Cristina advances the jury against the judge who investigated her attempted murder and gains positions in the Council of the Judiciary.

As the José Luis Espert scandal unfolds, former President Cristina Kirchner pushed two low-profile moves within the National Council of the Judiciary. On the one hand, she secured control of a vote in that body, and on the other, she advanced the impeachment request against Judge María Eugenia Capuchetti, who this week dismissed the false complaint against PRO deputy Gerardo Milman. These maneuvers sparked a fight within the body that will continue this week while awaiting the conviction of "Los Copitos," who attempted to kill Cristina on September 1, 2022, but without any "mastermind," as the former president had claimed.

Without waiting for the results of the October 26 elections and at the request of the K senators' bloc, Senate President Victoria Villarruel appointed ultra-K senator Anabel Fernández Sagasti as her alternate replacement in place of Claudia Abdala Zamora.

Meanwhile, Kirchnerism is advancing against Capuchetti in the Judiciary, but now with a conflict within the Disciplinary Committee . Committee members Diego Barroetaveña, Agustina Díaz Cordero, Alejandra Provítola, and Eduardo Vischi warned the committee's president, lawyer César Grau, who is aligned with the K party, that he is violating the regulations.

"Given the unusual procedural process assigned to the case, in evaluating the judge's complaint, we find it necessary to review the regulatory guidelines governing the actions of this Commission," these advisors warned in a statement, judicial sources told Clarín.

For these councilors, the way Grau is handling the disciplinary proceedings against Capuchetti violates any "test of legality, constitutionality, and conventionality," they warned.

And after speaking of the "mess that has been created," the councilors stated that "the continued insistence on producing the prescribed witness statements is striking, as there is no reason to believe that the evidence will be lost or that there will be no subsequent opportunity to obtain it."

In stark terms, they warned Grau that if Capuchetti moves forward, she would be prevented, for example, from challenging witnesses or disqualifying advisors, "in complete discordance with the objectivity—not even mentioning impartiality—that should govern the conduct of any public official."

The first group of witnesses in the Capuchetti case was summoned for this Wednesday. Until now, in Comodoro Py 2002, the Sixth Federal Oral Court will be delivering its verdict in the bombing case, where Sabag Montiel and his then-girlfriend Brenda Uliarte are on trial. The prosecution and CFK's plaintiffs have requested sentences of up to 15 years in prison. The leader of the "copitos," Nicolás Carrizo, will be acquitted because he was not charged.

Among the witnesses summoned is the Buenos Aires Province Minister of Justice and Cristina's judicial adviser, Juan Martín Mena, despite the fact that Judge Capuchetti filed a criminal complaint against him for perjury in a case parallel to Cristina's attempted murder and related to the chain of custody of Sabag Montiel's cell phone.

The note heightened tensions within the Disciplinary Committee, which is composed of Grau (president), judges Alejandra Provítola (vice president), Diego Barroetaveña, Agustina Díaz Cordero, and Alberto Lugones, senators Luis Juez, Eduardo Vischi, María Inés Pilatti Vergara, and Mariano Recalde, and academic Hugo Galderisi. The committee had already undergone intense discussion on August 13, when, in a vote with unusual alliances, it was decided to call five witnesses to testify regarding the failure to preserve the cell phone belonging to Cristina Kirchner's attacker, Fernando Sabag Montiel.

Last week, Capuchetti not only rejected the proceedings against her because she hadn't been notified, but also the summoned witnesses, especially Mena, saying he couldn't be heard. She explained that she had filed a criminal complaint against him for lying against her in a case to link her to the deletion of the phone.

To put this into context, the case against Capuchetti is being investigated by the Council by Federal Judge Lugones, a member of the "Celeste" ticket, aligned with Kirchnerism. Within this framework, he requested the summoning of Priscilla Santillán, Capuchetti's security guard who transported Sabag Montiel's phone to the Airport Security (PSA) headquarters; Damián Neustadt, the PSA officer who received it; and Camila Dafne Serén and Pablo Kaplan, the experts who unsuccessfully attempted to extract the contents of Sabag Montiel's cell phone in the early hours of the morning after the attack and were ultimately charged in a case opened by Judge María Servini to determine who destroyed the phone.

And finally, Lugones included Mena on the list, who had testified in the Servini case that "Capuchetti manipulated the telephone." Following this sworn statement, Capuchetti filed a criminal complaint against Cristina Kirchner's former minister.

The decision on how the case against Capuchetti, which Cristina Kirchner is so interested in, will move forward depends on the committee headed by Grau, the legal representative who joined the organization after Héctor Recalde's death and who votes with the Kirchnerist bloc. It was precisely Grau who broke the tie in the decisions to summon those witnesses. It was a heated meeting in which, on one side, judges Barroetaveña, Provítola, and Díaz Cordero, along with academic Galderisi and Radical Senator Vischi, were present; and on the other, Grau, Lugones, Kirchnerist Senators Pilatti and Recalde, and PRO Senator Luis Juez. With a 5-5 vote, the tiebreaker was Grau.

And now Judge Capuchetti's brief has appeared, in which she challenges the Council's entire proceedings: she stated that she was not notified of the investigation against her and therefore the witnesses cannot be heard. She also asserted that most of them have already testified in court, some of them as defendants; and she specifically targeted the statement Mena could give. Therefore, she requested a suspension of the entire proceedings. She said it is null and void.