Judge Staton rejects Tom Girardi's delay request, severs CFO from client fraud trial
Also, the 9th Circuit reversed Judge Carney's order releasing Robert Rundo and granted en banc review in a groundbreaking gun possession case. A new judge also recused from the Young Thug / YSL trial.
Disgraced ex-lawyer Tom Girardi will stand trial alone in Los Angeles federal court next month after a judge on Wednesday severed his co-defendant and rejected his lawyers’ request for a two-month delay.
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton, who declared Girardi mentally competent to stand trial in January, said she “has some concern that this request for another continuance was long in the making.”
“First, neither the ex parte application nor the reply read like documents drafted within the last few days to respond to unforeseeable circumstances,” according to a three-page order. “Further, the Defendant’s reply reflects a misunderstanding of what needs to be shown for a continuance at this stage.”
At the same time, Staton handed Girardi a win by granting his request that Girardi’s former law firm chief financial officer, Christopher Kamon, be tried separately. She said the prosecution’s theory that Kamon aided and abetted Girardi “lends itself to a joint trial.” However, “the potential for prejudice arises out of the anticipated defenses, which pits Defendant Girardi against Defendant Kamon such that each will tend to act as a ‘second prosecutor’ of the other.”
“This will result in each defendant having to defend against two different, conflicting theories as to why he is guilty of the charged offenses,” Staton wrote. “Although such situations do not always compel the conclusion that the defendants should be tried separately, the Court determines in this instance that it does.”
Girardi, 85, currently resides in an assisted living center. Kamon has been in federal custody since his arrest in Baltimore after returning from the Bahamas in November 2022. He’s accused in another case of stealing money from Girardi’s law firm in a separate scheme.
Kamon also is a co-defendant in a Northern District of Illinois indictment related to the theft of settlement money from victims of the Lion Air plane crash, alongside former Girardi Keese partner David Lira, who is Girardi’s son-in-law.
Girardi’s public defenders said in their June 21 motion for severance that “Kamon, not the aging and mentally declining Girardi, perpetrated the fraud that deprived Girardi Keese clients of their settlement funds.”
“Likewise, Girardi anticipates that Kamon will argue that he acted without intent to defraud because he was pressured into acting at Girardi’s command. Kamon has already made such self-serving statements to that effect in five proffers with the government in 2023,” according to the motion from Deputy Federal Defenders J. Alejandro Barrientos, Samuel Cross and Charles J. Snyder.
Prosecutors said in their opposition that “Girardi’s and Kamon’s defenses are neither mutually exclusive nor antagonistic.”
“Though Girardi attempts to paint Kamon as the sole culprit of the larger fraud scheme, the evidence at trial will conclusively demonstrate that it was Girardi — not Kamon — who repeatedly lied to clients to delay paying them money he owed,” according to the filing from Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Paetty and Ali Moghaddas. “Nonetheless, in an effort to manufacture grounds for a severance, Girardi makes the incredible claim that Kamon was responsible for Girardi’s lies to clients.”
In her order, Judge Staton cited a case that Girardi’s lawyers also cited: the Eastern District of New York prosecution of Martin Shkreli, the former hedgefund manager turned federal felon. She also cited the case of Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, whose trial was severed from co-defendant Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.
“Although this case lacks any suggestion related to the type of intimate abuse alluded to in Holmes, both cases involve a defendant who claims exploitation by a co-defendant in a manner that is relevant to a mens rea element of jointly charged offenses,” the judge wrote.
Girardi’s July 13 request to delay the Aug. 6 trial to Oct. 8 or Oct. 15 was based on what his lawyers described as late discovery produced by prosecutors, as well as prosecutors’ plan to introduce evidence of transactions related to Girardi’s wife, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne.
“Every day, we are working as quickly as we can to prepare for a high-publicity, document-heavy trial with 15-30 witnesses involving a decade-long scheme and arcane details related to the trust and operating accounting processes at Girardi Keese,” Snyder said in a declaration. “We have also had to figure out all of this on our own because our client is unable to help us in our defense. And we are doing this while maintaining full caseloads as active trial DFPDs.”
Snyder and his co-counsel twice supplemented their request to alert Staton to newly released discovery and late stipulation drafts from prosecutors. Prosecutors said in a nine-page opposition that the request “raises no good cause justifying an additional continuance and should be denied.”
Staton agreed, saying it’s always been possible that prosecutors would present evidence of client fraud beyond the four clients charged in the indictment. The judge said about late evidentiary stipulations, “such details are often left to the last weeks before trial.”
Previous articles:
9th Circuit: Judge ‘clearly erred’ in Rundo release
An appellate court said this week that now-retired U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney’s choice to “gloss over” a white supremacist’s use of fake passports shows he was mistaken in ordering his release.
The order from the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reverses Carney’s April 30 bail order for Robert Rundo, who has been in custody since the same appellate panel stayed a previous release order in February pending the U.S. Department of Justice’s appeal.
Carney “clearly erred” when he said Rundo isn’t a danger to public safety and was unlikely to flee, the appellate panel said.
“The district court stated that ‘the government has provided no evidence that Mr. Rundo . . . caused any injury to anyone,’ despite mountains of evidence in the record to the contrary,” according to the order. “This evidence included photographs and videos of Rundo physically assaulting people, and posts on social media where Rundo gloated about having used violence to harm people.”
That along with Carney’s failure to mention Rundo’s use of fake passports and his extradition from Romania “leaves us with a ‘definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed’ in its analysis,” according to the order, citing a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court case that quoted a 1948 case.
The order is from Senior Judge Richard A. Paez, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. and U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar, sitting by designation from the Northern District of California. The judges still are considering the DOJ’s appeal of Carney’s dismissal of Rundo’s two criminal charges for allegedly inciting violence at political rallies in 2017. Carney said the DOJ selectively prosecuted Rundo when members of Antifa caused more problems.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Robbins said in oral argument on June 18 that Carney assumed three people were Antifa members, “but it’s not actually clear that they were.”
Previous articles:
Influential gun ruling vacated amid en banc review
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday vacated the ruling that led to the dismissal rapper Torrence “Boosie Badazz” Hatch’s federal gun case last Friday.
The court will review United States v. Duarte en banc, which in the 9th Circuit means 11 judges will decide the case instead of the previous three-judge panel.
Boosie’s dismissal still stands. My article on Friday explains the previous ruling and includes links to documents.
Rapper Boosie is first felon to have gun case dropped under new 9th Circuit ruling
SAN DIEGO — Rapper Torrence “Boosie Badazz” Hatch had someone other than his lawyers and the judge to thank on Friday after his federal gun case was dismissed in San Diego: Steven “Shorty” Duarte, a Los Angeles felon whose …
New judge recuses from Young Thug / YSL case
In Atlanta, Fulton County Superior Judge Shukura Ingram recused herself from the Young Thug / YSL trial over her former courtroom deputy’s alleged relationship with defendant Christopher Eppinger. Eppinger was severed from the current trial during jury selection amid allegations of his relationship with the deputy.
Judge Ingram’s recusal order said the ex-deputy could be called as a witness in Eppinger’s case, and Ingram could be called as a witness, too, because she worked closely with her.
The case is now with Paige Renee Whitaker, a Fulton County Superior Court judge since 2017. Several criminal defense attorneys hosted a fundraiser for her 2022 reelection campaign, including three who represent trial defendants: Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams’ lawyer Brian Steel, Quamarvious Nichols’ lawyer Bruce Harvey and Shannon Stillwell’s lawyer David Botts.
I spoke with Deamonte Kendrick’s lawyer Doug Weinstein about the changes today on YouTube live.
I also spoke with Stillwell’s lawyer Max Schardt in a live YouTube interview on Tuesday. It went well. We talked for nearly two hours and had upwards of 1,500 people watching us live throughout. The video is approaching 20,000 views. I’m working on clipping out highlights and posting as new videos for people who don’t have time for the full thing.
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