Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Unsealed documents show that Jeffrey Epstein was offering advice to
Speaker 1: Glaine Maxwell as late as despite her lawyer's statement that
Speaker 1: the British socialite had no contact with the disgrace financier
Speaker 1: in a decade. Maxwell is in a federal jail in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn after her arrest this month on charges of engaging
Speaker 1: with Epstein in a sex trafficking scheme. She's trying to
Speaker 1: stop the disclosure of documents that include her sworn testimony
Speaker 1: in a civil case. Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter
Speaker 1: Patricia Hurtado, who has been covering the Maxwell case that
Speaker 1: give us the background on these documents. So this is
Speaker 1: a prolonged involved story goes back to there was a
Speaker 1: young woman named Virginia Robert Gufrey, and she says that
Speaker 1: when she was sixteen years old, she encounters Gawayne Maxwell
Speaker 1: at mar Lago. Her dad worked there as a maintenance man.
Speaker 1: He gets her a job at the spa. She's handing
Speaker 1: out towels and a lovely woman British woman comes up
Speaker 1: to her and sees her reading a book about massage
Speaker 1: and offers her a job working for this wealthy man
Speaker 1: who wants to looking for a private massuit. She said
Speaker 1: she was sixteen years old at the time, so she
Speaker 1: goes to the mansion through if it turns out she's
Speaker 1: introduced Jeffrey Epstein and he immediately and Maxwell, she alleges
Speaker 1: forced her to perform sex acts with the two of
Speaker 1: them present, and she became a sex slave. She and
Speaker 1: alleges that was in thousands. So then she ends up
Speaker 1: trying to join a lawsuit with victims of Epstein after
Speaker 1: Epstein gets his secret plea deal, and she makes some
Speaker 1: comments about Maxwell publicly and Maxwell comes back and issues
Speaker 1: a press release in January twenty sixteen. She makes statements
Speaker 1: and says that this woman is a liar. It provoked
Speaker 1: or prompts a defamation lawsuit. Gufrey sues Maxwell for defamation
Speaker 1: and Maxwell gave testimony under oath questioned about this steps trafficking.
Speaker 1: Guffrey was very very aggressive. Her lawyers included David Boys
Speaker 1: and this guy Bradley Edwards and as Pottinger in Florida,
Speaker 1: and they really went to question Maxwell at people that
Speaker 1: worked at the Epstein home in Palm beach, all kinds
Speaker 1: of allegations. So Gufrase alleged was forced to have sex,
Speaker 1: that she was trafficed to these famous men, including alleged
Speaker 1: princes passively, Prince Andrew, she's named him, and Maxwell denies it.
Speaker 1: So what happens is this stuff was all settled right
Speaker 1: on the eve of trial. The tifteen lawsuits got settled
Speaker 1: right before trial, and then the documents were understealed. So
Speaker 1: how did all those sealed documents get unsealed before Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein's suicide. But after Epstein gets prosecuted, the Miami Herald
Speaker 1: goes to ask why is this sealed? And the Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals, Second Circuit Court of Appeals directed that the
Speaker 1: judge who had originally had the lawsuits didn't properly seal.
Speaker 1: He shouldn't have properly sealed everything. It was improper to
Speaker 1: keep all the documents from the public. And so that's
Speaker 1: how we get to this point. The circuit orders last August,
Speaker 1: they order all these documents and seals, and all the
Speaker 1: documents start hitting the dockets and the next day Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Epstein is found dead in his jail cell of an
Speaker 1: apparent suicide. So the document release was sent back to
Speaker 1: a new federal judge to provide over what's properly unsealed
Speaker 1: and what should not be properly unsealed. And you can
Speaker 1: imagine there's all these implications for other people whose names
Speaker 1: may can't come up, other victims who allegedly were there
Speaker 1: when the trafficking occurred or were also traffic who may
Speaker 1: not want to have their names come out. So there's
Speaker 1: like a Jane Doe one, and a Jane Doe two,
Speaker 1: and multiple Jane does and also John does. So Judge Prescott,
Speaker 1: July twenty three, she held a hearing after you know,
Speaker 1: Maxwell has now been charged and says, okay, let's go
Speaker 1: and have a hearing about what you get unsealed. So
Speaker 1: she ordered the first transfer documents to be unsealed last
Speaker 1: Thursday night. So that's how we get to this testimony.
Speaker 1: Maxwell was questioned under oath. The government used the testimony
Speaker 1: as a basis they say she lied and committed to
Speaker 1: counts of perjury for lying when she claimed she was
Speaker 1: never present when Epstein may have been sexually abusing underage girls,
Speaker 1: nor had she seen anything like it. She was not
Speaker 1: aware of that activity illegal activity, nor was President ever
Speaker 1: witnessing it, so that testimony remains under steal because she
Speaker 1: went for an emergency motion and asked the Quarter of
Speaker 1: Appeals to again stop the release Thursday night. So that
Speaker 1: was on the eleventh hour stop to that part. But
Speaker 1: the rest of the documents hit the docket starting at
Speaker 1: like nine thirty on Thursday night. How many documents are
Speaker 1: already out. Two thousand pages were released in August, so
Speaker 1: that's when we started first seeing these allegations of possible
Speaker 1: you know, Prince Andrew's involvement. Some captains of industry were implicated,
Speaker 1: some senators, some former presidents uh their allegations. There were
Speaker 1: flight records of people who were on the plane to
Speaker 1: Epstein's Island in the Virgin Islands. What's her legal argument
Speaker 1: to stop the release of the deposition, Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's unusual because the you know Federal with Heel's
Speaker 1: Court already ruled we should be un sealed, and then
Speaker 1: the judge was ruling she reviewed it and said she
Speaker 1: didn't see a problem. But now Maxwell is making this
Speaker 1: argument that oh, I'm under indictment, so my testimony, if
Speaker 1: any potential juror reads it, I won't be able to
Speaker 1: get a fair trial and they'll judge me based on
Speaker 1: this testimony coming out now. So she'd won a temporary stay,
Speaker 1: but the circuit told her they want to hear oral
Speaker 1: arguments on September twenty two, and in the meantime, Judge
Speaker 1: Loretta Prescot, who is presiding over the un sealing the
Speaker 1: federal judge in Manhattan, she's ordered them to get ready
Speaker 1: for another state of documents. So on Thursday night we
Speaker 1: saw about fifty documents with hundreds of pages of evidence
Speaker 1: coming out um, including Gufrey's deposition which she gave under oath.
Speaker 1: There were excerpts that had been under steal, and we
Speaker 1: saw a little bit more about that. It seems a
Speaker 1: little disingenuous for Maxwell to want to conceal this deposition
Speaker 1: in the papers. When she tried to get the judge
Speaker 1: to agree to let her lawyers openly identify her accusers
Speaker 1: in public. Yeah, that was It's It's interesting because her
Speaker 1: civil lawyers in the defamation lawsuits are also part of
Speaker 1: the team that's defending her in this criminal case. And
Speaker 1: I guess it makes sense that these lawyers from Denver
Speaker 1: have great expertise. They know all that what's out there
Speaker 1: against her, but um, it was an interesting tactic. They
Speaker 1: wanted to be able to identify the accusers by name.
Speaker 1: It's called protective orders, and they're becoming really common nowadays
Speaker 1: for federal prosecutors to say that the lawyers will give
Speaker 1: you the evidence, but you are prohibited from releasing it
Speaker 1: to anyone and you could face criminal prosecution if you
Speaker 1: leak it to one. So that's a way of keeping
Speaker 1: things out of anyone else's hands, and it's just about
Speaker 1: the lawyer's eyes only. But what they wanted to do
Speaker 1: is they would see the names of the victims, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to say the names of any victim that
Speaker 1: had possibly in a tweet or on a Reddit posting
Speaker 1: said oh yeah, hashtag me too, I was an Epstein victim,
Speaker 1: or I agree with you he's a terrible person, or whatever.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be able. They said that was in
Speaker 1: the public forum, and they wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: name those people. The judge in the criminal case said no,
Speaker 1: but it's an interesting um argument. And the thing that
Speaker 1: was also interesting that Judge Prescus stated in her ruling
Speaker 1: she was kind of surprised by Maxwell trying to keep
Speaker 1: her testimony from becoming public basically, Presca said, when asked
Speaker 1: about all this activity, she basically denied knowing anything that's
Speaker 1: going on. So like, how bad could it be if
Speaker 1: she basically doesn't answer questions or denies anything. What did
Speaker 1: you learn from the documents that were released already? You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's dizzy and uh, mind boggling, how intense all this,
Speaker 1: you know, these what these girls went through. I mean
Speaker 1: I had read most of the stuff before, but when
Speaker 1: you go back, one of the things Virginia Jufrey wrote
Speaker 1: was called The Billionaire Playboys Club, and it was like
Speaker 1: a novel that she serialized or novelized her life, and
Speaker 1: it was it's like stunning too when you read, you know,
Speaker 1: sixteen year old going to the South of France for
Speaker 1: Naomi Campbell's birthday party, and what happens when you go
Speaker 1: there when all these potentates and wealthy men are there.
Speaker 1: And she said she was, you know, gots struck by
Speaker 1: how amazing she was with all these celebrities wearing a
Speaker 1: pretty dress that the night ends up getting her farmed
Speaker 1: out to a wealthy man as a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1: It's so tawdry and it's it's really kind of you
Speaker 1: know how Epstein had a lot of connections, a lot
Speaker 1: of friends. There he is kissing Naomi Campbell. There's delay
Speaker 1: Maxwell kissing Naomi Campbell Hello friends and getting invited to
Speaker 1: her birthday party in the south of France in Santo Pay.
Speaker 1: But you can kind of see how these poor kids
Speaker 1: might have gotten. Some of them came from very broken
Speaker 1: homes or runaways or came from troubled homes, and Epstein
Speaker 1: and Maxwell allegedly kind of hooked up on those people
Speaker 1: to lure them into their world. We also saw a
Speaker 1: very unusual thing, which was Maxwell's lawyers claimed that after
Speaker 1: in the last ten years, Maxwell had not had any
Speaker 1: communication with Epstein and they proffered that to the judge
Speaker 1: and asking for bail, that she had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with him and she hasn't spoken to him for ten years.
Speaker 1: And what was released by Judge Prescott also on Thursday
Speaker 1: were a series of emails that Epstein traded with Maxwell
Speaker 1: in January, basically him telling her how to handle this
Speaker 1: flare up of Geuffrey making these allegations against her being
Speaker 1: ef steamed, madam, you know, hold your head up high,
Speaker 1: go to parties. These women are they're just gossip mongers. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty interesting. They seem to have had a
Speaker 1: very close relationship. Even still despite what the lawyer claimed
Speaker 1: that it had been ten years. Here was January, these
Speaker 1: emails were exchanged. Since the second Circuit already ordered these
Speaker 1: documents released before, what are the chances that they'll now
Speaker 1: say no, don't release them. Yeah, that's a good, very
Speaker 1: good question. And what the circuit did originally and last
Speaker 1: year it's ordered much of the documents. There was apparently
Speaker 1: some just some agreements that the document certain documents already
Speaker 1: got released. That's how we got those two thousand last August.
Speaker 1: But they also directed there were some documents that should
Speaker 1: go back to the trial judge or a lower court judge,
Speaker 1: which is how PRESCO got it to determine what should
Speaker 1: be you know, filtered, what should be redacted, What was
Speaker 1: anything named anybody that had never come public before. So
Speaker 1: it really is going to be interesting. I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly who's on the panel, and I think we know
Speaker 1: two judges and um, it remains to be seen if
Speaker 1: the three judges on the in the panel how they
Speaker 1: view this latest attempt by her, because they've already and
Speaker 1: they also have the comments Judge Presco has made. She's
Speaker 1: done the review in camera looking at Maxwell's testimony, and
Speaker 1: she said, I don't have a problem releasing this. And
Speaker 1: then she also argued, Uh, the judgment noted in her
Speaker 1: ruling that Maxwell had been charged on July second, and
Speaker 1: yet her lawyers didn't bother coming to her and saying, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we have a criminal case. Now halt the release of
Speaker 1: these documents until like last week. So she's like, what,
Speaker 1: what took you three weeks to come to me? Um?
Speaker 1: She called it an eleventh hour last effort. Just update
Speaker 1: us on where Maxwell is right now and are there
Speaker 1: any more attempts on her part to get released? So far,
Speaker 1: we haven't seen anything like that. Um. If she's in
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn lock up and by Sunset Park, by the
Speaker 1: b QUE, it's probably kind of grim. She probably will
Speaker 1: make another effort. The judge is basically said, because of
Speaker 1: her ties, because she's a you know, French citizen, she
Speaker 1: could go to France and flee and then she couldn't
Speaker 1: be extradited. So, um, you know, the next step we
Speaker 1: have is oral arguments in September. I suspect that her
Speaker 1: lawyers are going to make a full throated the sense
Speaker 1: of her on both tacks, you know, both the guffre
Speaker 1: versus Maxwell lawsuits, civil suits as well as you know,
Speaker 1: making filings. I mean, what we saw was really unusual.
Speaker 1: It was this effort to the bid Bibo defense lawyers
Speaker 1: to name the victims, which is pretty unheard of. And
Speaker 1: the judge kind of noted that that victims are you know,
Speaker 1: accorded a certain amount of privacy, and you know, it
Speaker 1: might even seem like an attempt to quiet the women
Speaker 1: of the female accusers. A lot of these defense tactics
Speaker 1: like naming the alleged victims seem manipulative and tawdry, and
Speaker 1: if they're worried about pre trial publicity influencing potential jurors,
Speaker 1: these tactics certainly wouldn't endear them to potential jurors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I agree with you. It doesn't look, um, particularly
Speaker 1: endearing for a defendant to go after people who your
Speaker 1: young women who were you know, thirteen fourteen years of age. Um.
Speaker 1: But I guess you know, we certainly saw that out
Speaker 1: of Epstein, where his lawyers argued that these were transactions
Speaker 1: with young women who were basically prostitutes, and the judge
Speaker 1: who had that case, raised his eyebrow and said that
Speaker 1: these are underage girls, so it doesn't matter if they
Speaker 1: supposedly were engaging in which you call like legitimate transactions
Speaker 1: or consensual. How can it be consensual when they're underage.
Speaker 1: You don't have consent when you're fifteen. So um, it
Speaker 1: remains to be seen. You know. I guess it's a
Speaker 1: fine narrow line they're gonna have to tread. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: hoping that they'll just do a full throttle defensive galine
Speaker 1: at before trial, and then maybe the judge won't be endeared,
Speaker 1: but at least they'll be defending her their client, And
Speaker 1: then maybe they're hoping that any potential jurors will forget
Speaker 1: by the time they get to jury selection in July
Speaker 1: of next year. Thanks for being on the Bloomberg Law Show, Pat,
Speaker 1: That's what is Sha Hurtado, Bloomberg Legal reporter. A federal
Speaker 1: appeals court has thrown out Joe Harsnayev's death sentence in
Speaker 1: the Boston marathon bombing. A three judge panel of the
Speaker 1: First Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new penalty phase
Speaker 1: trial on whether the twenty seven year old Sir Nieves
Speaker 1: should be executed for the attack that killed three people
Speaker 1: and wounded more than two hundred sixty others. The panel
Speaker 1: said there was massive media coverage and the trial judge
Speaker 1: did not adequately screen jurors for potential biases. Sir Nieve
Speaker 1: will spend the rest of his life in prison, but
Speaker 1: it will be up to the U. S. Attorney's Office
Speaker 1: to decide whether to appeal the decision or retry the
Speaker 1: death penalty portion of the case. My guest is Robert Bloom,
Speaker 1: a professor at Boston College Law School. The appellate court
Speaker 1: said the jurors weren't properly screened. How so, what problems
Speaker 1: did they find with the screening. Well, one of the
Speaker 1: major problems was the use of social media, especially twitters
Speaker 1: or read twitters or whatever they call it. And apparently
Speaker 1: one juror tweeted that he called there of garbage and
Speaker 1: the judge, who asked a lot of questions about media,
Speaker 1: didn't really get into the social media. So the appellate
Speaker 1: Court wanted to make sure that the jury which which
Speaker 1: decided on sentencing was fear and they said that the
Speaker 1: judge should have done more. The judge did a good bit,
Speaker 1: but he should have done more to make sure that
Speaker 1: nobody was using social media or was reading newspapers. In addition,
Speaker 1: one of the jurors said he didn't stay at home
Speaker 1: during the time that they were looking. He had a
Speaker 1: shelter in place, and he apparently said he didn't, but
Speaker 1: he actually did. So there's some indication of a lack
Speaker 1: of fairness given bias of those particular drawers. Can a
Speaker 1: judge really find out if someone is lying in that respect?
Speaker 1: I mean, how can I judge monitor social media? Isn't
Speaker 1: up to the lawyers, the defense and the prosecution to
Speaker 1: bring forth some things that might be troubling about a juror.
Speaker 1: There's just so much out there these days. And what
Speaker 1: what's supposed to occur as the jurors are seated is
Speaker 1: something called wada, and the judge will get questions from
Speaker 1: both sides and we'll ask those questions. There's no there's
Speaker 1: very little investigative peace. The lawyers don't know who the
Speaker 1: drawers are going to be. It's a big pool. This
Speaker 1: judge also had questionnaires for the drawers, which both attorneys got,
Speaker 1: so so there's not an investigative The investigation comes from
Speaker 1: asking questions and you hope the drawers are telling the truth.
Speaker 1: One of the primary defense are events was that it
Speaker 1: was error to even hold the trial in Boston. What
Speaker 1: did the appellate courts say about that? They only focused
Speaker 1: in on the sentencing hearing, So I guess they concluded
Speaker 1: that holding trial itself not the sentencing hearing. By the way,
Speaker 1: the sentencing hearing is the continuation of the trial. They
Speaker 1: felt that was okay. Apparently they described the media attention
Speaker 1: as unrivaled in American legal history, and the O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson trial came to mind, because with the O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson trial, people were watching every minute of it across
Speaker 1: the country. You're in Boston. Was it a microcosm of
Speaker 1: that in Boston for this trial? Absolutely there were news
Speaker 1: reports Daley, and you know, initially was the horror of
Speaker 1: the marathon bombing in the capture of Tanara. Almost on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, deal was news media reports about the marathon.
Speaker 1: So there was a great deal of publicity. Certainly there
Speaker 1: was all kinds of media attention, TV radio, a lot
Speaker 1: of it. If this decision stands, the defense will try
Speaker 1: to move the case out of Boston again, most likely,
Speaker 1: so seven years later, is the same bias evident in
Speaker 1: Boston as it was before, Well, it's obviously less. The
Speaker 1: heelicourt didn't say you can't have it in Boston. They
Speaker 1: just said, if you decide to have it anywhere, make
Speaker 1: sure you ask enough questions so that decision makers, the
Speaker 1: jurors will act fairly. In a death penalty VOI dear,
Speaker 1: doesn't that always get you a jury that is perhaps
Speaker 1: more pro law then you would ordinarily get because they're
Speaker 1: able to say, yes, I'd give someone the death penalty.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's more the notion of considering it.
Speaker 1: If they say they adamantly against the death penalty, then
Speaker 1: obviously they would be challenged and they wouldn't be allowed
Speaker 1: to sit on the second time around. What can a
Speaker 1: judge do to try to ensure that there are unbiased jurors. Well,
Speaker 1: he certainly can ask more questions about social media. He
Speaker 1: can ask questions about whether or not somebody was sheltered
Speaker 1: in place, so they can do a good deal more
Speaker 1: of that kind of situation. By the way, they judge
Speaker 1: didn't do a bad job. He had a long questionnaire
Speaker 1: and what the just to screen out a bunch of
Speaker 1: durs and then many questions were asked, but what there
Speaker 1: took a while, but there were still some problems. According
Speaker 1: to the Court of Appeals, So Sir Nayev's attorneys, in
Speaker 1: trying to avoid the death sentence, argued that his older
Speaker 1: brother had orchestrated the attack and influenced his younger brother. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially during the sentencing part of the trial. One of
Speaker 1: the defenses arguments was that he was under the influence
Speaker 1: of his older brother, so that the relationship with the
Speaker 1: older brother was certainly an important part of the sentencing piece,
Speaker 1: So tell us more about the brother well. The judge
Speaker 1: refused to allow the notion that the brother was alleged
Speaker 1: and being investigated for two thousand and twelve murder and um.
Speaker 1: The appellate court thought that was important, especially if one
Speaker 1: of the arguments that the defense was making that he
Speaker 1: was under the influence of his brother. And if you
Speaker 1: are under the influence of your brother and you know
Speaker 1: that your brother has killed in the past, are alleged
Speaker 1: to have killed in the past, then isn't that increase
Speaker 1: the influence peace? And the appellate court thought that the
Speaker 1: judge made an error in not allowing that information. In
Speaker 1: judges are so reluctant to move trials for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: But do you think the judge in this case really
Speaker 1: should have moved the trial? Well, um, you know, a
Speaker 1: more apt example would probably be the Timothy McVeigh case,
Speaker 1: where the trial judge did not have the trial in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City. I believe it was moved to Colorado. The
Speaker 1: marathon in Boston is like the Fourth of July apple
Speaker 1: Pie and the Red Sox. It's very big here in Boston,
Speaker 1: So messing with this tradition was upsetting too many in
Speaker 1: Greater Boston. M Some legal observers say that the U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney might go straight to the Supreme Court with an appeal. Well,
Speaker 1: if they do that, okay, I'm not sure the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court will take it because, as you read the decision,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of facts that are that are utilized
Speaker 1: by the appellate court, and usually the Supreme Court doesn't
Speaker 1: want to get involved with all the facts that the
Speaker 1: appellate court addressed. So my best guess is that it
Speaker 1: won't be appealed to the Supreme Court at any rate.
Speaker 1: If it is appealed to the Supreme Court, and for
Speaker 1: some reason which I doubt, the Supreme court were to
Speaker 1: take it. Then if they overturn the first circuit, then
Speaker 1: the death penalty would still be on the table. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, if they don't appeal it, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney with possibly the Justice Department in Washington being involved,
Speaker 1: can retry SNAr with regard to the sentencing piece. Automatically,
Speaker 1: you can do it. The Peller Court said they throughout
Speaker 1: the initial one, but they said you could do it
Speaker 1: again if you wanted, and is it likely that they
Speaker 1: will do it again. The victims would have to relive
Speaker 1: this all over again if there's a retrial of the
Speaker 1: penalty phase. There was a letter published at the time
Speaker 1: of the sentencing phase, or as it was about to begin.
Speaker 1: The Richards family who lost I believe it was an
Speaker 1: eight year old son. A younger daughter I think she
Speaker 1: was five or six lost the leg. The nature of
Speaker 1: the letter was, please don't give him the death penalty
Speaker 1: because this thing will be appealed and appealed and appealed,
Speaker 1: and we want to get it behind us. And what
Speaker 1: they predicted was absolutely correct. In addition, Greater Boston community
Speaker 1: we had to relive the horror of that day. If
Speaker 1: the government had taken the death penalty off the table.
Speaker 1: He would have admitted guilt, he would have gotten a
Speaker 1: life sentence. He would have been sent for the rest
Speaker 1: of his natural life to Supermax and Flawrence, Colorado, which
Speaker 1: is where he is now. And that would have been
Speaker 1: that and we wouldn't have to relive it. Instead, you know,
Speaker 1: the story of the whole marathon bombing turned into the
Speaker 1: story after the bombing was about courageous police and bystanders
Speaker 1: and the medical community. And everybody was wearing shirts as
Speaker 1: a Boston Strong, and the Watertown police will be wearing
Speaker 1: shirts calling the Watertown Strong. It was just it was
Speaker 1: just great to see how the community was coming together.
Speaker 1: There was an unbelievable memorial right across us from the
Speaker 1: Boston Public Library. It made a horrible story so much
Speaker 1: better because it ended up being a story of courage
Speaker 1: in the community coming together. And I just as a
Speaker 1: citizen of Boston, as the product of the Boston Public Schools,
Speaker 1: I don't want to see this, this horrible event relived again.
Speaker 1: And many of the victims, certainly the Richard's family, feel
Speaker 1: the same way. At least they've expressed that some victims
Speaker 1: don't feel that way. And then you have these I understand.
Speaker 1: I totally understand that, you know, and I wasn't a victim,
Speaker 1: so I'm not criticized them in the least. I'm largely
Speaker 1: talking as a citizen of grade of Boston. Do you
Speaker 1: think that President Trump's statements will influence the U S.
Speaker 1: Attorney in Boston to to retry the penalty phase? The
Speaker 1: U S. Attorney is answerable to the Justice Department Attorney General.
Speaker 1: Bar appears to reflect the sentiments of President Trump, so
Speaker 1: there's a possibility that he will order bar the U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney in Massachusetts, who by the way, is a Trump appointment,
Speaker 1: to redo the sentencing hearing. I think that would probably,
Speaker 1: although you know, I don't know about the politics of it.
Speaker 1: I think that probably might be their approach as opposed
Speaker 1: to appealing to the Supreme Court because or maybe they
Speaker 1: would because that would take a long time, and if
Speaker 1: they appealed it to the Supreme Court, the election in
Speaker 1: November would be over by the time they decided it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being on the Bloomberg Laws Show. That's Robert
Speaker 1: bloom a professor at Boston College Law School. I'm June Grosso,
Speaker 1: and this is Bloomberg