Yesterday, most of the defendants in the Cities Church case asked for a continuance of deadlines on pretrial motions because DOJ keeps stalling on discovery.
But then Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, and Michael Beute objected to any continuance as it pertains to the three of them, in significant part because, as journalists, they are differently situated than the other defendants. They included two exhibits with that objection showing that DOJ — and HSI Agent Timothy Gerber — continue to engage in exceedingly problematic behavior in the investigation. In addition to disclosing seven more warrants, some targeting Fort personally, that make the false claim that she chanted along with protestors, the first exhibit (a letter to prosecutors dated June 30) reveals that DHS was using customs summonses to obtain toll records targeting Fort.
Third, in yet another troubling development, the discovery produced on June 26 revealed that, during the pendency of this criminal investigation and prosecution, the government sought and obtained evidence through the misuse of administrative summonses issued pursuant to 19 U.S.C. § 1509. As you are aware, Section 1509 authorizes administrative summonses for customs-related investigations, such as verifying the accuracy of entries, determining unpaid duties, and enforcing the customs laws. Yet, here, the government served a § 1509 administrative summons on Ms. Fort’s cellular service provider to obtain information for use in this criminal case. Worse, that administrative summons further represented that the requested disclosure was “authorized by Title 18, United States Code, Section 2703(c)(2),” notwithstanding that Section 2703(c)(2) requires disclosure only when a governmental entity employs “an administrative subpoena authorized by a Federal or State statute or a Federal or State grand jury or trial subpoena.” The legal authority permitting the government to invoke a customs administrative summons for the purpose of obtaining evidence in this criminal prosecution—and to rely on Section 2703(c)(2) in doing so—raises substantial concerns regarding the legality of the government’s conduct surrounding the investigation of this case.
The second exhibit is a July 2 letter memorializing a call Fort’s attorneys had with prosecutors Ned Hedley (who works for Harmeet Dhillon) and John Arboleda (a JAG officer filling in in MN) the day before. Fort’s attorney, Matthew Ebert, memorialized the call because prosecutors told him that,
the government does not intend to respond to our correspondence in writing, out of the concern expressed on the call that what it represents to us could be put before the Court and/or otherwise used against it.
The balance of the letter lays out more details pertaining to the spying that Gerber has been doing on Fort.
It suggests:
- Some judge or judges rejected legal process that HSI attempted to obtain back in January (docket 26-mj-113, the one after the process identified in the earlier letter, is dated January 30) for both cell site simulators and toll records, including on Fort’s phone
- HSI then started using customs summonses for some of the same information, continuing all the way until late May and — per Ebert’s letter — prosecutors “would not specify, when asked, whether it is continuing to issue customs-related administrative summonses as part of this case”
- Discovery obtained to date shows a T-Mobile response with records pertaining to Fort, but without the records attached, including for an April 12 summons return with Fort’s toll records:
Bates No. 00012439 further suggests that the government received records related to Ms. Fort that it has yet to produce. That document states that on “April 12, 2026, T-Mobile US, Inc responded to the Homeland Security Summons with” Ms. Fort’s subscriber information and toll records, including to identify her by the name “Georgia Mcclellon.” However, none of the documents in the sequence Mr. Hedley identified (or elsewhere in the government’s discovery) appear to contain T-Mobile’s records providing Ms. Fort’s subscriber information— including her name. Bates No. 00012439 also states that the toll records related to Ms. Fort’s phone number “were uploaded into PLX.” Yet, there have been no T-Mobile toll records produced in discovery to date.
One possible explanation for all this is that, even before Magistrate Judge John Docherty refused search warrants Gerber attempted to get in February, he was having trouble getting legal process for Fort’s devices. And so, instead, he just started using customs summonses and has not stopped. Or hadn’t stopped, as late as late May. Perhaps prosecutors aren’t sharing that discovery because they are slovenly. Perhaps they aren’t sharing it because it would be proof of unlawful spying. Whichever it is, they don’t want a paper trail of their actions, because it could be used against them.
Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko will hold a hearing for Fort’s bid to get grand jury transcripts on Friday. Ebert’s letters describe that prosecutors will rely only on passages of the indictment that mention her specifically — that she attended a pre-protest meeting, that she purportedly intimidated the pastor, and that she blocked a car, the latter two claims which have been debunked already.
Which is to say, their entire case against Fort fell apart given the testimony of the most important witness in the case, and their response to that was to continue spying on her using customs summonses.
Is it time for these cases to be thrown out for prosecutorial misconduct and the DOJ attorneys investigated by the court for committing fraud on the court?
If that’s premature, is it time, at least, for the court to formally refuse to give DOJ attorneys the presumption of regularity?
My WAG is that MJ Micko is leaning towards giving Fort grand jury transcripts, possibly at Friday’s hearing, which will start to unravel the case. Remember he’s the MJ who refused the initial arrest warrants, and so I imagine wants his order to be bulletproof.
I would imagine he also wants his orders followed, which the DOJ seems to be having great difficulty in doing.
Past time.
A nice start would be requiring the US Attorney to come into court personally, to witness the presentation and evisceration of the conduct of the AUSA, and then to be required to explain to the judge what kind of discipline the US attorney intends to impose on the AUSA.
And then the US Attorney should be asked to share to the judge what kind of discipline the judge ought to impose on them personally for running such a slip-shod operation.
If you are representing The People, you better damn well follow the law.
Each of these DOJ attorneys should be acutely concerned about how long they will retain their licenses to practice law anywhere.
Who iniates & then who manages pursuing a charge of prosecutorial misconduct?
I had noted late in an earlier thread that the ‘presumption of regularity’ doctrine seems to be at odds with the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ standard contained within the Sixth Amendment which reads:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
These machinations by Dhillon and her team appear to strike at the information requirement because the USG under the ‘regularity’ fiction is hiding their sources, precluding challenge and examination by the defense teams. I had wondered before whether this ‘regularity’ mechanism was a method to move cases along but as this case (and many others, including ‘no bill’ rejections by grand juries) demonstrated this doctrine is easily abused. Convict-1 has put all of this in motion, but the minions are perfectly willing on their own (see Homan’s rant this week) to engage in bootlicking exercises to get crumbs of affection.
What do our brilliant posse of legal minds say?
No, the presumption of regularity is not at odds with the requirement that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty.
The presumption of regularity does not reach matters of innocence or guilt. At its most basic, it deals with the courts’ assumption that government lawyers’ statements of fact, recitations of law, claims about the existence and meaning of precedents are accurate. It assumes that govt lawyers will do what they promise the courts they will do. It assumes that government lawyers will follow court orders or challenge them openly in the usual way, not ignore or refuse to follow them.
Trump’s private lawyers consistently play fast and loose with those assumptions. They often cite precedent that doesn’t support their contention or means the opposite of what they say it does. That conduct is subject to severe sanction.
Trump has so corrupted the DOJ that its lawyers behave as if they were his private lawyers. That should cause the courts to promptly drop the presumption of regularity and lead to severe sanctions for lawyers who abuse the courts.
In the sane world that would be true, but since the DoJ has become Convict-1’s personal law office with the flagrant lying and rampant corruption already noted in most of the high-profile cases, at what point is the presumption flipped to make this DoJ prove every claim in show-cause mode? There has to be a tipping point when justice has been perverted like this.
You’re going in circles. If you withdraw the presumption of regularity, then all those assumptions about the DOJ’s credibility go away and they have to voluminously support everything they do in the federal court(s). That is the flipping you write about.
Federal courts have been reluctant to do do away with that presumption, but, as Judge Williams in Florida suggested, it’s time. It’s past time.
“the government does not intend to respond to our correspondence in writing, out of the concern expressed on the call that what it represents to us could be put before the Court and/or otherwise used against it.”
I am gob smacked. This is “Is you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy” level horseshit, only it’s DOJ saying it?
Thank goodness SOMEONE got that into the record.
Shit. I should have used that in the title, shouldn’t I have.
Well, at least according to IMDb, the entire quote is:
“Nigga, is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? … is you takin’ notes on a criminal fuckin’ conspiracy?”
YMMV…
I strongly believe you will have another opportunity to use that title.
Probably many more opportunities.
You might very well have other opportunities to use that title in the future …
The fish rots from the head (or so they say). I seriously doubt this crew came up with the idea of customs summonses on their own, and I even *more* seriously doubt they would have pursued this strategy without at least tacit approval from above.
That means Harmeet Dhillon. Possibly Bondi? And, since they’ve been at as recently as this May, Todd Blanche, who seems willing to trample on any law, and certainly any rule of civil or criminal procedure, to serve Dear Leader’s “agenda.”
More to the point, where else are they doing this?
I think this is right. The best strategy might be to give Fort the GJ transcripts and then start hammering on the US Attorney to find out where the idea of these customs subpoenas came from.
That will give the Judge the material for referring the responsible lawyers for disciplineary proceedings, as in the slush fund case.
I’m sorry to say that we’ll need to presume it’s all rotten unless objectively and independently proven otherwise. Given how much Convict-1 lies about everything, and the willingness to curry favor exhibited by the minions it is no secret that only what Convict-1 considers happy talk is permitted in the news or by government actions.
That’s why we have things like the Reflecting Pool fiasco (see Charlie Pierce’s take channeled at BarkBarkWoofWoof which avoids a paywall) as well as numerous court rejections on topics big and relatively small. Even Convict-1’s pet SCOTUS majority refused to help him stiff E. Jean Carroll, and if you’ve lost them … We’ll see what happens with the next wave of election cases, especially for the DoJ demand for voting rolls.
These people were raised to believe modern society is a lie created by bleeding heart liberals in the 60’s and the Constitution is just a nicety to make people feel better. To them laws are just a way of punishing your enemies who aren’t even worthy of trials or forgiveness while “law abiding citizens” are above the law and should be instantly forgiven of all crimes without an investigation. As much as they’re willing to go through the motions of investigations and trials, that’s only to appease the liberals and they think it’s a travesty of justice if they don’t get the results they want. Due process is red tape that needs to be massaged to get around.
And…that’s largely true, which is why being detained, arrested, booked, held without bail, and put on trial are intentional punishments because we’re presumed guilty as soon as cops have probable cause and there’s no compensation for the innocent unless they can prove egregious malfeasance by cops, prosecutors, or judges.
After all, the dudes who wrote the Constitution owned humans as property and clearly felt they could decide who it applied to. America couldn’t even ban slavery without a specific amendment and rightwingers are outraged at the idea that the Constitution protects everyone in our borders rather than the specific people they can only identify by judging them personally. The fact that the Founding Fathers had double standards is a feature to them, not a bug. It’s not hypocrisy when people openly say that some people deserve different treatment than others.
And the big complaint Trump, Jan Sixers and all the other MAGA criminals had about their treatment was that it happened to them, because they’re Law Abiding Citizens and shouldn’t be treated like criminals just because they committed crimes. And now that they’re getting retribution they’re outraged that the Constitution protects their enemies and that they actually need to have real evidence of laws being broken because an accusation is as good as a conviction to them. You’re guilty as soon as they see you’re on the other team.
It reminds me of what Franklin mentioned to John Dickinson regarding the legitimacy of revolutions, in that it’s only illegal in the third person (‘their revolt’) versus the first person (‘our revolution’).
These MAGA types are spoiled brats who proclaim themselves as ‘true patriots’ entitled to a higher tier of benefits like being a ‘gentlemen’ or lord entitled one to tiebreakers in legal cases in the UK. That’s been changed and eroded to where Randy Andy was stripped of his royal status courtesy of the Epstein files, where it has been 111 days since US DoJ promised NM DOJ its files.
Stephen Miller stated that when a “leftist protests that we are violating his rights,” the individual is simply lying to persuade people who aren’t paying close attention. They don’t believe the bill of rights was intended to protect people who believe something different than they do. From the White House on down to the line prosecutors, they will not respect the constitution or the rights of anyone who disagrees with the administration. In this case, they disassemble or deceive to conceal that they are running over the constitution on the purely pragmatic basis that a judge might stop them.
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Trump is well known for never writing things down so there is never any written evidence to be used against him in a court of law. He learned it from Roy Cohn and he has clearly conveyed that to his subordinates who have in turn passed it down the line. Criminal lawyers love a client who never puts anything in writing.
Putting things down on paper is the bread and butter of any good law practice. Creating a contemporaneous business record of what you propose to do, what you’ve done, what the other side or the courts have agreed on or prohibited is absolutely essential.
It is mandatory for prosecutors, who represent the public, the courts, and the criminal justice system. Without it, we have the whimsical barbarism of Donald Trump.
Memorable turn of phrase there. You can’t helping thinking the “whimsical barbarism of Donald Trump,” has been heavily influenced by the lyrical brutality of A. Hitler and the genocidal stylings of P. Pot.
Whimsical barbarism. Lovely turn of phrase. Trump would merchandise the banality of tyranny.
All these garbage cases, but are there any real cases with real crimes and criminals taking place?
Also it is really surprising that convicted union leader John Dougherty was denied a pardon by the administration.
Customs
It’s not a customs summons case
Neville’s appeasement is a sin
It’s not a customs summons tune
Dog whistles night and noon
The guiles, the grounds,
Screwups, showdowns
are 2nd nature to them now,
Deceiving now, deceiving then
Law was routinely independent,
Not so bent to foul mindset,
Surely, we could
always be that way again…
…and yet
A customs summons choice
A customs summons case
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTmOcgmEQqE
“The Muppets “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” on The Ed Sullivan Show”
Clever!