The Trial of NXIVM Leader Keith Raniere Has Started

Man: PYX 106 “Quinn & Cantara.”

Quinn: It’s 1800LAW1010, 1800law1010.com. Paul Harding on the phone, Cantara, from Martin, Harding, and Mazzotti.

Cantara: And we had opening statements in the trial of Nxivm leader Keith Raniere starting yesterday. What are we watching for this week, Paul?

Paul: Well, you know it’s gonna be quite the show down there and to the extent that they even found out they’ve got some folks, screenwriters from Hollywood, are gonna sit through this whole trial because they anticipate there’s gonna be some of that going on at the conclusion whichever way that the jury rules. So here we’ve got a trial that is gonna be sensationalized, it’s gonna have lots of twists and turns but at the end of the day, he has no one standing with him. All the co-defendants, as we found out last week, pleaded out and many are gonna be testifying against him.

Quinn: So did Allison Mack plead out?

Paul: She did. In fact, she plead out…She has what they call…she and Saltzman [sp] have what they call a cooperation agreement. Meaning you plead out but you’ve gotta make sure you testify pursuant to what you told the FBI that you were going to share.

Quinn: Saltzman knows her future and so does Allison Mack, everybody else knows existentially.

Cantara: Paul, what is their future? Are people going to jail yet or no?

Quinn: Yeah, I don’t know what the plead outs were. What were they?

Paul: Yeah. So they basically plead and then you’re sentenced later. And so if you go to trial and all of a sudden you say, “You know what, he’s a great guy and he didn’t do anything wrong,” you’re inconsistent with what you shared with the FBI, then you’ve got a whole new problem, it starts afresh. So there’s a plea but you didn’t cooperate with the agreement. Yeah, there will be jail time for the other folks in this. Again, I don’t wanna just paste them all the exact same, they all had different roles.

Quinn: Sure.

Paul: Mack, for example, said, “Yeah, you know, I basically was collecting collateral information…

Quinn: Pictures.

Paul: …for people.” Yeah. And so stuff like that. And she got a gain from that. I suspect she’s gonna do some jail time but maybe some of the other folks won’t.

Cantara: Paul, how long do we expect this Nxivm Keith Raniere trial to go on?

Paul: Well they’re talking that it’s gonna go well beyond two weeks into the third week. But with trials, you can get hung up, you can have jurors who just don’t, you know, who have issues. And so we never know but I think that’s about the time frame. And that all is presupposing that Keith Raniere is not gonna testify because that’s sort of what people are thinking that he won’t do. But, you know, he’s had such a communicator over the course of his lifetime…

Quinn: Yeah, he may end up doing it.

Paul: …he may have been an influencer. Yeah, that he may think that, “I need to do this.”

Cantara: Any chance he ends up in the Otisville federal penitentiary system along with Michael Cohen?

Paul: Yeah, you know, I guess, roll the dice, right?

Quinn: Yeah, right?

Paul: If they could pass each other at some point in the hallway.

Quinn: Are they federal charges, though?

Paul: Yeah, so he’s being tried in the federal court and the federal charges. They were state charges that could come later if by chance he were to, you know, be found not guilty. I mean, by chance. I mean, I really feel that the government has a really good case. But we’ve seen it in the past where we think, “Oh, this looks like it’s going in one direction.” But we haven’t really heard anything from the defense. Okay, what we’ve heard is what the prosecution, what the federal government has sort of talked about in large part through the media and the Keith Raniere’s team has been saying virtually nothing. So we may learn some new stuff during the course of this but probably just not enough to exonerate him.

Cantara: All right, two, maybe three weeks is when we’re expecting a trial.

Quinn: Okay. Thank you Paul.

Paul: Yeah.

Cantara: Thanks for watching this for us Paul, we appreciate that.

Quinn: I’m like three podcasts deep in on this thing. It’s so fascinating.

Cantara: We appreciate.

Quinn: We’ll see how this wraps up. Paul Harding, Martin, Harding, Mazzotti, 1800LAW1010, 1800law1010.com.

Cantara: Thanks, Paul.

Paul: Bye guys.