I’m tied up with other stuff at the moment, so no 3-blogs-a-day for a while…
BUT, this seemed too important not to share. Jim Lee sent me some new info today, and among other junk, I found this — a list of Q&As w/ Mata’s dad.
(!)
Jim Lee didn’t offer any context, but I think this looks like a list of questions that someone (maybe Jim) sent to Mr. Howe, with his answers back in bold. There IS a cover email from Mata’s dad to Jim Lee dated March 10, 2026 (!), which says: Mr. Lee, Attached are my answers to your questions. Let me know if you would like to discuss my responses, or any other matter.”
HOW/WHY was Jim Lee asking these questions WEEKS after the Complaint was filed? Doesn’t Rule 11 say you have to investigate before you accuse someone of wrongdoing?
Is this the smoking gun I was FINALLY waiting for? Uh….maybe?
This is one of those situations where I’ll just let each reader draw their own conclusions.
But let me add a couple of observations:
- Per Mata’s father, his daughter told him she “had an interesting hearing approaching”, and “She said it had received a lot of publicity.”
My first question on cross examination: “Judge Mata, how did you know the case received a lot of publicity? Were you watching/following any of that?”
Her spontaneous statement about this kinda sorta feels like an admission, don’t you think?
- Jim appears to have asked if Mata “invited” her dad to come to court. He says no at first, but then he describes what sure sounds like an invitation to me; “She said…if I wanted, I could watch it on a live steam, or come to the Court.
OKAY, SO LIKE TOTALLY AN INVITE. Got it.
- His comment about “a woman named Dani” giving him a copy of papers which he “briefly” looked at and then threw away….that sounds, um, uh….It sounds like either a cover story, or a red herring.
Hava Derby (and I believe others) specifically said Mr. Howe told them his daughter printed documents for him and said: “Dad, come here, you’ve GOT to read this….this is just….” Hava was talking about JUDGE MATA giving papers to her dad, not someone else. Hava claimed Mr. Howe told her that happened.
Mr. Howe’s statement to Mr. Lee saying Dani gave him papers may be 100% true.
But so what? Whether Dani gave papers to Mr. Howe is 100% irrelevant to the question of whether his daughter did the same thing, as Hava claimed. So why wasn’t THAT question asked?
- Despite taking the position Mr. Howe has NO role to play in this case, Jim Lee did hit him with a good question: “At any time, did you discuss the Laura Owens v. Clayton Echard case with Judge Mata?”Dad’s response was a slick one: “I never discussed anything substantively or evidentiary about the case with Judge Mata.”
Notice how dad’s response was NOT: “NO.” Think about that. His answer was not a simple no.
Instead, he qualified his response by saying (in effect) that he DID discuss the case with his daughter, BUT according to his “trust me” definition of the word, those discussions were not “substantive or evidentiary”.
OKAY, so what exactly did you talk about?
- Notice Jim Lee appears to have asked that as his next follow-up: “If so, what did you discuss with Judge Mata?” The response to that question appears to be blank.YIKES.
Is that because Mr. Howe refused to answer the question, or is Jim Lee withholding that information from me? Neither answer is good.
SO, is this a smoking gun? Read the document for yourself and reach your own conclusions.
My conclusion: this certainly isn’t little-to-no-fetal-DNA….that’s for damn sure.
FINAL THING — If you read this, Mr. Howe’s “theme” is pretty clear — “Nah, no big deal. I barely even hardly knew about the case, and yeah, I maybe talked to Julie for 2 seconds about it, but it was nothing important.”
FRIENDS — if that was the real story, why didn’t Mr. Howe just tell me this 18 months ago? If that was the real story, and if I believed it, I ABSOLUTELY would have moderated, if not completely, withdrawn or changed my claims about what I *think* really happened here.
Keep in mind, when I first heard about Mata’s dad being there, I did NOT rush out to hurl accusations at anyone. I did the best thing I could think of to investigate — I emailed Judge Mata and asked for her side of the story.
Did she offer her side? Absolutely not. She refused to answer, and then just hours later, she issued her post-trial ruling against Laura….filled with mistakes. Like she was rushing to file it before I could try to have her removed.
Look — despite what you think, I am not mad at Mr. Howe. I am not mad at Judge Mata….well, perhaps slightly. But my focus is only on one thing – THE TRUTH.
I want to know the truth. If the truth is that NOTHING improper happened here, then I will take all the punishment I deserve. I will be the first one to apologize.
But when something suspicious happens, and you try to investigate and EVERY SINGLE PERSON runs and hides and refuses to talk and refuses to let you see any documents that shed light on the truth, that’s not a sign of innocence.
