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By the Time Kevin McCarthy Rolled Out an Impeachment Inquiry, the FBI Had Already Debunked a Key Premise

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Yesterday morning, in a desperate bid to keep his gavel, Speaker McCarthy directed three committees, including the House Judiciary Committee, to begin an impeachment query.

As Philip Bump laid out, only one of McCarthy’s justifications for impeachment — that Biden knew more about his son’s business than he stated publicly (but not under oath) — has been substantiated; several of the rest have no basis in fact.

More importantly, just one relates to Biden’s current term as President: the allegation that his Administration has interfered in the investigation into his son. When Bump wrote his column, he noted that David Weiss — the Trump appointed US Attorney whom Biden retained precisely to give independence to the investigation — had disputed the claim.

“Finally, despite these serious allegations,” McCarthy continued, “it appears that the president’s family has been offered special treatment by Biden’s own administration, treatment that not otherwise would have received if they were not related to the president.”

This allegation does have one advantage over the preceding four: It’s actually related to Biden’s time in office as president.

The suggestion here is that the handling of Hunter Biden’s tax and gun case was unfairly lenient, thanks to pressure from the Justice Department. This was alleged by whistleblowers from the IRS who offered testimony in front of Congress. The U.S. attorney leading the Hunter Biden investigation, David Weiss, disputed the allegations.

Only, according to a report from the WaPo, by the time McCarthy made this allegation, it had been even further debunked.

Last Thursday, FBI’s Baltimore Special Agent in Charge Thomas Sobocinski appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. He testified that his memory of a key October 7 meeting conflicts with claims that purported whistleblower Gary Shapley made about the meeting.

Shapley said Weiss told FBI and IRS agents during that meeting that Weiss was not the “deciding official on whether charges are filed.” But Sobocinski, who was also there, said he did not hear Weiss say that and “never felt that [Weiss] needed approval” to bring charges.

Sobocinski, who is the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office, noted there was “bureaucratic administrative process” Weiss had to work through to bring charges outside Delaware but that his understanding was “that [Weiss] had the authority to bring whatever he needed to do.”

“I never thought that anybody was there above David Weiss to say no,” he said.

Pressed again on the issue later in the interview, he said, “I went into that meeting believing he had the authority, and I have left that meeting believing he had the authority to bring charges.”

Gary Shapley’s claims of politicization have been debunked twice now. The key claim of favoritism at the core of impeachment keeps crumbling.

Jim Jordan, at least, knew all this before McCarthy’s impeachment decision.

And yet McCarthy went forward anyway, with even less basis for the inquiry.

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As Xitter’s Lawyer Stalled DOJ, Elon Musk Met with Jim Jordan (Twice!) and Kevin McCarthy

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Elon Musk has been eerily quiet about being held in contempt by Beryl Howell since the DC Circuit opinion was first released on August 9.

It’s not like him to pass up the opportunity to make an obnoxious comment.

Which is why I’m interested in what Musk was doing during the period when Xitter’s counsel was stalling on the DOJ request — including a visit to Kevin McCarthy on January 26.

Beryl Howell approved the warrant on January 17. After several failed attempts, the government served it to the official portal on January 19. But then Xitter’s senior-most legal person stalled for 12 days, until she told DOJ that Xitter was going to make a First Amendment challenge so Trump could invoke executive privilege.

The government’s initial service attempts on Twitter filed twice, with the government’s receipt both times of an automated message indicating that Twitter’s “page [was] down.” Gov’t’s Mot. at 2 (alteration in original). On January 19, 2023, the government was finally able to serve Twitter through the company’s Legal Requests Submissions site. Id

Twitter, however, somehow did not know of the existence of the Warrant until January 25, 2023—two days before the Warrant returns were due. That day, the government contacted Twitter about the status of the company’s compliance with the Warrant, and Twitter’s Senior Director of Legal, JN [redacted], indicated she was not aware of the Warrant but would consider it a priority.” Id; see also Decl. of [redacted], Senior Director of Legal for Twitter (“[redacted] Decl”) 2 (SEALED), ECF No. 9-1. The government indicated that they were looking for an on time production in two days time” to which [J redacted] responded, “without knowing more or taking any position that would be a very tight turn around for us.” [Jl Decl. ¶ 2. The government sent the six pages of the Warrant and the NDO directly to [J redacted] later that evening Meanwhile, [J redacted] directed Twitter’s personnel to preserve data available in its production environment associated with the Target Account, and “have confirmed that the available data was preserved.” Id. ¶ 4.

Twitter notified the government in the evening of January 26, 2023, that the company “would not comply with the Warrant by the next day, “Id. 5, and responded to the government’s request for more specific compliance information, by indicating that “the company was prioritizing the matter and taking it very seriously” but that [redactedl had the Warrant and NDO only “for two days,” id. ¶ 8, even though the government had tried to submit the Warrant and NDO through Twitter’s Legal Requests Submissions site nine days earlier. The Warrants deadline for compliance makes no exception for the provider’s failure to have a fully operational and functioning system for the timely processing of court orders.

On January 31, 2023, Twitter indicated for the first time that the company would not comply with the Warrant without changes to the NDO, stressing as “essential to Twitter’ business model including [its] commitment to privacy, transparency, and neutrality) that [Twitter] communicate with users about law enforcement efforts to access their data.” 1d. 10.

The Legal Director’s declaration is more obnoxious than that. She made no mention of DOJ’s attempts to serve the warrant before she got involved and makes much of a claim that it took the AUSA two efforts to email a separate copy to her. Her assurances that everything was preserved — made as of January 25 — don’t rule out any deletions before that.

It wasn’t until February 1 that WilmerHale was officially involved.

And in the meantime, Elon Musk had made a widely covered trip to DC. He met with Jim Jordan on Thursday January 26, Kevin McCarthy that evening, and then Jordan (again) with James Comer the next day (Axios, NYT, CNN)

As of now, at least, Jordan and McCarthy are two of the just 51 people that Trump follows, who could have sent him DMs.

The next week, Comer formally announced his dick pics hearing, which (as Allison Gill observed yesterday) took place the day between two hearings on the warrant, as contempt fees started piling up. In that hearing, Republicans spun Musk’s willful violation of the consent decree against Xitter as an assault on the First Amendment.

As it was happening, Musk posted a tweet with nothing more but a period.

This was happening in the period when Xitter was doing more intensive searches to get — for example — the second preservation of Trump’s account from January 12, 2021 and all other accounts associated, via common device, cookie, or IP, with Trump’s own.

In the February 7 hearing, then-Chief Judge Beryl Howell questioned whether Xitter was stalling on this production because Musk “wants to cozy up with the former President, and that’s why you are here?”

But it may be more than that.

Musk is solidly part of the far right culture that might have been involved in any DM lists organizing the insurrection. One of the main reasons he started considering buying Xitter is because of the efforts Xitter took in the aftermath to crack down on violence.

And in the lead-up to Musk’s purchase of Xitter, someone — there’s reason to believe it might be Stephen Miller, who had been interviewed by Jack Smith’s prosecutors in November, before he was interviewed in a privilege-waived interview in April — texted Musk personally to raise the sensitivities of restoring Trump to Xitter.

And one of Musk’s phone contacts appears to bring Trump up. However, unlike others in the filings, this individual’s information is redacted.

“It will be a delicate game of letting right wingers back on Twitter and how to navigate that (especially the boss himself, if you’re up for that),” the sender texted to Musk, referencing conservative personalities who have been banned for violating Twitter’s rules.

The anonymous texter then offers up a suggestion for “someone who has a savvy cultural/political view to be the VP of actual enforcement.” That suggestion: “A Blake Masters type.”

Any delays and obstruction may not just be an effort to protect Trump.

It could be Musk’s effort to protect his own network — and people in DC like Jim Jordan.

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James Comer’s Imaginary Whistleblower Friend, Gal Luft, Was Charged Last November for Lying in that March 2019 Meeting

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I wrote last week that James Comer and Jim Jordan and Jason Smith have been immunizing misconduct and crime in an effort to gin up a conspiracy theory against Joe Biden and his family.

Last night, that effort was demonstrated in spectacular fashion. For months, Comer has been squealing about a secret informant he had who had proof that Joe Biden engaged in graft with CEFC. But then his imaginary whistleblower friend disappeared.

In recent weeks, Comer’s imaginary whistleblower friend was identified as Gal Luft. He disappeared because he skipped bail in Cyprus on an arrest warrant from the US.

Here’s how NYPost’s Hunter propagandist described it:

Gal Luft, the “missing” witness in the House Oversight Committee’s Biden family corruption investigation, has told The Post he is alive and living as a fugitive in an undisclosed location.

The former Israeli Defense Force colonel vanished from Cyprus last month while on bail awaiting extradition to the US on seven charges.

He denies the allegations, which include five charges relating to the Arms Export Control Act of conspiring to sell Chinese products to the United Arab Emirates, Kenya and Libya, as well as a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and of making a false statement.

Luft claims he was forced to skip bail because he is the victim of a political persecution by the US to protect Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and brother Jim.

A few days ago, Luft did a video, naming the prosecutors he met with at that meeting and daring DOJ to unseal his indictment. So they did. The November 1, 2022 indictment, by the same two prosecutors, charges Luft with a range of sanctions violations and serving as a Foreign Agent of China. The FARA violation alleges he insinuated someone who looks a lot like James Woolsey into the Trump Administration on the payroll of CEFC.

The date is important: He was charged before he started regaling dim-witted Chairmen about dirt on Hunter Biden. This prosecution can’t be about retaliation for the conspiracy theories he told Comer — the indictment precedes it all by months.

In any case, the indictment also lays out the false charges count against him.

He was charged with lying at that March 2019 meeting about his own ties to CEFC.

84. On or about March 29, 2019, in the Southern District of New York, Belgium, and elsewhere outside of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States, GAL LUFT, defendant, who is expected to be first brought to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation, to wit, LUFT falsely stated during an interview at the United States Embassy in Brussels, Belgium with federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors, in connection with an investigation being conducted in the Southern District of New York, that LUFT had tried to prevent CEFC China from doing an oil deal with Iran, that LUFT had been excluded from CEFC China meetings with Iranians, and that LUFT did not know of any CEFC China dealings with Iran while he was affiliated with the company–when in fact, including as described above in paragraphs Sixty-Six through Eighty, LUFT personally attended at least one meeting between CEFC China and Iranians and assisted in setting up additional such meetings for the purpose of arranging deals for Iranian oil, and also worked to find a buyer of Iranian oil while concealing its origin.

In other words, well before Luft told Comer anything, he had been charged for lying at the very meeting he’s now claiming he was retaliated for. Comer was duped.

Again.

Given the precedent of Eric Swalwell, who was removed from the House Intelligence Committee after having been cultivated by a Chinese agent, Comer should be stripped of his gavel and referred to the ethics committee.

Instead, Speaker McCarthy is going to let him continue to make a mockery of himself offering to immunize all range of grifters in hopes of finding dirt.

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Republican House Chairmen Are Resorting to Immunizing Crimes to Gin Up Their Fake Scandals

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Even before Abbe Lowell wrote a long letter trying to make this plain for obtuse journalists, it was clear to me that Republican House Chairmen are resorting to immunizing crimes in an attempt to gin up scandals to use against Joe Biden.

It’s right there at the start of Gary Shapley’s testimony.

IRS agents are prohibited from leaking details from private tax returns.

To permit Shapley to do so, the (unnamed) House Ways and Means Majority Counsel first laid out that Shapley was sharing information as a whistleblower, effectively waving a magic wand to let Shapley ignore this prohibition.

MAJORITY COUNSEL 1. Finally, I’d like to note the information discussed here today is confidential. As an IRS agent, I know you understand the significance of our tax privacy laws. Chairman Smith takes our tax privacy laws extremely seriously, and we have worked diligently to make sure that you can provide your disclosures to Congress in a legal manner and with the assistance of counsel.

As I’m sure you know, 26 U.S.C. Section 6103 makes tax returns and return information confidential, subject to specific authorizations or exceptions in the statute.

The statute anticipates and provides for whistleblowers like yourself to come forward and share information with Congress under Section 6103(f)(5).

Specifically, that statute permits a person with access to returns or return information to disclose it to a committee referred to in subsection (f)(1) or any individual authorized to receive or inspect information under paragraph (4)(A) if the whistleblower believes such return or return information may relate to possible misconduct, maladministration, or taxpayer abuse In your position at the IRS, do you or did you have access to return or return information covered by Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code?

Mr. Shapley. Yes.

MAJORITY COUNSEL 1. Have you had access to return information that you believe may relate to possible misconduct, maladministration, or taxpayer abuse?

Mr. Shapley. Yes.

MAJORITY COUNSEL 1. Do you wish to disclose such information to the committee today?

Mr. Shapley. Yes, I do.

And, as Lowell noted, Shapley then answered a bunch of questions, some of which were unrelated to his core allegations. Then, days after the Hunter Biden settlement was out, House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith released Shapley’s transcript, after which Shapley has run to the right wing media to repeat his allegations.

Shapley’s media appearances might constitute a crime. But how is Merrick Garland’s DOJ going to prosecute it, now that the right wing has made Shapley a hero for floating the latest manufactured scandal about Hunter Biden? Hell, Shapley is going to be the cornerstone of an attempt to impeach Garland, not for prosecuting Shapley for breaking the law, but because Garland let a Trump appointee prosecute the President’s son unimpeded.

That’s Garland’s sin: Letting a US Attorney appointed by Donald Trump prosecute the son of the most powerful man in the world, something that should be a remarkable, however sober, feat of due process, but which Republicans want to undermine because a Republican US Attorney didn’t find enough crime for their needs, because they need this story to go on and on and on.

In his letter, which was addressed to Chairman Smith, Lowell also pointed out what was clear to both me and Andrew Prokop: One or both of these IRS so-called whistleblowers may be source(s) for the biennial right wing leak to Devlin Barrett, leaks that always appear just before and are intended to influence an election, leaks that in this case got the IRS team removed from the investigation.

Right wingers seem to like Devlin because he can be trusted to write down what they tell him to write, rather than write what the evidence they describe would indicate. In 2020, for example, Devlin read an interview report, which was improperly redacted, and which made it clear that a right winger on the Mike Flynn case bullied a woman at work and was willing to make claims about which he had no first hand knowledge, and instead of reporting that, Devlin claimed that it indicated misconduct in the Mueller investigation. Last fall, Devlin took evidence that some investigators who were either ignorant of or ignoring known details about the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago and instead tried to preempt investigative conclusions by proclaiming that Trump didn’t exploit the documents he stole for personal gain. In 2016, Devlin wrote the story that would eventually get Andy McCabe fired — yet another scandal that fed itself for years — because he deigned to correct the false claims of people trying to impugn Hillary before the election.

In the case of investigators on the Hunter Biden team, the pre-election leak at issue here, Devlin took a report making clear that investigators had not substantiated any of the foreign influence peddling claims about Hunter Biden and instead let agents use him to pressure David Weiss to charge Hunter in a certain way and do so before the election.

Regurgitating right wing law enforcement claims of scandal credulously is what Devlin seems to do best. “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially later in the campaign season,” seems to be Devlin’s journalistic ethos.

And it’s not just tax law that Devlin’s sources violated by leaking details about the Hunter Biden investigation. As Lowell notes, it may well be grand jury information — something Lowell alleges was also included in Shapley’s disclosures (though about this I’m less convinced).

As I said, if one or both of these men do turn out to be Devlin’s source, then the scandal created here will make it far harder to prosecute them, just as Jim Jordan has been trying to reward several other people — FBI agents — suspected of leaks politicizing the FBI by retroactively claiming they’re whistleblowers after a disciplinary process began.

Then, Republicans are using the confidentiality guaranteed as part of due process to create more scandal. In the wake of the transcript release, Republicans released a letter demanding more testimony from people who would not normally, and won’t now, be able to comply, especially given that this is an active prosecution. The WaPo, which played a central role in this false scandal in the first place, reported that as “news,” without explaining to readers that of course the recipients won’t comply and won’t be able to and shouldn’t be able to, in the same way people investigating Donald Trump should not be and are not running to Congress to describe what they discovered in Melania’s underwear drawer.

This is a stunt. It should be reported as a stunt. Until it is reported as a stunt, Republicans will continue to corrode democracy, using their majority to do nothing but manufacture political dirt.

WaPo offered no context in their report on this manufactured story (including noting that Trump was accorded the same treatment as some of the things being spun as distinct). It’s just pure pavlovian reaction, taking dogshit from Republicans who have made it crystal clear for six months they plan to do nothing — nothing!! — else with their majority than simply manufacture scandals, and packaging up obvious dogshit as if it were news. Notably, there’s also no update (why update a story manufactured for a pre-holiday Friday release?) to note that US Attorney David Weiss (originally identified as an AUSA, which betrays ignorance about a key detail of the way DOJ guards independence and took special measures to do so here) did respond to the letter, predictably saying that he can’t violate the confidentiality that Shapley did, but also reiterating his past claims that he was in charge of the decisions on this case.

Why ruin the clickbait scandal with actual facts?

Then, finally, this manufactured scandal moves onto the next step, in which WaPo claims to be helpless to assess these contested claims — in which several US Attorneys have repeatedly debunked claims about topics that Shapley was not in a position to know — so instead suggests that Lowell’s letter will instead just create a difference of opinion.

Here’s how the WaPo — again, which is one key reason there is a scandal here in the first place — described the manufactured scandal that Republicans have not hid was a manufactured scandal, at all.

Lowell’s letter battling with Congress illustrated that while the president’s son appears close to resolving the federal misdemeanor charges — and this week also settled a separate child support case — he still faces a number of challenges that could yield further headlines. The action is set to move from the courthouse to Capitol Hill, as Republicans delve into Biden’s business dealings and scrutinize the Justice Department’s handling of the criminal investigation.

[snip]

Lowell’s salvo signaled the beginning of what could be a newly intense phase of the battle for public opinion between the president’s son and congressional Republicans.

It’s all about the headlines to the WaPo that wittingly made it headlines in the first place.

Lowell’s letter is not “battling with Congress.” Lowell’s letter is not “battl[ing] for public opinion.

He’s laying out some basic facts, not only answering some questions that have floated for months about Hunter Biden’s conduct, but also pointing out the crime that WaPo of course is not going to report on, because of course they cannot.

Rather than assess the facts, WaPo instead resorts to both-sides glee — this scandal, the one they kicked off, will continue forever!!!

I don’t know what kind of person goes into journalism only to profess utter helplessness to weigh the credibility of various sources, or even whether someone was in a place to know what he is claiming he knows. I don’t know why someone would go into journalism only to willingly treat people like James Comer and Jim Jordan as credible, when even Steve Doocy keeps mocking them for their flimsy claims, when they don’t even try to hide what they’re up to! I don’t know what kind of credulity you would need to immediately treat a request for testimony designed to be impossible as big breaking news.

I do know this: in 2014, some corrupt oligarchs decided to put Joe Biden’s son in a place where, no matter what he did, they could use it to their future advantage. It was stupid for him to take that offer, but let’s all acknowledge it was a set-up from the start. I know that no later than 2018, other corrupt oligarchs, some with clear ties to Russian spooks, started pitching Hunter Biden as a scandal, all wrapped up for Donald Trump’s personal consumption. I know that ever since, Republicans have been milking the addiction recovery of a private citizen relentlessly. I’m not sure a private figure has ever been scrutinized so closely and relentlessly by Congress, including past mob or union corruption investigations that actually served the public interest. I know that Trump’s own tax scandals, Ivanka and Jared’s influence peddling, Trump’s corrupt oligarch ties, Trump’s pardons — including of far bigger tax cheats than Hunter Biden — have gotten nowhere near this level of scrutiny, and almost no one is making the GOP’s base hypocrisy here the story.

I know that Hunter Biden has made a ton of mistakes in his life, and I admire that he is doing the hard work to turn his life around. I can’t imagine trying to do it at a time when millions of people have made him their personal plaything for scandal.

What I don’t understand is how self-respecting people can so willingly play a part of the effort to rip Hunter Biden to shreds solely because Republicans choose to run on wildly hypocritical scandal-mongering rather than policy. You’re letting half-wit bozos manipulate you like children, and you’re positively gleeful about it! Do you not understand — or care — what a grotesque project you’re playing useful idiots for?

Back in 2020, Zeynep Tukfeci wrote what remains one of the most insightful pieces on the way that Republicans have milked Hunter Biden’s legal challenges and addiction for their political ends.

[T]raditional media is, still, terrible at recognizing how these hack-and-leaks are, in fact, as much about blackmailing political candidates as they are about politically relevant allegations.

That’s right, there’s a blatant blackmail attempt right in front of our eyes, and we’re not recognizing it for what it is.

[snip]

Is the Hunter story newsworthy, in the sense that it should be reported on? Yes, of course. Should Joe Biden be asked about some of the allegations? Yes, of course. (Note the some).

But the real questions we need to ask of ourselves are these: what should be asked of Biden? How much media attention should be given, to what parts of the story? What parts of the story are very important,, and not being covered?

This has been an ongoing theme in my work: In the 21st century, it is attention, not speech, that is restricted and of limited quantity that the gatekeepers can control and allocate. In the digital age, especially in countries like ours, there is no effective way of stopping people from publishing or talking about this story through traditional censorship—but there are many ways to regulate how much attention it gets.

[snip]

In 2016, the media got hacked—not in the sense of a computer breach, but that their unreflective habits allowed them to be played. They spent their time giving disproportionate attention to gossip and privacy violations that were illegitimate—ironic, in my view, since they barely covered the newsworthy aspects of that hack.

Before the 2016, election, in a New York Times op-ed, I called this whistle-drowning. Whistle-blowing is designed to focus our attention on something that is being kept from the public, something that is in the public’s interest to know and evaluate. Whistle-drowning is designed to flood the public a flurry of allegations that make it very difficult to concentrate on the important questions facing us.

[snip]

If a story about Hunter Biden deserves attention and not getting it yet, it is this: the Hunter Biden story, as it has happened, is a blatant attempt to blackmail and rattle his father, who is, of course, concerned over his son’s struggles with drug addiction. In that context, and with appropriate diligence, allegations of influence-peddling should be investigated, with proper reporting, not innuendo.

[snip]

The media is still under some illusion that fairness and balance means devoting equal attention to allegations about, and stories potentially damaging to, both candidates–rather than devoting proportional attention to allegations and stories according to their credibility, scale, scope and importance.

She calls this a hack-and-leak (this was before it became clear that the “laptop” was instead an alleged theft and leak), but a better description is just trolling. Indeed, what Comer and Jordan — and now Smith — are using their gavels for is no different than what Microchip, one of the trolls who played an instrumental role in getting people to care about John Podesta’s risotto recipe rather than Donald Trump’s racism and emotional instability in the 2016 election, testified he succeeded in doing in 2016.

Q What was it about Podesta’s emails that you were sharing?

A That’s a good question.

So Podesta ‘s emails didn’t, in my opinion, have anything in particularly weird or strange about them, but my talent is to make things weird and strange so that there is a controversy. So I would take those emails and spin off other stories about the emails for the sole purpose of disparaging Hillary Clinton.

T[y]ing John Podesta to those emails, coming up with stories that had nothing to do with the emails but, you know, maybe had something to do with conspiracies of the day, and then his reputation would bleed over to Hillary Clinton, and then, because he was working for a campaign, Hillary Clinton would be disparaged.

Q So you’re essentially creating the appearance of some controversy or conspiracy associated with his emails and sharing that far and wide.

A That’s right.

Q Did you believe that what you were tweeting was true?

A No, and I didn’t care.

Q Did you fact- check any of it?

A No.

Q And so what was the ultimate purpose of that? What was your goal?

A To cause as much chaos as possible so that that would bleed over to Hillary Clinton and diminish her chance of winning.

It’s about chaos, not facts. Manufactured conspiracy can and is designed to distract from the fact that there’s no there there. It is designed to make voters irrational. It is designed to make democracy fail.

Over time, Shapley’s claims, as well as any misconduct allegations about Devlin’s sources, will be reviewed — but anyone with the most basic understanding of how due process works in the country knows that that’s not going to happen immediately, also knows that Jim Jordan and James Comer are the last people you’d ask to conduct a competent review of anything.

And so the willingness to bow to Comer and Jordan and Smith’s demands that it be immediate and relentless is just willingness to be used, manipulated, to perpetuate the kind of manufactured conspiracy that is designed to kill democracy.

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Two of Jim Jordan’s So-Called Whistleblowers Are Under Investigation for Improper Treatment of FBI Files

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As a number of outlets have covered (Rolling Stone did a particularly good story), Democrats on the Insurrection Protection Committee released a report on the only three witnesses — whom Jim Jordan dubiously claims are whistleblowers — who have yet to be formally deposed by the committee. Not only does the report seriously question their claims to be whistleblowers (in part because they have little, if any, firsthand knowledge of the issues about which they claim to be reporting), but the report shows that all three are pro-insurrection conspiracy theorists.

I’ve already written about one, Stephen Friend, who balked that some Three Percenters with ties to the Oath Keepers and Kremers were being treated as a domestic terror threat.

The other two are George Hill, a recently retired Supervisory Intelligence Analyst whose embrace of false flag theories around January 6 should invite defendants in the Boston area to ask for discovery on his potential involvement in any cases, and Garret O’Boyle, an anti-vaxer who refused to take an investigative step against two apparent January 6 leads but suffered no consequences as a result.

I’d like to point out two functional details of the report: as the report describes, two witnesses are under investigation for mishandling FBI files, and those same two witnesses received payments from Trump-related funds, funds that are likely part of the larger January 6 investigation.

Jim Jordan’s witnesses are alleged to be accessing or sharing information not necessary for their job

First, the substance of this testimony involves records that were either improperly accessed or outside the witnesses’ job description.

Friend, for example, admitted that he was suspended, in part, for improperly removing parts of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide and other internal documents from the FBI system.

Friend has publicly stated that his security clearance was suspended because he improperly accessed material on FBI computer systems, 220 and during his testimony, he admitted that while a Special Agent at the Daytona Beach Resident Agency, he accessed and removed documents marked “For Official Use Only” from a classified FBI system.221 Specifically, he admitted that in September 2022, he accessed the classified system to get “information about the employee handbook and disciplinary processes,” “a flow chart of the way the Inspection Division works and the OPR [Office of Professional Responsibility] process works,” and “copies of the last five OPR quarterlies as a go by for precedent for punishment for my situation.”222 He also accessed and removed elements of the then-current version of the FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.223

Remember that Intercept source Terry Albury did prison time, in part, for taking and leaking the DIOG; so any complaint that Friend is disciplined for this amounts to a complaint that he’s being subjected to the same standard as Albury was.

Similarly, O’Boyle was suspended  last year based on allegations he was leaking to the press.

He applied for and was accepted to a new unit in Virginia and was scheduled to begin work there on September 26, 2022.90 His security clearance was suspended that day.91

O’Boyle told the Committee that his suspension notice stated that “an unidentified person … made an allegation that [he] had been making unprotected disclosures to the media,” and that because of this he was “no longer deemed fit to hold a security clearance.”92 He denied having made such disclosures, and he explained that instead he believed that he had been retaliated against because he “had been coming to Congress… for nearly a year.”93 He described this as being a “weaponization of the [security] clearance” process.94 He has appealed that suspension and, to his knowledge, the appeal process is still ongoing.95

[snip]

O’Boyle did confirm that he corresponded with staff of both Rep. Ron Estes and then-Ranking Member Jim Jordan probably “more than 20” times in 2022 and produced “maybe around” 50 documents to them.104 O’Boyle’s attorney advised him “not to talk about specifics of any of his disclosures to Congress … because those are confidential” and in fact prohibited him from describing the substance of any of his communications with the offices of Rep. Estes or then-Ranking Member Jordan.105

O’Boyle has some unspecified role in material that got forwarded from an eGuardian tip, possibly via Jim Jordan, to Project Veritas. PV’s coverage falsely claimed that the FBI had labeled a group called American Contingency a Domestic Violent Extremism group. In reality, the FBI investigated the group’s founder, Mike Glover, and concluded he did not present a threat.

Nevertheless, Jordan cited PV’s coverage in a complaint to Christopher Wray.

O’Boyle admitted that, even though he had no role in this investigation, he was involved somehow in the dissemination of information about it.

Q Did you know anything about the investigation or what has been described as an investigation into him [Mike Glover] prior to having this letter put in front of you today?

A I did.

Q And what did you know?

A Pretty much mostly what’s in here.

Q And that – how did you learn that information?

BINNALL: Prior to our previous instructions, you can answer to the extent it’s appropriate.

A This is one of the protected disclosures that I made.

Q Okay. And it involves Mr. Glover?

A Uh-huh.

Q But you … were not personally involved in any matters involving Mr. Glover in your capacity as an FBI employee?

A Right. I never investigated him.

Q Okay. And what about American Contingency?

A Correct. No.

Q Okay. So you don’t have firsthand knowledge of anything that the FBI may have – may or may not have done?

BINNALL: You can answer to the extent that it doesn’t violate my previous instructions.

A I mean, I guess, in accordance with my work and my protected disclosure, I had some knowledge of what the FBI had done.

BINNALL: And don’t go any further than that.135

It’s unclear whether this is the leak investigation that led him to lose his security clearance. When asked about it, O’Boyle claimed he was set up by someone irked that he was feeding information to Congress for the prior year, but he did not take that complaint through proper channels, to the DOJ IG or Inspection Division. He refused to tell Democrats on the committee what the allegations about leaking pertain to.

Instead, he went to Donald Trump’s lawyer, Jesse Binnell.

Among the claimed whistleblower complaints O’Boyle shared (the other involves vaccine denialism) is that a WFO Special Agent sent him two leads, one based on an anonymous tip, apparently of January 6 suspects.

But I received a lead about someone based on an anonymous tip, and in law enforcement anonymous tips don’t hold very much weight, especially without evidence that you can corroborate pretty easily.

I wasn’t able to corroborate anything they said, even after speaking with the person they alleged potential criminal behavior of.

While I’m trying to figure all that out, I get another lead from the same agent who sent me that lead.108

He explained that he decided to call the agent who had sent him the lead:

Q [A]fter talking to her, my mind was blown that she was still trying to get me to do some legal process on the guy that I got the anonymous tip on. … And so I ended up writing that all up and denying it. …

When we got off the phone, I was like, “I’m just going to close this.” She still wanted me to do what she wanted me to do in the lead, and I was like, no. I can’t…

Q So, to your knowledge, that case was closed?

A To my knowledge, yeah.109

To suggest that anonymous tips related to January 6 were particular unreliable does not hold up against the record of the investigation. This exchange makes him sound just like Friend — someone who refused to investigate suspected perpetrators of January 6, and is trying to launch a career as a far right celebrity as a result.

Finally, there’s Hill, the retired Supervisory Intelligence Analyst who adheres to conspiracy theories about Ray Epps. He reported to the committee on matters he was not personally involved — what sounds like a tip or Suspicious Activity Report from a financial institution pertaining to January 6.

Hill claimed that a financial institution provided a self-generated customer list to the FBI of its own volition, that the Boston Field Office had been asked to conduct seven preliminary investigations based on that list, and that FBI field offices around the country were also asked to open preliminary investigations—according to Hill, the “least-intrusive method” of investigation—based on that list. 32

As noted, Hill explained that he himself did not handle any cases, so his knowledge of the investigations was limited by his role. Moreover, he revealed that he had no information about the origins of the list, he did not recall which entity uploaded the list to the FBI’s system, and, while he viewed an electronic communication referencing the list in the FBI’s case management system, he never opened or viewed the actual list itself. 33

To the committee, attempting to weigh whether there’s merit to Hill’s allegations, this simply reeks of someone reporting on an investigation he was not part of. But it raises real questions why he was monitoring an investigation he was not part of.

In all three cases, people tangentially involved with the January 6 investigation balked at pretty minor investigative steps. And all three at least accessed information outside their job to do so — and in two cases, there are allegations of improper access.

Trump-related organizations paid two of these witnesses

The allegations that at least some of these men may have improperly accessed investigative information to which they were not privy is all the more alarming given the detail that two of them — Friend and O’Boyle, the two under more formal investigation by the FBI — have received financial benefits from Trump-related organizations.

Witnesses Garret O’Boyle and Stephen Friend both testified that they have received financial support from Patel, with Friend explaining that Patel sent him $5,000 almost immediately after they connected in November 2022. Patel has also promoted Friend’s forthcoming book on social media.

But Patel’s assistance has not just been financial. He arranged for attorney Jesse Binnall, who served as Donald Trump’s “top election-fraud lawyer” when Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, to serve as counsel for Garret O’Boyle. When Committee Democrats asked O’Boyle about this financial connection, Binnall appeared to surprise his client with an announcement that he was now representing O’Boyle pro bono. Committee Democrats infer that Binnall hoped to distance his connection to Patel and others.

Patel also found Friend his next job. Friend now works as a fellow on domestic intelligence and security services with the Center for Renewing America, which is run by former Trump official Russell Vought and is largely funded by the Conservative Partnership Institute, which itself is run by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Senator Jim DeMint.

This is where the Insurrection Protection Committee more directly ties into Trump’s own defense against charges for his coup attempt.

Jesse Binnall is Trump’s lawyer; he was even interviewed as part of obstruction inquiry related to the stolen document investigation. His firm has been receiving hundreds of thousands in payments from Trump’s two PACs, over $130,000 in both November and December. This is some of the spending that Jack Smith is reportedly investigating for misuse of campaign funds. So there’s the real prospect that O’Boyle, under investigation for leaking details of FBI investigations against January 6 and other right wing figures, is being paid from funds raised by lying about voter fraud.

Similarly, Trump’s Save America PAC gave $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute. Again, that payment is almost certainly part of the Jack Smith investigation. As the Democratic report notes, Vought’s organization has been focusing on precisely this false weaponization claim.

CRA’s President, former Trump administration official Russ Vought, has embraced many of the themes laid out by the witnesses George Hill, Garret O’Boyle, and Stephen Friend, and Vought reportedly pushed Republican leadership to establish the Weaponization Subcommittee at the start of the 118th Congress.397 In the forward to CRA’s 2023 budget proposal for the federal government, entitled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government,” Vought wrote,

On the heels of this wrenching national experience is the growing awareness that the national security apparatus itself is arrayed against that half of the country not willing to bend the knee to the people, institutions, and elite worldview that make up the current governing regime. Instead of fulfilling their intended purpose of keeping the American people safe, they are hard-wired now to keep the regime in power. And that includes the emergence of political prisoners, a weaponized, SWAT-swaggering FBI, the charges of “domestic terrorism” and “disinformation” in relation to adversaries’ exercise of free speech, and the reality that the NSA is running a surveillance state behind the protective curtain of “national security.” The immediate threat facing the nation is the fact that the people no longer govern the country; instead, the government itself is increasingly weaponized against the people it is meant to serve.398

Committee Democrats find the connections between Patel, CRA, and CPI deeply concerning. Evidence suggests that these entities were not just a driving force for creating the Weaponization Subcommittee, but are actively propelling its efforts to advance baseless, biased claims for political purposes. This evidence seriously discredits the work done by Committee Republicans and casts further doubt on the reliability of the witnesses they have put forth.

That suggests the prospect that Trump-related figures are violation campaign finance law to fund an NGO to, in turn, pay for FBI agents under investigation for improperly accessing FBI files to spread conspiracy theories about the investigation into Trump and his supporters.

Jordan’s imaginary friends

The combination of alleged leaks with payments from funds raised using false claims of vote fraud makes me even more worried about the witnesses that Jordan won’t let be questioned by the Democrats on the committee.

As the Democratic report notes, Jordan says he has spoken to — and received materials from — dozens of other people claiming tobe whistleblowers.

This partisan investigation, such as it is, rests in large part on what Chairman Jordan has described as “dozens and dozens of whistleblowers… coming to us, talking about what is going on, the political nature at the Justice Department.”1 To date, the House Judiciary Committee has held transcribed interviews with three of these individuals. Chairman Jordan has, of course, refused to name any of the other “dozens and dozens” who may have spoken with him. He has also refused to share any of the documents which these individuals may have provided to the Committee.

Jordan recently sent Christopher Wray a list of 16 Special Agents he demands to interview.

Our need to obtain testimony from FBI employees is vital for carrying out our oversight and for informing potential legislative reforms to the operations and activities of the FBI. From the documentary and testimonial information that we have obtained to date, we have identified several FBI employees who we believe possess information that is necessary for our oversight. Accordingly, we ask that you initially make the following FBI employees available for transcribed interviews with the Committee in the near future:

[16 names redacted]

We anticipate that we may require testimony from additional FBI employees as our oversight continues, and we expect your cooperation in facilitating these future interviews as well.

We are aware that the Justice Department has preemptively indicated that it intends to limit the scope and nature of information available to the Committee as part of our oversight.3
You should know, however, that despite the Department’s assertions to the contrary, congressional committees have regularly received testimony from non-Senate-confirmed and line-level Justice Department employees, including FBI employes [sic], in the past. We expect this past precedent to apply to our oversight as well.

Jordan’s list includes 17 names, including Jack Smith. Eleven of those — including Lisa Page — appear to be related to Mark Meadows’ own investigation of the Russian investigation. Jordan is effectively saying he has the right to interview line agents because Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr let him do so, to undermine the last investigation into Donald Trump.

Jordan provides no basis for needing to interview these people. He doesn’t provide any explanation about how they might provide evidence of improper FBI activity.

According to Breitbart, which claimed to have seen transcripts of the Jordan witnesses interviews, said the 16 people “had been named by the three witnesses in the closed-door interviews.” In other words, three disgruntled FBI agents, two under investigation for wrong-doing, are leading Jim Jordan by the nose to make life hell for their former colleagues.

But those two other details make this different.

These people are being given financial benefits from Trump-related sources, financial benefits that may themselves be part of the crime under investigation.

And at least two of these people — the same two on the grift train — are under investigation for inappropriately removing or leaking sensitive FBI documents.

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Jeremy Liggett: A Little Bitty Fly that Jim Jordan Wants to Propagandize

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Close to the end of a May 17, 2022 interview with the January 6 Committee, alleged Three Percenter Jeremy Liggett claimed that Joe Biden’s DOJ was weaponizing DOJ, “to include the CIA.”

I believe that we should have the First Amendment right. I believe that we should be able to protest at the Capitol. Okay? I don’t believe that you should hit law enforcement officers. Okay? I don’t believe that you should, you know, go into the building unless you’re invited. From some of the stuff that I’ve seen that’s fact, people were invited in. Okay? So let’s put that on the Capitol Police. Right? I think that the Capitol Police could have done a better job securing the building beforehand. I believe that the individuals that struck law enforcement officers or went in the Capitol inside should be charged, you know, for what they did. Okay?

But with saying that, okay, I believe that this administration, the Joe Biden administration, has weaponized the Department of Justice, okay, to include the CIA. Right? And I believe that you guys are — you guys, them, are swinging a big bat at little bitty flies. And it disheartens me, okay, that I am a citizen of a country right now, okay, that is locking people up on misdemeanor charges and keeping them in jail with no bonds, okay, for now months and possibly years. Okay?

The claim that Biden has weaponized DOJ (to include the CIA) is a common myth among the far right, just like the myth — which Liggett also espoused in the interview — that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

In general, the claim that DOJ “is locking people up on misdemeanor charges and keeping them in jail with no bonds … for [] months and possibly years” is also false (though a defendant named Michael Gareth Adams, who was originally arrested in April 2021, just turned himself in Thursday after being on the lam from his January 6 trespassing charge and a Virginia hit-and-run warrant for over a year and he is at least temporarily being jailed pre-trial).

But Liggett’s case will likely be at the center of such false claims if a committee Kevin McCarthy gave the insurrectionist members of Congress to end their opposition to his election as Speaker is passed as part of the Rules package on Monday. (On George Stephanopoulos’ show this morning, Scott Perry, whose phone was seized last summer as part of the investigation, said he’d be a totally appropriate member to sit on the committee.) That’s because the arrests of five of Liggett’s associates as well as a related search of Liggett’s home are almost certainly at issue in events that led to the suspension of an FBI Agent, Stephen Friend, who will be a star witness of the committee.

As Friend described in a declaration shared with Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, he refused to participate in FBI arrests of a group of January 6 suspects charged the week of August 15 and arrested on August 24.

During the week of August 15, 2022, I became aware of imminent arrests of J6 subjects and searches of their respective residences within the FBI’s Jacksonville and Tampa Field Office areas of responsibility. Simultaneous takedowns were scheduled to occur on August 24, 2022. Due to perceived threat levels, an FBI SWAT team was enlisted to arrest one of the arrests.

[snip]

I responded that it was inappropriate to use an FBI SWAT team to arrest a subject for misdemeanor offenses and opined that the subject would likely face extended detainment and biased jury pools in Washington D.C. I suggested alternatives such as the issuance of a court summons or utilizing surveillance groups to determine an optimal, safe time for a local sheriff deputy to contact the subjects and advise them about the existence of the arrest warrant.

[snip]

I told them that I would not participate in any of these operations.

Though Friend has never said it, his complaints amount to a complaint that some January 6 defendants — including those associated with militias — are treated as a domestic terror investigation. In November, a whistleblower complaint Friend submitted was rejected by DOJ’s Office of Special Counsel.

Based on timing, it is virtually certain that the arrest Friend refused to participate in was that of Liggett’s associates in the “B Squad” or “Guardians of Freedom.” They were charged on August 16 and arrested on August 24, three of them in Florida. The only one not charged with felony civil disorder, Tyler Bensch, allegedly posted a picture of himself on January 6 with an assault rifle, which is the kind of thing that would lead the FBI to involve SWAT in an arrest.

There’s no public sign that Liggett has been arrested, though he claimed his house was searched the day that FBI made the other arrests. The case against his associates has been continued twice, once in October and again at the end of December, to allow for plea negotiations and the sharing of grand jury information (which sometimes suggests cooperation), with the next status due on February 14. Contrary to the claims of Friend and Liggett, all the men, even those accused of felonies, were released on personal recognizance.

Any investigation against Liggett, however, may be a different issue. Not only does the complaint against his associates claim he made the travel arrangements for forty men for January 6, not only did he conduct a training in advance on how to come armed to DC, but he’s a key pivot between the militias and the January 6 organizers.

On May 17, in his interview, the committee focused on the ties between Liggett and two people associated with the MAGA Bus Tour, Dustin Stockton and Charles Bowman.

Stockton, you’ll recall, was the organizer who made great PR for himself by telling Rolling Stone that he had objected to the violent rhetoric leading up to January 6.

But on December 30, 2020, the Committee showed in both Liggett’s and Amy Kremer’s depositions, Stockton was made a member of Liggett’s group.

Q Okay. And just if you focus on the first and third name that Bowman sends, Jeremy Liggett and Tarra Nicolle Hernandez. Just remember those. And if we look at exhibit 21, it is not an email you would have seen. I just want to ask whether he talked about it. You see that on December 30th of 2020, this person Tarra Hernandez, she was the name three on thatlist, sends to Mr. Stockton an email that says: ~ Welcome to Three Percenters, guardians of freedom. So, just a week before the event of January 6th, it is telling Mr. Stockton: Welcome to Three Percenters, guardians of freedom. It is an honor to have you on our team patriots. And then, if you look down there, there is a paragraph towards the bottom that says: Please be advised, per the founder, Jeremy Liggett, you have been moved and assigned as a full active member and not a prospect member. ~ Please disregard the mandatory meeting attendance mentioned in the attached documents. Again, just asking, do you recall him, Dustin, bringing up the notion that he joined the Three Percenters just a week before the event on January 6th?

A No. No. Yeah, no.

Stockton may have gotten involved via Charles Bowman, who did security for the Kremers at several of their events.

Q Do you remember who you used for security in December in D.C.

A Yeah. We used RMS Protective Services. And we also hired the — that first security company that we used for November 14th, we hired them again to be security at the Supreme Court.

Q There is a name we have seen, Charles Bowman, does he work with the security? Do you know that gentleman?

A I know, I do know Bowman. He — mean, he worked – I don’t know that he technically works with them, but — like as an employee, but I know he, you know, works with those guys.

Q Okay. So the folks that you used for November and it sounds like December or at least some of them, Bowman somehow worked with them?

A Yeah. I mean Bowman was I don’t how to describe Bowman. He’s like a big brother that’s always you know, it was lie he was always looking out for us and making sure, you know, that we were safe and whatnot.

Stockton was with both Bowman and Liggett at their December event.

Q Okay. I’m going to pull up page 8 of this exhibit. This is an email blast that Dustin Stockton sent out to some people on December 16th. And then he’s talking about being in an elevator with Charles Bowman, with the 3 percent team in D.C.

A I don’t know why they kept using that term.

Q Well, this is on Saturday December 12th and if you remember back from that welcome email, Dustin Stockton is the one who joined your group, but he’s in the back right here giving a thumbs up.

A Yeah. I know Dustin.

Q Oh, you do? Okay. How do you know Dustin Stockton?

A I’ve met him at rallies and things like that. He’s done speaking engagements. He seems like a nice guy.

Q Did he ever invite you to do speaking engagements?

A Yeah, uh-huh.

Q Did you meet up with him on December 12th?

A I’m trying to remember if — I’m sure there’s a possibility I did. Is that picture from December 12th?

Q This picture is from December 12th.

A Oh, yeah. Then I met with him on December 12th

According to Liggett, Bowman had been on the Guardians of Freedom Telegram chat for years.

Q Okay. So Mr. Bowman was on the Guardians of Freedom Telegram chats?

A Yeah, at one point.

Q Was there anybody else from the Women for America First organization that 11 were on those chats?

A No. No.

Q And was Mr. Bowman a member of Guardians of Freedom?

A No. No.

Q Okay. Why was he on the Telegram chats?

A I sent him an invite.

Q And why did you send him an invite if he wasn’t a member?

A Because he wanted to make sure that there was no one in our group that were saying anything bad about anything, because like I told you guys prior to or earlier, that there’s a lot of people — when you have — when you have organizations that try to get into the organization — they’re bad people. Like, from my knowledge, you know, the few times that I — that I spoke with him, I mean, they don’t want to be affiliated with any kind of extremists or anything like that. mean, that’s —

In addition to inviting Liggett to speak on January 5, Bowman also set Liggett up as a “marshal” for the Ellipse event on January 6. This is how Justin Caporale, one of the main organizers, described Liggett’s inclusion.

Do you remember having conversations with Women for America First organizers about having volunteers for the event?

A I don’t remember the specific conversation, but, yes, we would’ve had that conversation.

Q And what’s the job for volunteers at an event like this?

A To act as an extension of kind of the guest management team, you know, provide way finding, be greeters, you know, make sure if someone needs to find a rest room or food or water, that we can help them get to where they need to go.

Q Was there ever an instance where you thought these volunteers might be used for security purposes at the Ellipse event?

Q No, sir.

A Do you know who Charles Bowman is?

Q I do not.

A Do you remember having any conversations with a Charles Bowman?

A It’s very likely that I did, but I don’t — I don’t know or I don’t remember those conversations. His name does not ring a bell to me. I couldn’t pick him out of a line-up.

Q Okay. And, if we go up here, we see that Mr. Bowman ultimately sends a list of, you know, several names, including a Jeremy Liggett, L-i-g-g-e-t-t, and others: Robinson, Hernandez, Clark. For volunteers, do you know if there’s any vetting done for who’s selected to be a volunteer for these kinds of events?

A Most of the time, there’s not vetting done unless that volunteer is required to be in a secure location.

Q And so there would not have been a way for you to know, as the person requesting volunteers, whether any of these individuals were associated with a militia organization or paramilitary group like the Three Percenters or Oath Keepers or that kind of thing?

Q No, sir.

Liggett did serve as a “marshal.” Per his testimony, he in fact did show people where the bathroom was (in addition to escorting VIPs). He complained that he was not fed lunch as part of the deal.

Q Just a quick followup on that, Mr. Liggett. You said you were disappointed a little in your role on January 6th. Could you explain why you were disappointed?

A Yeah. It was boring. First of all, they put me in a pink vest. Okay? And no offense, I know you’re wearing a pink tie, all right, but I’m not the pink kind of guy. So I was in a bright orange and a bright pink vest. It was fricking cold as hell, okay, and they didn’t feed us lunch. And it was boring, completely boring.

Q The speeches or the activity that you were doing?

A Oh, I don’t know. I didn’t get to see the speeches. I was too busy walking people here and there and passing out signs and stuff. So I was disappointed.

[snip]

You guys should put that in your report, that it was cruel and unusual punishment by these rally people by not feeding us all day. So anyway — and you know they had the budget, because they ask for your money all the time, right.

But that’s not the most damning part of his testimony (for which he had no attorney). When specifically asked if he was the Three Percenter group with which fellow Floridian Kelly Meggs had formed an alliance, he denied it, 100% (he also denied that the B Squad was a Three Percenter group or a militia at all, in spite of integrating the Three Percenter logo into their bling).

So Kelly Meggs is also —

A Who’s Kelly Meggs?

Q He is an Oath Keeper from Florida. And so he says: Well, we are ready for the rioters. This week I organized an alliance between Oath Keepers, Florida Three Percenters, and Proud Boys. We have decided to work together and shut this shit down. He posted it on December 19th, after President Trump’s “will be wild” tweet. Do you have —

A I don’t know.

Q Do you know who this Florida Three Percenter group would be?

A No. No. I can 100 percent, without a doubt, tell you that that is not in reference to anything that we were doing before or — well, I can’t say anything after, but before January 6th, there’s no way, no way.

Q Do you have any guess or hint about which Three Percenter group in Florida Mr. Meggs was talking about?

A I mean, my guess would be — if I were an investigator and I was investigating this, I would probably look into the Three Percenter-Originals. That’s probably who I would look at.

But as the J6C report itself explained, Liggett was the guy on the chats with Meggs.

Meggs bragged on Facebook that following President Trump’s December 19th tweet he had formed an alliance between the Oath Keepers, the Florida Three Percenters, and the Proud Boys “to work together to shut this shit down.”359 On December 19th, Meggs called Enrique Tarrio and they spoke for more than three minutes.360 Three days later, Meggs messaged Liggett, echoing his excitement about the December 19th tweet and specifically referencing the seat of Congress: “He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!!”361 Liggett said “I will have a ton of men with me” and Meggs replied that “we have made Contact [sic] with PB [Proud Boys] and they always have a big group. Force multiplier. . . . I figure we could splinter off the main group of PB and come up behind them. Fucking crush them for good.”362 Aside from Meggs, Stewart Rhodes brought in at least one local militia leader363 and Three Percenters into the Oath Keepers January 6th planning chats that came about following President Trump’s tweet.364

Liggett denied being the guy involved with Meggs, but he did not deny knowing Enrique Tarrio. Which is interesting for a stray reference in the deposition of Samuel Armes, the head of the Florida crypto currency association who, in the interest of war gaming possible threats, wrote the first draft of a document that came to be known as the Winter Palace document. After receiving the document from Armes, Tarrio’s girlfriend shared it with the head of the Proud Boys. Tarrio seems to have referenced in the context of the successful occupation of the Capitol.

J6C asked Armes if he knew Liggett, who they suggested had some association with the document.

I think then — actually, do you know someone named Jeremy Liggett in Florida?

A L-i-g

Q Yeah, L-i-g-g-e-t-t

A Jeremy Liggett. To the best of my recollection, I have never heard that name in my life. Jeremy Liggett? Is he into cryptocurrency?

Q I’m not sure. But it was just a question based on this document, so–

No, I’ve never heard of him in my life.

A Okay.

The document was shared around as a Google doc, so the people who accessed it would be accessible to investigators. But Liggett, even more than the Proud Boys, appears to be a fan of the 1776 invocation, which the document used.

Liggett says that the people who are being prosecuted — like five of his associates (four of whom are accused of pressuring cops in the Tunnel, the worst of the fighting) — are just “little bitty flies” who shouldn’t be prosecuted. He claims to believe false claims about the election, about the treatment of Jan 6 defendants, and about FBI more generally.

And that is the point of this committee. It is the reason why, under the Mueller investigation precedent, DOJ’s inability to share grand jury information with Congress won’t stop this committee from being a problem.

Jim Jordan and Scott Perry want to use their committee to claim that men like Liggett, someone who ties the Ellipse event organizers directly to the worst of the violence, should not be investigated. They want to magnify the complaints of people like Friend, who call a DC-led investigation those who attacked the Capitol an abuse of FBI authority.

The reason why is clear — because the existence of someone like Liggett, who was escorting VIPs even as he was paying for travel of men involved in the tunnel fight — makes their own role in the insurrection more problematic. This committee is not about overseeing the FBI. It’s about trying to spin their own attack on the Constitution as something else than it was.

Update: Added the chat between Liggett and Meggs.

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Welcome to the Jim Jordan and James Comer Look the Other Way Committees, Brought to You By Access Journalism

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In an article published 112 days before the November election, Politico included this sentence about all the investigations Republicans planned to conduct if they won the House.

Republicans on the [Oversight] committee plan to hold high-profile probes into Hunter Biden’s dealings with overseas clients, but they also want to hone in on eliminating wasteful government spending in an effort to align the panel with the GOP’s broader agenda.

Politico’s Jordain Carney did not note the irony of planning, almost four months before the election, an investigation into foreign efforts to gain influence by paying the then Vice President’s son years ago, next to a claim to want to eliminate wasteful spending. He just described it as if yet another investigation into Hunter Biden, even as DOJ continued its own investigation, wasn’t an obvious waste of government resources.

Politico’s Olivia Beavers didn’t point that out either in a 1,400-word profile in August on James Comer entitled, “Meet the GOP’s future king of Biden investigations,” the kind of sycophantic profile designed to ensure future access, known as a “beat sweetener.” (Beaver is currently described as a Breaking News Reporter; this profile was posted 3 days after the search of Mar-a-Lago.) She did acknowledge that these investigations were, “directing the party’s pent-up frustration and aggression toward Democrats after years in the minority,” not any desire to make government work or eliminate wasteful spending. But she nevertheless allowed Comer and his colleagues to claim that an investigation into Joe Biden’s son could be credible — that it would somehow be more credible than the bullshit we expect from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

He’s long been known on both sides of the aisle as a sharp and affable colleague, and has the tendency to lean in with a hushed voice, almost conspiratorially, only to crack a well-timed joke that’s often at his own expense. Beyond that personal appeal, though, Comer emphasized it’s his priority to ensure the oversight panel’s work remains “credible.”

That’s a tricky path to tread, given his party’s investigative priorities are still subject to the whims of former President Donald Trump as well as an increasingly zealous conservative base and media apparatus. But Comer’s particularly well-suited to the task, according to more than two dozen House Republicans interviewed. And if he manages to do it right, it could provide a launching pad to higher office — Comer is not discounting a future bid for Senate or Kentucky governor, though that likely wouldn’t occur until after his four remaining years leading the panel.

“I’m not going to be chasing some of these right-wing blogs and some of their conspiracy theories,” Comer told POLITICO in an hour-long interview conducted in a rented RV trailer that his campaign had parked at the picnic. “We’ll look into anything, but we’re not going to declare a probe or an investigation unless we have proof.”

[snip]

And though Comer has said Hunter Biden would likely get subpoenaed in the event of a declined invitation to the committee next year, he doesn’t want to appear trigger-happy with issuing subpoenas, either.

“This isn’t a dog-and-pony show. This isn’t a committee where everybody’s gonna scream and be outraged and try to make the witnesses look like fools,” he said, before nodding at House Democrats’ past probes of the Trump campaign and Russian election interference. “Unlike Adam Schiff, we’re gonna have something concrete, substantive on Hunter Biden or I’m not going to talk about Hunter Biden.”

Beavers didn’t mention the platitudes she included in her August article when she reported, yesterday, on the press conference Comer and Jim Jordan have scheduled for today, less than 24 hours after the 218th House seat for Republicans was called, to talk about the investigation into Hunter Biden.

Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and James Comer (R-Ky.) discussed plans to investigate politicization in federal law enforcement and Hunter Biden’s business affairs.

“We are going to make it very clear that this is now an investigation of President Biden,” Comer said, referring to a planned Republican press conference Thursday about the president and his son’s business dealings.

Beavers has let Comer forget the claim, which she printed as good faith in August, that Comer was “not going to declare a probe or an investigation unless we have proof.”

Olivia. Comer lied to you in August. As a journalist, you might want to call that out.

There is no functioning democracy in which the opposition party’s first act after winning a majority should be investigating the private citizen son of the President for actions taken three to six years earlier, particularly not as a four year criminal investigation into Hunter Biden — still overseen by a Trump appointee — continues.

There is no sane argument for doing so. Sure, foreign countries paid Hunter lots of money as a means to access his father. But according to an October leak from FBI agents pressuring to charge the President’s son (one that Comer pitched on Fox News), which claimed there was enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden for tax and weapons charges but which made no mention of foreign influence peddling charges, that foreign influence peddling apparently doesn’t amount to a crime. Nothing foreign countries did with Hunter Biden is different from what Turkey did with Mike Flynn, Ukraine did with Paul Manafort, Israel did with George Papadopoulos, and multiple countries did with Elliot Broidy. Jim Jordan and James Comer not only had no problem with that foreign influence peddling, they attacked the FBI for investigating them.

If James Comer and Jim Jordan really cared about foreign influence peddling, they would care that, since leaving the White House, the Trump family has entered into more than $3.6 billion of deals with Saudi Arabia ($2 billion to Jared’s investment fund, a $1.6 billion real estate development in Oman announced the day before Trump’s re-election bid, and a golf deal of still-undisclosed value; Judd Legum has a good post summarizing what we know about this relationship). Given that the Oversight panel under Carolyn Maloney already launched an investigation into Jared’s fund — like Hunter Biden’s funding, notable because of the obvious inexperience of the recipient — Comer could treat himself and American taxpayers with respect by more generally investigating the adequacy of protection against foreign influence, made more acute in the wake of the opinion in the Steve Wynn case that guts DOJ’s ability to enforce FARA.

With today’s press conference, you will see a bunch of journalists like Olivia Beavers treating this as a serious pursuit rather than pointing out all the hypocrisy and waste it entails as well as the lies they credulously printed during the election about it. You will see Beavers rewarding politicians for squandering government resources to do this, rather than calling them out for the hypocrisy of their actions.

Maybe, if Comer becomes Governor of Kentucky, Beavers will have the inside track on access to him. I guess then it will have been worth it for her.

This Hunter Biden obsession has been allowed to continue already for three years not just because it has been Fox’s non-stop programming choice to distract from more important matters, but because journalists who consider themselves straight journalists, not Fox propagandists, choose not to call out the rank hypocrisy and waste of it all.

For any self-respecting journalist, the story going forward should be about how stupid and hypocritical all this is, what a waste of government resources.

We’re about to find out how few self-respecting journalists there are in DC.

Update: NBC journalist Scott Wong’s piece on the GOP plans for investigations was similarly supine. The funniest part of it is that it treated a 1,000 page “report,” consisting almost entirely of letters Jordan sent, as if it were substantive. I unpacked the details NBC could have disclosed to readers here.

Meanwhile, this Carl Hulse piece doesn’t disclose to readers that Marjory Taylor Greene’s investigation into the jail conditions of January 6 defendants, besides being an attempt to protect potential co-conspirators, also is falsely premised on claims that the January 6 defendants are treated worse (and not better) than other defendants as well as false claims that many of the pre-trial detainees are misdemeanants.

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The FBI Believed Michael Sussmann Was Working for the DNC … Until Andrew DeFilippis Coached Them to Believe Otherwise

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Thanks to those who’ve donated to help defray the costs of trial transcripts. Your generosity has funded the expected costs of transcripts. But if you appreciate the kind of coverage no one else is offering, we’re still happy to accept donations. This coverage reflects the culmination of eight months work. 

There’s accumulating evidence that at least some people — including some key decision-makers — believed the FBI believed that the Alfa Bank tip came from the DNC — and that Andrew DeFilippis has engaged in a lot of coaching to try to make that evidence go away.

The first time FBI Agent Ryan Gaynor testified to John Durham about the investigation into the Alfa Bank anomaly in October 2020, he told prosecutors that the DNC was the source of the allegation.

Q. Okay. So in your first meeting with the government, you — this is October of 2020, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. You told them multiple times that you believed that the Democratic National Committee was the source of the allegations of connections between Alfa-Bank and Russia, correct?

A. Correct, which was wrong.

Q. Okay. But you said that you thought the Democratic party itself was who provided the information, correct?

A. I did say that in the meeting.

That’s even what he has written down in a briefing document he kept in Fall 2016.

At the end of that October 2020 interview, prosecutors threatened Gaynor with prosecution.

His more recent testimony, starting for the first time on May 13, was that Sussmann was representing himself. The reason he now remembers that to be true goes to the heart of Durham’s materiality: it would have mattered if Sussmann was representing the DNC, so he must have been representing himself.

Q. Okay. I want to ask you, first, about testimony that you gave today where you said that when Mr. Moffa told you that Mr. Sussmann was a DNC attorney, you said, “I understood that to mean that he had been affiliated with the Democratic party but that he had come representing himself on the Alfa-Bank allegations.” Do you remember giving that testimony?

A. That was my take-away.

Q. And you gave that testimony that I just read?

A. Yes; that he was a DNC attorney, but that my take-away from that discussion was that he wasn’t there representing the DNC.

Q. When you were asked, “When Mr. Moffa said Mr. Sussmann was an attorney for the DNC, what impression did you come away with?” what did you understand that to mean? And your answer was: “I understood that to mean that he had been affiliated with the Democratic party, but that he had come representing himself,” right?

A. So he’s affiliated with the Democratic party because he was a DNC attorney.

Q. And your impression was he had come representing himself?

A. My take-away from that meeting, what I recall, is that I did not believe that he was there representing the DNC specifically because, had he been, that would have been information that would have impacted it.

This is a tautology: If Sussmann had been representing the DNC it would have mattered so it must be the case that Gaynor believed he was not representing the DNC. It also happens to be the central argument of DeFilippis’ materiality claim.

Meanwhile, Scott Hellman — Durham’s star cyber witness — received a text from his boss, Nate Batty (with whom he compared notes before his first interview with Durham), referring to the white paper as a “DNC report” on September 21, 2016, two days after Jim Baker received the materials.

Michael Sussmann lawyer Sean Berkowitz asked Hellman about that the other day. At first, Hellman expressed surprise about that text.

Q. All right. And then, with respect to Stranahan, he asks you and Nate to write a report about the — write a summary of the DNC report. Correct? That’s what it says?

A. That’s what it says in this chat, yes.

Q. And did you understand, sir, that the information had come from a DNC, meaning Democratic National Committee, source?

A. I did not understand that, no.

Q. Did you know what Nate Batty knew about it?

A. I don’t think he knew anything about it.

Q. Did you call up Tim and say, what a second. This is a DNC report? That’s political motivation.

A. No.

Q. Didn’t do anything or it didn’t occur to you?

A. The first time I saw this was two years ago when I was being interviewed by Mr. DeFilippis, and I don’t recall ever seeing it. I never had any recollection of this information coming from the DNC. I don’t remember DNC being a part of anything that we read or discussed.

Q. Okay. When you say, the first time you saw it was two years ago when you met with Mr. DeFilippis, that’s not accurate. Right? You saw it on September 21st, 2016. Correct?

A. It’s in there. I don’t have any memory of seeing it.

Later in Berkowitz’ cross-examination he returned to the text. He asked how it could be that a white paper from a DNC lawyer could be referred to as a DNC report.

Q. And although you were surprised to see it today, it appears that at least somebody, such as Mr. Batty was aware and you were aware that somebody was calling this white paper a DNC report. Correct?

A. I was not aware that anybody was calling it a DNC report, and I don’t believe Mr. Batty knew that either.

Q. But you saw the link message. Right?

A. I did see the link message, yes.

Berkowitz asked Hellman how it could be that he would see a reference to a DNC report and not take from that it was a DNC report. Hellman describes “the only explanation that … was discussed” — which is that it was a typo.

Q. What’s your explanation for it?

A. I have no recollection of seeing that link message. And there is — have absolutely no belief that either me or Agent Batty knew where that data was coming from, let alone that it was coming from DNC. The only explanation that popped or was discussed was that it could have been a typo and somebody was trying to refer to DNS instead of DNC.

Q. So you think it was a typo?

A. I don’t know.

Q. When you said the only one suggesting it — isn’t it true that it was Mr. DeFilippis that suggested to you that it might have been a typo recently?

A. That’s correct.

Q. Okay. You didn’t think that at the time. Right?

A. I did not. I had never seen it or had any memory of seeing it ever before it was put in front of me.

With some prodding, Hellman admitted that when he referred to “discussing explanations,” he meant doing so with Andrew DeFilippis. This exchange was, quite literally, Berkowitz eliciting Hellman to provide an answer that DeFilippis thought up — one necessary to sustain DeFilippis’ narrative — without, at first, admitting it was DeFilippis’ opinion of what the truth must be.

So after DeFilippis threatened Gaynor with prosecution, he came to remember something other than what the note, tying the white paper to DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann, that he used to “refresh his memory” said.

And when faced with the possibility, two years or maybe six after the fact, that Scott Hellman’s epically shitty analysis of the white paper could have been influenced by being told that it was a DNC white paper, Hellman offered up the explanation that DeFilippis offered him.

At least twice, then, under coaching from Durham’s lead prosecutor, key witnesses have come to believe something other than what the documentary evidence suggests.

The fact that DeFilippis has twice coached witnesses to deny any understanding at FBI that this was a DNC tip — whether it was a DNC tip or not — is really telling. That’s because DeFilippis has to try to pitch a nearly unsustainable position: how his single witness to Sussmann’s alleged crime, Jim Baker, can in 2016 have told Bill Priestap the following:

Q. I think you testified yesterday that by this time you were at least generally aware that Mr. Sussmann represented the DNC in connection with hacks; is that right?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And what, if anything, did you say to Mr. Priestap about that?

A. I think I told him like, okay, this is who Michael is. He’s represented the Democratic party in the Russian hack that we were also investigating and/or the Hillary Clinton Campaign. So just, again, to orient Bill to who Michael was. I mean, that’s a serious credential in terms of being a cyber security expert. And then to explain: But in this case he said he’s not appearing on behalf of them. In this case he’s coming in as a good citizen.

And then, in 2018, have told Jim Jordan the following:

Q. Mr. Jordan then says: “And he was representing a client when he brought this information to you or just out of the goodness of his heart? Someone gave it to him and he brought it to you?”

A. In that first interaction, I don’t remember him specifically saying that he was acting on behalf of a particular client.

Q. Did you know at the time that he was representing the DNC in the Clinton campaign?

A. I can’t remember. I had learned that at some point. I don’t, as I said — as I think I n said last time, I don’t specifically remember when I learned that — excuse me — so I don’t know that I had that in my head when he showed up in my office. I just can’t remember.

Q. Did you learn that shortly thereafter if you didn’t know it at the time?

And then testify last week this way.

Q. Okay. Number two, did you know on the September 19th, 2016 meeting that Mr. Sussmann had been representing Hillary For America’s campaign and the DNC in connection with the hack investigation. Did you know that on September 19th when he met with you?

A. Sitting here today, I think the answer is, yes, I did know that by that point in time.

Q. I’ve written down, “yes, DNC and HFA and hack”. I want to be really clear. You’re not saying that he said that in the meeting. correct?

A. Correct.

Q. And you’re not saying he said he was there on behalf of them? You’re just saying that in your mind you knew that he had been acting as a lawyer for those two entities in connection with the hack. Correct?

It’s not just a question of whether Baker will be a credible witness, though his wildly changing claims about the DNC are among the reasons why his testimony is not credible.

It’s also that Durham wants to point to Sussmann’s failure, a year earlier in a Congressional hearing, to offer up his ties with the Democrats as proof he was lying. But Durham is treating Baker’s failure to do so in the same situation as an innocent mistake. For his single witness to be credible, DeFilippis has to find a way to excuse Baker’s failure to offer that up in a far more direct question while pointing to Sussmann’s failure to offer it up as proof of guilt.

He has to do so to defend his prosecutorial decisions, too. Given how much stake DeFilippis has placed on Baker sharing with Priestap that he knew Sussmann represented the Democrats, it makes it far less credible that Baker didn’t knowingly lie to Jordan. Especially given the way Baker responded to a Berkowitz question, suggesting that perhaps he hadn’t been truthful with Jordan, but instead was “careful.”

Q. And when you gave voluntary information to Congress, you understood that you were under oath?

A. I don’t think I was under oath, but I understood that it’s a crime to make false statements to Congress.

Q. So you tried to be as careful as you could. Correct?

A. I tried to be as careful as I could in that environment, yes, sir.

Q. You tried to be as truthful as you could?

A. (No response)

Q. Tried to be as truthful as you could?

A. Yes, sir.

Sussmann’s team is going to argue that there are a long list of people against whom there is far better evidence for false statements or perjury charges than him, with the single difference being that the other people were willing to tell the storytale DeFilippis is using prosecutorial resources to tell. And the first person on that list — it makes me sick to my stomach to say — is Jim Baker.

Finally, it’s a matter of materiality. DeFilippis has to find a way for it to be the case that his single witness knew when he met with Sussmann that Sussmann was a DNC lawyer (because Bill Priestap’s notes reflect that), but didn’t view that to be material to everything that happened next.

And the only way to sustain that rickety narrative is to ensure that no one else — not even the people using documentary proof reflecting a belief that this was a DNC report to refresh faded memories — understood that the white paper came from the DNC.

Thus far, Sussmann’s cross-examination has elicited evidence that at least three witnesses changed their testimony after interviews with DeFilippis, adopting a “memory” that conflicts with the documentary record with regards to whether the FBI believed the white paper to be associated with the DNC.

OTHER SUSSMANN TRIAL COVERAGE

Scene-Setter for the Sussmann Trial, Part One: The Elements of the Offense

Scene-Setter for the Sussmann Trial, Part Two: The Witnesses

The Founding Fantasy of Durham’s Prosecution of Michael Sussmann: Hillary’s Successful October Surprise

With a Much-Anticipated Fusion GPS Witness, Andrew DeFilippis Bangs the Table

John Durham’s Lies with Metadata

emptywheel’s Continuing Obsession with Sticky Notes, Michael Sussmann Trial Edition

Brittain Shaw’s Privileged Attempt to Misrepresent Eric Lichtblau’s Privilege

The Methodology of Andrew DeFilippis’ Elaborate Plot to Break Judge Cooper’s Rules

Jim Baker’s Tweet and the Recidivist Foreign Influence Cheater

That Clinton Tweet Could Lead To a Mistrial (or Reversal on Appeal)

John Durham Is Prosecuting Michael Sussmann for Sharing a Tip on Now-Sanctioned Alfa Bank

Apprehension and Dread with Bates Stamps: The Case of Jim Baker’s Missing Jencks Production

Technical Exhibits, Michael Sussmann Trial

Jim Baker’s “Doctored” Memory Forgot the Meeting He Had Immediately After His Michael Sussmann Meeting

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Members of Congress Subpoena Members of Congress

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The January 6 Committee just issued subpoenas to five of their colleagues.

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was in communication with President Trump before, during, and after the attack on January 6th. Mr. McCarthy was also in communication with other members of the White House staff during the attack and in the days before and after January 6th concerning the events at the Capitol. Mr. McCarthy also claimed to have had a discussion with the President in the immediate aftermath of the attack during which President Trump admitted some culpability for the attack.

Representative Scott Perry was directly involved with efforts to corrupt the Department of Justice and install Jeffrey Clark as acting Attorney General. In addition, Mr. Perry had various communications with the White House about a number of matters relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation, including allegations that Dominion voting machines had been corrupted.

Representative Jim Jordan was in communication with President Trump on January 6th and participated in meetings and discussions throughout late 2020 and early 2021 about strategies for overturning the 2020 election.

Representative Andy Biggs participated in meetings to plan various aspects of January 6th and was involved with plans to bring protestors to Washington for the counting of Electoral College votes. Mr. Biggs was involved in efforts to persuade state officials that the 2020 was stolen. Additionally, former White House personnel identified Mr. Biggs as potentially being involved in an effort to seek a presidential pardon for activities connected with the former President’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Representative Mo Brooks spoke at the rally on January 6th, encouraging rioters to “start taking down names and kicking ass.” In addition, Mr. Brooks has publicly described conversations in which the former President urged him to work to “rescind the election of 2020” and reinstall Mr. Trump as President. The Select Committee also has evidence that Mr. Brooks’s staff met with members of Vice President Pence’s staff before January 6th and conveyed the view that the Vice President does not have authority to unilaterally refuse to count certified electoral votes.

I suspect such a subpoena only conceivably has a chance in hell of working with Kevin McCarthy (or possibly Mo Brooks if he can do it quietly, given how Trump has targeted him). The rest of genuine criminal liability they’d like to use Speech and Debate to dodge.

But this provides a way for the January 6 Committee to package up what evidence they have against these five in such a way as to feed it to DOJ.

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Jeffrey Rosen Targeted Project Veritas’ Office Manager Long before Merrick Garland Targeted James O’Keefe

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According to a recent NYT story, Project Veritas paid $50,000 to a former Mike Pence lawyer and House staffer, Mark Paoletta, to get members of Congress to push back against the criminal investigation into the rat-fucking organization.

After the criminal investigation into Project Veritas became public last fall, a prominent Republican lawyer who was lobbying on behalf of the organization and Mr. O’Keefe briefed a group of congressional Republicans on the case, to urge them to try to persuade the Justice Department to back off the investigation because the group did nothing wrong, according to a person briefed on the matter.

[snip]

Lobbying filings show that Mr. Paoletta was paid $50,000 during the last two months of last year to inform members of Congress about the F.B.I. raid on Mr. O’Keefe.

That’s really telling. After Project Veritas won a fight to get a Special Master appointed to review records seized in a raid on James O’Keefe and others last year, they balked at DOJ’s effort to make them foot the entire bill, telling a tale about their gritty “upstart journalism.”

The government argues that an upstart journalism organization with a current annual budget that recently hovers around $22 million is better suited to fund Special Master proceedings than a goliath arm of the U.S. government featuring a long-standing bloated budget, currently at $31.1 billion.2 The government’s demand that a press entity bear considerable financial burdens to defend against the government’s unconstitutional attack on a free press is corrosive to the First Amendment. The exercise of First Amendment rights is a guaranteed right, not a luxury subject to taxation at the government’s whim. Imposing daunting costs during the pendency of an investigation meant to resolve important First Amendment questions inflicts its own kind of abridgement. When exorbitant costs may be levied against the media simply for acting in accord with settled First Amendment precedent, the process becomes the punishment.

[snip]

For Project Veritas, an upstart journalism organization, each dollar spent on Special Master fees and expenses is a dollar not spent publishing news stories or investigating leads.

They won that fight and thus far, Special Master Barbara Jones has billed almost $40,000, which will be split 50-50.

It turns out, though, that PV’s claim that they would spend every cent saved on Special Master fees on what they euphemistically call “news stories,” was false. Instead, they were spending it to get Chuck Grassley (whose former top staffer Barbara Ledeen used to have close ties to PV), Jim Jordan, and other of the most corrupt Republicans to write letters to Merrick Garland complaining about “brazen and inconsistent standards” and “partisan or other improper motive.” (As we’ll see, it turns out they should have been complaining to Jeffrey Rosen.)

What’s interesting is those letters that Barbara Ledeen’s former boss and Jim Jordan and Ron Johnson signed all suggest they took their understanding of PV’s actions entirely from the public record. They cite news articles.

Congress was told that Don Jr was involved before the stupidest Republicans wrote to complain

Not so, as reported by the NYT. Paoletta apparently knew — and shared — details that had not yet been reported by the press. Paoletta knew of a September 6, 2020 fundraiser held by Elizabeth Fago and attended by Don Jr where Ashley Biden’s diary — allegedly stolen — was passed around.

In August, Ms. Harris reached out to Robert Kurlander, a friend who had been sentenced to 40 months in prison in the 1990s on a federal fraud charge and had expressed anti-Biden sentiments online, to say she had found the diary. The two believed they could sell it, allowing Ms. Harris to help pay for the lawyers representing her in the custody dispute.

New details from interviews and documents have further fleshed out what happened next. Mr. Kurlander contacted Elizabeth Fago, the Trump donor who would host the fund-raiser attended by Donald Trump Jr. When first told of the diary, Ms. Fago said she thought it would help Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the election, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Richard G. Lubin, a lawyer for Ms. Fago, declined to comment.

On Sept. 3, Ms. Fago’s daughter alerted Project Veritas about the diary through its tip line.

Three days later, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander — with the diary in hand — attended the fund-raiser attended by Donald Trump Jr. at Ms. Fago’s house in Jupiter, Fla., to see whether the president’s re-election campaign might be interested in it. While there, Mr. Kurlander showed others the diary. It is unclear who saw it.

It appears that Paoletta had originally been told — and told members of Congress — that Don Jr advocated calling the FBI, only to follow up to express uncertainty about that point.

The lawyer, Mark Paoletta, said that upon learning about the diary at the fund-raiser, Donald Trump Jr. showed no interest in it and said that whoever was in possession of it should report it to the F.B.I. But shortly thereafter Mr. Paoletta, who had served as Vice President Mike Pence’s top lawyer in the White House, called back the congressional Republicans to say he was unsure whether the account about Donald Trump Jr.’s reaction was accurate.

We know from past history, Don Jr doesn’t call the FBI when offered dirt on an opponent. Instead, he says “If it’s what you say, I love it, especially closer to the election.”

Project Veritas was willing to pay $50,000 to tell members of Congress that this crime might impact powerful fundraisers (Fago was named on the PV warrants) and the former President’s son, but didn’t want to foot the full bill for a Special Master.

SDNY always gets emails before they do an overt search

The fact that PV told members of Congress that this involved the former President’s son explains why PV is so pissed upon discovering what has been obvious to me from the start: That before obtaining warrants to seize James O’Keefe’s phones, DOJ had first obtained emails that provided the evidence to get the warrants for his phones.

The Government disclosed many of its covert investigative steps in the ex parte context of the Affidavit, including each email search warrant it had obtained pursuant to the SCA in this investigation.

This is precisely what SDNY did with Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani, and it’s what Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave was talking about when she referred to the “considerable detail” in the affidavit.

Third, the Court has reviewed the Materials in camera and observes that they contain considerable detail about individuals who may have already provided information to the Government—voluntarily or involuntarily—such that unsealing of the Materials “could subject [them] to witness tampering, harassment, or retaliation.”

PV revealed that in a motion asking Judge Analisa Torres to claw back this information.

The government apparently disdains the free press, and candor to the Court and opposing counsel. In light of the government’s violations of Project Veritas’s First Amendment, journalistic, and attorney-client privileges, as well as the government’s attendant failure to disclose these matters before or during the litigation of our motion for appointment of a Special Master, Project Veritas requests that this Court, pursuant to its supervisory powers, inherent authority, and Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(g), enter an Order requiring the government to:

(1) immediately halt access, review, and investigative use of Project Veritas materials that the government obtained from Microsoft (cf. November 12, 2021 Order acknowledging pause in government extraction and review of James O’Keefe’s mobile devices);

(2) inform this Court and counsel whether the government used a filter team to conduct a review of the data it seized from Microsoft on the basis of both attorney-client and journalistic privileges;

(3) inform this Court and counsel of the identities of any prosecutors, agents, or other members of the investigative team who have reviewed any data seized from Microsoft, what data they reviewed, and when they reviewed it; and

(4) disclose to the Court and counsel the identity of any other third party to which the government issued demands for Project Veritas data under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”) with or without a non-disclosure order.

This interim relief is necessary to avoid compounding the harm to Project Veritas caused by the government’s violations of law and principles of candor and to enable Project Veritas to seek appropriate further relief.

I’ve put the dates of these warrants below; those dates and targets totally undermine everything PV has been complaining about.

PV has been complaining about “journalists” when DOJ first found evidence of a crime from their office manager

That’s because the first person targeted at PV was their “human resources” manager; that may be a reference to Jennifer Kiyak, who is named in the warrant targeting O’Keefe but listed on Project Veritas Exposed as PV’s Office Manager.

An office manager would have been the one to arrange payment of $40,000, and by getting her emails and — given that the FBI first targeted her in a subscriber record, may have been traced backwards from contacts with Ms. Biden — DOJ probably obtained plenty of evidence that the “journalists” had done far more than journalism.

Moreover, the first warrant to get “journalists'” emails was obtained while Jeffrey Rosen was Acting Attorney General, and all but one of these warrants for email (the one against O’Keefe) were obtained before Merrick Garland was confirmed. All of these email warrants were obtained before Garland imposed his new media guidelines, guidelines that Billy Barr’s DOJ never adhered to.

In other words, PV has been complaining for months that Merrick Garland targeted “journalists” when in fact they should be complaining that Jeffrey Rosen targeted someone who would, in no way, under any administration, be covered by media guidelines.

DOJ tells PV to hold their complaints until they are indicted

DOJ’s response to PV’s wails (which I wrote up in more detail here) is genuinely hysterical. They say, over and over, that PV can wait until they’re indicted to challenge these warrants.

Movants can raise these issues if there is an indictment filed charging them in connection with the investigation,

[snip]

The materials referenced by the Movants were obtained pursuant to duly authorized legal process that are not subject to challenge by the Movants in this pre-indictment stage.

[snip]

Second, the Movants seek pre-indictment discovery regarding the process used to review the materials referenced by the Movants, the identities of those who participated in that process, and the identities of third parties on which other legal process may have been served in the course of the investigation.

[snip]

To the extent the Movants may potentially be entitled at some point to the disclosures that they seek, any such entitlement would only be triggered, if at all, by the filing of an indictment charging them in connection with the investigation, and not before.2 In the event of a criminal proceeding, as Judge Oetken noted, they would have the opportunity to litigate any privilege or suppression issues, but they cannot do so during the pre-indictment phase of an ongoing grand jury investigation.

They acknowledge that PV would love to know who or what else has been investigated.

Of course, the Movants, like any subjects of a federal grand jury investigation, would like to know about every investigative step the Government is taking during the course of a criminal investigation, but that is not the law, for good reason.

No doubt so would Don Jr.

It also suggested there are other aspects of this investigation that DOJ is keeping secret.

The Government refrained from publicly disclosing details of the investigation, and continues to do so, for the same reasons that this Court denied production to the Movants of the affidavit (the “Affidavit”) submitted in support of the issuance of the search warrant dated November 5, 2021 that is the focus of this Part I matter and that Judge Cave ruled should remain sealed: to protect the ongoing grand jury investigation.

Keep in mind, there are necessarily other warrants out there that list other crimes, such as ones involving Harris and Kurlander that would name theft itself. In fact, the first order targeting PV mentions 18 USC 873 — blackmail.

Which means we can’t rule out that the nomination of Fago to the National Cancer Advisory Board a month after the election might be under investigation too.

These events are covered by three SDNY dockets: 21-mc-813 for James O’Keefe, 21-mc-819 for Eric Cochran, and 21-mc-825 for Spencer Meads.

2020

June: Ashley Biden moves to Philadelphia.

July: Aimee Harris moves into space formerly occupied by Ms. Biden.

August: Harris reaches out to fraudster Robert Kurlander, who contacts Elizabeth Fago.

September 3: Stephanie Walczak offers diary to PV.

September 6: Diary is shared at a fundraiser attended by Jr.

Mid-September: Kurlander and Harris fly to NY with the diary.  Spencer Meads travels to Florida and Harris shows more of Ms. Biden’s belongings.

Early October: A PV operative calls Ms. Biden and claims he wants to return the diary; PV takes her agreement as confirmation the diary is hers.

October 12: O’Keefe sends email, not mentioning Ms. Biden by name (but clearly referring to her) explaining his decision not to publish “Sting Ray” Story.

October 16: PV calls Joe Biden to extort an interview.

Late October: PV pays $40,000 for the diary.

October 25: National File publishes pages from Ashely Biden’s diary, linking parallel New York Post campaign targeting Hunter. It explains the provenance of the diary this way:

National File also knows the reported precise location of the physical diary, and has been told by a whistleblower that there exists an audio recording of Ashley Biden admitting this is her diary.

[snip]

National File obtained this document from a whistleblower who was concerned the media organization that employs him would not publish this potential critical story in the final 10 days before the 2020 presidential election. National File’s whistleblower also has a recording of Ashley Biden admitting the diary is hers, and employed a handwriting expert who verified the pages were all written by Ashley. National File has in its posession a recording of this whistleblower detailing the work his media outlet did in preparation of releasing these documents. In the recording, the whistleblower explains that the media organization he works for chose not to release the documents after receiving pressure from a competing media organization.

November 3: PV provides the diary to local law enforcement in FL.

November 22: DOJ uses subpoena for subscriber information of PV’s Human Resources Manager.

November 24: DOJ obtains 2703(d) order for HR manager’s email headers from 9/1/2020 to present.

December 8: Fago appointed to National Cancer Advisory Board.

2021

January 14: DOJ obtains warrant for emails of Eric Cochran, Spencer Meads, and HR manager from 1/1/20 through present.

January 26: DOJ obtains warrant for emails from another PV “journalist” from 1/1/20 through present.

March 5: DOJ obtains warrant for emails of three other PV “journalists” from 1/1/20 through 12/1/20.

March 9: DOJ obtains email headers for additional PV “journalist” from 9/1/20 through 12/1/20.

April 9: DOJ obtains warrant for O’Keefe’s emails from 9/1/20 through 12/1/20.

October 26: Paul Calli call DOJ, asks for AUSA Mitzi Steiner, and asked to speak about the PV investigation; Steiner asked how Calli had obtained her name, what else he had obtained, and declined to speak with Calli.

October 27: Lawyers for Project Veritas inform the DOJ that they will accept service for a subpoena relating to the investigation

November 3, 3:49 PM: Search warrants for Eric Cochran and Spencer Meads approved.

November 4, AM: FBI executes search warrants on former PV employees, Cochran and Spencer Meads.

November 4: PV lawyers accept service of subpoena.

November 4, one hour after the search: Mike Schmidt reaches out to Cochran and O’Keefe for comment about the investigation.

November 5, 11:18 AM: Warrant for O’Keefe authorized

November 5: NYT publishes story on investigation including language that PV would later baseless claim had to have come from the FBI.

November 6: FBI executes a search warrant on James O’Keefe

November 6: Schmidt contacts O’Keefe for comment.

November 6: Lawyers for Project Veritas ask the FBI to sequester material from the phone.

November 7: DOJ declines PV’s request and states the FBI has complied with all media guidelines.

November 8, 6:11PM: DOJ emails PV and tells them the extraction may start as soon as the next day.

November 8: After PV says it’ll file a legal challenge, FBI says it’ll only stop extraction after PV files such a challenge.

November 10: On behalf of PV, Calli Law moves to appoint a Special Master.

November 11, 12:51-12:53AM: Calli asks for confirmation that DOJ stopped extraction and review on O’Keefe’s phone on November 8.

November 11, 7:57AM: DOJ responds that the substantive review of O’Keefe’s phone was paused upon filing of motion on November 10.

November 11; 2:13PM: Judge Analisa Torres sets initial briefing schedule; in response to Torres order, DOJ stops extraction of O’Keefe phone.

November 12: In response to DOJ request, Torres extends briefing schedule.

November 12: Greenberg Traurig lawyer Adam Hoffinger, representing Eric Cochran, asks for Special Master to apply to materials seized from him, as well.

November 12: Letter signed by FL attorney Brian Dickerson but apparently docketed by NY lawyer Eric Franz asks for Special Master to apply to Spencer Meads

November 12, 3:49PM: Calli asks for clarification on review and extraction.

November 12, 3:59PM: DOJ responds that, “upon the filing of your motion, the Government paused the review of all material obtained from the search of your  client’s residence.”

November 14: Calli submits clarification letter regarding extraction and review.

November 15: Torres sets schedule in Cochran docket.

November 15: DOJ requests permission to reply to PV on November 19.

November 15: Calli requests inquiry into government leaks to NYT.

November 16: Torres grants permission to respond on November 19.

November 16: Ian H. Marcus Amelkin asks to delete initials of PV source, A.H., from docket.

November 17: Torres denies Amelkin request without prejudice.

November 17: Cochran motion to appoint Special Master.

November 18: For Meads, Dickerson formally moves for Special Master (and also complains that FBI seized dated devices).

November 19: Calli requests extension on response deadline for PV subpoena.

November 19: Government files opposition to request for Special Master and inquiry into purported leaks.

November 19: DOJ requests permission to respond to motion for extension on subpoena. Torres grants request.

November 21: DOJ opposition to extend subpoena deadline.

November 21: Government motion to oppose unsealing affidavits.

November 22: Torres denies motion for extension on subpoena.

November 22: PV reply to government opposition to Special Master.

November 23: Torres denies motion (including from RCFP) to unseal affidavits.

November 23: Cochran reply to government opposition to unseal affidavits.

November 24: Meads reply to refusal to unseal affidavits, including letters from House and Senate complaining to DOJ.

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