Current and former FBI officials familiar with the matter told me there was a quiet campaign to urge senior leadership to cancel the trip. When that and other efforts to pass apprehensions up the chain went unanswered, some shared their worries with Congress. Now a pair of senior House Democrats are taking the unusual step of asking the FBI director to scrap the visit, which is reportedly set to begin next week: “In the interest of national security, we ask you to reconsider. Call off this trip,” they wrote in a letter that I obtained. The letter is signed by Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Representative Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. Patel has not replied to the letter and the FBI has not publicly confirmed his travel plans. Neither the FBI nor the White House responded to my multiple requests for comment.

The story notes that Kash has, with Trump, spent a decade trying to dismiss Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

But it doesn’t mention that Kash has used his position in the Deep State — first as babysitter for John Ratcliffe, then as FBI Director — to collude with Russian spies to frame Donald Trump’s adversaries, first Hillary Clinton and then more recently Jim Comey.

As Chuck Grassley exposed last year, documents shared with the FBI in 2016 discussed framing Hillary Clinton, based on her criticism of Donald Trump’s coziness with Russia. Kash appears to have discovered the documents when undermining the Russian investigation in 2017; right wingers on HPSCI got a look at them in 2018; and then Kash had John Ratcliffe declassify them in 2020 to create a basis for the John Durham investigation.

But the documents Kash was attempting to use to claim that Hillary tried to frame Trump (which is not what they said anyway) were fabrications. They were fabricated starting on July 26, 2016, to distract from growing discoveries tying Guccifer 2.0 to Russia.

Even though Durham showed they were fabrications (he called them “composites”), Kash kept using those Russian fabrications to try to frame Trump’s adversaries. Jim Comey’s confused answer about the fabrications was one of the things Trump charged Comey for last year. And there’s no way Todd Blanche could charge the Grand Conspiracy without relying on Comey’s confused answer, either.

Last year, after Charlie Savage laid out what I also did — that Kash and John Durham had been chasing Russian fabrications for years — Kash panicked, and endorsed Sean Davis’ propaganda about these reports in an attempt to cling to his use of Russian fabrications.

That’s a problem. For the same reasons I laid out in this video about the misleading way Chuck Grassley declassified the document, it means that when Kash gets on a plane to visit Russian spies this week, they already have his nuts in a vice, because they know — and have proof — that he has been relying on Russian fabrications to frame people.

The entire logic of the Durham Report holds that it is a crime to knowingly rely on Russian disinformation — or false claims at all — to try to frame someone.

That is the crime the FBI Director continues to commit.

And Putin’s spies have proof that is what Kash is doing.

Links

In a Desperate Bid to Survive His Latest Fuck-Up, FBI Director Kash Patel Desperately Clings to Propaganda

John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel — and Durham Himself — Committed the Crime John Durham Was Hunting

How Chuck Grassley’s Politicized Redactions Gave Putin Leverage over Trump

The SVR Fabrication Necessitates Reconceiving the 2016 Russian Influence Operation

How John Durham Buried Evidence He Had Been Doing the Work of Russian Spies … and then Tulsi Gabbard Buried More

Kash Patel’s Taint

Did the Comey Dismissal Render Kash Patel’s Grand Conspiracy “Just Someone Else’s Fantasy”?

The post Kash Patel Colluded with Russian Spies to Frame Jim Comey, and He Probably Will Again appeared first on emptywheel.

The U.S. Treasury market’s liquidity and performance versus global peers is evidence.

It doesn’t say what it is evidence of.

Senator Warren wrote the letter, “to ask how the Treasury Department (Treasury) plans to address the harm to families and risks to the financial system from skyrocketing interest rates, which are driven in part by President Trump’s failed economic agenda and your market misadventures.” Her letter laid out the following:

• 10-year Treasury yields are the highest they’ve been since 2002 (sourced to WSJ)
• Those surging yields harm consumers, especially through higher mortgage rates (sourced to NBC, NYT, Mortgage News Daily, National Association of Realtors)
• That surge is self-inflicted, and comes on top of efforts by the Fed to rein in inflation, which is driven by the Iran War
• Trump’s policies are driving up National Debt (citing US Bureau of Economic Analysis)
• Trump’s policies, including both the Big Ugly Bill and the Iran War, are driving up the deficit (citing reports on the financial impact and effects of the law and the AP)
• A long paragraph on what Warren calls Bessent’s “chaotic interventions in the market, apparently in hopes of stemming the damage” citing this CNN story to claim Bessent’s intervention is failing:

Rather than advise the President to lower costs, you have chosen to launch unprecedented and chaotic interventions in the market, apparently in hopes of stemming the damage. On August 19, 2026, the Treasury Department announced its plan to double the size of its buyback operations, in which it issues short-term Treasury bills to buy back longer dated bonds.15 There were reports that the Treasury reportedly was even considering tapping its cash on hand, maintained in the Treasury General Account at the Federal Reserve, to further increase the buybacks.16 Since then, Treasury has gone through with three rounds of these buybacks: $5.2 billion on September 10, $4.1 billion on September 24, and $6 billion on October 1.17 While you asserted that the goal of these purchases was to make it easier for investors to buy and sell Treasuries, others—including your former boss —see your move as an attempt to reduce the high interest rates on longer term Treasury debt. Unfortunately, your intervention is failing.18 Indeed, bond yields rose on the days of the first two buybacks, and while they dipped on the day of the third, they climbed again the following day and remain high.19 Buybacks are not designed to lower rates, and they are financed by issuing new debt, which only adds to the pressure pushing rates higher.20 Further, the administration’s casting about for various measures to reassure the markets is undermining the longstanding strategy that Treasury issuance—and buybacks—should be “regular and predictable” to keep financing costs lower over time.21

• Another paragraph describing the financial struggles of Americans citing (among other things) this NYT story

She asked the following questions:

1. Is the Treasury planning to draw down the Treasury General Account to expand buybacks further? If so, on what timeline? What risks does that pose to Treasury’s cash position and to market liquidity?
2. What analysis has the Treasury done—including through the Bureau of Tax Analysis, Office of Economic Policy, and Office of the Secretary—on how higher yields are affecting mortgage payments, car loans, and credit card costs for American families? Provide copies of that analysis.
3. How is the Treasury ensuring lenders don’t overcharge consumers at a time when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been gutted? What specific steps is the Treasury taking, beyond buybacks, to bring long-term yields down?
4. Will you recommend that the President end the war in Iran and pursue other policies to reduce inflation and lower costs for families? If not, what is your plan to lower costs for families?

Rather than answer any of those four questions — what he’s doing with his buybacks, whether Treasury has tracked how higher yields are affecting consumers, whether Treasury is protecting consumers against being cheated, and whether he has counseled Trump to end the war that is spiking prices — Bessent did the following:

• Told her she should take an introductory economics course
• Accused her of blaming the Fed in 2022 when inflation spiked under Biden
• Rather than answering her question about his plans on the buybacks, instead claimed that evidence is evidence

‘The “interventions” you describe as “unprecedented” have been underway since May 2024. The buyback program has been well received by market participants in bolstering Treasury liquidity, which reduces market volatility, increases the convenience yield of Treasury securities and ensures the best value for the taxpayer. The continued enhancements optimize Treasury market liquidity in primary and secondary markets. The U.S. Treasury market’s liquidity and performance versus global peers is evidence. [my emphasis]

• Responded to her comments about the services that the Big Ugly Bill stripped from Americans by boasting that “the average refund this filing season was over $3,400,” though some of that was because people overpaid last year and it is an average that includes especially large refunds from changes to SALT
• Complained about these comments in this paywallwed Punchbowl article, which was itself a response to this WSJ profile laying out Bessent’s bullying and his failure to meet his own goals

To summarize, Warren asked if he’s doing anything to help American consumers and whether he knows what he’s doing with risky market interventions, and he responded by blaming Joe Biden and then rather than responding to criticisms in the WSJ and Punchbowl (which, incidentally, show that his interventions have not been well-received), accused her of being stupid.

It did serve Bessent’s apparent purpose, however, of going viral among a bunch of people who apparently haven’t read what it says — or perhaps have only read Bessent’s Native American slur.

Accused of being a bully whose management makes the US less safe, Scott Bessent decided to waggle his dick around and dodge any question about his performance.

Which only raises more questions about whether he could manage an increasingly likely financial crisis.

The post Evidence Is Evidence: The Questions Scott Bessent Couldn’t Answer appeared first on emptywheel.

I think it is a mistake to center stories about the corrupt deal Trump made with Vladimir Putin yesterday around Donald Trump’s tweet (which I have corrected for accuracy).

The tweet is propaganda: the ask that his handler, Vladimir Putin, demanded before he agreed to his own side of the bargain. Putin’s own statement does not mention the word “diesel” — and does not mention any oil deals at all until after mentioning “the Ukraine crisis” and “the situation surrounding Iran.”

During the October 9 telephone conversation with US President Donald Trump, considerable focus was on prospects for settling the Ukraine crisis, while the situation surrounding Iran and various aspects of bilateral relations were touched upon as well.

When discussing the state of affairs in the global energy market, the Russian side confirmed its willingness to supply oil and petroleum products to the US market and global markets at large. I am convinced this will have a positive impact on the entire global economy.

An agreement was reaffirmed to maintain personal contacts between the presidents of the two countries and to continue cooperation across their respective administrations, security services, and agencies.

The purported deal for diesel — for Russia to export diesel they do not have — is not the drone warfare you’re looking for. Just in the last three days, we heard of a Lukoil deal that would benefit a guy who gave Trump $2 million which requires both Putin and Trump’s approval (and offers the kind of US corruption that Trump has so enjoyed with his theft of Venezuela’s oil).

The deal, for a worldwide portfolio of oil fields, refineries and gas stations now owned by the sanctioned Russian energy giant Lukoil, has become intertwined with the U.S. talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, The New York Times reported last week.

The United States government, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, would get a stake of about 15 percent in the deal, without investing any cash up front, the people said.

The leader of the investor group, Todd Boehly, an American billionaire who has donated $2 million to pro-Trump causes in the last two years, would get a smaller minority stake.

But more than half of the equity will be cumulatively held by investors in the Middle East, according to three participants in the negotiations. The investors include entities tied to the royal family in Abu Dhabi and to two billionaire Syrian-born Qatari brothers, who are business partners with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.

The deal is structured in such a way that the United States — through Mr. Boehly and the government — would control a majority of the board of the resulting entity, some of the people close to the deal said. A senior administration official said the deal included a “substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States,” would enhance American “energy dominance” and outlast the current administration.

We also learned of a Nord Stream deal that would start selling gas to Europe, and benefit Kushner.

Top Russian and US officials, including US Special Envoy Jared Kushner, have held talks about bringing a US investor into the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered gas to Germany before Russia invaded Ukraine, five people with knowledge ​of the situation said.

The discussions included Kirill Dmitriev, a close adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, the people said.

Nothing about Putin’s statement makes sense if this deal is about diesel. It all makes sense if this deal is about bribing people close to Trump to betray Ukraine and Europe.

The point of Trump’s statement about Ukraine is, first, to continue to blame Ukraine — rather than Trump’s own incompetence — for sky high diesel prices. And, just as importantly, to rationalize cutting off Ukrainian intelligence (and, if that were to happen, probably Starlink as well).

• They were told that Trump decided to move forward after Ukraine ignored multiple requests to stop strikes on Russian oil refineries, which were directly affecting U.S. consumers.
• A Ukrainian official claimed that during the talks, Witkoff and Kushner threatened that Trump could cut off Ukraine from U.S. intelligence if it continued to ignore his requests.
• The U.S. official denied such a threat was made and said Witkoff and Kushner told the Ukrainians that the U.S. was a strong partner, providing munitions and intelligence. Ukraine therefore shouldn’t take actions that hurt American consumers, Witkoff and Kushner said.
• “The attacks on the refineries cause pain in Russia, but it causes pain for the U.S., too,” the U.S. official said.

Trump is not the agent of this deal — or rather, he is the Agent of a Foreign Power here. But he is not the architect of it.

I predicted back in March that one way the Iran war would end is if Putin recruited Trump to join his side in a world war, which at this point puts the dictatorships of the world against a Europe struggling to stave off right wing extremists just as winter hits.

Trump has two options to get the Strait of Hormuz open, neither of which would restore the status quo from before Trump’s disastrous attack, if they work at all: to use the cover of other quasi-negotiations to capitulate on Russia’s terms, effectively losing the war to Iran for Russian assurances that Iran will keep the Strait open, or to send those 20,000 troops to conduct incredibly difficult operations with degraded local facilities.

I’m not saying that Trump has already decided to capitulate to Russia. Though it is the kind of neat solution — one that likely comes with financial benefits for his family and his developer buddy — that would allow Trump to go back to gaudying up more of the White House, his real passion. I’m saying that until Trump’s two insanely unqualified and conflicted “volunteer” negotiators are replaced with grown-ups, this will continue to be a real possibility.

It took Lindsey Graham’s death, Trump’s complete incompetence to claim an Iran win, and billions of dollars in bribes — some of which may never deliver. The mention of “cooperation across their respective administrations, [including] security services,” likely means that Kash Patel is traveling to Russia next week to collect the kind of disinformation (likely implicating Jim Comey and John Brennan) he has been chasing for a decade.

But Vladimir Putin seems to have finally completed the complete recruitment of Trump that Russia has been pursuing for decades.

The post Agent of a Foreign Power appeared first on emptywheel.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

The post Fridays with Nicole Sandler appeared first on emptywheel.

The story doesn’t name John Yoo in either the body or the correction, noting he works at Berkley, not Stanford.

An earlier version of this article misstated the school affiliation of the law professor known for memos on torture in the war on terrorism who joined the “grand conspiracy” prosecution team. He is at the University of California, Berkeley, not Stanford.

Its backstory on Joe DiGenova skips the most important bit — his role in the the Russian-linked influence operation that framed Hunter Biden in 2019, which seems like worthy background to the fight over a SCIF (this story describes that Jason Reding Quiñones approved DiGenova’s request for his own SCIF, but Todd Blanche overrode it). Nor does it describe Jack Eckenrode’s background on another Russian-linked attempt to frame Hillary Clinton. While it describes Mike Davis’ role in dreaming up the Grand Conspiracy, it doesn’t describe Davis’ ties to Aakash Singh (or to other cases that have fallen apart), though it does confirm that Singh is now overseeing the investigation.

What the story does do is capture a key conflict between DiGenova and Todd Blanche. The story starts by describing how DiGenova quit before Blanche could fire him. It ends by claiming Blanche wasn’t intending to fire him. Along the way it describes that Blanche is approaching the Grand Conspiracy in a way to avoid getting fired, not in a way to prosecute anyone.

Under the clash of personalities was a deeper divide on how best to move forward.

Mr. diGenova, who wanted to take aim at big-name targets, told one associate he believed that Mr. Blanche was less interested in proving the conspiracy to destroy the president than in securing rapid box-checking indictments of low-level players to keep Mr. Trump happy.

Mr. Blanche, he told that person, was so anxious to maintain his position that he did not want to tell Mr. Trump the truth: A successful investigation needed time.

The attorney general acknowledged the inquiry’s complexities on a podcast earlier this year. “I’m not suggesting that we don’t have that evidence,” he told Sean Hannity of Fox News. “I’m saying when you talk about the challenges, that’s the challenge.”

Mr. Blanche had his own complaints. His team thought Mr. diGenova was too scattered, too combative and too slow, according to three current and former officials. It did not help that around this time Mr. diGenova and Ms. Toensing left for a long-planned vacation to France.

By early September, Mr. Blanche dispatched two prosecutors from Washington to Florida to move things forward. During a heated meeting, they peppered Mr. diGenova’s staff with questions about its work before the grand jury.

The coda came when members of Mr. diGenova’s team offered him a readout of their closed-door meeting with the two prosecutors: Washington would now be running things.

Mr. diGenova, infuriated, said he would instruct U.S. marshals to remove the prosecutors from the grand jury room if they showed up there to interfere, the officials said.

Mr. Blanche responded with a profanity-laced phone call and summoned Mr. diGenova to Washington. The attorney general wanted to recount his grievances in person, but never actually planned to fire Mr. diGenova, according to a person close to Mr. Blanche. [my emphasis]

The closest it gets to describing that the entire grand conspiracy is makebelieve is when it describes, “Mr. diGenova and others involved in the case have found it difficult, and time-consuming, to meet the standards of evidence and jurisdiction needed to prove anything close to a conspiracy in a court of law.”

Meanwhile, it describes Blanche losing confidence in David Metcalf, who first oversaw the case in Philadelphia, then Maria Medetis Long, the national security prosecutor once in charge of the case, then US Attorney Reding Quiñones who fired Medetiz, then DiGenova, one after another lawyer who failed Blanche.

Except for Singh. In spite of Singh’s role in all the failed politicized cases Blanche has overseen, Blanche still has confidence in him.

It’s a funny progression given the complaints Blanche made on boy-troll show RuthLess this week (which Raw Story reported). He said the biggest challenge he faces is all the former prosecutors calling out his corruption. He claimed he’s perfectly happy with the people who’ll work for him — the JAG officers forced into service, the conspiracy theorists who can’t get clearance, even Reding Quiñones, though the story describes “a growing lack of confidence” in him.

I think the most challenging is not changing the culture–most of our prosecutors are great. Agents are great. But changing the perception of the culture. The prosecutors that left over the past year and a half, they hate us. And so any time — they formed a, basically they unionized, formed an organization whose sole mission is to go after the current Department of Justice. So pushing back on that perception is a constant challenge. I go to US Attorneys Offices multiple times a month and the prosecutors in those offices are great. They love what we’re doing. They love their jobs. It’s the best job they’re ever going to have. But the perception on LinkedIn or on Instagram or the newspaper, New York Times, is just “my god, DOJ is in a bad place,” which it’s not.

It’s just the former prosecutors impugning DOJ’s reputation, not the judges serially describing how DOJ’s presumption of regularity has collapsed.

What I increasingly wonder, though, is what is so compelling about this job that motivates Blanche’s flopsweat efforts to deliver on Trump’s demands for revenge? What is so attractive about this job that he’s willing to spin out pointless indictments that will only do what this story curiously describes, with no direct attribution, as a big win for Trump,

Even if charges are never filed, Mr. Trump has already instilled fear in — and imposed steep financial costs on — potential targets, in his view giving them a taste of what he experienced when he was under investigation.

Why is Singh the one in whom Blanche retains confidence, when he is the architect of so much Blanche failure?

The post Why Does Todd Blanche Want the Job? appeared first on emptywheel.

All right. Let’s move on to privilege, which has loomed large in our discussion so far. Is it the Department of Justice’s position that if someone is prosecuted because of their political affiliation, their First Amendment conduct, race, any other legal consideration that the documents that show that will be privileged?

MR. WHALEN: I think there is caselaw — the government believes there is caselaw out there that says when — in the FOIA context is where I’ve seen it — when there has been a showing of potential selective or vindictive prosecution, this court can, pursuant to an order, kind of maintaining the privilege reviewed in the documents. And hopefully I answered your question, Your Honor. I don’t mean to be —

THE COURT: I’m thinking it through.

MR. WHALEN: Sure.

THE COURT: I’m going to ask you again because I’m not sure you did.

MR. WHALEN: Okay.

THE COURT: If there is a document that says, we are going to prosecute all of the people of color for this offense and none of the white people, would that be privileged, in your opinion?

MR. WHALEN: It depends on the situation in which the document is being asked to produce.

Perry then asked questions that would go to whether DOJ would have to reveal the existence of pertinent communications if relevant to a selective and vindictive claim. Again, Whalen hedged.

THE COURT: Okay. I’m assuming it’s not your position that if one of those legal considerations is at issue in a case, that a prosecutor should lie to the government or the Court about whether or not the communication exists?

MR. WHALEN: Your Honor, it’s the position of the Department of Justice we should never lie to Your Honor.

THE COURT: So if there’s a claim of privilege, doesn’t that need to be made at the time the relevant communication is requested?

MR. WHALEN: I don’t know the answer to that.

THE COURT: I mean, certainly AUSAs, like all lawyers who appear before me, have a duty to be truthful, right?

MR. WHALEN: Correct. I’m sorry.

THE COURT: And privilege isn’t automatic, right? I mean, Courts review documents for claims of privilege all the time.

So then Judge Perry asserted as fact that she was told there were no relevant communications on that topic.

THE COURT: All right. Well, in this case I was told that there were no relevant communications at all. Period. Hard stop. If there are, in fact, no relevant communications to the malicious prosecution, vindictive prosecution motion, what privilege could possibly exist here?

She’s talking about the claims that William Hogan made in a March 30 filing, which she expressly relied on in an April 7 hearing when denying the Broadview 6′ selective and vindictive claim.

To the end, the prosecutors agreed to provide evidence of external forces communicating with the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office about this case, and they have now said there is no such evidence. There are no White House communications, there are no main justice communications, and I quote, There are no communications of any nature from, to, or with anyone outside of the U.S. Attorney’s Office other than local FBI investigators assigned to the case regarding any investigatory or charging decisions.

In response to her assertion that she was told there were no relevant communications, Whalen pulled up the March 30 document in question and disputed whether the claim was that categorical.

MR. WHALEN: Your Honor, may I just grab something off the table for a second?

THE COURT: Sure.

MR. WHALEN: Thank you. And the reason I’m grabbing this, Your Honor, is the representation was not made that there were no communications period or stop, as I understand it. Our representation in docket 110, starting on pages 3 and 4. We were responding to the former defendants’ request for documents. And their request is on page 94 — I’m sorry — docket 94. So if you look at docket 94, page 6, they said, quote, these — I’m not quoting here, these documents, quote, “Give rise to a prima facie showing sufficient to warrant discovery in to any role the White House may have held in influencing, if not directing, the prosecution of this case.”And the government responded at docket 110, pages 3 to 4, and said that there are no communications showing who was — “The indictment in this case was proposed, reviewed and approved exactly like hundreds of others routinely brought by the USAO year-in and year-out, that is without any influence or interference by anyone outside the USAO.”

And then the government goes on and says, “The decisions about who and what to charge were made by USAO prosecutors and their supervisors based solely on positive identifications of the defendants and evaluations of their individual criminal conduct.” Tying back to that, we then say, “Accordingly, there are no communications of any nature or form to or with anyone outside of the USAO regarding investigatory or charging decisions.” How I read that sentence and paragraph is that there are no communications prior to the decision to charge the former defendants directing us to charge these particular individuals. Because, Your Honor, on page 4 there is this footnote, footnote 2, where we say, we have alerted DOJ about our decision to charge these individuals, right. That in and of itself is saying, yes, there are communications, they are just post charging.

THE COURT: All right. So what I have says — and this is, I think, exactly what you quoted, “Accordingly, there are no communications of any nature from, to, or with anyone outside of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, other than the local FBI investigators assigned to the case, regarding any investigatory or charging decisions. To be crystal clear, this specifically includes anyone in the White House and all components and offices of Main Justice.” Is it your position that statement is true, or is it your position that statement is truthy because there are privileged communications of this nature?

When asked whether he stood by that statement Whalen said it was true as it relates to precharging decisions.

MR. WHALEN: Our position is that is true when tied back to the opening of the paragraph where it says, no one — excuse me — There was no communications about influence or interference by anyone outside the USAO. And so this statement is true as it relates to precharging decisions, Your Honor.

THE COURT: But possibly untrue as it relates to things that happened after the decision was made?

MR. WHALEN: Well, Your Honor, we made clear and we tried — we clearly did not make clear. We attempted to clarify that there were communications after the decision was made between us and the Department.

That’s when Judge Perry raised the point I raised here: There wasn’t just one charging decision. There was, at a minimum, the decision to present the case a second (and third) time to the grand jury. Whalen attempts to claim the famous Footnote 15 addressed this issue. Perry scoffed.

THE COURT: I mean, here’s what I’m having a little struggle with. The decision is not, as in most cases, a one-time thing because we have a cross-memo that goes up the chain that at some point has an indictment with it that gets signed. And then we have a whole lot of other things that happened in the weeks that follow where the case gets presented, there’s a no bill, re-presented, re, re-presented. So are you saying charging decision as in the moment whoever at the top of the chain, whichever chain it was at the time, agreed that charges should issue? Or are you accounting for all of this later time period where there were arguably other decision points that needed to be made, not the least of which was after the no bill? Again, the US Attorney, as I understand it, had to affirmatively make the decision to represent.So, I guess, it would help me if you would clarify what your decision point is that you are using for that very nuanced and specific statement. MR. WHALEN: Your Honor, we attempted to clarify in our response on footnote 15, page 41.

THE COURT: You didn’t. Footnote 15 is a mess. “The front office is not aware of any communications in which it took direction from anyone outside the USAO regarding decisions as to what investigatory steps the local prosecution team would take or who the local prosecution team would charge when prosecutors went into the grand jury to indict this case.” Okay. So “the front office is not aware” is different from there were no communications. “In which it took direction” is different from no direction was given to us. “As to what investigatory steps or who would be charged” is different than what would be charged. And “when prosecutors went into the grand jury to indict this case,” I mean, they went into the grand jury to indict the case on three separate occasions. So I appreciate you trying to clarify. That is a highly ambiguous statement, and given that I’ve already been confused, shall we say, several times about what the facts are with respect to this issue, I want to make it clear now. So “the front office is not aware.” Does that mean there could be, but at this moment the front office does not remember whether there are any communications?

A bit later, Judge Perry noted that DOJ keeps raising privilege claims, suggesting there’s something privileged in question. She repeats, again — and again — that she was told point blank (by Hogan, though she doesn’t name him) that there were no such communications pertinent to a selective prosecution claim.

THE COURT: I mean, I didn’t intend to engage fact finding either at this stage, but you’re telling me — you’re making a lot of claims of privilege. And look, if there are no documents that are material, there is no privilege. No documents, no privilege. The constant repetition of privilege indicates to me there is something out there that is relevant and material.

MR. WHALEN: Well, Your Honor, I think even — I don’t know that the claim of privilege necessarily goes to only responsive and relevant documents. Right? When the Court is asking us to produce documents and they are privileged documents, I understand you can say, there are no responsive documents. That’s like saying, you know, I’m not guilty of a crime. I understand that you could always say that. I don’t think the Court should necessarily infer — and I could look at the caselaw, I might be wrong about this. I don’t think that the Court should infer the fact that we’re saying there are potentially privileged communications necessarily means that there is a responsive communication to the question.

THE COURT: I’m inferring it only because my first question I got was there’s nothing. No way, no how. And now your argument has changed pretty significantly. And is, if there were something, it would be privileged.

MR. WHALEN: I don’t believe I said there is no way, no how communications.

THE COURT: You didn’t.

Judge Perry returns to the fact that there were more than one prosecutorial decision. Whalen tried, again, to retreat back to what the March 30 document says. But ultimately he concedes that those reassurances would read differently to someone who knew DOJ presented this case three times.

MR. WHALEN: Your Honor, I think reading docket 110, I mean — I’m telling the Court docket 110, as a read it, and I think our position has been, that there are communications between us and DOJ, and we’re not hiding that fact. Now what document 110 says, as I read it, is there are no communications about the direction of the charging and indictment in this case.

THE COURT: But at what stage?

MR. WHALEN: I understand Your Honor’s question.

THE COURT: Because I didn’t know at the time I got docket 110 that there were multiple presentations, I don’t think.

MR. WHALEN: I think that’s probably correct.

This question seems to be the primary thing Judge Perry wants to answer, given her order for more documents. She is asking for every communication with someone outside of Chicago USAO from the day of the protest until the day Hogan wrote that claim into the March 30 filing.

(1) all communications between September 26, 2025 and March 30, 2026 from, to, or with anyone outside of the Northern District of Illinois U.S. Attorney’s Office (other than the local FBI investigators assigned to the case) regarding any investigatory or charging decisions for this case; and (2) the October 14, 2025 email sent to U.S. Attorney Boutros attaching the October 9, 2025 Grand Jury transcript and any replies to or forwards of that email.

The timing would cover the October 27 meeting at which a video — almost certainly the video Kat Abughazaleh posted, which Mike Davis and others RTed, ordering Andrew Boutros to charge it as a conspiracy. Judge Perry is ordering any memorialization of that meeting and any other oral communications.

To the extent there were oral, rather than written, communications that would be responsive to the Court’s requests, the Government is asked to provide the following: (1) the people present for such communication; (2) the date, time, and length of the conversation; and (3) a certification that there was no recording or transcription made of the communication. If the communication was later summarized in writing or notes were taken, they should be produced.

And she is asking for the documents in native format, meaning she’ll be able to see who was involved in authoring emails, who was BCCed, what time various events occurred with such emails. Such a timeline could be of critical import for the events of October 16. Judge Perry would get something more specific from such tracking information for the first grand jury presentation. As Boutros described in his filing, he received it on October 14. But he pinky swears he didn’t read it.

The United States Attorney was emailed a copy of the transcript from the October 9, 2025, grand jury presentation on October 14, 2025, but has no recollection of reviewing the transcript at that time, and is quite certain he did not review the transcript at that time.

Judge Perry might get a lot of documents from this request.

One other thing she’ll get, with her request for the native format on email files and their attachments, is some more information about whether Boutros was telling the truth that he never read that October 9 transcript.

The post Native Format: A Way to Test Andrew Boutros’ Claim He Never Read the October 9 Transcript in Real Time appeared first on emptywheel.

On Wednesday, DOJ asked for a mulligan on the grand jury transcripts it has shared with Judge April Perry twice before, first in redacted form hiding the misconduct of Sheri Mecklenburg, then in purportedly unredacted form sharing (among other things) how DOJ redacted the part of the transcript where Mecklenburg said walking away from the ICE SUV that just drove into a peaceful protest might be evidence of a felony conspiracy.

What they actually wanted to share with her is deliberately obscure:

five transcripts of grand jury testimony occurring in three grand jury sessions concerning two law enforcement witnesses, an excerpt, a colloquy, and exhibits in [the Broadview 6 case]

There are currently either four public transcripts or six, depending on whether you count the witness testimony as part of the transcript or not:

• The October 9 unredacted transcript.
• Some, but not all, of FBI Agent Evan Hylton’s Testimony; which had the effect of hiding the malicious source of this prosecution and also gave Andrew Boutros cause to rely on case files rather than sworn testimony for his account of the investigation.
• The October 16 unredacted transcript, which has two parts, the legal instruction and what purports to be the only presentation of the ICE goon’s testimony that day.
• The October 23 unredacted transcript, which likewise includes the ICE goon’s testimony as a second section of the transcript.

Either way, the number is different than five, the number DOJ claims they’re sharing now.

The confusion is not just due to the extensive redactions in the filing. After Judge Perry read the unredacted versions, she issued an order effectively saying, Sure, but, I thought you already provided these? (She may agree with me that there are either four or six transcripts currently.)

MINUTE entry before the Honorable April M. Perry: The Government’s request to disclose grand jury materials [272] is granted. That said, the Court notes that the 10/9, 10/16, and 10/23 Grand Jury transcripts − in both redacted and almost entirely unredacted form − are already on the public docket. See Doc. 129−1; 129−2; 229−1; 219; 220; 221.

For the reasons I laid out here, I suspect there may have been three sessions, not two, on October 16. In any case there are serious irregularities in the existing transcripts, so maybe DOJ wants to fix those past irregularities.

Third time’s a charm! Or three strikes and you’re out?

It appears DOJ is invoking some reason — almost certainly one or more privileges — to excuse their past incomplete release. That’s clear because their request to seal the request describes something besides grand jury secrecy to explain their reasons for sealing the request and the request to seal.

Of far more interest, DOJ is hiding who, in addition to Chicago’s Civil Chief, signed both filings. Whoever it is, it is someone from a different office than the Chicago US Attorney’s office, almost certainly Main DOJ.

Unless it is someone at the White House.

Pardon me while I go place Kalshi bets that either Trent McCotter or Aakash Singh, the latter of whose conduct is at issue in these proceedings, signed those filings.

The request for a mulligan (a second one!) comes after several developments that likely go to what happened on October 16 (and why the transcript was riddled with irregularities on second release).

• The liberation, on Friday September 25, of Sheri Meckleburg’s retirement letter, which among other things claimed that on May 21, Andrew Boutros sent an office-wide email in which he “[laid] responsibility at [Mecklenburg’s] feet for a felony prosecution that you personally directed over my objection that the case was better suited to misdemeanor charges.”
• Main DOJ issued a non-denial denial to Mecklenburg’s assertion, claiming “‘Mecklenburg’s recommendation in writing to the supervisory chain of the U.S. Attorney’s Office included the section 372 felony as the strongest charge,’ a DOJ spokesman said in an email.” I argued that effectively waived privilege on these charging decisions.
• Mecklenburg’s attorney, in the hearing on these issues on October 1, described that, “as of late Friday afternoon,” which would have been after the retirement letter was liberated,” we received a very direct admonition from the Department of Justice advising and reminding Ms. Mecklenburg of her obligations with respect to privilege conversations, et cetera.”
• Privilege came up 36 other times in that October 1 hearing, including these comments from Judge Perry, in the order in which they came up:
  • [I]f there’s a claim of privilege, doesn’t that need to be made at the time the relevant communication is requested?
  • Is it your position that statement [by which DOJ defeated a vindictive prosecution motion, claiming there were no communications about charging decisions] is true, or is it your position that statement is truthy because there are privileged communications of this nature?
  • All right. So in addition to waiving privilege by not asserting it when you should, you can also waive privilege by disclosure, right? By talking about what the documents contain. So, for example, if DOJ has made press statements about what certain documents contain, wouldn’t that be a waiver of privilege?

So after all that happened, DOJ has submitted the same transcripts they were ordered to provide Judge Perry back in May, this time with what are almost certainly privileged discussions unredacted, in what is likely a belated attempt to use privilege claims to explain why they provided obviously flawed grand jury transcripts on both their first and second try.

Redacted transcripts:

• October 9 redacted transcript
• October 16 redacted transcript
• October 23 redacted transcript

Unredacted transcripts:

• October 9 unredacted transcript
  • Redacted 3-61; omitted 4-60
  • Evan Hylton Testimony: pages 10-53 (pages 54-61 omitted from his transcript, but included in unredacted)
• October 16 unredacted transcript
  • Redacted 2-4; omitted 3
  • Redacted 8-11; omitted 9-10
  • Redacted 25-26 (none omitted)
  • Redacted 27-28 (none omitted)
  • Redacted 29-37; 30-36 omitted
  • ICE witness: introduced 37, testimony starts 40
• October 23 unredacted transcript
  • Redacted 3-5; omitted 4-5
  • Redacted 29-41; omitted 30-39
  • Redacted 52-57; omitted 53-55
  • ICE witness: testimony begins 68

The post Broader View 6: DOJ Is Taking a Second Mulligan on Grand Jury Transcripts appeared first on emptywheel.

Many of my posts are about abstract ideas like freedom and morality. I try to use lexamples and stories to make these concepts more concrete. For example, the early drafts of my last post included a story about a federal district judge who told me about his thoughts on judging, but I cut it for reasons of length. The story was in the early drafts of this post, but I cut it because the point wasn’t funny. and it wasn’t interesting outside the context of a discussion of judging. And for other reasons.

So here’s a story.

When I was at the Tennessee AG’s office doing consumer protection work, I filed an complaint in Chancery Court to stop a business promising to make you a country music star. I listened to the demo tapes of a number of aspiring singers. One in particular sticks with me, a gravel-voiced guy from, I don’t know, Montana, with a five note rage singing his creation: My Loving Snowmobile. At least his five notes were on pitch…

They’d all spent several hundred dollars to get 100 copies of their demos pressed into vinyl and a publicist to push them. That meant mailing the vinyl to the top 50 country music radio stations with a nice letter and maybe a phone call to one or two. I was handling a preliminary matter on the case, and afterwards my colleague and I ran into a different Chancellor, C. Allen High, a long-serving and respected jurist. I told him about My Loving Snowmobile and got a laugh.

Then he told us he’d just gotten back from Judge School, as he called it, in Reno. I learned a lot, he said. For example, they taught us that when a company is small it violates the consumer protection law and when it gets bigger it violates securities laws, and when it gets even bigger it violates the anti-trust laws.

Not all stories are about work.

I was a chorus singer in various groups for years. The Nashville Symphony Chorus, 145 or so singers, was scheduled to perform an oratorio by  Philip Glass, The Passion of Ramakrishna, one season, a minimalist piece in typical Glass style and the composer was to be there to hear it. The Chorus Master got a professor from the Vanderbilt Divinity School to talk about Ramakrishna and his religious background, basically Hindu but broader. It was fascinating, and there was lots of discussion among the singers.

The following Monday, rehearsal began with one of the altos announcing to the group that she couldn’t perform that piece because it violated her religion; it turned out that at least 10 other women agreed and refused to participate. I was as usual sitting next to an observant Jew, whose eyes rolled, and we and our neighbors tried not to be jerks. This wasn’t even a matter of ecumenism. My neighbor sings Messiah, I can sing the first verse of Hatikvah (in English) from memory. This is just being a semi-professional singer.

Well, I knew this woman from an earlier incident at the opera. We were singing something Italian, maybe La Traviata, and there was a long break before we sang off-stage in the last act. The women always brought food, and it was custom for the men to visit and nosh. So after a few minutes one of the men went into the women’s dressing room only to be greeted by this woman in her petticoats (she’d removed her outer dress for some reason). She shrieked at him to get out, that he was violating her wedding vows.

And here’s a story I told to clients.

I did a lot of bankruptcy work, mostly for middle class people with some assets to protect (legally, of course). I always asked what happened to their finances. Once, a client told me that he’d been selling stationery and greeting cards for a company when he decided he could make more money if he made and sold those little books with interesting covers and blank pages you see in the stationary store. He couldn’t persuade his bank to lend him start-up capital, so he put in much of his savings and added $75,000 in credit card borrowings.

Turns out it’s easier to make the little books than to sell them, and he was pretty much broke by the time he came to see me. In fact, he asked if I’d take a trunkful of little books instead of my usual cash fee.

He had a car he really loved, a two-year-old Olds with over 90,000 miles, on which he owed more than three years of payments. The car was worth a lot less than the debt, so I urged him to surrender it and get a new car. Nope, he loved that car. It fit him, he said.

As part of the counseling I always asked clients about their plans for after the filing. I explained that the point of bankruptcy is to give people a fresh start, but you can’t just wait around before planning a future. This guy was single, and had no ties to Nashville except a brother, so I asked my favorite question: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? I always expected answers like Seattle or Boston or London, or wherever their parents or kids lived.

And the guy says Kansas City. I confess I don’t have a great poker face, but I did manage not to laugh out loud (sorry Peterr), and asked what he liked about KC. He went on for a while about the glories of the city and its people. So I gave my usual follow-up, here’s your big chance, added some blather about moving, and started on the paperwork. We filed, did the meeting of creditors, shook hands and parted.

Several weeks later he called. He’d moved to Kansas City, gotten a job selling for Hallmark, and wanted to get out of his car payments (he was within the allowed time to change his mind), because Hallmark had given him a new car.

This story became my go to for the fresh start part of bankruptcy counseling.

And one more.

I did pro bono work like all decent lawyers. I handled a small matter for Sister Mary (not her name), of the order of the Sisters of Mercy. Sister Mary ran a half-way house for women with children, and after that first matter, she considered me her lawyer. So she called me about a client, a woman about 30 with a small child. She was a bit slow, as Sister Mary put it kindly, but was a decent person who wanted to do better. She had been fined $10,000, and sentenced to a term in prison in some drug-related matter. When she got out, she was handed a bill for about $10,000 for the cost of locking her up, as required by a typically vengeful Tennessee Law. By the way, no one has ever asked me why I left Tennessee the minute my wife retired.

Anyway, that amount was impossible. The client was working 30 hours a week at a meat and three for an hourly wage and no benefits, and had a child to support. With her debt she couldn’t afford a car, and besides that, not having paid the fine, she was ineligible for a drivers license under a typically vengeful Tennessee law. Nashville bus service in her part of town was useless. So Sister Mary thought she should file bankruptcy.

The problem with filing bankruptcy was that she wouldn’t be able to file again for six years (it’s now eight years, because rich people hate you and they tell Congress what the law should be). If she or her child had a big medical crisis or some other expensive emergency, she’d be stuck in a hopeless situation.

Tennessee law permitted the criminal courts to remit the fine and the imprisonment cost, but only in dire circumstances, and the practice in Nashville was that fines might be remitted but not the imprisonment cost. But the remaining $10,000 was also impossible. My solution was to file a motion in the Criminal Court to remit both. We drew Judge X, as far as I know the only Catholic judge in the Nashville criminal court system.

I watched a number of matters and when it was my turn, I described my client’s problem and the applicable law. I concluded by offering two witnesses, my client and Sister Mary. Judge waved that off, and grilled me. After each answer I added that I had Sister Mary to explain the situation. On the fourth repetition, I saw the Judge catch the reference, and it was like watching me as an 11-year-old in front of Sister Alice trying to explain why I was reading Howard Pyle’s Men of Iron in arithmetic class (but that’s another story).

He asked Sister Mary to come up to the lectern, thanked her for appearing, nodding like a schoolboy, and asked a couple of questions about my client, and admitted he wasn’t used to the then new rule of nuns wearing a habit, which I took as an apology for not recognizing just who she was. Sister Mary explained her mission and her hopes for the client in a firm voice. He listened carefully. Then he called me back and grilled me some more about bankruptcy and health care, and then ruled in my client’s favor, unnecessarily rudely in my opinion.

Sister Mary later told me that the client had done so well at the meat and three that she got a better job with benefits and a decent wage, and was doing very well as was her child.

Confession and conclusion

Well, those stories aren’t exactly 100% true, and I doubt that my writing conveyed them as well as my old law partner McLemore would have. The details don’t matter so much as the impact they’ve had on my life and work.

So.

Got a story you want to share? Use the comments. We’d all love to hear it.

The post The Stories We Tell appeared first on emptywheel.

Plaintiff Coalition for Independent Technology Research (“CITR”) is a U.S.-based, non-partisan, non-profit membership organization established to advance, defend, and sustain the right to ethically study the impact of technology on society. CITR’s members are research institutions, academics, journalists, and advocates who study and report on emerging digital technologies, including social media, and their social and political impacts. As part of its mission, CITR works to defend technology research from efforts at obstruction, interference, and cooption by both the government and the technology companies that are often the subject of that research. CITR believes that technology is changing society in ways that are essential for the public, the government, and the internet platforms themselves to understand, and that independent research is critical to that understanding. CITR is a fiscally sponsored project of Aspiration, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, CA.

[snip]

The Censorship Policy’s chilling effects on CITR’s noncitizen members are especially acute because Defendants have already enforced the Policy against some of them. Two of the five individuals whom Defendants identified on December 23, 2025 as subject to exclusion or deportation under the Policy—[Imran] Ahmed and [Clare] Melford—lead organizations that are CITR members. And the work that Under Secretary [Sarah] Rogers cited in explaining Defendants’ decisions to exclude or deport four of those five individuals is substantially similar to the work of many other CITR members.

The notion that State would retaliate was totally unsubstantiated, DOJ claimed.

Plaintiff seeks extraordinary relief premised only on unsubstantiated fears of retaliation. In short, the Protective Order assumes bad faith from the Government, and then prematurely appoints this Court as the initial reviewer of all Government action taken against anyone tangentially related to this litigation.

Judge Boasberg, in an opinion staying any action against CITR issued in July, substantially agreed with DOJ about retaliation.

The Coalition’s concern is understandable: members fear both enforcement under the challenged policy and other retaliatory immigration, investigative, or regulatory action. See Protective Order Mot., ¶¶ 2–4. Yet such expansive relief is not warranted on the present record. CITR’s proposed use restriction would bar a host of governmental actions based on information of all kinds elicited in this case, extending even to persons merely “identified through this lawsuit.” Id., ¶ 8. As the Court today stays the policy and Plaintiff has already submitted the evidence supporting such preliminary relief on the public docket, the immediate risk that litigation disclosures will facilitate the challenged enforcement regime is substantially diminished. The stay does not eliminate CITR’s separate fear of broader retaliation, but it changes the nature of the risk that remains.

With the challenged policy suspended, the residual concern rests on the possibility of future unlawful acts rather than any concrete threat now before the Court.

[snip]

CITR’s proposed order errs on the broader end of the spectrum. It would convert an existing prohibition on retaliation into a contempt-backed command; extend that exposure to any adverse action against an undefined population of members and their families as well as the Coalition’s fiscal sponsor; and make the Court a continuing screener of independently initiated government actions — even after this litigation ends and with enforcement turning on “elusive questions of motivation.” Twelve John Does v. District of Columbia, 117 F.3d 571, 579 (D.C. Cir. 1997); see Proposed Order, ¶¶ 3–5, 8.

The Court will therefore deny the Motion for a Protective Order without prejudice. Should a more concrete and immediate threat appear in the future, Plaintiff is free to seek more specific relief from the Court.

Because Judge Boasberg had stayed any immigration action against Ahmed, Milford, and other CITR members, their fears of retaliation were based on the possibility of then-future illegal action by the State Department.

Sarah Rogers’ targeting of the Disinfo2026 conference here in Lithuania was precisely that kind of illegal action. Rogers cited two panels in justifying her censorship. One talking about the ways the US spreads disinformation, and another titled, “Under attack: How the counter-disinformation community is dealing with US government pressure.”

Clare Pershan, from CITR, spoke, and spoke about the lawsuit at length. And among the other people on the panel was Gregory Rohde, a board member at EU Disinfo Lab, which organized the conference, and a US citizen.

Sarah Rogers retaliated against the conference as a whole, including the three US citizens who were on the first panel and Rohde, because of a panel on this lawsuit.

Importantly, the specific means Rogers used to censor the conference involved precisely the kind of action Rogers claims she wants to prevent — to have government officials using their sovereign power to suppress American citizens’ speech. Boasberg’s order describes,

To begin, the Government has a legitimate interest in protecting Americans’ speech from foreign officials who use sovereign power to suppress it. Cf.TikTok Inc. v. Garland, 604 U.S. 56, 75(2025) (affording “substantial respect” to Government’s informed judgment about foreign-adversary risks to major platform). The May Memo’s examples largely describe that kind of foreign-sovereign coercion: threats of arrest for activity on American platforms, fines or detention for failing to meet censorship demands, and demands for private user data to police compliance with content-moderation rules. SeeMay Mem. at ECF p. 2. Applied to a foreign official who uses public power to force an American platform to suppress protected expression here, the policy would rest on the serious interest the Government invokes. The July 2025 Brazilian visa revocations, whatever their ultimate merits, at least fit that description: they were aimed at officials said to wield judicial authority against an American platform.

Rogers bullied sovereign states — Canada, the EU, and Lithuania — into defunding the conference specifically to punish the speech of CITR and a number of American citizens. (As a testament of how fucked up Rogers’ bullying is, another of the American citizens she attempted to censor is Mike Gillis, from the Onion.)

In their original response to the CITR lawsuit, DOJ had argued that their censorship was cool because they had not targeted any US citizens.

Now they have.

And that may make this lawsuit more interesting.

The post Sarah Rogers Is the Foreign Censorship Threat She Warned Against appeared first on emptywheel.

Three persons familiar with the matter, including European officials, confirmed that the US state department had been in touch with multiple governments over their support for the conference.

Internal state department documents seen by the Guardian also show US officials thanking Lithuania for “taking US concerns seriously”. The document says Washington was “grateful” Lithuania supposedly found a panel framing the US as a foreign information threat “reprehensible and surprising” and welcomed its decision to limit involvement in the conference.

That panel – called “USA as a FIMI threat: adapt, acknowledge, push back”, with the acronym FIMI referring to “foreign information manipulation and interference” – took place Wednesday. It explored how Europe’s disinformation community could rebuild resilience without Washington, and is the first time the conference appears to have entertained the idea that the US could be a disinformation actor in Europe. Sources and the internal document indicate the state department was explicitly focused on this panel, which included three American speakers, among them a former CIA officer.

According to one person familiar with the deliberations, other communications appeared to originate from the office of Sarah B Rogers, the US undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

At issue was a panel that treated the US — led by a man who routinely lies about his obeisance to Russia — as a source of disinformation.

I’m at the conference. I was at the panel.

Not only did that panel not address US support for Xitter-based fraud (there was another panel that addressed US sanctions on disinformation researchers), but it largely pulled its punches.

The panel generally dodged the extent to which Trump (and Rogers, who was cuddling up with pro-Russian politicians in Montenegro recently) are pawns for Russia, but Emerson Brooking suggested that the 51-spook letter overstated Russian influence behind the laptop. (In related news, the guy who publicly unpacked the Hunter Biden laptop, Gus Dimitrelos, used forensic software recently disclosed as Russian to do that).

For much of the day, experts discussed how to counter Russian disinformation, but all the discussions about countering US disinformation lacked ambition — indeed lacked a sense of the scope of the problem — and therefore didn’t address the extent to which trolls in official positions, like Rogers, are themselves vectors Russian disinformation.

The post Sarah Rogers Censors Conference on Disinformation appeared first on emptywheel.