NIGEL Hughes appeared timid and out of step when he appeared before Magistrate Faith McGusty at the Georgetown Magistrates Court last Wednesday.

An upbeat and witty Magistrate McGusty was assigned to take over the GECOM fraud trial from Magistrate Leron Daly who has been experiencing an extended bout of ill health. Hughes is the lead attorney defending former GECOM officials who are facing multiple charges of doctoring the results of the 2020 general and regional elections in favour of APNU+AFC.

It’s not the story Guyanese were talking about that day. Rather, the talk of the town was the triumph of Republican Donald J. Trump over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, in the U.S. elections. While President Irfaan Ali was extending his congratulations to President Trump, Hughes was shuffling into a narrow bench in Magistrate McGusty’s courtroom.

To appreciate the contrast between the two outwardly unconnected events, it is important to note that Hughes is ExxonMobil’s lawyer, one of the six or perhaps seven largest publicly traded and investor-owned oil and gas companies often referred to as “Big Oil.”

Hughes is also the newly minted leader of the AFC. Asked whether he would consider resigning his role as a solicitor of ExxonMobil, Hughes’ answer was a categorical no. One can only assume that the relationship between him and “big oil” works extremely well when it comes to his bank account.

And then there is this annoying legal case that refuses to go away. The same case that brought him back in court before Magistrate McGusty. His clients are charged with conspiracy to rig the 2020 elections in favour of APNU+AFC. After months of testimony before a Commission of Inquiry that examined the roles his clients played in conspiring to steal votes in favour of APNU+AFC, Hughes insists to this day that it was the PPP/C that stole the votes, a claim devoid of any shred of evidence.

But what does a fraud trial in Georgetown have to do with the incumbent administration of President-elect Donald Trump? The previous Trump administration had a front-seat view in 2020 when GECOM officials, in cahoots with some members of APNU+AFC, engaged in a series of bizarre and brazen acts aimed at stealing votes from the PPP/C and delivering them to APNU+AFC.

The U.S. ambassador at the time, Sarah-Ann Lynch, would have been sending weekly, if not daily memos up the food chain to key officials in Trump’s State Department and other key agencies in Washington D.C. Those memos would have outlined the sometimes colourful strategies deployed by GECOM’s Keith Lowenfield, Clairmont Mingo and Roxanne Myers. What might those memos look like years from now when they’re declassified? One incident might stand out for its sheer comedic value.

At 09:00 hrs three days after votes were cast, local and international observers, including the U.S. Ambassador, were gathered in a room at the Ashmin’s Building dubbed the tabulation room. An hour later, Myers entered and said: “Y’all get out the room. There is a bomb in the building.”

When police officers arrived, they requested everyone to leave. Sensing something was afoot, the majority of observers, including Lynch, refused to vacate the property. One would expect the Ambassador of the United States would have been rushed out and away from the building by her security team. That did not happen.

According to the final report of the Commission of Inquiry, Roxanne Myers herself never left the building. The report also said that Myers eventually directed officers to a white Styrofoam cup with what appeared to be the bored doodling of the face of a clock and the lens of a camera. The police removed the object and later reported it to be “a completely harmless contraption.”

Did Myers concoct a bomb plot to stymie the tabulation of votes? It may be evidence McGusty is likely to hear with the resumption of the GECOM fraud trial now in her courtroom. It is also evidence that could be embarrassing to Hughes, especially in light of a new U.S. administration less inclined to be swayed by baseless allegations of racism when stacked against a pile of glaring classified evidence telling a very different story.

This brings me back to Hughes’ demeanour at Magistrates’ court in the afternoon of Wednesday, November 6. Inside the small courtroom, Hughes clashed with Darshan Ramdhani, the astute lead prosecutor on the case. Hughes appeared confused as to whether the trial was starting anew or a continuation of an already existing trial. Hughes wanted a continuation of trial if the evidence was advantageous to his clients and a new trial if a decision was damning. McGusty asked the two parties to make written and oral submissions, a decision that will again result in further delays.

When journalists queued outside the courtroom to question Hughes, he insisted they wait for Ramdhani to stand with him. The two men couldn’t have been further apart in what they had to say, but the expression on Ramdhani’s face and his body language spelt out just how annoyed he was to have been publicly asked to stand with Hughes before a small drizzle of reporters.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.