Raniere Appeals to Supreme Court; Based Solely on Judge Stopping Lauren Salzman Cross Examination

Lauren Salzman from a recent photo.

Correction: Earlier this week, I incorrectly reported Clare Bronfman filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the US Supreme Court. This needed to be corrected. She only paid for it.

Keith Raniere, through his attorneys, Marc Agnifilo and Mark M. Baker, filed a Writ of Certiorari with the Supreme Court.

***

The odds are likely against the Court hearing Raniere’s case. The Supreme Court hears about 80 cases out of about 8,000 who petition the court.

Raniere wants the Supreme Court to review a 2nd Circuit decision entered on December 9, 2022, concerning District Court Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis’ decision to stop the cross-examination of Lauren Salzman, the Government’s sole testifying cooperating witness.

She pleaded guilty to Racketeering, NY State Extortion, and Forced Labor and testified to support the Government’s allegations on almost every element of every crime with which Raniere was charged.

She faced a prison term of 20 years, absent her cooperation.

The Government emphasized on direct examination that Lauren pleaded guilty to extortion and that she committed extortion at Raniere’s direction.

The cross-examination confronted Lauren with the conduct the Government claimed was extortionate and asked her to admit that she believed she and Raniere were helping the person at the time.

Here is the cross-examination leading up to the stopping of it.

Agnifilo

Q. Did you think it was extortion when you took the stuff [collateral]? Were you doing it to scare them?

AUSA Tanya Hajjar: Objection

Judge Garaufis

The Court: You may answer.

A. I had concerns that it was problematic and I chose to go with what Keith said. If I didn’t think it was problematic, I wouldn’t have raised it.

Q. Did you intend to hurt anyone, did you intend to scare anyone?

Ms. Hajjar: Objection

Judge Garaufis

The Court: Sustained
***

Q. When you were in DOS, before anybody was arrested, were you doing things intentionally to break the law?

Ms. Hajjar: Objection

Judge Garaufis

The Court: That requires a legal conclusion.

Q. What was your intention when you were in DOS?

Judge Garaufis

The Court: You may answer.

A. [Lauren started to cry.] My intention was to prove to Keith that I was not so far below the ethical standard that he holds that I was – don’t even how far below I am. [She sobbed harder. She had a tissue in her hand and wiped tears from her face.] I was trying to prove my self worth, and salvage this string of hope of what I thought my relationship might some day be, and I put it above other people, helping them in their best interest. That’s what I did when I was in DOS. [Her voice was breaking. She was growing more emotional.]

Judge Garaufis

The Court: Okay, that it. We are done

Mr.  Agnifilo: Okay Judge. Thank you.

Judge Garaufis

The Court: You are done.

Mr. Agnifilo: I know. I am done.

Judge Garaufis

The Court: No, I said you’re done

Mr. Agnifilo: I know. I am.

Judge Garaufis

The Court: So you can sit down.

Following the discharge of the jury, the defense counsel addressed the court, stating: “I don’t know why Your Honor cut off my cross-examination.”

Judge Garaufis

The court: If you want to know, you went way over the line as far as I’m concerned with regard to this witness. You could have asked your questions and moved on to the next question, but you kept coming back, and I am not going to have someone have
a nervous breakdown on the witness stand in front of – – excuse me, this is not DOS. This is not the allegations. This is a broken person, as far as I can tell, And whether she’s telling the truth, whether the jury believes her. I think it’s absolutely necessary that there be a certain level of consideration for someone’s condition

And that’s really what this was. You had plenty of – if you have other things to say, you could have gone on and said them. But what I had here was, I had a crisis here. And not in my courtroom. I have to sentence this defendant, and what you did was, basically, ask her to make legal judgments about whether what she did in pleading guilty was farcical, that she took somebody else’s advice, some lawyer, so she could get out from under a trial. I thought that really went pretty far beyond the pale, frankly.

Mr. Agnifilo: Your Honor, I –

Judge Garaufis

The Court: I took her guilty plea, sir. All right?

Mr. Agnifilo: I am not trying to argue with you. I am not trying to argue with you.

Judge Garaufis

The Court: Then don’t argue with me.

Mr. Agnifilo: No –

Judge Garaufis

The Court: You can take your appeal if you should not be successfully. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I thought it was extremely excruciating. When I tried to cut off the line of questioning, you just went right back to the line of questioning. You could have gone on to something else. You could have. I may not get everything right up here, but I will tell you, as a human being, it was the right decision. Alright? And before I’m a judge, I’m a human being. And that goes for everybody in this room, and it includes you and the Government. And I am not going to allow someone to be placed in this circumstance and that let it continue. I am the one who is disappointed. I’m done…

****

A few hours later, defense counsel filed with the court a written application for a mistrial. The court denied the motion.

Appeal to the Court of Appeals

Raniere appealed this and other issues with the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. The appeal was rejected.

The 2nd Circuit ruled any arguable error was harmless.

Furthermore, the Government “offered to the defense to make any of its witnesses available” to testify at Raniere’s case-in-chief, “including Lauren Salzman,” but that Raniere had not elected to avail himself of that opportunity and declined to put on a case.

Under these particular circumstances, we conclude Raniere
“suffered no harm” from the District Court’s prior decision to cut off Lauren Salzman’s cross-examination….

Reasons for Allowance of the Writ

From the petition for a writ of certiori to the Supreme Court:

The Government called only one cooperating witness: Lauren Salzman. Her testimony was central to the prosecution’s version of events, and it used her guilty plea to racketeering, racketeering conspiracy and extortion to directly impute that guilt to
Petitioner.

In addition to testifying to almost twenty years of her observations of Petitioner, including her lengthy intimate relationship with him, Salzman testified that she and he committed extortion and other crimes together in connection with women in DOS.

The single most important area of the cross-examination of Ms. Salzman was to show that, at the time, she and Petitioner had engaged in the conduct at issue, she genuinely believed she was helping, not harming, the person with whom they were
interacting.

The primary theme propounded by the defense, therefore, from opening statements through the examination of each witness and to the closing argument, was that, while highly unorthodox and
even offensive to some, Petitioner and others, including Salzman, genuinely believed they were helping people overcome various limitations that these people came to NXIVM to overcome.

Accordingly, the focus of the entire cross examination of this
cooperating witness was to get her to admit that she was trying at all times to help people in their best interests.

As will be shown below, as soon as she testified to the jury that in fact she was motivated by “helping them in their best interest,” the trial judge shut down the cross….

The court’s after-the-fact justification for terminating the cross-examination of the government’s only cooperating witness is plainly inconsistent with the record facts.

First, the court said to counsel “you went over the line.” But the court overruled the government’s objection as to this question and directed the witness to answer.

Second, the court suggested that it had stopped the cross-examination because the cooperating witness was having a “nervous breakdown on the witness stand.”

There was no prior instance, however, of the witness breaking down. Even so, this was no excuse, given the scope of this sacred Sixth Amendment right, to terminate the cross-examination of such a crucial prosecutorial witness.

The court’s actual reason for stopping the cross is readily manifest in the record. The court screamed at counsel, “excuse me, this is not DOS.” The court here stated that even though the cooperating witness was answering a question which the court had directed
her to answer, counsel’s questioning had made the legal proceedings akin to the allegations about DOS….

The Supreme Court has characterized the Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, embodied in the right to cross-examination, by repeatedly quoting Wigmore…  as “the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”…

Cross-examination is the principal means by which the believability of a witness and the truth of his testimony are tested….

The cross-examiner is not only permitted to delve into the witness’ story to test the witness’ perceptions and memory, but the cross examiner has traditionally been allowed to impeach, i.e., discredit, the witness….

In this case, Lauren Salzman did in fact point “directly to the defendant in the courtroom itself.” Yet, as even assumed by the Court of Appeals to have been constitutional error, the district court abruptly terminated defense counsel’s cross examination of that crucial prosecution witness who advanced the government’s essential theory of coercion. The district court unabashedly did so because it wanted to spare her the obvious ordeal that attends a probing confrontation — undoubtedly, a rather inappropriate
role for the court to assume, certainly with respect to a major cooperating witness who was in a unique situation to recount.

It also wanted to safeguard her earlier plea from being reduced to a “farce.” But her examination needed to be pursued by defense counsel to probe the nature of her own conduct, and whether she had pleaded guilty because she believed she was actually guilty of assisting in the alleged coercion, or simply to minimize her custodial exposure.

Upon being told he was done and he should sit down, thereby completely dressing him down in the full presence of the jury — with the “serious damage” that such wrought upon his crucial credibility in the minds of the jurors — defense counsel promptly filed an unsuccessful written motion for a mistrial. So, in the
end, not only was cross-examination unconstitutionally
curtailed, but defense counsel was outed as a brute in
the presence of the jury,

Contrary to the holding of the Court of Appeals, this Court should consider whether a prosecutorial offer of direct testimony — not the offer of continued cross-examination…  can ever supplant the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth that is cross-examination.

Rather, the Court should consider whether any sound justification exists for the district court’s premature and abrupt termination of counsel’s cross examination.

[The Second Circuit’s claim was that the prosecution offered the defense to later call Salzman during its direct case. Raniere argued there are precedents that distinguish between direct and cross examination. Additionally, Raniere had no obligation to put on any defense.]

Judge Garaufis approved the question over the prosecution’s objection, directing the witness to answer the question.

Before she completed her answer, the judge terminated the examination without explanation to the jury.

The judge then suggested defense counsel had done something inappropriate by “probing whether Salzman had truly intended harm…. the district court appeared far more concerned that the witness might answer defense counsel’s questions in a manner that
contradicted her guilty plea given in its courtroom.

Curiously, it even seemed perplexed that defense counsel did not share that concern.

Quite to the contrary. Defense counsel had every right, indeed an obligation, to test the veracity of Salzman’s testimony, including an effort to show bias and motive, even if that would have undermined the colloquy at the cooperating witness’s plea. The district court simply had no discretion to curtail cross examination so as to prevent the jury from hearing facts bearing on the witness’s credibility….

When the district court impermissibly intervened in the fact-finding process during a central line of cross-examination, the prejudice suffered by the Petitioner was only exacerbated by the manner in which the district court handled the issue. For here,
the jury was left with the false impression that defense counsel had done something so improper as to justify the draconian sanction of forfeiting continued cross examination along with a tongue-lashing by the court.

The end result was that Salzman’s eminently challengeable credibility remained largely intact.

In reality, defense counsel was simply doing his job as the Sixth Amendment directs — cross-examining the sole cooperating witness in an attempt to discredit her.  Whether that would have undermined what the witness had earlier sworn to upon pleading guilty, or whether it would have caused the witness anxiety, is
simply not a defense attorney’s concern — which was solely to demonstrate prosecutorial overreaching in extracting Salzman’s plea….

The Supreme Court should consider whether a prosecutorial offer to make such witness available on the defense case could ever cure a Sixth Amendment deprivation….

 

 

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Frank Parlato

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    • Do you mean ‘bad’ in modern parlance, as in its great. Or bad, as in terrible?
      I wish this woman all the best in the world. She had her life derailed by the loathsome Orc.
      I hope she has kids, puppies and a brilliant life. She deserves that.

      • She’s UGLIER now. Also, her life wasn’t derailed by an Orc. She was derailed by her own mom Nancy. And Laurens sister Michelle was in on it too. It was a family affair. If Lauren TRULY and TRULY was a victim and had remorse, she would 100% cut off all NXIVM/ESP people cold turkey. But she can’t, and she won’t. She’s very much still tied to it. Also, her sister Michelle still does NXIVM style coaching. They haven’t changed. They only thing that did is the packaging of the product. New company name, same product. Lauren and Michelle are still very much NXIVM. NXIVM 2.0: The rebirth. Neither of them every issued a formal and sincere apology and owned up to hurting others. I wish they both are cursed and rot in hell.

        • Most of what you type is either a flat lie or flat wrong. Can you bring anything to the table we don’t already know? Cause your lies are getting old.

  • Do those salvation boxes have more of Nancy’s money? Unless Nancy’s brother in law already muled it away for them.

  • Does anyone find it off that Raniere hired Marc Agnifilo to file a Writ of Certiorari with the Supreme Court when he has a motion in district court with Judge Garaufis saying Marc Agnifilowas ineffective counsel in Raniere’s trial?

    This motion was on thin ice, to begin with, due to Judge Garaufis conducting Curcio hearings due to Clare Bronfman paying for all the defendant’s lawyers.

    After going through the Curcio process and hearing, Raniere decided he was happy with his legal representation and wanted to stay with Marc Agnifilo and this legal team.

    After Agnifilo refused to file Raniere’s brainchild of FBI tampering Rule 33 motion, Raniere filed his “ineffective counsel” motion against Marc Agnifilo.

    Now Raniere is hiring Agnifilo to take him to the US Supreme court.

    Let’s face it, over his decades of legal system abuse, Raniere has burned through tons of attorneys. His track records show he doesn’t win. Instead, he burns up “other people’s money (mostly Clare Bronfman’s), filing legal cases and motions he cannot win.

    This Writ of Certiorari will cost in the ballpark of 400,000 – 500.000 to whoever is paying the bill. We know it’s not Raniere.

    Will the Supreme Court hear it? 99% NOT

    Raniere could of call one witness in his defense.
    Lauren Salzman

    The second circuit said this in their decision when they dismissed Raniere’s appeal.

    He won’t take no for an answer and will keep going no matter the cost. So it’s not his money.

  • What will happen to the blind retard Raniere when he dies?

    Will BOP release his body to Nicki, Suneel and the other leftovers to worship?

    Cremate him and pour him down the drain?

    Or?

    • I believe EVERYONE should choose their own funeral and way their body is laid to rest. If prisoners do not specify, whatever protocol is. I assume it’s traditional burial with a headstone. We even bin Laden a respectful burial at sea.

  • Supreme Court now Clair Bear is funding trips to the Supreme Court , unbelievable that woman is gonna be dead broke by the time she’s out of prison. This is going to be so amusing which is going to give out first Clair’s money or Keith ,can’t knock him on consistency.

    • That’s the difference between being rich vs being wealthy. Her money even in her near bottomless stupidity will still last her lifetimes. They are whining over this civil suit, but Clare is not losing any sleep over it because it’s not even a dent in her fortune. It’s more like a scratch or a ding, something you can just buff out with a few stock trades.

  • Raniere is such an ass-clown.

    Straight to the shredder, that’s where his pathetic petition is going. Along with most of the dozens of other packets of waste paper sent the Supreme Court daily. Who has time for this nonsense? Desperate, hopeless appeals.

    Back in MDC Brooklyn, after his conviction, Vanguard hatched a plan. He was going to “war”! A podcast where he would publicly decry the injustice done to him. He’d have Federal judges put under surveillance. There would be a publicity offensive, “get Dershowitz!” Then, as the masses rose up, in the streets demanding Justice for Raniere! he would have his case heard by the Supreme Court.

    Such is that man’s hubris. He actually thinks the Supreme Court would take an interest in his case. A simple, run of the mill criminal case. That he lost, overwhelmingly.

    And lost on appeal.

    His publicity campaign fizzled. No, “fizzled” overstates it. It was simply a non-starter. Dersh was hired, he said his few sentences, nobody cared.

    “Abandon all hope, you who enter here” Milton wrote. It’s advice Raniere should learn and take to heart. Because he’s in prison for the rest of his life and he best get used to it.

    Justice has been done.

  • I have heard Sarah E talk about Lauren on many podcasts (her own & others). Sarah has completely forgiven Lauren and wants to see her again. And wants Lauren in her life! Why? Is it possible that Lauren is manipulating Sarah again?

  • Was Lauren a “broken person” when she flew on a private jet to Mexico with Raniere, Mack and Squeaky to give Raniere a group blowjob? Or when she leaked branding videos to the paparazzi? She’s a fucking PHONY!! I hear she is washing dogs now? My maybe she should wash her own filthy past.

      • Suffered? SHE ENJOYED HURTING AND EXPLOITING OTHERS. She enjoyed every minute of the fame, sex, sex trafficking, money laundering, vacations, power and control. She didn’t suffer a bit. She made others suffer, and she enjoyed doing it to others. She’s not a victim. She’s a victimizer.

  • “The Supreme Court has characterized the Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, embodied in the right to cross-examination, by repeatedly quoting Wigmore… as “the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”…”-

    Yes- and what we’re seeing in every aspect of our daily lives is that our constitutional rights are being obliterated.

    Biden administration is making certain that happens.

    • It’s a risk. You can cement the Government’s case if you’re not careful.

      I personally think the only way Raniere had a shot at winning was to put on a case with a credible narrative and take the stand himself to sell it to the jury. For Raniere, not only a cult leader but the world’s smartest man, he would have had no problem selling a Brooklyn jury – hook, line, and sinker.

      And if he totally fell flat, there’s no real difference between 120 and 150 years. Except of course Raniere’s lawyers going around and saying they saved a client 30 years in jail.

      • I agree that Raniere needed to put on a defense, however–I also see how the stakes were just too high. The DOJ had so much evidence against him to impeach him with. Taking the stand would have been a Hail Mail pass, and instead, they took the “consenting adults” route.

        At the end of the day, it had to be a tough call.

        Analysts are saying Murdaugh sunk his defense when he took the stand.

      • I would have chosen one good slave, probably Nikki, rather than 100 “maybe” slaves. If the slaves would have banned together around their master maybe Raniere would be free. If Raniere never attacked Parlato, Raniere would probably be free.

      • There needed to be a defense for Raniere to put on. His legal team interviewed people in many different countries, and no one wanted to be a witness for Raniere in his defense.

        His loyalist makes up lies now about how they were intimidated by the DOJ. That is a lie. It’s witness tampering, and they would have been in trouble with the state bar of such games. No complaints were made by Raniere’s “friends” either.

        Raniere can’t answer questions that were not staged by his inner circle. He talks in circles and makes no sense. Instead, the DOJ had video footage of Raniere saying some crazy shit about underage sex from his teaching in NXIVM, the tapes for setting up the branding, and the text messages between him and the underage child he had sex with.

        The DOJ would have had him for lunch if he had taken the stand.

        Raniere didn’t get rid of any evidence.

  • The only right Raniere was depived of was respect for others. None of this sixth amendment rubbish justifies wasting space on any server or mobile phone memory.

    What pointless garbage…

    • Honestly, I didn’t even recognize or think it was either of them. Lauren is going downhill fast. You can thank Nancy for the genes. Don’t have kids Lauren. Save us all. As it is, there is already Michelle’s 666 kid. No need to perpetuate more evil.

  • Well I read Agnifilo say “I’m done” two or three times so there we go, looks like in agreement with the judge when he tells him he’s done.

About the Author

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist.

His work has been cited in hundreds of news outlets, like The New York Times, The Daily Mail, VICE News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Post, New York Daily News, Oxygen, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The Sun, The Times of London, CBS Inside Edition, among many others in all five continents.

His work to expose and take down NXIVM is featured in books like “Captive” by Catherine Oxenberg, “Scarred” by Sarah Edmonson, “The Program” by Toni Natalie, and “NXIVM. La Secta Que Sedujo al Poder en México” by Juan Alberto Vasquez.

Parlato has been prominently featured on HBO’s docuseries “The Vow” and was the lead investigator and coordinating producer for Investigation Discovery’s “The Lost Women of NXIVM.” Parlato was also credited in the Starz docuseries "Seduced" for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Additionally, Parlato’s coverage of the group OneTaste, starting in 2018, helped spark an FBI investigation, which led to indictments of two of its leaders in 2023.

Parlato appeared on the Nancy Grace Show, Beyond the Headlines with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Oz, American Greed, Dateline NBC, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, where Parlato conducted the first-ever interview with Keith Raniere after his arrest. This was ironic, as many credit Parlato as one of the primary architects of his arrest and the cratering of the cult he founded.

Parlato is a consulting producer and appears in TNT's The Heiress and the Sex Cult, which premiered on May 22, 2022. Most recently, he consulted and appeared on Tubi's "Branded and Brainwashed: Inside NXIVM," which aired January, 2023.

IMDb — Frank Parlato

Contact Frank with tips or for help.
Phone / Text: (305) 783-7083
Email: frankparlato@gmail.com

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