They insist, with a straight face, that they are neither crooks nor thieves. Hilarious. On February 2, I was on the air at the radio station Finam FM. At one point, the host asked me: "So how do you feel about the United Russia party?" I answered truthfully: "I have a very poor opinion of the United Russia party. United Russia is a party of crooks and thieves." You can watch it here, starting at 4:10.
And then this: Ordinary citizens came to me—not public figures, not celebrities, not officials, but members of the United Russia party—asking me for a legal opinion on Alexei Navalny’s words about the party. They are ordinary people, earning average wages, raising children, living in a country they love. And they do not like being accused on national radio, simply because they joined the United Russia party, of being thieves and crooks. And that is why they want to sue him. .... And I will defend the good name of those people who came to me for help ..... Ordinary people, unknown to anyone, not officials and not politicians. Simply party members offended by Alexei Navalny’s statement. Source I can just picture it: I arrive in court, and there stand these ordinary citizens. Teachers, doctors, engineers, and even one milkmaid for a better sample. All of them forced to take time away from raising children and earning average wages in order to unite and defend their good name. So far, no ordinary citizens are in sight. What is in sight, however, is lawyer Gorgadze speaking on their behalf.
A quick Google search suggests that: Mr. Gorgadze likes having his picture taken with celebrities
- he is the honorary president (!!) of rhythmic gymnastics clubs (!!)
he opposes trial by jury
and in general, he is quite preoccupied with my humble person, devoting various colorful epithets to me on his Twitter.
Now, the samurai lawyer’s code of ethics requires me to refrain from judging the actions of other lawyers, so I will keep my many jokes to myself.
Still, I view Mr. Gorgadze’s behavior with understanding, bearing in mind that his skills are closer to rhythmic gymnastics—where the main things are flexibility and the ability to quickly catch thrown objects.
So.
I will take part in this case with enormous pleasure. That story taught the Kremlin crooks nothing.
We’ll have to teach them.
Right now, Yandex returns 210,000 pages for the query "United Russia is a party of crooks and thieves." Let’s see how many it returns by the end of the trial.
As for my legal position, it is simple: based on the available information, including material published in the media, I personally regard "United Russia" as a party of crooks and thieves. That is my value judgment.
Let me remind you that in April of last year, Boris Gryzlov (one of United Russia’s leaders) called the newspaper "Vedomosti" accomplices of terrorists; however, he won when the paper sued him. The court ruled that this was Gryzlov’s "value judgment."
As recently as yesterday, Vladimir Putin won a case against Nemtsov-Ryzhkov-Milov, who had filed a lawsuit to defend their honor and dignity after Putin said that they had "stolen billions with Berezovsky" (Milov especially, considering that at the time he was no longer in school but was still in college). The court also ruled that this was a "value judgment."
So when I go to court, I intend to repeat Gryzlov and Putin’s argument word for word. Let the judge decide how my "value judgment" differs from theirs. This should be fun.
Please help me a little with this case. I have two requests:
Yesterday in court, Putin’s representative brought in articles from Wikipedia and all sorts of other websites. So why should I be any worse?
I am going to ask the court to add the comments on this post to the case file. So could all of you please leave a few words in the comments about "my attitude toward the United Russia party" and "what I consider the United Russia party to be"?
I have decided to conduct a poll to find out, so to speak, how the people of the internet—the popular online masses (also ordinary citizens, by the way)—feel about United Russia. Maybe I am badly mistaken and actually in the minority.
For decent representativeness, I would like at least 10,000 people to take part in the poll.
So I would appreciate any help promoting the vote:
[Error: Invalid poll ID 1681980]