Federal agents gave orders to destroy evidence for the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot. They also violated client-attorney confidentiality.
Federal agents gave orders to destroy evidence for the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot. They also violated client-attorney confidentiality. Both of these things are crimes on the part of federal agents, as well as gross violations of the rights of those who have been charged in this incident.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/09/classified-info-proud-boys-trial-00086357
‘Spill’ of classified info derails Proud Boys trial
It’s the latest hiccup in a seditious conspiracy trial that has been marked by excruciating delays and extended legal disputes.
By Kyle Cheney
March 9, 2023
Federal prosecutors inadvertently disclosed likely classified material to Proud Boys defense attorneys, Justice Department officials indicated Thursday, a snafu that has derailed — for at least a full day — the most important trial to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The admission in court by a top DOJ official came in connection with testimony from FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller, one of the lead investigators in the Proud Boys case. Miller has already spent two days testifying about the Proud Boys’ Jan. 6 activities — their march to the Capitol from the Washington Monument and key role in the breaches that led to the broader attack.
As part of her testimony, prosecutors shared with defense lawyers a set of internal FBI messages that Miller had sent and received from colleagues related to the case — a standard production of evidence in criminal cases. To compile those exchanges, FBI headquarters sent Miller a spreadsheet of her messages — culled from a computer network classified at the “secret” level. Miller then reviewed the messages and filtered them to ensure only relevant, unclassified exchanges were included.
Miller sent her final list to prosecutors, who then packaged the messages into an Excel spreadsheet that they provided to defense lawyers. But unbeknownst to them, the messages Miller initially filtered out — including some that DOJ officials say are likely classified — were left in the final document as “hidden” rows in the Excel spreadsheet. Defense counsel stumbled upon them and began grilling Miller about them in front of jurors in the case.
Overnight, Justice Department attorneys told the defense team they were concerned there had been a “spill” of classified information in the hidden messages they accessed. And on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly paused the trial — already in its third month — to determine how to handle the error.
It’s the latest hiccup in a seditious conspiracy trial that has been marked by excruciating delays and extended legal disputes. Prosecutors say Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and four leaders of the group schemed to prevent the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. The group, according to the Justice Department, split into teams that helped engineer the breach of police lines and, ultimately, the building itself, when one of the defendants, Dominic Pezzola, smashed a Senate-wing window with a stolen riot shield.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine, who is supervising the case for the Justice Department, acknowledged the likely “spill” of classified information Thursday morning. She raised particular concerns about a message sent to Miller by another agent who works on covert activity — and who she said did not work on the Proud Boys case — describing a supervisor’s order to “destroy 338 items of evidence.”
“That could impact a classified equity,” Ballantine said.
Defense lawyers cried foul, though, noting that the government’s claims of “classified” material arrived just as the defense sounded the alarm about the content of some of the inadvertently disclosed messages. While Miller testified Wednesday she had produced about “25 rows” of messages, defense lawyers said there were thousands of rows of hidden messages that included contents they contended were directly relevant to their case.
Some of the messages appeared to reveal that FBI agents accessed contacts between defendant Zachary Rehl and his attorney, which led Miller to tell a colleague she thought Rehl would take his case to trial. In another message, an FBI agent tells Miller, “You need to go into that CHS report you just put and edit out that I was present.” After defense attorneys began to press Miller about the attorney-client messages on Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors objected, and Kelly halted the trial to permit the parties to debate the matter.
After hearing arguments Thursday, Kelly ordered defense attorneys to refrain from reviewing or disseminating the messages until the FBI was able to conduct a classification review, a process that Ballantine said could likely be completed by the end of the day Thursday.
The flare-up comes as prosecutors are nearing the end of their case against the Proud Boys. They’ve laid out evidence showing that Tarrio and his allies developed a sense of existential dread about a Biden presidency and quickly embraced Trump’s claims of fraud in the days and weeks after his defeat in the 2020 election. As Jan. 6 neared, the group’s leaders grew increasingly disillusioned with police — who they accused of insufficiently acting to investigate a man who stabbed several Proud Boys at a December 2020 rally in Washington. And they set up a new chapter, dubbed the “Ministry of Self Defense,” that included men they believed would follow orders.
A week before Jan. 6, Tarrio received a document from a girlfriend titled “1776 Returns” that sketched out a plan to occupy federal buildings in order to derail and delay Congress’ proceedings to certify the 2020 election.
Defense attorneys have contended that the group is little more than a glorified drinking club that had no actual plan to either storm the Capitol or prevent Biden from taking office. Miller’s testimony portrayed the group’s march through Washington on Jan. 6 as an organized and concerted advance toward the Capitol that pinpointed weaknesses in Capitol Police defenses and exploited them to help facilitate the breach of the Capitol.
Exactly what crime is this person committing in this video from January 6, 2021?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4qajVw5rGk
Prosecutors Identify Police Supervisor Who Beat Woman on Jan. 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5f_Ta3qBoc
By Zachary Stieber and Joseph M. Hanneman
September 1, 2022
The Washington D.C. police officer who beat a Minnesota woman with a metal baton at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is a 19-year veteran with a history of use-of-force complaints.
Victoria C. White, of Minnesota, was struck nearly 40 times in a four-minute span in the Lower West Terrace tunnel leading into the U.S. Capitol, security video footage showed.
The officer who delivered most of the blows was identified in new court filings as Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) commander Jason Bagshaw, 45.
“The tunnel CCTV footage shows that over an almost two-minute span running from approximately 4:07:00 to 4:08:54 p.m., Lieutenant Bagshaw repeatedly struck, or tried to strike, the woman in red with his baton,” U.S. prosecutors said in one of the briefs (pdf).
Bagshaw has since been promoted to commander.
Prosecutors also acknowledged that Bagshaw “threw five left-handed jab punches in the direction of the woman in red’s head or upper body” and included an image showing Bagshaw with his left fist raised while standing near White, or the woman in red.
MPD use-of-force policies advise officers to avoid striking the head.
Bagshaw did not respond to a message. MPD did not respond to requests for comment. The agency said previously it wasn’t aware of the surveillance footage, released in December 2021 by attorney Joseph McBride, showing one of its officers pummeling White.
Bagshaw, the video shows, struck White’s head eight times, then punched her with his left fist. He later made a fist and punched White in the face and head six times. Another officer—with both hands on his baton—jammed the butt of the weapon at White’s face and then rammed her with the baton 10 times, the video footage shows.
Prosecutors attempted to defend the strikes.
“While many observers might instinctively cringe at the sight of a male police officer using a baton to strike, or attempt to strike, the head, neck, and shoulder area of a smaller woman, there are many possible lawful justifications for Lieutenant Bagshaw’s use of force,” they said.
“The woman in red’s location alone was criminal, making her subject to arrest, and it presented a threat to the officers and the U.S. Capitol. Here, there is no evidence in the trial record explaining how the woman penetrated the phalanx of officers, whether she was armed at the time, or if she had threatened or undertaken violent action against an officer. Depending on these circumstances, an officer may have been justified in using violent force against her. It is possible that Lieutenant Bagshaw struck her for no justifiable reason. But it is also possible he struck her to disarm her, or to subdue her after she attacked an officer,” they added.
White’s case was featured in The Epoch Times documentary “The Real Story of Jan. 6.”
“The first blow came to my head by a metal baton,” White said in the film. “It was really bad. I remember trying to keep myself up. I was scared I would be trampled.”
In the film, use-of-force expert Stan Kephart said striking White in the head was a potentially fatal mistake.
“The head is a sphere. What happens when you strike a spherical object with a blunted object, at least resistance and glances off the head. That’s a possibility. The second thing is you can hit them flush and kill them,” Kephart said. “If your intent was to kill them, you should have been using a firearm and not a baton.” Bagshaw’s History
Bagshaw, who started working for the department in 2003 and has been promoted twice since Jan. 6, 2021, has been the subject of multiple complaints over the years.
In one instance, a Washington resident accused him of working with other officers to try to cover up an illegal beating in 2013. Bagshaw falsely said in an application for a search warrant for the man’s home that a taxi driver told him the man looked like a man who had assailed the driver, according to court filings.
Bagshaw testified in a deposition that another officer told him the driver did not know if the man was one of the men who assailed him. The case was settled out of court.
In another case, which is still ongoing, Bagshaw and other MPD officers were accused of violating the constitutional rights of protesters who gathered in Lafayette Square near the White House in the wake of George Floyd’s death. A second case that is ongoing says Bagshaw instructed officers to beat a woman who was protesting the death of her son at the hands of the police.
In a December 2020 incident documented on video shared on Instagram and other social media websites, Bagshaw picked up a man identified as a medic, carried him a short distance, and tossed him to the pavement.
In mid-July 2022, Bagshaw shot an armed man to death in a crowded restaurant district on D.C.’s waterfront. Bagshaw, who was off-duty at the time, said he fired after witnessing Lazarus David Wilson, 23, of Dumfries, Virginia, pointing a firearm at patrons. One Step Toward Justice
White told The Epoch Times she identified Bagshaw as her attacker weeks ago, based on security video and other sources.
She said his identity being made public is just one step toward justice in her case.
Publicity on the details, however, sparked her post-traumatic stress disorder from the Capitol incident and 10 years of domestic abuse by her ex-husband, she said.
“The highest-ranking officer in the tunnel targets her and just absolutely tees off on her and begins to brutally beat her,” McBride, White’s former attorney told The Epoch Times in late 2021.
McBride has called for a special prosecutor to investigate how police officers acted on Jan. 6.
White has said she traveled to Washington on Jan. 6 to peacefully protest.
She said in a lawsuit against Washington police officials and officers that she was illegally beaten and abused, and falsely imprisoned.
Prosecutors charged White, who has said she was unarmed, with four counts, including civil disorder and entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds.
White is attempting to withdraw the suit because she says she is busy preparing for her criminal trial.
According to footage from the scene, White yelled at people who were breaking glass to stop, but later pushed her way towards the tunnel and eventually came to be standing next to officers holding riot shields.
“I admit, I was pushing to get in because I’m assuming it’s just another doorway to go up to the next level,” White said in a podcast interview. Officers were spraying mace and soon began beating her, she said, adding, “And next thing I know, I’m in the police being like pushed backwards like ping pong of sorts and the next thing I know I’m in the State [sic] Capitol.”
Prosecutors have not charged any officers on-duty on Jan. 6, including the MPD officer who shot a woman dead, even though use-of-force reports obtained by The Epoch Times detailed the brutality of attacks on protesters and rioters.
‘Excessive Force’
Bagshaw’s identity was revealed in motions filed after the trial of Kyle Fitzsimons, another Jan. 6 defendant.
Fitzsimons was charged with a number of violations of the law, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers.
His public defender has asked for U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, an Obama appointee who oversaw the bench trial that concluded on Aug. 19, to toss the assault charge because she says Fitzsimons was defending White against Bagshaw’s “excessive force.”
“In response to the display of excessive force and calls for help, Mr. Fitzsimons threw an unstrung bow towards the officer in order to distract him. Mr. Fitzsimons reasonably believed that the woman faced a present threat of death or serious injury and acted lawfully in response to the threat,” Natasha Taylor-Smith, the lawyer, said in a brief.
Americans are able to use reasonable force against an officer’s excessive force, the brief said, citing the Fourth Amendment and earlier decisions in federal courts. That ability comes “if the force used was so excessive that no reasonable officer could have believed in the lawfulness of his actions,” one of the earlier rulings stated.
“Lieutenant Bagshaw’s use of force against the woman in the red sweater was clearly apparent and no reasonable officer could justify his actions,” Taylor-Smith said, citing the surveillance photograph showing Bagshaw’s raised fist.
Fitzsimons could see Bagshaw strike White with a baton, then with his closed fists, and clearly aimed the bow in the direction of the beating, according to the brief. The bow bounced off the helmet of another officer, the government has said.
“The evidence on record is sufficient for this Court to make the inference that Mr. Fitzsimons’s intent was to distract Lieutenant Bagshaw and prevent him from continuing to beat the woman,” Taylor-Smith said. Government Disagrees
Prosecutors urged Contreras not to throw out the charge.
They say there is no evidence that Fitzsimons was aware of White, let alone that he thought she was in danger and believed force was necessary to protect her.
At least five people obstructed Fitzsimons’ view of the beating, including four officers, the government’s brief says. Additionally, White is shorter than the officers standing in front of her, further obscuring the view. The prosecutors argue that there is no evidence “what the defendant perceived or thought when he hurled his bow like a spear.”
Even if Fitzsimons did witness what unfolded, no evidence was presented during the trial proving that Bagshaw violated use-of-force policies or that his actions were otherwise unjustified, prosecutors said.
Bagshaw stopped using his baton against the woman over 20 seconds before Fitzsimons hurled his bow, prosecutors said. And the video footage shows that Fitzsimons began preparing to hurl the bow “before Lieutenant Bagshaw raised his fist,” they said. “The defendant’s use of a weapon thus constituted an unreasonable escalation, fatally undermining his defense-of-others claim.”
Video – Rachel Maddow: “Just a key point, that yes, there was a pro-Trump rally at which the president spoke. And we can absolutely talk about all the things the president said there. But the idea that that rally is the thing that got out of hand and that somehow resulted in the breaching of the capitol – that rally was very far from the Capitol and the people who, as you say, did the initial breach, that allowed everybody else to come in, they never even went to that rally.”
Rachel Maddow said:
“Just a key point, that yes, there was a pro-Trump rally at which the president spoke. And we can absolutely talk about all the things the president said there. But the idea that that rally is the thing that got out of hand and that somehow resulted in the breaching of the capitol – that rally was very far from the Capitol and the people who, as you say, did the initial breach, that allowed everybody else to come in, they never even went to that rally.”
Here’s video of her saying it:
Dershowitz: Jan. 6 Panel ‘Doctored the Tape,’ Edited Out Trump’s Words
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/alan-dershowitz-newsmax-donald-trump-jan-6/2022/06/10/id/1073948/
Dershowitz: Jan. 6 Panel ‘Doctored the Tape,’ Edited Out Trump’s Words
June 10, 2022
Constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Friday that the Jan. 6 committee’s public hearing on Thursday night was ”not a fair proceeding” in that it was ”one-sided” and ”unethical.”
”Take, for example, President Trump’s speech on Jan. 6,” Dershowitz said on ”Spicer & Co.” ”He said at the end of the speech he wanted people to show their voices patriotically and peacefully.
”They doctored the tape,” he continued. ”They edited those words out. If a prosecutor ever did that, they’d be disbarred. You can’t present part of the tape and deliberately omit the rest of the tape in order to mislead the audience, especially when the other side has no opportunity to cross-examine, no opportunity to present its own evidence.”
Citing data from Nielsen Media Research, the New York Post reports that more than 20 million Americans tuned into Thursday night’s prime-time hearing by the House select committee investigating last year’s Capitol attack — a larger figure than watched this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.
According to the Post, Thursday’s public hearing was the first of six the committee plans to hold in the coming weeks to reveal its findings about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of protesters stormed the Capitol building to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.
Dershowitz went on to say that if the leader of Black Lives Matter had been arrested for inciting violence because a speech they made led to violence, he would defend them ”on the grounds that the First Amendment protects advocacy, it doesn’t protect incitement.”
”So, President Trump committed no crimes,” he said. ”Anybody who thinks that he did fails to understand the First Amendment.”
Because Donald Trump’s side had no opportunity to present its case, Dershowitz said the committee had a ”special ethical obligation not to cheat, not to defraud the viewers, and that’s exactly what the Democrats, with their two Republicans, did yesterday.”
”They cheated the viewers of hearing the actual words that Donald Trump spoke,” he said.
To ensure a fair hearing, Dershowitz said there should have been an independent commission, one like the 9/11 Commission.
”People would take seriously a nonpartisan, non-biased commission,” he said. ”But nobody should take seriously this one-sided basketball game in which only one team is allowed to shoot for the basket, and the other team is not even allowed to defend.”
EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE: Secret Video Recordings LEAKED from Inside “The Hole” of DC Gitmo — First Footage Ever Released of Cockroach and Mold Infested Cell of J6 Political Prisoner
The videos are at the link:
EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE: Secret Video Recordings LEAKED from Inside “The Hole” of DC Gitmo — First Footage Ever Released of Cockroach and Mold Infested Cell of J6 Political Prisoner
By Cara Castronuova
May 25, 2022
Secret video recordings have been leaked exclusively to The Gateway Pundit from deep within the walls of the DC Gulag. See the series of eight videos below.
This filthy facility is notorious for inhumane and torturous conditions. It is where many Political Prisoners from January 6th are being unconstitutionally detained by the United States Government pre-trail.
The video recordings below feature Brandon Fellows, a 27 year old January 6th prisoner who has been in the Gulag since last June of 2021. According to Fellows, his crime was “taking two hits of marijuana in the Capitol after having a conversation with police who told him he could go inside.”
The first video shows Fellows, excited to be talking to a camera and civilization, collecting what appears to be black mold from the faucet of his sink where his drinking water comes from. He places it in a tiny bag and shows it to the camera:
Fellows was able to get the mold sample to an attorney to send to a lab for testing. Please donate to help Fellow’s legal team test the mold sample at a science laboratory and pursue legal action against DC Gitmo for endangering J6 prisoners. According to experts, mold in drinking water can be deadly.
No outside witnesses, visitors or journalists are allowed to visit the insides of DC Jail where the J6 Political Prisoners are being held. Even United States Legislators have been turned away by the warden. There is no recording allowed at the jail. Therefore, no footage of this type exists in the world that documents the plight of the American Political Prisoners of The Biden Regime.
Fellows is facing up to twenty years in prison if convicted. There will more than likely be legal ramifications directed towards Fellows when the Regime learns of these videos.
Please help Brandon Fellows by donating to his legal fund here.
The personable Fellows has Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of Autism. Coupled with his dark and sarcastic sense of humor, he makes for a fascinating narrator.
“My dark sense of humor is like a defense mechanism for me,” said Fellows. “It helps me deal with everything going on.”
In the next video Fellows shows us an electrical fire waiting to happen (or electrocution of a prisoner) in his cell as loose live wires protrude from the wall. Very dangerous and disturbing:
This video series documents Fellow’s time in extensive solitary confinement, where he spent 22 hours a day in his cell. His “rec” time was spent in anther solitary cell with a TV in it for 1-2 hours per day. He was not allowed out of his cell at all between Fridays and Mondays. That is less than 10 hours outside a cell in a week of 168 hours!
“I wanted people to see that we are real and to prove what we are dealing with,” said Fellows about the videos
“Brandon Fellows is very brave for getting this footage out,” said a fellow J6er also housed at DC Gitmo. “It will help us all.”
The next video show the cockroach infested sink that the men get their daily drinking water from. No wonder there have been reported problems of diarrhea and intense stomach pains to advocacy groups. See the video below:
In the next video, Fellows talks about the “re-education tablet” that is provided to him in his cell a few times a week. Fellows calls it a “racist tablet”, says that is is “anti-white” and pushes the Islamic religion on prisoners. See the tablet here:
Another video shows a visibly shocked Fellows get emotional after seeing a small handful of grapes on his food tray. We reported last week that Fellows and the other detainees were denied fruit and fiber in their diets, causing major constipation leading to the chronic overuse of laxatives then leading to painful diarrhea and dehydration. Many of our readers wrote to the DC Jail to complain on behalf of Fellows, perhaps this small portion of grapes he received was due to that effort. See Fellow’s heart-wrenching reaction here:
In this video Fellows shows us the filthy floor left coated with remnants of the jail population’s feces. This was after the guards put him back in a cell that had an overflowed toilet without sterilizing the floor:
This next video shows what “rec” time is like for a January 6er in “the hole”, or the “SHU” (Special Housing Unit). “Rec” is basically the time allowed out of the cell. For Fellows, that was six hours total in NINE DAYS. Fellows was handcuffed during rec while he watched a TV alone on a wooden chair in another cell. There is a microwave in the cell he was not allowed to use because his right to purchase food from commissary was stripped. See the “rec” room here:
Saving the most graphic for last, this last video gives very special insight to the conversations that go on in DC Jail in the middle of the night. Because Fellows was thrown into “the hole”, he had to endure the late night screaming of the “general population” outside of the “Patriot Pod”.
The “Patriot Pod” is where the J6ers are being housed away from the “general population”. Non-convicted J6er’s are not privy to any of the jail’s facilities like the rest of convicted prisoners are. This includes use of a cafeteria, gym, jobs, classrooms, outdoor areas, barber shop or religious services.
“These J6er’s are second class citizens at DC Jail,” said Tina Ryan of Citizen’s Against Political Persecution. “They don’t have the option to use the jail facilities like the other prisoners do- including the convicted murderers and rapists. Because they are Trump supporters they are being treated worse than men that have been convicted for murder.”
After a year of getting to know many of the January 6th political prisoners, it is worth noting that many of these men remain strong and unbroken. It is a privilege to get to know them and serve as a first hand witness to the strength of mind, willpower and God that keeps them whole.
Please help Brandon Fellows by donating to his legal fund. If found guilty by a jury, Fellows faces decades in prison.Fellow’s legal team plan on getting the mold (that is now in their possession) tested in a science lab and possibly suing the government for putting these pre-trial detainees in an unsafe, if not deadly, environment.
You can write Brandon Fellows via mail by sending letters or cards to:
BRANDON FELLOWS – Prisoner 377943
DOC-DC-CTF
1901 D ST. SE
WASHINGTON, DC 20003
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 