During the 11 days I was in jail, Chris Trotter visited me once. During that visit he informed me that the price was going up 250% from what he had originally told me, because it was now a felony case.
When I was finally bailed out, thanks to the money raised by Oregon Firearms Federation and voices such as Lars Larson and Victoria Taft getting the word out, I went to Trotter’s office the next morning to start working on my case. We still had not received any copies of the evidence from the prosecutors. This is referred to as “discovery” and both sides are required to share any relevant evidence with the other side.
The judge assigned to the case, Thomas Ryan, soon ordered the evidence to be sealed. That included my first-person video of the incident, security camera video, and video taken by others. My video was the only one that showed the initial altercation perpetrated by the violent mob. The only thing the media showed was the seven seconds I had the gun out, with no context. The public was not allowed to see what had really transpired.
About a week after being bailed out I testified to the grand jury on the case. They had already heard from a slew of witnesses, many of whom presumably continued down the “white supremacist” trope as they had talked about this in the detective interviews which I was eventually allowed to hear months later. We were not allowed to present an opposing case, and the only things the jurors were privy to were what the DA’s wanted them to see and hear.
The grand jury had already made up their minds about me based on nothing but false information.
As I recall, the testimony to the grand jury lasted about 2 hours. Chris Trotter was on site, but was not allowed to be in the room with me. I was allowed to pause the proceedings to consult with him outside the presence of the jurors, which I had done 2 or 3 times. Trotter’s main advice was to just answer the questions from deputy DA’s Todd Jackson and Kate Molina, as well as any questions from the jurors.
He never encouraged me to make my own case. He never supplied me with any case law to reference. Turns out there were several case laws that weighed in my favor regarding self defense, mindset, training, and other pertinent things that Trotter never informed me of.
During this time I was on what’s called “pre trial release” and there were certain orders I had to abide by. The pre trial release officer, Chelsea Fonua, ordered that I be banned from posting videos, banned from going on social media, banned from talking to the press, banned from blogging, and banned from attending political events.
I was effectively banned from working, and I couldn’t make my own case to the public. Had I gone on the radio or made a video about the case, I would have been thrown back in jail and on the hook for $250,000.
Chris Trotter never once formally challenged those orders. He asked me about it a few months after I was released, I told him those orders were still in effect, and all he said was something like “That’s unfortunate.” But he never submitted a motion to the courts to modify those conditions. I would later find out that people make motions all the time to modify conditions of release, but Trotter never told me about that and never tried to do it.
Chris Trotter is the most gutless attorney you could ever hire.