To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Sec­re­tary in the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Trevor James has vowed to seek le­gal ac­tion and al­so take his fight to the polls in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, af­ter the po­lice ex­e­cut­ed a search war­rant at his home.

On Thurs­day, around 6 pm, po­lice and Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers ar­rived at James’ home with a search war­rant for his elec­tron­ic de­vices and to in­spect his van. This was based on an ap­pli­ca­tion made by Cpl Makeal Seechan, of the In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit.

The High Court ap­proved the war­rant un­der Sec­tion 5 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011. High Court Mas­ter Sookraj-Goswa­mi au­tho­rised the war­rant on Sep­tem­ber 4.

The war­rant al­lowed of­fi­cers to search James’ res­i­dence at the NHA De­vel­op­ment, Sig­nal Hill, and any re­lat­ed premis­es.

The war­rant al­so al­lowed of­fi­cers to re­trieve phones, com­put­ers and oth­er de­vices that might con­tain com­mu­ni­ca­tions, videos, im­ages and GPS da­ta linked to an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice lev­elled against James.

Po­lice be­lieve the de­vices may hold key ev­i­dence.

Po­lice are ex­pect­ed to ex­am­ine the de­vices for fur­ther ev­i­dence.

This fol­lows a sim­i­lar case in 2023, when po­lice searched the homes of THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine, deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Faith B Yis­rael and a for­mer THA of­fi­cial. That in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volved a leaked voice record­ing where two THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil mem­bers were heard al­leged­ly dis­cussing us­ing pub­lic funds for po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da.

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to the war­rant, James took to so­cial me­dia say­ing he would not be in­tim­i­dat­ed. Just be­fore mid­night, he shared a pic­ture of the war­rant with the cap­tion, “Con­tin­ued ex­ec­u­tive per­se­cu­tion. No fear. No bow­ing. No turn­ing back. Stand firm To­ba­go. Join me live at 5 pm Fri­day (yes­ter­day).”

At a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, James men­tioned his on­go­ing dis­putes with Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers. “For some Mas­ter of the High Court to be­lieve that some­how I am able to in­struct Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers is at best pre­pos­ter­ous.”

He added, “There is a need to change the con­struct be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad be­cause clear­ly, those who run the Gov­ern­ment now, they have no re­gard for the au­thor­i­ty of the Fifth Sched­ule.”

James ar­gued that the war­rant sug­gests au­thor­i­ties be­lieve he il­le­gal­ly ac­quired a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stick­er and might have ev­i­dence on his phone to sup­port that claim.

He dis­missed this as false, say­ing, “This is an at­tempt to get in­to my per­son­al life, to seize my per­son­al de­vices, and em­bar­rass me … to sug­gest of­fi­cers from Trinidad can do what­ev­er they want to the Sec­re­tary re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment of Li­cens­ing in To­ba­go.”

He al­so hint­ed at po­lit­i­cal mo­tives be­hind the search and ques­tioned why of­fi­cers act­ed ag­gres­sive­ly to­ward him but showed le­nien­cy in oth­er re­cent scan­dals in­volv­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

He not­ed that de­spite a re­port of a threat to his life, the po­lice have yet to act on it.

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day.

Mean­while, ad­dress­ing the mat­ter at a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty me­dia brief­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was still in its ear­ly stages and could not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails.

Al­so at the brief­ing, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher said she did not know of any in­stance of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion us­ing her of­fi­cers against James.