By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC - Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN
EDNY COURTHOUSE, Feb 21 – The case was called United States versus Jho Low but in the dock there was only one Roger Ng, in a courtroom without no Press or public.
The Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York had ruled that due to COVID-19 the jurors had to be socially distanced. So they had taken over all of the wooden pews of the courtroom gallery.
The press was pushed into an overflow courtroom two stories away, with a Court Security Officer at the door to make sure they didn't dare take in a cell phone to tweet with, much less a laptop or tablet to blog on.
Kurt Wheelock hadn't yet gotten the one-case press pass to bring his electronics in to the media room on the third floor. But still the CSO asked if he had any electronic devices in his light day backpack or of the pockets of his winter coat.
Kurt said no, signed his name on the COVID 19 contract tracing sheet and went in. He sat in the back row, returning a nod to a wire service reporter who had asked him about, but never included in an article, Kurt's ouster from the United Nations.
Television monitors had been set up in the well of the overflow courtroom, with another roll down plastic screeen for the six earlier arriving journalists at counsel table.
It was not Roger Ng in the witness box, but a man named Cummings from Strategic Marketing Group.
He was being asked how much Jho Low, and in one case Ng and by implication Goldman Sachs, effectively erasing itself from this trial for now, had paid in promotion and seemingly prostitution fees.
They flew in rappers and movie stars and models - the word was put in quotation marks even on the memo he has asked about - to Jho Low's parties in Las Vegas and once in his hometown in Penang, Malaysia.
Leonardo DiCaprio, whose Wolf of Wall Street Jho Low funded, and the director Martin Scorcese; Jaime Foxx and Kim Kadashian. Where was Jah Rule, who partnered with McFarland on the failed Fyre Fest? Maybe that came later.
Kurt started taking notes. He'd write this up later on a bench across from the courthouse, or in the Park Manor a block away if it was too cold. It was still winter but just barely. And Kurt was hunting for the Weasel of Wall Street.
Kurt had first heard of Jho Low while still in the UN, before he was thrown out. Jho Low appeared at a UN press conference in front of the ubiquitous and now defiled logo. #TheWeaselOfWallStreet, 1st in a new series
Inner City Press is also covering US v. Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, the self-rapped Crocodile of Wall Street, a story here, song here
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