Before Jan. 6, Mark Meadows joked about Trump’s election claims: In a text, Meadows wrote that his own son was unable to find more than a handful of votes potentially cast in the name of dead voters, people familiar with message say by Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig and Jacqueline Alemany Washington Post July 22, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
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Mark Meadows joked about the baseless claim that large numbers of votes were fraudulently cast in the names of dead people in the days before the then-White House chief of staff participated in a phone call in which then-President Trump alleged there were close to 5,000 dead voters in Georgia and urged Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the 2020 election there.
In a text message that has been scrutinized by federal prosecutors, Meadows wrote to a White House lawyer that his son, Atlanta-area attorney Blake Meadows, had been probing possible fraud and had found only a handful of possible votes cast in dead voters’ names, far short of what Trump was alleging. The lawyer teasingly responded that perhaps Meadows’s son could locate the thousands of votes Trump would need to win the election. The text was described by multiple people familiar with the exchange.
The jocular text message, which has not been previously reported, is one of many exchanges from the time in which Trump aides and other Republican officials expressed deep skepticism or even openly mocked the election claims being made publicly by Trump, according to people familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the criminal investigation.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading a Justice Department investigation of Trump’s activities in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, has focused on exploring whether Trump and his closest advisers understood that claims of fraud in the election were baseless, even as they pressed state officials and others to overturn Biden’s victory and convinced Trump’s millions of supporters that the election had been stolen, people familiar with the probe have said.
The text message is a small part of a broader portrait of Meadows that Smith appears to be assembling as he weighs the actions of not just Trump but a number of his closest advisers, including Meadows.
People close to Meadows have said that he was privately sympathetic to those Trump advisers who were skeptical of the fraud claims. Yet Meadows also played both sides, often appearing to indulge Trump’s desire to use those false allegations to try to remain in office, people who witnessed his behavior have said.
A spokesman for Meadows declined to comment. Blake Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.
Since Trump said he was named a target of Smith’s investigation earlier this week, his allies have been feverishly speculating about the degree of Meadows’s cooperation with the Smith probe and whether he has provided testimony that Smith will use to build a case against Trump or others.
The Meadows text, which a person familiar with the investigation said prosecutors have presented to a grand jury, is a reminder that Smith has gathered documents and witness testimony that has not been seen by the public despite more than two years of congressional and media scrutiny about Trump’s activities following the election. He will probably offer the public the fullest picture yet available of the events that led to the Jan. 6 attack.
A spokesman for Smith declined to comment.
Days after Meadows sent the text, he organized the Raffensperger call on Jan. 3, in which Trump pressed to “find” the votes in the state necessary to overturn Biden’s win.
A recording of the call shows that Meadows did not interject or challenge Trump’s claims about votes cast in the name of dead people. Instead, when Raffensperger countered that state investigators had found just two such votes, he responded: “That may be what your investigation shows, but I can promise you there are more than that.”
Meadows expended particular energy after the 2020 vote on Georgia, a traditionally Republican-leaning state that Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes, former White House officials and campaign aides said. Meadows lobbied other officials in the state about the election results and even visited a ballot counting center in Georgia, The Washington Post has reported.
In the weeks after the election, Trump advisers said they received claims that came from Meadows that the election was fraudulent, but when they checked the claims with outside experts paid by the Trump campaign, they could not substantiate them, according to people familiar with the requests.
Meadows, a former member of Congress who became Trump’s chief of staff in early 2020, was viewed inside the White House and the campaign as one of the biggest propagators of such claims — though at times he also entertained concerns from other Trump advisers who wanted the president to accept his election loss.
It is not clear how extensively Blake Meadows looked for instances of fraud in Georgia or what his father concluded about his findings.
Blake Meadows interned for a North Carolina Supreme Court justice and worked for his father’s campaign for Congress and a Republican political group called the Alliance Defending Freedom, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is now managing partner of his own firm in Tyrone, Ga.
Witnesses have been asked detailed questions about why Meadows appeared so deeply interested the Georgia election results and about his various phone calls with Georgia officials and other activities in the state, three people familiar with testimony said.
The Justice Department obtained hundreds of Meadows texts in the summer of 2022, which were then shared with Smith’s team after the special counsel was appointed in November, according to two other people familiar with the probe. Meadows subsequently turned over additional documents to Smith’s office in response to a subpoena, according to people familiar with his activities.
Witnesses who have appeared in front of a Washington grand jury investigating Jan. 6 say prosecutors appear to have an extensive collection of Meadows text messages and emails, with one witness describing being shown a “grid” displaying the communications.
This spring, Meadows testified to the grand jury about his interactions with Trump and others involved with Trump’s election effort, two people with knowledge of the appearance said.
After leaving the White House, Meadows joined the Conservative Partnership Institute, where he has helped the group raise money and amass real estate for a larger office complex on Capitol Hill. He has kept in touch with some of his aides from the White House.
People in Trump’s orbit have grown increasingly concerned about what they see as Meadows’s retreat from the public scene as a prominent defender of the former president. He has reduced his public appearances, particularly on television — where he was once a frequent guest. He has not posted on Twitter in five months.
Trump has repeatedly complained to others about Meadows and questioned his loyalty, according to three Trump advisers. A spokesman for Trump declined to comment about Meadows.
Trump’s relationship with his former chief of staff soured after Meadows published a book about his time in the White House last year that generally praised Trump but also included details about how sick Trump became when he contracted covid-19 in October 2020, a description of personal vulnerability that has angered Trump. That included insider information about Trump’s three-day stay at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center recovering from the virus, where Meadows joined him.
Research for the book, “The Chief’s Chief,” also appeared to help a separate Smith investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving office. Investigators obtained audio of Trump talking about what he said was a classified document with ghostwriters for Meadows, as papers rustle.
A person close to Meadows said he knows his relationship with Trump is permanently ruptured and has told others he does not seek to antagonize Trump and his supporters but concluded he had to cooperate with Smith’s office as required by law.
— Perry Stein contributed to this report.
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Trump is SCREWED by SECRET TEXT MESSAGES by Former Top Aides MOCKING HIM by Ben Meiselas MeidasTouch Jul 24, 2023
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on text messages sent by Donald Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to Trump’s former White House lawyer after the 2020 election mocking Trump’s claims of fraud.
Transcript
I'm Ben Meiselas from the Meidas touch Network a pretty big story over the weekend from The Washington Post about how Mark Meadows Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff was sending private text messages basically mocking Donald Trump's claims of election fraud and if you've been a viewer of the Midas touch Network this story which was billed as major breaking news by The Washington Post would not be big breaking news to you because remember we told you back when the January 6th committee was gathering evidence how big these text messages are let's just go right to The Source before going to Washington Post to remind you of these text messages that Mark Meadows was sending and receiving with a White House lawyer at the time this was right before the January 6 phone call that Donald Trump had with Brad raffensberger the Secretary of State of Georgia where Donald Trump threatened raffensberger find me the 11 780 votes or else but even though Mark Meadows coordinated that call between Donald Trump and Brad raffensberger um Mark Meadows was privately mocking Donald Trump in these text messages and so the one thing to note here as well is that Mark Meadow's son Blake Meadows is an attorney and Blake Meadows at the time of the aftermath of the 2020 election When Donald Trump was making all of these false statements about election fraud Blake Meadows was actually working with the Trump campaign to investigate these allegations and so Blake medal Blake Meadows knew that Donald Trump's accusations of voter fraud was just completely and totally false and he had been trying to determine if there were dead voters in Georgia that was absolutely not the case I think they found 12 people who had passed away since the general election but let's just go to The Source before reading and going over this Washington Post article so here it is right here these are the messages between Mark Meadows and a top White House lawyer right around January 6th of 2021 it says just an FYI Alex Cannon and his team verified that the 10 000 supposed dead people voting in Georgia is not accurate so the fact that Mark Meadows and the top White House lawyer are recognizing that this claim that was being advanced by Donald Trump and frankly by Meadows that there was ten thousand dead people voting was not verified goes on to say I didn't hear that claim it is not accurate I think I found 22 if I remember correctly two of them died just days before the general and then the response was it was alleged in Rudy's hearing today your number is much closer to what we can prove I think it's 12 again these messages are coming from Mark Meadows and so as Mark Meadows is advancing the big lie on behalf of Donald Trump privately this is what Mark Meadows is saying and then Mark Meadows responds my son referring to Blake Meadows my son found 12 obituaries obituaries and six other possibles depending on the voter roll accuracy and then the White House lawyer says that sounds more like it maybe he can help Rudy find the other ten thousand and then Mark Meadows responds LOL the fact that there are mocking Trump like this but they also find it a joke right like maybe your son Mark can help find the other 10 000 votes and by the way language that Donald Trump used right when he spoke to Brad raffensberger Georgia Secretary of State what did Trump say find me 11 780 votes and here privately they're mocking Donald Trump but they're making a mockery out of our entire democracy right here joking that Rudy Giuliani who's working on behalf of the Trump campaign is just making false allegations that there are ten thousand dead people that voted and they know it's a lie so this is critical because it goes to intent and by the way it goes to Donald Trump's and by the way these messages were produced in connection with the January 6th committee right so we've talked about these Mark Meadows text messages before so I found it somewhat curious although um I think it demonstrates that special counsel Jack Smith's team is focused on it that adds to it that the Washington Post build this as like they got a scoop or they got an exclusive by the way Washington Post has done some great reporting but this right here I don't think is a scoop and I don't think they really acknowledge that these messages were out before and that we've talked about them here this is the Washington Post article it says before January 6th Mark Meadows joked about Trump's election claims in a text Meadows wrote that his own son was unable to find more than a handful of votes potentially cast in the name of dead voters people familiar with the messages say the article goes on to say Mark Meadows joked about the baseless claim that large numbers of Voters were fraudulently cast in the names of dead people in the days before the then white house chief of staff participated in a phone call in which Donald Trump alleged there were close to 5 000 dead voters in Georgia earned and urged Brad raffensberger Georgia Secretary of State to overturn the 2020 election in a text message that has been scrutinized by federal prosecutors Mark Meadows wrote to a White House lawyer that his son Atlanta area attorney Blake Meadows had been probing a possible fraud and had found only a handful of possible votes cast in dead voters names far short of what Trump was alleging the lawyer teasingly responded that perhaps Meadow's son could locate the thousands of votes Trump would need to win the election the text was described by multiple people familiar with the exchange the jocular text message which has not been previously reported is one of many exchanges from the time in which Trump AIDS and other Republican officials expressed deep skepticism or even openly mocked the election claims being made publicly by Trump according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on a condition of anonymity I mean look it's great that they're speaking on a condition of anonymity but we have the text messages you you've now seen the text messages that Mark Meadow sent to the White House lawyer in late 2020 right before the January 2nd 2021 call with Mark Meadows just to remind you though of the mark Meadows situation remember at first Mark Meadows was cooperating with the January 6 committee turned over about 2 000 text messages in October of 2021. he was then supposed to turn over the next tranche of records and text messages and be deposed by the January 6 committee on or around December of 2021 he said he was going to participate he said he was going to turn over more records but right before Meadows was set to actually sit for his deposition Meadows filed a lawsuit against the January 6 committee and Nancy Pelosi and sought injunctive relief to try to block his testimony ultimately that case was dismissed by a federal judge in Washington D.C however Mark Meadows effectively ran out the clock on the January 6 committee didn't turn over more text messages didn't have to have his deposition taken many people were speculating why did the Department of Justice not prosecute Mark Meadows even though the January 6 committee recommended uh charges that be pursued by the Department of Justice for contempt of congress and remember what I had said at that time I think the January I think the Department of Justice was going to try to focus on making Meadows a cooperating witness in connection with the broader criminal case that they were going to be prosecuting with respect to Donald Trump and unlike the January 6 committee that struggled when it came to executive privilege claims because there is a small line of cases that basically say in an inter-branch dispute that a former president could assert executive privilege vis-a-vis the Congress but not vis-a-vis a current president so the Department of Justice is an executive branch Department um and the only person who could waive executive privilege is the current president the current executive so President Biden waived executive privilege he's not asserting executive privilege even if President Biden were to assert executive privilege um if there was a compelling need that was showed by the Department of Justice that would override um any claims of executive privilege even if it was asserted in the first place so Biden has not asserted executive privilege Mark Meadows has had to turn over the records that he didn't have to turn over uh to the January 6th committee so Jack Smith's got those additional text messages right now and we all believe that special counsel Jack Smith has turned Mark Meadows into a cooperating witness right now that Mark Meadows has agreed to a proffer session providing all of this information to special counsel Jack Smith in exchange for either not Prosecuting Meadows or for a lesser charge against Meadows and all of the kind of Maga world has not heard from Meadows they're worried that Meadows has flipped and by all accounts Meadows is cooperating with special counsel Jack Smith right now but as it relates to these specific text messages we have reported on that here before on the Meidas touch network but this does go to show you that special counsel Jack Smith is very very focused on this because and messages like this because it shows that everybody in Trump's orbit knew this was BS they knew there was no election fraud they were mocking it Trump knew and when Trump knew that goes to intent that's what's called The mens rea in a criminal case and that's the type of Smoking Gun text messages that are going to be used in a prosecution of Donald Trump keep you posted as we learn more but that's why we follow this step by step by step I'm Ben Meiselas from the Meidas touch Network hit subscribe we're on our way to 1.5 million subscribers thanks to your awesome support check us out at patreon.com Meidas Touch wherever you get audio podcasts subscribe to the minus touch podcast have an excellent day
Former Donald Trump / Rudy Giuliani Associate Lev Parnas discusses Rudy Giuliani’s false claims about Hunter Biden’s business in Ukraine and the fake narrative that Joe Biden coordinated the ousting of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in order to protect his son. Parnas also exposes some of Giuliani’s personal relationships with individuals later revealed to be active Russian Intelligence Agents.
Transcript
Hey everybody. My name is Lev Parnas.
For those of you that don't know me, I was part of Donald Trump's inner circle and Trump's Maga cult. Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani sent me to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. Now that I'm out of the cult, and finishing up my sentence of home confinement, I'd like to share some some stories that I have written up in my diary while I was here on home confinement.
Now this week it was reported that Rudy Giuliani did invent information that he pushed to overturn the 2020 election. Now as crazy as it might sound to you, to me it was Rudy just being Rudy. It wasn't about finding out the real information, or the truth about what was really going on. It was all about getting Trump back in office. And today I'm going to tell you a little bit how it coincided with all the stuff that's transpired in Ukraine, because it was similar to the same thing that happened in the 2020 election.
It was getting information and pushing it through any means possible, through his cohorts in Congress.
Back then it was Devin Nunez. Today it's Senator Johnson,
James Comer,
Marjorie Greene,
Lauren Boebert, and the rest of the crazy Congress people that we have that are pushing all these misinformation just to confuse the public.
So where do we begin? in November of 2018, I was approached by Rudy Giuliani, and asked if I could vet some information that he got regarding Joe and Hunter Biden, and if I could use my contacts in Ukraine to find out if they were true. Obviously, being in the Maga cult, I was drinking the Kool-Aid, and I decided, and I was happy, to accept that invitation. I thought I was going to be a hero, and I was going to help save the our democracy from the deep State. Boy was I wrong!
So anyway, going forward, in December, I met up with Trump and Giuliani at the White House, where Giuliani told Trump about everything about a video that he saw where Joe Biden basically came out and said to the prosecutor Viktor Shokin that if he doesn't get fired, they're not gonna, Ukraine won't get a billion dollars in aid.
Fact check: Biden leveraged $1B in aid to Ukraine to oust corrupt prosecutor, not to help his son by Camille Caldera USA Today Published 5:25 p.m. ET Oct. 21, 2020
He [Giuliani] thought that he had the Smoking Gun at the time, and he wanted to find Viktor Shokin. He wanted to get to the bottom of it. He wanted to find Victor Shokin, and I was the guy that was going to go and do that for him.
We went to the White House where he updated Trump. Trump came out, patted me on the back, gave me a thumbs up, and told me, "Rudy says good things about you, Lev. Continue doing the good work that you're doing."
I was impressed. I was mystified. I mean, here the president of the United States is telling me that I'm doing good work, and I'm, you know, for a kid out of Brooklyn that never expected to be in the White House, here I am speaking to the President of the United States, and being sent on a mission from him and his attorney Rudy Giuliani to help save our democracy, which I thought at that time. Boy was I wrong about that!
My connection to Trump came through Giuliani, with whom I had done business, and through the large campaign donations I had made to Trump's campaign. Giuliani, who desperately wanted to be Secretary of State, recruited me to help him further Trump's interests overseas. I had no official position, but my primary task was to be their go-between with Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs and government officials. In retrospect, I concluded that my real job was to help undermine and destabilize the Ukrainian government.
-- Lev Parnas Diary
So I traveled to Ukraine in 2018 in December to find Viktor Shokin. After meeting various characters, I eventually located Shokin, and had to go through a two-hour drive in the middle of nowhere to meet with Viktor. When we sat down, at first, Viktor Shokin was an interesting character. He didn't care too much about what was going on in the United States, and didn't care too much about Rudy Giuliani, or Trump. All he cared about was getting back into power, and getting reinstated to become Attorney General of Ukraine -- Prosecutor General, excuse me.
Trump acted on his hatred of Ukraine as he tried to improve his re-election chances in 2020. The plan that Giuliani and Trump put into operation was simple. Giuliani sent me to collect compromising information that the Eastern European oligarchs had on Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine to use against Joe Biden. It was also my job to convince the new Ukrainian government to announce an official investigation into Hunter Biden. If they didn't, the U.S. would not send Trump or Vice President Mike Pence to Zelensky's inauguration, threatening Zelensky's domestic stature and his ability to stand up to Putin. Trump also paused much needed military aid for Ukraine while he tried to get Zelensky to open the Biden investigation.
-- Lev Parnas Diary
I relayed a message to him telling him that Giuliani says that we could help. We could help if you help us. And we need information on Joe and Hunter Biden.
At first, Shokin was a little bit skeptical about getting involved, but eventually he said he would love to come to the United States and meet with Giuliani, and talk about it. Giuliani prepared a visit for him, which got derailed by Maria Yovanovitch, the U.S ambassador to Ukraine. He [Giuliani] told Shokin to get a Visa. "Tell them at the Visa office that you're going to Los Angeles to visit your daughter. Don't tell them that you're going to Washington DC to meet up with Lindsey Graham and myself."
Well, that didn't go well. When he went to the Visa office, he got declined.
After several conversations, and Giuliani pressuring the State Department, even going to Trump himself, sending me text messages to reply back to Shokin that everything would be well, he never was able to get him the Visa.
The fired prosecutor at the center of the Ukraine controversy said during a private interview with President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani earlier this year that he was told to back off an investigation involving a natural gas firm that was linked to Joe Biden's son, according to details of that interview that were handed over to Congress by the State Department's Inspector general Wednesday.
Fox News obtained a copy of Giuliani's notes from his January 2019 interview with fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in which he claimed that his "investigations stopped out of fear of the United States."
"Mr. Shokin attempted to continue the investigations but on or around June or July of 2015, the U.S. Ambassador Geofrrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing," the [hidden words] stated. The notes also claimed Shokin was told Biden had held ...
We were able to do a 45 minute video with him at some point in January of 2019, where Shokin basically pushed the narrative that Joe Biden got him fired because of withholding the billion dollar aid. But one interesting part in that video, in the interview, was when Rudy asked Shokin directly, "What laws, or what criminality, did Joe or Hunter Biden do?" Shokin couldn't respond. Because there was no rules that were broken. There were no laws being broken. And that was a narrative that started then, and continued to this day today.
After that, we went with the Yuriy Lutsenko, who was another prosecutor, the current prosecutor of Ukraine. Lutsenko -- all he wanted to do was meet attorney general Barr. But to me, Rudy Giuliani wanted information, information that Lutsenko didn't have. Because there was no concrete evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe and Hunter Biden.
But Rudy Giuliani pushed. He didn't care if there was facts involved. He didn't care if there was evidence. He cared that the narrative, that the information that the prosecutors gave him, fit his narrative.
At some point there was lots of arguments going back and forth with Shokin. Lutsenko would make statements, retract statements, give information, but that didn't bother Rudy. With no facts involved, he used people like John Solomon, Fox news reporter Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Senator Ron Johnson, Devin Nunez, and pushed that information into the halls of Congress, and into the media for the public to hear, with no facts behind it whatsoever.
Rudy knew there was no facts, but it was all about getting Trump back in office. De didn't care if there was truth behind it. All he cared about was that he could bring up enough "what if" and bring enough confusion so the American public would get confused enough to be able to get Trump back in office.
Today Rudy Giuliani, because of all of that, is facing some problems. I mean, he's currently looking to probably get disbarred. He's probably going to get indicted in the election fraud case. And he's being sued by lots of people, you know, one of them being Noelle Dunphy for sexual assault. And I was part of a lot of those meetings, and heard a lot of things that went on.
I spent a lot of time with Rudy Giuliani. He's not the Rudy Giuliani that we're used to knowing, or reading about, or hearing in the past. He's not the Rudy Giuliani that was named America's mayor. He's a different Rudy Giuliani that sold his soul to Trump. Basically, sold his soul to the Trump cult, and basically is now doing whatever it takes: lying, sending misinformation, without proof, just to be able to get his cult leader Trump back in office.
So let's talk about some facts. You know, I mentioned some of the facts as far as what happened with the 2020 election. Now let's go into some of the people Rudy Giuliani dealt with, just so you understand as far as getting information from Ukraine.
The European Union has welcomed the dismissal of Ukraine's scandal ridden prosecutor general and called for a crackdown on corruption, even as the country's political crisis deepened over efforts to form a new ruling coalition and appoint a new prime minister. Ukraine's parliament voted overwhelmingly to fire Viktor Shokin, ridding the beleaguered prosecutor's office of a figure who is accused of blocking major cases against allies and influential figures and stymying moves to root out graft. "This decision creates an opportunity to make a fresh start in the prosecutor general's office. I hope that the new prosecutor general will ensure that [his] office ... becomes independent from political influence and pressure and enjoys public trust," said Jan Tombinski, the EU's envoy to Ukraine. There is still a lack of tangible results of investigations into serious cases ... as well as investigations of [hidden] prosecutor general's office," he added.
Viktor Shokin was a corrupt prosecutor, and not only Biden wanted him out, the whole West wanted him out. IMF wanted him out. Western leaders wanted him out. Not because he was making investigations, but because he wasn't investigating. And that's a clear fact. He was not investigating Burisma when Rudy Giuliani saw the video of Joe Biden saying, "get rid of Viktor shokin, or we're not going to give you a billion dollars." The reason why Biden made that statement was because the United States, the IMF, and the Western leaders, were pushing for reform in Ukraine. They were trying to do away with corruption, and Shokin, was one of the corrupt prosecutors at the time.
EU hails sacking of Ukraine's prosecutor Viktor Shokin Political crisis continues as deals on a new coalition and premier prove elusive by Daniel McLaughlin in Kiev The Irish Times Tue Mar 29 2016 - 18:41
Then comes Yuri Lutsenko. Yuri Lutsenko, who all he wanted to do was meet attorney general Barr, and to be able to discuss with him criminal activities that were going on between Ukrainian and American citizens. Rudy didn't care about that. All Rudy wanted to hear was, "Get me some dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden."
Lutsenko, because of his own political ambitions, and because he was worried about getting ousted if Petro Poroshenko was to lose the election, which he eventually did to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, tried to play ball. But it was never good enough for Giuliani, because he would never come out and announce an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.
But that didn't stop Rudy from pushing the agenda. It didn't stop Rudy from pushing the misinformation campaign. It didn't stop John Solomon, and Fox, and Ron Johnson, and Devin Nunez, to go up in front of the American public and talk about bits and pieces of information without facts backing it up.
But then later, when Rudy Giuliani needed really seriously corrupt individuals that would be able to go to any extreme to help him, that's when enters Andriy Telizhenko, and Andriy Derkach.
So let's talk about who these people are. Andriy Telizhenko, he was sanctioned by the U.S treasury for being part of a Russian linked foreign influence network.
That's right folks. He was sanctioned by the Trump Administration for being part of a Russian linked foreign influence network.
So just understand who the information was coming from.
Now let's take a look at Andriy Derkach. Andriy Derkach was a member of parliament who the Trump Administration accused of an active Russian agent over a decade.
His father was an ex KGB agent. Let's repeat myself: he was an active Russian agent for over a decade.
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned seven current and former Ukrainian officials who tried to tip the U.S. presidential election for the outgoing President Donald Trump.
All seven are part of a Russianlinked foreign influence network associated with lawmaker Andrii Derkach. The group used dubious allegations to try to start an investigation against Biden and his son Hunter to hut Biden's chances of winning the election.
"Russian disinformation campaigns targeting American citizens are a threat to our democracy," said U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.
On May 19, Derkach leaked recordings of what he claimed were conversations between Biden and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Derkach claimed this proves that in 2016, Biden forced Ukraine to fire then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin to help Ukrainian oil company Burisma Holdings escape corruption prosecution.
[HIDDEN] which has been debunked multiple times. In December 2019, Trump ...
The Trump Administration sanctioned Derkach on the grounds that he was an active Russian agent for over a decade, who had waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives to influence the 2020 elections.
PRESS RELEASE Active Russian Agent Andrii Derkach Indicted for Scheme to Violate Sanctions in the United States Wednesday, December 7, 2022 For Immediate Release Office of Public Affairs
Derkach was Added to OFAC’s List of Specially Designated Nationals in 2020 After Waging a Covert Influence Campaign to Undermine the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election
A seven-count indictment was unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging Andrii Derkach, 55, of Ukraine, with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Acts (IEEPA), bank fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and four counts of money laundering in connection with the purchase and maintenance of two condominiums in Beverly Hills, California. Derkach allegedly concealed his interest in the transactions and violated sanctions imposed in 2020. Derkach remains at large. The charges and forfeiture action announced today include the first use of criminal and forfeiture powers targeting the concealment of ownership by senior foreign political officials, passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021.
“The conduct of this Kremlin asset, who was sanctioned for trying to poison our democracy, has shown he is ready, willing and capable of exploiting our banking system in order to advance his illicit goals,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. “The U.S. will not be a safe haven where criminals, oligarchs or sanctioned entities can hide their ill-gotten gains or influence our elections. This office, together with our law enforcement partners, will use every tool available to prosecute those who evade sanctions and abuse the U.S. financial system, and we will identify, freeze and seize criminal proceeds whenever and wherever possible.”
“Kremlin-backed Ukrainian politician and oligarch, Andrii Derkach, was sanctioned for his efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential election on behalf of the Russian Intelligence Services,” said Assistant Director in Charge Michael J. Driscoll of the FBI New York Field Office. “While participating in a scripted Russian disinformation campaign seeking to undermine U.S. institutions, Derkach simultaneously conspired to fraudulently benefit from a Western lifestyle for himself and his family in the United States. The FBI will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to identify Russian intelligence operations, disrupt Russian information laundering networks and bring to justice those who seek to engage in criminal conspiracies to undermine the integrity of U.S elections and evade U.S. sanctions.”
“Attempting to enjoy the safety, security and freedoms of an open society, while secretly working to undermine that very society, is a hypocrisy that runs through every sanctions charge announced by the Task Force,” said Task Force KleptoCapture Director Andrew C. Adams. “It is a particularly egregious hypocrisy in the case of Andrii Derkach – sanctioned for attempts to undermine American democracy, while corruptly seeking to benefit from its protections.”
According to the indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York, on or about Sept. 10, 2020, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Derkach for his efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. According to information publicly released by OFAC, Derkach was “an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services,” who “waged a covert influence campaign” to undermine the 2020 Presidential election. As alleged, beginning in at least 2013 and continuing after Derkach’s OFAC designation, Derkach and a co-consiprator (CC-1) devised a scheme to purchase two luxury condominiums in Beverly Hills, California, (the Subject Condominiums) while concealing Derkach’s interest in the transactions from U.S. financial institutions. The scheme utilized a U.S.-based financial services professional (the Nominee). The Nominee assisted Derkach and CC-l in setting up and managing several corporate entities designed to hide Derkach’s ownership interest in the Subject Condominiums and related financial holdings. The Nominee understood that Derkach and CC-1 would occupy one of the Subject Condominiums, and the other would be used by Derkach’s children.
At the direction of Derkach and CC-1, the Nominee established two corporate entities in California. As part of the scheme, Derkach and CC-l misrepresented details about Derkach’s identity to the Nominee. Derkach and CC-l caused the Nominee to falsely represent ownership of funds and bank accounts to U.S. financial institutions, thereby deceiving those institutions into processing transactions related to, involving and on behalf of Derkach and his blocked property.
At all times relevant to this indictment, and since the date of his OFAC designation, Derkach has been aware of and actively working to evade the OFAC sanctions placed upon him. As alleged, on or about Sept. 10, 2020, the day that OFAC designated Derkach, Derkach posted a response on Facebook, stating the “decision was drawn up on a piece of paper by several congressman of [a U.S. political party] and inspired by representatives of the State Department.”
Moreover, in the years and months preceding his designation, the defendant spent significant time in the United States, including at the Subject Condominiums. In conducting that travel to, and spending time in, the United States, Derkach was actively involved in deceiving U.S. law enforcement and border authorities even prior to his SDN designation. For example, in December 2019 and February 2020, Derkach was in the United States to meet with U.S. persons and conduct media appearances. To obtain a U.S. visa, and to ostensibly attend meetings and conferences related to human rights issues in Ukraine, Derkach retained the services of a U.S.-based consulting firm (Firm-1). The written contract purported to be between Firm-l and a Ukrainian shipping company and did not refer to Derkach, notwithstanding Derkach’s direct involvement in the provision of services that the contract purported to reflect. In or about and between July 2018 and December 2018, Derkach paid Firm-l approximately $100,000. In a July 2018 email communication with Firm-l, Derkach’s representative expressed concern that, “given the fact that my client [Derkach] is a politically exposed person, as well as the statements he made concerning Ukraine’s interference into U.S. elections and the insider information we have in our possession,” the visa application process could be potentially complicated for Derkach.
Derkach, through the Nominee, continued to conduct U.S. financial transactions in support of his real estate holdings even after Sept. 10, 2020, the day that OFAC designated the defendant Derkach and added him to the SDN List. Because Derkach and CC-l had obscured details about Derkach’s identity and involvement from relevant financial institutions, Derkach and CC-1 succeeded for a time in conducting financial transactions valued at several hundred thousands of dollars in violation of OFAC’s sanctions.
If convicted, the defendant faces a maximum of 30 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Concurrent with today’s announcement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has filed and announced a civil forfeiture suit naming the Subject Condominiums and two financial accounts as defendants in rem, seeking forfeiture of those properties on the basis of their involvement in, and status as proceeds of, criminal violations of the federal money laundering laws, the IEEPA, and federal law criminalizing the concealment of assets of senior foreign political figures.
U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York, Task Force KleptoCapture Director Andrew C. Adams and Special Agent in Charge Michael J. Driscoll of the FBI New York Field Office made the announcement.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Artie McConnell and Jonathan E. Algor for the Eastern District of New York are prosecuting the case, with assistance from Trial Attorney Adam Small of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section. Assistant U.S. Attorney Madeline O’Connor for the Eastern District of New York is handling the forfeiture matters. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs provided valuable assistance.
The investigation was coordinated through the Justice Department’s Task Force KleptoCapture, an interagency law enforcement task force dedicated to enforcing the sweeping sanctions, export controls, and economic countermeasures that the United States, along with its foreign allies and partners, has imposed in response to Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. Announced by the Attorney General on March 2 under the leadership of the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, the task force will continue to leverage all of the Department’s tools and authorities to combat efforts to evade or undermine the collective actions taken by the U.S. government in response to Russian military aggression.
An indictment is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Updated December 7, 2022
Federal prosecutors in the U.S. charged Derkach with seven counts of money laundering, bank fraud, and sanctioned evasion charges. Ukraine intelligence ordered Derkach detained on charges that he was paid half a million dollars from Russian intelligence to use a private security company to assist the Russian invasion of Ukraine. he currently remains a fugitive both in the Ukraine and the U.S.
So U.S attorney Michael J. Driscoll said in the press release: “While participating in a scripted Russian disinformation campaign seeking to undermine U.S. institutions, Derkach simultaneously conspired to fraudulently benefit from a Western lifestyle for himself and his family in the United States."
So these are the people that dealt with Rudy Giuliani. He knew who they were. He understood that the information was coming as part of a Russian campaign, but he didn't care. All he cared about was confusing the American public, sending disinformation out because, like I said before, it was all about getting Trump back in office.
How Rudy Giuliani, once a national hero, ruined his own reputation by Devlin Barrett Washington Post September 16, 2022
Rudy Giuliani, pictured at the White House in 2018, was an ally of Donald Trump long before Trump won the presidency. His peddling of false claims on Trump’s behalf helped erode his image as “America’s Mayor.” (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
What in the world happened to Rudy Giuliani? How did the man whose bravery and resilience reassured a nation during the 2001 terrorist attacks become a bellowing, cheek-stained geyser of nonsense?
Andrew Kirtzman sets out to answer that question in “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor.” Kirtzman is well-suited to the task; as a New York-based reporter he covered Giuliani for years and was alongside the mayor on 9/11 as he sought to rally a devastated country.
Giuliani’s image as a national hero was set in stone that day, but the former mayor, prosecutor and presidential candidate has spent the years since chipping away at the pedestal on which he stands, largely through truth-twisting diatribes in defense of Donald Trump. Kirtzman’s biography attempts to explain how a man who nobly defended the country in one of its darkest moments then devoted his twilight years to sabotaging it.
It’s a measure of how much Giuliani’s place in history has changed that this is Kirtzman’s second biography of him. The author argues that it’s not so much that Giuliani changed as age, alcohol and a thirst for attention gradually led his worst impulses to dominate his life. Giuliani’s self-confidence, Kirtzman writes, “drove his greatest crusades, from his mission to eradicate the mob, to his determination to clean up New York City. . . . But the almost fanatical sense of righteousness that propelled his rise also presaged his catastrophic fall.”
It can be difficult in 2022 to recall Giuliani’s remarkable early career, when he became mayor of a city that many considered in 1994 not just dangerous and dirty, but out of control and fundamentally unmanageable.
Giuliani hurled his obsessive, combative and vindictive spirit into taming New York. Crime plummeted, corporate profits soared, and three-card monte dealers in Times Square gave way to Disney characters.
As mayor, he found an ally in Trump the real estate developer, but their relationship went far beyond any zoning regulation or fundraiser; the two men were in some ways kindred spirits, people whose careers were boosted and shaped by New York’s unique tabloid news culture. Rudy and the Donald thrived in a public discourse dominated by personal feuds and peccadillos.
After 9/11, the respect and admiration for Giuliani swelled so high, people often burst into spontaneous applause when they saw him in public. That public love translated into tremendous wealth and political influence, and Kirtzman details the years in which Giuliani cashed in with a global business brand.
In 2007, “America’s Mayor” sought to trade the imaginary title for a real one by running for president. Starting with the best name recognition and donor pool in the GOP, Giuliani burned through both in record time, exiting the race in an Orlando hotel ballroom, having amassed a grand total of one convention delegate.
Giuliani spent the post-election period in a deep funk and, to hear his ex-wife Judith Nathan tell it, drinking too much. Giuliani and Nathan holed up at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, using the complex’s tunnels to stay out of public view.
At times the book seems more interested in Giuliani’s troubled marriage than his estranged relationship with reality, but “the ex-wife made him do it” defense offered by some of Giuliani’s former advisers feels like a too-convenient excuse, since after the divorce he became even more closely tied to Trump.
“What’s clear is that the two men’s friendship survived when a hundred other Trump relationships died away like so many marriages of convenience,” Kirtzman writes. “Giuliani would never turn his back on Trump, much to his detriment.”
After the failed presidential bid, Giuliani’s legal and consulting career withered, as his increasingly strident political commentary turned off law partners. During the 2016 campaign, Giuliani rediscovered his public voice as a pro-Trump attack dog, going on Fox News to accuse Hillary Clinton of all manner of crimes and illness.
It was a testament to the collective memory of Giuliani as a hero in a crisis that the nonsensical accusations he made that year did little to dent his reputation. Even Kirtzman, in his deconstruction of the former mayor, seems to credit Giuliani’s claims to have sources inside the FBI in 2016 telling him about the Clinton investigations. When federal agents questioned Giuliani in 2018 about that — an interview in which lying could lead to criminal charges — he admitted he didn’t have any inside information.
In that interview, Giuliani conceded what should have long been obvious to the outside world: that he had made wild claims based on little to no evidence, on the belief that false accusations are an acceptable part of politics.
“You could throw a fake,” he told the agents.
Trump’s 2016 victory gave Giuliani sway with the most important person on the planet: the president of the United States. The same spaghetti-on-the-wall strategy Giuliani had deployed against Clinton he now aimed in the general direction of the Biden family, trying to build a case of corruption out of Ukraine, where Joe Biden’s son Hunter had business interests. Rather than get his client Trump reelected, Giuliani helped get him impeached.
And still, people believed.
In Tampa, 38-year-old crane operator Paul Hodgkins watched a televised news conference in late 2020 in which Giuliani claimed the election had been stolen from Trump. As Giuliani spoke, what appeared to be dark hair dye oozed down the side of his face. Hodgkins thought Giuliani was not someone who would make something up or “chase fairy tales.”
By then, Giuliani had been publicly chasing fairies and goblins for the better part of four years. But Hodgkins still believed in America’s Mayor, so he went to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, took part in the pro-Trump riot and was sent to jail.
Kirtzman’s Giuliani is a tragic figure, one whose lack of fear spelled doom as he aged. Giuliani is now 78. The president is 79, the House speaker is 82, and Trump is 76. As our country’s leadership ages in place, the house of government may need more handrails.
What happened to Rudy Giuliani? The more pressing question posed by Kirtzman’s book is what happened to us, that it took so long to see it.
Devlin Barrett writes about the FBI and the Justice Department for The Washington Post and is the author of “October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election.” He was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for national reporting, for coverage of Russian interference in the U.S. election.
Devlin Barrett writes about the FBI and the Justice Department, and is the author of "October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election." He was part of reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 and 2022. In 2017 he was a co-finalist for the Pulitzer for Feature Writing and the Pulitzer for International Reporting.
I want everybody to understand where we stand. Rudy Giuliani is not America's mayor. Rudy Giuliani is not somebody that is to be trusted. Rudy Giuliani is somebody that's about to get disbarred, someone that's about to get indicted, because of his lies and his misinformation that he pushed onto the American public without any proof to back up his claims. And all of that was done for Donald J Trump, to get him back in office, to keep him in office, to be able to keep his leader in office.
Disciplinary panel calls for Rudy Giuliani's disbarment His ultimate disbarment or other penalty would be decided by the D.C. Court of Appeals. by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein Politico 07/07/2023 02:16 PM EDT Updated: 07/07/2023 02:39 PM EDT
A Washington-D.C.-based bar discipline committee concluded Friday that Rudy Giuliani should be disbarred for "frivolous" and "destructive" efforts to derail the 2020 presidential election in support of former President Donald Trump.
"He claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it," the three-member panel declared in a 38-page decision. "By prosecuting that destructive case Mr. Giuliani, a sworn officer of the Court, forfeited his right to practice law."
The D.C. disciplinary panel contended that Giuliani's efforts to aid Trump's bid to subvert the 2020 election overshadowed the renowned prosecutor and mayor's prior record.
"The misconduct here sadly transcends all his past accomplishments," they concluded. "It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect. He sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in his refusal to acknowledge the wrong he has done."
So there you have it. That's what happened.
Thank you everyone for watching. Please make sure to subscribe to MeidasTouch Network. I'll be sharing more stories in the near future from my diaries, from my home confinement. And I'll see you soon.
Michael Cohen and Miles Taylor SHARE SECRETS from WITHIN Trump’s INNER-CIRCLE by Michael Cohen Mea Culpa, MeidasTouch Premiered Jul 22, 2023 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen
On this episode of the Mea Culpa Podcast, Michael Cohen welcomes back Miles Taylor who famously served as the Deputy Chief of Staff in Homeland Security only to blow the whistle on the Trump Administration with an anonymous op/ed that pulled the lid off the dysfunction and madness lurking inside the West Wing. After resigning from the Trump Administration, Taylor joined fellow never-Trump Republicans in campaigning against his former boss. He is a frequent guest on CNN and MSNBC and offers the stark truth about Trump in a new book called “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy From the Next Trump.” With the 2024 election approaching, Taylor is back with bombshell revelations and a sobering national forecast. Through interviews with dozens of ex-Trump aides and government leaders, Taylor predicts what could happen inside “Trump 2.0,” the White House of a more competent and formidable copycat. You won’t believe what Taylor says, but trust me, it’s all 100% true.
Transcript
okay so miles in a recent LA Times op-ed you describe the problem at the moment as having less to do with Trump than with the Maga base and you wrote that and I quote these highly motivated voters are hungry famaga candidates who share their views and such views will not change overnight the next Trump will have to feed this Beast to win which means keeping the base radicalized on a steady diet of conspiracy theories about existential threats to their way of life if you do me the favor describe for my listeners how this will manifest in 2024 and how do we get past this moment or in all fairness are we just stuck with it for the foreseeable future uh Michael thanks for having me as always and look I will say this I would be the first to have hoped that it was just about Donald Trump that the man himself was an aberration and that the Republican Party had not been rotted to the Corps in fact as you know you know right after the Trump Administration I gathered a group of Republican Senators and congressmen and former cabinet members to go try to reform the GOP take it back to where it was before Trump and we failed miserably and and I'll be the first to admit that we failed and it became really evident to me in the past two years as I was working on this book that it wasn't about just Donald Trump yes he's a threat to our democracy yes he's an imminent threat to our democracy but at the same time the threat has spiraled much Beyond his control and really the GOP base has radicalized so what I was saying in that LA Times piece and what I say in blowback is that if you do a breakdown of the data you will find that the average GOP voter looks very much like the Maga politicians want them to look like they have favorable views towards political intimidation and violence they believe in mainstreamed conspiracy theories why does that matter because even if Donald Trump is not the nominee whoever the GOP nominee is will have to cater to that Maga base in order to win the presidency and it's the reason why we Face a generational struggle with the Maga movement is because the base has been so demonstrably radicalized if you look at the data that the politicians at the top of the party will continue to cater to it and and that's why I call this book a warning to save democracy from the next Trump because it might be Donald Trump in a second White House term or it might be a savvier successor a copycat that tries to carry forward the movement isn't that what they all are I've been calling Ron de sanctimonious or Rhonda snat knows Iran to Satan I've been calling him Donald Trump 2.0 forever and you take people even like a Ted Cruz you take people like Matt Gates or Josh Hawley Lauren bobert um you know uh uh you know name them just name them uh Lindsey Graham they all are Donald Trump wannabes it's so amazing it's the kind of thing that if you had a kid who acted this way in school he'd get a timeout or a smack across the side of the head right I know today you can't hit the kid right but you would certainly give him a [ __ ] time out and say hey this is unacceptable you know what else is unacceptable racism sexism misogyny xenophobia homophobia islamophobia anti-Semitism yeah they're all bad [ __ ] and why would you want to copy Donald Trump and be a trump 2.0 when you're talking about these you know these attributes it makes absolutely no sense to me but you know I I gotta say this mouse I really want to sort of dig in because I see that beautiful book you know that you have over your left shoulder there your new book called blowback I got to tell you while I was in Otisville I got I think five copies sent to me by just supporters um who sent me Anonymous and I remember I was handing them out you know first of all I put one into the library I'll tell you noticeville we had an amazing Library I must have received over 200 250 of the newest books and I would put them in there everybody would read them you know we'd have uh you know then we'd have little discussion groups about it I can't tell you the number of people that used to say to me who do you think who do you think wrote Anonymous I said I gotta tell you at some points I think it's this person but then as it moves further down I just I never would have picked you to be very honest with you but you know I am truly I'm truly ecstatic to know to know you uh and I gotta tell you I enjoyed that book I am about three quarters of the way now through blowback um it's fantastic it's definitely um a a fantastic read and I want to start I want to start today by talking about this new book blowback a warning to save America from the next Trump in one chapter you describe the Doomsday Book which contains and I quote the president's break glass options for keeping the country running in situations ranging from Global nuclear war to an armed foreign invasion of the United States I mean you then go on to describe the powers given to the president at that time as extraordinary all right now I'll list a few here from the book draft authorizations to enable the White House to unilaterally detain dangerous persons censor the news media flip an internet kill switch take over social media and suspend Americans from traveling now if you do me the favor describe for my listeners the nightmare scenario how Trump might have used the documents for non-emergency situations and how close did he actually come in trying to manufacture a crisis so that he could invoke these presidential emergency actions well Michael in writing this book I wanted to paint a very clear-eyed picture of what a second Trump Administration would look like if he retook the White House and again what it would look like if a copycat took the White House so rather than people just listening to me and what my opinion would be for my two years you know in the executive branch during the Trump Administration and dealing with the man I wanted to go interview other senior officials that worked with Trump in the White House and at every Department uh an agency you know every major department agency and Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill and ask them and their words to describe what Trump would have won what he would have done if he won re-election and what he would do a second go around the Doomsday Book was one of the more alarming things that I was told and this had never been reported previously here's the short version of the story is in 2020 as Donald Trump was getting closer to the re-election B could have potentially accessed a tool that would have allowed him to cement a a coup now what is this tool well there's a little known book this book called the Doomsday Book by National Security officials that's kept at the White House for the most extraordinary moments if the nation's under threat a nuclear war an armed foreign Invasion and it's the responsibility of one top staffer on the National Security Council to protect this book now when I was doing interviews for blowback I was told that they actually went out of their way to try to keep the president from being aware of the contents of the book from being aware of the most extraordinary powers that the president has in those circumstances because there was worry in the White House that Trump or one of his Maga allies would try to misuse those National Security powers and then there was this extraordinary moment in the lead-up to the election where the White House almost installed a Maga loyalist named Christina Bob into that job on the National Security Council now some of your listeners may know Christina Bob as one of Donald Trump's current lawyers someone who was uh on the one American News Network as a hardcore Maga uh you know talking head and she was almost placed in that position now what the White House did not know is that if they placed her in that position she would have had access to one of the most sensitive emergency manuals in the entire government this Doomsday Book and as we later found out Christina Bob was involved directly in the efforts to overturn the election thankfully this was thwarted people stopped Christina Bob from getting named to this position but we were basically that close from one of Trump's closest allies from knowing he had these extraordinary powers which he could have easily deployed to prevent the transfer of power in 2020 that was something really worrying to me and it made me think back Michael to when I was still in the administration and Trump thought his most extreme power was the Insurrection act he'd been told about it he called it his magical authorities and at one point in 2019 he wanted to write in the State of the Union that he was invoking the Insurrection act to go deploy the military to the border to stop migrants from coming in but if he had done that which we stopped him from doing it but if he had done that there's no telling where he might have used his Insurrection act powers and of course as we know uh Donald Trump clearly had an interest in doing that potentially on January 6th right so describe it though in terms of non-emergency situations and I bring that up because you know you don't need with Donald to have an emergency situation meaning you don't need to have an attack upon America on American soil Donald will deem anything to be an emergency situation if it affects him so just if you can give me like a non-emergency situation that blowback um describes in terms of how he would use this um you know this doomsday um scenario this doomsday look one of the worries uh from the people that I talk to and again keep in mind these are people who've been appointed by the Trump Administration on his National Security Council the folks that I spoke to are worried that in a second term Donald Trump would use these powers to influence elections so for instance he might Target social media companies that are opposed to him and a few uh you know the information that's in my book about what allegedly is contained in the in the Doomsday Book would allow someone like a trump to potentially do that so hypothetically he could cut off access to an internet provider or a social media company that wasn't friendly towards Donald Trump he could as one interviewee told me deploy the military uh to the polls to intimidate voters not to vote for the political opposition and instead support the Maga side he could potentially go and hunt down innocent people and political opponents and actually jail them under some of these authorities I mean this is the type of stuff Michael that you would imagine in some B-movie plot about a dictator overtaking the United States but the authorities that are again allegedly contained inside the Doomsday Book would potentially allow a trump to act like an actual autocrat and to exercise the powers that he wanted to and and that deploying of troops onto U.S soil is something I heard again and again when I talked uh to people in fact there was this story that I was told uh and I'd had some connection to it early in the administration about Trump wanting to build his own mercenary Army in the United States so everyone's familiar with the Wagner group in Russia that Putin has well Trump was jealous of the Wagner group he wanted his own private Army and in the course of the administration he tried to get AIDS to green light a proposal to work with military contractors to create his own private Army and this is something that defense officials told me Trump will pursue in a second term he will want to stand up his own mercenary group that's accountable to him so he doesn't have to worry about the U.S military exercising a conscience or the oversight committees on Capitol Hill he wants the authority to tell these troops uh where to go and what to do including deploying them on U.S streets in fact a former top counter-terrorism official from the Trump Administration called it a junior gestapo that was his worry is that if the president had been allowed to do this it would have been a junior gestapo and next go around they won't be prevented from trying to stand up these structures so explain to me then how it is I mean I can't believe you're right it sounds like a b-rated movie or a c-rated movie except for the fact that it happened to me I mean what's the difference between the way you describe a unilaterally detain what he deems dangerous persons how is it any different than an unconstitutional remand of a United States citizen a Critic as I talk about in my book Revenge right as a Critic because I refuse to waive my first amendment constitutional right I mean it's funny because you see all these [ __ ] Mega morons running around with their AR-15s and their flapjackets and their Kevlar and their [ __ ] helmets waving the 2024 Trump Banner all screaming you can't take our guns it's our Second Amendment right okay grant you that but what about my first amendment what about My First Amendment right to publish a [ __ ] book and instead because Donald didn't want that to happen he unilaterally has me detained and thrown back into solitary confinement you could bet your bottom dollar that's exactly what he will do in another term it's actually why I'm looking I'm looking outside of the country to potentially move I mean if you think that this country is going to be anything recognizable to what you've grown up in or what you were hoping to leave future Generations it will not well Michael you know people like you and I have joked Darkly in recent years about the prospect of if Trump wins reelection we will be sent to the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay and then in the course of interviewing people for this book a number of stories surfaced including and resurfaced including the fact that Trump actually did want to go put innocent civilians in the terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba better known as gitmo and in fact at one point he demanded that officials send migrants from the border into the terrorist prison at gitmo and the only reason he was persuaded not to do it wasn't because it would have been illegal but because the prison wasn't large enough to house large numbers of people these types of things will become reality in a second term now there was a phrase that someone used and again in in this book these officials are mostly cited by name someone warned that in a second term the motto of the Trump justice department would be to the blue in other words use all aspects of prosecutorial authority to go Sue political opponents harass them with special prosecutors and arrest them wherever possible and an FBI official gave me a very alarming scenario he said look we've built an entire counterterrorism apparatus in the United States to make it easy for us to find the bad guys and find out derogatory information about them he said it wouldn't be hard for a wayward president to turn that counter-terrorism apparatus against his political Rivals what was the example he cited for me was pocket litter at airports so you know when you go through TSA and you get sent to secondary screening and if you really get sent to secondary they make you open your backpack empty your pockets and they're allowed to go through some of that information including at the border they can go through in detail your electronic devices this FBI official and the book said I would worry in a second term about the White House directing that political opponents be sent into secondary to search their pocket litter so what does Eric swalwell have on his phone what does Nancy Pelosi have on her computer what dirt can they find out from politicians to use against them again Michael I would be the first to think that this sounded [ __ ] crazy if you told me a few years ago that very credible people lifetime public servants would warn that these things could actually happen but that's the worry about a second term is that Donald Trump and his allies would fully abuse these Powers I mean for instance when talking about the intelligence Community I spoke to Fiona Hill Fiona had been Donald Trump's top Russia advisor on the National Security Council and her biggest worry was that the Spy Community the intelligence agencies would be weaponized in a second term another person who served with Fiona said yes we worried about Donald Trump potentially using fisa the intelligence surveillance act to use the spy agencies to spy on political opponents and that's something that I witnessed in the Trump administration at one point the president had asked John Kelly if we could tap the phones of White House staff because he wanted to monitor them because he was worried about them saying bad things about them this man will not be held back in a second term from violating civil liberties in an extensive way you know I'm not a hundred percent certain that all of my listeners actually know who Miles Taylor truly is right and I want you to take a minute because I think it's extremely important you and I are having a very very scary conversation right now and I don't want people for a split second to think oh these are just two guys with an ax to grind you were one of his former aides do me a favor explain your position right describe your relationship with Donald I mean how it started you know and where you know do you still have you know relationships with those who remain in his orbit because this book is like a horror movie I I mean I it's it's like another scream or another Freddy [ __ ] Krueger if you think about it it really is it's terrifying if you read between the lines of what's going on here so if you would again describe the relationship what you did at DHS and what your role was and so on because I really want people to take not just this conversation serious but I want them to read the book and I want them to understand the way I see blowback I see it as almost the um uh we'll call it the second chapter of my book Revenge which should have scared the [ __ ] out of people in the first place that in and of itself like a bookend you know to revenge is really what I see it as if you're not scared shitless from the weaponization of the justice department well we blowback and see what else this Maniac could do well you know Michael and I'll get to you know I'll go back in time here in a second but you were one of the first to predict it I mean the title of your book Revenge you said was going to be Donald Trump's watchword if he won the White House again and some people may have heard that and thought it was an overreactive well guess who has said it will be the highest priority in a second Trump Administration Donald Trump he has said retribution will be his goals so people like you who sounded that alarm weren't you know Fanning the Flames of outlandish rhetoric you were pointing to a very specific very real incredible threat and Trump has made clear what that retribution will look like and the purpose of blowback is to spell that out across every department and agency how will Trump's allies intend to weaponize the federal government against opponents and again they don't have to hear it from me I I cite people who had been close to the president and some who are still his confidants in this book but going back in time as you asked Michael you know I had no interest in getting involved in politics in fact I absolutely hate talking about politics I love talking to you I hate being out there about politics because like you I started my career in a totally different space and that was in National Security and I wanted to remain in National Security and I went into government during the Bush Administration after 9 11 worked in the Pentagon in the White House and vice president Cheney's office on Capitol Hill working on counterterrorism issues and then at the Department of Homeland Security all throughout that time my focus was cyber security counterintelligence combating nation-state threats from Russia and China it just wasn't American politics but when Trump was running for office uh I got very involved in Paul Ryan's efforts when he was speaker of the house to try to stop Trump because I was really worried about the damage he would do to the Republican party I thought there was no chance he could win the presidency but I thought in the process he would ruin the GOP so I got involved in what Paul Ryan called his Trump inoculation plan and clearly we failed miserably we failed to prevent Trump from winning the nomination and ultimately from winning the presidency now I had no desire to go work with a man like that but then a mentor of mine someone I looked up to John Kelly got picked to go be Homeland Security secretary and I was very persuaded Michael by this notion of an axis of adults that was going to keep Trump stable educate him and the job and try to keep the executive branch on the rails when this very demonstrably unhinged guy took the job uh we were wrong though I went in I took a job as John Kelly's National Security National security advisor eventually became Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security and we spent a lot of time with Trump in the Oval Office on Air Force One and the White House Situation Room but most importantly DHS we were with Trump in moments of Consequence the most important decisions he would have to make in addition to those having to do with the military to protect lives and livelihoods in the American way of life against hurricanes and tornadoes and terrorists and Chinese spies those are the moments we would go be with the president and I've got to tell you the thing that shocked me and got me to quit that Administration and campaign against him was just absolutely how undisciplined and irresponsible he was in moments when American lives were on the line and you saw Michael firsthand all the time he was very flippant he was disinterested in the facts and he was incredibly Reckless uh when it when it really counted and moments that really counted and and that worried me that's why I ultimately quit the administration tried to sound the alarm first with an anonymous opinion piece but then unmasking myself and and that that's one thing that I write about in this book is it's ironic coming from me but I really do think anonymity is a danger to our democracy and I wish I had come forward even sooner because pulling the mask off made it easier for other people to come forward too and I think the worry the second time around is we still have very senior Republicans like the Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy who still support Donald Trump in public but in private will still say the man is a danger we need those people to unmask themselves and tell the truth and ironically Michael some of the people I spoke to in this book some of those senior Republicans looked me in the eye and said I need you not to use my name in the book and ask me to keep them Anonymous that's a problem these people need to come forward and and throughout this period I'll be urging the people who spoke to me in the book who didn't want to use their names to come out and attach their names to those comments yeah and they should by the way do you have any um your remaining in relations with anybody still in Trump's orbit are you hearing anything um look the funny thing is you don't even really need to hear it from secondhand people Donald says it himself I will be your Vengeance right I will be your judge your jury your executioner the problem though is that the guy's an idiot right and his entire term while he remains alive because he will never ever leave that office it may I'm telling you not because of age he will never leave that office he will avoid a one-term addition he will avoid he will try to become as you said an autocrat as I say all the time a monarch the supreme leader the fuhrer you know the king that's what he wants to be he tells us exactly what he's going to do and yet you're right there are still people like the Kevin McCarthy's that they just don't care and you know when they start to care you know when they start to care um they start to care when it hap when something happens to them right so let me just take you back in time for a second where Trump attacked you via social media as well as at a rally in Tampa all right you talk about this in the book as someone who's experienced this you know attacks by Trump on multiple occasions describe for my listeners how you felt when this [ __ ] was happening to you how it changed your life not only then but also today now
[Miles Taylor] well no one has to have sympathy for me Michael but like you I think it's a really important to paint a clear picture of what it looks like when the president of the United States a vindictive twice impeached disgraced president of the United States comes don't forget sexual assaulter and you got to add that to the list this guy's got a long rap sheet now um but it's it's pretty extraordinary and we're witnessing this explosion in political intimidation and violence in our country and when I came out against Trump uh it far exceeded my worst visions of what could happen now let's say for instance I had quit the Bush Administration in protests and campaigned against my former boss President W bush which I wouldn't have done and very much enjoyed my time in the Bush Administration but let's say I had all that would have happened to me is they would have said well you're not in the tribe anymore and we don't affiliate with you that's about it but quitting the Trump Administration and campaigning against the former president as I often say ended up costing me my home it cost me my job it cost me close relationships it cost my family their security and my own security such that I ended up on Election night 2020 in a safe house in Northern Virginia under armed guard and facing death threats because of how serious the situation had become now at the time I thought maybe that was unique in in how extreme it was and how extreme the vitriol was from Trump supporters after he named me in those rallies and continued to urge people to look me up but then I heard story after Story of federal state local official officials especially in the post-election period that experienced the same thing these crowd-sourced death threats the doxing the attempts to find them I mean I had my I had people posting pictures of my sister and my nieces in their home and their addresses and saying our blood would be in the streets I mean this is really terrifying stuff and there's no playbook for it for when your family is hit with this and this was happening across the country now you know for the book in blowback I talked to a number of people like Adam kinzinger former Republican member of Congress Denver riggleman and others and they made clear to me that their colleagues in the house those that the very few that spoke out against Donald Trump they had to go get pistols Concealed Carry Permits for their children and family members I mean the threats got really extreme and a lot of those people ended up leaving Congress because of it and and saying so so publicly Fred Upton who was a congressman Republican congressman from Michigan stalwart conservative said he just couldn't put up with the threats anymore I think his comment to me was you know I'm fast but I'm not that fast and you know these people are crazy um I I never thought I would see that in my life that we would have public officials running for their lives and and to put a data point on it Michael the chatter we are seeing about threats to American public servants especially from the far right is greater in volume than the chatter we saw after 9 11 in terms of threats to public service so just put that in perspective the largest terrorist attack in the history of the world we are seeing in some senses a higher statistical Threat Level now than we did in that window and it's coming from inside the house because in your book you talk about that Tampa rally you talk about multiple rallies and Donald's line that he used and I quote bad things are going to happen to him naming you what let me just be very clear knowing Donald as well as I do and I do know him I haven't been wrong yet what he was doing is he was sending a coded message to that veswath of the 28 of the GOP that is seriously indoctrinated into the cult where maybe he was hoping that something bad was going to happen to you and by saying it this way he still leaves himself with enough wiggle room to say I didn't even know this kid I didn't want to see anything happen to anybody but I predicted when you do [ __ ] like this bad things happen to people right what he's doing is the same sort of nonsense that he does it's part of the Trump Playbook he was calling to action these magomaniacs that are willing to go to prison for him right for periods of time whether it's 90 days or 18 years simply based upon what they determine and and Michael as you know we actually have seen people respond to the call not just January 6th of course which is which is the biggest example but you know when authorities raided Trump's home a year ago looking for the classified documents that he stole you know he called the FBI the fascist Bureau of Investigation days later we had a guy with an AR-15 and a nail gun storm and FBI field office on behalf of trump they do respond to this call and when he came out in my case and he said bad things are going to happen to Miles Taylor it was a dog whistle as you know it was a command for people to do bad things uh and again no one has to have sympathy for me I went into this fight clear-eyed but if you just want to get a sample of those message I mean go to my Twitter page at Miles Taylor USA I've got a clip at the top there of just a sample of the voicemails people like me people like you Michael and others get from these lunatics who find our information they're not just doing that because they stumbled on us on the web it's because people like Trump have made it clear that their supporters should harass us and our families and and our friends and innocent people around us uh and and that's something that I think is really alarming because it's spread Beyond Donald Trump again his ethos has infected the Republican party don't believe me again look at the examples people give in blowback and I'll give you two examples now about how trumpism has spiraled even beyond what Donald Trump was willing to do there was two things in the first term he wanted us to do that he walked back from one was busing and dumping migrants and Sanctuary cities and another was cleaning house at the FBI let me drill into both of those on the busing and dumping of migrants president said to us in 2019 I want you to take the murderers the criminals and the rapists that you catch at the border DHS and I want you to ship them into Democratic cities to cause chaos and disorder and instability this was a real request from the White House I had to go to our lawyers and get them to tell me in writing yes this would be illegal which I passed along to the White House the chief of staff Stephen Miller and said we cannot do this Trump grudgingly held back second the president wanted to gut the FBI and we know he fired Jim Comey but then he stopped short because he was worried about getting impeached well guess what those two thwarted Trump policies are now mainstream positions of the Republican Party Ron DeSantis and Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas have both picked up the busing and dumping of migrants concept with alacrity and now they're using migrants as political pawns around the country look at the FBI we all thought that was a fringe Donald Trump policy position that he wanted to cleanse the nation's Premier investigative agency but now if he returns to power Trump we know wants to install political loyalists over there and it's become a top talking point of the Republican party was is to take a wrecking ball to that institution and install political operatives effectively these are two examples of trumpism infecting The Wider GOP and I think it's what we could expect if Trump or a copycat wins the White House is those things that he was prevented from doing being implemented on stair droids in a second term yeah look I I get it um I I really get it uh I I had a problem with Trump's desire to completely eradicate the FBI complete I mean literally he wanted to get rid of the entire agency now to get rid of one person I get it you know he has the right to do that James Comey only serves at the pleasure of Donald Trump as the president and I'm not a massive fan of Comey uh to be very honest with you I think Comey has a lot of um personal desires on his own you know if I ask the average person name two FBI directors well everybody knows right J Edgar Hoover I mean everybody just knows that name because he's been such a interesting character over the course of the last you know 50 years uh books written about him movies made about him about his Antics and so on and then you ask him well name another name another now I always would say Louis freed why he was Jewish right and so you know that for me yeah I was always impressed that there was you know a Jew who could make it you know to the head of the FBI most people couldn't name another FBI director until James Comey he wanted to be that number two that number three that everybody would know his name well my brother this ain't [ __ ] cheers all right and you know everybody didn't need to know your name one of the reasons most people don't know FBI directors is because they kind of stay silent they stay to the side but not Comey he was very much front and center and at like six foot seven you know not it's not an easy task if you know what I mean well it and I think that we're gonna see uh unfortunately if in a second Trump Administration and a trump 2.0 other departments and agencies that you would normally think should be in obscurity being front and center and one of those Michael that I was again very surprised by in these conversations was the Department of Veterans Affairs we don't talk about the VA very much people think of it as a sleepy institution that does the right thing and it takes care of America's veterans in the course of writing blowback I spoke to Trump's top appointees who were running the Department of Veterans Affairs who revealed to me that there were plans in a second term to quote detonate the VA and gut veterans health care benefits why because Donald Trump found out that the VA had the second biggest budget in the federal government 250 billion dollars and he wanted to use it as a piggy bank he was frustrated spending money on Veterans as we know he has a long history of animosity towards military veterans because presumably it's because he's self-conscious about the fact that he himself didn't serve and his top officials told me they're named in the book that Trump wanted to detonate the VA kick veterans out on the street and he didn't care because in the in the words of one former deputy secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs he thought veterans were quote lazy malingerers and he wanted to spend that money elsewhere this is really disturbing for a lot of reasons one because Americans want to take care of their military veterans but no no no no I'm so sorry miles Americans are obligated to take care of the veterans they fought for us their saved our democracy they put their lives on the line we [ __ ] owe it to them all right and I'm going to tell you a couple stories also uh as it relates to the VA don't forget I was the one who brought David shulkin the secretary of the VA to the table because I knew David from well before um you know way way before Donald ever did well yeah and and Michael I would love to hear your your perspective on this because this was something I didn't expect uh folks to say is that there would be this priority to essentially break the veterans Health Care apparatus in a second term and what was more alarming is that department leaders said they had the authority to do it you know the president had the authority if he wanted to execute that order to destroy the veterans safety net which not only throw the throws those millions of veterans potentially out on the street but actually the American Health Care System people don't realize is heavily dependent on the VA a lot of doctors their very first job is they go into the veterans Health Care system so this would be a major national security crisis to break that veterans Health Care system I was told the only reason Trump was persuaded not to do that in a first term his political advisors convinced him that it would hurt him very badly and re-elect him with of course the veterans community if he broke the veterans Healthcare Network so they shelved it to wait to a second term to destroy that institution people need to wake up I mean we all remember in 2020 the stories coming out about Trump being in France talking about veterans being suckers and losers because they died uh you know in combat this perception is not just a gross Viewpoint it's one that could affect the lives of millions of American veterans if we give the Maga movement another shot at the White House but Michael I'm curious to hear you know what you thought you know I'm going to get oh yeah I'm going to get into that in about a half second I did just want to ask you one quick question because as a result of you know Trump's comments and again I know this all too well and it's it's [ __ ] painful they you stated in the book that um there was a billionaire who was actually willing to fund your security detail but you ended up not accepting it I'm just curious because you don't name who the billionaire is me personally I can't find anybody you know to help me despite you know all of my cooperation I'm just curious um who was the billionaire that has enough um Moxie and enough um uh well what's the right word for it um it's just has enough empathy for somebody like yourself who put his ass on the line for this country right by exposing the dangers of trump that they'd be willing to fund your security well uh you know ironically that person wishes to remain anonymous and and I'll respect those wishes but I but I gotta tell you Michael you know what it's like in that moment when you turn against the tribe there are very few people there to support you and this is someone who I didn't know someone who I knew of and admired because they're a public person who reached out in the wake of trump saying bad things are going to happen to Miles Taylor and someone who was very perceptive in knowing that that would result in an avalanche of death threats against our family and the person reached out and said look I know you can't afford it let me help you get protection and I was really grateful for that Outreach but but you make a really good point Michael most folks especially these public servants on the front lines who continue to get threatened for defending democracy they don't have a Silicon Valley billionaire who's going to call them on speed dial and say I'd like to help out I mean we're talking about something that's become an epidemic the political intimidation and threats and violence and you know Trump and his allies in the market movement continue uh to promote that such that we're seen in polls I mean there was an NPR poll that showed one in four Americans have a favorable attitude of violence towards the government there was a famous University of Chicago survey last year that showed one in 10 Americans some some 35 million American adults believed that force would be justified to restore Donald Trump to the White House run in 10 Americans believing we should forcibly put him back in the White House we've never seen numbers like that from a public safety and National Security perspective you know I've made this point on television which I thought um was going to get more attention but it really didn't so here I am now the recipient of a lawsuit by Trump a 500 million dollar lawsuit southern district of Miami it's a complete [ __ ] case it's retaliation Against Me Again by Donald because of the DA's case and the AGS case and um my case going to trial against him on July 24th it's all retaliation by Donald and Adam Park menko God bless this guy went ahead created this website uh GoFundMe right I had nothing to do with he did it and so then turned it over to my lawyer I think we've raised about 225 000. um the initial is going to be 250 000 that's needed just to get to the Discovery stages which we're at right now and so it's probably going to cost close to a million dollars this litigation to defend myself I'm at 225 000. now don't get me wrong I thank every supporter from the one guy who gave 50 Grand to the person who donated a dollar I thank every supporter I truly do but then there's this guy on the subway here in New York who choked a homeless guy out and killed him and he's already raised over three and a half million dollars for his defense fund right I mean he choked the guy out the guy the guy who he choked out probably weighed 120 130 pounds wet chokes him out and yet the right the right wing they're so okay with the violence that in drones they just give money whether it's ten dollars twenty or a hundred makes no difference this guy has three plus million dollars in the bank for his use for defense Etc I don't get it I don't get it my lawsuit is to hold Donald Trump accountable right this is the kind of action that's going to put Donald on the stand and we're gonna learn a whole lot more about about the guy but for some unknown reason I can't explain it the conservative they just I I I don't they just they just give I can't explain it you know what I mean um they just I mean I think Michael you're the perfect example of how there is an active strategy right now in Maga circles to sue opponents of the former president into silence and we've seen that with a number of folks what do you think my 500 million dollar lawsuit is you think that's not to keep me silent Stephanie Grisham Olivia Troy I mean they're going after people who they see as a threat and trying to sue them into silence and it's really important for folks to stand up and back those individuals like you so that they can continue to tell the truth about Trump and hold them accountable because they actually perceive this to be an effective strategy because they know how expensive it is to tie people up in litigation that Trump used to talk about it I mean you and I've talked about this before I'm sure he said it far more often in your presence but I remember him coming into the Oval Office and saying this is how you get people to do things you want you soothing I used to do that for him but not not to take away people's constitutional rights I'm talking against you know other developers I'm talking against you know contractors I'm talking you know [ __ ] like that things that nobody has any business other than between the Trump organization Donald and the president CEO of whoever the contractor was I mean we're not talking about Apples to Apples though that's what he learned he learned that he could take advantage of these contractors of these smaller people by scaring the [ __ ] out of them into a 500 million dollar lawsuit but at this point in time I'm so beaten and damaged it ain't gonna happen all right I'm just I walk with my head up high like you right I'm not thinking about these threats from these lunatics right I I like you I also don't have a security detail that's okay right I'm gonna continue to do my thing I'm going to continue to speak truth to power and I'm going to continue to ensure that Donald Trump is held accountable not the things that he didn't do but for things that he did do the things that if it was you and certainly as it was for me you end up seeing prison in time right now let me just jump in for a second and talk to you about the whole thing with the um Secretary of the VA so I knew David shulkin through mutual friends for years for years and Donald first was looking at a handful of different people and none of them wanted the job remember he didn't have his book prepared that if in fact he won the election that we would already be calling up John Kelly we'd be calling up you know um David shulkin we'd be calling up whoever these cabinet members might be he thought it was bad luck he didn't want to do it I took from scaramucci his book on uh Romney that he had to show Trump what it looks like and he said it was bad luck give it to Steve Bannon you know or give it to kellyanne Conway I don't want to see it I'm not doing it and it wasn't that he didn't do it because it was bad luck he didn't do it because he never thought he was going to win and he thought it would be a waste of time calling all of these people and maybe he would feel that he would owe them something if they said yes so all of a sudden everybody's now scrambling to find Qualified people that they knew for various positions including ambassadorships and so on well in this specific case he could not find anybody to take on the role of the secretary of the VA and I turned around I said to him hey boss there's a guy named Dave shulkin who I happen to know for a long time in fact David currently is the under Secretary of the VA under Obama to which Donald looks to me he goes Michael are you out of your [ __ ] mind I said why so he goes why in the world what kind of an [ __ ] would I look like if I bring in someone like this guy who's a Democrat who had previously worked under the Obama Administration as the assistant under as the undersecretary to the VA I said boss he's a Republican I said he's really qualified he's an administrator in fact just to give you an idea when Melania burned herself at Bedminster he's the one that we got in order to help her through the entire process because she you know she Burns herself without water uh at Bedminster he goes yeah I'm like yeah and in fact Melania liked him a lot you liked him you were even sent him a thank you card so he goes oh okay bring him in and then there were others that were going to work in some sort of a think tank with the VA but the whole goal at that time was to dismantle the VA and it was an interesting thought process sell off everything that's the VA and you'll have a ton of money that's there because the VA there is a substantial in his mind there's a substantial amount of waste there's facilities that have all brand new equipment that's not even being used and the service in Trump's opinion because this is it means to an end that the service is not even secondary not even tertiary it's sub service by these doctors that are building the system and this again is all part where we'll sell off the equipment to third world countries and have a couple of billion dollars sitting in the back but what they wanted to do is to offer to every veteran a special United States government military insurance card that every doctor has to accept it be like a Medicare Medicaid but it's any doctor that you want to go to and they must give you an appointment within 24 hours that part I kind of liked where that these veterans that are going through whether it's emotional issues ptsds they need medication uh they have uh injuries that are causing them pain they must be seen within 24 hours all right I thought the idea was great but to dismantle the entire VA simply so that you know they can Bank all of this money to the side so he could use it for other things like military or just to park to the side for infrastructure that's just wrong you don't do that to people if you're going to try to make something right uh out of the VA to improve it try to figure out how to improve it for the people that need it the most and that's the people that put the most on the line for our country Michael you said it so well and and I think you make a very important point which is you know the VA system as as a lot of veterans know is broken it has to be reformed but Trump's own people went to him at the White House from the VA and said what you want to do with the Wrecking Ball approach will kill veterans you've got to phase this in if you want to take this Wrecking Ball and gut the VA to use it as a piggy bank you are going to put lives in danger that's not what persuaded Donald Trump not to do it what persuaded him is that it would hurt his re-election to do it and I think that's the big concern is policies like this these zombie policies uh will come back to life if he's restored to the White House that's that's the big concern yeah I totally agree so let me ask you so let me just go to one more juicy bit in the book If you would talk to me about Trump and Ivanka and what he said to John Kelly Chris I've heard him speak like this before but I want I want it from your mouth I want to know your experience as it relates to uh what was said and in what context Etc yeah you know the misogyny inside Trump's world is really well known and you know you've seen it Michael with him and I saw it with senior female figures in the administration who he made inappropriate comments about their makeup and their weight and you know things of a sexual nature I mean that was almost second hand for comments like that to happen in his orbit now the one that John Kelly had shared with me I wasn't there for this but you know Kelly's unimpeachable in his Integrity in my view was it comment that the president had made about thinking that ivanka's breasts and her backside were so attractive that he would want to have sex with her which prompted Kelly to say to the president you know she's your daughter Mr President the fact that his own chief of staff had to remind him that the person's body they were talking about was his own daughter it was really disgusting to me and as Kelly relayed the story his comment was Miles Trump is a very very evil man and I actually debated Michael about whether to include that story in this book because it's so disgusting it's so outlandish but I've got to think that even Maga supporters of Donald Trump will draw the line at incest right there's at least got to be a line there and that's who this man is it's important for them to know the character of this person that a lot of them still worship who is the head of the Republican Party who's leading the GOP field right now is a man who's made incestuous comments and I actually didn't even realize Michael until this story came out how extensive that history is of his perverse comments about his daughter until people started to send me Super Cuts of these radio interviews and TV interviews and print interviews where he's made these sexualized references uh to his daughter so look I'm a national security guy not a political guy but dear God if I have any political Instinct whatsoever it's hopefully that people will hear about a politician expressing incestuous feelings towards his own daughter and think that person's not fit for public office yeah I mean maybe that person is not fit to to walk around our streets in in our you know in our great country I mean well they have a place for people like that Michael they have a place for people like that and it's pretty yeah it's it's called hell right so if if you would Jay talk to talk to me about schedule right they I've always heard there was that thing right there's a special place in hell for people like that incest come on man you know I mean he used to talk about Ivanka as being you know every girl wants to be like Ivanka and every guy wants to sleep with her that's why he would send her on certain tasks and I've said that you know publicly before so obviously everything that you're saying here is um you know as far as I'm concerned brings truth so if you would talk to me about what is schedule f um I mean what it what what exactly is it and how will it affect the government should Trump get reelected yeah well you know schedule F is one of those things Michael that sounds like a boring bureaucratic term and could also be a bulldozer in a second Trump Administration so this is an authority that the president had developed When Donald Trump was still in office that would have given him the ability to fire America's civil servants at Key departments and agencies so the public servants who aren't political they're appointed you know experts across the government and you know at the time people thought again this was outlandish because we have Civil Service protections of this in this country so that if you get hired to work for NASA or you get hired to work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as an expert that you keep your job regardless of who's President democrat or republican that those experts stay and we don't replace them with political campaign AIDS and lackeys and Loyalists because we want a federal government that functions right the person who disperses the social security check could not be a trump minion it's just someone who you know needs to know how to disperse Social Security checks but Trump wanted to fire these people because he believed there was a so-called deep State out to get him and so they developed this Authority called schedule F to be able to fire tens of thousands of federal civil servants since that time and this is another example of trumpism extending beyond the former president a lot of his acolytes have praised the idea of schedule F and have said they will bring it back if they are elected to office and you can count on the fact that in a second Trump Administration that they would fire tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of civil servants to cleanse the government to install political loyalists again don't believe me believe Trump's own aides who in this book talk to me about the different places that could happen and especially there were concerns among the people I talked to about the emergency response functions of the government and Trump's desire to install in those agencies people who would weaponize federal aid to support red States and to punish blue States and I also saw this firsthand when there was a tornado or a hurricane Trump was always looking for leverage in the form of Federal Aid ah is the government going to send billions to help people whose houses have burned down well is it a blue state if it's a blue State I want you to hold back the money until I get something from them that's not how the federal government's supposed to operate when you dial 9-1-1 they don't say are you a democrat or a republican before they come respond they come respond in a second Trump Administration there will be a litmus test a political litmus test for whether Americans get the federal aid they need in emergencies and he'll do that by being able to gut the bureaucracy of those experts with scheduling absolutely 100 so look Mom the hour goes by really quickly I could sit and probably have you on for two hours I want to ask you one last question because some of this actually resulted from your first book Anonymous which my understanding in speaking to people that were still in his orbit at the time was driving him [ __ ] crazy they couldn't figure out who was uh who was it that wrote this book and how many other as he would call them leakers are there out there there came a point in time that Trump actually talked about having White House AIDS phones tapped I mean this is unfucking precedented right I mean the closest of course would be Nixon but that doesn't it pales in comparison what do you know about this you know Stephanie Grisham who I spoke to for both this book and a podcast with I heart media called the whistleblowers actually told me more about this than I had even realized at the time which was you know she said that the op-ed when it dropped the anonymous op-ed and then and then my book a warning drove the president so crazy that they would be in completely unrelated meeting and he would quiz everyone in the room about who it was he tweeted at the time reason question mark formed a task force to try to hunt down the author and became so paranoid that he said the white house chief of staff John Kelly that he wanted to wiretap the phones of White House staff and I remember that being shared with me at the time and and being just so astonished that the president of the United States could be that ignorant of the law to think that he had the ability to just wiretap innocent civilians even if they worked for him to monitor their phones and get away with it these are the types of things that we should fully expect him to do if he comes back into office there won't be John Kelly's to tell him as Kelly did at the time no Mr President you cannot do that that's illegal there will be people who say yes and you know there were folks who in writing blowback told me exactly that that they believed that Trump will try to weaponize the U.S intelligence Community to monitor political Rivals and also his own team potentially in a second term and it's not speculation because he tried to do it we know he tried to do it we were there and you know just there's an avalanche just a mountain if you will of evidence of how absolutely unfit this man is for public office I even though was astonished by the things that people shared might happen in the second term if Trump or a copycat goes back to the White House well as always miles great to see you my friend great to speak to you stay safe thank you for joining me thank you for providing this information which is so desperate as we you know come close to the 2024 election which is why I constantly say not just here but on my other podcast political Beatdown vote blue thanks Mike to see you my brother I'll see you soon
Former Trump Insider [Miles Taylor] EXPOSES Trump MISHANDLING Classified Info and MORE by Ben Meiselas MeidasTouch Jul 24, 2023 MeidasTouch Podcast - Full Episodes
Ben Meiselas interviews former Donald Trump official Miles Taylor, who became an outspoken whistleblower against Donald Trump. Miles is out with a new book warning about the dangers of another Trump term and how our democracy will be destroyed if that happens. Meiselas gets Miles to deliver some breaking news exclusively with the MeidasTouch Network that Miles Taylor saw Donald Trump mishandle classified information. Special Counsel Jack Smith, are you listening?
Transcript
I'm Ben Meiselas from the Meidas touch Network and we are joined by Miles Taylor miles previously served as the chief of staff at the U.S Department of Homeland Security in the Trump Administration where he published an anonymous essay in the New York Times blowing the whistle on Donald Trump miles has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump giving us an inside perspective of the dangers posed by this malignant narcissistic unqualified sociopathic criminal traitor and Miles a New York Times Best Sellers out with a new book blow back a warning to save democracy from the next Trump was released on July 18th I've had the opportunity to read it and now I have the opportunity to speak with you Miles Taylor and share it with all of the Midas Mighty watching out there how you doing Ben I'm just glad you didn't introduce me as a narcissistic sociopathic criminal traitor so you know if I ever enter that territory I need you to send me a text message and call me out but uh but it's always great to be with you and uh and I've got to say uh just the other day she's gonna get a kick out of this but my stepmom said I hope you're talking to the Midas touch guys because I love them and I said you will be delighted to see on the schedule that I am that is so good to hear that she's a part of the Midas Mighty and knowing that she's gonna be watching this interview so let's get right into it you know and I've seen a lot of your interviews out there we've covered your book in some of these segments we do here on the Meidas touch Network so our viewers are familiar but there's one nagging question that I haven't heard you've been asked by anybody yet and it relates to Donald Trump's handling of classified information and if you've observed anything about that yesterday there was a big ring in the Federal Criminal Case brought by special counsel Jack Smith against Donald Trump for his willful retention of National Defense information so I think the million dollar question out there that I've never heard you've been asked is did you Miles Taylor observe Donald Trump mishandling classified information and has special counsel Jack Smith reached out to you?
[Miles Taylor] well you know Ben uh I did and I haven't heard from the special counsel but you know I'm I'm willing to say I'm I'm more than happy to talk to the special counsel and his team if it's additive to this case and I think there's actually probably a lot of other people from the administration who could add color to this Narrative of Trump's really really reckless handling of National Security Secrets which we saw all throughout the administration in my case there were several episodes I mean one was getting a phone call early in the administration from Trump's Homeland Security advisor who uh called to say that the president had just disclosed highly classified information in the Oval Office uh not just to some civilians and tourists but to a foreign adversary it's when the Russians were visiting the white house uh and and that was publicly reported the Sensitivity I think people still don't understand the extreme sensitivity of what Trump had shared but it didn't stop there because after that we became really concerned about what to share with Donald Trump and when because we had no confidence that he would protect highly classified information that we put in front of him because he had a proclivity to talk about those things he liked having leverage which was you know secrets that other people didn't know that he did know and I saw him brag about it uh you know in a number of occasions and and one that stood out in particular was a day that I was sitting in John Bolton's office having a conversation with him when he was Trump's National Security adviser and and Sarah Sanders then press secretary enters sort of breathlessly to say that Trump had just had a meeting with a group of reporters and sort of carelessly picked up a fistful of classified documents and waved it in front of the reporters to brag about the sensitive intelligence he got as commander-in-chief it was a it was an unbelievable lapse in protocol but I think is in indicative of a wider Behavior we saw from Donald Trump which was again a failure to protect those secrets that American lives depend on and we've seen it since the administration so I do hope the special counsel is building out a longer historical Narrative of Trump's mishandling of documents so that they can show that what happened with the documents at Mar-A-Lago was by no means some accident or just a brief lapse
[Ben Meiselas] And you'd be willing to testify and speak with special counsel Jack Smith about your observations about how Donald Trump continuously mishandled classified information while you were in the administration correct well look I'd be happy to talk to any of the investigators in any of these cases that have to do with the former president because I think there is really important historical context to a lot of these cases so I mean let's take January 6th and the Insurrection for example the special counsel is investig creating Trump's failure to respond to that incident or more directly his fomenting of an attempted Insurrection against the capital but I think one of the things that will be really important in that case is telling the story of how Trump had an affinity for this idea of invoking the Insurrection act years before he uh ended up fomenting January 6. then it's something that I talk about in blowback is you know as far back as I remember an episode in 2019 when we had to rush to the White House to stop Donald Trump from including the Insurrection act in his State of the Union Address he had seen on Fox News these images of migrants coming to the border and Trump was well aware that he had in his words this magical Authority called the Insurrection act where he could deploy the U.S military on domestic soil and he wanted to exert that power and he was this close to including that in his State of the Union and saying that he was invoking the Insurrection act that it was a national emergency and he was going to deploy U.S troops uh on soil uh to you know turn migrants away migrants who had a lawful right to come to the United States by the way people seeking Asylum and we ultimately talked him out of it we got his lawyers to stand down but what this shows is that this was in Donald Trump's mind years earlier he knew that if there was an incident like an Insurrection at the Capitol it would give him pretext to potentially invoke those extraordinary presidential powers and that's why I think he sat there in the west wing of the White House for hours and watched the event unfold is that he was waiting for the moment when he felt like he could justify invoking those Powers now that is speculation on my part but I think it's completely backed up by the history of him wanting to use those authorities for unlawful purposes well what's not specular Nation though on your part and you've talked about this before and I want you to share with the Meidas Mighty what you observed Donald Trump wanted to build out his own mercenary force similar to what he observed with Vladimir Putin and he talked about in a serious way building out his own personal Army to guard him and protect him and carry out his will did he not?
[Miles Taylor] yeah I mean this this sounds like the type of thing that is in a is in a bad Hollywood flop you know just a really bad screenplay but it was the president of the United States that wanted his own mercenary force and I witnessed some of the chaos around this internally in the administration in the first year is we were in the process of briefing Trump on Afghanistan and trying to give him options for what to do next because we were worried that Trump was going to recklessly handle the exit from Afghanistan and that people would die U.S troops and civilians uh because of the way that he wanted to just pull out in an instant he needed a much more sequenced uh reasonable plan so that troops wouldn't be put in danger civilians wouldn't be put in danger in the course of us developing those options we got word that the president was having private conversations with people about potentially creating his own mercenary force that could be deployed into Afghanistan allegedly one of those people he was talking to was Eric Prince the controversial founder of Blackwater the Blackhawks Ops group that got a lot of attention during the Iraq War um and thankfully we talked him down from this and in the process of that you can read about it in the book was was absurd I mean you know John Kelly called me and said you know this 50-page memo that we would normally give to any other president about what his options are is something Trump literally can't read the man doesn't read we've got to boil this down into a one-pager in his voice and so I had to write this incandescently stupid memo called something like Afghanistan how to put America First and win and then Bullet by Bullet I summed up this highly classified memo into Trump's sort of bombastic language because it was the only way he was going to understand I mean I literally said in there you know if we leave Afghanistan too fast the terrorists will call us losers but if we want to be seen as winners we need to make sure the Afghan forces have the strength to push push back against these criminals I mean it was it was that dumb and that's how you had to talk to him so you know I had to write this this absurdly stupid memo in Trump's voice to persuade him to really take the serious options seriously and not go create a private mercenary force that he could send into Afghanistan instead of the military but then in the course of writing this book I didn't want people just to hear from me I wanted them to hear from dozens and dozens of dozens of people almost all of them Republicans who were appointed by Trump or were Republican members of Congress about what would happen in a second term and in the course of those interviews someone brought up this idea of a mercenary Force again a top official on Trump's National Security Council said that after I left the idea came back again and that Trump desperately wanted to create his own armed mercenary group so much so that the NSC had to scramble to write these memos and brief Trump and explain to him why it was a bad idea and they they ultimately shut it down but what was clear to them is that he had this deep Envy of Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin's own Wagner group right his sort of unaccountable you know band of uh you know ex-military Fighters that he directly controlled now we've all seen how that worked out for Vladimir Putin but Trump wanted his own group like that and a number of other officials former top counter terrorism officials and folks from different departments and agencies said that they also had seen plans on the Shelf to deploy the U.S military domestically to deploy DHS Security Forces domestically with political aims and that's what they worry about in a second term and it's what I worry about in a second term I mean one of the people I spoke to for this book who was on Trump's National Security Council appointed by the president said look in a second term they will try to take DHS forces and they will send them to polling places in the name of election security but the goal will be to have armed individuals at the polls to intimidate the political opposition and Ben we saw this in Arizona in the last election these so-called ballot Watchers these militia men who showed up with guns and their goal wasn't to protect the polls from violence their goal was to scare Democrats away from voting and to have one of Trump's own senior National Security Council officials say in the second term he'll do that and he'll do that with official state Security Forces is I think deeply deeply just disturbing it's the kind of thing you would hear about in a story about a third world Republic about a North Korea or an Iran uh not the United States but that's the moment that we're in and that's the possibility we're facing yeah and both unlawful and stupid when you when you look at some of his ideas and you talk about in the book how Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff someone you mentioned earlier in the interview John Kelly made the comment that you heard that look one-third of the things that Donald Trump does is illegal one-third of them is just completely stupid and one-third of that is not possible did I butcher the quote or do I get it about right well that's that's about right I mean you know Kelly's point was that um you know we rarely have credible ideas uh from the president and you know that was a point in the administration shortly before Kelly left and and he was growing immensely frustrated at his inability to sort of hem Donald Trump in uh you know year one I think we were able to keep a lot of the bad ideas in the Box you know his plans to pull out of NATO or shoot migrants at the border uh or you know weaponize America's spy Powers against his political opponents you know those things were put back in the box but by year two you know Trump was resisting these people who had a conscience around him and if you can give him credit for anything it's that he had this finely tuned radar for people with a conscience and he found them and he systematically eliminated them from the administration and that's one of my warnings about a second Trump term or a copycat is there will not be these John Kelly's and Jim mattises that come into the administration with the goal of trying to help the president govern and keeping him in check there won't be it will be filled with political loyalty Loyalists and John Bolton said that to me and Mark esper his former Defense secretary and on down the list it was actually the biggest thing I heard is people fearing the low quality and character of the folks that will be running the federal government if we see a return of trumpism in the white house when you talk with some of these Republican colleagues and or I don't even know if they still identify with this modern day Republican party but you know one of the things that shocks me is when I guess nothing could shock me anymore though when you see someone like the governor of Georgia Brian Kemp and he says things like he recognizes that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to our country that what he did on January 6 was traitorous it makes statements he tried to overthrow the election in Georgia but then in the next breath he's asked a question well would you vote for him and the response as well if he's the Republican nominee yeah I would I would vote for him i i i i i it's really inexplicable to me and look Brian Kemp you can say a lot of things about him and I could be very critical of some of his policies but in theory an intelligent person how does that how do you square that away when you see that and do you see that when you speak with kind of former Republicans who are very critical of trump who who say well I guess if he's not me I still got to vote for him I I think it's incredibly depressing and and I hear that from a lot of folks and I I think that's why it's very plausible that Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States I think it's a very real possibility you know been a lot of our friends are sort of in denial about that and folks don't want to think it can happen and and we keep fantasizing that the Justice Department's going to take him down or this case or that case uh you know we've got it twice impeached twice indicted you know potentially soon three-time indicted maybe more ex-president who's still not suffering in the polls because of it we have to prepare ourselves for the prospect of a second term and that's why I wrote this I mean no one wants to read another Trump retrospective or another Memoir and but what I was frustrated by was that no one was out there detailing in a very clear-eyed way what would happen if we make this Civic mistake again and we had great reporting from The New York Times a few days ago uh that talked about how Trump has these plans to use the powers of the presidency for revenge and that's just the tip of the iceberg I mean blowback goes into detailed department by Department of exactly what they mean by revenge and what they're going to try to do with those agencies I mean you know one of the ones that was really disgusting to me is what I heard about America's veterans is there's plans on the Shelf in a second term to basically destroy the social safety net for America's veterans the people who served this country in uniform many of them wounded their families who sacrificed to pull that social safety net out from under them why I mean why would anyone even consider that well it's because Donald Trump found out that the VA was the second biggest department in the federal government with a 250 billion dollar budget and he wanted that money spent somewhere else he wanted to spend it on political priorities again this isn't Miles Taylor saying this I mean this is Trump's senior leaders at the Department of Veterans Affairs that he appoint painted they said that Trump thought of Veterans as quote lazy malingerers and he didn't care if they were kicked out onto the street he was just so frustrated that so much money was being spent on them and we know about Trump's long history of animosity towards veterans how he went to France uh to Mark the anniversary of the Normandy invasion and said the guys in the ground were suckers and losers because they didn't survive in the battle and look I'm not a psychologist but I'm sure this has something to do with the fact that he was a draft Dodger that you know he used a false excuse allegedly of bone spurs to avoid going into the draft and since then he's had this deeply vile view towards people who serve this country and that's why he was so excited as president to bring the generals to serve under them he wanted the generals under his thumb and I'll never forget standing in the Oval Office when John Kelly was sworn in as white house chief of staff it was like a good man jumping on a grenade being thrown by a bad one and the only person smiling in that room was Donald Trump is because he thought he was bringing Kelly in to keep him in check and Kelly thought he was there to keep Trump in check and ultimately as much as I admire General Kelly and I do Donald Trump ended up being the right one because it was clear that we were wrong that unelected bureaucrats were never going to be able to protect this country from a wayward commander-in-chief and they certainly won't be there if there's a second term you also describe Donald Trump's treatment of female staffers how he talked about his own daughter Ivanka can you speak to that yeah you know this is something that I have told a couple of other people that I was unsure whether I even wanted to put in the book because it's so disgusting um it doesn't have to do with public policy on the surface but I included it anyway because when John Kelly recounted that episode to me about Trump talking about ivanka's body and what it might like be like to have sex with her his comment after that is Miles Trump is a very very evil man and there's not a lot of things that can persuade his voters Maga voters really hardcore ones to break from the former president but I've got to think they draw a line somewhere and I've got to think they would draw the line at incest and it's not just John Kelly saying this there's this rap sheet that goes on and on of Trump's sexualizing his own children I mean you've got Trump going out there talking about how Democrats are are pedophiles and perverts this guy acts in a way that's you know makes pedophiles look like you know innocent people he is a consummate pervert and that deficient moral character can't somehow be compartmentalized from the full-time job he brings that same lack of character uh and disgusting attitude towards his work to towards relations with other countries towards democracies guard rails he's a man without a moral compass whatsoever and what worries me Ben is for the longest time I made the mistake of thinking that Trump was an aberration and just a uniquely disturbing human being and that we only needed to get past him but his views and his ethos have infused the Republican party and now we are seeing them fall all over themselves to try to become the next Trump and that's what I try to warn about here is that even if Trump doesn't win a lot of the candidates in this field are trying to outdo him and take the policies that even he walked back from and take them further and Implement them if the Maga movement retakes the White House and and it pains me to say it but I genuinely think uh if we put another manga president in the white house it is the end of our democracy and there's other people in this book uh quoted one of them Sue Gordon who was deputy director of National Intelligence under Trump I asked her and her comment was I have low confidence that America reaches its 300th birthday in any recognizable form if we put another person like that in the White House and that's pretty damning coming from it's someone that Trump hand-picked to run his intelligence community so in 2020 a lot of people who may have been on opposite sides of the political Spectrum United in a common goal for democracy there was a lot of passion a lot of energy out there from the ads that were being made to whistleblowers coming forward to there was a lot a lot of energy at that time as we approached the 2024 election what do you think is the solution we know the warning but what has to be done now you know we're less than 500 days away from election what has to be done well a couple things need to be done and you point to one of the really important ones which is what I call Coalition campaigning it's really really vital that this time around we make sure that concerned conservatives and independents Coalition with Democrats to make sure that this doesn't happen again My worry is I'm not entirely sure that that's the case I mean when I look at the polling and I look every week at these new polls that drop about the attitudes of the GOP base you see a lot of these Republicans who defected in 2020 and voted for Joe Biden you see him going back home you see them going back to the GOP tribe and that worries me because we need those voters as a firewall to prevent someone like Trump from coming back but they aren't and part of the reason they aren't is because Republican leaders have continued to stand by Trump at every opportunity they've had to break with him whether it was the Insurrection whether it was the unlawful retention of classified documents indictment after indictment largely Republican leaders have stood by them which basically signals to voters hey he's a good guy this is all politicized and it perpetuates this conspiracy theory of a justice department that's out to get him for political retribution most of these people in Jack Smith's team and otherwise they're all public servants a political public servants and they have no reporting line to the president of the United States that's actively used to run these cases but that narrative has taken hold so I worry about that Coalition staying together and the only way we can make it work is to get more of these prominent Republicans to speak out luckily in the primaries we've seen people like Chris Christie and ASA Hutchinson and will Hurd go out there and speak the truth but these guys are a minority I mean they've got single digits in the polls what we need are people who know better like Kevin McCarthy the speaker of the house to come out and say the things he used to say privately about Donald Trump I mean I witnessed him complain about Donald Trump all the time not just when I was working in the house when I was at the Department of Homeland Security as Chief of Staff I mean you know Kevin McCarthy would call us when we would enlist his help in trying to fix Trump problems and say you know he one time this quoted in the book he said you know why the [ __ ] am I having to do this you know essentially like why is this guy so out of control like why do I have to keep intervening from Capitol Hill to keep him from making stupid decisions Kevin needs to say those things publicly Kevin needs to stop keeping those opinions private and the same with his lieutenants and the same with his caucus I mean I've got a lot of friends who are still in Congress I've got Republican members of Congress that are friends of mine that are peers of mine that we came up together we'll go out for beers and they'll say the same thing Trump's a danger to democracy but their mistake is in thinking he will just go away no he will not go away unless they have the courage from within the tribe to start attacking him and diminishing his political support and if they don't do that we are going to Zombie Walk Off The Democratic Cliff you know one of the reasons I took a detour in the career trajectory I was on to build this pro-democracy media network is I just felt when I was clicking through the channels or searching online that a lot of I'm not saying all I don't want to cast it with such a broad brush but a lot of Legacy Media is also normalizing the behavior and every single day Donald Trump's on his social media platform posting Q Anon memes threatening prosecutors yet the story that's presented to the public outside of this network and a number of other uh and some small few other networks is yeah just Democrats Republicans we are in a situation where there's lots of polarization Americans are very divide did and they just fail to meet the moment and do we just have to Recon my my answer was I just got to rebuild the thing and create a new one and and do it but but what do you see there I mean they over intellectualize it what's going on there I think it's going to be really hard because people are exhausted and and you know this well Ben it's one of the ironies of being in this space is you know the the other side the Maga side tries to say well any of these never trumpers or former Republicans or rhinos or you know these these you know Democrats you know they're all coming at us because they're grifters and I find that allegation remarkably funny because like doing this you know being on this podcast talking to you writing this book has been literally the opposite of financially lucrative like when I was working in the private sector and working in the tech sector I was finally making very good money you know what's not a really good thing for business you know what's [ __ ] the stupidest thing for business it's the dumbest thing I mean if people want to know if they want to see my salary for the past two years my salary for the past two years has been less than it was when I was in government and we don't pay government servants well so no you know I'm not getting rich off of talking about Trump if anything it is deeply suppressed my financial situation and and again no one has to have sympathy for me I'm doing this because it has to be done but you know when I came out against Trump yeah I say this all the time I did lose my home I did lose my job I did lose relationships I did lose my life savings I was on unemployment for months so you know I want those people who accuse folks like us being grifters come say that to my things because we are in this because our country is literally on the cusp of potential what I call Civic suicidal ideation it's essentially as a country where uh we're looking down the barrel of a gun and about to make a horrible mistake that we cannot walk back from and we have to wake up to that and I'm so frustrated with a lot of the the mentors I had coming up in Washington who I thought would have the courage to go sound that alarm and they didn't and I'm just a kid from a middle class town in Indiana a small farm town and I grew up thinking if someone's bad and if there's a bully you call it out and a lot of these people apparently weren't raised that way and rather than acting like adults they've act like children hiding under the bed from the Boogeyman and if they continue to do that we will lose this we will lose this thing that we call our democracy and you know Reagan said we were you know Freedom was always a generation away from Extinction and the founders thought that right the famous quote from Ben Franklin when they asked him after he walked out of the Constitutional Convention well what have we and he said a republic if you can keep it and there was a worry even then that we were always a few steps away from throwing this away and I think that right now we're at Graver risk of that than we were in 2016 than we were in 2020 I hate to sound like the broken record but I do think the 2024 presidential election will be the decisive referendum on the survival of American democracy really who are we as a country I mean and I think it goes in two extremes right it either becomes this fascist dystopia that looks like Russia or I think a pro-democracy coalition can unite and you know there could be actual progress made and you know yeah you and I probably disagree on a bunch of issues we probably agree on a bunch of issues but ultimately we could have a very civil conversation and ultimately we want to make sure that Americans can find a great job we want to make sure that they've got great working conditions right we want to make sure that people can get health care now you and I in the past may have had disagreements or agreements I I don't know about what's the best delivery method but we all agree that people should get health care and people should not be spending huge amounts of money because big Pharma is jacking up rates and like like we should protect our veterans like we we should and and you and I talk about those issues issues if you were to watch what the podcast is going on on the other side of of the war of the country they're talking about how the Barbie movie is a communist plot and Mr Potato had this and you know I I just think that's what's that's what's on the line ultimately I give you the final and and those things used to be Fringe conspiracy theories and what alarms me is my former party has mainstreamed those conspiracy theories and a vast majority of the the base now believes them that is changing their voting behavior and it's leading to some very dangerous things and and I'll Echo your sentiment Ben which is you and I probably have tons of policy disagreements you know and and for listeners I'm no liberal I'm a Libertarian conservative I'm that evil guy that you think wants to make government so small and Destroy social services and blah blah blah blah I mean it's My Views are much more Humane than that but I'm a hardcore libertarian that doesn't matter if the American experiment itself is on the line I am more than happy to go team up with a Bernie Sanders you know Democrat that's the antithesis of my world view if it means protecting our country and we all need to be doing that because I would love next time I come on the podcast Ben that that the world's better our politics are better and you and I are just getting in a scrappy debate about welfare reform or you know taxes or something like that that's what we need to go back to but we're not in that moment because democracy is on the line so if there's one exhortation I would make to people again I'm not making a bunch of money off this book but what I want you to do is share this with someone who needs to read it because almost all the voices in blowback are from Republicans and Republicans that were appointed by Trump or served under Trump painting a picture of what he or a copycat would do back in office people need to be clear-eyed about this before they enter the voting booth uh so I hope they spread the message well we appreciate you you're spreading the message on the Meidas touch Network everybody gets your copy of blowback a warning to save democracy from the next Trump I've read it hopefully all of you will read it and share in the comments your thoughts about the book share in the comments if you are purchasing this and make sure to recommend it to a family member friend co-worker colleague or neighbor as well Miles Taylor thanks for joining us as always Ben you're a patriot I appreciate you thank you for everything you guys do this has been the Ben micellis from the Midas touch Network interview with Miles Taylor have a great day everybody
Jack Smith CORNERS Trump with New KEY PIECE of evidence by Michael Popok MeidasTouch Jul 26, 2023
Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on new revelations in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of Trump as he tries to crack the code and pin “criminal intent” on him w new emphasis on a February 2020 Oval Office meeting 9 months before the election where Trump bragged about how secure the vote and elections were, before claiming “voter fraud” just 6 weeks later.
Transcript
Michael popok legal AF Jack Smith and his team continue to try to crack the nut and split the atom and prove that Donald Trump had Criminal Intent and they're trying to do that by getting in doing a craniectomy get inside the brain of Donald Trump to figure out what he knew when he knew it about voter integrity and when that switch flipped and he started to talk about fraud false ballots ballot stuffing software that flipped uh Trump votes to Biden and the like and they're trying to set up that timeline to show basically that Donald Trump is telling a lie when he tells people that he truly believes there was voter fraud he still does it to this day but the timeline the the uh knew or should have known timeline the willful blindness timeline because you're not allowed under the law to stick your head in the sand it's the ostrich Theory put your fingers in your ears and cover your eyes and exclude out and and force out all facts that you that are being presented to you that don't fit your theory because you want to claim that there's voter fraud when there isn't and the more data points that Jack Smith can put together to show that Donald Trump is full of crap and newer should have known that the vote was Secure and that this big lie about steal the vote um was nothing more than that in order to undermine the Integrity of the voting system and cling to power and there's a renewed Focus or a new Focus that's being reported by CNN of a February of 2020 Oval Office meeting involving Donald Trump and Senior White House officials and other agency officials talking about voting Integrity voter Integrity this is February right this is several months before the November election and according to witnesses that have testified to Jack Smith and I'm going to give you a list of people I think have given that testimony they would have been in a meeting like this one Donald Trump was so impressed and so happy with the secured Integrity information he was getting about the election the use of paper ballots the use of audit Trails the use of security audits he was so happy about that that he wanted the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to take to the airwaves and give a press conference to assure the American people that the election was going to be fair and that its integrity was going to be preserved right so what happened that's February by April Donald Trump is taken to the airwaves spouting off about Venezuelan hardware and software that's flipping hundreds of thousands of votes for Trump to Biden and deleting hundreds of thousands of votes for Donald Trump so what happened did he just go crazy or is it all a lie and he's burying his head in the sand because he knows from his cyber security head right Chris Krebs to his Department of Homeland Security had at the time Ken cuccinelli right to his head of the FBI Chris Ray to his then chief of staff that would have been in the room Mark Meadows cooperating with Jack Smith Pat cipollone White House counsel cooperating with Jack Smith Eric Hershman Deputy White House counsel cooperating with Jack Smith Cassidy Hutchinson right-hand aide to Mark Meadows cooperating with Jack Smith I'm sure that a combination of those people are cooperating with Jack Smith as he gets to the bottom is how did the train drum jump the tracks sorry about that I was at Trump the tracks how did the train jump the tracks in Donald Trump's mind and getting inside that men's Raya right that Criminal Mind that Criminal Intent how did he go in February from wanting to blow a horn from the top of the White House and tell everybody how his secure how secure his elections were going to be right the most secure and he went from that to April to getting on his social media talking about hundreds of thousands you know 941 000 so precise yet so nuts deleted votes for Trump 435 000 votes that got flipped that were for Trump got flipped to Biden by Venezuelan and Italian software now I know who who promoted these crazy crackpot conspiracy theories Sydney Powell right pillow guy overstock.com guy or as I like to call him overthrow.com guy these were his advisors these were the people that were pouring poison into his ear but he's the criminal right you know you don't get to say well I I followed you know Mike Lindell pillow guy Cindy Powell she had a law degree you know you don't go from it's the most you know secure protected election and you want the FBI the DHS to go to the airwaves and tell people that to telling people the only reason you lost is millions of votes for you were taken away illegally and by and by false means so the Department of Justice obviously believes they have to explain this to a jury and these are data points these are pieces of the puzzle they're going to put in front of the jury to show that he's Faking It right he's continuing to talk about it because he knows he can't slip anymore he already had one slip when he said to his director of communications who's now a host on The View and he said to her Alyssa Farah can you believe I lost to this effing guy talking about Joe Biden we haven't heard that since because he knows that was terrible it's true but it's terrible for his case and his argument that you know he's too he's too crazy and nuts and a believer of the fraud to have committed a crime and this is the nut that Jack Smith literally has to crack right Donald Trump's the nut and this is the way that prosecutors are going to do it one by one focusing on February of 2020 meetings let me just remind everybody that the stop the steel slogeneering and the approach that the Republicans would challenge the Integrity of the election and the vote process no matter what predated covet in 2019-2020 if you go back in Google you will find um Roger Stone right who learned all of his dirty tricks working for tricky dick Nixon talking about stop the seats stop the steal in 2017 and 2018 before the election what what election is being stolen when you're not even in election season yet right two years or more before the election the drum beat of stop the steals started Donald Trump got in we may not like it but he got in in 2018. so if anybody stole the election I guess it was Donald Trump now come 2020 February Donald Trump's on board with this this is going to be a fair election we don't have a voter Integrity problem we've never had a voter Integrity problem let me repeat that in the history of elections in America our elections especially compared to the rest of the world are so secure I'm not saying they're fraud free there's no election system that's fraud free but so de minimis into the 0.001 percentile of voter fraud voter fraud running everything from double voting purposely voting outside your Precinct voting your dead mother-in-law's ballot in a mail-in whatever but if you add all that up it's literally 0.001 It's never enough to affect the outcome of an election not one where Joe Biden won by over 7 million popular vote you know two thousand three thousand votes out of a couple hundred million cast it's not going to make a difference right it's like spitting into the rain and so Donald Trump knows better he was told better by experts in his own administration at a group meeting in February he went into he should have gone into the election believing that but that that doesn't help him that storyline that narrative doesn't help Donald Trump cling to power and stop the peaceful transfer he's got to attack the election system so we run the timeline back and The Time Machine back and that is what we're watching Jack Smith do and he's getting all the people that were in rooms like the February 2020 White House meeting Mark Meadows Ken cuccinelli Pat sip alone Pat Philbin I'm sure Mark Meadows assistant Cassidy Hutchinson Chris Ray the FBI and he's saying to them let's talk about that meeting in which Donald Trump was crowing about how secure the elections were well what happened eight weeks later when he started tweeting about a million deleted or flipped votes or went on National Television to say this the mail ballots they cheat okay people cheat mail ballots are very dangerous thing for this country because they're cheaters they go and collect them they're fraudulent in many cases right just because states trying to cope with covid came up with more approachable uh mail-in and drop-off ballot requirements so we could have an election during a pandemic and people wouldn't stay home and give up their constitutional right to vote there is no important constitutional right in America if you could only have one right if you could only have one of what's guaranteed you by the Constitution you would take voting so the voting right is first among equals in the Bill of Rights and in the Constitution right and so we have to make sure that people are able to exercise it even in a pandemic even in a Bubonic plague that's sweeping America people have to vote because that's our system of government we don't delay things right it's one thing to cancel a baseball game with Saturday Night Live because of 9 11. it's another thing to push off the vote and the national election and the exercise of the preeminent voting right and right under our constitution this is what Jack Smith is doing this is why we've been so patient over the last nine months as he develops his case and continues to try to crack that nut and split that atom and prove Criminal Intent by Donald Trump I'm going to follow all of these developments as I find out about them and I report them to you right here in hot takes just like this one in only one place and you knew that it's legal AF and the Midas touch Network on the YouTube channel you can find me slide over to playlists you can find the popok playlist it'll give you all my hot takes every Wednesday and Saturday I co-anchor legal AF the leading podcast at the intersection of U.S law and politics you get it on the Meidas Touch YouTube channel if you want to watch us do it you want to listen to us it's everywhere podcasts are found every platform you can find you can follow me on all things social media I'll keep you up to speed and up to date at m s poke including on threads I'm Michael popok legal AF reporting
Memorandum Opinion [Denying Defendant Chansley's § 2255 motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his guilty plea and corresponding sentence] USA v. Jacob Anthony Chansley, Case No. 1:21-cr-3 (RCL) by Royce C. Lamberth, United States District Judge July 20, 2023
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JACOB ANTHONY CHANSLEY, Defendant.
Case No. 1:21-cr-3 (RCL)
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Defendant Jacob Anthony Chansley, who was the face of the riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, is now the face challenging the prosecutions of the criminal conduct that occurred that day. Citing what he calls "newly discovered" evidence, Mr. Chansley moves to vacate, set aside, or correct his guilty plea and corresponding sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. The government opposes and urges the Court to summarily deny Mr. Chansley's motion.
Upon consideration of Mr. Chansley's motion, the government's opposition, the record therein, and the applicable law, the Court will DENY Mr. Chansley's § 2255 motion.
I. BACKGROUND
A. Mr. Chansley's Involvement in the Events of January 6, 2021 and Indictment
On January 6, 2021, at approximately 1:00 pm, the Senate and House of Representatives assembled in a joint session at the U.S. Capitol building to count electoral votes cast in the 2020 presidential election. Statement of Offense, ECF No. 70, ¶ 3. Then-Vice President Michael R. Pence was present and presiding over the joint session. Id. At approximately 1 :30 pm, the Senate and House adjourned to their respective chambers to resolve an objection to the certification. Id. Vice President Pence adjourned with the Senate and presided over that proceeding. Id. Meanwhile, a large crowd of rioters gathered outside of the building, assembled behind barricades in front of the police line at the West front of the Capitol. Id. ¶¶ 4, 5.
At approximately 1:50 pm, Mr. Chansley scaled a media tower constructed in preparation for the presidential inauguration. Id. ¶ 5. That day, Mr. Chansley was shirtless, wearing a homed and fur-lined hat, and red, white, and blue face paint. Id. He carried a six-foot-long pole with an American flag zip-tied to it and a spearhead affixed to the top, as well as a bullhorn. Id.; United States v. Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d 151, 155 (D.D.C. 2021). Approximately ten minutes later, Mr. Chansley and the other rioters breached the barricades and advanced to the Capitol's West front. Statement of Offense ¶¶ 6, 7. At approximately 2:13 pm, rioters forced open the Senate Wing Door, which set off a loud alarm. Id. ¶ 9. One minute later, Mr. Chansley entered the Capitol through the broken door, becoming one of the first thirty rioters to do so. Id. ¶ 10.
At approximately 2:16 pm, two minutes after entering the Capitol, Mr. Chansley and other rioters charged upstairs to the second floor of the Senate side of the Capitol building. Id. ¶ 11. On the second floor, Mr. Chansley encountered several U.S. Capitol police officers, including Officer Keith Robishaw. Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 155. Officer Robishaw instructed Mr. Chansley and his fellow rioters to leave the building. Statement of Offense ¶ 11. Most of the other rioters complied, but Mr. Chansley refused. Id. Instead, he used his bullhorn to demand that the lawmakers be brought out to face the crowd. Id. At 2:20 pm, the members of the Senate and House, including the Vice President, evacuated their chambers and all certification proceedings were suspended. Id. ¶ 10. During this time, Mr. Chansley ascended another staircase, arriving on the third floor of the Senate side of the Capitol building. Id. ¶ 12.
At approximately 2:52 pm, Mr. Chansley entered the Senate gallery alone. Id. While standing in the gallery, Mr. Chansley shouted obscenities. Id. After that, Mr. Chansley exited the gallery and descended a staircase, where he again met Officer Robishaw. Id. ¶ 13. Officer Robishaw again instructed Mr. Chansley to leave the building, but Mr. Chansley again refused. Id. Instead, Mr. Chansley said that he planned to join rioters who were on the Senate floor. Id.
Mr. Chansley then entered the Senate chamber, followed by Officer Robishaw. Id. Once inside the Senate chamber, he climbed onto the Senate dais and sat in the Vice President's chair, taking pictures of himself as he did so. Id. ¶ 14. Officer Robishaw asked Mr. Chansley to vacate the seat, but Mr. Chansley refused. Id. Instead, he stated, "Mike Pence is a fucking traitor." Id. Mr. Chansley then grabbed paper left on the dais and wrote the following note to the Vice President: "It's Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!" Id.; Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 155. Mr. Chansley repeated the same message verbally to a reporter from The New Yorker who was filming the events in the Senate chamber at the time. Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 155. Officer Robishaw asked that Mr. Chansley vacate the seat and assist him by using his bullhorn to convince his fellow rioters to leave the Senate chamber, but Mr. Chansley refused. Statement of Offense ¶ 15. Instead, Mr. Chansley used his bullhorn to lead his fellow rioters in the following "prayer": "Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government." Id.; Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 155. At that time, there were approximately 20 rioters in the Senate Chamber. Sent'g Hr'g Tr., ECF No. 111, at 7:7-12. Officer Robishaw was the only law enforcement officer present. Statement of Offense ¶ 14. At approximately 3 :09 pm, additional law enforcement officers arrived in the Senate chamber. Id. ¶ 16. The officers then cleared Mr. Chansley and the other rioters from the chamber. Id.
Several media outlets interviewed Mr. Chansley in the hours and days after he left the Capitol. Id. ¶ 18. In an interview on January 7, 2021, Mr. Chansley stated: "The fact that we had a bunch of our traitors in office hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker, I consider that a win." Id.; Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 156.
On January 8, 2021-just two days after the riot-the government filed a sealed criminal complaint against Mr. Chansley, alleging that his actions on January 6 violated various federal laws. See ECF No. 1. Three days later, on January 11, 2021, a grand jury returned an indictment against Mr. Chansley, making him the first Capitol rioter to be indicted in connection with the events of January 6. Indictment, ECF No. 3; Sent'g Hr'g Tr. at 3:22-24. The indictment charged him with six counts: civil disorder in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 23 l(a)(3) (Count One); obstruction of an official proceeding in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) (Count Two); entering and remaining in a restricted building in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(l) (Count Three); disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building in violation of18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(2) (Count Four); violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building in violation of 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(A) (Count Five); and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building in violation of 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G) (Count Six). See Indictment.
On the same day as his indictment, Mr. Chansley was arrested and appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah M. Fine in the District of Arizona. Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 156. The government moved for, and Magistrate Judge Fine ordered, Mr. Chansley' s pre-trial detention. Id. at 156-57; United States v. Chansley, 2:21-mj-5000 (DMF), ECF Nos. 5, 10 (D. Ariz. Jan. 19, 2021). Magistrate Judge Fine then ordered Mr. Chansley to be committed to this District. Chansley, 2:21-mj-5000 (DMF), ECF No. 11 (D. Ariz. Jan. 19, 2021). Mr. Chansley was arraigned by the undersigned in late January 2021. Minute Entry (01/29/2021). He was then represented by Mr. Albert Watkins ("plea counsel"). Id.
B. Video Evidence and Discovery Process
Mr. Chansley, through plea counsel, moved in this Court for pre-trial release and the Court held a hearing on the motion on March 5, 2021. Minute Entry (03/05/2021); ECF No. 12. At the hearing, plea counsel made several representations regarding the video evidence in this case: that "there's miles and miles and miles of footage of my client from January 6th[,]" ECF No. 28, at 7:5--6; that he "provided the Court with the video footage that we were able to gamer through an independent investigative undertaking" in conjunction with a "former FBI special agent[,]" id. at 7:13-15; and "[t]here's a lot of footage of my client interacting peacefully, chatting with and supporting law enforcement who were similarly positioned in [the Senate] part of the Capitol[,]" id. at 10:2-4. Considering this evidence, in conjunction with the other evidence of Mr. Chansley's actions that day, the Court denied Mr. Chansley's motion. Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 172.
The case then proceeded. As part of the discovery process, the government filed in March and April 2021 motions for a protective order and for an order to disclose certain sealed and protected materials with defense counsel. Gov't Opp'n, ECF No. 123, at 2; ECF Nos. 21 & 36. The Court granted both motions within days of their filing. ECF Nos. 24 & 37.
On May 20, 2021, the government provided its first notice of discovery with the Court.1 ECF No. 38. That notice contained a letter to plea counsel, dated the same date, recounting the various discovery productions made to counsel between January and mid-May 2021. ECF No. 38- 1. Of relevance here, the letter listed the following productions:
(1) video footage from the Senate floor (produced April 24, 2021); (2) video footage from a subpoena to The New Yorker (produced April 24, 2021); (3) nine videos from relevant Metropolitan Police Department ("MPD") body worn cameras ([produced] May 17, 2021); (4) five videos of Capitol Closed Circuit Video ("CCV") footage ([produced] May 18, 2021); and (5) two grand jury transcripts with ten accompanying grand jury exhibits ([produced] May 19, 2021).
Gov't Opp'n at 2 (referencing ECF No. 38-1 at 2). On September 17, 2021, the government provided two updates on the status of discovery. ECF Nos. 75 & 76. In the first update, describing the status of discovery as of August 23, 2021, the government expressly acknowledged the following: "Defense counsel in Capitol Breach cases have made requests including any and all information that captures an individual defendant's conduct or statements; shows people "peacefully walking around the Capitol"; or suggests that a member (or members) of law enforcement allowed people to enter or remain in the Capitol or on restricted grounds, acted friendly or sympathetic to the rioters, or otherwise failed to do their jobs." ECF No. 75 at 2 (emphasis added). In response, the government noted "there may be additional types of information a defendant may consider material or exculpatory" but that "since the government does not know the defense theory in any particular case, it is impossible to [sic] for the government to determine what other types of information a defendant may believe to be material." Id. The government added: "To the extent the type of information described above may exist, it may be interspersed among the voluminous sets of data." Id.
The government informed plea counsel of its proposed solution to this discovery conundrum. The government described how it was working with the Federal Public Defender ("FPD") for the District of Columbia to upload discovery materials to electronic databases. Id. at 3. Specifically, the government noted that it had already begun populating one database, named Relativity, with documentary discovery. Id. at 5. Further, due to processing and usability limitations associated with Relativity, the government explained that it was in the final stages of contracting to facilitate, in close consultation with FPD, production of video discovery via a different database, named Evidence.com. Id. at 7.
In the second discovery update of September 17, 2021, describing the status of discovery as of September 14, 2021, the government confirmed that the Evidence.com contracting process was complete and that the database was operational. ECF No. 76 at 2-3. The government further reported that it was in the process of populating Evidence.com with approximately 2,300 hours of footage captured by law enforcement body-worn cameras. Id. at 3. Specifically, the government stated that it "expect[ed] to produce [such footage] no later than the end of next week (Friday, September 24, 2021)." Id. (emphasis added).
On October 25, 2021, the government provided its fourth update regarding the status of discovery, current as of October 21, 2021. ECF No. 78. The update reported, in relevant part, that the following evidence had been made available on Evidence.com: (1) 16,925 closed circuit television ("CCTV") video files, containing approximately 4,800 hours of footage, recorded by 515 cameras located throughout the Capitol; (2) 15 maps indicating the location of cameras in the Capitol Visitor Center and interior of the Capitol; and (3) 1,676 files from body-worn cameras belonging to Metropolitan Police Department ("MPD") officers, containing approximately 1,600 hours of footage. Id. at 2. The government later represented that these materials were made available to defense counsel through Evidence.com on October 22, 2021. Def.'s Mot., ECF No. 117, at 12; Gov't Opp'n at 16. Separately, the government provided defense counsel with information about the location of the files within the database, their naming conventions, and the videos' timestamps. Gov't Opp'n at 17. Additionally, the government noted in the October 25, 2021 update that the FPD, who was coordinating access to Evidence.com on behalf of defendants charged with crimes related to January 6, 2021, had sent emails to all defense counsel with information on how to request a license to access the database. ECF No. 78 at 2. The FPD had also developed and shared a guide for defense attorneys on how to use Evidence.com and share discovery with their clients. Id. Mr. Chansley's plea counsel received the FPD's notification on October 15, 2021. Def.'s Reply at 6-7.
On November 5, 2021, the government provided its fifth update regarding the status of discovery, current as of that date. ECF No. 79. The government noted that, since the last status update, the government had populated Evidence.com with additional video footage. Id. at 2. In relevant part, the government stated that it shared an additional 4,204 CCTV video files recorded by 123 cameras, some of which were located in the Capitol's interior. Id.
C. Mr. Chansley's Guilty Plea and Sentencing
On September 3, 2021, Mr. Chansley pleaded guilty to Count Two, obstruction of an official proceeding in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), in exchange for the government's dismissal of the five other charges then-pending against him. See Minute Entry (09/03/2021). Mr. Chansley, in consultation with plea counsel, executed and signed a written plea agreement with the government. Plea Agreement, ECF No. 69. In the plea agreement, Mr. Chansley agreed that he was pleading guilty to Count Two because he was "in fact guilty." Id. at 10. In so doing, Mr. Chansley averred that the Statement of the Offense "fairly and accurately describe[d] [his] actions and involvement" in the offense. Id. ,i II. Mr. Chansley also agreed that he had "read every page of [the] Agreement," "discussed it with [his] attorney," and "fully underst[ood the] Agreement and agree[ d] to it without reservation." Id. at 10. In the plea agreement, Mr. Chansley attested that he was "satisfied with the legal services provided by [his] attorney in connection with [the] Agreement and the matters related to it." Id. at 10. Mr. Chansley reiterated his satisfaction with plea counsel to this Court during the plea hearing. See Plea Hr'g Tr., ECF No. 110, at 7:9-15; 9:22-25.
The plea agreement contained-and Mr. Chansley assented to-several express waivers. Specifically, Mr. Chansley agreed to waive his right to directly appeal his sentence, except for his rights to appeal a sentence imposed beyond the statutory maximum or U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range, and to appeal based on ineffective assistance of counsel. Plea Agreement ¶ IX(D). Furthermore, Mr. Chansley agreed to waive "any right to challenge the conviction entered or sentence imposed" through a motion brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, unless "such a motion is based on newly discovered evidence or on a claim that [Mr. Chansley] received ineffective assistance of counsel." Id. ¶ IX(E).
Finally, Mr. Chansley agreed to several provisions regarding sentencing. As relevant here, Mr. Chansley agreed that his sentence would be "determined by the Court, pursuant to the factors sector forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), including a consideration of the Sentencing Guidelines[,]" id. ¶ IV, and that he understood "that the sentence to be imposed is a matter solely within the discretion of the Court." Id. ¶ VII. He further agreed to the government's estimated offense level calculations under the Guidelines. Id. ¶ IV(C). Specifically, he agreed that the estimated offense level for Count Two was 25, representing the base offense level (14) plus enhancements for property damage (8) and substantial interference (3). Id. ¶ IV(A). The estimated Count Two offense level of 25, minus reductions for acceptance of responsibility (2) and assistance to authorities (1 ), rendered an estimated total offense level of 22. Id. Accordingly, Mr. Chansley agreed that, considering an estimated total offense level of 22 and criminal history category of I, id. ¶ IV(B), the estimated Sentencing Guidelines range in his case was 41 to 51 months' incarceration. Id. ¶ IV(C). He further concurred with the government's estimated monetary penalties, including a fine range of $15,000 to $150,000, id., a special assessment of $100 for his felony conviction, id. ¶¶ I, IV(C), and restitution in the amount of $2,000, id. ¶ XI. Finally, he agreed that his conviction carried a maximum supervised-release term of three years. Id. ¶ I.
On November 17, 2021, after the government's five updates regarding the status of discovery, this Court sentenced Mr. Chansley. See Minute Entry (11/17/2021). In calculating the applicable sentence, the Court agreed with the Guidelines calculations as outlined by the parties in the plea agreement and calculated a total offense level of 22. Sent'g Hr'g Tr. at 2:25-3:7. When it came time for plea counsel's presentation, he appreciated the seriousness of the events of January 6, 2021, id. at 14 :9-11, and acknowledged the overwhelming evidence in this case: "I've provided you with videos. I've provided the government with videos. The government's given me videos. The government's given you videos that I've given her. This isn't a drive-in movie theater. You don't need to see more video." Id. at 16:18-21. Plea counsel went on to focus on Mr. Chansley's acceptance of responsibility, which he previewed by saying, "Jake presents with having apologized without equivocation. No buts, no blames, I did it, I want to be accountable, I want to be held accountable." Id. at 27:15-17.
Mr. Chansley then spoke to the Court, accepting responsibility for his actions and expressing remorse. See, e.g., id. at 32:23-33:4 ("So I had to come to terms with the fact that I was in solitary confinement because of me, because of my decision. I broke the law, and if I believe in freedom, if I believe in law and order, if I believe in responsibility and accountability, then that means that I should do what Gandhi would do and take responsibility even and especially when it incriminates me. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. That's what men of honor do."); id. at 34:25-35:5 ("I am truly, truly repentant for my actions, because repentance is not just saying you're sorry. Repentance is apologizing and then moving in the exact opposite direction of the sin that you committed. And that's what I've been trying to do ever since I realized the magnitude of my error and the magnitude of my mistake."). Mr. Chansley unequivocally stated: "[I]n retrospect, I would do everything differently on January 6. In all honesty, I would do everything differently." Id. at 35:16-18. The Court heavily credited Mr. Chansley's apparent remorse and acceptance of responsibility. See id. at 48:21-22 ("[Y]ou have evolved in your thinking clearly and reversed your thinking in many ways"); id. at 49:3-5 ("You've certainly done everything you could today to convince the Court that you're anew person, and I think you're on the right track"); id. at 55:23- 56:2 ("[Y]ou were smart. It may not feel it today, but let me guarantee you, you were smart. You did the right thing. And you owned up to it today in a fashion that is unusual for me to see, the candor with which you approached me today. I appreciate it.").
The Court then sentenced Mr. Chansley to 41 months' incarceration as to Count Two, the bottom of the Guidelines range, with credit for time served. See J., ECF No. 92, at 2. In explaining the sentence, the Court stated: "[W]hat you did here was horrific, as you now concede, and obstructing the functioning of the government as you did is the type of conduct that is so serious that I cannot justify a downward departure [ from the Sentencing Guidelines range of 41 to 51 months]." Sent'g Hr'g Tr. at 48:22-25. Even considering the seriousness of the offense, the Court credited Mr. Chansley's remorse and acceptance of responsibility to sentence Mr. Chansley consistent with the bottom of the applicable Guidelines range. See id. 49:1-3 ("I do think that the minimum under the guidelines is something you've earned because you've done everything right from the time that you started in the other direction."). The Court also sentenced Mr. Chansley to three years of supervised release, a special assessment of$ 100, and $2,000 in restitution. 2 See J. at 3, 6. Approximately two weeks after sentencing, Mr. Chansley's current counsel, Mr. William Shipley ("post-conviction counsel") appeared to represent Mr. Chansley, ECF No. 101, and the Court granted plea counsel's motion to withdraw. Minute Entry (11/29/2021).
In late March 2023, Mr. Chansley was released from custody after having completed his term of incarceration, accounting for his time previously served and good-time credit. 3
D. Post-Sentencing Events Related to Mr. Chansley's Case
On March 6, 2023, then-television host Tucker Carlson aired footage from January 6, 2021 on his eponymous show.4 The host claimed that certain videos recorded on January 6 had been withheld from the public and that such videos demonstrated that the Capitol rioters were merely "sightseers." That segment prominently featured Mr. Chansley. All of the footage of Mr. Chansley aired on the program was recorded on CCTV cameras positioned inside the Capitol building between the times of 2:49 pm and 2:59 pm, except for one CCTV clip recorded at 2: 13 pm. Gov't Opp'n at 9-10. Mr. Chansley arrived at the Capitol more than one hour prior to this period and stayed for some time afterward. Statement of Offense ¶¶ 4, 5, 16. The footage, in relevant part, showed Mr. Chansley traversing hallways in the Senate side of the Capitol, sometimes followed by and sometimes following law enforcement officers who did not visibly impede Mr. Chansley' s movements. The footage did not include any audio recordings. The host claimed that the videos undermined the legitimacy of the government's prosecution against Mr. Chansley. Two days later, plea counsel stated on the same television program that he had not seen the videos at any point during his representation of Mr. Chansley.5
On March 9, 2023, Dominic Pezzola, who at the time was on trial for his own felonious conduct on January 6, 2021, moved to dismiss his indictment based on the government's failure to disclose the footage aired on March 6, which Pezzola claimed was "exculpatory" for himself and Mr. Chansley.6 See United States v. Pezzola, 21-cr-175-6 (TJK), ECF No. 679. On March 12, 2023, the government opposed, claiming that the footage of Pezzola and Mr. Chansley aired during the broadcast was neither withheld from the defense nor exculpatory. Pezzola, ECF No. 689, at 2. Specifically, the government asserted that all of the footage aired on the broadcast, save for one 10-second clip, was produced to defense counsel via the Evidence.com database by September 24, 2021, and that the remaining clip was produced on January 23, 2023. Id. at 3. Based on these representations, along with a consideration of the applicable law, Judge Timothy J. Kelly denied the motion because "Pezzola ha[ d] not shown that the video footage tends to show his innocence" "[n]or ha[d] the evidence been suppressed." Mem. Order, Pezzola, ECF No. 755, at 3.
On March 17, 2023, Mr. Chansley's post-conviction counsel contacted the government via letter asking specific questions about when the CCTV videos appearing in the March 6, 2023 segment were produced. Def.'s Mot. at 11; Gov't Opp'n at 9. The government responded on March 27, 2023, explaining that all of the clips appearing in the broadcast, except for the 10-second clip, were produced on October 22, 2021, and that the remaining clip was produced on February 21, 2023. Def.'s Mot. at 12; Gov't Opp'n at 9-10.
The Court summarizes the videos aired on March 6, 2023 as the following:
Approximate Time on January 6, 2021 / U.S. Capitol CCTV Camera7 / Time Stamp in Television Segment / Government's Representation of Approximate Date Disclosed to Defense via Evidence.com
2:13 pm / Camera A / 2:48 / May 2021 or October 22, 2021 8 2:49 pm / CameraE / 2:06 / October 22, 2021 2:51 pm / CameraE / 3:09 / October 22, 2021 2:56pm / CameraF / 4:31 / October 22, 2021 2:56 pm / Camera F / 5:14 / October 22, 2021 2:57 pm / CameraD / 3:35 / October 22, 2021 2:57pm / CameraD / 5:21 / October 22, 2021 2:57pm / CameraE / 4:12 / October 22, 2021 2:57pm / CameraE / 5:00 / October 22, 2021 2:57pm / CameraH / 3:40 / October 22, 2021 2:57pm / CameraH / 5:25 / October 22, 2021 2:59pm / CameraB / 3:28 / October 22, 2021 2:59pm / Camerae / 4:01 / October 22, 2021 2:59pm / CameraG / 3:48 / February 21, 2023 9
See Def's Mot. at 12; Gov't Opp'n at 9-10.
In April 2023, Mr. Chansley, through counsel, moved to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, claiming newly discovered evidence and ineffective assistance of his plea counsel. Def. 's Mot. at 2--4. Specifically, he claims that conduct by both the government and his plea counsel with respect to the videos aired during the March 6 broadcast rendered both his plea agreement and resulting sentence unconstitutional. Id. First, Mr. Chansley asserts that the videos were both exculpatory and withheld from the defense in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), and that, had the videos been disclosed to the defense prior to sentencing, plea counsel would have used the videos' contents to argue for, and that this Court would have imposed, a lower sentence than the one Mr. Chansley received. Id. at 16-1 7. Second, he claims that plea counsel was unconstitutionally ineffective because counsel did not seek production of the videos from the government and because counsel recommended that Mr. Chansley accept the plea agreement containing a sentencing-enhancement stipulation and waiving appeal rights without this evidence. Id. at 17-21. Relatedly, he insists that further discovery into the video-disclosure issue is required, particularly due to government's conflicting statements regarding the dates of production as stated in filings in this and the Pezzola case. Id. at 21-22.
In June 2023, the government opposed, insisting that Mr. Chansley has not met his burden to establish that he is entitled to collateral relief because he either waived his claims or they are meritless. Gov't Opp'n at 1. Mr. Chansley submitted a brief reply. Def.'s Reply, ECF No. 126. Mr. Chansley's motion is now ripe for review.
II. LEGAL STANDARDS
A. 28 U.S.C. § 2255
A prisoner may move to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence if (1) the sentence was imposed "in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States"; (2) the court lacked jurisdiction to impose the sentence; (3) the sentence "was in excess of the maximum authorized by law"; or (4) the sentence is "otherwise subject to collateral attack." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(a). The petitioner bears the burden to prove his right to relief by a preponderance of the evidence. United States v. Baugham, 941 F. Supp. 2d 109, 112 (D.D.C. 2012). A court need not hold an evidentiary hearing when "the motion and the files and records of the case conclusively show the prisoner is entitled to no relief." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(b).
B. Government's Discovery Obligations
The government has a constitutional obligation, as recognized in Brady and its progeny, to disclose "evidence in its possession that is favorable to the accused and material either to a defendant's guilt or punishment." United States v. Trie, 21 F. Supp. 2d 7, 23 (D.D.C. 1998). Favorable evidence "tends to help the defense by either bolstering the defense case or impeaching potential prosecution witnesses." United States v. Sa/avian, 233 F.R.D. 12, 16 (D.D.C. 2005); see also Brady, 373 U.S. at 87; Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 153-55 (1972). To prevail on a Brady claim, the defendant must show prejudice; in other words, '" a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different."' United States v. Sitzmann, 893 F.3d 811, 826 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (quoting United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682 (1985)). "A court should evaluate prejudice under Brady based on the suppressed evidence as a whole rather than an 'item by item' basis." United States v. Martin, No. 98-cr-329 (RCL), 2021 WL 4989983, at *4 (D.D.C. Oct. 27, 2021) (quoting Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419,420 (1995)). Importantly, "[f]or an item to be Brady, it must be something that is being 'suppress[ed] by the prosecution."' United States v. Blackley, 986 F. Supp. 600,603 (D.D.C. 1997) (quoting Brady, 373 U.S. at 87).
C. Ineffective Assistance of Counsel
To prevail on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a petitioner "must prove both incompetence and prejudice." Kimme/man v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365, 381 (1986). Specifically, the petitioner must demonstrate that (1) "counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness ... under prevailing professional norms" and (2) "there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different." Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687-88, 694 (1984). That sets a high bar, as a court's evaluation of counsel's actions "must be highly deferential," and is assessed under the circumstances present at the time of representation without the benefit of hindsight. Id. at 689. Furthermore, a "reasonable probability" under Strickland's second prong is one that is "sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome." Id. at 694. To establish prejudice, the petitioner must show there is "a substantial, not just conceivable, likelihood of a different result." Cullen v. Pinholster, 563 U.S. 170, 189 (2011) (internal quotations and modifications omitted). An ineffective assistance of counsel claim is defeated if the defendant fails to demonstrate either prong. Strickland, 466 U.S. at 700.
III. DISCUSSION
Mr. Chansley' s motion concocts a Brady claim, and a derivative ineffective assistance of counsel claim, based on videos aired devoid of context and supposedly inconsistent disclosure dates provided by government counsel in two separate cases. These videos are decidedly not exculpatory, especially when viewed in context with the "miles and miles and miles of footage" recorded of Mr. Chansley on January 6, 2021. ECF No. 28, at 7:5--6. Such footage, conveniently omitted by the March 6, 2023 program, shows nearly all of Mr. Chansley's actions that day, including: carrying a six-foot-long pole armed with a spearhead, unlawfully entering the Capitol through a broken door, disobeying orders from law enforcement on more than a half-dozen occasions, screaming obscenities, entering the Senate chamber, climbing onto the Senate dais, sitting in the Vice President's chair, and leaving a threatening message for the Vice President. Moreover, the precise date that the particular videos appearing in the program were disclosed is immaterial because Mr. Chansley and plea counsel were aware of the videos' content -- Mr. Chansley interacting with law enforcement officers who did not visibly impede his progress -- by May 20, 2021. In other words, Mr. Chansley possessed the facts in the videos well in advance of his plea agreement, yet still determined, quite sensibly, to accept responsibility for his role in the criminal events of January 6, 2021. What is more, the record shows that the government disclosed virtually all of the videos at issue weeks before Mr. Chansley' s sentencing. These facts and the underlying law conclusively demonstrate that Mr. Chansley is not entitled to relief under § 2255.
A. Mr. Chansley's Claims Are Timely, Not Waived, and Not Moot
As a threshold matter, Mr. Chansley claims are not time-barred. Under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a defendant must bring any § 2255 claims within one year of "the date on which the facts supporting the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence." 28 U.S.C. § 2255(£)(4). Mr. Chansley's claims rely on facts, namely alleged discrepancies in the dates and circumstances surrounding discovery in his case, discovered in March 2023. Because Mr. Chansley filed his motion within one year after these events, his motion is timely.
Nevertheless, the government insists that Mr. Chansley's Brady claim is procedurally barred because he waived this claim through his plea agreement. 10 Gov't Opp'n at 14-16. Mr. Chansley agreed to waive a collateral challenge to his conviction unless the motion was based on "newly discovered evidence." Mr. Chansley responds that his claim is not waived because neither he nor his plea counsel were aware of the specific evidence (the videos broadcast on March 6, 2023), even if they may have been aware of the facts contained in the evidence. Def.'s Reply at 2-3. The Court is mindful of the government's view that the "concern with finality served by the limitation on collateral attack has special force with respect to convictions based on guilty pleas." Gov't Opp'n at 15 (quoting Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 621 (1998)). At the same time, this Court "will not bar the door" to Mr. Chansley's collateral attack when "his waiver only arguably or ambiguously forecloses his claims." United States v. Hunt, 843 F.3d 1022, 1027 (D.C. Cir. 2016). Because it is not clear that Mr. Chansley's plea agreement unambiguously waived his right to bring his claim, and because the government admits that one 10-second video appearing in the March 6, 2023 was not disclosed prior to Mr. Chansley's plea and sentencing, the Court concludes that Mr. Chansley did not waive his Brady claim.
Additionally, although not raised by either party, the Court notes that Mr. Chansley's claims are not moot even though he ended his period of incarceration prior to filing his motion. In addition to a prison term, the Court sentenced Mr. Chansley to supervised release, a special assessment, and restitution. He may still pursue relief from the remaining aspects of his sentence under§ 2255. See United States v. Mejia, No. 10-cr-256-03 (RCL), _ F. Supp._, 2023 WL 2297465, at *2 (D.D.C. Feb. 23, 2023) (citing United States v. Mejia, No. 20-3086, 2022 WL 4280686, at *1 (D.C. Cir. Sept. 14, 2022)).
The Court will therefore proceed to the merits of Mr. Chansley' s claims.
Mr. Chansley' s motion assumes that Brady provides a right to the disclosure of exculpatory information by the government to the criminal defendant at the plea-bargaining stage but does not directly address this question or offer any authority to support his position. The government, on the other hand, does engage with the question-whether Brady applies throughout the criminal proceeding or if it is only a trial right-and notes that there is currently a circuit split on the issue with no binding authority in this Circuit, but does not take a formal position. See Gov't Opp'n at 11 n.5; compare United States v. Avellino, 136 F.3d 249, 255 (2d Cir. 1998) (holding that Brady applies to the non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence prior to plea bargain); Campbell v. Marshall, 769 F.2d 314, 322-24 (6th Cir. 1985) (same); White v. United States, 858 F.2d 416,422 (8th Cir. 1988) (same); Sanchez v. United States, 50 F.3d 1448, 1453 (9th Cir. 1995) (same); United States v. Ohiri, 133 Fed. App'x 555, 561--62 (10th Cir. 2005) (same); with United States v. Moussaoui, 591 F.3d 263,285 (4th Cir. 2010) (holding that Brady applies to the non-disclosure of exculpatory evidence only at the trial stage); Matthew v. Johnson, 201 F.3d 353, 361--62 (5th Cir. 2000) (same).
This Court joins the weight of authority and the principles enshrined in Brady to conclude that a defendant may challenge the validity of his guilty plea on the basis of Brady. Plea bargaining is a critical component of our modern criminal justice system. As the Supreme Court emphasized in Brady, "our system of the administration of justice suffers when any accused is treated unfairly." 373 U.S. at 87. When a defendant is forced to decide whether to go to trial or plead guilty without knowledge of exculpatory evidence in the government's possession, he suffers unfairness of the highest order. This is because shielding the plea-bargaining process from Brady creates perverse incentives for prosecutors to "deliberately withhold exculpatory information as part of an attempt to elicit guilty pleas." Sanchez, 50 F .3d at 1453. What is more, plea bargaining is just one step in the process of preparing for a trial. Plea agreements, like any other contract, are only finalized after the assent of both parties. See Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 137 (2009). In the situation where a defendant and the government fail to reach a plea agreement, or if that agreement is not accepted by the Court, a defendant must proceed to trial. A Brady rule that absolves the government of any responsibility to disclose exculpatory evidence until the eve of trial would impermissibly hinder a criminal defendant in the preparation of his defense. See United States v. Pollack, 534 F.2d 964, 973-74 (D.C. Cir. 1976). Under these circumstances, the Court agrees with the majority of circuit courts that Brady provides a right to the disclosure of exculpatory information at the plea-bargaining stage.
C. Mr. Chansley's Brady Argument Is Without Merit
Even though Mr. Chansley may assert his Brady claim, he does not meet his burden to show that he is entitled to relief on that basis. He argues that the government violated its obligations under Brady, and therefore secured an unconstitutional sentence, by not disclosing the videos broadcast on March 6, 2023. Mr. Chansley's argument, and its various permutations, is belied by the record, applicable law -- or both.
1. Nearly all of the videos at issue were disclosed to the defense
Mr. Chansley relies primarily on a televised statement by his former counsel-unswom and not subject to Rule 11 sanctions-along with the absence of plea counsel's discussion of the videos at sentencing as evidence that the videos were withheld from the defense. Perhaps plea counsel's memory has faded over the past two years. Perhaps plea counsel's statement was fueled by personal motives contrary to the interest of his former client. Regardless, the record is plain that the vast majority of the videos, and all the pertinent content contained therein, was indeed disclosed to the defense as early as May 2021 and by mid-October 2021 at the latest. 11
All of the facts surrounding Mr. Chansley's movements around the Capitol featured in the television program were disclosed months before Mr. Chansley's guilty plea, as he concedes. Def. 's Reply at 2-3. For example, the program showed Mr. Chansley's interaction with enforcement officers in the Senate stairwell, after he left the Senate gallery and before he entered the Senate chamber. This same footage was captured by MPD body-worn cameras that were made discoverable on May 17, 2021. Gov't Opp'n at 18; ECF No. 38-1 at 2. Finally, grand jury transcripts containing testimony of an officer who encountered Mr. Chansley several times on January 6, 2021, and who appears in the footage aired in the March 6, 2023 broadcast, were disclosed to plea counsel by May 19, 2021. Gov't Opp'n at 19; ECF No. 38-1 at 2. 12
The television program also discussed Mr. Chansley' s time on the Senate floor. The record demonstrates that footage depicting these same events, recorded by The New Yorker, was disclosed to plea counsel on April 24, 2021. Gov't Opp'n at 18; ECF No. 38-1 at 2. On May 14, 2021, plea counsel confirmed by email that he was aware of the video and that it was his position that the video "depict[ ed] the door to the Chamber being held for Mr. Chansley by law enforcement as he entered into the Chamber (followed thereafter by law enforcement)[,]" whom plea counsel later identified as Officer Robishaw. Gov't Opp'n at 18 (quoting Email, Ex. 1 to Sealed Gov't Opp'n, ECF No. 124-1 at 1, 5). Plea counsel further claimed that the video showed Mr. Chansley "being escorted into the Chamber just before 3:00p[m]." Id. (quoting Email at 1). In fact, plea counsel demonstrated awareness of evidence of his client supposedly interacting peacefully with law enforcement in the Capitol building two months earlier when he argued in support of his client's (unsuccessful) motion for pre-trial release. ECF No. 28 at 10:2-4. Thus, plea counsel's statements by email and in court reveal that counsel was aware of all pertinent facts aired in the March 6, 2023 program at least four months prior to Mr. Chansley' s plea.
The vast majority of the CCTV footage aired on the program, which did not contain any new facts, was made discoverable through Evidence.com prior to Mr. Chansley's sentencing. Gov't Opp'n at 16-17. Mr. Chansley cries foul at the government's representation in the Pezzola case -- that disclosure occurred on September 24, 2021-and the government's representation in this case -- that disclosure occurred on October 22, 2021-and claims that both representations are likely "false." Def.'s Mot. at 12. Rather than intentional government obfuscation, there is a far more likely, innocent explanation for the date discrepancy. As the government stated in its second discovery update in this case, filed on September 17, 2021, the government merely "expect[ ed]" to produce the videos via Evidence.com by September 24, 2021. The next update, filed on October 25, 2021, confirmed that the videos were, in fact, produced as of October 21, 2021 (which the government now clarifies as October 22, 2021). Regardless, contrary to defense counsel's assertions, the information was, in fact, produced by October 2021 at the very latest.
In alternative, Mr. Chansley argues that even if the videos were disclosed, the government provided too many videos too late because it would have been physically impossible for defense counsel to review the 4,800 hours of footage disclosed on October 22, 2021 before Mr. Chansley' s sentencing in mid-November 2021. Def.'s Mot. at 16 & n.3. Aside from the fact that "[Mr. Chansley] cite[ s] no authority for the proposition that the government fails to meet its Brady [] obligations by providing too much discovery," United States v. Bingert, Nos. 21-cr-91-1, 21-cr- 91-2 (RCL), 2023 WL 3203092, at *6 (D.D.C. May 9, 2023) (emphasis in original), this argument is an obvious red herring. As the government points out, Mr. Chansley was well aware of the path he walked on January 6, 2021. Gov't Opp'n at 17. That knowledge, combined with the government's disclosure of maps showing the CCTV cameras' locations and a guide for identifying the relevant cameras, certainly enabled the defense to focus on reviewing footage captured by cameras only in the areas of the Capitol that Mr. Chansley actually visited.
Mr. Chansley's Brady claim fails at the outset because the record confirms that none of the relevant facts have been suppressed. Blackley, 986 F. Supp. at 603. The Court further notes that "the volume of discovery does not excuse defense counsel," including Mr. Chansley's post-conviction counsel, "from making reasonable efforts to ascertain whether an item has been produced before making representations about what was and was not produced, let alone before filing inaccurate and inflammatory allegations of discovery failures." Mem. Order, Pezzola, at 3.
2. None of the videos are exculpatory
Despite spilling much ink on the supposed significance of the videos, Mr. Chansley does not explain why he believes the videos are exculpatory with respect to the charge to which he pleaded guilty: obstruction of an official proceeding in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). This is likely because he cannot make this showing.
Mr. Chansley admitted to engaging in the following conduct on January 6, 2021, all before the events recorded in the videos aired in the March 6, 2023 program: participating in a violent riot; being one of the first rioters to unlawfully enter the Capitol; traveling through hallways, stairwells, and the Senate gallery for approximately 38 minutes; encountering law enforcement on several occasions; ignoring their direct orders; screaming obscenities; and demanding that fleeing lawmakers be brought out to face the mob. Moreover, Mr. Chansley admitted to engaging in the following conduct after the events recorded in the videos: entering the Senate chamber; climbing on the Senate dais; ignoring multiple direct orders from the lone law enforcement officer in the chamber; sitting in the Vice President's chair; leaving a threatening message for the Vice President; leading the rioters in the chamber in a demonstration; and only vacating the chamber after multiple other law enforcement officers arrived. These facts show that Mr. Chansley intended to, and did, obstruct the certification proceedings. That law enforcement officers outnumbered by the quantity of rioters did not physically engage Mr. Chansley or impede his progress is irrelevant to his guilt with respect to Count Two.
Of the videos appearing in the March 6, 2023 segment, one 10-second video was disclosed in February 2023, after the conclusion of Mr. Chansley's case. The clip, capturing Mr. Chansley's movements at approximately 2:59 pm, appears to show him outside of the Senate chamber accompanied by two law enforcement officers. One of the law enforcement officers reaches out to briefly touch a door before leading Mr. Chansley away from the Senate chamber. Mr. Chansley argues that this video, and others, provide further context "about how he came to be inside the Senate Chamber," which he argues is evidence casting doubt on his intent to obstruct the certification proceedings. Def.' s Mot. at 19. This argument, like his others, misses the mark. The circumstances surrounding his entry into the Senate chamber are not legally relevant. His presence that day, his refusal to obey multiple orders :from law enforcement, and his specific statements and actions all created serious safety concerns and forced an end to the certification proceedings, consistent with his expressed intent. In addition, entry into the Senate chamber, or even the Capitol building, is not a required element for guilt under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), as this Court has implicitly determined numerous times. See, e.g., Notes for Oral Ruling, United States v. Worrell, No. 21-cr- 292-1, ECF No. 245 (D.D.C. May 12, 2023); Notes for Oral Ruling, Bingert, ECF No. 166; Notes for Oral Ruling, United States v. Hostetter, No. 21-cr-392-1 (RCL), ECF No. 275 (D.D.C. July 13, 2023); Findings of Pact and Conclusions of Law, United States v. Powell, No. 21-cr-179 (RCL), ECF No. 110 (D.D.C. July 18, 2023).
As a fallback position, Mr. Chansley appears to argue that the videos show that "he committed no acts of violence, that he expressed no hostility or intention to do violence to any property or individuals" and therefore the 8-point sentencing enhancement was improper. Def. 's Mot. at 19; see also id. at 17-19. But that argument suffers from the same fatal defect as the March 6, 2023 broadcast: it lacks the context of what occurred before and after. The enhancement applies "[i]f the offense involved causing or threatening to cause physical injury to a person, or property damage, in order to obstruct the administration of justice[.]" U.S.S.G. § 2Jl.2(b)(l)(B). As explained above, Mr. Chansley's actions on January 6, 2021 more than fit the bill.
Whether the videos from the March 6, 2023 television segment are viewed individually or in context with the rest of the evidence against Mr. Chansley, the videos are not exculpatory. Therefore, Mr. Chansley's Brady claim fails at the second prong of the analysis as well.
3. The government's discovery approach in his case did not violate its Brady obligations
Separate from the alleged failure to disclose specific videos, Mr. Chansley argues that the government's approach to discovery contravened the applicable Brady standard in this District. See, e.g., Def. 's Mot. at 9; Def. 's Reply at 3-4. That argument, like his others, is misplaced.
In cases involving voluminous discovery, courts are "wary of requiring the government to, in effect, do defense counsel's work for them and of inserting itself into the fray of micromanaging discovery in these cases." United States v. Sheppard, No. 21-cr-203 (JDB), 2022 WL 17978837, at *14 (D.D.C. Dec. 28, 2022). "On the other hand, [courts are] sympathetic to the needle-in-thehaystack problem defendants face when confronted with such enormous amounts of discovery, only some of which is relevant to their cases, particularly since defense counsel have comparatively fewer resources at their disposal for identifying which evidence is relevant." Bingert, 2023 WL 3203092, at *6 (citing United States v. Hsia, 24 F. Supp. 2d 14, 29 (D.D.C. 1998)). Balancing the government's obligations and defendants' responsibilities, courts in this District have settled on the following standard: '"[T]o the extent that the government knows of any [Brady] material in its production,' the Court will 'require [the government] to identify' it." Sheppard, 2022 WL 17978837, at *14 (alterations in original) (quoting United States v. Saffarinia, 424 F. Supp. 3d 46, 86 (D.D.C. 2020)).
Mr. Chansley cites the government's first September 17, 2021 discovery update, and the two district court cases referenced in a footnote therein, as evidence that the government's approach to discovery does not adhere to Saffarinia. Def 's Mot. at 14; ECF No. 75 at 2 (citing United States v. Meek, No. 19-cr-378 (JMS/MJD), 2021 WL 1049773, at *5 (S.D. Ind. Mar. 19, 2021) and United States v. Ohle, No. S3-08-cr-1109 (JSR), 2011 WL 651849, at *4 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 7, 2011)).
Taking the second portion of his argument first-and declining to opine on the wisdom of the government's choice to cite out-of-circuit, unpublished memorandum orders for points oflaw as important as Brady-Mr. Chansley' s argument misses the mark. The government cited those cases merely for the proposition that "[ d]efendants are in a better position to determine what evidence they believe is exculpatory and will help in their defense" than the government. ECF No. 75 at 2 (citing Meek, 2021 WL 1049773, at *5). That proposition is not inconsistent with Saffarinia. What is more, Mr. Chansley reads Saffarinia far too broadly. That opinion clearly held that the government is only required "to identify Brady material already known to it based on its existing knowledge of the documents it collected and reviewed in the first instance[,]" and that, as a corollary, the government is not required to "sift through the evidence in search of anything that could help the defense[.]" Saffarinia, 424 F. Supp. 3d at 86 (emphases in original) (internal citations omitted). In other words, Saffarinia does not require the government to specifically identify to a defendant any evidence in the government's voluminous disclosures that could conceivably qualify as Brady material based on the government's anticipation of any possible defense theory. Instead, Saffarinia only requires the government to identify exculpatory evidence of which it is aware.
The first part of Mr. Chansley's Brady argument similarly falters. In his view, the government's en masse production of discovery with the opportunity for defendants to lodge specific requests for information that they believe to be exculpatory is improper because this District "looks with disfavor on narrow readings of the government's Brady obligations[.]" Def. 's Mot. at 10 (collecting cases). But it is precisely the government's recognition of this District's exacting Brady standards that compelled the government to contract for, fund, and facilitate the introduction of a platform to disseminate massive amounts of discovery in cases related to January 6, 2021, and to equip defense teams with the tools necessary to digest the information made available on the platform. To be sure, this unprecedented prosecutorial effort places enormous disclosure burdens on the government and necessitates novel approaches to sharing discovery information with defendants. That said, Mr. Chansley has not demonstrated how the government's approach is inconsistent with Brady.
As a last gasp, Mr. Chansley faults the government for not providing him with specific discovery earlier because he was "easy to identify in the crowd of people who entered the Capitol" due to his distinctive costume. Def.'s Mot. at 13. Mr. Chansley does not cite any authority, and the Court is aware of none, stating that the government faces a heightened Brady obligation merely because a defendant is recognizable. Regardless, as previously discussed, the evidence that Mr. Chansley claims is exculpatory is decidedly not so.
* * *
Mr. Chansley has failed to demonstrate that the government fell short of its Brady obligations with respect to the production of video evidence in his case. Therefore, this claim fails.
D. Mr. Chansley's Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Argument Is Without Merit
Despite his repeated assertions that he was satisfied with plea counsel in writing and on the record, Mr. Chansley now argues that plea counsel was ineffective in two ways: (1) by encouraging him to accept a plea agreement containing a sentencing enhancement and appeal waivers; and (2) by not demanding production of the CCTV videos aired during the March 6, 2023 program prior to sentencing in order to use such video at sentencing. Def.'s Mot. at 17-21. He claims that he suffered prejudice because, absent these errors, he would have received a more favorable plea agreement and the Court would have imposed a lower sentence. Id. His argument is wildly speculative, contrary to established caselaw and practice, and devoid of common sense.
1. Mr. Chansley has not demonstrated that plea counsel's performance was deficient
Mr. Chansley's ineffective assistance of counsel claim stumbles at the start because he is unable to establish that his plea counsel's performance was deficient.
Mr. Chansley's first argument, that plea counsel erred in negotiating the terms of his plea agreement, collapses upon cursory inspection. First, a "prosecutor is not obligated to make a plea offer at all, let alone a plea offer on any particular terms." United States v. Zaia, 751 F. Supp. 2d 132, 143 (D.D.C. 2010). Similarly, Mr. Chansley does not point this Court to any authority stating that counsel has a constitutional duty to pursue a plea agreement more favorable than the agreement actually offered. What is more, dissatisfaction with the terms of a plea agreement alone cannot serve as a basis for an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. See United States v. Brunetti, 376 F.3d 93, 95 (2d Cir. 2004); Hunter v. United States, 160 F.3d 1109, 1115 (6th Cir. 1998). Second, plea counsel's suggestion to Mr. Chansley that he accept the plea agreement with the sentencing enhancement and appeal waiver fell squarely within the "wide range of reasonable professional assistance" that Strickland protects. 466 U.S. at 689. In exchange for Mr. Chansley's plea, the government agreed to dismiss the other charges pending against him and not to pursue other potential sentencing enhancements. Gov't Opp'n at 24 n.11. This sort of bargained-for-exchange is entirely consistent with effective performance by counsel during the plea process.
Mr. Chansley' s second claim, that plea counsel erred by not demanding or using the CCTV footage, also fails. As previously discussed, plea counsel did, in fact, have access to the videos well in advance of Mr. Chansley's sentencing. Similarly, as the government correctly notes, the record reflects that plea counsel reviewed such evidence with Mr. Chansley. See id. at 27 ( citing Sent'g Hr'g Tr. at 26:13-16). And contrary to Mr. Chansley's insistence, plea counsel's decision not to present the videos during sentencing does not demonstrate ineffective assistance-in fact, it was quite effective. The Court agrees with the government that plea counsel's strategic choice to use his presentation to focus on Mr. Chansley's remorse and acceptance of responsibility, rather than present additional video evidence in a futile attempt to contradict the obvious facts of the case, was objectively reasonable. See id. at 27-28. And that decision was all the more reasonable when considering that the Court previously rejected as unpersuasive plea counsel's attempt to cite the facts contained in the videos in light of the rest of the evidence of Mr. Chansley's conduct. See Chansley, 525 F. Supp. 3d at 170-71. Plea counsel sensibly changed course at sentencing, noting that the government was still pursuing investigations and gathering evidence related to the events of January 6, 2021, but that he and Mr. Chansley were "not in a position of slowing this court proceeding down because [they didn't] have to, because those investigations, those outcomes are irrelevant as to [Mr. Chansley], as to the defendant in this case, as to the decision of [Mr. Chansley] to enter a plea[.]" Sent'g Hr'g Tr. at 16:11-15. Plea counsel emphasized that Mr. Chansley wanted "to be held accountable based on evidence that we have today, that this court has seen." Id. at 16:16-17. Based on this presentation, along with Mr. Chansley's own comments, the Court determined that the appropriate sentence in his case was the bottom of the applicable Guidelines range, despite the seriousness of Mr. Chansley' s conduct.
Mr. Chansley does not meet his burden to establish that plea counsel performed deficiently.
2. Mr. Chansley has not demonstrated that he suffered any prejudice
As for prejudice, Mr. Chansley attempts to tread a fine line. He wisely does not claim that he would have opted for trial absent counsel's performance. Nor could he.13 Instead, he argues that, had plea counsel performed effectively, he would still have proceeded with a plea agreement, but would have agreed to one absent the sentencing-enhancement stipulation or the appeal waivers. Def.'s Mot. at 20-21. Mr. Chansley argues that without the stipulation, his recommended Guidelines sentence would have been lower and that without the waiver, he would have been able to appeal his sentence on any grounds he wished. Id. However, these hypothetical scenarios fall woefully short of establishing a legally sufficient showing of prejudice.
As discussed above, neither the government nor plea counsel had any obligation to reach a plea agreement without the sentencing enhancement or appeal waiver. Also, the enhancement at issue, U.S.S.G. § 2Jl.2(b)(l)(B), has been approved by courts in this District in a variety of cases involving the events of January 6, 2021, including this Court. Gov't Opp'n at 26 (collecting cases). And regarding the appeal waiver, it is clear that "[a] 'knowing, intelligent, and voluntary' waiver of the right to appeal 'generally may be enforced."' United States v. Adams, 780 F .3d 1182, 1183 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (quoting United States v. Guillen, 561 F.3d 527, 529 (D.C. Cir. 2009)). Mr. Chansley has not alleged, much less shown, that his plea was not knowing, intelligent or voluntary. Nor has he so much as hinted at what other legal challenges to his conviction he could or would have raised had he not waived his direct-appeal rights. Under these circumstances, he cannot show that he suffered any prejudice due to the terms of the plea agreement that he accepted.
Similarly, Mr. Chansley has not met the required prejudice showing with respect to plea counsel's alleged failure to demand or use the CCTV footage appearing in the March 6, 2023 broadcast. Even if plea counsel had presented the Court with this footage, which, as discussed above, plea counsel was correct not to, Mr. Chansley would not have received a lower sentence. The criminal nature of Mr. Chansley's actions that day, including his decision to leave a note threatening "It's Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!" at the heart of the U.S. government, establish the appropriateness of a sentence of at least 41 months' incarceration. 14 In fact, without Mr. Chansley' s apparently unequivocal acceptance of responsibility, the Court is confident that he would have received a higher sentence.
In sum, Mr. Chansley cannot demonstrate that either the absence of certain terms in the plea agreement or the presence of the CCTV footage at sentencing would have resulted in even a "conceivable[] likelihood of a different result," much less a "substantial" one. Cullen, 563 U.S. at 189. Therefore, he has not established prejudice.
* * *
Mr. Chansley' s claims are without merit. Thus, the Court will DENY his motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his conviction under 28 U.S.C. § 2255.
The Court is disappointed to learn that, through his filings and public statements, Mr. Chansley has recanted the contrition displayed at his sentencing nearly two years ago. 15 Such an about-face casts serious doubt on the veracity of any of Mr. Chansley' s claims, here or elsewhere.
Finally, the Court would be remiss if it did not address the ill-advised television program of March 6, 2023. Not only was the broadcast replete with misstatements and misrepresentations regarding the events of January 6, 2021 too numerous to count, the host explicitly questioned the integrity of this Court -- not to mention the legitimacy of the entire U.S. criminal justice system with inflammatory characterizations of cherry-picked videos stripped of their proper context. In so doing, he called on his followers to "reject the evidence of [their] eyes and ears," language resembling the destructive, misguided rhetoric that fueled the events of January 6 in the first place. 16 The Court finds it alarming that the host's viewers throughout the nation so readily heeded his command. But this Court cannot and will not reject the evidence before it. Nor should the public. Members of the public who are concerned about the evidence presented in Mr. Chansley's case and others like may view the public docket and even attend court proceedings in these cases. Those of us who have presided over dozens of cases arising from, listened to hundreds of hours of testimony describing, and reviewed thousands of pages of briefing about the attack on our democracy of January 6 know all too well that neither the events of that day nor any particular defendant's involvement can be fully captured in a seconds-long video carelessly, or perhaps even cynically, aired in a television segment or attached to a tweet.
IV. CERTIFICATE OF APPEALABILITY
Before appealing a final order denying a § 2255 motion, a court must "issue or deny a certificate of appealability." Fed. R. Governing § 2255 Proceedings 1 l(b). The defendant may not appeal without this certificate of appealability, which requires "a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right." 28 U.S.C. § 2253(c). Doing so requires the defendant to demonstrate "that reasonable jurists could debate whether ( or, for that matter, agree that) the petition should have been resolved in a different manner or that the issues presented were adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further." Slack v. McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 484 (2000) (quoting Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880, 893 & n.4 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted)). When a district court denies relief on procedural grounds, the defendant must also show that reasonable jurists would debate "whether the district court was correct in its procedural ruling." United States v. Baxter, 761 F.3d 17, 26 n.10 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (quoting Slack, 529 U.S. at 484).
Mr. Chansley's arguments are without merit. For these reasons, the Court finds that reasonable jurists would not debate whether his claims deserve encouragement to proceed further. Mr. Chansley has not made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right. The Court will therefore decline to issue a certificate of appealability for Mr. Chansley's claims.
V. CONCLUSION
For these reasons, the Court concludes that Mr. Chansley's motion and the record in his case do not show his entitlement to relief. No evidentiary hearing is warranted, see 28 U.S.C. § 2255(b), and the Court will DENY Mr. Chansley's motion. No certificate of appealability shall issue. A separate Order consistent with this Memorandum Opinion shall issue.
SIGNED this 20th day of July, 2023.
Royce C. Lamberth United States District Judge
_______________
Notes:
1 In total, the government provided nine discovery updates in this case. Gov't Opp'n at 3 n.2.
2 Mr. Chansley appealed his conviction, ECF No. 108, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later issued a mandate dismissing Mr. Chansley's appeal pursuant to his own motion, ECF No. 112.
3 Scott Macfarlane, "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley Released Early from Federal Prison, Transferred to Halfway House, CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/qanon-sham ... onhalfway- house-jan-6/ [https://perma.cc/4WNZ-4WVS].
4 Fox News, Tucker: This Video Tells A Different Story of Jan 6, YouTube (Mar. 6, 2023), https://youtu.be/Opy7MLGAPBk?t=169 [https://perma.cc/753P-ESUW].
5 Fox News, "QAnon Shaman's" Lawyer Speaks Out After Jan. 6 Bombshell Footage Released, YouTube (Mar. 9, 2023) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTdL5VtjbtY [https://perma.cc/T4BP-68ST].
6 In early May 2023, a jury convicted Pezzola of eight of the ten crimes for which he was indicted, including seditious conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2384. Verdict, United States v. Pezzola, 21-cr-175-6 (TJK), ECF No. 804.
7 The Court follows government counsel's lead in referring to cameras by letter instead of their true identifiers due to the sensitive nature of the cameras and their locations. See Gov't Opp'n at 9 n.4.
8 Mr. Chansley's motion contains a purported excerpt from the government's March 27 letter indicating that this video was produced via Evidence.com on October 22, 2021 along with the vast majority of the other videos appearing in the segment. Def.'s Mot. at 12. However, the government's opposition indicates that this file was produced in May 2021. Gov't Opp'n at 9. The exact date of production is immaterial, as the Court will explain, because the record unmistakably shows that this video was not suppressed nor is it exculpatory.
9 Even though this clip was not available to Mr. Chansley prior to the conclusion of his case, it does not exculpate him nor would its disclosure have affected this Court's sentencing determination. See Part 111.C.
10 Mr. Chansley's plea agreement expressly reserved the right to collaterally attack his conviction based on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. Plea Agreement ¶ IX(E).
11 One 10-second video showing Mr. Chansley's movements outside of the Senate chamber was not disclosed to plea counsel prior to sentencing. However, because that video was not exculpatory, there is no Brady violation with respect to that video. See Part III.C.2.
12 In fact, as Mr. Chansley admits, counsel was aware of this information even earlier. On January 9, 2021, Mr. Chansley participated in an interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Def. 's Mot. at 18-19. In that interview, Mr. Chansley "claimed that police escorted him into the Senate Chamber and asked if he would assist in getting the protestors to vacate the Chamber. [Mr.] Chansley claimed to use his megaphone to request that protestors depart." Id. at 19. Though Mr. Chansley later contradicted the second claim through his agreement to the facts as outlined in the Statement of Offense, the first claim is consistent with the Statement of Offense.
13 Both the government and plea counsel acknowledged the overwhelming evidence of Mr. Chansley's guilt, Sent'g Hr'g Tr. at 4: 13-16; 16:18-21. Given these facts, "[i]t is highly improbable" that Mr. Chansley would have declined to plead guilty and instead proceed to trial. United States v. Thomas, 999 F.3d 723, 738 (D.C. Cir. 2021). Furthermore, Mr. Chansley faced a potential sentence of 20 years in prison-more than five times longer than the term he actually received-had he gone to trial. Sent'g Hr'g Tr. at 42:12-18. A defendant cannot establish prejudice under these circumstances. See United States v. Ayers, 938 F. Supp. 2d 108, 115 (D.D.C. 2013).
14 At the time of his November 2021 sentencing, the government had not gathered any evidence that Mr. Chansley was aware of the noose hanging outside of the Capitol building at the time that he sat in the Vice President's chair and wrote his threatening note. Sent'g Hr'g Tr. at 8:7-13. Therefore, the Court did not take that event into consideration in imposing Mr. Chansley's sentence. Since then, the government has gathered terabytes of additional evidence regarding the events of January 6, 2021. Were Mr. Chansley to be resentenced today, perhaps the government would be able to present such evidence and, if so, the Court would certainly consider such evidence in imposing a new sentence.
15 See, e.g., Caitlin Sievers, "QAnon Shaman" Looks to Overturn Sentence, Says He Never Renounced QAnon, A'Z Mirror (June 22, 2023), https://www.azmirror.com/2023/06/22/qan ... s-henever- renounced-qanon/ [https://perma.ccN84G-UUR.7]; Mike Wendling, The 'QAnon Shaman' and Other Capitol Rioters Who Regret Pleading Guilty, BBC News (July 16, 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada- 66169914 [https://perma.cc/8MTE-PWKM].
Lev Parnas REVEALS MORE Trump Crimes HE WITNESSED and his BOMBSHELL Letter to Congress by Lev Parnas MeidasTouch Jul 26, 2023
On today’s episode, Former Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani Associate Lev Parnas reads from his exclusive letter to Rep. James Comer of the House Oversight Committee. His letter outlines Trump and Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on the Biden family as well as their continued efforts to interfere with the highest levels of Ukrainian politics.
Transcript`
Hi everyone. Welcome to Lev Parnas's Diaries from home confinement. For those of you that don't know me, I used to be part of Donald Trump's inner circle, in Trump's cult. Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani sent me to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. Now that I'm out of the cult, and finishing up my sentence on home confinement, I want to share some of my diary stories with you.
Last week the oversight committee, led by representative James Comer, held a hearing to spread more conspiracy theories into Joe and Hunter Biden. Representative Jamie Raskin read portions of my letter, and entered it into evidence.
Comer, Republicans' Investigative Chief, Embraces Role of Biden Antagonist: The fourth-term Kentuckian and chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has become an aggressive promoter of sinister-sounding claims about the president and his family.
Democrats accuse GOP of spreading 'racist conspiracy theories' in Biden docs probe by Rebecca Beitsch and Brett Samuels 05/03/23 12:21 PM ET
The memo also condemns committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), accusing him of misrepresenting Chung's testimony while spreading "false, xenophobic, and racist conspiracy theories."
The memo points to media appearances by Comer, including those in which he suggests Chung, who was born in South Korea, had ties to Hunter Biden and the Chinese Community Party, telling Fox's Maria Bartiromo, "We're looking into that."
Donald Trump becomes the first U.S. president to be impeached twice
All eyes on a Washington grand jury amid signs of possible third Trump indictment by Stephen Collinson, CNN Updated 9:22 AM EDT, Thu July 20, 2023
Like most of you, I've been watching the GOP, led by Senator Chuck Grassley, representative James Comer, and their cohorts like Marjorie Greene, continue to spread misinformation, and spread conspiracy theories, related to Joe and Hunter Biden, to confuse the American public.
And most importantly to distract from the real criminal, their leader, twice-impeached, twice-indicted, and with more indictments coming, Donald J Trump.
I'm currently in the process of writing my tell-all book. It's called, "Shadow Diplomacy," detailing everything that transpired in the Trump's Administration pertaining to the Bidens, and much, much more. Since the book is not scheduled to be released for a few more months, as a concerned citizen, and someone that loves our country, I had to do more. I had to act now.
So I decided to take pen to paper and write James Comer a letter, describing what actually transpired in our year and a half long investigation into Hunter and Joe Biden. Now I'm going to read the letter to you, and then we'll go discuss some things afterwards.
"Dear Chairman Comer,
As I have been closely following the developments in Congress's investigations into both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I believe I can place the facts in context for you. I write to you as a concerned American, who wishes only to share the information that I know to be true, so that we can lay to rest the conspiracy theories about Biden's supposed corruption in Ukraine once and for all.
I feel I have a responsibility to remind you, our representatives, and the American people of what actually happened during Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump's efforts to uncover information about the Bidens in Ukraine. From November 2018 to October 2019, I was a key participant in and witness to these efforts; and every event described below, I was either physically present in the room with the people involved, on phone calls with Giuliani and the individuals in question, often interpreting between the Ukrainian and English languages, or communicating directly with Giuliani about the situation. Please consider that the facts I state here have never changed from when I first submitted to Congress everything I knew in November 2019. It has always been my intention to tell the truth, because I love this country with my whole heart, and I want our government to unite for the greater good instead of chasing false stories that divide us.
By reading the information below, you will understand the full extent of the campaign orchestrated by Giuliani and Trump to dig up dirt on the Bidens, and to spread misinformation about them through various networks including government officials, journalists, and FOX News personnel. You will also see clearly that there is no evidence of Joe or Hunter Biden interfering with Ukrainian politics, and there never has been. Statements suggesting otherwise have been debunked again and again. I hope that the breadth of my experiences, which are all backed up by the materials I previously shared with Congress, will provide that no stone has been unturned in this investigation.
Here are the facts as I know them to be true:
In November of 2018, I was approached by Rudy Giuliani, who asked me about my contacts in Ukraine and if I could verify some information he received about Joe Biden.
A video had been recently shared online in which Biden, being interviewed by Council on Foreign Relations, said that in 2016 he had pressured Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko to fire his Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
Giuliani told me he had discussed with then-President Trump not only Biden's statements in the video, but also his discovery that Biden's son Hunter was on the board of the Ukrainian Energy company called Burisma and that Shokin was supposedly looking into possible corruption in the company. When Giuliani spoke to me, he got very excited and said, "This is the smoking gun [he'd] been looking for" -- meaning he saw it as a way to discredit the Bidens.
Later that month, I attended the Hanukkah celebration at the White House where Giuliani and Trump were both present. Trump approached me briefly to say, "Rudy told me good things. Keep up the good work." Then he gave me a thumbs-up in approval.
I met with Shokin for the first time in Ukraine in December of 2018. Giuliani had instructed me to relay a message to him, which was essentially that if he wanted to be reinstated as Prosecutor General -- a goal he expressed very openly -- that the Trump Administration could help him get his position back, but only if he provided hard evidence of Joe Biden's corruption. Initially Shokin said he had decided not to investigate Burisma further, but when I gave him Giuliani's message, he became shifty in his answers, admitting that his team was "looking into it" without giving further details.
I returned from Ukraine, Giuliani told me to ask Shokin to fly to the States to meet up with Senator Lindsey Graham, and when he was speaking to the visa authorities, he should tell them he was only going to California to see his daughter, not that he would then travel to Washington, D.C. to meet Graham.
However, when Shokin applied for his visa, then-Ambassador Marie Yavanovich denied him.
Communications ensued where Giuliani continued to pressure Shokin into helping him get information on the Bidens, although Shokin was being skeptical because Giuliani could not get him a visa approved, and he didn't understand how the president of the United States and his personal representative could not achieve something like that. Eventually they had a 45-minute Skype call in January 2019, where I served as an interpreter between the two of them, and of which there was a recording that I later submitted to Congress. The recording shows Giuliani aggressively asking Shokin for details on the Bidens. Even though Shokin was trying to push the narrative that he had lost his job because of the pressure Joe Biden had put on President Poroshenko to fire him, when asked directly by Giuliani, he conceded that there was no evidence of either Hunter or Joe Biden doing anything that interfered with Ukrainian law.
Giuliani continued to receive conspiracy theories from different sources, and remained insistent that there must be some data on the Bidens' corruption.
In late January 2019, my business partner Igor Fruman got word that Yuri Lutsenko, Shokin's replacement as Ukraine's Prosecutor General, was in New York and wanted to meet with Giuliani to discuss some legal matters. We set up the meeting in Giuliani's office on Park Avenue. There, Lutsenko explained he'd requested the meeting because he wanted to sit down with Bill Barr and, Attorney General to Attorney General, discuss the overall problem of Ukrainian and American corruption, including the funneling of Ukrainian money into American institutions. Giuliani stopped Lutsenko and said he wasn't interested in that, only in information concerning Joe and Hunter Biden. He then added statements to the effect that if Lutsenko wanted a conversation with Barr, he would need to offer a give and take, and Giuliani was interested in details about the Bidens.
Even though Lutsenko protested that he hadn't come to discuss the Bidens, he agreed to see what he could find for Giuliani. The next day, we all met again in Giuliani's office and Lutsenko brought a folder containing purported wire transfers from Burisma to Hunter Biden, and documents from the Prosecutor General's office outlining the company's hierarchy and organization from its CEO, Mykola Zlochevsky, on down. These documents did show what the Prosecutor General's office was doing in its investigation into Burisma, but again, there was no evidence in any of these materials that pointed to any criminal activity from Hunter Biden.
During the meeting, Giuliani stopped to call President Trump for about 3-5 minutes to update him on how the meeting was going with Lutsenko, and told Lutsenko that Trump was very happy with the help he was giving. He gave Lutsenko the thumbs-up.
Lutsenko then promised that if we went to Ukraine, he would help us meet with President Poroshenko and other officials who were dealing directly with the Burisma investigation. After the first meeting, Lutsenko kept pressuring Giuliani that he needed to meet Bill Barr. However, Giuliani eventually told Lutsenko he hadn't provided enough information, and that the only way he could meet Bill Barr was if he retained Giuliani for $200,000. He then gave Lutsenko a "contract." (It should be noted that Lutsenko refused to pay and to this day has never met Bill Barr.)
A few days later, Giuliani told me that he had decided that it might not be a good look for him to represent Ukrainian officials while representing Donald Trump, and introduced me to attorneys Victoria Toensing and DiGenova, who he said would represent Lutsenko instead. Later on, Giuliani told me that Toensing and DiGenova had agreed to split the $200,000 retainer fee in some part with him. In subsequent calls with Giuliani, Lutsenko was still upset and complaining about the whole situation, arguing that he shouldn't have to pay anything to meet one Attorney General to another, particularly because they had to discuss criminal matters between their respective countries.
In February 2019, Giuliani and I met Lutsenko in Poland, where the Prosecutor General was now more favorable to the idea of helping the Trump team investigate the Bidens.
He said President Poroshenko would meet with us, so Giuliani decided I should go straight from Poland to Ukraine on his behalf. I then had a three-hour meeting with Poroshenko. Giuliani's message to the president, who was running for re-election, was that Trump would support him and help him win if he made an official announcement of an investigation against Joe Biden.
Poroshenko was taken aback and relayed to me that he didn't trust Trump based on the bad deal they had made in 2018. At the time, he and Trump had met in the White House, and after the meeting one of Trump's aides suggested that Poroshenko should buy coal from a Pennsylvania Coal Company. The reason, they explained, was that Trump was about to have a rally in that part of the state and the purchase would be a good look for the relationship between the two countries. Poroshenko bought the coal, which was more expensive than Ukraine had paid for the same product from other sources, and he ended up having issues with the Ukrainian Parliament over the cost. After Trump had the rally, there were no further interactions between the two of them. So according to Poroshenko, he now had no reason to trust Trump, but he did tell me that he would wait to see what happened since the lines of communication had been opened.
Arriving back in the States, I began a series of regular meetings at the Trump International Hotel with Giuliani and what I later called the "BLT Team," because we always met at the BLT Steak restaurant in the hotel.
The BLT Team included Toensing, DiGenova, and John Solomon, an investigative reporter who was then working for The Hill and had many contacts at FOX News and the State Department, as well as having Trump on his speed dial. Solomon gave us information at the meetings that he said various sources had shared with him about the Bidens' dealings in Ukraine. Giuliani tasked me with traveling to Ukraine throughout March, April, and May 2019 to interview different people who had promised to give us information and evidence including records of bribes, bank records, and incriminating tapes.
Yet every time I went on these trips and conducted these interviews, I came up with nothing. Lutsenko kept assuring me that they would announce an investigation into the Bidens, but that never happened either.
Around the same time as the BLT Team began meeting, I was introduced by phone to Congressman Devin Nunes, who was leading his own separate investigation into the Bidens.
His team decided to work with the BLT Team, and I was told to keep in contact with Nunes's staff member Derek Harvey. While I was in Ukraine on these assignments, Nunes and Harvey asked me to help set up interviews that would facilitate their investigation. With my assistance, Harvey conducted numerous interviews with Ukrainian prosecutors and officials via Skype.
During this process, the prosecutors initially expressed an interest in meeting Nunes directly and having him conduct in-person interviews in Ukraine. But Nunes declined, explaining to me again by phone that because Republicans did not have control of the House, they would have to report any travel they were doing. Therefore, he believed it was better to have Derek Harvey conduct the interviews on Skype so the Democrats wouldn't know what was going on. On one occasion I even tried to set up an interview with Viktor Shokin for Harvey, but Shokin told me that there was no need because the two had already spoken.
At one point Victoria Toensing said that Senator Ron Johnson would also work as the BLT Team's "guy in the Senate" to push all the information that we were getting -- which still amounted to the same unverified conspiracy theories.
In March 2019, John Solomon had the idea to set up FOX News interviews with Poroshenko, Lutsenko and Nazar Kholodnytsky, the head prosecutor for the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). Shortly before his interview, Kholodnytsky had gotten caught up in some criminal activities and Marie Yovanovitch called for him to be ousted from his position. During the taping of his interview, instead of talking about the Bidens as planned, Kholodnytsky complained about Yovanovitch's interfering in Ukrainian politics. However, during his taping, he never validated nor confirmed that any illegal activities had been committed by either Hunter or Joe Biden. This statement upset Solomon and Giuliani, so the interview never aired on FOX.
Ten minutes before Poroshenko's interview was to take place, he decided not to participate. There was an intense phone conversation that I translated between Lutsenko and Giuliani, which ended with Giuliani telling Lutsenko that if he couldn't get Poroshenko to do the interview, not to call anymore.
During the argument with Giuliani, Lutsenko sent me an expletive-ridden text. I read the original in Russian, but the translation into English is essentially as follows, accommodating for language and context: "Sorry, but I didn't get a visit. But first, my president didn't get a damn thing. I'm ready to destroy your competitor, but you want more and more. You expect us to do everything, and everything we ask of you is "Later." It's not right. It's not fair."
Finally, Lutsenko then said he would do the interview and give us a big bombshell about the situation in Ukraine, which Giuliani expected to be about the Bidens. But during the interview, instead of talking about the Bidens, Lutsenko spoke about Yovanovitch's newly uncovered "Do Not Prosecute" list of names. It became a big scandal, but not long after that announcement, he retracted his statements. Giuliani was incredibly angry.
Every time Giuliani and Lutsenko had spoken about the Bidens, he would answer that nothing had been found to incriminate them. Neither Joe nor Hunter Biden had done anything against the Ukrainian constitution or local laws; there was no evidence of bribery or extortion that anyone could find. At the same time, Lutsenko was worried he wouldn't be able to stay in office if Poroshenko lost his bid for re-election, so he did what he could to stay on Trump and Giuliani's good side. To appease them, he would sometimes make vague statements to the media about Hunter and Joe Biden, but he never said they had committed any acts of corruption or that an investigation was being opened. There was simply nothing he had to substantiate those claims.
By that point, the BLT Team were watching the Ukrainian presidential elections and realized Volodymyr Zelenskyy was probably going to win.
The conversations shifted from Poroshenko and Lutsenko to getting a promise from Zelenskyy that he would announce an investigation into the Bidens following his win. Giuliani assumed that because Zelenskyy was an actor and comedian, not a politician, he would naturally want to do anything he could to establish a good relationship with the U.S.
I was tasked in April 2019 to go to Ukraine and get in contact with Zelenskyy. Yet my attempts to contact him were consistently blocked by Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a Ukrainian oligarch who was backing Zelenskyy financially.
Eventually I flew to Israel, where Kolomoyskyi was living in exile, and explained Giuliani and Trump's stance on the matter and why we needed Zelenskyy to commence an investigation into the Bidens. Giuliani had also instructed me to tell Kolomoyskyi that he would help with his legal problems in the U.S. if he would help us with Zelenskyy.
As you see, these are flagrant examples of Giuliani interfering in Ukrainian politics. Ironically, the very thing he was desperate to prove that the Bidens were doing in Ukraine -- and for which he could find no evidence at all -- was what he was guilty of.
By the end of April 2019, it was clear Zelenskyy would win in a landslide. We were preparing to set up a meeting between Zelenskyy and Giuliani, who was supposed to come to Ukraine on May 10th with Victoria Toensing. Giuliani had given me a letter which I handed over on May 9th to Arsen Avakov, the Minister of the Interior; the letter was to communicate to Zelenskyy that Giuliani wanted to discuss private matters pertaining to Trump, as he represented Trump in his personal capacity.
However, this meeting never occurred.
On May 11th, Giuliani called me frantically in the middle of the night, saying he'd been approached by Kash Patel, a member of Devin Nunes's team and staffer for Trump's National Security Council. Patel informed him that people in Zelenskyy's inner circle were Trump's enemies and that Giuliani could not meet in Ukraine now because it would be "a set-up."
Instead I was once again assigned to be the man on the ground, to meet with Zelenskyy myself on Giuliani and Trump's behalf and deliver a precise message in very strict words. Unless Zelenskyy announced an investigation into the Bidens the U.S. would not deliver certain promises: 1) Trump would tell Mike Pence not to attend Zelenskyy's inauguration, and 2), the U.S. would not send any aid to Ukraine, military or otherwise.
It would be Zelenskyy's Chief of Staff Sergei Shafer, and not the president himself, who met with me on that trip. After sharing a copy of the letter with Shafer via WhatsApp, I reiterated Giuliani's message for Zelenskyy to Shafer. Though he initially told me that Zelenskyy wanted a good relationship with the U.S. and would cooperate, we never heard from them after that. A few days later, I was told by Avakov, Minister of the Interior, that Zelenskyy was told not to speak to Giuliani or his team and that he should only go through proper channels with people at the U.S. Embassy. When I reiterated that message to Giuliani, he became enraged.
On May 13th, Ukrainian officials got confirmation from the U.S. that Mike Pence would not attend Zelenskyy's inauguration, which caused turmoil inside the Ukrainian government. They didn't want their people to realize that the U.S. were essentially pulling out of its promise to provide aid. When Kolomoyskyi found out, he returned to Ukraine, and was furious about the situation. He went to the media, calling Fruman and me grifters, stating they we were trying to force Zelenskyy to do unethical things, and threatening our lives. On his end, Giuliani then began sending bullying and threatening messages to Zelenskyy on Twitter and disparaging him on FOX News. He would question Zelenskyy's power as president, he would insist that Zelenskyy arrest Kolomoyskyi immediately, and repeat that Zelenskyy's inner circle was comprised of Trump's enemies, among other such statements.
It was then decided that Giuliani and I would fly to Paris to discuss next steps for Ukraine.
While in Paris, Giuliani received a call from Rick Perry, then Secretary of Energy. Perry was calling from Air Force Two, explaining that Trump had assigned him to represent the U.S. at Zelenskyy's inauguration and that he was "supposed to call Rudy" for his exact instructions. The call was on speaker, so I heard every word. Giuliani outlined to Perry that he needed to relay the same message to Zelenskyy after the inauguration ceremony: Announce an investigation into the Bidens, or the U.S. will pull its aid. Right after the inauguration, Perry called Giuliani to say he had delivered the message and Zelenskyy was willing to play ball.
But when Zelenskyy did make an announcement the following day, it was a statement about addressing general corruption in Ukraine, and never mentioned the Bidens. Giuliani was angry, communicating with Trump that the Ukrainians were playing games. We knew that at the same time, Trump was also making several attempts to deliver messages to Zelenskyy through other members of his team outside of Giuliani, and all with the same theme: investigate Joe Biden or else.
Near the end of our trip to Paris, we were introduced to one of Igor Fruman's associates, a friend who happened to be an employee of a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmitry Firtash, who had many political and business connections, including with the head of Burisma, Zlochevsky. When we returned to the U.S., we met with the BLT Team and John Solomon said Firtash's help would be key because of his relationship with Zlochevsky.
The problem was that Firtash would prove nearly impossible to contact.
He was also facing a serious extradition case to the U.S. for a number of bribery, racketeering and other charges since 2014. Solomon and Giuliani put together a package of documents regarding regarding confidential information in Firtash's case, and had me travel to Vienna in June 2019 to meet with Firtash, letting him know that Giuliani and our whole team were serious and that we could help him if he helped us. From June until the time of my arrest in October 2019, we had ongoing communications with Firtash.
In a meeting with the BLT Team, Solomon relayed to Giuliani that he had information that Robert Mueller's lead prosecutor Andrew Weissman offered Firtash a deal to cancel his extradition if he would testify against Trump and Putin. Firtash didn't want to get involved with the Biden versus Trump situation, but was open to helping us with Mueller's investigations into Trump. Thereafter, as I became an interpreter between Firtash's new legal team and Firtash, most of the conversations in which I participated were potentially privileged; however, I believe this information may be made available to the House Oversight Committee through a congressional subpoena.
But the true purpose of dangling this carrot in front of Firtash was to get him to use his contacts to pressure Zlochevsky to cooperate with the BLT Team. Eventually, Giuliani proposed a $1 million contract to represent Firtash. Later, similar to the Lutsenko situation, he took it back and had Firtash sign a contract with Victoria Toensing. Giuliani, however, would continue to oversee everything and remain in charge of matters related to Firtash. Then later Giuliani and Toensing had several phone calls that I was privy to with Bill Barr, leading to an unofficial meeting in the lobby at the Trump International Hotel, and then an official meeting at the Department of Justice.
Giuliani worked aggressively to hire Ms. Dunphy, offering her what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work as his Director of Business Development with a salary of $1 million per year plus expenses. As an added inducement, Giuliani also offered to provide pro bono legal representation to Ms. Dunphy in connection with an ongoing dispute arising from an abusive ex-partner....
At the same time, the BLT Team was exploring many different angles to get information on the Bidens.
In June, Giuliani asked me to accompany him to a lunch in New York with Vitaly Pruss, a Russian businessman who claimed to have deep connections to Burisma, including with Hunter Biden's business partner Devon Archer, and had recommended powerful people to Zlochevsky that he should put on the company's board. During this meeting, Pruss shared a story with us: He said earlier that year, while doing business related to Burisma, he had taken Hunter Biden to meet Kazakhstan's minister of foreign affairs, and that Biden had gotten substantially intoxicated with drugs and alcohol on this trip. While he was incapacitated, his laptop was compromised and copied by a representative of FSB (Russia's secret police) and members of Zlochevsky's team.
It's important to note that certain aspects of Pruss's story are verifiably true. This trip with Hunter Biden did happen, and his computer hard drives were taken and duplicated. But Pruss specified that while the contents of the laptop were personally embarrassing to Hunter Biden -- pictures of him doing drugs and surrounded by girls -- there was no evidence of financial crimes or any data on his laptop that suggested the illegal activities of any other kind, which is the sort of proof that Giuliani desperately needed. Pruss never mentioned anything about the hard drives containing criminal information, only the embarrassing images. It was not until Giuliani began disseminating the story of Hunter Biden's laptop that the idea of proof of financial and political crimes was introduced.
Giuliani continued this simultaneous efforts to reach Zlochevsky through Firtash and Pruss.
I specifically recall that Giuliani told me to tell Pruss to pressure Zlochevsky by saying that he could be "an enemy or a friend of Trump." At a meeting of the BLT Team, Giuliani and Solomon came up with a series of 12-14 questions about the Bidens that we would propose to Zlochevsky. Eventually, we managed to get Zlochevsky's answers back. But his answers gave us nothing -- because there was nothing. On reading Zlochevsky's reply, Giuliani turned red and yelled, "What is this shit? This is bullshit. Make sure nobody sees this. Bury this."
I will remind you that Zlochevsky's answers are in the report that the House Oversight Committee published. In this document, he stated that Hunter Biden was never asked or assigned to speak with anybody in the U.S. on behalf of Burisma, that there were no political lobbying efforts on behalf of Burisma, that nobody from the company had ever spoken to Joe Biden, and that Hunter Biden was essentially innocent of what people had been implying. His letter debunked all the conspiracy theories.
In August 2019, Kurt Volker, Trump's Special Envoy to Ukraine, approached Giuliani. He said that Trump had written Zelenskyy off and wasn't talking to him, but wanted Giuliani to emphasize to Trump that the relationship with Zelenskyy was crucial. He stressed that Zelenskyy needed to get support from the U.S. in Ukraine's ongoing war with Russia. While at a meeting that I was present at with Giuliani and Volker at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, it was agreed that if Giuliani opened the communication channels with Zelenskyy and Trump, as well as invited Zelenskyy to the White House, then Zelenskyy would announce an investigation into the Bidens. A later meeting with Volker, Giuliani, and then U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and Rick Perry took place to discuss the details of the investigation announcement in a phone call with Zelenskyy's chief of staff Andriy Yermark.
I was then tasked with traveling to Spain to attend a meeting with Yermark and Giuliani. In that meeting, Giuliani pressured Yermark to tell Zelenskyy to make the announcement about the Bidens. Giuliani also brought up Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kiev, who he had met with several times in New York. He informed Yermark that he knew Zelenskyy wanted to fire Klitschko and emphasized that this would be a bad idea, because Klitschko was well liked by Trump and the American people.
Again, this is a blatant example of Giuliani interfering in foreign politics. Zelenskyy's aim was to clear out corruption in the Ukrainian government. Unfortunately, the war has limited Zelenskyy's opportunities to address this. However, there was no possible reason why Giuliani should have been suggesting who should play any role in the Ukrainian government.
In the early part of October 2019, I got a call telling me to go to Vienna with Giuliani, where the former Chief Financial Officer of Burisma, Alexander Gorbunenko, would meet Giuliani and give us Hunter Biden's hard drive and answer any questions we had. My Ukrainian contacts also told me they would have Viktor Shokin in Vienna to give an interview to Sean Hannity of FOX News, because Shokin was supposed to appear in a Viennese court on behalf of Dimitry Firtash, giving sworn testimony in court that would basically be saying what Giuliani wanted him to say -- that he was fired because of Joe Biden. (As mentioned earlier, Biden did make statements that he had helped to get Shokin fired, but Ukrainian investigations into the matter some years later concluded that Shokin had been terminated because of multiple cases of corruption while in office.)
I have text messages confirming all these plans, and all are among the materials I submitted to Congress during the first impeachment inquiry. These include messages from Hannity setting up the interview, and messages coordinating that Giuliani, Toensing, and I would go to Vienna to meet Burisma's ex-CFO Gorbunenko. Just before we were to fly to Austria, there was a meeting at FOX News in Washington, because Solomon was appearing that night on Hannity's show and Giuliani was appearing in Laura Ingraham's. The BLT Team got together in a FOX conference room and discussed how we would blow up the story once we got Hunter Biden's hard drive in Vienna.
The next morning Giuliani met me for breakfast and said that Trump needed him at the White House, he would be unable to go to Vienna. He insisted Fruman and I should go and set up everything and he would join us later. Toensing then contacted me to say that she would not go to Vienna either because her husband had a cold. Shortly afterward, on October 9, 2019, Fruman and I were arrested at Dulles International Airport while trying to make the first leg of our flight to Vienna.
Throughout all these months of work, the extensive campaigns and networking done by Trump allies and Giuliani associates, including the enormously thorough interviews and assignments that I undertook, there has never been any evidence that Hunter or Joe Biden committed any crimes related to Ukrainian politics. Never, during any of my communications with Ukrainian officials or connections to Burisma, did any of them confirm or provide concrete facts linking the Bidens to illegal activities. In fact, they asked me multiple times why our team was so concerned with this idea. The truth is that everyone, from Giuliani and the BLT Team to Devin Nunes and his colleagues, to the people at FOX News, knew that these allegations against the Bidens were false. There has never been any factual evidence, only conspiracy theories spread by people who knew exactly what they were doing.
With all due respect, Chairman Comer, the narrative you are seeking for this investigation has been proven false many times over, by a wide array of respected sources. There is simply no merit to investigating this matter any further. I hope my letter has provided you with additional clarity on this point.
Please know that in my sharing this information with you, I am not looking for any sympathy for myself. I take full responsibility for my own actions in this matter, and I am extremely remorseful for my participation. In explaining the full context to you here, I can only hope that my truth can be used for the greater good. Please abandon this effort to investigate the Bidens, which is nothing more than a wild goose chase, and let our elected officials return to the issue at hand of uniting our great country to be stronger and better than ever before.
I am willing to testify under oath in Congress regarding any of these matters, and answer any questions that you might have, or provide you with any texts or correspondence in these situations I have described in this letter. You may contact me through my attorney Joseph A. Bondy, who can be reached by phone at [DELETE].
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Lev Parnas
So there you have it folks. That was my 10-page letter that I wrote to James Comer. And what did he do? He basically looked the other way, just like they do all time. Because they don't want the truth. They don't want to get to the bottom of it. All they want to do is give you bits and pieces, they want to give you conspiracy theories, they want to confuse the people all for the simple fact: to deflect from the real criminal, like I said, Donald J Trump.
Thank you for watching. You can follow me on Twitter or Threads or Instagram at LevParnas. And please make sure to subscribe to the Meidas touch Network.
Superseding Indictment USDC, Southern District of Florida USA v. Donald Trump, Waltine Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira Case No. 23-CR-80101-CANNON(s) by Jack Smith, Special Counsel 07/27/2023
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD J. TRUMP, WALTINE NAUTA, and CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA, Defendants.
SUPERSEDING INDICTMENT
The Grand Jury charges that:
GENERAL ALLEGATIONS
At times material to this Superseding Indictment, on or about the dates and approximate times stated below:
Introduction
1. Defendant DONALD J. TRUMP was the forty-fifth President of the United States of America. He held office from January 20, 2017, until January 20, 2021. As president, TRUMP had lawful access to the most sensitive classified documents and national defense information gathered and owned by the United States government. including information from the agencies that comprise the United States Intelligence Community and the United States Department of Defense.
2. Over the course of his presidency, TRUMP gathered newspapers, press clippings, letters, notes, cards, photographs, official documents, and other materials in cardboard boxes that he kept in the White House. Among the materials TRUMP stored in his boxes were hundreds of classified documents.
3. The classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.
4. At 12:00 p.m. on January 20, 2021, TRUMP ceased to be president. As he departed the White House, TRUMP caused scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported to The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he maintained his residence. TRUMP was not authorized to possess or retain those classified documents.
5. The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP's presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club -- including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.
6. On two occasions in 2021, TRUMP showed classified documents to others, as follows:
a. In July 2021, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey ("The Bedminster Club''), during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance, TRUMP showed and described a "plan of attack" that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official. TRUMP told the individuals that the plan was "highly confidential .. and "secret." TRUMP also said, ''as president I could have declassified it,'" and, "Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."
b. In August or September 2021, at The Bedminster Club, TRUMP showed a representative of his political action committee who did not possess a security clearance a classified map related to a military operation and told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.
7. On March 30, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") opened a criminal investigation into the unlawful retention of classified documents at The Mar-a-Lago Club. A federal grand jury investigation began the next month. The grand jury issued a subpoena requiring TRUMP to turn over all documents with classification markings. TRUMP endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal his continued retention of classified documents by, among other things:
a. suggesting that his attorney falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that TRUMP did not have documents called for by the grand jury subpoena;
b. directing defendant WALTINE NAUTA to move boxes of documents to conceal them from TRUMP's attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury;
c. suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents called for by the grand jury subpoena;
d. providing to the FBI and grand jury just some of the documents called for by the grand jury subpoena, while claiming that he was cooperating fully;
e. causing a certification to be submitted to the FBI and grand jury falsely representing that all documents called for by the grand jury subpoena had been produced -- while knowing that, in fact, not all such documents had been produced; and
f. attempting to delete security camera footage at The Mar-a-Lago Club to conceal information from the FBI and grand jury.
8. As a result of TRUMP's retention of classified documents after his presidency and refusal to return them, hundreds of classified documents were not recovered by the United States government until 2022, as follows:
a. On January 17, nearly one year after TRUMP left office, and after months of demands by the National Archives and Records Administration for TRUMP to provide all missing presidential records, TRUMP provided only 15 boxes, which contained 197 documents with classification markings.
b. On June 3, in response to a grand jury subpoena demanding the production of all documents with classification markings, TRUMP's attorney provided to the FBI 38 more documents with classification markings.
c. On August 8, pursuant to a court-authorized search warrant, the FBI recovered from TRUMP's office and a storage room at The Mar-a-Lago Club 102 more documents with classification markings. TRUMP's Co-Conspirators
9. Defendant NAUTA was a member of the United States Navy stationed as a valet in the White House during TRUMP's presidency. Beginning in August 2021, NAUTA became an executive assistant in The Office of Donald J. Trump and served as TRUMP's personal aide or "body man." NAUTA reported to TRUMP, worked closely with TRUMP, and traveled with TRUMP.
10. Beginning in January 2022, Defendant CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA was employed as the property manager at The Mar-a-Lago Club. Prior to holding the position of property manager, DE OLIVEIRA was employed as a valet at The Mar-a-Lago Club.
The Mar-a-Lago Club
11. The Mar-a-Lago Club was located on South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, Florida, and included TRUMP's residence, more than 25 guest rooms, two ballrooms, a spa, a gift store, exercise facilities, office space, and an outdoor pool and patio. As of January 2021, The Mar-a-Lago Club had hundreds of members and was staffed by more than 150 full-time, part-time, and temporary employees.
12. Between January 2021 and August 2022, The Mar-a-Lago Club hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that together drew tens of thousands of guests.
13. The United States Secret Service (the 'Secret Service") provided protection services to TRUMP and his family after he left office, including at The Mar-a-Lago Club, but it was not responsible for the protection of TRUMP's boxes or their contents. TRUMP did not inform the Secret Service that he was storing boxes containing classified documents at The Mara-Lago Club. Classified Information
14. National security information was information owned by, produced by, produced for, and under the control of the United States government. Pursuant to Executive Order 12958, signed on April 17, 1995, as amended by Executive Order 13292 on March 25, 2003, and Executive Order 13526 on December 29, 2009, national security information was classified as ''TOP SECRET," "SECRET,'' or "CONFIDENTIAL," as follows:
a. Information was classified as TOP SECRET if the unauthorized disclosure of that information reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority was able to identify or describe.
b. Information was classified as SECRET if the unauthorized disclosure of that information reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security that the original classification authority was able to identify or describe.
c. Information was classified as CONFIDENTIAL if the unauthorized disclosure of that information reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security that the original classification authority was able to identify or describe.
15. The classification marking "NOFORN'' stood for "Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals" and denoted that dissemination of that information was limited to United States persons.
16. Classified information related to intelligence sources, methods, and analytical processes was designated as Sensitive Compartmented Information ("SCI"). SCI was to be processed, stored, used, or discussed in an accredited Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility ("SCIF''), and only individuals with the appropriate security clearance and additional SCI permissions were authorized to have access to such national security information.
17. When the vulnerability of, or threat to, specific classified information was exceptional, and the normal criteria for determining eligibility for access to classified information were insufficient to protect the information from unauthorized disclosure, the United States could establish Special Access Programs ("SAPs'') to further protect the classified information. The number of these programs was to be kept to an absolute minimum and limited to programs in which the number of persons who ordinarily would have access would be reasonably small and commensurate with the objective of providing enhanced protection for the information involved. Only individuals with the appropriate security clearance and additional SAP permissions were authorized to have access to such national security information, which was subject to enhanced handling and storage requirements.
18. Pursuant to Executive Order 13526, information classified at any level could be lawfully accessed only by persons determined by an appropriate United States government official to be eligible for access to classified information and who had signed an approved non-disclosure agreement, who received a security clearance, and who had a "need-to-know'' the classified information. After his presidency, TRUMP was not authorized to possess or retain classified documents.
19. Executive Order 13526 provided that a former president could obtain a waiver of the "need-to-know'' requirement, if the agency head or senior agency official of the agency that originated the classified information: (1) determined in writing that access was consistent with the interest of national security and (2) took appropriate steps to protect classified information from unauthorized disclosure or compromise and ensured that the information was safeguarded in a manner consistent with the order. TRUMP did not obtain any such waiver after his presidency.
The Executive Branch Departments and Agencies Whose Classified Documents TRUMP Retained After His Presidency
20. As part of his official duties as president, TRUMP received intelligence briefings from high-level United States government officials, including briefings from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, senior White House officials, and a designated briefer. He regularly received a collection of classified intelligence from the United States Intelligence Community (''USIC") known as the ''President's Daily Brief."
21. The USIC's mission was to collect, analyze, and deliver foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information to America's leaders, including the president, policymakers, law enforcement, and the military, so they could make sound decisions to protect the United States. The USIC consisted of United States executive branch departments and agencies responsible for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of national security.
22. After his presidency, TRUMP retained classified documents originated by, or implicating the equities of, multiple USIC members and other executive branch departments and agencies, including the following:
a. The Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA"). CIA was responsible for providing intelligence on foreign countries and global issues to the president and other policymakers to help them make national security decisions.
b. The Department of Defense ("DoD"). DoD was responsible for providing the military forces needed to deter war and ensure national security. Some of the executive branch agencies comprising the USIC were within DoD.
c. The National Security Agency. The National Security Agency was a combat support agency within DoD and a member of the USIC responsible for foreign signals intelligence and cybersecurity. This included collecting, processing, and disseminating to United States policymakers and military leaders foreign intelligence derived from communications and information systems; protecting national security systems; and enabling computer network operations.
d. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency was a combat support agency within DoD responsible for the exploitation and analysis of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information in support of the national security objectives of the United States and the geospatial intelligence requirements of DoD, the Department of State, and other federal agencies.
e. The National Reconnaissance Office. The National Reconnaissance Office was an agency within DoD responsible for developing, acquiring, launching, and operating space-based surveillance and reconnaissance systems that collected and delivered intelligence to enhance national security.
f. The Department of Energy. The Department of Energy was responsible for maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent to protect national security, including ensuring the effectiveness of the United States nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear explosive testing.
g. The Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The Department of State was responsible for protecting and promoting United States security, prosperity, and democratic values. Within the Department of State, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research was a member of the USIC and responsible for providing intelligence to inform diplomacy and support United States diplomats.
TRUMP's Public Statements on Classified Information
23. As a candidate for President of the United States, TRUMP made the following public statements, among others, about classified information:
a. On August 18, 2016, TRUMP stated, "In my administration I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law."
b. On September 6, 2016, TRUMP stated, ·'We also need to fight this battle by collecting intelligence and then protecting, protecting our classified secrets. . . . We can't have someone in the Oval Office who doesn't understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified."
c. On September 7, 2016, TRUMP stated, "[O]ne of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information."
d. On September 19, 2016, TRUMP stated, "We also need the best protection of classified information."
e. On November 3, 2016, TRUMP stated, "Service members here in North Carolina have risked their lives to acquire classified intelligence to protect our country.''
24. As President of the United States, on July 26, 2018, TRUMP issued the following statement about classified information:
As the head of the executive branch and Commander in Chief, I have a unique, Constitutional responsibility to protect the Nation's classified information, including by controlling access to it. . .. More broadly, the issue of [a former executive branch official's) security clearance raises larger questions about the practice of former officials maintaining access to our Nation's most sensitive secrets long after their time in Government has ended. Such access is particularly inappropriate when former officials have transitioned into highly partisan positions and seek to use real or perceived access to sensitive information to validate their political attacks. Any access granted to our Nation's secrets should be in furtherance of national, not personal, interests.
TRUMP's Retention of Classified Documents After His Presidency
25. In January 2021, as he was preparing to leave the White House, TRUMP and his White House staff, including NAUTA, packed items, including some of TRUMP's boxes. TRUMP was personally involved in this process. TRUMP caused his boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White House to The Mar-a-Lago Club.
26. From January through March 15, 2021, some of TRUMP's boxes were stored in The Mar-a-Lago Club's White and Gold Ballroom, in which events and gatherings took place. TRUMP's boxes were for a time stacked on the ballroom's stage, as depicted in the photograph below (redacted to obscure an individual's identity).
27. In March 2021, NAUTA and others moved some of TRUMP's boxes from the White and Gold Ballroom to the business center at The Mar-a-Lago Club.
28. On April 5, 2021, an employee of The Office of Donald J. Trump ("Trump Employee 1 ") texted another employee of that office ("Trump Employee 2") to ask whether TRUMP's boxes could be moved out of the business center to make room for staff to use it as an office. Trump Employee 2 replied, ''Woah!! Ok so potus specifically asked Walt for those boxes to be in the business center because they are his 'papers."' Later that day, Trump Employee 1 and Trump Employee 2 exchanged the following text messages:
Trump Employee 2:
We can definitely make it work if we move his papers into the lake room?
Trump Employee 1 : There is still a little room in the shower where his other stuff is. Is it only his papers he cares about? Theres some other stuff in there that are not papers. Could that go to storage? Or does he want everything in there on property
Trump Employee 2:
Yes -anything that's not the beautiful mind paper boxes can definitely go to storage. Want to take a look at the space and start moving tomorrow AM?
29. After the text exchange between Trump Employee 1 and Trump Employee 2, in April 2021, some of TRUMP's boxes were moved from the business center to a bathroom and shower in The Mar-a-Lago Club's Lake Room, as depicted in the photograph below.
30. In May 2021, TRUMP directed that a storage room on the ground floor of The Mar-a-Lago Club (the "Storage Room") be cleaned out so that it could be used to store his boxes. The hallway leading to the Storage Room could be reached from multiple outside entrances, including one accessible from The Mar-a-Lago Club pool patio through a doorway that was often kept open. The Storage Room was near the liquor supply closet, linen room, lock shop, and various other rooms.
31. On June 24, 2021, TRUMP's boxes that were in the Lake Room were moved to the Storage Room. After the move, there were more than 80 boxes in the Storage Room, as depicted in the photographs below.
32. On December 7, 2021, NAUTA found several of TRUMP's boxes fallen and their contents spilled onto the floor of the Storage Room, including a document marked "SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY," which denoted that the information in the document was releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NAUTA texted Trump Employee 2, "I opened the door and found this ... " NAUTA also attached two photographs he took of the spill. Trump Employee 2 replied, "Oh no oh no," and "I'm sorry potus had my phone." One of the photographs NAUTA texted to Trump Employee 2 is depicted below with the visible classified information redacted. TRUMP's unlawful retention of this document is charged in Count 8 of this Superseding Indictment.
TRUMP's Disclosures of Classified Information in Private Meetings
33. In May 2021, TRUMP caused some of his boxes to be brought to his summer residence at The Bedminster Club. Like The Mar-a-Lago Club, after TRUMP's presidency, The Bedminster Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents.
34. On July 21, 202 l, when he was no longer president, TRUMP gave an interview in his office at The Bedminster Club to a writer and a publisher in connection with a then-forthcoming book. Two members of TRUMP's staff also attended the interview, which was recorded with TRUMP's knowledge and consent. Before the interview, the media had published reports that, at the end of TRUMP's term as president, a senior military official (the "Senior Military Official") purportedly feared that TRUMP might order an attack on Country A and that the Senior Military Official advised TRUMP against doing so.
35. Upon greeting the writer, publisher, and his two staff members, TRUMP stated, "Look what I found, this was [the Senior Military Official's) plan of attack, read it and just show ... it's interesting.' Later in the interview, TRUMP engaged in the following exchange:
TRUMP: Well, with [the Senior Military Official]-uh, let me see that, I'll show you an example. He said that r wanted to attack [Country A]. Isn't it amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this -- this is off the record, but -- they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.
WRITER: Wow.
TRUMP: We looked at some. This was him. This wasn't done by me, this was him. All sorts of stuff-pages long, look.
STAFFER: Mm.
TRUMP: Wait a minute, let's see here.
STAFFER: [laughter] Yeah.
TRUMP: I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know.
STAFFER: Mm-hm.
TRUMP: Except it is like, highly confidential.
STAFFER: Yeah. [Laughter]
TRUMP: Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. You attack, and-
* * *
TRUMP: By the way. Isn't that incredible?
STAFFER: Yeah.
TRUMP: I was just thinking, because we were talking about it. And you know, he said, "he wanted to attack [Country A], and what ... "
STAFFER: You did.
TRUMP: This was done by the military and given to me. Uh, I think we can probably, right?
STAFFER: I don't know, we'll, we'll have to see. Yeah, we'll have to try to-
TRUMP: Declassify it.
STAFFER: -figure out a-yeah.
TRUMP: See as president I could have declassified it.
STAFFER: Yeah. [Laughter]
TRUMP: Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret.
STAFFER: Yeah. [Laughter] Now we have a problem.
TRUMP: Isn't that interesting?
At the time of this exchange, the writer, the publisher, and TRUMP's two staff members did not have security clearances or any need-to-know any classified information about a plan of attack on Country A. The document that TRUMP possessed and showed on July 21, 2021, is charged as Count 32 in this Superseding Indictment.
36. In August or September 2021, when he was no longer president, TRUMP met in his office at The Bedminster Club with a representative of his political action committee (the "PAC Representative"). During the meeting, TRUMP commented that an ongoing military operation in Country B was not going well. TRUMP showed the PAC Representative a classified map of Country Band told the PAC Representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC Representative and to not get too close. The PAC Representative did not have a security clearance or any need-to-know classified information about the military operation.
37. On February 16, 2017, four years before TRUMP's disclosures of classified information set forth above, TRUMP said at a press conference:
The first thing I thought of when I heard about it is, how does the press get this information that's classified? How do they do it? You know why? Because it's an illegal process, and the press should be ashamed of themselves. But more importantly, the people that gave out the information to the press should be ashamed of themselves. Really ashamed.
TRUMP's Production of 15 Cardboard Boxes to the National Archives and Records Administration
38. Beginning in May 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (''NARA"), which was responsible for archiving presidential records, repeatedly demanded that TRUMP turn over presidential records that he had kept after his presidency. On multiple occasions, beginning in June, NARA warned TRUMP through his representatives that if he did not comply, it would refer the matter of the missing records to the Department of Justice.
39. Between November 2021 and January 2022, NAUTA and Trump Employee 2 -- at TRUMP'S direction -- brought boxes from the Storage Room to TRUMP's residence for TRUMP to review.
40. On November 12, 2021, Trump Employee 2 provided TRUMP a photograph of his boxes in the Storage Room by taping it to one of the boxes that Trump Employee 2 had placed in TRUMP's residence. Trump Employee 2 provided TRUMP the photograph so that TRUMP could see how many of his boxes were stored in the Storage Room. The photograph, shown below, depicted a wall of the Storage Room against which dozens of TRUMP's boxes were stacked.
41. On November 17, 2021, NAUTA texted Trump Employee 2 about the photograph Trump Employee 2 had provided to TRUMP, stating, "He mentioned about a picture of the 'boxes' he wants me to see it?" Trump Employee 2 replied, "Calling you shortly."
42. On November 25, 2021, Trump Employee 2 texted NAUTA about TRUMP's review of the contents of his boxes, asking, "Has he mentioned boxes to you? I delivered some, but I think he may need more. Could you ask if he'd like more in pine hall?" Pine Hall was an entry room in TRUMP's residence. NAUTA replied in three successive text messages:
Nothing about boxes yet
He has one he's working on in pine hall
Knocked out 2 boxes yesterday
43. On November 29, 2021, Trump Employee 2 texted NAUTA, asking, "Next you are on property (no rush) could you help me bring 4 more boxes up?" NAUTA replied, "Yes!! Of course."
44. On December 29, 2021, Trump Employee 2 texted a TRUMP representative who was in contact with NARA ("Trump Representative 1'"), "box answer will be wrenched out of him today, promise!" The next day, Trump Representative I replied in two successive text messages:
Hey -Just checking on Boxes ...
would love to have a number to them today
Trump Employee 2 spoke to TRUMP and then responded a few hours later in two successive text messages:
12
Is his number
45. On January 13, 2022, NAUTA texted Trump Employee 2 about TRUMP's "tracking" of boxes, stating, 'He's tracking the boxes, more to follow today on whether he wants to go through more today or tomorrow.'· Trump Employee 2 replied, "Thank you!"
46. On January 15, 2022, NAUTA sent Trump Employee 2 four successive text messages:
One thing he asked
Was for new covers for the boxes, for Monday m.
Morning
*can we get new box covers before giving these to them on Monday? They have too much writing on them . .I marked too much
Trump Employee 2 replied, "Yes, I will get that!"
47. On January 17, 2022, Trump Employee 2 and NAUTA gathered 15 boxes from TRUMP's residence, loaded the boxes in NAUTA's car, and took them to a commercial truck for delivery to NARA.
48. When interviewed by the FBI in May 2022 regarding the location and movement of boxes before the production to NARA, NAUTA made false and misleading statements as set forth in Count 38 of this Superseding Indictment, including:
a. falsely stating that he was not aware of TRUMP's boxes being brought to TRUMP's residence for his review before TRUMP provided 15 boxes to NARA in January 2022;
b. falsely stating that he did not know how the boxes that he and Trump Employee 2 brought from TRUMP's residence to the commercial truck for delivery to NARA on January 17, 2022, had gotten to the residence; and
c. when asked whether he knew where TRUMP's boxes had been stored before they were in TRUMP's residence and whether they had been in a secure or locked location, NAUTA falsely responded, "I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don't know. I don't-I honestly just don't know."
49. When the 15 boxes that TRUMP had provided reached NARA in January 2022, NARA reviewed the contents and determined that 14 of the boxes contained documents with classification markings. Specifically, as the FBI later determined, the boxes contained 197 documents with classification markings, of which 98 were marked "SECRET," 30 were marked "TOP SECRET," and the remainder were marked "CONFIDENTIAL." Some of those documents also contained SCI and SAP markings.
50. On February 9, 2022, NARA referred the discovery of classified documents in TRUMP's boxes to the Department of Justice for investigation.
The FBI and Grand Jury Investigations
51. On March 30, 2022, the FBI opened a criminal investigation.
52. On April 26, 2022, a federal grand jury opened an investigation.
The Defendants' Concealment of Boxes
53. On May 11, 2022, the grand jury issued a subpoena (the "May 11 Subpoena") to The Office of Donald J. Trump requiring the production of all documents with classification markings in the possession, custody, or control of TRUMP or The Office of Donald J. Trump. Two attorneys representing TRUMP (''Trump Attorney 1" and "Trump Attorney 2") informed TRUMP of the May 11 Subpoena, and he authorized Trump Attorney 1 to accept service.
54. On May 22, 2022, NAUTA entered the Storage Room at 3:47 p.m. and left approximately 34 minutes later, carrying one of TRUMP's boxes.
55. On May 23, 2022, TRUMP met with Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 at The Mar-a-Lago Club to discuss the response to the May 11 Subpoena. Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 told TRUMP that they needed to search for documents that would be responsive to the subpoena and provide a certification that there had been compliance with the subpoena. TRUMP, in sum and substance, made the following statements, among others, as memorialized by Trump Attorney 1:
a. I don't want anybody looking, I don't want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don't, I don't want you looking through my boxes.
b. Well what if we, what happens if we just don't respond at all or don't play ball with them?
c. Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?
d. Well look isn't it better if there are no documents?
56. While meeting with Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 on May 23, TRUMP, in sum and substance, told the following story, as memorialized by Trump Attorney 1:
[Attorney], he was great, he did a great job. You know what? He said, he said that it -that it was him. That he was the one who deleted all of her emails, the 30,000 emails, because they basically dealt with her scheduling and her going to the gym and her having beauty appointments. And he was great. And he, so she didn't get in any trouble because he said that he was the one who deleted them.
TRUMP related the story more than once that day.
57. On May 23, TRUMP also confirmed his understanding with Trump Attorney 1 that Trump Attorney 1 would return to The Mar-a-Lago Club on June 2 to search for any documents with classification markings to produce in response to the May 11 Subpoena. Trump Attorney 1 made it clear to TRUMP that Trump Attorney 1 would conduct the search for responsive documents by looking through TRUMP's boxes that had been transported from the White House and remained in storage at The Mar-a-Lago Club. TRUMP indicated that he wanted to be at The Mar-a-Lago Club when Trump Attorney 1 returned to review his boxes on June 2, and that TRUMP would change his summer travel plans to do so. TRUMP told Trump Attorney 2 that Trump Attorney 2 did not need to be present for the review of boxes.
58. After meeting with Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 on May 23, TRUMP delayed his departure from The Mar-a-Lago Club to The Bedminster Club for the summer so that he would be present at The Mar-a-Lago Club on June 2, when Trump Attorney l returned to review the boxes.
59. Between TRUMP's May 23 meeting with Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 to discuss the May 1 I Subpoena, and June 2, when Trump Attorney 1 returned to The Mar-a-Lago Club to review the boxes in the Storage Room, NAUT A removed-at TRUMP's direction-a total of approximately 64 boxes from the Storage Room and brought them to TRUMP's residence, as set forth below:
a. On May 24, 2022, between 5:30 p.m. and 5:38 p.m., NAUTA removed three boxes from the Storage Room.
b. On May 30, 2022, at 9:08 a.m., TRUMP and NAUTA spoke by phone for approximately 30 seconds. Between 10:02 a.m. and 11:51 a.m., NAUTA removed a total of approximately 50 boxes from the Storage Room.
c. On May 30, 2022, at 12:33 p.m., a Trump family member texted NAUTA:
Good afternoon Walt, Happy Memorial Day!
I saw you put boxes to Potus room. Just FYI and I will tell him as well: Not sure how many he wants to take on Friday on the plane. We will NOT have a room for them. Plane will be full with luggage. Thank you!
NAUTA replied:
Good Afternoon Ma'am [Smiley Face Emoji] Thank you so much.
I think he wanted to pick from them. I don't imagine him wanting to take the boxes.
He told me to put them in the room and that he was going to talk to you about them.
d. On June 1, 2022, beginning at 12:52 p.m., NAUTA removed approximately 11 boxes from the Storage Room.
60. On June 1, 2022, TRUMP spoke with Trump Attorney 1 by phone and asked whether Trump Attorney 1 was coming to The Mar-a-Lago Club the next day and for exactly what purpose. Trump Attorney 1 reminded TRUMP that Trump Attorney 1 was going to review the boxes that had been transported from the White House and remained in storage at The Mar-a-Lago Club so that Trump Attorney 1 could have a custodian of records certify that the May 11 subpoena had been complied with fully.
61. On June 2, 2022, the day that Trump Attorney 1 was scheduled to review TRUMP's boxes in the Storage Room, TRUMP spoke with NAUTA on the phone at 9:29 a.m. for approximately 24 seconds.
62. Later that day, between 12:33 p.m. and 12:52 p.m., NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA moved approximately 30 boxes from TRUMP's residence to the Storage Room.
63. In sum, between May 23, 2022, and June 2, 2022, before Trump Attorney 1's review of TRUMP's boxes in the Storage Room, NAUTA -- at TRUMP's direction -- moved approximately 64 boxes from the Storage Room to TRUMP's residence, and NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA brought to the Storage Room only approximately 30 boxes. Neither TRUMP nor NAUTA informed Trump Attorney l of this information.
The False Certification to the FBI and the Grand Jury
64. On the afternoon of June 2, 2022, as TRUMP had been informed, Trump Attorney l arrived at The Mar-a-Lago Club to review TRUMP's boxes to look for documents with classification markings in response to the May 11 Subpoena. TRUMP met with Trump Attorney 1 before Trump Attorney 1 conducted the review. NAUT A escorted Trump Attorney 1 to the Storage Room.
65. Between 3:53 p.m. and 6:23 p.m., Trump Attorney 1 reviewed the contents of TRUMP's boxes in the Storage Room. Trump Attorney 1 located 38 documents with classification markings inside the boxes, which Trump Attorney 1 removed and placed in a Redweld folder. Trump Attorney 1 contacted NAUTA and asked him to bring clear duct tape to the Storage Room, which NAUTA did. Trump Attorney 1 used the clear duct tape to seal the Redweld folder with the documents with classification markings inside.
66. After Trump Attorney 1 finished sealing the Redweld folder containing the documents with classification markings that he had found inside TRUMP' s boxes, NAUTA took Trump Attorney 1 to a dining room in The Mar-a-Lago Club to meet with TRUMP. After Trump Attorney 1 confirmed that he was finished with his search of the Storage Room, TRUMP asked, "Did you find anything? ... Is it bad? Good?"
67. TRUMP and Trump Attorney 1 then discussed what to do with the Redweld folder containing documents with classification markings and whether Trump Attorney 1 should bring them to his hotel room and put them in a safe there. During that conversation, TRUMP made a plucking motion, as memorialized by Trump Attorney 1:
He made a funny motion as though -well okay why don't you take them with you to your hotel room and if there's anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out. And that was the motion that he made. He didn't say that.
68. That evening, Trump Attorney 1 contacted the Department of Justice and requested that an FBI agent meet him at The Mar-a-Lago Club the next day, June 3, so that he could turn over the documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena.
69. Also that evening, Trump Attorney l contacted another TRUMP attorney ("Trump Attorney 3") and asked her if she would come to The Mar-a-Lago Club the next morning to act as a custodian of records and sign a certification regarding the search for documents with classification markings in response to the May 11 Subpoena. Trump Attorney 3, who had no role in the review of TRUMP's boxes in the Storage Room, agreed.
70. The next day, on June 3, 2022, at Trump Attorney 1 's request, Trump Attorney 3 signed a certification as the custodian of records for The Office of Donald J. Trump and took it to The Mar-a-Lago Club to provide it to the Department of Justice and FBI. In the certification, Trump Attorney 3 -- who performed no search of TRUMP's boxes, had not reviewed the May 11 Subpoena, and had not reviewed the contents of the Redweld folder -- stated, among other things, that "[b]ased upon the information that [had] been provided to" her:
a. "A diligent search was conducted of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida";
b. "This search was conducted after receipt of the subpoena, in order to locate any and all documents that are responsive to the subpoena"; and
c. "Any and all responsive documents accompany this certification."
71. These statements were false because, among other reasons, TRUMP had directed NAUTA to move boxes before Trump Attorney 1's June 2 review, so that many boxes were not searched and many documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena could not be found -- and in fact were not found -- by Trump Attorney 1.
72. Shortly after Trump Attorney 3 executed the false certification, on June 3, 2022, Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 3 met at The Mar-a-Lago Club with personnel from the Department of Justice and FBI. Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 3 turned over the Redweld folder containing documents with classification markings, as well as the false certification signed by Trump Attorney 3 as custodian of records. TRUMP, who had delayed his departure from The Mar-a-Lago Club, joined Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 3 for some of the meeting. TRUMP claimed to the Department of Justice and FBI that he was "an open book."
73. Earlier that same day, NAUTA, DE OLIVEIRA, and others loaded several of TRUMP's boxes along with other items on aircraft that flew TRUMP and his family north for the summer.
The Attempt to Delete Security Camera Footage
74. On June 3, 2022, when FBI agents were at The Mar-a-Lago Club to collect the documents with classification markings from Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 3, the agents observed that there were surveillance cameras located near the Storage Room.
75. On June 22, 2022, the Department of Justice emailed an attorney for TRUMP's business organization a draft grand jury subpoena requiring the production of certain security camera footage from The Mar-a-Lago Club, including footage from cameras "on ground floor (basement)," where the Storage Room was located.
76. On June 23, 2022, at 8:46 p.m., TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and they spoke for approximately 24 minutes.
77. On Friday, June 24, 2022, the Department of Justice emailed the attorney for TRUMP's business organization the final grand jury subpoena, which required the production of "[a]ny and all surveillance records, videos, images, photographs and/or CCTV from internal cameras" at certain locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club, including "on ground floor (basement)," from January 10, 2022, to June 24, 2022.
78. That same day, June 24, 2022, at 1:25 p.m., Trump Attorney 1 spoke with TRUMP by phone regarding the subpoena for security camera footage. At 3:44 p.m., NAUTA received a text message from a co-worker, Trump Employee 3, indicating that TRUMP wanted to see NAUTA. Less than two hours later, NAUTA -- who was scheduled to travel with TRUMP to Illinois the next day -- changed his travel schedule and began to make arrangements to go to Palm Beach, Florida, instead.
79. NAUTA provided inconsistent explanations to colleagues for his sudden travel to Florida. At 7:14 p.m. on June 24, he texted one person that he would not be traveling with TRUMP the next day because he had a family emergency and used ''shushing" emojis; at 9:48 p.m. that night, he texted a Secret Service agent that he had to check on a family member in Florida; and after he arrived in Florida on June 25, he texted the same Secret Service agent that he was in Florida working.
80. Around the same time on June 24 that NAUTA was making his travel plans to go to Florida, NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA contacted Trump Employee 4, who was the Director of Information Technology ("IT') at The Mar-a-Lago Club, as follows:
a. At 5:02 p.m., NAUTA sent text messages to Trump Employee 4 asking, ''Hey bro You around this weekend."
b. At 5:05 p.m., NAUTA texted DE OLIVEIRA, asking, "Hey brother You working today?" DE OLIVEIRA responded, "Yes I just left." NAUTA then called DE OLIVEIRA and they spoke for approximately two minutes.
c. At 5:09 p.m., Trump Employee 4 texted a response to NAUTA, "I am local. Entertaining some family that came to visit. What's up?" NAUTA responded to Trump Employee 4, "Ok, cool. No biggie just wanted to see if you where around. Enjoy bro!''
d. At 6:56 p.m., DE OLIVEIRA texted Trump Employee 4, "Hey buddy how are you ... Walter call me early said it was trying to get in touch with you I guess he's coming down tomorrow I guess needs you for something." Trump Employee 4 responded, "He reached out but he didn't say what he wanted. I told him I was local but entertaining some family that came from NYC this weekend. He told me to no worries.''
e. At 6:58 p.m., Trump Employee 4 texted NAUTA, "Bro, if you need me I can get away for a few. Just let me know." NAUTA responded, "Sounds good!! Thank you.''
81. On Saturday, June 25, 2022, NAUTA traveled from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Palm Beach, Florida. Prior to NAUTA's trip, DE OLIVEIRA told a valet at The Mar-a-Lago Club ("Trump Employee 5") that NAUTA was coming down. DE OLIVEIRA asked Trump Employee 5 not to tell anyone that NAUTA was coming down because NAUTA wanted the trip to remain secret. DE OLIVEIRA also told Trump Employee 5 that NAUTA wanted DE OLIVEIRA to talk to Trump Employee 4 to see how long camera footage was stored.
82. Shortly after arriving in Palm Beach on the evening of June 25, NAUTA went to The Mar-a-Lago Club and met with DE OLIVEIRA at 5:46 p.m. At The Mar-a-Lago Club, NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the Storage Room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.
83. On Monday, June 27, 2022, at 9:48 a.m., DE OLIVEIRA walked to the IT office where Trump Employee 4 was working with another employee in the IT department. DE OLIVEIRA requested that Trump Employee 4 step away from the office so that DE OLIVEIRA and Trump Employee 4 could talk.
84. At 9:49 a.m., Trump Employee 4 and DE OLIVEIRA left the area of the IT office together and walked through a basement tunnel. DE OLIVEIRA took Trump Employee 4 to a small room known as an "audio closet" near the White and Gold Ballroom. Once inside the audio closet, DE OLIVEIRA and Trump Employee 4 had the following exchange:
a. DE OLIVEIRA told Trump Employee 4 that their conversation should remain between the two of them.
b. DE OLIVEIRA asked Trump Employee 4 how many days the server retained footage. Trump Employee 4 responded that he believed it was approximately 45 days.
c. DE OLIVEIRA told Trump Employee 4 that "the boss" wanted the server deleted. Trump Employee 4 responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that. Trump Employee 4 told DE OLIVEIRA that DE OLIVEIRA would have to reach out to another employee who was a supervisor of security for TRUMP's business organization. DE OLIVEIRA then insisted to TRUMP Employee 4 that "the boss" wanted the server deleted and asked, "what are we going to do?"
85. At 10:14 a.m., DE OLIVEIRA texted NAUTA, who was still in Florida, "Hey buddy are you working today?" DE OLIVEIRA then called NAUTA at 10:15 a.m., and they spoke for approximately one minute.
86. Later that day, at I :06 p.m., NAUTA texted DE OLIVEIRA, who was at The Mar-a-Lago Club, "On my way to you." Between 1:31 p.m. and 1:50 p.m., DE OLIVEIRA walked through the bushes on the northern edge of The Mar-a-Lago Club property to meet with NAUTA on the adjacent property; then walked back to the IT office that he had visited that morning; and then walked again through the bushes on the northern edge of The Mar-a-Lago Club property to meet with NAUTA on the adjacent property.
87. At 3:55 p.m., TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and they spoke for approximately three and a half minutes.
The Court-Authorized Search of The Mar-a-Lago Club
88. In July 2022, the FBI and grand jury obtained and reviewed surveillance video from The Mar-a-Lago Club showing the movement of boxes set forth above.
89. August 8, 2022, the FBI executed a court-authorized search warrant at The Mar-a-Lago Club. The search warrant authorized the FBI to search for and seize, among other things, all documents with classification markings.
90. During the execution of the warrant at The Mar-a-Lago Club, the FBI seized 102 documents with classification markings in TRUMP's office and the Storage Room, as follows:
Location / Number of Documents / Classification Markings
91. Just over two weeks after the FBI discovered classified documents in the Storage Room and TRUMP's office, on August 26, 2022, NAUTA called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, "someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good." In response, Trump Employee 5 told NAUTA that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal and that DE OLIVEIRA would not do anything to affect his relationship with TRUMP. That same day, at NAUTA's request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with NAUTA and the PAC Representative that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal. That same day, TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and told DE OLIVEIRA that TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRA an attorney.
COUNTS 1-32 Willful Retention of National Defense Information (18 U.S.C. § 793(e))
92. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
93. On or about the dates set forth in the table below, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendant,
DONALD J. TRUMP,
having unauthorized possession of, access to, and control over documents relating to the national defense, did willfully retain the documents and fail to deliver them to the officer and employee of the United States entitled to receive them; that is- -- RUMP, without authorization, retained at The Mar-a-Lago Club documents relating to the national defense, including the following:
Count / Date of Offense / Classification Marking / Document Description
1 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//NOFORN//SPECIAL HANDLING / Document dated May 3, 2018, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries
2 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN//SPECIAL HANDLING / Document dated May 9, 2018, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries
3 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN//FISA / Undated document concerning military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States, with handwritten annotation in black marker
4 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SPECIAL HANDLING / Document dated May 6, 2019, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to foreign countries, including military activities and planning of foreign countries
5 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//[redacted]/[redacted]//ORCON/NOFORN / Document dated June 2020 concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign country
6 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SPECIAL HANDLING / Document dated June 4, 2020, concerning White House
7 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//NOFORN / Document dated October 21, 2018, concerning communications with a leader of a foreign country
8 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY / Document dated October 4, 2019, concerning military capabilities of a foreign country
9 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//[redacted]/[redacted]//ORCON/NOFORN/FISA / Undated document concerning military attacks by a foreign country
10 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//TK//NOFORN / Document dated November 2017 concerning military capabilities of a foreign country
11 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / No marking / Undated document concerning military contingency planning of the United States
12 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY / Pages of undated document concerning projected regional military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States
13 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SI/TK//NOFORN / Undated document concerning military capabilities of a foreign country and the United States
14 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//ORCON/NOFORN / Document dated January 2020 concerning military options of a foreign country and potential effects on United States interests
15 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//ORCON/NOFORN / Document dated February 2020 concerning policies in a foreign country
16 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//ORCON/NOFORN / Document dated December 2019 concerning foreign country support of terrorist acts against United States interests
17 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//[redacted]/TK//ORCON/IMCON/NOFORN / Document dated January 2020 concerning military capabilities of a foreign country
18 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//NOFORN / Document dated March 2020 concerning military operations against United States forces and others
19 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA / Undated document concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States
20 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / TOP SECRET//[redacted]//ORCON/NOFORN / Undated document concerning timeline and details of attack in a foreign country
21 / January 20, 2021 - August 8, 2022 / SECRET//NOFORN / Undated document concerning military capabilities of foreign countries
22 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//[redacted]//RSEN/ORCON/NOFORN / Document dated August 2019 concerning regional military activity of a foreign country
23 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SPECIAL HANDLING / Document dated August 30, 2019, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries, with handwritten annotation in black marker
24 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//HCWS-P/SI//ORCON-USGOV/NOFORN / Undated document concerning military activity of a foreign country
25 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//HCS-P/SI//ORCON-USGOV/NOFORN / Document dated October 24, 2019, concerning military activity of foreign countries and the United States
26 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//[redacted]//ORCON/NOFORN/FISA / Document dated November 7, 2019, concerning military activity of foreign countries and the United States
27 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SI/TK//NOFORN / Document dated November 2019 concerning military activity of foreign countries
28 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SPECIAL HANDLING / Document dated October 18, 2019, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries
29 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//[redacted]/SI/TK//ORCON/NOFORN / Document dated October 18, 2019, concerning military capabilities of a foreign country
30 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//[redacted]//ORCON/NOFORN/FISA / Document dated October 15, 2019, concerning military activity in a foreign country
31 / January 20, 2021 - June 3, 2022 / TOP SECRET//SI/TK//NOFORN / Document dated February 2017 concerning military activity of a foreign country
32 / January 20, 2021 - January 17, 2022 / TOP SECRET//NOFORN / Presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 793(e).
COUNT33 Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k))
94. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
The Conspiracy and its Objects
95. From on or about May 11, 2022, through in or around August 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendants,
DONALD J. TRUMP, WALTINE NAUTA, and CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA
did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with each other and with others known and unknown to the grand jury, to engage in misleading conduct toward another person and corruptly persuade another person to withhold a record, document, and other object from an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(2)(A); to corruptly persuade another person, with intent to cause and induce any person to alter, destroy, mutilate, and conceal an object with intent to impair the object's integrity and availability for use in an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(2)(8); and to corruptly alter, destroy, mutilate, and conceal a record, document, and other object from an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(1).
The Purpose of the Conspiracy
96. The purpose of the conspiracy was for TRUMP to keep classified documents he had taken with him from the White House and to hide and conceal them from a federal grand jury.
The Manner and Means of the Conspiracy
97. The manner and means by which the defendants sought to accomplish the objects and purpose of the conspiracy included, among other things, the following:
a. Suggesting that Trump Attorney 1 falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that TRUMP did not have documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena;
b. moving boxes of documents to conceal them from Trump Attorney 1, the FBI, and the grand jury;
c. suggesting that Trump Attorney 1 hide or destroy documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena;
d. providing to the FBI and grand jury just some of the documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena, while TRUMP claimed he was cooperating fully;
e. causing a false certification to be submitted to the FBI and grand jury representing that all documents with classification markings had been produced, when in fact they had not;
f. making false and misleading statements to the FBI; and
g. attempting to delete security camera footage from The Mar-a-Lago Club to conceal the footage from the FBI and grand jury.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1512(k).
COUNT 34 Withholding a Document or Record (18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(b)(2)(A), 2)
98. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
99. From on or about May 11, 2022, through in or around August 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendants,
DONALD J. TRUMP and WALTINE NAUTA,
did knowingly engage in misleading conduct toward another person, and knowingly corruptly persuade and attempt to persuade another person, with intent to cause and induce any person to withhold a record, document, and other object from an official proceeding; that is--(1) TRUMP attempted to persuade Trump Attorney 1 to hide and conceal documents from a federal grand jury; and (2) TRUMP and NAUTA misled Trump Attorney 1 by moving boxes that contained documents with classification markings so that Trump Attorney 1 would not find the documents and produce them to a federal grand jury.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 15 l2(b)(2)(A) and 2.
COUNT 35 Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record (18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(1), 2)
100. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
101. From on or about May 11, 2022, through in or around August 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendants,
DONALD J. TRUMP and WALTINE NAUTA,
did corruptly conceal a record, document, and other object, and attempted to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity and availability for use in an official proceeding; that is-TRUMP and NAUTA hid and concealed boxes that contained documents with classification markings from Trump Attorney 1 so that Trump Attorney 1 would not find the documents and produce them to a federal grand jury.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1512(c )(1) and 2.
COUNT 36 Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation (18 U.S.C. §§ 1519, 2)
102. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
103. From on or about May 11, 2022, through in or around August 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendants,
DONALD J. TRUMP and WALTINE NAUTA,
did knowingly conceal, cover up, falsify, and make a false entry in any record, document, and tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, and influence the investigation and proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of a department and agency of the United States, and in relation to and contemplation of any such matter; that is--during a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI, (1) TRUMP and NAUTA hid, concealed, and covered up from the FBI TRUMP's continued possession of documents with classification markings at The Mar-a-Lago Club; and (2) TRUMP caused a false certification to be submitted to the FBI.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1519 and 2.
COUNT 37 Scheme to Conceal (18 U.S.C. §§ 1001(a)(1), 2)
104. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
105. From on or about May 11, 2022, through in or around August 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendants,
DONALD J. TRUMP and WALTINE NAUTA,
in a matter within the jurisdiction of the judicial branch and executive branch of the United States government, did knowingly and willfully falsify, conceal, and cover up by any trick, scheme, and device a material fact; that is -- during a federal grand jury investigation and a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI, TRUMP and NAUTA hid and concealed from the grand jury and the FBI TRUMP's continued possession of documents with classification markings.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1001 (a)(1) and 2.
106. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
107. On or about June 3, 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendant,
DONALD J. TRUMP,
in a matter within the jurisdiction of the judicial branch and executive branch of the United States government, did knowingly and willfully make and cause to be made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation; that is -- during a federal grand jury investigation and a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI, TRUMP caused the following false statements and representations to be made to the grand jury and the FBI in a sworn certification executed by Trump Attorney 3:
a. "A diligent search was conducted of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida";
b. "This search was conducted after receipt of the subpoena, in order to locate any and all documents that are responsive to the subpoena"; and
c. "Any and all responsive documents accompany this certification."
108. The statements and representations set forth above were false, as TRUMP knew, because TRUMP had directed that boxes be removed from the Storage Room before Trump Attorney 1 conducted the June 2, 2022 search for documents with classification markings, so that Trump Attorney 1 's search would not and did not include all of TRUMP's boxes that were removed from the White House; Trump Attorney 1's search would not and did not locate all documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena; and all responsive documents were not provided to the FBI and the grand jury with the certification. In fact, after June 3, 2022, more than 100 documents with classification markings remained at The Mar-a-Lago Club until the FBI search on August 8, 2022.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections l00l(a)(2) and 2.
COUNT 39 False Statements and Representations (18 U.S.C. § 100l(a)(2))
109. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
110. On May 26, 2022, NAUTA participated in a voluntary interview with the FBI. During the interview, the FBI explained to NAUTA that the FBI was investigating how classified documents had been kept at The Mar-a-Lago Club, and the FBI asked NAUTA questions about the location and movement of TRUMP's boxes before TRUMP provided 15 boxes to NARA on January 17, 2022. NAUTA was represented by counsel, and the FBI advised NAUTA that the interview was voluntary and that he could leave at any time. The FBI also advised NAUTA that it was a criminal offense to lie to the FBI. The interview was recorded.
111. On or about May 26, 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendant,
WALTINE NAUTA,
in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch of the United States government, did knowingly and willfully make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation; that is -- in a voluntary interview during a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI, NAUTA was asked the following questions and gave the following false answers:
Question: Does any -are you aware of any boxes being brought to his home -his suite?
Answer: No.
Question: All right. So, so to the best of your knowledge, you're saying that those boxes that you brought onto the truck, first time you ever laid eyes on them was just the day of when [Trump Employee 2) needed you --
Answer: Correct.
Question: -to take them. Okay.
* * *
Question: In knowing that we're trying to track the life of these boxes and where they could have been kept and stored and all that kind of stuff-
Answer: Mm-hm.
Question: --do you have any information that could-that would-that could help us understand, like, where they were kept, how they were kept, were they secured, were they locked? Something that makes the intelligence community feel better about these things, you know?
Answer: I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don't know. I don't-I honestly just don't know.
* * *
Question: And what-so, so you only saw the 15 boxes, 15, 17 boxes-
Answer: Mm-hm.
Question: -the day of the move? Even-they just showed up that day?
Answer: They were in Pine Hall. [Trump Employee 2) just asked me, hey, can we move some boxes?
Question: Okay. Answer: And I was like, okay.
Question: So, you didn't know-had no idea how they got there before?
Answer: No.
112. The underscored statements and representations above were false, as NAUTA knew, because (1) NAUTA did in fact know that the boxes in Pine Hall had come from the Storage Room, as NA UTA himself, with the assistance of Trump Employee 2, had moved the boxes from the Storage Room to Pine Hall; and (2) NAUTA had observed the boxes in and moved them to various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001 (a)(2).
COUNT 40 Altering, Destroying, Mutilating, or Concealing an Object (18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(b)(2)(B), 2)
113. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
114. From on or about June 22, 2022, through in or around August 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendants,
DONALD J. TRUMP, WALTINE NAUTA, and CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA
did knowingly corruptly persuade and attempt to persuade another person, with intent to cause and induce any person to alter, destroy, mutilate, and conceal an object with intent to impair the object's integrity and availability for use in an official proceeding; that is -- TRUMP, NAUTA, and DE OLIVEIRA requested that Trump Employee 4 delete security camera footage at The Mara-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1512(b )(2)(8) and 2.
COUNT 41 Corruptly Altering, Destroying, Mutilating or Concealing a Document, Record, or Other Object (18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(1), 2)
115. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
116. From on or about June 22, 2022, through in or around August 2022, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendants,
DONALD J. TRUMP, WALTINE NAUTA, and CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA
did corruptly alter, destroy, mutilate. and conceal a record, document and other object and attempted to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity and availability for use in an official proceeding; that is -- TRUMP, NAUTA, and DE OLIVEIRA requested that Trump Employee 4 delete security camera footage at The Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 15 12(c)(1) and 2.
COUNT 42 False Statements and Representations (18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2))
117. The General Allegations of this Superseding Indictment are re-alleged and fully incorporated here by reference.
118. On January 13, 2023, DE OLIVEIRA participated in a voluntary interview with the FBI at DE OLIVEIRA's residence. During the interview, the FBI explained to DE OLIVEIRA that the FBI was investigating how classified documents had been kept at The Mara-Lago Club, and the FBI asked DE OLIVEIRA questions about the location and movement of TRUMP's boxes and other items. DE OLIVEIRA was advised by the FBI that the interview was voluntary and that he could tell the agents to leave at any time. The FBI also advised DE OLIVEIRA that it was a criminal offense to lie to the FBI. The interview was recorded.
119. On or about January 13, 2023, in Palm Beach County, in the Southern District of Florida, and elsewhere, the defendant,
CARLOS DE OLIVEIRA,
in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch of the United States government, did knowingly and willfully make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation; that is -- in a voluntary interview during a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI, DE OLIVEIRA was asked the following questions and gave the following false answers:
Question: When --after the end of the presidency, boxes arrived to Mar-a-Lago. Were you part of any group to help --
Answer: No.
Question: --unload them and move them?
Answer: No.
* * *
Question: Do you --were you --do you even know, like, or were you even there or aware that boxes were --
Answer: No.
Question: --like, all this stuff was being moved in?
Answer: Never saw anything.
Question: Okay.
Answer: Yeah. And then --
Question: Even his personal stuff, like, his clothes -
Answer: Never.
Question: --and furniture, nothing?
Answer: Never saw nothing.
Question: Okay. So you don't know where items would have been stored, as soon as he moved back to Mar-a-Lago?
Answer: No.
120. The underscored statements and representations above were false, as DE OLIVEIRA knew, because DE OLIVEIRA had personally observed and helped move TRUMP's boxes when they arrived at The Mar-a-Lago Club in January 2021.
All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001(a)(2).
A TRUE BILL [DELETE] FOREPERSON
JACK SMITH SPECIAL COUNSEL UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
***
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
PENALTY SHEET
Defendant's Name: Donald J. Trump
Case No.: 23-CR-80101-AMC(s)
Counts #:1-32 Willful Retention of National Defense Information, 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) *Max.Term of Imprisonment: 10 years * *Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years *Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 33 Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k) *Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years *Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 34 Withholding a Document or Record, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(b)(2)(A), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 35 Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(1), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 36 Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1519, 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A *Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250 000
Count#: 37 Scheme to Conceal, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001(a)(1), 2 *Max. Term of Imprisonment: 5 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 39 False Statements and Representations, 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (a)(2) *Max. Term of Imprisonment: 5 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A *Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 40 Altering, Destroying, Mutilating, or Concealing an Object. 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(b)(2)(B). 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 41 Corruptly Altering, Destroying. Mutilating, or Concealing a Document, Record, or Other Object. 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(1), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A *Max. Supervised Release: 3 years *Max. Fine: $250,000
*Refers only to possible term of incarceration, supervised release and fines. It does not include restitution, special assessments, parole terms, or forfeitures that may be applicable.
***
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
PENALTY SHEET
Defendant's Name: Waltine Nauta
Case No.: 23-CR-80101-AMC(s)
Count#: 33 Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k) * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 34 Withholding a Document or Record, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(b)(2)(A), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 35 Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(1), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 36 Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1519, 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 37 Scheme to Conceal, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001(a)(1), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 5 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 39 False Statements and Representations, 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2) * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 5 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 40 Altering, Destroying, Mutilating, or Concealing an Object, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(b)(2)(B), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 41 Corruptly Altering, Destroying, Mutilating, or Concealing a Document, Record, or Other Object, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(1), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
*Refers only to possible term of incarceration, supervised release and fines. It does not include restitution, special assessments, parole terms, or forfeitures that may be applicable.
***
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
PENALTY SHEET
Defendant's Name: Carlos De Oliveira
Case No.: 23-CR-80101-AMC(s)
Count #: 33 Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(k) * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 40 Altering. Destroying, Mutilating. or Concealing an Object, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(b)(2)(B). 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 41 Corruptly Altering, Destroying. Mutilating, or Concealing a Document, Record. or Other Object, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1512(c)(1), 2 * Max. Term of Imprisonment: 20 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
Count#: 42 False Statements and Representations, 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (a)(2) *Max. Term of Imprisonment: 5 years * Mandatory Min. Term of Imprisonment (if applicable): N/A * Max. Supervised Release: 3 years * Max. Fine: $250,000
*Refers only to possible term of incarceration, supervised release and fines. It does not include restitution, special assessments, parole terms, or forfeitures that may be applicable.
