The Use of Mendaciously Selective Quotation in My Trial
John Burns is an unethical lawyer
The reason why Mr. Apelbaum and his attorneys thought they could perform a kind of civil lynching is that I am an outspoken critic of Israel with a large body of work, which they could arrange, Tetris-like into the picture of a bigot.
Whether the mendacity of what they’ve done rises to a level that is sanctionable will be a matter for an eventual bar complaint against Mr. Burns. They did this after I declined to pay them $100,000 and retract something which is true.
Burns got up and argued in his closing statement that the jury are the only people who could stop my campaign of targeted harassment. No such thing has occurred. He said something to the effect of, you, the jury, are the only people who can get him to stop. In fact, the offer remains on the table to take the factually uncontested language and add a statement of their own choosing. So this is a lie. He himself, and the plaintiffs, could have fixed any harm they view my reporting as having caused, at any time. But a civil lynching is attractive when the person so lynched can be rendered a debt peon.
Initially, they had more than 150 exhibits, articles of mine, they wanted to use, which Judge Nachmanoff sensibly balked at. He said you have to submit a handful, with redacted and unredacted versions. They submitted one; this one which you can read if you’re a subscriber. I’ll show you the redactions they did. They made the article say the opposite of what it actually says.
What Burns told the jury is the article says is I believe we should distrust Jews, Jews are trying to get us to start a war, and there is an implicit menacing threat of harm to Jews. This kind of bad faith is standard in Internet conversation, but it may rise to the level of sanctionable conduct for a lawyer arguing a case.
Here is their redacted exhibit submitted three days before the trial:
The final isolated quote is the really egregious context-stripping redaction. They said, you’re talking about Jews! The article is very clear that it’s talking about the faction of GOP Zionists that are aligned with Netanyahu. I would furthermore note that the war this article warns about has now occurred, so I was strung up by a correct prediction:
In essence, what they’re doing is taking my warning about harms which will occur based on my assessment of the situation, as my desire to cause the harm. When Burns asked me about this on the stand I sort of laughed and said it doesn’t say that.
There isn’t really a good defense against flagrant and shameless lying except to call out the lie. Any judicial proceeding is premised on a certain baseline honesty which Mr. Apelbaum’s team violated. Apelbaum said on the stand that I accused him of human trafficking, something the judge ruled out and the article in question clearly does not do. He brought it up with the intent of biasing the jury with the suggestion I had accused him of a heinous crime.
The other lie which is now in the record is their misrepresentation of the relationship between the two companies named XRVision, which they have now conceded there was a licensing agreement between after maintaining for months, including through discovery, that they have nothing to do with each other. After conceding after discovery that they do in fact have something to do with each other, they listed the new leadership of Cynapse, which rebranded from XRVision several years ago.
The chairman of Cynapse today is Elliott Broidy, who pleaded guilty to a FARA violation related to China, and resigned as an RNC deputy finance chair after it came out that he knocked up a Playboy Playmate.
The timeline regarding the end of these two companies’ association remains fuzzy, which is why the plaintiffs dropped the allegedly defamatory statement a half hour before trial. I’m not surprised the Plaintiffs didn’t want to hash out in a courtroom when exactly they terminated the licensing agreement between his company and one now led by a person who pled guilty to acting as an unregistered agent for China.