Longterm readers of this site know that bmaz always gets incensed when people discuss RICO, mostly because those discussions tend towards magical thinking that RICO can make complex legal questions magically result in jail time for bad guys.

That’s why I put RICO in the title.

But RICO really has come up in a January 6 case: pertaining to DOJ’s attempted seizure of the $90,000 John Sullivan made off selling his video of the insurrection. Much of that filing dismisses Sullivan’s attempt to keep the money because he needs it for living expenses. If he genuinely needed it to pay his lawyer, he might have an argument, but DOJ says he’s got other bank accounts with significant funds for that.

Here, the defendant has submitted no declaration, financial affidavit, or banking statements. He has not provided any information about his assets outside his bank account ending in 7715, the only account from which funds were seized. He has not provided information about his short- or long-term liabilities. He has not detailed his sources of income, despite being, to the government’s understanding, currently employed by his father. He has not described his ability to use other assets, liquid and non-liquid, to pay basic necessities, including the assistance of family members and friends. He has not provided information regarding what funds he has recently expended toward household expenses and what any additional funds are requested, nor detailed what the “household expenses” entail. Such specification is particularly essential where expenditures can dramatically vary, irrespective of necessity, based on a defendant’s typical lifestyle. Cf. United States v. Egan, 2010 WL 3000000, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. July 29, 2010) (“The Court does not take lightly a request to release funds allegedly stolen from former customers in order to finance luxuries” such as high-end vehicles or a multimillion-dollar home”).

A more fulsome showing is particularly warranted in light of the defendant’s Pretrial Services Report from the arresting jurisdiction, which was prepared from an interview conducted on January 15, 2021 and, according to D.C. Pretrial Services, submitted to this Court with the Rule 5 papers. That document reported significant funds in unspecified bank accounts of the defendant – funds that wholly predate, and lie entirely outside the scope of, the government’s seizure warrants. The government’s seizure warrants instead surgically targeted the defendant’s $90,875 in proceeds from sales of his video footage from the U.S. Capitol – all of which was deposited into his bank account subsequent to January 15. The Pretrial Services Report further noted multiple vehicles owned by the defendant. And it provided a specific estimate of the defendant’s monthly expenses to include rent, groceries, cell phone, auto insurance, and other incidentals – which, if extrapolated, should mean that the defendant retains substantial assets notwithstanding the government’s seizure of the $62,813.76 on April 29, 2021.

The government, moreover, is aware of at least one other bank account of the defendant with America First Credit Union in which he retained a positive balance as of March 19, 2021. Again, this account and the funds therein lie wholly outside the scope of the government’s seizure warrants.

But there’s a part of the filing that probably answers a question I asked: aside from the First Amendment concerns of seizing funds from making a video, I wondered why DOJ had invoked the obstruction charge against Sullivan to do so, rather than the civil disorder charge, as the basis for the seizure. There’s more evidence that Sullivan was trying to maximize chaos than obstruct the counting of the vote, so it seemed like civil disorder was the more appropriate felony.

It seems that invoking obstruction gave DOJ a way to seize the funds, and even then it had to go through RICO magic.

Here’s the language in question: I’ve highlighted the RICO reference in bright red letters for bmaz’s benefit.

Title 18, United States Code, Section 981(a)(1)(C) provides that “[a]ny property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to a violation of … any offense constituting ‘specified unlawful activity’ (as defined in section 1956(c)(7) of [Title 18 of the U.S. Code])” is “subject to forfeiture to the United States.” The provision thus subjects “proceeds” traceable to violations of specified unlawful activities (“SUAs”) to civil forfeiture. Meanwhile, criminal forfeiture is authorized when 18 U.S.C. § 981(a)(1)(C) is used in conjunction with 28 U.S.C. § 2461(c), which holds that “[i]f the defendant is convicted of the offense giving rise to the forfeiture, the court shall order the forfeiture of the property as part of the sentence in the criminal case.” In turn, 18 U.S.C. § 1956(c)(7) – which was cross-referenced in § 981(a)(1)(C) – incorporates as SUAs all predicate offenses under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”) statute – that is, “any act or activity constituting an offense listed in section 1961(1) of this title [Title 18] except an act which is indictable under subchapter II of chapter 53 of title 31.”

Finally, 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1) sets forth the RICO predicates and expressly includes, among those predicates, 18 U.S.C. § 1512. 3 Thus, “[b]y application of § 2461(c), forfeiture of property is mandated for a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512, since it is a racketeering activity identified in 18 U.S.C. § 1961(1), which is a specified unlawful activity under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(c)(7)(A).” United States v. Clark, 165 F. Supp. 3d 1215, 1218 (S.D. Fla. 2016) (emphasis added).

The forfeiture law, 18 USC §981, allows for forfeiture when a person profits off any of a bunch of crimes. Terrorism is in there, for example, but Sullivan is not charged with a crime of terrorism (they might get there with Sullivan if he were charged with breaking a window that surely cost more than $1,000 to fix, but they haven’t charged him for that, even though his own video suggests he did break a window and all those windows are ridiculously expensive). Instead, DOJ is using 18 USC §1956, money laundering, to get to forfeiture. Sullivan is not alleged to have laundered money. But that law includes RICO’s predicates among the unlawful activities for which one might launder money. And obstruction, 18 USC §1512, is a specific unlawful activity that may be part of RICO.

That is, they found a crime that Sullivan allegedly committed — obstruction — nested three layers deep in other statutes.

DOJ admits that obstruction hasn’t led to forfeiture all that often — but they’ve found nine cases, none in DC, where it has.

3 There is a limited number of forfeiture allegations paired with § 1512 as the SUA. Section 1512 prohibits (a) killing or assaulting someone with intent to prevent their participation in an official proceeding, (b) intimidating someone to influence their testimony in such a proceeding, (c) corrupting records or obstructing, impeding, or influencing such a proceeding, and (d) harassing or delaying someone’s participation in such a proceeding – crimes that do not often generate profits. Nonetheless, the government has identified at least nine indictments where a § 1512 count was a basis for the forfeiture allegation. See United States v. Clark, 4:13-cr-10034 (S.D. Fla.); United States v. Eury, 1:20CR38-1 (M.D.N.C.); United States v. Ford and Prinster, 3:14-cr45 (D. Or.); United States v. Shabazz, 2:14-cr-20339 (E.D. Mich.); United States v. Cochran, 4:14- cr-22-01-HLM (N.D. Ga.); United States v. Adkins and Meredith, 1:13cr17-1 (N.D. W. Va.); United States v. Faulkner, 3:09-CR-249-D (N.D. Tex.); United States v. Hollnagel, 10 CR 195 (N.D. Ill.); United States v. Bonaventura, 4:02-cr-40026 (D. Mass.). Congress likewise included some of § 1512’s surrounding obstruction-related statutes as SUAs, and forfeiture allegations have also referenced these sister statutes. E.g., United States v. Fisch, 2013 WL 5774876 (S.D. Tex. 2013) (§ 1503 as SUA); United States v. Lustyik, 2015 WL 1401674 (D. Utah 2015) (same).

Of course, those obstruction charges were probably garden variety obstruction (say, threatening trial witnesses for pay), not the already novel application of obstruction that other defendants are challenging.

bmaz may swoop in here and accuse DOJ of using RICO for magical thinking. At the very least, this all seems very precarious, as a matter of law.

I’m all in favor of preventing someone from profiting off insurrection. But this seems like a novel application of law on top of a novel application of law.

Sullivan has a hearing today before Judge Emmet Sullivan, so we may get a sense of whether the judge thinks this invocation of RICO is just magical thinking.

Yesterday, the government released a superseding indictment for John Earle Sullivan, the guy who filmed video of the insurrection and then sold it to CNN and other media outlets. In addition to adding two crimes for his possession of a knife he boasted of having in his own video but then allegedly lied to the FBI about, the government moved to seize almost $90,000 in forfeiture. The move is an aggressive step that may be justifiable for Sullivan, but has implications for the five or so other propagandists arrested as part of the riot.

Sullivan was first charged, with civil disorder and trespassing, on January 13, after several FBI interviews. His arrest affidavit described how, repeatedly during the video he filmed of the riot, he made comments egging on the rioters. At the moment he caught Ashli Babbitt’s shooting on film, he had pushed himself to the front of that mob by calling out that he had a knife.

When the government first indicted Sullivan on February 3, the added obstruction and abetting charges to the civil disorder and trespass charges. That happened at virtually the same time the government moved to revoke his bail, based off several violations of the limits imposed on his use of social media. Sullivan responded by arguing that all that media contact was his job; his lawyer even provided evidence of the funds CNN have paid him to obtain his video of the insurrection. In response, Sullivan remained on bail with more explicit limits to his Internet access.

The one public discovery notice provided to Sullivan so far includes:

• Earlier publications showing his efforts as a provocateur, including “Let’s start a riot” and “How to Take Down a Monument”
• His criminal arrest record that includes association with past outbreaks of violence at protests
• An interview he did on Infowars after the riot
• Subpoenas to CenturyLink and Beehive Broadband, suggesting they were tracking traffic on Sullivan’s website

Then things went quiet in his case until, on May 7, his lawyer filed a motion to get funds in a Utah bank released he said had been seized without warning. It argued that Sullivan is entitled to a hearing at which he can contest that he committed a crime and the funds being seized came from the crime.

Accordingly, the federal courts have held that when the government restrains a criminal defendant’s assets before trial on the assertion that they may be subject to forfeiture, due process requires that the defendant be afforded a post-deprivation, pretrial hearing to challenge the restraint. If certain minimal conditions are satisfied, “[t]he wholesale use of…forfeiture proceedings [should cause] grave concern when the Government has clearly focused its law enforcement energies and resources upon a person and attempts to restrain his property….” United States v. $39,000 in Canadian Currency.” 801 F.2d 1210, 1219 n.7 (10th Cir. 1986).

The United States Supreme Court has made clear that pretrial seizure, pursuant to 21 U.S.C. Sec. 853 (f) requires two probable cause findings: (1) that the defendant committed an offense permitting forfeiture and (2) that the property at issue has the requisite connection to that crime.” Kaley v. United States, 134 S. Ct 1090,1095 (2014).

At the outset, defendant notes that he needs the funds in the seized bank account in order to pay his rent and household necessities. Additionally, the proceeds of the seized bank account are not the product of criminal activity alleged in the indictment.

Thus the new indictment, I guess.

The indictment ties the forfeiture not to Sullivan’s civil disorder charge, which would seem to make sense given Sullivan’s past history of profiting off inciting violence at peaceful protests, but instead to Sullivan’s obstruction charge. That seems to argue that Sullivan’s filming of the insurrection, in which he cajoled police to step down (including from the confrontation before Babbitt was shot) and cheered on the seizure of the Capitol, was part of the successful obstruction of the vote count.

Given Sullivan’s past incitement (which, ironically, was well-documented by leftist activists months before Trump supporters and Sullivan’s own brother tried to base an Antifa false flag claim on Sullivan’s presence), this may be a reasonable argument for Sullivan.

But there are at least five other right wing propagandists who were present at the insurrection for whom that might be a really troubling precedent (an InfoWars video editor Sam Montoya also witnessed and magnified Babbitt’s death).

Again, this may all be merited. And perhaps DOJ is tying Sullivan’s new charges for his knife to the seizure. But it seems an important development to track.

Update: Sullivan’s motion for a hearing on the seizures alluded to more discovery. This letter may describe that discovery. It describes a slew of subpoenas, including Square, JP Morgan, Venmo, Discover, Amazon, and others. In other words, the letter reflects a concerted effort to figure out how Sullivan’s finances work.

But the more interesting detail is item 21, reflecting the HIGHLY SENSITIVE estimate from the Architect of the Capitol estimating the cost of replacing a window. Sullivan’s own video strongly implies he broke that window. But he hasn’t been charged with it yet. That’s important, because he could be — and if he is, it could trigger terrorism enhancements.

It was harsh of the government to seize Sullivan’s funds. But what might come next will be far more harsh.

Update: Justin Rohrlich found and shared the seizure warrants. The logic behind this seizure is as follows:

¶31: The affidavit lays out evidence of Sullivan admitting he’s not a journalist, including hims saying on January 5 that he made that claim up “on the fly.”

¶32: A description of how after the riot, Sullivan changed his webpage description to incorporate a claim to be a journalist.

¶34: Citations to the hearing on his release violations in which he presented the contracts he got for the video.

¶35: A brag, right after he left the Capitol, saying, “Everybody’s gonna want this. Nobody has it. I’m selling it, I could make millions of dollars. … I brought my megaphone to instigate shit.”

¶36: A summary of the deposits paid for use of the video.

The government and Ethan Nordean are having a dispute that is, at least procedurally, about whether by giving Nordean the Telegram text messages he demanded in prioritized fashion, the government committed a Brady violation. Nordean started this dispute on April 29 with a filing admitting that the texts he received before his detention hearing were the ones he asked for specifically but still complaining that he didn’t get all his texts at once.

Today, the government produced for the first time additional Telegram messages extracted from Nordean’s phone. The government provided no explanation as to why they were produced after the hearing on its third detention motion and not beforehand.1 Like the Telegram chats it used to support detention, today’s production was drawn from the same device (Nordean’s phone), the same app (Telegram), and only postdate by some days the chats the government used to detain Nordean. In reviewing the following chats, the Court may recall that because the Telegram messages are encrypted and, according to the government, “designed to evade law enforcement,” the government would have the Court believe the app users are speaking candidly in Telegram.

On March 25, Nordean requested that the government produce, at least by March 30, Telegram chats on Nordean’s phone sent and received between 1/4/21 and 1/8/21. Nordean did not say that no other chats should be produced, nor did he waive any right to Brady material of which the government was aware. On March 9, Nordean served a discovery letter on the government seeking all of the defendant’s statements and requesting that Brady material be produced according to the schedule in Rule 5.1.

The government response doesn’t point out that they gave Nordean precisely what Nordean asked for. It does describe how they provided Nordean’s Telegram chats in three waves, with the entire content of his phone provided by April 30.

On April 29, 2021, the government produced to defendant Nordean eleven (11) strings of text messages, totaling over 5,000 pages, that contained the terms “Ministry of Self-Defense” or “MOSD,” and that were recovered from defendant Nordean’s phone.

Thereafter, on April 30, 2021, a full copy of an extraction from defendant Nordean’s phone was produced to Nordean’s counsel. That production included approximately 1,172 Telegram message strings (totaling over 1.3 million messages). The extracted text of the Telegram messages in Nordean’s phone runs over 204,000 pages when printed in .pdf format, which does not include any of the images, audio, or video files that are associated with the message strings. In addition to the Telegram messages, the phone contains hundreds of other communications using other platforms, including other encrypted platforms such as Signal and WhatsApp. The government’s review of these message strings, hundreds of which contained communications between December 2020 and January 2021, is ongoing, and all of this information is in defendant Nordean’s possession.

Nordean’s reply doubles down on the accusations of misconduct, now claiming the government intentionally withheld substantiation of Nordean’s claim to have disavowed rallies.

Nordean had presented an audio recording of himself in a conversation with members of his group in which he rejected political rallying. The recording shows him annoyed with how often he had to “repeat himself” on the point. The clip was recorded in February, shortly before his arrest. It is not “self-serving,” as he was communicating with his in-group and through the medium that the government alleges was used “to evade detection.”1 The Court found that the clip “does suggest that, at some point, [Nordean] agreed that the Proud Boys should stop rallying.” Hr’g Trans., 4/19/21, p. 55:21. However, the Court also found that “without any further context there’s no indication that that was some kind of permanent decision.” Id., p. 55:22.

At the time of the hearing, there was “further context.” The government knew it and did not inform the defense or the Court. Shortly after that hearing, on April 29, the government produced late January chats in which Nordean repeatedly discussed “bans on rallies”; in which Nordean said, “fuck politics, build communities and local economy” (Cf. the Court: “politics has not [passed]”); where Nordean endorses the doubly capital notion “THE PROUD BOYS ARE NOT MARCHING ON CAPITAL BUILDINGS”; and in which Nordean reacts dismissively, in real time, to the conspiracy charge supposedly predicating his detention. On its own, the government’s late production of these chats is unequivocally a violation of the Due Process Protections Act and Local Criminal Rule 5.1. It is also a violation of Rule 3.8(e) of the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct for prosecutors.2

2 “The prosecutor in a criminal case shall not . . . Intentionally fail to disclose to the defense, upon request and at a time when use by the defense is reasonably feasible, any evidence or information that the prosecutor knows or reasonably should know tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigate the offense.” Rule 3.8(e) of the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct.

In his reply Nordean asks a fair question — why the government didn’t just keep screen-capping texts that were a “two-second scroll” down Nordean’s phone from the chats the government had turned over in response to Nordean’s specific request. It seems the government has a reasonable answer: because it was responding to a specific request, though they have yet to say that specifically.

Nevertheless, neither side is treating this as a dispute over misconduct. The government notes that his original motion asks for no relief.

Defendant Nordean’s notice alleging a violation of those provisions (ECF 79) seeks no relief, and no relief or further action by the Court is necessary or appropriate.

Nordean’s reply asks for no relief either. It instead says that he is “developing evidence,” but once again asks for no relief.

The government concludes its response by saying Nordean’s “notice seeks no relief because defendant is entitled to no relief.” ECF No. 84, p. 12. The government is mistaken. The notice sought no relief because Nordean is developing further evidence of the government’s misconduct in filing a series of misleading claims in this matter and in withholding evidence so that it cannot be timely used.

And Nordean goes from that comment — stating that it is incorrect that he asks for no relief by once again asking for no relief — to instead make an argument about bail. (This series of exchanges is actually about preparing a record for Nordean’s detention challenge at the DC Circuit.)

Nordean points to this declaration from Daniel Aurellano stating that Ethan Nordean is no longer the President of Proud Boys Seattle Chapter, because he, Aurellano, was elected to replace him.

Nordean is also developing evidence showing that the premises for revoking his release order are factually mistaken. For example, although Nordean’s leadership role in the Proud Boys was cited to detain him, he is no longer a leader, in any sense of the word, in that organization, nor does he have any decision-making authority, as sworn statements indicate and will further indicate.

Aurellano says he was elected to replace Nordean “in February 2021,” but doesn’t say when that happened. Nor does Aurellano say when, in February 2021, the Proud Boys Northwest chose to dissociate from the national Proud Boys. He does, however, say Nordean stopped participating in Proud Boys Internet communications after his arrest in February 2021. Which suggests Aurellano got elected to replace Nordean at a meeting that Nordean called for while still the head of the chapter, on January 20, and at which Nordean planned to discuss “bugout bags” and “bulk armor deals” because they were “on the brink of absolute war.”

Nordean makes much of the fact that subsequent to this January 20 statement, and so also subsequent to Joe Biggs’ arrest on January 20, he made a series of comments forswearing rallies.

But that means one of the last things Nordean did while still in charge was call for and prepare for war — not to mention to call for bugout bags for which the old passport of one’s ex-wife, such as the one the government alleges (though the allegation is contested) was out on Nordean’s bedroom dresser when the FBI came to search his house — would be acutely valuable. And then everyone started getting arrested and the Proud Boys took steps to cover their tracks.

Amid this whole bail dispute pretending to be a misconduct dispute, however, Nordean has helped to lay out both that this is a remarkably organized militia, and it is adopting a tactic other terrorist groups have in the past: to splinter and rebrand as a way to attempt to evade prosecution, as if the Proud Boys Northwest had adopted the name Y’All Qaeda Northwest like African branches of the Islamic State did.

Thus far, filings in the Proud Boys Leadership conspiracy case have shown that:

• The Proud Boys started preparing a compartmented cell structure in anticipation of the January 6 insurrection on December 29
• Enrique Tarrio anticipated he would be arrested when he came to DC on January 4 and so provided for a succession plan
• Charles Donohoe allegedly attempted to destroy evidence of past planning in the wake of Tarrio’s arrest, specifically in an attempt to avoid gang charges (whether he succeeded or not remains contested)
• In the aftermath of January 6, the Proud Boys (and Nordean specifically) took steps to prepare for war
• In Seattle, the Proud Boys responded to Nordean’s arrest by ensuring the continuity of the organization

Again, none of this is exculpatory for Nordean. It shows the Proud Boys operating like sophisticated terrorist groups have operated in the past, in an attempt to retain viability while under government scrutiny.

And along the way, Nordean and the government have been drawing an utterly convincing argument — with two attempts to access passports and an explicit call for bugout bags — that he would flee the country the first chance he got.

Although GWU’s tracker, which is still the best way to keep track of all the January 6 defendants (though this visual story from WaPo using their data is nifty) added four new January 6 defendants yesterday, the pace of new defendants has slowed considerably. While there are still some detention fights, several of those disputes (Proud Boys Ethan Nordean and Joe Biggs, and disorganized conspirators Nate DeGrave and Ronnie Sandlin, as well as Neo-Nazi sympathizer Timothy Hale-Cusanelli — have moved to the DC Circuit.

We’re likely to have more bail revocation fights. The other day, for example, Landon Copeland — who made news for his meltdown during a magistrate judge’s hearing last week — was arrested for some still unidentified bail violation. The government has also moved to revoke Patrick Montgomery’s bail because he — a professional hunting guide — shot a mountain lion that he — a felon — cannot legally possess.

But there are a couple of developments this week that point to what’s going on with this investigation.

Delayed phone exploitation

In a hearing in the case against mother and son defendants Deborah and Salvador Sandoval, Deborah’s attorneys were anxious to move to trial based off an apparent misunderstanding that the evidence on her sole computer device, her smart phone, would show she barely entered the Capitol. Meanwhile, the government revealed that because Salvador chose not to share passwords to his multiple devices, those are taking a lot longer to exploit. As I’ve already noted, Ethan Nordean is the only Proud Boys leadership co-conspirator whose phone DOJ was able to exploit without cracking the password first (the FBI got the password from Nordean’s wife). Exploiting all these phones is going to take a lot of time.

In another case, there appear to be privileged communications on Eric Torrens’ phone, which will delay the exploitation of that for up to four weeks as a filter team reviews the content.

In other words, even before you consider any delay created by FBI’s need to respond to Signal’s Moxie Marlinspike’s exposure of vulnerabilities in Cellebrite’s code, it will take some time to process the vast volume of evidence the government has obtained since January 6.

The network analysis

The arrest of Brittiany Dillon gives a sense of another cause of delay.

Bryan Betancur was one of the first wave of January 6 defendants to be arrested, on January 17, after his parole officer alerted the FBI that he had lied about handing out Bibles to get permission to travel from Baltimore to DC that day. The government got a warrant for his phone on January 20. Once they got into his phone, they discovered text messages between Betancur and Dillon in which Dillon described falling in the door of the Capitol during the riot. The government found video of her — falling down as she entered — on surveillance videos by January 23. The government obtained phone and Google warrants to confirm that Dillon had been inside the Capitol the day of the riot. For some reason, the FBI only got around to interviewing Dillon’s father, ostensibly about Betancur, on April 21; the agent got Dillon’s father to confirm Dillon’s ID while they were talking.

This is similar to what happened with Patrick Montgomery, who like Betancur was arrested on January 17. Only after FBI exploited his phone and found some key pictures did they arrest a buddy he was with that day, Brady Knowlton, while pursuing two others.

These arrests of friends of early arrestees may reflect an FBI agent trying to get arrest numbers, but in a number of cases, they seem to reflect larger investigative strategies based on things investigators have found in the profiles of the original defendant. By my count there are about 18 cases of network arrests aside from the militia conspiracies, and about half of those look like they may be more interesting than friends getting scooped up together. I would expect to see more of this going forward.

Delayed arrests

The two month delay between the time DOJ identified active duty Marine, Major Christopher Warnagiris, as the person who played a key role in keeping the East door of the Capitol open after it was first breached on January 6 and when they arrested him on Wednesday is far more interesting.

As the arrest affidavit explains, FBI isolated Warnagiris as a suspect based on his conduct as shown in video, and then published a Be On the Lookout picture to figure out who he was. On March 16, a former co-worker IDed him, and on March 17, the FBI interviewed one of his current co-workers, who positively IDed Warnagiris.

And that’s it–that’s where the narrative in the affidavit, which was signed on Wednesday, ends. They get a BOLO-based tip on March 16, and get military witnesses to confirm his ID on March 17. And that’s all they’re telling us about who he is and what other evidence they have against him.

I’m sure that’s not all that has transpired since FBI discovered an active duty Major played a key role in keeping the East Capitol breach open.

All the while, someone who by dint of being an active duty service member has clearance, has (as far as we know) been going into Quantico every day for the almost two months since they IDed him. That’s … an interesting investigative decision.

Compare that narrative to the one told in the arrest affidavit of Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, the Army reservist and Nazi-sympathizer who worked as a contractor at Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey. On January 12, an informant told the FBI that Hale-Cusanelli was at the riot, on January 14, the informant recorded a conversation in which Hale-Cusanelli admitted to pushing and shoving along with the rest of the mob. Hale-Cusanelli has been jailed since the very next day, January 15 (he is appealing his detention to the DC Circuit). Hale-Cusanelli has not been charged with assault and he is not known to have played such a key role in compromising the Capitol from a second side.

Now, for many defendants, I can see taking your time after the initial rush of arrests. After all, if they were going to delete their Facebook, that would have happened (and did happen, with a goodly number of defendants) by January 9. But Warnagiris seems like a more urgent risk.

And, remarkably, DOJ apparently did not ask for any special conditions on Warnagiris. He has no location monitoring, no restrictions on possessing a gun, no specificity to his travel around DC (most defendants have stay-away orders, but for people like Warnagiris who are local to DC, they’re sometimes restricted to their District). They did not ask him to surrender his passport. Now, perhaps something is also going on with him in the military. But the whole thing — on top of the inevitable shock of having an active duty officer arrested — raises more questions than other cases.

All of which is to say that, with a defendant who genuinely poses unique security risks, the government is now taking their time to flesh out their investigation.

I’ve said from the start that this investigation has been lightning quick. That’s still, absolutely, true. But there’s going to be a lot more happening behind closed doors in the weeks ahead.

Journalists and the public who called into Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather’s public access line yesterday presumably called in to hear the initial hearings for a range of January 6 defendants. There were the two life-long friends, Jennifer Ruth Parks and Esther Schwemmer, whose lawyers went to some effort to ensure the no contact provision imposed upon their arrests was explicitly dropped in release conditions as they await resolution of their misdemeanor trespass charges. Right wing media figure Billy Tryon from upstate NY, accused of trespassing, had his appearance without incident. Somehow Albuquerque Cosper Head, accused in one of the more brutal attacks on January 6, the group assault on Brian Fanone, was a side-story of this hearing.

But the hearing — scheduled for an hour but lasting far longer — ended up posing an apt lesson in the human tragedy created by Trump’s radicalization of his supporters.

Even before the judge came in, Landon Copeland had disrupted the proceedings for others. A friend who had logged into the Zoom conference — which is supposed to be restricted to official participants like defendants, lawyers, and pretrial services officers — got booted for using an obscene name. Copeland took a week to travel from Southern Utah to the insurrection with his girlfriend. He is accused of assaulting cops and participating in a civil disorder along with the trespassing charges that virtually all January 6 defendants get charged with.

After he was arrested, Copeland was let out on personal recognizance, but in the wake of learning he’d face consequences for his participation in the riot, he posted threats of violence to his Facebook account.

Plus, Copeland had a recent arrest for violence. He was arrested in early 2020 for stealing a car and lighting it on fire.

Copeland’s interruptions early in the hearing seemed like rage about being held accountable and incomprehension about both the seriousness of his plight and basic things like managing a conference call appearance. As he started screaming, most on the line realized what the outbursts would do for his defense against charges that he lost control on January 6, blew off authority, and beat up some cops, and multiple lawyers and court personnel kept trying to counsel him to shut up. He even promised he would be quiet at one point, only to interrupt as the government described base-level pre-trial release conditions by asking, “Is any of this negotiable?”

Perhaps the most telling exchange came when Anthony Antonio’s attorney, Joseph Hurley, started into a long explanation about why his client — who was arrested in Delaware, lives in South Carolina, but needs to travel nationally for his job — should not have any district level travel restrictions on his release conditions.

If you go by his his arrest affidavit, Antonio is as dangerous as Copeland. He’s not charged with assault, but is charged with participating in a civil disorder,  obstruction, and depredation of property (the charge used to add detention enhancements to militia conspirators). He showed up wearing a 3%er patch and a bullet proof vest. He was involved in the fight in the Lower West Tunnel. And while he grabbed a bullhorn and emphasized keeping the riot peaceful, after he did so, he broke into an office and trashed the place, allegedly coming away wielding a table leg as a weapon.

According to Antonio’s arrest affidavit, the FBI IDed him first by releasing his image in a BOLO, then responding to a tip provided in response.

That’s not what Hurley said. Hurley told Magistrate Meriweather that days after the riot, Antonio had come to his Wilmington, DE office and overcome Hurley’s initial resistance to work with any January 6 defendants by convincing him he was really an up-standing citizen whose mind had been rotted by Fox. This is not a new ploy. Many attorneys representing January 6 defendants have claimed that their clients did what they did because they had been caught up in Trump’s lies. In this case, Hurley claimed that the riot had cured his client of his belief in Trump, but also made him realize that the six months he spent with a bunch of guys living in Naperville during COVID had given him “Foxitis,” and led him to deviate from a successful life in sales to participate in a mob.

Hurley led the growing call-in audience to believe that Antonio came to him and they went to the FBI. But the arrest affidavit suggests that Antonio and Hurley first met the FBI on February 4, long after other witnesses turned him in, and in that meeting, Hurley downplayed his involvement and claimed the cops let them do what they were doing.

On February 4, 2021, FBI agents interviewed ANTONIO with his attorney present. ANTONIO stated that he came to Washington, D.C. because then-President Trump told him to do so. He admitted that he was at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and saw that there were barriers up and that people were clashing with the police. ANTONIO admitted that he was on the scaffolding that day, but stated that another person also on the scaffolding said, “I’m media,” showed ANTONIO a badge, and said that ANTONIO could be on the scaffolding because he (ANTONIO) was “with” the person with the badge. ANTONIO told the agents that he was advising others not to come up on the scaffolding because he was worried it would fall.

When asked if he heard the police give any commands, ANTONIO claimed that when he was on the scaffolding he heard announcements over a speaker, but could not understand what was being said. ANTONIO said that he saw the barriers pushed over by people and that the police were gone. According to ANTONIO, he thought “I guess they gave us the steps, they said we could be on the steps, they’re, they’re done.” ANTONIO also told agents that when he was on the “steps,” – contextually referring to the steps of the Lower West Terrace – he observed a person who was bleeding from the head, and he tried to make a path through the mass of people to get the injured person aid.

When the FBI asked Antonio whether he had entered the room of the Capitol in which — he told VDARE — [we] “broke everything,” Hurley refused to let him answer.

ANTONIO was asked if he was ever in a position to observe what was going on inside the Capitol building. ANTONIO responded that there was a woman yelling, “we broke the window,” and through that window he observed people smashing furniture and piling it in front of the door to create a barricade. ANTONIO reported that because of the chemical irritants in his eyes, he was rubbing them, but he could hear the sound of the property being broken inside the room. When asked if he went inside the Capitol building, ANTONIO’s lawyer stated, “Next question, please,” and the agents complied with that request.

Plus, there’s a key gap — at least in the April 14 affidavit, dated six days before his arrest — in the narrative of what Antonio did. Surveillance video shows Antonio approaching the cops inside the tunnel bearing a stolen riot shield, but that video, at least, doesn’t show what he did there.

Once he made his way to the front of the tunnel, ANTONIO turned his hat around so that the bill was facing backwards. At this time in the investigation, due to the angle of the surveillance video, it is unclear what actions ANTONIO took at the front of the tunnel. Approximately two minutes later, ANTONIO left the tunnel with the riot shield still in his possession. About twenty minutes later, ANTONIO reentered the tunnel and pushed his way towards the front of the crowd; he was ultimately pushed out of tunnel. As before, it is unclear at this point, what ANTONIO did while inside the tunnel due to the angle of the surveillance video.

Antonio told the FBI, at what seems to have been a well-rehearsed interview with the famously showy Hurley (who claimed the only attorney who could vouch for him in DC was a guy named Joe Biden, but that guy isn’t admitted to the DC Bar), that he looked into Michael Fanone’s eyes and saw death and realized things had gone too far.

ANTONIO told the agents that while he was on the steps, he observed about six men drag a police officer down the steps. He claimed that he heard the sound of a taser, looked in that direction, believing that the officer was using the taser against the crowd, but “it was the exact opposite.” Your affiant is aware that this police officer, Officer 1, was tased by participants in the riot. ANTONIO claimed that he locked eyes with the officer, who said, “help, help,” and ANTONIO could see “death in the man’s eyes.” ANTONIO stated he would not be able to get the image of the officer out of his head. ANTONIO reported that this was the point he said to himself something was wrong and not right. According to ANTONIO, he did not help the officer, and “missed my judgement, I didn’t help him when I should of.”

But that was before he entered the Capitol and trashed the joint. And when the guy wearing a 3%er patch and flashing 3%er symbols was asked about affiliations with right wing extremists, he simply said he knew of but was not affiliated with the Proud Boys.

Anyway, Hurley was telling the carefully rehearsed story about how his client’s “Foxitis” explains his role in the insurrection and claiming that his client was cooperating and they would be happy to waive speedy trial for years to let all the bad people be prosecuted first at a dial-in hearing that live coverage about Copeland’s disruptions had attracted more attention to, and Copeland interrupted this speech and said, “This is not pertinent.”

Copeland then continued to hijack the conference between patient court employees muting him, him hanging up, and one after another services personnel calling in to see if they could help.

It was difficult to tell how much of Copeland’s interruptions were about the PTSD that, it was mentioned at the trial, he suffered from or from ties the Sovereign citizen movement in southern Utah. His service and his “taxes” (which he made clear included his child support) were recurrent theories.

I need a bunch of stuff, I’m a veteran, and you owe this to me, I got shot at in Iraq. You guys just done fucked this up. I don’t know who you are. I’m clear out here in the middle of the desert in no man’s land. You can’t come get me if I don’t you to.

An FBI Agent, who was prepared to talk about his threats on Facebook, showed up. But by then, Judge Merriweather had decided she couldn’t move forward without a competence hearing, all exacerbated by the challenge of finding someone Copeland trusted enough to encourage him to attend the hearing. It’s impossible to tell where the very real PTSD ends and the Trump-stoked resentments begin.

Against the background of Hurley claiming Fox and Trump had made his client crazy enough to join a riot, Copeland’s outbursts made it clear how dangerous was the way that Trump has exacerbated the instability of his supporters, how the effect leaves us with no good options.

But claiming his client had been temporarily made crazy by Fo worked for Hurley, at least. His client got his national release conditions.

Two days ago, I noted that discovery correspondence in the case of Long Island CPA Justin McAuliffe suggests he may know something about what happened to Jeff Merkley’s laptop, which was stolen during the riot. Merkley described the damage rioters had done to his office in this video.

The trail of destruction and looting. What happened today was an assault by the domestic terrorists who stormed the Capitol, but it was also an assault on our constitution.
[sound on] pic.twitter.com/BrELF7cMz1

— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) January 7, 2021

In a letter describing the discovery provided to McAuliffe, DOJ included a picture of Merkley’s stolen laptop, among other items.

As I noted, McAuliffe has not been charged with theft or damage at all. He remains charged under his original complaint with just trespassing.

In the last two days, there have been several developments in the investigation of Merkley’s missing laptop.

First, on May 4, the government arrested a guy named Gary Edwards.

His arrest affidavit includes a picture of him in what the wall hangings, among other things, make clear is Merkley’s office.

Most pictures in his arrest affidavit (including this one) show Edwards using his phone. I have speculated in the past that DOJ is prioritizing the arrests of MAGA tourists — those otherwise charged with just misdemeanor trespassing — for evidence they may have on their cell phones, and Edwards may be such an example.

Also in the last few days, GWU made the April 30 arrest of Oliver Sarko public. His arrest affidavit describes that he entered Merkley’s office. The picture included shows that he was filming as he walked out.

Like Edwards, Sarko was arrested solely for trespassing, in another arrest that may serve to obtain key evidence about what happened in Merkley’s office.

More interesting still, the government moved to revoke the bail of Brandon Fellows. Fellows is the guy that McAuliffe’s arrest affidavit shows sitting next to McAuliffe at a table in Merkley’s office (Fellows is the guy with the fake beard; his own arrest affidavit includes a screen cap with Fellows at the table that doesn’t show McAuliffe).

Fellows’ arrest affidavit (unlike McAuliffe’s) notes that Merkley’s laptop was stolen, but it doesn’t charge him for the theft.

On January 6, 2021, a live stream video on the DLive platform was broadcasted to the public from user “Baked Alaska” and a portion was later posted on Twitter. In the video, several people were observed in an office that appeared to be within the Capitol. The video showed a person who appeared to be FELLOWS, sitting at a table with his feet propped up on a table, as shown in the still shot below. The chairs, table, drapes, and wall art appeared to be consistent with those in the office posted by Senator Merkley. The conference room in which FELLOWS is present appears to be Senate room S140, the private “hideaway” office of Senator Merkley within the U.S. Capitol. The artwork visible on the walls of the conference room in the video is also visible on a video that Senator Merkley posted to Twitter on January 6, 2021, at 11:36pm, documenting some of the damage to his office, as described above. At this time, there is no evidence that FELLOWS was involved in any of the theft, damage, or destruction – other than being a part of the group that occupied the office for some period of time.

According to the government’s motion to revoke bail, since the time Fellows has been out on bail, he has committed a range of small release violations, along with a more significant one: petty larceny.

The PSA’s May 5, 2021 report cites numerous violations to support the request to remove the defendant from their supervision. First, the report relayed two instances, on April 8, 2021, and May 1, 2021, in which the defendant failed to comply with his curfew 9:00 p.m. curfew. On both occasions, PSA had to contact the defendant, who gave excuses for his violations (Doc. 23 at 3-4). On the latter occasion, the defendant told the PSA officer that he had left a message that he was running late, however there was no record of such a message being left. (Id. At 5). Second, the report also alleges two violations of his failure to report to PSA as directed on April 9, and April 16, 2021 (Id. at 2). Third, the report indicates the defendant was given a ticket in New York for Petit Larceny (Misdemeanor), with an appearance date of May 12, 2021 (Id. at 3). As noted in the PSA report, defendant failed to report the arrest as required by his conditions of release. (Id.). After the defendant was arrested for the Petit Larceny he was issued an appearance ticket directing him to appear in Court for the offense. Similar to his initial arrest by the FBI in this matter, the defendant told the New York State police officer that he would meet the officer to be processed on March 8, 2021, but failed to show up. The defendant only turned himself in after the officer contacted him again on April 28th.

The larceny is just a misdemeanor. But Fellows’ arrest affidavit makes it clear the FBI thinks he might have stolen Merkley’s laptop (curiously, he’s one of the rare January 6 defendants for whom the government got a prospective location warrant, as well as a PRTT order to find out who he’d been talking with, though the former may have been because he was dicking around with self-reporting). And this motion to revoke bail suggests that while out on release under suspicion that he stole a laptop, he took something else, albeit far more minor.

Given that there are upwards of 300 people out on bail for charges related to January 6, I would imagine that Fellows is nowhere near the only one to have violated his release conditions (John Sullivan is the only one I can think of who was actually publicly reported for it).

But at a time when the government seems to be focusing closely on who stole Merkley’s laptop, they’ve decided it’s time to detain Fellows pending trial.

Update: After I posted this, GWU’s Seamus Hughes reminded me that Sarko’s arrest affidavit also included a reference to Merkley’s office. Thanks to him for the reminder.

Update: Because Judge Trevor McFadden held the hearing to consider bail revocation in person, the call-in line got bolloxed and as a result none of the press were able to hear McFadden’s reasons why he didn’t revoke Fellows’ bail, but he did not. He did, however, place him in home detention.

Judge Tim Kelly just wrapped up a status hearing with three of the four Leadership Proud Boy conspiracy defendants: Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs, and Charles Donohoe (Zach Rehl’s attorney is still arranging her appearance before the DC court).

A really important detail came out about the Telegram texts that have been central to the conspiracy case against the defendants: According to Nordean’s attorney Nick Smith, they call came from Nordean’s phone.

He said that, in part, to anticipate some of the challenges he’ll make to the evidence. First, he’s going to claim the search was illegal and move to suppress it based off a ruling that the government has dropped that theory of crime (that won’t work under Fourth Amendment precedents, but you have to try).

More importantly, he said the government had gotten into the phone — rather than be forced to crack it, as they are doing with everyone else’s phone — because Nordean’s wife gave the FBI the passcode.

It had seemed like someone listed as Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1 may have shared them with the government. That person says some pretty damning things in the chats.

39. On after Chairman’s January 4, 2021, shortly after Proud Boys Chairman’s arrest pursuant to a warrant issued by D.C. Superior Court, DONOHOE expressed concern that encrypted communications that involved Proud Boys Chairman would be compromised when law enforcement examined Proud Boys Chairmans’ phone. DONOHOE then created a new channel on the encrypted messaging application, entitled, “New MOSD,” and took steps to destroy or “nuke” the earlier channel. After its creation, the “New MOSD” channel included NORDEAN, BIGGS, REHL, DONOHOE, and a handful of additional members.

40. On January 4, 2021, at 7:15 p.m., DONOHOE posted a message on various encrypted messaging channels, including New MOSD, which read, “Hey have been instructed and listen to me real good! There is no planning of any sorts. I need to be put into whatever new thing is created. Everything is compromised and we can be looking at Gang charges.” DONOHOE then wrote, “Stop everything immediately” and then “This comes from the top.”

41. On January 4, 2021, at 8:20 p.m., an unindicted co-conspirator (“UCC-1”) posted to New MOSD channel: “We had originally planned on breaking the guys into teams. Let’s start divying them up and getting baofeng channels picked out.”

42. On January 5, 2021, at 1:23 p.m., a new encrypted messaging channel entitled “Boots on the Ground” was created for communications by Proud Boys members in Washington, D.C. In total, over sixty users participated in the Boots on the Ground channel, including NORDEAN, BIGGS, REHL, DONOHOE, and UCC-1.

That, in turn, had led to speculation, and in no way just from me, that UCC1 had already flipped on his buddies and was cooperating.

What was said today appears to be inconsistent with that. Indeed, it seems all the talk of four informants from the Proud Boys working with the FBI mostly pertained to helping Attorney General Billy Barr gin up claims against Antifa, and not (yet, at least) informing on each other.

In recent days there have been developments in the investigation into two laptops stolen on January 6. First, a woman in Homer, Alaska claims the FBI seized her own devices, based off a suspicion that she is the woman who currently has Nancy Pelosi’s laptop.

Marilyn and Paul Hueper, owners of the Homer Inn and Spa, told Alaska’s News Source that agents broke through their door early Wednesday morning with guns drawn, handcuffed the couple and two guests, and started searching the premises.

“They basically took me out of the handcuffs and said something like, ‘So you probably know why we’re here.’ I was like, ‘no, probably not.’” Marilyn Hueper said Friday. “And they said, ‘well, we’re looking for Nancy Pelosi’s laptop and we know you were in the building and you were in the room at the time.’”

The FBI isn’t saying much about what they know about the search.

“I can confirm that, on April 28, the FBI was conducting court authorized law enforcement activity at the location you are referring to. At this time, and until it reaches the public realm, we can’t discuss the details,” Chloe Martin, Public Affairs Officer for the Alaska Field office of the FBI, told Alaska’s News Source via email Friday.

The Huepers’ name does not come up in a search of online court records for the U.S. District of Alaska.

The couple declined to provide a copy of the search warrant the FBI had, but said it permitted agents to search for items stolen from the Capitol.

Agents seized cell phones, laptops and a copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Huepers said.

“We never got within 100 yards of the main doors of the Capitol,” Paul Hueper said.

Her arguments that she’s not the person in the BOLO the FBI showed her are pretty convincing.

That said, she and her spouse claimed they were on the other side of the Mall on the day of the riot, even though they posted to Facebook from closer to the Capitol. I hope we learn how it’s possible that they have two GeoFences from the Capitol but could make a mistake like this.

Meanwhile, discovery correspondence filed yesterday in the case of Long Island CPA Justin McAuliffe suggests he may know something about what happened to Jeff Merkley’s laptop, which was also stolen during the riot.

Merkley did a video showing the damage done to his office after the insurrection, describing the laptop taken from his table and the broken hinges on the unlocked door.

The trail of destruction and looting. What happened today was an assault by the domestic terrorists who stormed the Capitol, but it was also an assault on our constitution.
[sound on] pic.twitter.com/BrELF7cMz1

— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) January 7, 2021

And if you look closely in the arrest affidavit for McAuliffe, you can see the maps that appear in Merkley’s video, as well as the flag left behind.

But the discovery correspondence yesterday included a picture of the stolen laptop and the broken door among other items.

To be clear: McAuliffe has not been charged with theft or damage at all. He remains charged under his original complaint with just trespassing.

But rather than indicting him for any role in those crimes, the government continued his case until May 19, which either means he’s planning on pleading or the government believes that he (like Riley June Williams, who is accused of stealing Pelosi’s laptop) may know more about who took the laptop and what they did with it.

Or maybe the government is just waiting on DNA tests from that joint described in evidence picture, “joint.jpg,” before charging this case?

In a recent motion opposing relaxing Larry Brock’s release conditions, the government revealed that it, “is continuing to investigate the Defendant for the offense of obstruction under Title 18 United States Code Section 1512(c).” Brock is the retired Lieutenant Colonel who, like Eric Munchel, brought Zip Ties onto the Senate floor. In spite of Brock’s online writings shortly after the election predicting that, ““Fire and blood will be needed soon,” Brock was charged only with misdemeanor trespassing for his role in the insurrection.

Since then, the Senate has been a locus of increased attention, as the government arrests more people with video of what happened there and rounds up the co-conspirators of those they arrested months ago.

That increased attention provides a way to look at the events of January 6 via a different lens. Rather than focusing on the most spectacular defendants — no one is more spectacular than Jacob Chansley, but Eric Munchel’s actions attracted attention away from others — by focusing on who breached the Senate, we can understand some of the logistics that allowed it to be breached. And by whom.

The picture we get, as a result, is a crossroads of the really aggressive participants of the January 6 insurrection, with cultists, militia members, GOP operatives, and curious tourists all represented.

I am assuredly not saying there was or is a conspiracy that joins all these people. While there are some pregnant unanswered questions about individuals like Leo Bozell, Bradley Barnett, Jacob Clark, and Patrick Montgomery — as well as conduct like assaults charged against Montgomery and DJ Shalvey that remain undescribed — there’s absolutely no reason to believe this was all coordinated. … Beyond, of course, the President calling out the mob on Mike Pence.

A focus on the Senate is useful, though, to show how the multiple breaches interacted. The first people who came in the West door (including the Hughes brothers), the Northwest door (including Patrick Montgomery and his buddies), and the East door (which is how Joe Biggs got to the Senate), all made it to the Senate before it was secured. Indeed, a number of people who made it to the Senate (like Ronnie Sandlin) were instrumental in opening the East doors from inside, before they reached the Senate. So looking at who got to the Senate how helps to clarify how all the three main breaches worked in tandem, and in fairly quick succession.

It’s also a reality check about the relative importance of various groups who breached the Capitol. While this is still an impartial picture, the narrative to date suggests that QAnon managed to get far more of their adherents to the Senate floor than either the Proud Boys (Joe Biggs and Arthur Jackman showed up after getting in with the help of people inside) or the Oath Keepers (Kelly Meggs and Joshua James showed up too late). QAnon held a prayer on the dais while the militias were still breaching doors.

There are a number of people who remain — publicly at least — unidentified, such as two of Patrick Montgomery’s associates or someone who shadowed Bozell.

This post, a description of those who breached the Senate organized alphabetically by the most important participant, is just a baseline from which to understand more about who go to the Senate and how.

Update: In comments a few people have explained what significance I attribute to continuances a few of these defendants, like Leo Kelly, have. It means several things. First, it means the person in question is immediately moving to discuss a plea deal. One of the defense attorneys here seems to have chosen to really aggressively seek such continuances (Kira West is a noticed attorney on three of these defendants: Leo Kelly and Christine Priola, both of whom got continuances before being formally charged, and Tony Mariotto, who was charged by information; in the latter two cases, though, West sponsored outside attorneys Pro Hac Vice). But from a narrative perspective, it means our understanding of what the government knows about the defendant is frozen at the moment the FBI agent writes an arrest affidavit, whereas with defendants who get detained and then challenge that detention, which include a high percentage of the defendants who made it to the Senate, we often learn what the government found on the person’s cell phone. One of the points I attempted to make here is that for a variety of reasons, the story told in the court filings leaves out significant and, in some cases, intentional gaps in the revelation of what the government knows.

Note: This is based of my own imperfect list of who was described as being where. Plus, I suck at visual identifications. Please let me know what I’ve missed in comments. 

Thomas Adams

Per his arrest affidavit, Thomas Adams traveled from Springfield, IL, and claims to have just followed the mob with an unnamed friend (probably Roy Franklin, who was interviewed along with him the day of the insurrection) up the scaffolding to what I believe is the Northwest door. The cops he saw after he entered the building “weren’t really doing much … just waiting to see if we’d try to push past them.” Soon thereafter, he entered the Senate, where he saw Jacob Chansley, who he thought was “hilarious.” This is a photo of Adams in the Senate.

Adams took a lot of video while he was in the Capitol, including footage from the Senate floor the government may be particularly interested in, including this image.

Adams was arrested on April 13, over three months after he appeared in an article describing his exploits that day, during a period when the government seemed to be arresting a lot of people who took a lot of video of key scenes. He was charged with trespassing and obstructing the vote count.

Tommy Allen

Tommy Allen flew to DC from Rocklin, CA. He was picked up on video recordings in the Senate from 3:03 to 3:10PM on January 6. In addition to this picture, he was filmed taking papers from the clerks’ desks at the front of the Senate and putting them in his back left pocket, as well as absconding with the American flag.

He would later tell a journalist he took a letter from Trump to Mitch McConnell from the then-Majority Leader’s desk.

Allen was arrested on January 22 after first a stranger and then someone who’d “interacted with him on a number of occasions” alerted the FBI to his Facebook posts, which he tried to delete after he returned home. The latter witness also told the FBI that he or she had heard that Allen had destroyed the documents he took in his backyard.

Allen was charged with trespassing and (probably misdemeanor) theft; after he was formally charged with the same charges on February 2, he wasn’t arraigned until April 8.

Bradley Bennett and Rosie Williams

At some point on January 6, QAnoner Bradley Bennett and his partner Rosie Williams seemed to pray with DJ Shalvey and two others.

And they appear to have gotten in the Capitol the same way that Andrew Griswold did (so probably the East entrance, after those doors were opened from inside). They also made it to the Senate.

Those images would seemingly expose the couple mostly to trespass charges — and indeed, that’s all Rosie got charged with, both on their arrest complaint and their indictment.

But from the start, Bennett responded to his pursuit with obstruction. First, per a tipster who had tracked Bennett for his QAnon postings, Bennett deleted most of his January 6 postings within a day of the event.

Publicly, on the day of the event, Bennett blamed Antifa instigators.

But Bennett texted an associate the same day and clarified that Jacob Chansley was not Antifa.

Bennett and Chansley now share an attorney, Albert Watkins.

Then, after the FBI arrived in Kerrville, TX on March 23 to arrest the couple based off a March 19 warrant, only Rosie was there to be arrested. Per a motion for detention, Bennett had left on March 13 (though one of his sisters claims they split up in February), rented a car, drove to North Carolina, then went to stay with a friend in Fort Mill, South Carolina for two weeks, then hid for another 10 days until finally agreeing to turn himself in on April 9. He stopped using his cell service in that time period and stopped posting to Facebook, shifting to Telegram instead. At some point, he got rid of his new iPhone 11, claiming it did not work (there’s still some uncertainty about when and why he ditched the phone).

Bennett’s efforts to evade arrest may well arise out of nothing more than QAnon paranoia. Though several other aspects about him suggest he may have a more sophisticated Q-related grift going on. But he had attracted attention, even among Q adherents, even before January 6, and he was among the most elusive defendants of all January 6 arrestees.

Joe Biggs and Arthur Jackman

That Joe Biggs made his way to the Senate chamber did not show up in his arrest affidavit, or the first several filings in his case. It was mentioned in the “Leadership indictment” charging Biggs and three others with a conspiracy to obstruct the election certification.

64. Thirty minutes after first entering the Capitol on the west side, BIGGS and two other members of the Proud boys, among others, forcibly re-entered the Capitol through the Columbus Doors on the east side of the Capitol, pushing past at least one law enforcement officer and entering the Capitol directly in front of a group of individuals affiliated with the Oath Keepers.

65. After re-entering the Capitol by force, BIGGS and another member of the Proud Boys traveled to the Senate chamber.

But that indictment, released on March 10, may have increased the urgency of the focus on the Senate, as it showed that Biggs entered the Capitol twice — first in the initial wave, through the West door, and then through the East door — in a kind of pincer movement and after doing so went to where Mike Pence had only recently been evacuated.

I’m not sure I’ve seen pictures of Biggs in the Senate. But the arrest affidavit for Arthur Jackman — with Paul Rae, one of two Floridians who tailed Biggs around that day — shows him, after twice being caught walking with his hand on Biggs’ shoulder…

… And posing with Biggs and Rae for a selfie on the East steps …

Jackman’s affidavit shows him in the Senate (where we know Biggs also went).

And taking this selfie with his Proud Boys emblazoned cell phone.

In fact, the investigation into Jackman (at least as described in the affidavit) started when a friend of Jackman’s shared that selfie — which Jackman had first sent to a childhood friend — with the FBI.

When interviewed by the FBI on January 19, a good two months before he was arrested, Jackman explained that he had joined the Proud Boys in 2016 as a way to support Trump, refused to say whether he had entered the Capitol, but claimed the Proud Boys weren’t there to infiltrate it as [this makes no sense] it was not a sanctioned Proud Boys event.

It’s going to be hard to argue he didn’t breach the Capitol as part of a Proud Boys’ event (twice!) when he did so each time tailing along behind Joe Biggs.

Joshua Black

Joshua Black claimed that God instructed him to drive to DC and take part in events on January 6, and he came with his knife. He was at the front of the mob pushing past barricades before the initial breach of the Capitol (though it’s not clear whether he was pushing himself or being pushed from behind), and after being hit in his face with a plastic bullet, he then walked around the Capitol and entered the East side, at the forefront of another mob. Then he found the Senate Chamber.

While there, he joined others in rifling through and photographing papers on the desks and then in prayer. He ordered someone else (maybe Christian Secor?) to get out of the presiding officer’s chair and not to be disrespectful, and ordered others not to loot the place.

He self reported after he showed up in media coverage, and then later admitted to the FBI he brought the knife that would significantly expand his legal exposure.

He was formally charged with obstruction, and the trespassing charges against him were enhanced because of that knife. He spent over three months in jail, in part because an Alabama Magistrate believed he might be dangerous if he came to believe God ordered him to commit violence. After a hearing on April 23, Amy Berman Jackson released him to home confinement.

Leo “Zeeker” Bozell

Someone whose kids went to school with Zeeker Bozell’s kids tipped of the FBI on January 14 that he had been part of the riot.

Then later, when CNN published footage from the New Yorker on the Senate rioters, that same tipster alerted the FBI to that, too, circling the scion of the movement conservative, Leo Bozell, in the picture.

After being interviewed by the FBI on January 19, the same very persistent witness followed up again on January 24 with this YouTube video that included a fleeting glimpse of Bozell, this time on the balcony in the Senate.

The clip itself is innocuous. But the crowd it captures on the balcony, possibly a convergence of the first people to arrive, may be far more important.

What may have finally piqued the FBI’s interest in the son of a prominent Republican operative were the videos showing that while Bozell was up on the balcony — before anyone was on the floor of the Senate — he and a much younger man (Mike P persuasively argues that this is Bruno Cua in comments) took steps to ensure that two cameras would not capture what was about to happen on the Senate floor.

Bozell was originally charged with trespassing and obstruction on February 11; he was arrested 6 days later. It wasn’t until his indictment on March 12 — two days after Joe Biggs was indicted in the “Leadership” indictment — that Bozell was charged with doing or abetting $1,000 of damage while forcibly entering the Capitol, the same charge used to detain some Proud Boys and Oath Keepers prior to trial. But in spite of being implicated in a crime of violence, Bozell was released on personal recognizance.

Larry Brock

Larry Brock is the less famous of the two Zip Tie Guys in the Senate that day, though Brock was even more kitted out than Eric Munchel. According to his arrest affidavit, within two days of the riot, Brock’s ex-wife called the FBI and told them he had been on the Senate floor. That same day, someone who knew of Brock’s Air Force background and ties to defense contractor L3 also tipped off the FBI.

Brock is one of the people (Oath Keepers Kelly Meggs and Joshua James were recently disclosed to be others) who also made it to Nancy Pelosi’s office, suggesting he was hunting top legislators. Yet, even though videos show Brock lecturing the other insurrectionists that, to win the I/O (information operation) war, they needed to avoid damaging anything, and even though Brock’s social media shows he had started talking war days after the election and mused that, “I really believe we are going to take back what they did on November 3,” while traveling to DC, the government only charged him with misdemeanor trespass (though as noted above, they’re still weighing obstruction charges for him).

Jacob Chansley

Jacob Chansley’s strutting poses have made him the poster child of the insurrection, but the self-billed “Q Shaman” was well know to those who tracked extremist organizing and QAnon before January 6.

As with Joshua Black, the FBI didn’t need to come looking for Chansley. He called them on January 7 and admitted he was the guy with animal pelts and no shirt.

Even though Chansley was originally charged on January 8 only with trespassing, an indictment obtained 3 days later charged him with obstruction and civil disorder. When Royce Lamberth denied Chansley’s bid for pre-trial release, he treated the spear Chansley had brought as a dangerous weapon, which will make his trespassing charges a felony as well.

Amid all the discussions about Chansley since he was arrested, one thing has gotten little public attention: his admission that he traveled to DC with some other people from Arizona, people who no doubt would implicate him in an extremist network that predated January 6. Unless I’ve missed it, that network hasn’t been implicated together.

Jacob Clark

The government got an arrest warrant for Jacob Clark by March 5. It appears to be based largely off using facial recognition to match his Colorado driver’s license to nine different pictures obtained from surveillance videos from the Capitol, corroborated by one person who knows him. They also used returns from the Google GeoFence warrant to show he was inside the Capitol from 2:15 until 3:25PM the day of the riot and returns from a Verizon warrant showing him driving from Colorado to DC from January 4 to 5 and then returning starting on January 7.

Because the government didn’t arrest Clark until April 21, over six weeks after obtaining the warrant, the warrant affidavit surely only shows a fraction of what the government knows about him. Even still, the affidavit shows Clark to have been like Where’s Waldo during the time he was in the Capitol, with surveillance footage showing him in four different confrontations with police in four different locations, each time seemingly pushing the cops to let rioters run through the building. The most easily identifiable (though he was also in the Rotunda as it was breached) shows that Clark took part in the exchange with plain clothes police outside the Senate gallery that Nate DeGrave was also charged for.

What’s interesting is the video shows that Clark got to that hallway over a minute before almost everyone else.

Clark was charged with civil disorder, obstruction, and trespassing, but perhaps because he was only recently arrested, he has not yet been indicted.

Josiah Colt, Ronnie Sandlin, and Nick DeGrave

I described here how these three men planned and outfitted for the insurrection together. The key takeaway from that post for the purpose of this one is that Sandlin and DeGrave are accused of tussling with cops so as to permit the East door of the Capitol to be opened (through which some key conspirators rushed), but also of fighting with cops just outside the Senate Chamber (along with Jacob Clark, above, and with Christian Secor watching) so as to permit the Chamber itself to be breached.

Only Josiah Colt is recognizable among these three, but his two buddies played pretty key roles in the success of the larger insurrection.

Elias Costianes

The FBI received a tip on January 8 that Elias Costianes had posted videos of his participation in the riot on his Snapchat account. On January 19, the tipster provided the videos he uploaded. Those showed Costianes filming himself in the Senate, outside Pelosi’s office, and possibly watching the East doors being breached. He was charged on February 3 with trespassing and obstruction and arrested on February 12. He was indicted on the same charges on March 3, and his case has been continued since, meaning there’s no explanation for why he knew precisely where to go in the Capitol.

Bruno Cua

Cua, a spoiled 18-year old whose own parents enabled his participation in the insurrection, was part of the mob that fought to get into the Senate Chamber (along with Sandlin, DeGrave, and Clark). According to his arrest affidavit, he was turned in by local police officers, who knew him because he has a history of pissing off his neighbors and ignoring orders. He was charged on January 29, arrested on February 5, and indicted on February 10. He was charged with obstruction, civil disorder, and assault/resisting, and his trespass charges were enhanced because he carried a baton with him. Even after the insurrection, Cua still endorsed violence.

Violent protests against the capital (NOT SMALL BUSINESS’S) are well within our constitutional rights

Dear Swamp Rats, The events at the capital were a reminder that WE THE PEOPLE are in charge of this country and that you work for us. There will be no ‘warning shot’ next time.

Everyone who works in congress is a traitor to the people and deserves a public execution.

But beyond details from his social media posts, there was nothing from an extended detention fight that illuminated more about Cua’s ties.

Andrew Griswold

For all we can tell from the court filings, Andrew Griswold is just some guy who went to the Senate floor along with a bunch of other people who wanted to prevent the vote count.

But there are a few interesting features of his case. Someone else who went to the Senate helped get Griswold, from Niceville, Florida, arrested. His Febuary 26 arrest affidavit, describing how he was one of the first people to come through what must be the East door after it was opened with the help of Sandlin and DeGrave, relies, in part on,

camera footage obtained from an individual (W-2) who also entered the Capitol on January 6. At multiple points during the video, an individual who appears to be GRISWOLD is visible, wearing a camouflage jacket.

[snip]

At one point in the video, W-2 walks through a hallway, and GRISWOLD is visible ahead. W-2 then enters the Senate gallery, and GRISWOLD is again visible, as seen in the screenshot below:

The discovery shared with Griswold may describe this as, “One clip from a video obtained in another investigation” which the government deems as Sensitive.

Magistrate Michael Harvey approved Griswold’s arrest warrant on February 26. But the first arrest warrant against him was quashed by Harvey, apparently on March 1; the arrest warrant that Harvey approved is also dated March 1. Griswold was arrested on March 5 and that same day he and his attorney stipulated to the fidelity of the FBI image of his phone so he could get it returned, which is a reasonable thing to do if you want to avoid buying a new phone but very rare among January 6 defendants (indeed, Vitaly Gossjankowski won’t so stipulate with his laptop, even though that has expensive software on it to assist his hearing disability). Griswold was charged with trespassing and obstruction, but almost two months after his arrest, he has not been formally indicted.

Apparently as part of Griswold’s efforts to get the DC pretrial release conditions imposed rather than the local FL ones (the conditions differ in terms of the travel restrictions, the reporting requirements, restrictions on alcohol and other drugs, and — most notably — restrictions on the right to retain a legal firearm), the original Florida judge in his case recused and another granted Griswold’s request. All subsequent January 6 defendants seem to be having restrictions imposed on gun ownership, so that may have been the issue.

Paul Hodgkins

In an interview on January 26, four days after an acquaintance provided the FBI with a selfie he posted to Parler, Paul Hodgkins told the FBI that he traveled to DC alone, on a bus, and didn’t know any of the people engaged in violence or destruction around him. But before he started rifling through things on the desks in the Senate, he put on some white latex gloves, which is a curious bit of preparation for a guy who just hopped on a bus alone.

Hodgkins’ release conditions — initially, with a $25,000 bond and high intensity supervision, though with the bond later dropped by Magistrate Merriweather and then his curfew loosened by Judge Randolph Moss — were much stricter than other defendants charged, like he was on March 5, with trespassing and obstruction. (That could either stem from a strict local magistrate or from a prior arrest record.) In both of Hodgkins’ appearances, his lawyers have talked about making a plea deal.

Jerod  and Joshua Hughes

Jerod and Joshua Hughes are brothers from Montana. They watched as Dominick Pezzola busted through a window to break into the Capitol, were among the first 10 people in (amid a group that included Proud Boys who — like them — are from Montana), then Jerod kicked the door open to allow other rioters in behind them.

They went from there immediately towards the Senate floor, following Officer Goodman closely behind Doug Jensen.

Once inside the Senate, Jerod set about ransacking desks as Christian Secor, holding his America First sign, looked on.

That’s about all their arrest warrant, charging them with civil disorder, damaging government property, obstruction, and trespassing describes. They turned themselves in on January 11 after the FBI released their pictures on a BOLO. They were indicted on February 10. Since that time first Jerod, then Joshua, have moved for bond, which Judge Tim Kelly granted to both on April 7.

Those detention disputes, revealed that the brothers had driven over days to attend Trump’s rally. They claimed, at first, that they had gone to the Capitol in response to Trump’s exhortations. But after the prosecutor reviewed the Cellebrite report from Jerod’s phone on April 5, the government discovered texts showing buddies had funded the trip, and that Jerod claimed that he was behaving as a model citizen by participating in an insurrection.

Defendant: Ah we didn’t do anything crazy like destroy shit or fight the cops. Trespass and vandalism. Meh. I’ve done time. It’s josh I worry about.

Person Five: It’s the trespassing I worry about, but there may have been so many of you that figuring it out is more trouble than it’s worth. Were you in the photos? I could only see josh

Defendant: They got my ugly mug up and down. Trespassing ain’t shit. I feel like I was behaving like a model citizen ready to reclaim my country. Not enuff people followed.

Jerod said to someone else that they had wanted to hold the place but didn’t have numbers to accomplish that.

Person Six: How was it

Defendant: Insane on a few different levels.

Defendant: I saw picture [sic] of me and josh already on the news. Not enough people followed us in to hold the place. We had to get the fuck out.

The government also noted — attributing it to a picture on Jerod’s phone though they surely would have had it before — that the two had been present in the Senate Gallery, as well as the Senate floor.

Leo Christopher Kelly

Leo Kelly did an interview the day of the riot — after being among the first people in the Capitol and praying with others on the dais of the Senate — expressing some reservations about invading other people’s space. He asked a Deputy US Marshal to tell the FBI he would turn himself in if an arrest warrant were issued. He was arrested, just on trespassing charges, days later. Since that time, the government has twice deferred formally charging him, with the next deadline for a preliminary hearing set for May 10.

Anthony Mariotto

Like fellow Floridian, Arthur Jackman, Tony Mariotto was first IDed after he shared a selfie from the Senate Gallery and a friend shared it (after Mariotto had deleted his Facebook account) with the FBI.

Mariotto was in Georgia when the FBI first caught up with him. But when they asked, he immediately returned to Florida, and, on January 19, handed over his phone to be imaged. Three days later he was arrested. On February 8, he was formally charged with trespassing.

His arrest affidavit, which describes, “other videos that were recorded inside the Capitol Building during the events of January 6, 2021,” doesn’t describe what was on those videos. They may be among those that implicate others who entered the Senate.

Patrick Montgomery and Brady Knowlton

The investigation of Patrick Montgomery is a useful snapshot for understanding the Senate as a crossroads. As I wrote here, his acquaintances started turning him into the FBI the day after the insurrection, leading to his arrest and formal charge on misdemeanor trespassing charges by information. Even while that was happening, the FBI was investigating a guy who showed up in one of his pictures from the day, Brady Knowlton.

Knowlton’s arrest affidavit implicated two other guys, one that a witness who has been in a lawsuit with Knowlton for years described as Knowlton’s “right-hand man,” but who remains unnamed and uncharged. And surveillance images of Knowlton and Montgomery IDed someone — the guy in the hoodie who entered the Capitol with Knowlton and Montgomery — whom FBI either declined to name or had not yet IDed when they got the Knowlton arrest warrant.

The three of them went to the Rotunda — where people were opening a third breach to the Capitol — and from there to the Senate, with Knowlton filming from his camera the entire time.

When the government indicted Montgomery and Knowlton on April 16, they not only charged both with obstruction, but they added assault and civil disorder charges against Montgomery for an unidentified exchange with cops.

So in addition to the assault that Montgomery allegedly was involved in, this thread still leaves two men unidentified.

Christopher Moynihan

Per his arrest affidavit, Christopher Moynihan is another of the people who rifled through official papers when he got to the floor of the Senate on January 6. g “There’s got to be something we can use against these fucking scumbags,” he was quoted as saying. In the wake of the New Yorker video, two of Moynihan’s former co-workers alerted the FBI to his identity. He joined the prayer on the dais, but with a sour face that made it look like he was just going along. He was arrested on February 25 and indicted with the same obstruction and trespassing charges on March 17.

Eric Munchel and Lisa Eisenhart

Eric Munchel and his mom, Lisa Eisenhart, quickly became the focus of both legal and press attention given his spectacular appearance on the floor of the Senate with Zip Ties.

They were arrested early — on January 15. Munchel’s admission to having a taser when he breached the Capitol increased both’s legal exposure under a deadly weapon enhancement. But Munchel’s general compliance with law enforcement also helped to convince the DC Circuit they would not be a threat going forward.

After the events of January 6, Munchel apparently considered joining Proud Boys. But instead, he’s now the poster child both for the threat of kidnapping, but also for a DC Circuit standard of bail that treats involvement in a terrorist event as a historical threat, and requires detention decisions to consider whether the same people pose a forward-looking terrorist threat.

The more important point for the purposes of this post is that the government has not yet shown proof that Munchel or his mother did more than recognize the two militias as they were engaged in armed MAGA tourism while holding zip ties.

Christine Priola

According to her arrest affidavit, the government identified Christine Priola’s presence in the Senate chamber within days, based in part on the sign she carried reading, “The Children Cry Out for Justice,” perhaps suggesting a QAnon affiliation. Curiously, the affidavit explains that she and others — the first people in the Senate — “entered the restricted floor area of the Senate chambers and took photographs of the evacuation of the Senate chambers that were required based on the unauthorized entrance,” suggesting the rioters arrived even earlier than the impeachment case had made out.

After a tip on January 8 from someone in Cleveland that Priola, who worked for the Cleveland School District, was the one holding the sign, the FBI searched her home and seized her devices — on which she had filmed events in the Senate — that same day. But when the FBI imaged her phone, there were no photos, videos, chats, or messages from January 4 through 7, and the location of the phone was also unavailable until 4:23PM on January 6, when her phone showed up northeast of the Capitol.

Priola was arrested for trespassing on January 14, but since then her case has been on hold, without even an Information to show whether the FBI obtained more information on why her phone had been cleared within two days.

Michael Roche

Michael Roche is one of the people who joined Jacob Chansley in prayer on the Senate dais. The story of how he came to be arrested — and why he was not arrested until April 13 — remains a muddle. He was IDed on February 8 when law enforcement found a video he made posted to someone else’s account. In the video, he admitted that,

We did get a chance to storm the Capitol. And we made it into the chamber. . . . We managed to convince the cops to let us through. They listened to reason. And when we got into the chamber … we all started praying and shouting in the name of Jesus Christ, and inviting Christ back into out state [sic] capitol.

That seems to have led the FBI to this photo was posted by Seth Roche, explaining that he took the picture before people started claiming that Jacob Chansley was Antifa and explaining (I think) that his brother had stood shoulder to shoulder in prayer with Chansley, “in the main capital [sic] chamber [sic] holding up the Bible.”

Roche’s arrest affidavit suggests the FBI found both those posts before the New Yorker posted its story on January 17 with the video of Chansley, Roche, and others praying.

According to the arrest affidavit, nothing else happened until US Marshals, in an effort to find a missing child, knocked on Roche’s door, thinking the child’s family lived there. Roche told the Marshals he thought they were coming to arrest him. When the Marshals informed the FBI that same day, the FBI got the Marshal to ID Roche as the person in the NYer.

Again, all that happened by February 2. It wasn’t until April 7 when the FBI submitted his arrest affidavit. The affidavit not only has no more recent evidence in it, but it doesn’t really explain why Roche (unlike — say — Larry Brock) got charged with obstruction along with trespassing.

Those questions further raise the question about whose Facebook his interview appeared on, because that person may be the real person of interest associated with Roche.

Christian Secor

It seems like Christian Secor’s classmates at UCLA jumped on the opportunity to report Secor’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection. Eleven people, many of them students, IDed Secor as one of the people who had sat in the presiding officer’s seat or otherwise shown up in the New Yorker video of the Senate occupation.

But Secor did more than tour the Senate. The surveillance videos the FBI included with his arrest affidavit show Secor was among those who shoved the East doors open from inside.

He was close to  the brawl outside the Senate gallery doors involving Nate DeGrave, Ronnie Sandlin, and Jacob Clark.

There’s even a clip of him just behind the woman that the FBI suspects of having Nancy Pelosi’s laptop (per a Homer, AK woman who claims she was mistakenly IDed as such).

There’s no reason to believe Secor and this woman are together, but the proximity is interesting given that Riley June Williams, also a Groyper, allegedly first took the laptop.

Secor was arrested on suspicion of assault, civil disorder, obstruction, and trespassing on February 16 and indicted on those same charges on February 26. In March his lawyer moved to get him released in time to finish his UCLA finals. The government tried to oppose his release, pointing in part to his pro-fascist views, in part to the weapons he had been acquiring and in part to his alleged attempts to cover up his involvement. But Judge Trevor McFadden released him on a $200,000 bail with a rather curious kind of home incarceration that lets him out to work.

DJ Shalvey

DJ Shalvey is the guy wearing an undersized hard hat depicted in videos of people rifling through papers in the Senate. He’s quoted thinking Ted Cruz sold them out before others tell him, no, Ted Cruz was right there with the insurrectionists.

The FBI obtained an arrest warrant for him after two long-time associates alerted the FBI, one of whom shared selfies that Shalvey sent him the day of the riot, by February 12. But he wasn’t arrested until March 9, reportedly after turning himself in. Somewhere along the way he must have interviewed with the FBI, though, because his (still undocketed) indictment released Friday not only added assault and civil disorder charges against him, as well as theft charges for taking a letter from Mitt Romney to Mike Pence, but they also made Shalvey the rare if not only January 6 defendant charged with lying to the FBI about that assault.

 

In a filing overnight probably designed to feature in his appeal of his detention, Ethan Nordean accuses the government of sitting on exculpatory information.

Among the Telegram texts that Nordean posts is one showing that he remained in a leadership position — able to make a decision to ban Proud Boy rallies for three months — on January 21, over two weeks after the insurrection (the “owner” moniker may also suggest he ran the Proud Boy channel in question).

Another thing that Nordean thinks is exculpatory is another commenter claiming that “nothing could be further than the truth” than that the Proud Boys “led the Trump rally to the capitol.”

It’s a fair point from Captain Trump actually.

But that’s because the Proud Boys weren’t at the Trump rally. Instead, they were at the Capitol, with no excuse about coming to hear Trump.

Which makes Nordean’s citation to his own comment about Joe Biggs’ complaint pretty damning as well.

Biggs’ complaint, which was built entirely off public comments about Proud Boy planning, shows a picture of a large Proud Boys group already close to the Capitol by 12:15. It shows their use of radios (they would get details of the preplanned channel they used weeks later). It shows a group wearing pre-coordinated orange hats.

It also describes how Proud Boys started recruiting people to come to DC no later than December 29.

9. For example, on December 29, 2020, Tarrio posted a message on the social media site Parler1 about the demonstration planned for January 6, 2021. Among other things, Tarrio announced that the Proud Boys would “turn out in record numbers on Jan 6th but this time with a twist… We will not be wearing our traditional Black and Yellow. We will be incognito and we will be spread across downtown DC in smaller teams. And who knows….we might dress in all BLACK for the occasion.” I believe the statement about dressing in “all BLACK” is a reference to dressing like the group known as “Antifa,” who the Proud Boys have identified as an enemy of their movement and are often depicted in the media wearing all black to demonstrations.

10. On or around the same day, BIGGS posted a similar message to his followers on Parler in which he stated, among other things, “we will not be attending DC in colors. We will be blending in as one of you. You won’t see us. You’ll even think we are you . . .We are going to smell like you, move like you, and look like you. The only thing we’ll do that’s us is think like us! Jan 6th is gonna be epic.” I understand that BIGGS was directing these statements at “Antifa.”

11. Separately, BIGGS has described the Proud Boys’ efforts, in general, to plan for demonstrations and events attended by the Proud Boys. In an interview that was purportedly taped in December 2020 and posted online on or about January 3, 2021, BIGGS described how he, as an organizer of Proud Boys events, sets about planning them. BIGGS explained, in part:

When we set out to do an event, we go alright, what is or main objective? And that’s the first thing we discuss. We take three months to plan an event. And we go, what’s our main objective? And then we plan around that, to achieve that main objective, that goal that we want.

In other words, the complaint that Nordean complains (at a time when a number of people he interacted that day had already been arrested) shows pre-planning not to attend a Trump speech — which is what tens of thousands of people were planning on doing that day, but instead to not attend a Trump speech, and instead wait by the Capitol for key events to transpire.

In any case, Nordean explains one reason why these texts weren’t provided right away: because he asked just for five days of Telegram chats at first, not the later ones. These aren’t the texts that, Nordean believed, were going to be the most helpful.

On March 25, Nordean requested that the government produce, at least by March 30, Telegram chats on Nordean’s phone sent and received between 1/4/21 and 1/8/21. Nordean did not say that no other chats should be produced, nor did he waive any right to Brady material of which the government was aware. On March 9, Nordean served a discovery letter on the government seeking all of the defendant’s statements and requesting that Brady material be produced according to the schedule in Rule 5.1.

Another likely reason is that a protective order has not been signed in this case yet, as compared to a slew of other ones, meaning prosecutors are still going to focus on the evidence backing the indictment (and so the texts from before the insurrection, not after).

The charges already allege that Charles Donohoe encouraged everyone to write exculpatory things in their Telegram chats starting on January 5, in the wake of the Enrique Tarrio arrest. And here, Nordean managed to still provide evidence of a claim he has earlier contested: that he had a leadership role in this militia group.