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Category: Law/Crime

Lessons on genocide from Xinjiang and Gaza

Lessons on genocide from Xinjiang and Gaza

Nader Hashemi and James A. Millward write: Days before the International Court of Justice’s initial ruling late last month that found there was a plausible risk of genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, the United Nations Human Rights Council conducted its “universal periodic review” of China’s human rights record. China’s abusive treatment of Uyghur and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang province—which many governments around the world, including both U.S. administrations under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, have officially called…

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GOP’s Biden impeachment witness told feds he got stories from Russian officials

GOP’s Biden impeachment witness told feds he got stories from Russian officials

The Daily Beast reports: The increasingly-discredited star witness for the GOP-led impeachment inquiry into president Joe Biden admitted to federal authorities that he had ties to high-ranking Russian officials, according to a memo from special counsel David Weiss filed on Tuesday. “[Alexander] Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials who are affiliated with Russian intelligence services are not benign,” the memo said. “During his custodial interview on February 14, Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a…

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Fani Willis turns the tables on her attackers

Fani Willis turns the tables on her attackers

Jennifer Rubin writes: Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand last week under attack from Michael Roman, former henchman 0f four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump, and many in the media and legal community. At issue was whether her romantic relationship with a special counsel, Nathan Wade, was grounds for disqualifying her from the sprawling RICO case she brought against Trump and nearly 20 co-defendants (some of whom struck plea deals). What was legally at issue — the…

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Judge Engoron’s ruling is a detailed road map to Trump’s thievery

Judge Engoron’s ruling is a detailed road map to Trump’s thievery

David Cay Johnston writes: The news about the eye-popping $355 million judgment against Donald Trump Friday minimized or even missed the real story in the judge’s richly detailed ruling. In justifying his findings of fact, New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s analysis of testimony in Trump’s seven-week civil fraud trial in Manhattan showed how everything Trump does is based on consistent and shameless cheating, deceiving, falsifying documents, and lying. The 92-page ruling establishes that Trump isn’t a business genius, a modern…

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Why Trump’s sleaziest criminal case is so important

Why Trump’s sleaziest criminal case is so important

David Corn writes: Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s indictment-o-rama, the politerati have considered the criminal case filed in New York City against the former president by District Attorney Alvin Bragg to be a sideshow. Though this case has key elements of a bona fide scandal—porn star! hush money! alleged extramarital affair!—pundits and politicos have struck a dismissive attitude toward Trump’s Stormy Daniels mess and the legal peril it poses him. Perhaps because it’s not as weighty a matter as…

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National security experts criticize Biden’s handling of classified documents

National security experts criticize Biden’s handling of classified documents

NBC News reports: The controversy over special counsel Robert Hur’s characterization of President Joe Biden’s memory has obscured one of the most surprising findings in his report: evidence that Biden knowingly kept classified materials at home for years and failed to turn them in. After a yearlong investigation, Hur found that the evidence of “willful retention” — the language in the criminal statute — wasn’t strong enough to justify a prosecution. And he explained in detail why the criminal charges…

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Trump allies plan new sweeping abortion restrictions

Trump allies plan new sweeping abortion restrictions

The New York Times reports: Allies of former President Donald J. Trump and officials who served in his administration are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country. Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a…

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Can Trump pay? What if he doesn’t? Here’s what to know about Trump’s massive civil judgments

Can Trump pay? What if he doesn’t? Here’s what to know about Trump’s massive civil judgments

Politico reports: A seven-figure verdict, an eight-figure verdict and, now, a nine-figure verdict. Donald Trump has been hit with all three in the past nine months, with Friday’s $354 million penalty for New York business fraud by far the most massive. He is now on the hook for over $440 million in civil judgments as he heads toward the Republican nomination — and as he prepares for one or more criminal trials this year. Those criminal cases could put him…

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Trump is suddenly in need of a lot of cash. That’s everyone’s problem

Trump is suddenly in need of a lot of cash. That’s everyone’s problem

Vox reports: Two recent verdicts have now left Donald Trump on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars. On Friday, a New York judge handed the former president a $355 million penalty, and banned him from serving in a leadership position in any business in New York for three years, for fraudulently inflating his net worth to lenders in order to receive more favorable loan agreements. And in January, a Manhattan jury ordered Trump to pay the writer E….

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Plastics reckoning: PVC is ubiquitous, but maybe not for long

Plastics reckoning: PVC is ubiquitous, but maybe not for long

Nicola Jones writes: The word “vinyl” might sound innocuous, bringing to mind everyday items like LP records, flooring, pipes, or shiny plastic pants. The plastic this name refers to — polyvinyl chloride (PVC) — is the world’s third-most widely produced synthetic polymer, with more than 50 million tons cranked out each year for everything from window frames to food wrap, fake leather car seats to medical products. It’s everywhere. But environmentalists and NGOs have been raising alarms about PVC for…

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Gaza and the end of the rules-based order

Gaza and the end of the rules-based order

Agnès Callamard writes: After more than four months of conflict, Israel’s campaign of retaliation against Hamas has been characterized by a pattern of war crimes and violations of international law. Israel’s stated justification for its war in Gaza is the elimination of Hamas, which is responsible for the horrific crimes committed during its October 7 attack on Israel: 1,139 people, mostly Israeli civilians, killed; thousands more wounded; a yet unknown number of women and girls subjected to sexual violence; and…

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Judge rules full speed ahead on Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial

Judge rules full speed ahead on Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial

The Daily Beast reports: Donald Trump will face trial next month in New York City for faking documents to cover up his sexual affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, becoming the first American president to face a jury on criminal charges. On Thursday, Justice Juan Merchan refused to dismiss the case and set the trial to start March 25, as previously planned. Trump’s lead defense lawyer, Todd Blanche, immediately called the decision to keep the start of trial on schedule…

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Ireland, Spain want EU to review Israel’s human rights compliance in Gaza

Ireland, Spain want EU to review Israel’s human rights compliance in Gaza

Reuters reports: The prime ministers of Spain and Ireland asked the European Commission on Wednesday to urgently review whether Israel is complying with its human rights obligations in Gaza. At least 1,200 Israelis were killed and around 250 were taken hostage in a raid by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7, prompting Israel to retaliate. At least 28,576 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli strikes, the health ministry in Gaza said on Wednesday. Palestinians jammed into their…

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The tangled fates of Fani Willis and her biggest case

The tangled fates of Fani Willis and her biggest case

Charles Bethea writes: This past August, Manny Arora, a lawyer in Atlanta, considered an unusual challenge to the charges brought against his client Kenneth Chesebro. Arora, who is in his fifties, is an unflappable retired Air Force prosecutor. He has argued cases on behalf of the former N.F.L. star Adam (Pacman) Jones and Gucci Mane, the Atlanta rapper. Chesebro was a big client, too: a Harvard-trained lawyer and one of the alleged architects of Donald Trump’s scheme to have several…

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Biden administration investigating Israel’s possible war crimes — despite public claims to the contrary

Biden administration investigating Israel’s possible war crimes — despite public claims to the contrary

HuffPost reports: A month ago, White House spokesperson John Kirby declared Washington was so confident in Israel’s U.S.-backed offensive in Gaza that the U.S. did not need to investigate its actions. “I’m not aware of any kind of formal assessment being done by the United States government to analyze the compliance with international law by our partner Israel,” Kirby told reporters on Jan. 4, as the Biden administration rallied to defend Israel against an International Court of Justice case arguing…

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Dutch court orders halt to export of F-35 jet parts to Israel

Dutch court orders halt to export of F-35 jet parts to Israel

Reuters reports: A Dutch appeals court on Monday ordered the government to block all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel over concerns they were being used in violations of international law during Israel’s Gaza offensive. It said the state had to comply with the order within seven days and dismissed a request by government lawyers to suspend the order pending an appeal to the Supreme Court. The state has eight weeks to appeal against the decision. “It is…

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