"The information that provided the basis for the warrant to search John Bolton’s home on Friday was based on intelligence collected overseas by the C.I.A..."
Ratcliffe provided Patel "with limited access to the intelligence." archive.is/6uxMR
"The search of the home and office of Mr. Bolton [is] a major escalation of a long-running inquiry into whether he collected or leaked sensitive national security information..."
"The nature of the intelligence collected overseas is not known."
"The C.I.A. is prohibited from law from collecting intelligence on Americans...
But the C.I.A. regularly collects information on foreign governments, particularly adversarial countries. When information on Americans is collected during those espionage operations...
there are procedures to share that information with law enforcement when officials believe an investigation could be warranted."
"The United States gathered data from an adversarial country’s spy service, including emails with sensitive information that Mr. Bolton, while still working in the first Trump administration, appeared to have sent to people close to him on an unclassified system..."
"The investigation into President Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, began to pick up momentum during the Biden administration, when U.S. intelligence officials collected information that appeared to show that he had mishandled classified information"
"The emails in question, according to the people, were sent by Mr. Bolton and included information that appeared to derive from classified documents he had seen while he was national security adviser."
"One major reason for conducting the searches was to see if Mr. Bolton possessed material that matched or corroborated the intelligence agency material, which, if found, would indicate that the emails found in the possession of the foreign spy service were genuine"
"The material in the intercepted emails included information that Mr. Bolton did not ultimately use in his book. That may suggest that he had been told it remained classified..."
Fun fact:
The current Deputy Director at the CIA is Michael Ellis.
The same Michael Ellis who, as General Counsel at the NSA, reviewed Bolton’s memoir and determined it contained classified material.
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"Mr. Comey expects to move to dismiss Count One based on a defense of literal truth."
Cruz was asking about McCabe, not Richman.
Comey plainly did not lie to Congress about his interactions with Mr. Richman.
The question from Cruz wasn't about Comey and Richman, it was about Comey and McCabe!
"No reasonable prosecutor would have brought such a deficient case; the only explanation is that the President’s handpicked interim U.S. Attorney did so to carry out the President’s wishes."
Nachmanoff also notes that DOJ has had years to address the issue it is now in a rush to resolve; the IG report as well as the Fitzgerald-Comey relationship and memo affair have been public knowledge since 2019; Fitzgerald didn't suddenly become Comey's defense counsel—he's been that since Sept 25
Interestingly, Nachmanoff lets us know some of what was under the redaction blocks in the defense's reply to the motion to expedite.
Motion to Dismiss for Vindictive and Selective Prosecution.
+
Motion to Dismiss based on Unlawful Appointment of Halligan
These were expected and may be highly consequential to the case. Could kill it.
I predicted the former would be a "hefty" filing thanks to the many words Trump, Kash, and others in the administration have repeatedly uttered against Comey in interviews, rallies, and posted on social media.
It is The filing is 51 pages plus almost 80 pages in exhibits.
Is it "more compelling than most" filings of this type? We'll have to read it to find out. x.com/realjusthuman/…
The latter filing I predicted would likely give some folks a "case of the cognitive dissonances."
That's because, on the one hand, people on the right like that such a motion worked against Special Counsel Jack Smith... but don't like that a similar effort was lodged against Alina Habba in New Jersey... and they no doubt wish for this one to fail here against Lindsey Halligan.
And you can reverse all that for people on the left.
The attorney the evidence comes from has informed investigators that Patrick Fitzgerald is among the parties communicated with in the evidence.
That attorney is almost certainly Daniel Richman or David Kelley, and the evidence is communications acquired during DOJ-OIG investigation of Comey's Memos.
DOJ quotes from IG's report in their filing and notes that Comey used Fitzgerald to improperly disclose classified info.
-Michael Dreeben
Fmr Deputy Solicitor General, longtime DOJ prosecutor, and member of both the Mueller and Smith Special Counsel teams.
-Elias Kim
Litigator for Dept of Commerce and Solicitor General's Office. Experienced in appellate issues.
-Ephraim McDowell
Another alum of the Solicitor General's Office. Also worked in White House Counsel's Office.
-Rebekah Donaleski
Over a decade of experience as a prosecutor for the SDNY. Led the Public Corruption Unit there. Involved in the prosecutions of Senator Robert Menendez, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Michael Avenatti.
Kim, McDowell, and Donaleski are all from the Cooley Law Firm.
Between Sept 2019 and July 2021, Iran hacked Bolton's personal email account and accessed the classified and national defense information he had put in it.
Bolton alerted the US Gov't to the hack, but did not inform them of the classified and national defense information that was on it.
On a regular basis, Bolton sent "diary" entries via unsecured applications to two family members which described his "day-to-day activities as the National Security Advisor."
These "diary" entries contained TOP SECRET/SCI-level national defense information.
Just complete disregard for proper handling of classified information.