90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, June 17, 2023

Girls With Guns

The FBI conducted a halfhearted inquiry, at best.

Now we know why.

It remains the greatest unsolved mystery related to the events of January 6: Who placed pipe bombs near the headquarters of both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee the night before?

Shortly before the joint session of Congress convened at 1 p.m. to debate the results of the 2020 Electoral College vote, a woman on her way to do some laundry looked down and spotted a device in an alley adjacent to the RNC building. Karlin Younger ran to notify security guards, who then called police. Law enforcement conducted a search of the area and located another device outside the DNC building.

Panic quickly ensued. “I just had to evacuate my office because of a pipe bomb reported outside,” Representative Elaine Luria (D-Va.) tweeted at 1:46 p.m. “I don’t recognize our country today and the members of Congress who have supported this anarchy do not deserve to represent their fellow Americans.”

“I’m sheltering in place in my office,” Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) tweeted at the same time. “The building next door has been evacuated. I can’t believe I have to write this.”

The media immediately suggested the explosives had been planted by someone loyal to the president; the New York Times noted in its breaking report that the bombs were found “just a few blocks away from the U.S. Capitol, which Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed on Wednesday afternoon.”

Federal authorities promised a full-throated investigation. During a press conference on January 12, 2021, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin and Washington FBI Field Office chief Steven D’Antuono emphasized the seriousness of the pipe bomb threat. “They were real devices. They had explosive ignitors,” Sherwin told reporters. D’Antuono announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to the identity and arrest of the perpetrator. The FBI, D’Antuono warned, was “looking at all angles, every tool, every rock is being unturned” in pursuit of the bomber.

A few months later, D’Antuono made another desperate plea for the public’s help in his investigation and doubled the reward. “We know it can be a difficult decision to report information about family, friends, or coworkers but this is about protecting human life. We need your help to identify the individual responsible for placing these pipe bombs to ensure that they will not harm themselves or anyone else.”

But despite sophisticated surveillance tools including geofence warrants that were at D’Antuono’s disposal—methods the FBI continues to use to this day in its ongoing manhunt for January 6 protesters—the trail went cold. So, too, did the national news media’s interest in the story. The January 6 Select Committee completely ignored the pipe bomb threats, relegating the story to two mentions buried deep in the final report’s appendix.

D’Antuono’s bluster notwithstanding, his office conducted a halfhearted inquiry at best. And now the public knows why. During an interview with the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month, D’Antuono disputed claims the bombs were planted to divert law enforcement presence away from the Capitol just before protesters assembled outside the building, a view commonly shared at the time.

Not only did the FBI fail to identify the individual, D’Antuono admitted the FBI does not even know the “gender” of the bomber. He also backtracked on numerous public statements insisting the devices were viable, indeed, deadly. Pressed by Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.) to explain how the bombs were operable considering the use of a one-hour kitchen timer attached to the metal tube, D’Antuono admitted that they couldn’t have detonated during January 6. “I don’t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren’t supposed to go off.”

In perhaps the most alarming portion of D’Antuono’s testimony, he revealed that the FBI does not have a complete account of cell phone use in the area on January 5, data that would easily result in tracking the perpetrator’s identity. In what Revolver News’ Darren Beattie described as “the dog ate the geofencing data” excuse, D’Antuono claimed data from one provider was “corrupted” and unusable.

“It just—unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I’m not sure—I can’t remember right now which one,” D’Antuono testified. “But for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was, right. So maybe if we did have that—that data wasn’t corrupted—and it wasn’t purposely corrupted. To my knowledge, it wasn’t corrupted, you know, but that could have been good information that we don’t have, right. So that is painful for us to not to have that. So we looked at everything.”

And as if to ward off warranted skepticism about the idea that cell phone data tied to one of the animating moments of January 6 just happens not to exist, D’Antuono told the committee he did not “want any conspiracy theories” surrounding the conveniently missing records.

But, of course, D’Antuono does not need to fuel any “conspiracy theories” about the pipe bomb incident. Beattie has raised numerous questions about the FBI’s handling of the investigation, such as apparently doctored video of the suspect’s movements. It’s also unclear, according to D’Antuono’s testimony, whether the FBI interviewed the woman who first found the device near the RNC. As I reported last year, Younger worked at the time for an agency called FirstNet, a public-private partnership between AT&T and first responders. The month before the Capitol protest, FirstNet received a $92 million grant from the FBI—which is either a wacky coincidence or another way in which FBI surrogates participated in the events of January 6.

Surely with such a professional connection between his agency and Younger, D’Antuono easily could have invited her to answer a few questions. But somehow, his “no stone left unturned” investigation did not include a sit-down with the one individual responsible for finding the bomb and...

Visage à trois #1501

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1157

Visage à trois #1500

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Tucker #4:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1157

Trump Prosecution Violates Attorney-Client Confidentiality by Targeting 3 Trump Lawyers

By Daniel Greenfield

Five lawyers have had attorney-client privilege violated to get Trump.

As I wrote earlier this week…

It wasn’t all that long ago that the liberal legal establishment was attacking the FBI for listening in on chats between terrorists and their lawyers. Defenders of Lynne Stewart, who was passing messages to terrorists on behalf of the Blind Sheikh, claimed that the government had violated attorney-client privilege and the Fifth Amendment by catching her in the act.

Stewart’s indictment was described as the ‘death knell’ for the right to counsel. Meanwhile, Democrats repeatedly violating attorney-client privilege to go after a sitting and former president is no big deal.

This began with Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani. Clinton Special Counsel Jack Smith is now escalating by going after 3 Trump lawyers.

Those lawyers are M. Evan Corcoran and Jennifer Little, both of whom were subpoenaed for testimony and records, nearly all of them possessed by Mr. Corcoran, by Mr. Smith’s team during the investigation. According to the indictment, Mr. Trump told Mr. Corcoran that he wanted to be at Mar-a-Lago when Mr. Corcoran did a search, and that Ms. Little did not have to be there.

Mr. Corcoran, in particular, could prove to be a pivotal witness should the case go to trial, given that he recorded extensive audio notes about his dealings with Mr. Trump concerning both the receipt of the subpoena and the search of boxes in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago undertaken in an effort to comply with it.
A federal judge allowed prosecutors to pierce attorney-client privilege and obtain testimony and most of Mr. Corcoran’s notes. Several damning excerpts from them were quoted in the indictment, apparently showing Mr. Trump trying to get around the demands set forth in the subpoena.

The indictment also mentions a third lawyer — Trump Attorney 3 — who signed an attestation, at Mr. Corcoran’s request, certifying that a “diligent search” of “the boxes that were removed from the White House to Florida” had been conducted and that “any and all responsive documents” had been found. Prosecutors say the attestation signed by that lawyer, Christina Bobb, was false because Mr. Trump had already directed Mr. Nauta to move several boxes in a way that kept them from being searched.

So we’re up to five lawyers now. Five.

The junta didn’t just do this with one lawyer, they did it with five and there’s no reason to think that they’ll stop there.

I don’t believe that there’s a single case where five attorneys for the same defendant had attorney-client privilege violated. This is likely unprecedented in American history.

Apart from the illegitimately obtained evidence, fruit of a poisoned tree, the idea here is to intimidate lawyers.

There are now stories about how Trump can’t find top-drawer legal help. Not surprising when lawyers who take him on as a client know that they will be investigated, their notes seized, possibly prosecuted and certainly forced to...