The Significance of Tom Barrack’s Obstruction and False Statements Charges

I want to expand on something I said in this post about Tom Barrack’s charges: the obstruction and false statements charges against Trump’s big fundraiser make this case much more solid than many in the press (usually the same people claiming it’s a FARA case) are suggesting.

 In a June 20, 2019 interview with the FBI, the indictment alleges that Barrack lied about whether:

  1. Al Malik asked Barrack to do things for UAE
  2. Barrack downloaded an encrypted app to use to communicate with MbZ and other Emirati officials
  3. Barrack set up a meeting between MbZ and Trump and, generally, whether he had a role in facilitating communications between them
  4. He had a role in prepping MbZ for a September 2017 meeting with Trump

Curiously, the detention memo mentions two more lies that aren’t included in the indictment:

(1) writing a draft of a speech to be delivered by the Candidate in May 2016; (2) reviewing a PowerPoint presentation to be delivered to senior UAE officials on how to increase the UAE’s influence in the United States with his assistance;

In any case, this structure makes it easy to hold Barrack accountable at least via his lies to the FBI, and that he allegedly lied is powerful evidence that the full scope of the relationship was meant to be secret.

The headline charges are the foreign agent and conspiracy charges. But in addition to those charges, Barrack is also charged with obstruction and false statements. Most likely, if he were found guilty only on those charges, he’d face less time than from the foreign agent charge, but he’d still face prison.

Here’s what we know of the timeline: According to the Rashid Al Malik complaint, he was interviewed by the FBI on April 5, 2018. If the Intercept’s report that Mueller’s team conducted this interview is correct, this is likely his almost entirely redacted 302 (for an investigation that was ongoing in September 2020). Three days earlier, someone represented (as Barrack was) by Steptoe and Johnson had a pre-grand jury interview led by Zainab Ahmad that Andrew Weissmann joined while in progress. On April 8, three days after his own interview, Al Malik left the country and has been gone ever since.

In early 2019, Mueller’s team started handing off referrals, which may be why, in February 2019, the FBI sent subpoenas to Colony Capital.

In or about February 2019, Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) special agents served federal grand jury subpoenas on several individuals employed by or associated with Company A, including individuals that reported directly to the defendant THOMAS JOSEPH BARACK, in connection with the criminal investigation of the activities of the defendants RASHID SULTAN AL MALIK ALSHAHHI, BARRACK, and MATTHEW GRIMES.

Following the service of these federal grand jury subpoenas, the defendant THOMAS JOSEPH BARRACK volunteered to speak with FBI special agents. On or about June 20, 2019, FBI special agents interviewed BARRACK, in the presence of counsel, regarding the activities of the defendant RASHID SULTAN AL MALIK ALSHAHHI, BARRACK, and the defendant MATTHEW GRIMES. At the outset of the interview, United States government officials advised BARRACK, and confirmed that he understood, that lying to federal agents is a federal crime. Thereafter, during the course of the interview, BARRACK knowingly made numerous materially false statements relating to the activities of ALSHAHHI, BARRACK, and GRIMES.

At the time, of course, Barrack’s close ally was still President and Bill Barr was newly installed at the helm of DOJ, working hard to cover up the true results of the Mueller investigation and even beginning to take steps to protect Rudy Giuliani from his own foreign agent charges. Why wouldn’t Barrack lie?

Interestingly, the obstruction charge against Barrack suggests others were part of this.

On or about June 20, 2019, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendant THOMAS JOSEPH BARRACK, together with others, did knowingly, intentionally and corruptly obstruct, influence and impede, and attempt to obstruction, influence and impede, an official proceeding, to wit: a Federal Grand Jury.

In any case, Barrack is well-resourced and he’ll no doubt offer some solid defenses here, possibly including that he had earlier told the truth about some of this stuff, and so, any inaccuracies in his 2019 interview weren’t material.

But assuming the FBI didn’t charge a billionaire with false statements without having him dead to rights on the charges, by June 2019, the FBI foreclosed several of the defenses that Barrack might offer going forward: that he was doing all this as a legal commercial transaction (which is exempt from the foreign agent charges) or that he wasn’t really working for UAE, he just thought the alliance really served US interests and indulged the Emiratis by referring to MbZ asboss.” By denying very basic things that the FBI appears to have records for, then, Barrack made it a lot harder to argue — in 2021 — that’s there’s an innocent explanation for all this.

Five days after Barrack’s interview, the FBI obtained an arrest warrant for Al Malik, one that made Al Malik look like the bad guy here, taking advantage of poor Tom Barrack and poor Paulie Manafort.

But then DOJ kept investigating Barrack’s role in all this. According to CNN, before this time last year, EDNY prosecutors believed they had enough to add Barrack to the charges, but the appointed US Attorney “expressed misgivings.”

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn investigating Tom Barrack, a prominent ally to former President Donald Trump, for allegedly violating foreign lobbying laws had enough evidence to bring charges last year, but held off doing so until the arrival of the new presidential administration, according to people briefed on the matter.

Prosecutors wanted to move forward on the case and believed they could obtain an indictment, one source familiar with the matter said. The source said the investigation was mostly done well before the time period when prosecutors are discouraged from advancing politically sensitive matters ahead of an election.

But two sources tell CNN the US attorney in Brooklyn at the time, Richard Donoghue, expressed misgivings about the case. It’s unclear if he delayed the case outright or if prosecutors chose not to move forward at the time knowing the US attorney would not support it.

Then-Attorney General William Barr was also known inside the department to have reservations, in general, about foreign lobbying cases, which the Justice Department has struggled to prosecute in the past.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn US attorney’s office declined to comment. [my emphasis]

This is a hugely important report, but it also lets the Barr DOJ off easy. That’s true, first of all, because this is not a foreign lobbying case (this is one of the many reasons I harp on the import of getting the charge right here). DOJ hasn’t struggled to prosecute 951 cases, though at the time prosecutors deferred these charges, Barr was busy letting Mike Flynn blow up the Bijan Kian case, which included both FARA and 951 in the conspiracy charge, along with 951 separately, but which charged only Ekim Alptekin with false statements. Had Mike Flynn held to the terms of his plea agreement, that case likely would have been a far easier guilty verdict.

What happened last year, though, is that after EDNY prosecutors had continued to investigate for a year after discovering that Barrack was in no way the innocent victim of accused foreign agent Rashid Al Malik and were prepared to try to hold Barrack, as well, accountable for a pretty dramatic undisclosed role in setting a pro-UAE foreign policy, Richard Donoghue, faced with evidence that one of Trump’s closest advisors wasn’t telling the truth about why he was doing the things he was doing (or even, that he was doing them), “had misgivings.”

Or maybe he had misgivings about how Trump and Barr would respond if he approved this.

In fact, all this must have happened more than a year ago, because on July 10, 2020, Barr announced he was swapping Donoghue for Seth DuCharme, his DOJ fixer. This CNN report doesn’t explain why this didn’t get charged under DuCharme, but maybe that’s the point.

So Donoghue — or maybe DuCharme — left all the repercussions to US foreign policy of Barrack’s undisclosed actions earlier in the Trump Administration remain in place.

Frankly, it’s not surprising that Donoghue and DuCharme — who were, at the time, also in charge of limiting any damage to Rudy for his undisclosed influence-peddling — didn’t approve this prosecution. That’s their job.

What may be the most interesting detail is that whereas Lisa Monaco approved the raid on Rudy on her first day in office, this prosecution has taken three more months to charge.

This case will sink or swim on the strength of the false statements charges, because if Barrack’s alleged lies in June 2019 were clearcut, when he presumably believed he would be protected by Barr and Trump, then it makes several likely defenses a lot harder to pull off now. It’s possible there’s some complicating factor (again, I think it possible that he told the truth about some of these questions when interviewed by Mueller in December 2017). But if not, then the alleged lies become the building blocks to proving the Foreign Agent charges.

In any case, the alleged false statements charges make the questions about why Barr’s DOJ thought it was okay to keep these secrets all the more important.

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82 replies
  1. Peterr says:

    The “Curiously, the detention memo mentions two more lies that aren’t included in the indictment” line makes me think that the DOJ may be sitting on a superceding indictment that would include these lies, and mentioning them here is a shot across the bow to get Barrack’s attention and ultimately his cooperation.

    This sounds to me as if the current DOJ may be looking beyond Barrack toward a case against the old DOJ. Nailing him on lying to the FBI puts him on the hook, and gives them a lot of pressure points to seek future testimony or help directing possible investigatory leads.

    • emptywheel says:

      I think it’s more likely for the reason I hinted at in the post: because he didn’t outright lie about those things in 2017, whereas he did (allegedly) in 2019.

      So while he lied in the 2019 interview, they don’t want to charge them bc he could say he wasn’t trying to hide it.

      • Leoghann says:

        You mentioned other omissions from the charges in your earlier post. At the time I read that one, Peterr’s question occurred to me as well. Investigators are already discovering that some of Former’s longer-term buddies are difficult to turn, and surely it can’t hurt to keep a few things aside to turn up the heat later.

      • Summertime Blues says:

        Will Rodgers said “We have the best Congress money can buy”. The same thought extends to our legal system not in the sense that it is corrupt, but that those with great wealth have access to legal counsel that is exponentially better that what the average citizen has access to. It’s reasonable that the DOJ will want to tie the case up with steel cables rather than a bow. Mr. Barrack is expecting his attorneys to produce an innocent verdict- if this even goes to trial. Litigation could well extend into the next century /s.

    • Rugger9 says:

      In particular, this would highlight that DJT can’t help these lowlifes out of their jams and perhaps a few more will flip. Even Ivanka is rumored to be willing to talk (strictly rumor), and Jared’s had a couple of his alleged examples of his defiance appear in the press.

      It seems to be a question of when the floodgates open. If/when Barrack gets hauled into court and is held accountable, the rush to cut deals will be on because then everyone would know neither money nor connections would protect them from Garland’s DOJ.

      • Wajim says:

        Well, yeah, most of us want that, but until I see Bill Barr in ‘cuffs I suppose I’ll remain cynical. Barrack’s a big fish, though, I’ll give ’em that

  2. Marinela says:

    Trying to understand why Billy Barr didn’t squash this investigation into Tom B. as he did with the other investigations.

    Because it got “delayed”, now he got charged, but why the delay versus just declining it?

    • emptywheel says:

      I think killing investigations was a bigger push for Barr than preventing them from going forward. He didn’t kill the Rudy investigation.

      • BobCon says:

        I agree, Barr had more on his agenda than just protecting Trump.

        He had executions to rush, crackdowns on civil rights protests to launch. He had an incentive to avoid doing too much to drive resignations in the machinery at DOJ needed to make those things happen.

        • Marinela says:

          Barr didn’t have the bandwidth to cover up all the crimes and corruption from the Trump administration.
          Makes sense considering he was invested in culture wars shenanigans.

          So relieved Trump lost and Bill Barr is gone.
          Cannot remember who Trump wanted to replace Barr with in his second term.

          US dodged a lot of bullets by electing Biden.
          Feeling grateful today.

    • Rugger9 says:

      A very good question indeed but perhaps the Barrack-DJT dynamic (which I do not know) would help determine why Barr didn’t go the easy way and write get-out-of-jail-free letters. Barr seemed to not want to do these things, with the exception of Flynn but Flynn was deeper into the prosecution process that Barrack is now, and FWIW I think it would have been done very quietly.

      DJT’s assistance was transactional, so what could Barrack offer now (or in January 2021, for example) as a quid pro quo? I don’t see anything except $$$$.

      • Kenster42 says:

        Unless Barrack was given a secret pardon prior to TFG leaving office, he’s in biiiig trouble.

        • bmaz says:

          This is just nonsense. There are no “secret pardons”, and what in the world is “biiiig trouble”? Pretty sure you are just a troll at this point. Please stop.

      • subtropolis says:

        DJT had supposedly become annoyed with him wrt the inauguration money. This is from August 2019:

        Trump cuts off one of his oldest friends
        https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/19/donald-trump-cuts-off-tom-barrack-1467191

        – – –
        The key issue driving the two men apart: Barrack’s role as chairman of the president’s 2017 inauguration fund, which is under investigation by prosecutors.

        Trump was “really upset” to read reports about Barrack’s role in allegedly making it easy for some foreigners and others to try to spend money to get access to Trump and his inner circle and whether some of the inauguration money was misspent, according to a senior administration official.

        “The president was really surprised to read all about the inauguration and who was trying to buy access and how, because the president doesn’t get any of that money,” said the official.
        – – –

        The same article mentions the OTHER investigation, first reported by the NYT in 2019, which led to Barack’s indictment. I think that the notion that TFG was annoyed regarding his not getting a cut is only half the story. Perhaps even less than half. I’m wondering whether he’d learned that the FBI was investigating the UAE business — and, that the evidence might include difficult to dispute recordings, courtesy of NSA — and he did what he always does: distance himself like mad.

        • TooLoose LeTruck says:

          So Barrack joined that list of former Trump toadies exiled from the Magic Kingdom?

          Parscale…

          Michael Cohen…

          And Barrack too?

          What did Donald once say about that sort of thing…

          “That’s MY money!”

          And somewhere today, I’m pretty sure I read something about Trump publicly praising Rudy… does that mean Rudy has been allowed back into the Kingdom?

  3. Marinela says:

    “What may be the most interesting detail is that whereas Lisa Monaco approved the raid on Rudy on her first day in office, this prosecution has taken three more months to charge.”

    Being an espionage case, may explain why it took the current DOJ longer time.

  4. Rapier says:

    As “the traditional Judeo-Christian moral system” is under attack by “modern secularists” who better for Barr to turn to than Al Malik and the UAE, not to mention Tom Barrack. Let us not forget Rodger Stone, the apostle General Flynn and the sainted Donald Trump.

    • P J Evans says:

      I always read “Judeo-Christian” as “the harshest laws we can find” – there’s really nothing either Jewish or Christian about those views.

  5. TooLoose LeTruck says:

    Is there any chance the astonishing amount of bail Barrack got hit w/, $250MM, was in part meant to be a warning shot across others’ bows?

    • Leoghann says:

      More likely, it’s the fact that Barrack is a very, very wealthy man, has private jets, and bank accounts around the world. Also, his “boss” runs a country with no extradition treaty.

      • bmaz says:

        No, it is just gross. It is, far as I can tell, the highest bail in history. Will leave aside that most of it is property based and not cash, it is still beyond ludicrous. Barrack is not the first man of means to be charged with a fairly mediocre crime. The proposition that “Golly! he may jet away to Stavros’ secret island” is such horse manure. The frothing at the mouth lunacy over 1/6 detention/release is truly sickening. And incredibly damaging in the bigger picture of criminal law.

        • Ken Haylock says:

          The problem is surely that he’s an extreme flight risk, because he’s old enough that he could well spend the rest of his life in jail if he’s guilty & he could flee the jurisdiction to a retirement of untouchable luxury & more money that he can ever spend very easily. Even if he thinks he can get away with it with long sequence of appeals, he’ll surely be in court or talking to lawyers about being in court for the next 5 years, & may well _still_ go to jail. Arguably he should have remained locked up on that basis alone.

        • subtropolis says:

          I don’t wish to dispute any of that except the horse manure. You’ve heard of Carlos Ghosn? Stop pretending that skipping bail isn’t a thing.

          • bmaz says:

            Lol, did Ghosn abscond from US jurisdiction? Um, no. And, for anybody citing Kim Freeman, please get a life and grip. That was ridiculous, but was done by a podunk municipal court judge. Federal courts are different.

            Subtropolis, please stop pretending that you know squat about criminal law.

              • bmaz says:

                Ah yes, yet another state level bit of insanity. Of which, even the Texas appellate court found absurd (they have separate ones for criminal cases you know, and are famous for being brutal). Even they found such giant sums to be ludicrous. And that was as to a known bail jumper and murderer. Far different than the mediocre charges Barrack is charged with. Again, internet outrage is not a real basis for anything in federal criminal law.

                • MB says:

                  OK, Durst joins Freeman in the dustbin as well (sigh).

                  AUSA John Carroll asked $250 million bail for Michael Milken in 1989 (same as Barrack), but Judge Kimba Wood granted bail conditions of $1 million plus his mansions as collateral, and surrender of his passport instead.

                  Oddly, it was Rudy Giuliani who indicted Milken as USA in 1989 and then decades later lobbied strenuously for Trump to grant him a pardon, which he did last year.

                  https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1989/04/15/milken-to-set-aside-700-million/444280a7-92a3-420a-8b11-b230c2f834d9/

                  (kinda fun researching all this, actually)…

                  • TooLoose LeTruck says:

                    Yes, it is, isn’t it?

                    Kind of gives you a reason to delve into all kinds of obscure information you might never have cause to go looking for…

                  • bmaz says:

                    FWIW, this stuff is hard. I do it for a living, and still do not always get it right. Thing is, Barrack got treated fairly if you read the fine print. He is out, and thanking everybody he came in contact with. Which is very smart.

                    But thing also is that the press/media was all agog and reporting what was, on the surface, a ridiculous release amount. And it was. But that is what sits in people’s minds. And that is my fear.

                    Disclaimer: I know Durst’s attorneys. They are quite good. He will probably die before the proverbial conviction. And it is on hold in LA currently.

                    • TooLoose LeTruck says:

                      This right here is one of the things I love about this blog… people who really know what they’re talking about are so willing to bore down into the fine print, then muck around and get dirty…

                      Thank you!

                    • MB says:

                      Yikes.

                      I had also thought that despite the Durst jury returning at the end of the May coincident with the upcoming rescission of the mask mandate in California that started on June 15, that the re-imposition of the mask mandate in L.A. County on July 15 would put the kibosh on the resumed trial.

                      But I guess there’s bigger issues at play here than whether being physically present in the courtroom for all concerned was a public health issue or not…after all, the Derek Chauvin trial took place with lots of mask-wearing inside the courtroom in April and May of this year…

            • subtropolis says:

              I am not arguing criminal law with you. Also, unlike the other commenters, I am not attempting to justify people having to put up $millions in order to remain free until trial. I am only calling you out for your pretending that people do not occasionally flee. That’s ridiculous.

        • John Colvin says:

          Given that most of what was posted as bail was a portion of Barrack’s interest in a closely held entity (the assignee of which might have great difficulty actually extricating value from) and the bail amount was by negotiated agreement rather than by court order, practically, I think the reported dollar amount is somewhat immaterial (and does not offend me). If Barrack intends to flee, he will probably have enough funds available to live quite well (though he would be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life), but the government will recoup a large financial penalty.

          • bmaz says:

            Oh, do you now? I am sure all other possible defendants, including some I represent, will be comforted by your attenuated ignorance.

  6. earlofhuntingdon says:

    LOL. The GreatGlennGreenwald’s descennds into madness – liberal journalists are ignorant servants of the security state – but not really. He just ikes to paint his canvass with one color and a four-inch brush.

    Like his new bff and their bff Donald Trump, he is more aware of his surroundings than it appears. He might believe some of it, sure. But he is choosing to sell his current bunk because it keeps him as the center of attention and makes the most money.

    https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1419301225376387076

    • Peterr says:

      From the replies to that tweet:

      @AntonyMaxo
      It’s hella funny to rewatch Zachary Quinto’s scenes as Greenwald in that Snowden movie. Those scenes, in hindsight, aged like a fine wine poured in a dirty diaper and wrung out in a moldy sponge and left in a hot locker room for 10 weeks.

      • TooLoose LeTruck says:

        Now that tweet is a level of snark that I can only dream of and desperately wish to achieve some day…

        I am in awe of that individual’s command of the English language…

      • Rugger9 says:

        Speaking of a similar case, one of my daughter’s friends in HS forgot a tuna sandwich in his locker all summer. He was banished from having a locker after that.

        • TooLoose LeTruck says:

          Oh gawd…

          We’re talking a serious biological weapon here…

          I worked for a nonprofit once that staged volunteer work events… we’d get hundreds of individuals to come out to repair people’s homes, and part of the process involved feeding them on these work days.

          So one time I was helping clean up a storage room where we kept materials and in one box we found an unopened half gallon of half & half that had somehow been left sitting at room temperature for like a year and a half…

          Needless to say, we left it unopened and very, very carefully disposed of it…

        • Super Nintendo Chalmers says:

          Okay, so the kid left a tuna sandwich in his locker. That’s totally foreseeable which is why I blame the school here. This tells me the school didn’t open all the lockers at the end of the year and waited until the summer break ended, 3 months later.

          I suppose it would be too much to ask that the lockers be clean and stink-free for the first day of the year for students that didn’t have that locker the previous year. I don’t know about you, but in jr. and sr. h.s. I never had the same locker two years in a row.

          • P J Evans says:

            My HS tried to assign “permanent” lockers – it was much easier all around. But it didn’t always work out – my BFF had theirs changed every year, for some reason.
            Never forgot lunch, but I did forget a chocolate bar in my tote when I was working. It was a bit messy, but the bag was water-repellent so it was confined.

    • milestogo says:

      I used to read Glenn with some interest during his Salon days. His descent into journalistic madness is something I truly can’t figure out. Whenever I don’t understand something like this, it’s typically because my imagination isn’t broad enough to guess at the true causes. Maybe it is about the attention or the money but maybe he’s just really angry about some past snub.

      • earlofhuntingdon says:

        GG’s behavior suggests it’s about the narcissism, the status, and the money. His politics seem to follow that. Plus, he’s more thin-skinned than Donald Trump, which takes some doing. His claim to being the one, true progressie that liberal journalists fail to be might be a messiah complex.

        • Peterr says:

          I think you could have gone with “is” instead of “might be” in that last sentence.

          • Eureka says:

            I enjoyed “progressie” — while I take that to be a happy accident, it’s got that spark of pejorative a la “lint licker”, etc.:

            GG is the one true progressie.

            Thanks, earl.

  7. BobCon says:

    OT, but worth noting that Bob Moses has died.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/25/us/bob-moses-civil-rights-leader-death/index.html

    He was a lion of the civil rights movement, and unbelievably brave, putting his life on the line to register voters in Mississippi in the 1960s and coming close to death from attacks by white supremacists on more than one occasion.

    Republicans are desperate to strike the names of people like Moses from the history books, all in the hopes of preserving their delicate egos, as they tremble at the thought that school children might draw hope and inspiration from his example.

    • Peterr says:

      Not to downplay his work in Mississippi in the 60s at all, but his work in creating and leading the Algebra Project is amazing. His obit at the New York Times ended with this:

      Mr. Moses saw teaching “math literacy” as a direct extension of his civil rights work in Mississippi.

      “I believe that the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered Black voters in Mississippi was in 1961,” he wrote in “Radical Equations.”

      “I believe we can get the same kind of consensus we had in the 1960s for the effort of repairing this,” he added. “And I believe that solving the problem requires exactly the kind of community organizing that changed the South in the 1960s.”

      In the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis touched off global protests against systemic racism and police brutality, Mr. Moses said that the country seemed to be undergoing an “awakening.”

      “I certainly don’t know, at this moment, which way the country might flip,” he said in June 2020. “It can lurch backward as quickly as it can lurch forward.”

      What gives me hope is the number of folks he inspired through his life.

      • Super Nintendo Chalmers says:

        al ‘Jebra, an insidious mooslem (sic) plot to enslave our kids with math.

  8. skua says:

    From a lion we move down to a lower bowel parasite.

    s/
    Sidney Powell is going to help defend the 6 January rioters. You can help her work by donating. And don’t worry, I’m sure any un-used funds will be returned to donors.
    /s
    Actually this is bad for the defendants and bad for America – Powell is very capable of getting them heavier sentences which will increase the outrage their fellow deluded armed insurrectionists and their Trumpist supporters feel.
    Rather tricky really – “We can’t get them found innocent so instead we’ll get them hung and thereby prove that the deep state is against us, whilst pocketing tens of millions in donations.”

    • bmaz says:

      Yeargh. Do you have a link/cite for that? I googled, but it did not pop up.

      Frankly, not sure a federal court should or would accept her appearance at this point.

      • Peterr says:

        Marcy replied to a tweet about this that was sourced back to the Gateway Pundit. GP cites an announcement on “The War Room” radio show:

        Attorney Cynthia Hughes went on The War Room on Friday morning to announce the launch of a major legal defense fund to support the families of the Jan. 6 political prisoners.

        Cynthia told the War Room audience that the meeting this week involved Sidney Powell and her Defending the Republic defense fund and several attorneys.

        Radio host Pete Santilli has been steadfastly working behind the scenes for these unjustly imprisoned patriots. Pete was put in this exact situation years ago with the same corrupt DOJ, FBI, CIA and government officials. Initially, Pete said Sidney declined, as she is so busy with the election/voter fraud cases. Eventually, she acquiesced, and Pete just made the announcement last night on his show.

        Powell will be working WITH other yet unnamed high-powered attorneys who have also agreed to step in. She is NOT representing anyone….have to make that clear.

        Internal links omitted.

          • Peterr says:

            I like the “yet unnamed high-powered attorneys” part. My guess is that they are still haggling over their fees, and demanding payment in advance before they allow their names to be made public.

            Although with this crowd, I could see them trying to make an argument to the court that revealing their names — even to the prosecution — would cause them irreparable harm and subject them to later harassment in other cases. “Your honor, we would like to serve with our names under seal and our identities (voices and appearances) obscured in court.”

            LOL indeed

            • bmaz says:

              You know who has steered VERY far away from such nonsense? Actual right wing high powered lawyers. I’ll be waiting on this one. And, again, LOL.

  9. Savage Librarian says:

    Charge

    In the land of the oil derrick,
    did men unite against Iran’s cleric,
    with an assist from Tom Barrack,
    who didn’t foresee DOJ’s Merrick:

    Obstruction & false statements charge.
    Because Tom is used to living large,
    maybe he thinks this is just marg-
    inal, and doesn’t have a lot of starch.

    After all, it’s true Martha did her time
    for obstruction/false statements crime,
    The experience was far from sublime,
    yet she’s free to earn another dime.

    She wasn’t charged as a foreign agent,
    didn’t deal with someone rage bent,
    She learned what being caged meant,
    Now she can revisit the big stage tent.

    So what will happen with Tom Barrack?
    Will he contribute to a fair schtick?
    Maybe he couldn’t give a hair lick
    if the big guys keep him as their pick.

  10. Bob Shapiro says:

    Water cooler at Tom Barracks’ lawyers’ offices: “Get Bruce Rogow on the case!”

  11. Eureka says:

    David Roberts via Les Bowen:

    In a small MI town [Traverse City], a group of white students started a “slave trade” snapchat group, where they “sold” their black peers. In response, the school system passed an equity resolution. Now guess what? White parents are objecting to “critical race theory.” [WaPo link]

    Bury my heart.

    • Eureka says:

      …in this:

      “I know how much I was sold for: one hundred dollars,” said Nevaeh, who is half-Black. “And in the end I was given away for free” — to the friend who first warned her about the group.

      The Snapchat group, titled “slave trade,” also saw a student share the messages “all blacks should die” and “let’s start another holocaust,” according to screenshots obtained by The Washington Post. […]

      […]

      In interviews, children of color in Traverse City reported enduring years of harassment in the classroom and on the playing field. Black, Native American and LGBTQ students said casual racism, sexism and homophobia form part of daily life. Some White children said they have witnessed this, too.

      The Snapchat incident was unsurprising to them: “I was more surprised that somebody found out about it and it got to the news,” said Eve Mosqueda, 15, who is Native American and Mexican, adding that other kids throughout elementary school had asked her if she lived in a teepee.

      …utterly ridiculous juxtaposition:

      “We don’t, not even for a second, think about race,” said Darcie Pickren, 67, a vocal leader of the anti-CRT movement who is White, with Irish and Native American ancestry, and two of whose children graduated from the school system. “We never would. And I think that this is opening a can of worms and we are not going to be able to go back.”

      Added Sally Roeser, 44, a White mother of two who graduated from Traverse public schools: “We were all brought up not to take someone’s race into consideration. That’s what we’re guaranteed in America.
      (emphasis added)

      • J R in WV says:

        I had manager in an IT department who had a BS in computer science and an MBA, he hired me and several other expert software developers to first repair an antique software system, and then build a modern system to replace the antique.

        He stepped down as manager of the Software Development office because other state employees were discarding his paperwork, preventing our work from going forward. We couldn’t buy things, hire people, travel for training, because the paperwork was “lost”… It was because he was black~!!~

        But there’s no racism in America today. None. Never was, just ask any of the bigots!!

        • P J Evans says:

          My lead person didn’t like people who were black or Hispanic. Not racist…when two or more people were around. Only one white person, you found out what she really was. (Yeah, she voted R. I did some genealogy research for her but didn’t tell her some of what I learned, because it would have caused problems for me – one of her ancestors was known to shortchange customers at his butcher shop, as it made the local paper.)

    • P J Evans says:

      They have a problem with racism: they just don’t want to admit it. (I grew up in a city like that. It still has a problem. Still few blacks.)

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