“This is what we assess to be the most sophisticated malware deployed by the FSB when it comes to espionage campaigns,” the FBI official said.
Russian spies did not use Snake to stage physical attacks, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
Still, it represented something of a Swiss-army-knife of digital spying, giving Russian spies clandestine access to victim computers, allowing those devices to communicate covertly among each other and acting as a staging point for additional activity from Kremlin spooks.
For years, the Snake malware avoided detection from U.S. authorities through the use of two custom digital communication protocols — a “sophisticated” evasion technique that allowed Russians to send surreptitious communications with other compromised devices, according to the court documents unsealed Tuesday.
In another sign of how careful the Russian operation was, the indictment only identified eight U.S.-based victims of the Kremlin espionage operation.
But U.S. authorities, which have been investigating the malware for more than 10 years, ultimately identified a way to identify and decrypt those communications.
Over the years, that allowed U.S. authorities to alert targets of the advanced Russian spying tool. There has been “ongoing engagement with domestic victim organizations since the inception of this investigation,” the FBI official said.
On Monday, U.S. authorities used their own digital tool, dubbed Perseus, to cause Snake to disable itself from victim computers.
“Through a high-tech operation that turned Russian malware against itself, U.S. law enforcement has neutralized one of Russia’s most sophisticated cyber-espionage tools, used for two decades to advance Russia’s authoritarian objectives,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
As it did in two prior cases, the Justice Department used a special seizure warrant, known as Rule 41, to remove the Russian malware from U.S. victim computers.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“As this Court is well aware, the justice system’s reaction to January 6 bears the weighty responsibility of impacting whether January 6 becomes an outlier or a watershed moment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler wrote in the 183-page sentencing memo. “Left unchecked, this impulse threatens our democracy.”
Prosecutors cited polling from earlier this year showing that one in five Americans believe political violence is sometimes justified and that one in 10 “believes it would be justified if it meant the return of President Trump.”
Rhodes was charged with seditious conspiracy last year alongside nearly a dozen Oath Keepers for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors alleged that Rhodes embraced Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and used it to mobilize Oath Keepers across the country to resist the results of the election.
“These defendants were prepared to fight. Not for their country, but against it,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “In their own words, they were ‘willing to die’ in a ‘guerilla war’ to achieve their goal of halting the transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential Election. … These defendants played a central and damning role in opposing by force the government of the United States, breaking the solemn oath many of them swore as members of the United States Armed Forces.”
In an eight-week trial last year, prosecutors presented evidence that the group planned to descend on Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 in response to Trump’s call about two weeks earlier for supporters to “be there, will be wild.” They stockpiled weapons, which prosecutors contend were meant to be available if the mob’s clash with police turned even more violent than it did, at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Va.
Rhodes, an Army veteran, Yale Law School graduate and disbarred attorney, was one of a pair of Oath Keepers convicted by a jury last November on rare seditious conspiracy charges for planning an assault on the Capitol as Congress was tallying the electoral votes as part of the process transitioning power from Trump to President Joe Biden.
The other person convicted on the marquee charge was Kelly Meggs, a leader of the Florida Oath Keepers. Three Oath Keepers members tried with Rhodes and Meggs were acquitted of seditious conspiracy, but convicted on other felony charges.
Four other Oath Keepers were convicted of seditious conspiracy at a second trial in January. And three more pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy over the past year.
In addition to the nine Oath Keepers who have been convicted of seditious conspiracy, five members of the far-right Proud Boys have also been convicted of or pleaded guilty to the charge. Four of them, including the group’s national leader Enrique Tarrio, were found guilty by a jury on Thursday. The sentencing recommendation for Rhodes is a window into the likely sentence that prosecutors will seek for Tarrio and his allies.
The recommendation for the stiff prison term for Rhodes was sent Friday night to U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who has presided over three jury trials for Oath Keepers members. A fourth is slated to take place later this year.
Mehta, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, has scheduled sentencing for Rhodes, Meggs and several other convicted Oath Keepers over a series of dates in late May and early June.
Prosecutors also announced in their Friday night submission that they are seeking similarly lengthy sentences for others convicted in the Oath Keepers trials to date, including: 21 years for Meggs, 18 years for Jessica Watkins, 17 years for Roberto Minuta, 17 years for Ed Vallejo, 15 years for Kenneth Harrelson and 14 years for Thomas Caldwell. Each of them would equal or exceed the lengthiest sentences given to Jan. 6 defendants so far.
Prosecutors arrived at those steep sentencing recommendations in part by labeling the actions of Rhodes and his co-conspirators “terrorism,” defined in the criminal code as “acts that were intended to influence the government through intimidation or coercion.” The Justice Department has sought this enhancement in relatively few Jan. 6 cases and with limited success.
Judges declined to adopt it in several cases against high-profile Jan. 6 defendants — but none had been convicted of seditious conspiracy and none were alleged to have played as large a role in the Jan. 6 attack as Rhodes and his allies.
Prosecutors also dinged Rhodes and several allies for participating in post-trial interviews in which they defended their actions on Jan. 6. Rhodes, in particular, they said “continues to invoke the words and deeds of the Founding Fathers in not-so-veiled calls for violent opposition to the government.”
About 1,000 people have been charged criminally in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, but prosecutors said Rhodes and other members of the fiercely anti-government Oath Keepers deserve lengthy prison sentences because they were instigators of the unrest and violence that broke out that day.
While the vast majority of those charged entered the Capitol building, Rhodes and Tarrio were convicted on the serious seditious conspiracy charge despite never setting foot in the building that day. Rhodes was in Washington and marched with Oath Keepers members, but remained in a parking lot as rioters entered the building and clashed with police. Tarrio had been arrested by police a couple of days before and was in Baltimore when the violence unfolded on Jan. 6 after being ordered to leave Washington.
While the 25-year recommendation for Rhodes is the lengthiest yet in Jan. 6 cases, it is only slightly longer than the 24-year, six-month sentence prosecutors sought for a man sentenced Friday for repeatedly assaulting police officers during the riot.
A jury convicted Peter Schwartz, 49, last December on assault and civil disorder charges for throwing a chair at police and spraying them with pepper spray, all while armed with a wooden tire knocker. According to prosecutors, unlike many Jan. 6 defendants, Schwartz had “a substantial violent criminal history.”
Mehta, the same judge handling the Oath Keeper’s cases, sentenced Schwartz to 14 years in prison. While that was more than a decade short of what prosecutors asked for, it was the longest sentence yet for a Jan. 6 offender. The next longest was also handed out by Mehta: 10 years for Thomas Webster, a retired New York City police officer who assaulted a D.C. cop on the front lines of the Capitol riot. Prosecutors had sought a 17-and-a-half year term in that case.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Lane also appeared to have attended a meeting where 11 Arizona Republicans falsely declared themselves presidential electors. In a video of that meeting, which was posted by the Arizona Republican Party, a man wearing a Trump campaign jacket with the name “Lane” on it is seen passing out papers for people to sign “certifying themselves Arizona’s ‘duly elected and qualified electors.’”
POLITICO also obtained a video from September of 2021 — during which time Lane was working as an RNC “election integrity” official in Virginia — in which he fanned conspiracy theories about the election. Lane was speaking to a gathering of conservative grassroots organizers about the RNC’s statewide plan to deploy poll workers and watchers in the upcoming gubernatorial election.
It’s important that “we learn from mistakes, we learn from any fraud, stealing,” said Lane.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that last year was stolen. ‘Stolen’ means different things to different people. On one end, it can mean the Chinese, the Russians, uh, hacked machines, or there was an influx of ballots, or fake ballots, whatever,” Lane said in the video given to POLITICO from the group Documented, a non-partisan investigative watchdog that says it believes “democracy itself is under attack.”
“On the other end is, ‘Hey, Covid was a thing, Democrats took complete advantage of it, within the laws, and outside the laws.’ And there’s everything in between,” said Lane.
Lane was among a number of people from the 2020 Trump campaign who both received subpoenas from law enforcement and complied with those requests. The committee declined to comment about the incident or his work in the House. Lane, who does not appear to have faced any charges, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Lane was a young aide on the Trump campaign at the time, fresh out of graduating from law school. But his career path from there through the House Administration Committee underscores how individuals connected to Donald Trump’s unsuccessful scheme remain well within the corridors of power, including on matters of election conduct.
The House Administration Committee is often considered a sleepy backwater that runs the logistics of the House, including doling out parking and office spaces. But it also has broad jurisdiction over elections — from campaign finance law to voting rights and election administration. Its chair, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), did not vote to block certification of the 2020 election but it’s been holding numerous hearings recently about the 2022 election, some that include individuals who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Last week, it held a hearing featuring a number of individuals who participated in a recent Washington conference hosted by conservative groups pushing for voting restrictions. Among those who testified were Hans Von Spakovsky, the Heritage Foundation’s elections lawyer who has a long history of advocating for voting restrictions and insists the U.S. system is rife with voter fraud.
Lane’s role would typically include helping to plan hearings, recommend witnesses and draft questions and helping to draft legislation, according to a person familiar with the committee’s operations.
In a potential sign of Lane’s influence over the committee’s work, last month Lynn Taylor of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy testified before the election subcommittee on the issue of “election observer access.” Taylor worked closely in 2021 with Lane, whom she introduced at the September event, and Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who advised Trump in the 2020 election. Mitchell spread false election claims and participated in the former president’s infamous call with Georgia election officials where Trump urged them to “find” votes. Mitchell resigned from her law firm following criticism of her involvement in the call.
After the 2020 election, Mitchell created a network of activist groups to recruit and coach poll watchers and workers in multiple battleground states. Mitchell’s broader “Election Integrity Network” is now collaborating directly with Taylor, according to Lindsey Zea, a research analyst for the VIPP who spoke during a Feb. 21 Zoom meeting of activists obtained by POLITICO.
Mitchell has also spoken openly about having a working relationship with the House Administration Committee. At a meeting last week for the Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that serves as a clearinghouse for election information and upon whose advisory board she serves, Mitchell praised the committee’s staff.
“They’ve been wonderful about working with and helping to educate volunteers and citizen activists on weekly calls,” Mitchell said of the staffers. Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment.
During those weekly meetings, which often occur over Zoom and include conservative activists, Mitchell has encouraged attendees to become familiar with local elections clerks as she pushes a menu of reforms that would reduce ballot access among certain groups, including university students.
In an April 13 call run by an allied group, Michigan Fair Elections, Mitchell said “we are at a turning point in our republic.” According to the call, which was obtained by POLITICO, Mitchell went on to say that U.S. “electoral systems” need to change or Republicans will “lose the presidential election” again in 2024. A lawyer on a separate April 6 call run by the same group spoke about plans to sue public universities in Michigan that help register students to vote.
Mitchell has served as a member of the EAC’s advisory board since late 2021, when she was appointed as one of the two representatives of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent federal commission created in the 1950s. Her position there has been the subject of controversy given the key role she played in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Though the board does not have a policy-making role and meets irregularly, it can make recommendations on voluntary guidelines to the EAC. The EAC certifies voting systems and advises local election offices on compliance with federal election regulations.
Earlier this month, the progressive think tank Center for American Progress issued a report highlighting the “failure” to hold Trump and his allies “fully accountable” for their “scheme to destabilize the democratic system for political purposes.”
As a RNC official, Lane collaborated with Mitchell in Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial election in 2021, which Mitchell considered a test pilot for nationwide “election integrity” coalitions. And in a January 2023 letter to RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Mitchell and other members of her coalition complained that Lane and some other “election integrity” officials had not retained their positions after the 2022 midterms. The letter referred to Lane as an “outstanding leader.”
“We were distressed, to say the least, to learn that all the state (election integrity directors) and the entire field staff were to be terminated,” the letter read. “Preventing cheating in our nation’s elections is a priority to voters,” it continued.
Shortly thereafter, Lane took up the job with the House Administration Committee, according to his LinkedIn page.
“I have already had the opportunity to meet with Secretaries of State and county election officials from across the country,” Lane said on his LinkedIn in announcing his new role. He said he is “ecstatic” to be in the position.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Recognizing Sumrall’s prominence within the Jan. 6 community, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jordan Konig pressed the witness to identify others who went into the Capitol but had not yet been charged — raising the prospect that a truthful answer might incriminate his acquaintances or associates. After initially beginning to answer the question, Sumrall appeared to grow agitated.
Alberts’ attorney Roger Roots quickly objected, prompting U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper to recess the trial and debate the issue. After jurors left the room, Cooper professed to being blindsided by the line of questioning, calling it “unorthodox” and a “fairly unique situation.” He asked prosecutors to give him a heads-up next time if they planned to go that route.
Roots fumed that the line of questioning was a bid by prosecutors to turn Sumrall into a “cheese-eating rat” and “a snitch on the stand.” He accused prosecutors of “pretending they’re the FBI” and attempting to humiliate Sumrall in front of the jury.
“This is so outrageous,” Roots said.
Konig said Sumrall’s refusal to answer the question spoke to his credibility as a defense witness — proving that he was unwilling to testify in any way that would be harmful to a Jan. 6 defendant. His “ties to the Jan. 6 community,” Konig said, are proof of his bias that jurors should be permitted to consider.
He also cited two recent criminal tax cases in which prosecutors were permitted to cross-examine witnesses. In a 2019 case in Colorado, a federal judge ordered a defendant to respond to prosecutors’ request that he identify other people who refused to pay their taxes. The same year, in a federal criminal tax case in Nevada, prosecutors asked the defendant to identify other tax scofflaws — including one who happened to be in the room at the time of the testimony.
Cooper, though, did not permit prosecutors to go as far. He said he would permit Sumrall to decline to answer the question and would not order him to name names. Prosecutors agreed this was an acceptable outcome because jurors would still see that Sumrall had refused to identify people who might be implicated in Jan. 6 wrongdoing. When the jury returned, Cooper informed them of his decision.
Alberts called Sumrall in part because Sumrall was on Capitol grounds Jan. 6 filming the events. The defense contended that Sumrall’s video showed the thin police presence as pro-Trump protesters arrived at the Capitol and ultimately surged past several layers of barricades.
During their cross-examination, prosecutors highlighted Sumrall’s extensive commentary in support of Jan. 6 defendants, his help in fundraising for the legal defense of some of the most notorious perpetrators on that day — including one of Roots’ other clients, Dominic Pezzola, who is facing seditious conspiracy charges in a trial two floors away — and his sympathy for the “cause” that Jan. 6 rioters espoused that day.
They also emphasized that Sumrall had claimed “99 percent” of Jan. 6 defendants should not have been charged.
Sumrall was the final defense witness in the case, which now heads to closing arguments and jury deliberations.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Critics have accused conservative opponents of Biden policies of filing their lawsuits in particular divisions in the district, seeking to guarantee they’re heard by a sympathetic judge. The Biden administration, for example, has accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of “judge shopping” in recent cases he’s filed in the district challenging various administration policies.
The lawsuit that Pittman agreed to transfer on Monday was brought by a for-profit college trade association that wants to block a new Biden administration policy that makes it easier for student loan borrowers to have their debts forgiven when they are misled or defrauded by their college.
Career Colleges & Schools of Texas, which filed the case in February, is trying to block the Education Department’s rewrite of federal standards — known as “borrower defense to repayment” — that govern when the agency discharges a student loan based on a college’s misconduct. The group argues that the policy, which is set to take effect July 1, is an illegal and unfair effort by the Biden administration to provide more loan forgiveness to borrowers while sticking colleges with the bill.
In a six-page decision, Pittman rejected arguments by the Austin-based association that it should be able to pursue the case in the Fort Worth division of the Northern District of Texas on behalf of member schools in that area that would be affected by the new policy even though the group itself doesn’t have any office or employees there.
Pittman ruled that connection to the district was too far removed. Career Colleges & Schools of Texas “may have an interest in assisting various burdened parties in the division, but it does not have any presence,” Pittman wrote, concluding that “venue is improper” in his district.
The Biden administration had asked that the case be moved either to Austin where the college group is based or federal district court in Washington, D.C. Pittman ruled that Austin would be the “more appropriate” venue because it still “affords some ‘respect’ to Plaintiff’s original choice of forum — even though it was an incorrect one.”
The Justice Department declined to comment. An attorney representing Career Colleges & Schools of Texas said that the organization would not comment on pending litigation.
The Northern District of Texas is widely seen a one of the nation’s most conservative with GOP appointed judges who have demonstrated a willingness to strike down major Democratic policies.
Pittman, for example, was the judge who first blocked Biden’s sweeping student debt relief program last fall. His colleague Judge Reed O’Connor is a George W. Bush appointee who notably struck down the Affordable Care Act in 2018.
More recently, another judge in the district, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, authored the controversial ruling earlier this month that overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of a common abortion pill. That decision is on pause while the Supreme Court hears an emergency appeal.
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Devin Patrick Kelley, a former Air Force service member, opened fire during a Sunday service at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in November 2017. The shooter died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“No words or amount of money can diminish the immense tragedy of the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a press release. “Today’s announcement brings the litigation to a close, ending a painful chapter for the victims of this unthinkable crime.”
The tentative settlements will resolve claims by more than 75 plaintiffs arising out of the shooting, DOJ said.
DOJ reached a $127.5 million settlement with the victims of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018 and a $88 million settlement to the families of those killed in the South Carolina church shooting in 2015.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The DOJ is seeking injunctive relief, cost recovery and civil penalties to “ensure it pays the full cost of the environmental cleanup,” according to the lawsuit.
“As a result of this incident, hazardous materials vented into the air and spilled onto the ground. These substances contaminated local waterways and flowed miles downstream,” the prosecutors wrote in the suit.
The derailment, involving a freight train traveling near a small town along the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, sent 38 cars off the track, spilling hazardous chemicals. Some of the tank cars had been compromised and required a controlled release of toxic vinyl chloride, which was burned off and forced the town’s evacuation.
Federal officials have insisted that the area and its water are safe now, but residents continue to complain of foul smells and worry about long-term health concerns, as well as depressed home values.
Earlier this month, Alan Shaw, the railroad’s CEO, appeared before Congress to apologize for the derailment and promise accountability, telling lawmakers that “we won’t be finished until we make it right.”
The company has come under intense scrutiny from the industry and lawmakers, who have pressed for more stringent safety precautions as they suspect an overheating wheel caused the derailment. Norfolk Southern has since announced a handful of new safety measures, as has the industry as a whole.
Lawmakers from both parties, including a heavy contingent from Ohio and Pennsylvania, are pressing forward with legislation intended to shore up rail safety, but so far have yet to gain broad traction.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The trial proceedings have renewed extraordinarily complex issues surrounding the immunity presidential advisers enjoy from being forced to testify to Congress, as well as the relatively untested puzzle of what courts should do when a current and former president disagree on assertions of executive privilege. While the Nixon-era Supreme Court has ruled that the incumbent president’s determination carries far more weight, courts have never drawn precise lines — and the issue has remained dormant until Trump’s post-presidential efforts to stymie investigations of his bid to overturn the election.
The issues were similarly prominent during the contempt of Congress trial for Trump ally Steve Bannon, also for defying the Jan. 6 committee. In that case, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols largely rejected Bannon’s arguments that he believed he was immune from testifying to Congress. Bannon was convicted by a jury in July. He’s currently appealing the verdict.
Navarro, unlike Bannon, was a sitting presidential adviser at the time of Jan. 6, which has added additional complexities to his case
But DOJ said there’s no need for Mehta to resolve those thorny issues. Navarro, Aloi noted, hasn’t shown any evidence that Trump actually did assert privilege over his response to the committee’s subpoena. A Jan. 23 letter from Trump’s lawyer — a belated effort by Trump to suggest Navarro was correct to defy the select committee — failed to make the case, she said. That’s because the majority of the select committee’s questions for Navarro had little to do with his role as Trump’s trade adviser, or indeed with Trump at all.
“The committee informed the Defendant that most of the information it was seeking did not concern communications he took in his capacity as presidential adviser at all, but instead related to matters undertaken in his personal capacity with persons outside the government,” the department argued. “Executive privilege, in this case, therefore could not justify a complete default on the Committee’s subpoena.”
The select committee subpoenaed Navarro in early 2022, seeking information about his efforts to support Trump’s bid to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election. Navarro, whose primary official role at the time was responding to the Covid pandemic, spent weeks after the election compiling a report that leveled discredited claims of election fraud. Trump cited that report in the same tweet he urged supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6 for a “wild” protest.
Navarro had also publicly described strategizing with Bannon and House Republican lawmakers on a strategy they dubbed the “Green Bay sweep,” a tactical plan for House and Senate Republicans to formally object to Joe Biden’s election during the certification of Electoral Votes on Jan. 6.
The select committee subpoenaed Navarro on Feb. 9, 2022, and Navarro responded almost immediately that he would not comply because of executive privilege. After weeks of failed discussions between the committee and Navarro, Biden’s White House counsel issued a letter indicating that Biden had determined not to support any claim of privilege over Navarro’s testimony. Navarro then blew off a March 2 deposition date. The House soon held Navarro in contempt and recommended that DOJ pursue criminal charges, which it did in June.
“At no time did the Defendant provide the Committee with any evidence supporting his assertion that the former President had invoked executive privilege over the information the Committee’s subpoena sought from the Defendant,” Aloi noted in her Tuesday night brief. “And at no time in his communications with the Select Committee did the Defendant raise the issue of testimonial immunity, nor even suggest that former President Trump had requested that he communicate any assertion of such immunity to the Committee.”
Mehta appeared to largely align with the Justice Department’s thinking on the matter until late January on the eve of trial, when he raised new questions about whether Navarro might fit within the realm of close presidential advisers who DOJ has long said are “immune” from compelled testimony to Congress. If so, he said, it’s possible DOJ would be barred from bringing contempt of Congress charges against Navarro.
But the department said its prior analyses about immunity — which all pertain to current and former advisers to a sitting president — aren’t applicable to Navarro, a former adviser to a former president.
Mehta is also contemplating whether questions about Trump’s claim of executive privilege should be resolved by the jury in Navarro’s forthcoming trial. But DOJ said this was a purely legal determination that should be resolved before trial begins.
“[W]hile a valid assertion of executive privilege may provide a bar to prosecution, a subpoenaed witness’s mistaken belief that executive privilege was asserted or excused compliance is not a defense at all,” Aloi wrote. “The Defendant should not be permitted to testify about contrary and mistaken beliefs before the jury.”
“Were a jury confronted with credible evidence both that there an invocation by the former President, and that there was not an invocation (and/or an express decision not to invoke) by the current President,” she continued, “there is no fact finding the jury could do that would resolve the conflict.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“This unacceptable and unconstitutional conduct erodes the community trust necessary for effective policing,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
The Louisville, Kentucky, city government and police department conducted practices that violated the Constitution, according to a new investigation released Wednesday by the Department of Justice.
The Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government and the Louisville Metro Police Department had patterns of unlawful practices, Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a press conference in Louisville on Wednesday. The DOJ investigation, the results of which Garland announced Wednesday, was launched after Louisville police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor in 2020. That shooting sparked nationwide protests and calls for police reform.
In its report, the DOJ had “reasonable cause to believe” that the city government and police department engaged in “a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The filings are the first effort by the Justice Department to place limits on any potential efforts by Jan. 6 defendants to use the newly disclosed footage to prolong their criminal proceedings. Nichols’ attorney, Joseph McBride, urged U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth to delay his late-March trial in order to give Nichols’ defense team time to review the footage, which McBride said he’s been granted access to by the House.
Prosecutors emphasized that defendants and their lawyers have had access to an enormous trove of evidence for nearly two years — more then 4.9 million files totaling nearly 7.4 terabytes of information. Those files include “over 30,000 files that include body-worn and hand-held camera footage from five law enforcement agencies and surveillance-camera footage from three law enforcement agencies.”
Prosecutors contended that the existence of the additional footage reviewed by Carlson does not necessarily entitle defendants to receive it — particularly without a basis for believing it includes exculpatory content.
“The Government’s discovery obligations in a criminal case are properly limited to materials that are potentially relevant to a defendant’s case in the government’s possession or control, and the government is not obliged to acquire materials possessed or controlled by others,” McCauley wrote, saying a trial should not be delayed “based on speculation about whether and when any such additional, likely irrelevant, information may become available.”
Defense teams have complained that the overwhelming amount of material has been impossible to comb through — even as they demand access to the extensive new trove. It’s become a recurring theme in Jan. 6 cases: Prosecutors have dumped enormous caches of evidence on defense teams, who continuously claim they don’t have the means or capacity to meaningfully review it. The Justice Department noted that it has built tools intended to help defendants and their lawyers pinpoint relevant footage by camera angle and time of day.
The Justice Department also rejected as “premature” the notion that Carlson’s decision to air some of the security footage Monday should lead to the Justice Department making the full cache of security film public. Prosecutors noted that “limited” clips aired by Carlson were nearly all included in the initial troves of footage provided to defense attorneys, which includes nearly all of the footage inside and outside the Capitol from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Jan. 6.
“Nearly all the footage displayed on the program has long been in the government’s production to defense counsel and, in some cases, has also been admitted in public hearings and/or trials and has been available to, released to, and/or published by news media,” the department noted.
Prosecutors also argued that there’s still good reason not to widely release all security footage; “Disclosure of all CCV footage could not only reveal the U.S. Capitol’s internal surveillance system to third parties but could also jeopardize the privacy and security of certain persons depicted on such CCV footage.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
