emptywheel (ni-česká)'s Threads

Jul 15 • 7 tweets • 2 min read

Also, she claims there has been little judicial scrutiny of this, ignoring the 4 precedents and Hunter Biden's similar challenge rejected by 2 Trump appointees.

https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1812854421400785146

Oh also: If she's right, statutes of limitation on Trump's alleged crimes go until 2027.

Hunter Biden's started expiring last year.

Jul 7 • 7 tweets • 2 min read

Some amusing bits about the media frenzy.

1) We've talked about little but Biden's age since January. Yet certain hacks with a gripe claim they were the only one telling that secret that led all the news. 2) CREDIBLE stories -- that is, the ones that quote people on the record and/or very specifically described people anon, rather than just inventing a conspiracy retroactively based on feels -- all describe a decline since January, and more in recent months.

Jun 25 • 6 tweets • 3 min read

Journalists (who should be smarter than right wing propagandists) all seem to be missing something about the MAL filing.

This blue leatherbound box is where these classified files were taken from -- the source of the famous pic released last August.

If you don't understand that, you understand almost nothing abt the filing.

How do we know the blue leatherbound box = the classified docs in the August box?

Warrant returns are your friend!!

So are item numbers, in which this box is IDed as item 2 and its contents 2A.

Jun 25 • 4 tweets • 2 min read

DOJ releases new pictures of Trump's stolen document boxes getting dumped.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Aileen Cannon is doing her best to prevent a trial before the election, but by all means make sure we get more pictures like this one (my annotations). This box had the most sensitive docs found.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Jun 24 • 6 tweets • 2 min read

Let's correct the false claims here.
1) Egypt National Bank convinced Beryl Howell they complied with this subpoena -- it's unclear how the Chinese records resolved.
2) Mueller didn't tank this investigation. After a long subpoena fight, he handed it over to DCUSAO.

https://twitter.com/EricLisann/status/1805062493175451808

3) That's precisely the same thing he did with Roger Stone investigation: After year-long subpoena delay, he handed over still ongoing investigation into whether Stone conspired w/RU on CFAA.
4) We know what happened to Stone investigation: Barr killed it, Trump killed it more.

Jun 21 • 4 tweets • 1 min read

Reupping: Judge Hernán Vera denies Garrett Ziegler's MTD against Hunter Biden's lawsuit.

I'm still seeing people wildly misrepresent this lawsuit. It is not abt distributing data. It is about HACKING it.

emptywheel.net/2024/06/21/gar… There was an iPhone--one central to the gun case against Hunter--saved ONLY in iTunes (not iCloud), and protected by a password. Ziegler admits he accessed it -- lots of journos have relied on him doing so. Q is whether doing so was accessing Hunter's data.

Jun 14 • 5 tweets • 2 min read

Propaganda outlet with ties to Russia complains that journalist factually reports about the laptop.

But sure--it wasn't a Russian information op at all.

Here are the guts of the @pbump argument that has pro-Russian propagandists in a tizzy.

1) FBI laptop ≠ Rudy laptop
2) There's a difference between authentic laptop and false claims about what's on it

Jun 14 • 4 tweets • 1 min read

It's important to note two things about the propaganda virtually all media outlets did wrt Trump's return to the scene of the crime the other day.

First, they didn't exact a cost for Republicans welcoming a criminal. That's insane, but so normalized, everyone did it. But then outlets went one step further. They pitched this meeting as a sign of unity.

It wasn't a sign of "unity" in the terms post-convention meetings are.

It was a sign of obeisance. A public instance where everyone would happily go on camera and clap for a crook.

Jun 11 • 4 tweets • 1 min read

There's been some confused reporting on this. What the juror is describing is that the jury didn't not find his lie was material at first.

That makes sense: the gun shop sold the gun even tho form was incomplete anyway.

https://x.com/mkraju/status/1800582513196507455

The juror also wisely said Naomi shouldn't have testified.

[It's not clear he understands that the defense called her.]

Jun 10 • 9 tweets • 3 min read

Lots of commentary described that Leo Wise said they overwhelmed jury w/evidence bc they had to. He was saying something more subtle: bc Hunter hadn't stipulated to being an addict, they had to.

Still doesn't explain the need to provide mostly comms entirely unrelated to period.

Here's Leo Wise arguing that if someone hasn't been to rehab then they may not know they're an addict so they could argue they weren't knowingly an addict when they possessed which is fucked on a number of levels, and ALSO doesn't deal with the AA issue.

Jun 9 • 6 tweets • 3 min read

Here's an example of one of the puzzles abt the messages from the laptop. It's an August 8, 2018 SMS text saved as a message on the laptop.

The laptop did not register to Hunter Biden's iCloud account until October 21, 2018, months later.
documentcloud.org/documents/2473…

Here's a table showing where the comms prosecutors planned, pretrial, to include on summary came from. Pink was validated by Hallie Biden. Blue is stuff Hunter tried unsuccessfully to exclude on other grounds.

Jun 9 • 10 tweets • 4 min read

This, from Ankush Khardori, is one of the better reports on what led to the Hunter Biden prosecution. For example, it correctly describes that Judge Noreika killed the plea deal.

Many outlets falsely claim Hunter declined it.

politico.com/news/magazine/…

But even there, there are two problems.

First, it is uncontested that Weiss' office told Hunter's lawyer in June 2023 there WAS no pending investigation against him (eg, FARA). When Leo Wise said there was, it reneged on the plea as agreed.

Jun 6 • 6 tweets • 2 min read

I've written a shit-ton abt Hunter Biden today. This post explains what a summary witness is and why their blind spots are interesting.

emptywheel.net/2024/06/05/spe… This post shows that summary witness Erika Jensen did not look, and therefore (unsurprisingly) did not find any evidence of tampering with the Hunter Biden laptop before FBI got it.

emptywheel.net/2024/06/05/the…

Jun 3 • 8 tweets • 2 min read

The coverage of the Hunter Biden trial includes FAR MORE political journos than the DC trial, along with people like Devlin Barret who should have been conflicted off this story years ago. As a result... We get stuff like this from [not a DOJ reporter, nor a credible politics reporter] Ashley Parker utterly muddles the timeline in ways that obscure Trump's role (which Devlin has also been paid to obscure).

Jun 3 • 7 tweets • 2 min read

Minutes after @woodruffbets reports Judge Maryellen Noreika sent a defendant to prison for a year for what gun shop owner ADMITS he did (add something to form to claim he had gotten proper ID 3 years after fact), Noreika prohibited Hunter from raising it.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… This is a fairly insane decision.

When the second form first came up in a hearing, Derek Hines said it was proof of extra diligence.

Nope. It was evidence the gun shop owner broke the law himself.

Jun 2 • 11 tweets • 5 min read

In Derek Hines (Hunter Biden prosecutor)'s first attempt to keep out the form the gun shop doctored, he cited THE GUN SHOP OWNER as proof that the form was all filled out before Hunter left the store.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

In a 13-page reply (Judge Noreika set 5-page limits for MIL), Derek Hines now insists that Palimere is not a witness.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Jun 2 • 4 tweets • 1 min read

What if instead of polling, Does Trump's felony conviction make you more or less likely to vote for him?" instead poll, "Does the GOP's wholesale attack on rule of law make you more or less likely to vote for it?" Effectively, the mainstream press has given PERMISSION to voters to support fucking porn stars and committing fraud by treating this as a political question, whether something more fundamental.

Jun 1 • 6 tweets • 2 min read

As @Kerri_Kupec did before her, @whignewtons is pretending that when she was at DOJ, there wasn't selective targeting.

DOJ is about to sign a Privacy Act settlement with Peter Strzok bc Isgur herself was involved in releasing his texts but doing nothing abt Pro-Trump tweets.

https://twitter.com/whignewtons/status/1796577168174006415

I believe while she was still at DOJ, DOJ reached out to target John Kerry.

The ENTIRE TIME she was at DOJ, it was pursuing an investigation against Hillary Clinton based on right wing disinformation.

May 31 • 8 tweets • 2 min read

Here's what happens when people wail on Xitter about their false claims about what Garland has done (which they don't know bc they haven't looked).
1) It takes focus away from people like Aileen Cannon or Sam Alito.
2) It lets J6C off the hook for their totally frivolous delay. 3) It turns this totally mythical belief about Garland into the catchall complaint--literally no different in structure from QAnon, and just as spun free of reality.
4) That, in turns, breeds impotence.

May 31 • 11 tweets • 4 min read

In which Maggie and her fellow Trump-whisperer describe the willful delay of Trump's trials using the passive voice, because Goodness knows Trump has no agency in all this.

nytimes.com/2024/05/30/us/…

You could describe (and actual legal journalists have described) that a Trump-appointed Judge is stalling the case, giving hearings for issues that may raise reversible error down the road.

But not the Trump-whisperers. Aileen Cannon is merely "PUZZLING" things through!

May 24 • 4 tweets • 2 min read

The clerk who sold Hunter Biden a gun used three different pens to fill out the gun form. First black, selling him a gun w/o showing proper ID.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

Then red to note NCIS approval.

Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll