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Tag: trial and procedure

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Lancaster is about 15 miles south of Dallas.

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “Yes,” Smith said.”

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  • 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

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    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.

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  • Former Manhattan attorney says ‘many bits and pieces of evidence’ exist to charge Trump | CNN Politics

    Former Manhattan attorney says ‘many bits and pieces of evidence’ exist to charge Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A former Manhattan special assistant district attorney who investigated Donald Trump said Sunday night there are “many bits and pieces of evidence” the district attorney could use to bring criminal charges against the former president.

    Mark Pomerantz, a former senior prosecutor on the Manhattan DA’s team investigating Trump and his organization’s business dealings, said prosecutors weighing similar evidence against anyone other than the former president would have moved ahead with charges in a “flat second.”

    Pomerantz made the comments in a “60 Minutes” interview promoting a new book about his time investigating Trump. He pointed to evidence he had access to during the investigation – principal among them, that Trump personally signed off on inflating his own net worth to obtain more favorable banks loans.

    “There were many bits and pieces of evidence on which we could rely in making that case,” Pomerantz told CBS’s Bill Whitaker.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, filed a civil lawsuit against Trump, his eldest children and others alleging they were engaged in a decade long fraud by using inaccurate financial statements to obtain favorable loan and insurance rates and tax treatment. The burden of proof in a civil lawsuit is lower than what prosecutors need to prove a criminal case. Trump has called the lawsuit politically motivated and has denied any wrongdoing.

    The allegations come nearly a year after Pomerantz resigned from the DA’s office in protest and days before the release of his new book, which has prompted pushback from District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

    Pomerantz resigned after Bragg, who was newly sworn into office, refused to give him a green light to seek an indictment against Trump. The district attorney’s office previously brought tax fraud charges against the Trump Organization and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty.

    Pomerantz resigned last February along with general counsel Carey Dunne.

    “If you take the exact same conduct – and make it not about Donald Trump and not about a former president of the United States, would the case have been indicted? It would have been indicted in a flat second,” Pomerantz said Sunday. He called Bragg’s decision not to bring the case a “grave failure of justice.”

    Pomerantz’s claims detailed in his forthcoming book have drawn the ire of his former boss and the DA’s Association of the State of New York, who claim that a former prosecutor speaking out about a case he used to be a part of could damage its integrity.

    Bragg’s office asked to review the book before its publication out of concern it would reveal information obtained from a grand jury. Simon & Schuster, the publisher, moved ahead with publication.

    “After closely reviewing all the evidence from Mr. Pomerantz’s investigation, I came to the same conclusion as several senior prosecutors involved in the case, and also those I brought on: more work was needed. Put another way, Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff,” Bragg said in a statement to CNN.

    Bragg added that he hasn’t “read the book, and won’t comment on any ongoing investigation because of the harm it could cause to the case. But I do hope there is at least one section where Mr. Pomerantz recognizes his former colleagues for how much they have achieved on the Trump matter over the last year since his departure.”

    In January, a New York judge fined the Trump Organization $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme, a symbolic moment because it is the only judgment for a criminal conviction that has come close to the former president.

    Two Trump entities, The Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp., were convicted last year of 17 felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records. Trump himself was never charged or convicted.

    On Sunday Pomerantz expanded on what evidence he believes they had against Trump, including Trump’s signature on a Deutsche Bank loan certifying that all of his financial statements were accurate.

    “He warrants that the financial statements are true and correct in all material respects. Finally of course on the guaranty is his sharpie signature, Donald J. Trump,” Pomerantz said. He also alleges he has documents proving Trump knew the accurate size of his 10,996-square-foot Fifth Avenue condominium, but lied anyways, claiming in 2015 and 2016 accounting documents that it was really 30,000 square feet.

    CNN previously reported that some prosecutors did not believe they had enough evidence to prove Trump’s intent and they lacked a credible narrator to explain how the financial statements were put together.

    In a letter to Pomerantz, Trump’s lawyer threatened legal action against the former prosecutor if he releases the book. The lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told CNN in a statement that Pomerantz’s “desperate attempt to sell books will cost him everything. Not to mention, it is clear that he was very much in the minority in his position that President Trump committed a crime.”

    In the book, which publishes on Tuesday, Pomerantz compares Trump to John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family, according to an advanced copy obtained by The New York Times, and lays out the complicated investigation that saw many close to the former president charged with crimes.

    Meanwhile, Bragg’s office last week accelerated its investigation into Trump’s alleged role in a hush money payment made to silence adult film star Stormy Daniel’s allegations of an affair. Trump has denied the affair.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “No.”

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

    “No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

    “No sir,” the CEO replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Jim Jordan issues first subpoenas targeting Biden administration’s response to school board threats | CNN Politics

    Jim Jordan issues first subpoenas targeting Biden administration’s response to school board threats | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Friday subpoenaed the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Department of Education for documents as part of its investigation into whether a Justice Department strategy to address threats against teachers and school officials was abused to target conservative parents.

    The flurry of subpoenas are the first from the Judiciary’s subcommittee dedicated to investigating the alleged weaponization of the federal government and are an early indication that the newly minted chairman intends to aggressively pursue its probe into the Biden administration’s response to rising tensions and threats of violence surrounding school board meetings.

    The subpoenas set a document deadline of March 1. The panel sent the subpoenas after initially sending letters to the agencies for voluntary cooperation on January 17.

    The allegations being investigated date to 2021, when protests and some violence erupted at school board meetings across the country. Most of the anger came from conservative parents who wanted to repeal mask mandates, opposed anti-racism courses and had concerns about LGBTQ policies.

    With that backdrop, the National School Boards Association wrote to President Joe Biden asking for federal help to address the violence and threats against school administrators. The group said that “these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism” and encouraged the Justice Department to explore which laws, possibly including the Patriot Act, could be applied.

    The group soon apologized for “some of the language” in its letter. But it quickly drew backlash, particularly among conservatives.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland had issued a memo in response – which didn’t cite the letter, compare parents to “terrorists” nor invoke the Patriot Act. It merely told the FBI and federal prosecutors to step up collaboration with state and local law enforcement on the issue.

    According to a report Jordan released last year, emails show that the Biden White House consulted with the NSBA on the letter before the group made its letter public. An independent review by NSBA concluded, however, that there was no “direct or indirect evidence suggesting the Administration requested the Letter” or reviewed the contents before the letter was sent.

    Other emails also show that the Justice Department sent an advance copy of Garland’s memo to the NSBA.

    The FBI later established a “threat tag” to internally track cases about school board threats under the same categorization. Republicans have seized on the “threat tag” to accuse the FBI of carrying out Biden’s desire to stomp out conservative speech at school boards. But the creation of an internal database does not mean the FBI initiated any sort of crackdown against parents.

    Judiciary Republicans are requesting Garland provide a paper trail of the DOJ’s communications with the White House, intelligence agencies and members of the National School Boards Association about alleged violence at school board meetings.

    The subpoena also calls for a number of documents relating to Garland’s directive for FBI and US attorneys’ offices to meet with federal, state and local law enforcement partners to discuss strategies for addressing the issue, focusing specifically on what meetings took place and what recommendations were made.

    A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. Three days after Jordan’s voluntary request to DOJ, a department official responded to the Ohio Republican that “we share your belief that congressional oversight is vital to our functioning democracy” and encouraged the committee to prioritize its document requests to elicit efficient responses, according to a letter obtained by CNN.

    The FBI subpoena specifically demands that Director Chris Wray produce a variety of documents, including communications related to meeting with US attorneys’ offices and “establishment of the Department of Justice’s task force.”

    Wray is also told to hand over all documents related to formal and informal recommendations created or relied upon by FBI employees in accordance with Garland’s October 2021 memo.

    The FBI said in a statement that the bureau “has never been in the business of investigating speech or policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else, and we never will be,” adding that “attempts to further any political narrative will not change those facts.”

    “The FBI recognizes the importance of congressional oversight and remains fully committed to cooperating with Congress’s oversight requests consistent with its constitutional and statutory responsibilities. The FBI is actively working to respond to congressional requests for information – including voluntary production of documents,” the FBI statement read.

    Jordan’s subpoena to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called on the Education Department to hand over any documents or communications related to a letter the National School Boards Association sent in September 2021.

    Jordan’s subpoena also called for any files related to Viola Garcia’s appointment to the National Assessment Government Board. Garcia was the president of the National School Boards Association and was one of two individuals who signed the September 2021 letter to Biden.

    An Education Department spokesperson told CNN that “the Department responded to Chairman Jordan’s letter earlier this week. The Department remains committed to responding to the House Judiciary Committee’s requests in a manner consistent with longstanding Executive Branch policy.”

    CNN has reached out to Garcia for comment.

    On Thursday, a day before the subpoena, the Education Department told Jordan’s team that the department played no role in crafting the letter from the National School Boards Association.

    “I would also like to reiterate – as the Department has repeatedly made clear – that the Secretary did not request, direct any action, or play any role in the development of the September 29, 2021, letter from the NSBA to President Biden,” Gwen Graham, assistant secretary for legislation and congressional affairs at the Education Department wrote in a letter obtained by CNN. Graham added that an independent review for counsel retained by the NSBA did not find any connection between the letter and Garcia’s appointment.

    Republicans gave Democrats on the committee a heads up that these subpoenas were coming, a source familiar told CNN. Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett of the US Virgin Islands, the highest-ranking Democrat on the subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, said the subpoenas were underpinned by “conspiracy theories” and said she is confident that what the Republicans have asked for “will once again disprove this tired right-wing theory.”

    White House spokesperson for Congressional Oversight Ian Sams said in a statement to CNN, “Chairman Jordan is rushing to fire off subpoenas only two days after the Judiciary Committee organized, even though agencies already responded in good faith seeking to accommodate requests he made. These subpoenas make crystal clear that extreme House Republicans have no interest in working together with the Biden Administration on behalf of the American people and every interest in staging political stunts.”

    Since the uproar at school boards became a major political issue in late 2021, Republicans have pushed the baseless narrative that Biden, Garland and Wray have weaponized federal law enforcement to attack innocent parents who care about education.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy falsely claimed that “Biden used the FBI to target parents as domestic terrorists.” Jordan has said Garland tried “to use federal law enforcement tools to silence parents.” This claim even came up in the GOP response to last year’s State of the Union. These claims have been repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers from CNN and other outlets.

    For his part, Garland has aggressively pushed back against Republicans’ accusations. He previously testified to Congress that the Justice Department isn’t using counterterrorism resources against parents and said it was ridiculous to equate “angry” parents to “terrorists.”

    When GOP senators grilled Wray about the “threat tag” matter at an August hearing, he defended the FBI.

    “The FBI is not going to be in the business of investigating speech or policing speech at school board meetings,” Wray said. “We’re not about to start now. Threats of violence, that’s a different matter altogether. And there, we will work with our state local partners, as we always have.”

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  • Law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders from having guns is unconstitutional, court rules | CNN Politics

    Law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders from having guns is unconstitutional, court rules | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, a conservative-leaning appeals court ruled Thursday.

    The ruling is the latest significant decision dismantling a gun restriction in the wake of the Supreme Court’s expansion of Second Amendment rights last year in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision.

    The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said that the federal law targeting those believed to pose a domestic violence threat could not stand under the Bruen test, which requires that gun laws have a historical analogy to the firearm regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing.

    “Through that lens, we conclude that (the law’s) ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier’ that our ancestors would never have accepted,” the 5th Circuit said.

    The Justice Department signaled Thursday night that it plans to appeal the ruling. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Congress had determined the statute “nearly 30 years ago.”

    “Whether analyzed through the lens of Supreme Court precedent, or of the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, that statute is constitutional. Accordingly, the Department will seek further review of the Fifth Circuit’s contrary decision,” he said.

    The Justice Department did not specify its next step in seeking review of the ruling, which could include asking the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals for an en banc rehearing by all the judges on the court, or asking the US Supreme Court to take up an appeal.

    The court’s opinion was written by Judge Cory Todd Wilson, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump. He was joined by Reagan-appointee Judge Edith Jones and Judge James Ho, another Trump appointee who also wrote a concurrence.

    The 5th Circuit panel was not persuaded by the historical parallels put forward by the US Justice Department, which was defending the conviction of a person who possessed a firearm while under a domestic violence restraining order that had been imposed after he was accused of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. The Justice Department argued that the domestic violence law was analogous to 17th-and 18th century regulations that disarmed “dangerous” persons.

    “The purpose of these ‘dangerousness’ laws was the preservation of political and social order, not the protection of an identified person from the specific threat posed by another,” the 5th Circuit opinion read. “Therefore, laws disarming ‘dangerous’ classes of people are not ‘relevantly similar’” to “serve as historical analogues.”

    A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a CNN inquiry. If the 5th Circuit’s ruling is appealed, it could set up another showdown over gun rights at the Supreme Court.

    Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said clarity from the court is necessary.

    “One of two things is true: Either this kind of blind, rigid, context-free, and common-sense-defying assessment of history is exactly what the Supreme Court intended in its landmark ruling last June in Bruen, or it isn’t,” Vladeck said.

    “Either way, it’s incumbent upon the justices in the Bruen majority to clarify which one they meant – and to either endorse or reject the rather terrifying idea that individuals under an active domestic violence-related restraining order are nevertheless constitutionally entitled to possess firearms,” he added.

    The defendant challenging his conviction, Zackey Rahimi, had lost in an earlier round before the 5th Circuit, before the Supreme Court issued its Bruen ruling last year. The previous 5th Circuit opinion was withdrawn after the Bruen decision was handed down, and the appeals court did another round of briefing directed at the new test.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Comparing the classified document discoveries plaguing Biden, Trump and Pence | CNN Politics

    Comparing the classified document discoveries plaguing Biden, Trump and Pence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Washington – President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence are all facing scrutiny regarding their potential mishandling of classified documents.

    In all three cases, sensitive government materials were found in places where they shouldn’t have ended up. But there are key distinctions that differentiate each situation, including how Biden, Trump and Pence responded to the discovery of documents and how aggressively the Justice Department is currently investigating.

    Here’s a breakdown of the similarities and differences between the Biden, Trump and Pence cases.

    The Biden and Pence situations are similar – their lawyers discovered the classified documents, alerted the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and turned over the papers. In Biden’s case, FBI agents later found additional documents when they searched his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

    Trump followed a different path. After he left the White House, NARA realized that materials were missing. In May 2021, they reached out to Trump’s lawyers who negotiated for months over the voluntary return of several boxes of important documents.

    The Justice Department obtained a subpoena in May 2022, a year after NARA’s initial flag, after suspecting that Trump was still holding onto some classified records. Trump gave back more files but didn’t return everything in his possession. The FBI later executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, where more documents were found. The search was the first time in American history that a former president’s home was searched as part of a criminal investigation.

    The exact number is unknown in Biden’s case. Approximately 20 classified documents had been recovered before the FBI searched Biden’s home in Wilmington. The FBI uncovered even more classified files during that search, but neither side has publicly disclosed the specific number of additional documents found.

    For Trump, more than 325 classified records have been recovered. This includes documents returned voluntarily to NARA, turned over to the Justice Department under subpoena, and found by the FBI.

    With Pence’s situation, CNN has reported that his team found about a dozen documents at his Indiana home.

    Some of Biden’s documents were marked “top secret,” which is the highest level of classification. Some of those documents had an “SCI” designation, which stands for “sensitive compartmented information” and refers to extremely sensitive material gleaned from US intelligence sources.

    At least 60 of the Trump documents were labeled “top secret,” including some files with SCI markings. There were also some documents with “SAP” designation, which stands for “special access programs” and is used for documents that are closely held with special protocols for who can access the material.

    A source who was briefed on some of the Pence documents previously told CNN that the government papers recovered from his home were “lower level” classification, without any SCI or SAP markings.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland brought on special prosecutors to investigate Biden and Trump. The Trump matter is being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed in November. And the Biden matter is being investigated by special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed in January.

    CNN has previously reported that the FBI and Justice Department are conducting a review of the Pence documents and how they ended up at his home. This is less than a full-blown criminal probe.

    The Trump investigation has progressed the farthest. Federal prosecutors got a subpoena, demanded the return of all classified documents and tried to hold Trump in contempt when he didn’t fully comply. Investigators also got a judge to approve a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and CNN has reported that there is an active grand jury based in Washington, DC, that recently heard testimony from witnesses.

    In this file image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and redacted by in part by the FBI, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 search by the FBI of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

    There haven’t been any known subpoenas or search warrants in the Biden inquiry, though the FBI has conducted voluntary interviews with some of the people on Biden’s team who handled documents.

    There aren’t any known subpoenas, search warrants or FBI interviews in the Pence-related review.

    Biden and Pence both maintain that they engaged early with NARA to return missing documents and are cooperating fully with the Justice Department.

    Whether it was intentional or not, Trump repeatedly missed opportunities to return the documents to the government. Criminal prosecutors eventually concluded that there might have been intentional efforts to hold onto the documents, and Trump is now under investigation for potential obstruction.

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  • 2 witnesses in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial testify Murdaugh’s voice is on video made just before killings | CNN

    2 witnesses in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial testify Murdaugh’s voice is on video made just before killings | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two witnesses in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh told the court Wednesday they are “100%” certain that Murdaugh’s voice is on footage prosecutors say undermines the disgraced former South Carolina attorney’s claim he was not present at the scene of the killings when his wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul were fatally shot.

    The video, just short of a minute long, was filmed on Paul’s phone starting at 8:44 p.m. the night of the killings in 2021, according to Lt. David Britton Dove, a supervisor in the computer crimes center at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division who extracted forensic data from the phones belonging to Murdaugh, his son and his wife. In his review of the trio’s phones, the footage was the only video or photo Dove deemed relevant to the investigation, he said, telling the court it appeared to be recorded in the area of the Murdaugh family’s kennels.

    Three different voices could be heard in the footage, Dove testified Wednesday. And while Dove did not personally know the voices, he said, “You can tell that they’re different voices.”

    Prosecutors believe one of those voices belongs to Murdaugh, and that voice is the only other on the video besides the victims and places him at the scene at the time of the murders. Two witnesses Wednesday backed up that claim.

    Rogan Gibson, who described himself as a close friend of Paul’s and the Murdaughs as being like a second family, told investigators shortly after the killings that along with the voices of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, he was “99% sure” the third person heard was Alex Murdaugh. Last November, he told investigators that he was 100% sure, and repeated that in court Wednesday.

    When asked by state prosecutor Creighton Waters if he recognized Alex’s voice, Gibson said, “Yes, sir.”

    “100%?” asked Waters. “Yes, sir” replied Gibson.

    Will Loving, another witness who was Paul’s friend, also testified that he was “100%” sure it was Alex’s voice on the video.

    Prosecutors have indicated cell phone evidence is key in their case against Murdaugh, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of his wife Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and his 22-year-old son Paul on June 7, 2021.

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

    But prosecutors accuse Murdaugh of committing the murders to distract attention from a series of alleged illicit schemes he was running to avoid “personal legal and financial ruin,” per court filings. Separate from the murder charges, he is also facing 99 charges stemming from alleged financial crimes, per the state attorney general.

    Evidence will show, the state has claimed, that Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes were “about to come to light” when his wife and son were killed.

    Gibson said he had known the Murdochs practically all his life, and testified that it was Alex Murdaugh’s voice that could be heard in the video calling for the family’s yellow lab, Bubba, to drop a chicken from his mouth.

    Paul Murdaugh called Gibson the night of the shooting, at 8:40 p.m., to ask if something was wrong with Gibson’s dog, Cash, which was in a kennel at the Murdaugh property. The two tried to hold a video call so that Gibson could see the dog, but the reception was not good enough, Gibson testified. Paul told him he would take a video of the dog and send it to him if the FaceTime call didn’t work, Gibson said, but he never received the footage.

    Gibson testified that he tried to call and text Paul after the failed video call, but his friend never responded.

    Murdaugh appeared to sob while the video played in court the first time.

    Prosecutor Waters of the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office – which is prosecuting the case due to the Murdaugh family’s decades-old ties with the local solicitor’s office – teased the video in his opening statement last week, saying that while Alex claimed to investigators he was napping at the house, video evidence would show he was present at the family’s kennels, where the bodies of his son and wife were found.

    “You’ll see that video and you’ll hear from witnesses that identify Paul’s voice, Maggie’s voice and Alex’s voice,” Waters said, telling the court Paul was filming a dog that belonged to his friend because they were concerned about the animal’s tail. Murdaugh “told anyone who would listen he was never there … The evidence will show that he was there. He was at the murder scene with the two victims” minutes before Paul’s phone “locks forever.”

    In his own opening statement, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said the audio from the video obtained by the prosecution would simply show Murdaugh and his wife having a “normal discussion” with “no animosity.” Paul is “very happy,” Harpootlian claimed. “Nobody’s down there threatening him. Daddy is not pulling out a shotgun and killing him.”

    During cross examination by the defense Wednesday, Gibson said Alex and Paul Murdaugh had a great relationship, and spoke about Alex as an affectionate and loving father who was involved with his sons. Alex was like a second father to him, Gibson said.

    Murdaugh cried a lot and “was just real distraught, sad, just tore up” about the deaths, Gibson testified.

    “Can you think of any circumstance that you can envision, knowing them as you do, where Alex would brutally murder Paul and Maggie?” defense attorney Jim Griffin asked.

    “Not that I can think of,” Gibson answered.

    The defense attorney also questioned Gibson about the sheds, workshops and vehicles frequently being left unlocked at the Murdaugh property, and guns often left unprotected or just laying around. Gibson conceded it would be easy for someone to sneak on the property and steal something. On redirect from the prosecution, Gibson acknowledged he had never heard Paul complain about people doing that.

    In his testimony Tuesday, Dove, the 15th witness called by the prosecution, detailed the communications of Maggie’s phone the night of the killings, including a text from Alex at 9:47 p.m. that read, “Call me babe.” It was never read.

    In his opening statement last week, Waters told the jury Murdaugh repeatedly called his wife that evening before texting her that he was going to visit his mother and driving to Almeda, South Carolina.

    “It’s up to you,” Waters said, “to decide whether or not he’s trying to manufacture an alibi.”

    According to Dove’s testimony Tuesday, the night she was killed, Maggie read two text messages – at 8:31 p.m. and 8:49 p.m. – in a group chat with family about Murdaugh’s father, who was in ailing health, seconds before her phone locked for the final time.

    The display of Maggie’s phone turned off minutes later, at 8:53 p.m. At 8:54 p.m., the orientation changed to landscape and the camera activated – an indication, Dove said, the phone was moved and the camera tried to locate Maggie’s face in an unsuccessful attempt to unlock.

    Maggie’s phone showed repeated missed calls from her husband over the course of the next hour, Dove testified, along with evidence it had switched to portrait mode. That, the expert said, was another indication the phone was likely held in someone’s hand. A final call from Murdaugh was missed just before 10:04 p.m.

    But those calls appeared to be missing from Murdaugh’s phone, Dove said Wednesday, testifying that call logs show a gap in calls between June 4 and 10:25 p.m. the night of June 7.

    “A gap like that would indicate” that calls were “actually removed from there,” Dove said, adding the only way to remove the calls from the log would be to do so manually.

    Asked specifically if the calls were deleted from the log, Dove said, “it would appear that way,” noting there was no way to know when they were deleted or who was responsible.

    Additionally, Murdaugh was in the same group chat as his wife when relatives were texting about his dying father, Dove said Wednesday. And while evidence shows Maggie read both messages, Murdaugh did not read them until the next day, Dove said, despite telling state investigators about his concern for his father’s health.

    This behavior appeared to be outside Murdaugh’s typical texting habits, Dove testified, saying Murdaugh typically had a habit of checking texts within 5 minutes, or sometimes 30 to 40 minutes.

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  • Video of Nichols’ beating prompts renewed calls for police reform | CNN Politics

    Video of Nichols’ beating prompts renewed calls for police reform | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    New York to San Francisco. Baltimore to Portland. Boston to Los Angeles, and countless cities in between.

    Protesters once again took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video capturing the violent Memphis police beating that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

    On Sunday morning, Nichols’ family attorney made note of the outrage as he aimed a simple but pointed message at Washington.

    “Shame on us if we don’t use [Nichols’] tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” Ben Crump said on CNN’s “State of Union.”

    President Joe Biden referenced the failed legislation in his statement about Nichols on Friday, and many leaders – from the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – are acknowledging a potential role for federal legislation.

    The Congressional Black Caucus is requesting a meeting with Biden this week to push for negotiations. “We are calling on our colleagues in the House and Senate to jumpstart negotiations now and work with us to address the public health epidemic of police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities,” CBC Chair Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat, wrote in a statement on Sunday.

    Gloria Sweet-Love, the Tennessee State Conference NAACP president, called on Congress to step up during a Sunday evening news conference in Memphis. “By failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality, you’re writing another Black man’s obituary. The blood of Black America is on your hands. So stand up and do something.”

    But with Congress as divided as ever, it appears public outrage is once again on a collision course with Washington partisanship.

    Here’s what you need to know about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, why it failed, and what chances it stands in the current political climate.

    The legislation, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.

    It would ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels, and it would overhaul qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that critics say shields law enforcement from accountability.

    According to a fact sheet on the legislation at the time, the measure would also allow “individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.”

    The fact sheet also states that the legislation would “save lives by banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants” and would mandate “deadly force be used only as a last resort.”

    The bill twice cleared the House under Democratic control – in 2020 and 2021 – largely along party lines. But it never went anywhere in the Senate, even after Democrats won control in 2021, in part, because of disagreements about qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued in civil court.

    Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina spent some six months trying to hash out a deal that could win 60 votes in the Senate, but talks were stymied by a number of complicated issues.

    “It was clear at this negotiating table, in this moment, we were not making progress,” Booker told reporters in the spring of 2021. “In fact, recent back-and-forth with paper showed me that we were actually moving away from it. The negotiations we were in stopped. But the work will continue.”

    With the legislation stuck, Biden signed a more limited executive order to overhaul policing on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death. It took several actions that can be applied to federal officers, including efforts to ban chokeholds, expand the use of body-worn cameras and restrict no-knock warrants, among other things.

    But the president cannot mandate that local law enforcement adopt the measures in his order; the executive action lays out levers the federal government can use, such as federal grants and technical assistance, to incentivize local law enforcement to get on board

    And since then, little has happened on the federal legislative front.

    Here’s the reality: the road for police reform has only become more challenging in the new Congress now that House Republicans, who have placed their priorities elsewhere, are in the majority.

    Senate Democrats picked up one more seat in last year’s midterm elections to pad their majority, but they’re still far short of the 60 votes that would be need for such an effort to succeed. That means any policing overhaul that can find meaningful support in Congress will likely be stripped of the kind of measures that protesters are calling for.

    State officials have been initiating investigations into local police departments, recognizing that the federal government can’t take on every case nationwide.

    And, in some cases, local governments have taken their own steps. In the year after Floyd was killed, at least 25 states had considered some form of qualified immunity reform. In 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law a series of police reforms that created a system to decertify law enforcement officers found to have engaged in serious misconduct – joining the majority of states that have similar decertification authorities.

    But, for many, it’s not nearly enough. Read this CNN Opinion piece from Sonia Pruitt, a retired Montgomery County, Maryland, police captain:

    “Many have noted the police assault on Nichols is reminiscent of that on Rodney King, a Black man whose beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers in 1991 was captured on video. But the beating of Nichols is actually much worse because it shows that after nearly 32 years, the needle of police reform has barely moved, and seemingly minor traffic violations continue to lead to the deaths of Black and other minority men and women in police encounters.”

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  • Madison Square Garden CEO doubles down on use of facial recognition tech | CNN Business

    Madison Square Garden CEO doubles down on use of facial recognition tech | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The chief executive of the Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corporation has doubled down on using facial recognition at its venues to bar lawyers suing the group from attending events.

    Speaking to Fox 5 on Thursday, MSG Executive Chairman and CEO James Dolan said Madison Square Garden is a private company and therefore entitled to determine who is allowed to enter its venues for events.

    “At Madison Square Garden, if you’re suing us, we’re just asking of you – please don’t come until you’re done with your argument with us,” he said. “And yes, we’re using facial recognition to enforce that.”

    His comments come after New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday sent a letter to MSG Entertainment requesting information regarding its use of facial recognition technology to prohibit legitimate ticketholders from entering venues. The letter said the attorney general’s office has reviewed reports MSG Entertainment has used facial recognition to identify and deny entry to multiple lawyers affiliated with law firms involved in ongoing litigation with the company. The letter indicates thousands of attorneys from around 90 law firms may have been impacted by the policy, and said the ban includes those holding season tickets.

    The attorney general’s letter raised the concern that banning individuals from accessing venues over ongoing litigation may violate local, state, and federal human rights laws, including laws prohibiting retaliation. The letter also questions whether the facial recognition software used by MSG Entertainment is reliable and what safeguards are in place to avoid bias and discrimination.

    In a press release, James said, “MSG Entertainment cannot fight their legal battles in their own arenas. Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall are world-renowned venues and should treat all patrons who purchased tickets with fairness and respect. Anyone with a ticket to an event should not be concerned that they may be wrongfully denied entry based on their appearance, and we’re urging MSG Entertainment to reverse this policy.”

    MSG Entertainment owns and operates several venues in New York, including Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the Hulu Theater, and the Beacon Theatre. Madison Square Garden is the home of the New York Knicks, Rangers, professional boxing, and college basketball teams.

    In a statement Thursday, an MSG spokesperson told CNN, “To be clear, our policy does not unlawfully prohibit anyone from entering our venues and it is not our intent to dissuade attorneys from representing plaintiffs in litigation against us. We are merely excluding a small percentage of lawyers only during active litigation.”

    “Most importantly,” the spokesperson added, “to even suggest anyone is being excluded based on the protected classes identified in state and federal civil rights laws is ludicrous. Our policy has never applied to attorneys representing plaintiffs who allege sexual harassment or employment discrimination.”

    In the Fox 5 interview Thursday, Dolan said when the attorneys suing MSG finish their litigation, they will be welcome back to the venues. “If your next door neighbor sues you, if somebody sues you, right, that’s confrontational. It’s adversarial and it’s fine, people are allowed to sue,” he said. “But at the same time, if you’re being sued, right, you don’t have to welcome the person into your home, right?”

    Dolan defended the use of facial recognition technology, saying it’s useful for security and noting that he believes Madison Square Garden to be one of the safest venues in the country. “Basically, anytime that you go out in public, you’re on camera,” he said. “Believe me, you walk down the street, you’re on camera, you’re on 10 cameras. What facial recognition does is looks at, you know, recognizes your face, and says you know, are you someone who’s on this list.”

    Dolan claimed the State Liquor Authority has threatened MSG’s license over its use of facial recognition technology. The New York State Liquor Authority told CNN it issued a “letter of advice” to MSG, after receiving a complaint in mid-November over attorneys engaged in litigation against the company not being allowed to enter its premises.

    “After receiving a complaint, the State Liquor Authority followed standard procedure and issued a Letter of Advice explaining this business’ obligation to keep their premises open to the public, as required by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law,” Joshua Heller, a State Liquor Authority spokesperson, told CNN.

    The SLA told CNN an investigation into the matter is “ongoing”.

    During the Fox interview, Dolan apparently threatened to shut down sales of liquor during an unspecified upcoming New York Rangers game, and said he would direct any upset patrons to the liquor authority to complain.

    Dolan also pushed back at the suggestion that he’s being “too sensitive.”

    “The Garden has to defend itself,” Dolan said. “If you sue us, right, you know we’re going to tell you not to come.”

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  • First responder on scene testifies he did not see ‘visible tears’ from Alex Murdaugh after his wife and son were found dead | CNN

    First responder on scene testifies he did not see ‘visible tears’ from Alex Murdaugh after his wife and son were found dead | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The first law enforcement official to respond to the scene where Alex Murdaugh’s wife and son were found killed testified Thursday that one of the first things Murdaugh mentioned after the sergeant from the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office arrived was a boating accident involving his son years ago.

    Murdaugh, a now disbarred attorney and member of a prominent legal family, is on trial in Walterboro, South Carolina, for the murders of his wife Margaret (known as Maggie) and his son Paul, who was 22 at the time of the June 7, 2021, crime.

    “This is a long story. My son was in a boat wreck months back, he’s been getting threats, most of them benign stuff we didn’t take serious,” Murdaugh can be heard saying on body camera footage played in court. “I know that’s what it is.”

    Murdaugh’s son Paul was allegedly the driver of the boat that wrecked in February 2019, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach. At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges of boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm and causing death. He pleaded not guilty, and court records show the charges were dropped after his death.

    Sgt. Daniel Greene of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office testified that Murdaugh offered this information right away, and he had not asked Murdaugh about it.

    Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.

    Murdaugh was at the scene when Greene arrived, and although Murdaugh appeared to be upset, “I didn’t see any visible tears,” Greene testified.

    Murdaugh was visibily upset in court, though, when footage from Greene’s body camera was shown to the jury, at one point wiping his eyes.

    The jury also heard the 911 call Murdaugh placed to report that he had found his wife and son shot and on the ground near his kennel on the family’s property.

    “I can tell he’s shot in the head, and he’s shot really bad,” Murdaugh, speaking of his son, can be heard saying on the recording.

    Asked if they had shot themselves, he replied: “Oh no, Hell no!”

    In his cross examination of Greene, Murdaugh’s defense attorney Dick Harpootlian sought to cast doubt on the procedures taken by the first law enforcement responders to preserve the integrity of the evidence on scene.

    Vehicle tracks weren’t secured “in any way,” Harpootlian said, adding that any tracks that were there were driven over by “multiple vehicles, law enforcement vehicles.”

    Harpootlian asked Greene about where he and members of his agency were standing and walking, a spot he suggested was “on top of an area where shots have been fired.”

    Prosecutors accuse Murdaugh of committing the murders to distract attention from a series of alleged illicit schemes he was running to stave off “personal legal and financial ruin,” according to court filings. Evidence will show, the state claims, that Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes were “about to come to light” when his wife and son were killed.

    Murdaugh faces 99 charges stemming from 19 grand jury indictments for various crimes, according to the state attorney general’s office, including allegedly defrauding his clients and former law firm of nearly $9 million. Just last month, the AG’s office announced Murdaugh had been indicted for tax evasion for failing to report almost $7 million of income earned through illegal acts, for which he allegedly owes the state almost $500,000.

    “You’re gonna hear some of what was going on in Alex Murdaugh’s life, leading up to that day – stuff that happened that very day, stuff that was leading up to a perfect storm that was gathering,” lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said in his opening statement Wednesday, after two days of jury selection ended with 12 trial jurors and six alternatives being seated.

    The prosecution’s opening statements were just “theories” and conjecture, Harpootlian said.

    Not a single witness will tell the jury that Murdaugh and Maggie’s relationship was anything but loving, Harpootlian said. Paul, he said, was the “apple of his (father’s) eye,” as exhibited by a Snapchat video the jury will see from the night of the killings, showing the father and son laughing and bonding over trees they planted.

    “To find Alex Murdaugh guilty of murdering his son, you’re going to have to accept that within an hour” of bonding, “that he executes him in a brutal fashion,” Harpootlian said. “Not believable.”

    The prominence of the Murdaugh family name overshadows the trial: Three generations of Murdaughs have served over 87 years as solicitor for the 14th Circuit, which oversaw prosecutions throughout the South Carolina Lowcountry. Podcasts and documentaries have been made about the family and the murders.

    The office of South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson is prosecuting the case due to the family’s close ties to the local solicitor’s office.

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  • GOP-led committees plan to issue subpoenas in Biden probes without consulting Democrats | CNN Politics

    GOP-led committees plan to issue subpoenas in Biden probes without consulting Democrats | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee and select subcommittee on the so-called weaponization of the federal government plan to adopt a rule that will allow Republican members to issue subpoenas without consulting Democrats days ahead of time, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

    The plan, articulated to GOP members of the select subcommittee by its top Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio during their first meeting Friday, will expedite the subpoena process as both panels move forward with probes of the Biden administration, two of the sources said.

    It reflects the “urgency” of Republican plans to investigate the Biden administration on several fronts, the sources added.

    A third source told CNN that the move will effectively allow Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and select subcommittee to unilaterally issue subpoenas.

    In doing so, Republicans are taking a page from Democrats and former Oversight Committee chairman, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who previously waived rules that required members of the opposite party be consulted before subpoenas were issued.

    At the time, Republicans slammed the decision by Democrats as a violation of the bipartisan agreement that governs the subpoena process for certain House committees.

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  • Prosecutors in Alex Murdaugh murder trial play recording of his first interview after bodies of his son and wife were found | CNN

    Prosecutors in Alex Murdaugh murder trial play recording of his first interview after bodies of his son and wife were found | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    On the third day of the murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh, prosecutors showed the court video of Murdaugh’s first interview with authorities after his wife and son were found killed.

    In the interview, which had not been released publicly previously, Murdaugh described arriving at the scene where he could see the two bodies and told investigator he could see things were “bad” when he first pulled up to the home.

    Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime related to the deaths of his wife, Margaret, and son, Paul, who was 22 at the time of the June 7, 2021 crime. Opening statements for Murdaugh’s murder trial began earlier this week and is now in recess for the weekend, with the prosecution’s ninth witness still on the stand.

    In the interview played in court on Friday, Murdaugh told investigators he had left home that night to go check on his mother, who is a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient.

    Murdaugh said that after arriving and seeing the bodies, he tried to turn his son’s body over and then went over to his wife. He told investigators he touched both of them to try and take their pulse, adding he “tried to do it as limited as possible,” according to the video recording.

    He said there was blood around his son’s body but that he didn’t see anything else around other than Paul’s cellphone. Murdaugh broke down several times during the interview.

    Murdaugh said he called 911 and later his brothers and a good friend.

    Colleton County, South Carolina, Sheriff’s Office Det. Laura Rutland, who was among the officers who interviewed Murdaugh hours after the bodies were found, testified on Friday she did not see footprints or knee prints in the blood near Paul’s body.

    She also testified that she had seen Murdaugh’s hands and shirt that night and he was “clean,” telling the court she did not see any blood on him.

    In the video recording played in court, Murdaugh was asked by another law enforcement officer if there had been any problems and Murdaugh responded,”Nothing that I know of,” but added there had been negative publicity following a boat accident that Paul, his son, was involved in.

    At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges of boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm and causing death in connection to a 2019 boat crash that claimed the life of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, court records show.

    Alex Murdaugh said in the recording there had been some “vile stuff’ online directed at his son and that Paul had been “punched and hit and just attacked a lot,” but acknowledge he had not witnessed those incidents.

    Murdaugh then went on to allude about a man he recently had hired who Murdaugh said had allegedly shared a “freaky” story with Paul about getting drafted on an undercover team to “kill radical Black Panthers.”

    “I really do not think that in all honesty that it’s him, but I think you oughta check it out,” Murdaugh continued, according to the recording.

    Murdaugh also told investigators he owned about 20 or 25 guns.

    During cross examination, defense attorney Jim Griffin questioned Rutland about how another agent collected the clothing that Murdaugh was wearing that night and asked her if she had followed proper protocol, seeming to question the integrity of the investigation.

    Griffin also asked Rutland about notes in her report that night which said Murdaugh’s wife appeared to have strands of brown hair in her hands and fingers and that Paul appeared to have scratches on his face. Rutland told the court she noted what she observed.

    The prosecution also called as their eighth witness another agent, who testified she collected samples from the two bodies and a ninth witness, also an agent, who is expected to resume testimony on Monday morning.

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  • Peter Navarro contempt of Congress trial will be delayed for months, judge says | CNN Politics

    Peter Navarro contempt of Congress trial will be delayed for months, judge says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Friday delayed the contempt of Congress trial for former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro, likely for months, to allow for additional pre-trial debate over the role executive privilege could play when the case goes to a jury.

    Over the course of a nearly two-hour hearing Friday, US District Judge Amit Mehta grilled Justice Department prosecutors on the position the department has taken, in previous internal Office of Legal Counsel opinions, that close aides to a president can be immune from congressional subpoenas.

    The trial had been scheduled to begin on Monday.

    Mehta had opened the door to the possibility that Navarro could present evidence at trial – potentially taking the stand – that he had been told by Trump that the former president was invoking executive privilege over his testimony to the House January 6 Committee.

    So far, Navarro has presented no evidence that Trump made a such an invocation when he was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the now defunct House January 6 select committee.

    Federal prosecutors bristled at the idea that Navarro should still be allowed to present such evidence, arguing that it doesn’t exist in the first place and that if it did, it would not be up to the jury to decide whether such invocation would have shielded Navarro from the subpoenas.

    Mehta ultimately decided that the issue raised legal questions that needed to be decided before trial, so he postponed its Monday start date.

    The judge did not schedule a new date for the trial, and instead set a briefing schedule on the privilege questions that will extend through the end of March.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • These are the names to know in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh | CNN

    These are the names to know in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh is underway at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, a small town about 40 miles east of Charleston. The case goes back to June 2021, when Murdaugh’s wife and son were found shot to death at the family’s Islandton property, known as Moselle.

    Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime related to his wife and son’s deaths. Separate from the murder charges, he is also facing 99 charges stemming for alleged financial crimes.

    Here are the key players in the murder trial:

    Now disbarred, Murdaugh is a member of a prominent legal family in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Three generations of his family over 87 years have served as solicitor for the 14th Circuit, which oversaw prosecutions throughout the area. A portrait of his late grandfather, one of the solicitors, had hung on the wall of the courtroom; it was removed before trial. Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

    Alex Murdaugh’s wife, who was 52 when she was found fatally shot with the couple’s younger son at the family’s Moselle estate on June 7, 2021.

    Alex Murdaugh’s 22-year-old son, who was found fatally shot with his mother at the family’s Moselle estate on June 7, 2021. At the time, he was facing charges of boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm and causing death in connection to a 2019 boat crash that claimed the life of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, court records show. He had pleaded not guilty, and the charges were dropped after his death.

    South Carolina senior assistant deputy attorney general and lead prosecutor. He has been involved with the case since 2021. The state attorney general’s office is prosecuting the case because of the Murdaugh family’s close ties to the local solicitor’s office.

    One of Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorneys, along with Jim Griffin. Harpootlian is a South Carolina state senator and attorney whose Columbia-based practice specializes in criminal defense.

    One of Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorneys, along with Dick Harpootlian. A former federal prosecutor, he now works as a state and federal criminal defense attorney based in Columbia, South Carolina.

    Alex Murdaugh sits in the Colleton County Courthouse with defense attorneys Dick Harpootlian, middle, and Jim Griffin, right, on January 23.

    Judge Clifton Newman speaks during jury selection on Wednesday, January 25.

    The South Carolina Circuit Court judge hearing the case. He has been on the bench since 2000. Newman has presided over various proceedings in the Murdaugh case since 2021.

    A former client of Alex Murdaugh. Murdaugh told authorities he conspired with Smith to kill Murdaugh as part of an insurance fraud scheme, per court documents, purportedly so Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster, could collect a $10 million life insurance payout. Smith admitted in 2021 to being present at the shooting and disposing of the firearm afterward, according to an affidavit.

    Alex Murdaugh’s surviving son. He was in court for opening statements – the first time he has appeared at legal proceedings for his father – and is listed as a witness at trial. His father’s scheme for Smith to kill Murdaugh was “an attempt on his part to do something to protect his child (Buster),” Harpootlian, the attorney, said.

    Alex Murdaugh’s younger brother. He is listed as a witness at trial and accompanied Buster Murdaugh to court this week.

    The Murdaugh family’s longtime housekeeper who died in 2018 in what was described as a “trip and fall accident” at their home. Murdaugh is accused of misappropriating funds meant for Satterfield’s family as part of a wrongful death settlement.

    An expert in bloodstain pattern analysis who analyzed the shirt worn by Alex Murdaugh on the night his wife and son were killed. In a motion filed just before the trial, the defense asked the court to prohibit Bevel from testifying.

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  • Half Moon Bay shooting suspect legally owned his gun and targeted specific people, authorities said. Here’s what we know about him | CNN

    Half Moon Bay shooting suspect legally owned his gun and targeted specific people, authorities said. Here’s what we know about him | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The man suspected of killing four people at a California mushroom farm and three others at a nearby site had legal possession of a semi-automatic weapon that was registered to him, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said.

    The suspect, who authorities identified as 66-year-old Chunli Zhao, was not known to local law enforcement before the massacre and had shown no red flags as far as the sheriff’s office was aware, Corpus told CNN Tuesday morning.

    “There was nothing that would have kind of elevated or raised us to have any concern with him at this time, prior to this incident,” the sheriff said.

    This was a case, the sheriff continued, where someone “snaps,” and “innocent people were killed.”

    Officers found four people dead and one person wounded at the mushroom farm and, moments later, found three more people dead at a separate site about two miles away, officials said.

    The sheriff has described the attack as a “workplace violence incident,” saying Zhao targeted specific people and, though he had the opportunity to hurt others, “he went after and pursued” certain individuals.

    The sheriff’s office described the suspect as a “co-worker or former co-worker” of the victims at each shooting site.

    Zhao is expected to appear in court for an arraignment Wednesday afternoon, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Sean Gallagher said.

    There are many questions still unanswered about the attack, including what could have motivated the shooting, who the victims were and why they were targeted.

    But here’s what we know about the suspected gunman.

    County officials said authorities did not know “preceding factors” that would have suggested Zhao would carry out the attack.

    But it wasn’t the first time he was accused of violence against someone he worked with, court records obtained by CNN show.

    Zhao was subject to a temporary restraining order after a former coworker and roommate accused him of attacking and threatening him in 2013.

    Yingjiu Wang, who worked with Zhao at a restaurant and lived with him in a San Jose apartment, wrote in a court declaration that Zhao’s violent behavior started after Zhao quit that job in March 2013.

    Early in the morning two days later, Zhao came into Wang’s room and asked for his salary. When Wang told him to pick it up at the restaurant, Zhao said he would kill Wang, and then “took a pillow and started to cover my face and suffocate me,” Wang wrote.

    “While I couldn’t (breathe), I used all my might within the few seconds to push him away with my blanket,” Wang wrote. He said he called for help and another roommate came to the door, but Zhao had allegedly locked it. The two men ended up wrestling on Wang’s bed before Zhao calmed down, according to Wang.

    Two days later, he wrote, Zhao threatened him again, saying “he can use a knife to cut my head if he can’t come back to work.” Wang wrote he had no control over Zhao’s work status at the restaurant.

    A judge issued a temporary restraining order against Zhao, which prevented him from getting too close to Wang and banned him from owning or buying a gun, according to the court paperwork. The restraining order expired in July 2013. An attorney for Zhao in the 2013 complaint did not respond to requests for comment and Wang could not be reached for comment.

    The incident was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.

    San Mateo County sheriff deputies walk through a farm where a mass shooting occurred on January 23 in Half Moon Bay, California.

    Zhao lived at the first property, where four victims were killed, for about seven years, according to California Terra Garden spokesperson David Oates.

    The site, formerly known as Mountain Mushroom Farm, was acquired by the company California Terra Garden in March 2022, Oates said.

    There are several mobile homes and trailers for employees on the property, which is where the suspect lived, Oates added.

    Zhao was one of about 35 employees working at the farm, the spokesperson said, adding that in the background checks all employees have to go through, there was “nothing to indicate anything like this was even a possibility.”

    An employee who did not want to be named told CNN he had known the suspect for about six years and had considered him to be friendly and a “nice guy.” The two were coworkers at the farm and had both been working Monday, the employee said.

    The employee told CNN he took cover when the shooting began and when the gunfire stopped, he saw the suspect drive away from the scene on a forklift.

    The alleged gunman in the Half Moon Bay, California, mass shooting, Chunli Zhao, is being apprehended on January 23.

    Zhao, who authorities believe acted alone, was arrested roughly two hours after authorities received the first reports of a shooting.

    Deputies were dispatched a little after 2:20 p.m. local time. At roughly 4:40 p.m., the suspect was taken into custody after authorities found him in his vehicle at the parking lot of the Sheriff’s Office Half Moon Bay Police Substation, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

    A weapon was also found in his car, the release added.

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  • Closing arguments conclude in trial of accused NYC bike path terror suspect | CNN

    Closing arguments conclude in trial of accused NYC bike path terror suspect | CNN

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Closing arguments concluded Tuesday in the trial of Sayfullo Saipov, the man prosecutors say was radicalized by ISIS propaganda before he allegedly drove a rented truck down a bike path in New York, killing eight pedestrians in 2017.

    The judge is expected to charge the jury with the case Wednesday morning. He indicated the reading of the jury instructions will take several hours before deliberations begin.

    Defense attorney David Patton acknowledged in his closing argument that the defense does not dispute facts of the attack Saipov is accused of committing on Halloween in 2017.

    “It is no defense ‘I was convinced by others to do it,’ nobody forced him to do this and he’s guilty of murder and assault among many other crimes,” Patton told the jury.

    Six foreign tourists and two Americans were killed in the attack, the deadliest terrorist attack New York had seen since 9/11.

    The defense attorney disputed, however, prosecutors’ claim that Saipov was motivated to commit the attack to gain entry to ISIS.

    He argued that was not Saipov’s goal, and that the attack was spurred by religious fervor to please his God and “ascend to paradise” in his religion.

    Patton also noted ISIS does not call its members “soldiers of the Caliphate” as Saipov has referred to himself, according to trial evidence, but rather identifies its members by another term.

    The defense attorney said Saipov’s claim that an ISIS leader told him to commit the attack likely comes from a propaganda video recovered on his phone. Buying into ISIS propaganda does not suggest Saipov had any direct contact or coordination with ISIS members ahead of the attack, Patton said.

    In this courtroom sketch, Saipov listens during closing statements Tuesday.

    The people communicating with Saipov in “The House of the Caliphate” messaging group could have been anywhere, according to the defense attorney, and were not necessarily ISIS members in Syria or other territories occupied by the terrorist organization.

    Saipov faces eight capital counts of murder in aid of racketeering activity that could result in the death penalty if he’s convicted. The jury must determine in part whether the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that gaining entrance to ISIS was a substantial motivating factor for Saipov’s attack.

    “I just hope you will see why it is so important for you to get that right,” Patton told the jury in closing.

    Prosecutors told the jury in the government’s rebuttal Tuesday evening that Saipov must be convicted on all counts as they stand.

    “People who ISIS relies upon to conquer territory and kill non-believers, those are its soldiers. Of course they are part of ISIS. That is common sense,” prosecutor Amanda Leigh Houle said. “An organization engaged in a worldwide war needs its soldiers and its soldiers are part of the group.”

    The trial is the first federal death penalty case heard under President Joe Biden, who previously pledged to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level.

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  • DOJ sues Google over its dominance in online advertising market | CNN Business

    DOJ sues Google over its dominance in online advertising market | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department and eight states sued Google on Tuesday, accusing the company of harming competition with its dominance in the online advertising market and calling for it to be broken up.

    The move marks the Biden administration’s first blockbuster antitrust case against a Big Tech company. The eight states joining the suit include California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia.

    The fresh complaint significantly escalates the risks to Google emanating from Washington, where lawmakers and regulators have frequently raised concerns about the tech giant’s power but have so far failed to pass new legislation or regulations that might rein in the company or its peers.

    For years, Google’s critics have claimed that the company’s extensive role in the ecosystem that enables advertisers to place ads, and for publishers to offer up digital ad space, represents a conflict of interest that Google has exploited anticompetitively.

    In Tuesday’s complaint, a copy of which was viewed by CNN, the Justice Department alleged that Google actively and illegally maintained that dominance by engaging in a campaign to thwart competition. Google gobbled up rivals through anticompetitive mergers, the US government said, and bullied publishers and advertisers into using the company’s proprietary ad technology products.

    As part of the lawsuit, the US government called for Google to be broken up and for the court to order the company to spin off at least its online advertising exchange and its ad server for publishers, if not more.

    Google, the US government alleged, “has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising. Having inserted itself into all aspects of the digital advertising marketplace, Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.”

    The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

    Tuesday’s suit marks the federal government’s second antitrust complaint against Google since 2020, when the Trump administration sued over Google’s alleged anticompetitive harms in search and search advertising. That case is still ongoing. Google has also been the target of antitrust litigation by state and private actors.

    In a statement, Google said the DOJ suit “attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector.”

    “DOJ is doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees, and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow,” a Google spokesperson said, adding that a federal judge last year knocked down a claim that Google colluded with Facebook in a separate antitrust suit led by the state of Texas. That judge also ruled, however, that a number of monopolization claims in the Texas case could move forward.

    The lawsuit is a frontal assault against Google’s massive, primary business of advertising. Google generated $209 billion in advertising revenue in 2021, according to its annual report, a figure representing more than 80% of its total revenue. By comparison, the next largest giant in online advertising, Facebook-parent Meta, generated $115 billion in 2021.

    Third-party estimates suggest that Google and Facebook accounted for the majority of US digital ad revenues, hitting a peak around 2017, with Google taking about a third of the market. Since then, however, others including Amazon have begun encroaching on that business.

    The US complaint echoes concerns that have prompted similar antitrust investigations in the United Kingdom and in the European Union.

    Google not only controls the platform publishers use to sell online ad inventory, the Justice Department alleged Tuesday, but also the advertising tools marketers use to claim that inventory and the exchange that facilitates those transactions.

    “Google’s pervasive power over the entire ad tech industry has been questioned by its own digital advertising executives,” the complaint said, “at least one of whom aptly begged the question: ‘[I]s there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network? The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE.’”

    Tuesday’s complaint marks an opening salvo against Big Tech by DOJ’s antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter. Kanter has spent months laying the groundwork for a broader offensive against the tech industry’s most dominant companies, reflecting commitments by President Joe Biden and others in the US government to hold powerful firms accountable. Under Kanter, Justice Department antitrust officials have pushed to bring more cases to trial as well as to prosecute cases involving unconventional legal theories.

    In 2020, House lawmakers released a 450-page report finding that Google, along with Amazon, Apple and Facebook, hold “monopoly power” in key business segments. The report was the result of a 16-month investigation in which congressional staff reviewed corporate documents and interviewed the tech industry’s many customers and rivals. It concluded, among other things, that Google was uniquely positioned to benefit from its powerful role in the online ad industry.

    “With a sizable share in the ad exchange market and the ad intermediary market, and as a leading supplier of ad space, Google simultaneously acts on behalf of publishers and advertisers, while also trading for itself,” the report said.

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