“I will say on­ly this - I do not in­tend to give any­one an­oth­er Sec­tion 34 op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­rail the tri­als that are tak­ing place in Mi­a­mi for an­oth­er ten years.”

That’s how At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour jus­ti­fied his re­fusal to com­ment any fur­ther on ques­tions sur­round­ing his dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from le­gal pro­ceed­ings in the Pi­ar­co Air­port fraud case in a Mi­a­mi court, de­spite nu­mer­ous at­tempts by jour­nal­ists yes­ter­day to have him ex­plain fur­ther.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence he called to ad­dress is­sues with the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Leg­is­la­tion, which he had raised in the Sen­ate ear­li­er in the day, Ar­mour still en­ter­tained ques­tions about the case.

De­spite this, he re­fused to add any sub­stan­tial fur­ther com­men­tary on the is­sue, sim­ply re­fer­ring to his pre­vi­ous state­ments and the one most re­cent­ly pub­lished this week (June 20).

“I don’t in­tend to make any com­ments be­yond what I said in the state­ment that was pub­lished on Mon­day of this week and I am not go­ing to change my mind on that,” he said.

His re­sponse came as he re­fused to ad­dress a ques­tion from a re­porter seek­ing de­tails on the ex­tent of his ef­forts to cor­rect the record af­ter re­al­is­ing he mis­rep­re­sent­ed his role in for­mer client Bri­an Kuei Tung’s fraud case in an the af­fi­davit to the Mi­a­mi court.

Asked to com­ment on calls from the Op­po­si­tion and mem­bers of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion for him to step down from his po­si­tion as a re­sult of the fi­as­co, Ar­mour said: “I have noth­ing fur­ther to say be­yond what I have said in my state­ment that was pub­lished on Mon­day.”

Asked by Guardian Me­dia why he was re­fus­ing to ad­dress the is­sues fur­ther, he said: “Be­cause I’m not.”

He of­fered a fur­ther ex­pla­na­tion when pressed about if he be­lieved this re­sponse was suf­fi­cient for mem­bers of the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty and the pub­lic.

“I have al­ready pro­nounced on the is­sue,” Ar­mour said.

“I have said as much as I am pre­pared to say. I have said and I am not go­ing to re­peat be­yond those things that are al­ready stat­ed by me, that there are im­pend­ing ju­di­cial pro­ceed­ings. I do not in­tend, be­yond what I have said in very re­strict­ed terms, to make any com­ment on any­thing that has the po­ten­tial to im­pact on the pro­ce­dures that are tak­ing place in Mi­a­mi.”

This is where he ex­pressed his cau­tion at not cre­at­ing an­oth­er Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co with the on­go­ing case, fur­ther de­lay­ing jus­tice.

Over the past few weeks, Ar­mour has been sub­ject of heavy crit­i­cism from at­tor­neys and the Op­po­si­tion. Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made re­peat­ed calls for Ar­mour to step down as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al or be fired, while some 40 mem­bers of the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) have signed a pe­ti­tion to trig­ger a mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence against Ar­mour to be brought be­fore the as­so­ci­a­tion.

It all stems from Ar­mour’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go in a Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port 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 Kuei Tung, raised a chal­lenge to him rep­re­sent­ing the State in the mat­ter. Ar­mour rep­re­sent­ed Kuei Tung and his then-girl­friend Re­nee Pierre in the ca­pac­i­ty of a de­fence at­tor­ney in his pri­vate prac­tice be­tween 2003 and 2008.

But when he took over as AG, 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.

In his most re­cent state­ment on this, Ar­mour said he wrote the af­fi­davit from his mem­o­ry of events that tran­spired 14 years ago. He added that at the time, he was on va­ca­tion and did not have any doc­u­ments with him, es­pe­cial­ly as he had dis­posed of them “a long time ago.” He said he was nev­er giv­en the chance to rec­ti­fy the er­ror when he re­called his in­volve­ment to be of a greater ex­tent, de­spite stay­ing in his ho­tel room with his phone the day the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion ap­pli­ca­tion was due to be heard by the Mi­a­mi judge.