The Dotcom saga back to court again
On December 23 last year, as Kim Dotcom strolled into the Auckland District Court, he muttered to the journalist alongside: ‘‘Let’s see what Santa has in store.’’
What Santa – otherwise known as Judge Nevin Dawson – had was a pretty crappy early Christmas gift: a ruling that after all the shouting and helicopters and madness and lawyers and dance singles and face-offs with the prime minister, the United States did indeed have a case against this plucky-internet-entrepreneur/evildigital-pirate, and Dotcom could legitimately be extradited to the US to face trial.
But again, just when it seemed this terribly-important-copyrightcase/out-of-control-circus-act had reached a conclusion, it hadn’t.
Because even though Dotcom has at times run short of money to actually pay them, he is still a wealthy man with lawyers.
And when a wealthy man with lawyers wants to fight extradition, and the foreign government really, really wants to extradite him, the arguments can take some time.
There have been High, Appeal and Supreme Court rulings about the validity of the search warrants that led to the Swat-style raid on Dotcom’s Auckland mansion in January 2012.
There have been High and Appeal Court hearings to decide whether Dotcom can sue the GCSB spy agency and the police.
And that’s not to mention assorted US court hearings, including attempts to block Dotcom’s access to his allegedly ill-gotten gains. And so it is that today the next act of the Dotcom saga begins.
This time it is a High Court review of Judge Dawson’s extradition ruling, during which Dotcom’s New Zealand lawyer Ron Mansfield, with his US lawyer Ira Rothken riding shotgun, will attempt to demonstrate that the court mucked it up.
They’ll say, the US can’t extradite Dotcom, especially seeing the copyright violations he is accused of are not sufficiently serious to trigger the extradition treaty. The hearing could run for eight weeks – almost as long as the 10 it took to thrash everything out last year, and whichever way it goes, one side or the other will almost certainly be unhappy with the result, so they will probably appeal and the merry-go-round will creak back into action.
Dotcom has always had a knack for looking like he is enjoying himself, whether living out an numbskulled squillionaire lifestyle before his arrest, promoting a diabolically bad dance album, nosediving his own political party, or staring down the barrel of a lifetime in an American prison.
So it was not terribly surprising that on Friday Dotcom took to Twitter to post a brief video – inexplicably sped-up and with chipmunk voices – where his team’s legal strategy was outlined.
‘‘Hello everybody,’’ he squeaked, while waving the camera around the room. ‘‘This is Kim Dotcom and here’s my lawyer Ira Rothken. How are are you doing, bro?’’
‘‘I’m doing great Kim,’’ said Rothken.
‘‘Are we going to win?’’ asked Dotcom.
‘‘We are going to win,’’ said Rothken.
‘‘That’s it, bro,’’ said Dotcom, swinging the camera back for a close-up of his own manic, bestubbled face. ‘‘Wooooh!!’’