Category: Legal Commentary

bookmark_borderSeptember 4, 2014 to December 4, 2014

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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.

disloyal

bookmark_borderApril 9, 2013

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The attached FD-302 is a sanitized version of the events that transpired on April 9, 2013. It should be read as a cautionary tale about thinking law enforcement are the “good guys”. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren’t. In other words, every encounter is 50/50 (See the movie Crash.)

Shortly after I get home from work, there is a knock on my door as I’m fixing myself dinner on an idle Tuesday as the advice song warns: “The real troubles in your life … Are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind … The kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday”.

I go to the window that overlooks my front door and see two average looking white guys, I say “whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it” and one of the guys flashes an FBI badge and I go to open the door. That was a mistake, I should have immediately asked them – from the window – “Do you have a warrant?” This would have forced the bastards to reveal the warrant immediately; because I wouldn’t have opened the door without an affirmation.

Instead, I opened the door and let them inside, for what is legally called a “knock and talk”. They immediately began by asking me if I was a terrorist then quickly pivoted to asking if I was a member of the criminal images community. Again, I made the mistake of trying to defend myself and trying to be cooperative. In hindsight I should have 1) Not let them inside until they produced the warrant and 2) Said “I invoke my 5th Amendment right to remain silent”. As that would have put them in a bind, because their search warrant was based on fraudulent information.

In the PDF, you’ll see that the lead agent memorialized these events in the first four paragraphs of his FD-302. He based those paragraphs totally on the chicken scratch of first two pages of the PDF and his imagination. As you can see, the FD-302 is mostly a sanitized re-arrangement of what actually occurred, but thanks to no-one recording the “interview” (even though POS Becker ordered them to – See Nebraska Case No. 8:13CR106 Doc# 247 “Although Agent Koontz recorded the interview, due to an oversight she did not record the advisement of Miranda rights … Agent Koontz explained the oversight occurred because FBI policy did not permit her to record interviews; however, she recorded the interview with the defendant at the Department of Justice’s request”), it’s just my word against their’s; but I have receipts.

The key sanitization occurs in paragraph 5 where the agent (SA Couch) states “Cottom was then told that the FBI had a search warrant for his residence”. That is not what happened. In sum, the two Agents performed what is known as a “knock and talk” when they should have performed a “knock and announce”. But Courts often think this is just fine, so YOU need to be vigilant to protect your rights.

What actually occurred during those first 5 paragraphs was that the two Agents (who didn’t have clue of what computer they were looking for) got me to discuss Tor and what computer I used to access it. (At the time these idiots thought that using Tor was a key admission – Courts later rejected that belief.) That made them focus on my Linux computer for the triage, that was turned off in my office/bedroom. The lead agent then asked if I’d consent to a digital exam of that computer and I said “No, you’ll need a warrant for that.” Note how the lead agent left that FACT out of his 302. Odd no? Well, things just got odder from there.

Notice paragraph 6 states that “…a hard drive from Cottom’s desktop computer was looked at from behind a write blocker using X-Ways…” and that they located “multiple images…under the home/adama directory”. The lead agent then reports in paragraph 7 that “Cottom denied knowing how [images] had gotten onto his computer”. That’s not what happened, When SA Couch confronted me in the kitchen (were I was made to stay] about the images, I actually said “Bullshit, all the home directories are encrypted!” Couch being technically ignorant offers to show me. BIG Mistake!

SA Couch reports that after he showed me the images I just said “whatever” and walked away. Again, this is an egregious sanitization. First, I told the tech (SA Romus) – after looking at his laptop screen – “those are thumbnails genius and you wrote over an encrypted home directory to plant them, be sure to save the X-Ways log.” That caused the tech to immediately get angry and he shut down the triage. I told the lead agent “he planted the thumbnails in a decoy account”. SA Couch then responded with some nonsense and I said “whatever” and walked away from my office. The triage I saw (which they didn’t photograph, even though they took 74 pictures during the raid) consisted of the desktop’s 500GB drive on a TV table next to a laptop running X-ways. That’s right, he took a cold hard drive (off) out of my desktop computer and connected it to his laptop with a standard USB to SATA adapter (It was slim, thus not thick like a write blocker would have to be). When you look at exam chicken scratch you can see it just says “write blocker with an arrow to X-ways” no name or make was noted.

Here is what I observed from my kitchen table during the triage. The tech examined the hard drive for about an hour finding nothing but MP3 files (I had about a half a million). SA Couch stated “You have a lot of MP3s” And I replied “Yes”. I also knew that the home directories were encrypted, so I knew they couldn’t examine them. After that first hour, I saw an agent pick up my locked laptop and open its screen. I knew it would present him with my picture associated with the user name Adama. Unknown to them, the Adama account on my linux box was a decoy, it was there for hackers to make the mistake that the admin account on my windows computer was the same on my linux computer. So my decoy trapped these clowns, a few minutes later they claimed to have found images in Adama’s account. I knew they were lying because 1) I didn’t use that account (no-one could, it was locked in the shadow file) and 2) all home directories were encrypted – thus my response was “bullshit”. (Note: I am asserting that the tech had a script (likely python) that generated the fake thumbnails in seconds. He overwrote/modified the home directory fast because I had told them the linux os drive wasn’t encrypted (which it wasn’t). The tech just falsely assume the home directories weren’t encrypted either. Thus his fatal mistake.)

As you can see from the indecipherable notes the tech took, there is no way to contradict my story. So I had my attorney ask for the X-ways logs from the triage or a picture of it (because I knew they didn’t use a write blocker). The AUSA said neither was available. 100% Suspicious, you betcha! So that’s when they came to the agreement that my case would just be about the NIT. Since I was a legal novice at this time, I trusted my CJA Attorneys. As I’ve documented on this blog, that trust was misplaced

fd302

bookmark_borderThe Injustice System

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Exoneration projects prove our justice system has an epidemic of bad prosecutors. So the POS responsible for my illegal conviction is not a minority, but perhaps the majority.

Regardless, the Eighth Circuit rejected my petition (26-1808). I’m sending a “Motion for Clarification” today, but they’ll probably ignore it. So I feel that I should NOW explain why §2255(h)(1) is deeply unconstitutional.

FYI, a §2255 petition is one of the last ways a federally convicted person (like myself) can ask a court to fix a wrongful conviction. But since I have already filed a §2255, the rules for a second petition become much harder thanks to AEDPA. Under §2255(h)(1), I have to prove that I’ve obtained “new evidence” that proves that no reasonable person could still vote to convict me.

That sounds fair in theory, but in real life scenarios (like mine) it can become a HUGE unconstitutional obstacle. If (as in my case) the government hid evidence and someone (like me) only later got access to records that prove the case was built on lies (which I have done), the court can still refuse to grant the petition. Thus, I end up in a “procedural trap” because the evidence came too late, even though it proves my conviction was wrongfully obtained.

In other words, §2255 cares more about finality than truth. That means that even though I have irrefutable proof of serious wrongdoing, I still may not get a real chance at exoneration. If you’re a normal person -outside our corrupt judicial system- that is obviously ridiculously unfair.

So, at this point, my hopes rest in the WDNY court doing the right thing and un-redacting the email in Exhibit H. Since the 8th Circuit doesn’t have to tell me why they rejected my petition (thus my motion for clarification), I have to speculate. I’ve determined (with the help of AI and AUSA Tessie Smith’s perjurious response) that they justified the denial on their opinion that: “the petitioner relies on redacted FOIA documents (e.g Exhibit H) to allege unconstitutional collusion between the government and his defense team. Speculation regarding what the un-redacted documents might contain does not meet the clear and convincing evidence standard required to overcome the government’s presumption of regularity. Furthermore, allegations of attorney collusion must be proven concretely. Therefore, this Court will not overturn a conviction based on documentary inferences; the petitioner must prove the collusion through concrete evidence and the redacted documents do not meet this standard.”

If this makes you say “this shit is crazy!”, you are a sane person. The government has redacted the information that will get my case overturned. Talk about a conflict of interest! Speaking of conflicts of interests, would you be surprised to learn that Jospeh Leo Howard is in possession of an unreacted copy of Exhibit H? You shouldn’t be because he has (as documented on this blog) refused to supply a single page from my case file AND the Nebraska Counsel for Discipline has also failed to provide me with any acknowledgment of my complaint against him for not providing me with my case file. You should also not be surprised that my case file also contains emails from me to him on July 30, 2015 ordering him to prepare for trial. Proving that he went behind my back to negotiated a conditional plea with POS Becker without my permission. Worse, an email I got from the public defenders office proves that Howard and my public defender (who I trusted in 2015) conspired on July 30, 2015 to coerce me into taking that unauthorized conditional plea.

Howard is also in possession of emails (starting on August 4, 2015) proving that I wanted him to file paperwork to withdraw my plea. Howard ignored my requests from August until November, when he negotiated with POS Becker to do a “reverse proffer” to convince me not to withdraw my plea. When I arrived for the proffer, Joe thanked him for doing it and Becker replied “Sure, we have nothing to hide” That is when I knew Becker was lying. I just glowered at Becker during the proffer, Joe was like “could you try to hide your disdain for him a little?” I said “NO!” But after the proffer, Howard still refused to file the paperwork to withdraw the plea and only did so after I wrote the judge indicating that I didn’t trust Howard or POS Becker.

As this blog documents, during my incarceration in 2016 to 2018 I realized that I had been railroaded. Joe refused to provide me with my case file while incarcerated because it was “sealed” and I’m pretty sure he didn’t give Megan the whole file (but I’ve written that her former firm is also uncooperative). HUGE SIGH! Anyway, the bottom line is that I need un-redacted exhibits to win.

bookmark_borderFrom Bad to Worse

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As I noted a few weeks ago, the new Comey prosecution isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Then we had the ridiculously corrupt prosecution of the Broadview Six. Now, – this week – we topped off the prosecutorial misconduct with charging a guy for pulling debris from an algae infested “pool”.

Sadly, this kinda prosecutorial misconduct at the DOJ isn’t new; but – like everything else -, the current administration has put it on steroids. Which I guess is a good thing, the corruption in my case was easy for the Courts to ignore (hopefully they’ll finally correct that). But this blatant corruption on steroids is simply impossible to ignore. I suspect an AUSA is going to loose their Bar Card over this nonsense eventually. I know I hope Keith A. Becker does.

bookmark_borderDeadline is Today

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So the deadline to respond to my Habeas petition is due today, if they didn’t ask for another extension. I asked the FOIA Judge to speed up the un-redacting of Exhibit H and “they” thought it prudent to ask the AUSA in that lawsuit what they thought about that. Whatever, it will all come out in the end. It’s all just so corrupt. As the Cato institute has documented, there is a strong AUSA bias in federal Courts. They asserted “the key takeaway is that the composition of the federal judiciary is massively imbalanced in favor of former government advocates compared with former government opponents” SMDH!

Update June 25, 2026 – The AUSA filed their pathetic and perjurious response to my petition on June 4, 2026 (I got it in the mail on June 11, 2026). I mailed my response to their response reiterating that TB2’s LOG IS FAKE, and it was filed on June 16, 2026. I now await the Court’s decision…

bookmark_borderHam Sandwich Indictments

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As I’ve been stating since 2021 when I started this blog, it is an objective statement of fact that a “good” prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. The term was coined by a Judge in 1985. My case proves that correct, but the current indictment against Comey is a concrete example of this fact.

The problem with grand juries is that the process is flawed. It’s supposed to be made up of skeptical members of the society (your peers). But it is often made up of partisan hacks, highly sympathetic and deferential to the prosecutor as a trustworthy person who wouldn’t lie to them. Unfortunately, many prosecutors (like Keith A. Becker) are not trustworthy people.

As one former prosecutor put it; “I became a prosecutor because I don’t like bullies. I stopped being a prosecutor because I don’t like bullies.” – I concur…

bookmark_borderIndisputable Evidence of Parallel Construction

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As explained almost two years ago, Parallel Construction was used to prosecute me. “My experts” made numerous false claims about the NIT, which I’ve discussed many times before, but here are some new lies I’ve recently discovered thanks to recent documents I’ve received from the public defender’s office.

Ashley’s 2016 report (while much more accurate than her perjurious 2015 report) contains new deliberate lies. The one I’d like to discuss now is in Section 2.6 of her 2016 report, where she lies: “… the cornhusker log indicates that [the] DNS request was made via the proxy server and that data was not logged in this case.” Also remember that they refused to answer the simple question about the huge time gaps. My experts were PH.d holders or candidates at the time these reports were written and are today considered to be experts in their field, so the idea that they didn’t know that statement was a lie is preposterous, Because:

Flash could not make any connections (DNS or TCP/IP) through the proxy server! (In this case TOR). Worse, the time gaps are too long. How they claim the NIT worked “in my case” was that gallery.php was loaded in a hidden iframe located on a TB2’s html pages (in my case index.html and 1481.html). As I explained previously, that scheme intentionally scrubs the actual referring page from the fabricated “Visitors” table. Anyway, while gallery.php is making those bogus entries into the visitors table, it is also sending the browser javascript to load gallery.swf (the Flash App). The browser then loads Flash Player to execute gallery.swf. Flash Player ignores the browsers proxy settings and instead uses the OS networking stack (in my case Ubuntu 12.04LTS). Default DNS timeout settings were 10 seconds for each server or 20 seconds total, so that means the 39 & 63 seconds delays were impossible!

Even worse, the FBI forensic report for my Ubuntu machines clearly states that Adama’s home was unencrypted and its account was locked in the shadows file, while the other two accounts had encrypted home and unlocked shadow file entries. What does that mean? My Ubuntu Machine was Hacked or Tampered with… as the only way to lock an account is to be root (or have sudo) and type in a command in a terminal to lock the account.

That’s why no defense expert actually examined the machine, it would have been obvious that someone (FBI?) had tampered with the machine.

bookmark_borderI need more…

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So I got this in the mail yesterday from Jeff Ciccone AFPD:

I am in receipt of your most recent letter dated September 16, 2025, inquiring about records relating to your prior federal case. Specifically, you asked whether I redacted code from an e-mail or if that code was already redacted. You also asked me to confirm that other e-mails were deleted by your prior attorney. I can tel you that I did not redact code or delete any emails. My previous letter to you contained all of the documents in the Federal Public Defender’s Office’s file that were responsive to your original request.

There are missing e-mails, the most crucial ones are from July 30, 2015 to December 2015. I mean it’s clear several emails are missing from the chain I posted. I think the times are messed up because the two lawyers were in different time zones. Steven’s in EST, and Joe is an hour behind him in CST. So I think the first email on the pages was actually received at the time indicated EST, but Joe sent it at 2:53pm. That’s the only way it makes sense for him to meet with the Judge and be back at 4pm CST, 5pm EST…

So the first e-mail in this chain is actually the last e-mail on the two pages. Joe sent it to Steven @ 2:08pm CST (which was 3:08 EST). Steven then replied to that message @ 2:11pm CST and then the last message in this chain occurred at 2:53 CST.

So, the subject of the first message (confirmed by the absence of RE:) is “Petition to Plead Guilty”. As I pointed out yesterday, Joe didn’t have permission to negotiate any plea deal and he alludes to this fact in the contents of this first missive. Joe also attached a pdf of the petition, that Steven deleted (see bottom of missive). Note that Joe is replying to an unasked question by begining with: I have not yet received the Plea Agreement. I suppose any time now, but in our district we must also file a Petition to Enter a Plea of Guilty. This trend of answering unasked questions will continue in this chain…

At 2:11 CST (or after having the petition for 3 minutes) Steven replies “It looks good … I’ll conference you in when he gets here”. My recollection of the events of that day contradict this narrative as I remember Steven e-mailed me around 4pm EST asking if I’d come to his office to discuss the case at 5pm EST, so he couldn’t have anticipated my 5pm arrival at 3:11pm EST… The last e-mail in this chain occurs 42 minutes later and we are clearly missing some communications between Steven & Joe; because, Joe answers an unasked question from Steven, “I have heard nothing…” and then asks Steven a question and he deleted his reply or answered Joe by phone…

One thing I noticed – during this ordeal – is that when lawyers are doing something illegal or unethical, they always do it verbally, either in person or on the phone…

bookmark_borderI Knew it… Two

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I knew everything about the case against me was fraudulent; But, when your experts are conspiring with the prosecution, there is simply no way for you not to get railroaded. Note how I complained to Steven below about what I suspected happened (and now in 2025 know for a fact occurred):

June-26-2015

It you look on page 8 of the shills 2016 report you’ll see that the scenario above is mentioned for the first time in Section 2.7 # 2. They lied again when they claimed to have found no evidence that, that occurred. This is a lie because Figures 3, 4 & 5 (in their 2016 report) clearly shows the FBI code is intentionally scrubbing the actual referring page… The only reason to scrub the referring page is to hide its actual identity and the only reason to do that is to hide the fact that the FBI was literally “iframing” people for visiting TB2.

bookmark_borderThis is so bad…

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So in 2022 I tried to get the shills to answer questions. They refused and do not inform me of their 2016 report that contradicts their 2015 report. I do not find their 2016 report until 2023… So now I’ve proven that the shills were a part of Becker’s Conspiracy.

Now, I know that my lawyers were also a part of that conspiracy (instead of being confused by the shills lies). Their role included proffering the shills nonsense (that just confirmed the government’s lies) to the Court and coercing me to accept a conditional plea. Here are the events that lead up to my railroading: 

July 29, 2015: I view the evidence book with my Attorney, Mr. Howard and his “expert”, Mr. Kasel. I’m not impressed and order Mr. Howard to prepare for the Daubert hearing and trial. (If I won the Daubert hearing the case was over, if I lost the hearing we would proceed to trial, both scheduled for August 3, 2015.) I fly back to Rochester that evening and return to work the next day.

July 30, 2015 (8am to 4pm): Mr. Howard e-mails me all day, trying to get me to agree to allow him to negotiate a plea I’d enter into if we lost the Daubert hearing on August 3, 2015. I repeatedly order Mr. Howard to prepare for trial and that he did not have permission to negotiate any plea deal. He then tries to call me on the phone, I refuse to answer.

July 30, 2015 (4pm to 6pm): A little after 4pm, Mr. Slawinski e-mails me and asks if I would come to his office, I agree. Once there I’m ambushed by him, Mr. Howard and Mr. Gross to accept a “conditional plea” deal, that none of them had permission to negotiate. They coerce me into agreeing to the conditional plea by convincing me that it was like a “Nolo contendere” plea, when they knew that it wasn’t.

Now this recently disclosed passage from a previously posted e-mail chain confirms their participation in Becker’s conspiracy:

“I don’t want to drop it on him without one of us there… If he is in your presence, I think we may have more influence on him, and I think he needs the in person encouragement and advice.”

So he admits he will be “dropping” the plea agreement on me. That confirms he knows that I don’t know that it’s coming (because I repeatedly told him to prepare for trial). In the second sentence Howard admits he coerced me to take the plea because he knew I would reject the agreement unless they “encouraged” me to take it.