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How Sidney Powell Misrepresents Her Evidence in Her Fake Brady Motion

In this post, I laid out how Sidney Powell used what should have been a reply in her effort to obtain what she called Brady information to instead lay out, for the first time, her argument about how Flynn was abusively caught in his own acts by mean FBI Agents out to get him, and so should have the two guilty pleas he made under oath thrown out. Powell also complains about a slew of things that happen in most FBI investigations, and pretends they’re specifically abusive when they happen with her client.

In this post, I’d like to unpack what Powell does with her so-called evidence, 16 exhibits purportedly included to support her case, but also largely provided to rile up the frothy right.

Virtually everything she claims — with the possible exception that Flynn’s 302 says he acknowledged calling Sergey Kislyak 4-5 times on December 29, 2016, but actually said he didn’t remember that– is not backed by her evidence. In several cases, she presents evidence that undermines her own claims. She supports her most central claim — that the FBI Agents introduced a claim about Flynn getting a response on UN sanctions — by arbitrarily cutting up notes and hiding the continuity of notes that in fact back the Agents.

Exhibit 1: A timeline

Exhibit 1 is a timeline that purports to show how the Deep State was out to get Flynn and how all the people involved in Flynn’s prosecution allegedly involved in abuse. Powell uses the timeline to suggest all the events that happened at DOJ and FBI over a two year was a focused effort to get her client and his boss.

The real evidence the government had long suppressed caused a cavalcade of major events—many within mere days of Mr. Flynn’s plea—and all unknown to him before it. Lisa Page, Special Counsel to Deputy Director McCabe, resigned; she had edited Mr. Flynn’s 302 and was part of the small, high-level group that strategically planned his ambush. Lead Agent Peter Strzok was demoted from the Mueller investigation and ultimately fired. Strzok, who had met extensively with McCabe and the high-level, small group, was primarily responsible for creating the only basis for the charge alleged against Flynn. [emphasis original]

But the timeline is not “evidence” at all. For example, she includes a slew of events that we know don’t relate to her narrative, but which she claims do, including:

  • Andrew McCabe’s firing for (allegedly) lying to the Inspector General about leaking information that confirmed a criminal investigation into the Clinton Foundation during the campaign
  • Lisa Page’s departure from Mueller’s team, which texts to Strzok that Powell chooses not to include makes clear was planned from the time she joined Mueller’s team
  • Rachel Brand’s resignation (as well as the career moves of a bunch of other people that likely don’t relate to Flynn, but are probably best explained by Christopher Wray bringing in his own team)

The timeline includes notable gaps including:

  • President Obama’s warning to Trump not to hire Mike Flynn, based off issues that did not relate to Trump
  • Elijah Cummings’ letter to Mike Pence about Flynn’s problematic meetings with Turkey, which explains the urgency behind DOJ’s FARA questions
  • Mention of the December 23 and 31, 2016 calls from Kislyak to Flynn, which he also lied about; the December 23 call is utterly central to one of Powell’s key claims against the FBI Agents
  • Details around White House requests in early 2017 to see the information on Flynn, which explains some of the texts (indicating what a challenge it was to investigate Flynn and concerns about documenting his interview before he left) Powell elsewhere says are damning
  • The John Dowd call to Rob Kelner pressuring him not to cooperate

The timeline includes evidence that conflicts with Sidney Powell’s argument, including:

  • A quote from Strzok making it clear that in an unfiltered text to Page, he believed Flynn had lied
  • A description of how Rudolph Contreras recused from the Flynn case as soon as it would have become clear to him that Strzok was involved
  • A 302 from Lisa Page undermining her claim that there were “many” meetings to strategize on Flynn’s interview

Exhibit 2: Cherry-picked Strzok-Page texts

Exhibit 2 is a cherry-picked selection of texts from Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

For example, Powell claims,

The belatedly-disclosed Strzok-Page texts make clear that the agents left the interview with a firm conviction Mr. Flynn was being honest, and they maintained that conviction despite strong expressions of disbelief and cries of “bullshit” from their colleagues.

But one of the texts she includes quotes Strzok describing his, “excitement knowing we had just heard him denying it all, knowing we’d have to pivot into asking.” That comment actually confirms that even in an unguarded moment, there was no doubt in Strzok’s mind that Flynn had lied about the events.

She claims that a text that very obviously pertains to Strzok’s ongoing efforts to pursue leakers — including leakers who harm Trump associates — and suggests it has something to do with animus against Flynn.

April 20, 2017, Strzok texts Page: “I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go.” Ex. 2.

This text is instead proof that, rather than being part of a plot to leak information to harm Trump associates, Strzok and Page continued to pursue all leakers, including those damaging Trump associates.

Significantly, Powell does not submit a single text that shows animus towards Flynn personally, as opposed to Trump. Indeed, she includes a text discussing this article on how Trump picked Pence as a running mate; it mentions Flynn, but neither Page nor Strzok mention that (or any concern that he might have picked someone who was already regarded a counterintelligence concern).

Exhibit 3: Cherry-picked Comey memos

Exhibit 3 are two of Comey’s memos. I don’t think Powell ever gets around to using Comey’s first memo as proof FBI was using the briefing about the dossier to see how Trump would react (though the rest of her brief is consistent with that). Instead, she cites to the memos for two purposes, neither of which it supports. First, she uses it to make much of the fact that Comey briefed Trump on the dossier the day after he met with Obama’s National Security advisors.

Then Director Comey had briefed the President-Elect about these “salacious and unverified” allegations on January 6, 2017, a day after meeting in the Oval Office with President Obama, Vice-President Biden, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, Susan Rice, James Clapper, and John Brennan. Ex. 3.

But of course, the timing has nothing to do with the dossier and everything to do with the fact that Comey, Clapper, and Brennan were briefing Trump on the same thing they briefed Obama on the day before: the preliminary results of the Intelligence Community Assessment. It’s evidence they were treating Trump as they should the incoming president, something that’s backed by other evidence.

She then uses the Comey memos (plus two Strzok 302s below) to support a footnote where Powell deliberately conflates what it takes to open a counterintelligence investigation (which, even ignoring how Powell claims one can only open an investigation if one has proof beyond a reasonable doubt about someone, can also be opened if someone is being targeted by foreign intelligence services) and what it takes to charge someone.

Under federal law, to establish that an American is acting as an agent of a foreign power, the government must show that the American is purposefully engaging in clandestine activities on behalf of a foreign power, and that it is probable that these activities violate federal criminal law. See FISA, Title 50, U.S. Code, Section 1801(b)(2). Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe publicly admitted that in the summer of 2016, they took it upon themselves to single out four individuals associated with the Trump campaign for investigation. Admittedly, the FBI had no evidence that any of the four had committed a crime—much less that they “knowingly engage[d] in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power.” Id; see Ex. 3.

The memo in no way supports the passage.

Powell unsurprisingly doesn’t include the two Comey memos that hurt her client’s claim. The January 27 memo describes Trump telling the FBI Director that, “he has serious reservations about Mike Flynn’s judgement,” which would seem to support FBI’s decisions to treat the Flynn matter seriously. In the February 8 one, Comey describes Reince Priebus asking if FBI has a FISA order targeting Flynn, something that would totally justify the FBI’s concerns about how they were dealing with and documenting an investigation of the National Security Advisor that Powell makes much of.

Exhibit 4: CNN article

Exhibit 4 is a CNN article quoting Strzok-Page texts where Page says the release of the Steele dossier may provide pretext to interview people, which is a clear reference to George Papadopoulos (everything in Steele about Flynn is OSINT). It also describes Strzok to be obviously aggravated by all the leaking going on, as well as discussions about how FBI tried to walk back a problematic NYT article that doesn’t mention Flynn, but instead focused on Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.

Exhibit 5: Peter Strzok’s 302 about Sara Carter and John Solomon’s propaganda

Exhibit 5 is a Peter Strzok 302 that Powell purports to include for what she claims is a quote from it.

In the next two weeks, there were “many meetings” between Strzok and McCabe to discuss “whether to interview [] National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and if so, what interview strategies to use.” Ex. 5.

Except that’s an egregious misquote of what the 302 actually says, which is,

I have attended many meetings with DD McCabe regarding Russian influence investigations, including meetings which discussed whether to interview former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and if so, what interview strategies to use.

The “many” here refers to meetings about Russian influence generally, just a subset of those many meetings relate to Flynn. Nor does the 302 reflect that all those meetings happened in the two weeks before Flynn’s interview.

Powell also uses this 302 to claim that “they all knew” they had no basis to open the CI exhibit, as noted above. The only way this could be used to support the case is to take allegations included in a Sara Carter/John Solomon report claiming bias which (per the government’s last filing) was repeatedly debunked after this time, as truthful, even though Strzok says repeatedly in the 302 they’re not.

Exhibit 6: Peter’s Strzok’s 302 on his own role in the investigation

Exhibit 6 is the 302 recording a July 19, 2017 interview of Strzok describing his role in starting the investigation. Powell uses it, rather than “a seven-line summary of Ms. Yates statement,” they received in discovery, to support a claim about why Sally Yates was angry that the FBI interviewed Flynn.

Comey and McCabe were executing their own agenda—not investigating a crime. This is why, in Brady evidence still suppressed, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates candidly opined that the interview “was problematic” and “it was not always clear what the FBI was doing to investigate Flynn.”8 This is also why Strzok admitted that Yates “was not happy” to learn of the interview and PDAG Axelrod argued with FBI General Counsel James Baker about the FBI’s unilateral decision to interview Flynn. Ex. 6.

To prove she needed the full Yates interview, Powell would need to describe what’s inadequate in the Yates summary, but she chooses not to.

Powell also uses this 302 to support the claim that “they all knew” they had no basis for a counterintelligence investigation, which it doesn’t support.

The other things that Powell uses this exhibit to prove is that the FBI — as it does for all witnesses!!!! — tried to stage the interview to be as useful as possible.

They purposely did not tell him they were investigating him and strategized at length to avoid raising any concerns. Ex. 6 (“Flynn was unguarded and clearly saw the FBI agents as allies.”).

[snip]

The agents did three briefings the day of the interview. They reported he had a sure demeanor, and he was telling the truth or believed he was—even though he did not remember it all. Ex. 6.

[snip]

” They purposely did not tell him they were investigating him and strategized at length to avoid raising any concerns. Ex. 6 (“Flynn was unguarded and clearly saw the FBI agents as allies.”).

Powell slightly misrepresents this, describing the FBI agents as believing that Flynn was telling the truth instead of saying, “both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying,” and she leaves out key parts of the rest of the description, including that he “did not give any indicators of deception,” which changes the meaning somewhat. In general, however, the description of how FBI planned the interview doesn’t prove bias at all on the part of the FBI; it proves they treated Flynn like they treat everyone.

Exhibit 7: Two pages of the Steele dossier

Exhibit 7 is the two pages of the Steele dossier which include the sole reference in it to Flynn.

Kremlin engaging with several high profile US players, including STEIN, PAGE, and (former DIA Director Michael Flynn), and funding their recent visits to Moscow.

[snip]

Speaking separately, also in early August 2016, a Kremlin official involved in US relations commented on aspects of the Russian operation to date. Its goals had been threefold — asking sympathetic US actors how Moscow could help them; gathering relevant intelligence; and creating and disseminating compromising information (“kompromat”). This had involved the Kremlin supporting various US political figures, including funding indirectly their recent visits to Moscow. S/he named a delegation from Lyndon LAROUCHE; presidential candidate JILL STEIN of the Green Party; TRUMP foreign policy adviser Carter PAGE; and former DIA Director Michael Flynn, in this regard and as successful in terms of perceived outcomes.

According to Powell’s own theory, the RT event took place long after the US government came to be concerned about Flynn as a CI threat, and according to her own claims, Flynn was already on Trump’s campaign at this time, so the FBI would have been reviewing these publicly known facts in real time. And while the Kremlin only indirectly funded these trips, both the Page and the Stein/Flynn trips were paid for, albeit by cut-outs. This is actually an instance where the Steele dossier only repeats generally true, OSINT facts.

Nevertheless, Powell uses it to misrepresent both the timing of Nellie Ohr’s research on Flynn (most of her research was done in 2015 and early 2016, and so was funded by Paul Singer) and why her spouse shared it with the FBI (to help them vet the dossier).

It was only much later the defense learned what the FBI already knew: This document had been bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Both the FBI and Fusion GPS hired former British spy Christopher Steele. Fusion GPS was on the Clinton payroll, and it also hired Nellie Ohr—a Russia specialist with CIA ties whose husband Bruce was the fourth highestranking official in DOJ. Ms. Ohr was researching Mr. Flynn also, and his name appears twice in the “Steele dossier.” Ms. Ohr and Steele funneled their “work” through Bruce Ohr in a backchannel to the FBI, long after the FBI fired Steele for lying. Ex. 7;

Powell also uses it to demand a letter from MI6 on Steele that the NYT recently reported said that Steele was honest, but displayed questionable judgement (of the sort that might lead him to trust Oleg Deripaska).

Mr. Horowitz has asked witnesses about an assessment of Mr. Steele that MI6, the British spy agency, provided to the F.B.I. after bureau officials received his dossier on Mr. Trump in September 2016. MI6 officials said Mr. Steele, a Russia expert, was honest and persistent but sometimes showed questionable judgment in pursuing targets that others viewed as a waste of time, two people familiar with the assessment said.

Whatever Carter Page’s possible beef with the dossier, all the dossier does on Flynn is report what the FBI was (even according to Powell’s claims) already reviewing with Flynn. And a letter saying that MI6 thought Steele was honest is not going to change that.

Exhibit 8: Not-Comey’s description of Comey’s action

Exhibit 8 is Josh Campbell’s description of how Comey decided to send FBI Agents to interview Flynn without going through the White House Counsel (which Andrew McCabe nevertheless gave Flynn the opportunity to ask to do).

The government did not disclose this to Mr. Flynn until after Mr. Comey bragged about his breach on national television—not because Mr. Van Grack was complying with this Court’s order. This short video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNhjFrjXqI) reveals Mr. Comey’s deliberate disregard for DOJ and FBI rules. In fact, Mr. Van Grack only disclosed a bland summary four days after Comey gloated about it on national television to a laughing audience— four days before Mr. Flynn’s scheduled sentencing, and because this Court entered its minute order of December 12, 2017. Dkt. 10. Mr. Flynn seeks disclosure of the full report of Mr. Comey’s conduct, any memos, notes, and 302s documenting his decision, which was admittedly the subject of “many intensive discussions” within the FBI. There must be at least notes of several others, including Comey’s Special Assistant Mr. Campbell, that document the efforts directed against Mr. Flynn. Ex. 8;

Powell uses Campbell’s description, which includes the line “screw it,” rather than a transcript of Comey’s statements that she links, which are far less inflammatory, presumably to assume that Campbell must have taken official notes of the many conversations he claims happened.

But this exhibit, like all the others on how FBI tried to optimize this interview, only shows that the FBI treated Flynn like they’d treat anyone.

Exhibits 9 and 10: Joseph Pientka and Strzok’s notes

Exhibits 9 and 10 are the notes that Joe Pientka and Strzok made, respectively, about the Flynn interview. This is the core of any legitimate argument Powell has, though here, as elsewhere, part of what she’s complaining about is normal FBI process where two Agents do an interview and then write up a 302.

Only the junior agent was taking notes during the interview. Strzok’s 302 of July 2017 says that he was handling the interview and his partner was taking notes. A 302 is to be written into Sentinel within five days. Notes are to be signed and dated by the notetaker. Inexplicably, we have two sets of notes with significant redactions—neither of which is signed and dated as required. Exs. 9, 10. Agent Strzok’s notes are far more detailed, lengthy, and written in a way that would not appear to be physically possible to write in a contemporaneous, casual setting. Ex. 10.

Powell’s claims that these notes weren’t dated or signed might have merit, though given that virtually all of her claims misrepresent key details, it’s hard to tell, especially with the way she presents the notes in screen caps followed by transcriptions.

She makes two other substantive claims about the notes. First, she claims that the notes (plus a copy showing changes made on February 10, which is Exhibit 11) falsely claim that Flynn stated that he did not ask for any specific action regarding the UN vote on Egypt’s resolution on illegal Israeli settlements.

Overnight, the most important substantive changes were made to the Flynn 302. Those changes added an unequivocal statement that “FLYNN stated he did not”—in response to whether Mr. Flynn had asked Kislyak to vote in a certain manner or slow down the UN vote. This is a deceptive manipulation because, as the notes of the agents show, Mr. Flynn was not even sure he had spoken to Russia/Kislyak on this issue. He had talked to dozens of countries. Exs. 9, 10, 11.

[snip]

Whatever Mr. Flynn said to anyone regarding the UN issues had nothing to do with the FBI’s alleged “investigation” about the 2016 election and could not be the basis for false statements “material” to that issue. According to the notes, he was not even sure he had spoken to Kislyak on that issue. Exs. 9, 10.

Perhaps Sidney Powell is this dumb, or perhaps she just thinks Emmet Sullivan is, but this is thoroughly dishonest. What Pientka’s notes show is that when Flynn was asked to offer up what contacts he had had with Kislyak, he described the following ones post-election:

  • A condolence call after Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey was killed on December 19, which Flynn described as happening “before Xmas, Mid-December day after assassination”
  • A condolence call after Russia’s military band crashed in Syria on Christmas Day
  • A single call on December 29

Then, when the Agents cue him again, he admits to:

  • The in-person Trump Tower meeting about setting up a back channel around December 1

Then, when asked about the UN vote, Flynn starts by saying, “that’s a good reminder,” then admits to calls with others, makes representations generally about all his calls regarding the UN vote where he claims he only asked about people’s positions, not to abstain, then ends by saying “Appreciate you reminding me that was another convo.” In context, that probably records — and at the very least is consistent with — an admission he spoke with Russia among his UN calls. And given his description of it occurring “Maybe Thurs-Fri prior to Xmas,” he dates it to December 22 or 23, when he claims his call was offering condolences for the assassination. (Powell splits these two up in Pientka’s notes, as she also does with the same exchange in Strzok’s notes, but the flow is clear; this is clearer in the full version of Strzok’s notes submitted with Exhibit 16)

Furthermore, Powell claims that “he talked to dozens of countries,” which she pulls from his comment about his general interactions with other countries. The notes make clear that he instead said he “talked to a bunch” of countries. It’s clear that Powell’s claim he spoke to “dozens” is false in any case, because Flynn was talking about the UNSC, on which there are just 15 members, and Flynn described how those numbers worked out — and the need to get just 5 to abstain — for the Agents.

In other words, what the notes actually show is Flynn lying about his reason for the call, being given an opportunity to fix the lie about the subject of the call, then making claims that would apply to all his UN calls (including the Russian one) that were themselves false.

In short, the notes actually appear to back the Agents.

Exhibit 11: Redline of 302

Exhibit 11 is a redline of Flynn’s 302 which, in Powell’s theory, was changed on February 10, after the press reported that Flynn didn’t speak about sanctions (as if the FBI would respond to press reports on something they already knew to be a lie), to make it more damning.

She’s concerned about two changes made in this section pertaining to the UN vote.

This section is the basis of the most inflammatory claim Powell made.

Those changes added an unequivocal statement that “FLYNN stated he did not”—in response to whether Mr. Flynn had asked Kislyak to vote in a certain manner or slow down the UN vote. This is a deceptive manipulation because, as the notes of the agents show, Mr. Flynn was not even sure he had spoken to Russia/Kislyak on this issue. He had talked to dozens of countries. Exs. 9, 10, 11.

Second, they added: “or if KISLYAK described any Russian response to a request by FLYNN.” That question and answer do not appear in the notes, yet it was made into a criminal offense. The typed version of the highly unusual “deliberative” 302 by that date already included an entire section from whole cloth that also serves as a criminal charge in the Information and purported factual basis regarding “Russia’s response” to any request by Flynn. The draft also shows that the agents moved a sentence to make it seem to be an answer to a question it was not. Exs. 9, 10, 11

As shown above, because Flynn’s comments about his asks regarding the UN vote apply to all the countries in question, it would apply to the Russian one as well.

But as shown, the only way Powell can sustain this claim is to separate Flynn saying three things that are clearly all about the same topic into three different sections of her transcription:

  • That’s a great reminder
  • No hey if you do this
  • Appreciate you reminding me that was another convo

The “Appreciate you reminding me that was another convo” certainly is consistent with the December 23 call Kislyak made to say they weren’t going to abstain, because Flynn talks about it happening the Thurs-Fri before Xmas, which would be consistent with the ask on Thursday, December 22 and the response on Friday, December 23.

Note, too, that the charge that Flynn lied about getting a response from Russia would also apply to whether Flynn acknowledged getting a response back from Kislyak after the December 29 call. As she did with the UN notes, she splits these up too, so separates where Pientka notes “no recollection of that” from where he records Flynn saying, “Nothing long drawn out don’t do something.” Her transcription of “RePP?” and “I don’t, the conversation was on” doesn’t account for the possibility that this is a question — with question mark included — about Russia’s response.

Powell makes a more credible argument about the Agents recording that Flynn affirmatively stated he made 4-5 calls to Kislyak on December 29

Notes by both agents state that Mr. Flynn does not remember making four to five calls to Ambassador Kislyak from the Dominican Republic, where he was on vacation, but that if he did so, it was because phone service was poor and he kept getting dropped. “I don’t remember making 4-5 calls. If I did lousy place to call.” The final 302 states the opposite: “Flynn remembered making four to five calls that day about this issue, but that the Dominican Republic was a difficult place to make a call as he kept having connectivity issues.” Ex. 11. This dramatically demonstrates the wrongheadedness of allowing a 302 to create a federal felony.

But this issue is not an editing one, as the draft doesn’t change on this point.

More importantly, it’s not — as the UN question is — a charged lie.

Powell is right that the problem with charging false statements off a 302 is that the editing process is human, but that doesn’t change that the notes clearly back that Flynn told numerous material lies in his interview, and she doesn’t actually claim he didn’t.

Exhibit 12: Lisa Page rebuts Powell’s claim of “many” meetings to strategize Flynn’s interview

Exhibit 12 is a 302 with Lisa Page that, among other things, proves that contrary to claims the frothy right has made about Mueller’s team not checking about Strzok bias affecting the impact of the Flynn interview, Mueller’s team instead interviewed Page to check just that.

The 302 also disproves Powell’s claim that Strzok claimed he had attended “many” meetings about how to handle the Flynn interview. As reflected in Page’s telling, there was a meeting the night before, and one after the interview.

Powell doesn’t reveal that this 302 damages her story in key ways. Instead, she seems to include it to substantiate this claim:

Lisa Page, Special Counsel to Deputy Director McCabe, resigned; she had edited Mr. Flynn’s 302 and was part of the small, high-level group that strategically planned his ambush.

But she doesn’t actually cite the exhibit here. Nor does she in a later reference to Page editing the 302.

And for his third production, it gave the defense two pages on October 4, 2018. These go precisely to the issue of McCabe’s Special Counsel Lisa Page editing the Flynn 302. Ex. 2.

But in the second instance, the 302 actually shows that Brandon Van Grack provided Flynn texts reflecting Page editing Flynn’s 302 even before they had interviewed her (on October 25) to understand what they meant. That is, this detail shows how responsive Van Grack was, not that he was slow in turning things over.

In short, there’s no basis to believe Page altered the 302. Her edits, if they were actually incorporated, went through Bill Priestap, not Strzok. And she told the FBI that she would often edit things he wrote for grammar.

But unlike the frothy right, which has been harping on this point all weekend, Sullivan may never refer to that 302, because Powell didn’t appear to cite it.

Exhibit 13: WaPo reports on the Strzok-Page texts

Exhibit 13 is a WaPo report describing that Mueller reassigned Strzok in the wake of the discovery of his texts with Page. Powell provides this to substantiate a theory that Mueller’s prosecutors were pressuring Flynn to plead guilty knowing this would come out.

Not only did Mr. Van Grack not disclose a single text message before Mr. Flynn agreed to plead guilty, but Special Counsel apparently managed to control the press on the issue until the plea was entered on December 1, 2017, in Judge Contreras’s court. It defies credulity to suggest that it was only unlucky for Mr. Flynn that the story broke the very next day. Part of the evidence we request includes communications between the press and SCO, which will likely establish that Special Counsel intensified pressure on Mr. Flynn to plead immediately while it was pressuring the press not to explode the truth that destroyed the entire case. Karoun Demirjian, Top FBI official assigned to Mueller’s Russia probe said to have been removed after sending anti-Trump texts, THE WASH. POST (Dec. 2, 2017), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/two-senior-fbiofficials-on-clinton-trump-probes-exchanged-politically-charged-texts-disparagingtrump/2017/12/02/9846421c-d707-11e7-a986-d0a9770d9a3e_story.html; MTC 11; Ex. 13.

Unfortunately for Powell, that doesn’t change the fact that according to her own timeline, Van Grack had already disclosed this three days earlier, and that the reason the texts came out is because Rod Rosenstein okayed their release in probable violation of the Privacy Act, something that Mueller’s team probably had no way of anticipating.

Exhibit 14: The InfoWars event Flynn co-headlined with Ray McGovern and Julian Assange

Exhibit 14 consists of materials from Flynn’s speaker’s bureau, which Powell submits to show that those events were solidly in the mainstream (which is absolutely true of the Kaspersky event).

Mr. McCabe pointed to Mr. Flynn’s “very public interactions with Vladimir Putin and other Russians.” These “interactions” seem to have arisen from the work of CIA/FBI operatives Stefan Halper and Joseph Mifsud, and bookings made by Mr. Flynn’s American speakers’ bureau, Leading Authorities (which books engagements for countless former government officials and prominent people). Leading Authorities booked him for three events with “Russian connections”: one in Moscow for RT and two in Washington. All were well attended by prominent persons from around the world because of the important issues discussed and the presence of other recognized experts on the programs. See Ex. 14; MTC 4, 16.

Yet among the other things these materials reveal are that the RT event featured Oliver Stone and Max Blumenthal on InfoWars (at a time when Russia had already kicked off its 2016 InfoWar against Putin).

It also featured Julian Assange and Ray McGovern on a panel about security and surveillance.

His talk to Volga-Dnepr Airlines was not recorded or open to the media.

The RT materials, while already broadly public, are especially damning, as they effectively show that Russia orchestrated his appearance, right alongside Putin, at the same event which a bunch of people who would later be part of the effort to deny Russia’s role in this infowar. A number of these people have been friends of mine (though they’re also among the people who’ve attacked me most baselessly once I started saying publicly that Russia did the hack), but they’re in no way the best experts to talk about infowars or how to balance privacy and counterterrorism.

Exhibit 15: Proof that Mueller’s team provided discovery before Flynn pled guilty a second time before Sullivan

Exhibit 15 is another timeline, this one providing the dates — but not the substance — of what Mueller provided in discovery in response to Emmet Sullivan’s order (note: it also gets at least some of the dates wrong, even as compared to her other timeline).

Powell claims in her brief that Flynn didn’t get all this material before he pled guilty the first time.

Neither Mr. Flynn nor his former counsel had any of these documents or knowledge of the plethora of information discussed above when Mr. Flynn entered his plea.

But Powell’s own timeline shows that every installment of the government’s production save one preceded the date last year when Flynn pled guilty again to Emmet Sullivan.

The exception is material handed over on August 16 of this year that relates to Flynn’s time at DIA which (given that it dates to at least two years before he committed the crimes in question) cannot be relevant to his crimes. Indeed, the government says that some of it is inculpatory.

Request #15: The government is not aware of any information in possession of the Defense Intelligence Agency that is favorable and material to sentencing, including the information that the government provided on August 16, 2019. Specifically, the information of which the government is aware, including that August 16 production, is either inculpatory or has no relevance to the defendant’s false statements to the FBI on January 24, 2017, or to the FARA Unit.

In short, Powell’s own timeline shows that the government complied with Sullivan’s standing order before Flynn pled guilty before Sullivan.

Exhibit 16: The handwriting analysis that doesn’t even try to disprove Strzok

Finally, there is Exhibit 16, a declaration from a handwriting analyst. Powell includes it to substantiate a demand for Strzok’s original notes of his interview with Flynn to investigate an “anomaly” that she doesn’t describe (making this request moot from a Brady standpoint).

Agent Strzok’s notes are far more detailed, lengthy, and written in a way that would not appear to be physically possible to write in a contemporaneous, casual setting. Ex. 10. The defense requests production of the actual, original notes, and handwriting samples of Strzok of contemporaneous and non-contemporaneous notes to evaluate another anomaly that further calls into question the entire effort by the FBI to manipulate and set up Mr. Flynn, and its report of that interview. Ex. 16.

But as her expert lays out, getting Strzok’s original notes would not be enough, because he would also need a baseline of how Strzok takes notes.

If additional comparable6 notations of Agent Strzok written under similar conditions could be obtained and submitted for analysis, it may be possible to determine whether the (Q-1) notations were prepared as purported. In consideration of both the observations made, as well as limitations present, further analysis of the original evidence would likely be necessary to support any definitive conclusions in this matter.

Ultimately, her expert says he can’t make any conclusions about whether the notes were “written during the course of the January 24th interview, or prepared at a subsequent time period.”

Based upon the inherent limitations arising from the examination of non-original evidence, compounded with the lack of any known comparison handwritten notations of Agent Peter Strzok (i.e., other non-contested handwritten notations prepared under like conditions), it has been determined that no conclusion can be rendered as to whether the submitted (Q-1) notations were written during the course of the January 24th interview, or prepared at a subsequent time period.

But as Powell makes clear in the very same paragraph where she makes this demand, no one claimed that Strzok wrote these notes during the interview. Only Pientka’s notes were taken during the interview (which is, again, one of those potentially bad things that is normal for FBI interviews that Powell thinks shouldn’t happen with her client).

Only the junior agent was taking notes during the interview. Strzok’s 302 of July 2017 says that he was handling the interview and his partner was taking notes.

So Powell uses this expert to claim she needs the original of Strzok’s notes to prove that he wrote them at a time he didn’t write them.

Which sounds like the definition of sanctionably frivolous behavior.

The Intelligence Issues the House Intelligence Committee Largely Ignored

I watched or listened to most of the House Intelligence Committee hearing with Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire this morning. And because both sides (with the very limited exception of Will Hurd) failed to raise the issues regarding the whistleblower complaint that go to the core of Maguire’s own equities, he was largely able to dodge the difficult issues.

Maguire’s own actions implicate whether IC whistleblowers will believe credible complaints will be treated appropriately. As Democrats noted, his first actions when he received a complaint implicating the President and the Attorney General were to refer to lawyers reporting directly to the President and the Attorney General. Maguire even pretended that Bill Barr’s role in this was not a significant part of the complaint to dismiss the worthlessness of referring this complaint to Bill Barr to investigate.

But there were three other key issues Maguire should not have been able to dodge.

First is the allegation that Trump moved the summary of this call to the covert communications system to hide the improper nature of the call. The whistleblower complaint said that this is not the first time the White House has done so. This is a clear abuse of the legal status of covert operations dictated by the National Security Act, something for which Maguire has direct responsibility. Covert operations must be communicated, by law, to at least the Gang of Eight in Congress. That Trump has politicized and misused this system discredits a core means of accountability for the White House, on Maguire’s job directly oversees. And yet he wasn’t asked how Trump’s actions undermine the legally mandated system of covert communications.

Then there’s the fact that Trump is premising policy decisions not on the best intelligence, but instead on how he can derive personal benefit from them. His doing so is a core abuse of presidential power. But — as I noted this morning — it also robs American citizens of the benefits the entire intelligence system is supposed to ensure. Maguire admittedly cannot force the President to make the right decisions. But the repercussions of premising policy decisions on personal gain for the national security of the US should be a concern of Maguire’s. That wasn’t mentioned either.

Finally, there’s the allegation that someone without clearance and entirely outside of the intelligence community was being asked to share and act on classified information derived from the intelligence community. Maguire at one point claimed that Trump can do whatever he wants with his personal lawyer and that such discussions would be privileged (after, at another point, dodging a question because he’s not a lawyer). That’s the height of absurdity. Rudy’s pursuit of policy actions has nothing to do with his role as Trump’s personal lawyer. And as the DOJ IG complaint against Jim Comey makes clear, sharing even retroactively confidential information with your personal lawyers — as Comey was scolded for doing — is not permissible. Yes, it’s true that as President Trump can declassify anything he wants (though Comey was original classification authority for the information he shared with his own lawyers), but others in the IC cannot share information with an uncleared person without formal declassification, or they risk their own legal troubles.

None of this came up in substantive fashion in today’s hearing by the people who are supposed to oversee the intelligence community.

The Definition of “Collusion” as Impeachment Proceeds: the Risk Trump Poses to All Americans

It’s a testament to how crazy things have been this week that this memo — Andrew McCabe’s memorialization of opening the investigation into Donald Trump on May 16, 2017 — only got covered by obsequious propagandists on the frothy right. Judicial Watch liberated it via FOIA and actually had to focus on something else — Rod Rosenstein’s offer to wear a wire — to drive interest.

I suspect that’s because the memo paints McCabe’s own actions in favorable light (and Rosenstein in a damning light, both as regards his own integrity and his purported loyalty to Trump). Consider this paragraph:

I began by telling [Rosenstein] that today I approved the opening of an investigation of President Donald Trump. I explained that the purpose of the investigation was to investigate allegations of possible collusion between the president and the Russian Government, possible obstruction of justice related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey, and possible conspiracy to obstruct justice. The DAG questioned what I meant by collusion and I explained that I was referring to the investigation of any potential links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. I explained that the counterintelligence investigations of this sort were meant to uncover any [sic] the existence of any threat to national security as well as whether or not criminal conduct had occurred. Regarding the obstruction issues, I made clear that our predication was based not only on the president’s comments last week to reporter Lester Holt (that he connected the firing of the director to the FBI’s Russia investigation), but also on the several concerning comments the president made to Director Comey over the last few months. These comments included the President’s requests for assurances of loyalty, statements about the Russia investigation and the investigation of General Michael Flynn. I also informed the DAG that Director Comey preserved his recollection of these interactions in a series of contemporaneously drafted memos. Finally, I informed the DAG that as a result of his role in the matter, I thought he would be a witness in the case. [my emphasis]

The substance of this paragraph has been told before, albeit by certain NYT reporters who have consistently misunderstood the substance of Trump’s ties to Russia. Those tellings have always left out that McCabe also predicated a conspiracy to obstruct justice investigation (meaning, among other things, that Rosenstein himself was on the line for his actions to create an excuse for firing Comey). The emphasis, here, is also not focused exclusively on Mike Flynn but on the Russian investigation generally; as I’ve been meaning to show, Trump faced at least as much direct exposure given the investigation into Roger Stone, and his actions after he learned Stone was a target in March 2017 reflect that more than commonly understood.

By far, the most important detail in this paragraph, however, is McCabe’s definition of “collusion,” as he explained it the day before Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to investigate what he would later call collusion. Collusion, for McCabe, is just “potential links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government,” not necessarily any criminal ties. McCabe made this statement at a time when FBI knew about neither the June 9 meeting to get dirt on Hillary Clinton nor Trump’s sustained effort to pursue an improbably lucrative Trump Tower deal, to say nothing of the fact that Trump’s campaign manager was sharing campaign strategy while discussing how to carve up Ukraine to Russia’s liking. That is, according to the definition McCabe used, the investigation did find “collusion.” Period, end of sentence.

Importantly, the first thing McCabe raised when discussing such — at that point hypothetical — links was national security, not criminal campaign finance or bribery exposure. That is, McCabe opened the “collusion” investigation to find out whether Trump’s — at that point hypothetical — links to the Russian government were making the US less secure. The answer to that question was not included in the Mueller Report; indeed, the most glaring evidence that those links did make the US less secure were very pointedly not included in the report.

This is an important lesson as the Ukraine investigation — which cannot and should not be separated from the Russian investigation — proceeds, one that has thus far been deemphasized again. Trump’s continued efforts to pursue policies — foreign and domestic — that personally benefit him don’t just amount to breathtaking corruption. They provide foreign countries more and more leverage to use against Trump to limit his policy options. Every time Trump does something scandalous with a foreign leader — and he does it all … the … time — it means those foreign leaders can hold that over Trump going forward and in so doing, limit his negotiating position. So not only do Americans lose out on having a President who makes decisions based on how they benefit the country rather than himself personally, but they also get a far weaker President in the bargain, someone who — if he ever decided to prioritize American interests over his own — would have already traded away his bargaining chips to do so.

Through his actions thus far as President, Trump has guaranteed he cannot pursue policies that would benefit average Americans, and he has done so not just with Russia and Ukraine, and not just because of his executive incompetence.

There is an impact that Trump’s “collusion” and corruption have on everyday Americans, whether they wear pussy hats or MAGA caps, an impact that Democrats have permitted Republicans to obscure. Trump’s actions effectively rob Americans of the powerful executive on foreign policy issues that our Constitution very imperfectly sought to ensure, without stripping the weakened Trump of the tools he can wield to punish those who call him on his weakness.

Because he always self-deals, Trump has made himself an intolerably weak President, one who makes the US less secure at every step. Republicans defending him need to be held accountable for weakening the US.

What we know of Bill Barr’s treatment of the ICIG referral on the Ukrainian whistleblower suggests he only reviewed it, cursorily, for criminal campaign finance violations — possibly not even the obvious presidential bribery prohibited explicitly by our Constitution it exhibits. Bill Barr did not, with the Russian investigation and has not with the Ukrainian referral, consider how by protecting Trump’s actions, he robs every American of what the Constitution guarantees: a President, not a man shopping for revenge and phallic symbols in foreign capitals. That’s why Barr had to totally distort the conclusions of the Mueller report on collusion: to hide what it is really about and to hide how enabling such activity by Trump hurts Americans.

Yet from the start, from the moment when McCabe opened an investigation into Trump, that’s what it was supposed to be about.

The Giglio Brady Head Fake in Sidney Powell’s Latest

I’d like to congratulate Sidney Powell, whose motion to show cause is less batshit than the Brady motion I unpacked here (note, these motions work together, but we only got this most recent one today because it had been submitted under seal under the protective order until the government redacted the names of some FBI Agents).

Powell fancies both motions as demands for Brady material she claims has been withheld in violation of Emmet Sullivan’s standing order that the government produce Brady material even to defendants that, like Flynn, plead guilty. But the key to understanding the motion, in my opinion, comes in the middle of a list of things she demands. She asks not just for Brady material (that is, evidence that is exculpatory to the charges Flynn pled guilty to), but also for any new Giglio information discovered by the government in the last two years.

Brady or Giglio material newly discovered by the government (and by the Inspector General in his separate investigations) in the last two years.

Giglio material is information that would impeach potential witnesses.

To understand the distinction, consider Powell’s complaints about recent discovery she got, which is batshit insane on its face.

To substantiate her claim that the government has violated its Brady obligations, she points to materials Brandon Van Grack had just provided the week before this motion.

In fact, just last week, Mr. Van Grack produced an additional 330 pages that included information that any reasonable attorney would understand as Brady evidence in light of Special Counsel’s investigation and assertions that Mr. Flynn was an undisclosed “agent of Russia” or an “agent of Turkey.”2 That production also shows that Mr. Flynn passed his polygraph test in 2016 and his security clearance was renewed. This was at the same time the FBI seems to have been investigating him under the pretext that he was an “agent of Russia” and/or of Turkey. Interestingly, the new production also shows that James Clapper refused to assist in the investigation for Mr. Flynn’s security clearance, which Mr. Flynn received after a full investigation despite Mr. Clapper’s actions.

She makes several crazy ass claims in this passage. First, she boasts that Flynn was able to pass a polygraph in April 2016 at a time, she claims, that he was under investigation for being an agent of whatever country was offering the highest bid. It’s unclear when the investigation into whether he was a Russian agent started. But the investigation into whether he was a Turkish agent hadn’t started yet because the underlying conduct hadn’t started yet! Moreover, Flynn didn’t plead to being a Russian agent (indeed, the investigation into whether he was compromised by Russia may have been reopened and remain open), so whether that poly reflected about him being so is irrelevant to the charges (and therefore not Brady).

In other words, Powell is claiming that a successful April 2016 polygraph is proof of innocence for lies Flynn told in January 2017 about contacts with Sergey Kislyak in November and December 2016, and lies he told in March 2017 about a relationship with Turkey that began in July 2016 and he was actively hiding in August through November 2016, when he was getting Top Secret briefings with candidate Trump. On its face, it’s a batshit insane claim (which is probably why Sara Carter is running with it).

Oh, and remember, the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn were pretty impressed with his ability to appear convincing while telling what they knew were outright lies. Flynn is (unsurprisingly, for a lifetime intelligence officer) good at lying.

But that’s almost certainly not why Powell is interested in this polygraph (it’s also almost certainly not why she got it, either, but I’ll reserve that explanation for a later time). She’s interested in the poly because it shows that Mike Flynn was able to renew his clearance even though James Clapper, who had fired him, would not recommend he have it renewed. That is, she wants to highlight this as part of an argument that the investigation into Flynn and everyone else was part of a Deep State coup against Trump and his flunkies.

In fact, most of her non-crazy requests (and there are a number of them) fit that narrative too. It’s not about any exculpatory evidence against Flynn — he already got that. It’s about allegedly damning details about the people who investigated him, to include Peter Strzok and James Clapper and Jim Comey and a slew of other people. But that’s Giglio, material that might make these people look bad if they ever had to testify against Flynn, not Brady (and with the exception of Strzok, none would have testified against him, and FBI could have avoided having Strzok testify too).

It actually is an interesting question about the scope of Sullivan’s standing order (though as Van Grack made clear in yesterday’s hearing, Flynn actually got a lot of stuff Powell claims he should have gotten before he pled guilty before he did plead guilty first once and then a second time). And Sullivan may well rule that Flynn should get some of it. But none of that will change that he lied over and over about his behavior while in the employ of Donald Trump.

That’s not the only thing Flynn is doing with this motion (he also seems to be fishing for evidence of selective prosecution based on KT McFarland’s ability to clean up her testimony after Flynn flipped). But it is the central one.

Sidney Powell Gets Caught Lying in Hearing before Emmet Sullivan

The Mike Flynn status hearing just ended (I livetweeted it here). The outcome is that Flynn’s sealed Brady filing will be posted tomorrow, the government response will be in two weeks, Flynn’s reply will be on October 15. The Brady hearing will be October 31.

Emmet Sullivan tentatively set a sentencing hearing for December 18, the year anniversary for his aborted sentencing hearing last year.

The government said it will file a new sentencing memorandum, suggesting they likely will say he did not accept responsibility for his crimes. Those new filings are due on December 2.

Sidney Powell stated that she does not expect Flynn to withdraw his plea, though she did suggest the entire prosecution should be withdrawn because of egregious misconduct.

The hearing itself was less remarkable than Sidney Powell’s factually impaired briefing last week. But she did manage to get in at least one lie to Sullivan.

She claimed that Flynn had not been provided notice of the Lisa Page – Peter Strzok texts. Brandon Van Grack told the court that Flynn was told Strzok had a political preference before he signed his guilty plea. Van Grack also revealed that Flynn got texts that have not been otherwise publicly released. That means Senator Ron Johnson didn’t release texts that pertained to Flynn (and perhaps were derogatory to him) when he dumped all of them in December 2017.

Powell also complained that Flynn had not been provided notice that Jim Comey “set up the ambush interview” of Flynn. Van Grack made it clear that Flynn received it before sentencing and that Sullivan referenced it at the beginning of last year’s sentencing memo. Powell excused her outright lie about something Sullivan mentioned on the public record by saying the train was pretty far down the track by then.

Powell made much of the fact that the government had already decided that Flynn would not be charged as an Agent of Russia or with a Logan Act violation shortly after his FBI interview. Van Grack noted that that’s not the benefit that the government said Flynn had obtained with his guilty plea.

Finally, Powell suggested that there might have been a prior secret investigation into Mike Flynn based off the secret NSA database, attempting to reference the allegations in the Rosemary Collyer opinion that has to do with targeted surveillance of otherwise targeted US person subjects when they’re overseas. In short, it was rank nonsense based off of Sara Carter’s erroneous “reporting” on the opinion.

All in all, Sullivan took being lied to in pretty mellow fashion. We’ll see whether that continues after Van Grack lays out precisely how batshit some of Powell’s claims are.

Horowitz

What a Properly Scoped FISA Abuse Inspector General Report Would Look Like

In this piece on the Jim Comey IG Report, I showed that Michael Horowitz’s department received evidence of two violations of DOJ rules. His office first received seven memos that documented that DOJ’s protocols to ensure the integrity of investigations had collapsed under Donald Trump’s efforts to influence investigations. And then, at some later time, his office learned that Comey had (improperly, according to the report) retained those memos even after being fired and that FBI had classified six words in the memos he retained retroactively.

Horowitz’s office has completed an investigation into an act that otherwise might be punished by termination that already happened. But there is zero evidence that Horowitz has conducted an investigation into the subject of the whistleblower complaint, the breakdown of DOJ’s protections against corruption.

In April 2018, Horowitz released a report (which had been hastily completed in February) detailing that Andrew McCabe had been behind a reactive media release during the 2016 election. But his office has not yet released its conclusions regarding the rampant leaks that McCabe was responding to. In other words, Horowitz seems to have once again released a report on a problem that — however urgent or not — has already been remedied, but not released a report on ongoing harm.

Horowitz is reportedly preparing to release a report on what the frothy right calls “FISA abuse.” but given the content of a Lindsey Graham letter calling for declassification of its underlying materials, it’s seems likely that that report, too, is scoped narrowly, focusing just on Carter Page (and any other Trump officials targeted under FISA). There’s no request for backup materials on the other investigation predicated off of hostile opposition research, the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

I have long said that if Republicans think the FISA order into Carter Page was abusive, then they’re being remiss in their oversight of FISA generally, because whatever abuse happened with Page happens, in far more egregious fashion, on the FISA applications of other people targeted and prosecuted with them.

If Michael Horowitz is concerned that the information from paid informants is not properly vetted before being used as the basis for a FISA application, they would be better to focus on any number of terrorism defendants. Adel Daoud appears to have been targeted under FISA based off a referral — probably, like Christopher Steele, a paid consultant — claiming he said something in a forum that the government later stopped claiming; Daoud remains in prison right now after having been set up in an FBI sting.

If Michael Horowitz is concerned that the FBI is misusing press reports in FISA applications, they would be better to focus on the case against Keith Gartenlaub. The FBI based its FISA applications partly off a Wired article that was totally unrelated to anything Gartenlaub was involved with. Gartenlaub will forever be branded as a sex criminal because, after finding no evidence that he was a spy, the government found 10 year old child porn they had no evidence he had ever accessed.

If Michael Horowitz is concerned that information underlying a FISA application included errors — such as that there are no Russian consulates in Miami — he should probably review how Xiaoxing Xi got targeted under FISA because the FBI didn’t understand what normal scholarship about semiconductors involves. While DOJ dropped its prosecution of Xi once it became clear how badly they had screwed up, he was charged and arrested.

And if Michael Horowitz is concerned about FISA abuse, then he should examine why zero defendants have ever gotten able to review their applications, even though that was the intent of Congress. Both Daoud and Gartenlaub should have been able to review their files, but both were denied at the appellate level.

The point being, the eventual report on “FISA abuse” will not be about FISA abuse. It will, once again, be about the President’s grievances. It will, at least according to public reporting, not treat far more significant problems, including cases where the injury against the targets was far greater than it was for Carter Page.

I don’t believe Michael Horowitz believes he is serving as an instrument of the President’s grievances. But by scoping his work to include only the evidence that stems from the President’s grievances and leaving out matters that involve ongoing harm, that’s what he is doing.

Note: I have or had a legal relationship with attorneys involved in these cases, though not when writing the underlying posts.

When Did Trump Learn Rod Blagojevich Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald Had Comey’s Memos?

When Trump was last floating commuting former IL governor Rod Blagojevich’s sentence, he was quite clear he was considering in part because of his animus towards Jim Comey, even though Comey was not in government when Blago was prosecuted.

“His wife I think is fantastic and I’m thinking about commuting his sentence very strongly. I think it’s enough, seven years,” Trump told reporters of Blagojevich who was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison for participating in several “pay to play” schemes (including trying to take back an $8 million contribution Illinois made to Children’s Memorial Hospital because the hospital’s CEO wouldn’t make a campaign donation).

Blagojevich notably attempted to give former Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s vacant seat to the highest bidder but was not officially convicted for it. Recordings obtained by government officials have Blagojevich saying of the seat, “I’ve got this thing and it’s (expletive) golden, I’m not just giving it up for (expletive) nothing.”

Still, in 2011 he was convicted on 17 charges for wide-ranging acts of corruption.

“I thought he was treated unbelievably unfairly; he was given close to 18 years in prison. And a lot of people thought it was unfair, like a lot of other things,” Trump said on Wednesday. “He’s been in jail for seven years over a phone call where nothing happens—over a phone call which he shouldn’t have said what he said, but it was braggadocio, you would say. I would think that there have been many politicians—I’m not one of them, by the way—that have said a lot worse over the telephone.”

The president added that “it was the same gang, the Comey gang and all these sleazebags that did it.” Trump was referring to James Comey, the former FBI director that Trump fired after taking the Oval Office and who is a frequent target of the president’s ire. Comey’s close friend and associate, former U.S. attorney in Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald, led the prosecution against Blagojevich.

Reporters noted that Comey and Fitz were friends, though didn’t go further into reasons why Trump might consider Blago’s prosecution by Fitz to be the work of the “Comey gang” of “sleazebags.” Based on what we learned from the IG Report into Comey’s treatment of his memos recording Trump’s attempts to interfere with ongoing investigations it seems Trump treats Fitz as part of Comey’s gang because of the way those memos got shared.

This probably dates back to April 2018. That month was already crazy given the raid on Michael Cohen’s home and office. Then, during the second half of the month, Trump responded to Comey’s book tour by claiming he leaked classified information, a claim that tried to criminalize Comey’s sharing of his memos.

On April 13, in response to some of Comey’s book coverage, Trump accused him of leaking classified information, perhaps the second time Trump made that accusation (the first was in July 2017).

The same day, Trump pardoned Scooter Libby, who had been prosecuted for serving as a firewall to protect the Vice President and President from any consequences for using their classification authority to retaliate against critics. Comey, as Acting Attorney General, appointed Fitz to prosecute Libby. So in that prosecution, at least, they were part of the same “gang.”

On April 15, Trump accused Comey of leaking classified information again.

On April 17, Comey’s book officially came out.

On April 19, Comey’s memos got shared with Congress and they promptly got leaked. Trump immediately pointed to them to substantiate a claim Comey leaked classified information again.

On April 20, Trump made the accusation again.

That same day, the WSJ reported that DOJ’s Inspector General was investigating “classification issues” relating to the four memos Comey shared with Richman, which (the WSJ noted, slightly inaccurately) he believed to be unclassified as shared.

At least two of the memos that former FBI Director James Comey gave to a friend outside of the government contained information that officials now consider classified, according to people familiar with the matter, prompting a review by the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

Of those two memos, Mr. Comey himself redacted elements of one that he knew to be classified to protect secrets before he handed the documents over to his friend. He determined at the time that another memo contained no classified information, but after he left the Federal Bureau of Investigation, bureau officials upgraded it to “confidential,” the lowest level of classification.

The Justice Department inspector general is now conducting an investigation into classification issues related to the Comey memos, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Comey has said he considered the memos personal rather than government documents. He has told Congress that he wrote them and authorized their release to the media “as a private citizen.”

Mr. Comey gave four total memos to his friend Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Columbia Law School, people familiar with the matter said. Three were considered unclassified at the time and the one was that was classified contained the redactions made by Mr. Comey.

On April 21, Trump accused Comey of leaking twice more, once by pointing to the WSJ story.

On April 24, the Chicago Tribune’s DC office reported that Fitz was representing Comey, along with David Kelley and Daniel Richman.

Finally, on April 27, Trump made the accusation again.

So back in April 2018, some of this was bubbling to the surface. The public reporting was surely fed by leaks from Congress, though Trump anticipated Congress both with his first accusation and, if it’s connected, the Libby pardon.

But those leaks do not reflect the actual facts as recorded in the Inspector General’s Report (which, of course, was still in process at the time).

As described in this section, on May 14, 2017, Comey transmitted copies of Memos 2, 4, and 6, and a partially redacted copy of Memo 7 to Fitzgerald, who was one of Comey’s personal attorneys. Comey told the OIG he thought of these Memos as his “recollection recorded,” like a diary or personal notes. Comey also said he believed “there’s nothing classified in here,” and so he thought he could share them with his personal attorneys.

Comey told the OIG that, before sharing these Memos with his attorneys, he redacted the second paragraph of Memo 7, which contained a discussion of foreign affairs during which Trump asked Comey to “follow up” on a specific matter. Comey told the OIG he redacted this paragraph because it was “utterly unrelated to what I was seeking their advice and counsel about.” He “did not consider that paragraph classified,” he just thought that “it was irrelevant.” Comey said that he used the personal scanner at his home to make a copy of Memo 7, then used a marker to black out fifteen lines from the second paragraph of the copy of Memo 7. Comey also placed an index card on which he handwritten the word “Redacted” over the center portion of the blacked-out paragraph, further obscuring most of the second paragraph of Memo 7. When Comey was finished redacting, the second paragraph read “He then switched topics…[REDACTED]…then said that I was doing a great job and wished me well. The call ended.” A copy of the redacted version of Memo 7 Comey created is contained in Appendix B to this report.72

Comey then used his personal scanner to create a Portable Document Format (PDF) file containing four of the Comey Memos: un-redacted copies of Memos 2, 4, and 6, and the redacted copy of Memo 7.73 On May 14, 2017, Comey attached the PDF to an email from his personal email account, and sent the email and PDF attachment from his personal laptop to Fitzgerald’s personal email account, with instructions for Fitzgerald to share the email and PDF attachment with Kelley and Richman.

Fitzgerald received the email and PDF attachment from Comey at 2:27 p.m. on May 14, 2017. Fitzgerald forwarded the email and attachments to Kelley on May 17, 2017, at 7:35 a.m., and to Richman on May 17, 2017, at 10:13 a.m. Richman told the OIG that, when he received the email and attachments from Fitzgerald, he accessed the files from his computer, read them, and downloaded a copy into a separate file on his computer. Richman said he did not make any paper copies of the Memos.

Fitzgerald also forwarded the email and attachments from his personal email account on May 17, 2017, at 4:47 p.m. to another email account belonging to Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald then saved the PDF attachment onto his computer, after which he said he placed the incoming email from his personal email account into the “deleted” items folder.

Comey told the OIG that he did not notify anyone at the FBI that he was going to share these Memos with anyone, and did not seek authorization from the FBI prior to emailing these four Memos to Fitzgerald. Comey told the OIG that he deleted his electronic versions of the email and the PDF attachment that he sent, and did not retain a hard copy of either.

72 During the June 2017 classification review, the FBI marked fifteen words from this paragraph as classified, all of which had been obscured by Comey’s redactions. Compare the version of Memo 7 in Appendix A of this report with Comey’s redacted version of Memo 7 in Appendix B.

73 Comey told the OIG that he used his personal shredder to shred the redacted copy of Memo 7 after he had scanned it, instead of returning the redacted copy to his personal safe with the other Memos.

The report makes it clear that Comey redacted memo 7 not because he believed anything in it was classified, but because he believed that discussion, about Egypt and Jordan, was irrelevant to the issues that Fitz et al were representing him on. In any case, the IG concluded that that didn’t amount to leaking classified (confidential) information because Comey redacted it — albeit ineffectively — before he shared it.

More importantly, while Comey intended all four memos to be shared with Richman and Kelley, he did not share them directly. He sent them to Fitz, who sent them on to the two others, though Fitz didn’t get around to it until May 17, three days later.

In the interim, Comey sent Richman photographs of Memo 4, the one recounting Trump directing him to let the Mike Flynn thing go, and directed him to share it with NYT’s Mike Schmidt.

On the morning of May 16, Comey took digital photographs of both pages of Memo 4 with his personal cell phone. Comey then sent both photographs, via text message, to Richman.75 Comey told the OIG that he transmitted this copy of Memo 4 to Richman on May 16 because Comey “had a specific assignment for him.” Comey told the OIG he knew Richman had a close relationship with a reporter for The New York Times. According to Comey, he directed Richman “to share the content[s] of this memo, but not the memo itself, with [the reporter].” Comey also said that, although Richman was his attorney at the time, Comey “didn’t intend to assert any kind of privilege about the direction” he gave to Richman. Comey told the OIG he directed Richman to share the contents of Memo 4 with The New York Times because

I had a conversation with the President of the United States. It was unclassified, on February the 14th. I’m a private citizen. I can talk about conversations I had with the President of the United States. I happen to have that conversation enshrined in an accurate way in this memo. So to ensure that the newspaper gets the most accurate account of my recollection, I’ll send the memo to [Richman]. Tell him, use this; don’t give them the memo, but use this to communicate the substance of it.

Comey told us he needed to do this because it was something he was “uniquely situated to do, because [he was] now a private citizen.” He told us that by speaking out, or enabling someone else to speak out, it would “change the game” and create “extraordinary pressure on the leadership of the Department of Justice, which [Comey did] not trust, to appoint someone who the Country can trust, to go and get those tapes.”

75 On May 16, 2017, Richman had not yet received copies of the Memos from Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald sent the email containing Memos 2, 4, 6, and a redacted copy of Memo 7 to Richman on May 17, 2017, at 10:13 a.m.

So the sharing of that single memo with the press did not involve Fitz, at all.

Importantly, from what I know of Fitz, he probably wouldn’t even have approved of sharing the information, which may be why Comey shared it with Richman directly.

In any case, that memo did not include any classified information, meaning neither Comey nor his lawyers publicly released any classified information (remember, altogether the FBI only determined that one to six words in the memos Comey shared in unredacted form were confidential).

We found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the Memos to members of the media.

Nevertheless, Trump’s treatment of Fitz as a member of Comey’s “gang” of “sleazebags” seems to be tied to the fact that Comey managed to use the memo showing Trump trying to kill the Mike Flynn investigation to launch the Mueller investigation, even though the facts show that Fitz never had a role in doing so (because he didn’t share the memo in question before Comey sent it to Richman directly).

Given that Trump’s accusations that Comey leaked classified information, I’m interested in whether Trump got a briefing that Michael Horowitz was reviewing that issue before Congress did. Particularly given that Comey shared the memos with Fitzgerald before six words in one of them were retroactively classified, the memos would otherwise amount to attorney client communications (albeit, if you believe that the President ordering the FBI Director to violate FBI rules constitutes official business — something the IG Report didn’t evaluate — memos that were government, not personal, documents).

Granted, in June 2017, when DOJ contacted him about this (while Comey was still testifying), Richman offered up that Comey had shared the memos with all three lawyers. This is not something over which Comey claimed privilege. So even though Trump started basing an attack on attorney-client communications literally at the same time he was complaining about his own attorney-client communications had been seized in a law enforcement search, the discovery of them did not breach attorney-client privilege.

But I’m wondering whether and when and by whom Trump got briefed on this. Did someone give Trump a heads up on what Horowitz was investigating before Congress got one (and why did Congress get that heads up, presumably before conclusions made it clear no classified information got shared with the press?).

The IG Report, like the other ones into the FBI and DOJ officials Trump has attacked as his enemies, doesn’t have some of the normal features of IG Reports, like timelines of the investigation and detailed scope of the interviewees. Such timelines would provide some indication of when the IG knew that Fitz wasn’t in the loop on the NYT story, and so some indication of when someone should have informed Trump in any briefing of that fact, even assuming Trump briefings are accurate about such things or that his brain can process an accurate briefing.

Which is to say, this IG investigation appears to have led the President to draw certain conclusions, possibly including the inaccurate one that Pat Fitz was part of a plot to leak really damning information to the NYT. It may even serve a role in the President’s clemency choices! It would be useful to have more information about how Trump got a mistaken understanding of how the NYT story happened and from whom.

Horowitz

Michael Horowitz’s Credibility Is at Risk

I’m generally a fan of Michael Horowitz, DOJ’s Inspector General.

For example, unlike many people, I think the Inspector General report on Andrew McCabe makes a credible case that the Deputy Director got caught being less than fully forthcoming with the IG — though I also think McCabe’s lawsuit has merit and expect his claim that the report itself was not completed in proper fashion may prove key to that inquiry.

But yesterday’s Comey report — and the office’s continued failure to release a report on the non-Comey leaking that hurt Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election — threatens to do grave damage to his credibility.

As I laid out in this piece at The New Republic, I think the IG Report captures the way Comey didn’t meet the standards he set for whistleblowers and Hillary Clinton over his career. I get the feeling IG staffers find Comey just as insufferable as I do!

But that’s a problem, because the case they make that Jim Comey violated FBI rules in retaining memos documenting the highly inappropriate behavior of the President is shoddy, largely because the factual findings laid out make the claim he mishandled classified information dubious and the assessment of whether he released non-public investigative material and whether his memos recorded official acts in no way supports the claims made. The IG probably could have made a solid case on the latter issue; they just didn’t.

For example, there’s the conclusion that Comey improperly disclosed Trump’s request that he drop the investigation into Michael Flynn (i.e. “I hope you can let this go”) to his friend Daniel Richman, who then told the New York Times. For the first time, the report in the second section cites Comey’s colleagues’ response to his action. “Members of Comey’s senior leadership team used the adjectives ‘surprised,’ ‘stunned,’ ‘shocked,’ and ‘disappointment’ to describe their reactions to learning that Comey acted on his own to provide the contents of Memo 4, through Richman, to a reporter.”

The report later also claims there is “no doubt” that his colleagues used those words because he violated the FBI duty to safeguard investigative matters. But if there were truly no doubt, then the report could have shown that by citing those witnesses stating that themselves. Since the report relies on this language in its analysis of two different findings, those reactions should be included, with full context, in the factual findings section.

Then there’s the report’s claim that, in releasing that same memo, Comey had revealed non-public investigative information. To back this up, the report includes two lengthy footnotes on former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates’s extensive testimony to Congress about her discussion with White House Counsel Don McGahn about Flynn—testimony that revealed a great deal about the status of the FBI’s Flynn investigation as it existed on the day she got fired. These footnotes attempt to argue that Yates’s disclosures were less substantive than Comey’s repeated references to Trump describing the calls Flynn had made to Russia’s ambassador (calls that were publicly disclosed) and insisting that Flynn had done nothing wrong. The second footnote describes that information by asserting, “Comey’s disclosure of Memo 4 provided the public with details relevant to the Flynn investigation.”

But what Yates’s testimony demonstrates is that Yates had, without objection from the Justice Department, introduced a great deal of information about the investigation into Flynn into the public record before Comey’s disclosure. Furthermore, the report cannot claim that he revealed details about the investigation itself. The actual new information that the memo disclosed was a description of how the president had, in highly unusual fashion, tried to end the investigation into Michael Flynn. The memo could only have disclosed investigative information if the president himself was being investigated—and he wasn’t yet.

The inspector general might have argued that fielding a request from the president to end an ongoing investigation is part of that investigation itself. But it tellingly does not lay out that case, instead merely claiming that such a request is “relevant” to the investigation.

Perhaps most problematically, the report provides abundant evidence of how unusual were Trump’s efforts to intervene in ongoing investigations, how his efforts broke all sorts of DOJ rules designed to protect investigative independence.

More generally, the report does not discuss whether presidential efforts to intervene in investigations, in violation of department rules about proper communication channels and chain of command, constitute the official business of the FBI director. The report does, however, lay out abundant evidence that such efforts are not normal. It quotes former FBI General Counsel Jim Baker stating that any one-on-one meetings are “quite outside the norm of interactions between the FBI Director and a President of the United States.” It describes Baker and Comey’s repeated efforts to address Trump’s direct communications: After Trump asked Comey to let the Flynn investigation go, the report quotes Comey as saying he “took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me. I told the AG that what had just happened—him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind—was inappropriate and should never happen.”

After Trump called Comey directly about an intelligence investigation on March 9, 2017, Comey called then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions immediately, “to keep the Attorney General in the chain of command between [Comey] and the President.” The last memo records Comey reviewing again the proper channels for the president to intervene in investigations; the report’s discussion of it notes that Comey’s chief of staff shared the details in real time with the proper chain of command.

Is this what constitutes official business? This is what the inspect general’s report would have you believe: that the president asking Comey to do things that break the FBI’s rules is part of the FBI director’s job—and hence, Comey is at fault for airing that official business to his associates and ultimately the press. The report treats a memo recording the president demanding that he “‘lift the cloud’ created by the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election” as official business, implying that Comey should have done what the president asked of him.

As the report reveals, a whistleblower provided a full copy of Comey’s memos to the IG Department. At that point, then, the IG had solid documentation of all the ways Jeff Sessions and others had failed to protect the independence of the Department.

There’s no sign the IG investigated that problem, which remains ongoing.

Instead, after months of pressure from Trump, it instead made a weak case that Comey broke the rules, without assessing all the other urgent problems revealed by the memos.

I actually don’t think the IG produced this report in response to pressure from Trump. The facts they do lay out — to the extent they lay out the facts — aren’t that supportive of Trump.

But I do think the IG presents abundant evidence of other problems at DOJ that remain pressing. And instead of focusing on those, they instead made a weak case against Jim Comey.

I don’t like Jim Comey’s sanctimony either. But given the way the IG focuses on Comey to the detriment of the other violations of DOJ process, it suggests this investigation was affected by more personal animus than anything Peter Strzok did.

The Classified Conversation Trump Had with Comey Was Two Days after the Vault 7 Leak

The other day, I did a long post showing that Trump blabbed details about the FBI’s investigation into the theft of CIA’s hacking tools the same day that the FBI was preparing to take the first step that would alert Joshua Schulte he was FBI’s suspect, a search of his apartment. While in fact, Trump’s comments probably were broadcast after the search had commenced, he made the comments at a time when they could have tipped off Schulte.

In the post, I noted that Jim Comey had had one classified conversation about an intelligence investigation with Trump. “I had one conversation with the president that was classified where he asked about our, an ongoing intelligence investigation, it was brief and entirely professional,” Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The DOJ IG Report on Comey’s memos released today (which I’ll cover at length later) reveals that that conversation took place on March 9, 2017.

On March 9, 2017, Comey had a secure one-on-one telephone call with President Trump. Comey told the OIG that the secure telephone call was “only business,” and that there was “nothing untoward” about the call, other than it was “unusual for the President to call the Director directly.” Comey said he did not prepare a memo to document this call with the President, but said he had [Jim] Rybicki arrange a secure call to Attorney General Sessions immediately afterwards to inform the Attorney General about the telephone call from the President in an effort “to keep the Attorney General in the chain of command between [Comey] and the President.”

That means the conversation took place just two days after the March 7 initial release of the Vault 7 files. The timing makes it far more likely that that’s what they two men spoke about.

More crazy, however, is the detail that Trump initiated that call.

If Trump were calling the FBI Director for information about an investigation into a leak to WikiLeaks (at a time a long effort to get Julian Assange a pardon had already begun), that would change the import of the call significantly.

Revisiting the First Time President Trump Blabbed Out Classified Information for Political Gain

I’d like to revisit what might be the first time in his presidency that Donald Trump blabbed out highly classified information for political gain. Trump appears to have endangered the investigation into CIA’s stolen hacking tools, all to blame Obama for the leak.

It happened on March 15, 2017, during an interview with Tucker Carlson.

Amid a long exchange where Tucker challenges Trump, asking why he claimed — 11 days earlier — that Obama had “tapped” Trump Tower without offering proof, Trump blurted out that the CIA was hacked during the Obama Administration.

Tucker: On March 4, 6:35 in the morning, you’re down in Florida, and you tweet, the former Administration wiretapped me, surveilled me, at Trump Tower during the last election. Um, how did you find out? You said, I just found out. How did you learn that?

Trump: I’ve been reading about things. I read in, I think it was January 20th, a NYT article, they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they used that exact term. I read other things. I watched your friend Bret Baier, the day previous, where he was talking about certain very complex sets of things happening, and wiretapping. I said, wait a minute, there’s a lot of wiretapping being talked about. I’ve been seeing a lot of things. Now, for the most part I’m not going to discuss it because we have it before the committee, and we will be submitting things before the committee very soon, that hasn’t been submitted as of yet. But it’s potentially a very serious situation.

Tucker: So 51,000 people retweeted that, so a lot of people thought that was plausible, they believe you, you’re the president. You’re in charge of the agencies, every intelligence agency reports to you. Why not immediately go to them and gather evidence to support that?

Trump: Because I don’t want to do anything that’s going to violate any strength of an agency. You know we have enough problems. And by the way, with the CIA, I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked and a lot of things taken. That was during the Obama years. That was not during, us, that was during the Obama situation. Mike Pompeo is there now, doing a fantastic job. But we will be submitting certain things, and I will be perhaps speaking about this next week. But it’s right now before the Committee, and I think I want to leave it at that. I have a lot of confidence in the committee.

Tucker: Why not wait to tweet about it until you can prove it? Does it devalue your words when you can’t provide evidence?

Trump: Well because the NYT wrote about it. You know, not that I respect the NYT. I call it the failing NYT. They did write on January 20 using the word wiretap. Other people have come out with —

Tucker: Right, but you’re the President. You have the ability to gather all the evidence you want.

Trump: I do, I do. But I think that frankly we have a lot right now and I think if you watch, uh, if you watched the Brett Baier and what he was saying and what he was talking about and how he mentioned the word wiretap, you would feel very confident that you could mention the name. He mentioned it and other people have mentioned it. But if you take a look at some of the things written about wiretapping and eavesdropping, and don’t forget when I say wiretap, those words were in quotes, that really covers, because wiretapping is pretty old fashioned stuff. But that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes but that’s a very important thing. But wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think you’re going to find some very interesting items over the next two weeks. [my emphasis]

It was clear even at the time that it was a reference to the Vault 7 files, now alleged to have been leaked to WikiLeaks by Joshua Schulte; the first installment of files were released eight days earlier.

The next day, Adam Schiff, who as the then-Ranking HPSCI member, likely had been briefed on the leak, responded to Trump’s comments and suggested that, while Trump couldn’t have broken the law for revealing classified information, he should nevertheless try to avoid releasing it like this, without any kind of consideration of the impact of it.

Last night, the President stated on Fox News that “I just wanted people to know, the CIA was hacked, and a lot of things taken–that was during the Obama years.” In his effort to once again blame Obama, the President appears to have discussed something that, if true and accurate, would otherwise be considered classified information,

It would be one thing if the President’s statement were the product of intelligence community discussion and a purposeful decision to disclose information to the public, but that is unlikely to be the case. The President has the power to declassify whatever he wants, but this should be done as the product of thoughtful consideration and with intense input from any agency affected. For anyone else to do what the President may have done, would constitute what he deplores as “leaks.”

Trump did reveal information the CIA still considered classified. At the very least, by saying that CIA got hacked, he confirmed the Vault 7 documents were authentic files from the CIA, something the government was not otherwise confirming publicly at that time. (Compare Mike Pompeo’s oblique comments about the leak from a month later.)

His reference to the volume of stolen files may have been based on what the CIA had learned from reviewing the initial dump; court filings make it clear the CIA still did not know precisely what had been stolen.

His reference to a hack, rather than a leak, is an interesting word choice, as the compromise has usually been called a leak. But Schulte’s initial search warrants listed both Espionage and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, meaning the government was treating it as (partly) a hacking investigation. And some of the techniques he allegedly used to steal the files are the same that hackers use to obfuscate their tracks (which is unsurprising, given that Schulte wrote some of the CIA’s obfuscation tools).

Perhaps the most damning part of Trump’s statement, however, was the main one: that the theft had taken place under Obama. WikiLeaks’ initial release was totally noncommittal about when they obtained the files, but said it had been “recent[].” By making it clear that the government knew the theft had taken place in 2016 and not more “recently,” Trump revealed a detail that would have made it more likely Schulte would realize they believed he was the culprit (though he knew from the start he’d be a suspect), given that he’d left the agency just days after Trump was elected.

The most damning part of all of this, though, is the timing. Trump made these comments at an unbelievably sensitive time in the investigation.

Tucker did the interview while accompanying Trump to Detroit on March 15, 2017, which means the interview took place sometime between 10:50 AM and 3:30 PM (Tucker said the interview happened at Willow Run Airport, but this schedule says he flew into DTW). Unless it was given special billing, it would have aired at 9PM on March 15.

That means Trump probably made the comments as the FBI was preparing a search of Schulte’s apartment, the first step the FBI took that would confirm for Schulte that he was the main suspect in the leak. Trump’s comments likely aired during the search, before the moment Schulte left his apartment with two passports while the search was ongoing.

CIA had had a bit of advanced warning about the leak. In the lead-up to the leaks (at least by February 3), a lawyer representing Julian Assange, Adam Waldman, was trying to use the Vault 7 files to make a deal with the US government, at first offering to mitigate the damage of the release for some vaguely defined safe passage for Assange. The next day, WikiLeaks first hyped the release, presumably as part of an attempt to apply pressure on the US. Shortly thereafter, Waldman started pitching Mark Warner (who, with Richard Burr, could have granted Assange immunity in conjunction with SSCI’s investigation). On February 17, Jim Comey told Warner to stop his negotiations, though Waldman would continue to discuss the issue to David Laufman at DOJ even after the initial release. Weeks later, WikiLeaks released the initial dump of files on March 7.

An early WaPo report on the leak (which Schulte googled for its information about what the CIA knew before WikiLeaks published) claimed that CIA’s Internal Security had started conducting its own investigation without alerting FBI to the leak (though obviously Comey knew of it by mid-February). The same report quoted a CIA spox downplaying the impact of a leak it now calls “catastrophic.”

By March 13, the day the FBI got its first warrant on Schulte, the FBI had focused on Schulte as the primary target of the investigation. They based that focus on the following evidence, which appears to incorporate information from the CIA’s own internal investigation, an assessment of the first document dump, and some FBI interviews with his colleagues in the wake of the first release:

  • The FBI believed (and still maintains) that the files were stolen from the onsite backup server
  • Schulte was one of a small group of SysAdmins who had privileges to that server (in the initial warrant they said just three people did but have since revised the number to five)
  • The FBI believed (mistakenly) that the files were copied on March 7, 2016, a time when one of the other two known SysAdmins was offsite
  • Schulte had had a blow-up with a colleague that led to him souring on his bosses
  • During the period the CIA was investigating that blow-up, Schulte had reset his administrative privileges to restore his access to the backup server and one project he was working on
  • As part of his August security clearance renewal, some of Schulte’s colleagues said they thought he could be subject to coercion and was not adhering to rules on removable media
  • Just before he left, Schulte created two documents claiming to have raised concerns about the security of the CIA’s servers that (the government claims) he didn’t actually raise
  • Names identifying the two other SysAdmins who had access to the backup server, but not Schulte’s, were included in the initial release
  • In six days since the initial Vault 7 release, Schulte had contacted colleagues and told them he thought he’d be a suspect but was not the leaker

Having obtained a warrant based off that probable cause, on the afternoon of March 13, FBI agents went to conduct a covert search of Schulte’s apartment. The FBI was trying to conduct the search before a trip to Mexico Schulte was scheduled to take on March 16, which (as the affidavit noted) would have been only his second trip outside the US reflected in DHS records. But when the FBI got to Schulte’s apartment, they found a slew of computer devices (listed at PDF 116), making the covert search impractical. So overnight, they obtained a second warrant for an overt search; the FBI obtained that warrant at 1:36 AM on March 14. During that same overnight trip to the magistrate, the FBI also obtained warrants for Schulte’s Google, Reddit, and GitHub accounts.

There’s a lack of clarity about this detail in the public record: the warrant is dated March 14, but it is described as the “March 15 warrant.” The overt search continued through the night in question, so it could either be March 14-15 or March 15-16. The government’s response to Schulte’s motion to suppress the search says, “The Overt Warrant was signed during the early morning hours of March 14, 2017, and the FBI executed the warrant the same day.” But a May 5, 2017 affidavit (starting at PDF 129) says the overt search of Schulte’s apartment took place on March 15.

Whatever day the search happened, it appears that the search started when the lead agent approached Schulte in the lobby of Bloomberg, perhaps as he was leaving work, and asked if he had a role in the leak, which Schulte denied. (This conversation is one basis for Schulte’s false statements charge; the Bill of Particulars describing the interview says it took place on March 15.) The agent got Schulte to confirm he was traveling to Mexico on March 16, then got Schulte to let them into his apartment (Bloomberg is at 120 Park Avenue; Schulte lived at 200 E 39th Street, five blocks away). The search of Schulte’s apartment went through the night. Sometime between 10 and 11 PM, Schulte left his apartment, telling the FBI Agents he’d return around 11:30 PM. By 12:15 AM he hadn’t returned, so the lead FBI Agent went and found him leaving Bloomberg. They told him they had found classified information in his apartment, and asked for his passports. He went back to his workstation to retrieve them, and voluntarily handed them over. The affidavit describes Schulte being put on leave by Bloomberg on March 16, the last day he reported to work at Bloomberg (which would be consistent with the search taking place on the night of March 15-16).

If the search took place overnight on March 14-15, Trump’s statements might have reflected knowledge the search had occurred (and that FBI had found classified information in Schulte’s apartment that would sustain an arrest on false statements and mishandling classified information charges, if need be). If the search took place overnight on March 15-16 (which seems to be what the record implies), it would mean Trump made the comments before the search and they would have been aired on Fox News during it.

In other words, Trump may well have made the comments at a time when FBI was trying to avoid giving Schulte any advance notice because they were afraid he might destroy evidence.

In addition, Trump undoubtedly made the comments (and Schiff highlighted the significance of them) before Schulte had follow-up interviews on March 20 and 21, at which he denied, among other things, ever making CIA’s servers more vulnerable to compromise. If Schulte had read Trump’s comment he’d be more worried about anything akin to hacking.

The question is, how much of what Trump said reflected real knowledge of the investigation, and to what degree should he have known that blurting this out could be unbelievably damaging to the investigation?

Given Trump’s imprecision in speech, his comments could derive entirely from the Vault 7 release itself, or at least a really high level briefing (with pictures!) of the compromise and CIA’s efforts to mitigate it.

But there are two pieces of evidence that suggest Trump may have been briefed in more detail about Schulte as a target.

Jim Comey testified on June 8, 2017 that, in addition to asking him to, “let this [Flynn thing] go,” Trump had asked him about a classified investigation, but that conversation was entirely professional.

WARNER: Tens of thousands. Did the president ever ask about any other ongoing investigation?

COMEY: No.

WARNER: Did he ever ask about you trying to interfere on any other investigation?

COMEY: No.

WARNER: I think, again, this speaks volumes. This doesn’t even get to the questions around the phone calls about lifting the cloud. I know other members will get to that, but I really appreciate your testimony, and appreciate your service to our nation.

COMEY: Thank you, Senator Warner. I’m sitting here going through my contacts with him. I had one conversation with the president that was classified where he asked about our, an ongoing intelligence investigation, it was brief and entirely professional.

Obviously there were a ton of investigations and this conversation could have taken place after Trump made the public comments. But the Vault 7 investigation would have been one of the most pressing investigations in the months before Comey got fired.

More directly on point, in his Presumption of Innocence blog, Schulte describes the interactions with the FBI during the search — which are consistent with them taking place on March 15 — this way (he has not sought to suppress the statements he made that night, which suggests his claims of coercion aren’t strong enough to impress his attorneys):

The FBI set an artificial and misguided deadline on the night before I was to depart NYC for Cancun to prevent me from leaving the country. Despite my insistence with them that the notion someone would flee the country AFTER the publication literally made no sense—if it were me communicating with WikiLeaks then obviously I would have made damn sure to leave BEFORE it happened—they were persistent in their belief that I was guilty. The FBI literally told me that everyone ”up to the top” knew we were having this conversation and that “they” could not afford to let me leave the country. “They” could not afford another national embarrassment like Snowden. “They” would not, under any circumstances, allow me to leave the country. The FBI were prepared and willing to do anything and everything to prevent me from leaving the country including threaten my immediate arrest arrest unless I surrendered my passport. I did NOT initially consent, but the FBI held me against my will without any arrest warrant and even actively disrupted my attempts to contact an attorney. Intimidated, fearful, and without counsel, I eventually consented. I was immediately suspended from work

Schulte’s an egotist and has told obvious lies, especially in his public statements attempting to claim innocence. But if it’s true that the FBI agents told him everyone “up to the top” knew they were having the conversation with him on March 15, it might reflect knowledge that people at least as senior as Comey or Sessions or Pompeo knew the FBI was going to conduct an overt search with one goal being to prevent Schulte from leaving the country. And given the purported reference to Snowden and the way the entire government pursued him, it is not impossible that Trump had been asked to authorize Schulte’s arrest if he didn’t surrender his passports.

In other words, it is certainly possible that when Trump boasted that the CIA’s hacking tools had been stolen under Obama and not under his Administration (an interesting claim to begin with, given the delay in CIA alerting the FBI that WaPo reported), he had been briefed about Schulte within the last 48 hours or even that morning.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that this comment was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the FBI investigation. Trump has a habit of mindlessly repeating whatever he has heard most recently, so if Trump were briefed on the investigative steps against Schulte on the 14th or 15th, it’s not surprising he brought it up when sitting with Tucker mid-day on the 15th, particularly given that they were discussing surveillance.

But imagine how this would look to the FBI as Trump started engaging in outright obstruction of the Russian investigation, particularly by firing Comey. There’s nothing in the public record that suggests a tie between Schulte’s leaks and Russia. But Schulte’s leaks (most notably the Marble Framework he authored) not only would have made it easier for Russia to identify CIA’s Russian targets, but they would have forced CIA to rebuild during a period it was trying to figure out what had happened in 2016 (and NSA would be in the same position, post Shadow Brokers). When the FBI was trying to keep their focus on Schulte secret for one more day so they could get to his apartment before he started destroying things, Trump sat before a TV camera and made a comment that might have alerted Schulte the FBI did, indeed, believe he was the culprit.

And Trump did so all to blame Obama for a catastrophic leak rather than himself.