The Justice Department is already facing sharp questions from a judge about altering sensitive documents in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Now, two lawyers connected to the case say DOJ has made new mischaracterizations in its attempt to clean up the mess.
The department claimed late Monday that it had consulted with lawyers for former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and former FBI agent Peter Strzok and confirmed that two sets of handwritten notes — key evidence in Flynn’s case — were valid and free of any alterations.
But correspondence between the two attorneys and DOJ reveal that neither vouched for the accuracy of the documents. In fact, McCabe's lawyer Michael Bromwich and Strzok's lawyer Aitan Goelman affirmatively refused to do so.
[...]
"We are unable to certify the authenticity of all of the attachments or the accuracy of the transcriptions," Goelman wrote to Ballantine Sunday afternoon. "To do so, we would need both more time and access to the original notes, particularly given that U.S. Attorney Jensen’s team has already been caught altering Pete’s notes in two instances."
[...]
The discrepancy between Ballantine’s assertion and the two lawyers’ claims is significant. The judge, Emmet Sullivan of the federal district court in Washington D.C., has already raised loud alarms about the credibility of the Justice Department's earlier filings in its attempt to drop the case against Flynn.
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DOJ’s late-Thursday filing was the result of Sullivan's demand the department verify that all of the exhibits it has submitted to support dropping the case were accurate and unaltered. Sullivan made this demand after learning from Strzok and McCabe's lawyers that their clients' notes had previously been altered to include dates — in Strzok's case a verifiably inaccurate one — that were not part of the original notes.
Politico
The old Trump double-down move.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
If he was floored then, where is he now?Goelman responded on Monday declining to cooperate and to indicate that another exhibit appeared to be mislabeled.
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It's unclear whether Sullivan will be made aware of the additional discrepancies. Strzok flagged them on Twitter earlier Tuesday afternoon.
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In the rest of Thursday’s filing, which was lodged on the court docket at 11:42 p.m. on Oct. 26 by Ballantine, DOJ includes sworn affidavits from current FBI and DOJ personnel asserting that the bulk of the exhibits were “true and correct” copies of the original documents, and contained no alterations beyond the ones previously identified.
[...]
During a hearing last month, Sullivan told attorneys for DOJ and Flynn that he was "floored" by the revelation of the added dates, and last week he ordered DOJ to itemize and certify the accuracy of all of its other evidence, and to verify that no other alterations were made to the Strzok and McCabe documents. Those certifications were due by midnight Monday.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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