As you’ve seen, CNN reports that classified documents have now been found at the home of former Vice President Mike Pence. This certainly upends the media narrative of recent weeks and probably spurred a round of guffaws at the White House. But there’s a more important issue here which reporters have done too little to explain for readers. “Classified” material covers a huge range of material, from simple briefing papers that may only barely require classification to Top Secret documents. There’s compartmented information that almost no one can see unless they have a specific need to see it.

I want to draw out a few points I mentioned last night about the arrest of Charles McGonigal. When I first heard about the indictments, I understood them to be one (D.C.) that dealt with events while McGonigal still worked at the FBI and one (New York) that dealt with events after he worked at the FBI. But as I noted last night, it’s not that clear cut. The relationship with Oleg Deripaska and a reputed former Soviet/Russian intelligence officer, Evgeny Fokin, began when McGonigal was still at the FBI.

The New York indictment is elusive about just what it’s suggesting about McGonigal and Fokin in 2018, when the former still worked at the FBI. It is also unclear about whether McGonigal was compromised by a foreign power or was simply building a relationship with Fokin and Deripaska for money he would make after he left the FBI.

Was he compromised by Russia? Or was he just compromised by Deripaska? Needless to say, there’s not necessarily a bright line separating these two scenarios.

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Needless to say there’s quite a lot in these indictments of former FBI counterintelligence agent Charles McGonigal et al. There are a number of points I want to note. But let me start with this one.

A fair amount of this information has been public for a long time. I was surprised to see the September 2022 Insider article on the investigation that Josh Kovensky linked in his write up. But I also found this Twitter thread from independent journalist Wendy Siegelman from December 13, 2021. She flags and discusses a November 29th, 2021 FARA filing which actually details a number of the basic relationships if not the specific crimes set forth in today’s New York indictments. Indeed, if you read the FARA filing you can easily identify a number of people in the indictment. People like “Agent-1,” for instance, who appears to be Yevgeny Fokin. I was surprised to see so much of this revealed in a FARA filing more than a year ago.

A jury convicted four more members of the far-right Oath Keepers group of seditious conspiracy today, bringing to a close one the highest-profile prosecutions to be brought thus far in response to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. It also leaves us with the question: will that be it when it comes to accountability for the attack?

In closing arguments on Monday, some of the Oath Keepers’ lawyers were not subtle in outlining where they believe the real blame for the attack should lie.

“Responsibility really rests at our politicians’ feet,” Scott Weinberg, the attorney for Oath Keeper David Moerschel said on Monday, per the Washington Post. “The president and Stewart Rhodes were claiming that the world is coming to an end even before the election.”