Al­though At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour has bro­ken his si­lence on his dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port civ­il mat­ter in a Mi­a­mi court, the group of at­tor­neys call­ing for a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence in him will go ahead with their pe­ti­tion.

This is ac­cord­ing to at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, who spoke briefly to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Tak­lals­ingh was among a group of 40 at­tor­neys who req­ui­si­tioned the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) on June 15 for a meet­ing to de­bate and vote on a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence in Ar­mour.

“A le­gal process has been ini­ti­at­ed by the req­ui­si­tion which was signed by 40 lawyers. The req­ui­si­tion asks for a re­sponse from the AG and he has pro­vid­ed a re­sponse. The le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty will now meet to con­sid­er the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the AG as soon as a date is fixed by the coun­cil of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion,” Tak­lals­ingh said.

He said Ar­mour will be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to any part of the req­ui­si­tion if he choos­es to do so. Tak­lals­ingh said so far, he has on­ly re­ceived an ac­knowl­edge­ment from the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Tak­lals­ingh al­so con­demned those who sought to tar­get the at­tor­neys who signed the req­ui­si­tion, say­ing, “No one should be pre­vent­ed or in­tim­i­dat­ed from ex­press­ing their view, whether by pe­ti­tion or oth­er­wise. I com­mend each lawyer, some of them who are very ju­nior, who signed this pe­ti­tion and ini­ti­at­ed this pro­ce­dure. The fu­ture of the le­gal pro­fes­sion is in safe hands.”

The req­ui­si­tion stems from Ar­mour’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in a civ­il suit in a Mi­a­mi court. The mat­ter is di­rect­ly tied to the Pi­ar­co Air­port fraud case, with the same de­fen­dants. How­ev­er, an is­sue arose when Ar­mour was ap­point­ed as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to re­place Faris Al-Rawi in March, af­ter his ex-client, for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung, raised a chal­lenge to his rep­re­sent­ing the state in the mat­ter. Ar­mour rep­re­sent­ed Kuei Tung and his then-girl­friend Re­nee Pierre in his ca­pac­i­ty as a de­fence at­tor­ney in his pri­vate prac­tice be­tween 2003 and 2008.

But when he took over the reins of the AG’s of­fice, Ar­mour be­came the State’s at­tor­ney in all civ­il mat­ters. Once his ap­point­ment was an­nounced, Kuei Tung filed a pe­ti­tion to dis­qual­i­fy Ar­mour and the US law firm, Se­quor Law, which had been rep­re­sent­ing T&T and to dis­miss the case against him.

A Mi­a­mi court judge agreed with two of the three pe­ti­tions Kuei Tung filed. It was lat­er re­port­ed that the judge said Ar­mour mis­rep­re­sent­ed his role in Kuei Tung’s de­fence when he swore to an af­fi­davit stat­ing he on­ly played a ‘ju­nior’ role in the pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry, which was lim­it­ed to re­search and note-tak­ing.

On Mon­day, Ar­mour re­leased his third state­ment since the in­ci­dent, ad­mit­ting he got the de­tails on his af­fi­davit wrong. How­ev­er, he said he did not be­lieve there was any­thing to gain from “down­play­ing” his in­volve­ment in Kuei Tung’s de­fence. Ar­mour said when he pre­pared and signed the af­fi­davit, he was on va­ca­tion with his fam­i­ly in Eu­rope and did not have any files with him.

“The end re­sult is that I signed an af­fi­davit based en­tire­ly up­on my best rec­ol­lec­tion but I was at­tempt­ing to re­call events oc­cur­ring some 14 years be­fore,” Ar­mour said.

He added that once he saw Kuei Tung’s af­fi­davits, which were filed in re­sponse to his, he wait­ed for an op­por­tu­ni­ty to “cor­rect” his af­fi­davit. How­ev­er, Ar­mour said he was not giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so and the judge’s de­ci­sion was hand­ed down.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to speak to Ar­mour yes­ter­day, while he was in the Sen­ate par­tic­i­pat­ing in the de­bate on the In­sur­ance (Amend­ment) Bill 2022, by pass­ing a note to him.

While Ar­mour could be seen read­ing the note, he im­me­di­ate­ly fold­ed it and placed it in his jack­et pock­et. He left the Sen­ate min­utes af­ter the sit­ting had been ad­journed.

Ques­tions sent via What­sApp to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley have so far been ig­nored.

The Prime Min­is­ter re­mains in the US for med­ical treat­ment fol­low­ing the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and there has been no word on when he will re­turn.

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