With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff . For the story behind the story... NewsMax.com. Sunday June 25, 2000; 9:15 PM EDT
Elian Gonzalez's great-uncle Lazaro has approved an 11th hour bid to save the boy from deportation to Cuba next week by bringing the Washington, D.C.-based legal watchdog group Judicial Watch into the case.
Reached late Sunday at his Washington home, Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman confirmed the stunning development, telling NewsMax.com that he now represents Elian's Miami family as co-counsel along with Miami attorney Kendall Coffey.
"We plan to go into the lower court and seek to set aside the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals judgment on the basis of fraud," Klayman told Newsmax.com. Last week the full 11th Circuit Court ruled that Elian was not entitled to an asylum hearing, despite the boy's expressed desire to
stay in the United States and his signature on an asylum claim filed by the family earlier this year.
Klayman told NewsMax.com that his efforts would be part of a "dual track effort," where Judicial Watch would focus on U.S. District Court Judge Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida, while Coffey continues to pursue the case with the Supreme Court.
"The Immigration and Naturalization Service didn't give the court a full deck of cards, which would have shown that the Clinton administration was in bed with Castro," Klayman said. "Therefore the judgment against Elian's Miami relatives was procured by fraud and should be set
aside."
Documents obtained by Judicial Watch, which have yet to be considered by the court, suggest that pleasing Castro was the Clinton administration's top priority in the Elian case.
A source familiar with today's developments said the Miami Cuban community was instrumental in persuading Lazaro Gonzalez to seek Judicial Watch's help after reports from NewsMax.com's Jack Thompson raised questions about the efficacy of the strategy being pursued by the Miami family's current
legal representation.
Cuban-Americans Rally as Judicial Watch Joins Elian Case
Miami's Cuban-American communty took to the streets late Sunday to express its support of Judicial Watch, as news spread that the D.C.-based legal watchdog group has now entered the Elian Gonzalez case.
Reporting from Little Havana for NewsMax.com, Miami lawyer Jack Thompson says that South Florida's Spanish television network Telemundo began broadcasting scenes from outside Elian's American home Saturday night, as demonstrators urged Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez to consider a new legal
strategy.
By Sunday, local TV network affiliates were on the scene as supporters continued to rally for a last-ditch effort to save the boy from a life sentence to Castro's Caribbean Alcatraz.
On Monday, legal efforts to derail the Clinton administration's attempts to deport the boy will begin, starting with a letter from Thompson to U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore:
June 26, 2000
The Honorable K. Michael Moore
United States District Court Judge
Southern District of Florida
99 N.E. Fourth Street, Suite 1168
Miami, Florida 33132 VIA HAND DELIVERY
RE: Gonzalez v. Reno et alia
Your Honor:
Friday evening I attended here in Miami a dinner organized by Cuban Americans to honor Donato Dalrymple, who helped rescue Elian Gonzalez from the sea. Given the Eleventh Circuit's ruling earlier that day, there were many tears in hundreds of eyes in a roomful of broken hearts. These people love
this country but distrust their government.
One reason for the distrust is that your decision refusing to grant Elian an asylum hearing was procured through fraud. This is not your fault. Key documents discovered through a FOIA request by Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm located in Washington with an office in Miami, show the
Clinton-Gore Administration's collusion with the Castro regime to subvert the asylum laws and regulations of this country.
These documents were hidden by the Immigration and Naturalization Service because the INS knew that if disclosed they could impact your deliberations.
This sleight of hand by the government helped secure your ruling fraudulently, and it should be set aside as the proceedings before you were a sham.
I represent no party in this matter, so I ask you to do this sua sponte, on your own motion, since you have always shown a concern for the legitimacy of your orders.
I ask you, I beg you, not only for the boy but for those who want not only to love this country but also to trust its judicial institutions, a) to order an evidentiary hearing into the government's misconduct in this case, and b) to enjoin Elian's deportation until you may reconsider the issues
based on the newly discovered evidence. As you know, you, as the trial court in this matter, can do that without the approval of the Supreme Court.
In the parable of the persistent widow, found in Scripture at Luke 18:1-8, a judge who hears the cries, day and night, of one seeking justice, eventually agrees to hear her plea. We ask you to do the same. As I deliver you this letter, there are many individuals, maybe hundreds, standing outside
this federal courthouse right now who accompanied me here today to underscore their "cries seeking justice." Hear their cries.
Your Honor, the government of the United States has perpetrated a fraud upon this court in proceedings rendered a sham by its deception. If Elian Gonzalez leaves on Wednesday to return to his Caribbean Alcatraz, any subsequent inquiry into this fraud will certainly be of no use to this little
boy. When he is gone, it is too late for justice.
Respectfully,
Jack Thompson
Elian's Last Chance for Freedom
With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff. Saturday June 24, 2000; 10:40 AM EDT
NewsMax.com's Jack Thompson has been at ground zero of the Elian Gonzalez case since the Clinton administration's gunpoint abduction of the boy on April 22.
Now, as the final curtain is about to drop on this sad chapter of American history, he reports that Elian has one last chance for freedom:
"Friday, the day that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said to Elian 'no mas,' I had the pleasure of sitting next to Judicial Watch's Larry Klayman at a dinner honoring his client and my friend, Donato Dalrymple. It was a night of many tears in a room full of broken hearts.
"Larry handed me the Atlanta court's short opinion along with his assessment of it: 'The court doesn't even mention the INS documents that show collaboration between Clinton and Castro to subvert rather than implement asylum law. What we intend to do, what we must do, is persuade Kendall
Coffey [the head of Elian's legal team] to go back to the trial court in Miami and inform Judge Moore that we have discovered new evidence that shows the government is lying.'
"Klayman went on to say that Elian has next to no shot in the Supreme Court and that a new evidentiary hearing is the only chess move, and a valid one at that, left to the boy.
"Other than Donato, Larry Klayman was the most popular man in the room Friday night. Everyone there knew what NewsMax readers know: If Judicial Watch had represented Elian rather than Team Coffey, this little boy would have had a real shot at some semblance of due process, which Justice
Brandeis called 'the hallmark of freedom.'"
All Rights Reserved © NewsMax.com |