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Something went down today!

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/12/14/politics/mueller-grand-jury-mysterious-friday/index.html

Washington (CNN) Fridays at the DC federal courthouse are typically days of high alert for the press corps trying to discern what special counsel Robert Mueller’s next legal action will be.

But this Friday, court officials went to extreme measures to ensure it was as difficult as possible to figure out what Mueller’s team was doing as the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held a secret and mysterious argument about a grand jury subpoena challenge.

An entire floor of the courthouse was closed to the public and press for more than an hour. During that time, attorneys secretly entered the courthouse to argue before three federal appellate judges over a grand jury subpoena.

Typically, DC Circuit Court arguments run smoothly, one after another until three cases have been argued publicly, starting at 9:30 am in a large, portrait-lined courtroom on the Fifth Floor of the federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue. But after Circuit judges David Tatel, Thomas Griffith and Stephen William — who coincidentally has written two books on Russian history — heard an immigration-related case Friday morning, the courthouse security went into lockdown mode.

Tatel, Griffith and Williams took a brief recess, indicating they’d return to the courtroom shortly.

Then, security officers cleared the appeals courtroom, allowing only about a dozen law clerks working for federal judges to stay behind, including at least one who assists Howell with her cases.

Security guards also cleared the vestibule to the courtroom and checked the coat closet where attorneys coming to listen to arguments stash their belongings. They locked the door leading to the attorneys’ lounge on that floor and shooed the more than 20 reporters prowling the hall away from the elevator bank and told them to vacate the nearby stairwells. At one point, even an elevator wouldn’t open its doors on the fifth floor.

The entire level of the building on which the appeals court is housed was locked down.

More details - They’re implying Trump!

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/14/mystery-mueller-subpoena-fight-1065409

FTA:
POLITICO originally broke the story in October that Mueller’s team — which is investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russians trying to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump tried impede the ongoing probe — had been dragged into court by a witness battling a subpoena. POLITICO discovered the Mueller connection after a reporter sitting in the court’s clerk office overheard a man request a document in the case from the special counsel’s office. The man declined to identify himself or his client when approached by POLITICO.

Another clue linking the case to Mueller came a few weeks later when lawyers for the witness fighting the subpoena asked the full bench of the appeals court to review a lower court decision on the case. A notation in the legal docket said only nine of the court’s 10 active judges participated — Judge Greg Katsas, the court’s only Trump appointee and who had worked on the Russia probe while serving in the Trump White House, had recused himself. During his confirmation hearing, Katsas said he would take a broad view of his recusal obligations stemming from that experience.

The enigmatic case took another twist when POLITICO Magazine published an opinion piece by former federal prosecutor Nelson Cunningham suggesting Trump himself was the person who had gotten a subpoena and was fighting Mueller.

“At every level, this matter has commanded the immediate and close attention of the judges involved — suggesting that no ordinary witness and no ordinary issue is involved,” Cunningham wrote.

Mueller’s office has repeatedly declined comment about the case, and a spokesman for the special counsel did so again on Friday.

Meanwhile, Trump’s personal lawyers denied in early October that the president had anything to do with the case, and Trump himself insisted he wasn’t locked in any kind of subpoena battle with Mueller when pressed by reporters later that month.

More anticipation had been building in recent weeks about who had gotten the subpoena after a series of additional tantalizing clues were filed in the docket, including sealed multi-page briefs and sealed letters updating the judges on recent events affecting the case.

Friday’s long-scheduled oral arguments had long been seen as the best opportunity yet to identify the litigants.

More than a dozen reporters lined up in the hallway outside the courtroom about an hour before the first of three cases were set to be argued before U.S. Court of Appeals Judges David Tatel, Thomas Griffith and Stephen Williams.

Reporters and members of the public were free to enter the courtroom during the first two cases. But the secrecy clampdown quickly followed as the court shifted gears to the sealed grand jury case. A security officer wearing blue rubber gloves checked the chambers for any devices left behind. The live audio feed went dead.

And then the clerk kicked the journalists off the entire fifth floor.

Determined to keep covering the story, reporters spread out around the courthouse and quickly set up a group email chain to pool their resources and communicate about who saw what in the hallways, elevators, staircases and entrances throughout the building. One television network reporter even stood guard at the top of a ramp leading to a secure parking garage where Mueller’s team has been known to bring in clandestine grand jury witnesses.

As the media played cat-and-mouse with the courtroom security guards — several reporters were reprimanded for waiting in stairwells — the additional measures undertaken Friday surprised many people familiar with the federal building’s practices.

“It’s not the norm, that’s for sure,” Manuel Retureta, a Washington-based defense lawyer not involved in the Mueller probe but who is frequently at the courthouse, said as he observed the scene.

After about 90 minutes, court security officials allowed the journalists to return to the fifth-floor hallway, where the courtroom doors were still closed. A few minutes later, reporters spotted the judges walking back to their offices. No one with any apparent ties to the case were spotted leaving the building.