Today I walked out of the Investigative Committee already as a defendant. A group of 15 investigators wasted no time and somehow managed to order and carry out two expert examinations, several searches, compile enough material for five volumes of a criminal case file, and formally charge me.
All because of this tweet:
If you're a lawyer, here you go—have a laugh. This is the ruling opening the criminal case. It doesn't even say what the alleged defamation actually consists of.
Not to mention that you can't defame some unspecified person. Defamation has to be specific. And a statement like “everyone who uses a veteran for their own purposes is a bunch of disgusting prostitutes” is an opinion. Just like, for example, “the RT channel is run by talentless thieves.”
This case is absolutely extraordinary, full of innovative legal thinking. For example, during my first interrogation I stated that the criminal case was fabricated and politically motivated. Without batting an eye, the investigator told me: I am disallowing that part of your testimony and will not include it in the interrogation record.
I think that at that moment, people on the floor below could hear my lawyers Mikhailova and Kobzev dropping their jaws onto the floor. How can you disallow the testimony of the very person you're interrogating?
And yet he left it out. He consulted his superiors, and they said: it's all fine—write down whatever you like in the interrogation record, and whatever you don't like, leave out.
Some people didn't believe that 15 investigators were handling the case. Here you go: 4 investigators for especially important cases, 7 senior investigators, and 4 plain investigators (presumably so they can run to McDonald's for the others).
Another breakthrough in jurisprudence: the charging document names some random guy called Lukin.
Who is that? we ask.
Just some person—he read the tweet.
What kind of nonsense is this, you think. But that's only because you don't see the bigger picture of how this case is being fabricated. There's already a designated judge the case will go to, with the verdict already written. And to firmly establish jurisdiction and guarantee that the case lands in the right court (in case I say I wrote the tweet somewhere else), they insert some nobody into the file who “became acquainted with the tweet while located at the following address.”
The case materials emphasize that the RT video is “patriotic”:
And finally, the best part.
Once, Hemingway supposedly made a bet that he could write a five-page interrogation record that would make everyone who read it burst into tears.
Read it—but try not to soak your keyboard with tears. This is that sole-proprietor PR man, Igor Kolesnikov. The grandson of the allegedly insulted veteran, who together with Margarita Simonyan organized this whole affair, using the poor old man.
A marvelous story. About how his grandfather raised him. About how proud he was of him. And about how he learned from RT employees what a terrible insult I had inflicted on grandpa.
And how he firmly decided not to tell his grandfather anything—the veteran's heart wouldn't be able to take it.
But then disaster struck—a neighbor (whose name is unknown) told him everything. Then doctors were called. Everything was carefully photographed. And so on.
Just excellent. Enjoy.
What do you think—was this crook selling out his grandfather to Simonyan for cash, or doing her a favor in exchange for future rewards?
By the way, read Agora's report on the political motives in the ACF case.