Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s Story Gets Stupider

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In an attempt to unfuck Pam Bondi’s Halloween attempt to ratify Lindsey Halligan’s attempt to indict Jim Comey, the blondes from Florida have fucked things worse.

Bondi submitted a declaration effectively saying, never mind that the last time I claimed to ratify Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s work, I didn’t read closely enough to notice that the transcripts were incomplete. This time, I have read “the entirety of the record now available to the government” and I re-ratify what Lindsey did almost two months ago.

The district court has subsequently raised questions about the completeness of the record of the grand jury proceedings presented to me at the time of the initial ratification. For the avoidance of doubt, I have reviewed the entirety of the record now available to the government and confirm my knowledge of the material facts associated with the grand jury proceedings.

Lindsey, for her part, claims there was no gap and confessed she did not re-present the charges after getting no-billed. There was only one presentment.

1. Accordingly, I, Lindsey Halligan, submit this declaration to clarify the precise sequence of events on September 25, 2025, to confirm that the grand jury transcript accurately reflects the full extent of my appearance before the grand jury, and to explain that the period in question consisted solely of the grand jury’s private deliberations, during which no prosecutor, court reporter, or other person may be present pursuant to Rule 6(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. There are no missing minutes, contrary to the suggestion raised by the court.

2. On September 25, 2025, I presented the case of the United States v. James B. Comey, Jr., to a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division. I have reviewed the full transcript of the grand jury proceedings, and the transcript accurately reflects the entirety of the government’s presentation and presence in front of the grand jury. There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript. Below is a brief timeline of the events that day.

3. On September 25, 2025, I appeared before the grand jury. After introducing myself and the case proposed for indictment, the case was presented through testimony. At the conclusion of the presentment, I provided a brief summation to the grand jury and then departed along with the court reporter. The process of presenting the indictment took place from approximately 02:18 PM to 04:28 PM.

4. Approximately two hours later, at 06:40 PM, I was notified by then-First Assistant United States Attorney Maggie Cleary that the grand jury had returned a true bill as to the presented Count Two and Count Three of the indictment and that the grand jury had not returned a true bill as to the presented Count One. I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment in front of the magistrate judge.

There are a slew of problems with that.

First, there are two indictments — or rather, three:

  • The no-billed indictment as Lindsey first presented it, with the signature page from the real indictment, which starts in blue ink and ends in black.
  • The no-billed indictment as it subsequently got corrected, with both a (claimed) signature from herself and the foreperson, all in blue ink.
  • The indictment purportedly supported by the grand jury, signed in black.

Lindsey now claims she only presented the case once, yet there are — or purport to be — two indictments.

For what it’s worth, when Amicus12 first pointed this out, I called the clerk to find out WTF, but have gotten no response.

Also of interest, right wing propagandist Julie Kelly (who is quite chummy with Pam Bondi’s corrupt DOJ) claims that yesterday morning, the Chief Judge in EDVA, Leonie Brinkema, restricted Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s US Marshal detail from the courthouse.

But even if there’s not the colossal paperwork error there appears to be, there’s another problem.

The Loaner AUSAs confirmed … yesterday, that they plan to include Comey’s “Clinton Plan” statements — the stuff no-billed in original Count One — in the obstruction charge.

But, as provided in discovery and via the indictment, the government intends to seek the admission of evidence at trial on this count regarding the defendant’s statements to senators during the September 30, 2020, committee hearing. For instance, the defendant’s statements to Senators Grassley and Cruz regarding his use of Richman as an anonymous source concerning the Clinton email investigation and his statements to Senators Graham and Hawley regarding his alleged lack of memory concerning the so-called Clinton plan to “tie Trump” to Russia.

Comey attorney Pat Fitzgerald had already promised some challenge to this, in the halcyon days when everyone believed there were two presentments.

I think there’s another motion coming from us, in light of some disclosures that were made Monday, where we think that the government is expanding its case, we believe, to include the conduct that was no true billed in Count One as part of its proof of Count Two, which raises serious issues for us. So we’ll do everything we can, but to do all that while getting Mr. Comey access to materials…

But now Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer is claiming that she can rely on Count One even though grand jurors in the very same vote she’s claiming to rely on rejected that claim.

And Pam Bondi is signing on willingly to that claim.

Whatever else has happened, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer has guaranteed that Comey will get to review what went down. The only remaining question, I suspect, is when he gets that — whether it is soon enough to help him throw out the evidence against him. But it seems like Judge Currie is not the only one alarmed by what she saw in these transcripts.

Update: I should add, given my continued obsession with the authors who have not noticed their appearance, Gabriel Diaz authored the document submitted today.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Cohen is the author of the digitally signed but unsworn declaration from Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer.

Someone named lheim authored Pam Bondi’s signed but unsworn declaration.

Update: Holy hell.

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer appears to have resubmitted the entire package, not to fix her stupid story, but instead to fix her signature line (which Josh Gerstein first noted).

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Trailer Park Slum Lord: The Generational Corruption of Bill Pulte

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The thing about Bill Pulte’s corruption is that a fair number of Republicans seem have it in for him, too (as laid out in this Politico piece in September).

That may help to explain the 3,000 word profile airing the family’s dirty laundry while detailing that Pulte’s closest ties to his family’s developing empire are to some decrepit trailer parks.

He did not issue press releases about the five mobile home parks his companies acquired in Florida for about $3 million in the two years before he was nominated to become the F.H.F.A. director in January.

Recent visits to two of the mobile home parks revealed a broken fence and overflowing trash bins. The dozen or so trailers at the parks were aging. Some had windows covered with faded American flags and cardboard. Duct tape patched torn screens.

Documents show Mr. Pulte was the signatory on a $2 million mortgage taken out on three of the properties in August 2024. The woman listed as an agent on some of the mobile home parks also works in his charitable organization. In January 2024, he told an interviewer on an investing podcast that the “Pulte Family” was buying mobile home parks and planning to revamp them amid a market of rising rents.

In the same interview, Mr. Pulte said he planned to make them into “nice communities.”

But his companies have been slow to make repairs, said residents of three of the parks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.

A resident of one property, in Lake Worth in Palm Beach County, said he had gone months without a working stove, despite asking the management company to fix it. Another resident said he had spent $300 to repair his broken air-conditioning unit. Some trailer park leases warn tenants that if they miss rent payments, which are due weekly, “they will be removed for trespassing by the local sheriff!!”

At some properties, rents have been rising. A resident at a mobile home park in Cottondale in the Florida panhandle said in a filing in Jackson County Court this summer that his monthly rent had increased to $950 from $550 after Mr. Pulte’s company took over. At a park in Ruskin, south of Tampa, rents recently rose $100 a month — about 16 percent — to pay for a new dumpster, several residents said.

None of the mobile home properties carry the Pulte family’s name.

One of the quickest ways to taint someone in Trump’s eyes is to make him look squalid.

Meanwhile — and purely by happenstance — the Epstein dump James Comer released to distract from Trump’s knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking included a document that seems to be Epstein’s side of the split with Trump.

In a February 1, 2019 email first sent to himself (possibly BCCed to someone else?), and then sent to Michael Wolff, Epstein transitions directly from a claim in one of the letters from which Comer was trying to distract — that Trump came to his house a lot while someone Epstein trafficked was there, purportedly Virginia Giuffre — to his description over the fight about the property that Trump would one day launder into cash from Dmitry Rybolovlev, the fight that Trump had also publicly used to explain the split. Much of Epstein’s focus was on his suspicions that Trump didn’t have the money to buy the mansion in the first place and probably didn’t pay taxes on it.

But amid the description, Epstein describes that “his friend pulty the developer” was part of Trump’s bid. If that is Pulte, it would be Pulte’s father who, like Trump’s dad, fronted him in the real estate business. [Update, corrected per this report. h/t DrAwkward]

In Epstein’s mind, then, there’s a tie between Trump’s knowledge he “stole” his spa girl and the fight over the Palm Beach mansion, a fight in which “pulty the developer” played some part.

But all that is in the past.

Let’s move onto concerns about the present and future.

AP reports that an aide to Pulte pulled information on single home mortgage rates and shared it with a competitor. When Fannie executives pointed out this was collusion, they were fired (another part of the explanation for Pulte’s purge last month).

A confidant of Bill Pulte, the Trump administration’s top housing regulator, provided confidential mortgage pricing data from Fannie Mae to a principal competitor, alarming senior officials of the government-backed lending giant who warned it could expose the company to claims that it was colluding with a rival to fix mortgage rates.

Emails reviewed by The Associated Press show that Fannie Mae executives were unnerved about what one called the “very problematic” disclosure of data by Lauren Smith, the company’s head of marketing, who was acting on Pulte’s behalf.

“Lauren, the information that was provided to Freddie Mac in this email is a problem,” Malloy Evans, senior vice president of Fannie Mae’s single-family mortgage division, wrote in an Oct. 11 email. “That is confidential, competitive information.”

He also copied Fannie Mae’s CEO, Priscilla Almodovar, on the email, which bore the subject line: “As Per Director Pulte’s Ask.” Evans asked Fannie Mae’s top attorney “to weigh in on what, if any, steps we need to take legally to protect ourselves now.”

While Smith still holds her position, the senior Fannie Mae officials who called her conduct into question were all forced out of their jobs late last month, along with internal ethics watchdogs who were investigating Pulte and his allies.

This effort seems to stem from Pulte’s response to Trump’s orders to push builders to build more single family homes.

Pulte’s power over the mortgage lending industry is unusual. Not long after his Senate confirmation, he appointed himself chairman of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which hold trillions of dollars in assets. The companies serve as a crucial backstop for the home lending industry by buying up mortgages from individual lenders, which are packaged together and sold to investors.

The three competing roles present the potential for a conflict of interest that is detailed in emails reviewed by AP. Like many matters of public policy in Trump’s Washington, it appears to have begun with a social media post.

In October, Trump criticized the homebuilding industry, which he likened to the oil-market-dominating cartel OPEC.

“They’re sitting on 2 million empty lots, A RECORD,” the president posted to his social media platform, Truth Social. “I’m asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get Big Homebuilders going.”

“On it,” Pulte posted in response on X.

That is, Pulte may have abused his overlapping roles running the country’s housing finance in an attempt to solve the fact that he’s not otherwise good at his job.

And so he tried to cheat.

And when caught cheating, he fired the people who caught him.

The fact that Pulte keeps getting caught botching his day job — the one that, when he fails, could tank the entire US if not global economy — has not distracted him from his real love: framing Trump’s enemies.

This time, Eric Swalwell was the target.

A top housing official in President Donald Trump’s administration has referred California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell to the Justice Department for a potential federal criminal probe, based on allegations of mortgage and tax fraud related to a Washington, D.C., home, according to a person familiar with the referral.

He is the fourth Democratic official to face mortgage fraud allegations in recent months.

Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, alleged in a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday that Swalwell may have made false or misleading statements in loan documents.

The matter has also been referred to the agency’s acting inspector general, this person said.

“As the most vocal critic of Donald Trump over the last decade and as the only person who still has a surviving lawsuit against him, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took him this long to come after me,” Swalwell said in a statement to NBC News.

Perhaps Pulte has a whole portfolio of flimsy claims about Trump’s enemies in a folder somewhere, to deliver up to Trump every time someone, even some Republican, raises real concerns about his basic competence.

Thus far, it seems to have insulated him from any real accountability.

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Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs Can’t Decide What the Clinton Investigation Is

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Remember how I said that the hopeless confusion Tyler Lemons exhibited in his response to Comey’s motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution showed why Comey was right to request a Bill of Particulars? In that filing, Lemons played games with transcripts, confused what was a Clinton investigation, what a Russian investigation not yet focused on Trump, and what was, instead, inaccurate propaganda from John Solomon?

Well, if anything, the problem has gotten worse.

Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz submitted the following response memos today:

After Lemons spent 15 pages of last week’s vindictive prosecution response — laying out (A) November 2016 communications between Jim Comey and Dan Richman leading to this story, (B) February 2017 communications with Chuck Rosenberg leading to this story, and (C) May 2017 communications between Dan Richman and Mike Schmidt leading to this story, as well as presenting (D) a wildly misleading story about the “Clinton Plan,” the Gabriel[s] spent five pages throwing half that out.

(B) and (C) are gone, perhaps sacrificed to the reality that Dan Richman had left the FBI before those, meaning they didn’t fit the terms of Ted Cruz’ question. Or maybe, in the case of (C), to the possibility their attorney-client breach will blow up in their face.

After Lemons’ Response to vindictive and selection bitched twice that publicly available transcripts Comey had used included minor inaccuracies,

6 The transcript attached to the defendant’s motion non-substantively corrects Senator Grassley’s second question. See C-Span, User Clip: Sen. Grassley Questions James Comey (May 3, 2017), https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-committee/user-clip-sen-grassley-questions-jamescomey/4853218.

[snip]

9 The transcript attached to the defendant’s motion non-substantively corrects Senator Cruz’s questions and the defendant’s first answer; the transcript also erroneously adds the word “that” to Senator Cruz’s final question and omits the word “is” from the same question. See, e.g., POLITICO, Archive: Sen. Ted Cruz questions James Comey on Trump and Clinton investigation leaks (Sept. 26, 2025), https://www.politico.com/video/2025/09/26/archive-sen-ted-cruzquestions-james-comey-on-trump-and-clinton-investigation-leaks-1759922.

The Response on Bill of Particulars noted that their own did too.

2 The Government’s response in opposition to the Defendant’s motion to dismiss erroneously omitted the word “the” before the words “Clinton investigation” in quoting Senator Cruz. See Dkt. 138 at 11.

Yet, if either the Response on Bill of Particulars or the Response to literal truth addresses this complaint from Comey, I don’t see it.

As detailed in Mr. Comey’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment Based on Vindictive and Selective Prosecution, as well as the Motion to Dismiss the Indictment Based on Fundamental Ambiguity and Literal Truth, the text of Count One both misstates the testimony Mr. Comey actually gave and misquotes the question.

We’re two months into this thing and no one has gotten around to addressing the fact that the language in the indictment misrepresents what happened.

Remember: While Diaz said Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer showed 14 exhibits to the grand jury, none of those lay out the Cruz and Comey exchange, so we can’t entirely rule out Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer just … making up what was said, as she assuredly did in the indictment.

Then, having included a full transcript of the Cruz-Comey exchange in the filing, Lemons (or is it Shedd?) dismissed the way Cruz misspoke his lines — substituting “administration” for “investigation” in his question — this way.

The “other ambiguities” do no more to obscure the meaning of Senator Cruz’s questions. See Def. Mem., Dkt. 105 at 14. The defendant flags Senator Cruz’s mistaken use of “Clinton administration” instead of “Clinton investigation.” See Oversight Hearing Transcript at 11. Yet Senator Cruz had correctly referred to the “Clinton investigation” two sentences prior and he was recounting the defendant’s own testimony, so the mistake would have been obvious to the defendant.

But then it largely dodges the way Cruz framed his question to focus on Andrew McCabe.

Under the narrow interpretation, Senator Cruz asked the defendant only whether he authorized McCabe to be an anonymous source. Under the broad interpretation, Senator Cruz asked the defendant whether he authorized anyone at the FBI to be an anonymous source.

The broad interpretation is the better one.

That exacerbates a problem.

There wasn’t one — the — Clinton investigation in 2016.

There were two. And the one Cruz was invoking by addressing McCabe’s involvement in a WSJ story was not the email investigation. It was the Clinton Foundation investigation.

By October 25, 2016, McCabe had been notified that Barrett was working on a follow-up story to the October 23 article that would cover McCabe’s oversight of the CF Investigation and potential connections with McAuliffe campaign contributions to McCabe’s wife. McCabe thereafter authorized Special Counsel and AD/OPA to talk to Barrett about this follow-up story.

Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs appear not to understand that we’re still fighting over a leak (plus McCabe’s response) that revealed a previously undisclosed investigation days before an election and somehow Trump is the victim? And so while they’re excusing Cruz’ imprecision they’re committing more of their own.

Now go back to the Response to the Bill of Particulars request. As Lemons did in the original map of the investigation, the Gabriel[s] buried the transcript for the exchanges about the “Clinton plan” in an exhibit, thereby burying the fact that they keep misrepresenting Lindsey Graham’s questions worse and worse. They don’t correct Lindsey Graham’s lie about this being an investigative referral. They couldn’t be bothered with the slop of his use of the word “taught.” And of course they don’t account for the fact that to Comey (and John Brennan), these details were interesting for what they said about Russia’s hacking of Hillary-related victims, not about the totally legal and normal thing Hillary was alleged to be doing, engaging in politics.

More insane still, the Gabriel[s] turn the “Clinton plan,” into a story about the Clinton email investigation.

During the same September 30, 2020 hearing, the defendant was asked by Senator Graham whether he remembered being “getting” or being “taught” of “a[n] investigatory lead from the intelligence community” regarding “U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server,” i.e., the conduct that the FBI investigated during the Midyear Exam investigation. See Dkt. 138-14 at 1. The defendant replied that that information “d[idn’t] ring any bells with [him].” See id. He similarly informed Senator Hawley that he did not “remember” receiving the investigatory [sic] referral, or “anything described” therein. See id. at 5. The government has nevertheless determined that the defendant’s handwritten notes appear to show that he was informed in September 2016 regarding an “HRC plan to tie Trump.” See Dkt. 138 at 14–15; see also Dkt. 138-13. [my emphasis]

Note, the Gabriel[s] are misrepresenting the transcript here. Comey said, “I don’t remember receiving anything that is described in that letter,” referring back to the misleading letter Ratcliffe wrote about all this, not the referral itself.

Once again, proving Comey’s point that what prosecutors are presenting as the alleged lies are, themselves, lies.

Having misrepresented the alleged lie, some pages later, they confess that, yup, they’re prosecuting Comey for the conduct they got no-billed on.

But, as provided in discovery and via the indictment, the government intends to seek the admission of evidence at trial on this count regarding the defendant’s statements to senators during the September 30, 2020, committee hearing. For instance, the defendant’s statements to Senators Grassley and Cruz regarding his use of Richman as an anonymous source concerning the Clinton email investigation and his statements to Senators Graham and Hawley regarding his alleged lack of memory concerning the so-called Clinton plan to “tie Trump” to Russia.

I feel like maybe we’re a second or generation into frothy misrepresentations of what happened in 2016 and 2017, and these young AUSAs are badly in need of a roadmap laying out the actual events behind Grampa Trump’s delirium, rather than just regurgitating the slop that John Solomon feeds them.

There’s a reality here, and these Loaner AUSAs seem blissfully unaware of that reality.

And that’s all before you get into the fact that whatever frothy Republicans were misled into believing by Ratcliffe back in 2020, taxpayers have spent millions of dollars to confirm all this is Russian disinformation, and having determined that, those who use it to get indictments are (per John Durham and his lead investigator Jack Eckenrode) committing a crime.

Finally, having redefined Russian disinformation to be about Hillary’s email investigation rather than the conspiracy theory that the plan was true and proven by Christopher Steele getting snookered by Oleg Deripaska or Michael Sussmann passing along Rodney Joffe’s discovery of a real anomaly in good faith, they’ve made the “Clinton plan” useless for the one thing it might have been used for: materiality. As Comey noted in his Bill of Particulars motion, that 2020 hearing had a clear scope, and that clear scope must be adopted to define the scope of the investigation Comey allegedly obstructed.

1 Before the hearing, the committee agreed that it would be limited to four specific topics: (i) “Crossfire Hurricane,” (ii) the December 2019 Department of Justice Inspector General report’s “Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,” (iii) the Carter Page FISA applications, and (iv) Christopher Steele’s source network and primary sub-source.

That wasn’t a hearing about Clinton’s emails! So every effort to retcon events so they’ll fit the Ted Cruz question in fact makes the evidence useless to prove Comey obstructed anything. Graham did, very much, want to suggest that Comey should have viewed the dossier more skeptically having been exposed to Russian disinformation claiming a Clinton plan, which is why he asked the question.

But Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs, in a desperate bid to fit the available facts to their false claims about false claims, have turned it into something else.

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Lindsey Halligan’s Seven Times 18-Minute Gap

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Update As I lay out here, Lindsey Halligan has submitted a digitally signed unsworn statement saying that there is nothing missing from the transcript. One possible explanation is that she did not instruct the grand jury as to the law. In any case, she now appears to claim she only presented the case once.

It’s time to return to the mystery of the magical disappearing Jim Comey grand jury transcript.

On October 28, Senior Judge Cameron McGowan Currie — the woman presiding over Jim Comey and Letitia James’ challenge to Lindsey Halligan’s appointment, ordered the government to provide her, no later than Monday, November 3, 2025, at 5:00 pm, all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.

On November 3, Currie revealed that when prosecutors gave her the transcripts on October 31, they hadn’t given her the part she most needed — revealing what Lindsey Halligan said to the grand jury — and ordered them to try again, asking them to provide a complete transcript and/or recording of what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did.

On Friday, October 31, 2025, the court received a package containing, inter alia, a “Transcript of Grand Jury proceedings on September 25, 2025.” This court has reviewed the transcript and finds it fails to include remarks made by the indictment signer both before and after the testimony of the sole witness, which remarks were referenced by the indictment signer during the witness’s testimony. In addition, the package contains no records or transcripts regarding the presentation of the three-count indictment referenced in the Transcript of the Return of Grand Jury Indictment Proceedings before the Magistrate Judge. See ECF No. 10.

Accordingly, the Government is directed to submit, no later than Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 5:00 pm, for in camera review, a complete Transcript and/or recording of all statements made by the indictment signer to the grand jury on September 25, 2025, to include statements made prior to and after the testimony of the witness and during the presentation of the three-count and subsequent two-count indictments.

On the morning of November 5, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, presiding over Comey’s challenge to DOJ’s bid to breach his privilege, ordered the government to provide all of that to Comey.

As part of this, I am going to order the government to disclose to the defense all grand jury materials, not just the testimony of the agent, but anything that was said during the course of the grand jury. How the grand jury was instructed, any presentation to the grand jury, any questions that were asked of either the agent or the United States Attorney, all of that is to be disclosed because I think the defense needs that in order to marry up the information that they have or the information that they will get to how it was used.

Among the concerns Pat Fitzgerald raised was that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had presented materials pertaining to the “Clinton Plan” that had been rejected during her first attempt as part of her obstruction charge.

And on top of that, Your Honor, I think there’s another motion coming from us, in light of some disclosures that were made Monday, where we think that the government is expanding its case, we believe, to include the conduct that was no true billed in Count One as part of its proof of Count Two, which raises serious issues for us. So we’ll do everything we can, but to do all that while getting Mr. Comey access to materials…

Later that day, November 5, Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons submitted a filing claiming he had complied with Currie’s order; he explained they had previously only provided the grand jury transcript that “was previously provided to the government [passive voice] by the transcription service.” But now, in response to Judge Currie’s order, they were providing “the complete recording.”

The Court had previously Ordered the government to provide, for in camera review, all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts. [DE 95]. In response, the government provided the transcript of the Grand Jury proceedings that was previously provided to the government by the transcription service.

The Court’s subsequent Order at Docket Entry 148 additionally requested the recording from the Grand Jury presentation. Upon receiving this order, the government immediately contacted the transcription service and requested the complete recording.

But Loaner AUSA Lemons did not make the grand jury transcript available to Comey. Instead, on November 6 (and in this order), he (or rather James Hayes, the guy at Main DOJ who keeps writing these things but who has not filed an appearance) claimed he would comply with the order to provide all the material seized from Dan Richman. Then he (or rather Hayes) appealed the order to share grand jury transcripts.

The next day, November 7, Judge Currie noted she had received the grand jury materials on November 5.

In advance of a hearing on November 10, Comey revealed that Loaner AUSA Lemons had not complied with Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick’s order.

This Court subsequently entered a written order denying the government’s motion for implementation of a filter protocol and compelling production of seized materials4 and the grand jury materials, together with restrictions on further government review.

4 On November 6, 2025, the government produced various copies of what appear to be the raw returns for the search warrants at issue, unscoped for responsiveness and filtered for Mr. Richman’s privileges. But the government provided incorrect passwords to large subsets of those materials. The defense engaged a vendor who worked throughout the weekend to load and process those materials; the government provided the correct passwords on November 9, 2025.

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

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

Nevertheless, Fitzpatrick adopted the government request that he first review the “transcript” to see whether Comey’s suspicions about privilege and Fourth Amendment violations could result in the dismissal of the entire indictment.

Later that day, November 10, the government submitted what should have been the grand jury materials for Fitzpatrick’s review.

At that point, both Judge Currie and Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick should have had a record of everything Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did in her attempt to indict Jim Comey.

In spite of the urgency, we haven’t heard from Fitzpatrick yet; I was wondering if he wanted to get a sense of how the Currie hearing today went.

But maybe he’s having the same problem Currie did.

In the disqualification hearing today, Currie revealed (ABC; CNN; Politico)  that nothing from 4:28 on was recorded.

Currie also laid into Whitaker during the hearing on whether Attorney General Pam Bondi had reviewed the grand jury transcript in James Comey’s case, noting there was no record of anything that happened after 4:28pm ET that day. Comey wasn’t indicted for nearly two hours after that, according to available court transcripts.

“It became obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed” the entire proceeding, Currie said, adding that it appeared “there was no court reporter present” at the time of the missing portion.

In preparation for Thursday’s hearing, Currie privately reviewed the transcripts and said previously that she thought looking at the transcripts was “necessary to determine the extent of the indictment signer’s involvement in the grand jury proceedings.”

That’s what I said, Judge Currie!! Pam Bondi couldn’t have reviewed the transcripts when she claimed to ratify this prosecution on October 31!

If Lindsey presented in the order of the exhibit numbers, the latter part of this presentment focused on the Mike Schmidt communications and the “Clinton plan” documents — the things Comey expressed particular interest in. Plus, if you’re missing the latter bit of the presentment, you don’t have proof the grand jury voted to indict.

Remember that the foreperson did not specify that just one of the charges was no-billed (though there definitely were two indictments, both of which Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer signed).

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer has done Rosemary Woods one, two, three, four, five, six, seven better, creating a gap of 139 minutes, from 4:28 until 6:47, over seven 18-minutes worth long.

Not bad for a rookie.

Update: Per CNN, DOJ claims nothing is missing.

In a statement to CNN following the hearing, a representative for the Justice Department denied that there was anything missing from the transcript.

“There is no ‘missing two hours.’ That time period refers to when the jurors were deliberating behind closed doors, which would not be included in a transcription,” the statement said.

The DOJ, however, did not offer an explanation for the gap in court.

Update: I think the answer is that the last bit of Lindsey’s instruction is missing, plus the entirety of the deliberation, which wouldn’t be recorded.

Update: Corrected “indictment” which would be dismissed for “transcript.”

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Judge Jamel Semper Mostly Denies LaMonica McIver’s Bid to Dismiss Prosecution

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Judge Jamel Semper has denied most of LaMonica McIver’s bid to throw out her prosecution, denying her selective and vindictive prosecution claim, as well as a request to obtain more discovery, outright, and dismissing her legislative immunity claim on two of three counts.

Given the precedent, Semper’s ruling on the selective and vindictive prosecution claim is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is the presumption of regularity Judge Semper affords DOJ (and ICE) even after he has had to order DOJ to whack-a-mole remove all the false statements Tricia McLaughlin keeps posting about McIver. He makes no mention, for example, of the evidence showing Todd Blanche ordered Ras Baraka be arrested even though he was no longer on Delaney Hall property.

His analysis of the legislative immunity, however, is less convincing.

He dismisses McIver’s claim that she was present at Delaney Hall for a legislative function — the government concedes the inspection itself is legislative — to an entire trip to DC, some of which did not involve legislative acts.

Defendant further contends that her exercise of congressional authority “comfortably shows that her presence at Delaney Hall was ‘manifestly legislative activity.’” (Mot. I at 17) (emphasis added). The case law does not support Defendant’s broad interpretation. The Third Circuit’s holding in Lee is instructive, where the court declined to find that the entirety of a legislator’s fact-finding trip was protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. See 775 F.2d at 522. There, a legislator from the Virgin Islands argued that the conversations and meetings that took place during a trip he took to New York and Washington, D.C. were entitled to immunity because the purpose of his trip was for legislative fact-finding.19 See id. The Court disagreed. In rejecting his argument as too broad, it found that for “conversations to trigger the protection of legislative immunity, they must have involved legislative fact-finding.” Id. The Court wrote that “it is Senator Lee’s purpose or motive that will determine in part whether the trip was a legislative act at all” and ordered the district court to examine “which acts were proper legislative acts and which were personal and non-legislative acts.” Id. at 522, 524.

19 The defendant in Lee had received approval from the President of the Virgin Islands legislature for a legislative fact-finding trip to New York and Washington, D.C. to conduct meetings and discuss such official legislative business as consumer affairs, interior matters and issues involving transportation. See 775 F.2d at 517. An investigation by law enforcement later revealed that many of the meetings with government officials he claimed took place did not in fact happen. See id.

But before and after the fracas, McIver was simply trying to do that inspection. The kidnapping of Baraka was ICE’s response to that.

Even with Count Two, which criminalizes McIver’s response after an ICE guy grabbed her, Semper dodges by saying the record about her motive to return onto Delaney Hall premises where she conducted the inspection she originally came for remains uncertain. He does so even though he describes the ICE guy initiating physical contact.

Surveillance video shows that as Defendant and Representative-2 tried to reenter the facility through the Security Gate, V-2 blocked Defendant from entering by forcibly pushing her back into the public parking lot, and Defendant responded by pushing V-2 in return. (Id., 1:28:08-21.) Defendant was only able to reenter the facility when Representative-2 wrapped his arms around her and pulled her through the Security Gate. (Id., 1:28:15-24.) Defendant and the Representatives were subsequently allowed to conduct their congressional oversight inspection of Delaney Hall later that day.10 (Mot. I at 11.)

[snip]

As Defendant attempted to reenter the facility through the Security Gate, V-2 forcibly pushed Defendant back into the public parking lot before Defendant pushed V-2 in response. 25 (Id., 1:28:10-1:28:20.) The indictment alleges Defendant “pushed past V-2 while using each of her forearms to forcibly strike V-2 as she returned inside of the secured area of Delaney Hall.” (Ind., Count 2 ¶ 3.) Defendant successfully reentered the facility after Representative-2 wrapped his arms around her and pulled her through the Security Gate, as the agents kept protestors from entering the Security Gate. (Def. Ex. A, 1:28:20-1:28:25.) Following her reentry into the secured area of Delaney Hall, Defendant and the Representatives were allowed to conduct their inspection of the facility. (Mot. I. at 11.)

25 Surveillance video reveals a dynamic situation where V-2 struggled through a crowd of hostile protestors before encountering Defendant at the Security Gate. (See generally Def. Ex. I.) The Court makes no finding on V-2’s intent when he forcibly pushed Defendant as she lawfully tried to reenter the Security Gate. While the inchoate record does not allow for a determination of Defendant’s predominate purpose upon reentry into the Security Gate, it is axiomatic that Defendant’s statutory right to enter and inspect the facility could not be infringed, even if mistakenly, by V-2. Upon completion of the record, Count Two will be subjected to scrutiny.

[snip]

Discovery is ongoing, and the parties are in process of reviewing two hours of complete video from the inspection. 26 The facts surrounding that inspection are relevant to Defendant’s motive in reentering the facility in Count Two, and whether her intent was related to her oversight duties. 27

26 The Government is in the process of turning over the complete set of surveillance footage from the Members’ tour, which took place after the subject incident. (See Tr. at 20:1-14.)

27 A Member of Congress may only “be prosecuted under a criminal statute provided that the Government’s case does not rely on legislative acts or the motivation for legislative acts.” Helstoski, 442 U.S. at 487-88.

He’s describing law enforcement assaulting a member of Congress as she tries to do her job and that doesn’t qualify for legislative immunity?

Likewise, Semper dismissed her claim that Trump v. US stands for the principle that if Trump’s motives while attacking Congress cannot be scrutinized, then hers cannot either with no consideration that Speech and Debate has more Constitutional protection than Trump’s Executive authority.

Finally, Defendant suggests that inquiry into Defendant’s motives “would raise significant separation-of-powers concerns considering Trump’s holding that courts evaluating claims of presidential immunity emphatically ‘may not inquire into the President’s motives.’” (Mot. I. at 20) (emphasis in original) (quoting Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 618 (2024)). Defendant asks this Court to extend the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity to the area of legislative immunity. But these are two separate immunities applicable to two separate branches of government, scrutinized under two separate legalstandards. Article I of the Constitution confers legislative immunity for speech or debate, which the courts have interpreted and developed through case law, while the presidential immunity doctrine is a court-created doctrine derived from the executive’s Article II powers. See Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952); see also Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982). Moreover, the question of whether the President engages in “official action” is a distinct inquiry from whether a Member of Congress was engaging in a legislative act. Trump, 603 U.S. at 617.

To be fair, he can afford to err on the side of conservatism. This challenge (but not the selective and vindictive one) is entitled to interlocutory appeal. So the Third Circuit — with Emil Bove safely installed — will review this before any trial.

11 The Court’s decision regarding Defendant’s immunity under the Speech Clause is subject to immediate appeal under the collateral order doctrine. See Helstoski v. Meanor, 442 U.S. 500, 506– 08 (1979). See also United States v. McDade, 28 F.3d 283, 288 (3d Cir. 1994) (“[W]e have jurisdiction to entertain the defendant’s claim that the Speech or Debate Clause requires dismissal of the entire indictment or particular charges contained in the indictment.”).

And by then, McIver may have a more fulsome understanding of what was happening elsewhere at the facility.

As of now, though, Judge Semper has ruled that immunity doesn’t attach when ICE goons stage a kidnapping in the middle of an attempt to exercise legislative oversight.

That seems like a problem.

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Trump Already Confessed He Knew about “the Girls”

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On the same day Adelita Grijalva will finally be sworn in and provide the 218th vote to force a vote to release the Epstein files, Oversight Dems have released three records from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate making it clear Trump is more implicated in Epstein’s crimes than he has let on.

There’s one email that will ensure that Melania Trump backs off her threat to sue Michael Wolff. He and the sex trafficker were discussing how to craft an answer Trump could give to CNN about their relationship during the 2015 election.

Effectively, Epstein was offering to provide Trump an answer to make things easy on Trump.

The most damning describes Epstein, discussing with Ghislaine Maxwell in 2011 one of the victims spending “hours at [Epstein’s] house with Trump.

That conversation transpired in April 2011, just a month before Trump dropped out of the presidential race.

The most intriguing was another email exchanged with Wolff, just six months before Epstein was arrested and then suicided, in which Epstein claimed Trump was lying when he “said he asked me to resign, never a member  ever.”

One of the first times this claim was aired was in a 2007 Page Six story that preceded many of the details becoming public.

Meanwhile, the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach last night confirmed a Web site report that Epstein has been banned there. “He would use the spa to try to procure girls. But one of them, a masseuse about 18 years old, he tried to get her to do things,” a source told us. “Her father found out about it and went absolutely ape-[bleep]. Epstein’s not allowed back.” Epstein denies he is banned from Mar-a-Lago and says, in fact, he was recently invited to an event there.

Trump has, at times, admitted he served as an anonymous source for Page Six.

Trump repeated this story, in two parts, in July.

First, days after Todd Blanche sat down with Ghislaine Maxwell, Trump described that Epstein “hired help” from Trump, and continued doing so even after Trump “said, don’t ever do that again,” implying that he told Epstein to stop.

What caused the breach with him? Very easy to explain. But I don’t want to waste your time by explaining it. But for years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein. I wouldn’t talk. Because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help. And I said, don’t ever do that again. He stole people that worked for me. I said, don’t ever do that again. He did it again. And I threw him out of the place. Persona non grata. I threw him out. And that was it.

Then, the next day, Trump confessed that Virginia Giuffre was one of the “young women” that Epstein “stole.”

Reporter 1: I’m just curious. Were some of the workers that were taken from you — were some of them young women?

Trump: Were some of them?

Reporter 1: Were some of them young women?

Trump: Well, I don’t wanna say, but everyone knows the people that were taken. It was, the concept of taking people that work for me is bad. But that story’s been pretty well out there. And the answer is, yes, they were.

[inaudible]

Trump: In the spa. People that work in the spa. I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world at Mar-a-Lago. And people were taken out of the spa. Hired. By him. In other words, gone. And um, other people would come and complain. This guy is taking people from the spa. I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it I told him, I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether they were spa or not spa. I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine and then not too long after that he did it again and I said Out of here.

Reporter 2: Mr. President, did one of those stolen persons, did that include Virginia Giuffre?

Trump: Uh, I don’t know. I think she worked at the spa. I think so. I think that was one of the people, yeah. He stole her. And by the way, she had no complaints about us, as you know. None whatsoever.

Both these limited hangouts, delivered in the wake of Blanche’s interviews with Maxwell, blame Epstein for stealing his girls.

But it wasn’t Epstein stealing the girls and he didn’t tell Epstein to stop.

He told Maxwell to stop.

And then he lied and claimed he had kicked Epstein out as a result.

And then Todd Blanche moved Epstein’s co-conspirator, who didn’t mention the girl Trump spent hours with or remind Blanche of Trump’s knowledge she was trafficking girls from his club, into comfier digs.

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Corruption Is All Fun and Games Until It Threatens to Tank the Economy

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WSJ has a follow-up to the story Reuters published a week ago, on November 5 (which I wrote about here). The Reuters piece described that FHFA’s Inspector General had been fired as he was preparing to share information relevant to EDVA’s cases — so Letitia James — and also Congress.

The ouster of Joe Allen, FHFA’s acting inspector general, follows the agency’s director, Bill Pulte, becoming an outspoken voice in support of the Trump administration. Across the government, the Trump administration has so far fired or reassigned close to two dozen agency watchdogs, who police waste, fraud and abuse. It has also defunded the group that supervises those offices.

[snip]

Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in that office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said, while a third described it as being potentially relevant in discovery.

His ouster also came about as he was preparing to send a letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the FHFA was not cooperating with the inspector general’s office, three of the sources said.

WSJ describes that Allen was investigating whether Bill Pulte ordered people to snoop in Trump’s adversaries’ records. It also confirms that Allen did share that information with EDVA (it doesn’t mention whether Allen had succeeded in sending off any letter to Congress).

Fannie Mae watchdogs who were removed from their jobs had been probing if Trump appointee Bill Pulte had improperly obtained mortgage records of key Democratic officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to people familiar with the matter.

Fannie’s ethics and investigations group had received internal complaints alleging senior officials had improperly directed staff to access the mortgage documents of James and others, according to the people. The Fannie investigators were probing to find out who had made the orders, whether Pulte had the authority to seek the documents and whether or not they had followed proper procedure, the people said.

That group elevated the probe about the James documents to the more senior Office of Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and that Pulte heads, the people said. The acting inspector general then passed the report to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia, some of the people said.

[snip]

The FHFA acting inspector general sent the office the report at least in part because it could be considered material information for James’s defense in the case, one of the people said.

The very days this all happened, on November 4, the Loaner AUSA in the James case, Roger Keller, filed a notice saying DOJ was not going to comply with Judge Jamar Walker’s order to turn over vindictive and selective prosecution evidence, specifically pointing to the carve out in Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure for “reports, memoranda, or other internal government documents” made by “other government agents in connection with the investigation,” language that would cover any FHFA reports into Bill Pulte’s corruption.

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16 does not require the Government to produce vindictive/selective prosecution-related evidence before a defendant files such a motion. The Rule permits a defendant to discover evidence material to her defense, FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(1)(C), but “defense” means the “defense against the Government’s case in chief, . . . not to the preparation of selective prosecution claims.” Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 462 (citing FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(1)(C))(emphasis added). FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(2) underscores the limitation to “defense” as it “exempts from defense inspection ‘reports, memoranda, or other internal government documents made by the attorney for the government or other government agents in connection with the investigation or prosecution of the case.’” Id. (quoting FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(2)). “If a selective-prosecution claim is a ‘defense,’ Rule 16(a)(1)(C) gives the defendant the right to examine Government work product in every prosecution except his own.” Id. [my emphasis]

James did mention the earlier Reuters report in her vindictive and selective prosecution motion, submitted last Friday.

The retribution campaign against AG James had only just begun. Around the same time, another federal agency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), led by Director William Pulte, was also looking for dirt to use against AG James. By April 14, they had concocted it. Mr. Pulte delivered a criminal referral “[b]ased on media reports” to DOJ against AG James, claiming she had “in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.” Ex. F at 1. The criminal referral cherry-picked documents to claim fraud over three properties—one even going back to 1983—none of which was the Peronne Property at issue in the indictment.16 The referral asked DOJ to open a criminal investigation into AG James. See Ex. F at 1. Mr. Pulte also coordinated with Edward Martin—the self-described “captain” of DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group who is President Trump’s close confidante and would later also be named a Special Attorney.17

16 Mr. Pulte’s conduct demonstrates how far allies of the President would go to carry out his “get James” orders. Public reports indicate that Mr. Pulte “skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals” against President Trump’s political enemies. Reports also indicate he may have bypassed ethics rules in doing so. Marisa Taylor & Chris Prentice, Exclusive: Trump official bypassed ethics rules in criminal referrals of Fed governor and other foes, sources say, Reuters (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/HK6Y-LJVR. The FHFA has no generalized crimefighting or anti-fraud authority. It does not even have an express authority to make criminal referrals besides those granted to the FHFA’s Inspector General under the Inspector General Act of 1978. In addition to violations of the act itself, Mr. Pulte may have failed to comply with the FHFA’s own Privacy Act regulations, which require FHFA to “ensure” that records containing personally identifiable information are “protected from public view.” Domenic Powell, Are Pulte’s “Mortgage Fraud” Investigations Legal?, Yale J. Reg.: Notice and Comment (Nov. 1, 2025), https://perma.cc/2U6G-S46X.

17 Alan Feuer et al., Trump Demands That Bondi Move ‘Now’ to Prosecute Foes, N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2025), https://perma.cc/FC9R-U8TK. [link added]

This story may provide opportunity to submit a follow-up (or at least revisit the issue in a reply memo due in two weeks).

By then, of course, we may have more visibility into who got Allen fired, and whether simply the referral to Lindsey Halligan did the trick.

Particularly if Allen did succeed in getting that letter sent to Congress.

All this is happening at a curious time. First, just yesterday Politico claimed someone in Trump’s immediate orbit was furious at the way Pulte sold Trump on an insanely stupid 50-year mortgage plan.

White House officials are furious with Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, who talked the president into suggesting a 50-year mortgage plan.

The White House was blindsided by the idea, according to two people familiar with the situation granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, and is now dealing with a furious backlash from conservative allies, business leaders and lawmakers.

On Saturday evening, Pulte arrived at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a roughly 3-by-5 posterboard in hand. A graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt appeared below “30-year mortgage” and one of Trump below “50-year mortgage.” The headline was “Great American Presidents.”

Roughly 10 minutes later, Trump posted the image to Truth Social, according to one of the people familiar, who was with the president at the time.

Almost immediately, aides were fielding angry phone calls from those who thought the idea – which would endorse a 50 year payback period for a mortgage – was both bad politics and bad policy, a move that could raise housing costs in the long run, the person said.

After describing fury about how Pulte did this — hitting Trump up with visuals at the golf club — Politico spends 11 paragraphs describing a range of people panning the idea before describing the last time Pulte did this: when pitching a plan to bring Fannie and Freddie public, another insanely stupid idea.

“Anything that goes before POTUS needs to be vetted,” said the person present for Pulte’s poster presentation. “And a lot of times with Pulte they’re not. He just goes straight up to POTUS.”

[11 ¶¶ of influencers and experts panning the idea]

This is not the first time Pulte’s policy proposals have caused headaches. He was also behind the idea Trump floated earlier this year to take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public, which also resulted in significant pushback from industry.

Which brings us to the very last paragraph of the WSJ story, a story mostly focused on Pulte’s investigation-related corruption. It suggests Pulte’s corruption may make it harder to bring Fannie and Freddie public, that prior idea he floated by cornering Trump with unvetted ideas.

The Trump administration is considering an initial public offering for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one of the biggest IPOs in history at a crucial moment for the mortgage market. That process will require convincing potential investors, and the broader mortgage-bond market, the management of the companies is stable.

As I read both James’ and Comey’s motions to dismiss for vindictive prosecution, there’s part of me that selfishly wants this process to be one step harder than it needs to be: rather than simply dismissing on the abundant evidence of vindictive prosecution laid out (or, even more likely, because Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer is only playacting as US Attorney, about which there is a hearing tomorrow), I want them to get discovery so we can unpack all this process and bring down the corrupt enablers like Pulte, Eagle Ed Martin, on up to Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche.

Still, there’s something that may force this to go even more public than it otherwise would: Lisa Cook, into whose private records Pulte was likely also snooping, who will have a hearing about whether Trump attempted to fire her “for cause,” or because Pulte snooped in her private records looking for cause.

Corruption is all fun and games until it gets fast-tracked to SCOTUS (where, admittedly, Justices have been all too happy to legalize corruption). It’s all fun and games, Trump’s team seems to believe, until it poses a risk to the housing market.

For whatever reason, Bill Pulte seems to be getting fast-tracked in Trump world, from a useful corrupt flunky to a dangerous liability.

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“Witch Hunt!” Jim Comey Channels Media Matters

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One of the most scathing passages in Jim Comey’s reply brief on his vindictive prosecution claim repeats something Media Matters does persistently to understand how Donald Trump’s brain works.

It’s a reply to this passage of the government response, which is the cornerstone to their claim that Donald Trump’s years of attacks on Comey weren’t animus, they reflected, instead, a sound concern about crime.

The defendant argues that he’s being prosecuted to punish him for being a “[v]ocal [c]ritic of President Trump.” Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59 at 11. Yet according to his own version of events, the earliest that he “spoke out on public and political issues” was June 8, 2017. Id.; see Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59-4 at 2 (pinning the earliest exercise of the defendant’s First Amendment rights to criticize the Trump Administration to a New York Times article published on June 8, 2017). By that point, however, the President had already accused him of committing a crime. On May 21, [sic] 2017, less than three weeks after the defendant first testified that he never “authorized anyone at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation,” Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59-2 at 4, the President publicly accused him of giving “false or misleading testimony,” Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59-4 at 2. That accusation of criminal conduct was mounted before the defendant first stepped into his self-described role as a vocal critic of the President. And that “sequence of public events” should disabuse any notion that the defendant is being punished for exercising his First Amendment rights. See Wilson, 262 F.3d at 317 (reasoning that a defendant’s “theory on proving causation” will be “belied by the record” if the government’s “efforts to prosecute [him] preceded” his exercise of a protected right).

I focused closely on this passage — on other problems with this passage — here, noting that prosecutors had kicked off a fight about chickens and eggs.

I didn’t note that Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs got the date wrong, May 21 instead of May 31 (Comey was generous enough not to note it), a date correctly recorded in both Comey’s appendices collecting these things (one, two).

[Note my screen cap is +5.]

But I missed the even bigger problem with this argument.

Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs didn’t check what Trump was watching on Fox and Friends that day.

On May 19, 2017, in the uproar that followed, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced that Mr. Comey would testify before the Committee about his dismissal and the investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election. Former FBI Director Comey Agrees to Testify in Open Session at Senate Intel Committee, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (May 19, 2017), https://perma.cc/HC5K-KYUV.

That announcement was followed on May 31, 2017, by the first of the President’s allusions to “false or misleading” testimony by Mr. Comey. The government suggests that this tweet shows that the President’s prosecutorial motive arose from Mr. Comey’s May 3, 2017 Senate Judiciary Committee testimony and that he voiced it before Mr. Comey entered into public debate. ECF No. 138 at 28. The tweet shows nothing of the kind.

To begin, the tweet does not reflect the President’s opinion about Mr. Comey, nor does it refer to Mr. Comey’s May 3 testimony as the government misleadingly implies. Instead, the tweet quotes a report based on a conversation on Fox and Friends describing a letter written by former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page stating Page’s view of Mr. Comey’s March 20, 2017 testimony about links between the Trump campaign and the Russia government.5 This tweet can hardly qualify as expressing the President’s legitimate prosecutorial motive—as opposed to relaying hearsay from a television program with no factual basis. In fact, it is the type of unfounded accusation that displays animus rather than a genuine interest in justice. And despite the government’s reliance on it as preceding Mr. Comey’s public statements, the tweet came after the news broke about Mr. Comey’s imminent testimony, i.e., after the President knew that Mr. Comey intended to exercise his First Amendment rights to speak publicly about Mr. Trump’s conduct in office. The President’s preemptive effort to discredit Mr. Comey reflects his animus triggered by Mr. Comey’s anticipated protected speech.

Finally, and most damaging to the government’s theory of the President’s longstanding prosecutorial motive to bring this case, the tweet has nothing to do with this prosecution: it was issued years before the testimony that forms the basis for the charges against Mr. Comey.

5 The tweet (issued in two parts) says: “So now it is reported that the Democrats who have excoriated Carter Page about Russia, don’t want him to testify. He blows away their….” “…case against him & now wants to clear his name by showing ‘the false or misleading testimony by James Comey, John Brennan…’ Witch Hunt!” Appendix at 1. The tweet was issued thirty minutes after Fox and Friends broke the same story. Id. And Mr. Comey had testified publicly before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20, 2017, to confirm the Trump-campaign and Russian-interference investigation. See Mueller Report, supra n.4 at 52-53

Trump was parroting Carter Page complaining about Comey’s March 20 testimony, not commenting on Comey’s May 3 testimony, testimony that prosecutors want to make relevant to this case.

Donald Trump was parroting Carter Page and that’s what prosecutors claimed was the genesis of Trump’s purported good faith prosecutorial concern about Comey’s leaking.

Oops.

There is, to be clear, a fair amount of chicken and egg in Comey’s reply, too, some not entirely persuasive (though that pertains to their representation of the evidence prosecutors presented, not the legal argument, and so could be mooted if some of this gets suppressed). But it reads with the confidence of people who, now, have the exhibits with which prosecutors hope to prove their case, as well as a sense of whether and if so which exhibits will be thrown out as unlawfully obtained.

And in the process, Comey has demonstrated to the Loaner AUSAs how little they know about this whole story and the man whose batshit rants they’re treating as credible.

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Gabriel Diaz’ 14 Exhibits

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As I noted here, in a telephone hearing yesterday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the government to provide him with the grand jury transcripts in the Jim Comey case, which he will review after reading an ex parte filing from Comey’s team laying out the unlawful evidence they suspect got presented to the grand jury.

Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz may have helped them write that memo by confirming there were 14 exhibits presented to the grand jury.

His claim — that there were 14 exhibits — may not be entirely true.

I say that because that number — 14 — matches the number of exhibits included in last week’s response to Comey’s vindictive prosecution claim (the reply to which Comey submitted yesterday, which I’ll return to). The exhibits posted to docket last week, which all include exhibit tags, consist of the following:

This order would suggest they laid out the evidence that Comey lied, focusing heavily on the 2016 exchange (the only one from when Richman was at the FBI), and presenting Comey’s April 23, 2017 thank you email to Richman ahead of Richman’s February 11, 2017 recruitment of Chuck Rosenberg, possibly creating the misimpression that Comey asked for Richman to weigh in on what became the April 2017 story.

Then they presented the Comey memo exchange (Exhibits 10 and 11), and the “Clinton Plan” (Exhibits 12-14). As presented, they did not present the “Clinton plan” referral itself to the grand jury (which might have made it even more apparent that Lindsey was not asking about what Comey’s notes laid out).

There must be at least one more exhibit as presented for the indictment the grand jury approved. As laid out here, the grand jury was not shown how Comey responded to Ted Cruz’ question (to say nothing of Chuck Grassley’s question on which Cruz’ question was based). That is, as laid out here, prosecutors did not include the exhibit that laid out the one lie actually charged.

There must be a video or something — though I find it interesting that they didn’t provide a transcript of Cruz’ question (if they didn’t), since he garbled it about ten different ways.

There are three other questions this exhibit list raises for me.

First, one concern Comey’s attorneys have is the treatment of the materials obtained with a second warrant for Dan Richman’s Columbia emails  — presumably the source of Exhibits 4-9.

What’s interesting is the Bates stamps for those are inconsistent. The earlier set are marked with a Richman Bates stamp.

The two later ones, including the one from the same Jim Comey ReinholdNiebuhr7 alias Gmail, have COLUM Bates stamps.

That suggests those two sets of communications were treated differently. Possibly, the earlier one was part of Richman’s privilege log.

The Bates stamps on the texts between Richman and Mike Schmidt also raise questions, because there’s no source of any kind noted (or if there is, it is redacted), just a series starting with 4801.

Given some of the other details we’ve learned: that all the Feebs involved in this report directly to Kash Patel, that the agent who read the attorney-client privileged text was reading the entire Cellebrite extraction of Richman’s phone — that is, without privileged texts removed — it raises real questions about whether some other team provided them, a team with its own (obscured) Bates stamp.

Worse still, the one of the two agents who read the privileged text attested that he only handed Miles Starr two pages of texts, all dated May 11.

SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

But the exhibit is eight pages long!

Having been told there was privileged communication there and shielded from it, someone went back to those texts to get more of them, to present them to the grand jury. And that same someone led the Loaner AUSAs to believe that sharing the Comey memos after consulting with attorneys was a crime.

Effectively, SA Warren has reported a crime committed by his superiors, the willful violation of Jim Comey’s privilege.

Which is undoubtedly why James Hayes is so intent on letting the FBI lead a privilege review.

Finally, one more thing. Remember how weird the no-billed indictment is, which I laid out here?

The indictment the grand jury approved charged Comey with lying to Ted Cruz (as Diaz would have it, without being shown what that lie is), and obstructing a Congressional proceeding, “by making false and misleading statements before that committee.”

The exhibit list makes clear that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did shoehorn the no-billed charge into the obstruction charge, presumably treating questions about the Comey memos and “Clinton plan” — the only things in the indictment that were material to the scope of the hearing — as “misleading” rather than “false” statements. Last week, Pat Fitzgerald had said they were going to raise concerns about that this week, but they may be waiting to get that grand jury transcript.

Now go back and look at how that obstruction charges looks in the no-billed (top) and approved (bottom) indictment.

Update: As Amicus12 points out below, sometime within a day or so of the indictment, this error got fixed. Here’s what the fixed document looks like:

It is increasingly clear that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer literally replaced what would have been Count Three of the no-billed indictment with Count Two of the approved indictment. That explains why that page has:

  • Staple and scan marks matching the real indictment
  • The numbering from the second indictment (these paragraphs should be numbered 7 and 8 in the no-billed indictment)
  • Both the signature of the foreperson (note the part of a signature that crosses into the “U” of the True Bill line) and Lindsey herself on that page

She simply swapped the page.

There’s good reason to ask whether she wasn’t just being dumb and inexperienced (which is what it looked like in the 7-minute hearing with the judge), but was also being deceitful.

For example, it’s possible that the original indictment charged Comey with obstructing the Senate’s investigation only by making false statements, but in a bid to get the material things in there pertinent to the larger investigation, the “Clinton plan” and the Comey memos, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer added the word “misleading” to lower the bar to get a vote from the grand jurors.

It’s unclear whether Fitzpatrick will or can review some of these issues. He’s scrutinizing the indictment for unlawful and privileged exhibits. That also might explain why Diaz tried hard to prevent Comey from providing a list of things to look for.

The unlawful exhibits are bad enough. But there seems to be worse still.

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