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  • Michigan State to ease back into classes and athletics as students and staff continue to grapple with horror of mass shooting | CNN

    Michigan State to ease back into classes and athletics as students and staff continue to grapple with horror of mass shooting | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After the Michigan State University community was paralyzed by a horrific mass shooting that killed three students, injured five others and halted campus activity, the school will begin to resume athletic and academic life, as many are still struggling to make sense of the tragedy.

    Athletic events, some of which were postponed or canceled due to the shooting, are scheduled to resume this weekend and classes will recommence Monday, university officials announced.

    “Athletics can be a rallying point for a community in need of healing, a fact many of our student-athletes have mentioned to me,” MSU Vice President and Director of Athletics Alan Haller said in a statement Thursday. “The opportunity to represent our entire community has never felt greater.”

    Student athletes may opt out of participating, Haller said, explaining, “there are some who aren’t ready to return to athletic events. Those feelings are incredibly valid.”

    All classes were canceled through Sunday and other activities suspended for at least two days after a 43-year-old gunman opened fire Monday evening on two parts of the campus. As they fled the deadly rampage, students leapt from smashed windows and ran to dorms as others sheltered in place for hours. Some students found themselves reliving a familiar nightmare, as they had survived another mass shooting just over a year ago.

    The five injured students are “showing signs of improvement,” MSU interim President Teresa Woodruff said Thursday. One has been moved from critical to stable condition and the others remain in critical condition, Board of Trustees chair Rema Vassar said.

    Berkey Hall, where Arielle Anderson and Alexandria Verner were killed, will remain closed for the rest of the semester, Woodruff said. The nearby student union, where Brian Fraser was killed, is also closed, she said, noting its reopening is still being evaluated.

    But even as the campus transitions back to normal operations, community members like professor Marco Díaz-Muñoz are still working through the pain and shock of Monday night’s tragedy.

    Díaz-Muñoz doesn’t want to return to Berkey Hall, where the gunman entered through the back door of his classroom and began firing at his Cuban literature students, injuring several and killing Anderson and Verner, he told CNN’s Miguel Marquez.

    “It was like seeing something not human standing there,” he said, describing the masked gunman. After the shooter left the classroom, Díaz-Muñoz threw himself against one of the doors to block him from possibly reentering.

    Some students were able to escape through the windows as others stayed behind to help the injured, using their hands to clamp down on the wounds, he said. “I’ve never seen so much blood.”

    Two girls, who he later learned were Anderson and Verner, seemed to be in the worst condition and were “lying there in these pools of blood,” the professor said. He believes most or all of the injured students were in his classroom.

    “I feel like I want to not remember these scenes and not have to go teach that class,” he said. “But there is another part of me that feels a great need, a strong need to see my students again … to see that they are alive, I need to see their faces.”

    He is trying to write his students a letter, but is struggling with what to say.

    The gunman, Anthony Dwayne McRae, was found by police about 4 miles from campus later Monday night after a tipster recognized his photo in the news and alerted authorities, according to authorities.

    As police approached him, McRae shot and killed himself, said Michigan State Police Lt. Rene Gonzalez.

    On his body and in his backpack, investigators found two legally purchased but unregistered 9mm handguns, several loaded magazines and dozens of loose rounds of ammunition, authorities said.

    “He did purchase the gun legally. He was allowed to purchase the gun. There was nothing in place to prohibit him from purchasing a firearm,” MSU police interim Deputy Chief Chris Rozman said Thursday.

    McRae was arrested in 2019 and charged with the felony of carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, and later pleaded guilty to a lower misdemeanor charge of possession of a loaded firearm as part of a plea deal, court records show.

    But the lesser charge, negotiated down by a prosecutor, did not prohibit him from purchasing firearms in the future, Lansing Police Chief Ellery Sosebee said Thursday.

    Investigators also found a note on McRae that listed other potential attack targets, MSU police confirmed. Two schools in New Jersey’s Ewing Township were on the list, police there have said, adding that there is no threat to the schools.

    Other possible targets detailed in the note included a warehouse, an employment agency, a discount store, a church and a fast food restaurant, law enforcement officials who have access to the note told CNN.

    “We found that he had had contact with some of those places,” Gonzalez said Thursday. He confirmed McRae had once worked at the warehouse, belonging to the Meijer supermarket chain.

    “In a couple of other businesses, it appears that he’d had some issues with the employees there, where he was asked to leave,” Gonzalez said. It looked like McRae’s possible motive was that “he just felt slighted, and that’s kind of what the note indicated,” he said.

    The businesses listed have been notified by law enforcement and told that the gunman is dead, law enforcement officials said.

    Students Alexandria Verner, Arielle Anderson and Brian Fraser were killed in Monday's shooting.

    The three students killed, two of whom are from the same Michigan hometown, included an aspiring doctor, a beloved fraternity president and a biology student from a close-knit town.

    Fraser, 20, was the president of the Michigan Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta, the fraternity said in a statement.

    “As the leader of his chapter, Brian was a great friend to his Phi Delt brothers, the Greek community at Michigan State, and those he interacted with on campus,” the statement said.

    The fraternity and his parents have created a memorial scholarship in Fraser’s honor, in the hopes that recipients “will embody Brian’s charismatic, contagious smile and caring, loyal energy,” Phi Delta Theta announced.

    Fraser, a sophomore, and Anderson, a junior, were both from the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

    Anderson, 19, was a “remarkable student” studying to become a doctor, her aunt Chandra Davis said in an Instagram post.

    “She was working diligently to graduate from Michigan State University early to achieve her goals as quickly as possible,” the family said in a statement. “As an Angel here on Earth, Arielle was sweet and loving with an infectious smile that was very contagious. We are absolutely devastated by this heinous act of violence upon her and many other innocent victims.”

    Verner, 20, was a junior at the university studying biology, according to The State News.

    “Her kindness was on display every single second you were around her,” family friend Billy Shellenbarger told CNN. He has known Alexandria, or Alex, as he called her, since she was in kindergarten.

    In her hometown of Clawson, Michigan, Verner was a student leader and fantastic three-sport athlete in volleyball, basketball and softball, said Shellenbarger, who is the Clawson Public Schools Superintendent.

    “To lose her on this planet, let alone our small community, it’s tough,” he said. “And it’s going to take a while to recover, but to have known her for the duration of time that we all have, once again, is a gift to all of us.”

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  • ‘Does that mean that I am a suspect?’ Footage shows investigator asking Alex Murdaugh if he killed his wife and son | CNN

    ‘Does that mean that I am a suspect?’ Footage shows investigator asking Alex Murdaugh if he killed his wife and son | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: The HBO docuseries “Low Country: The Murdaugh Dynasty” chronicles the family’s influence in South Carolina. It airs on CNN Sunday, February 19, at 8 p.m. ET.



    CNN
     — 

    The jury in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial saw footage Wednesday from a crucial interview he had with state investigators where he was asked for the first time if he killed his wife and son.

    The interview on August 11, 2021, was the third Murdaugh had with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, which was investigating the murders of his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and grown son, Paul Murdaugh, two months earlier, according to testimony Wednesday by SLED agent Lt. David Owen.

    The interview was about to end when Owen told Murdaugh he had “a few more questions.”

    “Did you kill Maggie?” Owen asked, according to the footage played in court.

    “No,” Murdaugh said. “Did I kill my wife? No, David.”

    “Do you know who did?”

    “No, I do not know who did,” Murdaugh said.

    “Did you kill Paul?”

    “No, I did not kill Paul,” Murdaugh said.

    “Do you know who did?”

    “No, sir, I do not know who did,” Murdaugh said. “Do you think I killed Maggie?”

    “I have to go where the evidence and the facts take me,” Owen said.

    “I understand that. And you think I killed Paul?”

    “I have to go where the evidence and the facts take me,” Owen said again. “And I don’t have anything that points to anybody else at this time.”

    “So does that mean that I am a suspect?”

    Owen told Murdaugh he was “still in this,” adding, “I have to put my beliefs aside, and go with the facts.”

    Owen’s testimony Wednesday comes as the state nears the end of its case, in which prosecutors contend Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from a mountain of alleged financial crimes he had committed and to stave off a “day of reckoning” when those crimes might come to light.

    The defense maintains Murdaugh – who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the killings – was a loving father and husband who called 911 the night of the killings after he found his wife and son shot at the family’s estate in Islandton, South Carolina, a property known as Moselle.

    At the time of the August 11, 2021, interview, Murdaugh was “the only known suspect” in the murders, Owen testified Wednesday.

    The case was transferred that same day from the local solicitor to the Attorney General’s Office, which has been prosecuting the case due to the Murdaugh family’s long ties with the local solicitor: Three generations of Murdaughs served as the 14th Circuit Solicitor over about 87 years.

    Murdaugh’s statements during the August 2021 interview were voluntary, Owen testified Wednesday. Murdaugh wanted to ask SLED agents questions about the investigation, Owen said, and the agent told him he wanted to ask Murdaugh some questions, too. Murdaugh indicated he was comfortable answering the agents’ questions.

    Murdaugh claimed to law enforcement he last saw Maggie and Paul earlier in the evening of the murders. They ate dinner together before Murdaugh took a nap and then drove to Almeda to visit his mother. He discovered the bodies of his wife and son, he said, when he returned home and called 911 at 10:07 p.m.

    The footage played in court Wednesday showed SLED agents confronting Murdaugh about evidence that appeared to contradict his earlier statements to law enforcement.

    It was the first time, Owen testified, that Murdaugh was confronted with the fact that Paul’s friend, Rogan Gibson, said he heard Murdaugh’s voice in the background of a phone call he had with Paul that night, shortly before the murders took place.

    “You were heard in the background, and that was prior to 9 p.m. … Was it you?” Owen asked Murdaugh, per the footage shown in court Tuesday.

    “At nine o’clock? No, sir,” Murdaugh said, “not if my times are right.”

    “Who do you think it could have been?”

    “I have no idea.”

    “And Rogan’s been around your family for pretty much all his life,” Owen said, something Murdaugh agreed with. “And he recognizes your voice, and you have a distinct voice. Can you think of anybody else that has a voice similar to yours that he may have misinterpreted?”

    “No, sir.”

    Months later, investigators discovered a video on Paul’s phone that he filmed immediately after that call, at 8:44 p.m. in the area of the family’s dog kennels, near where the bodies were found. Multiple witnesses at trial have identified Murdaugh’s voice, along with Maggie’s and Paul’s, in that video, contradicting Murdaugh’s statements to investigators he had not gone to the kennels before finding the bodies.

    The footage played Wednesday also showed the agents confront Murdaugh about another piece of footage filmed by Paul the night of the killings: A Snapchat video showing Murdaugh looking at a sapling on the family’s property. In it, Murdaugh is seen wearing pants and a blue shirt. But later, he was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt.

    “There’s a video on Paul’s phone of you and him on the farm that night. You’re wearing khaki pants and a dress shirt … When I met you that night, you were in shorts and a T-shirt,” Owen said. “At what point in the evening did you change clothes?”

    “I’m not sure,” Murdaugh said. “What time of day was that? I would have thought I would have already changed.”

    Testimony in recent days similarly undermined statements Murdaugh made to SLED during the August 2021 interview – namely, that Maggie decided to go to Moselle the night of the killings because she was worried about him and his father, whose health was deteriorating.

    Two witnesses disagree: On Tuesday, Maggie’s sister testified it was Murdaugh who wanted Maggie to come to Moselle. Maggie was staying in the family’s Edisto Beach property and did not want to go to Islandton, Marian Proctor said, recalling a conversation they had the day of the murders.

    Proctor encouraged Maggie to go, she said, breaking down in court.

    Blanca Simpson, a family housekeeper, similarly testified last week that Maggie told her the day of the murders that Alex had asked both Maggie and Paul to come to Moselle that night.

    During cross-examination, defense attorney Jim Griffin noted that investigators had the Snapchat video in July, but did not ask Murdaugh about the whereabouts of the blue shirt and pants he was seen wearing in that footage. Owen testified that he never asked Murdaugh for those clothes.

    “And the reason you didn’t, (was because) you weren’t concerned about those clothes. Your investigation had been focused since early June on the T-shirt he was wearing, the shorts he was wearing and shoes he was wearing at the time he called 911,” Griffin said.

    “Yes,” Owen replied.

    Owen testified that he had told a county grand jury that an expert found multiple particles of blood spatter on the front of the T-shirt, and it was sent to a lab for testing. The test, however, found no blood on the shirt.

    “Y’all completely overlooked the fact that when you did a HemaTrace test to confirm whether there’s blood, it came up negative. Wasn’t that overlooked?” asked Griffin.

    “I had never seen that report,” responded Owen, who admitted he did not see it until November 2022, just months before the trial began.

    “Whoever killed Maggie and Paul would likely have biological material on them from the blasts that killed the two victims, right?,” Griffin asked Owen.

    “They would have some, yes,” Owen answered.

    Griffin established that Murdaugh’s mother’s property in Almeda was not searched until months after the killings, in September 2021. No weapons were found on that property, Owen testified.

    Owen also testified that nearby waterways and the route from Moselle to Almeda was “driven several times,” but not walked over.

    At one point Wednesday, Judge Clifton Newman ruled against allowing testimony about a roadside shooting that injured Murdaugh in September 2021. Authorities have alleged that Murdaugh arranged for another man, Curtis Edward Smith, to shoot him so his surviving son could obtain millions of dollars in life insurance.

    But the judge later Wednesday decided to allow that testimony after Smith was brought up during Owen’s cross-examination.

    Griffin seemed to suggest the killings could have been related to a money dispute with a drug gang, telling the court that Murdaugh was buying $50,000 worth of drugs each week from Smith. Owen agreed, testifying that he has been told the same.

    Griffin said Smith owed a lot of money to a drug gang, and Owen testified that he was told the gang was not worried about the money because it knew it was going to get paid.

    Owen testified that Smith was brought into the investigation on September 4, 2021, the day of the roadside incident. Before that, Murdaugh had never mentioned his involvement with Smith in relation to Maggie’s and Paul’s killings, according to Owen.

    “Prior to that day, had Alex Murdaugh ever mentioned to you Curtis Edward Smith or anyone else that might have been involved in his son’s or his wife’s murder?” prosecutor John Meadors asked.

    “No, sir,” responded Owen.

    Asked if a cell phone analysis had been performed to see if any of the drug gang members were in the area the night of the killings, Owen said drug gang members typically use burner phones, and he didn’t have their phone numbers. But state investigators performed an analysis around Moselle and had identified only first responders as coming to the scene, Owen said.

    The defense attorney also asked Owen if any DNA analysis had been done to match a small amount of unknown male DNA found under Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernail. Owen said no.

    The drug investigation is ongoing, Owen testified.

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  • Memphis firefighters union defends EMTs in Tyre Nichols case, says they weren’t given ‘adequate information’ | CNN

    Memphis firefighters union defends EMTs in Tyre Nichols case, says they weren’t given ‘adequate information’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The president of the firefighters union in Memphis, Tennessee is defending the actions of EMTs involved in the Tyre Nichols case.

    In a letter to the Memphis City Council, Thomas Malone, president of the Memphis Fire Fighters Association, said his members “were not given adequate information upon dispatch or upon arrival on the scene” where Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, had been repeatedly punched and kicked by police after a traffic stop on January 7.

    “Quite frankly, there was information withheld by those already on the scene which caused our members to handle things differently than they should have,” Malone suggested.

    Three Memphis Fire Department personnel were fired for failing to render emergency care during the January 7 incident.

    CNN obtained the letter from Memphis City Council member Dr. Jeff Warren. CNN has reached out to both Malone and Ben Crump, an attorney for the Nichols family, and has yet to hear back.

    Malone also said he was “disheartened” to see some members of the 1,600-employee department criticizing fellow members during a city council meeting last week.

    “Our members respond to hundreds of calls over and over, without fail. One incident should not define the good work being done by these dedicated public servants and some have taken that position, unfortunately,” he said.

    Memphis Fire Chief Gina Sweat told the council that training issues and the failure of EMTs to take personal accountability on a call were to blame for her department’s handling of the Nichols case.

    Emergency medical technicians Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge and fire Lt. Michelle Whitaker were fired, the fire department announced last month.

    An investigation concluded that the two EMTs “failed to conduct an adequate patient assessment of Mr. Nichols” after responding based on both the initial call – in which they heard a person was pepper-sprayed – and information they were told at the scene, Sweat said in a news release.

    Whitaker had remained in the fire truck, according to the chief’s statement.

    The truck carrying the EMTs arrived at about 8:41 p.m. when Nichols was on the ground leaning against a police vehicle, the fire department said. An ambulance was called at 8:46 p.m. the department said. The ambulance arrived at 8:55 p.m. and left with Nichols 13 minutes later, according to the fire department.

    Pole-camera video shows that between the time the EMTs arrived and the ambulance arrived, first responders repeatedly walked away from Nichols, with Nichols intermittently falling onto his side.

    Since the incident, six officers have been fired, including five who are facing murder charges in Nichols’ death. On Monday, the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson told CNN another of the fired officers involved in the incident would have his case’s reviewed.

    The former officer, Preston Hemphill, was also fired for violating multiple police department policies, including personal conduct and truthfulness. He has not been charged in the case.

    Last week, the district attorney’s office announced it would investigate all prior and pending cases involving the five officers who were criminally charged.

    The officers were also added to a Giglio list, also known as a Brady list which documents law enforcement members who have been charged criminally or involved in incidents of untruthfulness or other issues that may undermine their credibility, according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

    “The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office will add former Memphis Police Department Officer Preston Hemphill to the Giglio list. Additionally, the Office will investigate all prior and pending cases of Hemphill,” spokesperson Erica Williams said.

    Hemphill’s attorney, Lee Gerald, declined to comment about the investigation or his client’s addition to the Giglio list.

    Hemphill was seen on body camera video using his Taser on Nichols and later could be heard saying, “I hope they stomp his ass.”

    After Nichols’ beating, Hemphill provided conflicting statements about the case, first saying on a form that Nichols tried to grab a fellow officer’s weapon, but later telling investigators he did not see that occur, according to a police department document obtained by CNN.

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  • What we know about the unidentified object shot down over Alaska | CNN Politics

    What we know about the unidentified object shot down over Alaska | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    An unidentified object was shot down 10 miles off the frozen coast of Alaska on Friday afternoon, US officials announced, but details about the object are scarce.

    US military pilots sent up to examine the object gave conflicting accounts of what they saw, which is part of the reason why the Pentagon has been cautious in describing what the object actually is, according to a source briefed on the intelligence.

    The incident marked the second time that US jets had taken down an object in less than a week, following the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina last week.

    On Saturday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said it was monitoring “a high altitude airborne object” over northern Canada, and military aircraft are currently operating in the area from Alaska and Canada, according to a news release from the agency.

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced shortly after that he ordered the downing of the object.

    It’s currently not clear what this object is or whether it has any relation to the Chinese spy balloon or the object shot down over Alaska.

    Trudeau said he spoke with President Joe Biden on Saturday and that Canadian forces will lead the object recovery operation.

    The object taken down Friday, which officials have not characterized as a balloon, was shot down at 1:45 p.m. EST, according to Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, who said recovery teams are now collecting the debris that is sitting on top of ice in US territorial waters.

    The object “came inside our territorial waters – and those waters right now are frozen – but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters on Friday. “Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour.”

    Asked about the operation on Friday afternoon, Biden told CNN, “It was a success.”

    Here’s a look at what we know so far about the object shot down on Friday.

    F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back “limited” information about the object.

    But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.

    Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.

    Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.

    The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said.

    In a statement Saturday, US Northern Command said the command has no new information to share about the object’s “capabilities, purpose or origin,” but noted that recovery efforts are being affected by Arctic weather conditions, “including wind chill, snow and limited daylight.”

    The statement added that “fighter aircraft” downed the “high altitude airborne object” on Friday following an order from Biden and said recovery operations for the remains of the object continue Saturday in coordination with the FBI and local law enforcement.

    Kirby said Friday that Biden was first briefed on the object on Thursday evening, as “soon as the Pentagon had enough information.” It “did not appear to be self-maneuvering,” Kirby said.

    It’s unclear what the object looks like, or where it came from. On Friday, Ryder said it was traveling north east across Alaska. He declined to provide a physical characterization, only saying that it was “about the size of a small car” and “not similar in size or shape” to the Chinese surveillance balloon that was downed off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.

    “We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now,” Kirby said. “We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately-owned, we just don’t know.”

    There was not a significant concern about damage to people or property if the object was shot down, which was the primary reason the Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to traverse the continental US last week.

    Ryder also emphasized that officials do not know the origin of the object, which did not appear to be manned and that it was shot down because it posed a “reasonable threat to civilian air traffic” as it was flying at 40,000 feet.

    Ultimately, the object was downed near the Canadian border and northeastern Alaska by a F-22 fighter jet out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, equipped with an AIM-9X – the same aircraft and missile used to take down the surveillance balloon. A US official said the military waited to shoot the object down during daylight hours to make it easier for the pilots to spot it. Ryder said the mission was “supported with aerial assets from the Alaska Air National Guard.”

    The Alaska National Guard and units under US Northern Command, along with HC-130 Hercules, HH-60 Pave Hawk, and CH-47 Chinook are all participating in the effort to recover the object, Ryder said.

    Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, February 5, 2023.

    Officials have given no indication so far that the object is at all related to the Chinese surveillance balloon downed last weekend, debris of which is still being recovered on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

    Ryder said Friday that recovery teams have “mapped the debris field” and are “in the process of searching for and identifying debris on the ocean floor.”

    “While I won’t go into specifics due to classification reasons,” Ryder said, “I can say that we have located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities.”

    When asked Friday if lessons learned about China’s balloon assisted in detecting the object shot down over Alaska, Ryder said it was “a little bit of apples and oranges.”

    The object did not appear to have any surveillance equipment, according to a US official, which would make it both smaller and likely less sophisticated than the Chinese balloon shot.

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  • Conservative activist Matt Schlapp denies sexual battery allegations in new court documents | CNN Politics

    Conservative activist Matt Schlapp denies sexual battery allegations in new court documents | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    High-profile conservative activist Matt Schlapp is denying claims of sexual assault and wants the man who is accusing him to be publicly identified, according to court documents filed Thursday in the lawsuit against Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp.

    The documents claim the lawsuit, which seeks more than $9 million in damages from the Schlapps, “reeks of gamesmanship and hypocrisy” and say the accuser’s request to remain anonymous “is utterly without justification.”

    The Schlapps state the staffer’s identity should be made public because they allege that his own reputation should be questioned, asserting that the staffer can’t “meet his burden of showing special circumstances which outweigh the public interest in knowing his name,” according to the documents.

    “Plaintiff simply cannot proceed on his claims of alleged impropriety by the Defendants while shielding from scrutiny his own past admitted unsavory affiliations with white nationalists and anti-Semites by proceeding as a ‘John Doe,’” the documents say.

    The initial complaint said the staffer, identified only as John Doe, faced an “unusual risk of retaliatory physical or mental harm” if he was named, based on the Schlapps’ popularity and prominence.

    The Schlapps are now being represented by attorney Benjamin Chew, known for winning the defamation case against actor Johnny Depp. The 2022 trial, which saw a jury award Depp $15 million in his lawsuit against former wife Amber Heard, became known for airing many personal and intimate details publicly.

    The original lawsuit, filed in January, alleges that Schlapp, the president of the American Conservative Union, inappropriately fondled the genital area of a male Republican strategist during a car ride back to Schlapp’s hotel in Atlanta last year. Schlapp was in Georgia for Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign and had spoken at an event earlier in the day. The staffer was assigned to drive Schlapp back to his hotel, and to another Walker event scheduled for the following morning.

    In addition to sexual battery allegations against Matt Schlapp, the lawsuit also accuses both Schlapps of defamation and conspiracy to discredit the staffer.

    The Schlapps’ response to the lawsuit denies all claims of sexual battery and inappropriate touching but admits to phone calls and text messages exchanged between Matt Schlapp and the staffer, which have been previously reported and reviewed by CNN.

    The Schlapps admit to a text message in which Matt Schlapp suggests he and the staffer meet up for drinks, writing, “I have a dinner at 7. May grab a beer after if you want to join let me know.” The staffer responds, “I’d enjoy that,” according to the documents.

    The Schlapps also admit to a phone call later the night of the alleged incident, to arrange pickup for the following morning, and a text message at 7:26 a.m. from Matt Schlapp to the staffer that said, “I’m in the lobby,” waiting for the staffer to drive him to the planned Walker event in Macon, Georgia.

    CNN previously reported that after the alleged sexual assault, the staffer notified Walker campaign officials, who told him not to drive Schlapp in the morning and to instead give him the phone number to a local car service.

    The staffer responded to Schlapp’s text, saying, “I did want to say I was uncomfortable with what happened last night. The campaign does have a driver who is available to get you to Macon and back to the airport,” and provided the number. The Schlapps admit to this detail in the court documents and to three attempts Matt Schlapp made to call the staffer, which went unanswered.

    Several hours later, Matt Schlapp texted the staffer, “If you could see it in your heart to call me at the end of day. I would appreciate it. If not I wish you luck on the campaign and hope you keep up the good work” – another exchange the Schlapps admit to in the documents.

    As part of the defamation count in the original lawsuit, the complaint claimed that Mercedes Schlapp sent a message to a neighborhood group text that smeared the staffer’s character and claimed he’d been fired from jobs for “lying and lying on his resume.” The Schlapps deny that allegation in their response.

    The Schlapps are requesting the court dismiss the complaint. A preliminary hearing on whether the staffer should be identified is set for March 8 in Alexandria Circuit Court in Virginia.

    The staffer and his attorney declined to provide further comment.

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  • ‘A recipe for disaster.’ Deadly encounter in Memphis comes at a critical time in American policing | CNN

    ‘A recipe for disaster.’ Deadly encounter in Memphis comes at a critical time in American policing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Since the night Tyre Nichols was kicked, pepper-sprayed, punched and struck with a baton by Memphis police officers, six cops have been fired and five of them charged with murder. Seven others face internal disciplinary charges.

    Nichols died three days after the January 7 traffic stop and subsequent fatal encounter captured on video and principally involving five officers with two to six years on the job.

    The death of the 29-year-old Black man comes at a critical juncture in American law enforcement, as departments across the country – including the Memphis PD – struggle to recruit qualified officers and fill shifts, lure candidates with signing bonuses worth thousands of dollars, and at times curtail standards and training in a desperate bid to strengthen patrols amid rising gun violence, according to law enforcement experts.

    “That is a recipe for disaster,” said Kenneth Corey, a retired NYPD chief who once ran the training division. “We’ve seen it happen before. You couldn’t fill seats. You lowered standards. And now you’ve got scandal and use of force. And when you look at the individuals involved you say, we never would have hired this guy once upon a time.”

    In the weeks since authorities released video of Nichols’ brutal beating, little information has come out about the recruitment and training of the five former officers facing murder charges – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr.

    The five men were part of a now disbanded specialized street crime unit formed just over a year ago as part of the city’s strategy to combat rising violence. The SCORPION unit focused on homicides, robberies, assaults and other felonies.

    Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said Nichols’ killing raises questions about “how those officers were trained and supervised and selected.”

    “Over time you always want to look at the backgrounds of those officers – that will be important. The hiring process – that will be important,” he said. “In this case we don’t know enough yet.”

    Bean, 24, was commissioned as an officer in January 2021, personnel records show. His attorney has not responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

    Haley, 30, was commissioned as an officer in January 2021, the records show. He is a former correctional officer. His attorney has not respond to requests for comment.

    Martin, 30, joined the department in 2018, according to the records. He will plead not guilty, according to his attorney, William Massey, who said: “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die.”

    Mills, 32, a former jailer in Mississippi and Tennessee, joined the department as a recruit in March 2017, the records show. He, too, plans to plea not guilty, said Blake Ballin, his attorney, who described Mills as “devastated” and “remorseful.”

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told CNN last month that Nichols’ death was indicative of “a gap somewhere” in the specialized street crime unit.

    “We train and we retrain these officers, just like specialized units around the country,” she said. “These officers working in specialized units, you always need to make sure that the supervision is there and present.”

    On January 28, one day after the release of the video, Memphis PD announced that it had permanently disbanded the unit.

    Davis said the department was unaware of any evidence the unit had previously engaged in misconduct but added that an investigation is ongoing.

    The five former Memphis officers charged in Nichols’ death also are accused of assaulting another young Black man just three days before the fatal police encounter, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

    The suit accuses the city of failing to prevent or address an alleged pattern of policing abuses by the SCORPION unit, which it claims operated like a “gang of vigilantes” without adequate training or supervision. Police declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing ongoing litigation.

    The Shelby County District Attorney’s office in Memphis said it will review all cases involving the five officers charged with Nichols’ death.

    Davis, speaking at a Memphis city council meeting Tuesday, said training was not an issue with the unit. Instead, she said, “egos” and a “wolf pack mentality” contributed to the killing.

    “Culture is not something that changes overnight. You know, there is a saying in law enforcement that ‘culture eats policy for lunch.’ We don’t want to just have good policies because policies can be navigated around,” she said. “We want to ensure that we have the right people in place to ensure our culture is evolving.”

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn

    In this still from video released by the City of Memphis, officers from the Memphis Police Department beat Tyre Nichols on a street corner.

    These are the moments that led to Tyre Nichols’ death

    Nichols’ death comes as many police departments in the US have been reeling from an exodus of officers due to resignations and retirements and scrambling to attract new recruits. The staffing crisis has been exacerbated by high-profile cases such as the 2020 murder of George Floyd that have put policing under scrutiny and made it a frequent target of protests and moves to decrease funding.

    “The pandemic impacted recruiting and then George Floyd’s murder really was a moment in time that made prospective police applicants think twice – Is this a job for me?” Wexler said.

    “And now, unfortunately, with the Tyre Nichols killing you simply compounded what was already arguably a challenging environment to hire a police officer.”

    Wexler’s group, in a 2021 survey, found that retirements had risen 45% that year since 2019. Resignations had jumped 18% in that two-year period.

    The number of officers on the Memphis Police Department dropped by more than 22% since 2011 – from 2,449 in September 2011 to a low of 1,895 officers last December, according to the Memphis Data Hub website.

    The department was budgeted for 2,300 officers last year, CNN affiliate WMC reported. In 2015, nearly 200 Memphis police officers resigned over changes to pension and benefit plans, according to WMC.

    “It had gotten to the point that we were having sergeants as acting lieutenants,” said Alvin Davis, a former Memphis police lieutenant and recruiter who retired last year. “Hundreds of people did it over a period of time because we didn’t have enough supervisors. So many people were running out the door.”

    In this still from video released by the City of Memphis, officers stand around as Tyre Nichols leans up against a car after being detained and beaten on January 7.

    Like other departments around the country, the Memphis PD in 2021 began offering $15,000 signing bonuses and $10,000 in relocation assistance. Additionally, requirements on college credits, military experience and employment history have been loosened, WMC reported.

    “Departments around the country … are offering between $25,000 and $30,000 signing bonuses,” Wexler said. “You’ve got a national shortage of applicants which has forced police departments to do unprecedented things like offering signing bonuses and, in some cases, modifying the standards for hiring.”

    Greg Umbach, associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said there is a direct correlation between higher standards for new recruits and lower incidents of bad behavior.

    “We know from decades of research that the number of cops meeting higher qualifications, most notably a college degree, matters far more than anything else, for the number of civilian complaints a department gets,” Umbach said.

    And if the pipeline of good officers is low, Umbach said, then so is the quality of supervision – a reality that has plagued the Memphis Police Department and other agencies nationwide.

    “Any police sergeant watching that video, their first thought is, ‘My God, where was the supervision and why did they think this was okay,’” Umbach said.

    The Memphis Police Department urges recruits to

    Davis, the former lieutenant and recruiter, asked a similar question about supervision.

    “If you pepper-spray someone or you tase someone, you’re supposed to call a supervisor,” said Davis, who spent 22 years on the job. “That’s just policy. Why they didn’t, I can’t say.”

    But, Davis said, the behavior of the former officers who beat Nichols did not entirely surprise him – given the curtailed training and standards, shortage of skilled supervisors and growing number of officers lured by monetary incentives and without the requisite experience being deployed on the city’s streets.

    “The standards kept dropping and dropping to bring people in,” said Davis, who was in charge of recruiting. “And then they start throwing money out to lure people in and this is what you got.”

    He added, “Just about everybody who came, the first thing they asked us was about was the money. How long did they have to stay on the job? Do I have to do a year? Two years? Nobody is trying to make a career out of it. It was the money.”

    The Memphis PD did not immediately respond to a request for comment on training, recruitment and staffing issues.

    “It’s not the job that it used to be, when you felt like you’re the ‘best in blue’ and you have your head up because you really feel like you accomplished something,” said Davis, referring to the Memphis Police Department’s longtime “Join the best in blue” recruitment campaign. “It’s not that kind of job anymore.”

    It’s too early to tell exactly what factors contributed to the behavior of the former officers who beat Nichols to death on January 7, law enforcement experts said.

    Wexler and others pointed to previous policing scandals that were preceded by periods of hiring under lax standards and curtailed training.

    In the late 1980s, nearly 10% of the officers in the Miami Police Department were suspended or fired after a corruption scandal involving rogue officers who became known as the “River Cops.” Nearly 20 former officers were convicted on various state and federal charges, including using their police powers as a racketeering enterprise to commit murder.

    Atlanta police officers keep an eye on marchers during a rally on January 28 protesting the fatal police assault of Tyre Nichols.

    In 1990, an investigation into the hiring and training of police officers in Washington, DC by the General Accounting Office found that a hiring rush during the previous decade – prompted by a wave of drug and gun violence – led to cutting corners on recruiting, background checks and training.

    Eight years later, another report by the GOA, the investigative arm of Congress, examined drug-related police corruption and said “rapid recruitment initiatives” coupled with loosening education requirements and inadequate training and supervision “might have permitted the hiring of recruits who might not otherwise have been hired.”

    “These are all lessons of history,” said Corey, the former NYPD chief. “You have to make the profession attractive to the type of people you want to recruit. It’s not that people have lost interest in policing. They just don’t see it as a viable occupation.”

    He added, “What we ask of our cops is that they think like lawyers, speak like psychologists, and perform like athletes but we pay them as common laborers. A starting officer in New York City makes $42,000 a year, which means about $20 dollars an hour. It also means that at McDonald’s they could be making $15 dollars an hour with none of the stress, trauma or risk.”

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  • Magnus Carlsen beats Hikaru Nakamura in battle of chess’ big guns | CNN

    Magnus Carlsen beats Hikaru Nakamura in battle of chess’ big guns | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The battle of chess’ behemoths ended in victory for five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen, with the Norwegian beating Hikaru Nakamura to be crowned Airthings Masters champion.

    In the grand final played on Chess.com, Carlsen defeated his great rival 2.5-1.5 to win the first Champions Chess Tour event of the season and net £30,000 ($36,192) in the process.

    The win also secures him a place in the end-of-season Tour Playoffs in December.

    It was the second time that Carlsen had beaten the American in the competition. He had earlier this week seen off the world number six in the winners final, with Nakamura going on to qualify for the grand final by beating Wesley So in the loser’s final.

    Carlsen had only lost one game all tournament, to Indian teenager Arjun Erigaisi, but did not feel he had played his best chess.

    “It feels a little bit weird,” said Carlsen, per Chess.com. “Overall, I am a little bit underwhelmed since I didn’t feel like the tournament ever got going. But there will be more excitement to come.”

    International Master Tania Sachdev said of Carlsen’s performance, per Chess.com: “He was flawless today, start to finish. He took his chances when Hikaru got too risky, he never gave him a chance to come back.

    “Even the game when he was on the defense, that big Game 3, that Hikaru opportunity, he really showed amazing resilience. He completely deserves this win. It was amazing play, and this is why he’s World Champion.”

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    CNN has reached out to Banks for comment.

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  • Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says | CNN Politics

    Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The White House announced Friday that President Joe Biden ordered the military to down what it described as a “high-altitude object” hovering over Alaska earlier in the day.

    “The Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters when asked about rumors of another suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.

    The high-altitude object, Kirby said, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.”

    He continued, “Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did. And it came inside our territorial waters – and those waters right now are frozen – but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters. Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour.”

    It’s the second time in a little less than a week that US fighter jets have shot down an object flying over American airspace. The Biden administration has faced questions over its handling of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that floated across the nation last week before being shot down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday/

    While the president has stood by how he and his administration handled that balloon, he has faced criticism from Republicans for allowing the suspected spy balloon to float over much of the country before shooting it down.

    The new object, Kirby added, was taken down with US Northern Command fighter aircraft “near the Canadian border” on water that is frozen in the Arctic Ocean.

    “The general area would be just off the very, very northeastern part of Alaska near the Canadian border,” Kirby said of the location.

    The object first came to the attention of the US government “last evening.” Kirby told reporters that the US assessed the “object” to be unmanned before it was eventually shot down.

    “We were able to get some fighter aircrafts up and around it before the order to shoot it down, and the pilots assessment was this was not manned,” Kirby said.

    Kirby also offered some nomenclature guidance on the object, which the US is not referring to as a balloon and has yet to attribute to China or any other entity.

    “We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned, we just don’t know,” Kirby said.

    He added: “We don’t have any information that would confirm a stated purpose for this object. We do expect to be able to recover the debris since it fell not only within our territorial space, but on what we what believe is frozen water. So a recovery effort will be made and we’re hopeful that it will be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it.”

    The object was “much, much smaller” than the Chinese suspected spy balloon, Kirby said, comparing it to “roughly the size of a small car.” The balloon downed last Saturday was described by US officials as approximately the size of three buses.

    Biden “absolutely was involved in this decision” and ordered it at the recommendation of Pentagon leaders, Kirby said.

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • New GOP-led panel to hold first public hearing Thursday on alleged ‘weaponization’ of federal government | CNN Politics

    New GOP-led panel to hold first public hearing Thursday on alleged ‘weaponization’ of federal government | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The GOP-led House committee on the alleged “weaponization” of the federal government kicks off Thursday with its first public hearing with a witness list that suggests Republicans on the committee will push a popular narrative among conservatives that has been disputed by federal officials.

    The hearing will be split into two sessions, featuring a swath of current and former lawmakers, former FBI officials and legal experts. They plan to discuss allegations of how the government has been weaponized against Republicans, as well as the general belief among some conservatives that federal officials and mainstream media have been working to silence the right.

    “We’re focused on the whole weaponization of government, and the idea that the government is not working for the American people,” subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan told CNN. “The government is supposed to protect the First Amendment, not have, as Mr. (Jonathan) Turley said, ‘censorship by surrogate,’” he said, referencing one of the witnesses slated for Thursday’s hearing who is a George Washington University Law Center professor.

    The Ohio Republican continued, “I’m sure those will be some of the things that will come up in the course of the hearing,” he added, referencing a line from one of the witnesses GOP members have called.

    Democrats on the panel, however, tell CNN they reject the premise of the weaponization subcommittee itself – and much of their time will be spent disputing GOP messaging.

    “We have an overall strategy, which is to debunk the misrepresentations that are sure to be coming from it,” said Rep. Dan Goldman, a freshman Democrat from New York. “My understanding is that Sens. Grassley and Johnson are going to speak, and I’m glad they are. I hope they talk about how they used their Senate committees to weaponize Russian propaganda and disinformation in 2020.”

    “I think our intention is to make sure that the American people are aware of the actual truth of the matter, and not whatever partisan misinformation that Republicans are going to peddle,” Goldman added.

    Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is being called as one of the Democrats’ witnesses. He told CNN that “one basic question is whether weaponization is the target of the committee or if weaponization is the purpose of the committee” – previewing a potential line of attack.

    In a new memo released Thursday ahead of the subcommittee’s first hearing, the White House called the subpanel a “Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee” and “a political stunt that weaponizes Congress to carry out the priorities of extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”

    White House Oversight spokesman Ian Sams writes that the committee “plans to weaponize the MAGA agenda against their perceived political enemies” and is “choosing to make it their top priority to go down the rabbit hole of debunked conspiracy theories about a ‘deep state’ instead of taking a deep breath and deciding to work with the President and Democrats in Congress to improve Americans’ everyday lives.”

    The first panel of witnesses to testify before the committee include GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, as well as former congresswoman from Hawaii and ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.

    The lawmakers are only slated to deliver opening statements and are not expected to answer any questions while testifying, sources familiar with the committee’s plans tell CNN.

    Gabbard has regularly appeared on Fox News since leaving Congress and frequently uses the network to accuse the FBI and the Justice Department of targeting political opponents of the Biden administration.

    Grassley and Johnson have both previously attacked the Justice Department for how it has handled its investigation into Hunter Biden and its approach to addressing threats against school administrators.

    Grassley has also accused the Justice Department of seeking to criminalize the First Amendment right of parents to protest school policies. The Justice Department has denied doing so, pointing to a line in the memo acknowledging that “spirited debate about policy matters is protected under or Constitution.”

    The witnesses’ previous comments regarding the politization of the Biden Justice Department suggest that the committee plans to push a narrative that is popular among the right, but has been publicly disputed by the FBI. There is little public evidence supporting such claims, which Jordan says are backed up by unnamed whistleblowers. Some allegations have been debunked by fact-checkers or news reports, and Jordan has falsely claimed for years that there is an anti-GOP “deep state” within the FBI.

    Democrats, meanwhile, plan to showcase Raskin’s testimony, who is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee – which is investigating a series of polarizing issues such as Hunter Biden and the former and current presidents’ possession of classified documents. Raskin, a former member of the House select committee on the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection, and a key fixture in both of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trials, has been a crucial messenger for the left in pushing back against the GOP’s claims and controversial probes.

    The second panel of witnesses will feature former FBI special agents Nicole Parker and Thomas Baker, as well as Turley and the Raben Group’s Elliot Williams.

    Parker wrote an op-ed last month detailing how she left the bureau after over 10 years of service because she believed it became “politically weaponized.”

    Baker, meanwhile, published a book in December 2022 titled, “The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy.”

    Turley was a prominent figure during Trump’s impeachment trials often referenced by the right.

    Williams, a CNN analyst, is appearing on behalf of the Democrats. Williams previously served as deputy assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Department of Justice, where worked to secure Senate confirmation for both Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

    Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democratic member of the subcommittee, cast doubt on the effectiveness of Republicans’ strategy, telling CNN, “I fail to see what they think they’re going to accomplish by those kinds of witnesses. … I don’t know that that adds anything to their credibility or making their case. I’ll leave it at that.”

    But Democrats are also cognizant of one potential disadvantage ahead of Thursday’s hearing – the fact they have not yet met as a group while the Republicans have. Connolly told CNN that, given they were just named as member of the panel last week, they have not yet had the opportunity to begin preparing for the onslaught of investigations GOP members have planned.

    GOP subcommittee members told CNN the purpose of the first hearing is largely to outline the panel’s investigate plans in the months ahead, and set the stage for what viewers should anticipate from the weekly-hearings the committee is hoping to hold.

    “Chairman Jordan wants to introduce people to what the committee hopes to accomplish, and the scope of the problem. Having these senators speak with authority helps set it. They won’t be questioned as witnesses, but they are testifying as to their observations,” GOP Rep. Darrell Issa said.

    “I’m not sure we’re going to learn what we need to learn about what has happened inside government agencies in sufficient detail with these witnesses, but I think they can kind of cast the vision,” Republican subcommittee member Dan Bishop of North Carolina told CNN.

    Bishop said he hopes the work of this panel will pave the way for legislation to address what he claimed were agencies “going off rogue.”

    Jordan and House Judiciary Committee staff have met with series of whistleblowers behind closed doors this week for transcribed interviews regarding claims about the politicization of the Justice Department. The interviews will serve as the basis for much of the subcommittee’s probe, sources with direct knowledge of the interviews tell CNN.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “That’s correct,” Fletcher said.

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

    “Yes, sir.”

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

    “That’s correct.”

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

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

    “On the outside?” Meadors asked.

    “Yes, sir,” Fletcher said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Yes,” Smith said.”

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  • Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

    Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.



    CNN
     — 

    In Lord Byron’s satirical epic poem, “Don Juan,” the main character marvels at “the whole earth, of man the wonderful, and of the stars … of air-balloons, and of the many bars to perfect knowledge of the boundless skies — and then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.”

    The balloon from China floating eastward over the United States last week riveted the nation’s attention for a lot longer.

    At first, the enormous balloon, carrying a smaller substructure roughly the length of three city buses, seemed to symbolize America’s wide-open vulnerability to what the Pentagon described as surveillance from a rising power.

    But the downing of the balloon off the Carolinas Saturday gave President Joe Biden’s administration a way to unleash its fighter jets without any loss of life.

    “I told them to shoot it down,” said Biden, peering at reporters through his Ray-Ban aviators at a Maryland airport. Referring to his national security team, Biden added, “They said to me let’s wait till the safest place to do it.”

    The incident led to the abrupt postponement of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China and an apologetic statement from Beijing calling it a “civilian airship” that had “deviated far from its planned course.” The US Navy and Coast Guard are taking part in an effort to recover the aircraft. which may yield evidence of its true purpose.

    Some Republicans criticized the President for not shooting it down sooner. China called the downing of the balloon an “obvious overreaction” and said it “reserves the right” to act on “similar situations.”

    In May 1937, the golden age of transcontinental passenger airships came to a catastrophic end in roughly 30 seconds after a spark set the hydrogen fuel on the Hindenburg ablaze, killing 36. But balloons for other uses survived, and they remain a tool of surveillance, even in the era of spy satellites.

    “The question is whether China carefully considered the consequences of its actions,” wrote David A. Andelman. “Intentional or otherwise, if it was indeed monitoring air flows, their engineers might have suspected these weather phenomena would eventually take these balloons over the United States.”

    He pointed out that China has an enormous fleet of satellites which can surveil other nations. “Between 2019 and 2021, China doubled the number of its satellites in orbit from 250 to 499.”

    In the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby observed, “To understand how a balloon — at once menacing and farcically Zeppelin-retro — might become a defining image of the new cold war, consider how this alleged Chinese spy contraption captures both sides of the present moment. It is provocative enough to cause Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a much-anticipated trip to Beijing. It is clumsy enough to symbolize China’s immense capacity to blunder — a tendency that President Biden’s team has lately exploited, to devastating effect.”

    05 opinion cartoons 020423

    02 Marie Kondo tidying

    “It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop,” Marie Kondo wrote in the 2011 book that sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and launched her career as a Netflix star and curator of “joy.”

    “In fact, anyone can do it.”

    It was an apt sentiment at a time when striving for perfection at home and at work was the norm, despite it being a sometimes soul-crushing aspiration — and one that began to vanish with the arrival of the pandemic in 2020.

    So it was understandable that people took notice when Kondo, who gave birth to her third child in 2021, recently said, “My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.”

    As Holly Thomas wrote, “Her benign comment, while welcomed with relief in some circles, prompted a surprisingly febrile reaction in others. … Kondo’s success was built on tidying, and encouraging us to tidy in turn. Where was her loyalty to tidying? How dare she pivot out of her well-ordered lane after selling us a way to live?”

    But that’s the wrong way to look at it, Thomas added. “The discomfort … with Kondo’s personal rebrand demonstrates a rigidity that’s reflected across many areas of life. … On a more sinister level, there can be an implicit sense that once you’ve established a particular trait or activity as inherent to your identity, it is somehow greedy or unfaithful to try your hand at something new.”

    Jura Koncius wrote in the Washington Post, “Kondo, 38, has caught up with the rest of us, trying to corral the doom piles on our kitchen counters while on hold with the plumber and trying not to burn dinner. The multitasker seems somewhat humbled by her growing family and her business success, maybe realizing that you can find peace in some matcha even if you drink it in a favorite cracked mug rather than a porcelain cup.”

    The new Kondo might welcome a bill in Maryland that would provide tax breaks to companies that switch to four-day work weeks as a pilot project. “We are three years into a pandemic that upended work life (and life-life) as many of us knew it,” wrote Jill Filipovic. “We are living in an era in which out-of-work demands, most especially parenting and other forms of caregiving, are more extreme than ever. And we are living in a country that, unlike other nations, provides meager support as its people strive to balance it all…”

    “No wonder so many workers report being fed up and burned out. No wonder so many women, who continue to do the lion’s share of the nation’s parenting, drop out of the workforce.”

    03 opinion cartoons 020423

    The 2024 presidential campaign is just starting to come into focus. Former President Donald Trump has locked on to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the biggest threat to his campaign for the GOP nomination.

    Trump “mercilessly slammed DeSantis again … first at a South Carolina campaign rally and then in remarks to the media,” Dean Obeidallah noted. “On his campaign plane, Trump berated DeSantis as ‘very disloyal’ and accused him of ‘trying to rewrite history’ in recent pronouncements about Covid-19 policy in Florida.”

    If DeSantis enters the race, Obeidallah observed, “he’ll need to show the red meat-loving GOP base that he can punch back against Trump.”

    Yet Trump’s derisive nicknames for DeSantis haven’t stuck, as SE Cupp said. “I know we’re just getting started, but this Trump doesn’t seem to pack the punch that 2016 Trump did. … Maybe he’s lost his touch as he’s faced one political storm after the other.”

    Some other potential rivals are queueing up, with Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, planning to announce her candidacy on February 15 and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mulling a possible run.

    “Haley is a formidable candidate who brings the executive experience from her days as governor as well as the foreign policy experience from her time as ambassador,” wrote Gavin J. Smith, who worked in both the Trump administration and Haley’s executive office in South Carolina. “This experience, paired with her ability to bring people together, her background as a mom and a military spouse, and her track record of fighting the uphill battle of running against old White men — is exactly why she is the right candidate, at the right moment, for Republicans to rally behind as we look to win back the White House in 2024.”

    Mike Pompeo has lost 90 pounds on a diet and exercise regimen. He has a new book out that attacks the media and lambastes some of his Trump administration colleagues. “Based on a close reading of his book,” Peter Bergen wrote, “I bet he will take the plunge. Pompeo could be looking to benefit as Trump loses altitude among some Republicans, and at 59, Pompeo is a spring chicken compared with President Joe Biden and Trump, so if it doesn’t work out well this time around, he sets himself up for other runs down the road.”

    When Biden sums up the State of the Union Tuesday evening, the camera will reveal one change from last year, reflecting divided party control of Congress: Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy — rather than Nancy Pelosi — will be in the backdrop, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, as Biden speaks from the House podium.

    David Axelrod, who served as a strategist and adviser to former President Barack Obama, has some advice for Biden: “Acknowledge the stress people feel, explain how you’ve tried to help but don’t tell them how great things are. Or worse, how great YOU are. You can’t persuade people of what they don’t feel — and will lose them if you try.”

    “Rather than claim his place in history, the President should paint the picture of where we’ve been and, even more important, where we’re going…”

    Biden met with McCarthy last week, as each staked out their positions on the coming battle over America’s debt limit.

    In 2011, Obama and GOP leaders in Congress narrowly averted a default in US debt payments. Republican Lanhee J. Chen pointed out that one of the people “who facilitated the 2011 deal was none other than Joe Biden. Now, many in Washington are trying to predict what might unfold over the next several months as the once-and-future dealmaker approaches yet another debt ceiling crisis — but this time as commander in chief.”

    “The current crisis presents an opportunity for moderates in both parties to unite around the need both to raise the debt ceiling but also to put in place lasting changes that will fundamentally improve America’s fiscal trajectory.”

    01 opinion cartoons 020423

    For CNN Politics, Zachary B. Wolf spoke with Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor, who argues that the President would have legal grounds to ignore the debt ceiling entirely. Moreover, Hockett disputed the notion that US government debt is on an unsustainable path: “When we measure a national debt, we look at it as a percentage of GDP. It’s much, much lower than the Japanese national debt is, for example, relative to Japanese GDP. And you don’t see anybody worrying about the integrity or the worthiness of the Japanese national debt or whether Japan’s economy can sustain its debt.”

    Following Biden’s speech on Tuesday, the new Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will give the GOP response. “The 40-year-old certainly provides a contrast to the 76-year-old former President Donald Trump by virtue of her age and gender,” wrote Julian Zelizer.

    But the Trump approach is still in the background, he added. “Sanders represents a new generation of Republicans eager to weaponize the same outrage machine with familiar talking points about the threats of immigration, the so-called radical left’s attacks on education, and an economy in shambles under Biden — while showing that they can govern without the self-defeating chaos and tumult that rocked the nation from 2017 to 2021.”

    For more on politics:

    Elliot Williams: I had a security clearance. It’s easier to lose classified documents than you think

    Frida Ghitis: The most important of George Santos’ secrets

    06 opinion cartoons 020423

    The death of a young man after a traffic stop and brutal police beating in Memphis cries out for a response to a national problem, wrote Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Tyre Nichols, who was laid to rest on Wednesday, was killed for driving while Black,” she wrote. “The former Memphis police officers fired for his killing will get an opportunity to defend themselves in court against the criminal charges, as they should. Nichols got no such opportunity…”

    “The question we should be asking now is, why are Black people stopped so often for traffic violations? Why are so many across the United States dying at the hands, or tasers or guns of police officers during these stops? And what can be done to change this horrific situation?”

    “Here’s one thing we know: Body cameras are not the answer. Body camera footage is not prevention; there was body camera footage of Nichols’ killing. It is evidence, not a prophylactic.”

    In the summer of 1966, when the young civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael “climbed onto the back of a truck with generator-powered lights below, he looked as though he had stepped onto a floodlit stage.” Carmichael lamented that after six years of shouting for freedom, “We ain’t got nothing. What we’re going to start saying now is ‘Black Power!’”

    Mark Whitaker, who wrote about that moment for CNN Opinion, is the author of a forthcoming book, “Saying It Loud: 1966 – The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement.”

    The day after Carmichael spoke, “a short Associated Press story describing the scene was picked up by more than 200 newspapers across America. Overnight, the Black Power Movement was born. … In 1966, the Black Power pioneers established the principle that all Black lives deserve to matter.”

    Florida’s governor is engaging in a bad faith attack on the College Board’s “proposed Advanced Placement African American Studies course, citing concerns about six topics of study, including the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism and reparations,” wrote Leslie Kay Jones, assistant professor in the sociology department at Rutgers University. “Gov. Ron DeSantis said the course violates the so-called Stop WOKE Act, which he signed last year, and the state criticized the inclusion in the course of work by a number of scholars, including me.”

    “By villainizing CRT (critical race theory) and then representing African American Studies as synonymous with CRT, the DeSantis administration paved the way to convince the public that the accurate teaching of African American Studies as a field of research was a Trojan horse for teaching students ‘to hate.’ … I must ask where ‘hate’ is being stoked in African American Studies? Is it in the factual teaching that enslaved Black people were considered 3/5ths of a human being?”

    04 opinion cartoons 020423

    Manish Khanduri: ‘Blisters inside my blisters.’ Why we walked the entire length of India

    Lev Golinkin: Germany’s quiet betrayal of victims of the Holocaust

    Darren Foster: After 15 years of reporting on opioids, I know this to be true

    Joyce Davis: How Russia outmaneuvered the US in Africa

    AND…

    Judy Blume

    Young adult author Judy Blume is the subject of a new documentary, set to air in April on Amazon Prime. One of her books, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is the basis for a new film, also aimed for an April release.

    “To say Blume is widely loved would be an understatement, as the documentary shows,” wrote Sara Stewart. “It features interviews with some of the author’s more famous adoring fans, including Molly Ringwald, Samantha Bee and Lena Dunham. It also showcases her correspondence with now-adult women who wrote to Blume, initially, as teenagers — and she wrote back, beginning friendships that would last decades.”

    “All of these women speak about the ways Blume’s books changed them, made them feel seen and understood in a way that their parents often did not.” At a time when books touching the topics she covers are increasingly being banned in schools, Blume’s voice rings out.

    At 84, she “is still fighting the good fight,” wrote Stewart. At the Key West, Florida, bookstore Blume co-founded, “the shelves bear signs proclaiming, ‘We Sell Banned Books.’”

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  • Inside Biden’s decision to ‘take care of’ the Chinese spy balloon that triggered a diplomatic crisis | CNN Politics

    Inside Biden’s decision to ‘take care of’ the Chinese spy balloon that triggered a diplomatic crisis | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    When President Joe Biden learned a likely Chinese spy balloon was drifting through the stratosphere 60,000 feet above Montana, his first inclination was to take it down.

    By then, however, it was both too early and too late. After flying over swaths of sparsely populated land, it was now projected to keep drifting over American cities and towns. The debris from the balloon could endanger lives on the ground, his top military brass told him.

    The massive white orb, carrying aloft a payload the size of three coach buses, had already been floating in and out of American airspace for three days before it created enough concern for Biden’s top general to brief him, according to two US officials.

    Its arrival had gone unnoticed by the public as it floated eastward over Alaska – where it was first detected by North American Aerospace Defense Command on January 28 – toward Canada. NORAD continued to track and assess the balloon’s path and activities, but military officials assigned little importance to the intrusion into American airspace, having often witnessed Chinese spy balloons slip into the skies above the United States. At the time, the balloon was not assessed to be an intelligence risk or physical threat, officials say.

    This time, however, the balloon kept going: high over Alaska, into Canada and back toward the US, attracting little attention from anyone looking up from the ground.

    “We’ve seen them and monitored them, briefed Congress on the capabilities they can bring to the table,” another US official told CNN. “But we’ve never seen something as brazen as this.”

    It would take seven days from when the balloon first entered US airspace before an F-22 fighter jet fired a heat-seeking missile into the balloon on the opposite end of the country, sending its equipment and machinery tumbling into the Atlantic Ocean.

    The balloon’s week-long American journey, from the remote Aleutian Islands to the Carolina coast, left a wake of shattered diplomacy, furious reprisals from Biden’s political rivals and a preview of a new era of escalating military strain between the world’s two largest economies.

    It’s also raised questions about why it wasn’t shot down sooner and what information, if any, it scooped up along its path.

    What was meant to be a high-profile moment of statesmanship -as Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to travel to China instead transformed into a televised standoff, testing Biden’s resolve at a new moment of reckoning with China. As Navy divers and FBI investigators sort through the tangle of equipment and technology that tumbled into the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, Biden and his team must also piece together what the episode means for the broader relationship with Beijing.

    Minutes after the balloon was shot down at his order, a reporter asked Biden what message his decision sent to China. He looked on silently before stepping into his SUV.

    On Tuesday, as Biden darted from Washington to New York City for an infrastructure event and a fundraiser, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed him there was a Chinese balloon floating over Montana.

    The location was unnerving: As officials watched the balloon’s path, there was alarm at what appeared to be deliberate effort to sit over an Air Force base that maintains one of the largest silos of US intercontinental ballistic missiles.

    For some administration officials, the timing also appeared intentional. The balloon floated over the US the same week Blinken was due to depart for China, a high-stakes visit viewed as the culmination of intensive diplomatic efforts launched late last year by Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in Bali.

    In his Tuesday briefing with the President, Milley informed Biden the balloon appeared to be on a clear path into the continental United States, differentiating it from previous Chinese surveillance craft. The President appeared inclined at that point to take the balloon down, and asked Milley and other military officials to draw up options and contingencies.

    At the same time, Biden asked his national security team to take steps to prevent the balloon from being able to gather any intelligence – essentially, by making sure no sensitive military activity or unencrypted communications would be conducted in its vicinity, officials said.

    That evening, Pentagon officials met to review their military options. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, traveling abroad in Asia, participated virtually. NASA was also brought in to analyze and assess the potential debris field, based on the trajectory of the balloon, weather, and estimated payload. When options were presented to Biden on Wednesday, he directed his military leadership to shoot down the balloon as soon as they viewed it as a viable option, given concerns about risks to people and property on the ground.

    “Shoot it down,” Biden told his military advisers, he would later recount to reporters.

    But Austin and Milley told Biden the risks of shooting the balloon down were too high while it was moving over the US, given the chance debris could endanger lives or property on the ground below.

    “They said to me, ‘Let’s wait till the safest place to do it,’” Biden told reporters on Saturday

    Biden had another key request, though: he wanted the military to shoot down the balloon in such a way that it would maximize their ability to recover its payload, allowing the US intelligence community to sift through its components and gain insights into its capabilities, officials said. Shooting it down over water also increased the chances of being able to recover the payload intact, the officials said.

    While Beijing insisted on Friday that the balloon was simply a meteorological device that had strayed off course, the US government was confident that the balloons were being used for surveillance. Both the balloon discovered over the US and another spotted transiting Latin America carried surveillance equipment not usually associated with standard meteorological activities or civilian research, officials said – specifically, both featured collection pod equipment and solar panels located on the metal truss suspended below the balloon itself. The US also observed small motors and propellers on the balloons, leading officials to believe Beijing had some control over its path.

    US officials said the balloons were part of a fleet of Chinese spy balloons that have been spotted across five continents over the last several years.

    For the bulk of its journey across the US, the scramble to assess, monitor and eventually debilitate the balloon was kept to a close circle of Biden’s top national security advisers.

    But by the middle of the week, however, the mysterious white object floating above more populated areas of Montana was difficult to conceal. The balloon caused an hours-long grounding of commercial flights around Billings on Wednesday as the military worked to respond.

    And people starting looking up.

    Michael Alverson was working at the mines in Billings when he looked up and noticed a glowing orb in the sky. Realizing it couldn’t be the moon, he brought out his binoculars to take a closer look.

    “Me and my coworkers were shocked,” Alverson said. “It appeared to be a weather balloon – or so we thought.”

    Ashley McGowan told CNN she received a call from her neighbor wondering if she had heard jets flying about their neighborhood in Reed Point, Montana, on Wednesday. McGowan said she went outside with her dogs and saw a bright white dot in the sky.

    “What’s happening?” she recalled wondering. “Is this a UFO or is it like trash or is it the star? I had somebody try to tell me it was the green comet, I’m like that’s way too close to be the comet.”

    “This isn’t normal,” she remembered thinking. “There’s jets flying everywhere.”

    Officials attributed the decision to publicize the balloon’s existence to several factors, including the fact “that people were just going to see the damn thing,” one official acknowledged.

    As the military was fine tuning its options, a parallel effort was underway with the Chinese to assess the feasibility of Blinken making his highly anticipated visit to Beijing at a moment of fresh tension.

    Heading into the visit, White House officials had been cheered by more robust communications with China following Biden’s meeting with Xi late last year. After shutting down virtually all talks following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last summit, the Chinese were finally back at the table – a critical step, in the eyes of Biden’s advisers, to maintaining stability in the world’s most important bilateral relationship.

    The balloon would dash all of it.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Indonesia on July 9, 2022.

    On Wednesday evening, China’s top official in Washington was summoned to the State Department, where Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman delivered “a very clear and stark message” about the discovery of the surveillance balloon, officials told CNN.

    Biden himself relayed to his top national security officials that he no longer believed the time was right for Blinken to visit Beijing, in part because the balloon would likely end up dominating his talks there.

    The trip was postponed hours before Blinken was due to board his plane.

    “In this current environment, I think it would have significantly narrowed the agenda that we would have been able to address,” a senior State Department official said.

    Republicans immediately moved to attack Biden for not shooting the balloon down immediately. The attacks, which came as Biden ignored questions on the issue throughout the day on Friday, served as an annoyance “that evolved into frustration,” inside the White House, one person familiar with the dynamic said.

    “This was a decision that was made at the recommendation of the Pentagon, for public safety reasons,” the person said in describing the rationale.

    Still, administration officials moved to brief key lawmakers and staff on Capitol Hill. That included briefings for the staff of the top Republicans and Democrats on the intelligence panels, as well as the top four congressional leaders – a group known as the Gang of 8.

    A formal briefing for the lawmakers in the Gang of 8 is scheduled to take place next week.

    Still, coming just ahead of Blinken’s travel to China, it was a move that officials across the administration said made little sense on its face and required a public and private response.

    US officials spoke to their Chinese counterparts throughout the week, making clear the balloon was likely to be shot down, an official said.

    Biden himself would be updated regularly over the course of the week, with his national security team providing updates on their conversations with Chinese counterparts and military officials presenting updated military options.

    US military and intelligence officials moved quickly to identify and close off any risks that may have extended from the balloon, though one official described them as “rather small to begin with,” given ongoing US efforts to mitigate spying threats from more sophisticated satellites.

    Another official also said US assets were immediately put into motion to monitor and collect any intelligence from the balloon as it followed its path through the US – including the scrambling of military aircraft as the balloon floated high above the central part of the country.

    Still, even without a direct threat to the American public, the widely held view inside the administration was that the balloon would need to be shot down, likely after it moved over open water.

    Waiting to carry out the operation allowed the US to “study and scrutinize” the balloon and its equipment, a senior Defense official said.

    “We have learned technical things about this balloon and its surveillance capabilities. And I suspect, if we are successful in recovering aspects of the debris, we will learn even more,” the official added.

    Officials also suggested that collecting debris from the balloon could be easier if it landed in water as opposed to on land.

    Government agencies worked throughout week to find the right place and right time to intercept the Chinese spy balloon, according to a government source familiar with the shoot-down plans. Earlier in the week, the Federal Aviation Administration had been told by the Pentagon to prepare options for shutting down airspace.

    A plan to shoot down the balloon was once again presented to Biden on Friday night while he was in Wilmington, where he approved the execution plan for Saturday.

    “We’re gonna take care of it,” Biden said later on the frigid tarmac Saturday in Syracuse, New York, where he was paying a brief visit to visit family.

    Government officials were told Friday night “decisions would be made (Saturday) morning” on when to close down airspace, and FAA officials were told to “be by the phone” early Saturday morning and “ready to roll.”

    Austin gave his final approval for the strike shortly after noon on Saturday from the tarmac in New York, according to a defense official. Austin had traveled north on Saturday for a funeral, but remained very engaged throughout the planning process and the operation, the official said.

    At about 1:30 p.m. ET, the FAA instituted one of the largest areas of restricted airspace in US history, more than five times the size of the restricted zone over Washington, DC, and roughly twice the size of the state of Massachusetts.

    The Temporary Flight Restriction – put in place at the request of the Pentagon, the FAA said – included about 150 miles of Atlantic coastline that effectively paralyzed three commercial airports: Wilmington in North Carolina and Myrtle Beach and Charleston in South Carolina.

    Biden had just taken off from Syracuse when fighter jets that had taken off from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fired a single missile into the balloon.

    As its wreckage tumbled toward the Atlantic Ocean, Biden was on the phone with his national security team on Air Force One.

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  • Alex Murdaugh hid settlement of more than $4 million from family of his late housekeeper, her son testifies | CNN

    Alex Murdaugh hid settlement of more than $4 million from family of his late housekeeper, her son testifies | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh never told the family of his late housekeeper that he collected more than $4 million in insurance settlements after she fell at his home, according to testimony at his double murder trial Friday.

    Outside the presence of the jury, Judge Clifton Newman heard testimony about Murdaugh’s alleged financial schemes as the court weighs whether to allow the admission of such evidence.

    Prosecutors want the evidence of financial wrongdoing admitted to show that the scion of one of the state’s most powerful families was, in their words, a desperate thief on the verge of being exposed at the time of the 2021 murders of his wife and adult son.

    Defense attorneys have portrayed the defendant as a loving father and husband being prosecuted after a poorly handled investigation while the real killers remain at large.

    Michael Satterfield, a son of Gloria Satterfield, who worked as housekeeper for the Murdaugh family for more than 20 years, testified in the second week of the murder trial. She died a few weeks after a fall at the Murdaugh home in 2018.

    Satterfield’s son told the court that Murdaugh offered to “go after my insurance company” to help their family with medical bills and other expenses.

    Michael Satterfield testified that Murdaugh at one point said Satterfield and his brother could each get $100,000 from the insurance company. They never got the money, he testified. And Murdaugh never mentioned a $5 million umbrella policy that he had in addition to a policy for a smaller amount.

    In June 2021, Michael Satterfield testified, his family heard their case was settled but Murdaugh did not disclose that he had collected on two settlements – one for more than $500,000 and another for $3.8 million.

    “Did he get your permission to steal your money?” Waters asked.

    “No.”

    “Did you ever get one cent from Alex Murdaugh?” Waters asked later.

    “No.”

    In December 2021, an attorney for the Satterfield family said Murdaugh agreed to a $4.3 million settlement with the family. He also issued an apology to the Satterfields.

    The first witness called Friday, also outside the jury’s presence, was Jan Malinowski, president and CEO of Palmetto State Bank. Palmetto’s former president, Russell Laffitte, was convicted of six counts of financial fraud crimes in November.

    Malinowski, who testified at Laffitte’s trial, told the court that Murdaugh’s mounting debt to the bank was regularly covered, without justification, by loans from Laffite.

    In August 2021, two months after the murders, Murdaugh’s account had an overdraft of more than $350,000, Malinowski testified. Laffitte responded with a $400,000 transfer to the defendant’s account.

    Murdaugh at the time owed the bank more than $4 million, Malinowski testified.

    Would the loans have kept coming had the bank known “that Murdaugh had been stealing money from his partners or … his clients?” asked Creighton Waters, a prosecutor with the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office – which is prosecuting the case because of the Murdaugh family’s long ties with the local solicitor’s office.

    “No sir,” the CEO replied.

    Waters, eliciting laughter in the courtroom, said the bank had “perhaps the most generous overdraft policy ever seen.”

    “Quite possibly,” Malinowski replied with a slight smile.

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

    In addition to the murder counts, he faces 99 charges related to those purported schemes.

    A pretrial motion from the state contended “the murders served as Murdaugh’s means to shift the focus away from himself and buy some additional time to try and prevent his financial crimes from being uncovered, which, if revealed, would have resulted in personal legal and financial ruin for Murdaugh.”

    The defense has fought the admissibility of the evidence in the murder case, asserting the fraud cases are irrelevant to the question of Murdaugh’s guilt in the murders of his wife and son.

    Murdaugh, who was disbarred amid a mountain of allegations of white-collar theft and fraud, faces 99 charges stemming from 19 grand jury indictments, including allegedly defrauding his clients and former law firm of nearly $9 million, according to the attorney general’s office.

    Under each case, Murdaugh faces the possibility of two sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

    On Thursday, the chief financial officer of Murdaugh’s former law firm testified about confronting the now-disbarred attorney about missing funds the morning his wife and son were killed.

    Jeanne Seckinger, CFO of the firm formerly known as PMPED, testified outside the jury’s presence.

    The morning of the murders, Seckinger confronted Murdaugh about $792,000 in missing funds, she said Thursday, testifying that legal fees should have been made payable to the law firm – renamed to Parker Law Group after Murdaugh’s ouster – and not to individual attorneys.

    But Seckinger and other members of the firm realized in May 2021 they had not received a fee check stemming from a settlement signed in a case Murdaugh shared with another attorney, Seckinger testified, which was a concern.

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

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

    But the June 10 hearing was canceled after Maggie and Paul’s deaths, Seckinger said Thursday, and the firm opted not to confront Murdaugh about the missing money.

    Eventually, the firm did confront Murdaugh about the missing money and “it was my understanding that Alex admitted it,” Seckinger testified.

    Before the firm could announce Murdaugh’s resignation, however, Seckinger testified she heard Murdaugh had been shot while on the side of the road. Murdaugh later told authorities he conspired with a former client to kill him as part of an insurance fraud scheme, purportedly so his surviving son could collect a $10 million life insurance payout.

    Finally, the court on Friday heard from a ballistics expert who told the court the .300 Blackout rifle cartridge casings found near Maggie’s body had identical markings to older casings found near the Murdaugh home as well as at a shooting range on their property.

    The older casings found near the house and in the shooting range “had those same matching mechanism marks to conclude they’d been loaded into, extracted and ejected from the same firearm as those at the crime scene around Margaret Murdaugh’s body,” Paul Greer, a firearm examiner with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, testified.

    The prosecution has said Maggie was killed with a .300 Blackout AR-15 rifle that was a “family weapon” but the weapon has yet to be found.

    During cross-examination by the defense on Friday, Greer said it is “hard to say” whether different .300 Blackout rifles could create the same markings on casings – but reaffirmed he was confident in his findings.

    Greer test fired one .300 Blackout rifle found in the gun room on the Murdaugh property and said the results were inconclusive on whether its ejected casings were an exact match with the casings found around Maggie’s body – but he said if the casings were not from that exact weapon, they came from one identical to it.

    Prosecutors have also said the Murdaughs owned other AR-style rifles, including one Murdaugh bought his son to replace another that went missing. The prosecution has said the replacement is “nowhere to be found.”

    Greer had similar testimony when the defense asked if Paul was killed with the camouflage-patterned gun Alex Murdaugh had on him when first responders arrived at the crime scene. The expert said he test fired that gun and the results were inconclusive. Greer testified he could not tell whether the casings were a match, but that it was possible the gun – or a weapon with similar characteristics – killed Paul.

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  • CFO of Alex Murdaugh’s former law firm testifies she confronted him about missing funds the morning his wife and son were killed | CNN

    CFO of Alex Murdaugh’s former law firm testifies she confronted him about missing funds the morning his wife and son were killed | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh continued Thursday with testimony about the disgraced attorney’s alleged financial crimes, which prosecutors have suggested were about to be revealed when Murdaugh allegedly killed his wife and son in an effort to distract from those schemes.

    The testimony of Jeanne Seckinger, the chief financial officer of Murdaugh’s law firm, was heard Thursday morning without the jury present as Judge Clifton Newman weighs whether to allow the state to present the evidence of the alleged financial crimes, for which Murdaugh faces 99 charges separate from the murder case.

    The morning of June 7, 2021 – the same day of the murders – Seckinger confronted Murdaugh about $792,000 in missing funds, she said Thursday, testifying that legal fees should have been made payable to the law firm, then known as PMPED, and not to individual attorneys.

    But Seckinger and other members of the firm realized in May 2021 they had not received a fee check stemming from a settlement signed in a case Murdaugh shared with another attorney, Chris Wilson, Seckinger testified, which was a concern.

    “Either he’s got a check he hasn’t turned into us that is properly payable to PMPED or he’s received a check payable to him,” Seckinger said.

    Seckinger testified she confronted Murdaugh on June 7 and told him she had reason to believe he had received the funds himself and that he needed to prove to her he had not.

    “He assured me that the money was there, and that he could get it,” Seckinger said.

    Prosecutors indicated in pretrial filings they believed Murdaugh killed his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and his 22-year-old son Paul Murdaugh to distract attention from various illicit schemes he was running and which the state contends were about to come to light when they were killed.

    “Ultimately,” prosecutors wrote in a motion, “the murders served as Murdaugh’s means to shift the focus away from himself and buy himself some additional time to try and prevent his financial crimes from being uncovered, which, if revealed, would have resulted in personal legal and financial ruin for Murdaugh.”

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

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

    Prosecutors’ motion contends the missing $792,000 had already been spent. But the hearing was canceled after Maggie and Paul’s deaths, Seckinger said Thursday, and the firm opted not to confront Murdaugh about the missing money.

    “Alex was distraught and upset and not in the office much” after the killings, Seckinger said. “And nobody wanted to harass him about nothing that we thought was really missing, when we had several months till the end of the year to clear it up. So we were not going to harass him at that point in time.”

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  • MLK invoked as Tyre Nichols’ life is celebrated in song and tributes in Memphis | CNN

    MLK invoked as Tyre Nichols’ life is celebrated in song and tributes in Memphis | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Mourners, from Vice President Kamala Harris to the activist the Rev. Al Sharpton, on Wednesday celebrated the life of Tyre Nichols, whose death at the hands of police in Memphis led to second-degree murder charges against five officers.

    “Mothers around the world, when their babies are born, pray to God when they hold that child, that that body and that life will be safe for the rest of his life,” Harris said to applause during Nichols’ funeral service in a packed Memphis sanctuary.

    “And when we look at this situation, this is a family that lost their son and their brother through an act of violence at the hands and the feet of people who had been charged with keeping them safe.”

    Nichols, 29, who was Black, was subdued yet continuously beaten after a traffic stop by Memphis police on January 7. He died three days later.

    “The people of our country mourn with you,” Harris told Nichols’ family.

    Sharpton, in a painfully familiar role, delivered an impassioned eulogy that paid tribute to Nichols’ life and served as a clarion call for justice.

    Sharpton said he visited the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. He called out the five Black former officers charged in Nichols’ death.

    “There’s nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors, that you walked through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doors. You didn’t get on the police department by yourself,” Sharpton said.

    If Nichols had been white, Sharpton said, “you wouldn’t have beat him like that,” referring to the five former officers.

    “You don’t fight crime by becoming criminals yourself… That ain’t the police. That’s punks.”

    The reverend invoked King’s 1968 “Mountaintop” speech in Memphis, where King said he had reached the peak and seen the Promised Land. The former cops accused of killing Nichols, he said, failed to live up to that legacy. “He expected you to bring us on to the Promised Land,” Sharpton said.

    Flanked by the Rev. Al Sharpton and her husband, Rodney Wells, RowVaughn Wells speaks during the funeral service for her son Wednesday.

    RowVaughn Wells, Nichols’ mother, remembered her son as “a beautiful person” and echoed others at the celebration of life in calling for passage of the George Floyd Policing Act.

    “There should be no other child that should suffer the way my son and all the other parents here (who) have lost their children,” she said.

    Nichols’ older sister, Keyana Dixon, recalled looking after her younger brothers.

    “With Ty, I didn’t mind,” she said. “He never wanted anything but to watch cartoons and a big bowl of cereal. So it was pretty easy to watch him.”

    Dixon said all she wants is her “baby brother back.’

    Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Nichols’ family, said the charges against the five ex-officers in Nichols’ death set a precedent. Within 20 days of his death, the former officers were indicted on charges that included murder and kidnapping.

    “We can count to 20 and every time you kill one of us on video, we’re going to say the legacy of Tyre Nichols is that we have equal justice swiftly,” he said.

    Tyre Nichols, 29, was a free spirit with a passion for skateboarding and capturing sunsets on his camera.

    For the day, mourners at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church shifted the focus from the heart-wrenching footage of the beating that Nichols in a hospital bed with his face badly swollen and bruised before his death, sparking protests across the country.

    Harris was joined other senior level Biden administration officials, including White House Director for the Office of Public Engagement Keisha Lance Bottoms, former mayor of Atlanta, and Senior Adviser to the President Mitch Landrieu.

    Representing other Black people killed by police, Tamika Palmer – whose daughter Breonna Taylor was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, home by police during a botched raid in March 2020 – attended the service.

    Also there was Philonise Floyd, the younger brother of George Floyd, whose name reverberated across the nation following his May 2020 death after an ex-cop Minneapolis cop knelt on his neck and back for more than 9 minutes.

    “The family needs all the support that they can get,” Gwen Carr, whose son, Eric Garner, died after being placed in a chokehold by an NYPD officer in 2014, told CNN Wednesday before attending the service. “It’s so fresh for them but for me, it just digs into old wounds.”

    The service was scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. local time but was pushed back because of bad weather and travel delays. It began shortly after 1 p.m. on the first day of Black History Month with African tribal drummers and a gospel choir.

    With Nichols’ black casket, draped in a white bouquet of flowers, as a centerpiece, the young man was praised by the Rev. J. Lawrence Turner as “a good person, a beautiful soul, a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a human being – gone too soon.”

    Mourners watched slide shows of a smiling Nichols at different times in his life. A photo montage opened with a quote from Nichols: “My vision is to bring my viewers deep into what I am seeing through my eye and out through my lens.”

    The Rev. Al Sharpton introduces the family of Tyre Nichols.

    Tiffany Rachal, the mother of Jalen Randle, a 29-year-old Black man killed by a Houston police officer last year, offered her condolences to the family before singing, “Lord I will lift my eyes to the hills.”

    On Tuesday, Sharpton and Nichols’ family gathered at the Mason Temple Church of God In Christ headquarters in Memphis – where King Jr. delivered his famous “Mountaintop” speech the night before he was killed.

    “We will continue in Tyre’s name to head up to Martin’s mountaintop,” Sharpton said from the “sacred ground” where MLK delivered his speech 55 years ago.

    Tyre Nichols' funeral service took place less than a week after Friday evening's public release of footage of the brutal attack on him.

    Sharpton reflected on the family’s loss as their son’s name is added to a vast pantheon of Black people who died after encounters with police.

    “They will never ever recover from the loss,” Sharpton said.

    Before Wednesday’s service, Dan Beazley, 61, carried a towering wooden cross over his shoulder outside the Memphis church. He said he drove 12 hours – including through an ice storm – from Northville, Michigan, to pay his respects and shine a light.

    Dan Beazley, 61, left, carries wooden cross outside Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church.

    Nichols has been described as a devoted son who had tattooed his mother’s name on his arm, a loving father to a 4-year-old boy, and a free spirit with a passion for skateboarding and capturing sunsets on his camera.

    Public outrage over the disturbing arrest video led to firings or disciplinary action against other public servants who were at the scene, including the firings of three Memphis Fire Department personnel. Two sheriff’s deputies have been put on leave. Additionally, two more police officers have been placed on leave.

    Nichols’ funeral took place less than a week after Friday evening’s public release of footage of the attack on him shook a nation long accustomed to videos of police brutality, especially against people of color.

    The brutal attack sparked largely peaceful protests from New York to Los Angeles as well as renewed calls for police reform and scrutiny of specialized police units that target guns in high crime areas.

    Up to 20 hours of video recordings haven’t been released, Shelby County District Attorney Steven Mulroy told CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” on Wednesday. The audio from the recordings is “probably more useful” in some cases than what the video shows, Mulroy said.

    He didn’t specify what can be heard on the recordings, which he said include sound captured after the beating took place.

    The release of that footage will be determined by city officials, he added.

    The prosecutor said he has asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to expedite its investigation into the other emergency responders – those besides the five already indicted – to see whether any charges are warranted for them. Those people include the officers who filed the paperwork, he said.

    Nichols was the baby of his family, the youngest of four children, according to RowVaughn Wells.

    He moved to Memphis from California right before the Covid-19 pandemic and remained there after the mandatory lockdowns prompted by the health crisis, his mother has said.

    Nichols was a regular at a Germantown, Tennessee, Starbucks where he befriended a group of people who set aside their cellphones at a table and talked mostly about sports, particularly his beloved San Francisco 49ers.

    His visits to Starbucks were typically followed by a nap before heading to a his job at FedEx. He would come home for dinner during his break.

    Nichols was also a fixture among the skateboarders at Shelby Farms Park, where he photographed memorable sunsets, according to his mother.

    In fact, taking pictures served as a form of self-expression that writing could never capture for Nichols, who had written on his photography website that it helped him look “at the world in a more creative way.”

    He preferred capturing landscapes.

    “I hope to one day let people see what i see and to hopefully admire my work based on the quality and ideals of my work,” he wrote.

    Before moving to Memphis, Nichols lived in Sacramento, California, where a friend recalled that “skating gave him wings.”

    On Wednesday, one song performed at the end of the service was a gospel version of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.”

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