April 29, 2003
Hawash News Roundup, and Additional Comments
Having left my own report up on its own for a time, let's take a brief tour through local news coverage of this morning's events in the Mike Hawash case.
KATU has a bit more from Hawash's attorney:
Now that Hawash is charged, his attorney Steven Houze says they can now fight what amount to "baseless charges."
"It's sketchy, it's circumstantial in nature," said Houze. "And perhaps that is in part the answer as to why it has taken the government so long to do what they are doing."
KOIN presents much the same story, and pegs the crowd at "more than 50 people."
KGW offers a more thorough package, with still more from Houze:
"It's our intention to shed the light of day on what has been a dark cloud of secrecy,? said Stephen Houze, the well-known attorney representing Hawash. He said he will use his pre-trial discovery powers to compel the United States to declassify any evidence it plans to use in the case. "This is America," Houze added. "We have an open court system."
And there's an Associated Press piece over on OregonLive that I presume will be part of tomorrow's Oregonian coverage, unless it already made it into this afternoon's edition.
Message of the day from Hawash supporters appeared to be all about "circumstantial evidence." It does seem odd that they finally got around to charging Hawash with something, and it's all based upon evidence they already had when they detained him in March.
I would suspect that since the Federal judge presiding over the case thus far told prosecutors that they needed to do something other than simply detain Hawash, under the possible threat of the judge freeing him this week, the government opted to cobble together an initial complaint, obtain an arrest warrant, and then proceed from there.
It's anybody's guess what the prosecution will present as evidence to the grand jury, and whether or not it goes beyond that which was offered in the affadavit released yesterday.
In essence, charging Hawash and bringing him into the public court system reset the clock for the prosecution.