By Mirror Contributor EVAN GAHR
United States District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit Beryl Howell said “this’ll be fun” when she scheduled the breach of partnership lawsuit against ratings-addled MSNBC host Ed Schultz for trial early next month.
Howell, an Obama appointee and donor, didn’t know the half of it. Grab the popcorn. Things are about to get popping.
Lawyers for Schultz and Michael Queen, the former business partner he allegedly bamboozled, filed a pre-trial statement Monday laying out exhibits and witnesses for the trial.
They include: former NBC News president Steve Capus, CNN worldwide president Jeffrey Zucker, MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter (gee, he’ll be objective), former NBC “Meet the Press” director Max Schindler and Schultz’s wife, Wendy.
The video recorded deposition of MSNBC president Phil Griffin will be played in part.
Schultz himself is expected to testify for up to five hours.
His lawyers also listed questions for potential jurors in the “voir dire.”
Among them: “Have you ever read any articles in the Daily Caller about the defendant?” And this: “Have you read any recent articles by Evan Gahr about the defendant?”
Wait. If I am a poseur and not even a real journalist as Schultz’s lawyers have claimed, why does it matter what I’ve written anyway?
Do they also plan to ask jurors if they’ve ever read graffiti on bathroom walls about Schultz?
Regardless, why would Schultz’s lawyers, Jeffrey Landa and John Hayes, worry that exclusive reports in The Daily Caller on the lawsuit would prejudice potential jurors against Schultz?
All we did was report the following:
–In 2008, Schultz begged Roger Ailes for a job but insisted he was too good for Oprah’s cable network.
–Schultz described CNN as the same material that the wife of Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple allegedly hurled at a neighborhood business owner.
–The ex-wife of Schultz obtained a domestic violence temporary restraining order against him.
–Schultz alternately pleaded the Fifth when asked about the restraining order in his 2011 depositions. He claimed complete memory loss; remembered just days after the matter was brought to the attention of MSNBC president Phil Griffin in February that the domestic violence protection order had nothing to do with domestic violence. (Yes, that is a long paragraph but I want to keep drawing attention to the matter.)
–Schultz claimed I was trying to destroy his career and made materially false statements about what I told Griffin.
–Judge Howell, an Obama appointee and donor, ridiculed Schultz’s lawyers when they asked her to seal the transcript of Ed Schultz’s deposition that they had actually filed more than two years ago.
–Howell just rejected Schultz’s desperate request to dismiss the lawsuit.
Catfish Abbott, the lawyer for plaintiff Michael Queen–yes, Catfish is his real name–plans to present a voluminous number of emails between Schultz and Queen.
Mr. Catfish will likely argue that these electronic epistles show that the two men entered into a legally binding partnership and that Schultz owes Queen, an NBC News producer and sound engineer, money for arranging his show.
Hayes and Landa are expected to contend the opposite.
Mark your calendars.
Jury selection begins May 11.