Thread by @stephenlemons

On lunch break at the LaceyLarkin trial. Attorney Bruce Feder, who represents one of Lacey and Larkin‘s codefendants, followed up before lunch on some of what Beinert said in his opening. #Backpage #FirstAmendment 1/

He explained content moderation to the jury and told them that in addition to an illegal/legal standard of assessing ads on Backpage, moderators tried to keep content to a “Playboy” standard, though legally they did not have to do any content moderation at all. 2/

He also described some of the prosecution’s deceptive tactics in its September 3 opening statement, such as putting the mug shots of the defendants on projected slides next to emails and statements they did not make. 3/

And the prosecution often took out of context or intentionally interpreted certain statements as improper when in reality they were not 4/

Feder Pointed out that aggregation, which the government described as terrible, was a legal practice. And that most of the adult ads that were aggregated on Backpage back in the day came from from Google and craigslist 5/

Feder explained there was nothing illegal about using social influencers to refer potential clients. Ditto Links to TER, the erotic review. Eventually Backpage stopped links from TER, tho not obliged to. 6/

As for the court cases that Beinert referred to at length in his opening, Feder observed that the federal government did not intervene in any of those cases but that they could have. 7/

Interestingly, in the morning before the jury came in an attorney for Larkin, Whitney Bernstein, brought up the DOJ memos from 2012 and 2013 which argue against prosecuting Backpage because of Backpage’s extensive cooperation with law-enforcement 8/

Bernstein argued that certain facts in the memos were exculpatory and should come in to the trial. Currently those memos have been excluded on a technicality. Though they have been referred to by @WIRED and published by @reason 9/

Judge Brnovich said that those memos will be discussed at another time. Another issue that came up before the jury came in involved an alleged statement supposedly made by Michael Lacey outside a US Senate hearing in 2017. 10/

As I mentioned in a previous string this morning, Brnovich seemed troubled that the prosecution’s representation of what the witness to the statement said did not match the FBI’s interview of the woman, the mom of daughter who was advertised on Backpage 11/

The FBI report said that when Lacey came out of the Senate hearing he was mobbed by a scrum of reporters. At which he supposedly made a statement about “yahoos.” 12/

I imagine though I don’t know for certain that if Lacey made any such a statement he was probably referring to the politicians who had been questioning him previously. 13/

Prosecutors say this statement was directed at the mom though the FBI report doesnt say this. The prosecutors assured the judge that this mom would say something different on the stand. Wonder if @ENBrown remembers anything from that morning in Jan 2017. We both were there. 14/

BTW, please see Elizabeth’s awesome new article on the start of the trial. 15/ reason.com/2021/09/08/bac…

Another big point that Bienert made in his opening was about the prosecutions allegation that what Lacey and Larkin had done in defending Backpage was all because of greed 16/

but Lacey and Larkin had already made a lot of money from their newspapers prior to the creation of Backpage in 2004. They didn’t need the money. But they refused to bow to government demands that they silence first amendment protected speech 17/

Lacey and Larkin have gone to jail more than once defending freedom of speech. Most notably in the case of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, when they were illegally arrested for publishing an article about an improper grand jury. On the first amendment front they have nothing to prove. 18/

Lunch break is almost over now so I’m gonna go head back into the sauna that is the special proceedings court room in the Sandra Day O’Connor federal courthouse. Will give you a report at the next break. 19/19