After his first trial was declared a hung jury because one holdout juror didn’t like the government, Timothy Shea’s second trial on fraud charges on the We Build the Wall scam will stay in New York City, the judge in the case began his retrial Monday, the Associated Press reports.
The owner of an energy drink company called Winning Energy, whose cans have featured a cartoon superhero image of Trump and claim to contain “12 oz. of liberal tears,” Shea’s first trial ended in June after eleven members of the jury voted to find Shea guilty, but according to a note the jury foreman sent the judge, one juror held out because of inherent anti-government bias. After hearing a motion from Shea that he could never get a fair trial in New York because there are liberals there and that the political bias of the area wouldn’t allow them to seat an unbiased jury, US District Judge Analisa Torres rejected the request to move the trial to Shea’s home state of Colorado and kept the trial in Manhattan.
Torres on Monday also ruled that Shea could not subpoena Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Shea and his attorneys requested the subpoena to force the DA’s office to turn over any exculpatory evidence, but Torres determined that the request for the information was too vague and did not offer any evidence that Bragg or the office had any such information.
Shea is on trial simply because he had no social standing with Donald Trump during the Trump administration. Charged in the same scheme, Trump lackey and serial criminal Steve Bannon got a pardon for his role in the fraud, which bilked $25 million from Trump followers which was supposed to pay for a wall to stop immigration along the southern border, but a significant amount of money ended up in the bank accounts of Bannon, Shea and two other men: Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato who have already pleaded guilty.