we begin with the argument your honor if i may i did provide that for the court it is unopposed by the government it's a letter where my client requests of his lawyer all happened remove his lawyer and appoint new counsel we linchpin for the government's case is the material ms representation they allege costs seem innocent crews to come into the agreement and that was the requirement for a separate account in which to put all the funds to pay peanuts but that's false that's simply not support the requirement for a separate escrow account only applies if it's a green if you recall initially council and that was this claim that once the improvements were started the city of crystal city would be saving two hundred thousand dollars a year and that money would be there to help a scene that that was represented by siemens and testif to a trial ultimately however if all things failed there was always the power to levy taxes that was the drawing power to this agreement by cruz and seems there's no way they could lose money it's think the only way this deal is going to go forward was if the money was segregated into a separate account that jonas you say there's no way they could have lost money john as was three months late on the st payment ended up seven hundred thousand dollars late on the whole deal so they did in fact lose money and that's just the seaman's of saying nothing of the financial hardship impose one's on crystal city and to say that he wasn't personally and rich is really difficult to stomach given the fact that there was thirty five thousand dollars in the general fund at the time of the ceo's issuing end money every month a payout a little bit of money to investors to keep them on the line and every month i take a little bit for myself to buy six thousand dollars st ok so i'm a little bit short so i have to go out in convincing new investor to give me is the two thousand dollars maintain their loss i don't believe so your honor i just don't believe that well it depends i'm concerned about applying that hypothetical out is if you're into my question is well it depends on what he does with the two thousand dollars maybe he pays some investors he owes money then you've collapsed actually intended loss right and then there is no distinction anymore between act whereas under the government's view the whole two thousand dollars is the intended loss because he's using it to fund a broader ponzi scheme the whole thing is fraudulent the whole thing is being used for his for his benefit to keep the the fraud going notion that somehow because the whole contract all two point well as an agreement of the contractual agreement that somehow that is a this is a contract that was entered into in fact started a discussion about this  but he had thirty five thousand dollars in the general fund when he intervened and gets the two million dollars from the c e o s any put it in the general fund so that he can spend it on stuff not related to this the reasons for the sealift help but as a matter sit it created a contract and we have a tension that really wasn't there because siemens and crews were they had no problems continue in this agreement two thirds of money was paid to siemens an attorney the court mentioned that jones was playing games that the attorney had a one in a long list of lawyers that will factually incorrect there was one lawyer initially that came in for an initial appearance it the the court could have attempted although it did not it could have attempted to see jonas and his lawyer think bath right work it out come on this talk it over come back in a week that didn't happen the in that context as that was present in the in those particular in that particular language my client then stated ok in lieu of new counsel represent myself very important he did not add from the outset to falls and the judge is speaking out loud and this is happy april hearing the nd hearing after the initial here at that point thinking back it was of course as we were talking it was a court's understanding that there was no legal reason for us is talking about are factual disputes they were defense of facts that were raised before the jury and they presented questions to the jury which the jury resolved there was significant evidence that basically out to exploit the city of crystal city a small city in south texas of about seven thousand residents and the whole idea behind his scheme and exploiting the what i call the infrastructure contract or the infrastructure of fraud the whole point of that was to to get the quiddity for the city so that he could accomplish several things one is to make sure that he got paid his money his salary he made two hundred thousand dollars a year plus about fifty thousand dollars and various expenses and so forth and he knew that the city was in dire straits and that there was a serious question about the city being able to meet those obligations he had considerable the contractor siemens and the underwriter crews were too full one was the misrepresentation about what he was going to do with or how he was going to hold the money whether was going to be segregated in d a separate account and and is for both siemens and the underwriter testified that it was important that there be a separate account that it not that the monies that were d raised by the ship to because of obligation to pay siemens not to be placed in the city's general fund the other condition on all of the documents the contract document is statements a statement from the city and so forth was that that money raised by the state going to obligations would be used exclusively to pay for the infrastructure improvement project not to be used for other purposes mr mr jonas evidence very early on that his intention was otherwise in fact asked the balun council before the closing could the money be used for for paying his species he also indicated in november before the deal was closed that he need a needed this this deal in need of the closing to happen before the end of two thousand and fourteen by the end of the year because that's when the budget year turned over and his judge oldham you pointed out there is only thirty or forty thousand dollars in the city's budget and the point so so the fraud i think the sufficiency of the fraud is really not a significant i think a an issue that you hit on judge oldham concerns intended last for the actual loss what's the appropriate measure for purposes of punishment and the appellant's argument is that look seven hundred thousand dollars and set aside all the other arguments that well they could've gotten money from taxes they it was all previously obligated to fraud was there that's not what the issue is the question is should we be looking at actual loss of about seven hundred thousand dollars that siemens did not receive one of the contract basically a profit or d is it the full amount that the district court applied and as your hypothetical points out the judge told them i think that's what was going on here is d that mr this was using the entire amount of the funding to continue to operate his corruption of the city of crystal city with his cohorts on the city council and the mayor because it was their scheme to to exploit the city's resources in the city's opportunities for their personal benefit and to do that d he needed the liquidity and what he did with the liquidity was he put the whole amount at risk but he was the one who made decisions about where d payments were made and some of those payments appear to have been made the inference is certainly there that he made d payments for legitimate invoices by the undercover operator operator the  contractor name heil heil made several relatively small bribe a means to to jonah's in exchange for jonah's basically giving priority to those those particular invoices that have been outstanding for some time but our position and i think the district court it her sentencing ultimately when when she stated the reasons for her sentence made very clear jonas's primary harm for purposes of punishment was  harm he did to crystal city it wasn't just the amount of harm that he did to siemens the seven hundred thousand dollars cruise we were we were able to calculate at the time what the ultimate injury was or the damage was that was done to either the underwriter or the certificate holders because of the complexities of how those markets work and where the city would be able to pay interest and maybe pay off the certificates at a later time but what the district judge found and for this reason we argue that even if there is a mistake in the calculation of the of the loss and now the district court made entirely clear she was not imposing a guideline sense she was imposing a sentence based on the statutory considerations and she listed both the circumstance answers of the harm to crystal city that the city manager of crystal city appeared it at sentencing you gave elocution and said crystal city didn't have the wherewithal to enter into the infrastructure agreement in the st place they could not take on two million one hundred thousand dollars of indebted us and the inference is jonas did it because he was looking to continue to have the resources available to him to run his operation to run the table to run the city and then engage in his bribe schemes that followed the bribe scheme with a pile that came along and then he was he didn't realize any at any of it but he was he was working for on a series of kickbacks in connection with the solar park project he was both putting a lawyer on to the project up front trying to get an agreement that he would get a part of the lawyers fees and he alluded to the fact that on the back and when the solar park was up and running he was going to get part of whatever the proceeds were from the sale of the electricity to be generated by the solar part all of which evidences what he was doing to crystal city and what is purpose was and the purpose wasn't necessarily focused solely on causing harm to siemens has met misrepresentations to s to crews or to induce them to enter into the agreement and as i say both of the employees testified our employees for both testified that those represent patients were material to their entering into those agreements or those contracts n but he also wanted to continue basically exploiting the city of crystal city on the issue of right to counsel i believe at one point mr aristotle he said it said basically that mr jonas wanted a different set of eyes on the case after he had been convicted by the jury i think that is what mr jones was about he sent a very short letter to his to his lawyer his court appointed lawyer mr muoz simply saying please and your representation of maine and assist me in getting somebody else new counsel the district court fairly quickly held a hearing on that inquired into it and mr jonas explained that well there were differences of opinion he had provided a d list of potential witnesses and questions in connection with his release on bond which mr wynn yost did not ask  basically mr jones was looking to have another another bite in a different lawyer now that we were getting into sensing and i think the controlling authority is clear he has a right to  counsel but as appointed counsel he doesn't have a right to counsel of his choice or his preference or to shop around to find one that he might think would do a better job on the district court inquired carefully the the getting in here they had discussed between them according to mr muoz the potential or possibility of mr jonas representing himself so it wasn't something that the court forced it on him before he got court it was something that he and counsel had contemplated beforehand and the court was basically making clear i'm not going to replace mr munoz you have appointed counsel and she said he was he worked hard for you at trial mr jonas disagreed  but i think the record shows that mr when you posted do a good job with what he had to work with and upon telling mr jonas that she wasn't going to appoint new counsel she she mentioned where you can represent yourself and he immediately said all represent myself which i wasn't there but as i read the transcript it seems like she was sort of surprised by that but she pursued it she asked is this what you really want to do she talked with him about his experience thirty years as a lawyer that he was admitted to the bar d the district texas that he was intelligent and he represented he could handle himself and he could do it she also talked with mr munoz d who said yes we had a conversation i suggested to him there are pitfalls  idea but he's an intelligent man we discussed it he says he wants to do it and he proceeded to make very clear at the september th airing that he wanted to represent himself he did represent himself through a series of  was there was one on april th and on that occasion that the district court had the transcript of the september status hearing where mr jonas waived his right to counsel and decided he wanted to represent himself and she went through that hearing with mr jonas and and about two thirds of the way through it she finally said mr jonas do you want me to appoint counsel for you there's no discussion where there's go or somebody else but yes do you want me to appoint counsel he said no i want to represent myself but i do want to point at counsel for appeal so he knew exactly what he was doing and if he wanted counsel he was given the  opportunity at least two months before the sentencing to have counsel appointed it turned it down and so i think under those circumstances the court did not abuse its discretion in denying his request for new substitute counsel the court effectively obtained from him a voluntary valid waiver of his right counsel and he proceeded to represent himself and he made that clear over a period of probably eight or nine months that he wanted to represent self and so those are those are the main issues the one point i want to also touched back on in connection with the sentencing is that the f b i after after considering the totality of the district court's comments during sentencing the standard for harmless error for a if the court finds that there was an error in the way in which the last amount was calculated the test is for the same reasons and i think that the court's articulation of reasons that she went through and she went through them quite clearly but they they included that mr jones has a sliding scale of truthfulness so she was looking at his character he blames others and always absolves himself he falsely accused witnesses of giving false testimony a trial he falsely accused prosecutors of sponsoring false testimony during his scheme he fired city employees who wouldn't do what he said in order d to make this scheme or he was in it for personal matters he caused devastating harm to crystal city and as she took it she put it he took advantage of a trusting community and he took them to the cleaners i think if you were to send this back to the district court and say well the actual last seaman's was seven one hundred thousand dollars not the intended amount of two million one hundred thousand dollars i think she has made quite clear that she would look at all of that by the way a seven hundred thousand dollars loss would be only a two level change in the guidelines if the seven hundred thousand dollars were the amount and i think the district court made quite clear d under the applicable standard that she would impose thousand a year that alone testimony happily showed that the two hundred dollars was barely and they were going to pay it back out of savings which was two hundred thousand dollars a year so that would have been two years right  any city council i take it is a take it you're saying that the city council approved the notion that if for some reason we could pay this stuff off we would just raise taxes the city council agreed to that well and that juncture i guess when we talk about expectations about how soon sold the city would have been reason one believing that they could have paid up from the saving the two hundred and one p improvement began and we would have to assume it's sort of a following i'm not aware judge that was not testimony on that all we know is that the contract provided for that safety valve for the parties in case everything else fails to make of obligation are secure by that type of fun sure i would make sure i understand your theory and your theory is that if jonas had taken the two million dollars from the c l o obligations and put the entire two million dollars in its pocket it would have been totally fine as the city could have raised two million dollars in taxes no because under that example just as all of them you clearly can show there was an intent to enrich themselves and that is not what was demonstrated with the amounts but you can see that the six thousand dollars server spurs tickets of perhaps six thousand dollars dutch but were not  counsel the bottom line is the judge did not appoint counsel she was not going to appoint counsel and in lieu of substitute counsel my client was left to represent self and that was an error was a violation of the th amendment by the court my client should