Thread by @emptywheel

I want to talk about this Intercept article making claims about the Jan 6 investigation.

theintercept.com/2021/02/22/cap…

I believe RIGHT NOW, it significantly overstates what it shows.

Let's start with the source. Aside from experts, the story relies on a single named source--a recently retired senior FBI person.

Was this person part of the investigation and quit out of concerns? Or was this person one of the people who advanced his career by firing those who investigated Trump people, which is THE LEAST damning explanation for why the FBI missed this terrorist attack?

The main claim this source makes involves a question of WHAT and HOW. The HOW appears to be via Emergency PRTTs, something explicitly permitted under DOJ guidelines.(I'll come back to the hybrid bit.)

The WHAT is, at a minimum, cell phone data showing who was present.

There's not enough in this piece to tell us whether we need to worry or not, for reasons that some of us have been discussing publicly since the attack. One of which is that the Capitol is REALLY wired up. Tons of cell locations INSIDE the Capitol.

As I said earlier, I have the utmost respect for Mike German, but I think this is one case where (absent more specific information) this claim MAY be entirely wrong.

That's bc every single person who did not have a work reason to be in the Capitol that day committed a crime.

There DO appear to be some exotic data collection methods (but those are public). As I already unpacked once, this Proud Boys conspiracy affidavit shows several of the methods (and what is likely meant by mapping people together).

justice.gov/usao-dc/case-m…

Most basic: Known defendant (likely IDed from pics), mapped to subscriber records, then shown to be at Capitol on the day.

A step more exotic. They don't seem to have placed Cory Konold's phone itself at the Capitol (unclear why), but they did place Felicia Konold's phone, and then got a record of her calling him.

Here's the most exotic of this bunch. They seem not to have contacted Chrestman's CELL location that day. But they did catch him using Google services (though it's unclear if this is bulk).

ALL of these, though, appear to be probable cause based of known IDs.

The other way they may be using this (and this is not the best example of this, but not a bad one) appears to be PUBLIC Facebook video postings from within the Capitol, then obtaining the UID and user off that.

justice.gov/opa/page/file/…

None of those are that concerning to me -- many are the equivalent of getting surveillance video from local stores, and some appears to be finding known IDs in a pool of IDs who were at the Capitol.

Against, most people who entered bldg on Jan 6 committed a crime.

The one scenario that DOES match Mike German's problematic case is in warrants obtained more widely in an attempt to find the person who left the bombs at the RNC/DNC.

RE PIN:
We've already seen one instance of this (trying to remember who). But a more likely tie than CP or Congress was voting rights and/or prominent people like Stone.

So ... MAYBE this is really alarming.

But right now, they seem to have one main source who may not be entirely reliable. And given the politics behind the attack I'd look for far than that one source.

But what we've seen is interesting but not that alarming.