By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC-Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN NY Mag
SDNY COURT, Exclusive, July 1 – To prosecute Joshua Schulte for leaking classified US information, the Department of Justice has used the testimony of cooperator Carlos Manuel Betances Luna Mera.
While the docket of his case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York still has a slew of "Sealed Documents," Inner City Press has now reviewed it, and reports on it here.
Betances was Federally arrested on March 15, 2018 on charges of illegal re-entry of the United States. He had previously been arrested in 2000 in Massachusetts for possession of cocaine. He was deported on April 17, 2001 to his native Dominican Republic.
Later he was arrested in The Bronx, New York on February 28, 2018 and Federally charged two weeks later.
But in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, where Jeffrey Epstein was later to be declared dead, Betances hit the jackpot.
He fell in with accused CIA leaker Joshua Schulte, and Huma Abadeen's first cousin Omar Amanat. And he cooperated against them, to try for a lighter sentence and even an S visa to stay in the US.
Assistant US Attorneys repeatedly asked for continuances of Betances' case, then filed sealed documents into the docket of his otherwise obscure case.
Nearly two years later a new Information was unsealed, the case assigned to SDNY District Judge Kimba M. Wood. Betances quietly pleaded guilty - with no sentencing date set - before SDNY Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger on August 17, 2021.
That is the last entry in his case, even as he testified against Schulte in 2022.
Then, as live tweeted by Inner City Press, Betances said he took the Schulte information to his lawyer - listed in the docket as Jorge De Jesus Guttlin - who contacted the US Attorney's Office.
Was his arrest just a set-up?
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