At a pretrial conference early this morning, Judge Rebecca Pennell ruled that Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) supervisory detention officer Jeremy Burlingame can be called back into court so the defense can question him about his Twitter account.
Burlingame did not disclose the existence of the account before the trial began, but RANGE uncovered it during our year-long investigation into the arrest and detention of the protesters on June 11. We broke the story after Burlingame first testified yesterday.
The account contained numerous disparaging tweets about immigrants, transgender people and Black people. Of direct importance to the trial, Burlingame posted that former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, who posted a call for folks to join him in protesting the detainment of two young men, “needs to be charged for incitement at the federal level.”
Assistant US attorney Lisa Cartier-Giroux agreed with Justice Forral’s defense attorney Andrea George that Burlingame should be allowed to be called back to court for questioning, where the defense will attempt to impeach his credibility.
“We’ve looked at the tweets and they are impeachment,” Cartier-Giroux said. “They are horrendous, there’s no other way to put it.”
She said that Burlingame did not reveal his Twitter account in discovery, where agents were asked if they had social media accounts. Cartier-Giroux said she has reported him to his agency where he is now under investigation.
George said that her investigators had been attempting to download and document his account when he deleted it which she remarked may be “destruction of evidence,” as she provided the government with copies of tweets they had preserved.
Pennell said that “a lot of folks have criticized the Department of Justice over the past year and a half,” and that their stance on supporting the defense’s request to call him back is “a great testament to the DOJ’s integrity.”
Burlingame will likely be called back to this stand this morning, after the defense is able to cross examine a sheriff’s deputy who testified at the end of the day yesterday.
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