Interesting: Judge Cannon has told the defense and govt to file proposed jury instructions defining the terms of the Espionage Act disputed at last week's motions hearing and narrowing the Presidential Records Act claim by April 2.
That suggests...

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… at least in theory that she is intending to take Trump's classified documents case to trial.

JUST IN: Alexander Smirnov told the feds during an interview after is arrest that "officials associated with Russian intelligence" were involved in passing a story about Hunter Biden. Smirnov also reported to the feds having contacts w/some pretty shady Russians including one connected to what seems like an assassination crew and an intel guy.

Now: The first Trump documents hearing in front of Judge Cannon in Florida has ended w/o a decision on the trial schedule. Cannon seemed skeptical of the govt’s request to go to trial in December but also seemed disinclined to let the trial stray until after the 2024 election. Cannon pressed Trump’s lawyer if they wanted to delay the trial after voting and they affirmed they did. They said if a trial date must be set it should be for mid-Nov 2024.
Cannon said she would file a written order promptly.

Now: DOJ responds, glancingly, to the uproar over the Jacob Chansley footage, clarifying that the images of him w/the police took place *after* he illegally entered the Senate gallery--the behavior that triggered his obstruction of Congress charge.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… By glancingly, I mean prosecutors responded to the complaints of another defendant, Dominic Pezzola of the Proud Boys, about the footage, and clarified their position on the new video.

We've just received more information about the tantalizing FBI data snafu that temporarily paused the Proud Boys sedition trial late week for an evidentiary
A quick thread. Background: The dispute concerns a log of internal FBI chats from one of the case agents, Nicole Miller. The log was given to the defense for impeachment of her testimony. Miller minimized or hid responses from other agents since, govt says, they were outside scope of cross-ex.

Update: Prosecutors have told the judge in the Proud Boys sedition case that the Jencks issue may have been a result of a "spill" of classified information.
No one seems to know exactly what that means at this point.

https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1633826853982011392

Jocelyn Ballentine, the prosecutor who oversees the J6 conspiracy cases, tells Judge Kelly that the spreadsheet of internal FBI comms at issue here contained classified messages from "one other agent who does clandestine work" but who did not take part in the Proud Boys case.

The Proud Boys sedition trial will pause today as parties hash out allegations against FBI agents in the case. The defense claims the govt w/held Jencks (or impeachment) material against one of the agents who is now on the stand. The material in question comes from internal FBI communications on the so-called Lync system. The defense claims that several messages sent by the agent on the stand, Nicole Miller, were missing in the Jencks production.

Just in--Garcia Luna trial update:
Today's witness, Oscar Nava Valencia, a former leader of the Millenio cartel, testified that he paid GGL $10 million in bribes in exchange for protection and information on rivals. Oscar Valencia told the jury that Arturo Beltran-Leyva and La Barbie Valdez informed him the money was going to Garcia Luna. He also testified that Chapo Guzman told him that Garcia Luna worked with the Sinaloa Cartel.
h/t @nateschweber

Quick analysis of the Oath Keepers verdict:
Convicting Stewart Rhodes of sedition, but failing to get guilty sedition verdicts for three other defendants was a landmark, but not total, victory for the Justice Dept in one of its biggest J6 cases. (more)
nytimes.com/2022/11/29/us/… Rhodes's sedition conviction suggested that the jury bought the idea that the Oath Keepers' leader had a plan in place from shortly after the 2020 election to stop the lawful transfer of power and to keep Joe Biden from taking power.
But...

Just in: Lawyers for the Proud Boys facing sedition charges are furious that DOJ dumped 500+ pages of redacted material on them related to a confidential human source in the far-right group a month before trial. Three motions have been filed in the past two days seeking relief from Judge Kelly.

Three former members of the Oath Keepers testified that they became disillusioned with the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, after the 2020 election.
“It sounded like we were going to war against the United States,” one of them told the jury.

https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1578148123498934273

Another Oath Keeper said Rhodes had a wild plan to sucker Antifa into fighting.
Because antifa attacked the “weak and elderly,” Rhodes said the group should dress as old people or as parents w/strollers. “If we could entice them to attack…we could give them a beat down.”

THREAD: An account may soon emerge questioning the role that the Proud Boys and a man named Ryan Samsel played in the tipping point confrontation of the Capitol attack.
(The J6 committee has focused on this moment.)
If that happens, here are a few things to bear in mind: In his first interview w/the FBI--only weeks after J6-- Samsel said a Proud Boys leader, Joe Biggs, urged him to confront the cops.
Samsel also said a man named Ray Epps encouraged him to calm down when he did confront the cops.
nytimes.com/2021/10/07/us/…
nytimes.com/2022/05/05/us/…

As shocking as this is--and it is shocking--this fact about the threat against Pence was included in Pezzola's original charging documents that were on 1/13/2021, 6 days after the Capitol attack.

https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1537515596937629696

7 days.
English major

Update: The Proud Boys sedition case hearing is getting a little heated right now over the issue of the confluence of the new charges and the J6 committee hearing tonight. A prosecutors is saying he's upset that Nick Smith, Ethan Nordean's lawyer, has accused the govt of coordinating its sedition indictment with the committee.
"Not true," the prosecutor Jason McCullough, says.

Peter Navarro, who has been representing himself in his dealing with the J6 committee, has told the magistrate judge he also wants to rep himself in his new criminal contempt case. Navarro tells the judge that when he was arrested he was denied use of a phone, calling it "prosecutorial misconduct."

Just in: "We do not have information that there were any govt agents acting as agent provocateurs on Jan 6," one of the lead Oath Keepers prosecutors just said in court.
She said the govt was not yet ready to discuss if there were govt informants in the crowd. This has always been an important distinction, particularly as some J6 defendants are likely to raise entrapment defenses and claim that govt-employed instigators provoked the violence at the Capitol.

As the first January 6 trial nears its midpoint in the case of Texas militiaman Guy Wesley Reffitt, a few thoughts on how it's going so far w/regard to both other J6 cases that are likely to go to trial and the larger story of the Capitol attack. First the govt's evidence has been copious & thorough:
*Eyewitness police testimony
*Seized Texas militia group chats
*A recorded Texas militia Zoom call
*A 30-min helmet-cam video Reffitt took of himself saying things you do not want heard at your trial
nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/…

Good morning from DC District Court.
Today the trial of accused Texas militiaman Guy Reffitt begins w/opening arguments.
I'll be posting updates throughout the day.
Here's a quick primer on this first trial stemming from the attack on the Capitol.
nytimes.com/2022/02/27/us/… The jury in the Reffitt case is now being seated and Judge Dabney Friedrich will soon give them their preliminary instructions.
Each side will have 30 mins for openings.
AUSA Jeff Nestler will speak for the government.
Defense lawyer William Welch will open on behalf of Reffitt.

Last night the govt released its witness list in the upcoming trial of Guy Reffitt, the first J6 defendant to be tried. (The trial is slated to start on Feb. 28.) It suggests how much evidence prosecutors have collected in these cases.
Follow along:
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… The government will start with an officer who was in the Capitol Police command center on J6. She will explain "the progression of the riot" through a compilation of video to support the civil disorder charge Reffitt is facing.

Overnight prosecutors issued a detention memo for one of the new Oath Keeper defendants, Ed Vallejo, charged w/seditious conspiracy.
There are some interesting new details.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… Vallejo, from Arizona, was in charge of one of the armed quick reaction forces staged at a Comfort Inn in Arlington Va.
We knew the teams had weapons. Now prosecutors say that, prepper-style, they also had essential supplies to last 30 days.

Overnight prosecutors unsealed new J6 assault charges against two Texas men who styled themselves as leaders of the Patriot Boys of North Texas.
Charging docs say the men--Donald Hazard and Lucas Denney--coordinated their trip to DC w/ members of the Proud Boys & Patriot Prayer. The text exchange Denney and Hazard shared on Christmas Day, 2020, in the run-up to their trip to DC for Jan. 6: