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Category: Law/Crime

Press freedom in the crosshairs as DeSantis widens his assault on an open society

Press freedom in the crosshairs as DeSantis widens his assault on an open society

Politico reports: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ broken relationship with the mainstream media could get even worse. At the governor’s urging, Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature is pushing to weaken state laws that have long protected journalists against defamation suits and frivolous lawsuits. The proposal is part DeSantis’ ongoing feud with media outlets like The New York Times, Miami Herald, CNN and The Washington Post — media companies he claims are biased against Republicans — as he prepares for a likely 2024 presidential…

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Jury in Georgia Trump inquiry recommended multiple indictments, forewoman says

Jury in Georgia Trump inquiry recommended multiple indictments, forewoman says

The New York Times reports: A special grand jury that investigated election interference by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia recommended indictments of multiple people on a range of charges in its report, most of which remains sealed, the forewoman of the jury said in an interview today. “It is not a short list,” the forewoman, Emily Kohrs, said, adding that the jury had appended eight pages of legal code “that we cited at various points…

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As the pandemic swept America, deaths in prisons rose nearly 50 percent

As the pandemic swept America, deaths in prisons rose nearly 50 percent

The New York Times reports: Deaths in state and federal prisons across America rose nearly 50 percent during the first year of the pandemic, and in six states they more than doubled, according to the first comprehensive data on prison fatalities in the era of Covid-19. The tremendous jump in deaths in 2020 was more than twice the increase in the United States overall, and even exceeded estimates of the percentage increase at nursing homes, among the hardest-hit sectors nationwide….

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U.S. formally accuses Russia of crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Harris says

U.S. formally accuses Russia of crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Harris says

Politico reports: The United States has determined that Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Saturday, the latest salvo in the West’s effort to hold Moscow accountable for its wartime atrocities. In a marquee address at the Munich Security Conference, Harris detailed that Russia is responsible for a “widespread and systematic attack” against Ukraine’s civilian population, citing evidence of execution-style killings, rape, torture and forceful deportations — sometimes perpetrated against children. As a result,…

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Trump leaked classified Russia papers to conservative journalist

Trump leaked classified Russia papers to conservative journalist

Murray Waas reports: In the closing days of his presidency— as President Donald J. Trump was preparing to declassify and make public almost a thousand pages of highly classified records pertaining to the FBI investigation into Russia’s covert interference in the 2016 presidential election to help elect him, and defeat Hillary Clinton — he turned to conservative columnist John Solomon for help. On Jan 14, 2021, less than a week before Trump was to leave office, Solomon excitedly declared on…

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GOP operative sentenced to 18 months for funneling Russian money to Trump campaign

GOP operative sentenced to 18 months for funneling Russian money to Trump campaign

Mother Jones reports: On Friday, a federal judge in Washington, DC sentenced a veteran GOP operative to 18 months in prison for funneling $25,000 from a Russian businessman to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Jesse Benton, a longtime aide to both Ron and Rand Paul, was convicted in November on six related charges. The court found that he and another GOP operative accepted $100,000 from Roman Vasilenko, a St. Petersburg-based influencer who wanted photos with Trump to display on his social…

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One more sign that Special Counsel Jack Smith is deadly serious

One more sign that Special Counsel Jack Smith is deadly serious

Dennis Aftergut writes: This weekend brought the strange news that Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Donald Trump, asked the grand jury to issue a subpoena to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office for an empty folder. Why? The Guardian reports that last month, Smith subpoenaed the folder, marked “Classified Evening Briefing,” even though Trump’s lawyers told him it had nothing in it. This tells us something important: that Smith is serious about pressing forward with a case against Trump for his 18 months of obstructing government efforts to…

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Constitutional originalism is going to get women killed

Constitutional originalism is going to get women killed

Madiba Dennie writes: American law has not historically been good to women, and whatever progress there once was is now vulnerable to regression. This return is being midwifed into the world by the theory of constitutional interpretation known as originalism—the idea that a law’s constitutionality today is dependent on the Constitution’s purported “original public meaning” when the relevant constitutional text was enacted. Its adherents market originalism as fair and free from favor or prejudice—but its effects are not and will not be…

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How the case of arrested FBI agent Charles McGonigal is tied to a Russia-linked influence effort

How the case of arrested FBI agent Charles McGonigal is tied to a Russia-linked influence effort

Mother Jones reports: It was shocking news: Charles McGonigal, a former counterintelligence chief for the FBI, was arrested for his alleged role in two separate schemes. In one, he purportedly accepted $225,000 from an Albanian American businessman, while he was still in the FBI, and did favors for that businessman and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. In the other, McGonigal, after he retired in 2018, allegedly provided investigative services to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was sanctioned in 2018 for assisting the global “malign” activities of Putin’s…

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Investigate Bolsonaro for genocide, says Brazil’s environment minister

Investigate Bolsonaro for genocide, says Brazil’s environment minister

The Guardian reports: Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land. In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series of operations by plane and helicopter to expel thousands of miners, who proliferated in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory during Bolsonaro’s administration, contaminating Amazonian rivers, wrecking…

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Trump’s hush money is news again. Here’s why we should care

Trump’s hush money is news again. Here’s why we should care

Norman L. Eisen, E. Danya Perry and Fred Wertheimer write: A criminal investigation of former president Donald Trump now being restarted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and also discussed in a new book by one of his former prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz, raises vital issues of both election integrity and accountability. Both the investigation and the book address Trump’s hush money payments in the last days of his 2016 campaign and related matters. His personal attorney went to jail for campaign finance…

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Federal judge says constitutional right to abortion may still exist, despite Dobbs

Federal judge says constitutional right to abortion may still exist, despite Dobbs

Politico reports: A federal judge in Washington, D.C., suggested Monday that there may be a constitutional right to abortion baked into the 13th Amendment — an area she said went unexplored by the Supreme Court in its momentous decision last year overturning Roe v. Wade. In a pending criminal case against several anti-abortion activists, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concluded only that the 14th Amendment included no right to abortion but stopped…

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Suspects arrested in plot to attack power stations, destroy Baltimore

Suspects arrested in plot to attack power stations, destroy Baltimore

ABC News reports: A Florida man and a Maryland woman have been arrested on federal charges of plotting to attack multiple energy substation with the goal of destroying Baltimore, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday. The suspects, Sarah Clendaniel of Catonsville, Maryland, and Brandon Russell of Orlando, Florida, were allegedly fueled by a racist extremist ideology as they “conspired to inflict maximum harm” on the power grid with the aim to “completely destroy” Baltimore, U.S. Attorney Erek Barron and…

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Supreme Court justices used personal emails for work and ‘burn bags’ were left open in hallways, sources say

Supreme Court justices used personal emails for work and ‘burn bags’ were left open in hallways, sources say

CNN reports: Long before the leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, some Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts for sensitive transmissions instead of secure servers set up to guard such information, among other security lapses not made public in the court’s report on the investigation last month. New details revealed to CNN by multiple sources familiar with the court’s operations offer an even more detailed picture of yearslong lax internal procedures that could have endangered…

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At the Supreme Court, ethics questions over chief justice’s wife’s business ties

At the Supreme Court, ethics questions over chief justice’s wife’s business ties

The New York Times reports: After Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the Supreme Court, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, gave up her career as a law firm partner to become a high-end legal recruiter in an effort to alleviate potential conflicts of interest. Mrs. Roberts later recalled in an interview that her husband’s job made it “awkward to be practicing law in the firm.” Now, a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work…

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