Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Trump-appointed US District Judge Timothy Kelly sided with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s DOJ to allow the feds to hide a host of exculpatory evidence from the jury in the Proud Boys January 6th sedition trial after it was mistakenly leaked to the defense by an FBI agent involved in the case.
As I reported last week, unintentionally leaked chat logs from FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller revealed she said she was ordered by her boss to “destroy” “338 items of evidence.”
The leaked chats also suggest Miller failed to reveal relevant communications to the defense, potentially spied on privileged attorney-client communications and was asked by another agent to “edit out that I was present” during a meeting with a Confidential Human Source Informant.
Concealing evidence. Doctoring evidence. Destroying evidence. Violating attorney-client privilege.
What's sad is this will be ignored even by conservative media and Congress simply bc they are members of the Proud Boys.
That's not a crime no matter how many times Wray says it. pic.twitter.com/IeXGj4gV7t
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) March 9, 2023
Rather than throw the entire case out with prejudice, Judge Kelly, a member of the Federalist Society, sided with the DOJ on nearly every issue on Monday to allow them to shield all that evidence from the jury with the sole exception of the agent discussing “edit[ing] out” their presence from a CHS report.
From The Epoch Times, “Judge Denies Requests from Jan. 6 Defendants to Cross-Examine FBI Agent on Leaked Messages”:
Defendants in the ongoing Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Breach trial suffered a defeat on Monday, as the court ordered that the defendants may not cross-examine an FBI agent for most of the defense attorneys’ allegations that spawned from internal FBI messages inadvertently leaked in court.
Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump-appointed judge, on Monday addressed allegations made by attorneys of the Jan. 6 defendants that targeted leaked internal FBI messages, which were revealed in court when Nick Smith, a defense attorney representing Ethan Nordean, cross-examined FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller on Thursday last week.
The judge denied all but one of the defendant’s arguments about the leaked messages. That leaves a narrowed space for the defendants to maneuver should they wish to upend the trial based on these messages alone.