Posted on 06/11/2024 7:58:33 PM PDT by SteveH
Ashleigh Merchant—the attorney who led the effort to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and his allies—is wading into another major RICO case prosecuted by Willis' office.
Merchant made an unexpected appearance at the Fulton County Courthouse on Monday afternoon to defend another Atlanta-based attorney who, in a shocking twist, was arrested while in court.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Well, who hasn’t given a lucrative job opportunity to his/her significant other every now and then? /s
Newsweek.com:
“99+ Ads, trackers and more blocked”.....
It seems that the judge has gone completely off the rails.
The judge, who's name is Ural Glanville, held an ex parte session with the prosecution and a prosecution witness. Others were in the room, including a court reporter and at least one or two sheriff's deputies (for "security reasons").
The witness with whom the judge met is a man named Kenneth Copeland, who also goes by the name Lil Woody. What is going around the rumor mill is that Lil Woody confessed to a murder while in the presence of the judge in his chambers.
Ex parte meetings are forbidden under all but very limited circumstances. The attorney for the defendant, Brian Steel, demanded information about the meeting, and was answered by Judge Glanville with repeated demands that he (Steel) disclose the name of the person who told him the meeting had occurred, and accused him of coming by this information "surreptitiously" (the judge used that word).
After repeatedly going back and forth on this, with the judge threatening the attorney with "criminal contempt," and the attorney refusing to disclose the means by which he learned of the ex parte meeting, the judge finally sentenced the attorney to serve twenty days in the Fulton county jail; sentence to be served on weekends, for the next ten weeks.
Around 50 attorneys gathered in the hallway outside the courtroom when they heard about this, and Ashleigh Merchant came forward to defend Brian Steele, which she did with amazing knowledge of the law. She stood up to the judge, trying to show him the error of his ways, but he refused to back down.
This morning, the witness Kenneth Copeland fired his lawyer, who was in the room when the ex parte discussions happened. The judge issued her a summons to return even though she's now been fired by her client; apparently judge Granville believes she (her name is Bumpus) is the source of the leak, which was entirely lawful and necessary under the legal cannons of the state of Georgia, since she witnessed an improper act on the part of the Court.
The only connection between the two cases is that both are RICO cases brought by the office of Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis, and that both apparently rest on very dubious evidence.
BREAKING: #YoungThug judge orders more contempt! Plus: #FaniWillis judge plows ahead despite stay!
Ashley is so good and smart. Hope she conservative, and runs for Governor.
The judge is or was a Brigadier General in the US Army Reserve.
There are several youtube lawyer blogs which covered this live. The judge was a mangled mess, who got caught misbehaving, and then threw a fit at the defense’s lawyer and instead of dealing with righting the case demanded to know how the defense found out about his misbehavior.
He then kept mixing pieces of civil contempt with pieces of criminal contempt, to try to compel the defense to give up their source - and got called out on it.
Bkmk
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