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Donald Trump Insists He’s Too Special To Use Same Database 1,200 Other January 6 Defendants Have Used

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In addition to his claim that he needs a bunch of intelligence so he can try to distinguish his influence operations from those of Russian spies, Donald Trump also submitted a filing claiming that Jack Smith has not done an expansive enough search on discovery.

To understand how frivolous this filing is, consider that it complains that Jack Smith has not included DC USAO materials on the January 6 investigation in its discovery to Trump.

Since the Order, the Special Counsel’s Office has enjoyed constructive access to USAODC documents. In an August 11, 2023 discovery letter, the Office wrote that the USAO-DC “maintains a separate database of materials comprising discovery in the criminal cases related to the breach of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” Ex. G at 6. The letter stated that the “investigative team” in this case had “accessed certain materials within that database and has taken into its possession certain materials that the investigative team may rely upon or use at trial.” Id. Given these alignments, there is no question that the USAO-DC is part of the prosecution team.

Twice over the course of these discovery letters, DOJ has told Trump if he wants access to the full database provided to all the other January 6 defendants, he can get it.

As we advised you, in the course of our investigation, we accessed certain materials within that database, took into our possession certain materials that we may rely upon or use at trial, and produced them to you in discovery in our case. In our August 11 letter, we also offered to facilitate your access to the USAO database. We reiterate that offer now.

In response, Trump complained about DOJ’s unwillingness to identify everything in the database that might be helpful.

Seeking to avoid that obligation, the prosecution’s November 25 letter again directed our attention to a “a separate database of materials comprising discovery in criminal cases related to the breach of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.” Ex. F at 3; see also Ex. G at 6. Like SASC Windom’s “full access to the FBI’s trove of evidence about Oath Keeper and Proud Boy extremists involved in the riot,” Doc. 116-1 at 9, the Office’s conceded access to the USAO-DC’s database further supports President Trump’s position that the USAO-DC is part of the prosecution team.

However, it is not enough for the prosecution to offer the defense access to materials produced in those cases. “The government cannot meet its Brady obligations by providing [the defendant] with access to 600,000 documents and then claiming that [the defendant] should have been able to find the exculpatory information in the haystack.” United States v. Hsia, 24 F. Supp. 2d 14, 29-30 (D.D.C. 1998). In United States v. Saffarinia, the court relied on Hsia and agreed with the defense that “the government’s Brady obligations require it to identify any known Brady material to the extent that the government knows of any such material in its production of approximately 3.5 million pages of documents.” 424 F. Supp. 3d 46, 86 (D.D.C. 2020); see also United States v. Singhal, 876 F. Supp. 2d 82, 104 (D.D.C. 2012) (directing prosecutors to disclose the “identity (by Bates number) of the specific witness statements and documents” that are “producible as Rule 16(a)(1)(E)(i) documents material to preparing the defense, regardless of whether those documents are inculpatory or exculpatory”). The discovery in this case dwarfs that at issue in Hsia and Saffarinia, and the prosecution must identify information that is subject to Brady by doing more than pointing to another huge database.

This issue has already been litigated, repeatedly, in other January 6 cases. His demand for more is a demand to be treated better than the people at the Capitol, the people actually depicted in and/or who took the video.

The argument itself is largely an attempt to exploit the fact that the defendant was once the President and so interacted with all parts of government. As DOJ quipped in an October 24 letter:

To point out but a few of the exceedingly broad errors in your assertion, the prosecution team does not include the almost three million civilian, active duty, and reserve members of the Department of Defense; the 260,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security (or its CISA component); or the Intelligence Community writ large. Furthermore, your attempt to serve Rule 17(c) subpoenas, ECF No. 99—definitionally reserved for non-party witnesses—on the House Select Committee’s successor entity and a member of the White House Counsel’s Office confirms your understanding that those entities are not members of the prosecution team.

It is not rooted in the actual evidence in the case or — as with virtually all the filings Trump’s teams have made — the actual charges against him.

That said, the associated filings are of some interest. It’s just that Trump’s team submitted them in the least useful way possible. I’ve put them below, in order.

Reading them together reveals that some of what Trump requested in his unclassified discovery request last night — such as the request for the classified backup to the 2016 ICA or the opportunity for foreign powers to hack the 2020 election — were already covered in DOJ’s motion to strike his CIPA 5 request.

Reading them together also shows a progression. As I’ve noted, his original request asked for:

43. Please provide all documents relating to communications or coordination by the Special Counsel’s Office and DOJ with any of the Biden Administration, the Biden Campaign, Hunter Biden, the Biden family, the Biden White House, or any person representing Joe Biden.

In the first response, DOJ addressed that question (and question 37(b) for materials on Executive Privilege) by describing five Executive Privilege waiver reviews

37b. The defendant was party to five miscellaneous matters regarding assertion of the executive privilege. Attachments to filings in those five matters included letters from the incumbent White House declining to invoke executive privilege over certain witness testimony. The defendant already has those materials.

Trump must have made a follow-up at the November 21 meet-and-confer, because DOJ addressed it again, saying that whatever he wants is not in the prosecution team’s possession and not covered by discovery obligations.

Requests 33, 40, 42, 43, and 44 seek information that exceeds the scope of our discovery obligations, is not within the possession of the prosecution team, and/or does not exist.

One interesting redaction in this most recent exchange pertains to Trump’s request for injuries of law enforcement on January 6.

2. If you intend to introduce evidence at trial of any injuries sustained to law enforcement or anyone else at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, please provide all documents regarding those injured during the protest at the Capitol, including medical records.

DOJ’s response to that is entirely redacted, suggesting that DOJ may well submit records of injuries, such as the heart attack Danny Rodriguez caused after being especially riled up at Trump’s rally.

Finally, of significant interest: Trump asks for the identities of all the people who’ve flipped.

16. Please provide all documents regarding offers of immunity, forgoing of prosecution, diversion, USSG 5K1.1 reductions, or any other consideration to persons under investigation or charged regarding activities related to January 6th.

DOJ included that request among those about which it said Trump was not entitled to discovery.

Requests 15-19, 34-36. All of these requests—regarding the pipe bomb investigation, offers of immunity to January 6 defendants, “Antifa,” sources, and various named and unnamed January 6 offenders—appear to be focused on others’ actions related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Many of them request information that exceeds the scope of our discovery obligations and/or is not within the possession of the prosecution team. To the extent that we possess any such materials, we have produced them to you. Relatedly, in our meet and confer, you stated that you believe that in certain other cases, the Department of Justice has taken a position inconsistent with the indictment’s allegations that the defendant is responsible for the events of January 6. We disagree. The Department’s position in other January 6 cases that the defendant’s actions did not absolve any individual rioter of responsibility for that rioter’s actions—even if the rioter took them at the defendant’s direction—is in no way inconsistent with the indictment’s allegations here.

Trump continues to argue he’s better than the members of his mob. And he’s trying to avoid being held accountable for any near murders his incitement caused.

August 11 DOJ letter accompanying first classified discovery; includes redacted reference to Secret Service at 6,

October 6 Trump letter addressing Document 1 and Document 5

October 23 Trump discovery letter with seven requests redacted (Unredacted copy)

October 24 DOJ response to classified discovery letter, describing scope of prosecution team

November 3 DOJ response to October 23 discovery letter rejecting most requests and telling Trump where to find some of it in discovery; this has a number of specific references to the requests in the October 23 letter

November 15 Trump discovery letter making broad requests for January 6 discovery

November 25 DOJ response to November 15 letter and November 21 meet-and-confer, providing additional responses to October 23 requests

Exhibit H (sealed; pertains to reason Bill Barr changed Public Integrity’s approach to voter fraud claims)

Exhibit I (sealed; follow-up to letter Molly Gaston and JP Cooney sent about PIN)

Exhibit J (sealed; involvement of National Security Division in January 6 cases)

Exhibit K (sealed; involvement from FBI WFO on January 2)

Exhibit L (sealed; involvement from FBI WFO on January 3)

Exhibit M (sealed; reference to DHS I&A as attempt to get to CISA Election Task Force; ODNI involvement)

Exhibit N (sealed; related to DHS involvement in March 2021 report on 2020 election)

Exhibit O (sealed; related to DHS involvement on January 6)

Trump’s Attack on Black Votes Was There the Whole Time, We Just Didn’t Call It a Crime

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As I noted in an update to this post, NYT and the Guardian have clarified that the third charge mentioned in Trump’s target letter was 18 USC 241, Conspiracy against Rights, not — as Rolling Stone originally reported — 18 USC 242.

This piece, from November 2021, explains why 241 is such a good fit to Trump’s efforts to discount the votes of 81 million Biden voters.

The Supreme Court has stressed that Section 241 contains “sweeping general words” and directed courts to give the provision “a sweep as broad as its language.” In United States v. Classic it established that the statute protects not only the right to vote but the right to have one’s vote properly counted. Classic upheld an indictment of officials who sought to aid one candidate by refusing to count votes cast for his opponent.

The broad language of Section 241 clearly encompasses the actions of those involved in Trump’s coup attempt, and the Court’s precedents support that conclusion. Evidence currently available shows that the conspirators agreed to a common scheme to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election, took innumerable acts designed to accomplish that goal, and intended thereby to effectively deprive millions of voters in half a dozen states—and the rest of the 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden—of their right to vote and have their votes properly counted.

In Anderson v. U.S. the Court explicitly held that Section 241 reaches conspiracies designed “to dilute the value of votes of qualified voters.” It requires only an intent to prevent votes from being “given full value and effect,” an intent that includes an intent “to have false votes cast.” Evidence suggests that Trump and his supporters attempted exactly that in Georgia. They pressured local officials to somehow, some way magically “find” 11,780 additional votes to give Trump victory there and negate the votes of nearly two and a half million Georgia voters.

And it’s not just the concerted effort to eliminate the votes of 81 million Biden voters on January 6.

The recent news that Jack Smith has subpoenaed the security footage from the State Farm arena vote count location in Georgia, taken in conjunction with Trump’s efforts in places like Michigan — where his efforts focused on preventing a fair count of Detroit, where he had actually performed better than in 2016, rather than Kent County, the still predominantly white county where he lost the state — is a reminder that Trump and his mobs, many associated with overt white supremacists like Nick Fuentes, aggressively tried to thwart the counting of Black and Latino people’s votes. It was the same play Roger Stone used when he sent “election observers” to Black precincts in 2016, just on a far grander scale, and backed by the incitement of the sitting President.

As I said in the other post, we’ll see how Jack Smith charges this soon enough.

For now, I want to talk about how the press cognitively missed this — myself included. I want to talk about how the press — myself included — didn’t treat an overt effort to make it harder to count the votes of Black and Latino voters as a crime.

In its piece (including Maggie, but also a lot of people who aren’t as conflicted as she is), NYT points to both Norm Eisen (who didn’t see this, either, and whose recent prosecution memo on the charges we did expect didn’t even cite the pending decisions in the DC Circuit) and the January 6 Committee as if they are where this investigation came from.

Two of the statutes were familiar from the criminal referral by the House Jan. 6 committee and months of discussion by legal experts: conspiracy to defraud the government and obstruction of an official proceeding.

[snip]

The prospect of charging Mr. Trump under the other two statutes cited in the target letter is less novel, if not without hurdles. Among other things, in its final report last year, the House committee that investigated the events that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol had recommended that the Justice Department charge the former president under both of them.

Alan Feuer (who is bylined along with Maggie) knows as well as I do, neither ConfraudUS (18 USC 371) nor obstruction (18 USC 1512(c)(2)) came from the January 6 Committee. J6C — and people like Eisen — were still looking at insurrection long after I was screaming that DOJ would use obstruction. They — and people like Eisen — still hadn’t figured out how DOJ was using obstruction even after Carl Nichols specifically raised the prospect of using it with Trump.

NYT’s discussion of the pending appeal from Thomas Robertson in the DC Circuit (in the last paragraphs of the article) is as good as you’ll see in the mainstream press. They know well the obstruction charges builds on years of work by DOJ’s prosecutors, but nevertheless point to J6C’s fairly thin referral of it, as if that, and not the charges in 300 January 6 cases already, is where it comes from.

The reason we knew DOJ would use obstruction is because DOJ has been, overtly, setting that up for years.

In its description of the unexpected mention of 241, though, NYT describes that “prosecutors have introduced a new twist.”

Federal prosecutors have introduced a new twist in the Jan. 6 investigation by suggesting in a target letter that they could charge former President Donald J. Trump with violating a civil rights statute that dates back to the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Again, it was a surprise to me, too. I’m not faulting the NYT for being surprised. But that doesn’t mean prosecutors “introduced a new twist,” as if this is some fucking reality show. It means journalists, myself included, either don’t know of, misinterpreted the investigative steps that DOJ has already taken, or simply didn’t see them — and I fear it’s the latter.

To be sure, in retrospect there are signs that DOJ was investigating this. In December, WaPo reported that DOJ had subpoenaed election officials in predominantly minority counties in swing states (notably, the journalists on the story were local reporters, neither Trump whisperers nor the WaPo journalists who’ve given scant coverage to the crime scene investigation).

Special counsel Jack Smith has sent grand jury subpoenas to local officials in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin — three states that were central to President Donald Trump’s failed plan to stay in power following the 2020 election — seeking any and all communications with Trump, his campaign, and a long list of aides and allies.

The requests for records arrived in Dane County, Wis.; Maricopa County, Ariz.; and Wayne County, Mich., late last week, and in Milwaukee on Monday, officials said. They are among the first known subpoenas issued since Smith was named last month by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee Trump-related aspects of the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as the criminal probe of Trump’s possible mishandling of classified documents at his Florida home and private club.

The subpoenas, at least three of which are dated Nov. 22, indicate that the Justice Department is extending its examination of the circumstances leading up to the Capitol attack to include local election officials and their potential interactions with the former president and his representatives related to the 2020 election.

The virtually identical requests to Arizona and Wisconsin seek communications with Trump, in addition to employees, agents and attorneys for his campaign. Details of the Michigan subpoena, confirmed by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, were not immediately available.

[snip]

Previous subpoenas, in Arizona and other battleground states targeted by Trump, have been issued to key Republican players seen as allies in his pressure campaign to reverse the results of the 2020 election. Maricopa County, the sprawling Arizona jurisdiction that is home to Phoenix and more than half the state’s voters, was among several localities on the receiving end of that pressure.

The Post could not confirm Tuesday whether the latest round of subpoenas went to local officials in any other states. The office of the secretary of state in Pennsylvania, another 2020 contested state, declined to comment. State and local election officials in another contested state, Georgia, said they knew of no subpoenas arriving in the past week. Officials in Clark County, Nev., the sixth contested state, declined to comment.

The Arizona subpoena was addressed to Maricopa County’s elections department, while the Wisconsin versions were addressed to the Milwaukee and Dane clerks. All seek communications from June 1, 2020, through Jan. 20, 2021. [snip]

These subpoenas asked for Trump’s contacts with local election officials, in the predominantly minority counties that Democrats need to win swing states, going back to June 2020, well before the election itself. By December 2022, DOJ was taking overt steps in an investigation that even before the election Trump had plans targeting minority cities.

And there may have been a still earlier sign of this prong of the investigation, from the NYT itself. Alan Feuer (with Mike Schmidt) reported in November that prosecutors were investigating Stone’s rent-a-mob tactics, going back to 2018 but really going back to the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000, the same fucking MO Stone has adopted for decades, using threats of violence to make it harder to count brown people’s votes.

The time was 2018, the setting was southern Florida, and the election in question was for governor and a hotly contested race that would help determine who controlled the United States Senate.

Now, four years later, the Justice Department is examining whether the tactics used then served as a model for the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In recent months, prosecutors overseeing the seditious conspiracy case of five members of the Proud Boys have expanded their investigation to examine the role that Jacob Engels — a Florida Proud Boy who accompanied Mr. Stone to Washington for Jan. 6 — played in the 2018 protests, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The prosecutors want to know whether Mr. Engels received any payments or drew up any plans for the Florida demonstration, and whether he has ties to other people connected to the Proud Boys’ activities in the run-up to the storming of the Capitol.

Different prosecutors connected to the Jan. 6 investigation have also been asking questions about efforts by Mr. Stone — a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump — to stave off a recount in the 2018 Senate race in Florida, according to other people familiar with the matter.

[snip]

The 2018 demonstrations in Florida did not come close to the scale or intensity of the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, but the overlap in tactics and in those involved was striking enough to have attracted the attention of federal investigators.

Information obtained by investigators shows that some of those on the ground in 2018 called the protests “Brooks Brothers 2.0,” a reference to the so-called “Brooks Brothers riot” during a recount of the presidential vote in Florida in 2000. During that event, supporters of George W. Bush — apparently working with Mr. Stone — stormed a local government building, stopping the vote count at a crucial moment.

As I noted at the time, the NYT story ignored Stone’s 2016 efforts, but his efforts to intimidate Black voters at the polls in that year was the origin of the Stop the Steal effort that Ali Alexander was entrusted to implement in 2020 while Stone awaited his pardon.

And we know from evidence submitted at the Proud Boys trial that their role in mobs was not limited to January 6, but was instead mobilized on a moment’s notice immediately after the election.

Tarrio even indicated that he had gotten instructions from “the campaign.”

Finally, for all my complaints about the treatment of Brandon Straka, this prong may have — should have — gone back still earlier, to the belated discovery of Straka’s grift.

This investigation has been happening. It’s just that reporters — myself included — didn’t report it as such.

It’s not just the epic mob Trump mobilized on January 6, an attempt to use violence to prevent the votes of 81 million Biden voters to be counted. It was an effort that went back before that, to use threats of violence to make it harder for election workers like Ruby Freeman to count the vote in big cities populated by minorities.

One reason TV lawyers didn’t see this is they have always treated Trump’s suspected crimes as a white collar affair, plotting in the Willard, but not tasing Michael Fanone at the Capitol.

But it is also about race and visibility.

January 6 was spectacular, there for the whole world to see.

But those earlier mobs — at the TCF center in Detroit, the State Farm arena in Atlanta, Phoenix, Milwauke — those earlier mobs were also efforts to make sure certain votes weren’t counted, or if they were, were only counted after poorly paid election workers risked threats of violence to count them, after people like Ruby Freeman were targeted by Trump’s team to have their lives ruined.

And we, the press collectively, didn’t treat those efforts to disqualify votes as the same kind of crime, as part of the same conspiracy, as Trump’s more spectacular efforts on January 6.

Update: Added the campaign texts. Thanks to Brandi, who knew exactly where to find them.

Update: Ironically, Bill Barr’s testimony may be pivotal to prove that Trump targeted Detroit because of race. That’s because Barr specifically told Trump he had done better in Detroit than he did in 2016.

Trump raised “the big vote dump, as he called it, in Detroit,” Barr said. “He said ‘people saw boxes coming into the counting station at all hours of the morning’ and so forth.”

Barr said he explained to Trump that Detroit centralized its counting process at the TCF Center downtown convention hall rather than in each precinct. For the November 2020 general election, Michigan’s largest city counted its absentee ballots at the convention center under the supervision of state Bureau of Election Director Chris Thomas. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most ballots cast were absentee.

“They’re moved to counting stations,” Barr said. “And so the normal process would involve boxes coming in at all different hours.”

“I said, ‘Did anyone point out to you … that you did better in Detroit than you did last time? There’s no indication of fraud in Detroit,” Barr said he told Trump.

Everyone in MI knows — and I’m sure Trump knows — he lost MI because he lost Kent County, which as more young people move into Grand Rapids has been getting more Democratic in recent years. That Trump targeted Detroit and not Kent (or Oakland, which has also been trending increasingly Democratic) is a testament that this was about race.

Update, 7/30: Both NAACP and ACLU recognized this in real time. Here’s ACLU’s suit.

DOJ Is Treating January 6 as an Act of Terrorism, But Not All January 6 Defendants Are Terrorists

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It turns out that Ted Cruz is (partially) right: Some of the people who participated in January 6 are being treated as terrorists. But not all January 6 participants are terrorists.

Though, predictably, Cancun Ted misstates which insurrectionists have been or might be labeled as terrorists — in part out of some urgency to avoid calling himself or Tucker Carlson as such.

While some defendants accused of assaulting cops will, I expect, eventually be slapped with a terrorism enhancement at sentencing, thus far, the people DOJ has labeled terrorists have been key members of the militia conspiracies, including a number who never came close to assaulting a cop (instead, they intentionally incited a shit-ton of “normies” to do so).

Ted Cruz wants to treat those who threatened to kill cops as terrorists, but not those who set up the Vice President to be killed.

The problem is, even the journalists who know how domestic terrorism works are giving incomplete descriptions of how it is working in this investigation. For example, Charlie Savage has a good explainer of how domestic terrorism works legally, but he only addresses one of two ways DOJ is leveraging it in the January 6 investigation. Josh Gerstein does, almost as an aside, talk about how terrorism enhancements have already been used (in detention hearings), but then quotes a bullshit comment from Ethan Nordean’s lawyer to tee up a discussion of domestic terrorism as a civil rights issue. More importantly, Gerstein suggests there’s a mystery about why prosecutors haven’t argued for a terrorism enhancement at sentencing; I disagree.

As numerous people have laid out, domestic terrorism is defined at 18 USC 2331(5):

(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—

(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States; and

As both Savage and Gerstein point out, under 18 USC 2332b(g)(5) there are a limited number of crimes that, if they’re done, “to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct,” can be treated as crimes of terrorism. One of those, 18 USC 1361, has been charged against 40-some January 6 defendants for doing over $1,000 of damage to the Capitol, including most defendants in the core militia conspiracies. Another (as Savage notes), involves weapons of mass destruction, which likely would be used if DOJ ever found the person who left bombs at the RNC and DNC. Two more involve targeting members of Congress or Presidential staffers (including the Vice President and Vice President-elect) for kidnapping or assassination.

If two or more persons conspire to kill or kidnap any individual designated in subsection (a) of this section and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be punished (1) by imprisonment for any term of years or for life,

There’s very good reason to believe that DOJ is investigating Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs for conspiring to assassinate Nancy Pelosi, starting on election day and continuing as he went to her office after breaking into the Capitol, so it’s not unreasonable to think we may see these two laws invoked as well, even if DOJ never charges anyone with conspiring to assassinate Mike Pence.

Being accused of such crimes does not, however, amount to being charged as a terrorist. The terrorist label would be applied, in conjunction with a sentencing enhancement, at sentencing. But it is incorrect to say DOJ is not already treating January 6 defendants as terrorists.

DOJ has been using 18 USC 1361 to invoke a presumption of detention with militia leaders and their co-conspirators, starting with Jessica Watkins last February. Even then, the government seemed to suggest Watkins might be at risk for one of the kidnapping statutes as well.

[B]ecause the defendant has been indicted on an enumerated offense “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government,” the defendant has been charged with a federal crime of terrorism as defined under 18 U.S.C §§ 2332b(g)(5). Therefore, an additional basis for detention under 18 U.S.C § 3142(g)(1) is applicable. Indeed, the purpose of the aforementioned “plan” that the defendant stated they were “sticking to” in the Zello app channel became startlingly clear when the command over that same Zello app channel was made that, “You are executing citizen’s arrest. Arrest this assembly, we have probable cause for acts of treason, election fraud.” Id. [my emphasis]

DOJ has invoked 18 USC 1361 as a crime of terrorism for detention disputes with the central Proud Boys conspirators as well. It’s unclear how broadly DOJ might otherwise do this, because another key figure who is an obvious a candidate for such a presumption, Danny Rodriguez (accused of tasing Michael Fanone and doing damage to a window of the Capitol), didn’t fight detention as aggressively as the militia members have, presumably because his alleged actions targeting Fanone clearly merit detention by themselves. That said, I believe his failed attempt to suppress his FBI interview, in which he admitted to helping break a window, was an attempt to limit his exposure to a terrorism enhancement.

We have abundant evidence that DOJ is using the threat of terrorism enhancement to get people to enter cooperation agreements. Six of nine known cooperators thus far (Oath Keepers Graydon Young, Mark Grods, Caleb Berry, and Jason Dolan, Proud Boy Matthew Greene, and SoCal anti-masker Gina Bisignano) have eliminated 18 USC 1361 from their criminal exposure by entering into a cooperation agreement. And prosecutor Alison Prout’s description of the plea deal offered to Kurt Peterson, in which he would trade a 210 to 262 month sentencing guideline for 41 to 51 months for cooperating, only makes sense if a terrorism enhancement for breaking a window is on the table.

You can’t say that DOJ is not invoking terrorism enhancements if most cooperating witnesses are trading out of one.

For those involved in coordinating the multi-pronged breaches of the Capitol, I expect DOJ will use 18 USC 1361 to argue for a terrorism enhancement at sentencing, which is how being labeled as a terrorist happens if you’re a white terrorist.

But there is another way people might get labeled as terrorists at sentencing, and DOJ is reserving the right to do so in virtually all non-cooperation plea deals for crimes other than trespassing. For all pleas involving the boilerplate plea deal DOJ is using (even including those pleading, as Jenny Cudd did, to 18 USC 1752, the more serious of two trespassing statutes), the plea deal includes this language.

the Government reserves the right to request an upward departure pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4, n. 4.

That’s a reference to the terrorism enhancement included in sentencing guidelines which envisions applying a terrorism enhancement for either (A) a crime involving coercion other than those enumerated under 18 USC 2332b or (B) an effort to promote a crime of terrorism.

4. Upward Departure Provision.—By the terms of the directive to the Commission in section 730 of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the adjustment provided by this guideline applies only to federal crimes of terrorism. However, there may be cases in which (A) the offense was calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct but the offense involved, or was intended to promote, an offense other than one of the offenses specifically enumerated in 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B); or (B) the offense involved, or was intended to promote, one of the offenses specifically enumerated in 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B), but the terrorist motive was to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, rather than to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct. In such cases an upward departure would be warranted, except that the sentence resulting from such a departure may not exceed the top of the guideline range that would have resulted if the adjustment under this guideline had been applied. [my emphasis]

The point is, you can have a terrorism enhancement applied even if you don’t commit one of those crimes listed as a crime of terrorism.

In a directly relevant example, the government recently succeeded in getting a judge to apply the latter application of this enhancement by pointing to how several members of the neo-Nazi group, The Base, who pled guilty to weapons charges, had talked about plans to commit acts of terrorism and explained their intent to be coercion. Here’s the docket for more on this debate; the defendants are appealing to the Fourth Circuit. This language from the sentencing memo is worth quoting at length to show the kind of argument the government would have to make to get this kind of terrorism enhancement at sentencing.

“Federal crime of terrorism” is defined at U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4, app. note 1 and 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5). According to this definition, a “federal crime of terrorism” has two components. First, it must be a violation of one of several enumerated statutes. 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(B). Second, it must be “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5)(A). By § 3A1.4’s plain wording, there is no requirement that the defendant have committed a federal crime of terrorism. All that is required is that the crimes of conviction (or relevant conduct) involved or were intended to promote a federal crime of terrorism.

[snip]

To apply the enhancement, this Court needs to identify which specific enumerated federal crime(s) of terrorism the defendants intended to promote, and the Court’s findings need to be supported by only a preponderance of the evidence. Id.17

The defendants repeatedly confirmed, on tape, that their crimes were intended to promote enumerated federal crimes of terrorism. They intended to kill federal employees, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1114. Exhibit 19; Exhibit 20; Exhibit 28; Exhibit 33; Exhibit 34; Exhibit 44; Exhibit 45. They intended to damage communication lines, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1362. Exhibit 37. They intended to damage an energy facility, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1366(a). Exhibit 30; Exhibit 35; Exhibit 36; Exhibit 45. They intended to damage rail facilities, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1992. Exhibit 29; Exhibit 30; Exhibit 38; Exhibit 45. And they intended to commit arson or bombing of any building, vehicle, or other property used in interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 844(i). Exhibit 45.

Furthermore, there can be no serious dispute that the defendants’ intentions were “to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion.” Coercion and capitulation were core purposes of The Base. And specific to the defendants, they themselves said this is what they wanted. Exhibit 39 (“Desperation leads to martyr. Leads to asking what we want. Now that’s where we would have to simply keep the violence up, and increase the scope of our demands. And say if these demands are not met, we’re going to cause a lot of trouble. And when those demands are met, then increase them, and continue the violence. You just keep doing this, until the system’s gone. Until it can’t fight anymore and it capitulates.”). It was their express purpose to “bring the system down.” Exhibit 36

Given how many people were talking about hanging Mike Pence on January 6, this is not a frivolous threat for January 6 defendants. But as noted, such a terrorism enhancement doesn’t even require the plan to promote assassinating the Vice President. It takes just acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States and an attempt to coerce the government.

Contra Gerstein, I think there’s a pretty easy explanation for why the government hasn’t asked for a terrorism enhancement yet. The way the government is relying on obstruction to prosecute those who intended to prevent the peaceful transfer of power sets up terrorism enhancements for some of the most violent participants, but we’ve just not gotten to most of the defendants for whom that applies.

Thus far, there have been just three defendants who’ve been sentenced for assault so far, the acts “dangerous to human life” most at issue: Robert Palmer, Scott Fairlamb, and Devlyn Thompson. But Palmer and Thompson pled only to assault.

Fairlamb, as I noted at the time, pled guilty to both assault and obstruction. Unlike the two others, Fairlamb admitted that his intent, in punching a cop, was to, “stop[] or delay[] the Congressional proceeding by intimidation or coercion.”

When FAIRLAMB unlawfully entered the Capitol building, armed with a police baton, he was aware that the Joint Session to certify the Electoral College results had commenced. FAIRLAMB unlawfully entered the building and assaulted Officer Z.B. with the purpose of influencing, affecting, and retaliating against the conduct of government by stopping or delaying the Congressional proceeding by intimidation or coercion. FAIRLAMB admits that his belief that the Electoral College results were fraudulent is not a legal justification for unlawfully entering the Capitol building and using intimidating [sic] to influence, stop, or delay the Congressional proceeding.

Fairlamb, by pleading to assault and obstruction, admitted to both elements of terrorism: violence, and the intent of coercing the government.

On paper, Fairlamb made a great candidate to try applying a terrorism enhancement to. But the sentencing process ended up revealing that, on the same day that Fairlamb punched a cop as part of his plan to overturn the election, he also shepherded some cops through a mob in an effort, he said with some evidence shown at sentencing, to keep them safe.

That is, on paper, the single defendant to have pled guilty to both assault and obstruction looked like a likely candidate for a terrorism enhancement. But when it came to the actual context of his crimes, such an enhancement became unviable.

I fully expect that if the January 6 prosecution runs its course (a big if), then DOJ will end up asking for and getting terrorism enhancements at sentencing, both for militia members as well as some of the more brutal assault defendants, both for those who plead guilty and those convicted at trial. But in the case of assault defendants, it’s not enough (as Ted Cruz says) to just beat cops. With a goodly number of the people who did that, there’s no evidence of the intent to commit violence with the intent of disrupting the peaceful transfer of power. They just got swept up in mob violence.

I expect DOJ will only ask for terrorism enhancements against those who made it clear in advance and afterwards that their intent in resorting to violence was to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

But until that happens, DOJ has already achieved tangible results, both in detention disputes and plea negotiations, by invoking crimes of terrorism.

237 Days: Cooperation in Criminal Investigations Takes a Long Time

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Earlier this week, I pointed out that the complaints about Merrick Garland’s approach to the January 6 investigation simply don’t account for how long competent investigations take. On Twitter, I noted that it took almost a full year after the Russian investigation was opened for George Papadopoulos to be arrested and another two months before he pled guilty, making 14 months for a simple false statements charge in a lightning fast investigation. With a purported cooperator like Mike Flynn, it took 15 months to plead guilty and another year for the cooperation, and that, again, was considered lightning fast (and was assisted by the criminal exposure Flynn had for secretly working for Turkey).

In the January 6 investigation, prosecutors got their first public cooperating witness on April 16, when Jon Schaffer entered into a cooperation agreement. Since then, four additional Oath Keepers (Graydon Young on June 23, Mark Grods on June 30, Caleb Berry on July 20, and Jason Dolan on September 15), Josiah Colt (on July 14), and Klete Keller (on September 29; and no, I have no clue against whom he’d be cooperating) also publicly entered into cooperation agreements. That’s what DOJ has formally revealed, though there are several cases where the government clearly has gotten cooperation from other defendants, but hasn’t shared that formally.

But even with cooperators, investigations take time. There are three recent developments that provide a sense of how time-consuming that is.

Jon Schaffer’s still unresolved cooperation

As I previously noted, the four main Oath Keeper cooperators have a harmonized status deadline for December 17. I had been waiting to see whether Jon Schaffer, who has ties to the Oath Keepers and communications with whom were noticed to Oath Keeper defendants, would be put on that same reporting schedule.

He hasn’t been.

In fact, a recent status report in his case suggests the main Oath Keeper conspiracy may not be the primary focus of his cooperation. That’s because two details in it are totally inconsistent with the progress of the Oath Keeper case.

Multiple defendants charged in the case in which the Defendant is cooperating have been presented before the Court; several are in the process of exploring case resolutions and a trial date has yet to be set.

As Judge Mehta well knows, four of the Oath Keepers already have “explor[ed] case resolutions.” And Mehta has set the first trial date for April 19, 2022.

So unless Schaffer’s attorney is entirely in error, it seems there’s some other multiple defendant case in which Schaffer is cooperating.

Swedish Scarf still at large?

Earlier this month, Gina Bisignano may have pushed the government to indict a conspiracy in which she’s a key witness earlier than they might have.

On November 4, she filed a motion to modify her release conditions, to get out of home arrest so she can try to salvage her salon business. In it, her lawyers revealed that back in July, Bisignano had entered into a sealed plea agreement.

10. On July 28, 2021, Defendant signed a plea agreement in the above captioned case UNDER SEAL.

11. On August 4, 2021, Defendant appeared before this Court and entered a guilty plea in the above captioned case, UNDER SEAL, to multiple counts of the indictment.

12. On September 16, 2021, a Zoom hearing was held before this Court, and Your Honor advised that you would entertain the Defendant’s motion in three (3) weeks to see whether the Defendant had any infractions during that time.

The only reason to seal the plea would be to hide a cooperation component.

There has long been chatter about a conspiracy indictment against members of the Southern California anti-mask community that traveled to the insurrection together. In response to Amy Berman Jackson’s questions about why Danny Rodriguez was not charged with three other defendants for assaulting Michael Fanone, prosecutors kept giving her vague answers for months, until they filed what must have been a sealed update on November 5. And a transcript of Rodriguez’ FBI interview at least suggested that the FBI had spoken to Bisignano before Rodriguez’ March 31 interview.

Is there any reason why Gina would tell us that you told her not to say anything to — about you being at the Capitol?

Videos of this interview, which are engaging TV, are here.

In mid-November, the government finally rolled out the long-awaited conspiracy indictment, which was more narrowly tailored than originally expected, charging Rodriguez, his estranged friend Ed Badalian, and someone referred to in the online community as “Swedish Scarf,” but whose identity remains sealed. The indictment charges two objects of the conspiracy: to halt the vote count on January 6, but also to “mutilate or destroy photographs and videos taken by” Bisignano (who is referred to as Person One in the indictment).

But there’s still no sign of an arrest of Swedish Scarf.

That could mean several things, one of which is that he’s on the lam.

The minute order from Judge Carl Nichols granting Bisignano some but not all of the release conditions she requested revealed that the government opposition to that request, which was due on November 24 (and so after the indictment against Badalian was unsealed) remains sealed.

There’s something else going on with this case. What, it is not entirely clear.

That said, what the public record suggests is that Bisignano had at least one interview prior to March 31, she pled guilty in August, but it still took three more months to obtain the indictment against Badalian and Swedish scarf.

Indicting a cop for fun and probation

Meanwhile the sentencing memos (government, defense) for Jacob Hiles reveal that not all cooperation comes with a cooperation agreement.

As the government describes, Hiles’ actions on January 6 include a number of the factors that would normally lead them to ask for a sentence including jail time: calls for revolution in advance, mockery of police efforts to defend the Capitol, and long boasts posted to Facebook after the fact.

But those Facebook posts play a key role in a more important prosecution, that of former Capitol Police Officer Michael Riley, who friended Hiles on Facebook before the insurrection and tried to protect him afterwards. After they first initiated contact, Riley warned Hiles to delete his posts, but he did not.

On January 7, 2021, a sworn U.S. Capitol police officer, Michael Angelo Riley, sent the defendant a private direct message on Facebook—the first message between the two, who had never met but shared an avid interest in fishing. The message stated as follows:

“Hey Jake, im a capitol police officer who agrees with your political stance. Take down the part about being in the building they are currently investigating and everyone who was in the building is going to be charged. Just looking out!”

Hiles responded to this message with a shorter version of the narratives posted on his public page and detailed above. He further stated, in part, “Investigate me however youd like and thank you for the heads up. . . . If what I did needs further investigation, I will gladly testify to this. There are some people who were violent. They attacked officers. They destroyed property. They should be fully prosecuted.”2 In the course of an extended conversation that ensued between the two, Hiles also said, “I don’t think I did anything wrong at all yesterday and I am very sorry things turned out the way that they did. I dont like the way that a few bad apples in a massive crowd are making the entire crowd be portrayed as violent terrorists,” and “I think when the fbi gets to investigating, they will find that these terroristic acts were committed in false flag attacks by leftists.”

The government’s investigation revealed that these communications between Riley and the defendant had been deleted by Riley, but not by the defendant, from whose Facebook account they were recovered. The communications included further corrupt conduct by Riley, as detailed in part in the Indictment, ECF No. 1, in United States v. Michael Angelo Riley, 21-CR-628 (ABJ). Indeed, according to Hiles, and consistent with the evidence recovered in the government’s investigation of Michael Riley, Hiles deleted no information in response to Riley’s suggestion that he do so.

And when FBI Agents interviewed Hiles after they arrested him on January 19, he told them enough about his contact with Riley such that they knew to look for those communications once they exploited his phone. That led to another interview and, ultimately, to the indictment of Riley.

Hiles further indicated that following the riot he had become friends with a Capitol police officer, although he did not at that time describe the content of then-Officer Riley’s initial contact. Later, a search of Hiles’ cell phone revealed a screenshot of the Facebook message detailed in the government’s Sentencing Memorandum from Riley to Hiles on January 7, 2021. Upon discovery of the message, the government requested through counsel that Hiles participate in a debrief with prosecutors and federal agents. Through counsel, Hiles agreed to do so and appeared for the debrief (held virtually) within 24 hours, and with no promise of any benefit from or agreement of any kind with the government.3

After his initial interview, Hiles told Riley that the FBI had expressed an interest in their communications. That led Riley to delete his own Facebook communications with Hiles.

15. RILEY and Person 1 continued to exchange friendly messages until January 20, 2021. On that date, Person 1 sente RILEY Facebook direct messages regarding having turned himself in to the FBI, including telling RILEY, “The fbi was very curious that I ha been speaking to you if they havent already asked you about me they are gonna. They took my phone and downloaded everything.” RILEY responded, “Thats fine”.

16. On January 20, 2021, RILEY deleted all his Facebook direct messages to and from Person 1.

Because of this cooperation against Riley (and because he offered up that he had gone to insurrection with his cousin, James Horning, who was arrested on obstruction and trespassing charges a month later), the government recommended probation.

Indeed, without the defendant’s significant, useful assistance to the government with respect to two felony prosecutions, the factors would require the government to recommend a sentence involving incarceration. Yet, upon consideration of the defendant’s exceptional cooperation with the government, the scale tips in favor of probation.

Hiles is due to be sentenced on Monday.

Hiles’ role in the prosecution of Riley is instructive for several reasons. First, these misdemeanants are not just defendants, but they are all witnesses to a crime. And some of them are going to provide important testimony without the formal trappings of a cooperation plea those indicted with felonies would have (even assuming those cooperation pleas were made public).

But the Hiles sentencing also gives a sense of the time necessarily involved. Riley’s indictment reveals how long even simple cooperation prosecutions can take. While union protections and internal investigations probably delayed things somewhat, it still took over 235 days between when the FBI first learned of Hiles’ communications with Riley and Riley’s arrest.

That’s for a cop. You can be sure it would take longer to indict those close to Donald Trump, even assuming the FBI has identified cooperators with useful testimony directly pertaining to those in Trump’s orbit, rather than identified those once or twice removed from Trump’s closest aides.

The government is getting more cooperation from January 6 defendants and witnesses than is publicly admitted. But that doesn’t mean we’ll see the fruit of such cooperation anytime soon.

Update, December 23: Adding the cooperation agreements for Gina Bisignano (August 4) and Matthew Greene (December 22).

Gina Bisignano: If a Plea Deal Falls on the Docket and No One Hears It …

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It turns out there are a lot of things that won’t show up on a January 6 docket.

According to a motion to ditch her house arrest filed last week, Gina Bisignano — the Beverly Hills salon owner who wore a Louis Vuitton sweater to the insurrection — signed a plea deal back in July.

10. On July 28, 2021, Defendant signed a plea agreement in the above captioned case UNDER SEAL.

11. On August 4, 2021, Defendant appeared before this Court and entered a guilty plea in the above captioned case, UNDER SEAL, to multiple counts of the indictment.

Normally, when people sign plea deals under seal like this, it’s a sign of a cooperation agreement.

That wouldn’t be surprising. DOJ has been trying to charge the group of LA-area anti-vax activists who traveled to DC together in a conspiracy for most of the year. And the transcript of Danny Rodriguez’ March 31 post-arrest interview showed the FBI agents interviewing Rodriguez — who went to insurrection with Gina and others and whose alleged tasering of Michael Fanone would form the center of any conspiracy — at least pretending that she was talking with investigators, possibly even claiming that Rodriguez threatened her to keep quiet at a visit to her home.

Q. Did you talk to Gina before she got arrested?

A. Um-hmm.

Q. What’d you find out from her?

A. Nothing. I mean, we just said hi. But, I mean, we didn’t talk about anything else. I don’t really know her that well.

Q. Did you go over to her house?

A. I’ve been to her house.

Q. After January 6th, have you been to her house?

A. Yeah. I went one time, yes.

Q. With Ed?

A. No.

Q. With who?

A. Gabe. The guy who turned a rat.

Q. What do you mean?

A. The guy who’s snitching on everyone. He’s a Trump supporter, but — and he had all this — he used to always pick fights with BLM and Antifa, and we always had problems with him making us look bad, and he always wanted to get violent. And now he’s turned on us — or, me.

Q. What happened when you went with Gabe to talk to Gina?

A. It was just, like, to touch base. It was just like, hey, you know, we’re — we made it. We’re back. Everything’s okay. Are you okay? Kind of thing.

Q. What is Gabe going to say happened?

A. I don’t know. I don’t know about that guy. I mean, I haven’t had contact with him and he was really quiet. He looked like he didn’t like what happened and he was just — kind of just sit — staring at the floor a little bit or something. Like, sitting on the couch quiet. And Gina and I were talking about D.C. and he was just quiet and, I mean — and then he left and I left. We were only there for, like, 30 minutes maybe.

Q. Is there any reason why Gina would tell us that you told her not to say anything to — about you being at the Capitol?

A. Yeah. I mean —

Q. Is that what you guys talked about?

A. I guess. Yeah. I mean, like — yeah. We’re like, don’t talk about this and don’t tell anybody and —

Q. Did you threaten her?

A. No.

Q. But you told her not to say anything.

A. No, I didn’t tell her. I mean, I think it was — no. I don’t even think I told her not to say anything. I just think it was just assumed or implied that —

Q. Well, tell me what you said because I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Tell me how the conversation went.

A. I really didn’t talk to Gina too much. I mean, we were over there and just talking, and was smoking some weed on her patio. That’s it.

Q. And?

A. I didn’t threaten her or tell her any — tell her to do anything.

Q. But you guys did talk about not saying anything to the police about what happened in D.C.?

A. We weren’t even talking necessarily about not talking to the police. We were saying not to talk to — about this to anyone that we know.

Q. So just don’t tell anybody?

A. Just keep it quiet and don’t tell anybody anything and let’s try to live our lives normal, but not really, no.

Q. Okay.

[snip]

AGENT ELIAS: And then he said he met up with out there Kayla, Chris Almonte, somebody named Sauna, and Gina. And then we talked a little bit about Gina and he said that, after January 6th, he did go to Gina’s house with Gabe one time. And they did discuss not saying anything to anyone.

BY AGENT ARMENTA: Q. Okay. So you told Gina that?

A. Yeah. We were just not going to talk to — talk about it with anybody.

Q. Did you threaten her at all?

A. No. For sure, no.

Q. So she’s not going to say that?

A. I would hope not.

Q. What about —

A. No. She’s a sweet woman. I wouldn’t threaten her. And plus, what I did, why — how can I threaten? I mean, if I threaten her, she’s just going to turn me in, right? [my emphasis]

Revealing a cooperation plea deal without permission is a good way to ruin your chances to get a 5K1.1 letter, which is what the government submits to ask for a lesser sentence in exchange for substantial assistance. So it’s possible the plea deal has gone south.

Nevertheless, we should expect there are secret plea deals like this among the 650 defendants. And so I wanted to observe several things about Bisignano’s docket. Mostly, that there’s no sign of a plea deal in it. Or anything else of interest.

Bisignano was arrested on January 19 and indicted ten days later. She was in a limbo for an extended period amid COVID-related transfer delays and also a delay getting her attorney admitted to the case. On February 26, Judge Carl Nichols released her to the house arrest she’s now trying to get relaxed.

But aside from adoption of a protective order in April (that is, after the Rodriguez agents claimed that Bisignano may have already started talking) and a grand jury disclosure order in July, just days before the plea deal, the only things that have happened in the docket are repeated requests for relaxation of her release conditions, status conferences, and discovery. The only thing reported out from a September status hearing pertained to her request for a relaxation of her release conditions.

Days before Bisignano pled guilty, July 24, the prosecutor in this case, Kimberly Paschall provided a summary of the discovery provided to day (which was mostly the stuff that went into her arrest). There has been no other discovery described outside of the mass discovery status updates.

All of which is to say, there’s nothing in the docket.

I raise all this not just to say, we have no idea what this means, though we have no idea what Bisignano’s public claim to have entered into a sealed plea deal in July means. The expected conspiracy case has never been publicly filed.

But it is worth noting that DOJ has not visibly met two deadlines set by Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the Rodriguez case, to tell her whether his case will be joined with others accused of assaulting Fanone, and to explain why he hasn’t been offered a plea deal.

First of all, the Court will require the government to make its intentions plain, and therefore it is HEREBY ORDERED that any motion to join this case to any other for trial must be filed by November 5, 2021. Any motion to extend that date must be based on good cause shown, and vague references to ongoing investigations or extenuating circumstances will not suffice; if matters must be submitted to the Court under seal, the government is familiar with how to accomplish that.

Second, it is FURTHER ORDERED that the government must inform the Court by November 5, 2021 whether a plea offer has been extended in this case and if not, why not.

These filings were due — on the docket, or under seal — by Friday, but there’s nothing there.

The lesson of this post, then, is that for all the wailing that nothing is going on in the January 6 investigation, there’s likely to be a lot going on that we’re not seeing.

The Network Effect: The 3%ers Incitement, Terrorist Enhancements, and California’s Anti-Maskers

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At a hearing for Danny Rodriguez on August 31, Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked, as she had in the last hearing, why Rodriguez wasn’t included in the indictment with a bunch of other men who, like him, are accused of assaulting Michael Fanone, a case over which she is also presiding. As also happened in that last hearing, ABJ asked about a plea offer. In July, AUSA Kimberly Paschall said Rodriguez might not be offered a plea deal at all. On Tuesday, Paschall said he would only be offered a plea deal if he were willing to be debriefed first, prosecutor’s jargon meaning that someone will only be permitted to plead guilty if he cooperates against others. Paschall also said that any plea would necessarily include the 18 USC 1361 charge against Rodriguez for breaking a window because it carries a terrorism enhancement. When prompted by Rodriguez’ attorney (who sourced her intelligence to Twitter), Paschall admitted there may be a superseding indictment against Rodriguez, widely assumed to be some kind of conspiracy indictment with other extremists from Southern California.

As HuffPo reported in February (relying heavily on the work of online researchers including Deep State Dogs), before his arrest Rodriguez was a well-known participant in a group of Southern California anti-maskers, one who had been reported for assault even before boarding a plane to DC in January.

Rodriguez, who goes by “Danny” and “DJ,” is well known among Trump supporters in the Los Angeles area as a superfan of the former president. Multiple news outlets have featured him in their coverage of the local pro-Trump movement in recent years, in articles that included his name and photo. He regularly attended the weekly Trump rallies in Beverly Hills last year. He was recognizable there by his dark-rimmed glasses and the many distinctive pins on his hat, which has a big GOP elephant symbol on the brim.

Rodriguez coordinated with other members of this network — including Gina Bisignano — while at the riot.

What Paschall basically admitted in Tuesday’s hearing is that DOJ intends to hold Rodriguez accountable as a terrorist, possibly in conjunction with his network of right wing operatives. But for all the reports (on Twitter) about network members flipping on each other, the network of extremists still manages to sow violence in front of the LAPD with impunity.

There are other public signs, however, that DOJ is going after this network. In June, DOJ rolled out a conspiracy indictment against six Three Percenters, including Alan Hostetter and Russell Taylor. In spite of explicit threats of execution detailed in it, it doesn’t include a crime of terrorism like the one charged against Rodriguez. While the Three Percenter ties, the plans to come to DC armed, and the defendants’ role in a January 5 Stop the Steal rally attracted a lot of attention, the import of a Telegram channel described in it got less focus.

On January 1, 2021, [Russ] TAYLOR created a Telegram chat called “The California Patriots-DC Brigade” (the “DC Brigade”) and invited other individuals to join. TAYLOR, HOSTETTER, WARNER, KINNISON, MARTINEZ, and MELE all joined, along with more than 30 others.

In the “about” section that described the purpose of the DC Brigade group, TAYLOR wrote:

This group will serve as the Comms for able bodied individuals that are going to DC on Jan 6. Many of us have not met before and we are all ready and willing to fight. We will come together for this moment that we are called upon.

In a series of messages on January 1, 2021, TAYLOR further explained the purpose of the group. In one message, he explained: “This thread is exclusive to be utilized to organize a group of fighters to have each other’s backs and ensure that no one will trample on our rights. Also, if there is key intel that we need to be aware of tor [sic] possible threats.” He added: “I am assuming that you have some type of weaponry that you are bringing with you and plates as well.” TAYLOR also asked members to identify if they had previous law enforcement experience, military experience, or “special skills relevant to our endeavors,” as well as the planned date and time of their arrival in D.C.

There were 36 people in this thread and DOJ may have arrested just 4 before this conspiracy charge, leaving at least 26 others who participated in a channel about coming armed to the Capitol still out there.

In recent days (close to three months after the conspiracy indictment), DOJ has started arresting those participants. On August 26, for example, DOJ arrested Jeffrey Scott Brown on charges of assault, civil disorder, and trespassing based in part on him spraying an irritant at the police.

The government cited Brown’s participation in Taylor’s Telegram channel to substantiate pre-meditation for his violence.

During the course of the investigation into the events of January 6, 2021, law enforcement has identified communications that documented planning and coordination amongst individuals in advance of January 6, 2021. As detailed below, the investigation has established that JEFFREY SCOTT BROWN participated in a Telegram group chat on an encrypted messaging app in the days leading up to January 6. In the Telegram chat “about” section was the following description: “This group will serve as the Comms for able bodied individuals that are going to DC on Jan 6. Many of us have not met before and we are all ready and willing to fight. We will come together for this moment that we are called upon.”

One of the members of this chat was Telegram user “JB” (UID XXXXXX1832). On January 5, 2021, at approximately 6:30 a.m. PST, Telegram user “JB” posted a picture of himself with the caption “Boarding LAX.” LAX is the airport code for the Los Angeles International Airport.

Yesterday, another of the participants on Taylor’s Telegram channel, Ben Martin, was arrested for his sustained efforts to get and keep the North doors of the Capitol open.

Among the pictures of Martin included in his arrest affidavit at that North door are some also included in a detention memo for Matthew Klein that depict the Klein brothers, already charged with conspiracy for their efforts to open it.

Martin’s arrest warrant describes Facebook Messenger discussions Martin had with an RT who, like Russell Taylor, publicly called for violence in advance of the riot. That RT invited Martin to a Telegram channel that sounds (except for RT’s boasts about its size) just like The California Patriots-DC Brigade.

A search warrant of the MARTIN Facebook account identified by the tipster revealed that the account was registered as “benjamin.martin.90410.” A review of the account further revealed communications between MARTIN and a Facebook account associated with R.T. Based on a different investigation, R.T. is known to the FBI to have advocated for violence in the lead-up to January 6, organized others to travel to D.C. for January 6 (some of whom participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol), and to have participated himself in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. MARTIN’s account contained communications occurring on January 3, 2021, between R.T. and MARTIN through Facebook Messenger in which MARTIN and R.T. discussed traveling to Washington D.C. for January 6, 2021. In the communications, R.T. invited MARTIN to join a Telegram chat for “a group of 200+ California patriots that are going to DC Jan 6,” which MARTIN accepted and joined. On January 6, 2021, MARTIN sent four messages to R.T. that stated, “we need to meet”, “I just spoke to Peggy Hall she said we need to meet”, and “I am in DC as we”, “well” [sic].

Consider what you have in this network:

  • Ties to two militias, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys
  • Organization based in localized, violent anti-mask activism
  • A direct tie to one of two organized rallies on January 5
  • A Telegram channel tying a group of participants together
  • The use of blowhorns and radios during the riot to maximize impact
  • Taylor’s description of a plan, formulated at least by December 30, to “surround the capital,” followed by Simon’s sustained efforts to open a new front on the North side of it
  • Discussions in advance of executing traitors followed by an assault on Michael Fanone that caused a heart attack
  • By dint of Rodriguez’ damage to a window of the Capitol, a crime of terrorism that can (and Paschall is intent, will) carry a terrorism enhancement

At Tuesday’s hearing, Paschall didn’t seem sure whether they will end up charging Rodriguez in a conspiracy with some of the others (though she said DOJ would likely finalize their decision on that point by October 1). Certainly, it doesn’t seem like local law enforcement in LA is anything but an impediment.

But this network of extremists is a good place to look to understand how the various parts of the riot came together.

Reuters Doesn’t Mention Terrorism When Claiming DOJ Won’t Charge Serious Offenses in the January 6 Investigation

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Reuters has a story claiming to report that, “FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated,” that has elicited a lot of consternation. I’d like to look at what it does and does not say. Most of it is true — and not news — but somewhere along the way someone (either the reporters or the sources) misunderstood parts of what they’re looking at.

Reuters or its sources don’t understand how DOJ is charging this

One detail shows this to be true.

The Reuters piece makes much of the fact that DOJ is not charging what it calls “serious” charges.

Prosecutors have filed conspiracy charges against 40 of those defendants, alleging that they engaged in some degree of planning before the attack.

They alleged that one Proud Boy leader recruited members and urged them to stockpile bulletproof vests and other military-style equipment in the weeks before the attack and on Jan. 6 sent members forward with a plan to split into groups and make multiple entries to the Capitol.

But so far prosecutors have steered clear of more serious, politically-loaded charges that the sources said had been initially discussed by prosecutors, such as seditious conspiracy or racketeering.

[snip]

More than 170 people have been charged so far with assaulting or impeding a police officer, according to the Justice Department. That carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

But one source said there has been little, if any, recent discussion by senior Justice Department officials of filing charges such as “seditious conspiracy” to accuse defendants of trying to overthrow the government. They have also opted not to bring racketeering charges, often used against organized criminal gangs.

Not once does the story mention obstruction, which also carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. If you don’t mention obstruction — and your sources don’t explain that obstruction will get you to precisely where you’d get with a sedition charge, but with a lot more flexibility to distinguish between defendants and a far lower bar of proof (unless and until judges decide it has been misapplied) — then your sources are not describing what is going on with the investigation.

Furthermore, Reuters purports to rule out “more serious, politically-loaded charges,” but it never mentions terrorism.

One reason it wouldn’t, though, is because for domestic terrorists, you don’t charge terrorism, you charge crimes of terrorism or you argue for an enhancement under U.S.S.G. §3A1.4 at sentencing. And that has and will continue to happen. For example, both the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys  conspiracies include 18 USC 1361 charges (damage to a government building exceeding $1,000, a charge that is a bit of a stretch for the Oath Keepers) that constitutes a crime of terrorism, and the government has raised that and noted it is a crime of terrorism in a number of bail disputes. Effectively, DOJ has already called the leaders of the militia conspiracies terrorists. But Reuters doesn’t think that’s worth noting.

Similarly, for both the assault pleas DOJ has obtained thus far, the government has reserved the right to invoke a terrorism enhancement at sentencing. In the case of Scott Fairlamb, who also pled guilty to obstruction, which effectively amounts to pleading guilty to having a political purpose for his assault, I suspect such an enhancement is likely.

Somehow this entire story got written without mentioning what DOJ is using instead of seditious conspiracy: obstruction (which has been charged against over 200 defendants) and terrorism enhancements; civil disorder is likewise not mentioned, but has been charged against around 150 defendants. DOJ isn’t using seditious conspiracy because it doesn’t need it (again, unless and until the courts reject this use of obstruction).

Reuters mis-describes the Proud Boys’ role in the riot

Much of the rest of the story includes details that are true, and public, but arguably misleading.

A “former senior law enforcement official” (most former senior people who had visibility on the investigation have been gone for some time) claims that 90 to 95% of these cases are “one-off” cases, seemingly distinguishing between the 40 people Reuters describes to have been charged in conspiracy from the 540 or so who have not been charged with a conspiracy.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

On paper, that’s true, and in key places a really important detail. But in other places it doesn’t mean what Reuters suggests it says.

For example, consider the nine men charged in the assault of Daniel Hodges. None of them knew each other before they started beating the shit out of some cops in the Tunnel of the Capitol. But several of the men charged nevertheless managed to orchestrate the assault (indeed, that’s most of what David Mehaffie did do — make other assailants more effective) and so, even while these individuals did not conspire to beat the shit out of cops, they worked in concert when they did so. The same is true for the men jointly accused of assaulting Michael Fanone (though Daniel Rodriguez has not been charged with the other men involved, many people believe because he’ll be charged in a conspiracy with others from Southern California).

Plus, the number cited to Reuters is probably wrong. Ten percent of the 580 people charged would be around 60. There were that many people on the Proud Boys’ organizational Telegram channel that day (though not all those people were present). There are a bunch of Proud Boys already charged individually, including some (like Dan Scott) who could easily be added to existing conspiracy indictments, others charged as groups (like the five Floridians on the Arthur Jackman indictment), and a father-son pair Jeffrey and Jeremy Grace who just got a terrorism prosecutor added. There are five Oath Keepers not included in that conspiracy (four cooperating against the others). And DOJ is only beginning to unwind the 3%er networks involved. So even just considering militias, the number is likely closer to 80.

And there are other important affiliations represented at the riot — with QAnon and anti-maskers being two of the most important — that actually created networks that were in some ways more effective than the militias. The QAnoners didn’t conspire with each other but they sure as hell were directed from the same place. And anti-mask protests were actually one place where a goodly number of rioters were radicalized, and those localized networks manifested as cells of cooperation in some key incidents in the riot.

More importantly, this claim can only have come from people who misunderstand what the investigation has shown:

Prosecutors have also not brought any charges alleging that any individual or group played a central role in organizing or leading the riot. Law-enforcement sources told Reuters no such charges appeared to be pending.

Conspiracy charges that have been filed allege that defendants discussed their plans in the weeks before the attack and worked together on the day itself. But prosecutors have not alleged that this activity was part of a broader plot.

It’s true that the Proud Boys are not known to have had a detailed plan describing who would move where in the Capitol. But it’s also true that both before and after the riot, the Proud Boys discussed mobilizing the “normies,” because normies have no adrenalin control. And the Proud Boys’ success at doing this is what made the initial assault on the West side of the Capitol work (and therefore the attack generally). The Proud Boys weren’t ordering the 1,000 rioters what to do at each step (though probably 100 people at the riot had some interaction with the Proud Boys), but they did give the riot a kind of structure that was crucial to its success.

Maybe Roger Stone isn’t involved?

Because of the other problems with this article, I don’t know what to make of the single piece of news in it. As noted above, a former senior law enforcement official claims that, “there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.” That makes sense with respect to Alex Jones; his videographer was arrested long ago and remains charged only with trespass.

But Stone has continued to appear in Oath Keeper filings long after the time that someone very senior would have left. And the two cooperators who might confirm or deny Stone’s involvement — Graydon Young (who did an Oath Keeper event with Stone in Florida) and Mark Grods (who was present with the Oath Keepers who were with Stone the day of the attack) — only pled guilty at the end of June, meaning if they confirmed Stone wasn’t involved (even in the planning for the attack known to have taken place in December, in Florida), it wouldn’t have happened all that long ago.

Particularly given the mention of kidnapping — which was a real question at the beginning of the investigation because of the zip ties that Larry Brock and Eric Munchel picked up inside the Capitol — this seems like a denial of a very dated misunderstanding of what happened.

I don’t think this story is meant maliciously. For example, I’m unimpressed with concerns raised about Tass’ ownership; this is Mark Hosenball and he’ll do the same reporting regardless of who signs his paycheck. Nor am I all that concerned by the anonymity of the sources; I’m more interested in how dated some of this information might be and which corners of the sprawling investigation those who actually worked on it were personally involved with.

It reads like the end result of a game of telephone asking questions that were raised in January, not a report about the investigation as public filings reveal it to be in August.

Update: DOJ just charged InfoWars host Owen Shroyer. The initial charges are just trespassing (leveraging a prior charge and Deferred Prosecution Agreement he entered), but he’s likely to be charged with obstruction based on stuff in his arrest affidavit.

Updated List of January 6 Assault Defendants

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Back in February, I did a post listing the January 6 defendants charged with one or another type of assault against police. I’ve been updating the post (and will update this one), but that one had gotten out of date and I’ve spent much of the morning doing housekeeping on my own tracking of the January 6 defendants so I wanted to repost that list.

Since February, some known assailants have been charged:

  • Julian Khater and George Tanios in the assault on Brian Sicknick suspected of playing a role in his death
  • Albuquerque Cosper Head, Thomas Sibick, and Kyle Young — charged together — in an attack on Michael Fanone and, separately, Daniel Rodriguez for tasing him
  • An expanding group — currently including Jeffrey Sabol, Peter Stager, Michael Lopatic, Clayton Mullins, and Jack Whitton — accused of dragging a cop into the crowd and beating him with various weapons and attacking another, thwarting attempts to help Rosanne Boyland, who was dying nearby

In addition, more militia defendants are being accused of assault, including Proud Boys Christopher Quaglin and Christopher Worrell. Last week, Oath Keeper Jon Schaffer entered a cooperation agreement with the government, probably staving off an assault charge tied to his use of bear spray, and a recent detention motion claims Joshua James riled up assaults on cops as well.

Then there are the rather spectacular cases of Trump State Department official Freddie Klein and former Green Beret Jeffrey McKellop, who’ve been charged with assault.

Yet even while the FBI rounds up more of the people charged with some of the identifiable assaults from January 6, the great majority of BOLOs (Be On the Lookout for — basically, requests for tips) released by the FBI, currently numbering 360, are assault suspects who have yet to be identified. So there may be around 200 more people who could be charged with assault.

And, of course, the pipe bomber remains at large, in spite of a $100,000 reward for information leading to that person’s arrest.

  1. Daniel Page Adams, whose arrest affidavit describes engaging in a “direct struggle with [unnamed] law enforcement officers” (his cousin, Cody Connell, described the exchange as a “civil war”). Tip SM
  2. Zachary Alam, who pushed cops around as he was trying to break into the Speaker’s Lobby. BOLO 79
  3. Wilmar Alvarado, who pushed cops in the mob trying to get in from the West Terrace. BOLO 65
  4. John Anderson, who after taking two riot shields from cops, needed their assistance after getting maced.
  5. Craig Bingert, who allegedly helped shove cops with a barricade. BOLO 105
  6. Brian Glenn Bingham, who scuffled with two cops after Ashli Babbitt got shot. BOLO 93
  7. David Blair, who poked a cop with a lacrosse stick with a Confederate flag attached. Onsite arrest
  8. Nicholas James Brockhoff, who sprayed a fire extinguisher from the Terrace at cops. BOLO 255
  9. Jamie Buteau, whom surveillance video showed throwing chairs at cops several times in the Capitol. (BOLO 188)
  10. Daniel Caldwell, who was filmed macing 15 cops. SM
  11. Matthew Caspel, who was filmed charging the National Guard. Tip SM
  12. William Chrestman, who is accused of threatening a cop as Proud Boys pushed their way past the original line of defense (charged with 18 USC 115). NM
  13. Reed Christensen, who was videotaped swinging at cops. BOLO and video 191
  14. Luke Coffee, who was videotaped beating several cops with a crutch. Tip SM and BOLO 108
  15. Cody Connell, who with his cousin was in a direct confrontation with cops. Tip SM
  16. Lance Copeland, who admitted to fighting with cops on the barricades.
  17. Christian Cortez, who yelled at cops behind a door.
  18. Matthew Council, who was arresting for shoving cops the day of the riot.
  19. Kevin Creek, who was filmed hitting and kicking officers on the West Terrace. BOLO 296
  20. Bruno Cua, who was filmed shoving a cop to be able to get into the Senate. Tip LE
  21. Nathan DeGrave, whom security cameras caught threatening to fight cops. Network Sandlin
  22. Daniel Egdvedt, a large man who took swipes and grabbed at several officers as they tried to remove him from the Capitol. BOLO 76
  23. Scott Fairlamb, who was caught in multiple videos shoving and punching officers (one who whom is identified but not named); Cori Bush has said she was threatened by him last summer. Tips, including SM
  24. Joseph Fischer, a cop who got in a tussle with another cop. Tip SM
  25. Kyle Fitzsimons, who charged officers guarding the doorway of the Capitol. BOLO 139
  26. Michael Foy, a former Marine who was caught on multiple videos beating multiple cops with a hockey stick. Tip SM
  27. Kevin Galetto, who allegedly knocked an MPD officer to the ground in the Tunnel. BOLO 146
  28. Robert Giswein, who appears to have ties to the Proud Boys and used a bat to beat cops. NM
  29. Vitali Gossjankowski, who was interviewed about whether he had tased MPD officer Michael Fanone, causing a heart attack; instead he was charged with assaulting CPD officer MM. BOLO 98 — with a second one mentioned
  30. Daniel Gray, who got into several confrontations with officers inside the Capitol, including knocking down a female cop. Tip SM
  31. Bryan Gunderson, charged with assault while committing a felony on a superseding.
  32. Alex Harkrider, who after being filmed fighting with police at the door of the Capitol, posted a picture with a crowbar labeled, “weapon;” he was charged with abetting Ryan Nichols’ assault. Tip SM
  33. Richard Harris, who assaulted a journalist in Oregon weeks before threatening cops, Nancy Pelosi, and Mike Pence during the riot.
  34. Albuquerque Cosper Head, accused of assaulting Michael Fanone.
  35. Dillon Herrington, who threw a 4X4 at cops, then threw a barrier. Sedition Hunters picture
  36. Emanuel Jackson, whom videos caught punching one officer, and others show beating multiple officers with a metal baseball bat. BOLO 31
  37. Shane Jenkins, alleged to have used a crowbar to break in a window, later threw things including a pole, a desk drawer, and a flagpole at cops.
  38. Douglas Jensen, the QAnon who chased Officer Goodman up the stairs, got charged with resisting him. NM, BOLO 10
  39. Taylor Johnatakis, charged with 111.
  40. Paul Johnson, who carried a bullhorn and was in the initial assault from the west side with Ryan Samsel. BOLO 49
  41. Chad Jones, who used a Trump flag to break the glass in the Speaker’s Lobby door just before Ashli Babbitt was shot and may have intimidated three officers who were pursuing that group. Tip NM
  42. David Judd, who threw a firecracker at cops in the tunnel. Tip and BOLO 137
  43. Julian Elie Khater, who allegedly sprayed Brian Sicknick and two others with very powerful bear spray. BOLO 190
  44. Freddie Klein, the State Department employee who fought with three different officers while trying to break through police lines. BOLO 136
  45. Edward Jacob Lang, who identified himself in a screen cap of a violent mob attacking cops and who was filmed slamming a riot shield into police and later fighting them with a red baseball bat. Tip SM
  46. Nicholas Languerand, accused of throwing a bollar, a can of pepper spray, and a stick at cops in the Lower West Tunnel.
  47. Mark Jefferson Leffingwell, whom a Capitol Police officer described in an affidavit punching him. Onsite arrest
  48. Joshua Lollar, who described fighting cops and was caught in pictures showing himself in the front lines confronting cops. Tip SM
  49. Michael Lopatic, who allegedly assaulted some cops with Stager and Sabol, then took a BWC to hide the assault. BOLO 133
  50. Clifford Mackrell, who attempted to strip an officer’s gas mask after someone else sprayed bear spray. BOLO 124
  51. Patrick Edward McCaughey III, who was filmed crushing MPD Officer Daniel Hodges in one of the doors to the Capitol. BOLO 62
  52. James McGrew, who shoved some cops in the Rotunda then bared his King James belly tattoo, Tip Network
  53. Sean McHugh, accused of spraying some yellow substance at cops and using a sign as a battering ram, BOLO 59
  54. Jeffrey McKellop, a former Special Forces guy accused of assaulting 4 cops, including one by using a flagpole as a spear. BOLO 215
  55. Jonathan Mellis, who used some kind of stick to try to jab and beat police. Tip SM
  56. Jalise Middleton
  57. Mark Middleton, the Middletons fought the cops outside the West entrance to the Capitol. BWC
  58. Garret Miller, who pushed back at cops and then threatened both AOC and the cop who killed Ashli Babbit. Tip LE
  59. Matthew Ryan Miller, who released fire extinguisher in close quarters. Tip SM
  60. Jordan Mink, who used a pole to assault the police.
  61. Brian Mock, who kicked a cop when he was down and bragged about it. BOLO and Tip SM
  62. Patrick Montgomery was charged with assault against MPD officer DJ in a follow-up indictment.
  63. Robert Morss, who in addition to tussling with a cop, was a key organizer of shield walls in the Tunnel. BOLO 147
  64. Aaron Mostofsky, possibly for stripping a cop of his or her armored vest and riot shield. NM
  65. Clayton Mullins, alleged to be part of the mob that assaulted AW and two other police. Tip
  66. Jonathan Munafo, alleged to have fought with cops in two different locations, including punching one in the Lower West Terrace. (BOLO and video 170)
  67. Ryan Nichols, who was filmed wielding a crowbar and yelling, “This is not a peaceful protest,” then spraying pepper spray against police trying to prevent entry to the Capitol. Tip SM
  68. Grady Owens, who allegedly hit a cop in the head on the Mall with a skateboard, as he was heading to reinforce the Capitol. BOLO 109
  69. Jason Owens, accused of assaulting a second officer after his son attacked one with a skateboard. Network Owens
  70. Jose Padilla, who shoved cops at a barricade, then helped use a Donald Trump sign as a battering ram against them. Tip SM
  71. Robert Palmer, who sprayed cops with a fire extinguisher then threw it at them.
  72. Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy who stole a shield from cops. NM (BOLO 43)
  73. Mark Ponder, filmed repeatedly attacking cops with poles.
  74. Christopher Quaglin, accused of assaulting cops both at the initial breach of the barriers and later in the Lower West Terrace.
  75. Stephen Chase Randolph, who shoved cops at the initial barricade and later bragged about a female cop’s head bouncing off the pavement. BOLO 168
  76. Daniel Rodriguez, whom videos appear to show tasing Michael Fanone. Sedition Hunter-based reporting
  77. Greg Rubeacker, Tip SM
  78. Jeffrey Sabol, helped drag a cop from the Capitol and beat him while prone. LE arrest (erratic driving)
  79. Ryan Samsel, who set off the riot by giving a cop a concussion; he appears to have coordinated with Joe Biggs. BOLO 51 (though not IDed by BOLO)
  80. Salvador Sandoval, Jr, who went to the insurrection with his mother and shoved some cops.
  81. Robert Sanford, who was filmed hitting Capitol Police Officer William Young on the head with a fire extinguisher. Tip NM
  82. Ronald Sandlin, who tried to wrestle cops to keep the door to the Senate open. MPD tip
  83. Troy Sargent, who appears to have punched some cops holding a line. Tip SM
  84. Peter Schwartz, a felon who maced several cops. Tip NM (BOLO 120)
  85. Dan Scott, AKA Milkshake, who shoved some cops in the initial assault. Network.
  86. Christian Secor, a UCLA self-described fascist who helped shove through some cops to break into the Capitol and then sat in the Senate chamber. Tip NM
  87. DJ Shalvey. The details of the assault charged against Shalvey are not public, but he did get charged for lying about it to the FBI.
  88. Barton Wade Shively, who pushed and shoved some police trying to get into the Capitol, punched another, then struck one of those same cops later and kicked another. BOLO 55
  89. Thomas Sibick, accused of being among a group of men who attacked Michael Fanone and stole his badge.
  90. Geoffrey Sills, alleged to have used both a pole and a baton in several assaults on cops in the tunnel.
  91. Audrey Southard-Rumsey, the talented singer deemed one of the main agitators in the Statuary Hall Connector. Tip SM
  92. Peter Francis Stager, who was involved in beating a prone cop with a flagpole. Tip SM
  93. Ezekial Stecher, whom videos showed pushing in the Lower West Tunnel.
  94. Tristan Stevens, who fought cops with a shield and baton. Video
  95. Isaac Sturgeon, who is accused of using a barricade to attack some officers.
  96. George Pierre Tanios, who allegedly conspired with Julian Khater to attack Brian Sicknick and two other cops. BOLO 254
  97. Kenneth Joseph Owen Thomas, who organized a MAGA Caravan from AL and then selfied himself attacking cops. BOLO 214
  98. Christopher Warnagiris, the Marine Major who fought to keep the East door open. BOLO 241
  99. Thomas Webster, who attacked a cop with a flagpole. BOLO 145
  100. Wade Whitten, accused of dragging AW down the steps of the Capitol and hitting him with a crutch. BOLO 130
  101. Duke Wilson, accused of assaulting several officers in the Lower West Tunnel. BOLO 87
  102. Jason Woods, who allegedly used the same tripping attack on a female cop and a cameraman. BOLO 238
  103. Christopher Worrell, a Proud Boy who apparently sprayed pepper spray at a line of police.
  104. Kyle Young, accused of attacking Michael Fanone and another officer, and stealing Fanone’s weapon.

FBI and DHS Aren’t Using the Free Expertise on Right Wing Terrorism While Looking to Pay for It

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There was a remarkable moment in the Homeland Security/Rules hearing on January 6 the other day. Krysten Sinema asked whether FBI knew of the conversations on social media where people were openly planning for insurrection. FBI’s Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, Jill Sanborn, explained they did not know of them because the Bureau couldn’t collect on the social media of Americans without a predicated investigation.

Krysten Sinema: Was the FBI aware of these specific conversations on social media?

Jill Sanborn: To my knowledge, no ma’am, and I’ll just sort of articulate why that is. So under our authorities, because, being mindful of the First Amendment and our dual-hatted mission to uphold the Constitution, we cannot collect First Amendment protected activities without, sort of the next step, which is the intent, and so we’d have to have an already-predicated investigation that allowed us access to those comms and/or a lead or a tip or a report from a community citizen or a fellow law enforcement partner for us to gather that information.

Sinema: So the FBI does not monitor publicly-available social media conversations?

Sanborn: Correct, ma’am, it’s not within our authorities.

For what it’s worth, Sanborn’s first comment was about collecting on social media. Sinema then treated that as a limitation on monitoring it (and Sanborn didn’t correct her). Still, Sanborn explained away FBI’s failure to see the insurrection many of the rest of us were seeing develop in real time by saying that discovering it would have required tracking Americans’ protected speech.

A more revealing moment came elsewhere, when Sanborn revealed that just one person who has been arrested in the wake of the attack had already been under investigation. That means, in spite of the Proud Boys’ threat, with Roger Stone, against Amy Berman Jackson two years ago, the FBI didn’t have an enterprise investigation into them (or the Oath Keepers or a range of other extremist organizations involved in the attack). So, because the FBI was not investigating the Proud Boys, the Proud Boys were able to plan an insurrection in plain sight.

That has changed, of course.

Later in the hearing, Mark Warner — citing all the FBI’s warnings in recent years about what a lethal threat white supremacist terrorism is — asked both Sanborn and the woman currently running DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Melissa Smislova, what they’re doing to improve things and whether they’re using any of the open source experts out there.

Sanborn talked about working with “partners” (which I took to mean social media companies) and Fusion centers. Smislova revealed that DHS is looking to contract with experts on the topic, rather than read what those experts produce on a regular basis.

Mark Warner: I appreciate Ms. Sanborn’s appropriate response that they not arbitrarily collect off of American citizens if there’s not some nexus, but I do think it’s important, I think others have mentioned this that Domestic Violent Extremists didn’t start with January 6. They didn’t start with Donald Trump. They’re not going to end with January 6. They’re not going to end with Donald Trump. In my state we saw, a few year’s back, the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville where many of these same groups and affiliations came together in another violent effort where one protestor was killed, we unfortunately lost a couple members of our State Police. Director Wray has repeatedly said in testimony before the Intelligence Committee, the Worldwide Threat Assessment, that Domestic Violent Extremists are a major national security threat to this country. I personally believe that that message was downplayed during the previous Administration because they didn’t want to hear it. I want to start with Ms. Smislova and Assistant Director Sanborn — Director Sanborn it’s great to see you again — is that, recognizing the constraints that are placed upon you in terms of collections, and also acknowledging that this threat has been around for some time. The FBI in particular has acknowledged that it is an extraordinary major severe threat, what have you both been able to do in engaging in open source intelligence and independent research communities to better identify these DVEs. I know in the run-up to the January 6 insurrection there was research done by Harvard’s John Donovan and Elon University’s Megan Squire as well as other researchers that pointed to the fact that these DVEs and affiliated groups, oftentimes groups that are working in conjunction with groups in Europe, were planning this effort. So how are you both, DHS and FBI, utilizing these independent researchers, these open source activities, and making sure we’ve got a better handle on it, recognizing your appropriate constraints on what you can do directly?

Melissa Smislova: Yes, Senator, thank you for the question. We just last week met as, as inside I&A, to discuss contracting with some of those experts outside. We are aware that we need to invest more in our understanding of Domestic Terror, we understand as well that it will require a different approach than a traditional Intelligence Community approach, we must use different sources to understand this threat, we are looking to get outside experts, invest more in-house, we are secondly looking at how to better understand the social media world, so we can better focus on where we might find specific and insightful information about what the adversary is thinking about. We are additionally looking to partner more with our state and local colleagues who we know have a different perspective on this threat and have more information, in some cases, than we do, and we are also, again, partnering more across the department and with our federal partners, increasing our relationships with FBI.

Warner: Ms. Sanborn?

Jill Sanborn: Thank you Senator, nice to see you again as well. I’d sort of say what we’re trying to do, and I’ll put it in three buckets, really, for you. Increasing our private sector is 100%, I have a section just inside my division that does nothing but partner engagement. We have found that the better we educate them on the threat we’re facing and painting a picture for them of what those threats we are, they’re better able to pay attention and collect and refer information to us and that is helpful and that’s when we talk about the fact that 50% of our tips and leads to our cases, or predication for our cases come from that relationship and that education. We’re also, same as my colleague said, using the state and local partners, so we leverage the Fusion centers a lot and their ability and their expertise — and the Orange County Fusion Center is a great example of leading, sort of, the analytics of social media and leveraging their expertise to predicate cases and they were actually behind the predication of the case, The Base, that we disrupted. And then last, I’d say, challenging ourselves for better collection inside, right, trying to point our sources and our collection to be in the right places to collect the intelligence that we need and that is what led to the Norfolk SIR, that is us pointing our collection in a space that gathered that information.

Warner: I have to tell you, respectfully, I’m pretty disappointed with both of your answers. This is not a new threat, we’ve seen since 2016 election how foreign adversaries manipulate social media, hear repeatedly from DHS and FBI that we’re going to get better at collecting. We saw the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. We heard people say we’re gonna get better at collecting information and better partnering, neither one of your referenced — there’s literally a host of experts at academia, at organizations like Graphika, and others that are monitoring the DVEs and their activities, oftentimes in their connections to anti-government groups in Europe, again, oftentimes amplified by nations like Russia, and I guess we’re always going to get ready and we’re somehow surprised when we see the kind of chaos that took place on January 6th.

Mark Warner proceeded to chew out both FBI and DHS’s witnesses given that, even after he raised open source expertise available, neither mentioned relying on it.

I hope Warner is paying attention to Huffington Post’s recent reporting. On February 26, relying on the work of some anti-fascist researchers, HuffPo identified Danny Rodriguez as the likely culprit behind the tasing of DC cop Michael Fanone, which led him to suffer a mild heart attack. HuffPo also reported that the FBI had gotten tips IDing Rodriguez in January, but had done nothing to call those who submitted the tips until HuffPo called the Bureau for comment.

The man in the red “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” hat seemed to think he was untouchable. He joined the mob as they yelled “HEAVE! HO!” and tried to force their way through a police line into the Capitol building. Once inside, he used a pole to ram against a window, trying to shatter it and bring more people into the Capitol. In the most disturbing footage of all, he was caught on camera appearing to shock D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Mike Fanone with a stun gun. As rioters push Fanone down the stairs and away from other cops, video shows the man in the red cap pressing a small black device against the officer’s neck. Fanone instantly drops to the ground, swallowed by the mob.

[snip]

His assailant in the red MAGA hat, who has been at large since the insurrection, is 38-year-old Daniel Joseph Rodriguez from Fontana, California, HuffPost can confirm.

Rodriguez, who goes by “Danny” and “DJ,” is well known among Trump supporters in the Los Angeles area as a superfan of the former president. Multiple news outlets have featured him in their coverage of the local pro-Trump movement in recent years, in articles that included his name and photo. He regularly attended the weekly Trump rallies in Beverly Hills last year. He was recognizable there by his dark-rimmed glasses and the many distinctive pins on his hat, which has a big GOP elephant symbol on the brim.

[snip]

Two separate anti-fascist activists ― as well as a third witness who supported Trump and called himself a former friend of Rodriguez ― reviewed footage of the man at the Capitol and told HuffPost they recognized Rodriguez from the California rallies.

The FBI received tips about Rodriguez last month, including one from a man he assaulted on video at a Los Angeles-area rally. But it wasn’t until hours after a HuffPost inquiry to the bureau for this story that the tipster heard from an FBI special agent with questions specifically about a man named “Danny Rodriguez.”

Then, yesterday, HuffPo revealed another case where a researcher sent in a tip only to have no visible response from the FBI. Shortly after January 20, SeditionHunter “Amy” identified Robert Scott Palmer as the guy in an American flag jacket who sprayed a fire extinguisher at cops.

With bright red and white stripes across his body and stars down his sleeves, the man in the American flag jacket and “FLORIDA FOR TRUMP” hat wielded a fire extinguisher while charging the U.S. Capitol on the afternoon of Jan. 6. He shoved his way through the crowd of rioters to the police line, then sprayed officers at close range before chucking the emptied canister at them. By nightfall he himself had been lightly harmed, apparently by a police crowd control munition. He held up his shirt to show off his bruised gut during an interview with a female journalist filming him live as cops pushed the mob back from Capitol grounds. Then he looked straight into her livestreaming device and identified himself as Robert Palmer from Clearwater, Florida.

[snip]

Palmer is now publicly on the FBI’s radar, though not by name. Three photos of him are featured on the bureau’s Capitol violence page, where he’s listed only as “#246 – AFO [Assault on Federal Officer].” But the images didn’t appear there until nearly a month after Amy had already tipped off the FBI about his identity.

#FloridaFlagJacket was used as a hashtag on Twitter less than a week after the Capitol attack, when Trump was still in office. Amy sent in a tip naming Palmer not long after President Joe Biden was inaugurated. His photos were finally added to the FBI database in late February.

It’s not just online researchers whose tips the FBI isn’t moving on quickly. On January 11, someone who knew Peter Schwartz as a felon who had gotten released from prison due to COVID, alerted the FBI that Schwartz had skipped out on his halfway house to attend the rally (the tipster was friends with Schwartz but Schwartz owed him money). The FBI subsequently identified Schwartz as the person who maced some cops.

On January 11, 2021, the FBI National Threat Operations Center (NTOC) received a tip from an individual (hereinafter W-1) who is personally acquainted with SCHWARTZ. In the tip, W-1 reported that “Pete SCHWARTZ” was involved in the Capitol riots. W-1 stated SCHWARTZ is a felon and was released from prison due to COVID-19. W-1 also stated that SCHWARTZ is employed as a traveling welder. According to W-1, SCHWARTZ was supposed to be at a rehabilitation facility in Owensboro, Kentucky on January 6, 2021. However, W-1 saw a picture of SCHWARTZ on the Capitol Building steps that appeared to have been taken on January 6, 2021. As part of the tip, W-1 also provided the Facebook URL for what he claimed was SCHWARTZ’s Facebook page. W-1 did not provide any other photographs, however. Due to the volume of tips provided to the FBI since January 6, 2021 – which stands at over 150,000 as of January 26, 2021 – the FBI was not able to immediately contact W-1 regarding the information that W-1 provided and did not immediately link SCHWARTZ to the individual who repeatedly maced officers at the Capitol.

Schwartz wasn’t arrested until February 4.

Still, that’s less time than these other tips.

The FBI, perhaps justifiably given the flood of data they’re dealing with, seems to value tips from suspects’ direct associates rather than online tipsters. The vast majority of tips they have acted on do come from people who know a suspect directly, often their family or friends or high school classmates.

But many of these researchers have been doing what FBI claims it cannot do (or could not before an insurrection gave them the predicated investigation permitting them to do so): connect the dots from public social media.

Instead, DHS is looking to pay people for the assistance people are trying to give the FBI for free.

The Expected Plateau in New January 6 Defendants became a Stream of New Assault Suspects

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Two weeks ago, I did a post pointing out that the majority of the people who had assaulted cops on January 6 remained at large. At the time, I had identified 26 January 6 defendants charged with assault.

It remains true that most people who assaulted cops have not been arrested. Around 139 cops were assaulted that day, and thus far DOJ has announced the arrest of not much more than 43 people on assault charges, as noted in the list below. Moreover, the people who assaulted key known victims like Michael Fanone and (to the extent that determining this will be possible) Brian Sicknick remain unidentified. Plus, around 192 of the BOLO posters released by the FBI asking for help locating key suspects identified from film are for those suspected of assaulting police; about 29 people with BOLOs who’ve been arrested were suspected of assaults on cops (not all of them were charged with assault, though).

That said, as time has gone on, a great percentage of people the government arrests seem to be assault defendants (and, in some cases, the government has charged people who were arrested for trespassing in early days with assault). Here’s my list which, as of February 26, is 43 people.

  1. Daniel Page Adams, whose arrest affidavit describes engaging in a “direct struggle with [unnamed] law enforcement officers” (his cousin, Cody Connell, described the exchange as a “civil war”). Tip SM
  2. Zachary Alam, who pushed cops around as he was trying to break into the Speaker’s Lobby. BOLO 79
  3. Wilmar Alvarado, who pushed cops in the mob trying to get in from the West Terrace. BOLO 65
  4. John Anderson, who after taking two riot shields from cops, needed their assistance after getting maced.
  5. David Blair, who poked a cop with a lacrosse stick with a Confederate flag attached. Onsite arrest
  6. Daniel Caldwell, who was filmed describing macing 15 cops. SM
  7. Matthew Caspel, who was filmed charging the National Guard. Tip SM
  8. William Chrestman, who is accused of threatening a cop as Proud Boys pushed their way past the original line of defense (charged with 18 USC 115). NM
  9. Luke Coffee, who was videotaped beating several cops with a crutch. (Tip SM and BOLO 108)
  10. Christian Cortez, who yelled at cops behind a door.
  11. Matthew Council, who was arresting for shoving cops the day of the riot.
  12. Bruno Cua, who was filmed shoving a cop to be able to get into the Senate. Tip LE
  13. Nathan DeGrave, whom security cameras caught threatening to fight cops. Network Sandlin
  14. Daniel Egdvedt, a large man who took swipes and grabbed at several officers as they tried to remove him from the Capitol. BOLO 76
  15. Scott Fairlamb, who was caught in multiple videos shoving and punching officers (one who whom is identified but not named); Cori Bush has said she was threatened by him last summer. Tips, including SM
  16. Kyle Fitzsimons, who charged officers guarding the doorway of the Capitol. BOLO 139
  17. Michael Foy, a former Marine who was caught on multiple videos beating multiple cops with a hockey stick. Tip SM
  18. Robert Giswein, who appears to have ties to the Proud Boys and used a bat to beat cops. NM
  19. Vitali Gossjankowski, who was interviewed about whether he had tased MPD officer Michael Fanone, causing a heart attack; instead he was charged with assaulting CPD officer MM (BOLO 98 — with a second one mentioned)
  20. Alex Harkrider, who after being filmed fighting with police at the door of the Capitol, posted a picture with a crowbar labeled, “weapon;” he was charged with abetting Ryan Nichols’ assault. Tip SM
  21. Richard Harris
  22. Albuquerque Cosper Head, accused of assaulting Michael Fanone.
  23. Emanuel Jackson, whom videos caught punching one officer, and others show beating multiple officers with a metal baseball bat. BOLO 31
  24. Shane Jenkins, alleged to have used a crowbar to break in a window, later threw things including a pole, a desk drawer, and a flagpole at cops.
  25. Douglas Jensen, the QAnon who chased Officer Goodman up the stairs, got charged with resisting him. NM, BOLO 10
  26. Taylor Johnatakis, charged with 111.
  27. Paul Johnson, who carried a bullhorn and was in the initial assault from the west side with Ryan Samsel. BOLO 49
  28. Chad Jones, who used a Trump flag to break the glass in the Speaker’s Lobby door just before Ashli Babbitt was shot and may have intimidated three officers who were pursuing that group. Tip NM
  29. David Judd, who threw a firecracker at cops in the tunnel. Tip and BOLO 137
  30. Julian Elie Khater, who allegedly sprayed Brian Sicknick and two others with very powerful bear spray. BOLO 190
  31. Freddie Klein, the State Department employee who fought with three different officers while trying to break through police lines. BOLO 136
  32. Edward Jacob Lang, who identified himself in a screen cap of a violent mob attacking cops and who was filmed slamming a riot shield into police and later fighting them with a red baseball bat. Tip SM
  33. Mark Jefferson Leffingwell, whom a Capitol Police officer described in an affidavit punching him. Onsite arrest
  34. Joshua Lollar, who described fighting cops and was caught in pictures showing himself in the front lines confronting cops. Tip SM
  35. Michael Lopatic, who allegedly assaulted some cops with Stager and Sabol, then took a BWC to hide the assault. BOLO 133
  36. Clifford Mackrell, who attempted to strip an officer’s gas mask after someone else sprayed bear spray. BOLO 124
  37. Patrick Edward McCaughey III, who was filmed crushing MPD Officer Daniel Hodges in one of the doors to the Capitol. BOLO 62
  38. Jeffrey McKellop, a former Special Forces guy accused of assaulting 4 cops, including one by using a flagpole as a spear. BOLO 215
  39. Jonathan Mellis, who used some kind of stick to try to jab and beat police. Tip SM
  40. Garret Miller, who pushed back at cops and then threatened both AOC and the cop who killed Ashli Babbit. Tip LE
  41. Matthew Ryan Miller, who released fire extinguisher in close quarters. Tip SM
  42. Jordan Mink, who used a pole to resist the police.
  43. Aaron Mostofsky, possibly for stripping a cop of his or her armored vest and riot shield. NM
  44. Clayton Mullins, alleged to be part of the mob that assaulted AW and two other police. Tip
  45. Ryan Nichols, who was filmed wielding a crowbar and yelling, “This is not a peaceful protest,” then spraying pepper spray against police trying to prevent entry to the Capitol. Tip SM
  46. Jose Padilla, who shoved cops at a barricade, then helped use a Donald Trump sign as a battering ram against them. Tip SM
  47. Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boy who stole a shield from cops. NM (BOLO 43)
  48. Mark Ponder, filmed repeatedly attacking cops with poles.
  49. Christopher Quaglin, accused of assaulting cops both at the initial breach of the barriers and later in the Lower West Terrace.
  50. Daniel Rodriguez, whom videos appear to show tasing Michael Fanone. Sedition Hunter-based reporting
  51. Jeffrey Sabol, helped drag a cop from the Capitol and beat him while prone. LE arrest (erratic driving)
  52. Ryan Samsel, who set off the riot by giving a cop a concussion; he appears to have coordinated with Joe Biggs. BOLO 51 (though not IDed by BOLO)
  53. Salvador Sandoval, Jr, who went to the insurrection with his mother and shoved some cops.
  54. Robert Sanford, who was filmed hitting Capitol Police Officer William Young on the head with a fire extinguisher. Tip NM
  55. Ronald Sandlin, who tried to wrestle cops to keep the door to the Senate open. MPD tip
  56. Troy Sargent, who appears to have punched some cops holding a line. Tip SM
  57. Peter Schwartz, a felon who maced several cops. Tip NM (BOLO 120)
  58. Christian Secor, a UCLA self-described fascist who helped shove through some cops to break into the Capitol and then sat in the Senate chamber. Tip NM
  59. Barton Wade Shively, who pushed and shoved some police trying to get into the Capitol, punched another, then struck one of those same cops later and kicked another. BOLO 55
  60. Thomas Sibick, accused of being among a group of men who attacked Michael Fanone and stole his badge.
  61. Peter Francis Stager, who was involved in beating a prone cop with a flagpole. Tip SM
  62. Ezekial Stecher, whom videos showed pushing in the Lower West Tunnel.
  63. Tristan Stevens, who fought cops with a shield and baton. Video
  64. Isaac Sturgeon, who is accused of using a barricade to attack some officers.
  65. George Pierre Tanios, who allegedly conspired with Julian Khater to attack Brian Sicknick and two other cops. BOLO 254
  66. Thomas Webster, who attacked a cop with a flagpole (BOLO 145)
  67. Wade Whitten, accused of dragging AW down the steps of the Capitol and hitting him with a crutch (BOLO 130)
  68. Christopher Worrell, a Proud Boy who apparently sprayed pepper spray at a line of police.
  69. Kyle Young, accused of attacking Michael Fanone and another officer, and stealing Fanone’s weapon.