Former President Moon Jae-in submitted a written opinion to the second trial court of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk stating that he believes Yoo Jae-soo is not guilty of the charge of tampering with the inspection.
Former Minister Cho’s lawyer submitted a fact-finding response in the name of former President Moon as evidence at the follow-up trial held on the 16th at the Criminal Division 13 of the Seoul High Court (Presiding Judge Kim Woo-soo, Kim Jin-ha, and Lee In-soo).
In this document, former President Moon stated, “All authority to make judgments regarding the start and end of inspections and dispositions should be viewed as vested in the Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs.”
The logic is that the termination of the inspection of former Busan City Deputy Mayor for Economic Affairs Yoo Jae-soo was an exercise of his authority by former Minister Cho, who was the senior secretary for civil affairs, and that he did not interfere with the exercise of his rights just because the results were different from the opinions of the inspection team members.
This is the first time that former President Moon directly presented his opinion in former Minister Cho’s trial.
When the prosecution asked, “Did former President Moon personally write and seal it, or did he read and seal the written opinion sent to him?” the defense lawyer said, “He wrote it himself and sent it to me.”
In response to this, the prosecution stated that it did not agree to the admission of evidence, saying, “The legal opinion was expressed based on a personal relationship with the defendant, and it is difficult to say that it was written directly in terms of format and content.”
On this day, former Minister Cho had a war of words with Mr. Lee, a former먹튀검증member of the Blue House special inspection team, who made a statement to the prosecution that was unfavorable to him.
Mr. Lee, an investigator at the prosecution, was dispatched to the special investigation team in 2017 and was aware of former Vice Mayor Yoo’s misconduct and personally carried out the inspection.
Former Minister Cho’s lawyer asked whether Mr. Lee, who was under inspection by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office at the time, accepted the prosecution’s investigation team’s conciliation to receive help and changed his attitude and actively made statements about suppressing the inspection.
In response, Mr. Lee said, “The inspection, which was reported as not guilty, was promoted again when the new head of the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office’s inspection department arrived at the time, and although there were four reports of not being charged, the inspection was carried out for three and a half years,” and “Director Lee was appointed by Chief (Cho Kook). “Manager Han Dong-soo,” he raised his voice.
Then, former Minister Cho took the opportunity to speak and directly interrogated Mr. Lee, refuting that the inspection had nothing to do with him.
Former Minister Cho said, “He was appointed on October 14, 2019, the last day of his short term as Minister of Justice,” and added, “I have never met him until he finished his term as head of the inspection department, and today was the first time I heard of a lengthy inspection of a witness.” “He said.
When former Minister Cho asked, “Do you still think the inspection was carried out because it was related to me?” Lee responded, “It’s hard to tell you everything, but I don’t think it’s completely unrelated.”
The court plans to examine former Vice Mayor Yoo Jae-soo as a witness at the trial date on the 20th of next month. However, it is unclear whether he will actually attend as three summons sent did not arrive due to lack of closure.