Yesterday, DOJ’s Inspector General released its long-awaited report on some subpoenas DOJ used in 2017, 2018, and 2020 to target, first, people in Congress, and then in the later round, journalists, including WaPo’s Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller, Adam Entous, NYT’s Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau, Michael Schmidt, and CNN’s Barbara Starr. The purported goal was to solve some leak investigations; with the exception of convicting James Wolfe for false statements to the FBI (the investigation into him arose out of the first congressional subpoenas discussed here), none were solved via these subpoenas.

Little of the narrative on the subpoenas targeting journalists is entirely new. It was covered in these stories in real time:

May 7, 2021: Trump Justice Department secretly obtained Post reporters’ phone records

May 7, 2021: Justice Dept. Seized Washington Post’s Phone Records

May 20, 2021: Trump Justice Dept. Seized CNN Reporter’s Email and Phone Records

June 2, 2021: Trump Administration Secretly Seized Phone Records of Times Reporters

June 4, 2021: U.S. Waged Secret Legal Battle to Obtain Emails of 4 Times Reporters

June 10, 2021: Hunting Leaks, Trump Officials Focused on Democrats in Congress

June 11, 2021: Justice Dept. Watchdog to Investigate Seizure of Democrats’ Data

June 11, 2021: In Leak Investigation, Tech Giants Are Caught Between Courts and Customers

The findings on the journalist side of the report were that Bill Barr properly approved the subpoenas, but didn’t do a mandated review from a committee on media first (though Kerri Kupec bought off on the subpoenas), and didn’t fully comply with a DNI statement saying the spooks still wanted to solve the leak for a few. The biggest controversy was how DOJ approved Non-Disclosure Orders to prevent journalists from learning of the investigation, but with the exception of the leak to Barbara Starr, those too followed the approach at the time, which was to issue knee-jerk NDOs.

One of the few new details is that Barr brought an AUSA from some field office into Main DOJ for a six month temporary assignment to renew focus on the leak, but the IG concluded that person wasn’t brought in for partisan purposes.

The findings on the Congressional side of the report are somewhat more interesting, not least because the policy on third party subpoenas to phone companies, Google, and Apple implicating people (including staffers and Members, throughout this discussion) in Congress were nowhere as formalized as the media guidelines were.

Particularly given that House Intelligence Chair, Republican Mike Turner, issued the loudest response to this report, it could have interesting repercussions in a second Trump term.

The report actually describes that the congressional subpoenas were an interim step between investigating the Executive Branch people who had access to the classified information (in 2017) and the journalists (in 2020, for the WaPo and NYT). The reason it appeared that there were more Democrats targeted — including Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell — was because a Democratic HPSCI staffer had suggested they had leaked (and also implicated a senior staffers whose actual emails were collected).

The IG Report found that, aside from Schiff and Swalwell and a top Dem staffer, there was a fairly even balance of Democrats and Republicans targeted (including Kash Patel, though it doesn’t name him); it does say that FBI was preparing to serve legal process on a Republican Member of Congress until the James Wolfe investigation proceeded to the point where they had one and only one perpetrator for the Carter Page FISA leak, so that person was not subpoenaed.

It’s the recommendations where this report, issued after Patel already sued and lost over being subpoenaed, and in advance of Patel’s likely confirmation as FBI Director whose activities will be overseen by whatever trash heap Trump makes of DOJ IG by then, that are of interest.

The Report reasons that since Congress is a co-equal branch of government protected by Speech and Debate privileges enshrined in the Constitution, it should have a similar kind of protocol that journalists benefit from (a protocol which has since been strengthened, but which Patel and Pam Bondi are sure to torch).

It made three recommendations to that effect.

Currently, DOJ’s policy requires that a US Attorney and Public Integrity approve a third party subpoena implicating someone from Congress, with an Urgent notice (the kind of warning they have to give before indicting someone prominent) provided to top DOJ leadership. The current practice would allow a US Attorney’s Office to rely primarily on the advice of career officials before investigating someone (whether a staffer or a Member) in Congress.

DOJ IG recommends instead more formal notice from the AG.

First, in order for senior leadership to be able to consider and decide matters potentially raising constitutional separation of powers issues, we recommend that the Department evaluate when advance notification to a senior Department official, such as the Deputy Attorney General or Attorney General, should be required before compulsory process is issued, and any corresponding NDOs are sought, for records of a Member of Congress or congressional staffer and establish, as necessary, implementing policies and guidance.

In a Pam Bondi DOJ, this would virtually guarantee that no Republicans would be investigated, because she would have advance veto.

DOJ IG also recommended that when DOJ requests Non-Disclosure Orders implicating people from Congress, they tell the judge approving the NDO that it is someone from Congress.

Second, we recommend that the Department consider the circumstances in which NDO applications and renewals should identify for the reviewing judge that the records covered by a proposed NDO are records of Members of Congress or congressional staffers.

This is uncontroversial and would stop the kind of knee-jerk NDO requests that hid these subpoenas for five years.

The last entirely justified recommendation that nevertheless could have the most intriguing implications is that DOJ adopt the same kind of exhaustion requirement that the media policy has. That is, you can only start getting legal process on people in Congress after you’ve exhausted other investigative approaches.

Third, we recommend that the Department consider whether there are circumstances in which an exhaustion requirement should be a prerequisite for issuing compulsory process to obtain records of Members of Congress and congressional staffers.

That is, in principle, what happened here: DOJ first checked Executive branch personnel and only then started investigating in Congress after stories started closely following Congressional briefings on the topics. But taken to its logical outcome, it would get interesting.

On the one hand, it would make it much harder to get even subpoenas on people in Congress than it already is (the one Democratic staffer and Wolfe were the only Congressional staffers whose content was collected).

This would make it easier for whistleblowers to leak to members of Congress and for them to leak to the press.

Such leaks might be one of the last failsafes going forward.

Except by rooting the notion of exhaustion in the constitutional protections afforded Congress, it might actually flip the current structure on its head. The reason why you would investigate a member of Congress before a journalist is because under the current approach, the congressional staffer with clearance is the only one who would be prosecuted (the of Wolfe example notwithstanding, that is exceedingly rare in any case; in the Jeffrey Sterling case the Senate protected a key Republican staffer who was suspected).

But if you decide Congress should have more protection, then an FBI Director who has already threatened to go after journalists might first choose to exhaust investigative remedies against journalists before turning to Congress.

That is, there’s a chance these policy recommendations would be used as an excuse to prosecute journalists but not their sources.

None of this may matter anyway, because there’s a high likelihood that Kash and Bondi will simply torch all the guidelines discussed as it is. They’re not statutorily mandated. And if Trump does start firing Inspectors General as he has promised to do, then it’s not clear we’d ever find out about all this. It took over three years to get this report.

Mike Turner says he wants to codify some of this. That might protect leaks about Republican adversaries as much as anything (the leaks investigated here mostly pertained to Carter Page and other Trump associates). But it might be one of the few means of transparency left.

Donald J. Trump, 34-time convicted felon and President-elect of the United States of America

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

When Donald Trump was reelected as president, that certainly qualified as being given a truckload lemons in my book. But the lemonade making? I just got a surprising vision of what that looks like.

On the southeast edge of the metro Kansas City area is the town of Belton, located in Cass County. Not all that long ago, it was an isolated rural farm town, well away from the Big City. Today, though, it has become somewhat of a bedroom community, still heavily rural but now with the addition of folks who want a more affordable place to live while commuting to their jobs elsewhere in the Kansas City area. Even with this shift toward being a bedroom community, in the 2024 presidential election, Trump carried Cass County 65%-33%. Belton is not some blue pocket in red Missouri – it is strongly red.

The current state representative for Belton is Republican Michael Davis, who has a degree in education from Harris-Stowe University in St. Louis (a white guy at an HBCU!?!) and a JD from Washburn University in Topeka where he served as president of the local chapter of the Federalist Society. He was the youngest member of the Missouri legislature when he was first elected, he has voted to defund Planned Parenthood and to cut taxes, and he sits on the House Judiciary Committee. All in all, he is the model of a Young Republican.

Except.

In advance of next year’s legislative session, lots of legislators pre-file bills with the clerk, and one of the bills filed by Davis has caught a lot of attention. The purpose of the bill is quite simple, and the text itself is a mere two pages. The bill would repeal Missouri’s prohibition on convicted felons running for public office.

Having a Republican sponsoring a bill like this is more than a little odd, given the “lock ’em up and throw away the key!” mentality of many in the GOP, especially in Missouri. But Belton, like many rural areas in Missouri, has a non-trivial portion of the population with minor drug convictions, or who have friends and family members with such convictions. While I can’t imagine that there are a huge number of these folks who want to run for office, a bill like this says to these people “If you’ve served your time, we want to welcome you back into society.” So good on Davis, even if that runs counter to the usual GOP message.

But the weird part of the story isn’t a Republican trying to help felons reenter society. The weird part is how he is trying to make the case for the bill, which he has titled the Donald J. Trump Election Qualification Act.

Says Davis in an interview with the Missouri Independent:

“Having conversations now, when I bring up the topic, a lot of them are squeamish about the idea of having felons in office, but then, if they’re Republican, I remind them that they probably voted for one,” Davis said. . . .

[snip]

“A lot of people don’t don’t think about the fact that Donald Trump, if he met all the other requirements, if he was a Missouri resident, he could not run for state representative or state Senate,” Davis said. “He would be precluded from running for these offices, but was able to be re-elected president of the United States. So I think that at least causes people to start thinking about the issue a little more than they might otherwise.”

Remember: this is a Republican member of the state legislator saying these things, not some liberal from Kansas City or St. Louis.

I know a bunch of folks, mostly in St. Louis and Kansas City, who have worked for years to shift the state of Missouri to focus on the reentry of felons into society rather than solely focus on locking them up to keep them out of society. I am confident in saying that *none* of these folks voted for Trump. But if Davis wants to hold up Trump as a reason to embrace a shift in the judicial system that worries not only about locking folks up but also about how to help folks reenter the world after time in prison, these folks will say more power to him. Passing this bill wouldn’t do anything to mitigate the mess that is about to be unleashed in DC, but it would change the lives of hundreds of families in Missouri for the better.

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” never sounded so appropriate.

The other day, former FBI Agent Asha Rangappa attributed the 11-year scope of Hunter Biden’s pardon to the possibility that, “For the 1st time, the FBI and Justice Department could literally fabricate evidence, or collaborate with a foreign government to ‘find’ evidence of a ‘crime,’ with zero accountability.”

Rangappa is not wrong that the ability to fabricate evidence to invent new crimes with which to charge Hunter likely helps explain the scope of the pardon.

But her suggestion that a second Trump term would be the “1st time” the FBI was in a position to do that is, itself, a symptom of the “zero accountability” that allowed Trump to win a second term.

FBI and DOJ already allowed various types of people — from spies to grifters to informants to an AUSA — to fabricate evidence against Hunter Biden and his father at least five times, with another four instances of potentially false evidence. It appears that such fabricated evidence played a role in the collapse of Hunter’s plea deal, David Weiss’ request for Special Counsel authority, and the evidence that convicted Hunter in his Delaware trial.

And whatever its influence on Hunter’s ultimate conviction, how Republicans worked to insert fabricated and otherwise suspect information into Hunter’s case is a lesson for how it’ll continue to happen.

The following list includes five examples, with numbered headings, that present compelling evidence of fabricated information used either by Congress or DOJ to go after Hunter and his father, along with four suspect incidents. The first five are presented in order of seriousness with regards to the effect on Hunter’s due process. This post will review each. I’ll do a followup that explains the lessons we can take from this.

1. After sharing a debunked Fox News meme, Alexander Smirnov makes false claims of bribery
2. Derek Hines narratively plants a crack pipe in Wilmington
3. The gun shop also lied on the gun form
4. Tony Bobulinski[‘s FBI report] claims he saw a diamond pass hands
5. Gal Luft claims Joe Biden met directly with CEFC Chairman Ye in 2016

• FBI enthusiastically welcomes “The Economist’s” claims
• The Scott Brady side channel launders dirt Rudy Giuliani obtained from Russian agents
• FBI makes Peter Schweizer their special Hunter Biden informant
• Judge Maryellen Noreika admits a laptop that has never been indexed

1. After sharing a debunked Fox News meme, Alexander Smirnov makes false claims of bribery

Fabrication: Longtime FBI informant Alexander Smirnov allegedly falsely claimed Mykola Zlochevsky twice told him that he was bribing Joe Biden.

Resolution: According to Scott Brady’s testimony, prosecutor Lesley Wolf had treated the Smirnov allegation with the same skepticism she did other tips shared via the side channel from Rudy. But after Congress leaked the Smirnov FD-1023 and Bill Barr publicly complained that David Weiss was supposed to have investigated it, it appears to have been part of — if not the primary reason — why Weiss reneged on the plea deal with Hunter, obtained Special Counsel status, and ratcheted up charges afterwards.

In January 2020, right in the middle of impeachment, Bill Barr set up a “discreet” side channel overseen via Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady via which Rudy Giuliani could share the dirt on Hunter Biden he had obtained, in part, from known Russian agent, Andrii Derkach.

As part of that process, Brady checked in on all investigations implicated by the side channel: the SDNY investigation into whether Rudy was acting as an unregistered agent of various Ukrainians, David Weiss’ investigation into Hunter Biden, and two oligarchs from whom Rudy solicited dirt on Hunter: Dmitry Firtash and Ihor Kolomoisky. In his interview, Brady didn’t claim to have looked into the investigation into another oligarch from whom Rudy solicited dirt (indirectly): Mykola Zlochevsky. That investigation reportedly started in 2016 while Joe Biden was Vice President and got shut down the previous month, December 2019, right in the middle of an impeachment focused on corruption at Burisma. Rather, Brady dubiously claimed he discovered Smirnov in a search on Hunter and Burisma.

As Alexander Smirnov’s first indictment describes it, it worked the other way. When Smirnov saw a report of Derkach’s meetings with Rudy, Smirnov started texting his handler that, “bribe of [Joe Biden] should soon be in the news))).” He promised to get proof — and then started sending already debunked memes made popular on Fox News.

Neither story convincingly explains how Brady came to reach out to Smirnov to give him opportunity to frame Donald Trump’s opponent. Perhaps one of Smirnov’s three ties to Trump and his people, including the financial ties to Economic Transformation Technologies, which in turn has ties to one of the construction companies that has partnered with Trump Organization in the Middle East, that are the subject of a second indictment against Smirnov, better explains it. That is, perhaps someone in Trump’s camp knew to send him.

Whatever the case, after Brady came calling, Smirnov claimed that at a meeting in 2017, Zlochevsky insinuated he was paying Hunter Biden as protection, from Joe, for himself. Smirnov further claimed that on a phone call the previous year (in 2019, around the time Rudy was expecting a Hunter laptop, and close to the time the investigation into Zlochevsky would be shut down), the Burisma head bragged about hiding his payments so well it would take ten years to find them.

Here was the bribery claim that Trump had first demanded a year earlier from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, all wrapped up with a bow in that Brady side channel!

Brady told Congress his investigators vetted Smirnov’s claims, which was, after all, the purported reason for his side channel. The Smirnov indictment repeatedly described how precisely the thing — Smirnov’s travel records — that Brady claimed he had used to validate Smirnov’s allegations instead debunked them. Jerry Nadler referred Brady for investigation for those false claims to Congress, an investigation that will presumably be killed after inauguration.

On October 23, 2020 — days after Trump personally yelled at Bill Barr about the investigation into Hunter Biden and on the same day that Tony Bobulinski, accompanied by a former Trump White House lawyer, claimed to have personally witnessed a key meeting with CEFC — David Weiss’ team was ordered by Richard Donoghue to receive a briefing on this allegation.

With the personal involvement of Bill Barr, PADAG Richard Donoghue and before him Seth DuCharme, and FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, Scott Brady found an informant who — if you believe the indictment — was willing to fabricate a bribery claim against Joe and Hunter Biden during an election year.

Don’t tell me that a second Trump administration will only prospectively use fabricated evidence, because it already happened, and the guy currently investigating how it happened was a witness to the process and one of the interviews in this case.

When DOJ ordered prosecutors to accept this alleged fabrication in 2020, AUSA Lesley Wolf reportedly treated it with the same skepticism she treated all the other dirt laundered through the side channel, and it went nowhere. But it didn’t go away. Republicans resuscitated it, in 2023, during their baseless effort to impeach Joe Biden. The FBI tried but failed to limit sharing of Smirnov’s FD-1023. Marjorie Taylor Greene promptly leaked details of it. Bill Barr started making public claims about it in response to Jamie Raskin’s accurate description of what happened in 2020. Then a “whistleblower” leaked the form itself via Chuck Grassley and James Comer. And amid that frenzy, Weiss reneged on his office’s previous assurances that there was no ongoing investigation, told Lindsey Graham that Smirnov’s FD-1023 was part of that ongoing investigation, and then obtained Special Counsel status, out of which the Smirnov false statements prosecution arose.

Yes, after the Smirnov allegation served as a precipitating factor in the collapse of Hunter Biden’s plea deal, he too is now being prosecuted. But by all appearances, the fabrication and the way Republicans leveraged it nevertheless played a central role in the plight of Hunter Biden, a central role in prosecuting him with far more serious charges than originally planned. The fabrication had its effect, and the effect was to make Hunter a felon.

Update: On December 10, Alexander Smirnov signed a plea deal admitting his bribery claims against Joe Biden were fabricated.

The events Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications. In truth and fact. Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016 — in other words, when Public Official 1 could not engage in any official act to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office. Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy.

2. Derek Hines narratively plants a crack pipe in Wilmington

Fabrication: AUSA Derek Hines repeatedly claimed that a line from Hunter Biden’s memoir set in February to March 2019 in New Haven happened in 2018 in Wilmington.

Resolution: None. Hines presented a version of this claim to jurors.

Prosecutors faced a number of challenges with charging Hunter Biden for the gun crime David Weiss had earlier decided to divert. They needed to defend against a vindictive prosecution claim that they had ratcheted up the gun charges against Hunter Biden because he didn’t accept the narrowed plea agreement after Weiss reneged on his June 19, 2023 assurances there was no ongoing investigation. Their plight was made worse because investigators had never taken the most basic investigative steps to pursue the gun charge: they had never obtained a warrant to search Hunter’s digital evidence for proof he was addicted when he owned the gun, and they had never done laboratory analysis on the pouch in which the gun was found. They did both those things after indicting Hunter for the gun crimes in 2023, after the statute of limitations had already expired.

The decision to charge Hunter with the gun crimes appears to have amounted to, “We know Hunter was an addict based on stuff obtained on the laptop and published in the right wing press” (indeed, one of Judge Maryellen Noreika’s decisions mistook stuff published by Murdoch rags for evidence before her).

Abbe Lowell has claimed that, at least in August 2023, prosecutors told him they had no need to rely on the laptop for evidence at trial. Prosecutors seem to have believed, incorrectly, that the laptop was an exact match of Hunter Biden’s iCloud. They similarly seem to have believed that Hunter’s memoir provided adequate proof that Hunter was doing drugs during the 11-day period in October 2018 he owned the gun. In fact, the memoir says almost nothing about that period.

Nevertheless, AUSA Derek Hines made a version of that argument — that the memoir reflected drug use during or closely after the period he owned the gun — over and over, at least seven times by my last count. Hines did so by claiming that his favorite line from the memoir — “It was me and a crack pipe in a Super 8, not knowing which the fuck way was up” — took place in fall 2018 in Wilmington, DE, and not in Hunter’s stopover in New Haven between the time he left Keith Ablow’s treatment in February 2019 and arrived back in Wilmington, before then moving back to Los Angeles permanently.

He simply moved the narrative reference to the crack pipe in a Super 8 from one crime scene to the one where he needed it to be, from 2019 to 2018, from New Haven to Wilmington. Just like a dirty cop moves an actual crack pipe from one location to another.

(This post includes the full memoir excerpt and a summary of Hunter’s spending around New Haven; it also notes that the claim he was staying in Super 8s was, as so much auto-biography is, embellishment.) The argument was absolutely crucial to Hines’ responses to Hunter’s selective and vindictive prosecution claims, falsely substantiating a defense of the prosecutorial decision to charge Hunter with the gun crimes (and even the tax crimes) because there was so much evidence against Hunter in the memoir, when in fact the memoir had a gap for the crucial period.

Hines sustained this fabrication with the jury by selectively presenting the memoir to exclude the discussion of leaving Ablow’s treatment and the way it exacerbated Hunter’s addiction. And when he walked his summary witness through the memoir, he again falsely insinuated that the line took place in 2018, not 2019.

Q. And how about any section in Chapter 9 or Chapter 10, the relevant time period for 2018?

A. No.

Q. And finally, page 208, continuing in the same chapter, after Mr. Biden describes full blown addiction, Exhibit 19, page 208, does Mr. Biden write “crack is a great leveler.” And then he goes on to say “just like in California.” Is that what he goes on to say here?

A. Yes.

Q. If you zoom out, above that, does he say in the first paragraph, “It was me and a crack pipe and a super eight, not knowing which the fuck way was up.” Are those his words?

A. Yes.

Q. And this is in the same chapter when he describes his return in the fall of 2018; correct?

To be sure: Hunter was also staying in cheap motels while he was in Wilmington in 2018, including the night before Hallie Biden found the gun. But those stays don’t appear in his memoir, and so prosecutors had little to no evidence that he was smoking a crack pipe while staying there. As noted, virtually nothing from those weeks in Wilmington appears in his memoir.

But that was true of the evidence against Hunter generally. While there was a great deal of evidence showing Hunter using drugs before and after the period he owned the gun, there was little definitive evidence showing him using in those 11 days.

Prosecutors charged a case for which they had very little direct evidence of drug use during the period in question. One way they won a conviction anyway was by misrepresenting the timing and location of this line in the memoir.

3. The gun shop also lied on the gun form

Fabrication: Sometime after reporting the gun purchase, the gun shop added a claim to the original form that they had asked Hunter for a second form of ID, in addition to his passport (which, because it lacks an address, would not suffice). 

Resolution: Judge Noreika prevented Hunter from presenting the doctored form to the jury or questioning specifically on the question (though Abbe Lowell did elicit closely related answers), thereby preventing Hunter from discrediting the gun shop practices generally or the proving Hunter’s lie on the gun form was not material. 

According to a contested Abbe Lowell filing, before the election in 2020, the guy who owned the gun shop from which Hunter bought a gun, Ron Palimere, and the State Trooper who first investigated the gun in 2018, Vincent Clemons, exchanged WhatsApp texts about how they could release the paperwork tied to the gun purchase in order to help beat Joe Biden.

[Vincent] Clemons was the Delaware State Police officer who first arrived at Janssens’ grocery store on October 23, 2018 when Hallie Biden threw a bag containing the handgun into a trash can in front of the store. It was Clemons who took statements about the handgun from both Hallie and Hunter Biden and was part of filling out an official police report on the issue. Two years later, he is in the communications with [Ron] Palimere about the Form 4473, one of which states: “Yep your side is simple – Hunter bought a gun from you, he filled out the proper forms and the Feds approved him for a purchase.” (emphasis added). Palimere later responded, “I’ll keep it short and sweet as well: Hunter bought a gun. The police visited me asking for verification of the purchase and that’s all I can recall from that day. It was over 2 years ago.” (TAB 6B, 10/26/20 Palimere-Clemons Texts at 4, 6.) The reference to filling out the “proper forms” is not lost on defense counsel given what transpired thereafter. And, despite the importance of Clemons (e.g., the person who actually took the statements), the Special Counsel is foregoing him as a witness to call two other Delaware officers instead.

As part of their effort to use Hunter’s gun purchase to hurt his father in the 2020 election, it appears that on October 22, 2020 they for the first time printed out the receipt recording Hunter’s purchase of the gun.

They would leak these materials, as well as the partisan write-up of the investigation penned after the fact by Clemons, to right wing propagandists.

Their reference to “proper forms” was important, Lowell argued, because some time after the original gun form was emailed to ATF after the gun had already been lost and recovered, it got altered, to falsely reflect that the gun shop obtained a second form of ID before selling a guy they knew to be Joe Biden’s kid a gun. (There’s no way this vehicle registration could have served as a second ID to supplement the passport, because Hunter was driving his father’s Cadillac, and so the registration would have been in Dad’s name.)

Hunter got evidence that these key witnesses tried to use these documents as part of a political hit job long after his selective and vindictive prosecution bids were rejected. And Judge Maryellen Noreika prohibited Hunter’s team from introducing either that the gun shop owner hated Joe Biden and also wanted to get Hunter out of his shop as quickly as possible and as a result sold him a gun without first getting the proper paperwork, or that they altered the form after the fact. Jurors were left with no explanation of why gun shop employee Jason Turner repeatedly claimed to have written “DE Vehicle Registration” on the form, but it didn’t appear on the form before them (see this post for more on the way the gun shop employees’ testimony materially conflicted).

The means by which prosecutors managed to cover up that the gun shop had also broken the law is fairly banal: They relied on secondary witnesses for key testimony rather than that of people more directly implicated in similar conduct as Hunter (the gun shop owner was immunized to sustain this case), and performed ignorance of details about this corruption at trial.

That happens all the time in criminal trials prosecuted by AUSAs who excel at prosecutorial dickishness. Judge Noreika’s decision to exclude a doctored gun form (and instead rely on a scan at trial) might have been a ripe issue for appeal. Certainly, by excluding evidence that the gun sale went through without proper paperwork, she excluded evidence that Hunter’s lie was not material.

But the larger issue is that Hunter Biden was prosecuted for lying on a gun form even while prosecutors covered up that the gun shop owner himself had an employee fabricate the form after the fact, possibly to hide his own role in leaking to the press and trying to push such a case against Joe Biden’s kid.

4. Tony Bobulinski[‘s FBI report] claims he saw a diamond pass hands

Fabrication: After Trump hosted Tony Bobulinski at a debate, the FBI recorded claims that Bobulinski personally witnessed a key CEFC meeting.

Resolution: After prosecutors deemed Bobulinski’s testimony unreliable and so avoided follow-up, IRS agents claimed prosecutors improperly withheld Bobulinski’s testimony, leading to his platforming of slightly different claims in a hearing purporting to support impeachment. Bobulinski accused FBI of misrecording his interview.

The day after being hosted by Donald Trump at one of the Presidential debates, Tony Bobulinski — represented by onetime White House Counsel and future January 6 witness attorney Stefan Passantino — went to the FBI and made certain claims about Hunter Biden’s ties to CEFC. Among other things, he claimed that he participated in a Miami meeting between Hunter Biden and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming.

BOBULINSKI first met in person with members of the BIDEN family at a 2017 meeting in Miami, Florida. BOBULINSKI, GILLIAR, WALKER, HUNTER BIDEN, and YE all attended the meeting. Also in attendance was Director JIAN ZANG (“ZANG”), a CEFC Director involved in forming new businesses and capitalizing them at the request of CEFC. At the meeting, BOBULINSKI witnessed a large diamond gemstone given as a gift to HUNTER BIDEN by YE.

The work conducted by CEFC, GILLIAR, WALKER, HUNTER BIDEN, JAMES BIDEN and YE over the preceding two years was discussed in detail at the Miami meeting. In particular, CEFC was closing significant investment deals in Poland, Kazakhstan, Romania, Oman, and the Middle East during this period of time. CEFC had used its relationship with HUNTER BIDEN and JAMES BIDEN – and the influence attached to the BIDEN name – to advance CEFC’s interests abroad. HUNTER BIDEN and JAMES BIDEN did not receive any monetary compensation for their assistance in these projects. HUNTER BIDEN and JAMES BIDEN did not receive any compensation because JOSEPH BIDEN was still VPOTUS during this time period.

He also claimed that when he met Joe Biden in May 2017, they discussed the business deal.

Further, BOBULINSKI met with JOSEPH BIDEN in person on May 2, 2017 at approximately 10:30 PM at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel bar in Beverly Hills, California where they discussed SINOHAWK

In his congressional testimony, Bobulinski disclaimed several things recorded in his FBI interview report. He said he did not attend the meeting in Miami nor witnessed the transfer of a diamond to Hunter. He backed off his description of the substance of his meetings with Biden.

Not only did Joe Biden meet with me twice for an extensive amount of time — and we weren’t talking about the weather or niceties. We had an extensive discussion about his family, my family, my business career, where I was successful, the military background, and what I was doing with the Chinese. However, coached before that meeting to not go into a lot of detail by Hunter and Jim Biden. Okay?

The effect here is subtle. Bobulinski — who is furious that Hunter cut him out of this deal — is still trying to put Joe Biden at the center of it, he’s still trying to claim (contracts and finances notwithstanding) that the aspiring President got 10% of the deal. That’s the now partly-disclaimed story he told, allegedly presenting himself as a direct witness to more than he was, when he waltzed into the FBI fresh off his campaign event with Donald Trump.

5. Gal Luft claims Joe Biden met directly with CEFC Chairman Ye in 2016

Fabrication: Uncorroborated testimony that Hunter’s financial payments from CEFC started while Joe Biden was still Vice President.

Resolution: Public release of charges after Luft got House Republicans to claim a cover-up.

At a time when he would have known he was under investigation for his role in Patrick Ho’s influence-peddling scheme, March 2019 (for which he was charged and currently awaits extradition), Gal Luft met with investigators in Belgium for two interviews, one focusing on his role in Ho’s activities, another focused on Hunter Biden. At the latter, he claimed that Joe Biden had met with Ye when he was still President, in 2016, and Hunter had gotten paid in 2016 too.

LUFT is aware that YE met with BIDEN and HUNTER at the end of 2016 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington.

The meeting at which Biden was present was later, in March 2017. Here’s how Rob Walker described it.

Walker: It was out‐of‐office.  Ah, we were in ah.., D. C. at the Four Seasons…

Soline: Hmph hmph. Walker: …and ah.., we were having lunch and he.., he stopped in…

Soline: Hmph hmph.

Walker: …then he’d ah, leave.

Wilson: Okay.

Walker: That was it.

Wilson: Just said hello to everybody and then…

Walker: Yes.

Wilson: …took off?

Walker: He literally sat down.  I don’t even think he drank water.  I think Hunter said um.., I may be tryin’ to start a company, ah, or tried to do something with these guys and could you.., and  think he was like “if I’m around”….and he’d show up.

So, too, was a $3 million payment that Luft said Hunter (actually, Rob Walker) received. Luft said it was paid in December 2016; it was paid in March 2017.

At the meeting, Luft “was directly asked to identify his CEFC CHINA ENERGY source(s) but refused to do so.”

Here’s how the tax indictment against Hunter (though not dissimilar to Bobulinski’s claims) described these ties.

8. In the late fall of 2015, the Defendant, Business Associate 1, and Business Associate 2 began to investigate potential infrastructure projects with individuals associated with CEFC China Energy Co Ltd. (CEFC), a Chinese energy conglomerate.

9. In or around December of that year, the Defendant met in Washington, D.C., with individuals associated with CEFC. During the next two years the Defendant, Business Associate 1, and Business Associate 2 continued to meet with individuals associated with CEFC, including in February 2017, with CEFC’s then-Chairman (hereafter “the Chairman”).

10. On or about March 1, 2017, State Energy HK, a Hong Kong entity associated with CEFC, paid approximately $3 million to Business Associate 1’s entity for sourcing deals and for identifying other potential ventures. The Defendant had an oral agreement with Business Associate 1 to receive one-third of those funds, or a million dollars. The Defendant, in turn, directed a portion of those million dollars to Business Associate 3.

On these topics, Luft’s testimony is subtle — just a temporal shift by a few months to make the sleazy Biden relationship with CEFC more damning (and put FARA charges that SDNY seems to have declined by the time Luft went public in 2022 back on the table).  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Luft slightly adjusted his claims about his testimony when he went to NYPost after his arrest, correcting the monetary amounts and timing focusing instead on the later event at which Biden was co-present with Ye.

Luft’s comments about Hunter Biden don’t appear in his own indictment. And indeed, there’s no evidence he wittingly lied himself; whereas Bobulinski had claimed firsthand knowledge of the Miami meeting, Luft was only claiming to have second-hand knowledge of this information. It could well have been an effort from his own sources to harm the Bidens. In his effort to allegedly disavow his own involvement in this influence peddling, Luft certainly had cause to want to shift CEFC’s attempt to recruit James Woolsey, likely sparked by Trump’s election win, to instead focus on what was surely a similar attempt to cultivate the Biden family, something that had less value after Trump’s win.

The files released by the disgruntled IRS agents show that by 2021, SDNY was no longer pursuing a FARA investigation against the Bidens with relation to CEFC, so whatever Luft claim, it has not (at least thus far) done lasting damage, which is the way investigations are supposed to work.

FBI enthusiastically welcomes “The Economist’s” claims

There are a range of Ukrainians who shared dirt on Hunter Biden that made it to investigators. The first two of those, by chronology, were Ukrainians who were briefly made informants by people in Los Angeles, but who were subsequently deemed to be part of an influence operation targeting Joe Biden.

As Johnathan Buma described it, the thumb drive Ukrainians he called Rollie and the Economist provided targeting Hunter Biden in early 2019 (which would have been almost immediately after the investigation into Hunter was opened in Delaware) largely focused on the sex and drugs that reflect Hunter’s addiction, as well as financial improprieties.

After receiving the presentation from ROLLIE and THE ECONOMIST, THE ECONOMIST provided me a thumb drive with some supporting documentation, much of which was in the Ukrainian language, which I do not speak. After I submitted my FD-1023 reports on this information, I was put in touch with two agents working out of the Baltimore office on a case based in Delaware involving Hunter. spoke on the phone with these agents, who were very interested in the information due to its relation to their ongoing investigation that was mostly involving allegations of Hunter’s involvement with drugs and prostitution. Information derived from ROLLIE and THE ECONOMIST had previously been found to be credible, so this was handled carefully and quickly transferred over to the agents in Baltimore and was serilized in their case file. While I transferred the information, I could not read the Ukrainian language, and it required translation in order to determine the viability of the electronic document’s presumed support of the allegations related to Hunter and Burisma, which were presented and summarized in a PowerPoint presentation created by THE ECONOMIST and serialized in the case file. I had no involvement in the subsequent investigation concerning Burisma and the Bidens and never received any update from these agents as to whether the information was corroborated, but later learned from the media that some of the allegations appeared to have been true. Based on the level of corruption and the RIS’ past usage of Ukraine for influence operations raw single-source information derived from Ukraine is always viewed with skepticism by members of the USIC with some specialty and experience in Ukrainian matters.

Buma went on to describe how, when he shared information about Rudy’s ties to Russian spies, his supervisor shut him down.

I’ve written why I am skeptical of Buma. It’s also worth noting that, in fact, in spite of four years of investigation, the FBI never managed to substantiate what he seems to suggest the claims were, so he’s likely wrong that the tips from Rollie and the Economist held up to scrutiny.

Given that, per Buma’s description, these two were quickly disqualified as informants, it seems likely that their information was deemed problematic. That is, it seems likely that this information was vetted and found wanting, which is (again, like the Luft allegations) precisely what is supposed to happen with potentially motivated informant information.

The Scott Brady side channel launders dirt Rudy Giuliani obtained from Russian agents

It’s what DOJ did with Rudy Giuliani’s information, obtained in part from known Russian agents trying to interfere in the election, that defies excuse.

By setting up the Brady Side channel (and related steps), Barr thwarted the SDNY investigation into whether Rudy was himself an unregistered agent of Ukrainian sources. SDNY did not then — and it appears, did not ever — get access to the interview Brady did with Trump’s personal lawyer about how he collected this information. And Brady attempted to intervene in the SDNY investigation to tell them they had gotten it wrong.

As noted above, at Barr’s direction, Brady also created a way that Smirnov could fabricate an allegedly false bribery claim against Joe Biden. He created a way to, effectively, spy on several ongoing investigations.

And, while his sole purpose was supposed to be vetting, his vetting process appears to have done nothing more than serve as a laundry service, insulating Rudy and his sources from investigators and parachuting his information in with the sanction of top DOJ personnel, as when Richard Donoghue ordered DE USAO to provide information about their investigation and accept information in exchange, into the Hunter investigation.

Q And did your AUSAs ever communicate to you issues they were having with Ms. Wolf?

A Not with Ms. Wolf specifically — well, no strike that.

There was an occasion with Ms. Wolf as well, but they would communicate to me the issues that we were having, our investigative team was having with both the FBI and with Delaware and with SDNY. Really the only office we didn’t have any issues with was EDNY. It was Rich Donoghue’s office.

Q Okay.

And so, before you communicated with the PADAG that you needed assistance, did you have an initiative to talk with Mr. Weiss?

A Yeah, I wouldn’t always run to the principal right away, right. I would try to go professional to professional, you know, U.S. attorney to U.S. attorney, and we would try to resolve things. And, only when we couldn’t, would we elevate it to the DAG’s office and involve the PADAG.

Mr. Rosen was never involved directly in our communications. It was always the PADAG.

Q Okay.

And what feedback was Mr. Weiss giving you during that time period before you had to involve the PADAG?

Mr. Lelling. Only in general terms.

Mr. Brady. Usually Mr. Weiss was in receiving mode and would say that he would talk to his team to try to resolve it?

Q At any point did you have to advise Mr. Weiss that you’ve been, you know, you’ve been charged by the DAG to collect this information, and part of your charge and your duty, and correct me if I’m wrong, is to analyze it and hand it off?

A That’s correct and to coordinate with other offices. And, yes, I reminded Mr. Weiss of that obligation that we have, of that requirement, and the FBI on a regular basis as well.

[snip]

Q And were you ever told that the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office did not want a briefing from your office?

A I believe I was. I don’t remember. But I know that we had trouble scheduling it.

Q Okay. And then, further down, it states AUSA Wolf’s comments made clear she did not want to cooperate with the Pittsburgh USAO, and that she had already concluded no information from that office could be credible stating her belief that it all came from Rudy Giuliani.

Were you ever made aware of Ms. Wolf’s processing and decisions regarding this briefing, and why she didn’t want the briefing?

A I was not. We did, however, make it clear that some of the information including this 1023 did not come from Mr. Giuliani.

We do not know what kind of information got laundered through this process. We do know that after four years of investigation, DE USAO did not charge any of the allegations that Rudy’s Russian spy buddies were pushing. Again, it looks like prosecutors in Delaware properly viewed this information with skepticism.

FBI makes Peter Schweizer their special Hunter Biden informant

But the import of that process shares a feature with another of the efforts to launder dirt into an investigation into Hunter Biden.

By 2020, even as Arkansas’ US Attorney’s Office was four years into an investigation of the Clinton Foundation predicated in three different venues at least partly on Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash, some FBI agents in DC had not just used his writing, but made him a formal informant to report on Hunter Biden. It seems that Schweizer was at least partly repackaging allegations based on the laptop, because (according to testimony from retired FBI agent Tim Thibault), when FBI agents from Delaware asked to stop getting the information, they effectively said they already had it.

At the request of the Delaware investigators, Thibault shut down Schweizer as an informant, four years after Thibault had been one of the the three FBI agents who had chased the Clinton Foundation allegations based on Schweizer’s work.

But like the Brady Side channel, this privileged means of sharing dirt — of uncertain quality — on Hunter Biden became a means to discipline those who tried to protect the integrity of investigations by limiting the partisan shit dumped into them. As Lesley Wolf also did, Thibault faced an entire campaign of retaliation (including from two agents who were themselves firebreathing partisans, who claimed that Thibault shut good work down), including public humiliation in an oversight hearing with Chris Wray.

The threats that Wolf faced may have been worse than what Thibault faced. But unlike Wolf, Thibault is on the (dated) Kash Patel’s enemies list.

We don’t know what substance of information Schweizer share with the FBI; we know the investigative agents didn’t want it, at least in that form.

But a more important point is that Thibault’s efforts (at the request of the investigative team itself) to protect the investigation from partisan taint, just like Wolf’s, made him a target for professional and potentially dangerous retaliation.

Judge Maryellen Noreika admits a laptop that has never been indexed

Which brings us, of course, to the laptop (and accompanying hard drive, purportedly a copy of the laptop but the Cellebrite report from which was 62% longer).

There are a great deal of reasons to be skeptical about the laptop: the discrepancies between John Paul Mac Isaac’s story and the FBI’s, JPMI’s claim that the FBI tried to boot it up four days before the known warrant, the possibility that Bill Barr got sent a copy.

But the biggest caution has to do with its handling.

Immediately after the release by NYPost, Rudy ran his yap and said it didn’t really matter if Derkach was a Russian spy and that he regarded the hard drive copy of the laptop he had to be an “extension” of his efforts to collect dirt from Russian spies. (In congressional testimony, Scott Brady admitted that Rudy never told him about the laptop.)

Thanks to Gary Shapley, we know the panicked meeting that ensued, as the investigative team tried to justify the year that they had spent snooping in a laptop that might have, after all, had something to do with Russia’s information operation. And Shapley recorded in real time not just that prosecutors had an email, dated March 31, 2020, recording some kind of concerns “about quality and completeness of imaged/recovered information from the hard drive,” but that they would not share it with anyone who might have to testify at trial. He also described that, at the time of that October 22, 2020 meeting, the FBI had never checked when the files on the laptop got added when. They had never checked to see if someone had packaged Joe Biden’s son’s digital life up onto a laptop to be dealt to the FBI.

My suspicion is that, after that time, prosecutors decided they shouldn’t try to introduce the laptop at any trial, because they could never clean it of this stench (they don’t appear to have considered investigating that stench, which continues to baffle me to this day). But after brashly telling Abbe Lowell in August 2023 they didn’t need no fucking laptop to charge the gun case, a different set of prosecutors discovered they had almost no evidence showing that Hunter Biden was doing drugs in the 11 days he owned a gun. They discovered that the all-critical communications between Hunter and Hallie Biden from that period — saved from a phone he used until replacement phones for ones he lost days before he bought the gun arrived during this same period — existed only on that laptop which he did not yet possess.

And rather than going back and pretending they were the FBI, acting like the FBI — rather than going back and doing the index that would tell them whether the laptop really did reflect Hunter’s use of it or someone else packaging up the digital life of the then President’s son — they instead bulldozed through things like the dickish prosecutors they are.

They never indexed the laptop. Never.

They never Bates stamped their own exhibits.

They never provided the laptop in e-discovery format.

In fact, after Hunter’s team did their own extraction so they could do searches, prosecutors raised questions about the integrity of their own source, the laptop.

When Judge Noreika denied my request for the extraction reports that Derek Hines claimed authenticated the laptop, she admitted that she had never required a report that actually referred to the laptop by some kind of identifier. The laptop evidence came in with no formal validation whatsoever.

The only two pieces of authentication used to validate the laptop at trial were the fact it had accessed Hunter’s iCloud account (but Zoe Kestan testified at trial that so had her own laptop), and that JPMI had sent an invoice to Hunter’s public iCloud email.

That was it.

The laptop and the most damning evidence against Hunter all came in without the most basic kind of validation. And as a result, we still can’t say with certainty we know fuckall about its provenance. Nor can we say whether its existence as a collection of evidence was doctored by hostile players (who would just as likely be Republican rat-fuckers as Russian spies).

We simply don’t know, and anyone claiming they do, is lying or withholding reporting and testimony that could have come in as part of the trial.

So we still can’t say whether the most famous prop in this whole story involved fabrications or manipulations or merely the disordered digital life of a hopelessly addicted man.

Hunter has been pardoned from these convictions (though James Comer has promised to continue hounding him going forward). Even still, these nine instances of dodgy evidence used against the President’s son provide lessons — none pretty — about what we should expect going forward.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I have been tamping down my disgust for the last four weeks, just as many of you have.

I’m completely disgusted with talking head punditry blaming everyone but themselves, including Democrats and Democratic Party-wannabes who decided after the election that it was a good time to kick minority groups and blame them, or turned stupid before the camera and insist the barrier to winning was something facts say it wasn’t.

But I have a specially level of revulsion allocated for – brace yourself, it’s not about some of you personally – white women.

53% of white American women have voted for Donald the adjudicated rapist Trump not once, not twice, but three fucking times – in 2016, in 2020, and yet again in 2024.

For some it was about financial issues like taxes – I earned this, I’ve got mine, fuck you, they voted, wanting Trump to ensure their rank in the economic pecking order was conserved.

For others it was about race and/or misogyny. Internalized oppression makes these voters believe they are somehow exempt from the oppression when they are only a future victim.

In a handful of states it’s clear reproductive rights were important to this bloc of voters because they voted against abortion restrictions. And yet they still voted for Trump.

Trump’s claims that he would leave abortion to states to decide apparently convinced them they could have things both ways. They could belong to the cult of Trump and white patriarchal supremacy and still retain their reproductive rights.

What poppycock. Trump had already made the biggest move possible to eliminate their rights at federal level by ensuring the Roberts’ Supreme Court would undermine them.

It’s infuriating and yet somehow predictable.

This cognitive dissonance in women is the stuff of myth, the kind of behavior we’ve been warned about in stories nearly a millennia old.

We’re watching once again the unfolding myth of Bluebeard.

~ ~ ~

Here’s the tl;dr version of the Bluebeard myth from Simple Wikipedia:

A rich man has a blue beard which frightens young women. He has been married several times but no one knows what has happened to his wives. He woos two young sisters in the neighborhood but neither are inclined to consider marriage. He treats them to a lavish time in his country house. The younger sister decides to marry him. Shortly after the wedding (and before he travels to a far land on business), Bluebeard gives his wife the keys to his house. One key opens a door to a distant room. He forbids her to enter this room. He leaves and his wife opens the door to the forbidden room. Here she finds Bluebeard’s former wives, all dead and lying on a floor covered with blood. She drops the key. It is magic and becomes stained with blood that cannot be washed away. Bluebeard returns. He discovers the blood-stained key and knows his wife has disobeyed his order. He tells her she will take her place among the dead. He grants her a few minutes to pray. She calls her sister Anne and asks her to go to the top of the tower to see if her brothers are on the road. After several tense moments, Anne reports seeing the men approaching. Bluebeard raises a cutlass to decapitate his wife. Her brothers burst into the room. They kill Bluebeard. Their sister is safe.

I’m not going to write out the full Bluebeard myth here. I’m going to trust readers to do their homework reading the original, more complex Wikipedia entry and possibly the Charles Perrault version available for free at Project Gutenberg.

There are many versions of this myth across languages, countries, and cultures. It has been adapted in contemporary culture repeatedly. In other words, humans have been telling a story in which the same familiar elements have occurred because humans universally find it relatable across history and now.

We’ve even begun discussion of universal liberation and the enslavement of fully-conscious AI “women” to serve Bluebeardian men, as in writer/director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015).

It should not be difficult to see the parallels between Bluebeard and Trump – the multiple silenced wives, the naïve woman/women who yield to promises of wealth and pleasure, the unpleasantness of discovering the truth beneath the promises, the mortal price to be paid.

Nor should it be difficult to see the meta layer of this myth, where wealthy men feel entitled to demand subordination by women including the suppression of knowledge and therefore consent. To slip this leash is to suffer loss unless rescued at the last moment. That rescue is the only thing separating the bride from the corpses of sister brides.

The biggest single variant between versions of the Bluebeard myth is the means of rescue. A sister or sisters, brother or brothers, or a mother figure steps in at the very last moment to save the final girl.

Unfortunately, the parallel here is that they believe naively they will always be the lucky final girl; in truth we as societal siblings are always the rescuers.

We did a shit job three elections in a row, mostly because we assumed the victim(s) were fully informed and aware of the danger, failing to reach them at a level mythic stories connect. Many were fully informed and blithely voted for Trump because he said he would leave reproductive rights to the states.

Like the last bride in Bluebeard’s myth, they may have been amply informed of the manifold deaths of previous wives yet plunged ahead into marriage believing they were somehow immune.

What if the victim(s) refuse efforts to save them?

~ ~ ~

Three women married Trump, two of whom should have known better. More women were involved with him consensually; they, too should have known better.

Note status of consent here – some girls and women were forced to be involved with Trump without their consent, from minors at the Miss Teen USA pageant to E. Jean Carroll. Don’t confuse these persons with the former. Many of them fought in some way not to be involved with Trump, informing more women about his nature as they did so, clawing back against his efforts to stuff them in his bloody oubliette by way of SLAPP suits and other forms of legal harassment.

The women who voted for Trump three times are among those who expressed their consent at the ballot box. They agreed to what he offered them as a candidate.

Like the younger sister who heard all the rumors about Bluebeard, who may have been warned by mother and sisters against him, they went ahead and consented to Trump as president.

The only thing which gave Bluebeard’s final wife pause was her own discovery in the personal pursuit of information. In many versions of the myth she is merely overwhelmed by her own curiosity about the forbidden. In other versions she is upset about being denied access to what is hers by rights as his wife. Whatever it is that drives her, it is she who must put the key into the lock, she who makes the discovery of the many corpses, she who in terror drops the key and eventually exposes her intransigence to Bluebeard.

It is she who must be threatened for her failure to obey and she who must face the intense fear of death.

She will seek her ready rescuers only after she has been confronted with the reality of Bluebeard’s immense monstrousness and his intent to kill her.

In short, the 53% of white women who voted for Trump will only realize the enormity of their mistake when he threatens them personally at immense personal cost.

They will ask us for help once they are fully aware of the immediate danger to themselves and loved ones – not before then.

Or as Adrian Bott as @Cavalorn tweeted so elegantly on the dead bird app back in 2015,

‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

So very prescient that he used a woman as a face-eaten victim.

Until a substantive number of these 53% of white women voters actually lose their faces so to say, they will not reach out for aid.

~ ~ ~

You may be depressed now. You may already be angry. But you must be prepared for the day that last bride, the final girl, the blundering substantive number of white women Trump voters emerge from their privileged state of heedless unawareness – unwokeness, dare I say – holding out a bloody key of knowledge asking frantically to be saved.

Because you’re going to have to be ready to save her sorry stupid ass in order to save us all.

If this wasn’t true humans wouldn’t be telling this story over and over so many times in so many ways, both as a warning to the women who need to be informed, and as a reminder to the rescuers they will be needed if Bluebeard is to be stopped from taking yet more victims.

Furthermore, you need to prepare yourself to tell your children and grandchildren about the myth of Bluebeard.

Now with Orangeskin.

Zeynep Tufekci has a column at NYT scolding thousands of people on social media for taking glee in the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

I don’t care one way or another for the scold. I care about how she makes a remarkable claim and then uses it to engage in political nihilism.

Tufekci claims that she can’t remember any murder being so openly celebrated in the US.

I’ve been studying social media for a long time, and I can’t think of any other incident when a murder in this country has been so openly celebrated.

From there, Tufekci likens this moment to the Gilded Age, where social upheaval led to exploitation and political violence.

The Gilded Age, the tumultuous period between roughly 1870 and 1900, was also a time of rapid technological change, of mass immigration, of spectacular wealth and enormous inequality. The era got its name from a Mark Twain novel: gilded, rather than golden, to signify a thin, shiny surface layer. Below it lay the corruption and greed that engulfed the country after the Civil War.

The era survives in the public imagination through still-resonant names, including J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt; through their mansions, which now greet awe-struck tourists; and through TV shows with extravagant interiors and lavish gowns. Less well remembered is the brutality that underlay that wealth — the tens of thousands of workers, by some calculations, who lost their lives to industrial accidents, or the bloody repercussions they met when they tried to organize for better working conditions.

Also less well remembered is the intensity of political violence that erupted. The vast inequities of the era fueled political movements that targeted corporate titans, politicians, judges and others for violence.

But she suggests that rather than the reform that arose out of the Gilded Age, this moment will stumble because “the will among politicians to push for broad public solutions appears to have all but vanished.”

The turbulence and violence of the Gilded Age eventually gave way to comprehensive social reform. The nation built a social safety net, expanded public education and erected regulations and infrastructure that greatly improved the health and well-being of all Americans.

Those reforms weren’t perfect, and they weren’t the only reason the violence eventually receded (though never entirely disappeared), but they moved us forward.

The concentration of extreme wealth in the United States has recently surpassed that of the Gilded Age. And the will among politicians to push for broad public solutions appears to have all but vanished. I fear that instead of an era of reform, the response to this act of violence and to the widespread rage it has ushered into view will be limited to another round of retreat by the wealthiest.

So, unprecedented glee at a murder. And Tufekci’s judgment that there’s simply not the political will there was in the early 20th Century.

As a threshold matter, I find her claim that this is a unique moment of glee to be … forgetful. Just two years ago, after all, Donald Trump and Elon Musk — whose platform has encouraged such mob celebrations — both led their mob in vicious jokes about Paul Pelosi’s near-murder.

Indeed, Trump used attacks on Paul Pelosi at least twice in his campaign — most recently, campaigning with some cops in September.

How do you forget that the richest man in the world and the President-elect have engaged in just such celebration of political violence (and that’s before he pardons seditionists)? Donald Trump got elected by celebrating political violence.

And then he proceeded to install at least 11 billionaires, ready to start looting government.

Which is where Tufekci’s failure to find any will to push for systematic solutions gets curious. After all, Lina Khan’s efforts to rein in monopolies played a role in last year’s election. WaPo’s coverage of all the billionaires Trump installed quotes Josh Hawley along with Elizabeth Warren and Noah Bookbinder.

Trump’s team of rivals stands in stark contrast with President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, which had a combined net worth of $118 million in the first year of his presidency, according to Forbes. Trump’s picks have not yet released their financial disclosures, but his 2025 Cabinet is likely to be even richer than the first Trump Cabinet, which had a combined net worth of $6.2 billion.

[snip]

Trump’s selections may be more inclined to look out for the interests of their own businesses and their fellow billionaires than for working-class voters, said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“It is hard to see how a Cabinet made up largely of the very, very wealthiest of Americans is going to have an understanding of what the needs of regular Americans are,” he said.

[snip]

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) expressed concern about the business backgrounds of some of Trump’s picks in an interview with Politico on Tuesday.

“All these Treasury secretaries, my point is, always end up being sort of Wall Street guys. Do I think that’s a great trend? Not really,” Hawley said.

[snip]

Democrats have roundly criticized Trump’s choices. The Democratic Party on Tuesday put out a news release that said Trump was “stacking his Cabinet with out of touch billionaires.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) told The Washington Post that the choices suggest Trump’s presidency will “be one giveaway after another for the wealthy and well-connected.”

“He’s nominating his ‘rich-as-hell’ buddies to run every facet of our economy, corrupting our government at the expense of ordinary Americans,” she said.

(NYT’s version of the same story credulously repeats the Tech Bros’ transparently bullshit claim that “A core goal of Mr. Musk and the Silicon Valley set has been to improve the efficiency of government services.”)

And even beyond Khan’s work, the Biden Administration took efforts to reverse the kind of concentration that made Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg rich. They’ve even taken action against … United Healthcare.

The richest man in the world is about to come for VA Health Care and once that fails to make way for new tax cuts, Medicare.

No one knows where this moment of rage will go. The oligarchs have the means to exercise the power of the state against those complaining that Trump’s billionaires plan to use bullshit claims about efficiency to make things far worse.

But the people who brought us to this moment where mobs take glee at political violence are about to loot the government.

And I’m pretty sure Senator Warren will be ready at hand to explain what is going down.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

The NYT has matched Jonathan Martin’s reporting that Biden’s aides are considering pardoning some subset of the people who will be targeted by Trump.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. “The beneficiaries know nothing,” one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons.

Smart lefty commentators are embracing the concept.

With the possible exception of Mark Milley, I think this is an exceedingly stupid idea. It’s the kind of magical pony thinking that led people to demand Merrick Garland, with no effort from them, make Trump go away, thereby ceding the ground for Trump to claim he was prosecuted in a witch hunt.

And it won’t work.

Biden’s pardon won’t even save Hunter Biden

Start with the fact that Biden’s pardon won’t even save his own son.

Sure, it’ll save him from going to prison for the crimes for which he was convicted.

But it might not even insulate him and his team from further harassment. That’s true, first of all, because prosecutors have continued to pursue an investigation — no doubt facilitated by the House investigation into Hunter — into whether Kevin Morris’ support for Hunter in 2020, as he was trying to sustain sobriety, amounted to a campaign benefit for Joe Biden.

While pursuing the false allegations of foreign-influence wrongdoing led nowhere, the Special Counsel seems to have given in to other demands to expand his investigation of Hunter, his family, and those close to them. Throughout 2024, Special Counsel prosecutors have sought information about financial support Hunter received in 2020 and 2021 around the time of the 2020 presidential election and questioned whether such support could be deemed improper political contributions. This latest inquiry is the exact demand that the disgruntled IRS agents alluded to in their statements to congressional committees and the media.92 The results of this investigation expanding—the theory of which was rejected in the case of former Senator John Edwards93—are nevertheless likely to be a focal point of any final report the Special Counsel prepares for Congress, which will no doubt result in more demands for baseless charges against Hunter.

Nothing in Hunter’s pardon protects Morris or, through him, Abbe Lowell. Indeed, I expect this prong of the investigation is one reason prosecutors fought to terminate Hunter’s prosecution, rather than dismiss the indictment: because it would make it easier to use the prosecution to show some benefit.

Plus, as far as I know, David Weiss will still have his Special Counsel report to write up, and because Alexander Smirnov has his existing false statement charge and a new tax indictment ahead of him (to say nothing of an appeal of David Weiss’ Special Counsel appointment under the same argument via which Trump got his own documents case dismissed), the report will go to Pam Bondi and not Merrick Garland. So Hunter can expect to be dirtied up some more in that report.

More importantly, House Republicans have already floated bringing Hunter in for more testimony. In recent years, the House GOP has spun entirely free of gravity and facts, so it would (and did, particularly in their referral of Hunter’s uncle Jim) take little to refer Hunter for prosecution on false statements.

Nothing about Hunter’s pardon will prevent Republicans from inventing new crimes going forward.

That’s true of anyone on a list. If you pardon Anthony Fauci, nothing prevents Congress from calling him to testify again to invent some new reason to prosecute him.

There are too many targets to play whack-a-mole

Another reason pardoning your way out of this problem won’t work is because there is an infinite supply of potential targets, but a finite attention span with which to protect them. As I noted, the Kash Patel enemies list on which the discussion is focused is dated; it excludes three of the names — Jack Smith, Liz Cheney, and (even!) Anthony Fauci — that, per NYT, are at the center of the discussion (Adam Schiff and Mark Milley are on there). Mike Flynn has his own list. Random mobs of MAGAts also have their own.

Olivia Troye, Kash’s current focus, is (as far as I know) on none of them.

Much of this discussion simply disappears most of the people who’ve already gone though this, who will continue to be targeted so long as there’s utility to it.

Importantly, the more invisible or easily dehumanized targets are, the easier they will be to take down.

Jack Smith, Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci, Adam Schiff, Mark Milley? They’re all people that some very powerful people will fight for, or at the very least be discomforted as they watch passively. Those would be the easiest cases to defend.

There are legal privileges to protect

One reason, for example, that Adam Schiff”s targeting might discomfort those who absolutely loathe him is because, to punish him for his imagined sin — speaking openly of Trump’s “collusion” with Russia in 2016 and daring to pursue him in impeachment after impeachment — would solidly be protected by Speech and Debate. The same is true of Liz Cheney.

To go after Adam Schiff for his imagined crimes, you’d have to rely on litigation approaches that might make — say — Mitch McConnell queasy.

Which may be one reason Schiff told Politico he thinks the whole idea is unnecessary.

“I would urge the president not to do that,” Schiff said. “I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary.”

Plus, the opinion via which Scott Perry protected many of the communications from his phone was signed by Karen Henderson, Greg Katsas, and Neomi Rao, the latter of whom are Trump appointees.

The same is true for Jack Smith (or Jay Bratt, whom Republicans also want to target). As prosecutors, they have broad immunity for their actions. That may have its drawbacks. But a whole lot of people who would be reporting to Pam Bondi have a lot invested in defending them.

If you pardon the easiest, highest profile, easily defended targets, you’ll leave weaker targets unprotected.

It would forestall the long overdue defense of rule of law

There’s this fantasy — assisted by shoddy legacy media coverage — that this kind of retaliation didn’t happen in the first Trump Administration.

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page would beg to differ with you.

Andrew McCabe would beg to differ with you.

Marie Yovanovitch would beg to differ with you.

Alexander Vindman would beg to differ with you.

Michael Cohen would beg to differ with you.

Michael Sussmann would beg to differ with you.

Igor Danchenko would beg to differ with you.

Dis- and misinformation researchers would beg to differ with you.

51 spooks who exercised their First Amendment rights would beg to differ with you.

John Bolton would beg to differ with you.

Hunter Biden would beg to differ with you.

Some of these cases got a lot of attention. Michael Cohen has done a superb job of making himself the center of attention; he knows what he’s dealing with. Many got the wrong kind of attention; certain outlets sent rabid packs of 20 journalists to cover the Hunter Biden legal case, without sending a single journalist interested in rule of law.

But Trump’s efforts have been most successful when they didn’t, when all the same people screaming we need to do pardons looked away.

What this moment requires is not a magical pony, some gimmick that will protect the strongest targets while ceding moral high ground, but a return to the work of actually defending rule of law day to day, especially those who are easy to isolate or demonize. This moment also requires actual journalism. I shouldn’t be the only one who cares about Hunter Biden’s due process rights more than his ickiness.

And yes, I realize that means that people will continue to get hurt, just as they’ve been getting hurt going back to 2017. Trust me, like many other people, I’m doing my own risk mitigation for the days ahead.

Pardoning the highest profile likely current targets of Trump capitulates to Trump’s narrative that there is no rule of law, there’s just one party against another. Instead defending the conduct of the people Trump targets takes a lot more work, a lot more courage. But without that work, Trump has won the fight.

Mark Milley’s defense of the Constitution

For most of the targets in question, the story you’d tell would be precisely the one Trump wants you to tell. If you pardon Cheney and Schiff because they investigated Trump, for example, you condone his narrative that that’s a crime.

It’s not.

If you pardon Fauci because he made difficult health insurance according to the best — albeit imperfect — science, you condone the pack of cranks Trump plans to install in every health-related agency.

But Mark Milley is different.

He’s different because the reason why Republicans would target him is that he upheld the Constitution, rather than Trump.

He’s different because he did something crucial — reaching out to his counterparts overseas to deescalate threats of nuclear catastrophe. Republicans want to spin that vital work as treason.

He’s different because a prosecution of Milley will be used as an excuse to deprofessionalize the military officer corps.

And he’s different because Trump might try to target Milley via military justice or might seek penalties not on the table for his other targets.

I don’t know if Milley wants that protection or if, like Schiff, he would prefer to defend his own actions. That’s his business.

The point though is nothing Biden can do will eliminate the risk that Trump will keep doing what he has been doing for eight years. Someone or someones will be that target, and imagining we can make that risk go away, it’ll only lead people to look away again instead of giving the attention the focus that it has lacked.

If we don’t find the solution to that problem, if we seek instead a quick fix, then it’ll get continually harder to defend rule of law as Trump stacks the courts and guts the guardrails at DOJ.

You can’t pardon your way out of Trump’s attack on rule of law. It’s going to take much harder work than that.

Update: Ian Millhiser makes the same argument about the inefficacy of pardons, noting as well that pardons can’t prevent lawsuits or state retribution.

As the dollar surged immediately after Trump’s election win, reports attributed it to Trump’s expected business-friendly climate (as if chaos helps businesses thrive), perhaps even to Trump’s populist bluster about tariffs targeting competing state currencies.

More recently and dramatically, Bitcoin has surged as Trump has named one after another crypto enthusiast to key posts, most notably Paul Atkins to SEC Chair.

Donald Trump’s win has accompanied a 3.5% boost in the dollar. His win has contributed to a 53% surge in Bitcoin.

And all that was before his announcement that David Sacks would be his White House crypto and AI “czar,” as well as the head of Trump’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.

The press coverage of the pick is a tiny bit more skeptical than Trump’s own announcement. Trump emphasized the success of Sacks’ All-In podcast.

In addition to his fundraising for Trump, news outlets noted that Sacks refused to take any position that would require him to step down from his own VC fund and will be hired under a designation that does not subject him to public financial disclosure rules. A few even mentioned his long ties to Peter Thiel.

But they left out two other important details.

First, Sacks is an unusually enthusiastic and unashamedly stupid Russophile. He parrots Putin’s propaganda even more dumbly than Tucker Carlson.

Second, Sacks played a huge role in contributing to a run on Silicon Valley Bank and then wailing for a bailout. He has a very recent history of privatizing the risk his reckless policies presents.

These twin developments — the rise of the dollar and the far more dramatic surge of Bitcoin — stem from two parallel Trump instincts. His defense of the dollar as reserve currency stems from his genuinely held but incompetently implemented belief in America’s Greatness™.

But his enthusiastic embrace of cryptocurrency arises from his corruption.

The self-dealing behind Trump’s World Liberty Financial was clear from the start. It was made more obvious when Justin Sun bought $30 million in World Liberty crypto tokens last month, effectively handing the newly elected President $18 million.

On November 25, Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, a new crypto venture backed by President-elect Donald Trump. Sun said his company, TRON, was committed to “making America great again.”

World Liberty Financial planned to sell $300 million worth of crypto tokens, known as WLF, which would value the new company at $1.5 billion. But, before Sun’s $30 million purchase, it appeared to be a bust, with only $22 million in tokens sold. Sun now owns more than 55% of purchased tokens.Sun’s decision to buy $30 million in WLF tokens has direct and immediate financial benefits for Trump. A filing by the company in October revealed that “$30 million of initial net protocol revenues” will be “held in a reserve… to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.” After the reserve is met, a company owned by Donald Trump, DT Marks DEFI LLC, will receive “75% of the net protocol revenues.”So before Sun’s purchase, Trump was entitled to nothing because the reserve had not been met. But Sun’s purchase covered the entire reserve, so now Trump is entitled to 75% of the revenues from all other tokens purchased. As of December 1, there have been $24 million WLF tokens sold, netting Trump $18 million.

All this has the potential to go horribly wrong.

And predictably so. Back in July — after Sacks had brokered the marriage between Musk and Trump but long before Trump rolled out his own crypto scam — Mark Cuban had this to say about the alliance.

And while I don’t ascribe to everything in this more ambitious prediction from Dave Troy from 2022, some have been predicting this confluence of events even longer.

One thrust of Trump’s transition plans — those stemming from his kneejerk parochialism — have focused on making The Dollar Great.

A just as significant thrust — granting reckless support for bubble cryptocurrency — arises from his venality.

With Trump, it’s generally safe to bet his greed will win out over care for anyone but himself.

Update: Added the caveat “public” before financial disclosure. See Kathleen Clark’s thread for an explanation.

Since Tim Miller posted it, I haven’t been able to stop looking at Kash Patel’s enemies list.

It’s not that Kash has an enemies list — though that’s an alarming accessory in an FBI nominee.

It’s the nature of the list, both the physical nature of it, but also its composition (the latter of which Philip Bump also discussed).

First, it’s dated — even more dated than it probably had to be for its September 2023 publication date. The most recent villain on the list may be Cassidy Hutchinson, who became a villain in June 2022. Jay Bratt, who became a personal villain to Kash when compelling his testimony in Trump’s stolen documents case no later than November 2022, is not on the list. Nina Jankowicz is on the list. She became a villain around the same time Hutchinson did: when the Biden Administration briefly tried to do something about disinformation until right wingers misrepresented some things she had said about Christopher Steele and the Hunter Biden laptop, which led her to resign and the effort to crash by July 2022. The description of James Baker as the former Deputy General Counsel of Twitter reflects Elon Musk’s firing of him for trying to maintain the privacy of records from Matt Taibbi et al; but Baker may be there as one of Kash’s Durham villains, because other Twitter File villains — most notably Yoel Roth — don’t appear on the list, nor any of the other disinformation experts who’ve been targeted non-stop since the Twitter Files.

Then there are the organizational characteristics. Hutchinson, like Michael Atkinson and Joe Biden, above, as well as Jim Comey, Crossfire Hurricane FBI Agent Curtis Heide, have bullets betraying some formatting problem, as if Kash added a bunch of people to an existing list. “Oh, and that Joe Biden guy! He’s a villain too!” as if he had to delay admitting that Biden was actually President (though Kamala Harris’ bullet is formatted like everyone else’s).

That’s not Kash’s most serious organizational problem. He claims the list is “alphabetical by last name.” But Joe Biden, with his funny bullet, comes after Stephen Boyd. Heide, another funny bullet, comes after Fiona Hill. Charles Kupperman comes after Loretta Lynch. And Alexander Vindman appears between Andrew Weissmann and Christopher Wray.

How are you going to systematically work through your enemies list if you can’t even alphabetize them properly?

Finally, Kash notes that his list is not exhaustive:

It does not include other corrupt actors of the first order such as … members of Fusion GPS or Perkins Coie…

But he’s wrong about that. The list includes Nellie Ohr primarily because she was an “Independent Contract [sic] for Fusion GPS.” And it includes Michael Sussmann as a “former partner at Perkins Coie.” The only other worthy villain for someone like Kash who had been at Perkins Coie — Republican nemesis Marc Elias — left Perkins Coie even before Sussmann did.

This list evinces a mind that struggles with basic structures, not an evil mastermind ready to hit the ground running.

That doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.

The fact that this sloppily organized list is two years old suggests one of the problems with attempting to forestall Trump and Kash’s vengeance by pardoning the people on the existing enemies list. These are yesterday’s enemies, and Trump’s minions have no limit on their ability to find new ones.

Just yesterday, after all, Kash demonstrated the point. Jesse Binnall threatened to sue Olivia Troye for calling Kash a liar.

On December 2, 2024, you appeared as a live guest on MSNBC and made several false and defamatory statements about Mr. Patel. These comments include that Mr. Patel would “lie about intelligence” and would “lie about making things up on operations” to the point where Mr. Patel “put the lives of Navy Seals at risk when it came to Nigeria,” and that Mr. Patel was even misinforming Vice President Mike Pence.

This is a complete fabrication, and you know it is false by virtue of your former position in the White House.

Mark Zaid, who is already representing Troye in a lawsuit filed by Ric Grenell, has a fundraiser to support what is no doubt going to be booming business going ahead.

On the one hand, this demonstrates that Kash will simply add new enemies to an ever evolving mis-alphabetized list, targeting each new person who tells the truth about him.  Like the campaigns targeting disinformation that didn’t make Kash’s book, this assault on enemies is an assault on the truth.

Those not on a list focused on Crossfire Hurricane and Trump’s first impeachment are not safe.

Nor can criminal pardons protect targets (and in some ways would be counterproductive) in the face of efforts to harass critics, because these people will sue make-believe cows just to harass a critic.

At the same time, consider how stupid it is to target Troye in this way if you’re an aspiring J Edgar Hoover. In two months, Kash may well have the ability to target Troye with government sanction. Instead of waiting, Troye’s comments will benefit from the Streisand Effect. Since she stands by her claims, Troye may get more opportunities to explain how Kash lied to Mike Pence, to the press, and possibly even to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Plus, there are at least a few Republican Senators who likely know and trust Troye more than they do Kash, so he has added surface area for attack in his own confirmation process.

And if Kash tries to target Troye if and when he does have the power to do so legally, it’ll be an immediate red flag for judges that the FBI — the entire FBI — is not to be trusted.

Don’t get me wrong. If Kash can get confirmed, he’ll supervise 35,000 people, almost all of whom would be able to alphabetize his enemies list and a good chunk of whom would be able — even with FBI’s notoriously archaic computer systems — to automate them. That’s what they do. That’s the danger of putting a guy with an enemies list in charge of the Bureau.

But there’s so much about this list that betrays a guy obsessed with reliving his best moment, a guy who used Congress’ oversight infrastructure to trick the world into supplanting the real Russian investigation with the Steele dossier.

Back in his heyday, Kash’s Nunes memo served simply to project, to obscure the legitimate basis for the Russian investigation. Kash succeeded in telling the origin myth Trump needed from which he has spun all the polarization that followed.

But now, he’s just playing a frantic whack-a-mole, striking at anything or anyone that might speak the truth.

That’s incredibly dangerous. The arbitrary nature is, itself, part of the intended terror.

But it’s also the cry of a guy who doesn’t understand what he’s looking at.

Update: This description of Kash’s book (which I’m hoping to avoid reading) is utterly consistent with this enemies list.

But a truth starts to dawn as Patel unleashes on the FBI: He doesn’t know a lot about it. He hasn’t worked in it, experiencing it only at arms length as an aide of Nunes’s, and viewing it through a prism of deceit of his own choosing.

That is, Kash has to invent a Deep State, but it bears little resemblance to the real thing.

Update: After standing by her comments, Troye offers to testify at Kash’s confirmation hearing.

Because I want to address how we move forward when both law and journalism will increasingly fail to tell the truth, I want to address this weird 3-paragraph Devlin Barrett … um, blog post? … that NYT chose to publish earlier this week. Devlin picks a big ol’ straw man and carries it across the line for his right wing fans.

Here’s how it works:

• Headline: Judge Scuppered Hunter Biden Plea Deal, Not Political Pressure
• ¶1: President Biden blamed “political pressure” for the collapse of Hunter’s plea deal
• ¶2: The plea deal fell apart in spectacular fashion [linking this article] because Judge Noreika rejected the structure of the deal
• ¶3: The collapse of the plea deal because of its structure “is a far cry from the president’s suggestion that the deal for Hunter Biden to avoid prison time and a felony conviction collapsed because of political pressure”

Now, as a threshold matter, Devlin oversimplifies what happened in the plea hearing, which I reconstructed here. Two things happened and Maryellen Noreika had two concerns. Yes, there was the way the plea deal (which she had authority to reject) invoked the diversion agreement (which Probation refused to sign after having previously approved it, and which Noreika repeatedly complained she should get to approve but legally should not). Devlin’s right that that was an issue, but Noreika’s complaints extended to areas she had no authority, the scope of immunity the government offered.

But there was also the confusion about the scope covered by the agreement. And that confusion arose because, after David Weiss’ First AUSA had told Chris Clark on June 19 that, “there was not another open or pending investigation” into Hunter, Leo Wise asserted at the July 26 hearing that there was an ongoing investigation, one he later suggested might pertain to FARA.

Don’t take my word for this, though: Here’s what the linked article that Devlin pretends backs his argument says:

Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, repeatedly informed the two sides that she would be no “rubber stamp.” She picked apart the deal, exposing substantial disagreements over the extent of the immunity provision.

Mr. Clark said the deal indemnified his client not merely for the tax and gun offenses uncovered during the inquiry, but for other possible offenses stemming from his lucrative consulting deals. Mr. Wise said it was far narrower — and suggested the government was still considering charges against Mr. Biden under laws regulating foreign lobbying.

Poor Devlin couldn’t even get the plea hearing right.

But the plea hearing is a straw man. Devlin gets there by misrepresenting what Joe Biden said about the prosecution.

Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. [1] Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. [2] Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.

[3] The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. [4] Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.

[5] No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. [my brackets]

Biden made these assertions:

1. A false statement on a gun form is not normally charged unless there are aggravating factors
2. Addicts who fail to pay their taxes usually can resolve that civilly (note: This is the claim to which Mark Scarsi, with merit, objected, partly because Hunter waited months after he filed to actual pay his taxes, and partly because Hunter also pled guilty to evading his 2018 taxes, not just failing to pay)
3. The charges only came about after Republicans instigated them to attack him
4. A carefully negotiated plea deal unraveled and “a number of my political opponents in Congress [took] credit for bringing political pressure on the process”
5. No reasonable person can doubt that Hunter was singled out [the comment to which Scarsi objected to without merit]

Joe Biden made absolutely no claim about why the plea deal unraveled in the hearing!! Devlin simply made that up. Rather, Biden observed factually that “a number of my political opponents in Congress [took] credit for bringing political pressure on the process.” [my emphasis]

The words, “political pressure,” are about Republicans claiming credit, not about what led David Weiss to renege on the earlier assurances there was no ongoing investigation or led Noreika to complain about the scope of the diversion immunity (it remains unanswered what led Weiss to renege and what led Noreika to complain about the scope, much less what led Weiss to refuse to fix any of the flaws Noreika pointed out, but to instead ratchet up the charges).

And Biden’s opponents did take credit.

James Comer took credit that same day. Jason Smith took credit when David Weiss got Special Counsel status. The disgruntled IRS agents claimed credit in … the very article Devlin linked.

“It appears that if it weren’t for the courageous actions of these whistle-blowers, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, Hunter Biden would never have been charged at all,” a team of lawyers for one of the I.R.S. agents said in a statement, adding that the initial agreement reflected preferential treatment.

Where Biden does say those same Republicans had a role in the case is in the charges being filed in the first place. “Several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them.”

The record is less certain on that claim. Hunter’s attorneys provided a bunch of evidence that Weiss equivocated throughout May and June 2023, as Republicans in Congress, Donald Trump, Bill Barr, and the disgruntled IRS agents claimed that prosecutors had stymied the investigation (a claim not backed by the very documents the IRS agents released).

But one place you might look to measure that claim is, again, the story Devlin claims backs his false claims. That story famously describes that Weiss told someone he didn’t want to bring any charges (which someone who might be Weiss “forcefully” denied).

Mr. Weiss told an associate that he preferred not to bring any charges, even misdemeanors, against Mr. Biden because the average American would not be prosecuted for similar offenses. (A senior law enforcement official forcefully denied the account.)

It also describes, in a story about the pressure from House Republicans, how Weiss changed the terms he was willing to offer.

On Tuesday, May 23, after four days of silence, Ms. Wolf delivered unwelcome news. Mr. Weiss had revised what he wanted in the deal, now demanding that Mr. Biden plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes. It crossed a red line for Mr. Clark.

The article that Devlin links claiming it supports his incomplete representation of the plea hearing (the straw man Devlin uses to make false claims about what Biden said) actually supports both of Biden’s claims about political pressure: the pressure led to charges in the first place, and those who applied the pressure claimed credit for killing the plea deal.

All Devlin did with that link is prove that Biden, not Devlin, made claims that match the public record.

And yet NYT published his little blog post as if it — and not the reported article which it claims to rely on — were true.