In fifteen minutes Mike Zullo pled the 5th Amendment 40 times yesterday. BOTG reports that Zullo arrived in court around 4:45 and sat uncomfortably in the witness chair, but expressionlessly answered every question with an invocation of his right against self incrimination.
Stephen Lemons who was also there quotes Zullo as saying after court that it was all about “due process.”
Zullo is back in court Thursday morning.
I thought that Judge Snow might order Zullo to answer some questions, but this has not happened so far.
Read more:
- Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse Commander Takes the Fifth, again and again – Phoenix New Times
- Arpaio’s posseman pleads the Fifth in contempt hearing – Arizona Republic
- Arpaio Investigator Testifies, Begrudgingly, in Contempt Hearing – Courthouse News Service
- Posse leader confronted about email in secret investigation – Associated Press
Hear more:
Toast: http://c2.thejournal.ie/media/2013/09/burning-question-scrape-burnt-toast-390×285.jpg
Zullobot, aka Mike “the Fifth” Zolus, strikes again.
I guess Snow does not want to waste time wrestling answers out of Zullo but instead prefers to just draw adverse inferences and let Arpaio and Zullo roshambo* any details between themselves. 😉
_________
* (German dub: “ausrambolen” which alludes to “Rambo” as well als “bowlen” = “to bowl”.)
Lemons’ latest.
Obviously, if a movie were to be made about this sometime in the future, Montgomery would have to be played by John Lithgow.
Well, if you’re going to make a movie about this mess, it would have to be a cartoon.
Arpaio – Mr McGoo
Sheridan – Donald Duck
Zullo – Inspector Clousseau
Montgomery – Spy vs. Spy (playing both sides of the con)
I’ll have to think about the rest of the cast of characters
Zullo looks so sad in that picture. Life was not supposed to be like this.
Per Cassidy, ““I’m taking the Fifth, sir,” [Zullo] replied, time and again, at times resting his head on his fist.” Megan Cassidy, Arpaio’s Posseman Pleads The Fifth In Contempt Hearing, Arizona Republic, Nov. 10, 2015.
Question for the lawyers: If Zullo pleads the 5th, and it’s later determined that he wasn’t really trying to avoid self-incrimination (e.g., the answers would merely have been embarrassing, or would have implicated Arpaio in a way that didn’t also incriminate him), can he be charged with perjury and/or obstruction?
Obviously, there has to be some leeway for a witness who’s mistaken about self-incrimination, but I noticed one of the gerbils cheering the response as being a kind of “F you, Judge!” defiance. It seems to me that that sort of intentional misuse of privilege should be actionable.
I’m no lawyer but I do understand that Zullo’s 5th Amendment rights as a deponent are not the same as those of a defendant in a criminal trial (who can refuse to take the stand, but must answer all permissible questions once on the stand and testifying) or of anyone interviewed by law enforcement (“you have tyhe right to remain silent…”).
Zullo cannot simply invoke his right on a question by question basis but ultimately the decision about whether he must answer is made by the judge, who gets involved if the questioning attorney(s) want the answer badly enough. If Zullo continues to refuse to answer, he is then in contempt of court and risking serious pain for himself.
There was a hint that Zullo might be considering answering the defense’s questions more fully when they depose him, but that would allow the other parties to object and the judge would make it clear to Zullo that if he answers to the defense he must answer similar questions from other interrogators.
But the prosecution might be happy enough to have a record of the questions that Zullo refused to answer. That record possibly could be used to draw adverse inferences, but that’s not completely clear (because this matter is about contempt: it’s not a routine civil or criminal trial).
Zullo isn’t the biggest fish, but the Department of Justice seem to be interested in him and his (mis)deeds, which is unlikely to be to Zullo’s benefit.
IANAL, so I might have some of the above wrong – mostly it’s based on what Fogbow lawyers say.
I think Zullo’s claim is (whether honestly or not, I cannot say) that he does not want to risk anything without a lawyer, and that he fears answering some questions might be construed as a waiver of the Fifth (for which I don’t know what the rules in US law are).
However I don’t think Snow will have much patience if Zullo keeps not having a lawyer. At some point, that becomes Zullo’s problem, not the court’s.
The Birthers over at BR are so ignorant and so rabidly delusional thinking that what is happening in federal court in Phoenix is some grand master plan concocted by used car salesman Mikey, to save A/Z Day and thus the country. If today comes together the same way that it did in 15 minutes on Tuesday, Mikey with his confident, used car salesman smirk is in for a surprise. Judge Snow may have some very probing questions that Mikey may be encouraged to answer. Watch out for the landmines Mikey!
Makes sense. I’d probably be thinking much the same thing in his position.
He might not even need a lawyer long-term, but he needs one for a consultation to tell him that (or not that, as the case may be).
One would think that, with all Arpaio’s alleged friends and supporters, someone would be willing to sit down for a half-hour for a $1 fee, and tell Zullo what his risks really are. Where are all the lawyers who donated big bucks to Arpaio’s campaign?
Arpaio, himself, ought to be willing to pry a few hundred out of his legal defense fund to get someone to help keep Zullo from turning into an unguided missile on the stand.
This report is absolutely amazingly poor. And these are the cops that go after the “really bad guys.”
http://images.phoenixnewtimes.com/media/pdf/macreport.pdf
We are talking about the MCSO…the “really bad guys” are anyone who Joe doesn’t like. Not a lot of investigation necessary.
It seems to me that incompetence at the top tends to attract, or grow, incompetence at all levels of an organization.
And yeah, when you don’t really seem to care that much about investigating hundreds of sex crimes, including sex crimes against children, that seems to say something about your definition of “bad guys.”
You are too polite.
If the September 2014 date is when it was written it looks like a class CYA memo written after the fact……poorly written in fact.
so, arpaio’s attorneys are claiming attorney-client privilege with zullo but that they DON’T have an attorney-client relationship with zullo!?!!?
The part that cracked me up is where Zullo tells Mackiewicz he wants some company on his Hawaii vacation:
“I agreed with Zullo’s assessment and purposed course of action and relayed the same to Sheriff Joe Arpaio.”
Okay, this one was funny, too:
“He discovered Mr. Blixseth was at one time listed on Forbes 400 billionaires. He also discovered he was in a bitter divorce with his estranged wife, Edra Blixseth and was in the middle of a very contagious bankruptcy proceeding. It was estimated Mr. Blixseth lost approximately half of his fortune in the divorce proceedings.”
Man, if that’s catching, I sure don’t want to get it!
I guess the pre-nup wasn’t on one of Monty’s hard drives.
“During the conversation Blixseth told Zullo he was in contact with a person that had previously worked as a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) . . . Zullo also learned that Montgomery was arrested in Nevada for failing to pay off a casino marker for approximately one million dollars.”
Cue Johnny Rivers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvY3kRWuyIM
Who’s STILL killing it, by the way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqOZDoz0dXc
Lemons tweets that Zullo invoked the Fifth around 100 times during the first 90 minutes of his testimony.
“Investigator Zullo relayed while in route to the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office Headquaters, Blixseth reached into his sock and retrieved three computer thumb drives. Blixseth told Zullo the information on the drives was beyond comprehension and a threat to every American citizen. He also told Zullo, that Montgomery had evidence of tapering on President Obama’ s Birth Certificate.”
I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no tapering, but if that guy started pulling stuff out of his sock in front of me, I’d want to be somewheres else.
question – if blixseth flew to AZ, how did the security scanner/detectors not pick up a suspicious collection of objects in his sock?
sorry, but to me this sounds like it was added for dramatic effect.
Yeah, something smells about that.
Been there, done that.
Yeah, but it was worth it. (To me)
Up to 218 by lunch.
What I can’t figure out is whether it’s just the bankruptcy proceedings that are “very contagious,” or the divorce, too. Either way, yikes.
Now there is the case of the little town in New Mexico I used to live in, where one year every woman in town named Kathy got divorced.
And why would he feel that there was a necessity to hide his thumb drives? I’m sure that people fly with thumb drives in their briefcases all the time. I’ve never heard of it being a problem.
Expendable? 😈
They were special Super Sekrit Spy Drives, in which all the metal has been replaced by plastic to evade scanners.
Unfortunately, that also makes them write-only, so you should wait for version 2.0 before buying.
Since he was handing them to Zullo, that statement was kinda redundant…
A group of tweets from Stephen Lemons refer to audio recordings played in court. Including:
– $7000 in a bag to Lockheed in Los Angeles
– Montgomery working on Snow stuff
– Montgomery claimed Mackiewicz profited from overtime
– Zullo asks Montgomery how to ruin someone with with private information
Sometimes the most obvious answer is the right one:
Zullo pleads the 5th because what he could say really is incriminating.
I just can’t help imagining it went something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4xOrG4gic8
when what he was looking for was more like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrRZVCg31fE
Stephen Lemons tweets that Zullo exploded on the stand. Started answering questions.
I’m beginning to thing you’re right.
I understand he blew up and started answering questions so I will be interesting to see where this goes.
“After about 30 minutes of answering questions Thursday afternoon, Zullo turned to Snow and said, “Your honor, at some point I need to stop answering questions… It’s like I don’t know what I’m doing.””
http://www.12news.com/story/news/local/valley/2015/11/12/arpaio-posse-leader-erupts-under-oath/75674218/
And Montgomery replied that you can hack their computer and upload child pornography on it.
Was this an idle question, or was somebody trying to attack Judge Snow? IIRC, Zullo replied “Oh God!” when this was played for him on the 9th.
Zulloverse shattering!
Which would obviously be a highly criminal act.
You can’t upload what you don’t have. So…
“Blixseth told Zullo he was in contact with a person that had previously worked as a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)”
“Blixseth contacted Zullo via phone and provided the name and contact phone number for Dennis Montgomery.”
“In a strange connection, Zullo discovered Mr. Montgomery was a partner in a software development company “Blxware” owned by Edra Blixseth, the estranged wife of Timothy Blixseth.”
What are the odds!?
Those who listened to the Reality Check Radio show last night now know where I got the information about the June 2012 meeting between Joe Arpaio, Mike Zullo, Michael Flynn and Tim Blixseth. Another person was present: Brian Reilly.
Brian said that the meeting was largely about the Blixseth divorce, and covered much of the same ground as the article by Jerome Corsi that appeared at WND just days before. http://www.wnd.com/2012/06/holder-faces-corruption-scandal-too/
Brian has no recollection of Blixseth talking about Dennis Montgomery at this meeting, although documents revealed in the Melendres case indicate that Blixseth periodically called Zullo about his progress on the birth certificate after that. The WND article does not mention Montgomery.
Brian was also at the trial yesterday and he reported that Zullo, when asked whether he had met Tim Blixseth prior to October of 2013, after a pregnant pause “looked me straight in the eye and said ‘no’.”
We may never know the whole story, or the true story. Arpaio didn’t leave much of a paper trail (he doesn’t use a computer), so we only have Arpaio’s word and Zullo’s word as to whether either one of them having Judge Snow investigated. The only other person with first-hand knowledge is Dennis Montgomery, and Montgomery is outside the jurisdiction of the Court in Arizona and cannot be subpoenaed.
We have an email from Montgomery saying ““MCSO pursued sensitive information against Judge Snow and we both know it. In fact you produced some of it to the DC judge in August,” but Montgomery was a con man and hardly a reliable witness, and not under oath.
The parties could take Montgomery’s deposition (despite him being out of state); I don’t think anyone thinks he’s worth the effort.