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At a quarter past two, in the Media Room 1206 of the Prettyman U.S. Courthouse of the DC District Court, Peter Blake of VMDTV started gathering everything in a hurry — laptop, pen and paper, mobile and portable charger — when he saw on the wall flat screen the jury started filling up the jury box.
Earlier in the morning when he came, there was plenty of space to spread out but in the last three hours, the room got packed with the ubiquitous DC horde of the press and broadcast media. During that time, everyone was glued to the wide flat screen monitor of the criminal trial that had been going on the last six weeks in the courtroom two doors down the hallway. Now the jury came out of the backroom after two days of deliberation and the Honorable District Judge Herman Reinholdt, looking worn out, asked: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you have a verdict?”
The jury foreperson, a white man, late fifties, in long sleeve unwrinkled white shirt, crewcut, straight-backed, clearly ex-military, said: “Yes, your Honor, we have.”
The court clerk, twenty-something undergraduate and a good bet in pursuit of his law degree from Georgetown or GWU, got the verdict form from the jury foreperson and handed it to the judge. Reinholdt read it deadpan a few long seconds — but long enough to build a tense atmosphere in the courtroom and in Room 1206 — before handing it back to the court clerk.
The wannabe-lawyer court clerk then faced the courtroom audience, straight-faced and read the verdict: “We the jury find the defendant guilty of all charges.”
Peter Blake was glad he gave himself a head start. He had inched toward the door when the court clerk got the verdict back from the judge and as soon the verdict was heard, he was out the door ahead of what sounded like a stampede behind him.
Out on the south front of the courthouse facing the intersection of two of the most symbolic avenues of the nation‘s capital — Constitution Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue where a portion of it was bounded by the power bastions of the nation: the White House and the Capitol Hill, people poured out of the courthouse building in droves, increasing the size of the crowd that had been demonstrating out on the lawn and parks around the building since early in the day of the trial. The trial of a former resident in one of the power bastions on Pennsylvania Avenue —the White House.
A few minutes after word of the verdict came out of the courthouse, former President Josh Clindenbar emerged from the door surrounded by layers of entourage —family, friends and relatives, the ubiquitous secret service and the press. Ahead of them among other media crew was Peter Blake talking loud on his mobile with a crew member manning the VMDTV van a short distance out on Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Get as close as you can,” he practically yelled on the mobile to the camera crew fighting their way towards the building, “before they get him in the car!”
The appearance of the ex-president immediately attracted a swarm of people from as far as across the two main avenues, tying up traffic on both directions.
Seeing the crowd all over, Peter Blake didn't trust the video crew to get good footage of the scene so he quickly switched his mobile to video and started recording the scene himself, tiptoeing close in front of Josh Clindenbar's entourage.
While doing that, he glanced at the name of the building inscribed on the wall above the doors:
How fucking ironic, he thought. Nothing pretty at all about the man, the first and only President, ex-President, to be tried and convicted of criminal charges, in the building.
And he's quite right, from what came out in the trial.
Senator Brookland, backed up by Senator Edwin Price, the Ethics Committee chair and a long-time comrade of both the House and the Senate leadership, had the DA present to the court during the evidentiary hearing part of the trial every single direct evidence they gathered from Hermes one after another.
All the materials collected from Donald Wells' copy of the system backup when Treasury upgraded its computer. All the major comms between the parties involved in the 4.6 billion dollar purchase of Hillsmith Farms by the Chinese; the multi-million dollar kickbacks to the facilitators of the sale, among them several officials at Treasury, several members of the U.S. Congress and several White House high officials including then President Josh Clindenbar who approved the sale transaction, approved it well within the fifteen-day time limit from the day CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) requests a decision by the President on whether to suspend or prohibit the sale.
The Defense argued against their admissibility, questioning their source and procurement. The prosecutor was quite forthcoming in explaining the source and method of procurement of every piece of evidence of the act of bribery, graft and corruption by all the accused. Every such criminal act was clearly documented as they were being committed, in real time. The wire transfers, the comms between the sender and the receiver, both official and personal.
Every one of the accused were caught and recorded at the time in the act of committing the crimes they are charged with.
For days, weeks, Defense argued against every piece of direct evidence that was consequently admitted as an exhibit, and Judge Reinholdt over-ruled the argument one after another.
The same sets of evidence were used in all the other trials, those of the accused in the Treasury Department, the other officials in the White House, several members of Congress and their accomplices in business, specifically all the liaison between the Chinese and their highly paid American gofers, lobbyists to the U.S. government.
Next to the recent conviction and incarceration of six sitting members of Congress, this last and final high-profile conviction resulting from the Project initiated by the group, the seventh and the last after three more House members (two recently retired) and two Senators (both retired), brought the total conviction of corrupt elected government officials to twelve.
Another dark page in the history of the United States government.
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