Following a tense morning in court, the fraud trial for a former city councillor is back on the rails after the defence lawyer abandoned his fight against a Crown application to have remote witnesses testify via video link.

Joe Magliocca, 59, is charged with fraud and breach of trust by a public officer. The charges stem from allegations he lied on expense claims related to travel on City of Calgary business during his second term as Ward 2 councillor from October 2017 to December 2019.

On Friday morning, defence lawyer Aryan Sadat made a recusal application, asking Justice Gord Wong to remove himself from the case, a request that was immediately denied by Wong.

The Crown proposed to call more than two dozen witnesses, each of whom appear in Magliocca’s expense claims as having been “hosted” by him (the requirement for reimbursement) with food and alcohol during his travels as the city’s representative at Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conferences.

Australia, Ireland, Canadian witnesses 

Those witnesses are sprawled across three countries — including Ireland and Australia — and include a Quebec cabinet minister, the mayor of Halifax and Ontario’s Liberal leader.

Their evidence is expected to be very brief, primarily to determine if they were hosted by Magliocca at an FCM conference.

On Monday, prosecutor Aaron Rankin made an application for non-Calgary witnesses to testify via video link, which Sadat opposed.

Sadat demanded the Crown file materials to justify the remote testimony application and then made a recusal application after the requested materials were filed, arguing the judge was in an “improper position” and should not read the document.

But Wong pointed out that judges hear evidence they have to ignore all the time, especially in the context of a pretrial hearing.

Defence not opposing application

In this case, the Crown was asked to justify the video testimony of each remote witness, which meant explaining their personal circumstances and the expected brevity of their evidence.

“It is required for the court to know what is the nature of the evidence,” Wong told Sadat.

“I don’t take issue with how the Crown has presented this.”

Sadat was given four hours to consider his next move and on Friday afternoon he revealed his decision.

“We’re not opposing the application,” he told the court.

The trial is set to last another two weeks.

Rankin indicated the first witnesses to be called on Monday will be Quebec’s Infrastructure Minister Jonatan Julien.