Uncairing, part 3

Last night I read the memorandum filed by the United States Attorney’s office opposing CAIR’s pending motion in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution. Josh Gerstein briefly summarizes the government’s memorandum here in today’s New York Sun. The memorandum represents the government speaking in a way it rarely does for public consumption about CAIR. Accordingly, it warrants a close look.
The government’s memorandum makes some technical arguments, including one I anticipated in “Coming clean about CAIR.” At trial the government has introduced evidence making out CAIR’s co-conspirator status. CAIR’s motion — predicated on its being identifed as an unindicted co-conspirator six weeks before trial — is therefore moot (or, as I put it in the NRO column, has been overtaken by events).
The government’s memorandum confirms my impression that CAIR’s brief is extraordinarily ill-considered. Apart from its confirmation of the Audrey Hudson Washington Times story on CAIR’s declining membership — a story that CAIR had disputed with characteristic vituperation at the time of its publication — the government’s memorandum makes the point that CAIR cannot seek relief on its own behalf (or on behalf of the 300 other unindicted co-conspirators) through the vehicle of a friend-of-the-court brief. Hudon’s Washington Times story by itself establishes that CAIR is the Potemkin Village of civil rights organizations.
If Hudson’s story establishes that CAIR is a Potemkin Village of a civil rights group, the government’s memorandum frankly states what lurks behind the facade. Among the statements CAIR’s brief has elicited from the governemnt is this:

[T]o provide greater clarity to the Court and the defense regarding the complexity and magnitude of the global Hamas-affiliated conspiracy to be demonstrated in the Government

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses