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Case 1:20-cr-00338-PAE Document 1616-2 Filed 02/24/22 Page 78 of 117 A-5915 13 CAC3PARC tax returns. At the end of the day, the government's brief takes you at great pains through each of those three backdating transactions. And I should say, quote, backdating transactions. What you learn is what is undisputed is that's what happened. Mistakes in the craziness of this law firm where you were churning these things out every December and taking a portion of the losses into income, the tax loss, in the craziness of that and mistakes were made. And trades were done to try to correct the mistakes. You can't dispute that. The only question at the end of the day, as I say in the papers, is mens rea. And the mens rea when you read the government's evidence, the bottom line is he must have known. And he must have known because he was an accountant. And what we know on that is I think for two years, in the '80s, he was a junior accountant at 20 some thousand dollars a year. There is not a shred of evidence that he ever took a class that taught, quote, the annual accounting rule, and I think the Court knows the Second Circuit precedent that says "must have known" is an argument, but it's not of great weight. And I'll stop with this. I have to say, I wasn't in the must've known category. This wasn't something that I was taught in tax law. Maybe I forgot it and maybe the answer is it's so obvious you didn't have to teach it. But I said to SOUTHERN DISTRICT REPORTERS, P.C. (212) 805-0300 DOJ-OGR-00009491