The following is drawn from a federal government filing (ECF 1882) laying out its case for admitting these communications at trial. These are prosecutors’ characterizations and allegations — Christian Sanon has pleaded not guilty, his attorneys dispute how this evidence should be used, and nothing here has been proven to a jury.
For months, the story of how Christian Sanon’s plan to install himself as Haiti’s president unraveled into an assassination has been told mostly in broad strokes: a Florida doctor with a messiah complex, a “Mr. President” nickname, a hired team of Colombian ex-soldiers. A recent government filing in the case adds something the public record hasn’t had before — a text-by-text timeline, in the words prosecutors say Sanon and two civilian confidants used with each other while the plot was actively unfolding.
The Confidants
Helen Manich and Robert Balthazar weren’t soldiers, weren’t Colombian, and — despite earlier reporting suggesting they claimed government ties — weren’t, according to the prosecution’s own filing, U.S. government employees or agents at any point. They were, in the government’s telling, private American citizens who became Sanon’s closest sounding board as his plan to remove President Jovenel Moïse moved from talk to action.
The Timeline, As Prosecutors Lay It Out
December 2020: Sanon travels from Miami to Haiti, beginning what the government calls active outreach to religious leaders and political figures to gauge support for overthrowing Moïse’s government.
February 4, 2021: Manich texts Balthazar with an update on internal jockeying: “Dr. Sanon called this evening…. Said the parties would not accept Gen Abraham as president; and therefore he was stepping up.” The line reads like two people discussing a friend’s career move — except the “job” was replacing a sitting head of state.
February 5, 2021: Sanon texts Manich naming names — which PHTK-aligned faction wanted which judge as president and which former Martelly-era official as prime minister, the kind of granular political intelligence you’d expect from someone deep inside the maneuvering, not a bystander.
February 7–8, 2021: Sanon circulates a fabricated Haitian arrest warrant to co-conspirators — the same warrant prosecutors say the Colombian mercenary team later carried the night of the assassination — and sends Balthazar the public decree announcing the firing of the judge central to his succession plan.
March 6, 2021: Manich forwards Balthazar a copy of what prosecutors call Sanon’s “coup decree,” noting it had come to her from Joseph Joel John — the co-defendant who has since pleaded guilty and, according to the government, has already testified to personally discussing the plot with both Manich and Balthazar.
March 28, 2021: Manich tells Balthazar that Sanon and co-defendant James Solages are working with a “US general” — someone prosecutors now say was actually Arcángel Ortiz, the man who recruited the Colombian hit squad.
April 2021: Sanon sends Balthazar photos of bulletproof vehicles and a private jet supposedly being arranged by his security-firm co-conspirators, and warns both confidants on April 14 that “his team is hearing great deal of chatter that JM will be removed today.”
June 2021: Sanon sends Balthazar a Spanish-language video prepared to announce his own installation as president, and, on June 7, a photograph of the Colombian mercenaries after they’d arrived in Haiti.
July 7, 2021, early morning hours: Hours after gunmen kill President Moïse in his bedroom, Sanon tries repeatedly to reach both Manich and Balthazar by phone.
Why It Matters in Court
None of this is being introduced as background color — it’s the center of a live legal fight. The government wants a jury to see these messages as proof Sanon wasn’t a duped outsider but the architect coordinating a real plan with real people, in real time, right up until the murder occurred. Sanon’s defense doesn’t dispute what the messages say so much as challenge whether prosecutors can prove who actually wrote them, arguing that without Manich or Balthazar testifying, the extractions are unauthenticated hearsay no agent can properly vouch for. The government’s counter is that it doesn’t need either of them on the stand at all — if it can show a conspiracy existed and that these two were part of it, the messages qualify as co-conspirator statements admissible without the declarant ever testifying.
Judge Becerra took up the dispute at a September 24, 2026 hearing. However she rules, the exchange itself — two people casually relaying a plan to remove a head of state the way others might discuss office politics — is likely to become one of the more striking pieces of evidence the jury sees, if it’s allowed in at all.
