Let me tell you how I finally got to act on my little obsession. Thanks to the court, no less. And while I’m at it, I’ll answer the frequently asked question: “So what’s going on with your trial?” There’s a famous classic scene in *Iron Man* where Iron Man starts fighting his buddy right there at a party. And before that he goes, like: DJ, give me a fat beat to beat up my best friend to. I really love that scene, and I’d been wanting to work that line in somewhere. But where, in my boring life, was I ever going to have a chance to ask for a fat beat? And then they brought me copies of the evidence on the basis of which they’re going to lock me and my associate Kholodny up as extremists for many, many years. I opened one of the folders, saw this key piece of evidence, and realized exactly where I would say that line. On the first day of the hearings, when stating my position on the charges—the defendants’ first formal statement. I stood up and said: so that you understand how I feel about your bogus charges, I’m simply going to read out one line from a document about my extremist activities. Volume 44, page 220 of the case file. The page bears three official stamps and the signature of a senior investigator for especially important cases. Then I turned to Daniil: Kholodny, give me a fat beat so I can read from the case materials, including “hey, grrra.” I mean, sure—perfectly solid proof that I was, as the prosecution says, plotting the violent overthrow of Vladimir Putin. My reward was the look on the judge’s face in the first second of the reading. The court secretary was the first to realize what it was and started laughing, then the bailiffs too. By the time we got to “Navalny, Lyokha, hey”—even the court was laughing. So that’s how the trial is going: jokes and laughter. We’ll have a laugh over all the nonsense the investigators stuffed into those volumes, they’ll hand me 15 to 20 years, and we’ll call it a day.
