Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Law with June Grasso from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: The bail hearing for Gallen Maxwell ended with the judge
Speaker 1: ruling that she must span the next year behind bars
Speaker 1: awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The judge sighted Maxwell's
Speaker 1: extraordinary financial resources and international ties and concluded there was
Speaker 1: a substantial risk that Maxwell would flee the country. The
Speaker 1: British socialite pleaded not guilty to charges that she helped
Speaker 1: her longtime boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein run a sex trafficking scheme
Speaker 1: targeting girls as young as fourteen. The bail hearing offered
Speaker 1: a glimpse at Maxwell's strategy at trial and at her
Speaker 1: life hiding from authorities at a luxurious secluded a state
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire, guarded around the clock by a team
Speaker 1: of former British military Joining me as Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Legal reporter, pat you actually attended the hearing, So tell
Speaker 1: us what it was like in this in the midst
Speaker 1: of the coronavirus pandemic. Well, it's of the first hearings
Speaker 1: that was held in the Seroal Courthouse in Lower Manhattan,
Speaker 1: and you know this is a place that's seen big trials,
Speaker 1: show trials of world Calm and Bernie made Off case
Speaker 1: and it's been shut down throughout the pandemic, and they
Speaker 1: opened it earlier this month for hearing and it's open
Speaker 1: to the public that on a restricted basis. You have
Speaker 1: to get your temperature checks before you go in. We
Speaker 1: went in and they had the Central Jury Room, which
Speaker 1: is this massive room where the jury potential jurors gather
Speaker 1: before they go up to trial. They had this massive room,
Speaker 1: socially distanced chairs, so about six ft apart. It was
Speaker 1: seating for about sixty people, and they had giant screens overhead,
Speaker 1: and everybody was in remote places. So Glenne Maxwell was
Speaker 1: in a lawyer's conference room over a screen, probably a
Speaker 1: laptop in the federal jail in Brooklyn. Per lawyer Mark
Speaker 1: Cohen was in his office. The judge was apparently at
Speaker 1: her possibly her home office. She was not in the courthouse,
Speaker 1: I was told, And everybody was appearing virtually, so it
Speaker 1: kind of unusual to see court not in court. Tell
Speaker 1: us about Maxwell's appearance. What did she look like? Well,
Speaker 1: her lawyer had complained that since she arrived at the MDC,
Speaker 1: they had not allowed her to take a shower for
Speaker 1: seventy two hours. She seems in great physical shape. She
Speaker 1: had her hair pulled back in a bun. She was
Speaker 1: wearing brown looked like short sleeve jail fatigues. And she
Speaker 1: speaks in a very posh, clipped, educated British accent, very composed.
Speaker 1: She's had her shoulders squared, and she was really attentive
Speaker 1: throughout the hearing. Was there a separate hearing for the
Speaker 1: bail as opposed to the pola. The hearing happened in
Speaker 1: several chapters. The first one is they have to do
Speaker 1: a whole proviso where the judge advises everybody be and
Speaker 1: and asks Maxwell if she's consenting to appear. Virtually, she
Speaker 1: has a right to be in the courthouse and have appearance,
Speaker 1: but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the courts are closed
Speaker 1: and this was going to be happening virtually, So that
Speaker 1: was the first part. Second part was she was arraigned
Speaker 1: and entered a not guilty plea, and then the next
Speaker 1: part was the prosecutors and the defense lawyers made their
Speaker 1: best arguments for why Maxwell should get bail. Her lawyers
Speaker 1: were arguing or why she should not be bailed because
Speaker 1: she poses a flight risk. So let's talk first about
Speaker 1: some of her arguments for bail. Of course, COVID nine
Speaker 1: team and her lawyer is Mark Cohen, who's a former
Speaker 1: federal prosecutor in Brooklyn. He argued that she should get
Speaker 1: five million dollars bond because keeping her in the jail,
Speaker 1: it's cumbersome and too difficult to show her all these
Speaker 1: thousands of pages of documents. He said he had to
Speaker 1: read most of the stuff over the own to her.
Speaker 1: Because all the federal jails are under shut down, they
Speaker 1: can't have attorney's visits for the reason that the attorneys
Speaker 1: could bring COVID into the jail or the virus could
Speaker 1: get spread, so there are no attorney visits. Everything's done
Speaker 1: virtually over video conferencing, So showing a client evidence over
Speaker 1: a screen and having them read it over the screen
Speaker 1: is really really difficult. And they only get a limited
Speaker 1: amount of time anyway in these for these lawyer conferences,
Speaker 1: So imagine only getting an hour to share your clients
Speaker 1: two thousand pages of documents. So that was number one.
Speaker 1: This was going to hamper her ability to defend herself. Secondly,
Speaker 1: they argued she's at risk because she's fifty eight, that
Speaker 1: she could get coronavirus, but the judge noted that she
Speaker 1: had not raised any pre existing conditions that would possibly
Speaker 1: put her at risk. So the judge, who has in
Speaker 1: the past allowed other people out of prison because of
Speaker 1: the virus, did not make a finding on that, so
Speaker 1: that was a losing argument for her. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the alleged victims testified. Her name is Annie Farmer. She
Speaker 1: says she was sixteen years old when she met Maxwell,
Speaker 1: and Maxwell invited her to meet Epstein because he was
Speaker 1: going to offer her to pay for her education. She
Speaker 1: was invited for a weekend at this New Mexico retreat
Speaker 1: with other high school students because they were meeting this
Speaker 1: finance here who was looking for intelligent children to help
Speaker 1: back their education. And she find herself all alone with
Speaker 1: Epstein and Maxwell and a New Mexico ranch, and that's
Speaker 1: when the abuse started. So she spoke out, and the
Speaker 1: victims are entitled to speak out, you know, don't allow
Speaker 1: this person out because of the harm they've caused me.
Speaker 1: That's under the federal world. I've been talking to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: legal reporter Pat Hurtado about Galine Maxwell's bail hearing. Was
Speaker 1: the prosecutor's argument, basically that there's nothing that can ensure
Speaker 1: that she won't leave the jurisdiction. Yeah, that was the argument.
Speaker 1: Maxwell wanted out on five million dollar a bomb secured
Speaker 1: by six people unnamed to she said, we're siblings, unnamed.
Speaker 1: She wasn't putting up any of her money. She was
Speaker 1: offering to put up property about three point seven five
Speaker 1: million in the UK, that's hers, but she was not
Speaker 1: offering to put up any of her own money. The
Speaker 1: government said she has all these mysterious finances. There seemed
Speaker 1: to be possibly fifteen bank accounts, including a Swiss bank
Speaker 1: account which appears to hold up more than twenty million dollars,
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of transactions going back and
Speaker 1: forth where money would be funneled from an Epstein account
Speaker 1: to her account, back and forth. And they're not clear
Speaker 1: the origins of the money or how much she has.
Speaker 1: They know she has at least one Swiss bank account
Speaker 1: and where this money went. She sold an apartment to
Speaker 1: townhouse It's pretty County on East sixty five Street on
Speaker 1: the upper east Side for about fifteen million a couple
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, and the government says we don't
Speaker 1: know where that money went. And then she bought this
Speaker 1: how in New Hampshire where they arrested her, you know,
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty six acres in Bradford, New Hampshire for
Speaker 1: one point two million, but it was purchased under an LLC.
Speaker 1: And the government said there were all these red flags.
Speaker 1: When they questioned Maxwell, she they said she's been less
Speaker 1: than truthful. For example, when pre trial it is called
Speaker 1: pre trial services and it's the court people who interviewed
Speaker 1: the person and say, okay, you just got arrested. Tell
Speaker 1: us a bit about yourself. Do you have any bank accounts?
Speaker 1: You know, help us out here because we're trying to
Speaker 1: assess if you're eligible for bail or if you're too poor.
Speaker 1: You need as a sense lawyer so you can get
Speaker 1: a federal defender paid for by the government. Maxwell. When
Speaker 1: they asked her where she lived, she said, oh, I
Speaker 1: live in a house. I don't know who owns it,
Speaker 1: but the people who own it let me live there.
Speaker 1: And the government said that was very curious to them
Speaker 1: because they got a call from the real estate agent
Speaker 1: who sold the New Hampshire proper the who said that
Speaker 1: they recognized Galae Maxwell as the woman who had come
Speaker 1: with a man. The man said his name was Scott
Speaker 1: and the woman said her name was Jen, and how
Speaker 1: he introduced himself as retired British military who was working
Speaker 1: on a book, and she introduced herself as Jen Marshall
Speaker 1: and said she was a journalist who is looking for privacy.
Speaker 1: So the circumstances of I don't know who owns my house,
Speaker 1: but the real estate agent said, this is the woman
Speaker 1: I recognized to introduced herself as somebody completely different. The
Speaker 1: government said these are ruses that show that she's willing
Speaker 1: to be less than forthcoming and hide off the grid
Speaker 1: to conceal herself, and that she's been hiding for the
Speaker 1: last year, and Judge finally decided with the government there
Speaker 1: was just too much risk and too many unknown factors
Speaker 1: about her. She's also a French citizen, and France does
Speaker 1: an extradited citizens, so that's also a problem. We got
Speaker 1: some insight into how she was living while she was
Speaker 1: hiding in New Hampshire, including that she had a team
Speaker 1: of former British military guarding her. Yeah, and the defense
Speaker 1: lawyer Mark Cohen was making an argument that Galais Maxwell
Speaker 1: has been the victim of a sensatiable media basically that
Speaker 1: have been going after her, so that Maxwell hired these
Speaker 1: people was a team of former British military who guarded
Speaker 1: her compound and that when the FBI says, when they
Speaker 1: got to her gate, it was locked. They had to
Speaker 1: cut the lock. They were immediately confronted with a guard
Speaker 1: who demanded who they were, and they announced that they
Speaker 1: were FBI and they were there to arrest her. They
Speaker 1: go up to the front door and one of them
Speaker 1: looks through the window and sees Maxwell running away from
Speaker 1: the door, and then they announced themselves and they say
Speaker 1: they had to breach the door, and then they went
Speaker 1: in and they found her hiding in another room. One
Speaker 1: of the agents found a cell phone wrapped in tinfoil,
Speaker 1: which they said was a misguided effort to avoid being
Speaker 1: tracked on her phone. Now, her lawyer said this is
Speaker 1: all because Maxwell has been victimized by the media who's
Speaker 1: always trying to track her down. So this is what
Speaker 1: she did. She hired guard to protect her from the press,
Speaker 1: and that the phone last year sometime that he claimed
Speaker 1: that her phone had been hacked by British press and
Speaker 1: that's why she was wrapping it in tinfoil to avoid
Speaker 1: this phone from being hacked by the press. When the
Speaker 1: judge said no bail, you're going to be in jail
Speaker 1: for about a year until your trial, did she have
Speaker 1: a visible reaction. I mean, some people said they saw
Speaker 1: her wiping a tear from her eye. What I saw
Speaker 1: is that almost looks like someone who was sitting up straight,
Speaker 1: very perky and attentive, and she had the look of
Speaker 1: you know, she was totally impassive expression the whole time.
Speaker 1: But when she lost that argument and the judge that
Speaker 1: I find her a risk, she has the ability to flee.
Speaker 1: There's no circumstances I feel comfortable allowing her out. She
Speaker 1: seemed to deflate, and her shoulders sagged, and she looked
Speaker 1: she cast her eyes down and she stopped looking up,
Speaker 1: so it looked like, you know, somebody, the air went
Speaker 1: out of her. The defenses arguments at the bail hearing
Speaker 1: hint at possible trial strategies from Maxwell, and one was
Speaker 1: challenging the credibility and the motives of the alleged victims,
Speaker 1: one of whom had just testified. Yeah, and one of
Speaker 1: the people that the defense lawyer Cohen went after was
Speaker 1: Annie Farmer, and he basically, in a kind of a
Speaker 1: parenthetical aside, said, you know, this is a woman who
Speaker 1: has filed a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars from this Maxwell,
Speaker 1: who has also applied for There's an Epstein Victims compensation
Speaker 1: fund est ablished out of this more than six million
Speaker 1: dollars that was in Epstein's estate when he died last
Speaker 1: August in a federal jail awaiting sex trafficking charges. So
Speaker 1: in May they worked out a deal where they established
Speaker 1: this fund that would have trustees and the victims of
Speaker 1: Epstein's abuse could make applications to be compensated because of
Speaker 1: the abuse. And he was basically suggesting, don't listen to
Speaker 1: any Farmer because she wants money and she's seeking millions
Speaker 1: from Maxwell, and she's going to get millions from Epstein's fund.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of attack on the alleged victims, who
Speaker 1: were teenagers at the time risky, especially in the me
Speaker 1: too era? Mighty backfire a trial? Um, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because I covered Harvey Weinstein's trial and it
Speaker 1: was a similar kind of approach that it has not
Speaker 1: and Bill Cosby certainly did it in his trial, so
Speaker 1: it hasn't been successful in the Post meets New World.
Speaker 1: And I asked, um, David Boys is a lawyer for
Speaker 1: any farmer and he represents other victims. And I said,
Speaker 1: are you confident you know there's if you're aware of it.
Speaker 1: There's a history of litigation. Um. Some of the victims
Speaker 1: did sue Epstein in federal court. Um. There's a long
Speaker 1: travail of lawsuits and cases. Um. After the victims find
Speaker 1: out that there was a plea deal that Epstein got
Speaker 1: in the Southern District of Florida where he evaded prosecution,
Speaker 1: they were upset that they were cut out. And you know,
Speaker 1: under the law, it's called a Crime Victims Restitution Act
Speaker 1: where victims can be have to be notified and then
Speaker 1: they get to participate and say this person did this
Speaker 1: to me, and I want you to judge to know
Speaker 1: to inform the judge for a sentence. Well, these people
Speaker 1: got didn't get told. And the women found out after
Speaker 1: the fact that he got a plea deal and it
Speaker 1: was all over. The case was over. So UM, the
Speaker 1: as women basically want that there's a lot of out there.
Speaker 1: There's depositions, there's testimony. Um, they've spoken out, they filed lawsuits,
Speaker 1: So when I was asking David boys, are you worried
Speaker 1: about some of these victims that they may get assailed?
Speaker 1: And are new confident that Annie Farm her, knowing what
Speaker 1: happened today, will be able to sit withstand this kind
Speaker 1: of cross examination if maxwell lawyers go after her, and
Speaker 1: he said, fine, I'm perfectly confident she's going to stand
Speaker 1: up just fine. So you know, it remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: It would be quite a trial because it will be
Speaker 1: Epstein's top lieutenant that these young women said, you know,
Speaker 1: I was fourteen years old. I was sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: and this lady came up to me and she seemed
Speaker 1: so nice, and she befriended me, and she checked me
Speaker 1: into Epstein's world. Did the defense attorney also try to
Speaker 1: portray Maxwell as a bit of a victim herself here,
Speaker 1: which seems like it would be a stretch before a jury. Well,
Speaker 1: he indicated that she a didn't know anything was going on,
Speaker 1: and then it seemed like he could possibly be indicating
Speaker 1: that that might be an avenue they're going to explore
Speaker 1: she didn't know what was going on behind closed doors.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there, I didn't know it. But secondly that
Speaker 1: if she was involved. If there was any involvement, it
Speaker 1: was because she was in Epstein's thraw kind of signaled
Speaker 1: that he was going to raise that it's got to
Speaker 1: be it's going to be more developed, I believe, you
Speaker 1: know when we see down the road when these papers
Speaker 1: get filed and the motions start getting made and there's
Speaker 1: a July trial day, so we'll have a July twelve
Speaker 1: one trial day. That's literally going to be nearly two
Speaker 1: years to the day from when Epstein first got arrested.
Speaker 1: In reading about it, it seems as if the defense
Speaker 1: attorney was just throwing everything against the wall to see
Speaker 1: what would stick, even saying that, oh, there were no
Speaker 1: video or audio tapes of what happened, which is certainly
Speaker 1: not a requirement right right, and and once that was
Speaker 1: one thing that David Boys was saying to me after
Speaker 1: the hearing, that, um, you don't need stuff in this
Speaker 1: day and age, and another defense lawyers said this former
Speaker 1: prosecutor said this to me that you know, that was
Speaker 1: an argument you made, Oh there's no video, and people say,
Speaker 1: but there was this that argument was made before cell
Speaker 1: phone You know, people make cell phone videos all the time.
Speaker 1: And now we see what happened to George Floyd, for example.
Speaker 1: But there is the testimony. These these former prosecutors and
Speaker 1: boys were saying, if you hear the steering accounts from
Speaker 1: a woman, and the jury assesses whether that person is
Speaker 1: credible the story enough is going to be pretty potent
Speaker 1: evidence before a jury. And the other thing the government
Speaker 1: says is they have travel records, photographs, and other material
Speaker 1: that will actually, um, you know, corroborate what these young
Speaker 1: women said happen, even though it's twenty five years old.
Speaker 1: I have to say that it seems as if since
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide that all the attention that might
Speaker 1: have been on his trial and him and all the
Speaker 1: blame is going to be pushed to her. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's what's happened. I mean, um, there's an speculation
Speaker 1: of if she played guilty, could she possibly give up
Speaker 1: other people in the network. But um, the former prosecutors
Speaker 1: I spoke to said, you know, you you view her.
Speaker 1: She was Epstein from the victim's accounts. She was Epstein's enabler.
Speaker 1: She was the one that enticed and lured these young women, teenagers,
Speaker 1: kids into his orbits and constantly funneled this these women.
Speaker 1: And then also the government says she was present so
Speaker 1: that she kind of would quote unquote normalize the abuse. Well,
Speaker 1: it can't be so bad as this lady. She is,
Speaker 1: this nice lady. Oh you're asking me to take my
Speaker 1: clothes off to do a massage. Oh, well, the lady's
Speaker 1: still here, you know, and she helped normalize this a
Speaker 1: barrent behavior for these poor kids, many of whom were
Speaker 1: homeless or destitute or came from broken homes. So it's
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein died in August of twenty but this is
Speaker 1: as close as you get to his second in command.
Speaker 1: And you know, if she was involved with this, with
Speaker 1: this behavior as the as the victims say she was,
Speaker 1: then you know it's uh, there's there's a reason why
Speaker 1: she's going to go to trial. One final question, is
Speaker 1: anyone considering or is there a thought that since she'll
Speaker 1: be in jail for a year, that they'll be pressure
Speaker 1: on her to lead guilty. And I mean, would the
Speaker 1: government even want to give her a deal? Yeah, some
Speaker 1: of the some of the people I was talking to
Speaker 1: said yes, this would be you know, she may get
Speaker 1: realized it's not so much fun being in lock up.
Speaker 1: It's not fun to be told when to take a shower.
Speaker 1: And the conditions at the Federal jail in Brooklyn have
Speaker 1: come under incredible scrutiny for the lack of you know,
Speaker 1: the women don't get enough air, they don't get time outside,
Speaker 1: and they don't get even get sunlight. It's a Some
Speaker 1: of the dormitories are like one big giant room with
Speaker 1: a bunch of bunk beds side by side. And during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, they've been complaints that the women have been
Speaker 1: ordered during a lockdown. There's been some situations whatever security situations,
Speaker 1: and they're told to sit on their beds all day
Speaker 1: long and don't move, and they have to be escorted
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom and they're not necessarily allowed to.
Speaker 1: So it's been kind of you know, it's not the
Speaker 1: greatest conditions. So if she's in these conditions when she's
Speaker 1: used to living quite the life, living very well. She's
Speaker 1: the daughter of a British publishing baron, Robert Maxwell. She
Speaker 1: grew up, she went to Oxford, She's lived very very
Speaker 1: high life and now suddenly the reality may be sinking
Speaker 1: in for her in a federal jail. Not a lot
Speaker 1: of fun facing federal charges that maybe it's time to
Speaker 1: kind of deal with the government and try to get
Speaker 1: some leniency, whether or not they get offered to her,
Speaker 1: and whether or not it's a deal that she accepts,
Speaker 1: and whether or not, you know, she might have to
Speaker 1: throw herself on the mercy of the court, and if
Speaker 1: whether or not she wants to give up other people
Speaker 1: and the government possibly might be suspicious if she starts
Speaker 1: pointing fingers at other people when they know otherwise that
Speaker 1: she was more directly involved than they were. It's called
Speaker 1: cooperating down. So whether you would go point down to
Speaker 1: a person lower on the on pyramid, on the power
Speaker 1: pyramid and say, oh, it's their fault, you know, that's
Speaker 1: not going to look good for her before a federal
Speaker 1: judge trying to implicate someone else and claim that she's
Speaker 1: less culpable. So it remains to be saying, what's going
Speaker 1: to happen next? And if she gave up to other people, um,
Speaker 1: who would they be. Someone likened this to somebody who's
Speaker 1: the head of a drug kingpin running a drug conspiracy
Speaker 1: right drug trafficking. The drug kingpin dies, but his top
Speaker 1: lieutenant is still around. So if that top lieutenant wants
Speaker 1: to plead guilty. Who are they going to implicate? There
Speaker 1: might be other people involved that they're the still number
Speaker 1: two in this this organization. So what they were suggesting
Speaker 1: to me as she may decide to point fingers at
Speaker 1: other people, but they may just be other clients. And
Speaker 1: I'm not condoning those other individuals who may have been
Speaker 1: clients because they were having sex with underage girls. But um,
Speaker 1: in the world of who's culpable and Jeffrey and Epstein's
Speaker 1: sex trafficking ring, it's gonna be equation. The government's going
Speaker 1: to have to work out. Thanks so much for being
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg A Show, Patty. That's Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Legal Reporter. After last minute legal battles and exhausting all
Speaker 1: legal avenues, the Texas Republican Party has given in and
Speaker 1: is having its convention online. The Texas State Supreme Court
Speaker 1: refused to force the city of Houston to allow the
Speaker 1: party to host its convention indoors at the George R.
Speaker 1: Brown Convention Center as the city is fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaker 1: Joining me is Bloomberg Legal reporter Laurel Culkins So Laurel
Speaker 1: tell us about the legal whirlwind. Okay, well, it all
Speaker 1: erupted at the last minute, sort of the middle of
Speaker 1: last week when Houston's Mayor Sylvester Turner, after repeatedly trying
Speaker 1: and failing to convince the Texas Republican Party to shift
Speaker 1: to a virtual convention, instructed convention officials to find a
Speaker 1: way out of the contract. And they've decided that the
Speaker 1: risk of six thousand more or less delegates coming to
Speaker 1: the city of Houston, which is an epidemic hot zone
Speaker 1: at this point, was simply too great a risk for
Speaker 1: a health stand point to both the attendees and a
Speaker 1: local convention and hotel and restaurant workers. So they triggered
Speaker 1: the forced masure clause, which is an escape clause in
Speaker 1: contracts that says, if you cannot perform this contract, you
Speaker 1: don't have to. Okay. Immediately, two different groups of Republicans suit,
Speaker 1: and they suit on different grounds. The Texas Republican Party
Speaker 1: itself said, well, that's actually not forced masure. You can
Speaker 1: safely hold a convention for six thousand people in a
Speaker 1: hall built for fifty thousand people with appropriate social distancing
Speaker 1: and cleaning procedures. You just don't want to, and that's
Speaker 1: an improper use of forced masure. Well, the other group,
Speaker 1: let's just call them the rogue Republican big wigs because
Speaker 1: they're not actually the Texas Republican Party. They also sued,
Speaker 1: and they claimed constitutional ground that Turner, who is a Democrat,
Speaker 1: was squashing their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly
Speaker 1: and it was a political hit job by a Democrat
Speaker 1: at and the rival political party, And both groups made
Speaker 1: a great deal of the contrast between the way Sylvester
Speaker 1: Turner vocally supported the Black Lives Matter marchers, which drew
Speaker 1: sixty thousand protesters to Houston City streets last month, with
Speaker 1: his saying, well, you can't safely have Republicans meet indoors
Speaker 1: with six thousand people this month. Now, the city said, obviously,
Speaker 1: an outdoor gathering like that is different than an indoor gathering,
Speaker 1: especially given the World Health Organization's recent guidance that tiny
Speaker 1: aerosolized particles of coronavirus can readily transmit the disease indoors.
Speaker 1: That's the groundwork that all the fighting started on, and
Speaker 1: at one point it was actually active in front of
Speaker 1: three courts at the same time, but then quite a
Speaker 1: roller coaster. So take us through the legal proceedings on
Speaker 1: the lower courts all the way up to the Texas
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. There were two different lower court judges that
Speaker 1: were looking at the two different groups lawsuits separately. Both
Speaker 1: of the judges were Democrats, because all of the local
Speaker 1: state court judges in Houston are Democrats. Both judges, for
Speaker 1: different reasons, rejected the Republican group's request for an emergency
Speaker 1: order forcing the city to put the convention back on track.
Speaker 1: So both of these groups over the weekend ran to
Speaker 1: the Texas Supreme Court. They just skipped right over the
Speaker 1: intermediate pelate courts, went straight to the Texas Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is all Republican, and they were
Speaker 1: hoping they would get a different answer there well on Sunday.
Speaker 1: On Monday morning, hard to keep up. Monday morning, the
Speaker 1: State Supreme Court said, you know, nice, try, but even
Speaker 1: if your political rights are getting squashed, you don't have
Speaker 1: the right to commandeer the convention center when they've appropriately
Speaker 1: exercised an escape clause in a contract. So that ended
Speaker 1: that aspect of it. And yet there was still a
Speaker 1: local judge that had an emergency order in front of him.
Speaker 1: Monday morning, so he held a hearing all Monday and
Speaker 1: essentially ended up in the same place that the Texas
Speaker 1: Supreme Court had ended up, where he said, it's a
Speaker 1: contract case. They properly invoked the escape clause. You can
Speaker 1: just fight about the damages down the road. We're not
Speaker 1: putting the convention back on. That was Monday. So then
Speaker 1: Monday night, the state Republican party leadership their executive committee
Speaker 1: meeting and voted to go ahead and moved to convention
Speaker 1: into a virtual online basis, which they had sort of
Speaker 1: been planning for back since March when this whole pandemic
Speaker 1: thing started gaining traction. They appropriately had a Plan B.
Speaker 1: So they voted to go to Plan B. And you
Speaker 1: would think that beie the end of it Monday night,
Speaker 1: but no, the die hard, the rogue Republicans refused to
Speaker 1: give up, and on Tuesday they grafted their constitutional claims
Speaker 1: over the convention being canceled to an existing lawsuit they
Speaker 1: had in federal court in Houston that was fighting actually
Speaker 1: on a different matter about the Texas governors COVID business
Speaker 1: restrictions and contract tracing and all kinds of constitutional claims
Speaker 1: related to that business. And you think that was a
Speaker 1: stretch to try to join all those people together on
Speaker 1: that claim, and it was a stretch. But the reason
Speaker 1: they did it was the federal judge that they had
Speaker 1: drawn in that case is well known for anti government views.
Speaker 1: He he rules against the government every chance to get
Speaker 1: and he smacked them around in the process. So they thought, well,
Speaker 1: it's worth a shot. And so on Wednesday, the federal
Speaker 1: judge Hella hearing almost all day long, and he tortured
Speaker 1: the City of Houston attorneys with questions that at one
Speaker 1: point seriously had been thinking he was going to put
Speaker 1: the Republican Convention back on track, until after hours late
Speaker 1: in the day the judge said, no, it's likely true
Speaker 1: that the Republican Party's political rights were trampled, you know,
Speaker 1: violation of constant shores. But it's just too late and
Speaker 1: they have a plan B that they're already working anyway,
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna let you do it. Is the end.
Speaker 1: It is, finally is. I was texting with the lawyer afterwards,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, it's this, really it is.
Speaker 1: The silver bullet been shot into this thing. And uh.
Speaker 1: He admitted that it was just too late and they
Speaker 1: were going to have to go online, and in truth,
Speaker 1: they've been planning to do that as a plan B
Speaker 1: all along. But you know, they want to have their
Speaker 1: party hats, they want to have their you know, crazy
Speaker 1: banners and and political meetings and that's actually their right
Speaker 1: as a political party to meet however they choot and
Speaker 1: however they prefer. That is a constitution all right, under
Speaker 1: both the state Constitution and the federal Constitution. But like
Speaker 1: the Texas Supreme Court said, in the midst of a
Speaker 1: pandemic and when certain conditions trigger the city can appropriately
Speaker 1: say you just can't do that here. Thanks Laurel. That's
Speaker 1: Laurel Calkins, Lburg legal reporter. I'm June Brusso and this
Speaker 1: is Bilburg.