A. The transcript of September 23, 2011 hearing before Judge Mahoney. Utilizing speculation and unsupported conjecture, Defendants argue that Plaintiff’s counsel deliberately misled the Court. (continued)
Conceding that Judge Mahoney referred to “websites” in the plural, Mr. Sotos nevertheless maintains that the Judge was referring only to one website, Real MCSO, because that was the subject of Defendants’ motion. (Id. at 1224, 1227, 1231, referring to Defendants’ Exh 23 at 13:17-19.)
Elizabeth Ekl and James Sotos walk out of the new Rockford Federal Courthouse.
Mr. Sotos admits that this is just his interpretation of Judge Mahoney’s reference to “websites” in the plural. (Id. at 1225.)
Yet, Mr. Sotos still maintains that Mr. Horwitz “tried to misdirect the court . . .” (Id. at 1225.) Mr. Sotos is confident that Judge Mahoney had in mind only the Real MCSO, despite no support in the hearing transcript.
Nonetheless, for some reason, Mr. Sotos argues that one would have to ask Judge Mahoney directly whether the Judge was referring to any other website, in particular the Shadow website, where some of the disputed documents appeared. (Id.at 1225-1226, 1238:-1239.)
Defendants insist that Judge Mahoney’s question was crystal clear and thus, because Mr. Horwitz must have known what the unambiguous question referred to, his response was patently deceptive. (Id. at 1238.)
Astonishingly, Defense counsel, Ms. Ekl, objects to Mr. Horwitz posing Judge Mahoney’s own question to Mr. Sotos.
Ms. Ekl contends that the question is “vague.” (Id. at 1236-1237.)
Explaining the reasons for her objection, Ms. Ekl makes a statement that would be comical, if its implications were not so serious: “Judge, again, I object to the vagueness of this question. We’ve been talking about multiple documents from multiple productions, multiple sources, and multiple websites.” (Id. at 1237).
But these are exactly the reasons that Mr. Horwitz gives for his answer to Judge Mahoney’s question, reasons that Defendants have insisted for months and months proved Mr. Horwitz’s answer was a deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive the Court:
There’s a lot of websites that have – at least from what I understand.
They’ve got lots of bloggers out there.
A lot of people are very critical of the department and all that, and they’re saying lots of different things, and they have similar names to them.
That’s just what I remember. (Defs. Exh. 23 at 13:8-13.)
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Part 6 tomorrow.