I don't think this violates Rule 12, but just in case, the context is that HATJ is a promoter of the theory that every US citizen has a secret account in their name at the Federal Reserve full of millions of dollars. She and her codefendant tried to put that theory into practice in July, and were almost immediately arrested and indicted on various wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering charges.

I think she's flatly, obviously guilty. She has some fans around here who strenuously disagree with me, so I thought this would be of interest to them--this transcript probably isn't showing up on the docket yet, so the link might be helpful.

It depends on who you ask. There's a lot of different versions of the theory. Basically they use the Federal Reserves routing number and a made-up account number (usually some variation on their own social security number) when they buy something or pay a bill, as if they were connecting to their own checking account.

It takes a while for the company to actually try and process ACH payments, so they'll process the transaction immediately on the assumption that the payment will go through and that they can just reverse the transaction if it doesn't.

These guys bought some CDs from a bank that way. They tried to buy $5 million; the bank figured out the scam but only after they'd already handed over $1.5 million in CDs. These guys liquidated the CDs and used the money to buy a huge, sweet motor home.

But since the bank had figured out that it was a scam and they weren't going to get paid, they stopped the wire and called the feds. Defendants were picked up within days.

HATJ has a loooooooooong history of making money off of conspiracy theorists, including UCC and free energy scams. Turns out banks have less of a sense of humor about it. Trial's scheduled for the fall.

The motor home was $500k, I guess the rest of the money was for gas.

She hasn't been charged with practicing without a license.

The judge did allow her to represent herself, and then she appeared to change her mind (and then asked to change it again).

Pages 9-16 are what's called a Faretta inquiry. When a defendant asks to represent herself, the judge has to confirm on the record that her waiver of the right to counsel is knowing and voluntary. They did the Faretta inquiry and the judge held that she met the standard, and could represent herself. He appointed the public defender (That's Mr. Bos) as "stand-by counsel," to assist her if necessary.

Then Tucci-Jarraf immediately objected to the court's decision. (This is on page 16.) She said, "I'm not waiving any rights." And if she's not waiving the right to counsel, then she gets counsel. You can't represent yourself without waiving the right to an attorney.

Then there was a lot of discussion back and forth, in which Bos indicated that Tucci-Jarraf didn't realize the consequences of saying that she would not waive any rights. I think he's almost certainly right about that, but the court didn't see it that way. It pointed out that the way she was handling herself raised questions about her competence to make a Faretta election. (Plus, HATJ used to be a lawyer. She knows what it means when the court rules that you can represent yourself and you immediately object to the decision--it's saying that you don't want to represent yourself.)

Ultimately the court decided that since this was just an identity hearing, and not the trial itself, and because Tucci-Jarraf had already delayed proceedings by several days, it was going to order the hearing to go forward with Bos rather than doing another Faretta inquiry. I suspect it also took into consideration the fact that Tucci-Jarraf used to be a lawyer and should know better than to screw around in a hearing, and that she was obviously trying to play games.

In practice it made no difference. Bos filed the stuff Tucci-Jarraf wanted filed and made the objections she wanted made (including an objection to himself serving as her counsel). And the hearing was just a few pages of, "Is this the person you arrested? Is this her driver's license?", etc. HATJ couldn't have handled it any better than Bos did if she were the greatest legal mind of all time--it's just so open and shut.

The real stuff happens when the hearings and trial in Tennessee get started.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't read it, I just wasn't aware that you had.

I do think that courts should grant Faretta waivers more often. They almost always do--the only time I ever see them denied is when it's a sovereign citizen playing games. Courts lose patience with a defendant who just wants to shout "ACCEPTED FOR VALUE!" when asked how they plead, both because it wastes time and because the defendant is just completely screwing himself out of a fair trial, and that's not justice.

Having said that, it is an important right, and people should be allowed to screw themselves out of a fair trial if they're warned that they're doing it, have a chance to not do it, and insist in writing that they want to do it.

The denial here doesn't bother me so much for a few reasons, in ascending order of importance:

1. It's an identity hearing, not a trial. It's never been addressed, as far as I know, whether the right to self-representation applies to pretrial proceedings. (It's a complicated question; the Constitution doesn't say, and the equivalent questions regarding the right to counsel took a while to sort out IIRC.) That's the least important factor to me, but it's significant because...

2. This is just a preliminary ID hearing. There isn't much lawyering to be done. Realistically, all the defendant can do is stand there while the government asks LEOs, "Is this the person you arrested? Was she carrying this driver's license?" HATJ literally couldn't have done anything for herself the PD didn't; even standing silently wouldn't have changed the outcome.

3. She indicated clearly that she wanted to screw around in the hearing. When she was sworn in, she said, "Withstanding identification correction of being the source of all that is, I swear to tell the truth." What the hell does that mean? Combined with her farcical objections to the court's jurisdiction (jurisdiction in a hearing like this is a no-brainer), it's a clear sign that she's not going to actually represent herself under real law so much as caper around uselessly, delaying proceedings without advancing any actual arguments or issues.

4. She used to be a lawyer. She knows what an objection is, and she knows what it means to object to the court's decision that she can represent herself. If she weren't trained as a litigator, I'd have a lot more sympathy for her confusion, but she is. It's like a doctor forgetting what a scalpel is. One explanation is that she's playing games, delaying the hearing. Another is that she's mentally unwell. Neither supports the court jumping through more hoops and doing the Faretta inquiry again, hoping this time she'll take it seriously.

The court isn't required to take all day and do the hearing over and over again until she decides to actually participate meaningfully. It gave her a chance to represent herself, and she screwed around both during the Faretta inquiry and after the ruling. Lawyers, even ex-lawyers, get less leeway than pro se defendants, and the court didn't give her any.

Hopefully, if she really wants to represent herself at trial, she'll learn from this and not screw around in Tennessee. It's certainly possible to represent yourself at trial--Sean David Morton did, and I think Winston Shrout (can't remember for sure). But if she handles herself like this, the court will have a hard time concluding that she's competent to make the Faretta election.

Tucci was fucked over, and it's shitty

Meh. She had a chance to represent herself. The court ruled in her favor. She decided she had to do the sovereign citizen thing, and talked herself out of her victory. The court has no legal or moral obligation to let her take another bite at the apple. I agree that she was fucked over. She fucked herself over.

Whether she's guilty or not does not matter

100% agree, it's irrelevant to the identity hearing in every respect. I don't believe the court considered guilt at all--that would be hugely wrong if it did.

she is obviously competent to plead her own case without government intervention

Maybe. We don't know yet. Bear in mind that defending herself at trial is a lot different than doing it an an identity hearing. She fucked up what might be the single easiest hearing a criminal defendant will ever have. And she really fucked it up--her objection indicates that she really didn't understand or didn't bother to think about what rights she was or wasn't waiving. She just wanted to recite some boilerplate at the court, without realizing that those particular words have meaning. The court can't let her represent herself if she won't waive her right to an attorney, it would be unconstitutional. Botching that move makes me question whether she's competent at all.

As I said, I'd have let her represent herself, just as the court did. But sovereign citizens look at the court as a stage where they can act out their fantasies. That's not what it is. The court is a public resource, and under no obligation to cater to shenanigans. That's why the judge isn't required to let her go through the self-rep inquiry over and over again--she gets one bite at the apple, then it's time to move on to the actual hearing. (Which had already been delayed for days, at her request.)

all this is telling me is that they know this and afraid of her

They know she's a "sovereign citizen"-type of defendant, and they're probably on guard for the extra time and hassle and paperwork it takes to handle a defendant who's so deeply mired in fantasy.

But no one, and I mean no one, is afraid of her legal prowess. I don't know how to explain how easy this hearing should have been, or how incompetent she was to fuck it up. Or even require it in the first place--she requested an expedited transfer to Tennessee, so why the fuck didn't she stipulate that she was the defendant in exchange for that, instead of spending a pointless week in the DC jail?

Apparently it's because she was all on fire to get UCC documents filed with the court, which is just dumbfuckery; the UCC is as irrelevant to this case generally, and the identity hearing specifically, as your shoe size is. It's like insisting on a McDonald's menu being filed with the court: both a waste of time and a powerful indicator that the defendant has no idea what she's doing.

The judge might have been impatient with her--both because she was playing games, and because she used to be a lawyer and should know better. He definitely wasn't afraid of her, because this was just an identity hearing. There is literally nothing anyone could have done to make trouble for the case at this stage, given that her identity was so easy to establish. (And since one reason it was so easy was that she made and posted videos of herself talking about the crimes they committed, I don't think anyone in the DOJ expects this to be a very hard trial, either.)

Federal prisoners don't get released by "cabal families." They get released if the charges are dismissed, if bail is set and they pay it, or if the court orders a release. None of those things have happened.

HATJ will have a bail hearing once she arrives in Tennessee. It's unlikely that the court will allow her to post bail, given that she fled the district before she was arrested. Most likely she'll be held without bail or bail will be set fairly high.

The "cancelling paperwork" she filed is legal gibberish. It's based on UCC forms, which have no relevance at all to the charges laid against her or the jurisdiction of the court.

Bear in mind that HATJ has never won any case, ever, with these pseudolegal theories. Her track record is 0. This is not going to go well for her.

Based on past history, I'm predicting she'll maintain some followers with a martyr act, like Irwin Schiff did.

Shame for Beane that the evidence is so voluminous against him and HATJ--the DOJ doesn't even have much reason to try and flip him to testify against her, so he's got nothing to bargain with.

Seems to me like they used him as a cutout, to eat the charges if the scam failed. He'll likely face the longest sentence, but it looks like she's more culpable.

It's actually moving very fast for a federal trial. The indictment came down the same month as the offense, which I think must be pretty rare with financial crimes--probably that happens mostly with drug offenses, where the evidence is simpler.

There were two roughly similar trials this year, of Sean David Morton and Winston Shrout. Those cases both took over 18 months from indictment to trial, if I remember correctly, and they were slam dunks for the government.

But don't bet on it starting in September. They alway set a trial date fairly early, because defendants are entitled to a speedy trial. Savvy defendants often request a postponement to give themselves time to prepare, which is almost always granted. If these two take their lawyers' advice, they'll probably do the same. (Or plead guilty, given that the evidence against them is overwhelming.)

HATJ got a pretrial release after all! Seems like a dumb move on the court's part to me, as she just screams "flight risk," but to be fair she hasn't run yet.

She and her codefendant filed a boatload of their patented legal gibberish, which the court rejected as gibberish. She'll be going on trial in 2018 unless she flees or pleads out before then.