DOJ Afraid to Put Things in Writing for Fear It’d Be Used Against Them

Lawyers working at the Department of Justice are refusing to put certain information in writing out of fear that it could be used against them.

The DOJ is prosecuting two journalists over their coverage of an anti-ICE protest at Cities Church in Minnesota in January, and one of them, Georgia Ellyse Fort, is charged with three felonies, including a hate crime. Fort’s defense counsel is accusing the government of spying on her, and a judge barred the government from using toll records and cell phone simulators that include Fort’s phone activity.

A Homeland Security Investigations agent, Timothy Gerber, allegedly began using customs summonses to get information about Fort, whose lawyers said that the prosecutors would not say whether the government was continuing to use those summonses. The prosecution is supposed to turn over its evidence to defense counsel in any legal case, but only described the cell phone data from Fort’s phone without turning over the data itself.

In a letter to DOJ prosecutors, first flagged by independent journalist Mary Wheeler, Fort’s lawyers referred to a phone call with DOJ lawyer Ned Hedley in which they got the indication 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.”

It’s an astounding thing for government lawyers to say, especially considering that documenting conversations is a basic requirement in the legal profession. Hedley’s words seem to indicate that the Trump administration is trying to hide something, or knows that its activities might not be legal.

Fort was arrested alongside journalists Don Lemon and Michael Beute—and the case against all of them is weak. The three are accused of rioting and protesting, while they say they were merely covering the event. Refusing to put certain things in writing would seem to undermine the government’s case. ...