The trial of members of the Proud Boys accused of seditious conspiracy and other charges in connection with the January 6, 2021 events at the Capitol has been halted after leaked chat logs from an FBI Special Agent showed that she had been ordered by her boss to destroy evidence.
The chat logs were inadvertently disclosed to the defense by federal prosecutors, who also admitted that they had likely disclosed classified material to the defense team.
This has caused a delay in the trial, which has been ongoing for three months.
FBI Special Agent Nicole Miller, one of the lead investigators in the Proud Boys case, had been testifying about the group’s activities on January 6th when the chat logs were disclosed.
The messages were sent and received from colleagues related to the case, and were compiled into a spreadsheet that was reviewed by Miller before being filtered to ensure only relevant, unclassified exchanges were included.
However, some messages that DOJ officials say are likely classified were left in the final document as “hidden” rows in the Excel spreadsheet, and were discovered by the defense team, according to Politico.
They then began questioning Miller about these messages in front of jurors.
The leak has raised concerns about the conduct of the investigation, with suggestions that Miller may have failed to reveal relevant communications to the defense and potentially spied on privileged attorney-client communications.
The chat logs also suggest that Miller was asked by another agent to “edit out that I was present” during a meeting with a Confidential Human Source Informant.
U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly has paused the trial to determine how to handle the error.
The revelation of the leak is likely to be a setback for the prosecution, as the evidence presented in the trial may now be called into question.
It remains to be seen what impact this will have on the outcome of the trial.
