FBI accused of infiltrating Jan. 6 defense team

 PJ Media:

Critics of the harsh prosecutions in the January 6th debacle continue to be vindicated. Those who have said the whole thing was a setup keep getting proved right by our own Department of Justice. According to lawyers for Zachary Rehl, a Proud Boys chapter leader charged with seditious conspiracy, the government failed to disclose that one of the witnesses scheduled to testify was actually a confidential informant for the FBI. Surprisingly, the Associated Press reported it.

Carmen Hernandez, a lawyer for former Proud Boys chapter leader Zachary Rehl, asked a judge to schedule an immediate emergency hearing and suspend the trial “until these issues have been considered and resolved.” Lawyers for the other four defendants joined in Hernandez’s request.

Hernandez said in court papers that the defense team was told by prosecutors on Wednesday afternoon that the witness they were planning to call to the stand on Thursday had been a government informant.

Hernandez said this informant had infiltrated their defense team and was even attending prayer meetings with the defendant’s family. Worse, the government knew the witness was an informant in December but did not disclose that information until Wednesday. The defense had asked for a list of all FBI informants involved in the Proud Boys in discovery. The DOJ failed to provide all the names and instead they have been trickling out. It’s starting to look like there were more government informants in the Proud Boys than Proud Boys.

...

“The allegations about the existence of yet one more previously undisclosed CHS after various other alleged full and complete disclosures of all the CHSs involved in the case demonstrate that there are reasons to doubt the veracity of the government’s explanation and justification for withholding information about the CHSs who have been involved in the case. Moreover, the government disclosed this information for the first time on the day before the witness was scheduled to appear,” wrote Hernandez.

This is justice?

The New York Times identified the latest informant as Jen Loh, whose real name is Jennylyn Salinas, a Texas-based activist who ran Latinos for Trump but also worked with the FBI, providing information to them about her friends’ actions. Not only has she been involved with multiple defendants in the case but their lawyers as well. Did she provide legal strategy information to the DOJ that is prosecuting the defendants? If so, there couldn’t be a clearer violation of attorney-client privilege.

According to the New York Times, Hernandez “described what Ms. Loh has been doing as a ‘surreptitious invasion’ of the Proud Boys’ defense team” and demanded the government cough up any more informants hiding within the Proud Boys circle no one is yet aware of.

Prosecutors are of course denying that they put Salinas up to infiltrating the defendants’ defense team. The government would never do that, they say. Suuuuure.

...

Salinas denies providing the government with information during the trial.  And the prosecution denies getting any.  But I suspect her presence is enough for the judge to declare a mistrial.