By Suneel Chakravorty
In this article, I will respond to Bangkok’s challenge regarding the claim of evidence tampering.
First, a significant correction: I am not claiming that the FBI agents in Raniere’s case planted child porn.
I am claiming they planted pictures of an adult woman, Cami, which they then backdated so that Cami appears to be 15 in the pictures. Why? If the pictures are from 2005, Cami is 15. If the pictures are from 2010, Cami is 20, and there is no valid predicate act for the racketeering charge of possession of child porn or sexual exploitation of a minor.
I would first direct Bangkok to review the evidence presented in this Frank Report exclusive published prior to Raniere’s sentencing.
There are a few points worth reiterating.
First: FBI agents seized a hard drive, a camera and a camera card from Raniere’s library on March 27, 2018.
Sometime after they seized it, the FBI lost custody of one of the devices, the camera card. During the time, the FBI “lost custody” it was accessed and altered by some unknown person on September 19, 2018 (which is about six months after the devices were collected.)
Finally the card arrived at the evidence lab in an unsealed cellophane bag.
The government’s expert witness FBI forensic examiner Brian Booth, of the Computer Analysis Response Team (CART), testified to these facts on June 13, 2019 at the trial of Raniere:
Booth: The file system data appears to have been changed.
Raniere’s Defense Attorney Paul DerOhanessian: When we say “changed,” it was changed while it was in the possession of the FBI?
Booth: If I’m taking the dates on when we received it, it would appear so.
…
DerOhanessian: Do you have any record in any piece of evidence or notes that reflects the accessing of Government Exhibit 524 [camera card] by any representative of the FBI on September 19, 2018?
Booth: No, I do not.
…
DerOhanessian: And with respect to Government Exhibit 524, the LEXAR card, was that submitted to you in a bag of some sort?
Booth: Yeah, it was a cellophane bag.
DerOhanessian: Was it a sealed cellophane bag?
Booth: No, it was not.
***
FBI Senior Examiner Brian Booth testified about his examination of electronic evidence found on a hard drive, a memory card and a Canon EOS camera, that the FBI seized from a townhouse at 8 Hale Drive in Halfmoon, N.Y., which Keith Raniere called his ‘executive library.’
Nude photos of Cami were found in a folder on the hard drive. Prosecutors said Raniere used the camera to take the photos of Cami when she was 15.
Prosecutors introduced as court exhibits metadata for the Cami images, including what appear to be date stamps that show the photos were taken on Nov. 2 and 24, 2005, when Camila was 15, which, because of her age, qualified it as child porn. These devices were critical evidence in the case. The FBI admitting to losing custody of one of the devices, should have made the devices inadmissible as evidence.
Second, the government’s argument is forensically invalid. Their key facts are 1) the picture metadata dates are in 2005, 2) the folder names have 2005 dates in them, and 3) there’s no visible scar.
Picture metadata dates can be easily altered, folder names can be manually changed, and there is evidence that Photoshop was used (indicated by .psa and .tn.4.cache files present on the hard drive in those very folders that contain the alleged contraband and other pictures), scars can be easily removed by Photoshop, and the visibility of a scar may change based on lighting and body position.
Third, FBI Examiner Brian Booth made false statements about the reliability of metadata. He stated multiple times that the metadata is difficult to modify.
Booth testified, “with EXIF data, once it’s embedded in a picture, it doesn’t matter how many times you move it around. It stays in that photo and it’s very hard to remove.”
However, a picture’s metadata (also called “EXIF”) dates can be altered by any number of widely available consumer tools. Just search on Youtube:
Booth repeats his false statement about EXIF data several times:
***
HAJJAR: Is there a particular reason why EXIF data is more difficult to alter?
BOOTH: They purposely designed it that way.
HAJJAR: And so between the dates and the EXIF data, what’s the best evidence of when this photograph was taken?
BOOTH: Well, the best reference is the EXIF data because that gets put into the JPEG file and it’s not easily modifiable
***
BOOTH: When it comes to changing photos, they still keep you from changing dates and times. It’s not easy to change those.
But it is not true. It is easy to change. The same YouTube search from above reveals the following tutorial on editing EXIF metadata.
What FBI Examiner Brian Booth said was so difficult to modify is so easy to modify that a child can learn to do it from YouTube videos.
Also, forensic expert Steve Burgess notes in an expert statement that EXIF data is easy to change.
Not only did FBI Examiner Booth contradict this basic technical fact, the prosecution then repeated his false statement as a central part of their closing arguments to the jury.
During her closing argument, Assistant US Attorney Moira Kim Penza states, “The forensic examiner, Brian Booth testified that the most reliable metadata that the FBI could obtain from the images on the Western digital hard drive, said that they were taken exactly when the folders stated they were taken.”
During the second closing, prosecutor Mark Lesko states, “I’m no expert, don’t get me wrong, but I heard Examiner Boothe, just like you did. EXIF data is extremely reliable. It’s embedded in the jpeg, in the image itself. And the EXIF data shows that the data was created on the camera, in this instance, this particular instance, the 150 jpeg on November 2, 2005 which (is) consistent with the title of the folder.”
Is it possible that FBI Examiner Brian Booth made a mistake? Is the FBI known for making mistakes?
Not likely.
Booth has been a forensic examiner for the FBI since 2006, according to his sworn testimony in 15 Cr. 611, US v. Benjamin Wey.
That is over a decade of experience when he testified. It strains reasonable credulity that he simply made this mistake about a basic fact well-known to even hobbyists, let alone a professional forensic examiner.
I believe FBI Examiner Brian Booth lied on the stand. But why?
This was not a trivial lie. It was a lie about an essential part of the government’s argument – the reliability of data, which was already tenuous because the FBI agents had broken custody of one of the devices.
During the trial of Keith Raniere, AUSA Tanya Hajjar told U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis the government expected to introduce 18 images of child pornography.
If the pictures were on the hard drive with the dates as presented, there would be no need to modify its contents. The fact that the camera card was accessed and altered, without any documentation, and that metadata dates were altered on the hard drive in a pattern that supports the government’s narrative, which was based on an easily debunkable lie about metadata, suggests that those pictures were either from a later date, or were never on the hard drive to begin with.
Now let’s talk about Camila. Camila did not testify at trial, let alone about these pictures.
The prosecution could have indicted Camila as a co-conspirator in the sex trafficking charge, as she was the perpetrator of the oral sex act on Nicole. But they did not.
If the prosecution did so and brought Camila as a witness, it would have been hard for the jury to see her as a hapless victim.
Camila only appeared on the scene after the so-called ‘NXIVM-5’ appeared on the CBS Morning Show alleging that the FBI agents had fabricated evidence to bring this most odious charge.
Mk10ART’s sketch of Camila. During the examination of FBI examiner Brian Booth, FBI Special Agent Meagan Rees carrying a red binder, opened it to show jurors (eight men and four women) over a dozen nude photos of Cami allegedly taken when she was 15 by Keith Raniere. Agent Rees displayed each photo to jurors for several seconds. According to a report in Courthouse News, some jurors appeared moved, even pained. “Several male jurors appeared to be trying not to look at the images, averting their gaze after a quick glance at a page, their heads swinging back and forth almost in unison as if on a pendulum. Some briefly touched their foreheads as if to shield their eyes.”
By the way, the prosecution brought this charge only three months before the trial. Before this charge, the co-defendants were preparing to go to the trial and prove their innocence. After the charge was announced, five of the six pleaded guilty within two months, leaving Raniere to stand trial alone.
The child porn ‘evidence’ is the critical evidence in the entire case, and the other charges themselves lack substance.
After all, sex trafficking was one single sexual encounter between two adult women, with no money changing hands.
Forced labor was one of those same women transcribing a few hours of video and reviewing 50+ essays, which she allegedly enjoyed at the time, based on her written review of those essays.
Sex trafficking and forced labor were among the most serious charges and yet they fall under the slightest scrutiny. Even if you take all of Nicole’s testimony as true, the elements are simply not met.
Without altering the Cami photos on the devices to support their narrative, the prosecution would have had a very difficult time breaking Raniere and his co-defendants and winning their case based on Raniere’s alleged conduct.
Based on the above, and the full technical examination we released in October 2020, it is my suspicion that FBI agents – perhaps in collaboration with the prosecution and perhaps even with non-government personnel – fabricated the evidence for the child porn charge in order to make Raniere so repugnant that the lack of evidence of actual crimes would not matter.
