Week 1 of Granath vs. Wright trial in Norway concludes with more witness testimony

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On day 5 of the Granath vs. Wright trial in Norway, CoinGeek’s Kurt Wuckert Jr. is back with another special edition live stream to keep us updated with what happened in court.

KPMG – Magnus Granath’s expert technical witnesses

Wuckert said on a previous live stream that Magnus Granath would have his strongest day when experts from KPMG testified for him. There turned out to be three witnesses related to digital forensics, auditing, and related fields.

Wuckert pointed out that this highly technical testimony was in Norwegian, as were the written notes on the screen, so both he and the translators struggled to determine exactly what was being said.

Many of the documents analyzed by KPMG were from the Miami trial (Kleiman vs. Wright). For example, they took emails between Dr. Wright and David Kleiman, noting that hash values did not match, indicating they had been manipulated. Wuckert estimates they looked at seven or eight such documents.

Wuckert found the way they presented this information less than satisfying. He noted that, in Miami, Ira Kleiman’s lawyers presented things in such a way that even a casual observer could understand what was going on, but in this trial, that wasn’t the case.

“I think this was the single worst segment of the entire time I’ve been in court here in Oslo,” he said, speculating that the strategy was to pepper the judge with technobabble. He believes this was a way to counter the judge’s potential sympathies to Dr. Wright as an inventor and family man who was cyberbullied to the point of attempting suicide.

Wuckert also pointed out that nobody tried to use this as evidence of a specific accusation. Instead, they raised questions about the authenticity of particular documents and let those listening fill in the blanks. Naturally, those who already think Dr. Wright is a fraud would use this as evidence to back up their claims.

Dr. Wright’s witnesses were a complete contrast to Granath’s

Wuckert then gets into Dr. Wright’s witnesses, emphasizing how their approach was in complete contrast to Granath’s. While the latter gave off the “code is law” vibe, Dr. Wright’s team was full of people vouching for Dr. Wright and explaining their history with him, putting their own reputations on the line in the process.

Taking them in order, Wuckert tells us about Shoaib Yousuf. He corroborated the creation of the company named C01N. Yousuf is a high-level tech professional who was mentored by Dr. Wright. He also attended Charles Sturt University, where Dr. Wright studied and taught. He testified that he went to Dr. Wright’s New South Wales farm and saw the servers and research facilities.

“This is all the stuff people say never happened,” Wuckert rightly pointed out.

Next up was Neville Sinclair. He worked at BDO at a high level in auditing and accounting. He said Dr. Wright is one of the most skilled auditors and forensic experts he has ever worked with. He corroborated the story that Dr. Wright pitched Alan Grainger, another BDO manager, on the idea of Bitcoin when he was still developing it.

The next witness, David Bridges, who worked at Qudos Bank, testified that he worked with Dr. Wright and how he got him interested in blockchain technology and logging for bank security. He worked with Dr. Wright on security technology that “sounds a lot like blockchain, but in the era directly before Bitcoin,” according to Wuckert. This witness turned down the opportunity to start a Bitcoin-powered bank with Dr. Wright, which is another thing people have accused Dr. Wright of making up.

Dr. Wright’s cousin, Max Lynam, was up next. He talked about his childhood growing up with his cousin and how they learned about computers early on. We’ve heard before (from Dr. Wright’s uncle Donald Lynam) how Dr. Wright had a close relationship with his grandfather, a cryptographer who served in WWII. Max Lynam’s testimony corroborated much of this. He testified that he knew Dr. Wright was Bitcoin’s inventor “from forever” as they were family.

After this, Dr. Ami Klin, a highly qualified autism expert, spoke. He talked about how Dr. Wright was bullied, how his father was abusive, and how his autism leaves him extremely intellectually gifted but struggling in social situations. Wucklert feels this testimony humanized Dr. Wright in ways he hadn’t seen before. During the cross-examination, Dr. Klin wiped the floor with Granath’s attorney for attempting to conflate autism with narcissism based on a blog post they pulled from the internet.

Wuckert’s Internet connection packed in at this point, cutting this broadcast short. Instead of the usual questions and answers, here’s a play-by-play of what happened tweeted by Wuckert from the court.

Granath VS Wright Day 🚨FIVE🚨 Master Thread.

Exam of Granath & Wright.

PLEASE RETWEET. I'll be live tweeting as it happens today.

🧵👇

— Kurt Wuckert Jr | GorillaPool.com (@kurtwuckertjr) September 16, 2022

Watch: Satoshi Trial Norway key witnesses put on record on Day 4