Prosecutors are pushing back hard at Nxivm leader Keith Raniere’s claim that explicit images of a 15-year-old girl found in an FBI search on a hard drive in his possession were from 2005 and too old to include in Raniere’s upcoming trial, scheduled to begin on May 7.
Although child sex charges have been dropped from this trial (and may be taken up in another district later), prosecutors want to introduce the images, which were on a hard drive seized last year at a townhouse in Halfmoon, New York. But Raniere argued that the FBI’s warrant to search the home was limited to evidence of crimes going back only to January 1, 2015. The nude images were from 2005, and Raniere’s attorney argued that they hadn’t been accessed since then.
Prosecutors in a new memo point out to Judge Nicholas Garaufis that Raniere’s deadline to contest the search and seizure was in January. And even if his objection wasn’t late, the search was proper and the images should be allowed in as evidence.
And brace yourself, here’s the unsettling paragraph at the center of the document, arguing that the 15-year-old girl was posed in a way the other Nxivm women were, which was required of them for blackmail material, which Raniere called “collateral.” For that reason, the images of the young girl are relevant to the racketeering case the government is putting on in the trial…
The images of child pornography are within the scope of the warrant and were properly seized from the hard drive. As described in the February Warrant, the images that Raniere seeks to suppress are part of a collection including “two digital images of a juvenile nude female exposing her vagina” (Ex. 2 ¶ 11), including one in which the minor victim’s “legs are open and her inner labia are visible” (id. ¶ 11b). The original complaint against Raniere (attached and incorporated into the March Affidavit as Exhibit 1), describes Raniere’s collection of materially similar photographs in connection with the crimes of sex trafficking and forced labor. As set forth in the complaint, a DOS “master” identified as CC-1 “regularly required her slaves to pose for nude photographs, including on one occasion close-up pictures of their vaginas, either as assignments or collateral.”
Yeah, that’s going to play well with a jury. Explicit crotch shots Raniere had taken of Nxivm women to keep them in line. No wonder Raniere wants to keep it out. But prosecutors argue that because the images were in “plain sight” (on the hard drive, anyway), the investigators were not required to pretend that they didn’t see them.
Here’s the document…
Nxivm Doc 593: Government's Opposition to Motion to Suppress by Tony Ortega on Scribd
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Posted by Tony Ortega on April 24, 2019 at 15:50
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Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He’s written about Scientology since 1995, and in May 2015 released a book about Scientology’s harassment of Paulette Cooper titled ‘The Unbreakable Miss Lovely,’ and more recently a compilation of his stories, ‘Battlefield Scientology.’ He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world, as well as other subjects at The Underground Bunker. You can reach him by sending him a message at tonyo94 AT gmail.com (Drop him a line if you’d like to get an e-mail whenever a new story is posted.)
