counsel as a result the court fundamentally misunderstood the nature of his complaint and the interests that were implicated by it mr like balmy had complained that the defense had not completed its defense investigation and had failed to contact several defense witnesses he was concerned that he would not receive a fair trial without a complete investigation and asked for new counsel if there was something preventing his counsel from fulfilling their duty to the district court however denied the request based on his misunderstanding that the issue concerned a disagreement over trial strategy and therefore did not implicate his right to counsel this court held united states versus  the court must make an adequate inquiry to create a sufficient basis to make an informed decision it follows that where the court misunderstood the nature of the application cannot make an informed decision and that in musa this court held for is not entirely clear to me and i think that with any any time an individual who is not trained the laws speaking on behalf of themselves it's always possible that things will be less than clear but it was clear to the district court the district  not ready at this point to be presented to a jury on tuesday and therefore you would like to have a new counsel appointed when mr erlich bomb a spoke at excerpt of record ninety one he he clarified that it was a conditional request that the condition was that if there was something preventing his counsel from completing their lawful duty and made it very clear that the first attorneys had not been able to contact some of the witnesses in this case so that it was clear  that and then denying the request of course the court denied it both as a request for your counsel and as a request for a continuance so so i know that the government has said well he disavowed it i don't think he does about it what he did is he clarified that it was a conditional request for a new counsel that he was the not of his concern was that his the investigation had not been completed i understand his he had written two letters to the court does reiterate many other points that the court identified were in the letters and the court had the letters and based on the court's review of those letters said you're requesting a new attorney and and and i for a continuance or at least that was the court's opinion so even though we we lack those records the colloquy and the court's understanding make it clear that it was a request from the coun not wishing to testify about what the well as the trial on the first day of trial defense counsel had indicated that he had contacted some but not all of  the nigerian a foreign national spouses and then and that they opted not to call the ones they had contacted but even even at the time of trial it was clear that not all of them had been communicated with duty to fully investigate the case and this was a this was an allegation of a conspiracy both with the u s citizen spouses and the foreign national spouses and so they were key witnesses they weren't floating out orbiting this case they were really at the heart of this case and certainly finding out what they would have to say and whether it would be helpful is is critical to his ri know really making an argument in effect if you think there is an argument of ineffective assistance of counsel i recognize that's not generally something and certainly on this record that i would be able to press on on direct appeal and so what i'm saying is something slightly different which is that that the district court erred in resolving this issue because of the way i handled it because it misunderstood the fundamental nature of the request and had it done an adequate inquiry had it really tease that apart and found out what was going on it would have seen what is clear from the record which is that this was about not trial strategy but trial preparation and investigation into that is he's making it conditional he's saying that the first attorneys have not been able to contact some of the witnesses we just found out on friday that that was the case and  and if there is something that is preventing them then new count then then we will pick up so it will continue from where attorney pedro chrystia and lisa shun are stop this is i'm sorry exit director ninety three ninety four if there are some factors or difficulty preventing my defense counsel to do their lawful duty for me to fully represent me in this case so we'll continue from where things in addition to the six points that he had outlined from his letters he had sent two letters to the court i believe they predated that and you know that that can't be the basis of well in the he does identify several other issues that he that he has a problem with i have not made that the focus of the inquiry of new counsel because this issue the issue of the complete trial let me turn to the questions that the court was asking my colleague regarding the substitution of counsel and that is the primary argument here the primary argument is that the court denied a substitution counsel request made at the pretrial conference the record reflects though is that judge fitzgerald carefully considered the letters that the fed had sent and judge ward laws question about the content of the letters even though we don't have the letters in the record what we do have is that following defendant's col is true defense counsel to not talk to some of the alleged members of the conspiracy because they were difficult to hoe difficult to find the government equally had a hard time finding some of these witnesses what the record does reflect documentary evidence they would counsel and their investigator tried to locate those witnesses those witnesses realized likely that they were in their status in the united states who's at risk once the united states had established that they were in a fraudulent marriage and fled what defense counsel did do subpoena three of the immigration attorneys who were percipient witnesses and three of the nigerian spouses who were involved in the conspiracy as well all three immigration attorneys invoke their fifth amendment privilege before the court and it is likely that all three of the nigerian spouses had they've been what what what defense counsel ultimately said is that elected they elected not to call the nigerian spouses as witnesses likely because they realize that the nigerian spouses would have been appointed to counsel and would have similarly invoked their fifth amendment privilege to the extent they did not invoke the privilege and decided to testify there was a good chance they would have lied on the stand just like one of the nigerians phalluses philip a funny troop who was caught on tape trying to convince his u s counterpart to lie to law enforcement where they he said on the tape that they should conspire to say that they did they did not know someone named terry defendant's name but instead knew someone named jerry and so that was the type of testimony that they would likely try to state on the record to protect themselves and to try and protect their status which defense counsel at that point surely recognized would have been perjury so the district court did consider the letters did consider the basis and conducted an inquiry and as this court has pointed out in its questioning the fence the defendant himself stated unequivocally that i did not say i need a change of counsel given that defendant himself said that he did not need me to change of counsel it is difficult to see how the district court could have abused its discretion in failing to grant relief that was never sought this is a defendant by the way who demonstrated that when he when he wanted to substitute counsel knew how to do it following his sentencing he filed a request to substitute counsel and the district court granted a request to substitute counsel who subsequently then filed a motion for bond pending appeal so the defendant was familiar with the process for seeking new counsel and deliberately did not seek new counsel the time the reason likely was because what judge fitzgerald observed was that the feminine was represented by two seasoned public defenders who put on a forceful defense facing challenging facts they filed pretrial motions they subpoenaed potential defense witnesses they forcefully cross examined us the witnesses called by the government including the u s spouses attacking their credibility based on their prior perjury by filing the false fraudulent marriage documents as well as some of them received use immunity for their testimony and cross examine them on that basis as well so judge fitzgerald knew that this case had been diligently defended and defendant simply cannot show the third prong of the court's inquiry for substitution of counsel under the mend sanchez standard which is that the defendant must establish that there was a complete breakdown of communication between defendant and his counsel that resulted in an inability to present a defense in other words there was an extensive irreconcilable conflict and there is simply nothing in the record nothing in the record that can establish that there was that type of conflict present and defendant in his reply on page one made clear that they are not pressing that ineffective assistance of counsel claim here and therefore it must fall into  this it's really trying to thread the needle where there is no hole need for further or a continuance for further investigation but defense counsel told the court defense counsel told the court that they were prepared to go forward and prepared to proceed and at the point th defense counsel says that they are prepared to proceed the supreme court in morris the slappy said that it is not an abuse of discretion for the district court to deny motion for continuance lets the court has any further questions i'm point it wasn't cumulative because they they talked about their relationship directly with the defendant as opposed to crave on charles craven charles was a key part of the defense case here craven charles was affiliated with five of the s s spouses who were participants in the in the fraudulent scheme and what the defense reiterated at opening throughout the case in a closing was that the real person the real target here should have been craven charles and the defendant was a naive matchmaker who simply wanted to connect people for true love what both the carters testified to is that they were directly approached by defendant with it with respect to the first carter carter he was approached outside a store and cold stopped by the defendant and asked would you like to enter into marriage for money so those are critical witnesses for the government to establish that this was not a craven charles operation the defendant was the mastermind with respect to how the question about its undue prejudice defendant has really in his papers not articulated how this is unfairly prejudicial surly surely it is prejudicial in that it is probative and  but for the court to find that it's unfairly prejudicial under the bus case and i apologise of i'm mispronouncing it the court has said that unfair prejudice is evidence that evokes an emotional response from the jury that adversely affects the jury's attitude of defendant wholly apart of its judgment of defendant's guilt or innocence there is nothing here to suggest that there's anything in the carter's testimony that would have evoked an emotional response separate and apart from the probative nature of their testimony prostitution so the two others are the michael maneka testimony that was testimony that i referred to earlier solicited by the defendant in his own examination under the invited error doctrine the court should not held the hold the government accountable for that elicitation and what the government did was simply clarify the testimony that the defendant himself alissa did which was that michael necking had paid the defendant money to be a beneficiary who was in one who was a beneficiary of a sham marriage so that is also squarely for a for be evidence to the extent that the court even wants to get to that inquiry because it showed that the defendant had accepted money from a nigerian spouse that is probative because one of the defense to attacks was that the government did not talk to nigerian spouses primarily because the government could not locate or they were uncooperative nigerian spouses and it also went to the fact that the defendant himself received money which they attacked repeatedly including during closing saying that there was no evidence that the finn and himself had received money from the scheme with respect to the testimony from chanel gates regarding defendant proposition her we point out that this is actually not falling under the four a four b rubric because it was a prior admission or it was me it was a statement by the defendant a statement by a defendant is not considered for a for b evidence under people rodriguez and therefore the court me not consider whether it falls within a for a for b standard if the court were to reach a for a for b question as to that evidence we would continue to say that it's inexplicably intertwined with the fence the fence was was that again he was a matchmaker putting people together for true love that is simply inconsistent with him later proposition one of the two spouses that he introduced for true love for sex that does not indicate that there was any in that further corroborates the government's evidence that he was not in this for true love but instead saw this as a business opportunity and sought to capitalize it as a commercial transaction an immigration fraud and for those reasons we don't believe that either of those either of those additional points that defendant makes under four four be actually constitute unfair prejudice i see my time just briefly returning to the issue of whether or not he had actually asked for new counsel i would point out that after that colloquy where i believe what he's doing is offering a conditional request for a new counsel the court an excerpt of record ninety five says well you know one view of all this is that you're asking for new counsel and a continuance and i'm going to deny those motions so so at the end it's not as though something happened that the court was  aware of the court was engaged and understood it to be a request for a continuance and you counsel the the briefly just the chanel gates issue the notion that anything that a defendant says is an admission as opposed to for a for a b seems to swallow the four zero four b rule entirely and in fact if you look at the cases that the government's citing and i'm blanking on the last other last name it concerns a statement to a law on a centrally admission to a law enforcement officer post arrest which is very different than interactions between two civilians and a proposition for essentially  prostitution which is a crime under california law and we haven't talked much about this but the issue as the government pointed out craven charles was connected to five of the six u s house is that's something that the government referred to in their summation as well and i think it bears directly on the issue of the appropriate guidelines if we understand the alternate guidelines here to relate to whether you are the u s citizen or the immigrant applicant there with another individual craven charles who was charged and and the government relied on the fact that he was connected to the u s about this my point being that my client was more connected to the immigrant