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Jack Smith to Aileen Cannon: Treating Non-Lawyer Tom Fitton’s Theories as Law Will Lead to Mandamus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump’s Defense: He Intended to Steal Boxes and Boxes of Classified Documents

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As I have been noting for months, in all of Jack Smith’s rebuttals to Trump’s claims that Presidents have absolute immunity, he floated scenarios that are pretty similar to stuff that Trump is known or suspected of doing.

One of those is, “a president who sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary.”

As I noted in response to Trump’s claim that that would be treason, Trump has done a whole lot that’s improper with classified information.

The closest thing on that list to treason is selling nuclear secrets to America’s adversaries. Not treason.

But Trump’s lawyers, including two of the lawyers representing him in the stolen documents case, lawyers who had their first good look at the documents Trump is accused of stealing last week, seem to suggest it could be.

To be clear: Trump has never been accused of selling nuclear secrets to America’s adversaries.

He undoubtedly gave Israel’s counterterrorism secrets to Russia — why, and whether there was a quid pro quo involved, we still don’t know.

He is known to have Tweeted out highly sensitive satellite information to dick-wag Iran, with the result that Iran learned about the satellites targeting their country.

To spite Mark Milley, he showed a plan to attack Iran to Mark Meadows’ ghost writers.

Ongoing reporting, first from ABC and then from NYT, reveals that after Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt paid millions for access to Trump, Trump shared details of a conversation he had about a call he had with Iraq’s president after bombing Iraq, described his perfect phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and provided sensitive details of America’s nuclear subs.

And he is accused of leaving nuclear documents — documents that Trump’s lawyers may have reviewed for the first time last week — in unsecure ways at his beach resort, possibly even in his gaudy bathroom.

So, no. Trump has not (yet) been accused of selling nuclear secrets, to adversaries or anyone else. Though he did give away what he claimed to be nuclear secrets to a businessman from an allied nation after the guy paid a lot of money for access to Trump.

But as I noted, we don’t yet know what happened to some of the secret documents that Trump snuck away from Mar-a-Lago after hiding them from Evan Corcoran in June 2022, documents he took with him to host a golf tournament the Saudis paid an undisclosed sum to host at Bedminster.

Those documents have never been located.

Just so long as Trump didn’t sell any of these nuclear documents, but instead gave them away, I’m sure we’re all good.

That’s important background to Trump’s primary defense in his stolen documents case. Between his motion to dismiss because the Presidential Records Act doesn’t say what he claims it says and his motion to dismiss for absolute immunity, he is arguing that he intended to steal boxes and boxes of classified documents.

The latter argument is substantially the same garbage argument Trump has made to the DC Circuit and SCOTUS. The former is a real piece of work, even by Trump’s standards. Here his argument:

  • Before the Presidential Records Act was passed, Presidents treated presidential papers — which are different from government classified documents — as their personal property
  • Because NARA had no authority, after Bill Clinton left office, to reclassify tapes of personal conversations Clinton made so Tom Fitton could have them, it means NARA has no authority over what counts as a presidential or personal record
  • Bill Clinton’s personal tapes are exactly the same as the boxes and boxes of official documents Trump sent to Mar-a-Lago
  • Without providing any evidence Trump did classify all those official documents as personal documents, he will nevertheless claim he did so while still in office
  • Robert Hur’s report describing seizing all of Joe Biden’s diaries — which are specifically excluded from the PRA — is proof that Presidents control all official documents they stash away
  • Cmon, Judge Cannon, you made the ridiculous argument I own these documents once already, only to have the 11th Circuit rip you a new asshole, but why can’t you make precisely that argument again?
  • Charging Trump for actions he took after leaving the White House is the same as supervising his actions day-to-day
  • Because DOJ declined to second-guess Mark Meadows’ spectacular failure to declassify documents Trump wanted to give to John Solomon, it means DOJ must accept Trump’s vague assertion that he didn’t spectacularly fail to declassify boxes and boxes of documents either
  • These boxes and boxes of official documents, which are not excluded from the PRA, are just like Reagans diaries, which are specifically excluded
  • Clinton’s conversations about official stuff are just the same as the official documents documenting that kind of stuff
  • Because NARA had never made a criminal referral before February 2022, the fact that it has since made two means it couldn’t make any
  • Trump didn’t think he’d get busted, so it was improper for FBI to bust him
  • DOJ should have dealt with me like they did with Peter Navarro when he also blew off the PRA
  • Because DOJ refused to seize unclassified personal Clinton recordings so Tom Fitton could have them, it means DOJ could not seize classified official documents so NARA could have them

Ultimately, though, the two arguments together are very simple. First, from the PRA filing, Trump intended to take those boxes and boxes of classified documents.

The Special Counsel’s Office concedes that the “genesis” of this case dates back to at least “the tail end of the Trump Administration itself.” Compel Oppn. at 3.2 The Office alleges in the Superseding Indictment that President Trump “caused scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported” to Mar-a-Lago. ECF No. 85 ¶ 4 (emphasis added). The Superseding Indictment makes clear that this decision and the related transportation of records occurred while President Trump was still in office. Id. ¶ 25 (alleging that President Trump caused boxes of records to be packed and shipped “[i]n January 2021, as he was preparing to leave the White House” (emphasis added)). President Trump departed the White House prior to “12:00 p.m. on January 20, 2021,” and as such he is alleged to have made these decisions concerning the documents at issue while he was the Commander-in-Chief. Id. ¶ 4.

And, from the immunity filing, because Trump stole those boxes and boxes of classified documents while he was still Commander-in-Chief, he has immunity from prosecution for doing so.

Specifically, President Trump is immune from prosecution on Counts 1 through 32 because the charges turn on his alleged decision to designate records as personal under the Presidential Records Act (“PRA”) and to cause the records to be moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. As alleged in the Superseding Indictment, President Trump made this decision while he was still in office. The alleged decision was an official act, and as such is subject to presidential immunity.

[snip]

Even if the Special Counsel’s Office could establish that President Trump’s designation decision under the PRA was illegal or otherwise improper—and they cannot—“the President’s actions do not fall beyond the outer perimeter of official responsibility merely because they are unlawful or taken for a forbidden purpose.” Blassingame, 87 F.4th at 14. The Supreme Court has so held, repeatedly. After all, every claim of immunity is raised against charges of allegedly improper motive or purpose. See, e.g., Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 756 (rejecting a rule that would permit “an inquiry into the President’s motives” as “highly intrusive”); Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 554 (1967); Barr v. Matteo, 360 U.S. 564, 575 (1959) (“The claim of an unworthy purpose does not destroy the privilege.” (citation omitted)); Spalding v. Vilas, 161 U.S. 483, 498 (1896) (holding that immunity does not turn on “any personal motive that might be alleged to have prompted his action”); Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. 335, 354 (1871) (holding that immunity “cannot be affected by any consideration of the motives with which the acts are done”); see also, e.g., Gregoire v. Biddle, 177 F.2d 579, 581 (2d Cir. 1949) (Hand, J.). In short, in assessing whether immunity applies, courts must look to the “nature of the act itself.” Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 362 (1978). The allegedly improper manner or purpose of the alleged acts is not relevant. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 756. Therefore, President Trump is entitled to immunity for this official act and that must include immunity from criminal prosecution.

This is, quite literally, an argument that it was totally legal for Trump to choose to steal boxes and boxes of classified documents.

Jay Bratt to Chris Kise: You Already Made that Frivolous Presidential Records Act Argument

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This post talks about the government’s legal argument against delay in the Trump stolen documents case. This other post talks about the filing’s description of the evidence in the case. 

My favorite part of the government’s reply to Trump’s request to put off his Espionage Act trial indefinitely comes in how they rebut Trump’s argument that there are novel issues that will require more time.

DOJ dismisses Trump’s suggestion that there’s a question about whether the Special Counsel could prosecute him by pointing to the appeal from the key witness protecting Roger Stone, Andrew Miller.

In re Grand Jury, 916 F.3d 1047, 1052–54 (D.C. Cir. 2019), the D.C. Circuit held that a special counsel appointed by the Attorney General has the authority to investigate and prosecute federal crimes.

More hilarious is the way they dismiss the claim that Trump needs a lot of time to make the Presidential Records Act argument he lifted from (noted non-attorney) Tom Fitton. They do so in several ways: noting that the argument really isn’t going to work and that even if they want to try it, the only thing they need to try is the indictment.

But then they note that Trump, with one of his existing counsel — Chris Kise, already made that argument, before Judge Cannon.

As for the impact of the Presidential Records Act on this prosecution, any argument that it mandates dismissal of the Indictment or forms a defense to the charges here borders on frivolous. The PRA is not a criminal statute, and in no way purports to address the retention of national security information. The Defendants are, of course, free to make whatever arguments they like for dismissal of the Indictment, and the Government will respond promptly. But they should not be permitted to gesture at a baseless legal argument, call it “novel,” and then claim that the Court will require an indefinite continuance in order to resolve it.

[snip]

As with any pretrial dispositive motion, all that is necessary is the Indictment—which the Defendants have had for over a month. And in fact, Trump (including his current counsel) has already briefed in this Court a variation of this argument. See, e.g., No. 22-CV-81294-CANNON, ECF No. 171 (filed Nov. 8, 2022). The legal issues Defendants raise do not justify deviation from a speedy trial date, much less open-ended deferral of considering one.

Jay Bratt went easy on Trump: He doesn’t bother reminding Kise (and Aileen Cannon) how that worked out before the 11th Circuit the last time they tried it.

Ultimately, though, the core nugget of the filing is this: The Speedy Trial Act requires a judge to set a trial date.

Any discussion of setting a trial date must begin with the Speedy Trial Act of 1974, 18 U.S.C. §§ 3161–3174 (the “Act”). The very first sentence of the Act forecloses Defendants’ proposal here:

In any case involving a defendant charged with an offense, the appropriate judicial officer, at the earliest practicable time, shall, after consultation with the counsel for the defendant and the attorney for the Government, set the case for trial on a day certain, … so as to assure a speedy trial.

18 U.S.C. § 3161(a). The Defendants chide the Government for seeking an “expedited” trial (Resp. at 1, 2, 8), but in doing so they have it exactly backward. A speedy trial is a foundational requirement of the Constitution and the United States Code, not a Government preference that must be justified. See U.S. Const. amend. VI; 18 U.S.C. Ch. 208 (captioned “Speedy Trial”).

[snip]

“That public interest cannot be served, the Act recognizes, if defendants may opt out of the Act entirely,” id., which the Defendants effectively try to do here by requesting an indefinite adjournment of the trial, for a minimum of some fifteen months.1 See Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 519 (1972) (noting the “societal interest in providing a speedy trial which exists separate from, and at times in opposition to, the interests of the accused.”).

This filing doesn’t get very deep into Trump’s claims about the election. It side-steps the issues I pointed to — voters’ need to know whether Trump reneged on the promises he made the last time he got elected. It acknowledges picking a jury may be tough but says that’s good reason to get started on it earlier. It even notes that Trump’s busy work schedule, like those of a lot of powerful people charged with a crime, is not an excuse to put off trial indefinitely.

[T]he demands of Defendants’ professional schedules do not provide a basis to delay trial in this case. Many indicted defendants have demanding jobs that require a considerable amount of their time and energy, or a significant amount of travel. The Speedy Trial Act contemplates no such factor as a basis for a continuance, and the Court should not indulge it here.

While I find several of these arguments persuasive, ultimately, it’s unclear whether this filing will work. We’re at the point where we’ll get the first hint of how Judge Cannon plans to approach this case.

But by laying out that she cannot do what Trump has asked, simply delay the case indefinitely, it simplifies her choices.

Down a Mouse Hole with Bill Clinton’s Cat, Socks

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When I first read this WaPo article yesterday, I was struck by two things: first, the revelation that when Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton appeared before a Jack Smith grand jury early this year, he was asked both about his central role in convincing Donald Trump he could rely on a case he, Fitton, lost, to justify stealing thousands of government documents (that’s the testimony we knew about), but also his role in January 6.

Fitton, who appeared before the grand jury and was questioned about his role in both the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, acknowledged he gave the advice to Trump but declined to discuss the details of their conversations.

I wasn’t aware that Fitton had much of a role in January 6.

I was also shocked that, in the spite of the grave damage Fitton’s crackpot advice had already done to Donald Trump’s future, he was nevertheless permitted to be there with the accused felon Monday night, dining on what was undoubtedly overcooked filet mignon, as Trump and his supporters discussed his plans for beating the rap.

In an interview Wednesday, Fitton said he dined with Trump on Monday night at his club, eating filet mignon with the former president one day before his first court appearance on the document charges. “I saw him last night; he’s in a good mood. He’s serious and ready to fight under the law.”

On top of the sheer stupidity of letting Fitton anywhere close to Trump in the wake of his indictment, Fitton’s presence presumably would breach any privilege claim lawyers present could make in the future.

The report that Fitton has been chatting with Trump this week explains some of the insanely stupid things Trump has said on his failing social media site, not to mention Trump’s deceit in claiming he would see everything presented to the grand jury, much less have already seen it before any protective order is signed and discovery is provided.

By invoking Clinton’s Socks, his term for Fitton’s failed lawsuit, Trump was falsely claiming to have inside knowledge of something that would have legal merit, presumably so his followers would believe Trump had some viable defense (that they would send him money to fund).

I was not, however, surprised by the sheer stupidity of the opinions Fitton expressed to WaPo.

“I think what is lacking is the lawyers saying, ‘I took this to be obstruction,’” said Fitton. “Where is the conspiracy? I don’t understand any of it. I think this is a trap. They had no business asking for the records … and they’ve manufactured an obstruction charge out of that. There are core constitutional issues that the indictment avoids, and the obstruction charge seems weak to me.”

Several other Trump advisers blamed Fitton for convincing Trump that he could keep the documents and repeatedly mentioning the “Clinton socks case” — a reference to tapes Bill Clinton stored in his sock drawer of his secret interviews with historian Taylor Branch that served as the basis of Branch’s 2009 book documenting the Clinton presidency.

Judicial Watch lost a lawsuit in 2012 that demanded the audio recordings be designated as presidential records and that the National Archives take custody of the recordings. A court opinion issued at the time stated that there was no legal mechanism for the Archives to force Clinton to turn over the recordings.

For his part, Fitton said Trump’s lawyers “should have been more aggressive in fighting the subpoenas and fighting for Trump.”

It’s not just that Fitton was allowed to share these legally incorrect opinions with Trump. It’s that he badly misunderstands how his own advice about the “Clinton Socks” case might be viewed as an agreement with Trump to enter into a conspiracy to withhold classified documents.

Remember, after Trump fucked up releasing the Crossfire Hurricane documents, Fitton went after them himself, only to reveal that the collection was just one dumbass binder.

Anyway, after puzzling through what role Tom Fitton might have had on January 6, I started reading through a motion to compel that Ruby Freeman’s attorneys served on pardoned felon Bernie Kerik last week. Bernie was the guy who mailed a key strategy document to Mark Meadows on December 28, 2020. In addition to making clear that Bernie was sharing the document to “move legislators,” not win court cases, it included exhibits laying out the claims about Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss that Rudy Giuliani would subsequently make publicly — that Freeman counted suitcases of votes multiple times after kicking out poll watchers, using a false claim of a water main break as the excuse — claims that Freeman alleges amount to defamation.

To be clear: those claims about Freeman are false, as is the claim she was arrested for her actions. Thus the lawsuit.

Freeman’s lawyers filed a motion to compel because when Kerik first responded to their subpoena last year, his attorney — Tim Parlatore — simply provided a link to the stuff that Kerik had provided to the January 6 Committee. Since then, Freeman’s lawyers argue, Rudy has disclaimed any work privilege claim over materials prepared for legislatures, as opposed to lawsuits. But when Freeman’s lawyers have gone back to Kerik to get the materials he withheld from J6C under a work product privilege claim that (they argue) Rudy has since waived, Parlatore explained there had been a “technical glitch” that creates some difficulties in consulting with Rudy’s attorney on the issue.

Relations between Parlatore and Freeman’s team have been sour for some time. Around the same time in December when Parlatore was telling a DC grand jury that he had done a diligent search of Bedminster — where at least two and probably a bunch of classified records have been sent, never to be seen again — he was telling Freeman’s team that Kerik didn’t have some documents that Freeman had obtained from other sources.

After Plaintiffs spent months negotiating with Mr. Kerik’s counsel and made more than a dozen unsuccessful attempts to effectuate personal service on Mr. Kerik,5 counsel for Mr. Kerik accepted service of the First Kerik Subpoena on November 14, 2022. (See Houghton-Larsen Decl. ¶ 4.) On November 21, 2022, Plaintiffs agreed to narrow the requests and provided examples of emails produced during discovery that were sent to Mr. Kerik but were not present in his production to the Select Committee. (See id. ¶ 5.) On December 21, 2022, Mr. Parlatore responded that “Mr. Kerik has looked and we do not seem to have any additional responsive documents to provide.” (See id. ¶ 6.) Mr. Kerik has never explained why he does “not seem to have” any of the example communications Plaintiffs provided to him, on which he was copied, and which have been produced by other parties.

By the time former Trump attorney Parlatore claimed a “technical glitch” was creating delays on June 7, the day before Trump was indicted, he also explained that, “there are other more pressing matters that have taken priority.”

The motion to compel includes fragments of both Rudy’s and Kerik’s March depositions in this case. In Kerik’s, Parlatore made a series of dickish responses to Freeman attorney Annie Houghton-Larsen’s questions that Parlatore deemed to ask for work product information, precisely the privilege claim that has since started to collapse.

In Rudy’s, there are a slew of hilarious responses showing how dissolute Rudy has gotten, such as when, struggling to come up with Sidney Powell’s name, he called her the Wicked Witch of the East.

Q. I’ll ask you about who was on it, but the team that was assembled at that point in time, is that the team that Ms. Bobb is referring to as the “Giuliani legal team”?

A. Correct.

Q. Now you can tell me, who was on this team?

A. It was myself, Jenna Ellis, Victoria Toensing, Joe DiGenova, Boris Epshteyn, originally.

We added Christina after about two weeks, and we added — oh my goodness, of course, her name will escape me.

Come on guys, help me. The wicked witch of the east.

Q. It’s — really, in this forum, I’m interested in what you remember.

A. Oh, I remember who it is. I just can’t remember the name. I block it out.

Q. We can come back to it.

A. On purpose. Everybody knows who it is.

Q. We can come back to it.

Anyone else aside apart this —

A. Sidney.

Q. Sidney?

A. It was Sidney.

Q. Sidney who?

MR COSTELLO: How could you forget that?

Q. Are you referring to Sidney Powell?

A. Sidney Powell, yeah.

Both men, however, struggled when asked about this passage of the strategy document, showing who, on December 28, its author considered key members of their team (Freedom Caucus members make the list on the following page), both struggled to remember who some of the members were.

There was little doubt that BK was Kerik and both ultimately decided that BE was Epshteyn.

But both simply couldn’t imagine what close Boris associate “SB” might be. Here’s Kerik’s epic struggle with the question:

Q. Okay. This might help you. Can we please turn to page 6.

Okay. So about two-thirds down the page it says, “Key team members. Rudy Giuliani.”

And then, “BK.” I’m assuming that’s you.

A. That’s probably me.

Q. Okay. “KF.” Do you know who that is?

A. Katherine Friess.

Q. And then, “Media advisors. SB.” Who do you think that is?

A. No idea. Well, I went through this before.

THE WITNESS: Who did I do this with? J6?

MR. PARLATORE: Probably.

THE WITNESS: Yeah. Boris Epshteyn would have been the BE. SB, I have no idea what that  is.

BY MS. HOUGHTON-LARSEN:

Q. Okay.

Sadly, Rudy dodged the TF question altogether and the excerpt cut off before Kerik was quizzed about the same question.

So we will have to wait to learn whether Tom Fitton is the TF who did influencer outreach on the effort to steal the election.

But it might help to explain why he was still welcome in the Boris Epshteyn-led effort to pursue political grievance rather than a sound legal defense.

“Classified Evening Briefing:” Mishandled and Stolen Documents Update

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There has been a bunch of news in the various investigations into various constitutional officers who took documents home. Here’s my updated handy table.

Biden

On February 1, the FBI did a consensual search of President Biden’s Rehoboth home. No additional documents with classified marks were found, though the FBI did take some notes from Biden’s time as Vice President. Those kinds of notes are what I include among potential “trophy” documents, because they may reflect mementos.

NARA released information relating to Biden’s initial turnover of documents under FOIA. I assume they would have had to get DOJ’s permission to do so.

Pence

Mike Pence’s team announced that, after a consensual search of his Carmel, IN home, the FBI found one additional document with classification markings and six additional pages.

The FBI discovered an additional classified document at former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana home Friday during a voluntary five-hour search of the house, a Pence adviser said in a statement.

The adviser, Devin O’Malley, said “the Department of Justice completed a thorough and unrestricted search of five hours and removed one document with classified markings and six additional pages without such markings that were not discovered in the initial review by the vice president’s counsel.”

“The vice president has directed his legal team to continue its cooperation with appropriate authorities and to be fully transparent through the conclusion of this matter,” O’Malley said. He also noted that Pence and his legal team had “agreed to a consensual search of his residence that took place today.”

A source familiar with the search said DOJ was given unrestricted access to Pence’s home, and a member of his legal team was present through its duration.

The scope of the search included looking for documents that DOJ believed might be considered original documents that should have been sent to the National Archives, the source said, which could explain the six pages of additional material that were taken.

Given those six pages, I’ve changed the table to reflect possible “trophy” documents, things taken as keepsakes.

Pence has another weekend home in IN that has not been searched.

Trump

Trump may have used the news of Pence’s classified document as an opportunity to dump more news of his own. Multiple outlets reported that he had turned over:

  • An empty folder marked “Classified Evening Briefing”
  • Some additional classified files
  • The laptop and thumb drive onto which digital versions of those files were copied

Here’s how ABC described the new materials:

The folder with classification markings was discovered in a box with additional papers, the sources said. A copy of the box’s contents was made electronically, raising the question about the existence of any additional electronic records that may be relevant to the special counsel’s investigation.

ABC News has also learned that after the information was recovered, federal agents retrieved the laptop from the aide. The laptop was not retrieved on the Mar-a-Lago grounds, the sources said.

Given the position of the person reportedly involved — who works for Trump’s PAC — it is possible that this person is the one who did a “compilation” of messages from a pollster, a faith leader, a book author, with two classified documents, one Secret and one Confidential.

Separately, there have been reports of at least three witnesses who have testified in the stolen document case:

  • In the second week of January, Evan Corcoran appeared before the grand jury. He’s the one who did the search that happened not to find the 100 documents Trump had hidden.
  • Late last year DOJ reached out to Alina Habba (she is represented by the same lawyer who had represented Christina Bobb). Habba filed a declaration in a NYS case claiming to have done a diligent search of Trump’s property for subpoenaed documents.
  • On February 2, Tom Fitton appeared before the grand jury. Fitton, who is not a lawyer, gave Trump catastrophically stupid advice saying that a suit he filed against Bill Clinton that was unrelated meant Trump could just determine what documents he could keep.
  • Robert O’Brien was subpoenaed in both the stolen documents and the attempted stolen election case and is asserting Executive Privilege over some matters. O’Brien would know the circumstances by which Trump was briefed, so this could be a follow-up to items more recently turned over to DOJ.
[Photo: National Security Agency, Ft. Meade, MD via Wikimedia]

The Full-Fitton: Trump’s Funny Math with the Federal Records Act

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As I laid out here, you really don’t need to get further than the second paragraph of Trump’s response to DOJ’s bid for a stay on Judge Aileen Cannon’s injunction against using seized evidence of obstruction and Espionage Act violations to find evidence of a crime. In that paragraph, Trump confesses that the FBI did seize documents marked as classified — and therefore documents responsive to a May 11 subpoena — from Mar-a-Lago on August 8; that’s tantamount to a confession to obstruction.

I want to look at another funny thing he does, before I move to the subject of his gaslighting (whether these documents are genuinely classified or not, which is irrelevant to the crimes under investigation).

Trump is trying to stall the Espionage and obstruction investigation into him. But he’s also attempting to either claw back documents into his own possession, or to bottle them up at the Archives under separate legal challenges. As such, he’s adopting Tom Fitton’s argument — based on a very different set of Bill Clinton records that weren’t seized from his home via a lawful warrant but were instead FOIAed — that he designated many of these documents as personal records while still President, so they don’t even have to be in the Archives.

Critical to that argument is that documents are either Presidential Records or personal records, and the latter don’t have to be in the Archives, and so (he makes several huge logical jumps) they can’t be used in a criminal prosecution against him.

The PRA further distinguishes records as either Presidential or personal. 44 U.S.C. § 2201. Presidential records are defined as: documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President’s immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. 44 U.S.C. § 2201(2).

The PRA expressly excludes personal records from the definition of Presidential records. See id. § 2201(2)(B). Personal records are defined as “documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion therof, [sic] of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.” Id. § 2201(3). The PRA thus “distinguishes Presidential records from ‘personal records’” and “requires that all materials produced or received by the President, ‘to the extent practicable, be categorized as Presidential records or personal records upon their creation or receipt and be filed separately.’” Jud. Watch, Inc. v. Nat’l Archives & Recs. Admin., 845 F. Supp. 2d 288, 291 (D.D.C. 2012) (quoting 44 U.S.C. § § 2203(b)). “The categorization of the records during the Presidency controls what happens next . . . . The statute assigns the Archivist no role with respect to personal records once the Presidency concludes.” Id. (emphasis added). “The PRA contains no provision obligating or even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes responsibility for the Presidential records.” Id. (quoting 44 U.S.C. § 2203(f)(1)). “[T]he PRA does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President.” Id. at 301 (describing categorization decision by former President Clinton as not within the discretion of the Archivist as the subject materials “were not provided to the Archives at” the end of the Clinton presidency).

Critically, the former President has sole discretion to classify a record as personal or Presidential. See Jud. Watch, Inc., 845 F. Supp. 2d at 301 (“Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President.”). The power of the Archivist is not greater than that of the President. Specifically, the PRA states “the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.” 44 U.S.C. § 2203(f)(1). This section should not be interpreted as weakening a President’s authority under the Act. See Jud. Watch, Inc., 845 F. Supp. 2d at 300 (“[T]he plain language of section 2203(f) of the PRA does not say . . . that the Archivist must assume custody and control of all materials that fall within the definition of Presidential records.”).

Accordingly, all of the records at issue in the Government’s motion fall into two categories: (1) Presidential records, governed exclusively by the Presidential Records Act; and (2) personal records, the determination of which was in President Trump’s discretion. See id. To the extent President Trump may have categorized certain of the seized materials as personal during his presidency, any disagreement as to that categorization is to be resolved under the PRA and cannot possibly form the basis for any criminal prosecution. [my emphasis]

He’s not wrong about the Presidential Records Act reserving personal records. The category of personal records might even exempt documents pertaining to his coup attempt from storage at the Archives (though if Trump had made that designation, then he could not exempt them from subpoena under a claim of Executive Privilege, nor could he later claim those records memorialized his official acts).

(3) The term “personal records” means all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion therof,2 of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term includes—

(A) diaries, journals, or other personal notes serving as the functional equivalent of a diary or journal which are not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Government business;

(B) materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; and

(C) materials relating exclusively to the President’s own election to the office of the Presidency; and materials directly relating to the election of a particular individual or individuals to Federal, State, or local office, which have no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.

If these documents hadn’t been seized via a lawful warrant authorizing the seizure of everything stored with documents bearing classification marks, the government might have a tough fight to get them.

This is also the reason why Trump wants the Archivist excluded from any Special Master proceeding — so Trump can persuade someone, in secret, that he actually designated such records personal and such a claim would stand up under the PRA, without leaving a record for such time as FBI subpoenaed the very same documents as personal documents.

But Trump chose to hoard classified records and as a result, the FBI was forced to get a warrant and seize records more broadly.

Still, as far as it goes, the Fitton argument is that everything is either a Presidential Record or a personal record, and the latter don’t belong in the Archives, and that should trump (heh) their seizure with a lawful warrant that authorized the seizure of everything stored with or in the same place as documents marked as classified.

Except in the paragraph immediately before the Fitton argument, Trump concedes that’s not right. Before you split things into Presidential and personal records, you need to split them into Presidential and Federal Records.

All government records (classified or otherwise) fall into two basic categories, either under the PRA or the Federal Records Act (“FRA”). “The FRA defines a class of materials that are federal records subject to its provisions, and the PRA describes another, mutually exclusive set of materials that are subject to a different, less rigorous regime. In other words, no individual record can be subject to both statutes because their provisions are inconsistent.” Armstrong v. Exec. Office of the President, 1 F. 3d 1274, 1293 (D.C. Cir. 1993).

That is, he admits his two-category sorting is false.

And then he just drops the FRA, never to mention it again.

Even setting aside the example of Mike Ellis — who on January 8, 2021, was discovered to have brought a compartmented NSA document to the White House and, at first, “refused to return the document, retained it for the White House archives, and, based on what the NSA employee saw, placed the document in a container that did not meet the security storage requirements for such a sensitive program” — there would be a number of other documents, classified and not, that were brought to the White House but which remained agency records. Another category of agency documents, for example, are those pertaining to the Russian investigation, which should never have been at the White House in the first place, but which Trump wants to own for all time by simultaneously claiming he declassified and then made personal records of them.

None of those records would fit into Trump’s neat binary.

So he just ignores that and goes full-Fitton and hopes Aileen Cannon will ignore that bit.

Go to emptywheel resource page on Trump Espionage Investigation.

“The President Was … Working in a Filing Room”

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The unredacted part of the affidavit for Trump’s search shows that it incorporated a “statement” Trump put out on February 18, in an attempt to rebut the report that the Archives provided Carolyn Maloney about what was discovered in the 15 boxes Trump finally returned. In a redacted part of the affidavit, there’s something that looks like a second post of some kind, which appears at the end of a nine-paragraph section describing the Archives’ fight to get the boxes back. One possibility is that it’s a second statement Trump issued before the other one.

I’d like to look at the two statements he put out in February, the one that might be that second post, and the one that is included in the affidavit but was illegible in the rendering of it on PACER. Here’s the first one:

The first attacks Maggie Haberman’s story about flushing documents (but is limited just to White House toilets; she has since reported he flushed stuff while traveling as well).

It also falsely claims that “the papers were given easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis.” Whatever the seven redacted paragraphs in the affidavit about the fight to get the documents back includes, it would show that that claim was utterly false.

But the statement does claim that “I have been told I was under no obligation to give this material back based on various legal rulings.” We know Trump was told this after the documents were returned. As CNN reported, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton was telling Trump just that, citing a ruling pertaining to Bill Clinton.

Not long after the National Archives acknowledged in February that it had retrieved 15 boxes of presidential records from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump began fielding calls from Tom Fitton, a prominent conservative activist.

Fitton, the longtime head of the legal activist group Judicial Watch, had a simple message for Trump — it was a mistake to give the records to the Archives, and his team should never have let the Archives “strong-arm” him into returning them, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

Those records belonged to Trump, Fitton argued, citing a 2012 court case involving his organization that he said gave the former President authority to do what he wanted with records from his own term in office.

The Judicial Watch president suggested to Trump that if the Archives came back, he should not give up any additional records, according to sources with knowledge of their conversations, which have not been previously reported.
While Trump continued to publicly tout his cooperation with the Archives, privately the former President began obsessing over Fitton’s arguments, complaining to aides about the 15 boxes that were handed over and becoming increasingly convinced that he should have full control over records that remained at Mar-a-Lago, according to people with knowledge of his behavior at the time.

Trump even asked Fitton at one point to brief his attorneys, said a person familiar with the matter.

“The moment Tom got in the boss’ ear, it was downhill from there,” said a person close to the former President, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

If Trump’s statement was a reference to Fitton’s advice, it may suggest that advice started even before the Archives publicly confirmed returning the documents (or that Fitton immediately got inside Trump’s head).

What I was most interested in, however, was Trump’s description that the “boxes [] contained letters, records, newspapers, magazines, and various articles,” suggesting that all this excitement was just a fight over 15 boxes of shit.

In fact, the affidavit reveals the initial Archives referral explained, those boxes did contain a lot of shit. But intermixed with all that shit were “a lot of classified records.”

The NARA Referral stated that according to NARA’s White House Liaison Division Director, a preliminary review of the FIFTEEN BOXES indicated that they contained “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and ‘a lot of classified records.’ Of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.”

As I understand it, the description that this was “unfoldered” means it had been separated from a classified cover sheet that the government uses to highlight that the document enclosed is classified (they’re color-coded so a person can readily see how secret something is). When people try to hide that they’ve got classified information, one of the first things they do is rip off that cover sheet because it’s such a dead giveaway (which is, after all, the point). As I’ve said elsewhere, the FBI found such cover sheets in Joshua Schulte’s shredder when they did the search of his apartment, which they used to suggest, fairly or not, that Schulte was trying to hide things in the wake of the Vault 7 release.

As Elizabeth de la Vega noted when reading the affidavit, newspaper articles and magazines are the kinds of things that white collar criminals use as filler to try to obscure their crimes.

Trump claimed that the boxes were full of things that might appear worthless, and when the Archives opened them up and looked more closely, that’s precisely what they were full of, aside from the classified documents stripped of their cover sheets. But in a public statement the day after the investigation was announced, Trump tried to insist it was just filler, as if that were going to confuse the FBI or even a building full of committed archivists.

And that’s one reason the second post — the one that we know appears in the affidavit — is so interesting.

Unsurprisingly, Trump pitched the discovery of classified documents in a continuity with his past investigations — Russia, Ukraine Impeachment, January 6 Impeachment.

Trump’s statement said the same thing when the search broke on August 8.

Since then, however, Kash Patel, in a column cited in the affidavit, has given us reason to believe that the real continuity is that (at least some of) the documents Trump had stolen were about the Russian investigation or the Ukraine impeachment.

Patel did not want to get into what the specific documents were, predicting claims from the left that he was disclosing “classified” material, but said, “It’s information that Trump felt spoke to matters regarding everything from Russiagate to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco to major national security matters of great public importance — anything the president felt the American people had a right to know is in there and more.”

And Paul Sperry revealed that one reason Trump was withholding these records was because of the ongoing investigation(s) into January 6.

I guess, if you refused to turn over records regarding past investigations, wailing that this is just a continuation of those past investigations is a good way to inoculate your mob for scandalous new disclosures about those past investigations.

But I’m most interested that Trump’s response deflects by complaining,

The Fake News is making it seem like me, as the President of the United States, was working in a filing room.

In fact, there was a public report that had emphasized Trump’s role in packing up the boxes before they got sent to the Archives, one of the WaPo stories that really led the way on this story in February.

At one point, Archives officials threatened that if Trump’s team did not voluntarily produce the materials, they would send a letter to Congress or the Justice Department revealing the lack of cooperation, according to a third person familiar with the situation.

“At first it was unclear what he was going to give back and when,” said one of these people, who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of a sensitive situation.

Trump was noticeably secretive about the packing process, and top aides and longtime administrative staffers did not see the contents, the people said.

That entire article — which includes details about Trump trying to get the Archives to issue false claims about his cooperation with the investigation — seems to be closely aligned with the kinds of sources that the FBI seems to have subsequently developed.

But the allegation Trump was attempting to rebut — that he personally was involved in packing boxes — has since been matched. The NYT cited multiple sources describing Trump going through the boxes to be returned to the Archives personally.

Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.

More recently (and possibly part of an attempt to blame Mark Meadows for all this) the NYT described how stuff that had accumulated on the dining room table of the White House where he worked was not only getting dumped into two dozen boxes that would not get sent to the Archives, but staffers were bringing additional documents into him there, including the Kim Jong Un letters that — because the Archives knew to go looking for them — have served as a beacon for the stolen documents throughout this story.

Papers he had accumulated in his last several months in office had been dropped into boxes, roughly two dozen of them, and not sent to the National Archives. Aides had even retrieved letters from Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, and given them to Mr. Trump in the final weeks, according to notes described to The New York Times.

[snip]

Although the White House Counsel’s Office had told Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s last chief of staff, that the roughly two dozen boxes worth of material in the residence needed to be turned over to the archives, at least some of those boxes, including those with the Kim letters and some documents marked highly classified, were shipped to Florida. There they were stored at various points over the past 19 months in different locations inside Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s members-only club, home and office, according to several people briefed on the events.

Whether the first of these two posts is the redacted one or not, both times the Archives issued a public statement, Trump issued public, false, denials (and, according to the contemporaneous WaPo story, attempted to get the Archives to do the same).

At that level, then, the statements feel familiar from the Russian investigation, Trump’s well-studied ability to flood the zone with bullshit.

But buried in the two, together, seems to tie closer to actions — Trump’s personal involvement in stuffing the boxes full of shit under which to hide damning documents — that would go some distance to prove deliberate obstruction.

Judicial Watch’s Eighteen Month Soros Conspiracy Theory

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Over the weekend, Judicial Watch’s head of investigations Chris Farrell went on Lou Dobbs and referred to the group of migrants Trump has dubbed a “caravan” as a,

highly organized, very sophisticated organization — I have that from the highest levels of the Guatemalan government — they’re investigating those groups criminally, and I strongly urge President Trump and his Attorney General Jeff Sessions to do the same here, a lot of these folks also have affiliates who are getting money from the Soros-occupied State Department, and that is a very grave concern.

When people noted that Farrell had been spewing the same kind of Protocols of the Elders of Zion conspiracy that Robert Bowers had embraced before shooting up the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and that such conspiracy theorizing had led Cesar Sayoc to send a bomb to Soros, Fox took down the segment (but not before showing it twice) and claimed it would no longer welcome Farrell.

Today, Radio Televisión Martí also pulled a Judicial Watch sourced segment attacking Soros in Cuba that Mother Jones pointed to in the wake of last week’s assassination attempt.

Radio Televisión Martí, a network overseen by the U.S. government that broadcasts to Cuba, pulled a video segment it produced months ago that relied on material from the conservative group Judicial Watch and referred to Democratic donor George Soros as a “multimillionaire Jew,” Mother Jones reported last week.

“George Soros has his eye on Latin America. But Judicial Watch, an American investigative legal group, also has its eye on Soros and what it sees as his lethal influence to destroy democracies,” the narrator of the segment says in the video, according to an English translation published by Mother Jones. “It describes him as a millionaire investor and stock market speculator who exploits capitalism and Wall Street to finance anti-system movements that fill his pockets.”

The video also refers to Soros as “the multimillionaire Jew of Hungarian origin whose fortune is estimated at $8 billion” and “a non-believing Jew of flexible morals,” according to Mother Jones.

While the assassination attempt has generated focus on Judicial Watch’s actions, what has not been explained, is how Judicial Watch came to include Soros on its beat, which otherwise for the last several years has remained focused on the themes of the 2016 election (and for basically the history of the organization has been focused unrelentingly on Hillary Clinton). They’re still looking for Hillary emails, and other than a break to push the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, currently spend most of their time trying to discredit the Mueller investigation. They’re even still trying to use Tony Podesta’s involvement in Paul Manafort’s corruption to suggest John Podesta had a role in such things.

The organization is awful, but they’re not primarily awful in an unreconstructed racist sense.

There are some thematic sympathies, to be sure. JW has supported Trump’s Muslim ban. They’ve done some lawsuits on where refugees were resettled under the Obama Administration. JW sued for information on unaccompanied minors in custody under the Obama Administration, claiming they had ties to gangs and other crimes. Even before Farrell’s “caravan” comments, he and JW President Tom Fitton were calling to militarize the border.

Just as notably, the premise behind Farrell’s coverage of this issue and presence on Lou Dobbs’ show over the weekend (though he has been a very regular guest on Dobbs’ show) — that he recently took a fact-finding trip to investigate the “caravan” — is also a departure from Judicial Watch’s normal investigative approach, which involves endless FOIAs rather than reporting trips.

JW is pitching its coverage of the “caravan” as part of its “corruption chronicles” which are normally focused on the US government, perhaps based on its claim that there is financial support for migrants in Central America.

Here’s one of the reports from his trip — which seems more like an effort to air right wing governments’ propaganda about migrants than any evidence of corruption.

The migrant caravan marching northbound through Central America is an “elaborately planned” movement that’s benefiting human smugglers and bringing disturbing numbers of violent gang members and other criminal elements through Guatemala, according to government sources in the capital city. “MS-13 gang members have been detained and coyotes (human smugglers) are joining the march with clients who pay to get smuggled into the United States,” a Guatemalan official told Judicial Watch. People from Asian countries waiting to get smuggled into the U.S. through Central America are also integrating with poor Hondurans in the caravan, a high-level Guatemalan government source confirmed. Among them are nationals of Bangladesh, a south Asian Islamic country that’s well known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). “There are lots of dirty businesses associated with this,” Guatemalan authorities told Judicial Watch. “There’s lots of human trafficking.”

Sandwiched between Honduras and Mexico, Guatemala has been overrun with the onslaught of migrants that began their journey last week in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. At last count around 7,000 have participated in the trek, a great deal of them rowdy, angry men ages 17 to 40. President Jimmy Morales has ordered the military and police to detain all of the migrants and facilitate their safe return back to Honduras, though thousands have already reached the Mexican border. In a morning interview with Judicial Watch at the Guatemalan Ministry of Defense, Secretary of Defense General Luis Miguel Ralda Moreno said more than 2,000 Hondurans have been sent back home on buses. “We’re doing everything possible to stop the caravan while still respecting human rights,” General Moreno said.

During an afternoon interview at the National Palace, President Morales said that Guatemala has absorbed the huge cost of mobilizing police and military to return thousands of people to Honduras. He would like the United States to help him find the organizers of the caravan so they can face legal consequences. “Mass immigration like this endangers lives,” Morales said. “This is unprecedented. We are in the process of investigating who is behind the caravan.” Morales assures that Guatemala is doing everything possible to curb illegal immigration and asked for cooperation from the United States.

But as it turns out, and as the Radio Televisión Martí piece makes clear,  JW’s attacks on Soros go back further, at least 18 months.

The effort publicly started in February 2017, as tensions between the right wing government and the opposition in Macedonia started heating up. At that point, JW accused Soros of engaging in a “clandestine” effort to overthrow the government, one based on a Viktor Orbán accusation (remember that Orbán is about to shut down Soros’ Central European University, an effort launched around the same time as this JW effort).

Here’s how the clandestine operation functions, according to high-level sources in Macedonia and the U.S. that have provided Judicial Watch with records as part of an ongoing investigation. The Open Society Foundation has established and funded dozens of leftwing, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Macedonia to overthrow the conservative government. One Macedonian government official interviewed by Judicial Watch in Washington D.C. recently, calls it the “Soros infantry.” The groups organize youth movements, create influential media outlets and organize violent protests to undermine the institutions and policies implemented by the government. One of the Soros’ groups funded the translation and publication of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” into Macedonian. The book is a tactical manual of subversion, provides direct advice for radical street protests and proclaims Lucifer to be the first radical. Thanks to Obama’s ambassador, who has not been replaced by President Trump, Uncle Sam keeps the money flowing so the groups can continue operating and recruiting, sources in Macedonia and the U.S. confirm.

With a population of about 2 million, Macedonia has one of the more conservative governments in Europe. This includes the lowest flat tax in Europe, close ties with Israel and pro-life policies. The country recently built a border fence to crackdown on an illegal immigration crisis that overwhelmed law enforcement agencies. Between 10,000 and 12,000 illegal aliens were crossing the Greek-Macedonian border daily at the peak of the European migration crisis, a Macedonian official told Judicial Watch, and the impact was devastating. This is likely of big interest to Soros, a renowned open borders advocate who pushes international governance, diminished U.S. global power and an increase in Muslim immigration. Soros spent tens of millions of dollars to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Just this month Hungary’s prime minister lashed out against Soros for funding groups to secretly influence the country’s politics. “Large-bodied predators are swimming here in the waters,” said Viktor Orban in his annual state of the nation speech. “This is the trans-border empire of George Soros, with tons of money and international heavy artillery.”

JW started suing for State documents on Soros’ involvement in Macedonia in April 2017. In May of that year, Mike Lee and five other GOP Senators started probing why State fosters democracy. This year, JW has sued for information on State-funded Soros programs in Romania, Colombia and Albania. The Radio Televisión Martí piece makes it clear they’re focusing on Cuba, too.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is a May 21 piece Farrell did on Lou Dobbs, (this came in the wake of the Concord Management filing complaining about the same, but I’m still working on pulling up the full episode to see if that’s what it was a reference to) in which he claimed that President Obama pursued a policy of regime change overseas, at times funded by Soros, which Dobbs suggested may have prompted Putin’s own tampering.

That is, not only are JW and Dobbs complaining that Soros is undermining right wing governments, but at least once, they made the argument that Soros’ open society work justified Putin’s own tampering in 2016.

Update: This InfoWars piece pointing to JW’s Albanian documents to sustain a claim that JW has proven the caravan is funded by Soros relies on both JW’s FOIAed documents and documents leaked by dcleaks in 2016. While I’m definitely not suggesting a link, by using both JW FOIAed documents and GRU stolen ones, InfoWars ties Putin’s 2016 effort to JW’s current ones.

Update: This post says the conspiracy theory linking Soros to the caravan dates to March.

The claims of a direct link between intentional SºRºS funding and the Latin/Central America ⊂⟑r⟑v⟑n appeared on March 30th. Of course, this was a different caravan. But it is the origin of the larger theme and keywords. It was amplified in April and May by TheBl⟑ze, WND, along with the usual actors, rage blogs, and sketchy K.⟑.G. cyborg accounts. And by MSN headlines, fact checks, and aggressive left-wing “retort” sites.

Let’s begin from the start. To be clear, I don’t mean all the SºRºS-funding rumors, but specifically the damaging Latin America-related ⊂⟑r⟑v⟑n-funding, midterm election impacting one.

Update: The employees behind the Radio Televisión Martí ads have been suspended and may get fired.

The federal government’s state-funded broadcasting arm is placing a number of employees on administrative leave and opening an investigation into how it ended up airing a story this year attacking liberal financier George Soros as a malignant “multimillionaire Jew.”

The story aired in May on Radio Televisión Martí, a Spanish-language broadcaster housed in the Office of Cuba Broadcasting in Miami. OCB is a division of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent federal agency that oversees government-funded news organizations around the world.

[snip]

“Those deemed responsible for this production will be immediately placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into their apparent misconduct,” Lansing added. “Disciplinary action appropriate under federal law may then be proposed, including the potential removal of those responsible, depending on the outcome of that investigation.”