New York judge orders documents unsealed after Maxwell’s lawyers had tried to keep them secret
An extensive collection of “extremely personal” documents in civil litigation against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell can be unsealed, a Manhattan federal court judge ruled on Thursday.
The documents relate to Maxwell’s deposition in this litigation, as well as her early 2015 correspondence with her longterm associate, the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Continue reading...
The United States is failing to report vital information on Covid-19 that could help track the spread of the disease and prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, according to the first comprehensive review of the nation’s coronavirus data.
The report, Tracking Covid-19 in the United States, paints a bleak picture of the country’s response to the disease. Five months into the pandemic, the essential intelligence that would allow public health authorities to get to grips with the virus is still not being compiled in usable form.
Related: 'Flying blind': US failure to report vital coronavirus data is hobbling response
Circling back to testing ...
Trump, who has been boasting about the country’s coronavirus testing for months, was right in saying that the US has dramatically ramped up testing and is now testing a higher proportion of citizens than many other countries.
Continue reading...Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been released from a Baltimore hospital after being treated for a possible infection, a court spokeswoman said on Wednesday, in the latest health issue for the US supreme court’s oldest member.
Ginsburg, 87, returned home and is “doing well,” spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in a statement. Ginsburg underwent a procedure at Johns Hopkins hospital on Tuesday to clean a bile duct stent that was inserted last August, the court said.
Continue reading...Maxwell, who faces up to 35 years in federal prison, was denied bail and will remain in custody
Ghislaine Maxwell appeared in Manhattan federal court via video feed on Tuesday, to plead not guilty regarding her alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minor girls.
Related: More victims of Jeffrey Epstein have come forward, says lawyer
Continue reading...Trump’s commutation ‘does not have to be the end of the story’, Andrew Weissmann wrote in a New York Times column
Donald Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence for lying to Congress and other crimes discovered in the Russia investigation “does not have to be the end of the story”, the former Mueller team member Andrew Weissmann said on Tuesday, advocating that the self-confessed political dirty trickster be brought before a grand jury.
Related: Roger Stone speaks in Fox News interview after Trump commutation
Continue reading...Court also rules in a separate decision that the president does not have to turn over his financial records to Congress
The supreme court has ruled that a Manhattan grand jury may have access to some of Donald Trump’s financial documents, dealing a major blow to the president in his fight to keep his tax records secret – although the records were not expected to become public ahead of the November election.
Prosecutors in New York had sought the documents as part of an investigation into whether Trump had improperly handled hush payments, including one to the pornographic film actor star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Continue reading...
A vigil held in the memory of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old who black man who was killed by police in Aurora, Colorado, turned violent when police pepper began to pepper spray the crowd, saying that those at the vigil were unlawfully gathering in front of a police station.
Here’s a look at the scene:
Jacksonville, Florida, the city that is slated to host the Republican National Convention in August, announced that it will adopt a mandatory mask requirement for all indoor locations where social distancing is not possible.
That makes things a bit awkward since the Republican National Committee actually moved its convention to Jacksonville after the state it was supposed to be held in, North Carolina, said it would likely impose some restrictions to shrink the size of the convention. North Carolina governor Roy Cooper said he could not agree to guarantees Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee were seeking that would allow the convention to be the big, people-packed convention it was planned to be.
At 5 p.m. today, the City of Jacksonville will be adopting a mandatory mask requirement for public & indoor locations, and in other situations where individuals cannot socially distance.
Please continue to practice personal responsibility to help stop the spread of this virus. pic.twitter.com/dcAuolVMyZ
The president’s West Point speech went smoothly but protests have focused a harsh light on his use of the military
Donald Trump attempted to solidify his bond with the US army on Saturday, delivering the graduation speech to cadets at the United States Military Academy and boasting of a “colossal” $2tn rebuilding of American martial might.
Related: Top US military general Mark Milley apologizes for Trump church photo-op
Continue reading...A US activist arrested as part of a brutal crackdown in Cairo has filed a lawsuit against a former Egyptian prime minister who now lives in Washington DC, arguing he was targeted for assassination, arrest and torture.
Mohamed Soltan was arrested following the violent dispersal of protesters in Cairo in 2013. Court documents chronicle the extensive physical torture Soltan suffered in multiple detention facilities during his 643-day detention, including beatings, denial of medical treatment and cigarette burns to the back of his neck.
Continue reading...Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that could erode legal protections for social media companies for content posted on their platforms, potentially opening them to liability claims over controversial content.
Continue reading...Norma McCorvey, known as Jane Roe, reveals she was paid by evangelical Christian groups to take anti-abortion stance
Norma McCorvey, most notable for being the plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the 1973 landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade that led to abortion becoming legal in the United States, made a stunning admission just before her death in 2017, it has emerged.
“This is my deathbed confession,” she explained.
Continue reading...Former justice department officials and legal experts have pointed to Barr’s intervention in cases involving Trump associates
Legal experts and and alumnae of the US Department of Justice have begun sounding the alarm about Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr.
Recently Barr’s justice department withdrew charges against Michael Flynn, the former Trump administration national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal law enforcement officials about his dealings with Russia’s ambassador over sanctions, just before Trump took office.
Continue reading...The local prosecutor who argued two white men were legally justified in chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man, has been at the center of aggressive and flawed prosecutions of at least two black women in recent years.
One of the women was wrongfully imprisoned for over a decade on a murder conviction secured by later discredited forensic evidence, and another woman was unsuccessfully tried twice for helping people vote.
Continue reading...Trump has refused to release documents but Sonia Sotomayor says there is a tradition of Congress ‘seeking records and getting them’
As the supreme court heard arguments concerning Donald Trump’s tax returns on Tuesday, justice Sonia Sotomayor told a lawyer for the president “there is a long, long history of Congress seeking records and getting them” from occupants of the Oval Office.
Related: McConnell tells Obama to 'keep his mouth shut' after Trump criticism
Continue reading...The president’s tax documents have been reported on by various outlets, even winning the New York Times a Pulitzer
The US supreme court is in its second week of working by telephone during the coronavirus pandemic. On Tuesday it will hear the highest-profile arguments so far presented remotely: regarding the release, or not, of Donald Trump’s tax returns.
When Trump ran for president in 2016, he bucked tradition by refusing to release such information. Saying he was under audit, which would not in fact have precluded action, he promised to release his returns in due course. He has not.
Continue reading...The key liberal US supreme court justice is resting comfortably and will be able to continue to work
US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has had a series of health scares, has undergone non-surgical treatment for a gallbladder condition and was resting comfortably, a court spokeswoman said.
Ginsburg, 87, had a gallstone that had caused an infection and was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, a spokeswoman said. Ginsburg was expected to participate in the court’s oral arguments on Wednesday remotely from the hospital.
Continue reading...Trump’s transformation of the federal judiciary means the stakes have never been higher in an election than they are for Democrats
He is 37 and less than 10 years out of law school. He had never tried a case, nor served as co-counsel at trial, when he was tapped last year for America’s federal bench. But he did go on Fox News to push the cause of Brett Kavanaugh when Trump’s supreme court pick was mired in sexual abuse claims two years ago.
And now he is bound for the second highest court in the land.
Continue reading...Multimillion dollar scheme involved kickbacks to Fifa officials for broadcast rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cup
Two former senior executives at Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox corporation have been indicted over their alleged role in a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving kickbacks to Fifa officials in exchange for broadcast and marketing rights to some of the world’s biggest football tournaments.
The US Department of Justice announced on Monday that Hernan Lopez, the former chief executive of Fox International Channels and Carlos Martinez, the former president of Fox Latin America, have been charged with wire fraud and money laundering offenses, marking another series of indictments in the US government’s sprawling investigation of corruption in world football.
Continue reading...Despite public offer to help with investigation Andrew has ‘completely shut the door’, and New York attorney general is now considering other options
Prince Andrew has “completely shut the door” on cooperating with US investigators in the Jeffrey Epstein case and they are now “considering” further options, a New York prosecutor said on Monday.
Andrew was a friend of Epstein, the wealthy financier and convicted sex offender whose death in custody while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in New York last year was ruled a suicide.
Continue reading...Preliminary findings conclude Boeing ‘jeopardized the safety of the flying public’ in its attempts to get Max approved by regulators
A “culture of concealment”, cost cutting and “grossly insufficient” oversight led to two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft that claimed 346 lives, a congressional report has concluded.
The preliminary findings, issued by Democrats on the House transportation committee, conclude that Boeing “jeopardized the safety of the flying public” in its attempts to get the Max approved by regulators.
Continue reading...