When former opposition Sen. Joseph Joël John returned to Haiti from a meeting in Miami with a Haitian American pastor and FBI agents in early 2021, he received an unexpected phone call from a Haitian government official.

How, Joseph Félix Badio wanted to know, could Joseph impose Christian Emmanuel Sanon on Haiti as president?

The exchange, which Joseph recounted earlier this year during the trial of four South Florida men accused of conspiring to kidnap or kill Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, raised a question that has persisted throughout the U.S. investigation into the assassination: How did Badio, who has since been indicted in the plot, know about John’s visit to Miami, and who connected the former senator to Sanon, a little-known pastor and South Florida resident who had recently returned from a trip to Washington?

On Friday, defense lawyers in Sanon’s federal conspiracy trial in Miami began trying to unravel part of that mystery, focusing on two individuals whose relationships with several Haitians implicated in the events leading up to Moïse’s July 7, 2021, assassination, have remained largely unexplored: Helen Manich and Jean Robert “Bob” Balthazar.

Both, it turns out, had once worked as FBI informants.

Nicholas Rahmer, an FBI supervisor, testified Friday that Manich and Balthazar had served as confidential human sources for the bureau, although neither was active when the alleged plot to overthrow Moïse was unfolding in South Florida and in Port-au-Prince.

“Manich was also a confidential human source?” Humberto Dominguez, one of Sanon’s defense lawyers, asked Rahmer. “Who was she a confidential human source for?”

“The FBI,” Rahmer said.

Manich, 70, worked as an FBI source from 2011-16, while Balthazar served from 2011-12, Rahmer told lead prosecutor Sean T. McLaughlin.

The disclosure offered a rare glimpse into the intelligence connections of two long-time behind-the-scenes-operators, whose relationships with figures tied to the conspiracy are emerging as a focus of Sanon’s defense.

“I always thought that this was a person that was at the level to know what was going on,” John testified about Balthazar, whom he met in 2010 and held in high esteem.

John said he believed Balthazar worked for the State Department and the Pentagon as a U.S. government informant. The former senator, who is expected to testify on behalf of the government during the trial, initially supported Sanon to replace Moïse before shifting allegiance to Haitian Superior Court Justice Windelle Coq Thélot, who was being pushed by Badio.

Balthazar was also a point of contact for Joseph Vincent, another co-conspirator and former U.S. government informant. Vincent, who previously served as a confidential source for the Drug Enforcement Administration, told Haitian police after his arrest in Port-au-Prince that Balthazar had sent him to Haiti to support Sanon.

Testimony this week revealed that Vincent and Ashkard Pierre, who served as a sort of chief-of-staff to Sanon and was often pictured with him in photographs prosecutors have entered into evidence from text messages, are cousins.

Foreign agent?

Dominguez pressed Rahmer about Balthazar’s reported work as a foreign agent, apparently on behalf of the Haitian government. A close confidant of high ranking officials in Haiti’s national police, Balthazar had long cultivated a reputation in Haiti as someone with direct access to American presidents and the State Department, and considerable sway on U.S. policy decisions.

“Did you know he was a registered foreign agent?” Dominguez asked. “Did your investigation turn up he’s a registered foreign agent?”

Rahmer, who had already spent hours testifying on the witness stand, replied he couldn’t remember if his investigation had turned up documents establishing that Balthazar had registered as such.

The defense’s questioning appeared aimed at illuminating the web of relationships between U.S. law enforcement agencies, Haitian political figures and other individuals, as well as events, that supposedly encouraged Sanon’s ambitions to replace Moïse.

Manich and Balthazar, who have a close relationship, have long been suspected in Haiti of having ties to the CIA, although such a connection was not raised in court.

Text messages introduced on Friday showed Manich regularly sharing newspaper articles about Haiti’s deteriorating political and security crisis with Balthazar, along with statements and positions taken by influential members of the U.S. Congress. She also relayed conversations she had with Sanon.

“Dr. Sanon called this evening,” she texted Balthazar in one message, explaining that although he was “positive about discussions,” with political parties, their leaders had rejected the candidacy of a former Haitian Army general to replace Moïse and “therefore, he was stepping up.”

Two days after Moïse’s assassination, Manich sent Sanon a screenshot of an article claiming that 10,000 American troops were on their way to Haiti to stabilize the situation. No such deployment took place.

Sanon, for his part, shared photographs of meetings he was conducting in Haiti to convince them of his popularity and political support.

“This last picture,” he wrote on Jan. 14, 2021, “one of the largest churches I preached.”

Frequently at this side was Pierre, who is currently in custody in Quebec, Canada, where he is fighting extradition to the United States after recently being named in a superseding indictment as part of federal prosecutors’ expanded investigation into the presidential assassination.

Sanon’s defense team is seeking to use the exchanges to show the jury the people and political forces behind the pastor’s efforts to replace Moïse, who was facing mounting anti-government protests over the length of his presidential mandate, overdue elections and a planned constitutional referendum. He also faced opened defiance from judges on the country’s highest court.

Prosecutors, for example, have portrayed Coq Thélot, as a justice who had been dismissed by Moïse. During earlier testimony in Sanon’s trial, they had a witness read aloud a Feb. 8, 2021, presidential decree placing Coq Thélot and two other justices into forced retirement after Moïse accused them of mounting coups against him.

Manich, however, offered a different interpretatio in a text message, arguing that the judges could only be removed under specific circumstances.

Sanon had portrayed himself as having U.S. backing as he sought to replace Moïse. Prosecutors insist no such support existed. They have described him as an indebted man driven by greed and a desire for power whose efforts to seize the Haitian presidency set in motion the events that culminated in Moïse’s killing.

Many informants

The issue of intelligence connections has shadowed the investigation ever since Moïse was found shot to death in his second-floor bedroom, and his wife, Martine, was seriously injured.

Unlike in the earlier trial involving the four South Florida defendants, prosecutors in Sanon’s case have sought to address those connections directly, hoping to do away with any speculation about the role of U.S. government agencies in the slaying.

Early in the proceedings, prosecutors acknowledged that Badio, the former government functionary who was transferred to the U.S. from Haiti last month along with 17 Colombian former soldiers, had also once served as a U.S. government informant.

“Prosecutors don’t want this case to become a trial on U.S. intervention in Haiti, but ultimately, that is why this case matters beyond just individual accountability,” said Jake Johnston, director of international research at the Center for Education Policy Research and Haiti analyst who has investigated the plot. “If you want to prevent this from happening again, we’re going to have to reckon with the fact that, at the very least, some U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of this plotting and did nothing to stop it. Either way, the U.S. is still picking Haiti’s leaders today.”

During Friday’s testimony, Rahmer identified four others who had pleaded guilty before trial or had been convicted earlier this year as having once worked as a confidential source for the U.S. government, including Vincent.

Only one, Arcángel Pretel Ortiz, was still active at the time of the assassination, Rahmer testified. His relationship with both the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations was terminated shortly after, agents said.

Pretel operated Counter Terrorist Federal Academy in Doral along with co-defendant Antonio Intriago, who ran Counter Terrorist Unit Security. The two businesses, collectively known as CTU, recruited the Colombian commandos who were supposed guarding Sanon in Haiti but later stormed Moïse’s hillside residence above Port-au-Prince in the middle of the night.

The group was accompanied by Vincent and James Solages, whom prosecutors are describing as an “underling” of Sanon’s. Upon arriving in the area, they shouted through a bullhorn that they were carrying out a DEA operation. They were not. Solages was convicted earlier this year along with Pretel. Federal prosecutors recently charged a close associate of his, former U.S. Marine Jimmy Glenn Thompson Jr., with failing to disclose information he knew about the plot.

Confidential sources

Rahmer acknowledged in his testimony that there are limits to knowing who is a confidential informant or working for agencies outside the FBI.

“Are those records readily open to the public? Is that something always kept confidential,” Dominguez asked. “It’s not like something that somebody can look up and check ... and see who is actually an active informant, right?”

As the trial wrapped up its second week, prosecutors said Friday that they still have 19 witnesses to call. Among those is John, one of several co-conspirators who has pleaded guilty and is cooperating in hope of receiving a reduction in their life sentences.

Federal prosecutors and digital forensic experts have relied on a massive trove of electronic messages to build their case. Prosecutor Jason Wu, during questioning of FBI analyst Elizabeth Riddell, asked about Sanon’s exchanges with Pretel, the FBI informant. She testified that between Jan. 1 and July 11, 2021, the two exchanged approximately 400 calls over the seven-month period.

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