AGO backs off from subpoena

Senate legal counsel Antonio Cabrera is now off the hook from having to testify in court on the hotly debated 2003 confirmation of attorney general Pamela Brown.

This came about after deputy attorney general Clyde Lemons volunteered during yesterday’s status hearing in Superior Court to drop its subpoena requiring Cabrera to appear in court.

Senate legal counsel Michael Ernest, who represented Cabrera yesterday, said he was about to argue the Senate legal office’s motion to quash the subpoena when Lemons stood up and said that “he had determined that he will not call Tony to testify anymore.”

Ernest said Lemons also made a promise to the effect that no member of the Senate would be subpoenaed.

“With those two promises on the record, we didn’t have to do the motion anymore. We didn’t want to waste the court’s time. We just put the promises on the record and then we withdrew our motion,” said Ernest.

Ernest asked the court Monday to quash the subpoena issued against Cabrera, saying that the former has legislative immunity, being a staff of a co-equal branch of government.

“We are very appreciative of the court that it took our motion very seriously. They called a very quick hearing to accommodate us. We were treated very well,” said Ernest, who used to work for the Supreme Court.

Ernest said yesterday that an audiotape of Brown’s confirmation is sufficient to prove that there is a Senate record of such action.

He cited that Senate rule 13 Section 1 provides that “the audiotape suffices to be the journal.”

He said this is consistent with Article 2, Section 14 of the CNMI Constitution, which says that “the journal in the form of audiotape shall suffice.”

“Senate rules say that the journal of the proceeding is the tape. And so if the confirmation is on side B of the tape, then it is in the journal,” said Ernest.

The AGO earlier presented a tape recording of the supposed Senate confirmation of Brown on November 17, 2003. The recording, however, was not transcribed and put in the Senate Journal for the Nov. 17 session on Rota.

The Public Defenders Office has used this as a reason for the court to drop its case, citing that Brown has no legal right to file a legal action because she is illegally occupying her post.