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A Good Question

September 12, 2004 Posted by John at 9:33 PM

Reader Martin Vaala asked an interesting question; here are his query and my answer:

Powerline:
Since you're lawyers, I have a, perhaps trivial, side issue question about the memos. What admissibility hurdles would you have to overcome to get copies of documents entered as evidence?

Martin Vaala

Martin:

Good question. Based on what CBS has released so far, they're not even in the ballpark. You'd have to authenticate them and overcome any hearsay obstacles contained within them. CBS hasn't attempted to do any of this.

CBS is trying to use these forgeries to influence a Presidential election, but they could never get them into evidence in a $10,000 civil case.

John H.

Which kind of puts CBS's stonewalling into perspective.