please the court can land and i represent irene in this case in this case the defendant timely requested leave to represent yourself and your i'd like to point out a couple things about that time so first of all for most of the time that it was not all the continuances were not her be hasd there were other defendants and she was joined with other defendants and there was a period of time where she apparently suffered a severe car accident and she was injured so there was a continuance for that the last continuances and i think the ones of the court should focus on one was necessitated by the fact that her then attorney  not the attorney with her name was diane bass rig a declarative doubt as to her competence and there were several and that of course then she was you know she underwent an examination it was a hearing and she was found to be competent the and a lot of things happened over time and you know so so i think it's important to focus on a couple of things the judge an initially denied the continuance and criticized her for not having the witnesses there when she was supposed to go to trial but at that time she was represented and you know her attorney and she differed on strategy and counsel strategy may well have been better but you know once when you're represented it's not realistic for the court to say witnesses would show up she didn't say a day certain but she said she could get them there by september or the following january and i think the problem is that the court kind of set a moving target because the court first said well they have to be here jean not going to testify and then they have to hear june twenty third and it was like week a week two weeks these shorter periods of time and her and if these people were you know experts and they were you know legitimately going to come i don't think it's unrealistic to say ok look they need three months notice i mean it's not uncommon for any but i think that's kind of the underlying this where they ever legitimately going to come or was this kind of a guy proposition but so the question is did she present anything to the court to get the court in a comfort that actually these were real witnesses that had agreed to come once they had an appropriate time to comb right and i think that's where you get into the difficulty of the pro se who is a little shall we say unusual i think that there was some evidence there were phone calls that occurred during trial their parent was the e mail that she showed to judge carter you know beyond that no i mean look it's not it's not an ideal record it's not as though you know we had looked to me now you tell me if i'm wrong look to me that the judge t extraordinary step of actually calling the witnesses all right he called some of them yes ok and i know one of those people said your honor i can commit to this day well there was one actually that this son said i it wasn't that they could commit to that that they couldn't commit to the date that he wanted you know like i believe he spoke to and i i can't remember off the top of my head if it was hunter or i think it was it  been hunter and he's in the judge's like will can you be here by june twenty third and he's like no that's impossible and and then the judge kept trying with the idea of possibly calling the jury back or continuing it and and of statements that were conflicted for example he wasn't leaning in the sense that he said you're going to trial today here you're not getting any extension of time at all and in farias you know the court had said that's really not acceptable once somebody makes a timely motion to represent themselves it's not enough to make them go to you can't make me go to trial the very next day and so when we start out with that mistake and then yes he i think he did and he was obviously somewhat uncomfortable with his decision because he commented on multiple times i think he went back and he he tried to be lenient but once you have that i mean realistically once you have a pro say she's going to trial the next day and she hasn't and again government but you know i guess i think that the proper avenue would have been to give her an extension to say look you know we're going to go to trial in october or whenever we're setting a date and you have the w are not testifying all right so if if that had happened if she had gotten a continuance what would these witnesses actually have testified to you know that i can't tell you i mean from her from what she said they would have testified that there were these high yield investment programs in europe with no risk catley yes that was her position all along well i mean do you think it was really possible that she could get a witness who would testify that he would have a high yield investment with absolutely no risk and a complete one hundred percent guarantee maybe the witness would have testified precisely to that but they might have testified that there were high yield and that their stay might have provided testimony that was because there was other you know there has a theory of her case though now was the syria of her case but she kind of backed off that during the trial and there were some others where she disagreed with the prior to counsel right you're right that's true that's true i don't it charitably rather confusing and you know any witness that will corroborate your testimony is probably better than none so in other words she when she had the misfortune to meet up with the undercut her officers basically told them that there was this five hundred to a thousand percent profit investment wasn't quite that high but it was about three hundred percent in year eleven high it was a that was profit of one million or ten million dollars so are you suggesting somehow she would get some witness would come in and say yes these are the typical kind of investments that are out there in europe i mean she she testified to what she told them so i am not the prejudiced part here it's also a problem in terms of what what it have mattered i recognize that your honor but i think what we're looking at is somebody who know i recognize that ultimately what you have though is a pro se who had to go to trial in one day right and that's a real problem and and even if you take away the witnesses i still think and the judge made all these statements about her own aeration but it's impossible it's difficult to imagine that she couldn't have been better prepared that she couldn't had you know at the time wouldn't have benefited her and i understand and you know interestingly enough and i'm just i'm running out of that you know she should have had i mean i agree like she's not this is not an easy kind of these are not easy cases to try and these are not you know this is a defendant quite possibly was delusional in some respects but  you know she she needed to have and whether the i just think that it would have been she would have had a fair trial if she had even a month she even a month didn't she kind of have a month i mean there was a two or three week break right in the middle but your honor the two as we break i mean you know once you start a trial i mean i'm not a trial lawyer but i do understand that once you're starting a trial and you're in the middle of it it's you know you're occupied with what's happening fact day and the next day and it's quite difficult to to prepare for and you know by that point that two or three mean that i'm a trial star you know usually it's a big scramble and surprises come up and you're looking for witnesses a reality one that's right and that's why it's better to have a lawyer but she here she has this two or three week break but by then you know she's just she's already said you know she can't get the witnesses and it's not i mean for it to try to get a witness from europe you know if they would come if they would have come that you know to say are you know i mean realistically it's hard to get an expert in california that's not booked up three to six months in advance so you know i think it's realistic to say from the from europe you need some time to say ok diligent whether the witnesses or the evidence here to the witnesses would have been useful the inconvenience and finally prejudice let me just jump in guess why didn't you all just say ok we'll come back in sixty days what was the russian the government's earned i mean why why not just say fine i mean in the u s attorneys have plenty to do why not just come back in two months and give her the time and you wouldn't be here today and i mean the government did not object in fact looking back to the record the government stipulated to all the continuance is over the years that it happened before and when the issue came up at the beginning of trial it was the court raising that sue a sponsor the government i don't think the government i don't think i was even asked the government's position on that the judge said the judge in the defendant that's correct right but it's very important to remember here is in comparing this to the other cases although on the surface it looks like go to trial today than this one day need to remember those the record shows a month before in april there was an in cameron conference between her then counsel became the standby counsel and the defendant in the court at which time the judge pacifically told her have those witnesses here we're going to trial in a month i want you to have those witnesses here i will listen to them if i think they're relevant i will let you put them on i may even believe counsel at that time so it wasn't just one day the judge had a lengthy discussion with her a these specific witnesses they went over them discussed them by name talked about what they would what they knew  what they would talk about that was a month before trial so that was her first thought well her first opportunity was these witnesses came up over the years and in fact some of the earlier continuances were specifically for these exact witnesses to be able to show up and even then years ago she said oh mr mr fokker mr quick they can't they're booked for six months they can't come for six months so she had previously asked for more time for these same people but at the time of trial she had them on from able to m judge said no the trials beginning now we started we went for four days and then she had a break of ten days there were actually two breaks there was a break of ten days from may twenty ninth to june eighth so she had that time period to get her witnesses and then we resumed trial  went for three more days and then there was another break for almost two weeks from june tenth to the twenty third so if you look from the beginning of trial to the end of her evidence there was almost a month when she could have had tried to get somebody there and she had that other month before trial so this is very different from the the other cases that this court has considered where defendant was rushed to trial on that that day i'd also note that both armont and various the cases i've discussed by the appellant in both of those those appear to have gone to trial on the very first day in one of them i think it was only seven weeks from charging to trial and the other was eleven weeks this case is radically different from that this case have been pending for years and years with these specific witnesses were at issue over and over again so i think it's a completely different situation from a pro se suddenly having something sprung on judge carr warned her a month before have those witnesses here now of the three witnesses one of them actually did show up according to her she claims that one of them actually came to court on the morning of june eighth when we were in session that afternoon even though she had been told only broke at the prior session that we were starting in the afternoon but for some reason she hadn't come that morning so one of those witnesses apparently she claimed was there she never explained why he didn't come back in the afternoon why she didn't try to have him come that day when judge carter later actually talked to that witness he said well i'm back in europe but i was in the u s for seven weeks and that included the day that he came so i think that the argument that she was somehow prevented or unable to have that witness appear in court is probably has no basis at all so she testified yes and she put on her view that these were legitimate investments that's correct so that was able to present that the jury heard the argument exactly right the extent and she extensively got into that i prosecute emanation as well with the government's main witness the the f b i agent i think it's also very significant in terms of assessing a prejudice that these witnesses these are not unique witnesses these were witnesses who had facts that they would present that without their presence she couldn't bring into the trial these were claimed to be experts and she claimed that these investments these as your honor pointed out allegedly no  risk very very high yield investments really existed in europe and were a common thing there well if that's the case certainly she could find someone in the financial industry somewhere i mean people invest in foreign investments from the united states and certainly financial advisors and brokers in the united states would be aware of these if they really existed she would need to bring these people in from europe and by the way these two individuals one of them is a retired banker and one of them was a real estate appraiser these weren't invent these weren't brokers this were an investment considered visors so they weren't even really even even if you accept her point of view in the field that she was really asserting which is investments and again one of them she said would be presenting information that was publicly available and do each bank's website again at this information is publicly available it would seem easy to get a substitute if one of these individuals really couldn't show up at the record think shows as judge carter pointed out you know he said every time you get close to trial you talk about these witnesses and then they're on available and i can't come so i think she had ample opportunity to make them available as the court pointed out serious question whether she can meet the test of showing that they'd be useful or that they'd be prejudice because the evidence showed these types of investments didn't really exist that there wouldn't really be anyone who could testify that they existed and she was never really able to rebut that and so i think here when the court looks at all those factors the judge was certainly within a proper exercise of discretion to say that here she could go forward and i think the as the court pointed out in its questions judge carter did indicate i think that if she was able to make a showing that one of the  more of these individuals were existed and really would show up he talked about accommodating their schedules although we had those two breaks he said during one of conferences that he would consider bringing the jury back again later in the summer at's correct the judge did have some concern about how long he could continue that process more but he was he in in a sense impose on them and they were able to accommodate both of these breaks during the trial and and to bring them back and he talked about the possibility of bringing them back yet again if necessary and as your honor pointed out of that in the questioning he took the extraordinary step of actually getting on the phone we were in court at the end of the day in the evening and we did a late in the evening so that we c these people when it was a you know what time of the day they could talk from from europe and we would call he would be on the phone himself trying to call these folks and it was only the one that we actually were able to talk to mr hunter who claimed to have been there and and then  left so i think that the judge although he did try to move the case along expeditiously i think the defendant was had an appropriate warning in advance notice especially with that conference the month before  so yeah i think it's important to keep in mind to the trial as compared to the the prior opinions of this work where those events had cases that were fairly short one was a thirteen twenty six case where the trial  to last for a short period of time here we had a trial that started and from the time it started to that was over it was a month right there so i understand counsel's point that people can be busy during trial we had those two breaks one of ten days and one of almost two weeks when she was able to return home and prepare and get her exhibits together and she certainly could have during that time tried to make arrangements for these witnesses to come in thank you  i have come to the podium for you i do have one one point in terms of you know counsel talked about the jury coming back and the judge exploring that and that actually the judge did explore that but it was quite clear from the hearing transcript  decided not to because the jurors were not available and it was adopted i believe it was either it was around that time that he started asking the judge asked the government to stipulate to this trial so that's it thank you thank you thank you very much thank both counsel this morning for your argument the case of united states versus pimco the is submitted