According to Judge Nicholas Garaufis’ court schedule, he will be holding a plea hearing today at 11:30 am in the Nxivm case.
This suggests someone is going to plead guilty today.
Who is it? Allison Mack, Kathy Russell or Clare Bronfman?
We do not know definitely who she is, although we know it will not be Keith Raniere.
According to two courtroom sources, it is Allison Mack.
However, until we can confirm this, all we can say for certain at this moment is that someone is expected to plead and it is possible there could be more than one guilty plea today.
If Allison does plead guilty the big question is whether she is going to have to plead to the sex trafficking charges.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
The judge has ordered that the parties appear for a conference at 1 pm:
ORDER: The parties are DIRECTED to appear for a conference at 1:00 P.M. today before the undersigned in Courtroom 4D South to discuss Keith Raniere’s 506 letter regarding jury selection, Kathy Russell’s 498 April 3, 2019 letter regarding her motion to dismiss, and other pretrial issues. Ordered by Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis on 4/8/2019. (Haddad, Andrew) (Entered: 04/08/2019)
We suspect it is not Raniere who is pleading because his attorney, Marc Agnifilo, has written to the court asking that “[if] any co-defendant of Keith Raniere’s has an agreement with the government to resolve her case with a guilty plea in advance of trial, defendant Raniere requests that any such co-defendant not be presented to the jury during tomorrow’s jury selection process as a trial participant. It would be clearly prejudicial to Mr. Raniere or any defendant going to trial to have the jury know that another co-defendant introduced as a trial participant has in fact pleaded guilty between jury selection and opening statements. It would be even more prejudicial to have a
co-defendant introduced to the jury as a trial participant and later have that same person appear as a government witness. To avoid these completely avoidable situations, we propose that as to any co-defendant who has an agreement in principal to plead guilty, such co-defendant be included in the list of names for the jury’s consideration along with all the other potential witnesses and other persons in the case, but that such co-defendant not sit at counsel table and that such person not presented to the jury as an active participant at the upcoming trial.”
This suggest Agnifilo already knows someone has made an agreement.
Stay tuned.
