United States v. Khatallah

278 F. Supp. 3d 1
District Court, District of Columbia·Decided September 28, 2017·No. Case No. 14-cr-00141 (CRC)·Published·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

CHRISTOPHER R. COOPER, United States District Judge

The Government has moved to admit into evidence at trial telephone records that it alleges are associated with a phone number used by the Defendant Ahmed Abu Khatallah. It contends that these telephone records are admissible as business records under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(6). Abu Khatallah has challenged the admission of the records, and the Court held a hearing on their admissibility on September 14, 2017. For the reasons that follow, the Court will grant the Government’s motion and admit the telephone records as business records.1

I. Factual Background

[redacted]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a copy of these telephone records in October 2012. Hr’g Tr. 70:1.3- 15, 91:14 18 (Sept. 14, 2017). In January 2017. Agent Justin O’Donnell of the FBI contacted Mohamed Ben Ayad, the CEO of Libyana, seeking to authenticate the records. Id. 71:16-20, 72:5. Ayad was also one of the individuals who helped found Libyana in 2004. Id. 73:21 23.' Prior to meeting with him. Agent O’Donnell and other agents confirmed Ayad’s identity as the Libyana CEO through open sources and publicly available information. Id. 72:10-17, 98:17-22. Agent O’Donnell and FBI Agent Mike Clarke met with Ayad outside the United States on January 21, 2017. Id. 72:2-5. At the meeting. Agent O’Donnell and Agent Clarke introduced themselves as FBI agents investigating the September 2012 attack on the U.S. Mission and Annex in Benghazi. Id. 72:20-24. 73:14-16. Ayad agreed to assist the two agents in their investigation with respect to the telephone records. Id. 73:18.

' During the meeting. Agent O’Donnell and Agent Clarke showed Ayad a hard copy of the telephone records. Id. 74:6-10. Ayad told the agents that Libyana maintains call data records as a matter of general practice for reasons such as accountability and billing and that he was familiar with Libyana’s business records- practices. Id. 73:24-74:3, 85:17-86:1,102:4-5. He then reviewed the records that the agents brought with them for several minutes. Jd. 74:12-13. After his review, he told the agents that the records were call data records from Libyana, explaining that the format of the records and the “profile page” that listed the information about the subscriber were unique to Libyana. Id. 74:17-19. Ayad explained that he had helped design the format for the profile page with the subscriber information and recognized it. |d. 76:1 3. In addition. Ayad told the agents that two particular telephone number prefixes -092 and 094— were used solely for numbers serviced by Libyans and the number here had-a 092 prefix. Id. 75:2-47. The agents then asked Ayad to sign a certification form attesting to the authenticity of the records and walked him through the form line-by-line to confirm his understanding before he signed it. Id. 76:7 11. 77:4-78:2. They thanked Ayad for his assistance and asked if he might also be able to reproduce the telephone records from the Libyans-databases. Id. 79:7-9.

Following the meeting, Ayad emailed Agent O’Donnell additional phone records for the same telephone number, this time covering February 21, 2014 through April 28, 2014. Id. 80:3-9. 82:1-11.6 Agent O’Donnell replied to Ayad via email, thanking him for the records but clarifying that the government was interested in telephone records for July to December 2012, not February to April 2014. Id. 82:16-23. Ayad responded that he could not access those records at this time because the electronic records from 2012 had been corrupted, though technicians were working on recovering the data. Id. 83:1-3. 105:1-2. 107:4-6. 126:7-19. Agent O’Donnell and Áyad spoke again by phone in July 2017, and Ayad confirmed that he was still Unable to access the relevant data from 2012. Id. 107:7 10.112:3-10.

On July 12, 2017. Agent O’Donnell sent an electronic version of the telephone , records to Ayad and asked him to analyze them once more and compare them to existing phone records in the Libyana databases. M . 83:6 13. 108:10 14. 109:23 110:4, 110:18-19. Ayad did so, and confirmed once again that the Telephone records were Libyana call data records. Id. 83:15. :84:10- 17. 84:25- 85:1. He also provided another certification as to the’ authenticity of the records, signed on July 18, 2017.'Id. 83:16, 84:4. This certification, which was made under penalty of perjury of the - laws of Libya, attested that the records “were made at or near the time of the occurrence of the matters set forth therein by (or from information transmitted by) a person with knowledge of those matters.” “were kept in the course of regu: larly conducted business activity,”, .“were made by the said business activity as a regular practice.” and “if not original records, are duplicates of original records.” Gov.’s Notice of Intent Introduce Telephone Records App. (“Ayad Certification”); see also Gov. Ex. 1103.

Agent O’Donnell also attempted to confirm the authenticity of the records by verifying that they included calls that other evidence indicated had occurred in that time period. Hr’g Tr. 86:2-6 (Sept. 14, 2017). For instance, during interviews with Abu Khatallah following his capture in June 2014. Abu Khatallah apparently told Agent O’Donnell that he had a phone call with a number ending in 8891 on the evening of the attacks. September 11, 2012, .around 8:30 p.m. Id. 86:9-87:1, Agent O’Donnell examined the records and found an entry documenting a call with a number ending in 8891 on September 11, 2012 at 8:39 p.m. Id. 87:2-6. In addition, Abu Kha-tallah apparently told Agent O’Donnell about another specific call that he made to a phone number ending in 1530 on September 11, 2012—which the recipient of the call also verified to Agent O’Donnell occurred. Id. 88:7-89:4. Agent O’Donnell found an entry in the .telephone records documenting this call too. Id. 89:7-9. During the hearing. Agent O’Donnell testified that there were other examples of telephone calls that he knew occurred and had verified, appeared on the records, though he could not recall any specific calls during the hearing. Id. 89:18-22, 122:8-22, 126:20 127:4.

II. Legal Standard

Under the Federal Rules of. Evidence, the Court “must decide any preliminary question about whether-... evidence is admissible.” Fed. R. Evid. 104(a). In making this determination, the Court “is not .bound by evidence rules, except those on privilege.” Id. The proponent of evidence must show by á preponderance of the evidence that any necessary prerequisites for admission have been met. Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171, 176, 107 S.Ct. 2775, 97 L.Ed.2d 144 (1987).

The Federal Rules of Evidence permit the admission of “[a] record of an act, event, condition, opinion or diagnosis” as a business record if:

(1) thes record was made at or near the time by—or from information transmitted by—someone with knowledge;

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United States v. Khatallah, 278 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D.C. 2017).

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