Jury sees footage seemingly showing Bob Lee using knife to do drugs in Nima Momeni trial close

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Nima Momeni’s defense may have answered perhaps biggest question of the accused stabber’s trial of why Cash App founder Bob Lee would have a knife prior to his death during closing arguments Tuesday when he pulled out a video ostensibly showing Lee using a knife-like object to do drugs.

Defense attorney Saam Zangeneh played the 12-member jury surveillance footage taken of Lee and his friend Bo Mohazzabi at The Battery club in San Francisco around 10 p.m. the night before the murder. In the video, Lee can be seen sticking an object that looked like a knife into a bag before sniffing a substance with Mohazzabi.

Zangeneh stopped the video for the jury to look at, noting that the object in Lee’s hand matches the dimensions and size of the murder weapon almost exactly. It’s proof, Zangeneh said, Lee was doing drugs with Mohazzabi and had a knife on him hours before his murder.

Momeni, a former tech worker, is accused of stabbing and killing Lee underneath the Bay Bridge in April 2023. Prosecutors have argued that Momeni killed Lee because Lee introduced Momeni’s sister Khazar to a drug dealer, Jeremy Boivin, who sexually assaulted her at a party at his residence after Lee left.

The defense claims that Momeni acted in self-defense after Lee, on a multi-day cocaine bender, attacked Momeni with a knife after Momeni made a “bad joke” questioning Lee’s fitness as a father.

If convicted of murder, Momeni could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The video is significant — prosecutors have spent the six-week trial saying that it made no sense for Lee to have a knife the night of the murder. The Battery club video may give the jury reasonable doubt to the prosecution’s theory.

During his closing, Zangeneh hammered on Mohazzabi, who testified in the first weeks of the trial, saying that Mohazzabi was evasive and his testimony was perjury because Mohazzabi told investigators he had not done drugs with Lee, which The Battery club video and other evidence contradicts.

During his testimony, Mohazzabi said he finished a juice cleanse and attended the party at Boivin’s the day before Lee’s death to spend time with Lee. Zangeneh said text messages showed Mohazzabi had only gone to Boivin’s apartment in the first place because he knew nitrous oxide and cocaine would be there.

“He went from a juice cleanse to a Colombian nose cleanse just like that,” Zangeneh said, snapping his fingers.

Zangeneh also told the jury it was telling that prosecutors would not allow jurors to see the murder weapon, a small paring knife, because it’s not in evidence.

“It’s in the police locker downstairs. I’ve never seen that in my career, but it happened here,” Zangeneh said. “You can’t look at it up close. You don’t get that opportunity. You get to look at a picture, a picture taken by them.”

DNA evidence from the knife, which Zangeneh called the prosecution’s “strongest argument,”  showed only Momeni’s DNA on the handle of the knife, but Zangeneh said prosecutors omitted a footnote from the DNA analysis that showed the analysis could be a false positive.

He said they never retested the knife because “they liked their answer.” He also said that investigators declined to test the rubber grip of the knife for DNA and did not analyze blood spatter from the crime scene.

“At this point the DNA stands for ‘do not allow,’” Zangeneh said.

Zangeneh noted that the brand of the knife, Joseph Joseph, is popular and that there was no proof it came from Khazar Momeni’s apartment as the prosecution argues, and explained that the government never searched Boivin’s apartment or asked him to testify.

“Wouldn’t you want to know what’s in Jeremy Boivin’s apartment? What if there was a Joseph Joseph knife in his apartment?” Zangeneh said.

As for motive, Zangeneh told the jury that Khazar Momeni’s reported sexual assault was overstated — she testified during the trial that Boivin had touched her buttocks, but that Lee was not present when the assault occurred, leaving no motive for Nima Momeni to kill Lee.

“They’re saying that touching someone’s backside results in murder, but not to the person that did it,” Zangeneh said.

“Unless they can show that our theory is not reasonable, it’s a not guilty,” Zangeneh told the jury at the end of his closing.

During a brief rebuttal before court adjourned, Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai said that the defense’s case relies on trickery and an unbelievable amount of coincidences.

“Nima Momeni was not struck by lightning 30 times!” Talai said

Talai pleaded with the jury to use their common sense and scientific evidence to reach their verdict, telling them to remember that none of Lee’s DNA is on the murder weapon, which would be “a miracle” had Lee been holding the knife for hours, as Zangeneh argued.

“Bob Lee is not here to defend himself today because the defendant killed him,” Talai said. “You are sitting in court with a murderer. Nima Momeni is a murderer … Help Bob by using your common sense, and not letting him get away with it."