A federal judge late Tuesday approved a request by the Federal Trade Commission to temporarily block Microsoft Corp.’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc.
U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order in order to “maintain the status quo,” and set a evidentiary hearing to be held June 22-23 on whether a preliminary injunction should be issued.
The deal was set to be finalized as soon as this Friday. Tuesday’s order said the deal may not close until at least five days after the court’s preliminary injunction ruling.
The acquisition has raised antitrust concerns that Microsoft MSFT, +0.74%,
with its Xbox gaming console, could withhold hit Activision Blizzard ATVI, +1.17%
videogame franchises such as “Call of Duty” and “Overwatch” from competing console platforms.
“This loss of competition would likely result in significant harm to consumers in multiple markets at a pivotal time for the industry,” the FTC said in its filing Monday.
In a statement Tuesday evening, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “Accelerating the legal process in the U.S will ultimately bring more choice and competition to the gaming market. A temporary restraining order makes sense until we can receive a decision from the court, which is moving swiftly.”
ROME (AP) — Silvio Berlusconi, the boastful billionaire media mogul who was Italy’s longest-serving premier despite scandals over his sex-fueled parties and allegations of corruption, died, Italian media reported Monday. He was 86.
Italian news agency LaPresse reported Berlusconi’s death after he was hospitalized on Friday for the second time in months for treatment of chronic leukemia.
Berlusconi was hospitalized in Milan on April 5 with a lung infection stemming from the disease, said Dr. Alberto Zangrillo, his personal physician. He also suffered over the years from heart ailments, prostate cancer and was hospitalized for COVID-19 in 2020.
A onetime cruise ship crooner, Berlusconi used his television networks and immense wealth to launch his long political career, inspiring both loyalty and loathing.
To admirers, the three-time premier was a capable and charismatic statesman who sought to elevate Italy on the world stage. To critics, he was a populist who threatened to undermine democracy by wielding political power as a tool to enrich himself and his businesses.
His Forza Italia political party was a coalition partner with current Premier Giorgia Meloni, a far-right leader who came to power last year, although he held no position in the government.
Silvio Berlusconi, Giorgia Meloni (C), Matteo Salvini and other members of right-wing coalition speak to the media on October 21, 2022 in Rome, Italy.
Getty Images
His friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin put him at odds with Meloni, a staunch supporter of Ukraine. On his 86th birthday, while the war raged, Putin sent Berlusconi best wishes and vodka, and the Italian boasted he returned the favor by sending back Italian wine.
As Berlusconi aged, some derided his perpetual tan, hair transplants and live-in girlfriends who were decades younger. For many years, however, Berlusconi seemed untouchable despite the personal scandals.
Criminal cases were launched but ended in dismissals when statutes of limitations ran out in Italy’s slow-moving justice system, or he was victorious on appeal. Investigations targeted the tycoon’s steamy so-called “bunga bunga” parties involving young women and minors, or his businesses, which included the soccer team AC Milan, the country’s three biggest private TV networks, magazines and a daily newspaper, and advertising and film companies.
Karima El-Mahroug, a.k.a. Ruby (C), reacts as members of the media approach on February 15, 2023 at a Milan special courthouse, following a court decision acquitting Berlusconi of bribing witnesses to lie about his “bunga bunga” parties in an underage prostitution case.
AFP via Getty Images
Only one led to a conviction — a tax fraud case stemming from a sale of movie rights in his business empire. The conviction was upheld in 2013 by Italy’s top criminal court, but he was spared prison because of his age, 76, and was ordered to do community service by assisting Alzheimer’s patients.
He still was stripped of his Senate seat and banned from running or holding public office for six years, under anti-corruption laws.
He stayed at the helm of Forza Italia, the center-right party he created when he entered politics in the 1990s and named for a soccer cheer, “Let’s go, Italy.” With no groomed successor in sight, voters started to desert it.
He eventually held office again -– elected to the European Parliament at age 82 and then last year to the Italian Senate.
Berlusconi’s party was eclipsed as the dominant force on Italy’s political right: first by the League, led by anti-migrant populist Matteo Salvini, then by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, with its roots in neo-fascism. Following elections in 2022, Meloni formed a governing coalition with their help.
He suffered personal humiliations as well. Berlusconi lost his standing as Italy’s richest man, although his sprawling media holdings and luxury real estate still left him a billionaire several times over.
In 2013, guests at one of his parties included an under-age Moroccan dancer whom prosecutors alleged had sex with Berlusconi in exchange for cash and jewelry. After a trial spiced by lurid details, a Milan court initially convicted Berlusconi of paying for sex with a minor and using his office to try to cover it up. Both denied having sex with each other, and he was eventually acquitted.
The Catholic Church, at times sympathetic to his conservative politics, was scandalized by his antics, and his wife of nearly 20 years divorced him, but Berlusconi was unapologetic, declaring: “I’m no saint.”
Berlusconi insisted that voters were impressed by his brashness.
“The majority of Italians in their hearts would like to be like me and see themselves in me and in how I behave,” he said in 2009, during his third and final stint as premier.
His second term, from 2001-06, was perhaps his golden era, when he became Italy’s longest-serving head of government and boosted its global profile through his friendship with U.S. President George W. Bush. Bucking widespread sentiment at home and in Europe, Berlusconi backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
As a businessman who knew the power of images, Berlusconi introduced U.S.-style political campaigns — with big party conventions and slick advertising — that broke with the gray world of Italian politics, in which voters essentially chose parties and not candidates. His rivals had to adapt.
Berlusconi saw himself as Italy’s savior from what he described as the Communist menace — years after the Berlin Wall fell. From the start of his political career in 1994, he portrayed himself as the target of a judiciary he described as full of leftist sympathizers. He always proclaimed his innocence.
When the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement gained strength, Berlusconi branded it as a menace worse than Communism.
His close friendship with longtime Socialist leader and former Premier Bettino Craxi was widely credited for helping him become a media baron. Still, Berlusconi billed himself as a self-made man, saying, “My formula for success is to be found in four words: work, work and work.”
He boasted of his libido and entertained friends and world leaders at his villas. At one party, newspapers reported the women were dressed as “little Santas.” At another, photos showed topless women and a naked man lounging poolside.
“I love life! I love women!” an unrepentant Berlusconi said in 2010.
He occasionally selected TV starlets for posts in his Forza Italia party. “If I weren’t married, I would marry you immediately,” Berlusconi reportedly said in 2007 to Mara Carfagna, who later became a Cabinet minister. Berlusconi’s wife publicly demanded an apology.
Berlusconi was nicknamed “Papi” — or “Daddy” — by an aspiring model whose 18th birthday bash he attended, also to his wife’s irritation. Later, self-described escort Patrizia D’Addario said she spent the night with him on the evening that Barack Obama was elected U.S. president in 2008.
From his cruise ship entertainer days, Berlusconi loved to compose and sing Neapolitan songs. Like millions of Italians, he had a passion for soccer, and often was in the stands at AC Milan.
He delighted in flouting political etiquette. He sported a bandanna when hosting British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his estate on the Emerald Coast of Sardinia, and it was later revealed he was concealing hair transplants. He posed for photos at international summits making an Italian gesture — which can be offensive or superstitious, depending on circumstances — in which the index and pinkie fingers are extended like horns.
US President Barack Obama (R) speaks with Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi during a meeting at the G8 Summit at Deerhurst Resort in Huntsville, Ontario, on June 26, 2010.
AFP via Getty Images
He stirred anger after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States by claiming Western civilization was superior to Islam.
When criticized in 2003 at the European Parliament by a German lawmaker, Berlusconi likened his adversary to a concentration camp guard. Years later, he drew outrage when he compared his family’s legal woes to what Jews must have encountered in Nazi Germany.
Berlusconi was born in Milan on Sept. 29, 1936, the son of a middle-class banker. He earned a law degree, writing his thesis on advertising. He started a construction company at 25 and built apartment complexes for middle-class families on Milan’s outskirts, part of a postwar boom.
But his astronomical wealth came from the media. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he circumvented Italy’s state TV monopoly RAI by creating a de facto network in which local stations all showed the same programming. RAI and his Mediaset network accounted for about 90% of the national market in 2006.
When the “Clean Hands” corruption scandals of the 1990s decimated the political establishment that had dominated postwar Italy, Berlusconi filled the void, founding Forza Italia in 1994.
His first government in 1994 collapsed after eight months when an ally who led an anti-immigrant party yanked support. But aided by an aggressive campaign that included mass mailings of glossy magazines recounting his success story, Berlusconi swept to victory in 2001.
Shuffling his Cabinet occasionally, he stayed in power for five years, setting a record for government longevity in Italy. It wasn’t easy.
A Group of Eight summit he hosted in Genoa in 2001 was marred by violent anti-globalization demonstrations and the death of a protester shot by a police officer. Berlusconi faced fierce domestic opposition and alienated some allies by sending 3,000 troops to Iraq after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. For a time, Italy was the third-largest contingent in the U.S. coalition.
At home, he constantly faced accusations of sponsoring laws aimed at protecting himself or his businesses, but he insisted he always acted in the interest of all Italians. Legislation passed when he was premier allowing officeholders to own media businesses but not run them was deemed by his critics to be tailor made for Berlusconi.
An admirer of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Berlusconi passed reforms that partially liberalized the labor and pension systems, among Europe’s most inflexible. He also was chummy with Putin, who stayed at his Sardinian estate, and he visited the Russian leader, notably going to Crimea after Moscow illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014.
In 2006, as Italy was ridiculed as “the sick man of Europe,” with its economy mired in zero growth and its budget deficit rising, Berlusconi narrowly lost the general election to center-left leader Romano Prodi, who had been president of the European Union Commission.
In 2008, he bounced back for what would be his final term as premier. It ended abruptly in 2011, when financial markets lost faith in his ability to keep Italy from succumbing to the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis. To the relief of economic powerhouse Germany, Berlusconi reluctantly stepped down.
Health concerns dogged him over the years. He underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1997. In November 2006, he fainted during a speech, and the next month flew to the U.S., where he received a pacemaker at the Cleveland Clinic. He underwent more heart surgery in 2016.
During a political rally in 2009, a man threw a souvenir statuette of Milan’s cathedral at Berlusconi, fracturing his nose, cracking two teeth and cutting his lip.
Berlusconi was first married in 1965 to Carla Dall’Oglio, and their two children, Marina and Piersilvio, were groomed to hold top positions in his business empire. He married his second wife, Veronica Lario, in 1990, and they had three children, Barbara, Eleonora and Luigi.
The federal criminal indictment against former-president Donald Trump alleging he illegally kept classified documents after leaving the White House reads like a textbook manual on how not to handle top-secret files.
Federal prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office detail a litany of alleged missteps, willful obfuscation and breaches of security in how Trump stored, shared and even tried to hide from investigators what he had taken with him when he left office in 2020.
On Friday, a federal judge in Florida unsealed the 37-count indictment against Trump on charges of willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, scheming to conceal and making false statements and representations.
Trump has insisted he is innocent and has vowed to fight in court.
Here are six of the most serious allegations contained in the 49-page indictment:
1. The most secret of secrets
Prosecutors were vague about exactly what kind of classified information was contained in the files Trump allegedly retained upon leaving office, but they did provide broad descriptions of what type of material was there, including sensitive details about national defense.
Other categories included:
White House intelligence briefings about foreign countries
Details about the military capabilities of certain foreign countries
Information on the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country
Documents detailing communications with the leader of a foreign country
Military contingency planning by the United States
Details of U.S. nuclear weapons
Documents detailing plans of an attack in a foreign country
2. Don’t mind those boxes
Prosecutors allege that Trump was extremely careless in how he stored dozens of boxes which contained hundreds of classified documents that he took with him from the White House to his residence at the Mar-a-Lago social club in Palm Beach, Fla.
At various points over the two years Trump kept the papers, the boxes were kept on a stage in a public ballroom, in a bathroom and shower, his home office, his bedroom and an unsecured storage room adjacent to a closet where bottles of liquor were stored.
In one episode, a Trump staffer found a stack of boxes had fallen over in the storage room, spilling documents marked as classified onto the floor.
3. Hey, check these out
On at least two occasions, Trump showed off certain classified documents to people who lacked any kind of security clearance, including a writer working on a book and a representative of a political action committee.
In July 2021, prosecutors say Trump whipped out a classified document detailing a proposed plan of attack on a foreign country.
“Look what I found, this was [the senior military official’s] plan of attack, read it and just show … it’s interesting,” Trump was recorded as saying, according to the indictment.
“It is like, highly confidential,” he allegedly said. “Secret. This is secret information.”
Two months later, Trump allegedly showed a classified map of a foreign country where fighting is ongoing to a representative of his political action committee. Trump noted that “he should not be showing the map,” and warned the official “not to get too close.”
4. Can’t we just keep this stuff?
After receiving subpoenas demanding he return all the classified material he had taken with him, Trump asked his lawyers if they could just not send it all back, or tell the government that they went through all the boxes and hadn’t found anything.
“Well, what if we, what happens if we don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” Trump is quoted as saying by federal prosecutors.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we didn’t have anything here?” Trump asked, according to the indictment.
“Well look, isn’t it better if there are no documents?” he further asked, the court documents claimed.
Later, after Trump’s lawyers had gone through the boxes and uncovered dozens of classified documents, Trump allegedly asked if they could just make anything really damning disappear, the court filing said.
“He made a funny motion as though —well okay, why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there is anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out. And that was the motion he made. He didn’t say that,” one of the lawyers, who was not named in the filing, was quoted as telling prosecutors.
5. Documents from many sensitive agencies
The documents investigators recovered came from a wide gamut of U.S. government agencies, the indictment said, including:
The CIA
Department of Defense
The National Security Agency
The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency
The National Reconnaissance Office
The Department of Energy
The Department of State
6. If my lawyers don’t know about it …
Prosecutors say that Trump purposefully worked with his personal valet to hide boxes of documents from his own lawyers as they worked to return classified material to the government.
During a 10-day period in the late spring of 2021, prosecutors say Trump’s valet, Waltine Nauta, moved 64 boxes from a storage room to Trump’s office for him to go through before his lawyers could examine them. Prosecutors say Nauta later moved just 30 boxes back to the storage for the lawyers to sift through. Some of those boxes were later sent to Trump’s other home in Bedminster, N.J.
Nauta has also been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheming to conceal and making false statements or representations.
The federal indictment of Donald Trump in a classified documents probe has been unsealed, a day after the former president was charged in the case.
Trump — currently the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — faces 37 criminal counts including charges of unauthorized retention of classified documents and obstructing justice.
The federal indictment of Donald Trump in a classified documents probe has been unsealed, a day after the former president was charged in the case.
Trump — currently the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — faces 37 criminal counts including charges of unauthorized retention of classified documents and obstructing justice.
Earlier Friday, Trump shook up his legal team in the wake of the indictment.
In a video on Truth Social Thursday night, Trump called the new probe a “hoax” and said he’s an “innocent man.” And in a fundraising pitch, Trump showed no signs of slowing his campaign, saying: “I only grow that much more confident that we WILL win back the White House and SAVE our country in 2024!” There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution to prevent Trump from running for president.
Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, was also charged in the indictment. Nauta went to work at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving the White House.
The 49-page document accuses the former president of ignoring Justice Department demands to return documents he had taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and even directing aides to help him hide the records sought by the government. Nauta was seen on surveillance camera removing boxes at Mar-a-Lago.
Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the investigation, said in a rare public appearance on Friday that he was seeking a “speedy trial.”
“It is very important for me to note that the defendants in this case must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” Smith said. He also invited the public to read the full indictment “to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.”
Trump has already been indicted in a separate case in New York and faces other investigations in Georgia and in Washington that could lead to criminal charges.
Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Analysts are predicting that the indictment could help Trump in the GOP primary, but not in the November 2024 election vs. President Joe Biden. Biden, asked about the indictment on Friday, said he had no comment.
“We continue to think that indictments are a neutral to positive factor for Trump in a primary setting, while being a serious vulnerability when the general election rolls around,” Tobin Marcus, an Evercore ISI analyst, wrote in a note on Friday.
Meanwhile, shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC, -0.70%,
the special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) looking to take Trump’s Truth Social platform public, were down fractionally after climbing in morning trading Friday.
Victor Reklaitis and the Associated Press contributed.
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he’s been indicted in the federal investigation into classified documents in his possession, and has been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
In a pair of posts late Thursday on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he was informed of the indictment by his attorneys. Shortly after, Trump sent a fundraising email to supporters, calling the investigation “witch hunt.”
There was no immediate confirmation from the U.S. Justice Department. The New York Times and Washington Post, among other media outlets, confirmed the indictment, citing unnamed sources.
In a four-minute video posted on Truth Social on Thursday night, Trump claimed “the whole thing is a hoax” and said “I’m an innocent man.” Later, during an interview on Fox News, Trump said he plans on pleading not guilty, “of course.”
The indictment is reportedly under seal and the exact charges are not yet clear. But Trump attorney James Trusty, appearing Thursday night on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” said Trump faces at least seven charges, including an Espionage Act charge — which he called “ludicrous”” — willful retention of documents, “several obstruction-based-type charges” and making false statements.
Reports this week had indicated an indictment was looming. On Wednesday, it was revealed that Trump was being investigated by a federal grand jury in Florida, in addition to one in Washington. That likely indicated Florida was a more appropriate venue for the charges, experts told the Associated Press.
Several media outlets had also reported Trump’s attorneys had been issued a target letter, which often precedes an indictment.
The investigation has centered around classified documents that were wrongly in Trump’s possession after he left office. After returning some documents to the National Archives, the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last year and recovered more than 100 additional documents that had been marked classified.
Special counsel Jack Smith has been leading the documents investigation, as well as a separate investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
In April, Trump — who was the first president to be impeached twice — became the first former president to be indicted, and pleaded not guilty in Manhattan court to 34 felony charges of falsifying records to cover up hush-money payments. He would also be the first former president to face federal charges.
Being indicted would not disqualify Trump, who has already entered the 2024 presidential race, from running for office. “Probably it will enhance my numbers,” Trump said of an indictment earlier this year.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Department of Justice has informed former Vice President Mike Pence ‘s legal team that it will not pursue criminal charges related to the discovery of classified documents at his Indiana home.
The department sent a letter to Pence’s attorney on Thursday informing him that, after an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information, no criminal charges will be sought.
The Texas House of Representatives voted Saturday to impeach scandal-plagued Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, triggering his immediate suspension from duties and setting up a trial that could permanently remove the state’s top lawyer from office.
The 121-23 vote constitutes an abrupt downfall for one of the GOP’s most prominent legal combatants, who in 2020 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn President Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of Donald Trump. It makes Paxton only the third sitting official in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to have been impeached.
The historic vote came after a months-long House investigation into the three-term attorney general that resulted in 20 charges alleging sweeping abuses of power, including obstruction of justice, bribery and abuse of public trust.
Paxton, 60, is just the third sitting official to be impeached in the state’s nearly 200-year history.
The House is controlled by Republicans and the matter now moves to the Republican-controlled state Senate. A two-thirds vote by the 31-member Senate would be enough to remove him from office.
Paxton’s wife, two-term state Sen. Angela Paxton, could be among those casting a vote on her husband’s political future.
Paxton has criticized the impeachment effort as an attempt to “overthrow the will of the people and disenfranchise the voters of our state.” He has said the charges are based on “hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims.”
Texas’ Republican-led House of Representatives launched historic impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Ken Paxton earlier on Saturday as Donald Trump defended the scandal-plagued GOP official from a vote that could lead to his ouster.
The House convened in the afternoon to debate whether to impeach and suspend Paxton over allegations of bribery, abuse of public trust and that he is unfit for office — just some of the accusations that have trailed Texas’ top lawyer for most of his three terms.
The hearing set up what could be a remarkably sudden downfall for one of the GOP’s most prominent legal combatants, who in 2020 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn President Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of Trump.
Paxton, 60, has decried what he called “political theater” based on “hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims,” and said it’s an attempt to disenfranchise voters who reelected him in November. It’s unclear where the attorney general was Saturday, but during the House proceeding he was sharing statements from supporters on Twitter.
“No one person should be above the law, least not the top law enforcement officer of the state of Texas,” Rep. David Spiller, a Republican member of the committee that investigated Paxton, said in opening statements.
Rep. Ann Johnson, a Democratic member, told lawmakers that Texas’ “top cop is on the take.” Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican committee member, said without elaborating that Paxton had called lawmakers and threatened them with political “consequences.”
As the articles of impeachment were laid out, some of the lawmakers shook their heads.
Paxton has been under FBI investigation for years over accusations that he used his office to help a donor and was separately indicted on securities fraud charges in 2015, though he has yet to stand trial. Until this week, his fellow Republicans had taken a muted stance on the allegations.
Lawmakers allied with Paxton tried to discredit the investigation by noting that hired investigators, not panel members, interviewed witnesses. They also said several of the investigators had voted in Democratic primaries, tainting the impeachment, and that they had too little time to review evidence.
“I perceive it could be political weaponization,” said Rep. Tony Tinderholt, one of the House’s most conservative members. Republican Rep. John Smithee compared the proceeding to “a Saturday mob out for an afternoon lynching.”
Impeachment requires just a simple majority in the House.
Texas’ top elected Republicans had been notably quiet about Paxton this week. But on Saturday both Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz came to his defense, with the senator calling the impeachment process “a travesty” and saying the attorney general’s legal troubles should be left to the courts.
“Free Ken Paxton,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, warning that if House Republicans proceeded with the process, “I will fight you.”
Abbott, who lauded Paxton while swearing him in for a third term in January, has remained silent. The governor spoke at a Memorial Day service in the House chamber about three hours before the impeachment proceedings began.
Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan also attended but the two appeared to exchange few words, and Abbott left without commenting to reporters.
In one sense, Paxton’s political peril arrived with dizzying speed: The House committee’s investigation came to light Tuesday, and by Thursday lawmakers issued 20 articles of impeachment.
But to Paxton’s detractors, the rebuke was years overdue.
In 2014, he admitted to violating Texas securities law, and a year later he was indicted on securities fraud charges in his hometown near Dallas, accused of defrauding investors in a tech startup. He pleaded not guilty to two felony counts carrying a potential sentence of five to 99 years.
He opened a legal defense fund and accepted $100,000 from an executive whose company was under investigation by Paxton’s office for Medicaid fraud.
An additional $50,000 was donated by an Arizona retiree whose son Paxton later hired to a high-ranking job but was soon fired after displaying child pornography in a meeting.
In 2020, Paxton intervened in a Colorado mountain community where a Texas donor and college classmate faced removal from his lakeside home under coronavirus orders.
But what ultimately unleased the impeachment push was Paxton’s relationship with Austin real estate developer Nate Paul.
In 2020, eight top aides told the FBI they were concerned Paxton was misusing his office to help Paul over the developer’s unproven claims that an elaborate conspiracy to steal $200 million of his properties was afoot.
The FBI searched Paul’s home in 2019, but he has not been charged and denies wrongdoing. Paxton also told staff members he had an affair with a woman who, it later emerged, worked for Paul.
The impeachment accuses Paxton of attempting to interfere in foreclosure lawsuits and issuing legal opinions to benefit Paul. Its bribery charges allege that Paul employed the woman with whom Paxton had an affair in exchange for legal help and that he paid for expensive renovations to the attorney general’s home.
A senior lawyer for Paxton’s office, Chris Hilton, said Friday that the attorney general paid for all repairs and renovations.
Other charges, including lying to investigators, date back to Paxton’s still-pending securities fraud indictment.
Four of the aides who reported Paxton to the FBI later sued under Texas’ whistleblower law, and in February he agreed to settle the case for $3.3 million. The House committee said it was Paxton seeking legislative approval for the payout that sparked their probe.
“But for Paxton’s own request for a taxpayer-funded settlement over his wrongful conduct, Paxton would not be facing impeachment,” the panel said.
A finance company boasting hundreds of apparently glowing online “customer reviews” and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau was this week civilly charged with cheating over 700 investors — many of them senior citizens — out of more than $30 million over 5 years.
El Segundo, Calif.–based Red Rock Secured and its controlling chief executive, Sean Kelly, were accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of playing on the retirement and tax fears of older investors to sell them gold and silver coins at vastly inflated prices to hold in self-directed IRAs.
The markup on the coins “was almost always above 100 percent, and typically 120 percent or more,” the SEC said in its complaint.
Between 2017 and last year, Red Rock pocketed more than $30 million of the $50 million investors paid for the coins, said the SEC, which also sued two former Red Rock executives.
Attorney Michael Schafler of the Los Angeles law firm Cohen Williams, representing both Red Rock and its CEO, said the company had “nothing to hide” and has been “completely cooperative” with the SEC investigation.
“Red Rock has demonstrated that it is focused on compliance and providing clients with information necessary to make reasoned and informed decisions about purchasing precious metals,” he added. “Red Rock stands by that. It looks forward to the opportunity to defend itself against the government’s allegations in Court.”
According to the SEC, Red Rock used an aggressive marketing campaign to target investors, especially those who were “conservative” or “right wing” politically and “over 59½ [years old].”
Sales personnel played on customers’ fears about government policy, inflation, the stock market and retirement to persuade investors to move IRA funds to Red Rock and invest in gold and silver bullion, according to the SEC. But then, using what the commission calls a “bait and switch,” they persuaded investors instead to buy niche “premium” gold coins with huge, but hidden, markups, which included an 8% sales commission.
These so-called premium coins included an obscure silver Canadian coin for which Red Rock Secured controlled the entire market, allowing it to claim falsely that the “market value” of the coin was more than twice the value of its silver content, the SEC said.
Red Rock Secured salespeople were told to pitch the idea of a “worry-free retirement” to potential clients, while warning them that in the stock market “you could wake up and half your retirement could be gone,” the SEC said.
“The defendants used fear and lies to defraud investors out of millions of dollars from their hard-earned retirement savings,” said Antonia Apps, director of the SEC’s New York office.
There was no hint of any of this in the company’s glowing online “customer reviews.” At Google, Red Rock had an average rating of 4.8 stars out of 5 from 136 self-described customers. At Trustpilot, it got an average rating of 4.8 stars out of 5 from 167 alleged customers. Trustpilot said the rating was “excellent.” At the Better Business Bureau, Red Rock got an average rating of 4.75 stars out of 5 across 96 reviews. At Consumer Affairs it got an average rating of 4.9 stars out of 5.
The Better Business Bureau, contacted by MarketWatch, said it had added an alert to its site about the SEC probe into Red Rock. But, it added, “BBB ratings are not a guarantee of a business’s reliability or performance. BBB recommends that consumers consider a business’s BBB rating in addition to all other available information about the business.”
The organization, which provides information about businesses through a rating system and handles consumer complaints, said its standard policy is to check that all reviews are from legitimate customers by contacting the company being reviewed. The BBB does not possess legal or policing powers.
Business-review platform Trustpilot also told MarketWatch it had added an alert to the Red Rock Secured review page.
“Trustpilot is an open, independent review platform, meaning anyone who has had an experience with a business can leave a review — whether positive or negative — on the business’s Trustpilot profile page,” the company said in a statement “We are currently investigating Red Rock Secured to ensure that they are using our platform in line with our business guidelines, and should we find any evidence they are not, we will take the necessary steps to prevent it.”
Deutsche Bank AG will pay $75 million to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming it aided Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday night.
The suit was filed by lawyers on behalf of an anonymous victim and others who accused the financier, who died by suicide in federal lockup in 2019, of sexual abuse and trafficking. The suit claimed Deutsche Bank DB, +1.92%
ignored red flags and did business with Epstein for five years despite knowing he was using the money from his accounts to further his sex trafficking.
Wells Fargo & Co. has agreed to pay $1 billion to settle a shareholders lawsuit related to its 2016 fake-accounts scandal, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Citing court documents, the Journal reported Monday night that Wells Fargo WFC, +3.41%
settled a class-action suit brought by shareholders who claimed bank executives overstated the bank’s progress at cleaning up its risk-management systems and governance in the wake of the scandal.
In a statement to the Journal, Wells Fargo said: “While we disagree with the allegations in this case, we are pleased to have resolved this matter.”
The settlement, which still needs to be approved by a judge, likely would be the 17th-largest ever for a shareholders’ class action, the Journal reported.
Wells Fargo has paid billions in fines and settlements related to the scandal. In December, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion as a result of alleged widespread mismanagement, and in March, a former Wells Fargo executive accused of overseeing the fake-account scheme pleaded guilty to criminal charges, agreeing to a 16-month prison term and a $17 million fine.
Wells Fargo shares are down 6% year to date and are off 8% over the past 12 months, compared to the S&P 500’s SPX, +0.30%
8% gain in 2023 and 3% rise over the past year.
Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday night that Republicans should force the government to default if Democrats won’t make spending-cut concessions in the debt-ceiling fight.
Trump made the comments in a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, with Republicans and undecided voters, hosted by CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins. The prime-time event quickly spiraled out of control, with Trump repeating lies about the 2020 election and mocking E. Jean Carroll, who on Tuesday won a defamation suit against him and $5 million in…
Foreign investors and businesspeople with exposure to China are becoming increasingly unnerved. And for good reason.
In March, Chinese authorities detained an employee of Japanese drug manufacturer Astellas Pharma JP:4503 ALPMY for alleged espionage violations. The Chinese seem confident in their case. Beijing’s ambassador to Japan said there was ample evidence of wrongdoing, and, despite the uproar, the Astellas employee remains detained.
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — A gunman apparently firing at random killed eight people and wounded 14 in a series of villages in Serbia, authorities said, shaking a nation still in the throes of grief over a mass shooting a day earlier. Police arrested a suspect Friday after an all-night manhunt.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić called Thursday’s shootings an attack on the whole nation — and said the person arrested wore a T-shirt with a pro-Nazi slogan on it but did not specify a motive.
The bloodshed sent shockwaves through a Balkan nation scarred by wars, but unused to mass murders. Though Serbia is awash with weapons left over from the conflicts of the 1990s, Wednesday’s shooting was the first at a school in the country’s modern history.
The last mass shooting before this week was in 2013, when a war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.
Public figures, politicians and experts appeared successively on TV Friday, desperately seeking to explain the tragedies. The first made the country numb with grief, while the second heightened feelings of insecurity and anxiety over what might come next. As a nationwide period of mourning began, TV screens were filled with people wearing black and music was banned from the airwaves as well as in cafes and restaurants.
“This is a moment when a nation decides whether it will go along a healing path,” Actor Srdjan Timarov said on N1 television. “The only other way is to declare capitulation.”
Late Thursday, an attacker shot at people in three villages near Mladenovac, some 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, south of the capital. Vučić said the assailant targeted people “wherever they were.”
“I heard some tak-tak-tak sounds,” recalled Milan Prokić, a resident of Dubona, near Mladenovac. Prokić said he first thought people were shooting to celebrate a birth, as is tradition in Serbia. “But it wasn’t that. Shame, great shame,” he added.
Forensic police inspect a shooting scene in the village of Dubona, Serbia, some 50 kilometers south of Belgrade, on Friday.
AP/Armin Durgut
Police said a suspect, identified by the initials U.B., was arrested near the central Serbian town of Kragujevac, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Belgrade.
Authorities released a photo showing a young man in a police car in a blue T-shirt with the slogan “Generation 88” on it. The double eights are often used as shorthand for “Heil Hitler” since H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
Vučić said the suspect repeated the word “disparagement” but it wasn’t clear what that meant.
The president vowed to the nation in an address that the suspect “will never again see the light of the day.” He referred to the attack as an act of terror and announced tougher gun-control measures, on top of ones put forward by the government a day earlier.
He called for a moratorium on new licenses for all weapons in the next two years, a review of all current licenses, longer prison sentences for those who break the rules and “fierce” punishment for anyone with illegal weapons. But first police will offer an amnesty to encourage people to hand over illegal guns — an action that has had limited success in the past.
“We will disarm Serbia,” Vučić promised, saying the government would outline the new rules on Friday.
Before the second shooting, Serbia spent much of Thursday reeling. Students, many wearing black and carrying flowers, filled streets around the school in central Belgrade as they paid silent homage to slain peers. Serbian teachers’ unions announced protests and strikes to warn about a crisis in the school system and demand changes.
Wednesday’s shooting at the Vladislav Ribnikar school also left seven people hospitalized, six children and a teacher. One girl who was shot in the head remains in life-threatening condition, and a boy is in serious condition with spinal injuries, doctors said Thursday.
Authorities have identified the shooter as Kosta Kecmanović and said he is too young to be charged and tried. He has been placed in a mental hospital, and his father has been detained on suspicion of endangering public security.
Gun ownership is common in Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans: The country has one of the highest number of firearms per capita in the world. And guns are often fired into the air at celebrations in the region.
Experts have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by the number of weapons in Serbia, a highly divided country where convicted war criminals are frequently glorified and violence against minority groups often goes unpunished. They also note that decades of instability stemming from the conflicts of the 1990s, as well as ongoing economic hardship, could trigger such outbursts.
Dragan Popadić, a psychology professor at Belgrade University, told the Associated Press that the school shooting has exposed the level of violence present in society and caused a deep shock.
“People suddenly have been shaken into reality and the ocean of violence that we live in, how it has grown over time and how much our society has been neglected for decades,” he warned. “It is as if flashlights have been lit over our lives and we can no longer just mind our own business.”
A lawsuit filed in Delaware in April against the travel site Tripadvisor and its majority shareholder is highlighting what may be a growing trend: companies seeking to shift their incorporations to Nevada to avoid Delaware’s more stringent and entrenched legal standards.
The suit was filed on behalf of a group of Tripadvisor Inc. TRIP shareholders, who are hoping to persuade the Delaware Chancery Court to stop the company from pushing ahead with board-approved plans to reincorporate in Nevada, arguing their motive is to take…
The sport, often described as a cross between tennis and ping pong, has exploded in popularity over the past few years. Nearly 9 million Americans are now playing the game, the Sports & Fitness Industry Association reports — a year-over-year increase of 85.7%. Many towns across the U.S. are allocating federal COVID-19 aid to build pickleball courts. And the Wichita City Council recently voted to spend over $6 million on a pickleball complex.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday preserved women’s access to a drug used in the most common method of abortion, rejecting lower-court restrictions while a lawsuit continues.
The drug has been approved for use in the U.S. since 2000 and more than 5 million people have used it. Mifepristone is used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol, in more than half of all abortions in the U.S.
The court faced a self-imposed Friday night deadline to decide whether women’s access to a widely used abortion pill would remain unchanged or be restricted while a legal challenge to its Food and Drug Administration approval goes on.
The justices have been weighing arguments that allowing restrictions contained in lower-court rulings to take effect would severely disrupt the availability of the drug, mifepristone, which is used in the most common abortion method in the United States.
It has repeatedly been found to be safe and effective, and has been used by more than 5 million women in the U.S. since the FDA approved it in 2000.
The Supreme Court had initially said it would decide by Wednesday whether the restrictions could take effect while the case continues. A one-sentence order signed by Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday gave the justices two additional days, without explanation.
Abortion opponents filed suit in Texas in November, asserting that FDA’s original approval of mifepristone 23 years ago and subsequent changes were flawed.
Matthew Kacsmaryk, shown listening to a question during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017, is the lone federal judge in his north Texas district — a fact that led to speculation among critics that the abortion-pill case had landed in his courtroom via judge shopping.
They won a ruling on April 7 by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, revoking FDA approval of mifepristone. The judge, the lone judge in his Amarillo, Texas, federal district, gave the Biden administration and Danco a week to appeal and seek to keep his ruling on hold.
Responding to a quick appeal, two more Trump appointees on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the FDA’s original approval would stand for now. But Judges Andrew Oldham and Kurt Englehardt said most of the rest of Kacsmaryk’s ruling could take effect while the case winds through federal courts.
Federal prosecutors have leveled a legal dropkick on former pro wrestler Ted DiBiase Jr., charging him with stealing millions of dollars meant to feed needy kids in a Mississippi scandal that has also tarnished the reputation of NFL hall of famer Brett Favre.
From the archives (September 2022): NFL star Brett Favre and Gov. Phil Bryant texted about how to use $5 million of welfare funds to build a new volleyball stadium
As Silicon Valley Bank was wobbling last month, large account holders with balances exceeding the federal deposit insurance limits panicked, sparked a bank run that ultimately prompted the federal government to step in with a rescue plan, and triggered widespread debate about potential reforms to the federal deposit insurance system.
All that drama, however, was at odds with federal data showing that bank failures stretching back to the start of the 2007-2009 global financial crisis have in aggregate done very little harm…
