After the Court allowed me to go back to work in May of 2013, nothing happened in my specific case until September 4, 2014. (May 2013 until October 2014 was spent arguing about the government’s Rule 41(f) violation for all defendants, the court ruled against “us” in October.)
While waiting for the Court’s ruling, my attorney (and a few others) were pressing Becker for details about the NIT. On September 4, 2014 Becker presented the nonsense indicated at the bottom of page 2 of the PDF. Basically Becker began his disinformation campaign to convince defense counsel (and the Court) that the NIT was just a flash application, which in my case was complete and obvious bullshit!
So, I immediately told Gross that Becker was lying. That prompted Gross to send Becker the first email in the PDF below. Note Gross is loyally advocating for me and demanding the NIT’s source code in October. Sadly his loyalty wouldn’t last…
After that first awesome email, Becker was able to convince Gross that I was guilty of “something” by introducing a red herring (discussed in my April 9, 2013 post). As I explain on my About Me page – I knew that my NIT report was a fraud, I just didn’t know why in October of 2014.
I didn’t know the specifics at the end of 2014, but I knew something had changed with Gross as he stopped communicating with me in November and December of 2014. I didn’t know exactly why until I got these FOIA emails in 2025. As you can read on the last page of the PDF, Gross is all in on Becker’s alternative narrative (one totally negated by the information presented in my April, 9, 2013 post). The betrayals in this email are egregious and extensive, but none more so than telling Becker: “Basically I found numerous [images] in the thumbnail format located in the thumbnailcache … Further it seems to me that because Cottom’s hard drives are encrypted it is entirely possible that the “original” image was downloaded and stored encrypted as evidenced by the thumbnails.” Becker knew that Gross did not understand ANY of the digital evidence BUT since this thumbnail red herring was turning attention away from the NIT fraud, Becker played along.
As Gerry Spence (an attorney who never lost a criminal case) said “The operational word in every competent defense is attack. If you’re explaining and defending, you’re losing.” Gross was doing more than explaining and losing, he was selling me out wholesale. What Gross basically said in that email was that he agreed with Becker, I was guilty so let’s work together to railroad him into a conviction.
In the next installment, we’ll explore how my railroading began in January of 2015. BTW, if you think any of this was okay, just ask Google AI (IMO, it’s actually the best now): “Hypothetically, is it okay for a defense lawyer to go behind his client’s back and admit to the prosecutor that he agrees that his client is guilty?” You’ll learn that there was absolutely nothing OK about that December 4, 2014 email.