Category: Litigation

My Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation goal is to prove, once and for all, that I was railroaded. If I get the documents I have requested, they will prove that Ashley Podhradsky, Matt Miller & Josh Stroschein (aka the shills) conspired with Becker to railroad Kirk Cottom.

They may also shed light or provide other details about the conspiracy. For example, my request might contain answers to the following questions:

• How did the shills become involved with my case in January of 2015? (I suspect Becker recommended them.)
• Why didn’t any of my five (5) defense experts (Gerry Grant, Shawn Kasel & the shills) examine my linux machine? (I suspect it was because they knew it would expose Adama account tampering – planting evidence – and the implausibility of Becker’s narrative.)
• Why didn’t any of my defense attorneys ask one simple question about the TB2 NIT Warrant for Nebraska and Elsewhere? (Can a magistrate in Nebraska issue a warrant to search a computer in New York? – I suspect it was because the answer was NO in 2012.)
• Why did the shills examine the wrong server in January of 2015? (I suspect it was to support Becker’s conspiracy.)
• Why didn’t my attorney (Howard) fire the shills? (I suspect Becker influenced his decision as Howard refuses to answer any questions about continuing the shills involvement in my case.)
• Why did the shills present TB2’s logs as legitimate when any expert could have easily determined that Tinyboard doesn’t log visitor activity? (I suspect it was to support Becker’s conspiracy.)

Those are just the questions that I’m pretty sure my FOIA request will answer, but I think many other questions might be answered as well. For example, the role parallel construction plays in federal prosecutions. As I mentioned before, I’m convinced that the entire NIT system is parallel construction and that the NSA tool known as FOXACID was actually responsible for initiating and investigating Operation Torpedo & Pacifier. “We” should have answers next month… stay tuned.

As indicated at the top of the month, I filed my FOIA lawsuit on June first. About a week later it got the civil case # 23-CV-6307. Included in the envelope was thorough documentation from the clerk, informing me of how the litigation will proceed and a consent form for the case to be heard by a federal magistrate (instead of a federal judge). I filed out the form and returned it to the clerk.

As you can see my “COUNTS” in a previous post, something interesting happened yesterday with regards to COUNT 2. The request that was previously ignored by the DOJ has now been miraculously acknowledged and given a request number of: 301907607. Something that I found interesting was the fact that the letter informing of this, also acknowledged that they received my request on February 16, 2023. SO, they got my letter, stored it somewhere and failed to acknowledge it until I sued them.

Yep, crazy corrupt are they… can’t wait for their probably corrupt response…

Over the last year or so, I’ve tried to get records regarding Operation Torpedo the predecessor to Operation Pacifier. I have my own highly suspect NIT Report & I made a simple request to receive the other 13 reports that solely supported the indictments. The DOJ and its component the FBI claims they couldn’t find these documents. My Lawsuit asserts that is bullshit.

Additionally, my lawsuit concerns the fact that the DOJ totally ignored my other request I made to the Criminal Investigations Unit (where Keith A Becker works) requesting all correspondence Becker sent and received from various parties relating to Operation Torpedo & Operation Pacifier.

I want that information because of an article written in a German news outlet (Tagesschau). They worked with a team of experts to examine some leaked Xkeyscore source code… they found that If you take certain steps to mask your identity online, the NSA will target you. That targeting is absolutely illegal and if it played any part in Operation Torpedo & Operation Pacifier then that’s a big problem. I’m hoping my lawsuit will prove Tagesschau’s suspicions.

So, it looks like my requests will be heading to litigation in June. Complaints will be:

COUNT 1
Violation of 5 U.S.C § 552 for failure to produce 13 NIT Reports
Cottom hereby incorporates by reference all proceeding paragraphs in this complaint. By letter dated December 21, 2022; Cottom’s request for the NIT Reports was denied by the Defendant and in clear violation of FOIA law.
Mr. Hurd (in his role as administrative arbiter) declared that the the Defendant’s illegal response was “appropriate”. Therefore, with regards to COUNT 1, Cottom has exhausted his administrative remedies and is entitled to receive all responsive non-exempt documents from the Defendant immediately.

COUNT 2
Violation of 5 U.S.C § 552 for failure to produce Keith A. Becker’s communications. (Operation Torpedo & Operation Pacifier)
Cottom hereby incorporates by reference all proceeding paragraphs in this complaint. By letter dated February 1, 2023; Cottom requested documents from the FOIA/PA Unit – Department of Justice – Room 803, Keeney Building Washington, DC 20530-001.
To date, the DOJ has refused to acknowledge Cottom’s legally binding request for all correspondence (formal and informal) from DOJ Attorney Keith A. Becker (“Becker”) to FBI Special Agents, Foreign Law Enforcement Agents, Prosecution & Defense Attorneys and Prosecution & Defense Experts, regarding the Becker’s Operation Torpedo (2012 to 2015) & Operation Pacifier (2015 to 2018). In other words, it is indisputable that the DOJ is in possession of the requested correspondence and is legally required to acknowledge and answer the request.
Therefore, with regards to COUNT 2, Cottom has exhausted his administrative remedies and is entitled to receive all responsive non-exempt documents from the Defendant immediately.

So, thanks to a PACER alternative, I now know Keith A. Becker (“Becker”) is absolutely guilty of prosecutorial misconduct in my case. In other words, I can now prove, with his closing argument from another case, that Becker knew he was lying in my case.

It’s important to understand exactly what misconduct occurred. First misconduct was obtaining a fraudulent search warrant for TB2 that was also void ad initio. (Void on its face because the magistrate wasn’t allowed to issue it on November 18, 2012.) This search warrant was fraudulently obtained because it based it’s “probable cause” on evidence Becker knew, or should have known didn’t exist. (As I explained in this post)

Second act of Becker misconduct concerns his use of that fraudulently obtained data to fraudulently obtain an indictment in Nebraska as explained in this post.

Third act of misconduct concerns his denial of malfeasance. As I explained extensively in this post, Becker knew he was caught in November of 2014 but instead of folding he doubled down.

Now, I’m trying to pin down the details of the conspiracy. As I noted in this post, the shills refuse to answer questions. None of the lawyers will answer my questions and the FBI is stonewalling.

I found this tidbit on the pacer alternative:

The judge has instructed you. It’s knowingly accessing with intent to view a computer disk of other material. What do we mean in this context? We mean [the] web server. That server was located here in Omaha. That sever had on it all the [contraband] images that were available on [the] website. That’s [what constitutes] the computer disk or other material.

And that the defendant knew that it contained [contraband]. Well, how do you know that? Well, you’ve seen the records of the defendant’s conduct. You’ve seen the screen shots of the site and what it looked like to its users and members. And you’ve seen what the defendant saw each day that he went and accessed these particular materials.

Now, again on the access with intent count [sic], ladies and gentlemen, you’ve got a guide. And your guide to these counts is [sic] Exhibits 5A through D and 6A though D…

5A through D are portions of that board data, the logs, that exist for the defendant’s conduct for November 18th until December 8th [2012]…

We’ve got a portion of Exhibit 5A broken up on the screen here. On the top part, we see the date and time. We’ve heard a lot about UTC, Universal Coordinated Time [sic]. It means the user took an action and that’s the time that the website recorded it…

We see the session identifier. Now remember the testimony of Special Agent Gordon, Special Agent Smith. A session ID is an individual, unique identifier for on particular session on the board.

What’s a session? Log-on to log off. One session, one unique series of characters just like you see on the screen.

Becker closing arguments 8:13CR105 Docket # 236 Pages 133 & 134

And I found this in my filing cabinet:

B. “Modified Tinyboard Application that Ran TB2” … 6. “TB2 servers apache access logs.” As we previously informed you via e-mail, Apache logs were not utilized to correlate website and NIT Data.”

Becker message to Howard on July 20, 2015

And I have this Becker quote from my withdrawal hearing:

And so the government was in control of the website TB2 and that means there are logs of activity from that website. That’s one batch of evidence. And some of the government’s evidence comes from those logs, including Apache logs which Special Agent Smith testified about at our last hearing. Then there is also information that is generated and collected via use of the NIT, and that’s a separate batch of information.

Becker statement on 12-16-2015

Now, combine those three quotes and compare them to the fact that Tinyboard doesn’t have any logs and you have a very easy perjury conviction. Now I’m trying to get exhibits 5A through 5D from the court and trying to get the shills to answer my questions (trying to hire a lawyer to ask them those questions on their stationary.

I’ll keep y’all informed…

…Based on the information you provided, we conducted a main entity search of the Central Records System (CRS) per our standard search policy. However, we were unable to identify records subject to the FOIPA that are responsive to your request. Therefore, your request is being closed…

Signed, Michael G. Seidel

Yeah, a major “cover up” is in progress y’all! The fact that this took almost a year for them to generate this non-response is irrefutable proof of their institutional malfeasance in my opinion…

The incompetence and dishonestly in my case probably shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but it does. I just found a transcript online. It documents how my lawyer betrayed me On Monday July 27, 2015 by attending a conference hearing about my then pending trial without telling me… and it provides several smoking guns.

First, it shows Keith Becker allowed the judge to continue to be confused about the venue of the charges. The judge wrongly thinks that my case is like Tidwell’s. It’s not because Tidwell was accused of visiting the other website in the sting, that ran on PHPBB software.

Second, it showed Becker misled the judge about the venue for the charges by agreeing with the wrong statement that my case was like Tidwell’s, when he knew that it wasn’t. (i.e The Daubert motion wouldn’t kill Tidwell’s prosecution)

Finally, it shows that my lawyer stated that he was confused about everything and was relying totally on the shills, that he wouldn’t fire. (And still won’t tell me why he didn’t fire them.)

The more I dig, the more frustrated and confused I get. This was a serious conspiracy… Still waiting for the FOIA requests to get processed. SMDH

I guess I can understand why some might be skeptical despite the evidence thus provided on this site. Behold the Void Ab Initio warrant that started my railroading. As you can see the warrant’s first page, it is void (invalid) on its face (legalize for obviously) because it says it’s for “Nebraska and elsewhere” and it’s signed by a Magistrate Judge named Gosset who didn’t have any authority to issue a warrant for “elsewhere” or anywhere outside of the district of Nebraska. (See US v Horton for the particulars). In sum, the NIT Warrant was challenged on this ground (being void ab initio) in a subsequent case (Operation Pacifier 2015) and all the circuits gave the FBI the “good faith” exception without acknowledging that this was their second (Operation Torpedo 2012 was first) infraction. Therefore had any of the Operation Torpedo defense lawyers been competent, Operation Pacifier wouldn’t have happened…

On the second page you can see that the “NIT” was deployed at 7pm on November 18, 2012. If you view the graphic on my about page you’ll see that my IP is accused of loading two html files from TB2 @ 7:12 & 7:15pm CST. That means the only time my IP visited TB2 was 12 and 15 minutes after the NIT was deployed on TB2 and my IP never visited the site again during the two week sting operation. Which, or course, is suspicious…

On the third page, you can see that the NIT will deploy to any IP address that loads any page on TB2, regardless of what caused the request. For example, a redirect or an iframe call will all be considered “accessing”, this – of course – is nonsense.

On the Final page you can see that the FBI lied about what they were searching for because, as the new expert report, indicated: “A unique session identifier sent by Hidden Service B” doesn’t exist because Tinyboard doesn’t issue session ids to visitors.

voidadinitio

So, back in March I sent the FBI a FOIA request and was assigned the request no. 1526159 and didn’t hear anything from then since. So in August I sent the DOJ’s “Office of Information Policy” (this is the place you appeal to if your request is denied) a “WTF?” letter. I got their response Friday, it said:

DOJ regulations provide for an administrative appeal to the Office of Information Policy only after there has been an adverse determination… As no adverse determination has yet been made… there is no action for this Office to consider… However, I can assure you that this Office has contacted the FBI and has been advised that your request is currently being processed. If you are dissatisfied with the FBI’s response, you may appeal again to this Office.

The letter was illegibly signed by someone from the Office of Information Policy.

I must have been attacked with FoxAcid. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. I spent most of my brief “Tor time” on legal freedom hosting hosted sites (for example the Hidden Wiki) and they were, from various reports, deemed to be a high priority for NSA spies.

I’ve got several FOIA requests in play at the moment, I’ll report when/if I get anything…