Judge dismisses case against British former trader Tom Hayes, who was jailed over interest rate scandal
A New York court has dismissed a criminal indictment against Tom Hayes, the British former trader at UBS and Citigroup who served five and a half years in a UK prison for rigging the Libor lending benchmark.
Prosecutors in the US filed a motion to dismiss the case against Hayes and another former UBS trader, Roger Darin.
Continue reading...Anthony Rapp alleges Spacey acted to gratify sexual desire during an encounter in 1986, when he was 14 and the Oscar winner was 26 or 27
Actor Kevin Spacey faces the first of a series of sexual abuse claims dating back decades on Thursday in New York in a trial that may come to overshadow a glittering career on stage and screen that included two Oscars and numerous other top awards.
The case against the 63-year-old American focuses on accusations by Anthony Rapp, a star of the Broadway musical Rent, who five years ago publicly accused Spacey of sexual assault when he was a teenager.
Continue reading...Appellate court ruling prevented special master from examining 100 files seized from Mar-a-Lago with classification markings
Donald Trump on Tuesday asked the US supreme court to partially reverse an appellate court decision that prevented the special master, reviewing for privilege protections materials seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, from examining 100 documents with classification markings.
The motion to vacate the ruling by the US appeals court for the 11th circuit represents the former president’s final chance to reinsert the 100 documents into the special master review – and potentially exclude some from the investigation into whether he illegally retained national defense information
Continue reading...Long-running satirical publication files legal document relating to case of man who was arrested for making fun of police
The clarion call of justice is sounding across America once again, thanks to the tireless efforts of its finest purveyor of made-up news.
The Onion, the long-running satirical publication, has filed a very real legal document with the US supreme court, urging it to take on a case centered on the right to parody. And in order to make a serious legal point, the filing does what the Onion does best, offering a big helping of total nonsense.
Continue reading...Sherri Papini’s case gained national attention when she went missing for weeks but was found staying with an ex-boyfriend
Sherri Papini, the California woman who admitted to faking her own kidnapping in 2016, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Papini’s case grabbed national attention when she went missing for several weeks, prompting a frantic search and widespread media coverage. She eventually reappeared with an elaborate story of being abducted by two “Hispanic women”, chained to a pole for three weeks, beaten and branded before being released by the side of a highway.
Continue reading...Chief justice warns against linking contentious decisions with court legitimacy as vice-president attacks ‘activist court’
US supreme court chief justice John Roberts has defended his conservative-leaning bench from attacks over its decision in June to overturn federal abortion rights, as US vice-president Kamala Harris launched a fierce attack on what she called today’s “activist court”.
Roberts, in his first public appearance since the bombshell ruling to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, warned against linking contentious decisions with court legitimacy, saying at an event on Friday night: “The court has always decided controversial cases and decisions have always been subject to intense criticism, and that is entirely appropriate.”
Continue reading...Ty Cobb served during the ex-president’s administration and claimed it was one of his two toxic traits dictating his actions
A lawyer who served in the White House during Donald Trump’s administration, said the ex-president is a “deeply wounded narcissist”, claiming that’s one of the two toxic traits that dictate his actions and decision making.
Ty Cobb, who stepped down in 2018 because of Trump’s disapproval of his “conciliatory” approach, also said Trump is “incapable of acting other than in his perceived self-interest or for revenge”.
Continue reading...Analysis of ‘amicus briefs’ shows how closely Clarence Thomas’s wife was entwined with rightwing effort to reverse 1973 ruling
Ginni Thomas, the self-styled “culture warrior” and extreme rightwing activist, has links to more than half of the anti-abortion groups and individuals who lobbied her husband Clarence Thomas and his fellow US supreme court justices ahead of their historic decision to eradicate a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.
A new analysis of the written legal arguments, or “amicus briefs”, used to lobby the justices as they deliberated over abortion underlines the extent to which Clarence Thomas’s wife was intertwined with this vast pressure campaign.
Continue reading...Ex-mayor derailed ‘train wreck’ dinner with clients and colleagues, then was later considered for secretary of state
At a law firm dinner in New York in May 2016, an “unhinged” Rudy Giuliani, then Donald Trump’s suggested pick to head a commission on “radical Islamic terrorism”, behaved in a drunken and Islamophobic manner, horrifying clients and attorneys alike.
According to a new book by Geoffrey Berman, a former US attorney for the southern district of New York (SDNY), at one point Giuliani turned to a Jewish man “wearing a yarmulke [who] had ordered a kosher meal” and, under the impression the man was a Muslim, said: “I’m sorry to have tell you this, but the founder of your religion is a murderer.”
Continue reading...After court overturned 1911 New York law, state lawmakers produced act to create ‘gun-free zones’ and strengthen gun control measures
After a federal judge said New York could implement new gun restrictions passed after the US supreme court struck down a century-old law, the state attorney general saluted “a victory in our efforts to protect New Yorkers”.
“Responsible gun control measures save lives and any attempts by the gun lobby to tear down New York’s sensible gun control laws will be met with fierce defense of the law,” Letitia James said on Wednesday night.
Continue reading...Court motion submitted by ex-president’s lawyers argues some materials seized by FBI could be subject to executive privilege
Donald Trump appeared to concede in his court filing over the seizure of materials from his Florida resort that he unlawfully retained official government documents, as the former president argued that some of the documents collected by the FBI could be subject to executive privilege.
The motion submitted on Monday by the former president’s lawyers argued that a court should appoint a so-called special master to separate out and determine what materials the justice department can review as evidence due to privilege issues.
Continue reading...Ruling comes as plaintiffs say current Georgia public service commission election system discriminates against Black voters
Black voters challenging Georgia’s method of electing members to the state’s public service commission scored a preliminary US supreme court order in their favor late Friday.
The decision came after conflicting rulings from lower courts earlier this month, offering up a rare example of the supreme court’s 6-3 conservative majority’s siding with voters over state officials.
Continue reading...For three hours, Bryant provided testimony against Los Angeles county for invasion of privacy over photos of her husband’s corpse
Vanessa Bryant testified on Friday that she was only beginning to grieve the loss of her husband, basketball star Kobe Bryant, and their 13-year-old daughter Gianna when she was faced with the fresh horror of learning that sheriff’s deputies and firefighters had shot and shared photos of their bodies at the site of the helicopter crash that killed them.
“I felt like I wanted to run, run down the block and scream,” she said, her tears turning to sobs and her voice quickening. “It was like the feeling of wanting to run down a pier and jump into the water. The problem is I can’t escape. I can’t escape my body.”
Continue reading...The agency claims the restrictions, including a ban on providing water and food to those lining up to vote, are racially motivated
Florida Republicans intentionally targeted Black voters when they enacted new voting restrictions last year, the justice department said in a court filing on Wednesday.
The department told a federal appellate court that a lower court had correctly evaluated claims of racial discrimination when it came to Florida’s new law. In March, US District Judge Mark Walker blocked new restrictions on the availability of absentee ballot drop boxes, regulations for third party voter registration groups, and a ban on providing food and water to people standing in line to vote. The US court of appeals for the 11th circuit paused that ruling earlier this year while it considers an appeal from Florida officials.
Continue reading...Allen Weisselberg has been accused of taking more than $1.7m from the company, including rent, car payments and school tuition
Donald Trump’s longtime finance chief is expected to plead guilty as soon as Thursday in a tax evasion case that is the only criminal prosecution to arise from a long-running investigation into the former president’s company, three people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.
Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization, was scheduled to be tried in October on allegations he took more than $1.7m in off-the-books compensation from the company, including rent, car payments and school tuition.
Continue reading...Singer had been sued by writers of 3LW’s 2000 song Playas Gon’ Play for alleged plagiarism, and the case is due to return to court
Taylor Swift has defended herself as the sole writer of her 2014 hit Shake It Off in response to a lawsuit claiming that she plagiarised lyrics from the 2000 song Playas Gon’ Play by girl group 3LW.
“The lyrics to Shake It Off were written entirely by me,” Swift stated in a sworn declaration filed on Monday. “Until learning about Plaintiffs’ claim in 2017, I had never heard the song Playas Gon’ Play and had never heard of that song or the group 3LW.”
Continue reading...Combined amount of $49.3m is still below the $150m Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis sought after his Sandy Hook shooting lies
After already ordering him to pay $4.1m to the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, the jury hearing the defamation case against far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his falsehoods about the massacre told him to surrender another $45.2m to the grieving family who sued him.
The combined amount of $49.3m is hefty but still below the $150m Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis – the mother and father of slain six-year-old Jesse Lewis – had demanded over Jones’s repeated lies that the Sandy Hook elementary school murders in Newtown, Connecticut, were an elaborate ruse carried out by “crisis actors” hellbent on forcing gun control reform.
Continue reading...Tesla chief says social media company miscounted accounts as part of a ‘scheme’ to mislead investors
Elon Musk has accused Twitter of deliberately miscounting the number of spam accounts on its platform as part of a “scheme” to mislead investors.
The Tesla chief executive made the allegations in a countersuit against the social media company, which is taking Musk to court in an attempt to make him complete an agreed $44bn (£36.5bn) takeover of the business.
Continue reading...Twitter rebuts billionaire’s lawsuit and his arguments for abandoning the takeover as legal standoff heats up
Twitter has rejected Elon Musk’s claims in court that he had legitimate reasons to back out of a $44bn deal to purchase the social media platform, marking the latest development in a dramatic legal showdown.
In a filing made public on Thursday, Twitter called Musk’s arguments for abandoning the deal “a story, imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Musk no longer found attractive once the stock market and along with it, his massive personal wealth, declined in value”.
Continue reading...Jury finds former Trump adviser guilty on two counts of criminal contempt for refusing to appear before House committee
Steve Bannon, the former top strategist to Donald Trump, was convicted on Friday in his contempt of Congress trial - a victory for the House January 6 select committee that referred him for prosecution as it continues to investigate the former president’s role in the Capitol attack.
The jury in federal court took less than three hours to return its verdict and found Bannon guilty on two contempt charges stemming from his refusal to comply last year with a subpoena in the congressional investigation seeking documents and testimony.
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