 Day three, I'm sorry day five of the Julian Assange extradition hearing at the Old Bailey in London was just as bizarre or even more Than the previous ones. This is Joe Laurier reporting for CN Live Last Thursday the hearing was interrupted because of the coronavirus scare and one of the members of one of the legal teams was thought to have contracted The disease but her test came back negative on Friday and we resumed again Monday morning losing a day and a half of the court In fact the day began today with a discussion about whether masks should be worn in court or not Edward Fitzgerald a defense lawyer for Assange said that one of the issues was Going back to the glass cage where Julian Assange is held during these proceedings meant putting his face close to a slit in the glass And Assange's face would have to come close to the glass in order to hear This is some of the extraordinarily unusual circumstances of this hearing But if we didn't sort of the camera switch and we saw Julian Assange the only time We saw Assange and he was indeed wearing a mask as well as a suit sitting in that glass cage this the hearing then began and It was interrupted shortly before lunch by the very loud sound Through our computers and then we learned inside the courtroom itself of what was a US television report About what what subject about Julian Assange? extraordinarily No one seems to know yet. How or why that happened the court thinks that it was either came from the defense witnesses computer or it was a hack and We were away from the court for about an hour an hour and a half when The judge returned we learned that there was an adjournment until Tuesday morning at 10 The court is still a seems trying to figure out what caused this interruption this is part of a courtroom and during a pandemic when The proceedings have moved online not only for we in the press a few reporters including Good sort of news that have remote video access to watch every moment The defense witnesses themselves have to dial in and that witness Eric Lewis an American lawyer the defense Witness could hardly be heard throughout the day He sounded at times as if he were underwater and other times as if he were a frog underwater There were many many words that were lost. It was a very very bad connection and then we had this out of the ordinary Interruption of an American TV report coming in to the courtroom The lawyers stood up through their hands in the air and within a second Vanessa Brates of the judge was gone She fled from her chair Was just before lunch so an hour or two hours later. We learned that they still haven't found out what happened But we're adjourned until tomorrow We did have some testimony today, however Eric Lewis is an American lawyer specializes in prison conditions and in sentencing and He testified basically that drilling the son would not get Fair conditions in his prison. He would be under special administrative measures That would make his defense difficult to a pretrial and post trial and would make preparing a defense difficult now, of course James Lewis Then the QC the prosecutor questioned Eric Lewis the American defense witness and Lewis the prosecutor resorted to his old tricks Which is to try to just destroy the credibility of this witness as an expert saying as he has to every witness so far from the defense Asking whether he's included in his report a 36 page affidavit from Gordon Cromberg in the US assisted US assistant attorney in Alexandria, Virginia federal court and of course, Mr. Lewis Eric Lewis had not But as all the witnesses said they did deal with the essence of what Lewis of what Cromberg said Cromberg was arguing that a sergeant is not a journalist and therefore he's not being prosecuted for for speech issues, but but for leaking classified information Not as a journalist and That it was they were in fact the US pursuing criminal law And not going after a reporter each witnesses tried to bat that down by speaking of the facts of the case and what is in the indictment He tried Lewis did the prosecutor to say that Yes, Cromberg. He also said that the issue of mental health came up The prosecutor Lewis was referring to a case called Ahmed in the European Court of Human Rights in which a Defendant facing extradition Was indeed extradited even though he was listed as having mental health issues. So what? Also, he Lewis the prosecutor tried to say that Zacharias Masawi the 9-11 hijacker had gotten a fair trial In washington and why wouldn't a sergeant get one as well? So what Lewis is trying to do is to say that there is a precedent for somebody having mental health issues and still being extradited so That mental health issue is not a reason why someone shouldn't be excited as a sergeant Maybe suffered from aspergers as some of his doctors had said and Lewis the prosecutor also Wants to say that he can get a fair jury trial unlike what Eric Lewis the witness was saying that he was unlikely to get a fair trial Alexandria and this is where Lewis really screwed up because the prosecutor because in fact By calling by saying that Masawi got a fair trial means that a serge would Lewis the defense witness pointed out that Masawi was tried in the district of columbia district court A very different jury trial than the one in alexandria, Virginia So that made James Lewis prosecutor look pretty bad right there. He just skipped over it And plowed ahead but at the end of that session in which Eric Lewis held his ground Uh James Lewis the prosecutor asked for a 10 minute rich recess without the witness being present We fortunately were privy to that conversation between Lewis and the prosecutor and judge venice of paraitia He really devolved into almost a shouting man Lewis is a highly emotional man as we heard from examin mccuris our legal expert on cn live last weekend This is very unlike a british prosecutor who normally stays totally controlled and calm And doesn't give a lot of respect for the defense argument in this case. Lewis is acting like an american prosecutor bullying Raising his voice to the point where Lewis the witness asked at least once or twice to be fair And another time he said i've been courteous to you. Why don't you be courteous to me? This is the witness talking to the prosecutor and that showed a little spine on the witnesses part but in this exchange this extraordinary exchange between paraitia and And lewis the prosecutor lewis actually said that i'm giving a warning. We told the judge I'm not prepared to be under any circumstance where he is allowed to give long answers It is not how cross examinations worked He lectured paraitia who is lewis has more experience in court than paraitia does and he seemed to be condescending Because of that he said after he gave this warning to the judge that he's never been guillotine In a cross examination ever by no judge in 35 years Experience it in the extradition tations that i've been involved with what he means by guillotine is being cut off by a time limit But paraitia she was quite firm with him and i think quite annoyed She told lewis that the court has the power to i'm courting to ensure efficient movement through this case There are 39 witnesses. I asked you before the trial began And you provided a time estimate The word guillotine comes from you. I say it's time management and that's the end of the matter But she did not take kindly to this accusation that she was guillotine him because she held him to what a four hour time limit during the day where the defense has 30 minutes to talk to their Undirect examination and the prosecutor has 40 Four sorry four hours. That's not enough according to james lewis And he could not bear having to be guillotined by her when he was when she didn't know what how he was laying out his cross examination She correctly told him that that was the estimate he gave and she was going to stick to that Four hours now. Why is lewis behaving this way one could only speculate but his especially from last thursday before the corona virus scare and on wednesday, especially with treva tim his his cross examinations is not going probably the way that he wants That these witnesses are are responding to him They are not allowing him to bully them And he's not making many great points and that's probably because he doesn't have a very strong case as we've discussed on previous videos here He has a weak case, especially as the governor's been trying to narrow it only to documents that named informants Which is an issue we went into in-depth in the cn live that we did over the weekend So here is lewis frustrated taking it out. It seems on beretsa So just before lunch the tv report came out Kevin bestola has tweeted that it was the voice of chris wallis of fit fox news I didn't recognize that it might very well have been but it's a huge mystery how Another bizarre instance in this case and today we had to this outburst from lewis This angry exchange that he had with the judge who was extremely tolerant of his behavior In fact, I should have that when he returned from the stamina recess, uh, lewis apologized for being in temperate So he realized he'd gone too far, but I wonder how far that apology goes And then we had the tv report being loudly into the courtroom That ended today's events. It shows the decorum of a courtroom particularly a british courtroom Being jeopardized by the pandemic that that witnesses must give testimony online that opens up Opens the court up to numerous technical problems and maybe a hacking And of course we in the press are worried that if it is indeed established that it was a hacking that beretsa may use this as a Reason to shut down our remote access. We really hope that that's not the case Rather now we're going to be able to log on again tomorrow at 10 a.m. To pick up The testimony of eric lewis in the extradition hearing of julian asange as we await Perhaps even more bizarre instances as we go forward Reporting for cnlog. This is jolloria