Courtroom questions from the state Republican Party’s lawyer Thursday morning rankled the lawyer for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz so much that he objected angrily and called the queries “outrageous.”
Wesley W. Horton, Bysiewicz’s lawyer in her Hartford Superior Court lawsuit to be declared eligible to run for for attorney general, said that the GOP’s lawyer, Eliot Gersten, was asking overly repetitive questions about something that Bysiewicz had already admitted: that she has never tried a case, or represented any client, in court.
“It’s outrageous,” Horton said loudly. He accused Gersten of arguing “to the press and not to the court.” Several reporters were present on the second day of the trial, as they had been on Wednesday’s first day. Horton said that Gersten had already established “six ways to Sunday” that Bysiewicz agrees she has “represented no clients” in court.
Gersten was allowed to continue his questioning although Judge Michael Sheldon encouraged him more than once to speed up and move on to other areas, in his effort to show that she lacks the experience needed for eligibility to serve as state attorney general.
Bysiewicz ended a day and a half of testimony as the trial’s first witness about 12:30 p.m. Thursday.
Then Horton’s partner, Daniel Krisch, called Lesley Mara, Bysiewicz’s deputy secretary of the state, in an effort to corroborate Bysiewicz’s claim that she practices law in some form or other every day in her post.
Bysiewicz says part of what she does to practice law in her office is to provide advice in phone calls to local officials about election laws and procedures. Mara testified about a couple of occasions in recent years when she was on the same phone call with Bysiewicz and local election officials.
Gersten established in questioning Bysiewicz that she rarely documents such phone calls in which she says she gives legal advice — especially ones in which she said that she is on the phone alone with a local official. Bysiewicz also could not recall many specific times in which she had spoken to particular officials — although Sheldon, the judge, noted after a while that very few people can remember whom they talked to on a certain day several years ago.
Witnesses’ testimony is scheduled to conclude Thursday afternoon — at this point, anyway — with final arguments to be held next Tuesday.
Bysiewicz claims that her 11 years as Secretary of the State qualify her under a state statute requiring that the state’s attorney general have at least 10 years’ experience in the “active practice” of law in Connecticut.
The Courant’s account of the first day of the trial can be read by clicking here.