Quote from: nutildah on December 22, 2019, 02:17:31 AM

I just want to know what would compel pirate to lie under oath about returning all of the funds to Og, if he indeed lied.

To be fair, Pirate could be motivated to lie or at least to exaggerate in various ways that might be a bit unclear to us, rather than "compelled." No one has cross examined him on those points regarding OGNasty, because it seems that OGNasty was not part of that particular investigation, as far as I had seen.

Certainly, I am not asserting that Pirate did in fact lie, but to be somewhat fair to OGNasty, he was not a target of the investigation (at least as far as we know), but I suppose if there were enough facts that demonstrated OGNasty or someone else to be possibly culpable for a crime or even a civil infraction, then the SEC or some other body, like the Department of Justice, might have been motivated to bring charges against him and/or some other persons that were connected to the matter.. but sometimes they just are attempting to get the BIGGER fish (perhaps Pirate in this case) rather than the messy circumstances of the possible smaller fish.

Surely, government agents have discretion in these kinds of matters, so their not bringing charges does not mean that OGNasty might not have been guilty of some kind of infraction (civil or criminal) if they were to chose to pursue an investigation in that direction.

So, yeah, there would remain a certain amount of due process issue if anyone were to attempt to ascribe too much truth to evidence that is presented in a proceeding in which someone else (seemingly pirate in that case) was the subject of the investigation rather than OGNasty or anyone else that Pirate had named as additional Pass through agents, so in that regard, OGNasty might not have been requested to give evidence.

It is also possible that OGNasty was requested to give evidence, and sometimes evidence is not immediately available publicly - or OGNasty might have not voluntarily cooperated with any request to give evidence, and the Agency would then be faced with a decision regarding whether to subpoena him.. also a discretionary matter regarding whether to subpoena a witness and/or documents, and he would not have to be a subject of the investigation in order to receive a subpoena or even a voluntary request for evidence, if they thought that testimony from him would be helpful in any aspect of their investigation that they had been conducting.

I am NOT changing my mind in any regard here because I do think that what has already been shown so far in regards to the corroboration of the testimony of Pirate does seem to demonstrate that OGNasty may have pocketed a certain amount of funds that were returned to him after the date that he had refunded all of the pass through investors, and surely, the amount that OGNasty pocketed could be much higher than what Twitchy has argued to be the minimum amount that he can show to rise to the level of beyond a reasonable doubt (including considering OGNasty's ongoing choice not to answer or explain), and for that reason and maybe for other reasons, OGNasty has concluded that it would be better for him to remain silent rather than speak - since maybe his feels that he is NOT really be able to unambiguously clarify the matter, and if he speaks, then more questions might be raised rather than answered, perhaps?

Of course this is not a court of law or even any kind of administrative proceeding, either, but we still can be guided by those kinds of standards in attempting to decide how to look at the evidence and what has been presented as arguments, too, including the burden of proof matters, and including assertions from Tecshare (in his opinion) that whatever evidence and arguments that have been presented so far do not rise to a level of sufficiently proving OGNasty of engaging in the alleged wrongdoing.

I personally, think Tecshare is being a bit selective in his own conclusions, but anyhow, if this were a criminal court or even a civil court, OGNasty could chose to exercise his 5th amendment right not to testify.. but sometimes adverse inferences can also be drawn from that choice not to testify based on gaps in the evidence that tends to show. Of course, if there is no criminal matter pending, then exercising 5th amendment rights seems more suspect, but anyhow, anyone can assert that the burden of proof is not with them but instead with the party(ies) bringing the allegations.

If OGNasty continues NOT to cooperate, then we would have to conclude reasonable inferences based on the evidence that we have - which seems to lean in favor of OGNasty NOT sending the funds to the investors of the pass through after he received them.

Of course, the burdens are different if we are talking criminal which would be 1) beyond a reasonable doubt (which seems a bit of a high and unnecessary standard in a situation like this) or in civil matters either 2) preponderance of the evidence or 3) clear and convincing evidence, and seems that there is enough evidence to meet either of the last two thresholds regarding more than just the part of the evidence (the smaller amount of the funds) that Twitchy asserts to have reached the higher standard (at least with the evidence so far including considering that OGNasty is largely refusing to materially cooperate (which maybe he does not have to), but we can still decide where the evidence points, too, even if he chooses to NOT cooperate.