[Pnews] Mistrial Declared in Kafkaesque D.C. Trial of Venezuela Embassy Protectors

[Prisoner News]

https://www.mintpressnews.com/mistrial-declared-kafkaesque-trial-venezuela-embassy-protection-collective/265004/
Mistrial
Declared in Kafkaesque D.C. Trial of Venezuela Embassy Protectors
by Alan Macleod - February 14, 2020
------------------------------

The word “Kafkaesque” is thrown around liberally in the modern era, often
without warrant. “The Trial,” a 1925 novel written by Bohemian writer Franz
Kafka, tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted in a
nightmarish kangaroo court while unable to properly defend himself. But
nearly 100 years later, another real trial took place in our modern
American dystopia, one which easily qualifies for the moniker. Starting
February 11, four anti-war activists, Adrienne Pine, Kevin Zeese, Margaret
Flowers and David Paul, were facing a year in prison and a $100,000 fine
each for interfering with the protective function of the State Department.
Today, despite a hostile judge and a host of constraints against the
defense, prosecutors were unable to convince a jury that any crime had been
committed and the events ended in a mistrial.

The four are members of the Washington D.C. Venezuelan Embassy Protection
Collective, a group that last year, at the behest of the government of
Nicolas Maduro, entered and occupied the Venezuelan embassy for over a
month. In 2019, the Trump administration sponsored a series of coups
against the democratically elected Maduro, bizarrely announcing the
virtually unknown politician Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of the
country. Each coup was less successful than the last, and Maduro remains in
complete control of the country, while Guaidó has become an overwhelmingly
unpopular
<https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article238040219.html>
figure, jeered
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-paints-anger-against-juan-guaido-as-hometown-heros-welcome/264875/>
and assaulted wherever he goes.

On the news of the mistrial verdict, Howie Hawkins, 2020 Green Party
presidential nominee, said
<https://howiehawkins.us/howie-hawkins-applauds-mistrial-result-in-trump-court-case-against-venezuelan-embassy-protectors/?fbclid=IwAR2GNIgWmXcpV_L9PvzfOP-3oeSd5jp-2-FhQDenStGI2PmgUlbS8IfgDTo>
“I am grateful for the resolve of the jurors who held out and caused
today’s hung jury…It shows that the overreach in foreign policy of the
Trump Administration is not popular among the American public.” Flowers and
Zeese are members of the Maryland Green Party. “We stand with Greens and
other progressives everywhere, who are proud of the actions that Flowers,
Zeese and the others, in favor of peace and the self-determination of
autonomous nations,” stated Hawkins. “This shows that Greens are willing to
do whatever is necessary to stand up for justice.”

What made the trial particularly Kafkaesque is that the four were not
allowed to defend themselves by arguing Maduro is indeed the legitimate
leader of the country, Judge Beryl Howell having asserted that President
Trump’s word on Venezuela is *literally* law. The United States instructed
Venezuelan diplomats to leave the country last April, prompting the
government’s request for activists to occupy the building. Howell also
decreed that it was illegal for the defendants to tell the jury that Trump
violated international law by raiding the embassy or to question Guaidó’s
legitimacy at all. Under the circumstances, the four decided to present no
defense whatsoever. Despite the drawbacks, prosecutors could not force
through a guilty verdict and the trial ended in a hung jury.

*MintPress News* spoke with the four activists. Dr. Pine, an anthropologist
at the American University in Washington, D.C., explained why she decided
to prevent the U.S. from violating Venezuelan sovereignty:

We entered the embassy at different moments, but all of us shared the goal
of protecting it from a U.S.-led coup, and helping to ensure with our
presence that a peaceful resolution could be achieved through the
negotiation of a Protecting Powers agreement – negotiations that were
underway during our residence in the embassy between the democratically
elected government of Venezuela and the Trump administration. That is why
we were all very clear that our role there was temporary.”

At the height of the tensions in April, there were more than 70 people
defending the embassy from Juan Guaidó’s American associates. Protectors
were subject to sound cannons and mobs of angry, pro-coup Venezuelans.
Eventually, the government also shut off their power and water.

Kevin Zeese, a lawyer and co-director of *Popular Resistance*
<https://popularresistance.org/>, an alternative news outlet, explained
<https://therealnews.com/stories/us-govt-attempts-railroad-venezuelan-embassy-protectors>
why he refused to leave and had to be removed in handcuffs:

The trespass notice that resulted in our arrest was issued because Carlos
Vecchio, a fake ambassador working with Juan Guaidó, ordered us to be
evicted. When we got that notice, it was unsigned; there was no state or
government agency; nothing official on it. But Carlos Vecchio’s name was on
it saying we were trespassing. We knew he did not have any position in
government and was not really an ambassador. And we knew we were not
trespassing because we had the permission to be in the embassy given to us
by the foreign minister and the Maduro government. So we did not see that
as a valid order and we stayed there.”

Pine told us that she and her co-defendants always rejected the validity of
the trial and court altogether. “We did nothing whatsoever to interfere.
Their case was riddled with flat-out lies,” she said. Both Zeese and Pine
have contributed to *MintPress News* in the past. Alex Rubenstein
<https://twitter.com/RealAlexRubi>, a journalist who covered the case in
close detail for *MintPress *last year, spending time inside the embassy
told us that, in his opinion, the U.S. had violated the Vienna Treaty, one
of the foundations of international diplomacy, saying:

The United States demonstrated total disregard for the rule of law, all in
an effort to further its phony coup against yet another country that has
nationalized major sectors of its economy for the benefit of its people
instead of big multinational corporations.”

Covering the trial from inside the courtroom, *The GrayZone*’s Max
Blumenthal <https://twitter.com/maxblumenthal/> expressed his dismay at
Judge Howell who “appeared unable or unwilling to appreciate the
distinction between the U.S.-recognized doofus,” Juan Guaidó, “who controls
zero government functions, and the U.N.-recognized Venezuelan government
that governs the country both in practice and in law.” He also reported
that during jury selection, one potential juror falsely claimed that
Venezuela had run two separate elections – one supervised by Russia and one
by the U.S. He said he learned that by reading the *Washington Post*.
Therefore, Blumenthal worried, it would not just be the judge that was
substandard.

When the jury originally told the judge that they were unable to reach a
verdict she directed them to continue deliberating instead of immediately
calling a mistrial. Howell has called for a retrial, according
<https://sputniknews.com/us/202002141078318677-mistrial-declared-in-trial-of-embassy-protection-collective-4/>
to *Sputnik News*, but it is not clear if or when it will occur.

Blumenthal himself is not a neutral actor but also spent time inside the
embassy, and was arrested in a SWAT-style raid
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/arrest-journalist-max-blumenthal-alternative-media/262637/>
in October by armed police who had been warned he was potentially armed and
dangerous. He sees the incident as an attempt to silence and intimidate
critical media.
Coverage worthy of Orwell

If the trial itself was Kafkaesque, the media coverage (or complete lack
thereof) is far more Orwellian. In the book “Nineteen-Eighty-Four,” George
Orwell describes a world of groupthink, where the entire political class
can change its collective opinion on a dime, consigning unwelcome facts
down the memory hole. Trump’s Ministry of Truth has decreed Guaidó to be
president, and that is final.

As of Friday afternoon, there has been complete silence across the
corporate media spectrum with regards to the trial, with nothing in *CNN*,
the *New York Times*, *Fox News* or *MSNBC*, who collectively employ
hundreds of reporters in the D.C. area. A search in Google News’ database
finds a few scattered articles in small, alternative outlets like
*AntiWar.com*, *Sputnik*, and *Venezuelanalysis* – not coincidentally all
sites that have been labeled as spreaders of fake news by the same
establishment that has collectively decided to ignore the trial. The
sinister thing about censorship in democracies, Orwell wrote
<https://chomsky.info/20101010_2/>, is that it is largely voluntary, so
people don’t realize they are under it.
Stemming a socialist wave

Why were the four charged with entering the embassy at the request of the
Maduro administration? For Rubenstein, the goal was obvious:

It was to send a clear message to any American citizen who may take up the
noble cause of upholding international law or who may be inclined to take a
stand against the United States’ long and ugly history of fomenting coup
d’états in service of oil or other natural resource interests.”

Nicolas Maduro won reelection in May 2018 in a process declared
<http://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/65>
free and fair by hundreds of international observers, but a sham
<https://fair.org/home/media-delegitimize-venezuelan-elections-amid-complete-unanimity-of-outlook/>
by the U.S. government and Western media. Some sectors of the Venezuelan
opposition refused to accept the result, and in January 2019, Guaidó, a
theretofore little-known politician, declared
<https://fair.org/home/resistance-media-side-with-trump-to-promote-coup-in-venezuela/>
himself president, despite never having stood for the position. Throughout
2019, he called on the military to rebel and overthrow Maduro. Despite
being supported financially and politically by the U.S. government, each
coup attempt failed, and left him in a weaker position than before. His
last coup attempt in November went so poorly
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/juan-guidos-latest-coup-attempt-venezuela-ends-was-a-massive-flop/262870/>
that few inside the country even noticed. Nevertheless, the Trump
administration has continued to hold him up as the legitimate president of
the country, even as his approval ratings dip below 10 percent
<https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/article238040219.html>.
While the United States and dozens of its allies recognize him, the United
Nations and three-quarters of the world’s countries continue to acknowledge
Maduro’s legitimacy. Guaidó’s mentor Leopoldo Lopez told
<https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-paints-anger-against-juan-guaido-as-hometown-heros-welcome/264875/>
journalists that if they successfully capture power, they will call on the
United States to formally govern the country.

The principal motive behind the U.S. government’s opposition to Venezuela
is that it has consistently voted for socialist candidates since the days
of Hugo Chavez (in office 1999-2013). Chavez revolutionized
<http://dlib.scu.ac.ir/bitstream/Hannan/561267/1/9781138489233.pdf> the
country, reducing poverty by half and extreme poverty by three-quarters,
creating a nationalized healthcare system, ridding the country of
illiteracy and drastically improving economic inequality and the standard
of living. Since 2015 the United States has been in an official national
emergency over the supposed imminent threat Venezuela represents, imposing
rounds of increasingly tough sanctions that have helped wreck the
once-booming economy. The sanctions, declared
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html>
a “crime against humanity” by an American U.N. Special Rapporteur who
visited the country, are estimated to have killed at least 40,000 people
<https://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/venezuela-sanctions-2019-04.pdf>
between 2018 and 2019 alone. The U.N. has called
<http://undocs.org/A/HRC/37/L.34> on all member states to break them.

The punitive nature of the sanctions matches the treatment of the Embassy
Protection Collective. Pine told *MintPress*:

We were prosecuted because the Trump administration wants to set an example
to terrify others who might consider putting their bodies on the line to
protest U.S.-led coups, counterinsurgency programs, unilateral coercive
measures, and other imperialist wars and policies, and to stand in
solidarity with peoples and nations wishing to forge their own path without
U.S. interference around the world.”

Feature photo | Left to right, David Paul, Margaret Flowers, Adrienne Pine
and Kevin Zeese pose in front of a D.C. court house before deliberations
began on Feb. 14, 2020. Photo | Embassy Protection Collective

*Alan MacLeod <https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod> is a Staff Writer
for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two
books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting
<https://www.routledge.com/Bad-News-from-Venezuela-Twenty-years-of-fake-news-and-misreporting/Macleod/p/book/9781138489233>
and Propaganda
in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent
<https://www.routledge.com/Propaganda-in-the-Information-Age-Still-Manufacturing-Consent-1st-Edition/MacLeod/p/book/9781138366404?fbclid=IwAR2xQQWJd98C25wapG4ynmlEnGvL5wxG_mp5RwpBwtwPDxInjNZ1Oo7KD-E>.
He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
<https://fair.org/author/alan-macleod/>, The Guardian
<https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alan-macleod>, Salon
<https://www.salon.com/writer/alan-macleod>, The Grayzone
<https://thegrayzone.com/author/alan-macleod/>, Jacobin Magazine
<https://jacobinmag.com/author/alan-macleod>, Common Dreams
<https://www.commondreams.org/author/alan-macleod> the American Herald
Tribune <https://ahtribune.com/author.html?id=1088> and The Canary
<https://www.thecanary.co/author/alan-macleod/>.*
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