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Much of Todd Blanche’s Perceived Cover-Up Is Actually Incompetence

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Something hilarious happened this week.

On Tuesday, Trump’s White House got Marc Caputo to write a credulous column platforming their laughable claims that they’re not responsible for how chaotic the release of the Epstein files has been, that the whole Epstein thing is just unfair to poor Donald Trump. Caputo’s column — the dutiful repetition of even ridiculous claims — is a read of Trump’s own perception of the challenge before him.

But before Caputo got to Trump’s flimsy excuses and the more damning detail — that the White House had taken over DOJ’s Xitter account — he started with his headline scoop: He allowed his sources to claim that the pain of this release will last one more week (that is, a week from Tuesday).

Only one more week.

Scoop: Trump administration expects Epstein files release could last another week

The Trump administration estimates it has about one week to go — and as many as 700,000 more pages to review — before it finishes releasing all the Jeffrey Epstein files.

[snip]

  • This will end soon,” another official said. “The conspiracy theories won’t.”

Imagine putting that prediction in writing!

The prediction lasted less than a day.

Even at the time, CNN was reporting that SDFL’s US Attorney’s Office has just solicited “volunteers” to work over the holiday to make this a one-week story.

The Justice Department’s leadership asked career prosecutors in Florida to volunteer over the “next several days” to help redact the Epstein files, in the latest Trump administration push toward releasing the hundreds of thousands of photos, internal memos and other evidence around the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A supervising prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida’s US Attorney’s Office emailed the entire district office on Tuesday — two days before Christmas — announcing an “emergency request from the [Deputy Attorney General’s] office the SDFL must assist with,” according to a copy of the email reviewed by CNN. “We need AUSAs to do remote document review and redactions related to the Epstein files,” the email said.

Then, DOJ explained why they needed the volunteers: they (claim they) just discovered a million more pages.

This thing won’t be done in a week or even a month. And the people smoking Caputo need to understand that’s partly due to Todd Blanche’s incompetence, and partly due to the stuff that is a cover-up.

You’re likely to disagree with this opinion, because conventional wisdom on the left holds that the chaos of the Jeffrey Epstein releases to date reflects an attempted cover-up. But the chaos we’re seeing in the Jeffrey Epstein release is not (yet), primarily, a cover-up — though DOJ is flouting the law in ways that will create further scandal that may be entirely unrelated to protecting Donald Trump.

What you’re seeing is incompetence — frankly, the same incompetence we’ve seen from day one on Trump’s efforts to corral the Epstein conspiracy theories which his followers thrive.

Consider the things that have been identified as evidence of an imagined cover-up:

  • Documents from a civil lawsuit published to docket at different times, adopting different standards of redaction, and therefore revealing accusations against Trump in just one of them
  • Documents from a civil lawsuit adopting reversible redaction
  • The handwritten letter claiming to be from Epstein to Larry Nasser purportedly written just before Epstein’s death

These actually could be readily explainable (and, indeed, all three fit one of the five rules on how to read Epstein files that Ankush Khardori offered on the day of the release — understand what kind of files you’re reading, and the biases people harbor or lies people will tell). For example, if DOJ had released the files with an inventory of the kinds of things the release would include, and the known reliability issues with various kinds of documents, then people might have been prepared to treat the claims made in civil suits with some skepticism. If DOJ had released the alleged Epstein letter with FBI’s own analysis of it, it would have persuaded people that the letter is a fake, if it is.

But DOJ did not do that.

Instead, Todd Blanche sat for a softball interview with Kristen Welker in which he did the following:

  • Falsely claimed that the delay in responding arose from any concern for the survivors
  • Guaranteed that all mention of Trump would be unredacted
  • Alluded to the real reasons for overredaction, which Welker of course ignored
  • Repeated his past bullshit excuses for letting Ghislaine Maxwell lie to his face with impunity before getting moved to Club Fed and getting a puppy
  • [Unrelatedly, but still problematically, falsely claimed politicized prosecutions did not involve Trump]

The key answer here was Blanche’s claim that DOJ needs to redact for reasons other than protecting victims.

KRISTEN WELKER:

Well, you’re talking about protecting the victims. The law directed the Justice Department to “release internal DOJ communications including emails, memos, meeting notes concerning decisions to charge, not charge, investigate or decline to investigate Epstein or his associates.” That’s the crux of what many of the victims or the survivors say they want to see. Why wasn’t that information prioritized in the first release, Mr. Blanche?

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE:

Well, first of all it was. And there are numerous documents released on Friday that address what you just quoted from, from the statute that address internal communications within the Department of Justice and internal communications between law enforcement and the Department of Justice. But it’s for the same reason. Because many of those internal communications talk about victims. Many of those internal back and forths between prosecutors and law enforcement talk about victims and their stories. And that has to be redacted. And by the way, everybody expects us to redact that. So the same complaints that we’re hearing yesterday and even this morning from Democrats and from others screaming loudly from a hill about lack of production on Friday, imagine if we had released tons of information around victims? That would be the true crime. That would be the true wrong. And if anybody out there, I heard Congressman Raskin, the Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, releasing statements accusing Attorney General Bondi, Director Patel and myself of not doing our jobs. If they have an issue with me protecting victims, they know how to get a hold of me. But we’re not going to stop doing it.

[snip]

KRISTEN WELKER:

Okay. Let’s delve more deeply into the redactions. Is any information about President Trump redacted in any of the files that have or will be released?

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE:

No. Not unless it’s supposed to be redacted under the law, which means victim information or any sort of privilege like attorney-client privilege. But I have no reason to believe that the lawyers that are working on this case were talking about President Trump. Because he had nothing to do with the Epstein files. He had nothing to do with the horrific crimes that Mr. Epstein committed. And so I don’t expect there will be anything redacted. But the short answer is we are not redacting information around President Trump, around any other individual involved with Mr. Epstein. And that narrative, which is not based on fact at all, is completely false. [my emphasis]

There aer several problems for Todd Blanche’s claim that there are other reasons that DOJ can redact information — he mentions attorney-client privilege, but that could quickly expand to executive privilege (indeed, elsewhere in the interview he asserts he’ll never share his communications with Trump) or deliberative. The files are also being released with every DOJ identity redacted, including Audrey Strauss and Geoffrey Berman. That may have the temporary advantage, for DOJ, of hiding who was complicit in the sweetheart deal in 2007 and which real champions of the victims, like Maurene Comey, Trump fired right in this middle of this realease.

The problem for Blanche is that judges have already ruled (in unsealing grand jury materials) that the transparency law supersedes other protections.

The Act requires disclosure of Epstein grand jury materials by requiring disclosure of “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials.” Id. “All” is crystal clear and should be afforded its “ordinary, common-sense meaning.” … (where Congress was aware of a category and did not exclude the category from the statute, that category is covered).

And so Congress will go to Richard Berman and argue that by withholding privileged or deliberative documents or even prosecutors’ names, DOJ is not complying with the law, and they’ll have precedent on their side.

Shit, Trump will be lucky if this only goes on for another month and not twelve.

The question Welker did not ask but should have is why DOJ is stuck doing this at the last minute if the FBI conducted an even bigger review of the files back in March. Why is DOJ in a mad rush to protect survivors now? Why wasn’t DOJ protecting survivors in March?

And the answer to that question is that, obviously, that earlier review was focused not on victims but on a political calculation: would the release of pictures of Bill Clinton in a public hotel pool in Brunei (which is what got released last week) outweigh the damage of files implicating Trump and his friends (starting with Les Wexner who was named as a potential co-conspirator in some documents already released), and that the conclusion of that earlier review, in July, was that this could not be weaponized like everything else, and so Trump and Todd Blanche personally attempted to pressure Congress to prevent this release at all costs but failed, which is why they’re stuck doing a second last minute review after the earlier one in March.

And eventually, all that — including whatever lists they made in March that Blanche probably hopes to shield under claims of privilege — should be ripe for release under the law. The incompetence of this first release will lead to iterative later releases.

Which brings us to the excuses Caputo platformed. As he describes, everyone is just exasperated, because how dare people take top Trump supporters like Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec and Benny Johnson and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino seriously when they focus on these files?

Behind the scenes: There’s a palpable sense of exasperation and annoyance in the administration about all of the headlines pertaining to Trump and Epstein and the inability to explain everything and just get the disclosure done.

  • “It’s a combination of extreme frustration at everything: at what Congress did, at our response to it, and a concern that it won’t go away,” an official said.
  • “There’s also a little bit of indignation at the media — that this wasn’t even a story for years and years. And now, not only is it a story, but the top of many news pages on a given day.”

How dare Trump’s trolls make this a huge story?!?!?!?!

This remains the problem with Blanche’s actions and everyone else’s. They’re misunderstanding that this is the scandal they rode in on.

They can’t just rely on past tools — like weaponization, like focusing on Clinton (as Trump attempted in his most recent wail about Epstein).

Because the Epstein scandal exists not because of anything Jamie Raskin or Ro Khanna did. The Epstein scandal exists because the conspiracism of it is the core of Trump’s power. Epstein conspiracy theories were always non-falsifiable (which I wrote about here and here and a bunch of other places).

And by attempting to bulldoze Congress on the big issues — on DOJ’s own prerogatives — Todd Blanche is only going to make things worse by creating new scandals.

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Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s Attempted Baby-Splitting Leads to Exploding Diaper

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I suppose I should have reminded readers, somewhere in my close tracking of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s attempt to craft a nifty solution to a difficult Fourth Amendment question, that she authored a 2004 FISA opinion from which a decade of bulk collection on Americans arose.

I delayed doing so, in part, because Tulsi Gabbard has deprecated the link to the official version and so I need to go find a copy. But this post describes the substance of the opinion. This post describes how subsequent phone dragnet opinions relied on it. And this timeline explains how, after Kollar-Kotelly was just the second FISA Judge read into the unconstitutional Stellar Wind program, and after she raised concerns about it, a guy named Jim Comey refused to reauthorize it in its then current form, which led to a famous standoff in a hospital, much drama, but only limited (and still largely undisclosed!) changes in the program, before Kollar-Kotelly wrote an opinion authorizing bulk collection that would be the cornerstone for 11 more years of bulk collection.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has a history with difficult Fourth Amendment decisions.

And she has a history with Jim Comey.

When we last reviewed this difficult Fourth Amendment question, Kollar-Kotelly had simply waved her hands over the original sins of unscoped seizures and overseized data targeting Dan Richman — which she deemed plausible Fourth Amendment violations but not something she had to deal with, she said, because she had found the later search of that likely unscoped data was itself a violation of the Fourth Amendment and so could apply a bunch of DC precedents that all addressed property that was, in the initial seizure, lawfully collected to data she agreed was plausibly also unlawfully collected. Then she ordered the government to send that unlawfully searched data to EDVA, where different precedents would apply, and where the government could get a warrant to access what they wanted.

In a motion to modify and clarify that was also, in a footnote, a motion for reconsideration, the government deftly asked to change the rules such that they would be able to keep the fruits of several iterations of unlawful searches, and Dan Richman would be gagged from revealing that’s what happened.

So here’s what Kollar-Kotelly — she of the history of difficult Fourth Amendment decisions and she with the two decade history with Jim Comey — has done since.

First, she issued an order bitching about the government’s last minute request and complaining that they didn’t raise these issues on the first go-around, but giving the government permission to keep anything derivative of those three iterations of unlawful seizures.

The Government’s [22] Motion, which was filed approximately one hour before the deadline for the filing of a certification of compliance set forth in this Court’s [20] Order, raises a variety of issues related to the handling of classified information and information that may be subject to the Government’s own privileges, including the attorney-client privilege and the deliberative process privilege. The Government could have-and should have-raised many of these issues earlier in its initial Response to Petitioner Richman’s [1] Motion for Return of Property, but it did not do so. The Court will clarify its [20] Order at greater length by separate order and, if appropriate, will request further briefing from the parties. For now, the Court notes three important clarifications:

[snip]

Further, this Court’s Order directed the return of Petitioner Richman’s own materials (and any copies of those materials), not any derivative files that the Government may have created. See Order, Dkt. No. 20, at 1 (directing the return of the original materials, copies of those materials, and any materials “directly obtained or extracted” from them); see also id. at 41 (explaining that the Court would not bar the Government from “using or relying on” the relevant materials in a separate investigation or proceeding). Accordingly, compliance with the Court’s Order will not intrude upon any of the Government’s privileges.

This order, by itself, would amount to permitting the government to use stuff tainted by a breach of attorney-client privilege (Jim Comey’s attorney-client privilege), something she has not dealt with at all.

Then yesterday, Kollar-Kotelly issued an order noting (in a footnote) the government request for reconsideration they buried in a footnote, but blowing it off …

1 In a footnote, the Government requests reconsideration of this Court’s merits ruling that the Government’s retention of the materials at issue violates Petitioner Richman’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures. See Gov’t’s Mot., Dkt. No. 22, at 7 n.5. However, the primary focus of the Government’s [22) Emergency Motion is the proper scope of the remedy to be awarded. Accordingly, the Court focuses here on issues that are directly relevant to the issue of remedy.

… But also requiring (among other things) the parties to explain three things, with the following deadlines:

  • By 9:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, the government should share its great ideas on how to keep all this data secure at EDVA.
  • By 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, the government should explain what it has from the original searches.
  • By 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, December 16, 2025, Richman should explain what he wants back, some of which may be influenced by the 10AM briefing.

The order pertaining to that 10AM explanation betrays how inadequate the original baby-splitting solution was, not least because Kollar-Kotelly doesn’t unpack that the stuff the government originally seized from Richman is evidence — or at least includes it.

Second, the Government argues in its [22] Emergency Motion that the Court’s Order “appears to require the Government to delete or destroy evidence originally, and lawfully, obtained pursuant to search warrants issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2019 and 2020.” Gov’t’s Mot., Dkt. No. 22, at 5. To be clear, the Court has not ordered the Government to delete or destroy any evidence; instead, it has ordered the Government to return certain materials to Petitioner Richman, while depositing others with a third-party custodian for safekeeping. However, to ensure that the remedy awarded in this case is appropriately tailored to the facts, the Court would benefit from more factual details regarding the Government’s execution of the search warrants issued in this District in 2019 and 2020. Id. Accordingly, it is ORDERED that, no later than 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, the Government shall file with the Court a brief response to the following questions:

(1) Does the Government have in its possession a complete copy of any of the following:

(i) the “forensic image” of Petitioner Richman’s personal computer hard drive that the Government was authorized to search under the warrant issued in this District on August 27, 2019;

(ii) the information disclosed by Columbia University to the Government pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on October 22, 2019;

(iii) the information disclosed by Apple to the Government pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on January 30, 2020; or

(iv) the “contents of a hard drive … containing backup files of one Apple iPad 4 and one Apple iPhone 5S” that the Government was authorized to search under the warrant issued in this District on June 4, 2020?

(2) Under each of the four search warrants at issue, the Government was authorized to seize only responsive material, which constituted a subset of the information it was permitted to search. Did the Government create a separate file, disk, hard drive, or any other segregated collection of responsive material for any of the following:

(i) the material seized from Petitioner Richman’s personal hard drive pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on August 27, 2019;

(ii) the material seized from Petitioner Richman’s Columbia University email accounts pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on October 22, 2019;

(iii) the material seized from Petitioner Richman’s iCloud account pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on January 30, 2020; or

(iv) the material seized from the backup files of Richman’s Apple iPad 4 and Apple iPhone 5S pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on June 4, 2020? [my emphasis]

As Kollar-Kotelly alludes to elsewhere, these questions should have been answered before she made her original decision. But she doesn’t acknowledge that she would have needed this information, in part, to understand whether the first two seizures violated the Fourth Amendment, which — if they do — would mean her application of multiple precedents that all assume the initial seizure was lawful would be totally inapt.

But there are two reasons why even these belated questions are inadequate to her purpose.

First, as Kollar-Kotelly noted in her own opinion, which she cited via William Fitzpatrick’s opinion which in turn cited this FBI declaration, when the FBI searched all this data in September, they searched a full extraction of Richman’s phone and iPad.

For this search, an FBI agent was instructed to review “a Blu-ray disc that contained a full Cellebrite extraction and Reader reports” for two of Petitioner Richman’s devices to identify “conversations between [Petitioner Richman] and [Mr. Comey].”

As the full quote from the FBI declaration explained, when Francis Nero did that search, he received a Blu-ray sealed with red evidence tape.

On or about September 12, 2025, while assigned to the Director’s Advisory Team, I was requested by Special Agent Spenser Warren to review a Blu-ray disc that contained a full Cellebrite extraction and Reader reports of an iPhone and iPad backups. I was requested to review the Cellebrite extraction for conversations between RICHMAN and JAMES COMEY. SA Warren handled this agent a manilla envelope sealed with red evidence tape that contained the Blu-ray disc with the Cellebrite extraction.

We know this full extraction contained attorney-client communications. Kollar-Kotelly doesn’t ask, in her second question above, how privileged communications were treated back in 2019 and 2020. She needed to ask whether the FBI only scoped the data not covered by Richman’s privilege declarations (which is what happened, if they scoped it at all) or whether they gave him scoped materials on which to make privilege declarations. Whichever it is, though, there needs to be a question 3, because the government never had the right to search privileged materials (except, arguably, on the original image itself, because such searches were not yet explicitly prohibited).

More importantly, if Spenser Warren handed Nero the full extraction, then it doesn’t matter what happened in step 2 of Kollar-Kotelly’s question above, because the government simply searched, without a warrant, unscoped data that should have been destroyed. That red evidence tape may well be what the government did to ensure that the FBI didn’t snoop on unscoped data. If so, the smoking gun in this chain of unlawful seizures was the decision, by someone on the Director’s Advisory Team, to search unscoped data without a warrant. That’s not covered by Kollar-Kotelly’s questions at all.

The other reason Kollar-Kotelly’s questions are inadequate is because of this disclosure (which didn’t make Fitzpatrick’s opinion and so may not be before her).

5 The Order also required the government to provide, in writing, by the same deadline: “Confirmation of whether the Government has divided the materials searched pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue into materials that are responsive and non-responsive to those warrants, and, if so, a detailed explanation of the methodology used to make that determination; A detailed explanation of whether, and for what period of time, the Government has preserved any materials identified as non-responsive to the four search warrants; A description identifying which materials have been identified as responsive, if any; and A description identifying which materials have previously been designated as privileged.” ECF No. 161 at 1-2.

Despite certifying on November 6 that it had complied with the Court’s Order, ECF No. 163, the government did not provide this information until the evening of November 9, 2025, in response to a defense inquiry. The government told the defense that it “does not know” whether there are responsive sets for the first, third, and fourth warrants, or whether it has produced those to the defense, and said that in that regard, “we are still pulling prior emails” and the “agent reviewed the filtered material through relativity but there appears to be a loss of data that we are currently trying to restore.” [my emphasis]

On November 9, in response to the same questions Kollar-Kotelly asked in her order but posed by Fitzpatrick, the government told Comey — but not in writing! — that they had no fucking clue what happened with the first, third, and fourth warrants, because something happened with Relativity, the software on which these distinctions would have been preserved. So they had to pull prior emails to figure out what the fuck they were doing searches on.

The government may still have no fucking clue what they’re dealing with, because they asked for a 48-hour extension on both their own deadlines.

Richman agreed to that delay but only if he also got an extension.

Counsel for Petitioner has informed the Government that he takes no position on this request, but respectfully requests that the Court provide Petitioner an equivalent extension of time to file his brief, see ECF No. 27 at 3, should the Court grant the Government’s motion.

Late yesterday, Kollar-Kotelly issued a docket order granting the government its two-day extension on the easier question — how to keep this data secure at EDVA — but just a two hour extension to the harder deadline — what the fuck happened with this data. She did not, however, grant Richman an extension at all, so his response must now be filed two hours after the government’s response.

The Court is in receipt of the Government’s 28 Motion for Additional Time to Respond to this Court’s 27 Order for supplemental submissions, which the Government filed at 6:28 p.m. ET this evening. The Government’s 28 Motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. The Government’s Motion is GRANTED as to the 9:00 a.m. deadline for the submission of “best practices on safekeeping evidence,” which is CONTINUED to 9:00 a.m. ET on Friday, December 19, 2025. The Motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART as to the Government’s deadline to respond to the factual questions presented in this Court’s 27 Order. The Government shall file brief responses to these questions no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, December 17, 2025. The Motion is otherwise DENIED. Petitioner Richman’s response deadline is unchanged.

Again, Kollar-Kotelly needed answers to these questions before she crafted the baby-splitting solution. Because if the original data was overseized and then not preserved in its scoped form (or if someone fiddled with Relativity in the interim to muddle what data was properly seized in the first search), then her application of DC precedent was inappropriate. At least some of this data was — as far as we know (though there may be other warrants) — always unlawfully seized.

That 2004 opinion Kollar-Kotelly wrote was an attempt to solve an enormous problem caused by unlawful government spying, but it served as the cornerstone for 11 more years of unlawful government spying. This particularly baby-splitting solution may lack the gravity of that earlier opinion, but in its currently muddled form, has the potential of causing another decade of problems.

Update: DOJ’s response is here. They actually admit to the problem with Relativity (though don’t name Relativity and try to obscure the timing of DOJ dropping it, which almost certainly has to post-date the January 6 investigation).

These responses are provided with the qualification that the search warrants were obtained five and six years ago.

[snip]

Search warrants directed at these materials were issued by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. These warrants included language for following a filter process for attorney-client privileged information. As to the iCloud account and backup files for the iPad 4 and iPhone 5S, these materials were combined and provided to Richman and his counsel for filtering. The filtered version was then provided back to the government for review. Correspondence reviewed by the present investigative team indicates that the primary case agent then committed to reviewing the filtered version through an e-discovery program. Between 2020 and 2025, the Department of Justice stopped using this e-discovery program and a loss of data occurred. The government has attempted to restore this data but has not been successful.

The government has contacted the primary case agent. The primary case agent stated that he always followed and complied with the terms of a search warrant, and that his behavior in this case would have been no different. However, due to the passage of time [redacted], the primary case agent could not specifically describe the process followed in 2019 and 2020.

In a redaction in this passage and an earlier one (for which DOJ appears not to have filed a motion to seal), they must describe something that happened to the original lead case agent. That is, for some reason he can’t fully reconstruct what he did five years ago.

And they have yet to reconstruct what was lost in dropping Relativity.

In short, they’re basically saying these warrant returns are so old, neither the person who managed them nor the software paid to preserve them are available to do so any longer.

Their solution to that, DOJ says, is for them to have a filter AUSA and a filter Agent review it all to find out if there is a segregated version within the larger set.

Finally, as to the materials described in this section, the government respectfully requests that the Court allow a filter FBI agent and a filter AUSA to review only the previously filtered versions, which, according to FBI records, are contained on the relevant storage devices. The purpose of this limited review would be to determine whether any sort of segregated version of responsive material exists on the storage devices.

This should change Kollar-Kotelly’s entire approach. DOJ confesses they have no fucking clue whether the data they have is legal or not.

But it likely will not.

Update: Richman’s response is here. It goes big, demanding that all materials be taken away from the government.

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The Epistemology of the Epstein Scandal

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One of the longest part of Vanity Fair’s two-part (one, two) interview with Susie Wiles focuses on Jeffrey Epstein. It goes like this:

¶1: Chris Whipple’s explanation of why it’s important.
¶2: Wiles’ admission she underestimated the import of it.
¶3: A review of Pam Bondi’s binder fiasco, with Wiles commenting on Bondi’s fuck-up.
¶4: A report on how many FBI agents reviewed the files, with Wiles’ claim they weren’t just searching for Trump.
¶5: Wiles’ claim there was nothing bad on Trump in the files, just him and Epstein being “young, single playboys.”
¶6: Wiles debunking Trump’s false claims about Clinton’s ties to Epstein.
¶7: Wiles describing that Kash Patel and Dan Bongino really understood Epstein, except Kash was wrong.
¶8: Wiles’ failure to offer an explanation for Todd Blanche’s interview with Ghislaine Maxwell.
¶9: Wiles’ claim that Trump was pissed Ghislaine got moved.
¶10: Wiles’ claim that the birthday letter to Epstein is not from Trump.
¶11 – ¶12: Wiles’ claim that Trump would sit for a deposition in his WSJ lawsuit if necessary.
¶13: Whipple explaining the threat of the Epstein files again, then quoting Wiles on who cares about it.
¶14: Someone at the White House who might be JD Vance explaining who cares about it.
¶15: A specific mention of Vance, with further explanation of those who care about Epstein.

Elsewhere, Wiles credits herself with a great read of electoral outcomes (even while describing her own prediction that Jack Ciattarelli might beat Mikie Sherill last month): She was certain they would win last year, she didn’t think November would be that bad, they’re going to win midterms.

Her confidence (even if feigned) is why I’m so interested in Wiles’ description of the relative knowledge about Epstein. As noted, she admitted to Whipple that she didn’t understand how important this scandal could be, deferring knowledge on such issues to Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and JD Vance — two of whom she describes as conspiracy theorists.

Wiles told me she underestimated the potency of the scandal: “Whether he was an American CIA asset, a Mossad asset, whether all these rich, important men went to that nasty island and did unforgivable things to young girls,” she said, “I mean, I kind of knew it, but it’s never anything I paid a bit of attention to.”

[snip]

The people that really appreciated what a big deal this is are Kash [Patel] and [FBI deputy director] Dan Bongino,” she said. “Because they lived in that world. And the vice president, who’s been a conspiracy theorist for a decade…. For years, Kash has been saying, ‘Got to release the files, got to release the files.’ And he’s been saying that with a view of what he thought was in these files that turns out not to be right.” [brackets original]

But then six paragraphs after describing that longtime Trump loyalist Kash Patel was totally into [a false belief] about the Epstein files, first Wiles and then someone who might be JD Vance (who is mentioned in the following paragraph) describe their understanding of who cares about this: “people that are sort of new to our world.”

The Epstein files debacle poses a dire political threat to Trump and the future of the GOP. “The people that are inordinately interested in Epstein are the new members of the Trump coalition, the people that I think about all the time—because I want to make sure that they are not Trump voters, they’re Republican voters,” Wiles said. “It’s the Joe Rogan listeners. It’s the people that are sort of new to our world. It’s not the MAGA base.”

A senior White House official described the mindset of an overlapping bloc of voters who are angered by both Trump’s handling of the Epstein files and the war in Gaza. It’s as much as 5 percent of the vote and includes “union members, the podcast crowd, the young people, the young Black males. They are interested in Epstein. And they are the people that are disturbed that we are as cozy with Israel as we are.”

Susie Wiles, who has been around Trump since he was first elected, claims “the people that are inordinately interested in Epstein” are “not the MAGA base”!!!

And then that anonymous White House official who might be JD Vance (whom Wiles explains is a conspiracy theorist) describes that the “young Black males” are the ones who care about Epstein.

To be fair, it is the case that the MAGAt base voters who do care deeply about this — people like Charlie Kirk, Benny Johnson, and Jack Posobiec — quickly fell in line when Trump demanded they stop talking about Epstein in July.

But like Kash and Bongino themselves, these are the people who made Epstein specifically and conspiracy theories about pedophiles more generally some of the central glue of  Trump’s coalition.

As I wrote for TPM’s anniversary series, the superpower of reclaiming attention which Trump has honed with these same far right trolls has always been developed in parallel with the use of conspiracy theories about pedophilia — from Posobiec’s Pizzagate, to QAnon, to Epstein — to keep that attention.

On July 8, something happened to Donald Trump that I’ve not seen happen in the entire decade he has dominated presidential politics. As his base clamored for more disclosures about sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his superpower — his ability to grab and redirect attention — briefly failed him. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” he whined when a journalist asked about the Justice Department’s decision to abort any further disclosure of documents related to the case. “This guy’s been talked about for years.”

[snip]

Two things had disrupted Trump’s superpower. First, after Trump’s top DOJ appointees — Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and his deputy Dan Bongino – had fueled, then disappointed, MAGA’s demand for Epstein disclosures, the failure to fulfill their promises fed the conspiracy itself. By thwarting the conspiracists’ demands, Bondi, especially, created rifts and distrust in Trump’s own base.

Conspiracy theories about Epstein were always non-falsifiable; the mob will never be satisfied. But Bondi made that dynamic worse.

More important for understanding what happened in July: the very same online trolls who’ve been critical partners in Trump’s success managing attention were precisely the same people who had spun those conspiracy theories. There is a direct through-line from a relatively small set of social media accounts that helped Trump win the 2016 election to PizzaGate and, after that, QAnon. QAnoners played a key role in Trump’s 2021 insurrection attempt, and its adherents remain a substantial portion of Trump’s base. Since 2016, pro-Trump trolls’ exploitation of social media algorithms to redirect political news coverage — whether from legacy media or newer outlets — has disrupted traditional news cycles.

And while some of what Wiles says about Epstein — her claim Trump was pissed Ghislaine got moved, her feigned certainty that the birthday letter is not from Trump — is clearly bullshit, Wiles and the anonymous person who might be JD nevertheless offered a very specific, and very inaccurate, description of which Trump voters care about Epstein.

Maybe they’re telling this tale because it’s the same thing they told House members in a bid to kill the Massie-Khanna discharge petition. Maybe they’re telling this tale because everyone Wiles thinks knows about Epstein is a conspiracy theorist and the guy who really knows is just a former young playboy.

But even though Trump got Kirk and Benny and Posobiec to give up their sustained demand for Epstein materials, it remains the case that Trump has never fully recovered from the fiasco in July. First Mike Johnson had to flee a week early in July or risk embarrassing votes, then Bondi’s desperate bid — using the White House situation room — to convince Lauren Boebert to defect from the discharge petition backfired, then the Epstein fiasco ultimately led Marjorie Taylor Greene to break with Trump more substantially.

And tomorrow, DOJ will be forced to hand over the Epstein files themselves.

For five months, Epstein has remained at least a low-level burn undermining Trump’s ability to manage the public’s focus and his own policy goals. The Epstein thing was the first thing that led Republicans to defect, and now they’re defecting left and right.

And yet Wiles (and her anonymous friend who might be conspiracy theorist JD Vance) professes to believe the only people who care about Epstein are the young Black voters that Trump just won over last year?

That’s either a fantastic lie. Or a confession that explains far more about why Trump has bolloxed Epstein so badly.

Update: On Xitter, Liz Wheeler (no known relation), one of the recipients of Bondi’s binder, focuses on the same passages I did — blaming Wiles for misinforming Trump about how important this is to MAGAts. But she doesn’t note what I do: that Wiles, at least, is still unclear how important it is.

It now makes total sense as to why President Trump has—at times—dismissed the Epstein scandal and even called it a “hoax.” Over the summer, Trump said he did not understand why many of his supporters were so fixated on Epstein.

Well, now why know why he said that—it would seem Susie Wiles was the one misinforming Trump about the MAGA base’s concerns.

We care about the Epstein files because we want transparency, we want the elites held accountable, and we want JUSTICE for the Epstein victims.

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Four Years and 345 Days

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As originally scheduled, Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey would have held a detention hearing today for Brian Cole, the guy accused of planting pipe bombs on January 5, 2021.

We might have learned more about evidence and motive at such a hearing, but now we’ll have to wait until December 30, if at all.

Last Wednesday, the AUSA in the case, submitted a filing basically saying, “Regarding your question about whether we still need a detention hearing on December 15, I respond that the defense wants another two weeks to review discovery before such a hearing, and we’d like an exclusion of time under Speedy Trial Act.”

The United States respectfully moves the Court to exclude time under the Speedy Trial Act from the date of defendant Brian J. Cole, Jr.’s arrest on December 4, 2025, through the date of the detention hearing, which the defense has requested to continue. 1

In response to the Court’s inquiry, the government conferred with defense counsel. Defense counsel has requested that the government represent the following to the Court in this motion: The defense requests that the Court continue the detention hearing in this case currently set for December 15, 2025, to allow the defense additional time to review the significant amount of discovery provided by the government to date. The defense consents to the exclusion of time under the Speedy Trial Act from December 4, 2025, through the date of the rescheduled detention hearing.

The government does not oppose a defense continuance of the detention hearing. The parties jointly request that the detention hearing be reset for December 30, 2025.

1 For administrative efficiency, the government is submitting a single motion reflecting the relief sought by both parties.

Before I unpack what this means — and what we can or cannot assume from this — let me point to this WSJ story that explains why it took so long to find Cole: Basically, an FBI Agent wrote code to be able to read cell tower dumps T-Mobile provided, which the government had claimed — for years! — was corrupted.

For four years, a tranche of cellphone data provided to the FBI by T-Mobile US sat on a digital shelf because investigators couldn’t figure out how to read it, people familiar with the matter said. The data turned out to be essential to cracking the case, the people said, a breakthrough that happened only recently when a tech-savvy law-enforcement officer wrote a new computer program that finally deciphered the information. That move led to the arrest of 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. at his home in Northern Virginia, where he had been quietly living with his mother and other relatives.

[snip]

Increasingly desperate and under pressure to make progress, supervisors urged agents and analysts to take a new look at what they had, including the data from T-Mobile—reflecting phone locations based on internet usage—that investigators had set aside years earlier.

Once investigators were finally able to read the data, they said it led them to Cole’s phone number because his cellphone’s movements tracked what investigators had seen in surveillance footage.

I have no doubt that the government believed they couldn’t access some or most of the T-Mobile data; it is a problem that has shown up in court filings for years. How well-founded that belief was is something we may learn in the months ahead.

WSJ also describes why we’re getting — and why we should expect to continue getting  — so much leaking from this investigation: Because Kash Patel is claiming credit and accusing the FBI of sandbagging before now.

In a four-hour interview with investigators, Cole acknowledged placing the bombs, people familiar with the probe said. He expressed support for Trump and said he had embraced conspiracy theories regarding Trump’s 2020 election loss, the people said. He had thrown out the Air Max sneakers, he said. Cole hasn’t entered a plea, and his lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Inside the Justice Department, agents and prosecutors have privately expressed widespread relief that an arrest has finally been made, but also resentment over FBI Director Kash Patel, who has suggested that they didn’t work doggedly on the probe until Trump administration leadership arrived.

The assertion that Cole is a Trump supporter, which was always the most likely explanation for his actions, adds to the likelihood of leaks. All the people crowing about the Cole arrest — Pam Bondi, Kash, and Dan Bongino — could well get fired if they find proof of another Trump supporting terrorist. So they’re no doubt trying to minimize the chances that becomes public via official channels.

The fact that the FBI had to write code simply to read the T-Mobile data may explain something that I allude to here: The language the complaint uses to refer to location data is not described in the normal way, usually expressed as a percentage likelihood that a device was within a certain range at the time in question.

The seven transactions between the COLE CELLPHONE and Provider’s towers occurred at approximately 7:39 p.m., 7:44 p.m., 7:59 p.m., 8:14 p.m., 8:23 p.m., and 8:24 p.m. Two transactions took place at 7:39 p.m. During this time period, the COLE CELLPHONE had transactions with five different sectors on Provider’s cell towers.

a. At approximately 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 59323, which faces southeast (approximately 120˚) from its location at 103 G Street, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector A”). Also at 7:39:27 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with a particular sector of Provider tower 126187, which faces east1 (approximately 90˚) from its location at 200 Independence Avenue, Southwest in Washington, D.C. (“Sector B”). Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 7:39:32 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs walked westbound on D Street, Southeast and then turned southbound on South Capitol Street, Southeast. These locations are consistent with the coverage areas of Sector A and B.

b. At approximately 7:44:36 p.m., the COLE CELLPHONE interacted with Sector B of Provider tower 126187. Video surveillance footage shows that at approximately 7:44:36 p.m., the individual who placed the pipe bombs walked east on Ivy Street, Southeast. This location is consistent with the coverage area of Sector B.

Here, the complaint claims only that the cell tower data is consistent with Cole’s presence in a certain cardinal directions from the cell towers; it doesn’t even explain how far that cell site is.

Even without the hack of the data needed to read the T-Mobile data, this case might have been vulnerable on Fourth Amendment grounds. While the geofences for the Capitol itself have been sustained in a series of court orders, these tower dumps did not (as the Capitol-focused geofences did) collect data of people who were by definition culprits or victims. But if the T-Mobile data showing Cole’s location comes from some untested code, it would be far more vulnerable to challenge, with the likelihood of dueling experts about whether the software hack faithfully rendered the location data.

Sure, there’s the confession, but any good defense attorney will attempt to challenge any Miranda waiver, particularly in the case (as here) where a suspect is reportedly on the spectrum or is otherwise vulnerable to pressure.

Meanwhile, consider the implications of DOJ finding a way to read T-Mobile data that had been unavailable for years. What else might that data reveal? Might that data reveal a meeting between Cole and someone else on Capitol Hill on December 14?

Approximately three weeks before the pipe bombs were placed, on or about December 14, 2020, COLE made a purchase at a restaurant located near First and D Streets, Southeast. The restaurant is located across the street from the entrance to Rumsey Court on D Street, Southeast.

I think it inconceivable that Cole placed those bombs at the perfect location set to explode at the perfect time for an attack the following day without consultation with others. Which means any investigation into Cole could break open (or reopen) an investigation into the far more coordinated attack that was evident in movement that day but — for whatever reason — not charged.

Imagine the possibility that the FBI could find proof — and a witness — to explain how January 6 was an exceedingly well-coordinated terrorist attack? That would be sure to get Bondi, Kash, and Bongino fired!

As noted, DOJ asked for and got an exclusion of the 15-day delay in detention hearing time from the Speedy Trial Act (STA). That’s actually a very big deal, because when DOJ arrested Cole on December 5, the month they had to indict Cole under the STA coincided with the month that existed before the normal 5-year statute of limitations on most crimes expired.

The charges against Cole, 18 USC 844(d) & (i), actually have an extended (at least ten year) statute of limitations, as would some other charges, but some other possible charges (or conspiracy charges) might not.

So several things are likely going on:

First, while I think it likely FBI got their guy, if Cole’s confession is at all vulnerable to challenge, the case might be exceedingly weak, not least because the data has been manipulated.

Meanwhile, DOJ really is in crunch time regarding both the charges and any further investigation. That likely suits Trump’s appointees, who could be fired if the arrest of Cole provides cause to investigate further.

And that’s all on top of any colorable claim that Cole is entitled to the pardons Trump has already given his mob (not least if he had contact with someone else who has already been pardoned).

That’s the kind of mix that gives DOJ strong incentive to push for a plea, using as leverage the possibility of further charges, on top of an already draconian possible 40-year sentence.

Everyone else may be focused on holidays. But the people involved in this prosecution are likely involved in a very delicate game of chicken, as the ticking clock of dual deadlines threatens to explode.

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Cowardice Like Michael Glasheen’s Is How January 6 Happened

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Yesterday, the guy in charge of FBI’s National Security Branch, Michael Glasheen, exhibited the same kind of cowardice that allowed January 6 to happen, when he delivered the scripted lines that Kash Patel and Donald Trump permit him to say at the Global Threats Hearing. First, he sustained the bullshit claim that Antifa was the greatest threat to the US, then he played dumb when asked about the Proud Boys.

This is precisely the kind of cowardice that allowed January 6 to happen.

To be sure, there are several layers of cowardice built into this. Glasheen shouldn’t have been testifying in the first place; Kash should have been. But unusually for the Global Threats hearing, Kash blew off the committee entirely and Kristi Noem left early after one and then another Democrat personalized the veterans her goons have targeted and the Americans she arrested.

Then early in the hearing, Bennie Thompson (after making a clear misstatement to call the shooting of two National Guards members in DC only to have Noem refuse to admit that Rahmanullah Lakhanwal received asylum under Trump) asked Glasheen about terrorist threats. Here’s how USA Today described the exchange.

“When you look at the data right now, you look at the domestic terrorist threat that we’re facing right now, what I see from my position is that’s the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing on the domestic side,” he said.

But when Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, the ranking chairman of the House Homeland Security committee, asked whether the group is headquartered or how many members it has, Glasheen did not have answers.

“We are building out the infrastructure right now,” Glasheen said.

“So what does that mean?” Thompson replied. “We’re trying to get the information. You said antifa is a terrorist organization. Tell us, as a committee, how did you come to that? How many members do they have in the United States, as of right now?”

Glasheen said the number is “very fluid” and that the investigation into the movement and its members is ongoing, comparing it to al-Qaeda and ISIS.

[snip]

“Well, the investigations are active,” Glasheen responded, pausing before closing his mouth.

Thompson shook his head.

“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove. I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did,” the congressman said, ending the exchange.

The exchange was one of the most-reported stories from the hearing yesterday (the advantage Ranking Members have for going first).

But few provided the background.

It was this kind of cowardice — it was precisely this kind of politicized threat focus — that allowed January 6 to happen. Bill Barr, too, was pushing the Antifa myth in advance of Trump’s insurrection. Trump even prepared precisely the kind of terrorist designation in advance that he rolled out in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, no doubt anticipating clashes that didn’t arise.

More troubling, a bunch of people in the Proud Boys network were treated as informants on Antifa rather than used to collect awareness of the militia. There was Jenny Loh, as Brandi Buchman described in her coverage of the trial.

Tarrio’s next witness is teed up for Monday after much commotion: FBI informant Jennylyn Salinas, also known as “Jenny Loh.”

Loh’s anticipated appearance threw proceedings into disarray last week as defense attorneys claimed they had no idea Loh was an informant. Loh maintains she told her handlers nothing about her interactions with the Proud Boys and that once the government became aware that she could be called to testify in the case, her informant relationship ended completely. Prosecutors say Loh, who was associated with Latinos for Trump, was an informant from April 2020 through this January and only received a single payment from the bureau after sharing footage with agents of people harassing her at home. Loh has said that her communications with the FBI were not about Proud Boys but the threat that antifa posed.

More troubling still, there was “Aaron,” whose participation in the Kansas City cell made it incredibly difficult for prosecutors to prosecute those participants. WaPo described his testimony while describing the larger problem.

[A]t least four FBI sources were approached by the defense. Two others are on trial. And it was federal prosecutors who undermined the credibility of a federal informant, suggesting that the man — who only pronounced his name as “Aaron” — had deleted evidence and eliciting testimony that he repeatedly understated his own participation in the riot.

[snip]

On cross-examination, “Aaron” — who did not spell his name into the trial record — acknowledged that a member of his Kansas City Proud Boys chapter “had said some pretty wild things” about violence in advance of Jan. 6 that he did not share with the FBI. He admitted entering the Capitol without FBI authorization and not revealing that he helped prop open a gate for other rioters.

He later tried to justify his actions to agents by saying he thought he could help stop the destruction of “items of historical significance or historical artifacts,” according to the testimony.

The evidence shown in court indicates that many of the FBI sources inside the Proud Boys were asked only about their ideological opponents on the left, even as the right-wing group was implicated in threats and violence at protests across the United States.

[snip]

“Aaron” testified Wednesday that before Jan. 6, the FBI never asked him to look for information about the Proud Boys. When he informed his handler that he was coming to D.C. for the protest, he was asked only “to try to see if I could locate someone in D.C. that had nothing to do with the Proud Boys,” he testified.

The FBI missed an attack on the Capitol in significant part because they treated right wing threat actors as informants rather than a far more urgent threat.

I have no doubt Glasheen knows he’s chasing ghosts, which explains his discomfort. I have no doubt that Glasheen, as Chris Wray did before him, is treading carefully to avoid being fired. He probably calculates, correctly, that if he gets fired, a less competent whack job would replace him.

This is all by design: The fearmongering at FBI did, already, and will, again, blinds the FBI to real threats.

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Trump’s Terrorists

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Things could get a bit awkward with two of Trump’s terrorists in the days ahead. Trump has done such a great job of memory-holing his insurrection, and yet it won’t entirely go away.

Start with Taylor Taranto. I’ve written about the mentally ill Navy veteran who trespassed on January 6 — just one of thousands of Trumpsters who invaded the Capitol — but then took up with the DC Jail crowd in the aftermath, growing increasingly unstable until when, after Trump posted Barack Obama’s address on Truth Social, Taranto started stalking Obama, as prosecutors described in a footnote of a motion to gag Trump this way:

[T]he defendant’s public targeting of perceived adversaries has resulted in threats, harassment, or intimidation. The public record is replete with other examples. See, e.g., United States v. Taranto, No. 1:23-cr-229, ECF No. 27 at 4-6 (D.D.C. Sep. 12, 2023) (affirming detention order for Taranto and explaining that, after “‘former President Trump posted what he claimed was the address of Former President Barack Obama’ on Truth Social,” Taranto— who had previously entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021—reposted the address, along with a separate post stating, “‘See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s’” [sic], and then proceeded, heavily armed, to the area the defendant had identified as President Obama’s address, while livestreaming himself talking about “getting a ‘shot’ and an ‘angle,’” adding, “‘See, First Amendment, just say First Amendment, free speech’”) (quoting Taranto, ECF No. 20).

Like everyone else, Taranto was pardoned for his Jan6 trespass and his gun-related crimes were downgraded along with the rest of America’s defense against gun crimes. Trump appointee Carl Nichols sentenced him to time served on October 30, but not before Jeanine Pirro’s office tried to hide the sentencing memo (and prosecutors) who described Taranto’s role in Trump’s insurrection and Trump’s role in inciting Taranto’s stalking.

So he was free to go home to Seattle and attempt to rebuild his life from the chaos that Trump made of it.

Only he didn’t.

In recent days he has been back stalking DC, and specifically Jamie Raskin. The very same prosecutors who attempted to bury Trump’s role in inspiring Taranto’s crimes were stuck asking he be jailed again.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Travis Wolf said Taranto’s return to D.C., his erratic behavior and renewed livestreaming raised serious alarms that he was “on the path” to the same conduct that led to criminal charges against him two years earlier and urged that he be returned to jail.

Wolf described acute mental health concerns, a series of alleged violations of Taranto’s supervised release conditions, and alarming social media posts, including one from the parking lot of the Pentagon. The prosecutor discussed other details of Taranto’s case during a closed court session.

Trump appointee Carl Nichols tried to give Taranto one more chance to go back to Washington and get some help. But he continues to lurk around DC, figuring he still has time before he has to report to Probation in Washington on Wednesday.

The man needs help, and jail is not going to get him what he needs, but until he leaves DC, he remains a real concern.

He’s a reminder of what Trump does to people, driving around DC broadcasting as he goes.

According to the standards DOJ has used with ICE protestors, Trump should have been charged right along with Taranto.

Then there’s the possibility that efforts to prosecute alleged pipe bomber Brian Cole will backfire, at least on those — Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino — who crowed about the arrest on Thursday.

Since he was arrested there have been a series of leaks, starting with Ryan Reilly (who literally wrote the book on the January 6 investigation, with all that suggests about his possible sources) followed by Evan Perez (one of the best-sourced journalists at FBI), told the FBI he believed Donald Trump’s bullshit.

The man charged with planting two pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican party headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol told the FBI he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Brian Cole Jr., 30, is cooperating with the FBI, NBC News has reported, citing a separate person familiar with the matter. Cole appeared in court Friday, one day after he was charged with leaving pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee in the hours before Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Trump has falsely claimed the 2020 election was “rigged.”

Cole confessed to planting the devices outside the parties’ headquarters in the hours before the Capitol attack, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News. A federal prosecutor said in court on Friday that the suspect spoke with the government for more than four hours, but did not reveal the contents of those discussions.

Pirro has been out trying to disclaim the obvious: that Cole is one of Trump’s terrorists, not the insider threat that people like Dan Bongino and Ed Martin have been claiming since the attack.

Anna Bower tracked Martin’s effort to stoke conspiracy theories about the pipe bomber, including this screen cap.

Kash Patel who has fired people for claiming that Jan6ers were a terrible threat to the country, said that when you do what Cole did, “you attack the very being of our way of life”  — and he did so after Pam Bondi hailed his hard work to make the case.

And then Bongino went on Sean Hannity and confessed he was making shit up before.

Hannity, during his interview with his former colleague, gave Bongino an opportunity to criticize prior iterations of the Justice Department and FBI for failing to arrest anyone in the case, and praise his own colleagues for getting the job done. But then he asked Bongino about the FBI deputy director’s own role in promoting conspiracy theories about the bomber during Bongino’s past career as a right-wing commentator.

“You know, I don’t know if you remember this — this is before you became the deputy FBI director,” Hannity said. “You put a post on X right after this happened and you said there’s a massive cover-up because the person that planted those pipe bombs, they don’t want you to know who it is because it’s either a connected anti-Trump insider or an inside job. You said that, you know, long before you were even thought of as deputy FBI director.”

Bongino’s response was astounding. He looked down, as if embarrassed, and replied: “Yeah, that’s why I said to you this investigation’s just begun.” But after hemming and hawing about the confidence he and FBI Director Kash Patel have that they arrested the right person, he got real.

“Listen, I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions,” he explained. “That’s clear. And one day, I’ll be back in that space. But that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”

And when you peruse the possible explanations about why FBI didn’t find Cole before this week (I suspect it’s because FBI had far less evidence against Cole when they arrested him on Thursday than against virtually every other Jan6er; they just got fucking lucky that they got the right guy), they all feed left wing concerns.

Did Steve D’Antuono take steps to distract from Cole back in 2021, as some right wingers are now suggesting? If so, he did that between the time he took insufficient steps to prevent the attack and those times in 2022 when he attempted to kill any investigation of Trump.

Did Chris Wray intentionally stall this investigation? Then what does that say about the rest of the January 6 investigation?

And what if Cole says he qualifies for one or both of the pardons Trump already gave to people, like him, who responded to Trump’s false claims by attacking the Capitol. After all Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of sedition and adjudged a terrorist at sentencing, was gone from the Capitol a whole day before Cole allegedly placed those bombs, and Tarrio got a full pardon. What is Pardon Attorney Ed Martin going to say to conclude that Cole is somehow different from the hundreds of others, including a good many who brought incendiary devices, who have been running free since January?

It’s still possible Jocelyn Ballantine will manage to bury Cole’s pro-Trump leanings — or at least avoid implicating anyone who worked with Cole to plant the bombs in the precisely perfect place to create a distraction on January 6. Ballantine has played such a role before, and emails that Dan Richman submitted in his bid to get his data back before the FBI can violate his Fourth Amendment rights again suggest she was part of the process that led to that violation in the first place.

But until then, the lesson Dan Bongino just learned could be devastating. When you follow the facts, even the most rabid Trump supporter may discover that Trump’s terrorists are the ones threatening America.

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“The Truth Is for Chumps:” Prepare for the Hunger Games

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As you read the 100 page report about what a shitshow the FBI is under Kash Patel, keep the following in mind.

First, this report is an attack on Kash from the right, complaining among other things, that he hasn’t eradicated “Trump Derangement Syndrome” from the FBI and that Fox doesn’t play in FBI break rooms, while applauding him for eliminating DEI.

It was shared first with Miranda Devine, whose skillset is hit jobs, not government analysis.

It was shared as a Sribd.

It was sent to Chuck Grassley and Jim Jordan, but not their counterparts Dick Durbin and Jamie Raskin.

Yes, the report’s most damning anecdote describes that Kash delayed a presser in theTyler Robinson case until he could get a ladies’ sized jacket with the particular SWAG he wanted. Yes, it describes multiple sources quoting Dan Bongino saying, “the truth is for chumps.”

There’s even the very serious and persistent concern that the FBI has neglected its counterintelligence and counterterrorism mission (the report doesn’t mention rampant public corruption).

Perhaps the most telling detail, though, is there’s no mention of Andrew Bailey, ostensibly co-Deputy with Dan Bongino.

You see, in just two weeks, Bailey will be eligible to run the FBI or even DOJ without undergoing confirmation. And so you should expect that sometime after that, someone will be replaced.

Kash has long been the leading candidate to be replaced. But there’s likely to be a bit of a Hunger Games competition in the weeks ahead as various contestants attempt to keep their high flying planes.

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Did the Comey Dismissal Render Kash Patel’s Grand Conspiracy “Just Someone Else’s Fantasy”?

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There’s something missing from all the analysis (and this, from Politico, is quite good) of what might happen in the wake of Judge Cameron Currie’s dismissal of at least the Jim Comey indictment, and possibly even the Letitia James one: the way the dismissal might help or hurt Trump’s plans to charge a Grand Conspiracy in Florida.

[I regret to inform all of you, especially Savage Librarian, that in thinking about this during a bout of insomnia on Sunday I set all my thinking about the Grand Conspiracy to the tune of Styx’ The Grand Illusion.]

After all, if the ultimate goal was always to charge Jim Comey as part of some 20-person conspiracy indictment claiming a bunch of people arranged to have Donald Trump investigated as a ploy to undercut his first term and damage his 2024 election chances (yeah, seriously, that is the theory!), then the statute of limitations expiration was always a mere speed bump.

And in the same way that the dismissal without prejudice leaves unresolved the larger issue of illegal weaponization of DOJ, it also leaves a number of things the Loaner AUSAs might have wanted resolved unresolved.

Understand, two things that had no business being in the Comey indictment are absolutely critical to the Grand Conspiracy theory.

The Grand Conspiracy would start at least by August 9, 2016, when Peter Strzok responded to Lisa Page’s question, “He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” by saying, “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

From there, Kash Patel’s conspiracy theory about the “Clinton Plan” CIOL would take over.

The Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory is that the “Clinton Plan” was real, and that it should have given the FBI notice that Hillary had a plan to frame Donald Trump. [I should emphasize, not only don’t I endorse this theory, much of it is false and even more of it is batshit insane, but it nevertheless is being pursued by a Senate confirmed US Attorney in SDFL, Jason Reding Quiñones.] But, the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory goes, when Peter Strzok got notice of the Clinton Plan on September 7, he made sure it never got shared with the people beginning to investigate why George Papadopoulos knew of Russia’s plan to help Trump in advance because, the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy goes, it would have led him to open an investigation into Hillary rather than Trump.

Again, not true, insane, but nevertheless what has everyone from the Deputy Attorney General and FBI Director on down to the people unlawfully accessing raw data collected years ago aroused.

Fast forward to 2020. According to the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory, when Jim Comey told Lindsey Graham the “Clinton Plan” — as misleadingly described in a John Ratcliffe letter no doubt drafted with Kash’s help — didn’t ring a bell for him, he was lying to cover up how the FBI ignored warning signs about leads from Hillary.

Fast forward even further to 2025. When Kash found a burn bag of materials that had not been destroyed, including the “Clinton Plan” CIOL that might have been brought to the FBI Director’s Office with a bunch of other Durham investigation materials, he and Jack Eckenrode instead assumed that Comey partisans were trying to protect Comey and Strzok’s devious plot to ignore the CIOL back in 2016.

You need the “Clinton Plan” CIOL for the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory because that’s what makes their wildly misleading claims about the treatment of the Steele dossier in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment damning. The Steele dossier should never have been used at all, the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory says, because the FBI had notice that Clinton wanted to frame Trump, but instead Comey, with Brennan’s involvement (the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory claims), demanded its inclusion and based (the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory claims) the judgement that Russia wanted Trump to win on it, and when Brennan lied about all that in 2023 (the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory claims), he was trying to cover up this devious plot.

You also need Comey’s decision to release the memo he wrote up memorializing Trump’s corrupt attempt to shut down the Mike Flynn investigation and with it the communications with Dan Richman. You need that, plus Comey’s overt wish that by releasing the memo a Special Counsel might be (and was) appointed, because it ties (the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory claims) Strzok’s stated intent to “stop” Trump from becoming President to the investigation that dominated his first term. The Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory turns the very legal release of a memo demonstrating Trump’s corruption into the crime of depriving Donald Trump of his right to fully exploit the presidency the Russian government gave him.

Now consider how charging Jim Comey with lying and obstructing fucked the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy plans.

First, the “Clinton Plan” CIOL.

EDVA successfully prevented Comey from explaining the problem with the “Clinton Plan” CIOL before attempting to charge him for lying about it. In his first discovery letter, Pat Fitzgerald noted that he had offered to meet with prosecutors on September 17.

In that regard, on September 17, 2025, I wrote the DOJ to ask for a meeting to discuss why the case should not be brought but never received a substantive response, much less a meeting.

And his motion to dismiss because Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer failed to actually get an indictment revealed that EDVA even refused to engage with the offer to toll the statute of limitations.

In fact, Mr. Comey’s counsel requested a meeting with the U.S. Attorney’s Office the week before the indictment was obtained and offered to toll the statute of limitations to allow for that meeting. A prosecutor in the Office told Mr. Comey’s counsel that the Office had been directed not to engage with defense counsel.

Prosecutors at EDVA — supposedly the good guys who got fired — didn’t want any truths Fitzgerald might share to fuck up their larger Grand Conspiracy conspiracy.

In one of his two replies for release of grand jury materials, Comey laid out how stupid all this is.

On September 30, 2020, Mr. Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into alleged links between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government. See Oversight of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: Day 3, Hearing Before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 116th Cong. (Sept. 30, 2020), http://bit.ly/4o2ekHb. The night before, he was sent a copy of the Ratcliffe Letter, described above, which purported to summarize the September 7, 2016 CIOL in one sentence. Mr. Comey was not provided an opportunity to review the September 7, 2016 CIOL at issue prior to his testimony.

[snip]

There is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Comey received the CIOL at issue, much less that he reviewed it. The materials in discovery make clear that every day, numerous CIOLs come to the FBI addressed to the Director—from a variety of federal agencies in a variety of formats—and are routed to employees other than the Director. Because the Midyear Exam investigation had been closed for more than two months, there is no reason to believe that any CIOL related to Ms. Clinton would have been sent to Mr. Comey (and the government has produced no proof that it was). There is no electronic trail showing that Mr. Comey received the CIOL at issue. There is no paper trail showing that he received it. And there is no witness who says that Mr. Comey either received it or discussed it with him. Full stop.

This total lack of evidence is extremely troubling in light of credible press reporting that not only does a declination memorandum exist in this case,11 but it made clear that with respect to the CIOL in particular, a prior investigation found that Mr. Comey’s statement could not support a false-statement charge because there was insufficient evidence Mr. Comey had ever seen the CIOL.12 Ms. Halligan was also reported to have been advised by career prosecutors in that declination memorandum that “seeking the charges would violate DOJ policy, raise serious ethics issues, and risk being rejected by the grand jury.” Id.

In a footnote, he noted that this is all based on Russian disinformation.

10 Indeed, it appears this information was created by Russian intelligence, and did not accurately reflect particular emails. See Charlie Savage & Adam Goldman, ‘Clinton Plan’ Emails Were Likely Made by Russian Spies, Declassified Report Shows, N.Y. Times (July 31, 2025), https://perma.cc/F8AF-TLAF.

Worse still, a grand jury determined there was not probable cause that Comey lied about the “Clinton Plan” CIOL (though the Loaner AUSAs were trying to backdoor that as a crime in the obstruction charge).

Todd Blanche whisked the criminal investigation into whether Brennan lied in 2023 about his enthusiasm for the Steele dossier away to SDFL before a prosecutor wrote up a declination memo. Having arrived in Florida, US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones sent out a bunch of subpoenas that everyone recognizes to be entirely performative (because they ask for highly classified things none of the subpoena recipients would have in their private possession).

But Blanche didn’t whisk this “Clinton Plan” CIOL off to Florida (which might have happened had Trump not demanded Pam Bondi intervene) before Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did real damage to it.

And by bringing in Loaner AUSAs who actually care about their bar licenses, Blanche also did grave damage to their plan to use the Comey memos in the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy. The Loaner AUSAs attempted (or rather, fronted for James Hayes’ attempt) to use this investigation to get a filter team approved to turn the clearly privileged materials Miles Starr and Jack Eckenrode could have read because Kash Patel’s FBI turned off the filters applied under Bill Barr into crime-fraud excepted communications, at least ostensibly because they reflected a conspiracy to leak classified materials but in reality to serve their larger Grand Conspiracy conspiracy.

But instead of getting their filter protocol, the EDVA effort resulted in an order from William Fitzpatrick prohibiting the government from reviewing those privileged materials.

ORDERED that the Government, including any of its agents or employees, shall not review any of the materials seized pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 search warrants at issue until further order of the Court;

And then Fitzpatrick issued an opinion effectively holding that DOJ violated Comey’s attorney-client privilege in 2020 by not permitting him to assert privilege.

However, the government never engaged Mr. Comey in this process even though it knew that Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey as his attorney as of May 9, 2017, and three of the four Richman Warrants authorized the government to search Mr. Richman’s devices through May 30, 2017, 21 days after an attorney-client relationship had been formed. ECF Nos. 38 at 2 and 138-11 at 33 (Aug. 2019 Office of the Inspector General Report) (noting that Mr. Comey informed the Office of Inspector General that “the day after his removal, or ‘very shortly thereafter,’ he retained attorneys Patrick Fitzgerald, David Kelley, and Daniel Richman.”).

[snip]

At the time the Richman Warrants were executed, the government was aware not only that Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey, but also that he maintained ongoing attorney-client relationships with other individuals, as the FBI materials regarding his resignation from Special Government Employee status noted his intention to represent a defendant in a federal criminal prosecution. Id. As a result, when the government obtained the first Richman Warrant in 2019, it was clearly foreseeable that Mr. Richman’s devices contained potentially privileged communications with numerous third parties, including Mr. Comey. Nevertheless, in 2019 and 2020, the government made a conscious decision to exclude Mr. Comey from the filter process, even though Mr. Comey, as the client, is the privilege holder, not Mr. Richman. The government’s claim at the November 5, 2025 hearing that Mr. Richman, at the time himself the subject of a criminal investigation and represented by separate counsel, was in a position to effectively assert Mr. Comey’s privilege is entirely unreasonable.

Fitzpatrick noted that had prosecutors obtained a new warrant to investigate Comey’s alleged leaks, it would be narrowly scoped. (He doesn’t say this, but it is the case that a new warrant would have prohibited any searches after February 7, 2017, the day Richman left the FBI, and therefore prohibited the review of the Comey memo exchanges even on the Richman side.)

If a new warrant had been sought by the government and issued by the Court, the Fourth Amendment would have required it to be narrowly tailored, authorizing access only to materials within a limited time frame and relevant to the new offenses under investigation. See Williams, 592 F.3d at 519. In addition, any new warrant would have imposed strict procedural safeguards to ensure privileged information was not reviewed by the prosecution team. As a result, the parameters of the 2025 search would inevitably have had a different and much narrower scope than the Richman Warrants. Faced with this prospect, the government chose to unilaterally search materials that were (1) seized five years earlier; (2) seized in a separate and since closed investigation; (3) that were never reviewed to determine whether the seized information was responsive to the original warrants; (4) that were likely improperly held by the government for a prolonged period of time; (5) that included potentially privileged communications; (6) did so without ever engaging the privilege holders; and (7) did so without seeking any new judicial authority.

And he described that DOJ had permitted Miles Starr to remain on the investigative team even after having been tainted by privileged communications.

Agent-3, rather than remove himself from the investigative team until the taint issue was resolved, proceeded into the grand jury undeterred and testified in support of the pending indictment. ECF 179. In fact, Agent-3 was the only witness to testify before the grand jury in support of the pending indictment. Id. The government’s decision to allow an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury is highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.

The Fitzpatrick opinion was absolutely devastating for the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy, because it rendered Comey’s side of the Comey memo exchanges unlawfully seized.

And then Donald Trump DOJ responded the way Trump always does, by claiming bias. The Loaner AUSAs made a specious claim that Fitzpatrick’s comments about Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s misstatements to the jury reflected bias.

Federal courts have an affirmative obligation to ensure that judicial findings accurately reflect the evidence. Canon 2(A) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges requires every judge to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary” and to avoid orders that “misstate or distort the record.” Canon 3(A)(4) requires courts to ensure that factual determinations are based on the actual record, not assumptions or misrepresentations. Measured against these obligations and the rule of law, the magistrate’s reading of the transcript cannot stand.

And, that very same day, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer lied to the NYPost in a bid to claim that Michael Nachmanoff himself is biased.

Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan suggested Wednesday that the Biden-appointed judge overseeing the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey violated judicial conduct rules by asking if she was a “puppet” of President Trump.

District Judge Michael Nachmanoff asked Comey’s defense lawyer if he thought Halligan, the prosecutor who brought the indictment against the former FBI boss, was acting as a “puppet” or “stalking horse” of the commander in chief, during a hearing in an Alexandria, Va., courtroom.

“Personal attacks — like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet’ — don’t change the facts or the law,” Halligan exclusively told The Post.

By November 19, the day of these twin bullshit claims of judicial misconduct, the Comey prosecution in EDVA had done grave damage to the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy. But the plan was to discredit everything the judges did.

Except for Cameron Currie. They forgot to include Judge Currie, and her order dismissing the indictment without prejudice — making the indictment and everything that happened after that a legal nullity — left all of this wildly unresolved.

DOJ is on notice that they broke the law and that their Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theories are bullshit. But that notice has become a legal nullity, with no way for them to rebut it in EDVA.

I can tell you what the plan was. It was (as Charlie Savage recently laid out) to whisk this all away to Aileen Cannnon’s courthouse to make the crimes FBI committed go away.

I have no fucking clue what the plan is now, because I have no idea what the legal import is of these legal statements that have been rendered a legal nullity by the Currie order.

I do know, however, that when imagining what might come next, you have to consider that SDFL investigation, which may be why Comey’s statement predicted that, “I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again.”

Update: In somewhat related news, the 11th Circuit has upheld the judgment and sanctions against Trump and Alina Habba for their frivolous lawsuit very much paralleling the Grand Conspiracy theory.

Meaning, Jim Comey has beaten Trump in court twice in a holiday-shortened week.

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The Graymail Cometh

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I’ve written extensively about how Kash Patel and John Durham chased a particular intelligence report — one we now know to have been based on Russian fabrications — for four years.

Kash, John Ratcliffe, Durham, his lead investigator Jack Eckenrode (who leads this investigation), Bill Barr — all of them! — believed that because the FBI received a single intelligence report repeating a Russian claim that Hillary planned to hold Trump accountable for his ties to Russia, it was proof that Hillary had intentionally fabricated the Steele dossier (disinformation into which was probably injected by Paul Manafort buddy Oleg Deripaska) and the Alfa Bank anomalies.

The case against Jim Comey renews that goose chase, perhaps (because Durham concluded it was likely fabricated) criminally so.

In his bid to obtain the grand jury transcripts submitted yesterday, Comey laid out how important it was for him to see how Lindsey Halligan instructed the jury on this matter, especially given that the grand jury rejected the charge specifically pertaining to that intelligence, but Loaner AUSAs plan to use it to prove Count Two of the existing indictment. As part of that discussion, he lays out how obscene it was to even charge him for not remembering something simply because Kash and Ratcliffe had developed an obsession over it.

Note, I have generally referred to that intelligence report as the “Clinton Plan,” which is how Durham referred to it, though without the scare quotes making clear that Durham himself fabricated parts of this theory. Comey, in his filings, uses the FBI term for all such referrals, CIOL (Counterintelligence Operational Lead).

Comey’s description starts with a detail I should have known, but did not: When Comey was asked, three times during the September 30, 2020 hearing, about the “Clinton Plan” CIOL, he had not been shown it.

On September 30, 2020, Mr. Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into alleged links between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government. See Oversight of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: Day 3, Hearing Before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 116th Cong. (Sept. 30, 2020), http://bit.ly/4o2ekHb. The night before, he was sent a copy of the Ratcliffe Letter, described above, which purported to summarize the September 7, 2016 CIOL in one sentence. Mr. Comey was not provided an opportunity to review the September 7, 2016 CIOL at issue prior to his testimony.

Ratcliffe had sent Lindsey Graham a misleading letter about it the night before the hearing, but he didn’t release the memo itself (which was itself redacted in a misleading way, and then shared with the Federalist) for another week. I first posted about it on October 11 of that year.

Nevertheless, Lindsey Graham highlighted it in the hearing and then Josh Hawley followed up. The focus on the referral was an ambush, probably intended to support the Durham investigation. And that’s what Kash is trying to criminalize, because doing so sustains his batshit insane theory that Hillary was treated better than Trump in the 2016 election when two criminal investigations into her dominated and the investigation into Trump’s aides remained secret.

To make things worse, Trump is trying to criminalize something which there’s no evidence Comey ever saw (Comey lays this out without even mentioning that Durham couldn’t find any proof that anyone else had seen it, either).

There is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Comey received the CIOL at issue, much less that he reviewed it. The materials in discovery make clear that every day, numerous CIOLs come to the FBI addressed to the Director—from a variety of federal agencies in a variety of formats—and are routed to employees other than the Director. Because the Midyear Exam investigation had been closed for more than two months, there is no reason to believe that any CIOL related to Ms. Clinton would have been sent to Mr. Comey (and the government has produced no proof that it was). There is no electronic trail showing that Mr. Comey received the CIOL at issue. There is no paper trail showing that he received it. And there is no witness who says that Mr. Comey either received it or discussed it with him. Full stop.

This total lack of evidence is extremely troubling in light of credible press reporting that not only does a declination memorandum exist in this case,11 but it made clear that with respect to the CIOL in particular, a prior investigation found that Mr. Comey’s statement could not support a false-statement charge because there was insufficient evidence Mr. Comey had ever seen the CIOL.12 Ms. Halligan was also reported to have been advised by career prosecutors in that declination memorandum that “seeking the charges would violate DOJ policy, raise serious ethics issues, and risk being rejected by the grand jury.” Id. 13

11 The government’s refusal to answer basic questions about the existence of this declination memorandum and decision to hide behind a flimsy claim of privilege to stonewall the Court’s inquiries, see ECF No. 207, should be taken as confirmation that such a memorandum exists. See ECF No. 174 at 21.

12Katherine Faulders, et al., Ex-special counsel John Durham undercut case against James Comey in interview with prosecutors: Sources, ABC News (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/M2JC-CQGQ.

13 Katherine Faulders, et al., Prosecutors’ memo to new US attorney found no probable cause to charge James Comey: Sources (Sept. 25, 2025), https://perma.cc/8KT5-LHAG.

As noted, this was a key part of Comey’s bid to get the grand jury transcripts, something that goes to the heart of the problem with simply cut-and-pasting the two true billed charges into a new indictment.

But as part of his (far less interesting) reply motion for a Bill of Particulars, he also includes all the discovery requests he has submitted (October 2, October 29, November 12, November 19). They hint at another way this prosecution might go away (and Comey’s post-exoneration retaliation might flourish), on top of the 14 ways we’ve already talked about: with discovery requests with which prosecutors will really not want to comply, or cannot, either because of bulk, classification, or destruction.

In the latter category, for example, Comey reveals an October 12 FBI 302 describing that DC USAO destroyed records relating to journalists when the Arctic Haze investigation was closed.

An FBI 302 Report, dated October 12, 2025, reports that “the District of Columbia United States Attorneys Office [was] ‘freaking out’ when the [Arctic Haze] case was declined for prosecution and in the process of being closed, with an Assistant United States Attorney telling [the lead agent in the Arctic Haze investigation] to ensure that any grand jury materials relating to members of the media were destroyed.” See FD-302 Report Serial 110 at -26505.

Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs say that’s not true.

In an email on November 20, 2025 at 10:29 AM ET, the government represented that the 302 was inaccurate and the records had not, in fact, been destroyed. Mr. Comey reserves his rights with respect to the government’s potential spoliation of exculpatory evidence and will further investigate the government’s claim.

Comey also, just Wednesday, asked for the complete case file for the Arctic Haze, Durham, and this investigation (why he doesn’t have the latter two months after indictment I don’t know).

The Arctic Haze case file will lay out not just how Bill Barr focused exclusively on Comey (which I noted here) as opposed to others who might have been trying to damage him, but would name the Republican(s) who would have been the focus if he had not done so.

The Durham case file would explain why Andrew DeFilippis left DOJ quickly and quietly in the middle of the investigation. It would show that Durham lied in his report about how many FBI sources he had asked about the “Clinton Plan” CIOL, partly in an attempt to hide how clear it was that no one had seen this. It might show which Ukrainian Russian agents Durham and Barr and Jack Eckenrode consulted during the investigation and whether they also consulted Oleg Deripaska. It would either reveal the nature of the tip about Trump corruption that Italy gave to Durham or make clear that Durham hadn’t actually chased it down.

Importantly, it would also include all the evidence that shows Durham and Durham’s lead investigator turned Kash’s senior advisor, Jack Eckenrode, saw confirming that he had been chasing Russian disinformation for years, even while failing to establish any proof that FBI had actually received it. That evidence would be important to lay out how the continued pursuit of this by Kash and Eckenrode is a crime, at least according to Durham’s logic.

Holy hell I’d love to see the full Durham case file.

But the request that might really sink this prosecution, if 14 other things don’t first, is Jim Comey’s request for (1) all the CIOLs he received between January 1, 2016 (when the first SVR reports pertinent to the Clinton email investigation came in) and September 30, 2016, (2) all the intelligence he received pertaining to the Clinton email investigation or Crossfire Hurricane in that same period, and (3) all communications he received for a narrower period, July 1, 2016 to September 30, 2016.

If the government intends to present evidence as part of its case in chief at trial regarding the CIOL dated September 7, 2016 that Mr. Comey was questioned about in the September 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Comey is entitled to any and all documents that would rebut the inference that this CIOL was memorable to him as of September 30, 2020. Therefore, to the extent Count Two (or any other aspect of the government’s case in chief) is premised on the September 7, 2016 CIOL, in addition to the standard Rule 16 discovery that we are entitled to receive promptly, we are entitled to receive the following categories of documents pursuant to Rule 16 and Brady and its progeny, all of which are material to Mr. Comey’s ability to defend this case in pretrial motion practice and/or at trial:

(1) Any and all documents reflecting Mr. Comey’s receipt or review of CIOLs concerning the Midyear Exam investigation, Hillary Clinton, or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation between January 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016, including but not limited to:

(a) The CIOLs themselves; and

(b) Documentation reflecting Mr. Comey’s receipt or review thereof;

(2) Any and all documents reflecting Mr. Comey’s receipt or review of classified information concerning the Midyear Exam investigation, Hillary Clinton, or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation between January 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016;

(3) Any and all documents reflecting discussion involving Mr. Comey of CIOLs concerning the Midyear Exam investigation, Hillary Clinton, or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation between January 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016;

(4) Any and all documents reflecting discussion involving Mr. Comey of classified information concerning the Midyear Exam investigation, Hillary Clinton, or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation between January 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016; and

(5) Any and all communications or documents received by Mr. Comey in his capacity as Director of the FBI between July 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016. “Communications” as used in this subrequest five includes, but is not limited to:

(a) Emails;

(b) Phone calls;

(c) Text messages;

(d) Records of oral communications;

(e) Meeting invitations and calendar entries; and

(f) Hard copies of written communications delivered to Mr. Comey or his staff.

This is, on one hand, totally justifiable, because it would show just how unremarkable the CIOL that the current FBI Director has obsessed about for six years is as compared to everything else that Comey saw in that period. It would show why it made sense that, in 2020, when sandbagged by a misleading letter, it was unsurprising that the “Clinton Plan” CIOL would not ring a bell, as Comey responded in the hearing.

On the other hand, it is classic graymail, the very defense strategy used by Scooter Libby a hundred (well, just twenty) years ago: a request for documents so sensitive and so voluminous that prosecutors would have an exceedingly difficult time complying.

Libby’s request was more frivolous than this one. He asked for PDBs, among the most sensitive intelligence documents out there, covering the period when he was targeting Valerie Plame through the period when he lied to Patrick Fitzgerald about doing so. Fitzgerald managed not just to get the discovery to Libby, but to get substitutions approved so Libby’s team could walk through how insignificant exposing a CIA officer was to him, given the issues he was dealing with at the time.

By comparison, Comey’s is totally reasonable, given what prosecutors are preparing to argue, that he should have remembered, in September 2020, either the CIOL he didn’t receive or a briefing, possibly from John Brennan, that mentioned it in passing weeks later.

But Comey’s request will be just as difficult to comply with (and will also flip the logic of the dumb burn bag investigation back onto investigators). Plus, Kash Patel won’t want to comply with this, because it would involve giving Jim Comey a ton of information about how real and pressing the Russian attack was in 2016, the one Kash’s entire career is built on diminishing.

It seems that Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs are already trying to dodge this request. The most recent discovery letter, sent Tuesday, reveals that prosecutors are struggling to come with even the number of CIOLs Comey saw.

With respect to defense Category Twelve, which we understand from our November 12, 2025 meet and confer that you are working to provide relevant numbers with respect to, we seek to review the underlying CIOLs for 2016 in their entirety, and reserve our right to seek declassification of those CIOLs.

Tough shit, this letter says. We not only want the number, we want to see them, all of them, and we may demand you declassify them.

In October, ABC reported that one of the things in the declination memo — one of the reasons why career prosecutors said they could not charge this — was the difficulty in even identifying the number of things they’d have to show Comey.

Prosecutors further expressed concerns about the department’s ability to take the case to trial quickly due to problems identifying all the relevant materials that would need to be handed over to Comey’s lawyers, sources said.

This is what that concern looks like in real life.

And if Lindsey’s unlawful appointment or Trump’s clear malice or Lindsey’s suspected misconduct in the grand jury or her failure to actually get an indictment or Miles Starr’s breach of Comey’s privilege or their unwarranted searches or Ted Cruz’ prevarications and stupid questions or the destruction of exculpatory evidence or something else doesn’t make this prosecution go away beforehand, Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs may one day give up.

Update: In a new filing, Comey asks for a delay of his deadline for identifying what classified information he’ll need to defend himself. Among the problems is DOJ has still not declassified the CIOL John Ratcliffe partly declassified 5 years ago.

First, the government must produce the classified discovery at issue. On October 29, 2025, and November 19, 2025, the defense made discovery and Brady requests to the government that called for the production of additional classified information and the declassification of certain materials. See ECF No. 204-2 (Requests Eleven and Twelve) and 204-4 (Request Fourteen). With respect to the defense’s requests, the government reported today, November 21, 2025, that they had requested authorization for the defense to have access to certain counterintelligence operational leads (“CIOLs”), but that they were held at high classification levels. Needless to say, to the extent Count Two relates to a CIOL, and Mr. Comey’s purported memory of a CIOL, it is necessary for the defense to review the CIOL and any other relevant CIOLs. That has not happened.

Discovery requests

Category One: Lindsey Halligan’s unlawful appointment (expanded to include WDVA)

Category Two: Lack of probable cause (expanded to include more prosecutors)

Category Three: Presentation to grand jury

Category Four: Vindictive prosecution (expanded to include comparators)

Category Five: Trump’s hostility to Jim Comey

Category Six: Prejudicial statements from Trump

Category Seven: Prior inconsistent statements from Andy McCabe

Category Eight: Other Rule 16 and Brady

[There’s no identifiable Category Nine]

Category Ten: Potential sources identified in leak investigations

Category Eleven: Privilege taint

Category Twelve: All CIOLs and communications

Category Thirteen: All evidence destroyed in Arctic Haze investigation

Category Fourteen: Full case files for Arctic Haze, Durham investigation, Jim Comey

 

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Kash Patel’s Taint

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In advance of today’s hearing (at 10AM ET) on Jim Comey’s vindictive prosecution claim, I want to lay out two aspects of the Comey prosecution that likely doom it, and may doom the larger fever dream of a grand conspiracy case.

Both arise out of the way that Lindsey Halligan was prepped not by prosecutors, but by FBI agents working on the “Director’s Task Force” we know to be led by Jack Eckenrode, the guy who chased Russian disinformation for years based off Kash Patel’s misleading packaging of classified documents back in 2020.

This post will argue that likely all of them, possibly up to and including Kash himself, have tainted themselves by snooping in Jim Comey’s privileged communications. A follow-up will lay out the increasing evidence that Jim Comey’s grand jury presentment is a crime scene.

On September 12, FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force were prepping for EDVA’s September 16 interview with Dan Richman, then led by Erik Siebert. They were searching the full Cellebrite extraction from Richman’s phone, and stumbled on communications Richman conducted using a pseudonym. They didn’t use those communications for the Richman interview, almost certainly because that interview would have been focused on actual suspected crimes rather than the fever dreams of conspiracists. But after that interview led prosecutors to conclude there was no crime that could be charged, Trump removed Siebert, leading Pam Bondi to appoint overt partisan Maggie Cleary, on September 20 (Cleary becomes important for the follow-up). But that wasn’t good enough. Then Trump publicly demanded Bondi install Lindsey Halligan, which Bondi did on September 22. That week, Cleary reportedly heeded prosecutors’ view the case could not — should not — be charged.

But Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer instead prepped with FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force. Importantly, because DOJ wouldn’t provide Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer with outside help, those FBI agents prepped Lindsey, who knew nothing about how to prosecute a case, themselves.

DOJ headquarters declined to provide lawyers to assist Halligan, and FBI agents and lawyers working to prepare her were denied their request for a para-legal professional to assist in the presentation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

[snip]

Last Tuesday [September 23], Halligan began a crash course to prepare. Justice officials told her that the deputy attorney general’s office didn’t have lawyers to help her, and that it was against federal rules of criminal procedure for one of the attorneys from Justice headquarters to be in the grand jury room, one source familiar with the discussions said.

There’s a natural tension between FBI agents and prosecutors. The former get really invested in their targets, leading them to believe their case is stronger than it is. The latter, traditionally, have focused on how to sustain DOJ’s prior near-perfect record of convictions, all while keeping their bar licenses, and so they focus on what will be admissible and credible at trial, not their emotional belief they’ve caught a baddy.

Just as one example of how this pressure works, Jack Eckenrode — the head of this effort! — may well be the guy who tried to force Patrick Fitzgerald to indict Karl Rove two decades ago by telling journalists Rove was going to be indicted. Someone wanted Rove indicted (so did I!), but Fitz presumably believed that Robert Luskin had nudged Rove through serial admissions successfully enough to avoid perjuring himself too badly, and also that Rove would be useful at Scooter Libby’s trial, which he was.

But with the FBI agents prepping Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer, that moderating influence of a prosecutor didn’t exist. It was Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer, being led by the nose by hyper-partisan FBI guys performing for their hyper-partisan boss hunting the baddy that Kash had targeted even before getting the job.

And that’s important, because when Special Agent Spenser Warren describes “team” in this affidavit about the breach of Jim Comey’s privileged texts, it likely includes Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer.

On the morning of September 25, 2025, the team was preparing for an indictment of James Comey, to occur later that afternoon. SA Warren provided case agent SA Miles Starr and an FBI Office of General Counsel (OGC) attorney a limited overview of the text message communications to and from “Michael Garcia” (now understood to be Daniel Richman). SA Warren advised SA Starr and the FBI OGC attorney that some of the messages appeared to reference potential future legal representation. The FBI OGC attorney immediately advised that any of the text message communications referencing potential future legal representation should not be part of the indictment preparation. SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

Take a step back though. This conversation should never have happened! That’s because the imagined crime these FBI agents were presenting was that Comey had lied when he told Ted Cruz he had never told anyone at FBI to act as an anonymous source. These texts post-dated Richman’s departure from the FBI by over three months. Even if they hadn’t accessed these texts illegally, they don’t help you prove your case (unless you neglect to tell grand jurors and judges when Richman left FBI, as this prosecution team persists in doing).

But because there was no grown-up in the room, they accessed the texts.

There are three pieces of evidence that the entire group — Miles Starr, Eckenrode, but also Lindsey Halligan, and with her, her Loaner AUSAs — all were tainted by the privileged communications, and along with it the grand jury.

First, Warren described that he shielded Starr from the taint of the privileged comms by isolating two pages of texts, “only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.” But Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer likely presented eight pages of those texts, marked as Government Exhibit 10, on the fourth page of which Richman says, “just got goahead,” like he had just spoken to Comey, and the fifth through eighth pages of which post-date May 11 entirely. Someone went back into evidence they had been told included privileged texts and got an extra six pages of evidence.

And if Lindsey was already presenting texts well beyond the time that Comey retained Richman, that makes it more likely that when Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer told the grand jury there was better evidence they would get for trial, she was thinking of the other side of Richman’s communications, the communications between Comey and Richman.

But if that’s what she was thinking, the only way she would say that would be if she knew of the privileged comms — the comms an FBI lawyer specifically advised not to include in grand jury prep. That doesn’t mean she looked at them. It means she knew they were there and intended to go get them. When Miles Starr or whoever went back to get 8 pages of texts, he likely searched only the ones that included Mike Schmidt, thereby avoiding seeing any communications between Comey and Richman, but he did so because he knew those privileged communications were there.

Classic taint.

Also note, in the transcript, this comment appeared just one page after the other misinstruction on the law that (per Judge William Fitzpatrick) Lindsey gave, suggesting that Comey would have to take the stand. I’m sure the FBI agents who prepped her have the fever dream that they’ll see Comey on the stand, but no prosecutor would even silently imagine she could get a well-lawyered defendant to take the stand, much less blurt it out in front of a grand jury.

The other piece of evidence that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer was tainted by that privileged communication is the way that, even before sharing any of this discovery with Comey, she and the Loaner AUSAs set out to breach Comey’s privilege. They filed a motion to do so as one of their first filings (perhaps not coincidentally on the day Maggie Cleary was fired). And then, a week later, when they tried to rush Michael Nachmanoff into granting that motion, they invented a new theory of crime to get access to these communications: that Jim Comey lawyered up with Dan Richman and Pat Fitzgerald (and David Kelley) on May 11, 2017 in order to leak classified memos showing Donald Trump’s corruption.

Additionally, based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information.

[snip]

This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel. Some of the communications in the potentially protected material are from the same time as the focus of the DOJ OIG report. Before litigating any issue of conflict or disqualification, the parties should have access to all relevant and non-privileged information. The sooner that the potentially protected information is reviewed and filtered, the sooner the parties can make any appropriate filings with the Court.

The imagined crime here is a leak of classified information, not a lie in response to a question from Ted Cruz, and so irrelevant to this prosecution.

In real time, Comey dismissed this claim as the bullshit fever dream it was: Comey was an Original Classification Authority and didn’t believe anything in his memos was classified, and the specific memo shared with Mike Schmidt had no classified information in it by any measure.

But consider how abusive the claim looks now. To get these texts, FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force had gone back into material seized from Richman obtained more than five years earlier, they did so without a fresh warrant specific to either this prosecution or the fever dreams the FBI agents are really pursuing, rather than accessing the stuff that excluded the stuff Richman had said was privileged, they accessed the raw data and ostensibly did so for communications that could not have been responsive to their intended purpose (that is, to find out what, if anything, Richman shared anonymously while still at the FBI). And their interim claim they invoked to breach privilege, that this was a conspiracy to leak classified information, had nothing to do with this case, or even the larger fever dream conspiracy — the one they’re pursuing in Florida — that this was a conspiracy to be mean to Donald Trump.

A classic fishing expedition.

Betcha some money the Loaner AUSAs are delaying here so someone can try to get a warrant in Florida invoking a crime-fraud exception based on the well-known crime of being mean to Donald Trump.

Indeed, in Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz’ emergency motion for a delay (authored, as so many of these abusive filings are, by James Hayes), he doesn’t even argue this is about taint. He’s arguing (in a sentence fragment) only about whether Miles Starr read the actual texts in question, not whether he went back and searched for their counterpart texts to put together an 8-page exhibit for Lindsey to use.

Indeed, the government believes the Magistrate Judge may have misinterpreted some facts he found when issuing the latest order to release the grand jury materials to the defendant. For instance, whether the defendant has any standing to challenge the Richman materials, the full context of the statements made by the prosecutor to the grand jury, that Agent-3 was exposed to potentially privileged material, and that two indictments were presented to the grand jury.

Much of what the prosecutors have done since that day is a frantic bid to get those privileged texts, texts that could in no way serve to help prove this case as charged.

It’s sunny (and very cold by Irish standards), so I’m going to go take a walk before I map out the team — like James Hayes and OGC lawyer Gabriel Cohen — that’s lurking behind the foolish Loaner AUSAs fronting for all of this. But there’s a very good chance all of them are driven by taint, the taint of a fishing expedition into Jim Comey’s privileged communications.

This prosecution appears to have become more focused on finding some way out of that taint than on actually winning this particular prosecution against Kash Patel’s nemesis.

Cast of characters

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer

Tyler Lemons: On loan from EDNC

Gabriel Diaz: On loan from EDNC

James Hayes: Litigation Attorney at Main Justice, he is listed as author of the following:

Gabriel Cohen: Metadata lists him as OGC, possibly in Detroit, he is the author of:

Henry Whitaker: The former Solicitor General of Florida and currently Pam Bondi’s counselor, he is the signed author of:

Kathleen Stoughton: An AUSA in South Carolina with solid appellate experience, she is listed as author of:

Michael Shedd: A newish AUSA in South Carolin, he is listed as author of:

lheim: Metadata lists as author of:

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