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Category: Law/Crime

Fox News’s settlement in the Dominion case is big news, except on Fox News

Fox News’s settlement in the Dominion case is big news, except on Fox News

The New York Times reports: Fox News’s last-minute settlement with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday earned banner coverage on every television news network but one: Fox News. The $787.5 million settlement was covered only three times by Fox News in about four hours after the settlement became public, amounting to about six minutes of coverage. For most of the day, including during the network’s prime-time shows, hosts appeared to be focusing on other issues, like illegal immigration and Covid-19’s possible…

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Fox can claim tax writeoff for defamation settlement

Fox can claim tax writeoff for defamation settlement

The Lever reports: Fox’s massive settlement with private equity-backed voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems didn’t just spare the conservative news organization from a lengthy public defamation trial or a full public reckoning for its election lies — it could also mean a tax break as large as $213 million, according to a Lever review. On Tuesday, Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation agreed to pay a $787 million settlement to Dominion, the largest-known media defamation payout in U.S. history, concluding two years of litigation over…

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Trump’s fake Georgia electors are now ratting on each other

Trump’s fake Georgia electors are now ratting on each other

The Daily Beast reports: The fake GOP electors in Georgia that former President Donald Trump recruited as part of his failed attempt to stay in power are starting to point fingers at each other, court documents revealed on Tuesday. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area prosecutor who’s investigating Trump’s effort to upend American democracy there, laid out the details in a legal memo to a state judge—one that hints at criminal indictments to come. According to the memo,…

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Does Clarence Thomas think he’s above the law?

Does Clarence Thomas think he’s above the law?

Jamelle Bouie writes: The law is a little different for those at the top. As the world now knows, Justice Clarence Thomas did not disclose a real estate deal he and his family made in 2014 with Harlan Crow, a billionaire Republican donor. Thomas and several other relatives sold his mother’s home in Savannah, Ga., along with two vacant lots, for $133,363 to a company owned by Crow. “Soon after the sale was completed,” according to ProPublica, “contractors began work…

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U.S. charges four Americans with aiding Kremlin efforts

U.S. charges four Americans with aiding Kremlin efforts

The Washington Post reports: Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States. The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials…

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DA Bragg’s secret weapon may be a lawyer who’s dogged Trump for years

DA Bragg’s secret weapon may be a lawyer who’s dogged Trump for years

The Daily Beast reports: A little-known lawyer in New York has long been the thorn in Donald Trump’s side, pressing deeper with every passing year by taking down his scammy charity, blocking his presidential policies, investigating his finances, grilling his annoyed son with questions, and finally indicting the former president last month. Matthew Colangelo, after years of relentlessly aggressive work, is finally on Trump’s personal radar—and that of his most combative MAGA allies, who’ve painted a target on his back…

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FBI arrests two on charges tied to Chinese police outpost in New York City

FBI arrests two on charges tied to Chinese police outpost in New York City

The New York Times reports: For years, thousands of New Yorkers and tourists have walked past an unassuming office building in Lower Manhattan. On Monday, federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges accusing two men of helping run an unauthorized Chinese police outpost there, one of more than 100 around the globe used to intimidate and control China’s citizens abroad, and to stamp out criticism of the ruling Communist Party. The two men were arrested on Monday and charged with conspiring to…

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How Portland police blanketed parts of the city with toxic chemicals

How Portland police blanketed parts of the city with toxic chemicals

The Guardian reports: Investigators have created a 3D simulation of the Portland police bureau’s (PPB) extraordinary use of teargas during a major protest event on 2 June 2020. Forensic Architecture (FA), a research agency that investigates human rights violations, worked with weapons experts to analyze hundreds of videos from that evening, along with internal police files, invoice records, manufacturer data and photos of teargas canisters. The analysis reveals that the city’s downtown was blanketed with gas at more than 50 times the level federal regulators…

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Clarence Thomas has for years claimed income from a defunct real estate firm

Clarence Thomas has for years claimed income from a defunct real estate firm

The Washington Post reports: Over the last two decades, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has reported on required financial disclosure forms that his family received rental income totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a firm called Ginger, Ltd., Partnership. But that company — a Nebraska real estate firm launched in the 1980s by his wife and her relatives — has not existed since 2006. That year, the family real estate company was shut down and a separate firm was…

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Fox News is on trial, and so are lies about 2020

Fox News is on trial, and so are lies about 2020

The New York Times reports: A judge in Delaware Superior Court is expected to swear in the jury as soon as Monday in a defamation trial that has little precedent in American law. Fox News, one of the most powerful and profitable media companies, will defend itself against extensive evidence suggesting it told its audience a story of conspiracy and fraud in the 2020 election it knew wasn’t true. The jury will be asked to weigh lofty questions about the…

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Matthew Kacsmaryk falsified record of his publications provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee

Matthew Kacsmaryk falsified record of his publications provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee

The Washington Post reports: As a lawyer for a conservative legal group, Matthew Kacsmaryk in early 2017 submitted an article to a Texas law review criticizing Obama-era protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions. The Obama administration, the draft article argued, had discounted religious physicians who “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.” But a few months after the…

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Leak raises fresh questions about Pentagon’s internal security

Leak raises fresh questions about Pentagon’s internal security

The Washington Post reports: The leak of hundreds of classified intelligence documents about the war in Ukraine and U.S. spying on allies has left many officials asking: How did this happen again? Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old, low-level National Guard member assigned to an intelligence support squadron in Massachusetts, allegedly removed hundreds of classified documents from his office on base and brought them home. He then shared them with his friends in an online community united by their love of guns…

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Why Jack Teixeira had access to so much classified information

Why Jack Teixeira had access to so much classified information

Fred Kaplan writes: One of the odd mysteries in the case of Jack Teixeira—the 21-year-old airman arrested on Thursday for pilfering and leaking hundreds of highly classified documents to pals online—turns out not to be so odd after all. The puzzle, as I noted in a column on Thursday, is why the Massachusetts Air National Guard, which is where Teixeira worked, would have access to such material in the first place. The answer is that Otis Air Base, the Cape…

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FBI makes probable cause arrest of Jack Teixeira in connection with classified documents leak

FBI makes probable cause arrest of Jack Teixeira in connection with classified documents leak

ABC News reports: The FBI on Thursday made a probable cause arrest in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in connection with the leaked documents probe. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Jack Teixeira was taken into custody in relation to the investigation into “alleged authorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.” Teixeira, 21, is a member of the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard. “FBI agents took Teixeira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident,” the attorney general said. “He will…

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Billionaire Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. The justice didn’t disclose the deal

Billionaire Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas. The justice didn’t disclose the deal

ProPublica reports: In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the road. What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives. The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the…

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Judge imposes sanction on Fox for withholding evidence in defamation case

Judge imposes sanction on Fox for withholding evidence in defamation case

The New York Times reports: The judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News said on Wednesday that he was imposing a sanction on the network and would very likely start an investigation into whether Fox’s legal team had deliberately withheld evidence, scolding the lawyers for not being “straightforward” with him. The rebuke came after lawyers for Dominion, which is suing for defamation, revealed a number of instances in which Fox’s lawyers had not turned over evidence in a…

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