EZRA LEVANT ｜ Rebel reports live from Lethbridge to cover the 'Coutts Four' trial
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Summary
Two years ago, the Coots 4 and Coots 5 were part of the protest known as the "Coots Blockade" against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's attempt to implement his anti-protest strategy in Canada's border town of Coots, Alberta. The protest was peaceful, peaceful, and peaceful. It was a stand up to the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and his attempt to crush it.
Transcript
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tonight lots of courtroom action here in lethbridge and in the federal court too
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it's february 20th and this is the ezra levant show
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oh hi everybody behind me you can see the protest that's here at the court uh in lethbridge every
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time there's a hearing inside dealing with the coots blockade now two years ago i'm here to cover
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the case of the so-called coots four there's also the coots three and the coots five a lot of people
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in coots coots was the border crossing between alberta and montana where dozens of truckers and
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farmers and people from the nearby community came to have a echo protest to the trucker convoy in
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ottawa and the bridge blockade in windsor ontario the geographical advantage and the logistical
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advantage that the coots blockade had is coots is really far away from large population centers
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it's a very small town if you blink you miss it when you're on the highway it really is just a
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border town there's a saloon and a few buildings but it's it's a small place and the reason i
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mentioned that is if you have a hundred big rigs and big pieces of farm equipment blocking a road
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you can't just call in 20 tow trucks the nearest tow trucks are what three hours away and good luck
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finding a tow truck driver who's willing to go against truckers and and farmers and so logistically
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and geographically in terms of police resources unlike ottawa and windsor the men were able to
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hold out but it was very peaceful the whole time you might remember we sent a lawyer chad williamson
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and his team they rotated through with the men giving them advice calming them down making sure no one got
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too crazy warning them don't bring firearms here that was a daily warning that chad gave the men
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telling them what to do if they were arrested telling them what they had to say and didn't have to say
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giving them business card so we were extremely attentive to this and of course we had two
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reporters embedded in the blockade uh kian simoni who's now our head of documentaries and sydney
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fazard these two men were there for i think nine days straight before they went home get a change of
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clothes i think 13 days all together we of course produced a documentary on the coup so we were very
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attentive to it and when four men were charged by the rcmp with very serious crimes involving firearms
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in one case involving explosives um conspiracy to commit murder of a police officer we were shocked
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by this as was the intended effect and in fact after that press conference came out many of the
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peaceful truckers said yeah because i don't want any of this and they just went home but this was all on
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the eve of the invocation of justin trudeau's emergencies act sure looks like a pretext now that
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time has passed they needed some proof of a violent insurrection because there simply wasn't one in fact
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the central characteristic of the trucker protest was it was peaceful it was fun it was joyful they had
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bouncy castles and hot tubs they waved canadian flags and the worst they did was honk their horns a few times
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they didn't storm any buildings justin trudeau wanted that january 6th insurrection narrative from the states
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to come to canada the truckers didn't give it to him and now fast forward to today uh a hearing
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in this court to throw out the fruits of a search warrant that was issued by a judge to uh look into
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the four coots men i should give you an update as you know a couple of weeks ago two of the coots four
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pled guilty to relatively minor weapons charges now whether or not they actually did those minor charges
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some people are skeptical i i think it's accurate to say if you've been in prison for two years
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you might just sign anything to get out of jail and go home to see your family so we should bear in mind
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that those two guilty pleas that were pled out in a deal two weeks ago they might not actually be
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accurate but if we take them at face value the two men who pled out pled guilty to weapons offenses
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which why would you bring a bring a weapon why would you bring a gun to a peaceful blockade
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did you think that there was going to be a final stand and this would be some battle
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that's not peaceful protest that's not why the truckers and the and the farmers were there they
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were there to stand up to the lockdowns to stand up for freedom not for revolution anyways um
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two of the truckers in the coots four just pled guilty just to end it two more continue on i met
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the other day with chris carbert one of the two remaining prisoners i went to the lethbridge
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correctional institute and i met with him for almost an hour his brother was there as well
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had lunch with the family and um i believed that there is sufficient grounds in the case of chris
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carbert to think that perhaps this was a frame-up that this was a stitch-up as the bridge would say
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that this was that he was overcharged and police exaggerated the case against him just to get that
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pr moment that trudeau needed listen he's still charged with very serious offenses and he's still
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behind bars i do not know his guilt or innocence that's not up for me to decide but i did decide with
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the family to set up a special crowdfunding campaign just for him and the reason is so that people who don't
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want to give to his case don't feel that their money is being railroaded there as you know rebel news
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and the democracy fund and other groups like the jccf we crowdfund for civil liberties cases that means
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peaceful protests that means mahatma gandhi style civil disobedience where you get arrested but not for
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doing anything violent for doing what tamara leach did certainly she's charged with a crime on the face
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of it mischief but she's a peaceful protester and she's being bullied by the state that was what we
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typically raise crowd funds for in the case of chris carbert he is facing serious charges but after my
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meeting with him and discussion with him and his family i felt that for those who want to help him
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in his specific case we should set up a specific crowd fund for him so we did at helpchris.ca and at the
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end of the monologue i'll i'll play that video that i recorded for helpchris.ca if you feel moved um i
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will be covering the case of the coots four as best i can but there's an important problem with that
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a lot of what they're talking about today in the pre-trial hearing is subject to a publication ban
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there's something in law called an ito an information to obtain it's exactly what it sounds like
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it's information the police uh uh take to the judge to obtain a search warrant they take it to
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a judge but it's all accusations it's an ex parte hearing the other side is not there to rebut it
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so it's the nastiest worstest most embarrassing things that the police can muster to convince a
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judge to issue a search warrant and some of it's true but some of it might be embellished some of it's
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relevant etc so they're talking about this ito and the search warrant they're talking about it in
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court but because it's untested allegations because it's wild accusations maybe not wild but it's
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accusations it's prejudicial to the defendants because they weren't there when this ito was
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submitted to the judge to get a search warrant it had to be done with an element of surprise right
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if you're getting a search warrant to spy on an accused criminal you you don't tip him off
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so so many things are being discussed in the court about whether or not this search warrant was valid
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whether or not it should be thrown out and they're going through the details in the information to
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obtain the ito but i can't report them even though i'm listening to them even though both sides lawyers
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are talking about them um because if that information were to come out untested unproven uncross examined it
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could taint uh the public including the jury pool on um against the suspects because they would hear
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the accusations without cross-examination or rebuttal it makes it hard to be a journalist i'm learning a
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lot about the case but i'm very limited in what i can tell you about it i'll do my best um i'm gonna be
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here for a few more days and i'm gonna try and bring out our trucker trial expert robert krajic
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who's been doing a great job covering the tamara leachian trial in ottawa day by day that trial in
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ottawa is on a bit of a hiatus i want to bring robert out here station him in lethbridge to report
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on the coots four that's happening right now and the coots three that's going on starting in a week from now
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there's a lot of coots trials going on and the prosecutor for many of them is the same guy his
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name is stephen johnston and i'm sure he would say he's doing his job he's loyal to his clients
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the province of alberta but he was the same prosecutor who went after pastor arthur pavlovsky
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who i think he was the same prosecutor who went after chris scott the owner of the whistle stop cafe
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i think for him it's a moral vendetta now he's so obsessed with getting every single protester
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the lengths they went to to shut down arthur pavlovsky and chris scott were astonishing and
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i'm worried that that same prosecutorial zeal is getting in the way of clear thinking here i don't
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know at the end what the four men did and what the two men still on trial look who's four did but
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they've been in prison for two full years pre-trial that's an enormous amount of time in prison before
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they've had their day in court you know i i have personally seen rapists in court get fewer days served
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in jail after a conviction it's very troubling anyhow it's sort of slightly hard to to talk with
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arthur pavlovsky giving his speech in the background he comes down even when he's not on trial to show
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moral support to the truckers inside so to wrap up i'm here to cover the pre-trial hearing where the
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two remaining defendants in the coots four are applying to the judge to throw out the search
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warrant that was executed against the coots four they're trying to prove to the judge that the
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information to obtain was improper and the search warrant itself was executed improperly
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uh this is because the trial will come up and whether or not the search warrant is admissible
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is a huge determinator next week the coots three are on trial as well and we are crowdfunding each of
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their lawyers too there's a lot of it's a lot of litigation going on and stephen johnson the prosecutor
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is behind quite a lot of it um so that's what i'm doing here in lethbridge and hopefully i'll be
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joined too by an expert in these trucker trials but two other things happened uh today that i want
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to tell you about it was a very busy day and my head is still spinning um as you know over the last
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two weeks we've gone to court three times not as journalists but as plaintiffs we saw that david
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lametti the former justice minister had illegally deleted government records namely his government
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twitter account anyhow i made a video this morning announcing the news the news came out while i
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was in court the news is the court the federal court issued their ruling and here instead of me
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repeating what i recorded this morning take a look at this video that i recorded minutes after
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as for levant here i've got breaking news from you i'm actually in lethbridge covering the trial
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of the coots four the two remaining members of it when on my phone i get an email from the federal
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court of canada they've issued a ruling in our landmark case rebel news versus david lametti you might
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recall that a couple weeks ago we noticed that david lametti had pressed delete on his twitter account
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who's david lametti you'll remember he's a disgraced former trudeau justice minister who brought
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in the emergencies act two years ago which was recently reviewed and ruled to be illegal and
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unconstitutional by the federal court after that incredible ruling lametti resigned in disgrace and
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slinked off to some cushy private law firm but honestly at the door he clicked delete on his
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government records i don't care what he does with this personal twitter account but this was a
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government civil service run government property would be like torching everything in the filing
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cabinet that's not yours to do and more the point victims of the emergencies act people who had
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their bank accounts seized they are now suing the government for the illegal and unconstitutional
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treatment at the hands of lametti how much clearer could it be that lametti was trying to destroy
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evidence as he sneaked out the back door so rebel news and myself went to court on an emergency basis no
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one else in the country did everyone was watching this i don't know is it a crime it's against the law
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certainly to delete public records everyone was watching it in slow motion we jumped in and filed
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an emergency injunction our lawyers worked all weekend and we had a hearing and then another
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hearing and then the final four-hour hearing in the matter where lametti had five lawyers paid for
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by taxpayers was held by no one less than the chief justice of the federal court of canada the big man
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himself when i saw that i thought uh-oh either they're bringing in the top man because if you're gonna
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spank a justice minister you better have your most senior judge do it or i thought yikes they're
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bringing in a buddy of lametti's just to you know finesse this whole thing i didn't quite know which
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way it would go anyways i just got the email of the ruling and we're going to post it all at
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stop the cover up dot com that's a special website we made with all our news on the lametti suit
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and i'd say it's a mixed bag we wanted the court to spank lametti we wanted the court to say you
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were caught red-handed you were deleting records contrary to the law we got you we wanted the courts
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to say that but they wouldn't what they did do was a half win i guess instead of ordering lametti
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and issuing a court order that uh requires those records to be preserved the court did two things
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number one it ordered lametti to file with the court an undertaking as it's called which is sort
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of like a lawyer's professional promise not to meddle with those records so i don't know it's like a
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pinky swear but for lawyers i much rather would have had a court order but the court is ordering him
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to make a pinky swear promise i'd call that a half win the other win that we got which would
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not have happened were it not for our lawsuit is that lametti is required to transfer his twitter
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account to the library and archives for them to handle now that still makes me nervous because who
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runs library and archives well trudeau does and i think they're just handing him to someone who's
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going to delete the records that lametti wants deleted that said we managed to get those two things
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and most importantly as soon as we filed the lawsuit against lametti he reactivated his twitter
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account that would have been deleted i read the ruling and you can read it at stop the cover up dot com
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and the judge said two things that i think were absolutely wrong and frankly one of them was a little
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bit embarrassing the first thing the judge said is that there's no proof that there would be
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irreparable harm if no order was issued well of course the irreparable harm is once those records
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are deleted they can never be got back and and there are people suing lametti for his atrocious
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and unconstitutional conduct if those records are gone they're gone that's the irreparable uh harm that
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would come so i think the judge missed that one but the second point is i think a little bit
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embarrassing of course twitter uh archives um if you have twitter you have every single tweet you've
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ever made every single private communication called the direct message every single interaction
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everything but there's a free website on the internet called the way back machine
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which takes sort of snapshots at random times of the web and it's irregular and it's owned by a private
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uh entity it's not a government thing it just just takes snapshots of the web and it's useful for
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looking up what things were looked like 10 years ago you could see for example what facebook looked
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like 10 years ago it's sort of interesting the judge said that way back machine is pretty good so
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even if lametti did destroy government documents well there are lots of snapshots of what his twitter
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account looked like i i maybe that's what a 70 year old man thinks of the internet and don't disrespect
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i'm not too far away from 70 years old myself but maybe there's a problem when you're having an
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internet case a twitter case and the judge has never used twitter as he admitted in the ruling and he
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actually thinks that uh some random website taking pictures of a government's uh twitter account is
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the same as preserving records i actually thought that was sort of embarrassing for the uh chief
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justice to say or maybe it was sort of oh i'm just a caveman i don't know about these high-tech
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things i'm gonna let the minister off i don't know i'm not thrilled with it but i am thrilled with
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what we did i'm thrilled that unlike anyone else in the country we jumped into action when we saw
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lametti breaking the law and he was breaking the law it's against the law to delete government records
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which he tacitly acknowledged by reviving his twitter account after he pressed delete we are
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the people who can take credit for getting him to make his pinky swear undertaking and we are the people
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who made the judge order that library and archives take possession of the twitter account on the whole
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i'd say the success here was seven out of ten in terms of actual results however the judge says
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because we didn't get a preservation order which is what we wanted we lost and so he's asked us to
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pay the cost of the government he hasn't said how much that has to be haggled out we have a decision
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to make do we appeal and try and get that formal preservation order i'm not sure if it's worth it
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financially there's going to be a little bit of a battle because those five government lawyers are
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going to demand that rebel news pay their bills because we didn't get everything we want i think
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that's atrocious and we'll have to see if we can convince them otherwise but i guess how i would end this is
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that was a very rebel moment we cover the news we do journalism and we saw a disgraced liberal trying
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to sneak out the door and destroy records on his way out the modern version of a paper shredder we
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leapt into action with the support of you our viewers we crowdfunded chad williamson and scott
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nickel two great freedom oriented lawyers who rushed to court did a great job representing freedom and the
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rights of the little guy and in the end although i think there's a lot of flaws in this ruling and i think
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the judge actually made some embarrassing errors in the end we got the court to order him to make an
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undertaking not to meddle with these records and he has to file that undertaking within seven days
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and library and archives will take hold of the records not himself so on the whole i'd call it a win
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and none of it would have been possible without you to see the ruling yourself go to stop the coverup
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dot com i'm very excited about that it wasn't the total win that i wanted i wanted the federal court
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to say to lamedi you're under a preservation order you touch it you're going to jail blah blah blah the
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toughest thing but maybe that's not realistic to have a chief justice tell a justice minister
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to make any sort of threat like that but to require the justice minister for former justice minister
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to sign a lawyer's undertaking not to meddle and to hand the files over to library and archives
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the more i think about it the more that's actually a huge win and even just filing the lawsuit against
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him caused him to reinstate his twitter account i actually think other than that flourish of the judge
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twisting the knife in lamedi i think we actually got everything we wanted to get i feel pretty good
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about that and thanks to you for supporting it no one else was in court no one else thought it was
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grievous enough to go to court to stop i'm glad we did and now so that's part two of my show today
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part one was my sort of rambling explanation of what i'm trying to do here at court even though i'm not
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allowed to discuss most of what's going on part two is the david lamedi victory and part three let me
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tell you my thinking about why i decided to set up a special crowdfund for chris carbert i hope it's the
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right thing to do meeting with him and the family sort of broke my heart what he's been through
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the fact that while he was in jail his brother passed away his father passed away he lost his
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two kids i mean he was a single dad before obviously they've gone to be with the mother how
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heartbreaking is that i suppose any prisoner is subject to those deprivations and that's irrelevant
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to the questions of what what he did and didn't do but it certainly touched me to see him a man who's
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spent two years in jail he told me he hadn't seen trees or grass in two years and it was very hard to
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hear him if you want to help chris carbert go to help chris.ca and those are special funds that won't
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be mingled with any other crowd funds if there is a surplus at the end of the day which i doubt
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it'll go to other trucker trials here's our video for help chris and then i'll come back for a final
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thought afterwards ezra levant here from rebel news i'm in lethbridge alberta outside the lethbridge
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correctional center inside is chris carbert one of the so-called coots four four men who were charged
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at the coots border blockade over two years ago in chris's case he was charged with three other men
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with conspiracy to commit murder against a police officer it was shocking news when the rcmp announced
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it so shocking that the rest of the truckers basically packed it in people didn't want to
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be associated with the threat of violent crime in fact one of the important characteristics of the
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trucker protest all across canada not only at the coots border blockade but in windsor ontario
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and in ottawa was just how peaceful it all was it was a protest of bouncy castles and hot tubs
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and at the most horn honking that's why canadians loved it that's why trudeau hated it trudeau wanted
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a january 6th insurrection narrative the truckers simply refused to give it to him the media tried
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but with citizen journalists including embedded in the blockade itself for example we had two rebel
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reporters there the whole time trudeau simply couldn't make that case but then an astonishing
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set of charges were made and shortly thereafter trudeau invoked the emergencies act putting the
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country under a form of martial law something never used before not even during 9-11 some people
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immediately said was this arrest and were these charges a pretext to launch the emergencies act
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i think it was a fair question given how politicized police were during the lockdowns but when information
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came out from police and prosecutors it looked like it was very serious indeed rebel news was crowdfunding
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legal defenses for truckers charged with civil disobedience and by that i mean peaceful protests
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you may know that rebel news represents thousands of people across the country or more precisely rebel news
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has crowdfunded for thousands of people some are represented by rebel news many are represented
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through the democracy fund rebel news crowds funds for tamara leach the great trucker leader in ottawa
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for arthur pavlovsky the christian pastor in alberta who was actually prosecuted for giving a sermon
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to the truckers but rebel news made the decision not to provide crowdfunding for the four coots men
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because the nature of the charges against them were not civil liberties charges they were charges
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of most grave crimes rebel news did pay for the bail hearing at their first instance sending four lawyers
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but after that it simply was in my personal view outside the scope of the donor intentions donors wanted peaceful
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protest but having a conspiracy to commit murder obviously exceeded that but as the months turned
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into years questions arose did these men actually do what they were accused of doing but then a couple of
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weeks ago something absolutely surprising happened at least it was surprising to me two of the coots four
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frankly the two that i thought the police had the strongest case against signed a plea bargain made
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a deal to walk out of jail immediately for time served and these were men who were charged with the
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others with conspiracy to commit murder but they pled guilty to very minor weapons charges the kind of
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thing that if they happened to you as a hunter or a farmer would at most have your firearms license
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suspended for a number of years at most a suspended sentence no jail time if these were the men
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who've been kept in prison for two full years and all the crown prosecution wanted from them is
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an admission that they in in one case had a unauthorized loaded weapon in another case a man
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agreed to bring a gun to the blockade which was a bad idea of course but if but that's far from a
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conspiracy to commit murder if the two men that i perceive to have the the weakest case in this
00:25:59.100
prosecution would get such a such an easy plea what about the other two and so today i visited chris
00:26:09.460
carbert in the lethbridge correctional center i spoke at length with the family we talked about
00:26:15.700
some of the evidence we talked about what it's like in prison
00:26:19.140
and i said to chris that while i made the decision two years ago with the facts in front of me
00:26:26.440
and while i think that that decision based on those facts was correct at the time
00:26:30.640
i no longer feel that way i'm not in a position to say whether or not chris carbert is innocent
00:26:37.840
or guilty that's not my job that's a job for the courts but it is crystal clear to me that the police
00:26:44.700
overcharged him that the prosecutors have exaggerated what these men have done
00:26:50.740
and that the evidence may not be what the police claimed it was in that ito information to obtain
00:26:58.520
when they first brought it to the court and if that is the case the fact that chris carbert and
00:27:05.220
tony olenek are still in jail two years later is actually a political punishment for being
00:27:13.740
embarrassers of justin trudeau and the sense that many people had two years ago that these were trumped
00:27:20.880
up political charges to pave the way for the emergencies act may well be true these men could
00:27:28.060
still be found guilty of the severe crimes mentioned before but i don't think that's likely anymore
00:27:33.900
and so while these charges still exceed what rebel news and certainly the democracy fund would normally
00:27:42.140
crowdfund for after talking to the family i have decided to set up a special crowdfunding account
00:27:51.420
just for chris carbert at help chris dot ca and in talking to chris and the family we've decided to
00:28:01.260
proceed this way all funds that help chris dot ca will go to pay for his lawyers to help run the trial
00:28:10.060
or do other legal work in the weeks and months ahead not to pay past legal bills but to pay legal bills in
00:28:17.020
the future the crowdfunding at help chris dot ca will be public and transparent for everyone to see
00:28:25.100
the family and the public should there be a surplus in the fund at the end of the trial chris and the
00:28:32.860
family and i agree that the funds should go to other trucker litigation including that funded by the
00:28:39.980
democracy fund as i mentioned before rebel news and or the democracy fund have represented 55 truckers in
00:28:47.340
alberta alone as well as windsor and ottawa including tamara leach some people will not want to contribute to
00:28:54.460
this because they may believe that the police and the prosecutors have something here that these men
00:29:00.060
did commit a crime or at least we should wait until we find out what the judge has to say
00:29:05.740
and i respect that and that's why i am not using funds that were granted just for civil liberties
00:29:11.500
purposes in this matter this is a completely new crowd fund that will be held separate and apart
00:29:17.820
but the fact that two men were let go in the manner that they were suggests to me that the crown does not
00:29:24.780
have the case that they claimed they did i'll tell you one more thing i learned today when i talked to chris
00:29:32.860
he was not allowed certain disclosure until two years in fact just very recently in fact some
00:29:39.580
disclosure from the crown he has not received yet disclosure by the way are details on all the evidence
00:29:46.940
including exculpatory evidence that could prove his innocence
00:29:50.460
one of those said chris was a message that he texted to people saying come to coots
00:29:58.380
for a peaceful protest and this was hidden from him and his lawyers in the disclosure package until very
00:30:08.060
recently why would police do that why would police overcharge why would they attempt to try the case
00:30:16.780
in the court of public opinion was it to help justin trudeau proceed with the invocation of the
00:30:22.700
emergencies act why would they decline to disclose as is their constitutional obligation and why was the
00:30:30.860
case so serious when it was announced dropped so lightly against chris lysac and jerry moran who were let
00:30:39.100
go with modest firearms offenses given the facts that i know now i can no longer say that this is not a civil
00:30:48.460
liberties case i believe it is i don't know chris carbert well nor do i know the family well and any
00:30:56.300
prisoner has hardships chris has told me that during his time in prison his father passed away and his
00:31:02.860
brother passed away i'm sure the stress of having chris in jail made both of their situations worse
00:31:10.140
he told me about his children who were growing up without their dad these are heartbreaking things
00:31:15.500
to hear and i'm sure every prisoner whether they're charged with a civil liberties offense
00:31:20.380
or whether they're charged with a horrendous crime has the same personal hardship but in this
00:31:26.060
case i am increasingly of the view that he is a political prisoner i told him that we're going to
00:31:34.700
help and we're going to help in the special way i've described and if you believe that we should help chris
00:31:42.060
carber whereas we didn't in the past if you like me think we should then please join me i've made the first
00:31:51.420
donation of 500 at help chris.ca and together hopefully we can get him legal representation
00:32:01.100
that will help us get to the truth and if the truth is as i suspect it is to his acquittal
00:32:08.300
and release go to help chris.ca well that's the show for today i'm a bit rambly because partly because
00:32:16.460
the loudspeakers in the background are in my ear and partly because i'm still digesting what i
00:32:21.180
heard in the courtroom itself i'll be here tomorrow and soon robert krajic will be here to cover all
00:32:27.660
these trials i will come back from time to time because they're very interesting thanks for your
00:32:32.060
support journalistically and to those of you who have crowdfunded the lawyers for the various men in
00:32:37.500
these cases the the one fellow amongst the coots four we're now helping and of course the coots three
00:32:43.340
the coots five and the 55 other truckers we're representing in alberta 55 of them if you can believe it
00:32:49.980
that's our show for today on behalf of all of us at rebel news to you at home good night and keep