Juno News - No end in sight for Tamara Lich trial (ft. Trish Wood)

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 uh we will move now to a story that's been brewing in ottawa for now three weeks it is

00:00:14.800 the criminal mischief trial of tamara leach and chris barber and what's interesting about this

00:00:21.180 we haven't been able to cover it from the courtroom because i you know can't broadcast live from you

00:00:26.140 courtroom number three or whatever they're in but we've been keeping an update and i've been

00:00:30.440 keeping tabs on it and there's been some great reporting that's been taking place uh some of it

00:00:34.540 from robert krychuk of rebel and also from trish wood who we had on alongside jacqueline vine and a

00:00:41.580 couple of weeks ago about a documentary they're putting together on tamara leach called the trials

00:00:46.820 of tamara leach but i wanted to bring trish wood back onto the show for a bit of an update on how 1.00

00:00:52.420 things have been going trish good to talk to you this week has been a bit interesting because

00:00:56.920 we've seen some double speak from one of the witnesses from what he said during the public

00:01:03.000 order emergency commission and what he's now saying in the prosecution of chris and tamara what's going

00:01:09.480 on well it's quite interesting because well let me just say um you're lucky you're not covering the

00:01:15.280 trial because it's one of the most boring things i've ever been involved in as a journalist and most

00:01:20.280 trials as you know andrew are full of drama they create their own culture they create their own 1.00

00:01:25.680 stories remember oj and you know if the glove doesn't fit you must quit and all that wonderful

00:01:30.820 stuff that happened this trial is a huge drag on one's attention i mean maybe it's the you know the

00:01:39.220 the air flow problem in the courtroom or something along those lines but generally it is a case the crown's

00:01:47.400 case is a case in search of a narrative the crown has not explained in any sensible way exactly

00:01:56.980 why he's leading the evidence he's leading in the order he's leading the evidence he and she he has a

00:02:03.240 second chair young young woman he's leading and the whole thing has turned into and i don't want to be

00:02:09.440 disrespectful to the court i i quite like this judge and i i've said so before i think i said so the last

00:02:14.040 time i was on she's pretty interesting tough smart doesn't miss a trick and is managing a whole bunch 1.00

00:02:20.280 of really crazy stuff that's going on quite well but i it's becoming a big kind of evidentiary blob

00:02:27.400 you know you you're not being trained as they as a good lawyer will kind of put it out day after day

00:02:35.140 to start thinking about the case in a certain way and you're like oh yeah well that could you know that

00:02:40.400 maybe that could be true maybe they did do it or maybe they didn't do it it's just

00:02:44.000 kind of throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping it's going to stick that that feels like what's

00:02:48.680 going on and i don't get it i do know i'm sure you know too that this is not the first crown this is not

00:02:55.300 the original crown um that he was removed and i don't exactly know what happened there i i know that

00:03:02.320 he was pretty zealous and was seen to be zealous which is not necessarily a good look in a trial that's

00:03:09.140 already being accused of being political so they brought these two in uh tim radcliffe is the lead

00:03:15.080 chair i don't know maybe maybe it's a last minute thing maybe they're just not up to speed on their

00:03:20.380 own evidence but i am not hearing anything bad about chris barber and tamara leach day after day

00:03:27.400 after day after day i mean it's kind of crazy and and i don't think even like i've been following

00:03:33.980 canadian press a little bit because they've been sort of okay i don't think even the people who are

00:03:39.200 inclined to look at tam mainly the the legacy media the people who are inclined to look at tamara and

00:03:45.420 chris in the worst possible way even they're they're playing it kind of straight because there's not

00:03:49.960 really anything going on the nub of it i think is the phrase hold the line and how will that be

00:03:56.260 interpreted and what did it mean and what did it mean when various people said it i also think it

00:04:01.840 will be about at the end of the day uh the interpretation of the phrase mischief because

00:04:07.620 that can be legally interpreted multiple ways too but we don't even have a framework of language in

00:04:13.200 this case yet so it's a really really strange thing to be participating in sitting there in the gallery

00:04:20.780 yeah yeah and just to talk about the pace of this there were initially 22 witnesses the crown was

00:04:27.560 planning to call yeah i believe there was talk about adding more but just for context here we are

00:04:32.660 about to wrap up the third week of trial there are under the original schedule three days left and

00:04:39.620 they've gone through three witnesses yeah so here's what's going on there aside from the fact that the

00:04:45.780 witnesses are not saying anything inculpatory about they're taking a long time to say nothing

00:04:51.500 well they're not even saying bad things about the the defendants right which you would think the

00:04:56.480 crown witnesses would be but but um there's a lot of procedural stuff that i don't quite understand and

00:05:03.860 i look i i give trials are really really hard work andrew i mean you you you're in trial all day

00:05:10.520 on your feet working really hard and you go home at night and you prep more i it's a really tough

00:05:15.460 gig for both sides actually so i have some sympathy for them but what i don't understand is

00:05:21.560 why the crown attorney primarily tim radcliffe uh who's the lead chair um was not better prepared

00:05:28.080 because a lot of the reasons that we're seeing this slow going with the witnesses is that simple

00:05:36.460 rules of evidence don't seem to have been being adhered to so we'll just get going and they'll get

00:05:43.540 three questions and answers out from one of their witnesses and then there is an objection

00:05:47.800 which the defense is perfectly entitled and should be doing on behalf of their client and then a long

00:05:54.560 long discussion on simple things like i know with um with mr ayotte who's on the stand now uh one of the

00:06:00.760 issues was did he have notebooks what notebooks can buttress what he's testifying to in court and my

00:06:06.480 understanding from from when i was there the other day is that he didn't have any so that then becomes a

00:06:11.700 big thing how do you know what you know and how do we know that you're saying what you actually know

00:06:16.040 you know like there are reasons that they do all these really specific things these rules of evidence

00:06:20.960 in a trial and they don't it's not that they're not being adhered to that's maybe not a fair thing to

00:06:27.260 say that would be perhaps for an appellate court to sort out later but they seem to be coming to mr

00:06:34.060 radcliffe as a bit of a surprise so i don't know if if if justice perkins but they is being

00:06:40.520 a stickler or if there really is something hinky about the way they are bringing the evidence to

00:06:47.680 court and some of it makes you know the complaints about it makes sense to me obviously if you're

00:06:51.540 defending your client you need to know exactly what the crown's going to lead so you can prepare

00:06:56.200 your defense and your you know arguments i mean court really is about arguing right and in order to

00:07:02.240 to prepare yourself you need to know what they're going to lead and whether it's credible and where

00:07:06.340 they got it and all that stuff and that didn't seem to be being happening so this is dragging and

00:07:12.060 i will say that the the judge is saying that you know she looks kind of irritated at times and not

00:07:19.260 yet irritated with defense now they're not leading evidence yet but but uh she does seem somewhat

00:07:25.000 irritated with it with this crown and with the process no one wants this no one wants to be

00:07:30.180 a judge in charge of a proceeding that's sort of crawling along the eyes of the country you know

00:07:36.240 are on this and um i you know i'll say this andrew i'm not a purely objective observer i was a journalist

00:07:43.160 long enough to know that i you know i do have sides a bit in this i can sort out truth from from non-truth

00:07:50.040 but i i do wish these charges hadn't been laid and i you know i kind of favored the convoy i think

00:07:56.340 people know that but uh putting that aside i feel like everybody involved in it including the the

00:08:02.840 judge wants this case to be decided on the facts as they're presented whether you think the charges

00:08:09.120 should have been brought or not and uh i think it's going to be really really difficult for the

00:08:14.700 crown to prove its case in this maybe you know maybe that's wishful thinking on my part but yeah i'm

00:08:19.720 not hearing it some of the some of the clips that i was told were played earlier on in this trial had

00:08:26.480 nothing to do with tamara leach and chris barber and and you know it's funny because the crown made

00:08:31.880 a point of saying early on in his opening remarks you know we're not this is not trying them for

00:08:36.040 their political beliefs and i believe he had also made a comment about it not being about the convoy

00:08:40.860 itself yeah yeah and yet his case has involved trying to basically put the convoy on trial well you

00:08:48.480 almost i almost want to put my hand up and say mr rightcliffe so why did you lead that clip what am

00:08:53.540 i supposed to glean from that because i'm not i'm not getting it there was a guy on from the surate

00:08:58.180 to quebec this is how kind of absurd some of the evidence is and he was part of what they were calling

00:09:05.580 the green squad and if you remember when they brought the convoy down and and by this time bear in

00:09:12.300 mind tamara and and chris had already been arrested they weren't even there this was yeah just for for

00:09:17.640 the audience to be aware they were arrested before the major police operations took place so i mean

00:09:23.600 anything that happened after that point i mean yes you could argue maybe they had encouraged it before

00:09:28.520 but they weren't there they weren't involved they were in a cell they were in a cell yeah so so the

00:09:35.120 surate quebec is doing this i guess it's called a clearing operation or at least that's what the

00:09:39.200 military calls it and and he was with the green squad and there was a point where he's kind of

00:09:43.940 talking about what they're doing you see this i believe it was body cam footage and this is kind

00:09:50.400 of heartbreaking too that here are these far right you know terrorists according to some people

00:09:56.900 including legacy media all these guys kind of military age guys uh chanting love over fear

00:10:04.080 right they're not misbehaving they are they're standing calm and true and chanting love over fear in the

00:10:11.900 face of this really overpowering police presence i think at that point the police were behaving as

00:10:17.460 well i'm not not dumping on them but here they are they're all on their black block and it's you know

00:10:22.440 very scary and we don't know what's going to happen and then there was kind of a moment where this um

00:10:28.760 this uh police officer from from the sq says well and then we went for lunch

00:10:33.240 and so of course the defense council lawrence greenspan says something like well you went for

00:10:39.360 lunch so so there's this big moment of we've got a you know secure the area from these scary people

00:10:45.960 but we're going for lunch so i mean there there are moments that maybe are not like intended to be

00:10:53.160 really representative of what's going on but they actually were like it wasn't they weren't so scared

00:10:58.980 that they couldn't go to the chateau laurier for lunch he clarified he wasn't eating at the chateau

00:11:03.740 laurier no one can afford that they took their lunches to the chateau laurier so that's the kind of

00:11:08.480 stuff we're seeing right i mean i haven't seen anything in the videos that did anything but really

00:11:16.260 uh act as exculpatory evidence for the defense except there are chance of hold the line i know

00:11:21.980 that's going to be discussed forever and ever but it is showing um some pretty how can i put it

00:11:30.680 subdued behavior on behalf of the protesters and i don't know if you remember this if i said this on

00:11:34.640 the last show but when they first started showing these these videos and you're like oh what's going

00:11:39.420 to be in them they're going to be so terrible and and what happened was the the protesters looked

00:11:44.840 pretty responsible but also in these clips there were photographs and images of the police beating

00:11:53.360 protesters in the head and and the judge noticed that you know she noticed so whatever they're

00:11:59.760 leading it always seems it's kind of like dare i say um the roadrunner and the coyote like they keep

00:12:07.220 dropping the anvil on i maybe i'm overstating it but do we know when they're going to settle the

00:12:13.480 trial schedule itself just to get back to the housekeeping side of this because i again the 0.73

00:12:18.320 dates that were originally planned they were going to i believe run tomorrow as well i i they weren't

00:12:23.660 running fridays but i believe they're scheduled to go tomorrow and then they were going to take a two

00:12:27.320 week break and finish off october 11th to 13th and i know they've talked about needing to add more

00:12:33.400 dates has that been settled yet not as far as i know but i came back yesterday so i don't know if

00:12:39.580 there's been movement on that i i get the sense that they've still got a long way to go with this

00:12:45.900 and and and it's also interesting too because covering it then becomes a problem right it costs

00:12:50.920 money to be in ottawa you know i'm paying hotels i'm la la la as you all know and you're like nothing's

00:12:58.020 really happening you're waiting for the big trial moment and nothing is happening it's all almost all

00:13:05.440 procedural none of it's making very much sense and you kind of go home at the end of the day

00:13:10.540 thinking man what am i going to write about so i've been writing about how bumpy the train ride was

00:13:15.400 going down to ottawa i was writing about other trials i've covered i mean there's not all that

00:13:21.140 much to say and yet this is a massively important trial in canadian history isn't it and if they are

00:13:27.360 convicted then we better know why it happened and that's essentially why why we're all there and still

00:13:33.040 kind of hanging in with something that even a lot of the protesters have disappeared at their point

00:13:37.500 too trish wood is the host of trish wood is critical and uh you should always follow the work she does

00:13:43.780 because you are never going to be disappointed if you do trish thanks so much as always for coming on

00:13:48.100 thanks andrew have a good day thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:13:52.120 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:13:58.080 by consult Kelley

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Juno News - September 23, 2023

No end in sight for Tamara Lich trial (ft. Trish Wood)

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