By Matthew Russell Lee, Author on Patreon Song Ruling
BBC - Decrypt - LightRead - Radio - Podcast
SDNY COURTHOUSE, Dec 28 -- Everywhere now the talk had moved from COVID to its variant Omicron, and in the courtroom it was no different.
Overnight Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers had sent Judge Nathan a letter urging a supplemental instruction about the flights to New Mexico. Judge Nathan came to the bench to hear the prosecutors' oral response. But her main purpose, it seems, was to lay down the law about Omicron.
Given the spread, she said, and the danger of a mistrial, she would require the jurors to deliberate from now on every day from 9 am to 6 pm - and she meant everyday. This would include Thursday December 30, which she had promised the off, and Friday December 31 - and even Saturday January 1. That should focus the mind, someone said.
Or set up an appeal for Maxwell if convicted, said another.
To Kurt the point was, if Omicron was so serious that a person he'd come to know had been blocked from entering the courthouse on Monday, how could Judge Nathan continue to deny his requests for a public call-in line, and not even docket them? Kurt prepared and filed another one, convinced this time it had to work.
Kurt went on a podcast in the UK and repeated it - it was a point of principle. The courts should be open and transparent. It was when they weren't that conspiracy theories grew. #MaximumMaxwell.
But as the hours went by - after Judge Nathan dropped half of her ultimatum on the jurors before dismissing them at 5pm, and in the now sanitized Saffian scrum in Foley Square (Saffian hailed the Uber and only then did Isabel Maxwell come over, after dropping a bagged pizza on the ground as she was asked about the MEGA Group and pedophilia in Spanish) - Judge Nathan did not even docket the request.
What about the promise made, and legal requirement, that trials be open to the public? Even a corporate journalist complained of being barred. The gray zone citizen journalist who had outright been disallowed from entering 40 Foley said it again to Kurt. Even if the judge disbelieved it, shouldn't it be inquired into? Or was the idea to hold the nose and get it done, wrap up this trial and scandal before the end of 2021 and move on?
Of course, there would be ongoing strands. Also that day Prince Andrew through his lawyer made a filing in his case, one that to Kurt smelled of dirty doxing.
The lawyer, who had only begrudgingly appeared in the case by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, had bought her Colorado voting records from some genealogy website and put them into PACER, with no redaction at all. Kurt took and photo, added his own redaction through the watermark of his blog, and put it out with a story.
What's wrong with that? some Prince defenders replied. Don't feed the trolls, others advised Kurt. But that was what Kurt did, his M.O.. It had gotten into trouble, terminal trouble, uptown at the UN. Might it also here? #MaximumMaxwell.
Note: On October 29, 2021 and again on November 12 Ghislaine Maxwell and the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed a flurry of motions in limine, heavily redacted; the Government argued that trial exhibits are not public and will be withheld. Inner City Press opposed and opposes the continued secrecy.
Inner City Press will cover the trial, and all the comes before and after it; #CourtCaseCast and song I, Song 2, Song 3, fifth song and now Nov 27 song
The underlying case is US v. Maxwell, 20-cr-330 (Nathan).
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