'People lost faith in the justice system a long time ago': Ezra on the Coutts 4 trial

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This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on July 25, 2023.

On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra discussed the upcoming trial of four men that were at the Coutts blockade in Lethbridge, Alberta last year who were charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

He talked about how the trial is not set to happen until next spring, although the events in question were in January and February 2022. He also explained why there is a publication ban in place, preventing Rebel News from publishing all details of the case:

The jury has yet to be impaneled. And one of the things about a jury trial is the jury cannot have preconceptions about the case. They can't get facts from the media or other sources. They have to get facts put through the legal process. Why? Because certain facts are hearsay. Certain facts are so prejudicial that it's impossible to get a fair trial. Sometimes in trials, entire court cases are moved to another city if the local jury pool is too tainted. To avoid that, in this case, the defense counsel have applied for and received a publication ban over some of the more lascivious details contained in part in a legal document filed by police to get the search warrant. 

That document is called an ITO— information to obtain. It's a document shown to a judge in secret, as in the target of the search warrant is obviously not there. Search warrants don't really work well if the person who's going to be searched gets a heads up about it. So the documents that were filed with the court were very lengthy and contain unchallenged accusations by the police… and so that is why the one-sided accusations by the police are being kept out of the public eye until the jury is impaneled. But that means it's impossible for us to tell you the details, at least as alleged by police, about what the four men in question did.

Ezra acknowledged that because Rebel is not able to say what's truly going on, it makes it difficult for the public to understand what they feel is an apparent injustice and double standard:

I think that one of the problems is that giving the justice system the benefit of the doubt is something that these people long ago left behind. They saw how the police became political weapons during the lockdown, enforcing things that have nothing to do with the criminal law when police enforced unscientific mask mandates, when police enforced ridiculous 6 ft of separation… And so people here who cannot see the facts alleged against the four accused men certainly aren't willing to believe that it's a fair case. Only time will tell when the facts come out in trial.

He also acknowledged that some who may normally be Rebel News supporters are upset that Rebel isn’t helping cover the legal fees of the four men, and explained why that is the case:

In some ways, I can't tell you that because of the publication ban, what I can tell you is that the money raised by both Rebel News and the Democracy Fund was to defend people for civil liberties offenses, people who committed civil disobedience as you may know, because you may be a donor yourself. We did not crowdfund to defend people accused of conspiracy to commit murder. Now, there is a crowdfunding page not run by us that if you want to give to these four men, you can certainly do so. And I'm not here to tell you to do so, or not to do so. But I can explain that neither Rebel News nor the Democracy Fund will take our donors money for men who are charged with conspiracy to commit murder. And when the facts come out in the trial, you may see for yourself whether or not this was a wise decision on our part.