Prosecution rests case in trial against Noor Salman

Defense attorneys file motion for dismissal

The judge in the Noor Salman trial scolded prosecutors for not sharing evidence that Salman hadn’t cased the Pulse nightclub with her husband — something an agent testified the FBI knew “within days” of the shooting.

“I’m very concerned by that,” U.S. District Judge Paul Byron said. He had cited an FBI statement claiming Salman and her husband Omar Mateen drove around the club for 20 minutes in his order to keep Salman in jail before her trial and said prosecutors are legally obligated to share beneficial evidence with defense attorneys when they discover it.

“The government was well aware that the defendant never scouted out the Pulse,” defense attorney Fritz Scheller said. “That was a critical part of their argument.”

Salman’s defense attorneys argued Thursday that she should get a bond now. Late Thursday, her attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case.

Byron said he used a “constellation” of evidence when he

denied Salman’s bond last year, including records of the couple’s unusually high spending in June 2016 and other statements Salman made about Mateen watching violent videos from the Islamic State group.

“I don’t know if that rises to the level of reconsidering bond. If you want to do that, file a motion, I’ll consider it,” Byron told Scheller.

Salman, 31, is charged with aiding and abetting her husband as well as obstruction of justice. The government rested its case Thursday, and Byron told jurors to expect closing arguments next Wednesday.

Outside the courthouse, her uncle Bassam Salman said he believes his niece will be vindicated.

“We know the justice system is going to take care of it, but the way it’s being handled — that’s wrong,” he said.

Susan Adieh, Salman’s cousin, said she “wanted to hug Noor, but I can’t get to her.”

“We know she was innocent; we know all this was a bunch of lies,” Adieh said. “Noor is an innocent child. She’s not the kind of violent person that they [contend] that she is.”

The issue of Salman and Mateen driving around the club together came up in the hours after Mateen killed 49 people at Pulse, when Special Agent Ricardo Enriquez interviewed Salman in the FBI’s Fort Pierce office.

He did not record the interview. Enriquez testified that Salman said she was too nervous to write a statement herself, so he wrote her words down and had her initial each paragraph.

“We drove around the Pulse nightclub for about 20 minutes with the windows of the car down. Omar was driving slowly, looking around and at one point stated ‘how upset are people going to be when it gets attacked,’ ” Enriquez wrote. Salman added a note in the margins in her own handwriting — “I knew he was talking about himself doing the attack on the Pulse.”

According to Enriquez, Salman also talked about visits to Disney Springs and CityPlace in West Palm Beach, during which Mateen made comments like, “What would make people more upset, an attack on Downtown Disney or a club?”

Agents were able to confirm the couple visited Disney Springs and CityPlace with cell tower records and video.

But within days of the shooting, FBI agents looked at the couples’ cellphone records and determined that neither had ever been near the club before the shooting. Investigators and prosecutors did not make the information public until FBI Special Agent Richard Fennern took the stand today, though Salman’s defense had used the evidence in a legal motion during jury selection.

On the day Salman said she and her husband visited the club, June 8, 2016, there are records of them at the Florida Mall, at a falafel restaurant and at a Kissimmee mosque, Fennern said. Most of their time is accounted for with receipts and cell records.

“Her phone had never been near the Pulse nightclub,” he said.

When Fennern finished testifying, Byron asked him to clarify when he knew that and what he did with the information. Fennern said he knew within days of the shooting and passed it along to the FBI case agents. Byron excused the jury for a scheduled break and turned to attorneys.

“Why wasn’t that in the government motion?” Byron asked.

The defense suggested prosecutors may have violated rules requiring them to hand over evidence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Sweeney said the government gave Salman’s defense an FBI PowerPoint presentation with all the relevant cellphone data on Aug. 1, 2017.

But by then, defense attorney Charles Swift said, he had spent thousands on his own technology expert to prove the same thing.

“I’m funded by a public entity, and I spent a lot of money on this. And the government knew,” Swift said. “… I had to spend money from people who give to civil causes.”

Swift cited the bill for the technology expert at about $7,000, and said he’d been paying the expert about $300 an hour through Thursday and was expecting he’d testify next week. Byron seemed open to granting Swift the money from the government if he asked for it, but didn’t rule on it.

“The government doesn’t have to be told to do the right thing, they must do it,” Byron said. “... It’s not triggered by an order; it’s triggered by the facts in your possession.”

Most of Fennern’s testimony was about tracing Salman and Mateen’s digital trails. He put together bank records with cell tower records showing their approximate locations with surveillance video from Disney Springs, Walmart and the St. Lucie Shooting Center, and connected it to the written statement Salman gave an FBI agent in the hours after the attack.

Jurors watched video this morning of Salman standing next to her husband as he purchased ammunition at a Walmart store.

Their son — who was 3 years old — was also there as Mateen made the purchase. Jurors saw the boy slide a Paw Patrol toy onto the checkout counter.

The last government witness jurors heard from was a former IRS investigator, who testified the couple spent more than $32,000 between June 1 and June 12, including $26,532 in credit card purchases. Mateen’s annual salary was about $30,000.