Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ The trial of the 'Coutts 3' starts with jury selection

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Today's show is about the Coutts III trial finally underway.

00:00:05.380 Hey, before I give you today's content, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.

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00:00:19.540 but you get the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News strong and independent.

00:00:23.680 We don't take government money, and we never will. Thanks.

00:00:30.000 You're listening to our latest podcast.

00:01:00.000 You can tell I'm at my home, away from home.

00:01:08.360 Leftbridge, Alberta, I've been here a dozen times because I come here for this courthouse.

00:01:12.760 This is the nearest court to the Coutts border protest that happened two years ago.

00:01:18.800 All the criminal charges that were laid at the Coutts border protest are being heard in this courthouse here.

00:01:25.940 And as you can tell by the large gathering behind me, today is a big day.

00:01:30.440 It's day one in the trial of the so-called Coutts III, or as the prosecutor calls them, the leadership group.

00:01:37.140 I think there were the leaders, although it was a very grassroots, organic protest.

00:01:42.640 Very populist, very grassroots.

00:01:44.860 Very different from the kind of left-wing professional protest that Canada is used to seeing.

00:01:50.780 I find the one key difference between protesters who are freedom-oriented, protesters on the right, is they're more individualistic, of course, but they actually know why they're protesting.

00:02:01.720 If you would have gone to the protest at Coutts, Alberta, or in Ottawa two years ago, or at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit, where there was another protest,

00:02:11.320 and asked anyone there, why are you here, they would have talked your ear off about freedom and the illegitimacy of the various lockdowns and mandates.

00:02:21.820 Contrast that to the kind of rent-to-mob protests you see on any given left-wing issue.

00:02:26.580 And I know this from personal experience.

00:02:27.880 You can go to a left-wing protest and say, why are you here?

00:02:30.720 They don't know why they're there.

00:02:32.220 Honestly, they're either because they're actually being paid, or they're just called up.

00:02:36.320 Come on, we're having another protest today.

00:02:38.660 We'll give you the sign.

00:02:39.960 And they always direct you to an official's vote.

00:02:41.800 So I think it's very different.

00:02:43.320 And as you can see, the group behind me, very severely normal people.

00:02:48.620 These are farmers and business owners and families.

00:02:51.840 And there's actually a lot of kids here today.

00:02:53.940 Everyone here is here because they believe in the freedom fight that they saw expressed in that border protest two years ago.

00:03:03.900 Well, you might recall that rebel unions sent lawyers to be embedded with the protest from almost the beginning.

00:03:11.880 We knew that things were going to be difficult because the police were trying all sorts of, in my opinion, unethical tricks.

00:03:20.060 But also, we wanted to make sure that these unsophisticated protesters, let me put it that way, as in their first protest, that they didn't fall into any traps, that they weren't provoked, that they weren't.

00:03:32.240 Because, of course, the protest, it was extremely cold out there.

00:03:37.840 And a lot of the protesters would gather for warmth in the saloon, which is sort of like a bar, I guess, in the Star Wars movie.

00:03:44.820 It's not just any manner of wretched folks who were there, including police and undercover police, trying to tempt, trick, or trap the men.

00:03:55.740 And, indeed, that did happen in the case of the so-called Keats Forge.

00:03:58.780 Today's the trial of the Coutts three, George Jansen, Marco van Heugenbos, and Alex van Heert.

00:04:03.700 These are the three men who often re-aged with the police, who gave advice to the others.

00:04:10.960 At least that's how it looks like on the inside.

00:04:13.260 It will be interesting to see what position these men's lawyers take in court.

00:04:17.780 Today is jury selection, which is a very exciting and important thing.

00:04:22.320 Most trials in Canada do not have juries.

00:04:24.480 They're judge alone.

00:04:26.160 But by selecting a jury, and these men have made this strategic calculation that they think they're more likely to get a sympathetic hearing by 12 of their neighbors than they are by a hand-appointed judge, most likely appointed by a liberal prime minister.

00:04:42.780 But even if it was appointed by a conservative, judges come from a certain socioeconomic strata.

00:04:49.120 They are, by definition, men and women of the establishment.

00:04:51.980 We've seen in other lockdown or pandemic trials that the judges tend to believe, for example, the health industrial complex.

00:05:03.840 They would never be skeptical of a Theresa Tam or another public health officer.

00:05:09.460 By making the deliberate choice to entrust their safety, future, and liberty with their neighbors, they're saying, I trust the common sense of the common people more than I trust the wisdom of an elite judge.

00:05:24.040 I think that's wise.

00:05:25.080 It makes me think, if you'll permit me a tangent, a couple of years ago, when a judge, and Adam, Adam Germain was his name, he was a liberal appointee, when he heard a case involving Arthur Pawlowski and Chris Scott, he said outrageous things like,

00:05:42.500 We all know someone who died from COVID, and any time you speak contrary to the public health officials, you must read this self-denunciation that what you're saying is wrong.

00:05:53.360 It was a compelled speech ruling.

00:05:55.640 It was overturned 3-0 by the Court of Appeal.

00:05:57.780 But you take my point.

00:05:58.720 You had a 70-year-old liberal appointee who just wouldn't even accept that the establishment could be wrong, accepted that we all know that this pandemic is devastating and we must obey it.

00:06:14.200 But just the mindset of a constituted, cocooned judge high on Mount Olympus, that's one end of the spectrum.

00:06:22.820 But ordinary men and women in Lethbridge is the other end of the spectrum, and these defendants, in my view, are very wise for choosing that.

00:06:30.260 So jury selection, remembering from my law school days, I've never participated in jury trial, even when I was a lawyer.

00:06:38.460 They sort for certain things.

00:06:40.940 For example, you can't be a lawyer on a jury and think, well, why wouldn't you want a lawyer on a jury?

00:06:45.620 No, because other jurors would defer to that person too much or go, he's an expert.

00:06:50.460 You wouldn't want someone who is blazingly partisan, who says, I know they're guilty, or I'll never convict.

00:06:58.160 You wouldn't want someone with a hard heart like that.

00:07:00.860 So there are questions that the prosecutors and the defense lawyers will have agreed on to vet jurors.

00:07:09.040 But then, again, going from memory of law school from 30 years ago, you have what's called peremptory objections.

00:07:15.360 You can say, I don't really like the cut of that person's chair, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

00:07:20.780 But I get to play a certain number of these cards.

00:07:23.700 I don't want that person on the jury.

00:07:25.180 So it's a fairly high-stakes business, jury selection.

00:07:29.300 And it's going to be fascinating to see who each side objects to, etc.

00:07:34.700 And once that jury is impaneled, well, then the business gets underway.

00:07:39.380 You might know that I've been coming down here literally for two years to this courthouse.

00:07:44.000 But most of what I've been covering over the last two years has been blanketed by a publication ban.

00:07:51.460 We've heard fascinating things, troubling things, amazing things in this court.

00:07:55.860 But we couldn't tell you about it.

00:07:57.720 And the reason for that is they didn't want to taint the jury pool.

00:08:01.240 They didn't want someone who's going to be impaneled on that 12-man jury to hear snips and shards and fragments of evidence before they get in that room.

00:08:13.020 Because the evidence they might hear might be out of context.

00:08:16.040 It might be hearsay.

00:08:17.620 There might be legal flaws with it.

00:08:19.400 So the idea was any preliminary discussions would be only for the courtroom to know.

00:08:26.500 Not for the wider public.

00:08:28.340 But once the jury is impaneled and once the trial gets underway, whatever happens in that courtroom, well, the jurors will see it.

00:08:36.740 And so then we can report on the details.

00:08:39.340 Now, most of the dramatic stuff was in the other trial I mentioned briefly, the Coutts IV, the men who have been in custody these two years.

00:08:47.580 But I think this trial, the greatest analogy for the trial that's starting today, is that of Tamara Leach.

00:08:55.100 Mainly, Tamara Leach was held out as her and Chris Barber as the leadership team for the protests in Ottawa.

00:09:03.980 Now, again, these protests are organic.

00:09:07.340 They're grassroots.

00:09:08.220 They were not directed by any political party.

00:09:10.720 Attempts to organize them were frustrated by the government.

00:09:13.300 For example, the Ottawa convoy raised $10 million on GoFundMe.

00:09:18.260 GoFundMe rescinded the donations.

00:09:21.080 They raised another $12 million on Give, Send, Go.

00:09:23.980 The government issued freezing orders.

00:09:25.940 My point is, the trucker convoy was as grassroots as it gets.

00:09:30.940 Sure, there were people who naturally emerged as moral leaders and made certain decisions and acted as spokesmen.

00:09:37.220 But this was not a corporation.

00:09:40.160 This was not a well-oiled political machine.

00:09:43.640 These were ordinary Canadians coming together in the crisis in a like-minded thing.

00:09:48.100 And it's going to be interesting to see what they can hang around the neck of these Coutts III and if that even amounts to a crime.

00:09:56.340 Because these three men, and they've had the chance to meet them each, and of course, Rebel News is crowdfunding their legal defense along with the Democracy Fund.

00:10:07.080 They're just peaceful protesters.

00:10:08.880 They engaged in some civil disobedience, perhaps.

00:10:11.440 But did they actually commit a crime?

00:10:13.100 And it'll be interesting to see if the prosecutors can make the case that they had.

00:10:18.880 I think that had there not been a political basis for the prosecution here, these three men would have had a half-day trial a year and a half ago, at most a slap on the wrist, what we call a conditional discharge or an absolute discharge.

00:10:35.900 And the judge would say, now, don't you do that again.

00:10:38.520 I don't want to see you in court again.

00:10:40.060 Get out of here.

00:10:41.300 Mischief, of course, is the lowest level of crime in the criminal code.

00:10:45.060 It's typically for vandalism or even, well, I mean, shoplifting has its own offense, but it is the lowest order of crime on the books.

00:10:55.960 And I think that the reason they've been turning into these grand productions with a 12-man jury and years of prosecution is because these are actually political profiles.

00:11:05.900 Tamara Leach has been put through a many-months-long criminal trial for mischief, which I learned from one of her lawyers, Keith Wilson, it is the longest mischief trial, not just in Canadian history, but in the history of the entire Commonwealth, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc.

00:11:26.780 There has never been in the recorded history anyone who has been on trial longer for the petty charge of mischief than has Tamara Leach.

00:11:38.380 And why is that?

00:11:39.700 Well, obviously, because they want to make the process the punishment.

00:11:43.260 They want to get her in the process itself, even if they can't convince her.

00:11:46.740 And I wonder if we'll see the same thing here in Alberta.

00:11:50.300 Will this prosecutor's name is Stephen Johnston, and he is animated by a vendetta, as far as I can tell.

00:11:57.060 He was the same prosecutor who went after Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky.

00:12:00.640 He's the same prosecutor, if I'm not mistaken, that went after Chris Scott at the Whistle Stop Diamond in Redgit.

00:12:05.640 This guy is not a prosecutor in the main.

00:12:09.320 He is a crusader on a political mission to punish the men who dared stand up to the establishment.

00:12:17.000 It's going to be fascinating to see of 12 men and women on the jury agreed.

00:12:21.280 I don't know if you can see, but there's a couple of cops on bicycle patrolling over there.

00:12:27.440 I see police driving around the neighborhood.

00:12:30.580 But there's a police paddy wagon over there, one, two, three, four, five, six cops over there, another half dozen over them.

00:12:40.040 What do they think is going to happen, these cops?

00:12:42.700 Do they think these school-aged children and these grandmas are going to storm the bill?

00:12:48.700 I mean, it's a political expression of policing itself.

00:12:53.560 One of the things that's driven me crazy about Lethbridge, and this is why I love Lethbridge,

00:12:56.960 it's that small-town values, and they're nice to the cops here.

00:13:01.640 And I don't propose that anyone be mean to someone else, with no reason.

00:13:06.320 But the embrace that the Coutts protesters and the Lethbridge community has had for police who came to bury them,

00:13:15.860 it is—all I can say is I presume it's the Christian idea of turning the other cheek. 0.78

00:13:20.120 Lethbridge, these police, not particularly these—not necessarily these individual officers,

00:13:27.460 but Trudeau's RCMP was given a mandate, crush the political protesters who are embarrassing Trudeau.

00:13:38.600 That's what caused the invocation of the emergency that—there was no crime emergency,

00:13:45.000 there was no public safety emergency, there was no war, there was no insurrection,

00:13:49.260 there was only a political emergency.

00:13:52.060 And shame on the RCMP and any other cop who participated in a show prosecution,

00:13:59.600 and God forbid what becomes a show trial. 0.62

00:14:02.780 I hope that the jury will put this prosecution in its place the same way a federal court judge Mosley did

00:14:12.400 when he ruled that the invocation of the Emergencies Act was illegal and unconstitutional.

00:14:17.700 So let me close with my remarks now.

00:14:20.140 I will come back and have more to say.

00:14:22.820 It's exciting to be here after two years of waiting.

00:14:26.260 It's a delight to see the community out in force.

00:14:29.260 Rebel News is not only going to be covering this story daily,

00:14:32.380 my colleague Robert Krejcik has done a great job covering Tamera Leach's trial.

00:14:36.920 He has moved to Lethbridge for the duration of this trial.

00:14:41.240 By the way, if you want to help chip in to his modest economy class expenses,

00:14:45.420 you can do that on a website we set up called truckertrials.com.

00:14:49.880 I don't know.

00:14:50.360 I'm excited that we're finally going to have our moment of justice.

00:14:54.640 And I'm sure the three men who have had the stigma of these charges against them for years

00:15:00.580 are looking forward to this process getting underway.

00:15:04.920 That's it for now.

00:15:06.080 I'm going to go into the courtroom where I will be live-tweeting the proceedings today,

00:15:10.780 sitting next to my colleague Robert Krejcik, and he will be here for the duration.

00:15:14.360 I'll come back to Lethbridge when I can make the time.

00:15:16.860 But you're in good hands with Robert.

00:15:18.520 That's my morning report.

00:15:19.520 I'll have him on to see you later.

00:15:27.960 A very interesting day.

00:15:33.700 Today was the first day in the trial.

00:15:37.000 The trial itself didn't start.

00:15:38.980 The jury selection did.

00:15:40.620 Fourteen jurors were selected.

00:15:43.080 And luckily, from a journalistic point of view, the publication bans are no longer relevant

00:15:49.220 because they were in place to protect the jury pool from being tainted.

00:15:53.680 So people who would serve on the jury would hear a snippet or a fragment of evidence

00:16:00.160 and maybe make up their mind in advance in a prejudicial way.

00:16:03.780 So luckily, things are now reportable.

00:16:07.720 And it was a very interesting day for jury selection.

00:16:10.540 Standing with me now is Chad Williamson.

00:16:12.100 And he's a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.

00:16:15.360 He was the lawyer that Rebel News sent down to the Cooch blockade saloon.

00:16:20.900 He was there in real time giving advice to the truckers, talking to the police, trying

00:16:27.220 to lower the temperature, letting truckers know what to do if they were arrested, reminding

00:16:32.320 them not to get into shenanigans.

00:16:34.880 Well, he's here at the court where he watched this first day with me.

00:16:39.540 Chad, good to see you.

00:16:40.340 Yeah, great to see Ezra.

00:16:41.240 It's great to be back down in southern Alberta.

00:16:44.780 I mean, the weather's nice.

00:16:45.880 And what a crowd earlier today.

00:16:48.140 I mean, lots of support for these guys, obviously.

00:16:51.260 You know, the carbon tax protests happening yesterday.

00:16:54.540 A lot's going on right now.

00:16:55.840 So, and jury selection today.

00:16:57.960 But this is one of the most crucial aspects of the criminal justice system.

00:17:04.860 You're so right.

00:17:06.680 I was talking to some of the team back at our HQ about the drive down, and they were asking

00:17:12.380 me if there was any more carbon tax protests on the streets.

00:17:14.860 Not that I saw, but it was pretty exciting yesterday.

00:17:17.460 That said, there were a ton of police out front here.

00:17:21.920 I counted at least a dozen, and I just had to laugh, because the people who are here are

00:17:28.980 friends and family of the accused, children, grandchildren.

00:17:33.480 There's donuts and coffee this morning, right?

00:17:36.100 I mean, these aren't, you know, Antifa guys lighting stuff on fire, you know, throwing

00:17:41.440 things at police.

00:17:42.320 These are moms and dads that live in southern Alberta that are just, you know, wanting to

00:17:46.760 support local people that contribute to the community, really.

00:17:50.680 I mean, I don't know who makes the decision to deploy a dozen or more police, and there

00:17:55.580 was police vans.

00:17:56.820 What, you're going to take away some grandmas in paddy wagons or something? 1.00

00:18:00.180 There were grandmas here.

00:18:01.520 Like, it wasn't just a bunch of, like, punk kids, right?

00:18:05.320 This is, I mean, full families down here, so.

00:18:07.440 Yeah.

00:18:07.760 I thought that was very interesting.

00:18:09.580 I have, I enjoyed the jury selection process.

00:18:13.420 It was sort of exciting to see people, it, I mean, I shouldn't say this, but I thought

00:18:18.580 of sort of a game show.

00:18:19.460 Come on now, and you came on down, and you went through the questions, and you, and would

00:18:24.560 you be recused and excused, or would you be compelled?

00:18:28.060 And some people sort of tried to get out of it and didn't succeed.

00:18:31.320 Others sort of whispered something to the judge, and they were let go.

00:18:34.480 It was sort of an exciting thing.

00:18:36.740 Yeah, jury selection process, I mean, it's a little bit of a circus, right?

00:18:40.640 Because you get such a smattering of eclectic and diverse people from around the community,

00:18:47.900 and I think I said to you, when we were just standing outside the court, like, I looked

00:18:53.180 around, and I thought, this really is Lethbridge.

00:18:55.780 Like, this is representative of Lethbridge.

00:18:58.200 We had, you know, some old babes in there. 1.00

00:19:00.820 We had some really young kids.

00:19:02.340 Well, there was a kid there I would have thought he was in high school.

00:19:04.800 Yeah, me too.

00:19:05.320 I mean, I actually thought that this was the gallery, when I first walked in, I thought

00:19:10.080 it was the gallery for the trial.

00:19:12.000 Like, I thought this was just the public watching.

00:19:15.060 And obviously, when they were, you know, not letting anyone else in, but they let me in

00:19:18.080 because I'm counsel, I thought, oh, wait a sec, this is actually the jury pool.

00:19:20.960 So it's, yeah, what a crazy process this morning.

00:19:25.100 The questions, I mean, now that the publication ban has been lifted, I mean, I can say that,

00:19:32.740 you know, the, what they call challenge for cause.

00:19:35.240 So these are the, this is the process where the court puts specific questions to a potential

00:19:41.600 jurist to determine whether or not they've got a bias.

00:19:44.640 And even if they have a bias, are they still able to deal with and discharge their duty fairly?

00:19:51.420 And you get all sorts of characters, right?

00:19:53.460 This is, this is just a big group of group of people from Lethbridge.

00:19:56.980 You got guys that clearly were just trying to get out of it, right?

00:20:00.140 No excuse, but they're trying to get out of it.

00:20:01.940 You got some poor dude whose final exams were tomorrow.

00:20:05.980 He should have been studying today.

00:20:07.860 And I mean, he went up and he just said, you know, it's, I'm in university.

00:20:10.540 We've got finals tomorrow.

00:20:11.620 And of course he was, uh, uh, graciously immersively let go by the, uh, the court.

00:20:16.700 So what, what an interesting process.

00:20:18.400 But I remember we, we fought for weeks over what the questions would be.

00:20:22.880 Right.

00:20:23.360 So, uh, and I mean, it went pretty quick.

00:20:25.940 This was one of the fastest jury selections I've probably ever seen.

00:20:28.560 It was only half a day.

00:20:29.360 Yeah.

00:20:30.020 And there were the 12 jurors and then two extras, I guess, in case someone God forbid

00:20:34.480 gets sick or has to leave for whatever reason, that way they would still have 12 juries to

00:20:39.920 make the decision.

00:20:40.920 That's right.

00:20:41.500 So, yeah.

00:20:42.540 And I mean, sometimes you see this, some people just don't have the constitution go three

00:20:45.860 weeks or they get really sick.

00:20:47.380 Or, um, you know, they're eating the government provided food that, you know, maybe doesn't

00:20:51.960 sit well or, or something.

00:20:53.440 Right.

00:20:53.720 And, uh, so, so you need a couple backups.

00:20:56.340 Uh, usually, even if you get down below that, you know, that 12, they can usually keep going 0.99

00:21:02.400 with, uh, I mean, they've got, you know, they, as long as council agree, maybe proceed with

00:21:06.620 10, but you really do need a fairly large jury so that it's representative of the community

00:21:12.540 at large and, uh, you know, a jury of your peers.

00:21:15.000 Right.

00:21:15.380 So, uh, and I think, I think, uh, there's a chance we could have got that today.

00:21:18.980 There's some jurors that I thought, you know, um, I kind of like them.

00:21:22.800 Some jurors, I thought, eh, you know, they might not be, um, you know, super into what

00:21:28.340 went down at Coots, but I mean, as well, if, if people can, and, and I think people take

00:21:32.960 it real seriously.

00:21:33.580 Like if they, they get a moment in the spotlight where now they're, they're the judge.

00:21:37.900 Right.

00:21:38.400 Um, so it's an interesting process.

00:21:40.780 It's hundreds and hundreds of years old.

00:21:43.080 This is what, this is the, really the cornerstone of justice, uh, in, in common law jurisdictions.

00:21:49.220 Um, go ahead.

00:21:50.100 You're so right.

00:21:50.640 You know, the last jury trial I sat through now that I think about it was more than 15

00:21:56.500 years ago.

00:21:57.280 It was Conrad Black's trial in the South, Southern district of Illinois, Chicago.

00:22:03.520 So you have this member of the house of Lords, this gazillionaire and who was the jury?

00:22:09.860 Was it a jury of his peers?

00:22:11.680 It most definitely was not demographically, ethnically, economically.

00:22:16.600 I walked into that room in Chicago and I thought he's done.

00:22:21.960 He's toast.

00:22:22.960 In fact, the prosecution used like picture book images, uh, like big, big pictures, like

00:22:30.360 a, a man.

00:22:31.480 Yeah.

00:22:31.700 Like a man with a bag of cash.

00:22:33.880 Because if, I mean, the idea, I mean, I don't know how you have a trial by your peers.

00:22:38.360 If you're a member of the house of Lords here, I absolutely felt it was, I, I, I looked at

00:22:44.160 the 14 people chosen and they absolutely were Lethbridge, working class people, young people,

00:22:49.920 older people.

00:22:50.520 You couldn't really tell who was what just by the look of them.

00:22:54.100 But I have to say, if you're on trial for a political purpose, which is what these protests

00:23:01.300 were, these protests were political in nature.

00:23:03.660 They weren't, they weren't a bank robbery dressed up as something.

00:23:07.040 They were some political expression.

00:23:08.400 If you're having a political expression that is conservative and populist, do you want to

00:23:12.140 throw your lot in with the elite establishment judge handpicked by a justice minister in Ottawa?

00:23:18.600 Or would you rather have your fate to 12 regular folks?

00:23:23.100 And I think it was very wise to go for a jury.

00:23:25.780 Yeah.

00:23:26.280 So it, it, it depends on the nature of the offense, right?

00:23:29.600 If it's what they call a summary and offense, which is punishable by, and most a brief prison

00:23:36.020 sentence.

00:23:36.180 I don't think you could have a jury for that.

00:23:37.720 You can't.

00:23:38.280 So, and that's in provincial court and it's, it's, I mean, this is Alberta.

00:23:42.180 This is cowboy court and they deal with a lot of really crazy stuff in provincial court.

00:23:46.020 Uh, when you move up to big boy court and throw this one at the bench, um, and you've

00:23:50.720 got, you know, I mean, mischief could potentially carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

00:23:56.200 Uh, I don't even frankly think they put rapists in prison for that long.

00:24:00.100 Or, uh, uh, I mean, you know, drunk drivers that mow somebody down.

00:24:03.880 I mean, you know, it's possible, but frankly, I think most of those sentences are much less

00:24:07.660 than that.

00:24:08.240 You're afforded the opportunity to make a jury election.

00:24:10.880 And that's what we did on day one is we wanted to make sure, and especially down here that

00:24:16.320 they'd get a jury of their community members, not some jury from, uh, you know, metropolitan

00:24:21.720 Cal.

00:24:22.560 And that's where the prosecutor wanted to take this, didn't he?

00:24:24.600 He wanted this as far away from the country mindset.

00:24:28.140 If he had his way, he would have had this hurt in Montreal.

00:24:31.160 Yeah.

00:24:31.560 And I mean, he raised the issue a number of times.

00:24:35.380 So what the motivations were, I mean, I guess everyone can draw their own conclusions, but

00:24:40.580 you know, there was alleged safety concerns, you know, and I knew it.

00:24:44.680 I was going to mention that the reason the cops were out here is, is because you've got

00:24:48.440 a whiny, thin skin prosecutor.

00:24:50.280 His name is Steven Johnson.

00:24:51.560 I saw him in action before.

00:24:52.800 He's the one who prosecuted Arthur Pawlowski for giving a sermon.

00:24:56.480 Then was he the prosecutor in Chris Scott and the Whistle Stop Cafe case?

00:24:59.760 No.

00:25:00.180 So that was another guy, Peter McKenzie.

00:25:02.340 Okay.

00:25:02.620 I mean, he, he is the, if I'm not mistaken, he's the director of specialized prosecutions

00:25:08.180 in Alberta.

00:25:08.620 Like he's, uh, it's my understanding.

00:25:10.460 He's the top dog.

00:25:11.500 So to go after Chris Scott, they brought in, uh, the best of the best.

00:25:15.460 And I'm just so delighted you won that case.

00:25:17.360 And I'm just so delighted Chris Scott showed courage.

00:25:21.340 So really we didn't, we didn't quite start today.

00:25:24.560 We did everything except for start tomorrow.

00:25:27.040 The trial starts at 10 AM.

00:25:29.000 Am I right?

00:25:29.660 Yeah, that's right.

00:25:30.340 So, I mean, the, you know, I, I, I get, I guess the crown, they said, well, you know,

00:25:34.840 we could give our opening address today.

00:25:36.740 And the opening address is really important because that's really your, uh, you know,

00:25:40.700 your, your bluster and your passion and a real, you know, distilled essence of what

00:25:46.740 your case is.

00:25:48.120 What, what's really important is to have the defense be able to reply to that right away.

00:25:52.140 So you don't, I don't think you necessarily want to have the crown finish the day with

00:25:56.680 their opening statement and then let the jury go back tomorrow and have it, have it, why

00:26:01.200 that's right from the defense.

00:26:02.560 And I think the crown said they weren't ready with their witnesses either.

00:26:05.340 So I think in fairness, both sides thought jury selection would take a little lump.

00:26:09.240 But yeah, and, uh, and in most cases it does, right?

00:26:12.280 Because I mean, I mean, in, in most cases you got a lot of people either getting out,

00:26:16.900 people expressing bias, people saying, Hey, you know, well, I got, I have surgery next

00:26:21.240 month or, uh, the process just usually takes a lot longer.

00:26:24.940 The jurors were, uh, I mean, you know, they just, they, they gave the court the answers

00:26:30.400 that the court wants.

00:26:31.240 They said that they could, uh, you know, discharge their duty fairly and, and, and honestly.

00:26:35.220 And, uh, and, and, and I feel like they might be able to, I got a pretty good vibe from most

00:26:39.880 of the jurists, um, uh, you know, whether you agree with, uh, the coots blockade or, uh,

00:26:45.820 anything like that.

00:26:46.500 I mean, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, a true Canadian citizen should be able to discharge their duty,

00:26:52.560 put all that aside, weigh the evidence on its merits, and then render a finding, uh, as

00:26:58.940 the trier of fact in this case.

00:27:00.840 And really what's interesting is normally in provincial court or where you guys just got a

00:27:04.860 case that's decided by a judge, he gets to rule on the facts and the law.

00:27:09.580 So you got kind of one guy or gal doing everything and they're usually senior lawyers or kind of

00:27:14.200 part of the, you know, judicial bureaucracy.

00:27:16.500 What's really neat when you have a jury, and this is just a century old tried and true

00:27:20.980 method.

00:27:21.600 You've got a jury of your peers giving a decision on the facts, and then you've got the, uh,

00:27:26.980 the judge there to kind of play referee whenever there's legal, uh, legal issues that arise

00:27:32.440 and people want to, uh, get in dust-ups over that.

00:27:34.840 So it's, uh, it's nice to bifurcate those two important aspects of a criminal case.

00:27:40.560 And, uh, I think we're going to see that throughout this, uh, throughout this entire trial.

00:27:44.140 You know, the founder of the National Review magazine, I remember he once said he'd rather

00:27:48.820 have the country run by the first hundred names in the Boston phone directory than the,

00:27:53.420 than the faculty of Harvard.

00:27:54.780 And I thought there's some wisdom there because there is a common sense with the common people.

00:28:00.140 And, and I, I'm excited about it.

00:28:01.760 I am going back to our HQ tonight, but we have our reporter, Robert Krejcik, who's going to be

00:28:08.540 covering every single day of the trial.

00:28:10.480 I'll try and come back if I can for some of it.

00:28:13.240 Robert's also going to cover the trial of the Coutts IV.

00:28:16.040 And when the trial of Tamara Leach re, uh, restarts, if it does, Robert will be there too.

00:28:21.680 So he really is our go-to expert.

00:28:23.920 And, and I just want to say, and this is for the viewers, because I mean, people, people

00:28:28.120 go, ah, you know, he's the rebel lawyer and all this sort of stuff.

00:28:30.540 But I actually started this whole journey as just a rebel viewer, a premium subscriber,

00:28:35.300 which I thought was funny.

00:28:35.960 And, uh, I've been following, uh, Robert's work covering, uh, of course, the Tamara Leach

00:28:40.460 trial and what's been so apparent to me.

00:28:42.920 And I, I've actually told them this off camera, so we already know this is no surprise, but,

00:28:46.900 um, I am so impressed with, uh, his understanding of very, very common.

00:28:51.680 Complex, uh, legal issues and his, his ability to convey those in a meaningful, clear and

00:28:58.720 understandable way to rebel viewers.

00:29:00.540 I really think that there's no one better suited, um, to be the boots on the ground here

00:29:05.380 to, uh, to really report on these very important trials.

00:29:08.820 I think you're right.

00:29:09.240 And he's making friends.

00:29:10.300 I can tell you, I made friends around the courthouse and, uh, I told him he should move

00:29:13.740 to Alberta.

00:29:14.520 And so we're always looking for cooler people, awesome people to move out here.

00:29:18.880 And so if I can convince them, um, I mean, there might not be any rebels left in Ontario.

00:29:23.440 It's funny.

00:29:23.780 You see that our last, our last Ottawa based reporter, William Diaz-Bertheon said he wanted

00:29:29.540 to move to Alberta because of the freedom.

00:29:31.180 And I absolutely support that on a personal level, but he deprived us of our man on the

00:29:36.020 street in Ottawa.

00:29:37.100 And of course, Robert should seek freedom, but it would also be a loss.

00:29:42.580 I mean, no one wants to work in Ottawa, it sounds like, you know, I mean, listen, it's

00:29:46.600 a, it's a good experience, but I, I understand.

00:29:49.380 All right.

00:29:49.620 Listen, um, thank you so much for watching this.

00:29:52.480 I want to conclude with the two ways you can get involved if you want to, um, as you

00:29:58.240 know, rebel news is doing the crowdfunding through the democracy fund for all three of

00:30:02.920 the men charged today.

00:30:04.000 Uh, their names are Marco van Heugenbos, Alex van Heurk, and George Jansen.

00:30:08.260 I've had the chance to get to know all three of them.

00:30:10.600 In fact, Sidney Fezard did a beautiful biographical documentary of the men.

00:30:15.280 It's about 40 minutes long.

00:30:16.540 You can find that on our website.

00:30:18.780 Uh, if you want to chip in to hire, to pay for their lawyers and their lawyers were very

00:30:24.440 active in court today.

00:30:25.340 And I think, I think we've got a legal dream team.

00:30:27.920 You can do that at coots3.com.

00:30:31.260 So if you go to coots3.com, you can make a contribution and you'll actually get a charitable

00:30:35.620 tax receipt from the democracy fund for that.

00:30:38.260 Now, also Robert Krejcik, as we've just discussed, we're talking about him.

00:30:42.000 He's filming this video.

00:30:43.280 So he's just 10 feet away from me.

00:30:45.220 Um, he flew in from Ottawa, flew to Calgary, drove down.

00:30:49.120 So he's staying here, economy class, uh, accommodations.

00:30:54.280 It's a, it's fairly cheap to, to be in Lethbridge.

00:30:57.260 It's not like New York city, but still it is going to ultimately cost us thousands of

00:31:01.920 dollars for the airfare, the automobile, the rent, the food to have a guy based out here 0.96

00:31:07.400 the whole time.

00:31:08.320 And if you think that's important journalism, because you don't trust the CBC state broadcaster,

00:31:13.920 please go to truckertrial.com truckertrial.com.

00:31:18.280 And that donation will go to our journalism.

00:31:21.280 So there's two ways to help go to coots3.com to help cover the lawyers for the men or go

00:31:26.540 to truckertrial.com to cover Robert's expenses.

00:31:30.120 All right.

00:31:30.880 That's it for today.

00:31:31.920 On behalf of all of us at rebel news to you at home, goodbye and keep fighting for freedom.

00:31:38.320 We'll see you next time.

00:31:39.320 Bye.

Rebel News Podcast - April 02, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ The trial of the 'Coutts 3' starts with jury selection

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