| Senate
Confirms Judge Nathan To 2d Cir 49-47
Unclear Who'll Sentence Maxwell Still
Sealing
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- ESPN
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
Dec 15 – The U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee held a
hearing on December 15,
2021 on a number of nominees
for District Court seats, and
on Alison J. Nathan who while
presiding of the U.S.
v. Ghislaine Maxwell
sex trafficking trial has been
nominated for the Second
Circuit Court of
Appeals.
On March 23, 2022
the full Senate voted to
confirm Judge Nathan. Earlier
in the day she presided over a
copyright case
removed from state court with
most of its filings sealed.
She set a schedule in that,
but it is not clear if she or
another judge will do the
sentencing of Ghislaine
Maxwell. It's worth noting
that Judge Richard J. Sullivan
is still presiding over
Violations of Supervised
Release in his old cases.
Watch this site.
During
jury selection in the Maxwell
trial, one prospective juror
said they could not sit for
two days between Christmas and
New Years Day as their spouse
had bought non-refundable
tickets for a trip.
The juror
was asked to change the plans
and when they didn't, they
were dropped from the
jury.
Notably,
after the ten days of the
government's case, the Maxwell
trial took a three day hiatus.
The reason
was not publicly explained, in
keeping with the redaction in
the case of the flight logs of
Jeffrey Epstein's planes, the
withholding of Maxwell's
witness list, and the
curtailing of the public
call-in line that other
Districts and even some SDNY
judges maintain.
(In full
disclosure, Inner City Press
has written three times to
Judge Nathan on these topics.
The first two letters were docketed
and denied, here.
The third,
citing the Omicron variant of
COVID and the ban on travel
from African countries that
Epstein's plane flew to, with
former President Clinton and
Kevin Spacey, has yet to be
acted on or even
docketed.)
At the
December 15 Senate Judiciary
hearing, none of these topics
came up. Most Democratic
Senators offered only praise.
(Senator Mazie Hirono, to her
credit, asking her standard
question about unwanted sexual
advances.)
Two
Republican Senators asked
about Judge Nathan shaving a
year off the sentence of
William Tucker in 13-cr-378
and questioned it, since he
already had COVID and was
vaccinated.
One of
Judge Nathan's boldest
decisions, to at least
initially grill the
prosecutors for Brady
violations in US
v. Nejad, did not
come up in the Committee, nor
in some recent profiles. Judge
Nathan for her part shouted
by, by name, her SDNY
courtroom deputy Khalilah
Williams.
In DC on
December 15 there were
questions about the Second
Amendment and the place of
international law, citing
Nathan having noted the
presence in the Supreme Court
gallery of a delegation
from China when the
application of the death
penalty was
limited.
But nothing
about the Maxwell case and its
implications; nothing about
court transparency either.
Video of hearing here,
from 1:00 to 1:48.
To some it seemed
strange (some might note that
since big wigs of both parties
are implicated in l'affaire
Epstein and Maxwell, neither
side wants to touch it).
To others, it was
a missed opportunity. We'll
see - watch this site.
***
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