ReportWire

Tag: testimony

  • House Oversight chairman and former Twitter employees strike deal on subpoenas in exchange for testimony | CNN Politics

    House Oversight chairman and former Twitter employees strike deal on subpoenas in exchange for testimony | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has subpoenaed three former Twitter employees who will testify before the panel in relation to their investigation into Twitter’s decision to temporarily suppress a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, three sources familiar with the documents tell CNN.

    Twitter’s former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy General Counsel James Baker and former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth requested they be subpoenaed in order to compel their testimony, the sources told CNN, given the legal complications of publicly sharing privileged information from Twitter before the committee.

    The hearing comes after Twitter’s CEO, Elon Musk, released some internal communications from Twitter staff about the decision to censor the New York Post story in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign season.

    Comer, who met privately with Musk last month when the billionaire visited the Capitol, told CNN last week that the hearing may “incorporate some private conversations with some high-level people at Twitter” who support the belief that the US government may have played a role in the suppression of the New York Post story.

    When asked specifically if Musk has conveyed this sentiment to him, the Kentucky Republican told CNN: “I cannot answer that but that may come out in the hearing.”

    Comer’s belief that the government may have been involved in the suppression of the story is rooted in the so-called “Twitter files” that Musk made publicly available. Comer added his panel so far has only had access to the files that have been released publicly.

    “Americans deserve answers about this attack on the First Amendment and why Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit. Accountability is coming,” Comer said in a statement regarding the hearing.

    CNN has previously reported that allegations the FBI told Twitter to suppress the story are unsupported, and a half a dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, all denied any such directive was given in interviews with CNN.

    Republicans on the panel are especially eager to grill Baker, who previously served as general counsel at the FBI during the investigation into whether former President Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. Baker joined Twitter just five months before the 2020 election.

    Gadde, Baker and Roth did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 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

    [ad_1]



    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.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Donald Trump mistook E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo, deposition transcripts show | CNN Politics

    Donald Trump mistook E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo, deposition transcripts show | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Newly unsealed transcripts from Donald Trump’s deposition in the E. Jean Carroll case show that the former president mistook Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples in a photo.

    The transcripts show that during his October 2022 deposition, Trump was shown a black and white photo where he is interacting with several people, including with his then-wife Ivana, Carroll and her then-husband.

    “I don’t know who – it’s Marla,” Trump said when shown the photo. “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” he says when asked to clarify.

    Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, then interjected and said “no, that’s Carroll,” according to the transcript.

    Carroll first sued Trump in 2019 for defamation after he denied her rape allegation. She filed a second lawsuit against Trump in November under a new law that allowed her to sue for battery even though the statute of limitations on the crime had passed.

    Trump has denied sexually assaulting the former magazine columnist and said he never pressured a woman to have sex with him, according to a deposition transcript that was unsealed last week.

    In his deposition transcript, Trump reiterated previous comments that he didn’t know Carroll and that she isn’t his type, a claim that could be called into question after his response to being shown the photograph.

    Trump said that while it is not “politically correct” to say she isn’t his type, he said he had to defend himself. He added that it wasn’t meant to be an insult.

    When asked if he ever kissed a woman without her consent, Trump testified, “Well, I don’t … I can’t think of any complaints. But no. I mean, I don’t think so.” He also denied ever touching a woman’s breasts or buttocks.

    Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan asked Trump, “Have you ever pressured a woman to engage in sex with you?”

    “The answer is no. But you may have some people, like your client, who are willing to lie,” Trump testified.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • READ: Former Trump White House aide’s testimony to House January 6 committee | CNN Politics

    READ: Former Trump White House aide’s testimony to House January 6 committee | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The House January 6 committee released another batch of transcripts Tuesday, including two more of its interviews with blockbuster witness Cassidy Hutchinson.

    The transcripts shed new light on how then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows regularly burned documents during the presidential transition period, according to Hutchinson, a top Meadows aide, who was interviewed by the committee several times.

    Read the transcripts of her May 17 and June 20 depositions below.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • How the January 6 panel unearthed key details from little-known insiders | CNN Politics

    How the January 6 panel unearthed key details from little-known insiders | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The story of January 6 has largely focused on a cast of very prominent characters, including former President Donald Trump and members of his inner circle who have become household names, like his former attorney Rudy Giuliani and his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

    But those with notable names were merely the tip of the iceberg for the January 6 committee, which spent 18 months investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses behind closed doors, including scores of Trump aides who were hardly ever in the headlines.

    The January 6 committee’s report, which came out Thursday, highlights how investigators tracked down little-known insiders – from the Trump campaign to the National Guard to the Republican National Committee – who witnessed key moments and provided critical information to the panel.

    One critical example of the outsize role of little-known figures: The committee’s report mentions an unnamed White House staffer who told Trump around 1:21 p.m. on January 6, 2021, that “they’re rioting down at the Capitol.” This represents one of the first instances of Trump being told directly that the situation was descending into violence.

    With the panel’s report public and witness interview transcripts trickling out on a daily basis, we’re getting a new glimpse into how these obscure figures played big roles in the inquiry. Some of them even provided information that will be useful to the ongoing criminal probes by the Justice Department and state prosecutors in Georgia, who are investigating Trump’s election schemes.

    Here are a few lesser-known insiders and what they shared with the committee.

    The committee’s dive into the hundreds of millions of dollars that were made in campaign fundraising off Trump’s bogus election fraud claims includes the story of a young RNC staffer who was fired after he pushed back on some of the assertions being made in fundraising emails.

    Ethan Katz, who provided testimony to the committee, was an RNC copywriter who made clear to his superiors he was not comfortable with the false claims the Trump campaign and its allies were making after the election, according to the report.

    His direct boss told the committee that she wasn’t sure why Katz was terminated three weeks after the election. However, it came after Katz repeatedly questioned the direction leadership was taking in Republicans’ post-election fundraising messaging.

    The first confrontation – corroborated by multiple witnesses – came in a meeting with the entirety of the Trump digital team, in which Katz grilled a higher-up on how the campaign was saying it wanted to stop the count in several battleground states while keeping it going in another.

    In the second episode in the report, he refused a directive to write an email declaring Trump the winner in Pennsylvania – an email Katz suspected was meant to preempt the election being called for Joe Biden in that state.

    Another copy writer was assigned the task, the report said, and an email falsely declaring a Trump victory in Pennsylvania was sent on November 4.

    Katz was one of several lower-level digital staffers who spoke to the committee, shedding light on how the campaign and the RNC tried to walk the line between not putting themselves in potential legal jeopardy by blasting out false claims while exploiting Trump’s fraud narrative for fundraising.

    Among the first people the committee identifies as having concocted the fake electors strategy – in which slates of fraudulent Trump electors were put forward as alternatives to Biden electors – is Vince Haley, the deputy assistant to the president for policy, strategy and speechwriting.

    Texts and emails that Haley turned over to the committee show how he repeatedly pushed the idea of using illegitimate GOP slates of presidential electors in battleground states to some of Trump’s closest staff members.

    Supposed election fraud by Democrats is “only one rationale for slating Trump electors,” Haley told Johnny McEntee, an assistant to Trump, in text messages one week after the 2020 election that he turned over to the January 6 committee.

    “We should baldly assert” that state legislators “have the constitutional right to substitute their judgment for a certified majority of their constituents” if that prevents socialism, he said.

    The messages highlight how Trump allies and White House staffers appeared to know that their efforts to overturn the election could be problematic early on but believed they were justified if the plan was successful in keeping Trump in office.

    Haley added, “[i]ndependent of the fraud – or really along with that argument – Harrisburg [Pennsylvania], Madison [Wisconsin] and Lansing [Michigan] do not have to sit idly by and submit themselves to rule by Beijing and Paris,” proposing that conservative radio hosts “rally the grassroots to apply pressure to the weak kneed legislators in those states.”

    Haley then sent McEntee names and contact information for state legislators in six states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump later called several of those state officials, according to the report.

    Two not-well-known Trump campaign officials who were already of interest to the Justice Department provided especially helpful testimony to the January 6 committee.

    One of them, Georgia-based staffer Robert Sinners, described how he felt misled by campaign higher-ups about the legal sketchiness around the fake electors plan – evidence that might go to show a corrupt intent.

    The second, Trump campaign associate general counsel Joshua Findlay, described fielding concerns from the activists being recruited to be fake electors and recounted to the committee how the campaign’s core team tried to hand off the scheme to the more fringe Trump lawyers.

    Findlay also gave valuable testimony connecting the plot to the former president himself. He told the committee that he was tasked by another campaign official in early December with exploring the feasibility of the plan and that the official conveyed to him that the president wanted the campaign to “look into” the alternative electors proposal.

    When it was decided that Giuliani would be in charge of the gambit, Findlay was left with the impression that it was because Trump wanted Giuliani to lead it. Findlay testified that Trump campaign leadership backed off the plan a few days after he had been told to look into it, with top lawyers bailing on the idea.

    However, the campaign’s director of election day operations, Mike Roman, took on a chief operation role in the gambit.

    The role played by Roman – who declined to answer many of committee’s questions in his testimony, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights – was fleshed out by communications handed over to the committee by Sinners. They showed that Roman was organizing information tracking the effort.

    Sinners told the committee that he would not have participated with the scheme had he known the campaign’s top lawyers were not on board with the plan. He testified that he felt “angry,” according to the report, that “no one really cared if – if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy” by doing this, and “we were just … useful idiots or rubes at that point.”

    The Justice Department has been seeking information about Sinners and Findlay. Their committee testimony, along with that of others, showed how the Trump campaign was willing to move forward with the fake electors plot – putting its participants in legal jeopardy – even as its top lawyers sought to distance themselves from the scheme.

    To get to the heart of what was happening in the White House and Trump campaign war rooms, the committee looked to junior staffers – people who were key observers to the action but didn’t have an orchestrating role.

    One such staffer was Angela McCallum, the national executive assistant on Trump’s reelection campaign.

    After the election, McCallum was part of the Trump campaign’s operation to contact hundreds of state legislators to ask for their support for efforts to replace state electors.

    Though McCallum does not appear to have had a leadership role in the operation, nor was she directly quoted by the committee, footnotes from the report show that she turned over several text messages, campaign spreadsheets and even a script for calling state legislators.

    Her insight appears to have given the committee information on the campaign’s outreach efforts to push the fake electors plan. Her notes say that campaign staff tried contacting over 190 Republican state legislators in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan alone.

    McCallum’s text records also show how campaign supervisors viewed the ongoing outreach efforts. In one instance, McCallum provided a text message sent by an operative the committee believes may have brought the fake elector certificates to Washington, based on the message’s photo of the operative in front of the Capitol.

    “This has got to be the cover a book I write one day,” the operative, whom the committee could not find to serve a subpoena, said in the message. “I should probably buy [Mike] [R]oman a tie or something for sending me on this one. Hasn’t been done since 1876 and it was only 3 states that did it.”

    In another message, the operative, who was McCallum’s supervisor, celebrated after reporters published a recorded voicemail McCallum left on a state legislators’ phone.

    “Honest to god I’m so proud of this” because “[t]hey unwittingly just got your message out there,” the message read, according to the report.

    He continued, telling McCallum that “you used the awesome power of the presidency to scare a state rep into getting a statewide newspaper to deliver your talking points.”

    The long delay in sending National Guard troops to the US Capitol on January 6 was among the most glaring security failures that day. Previously unreported testimony revealed for the first time in the committee’s final report shows that one commander on the ground had his forces ready to respond hours before they were given approval to actually do so.

    National Guard Col. Craig Hunter is not a household name, but as the highest-ranking commander on the ground on January 6, his testimony helped the committee untangle conflicting accounts provided by more senior officials and ultimately arrive at a conclusion about what caused the delayed response.

    Hunter provided a detailed timeline of his own actions that day, including that he immediately started preparing his troops to respond at around 2 p.m. ET after hearing that shots had reportedly been fired at the US Capitol.

    “So, at that point in my mind I said, ‘Okay, then they will be requesting the DC National Guard now, so we have to move,” Hunter told the committee, according to its final report.

    Within the hour, Hunter had a plan in place. Over 100 National Guard troops were already loaded on to buses with their gear, and Hunter informed other responding law enforcement agencies that backup was coming as soon as he got approval from his superiors.

    “At 3:10 p.m., Colonel Hunter felt it was time to tell his superiors all that he had done and hopefully get fast approval,” the report says.

    But Hunter was unaware that a looming communications breakdown between senior military leaders – including the acting secretary of Defense and secretary of the Army – would delay approval of his plan for more than three hours.

    At that very moment, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy was putting together a redundant plan for transporting those forces to the Capitol and was not aware that he had already been given authority to issue the order himself, the report says.

    The confusion, coupled with a lack of communication between senior military leaders and commanders on the ground, was a key factor in the delayed response, the report says.

    In hindsight, the failures of top military officials are even more glaring considering Hunter had already devised a plan that could have been put into motion hours earlier.

    They also did not occur in a vacuum. Trump could have personally intervened at any time, to hasten and coordinate the military response, but chose not to.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump White House drafted statement attacking Barr after he publicly refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, transcript reveals | CNN Politics

    Trump White House drafted statement attacking Barr after he publicly refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, transcript reveals | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    In December 2020, after then-Attorney General William Barr publicly refuted President Donald Trump’s claims that the election was rigged, White House staffers drafted a press release that would’ve called for the firing of anyone who disagreed with Trump’s claims, according to a new transcript from the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021.

    The draft statement ended with, “Anybody that thinks there wasn’t massive fraud in 2020 election should be fired,” according to the deposition.

    The draft statement – which was never sent out, and hadn’t been revealed before Friday – was brought up during the committee’s deposition of Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, according to the transcript. Congressional investigators told him that they likely obtained the statement from the National Archives, which turned over documents from the Trump White House.

    The committee also said during the Cipollone interview that White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson previously testified that Mark Meadows gave her the draft statement – which was a handwritten note – after an Oval Office meeting on the same day Barr made his public comments refuting Trump. It appears that the statement didn’t explicitly name Barr.

    The committee claimed that Hutchinson testified that she was instructed by Meadows to seek Cipollone’s approval before the statement was posted on social media. The committee said Hutchinson testified that Cipollone’s response was, “God, no.” Cipollone said he had no recollection of the draft statement or the episode.

    “By the way, I wasn’t fired,” Cipollone quipped to the committee.

    The Cipollone deposition is one of nearly 50 additional transcripts released Friday night by the January 6 committee. The latest batch contained interviews with key witnesses, including Trump White House insiders and lawyers who worked for the Trump campaign.

    Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s transportation secretary, said she had no recollection of discussing the 25th Amendment after the insurrection, according to a transcript of her deposition with the January 6 committee released Friday.

    Asked by congressional investigators if she had concerns about Trump’s mental fitness, Chao said that she didn’t go to many White House meetings by the end of Trump’s tenure. Chao was careful not to be too critical of Trump in her interview. She said she had not met with him in some time.

    “By that time, I did not have personal contact with him,” Chao said. “I did not go to the White House, there were no meetings, so I hadn’t been in close proximity to him.”

    Chao, who resigned on January 6, said she stepped down once she realized “the full ramifications of the actions that were taken by some people and the results that occurred.” Asked about Trump’s conduct that day, she said: “I wish he had acted differently.”

    Asked about the inner workings of the Trump White House, and who he trusted among his aides and advisers, Chao said, “I’m not so sure he trusted anyone.”

    Chao said she does not remember talking to other cabinet members that day – even though Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia told the committee he spoke with her.

    Ivanka Trump, who served as senior White House adviser to her father, handed over text messages to the January 6 committee, a newly released transcript of her testimony reveals.

    It wasn’t previously known that she provided text messages to the panel, though video clips from her April deposition were featured during the committee’s public hearings this summer.

    The content of the texts messages remains unclear.

    The committee’s line of questioning did not delve into the contents of her texts, but instead veered into her father’s cell phone habits, including whether he ever sent and received text messages. Ivanka Trump said she “never” exchanged texts with her father on “any device.”

    Still, this is the latest example of how the committee obtained a wealth of evidence, including materials that weren’t previously known.

    Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-peddling attorney who helped Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, said Trump and his allies believed he couldn’t have lost because of his large “rallies” and “common sense,” according to a transcript of her deposition to the January 6 committee released Friday.

    She said that was the consensus in the room at a White House meeting that she attended with Trump, just a few days after the election. She told the committee that Trump’s then-attorney Rudy Giuliani was also there along with White House aides, according to the transcript.

    “He wanted to know the truth,” Powell said, referring to Trump. “And our general consensus was that the vast majority of people had poured out in support of the President. The rallies indicated that. All the information that we had indicated that. And the numbers that we saw on election night simply didn’t jibe with common sense.”

    She also claimed “math geniuses” reached out to her to tell her that Joe Biden’s victory was statistically impossible.

    The testimony shows just how paper-thin the fraud theories emanating from Trump’s orbit actually were.

    Despite her assertions, there is no evidence that the outcome of the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud or vote-rigging. Many of the conspiracies Powell has promoted about the election have been thoroughly debunked.

    During the presidential transition, Trump nearly appointed Powell as a special counsel to use the powers of the federal government to investigate her baseless voter fraud theories. Senior White House officials and attorneys vehemently opposed that idea and it never ended up happening.

    Cipollone told the January 6 committee that it “would have been a disaster” if Trump made Powell a special counsel, according to a transcript of his deposition.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • ‘He knows he lost’: Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump acknowledged he lost 2020 election | CNN Politics

    ‘He knows he lost’: Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump acknowledged he lost 2020 election | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Shortly after the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told his aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, that President Donald Trump knew he lost but wanted to keep fighting to overturn the results, according to a newly released transcript from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

    The transcript of Hutchinson’s September 14, 2022, interview with the committee, which took place after she testified publicly, was released Thursday by the panel. It details post-election conversations that Hutchinson described, where multiple people said Trump acknowledged he had lost but was unwilling to concede.

    Hutchinson testified that Meadows told her on November 18, 2020, that Trump “has pretty much acknowledged that he’s lost,” the transcript says.

    “A lot of times he’ll tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it, and he thinks that there might be enough to overturn the election,” Meadows told Hutchinson that day about Trump, according to her retelling of the conversation.

    Hutchinson also testified that in late December 2020, Meadows lamented to her that Trump would get upset any time he mentioned the transition, telling the committee that Meadows said something to the effect of: “he’s just so angry at me all the time I can’t talk to him about anything post-White House without him getting mad that we didn’t win.”

    “Later in the interview, Hutchinson told the committee she spoke with Meadows immediately after a call with Georgia officials on January 2, 2021, where Trump pushed officials to help overturn the election results there.”

    “He said something to the effect of, ‘he knows it’s over. He knows he lost. But we are going to keep trying. There’s a chance he didn’t lose. I want to pull this off for him,’” Hutchinson said, recounting what Meadows told her about Trump.

    In a September 15 deposition, Hutchinson echoed her testimony that she heard about Trump fighting with his security detail on January 6, according to another deposition transcript.

    Hutchinson, who faced an onslaught of public criticism and pushback from Trump allies after she revealed the story she was told about Trump supposedly lunging at the driver of his presidential SUV on January 6, 2021, because he was angry that they wouldn’t take him to the US Capitol. During that public hearing, she said she heard the story from Tony Ornato, who was serving as deputy White House chief of staff at the time.

    But after her public hearing and the avalanche of pushback, Hutchinson said she had “no doubts” about her previous testimony.

    “I have no doubts in the conversation that I had with Mr. Ornato on January 6th. I have no doubts in how I’ve relayed that story privately and publicly” Hutchinson said, according to the transcript, which was released Thursday.

    She also shared that Ornato made “sarcastic offhand remarks” to her about the story at least two times after he initially mentioned it – on January 19 and April 16 – according to the transcript.

    “I have no doubts about the two instances on January 19th and April 16th about the conversation,” Hutchinson added.

    In the April 16 call, Hutchinson described a phone conversation to committee investigators where Ornato made a comment like “it could be worse. The president could have tried to kill – he didn’t say kill – the president could have tried to strangle you on January 6.”

    Hutchinson acknowledged that Ornato did not specify he was referring to the incident on January 6 but she said, “I assumed from the context of our phone call and from the conversations that we had had while still at the White House that he was referencing that incident. I have no reason to believe that he was referencing any other incident.”

    In June, Hutchinson publicly testified that Ornato told her about an altercation between the former president and the head of his Secret Service detail when he was told he could not go to the Capitol on January 6.

    The committee wrote in its report summary, which was released Monday, that they were unable to get Ornato to corroborate Hutchinson’s testimony about the alleged altercation in the presidential SUV.

    The committee summary said both Hutchinson and a White House employee testified to the committee about the Ornato conversation. But “Ornato professed that he did not recall either communication, and that he had no knowledge at all about the president’s anger.”

    The committee also released six more interview transcripts Thursday night, shedding new light on their closed-door sessions with key witnesses.

    In one transcript, Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary, told the committee that Trump tried to get then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to hold briefings about supposed fraud tied to Dominion voting machines – but McEnany refused.

    “She felt uncomfortable promoting the Dominion conspiracy theory, and that the president had asked her to talk about that during interviews” Matthews told committee investigators. “He did request her to do briefings on it as well, but we did not.”

    Matthews added that Trump encouraged McEnany to also put forward these conspiracy theories on cable news hits, which she said made McEnany uncomfortable and led to her attempting to avoid Trump after the election.

    Matthews testified publicly over the summer about how Trump’s conduct on January 6 led her to resign by the end of that day.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Zuckerberg weighed naming Cambridge Analytica as a concern in 2017, months before data leak was revealed | CNN Business

    Zuckerberg weighed naming Cambridge Analytica as a concern in 2017, months before data leak was revealed | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Mark Zuckerberg considered disclosing in 2017 that Facebook

    (FB)     was investigating “organizations like Cambridge Analytica” alongside Russian foreign intelligence actors as part of an election security assessment before ultimately removing the reference at his advisers’ suggestion, according to a 2019 deposition conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission and reviewed by CNN.

    The omitted reference provides insight into Zuckerberg’s thinking on Cambridge Analytica in the critical months before press reports would reveal that the data analysis firm affiliated with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had improperly gained access to tens of millions of Facebook users’ personal information. The data leak prompted a global outcry that led to hearings, an apology tour from Zuckerberg and Facebook’s $5 billion privacy settlement with the US government.

    The deposition transcript suggests that in 2017, Zuckerberg considered Cambridge Analytica a potential election concern on par with Russian election meddling efforts even though he said he did not know about the data leak first discovered by Facebook staffers in 2015. It also points to how Facebook staffers had opportunities to brief Zuckerberg on that leak, but chose not to, prior to reports about the incident that surfaced in 2018.

    Zuckerberg’s remarks in the deposition offer the clearest picture yet of what Zuckerberg knew about Cambridge Analytica, and when. The timeline of events has previously been scrutinized intensely by US lawmakers, state attorneys general and investors who have sued Facebook, now known as Meta, for allegedly breaching its fiduciary duties in connection with the data leak incident.

    Meta declined to comment on the release of the transcript, saying its case with the SEC involving the deposition had been settled for more than three years. The settlement in 2019 for $100 million resolved US government allegations that Facebook had misled investors for years after staffers first discovered the data leak.

    The SEC deposition transcript was released Tuesday by the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a watchdog group, that had obtained the document via a public records request. The transcript was first reported on Tuesday by Reuters, which had obtained the document through a separate records request.

    “This transcript reveals that something changed between January 2017 and September 2017 for Zuckerberg to deem Cambridge Analytica a threat commensurate with Russian Intelligence,” said Zamaan Qureshi, policy advisor at the Real Facebook Oversight Board. “But for reasons the Facebook CEO has still not disclosed, the world would only learn about Cambridge Analytica in March 2018.”

    In September 2017, Zuckerberg released a public statement about Facebook’s efforts to safeguard election integrity, saying the company would look into the impact that foreign actors, “Russian groups and other former Soviet states,” and “organizations like the campaigns” had on Facebook during the 2016 elections.

    But according to the court documents, Zuckerberg had originally proposed naming Russian foreign intelligence and Cambridge Analytica in the same breath.

    “We are already looking into foreign actors including Russian intelligence, actors in other former Soviet states and organizations like Cambridge Analytica,” Zuckerberg initially wrote, according to the draft the SEC produced in the deposition and that Zuckerberg testified was authentic.

    Zuckerberg testified that the reference to Cambridge Analytica was removed after a staffer recommended against naming specific organizations. “This was not something I think was particularly important to the overall communication,” he said, according to the transcript. “So I think when people raised this, I just took it out.”

    The testimony suggests he became aware of Cambridge Analytica around the same time as the general public, through press reporting around the 2016 election on the firm’s marketing claims. But it also suggests that he was kept in the dark about the Cambridge Analytica-linked data leak that predated the election and would eventually lead to Facebook’s broader reckoning with regulators and policymakers.

    The Cambridge Analytica saga began with a psychology professor who harvested data on millions of Facebook users through an app offering a personality test, then gave it to a service promising to use vague and sophisticated techniques to influence voters during a high-stakes election where the winning presidential candidate won narrowly in several key states.

    A 2020 report by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office later cast significant doubt on Cambridge Analytica’s capabilities, suggesting many of them had been exaggerated. But the improper sharing of Facebook data triggered a cascade of events that has culminated in numerous investigations and lawsuits.

    After hearing about Cambridge Analytica’s claims that it could use personal data to build “psychographic profiles” of voters who could then be targeted with effective political advertising, Zuckerberg began asking subordinates whether the firm’s marketing had any merit.

    In one January 2017 email produced by the SEC, Zuckerberg asked staffers to “explain to me what they actually did from an analytics and ad perspective and how advanced it was.”

    Explaining his thought process further, Zuckerberg testified: “Like, are these folks actually doing anything novel? Or are they just talking about data in a puffed-up way …. My understanding from those conversations is that, to summarize it very quickly, it was much closer to the latter.”

    But even though Facebook as an organization knew by that point, in 2017, that Cambridge Analytica had obtained Facebook users’ personal information in violation of the platform’s policies, that incident was never raised to Zuckerberg as a piece of potentially relevant context, according to the deposition. Following Facebook’s discovery of the leak, the company required Cambridge Analytica to delete the data it had improperly obtained through a third party and ordered the firm to sign a certification indicating its compliance.

    Zuckerberg testified that he did not get “fully up to speed” on the 2015 data leak, and Facebook’s response to it, until March 2018, when public reports about the incident emerged.

    In the deposition, Zuckerberg explained that he was not briefed earlier likely because Facebook considered the 2015 incident a “closed case until 2018, when new allegations came up that suggested that maybe Cambridge Analytica had lied to us” about having deleted the Facebook data. (The UK ICO’s report later found that Cambridge Analytica did appear to take some steps toward deleting the data, but it also expressed doubts about whether those steps were effective enough.)

    Zuckerberg reaffirmed in his testimony that had Facebook moved more swiftly to implement an existing and separate plan restricting app developers’ access to Facebook information, the data leak could likely have been avoided from the start.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Harvey Weinstein is convicted of 3 of 7 charges, including rape, in his Los Angeles sexual assault trial | CNN

    Harvey Weinstein is convicted of 3 of 7 charges, including rape, in his Los Angeles sexual assault trial | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was found guilty Monday of rape and sexual assault against one of four women he was accused of assaulting in Los Angeles – a significant conviction in the second trial of a man at the center of allegations that fueled the global #MeToo movement.

    Weinstein, who prosecutors said used his Hollywood influence to lure women into private meetings and assault them, was found guilty of three of seven charges against him.

    After weeks of emotional testimony and 10 days of deliberations, jurors in Los Angeles also acquitted Weinstein of one count of sexual battery by restraint against a massage therapist in a hotel room in 2010. They were a hung jury on one count of sexual battery by restraint, one count of forcible oral copulation and one count of rape related to two other women – including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a filmmaker and first partner to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    The three charges Weinstein was convicted of – rape, sexual penetration by foreign object and forcible oral copulation – were all tied to one of his accusers, a model and actress who testified the movie mogul assaulted her in a Beverly Hills hotel room in February 2013.

    The woman, identified as Jane Doe 1 in court, was the first to testify in the trial.

    “Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013. I will never get that back. The criminal trial was brutal. Weinstein’s lawyers put me through hell on the witness stand. But I knew I had to see this through the end, and I did… I hope Harvey Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime,” Jane Doe 1 said in a statement released through her attorney.

    Weinstein had pleaded not guilty to all seven charges against him.

    “Harvey is obviously disappointed, however hopefully because with this particular accuser there are good ground to appeal based on time and location of alleged events,” Weinstein’s spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said in a statement. “He is grateful the jury took their time to deliberate on the other counts and he is prepared to continue fighting for his innocence.”

    Weinstein faces a possible sentence of 24 years in prison for the Los Angeles conviction, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office. The once-powerful film producer is already serving a 23-year sentence for a 2020 New York rape conviction.

    Jurors will return to court Tuesday to consider aggravating factors to help determine the outcome of Weinstein’s sentencing hearing, according to the DA’s office.

    The District Attorney’s office will meet to determine whether to retry the counts on which the jury could not agree, officials said.

    Elizabeth Fegan, an attorney representing Siebel Newsom, who was identified in court as Jane Doe 4, said they were disappointed the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on the charges related to her client.

    “Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs. Harvey Weinstein is a serial predator and what he did was rape,” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors. This trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do. To all survivors out there – I see you, I hear you, and I stand with you.”

    Gov. Newsom also released a statement, saying, “I am so incredibly proud of my wife and all the brave women who came forward to share their truth and uplift countless survivors who cannot. Their strength, courage and conviction is a powerful example and inspiration to all of us. We must keep fighting to ensure that survivors are supported and that their voices are heard.”

    The Los Angeles jury reached its verdict after deliberating for a total of 41 hours – longer than the New York jury in Weinstein’s first criminal trial, in which he was convicted of criminal sex act and third-degree rape after 26 hours of deliberations. His attorneys have appealed that conviction, which put more attention on the outcome of the trial in Los Angeles.

    Jane Doe 2, who was identified as Lauren Young, told her attorney Gloria Allred by phone she was happy Weinstein was convicted on some counts despite there being a mistrial on her count, Allred said in a news conference after the verdict.

    “I am relieved that Harvey Weinstein has been convicted because he deserves to be punished for the crimes that he committed, and he can no longer use his power to intimidate and sexually assault more women,” Young said in a statement read by Allred.

    The weekslong trial saw emotional testimony from Weinstein’s accusers – a model, a dancer, a massage therapist and Siebel Newsom – all of whom were asked to recount the details of their allegations against him, provide details of meetings with the producer from years ago, and explain their reactions to the alleged assaults.

    Weinstein initially faced 11 charges, but four counts connected to an unnamed woman were dropped without explanation. She did not testify in the trial.

    In closing arguments, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez called Weinstein a “titan” who used his power in Hollywood to prey on and silence women.

    “Rapists rape. You can look at the pattern,” fellow prosecutor Paul Thompson told jurors.

    Meanwhile, Weinstein’s attorneys maintained the allegations were either fabricated or occurred consensually as part of a “transactional relationship” with the movie producer, repeatedly saying there is no evidence of assault.

    Defense attorney Alan Jackson called the accusers “fame and fortune seekers.”

    The trial in Los Angeles also included testimony from other witnesses, including experts, law enforcement, friends of accusers and former aides to Weinstein.

    Additionally, four women testified they were subjected to similar behavior by Weinstein in other jurisdictions.

    Each morning at trial, Weinstein was brought from a correctional facility and wheeled into the Los Angeles courtroom wearing a suit and tie and holding a composition notebook.

    His accusers all began their oftentimes emotional testimonies by identifying him in the courtroom as he looked on.

    “He’s wearing a suit, and a blue tie and he’s staring at me,” Siebel Newsom said last month, before what was one of the most emotional moments of the trial. She testified Weinstein raped her in a hotel room in 2005.

    During the trial, defense attorney Jackson asked jurors if they could “accept what (the Jane Does) say as gospel,” arguing what they said was a lack of forensic evidence supporting their claim.

    “Five words that sum up the entirety of the prosecution’s case: ‘Take my word for it,’” Jackson said. “‘Take my word for it that he showed up at my hotel room unannounced. Take my word for it that I showed up at his hotel room. Take my word for it that I didn’t consent. Take my word for it, that I said no.’ “

    Siebel Newsom described an hourslong “cat-and-mouse period,” which preceded her alleged assault. She, like other accusers, described feeling “frozen” that day.

    Attorneys for Weinstein do not deny the incident occurred, but said he believed it was consensual.

    Jackson called the incident “consensual, transactional sex,” adding: “Regret is not the same thing as rape. And it’s important we make that distinction in this courtroom.”

    In her closing arguments, Martinez highlighted the women who testified chose to do so despite knowing they would face tough conditions in court.

    “The truth is that, as you sit here, we know the despicable behavior the defendant engaged in. He thought he was so powerful that people would … excuse his behavior,” Martinez said. “That’s just Harvey being Harvey. That’s just Hollywood. And for so long that’s what everyone did. Everyone just turned their heads.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Former officer who killed Atatiana Jefferson testifies she pointed a gun at him before he fired | CNN

    Former officer who killed Atatiana Jefferson testifies she pointed a gun at him before he fired | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The former Fort Worth police officer charged with murder for the 2019 shooting of 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson in her own home testified Monday he fired at her because she pointed a gun at him.

    “As I started to get that second phrase out, ‘Show me your hands,’ I saw a silhouette,” the former officer, 38-year-old Aaron Dean, said. “I was looking right down the barrel of a gun, and when I saw the barrel of that gun pointed at me, I fired a single shot from my duty weapon.”

    Dean said he had his weapon out because he believed the home was in the midst of being robbed. He fired at her through the window “because we’re taught to meet deadly force with deadly force. We’re not taught that we have to wait,” he said.

    Yet in cross-examination, he admitted many of his actions that night were “bad police work,” including firing without seeing her hands or what was behind her, failing to tell his partner he saw a gun and rushing into the home without fully ensuring it was safe.

    “You’ve got another fellow officer from the Fort Worth Police Department entering a home which you have determined to be a burglary in progress with a possible armed assailant, and you didn’t think to tell your partner, ‘Hey there’s a gun inside?’” prosecutor R. Dale Smith asked.

    “No,” Dean said.

    “You didn’t think to tell her, ‘Hey I saw somebody with a gun?’” Smith asked.

    “No,” he said.

    His testimony is likely to be pivotal in the trial, which began last week and has already featured body-camera footage of the shooting and testimony from the primary witnesses, Jefferson’s 11-year-old nephew and Dean’s police partner Carol Darch. The prosecution rested its case after three days of testimony.

    Woman shot and killed by police officer in her own home

    The testimony comes more than three years after Dean and his partner responded to Jefferson’s house around 2:25 a.m. on an October night in response to a neighbor calling a nonemergency police line to note her doors were open.

    The officers did not at any point identify themselves as police when scoping out the home, and Dean then shot into a back window at Jefferson, who was up late playing video games with her young nephew.

    Heavily edited body camera footage released to the public showed an officer peering through two open doors, but he didn’t knock or announce his presence. Instead, he walked around the house for about a minute. Eventually, the officer approached a window and shined a flashlight into what appeared to be a dark room.

    “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” the officer yelled before firing a single shot, according to the body camera footage.

    Dean, who is White, resigned days afterward and was arrested and charged with murder for killing Jefferson, who is Black. He has pleaded not guilty to murder, a charge which carries a possible sentence of five to 99 years.

    His defense has said he fired in self-defense, but prosecutors argued there is no evidence he saw a gun in her hand before firing.

    On Monday, Dean testified he and his partner arrived to the scene and approached the home quietly because they believed it was in the midst of a burglary. They parked at a nearby home and did not announce themselves as police when approaching.

    When they were in the home’s backyard, Dean said he saw the silhouette of a person in the window. He thought the person was a burglar and shouted out commands for the person to show their hands. Dean said he could not identify the gender or race of the person in the window.

    Dean described the silhouette as being “bent over” facing the window with upper arm movement.

    He grew emotional on the stand as he spoke about the moments after he shot Jefferson.

    “I observed the person that we now know is Ms. Jefferson. I heard her scream and saw her fall like this,” Dean said, gesturing in a downward motion. “And I knew that I’d shot that person.”

    He said after firing the shot, he tried opening the window to render aid but couldn’t get it open, so they ran around to the front door and entered the home. He and Darch went into the bedroom and saw a child there.

    “I’m thinking, who brings a kid to a burglary? What is going on?” Dean said.

    He testified he found a firearm between Jefferson’s feet and noticed it had a green laser attached to it. Body-camera footage shows he audibly exhaled at that moment. “I was thinking that’s how close we came to dying,” he testified.

    In a confrontational cross-examination, Smith, the prosecutor, walked through each of Dean’s actions that night and repeatedly asked him, “Is that good police work?”

    Dean acknowledged many of his actions were not. In particular, he acknowledged he could not tell whether the gun was raised in a position ready to fire, only that he saw the barrel of the gun and decided to shoot.

    “Once you saw the barrel of the gun, you decided to pull the trigger and take who was on the other side of that window’s life?” the prosecutor said.

    “Yes,” Dean said.

    Smith went step-by-step through Dean’s body camera footage, showing multiple missteps Dean and his partner took while surrounding Jefferson’s home. Dean admitted he did not secure exits for a potential burglar, did not call for backup and did not administer CPR to Jefferson.

    Still, he gave himself an overall grade of “B” on an A-to-F scale for his actions before he pulled the trigger.

    “I’m sure there are things we could have done better,” he said.

    In opening statements, prosecutors acknowledged Jefferson had a firearm but said there was no evidence Dean saw the weapon in her hand before firing at her.

    “This is not a circumstance where they’re staring at the barrel of a gun and he had to defend himself against that person or to protect his partner,” Tarrant County prosecutor Ashlea Deener said. “The evidence will support he did not see the gun in her hand. This is not a justification. This is not a self-defense case. This is murder.”

    Yet Dean’s defense attorney said the former officer had seen an armed silhouette with a green laser pointed at him before firing.

    “In that window he sees a silhouette,” attorney Miles Brissette said. “He doesn’t know if it’s a male or female, he doesn’t know the racial makeup of the silhouette. He sees it, he sees the green laser and the gun come up on him. He takes a half-step back, gives a command and fires his weapon.”

    The prosecution’s first witness was Zion Carr, who was 8 years old and in the bedroom with his “Aunt Tay” when she was shot. Now 11, he testified they had accidentally burned hamburgers earlier in the night, so they opened the doors to air the smoke out of the house.

    He and his aunt were up late playing video games when Jefferson heard a noise outside, and she then went to her purse to get her gun, he testified. He did not see her raise her firearm toward the window, he testified.

    Zion said he did not hear or see anything outside the window, but he saw his aunt fall to the ground and start crying.

    “I was thinking, ‘Is it a dream?’” he testified. “She was crying and just shaking.”

    Prosecutors also called to the stand Dean’s police partner Carol Darch, who testified she was with Dean when they went to investigate the home.

    She said she believed the home was being burglarized because two doors were open, lights were on inside, cabinets were wide open and things were strewn about the living room and kitchen area.

    She had her back to the window when Dean began to yell out commands for Jefferson to put her hands up, she testified. Darch said she started to turn around, heard a gunshot, then looked over Dean’s shoulder and could see a face in the window with eyes “as big as saucers.”

    She testified she did not see Jefferson holding a gun and doesn’t recall Dean ever saying Jefferson had a gun.

    An attorney for Jefferson’s family said she was trying to protect her nephew from what they both thought was a prowler. She had moved into her ailing mother’s Fort Worth home a few months earlier to take care of her, family attorney S. Lee Merritt said at the time. She also took care of her nephews.

    Jefferson graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2014 with a degree in biology and worked in pharmaceutical equipment sales, according to her family’s attorney.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes: A timeline | CNN Business

    The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes: A timeline | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    More than three years after Elizabeth Holmes was first indicted and nearly four months after her trial kicked off, the founder and former CEO of failed blood testing startup Theranos was found guilty on four out of 11 federal fraud and conspiracy charges.

    The verdict comes after a stunning downfall that saw Holmes, once hailed as the next Steve Jobs, go from being a tech industry icon to being a rare Silicon Valley entrepreneur on trial for fraud.

    A Stanford University dropout, Holmes – inspired by her own fear of needles – started the company at the age of 19, with a mission of creating a cheaper, more efficient alternative to a traditional blood test. Theranos promised patients the ability to test for conditions like cancer and diabetes with just a few drops of blood. She attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, a board of well-known political figures, and key retail partners.

    But a Wall Street Journal investigation poked holes into Theranos’ testing and technology, and the dominoes fell from there. Holmes and her former business partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, were charged in 2018 by the US government with multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. (Both pleaded not guilty.)

    Here are the highlights of the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

    Holmes, a Stanford University sophomore studying chemical engineering, drops out of school to pursue her startup, Theranos, which she founded in 2003 at age 19. The name is a combination of the words “therapy” and “diagnosis.”

    Balwani joins as chief operating officer and president of the startup. Balwani, nearly 20 years her senior, met Holmes in 2002 on a trip to Beijing through Stanford University. The two are later revealed to be romantically involved.

    A decade after first starting the company, Holmes takes the lid off Theranos and courts media attention the same month that Theranos and Walgreens announce they’ve struck up a long-term partnership. The first Theranos Wellness Center location opens in a Walgreens in Palo Alto where consumers can access Theranos’ blood test.

    The original plan had been to make Theranos’ testing available at Walgreens locations nationwide.

    Holmes is named to the magazine’s American billionaire list with the outlet reporting she owns a 50% stake in the startup, pinning her personal wealth at $4.5 billion.

    Theranos has raised more than $400 million, according to a profile of the company and Holmes by The New Yorker. It counts Oracle’s Larry Ellison among its investors.

    The FDA clears Theranos to use of its proprietary tiny blood-collection vials to finger stick blood test for herpes simplex 1 virus – its first and only approval for a diagnostic test.

    The Wall Street Journal reports Theranos is using its proprietary technique on only a small number of the 240 tests it performs, and that the vast majority of its tests are done with traditional vials of blood drawn from the arm, not the “few drops” taken by a finger prick. In response, Theranos defends its testing practices, calling the Journal’s reporting “factually and scientifically erroneous.”

    A day later, Theranos halts the use of its blood-collection vials for all but the herpes test due to pressures from the FDA. (Later that month, the FDA released two heavily redacted reports citing 14 concerns, including calling the company’s proprietary vial an “uncleared medical device.”)

    One week after the Journal report, Holmes is interviewed on-stage at the outlet’s conference in Laguna Beach. “We know what we’re doing and we’re very proud of it,” she says.

    Holmes speaking at a Wall Street Journal technology conference in Laguna Beach, California on October 21, 2015.

    Amid the criticism, Theranos reportedly shakes up its board of directors, eliminating Henry Kissinger and George Shultz as directors while moving them to a new board of counselors; the company also forms a separate medical board.

    Safeway, which invested $350 million into building out clinics in hundreds of its supermarkets to eventually offer Theranos blood tests, reportedly looks to dissolve its relationship with the company before it ever offered its services.

    Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sends Theranos a letter saying its California lab has failed to comply with federal standards and that patients are in “immediate jeopardy.” It gives the company 10 days to address the issues.

    In response, Walgreens says it will not send any lab tests to Theranos’ California lab for analysis and suspends Theranos services at its Palo Alto Walgreens location.

    CMS threatens to ban Holmes and Balwani from the laboratory business for two years after the company allegedly failed to fix problems at its California lab. Theranos says that’s a “worst case scenario.”

    Balwani departs. The company also adds three new board members as part of the restructuring: Fabrizio Bonanni, a former executive vice president of biotech firm Amgen, former CDC director William Foege, and former Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich.

    Theranos voids two years of blood test results from its proprietary testing devices, correcting tens of thousands of blood-test reports, the Journal reports.

    Forbes revises its estimate of Holmes’ net worth from $4.5 billion to $0. The magazine also lowers its valuation for the company from $9 billion to $800 million.

    Walgreens, once Theranos’ largest retail partner, ends its partnership with the company and says it will close all 40 Theranos Wellness Centers.

    CMS revokes Theranos’ license to operate its California lab and bans Holmes from running a blood-testing lab for two years.

    Holmes tries to move past recent setbacks by unveiling a mini testing laboratory, called miniLab, at a conference for the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. In selling the device, versus operating its own clinics, Theranos seeks to effectively side-step CMS sanctions, which don’t prohibit research and development.

    Theranos investor Partner Fund Management sues the company for $96.1 million, the amount it sunk into the company in February 2014, plus damages. It accuses the company of securities fraud. Theranos and Partner Fund Management settled in May, 2017, for an undisclosed amount.

    The company also lays off 340 employees as it closes clinical labs and wellness centers as it attempts to pivot and focus on the miniLab.

    Walgreens sues the blood testing startup for breach of contract. Walgreens sought to recover the $140 million it poured into the company. The lawsuit was settled August, 2017.

    Theranos downsizes its workforce yet again following the increased scrutiny into its operations, laying off approximately 155 employees or about 41% of staffers.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that Theranos failed a second regulatory lab inspection in September, and that the company was closing its last blood testing location as a result.

    Theranos settles with the CMS, agreeing to pay $30,000 and to not to own or operate any clinical labs for two years.

    Theranos also settles with the Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich over allegations that its advertisements misrepresented the method, accuracy, and reliability of its blood testing and that the company was out of compliance with federal regulations governing clinical lab testing. Theranos agrees to pay $4.65 million back to its Arizona customers as part of a settlement deal.

    The SEC charges Holmes and Balwani with a “massive fraud” involving more than $700 million from investors through an “elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”

    The SEC alleges Holmes and Balwani knew that Theranos’ proprietary analyzer could perform only 12 of the 200 tests it published on its patient testing menu.

    Theranos and Holmes agree to resolve the claims against them, and Holmes gives up control of the company and much of her stake in it. Balwani, however, is fighting the charges, with his attorney saying he “accurately represented Theranos to investors to the best of his ability.”

    Reporter John Carreyrou, who first broke open the story of Theranos for the Wall Street Journal, publishes “Bad Blood,” a definitive look at what happened inside the disgraced company. Director Adam McKay (who directed “The Big Short”) secures the rights to make the film, starring Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes, by the same name.

    Holmes and Balwani are indicted on federal wire fraud charges over allegedly engaging in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, as well as a scheme to defraud doctors and patients. Both have pleaded not guilty.

    Minutes before the charges were made public, Theranos announced that Holmes has stepped down as CEO. The company’s general counsel, David Taylor, takes over as CEO. Holmes remains chair of the company’s board.

    Former Theranos COO Ramesh

    Taylor emails shareholders that Theranos will dissolve, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Taylor said more than 80 potential buyers were not interested in a sale. “We are now out of time,” Taylor wrote.

    Alex Gibney, the prolific documentary filmmaker behind “Dirty Money,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and “The Armstrong Lie,” debuts “The Inventor” on HBO, following the rise and fall of Theranos.

    A new court document reveals Holmes may seek a “mental disease” defense in her criminal fraud trial. Later, in August 2021, unsealed court documents reveal Holmes is likely to claim she was the victim of a decade-long abusive relationship with Balwani. The allegations led to the severing of their trials. His trial is slated to begin in 2022.

    Initially set to begin in July 2020, Holmes’ criminal trial is further delayed til July 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    News surfaces that Holmes’ is expecting her first child, once more further delaying her criminal trial. Holmes’ counsel advised the US government that Holmes is due in July 2021, a court document revealed. She gave birth in July.

    Holmes collects her belongings after going through security at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building with her defense team on August 31, 2021 in San Jose, California.

    More than 80 potential jurors are brought into a San Jose courtroom for questioning over the course of two days to determine if they are fit to serve as impartial, fair jurors for the criminal trial of Holmes. A jury of seven men and five women is selected, with five alternatives.

    After three months of testimony from 32 witnesses, the criminal fraud case of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes makes its way to the jury of eight men and four women who will decide her fate. The jury would go on to deliberate for more than 50 hours before returning a verdict.

    Holmes is found guilty of one count of conspiracy to defraud investors as well as three wire fraud counts tied to specific investors. She is found not guilty on three additional charges concerning defrauding patients and one charge of conspiracy to defraud patients. The jury returns no verdict on three of the charges concerning defrauding investors. Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution for each count.

    “The Dropout,” a scripted miniseries about Theranos produced by ABC, debuts on Hulu. Amanda Seyfried stars as Holmes and Naveen Andrews plays Balwani. Their romantic and professional relationship features prominently in the show.

    Following delays due to Holmes’ prolonged trial then a surge of Covid-19, jury selection for Balwani’s trial gets underway. On March 22, opening arguments are held and the government’s first witness, a former Theranos employee turned whistleblower, is called to the stand.

    After four full days of deliberations, a jury finds Balwani guilty of ten counts of federal wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Like Holmes, Balwani faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution for each count of wire fraud and each conspiracy count.

    Holmes asks for a new trial after claiming that a key witness visited her house unannounced and allegedly said he “feels guilty” about his testimony.

    In a court filing with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Holmes’ attorneys said Adam Rosendorff, a former Theranos lab director who was one of the government’s main witnesses, arrived at her home on August 8 asking to speak with her. According to the filing, Rosendorff did not interact with Holmes but did speak to her partner Billy Evans, who recounted the exchange in an email to Holmes’ lawyers shortly after.

    “His shirt was untucked, his hair was messy, his voice slightly trembled,” Evans wrote about Rosendorff. According to Evans’ email, Rosendorff “said when he was called as a witness he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everybody look bad.”

    The former Theranos lab director also “said he felt like he had done something wrong,” Evans wrote.

    Rosendorff takes the stand again to address concerns from Holmes’ defense team and their claims he had shown up at her home after the trial concluded asking to speak with her and expressed regrets about his testimony.

    At the hearing, Rosendorff reaffirmed the truthfulness of his testimony at Holmes’ trial and said that the government did not influence what he said.

    A federal judge denies Elizabeth Holmes’ request for a new trial, according to court filings, paving the way for the founder of failed blood testing startup Theranos to be sentenced later in the month.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump sues January 6 committee seeking to block subpoena for his testimony and documents | CNN Politics

    Trump sues January 6 committee seeking to block subpoena for his testimony and documents | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has sued the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, as a way to challenge its subpoena for documents and his testimony, according to filings in a federal court in Florida.

    Trump is challenging both the legitimacy of the committee – which multiple courts have upheld – and is claiming he should be immune from testimony about the time he was president.

    Trump’s lawyers say they’ve communicated with the House over the past week and a half as the subpoena deadlines neared, offering to consider answering written questions while expressing “concerns and objections” about the bulk of the document requests.

    “The Subpoena’s request for testimony and documents from President Trump is an unwarranted intrusion upon the institution of the Presidency because there are other sources of the requested information, including the thousand-plus witnesses the Committee has contacted and one million documents that the Committee has collected,” his attorneys argue in the suit. “The Committee also may obtain abundant government records relevant to its inquiry. Because of this obvious availability to obtain testimony and documents from other readily available sources, the Subpoena is invalid.”

    A spokesperson for the January 6 committee declined to comment.

    Trump said the House’s demands, if he met them, would violate privilege protections around the executive branch, including revealing conversations he had with Justice Department officials and members of Congress about the 2020 election and “pending governmental business.”

    He also argued to the court that he shouldn’t have to reveal inner workings about his 2020 presidential campaign, “including his political beliefs, strategy, and fundraising. President Trump did not check his constitutional rights at the Oval Office door. Because the Committee’s Subpoena to President Trump infringes upon his First Amendment rights it is invalid.”

    Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, said in a statement in part that “long-held precedent and practice maintain that separation of powers prohibits Congress from compelling a President to testify before it.”

    The lawsuit veers the Trump subpoena fight toward a likely dead-end for the House select committee.

    Trump’s back-and-forth with the House followed by the lawsuit will make it much harder for the committee to enforce the subpoena – and the dispute essentially will be unresolvable before the current Congress expires in January.

    The lawsuit also raises some protections around the presidency that have never fully been tested by appeals courts, and Trump brought the lawsuit in a court that, unlike DC, hasn’t weighed in on his standoffs with House Democrats over the past several years.

    Trump provided to the court his team’s recent letters with the committee, which show that the House panel tried to zero in last week on obtaining records of his electronic communication on personal phones, via text or on other apps from January 6, 2021. The House also said it sought to identify every telephone and other communication device Trump used from Election Day until he left the presidency, according to the letters.

    In one letter on November 4, the original date of the document-turnover deadline, the House committee accused Trump’s team of trying to delay.

    “Given the timing and nature of your letter – without any acknowledgment that Mr. Trump will ultimately comply with the subpoena – your approach on his behalf appears to be a delay tactic,” wrote Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the committee.

    Since Trump’s team replied on November 9 that he wouldn’t testify and found no records to turn over related to personal communications, the House hasn’t respond substantively, the court papers said.

    But Trump’s legal team responded to the House this week that Trump “voluntarily directed a reasonable search for documents in his possession” that could fit those two categories. The search found nothing, his lawyers said.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Prosecutors use Oath Keepers leader’s own words against him in heated cross-examination | CNN Politics

    Prosecutors use Oath Keepers leader’s own words against him in heated cross-examination | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    In a tense, head-to-head exchange with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, prosecutors used Rhodes’ own words from texts, speeches and interviews to suggest to the jury that the militia leader misled them when he testified he was unaware of other members’ activities on January 6, 2021, and was appalled by the violence that day.

    Rhodes is the first of the five defendants charged with seditious conspiracy in federal court in Washington, DC, to testify.

    In his two-day testimony, Rhodes told the jury that he wasn’t involved in the specifics of planning for January 6, and that he had no knowledge of plans for the so-called quick reaction force that the group set up in Virginia to quickly move weapons into Washington, as prosecutors have alleged.

    Prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy, however, showed the jury Signal messages in which Rhodes told other members that “We WILL have a QRF” on January 6 because “this situation calls for it” and was part of group messages where members shared photographs of routes the QRF could use to enter the city.

    “The buck stopped with you in this operation,” Rakoczy said to Rhodes, reading the leader’s messages aloud.

    “I’m responsible for everything everyone else did?” Rhodes responded.

    “You’re in charge, right?” Rakoczy said.

    “Not if they do something off mission,” he shot back.

    “That’s convenient,” Rakoczy said, smiling.

    The militia leader also told prosecutors that he “hoped to avoid” conflict and was only concerned about a civil war breaking out after Joe Biden became president – leading to a chiding question from Rakoczy about how “the civil war will be on [January] 21st and not on the sixth?”

    “I don’t condone the violence that happened” on January 6, Rhodes testified. “Anyone who did assault a police officer that day should be prosecuted for it.”

    Rakoczy pointed to statements Rhodes made in a secretly recorded conversation in the days after January 6 where he said he wished the Oath Keepers had brought rifles to the Capitol that day.

    “If he’s not going to do the right thing, and he’s just going to let himself be removed illegally, then we should have brought rifles,” Rhodes said in the recording prosecutors again played for the jury.

    “We could have fixed it right then and there,” Rhodes said of the Capitol attack, according to the recording. “I’d hang f**king Pelosi from the lamppost.”

    After playing the recording, Rakoczy asked Rhodes, “That’s what you said four days after the assault at the Capitol, right?”

    “Yeah, after a couple drinks and I was pissed off,” Rhodes testified.

    Rhodes and the other four defendants have pleaded not guilty to the seditious conspiracy charges.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • These are the women expected to testify against Harvey Weinstein at his second sexual assault trial | CNN

    These are the women expected to testify against Harvey Weinstein at his second sexual assault trial | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Reporting five years ago on Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual abuse spurred women to speak publicly about their own experiences with sexual violence in what became known as the #MeToo movement.

    Now, in a Los Angeles courtroom, eight women are set to testify in a trial altogether similar to the one that led to Weinstein’s landmark conviction two years ago.

    Weinstein, the 70-year-old movie producer, has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges based on allegations of sexual assault at Los Angeles hotels between 2004 to 2013.

    Opening statements in the trial began Monday and one woman has already testified about her alleged assault. Three more women are expected to testify directly to the charges, and four other women are expected to testify as “prior bad acts” witnesses, meaning their testimony isn’t directly connected to a charge but can be considered as prosecutors try to show Weinstein had a pattern in his behavior.

    He was found guilty in New York in 2020 of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape and was sentenced to 23 years in prison. He has appealed.

    Here’s what we know about the women set to testify in the California case and the charges connected to their allegations based on comments from the prosecution, the defense and their testimony.

    Weinstein is charged with forcible oral copulation and forcible rape of Jane Doe 4 between September 1, 2004, and September 30, 2005.

    Jane Doe 4 has been identified as Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In a statement, her attorneys confirmed she would be testifying against Weinstein in court.

    “Like many other women, my client was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein at a purported business meeting that turned out to be a trap,” said Beth Fegan, one of Siebel Newsom’s attorneys. “She intends to testify at his trial to seek some measure of justice for survivors and as part of her life’s work to improve the lives of women.”

    Siebel Newsom is a Stanford University graduate who has written, directed and produced several documentaries, including “Miss Representation,” “The Mask You Live In” and “The Great American Lie.” During her time as California’s first partner, Siebel Newsom has advocated for working mothers and launched initiatives focused on closing the gender pay gap, among other efforts.

    In opening statements, prosecutor Paul Thompson said the assault occurred when Siebel Newsom was a “powerless actor trying to make her way in Hollywood.” Weinstein invited her to “discuss her career” at the Peninsula Hotel, and in a hotel room, he assaulted and raped her, the prosecutor said.

    Defense attorney Mark Werksman countered that Siebel Newsom had consensual sex with Weinstein because she wanted his help getting roles and producing films.

    Werksman also said Weinstein donated to two of Gov. Newsom’s political races and that Siebel Newsom took her husband to a Weinstein party. “She brought her husband to meet and party with the man who raped her. Who does that?” he asked.

    Siebel Newsom has written about the incident with Weinstein in vague terms. In October 2017, just a day after The New York Times published its bombshell report on Weinstein, she wrote an opinion editorial for the Huffington Post saying she believed the report because she had a similar experience with Weinstein.

    “I was naive, new to the industry, and didn’t know how to deal with his aggressive advances ― work invitations with a friend late-night at The Toronto Film Festival, and later an invitation to meet with him about a role in The Peninsula Hotel, where staff were present and then all of a sudden disappeared like clockwork, leaving me alone with this extremely powerful and intimidating Hollywood legend,” she wrote.

    Weinstein is charged with forcible oral copulation, sexual penetration by foreign object and forcible rape of Jane Doe 1 on or about February 18, 2013, in Los Angeles County, according to the indictment.

    Jane Doe 1 was a model and actress who was married, had three children and was living in Italy in 2013. She speaks Russian, Italian and English, but her English was not very good at the time, she said.

    She was the first witness to testify in the trial and said she was staying in a hotel for the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival when she got a call that Weinstein wanted to see her. She testified she had met him previously in Rome.

    He came to her hotel room and tried to rape her, she testified.

    “I wanted to die. It was disgusting. It was humiliating, miserable. I didn’t fight,” she testified in court. “I remember how he was looking in the mirror and he was telling me to look at him. I wish this never happened to me.”

    Years later, she told her daughter about the assault in an attempt to connect with her about a similar issue, she testified. Jane Doe 1 then went to the police in October 2017 because she promised her daughter she would, she testified.

    In the defense’s opening statements, Werksman said she had fabricated the story and argued there was no evidence he went to her hotel room. Under cross-examination, she acknowledged she had no evidence to show the jury that would prove she was with Weinstein that night and said she couldn’t remember everything about the incident.

    “I remember a lot but I forgot a lot also,” she said.

    Weinstein is charged with sexual battery by restraint of Jane Doe 2 on or about February 19, 2013, in Los Angeles County.

    Jane Doe 2 was a 23-year-old model and aspiring screenwriter who had been modeling since she was 12, Thompson said in opening statements.

    She alleges she was assaulted during the Los Angeles Italia Film Festival, according to Thompson. She met with Weinstein at a restaurant at the Montage hotel and told him she wanted to be a screenwriter, the prosecutor said. The meeting then moved to a space upstairs, and when Weinstein led her into a bathroom, another woman shut the door behind Jane Doe 2, the prosecutor said.

    While she was trapped inside with Weinstein, he allegedly undid her dress, groped her and masturbated, the prosecutor said.

    The next day, she went to a pre-scheduled meeting with a Weinstein Company employee and was advised to go on “Project Runway,” a Weinstein-produced reality TV show.

    Werksman, the defense attorney, said in opening statements that Jane Doe 2 fabricated her story and noted that she met with the Weinstein Company employee the next day.

    Weinstein is charged with sexual battery by restraint of Jane Doe 3 on or about May 11, 2010.

    Jane Doe 3 was a licensed massage therapist who often worked with celebrities and athletes, Thompson said.

    In 2010, she massaged Weinstein and then went to the restroom to wash her hands, and he followed her into the bathroom, backed her into a corner, groped her and masturbated, Thompson said.

    Weinstein had suggested Jane Doe 3 could write a book about her massage work, Thompson said, and afterward an aide to Weinstein paid her $200 for the massage and put her in touch with Miramax’s book division about a potential book deal.

    In contrast, Werksman argued that their sexual interaction was consensual and part of an arrangement. He said that Jane Doe 3 gave him four additional massages after the alleged assault.

    “She made a deal. Sex in exchange for something of value. Jane Doe 3 and Mr. Weinstein were friends with benefits,” Werksman argued.

    Weinstein is charged with four counts related to Jane Doe 5: forcible oral copulation and forcible rape between November 3 and November 9, 2009, and forcible oral copulation and forcible rape on or about November 5, 2010, according to the indictment.

    However, prosecutors did not mention her or her accusations in opening statements of the trial, and neither did the defense. The current status of these charges is not clear.

    “While we have no comment at this time, our office is tirelessly ensuring all of the victims in this case receive justice,” the district attorney’s office said.

    Like in his New York trial, Weinstein’s LA trial will feature testimony from several “prior bad acts” witnesses.

    There are four of these witnesses in this case, identified by their first name and initial. Each of these women alleged they were assaulted by Weinstein outside of LA jurisdiction.

    In all, the defense argued these witnesses were being used solely to “confuse and overwhelm” the jury. Werksman defended Weinstein’s actions as part of the “casting couch” culture at the time.

    The prosecution said the testimony from these women will prove Weinstein’s guilt on the charges.

    “Each of these women came forward independent of each other, and none of them knew one another,” Thompson told the jury.

    Ambra B. went to Weinstein’s office for a meeting in Manhattan in 2015 and he grabbed her breast and put his hand up her skirt, prosecutors said. She reported the incident to the NYPD, which then directed her to speak with him on the phone and at a hotel restaurant and secretly record their conversations, according to Thompson. No charges were filed against Weinstein.

    Werksman argued nothing on the recording was tantamount to a confession and dismissed her as someone playing a “junior G-man” in an undercover sting targeting Weinstein.

    Ashley M., a dancer in the movie “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights,” was alone in a hotel room with Weinstein in 2003 and said he groped her and masturbated on her, according to Thompson.

    Werksman argued she did not resist or refuse the interaction at the time.

    Natassia M. met Weinstein and briefly interacted with him at an industry party for the 2008 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards and alleges he raped her at her hotel, according to Thompson.

    Werksman said there was no evidence of rape and notes they maintained contact for years afterward.

    Kelly S. was an actor in 1991 when, in a hotel room for the Toronto International Film Festival, Weinstein raped her, Thompson said. In 2008, at the same festival, she went to his hotel room with the intention of confronting him, and when he allegedly started groping her and masturbating, she left the room, the prosecutor said.

    Werksman attacked the idea that she didn’t confront him immediately upon seeing him again in 2008 and said she didn’t report the incident to police until 2018.

    Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported Harvey Weinstein was arrested in the alleged incident involving Ambra B.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What really happened to Nika Shahkarami? Witnesses to her final hours cast doubt on Iran’s story | CNN

    What really happened to Nika Shahkarami? Witnesses to her final hours cast doubt on Iran’s story | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A black-clad Iranian girl stands on top of an overturned garbage bin, waving her headscarf as it is engulfed by flames, amid chants of “death to the dictator.”

    A moment later, video shows, she crouches to collect another scarf, from a friend, which she will also set on fire in front of the protesters.

    The girl was 16-year-old Nika Shahkarami, from Tehran. A few hours after these scenes were recorded on September 20, in videos exclusively obtained and verified by CNN, Nika went missing. ​And more than one week later, her family learned that she was dead.

    ​Iranian authorities claimed Nika’s body was found at the back of a courtyard on the morning of September 21. ​Her mother wasn’t given access to identify her until 8 days later. CCTV footage released by the authorities timestamped just after midnight ​as September 20 ​became September 21 ​showed the figure of a masked person they said was Nika entering a building ​that was uninhabited, and still under construction in Tehran.

    ​A Tehran prosecutor initially said she died after being thrown from the building’s roof, and that her death “had no connection to the protests” of that day​, but despite apparently declaring her death a homicide, he did not say whether there were suspects under investigation. State broadcasters reported that she “fell,” but did not provide evidence to support the claim it was an accident.

    On Wednesday, after CNN asked the government to comment on the evidence in this investigation, an Iranian media report quoted a Tehran prosecutor as saying that Nika’s death was a suicide. Iranian authorities still have not responded to CNN’s repeated inquiries about Nika’s death.​​

    ​Authorities never explained why Nika would enter that building on her own, and Nika’s mother has said she doesn’t believe the masked person is Nika. Her mother has said she believes Nika was killed by the authorities, but the authorities have never said whether Nika was in their custody at any point.

    But dozens of videos and eyewitness accounts obtained exclusively by CNN indicate that Nika appears to have been chased and detained by Iranian security forces that night. One key eyewitness, Ladan, told CNN she saw Nika being taken into custody ​at the protest by “several large-bodied plainclothes security officers” who bundled her into a car.

    Moments earlier, this witness, while stuck in Tehran traffic, filmed a video that purportedly shows Shahkarami ducking behind a white car and yelling “tekoon nakhor, tekoon nakhor” – which means “don’t move, don’t move” – to its driver before running away from the brief shelter it gave her.

    Seven people who knew Nika and spoke to CNN confirmed it was her. The same footage, filmed at 8.37 p.m. on September 20, also shows anti-riot police on motorcycles, patrolling the area.

    “I wanted to save her, but I couldn’t,” said Ladan. “There were about 20 or 30 Basijis on motorcycles on the sidewalk​,” she said, using the local name for the paramilitary organization that has been at the forefront of the state’s crackdown on protesters.

    ​”Shahkarami was throwing rocks at them. I was scared and I even went past her and said, ‘Be careful dear!’ because there were a number of plainclothes police in the streets going through the cars looking for her.

    “Fifty meters ahead they got her,” Ladan added.

    Ladan came forward to CNN after realising that the teenager she had filmed and spoken to was the one whose death had been reported days later. CNN exclusively spoke to several witnesses who were at the Tehran protest on September 20 with the help of activist group 1500Tasvir.

    Other videos, including the scarf-burning ones, are evidence that Nika was at the forefront of the protests earlier in the night, before the crackdown started – fearlessly leading chants and throwing rocks, according to several testimonies.

    That would have made her a target for security forces, including members of Iran’s feared Basij militia, as they started to descend into the area around the University of Tehran and Keshavarz Boulevard where most of the protesters gathered that evening, witnesses said.

    “I remember how brave she was because she would go up on the garbage bin and wouldn’t come down. She also burned her head scarf,” said Najmeh, a protester who was with Nika at the demonstration.

    CNN is using pseudonyms for all of the witnesses quoted in this investigation, due to the risk to their safety.

    Students had gathered near Laleh Park around 5 to 6 p.m. on September 20 to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died last month ​in state custody after being detained by the country’s morality police​, allegedly for how she was dressed.​

    The scene was one that has become familiar in Tehran in recent weeks: young people, mostly women, chanting “death to the dictator,” burning headscarves and throwing rocks toward security forces.

    At one point, a trash bin was brought over and overturned to block the road. Nika hopped on top along with a couple of others, video footage showed.

    “She burned her head scarf and waved it. I told her not to wave it because you could burn yourself, just hold it until it burns,” said Nima, who was also at the protest and saw the events unfold. “Then she took the headscarves of the two friends who were with her and burned those as well.”

    In other videos ​from that evening geolocated and verified by CNN, Nika is shown hurling rocks at anti-riot police forces. She’s carrying a distinctive CAT rucksack and wearing a black mask and hat on her head. ​Sounds that appear to be gunshots can be heard.

    From 7 to 8 p.m., the security forces’ crackdown intensified, witnesses said. “They were firing tear gas and pellet shots and grabbing protesters. Almost all of us were confronting them and running away,” said Reza, another witness.

    As anti-riot police and Basij forces filled the streets, protesters started to move in all directions to escape the crackdown.

    Another witness, Dina, who spent some of the protest walking alongside Nika, told CNN she saw Nika in front of a gas station not far from the University of Tehran, where the group of protesters had gathered after fleeing tear gas launched by the security forces. Others managed to capture on video those being detained by what appeared to be plainclothes officers.

    Reza added: “I saw with my own eyes security forces hitting women with batons, and they grabbed many of them and took them to police vans.”

    It is in this context of extreme repression of the protest that Nika ​was last seen by the witnesses who spoke to CNN – and nine more days would pass before her family was given official word of her whereabouts. Videos verified and geolocated by CNN prove that the girl, in the last witness footage provided to CNN showing her alive, was hemmed in by security forces on three sides.

    “I think Nika got stuck that night when we were running away. Because she was very young,” Dina said.

    While Iranian authorities insist Nika died ​on the grounds of that uninhabited building, her mother Nasrin told Etemad, an independent Iranian newspaper, in an interview published on October 10 that she believes her daughter “was at the protests and killed there.”

    Iranian security forces arrested eight people who were workers in the building which Nika allegedly entered ​a few hours after eyewitnesses saw her at the September 20 protests, state-aligned news agency Tasnim reported on October 4. Tehran’s prosecutor Ali Salehi said a judicial criminal case had been launched and expressed his condolences to Nika’s family, state run IRNA said.

    Mohammad Shahriari, the head of criminal prosecution of Tehran province, initially said Nika’s injuries corresponded with ​having been “thrown down,” citing an autopsy that revealed multiple fractures in the area of the pelvis, head, upper and lower limbs, hands​, feet ​and hip, Tasnim reported.

    He added that “an investigation showed this incident had no connection to the protests. No bullet holes were found on the body.”

    CNN has repeatedly sought comment from the Iranian authorities on whether Nika was detained at the protests that night and whether other women were assaulted and put in police vehicles. CNN also asked the Tehran prosecutor’s office about the status of the criminal investigation into Nika’s death. No responses were received prior to the publication of this story.

    ​On Wednesday, the online news outlet Mizan, which is affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, published a report saying that Nika’s death had been a suicide, citing a prosecutor from t

    However, a death certificate first seen by BBC Persian and verified by CNN states that Shahkarami died from multiple injuries caused by blows with a hard object.

    In the Etemad interview, Nasrin said she had spoken by phone with Shahkarami many times on the day she disappeared. The background noise during the calls indicated she and the other protesters were fleeing from security forces, Nasrin added. ​

    Nika also mentioned a few locations she was in – Enghelab Square, Keshavarz Boulevard and Valiasr street – according to Nasrin, which match the videos geolocated by CNN.

    Nasrin last spoke with her daughter just before midnight, she said, and after that, all her attempts to call Nika indicated that Nika’s phone had been disconnected. Nika’s Instagram and Telegram accounts were deleted, according to Nika’s aunt and several protesters who spoke to CNN.

    For days, her family says they went to police stations, jails, and hospitals looking for traces of her, all to no avail. Finally, on September 30, Nika’s mother and brother were asked to identify Nika’s corpse, she told BBC Persian. ​

    ​On October 6, in an interview with Radio Farda, Nasrin claimed that while she and other members of the family were looking for Nika in the days after her disappearance, one person gave her Nika’s national ID number and told her “the IRGC got her, they wanted to slowly interrogate her.”

    That matches what Shahkarami’s aunt, Atash, told BBC Persian soon after she disappeared. “An unofficial source from the IRGC themselves got in touch with me and said, this kid was in our custody a week ago, and after we were done interrogating and building the case file, 1 or 2 days ago ​(she) was transferred to Evin prison,” Atash said.

    Atash and Nika’s uncle, Mohsen, were subsequently arrested by Iranian security forces and forced to make a false statement, according to BBC Persian​, citing a source close to the family. Following the BBC’s reporting, when reached by CNN, Atash asked not to be contacted again, citing safety concerns.

    While the family searches for answers, the people who were with Nika on that day are also still reeling from her death.

    “The situation was very scary, and everyone thought of escaping,” Dina said. “I can’t forgive myself for Nika’s death. She was a child.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • DOJ asks judge to force Trump White House lawyers to testify in Jan. 6 probe | CNN Politics

    DOJ asks judge to force Trump White House lawyers to testify in Jan. 6 probe | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to force the top two lawyers from Donald Trump’s White House counsel’s office to testify about their conversations with the former President, as it tries to break through the privilege firewall Trump has used to avoid scrutiny of his actions on January 6, 2021, according to three people familiar with the investigation.

    The move to compel additional testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin just last week is part of a set of secret court proceedings. Trump has been fighting to keep former advisers from testifying before a criminal grand jury about certain conversations, citing executive and attorney-client privileges to keep information confidential or slow down criminal investigators.

    But the Justice Department successfully secured answers from top vice presidential advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short over the past three weeks in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

    Jacob’s testimony on October 6, which has not been previously reported, is the first identifiable time when the confidentiality Trump had tried to maintain around the West Wing after the 2020 election has been pierced in the criminal probe following a court battle. A week after Jacob spoke to the grand jury again, Short had his own grand jury appearance date, CNN reported.

    All four men previously declined to answer some questions about advice and interactions with Trump when they testified in recent months in the secret criminal probe. Trump lost the court battles related to Jacob and Short before the chief judge of the trial-level US District Court in Washington, DC, last month.

    Attorneys for the men whom the DOJ is seeking to compel have declined to comment for this story or haven’t responded to requests. Cipollone and Philbin didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Justice Department also declined to comment.

    All four men have been willing to be as cooperative as the law demands, leaving Trump’s team to handle the fight over certain details in the investigation, the sources say.

    The litigation around Cipollone and Philbin’s testimony may be important for investigators in the long run, given how close the pair was to the Trump leading up to and during the Capitol riot. Prosecutors are likely to aim for the grand jury to hear about their direct conversations with the then-President.

    The disputes – conducted under seal in court because they involve grand jury activity – may also spawn several more court fights that will be crucial for prosecutors as they work to bring criminal charges related to Trump’s post-election efforts.

    Witnesses the federal grand jury has subpoenaed, such as former White House officials Mark Meadows, Eric Herschmann, Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller and campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn, also could decline to describe their conversations with Trump or advice being given to him after the election, several sources familiar with the investigation say.

    Trump and his allies have used claims of confidentiality – both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege – with mixed results in multiple legal quagmires that surround the former President. Those include the January 6 federal criminal investigation, the Mar-a-Lago documents federal criminal investigation, Georgia’s Fulton County investigation of election meddling, and the House select committee probe of January 6 as well. Some of the privilege arguments Trump has raised have never been settled in federal court, and some of the fights could lead to the Supreme Court.

    Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich slammed the “weaponized” Justice Department in a statement and referred to the probes surrounding the former President as “witch hunts.”

    According to the sources, the Justice Department won a trial-level judge’s order at the end of September that said Jacob and Short must testify in response to certain questions over which Trump’s team had tried to claim presidential and attorney-client confidentiality.

    The sealed court case, stemming from the grand jury’s work, had been before the chief judge of the DC District Court, Beryl Howell. Howell refused to put on hold Jacob and Short’s testimony while Trump’s team appealed, a source said.

    The Trump team, meanwhile, took several days to respond to their loss before Howell in court. The Justice Department set a quick-turnaround subpoena date for Jacob, leaving him to head into the grand jury under subpoena on October 6, according to several sources.

    The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is still considering legal arguments from Trump’s defense lawyers and the Justice Department over his ability to make executive and attorney-client privilege claims.

    How that is resolved – either by the appeals court or even the Supreme Court, if Trump pursues it that far – could have significant consequences for the January 6 criminal investigation, and for multiple witnesses who may be refusing to share some of what they know because of Trump’s privilege claims.

    Among a large group of former top Trump officials, Jacob has been one of the most searing voices condemning the then-President’s actions after the election, especially regarding the pressure he and his election attorney, John Eastman, tried to place on then-Vice President Mike Pence to block the congressional certification of the presidential vote.

    Jacob has been a harsh critic of Eastman, who is also of interest to prosecutors, dating back to when Eastman tried to convince Pence’s office the vice president alone could override the vote. He told Eastman at the time the right-wing attorney was a “serpent in the ear” of the President, and wrote while Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, “thanks to your bulls**t, we are now under siege.”

    Jacob added to a parade of star witnesses at public House select committee hearings this summer, speaking candidly about his disgust with what he witnessed inside the White House complex from his high-ranking position administration.

    “There is almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person would choose the American President, and then unbroken historical practice for 230 years, that the vice president did not have such an authority,” Jacob testified in July.

    But what Jacob and Short knew of Trump’s conversations, they wouldn’t disclose to the House nor to the grand jury until this month.

    In a taped House select committee deposition, Cipollone answered many questions about what happened inside the West Wing on January 6 but declined to describe communications between him and Trump.

    Cipollone’s and Philbin’s roles as White House lawyers raise complicated legal questions about whether Trump can claim confidentiality over the legal advice they gave him, as well as whether a former president can assert executive privilege to hold off criminal investigators.

    President Joe Biden has repeatedly declined to assert executive privilege around January 6 information, essentially leaving the fight for Trump to wage opposite the Justice Department.

    While the courts will look at each situation individually, history isn’t on Trump’s side. Federal prosecutors investigating former Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were able to overcome attorney-client privilege assertions for White House counsel as well as executive privilege assertions so the grand jury could hear closely guarded information.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump appears for deposition in E. Jean Carroll lawsuit | CNN Politics

    Trump appears for deposition in E. Jean Carroll lawsuit | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump appeared Wednesday for a deposition as part of the defamation lawsuit brought by former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll.

    Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for Trump’s testimony saying the former President had already taken steps to delay the case and he “should not be able to run out the clock.”

    “We’re pleased that on behalf of our client, E. Jean Carroll, we were able to take Donald Trump’s deposition today. We are not able to comment further,” said a spokesperson for Kaplan Hecker & Fink, the law firm representing Carroll.

    Lawyers for Trump have not responded to a request for comment.

    It is not clear what Trump said during the deposition, which was taken at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

    Carroll sued Trump in 2019 for defamation after he denied her claim that he raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s. She was scheduled to sit for her deposition last Friday.

    The legal stakes for Trump were recently raised when Carroll said she intends to sue him next month under a new New York State law that allows victims of sexual assault to sue years after the attack. His testimony in the defamation case could be used in a future lawsuit.

    The defamation case has been in legal limbo for over a year.

    Trump and the Justice Department argued Trump was a federal employee and his statements denying Carroll’s allegations were made in response to reporters’ questions while he was at the White House. They argued the Justice Department should be substituted as the defendant, which, because the government cannot be sued for defamation, would end the lawsuit.

    Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled against Trump and DOJ. They appealed. Last month a federal appeals court in New York ruled that Trump was a federal employee when he denied Carroll’s claim of rape and sexual assault.

    However, the federal appeals court asked the Washington, DC, appeals court to determine if Trump was acting within the scope of his employment when he made the allegedly defamatory statements. If the DC court finds in favor of Trump, then the Justice Department would likely be substituted as a defendant and the case dismissed. The DC appeals court has not yet taken up the matter and it is unclear if or when they will.

    This year Trump was ordered by a New York State judge to sit for a deposition with the New York attorney general’s office. Trump refused to answer questions, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

    Last month the New York attorney general’s office filed a $250 million lawsuit against Trump, his eldest children and the Trump Organization for allegedly defrauding lenders and insurers through false financial statements. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said the lawsuit was politically motivated.

    In civil cases if someone declines to answer questions the jury is allowed to apply an adverse inference against the person when deciding their potential liability.

    Last year Trump sat for a deposition for a civil lawsuit brought by protestors who claimed they were injured outside of Trump Tower during his first presidential campaign. He is also expected to testify in another civil lawsuit relating to a marketing campaign by the end of the month.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • January 6 committee member says panel will ask former Secret Service agent to testify again | CNN Politics

    January 6 committee member says panel will ask former Secret Service agent to testify again | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, told CNN on Sunday the panel will ask former Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato to testify again.

    “We’re in a position in the very near future to call the witnesses from the Secret Service back in for a few additional questions,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom,” explaining that the panel had wanted to “get through all the documentary evidence … over a million documents,” which they’ve now done.

    The House select committee has made clear it believes Ornato was a central figure who could provide valuable information about former President Donald Trump’s movements and intentions leading up to and on January 6.

    Not only did Ornato once run Trump’s detail, but he also made the unprecedented move of joining White House staff as the deputy chief of staff in December 2019 on a temporary assignment and eventually returned to the Secret Service to run its training program.

    To this point, Ornato has met with the panel on two occasions – in January and March – as part of its investigation.

    It’s not clear whether Ornato will end up testifying related to the claims from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson specifically testified that Ornato had told her about Trump lashing out in anger and lunging at a member of his protective detail as he demanded to be taken to the Capitol on January 6.

    Asked Sunday who else from the Secret Service would be called back to testify, Lofgren also mentioned the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail, Robert Engel, “and a few others,” but did not specify whom.

    “We want to make sure that we’re getting the straight story. Some of the testimony received doesn’t seem to align with some of the documents, so we have a need to understand that better from them,” she said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump can’t get out of deposition in E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit, judge rules | CNN Politics

    Trump can’t get out of deposition in E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit, judge rules | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge rejected former President Donald Trump’s attempt to pause his deposition in a defamation lawsuit scheduled for later this month saying Trump’s efforts to delay the case are “inexcusable.”

    Trump is scheduled to be deposed on October 19 in the defamation lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist who accused Trump of raping her in a department store in the mid 1990s. Trump has denied the allegations.

    Judge Lewis Kaplan said the lawsuit wasn’t over yet and as they wait for a federal appeals court to rule on a key element of the case, “completing those depositions – which have already been delayed for years – would impose no undue burden on Mr. Trump, let alone any irreparable injury.”

    “The defendant should not be permitted to run the clock out on plaintiff’s attempt to gain a remedy for what allegedly was a serious wrong,” Kaplan wrote.

    The judge said that Carroll would face “substantial injury” from further delay, citing the lengthy appeal process, which has already taken 20 months and is still not over, and the ages of Carroll and Trump, who are both in their 70s. Carroll’s deposition is scheduled for this Friday.

    Kaplan noted Trump’s efforts to delay the lawsuit and said his production of “virtually” no documents was “inexcusable.”

    An attorney for Trump could not immediately be reached.

    “We are pleased that Judge Kaplan agreed with our position onto to stay discovery in this case. We look forward to filing our case under the Adult Survivors Act and moving forward to trial with all dispatch,” said Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney.

    Carroll’s attorney had suggested that Trump wanted to stop his deposition after learning that she intends to sue him in November under a new New York state law that allows victims of sexual assault to sue years after the encounter.

    The judge said the question of whether Trump raped Carroll is “paramount” to the current case and the future lawsuit and stopping the deposition now because it could be used in the future “would make no sense.”

    Carroll sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he denied raping her in the mid-1990s and said that she wasn’t his type and accused her of fabricating the claim to boost sales of her book.

    Trump and the Justice Department argued Trump was a federal employee and his statements denying Carroll’s allegations were made in response to reporters’ questions while he was at the White House. They argued the Justice Department should be substituted as the defendant, which, because the government cannot be sued for defamation, would end the lawsuit. Judge Kaplan ruled against Trump and the DOJ. They appealed.

    Last month a federal appeals court ruled that Trump was a federal employee when he denied Carroll’s claim of rape and sexual assault. However, the federal appeals court in New York asked the DC appeals court to determine if Trump was acting in the scope of that employment when he made the allegedly defamatory statements. If the DC court finds that Trump was acting within his role, then the Justice Department would likely be substituted as a defendant.

    The DC appeals court has not yet taken up the matter.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Elon Musk’s deposition in Twitter dispute postponed amid revived talks to complete acquisition | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s deposition in Twitter dispute postponed amid revived talks to complete acquisition | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Lawyers for Elon Musk and Twitter have agreed to postpone the Tesla CEO’s deposition in the court fight over their $44 billion acquisition agreement, a source familiar with the negotiations told CNN. The decision comes as the two sides renew negotiations to complete the deal.

    Musk’s deposition had been set to begin Thursday, per a notice filed earlier this week.

    The two sides are in the midst of negotiations over how to proceed with the deal after Musk on Monday sent a letter proposing to complete the acquisition on the originally agreed upon terms. In the letter, Musk said his offer to proceed was contingent on staying the litigation proceedings over his initial effort to pull out of the deal and adjourning the trial that is set to begin in less than two weeks.

    As of Wednesday, the two sides had yet to reach a deal, a separate source told CNN. Delaware Chancery Court chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the judge who is overseeing the litigation, said in a Wednesday court filing that neither side had filed to stay the proceedings and she was continuing to prepare for trial to begin on Oct. 17.

    On Thursday, McCormick filed a letter to both sides laying out deadlines for responding to discovery motions, noting that the “trial is fast approaching.”

    Legal experts have said that Twitter

    (TWTR)     may want to continue the litigation process as a way to keep pressure on Musk until the acquisition is completed. But the postponement of Musk’s deposition may be a sign that the two sides are nearing an agreement, some legal experts say.

    It’s not clear whether a new date has been set for Musk’s deposition, but Twitter could end up pushing to complete it early next week if a deal is not reached.

    [ad_2]

    Source link