Theodore Boutrous Jr., a lawyer for The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press – an organization fighting to get more information about the mysterious grand jury subpoena case suspected to involved Special Counsel Robert Mueller – confirms Alston & Bird is representing the foreign-owned company in the matter.
CNN reported the firm's involvement earlier this month but did not know whom or what it represented.
In a brief filed by lawyers for the committee Monday, however, the committee stated that “the government has revealed Petitioner’s counsel’s name (and law firm) to counsel for the Reporters Committee.” The information was revealed to the committee’s lawyers when the government “cc’d Petitioner’s attorney” on its response to the committee’s motion to intervene at the Supreme Court. “Rather than objecting to this revelation, Petitioner’s counsel responded to the full email group and acknowledged receipt,” the committee’s lawyers detailed in Monday’s filing.
After being asked about the filing Monday, Boutrous provided a statement to BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, detailing those circumstances and noting, “Petitioner’s counsel did not object to the government’s disclosure originally, and neither party has suggested to us in their emails or otherwise that we need to keep counsel’s identity a secret. Nor has any party responded, let alone objected, to what we said in our brief, confirming that we know the name of Petitioner’s counsel. After we filed our reply brief in the Supreme Court, we served the brief on both parties, and neither party said anything about keeping counsel’s name confidential. In fact, Petitioner’s counsel even responded to us, confirming receipt of our papers.
“Given these circumstances, we believe that there are no restrictions on us and that it is appropriate for us to confirm that, based on the events described above, the identity of Petitioner’s counsel in the Supreme Court is Brian Boone of Alston & Bird.”
CNN:
Wednesday night, Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia released a redacted version of the proceedings at the trial court level. CNN had asked for this unsealed but redacted document more than two weeks ago, a request that contributed to Howell asking both the Justice Department and the mystery company to weigh in and propose redactions and subsequently release the information.
The newly public docket reveals little else than what's already known about the subpoena -- that Mueller's team sought information from a company wholly owned by a foreign government, and that company has been fighting the subpoena in the federal courts since August. But it does confirm that CNN's and other news outlets' previous reporting on the matter, which the special counsel's office has refused to comment on, is correct.
CNN says the proceedings line up with its own reporting which would confirm Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team is involved in the case.
CNN previously wrote that prosecutors from Mueller's office went to an hourlong sealed hearing in Howell's courtroom on September 11, 2018. The redacted docket shows this hearing led to Howell's first decision on the subpoena, that it was likely to lead prosecutors to records of commercial activity that directly affected the US and that would relate to a grand jury investigation.
On October 5, after the company lost an appeal, Howell called Mueller's team and defense attorneys from Alston & Bird to her courtroom for a second sealed hearing ... She said the company, now called a "witness" in the docket, was in contempt of court for not turning over information to the grand jury and would be fined $50,000 for each day it didn't comply.
The company days later appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and after losing there pushed its appeal to the Supreme Court, which hasn't yet agreed to take the case.
The Supreme Court will discuss the possibility of hearing questions related to what's public in the case -- but not the subpoena challenge itself -- on February 15.
Court begins to fill in details of mystery Mueller case (CNN)
We Now Know The Law Firm Representing The Mystery Foreign-Owned Company That Is Fighting A Grand Jury Subpoena (BuzzFeed News)