USA v. Anthony Blair

FOR PUBLICATION
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 23-13642
____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
ANTHONY RONDEL BLAIR,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Georgia
D.C. Docket No. 1:18-cr-00260-LMM-CMS-1
____________________
Before R OSENBAUM , GRANT, and B RASHER , Circuit Judges.
G RANT, Circuit Judge:
Anthony Blair had quite the deal for his friends and
associates: all-expenses-paid vacations to Costa Rica. The only
catch? They would have to bring back “souvenirs” in their
luggage—things like stuffed animals, coffee, and, most
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importantly, canned fruits and vegetables. When the travelers
returned, Blair would meet them and collect just the cans (the rest
was theirs to keep).
The cans, as the reader may have suspected, contained
neither fruit nor vegetables, but cocaine. The government
eventually caught on, too, and charged Blair with conspiring to
distribute a controlled substance. At trial, he argued that the
government had not proved that he knew the cans contained
cocaine, but the jury did not buy it. Blair now brings six
challenges to his trial and sentencing. None are persuasive, and
we affirm.
I.
At least to Blair, it seemed like the perfect drug-smuggling
scheme: find everyday people, provide them with all-expenses-paid
vacations to Costa Rica, secretly give them drugs, and then send
them home, unaware that they were carrying cocaine. The
travelers, for their part, were given certain “souvenirs,” including
canned goods, and were told they were part of an insurance
company’s security audit of baggage handling practices. The
travelers sometimes doubted the insurance story, but only a
handful refused to play along. Because they looked like tourists
returning from vacation, getting through customs was usually no
trouble. Then, the cans (but not the other “souvenirs”) were
retrieved—along with the cocaine inside them.
Blair learned about this scheme while working as a credit
repair specialist for Jason Arias and other members of the Arias
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family. And when he discovered how much Arias made bringing
the cans back from Central America, he wanted in. Blair soon
took a trip, brought back some cans, and made $2,500 after driving
them “up north” to Arias’s uncle.
His appetite whetted, Blair soon began recruiting other
travelers, with a finder’s fee that eventually reached $12,500 per
pair. Over the course of nine months, he booked ninety-four
travelers. Blair served as the travel agent for his recruits, paying
for flights, hotels, and Ubers. But that was not all: if a traveler
needed an expedited passport, new luggage, cash to pay a traffic
citation while abroad, or even spending money for nail
appointments and other “upkeep,” Blair covered that, too. He
also stayed in touch, ensuring that his recruits would be in their
rooms when Arias came by to drop off the “souvenirs.”
Things went well for Blair until he recruited Sequoia
Quixote, a convicted felon, to take the trip. Predictably enough,
Quixote was screened at customs in the United States, where
agents found the cocaine. Quixote told them about Blair, and the
plot quickly unraveled; Blair was arrested as soon as he arrived at
the airport to pick up Quixote.
Agents easily unlocked his phone by guessing his passcode
(proof that using one’s birthday is not a foolproof strategy). But
they waited for a warrant before retrieving any data. The next
day, warrant in hand, the agents extracted data using a plug-and-
play extraction tool called Cellebrite. Technical issues marred
the first extraction, so they waited for a Cellebrite software update
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and tried again thirty days later after obtaining a new warrant.
Meanwhile, after Blair was released on bond, he contacted Arias,
who then paid a $50,000 retainer for his legal defense.
For reasons unknown, the government dropped the charges
in March of 2018, but Blair had not learned his lesson: a few months
later, agents caught yet another traveler with five cans of cocaine.
She too agreed to cooperate, so when Blair stopped by around
midnight to collect the cans, he was arrested. A series of
superseding indictments ultimately culminated in a seven-count
indictment covering cocaine importation, cocaine possession, and
money laundering.
As the walls closed in, other members of the conspiracy
flipped. Dan Newton, a repeat traveler and friend of Arias’s,
informed the government that Arias had paid for Blair’s attorney,
which led the police to take a closer look at Arias—who also
became a cooperating witness. He told agents about his
conversations with Blair, and admitted that he had paid for Blair’s
attorney. Arias already had a phone he used just for
communicating with Blair, and he shared its contents with the
government.
Arias eventually entered a formal plea deal with the
government, contingent on his cooperation at Blair’s trial (and
otherwise). And when he repeated during a proffer session that
he had paid for Blair’s attorney, the government raised the conflict
in a motion. Blair’s counsel withdrew, a public defender stepped
in, and Blair went to trial a year later.
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At trial, Blair did not deny that he had made the travel
arrangements or that he had transported the cans from Atlanta to
New England. Instead, he argued that he didn’t know they had
illegal contents. In his closing argument, Blair said that he had
been told the cocaine would not “test positive” and was
“untraceable.” Arias, he insisted, had told him the cocaine was
“not illegal.” He also argued that the cocaine in the cans had been
“goop,” not “powder white,” so he should not have been expected
to know it was cocaine because of the consistency. Blair also
claimed that he had seen neither the bricks of cocaine nor the
blender and acetone used to put them into the cans.
The jury was not convinced. It convicted Blair on six of
the seven counts, and the judge sentenced him to twenty years’
imprisonment. He now appeals.
II.
Blair raises Sixth Amendment claims, evidentiary claims, a
claim that his subpoenas should not have been quashed, jury
instruction claims, a due process claim, and substantive and
procedural challenges to his sentence. We reject them in turn.
A.
We start with his two Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel
claims, which we review de novo. United States v. Gari, 572 F.3d
1352, 1361 (11th Cir. 2009). Blair first raises a Sixth Amendment
intrusion claim. Such a claim can be successful when the
defendant shows one of three things: (1) tainted evidence;
(2) communication of the defense strategy to the prosecution; or
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(3) purposeful intrusion by the government on the defendant’s
Sixth Amendment rights. United States v. Roper, 874 F.2d 782, 790
(11th Cir. 1989).1 We do not see any of those here.
Blair’s argument, we will confess, is not entirely clear. But
he seems to press the third option, contending that the government
intruded on his attorney-client relationship by engaging Arias as a
cooperating witness when it knew that Arias was also paying for
his counsel. But that’s not enough. Purposeful intrusion refers
to intentional efforts to learn about a defendant’s defense strategy.
Weatherford v. Bursey, 429 U.S. 545, 557 (1977). Here, the record
offers no suggestion that Arias directed Blair’s counsel’s efforts or
obtained any information about his defense strategy, much less
that he shared that strategy with the government. Moreover,
Blair’s first attorneys withdrew once the government notified the
court that it wished to present evidence of the Arias payments, and
Blair’s new court-appointed counsel had adequate time to prepare
for trial. And again, there is no evidence that the government
learned about, let alone influenced, Blair’s trial strategy—or that it
asked Arias to do so, or encouraged the payments, all of which
were made before Arias had started talking with the government.
Contrary to Blair’s assertion, telling the jury that Arias had
paid for his first lawyers does not convert any of this into evidence
of intrusion; it simply supports the government’s assertions of a
1 If we find a constitutional error, we review it to see “whether it was harmless
beyond a reasonable doubt.” United States v. Roy, 855 F.3d 1133, 1178 (11th
Cir. 2017) (en banc) (quotation omitted).
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conspiracy between the two. “There being no tainted evidence
in this case, no communication of defense strategy to the
prosecution, and no purposeful intrusion,” we see no violation of
the Sixth Amendment. Id. at 558.
Blair’s second right-to-counsel claim is that the government
interfered with that right by using Arias to collect incriminating
information from him without his attorney present. See Massiah
v. United States, 377 U.S. 201, 205–06 (1964). To succeed on this
Massiah claim, Blair must show that Arias deliberately elicited
incriminating statements from him while acting as a government
agent. Baxter v. Thomas, 45 F.3d 1501, 1510 (11th Cir. 1995).
No “bright line test” reveals whether someone is a
government agent for purposes of the Sixth Amendment.
Lightbourne v. Dugger, 829 F.2d 1012, 1020 (11th Cir. 1987)
(quotation omitted). But various factors are relevant: whether
the government initiated contact, solicited the party to be a paid
informant, encouraged “the elicitation of incriminating
statements,” or promised or suggested that the informant would
be rewarded for reporting incriminating statements. Id. The
“ultimate issue” is whether the facts show “the functional
equivalent of interrogation by the government.” United States v.
Gaddy, 894 F.2d 1307, 1313 (11th Cir. 1990) (quotations omitted).
Arias’s actions suggest that he acted on his own—not at the
government’s direction. First and foremost, Arias was not yet
talking with the government when he paid for Blair’s lawyers.
Plus, he started recording his conversations with Blair before he
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started cooperating with, or even talking to, the government. So
while the government knew that Arias regularly recorded his
conversations with Blair, that was a long-time practice—not one
that he adopted at the government’s direction. Nor did the
government ask him to collect evidence or provide recordings of
incriminating conversations in exchange for a reward. Many
criminal defendants collect information on their co-conspirators in
hopes of eventually getting a better deal for themselves. Arias is
no different. Except that he had yet another motive—
documenting Blair’s threats to (literally) burn down his unrelated,
legitimate business.
Blair, in short, has not shown that Arias was a government
agent, which means his Massiah claim fails. See Baxter, 45 F.3d at
1510.
B.
Blair next argues that the district court should not have
admitted the texts, photos, and FaceTime call records extracted
from his cell phone, again for two reasons.2
First, he claims that the government did not properly
authenticate the phone’s contents. Evidence is authenticated if
the presenter shows that it is what he claims it to be. United States
v. Hawkins, 905 F.2d 1489, 1493 (11th Cir. 1990). Only “some
2 We review district court evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United
States v. Smith, 459 F.3d 1276, 1295 (11th Cir. 2006).
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competent evidence” is needed, and circumstantial evidence can
suffice. Id. (quotation omitted).
Here, Special Agent Rutherford testified that he extracted
the contents of Blair’s phone using Cellebrite, reviewed the
proposed exhibit (a flash drive containing the extraction), and
confirmed that the data on the flash drive matched the data he had
extracted using Cellebrite. Rutherford’s testimony is enough to
authenticate the extracted data.
Even so, Blair challenges the integrity of the Cellebrite
extraction, arguing that there may have been a problem because
his phone had the Signal app. He admits that his concerns on this
front are “hypothetical.” Still, he suggests that a claim from
Signal’s founder that he hacked Cellebrite (three years after the
program was used on Blair’s phone) calls the entire extraction into
question. Omitted from Blair’s argument, however, is any
evidence about how and why that claim undermines the Cellebrite
pull. Blair does find it fishy that the extraction data from the
Runmeter app (which had nothing to do with the case) contained
date labels from four years in the future. But he never explains
how irrelevant data from an exercise app taints the reliability of the
texts, photos, and call records the government pulled from his
phone.
We see no evidence of a problem. And other witnesses
confirmed the accuracy of at least some of the materials pulled
from his phone, including call records and a photo showing cans of
“fruit.” Such independent proof of the accuracy of the evidence
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makes us “extremely reluctant to disturb the trial court’s decision.”
United States v. Harrell, 788 F.2d 1524, 1527 (11th Cir. 1986)
(quotation omitted).
Second, Blair argues that the government needed to provide
an expert witness to explain the extraction process, rather than just
the agents who plugged in the phone and ran the program. Not
so—the technical side of Cellebrite as used in this case is irrelevant.
It is plug-and-play technology that requires no special skill or
knowledge to operate, and similar evidence is allowed without
expert testimony. The best example is United States v. Mapson,
where photos from a license plate surveillance system were
entered into evidence with testimony from an officer who
described the system as “just a camera” allowing officers to retrieve
data by entering either a car’s license plate or its make, model, and
year. 96 F.4th 1323, 1335 (11th Cir. 2024) (quotation omitted).
We reasoned that no expert testimony was required because the
testimony was not “technical or specialized” and because it was
based on the officer’s “personal experiences,” rather than expert
knowledge. Id. at 1335–36. So too here—like the surveillance
system in Mapson, Cellebrite requires no special skills or knowledge
to use.
Blair disagrees. But his strongest authority is an out-of-
circuit case requiring an expert for testimony about forensic data
pulled with a different tool. United States v. Ganier, 468 F.3d 920,
924 (6th Cir. 2006). And interpreting that data—“a heading, a
string of words and symbols, date and time, and a list of words”—
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required “knowledge and familiarity with computers and the
particular forensic software well beyond that of the average
layperson.” Id. at 926. Cellebrite is different—again, no
specialized knowledge is needed to run that tool or interpret its
output. United States v. Williams, 83 F.4th 994, 997 (5th Cir. 2023).
The district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the
Cellebrite evidence to be admitted by lay testimony.3
C.
Blair argues that he should have been able to call former
Assistant United States Attorney Ryan Christian to testify about
Arias’s character for truthfulness. He made two requests, both of
which were denied by the Department of Justice, and the district
court granted motions to quash the related subpoenas.4
The Department of Justice has promulgated regulations to
govern and centralize its responses to record requests. 5 U.S.C
§ 301; 28 C.F.R. pt. 16. These regulations are valid and can
3 While this is a matter of first impression here, other circuits that have
considered the issue agree. The Fifth and Ninth Circuits have held that
Cellebrite evidence needs no expert testimony to be admitted. See Williams,
83 F.4th at 997 (5th Cir.); United States v. Jimenez-Chaidez, 96 F.4th 1257, 1267
(9th Cir. 2024). The Second and Fourth have done the same, albeit in
unpublished opinions. United States v. Marsh, 568 F. App’x 15, 17 (2d Cir.
2014); United States v. Chavez-Lopez, 767 F. App’x 431, 434–35 (4th Cir. 2019).
4 We review a motion to quash for abuse of discretion. Moore v. Armour
Pharm. Co., 927 F.2d 1194, 1197 (11th Cir. 1991). We review whether the
Department’s application of its Touhy regulations was arbitrary, capricious, or
an abuse of discretion. Id.
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lawfully bar employees from testifying. U.S. ex rel. Touhy v.
Ragen, 340 U.S. 462, 468 (1951); see, e.g., 28 C.F.R. §§ 16.23, 16.26.
The Department denied Blair’s Touhy requests because it
concluded that Christian’s testimony was not admissible evidence.
After each denial, Blair persisted in seeking a subpoena, and the
Department moved to quash. The district court granted the
Department’s motions, concluding that the government’s decision
to bar the testimony was not arbitrary and capricious.
Blair’s primary contention on appeal is that the Touhy
regulations do not apply to former employees. That argument
fails out of the gate—they do, and we have already said so. United
States v. Bizzard, 674 F.2d 1382, 1387 (11th Cir. 1982).
Blair next argues that because Christian’s testimony was
admissible under the federal rules it should have been admitted
under Touhy, but he falters there, too. Federal Rule of Evidence
608(a) permits a witness to attack the credibility of another
witness’s testimony with evidence about their character, but
certain standards apply. Rule 602 requires that a lay witness
testify based on personal knowledge. See United States v. Watson,
669 F.2d 1374, 1382 (11th Cir. 1982). And Rule 701 offers a similar
principle, requiring that testimony be based on a witness’s own
perception.
Though the baseline set by these two rules is low, Blair does
not come close to meeting it. His first Touhy request sought
testimony about statements that Christian made as an attorney at
Arias’s bond hearing. At the time of that hearing, Christian had
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not interviewed Arias—indeed, he stated at the hearing that his
perspective on Arias came from “reviewing the evidence in this
case.” So he had no personal knowledge of Arias’s character.
The district court correctly noted, among other things, that merely
reviewing evidence is not the right basis for character testimony.
Because Blair failed to show that the Department’s refusal to
present Christian for testimony was arbitrary and capricious, the
court properly quashed the first subpoena.
Blair’s briefing is not clear about the sequence of events
below (or even which Touhy ruling he is appealing), but it appears
that he filed a second Touhy request shortly after the district court
granted the motion to quash the first one.5 Blair’s new request
sought Christian’s testimony as it existed at the time of trial, which
would have swept in his personal knowledge from a proffer session
with Arias. It seems likely that this expanded request was meant
to get around the fact that Christian had no personal knowledge
about Blair’s truthfulness during the bond hearing.
The district court dispatched this follow-up quickly, and so
can we. The single proffer session was not enough to give
Christian a proper foundation to testify about Arias’s character for
truthfulness. A prosecutor and a defendant negotiating a plea is a
far cry from the natural habitat of either party—interactions in that
context simply do not provide the type of knowledge needed to
5 Though Blair’s second subpoena and related Touhy request appear neither
in the record on appeal, nor on the district court docket, the Department’s
motion to quash does.
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support an opinion about someone’s character for truthfulness.
So a single witness interview generally would not create an
adequate basis for opinion testimony from a lawyer, and the facts
here offer no reason to depart from that rule. See Watson, 669
F.2d at 1382; United States v. Dotson, 799 F.2d 189, 193 (5th Cir.
1986).
Indeed, in other contexts, we have also been skeptical about
treating lawyers as witnesses, especially where their views on
criminal defendants are concerned: “advocacy as to the credibility
of witnesses” is not “equivalent to a testimonial statement” by the
party. United States v. DeLoach, 34 F.3d 1001, 1005–06 (11th Cir.
1994) (quotation omitted). Consider this—if Christian’s
testimony about Arias would be allowed in Blair’s trial, would that
same testimony have been permitted against Arias himself had he
gone to trial? No to both, for the obvious reason that prosecutors
are not neutral arbiters of defendants’ character.
Other circuits agree that brief interactions between
investigators and witnesses do not provide a reliable basis for
opinion testimony about their character. Dotson, 799 F.2d at 193
(a six-year relationship between an agent and witness in the context
of an investigation); United States v. Cortez, 935 F.2d 135, 139–40 (8th
Cir. 1991) (two meetings with an informant totaling several hours);
United States v. Garza, 448 F.3d 294, 296–97 (5th Cir. 2006) (several
conversations between an investigator and a witness). We see no
reason to set a different rule.
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We thus agree with the district court that Christian’s
testimony was (at a minimum) “very unlikely” to have been
admissible. So the Department, in denying the request for
Christian’s testimony on that basis, did not act arbitrarily or
capriciously. And the district court, in quashing the subpoena,
did not abuse its discretion.
D.
The next issue concerns jury instructions.6 The prosecution
argued that Blair either knew that the cans contained cocaine or
deliberately avoided learning more about them despite many red
flags. The judge instructed the jury on both actual knowledge
and deliberate ignorance—the conscious effort to avoid learning
incriminating information. Blair says the deliberate ignorance
instruction was unjustified because the government was arguing
actual knowledge. And by presenting the deliberate ignorance
instruction, he insists, the court prejudiced his defense by creating
a risk the jury would find him guilty on a lesser standard of
negligence. He also contends that the jury lacked sufficient
evidence to find that he acted with knowledge.
A deliberate indifference instruction should be given only
when facts support the inference that there was “a high
probability” the defendant purposefully avoided “learning all of the
facts in order to have a defense in the event of a subsequent
6 We review whether jury instructions misstate the law or mislead the jury
de novo. United States v. Gibson, 708 F.3d 1256, 1275 (11th Cir. 2013).
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prosecution.” United States v. Maitre, 898 F.3d 1151, 1157 (11th
Cir. 2018) (quotations omitted). But no error exists if, as is often
the case, “the evidence could support both actual knowledge or
deliberate ignorance and the jury was instructed on both.” Id.
That’s true here: the evidence presented at trial easily supports
both instructions.
Blair received $434,195 in cash to give free trips to travelers
and deliver the cans they brought back. Days after he delivered
the cans, thousands of dollars would flow into his bank account.
Blair’s story was that he was “running a business,” and that he
didn’t know he was doing anything wrong because Arias told him
the cans had “untraceable cocaine” that wouldn’t “test positive”
because it “was not chemically cocaine”—and thus “not illegal.”
But whatever Blair thought was in the cans, he also knew someone
else thought it was worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars
to smuggle them into America. Still, he did not investigate.
The deliberate ignorance jury instruction did not mislead the jury,
and we affirm the use of the instruction.
Additionally, any error is harmless if the district court
instructed the jury on actual knowledge and the jury could have
reasonably convicted on that theory. United States v. Steed, 548
F.3d 961, 977 (11th Cir. 2008). That’s true here. In July 2017,
Blair took a video of cans inside Arias’s apartment and texted it to
Arias. Arias responded, “Delete.” And then in a second
message, “Double delete.” Then Blair said, “Stfu I already knew
but I wanted to be clear of everything.” Shortly after sending the
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video, Blair drove from Atlanta to Rhode Island and waited in a
hotel for six days. On another trip, Blair actually saw the cocaine
inside the cans when one had “busted open” and cocaine was
“dripping off.” Arias told Blair he “couldn’t believe that he didn’t
get arrested,” or that “dogs didn’t smell it.” But “Blair didn’t care”
and “just wanted his money.”
These are only a few examples; the record is flush with
evidence that Blair knew the cans contained cocaine. Because the
evidence supported both instructions and was sufficient to convict
under either, we affirm the jury instructions.
E.
Blair also argues that the government violated his due
process rights by presenting inconsistent theories at Arias’s and
Blair’s sentencing hearings.7 For Blair, the government argued
that he was responsible for at least 150 kilograms of cocaine. But
in Arias’s plea agreement, the government had agreed that he was
responsible for five to fifteen kilograms of cocaine. Because Arias
was the primary supplier of his cocaine, Blair insists, the
government cannot argue that he was responsible for at least ten
times as much cocaine as Arias. Pressing these factually
inconsistent theories, he says, violates due process.
He is incorrect. Arias had a cooperation agreement in
which the government agreed not to use information that he
7 We review due process claims de novo. United States v. Hunt, 526 F.3d 739,
743 (11th Cir. 2008).
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provided when determining his sentencing range. But that
agreement did not extend to Blair, and the larger number at Blair’s
sentencing was based on Arias’s testimony. No problem. But
to use that same information against Arias would have violated his
due process rights. Rowe v. Griffin, 676 F.2d 524, 528 (11th Cir.
1982). Blair does not get to piggyback on Arias’s agreement and
insist that the prosecution give him the benefits of Arias’s
cooperation. Plea bargaining is “an essential component of the
administration of justice.” Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257,
260 (1971). But it would become a dead letter in conspiracy cases
if an agreement with one defendant tied the government’s hands
for all the rest.
Blair’s only authorities, two out-of-circuit cases, do not
move the needle. In Smith v. Groose, the government “changed
the color of its stripes from one trial to the next” by advancing
“inherently factually contradictory theories” in two separate
prosecutions for the same crime. United States v. Hill, 643 F.3d
807, 834 (11th Cir. 2011) (quoting Smith v. Groose, 205 F.3d 1045,
1052 (8th Cir. 2000)). That fact pattern is a far cry from this one.
As for Thompson v. Calderon, that case was reversed by the Supreme
Court and in any event involved two murder convictions
prosecuted with fundamentally different theories and factual
assertions. 120 F.3d 1045, 1056 (9th Cir. 1997) (en banc), rev’d, 523
U.S. 538 (1998). Not so here—the government just gave a better
deal to a cooperating witness. We see no error.
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Blair also argues that this same problem resulted in an
incorrect sentence. But what Blair labels a challenge to his
“procedurally unreasonable sentence” is really just a rehashing of
his due process argument. A sentence is procedurally
unreasonable if there is “a significant procedural error” like
improper calculation of a Guidelines range, failure to adequately
explain the sentence, or failure to consider the sentencing factors.
United States v. Green, 981 F.3d 945, 953 (11th Cir. 2020) (quotation
omitted). Blair makes no arguments even remotely along these
lines. Using the words “procedurally unreasonable” is not
enough for a cognizable sentencing challenge, and Blair fails to
raise one.
Though he does make a proper substantive reasonableness
challenge, he largely recycles the same arguments, and this attempt
fails too.8 We “vacate a sentence as substantively unreasonable
if, but only if, we are left with the definite and firm conviction that
the district court committed a clear error of judgment in weighing”
the sentencing factors. United States v. Riley, 995 F.3d 1272, 1278
(11th Cir. 2021) (quotation omitted). Blair claims his sentence
was substantively unreasonable because it was five times as long as
Arias’s, even though Arias had a much larger role in the conspiracy.
But Blair cannot use Arias as a comparator in arguing about a
disparity—Arias cooperated and pleaded guilty while Blair did not,
8 We review the substantive reasonableness of a sentence for abuse of
discretion, considering the totality of the circumstances. United States v.
Barrington, 648 F.3d 1178, 1203 (11th Cir. 2011).
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20 Opinion of the Court 23-13642
and the district court considered this distinction when weighing the
sentencing factors. We have long recognized that individuals
who cooperate are not similarly situated to those who provide no
help to the government and go to trial. United States v. Docampo,
573 F.3d 1091, 1101 (11th Cir. 2009). Plus, his sentence fell eighty-
four months below the Guidelines range, meaning that any
departure from the Guidelines cut in Blair’s favor. See United
States v. Castaneda, 997 F.3d 1318, 1332 (11th Cir. 2021). Blair’s
sentence, in short, is substantively reasonable.
* * *
We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
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