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Tag: brand safety-nsf crime

  • Police arrest three after protest at asylum seeker hotel in England | CNN

    Police arrest three after protest at asylum seeker hotel in England | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Police in the northern England town of Knowsley, Merseyside, arrested three people on Friday after violence broke out during a protest outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers.

    Merseyside Police said those arrested were being held “on suspicion of violent disorder and taken to police stations to be questioned.”

    The protest, sparked by a video filmed near the hotel, had started peacefully, police said, but the situation later became tense and projectiles were thrown at the officers.

    Videos shared online Friday from the area appeared to show officers in riot gear with large shields and a police vehicle set ablaze.

    The police said they were dealing with two groups of protesters after a demonstration descended into chaos outside the Suites Hotel in Ribblers Lane.

    Care4Calais, a refugee charity, tweeted: “The far right have split into three groups and surrounded us at the hotel. The police don’t have the capacity to cover all three groups.”

    Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, told the UK Press Association news agency that she “was among 100 to 120 people from pro-migrant groups who went to the scene in reaction to the protest to show support for the asylum seekers.”

    “I’m trying to get in touch with some of the poor men in that hotel, I can only imagine how frightened they are. It was like a war zone,” she told the PA on Friday.

    Assistant Chief Constable Paul White of Merseyside Police said in a statement: “We will always respect the right to protest when these are peaceful, but the scenes tonight were completely unacceptable, putting those present, our officers and the wider community in danger.”

    “Thankfully we have not had any serious injuries reported up to this point, but for officers and police vehicles to be damaged in the course of their duty protecting the public is disgraceful,” he said.

    “We have arrested some of those suspects and will continue without hesitation to review all and any evidence which comes in, through CCTV, images or other information you may have,” he added.

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  • California state agencies investigating conditions at the two sites of the Half Moon Bay mass killing | CNN

    California state agencies investigating conditions at the two sites of the Half Moon Bay mass killing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two California state agencies are investigating whether there were potential labor and workplace safety and health violations at the two Half Moon Bay, California, farms where seven people were fatally shot last month.

    The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the state’s Labor Commissioner’s Office “want to ensure that employees are being afforded all the protections of California labor laws,” a state official told CNN in an emailed statement.

    The statement did not offer further details about the probe, saying neither agency comments on ongoing investigations.

    The suspect worked on one of the mushroom farms where he is suspected of fatally shooting four of his coworkers. The site, owned by California Terra Garden, is a mushroom farm where the suspected gunman worked and lived on for at least seven years, according to officials and a spokesperson for that company. A California Terra Garden spokesperson has said there were several mobile homes and trailers for employees on the property.

    The suspect was also a former employee of another nearby farm where he’s accused of killing three former colleagues, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus previously said.

    In a news conference the day after the massacre, California Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted the living conditions the farm workers faced.

    “Some of you should see where these folks are living, the conditions they’re in. Living in shipping containers,” the governor said. “Folks getting nine bucks an hour … no healthcare, no support, no services, but taking care of our health, providing a service to each and every one of us every single day.”

    And in a statement several days later, the governor’s office called the workers’ living conditions “deplorable.”

    “California is investigating the farms involved in the Half Moon Bay shooting to ensure workers are treated fairly and with the compassion they deserve,” according to a January 26 statement posted on Twitter by Daniel Villaseñor, the governor’s deputy press secretary.

    At the time, a California Terra Garden spokesperson responded to the accusations, saying the governor’s comments did not reflect the living conditions of farm workers.

    “The salary of all employees range from $16.50 to $24,” the spokesperson said, adding that workers receive “vacation days, company-sponsored health insurance, life/disability insurance, workman’s compensation insurance, and access to a 401(k) plan.” CNN has reached out to California Terra Garden for further details on how its employees are paid and for comment on the state agencies’ investigations.

    The spokesperson said last month that the eight families who lived on the property lived in “mobile homes and large recreational vehicles” equipped with kitchens, bathrooms, showers and “standard living amenities.”

    “No one lives in anything like shipping containers or tents as was erroneously reported. The families pay approximately $300 a month to rent these living spaces, well below market rate,” the company spokesperson said.

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  • Opinion: Addressing gun violence requires better means of measuring it | CNN

    Opinion: Addressing gun violence requires better means of measuring it | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Rosanna Smart is an economist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and co-leader of its Gun Policy in America initiative to understand the effects of gun policies. Andrew R. Morral is a senior behavioral scientist at RAND; co-leader of the initiative; and director of the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, a private philanthropy that funds gun violence prevention research. The views expressed in this piece are their own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Barely through January, America has this year already experienced 63 incidents with four or more people shot and more than 4,200 firearm deaths.

    These statistics do not come from official governmental sources, but are rather the result of information compiled and disseminated publicly by a small non-profit organization, the Gun Violence Archive, funded primarily by a single private donor. Our government collects no official data on mass shootings – and has no comprehensive data collection system tracking nonfatal firearm injuries – despite intense public concern about these events and the direction they may be trending.

    The federal government does collect data on firearm deaths, although complete nationwide data that link whether individual deaths occurred in the same incident is not yet available. And finalized data is always a year or so delayed. By comparison, federal data on poultry slaughter across the country lags by only a couple of weeks.

    What’s more, federal data collection on other aspects of gun crime and violence is abysmal.

    This seems like a pretty fundamental statistic we should know, or at least have some decent estimate of. Measuring only firearm deaths and not all injuries may underestimate the prevalence of firearm violence by a factor of two to three, showing only a skewed subset of firearm violence. Because firearm assaults and police shootings often result in nonfatal injuries, federal data systems track only a portion of these incidents that disproportionately affect Black Americans.

    Building a surveillance system for nonfatal firearm injuries would be difficult and expensive. In 1994, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded efforts to support such a system in seven states, but the project ended after just three years when Congress cut the CDC’s budget in response to its firearm violence research. It took more than two decades for Congress to approve federal funding to research gun violence.

    Now, a previously unreliable nonfatal firearm injury surveillance system is being redesigned with the goal of producing moderately precise national estimates of firearms injury hospitalizations by 2024. That’s a start, but what really may be needed is reliable state-level estimates to understand how laws and other prevention efforts affect firearm violence.

    The Firearm Injury Surveillance Through Emergency Rooms (FASTER) program, a 10-state pilot project launched by the CDC in September 2020, will test whether the National Syndromic Surveillance Program, which helps track urgent crises like the Covid-19 pandemic and opioid overdoses, can be used to monitor firearm injuries.

    The federal government could make important contributions to firearm injury prevention efforts by ensuring that funding for data collection and maintenance through FASTER or another system is sustained moving forward and creating straightforward mechanisms for researchers to access deidentified individual-level data with geographic indicators.

    Unfortunately, data quality on other aspects of gun violence is deteriorating. For decades, the FBI has compiled and disseminated information from local law enforcement agencies on aggravated assaults and robberies involving firearms. This system was retired in 2021. As a result, the federal government has been unable to provide comprehensive state or national estimates on important crime trends for the past two years.

    While a more detailed (and theoretically improved) system replaced the prior one, the rollout of this FBI System has not gone smoothly. In 2021, the FBI’s new data system collected crime information from just over 60% of law enforcement agencies nationwide, resulting in uncertainty about whether murder in 2021 was up 17% or down 7% from the year before.

    This crumbling of the nation’s crime data infrastructure, even if temporary, could be an urgent problem for any effort to proactively intervene to respond to emerging crime trends.

    Although the Federal government uses large-scale surveys of Americans to understand trends in health and risk behaviors – such as consumption of drugs and alcohol, use of seatbelts, exercise habits, and even sexual practices – questions about ownership, storage, and use of firearms have been notably absent from national versions of these surveys for almost two decades.

    Indeed, one of the CDC’s flagship health behavior surveys included questions on gun ownership, but removed that question from the core module after 2004. As a result, many studies of the effects of gun violence prevention that need information on state firearm ownership rates must use data that are almost 20 years old.

    Similarly, although the government’s 50-state National Survey on Drug Use and Health asks respondents aged 12 to 17 about handgun carrying behavior, no such questions are asked of adults, despite evidence linking gun carriage policies with firearm violence.

    Other important questions also are omitted from these surveys, such as defensive gun use, firearm storage practices, safe handling practices and training and safety perceptions.

    The lowest hanging fruit to improve our data collection could be to remove statutory barriers that prevent researchers from using important data that the federal government is already collecting, such as information on guns used in crimes. Since 2003, the Tiahrt Amendments have prohibited the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from sharing disaggregated crime gun trace data with researchers.

    Removing these blanket restrictions, or even providing more detailed aggregate statistics on crime gun possessors, sources and prior transactions, could help provide better understanding of diversion of firearms from legal to illegal markets, risk factors related to “straw-purchasing” (buying a gun for somebody legally prohibited from possessing it), and the flow of firearms between states with different gun law regimes.

    Other missing data from federal collection efforts include reliable information on police shootings, mass shootings, legal defensive firearm homicides, firearm sales and many other such data.

    Although everyone wants to see reductions in firearm violence in this country, specific proposals are often controversial, sometimes because there are no data demonstrating their effectiveness. If those data were collected, this would no longer be an excuse. Better evidence on the effectiveness of different policy or community interventions may rely on access to data that is not being collected now.

    The federal government has many of the requisite tools in place to do this, and it does it well on a wide range of other problems. Shying away from measuring this problem may also make it more difficult to fix it.

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  • One month before Tyre Nichols arrest, activists made city council presentation over fears of violent traffic stops in Memphis | CNN

    One month before Tyre Nichols arrest, activists made city council presentation over fears of violent traffic stops in Memphis | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A month before Tyre Nichols arrest and death, activists and organizers gave a presentation at the Memphis City Council public safety committee hearing to highlight their concern about violent pretextual traffic stops in the city they say led to the death or injury of five people since 2013, video from the committee hearing shows.

    Activists with Decarcerate Memphis made their presentation on December 6, almost exactly one month to the day Nichols was brutally beaten during a traffic stop by members of the now disbanded Scorpion unit.

    There was no specific reference to the Scorpion unit during the presentation, a review by CNN found.

    Among those at the committee hearing were Police Chief Cerelyn Davis and council members JB Smiley, Dr. Jeff Warren, Worth Morgan, Michalyn Easter-Thomas and Chase Carlisle.

    To highlight some of the danger of police stops, activists listed some of the people who had been harmed, including Anjustine Hunter, who was killed by police in 2013 after being pulled over for vehicle registration; Darrius Stewart, who was killed in 2015 after being pulled over for a headlight issue, and D’Mario Perkins, who died in 2018 after being pulled over for vehicle registration. According to CNN affiliate WMC, the Shelby county prosecutor in 2019 declined to file charges in Perkins’ death after the medical examiner ruled his shooting a suicide. According to investigators, two officers opened fire at the traffic stop after Perkins fired his weapon, the station reported.

    Two others were reported to be wounded during traffic stops in 2018, and 2021, respectively.

    According to the group’s analysis of traffic stops in Memphis using police data, Black male drivers in the city were disproportionately stopped by Memphis police officers, being cited 3.4 times more than White male drivers, while Black women were cited 4.7 times as often as White women in the city. The group said Black Memphians under 30 were cited six times as often as White Memphians under 30, also according to its analysis of police data

    The group argued that the action of pretextual stops were “discriminatory,” “counterproductive” and “dangerous” to residents of the city.

    “For a city that has the kind of traffic problems that we have, traffic enforcement is important. However, we do not want to enforce traffic from a standpoint of profiling any particular community, any particular group,” the pollce chief said at the committee hearing in response to the data presented. “We do live in a city that’s predominately African American. We do live in a city that has problems in our African American community.”

    “We need to really look at how do we extract data and be very transparent about the activity of our officers on the road,” Davis said.

    Unlike some other cities, Memphis does not publicize traffic enforcement data. Decarcerate Memphis said it collected its data from five years of tickets obtained from the department through public records requests.

    Five Black officers involved in Nichols’ arrest are due to be arraigned February 17 after they were fired January 20, then indicted on seven counts each, including second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping and official misconduct. A sixth officer, who is White, was fired and disciplined for violating policies in the Nichols case, while a seventh officer who has not been publicly identified is on administrative leave and under investigation.

    The SCORPION unit was created to tackle rising crime in the city. It was disbanded amid national outcry following Nichols’ death, the department has said.

    Defense attorneys in Memphis are going through their cases, trying to see whether any of their clients had run-ins with members of the unit, according to lawyer Mike Working. The hope is that whatever legal jeopardy their clients faced or faces will crumble, just as the credibility of the unit has.

    City officials have not released any roster of the specialized unit so attorneys are searching charging documents for mentions of the team’s involvement.

    “The tactics of the Scorpion unit were so brazen, and so many people have come forward that the entire unit is in question. And defense attorneys will ask for the chance to really review everything,” Working said.

    Charges will not automatically be dismissed, but the presence of the unit now means that defense attorneys will be able to see discovery, like body cameras or dash cameras, as much as six months earlier than usual, he said. The ability to wade through evidence sooner could mean attorneys could find something to get their client’s case thrown out, he added.

    “Scorpion, by its name, means there’s probably something there for the defense to investigate that must be disclosed,” Working said.

    It’s unclear how many criminal cases currently involve Scorpion unit officers, but after Tyre Nichols, it will be that much more difficult for prosecutors to build and maintain a case through trial, Working said.

    “They worked in teams, most officers on the team participated in an arrest,” he said. “So if all the people are going to be on a Scorpion team, I think it could be hard for the [district attorney] to piece that case back together once it’s been tainted by the Scorpion [unit].”

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  • Texas Attorney General Paxton agrees to $3.3 million settlement with whistleblowers who accused him of abuse of office and bribery | CNN Politics

    Texas Attorney General Paxton agrees to $3.3 million settlement with whistleblowers who accused him of abuse of office and bribery | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has agreed to a $3.3 million settlement and an apology as part of a tentative settlement with four whistleblowers who publicly accused Paxton of abuse of office, bribery and other criminal offenses in 2020.

    The former high-level aides – who also reported their allegations to the FBI – were fired within a month of their denouncement of Paxton, a Republican. They filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement to their former positions or equivalent positions, as well as reinstatement of lost fringe benefits and seniority rights.

    In a filing on Friday, both parties asked the Texas Supreme Court to defer consideration on the case to allow the parties to finalize and fund a settlement agreement.

    The filing included the mediated agreement which says that Paxton’s office will pay $3.3 million and that the final settlement will say Paxton accepts that the former aides were acting in a manner they thought was right and apologizes for referring to them as “rogue employees.”

    Paxton also agreed to remove the 2020 press release from his office’s website in which he described his aides as “rogue.” The press release has already been removed, and the filing says the settlement is contingent on all necessary approvals for funding.

    Despite the apology, the formal settlement agreement does not contain an admission of liability or fault by any party.

    In a statement on Friday, Paxton acknowledged the settlement, explaining why he agreed to “put this issue to rest” but did not mention the apology portion of the agreement.

    “After over two years of litigating with four ex-staffers who accused me in October 2020 of ‘potential’ wrongdoing, I have reached a settlement agreement to put this issue to rest. I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as Attorney General is unburdened by unnecessary distractions. This settlement achieves these goals. I look forward to serving the People of Texas for the next four years free from this unfortunate sideshow.”

    Lawyers for three of the plaintiffs also issued a statement to CNN, saying: “Our clients have spent more than two years fighting for what is right. We believe the terms of the settlement speak for themselves.”

    Former Texas deputy attorneys general James Blake Brickman, Mark Penley, and Ryan Vassar – along with former director of law enforcement David Maxwell – were the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

    CNN has previously reported that Paxton is facing an FBI investigation for abuse of office. He is also under indictment for securities fraud in a separate, unrelated case. Paxton has denied all charges and allegations.

    The former senior staff members largely stayed out of the limelight after filing the suit, but they broke their silence early last year ahead of the GOP primary, when Paxton was seeking the Republican nomination to be reelected as attorney general. They issued a statement responding to public comments that Paxton had made about the lawsuit during his reelection campaign.

    Paxton was reelected as attorney general in November.

    This headline has been updated.

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  • Family of Emmett Till files lawsuit demanding sheriff arrest Carolyn Bryant Donham | CNN

    Family of Emmett Till files lawsuit demanding sheriff arrest Carolyn Bryant Donham | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In a federal lawsuit filed earlier this week, a family member of Emmett Till is demanding that Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks serve an arrest warrant from 1955 on Carolyn Bryant Donham for her role in the death of Till.

    Last year, a five-member search group, including members of Till’s family found an unserved 1955 arrest warrant for Bryant at the Leflore County courthouse.

    Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, was visiting family in Mississippi when he had his fateful encounter with then-20-year-old Carolyn Bryant. Accounts from that day differ, but witnesses alleged Emmett whistled at Bryant (now Donham) at the market she owned with her husband in Money, Mississippi.

    Later, her husband, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, took Till from his bed and ordered him into the back of a pickup truck and beat him before shooting him in the head and tossing his body into the Tallahatchie River. They were both acquitted of murder following a trial in which Carolyn Bryant testified that Emmett grabbed and verbally threatened her.

    In 2007, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Donham on any charges.

    “It was Carolyn Bryant’s lie that sent Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam into a rage, which resulted in the mutilation of Emmett Till’s body into a [sic] unrecognizable condition,” the newly filed lawsuit states.

    “The Leflore County Sheriff is complicit in the trio’s escape from justice even though both Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam admitted to the crime,” it continued.

    “To this day, the warrant issued for Carolyn Bryant remains unserved. Carolyn Bryant’s whereabouts are known. This action is being brought in order to compel the Lelfore County Sheriff to serve the warrant upon Carolyn Bryant,” it added.

    CNN has reached out to Banks for comment.

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  • Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

    Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump and his role in January 6, 2021, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

    Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, the source said. They want the former vice president to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the 2020 election and the day of the attack on the US Capitol.

    The subpoena marks an important milestone in the Justice Department’s two-year criminal investigation, now led by the special counsel, into the efforts by Trump and allies to impede the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. Pence is an important witness who has detailed in a memoir some of his interactions with Trump in the weeks after the election, a move that likely opens the door for the Justice Department to override at least some of Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    Pence’s attorney Emmet Flood is known as a hawk on executive privilege, and people familiar with the discussions have said Pence was expected to claim at least some limits on providing details of his direct conversations with Trump. Depending on his responses, prosecutors have the option to ask a judge to compel him to answer additional questions and override Trump’s executive privilege claims.

    ABC News first reported on the subpoena.

    Pence’s office declined to confirm he had been subpoenaed. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment to CNN on the matter.

    Months of negotiations preceded the subpoena to the former vice president, CNN has reported.

    Justice Department prosecutors had reached out to Pence’s representatives to seek his testimony in the criminal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Pence’s team had indicated he was open to discussing a possible agreement with DOJ to provide some testimony, one person said.

    That request occurred before the department appointed Smith to oversee two Trump-related investigations, the January 6-related probe and another into alleged mishandling of classified materials found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

    In November, Pence published his memoir that detailed some of his interactions with Trump as the former president sought to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden. Pence and his team knew that the book’s publication would raise the prospect that the Justice Department would likely seek information about those interactions as part of its criminal investigation, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

    Pence rebuffed an interview request from the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, but allowed top aides to provide testimony in the House’s probe, as well as in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation. The DOJ successfully secured answers from top Pence advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

    There are no plans for Trump’s team to challenge the grand jury subpoena of Pence at this time, according to a source familiar with its thinking. But it would still be possible for Trump to attempt to assert executive privilege over some conversations they had, if Pence declines to detail those conversations to the grand jury.

    So far, Trump’s team has lost those challenges when Pence’s deputies and two White House counsel’s office attorneys testified, following Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s rulings that they must answer questions they initially refused to because of confidentiality around the presidency.

    Howell’s tenure as chief judge of the DC District Court ends in mid-March, meaning a different federal judge, James Boasberg, could be the one to field privilege disputes in the continuing grand jury investigation.

    CNN reported earlier Thursday that Smith had also subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien in both of the Trump-related probes, according to a source familiar with the matter. O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

    Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security secretary was separately interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the probe into 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, former acting secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • US officials disclosed new details about the balloon’s capabilities. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

    US officials disclosed new details about the balloon’s capabilities. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Biden administration officials disclosed new information Thursday about the capabilities of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that traversed the United States last week and what they are learning as the FBI begins analyzing the recovered parts after the balloon was shot down Saturday.

    US officials also detailed what they’ve discovered about the broader spying operation they say the Chinese government has undertaken using a fleet of high-altitude surveillance balloons across the globe.

    But senior Biden officials faced pointed questions on Capitol Hill from lawmakers in public hearings and classified briefings as Congress is demanding more information about why the balloon wasn’t shot down sooner.

    A senior State Department official said Thursday that the balloon “was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations” and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”

    The Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications, according to the official.

    “We know the PRC used these balloons for surveillance,” the official said. “High-resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations.”

    Signals intelligence refers to information that is gathered by electronic means – things like communications and radars.

    Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Chinese President Xi Jinping’s knowledge, sources familiar with the briefing said.

    The FBI has started its initial stages of evaluating the pieces of the balloon that were recovered and brought to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia for analysis, senior FBI officials said Thursday.

    Only evidence that was on the surface of the ocean has been delivered to FBI analysts so far, one official said, which includes the “canopy itself, the wiring, and then a very small amount of electronics.” The official said analysts have not yet seen the “payload,” which is where you would expect to see the “lion’s share” of electronics.

    The officials added that understanding the components of the balloon is vital intelligence and could be “important pieces of evidence for future criminal charges that could be brought.”

    Despite the latest revelations about the capabilities of the spy balloon, the Pentagon has insisted since the vessel was first acknowledged publicly that it does not give China capabilities above and beyond what they already have from spy satellites or other means.

    “We did not assess that it presented a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in actionable technical means from the Chinese,” said Gen. Glenn VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and NORAD, on Monday.

    Administration officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday on the balloon, which has prompted criticism from Republicans over allowing it to float across the US before it was shot down off the Atlantic coast.

    The officials told lawmakers that the US has assessed that little new intelligence was gleaned by the Chinese balloon operation because the Chinese appeared to stop transmitting information once the US learned of the balloon, in addition to US measures to protect sensitive intelligence from China’s spying operations, according to the sources.

    The US also believes what they have recovered from the shot-down balloon is beneficial to US intelligence, the sources said.

    Another source familiar with the briefings said officials said the balloon would give the Chinese better photos and signals collection than satellites, as well as a better ability to steer and hover longer over collection targets.

    The Biden officials told Congress that it’s still unclear what the motivation was for the flight of the balloon across the US, which prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his trip to China. One of the sources said that the US believes senior leadership of the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese Communist Party including Xi were also unaware, and the US believes the Chinese are still trying to figure out how this happened.

    In the classified congressional briefings, the administration officials argued that the US didn’t move earlier to shoot down the balloon in part over fears it could provoke an escalation of military tensions with China or even a military conflict. Biden gave the order to shoot down the balloon whenever the Pentagon felt it was safe to do so, the sources said, so the Pentagon ultimately made the call on when to shoot it down.

    The officials told lawmakers one of the reasons the balloon was not first shot down when it entered Alaskan airspace is that the waters there are cold and deep, making it less likely they could have recovered the balloon, according to the sources.

    The House briefing Thursday morning was tense, the sources said, with several Republicans railing against the administration, including GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said that the Pentagon made the president – whom she noted she doesn’t like – look weak by their actions.

    In response, the briefers tried to lay out a detailed timeline of the actions, the sources said.

    “The Pentagon was telling us they were able to mitigate in real-time as this was taking place and I believe that’s accurate,” Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN.”I believe the preeminent concern they had, as they expressed in real time, was the safety of US citizens.”

    After the briefing, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said it was wrong for the Biden administration to wait to shoot down the balloon.

    “They should have never let it into our sovereignty, they should have taken it another time,” McCarthy told CNN.

    But Republican Sen. Mitt Romney told CNN he believes the US made right decision to wait before shooting it down.

    “I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can’t imagine that would be the case of almost anything we do. But I came away more confident,” Romney said Thursday.

    Senators pushed defense officials at an Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday over the military’s assessment of the Chinese surveillance, with Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana telling officials that he did not know how they could unequivocally say it was not a military threat.

    “You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before and because I am telling you that that this ain’t the last time. We’ve [seen] brief incursions, now we’ve seen a long incursion, what happens next?,” said Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

    “We don’t understand because quite frankly, we have been briefed in his committee over and over and over again, about the risks that China poses, both economically and militarily,” he said. “China tends to push the envelope all the time until a line is set down.”“

    Pentagon officials said at the hearing that the Defense Department was not concerned about the balloon gathering intelligence over Alaska as it was not near sensitive sites.

    The balloon first crossed into US airspace over Alaska on January 28, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, said during the hearing. When the balloon was spotted, it was not determined to have “hostile intent,” Sims said, and officials did not believe it would impact aviation routes or present a significant intelligence gathering ability. That changed when the balloon began drifting over the lower 48 states, but while it was over Alaska, officials determined it was not over critical infrastructure.

    The House on Thursday passed a symbolic resolution condemning China’s surveillance balloon with a vote of 419 to zero.

    The FBI investigation into recovered balloon is the first of its kind in the bureau’s history, senior FBI officials familiar with the operation said Thursday as they described the initial stages and what’s been recovered so far.

    The officials said that this is the first time the FBI has investigated a spy balloon of this nature and assisted with the processing of such a scene. The officials added that understanding the components of the balloon is vital intelligence and could be “important pieces of evidence for future criminal charges that could be brought.”

    The parts of the balloon recovered on the surface of the ocean have been delivered so far, while recovering additional pieces of the balloon that sunk has been complicated by bad weather, officials said.

    It’s not yet clear where the balloon’s parts were manufactured, the officials said, including whether any of the pieces were made in America. Because analysts have yet to look at the bulk of the equipment on the balloon, the officials said that there has not been a determination as to everything the device was capable of doing and its specific intent.

    Of the small portion they have examined, analysts have not identified any sort of explosive or “offensive material” that would pose a danger to the American public.

    The FBI was alerted to the balloon on February 1, the officials said, because the intelligence community had determined that the balloon had an electronic element to it. By late Sunday – the day after the balloon was shot down – agents had arrived at the scene, and the first pieces of recovered evidence arrived at the FBI lab in Quantico on Monday.

    There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source declined to provide detail on what specific parts of the balloon contained English writing.

    Bloomberg News first reported that components of the balloon had English writing on them.

    The State Department official said the balloon was part of a Chinese fleet developed to conduct surveillance operations” with a manufacturer tied to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the official added.

    The official suggested that the US is eyeing sanctions for the presence of the balloon in US airspace – which US officials have repeatedly called a violation of US sovereignty and international law – noting the US “will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the balloon’s incursion into US airspace.”

    A recovery operation to secure debris from the balloon is ongoing with analysis continuing at an FBI laboratory in Virginia, but the officials’ remarks suggest the US has already established the balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology.

    However, the US has said it has been able to prevent the balloon from intercepting US communications.

    “The high-altitude balloons’ equipment was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons. It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications. It was equipped with solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors,” the official added.

    “We could track the exact path of the balloon and ensure no activities or sensitive unencrypted comms would be conducted in its vicinity,” a senior administration official said this week. “The US military took immediate steps to protect against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information, mitigating any intelligence value to the PRC.”

    President Joe Biden suggested Wednesday that bilateral relations with China had not been affected by the balloon fallout, but China reacted angrily to the shootdown, refusing a call with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a high-stakes trip to Beijing on Friday. New sanctions in response to the balloon would likely further inflame tensions.

    “We know these balloons are all part of a PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations. These kinds of activities are often undertaken at the direction of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” the senior State Department official added.

    China “has overflown these surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries across five continents,” the State Department official said, noting that “the Biden Administration is reaching out to countries directly about the scope of this program and answer any questions.”

    The official said that based on China’s “messaging and public comments, it’s clear that they have been scrambling to explain why they violated US sovereignty and still have no plausible explanation – and have found themselves on their heels.”

    “As we saw with the second balloon over Central and South America that they just acknowledged, they also have no explanation for why they violated the airspace of Central and South American countries,” the official said. “The PRC’s program will only continue to be exposed, making it harder for the PRC to use this program.”

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  • North Korean hackers extorted health care organizations to fund further cyberattacks, US and South Korea say | CNN Politics

    North Korean hackers extorted health care organizations to fund further cyberattacks, US and South Korea say | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    North Korean government-backed hackers have conducted ransomware attacks on health care providers and other key sectors in the US and South Korea and used the proceeds to fund further cyberattacks on government agencies in Washington and Seoul, US and South Korean officials warned Thursday.

    Some of those follow-on hacks have specifically targeted Pentagon networks and US defense contractors, according to the advisory from US and South Korean intelligence and security agencies.

    It’s the latest in a drumbeat of warnings from US officials that North Korea is adopting cybercriminal tactics to fund dictator Kim Jong Un’s ambitions, including the regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

    The statement from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, US National Security Agency, South Korean National Intelligence Service and others does not mention Kim’s weapons programs, but US officials have previously warned that a portion of the money Pyongyang steals through hacking can go to weapons development.

    North Korea’s use of stolen cryptocurrency to fund its weapons programs is part of the regular set of intelligence products presented to President Joe Biden, a senior administration official told CNN this week.

    “They need money, so they’re going to keep being creative,” the official said. “I don’t think the North Koreans are ever going to stop looking for illicit ways to glean funds because it’s an authoritarian regime … under heavy sanctions.”

    The news comes as North Korea displayed nearly a dozen advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles at a nighttime military parade on Wednesday.

    The new US-South Korea advisory did not identify hospitals that the North Korean hackers had allegedly victimized. The Justice Department has previously accused Pyongyang-backed hackers of hitting a medical center in Kansas in 2021, encrypting computer systems the facility relied on to operate key equipment, and another medical provider in Colorado.

    The advisory follows a similar warning from US agencies in July that North Korean hackers had used ransomware to disrupt services at health organizations for “prolonged periods.”

    In the statement released Thursday, US and South Korean officials accused North Korean hackers of taking pains to try to hide their identities – even posing as a notorious Russian ransomware gang. The North Koreans are also emulating non-state criminals in dumping online the private data of victims who do not pay, officials said.

    The hackers have used a popular software used in small and medium-sized hospitals in South Korea to spread their malicious code with the aim of locking up computers, according to the advisory.

    In addition to hacking, suspected North Koreans have posed as other nationalities to apply for work at IT firms and send money back to Pyongyang, US agencies have publicly warned. A CNN investigation found at least one cryptocurrency entrepreneur who unwittingly paid a North Korean tech worker tens of thousands of dollars.

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  • Family of slain cinematographer sues Alec Baldwin and ‘Rust’ production company | CNN

    Family of slain cinematographer sues Alec Baldwin and ‘Rust’ production company | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The parents and sister of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer who was shot and killed during a rehearsal on the ‘Rust’ film set in 2021 are suing actor Alec Baldwin, the movie’s production company and others over her death.

    The lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges the defendants caused intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and loss of consortium in Hutchins’ untimely death, attorney Gloria Allred announced in a news conference.

    Hutchins’ parents and sister live in Ukraine and are struggling to cope with the tragedy while living “in the midst of Putin’s war,” Allred said. Hutchins’ mother is a nurse, treating soldiers in a hospital near Kiev, and her brother-in-law is a soldier fighting in the war.

    CNN is seeking comment from Baldwin and the film’s production company.

    An attorney for on-set armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who was also named in the suit, had no comment.

    Last fall, a settlement was reached between Baldwin and the production company and Matthew Hutchins, Halyna Hutchins’ widower. Allred said this lawsuit is necessary because these family members also deserve accountability and justice, and claims that Baldwin and the film production team have not reached out these family members.

    “They haven’t heard from Alec Baldwin – the man with the gun,” Allred said, “the gun that ended the life of their daughter.”

    Baldwin and movie set armorer Gutierrez Reed are also facing criminal charges related to the shooting. David Halls, also named in the suit, has reached a plea agreement with the Santa Fe County District Attorney’s Office.

    “What we seek is an acknowledgement of what was taken – the loving relationship,” said Allred. “Whatever happens with the criminal case, we are pursuing this civil lawsuit for them to win justice.”

    Allred added: “There’s no real justice when someone’s been killed.”

    “Justice is in finding the truth,” added co-counsel John Carpenter.

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  • First on CNN: Trump’s former national security adviser subpoenaed in special counsel probes of classified documents, January 6 | CNN Politics

    First on CNN: Trump’s former national security adviser subpoenaed in special counsel probes of classified documents, January 6 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith in both his investigation into classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and the probe related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

    CNN has reached out to O’Brien for comment.

    O’Brien considered resigning from his post over Trump’s response to the violence on January 6, 2021, but ultimately decided to remain in the job, CNN previously reported. The National Security Council should have been involved in the handling of classified documents at end of the Trump presidency, and O’Brien may have knowledge of how those records ended up at Mar-a-Lago.

    Separately, Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the ongoing special counsel investigation related to 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

    Wolf declined to comment on his recent interview with federal investigators, which was first reported by Bloomberg. A spokesman for Smith also declined to comment.

    The interview comes after Wolf’s former deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, testified last month before a federal grand jury as part of Smith’s election interference probe. When Cuccinelli was asked at the time whether privilege claims arose, he said: “They did, and I didn’t say anything.”

    O’Brien, Wolf and Cuccinelli were previously interviewed by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.

    For the time being, Smith has not sought testimony from a handful of other potentially relevant Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller or former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, two other sources tell CNN.

    In the days after the January 6 attack, Wolf urged Trump and all elected officials to condemn the violence on Capitol Hill, calling what transpired “tragic and sickening.”

    “While I have consistently condemned political violence on both sides of the aisle, specifically violence directed at law enforcement, we now see some supporters of the President using violence as a means to achieve political ends,” Wolf said at the time. “This is unacceptable.”

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  • Former Pence chief of staff: FBI search of Pence home for any more classified material ‘not too far off’ | CNN Politics

    Former Pence chief of staff: FBI search of Pence home for any more classified material ‘not too far off’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, suggested Wednesday that an FBI search of Pence’s Indiana home for any additional classified materials is “not too far off into the future.”

    “There have been conversations about a consensual search to be conducted, and I presume that’s not too far off into the future,” Short told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

    Pence would give the FBI full access to look throughout his home, Short added, just as President Joe Biden’s legal team said he had done during a search of Biden’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, last week.

    As CNN previously reported, Pence’s representatives have been in talks with the Justice Department over searches of his home, as well as his office in Washington. They have said that they want to completely cooperate, though they do not believe there are additional classified documents in either place.

    A lawyer for Pence found about a dozen documents marked as classified at his home in January.

    In the interview on Wednesday, Short slammed what he saw as a “double standard” in how the FBI and Justice Department have approached retrieving documents from Pence’s and Biden’s homes, saying it took federal agents weeks before they went to the president’s Delaware home but that they had traveled to Pence’s Indiana residence the same day documents were discovered.

    No documents with classified markings were found during the search of the president’s Rehoboth home, according to Biden’s personal lawyer.

    The president defended his handling of the documents issue to PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff on Wednesday, saying he never had to be threatened to cooperate and that he has “voluntarily opened every single aperture” he has for searches.

    “To the best of my knowledge, the kinds of things they picked up are things from 1974, stray papers. There may be something else I don’t know,” he said. “But, one of the things that happened is that what was not done well, is as they packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should have been done to go thoroughly through every single piece of literature that’s there.”

    Short said that despite the controversy, Pence is continuing to consider whether he will run for president in 2024.

    “I don’t think he hears concern about (the documents) when he travels across the country,” Short said. “I think he hears encouragement from people as he travels.”

    But an announcement about any potential presidential run is not expected any time soon, according to Short.

    “I think the trajectory of most candidates who get in early to Republican primaries doesn’t really fare too well, so I think there is a benefit to him waiting until the end of this process,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Man who allegedly fired replica gun inside San Francisco synagogue faces hate crime enhancement over public comments | CNN

    Man who allegedly fired replica gun inside San Francisco synagogue faces hate crime enhancement over public comments | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A man arrested after allegedly firing a replica gun several times in a San Francisco synagogue now faces a hate crime enhancement, the city’s district attorney said Wednesday.

    The hate crime allegation against 51-year-old Dmitri Mishin is tied to statements he made during the incident as well as social media posts he made involving “several postings of an individual in Nazi-type clothing,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a news conference.

    While officials did not share what Mishin said while inside the synagogue, prosecutors believe he “harbored antisemitic views and that was the motivation for his actions,” Jenkins said. The hate crime allegation will enhance punishment guidelines if he is convicted, she added.

    Mishin was arrested Friday, days after he allegedly stepped inside a synagogue in the Richmond District during a gathering and “made a verbal statement,” pulled out what appeared to be a firearm and shot several times inside the building, police have said.

    Police recovered expended shell casings at the scene and at the time said they believed he had been firing blanks.

    Mishin was charged Wednesday morning with two felony counts of “making threats obstructing exercise of religion,” and six misdemeanor counts of disturbing a religious meeting and brandishing a replica firearm, the district attorney’s office announced.

    He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of all charges, according to Jenkins. CNN has been unable to identify an attorney for Mishin.

    “It is clear that antisemitism is still active and strong even here in San Francisco, in such a diverse place, and it’s something that will not be tolerated by this office or by myself,” Jenkins said.

    Mishin was originally scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday but will now be arraigned Thursday, Jenkins said. Her office will request he be detained without bail, she added.

    “Anyone who would walk into a synagogue of that sort, and make the statements that he did and displayed what appeared to be a firearm, is somebody who poses a public safety risk,” Jenkins said.

    The incident at the San Francisco synagogue came just days after a man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a New Jersey synagogue amid a backdrop of recent incendiary antisemitic incidents, including tweets from Kanye West, signs over a major Los Angeles bridge and messages projected on buildings in Florida.

    The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which has tracked incidents of US antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault since 1979, found 2,717 incidents of antisemitism in the US in 2021, up a significant 34% from the previous year.

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  • Suspect in New Year’s Eve machete attack in New York pleads not guilty | CNN

    Suspect in New Year’s Eve machete attack in New York pleads not guilty | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The man who allegedly attacked New York police officers with a machete on New Year’s Eve pleaded not guilty to state charges in court Wednesday.

    Trevor Bickford, 19, appeared in a Manhattan courtroom wearing a tan uniform with his wrists and ankles shackled. He spoke only to enter his plea.

    Bickford was indicted January 6 on 18 counts, nine of which included charges of first-degree attempted murder, assault, aggravated assault on a police officer, attempted aggravated assault on a police officer and attempted assault in furtherance of an act or as a crime of terrorism, according to the indictment.

    He is also facing several other charges related to assault, attempted assault and attempted murder.

    CNN has reached out to Rosemary Vassallo-Vellucci, Bickford’s attorney with the Legal Aid Society, for comment. Last month, the attorney said her client should be presumed innocent.

    On New Year’s Eve, Bickford allegedly entered the security area of the Times Square checkpoint, pulled out a machete and struck an officer with the blade and another officer in the head with the handle, authorities have said. He then swung the blade at a third officer, who shot the suspect in the shoulder, according to the NYPD.

    Bickford told authorities during his interview that he said “(Allahu) Akbar” before he walked up and hit the officer over the head with the weapon, according to a criminal complaint.

    Prosecutors have alleged the suspect said that all government officials were his target, since they “cannot be proper Muslims because the United States government supports Israel.”

    The three officers were hospitalized in stable condition and have since been released.

    The suspect was interviewed in December by federal agents in Maine after he said he wanted to travel overseas to help fellow Muslims and was willing to die for his religion, multiple law enforcement officers have said.

    In addition to the state charges, Bickford faces federal charges of four counts of attempted murder and is expected back in Manhattan federal court on February 20.

    New York prosecutors said they have received body camera footage, grand jury minutes, surveillance video and medical records related to the case, but have yet to receive material requested from the federal government’s case.

    Defense motions must be filed by March 22 and prosecutors must respond by April 12, Judge Gregory Carro said. He will issue a decision on May 3.

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  • Forensic expert testifies she found gunshot primer residue particles on Alex Murdaugh’s shirt and hands, and on a jacket | CNN

    Forensic expert testifies she found gunshot primer residue particles on Alex Murdaugh’s shirt and hands, and on a jacket | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A forensic scientist testified in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial Tuesday she found gunshot primer residue particles on clothes the now-disbarred South Carolina attorney was wearing the night his wife and son were killed – and on a blue jacket that has drawn increasing attention in the proceedings.

    The particles were found on samples taken from Murdaugh’s hands, as well as the shirt and shorts he was wearing the night the two were fatally shot in 2021, Megan Fletcher, a forensic scientist who analyzes gunshot residue for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, testified.

    The findings could mean those items were close to a firearm that was discharged, or the particles could have been transferred to those items from an object with gunshot primer residue on it, she said.

    In the case of a person’s hands, the particles could indicate the person fired a gun, Fletcher testified. She could not say when those particles would have been deposited. The Murdaughs owned firearms and had a shooting range on their property.

    Primer is one of the elements – along with the powder, the bullet and the casing – that make up an ammunition cartridge, often referred to as a round.

    Fletcher also examined a blue rain jacket that investigators found in a closet at the home of Murdaugh’s mother several months after the killings, she said. She found 38 particles of gunshot primer residue inside the jacket, which she described as a “significant number,” as well as 14 particles on the outside, she testified.

    “If a recently fired firearm were wrapped up inside that jacket, would that be consistent with your findings?” prosecutor John Meadors asked.

    “There is a possibility of that, yes,” Fletcher responded. The prosecution has said the murder weapon has yet to be found.

    The court heard about that blue rain jacket a day earlier, when defense attorneys argued to keep it out of evidence. A caregiver for Murdaugh’s mother, Mushell Smith, first testified Monday that Murdaugh went to his mother’s home early one morning after the killings and headed upstairs with something blue – which she described as a tarp – in his hands.

    South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Agent Kristin Moore told the court later on Monday. agent Kristin Moore told the court later on Monday investigators found both a blue tarp and a blue rain jacket on the second floor of the mother’s home.

    Without the jury present, the defense on Monday asked the judge to rule that the jacket shouldn’t be considered evidence. They argued the caregiver testified she saw Murdaugh carrying only a tarp – not a jacket – and said nothing connected Murdaugh to the jacket. The judge on Tuesday denied the defense’s request.

    Under cross-examination Wednesday, Fletcher acknowledged there were myriad possibilities for how the particles could have ended up on Murdaugh’s hands or the jacket, including if he had simply held a firearm or if the jacket made contact with the weapon.

    First responders testified early in the prosecution’s case that Murdaugh had a shotgun when they arrived at the scene. It was entered into evidence and is not believed to be a murder weapon.

    “When I analyzed the evidence, I did not know that he had a firearm in his hand,” Fletcher said under questioning by defense attorney Jim Griffin. “But that would be consistent with somebody who had a firearm in his hand prior to collection.”

    Griffin posited there were “just a whole lot of possibilities what could have happened, right?”

    “That’s correct,” Fletcher said.

    “And all you can tell us is what you saw under a microscope.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “You can’t tell us how it got there, or when it got there.”

    “That’s correct.”

    But on re-direct, Fletcher underscored that the number of gunshot residue particles found on the interior of the jacket was unusual.

    “Typically, people wear their clothing right side out,” she said. “And so, if they’re in the vicinity to the discharge of a shooting, that’s where the particles are going to land.

    “On the outside?” Meadors asked.

    “Yes, sir,” Fletcher said.

    Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of his wife Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and his 22-year-old son Paul on June 7, 2021.

    Murdaugh called 911 the night of the killings to report he’d found his wife and son shot dead at the family’s home in Islandton, South Carolina – a property known as Moselle.

    Prosecutors accuse Murdaugh of committing the murders to distract attention from a series of alleged illicit schemes he was running to avoid “personal legal and financial ruin,” per court filings. Separate from the murder charges, Murdaugh faces 99 charges stemming from alleged financial crimes, per the state attorney general. Opening statements were delivered January 25.

    Jurors on Tuesday also heard from Murdaugh’s longtime friend and former law partner, who became the third witness to identify the disgraced former attorney’s voice on a video clip that authorities say was recorded shortly before the killings.

    The video, just short of a minute long, was filmed on Paul Murdaugh’s phone starting at 8:44 p.m. the night of the killings, a law enforcement witness testified earlier in the trial. Three different voices could be heard in the footage, which appeared to have been recorded around the Murdaugh family’s kennels, according to that earlier testimony.

    Prosecutors believe one of those voices – the only other on the video besides the victims’ – belongs to Alex Murdaugh, placing him at the scene at the time of the killings. Murdaugh has maintained in interviews with law enforcement he was not there.

    On Tuesday, the friend and former law partner, Ronnie Crosby, testified that after the killings, Murdaugh shared he had dinner with Maggie and Paul, and then fell asleep on the couch while the two went to the kennels on the Murdaugh property.

    Murdaugh told Crosby that after he woke up, Murdaugh drove to his parents’ house – roughly 20 minutes away – to see his mother, and when he returned home, discovered Maggie and Paul had been fatally shot, Crosby testified.

    “He specifically said he did not (go to the kennels),” Crosby testified.

    When the prosecution on Tuesday played the video from Paul’s phone, Crosby said he identified three voices: Paul’s, Maggie’s and Alex’s. When asked if he was certain that’s who he heard, Crosby replied, “I’m 100% sure that’s whose voices are on that audio.”

    Two other witnesses told the court last week they were certain they heard Alex Murdaugh’s voice in that footage.

    Smith, the caregiver, testified Monday that Murdaugh visited his mother for about 15 or 20 minutes the night of the killings.

    Also Tuesday, jurors heard from Jeanne Seckinger, the chief financial officer of Alex Murdaugh’s former law firm who testified last week without the jury present. At the time, the judge still was weighing whether to allow the admission of evidence about the alleged financial schemes. He decided Monday to allow it.

    Seckinger testified Tuesday – this time in front of jurors – that she confronted Murdaugh about missing funds from the firm on the morning of June 7, 2021 – hours before his wife and son would be killed.

    She looked for Alex that morning and found him standing outside his office, she testified. He “looked at me with a pretty dirty look – one I’ve not seen before – and said, ‘What do you need now?’ Clearly disgusted with me.” she testified.

    Seckinger told Murdaugh she had reason to believe he personally received legal fees from a settlement – amounting to about $792,000 – that should have been made payable to the law firm, she testified.

    “He assured me again that money was in there,” Seckinger said Tuesday. “I told him I still needed to see ledgers or proof that it was.”

    Jeanne Seckinger speaks about Alex Murdaugh's alleged financial crimes during his double murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse on Tuesday.

    At the time, Murdaugh was facing a lawsuit from the family of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, who was killed in February 2019 when a boat, owned by Murdaugh and allegedly driven by Paul, struck a bridge piling.

    Murdaugh’s financial records – which state court filings said “would expose (Murdaugh) for his years of alleged misdeeds” – could have been disclosed following a hearing in the civil case scheduled for June 10, 2021, three days after the killings.

    Prosecutors’ pretrial motion contended “the murders served as Murdaugh’s means to shift the focus away from himself and buy some additional time to try and prevent his financial crimes from being uncovered, which, if revealed, would have resulted in personal legal and financial ruin for Murdaugh.” According to that filing, the missing money had already been spent.

    But the June 10 hearing was canceled after Maggie’s and Paul’s deaths, Seckinger said last week.

    Immediately after the killings, no one at the firm was concerned about finding the missing money, “because we were concerned about Alex,” Seckinger testified Tuesday.

    Yet Seckinger dug into more of Murdaugh’s records in the weeks ahead and found more impropriety, she testified. In September 2021, the firm’s partners confronted Murdaugh about the money and informed him they were forcing him to resign, she told the court.

    To cover the cost of the misappropriated money, “Each partner put up money and we refunded the money to the clients,” Seckinger told the court. When asked why, she said that Murdaugh “stole it.”

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  • Suspect in Dallas Zoo animal thefts allegedly admitted to the crime and says he would do it again, affidavits claim | CNN

    Suspect in Dallas Zoo animal thefts allegedly admitted to the crime and says he would do it again, affidavits claim | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The man who faces charges stemming from a string of suspicious activities at the Dallas Zoo allegedly admitted to stealing two tamarin monkeys and trying to steal the clouded snow leopard last month, according to arrest warrant affidavits.

    Davion Irvin also told police that he wants to return to the zoo and take more animals if he gets out of jail, the affidavits claim.

    Irvin, 24, is currently charged with six counts of animal cruelty and two counts of burglary to a building after Dallas police arrested him last week. He is being held at the Dallas County Jail on $25,000 bond, according to inmate search records. CNN has been unable to determine if Irvin has retained an attorney at this time.

    His arrest warrant documents reveal new details about a peculiar case that has gripped the nation’s attention in recent weeks and triggered some concern among zoo staffers.

    Although the monkeys were eventually found at an unoccupied home in the Dallas area, their disappearance followed a series of suspicious incidents at the zoo involving a leopard, langur monkeys and a vulture’s death, leading to a hike in security, including more cameras, patrols and overnight staff.

    On January 13 during the early morning hours, Irvin allegedly entered the Dallas Zoo when it was closed to the public and intentionally cut the fenced enclosure for the clouded snow leopard, according to the affidavits. Irvin then allegedly entered the habitat to take the leopard, which is valued at $3,500 to $20,000, the documents say.

    Irvin allegedly told investigators he petted the leopard, but the 25-pound animal jumped up into the top of its closure, and he wasn’t able to catch the animal. He left the exhibit with the cut still in place, and the leopard escaped, setting off an hours-long pursuit later that morning when zoo officials realized the animal was gone.

    After a frantic search and police involvement, the leopard was found on zoo property that afternoon on January 13.

    Roughly two weeks later, an unknown suspect cut the exterior fencing to the tamarin monkey exhibit and entered the exhibit through an unlocked door before cutting the cages and taking two monkeys, according to the affidavits. This offense, committed on January 30, was not captured on camera.

    In the days leading up to the theft of the monkeys, a person matching Irvin’s description asked zoo personnel specific and “obscure” questions about how to care for the tamarin monkeys and other animals, the affidavits say.

    The suspect was also seen entering nonpublic areas around the monkey exhibit that day, according to investigators, and he was captured on trail cameras eating a bag of chips near the exhibit, according to investigators.

    Another animal habitat near the leopard and monkey habitats was also found to be cut, according to the affidavits. Unreported thefts from early January were also brought to the attention of detectives – such as theft of feeder fish, water chemicals, and training supplies from a staff-only area at the otter exhibit.

    Before Irvin was identified and named as a suspect in the case, police had released surveillance footage and a photo of the suspect on January 31.

    On that same day, police received a tip from a man whose father is a pastor of a church that owns a vacant house in Lancaster. The tipster said Irvin frequently visited the house, and the pastor provided consent for police to search the premises.

    Upon searching, police found the two tamarin monkeys inside the home but no people. Multiple cats and pigeons were also in the home, according to the affidavits, as well as items that went missing from the otter exhibit.

    Detectives said the home’s interior was “in extreme poor condition” with dead animals, suspected cat feces, and mold and mildew.

    Lancaster is about 15 miles south of Dallas.

    While Irvin was not inside the home, police found a pair of Nike shoes that matched the shoes Irvin was wearing in the images captured by zoo cameras, according to the affidavits.

    On February 2, Irvin was spotted at the Dallas World Aquarium and asked employees about the monkeys at their location, according to the affidavits. Aquarium employees recognized Irvin from the photo released to the public, and authorities were contacted. Police followed Irvin onto a commuter train and arrested him.

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  • An off-duty New York police officer who was shot while trying to buy an SUV has died | CNN

    An off-duty New York police officer who was shot while trying to buy an SUV has died | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A New York Police Department officer who was shot in the head Saturday while off duty has died, the police commissioner said in a tweet Tuesday night.

    Adeed Fayaz, 26, had been in grave condition since the shooting, which happened in Brooklyn as he and his brother-in-law were trying to buy an SUV, officials said at an afternoon news conference.

    “Police Officer Adeed Fayaz was a father, a husband, a son, and a protector of our great city,” NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell tweeted. “Officer Fayaz was shot Saturday night and he tragically succumbed to his injuries today. Our department deeply mourns his passing, and his family and loved ones are in our prayers.”

    Randy Jones, a 38-year-old New York City man, was arrested Monday in connection with the shooting, authorities said at the news conference.

    Police are recommending charges of murder and attempted robbery, they said Tuesday night. CNN has reached out to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office for information about formal charges.

    CNN’s attempts to determine whether Jones had an attorney weren’t immediately successful. The Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit that represents poor New Yorkers, was not representing Jones as of Tuesday evening, a spokesperson for the group said.

    Fayaz had been in contact with a man selling a Honda Pilot on Facebook Marketplace for $24,000, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said. The officer and his brother-in-law on Saturday met the man, who jokingly asked whether they were carrying a gun, to which both men responded no, Essig said.

    “At this time, our perpetrator grabs (Fayaz) in a headlock, points the gun at his head, and demands the money,” Essig said.

    When Fayaz said he didn’t have the money, the man pointed the gun at the brother-in-law, according to Essig.

    “Officer Fayaz was able to break free, at which time the male fired, striking him in the head,” Essig said. “As (the suspect) flees, he continues to fire towards both the officer and his brother-in-law.”

    The brother-in-law took a gun from Fayaz’s hip and fired at least six times, according to Essig. The assailant drove from the scene, Essig said. Dashboard camera video from the brother-in-law’s vehicle helped detectives identify the car the assailant fled in, he added.

    The assailant allegedly had led both the officer and his brother-in-law down an alley where the shooting took place, a law enforcement source told CNN. No cameras are in the alley, the source added.

    Jones was arrested Monday at a motel in Nanuet, a hamlet north of New York City, Essig said. Charges are pending as authorities execute two search warrants, he said. Sewell said the suspect likely would be arraigned Tuesday night.

    A woman who was in the motel room was taken into custody and questioned, but she is not being charged at this time, Essig said.

    Authorities handcuffed the man using Fayez’s cuffs, Essig said. “We wanted him to know who, what he did to that officer. … And I think it sends a powerful message,” he said.

    Authorities are investigating whether the man is connected to other reported Facebook Marketplace robberies, including one that happened in early January “right down the block,” Essig added.

    Fayaz was married with two young children, Sewell said.

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  • Memphis City Council takes up reform proposals at first hearing since release of Tyre Nichols video | CNN

    Memphis City Council takes up reform proposals at first hearing since release of Tyre Nichols video | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Memphis City Council began to discuss nearly a dozen public safety proposals and reforms and grilled the city’s police chief and fire chief on Tuesday morning at the council’s first public hearing since the release of disturbing video showing the police beating of Tyre Nichols.

    “The month of January has deeply affected all of us and continues to do so, serving as a clarion call for action,” councilwoman Rhonda Logan said. “Today our focus will be on peeling back the layers of public safety in our city and collaborating on legislation that moves us forward in an impactful and intelligent way.”

    The council’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee was set to take up 11 proposals in all, including an ordinance to establish a procedure for an independent review of police training; an ordinance to clarify “appropriate” ways of conducting traffic stops; an ordinance to require police only to make traffic stops with marked cars; and a presentation on a civilian law enforcement review board, according to an online agenda.

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ”Davis and Fire Chief Gina Sweat spoke at the hearing and presented their plans for changing their departments going forward. The officials also answered questions from council members frustrated with the responses.

    The hearing comes about a month after Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was beaten by Memphis police officers with the specialized SCORPION unit following a traffic stop not far from his family’s home. He was taken to the hospital afterward and died three days later.

    The city released body-camera and surveillance footage in late January that showed officers repeatedly punching, kicking and using a baton on Nichols while his hands were restrained. They then left him without medical care for more than 20 minutes, the video shows.

    The video contradicted what officers said happened in the initial police report, which had indicated Nichols “started to fight” with officers and at one point grabbed one of their guns.

    His death has renewed calls for police reform and reignited a national conversation on justice in policing.

    Five officers involved in the beating, all of whom are Black, were fired and were indicted on charges of second-degree murder. In addition, a sixth officer was fired, and a seventh was put on leave. Further, the Fire Department fired two EMTs and a lieutenant for failing to render emergency care.

    The specialized SCORPION unit also was disbanded, less than two years after it was put into place.

    Sweat, the fire chief, told the council that training issues and the failure of EMTs to take personal accountability on a call were to blame for her department’s handling of Nichols.

    The dispatch call involving Nichols came in as a report of pepper spray, Sweat said. She described that as a “fairly routine call” – there have been over 140 pepper spray calls in the last six months – and the EMTs and lieutenant on scene treated it as such.

    “They did not have the video to watch to know what happened before they got there, so they were reacting to what they saw and what they were told at the scene,” Sweat said. “Obviously, they did not perform at the level that we expect or that the citizens of Memphis deserve.”

    According to Sweat, she saw the video of Nichols’ beating when it was released to the public, but an EMS chief had reviewed it days prior. Before the video was released on Friday, managers had already scheduled an administrative hearing with the employees involved for Monday, said the chief.

    “They did not perform within the guidelines and the policies that are already set. And that’s why they’re no longer with us,” the fire chief said.

    Councilman Frank Colvett Jr. said the Fire Department’s timeline of when it saw the video was an issue.

    “As the director of fire, there is a problem. I think it’s very clear to you now that solutions are required. And I understand procedures were not followed, and I understand we are looking at it. But it’s got to be more than that. OK, director, it’s got to be this is what we see and this is how we’ll fix it,” Colvett said.

    Prior to his death, Nichols had worked with his stepfather at FedEx for about nine months, his family said. He was fond of Starbucks, skateboarding in Shelby Farms Park and photographing sunsets, and he had his mother’s name tattooed on his arm, the family said. He also had the digestive issue known as Crohn’s disease and so was a slim 140 to 150 pounds, despite his 6’ 3” height, his mother said.

    Nichols’ mother and stepfather, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, are among the first lady’s guests at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.

    Biden hosted members of the Congressional Black Caucus at the White House last week to discuss police reform, which has stalled in Congress multiple times and faces an uncertain path forward.

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  • What is doxxing? | CNN

    What is doxxing? | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This story is part of ‘Systems Error’, a series by CNN As Equals, investigating how your gender shapes your life online. For information about how CNN As Equals is funded and more, check out our FAQs.



    CNN
     — 

    In 2017, Kyle Quinn enjoyed the anonymity any engineering professor typically would until he became a target of doxxing. Angry social media users mistakenly identified him as having attended a White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. His pictures, home address and employer’s name quickly made rounds across social networks, frightening Quinn and his wife and sending them to a colleague’s home for refuge, the New York Times reported.

    Quinn is one of many victims of doxxing, a form of online invasion of personal privacy that can lead to devastating consequences.

    According to the International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, doxxing is the intentional revelation of a person’s private information online without their consent, often with malicious intent. This includes the sharing of phone numbers, home addresses, identification numbers and essentially any sensitive and previously private information such as personal photos that could make the victim identifiable and potentially exposed to further harassment, humiliation and real-life threats including stalking and unwanted encounters in person.

    There are multiple etymologies for the term, but the cybersecurity firm Kapersky reports that one explanation is that doxxing came from the phrase ”dropping documents” and gradually ”documents” became ”dox” which has been used as a verb to refer to the practice. Originally a form of online attack used by hackers, the firm wrote, doxxing has been around since the 1990s.

    Doxxing can happen in many ways online and on other platforms.

    According to the International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication, in 2014, the gaming industry experienced a watershed moment known as Gamergate, a year-long culture war led by far right trolls online. After Eron Gjoni, ex-boyfriend of game developer Zoe Quinn uploaded a blog post about their break up, accused her of cheating on him, and shared screenshots of their private communications on an online forum, Quinn became one of many gamers to be a high-profile target of doxxing and rape threats, followed by many other female game developers who raised their voices, according to The Guardian.

    One of the victims, the American game developer Brianna Wu wrote in the magazine Index on Censorship: ”The truth is there is no free speech when speaking about your experiences leads to death threats, doxxing and having armed police sent to your house.”

    In 2014, Wu tweeted about escaping her home out of fear for her safety along with screenshots of death threats sent to her account.

    In 2019, the South African journalist and broadcaster Karima Brown missent a message meant for her producer to a WhatsApp group run by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) political party in which journalists are able to get media statements from the EFF, according to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ). Julius Malema, the party leader, accused her of spying on the party, and reacted by tweeting her phone number to his 2.3 million followers. Brown reportedly received rape and murder threats, including graphic messages 7]. The high court in Johannesburg later ruled the doxxing was a violation of the country’s Electoral Act, according to the CPJ, with Brown telling the non-profit that the court’s ruling was “a victory for democracy and media freedom, and a blow against misogyny and toxic masculinity.”

    Facebook’s parent company Meta does not explicitly use the term ”doxxing” in its privacy violations policy, but said in a statement to CNN that it considers users sharing ”personally identifiable information” about others a violation of its community standards. The company says it reviews any piece of content against its community standards and may remove private information such as home addresses that could result in tangible harm unless this information is publicly available through news coverage, press releases or other sources. Facebook users can use a specific reporting channel when they are concerned about their image privacy on the platform.

    TikTok clearly defines doxxing in its community guidelines which ban both the collection and publication of individuals’ personal information for malicious intent. Users can report a specific item on the platform and follow the instructions.

    Twitter’s app and desktop versions allow you to report other users who tweet private information and media about themselves or somebody else without permission by clicking on the three dots in the corner of an offending tweet, then Report Tweet and following the instructions. Users found in violation of the policy are required to remove the content in question and temporarily locked out of their account. Twitter says permanent suspension may result from a second violation. Users can also file a separate form to report such violations.

    It depends on the jurisdiction. In Asia, Singapore outlawed most forms of intentional harassment or distress in 2014, which includes doxxing, and violators can be fined up to SGD $5,000 (nearly $3,800 US) and/or jailed for up to 6 months.

    In Indonesia, activists told CNN that doxxing cases have been on the rise, especially those targeting women human rights defenders and journalists. Damar Juniarto, the executive director of Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network, a network of digital rights activists, said the term doxxing ”is not known in the Indonesia legal system” causing some doxxing cases to not be taken seriously by police. But he explained that the Personal Data Protection law, passed in September, punishes people who use and share personal information without a person’s consent, which can include doxxing.

    In the UK, there are clear guidelines for prosecutors to handle cases, particularly cases of violence against women and girls, which involve threats to post personal information on social media and the disclosure of private sexual images without consent, and the punishments vary.

    In the US, measures to combat doxxing vary across states. Last year, Nevada passed a bill that bans doxxing and allows victims to bring a civil action against the perpetrators. In California, cyber harassment including doxxing with the intent to put others and their immediate family in danger can put violators in county jail for up to one year or impose a fine of up to $1,000, or both.

    In 2021, Hong Kong authorities amended the data privacy law to include doxxing, with people facing jail sentences of up to five years and fines of up to HK$1 million ($129,000 US). This followed the doxxing of many officials and police officers during the 2019 protests against the Hong Kong government’s proposed bill to allow extraditions to mainland China. Critics argued that doxxing can be legally defended if sharing information about government officials out of public interest.

    Lauren Krapf, the technology policy and advocacy counsel for the Anti-Defamation League in the US, said whether doxxing is criminal depends on the intent.

    ”I think in certain circumstances, it is probably appropriate that [doxxers] have some level of criminal liability or civil liability,” Krapf told CNN, but emphasized that doxxing is not a black and white situation. The activity itself can be an empowerment tool for people engaging in protests to share information about extremists to others, she explained.

    Across the US, “state laws vary greatly and there is no federal statute outlawing doxxing,” Krapf told CNN, meaning “there isn’t currently one specific standard codified.”

    While anyone can be doxxed, experts believe women are more likely to be targets of mass online attacks, leaks of their sensitive media, such as sexually explicit imagery that was stolen or shared without consent and unsolicited and sexualized messages.

    A 2020 report by UN Women focusing on India, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and South Korea found that women experience many forms of online violence simultaneously such as trolling, doxxing and social media hacks.

    A 2020 global report by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), found that online violence against women is startlingly prevalent in the 51 countries surveyed, with 45% of Generation Z and Millennial women reporting being affected, compared to 31% of Generation X women and Baby Boomers, while 85% of women surveyed overall report witnessing online violence against women. While online violence is alarmingly common globally, the study shows significant regional differences, with Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East showing at least 90% of women surveyed having been affected.

    While the responsibility to prevent doxxing rests with those who would violate another’s privacy, and not with the victim, it is useful to take some preventative steps to protect yourself online.

    It can help to be familiar with doxxing-related policies on the online platforms you use as well as how to report abuse more generally. Consider making it harder for people to track you online by restricting the accessibility of any information that can identify you online and offline. For example, check who can see your personal email, phone number, home addresses and other physical locations on your social media accounts.

    The University of Berkeley, PEN America and Artist at Risk Connection provide thorough online privacy guides.

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  • Judge rules to allow evidence of Alex Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes in double murder trial | CNN

    Judge rules to allow evidence of Alex Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes in double murder trial | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The judge in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial on Monday ruled to allow the state to present evidence of the now-disbarred South Carolina attorney’s alleged financial crimes, which the prosecution contends were about to be revealed and provided him a motive to kill his wife and son.

    The decision came after days of testimony from witnesses who were heard without the jury present as Judge Clifton Newman weighed the admissibility of the evidence of the alleged schemes, for which Murdaugh faces 99 charges separate from the murder case.

    “I find that the jury is entitled to consider whether the apparent desperation of Mr. Murdaugh, because of his dire financial situation, threat of being exposed for committing the crimes for which he was later charged with, resulted in the commission of the alleged crimes,” Newman said.

    Prosecutors indicated in pretrial filings they believed Murdaugh killed his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and his 22-year-old son Paul Murdaugh to distract attention from those alleged crimes, which the state asserts were about to come to light when they were killed on June 7, 2021.

    Newman’s ruling is a blow to the defense, who fought the admissibility of the evidence in the murder case, claiming the fraud cases are irrelevant to the question of Murdaugh’s guilt in the murders of his wife and son.

    While proving motive is not necessary, “the state must prove malice, and evidence of motive may be used to prove it,” Newman said in explaining his decision.

    “In this case, since the identity of the perpetrator is a critical element that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, evidence of motive may be used in an attempt to meet that burden,” he said, adding the evidence was “so intimately connected” with the explanation of the state’s theory of the case “that proof of it is essential to complete the story.”

    Over the last several days, the state called a parade of witnesses who testified in camera, or outside the jury’s presence, about the allegations against Murdaugh and the state of his finances when his wife and son were fatally shot on the family’s property in Islandton, South Carolina, known as Moselle.

    That included testimony Monday from attorney Mark Tinsley, who was suing Murdaugh at the time of the killings on behalf of the family of Mallory Beach, the 19-year-old killed when a boat – owned by Murdaugh and allegedly driven by Paul Murdaugh – crashed in February 2019.

    At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges of boating under the influence causing great bodily harm and causing death. He had pleaded not guilty, and court records show the charges were dropped after his death.

    Tinsley was seeking a settlement in the civil case but had been told by Murdaugh’s defense attorneys he was broke and could only “cobble together a million dollars” for a settlement. Tinsley didn’t believe that, he said, testifying he knew Murdaugh was handling a lot of cases.

    “I know that he’s actively making money, and you just can’t possibly be broke, not the way he was making money,” he said. “Beyond that, I mean my clients have known Alex and his family forever, and so their perspective is that there’s generational wealth as well.”

    Tinsley offered a payment plan, he said, but the defense objected and Tinsley filed a motion to compel that, were the judge to rule in Tinsley’s favor, would have forced Murdaugh to reveal his accounts, he testified.

    A hearing on that matter and others was scheduled for June 10, 2021 – three days after the murders – Tinsley said Monday. But it was delayed when Maggie and Paul were killed, something the attorney framed as a deathblow to his civil case against Murdaugh, telling the court, “I recognized that the case against Alex, if he were a victim of some vigilante, would in fact be over.”

    “When you’re asking for a money judgment, people have to be motivated to give you that money judgment,” Tinsley said. “If you represent Attila the Hun versus some sweet old grandmother, nobody’s gonna give Attila the Hun money, but they would give money to some sweet grandmother.”

    “So if Alex had been victimized by a vigilante, nobody would have brought a verdict back against Alex … so I would have ended the case against Alex,” he said.

    The prosecution has pointed to June 10, 2021, as a “day of reckoning,” when the hearing might lead to Murdaugh’s alleged misdeeds being exposed. But in their cross-examination of Tinsley Monday, Murdaugh’s attorneys sought to undermine that argument, suggesting June 10, 2021, did not herald that reckoning.

    The motion to compel just one of a “pile of motions” that would be heard that day ahead of a potential trial that might be weeks or months down the road, defense attorney Phillip Barber said.

    “The gist of this is that there was perhaps going to be this Judgment Day, I think is the term the state used,” Barber said. “But that was going to be trial, right? That was going to be the verdict. That was going to be Judgment Day.

    Tinsley disagreed: “That’s the Judgment Day … and there were a lot of threads that were being pulled and it was subject to unraveling at any moment.”

    Prosecutor Creighton Waters drove his point home in his re-direct, asking Tinsley, “If the hearing takes place on June 10, 2021, what is the net effect of everything that could happen at that point?”

    “The discovery,” Tinsley said, “of everything he’s done.”

    After the judge’s ruling the jury heard from Mushell Smith, a caregiver for Alex Murdaugh’s mother, who testified she saw Murdaugh at his parents’ home in Almeda the night of the killings.

    That evening, Murdaugh called the house phone, told Smith he was outside and to let him in, said Smith, who was at times emotional during her testimony. Murdaugh then went into the room with his mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, sat on the bed, looked at his phone and left about 20 minutes later, Smith testified. Asked to describe his behavior, Smith said Murdaugh was “fidgety.”

    Murdaugh’s father passed away days later, and following the funeral, the family hosted a meal at the Almeda home, she said. During the gathering, Murdaugh came into his mother’s room and spoke to Smith, she said, telling her, “I was here 30 to 40 minutes” the night of the murders.

    The conversation upset Smith, she testified, adding she called her brother afterward to tell him about it.

    The next day, Smith said, Murdaugh asked her about her upcoming wedding, commented that it would be expensive and offered to help. Murdaugh had never before asked her about her wedding, Smith said.

    Three days after the funeral, Murdaugh showed up at the house again, Smith said, this time around 6:30 a.m., which was unusually early. But unlike his last unannounced visit, Murdaugh did not call the house phone to let Smith know he’d arrived. Instead, he knocked on the exterior wall by the bedroom window, she said.

    When she let him inside, Murdaugh was carrying something in his arms, Smith said, describing it as a blue tarp. He said nothing to her, Smith said, and went upstairs. He left soon after, she said, and while Smith later saw the blue item unfolded on a chair in a room upstairs, it was gone when she returned the next day.

    Under cross examination by defense attorney Jim Griffin, Smith told the court Murdaugh did not have blood on his clothes, shoes or in his hair when she saw him the night of the killings, also conceding that his “fidgety” behavior was normal for Murdaugh. She also acknowledged that Murdaugh’s offer to help with her wedding was something a “good person” would do.

    Additionally, Smith conceded she did not mention the blue, tarp-like item in her interview with state investigators, on June 16, 2021. It wasn’t until she had been in a car accident in September that she mentioned the tarp to a police officer working the wreck. The officer apparently reported Smith said Murdaugh had come over the night of the murders with a blue tarp that looked like it had a gun wrapped inside, but Smith insisted she did not say that.

    “So, you didn’t tell (the officer) that he came over and you couldn’t tell, but stated, ‘It looked like a rifle,’” Griffin asked.

    “No, I said it looked like he was holding something, I did not say it was a rifle,” Smith said.

    “And if (the officer) wrote a report saying that, he was incorrect?”

    “Yes,” Smith said.”

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