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David Weiss invokes Maryellen Noreika in the very first sentence of his Los Angeles — but not his Delaware — response to Hunter Biden’s immunity bid (not to mention, extrinsic evidence that, per his position that the diversion agreement was unambiguous, should be irrelevant).

The defendant has moved to dismiss the indictment returned by the grand jury in this district on the ground that a proposed diversion agreement presented to the United States District Court for the District of Delaware on July 26, 2023, which the district court rightly referred to as a “proposed agreement,” which required the approval of the Chief United States Probation Officer to enter into effect, which she expressly declined to give, see Exhibit 1, and as to which the district court in Delaware “deferred” a decision on accepting, nonetheless is in effect and confers “sweeping” immunity on the defendant in this case. [my emphasis]

The filing uses the word “proposed” 43 more times, almost all discussing either the diversion agreement or the tax plea agreement and in one case, including it in brackets within a quote of Leo Wise’s own words, effectively putting what Weiss claims Noreika said into Wise’s mouth even though Wise didn’t say it himself.

Only, Weiss misquotes what Judge Noreika said.

The word “proposed” was uttered once in the failed plea hearing, referring to both the plea and the diversion. Judge Noreika didn’t call either document a “proposed agreement;” she instead described “what is being proposed.” And before she used that word, “proposed,” she twice called the documents “agreements,” with no modifier.

THE COURT: Now, we have two cases and two agreements and I understand that the Diversion Agreement is not something that is typically before the Court, but you all did send it to me so I do want to talk about that a little bit. There are some provisions in those agreements that are not standard and are different from what I normally see, so I think we need to walk through these documents and get some understanding of what is being proposed so that I can give due consideration to the determination that you all are asking me to make. So I want to start with Criminal Action 23-274 involving the tax charges. [my emphasis]

In Weiss’ Delaware response, he only places that word in Judge Noreika’s mouth on the second page, and in full context, and only uses the word proposed 33 times. He never misquotes Noreika to Noreika.

In context in the plea hearing, Noreika was probably referring not to either document as “proposed.” She was probably referring to the way the two documents worked together and the expectations the two documents, working together, would put on her and Delaware head of Probation, Margaret Bray.

This immunity bid, along with three other motions to dismiss and a discovery motion, have now been fully briefed before Judge Noreika for 66 days. During those 66 days, both sides briefed the same issues before Judge Scarsi, he held a motions hearing, and issued a decision — a decision that would mean representations on which she made decisions last year are no longer valid.

I described the other day that Noreika appears to be frozen in uncertainty about what to do about these motions. And since Judge Scarsi issued his weird ruling on this same motion on Monday, neither side has noticed Noreika of the decision. It’s as if everyone is hunkering down waiting for Noreika to rule to see how it affects all these other moving parts.

I want to propose something about this dispute, about what is making it so difficult — for Noreika, especially — to decide. As Noreika herself noted in that passage from which David Weiss misquoted her, Judges don’t usually get involved in diversion agreements. But she did here. And in an effort to get out of that diversion agreement, Weiss has made Noreika’s intervention into the diversion agreement the subject of the dispute.

Noreika did not approve the plea on July 26 of last year for two reasons.

First, she was uncomfortable with the role she played in the diversion agreement, which all sides agreed she had no role in approving.

The immunity provision, for all crimes — gun, drug, and tax — was in the diversion agreement, not the plea agreement, but was cross-referenced in the plea agreement.

Both sides told her that she was only approving the plea, but since they had given her the diversion agreement, she inquired about how her role would work.

THE COURT: All right. Now at this point I would normally ask Mr. Biden how he pleads, but as we’ve already discussed, the Diversion Agreement is out there in a felony case, it is cross-referenced in the Memorandum of Plea Agreement. The Plea Agreement is cross-referenced in the Diversion Agreement, so before I ask him how he pleads, I need to understand — well, ask him how he pleads or decide if I can accept the Plea Agreement, I need to understand the Diversion Agreement.

So the felony gun charge here is a bit unusual, and we don’t usually make diversion agreements public. I don’t usually see a diversion agreement as the parties up here have hinted, but in fact you all did send it to me and it is referenced in the agreement that is before me in the tax case.

She objected to the way the diversion agreement included her as a finder of fact in case of a breach of the agreement.

THE COURT: All right. Thank you.

All right. Now I have reviewed the case law and I have reviewed the statute and I had understood that the decision to offer the defendant, any defendant a pretrial diversion rest squarely with the prosecutor and consistent with that, you all have told me repeatedly that’s a separate agreement, there is no place for me to sign off on it, and as I think I mentioned earlier, usually I don’t see those agreements. But you all did send it to me and as we’ve discussed, some of it seems like it could be relevant to the plea.

One provision in particular stands out to me, and that is paragraph 14. That paragraph says if the United States believes that a knowing material breach of this agreement has occurred, it may seek a determination by the United States District Judge for the District of Delaware with responsibility for the supervision of this agreement.

It then goes on to say that if I do find a breach, then the government can either give the Defendant time to remedy the breach or prosecute him for the crime that is the subject of the information or any other that falls within the language of the agreement. Do I have that understanding correct?

[snip]

THE COURT: First it got my attention because you keep telling me that I have no role, I shouldn’t be reading this thing, I shouldn’t be concerned about what’s in these provisions, but you have agreed that I will do that, but you didn’t ask me for sign off, so do you have any precedent for that?

[snip]

THE COURT: I’m concerned that that provision makes me a gatekeeper to criminal charges and puts me in the middle of a decision as to whether to bring a charge. And we already talked about separation of powers and that choice as to whether to bring charges is not — that’s the executive branch, not the judicial branch, so is this even constitutional?

MR. CLARK: I believe it is, Your Honor, because what the structure makes clear is that Your Honor is just finding facts. [my emphasis]

Importantly, all three sides — Hunter Biden’s team, David Weiss’ team, and Judge Noreika — made comments at this plea hearing that were internally inconsistent.

In Judge Noreka’s case, some of those comments pertained to whether her role was presiding over just the plea, or also the diversion agreement, which both parties to it said she had no authority to approve.

What’s funny to me is you put me right smack in the middle of the Diversion Agreement that I should have no role in, you plop meet right in there and then on the thing that I would normally have the ability to sign off on or look at in the context of a Plea Agreement, you just take it out and you say Your Honor, don’t pay any attention to that provision not to prosecute because we put it in an agreement that’s beyond your ability.

So this is what I am going to do. These agreements are not straightforward and they contain some atypical provisions. I am not criticizing you for coming up with those, I think that you have worked hard to come up with creative ways to deal with this. But I am not in a position where I can decide to accept or reject the Plea.

[snip]

THE COURT: I certainly understand what — if it’s a plea under subsection (c)(1)(B), I am not going to just agree with you as to the limits of my role. My problem is I am not — I am not sure, and I need to understand the propriety, it may very well be that it is appropriate, but as I said, it did catch my attention, you throw me in there, Judge, you’re the gatekeeper and then you take me out of the other aspects of the — you throw me into the Diversion Agreement and then you take me out of the Memorandum of Plea Agreement.

So I cannot accept the Plea Agreement today.

Even though the government did repeatedly tell her that the diversion agreement was only between the parties, they have also pointed to her docket minutes in support of their argument that the diversion had not come into effect.

The Court deferred a decision on the plea and pretrial diversion agreement.

But here’s the thing: If Noreika believes it is a separation of powers violation for Article III to be involved in a diversion agreement, then the diversion agreement should not be in that docket minute. It should, instead, say something like she was deferring a decision on the plea because of concerns about the diversion agreement.

I have argued that Judge Mark Scarsi misapplied Schrödinger’s cat paradox to his own weird decision on the diversion agreement. But one thing that happened here is that someone outside to the diversion agreement observed it with the result that the status of it changed. We are still debating on the status of that contract to which she is not a party because of her interventions.

And now Judge Noreika has been asked to rule on whether that contract that became a not contract because of her observations on it is a binding contract.

But that brings us to the other reason Noreika refused to approve the plea. Noreika didn’t accept the plea because Leo Wise told her there was an ongoing investigation.

THE COURT: Is there an ongoing investigation here?

MR. WISE: There is.

THE COURT: May I ask then why if there is we’re doing this piecemeal?

MR. WISE: Your Honor may ask, but I’m not in a position where I can say.

This, right at that moment, was a separate breach of the agreement between the parties, and deserves more attention. As I have laid out, Weiss has had five different opportunities to contest Abbe Lowell’s representation that on June 19 of last year, David Weiss’ office told Chris Clark that there was no ongoing investigation. Weiss has waived the opportunity to contest that. Leo Wise’s claim, at the hearing, was a breach of those representations.

And then, specifically referencing Wise’s affirmation that there was an ongoing investigation, Noreika asked if FARA charges could be charged and Leo Wise said they could, while Hunter and his attorneys believed that was prohibited by the diversion agreement. Along the way, Wise misrepresented the nature of the agreement, suggesting that Noreika would sign the diversion agreement.

MR. WISE: Because by the terms of the Plea Agreement, the only function, the Diversion Agreement — well, it has no function but the parties negotiated that their view, and it’s their view, probation can take a different view, Your Honor can take a different view, their view is the firearms offense should not be considered relevant conduct for calculating the guidelines related to the tax offense, that is all that 5(b) says. It does not incorporate the paragraph 15 or any part of the Diversion Agreement, it simply says our view is the Diversion Agreement, the firearm offense should not be considered relevant conduct in calculating the guidelines. I think practically how this would work, Your Honor, is if Your Honor takes the plea and signs the Diversion Agreement which is what puts it into force as of today, and at some point in the future we were to bring charges that the Defendant thought were encompassed by the factual statement in the Diversion Agreement or the factual statement in the Plea Agreement, they could move to dismiss those charges on the grounds that we had contractually agreed not to bring charges encompassed within the factual statement of the Diversion Agreement or the factual statement of the tax charges.

MR. CLARK: That’s my understanding, Your Honor, we would be enforcing a contract with the Department of Justice.

THE COURT: I don’t understand how you have an agreement not to pursue other charges in the case, the misdemeanor case, and you say that is not part of his Plea Agreement.

MR. WISE: Because the Plea Agreement does not include that.

THE COURT: All right. So let’s talk a little bit more about this. To the extent that the agreement —
you can sit down. To the extent that the agreement not to prosecute is promised, do the parties have some understanding what the scope of that agreement is?

MR. WISE: Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT: No, tell me, like specifically what does it include. You said that there is an investigation, I don’t know what that is, but you must know that if there are particular charges that could be brought based on the facts that are there.

MR. WISE: So I can tell you what I think we can’t charge. I can’t tell you what the ongoing investigation is. So, for instance, I think based on the terms of the agreement, we cannot bring tax evasion charges for the years described in the factual statement to the Plea Agreement. And I think we cannot bring for the firearms charges based on the firearm identified in the factual statement to the Diversion Agreement.

THE COURT: All right. So there are references to foreign companies, for example, in the facts section. Could the government bring a charge under the Foreign Agents Registration Act?

MR. WISE: Yes.

THE COURT: I’m trying to figure out if there is a meeting of the minds here and I’m not sure that this provision isn’t part of the Plea Agreement and so that’s why I’m asking.

MR. CLARK: Your Honor, the Plea Agreement —

THE COURT: I need you to answer my question if you can. Is there a meeting of the minds on that one?

MR. CLARK: As stated by the government just now, I don’t agree with what the government said.

This was earlier in the hearing; it precedes Noreika’s concerns about the diversion agreement. But it is one reason she was so concerned about her inclusion in the diversion agreement: because the two parties disagreed on the scope of the immunity provided.

Or rather, because Leo Wise had already changed the terms of the agreement, to include an ongoing investigation that Chris Clark had been assured did not exist.

We can now be quite sure what that ongoing investigation is: David Weiss reneged on the terms of the agreement, claiming there was an ongoing investigation when his office had previously assured Clark there was not, after members of Congress made Alexander Smirnov’s FD-1023 public. Faced with renewed attention on it, David Weiss was chasing the lead he was ordered to investigate in 2020, chasing it only to find out it was a false claim of bribery against Joe Biden.

When this dispute started back in December, how these parts fit together was not clear. Since, it has become clear that having been ordered to investigate the FD-1023 days after Donald Trump pressured Bill Barr in October 2020, under pressure from Congress, Weiss reneged on the assurances his office had given Clark in June 2023, which was the understanding on which the diversion agreement was signed, in order to be able to chase the Smirnov lead.

And now Weiss is presiding over an investigation into how Smirnov’s false claims came to be mainstreamed into the investigation of Hunter Biden in which he is a witness, a wildly unethical position to be in.

But by all appearances that is what explains the two breaches here: first, to Leo Wise reneging on the terms agreed before he was party to this prosecution, and then, to Wise’s refusal to brief the diversion agreement that Judge Scarsi says is binding, but instead to strip it of all immunity altogether.

Judge Maryellen Noreika’s decision on the diversion agreement and on the circumstances that led Weiss to renege on assurances he had given Clark is quite different than Scarsi’s. That’s true, in part, because by intervening in a signed contract to which she was not party, she led to the abrogation of that contract.

And then, because she took steps to ensure the rights of Hunter Biden — to ensure that the misdemeanors he thought he was facing were really what he was facing — prosecutors used that opportunity to slap on a bunch of felonies that, evidence before her makes quite clear, they had never bothered to investigate in the years they had investigated Hunter Biden.

I have no idea how she’ll ultimately rule. If she hoped that Scarsi would come up with a solution she could adopt, the prior representations about the status of the agreement, on which she based some decisions last year, may preclude her from simply adopting his weird solution. But she also faces a different legal and ethical position vis a vis the contract than Scarsi, because prosecutors took advantage of her good faith efforts to protect Hunter’s rights as a way to renege on the agreement altogether.

I know you all probably want a thread where you can talk about Aileen Cannon’s 3-page order denying Trump’s motion to dismiss based on bullshit claims about the Presidential Records Act.

For these reasons, accepting the allegations of the Superseding Indictment as true, the Presidential Records Act does not provide a pre-trial basis to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(3)(B)(v)—either as to Counts 1 through 32 or as to the remaining counts, all of which state cognizable offenses.

Separately, to the extent the Special Counsel demands an anticipatory finalization of jury instructions prior to trial, prior to a charge conference, and prior to the presentation of trial defenses and evidence, the Court declines that demand as unprecedented and unjust [see ECF No. 428]. The Court’s Order soliciting preliminary draft instructions on certain counts should not be misconstrued as declaring a final definition on any essential element or asserted defense in this case. Nor should it be interpreted as anything other than what it was: a genuine attempt, in the context of the upcoming trial, to better understand the parties’ competing positions and the questions to be submitted to the jury in this complex case of first impression [ECF No. 407]. As always, any party remains free to avail itself of whatever appellate options it sees fit to invoke, as permitted by law.

Fine, fine, have at it. She claims Jack Smith is the one making nutty requests, not herself.

Lee Kovarsky, who generally has a great read about the appellate posture of such things, warns that it’s unlikely Smith will ask for a writ of mandamus, but might ask for her recusal, which probably won’t work.

But really, I’m more immediately interested in this superb quote Will Oremus included in a WaPo article describing disgruntled new owners of a Xitter blue check, which may be my best ever quote in a mainstream publication.

Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist covering national security who greeted her blue verification badge Wednesday by posting an expletive, said she remains on X mostly to monitor right-wing narratives and disinformation so she can push back on them. She said she believes the verification changes are part of an effort to restore X’s status as a “public square” so that Musk can use it to “mainstream far-right ideas.”

On Thursday, Musk amplified various posts from verified X users defending a Jan. 6, 2021, suspect, decrying a rise in the “foreign-born” population under President Biden, highlighting crimes by Syrian migrants, mocking diversity and inclusion programs, and suggesting that leftists want to disarm American citizens “because they intend to do things that American citizens would want to shoot them for.”

In between, he agreed with a post that said that “a blue checkmark is a stamp of authenticity.”

As I said, have at it!

I’m still working on a long post on some of the things that may make Judge Mark Scarsi’s order denying all eight of Hunter Biden’s motions to dismiss vulnerable on appeal.

But I wanted to elaborate on a point I made in comments in this post. In the section of his order ruling that Hunter Biden’s diversion agreement had been executed (because it was signed by the only parties to the agreement) but not required to put into effect (because it was not signed by probation), Judge Scarsi truncated a citation to a precedent he relies on.

To justify only doing a close reading of the meaning of “approve” and “execute,” Scarsi says the Diversion Agreement is unambiguous. He cites to this 9th Circuit precedent, Klamath v Patterson.

The Court need not consult extrinsic evidence because the Diversion Agreement is unambiguous with respect to the issues for interpretation outlined above.5 But both parties miss the mark with their proffered interpretations in some respects. See Klamath Water Users Protective Ass’n v. Patterson, 204 F.3d 1206, 1210 (9th Cir. 1999) (“The fact that the parties dispute a contract’s meaning does not establish that the contract is ambiguous . . . .”).

5 Accordingly, the Court does not reach Defendant’s argument that the Government should be estopped from denying the validity of the agreement or the Probation Officer’s approval. (Immunity Mot. 18–19.) The Diversion Agreement is unambiguous, and the Government’s position on its interpretation cannot change its meaning.

Only, he truncated the quote. Here’s what the rest of the sentence he cites says:

The fact that the parties dispute a contract’s meaning does not establish that the contract is ambiguous; it is only ambiguous if reasonable people could find its terms susceptible to more than one interpretation. [my emphasis]

David Weiss also cited to (an earlier sentence in) this very same paragraph.

As the Ninth Circuit explained in Klamath:

A written contract must be read as a whole and every part interpreted with reference to the whole, with preference given to reasonable interpretations. Contract terms are to be given their ordinary meaning, and when the terms of a contract are clear, the intent of the parties must be ascertained from the contract itself. Whenever possible, the plain language of the contract should be considered first.

So both Weiss and Scarsi adopt Klamath as the standard. And Klamath says that if reasonable people could find its terms susceptible to more than one interpretation, then the contract is ambiguous.

As a side note: Neither Weiss and Scarsi adhere to their claim the contract is unambiguous. Weiss bitched mightily that Abbe Lowell submitted the discussions of the plea deal (Lowell relies on these for the selective and vindictive argument too, which is important for reasons I’ll return to), and told Judge Scarsi that these submissions are irrelevant.

Even though the defendant takes the position that the agreement is unambiguous, he nonetheless chose to submit 187 pages of extrinsic or parol evidence, including an affidavit from former counsel and multiple emails and other communications between defense counsel and the former prosecution team. Dkt. 25-5. “The reviewing court must not look towards extrinsic or parol evidence to create an ambiguity in a written agreement that is otherwise clear and unambiguous.” In re Zohar III, Corp., 2021 WL 3793895, at *6 (D. Del. Aug. 26, 2021). Because the parties agree the diversion agreement is unambiguous, these submissions are irrelevant.

But then Weiss submitted his own extrinsic submission: a declaration from AUSA Ben Wallace describing how he asked Margaret Bray to sign the diversion agreement after Hunter and Leo Wise did (and using the word “draft” four times, which is patently nonsense), but she did not.

Judge Scarsi depends on this declaration in the passage where he argues only a signature from Margaret Bray can represent approval — even while he misrepresents an email from the very same Ben Wallace.

Even if the Diversion Agreement required approval by the Probation Officer, Defendant argues in the alternative that the Probation Officer’s approval of the agreement might be inferred from her publication of a pretrial diversion report that recommends a 24-month term of pretrial diversion. (Immunity Mot. 16–18; see Machala Decl. Ex. 5, ECF No. 25-6.) Defendant’s theory of approval of the Diversion Agreement finds no purchase in the text of the agreement. The means by which the Probation Officer might approve the Diversion Agreement are not expressly stated, but the agreement provides but one reasonable, obvious method of approval: affixation of the Probation Officer’s signature on the “APPROVED BY” signature block set aside for her. (Diversion Agreement 9.) The agreement is not reasonably susceptible to an interpretation that the Probation Officer could manifest her approval by issuing a pretrial diversion recommendation consistent with the Diversion Agreement, let alone by any means other than signature on the line reserved for her.9

Defendant’s theory is also at odds with uncontroverted facts before the Court. In response to Defendant’s motion, the Government submitted a declaration from Assistant United States Attorney Benjamin J. Wallace, who testified that on the morning of July 26, 2023, the Probation Officer declined to sign the Diversion Agreement. (See Wallace Decl., ECF No. 35-1.) Defendant did not dispute this representation in his reply memorandum, and while Defendant’s counsel tried to minimize this testimony at the hearing, his arguments were unpersuasive.

9 Defendant’s argument would fail on its merits even if the Probation Officer could have manifested her approval by issuing a pretrial diversion report. Defendant submits that the Probation Officer provided a “letter to counsel . . . enclosing her recommendation in favor of the Diversion Agreement and copy of the Agreement.” (Immunity Mot. 18.) The report filed with this Court does not reference or attach a copy of the agreement at all. (See generally Machala Decl. Ex. 5.) That said, the report filed with the motion is incomplete and apparently redacted. Although some of the recommended conditions of pretrial diversion align with the conditions discussed in the Diversion Agreement, they do not mirror each other perfectly. (See, e.g., Machala Decl. Ex. 5 § 38(5) (requiring as a condition of pretrial diversion Defendant’s consent to entry into a criminal background check system, a condition not discussed in the Diversion Agreement).) Further, another document in the motion record indicates that the parties modified the Diversion Agreement after the Probation Officer issued her report in an effort to “more closely match” the report. (Clark Decl. Ex. T (providing July 20, 2023 revisions to Diversion Agreement); cf. Machala Decl. Ex. 5 (dated July 19, 2023).) The Court resists Defendant’s ouroboric theory that the Probation Officer manifested approval of an agreement the parties changed in response to the purported approval. Further, the Court doubts the Probation Officer manifested approval of the revised version of the Diversion Agreement passively by being party to an email circulating the updated draft. (See Clark Decl. Ex. T.)

As noted in my last post, the email in question doesn’t say the parties altered the diversion agreement. It says that the “parties and Probation have agreed to those revisions.” Scarsi simply miscites what the extrinsic evidence he relies on says.

Mark:
The parties and Probation have agreed to revisions to the diversion agreement to more closely match the conditions of pretrial release that Probation recommended in the pretrial services report issued yesterday. Attached, please find clean and redline versions of the diversion agreement.
Best,
Benjamin L. Wallace
Assistant U.S. Attorney

Ben Wallace’s declaration — particularly his repetition of the word “draft” — conflicts with the email he sent back in July. In July he said probation “agreed” to the diversion agreement and in March he said Margaret Bray did not approve it. That word “agreed” — the last thing that Hunter Biden would have seen before the plea hearing — is what would have informed his understanding of the status of the diversion agreement.

One way or another, both Judge Scarsi and David Weiss adhere to Klamath, which says, “if reasonable people could find its terms susceptible to more than one interpretation,” then it is ambiguous. And both Judge Scarsi and David Weiss — who themselves find the terms of the diversion agreement susceptible to more than one interpretation — include and rely on extrinsic evidence to try to make that signature line a condition precedent to either formation or performance of the contract.

You don’t need to get to Abbe Lowell’s differing interpretation of this. Even Scarsi and Weiss have found the diversion agreement susceptible to different interpretations and therefore, under Klamath, ambiguous.

And if the diversion agreement is ambiguous — which no one is arguing, but which under the terms of Klamath and by the repeated reliance by everyone on extrinsic evidence, it seems to be — then both the 9th and 3rd Circuits say that Hunter Biden’s beliefs about the diversion agreement hold.

Not only is it clear from the face of the Diversion Agreement signed by all parties that it is in effect—as all parties told the Delaware court at the July 26, 2023 hearing—any effort by the prosecution to search out some ambiguity in the contract in an effort to manufacture an excuse to renege on the deal it struck would fail. There is no explicit language in the Diversion Agreement that would allow the prosecution to nullify the Agreement, and nothing less will do.

If the prosecution must search out some ambiguity in the Diversion Agreement to exploit in support of its argument, the prosecution has already lost. Like the Third Circuit, the Ninth Circuit explains: “Courts construe ambiguities in the plea agreement against the government and will use the defendant’s reasonable beliefs at the time of pleading to construe the agreement.” United States v. Wingfield, 401 F. App’x 235, 236 (9th Cir. 2010); see United States v. Jackson, 21 F.4th 1205, 1213 (9th Cir. 2022) (“Our task is to determine what the defendant reasonably believed to be the terms of the plea agreement at the time of his plea.”); Franco-Lopez, 312 F.3d at 989 (explaining the court “construe[s] ambiguities in favor of the defendant” (citation omitted) and that, “[i]n construing the agreement we must determine what Franco-Lopez reasonably believed to be the terms of the plea agreement at the time of the plea.”). Indeed, the Ninth Circuit has “steadfastly applied the rule that any lack of clarity in a plea agreement should be construed against the government as drafter.” United States v. Spear, 753 F.3d 964, 968 (9th Cir. 2014) (citations omitted). “Construing ambiguities in favor of the defendant makes sense in light of the parties’ respective bargaining power and expertise.” United States v. De La Fuente, 8 F.3d 1333, 1338 (9th Cir. 1993). The prosecution does not dispute that this is the law; it claims the contract unambiguously gave Probation veto power over the Agreement between the parties despite being unable to point to any provision of the Agreement that says so. (DE 69 at 8-10.)

As noted, Hunter Biden was privy to the email where Ben Wallace said that Probation had agreed to the changes in the diversion agreement. He was not privy to Wallace’s actions at the beginning of the plea hearing. So his belief could only come from Wallace’s use of that word, “agreed.” If he believes Probation approved the diversion agreement, then if the diversion agreement is ambiguous, then that should hold sway.

Weiss pretty aggressively wants to avoid the conclusion that this diversion agreement is ambiguous (which may be why he, like Scarsi, did not include that part of the paragraph saying that conflicting interpretations is a good way to tell that a contract is ambiguous). He calls Lowell’s citation to this binding precedent on ambiguous agreements a strawman (even while submitting and relying on his own extrinsic evidence).

4 The defendant spends three pages on a strawman argument that if the Government were to take the position that the diversion agreement was ambiguous, any ambiguity should be construed against the government. Motion at 9. The government does not take the position that the diversion agreement is ambiguous and never has.

One thing this entire discussion excludes, but should not, is the scope of the immunity language in the diversion agreement. Because that’s where David Weiss clearly reneged on a signed contract, as proven by the undisputed assurances given to Hunter Biden on June 19 that there was no ongoing investigation that Weiss then reneged on to chase Russian disinformation offered by Alexander Smirnov (who is not mentioned in Scarsi’s opinion at all).

There’s another, very significant problem created by Scarsi’s weird opinion.

If the diversion agreement is binding (but not yet in effect) then the withdrawal of Judge Noreika’s briefing order from last July was improper.

When David Weiss moved to vacate her order, he stated that “there is no longer a … diversion agreement for the Court to consider.”

As a result, the Government respectfully requests that the Court vacate its briefing order since there is no longer a plea agreement or diversion agreement for the Court to consider.

And Weiss relied heavily on the claim that the diversion agreement it is not binding when responding to Hunter’s claim that the diversion agreement was in effect.

Fifth, as noted above, the proposed diversion agreement never took effect. And the Defendant misstates the record when he claims that the Government made statements to the contrary during the July 26 hearing. The Defendant claims, in a footnote, that the “Government stated in open court that the Diversion Agreement was a ‘bilateral agreement between the parties’ that ‘stand[s] alone’ from the Plea Agreement, and that it was ‘in effect’ and ‘binding,’” citing various parts of the transcript. But those cobbled together snippets do not add up to a statement that the proposed diversion agreement was in effect. The Government never said the proposed diversion agreement was in effect because it is not.

[snip]

To reiterate, the now-withdrawn diversion agreement, by its own terms, is not in effect. Paragraph one of the agreement expressly provides that, “The term of this Agreement shall be twenty-four (24) months, beginning on the date of approval of this Agreement, unless there is a breach as set forth in paragraphs 13 and 14.” ECF 29-1 at 1 (emphasis added). Paragraph two further provides that, “The twenty-four (24) month period following the execution and approval of this Agreement shall be known as the ‘Diversion Period.’” Id. (emphasis added). Ms. Bray, Chief United States Probation Officer for the District of Delaware, declined to approve the agreement at the hearing on July 26, 2023. Indeed, the version of the agreement that the Defendant docketed on August 2, 2023, has an empty signature line for Ms. Bray, immediately below the text “APPROVED BY.” Id. at 9. In sum, because Ms. Bray, acting in her capacity as the Chief United States Probation Officer, did not approve the now-withdrawn diversion agreement, it never went into effect and, therefore, none of its terms are binding on either party. [my emphasis]

Scarsi’s order also creates problems for claims Weiss made in a status report submitted to Judge Noreika in September

2 In its June 20, 2023 letter, the Government stated that “executed copies of the Memorandum of Plea Agreement related to the tax Information, and the Pretrial Diversion Agreement related to the firearm Information,” would be submitted at or in advance of the hearing. An executed copy of the plea agreement was provided to the Court at the July 26, 2023 hearing. U.S. Probation declined to approve the proposed diversion agreement and so an executed copy was never provided to the Court. [my emphasis]

Notably, Weiss did not contest that the diversion agreement was executed when Chris Clark submitted what he claimed was an executed copy on August 2. This is a claim he only made after the fact.

Though he reviewed all the motions to dismiss submitted in Delaware, Scarsi may not have reviewed the rest of the docket, so he may not understand that he has bolloxed Judge Noreika’s docket.

Judge Scarsi’s order is fundamentally inconsistent with the basis by which Weiss moved to dodge briefing on what has since been demonstrated to be an ambiguous agreement. If he’s right that the diversion agreement remains binding on the parties, then the withdrawal of the diversion agreement before Judge Noreika becomes uncertain. By rushing to rule before Judge Noreika did, Scarsi has effectively thrown a dead not-dead cat into Noreika’s lap and created problems with the order she signed vacating her briefing order back in August. By rushing to rule before Noreika did, Scarsi has made a mess of Noreika’s docket and created legal uncertainty about an order Noreika issued last year.

Update: First, I fixed the date of the Ben Wallace email reporting that Probation had approved of changes to the diversion agreement; it was in July, not June. I also realized that while the declaration Chris Clark submitted in the Delaware docket is in evidence, the email itself is not. Nevertheless, Scarsi does miscite what it says.

Update: I take that back: All the exhibits are in the Chris Clark declaration.

Update: I note that Ben Wallace’s declaration was not submitted with any attestation. He has not filed a notice before Scarsi.

Update: I’m comparing what Weiss said in the Delaware response to Hunter’s immunity argument with this Los Angeles one. Interestingly, Weiss retained this paragraph from the Delaware response, though it was introduced in Delaware stating, “even if the defendant actually believed that the agreement he negotiated did not require U.S. Probation’s approval.”

Furthermore, defendant’s subjective belief that the agreement did not require U.S. Probation’s approval, is not controlling. “Delaware adheres to the ‘objective’ theory of contracts, i.e., a contract’s construction should be that which would be understood by an objective, reasonable third party.” Iron Branch, 559 F. Supp. 3d at 378; Osborn ex rel. Osborn, 991 A.2d 1153 at 1159; NBC Universal v. Paxson Commc’ns, 2005 WL 1038997 at *5 (Del. Ch. Apr. 29, 2005)). An  objective, reasonable third party would understand that U.S. Probation would have to approve the agreement for it to go into effect, given the language in paragraphs 1 and 2 and the construction of the signature page.

But elsewhere they adopt US v. Clark, a Ninth Circuit case that says,

courts “hold[] the Government to a greater degree of responsibility than the defendant . . . for imprecisions or ambiguities in plea agreements” than they would a drafting party to a commercial contract.

Both Trump and Jack Smith have responded to Aileen Cannon’s whack order to write proposed jury instructions as if the Presidential Records Act says something it doesn’t. Neither are all that happy about it.

Trump used his response to claim that having the jury assess whether Trump really did make these documents personal records rather than simply steal them would put them in the role that, he’s arguing, only a (former) President can be in.

Smith — as many predicted — spent much of the filing arguing that Cannon cannot leave this issue until jury instructions because it must have an opportunity to seek mandamus for such a clear legal error; they cite the 11th Circuit slapdown of Cannon’s last attempt to entertain this fantasy in support.

Along the way, though, Smith also did something I had hoped he would do: explain where, and when, Trump’s own whack theory came from in the first place.

It came from Tom Fitton’s Xitter propaganda in response to the public report, in February 2022, that Trump had returned documents, including classified ones. But even after Fitton first intervened, Trump’s handlers continued to treat any remaining classified documents as presidential records for months.

On February 8, 2022, the day after the Washington Post article was published, the president of Judicial Watch posted the following two statements on Twitter5
:

Immediately after posting the second Tweet, the Judicial Watch president sent to an employee in Trump’s post-presidency office a link to the Tweet and offered to discuss the issue with Trump. A few hours later, the Judicial Watch president sent the same person his analysis of the case Judicial Watch v. NARA, 845 F. Supp. 2d 288 (D.D.C. 2012). That evening, the Judicial Watch president circulated to the employee a proposed public statement for Trump’s consideration, which included language that the PRA and judicial decisions gave Trump the right to keep the documents he returned to NARA. The statement never issued.

Around this same time, the Judicial Watch president, who was not an attorney, told another Trump employee that Trump was being given bad advice, and that the records Trump possessed at Mar-a-Lago should have been characterized as personal. The second employee advised the Judicial Watch president that they disagreed with the Judicial Watch president’s analysis: in Judicial Watch, former President Clinton had made the designation of certain records personal while President, whereas Trump had not done so. The second employee further informed Trump that the Judicial Watch president was wrong and explained why. Nevertheless, on February 10, 2022, Trump released a statement claiming in part, “I have been told I was under no obligation to give the material based on various legal rulings that have been made over the years.”6 Before this time, the second employee had never heard this theory from Trump. No other witness recalled Trump espousing this theory until after the Judicial Watch president conveyed it to him in February 2022.

Smith doesn’t, however, draw out the implication of this explicitly.

Not only has Trump been falsely suggesting — without evidence — that he did designate these documents personal records. He couldn’t have done so, because he didn’t know of this theory until over a year after he stole the documents.

But Cannon is such a chump that she has been chasing a theory spun up by Fitton, someone who has only an English BA.

Cannon may well respond poorly to Smith’s use of 20-some pages to lay all this out. It’s the kind of thing that routinely elicits miffed responses from her.

At this point, though, it seems Smith is simply laying a record for a challenge at the 11th Circuit.

As expected, Judge Mark Scarsi has denied Hunter Biden’s motions to dismiss.

This post will explain his interpretation of the diversion agreement and his invitation for additional briefing on what even he calls a “Schrödinger’s cat-esque construction of Defendant’s immunity under the Diversion Agreement.”

A follow-up post will show how three errors Scarsi made undermine his otherwise totally defensible decisions on selective and vindictive prosecution and outrageous conduct, in one case in a way that bears on the diversion agreement. Scarsi fails to come close to meeting his own rigorous evidentiary standard on two points, and on a third, Scarsi fails to adopt the legal standard he claims to rely on.

As you read these posts, keep three things in mind.

First, Scarsi issued this order 16 days before he said he would, which would have been April 17 (as noted, he has invited further briefing on a central point that he has nevertheless already ruled on).

Before he docketed yesterday’s order — an order that pointedly refused further briefing — Abbe Lowell filed a motion that addressed two issues Scarsi raised in last week’s hearing which are pertinent to Scarsi’s ruling. Scarsi hasn’t and probably won’t accept Lowell’s bid to file that motion, but it nevertheless was directly on point and, in my opinion, corrected claims that Scarsi reportedly made in last week’s hearing (one of which recurs in this opinion). And it was filed before Scarsi formalized his order rejecting Hunter’s motions.

Even before Judge Scarsi filed yesterday’s order 16 days before he said he would, he was (and remains) on a relentless pace to get this to trial quickly. Meanwhile, Judge Maryellen Noreika appears to be frozen in uncertainty about what to do about motions filed by Hunter. Versions of three of these motions to dismiss have been fully briefed in Delaware since January 30. During that period, Lowell submitted a request in Los Angeles asking Scarsi to hold off until Noreika ruled, because the diversion motion would properly be decided by Noreika, a request Scarsi denied. Then, on February 12, Lowell informed Noreika that Scarsi was not waiting on her decisions on MTDs filed first in her district, what I took to be a soft nudge asking her to rule quickly so she would rule first. In a March 13 status hearing, Lowell made the nudge much more directly, asking her to rule on the diversion agreement first, and do so quickly, noting that it was proper for her to rule given that Delaware contract law probably applied. These issues are relevant, among other reasons, because I think they make Scarsi’s order more vulnerable on appeal, an appeal that Hunter Biden probably would not, however, be able to make until after he were convicted.

More troubling, I have been wondering whether Noreika’s seeming paralysis was an attempt to wait out Scarsi to see what he did with these rulings. So Scarsi’s approach may end up influencing her even though several facts are differently situated before her, including one Scarsi relied on heavily.

Finally, in one place, Scarsi adopted the colloquial, rather than the formal logic meaning, of “begs the question.”

This observation begs a question regarding another provision, the parties’ agreement that the United States District Court for the District of Delaware would play an adjudicative role in any alleged material breach of the agreement by Defendant. (my emphasis)

I’m normally pretty tolerant of this usage; I occasionally fail to avoid it myself. But given that I think Scarsi has adopted an incorrect meaning of the Schrödinger’s cat paradox in an order that adopted a crazy theory to deny Hunter’s immunity claim, I find it notable that he also used a term that, in formal logic, describes someone adopting premises that assume a conclusion to be true, to mean something else. Scarsi’s misuse of these two terms are badges of someone getting logic wrong.

Now to Scarsi’s interpretation that led him to analogize that Hunter Biden’s immunity from the prosecution Scarsi is rushing headlong towards trial is both dead and not-dead. In short, Scarsi ruled that the parties to the contract granting Hunter Biden immunity from this prosecution executed the agreement, but did not yet put it into effect (or performance). As he describes, “the Diversion Agreement is a binding contract but performance of its terms is not yet required.”

To get there, Scarsi first lays out that the legal standards to apply here are uncertain, both as to whether Delaware, US, or California contract law governs, and as to the standard to apply to diversion agreements.

Having rejected Lowell’s request to let Noreika rule first, he applies the Ninth Circuit standard for plea agreements, and only in the next paragraph lays out what should come first: an acknowledgment that the Ninth hasn’t yet applied the standards used for plea agreements to diversion agreements, but other circuits have and so he will here.

The parties have not identified, and the Court has not uncovered, binding circuit authority extending these interpretation principles to pretrial diversion agreements. But several other circuit courts have found diversion agreements analogous to plea agreements and construed them according to similar contract principles. E.g., United States v. Harris, 376 F.3d 1282, 1287 (11th Cir. 2004) (“[T]his court interprets a pretrial diversion agreement applying the same standards we would use to interpret a plea agreement.”); Aschan v. Auger, 861 F.2d 520, 522 (8th Cir. 1988) (applying contract principles, reasoning that “[t]he pre-trial diversion agreement is analogous to a plea agreement”); cf. Garcia, 519 F.2d at 1345 & n.2 (similarly analogizing a deferred prosecution agreement to a plea bargaining agreement). The Court perceives no meaningful distinction between plea and diversion agreements relevant to the application of these interpretation principles.

These contract law standards may actually matter; they may matter a lot, not least because Scarsi misrepresents the uncontested record about the plea deal that failed (which I’ll get to in my follow-up).

In any case, however, Scarsi claims to be adopting a standard that holds the government responsible for any imprecisions in a plea agreement.

Given concerns about the defendant’s constitutional rights at play, “the honor of the government, public confidence in the fair administration of justice, and the effective administration of justice in a federal scheme of government,” courts “hold[] the Government to a greater degree of responsibility than the defendant . . . for imprecisions or ambiguities in plea agreements” than they would a drafting party to a commercial contract. Clark, 218 F.3d at 1095 (internal quotation marks omitted). “As a defendant’s liberty is at stake, the government is ordinarily held to the literal terms of the plea agreement it made, so that the government gets what it bargains for but nothing more.”

Having adopted that standard but then having claimed that the diversion agreement is unambiguous, Scarsi then comes up with an interpretation that neither the government nor Hunter Biden have adopted, telling the parties to a contract that he knows better than them what they entered into.

[T]he Court does not reach Defendant’s argument that the Government should be estopped from denying the validity of the agreement or the Probation Officer’s approval. (Immunity Mot. 18–19.) The Diversion Agreement is unambiguous, and the Government’s position on its interpretation cannot change its meaning.

We now have three different interpretations of a diversion agreement that everyone claims is unambiguous. Schrödinger’s cat had just two states of being: dead and not-dead. Scarsi has given this diversion agreement three.

Scarsi’s version says the words “approval” and “execute” are doing different things in the diversion agreement, and while the agreement was executed by the only parties to it, because someone not a party to it did not approve it, the government is not yet required to fulfill the contract.

Approval and approved together appear in three places in the agreement: the provision defining the agreement’s term, (Diversion Agreement § II(1)); the provision defining the diversion period, (id. § II(2)); and the signature block designated for the Probation Officer, (id. at 9). Outside of definition provisions, the only place the agreement uses the approve word stem is in the signature block inviting a formal sanction by the Probation Officer. And obtaining the approval of the Probation Officer makes sense in the context of the agreement, as the parties contemplated as a term of Defendant’s performance his subjection to her supervision. (Id. § II(10)(a).) In other words, the supervision provision would be nugatory if the Probation Officer refused to supervise Defendant.6 The definition provisions require an approval, and the only place in the agreement to which the Court can look to divine the meaning of approval is the signature block for the Probation Officer, compelling an interpretation that ties approval to an act by the Probation Officer.

In contrast, the term execution appears twice in the Diversion Agreement: in the provision defining the diversion period, (id. § II(2)), and in a provision authorizing execution of the agreement in counterparts, (id. § II(18)). Consistent with the definition of execute, the counterparts provision circumscribes the acts of signing the agreement that might validate it; in other words, the parties agreed that signing the same copy of the agreement would have the same effect as signing different copies. Notably, the provision defining the diversion period uses both execution and approval together, indicating each has its own meaning: “The twenty-four (24) month period following the execution and approval of this Agreement shall be known as the ‘Diversion Period.’” (Id. § II(2) (emphases added).) As Defendant’s counsel admitted at the hearing, Defendant’s proffered interpretation would render the phrase “execution and approval” redundant in part. The contrast between sections II(1) and II(2) supports an interpretation that gives each word its own meaning; while “approval” triggers the agreement’s term, the diversion period begins only “following the execution and approval” of the agreement.

Having ruled that the government is wrong that Probation’s approval was precedent to approval to the contract, Scarsi then argued that her approval was precedent to performance, something that had to happen before the agreement went into effect. Prosecutors are wrong that the contract isn’t binding, Scarsi argues, but because probation didn’t also sign the diversion agreement, prosecutors are not yet required to grant Hunter the immunity the agreement grants him.

For this interpretation to end up with Hunter being fucked, Scarsi also has to reject Hunter’s argument that probation already did agree to supervise the diversion agreement before, unbeknownst to Hunter and Judge Noreika, after he and Leo Wise signed the diversion agreement, Delaware head of probation Margaret Bray refused to sign the diversion agreement itself.

The agreement is not reasonably susceptible to an interpretation that the Probation Officer could manifest her approval by issuing a pretrial diversion recommendation consistent with the Diversion Agreement, let alone by any means other than signature on the line reserved for her.9

9 Defendant’s argument would fail on its merits even if the Probation Officer could have manifested her approval by issuing a pretrial diversion report. Defendant submits that the Probation Officer provided a “letter to counsel . . . enclosing her recommendation in favor of the Diversion Agreement and copy of the Agreement.” (Immunity Mot. 18.) The report filed with this Court does not reference or attach a copy of the agreement at all. (See generally Machala Decl. Ex. 5.) That said, the report filed with the motion is incomplete and apparently redacted. Although some of the recommended conditions of pretrial diversion align with the conditions discussed in the Diversion Agreement, they do not mirror each other perfectly. (See, e.g., Machala Decl. Ex. 5 § 38(5) (requiring as a condition of pretrial diversion Defendant’s consent to entry into a criminal background check system, a condition not discussed in the Diversion Agreement).) Further, another document in the motion record indicates that the parties modified the Diversion Agreement after the Probation Officer issued her report in an effort to “more closely match” the report. (Clark Decl. Ex. T (providing July 20, 2023 revisions to Diversion Agreement); cf. Machala Decl. Ex. 5 (dated July 19, 2023).) The Court resists Defendant’s ouroboric theory that the Probation Officer manifested approval of an agreement the parties changed in response to the purported approval. Further, the Court doubts the Probation Officer manifested approval of the revised version of the Diversion Agreement passively by being party to an email circulating the updated draft. (See Clark Decl. Ex. T.) [my emphasis]

In doing so, Scarsi misrepresents the exhibit he relies on.

The parties and Probation have agreed to revisions to the diversion agreement to more closely match the conditions of pretrial release that Probation recommended in the pretrial services report issued yesterday. Attached, please find clean and redline versions of the diversion agreement.

The parties didn’t modify the diversion agreement after probation issued its report; the parties and probation did. And that agreement didn’t happen on that email thread. Scarsi simply invents probation’s passive participation in an email.

That is, to dismiss Hunter’s argument that probation gave approval for the agreement, Scarsi misstates the evidence before him. That’s pretty telling, because if probation did approve the deal (and Hunter had no indication until the same AUSA who wrote an email saying probation had approved it that Bray refused to sign it after Hunter and Wise had), then the immunity deal is in place. Scarsi doesn’t address something he did in the hearing, which is that it made sense for tax crimes to be immunized given the expectation that Hunter would soon plead guilty to misdemeanors (which is one of the two things Lowell addressed in his filing and which was obviously wrong when Scarsi said it), so he seems to cede that if the agreement did go into effect, he can’t be charged with tax felonies.

More importantly, there are several aspects of Scarsi’s interpretation he doesn’t address, having nevertheless denied the motion while inviting further briefing and misusing the term, “begs the question.”

Having severed the execution of the contract from its performance, Scarsi doesn’t consider what those two terms apply to, even though prosecutors can only perform one part of the agreement — the immunity — and probation can only perform another — the diversion supervision. Margaret Bray cannot perform the part that matters here, conferring immunity, but Scarsi has given her veto power over the government fulfilling a contract they entered.

It would seem that if Scarsi were applying the standard he claims to be using — “the government is ordinarily held to the literal terms of the plea agreement [in this case, diversion agreement] it made” — then those who executed the diversion agreement, the prosecutors, should be required to recognize the immunity they agreed to and which they are uniquely situated to deliver.

More importantly, the main reason why probation never revisited approving the diversion agreement is because prosecutors failed to go get her signature. They failed to do so because Hunter did not agree to the terms of the separate plea agreement after Leo Wise changed the terms of the immunity it offered in the hearing itself. As we’ll see, that’s a part of the factual record that Scarsi simply disappears, ignoring it even though prosecutors waived contest to it.

Mark Scarsi rushed to interpret this contract in a way neither party to it agrees with, but did so in such a way that frees prosecutors from the obligation Scarsi himself says they agreed to give. He did so while misusing the term “begs the question” and invoking a metaphor, Schrödinger’s cat, designed to describe an absurd state, while calling Hunter’s correct description of events he misrepresented an ouroboric theory.

Mark Scarsi may be right that the diversion agreement uses two terms to depict two different things, but in doing so, he has upended the authority over prosecutions and arguably misapplied the standard he claims to adhere to.

Days after the merger between Truth Social and Digital World Acquisition Corporation went through, the new company, Trump Media and Technology Group, released its 8K. It described that it’s not sure Truth Social will make it a year.

In connection with the Company’s assessment of going concern considerations in accordance with Financial Accounting Standard Board’s Account Standards Update (“ASU”) 2014-15, “Disclosure of Uncertainties about an Entity’s Ability to Continue as a Going Concern” as stated above, the Company has until September 8, 2024 to consummate a Business Combination. It is uncertain that the Company will be able to consummate a Business Combination by this time. If a Business Combination is not consummated by this date, there will be a mandatory liquidation and subsequent dissolution of the Company. Additionally, the Company has incurred and expects to incur significant costs in pursuit of its acquisition plans. The Company lacks the financial resources it needs to sustain operations for a reasonable period of time, which is considered to be one year from the date of the issuance of the financial statements. As a result, these factors raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. The financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of these uncertainties.

It further described that it is hemorrhaging cash. Josh Marshall did a thread on it and concluded the company is basically worthless. (Update: Now he has done a full post on it.)

TMTG tanked on the news.

As that was happening, something curious was happening in the case of Michael Schvartsman.

He was charged last summer with insider trading in conjunction with the merger between DWAC and Truth Social. In February, DOJ supserseded his indictment, adding a money laundering charge for laundering the proceeds of his insider trading to buy a yacht he has since renamed Provocateur.

As part of the pretrial motions, lawyers revealed that a Russian porn investor, Anton Postolnikov, had also participated in the insider trading.

A Russian-American businessman based in Miami is suspected of making nearly $23 million from alleged insider trading involving former President Donald Trump’s media company, according to federal court records.

The businessman, Anton Postolnikov, is the owner of a Caribbean bank that caters to the porn industry and also reportedly loaned $8 million to Trump’s media company. Postolnikov, who owns a few residences on exclusive Fisher Island in Miami, is the nephew of a former high-ranking Russian government official who at one time was a staffer for Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to media reports.

[snip]

One of Troiano’s affidavits includes an e-mail Garelick sent Postolnikov on June 24, 2021, about four months before the merger was announced.

“Anton, Good times last night! Following up on that Trump Media Group SPAC we mentioned. The deal is going to finalize this week. Please let us know if you are interested in investing. . . .,” Garelick wrote in the message, which was also copied to Michael Shvartsman.

In March, the judge in the case, Lewis Liman, rejected the motions to dismiss of Schvartsman and his co-defendants.

Today, Schvartsman and his brother, Gerald, docketed plans to change their plea on Wednesday.

Normally, that’d just be an interesting coincidence with Trump’s crashing social media empire.

Except for one detail. Also today, Schvartsman added a lawyer to his defense team: Alan Futerfas.

Futerfas has long done work for Trump Organization and was closely involved on Don Jr’s representation during the Mueller investigation.

There’s a funny passage in the 2,800-word NYT piece contrasting how Trump has managed Michael Cohen and Allen Weisselberg.

Initially sympathetic, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cohen a “good man” and the search “a disgraceful situation.” He also called Mr. Cohen with a message — stay strong — and the Trump Organization paid for Mr. Cohen’s main lawyer.

But Mr. Trump’s advisers were concerned about witness tampering accusations and he stopped reaching out. Their relationship soon soured.

NYT claims — apparently intending this to be a serious explanation — that Trump stopped trying to buy Cohen’s silence with a pardon and payments for a lawyer because of concerns about witness tampering.

I mean, I’m sure some of NYT’s sources claimed that. But given the amount of witness tampering Trump continued to engage in — publicly and privately — after leaving Cohen to fend for himself, the explanation is not remotely credible.

A far, far more likely explanation — one that is also more consistent with other aspects of NYT’s story — is that Trump and his attorneys intervened in the privilege review of phone content seized from Michael Cohen to conduct a risk assessment. (NYT says it relied on court records to tell this story, but they don’t mention that Trump abandoned Cohen only after getting access to what had been seized and why.) What Trump’s team saw before them in both the seized materials and the warrants used to seize Cohen’s devices may have led Trump to conclude, first, that Cohen had already showed signs of betrayal, by secretly recording the phone call over which they planned the hush payments to Karen McDougal.

Mr. Cohen’s lawyers discovered the recording as part of their review of the seized materials and shared it with Mr. Trump’s lawyers, according to the three people briefed on the matter.

“Obviously, there is an ongoing investigation, and we are sensitive to that,” Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, said in a statement. “But suffice it to say that when the recording is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen. Any attempt at spin cannot change what is on the tape.”

NYT (including Maggie Haberman, who was also part of this story) was the first to break that story, and did so in the days after Cohen hired Lanny Davis, but it is not mentioned here.

Perhaps more importantly, Trump would have gotten a misleading sense from reviewing seized materials that Cohen was only being actively investigated for the taxi medallions and the hush payment.

That warrant may have led Trump to sincerely believe that prosecutors were only looking at the hush payment and business-related crimes, as he claimed on Fox News.

When Mr. Trump called into one of his favorite television shows, “Fox & Friends,” a few weeks after the search, he distanced himself from Mr. Cohen, who he said had handled just “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work, adding: “From what I understand, they’re looking at his businesses.”

“I’m not involved,” Mr. Trump added three times.

The warrants against Cohen built on each other and so built on the Mueller investigation, as I laid out here and here. But the warrant overtly tied to the April 2018 seizure didn’t mention other aspects of the investigation that might have made Trump more cautious about hanging Cohen out to dry, had he seen them.

Trump would not have known that Robert Mueller had succeeded in doing something SDNY does not seem to have done: accessed Cohen’s Trump Organization emails from Microsoft, thereby discovering documents regarding Trump’s ties to Russia that Trump Org had withheld from subpoena responses. Trump would not have known, then, that Mueller had established that Cohen told Congress a false story to cover up Trump’s own lies about Russia. That led to the first damning testimony from Cohen about Trump: That on his behalf, Cohen had contacted the Kremlin during the 2016 election and then lied to cover it up.

Plus, if Trump used the privilege review as a means to assess risk, it was based on a faulty assumption, an assumption mirrored in the NYT story.

NYT ties Cohen’s import as a witness to the crimes for which Cohen was investigated personally, even focusing exclusively on the hush payment and ignoring the lies about Russia. In a description of the damage Cohen’s congressional testimony did to Trump, NYT suggests that damage was limited to the hush payment, the thing that Trump allegedly engaged in financial fraud to cover up (predictably, NYT doesn’t mention the financial fraud alleged in the cover-up, just the cover-up).

When he pleaded guilty to federal charges that August, Mr. Cohen pointed the finger at Mr. Trump, saying he had paid the hush money “at the direction of” his former boss — an accusation he is expected to repeat on the witness stand in the Manhattan trial. A spokeswoman for Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, declined to comment.

Before going to prison, Mr. Cohen also appeared before Congress, where he was asked who else had worked on the hush-money deal. His answer: Mr. Weisselberg.

The far more damaging thing Cohen did in that congressional testimony, though, was to tee up the way Trump adjusted his own business valuations he used for his business to maximize his profits. That was the basis for the fraud trial against Trump Org, and if the verdict sticks, it may cost Trump a half billion dollars and, unless he finds a way to cash in on Truth Social, may create follow-on financial problems.

In other words, Trump seems to have imagined Cohen would not find another way of avenging being hung out like he was, and NYT doesn’t include that other way — predicating investigations that threaten Trump Org itself and led to Weisselberg’s twin prosecutions — in their story.

Ultimately, NYT is still telling this story as if the newsworthy bit is Trump’s continued success at cheating the law, what they describe as, “the power and peril of Mr. Trump’s tactics for avoiding a crisis like the one he now faces.”

This “power and peril” pitch makes Trump the hero of the story and Cohen and Weisselberg contestants in a reality show, with Cohen inflating that contest with his wildly premature boast that “the biggest mistake” Trump ever made was not paying for Cohen’s defense and his claim, “I was the first lamb led to the slaughterhouse.”

If NYT weren’t making this a reality show, it might take away different lessons:

• Trump has invested a great deal in using associates and co-conspirators to learn of the criminal investigation into him, with a Joint Defense Agreement incorporating 37 people during the Mueller investigation and $50 million of Republican campaign funds invested instead in paying attorneys who will at a minimum report back on investigative developments. Even with that $50 million investment (and the potential damage it’ll do to GOP fortunes in November), Trump has fewer tools to discover the status of ongoing investigations than he had when Republicans on both Intelligence Communities were using the committee to spy on investigations for him. Yet even with far more access to information than he currently has about ongoing investigations (the two federal cases against Trump are different, because Jack Smith has overproduced discovery), Trump miscalculated with Cohen.
• The risk Cohen posed was not just — as NYT portrays — that he’ll testify against Trump at trial, at this trial. It was that he would disclose information that implicated Trump (and Weisselberg) in new investigations, as he did. As such, one lesson to take away from this, at least for those who don’t have an incentive to make Trump the protagonist of all stories, is that those spurned by Trump know a whole lot of shit about him, and that shit could turn into investigations that implicate the fraud that lies at the core of his persona. John Bolton, Mike Esper, and Mike Pence are all people whom Trump accused of disloyalty who thus far have only shared shit about Trump when prosecutors came asking. That could change.
• As noted, NYT didn’t mention that Trump only turned on Cohen after discovering that prosecutors had obtained a damning recording from his phone. But he’s not the only Trump associate whose own blackmail on Trump was implicated in a criminal investigation. Mueller’s prosecutors were seeking Stone’s notes of all the calls he had with Trump during the 2016 election when they searched his homes (it’s not clear whether they ever found it), the existence to which Steve Bannon was also a witness. Both Stone and Bannon got their pardons, perhaps because they were better able at leveraging dirt on Trump for legal impunity than Cohen was.
• NYT describes the injury to Trump here as, “his long-held fear that prosecutors would flip trusted aides into dangerous witnesses.” That’s just weird. It’s as if NYT hasn’t considered that the real danger is that he’ll do prison time for his crimes. The focus on loyalty rather than truthful testimony is especially odd in a piece that describes that Hope Hicks is likely to testify in Alvin Bragg’s case, who’ll testify with less of the circus and more credibility than Cohen. After all, even Jason Miller, still a top campaign manager for Trump, would be a key witness against Trump in a January 6 trial if he repeated the true description of how the campaign started refusing to support the Big Lie after a period in 2020. Bannon provided damaging testimony in the Roger Stone trial by being held to his prior grand jury testimony, and he remains a MAGAt in good standing.

Sometimes, it’s not disloyalty that can sustain a conviction, it’s truth, even truth from still-loyal associates.

Not for NYT, I guess. In a piece trying to extend this analogy to Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira (the latter of whom, who really does have a colorable claim he didn’t know he was obstructing an investigation, is not similarly situated in my opinion), NYT describes that they were charged for their loyalty, not claims that sound pretty obviously false in the indictment.

Like Mr. Weisselberg, Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira remained loyal, and they are now paying the price: Mr. Smith charged both men not only with obstruction of justice, but also with lying to investigators.

Nauta and De Oliveira got charged, in part, because prosecutors believe they lied to protect Trump because that is a crime, just like it was a crime when Cohen and Stone and Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort did it (Manafort was punished but not charged for those lies). But Nauta, especially, almost certainly got charged because prosecutors still haven’t been able to account for how much Trump intended to steal classified documents when he left the White House and still haven’t been able to account for the stolen classified documents that got flown to Bedminster in 2022. Nauta probably figures it’s a good bet to hope that Trump wins the presidency, ends his prosecution (or pardons him) and rewards him with a sinecure. That’s how having dirt on Trump works! But the prosecution is not over yet, and especially given the likelihood that this won’t go to trial before the election, he may change his mind.

Trump has absolutely succeeded in bolloxing all his criminal cases and may well succeed in delaying all the rest until he can pardon his way out of most of them. But if that effort fails, basic rules of gravity are likely to kick in and Trump will no more be a protagonist than all the other suspected criminals investigated by state and federal authorities.

Leo Wise continues to engage in a kind of arbitrage to win his argument that politics didn’t lead David Weiss to renege on Hunter Biden’s plea agreement, making claims that may be true for him and Derek Hines, but are patently false for David Weiss, the only prosecutor still on the team who was involved in the plea deal itself.

According to the Daily Mail, Wise insisted in the hearing the Hunter Biden prosecution last week that there’s no proof the claims of disgruntled IRS agents Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley affected the case.

‘These two agents started the dominos,’ Lowell said. ‘When was the last time a chair of a congressional committee sought intervention to stop a plea deal?’

Wise hit back that the claim he was influenced by former IRS agents was ‘patently absurd’, adding ‘I couldn’t pick them out of a lineup’.

‘The defense’s problem is… they offer no proof,’ Wise said. ‘Other than insulting us, where is the proof?’

The proof exists in official testimony that DOJ witnessed and surely has in its possession.

On September 7 of last year — just days before the first indictment — Special Agent in Charge Thomas Sobocinski (who also remained on the case before and after the reneged plea deal) described that after Gary Shapley went public in late May, he and David Weiss spoke about how Shapley’s comments would affect the case.

The way it affected the case, Sobocinski explained, was that family members of investigative team members were getting stalked.

Q After it became public that Gary Shapley was going to come to Congress and he gave, I think, an interview on CBS in the at the end of May before his congressional testimony, who did you discuss that with?

A My team within Baltimore, probably folks within the Criminal Investigative Division. Definitely David Weiss.

Q And what was the nature of your conversation with David Weiss?

A I need to go off the record for a minute.

Mr. [Steve] Castor. Okay.

[Discussion held off the record.]

Mr. Sobocinski. Yeah. In general, it was concerns about how this was going to affect the ongoing case and were there issues we needed to take into at least from the FBI side to move forward.

BY MR. CASTOR:

Q After Shapley’s testimony became public in June, did you have any conversations with David Weiss about that?

A We acknowledged it, but it wasn’t I mean, we didn’t sit there with the transcript going back and forth. We both acknowledged that it was there and that it would have had it had an impact on our case.

Q Okay. Did any of your conversations with David Weiss, you know, have anything to do with like, can you believe what Shapley’s saying, this is totally 100 percent untrue?

A I don’t remember that level of it.

Q If it was

A I was more concerned about how this is affecting my employees. I now have FBI employees that names are out there. I have FBI employees and former FBI retired agents who’ve served for 20plus years whose parents are getting phone calls, whose photos with their girlfriends, who their children who are being followed. That is not something that we were prepared for, and I was concerned about having that continue or expand to other one of my employees. [my emphasis]

Obviously, both Sobocinski and David Weiss (who attended the hearing) know about the discussions they themselves had about how Shapley’s media tour led family members of the investigative team to be stalked. FBI’s Assistant General Counsel Megan Greer and DOJ’s Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legal Affairs Sara Zdeb attended the deposition as well and so know of this testimony. It is my understanding that DOJ has reviewed these transcripts for accuracy, and so must have copies of them.

The proof is there, almost certainly in DOJ custody. It’s just that David Weiss is withholding it from Hunter Biden.

I will cycle back to this issue once a transcript becomes available. I’ve seen no mention of the uncontested assertion by Abbe Lowell that David Weiss came to fear for the safety of his family. Judge Mark Scarsi reportedly asserted that the only evidence Lowell presesnted is stuff on the Internet — but of course, there’s a DC Circuit opinion that found that Trump’s threats “have real-world consequences.”

It’s not enough for Leo Wise to claim that Shapley’s actions had no impact on his own behavior. He needs to address whether it had an impact on Weiss’ actions.

And according to the FBI supervisor overseeing this case, Shapley’s actions “had an impact on our case,” because they led everyone to start worrying about the safety of their families.

Leo Wise may claim that because it wasn’t his family being stalked, the media tour didn’t have an impact on his decisions. But he would never have been added to the team if not for the campaign by the disgruntled IRS agents.

Welcome to the Good Friday – Happy Birthday Marcy edition of Fridays with Nicole Sandler.

This weekend will be a bit quiet due to holiday observations and celebrations.