Thread by @willchamberlain

Tommy’s barrister has been going for nearly an hour now, so I’ll thread out some observations

#FreeTommy #FreeTommyRobinson

A big issue for Tommy is going to be whether his appeal(s) will be thrown out for being time-barred (filed too late)

As @ezralevant noted, Tommy’s team is seeking to get both the contempt findings quashed - including the one from 2017

The appeals were “out of time” - too late.

Tommy’s barrister is arguing that the shenanigans the government pulled with Tommy made it very difficult to put a case together, and, as far as I can tell, that the judges should use their discretion to hear the appeal anyway

The judges seemed unsympathetic to this argument as to the 2017 contempt finding (for which Tommy got a suspended sentence), but that’s just my read from comments/facial expressions

#FreeTommy

That said, the judges have barely interrupted Tommy’s barrister as he’s spent an hour going through his argument

Perhaps appellate proceedings are less combative here, but it seems like the judges are sympathetic to a # of Tommy’s substantive arguments

The hearing is both very technical and very slow

America appellate hearings generally take 30 minutes total - maybe 1 hour total for complex cases

We’ve been going 75 minutes and the government’s lawyer hasn’t even spoken yet