(NewsHill.org)- Defense lawyers in the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial last week claimed that the internal FBI chat messages from a prosecution witness, FBI agent Nicole Miller, included suspicious exchanges related to the case against their clients, Politico reported.
Miller testified last week in the case, detailing the Proud Boys’ march to the Capitol on January 6. Once her testimony was concluded, prosecutors provided the defense with Miller’s internal chat messages.
But as they reviewed the messages, the defense discovered that the prosecutors inadvertently provided thousands of additional chat messages in the spreadsheet in hidden rows. Miller had tried to filter out these messages, sent to her from other agents, as she was screening for relevant information in the Proud Boys case.
According to the defense, the filtered messages appeared related to the case against their clients. Defense attorneys argued that they should be allowed to question Miller about the filtered messages when the trial resumes.
When attorney Nicholas Smith began questioning Miller on the messages last Thursday on behalf of his client Ethan Nordean, prosecutors objected, arguing that the filtered messages contained a “spill” of classified information. Defense lawyers argued that this was being used as a pretense to shut down the review of the filtered messages.
US District Court Judge Timothy Kelly called off the trial last Friday to give prosecutors and the defense time to present arguments on the messages.
On Monday, Judge Kelly rejected all but one request from defense attorneys to include the messages in the trial, saying the messages are mostly statements by other agents on things that are unrelated to the case, Fox News reported.
Kelly said he would allow the defense to cross-examine Miller on one message in which an agent asked another to remove his name from a report related to a confidential human source.
The judge also said that a separate motion to suspend all January 6 trials due to the revelations from footage aired last week on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” was not likely to succeed. However, Kelly said he would not rule on the motion until he receives the prosecution’s response.
