Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt  

Cana­di­an Vlog­ger Christo­pher Hugh­es yes­ter­day said while he will be de­fend­ing him­self against sedi­tion charges, he will be re­ceiv­ing guid­ance from an at­tor­ney and strate­gist.

Speak­ing with the me­dia out­side the T&T So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA), Hugh­es said af­ter an in­voice of US$40,000 was sent last Sat­ur­day for work done by Pamela El­der, SC, and her ju­nior Rus­sell Warn­er, he de­cid­ed to fight the mat­ter him­self. 

Asked how he will be prepar­ing for that, Hugh­es said he would get guid­ance from his first at­tor­ney, Criston Williams, and a UK-based strate­gist “well versed in law.”

“I’m not go­ing in­to it blind­ly; I have some very in­tel­li­gent minds that sur­round me. It all just comes down to price. We have at­tempt­ed to se­cure the ser­vices of a pub­lic de­fend­er but my salary is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er. I’m not able to get a pub­lic de­fend­er.” 

In an In­sta­gram post on Wednes­day night, Hugh­es said as a new Youtu­ber, he did not have the means to af­ford the fees. He said yes­ter­day he paid be­tween US$7,000 and 8,000 af­ter his last court date be­fore re­turn­ing to Cana­da and as­sumed the fig­ure cov­ered the case. He ad­mit­ted that there were no dis­cus­sions on costs pri­or to last Sat­ur­day’s bill. He said he had no reser­va­tions about the qual­i­ty of work but the cost was pro­hib­i­tive. 

“Our con­ver­sa­tions were very quick; they were over text mes­sage. Right now, my fo­cus is on to­mor­row (to­day).” 

Hugh­es has had four at­tor­neys since he was charged in May. His at­tor­neys in­clud­ed Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and El­der, Williams and Warn­er. He said Ram­lo­gan, who is his civ­il at­tor­ney, re­mains and the work done to date has been pro-bono.

Hugh­es was charged by Sgt Lee, of the Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit, with pub­lish­ing a state­ment with a sedi­tious in­ten­tion. 

The 45-year-old fa­ther of three, who plead­ed not guilty and is cur­rent­ly on $100,000 bail, faces a $3,000 fine or two years im­pris­on­ment.