Harmeet Dhillon Confesses She Blew Off Her Don Lemon Homework - emptywheel

There’s a line in the response Don Lemon and Georgia Fort gave to DOJ’s bid to delay their trial that likely explains the real reason that Harmeet Dhillon and her lawyers are asking for a delay in their case: DOJ is experiencing “technical issues” with accessing the phones of the nine defendants, which might be another way to say at least some of the defendants have complex passwords for their phones, which can add months to exploiting them.

In their papers and at Mr. Lemon’s arraignment, the Government raised particular concern about the ability to timely produce the “data found in seized cellphones” because of the use of a filter team, id. at 4-5, and because technical issues with accessing the data itself. This case involves, at most, the cell phones seized incident to the arrests of the nine defendants, and data from conduct that allegedly occurred over a single day.

That’s not the excuse DOJ (which was too slovenly to change the title of the document they used as boilerplate) offered, though. They’re claiming that the amount of evidence in this case — described as 2,000 pages of reports!!!! — merits a complex designation.

Moreover, the Government submits that this case involves a large volume of discovery. The Government estimates that discovery will include approximately 2,000 pages of reports and various other documents, plus multiple videos of the incident, BWC videos of St. Paul PD interviews of some church members/victims, photographs, and data from cellphones and social media. The process of reviewing and producing some discovery materials (e.g., data found in seized cellphones) also will be prolonged by the Government’s use of a “filter team” to conduct initial reviews and privilege screens of seized data to ensure that defendants’ rights are adequately protected. Additional discovery materials are still being received. Accordingly, the Government will need additional time — certainly more than seven-days — to process the discovery (e.g., redact, number-stamp, index the discovery, etc.) and provide fulsome and orderly disclosures to defendants.

And if that doesn’t work, DOJ threw in at the end, could they pretty please have another 30 days and then still another 30, on top of the 31 they’ve already had, again hinting that they’ve had problems accessing some of the evidence in this case?

If the Court denies the motion for a complex case designation, the Government nonetheless asks, in the alternative, for an order that extends the deadline for the Government’s initial production of Rule 16 discovery for a period of 30 days, with an extra 30-day period for discovery materials that are not yet possessed by, or accessible to, the Government.

Lemon and Fort’s attorneys (remember, both have a long-time former MN AUSA on their defense teams) mocked the claim that this merited complex case designation, pointing to what gets called a complex trial in the district, including the fraud cases that served as pretext for this invasion.

In recent years, this District has seen cases of unusually massive scope and evidentiary volume, such as the Feeding Our Future cases or the Highs RICO prosecution, each of which warranted complex case designation by mutual agreement of the litigants. Cases like those involved approximately fifty defendants each, millions of pages of evidence, and conspiracies of sweeping temporal and geographic scope. This case has none of those characteristics.

Magistrate Judge Wright recently rejected the complex designation in a case charging five defendants with eight counts related to alleged drug trafficking over at least an eight-month period. See United States v. Alm, et. al., No. 25-CR-289-LMP-EMB, ECF 84 (Sept. 2, 2025). The Court characterized the case as “hardly unusual in this District,” despite the fact that the Government identified substantially more discovery and counts than it has identified here.

The other seven defendants called DOJ’s claim they need more time than they want to prepare for trial “paternalistic.”

When all accused demand adherence to the statutory timeline, the Government may not manufacture “complexity” by asserting that additional preparation time would be beneficial. The statute does not permit suspension of the Speedy Trial clock based on a paternalistic assessment of defense needs that the defense itself rejects.

But the real issue — again from the Lemon and Fort filing — is that DOJ rushed to charge this before investigating. Again, two defense teams with DOJ career prosecutors scold Trump’s legal blow-ins for failing to follow DOJ polices.

The Government provides no explanation (other than its unpreparedness) why it cannot get its house in order. But the Government cannot manufacture urgency and then invoke its own unreadiness as an excuse for delay.

As the Government should know, the Department of Justice’s own internal policies reinforce that prosecutors are expected to thoroughly assess evidence and discovery obligations

beforecharges are brought, as part of the charging decision, not afterward. The Justice Manual’s criminal discovery provisions direct prosecutors to fully understand their obligations under Rule 16, Brady, Giglio, and the Jencks Act and to “consider thoroughly how to meet discovery obligations in each case.” These important policies reflect how the Justice Department itself expects prosecutions to be conducted: investigate first, evaluate the evidence, and then determine whether and how to bring charges. There is nothing in the record before the Court that evinces thoughtful deliberation from the Government about this case. To the contrary, the Government’s backwards approach of charging first and investigating later underscores the points raised—and the relief sought—in Mr. Lemon and Ms. Fort’s Joint Motion to Disclose Grand Jury Proceedings. ECF 125.

And the problem may go further than difficulty accessing some of the phones; it may go to why they need to access the phones.

The government needs to show defendants used “force or threat of force or [] physical obstruction” to prove the FACE Act charge, for which there’s at best flimsy evidence, especially from Lemon and Fort.

They need to prove a conspiracy and intent to deprive Cities Church parishioners of their right to exercise their faith to prove the Conspiracy against Rights charge, something incompatible with the purpose of the protest. They might find evidence to support this in phone evidence; or they might find exculpatory evidence. Going to trial without knowing what is there would be reckless.

But they didn’t bother to look for this evidence before they charged it. Instead, Harmeet, especially, simply trolled and trolled and trolled, making false claims about what evidence existed without — she now confesses — having bothered to check what kind of evidence was there.