IT'S A RICO CASE:

News of those significant redactions broke early Thursday morning and Law&Crime has a lengthy write-up of the overall story here. The amount of information released, however, is somewhat dizzying and part of an increasingly complex story line. We turned to the experts for the upshot of this groundbreaking release.

Federal defense attorney and computer law expert Tor Ekeland was appalled.

In an email, Ekeland rubbished DOJ's decision-making:

This is a mess. Did they provide a redaction log listing the basis for their redactions, e.g., privilege or word product or what not? You just don't get to redact things willy nilly because you don't want information that looks bad coming to public view. There might be cognizable privilege claims for redaction here, but when you try to ascertain what, you quickly get mired in the confusion and chaos of this administration. In order to claim privilege for redactions, you first need to be clear on who is claiming the privilege, and what privilege is being claimed. It's not immediately clear from this romper room mess.

Just Security's co-editor-in-chief and former Department of Defense special counsel Ryan Goodman explained several key aspects of the release in a thread on Twitter Thursday morning.

"The emails appear to contradict OMB General Counsel [Mark] Paoletta's letter to Congress (which set forth new rationale for hold on Ukraine aid on eve of HJC vote on impeachment articles)," he said. Goodman cited the following sentence from that letter as an intentionally false statement:

In fact, at no point during the pause in obligations did DOD OGC indicate to OMB that, as a matter of law, the apportionments would prevent DOD from being able to obligate the funds before the end of the fiscal year.

"When Politico broke the news of Ukraine hold in August, what did OMB General Counsel Paoletta do?" Goodman continued. "He circulated false Talking Points. The Deputy Under Secretary of Defense in an email said that Paoletta's talking point was 'just not accurate' and that OMB knew it to be false."

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