Opinion: The dominoes will fall

Sidney Powell was the wildest of Donald Trump’s diehards and part of his inner circle.  At that fateful meeting at the Oval Office with the President, she proposed ordering the military to seize voting machines in crucial states Trump had lost in a bid to overturn the presidential election result.

Now she’s struck a deal with prosecutors pleading guilty to conspiring to interfere with state election results. More importantly, she’s agreed to cooperate with investigators and testify against her co-defendants, including Trump.

Powell will serve six years of probation, pay a $6000 fine and write a letter of apology to the people of Georgia. As for her side of the deal, she has recorded a statement for prosecutors.

The lawyer Trump considered naming a special counsel to investigate allegations of voter fraud will now testify against him. She’s flipped, something Trump never imagined.

And now another co-defendant, Kenneth Chesebro, considered the captain of Trump’s legal team, has also flipped. He’s pled guilty and will testify against his former boss.

Trump’s world is falling apart – he has no friends, only witnesses to his crimes.

That’s a salutary lesson for a certain Joseph Muscat. No matter how powerful you think you are, your closest friends will turn against you soon enough. And the ones who’ll inflict the most damage are those who know you best, who kept your secrets, who helped you bury the bodies.

One such close friend of Joseph Muscat was feeling the pressure this week – Keith Schembri.

In a pre-trial hearing before magistrate Edwina Grima, Yorgen Fenech’s legal team insisted to the prosecution: “Do your job well, and you’ll find the true mastermind” behind Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

In a subtle hint to the prosecution, Fenech’s lawyer cynically commented about the contents of Melvin Theuma’s notorious ice cream box: “It wasn’t a photo with Yorgen Fenech”. It was a photo with Keith Schembri in Castille.

The day before that photo was taken, Yorgen Fenech called Theuma.  “You have an appointment tomorrow morning with Keith Schembri at Castille”. By then, Fenech had already asked Theuma to contact Geroge iċ-Ċiniz because “I want to kill Daphne Caruana Galizia”.

When Theuma reached Castille the following day, he called Fenech.  “Which door shall I go in through?” he asked.  “Go up the stairs through the front door where the soldier stands guard,” Fenech told him. 

Theuma was surprised when Schembri came down to greet him, shake his hand, show him around Castille, and take the famous photo.

Melvin Theuma

Melvin Theuma with former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff Keith Schembri att Castille.

Schembri then contacted another member of staff who gave Theuma his phantom job. Theuma would start getting paid a monthly salary for doing nothing, which he later described as “advanced payment for murder”.

Yorgen Fenech is getting restless.  After years of imprisonment awaiting trial, he’s finally fighting back.

He must surely rage at the fact that he’s the only one facing that desperate predicament. He must envy Schembri, who continues with his life, his business, and his freedom.

He must envy Joseph Muscat, happily uploading snapshots of his worldwide luxury trips with Michelle and the rest of his family.

Yorgen Fenech is the only one deprived of his loved ones and his freedom, and his rage is starting to break through, and his lawyers are challenging the prosecution to do their job well.

They’re not the only ones. Practically the whole European Parliament chastised the police and attorney general in a damning resolution passed with an overwhelming majority. 

It declared the parliament is “alarmed by the institutional failure of law enforcement and justice in Malta”.  It expressed concern about “the impunity afforded to the former prime minister (Joseph Muscat), his chief of staff (Keith Schembri) and the former minister for tourism (Konrad Mizzi)”. 

That resolution won the approval of 437 MEPs. Just 14 voted against.  It called the Commission “to use all the relevant tools at its disposal to ensure the law is applied equally for all”.

That’s what Yorgen Fenech’s lawyers are demanding, too. Why didn’t the prosecution request access to Keith Schembri’s replacement phone for the one he ‘lost’ just minutes before the police knocked on his door?

That replacement phone was seized from Schembri as part of a financial crimes investigation. According to Fenech’s lawyers, it must contain important information about Caruana Galizia’s assassination. 

They insisted that Ram Tumuluri should be called to testify. Keith Schembri told Tumuluri he was looking for someone to kill Caruana Galizia. After her assassination, Tumuluri said Schembri had threatened he “might end up like Daphne”.

While the European Parliament resolution called for full and continuous involvement of Europol in all aspects of the murder investigation, it transpired from the pretrial hearing that a critical report by a Europol expert about Caruana Galizia’s assassination has gone missing from court records.

That document was presented in the murder inquiry in 2018.  Now, it can’t be found.

Meanwhile, despite being granted a presidential pardon, Melvin Theuma refused to testify in the case against Keith Schembri over his phantom job. 

Joseph Muscat’s bodyguard, Kenneth Camilleri, who had passed messages to Theuma, declined to testify. Keith Schembri ‘lost’ his phone. Yorgen Fenech remained pretty tight-lipped, but that won’t last.

Fenech knows too much. When the FBI traced the SMS that triggered the car bomb that killed Caruana Galizia, Fenech knew almost immediately and told Theuma.

He knew the police would raid the potato shed and told Theuma to warn the Degiorgios and Vince Muscat il-Koħħu.

Fenech said about Keith Schembri: “He would have wanted to burn her not once but a hundred times.  They were all freaked out, including Joseph… She had broken them.  She had ruined them”.

Trump’s senior lawyer now stands ready to nail him with her testimony, and the dominoes have started to fall.

It won’t be long before the same happens here because the ground beneath the former leaders’ feet is shaking.

                           

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22 Comments
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carlos
6 months ago

Can the honest taxpayer sue the corrupt lot fo the 400 million Euros who were stolen from their hard earned money?
If this is at all possible, I will be the first to put in what it entails to crowd fund a case against the corrupt government and bring the corrupt lot on their knees and make them pay every single cent defrauded of us.

Jan Farrugia
Jan Farrugia
6 months ago
Reply to  carlos

I’ve been through that thought process too. Thanks for picking it up and proposing it.

makjavel
makjavel
6 months ago

Fearne has cracked on the VGH fraud His statement ” It was all done behind my back”
In whose office was Daphne Murder planned? In the office of the one who is known as nothing happens unless he decides? The final question ” Why was Muscat thrown out by his cabinet? What was shown to them? Was it written in blood?

Albert Beliard
Albert Beliard
6 months ago
Reply to  makjavel

What makes you believe that Joseph Muscat was thrown out by his cabinet when they (including PM Abela) continue to protect him and allow him to keep a diplomatic passport after he was forced to resign?

makjavel
makjavel
6 months ago
Reply to  Albert Beliard

Logic
Muscat did not resign because of health reasons.
Muscat resigned after his cabinet presented a letter to the president of Malta , which resulted in Muscat’s resignation, IT WAS NOT A LOVE LETTER.
Muscat resigned when the murder investigations were maturing .
Muscat stayed in office roaming the various banking capitals of the world, with diplomatic status as PM accompanied by family.
Dilpomatic Baggage will contain nothing and everything , his or anybody elses , from money to documents to mobiles to…………
Muscat still rules the roost, but he is being hounded down by Republika in the courts and by the PAC, with the EneMalta Chairman Ing. Ryan Fava giving the lie to Muscat and Minister Caruana.
What do they know that we do not?
That is the question.

Anthony T Mamo
Anthony T Mamo
6 months ago
Reply to  makjavel

Fearne did NOT crack. He knew all about the fraud so much so, that he boasted that “this is the real deal”. So he knew that the one before it was rotten to the core, yet he still continued to vote for Steward to get millions each year, each year increasing.

wenzu
wenzu
6 months ago

Fenech has nothing to lose by implicating ALL that were involved with the killing.

Mark Debono
Mark Debono
6 months ago
Reply to  wenzu

Apart from his life eh?

A. Fan
A. Fan
6 months ago

From your lips to G_d’s ears… However, a notable distinction between Malta and the US remains the canker that has long festered within local law enforcement (PC, AG, etc.). Without politically independent prosecution, the long arm of the law becomes an amputated stump where PEPs are concerned.

Nigel Baker
Nigel Baker
6 months ago
Reply to  A. Fan

What?

Godfrey Leone Ganado
Godfrey Leone Ganado
6 months ago

I ask: if the the critical Europol report by an expert was lost in the Court, is it possible and credible that Europol would not be in possession of another certified original copy, or is Europol refusing to release it as it cannot trust our Court Registry and our Commissiiner of Police?

James
James
6 months ago

A very salient question.

We can only hope that Europol is a bit brighter than our police and has at least one duplicate copy of their report readily available to anyone but Maltese authorities.

Albert Beliard
Albert Beliard
5 months ago

Nothing was lost in the Court because the confused judiciary and the rotten police force have been ‘weaponised’ by the OPM. It is evidently clear that there is a mega-grand conspiracy which will sink Malta.

Europol can simply provide a copy of its critical report as a replacement in just one minute to the Court registry and the impotent Commissioner of Police.

Mahmuga
Mahmuga
6 months ago

The dominoes will never fall with a corrupt AG and police commissioner!

Catherine Desira
Catherine Desira
6 months ago

From day one I was convinced that both Muscat and Schembri were the real masterminds of the most heinous political assassination that ever took place in Malta.

The Malta Labour Party will forever be associated with this heinous assassination.

Alex Saydon
Alex Saydon
6 months ago

Wishful thinking. Trump is in this predicament because the authorities are working on the case. In Joseph Muscat’s et al they are not

joe tedesco
joe tedesco
6 months ago

DISGRACED FOREVER.

Felix Salerno
Felix Salerno
6 months ago

Jekk Fearne hadmu minn wara darhu u m’huwiex involut f’dawn l-iskandli, allura x’qed jistenna biex jirrizenja u jibghathom jitmejlu, u mhux ihammgu lilu maghhom?

Last edited 6 months ago by Felix Salerno
Me Myself
Me Myself
6 months ago

Fenech bahbuh. Lest igorr il-piz wahdu. Il-Lejber ghad jaghmlu santi tieghu, santi bhal ta’ Santa Marija Goretti.

Jan Farrugia
Jan Farrugia
6 months ago

Unfortunately, the comparison between Trump and Joseph Muscat stops at the level of investigators and law enforcers. In Malta, investigators investigate a can of tuna shoplifter but not a €400,000,000 heist.

D. Borg
D. Borg
5 months ago

Fenech’s prime objective is to “protect” the Tumas empire.
That empire has nothing much to gain from the prosecution of the ex-Castille gang.

Joe l ghasfur
Joe l ghasfur
5 months ago

Prosit Kevin bhal dejjem tolqot il musmar fuq rasu. Jien nahseb fadal 3 snin u nofs ohra ghal elezjoni u jekk il polls ikomplu juru li dal partit korrot ser ikompli jitlef il magoranza, hemm nistena lil xi hadd min dil orgja ta kriminali jibda jiftah halqu biex isalva gildu.
Tinsiex li il miserabli Muscat darba qal li kollox ghandu prezz fil hajja u dawn sakem ikunu fil poter min kollox ser jaghmlu biex ma jinkixef xejn.
Omerta shiha. Hemm bzonn li dal poplu jiftah ghajnejh ghax uliedna ser jisthuna dalwaqt

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