The last day of the first week of the trial of the Spokane 3 started with a bang, and ended with a whimper. The day began with a testy bit of testimony from Spokane County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) Deputy Brittan Morgan, who was cross-examined by attorneys for the defendants.
Morgan’s cross-examination was expected to be spicy — he was caught on his own body camera footage calling protesters “fucking cunts” and saying he wanted to beat them with a stick. But what wasn’t expected was the reappearance of one Jeremy Burlingame, the ICE agent who testified on Wednesday that protesters were threatening law enforcement and forming “a mob.” At the close of court May 21, defense attorney Andrea George asked Judge Rebecca Pennell to introduce new evidence: tweets Burlingame made on a previously undisclosed Twitter account that defense had been unaware of until RANGE published an article about the posts.
Pennell declined to rule that day, but at a pre-trial conference this morning, when even federal prosecutor Lisa Cartier-Giroux called Burlingame’s tweets “horrendous,” she called him back to the stand again so the defense could question his credibility…