Thread by @NunesAlt

So y'all remember that time Trump's DOJ sent a subpoena to Twitter to compel them to reveal my identity, right?

Well there are some updates.

🧵

https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1394344671761993731?s=20&t=0zfajYaYM1apbJIG24h5gQ

1st I want to thank @NatlSecCnslrs for pursuing this information. We are only learning about this thanks to a FOIA request submitted by him.

You can support this important work of holding the govt accountable and the public informed by contributing here:

donate.democracyengine.com/NationalSecuri…

According to the emails obtained through @NatlSecCnslrs' FOIA, an unnamed USCP analyst mistakenly attributed a threat made to Sen McConnell in a reply to one of my tweets to me.

<Dear journalists, please note that I started this statement with "according to.">

According to this info, the tweet was on 10/27/2020, and the threatening reply was quickly deleted for violating Twitter's ToS.

If I were to guess, it would've been a reply to this tweet, bc it's about McConnell and it got a decent amount of engagement.

https://twitter.com/NunesAlt/status/1321083993660420097?s=20&t=g8ENDLKPZ3-_aV68H1BW8w

From the emails, look at this little bit of weirdness. USADC Ken Kohl (remember this name) seems oddly defensive about the way the media was characterizing this investigation.

As they say, a hit dog will holler. (Please don't hit dogs though)

So who is USADC Ken Kohl? It seems he may have been first put into his role as USDC to help AG Barr justify the dropping of criminal charges against Mike Flynn, who you know, already pleaded guilty to his crimes.

Read this thread. 👇

https://twitter.com/secretsandlaws/status/1311049038058467328?s=20&t=g8ENDLKPZ3-_aV68H1BW8w

By many accounts, Ken Kohl's role as USADC was highly politicized in nature. You can see why he might be so defensive and lash out at the insinuation because it's true.

https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1349049883597156356?s=20&t=zMRQkDVAOVHQ2Bh4SGXahA

Also @petestrzok had some words about Ken Kohl's professional integrity.

lawandcrime.com/awkward/peter-…

So US Attys Ken Kohl and Michael Friedman are asking us to believe a lot of incredible things.

1. A USCP "analyst" can't tell a tweet from a reply
2. Nobody from USCP to DOJ to the grand jury ever checked the handle of the threatening tweet
3. Nobody took a screenshot???

As @nycsouthpaw pointed out, they redacted the handle of the person who made the alleged threat in the subpoena to Twitter, yet my handle was not redacted anywhere else.

So it seems pretty obvious that they knew who actually made the threat.

https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1538152473008947202?s=20&t=0zfajYaYM1apbJIG24h5gQ

Also, another peculiar point of this story, the DOJ requested a gag order on this subpoena. Why the secrecy?

According to DOJ's own guidelines, a protective order shud be requstd when the subject is a flight risk, a public safety risk, or a risk of destroying evidence.

I have my very own page on the DOJ's website in the FOIA library. Isn't that fucking awesome.
justice.gov/oip/foia-libra…

There was no evidence that I was a flight or public safety risk, and I could not destroy evidence even if I wanted to. For that matter, there was no evidence that I sent the threatening tweet.

So that brings me to the @nytimes article by @charlie_savage on this story. I have a lot of respect for his work, but I found this particular story disappointing.

https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/status/1537933585943932931?s=20&t=_wvbnUs4F9x96V4gvxaHMw

It did not include all this relevant context, and simply repeated the highly implausible explanation by DOJ/Ken Kohl, who has a questionable history as a RW political operative within DOJ.

The headline of the article bluntly states his account as fact. That's not good journalism

Here is my statement that I sent to NYT in its entirety. Of course, I don't expect them to publish it in its entirety, but here it is for posterity.

What I do expect, is that journalists take statements from prosecutors and cops with a big grain of salt, because they lie.

Ken Kohl has since left the US Atty's office in DC, and is now DOJ Justice Attaché to the United Kingdom. I'm sure he's doing a swell job at whatever it is he's doing there too. So he's still employed by the DOJ, working in the US Embassy in London.

We all know during the Trump admin, many loyalists and unscrupulous operatives were appointed to key positions within the federal govt to do things that require a low level of professional integrity.

Some still linger today. It's time to clean house @TheJusticeDept.👇

/🧵

Another point and a half I want to make, the alleged threat was “K⬛️⬛️L MITCH MCCONNELL.”

To my understanding (help me out #LawTwitter), this wouldn’t be prosecutable anyway, and more explicit threats were being made on Parler every day. Did they investigate those too?