Richard Warman misleads the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal about "Jadewarr", under oath
John Pacheco attended last month’s Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing in the Warman v. Lemire case. That was where Canadian Human Rights Commission staff were grilled about their practice of going onto the Internet under fake identities, and posting bigoted comments.
Pacheco recorded that hearing himself (the tribunal bizarrely dismissed its court reporter for that one day) and compared his recording with testimony from the December, 2006, hearing in another one of Richard Warman’s complaints, against Jessica Beaumont. Besides having the same complainant (Warman) and the same tribunal chairman (Athanasios Hadjis), the two cases had something else in common: both involved the CHRC’s secret online identity “Jadewarr”. That’s the alias CHRC investigator Dean Steacy used to sign up as a member to the white supremacist group, Stormfront, a scandal in itself.
Pacheco’s comparison found a lot of ugly things about how the CHRC does business. But the most striking fact he discovered was that Warman hid his knowledge of Jadewarr from the tribunal, despite being asked about it several times under oath.
Pacheco’s site has all the details. But here’s a summary:
One of the pieces of evidence against Jessica Beaumont was this print-out from the Stormfront website that the CHRC submitted to the tribunal. But after the CHRC disclosed that print-out, they realized that it said “Welcome, Jadewarr” on the corner of it – giving away the fact that the CHRC had logged in as a member of Stormfront. That blew Steacy’s secret cover. To hide his tracks, the CHRC switched the “Welcome, Jadewarr” print-out with a generic print-out of the same page from the Stormfront website, without the words “Welcome, Jadewarr” on it.
On December 12, 2006, the tribunal chairman, Hadjis, was trying to figure out the difference between the two versions of the Stormfront document, to understand why the CHRC wanted to switch the original evidence with a new version. Here’s what Warman, and the CHRC lawyer, Giacomo Vigna, said when asked about the documents:
THE CHAIRPERSON: I’m sorry, I’m a little confused here...
MR. VIGNA: The layout, when you look at it, it might seem different, but if you look at the contents it’s pretty much the same.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Right.
That’s a scandal in itself – Vigna knew the difference between the two documents, and he knew why he wanted to switch them, but instead of revealing what he knew, he glossed over the difference between the two documents, calling them “pretty much the same”. That’s unethical. But what about Warman?
MR. VIGNA: Perhaps, Mr. Warman, you can explain it.
THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, perhaps you can explain it.
MR. WARMAN: Sure.
THE CHAIRPERSON: I do see that the content is similar. It’s got the poem in it, but how come the layout is different, as Mr. Vigna has indicated?
MR. WARMAN: Sure. I will happily explain. The first one is a Commission document. The second one is a document that was printed off in my presence on Friday.
THE CHAIRPERSON: So, the second document was available on the Internet and printed off?
MR. WARMAN: Yes, on Friday.
THE CHAIRPERSON: On Friday.
MR. WARMAN: So, if it’s more appropriate, we can withdraw the first one and simply tender the second one.
Warman does the same as Vigna – he doesn’t disclose the difference between the documents, other than when they were each printed. But that’s not the real difference, was it? That’s not why they switched it -- a switch that Warman himself suggests.
Later on, Warman was asked about the “Welcome, Jadewarr” print-out again:
MR. FROMM: …what’s the origin of it?
MR. WARMAN: I don’t know.
THE CHAIRPERSON: You don’t know now but you mentioned earlier that it was from the Commission. That’s what I heard you say.
MR. WARMAN: It originates in the broadest sense with the Commission.
THE CHAIRPERSON: So the Commission had produced this photocopy?
MR. WARMAN: Yes, but in terms of its specific origins, I have no idea.
That must have sounded a little bit strange: how could Warman have “no idea” about its specific origins, even though he said the generic replica of it was printed off in his presence the previous Friday? Hadjis, impatient as usual, let it pass.
Warman was asked again about the “Welcome, Jadewarr” version:
MR. FROMM: Can you explain what that is, “Welcome, Jadewarr?
MR. WARMAN: It appears to be a name that was logged in under.
MR. FROMM: By whom?
MR. WARMAN: I’m sorry, I don’t know.
Warman’s testimony is pretty clear: he swore he didn’t know who logged in as Jadewarr on the original print-out, and he didn’t know its “specific origins”.
The Beaumont hearing slouched onwards, and the strange matter of the switched evidence was forgotten. But Warman’s next case was against Marc Lemire, the webmaster of Stormfront. Lemire suspected something, and made a much bigger fuss about Jadewarr. In December, 2007, a year after Warman’s testimony in the Beaumont case, Steacy finally admitted he was Jadewarr in the Lemire case.
But it wasn’t until the March, 2008 hearing, when Steacy was cross-examined, that the whole truth came out – and that Warman’s testimony was exposed as misleading.
Steacy testified that Warman knew exactly who Jadewarr was, and he knew it well before the Beaumont hearing. Here’s Pacheco’s audio clip of Steacy testifying to that effect:
Since Steacy admitted he was Jadewarr, it’s not surprising to learn that Warman knew about it. Warman and Steacy had worked together, not just as colleagues at the CHRC where they were both “hate” investigators, but as “client” and “service provider”, when Warman filed a complaint and Steacy investigated it (a conflict of interest and another scandal). The two men were pretty cosy. In fact, Steacy told the March, 2008 hearing that everyone who knew who Jadewarr was knew the password, too – presumably, that included Warman.
But compare Steacy’s testimony in 2008 to what Pacheco dug up from Warman’s testimony in December, 2006:
MR. FROMM: Can you explain what that is, “Welcome, Jadewarr?
MR. WARMAN: It appears to be a name that was logged in under.
MR. FROMM: By whom?
MR. WARMAN: I’m sorry, I don’t know.
Warman swore he didn’t know who logged in as Jadewarr. But Steacy testified that Warman indeed knew who Jadewarr was.
Details about the group print-out of second, generic version of the document were discussed in the March, 2008, hearing too.
Steacy told the tribunal that he, Warman and CHRC lawyer Giacomo Vigna all got together. They logged in under Steacy’s Stormfront membership, Jadewarr, because, as Steacy testified, they had trouble finding the page otherwise. Here’s a record of that log-in by Steacy. Note the date: December 8, 2006, the date Warman said the document was printed out in his presence.
We don’t even need Steacy’s corroboration – Warman himself admitted that it was a group print-out. But from Steacy we learn who the group was, why the group was assembled and what they were trying to do.
Back in December, 2006, Warman’s vague answers were confusing. But in the light of the March, 2008 hearing, we see it was more than confusing, it was misleading. They were trying to keep Jadewarr’s identity a secret – even though they had an obligation to disclose that information to both Lemire and the tribunal, and another obligation to answer questions about it honestly.
“I have no idea” said Warman. “I don’t know.” But he did know.
The truth – as revealed 15 months later – was that Warman did “have an idea”. He “did know”. But instead of answering honestly under oath, he misled the tribunal.
I just can’t get that Johnny Cash song out of my mind – “as sure as God made black and white, what’s done in the dark will be brought to the light.”
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