In her third day of testimony on Tuesday, Khazar Momeni, the sister of Nima Momeni who is on trial for the alleged murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee, testified again that Lee had never touched her.
Prosecutors have insisted that Nima Momeni believed Lee had been involved with his sister, offering a motive for why Momeni allegedly stabbed Lee to death. Text messages from Khazar Momeni to her brother denying this claim were again shown to the jury.
“Do you have any inclination, based on what had happened that day, that there was any kind of bad blood between your brother and Bob Lee?” Saam Zangeneh, Nima Momeni’s attorney, asked, referring to the hour and a half Lee and the Momeni siblings spent together at Khazar’s home shortly before the stabbing.
“They liked each other,” Khazar Momeni said.
Bob Lee’s character
Zangeneh also tried in his questioning today to make Bob Lee out as callous.
On the afternoon of April 3, Khazar Momeni had spent time with Jeremy Boivin, allegedly Lee’s drug dealer, Lee, and Lee’s friend Borzu “Bo” Mohazzabi. Mohazzabi made Khazar uncomfortable, she testified, so Boivin kicked Lee and Mohazzabi out. But Lee insisted Khazar leave with them, messages show, and she said she eventually blocked his number.
“Get your ass in my Uber,” Lee texted Khazar at 5:11 p.m. “Or never speak to me again.”
Khazar Momeni described Lee as being “all over the place” and “aggressive” in the weekend leading up to his death.
What’s more, defense attorneys emphasized, Lee left her at Boivin’s home — where she said she was sexually assaulted.
“Did Bob text you, worried about you being with Jeremy Boivin?” Zangeneh asked. Khazar said he did not.
“At any time, did he make sure you were okay?”
“No,” Momeni said.
Text messages between Khazar Momeni and Lee also showed her accusing Lee later that night of being unfeeling, though it is unclear why.
“Was just expecting more compassion,” Khazar wrote Lee just after midnight on April 4, a couple of hours before the stabbing. “If you had any respect towards me you wouldn’t talk to me that way.”
Soon afterward, the two had made up, Momeni said. Lee went to her home around 12:40 a.m. to hang out with her and her brother.
Defense attorneys asked Momeni if she sent those messages to Lee because she was upset about Mohazzabi, who had made her uncomfortable earlier that day. She said yes.
Prosecutor Dane Reinstedt pushed back on that narrative, giving examples of the “hundreds of times,” he said, that Khazar Momeni responded to lawyers’ questions with a simple “yes,” even if it was inaccurate or contradicted prior testimony.
Khazar Momeni’s reliability as a witness
“Mr. Zangeneh asked you a lot of questions today. And your answer, I think hundreds of times, was just ‘Yes,’ is that right?” Reinstedt asked.
“I don’t know,” Momeni responded.
Reinstedt gave an example of text messages that she testified were sent at 12:30 p.m., then later agreed were sent at 8 a.m.
“You’re saying I’m mistaken reading the time? Yes. It’s possible,” she responded.
“Mr. Zangeneh asked you both of those questions, and you agreed, essentially, no matter what he said, just because he said it,” Reinstedt said.
Nima Momeni’s attorney objected, and the judge ruled to exclude the question.
Khazar Momeni explained that she had consumed several drugs, and that her memories of specific text messages from April 2023 were hazy.
Reinstedt: Mr. Zangeneh asked you a leading question that those text messages were about Bo. You remember that question?
Khazar: Yes.
Reinstedt: Why would Mr. Zangeneh think that those text messages were about Bo?
Khazar: I don’t know why he thinks what he thinks, but they were about Bo.
Pressed further, Khazar Momeni said she “wouldn’t perfectly remember” the messages on her own, but when seeing the messages, she could remember them.
“I don’t remember something I said to my friend two years ago when I was angry at him in the middle of the night, high,” She said. “But yes, when they showed it to me, it does make sense.”
Nima Momeni’s character
Defense attorneys also began laying the groundwork to bolster Nima Momeni’s character to the jury. Zangeneh showed video of Nima Momeni and Lee leaving Khazar Momeni’s home around 2 a.m., just about 30 minutes before Lee was stabbed. The two men sat in the car for several minutes before driving away.
Zangeneh: We see your brother open the door for Mr. Lee. Correct?
Khazar: Yes.
Zangeneh: Is that consistent with the way that Mr. Momeni, your brother, was treating Mr. Lee at your apartment?
Khazar: Yes, he was a gentleman.
Zangeneh: And during that 3 or 4 minutes that they were alone in the car. You don’t see Mr. Lee trying to leave. Correct?
Khazar: Correct.
Zangeneh: You don’t see him trying to escape?
Khazar: Correct.
Nima Momeni, in text messages shown in court, had texted Khazar in the days after the stabbing about making a rape case against two people, though it is still unclear who those people were.
One of those people was apparently Boivin. Khazar Momeni has testified that Lee and Mohazzabi did not touch her, but today she testified that she was sexually assaulted by her father.
“I don’t like bringing this up but we have to,” Zangeneh said, and pulled up a text message from April 5, 2023 — the day after Lee had been killed — between Nima and Khazar. When prosecutors showed the text thread in the past, they had excluded the final message where Khazar suggests that her father assaulted her.
Khazar: Lol u dumb fuck
Khazar: Bob never touched me
Khazar: No one did
Khazar: Your dad did who you kissed his asss and begged to get him approval
“Sorry to bring this up, but Mr. Boivin’s scenario that you had wasn’t the first time that you dealt with that kind of situation, correct?” Zangeneh said.
“Correct,” Khazar said.
“You’d been assaulted by your father?” Zangeneh asked.
“Correct,” she responded.
Khazar Momeni’s testimony will go into a fourth day tomorrow.
