By: Atty. Isaac W. Jackson, Jr.
Driven by my passionate desire and natural call to duty to fight falsehood, I wrote a rejoinder to your shoddy piece entitled “One Cannot Undo That Which Does Not Exist”. In that article, I displayed analytical skills lubricated by inherent intellectual prowess as a fore warning that any childish return would be nipped in the bud. As predicted, you came crawling on your belly in an attempt to save face. Unsurprisingly, you veered into the unproductive gutter-styled arguments, removed from the substantive issue – of course, I FIRED you as my legal counsel.
Cllr. Johnson you cannot repel this fact. The attempt to do so will only expose your limitations under the law and showcase the opportunistic and unethical behavior which I thought your recent orientation as a lawyer would change!
As a lawyer, and a respected diplomat, I will resist the temptation to go down the gutter path with you in spite of fact that I have capability to do so. With this consideration, I find solace in the immortalized words of Former U.S First Lady, Michelle Obama that “when they go low, we go high”. I will go high by sticking to the central theme of this debate – I FIRED you!
When I hired your services to plead my prohibition case, “Isaac W. Jackson, Jr Vs. The Government of the Republic, Headed by His Excellency Dr. George M. Weah,” at the Supreme Court, many people warned that I was shooting myself in the leg. The feedback from cross section of people is that you are an outright sell-out with no regard to protecting client’s interest. My sources pointed to several instances demonstrating your lack of stick-to-it-iveness in standing with your clients. Now, I understand what the brothers were talking about.
But, I will not let my sources down to travel the path you have taken by divulging the content of our private conversation. Had it not been for my current role as a diplomat, and to maintain the strict confidence of others, I would have divulged your private conversation with me regarding the President of Liberia, and those disparaging remarks you made about the Supreme Court. Yes, if I were to expose your hidden face and views, the President will never have confidence in working with you directly or indirectly and the Supreme Court would hold you in contempt! Do you remember the key reason you gave for refusing to file the Bill of Information at the Supreme Court following my repeated request? Do you also remember the reason you swore blind for not wanting to work with President Weah, and the CDC Government? Keep being rash, somebody else will leak your recording or expose you for who you are, but not me.
SUBSTANTIVE ARGUMENT
Besides, the technical, legal and sophisticated argument in my rejoinder, [referenced “Parrying Legal Sophistry” dated January 27, 2020 to you], it is commonsensical to argue that had the Supreme Court accepted your withdrawal request in April 2019, it would not have invited you on January 15, 2020 as my lawyer. The fact that the Supreme Court invited you to appear in Court on January 15, 2020 as my legal counsel, clearly indicates and implies that your so-called application for withdrawal from the case was ignored, and NOT accepted by the Court. Because, as argued earlier in my rejoinder, said request was contrary to the well-established Rules of Court, which says “counsel is estopped from withdrawing from a case having accepted representation and argued the case before the Full-bench of the Supreme Court, while awaiting the opinion of the Court”. So, I was constrained to dismiss you as a way of exorcising your shadow from hovering over my case like bad odor.
Additionally, it is disgracefully sickening that you continue to make these not-so-smart moves aimed at putting me against the Court by the twisting facts and promoting deliberate falsehood.
In your first shoddy piece, you accused me of criticizing the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court. Aware that your argument was rubbished and successfully demolished on grounds that the Court was not beyond criticism in a democracy. You are now shamelessly claiming that I insulted the Chief Justice and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court. No! Arthur Johnson, I did not insult the Chief Justice, neither did I insult Associate Justices of the Supreme Court. Quite honestly, had I insulted the Justices of the Supreme Court, as you are falsely claiming, the Court would have held me in contempt. So, STOP peddling lies against me. You have embarrassingly turned yourself into a dopey liar. How dare you equate criticism to insult?
I am aware that His Honor, the Chief Justice was not happy about my criticism of him in the press. But, my criticism of His Honor, the Chief Justice did not reach the threshold for holding me in contempt of Court. Conversely, had my public criticism of the Chief Justice reached the threshold for holding me in contempt, a principled manner lawyer would have prayed the Honorable, the Supreme Court to purge me of the contempt on ground that my comments were borne out of the depths of frustrations and indignations to which my family and I are being unjustly subjected. But, not to run away and accuse me falsely as you did. Manufacturing false allegation against your client is far below the characteristic of a good lawyer. You need to stop!
You profess to be a senior lawyer, but you Head an Asset Recovery Team established by a senior colleague who was not even confirmed then as Solicitor General. What does it say about you, and the legal status of the team you so overzealously served?
At this stage, I will leave you to where you belong, and move unto something more serious, like working along with my new lawyer, Cllr. Finley Yujay Karngar, in advancing our engagement letters to the agencies of the Government responsible to pay my eleven (11) month salary arrears, and to process our diplomatic passports as well as to persuade the Supreme Court to hear our Bill of Information. I hope my readers will understand that that I am once more, constrained to write an unusually lengthy Facebook post. However, I think it proper and fitting to decisively unmask the pretense at being knowledgeable by an intellectual nestling like Arthur Johnson.
About the author: Atty. Isaac W. Jackson, Jr., is currently serving as Liberia’s Permanent Representative to IMO. Before his assignment, Jackson served with Liberia’s Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism from 2008 as Assistant and later Deputy Minister for Press & Public Affairs. Jackson defends a political career which arises from his days as a student activist at the University of Liberia, where he received a Bachelor in Economics and Political Science. He later earned Bachelor of Laws from the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law. Currently, he is a candidate for Master of Laws in International Economic Law, Justice and Development at Birkbeck, University of London. He can be reached at whiekonblo@yahoo.com