Seventy-two denied motions
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Seventy-two denied motions is the figure John Kiriakou gives for the pretrial rulings in his own prosecution, and which he uses to explain why he regards a national security trial in the Eastern District of Virginia as unwinnable.

The venue

Kiriakou has described the Eastern District of Virginia as being known as the espionage court, and said that no national security defendant has ever won a case there. He lists himself, Edward Snowden and Jeffrey Sterling as having been tried or charged there. 

He adds that one judge in particular, Leonie Brinkema, reserves these cases for herself, and so was the judge in all of them, and that all of them were found guilty. 

The mechanism

Beyond the outcome, Kiriakou's complaint is procedural. He has said Brinkema made it literally impossible to mount a defence, because every time the defence moved the court to allow the declassification of information necessary to defend himself, she denied the motion. His count is that she denied seventy-two of his motions and approved zero. 

The exchange he cites

Kiriakou has recalled walking out of the courtroom one day and asking his attorney what had just happened. The answer was: "We just lost the case, that's what happened." 

The advice that follows from it

Kiriakou has said this is why he told Edward Snowden not to come home, that he could not get a fair trial. He made the same argument about Julian Assange in 2018: that if forced out of the Ecuadorian embassy and extradited, Assange could not get a fair trial either, because the deck is stacked and everybody knows what will happen. What frightened him more in Assange's case, he said, is that Assange does not have the choice. 

See also

- Leonie Brinkema
- Eastern District of Virginia
- Edward Snowden
- Julian Assange
- "It's about mitigating damage"
