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The Current Transcript for August 5, 2022

Host: Peter Armstrong

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Two years after Beirut blast, fight for justice and stability drags on

Guests: Habib Battah, Mariana Fodulian

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My son existed. You're still on your show today implying that I'm an actress, that I'm deep state. Jesse was real. I am a real mom.

PETER ARMSTRONG: Scarlett Lewis confronted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones at his defamation trial yesterday. Ten years ago, her six year old son was killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre. But to this day, she and her husband are told their child's death was staged in a half an hour using the rule of law to stop the lies. And then.

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She truly is terrified that she may never see us again. And, you know, I share those same sentiments.

PA: Brittney Griner has been sentenced to nine years in prison for bringing two vape cartridges with cannabis oil into Russia. In an hour, an unnerving verdict in the pressure on the United States to bring the basketball star home. But first, searching for justice in Beirut. I'm Peter Armstrong in for Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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Extraordinary images tonight of deadly explosions felt by millions in Lebanon. The detonation was heard 200 miles away in at least two other countries.

PA: Yesterday marks two years since a devastating explosion ripped through Beirut and shook the city to its core. 218 people were killed. Thousands more were wounded. A warehouse in the port containing a huge stock of ammonium nitrate caught fire leading to a blast that experts say was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. Two years later, almost no one has been held accountable for the tragedy, but family members of those killed are not done fighting for answers and for justice. Mariana Fodulian lost her sister Gaia in the blast. She joins us today from Beirut. Mariana, hello.

MARIANA FODULIAN: Hello.

PA: I first just want to say how sorry I am for your loss. I know this must be an incredibly difficult day. And can I just ask, how are you doing.

MARIANA FODULIAN: After two years? Not getting the justice. This is not okay for us. So when we say we are okay, it's like we are like trying to be okay. We can say about two years and not getting justice, this is not... Not good at all.

PA: Can you tell me a bit about your sister and what you think of when you think back to that terrible day?

MARIANA FODULIAN: My sister, she was very joyful, very friendly. She was always happy, always singing, always screaming, talking, so talking very loudly. So she was a happy person. And the day of the explosion, she was going to take a shower. When the first explosion came, happened, I mean, so she went outside to check this what happened? And then the second explosion happened. And she had it's the pressure of the explosion that's made internal hemorrhage in the cerebral and internal as well, because she had a little, little bit of blue around the eye. And this is maybe the sign of the hemorrhage that she had. And, and she they she was planning to go to do a shopping that day. And then she was killed by her government in her own house. So I don't know if this means cruelty or we can say they are criminal or I don't know if it's any words bigger than those that I will pronounce, we can say it for our government here.

PA: Carrying the weight of this loss for this long and waiting and fighting for justice, I wonder how much your life has changed since the day of that explosion.

MARIANA FODULIAN: My life changed because it's been one year. I'm not working because in August 2021, the population here, they are, not all of them understanding what we are going through. So me as a veterinarian, so I work nine to 10 hours per day and then if I had to go or leave for one hour to go and ask for justice for my sister, that was not okay with the owners of the clinic. So I had to lose my job. And now, all in all, what I am doing is asking and working for justice for my sister. Since here we are, we would never get the justice easily, so we have to always go to manifestations, go to meetings, work with lawyers, and then making pressure on everyone that is being against our justice.

PA: I wonder, given all of this, given all of the corruption, all of the negligence, all of the politics that are at play and have been at play since even before the explosion, what does justice look like to you at this point? What would you like to see done?

MARIANA FODULIAN: Justice for me is seeing them punished and in jail.

PA: By them, you mean the politicians that you think are responsible.

MARIANA FODULIAN: All of or all the people that they knew or they we can say we have to report the ones that they bought the ammonium, the ones that they knew about the ammonium and they didn't remove, they are the ones that they caused the explosion. So we have three parts. So I need each one that was responsible. In any of those cases, you have to be punished and then to be in the prison. For me, not knowing the tools is not enough. Because here in Lebanon, it's been 30 years. I've never seen anyone, any responsible or any minister or any deputy or any president being punished for what crime he did. So this is what I am asking for. Like, the government is not doing anything. So all they care about is taking the money and put it in the pocket and that's it. So they don't care about their population. They don't even know that we have those problem. If we ask any of them, how much do you pay for the bread? They don't know. So and that happened before all they had. And they had interviews with to check if they know the prices. They don't even know about it, so they really don't care.

PA: Beirut has always struck me as a place where people found hope in incredibly dark times. This feels like a particularly dark moment in your country. Are you still hopeful for justice on the explosion file and just the future in general?

MARIANA FODULIAN: We cannot say we have hope, but we can say that we will continue until we get it because we are waiting for them and giving our justice, this is impossible. So what you have to do is always pushing for it and making them be ashamed by themselves for what they did and what they are continuing on doing so. And here in Lebanon, we have this problem that people when something happens like an explosion, people, they say this will never happen here. Let's go to the same place, you know, or they say that Lebanon have to be happy again and we have to continue our lives and everything. So they never ask to punish those that they are doing those crimes towards their population. And this is the biggest problem here in Lebanon and in the population here. So even for us, they always say this you will not reach the justice and keep on going with your life and you have to live again. So this is not okay and this is not what we want from our population. We want that our population knows that we have to always ask for our rights and to reach our rights, we have to punish those they are doing discriminative things against us.

PA: I can sense your frustration, but I can feel and hear your resolve all the way from here in Canada. So thank you for for speaking with us today. And good luck in your your endeavour to get justice for your sister.

MARIANA FODULIAN: Thank you so much. Thank you.

PA: That was Mariana Fodulian. Her sister was killed in the Beirut explosion two years ago. Now, in those two years since the explosion, victims families have clearly sought justice and responsibility from those who allowed it to happen. But that's been an arduous process. Lebanon's ongoing political unrest and now its economic collapse, it's made recovery from the tragedy seem, frankly, like an impossibility. Habib Battah is an independent journalist based in Beirut, but he joins us today from Toronto. Habib. Good morning.

HABIB BATTAH: Good morning.

PA: You heard Marianna talk there about some of the struggles that she's faced since the explosion. How familiar is that story to the others that you hear in Lebanon?

HABIB BATTAH: You know, sadly, Lebanon has a lot of tragedies and the port explosion might have been the biggest explosion on record in modern history that wasn't nuclear. But Lebanon has seen, you know, thousands and probably a millions of explosions, and it's in its short lifetime. And so, you know, you do hear a lot of tragic stories constantly from the Civil War days until what's been happening in the recent years. It's been a lot of people suffering a great deal in that country. You know, today people suffer from, you know, all kinds of tragedies, whether it's trying to, you know, unveil a bit of bread. There's no bread in the stores. There's no electricity, there's no water. And then you have people who are recovering from from many, many wars, not just the explosion.

PA: We spoke to you last year on the first anniversary of the explosion. And and it was clear that not much recovery had been made at that point. How much has changed this year?

HABIB BATTAH: It's not a lot. It's remarkable, actually. If you drive down the area of the port where where the blast happened, you'll find, you know, rows of, you know, multi-story apartment buildings, high rises that are still gutted. And some of those were quite expensive properties. So if you can imagine, you know, some luxury hotels and apartments couldn't rebuild themselves. I mean, how about the average person? A lot of very poor people were affected as well. And people still can't even afford to put glass in their windows. And as I'm saying, people can't even afford to buy bread at this time in Lebanon, they've lost, you know, 90% of their purchasing power because of the economic crash.

PA: You know, we listen to what Mariana said about her frustrations in trying to get any not just justice, but frankly, answers. Start with the investigation. It's been stalled for months now. Why is that?

HABIB BATTAH: I mean, again, you have to give some context here. I mean, this investigation is is not just focussed on the, you know, explosive material and how it was stored, but it's also trying to hold accountable some of the highest levels of power in the country, some of the highest ranking generals and politicians. And so this is not an ordinary I would say it's not being treated as an ordinary industrial disaster. And, you know, there's a lot of dispute and debate over that, a lot of challenges by those who have been prosecuted, claiming that, you know, it's not really fair to prosecute, you know, high level people for localised, you know, hazardous materials. And some believe that there's a politicised element of this, that those who are being accused, those are being charged are happens to be the, you know, threats to be seen as threats to the West and enemies and members of, you know, Hezbollah and allied organisations. So there is a kind of politicised element to this trial that's that's occurring and and has been occurring, frankly, in Lebanon. And when you ask me about justice in Lebanon, I think it's important to ask, well, where does justice begin in Lebanon? You know, Lebanon is a country that is recovering from, you know, decades of war. There have been assassinations of many presidents and prime ministers. There's been no justice in any of those cases. So there's really been so many assassinations, so many thousands that have been killed and so many explosions. And there's been no justice. So there's justice beginning today. It's a difficult question, you know, in a state that has really not really formed as a state, I think that's really understand what kind of place Lebanon is. It's not really a kind of state that is stable. It's a state that's been wracked by war wars every decade of its existence, its 100 year existence. There's been a war every single decade and a devastating one. So there hasn't really been a time for Lebanon to build institutions of justice or even electricity or any kind of thing. And the country is perpetually torn apart. The country is seen as a chess piece. You know, we often ask ourselves, what's wrong with Lebanon, what's wrong with Lebanese people? We should also ask yourself, what's wrong with the world? The world supports Lebanon, the big countries of the world, Saudi Arabia, the United States, France, Iran are all pouring billions of dollars into Lebanon all of these decades and really kind of, you know, supporting their proxies. So it's a proxy battlefield that I think, you know, we should ask for accountability, not just from the Lebanese people, but also from the the global powers. You know, the FBI has been to Lebanon many times to investigate. We haven't seen any results of those investigations. We, you know, the French experts, the company that actually brought the ammonium nitrate to Lebanon is a British registered company. The British government hasn't been very forthcoming in its investigation. So, you know, we've seen a lot of lack of will, not just locally but internationally to actually help this country move forward.

PA: So given all that, what are the chances that people in Lebanon, people like Marianna, who are just trying to get answers and justice for the death of her sister, what are the chances they ever see those responsible held to account?

HABIB BATTAH: You know, I would say it's the same chance that much of people in the Global South have of accountability. You know, there are many countries like Lebanon, where many victims of continue to be miserable in silence. The world does not even hear them. I mean, it took the world, the biggest explosion in recent history to see what's happening in Lebanon. And even then, we're easy to forget about it. So unfortunately, there isn't a lot of, I think, hope for so many, so many victims in Lebanon and other countries that have been wracked by these kind of wars and instability.

PA: The economic collapse that was- this explosion happened in the midst of is one of, I think, the great underreported stories in the world right now. It's astounding what's happening in Lebanon. Can you just give us a sense of of where we're at in that and how difficult that's made life for everyday Lebanese people?

HABIB BATTAH: Yeah. Life was already very bad before this massive explosion. Lebanon is going through a quite a depression. I mean, the World Bank has said it's one of the worst economic collapses in recent history and in modern history since the 1800s. It's a 90% hyperinflation rate. So that means that if you had $100 in the bank, it's worth ten. If you made $100, you get ten. So people have seen their salaries slashed by 90%. They've seen their earnings, their savings. They've seen, you know, the value of their currency. The banks have gone through a crisis and the banks are not giving people their money. Banks are just giving you maybe a few hundred dollars a month, if you're lucky, to get that much. So Lebanon is a country that is also doesn't have much of an economy because it's been through so many wars. Lebanon is just a place of political money, mainly. That's the main economy of Lebanon. And we have resources or manufacturing. So all of our our products are imported. So if you have that kind of a currency devaluation and you're relying on, you know, 80% of your products as imports, then you really can't buy anything. And so what's been happening in Lebanon recently, for example, is that the production of electricity and and the distribution of water has not even been happening because the government can't afford to repair the infrastructure. The pipes, one pipe was broken and there was no water to the whole country for almost a month. And so people are having to just, you know, buy tanks of water, get generators, and we get about one hour or 2 hours of electricity per day. So your day is really spent in Lebanon trying to check your levels and check your. How much water do you have? How much battery charge do you have? If you have solar panels, how much are the gas stations open? The gas stations have been constantly closing in Lebanon because fuel is imported. So there have been a lot of massive lines. People have waited hours in line just to get gas in their cars. And so it's a really miserable state of affairs in the country. And then you get this massive explosion on top of all that. So it's been impossible to rebuild because people have no money and the country is essentially bankrupt. And that's only one of the main challenges of Lebanon. It's not just about the leadership. It's also about having a country with no economy and how to and how does a country build an economy? I think the country needs a lot more help than just handouts and aid distributions that really need a strong investment in the country. If the world wants to see Lebanon standards two feet, the question is, is that actually a reality? Does the world want Lebanon to sound stupid or does the world want to see Lebanon as this proxy battlefield for these battles between Iran and the U.S. and Saudi Arabia? That's the real question I think the world has to ask itself, not just the Lebanese.

PA: The last big boost to the economy came generally in the form of tourism, that people came, spent money and helped prop up the economy. Now that we're emerging from from COVID, is there an opportunity to try to restore some of the sort of foundations of the Lebanese economy?

HABIB BATTAH: Well, you know, tourism would be great. And I think I encourage people to visit Lebanon. It's you know, it's it's great value for your dollar. Now, people are- the ministry of the people is maybe it could help with tourism and some sense that people could come to the country. And it's very, very inexpensive. It's very beautiful country. All these things that I say I would love you to know. It's a very beautiful country with with, you know, beaches and mountains and all that stuff. People are desperate for any kind of help to come and visit the country. But again, you really can't build an economy on tourism. And so that's that's one step. I think the world should discover Lebanon and see how they can help beyond just a handout.

PA: What is the international help that the country needs? And I think as is often the case here, the more important question is what help doesn't it need?

HABIB BATTAH: Yeah, you know, I mean, again, it's just building a state from the ground up. You know, Lebanon has perpetually been at war with itself. And so there hasn't been time to build the kind of institutions that ensure the safety of the population. We want to make sure these kind of explosions don't happen again in the future. And you should know that explosions happen all the time because there is no real control over the state. The state is a fragmented bunch of militias, so there's no safety Board or regulations to ensure that these hazardous materials don't come into contact with people. And we've had many explosions of gas stations, of generators, of of all kinds of things that don't make the news on a regular basis in the country. So we really need to see a kind of institutional building, that kind of a support in the country, but also an economic investment. If countries of the world want to see Lebanon improve, they need to really see some kind of investment in the country, some kind of industry in the country that would really help people just to to survive, to eat. Because without an economy, you really can't talk about political independence at all.

PA: Right. Well, listen, these are incredibly tough times for one of my favourite places. So I really appreciate you giving us your your insight into what's happening today.

HABIB BATTAH: Thank you for having me.

PA: Habib Battah, an independent journalist based in Beirut, he joined us this morning from Toronto. We're going to take a quick break. For the news the CBC news is coming up next. And then.

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There's got to be a strong deterrent for Alex Jones to prevent him from peddling this propaganda campaign to put a stop to what's being said.

PA: Now, what is being said is that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, a shooting that killed 20 kids, six adults nearly a decade ago. Coming up, we'll take a look at how courts are being used in the information wars. I'm Peter Armstrong. I'm sitting in for Matt Galloway this week. Thanks for listening to us. This is The Current. We'll be right back.

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Alex Jones has learned that 'speech is free, but lies you have to pay for,' says lawyer

Guest: Louis Tompros

PA: Hello. I'm Peter Armstrong. You're listening to The Current.

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PA: Taking a conspiracy theorist to court.

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Truth. Truth is so vital to our world. Truth is what we base our reality on. And we have to agree on that to have a civil society. Sandy Hook is a hard truth. Hard truth. Nobody would ever believe that 26 kids could be murdered. Nobody would ever want to believe that. I understand people not wanting to believe that, actually. I don't want to believe it.

PA: Scarlett Lewis's six year old son, Jesse Lewis, was murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting. And now, ten years after the worst day of her life, she spent this week sitting in an Austin, Texas, courtroom testifying on the importance of truth. The man responsible for putting her in this situation is Alex Jones. For years, the media personality, conspiracy theorist, he's brazenly spread lies that the Sandy Hook massacre never happened, that the grieving parents, they're actors employed by a, quote, "deep state" that 20 children and six staff members, they were never murdered. Sitting in court this week, he continued to lie to the point where the presiding judge stepped in.

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It seems absurd to instruct you again that you must tell the truth while you testify. Yet here I am. You must tell the truth. Why are you testifying? This is not your show.

PA: Yesterday, the jury in that case ordered Alex Jones to pay the parents $4.1 million in damages. Now, they were seeking 150 million. But my next guest says the money is not the only reason that this case is important. It's also part of an emerging trend toward using courts to push back against false information. Louis Tompros is a litigator with the firm WilmerHale and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. Lewis, good morning.

LOUIS TOMPROS: Good morning.

PA: What goes through your mind when you hear both Scarlett Lewis and the judge speak in those clips we just heard?

LOUIS TOMPROS: I think that the point of the of the judges speeches is fundamental to the rule of law and the way that the legal system is designed to try to get to the truth. You have to tell the truth in court, and you have to be accountable for lies that you tell if they cause harm outside of court. That's what the point of defamation law is all about, and that's what this case ultimately stands for.

PA: You know, this case is just the first in a whole series by a Sandy Hook parents. What do you see as their, I guess, potential significance of these actions in terms of using the legal system to push back against a media organisation like Infowars?

LOUIS TOMPROS: I see these cases as part of a broader trend of what we talk about as counter disinformation litigation, which is essentially using the legal system to fight lies that are otherwise going to get a lot of traction and get a lot of attention in the public. The basic idea, and I think that the closing arguments in the Alex Jones case put it very well, is that speech is free, but lies you have to pay for if you are going to not tell the truth, if you're going to to live in a in a fantasy world and try to convince others that your lies are true, then you have to face the consequences of that. And that's what these cases stand for. And it's what other cases in the in the broader disinformation litigation repertoire stand for over the past few years. And I think there's a growing trend of those cases being more frequent and more successful as the prevalence of love lies in the in the public, in the public media, and viral lies becomes more common.

PA: You know, as we entered what people like to call the post-truth era, people kept telling me, you know, the institutions of our society are robust. They'll push back and keep all of this in check. And in a lot of cases, let's be honest, they didn't. But it does seem like the courts have been able to hold up and push back against this. Is that a fair assessment of both the institutions that didn't push back and where we're at with the courts now?

LOUIS TOMPROS: I think that's right. Although I would say I think to some degree that the jury is still out, so to speak, as to how ultimately the courts will be able to to help in the pursuit of truth, like the entire court system is set up to try to find truth. That's the point of the adversarial system. You present both sides to a neutral arbitrator and you try to figure out where the truth is for. And defamation is is and libel and trade libel and deceptive trade practises, actions are the kinds of kinds of lawsuits that you can bring when someone is telling a lie that is harming you out in the public. We have seen the court systems in recent years, certainly since the era, the post-truth era began, take those defamation cases more and more seriously, and we're seeing a trend of more and more success there. Whether that ultimately helps to, you know, to push back against the post-truth era more broadly is yet yet to be seen. But the courts are doing their part.

PA: I mean, Alex Jones is one of the best known characters of that era. And you know better than most how challenging it is to question him because you've actually done it. Just tell us how it is that you ended up at the Infowars headquarters in 2018.

LOUIS TOMPROS: Sure. So I did. I deposed Alex Jones. I represent and represented the cartoonist, Matt Furie, who created the famous comic book character Pepe the Frog. Right. And Pepe became a viral meme that was ultimately co-opted against Matt's will by alt right entities, including Infowars and and others as a symbol connected with hate. So Matt engaged us to try to to stop those misuses of his character and to try to disconnect Pepe from these these hateful ideas and images. And so we had a copyright case against Infowars. One of their defences was that that no, no, they can do, they can sell whatever they want with Pepe on it. It's a matter of free speech and we ultimately prevailed in front of the court on that issue. But as part of the case, I did go to Infowars headquarters and spent the day deposing Alex Jones. It was, I would say, to put it distinctly, a somewhat surreal experience and certainly the most interesting deposition that I have been involved in in my career.

PA: I've watched the video of it and it it's downright weird. There's one section that one of our producers has pulled. We're just going to take a listen to it. Here's our audience can get a sense of the strangeness. Take a listen.

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LOUIS TOMPROS: Hi. Mr. Jones, right before we went off the record, I was asking you to take a look at exhibit number 12. You have that in front of you.

ALEX JONES: You're free to use any means necessary. I want Pepe the frog alive. No disintegrations.

LOUIS TOMPROS: Thank you, sir.

ALEX JONES: Sorry. Let's go backl.

LOUIS TOMPROS: We have. Exhibit number five, right.

ALEX JONES: Okay. Exhibit number five.

LOUIS TOMPROS: And the first page of exhibit number five says Defendant's Infowars LLC.

PA: I mean, this is a deposition. He's being sued. What did you think when he started? I don't know. Can we call it a Darth Vader voice when he started talking like that?

LOUIS TOMPROS: He did. He had been talking earlier about how he liked to do impersonations and that kind of thing. I think that was one of many moments throughout the course of that deposition where it kind of went off the rails and wasn't taking this seriously. And I think to some degree, it's a little bit emblematic of the way in which purveyors of lies don't think that there is any check against them. They think that the court system is a joke. They think that the legislature and the and the people that will come to call them on it are a joke. When they're called out in honest media, they just say that it's fake news. And so I think it's it's a little bit emblematic of that, that he thought the whole thing was a joke, right? It wasn't a joke. We ultimately prevailed. And I think he's now seeing that in the Sandy Hook case. It's very much not a joke. He caused real harm and he's being called to account.

PA: And going through that, I kept sort of taking down notes, thinking, there's stuff we can learn here from your experiences and strategies about getting the truth out of Alex Jones. What were your main takeaways in terms of how to how to move forward, how to what strategy to use to to glean truth out in those weird moments?

LOUIS TOMPROS: Yeah, you know, I honestly, I did what I, I try to teach my students, which is to try to adapt and follow along. And when you're asking a witness questions, let them dig their own hole and let them keep on digging when when that's what they want. That's what they want to do. So what we ultimately got out of that deposition was the one fundamental thing that we needed, which was a concession that the reason that he was using AP was not for some political statement or something along those lines, but because he wanted to make money and we got there. It just took following along, asking the follow up questions, letting him letting him say the things that are untrue, calling him on it as appropriate, and then asking the further follow up questions until you ultimately get to the the key part of the truth that you need. And I think that's the point of witness examination and cross-examination and the adversary system. So it it takes lawyers willing to continue to engage with these folks and follow up. But there are tactics and techniques that you can use to get there, even with someone who is willing to be deceptive along the way.

PA: And I mean, it prevails in your case, but there's always a risk that, you know, by suing, you end up amplifying the voice of the person you're trying to stop. How should victims of disinformation weigh that risk against the possibility of public vindication, you know, kind of winning damages?

LOUIS TOMPROS: That's a real challenge and a real balance. This is often referred to as the so-called Streisand effect, and it's named after an instance back in 2003 when when Barbra Streisand actually sued a website to remove a photograph of one of her houses in California before she sued, that that photograph had only been viewed on that website six times. And after she sued, it was viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Right. So so calling out the problem sometimes draws more attention to it than you want. It's a balancing. It's a balancing act, honestly, for any individual or business that is being harmed by disinformation between between trying to get the retribution that you need and and calling more attention to it. I will say this. I think as the trend has shifted in in this post-truth era to the courts being more willing to entertain the merits of these libel and defamation cases that I think we are- that that balance does shift in favour of using counter disinformation litigation more and and the upside begins to outweigh the downside. But it's a choice that every individual, every business has to make. I think at some level it was clearly the right choice for the Sandy Hook victims. It has also been, I think, the right choice for the makers of the voting equipment that was accused of of wrongly in the U.S. of manipulating the election here. They've been quite successful just on the business side. But it's a choice that you have to make, weighing Streisand's effect against the potential upside.

PA: Well, and sort of a variation of the Streisand effect, as we've seen in the Sandy Hook case that Alex Jones is drawing people to his website, has been using the court proceedings for Infowars content, making some pretty bizarre claims along the way. Let's take a listen to what he's been saying on his show.

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ALEX JONES: They're all caricatures of what you would imagine in some alternate universe of dwarf goblins. It's demonic. They all act demonically possessed. The judge, the lawyers. It's. It's surreal to be around them. And it makes you feel sorry for them because these people are committed to occult ideology of the New World Order.

PA: So, like, on the one hand, he's using this case to draw new audience in and spout this nonsense out of them. Is there a risk that, at least amongst his audience, that the case could harm the credibility of the justice system?

LOUIS TOMPROS: There's certainly that possibility, although I'm not entirely sure that amongst his his diehard audience, that there's any credibility the justice system has in the first place. Right. If you're already in a world in which you don't believe any of this, that the risk is small, but you are right that that the the the downside of of engaging with the purveyors of disinformation is that you amplify their voice and their disinformation. And that's unfortunate for sure. That's, again, a judgement that you have to make in every individual case. It's the old adage, right? You don't don't feed the trolls. And so if you begin to engage with the folks that are doing this kind of that stream, this kind of disinformation, you run exactly that risk of amplifying their audience. On the flip side, you know, if we are going to have to live in a truth world as opposed to a post post-truth world, there really is at some point no choice but for at least some people, some companies, some individuals to stand up and say what you're saying is a lie and I'm going to call you on it. And it becomes one of those choices that everyone has to make individually on a case by case basis. But I hope and I do see that there are some people willing to stand up and fight and say, I'm not going to let you get away with your lies. I'm going to call you on it. Using the legal system, using the media, using every available tool.

PA: Well, it's been a mighty weird week. We're certainly glad to get your insight on this. Thanks for this.

LOUIS TOMPROS: Thanks so much.

PA: Louis Tompros is an intellectual property lawyer with Wilmer Hale. He represented the cartoonist Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe the Frog, in his copyright lawsuit against Alex Jones.

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Appeal or wait? Brittney Griner's legal team faces tough decision post-sentencing, says expert

Guest: Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon

PA: I'm Peter Armstrong sitting in for Matt Galloway this week. You're listening to The Current. Brittney Griner was handed a severe sentence in russia yesterday, nine years. The American basketball star was convicted for having a small amount of medical cannabis in her luggage when she landed in Moscow back in February. Now, hers is a politically charged case with allegations that she's being used as a political pawn. US President Joe Biden says it's a priority to bring her back to the United States, but that is clearly no simple task. Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Russian and Soviet history, and she's advised the WNBA Players Association on Brittney Griner case. Kimberly, good morning.

KIMBERLY ST. JULIAN-VARNON: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

PA: First of all, just what do you make of this in nine year sentence is a lot. What was your reaction when you when you first heard it?

KIMBERLY ST. JULIAN-VARNON: I wasn't surprised by the nine year sentence. It's within the sentencing statute that the Russian legal code has, but also it tends to go towards the Russian way of giving Americans, in particular, heavy sentences when they're charged with crimes in Russia. Paul Whalen got 16 years and Trevor Read also got a nine year sentence. So this is in line with that.

PA: And a lot of us thought that the sentence being completed was kind of the first step towards the political process of negotiating a prisoner swap of some kind. This morning for the foreign minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov has said that the Russian government is willing to discuss some kind of prisoner swap. Where do you think we are in that process? And and what are the big challenges of getting that deal done?

KIMBERLY ST. JULIAN-VARNON: So this morning, as The New York Times reported, that there are the Russians now in earnest engaging in negotiations for a prisoner exchange. The deal said on the table for a few weeks now. But Russia has always said that it will not engage in any negotiations until the Russian legal process has been completed and with the conviction, that process is complete. And so I think the next few weeks are going to be important because one Brittney Griner and her defence team have the legal possibility for an appeal. And so they have ten days to file that appeal from the conviction date, which is yesterday. So depending on if they file an appeal, which they probably will, the appeal could take days, weeks to months, depending on how far up it goes. And actually, in the Russian legal system, there are, you know, successful appeals. Many of them don't overturn sentences, but they do decrease sentences, you know, towards the minimum that the Russian legal code allows. So that's also a possibility. But in terms of the prisoner exchange, we have to think about the appeals process. And also, will Russia accept a two for one deal that it seems that the United States is offering? Victor Boot, the convicted arms trader who is an American federal prison, serving a 25 year sentence in exchange for Brittney Griner and Paul Whalen, who was convicted of espionage in 2021. So you have a problem in terms of American politics and how this deal is being viewed. Many American, you know, political discourse is split right now. There are Americans who think that Brittney Griner, as she admitted, guilt is guilty, so she's not unlawfully detained, that she should serve a nine year sentence. And then on the other hand, you have people who want her out immediately, who want this bill to be done. And then you have another group of people who are concerned that. Is it fair that a convicted arms dealer such as Viktor Bout gets out of prison in exchange for victory for two Americans? So this is a very complicated situation for the Biden administration. Never mind. American midterm elections are coming up in November. So this situation that has been a political firestorm since the news broke has a lot more meaning right now as we go up towards these midterm elections.

PA: And I mean, quite clearly, the Russians have more bargaining power than the U.S. and so am I. Am I right in that?

KIMBERLY ST. JULIAN-VARNON: Absolutely. The cards are in Russia's hands. They get to dictate the terms of the negotiations. They also get to dictate the timeframe. And because Russia knows how much public pressure is on the Biden administration. What impetus is there for Russia to move quickly on this? The longer they drag this out, the more public pressure is on Biden and the more they can try to get out of the United States. And so this is what the Biden administration is having to deal with. You have your cards on the table. Everybody knows your hand. But we don't know what Russia is willing to do or what Russia's asking for.

PA: Meanwhile, she's in jail in a in a Russian jail. Can you just give us a sense of what the conditions that she's facing are like while she's being held there?

KIMBERLY ST. JULIAN-VARNON: Sure. So she's in pre-trial detention, as she will be until she's moved to her, she was sentenced to a penal colony. So pre-trial detention is kind of like a jail she has two cellmates. And there have been reports like her issues have been she's over six feet eight. So she doesn't fit in the bed. You know, the roof is small. But in general, she's in comfort. Her two cellmates, according to Russian state media, are conversant in English. So she's not as isolated. The penal colony is a totally different ballgame. The penal colony, if you think about the gulag in Soviet history, these are just the descendants of the gulag. You're going to be doing a lot of work. It could be manual labour, it could be sewing uniforms, and it's more of a camp. So think less of cells and more like barracks. And the problem there, I think, is when you'll see more of isolation, you know, she's going to a penal colony. We don't know where yet. So there's no guarantee that she'll have anyone with her that speaks English. Right. I spoke to Trevor Reed a couple of weeks ago and he talked about how he had to learn Russian because there was no way to communicate. So it's a different situation. So pre-trial detention is going to be better and more comfortable as much as you can be in comfort in a Russian jail than the penal colony will be.

PA: So, I mean, on the one hand, you have this decision that she and her legal team will have to make about an appeal, because you'd like to bring down that sentence, if not overturn it at all. But if you think there's even a chance that there could be a political deal for a prisoner swap and get you out of there, and that all you do is delay that by at least ten days, probably a couple of months. How tricky is that decision going to have to be for for Graner and her her team?

KIMBERLY ST. JULIAN-VARNON: It is a very tricky situation. So you're also depending if you don't do the appeal, you're hedging your bet on a prisoner exchange or now that she's convicted, she can file and write to President Putin and ask for a presidential pardon. A couple of years ago, there was an Israeli national who was caught in possession of marijuana. She received, I believe, a seven year sentence, but she got a presidential pardon from President Putin. And so it is possible, however, you're putting a lot of eggs in one basket. So what the appeal does is it allows her to challenge, you know, this nine year sentence and possibly get it down to the minimum of five years. So these are all things they're going to have to think about. But I do think they're probably going to go for an appeal just to do everything that they can with the Russian legal system to try to get her either a smaller citizenor get her released.

PA: I was reading something last night that, you know, from from a lot of Americans perspective, Brittney Griner, whose identity is as a black LGBTQ woman. And the accusation there is that she'd be treated differently if she was a man. Do you what do you make of that?

KIMBERLY ST. JULIAN-VARNON: But I think and I've said this a few times, I think the discourse in America about Britney Briner, this case reflects more on America than it does on Russia. And so Brittney Griner is an unfortunate case, but she is not the only case of an American who has been charged with something similar. American teacher and former diplomat Mark Fogle was charged with something similar in [unintelligible] Airport last year, and he received a 14 year sentence. Paul Whalen received a 16 year sentence for alleged espionage to be read to see the nine year sentence for allegedly hitting a police officer. All of these are white men. And, you know, all of them besides Trevor Reed, who were released in April, are still sitting in Russian prisons. So I think that while our initial reaction, based on our experiences in America with the penal system in America is to focus on her race and her gender, this isn't necessarily the case in Russia. But I argue it's her nationality as an American, and her celebrity is much more important to the situation that she's in than her race or sexuality at this point.

PA: Indeed, there. That's all the time we have. But I really do appreciate you sharing all your insight on this. Been great. Thanks.

KIMBERLY ST. JULIAN-VARNON: Thank you.

PA: Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon has studied Russia for more than a decade, completing her Ph.D. on race in the former Soviet Union and East Germany. And that's our programme for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for q. The Promise of a Good Meals The Thread through Stanley Tucci His Life. The actor spoke with Tom Power about his new memoir and how his love of food has permeated through his personal and professional adventures. I'm Peter Armstrong. I've been sitting in for Matt Galloway. This week, Michelle Shepherd will be with us on Monday. Lucky us. Thanks for having me. It's been a great week. Thank you for listening to The Current.

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Friday August 5, 2022 Full Transcript

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