SDNY COURTHOUSE,
Dec 20 -- The trial has reached
endgame. When Kurt got to the courthouse on
Monday morning for closing arguments, he
expected Judge Nathan before the jury was
brought in to address in some way the
opposition to the withholding of all slides
and so-called demonstratives during the
closings. But no.
Judge
Nathan has so-ordered AUSA Maurene Comey's
request, only asking that some redacted
version be made available two hours after
it was all over, another blow to anything
like live coverage Kurt was trying to
provide, as #CourtCaseCast.
She asked, as to the long withheld
exhibits, if redacted versions had been
put in the public docket. She might have
just looked at the PACER screen on her
computer on Courtroom 318.
Comey
replied that no, redacted versions had
gone on her office's file sharing
platform. But file sharing with whom? Kurt
was on the list, but this was not making
them publicly available, as he'd gotten
Judge Rakoff to do in the Eaze / Wirecard
trial of US v. Weigand and Akhavan. There
was more and more wrong with this
#MaximumMaxwell trial.
Within
the minimized scope, AUSA Alison Moe
launched into a three house speech about
dildos, lube and nipple pinching. Some
thought it was a devasting indictment. But
where were the passengers of the Lolita
Express, the debauchers of Little St
Jeffs?
Where were the videos of them, how they
had been used for blackmail and to what
effect?
The prosecution did not seem to want to
know this, or to let anyone else know.
Kurt recorded his first podcast on the
closings in the fire stairs and headed up
to another pre-re-trial proceeding about
CIA Vault 7 leaker Josh Schulte. No one
pretended that CIA case, which also
involved child porn charges, did not have
a political and transparency angle. But
#MaximumMaxwell had been softened.
Maxwell's
team put Laura Menninger in the glass box.
She called the four witnesses gold diggers
and alluded to a chart of their lawyers,
which was not show to the public. She said
this was all tabloid journalism and even
appeared to praise Jeffrey Epstein.
Then AUSA Maurene Comey gave an ah,
shucks rebuttal, in the nature of C'mon,
or, Gimme a Break. The
latter was Kurt's reaction when Judge
Nathan spent an hour reading the 80 page
jury charge which she had only then put in
the docket, too late for anyone but the
parties to analyze it for what had been
left out.
The
jury retired, as they called it, from 4:30
pm and people milled around. By 5:30 Judge
Nathan sent them home, telling them not to
read the Internet, and to return Tuesday
at 9 am. Kurt would be there too, just as
he was after the jury left out in Foley
Square, the daily ritual of Ghislaine's
brother and sister and also Leah Saffian,
Kurt now noticed, squeezing into a black
SUV and driving north.
The fight or boxing match, limited
to a small square in the middle of the
ring, had been completed. Now it was time
for the referees to score it, and for the
complaints to begin. #MaximumMaxwell.
And so it
continued. Click
here
for Patreon and more
(2d).
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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