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Former President Donald Trump has been charged with 34 criminal counts in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Read the indictment here.
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READ: Trump indictment and statement of facts related to hush money payment | CNN Politics
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Suspect in murder of Cash App founder appears in court | CNN Business
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Nima Momeni, the suspect in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee, appeared in a San Francisco court Friday morning for an arraignment, one day after police announced his arrest.
When Momeni entered the courtroom, members of his family sitting in the front row held up heart signs with their hands. Momeni, who was not cuffed, acknowledged them and smiled back.
Momeni’s arraignment is set to continue on April 25. He will be held without bail in the meantime.
Lee was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco early in the morning of April 4th. The moments following the stabbing attack were captured on surveillance video and in a 911 call to authorities, according to a local Bay Area news portal.
The surveillance footage, reviewed by the online news site The San Francisco Standard, shows Lee walking alone on Main Street, “gripping his side with one hand and his cellphone in the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him.”
In announcing his arrest Thursday, law enforcement described Momeni as a 38-year-old man from Emeryville, California and said Momeni and Lee knew one another, but didn’t provide further details about their connection.
California Secretary of State Records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business, which, according to its website, provides services like technical support.
Lee’s family issued a statement Thursday thanking the San Francisco Police Department “for bringing his killer to Justice” after Momeni’s arrest.
“Our next steps will be to work with the District Attorney’s office to ensure that this person is not allowed to hurt anyone else or walk free,” the statement said.
In the statement, the family described Lee’s upbringing, his career, and the impact of the technology he helped create.
“Every day around the world, people interact with technology that Bob helped create. Bob will live on through these interactions and his dreams of improving all of our lives,” the statement reads.
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Trump’s attendance at rape and defamation trial against him would be a ‘burden’ on the city, his lawyer says | CNN Politics
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Donald Trump’s attorney on Wednesday said the former president “wishes” to appear at next week’s civil trial where a jury will hear columnist E. Jean Carroll’s assault and defamation claims against him – but his attendance should not be necessary because it would be a “burden” on the city and court.
The letter to the judge, from attorney Joseph Tacopina, appears to argue that Trump shouldn’t attend his civil trial without saying he won’t.
“Defendant Trump wishes to appear at trial,” the letter states, but adds “concern” that New York City and the court would face “logistical and financial burdens” to have a former president travel with the Secret Service and other security protections to the proceedings.
“In order for Defendant Trump to appear, his movement would need to be coordinated preliminarily by a Secret Service advance team hours beforehand each day that he is present, so that a tactical plan may be developed,” such as locking down parts of the courthouse, Tacopina said. Tacopina raised the disruption Trump’s recent criminal arraignment caused in the state court as an example.
“Your consideration is greatly appreciated,” Tacopina added.
Jury selection begins next Tuesday in Carroll’s lawsuit alleging that Trump raped her in a New York dressing room in the mid-1990s and then defamed her years later when he denied it took place, said she wasn’t his “type,” and suggested she made up the story to promote a new book. Trump has denied all allegations against him.
If he were to be called to testify, Trump would show up in person, Tacopina said. If he does not appear, his legal team asks the judge to instruct jurors that he isn’t required to attend and he wouldn’t be there because of the logistical burdens.
Carroll plans to attend the trial, her attorney has said.
In a response to the court on Wednesday afternoon, Carroll’s attorney criticized Trump’s reasoning, but indicated that a live appearance from the former president was not needed for the trial.
“Either way, Ms. Carroll has a right to play Donald Trump’s deposition at trial,” the lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, wrote, “so she has no need for him to testify live.”
“Mr. Trump has yet to answer the Court’s question, and he now asks the Court to deliver an excuse to the jury in the event he decides not to attend trial,” Kaplan wrote. “Given the gravity of the allegations at issue in this case, one might expect Mr. Trump to appear in person. But he is obviously free to choose otherwise … This Court and the City it calls home are fully equipped to handle any logistical burdens that may result from Mr. Trump’s appearance at a weeklong trial.”
They also noted Trump has traveled for other recent events, including an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, and has a campaign appearance scheduled two days into the trial.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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What Elizabeth Holmes’ life in prison could look like | CNN Business
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Once a Silicon Valley icon and paper billionaire, Elizabeth Holmes will now have to wake every morning at 6 a.m., hold a job paying as little as $0.12 an hour, and share bathing facilities at a prison camp in southern Texas.
Holmes reported to the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, on Tuesday to begin serving out her 11-year sentence after being convicted on multiple charges of defrauding investors while running the now-defunct startup Theranos. Her request to remain free on bail while she appeals her conviction was denied by an appellate court earlier this month.
Located approximately 100 miles outside of Houston, where Holmes grew up before moving to California to attend Stanford, FPC Bryan is a minimum-security federal prison camp housing more than 600 women offenders.
Bryan has other notable inmates. It is the same facility where Jennifer Shah, a cast member on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” is serving out her own sentence for her involvement in a telemarketing fraud scheme.
Holmes herself once graced the covers of magazines, appeared alongside prominent figures like Bill Clinton at conferences and attracted a who’s who of investors for Theranos, which promised to test for a wide range of health concerns using just a few drops of blood. But it all began to unravel after a damning Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015. Holmes is now the rare Silicon Valley founder to be tried for and convicted of fraud.
Federal prison camps are minimum security institutions with dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. These prisons are sometimes nicknamed “Camp Fed” because they’re less restrictive than other institutions.
But according to Mark MacDougall, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, the prison won’t be a walk in the park for Holmes.
“I think people who talk about ‘Camp Fed’ have never actually been inside a federal correctional institution,” MacDougall told CNN. “It’s not a place where people would want to spend time if they could be somewhere else.”
FPC Bryan will likely be heavily populated with white-collar offenders, according MacDougall. Housing at FPC Bryan typically consists of dormitory-style arrangements featuring a four-bunk cubicle and communal bath facilities, he said.
“There’s no privacy,” he said.
Inmates at FPC Bryan are required to maintain a job assignment, according to the prison’s handbook, with hourly wages ranging from $0.12 to $1.15. Holmes will have to wear a uniform of khaki pants and a khaki shirt – a far cry from her black turtleneck days. She also can’t wear jewelry, except for a plain wedding band and a religious medallion without stones, according to the handbook, and the value of these items can’t exceed $100 each.
MacDougall noted that there’s many volunteer opportunities at Bryan, and it’s very likely that someone with Holmes’ background might find herself teaching.
“I expect she would be teaching in some fashion,” he said. “That’s a very common occupation for inmates who have some education.” (Holmes dropped out of Stanford at age 19 to pursue Theranos.)
Holmes, who became a mother of two in the time between her indictment in 2018 and the start of her prison sentence, will also only be able to see her children and other family during visiting hours on weekends and federal holidays at FPC Bryan. Holmes and her family have most recently been living in California.
As MacDougall put it, “Anybody that suggests that she’s going to be in a pleasant environment or have an easy time of it is kidding themselves.”
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How Republicans are stitching their own straitjacket on Trump indictment | CNN Politics
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The Republican response to Donald Trump’s latest criminal indictment offers a clear test of the famous saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result.
The choice by Republican leaders, and even almost all of his 2024 rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, to unreservedly defend Trump after he was indicted earlier this year by the Manhattan district attorney helped the former president to widen his lead in primary polls. The roar of outrage from Republican leaders to that indictment restored Trump’s grip on the party after frustration over his role in the GOP’s disappointing 2022 midterm elections had loosened it.
But since last week’s disclosure that Trump faces another criminal indictment – this one federal, over his handling of highly classified documents – the party leadership and 2024 field has almost entirely replicated that deferential approach.
Repeating the pattern from other moments of maximum threat to Trump, the GOP response has been marked by a pronounced communications imbalance. From House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Trump’s supporters have loudly supported his claims that he is being persecuted by the left.
Simultaneously, with only a few conspicuous exceptions like second-tier presidential contenders Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the most Trump’s critics in the party have been willing to do is remain silent and not validate his vitriolic charges. Apart from those two former governors, just a short list of prominent Republicans – including former Trump administration senior officials William Barr and John Bolton, and Senate Minority Whip John Thune – have pushed back at all against Trump’s claim that he is being hunted by “lunatic,” “deranged” and “Marxist” prosecutors, or publicly expressed misgivings about the underlying behavior detailed in the federal indictment against him.
Christie reveals the exact moment he broke with Trump
By refusing to confront Trump or his enraged defenders more directly, the Republicans who want the party to move beyond him in 2024 may be stitching their own straitjacket. The nearly indivisible GOP defense of Trump has once again created a situation in which a controversy that is weakening Trump with the broader electorate is strengthening his position inside the GOP coalition.
Perhaps not surprisingly, multiple public polls show that most voters outside the Republican base are worried Trump jeopardized national security and dubious that anyone convicted of a serious crime should serve again as president. In a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll this spring, roughly three-fourths of independents, people of color, and voters under 45, as well as four-fifths of college-educated Whites, said they did not want Trump to be president again if he’s convicted of any crime. (The poll was conducted after Trump’s indictment in Manhattan but before the recent federal charges.)
In a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted partially after last week’s indictment, a solid 57% majority of Americans – including around three-fifths of college-educated Whites and voters under 30 and nearly that many independents – said he should not serve as president if he’s convicted specifically in the classified documents case. More than two-thirds of Americans overall said his handling of classified documents had created a national security risk.
Yet those same surveys also show that the vast majority of Republican voters say they do not believe Trump’s behavior is disqualifying – even if he’s convicted – and accept his claim that he’s the victim of unfair treatment. (In the Marist survey, more than three-fifths of Republicans said they would welcome a second Trump term even if he is found guilty of a crime.) That, too, may be unsurprising given the paucity of conservative elected officials or media figures that those voters trust telling them otherwise.
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian leaders, sees more than tactical political maneuvering in the choice by so many Republicans to again immediately lock arms around Trump despite the powerful evidence detailed in last week’s indictment. Such deference is “completely consistent” with the behavior across the world of “autocratic parties” under the thrall of “a leader cult,” says Ben-Ghiat, author of the 2020 book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”
The closest recent parallel she sees to the GOP’s behavior might be how the Forza Italia party remained in lockstep for years behind former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi throughout multiple trials (and even convictions) for corruption and sexual misconduct, amplifying his claims that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy and “witch hunt.” For leaders like Trump or Berlusconi (who died at 86 on Monday) such legal challenges, she says, actually become a “juncture” to strengthen their dominance by demanding that others publicly defend their behavior – no matter how indefensible. In that way, the leader establishes personal loyalty to him as the one true litmus test for belonging to the party. (The Republican decision to replace a party platform in 2020 with a brief statement declaring it would “enthusiastically support” Trump’s agenda, she notes, marked an important milestone in that transition.)
“If you stay in the party it’s either you have to be supporting Trump or face the consequences,” says Ben-Ghiat, who teaches at New York University. “You could be even running against him, but you have to adhere to the party line: the weaponization by the deep state. That’s the sad and dangerous part among many dangers we face. Even those people are stuck within this narrative world and this party line and their targets are the same as Trump’s.”
Trump’s latest round of legal jeopardy leaves the Republicans who are hesitant about him – either because they consider him unfit to serve as president or simply because they believe he is too damaged to win a general election – in the same position as his critics since 2015: hoping that his supporters will somehow move away from him, but unwilling to do almost anything overt to encourage them.
“They keep indulging the fantasy. … They don’t ever have to do anything and a deus ex machina is going to do this by itself,” says long-time conservative strategist Bill Kristol, who has emerged as one of Trump’s most dogged GOP critics.
Some Republicans say it’s possible this time will be different and the sheer weight of legal proceedings mounting against Trump – which could include further charges over his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election from special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis – could cause what some call “indictment fatigue” among GOP voters.
“I think there’s a schizophrenia that exists in this,” says Dave Wilson, a prominent social conservative and Republican activist in South Carolina. “You have people who say that no government should be used to weaponize against any one of us, much less a [former] president. At the same they are beleaguered about the same headlines again and again and again about indictments.”
Likewise, Craig Robinson, former political director for the Iowa Republican Party, agrees that given the prospect of cascading court appearances through the election year, “Donald Trump is asking a lot of the Republican voter to endure.”
But many other Trump critics inside the GOP fear that the chorus of support for him from party leaders and his 2024 rivals has set in motion a dynamic where denying him the nomination now could appear to some GOP voters as “rewarding” the Democrats, or the “deep state,” or President Joe Biden, or whoever they believe is persecuting him. “He will win the nomination with the message that they have weaponized the justice system against Republicans, against conservatives,” predicts former New Hampshire GOP chairperson Jennifer Horn, now a staunch Trump critic.
Trump has quickly made clear that he will stress that argument against any and all criminal claims converging against him. When he appeared for the first time after this latest indictment, at the Georgia GOP convention on Saturday, he argued that the “deep state” was targeting him because it recognized that he was the only 2024 candidate strong enough to stand up to it on behalf of Republican voters. “Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we, we, are the only ones who are going to be able to stop them,” he declared. At another point Trump insisted, “These criminals cannot be rewarded” – presumably by frightening Republican voters away from nominating him.
Such arguments from Trump show how his 2024 rivals, by mostly endorsing his claims, have voluntarily reduced themselves to the chorus in his drama. So long as the dominant story in red America is the claim that Democrats are unfairly targeting Trump, it may be difficult for the other candidates even to sustain attention in the Republican race.
“They’ve made themselves just sub-characters in the plot,” says Horn. “Every time they do this they make him the hero. So they are out there asking people to vote for them for president, even though they are saying Donald Trump is the real hero in this scenario. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Robinson largely agrees. Trump’s multiple indictments, he says, “might be a good opportunity for” for the former president’s 2024 rivals because some voters, even if they consider the allegations unfair, will “also think ‘I don’t want the next 12-18 months to be’” dominated by those controversies. Yet, Robinson believes, by echoing Trump’s claims of unfair treatment, the other candidates are encouraging Republican voters to accept his framing of the race. “If you believe the whole thing is corrupt and needs to be torn down and rebuilt, isn’t he the best one to do that?” says Robinson, adding that among many GOP voters, “There’s this sense that he’s the only one who can fight that fight.”
Kristol points out that other Republicans with a plausible chance of winning the nomination could distance themselves from Trump without fully endorsing the charges against him. “They can’t sound like me, they can’t sound like Asa Hutchison,” Kristol acknowledges. But he adds, other Republican candidates could respond to this indictment (and any potential subsequent ones) by expressing faith in the legal system to find the truth and saying something like: “‘I think Donald Trump did a good job, but this is bad, and when you can combine this with the ’22 results, we need a different nominee.” It’s an ominous measure of the party’s transformation into Trump’s personal vehicle, Kristol says, that they feel they “can’t even do that and instead want to attack Biden.”
It remains possible that Trump’s rivals or other GOP leaders could make a more explicit case against him as the race proceeds, or more possible indictments land. Comments on Monday from Thune and presidential contender Nikki Haley – who criticized Trump’s handling of the documents after initially attacking the indictment – suggest a window may be cracking open for greater GOP dissent. But the hesitation inside the party about fully confronting Trump remains palpable. At his campaign announcement last week, for instance, former Vice President Mike Pence said more explicitly than ever before that Trump’s behavior on January 6, 2021, rendered him unfit to serve as president again. But Pence immediately undercut that message by declaring in a CNN town hall later that day that he would “support the Republican nominee in 2024,” which very well could be Trump, even though Pence said he doubted it would be. What started as a challenge to him instead became another measure of Trump’s dominance – a shift underscored when Pence joined the chorus condemning the federal indictment.
Because Ben-Ghiat sees the GOP taking on more of the characteristics of other “authoritarian parties” in thrall to strongman leaders, she’s skeptical the legal challenges converging around Trump will undermine his hold on the party. But, she says, the experience of other countries shows that imposing legal consequences for the misdeeds of authoritarian-minded leaders is nonetheless critical to fortifying democracy.
There may be no proof of wrongdoing that can move large numbers of voters in Trump’s coalition, she says, but for everyone else in society, “it is very important to show that the rule of law can hold, that our institutions can do things, that democracy can work.”
Ben-Ghiat likens the multiple legal proceedings around Trump to the “truth commissions” established in countries such as South Africa and Chile that cataloged and documented the misdeeds of autocratic governments. “In the short run,” she says, the threat to US democracy “may get worse before it gets better” as Trump, echoed by most of the GOP leadership and conservative media, portrays any accountability for him as a conspiracy against his followers.
“But in the long run,” she says, establishing the evidence of any misconduct or criminal behavior through indictments, testimony and trials “that everyone can read is very, very important.” For anyone concerned about upholding the rule of law, Ben-Ghiat says, the choice by so many Republican leaders to preemptively dismiss any allegation against Trump “is just more proof of how important these procedures are.”
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Ron DeSantis is campaigning on his record. Judges keep saying it’s unconstitutional | CNN Politics
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Gov. Ron DeSantis has toured the country calling Florida the place “where woke goes to die.” But it’s still alive at the company Sara Margulis runs.
At Honeyfund, a website for engaged couples to create gift registries that can pay for their honeymoons, Margulis’ Florida employees learn about privilege and institutional racism. Margulis, the CEO and co-founder, said the training makes her staff better suited to serve couples of any background. Planning for this fall’s employee retreat is underway, with a session scheduled on DEI – or diversity, equity and inclusion, a term DeSantis often rails against.
DeSantis tried to ban such employee training in 2022, when the Florida Republican championed what he called the Stop WOKE Act. But Honeyfund and others sued on the grounds that the law violated their free speech. A federal judge agreed and blocked it from going into effect. The DeSantis administration then appealed – one of many of the governor’s ongoing legal battles as he pursues the presidency.
“Companies aren’t ‘going woke’ out of allegiance to Democrats. Time after time, diversity has proven to be good for the bottom line,” Margulis said. “Valuing diversity means understanding it, understanding means training and training means having to deal with this law. We were really handed a chance to make a difference for other business owners by challenging it, and we took it.”
In his early outreach to Republican voters as a presidential candidate, DeSantis has portrayed himself as a fighter and, crucially, a winner in the cultural battles increasingly important to conservatives. If elected to the White House, he’ll take those fights to Washington, he has said.
“I will go on offense,” DeSantis said in Iowa last month. “I will lean into all the issues that matter.”
But back in Florida, the agenda at the centerpiece of his pitch remains unsettled. Still ongoing are more than a dozen legal battles testing the constitutionality of many of the victories DeSantis has touted on the campaign trail. Critics say DeSantis has built his governorship around enacting laws that appeal to his conservative base but that, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he knows are unconstitutional and not likely to take effect.
In addition to halting parts of the Stop WOKE Act, judges have also intervened to freeze implementation of other DeSantis-led laws cracking down on protesters and Big Tech. The six-week abortion ban he signed this year – which he has called the “heartbeat bill” when speaking to conservative, and especially evangelical, audiences – won’t take effect unless the state Supreme Court determines that a privacy clause in Florida’s constitution doesn’t protect access to the procedure. Disney – the most famous of DeSantis’ political adversaries – has argued in court that the governor overstepped his power when he orchestrated a takeover of the entertainment giant’s special taxing district to punish the company for speaking out against his agenda. So did Andrew Warren, the twice-elected Tampa prosecutor whom DeSantis suspended last year in another act of political retaliation.
DeSantis has repeatedly predicted he will ultimately prevail in these challenges. Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for his campaign, called the lawsuits “the tactics of activists who seek to impose their will on people by judicial fiat.”
“These attempts to circumvent the will of the legislature are not indicative of anything beyond the failure of the left’s ideas at the ballot box,” Griffin said in a statement. “Governor DeSantis is a proven fighter who will bring the same temerity to the presidency.”
Recent weeks, though, have seen a handful of reminders that several pillars of his record remain fragile even as they figure prominently in his stump speeches.
On Friday, a federal judge blocked a new Florida law that gave the DeSantis administration the power to shut down bars or restaurants that admit children to certain “adult live performances,” widely seen as a crackdown on drag shows.
Another federal judge said Wednesday that Florida could not restrict transgender adults on Medicaid from receiving gender-affirming care. The same judge earlier this month had stepped in to allow three transgender children to receive puberty blockers while a lawsuit seeking to overturn a state ban on the treatment proceeds. In both rulings, the judge said there was “no rational basis” to prevent the care and declared “gender identity is real,” casting doubts on the future of the state’s prohibition.
DeSantis, as a presidential candidate, has seized on conservative concerns over such treatment, particularly for minors. His efforts to halt it – including signing a law that prohibits transgender children from receiving gender-affirming treatments and punish doctors who run afoul of it – are prominently featured in his stump speeches. Speaking to North Carolina Republicans after the ruling, the governor acknowledged the legal fight, but he assured the audience: “We are going to win.”
“It is mutilation, and it is wrong, and it has no place in our state,” he said.
DeSantis of late has also taken credit for the GOP’s narrow US House majority, noting the highly partisan map he pushed through his state legislature, which ultimately helped Republicans net four critical seats. But those suing Florida to invalidate the state’s congressional boundaries have new reason for optimism after the US Supreme Court ordered Alabama officials to redraw its map to allow an additional Black-majority district. The DeSantis map was similarly criticized as diminishing the power of minority voters in Florida.
“Many of the things coming from the governor are form over function,” said Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, one of plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit. “They want to get to a certain result, so they find a means to do it, whether it makes logic or legal sense or not.”
The US District Court for the Northern District of Florida has in particular stymied DeSantis’ agenda. Two judges on the bench, Mark Walker and Robert Hinkle, have repeatedly ruled against the governor, often punctuating their opinions with harsh and colorful repudiations.
Walker, in one ruling blocking parts of the Stop WOKE Act, compared Florida’s treatment of the First Amendment under DeSantis to the “Upside Down,” the nightmare alternative dimension from the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” In another lawsuit over the law, this one filed by college professors, Walker called the law “dystopian” and wrote that DeSantis and Florida Republicans had “declared the state has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom.’”
Hinkle, in January, chided DeSantis’ suspension of Warren as political, unconstitutional and executed with “not a hint of misconduct,” though he ultimately ruled he was powerless to intervene. Warren is appealing, though he suffered another defeat when the state Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a separate request to reinstate him.
Ruling this month against the state in the two cases dealing with transgender care prohibition, Hinkle called the law “an exercise in politics, not good medicine.”
“Nothing could have motivated this remarkable intrusion into parental prerogatives other than opposition to transgender status itself,” he wrote.
DeSantis has shrugged off these defeats as the work of left-leaning judges. President Barack Obama nominated Walker to his district court judgeship in 2012, and Hinkle was selected by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Neither nomination drew objection from Senate Republicans at the time.
When Walker ruled to block Florida’s anti-riot law – comparing it to past attempts to squash dissent from Civil Rights activists in the 1950s and 60s – DeSantis dismissed it as “a foreordained conclusion in front of that court.”
“We will win that on appeal,” DeSantis said. “I guarantee we’ll win that on appeal.”
That assurance came 21 months ago. In the meantime, the law has yet to take effect.
Dana Thompson Dorsey, a professor of education law, was among seven Florida college professors who sued to block the Stop WOKE Act over provisions that limited how she and her colleagues could talk about race and sex with students. She called Walker’s decision halting the law a “work of art.”
Since then, she has continued to teach critical race studies to her doctoral students at the University of South Florida, while DeSantis has taken his fight against the concept national. But despite winning injunctive relief, she remains troubled by the new environment for higher education under DeSantis.
“There is a lot at stake and it’s not just for those of us brave enough to be plaintiffs,” she said. “The idea of telling adults what they can and cannot learn is unfathomable. The students who become our future leaders will repeat our mistakes if they don’t understand the past.”
While legal challenges have prevented DeSantis from fully realizing his vision for Florida, the uncertainty has not always benefited opponents and the plaintiffs suing to block his agenda.
Abortions after 15 weeks have paused in most cases in Florida while providers await a ruling on the state’s ban. Andrew Warren remains out of office. Transgender care providers are in uncertain territory – Hinkle’s limited rulings provided relief but only for those who sued the state.
The League of Women Voters of Florida is taking the state to court over new restrictions on third-party voter registration. Fines for violating the law could cost as much as $250,000 a year and the organization has asked for a preliminary injunction to prevent its enforcement. In the meantime, the league decided it would no longer collect and turn in voter registration forms, pausing for now a practice that has been central to its civic outreach for more than 75 years.
“That’s a very sad and horrible result, but we cannot figure out a way to protect ourselves without that major change,” Scoon said.
DeSantis has also managed to maneuver when legal challenges have threatened to stymie his efforts, thanks to a closely aligned Republican-led legislature.
When a lawsuit accused the governor of breaking state law when he sent two planes carrying migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, lawmakers helped change the law to allow him to do so. His administration recently orchestrated the transport of migrants from El Paso, Texas, to California.
After several individuals arrested last year for voter fraud by DeSantis’ new election security force had their cases dismissed, lawmakers again tweaked the law to try to make it easier for the state to secure convictions.
DeSantis and Florida Republicans have signaled they intend to keep fighting in court, too. The budget DeSantis signed earlier this month included $16 million for legal battles underway and the ones to come.
“We will never surrender to the woke mob,” the governor recently told an audience in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are going to leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history where it belongs.”
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Biden administration moves ahead with Medicare drug price negotiations amid industry lawsuits | CNN Politics
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Undeterred by a growing number of lawsuits, the Biden administration on Friday released revised guidance for Medicare’s new drug price negotiation program.
The latest guidance outlines how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will negotiate with drugmakers to reach agreement on a maximum fair price for a selected medicine, the agency said. It was informed by public input on the initial guidance the agency released in March, which explained how it will select the drugs and how the negotiations will be conducted.
The program, which was authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act that congressional Democrats passed last year, has prompted a fierce backlash from the pharmaceutical industry. Two drug manufacturers and two industry groups have filed lawsuits, arguing the measure is unconstitutional.
But the administration is not backing down from implementing its historic new power. It intends to keep its timeline of announcing the first 10 drugs that will be selected for negotiation by September 1. CMS and the drugmakers will negotiate during 2023 and 2024. The prices will be effective starting in 2026.
“The Biden-Harris Administration isn’t letting anything get in our way of delivering lower drug costs for Americans,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Pharmaceutical companies have made record profits for decades. Now they’re lining up to block this Administration’s work to negotiate for better drug prices for our families. We won’t be deterred.”
The initial set of drugs will be chosen from the top 50 Part D drugs that are eligible for negotiation that have the highest total expenditures in Medicare. CMS will consider multiple factors when developing its initial offer, including the drugs’ clinical benefits, the price of alternatives, research and development costs and patent protection, among others.
If drugmakers don’t comply with the process, they will have to pay an excise tax of up to 95% of the medications’ US sales or pull all their drugs from the Medicare and Medicaid markets. The pharmaceutical industry contends that the true penalty can be as high as 1,900% of sales.
CMS said it received more than 7,500 comments on its initial guidance from patient groups, drug companies, pharmacies and others.
The changes it is making are aimed at improving transparency while keeping confidentiality in mind, as well as fostering “an effective negotiation process,” the agency said.
They include revising the confidentiality process to state that CMS will release information about the negotiations when it publishes the explanations of the prices. Also, drug companies may publicly discuss the negotiations – the prior secrecy requirement had been a point of contention among manufacturers that was mentioned in the lawsuits. And they won’t be required to destroy data relating to the negotiations.
In addition, CMS will hold patient-focused listening sessions to provide drug companies and the public more opportunities to engage with the agency. The sessions – which will give patients, caregivers and others the chance to share input on how a medication addresses unmet needs, how it impacts specific populations and what therapeutic alternatives exist – will be held in the fall for the first round of drugs.
Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, and the US Chamber of Commerce have all recently filed lawsuits in federal courts across the US. They each argue the program is unconstitutional in various ways.
The challengers also say that the negotiation provision will harm innovation and patients’ access to new drugs.
Among the arguments are that the program violates the Fifth Amendment’s “takings” clause because it allows Medicare to obtain manufacturers’ patented drugs, which are private property, without paying fair market value under the threat of serious penalties.
Plus, the negotiations process violates the First Amendment, the challengers say, because it coerces manufacturers into saying that they agree to the price that the government has dictated and that it’s fair.
Another argument is that the process violates the Eighth Amendment by levying an excessive fine if drugmakers refuse to negotiate and continue selling their products to the Medicare market.
Merck expects its diabetes drug Januvia to be among the drugs named in September and its blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda and diabetes drug Janumet to be subject to negotiation in the future. Bristol Myers Squibb believes its blood thinning medication, Eliquis, will be subject to negotiations this year, and its cancer medication, Opdivo, will be selected in a subsequent round.
The changes in the revised guidance did not allay the complaints of the pharmaceutical industry. PhRMA said that transparency remains “severely limited,” patients’ views are not being taken into account and Medicare beneficiaries could have less access to drugs.
“The very few substantive changes to the final guidance demonstrate CMS saw this as a box checking exercise, not an opportunity to mitigate the negative impacts this price setting policy will have on patients or the broader health care sector,” PhRMA said in a statement.
“The approach CMS took in this final guidance confirms what we claimed in our lawsuit – Congress’ unconstitutional shortcuts taken in the law have given the administration far too much flexibility to set prices at their whim without any oversight or accountability to anyone,” the group continued.
The Biden administration will “vigorously defend” the drug price negotiation program, said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.
“We feel the law is on our side,” she said in a call with reporters Friday.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood gives up law license amid 2020-related disciplinary case | CNN Politics
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Lin Wood, a prominent right-wing attorney and election denier, has given up his law license in an apparent move to stave off disciplinary proceedings tied to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Wood is formally retiring from practicing law, and the disciplinary cases against him in Georgia are being dismissed, according to court filings and a letter Wood sent to the state bar this week. His retirement is “unqualified, irrevocable, and permanent,” the court filings state.
“I have retired from the active practice of law as I have been planning to do since late 2019,” Wood told CNN.
The situation stems from Wood’s conduct after the 2020 election. He filed a series of meritless lawsuits after then-President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, which were filled with debunked theories about massive voter fraud that went nowhere in the courts. He was never formally part of the Trump campaign’s legal team, though he promoted the same election lies that Trump embraced.
“By permitting (Wood) to transfer to Retired Status and thereby prohibiting (Wood) from practicing law in this state or any other state or jurisdiction, the Office of General Counsel believes that it has achieved the goals of disciplinary action, including protecting the public and the integrity of the judicial system and the legal profession,” Robert Remar, an attorney representing the State Bar of Georgia, wrote in a court filing.
In a Telegram post on Wednesday, Wood said, “Anyone who suggests that my voluntary retirement from the GA B.A.R. was out of fear of disbarment, does not know me or has not followed me very long.”
The disciplinary proceedings against Wood are one of several against lawyers who helped Trump in his ill-fated quest to stay in power. His personal attorney at the time, Rudy Giuliani, saw his law license suspended in 2021. And another pro-Trump attorney, John Eastman, is currently in the middle of a disciplinary trial for attempting to subvert Congress’ election certification on January 6, 2021.
These and other lawyers in Trump’s orbit are also being scrutinized in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation into the Trump team’s wide-ranging attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and potentially interfere with the lawful transfer of power.
Long before the 2020 election, Wood became famous for successfully handling high-profile defamation lawsuits, most notably the case of Richard Jewell, the Atlanta security guard who was falsely accused of being the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bomber. But his activities amid the 2020 presidential election became increasingly unhinged, including calling for the execution of senior US officials and promoting QAnon conspiracies.
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DOJ says it’s assessing the situation along the Texas-Mexico border amid ‘troubling reports’ over migrant treatment | CNN Politics
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The Justice Department is assessing the situation along the Texas-Mexico border following reports that Texas troopers were told to push back migrants into the Rio Grande and ordered not to give them water, calling those reports “troubling” in a statement to CNN.
The Justice Department’s statement is the first public acknowledgment that the department is assessing the situation but falls short of opening an investigation. An assessment could be the first step toward an investigation.
“The department is aware of the troubling reports, and we are working with DHS and other relevant agencies to assess the situation,” DOJ spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa told CNN.
In a Tuesday joint statement with other Texas top officials, including Department of Public Safety Chief Steve McCraw, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said there have been no orders or directions given under Operation Lone Star that “would compromise the lives of those attempting to cross the border illegally.”
The Biden administration has repeatedly criticized Abbott’s actions along the US southern border and his decision to transport migrants to Democratic-led cities without coordination. CNN previously reported that the Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department were in ongoing discussions about what actions could be taken against the state.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday called Abbott’s recent actions at the border a “political stunt” and “shameful” when asked about concerns from the Mexican government over the state’s floating barriers.
“I saw these reports and I think one of the things and I’ve been very clear about this that this governor has done over and over again is treated this situation we’re seeing at the border in an inhumane way. It is atrocious – the actions that he decides to take. … Instead of dealing with this issue in a way that we can get to a resolution and are working together, he turns it into a political stunt,” Jean-Pierre said Wednesday.
“This is not surprising. Just yesterday I was asked about abandoned children – or migrant children – not offering them water. This is what we see over and over and over again from this Texas governor, from Gov. Abbott and it is – all we’re asking for – as a country and what we should hold near and dear is the basic human decency. Basic human decency and we are just not seeing this from this governor.”
Jean-Pierre said she would not speak to the “legal piece” of the situation, adding she would refer any legal action to the Department of Justice.
Internal discussions about legal action against Texas date back to last year, when Abbott began sending migrants to cities nationwide without alerting them and have continued with the deployment of buoys in the Rio Grande, which pose a potential drowning risk to migrants and now, concern over the treatment of migrants.
Texas is already facing a lawsuit against its installation of a marine floating barrier. The owner of a Texas canoe and kayaking company filed the lawsuit earlier this month on the same day that Texas started deploying buoys for the barrier in an attempt to deter migrant crossings on the river along the US-Mexico border.
That suit lists the state of Texas and Abbott, as well as the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard.
It’s unclear whether the administration will take legal action against Texas, and officials have stressed that border agents have historically worked closely with Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
But it wouldn’t mark the first time the Justice Department has sued on border-related matters. Last year, the Justice Department sued Arizona for placing shipping containers along the US southern border – a move taken by then-Republican Gov. Doug Ducey as an affront to Biden’s immigration policies. Arizona eventually agreed to remove the containers.
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Hunter Biden hearing ends after judge is not ready to accept revised plea deal | CNN Politics
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Wilmington, Delaware
CNN
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A plea deal between President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department is on hold after a dramatic court hearing Wednesday.
Hunter Biden failed to pay between $1.1 million and $1.5 million in federal taxes before the legal deadlines and was poised to plead guilty to two tax charges with prosecutors agreeing to recommend a sentence of probation.
But before the original plea could be entered, the deal began to unravel and a revised agreement reached during the hearing was not accepted by the judge.
“I cannot accept the plea agreement today, said District Judge Maryellen Noreika.
Noreika said she had “concerns” about the parties seemingly linking the tax plea agreement to resolving a felony gun charge. During the proceedings, prosecutors confirmed that the investigation into Biden was ongoing.
After negotiations, the president’s son then agreed to plead guilty to the two tax charges in a deal that only includes conduct related to tax offenses, drug use and gun possession. The two sides agreed that this deal does not shield him from potential future charges. But the judge wasn’t satisfied.
“What if it is unconstitutional?” she asked. “I’m trying to exercise due deliverance and consideration to make sure we don’t make a misstep.”
After the discussion, Hunter Biden entered a not guilty plea.
Noreika – a Donald Trump appointee who was confirmed unanimously by the Senate – presided over Wednesday’s hearing and has the sole authority to decide Hunter Biden’s ultimate punishment.
While the investigation was ongoing, Hunter Biden fully paid his federal tax bill, along with interest and penalties, his lawyers have previously said.
The Trump-era Justice Department started investigating Hunter Biden in 2018, and the probe steadily expanded to examine whether he violated money laundering and foreign lobbying laws with his multimillion-dollar overseas business dealings. Federal investigators also looked into Hunter Biden’s unpaid taxes and lavish spending, which came amid a struggle with addiction.
US attorney David Weiss has led the investigation. He was appointed by Trump, and Joe Biden kept him at his post so he could continue handling the probe. There is no public indication that Joe Biden or the White House ever tried to intervene in the probe.
A bizarre legal clash between a top Republican lawmaker and Hunter Biden’s lawyers, which erupted on the eve of his court appearance, did not come up at Wednesday’s hearing.
The dispute revolves around whether a member of Hunter Biden’s legal team lied to the court about her identity so they would remove a Tuesday filing from GOP Rep. Jason Smith, the House Ways and Means Committee chair, about alleged political interference in the probe.
In a late twist, the judge threatened to sanction Hunter Biden’s lawyers over the matter. They denied the claims and called the incident an “unintentional miscommunication” by court staff.
Hanging over the plea hearing are recent claims from two IRS whistleblowers who helped lead the investigation that the Justice Department gave preferential treatment to Hunter Biden beginning when Trump was president in 2020.
Their claims dovetail with the GOP-fueled narrative that Hunter Biden got a “sweetheart deal,” even though it’s fairly common for first-time offenders to avoid incarceration in a misdemeanor-only case.
The career IRS agents told Congress that Justice Department officials undercut their attempts to further scrutinize Biden family members, slow-walked requests for subpoenas and search warrants and blocked Weiss from filing the felony tax evasion charges that they had recommended.
The relevant parties – including Weiss, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other senior Justice Department officials – have publicly refuted the whistleblowers’ claims of politicization.
In letters to Congress, Weiss has maintained that he has “been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.” And earlier this week, he offered to testify at a public House Oversight Committee hearing, likely sometime this fall.
House Republicans have zeroed in on Hunter Biden’s finances as part of their broader oversight probes into the Biden family. They are seeking testimony from Weiss about the criminal probe, and the House GOP’s right-wing flank is already clamoring for a possible Garland impeachment.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers called the IRS whistleblowers “disgruntled agents” with “an axe to grind.”
They’ve also said their client is pleading guilty because he believes “it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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$35 political contribution to Democrats raises fresh scrutiny of Judge Merchan | CNN Politics
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Judge Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in New York, donated $35 in political contributions to Democrats in 2020, including a $15 contribution to the campaign of Trump’s opponent, President Joe Biden.
The political donations are undoubtedly small, but they nevertheless raise questions about Merchan’s impartiality as he has come under attack by the former president as a “Trump-hating judge.”
“While the amounts here are minimal, it’s surprising that a sitting judge would make political donations of any size to a partisan candidate or cause,” said Elie Honig, a senior CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor.
According to federal election records, Merchan made the three donations in July 2020 through ActBlue, an online fundraising platform for Democratic candidates and causes.
Merchan contributed $15 earmarked for the Biden campaign, and made two $10 contributions, one earmarked to the Progressive Turnout Project, a voter outreach organization, and another to Stop Republicans, a subsidiary of the Progressive Turnout Project.
Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University, said that New York, like most US jurisdictions, has adopted language from the American Bar Association Model Code of Judicial Conduct, which prohibits judges from “soliciting funds for, paying an assessment to, or making a contribution to a political organization or candidate.”
“The contribution to Biden and possibly the one to ‘Stop Republicans’ would be forbidden unless there is some other explanation that would allow them,” Gillers said.
But Gillers said that the donation “would be viewed as trivial, especially given the small sums.” He said if a complaint was made, the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct would remind the judge of the rules.
Asked if this could be grounds for a legal challenge or recusal, Gillers said, “Absolutely not. This does not come anywhere near the kind of proof required for recusal.”
Trump has been attacking Merchan and his family, including his daughter, whose political consulting firm did work for the Biden campaign and now-Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. Trump has also complained about Merchan for presiding over the case against the Trump Organization, which was convicted on tax fraud charges late last year.
CNN’s John Miller reports that the New York Police Department is tracking numerous threats against Merchan but has not seen specific, credible threats.
An attorney for Trump on Thursday condemned those making threats against Merchan. Joe Tacopina, one of the lawyers representing Trump in the case, told CNN the threats were “appalling and we condemn anyone participating in such behavior.”
Trump lawyer Susan Necheles declined to comment on the donations. But the former president’s political allies are pointing to the contributions to argue the judge should remove himself from the case.
“He donated to Joe Biden’s campaign. He should get off this case. And this judge has a history, with President Trump, in prior cases,” Mike Davis, a former Republican chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and founder of a conservative judicial advocacy group, told CNN’s Pamela Brown. “He finds out that this judge actually donated to Biden’s campaign. So, that at least raises the appearance of impartiality – the appearance that this judge could not be impartial against President Trump.”
Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a CNN legal analyst and former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said that the political donations amount to an “unforced error” for Merchan.
“Judge Merchan has a reputation of being a fair down the middle judge, however, donating to a defendant’s political rival can cause the appearance of a conflict, even where there is none, and creates an unforced error in this case involving Trump,” she said.
A search of federal election databases does not turn up any additional political contributions for Merchan. New York state campaign finance records show that he gave a $99 contribution in 2002 to Rolando Acosta, who has served as a New York state appeals court judge since 2017.
A source familiar with the court system said that the court administration doesn’t monitor judges’ personal affairs. The decision to recuse from the case would be up to Merchan himself.
If he doesn’t, however, Trump’s lawyers could appeal the matter to a New York state appeals court.
A spokesperson for the courts said, “We decline to comment on pending cases.”
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You can now apply for your share of a $725 million Facebook data privacy settlement. Here’s how | CNN Business
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New York
CNN
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Facebook users who had an active account at any point between May 2007 and December 2022 can now apply to receive a piece of parent company Meta’s $725 million settlement related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Meta in December agreed to the payment to settle a longstanding class action lawsuit accusing it of allowing Cambridge Analytica and other third parties to access private user information and misleading users about its privacy practices.
The legal battle began four years ago, following an international outcry from the company’s disclosure that the private information of as many as 87 million Facebook users was obtained by Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that worked with the Trump campaign.
The California judge overseeing the case granted preliminary approval of the settlement late last month, and Facebook users can now apply for a cash payment as part of a settlement.
The claim form — which requires a few personal details and information about a user’s Facebook account — can be filled out online or printed and submitted by mail. The form takes only a few minutes to complete and must be submitted by August 25 to be included as part of the settlement.
Any US Facebook user who had an active account sometime between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, is eligible to be part of the settlement class, including those who have since deleted their accounts.
It’s not yet clear how much each settlement payment will be. The fund will be distributed to class members who submit valid claims based on how long they had an active Facebook account during the relevant period, according to a frequently asked questions page on the settlement site.
A final settlement approval hearing is set for September 7. Settlement payments will be distributed after the court’s approval, assuming there are no appeals.
Meta did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement. Facebook has made changes in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica incident, including restricting third-party access to user data and improving communications to users about how their data is collected and shared.
“We pursued a settlement as it’s in the best interest of our community and shareholders,” Meta spokesperson Dina Luce said in a statement following the December settlement agreement. “Over the last three years we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program. We look forward to continuing to build services people love and trust with privacy at the forefront.”
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Chief Justice John Roberts will not testify before Congress about Supreme Court ethics | CNN Politics
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Chief Justice John Roberts has notified Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin that he won’t testify at an upcoming hearing on Supreme Court ethics, instead releasing a new statement signed by all nine justices that is meant to provide “clarity” to the public about the high court’s ethics practices.
“I must respectfully decline your invitation,” Roberts wrote in a letter to Durbin, which was released by a spokesperson for the high court Tuesday.
“Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence,” he added.
Without addressing Durbin’s specific concerns over ethics Roberts simply attached a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” to which he said, “All of the current Members of the Supreme Court subscribe.”
The Illinois Democrat had asked Roberts, in a letter, to voluntarily testify in a hearing on Supreme Court ethics set to take place May 2. The request came in the wake of a ProPublica report that found that Justice Clarence Thomas had gone on several luxury trips at the invitation of a GOP megadonor. The trips were not disclosed on Thomas’ public financial filings.
Thomas said in a statement that he had not reported the trips because the ethics guidelines in effect at the time had not required such disclosures.
It was widely expected that Roberts would decline Durbin’s invitation to appear before a separate branch of government to discuss ethics reform.
Durbin responded to the refusal in a statement Tuesday.
“Make no mistake: Supreme Court ethics reform must happen whether the Court participates in the process or not,” Durbin said in the statement.
He also noted that he was surprised that the chief justice had amended his letter with a statement meant to provide “clarity” to the public about how the justices consider ethics issues.
Durbin dismissed the statement as a “recounting of existing legal standards of ethics” and said that Roberts’ suggestion that current law is adequate “ignores the obvious.”
“It is time for Congress to accept its responsibility to establish an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court, the only agency of our government without it,” Durbin said.
The new statement, signed by all nine members of the court, says that the justices want to provide “new clarity” to the public. It might serve instead, to infuriate critics of the court who will say it falls far short of what is necessary to provide more binding regulations applicable to the justices.
Less than an hour after the court released the statement, for example, Gabe Roth, who runs watchdog group Fix the Court, blasted what he called a “rehashing of things we already knew and found insufficient.”
“Following weeks of scandal, Americans had been seeking some reassurance that nine of the most powerful people in the country understood their responsibility to act above board, avoid corrupting influences and be honest in their dealings and disclosures,” Roth said in a statement.
The newly drafted statement by the court notes that the justices “today reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices to which they subscribe in carrying out their responsibilities as Members of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
The statement reiterates something that Roberts has stressed before: that the justices “consult a wide variety of authorities to address specific ethical issues.”
“They may turn to judicial opinions, treatises, scholarly articles, disciplinary decisions, and the historical practice of the Court and the federal judiciary” and they “may also seek advice from the Court’s Legal Office and from their colleagues,” the statement says.
Indeed, Thomas in a rare statement on April 7 said that he had turned to the advice of his colleagues when deciding that luxury trips paid for by GOP megadonor Harlan Crow did not need to be disclosed in his yearly financial disclosure reports under the ethics guidelines that were in place at the time.
Last weekend, Durbin released a separate statement noting that Roberts had declined to directly respond to a letter asking him to investigate Thomas’ filings but had referred the letter to the Judicial Conference, which serves as the policy-making body of the federal courts.
Durbin had also included a letter from Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, the secretary of the Judicial Conference, who said that she would send the matter to the conference’s Committee on Financial Disclosure.
But the new statement emphasizes that while the Judicial Conference has a code of conduct that is followed by lower court judges, the conference “does not supervise the Supreme Court.”
The statement does note that in 1991, members of the court “voluntarily adopted” a resolution to follow the financial disclosure requirements and limitations on gifts that apply to all other federal judges.
But when it comes to recusals, the standards are necessarily more restrictive because unlike the lower courts that can freely substitute one district or circuit court judge for the other, the Supreme Court allows only its own members to hear a dispute.
The statement explains why individual justices “rather than the Court” must decide recusal issues.
“If the full Court or any subset of the Court were to review the recusal decisions of individual Justices, it would create an undesirable situation in which the Court could affect the outcome of a case by selecting who among its Members may participate,” it says.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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‘Peril to our democracy’: Chilling lines from the judge who sentenced the Oath Keepers’ leader | CNN Politics
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Judge Amit Mehta on Thursday handed down an 18-year prison sentence for the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that ended with the violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Before announcing the sentence, however, Mehta, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, delivered a chilling address to Rhodes about the impact of his seditious conspiracy crimes on American democracy.
The federal judges in Washington, DC, who work just blocks from the US Capitol, have served as a conscience of democracy since January 6. They have rejected defenses that downplay the seriousness of the Capitol attack, spoken out about future dangers to the peaceful transfer of power and – while they have criticized former President Donald Trump – reminded defendants they are responsible for their actions.
Here are some of the powerful lines from the judge on Thursday:
“I dare say, Mr. Rhodes – and I never have said this to anyone I have sentenced – you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta said.
“I dare say we all now hold our collective breaths when an election is approaching. Will we have another January 6 again? That remains to be seen.”
The judge, refuting claims Rhodes made during a 20-minute rant earlier in the day, added: “You are not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes. That is not why you are here. It is not because of your beliefs. It is not because Joe Biden is the president right now.”
The sentence is the first handed down in over a decade for seditious conspiracy and Mehta said he wanted to explain the offense to the public. He did not mince words.
“A seditious conspiracy, when you take those two concepts and put it together, is among the most serious crimes an American can commit. It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country,” the judge said.
“It is a series of acts in which you and others committed to use force, including potentially with weapons, against the government of the United States as it transitioned from one president to another. And what was the motive? You didn’t like the new guy.”
“Let me be clear about one thing to you, Mr. Rhodes, and anybody who else that is listening. In this country we don’t paint with a broad brush, and shame on you if you do. Just because somebody supports the former president, it doesn’t mean they are a White supremacist, a White nationalist. It just means they voted for the other guy.”
“What we absolutely cannot have is a group of citizens who – because they did not like the outcome of an election, who did not believe the law was followed as it should be – foment revolution.”
Mehta echoed these warnings later Thursday, when addressing a second Oath Keepers defendant, Kelly Meggs.
“You don’t take to the streets with rifles,” he said. “You don’t hope that the president invokes the insurrection act so you can start a war in the streets… You don’t rush into the US Capitol with the hope to stop the electoral vote count.”
“It is astonishing to me how average Americans somehow transformed into criminals in the weeks before and on January 6,” the judge said.
Mehta said Rhodes, 58, has expressed no remorse and continues to be a threat.
“It would be one thing, Mr. Rhodes, if after January 6 you had looked at what happened that day and said … that was not a good day for our democracy. But you celebrated it, you thought it was a good thing,” the judge said.
“Even as you have been incarcerated you have continued to allude to violence as an acceptable means to address grievances.”
“Nothing has changed, Mr. Rhodes, nothing has changed. And the reality is as you sit here today and as we heard you speak, the moment you are released you will be prepared to take up arms against our government. And not because you are a political prisoner, not because of the 2020 election, because you think this is a valid way to address grievances.”
“American democracy doesn’t work, Mr. Rhodes, if when you think the Constitution has not been complied with it puts you in a bad place, because from what I’m hearing, when you think you are in a bad place, the rest of us are too. We are all the objects of your plans to – and your willingness to – engage in violence.”
Mehta granted a Justice Department request to enhance the potential sentence against Rhodes, ruling that his actions amounted to domestic terrorism.
“He was the one giving the orders,” Mehta said. “He was the one organizing the teams that day. He was the reason they were in fact in Washington, DC. Oath Keepers wouldn’t have been there but for Stewart Rhodes, I don’t think anyone contends otherwise. He was the one who gave the order to go, and they went.”
During the sentencing hearing of Meggs, who was also convicted of seditious conspiracy, the judge again pegged Rhodes as the ringleader.
“It is in part because of Mr. Rhodes, frankly, that Mr. Meggs is sitting here today.”
On Wednesday, several police officers and congressional staffers who were at the Capitol on January 6 testified about their experiences, injuries and the aftermath. Mehta said their bravery and actions are also an important legacy of the attack, as officers put their bodies on the line.
“The other enduring legacy is what we saw yesterday,” the judge said. “It is the heroism of police officers and those working in Congress … to protect democracy as we know it. That is what they are doing.”
Before he was sentenced, Rhodes addressed the court for 20 minutes about the charges against him, repeating falsehoods about 2020 election fraud, claiming he was a political prisoner and expressing his desire to continue fighting.
“It’s not simply a conspiracy theory or a false narrative about fraud. It’s about the Constitution,” Rhodes said, later shouting: “I am not able to drop that under my oath. I am not able to ignore the Constitution.”
The judge had none of that, and compared Rhodes’ comments to the heroism of police officers and others protecting the Capitol: “We want to talk about keeping oaths? There is nobody more emblematic of keeping their oaths, Mr. Rhodes.”
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Timeline: The special counsel inquiry into Trump’s handling of classified documents | CNN Politics
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Washington
CNN
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The federal criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents escalated in stunning fashion this week with Trump’s indictment.
The indictment hasn’t been unsealed yet, so details of the charges aren’t publicly available. But the investigation – led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith – revolves around sensitive government papers that Trump held onto after his White House term ended in January 2021. The special counsel has also examined whether Trump or his aides obstructed the investigation.
Federal authorities have recovered more than 325 classified documents from Trump. He has voluntarily given back some materials, his lawyers turned over additional files after a subpoena, and the FBI found dozens of classified records during a court-approved search of his Mar-a-Lago home last summer.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing and claims the investigation is a politically motivated sham, intended to derail his ongoing campaign to win the Republican 2024 nomination and return to the White House.
Here’s a timeline of the important developments in the blockbuster investigation.
An official from the National Archives and Records Administration contacts Trump’s team after realizing that several important documents weren’t handed over before Trump left the White House. In hopes of locating the missing items, NARA lawyer Gary Stern reaches out to someone who served in the White House counsel’s office under Trump, who was the point of contact for recordkeeping matters. The missing documents include some of Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as the map of Hurricane Dorian that Trump infamously altered with a sharpie pen.
In a taped conversation, Trump acknowledges that he still has a classified Pentagon document about a possible attack against Iran, according to CNN reporting. The recording, which was made at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, indicates that Trump understood that he retained classified material after leaving the White House. The special counsel later obtained this audiotape, a key piece of evidence in his inquiry.
NARA grows frustrated with the slow pace of document turnover after several months of conversations with the Trump team. Stern reaches out to another Trump attorney to intervene. The archivist asks about several boxes of records that were apparently taken to Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s relocation to Florida. NARA still doesn’t receive the White House documents they are searching for.
After months of discussions with Trump’s team, NARA retrieves 15 boxes of Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago. The boxes contained some materials that were part of “special access programs,” known as SAP, which is a classification that includes protocols to significantly limit who would have access to the information. NARA says in a statement that some of the records it received at the end of Trump’s administration were “torn up by former President Trump,” and that White House officials had to tape them back together. Not all the torn-up documents were reconstructed, NARA says.
NARA asks the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records and whether he violated the Presidential Records Act and other laws related to classified information. The Presidential Records Act requires all records created by a sitting president to be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administration.
NARA informs the Justice Department that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago included classified material. NARA also tells the department that, despite being warned it was illegal, Trump occasionally tore up government documents while he was president.
On April 7, NARA publicly acknowledges for the first time that the Justice Department is involved, and news outlets report that prosecutors have launched a criminal probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. Around this time, FBI agents quietly interview Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago about the handling of presidential records as part of their widening investigation.
The FBI asks NARA for access to the 15 boxes it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January. The request was formally transmitted to NARA by President Joe Biden’s White House Counsel’s office, because the incumbent president controls presidential documents in NARA custody.
The Justice Department sends a letter to Trump’s lawyers as part of its effort to access the 15 boxes, notifying them that more than 100 classified documents, totaling more than 700 pages, were found in the boxes. The letter says the FBI and US intelligence agencies need “immediate access” to these materials because of “important national security interests.” Also on this day, Trump lawyers ask NARA to delay its plans to give the FBI access to these materials. Trump’s lawyers say they want time to examine the materials to see if anything is privileged, and that they are making a “protective assertion of executive privilege” over all the documents.
Trump’s lawyers write again to NARA, and ask again that NARA postpone its plans to give the FBI access to the materials retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.
Debra Steidel Wall, the acting archivist of the United States, who runs NARA, informs Trump’s lawyers that she is rejecting their claims of “protective” executive privilege over all the materials taken from Mar-a-Lago and will therefore turn over the materials to the FBI and US intelligence agencies, in a four-page letter.
The Justice Department subpoenas Trump, demanding all documents with classification markings that are still at Mar-a-Lago. At some point after receiving the subpoena, Trump asks his lawyer Evan Corcoran if there was any way to fight the subpoena, but Corcoran tells him he has to comply, according to notes Cochran took and later gave to investigators. Also after getting the subpoena, Trump aides are captured on surveillance footage moving document boxes into and out of a basement storage room – which has become a major element of the obstruction investigation.
News outlets report that investigators subpoenaed NARA for access to the classified documents they retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. The subpoena is the first public indication of the Justice Department using a grand jury in its investigation.
As part of the effort to comply with the subpoena, Corcoran searches a Mar-a-Lago storage room and finds 38 classified documents. According to a lawsuit that the former president later filed, Trump invites FBI officials to come to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the subpoenaed materials.
Federal investigators, including a top Justice Department counterintelligence official, visit Mar-a-Lago to deal with the subpoena for remaining classified documents. The investigators meet with Trump’s attorneys, including Corcoran, and look around the basement storage room where the documents were stored. Trump briefly stops by the meeting to say hello to the officials, but he does not answer any questions. Corcoran hands over the 38 classified documents that he found. Trump lawyer Christina Bobb signs a sworn affidavit inaccurately asserting that there aren’t any more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s attorneys receive a letter from federal investigators, asking them to further secure the room where documents are being stored. In response, Trump aides add a padlock to the room in the basement of Mar-a-Lago.
Federal investigators serve a subpoena to the Trump Organization, demanding surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s company complies with the subpoena and turns over the footage. CNN has reported that this was part of an effort to gather information about who had access to areas at the club where government documents were stored.
The FBI executes a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago – a major escalation of the investigation. The search focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are located. Federal agents found more than 100 additional classified documents at the property. The search was the first time in American history that a former president’s home was searched as part of a criminal investigation.
Trump sends a message through one his lawyers to Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying he has “been hearing from people all over the country about the raid” who are “angry,” and that “whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know,” according to a lawsuit he later filed. Hours later, after three days of silence, Garland makes a brief public statement about the investigation. He reveals that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and that the Justice Department will continue to apply the law “without fear or favor.” Garland also pushes back against what he called “unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department.”
Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approves the unsealing of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and its property receipt, at the Justice Department’s request and after Trump’s lawyers agree to the release. The warrant reveals the Justice Department is looking into possible violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records, as part of its investigation.
Trump files a federal lawsuit seeking the appointment of a third-party attorney known as a “special master” to independently review the materials that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. In the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers argue that the Justice Department can’t be trusted to do its own review for potentially privileged materials that should be siloed off from the criminal probe.
In a major ruling in Trump’s favor, Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, grants Trump’s request for a special master to review the seized materials from Mar-a-Lago. She says the special master will have the power to look for documents covered under attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.
The Justice Department appeals Cannon’s decision in the special master case.
Cannon appoints senior Judge Raymond Dearie to serve as the special master and sets a November 30 deadline for the Brooklyn-based federal judge to finish his review of the seized materials.
A maintenance worker drains the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago, which ends up flooding a room where there are computer severs that contain surveillance video logs, according to CNN reporting. It’s unclear if the flood was accidental or on purpose, and it’s possible that the IT equipment wasn’t damaged, but federal prosecutors found the incident to be suspicious.
Former Trump administration official Kash Patel testifies before the federal grand jury in the classified documents investigation. A Trump loyalist, Patel had publicly claimed that Trump declassified all the materials that ended up at Mar-a-Lago, even though there is no evidence to back up those assertions.
Garland announces that he is appointing special counsel Jack Smith to take over the investigation.
A federal appeals court shuts down the special master review of the documents that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. The appeals panel rebuked Cannon’s earlier decisions, writing that she essentially tried to “interfere” with the criminal probe and had created a “special exception” in the law to help Trump.
Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore testifies before the special counsel’s grand jury, where he described how Trump’s lawyers scoured his properties for classified materials. He later left Trump’s legal team.
Trump’s legal team searches four of his properties in Florida, New York and New Jersey for additional classified material. They find two more classified files in a Florida storage unit, and give them to the FBI. Around this time, Trump’s team also finds additional papers with classification markings at Mar-a-Lago, and they give those materials to the Justice Department. They also turn over a laptop belonging to a Trump aide who had copied those documents onto the computer, not realizing they were classified.
A string of key witnesses testify before the special counsel’s grand jury in Washington, DC. This includes Trump administration officials Robert O’Brien and Ric Grenell, who handled national security and intelligence matters; Margo Martin, a communications aide who continued working for Trump after he left the White House; and Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., longtime Trump employees who oversee security for the Trump Organization.
In response to a new subpoena from the special counsel, Trump’s lawyers turn over some material related to a classified Pentagon document that he discussed at a recorded meeting in 2021. However, Trump’s team wasn’t able to find the specific document – about a potential US attack on Iran – that prosecutors were looking for.
Corcoran, the lead Trump attorney, testifies before the grand jury in Washington, DC. This occurred after a federal judge ordered him to answer prosecutors’ questions, ruling that attorney-client privilege did not shield his discussion with Trump because Trump might been trying to commit a crime through his attorneys. Corcoran later recused himself from handling the Mar-a-Lago matter.
The first public indications emerge that the special counsel is using a second grand jury in Miami to gather evidence. Multiple witnesses testify in front of the Miami-based panel, CNN reported.
Trump lawyers meet with senior Justice Department officials – including special counsel Smith – to discuss the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The sitdown lasted about 90 minutes, and Trump’s team raised concerns about the probe, which they have called an “unlawful” and “outrageous” abuse of the legal system.
News outlets report that the Justice Department recently sent a “target letter” to Trump, formally notifying him that he’s a target of the investigation into potential mishandling of classified documents.
News outlets report that Trump has been indicted in connection with the classified documents investigation. Trump also says in a social media post that the Justice Department informed his attorneys that he was indicted – and called the case a “hoax.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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Microsoft faces off against US government over Activision deal, with top execs set to testify | CNN Business
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Microsoft
(MSFT) and the video game giant Activision Blizzard
(ATVI) will face off Thursday against the US government in a high-stakes battle over one of the largest technology acquisitions in history.The showdown in federal court will have the CEOs of both companies taking the stand to defend their $69 billion merger against claims that the combination could violate US antitrust law and harm millions of consumers.
The outcome of the fight will shape the future of the multibillion-dollar games industry. It will also impact enormously popular gaming franchises such as “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft,” which Activision owns and would be transferred to Microsoft under the deal.
Also testifying will be the top financial executives from both companies; senior leaders from Microsoft’s Xbox division; the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Phil Spencer; and a vocal critic of the deal, Sony gaming CEO Jim Ryan.
The days-long affair begins Thursday and is scheduled to run through next week.
In bringing the case, the Federal Trade Commission is asking a US district court judge for an injunction that would temporarily halt the deal. That would keep the companies from closing their merger, at least until the FTC’s in-house court rules in a separate proceeding on whether the acquisition is anticompetitive.
But this week’s fight over a preliminary injunction may prove decisive for the deal as a whole. Microsoft has said that a victory for the FTC at this stage “will effectively block the transaction” overall.
In this hearing, the FTC does not need to prove that the deal is anticompetitive. It just needs to show that the agency would be likely to succeed in doing so if the case moves ahead, and that otherwise its ability to enforce US antitrust law would be harmed.
The clash comes as Microsoft and Activision face down a contractual July 18 deadline to consummate the deal. Failure to close, or any permanent court order to block the merger, could force Microsoft to pay a $3 billion breakup fee to Activision, according to the deal’s terms.
The FTC lawsuit has put Microsoft under the harshest antitrust scrutiny in the US in more than two decades. It also could be a crucial test for the FTC at a time when it’s trying to rein in the tech industry broadly, with mixed success.
In its initial challenge to the merger in its in-house court last year, the FTC alleged the deal would harm competition by turning Microsoft into the world’s third-largest video game publisher — allowing it to raise video game prices with impunity, restrict Activision titles from rival platforms and harm game quality and player experiences on consoles and gaming services.
Some of those concerns have also been raised internationally. The UK government has challenged the acquisition, and the New Zealand government on Tuesday warned that the deal could be anticompetitive.
Microsoft has sought to address the concerns by hammering out multi-year licensing agreements with competitors such as Nintendo and Nvidia to ensure that their platforms will continue to receive popular titles if the deal goes through.
The company has also put forth an 11-point pledge to keep its platforms open, a commitment that applies not only to the Activision Blizzard deal but to virtually all of Microsoft’s gaming business going forward.
Last month, Microsoft said the European Union would require it to license Activision games “automatically” to competing cloud gaming services as a condition of allowing the merger to proceed in the EU. That commitment, Microsoft said, “will apply globally and will empower millions of consumers worldwide to play these games on any device they choose.”
Although EU regulators have said the concession addresses their concerns, officials in the US and the UK are continuing with their legal opposition to the deal.
The standoff particularly focuses attention on FTC Chair Lina Khan, a tech industry critic who has argued for litigating difficult cases and for introducing novel legal theories to help adapt US antitrust law to the digital age.
Khan won a significant victory last year when the FTC forced Nvidia to abandon its attempted acquisition of the chipmaker Arm. The deal would have combined two companies in adjacent industries in what is known as a vertical merger, a type of deal that is rarely blocked in the United States.
But Khan also suffered a setback when the FTC unsuccessfully tried to block Facebook-parent Meta from acquiring Within Unlimited, a virtual reality startup. The FTC had argued that the acquisition was an attempt by Meta to quash competition in the nascent VR industry, but earlier this year, a federal judge declined to issue a preliminary injunction of the kind the FTC now seeks against Microsoft. The FTC dropped its case against Meta soon after.
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Prosecutors say they plan to bring felony charges against man arrested with weapons in Obama’s DC neighborhood | CNN Politics
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Federal prosecutors on Thursday said they plan to file felony charges against the man who was arrested last week with firearms in former President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC, neighborhood and accused of threatening several politicians.
Taylor Taranto, who had an open warrant for his arrest related to charges stemming from his involvement in the US Capitol riot, was arrested last week after claiming on an internet livestream the day before that he had a detonator.
Taranto has been in police custody since his arrest, and during a hearing Thursday to determine whether he’ll continue to be detained pending his trial for the riot charges, federal prosecutors said they plan to add federal felony charges to the case.
The prosecutors did not say when exactly they would bring the additional charges. Taranto is currently only facing four misdemeanor charges related to his conduct on January 6, 2021.
Taranto will continue to remain in custody pending a decision on his detention, federal magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui ordered Thursday.
Faruqui said he is currently in contact with pretrial services in Washington state, where Taranto is believed to have lived recently, to see if Taranto could be supervised by a third-party custodian instead of being held in detention. Pretrial services informed the judge it could take up to a week to evaluate the case.
Taranto is set to have another detention hearing next Wednesday.
On Wednesday, prosecutors provided fresh details on Taranto’s online activity before his arrest and threats he made toward prominent politics in recent weeks.
The government said in a detention memo that Taranto made threats against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin. Earlier in June, Taranto and several others entered an elementary school near Raskin’s home, with Taranto live-streaming the group “walking around the school, entering the gymnasium, and using a projector to display a film related to January 6,” according to the filing.
Taranto stated that he specifically chose the elementary school due to its proximity to Raskin’s home and that he is targeting Raskin because “he’s one of the guys that hates January 6 people, or more like Trump supporters, and it’s kind of like sending a shockwave through him because I did nothing wrong and he’s probably freaking out and saying s*** like, ‘Well he’s stalking me,’” the filing said.
“Taranto further comments, ‘I didn’t tell anyone where he lives ‘cause I want him all to myself,’ and ‘That was Piney Branch Elementary School in Maryland…right next to where Rep. Raskin and his wife live,’” the memo said.
On June 28, according to prosecutors, Taranto made “ominous comments” on video referencing McCarthy, saying: “Coming at you McCarthy. Can’t stop what’s coming. Nothing can stop what’s coming.”
After seeing those “threatening comments,” law enforcement tried to locate Taranto but weren’t successful, prosecutors said.
The following day, on June 29, “former President Donald Trump posted what he claimed was the address of Former President Barack Obama on the social media platform Truth Social,” prosecutors wrote in their memo. “Taranto used his own Truth Social account to re-post the address. On Telegram, Taranto then stated, ‘We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.’”
“Shortly thereafter, Taranto again began live-streaming from his van on his YouTube channel. This time, Taranto was driving through the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington D.C.,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Taranto parked his van and began walking around the neighborhood and that because of the “restricted nature of the residential area where Taranto was walking, United States Secret Service uniformed officers began monitoring Taranto almost immediately as soon as he began walking around and filming.”
Secret Service agents approached Taranto, prompting him to flee, according to the filing, but he was apprehended and arrested.
The government told the judge that among the items found in Taranto’s van were a “Smith and Wesson M&P Shield” and a “Ceska 9mm CZ Scorpion E3.” They also found “hundreds of rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition, a steering wheel lock, and a machete,” as well as signs, a mattress and other indications Taranto was living in the van.
This story has been updated with additional details Thursday.
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Google hit with lawsuit alleging it stole data from millions of users to train its AI tools | CNN Business
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Google was hit with a wide-ranging lawsuit on Tuesday alleging the tech giant scraped data from millions of users without their consent and violated copyright laws in order to train and develop its artificial intelligence products.
The proposed class action suit against Google, its parent company Alphabet, and Google’s AI subsidiary DeepMind was filed in a federal court in California on Tuesday, and was brought by Clarkson Law Firm. The firm previously filed a similar suit against ChatGPT-maker OpenAI last month. (OpenAI did not previously respond to a request for comment on the suit.)
The complaint alleges that Google “has been secretly stealing everything ever created and shared on the internet by hundreds of millions of Americans” and using this data to train its AI products, such as its chatbot Bard. The complaint also claims Google has taken “virtually the entirety of our digital footprint,” including “creative and copywritten works” to build its AI products.
Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google’s general counsel, called the claims in the suit “baseless” in a statement to CNN. “We’ve been clear for years that we use data from public sources — like information published to the open web and public datasets — to train the AI models behind services like Google Translate, responsibly and in line with our AI Principles,” DeLaine Prado said.
“American law supports using public information to create new beneficial uses, and we look forward to refuting these baseless claims,” the statement added.
Alphabet and DeepMind did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The complaint points to a recent update to Google’s privacy policy that explicitly states the company may use publicly accessible information to train its AI models and tools such as Bard.
In response to an earlier Verge report on the update, the company said its policy “has long been transparent” about this practice and “this latest update simply clarifies that newer services like Bard are also included.”
The lawsuit comes as a new crop of AI tools have gained tremendous attention in recent months for their ability to generate written work and images in response to user prompts. The large language models underpinning this new technology are able to do this by training on vast troves of online data.
In the process, however, companies are also drawing mounting legal scrutiny over copyright issues from works swept up in these data sets, as well as their apparent use of personal and possibly sensitive data from everyday users, including data from children, according to the Google lawsuit.
“Google needs to understand that ‘publicly available’ has never meant free to use for any purpose,” Tim Giordano, one of the attorneys at Clarkson bringing the suit against Google, told CNN in an interview. “Our personal information and our data is our property, and it’s valuable, and nobody has the right to just take it and use it for any purpose.”
The suit is seeking injunctive relief in the form of a temporary freeze on commercial access to and commercial development of Google’s generative AI tools like Bard. It is also seeking unspecified damages and payments as financial compensation to people whose data was allegedly misappropriated by Google. The firm says it has lined up eight plaintiffs, including a minor.
Giordano contrasted the benefits and alleged harms of how Google typically indexes online data to support its core search engine with the new allegations of it scraping data to train AI tools.
With its search engine, he said, Google can “serve up an attributed link to your work that can actually drive somebody to purchase it or engage with it.” Data scraping to train AI tools, however, is creating “an alternative version of the work that radically alters the incentives for anybody to need to purchase the work,” Giordano added.
While some internet users may have grown accustomed to their digital data being collected and used for search results or targeted advertising, the same may not be true for AI training. “People could not have imagined their information would be used this way,” Giordano said.
Ryan Clarkson, a partner at the law firm, said Google needs to “create an opportunity for folks to opt out” of having their data used for training AI while still maintaining their ability to use the internet for their everyday needs.
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Judge denies Trump bid to move hush money case to federal court | CNN Politics
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A federal judge on Wednesday denied Donald Trump’s effort to move the New York indictment charging him with falsifying business records into federal court, finding that Trump failed to show that any of the allegedly illegal conduct related to his role as president.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein previewed at a court hearing several weeks ago that he would not accept the case and would return it to state court.
Trump, who has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, is set to go to trial in Manhattan for this case in March 2024.
The judge stated in his ruling that the payments to Daniels, an adult film actress and director, were not related to presidential duties.
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the President – a cover-up of an embarrassing event. Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts,” the judge wrote. “Whatever the standard, and whether it is high or low, Trump fails to satisfy it.”
The judge also rejected Trump’s argument that he should have immunity given his position as president at the time he signed reimbursement checks to Michael Cohen, his then-personal attorney who facilitated the hush money payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
“Reimbursing Cohen for advancing hush money to Stephanie Clifford cannot be considered the performance of a constitutional duty. Falsifying business records to hide such reimbursement, and to transform the reimbursement into a business expense for Trump and income to Cohen, likewise does not relate to a presidential duty. Trump is not immune from the People’s prosecution in New York Supreme Court,” the judge found.
A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told CNN that the district attorney’s office is “very pleased with the federal court’s decision and look forward to proceeding in New York State Supreme Court.”
A Trump campaign spokesman, meanwhile, said Wednesday that “this case belongs in a federal court and we will continue to pursue all legal avenues to move it there.”
In another blow to Trump, the judge said that federal election law, the Federal Election Campaign Act, doesn’t pre-empt the state charges, falsifying a business record with the intent to commit or conceal another crime. Trump has signaled he will make the argument that the federal statute should preempt the state claim before the judge presiding over the case in state court.
“FECA does not preempt the application of a general state law to conduct related to a federal election except if the law, or its application, constitutes a specific regulation of conduct covered by FECA,” the judge wrote.
“The only elements are the falsification of business records, an intent to defraud, and an intent to commit or conceal another crime,” the judge said, adding, “Trump can be convicted of a felony even if he did not commit any crime beyond the falsification, so long as he intended to do so or to conceal such a crime.”
The judge also rejected Trump’s claim that the case should be moved to federal court because of hostility at the state level.
“There is no reason to believe that the New York judicial system would not be fair and give Trump equal justice under the law,” the judge wrote.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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Microsoft under European antitrust investigation over Teams | CNN Business
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European officials are investigating whether Microsoft’s practice of bundling its Teams software with Office 365 is anticompetitive, the European Commission said Thursday.
The EU probe follows a formal complaint by Microsoft’s rival, the Salesforce-owned Slack, in 2020, alleging that Microsoft has illegally circumvented competition.
By packaging Teams together with its “well-entrenched” productivity suite, including apps such as Word and Outlook, Microsoft could be effectively blocking customers from seeking out rival collaboration tools, the Commission said. Antitrust officials are also concerned about interoperability issues between Microsoft’s software and third-party products, it added.
“These practices may constitute anti-competitive tying or bundling and prevent suppliers of other communication and collaboration tools from competing,” the Commission said in a statement.
Microsoft said in a statement it is cooperating with the probe.
“We respect the European Commission’s work on this case and take our own responsibilities very seriously,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. “We will continue to cooperate with the Commission and remain committed to finding solutions that will address its concerns.”
In a press briefing Thursday, EU spokesperson Arianna Podesta told reporters that “at this stage, possible commitments [by Microsoft to resolve the concerns] are too early to be discussed. We first need to identify indeed if there is a breach of antitrust considerations.”
The in-depth investigation reflects rising EU antitrust scrutiny for Microsoft, which was last fined on a competition violation in 2013 for not honoring a commitment to give European consumers a choice in web browsers.
Slack’s initial EU complaint alleged that Microsoft forces Teams onto millions of customers, “blocking its removal, and hiding the true cost to enterprise customers.”
A Slack executive at the time argued that Microsoft sells a closed ecosystem of its own products, while Slack provides customers with more freedom to mix and match services.
“This is a proxy for two very different philosophies for the future of digital ecosystems, gateways versus gatekeepers,” said Slack’s VP of communications and policy, Jonathan Prince.
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