Thread by @normative

Wow. Unless there’s an extraordinarily clear threat justifying an investigation, this is outrageous. Bad enough Nunes abuses the civil courts to mount frivolous lawsuits against online critics—now it seems he had DOJ doing his dirty work as well.

https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1394344671761993731

There really need to be hearings about this, and if it is indeed what it looks like, heads should roll at DOJ.

It also seems telling that DOJ was unwilling to show Twitter the supposed threatening communication, which presumably would have induced them to comply if it were real.

Right. There are certainly cases where it might be reasonable to refuse to share the info, but “we can’t show Twitter a message from Twitter” doesn’t make a ton of sense. And if the “threat” came some other way, why link it to a parody account?

https://twitter.com/whey_standard/status/1394397924239544320

Also, at the risk of stating the obvious, the fact that we’re reading this means that the judge did not buy the government’s claim that secrecy was necessary to protect the investigation. Which could, in turn, signal she wasn’t terribly impressed with the investigation itself.

For some reason, the judge ordered a public response, but with the name & contact info of the attorney redacted. Which seems particularly weird because it’s already public on the site with the original subpoena, sought by AUSA Michael J. Friedman. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Ah, wait, I guess the judge’s order is for redaction of the attorney authoring the motion in opposition, not the AUSA who sought the subpoena & gag order. But still pretty weird.

I note the subpoena was approved by then-Acting US Attorney Michael R. Sherwin, whose installation by Barr was seen at the time as a move to politicize the office. washingtonpost.com/local/legal-is…