Well, folks, something of a contest has developed between the prosecutors and Tongsun Park's legal team over how much cash you can stuff in an envelope.
As recounted in an earlier post, defense lawyer Michael Kim on Wednesday challenged the testimony of cooperating government witness Samir Vincent that in 1996 he had handled envelopes containing on one occasion $500,000 and on another occasion $100,000 in Iraqi cash. Kim suggested that the amounts of cash involved would simply not fit in the receptacles described. Getting physical, Kim offered Vincent some manila envelopes, and placed before Vincent on the witness stand a wall of neatly bundled $1 bills, equivalent in volume to $500,000 worth of $100s. Vincent managed to pack the volume equivalent of $100,000 into a 10"X15" inch envelope, but it appeared there was no way the remaining piles of cash could fit.
Think again. This morning, with Vincent still on the stand for cross-cross examination, prosecutor Edward O' Callaghan produced a bulging 11"X15" manila envelope, and in front of the jury asked Vincent to unpack it. Vincent opened the envelope, and in front of the jury began pulling out bundles of banknotes and stacking them on the wooden railing of the witness box— 100 to the bundle, with $1 bills once again serving as proxies for $100s. By the time Vincent had emptied the envelope, he was sitting for the second time this week next to a wall of cash bricks, five deep and 10 across.
So we now know that if you want to stuff $500,000 in $100s into an envelope, it's not 10"X15" you need, but 11"X15."
Asked Callaghan, at the end of this exercise: "Isn't it true that a couple of inches can make a difference?"
...Moving on to — you guessed it — yet more cash, a new government witness arrived in the courtroom today, from Amman, Jordan, to talk about two checks issued in 1997 to Maurice Strong. I'll be posting more on that this weekend.
