Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Rebel reports live from Lethbridge to cover the 'Coutts Four' trial

00:00:00.000 tonight lots of courtroom action here in lethbridge and in the federal court too

00:00:19.600 it's february 20th and this is the ezra levant show

00:00:30.000 oh hi everybody behind me you can see the protest that's here at the court uh in lethbridge every

00:00:37.700 time there's a hearing inside dealing with the coots blockade now two years ago i'm here to cover

00:00:43.940 the case of the so-called coots four there's also the coots three and the coots five a lot of people

00:00:50.120 in coots coots was the border crossing between alberta and montana where dozens of truckers and

00:00:57.140 farmers and people from the nearby community came to have a echo protest to the trucker convoy in

00:01:05.720 ottawa and the bridge blockade in windsor ontario the geographical advantage and the logistical

00:01:12.340 advantage that the coots blockade had is coots is really far away from large population centers

00:01:19.460 it's a very small town if you blink you miss it when you're on the highway it really is just a

00:01:24.040 border town there's a saloon and a few buildings but it's it's a small place and the reason i

00:01:28.340 mentioned that is if you have a hundred big rigs and big pieces of farm equipment blocking a road

00:01:34.900 you can't just call in 20 tow trucks the nearest tow trucks are what three hours away and good luck

00:01:42.500 finding a tow truck driver who's willing to go against truckers and and farmers and so logistically

00:01:48.140 and geographically in terms of police resources unlike ottawa and windsor the men were able to

00:01:53.540 hold out but it was very peaceful the whole time you might remember we sent a lawyer chad williamson

00:01:58.600 and his team they rotated through with the men giving them advice calming them down making sure no one got

00:02:04.100 too crazy warning them don't bring firearms here that was a daily warning that chad gave the men

00:02:10.440 telling them what to do if they were arrested telling them what they had to say and didn't have to say

00:02:14.520 giving them business card so we were extremely attentive to this and of course we had two

00:02:19.520 reporters embedded in the blockade uh kian simoni who's now our head of documentaries and sydney

00:02:26.480 fazard these two men were there for i think nine days straight before they went home get a change of

00:02:31.880 clothes i think 13 days all together we of course produced a documentary on the coup so we were very

00:02:37.120 attentive to it and when four men were charged by the rcmp with very serious crimes involving firearms

00:02:45.160 in one case involving explosives um conspiracy to commit murder of a police officer we were shocked

00:02:52.240 by this as was the intended effect and in fact after that press conference came out many of the

00:02:58.600 peaceful truckers said yeah because i don't want any of this and they just went home but this was all on

00:03:02.420 the eve of the invocation of justin trudeau's emergencies act sure looks like a pretext now that

00:03:09.620 time has passed they needed some proof of a violent insurrection because there simply wasn't one in fact

00:03:14.880 the central characteristic of the trucker protest was it was peaceful it was fun it was joyful they had

00:03:20.180 bouncy castles and hot tubs they waved canadian flags and the worst they did was honk their horns a few times

00:03:25.640 they didn't storm any buildings justin trudeau wanted that january 6th insurrection narrative from the states

00:03:31.920 to come to canada the truckers didn't give it to him and now fast forward to today uh a hearing

00:03:39.000 in this court to throw out the fruits of a search warrant that was issued by a judge to uh look into

00:03:46.840 the four coots men i should give you an update as you know a couple of weeks ago two of the coots four

00:03:51.800 pled guilty to relatively minor weapons charges now whether or not they actually did those minor charges

00:03:58.420 some people are skeptical i i think it's accurate to say if you've been in prison for two years

00:04:04.080 you might just sign anything to get out of jail and go home to see your family so we should bear in mind

00:04:10.860 that those two guilty pleas that were pled out in a deal two weeks ago they might not actually be

00:04:17.680 accurate but if we take them at face value the two men who pled out pled guilty to weapons offenses

00:04:22.460 which why would you bring a bring a weapon why would you bring a gun to a peaceful blockade

00:04:27.420 did you think that there was going to be a final stand and this would be some battle

00:04:32.240 that's not peaceful protest that's not why the truckers and the and the farmers were there they

00:04:37.320 were there to stand up to the lockdowns to stand up for freedom not for revolution anyways um

00:04:43.560 two of the truckers in the coots four just pled guilty just to end it two more continue on i met

00:04:50.620 the other day with chris carbert one of the two remaining prisoners i went to the lethbridge

00:04:56.620 correctional institute and i met with him for almost an hour his brother was there as well

00:05:01.260 had lunch with the family and um i believed that there is sufficient grounds in the case of chris

00:05:10.620 carbert to think that perhaps this was a frame-up that this was a stitch-up as the bridge would say

00:05:16.480 that this was that he was overcharged and police exaggerated the case against him just to get that

00:05:23.580 pr moment that trudeau needed listen he's still charged with very serious offenses and he's still

00:05:29.660 behind bars i do not know his guilt or innocence that's not up for me to decide but i did decide with

00:05:36.100 the family to set up a special crowdfunding campaign just for him and the reason is so that people who don't

00:05:41.660 want to give to his case don't feel that their money is being railroaded there as you know rebel news

00:05:46.360 and the democracy fund and other groups like the jccf we crowdfund for civil liberties cases that means

00:05:53.480 peaceful protests that means mahatma gandhi style civil disobedience where you get arrested but not for

00:06:00.960 doing anything violent for doing what tamara leach did certainly she's charged with a crime on the face 0.86

00:06:07.120 of it mischief but she's a peaceful protester and she's being bullied by the state that was what we 1.00

00:06:14.100 typically raise crowd funds for in the case of chris carbert he is facing serious charges but after my

00:06:20.360 meeting with him and discussion with him and his family i felt that for those who want to help him

00:06:27.280 in his specific case we should set up a specific crowd fund for him so we did at helpchris.ca and at the

00:06:33.680 end of the monologue i'll i'll play that video that i recorded for helpchris.ca if you feel moved um i

00:06:39.980 will be covering the case of the coots four as best i can but there's an important problem with that

00:06:45.680 a lot of what they're talking about today in the pre-trial hearing is subject to a publication ban

00:06:51.540 there's something in law called an ito an information to obtain it's exactly what it sounds like

00:06:56.840 it's information the police uh uh take to the judge to obtain a search warrant they take it to

00:07:06.040 a judge but it's all accusations it's an ex parte hearing the other side is not there to rebut it

00:07:13.180 so it's the nastiest worstest most embarrassing things that the police can muster to convince a

00:07:19.600 judge to issue a search warrant and some of it's true but some of it might be embellished some of it's

00:07:24.540 relevant etc so they're talking about this ito and the search warrant they're talking about it in

00:07:30.740 court but because it's untested allegations because it's wild accusations maybe not wild but it's

00:07:36.600 accusations it's prejudicial to the defendants because they weren't there when this ito was

00:07:41.720 submitted to the judge to get a search warrant it had to be done with an element of surprise right

00:07:45.360 if you're getting a search warrant to spy on an accused criminal you you don't tip him off

00:07:49.920 so so many things are being discussed in the court about whether or not this search warrant was valid

00:07:55.240 whether or not it should be thrown out and they're going through the details in the information to

00:07:59.820 obtain the ito but i can't report them even though i'm listening to them even though both sides lawyers

00:08:05.800 are talking about them um because if that information were to come out untested unproven uncross examined it

00:08:12.740 could taint uh the public including the jury pool on um against the suspects because they would hear

00:08:21.300 the accusations without cross-examination or rebuttal it makes it hard to be a journalist i'm learning a

00:08:28.020 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

00:08:35.340 here for a few more days and i'm gonna try and bring out our trucker trial expert robert krajic

00:08:42.460 who's been doing a great job covering the tamara leachian trial in ottawa day by day that trial in

00:08:49.080 ottawa is on a bit of a hiatus i want to bring robert out here station him in lethbridge to report

00:08:54.400 on the coots four that's happening right now and the coots three that's going on starting in a week from now

00:09:02.740 there's a lot of coots trials going on and the prosecutor for many of them is the same guy his 0.99

00:09:09.460 name is stephen johnston and i'm sure he would say he's doing his job he's loyal to his clients

00:09:14.500 the province of alberta but he was the same prosecutor who went after pastor arthur pavlovsky

00:09:20.200 who i think he was the same prosecutor who went after chris scott the owner of the whistle stop cafe

00:09:25.660 i think for him it's a moral vendetta now he's so obsessed with getting every single protester

00:09:33.760 the lengths they went to to shut down arthur pavlovsky and chris scott were astonishing and

00:09:38.800 i'm worried that that same prosecutorial zeal is getting in the way of clear thinking here i don't

00:09:45.020 know at the end what the four men did and what the two men still on trial look who's four did but

00:09:50.080 they've been in prison for two full years pre-trial that's an enormous amount of time in prison before

00:09:57.200 they've had their day in court you know i i have personally seen rapists in court get fewer days served

00:10:04.260 in jail after a conviction it's very troubling anyhow it's sort of slightly hard to to talk with

00:10:10.860 arthur pavlovsky giving his speech in the background he comes down even when he's not on trial to show

00:10:16.480 moral support to the truckers inside so to wrap up i'm here to cover the pre-trial hearing where the

00:10:24.360 two remaining defendants in the coots four are applying to the judge to throw out the search

00:10:30.900 warrant that was executed against the coots four they're trying to prove to the judge that the

00:10:36.040 information to obtain was improper and the search warrant itself was executed improperly

00:10:42.400 uh this is because the trial will come up and whether or not the search warrant is admissible

00:10:47.540 is a huge determinator next week the coots three are on trial as well and we are crowdfunding each of

00:10:56.640 their lawyers too there's a lot of it's a lot of litigation going on and stephen johnson the prosecutor

00:11:01.320 is behind quite a lot of it um so that's what i'm doing here in lethbridge and hopefully i'll be

00:11:07.160 joined too by an expert in these trucker trials but two other things happened uh today that i want

00:11:13.860 to tell you about it was a very busy day and my head is still spinning um as you know over the last

00:11:19.760 two weeks we've gone to court three times not as journalists but as plaintiffs we saw that david

00:11:27.580 lametti the former justice minister had illegally deleted government records namely his government

00:11:33.480 twitter account anyhow i made a video this morning announcing the news the news came out while i

00:11:39.480 was in court the news is the court the federal court issued their ruling and here instead of me

00:11:47.800 repeating what i recorded this morning take a look at this video that i recorded minutes after

00:11:52.560 learning about the about the ruling

00:11:54.740 as for levant here i've got breaking news from you i'm actually in lethbridge covering the trial

00:12:01.800 of the coots four the two remaining members of it when on my phone i get an email from the federal

00:12:06.960 court of canada they've issued a ruling in our landmark case rebel news versus david lametti you might

00:12:13.180 recall that a couple weeks ago we noticed that david lametti had pressed delete on his twitter account

00:12:19.020 who's david lametti you'll remember he's a disgraced former trudeau justice minister who brought

00:12:24.660 in the emergencies act two years ago which was recently reviewed and ruled to be illegal and

00:12:30.500 unconstitutional by the federal court after that incredible ruling lametti resigned in disgrace and

00:12:36.680 slinked off to some cushy private law firm but honestly at the door he clicked delete on his

00:12:42.720 government records i don't care what he does with this personal twitter account but this was a

00:12:46.880 government civil service run government property would be like torching everything in the filing 0.70

00:12:52.360 cabinet that's not yours to do and more the point victims of the emergencies act people who had

00:12:58.760 their bank accounts seized they are now suing the government for the illegal and unconstitutional

00:13:03.680 treatment at the hands of lametti how much clearer could it be that lametti was trying to destroy

00:13:09.520 evidence as he sneaked out the back door so rebel news and myself went to court on an emergency basis no

00:13:16.240 one else in the country did everyone was watching this i don't know is it a crime it's against the law

00:13:21.200 certainly to delete public records everyone was watching it in slow motion we jumped in and filed

00:13:26.400 an emergency injunction our lawyers worked all weekend and we had a hearing and then another

00:13:30.840 hearing and then the final four-hour hearing in the matter where lametti had five lawyers paid for

00:13:36.860 by taxpayers was held by no one less than the chief justice of the federal court of canada the big man

00:13:43.260 himself when i saw that i thought uh-oh either they're bringing in the top man because if you're gonna

00:13:48.020 spank a justice minister you better have your most senior judge do it or i thought yikes they're 1.00

00:13:53.240 bringing in a buddy of lametti's just to you know finesse this whole thing i didn't quite know which

00:13:57.620 way it would go anyways i just got the email of the ruling and we're going to post it all at

00:14:03.180 stop the cover up dot com that's a special website we made with all our news on the lametti suit

00:14:08.200 and i'd say it's a mixed bag we wanted the court to spank lametti we wanted the court to say you 1.00

00:14:16.540 were caught red-handed you were deleting records contrary to the law we got you we wanted the courts

00:14:23.460 to say that but they wouldn't what they did do was a half win i guess instead of ordering lametti

00:14:31.420 and issuing a court order that uh requires those records to be preserved the court did two things

00:14:38.420 number one it ordered lametti to file with the court an undertaking as it's called which is sort

00:14:45.120 of like a lawyer's professional promise not to meddle with those records so i don't know it's like a

00:14:51.220 pinky swear but for lawyers i much rather would have had a court order but the court is ordering him

00:14:57.540 to make a pinky swear promise i'd call that a half win the other win that we got which would

00:15:03.260 not have happened were it not for our lawsuit is that lametti is required to transfer his twitter

00:15:08.200 account to the library and archives for them to handle now that still makes me nervous because who

00:15:13.500 runs library and archives well trudeau does and i think they're just handing him to someone who's

00:15:18.100 going to delete the records that lametti wants deleted that said we managed to get those two things

00:15:24.400 and most importantly as soon as we filed the lawsuit against lametti he reactivated his twitter

00:15:30.600 account that would have been deleted i read the ruling and you can read it at stop the cover up dot com

00:15:35.860 and the judge said two things that i think were absolutely wrong and frankly one of them was a little

00:15:40.740 bit embarrassing the first thing the judge said is that there's no proof that there would be

00:15:44.480 irreparable harm if no order was issued well of course the irreparable harm is once those records

00:15:49.920 are deleted they can never be got back and and there are people suing lametti for his atrocious

00:15:55.020 and unconstitutional conduct if those records are gone they're gone that's the irreparable uh harm that

00:16:01.340 would come so i think the judge missed that one but the second point is i think a little bit

00:16:05.860 embarrassing of course twitter uh archives um if you have twitter you have every single tweet you've

00:16:12.860 ever made every single private communication called the direct message every single interaction

00:16:17.720 everything but there's a free website on the internet called the way back machine

00:16:22.540 which takes sort of snapshots at random times of the web and it's irregular and it's owned by a private

00:16:30.000 uh entity it's not a government thing it just just takes snapshots of the web and it's useful for

00:16:34.800 looking up what things were looked like 10 years ago you could see for example what facebook looked

00:16:39.680 like 10 years ago it's sort of interesting the judge said that way back machine is pretty good so

00:16:45.700 even if lametti did destroy government documents well there are lots of snapshots of what his twitter

00:16:51.000 account looked like i i maybe that's what a 70 year old man thinks of the internet and don't disrespect

00:16:57.700 i'm not too far away from 70 years old myself but maybe there's a problem when you're having an

00:17:03.860 internet case a twitter case and the judge has never used twitter as he admitted in the ruling and he

00:17:09.520 actually thinks that uh some random website taking pictures of a government's uh twitter account is

00:17:15.720 the same as preserving records i actually thought that was sort of embarrassing for the uh chief

00:17:20.060 justice to say or maybe it was sort of oh i'm just a caveman i don't know about these high-tech

00:17:25.540 things i'm gonna let the minister off i don't know i'm not thrilled with it but i am thrilled with

00:17:30.060 what we did i'm thrilled that unlike anyone else in the country we jumped into action when we saw

00:17:35.680 lametti breaking the law and he was breaking the law it's against the law to delete government records

00:17:40.000 which he tacitly acknowledged by reviving his twitter account after he pressed delete we are

00:17:45.600 the people who can take credit for getting him to make his pinky swear undertaking and we are the people

00:17:51.340 who made the judge order that library and archives take possession of the twitter account on the whole

00:17:57.200 i'd say the success here was seven out of ten in terms of actual results however the judge says

00:18:03.880 because we didn't get a preservation order which is what we wanted we lost and so he's asked us to

00:18:10.140 pay the cost of the government he hasn't said how much that has to be haggled out we have a decision

00:18:15.080 to make do we appeal and try and get that formal preservation order i'm not sure if it's worth it

00:18:20.340 financially there's going to be a little bit of a battle because those five government lawyers are

00:18:24.400 going to demand that rebel news pay their bills because we didn't get everything we want i think

00:18:28.580 that's atrocious and we'll have to see if we can convince them otherwise but i guess how i would end this is

00:18:33.300 that was a very rebel moment we cover the news we do journalism and we saw a disgraced liberal trying

00:18:40.740 to sneak out the door and destroy records on his way out the modern version of a paper shredder we

00:18:46.380 leapt into action with the support of you our viewers we crowdfunded chad williamson and scott

00:18:52.060 nickel two great freedom oriented lawyers who rushed to court did a great job representing freedom and the

00:18:58.080 rights of the little guy and in the end although i think there's a lot of flaws in this ruling and i think

00:19:03.040 the judge actually made some embarrassing errors in the end we got the court to order him to make an

00:19:09.140 undertaking not to meddle with these records and he has to file that undertaking within seven days

00:19:13.720 and library and archives will take hold of the records not himself so on the whole i'd call it a win

00:19:20.800 and none of it would have been possible without you to see the ruling yourself go to stop the coverup

00:19:28.400 dot com i'm very excited about that it wasn't the total win that i wanted i wanted the federal court

00:19:34.960 to say to lamedi you're under a preservation order you touch it you're going to jail blah blah blah the

00:19:41.260 toughest thing but maybe that's not realistic to have a chief justice tell a justice minister

00:19:46.820 to make any sort of threat like that but to require the justice minister for former justice minister

00:19:53.020 to sign a lawyer's undertaking not to meddle and to hand the files over to library and archives

00:19:59.140 the more i think about it the more that's actually a huge win and even just filing the lawsuit against

00:20:06.620 him caused him to reinstate his twitter account i actually think other than that flourish of the judge

00:20:11.740 twisting the knife in lamedi i think we actually got everything we wanted to get i feel pretty good

00:20:18.080 about that and thanks to you for supporting it no one else was in court no one else thought it was

00:20:22.760 grievous enough to go to court to stop i'm glad we did and now so that's part two of my show today

00:20:29.100 part one was my sort of rambling explanation of what i'm trying to do here at court even though i'm not

00:20:33.820 allowed to discuss most of what's going on part two is the david lamedi victory and part three let me

00:20:38.880 tell you my thinking about why i decided to set up a special crowdfund for chris carbert i hope it's the

00:20:44.620 right thing to do meeting with him and the family sort of broke my heart what he's been through

00:20:49.020 the fact that while he was in jail his brother passed away his father passed away he lost his

00:20:54.500 two kids i mean he was a single dad before obviously they've gone to be with the mother how

00:20:59.220 heartbreaking is that i suppose any prisoner is subject to those deprivations and that's irrelevant

00:21:05.540 to the questions of what what he did and didn't do but it certainly touched me to see him a man who's

00:21:11.780 spent two years in jail he told me he hadn't seen trees or grass in two years and it was very hard to

00:21:17.640 hear him if you want to help chris carbert go to help chris.ca and those are special funds that won't

00:21:23.500 be mingled with any other crowd funds if there is a surplus at the end of the day which i doubt

00:21:27.840 it'll go to other trucker trials here's our video for help chris and then i'll come back for a final

00:21:33.420 thought afterwards ezra levant here from rebel news i'm in lethbridge alberta outside the lethbridge

00:21:42.000 correctional center inside is chris carbert one of the so-called coots four four men who were charged

00:21:49.920 at the coots border blockade over two years ago in chris's case he was charged with three other men

00:21:56.680 with conspiracy to commit murder against a police officer it was shocking news when the rcmp announced

00:22:04.800 it so shocking that the rest of the truckers basically packed it in people didn't want to

00:22:10.020 be associated with the threat of violent crime in fact one of the important characteristics of the

00:22:15.000 trucker protest all across canada not only at the coots border blockade but in windsor ontario

00:22:20.260 and in ottawa was just how peaceful it all was it was a protest of bouncy castles and hot tubs

00:22:27.100 and at the most horn honking that's why canadians loved it that's why trudeau hated it trudeau wanted

00:22:35.320 a january 6th insurrection narrative the truckers simply refused to give it to him the media tried

00:22:42.040 but with citizen journalists including embedded in the blockade itself for example we had two rebel

00:22:47.840 reporters there the whole time trudeau simply couldn't make that case but then an astonishing

00:22:53.600 set of charges were made and shortly thereafter trudeau invoked the emergencies act putting the

00:23:00.720 country under a form of martial law something never used before not even during 9-11 some people

00:23:08.220 immediately said was this arrest and were these charges a pretext to launch the emergencies act

00:23:15.980 i think it was a fair question given how politicized police were during the lockdowns but when information

00:23:23.200 came out from police and prosecutors it looked like it was very serious indeed rebel news was crowdfunding

00:23:31.540 legal defenses for truckers charged with civil disobedience and by that i mean peaceful protests

00:23:38.040 you may know that rebel news represents thousands of people across the country or more precisely rebel news

00:23:44.000 has crowdfunded for thousands of people some are represented by rebel news many are represented

00:23:48.460 through the democracy fund rebel news crowds funds for tamara leach the great trucker leader in ottawa

00:23:55.140 for arthur pavlovsky the christian pastor in alberta who was actually prosecuted for giving a sermon

00:24:01.180 to the truckers but rebel news made the decision not to provide crowdfunding for the four coots men 0.83

00:24:08.140 because the nature of the charges against them were not civil liberties charges they were charges

00:24:14.040 of most grave crimes rebel news did pay for the bail hearing at their first instance sending four lawyers

00:24:22.420 but after that it simply was in my personal view outside the scope of the donor intentions donors wanted peaceful

00:24:32.700 protest but having a conspiracy to commit murder obviously exceeded that but as the months turned

00:24:42.760 into years questions arose did these men actually do what they were accused of doing but then a couple of

00:24:49.600 weeks ago something absolutely surprising happened at least it was surprising to me two of the coots four

00:24:56.580 frankly the two that i thought the police had the strongest case against signed a plea bargain made

00:25:02.620 a deal to walk out of jail immediately for time served and these were men who were charged with the

00:25:10.800 others with conspiracy to commit murder but they pled guilty to very minor weapons charges the kind of

00:25:17.420 thing that if they happened to you as a hunter or a farmer would at most have your firearms license

00:25:24.940 suspended for a number of years at most a suspended sentence no jail time if these were the men

00:25:31.480 who've been kept in prison for two full years and all the crown prosecution wanted from them is

00:25:39.300 an admission that they in in one case had a unauthorized loaded weapon in another case a man

00:25:45.440 agreed to bring a gun to the blockade which was a bad idea of course but if but that's far from a

00:25:51.300 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

00:32:56.380 fighting for freedom

Rebel News Podcast - February 21, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Rebel reports live from Lethbridge to cover the 'Coutts Four' trial

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