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Before CIA Leaks Trial Joshua Schulte Lawyers Argue Against Sealing As Inner City Press Has

By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC - Decrypt - LightRead - Honduras - Source

SDNY COURTHOUSE, Jan 25 – Ten days before the trial of accused CIA leaker Joshua Schulte, set to begin February 3, a final pre trial conference on January 24 showed continuing disputes about the secrecy and sealing of evidence and witnesses.

   Inner City Press has filed two fast turn-around letters opposing the closing of the courtroom, the denial of a live feed of the proceeding such as has permitted live reporting of the OneCoin / Mark Scott, Hernandez / Honduras, #6ix9ine, Rep. Chris Collins and upcoming Avenatti proceedings.

  Now Schulte's lawyers say: "One particularly serious issue merits this Court's attention. As we noted in our response brief, at page 7, "the Government has failed to provide any notice of [its] requested closure to the public" and "declined to provide such notice despite requests by the defense to file an unclassified version of its motion on the Court's public CMIECF docket." It is black-letter law that there must be public notice of any effort to close parts of a criminal trial sufficiently far in advance of trial to permit intervention by interested members of the press and public. See In re The Herald Co., 734 F.2d 93, 102-03 (2d Cir. 1984) (requiring that a motion for closure, or notice of such a motion where a court has granted leave to seal the motion, must be docketed "promptly" and in "detail[1" sufficient to afford the general public notice and an opportunity to challenge the requested closure); United States v. Aref, 533 F.3d 72, 81 (2d Cir. 2008); United States v. Alcantara, 396 F.3d 189, 199-200 (2d Cir. 2005) (motion should be docketed "sufficiently in advance of a hearing" to permit intervention). There is no longer sufficient time for the government to provide adequate notice to the press and public of its intended restrictions on access prior to the start of trial on February 3, 2020. Today is January 21, 2020. For that reason alone, the requests for proposed closures should be denied. The press' failure to receive timely notice within which they intervene and challenge could constitute structural error." Yes, the request for closures and denial of live feeds should be denied. Inner City Press will make these and other arguments on January 27 - watch this site.

  A basic PACER search by Inner City Press finds that Schulte in April 2019 filed a civil lawsuit against the US Attorney General. There is a docket number: 19-cv-3346. Photo here.

  But even on the SDNY Press Room PACER terminal when Inner City Press clicked on the Complaint, it replied, "You do not have permission to view this document." So who does? And is this a public court system? We will have more on this.

   Assistant US Attorney Matthew Laroche argued that while prospective jurors will be shown witnesses real names, it will only by in hard copy and thereafter some 17 of them will be referred to by pseudonyms.

  Schulte's lawyer Sabrina Shroff, still with the Federal Defenders for purposes of this case, insisted on calling these "fake names," and complained about the difficulties imposed in conducting basic research on potential witnesses.

US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey S. Berman is asking to have the public excluded from the courtroom during the testimony of several of these CIA witnesses: ten called by the prosecution, and seven the defense seeks to call.

On January 21, SDNY District Judge Paul A. Crotty scheduled a public hearing on US Attorney Berman's request, to be held on January 27 at 2 pm.  Opposition to sealing has already been filed, see Inner City Press filing into the docket on Big Cases Bot, here. Watch this site. The case is US v. Schulte, 17-cr-548 (Crotty).

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