No. of Recommendations: 1
Here's a review of conspiracy law by Empty Wheel and then she applies it to the KAG indictment.
CONSPIRACY LAW – EIGHT THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
One: Co-conspirators don’t have to explicitly agree to conspire & there doesn’t need to be a written agreement; in fact, they almost never explicitly agree to conspire & it would be nuts to have a written agreement!
Two: Conspiracies can have more than one object- i.e. conspiracy to defraud U.S. and to obstruct justice. The object is the goal. Members could have completely different reasons (motives) for wanting to achieve that goal.
Three: All co-conspirators have to agree on at least one object of the conspiracy.
Four: Co-conspirators can use multiple means to carry out the conspiracy, i.e., releasing stolen emails, collaborating on fraudulent social media ops, laundering campaign contributions.
Five: Co-conspirators don’t have to know precisely what the others are doing, and, in large conspiracies, they rarely do.
Six: Once someone is found to have knowingly joined a conspiracy, he/she is responsible for all acts of other co-conspirators.
Seven: Statements of any co-conspirator made to further the conspiracy may be introduced into evidence against any other co-conspirator.
Eight: Overt Acts taken in furtherance of a conspiracy need not be illegal. A POTUS’ public statement that “Russia is a hoax,” e.g., might not be illegal (or even make any sense), but it could be an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Conspiracy law allows prosecutors to hold one cog in a larger crime responsible for the actions taken by everyone else with whom he entered into a conspiracy — and the agreement can be implicit (see Rule One). Once prosecutors show that a person has entered into a conspiracy — here, to transport migrants first into the US and then around the US — then he is on the hook for everything else his conspirators do. Conspiracy law allows prosecutors to rely on communications from some members of a conspiracy without requiring them to take the stand to validate those communications.
Two more points. First, it is totally normal for DOJ to refer to co-conspirators anonymously as they do here. In addition, it is not at all unusual for DOJ to throw a great deal of energy — such as (hypothetically) a cooperating agreement with CC1 and possibly even favorable treatment of CC6 to substantiate a case against a lesser member of a conspiracy if they want. That’s likely what happened here.
With that as background, here’s what the conspiracy looks like:
(there's a nice little chart about half way down)
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/06/07/the-kilmar-a... 