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Category: Law/Crime

Corruption: Clarence Thomas accepted gifts worth millions of dollars over 20 years, analysis finds

Corruption: Clarence Thomas accepted gifts worth millions of dollars over 20 years, analysis finds

CNBC reports: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted millions of dollars’ worth of gifts over the past two decades on the bench, a total nearly 10 times the value of all gifts received by his fellow justices during the same time, according to a new analysis. Thomas received 103 gifts with a total value of more than $2.4 million between 2004 and 2023, the judicial reform group Fix the Court said in a report Thursday. In contrast, Thomas’ fellow justices…

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U.S. clears way for antitrust inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

U.S. clears way for antitrust inquiries of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

The New York Times reports: Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter,…

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Former Meta engineer sues company saying he was fired over handling of Gaza content

Former Meta engineer sues company saying he was fired over handling of Gaza content

Reuters reports: A former Meta engineer on Tuesday accused the company of bias in its handling of content related to the war in Gaza, claiming in a lawsuit that Meta fired him for trying to help fix bugs causing the suppression of Palestinian Instagram posts. Ferras Hamad, a Palestinian-American engineer who had been on Meta’s machine learning team since 2021, sued the social media giant in a California state court for discrimination, wrongful termination and other wrongdoing over his February…

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: Alito’s MAGA battle flags

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: Alito’s MAGA battle flags

  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Courts Subcommittee, delivers the 32nd in a series of speeches titled “The Scheme,” exposing the machinations by right-wing donor interests to capture the Supreme Court and achieve through the Court what they cannot through the elected branches of government. Whitehouse discusses the ethics violations related to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s MAGA battle flags that flew at two of his homes, and Chief Justice Roberts’s refusal to take action as…

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Multiple Trump witnesses have received significant financial benefits from his businesses, campaign

Multiple Trump witnesses have received significant financial benefits from his businesses, campaign

By Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica. Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company. The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis of public disclosures, court records and securities filings. One campaign aide had his…

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Samuel Alito’s king complex is warping reality on and off the bench

Samuel Alito’s king complex is warping reality on and off the bench

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern: Dahlia Lithwick: I think the merits can get lost when we talk about the flags. But there is a substantive problem that we’re starting to pick up on, and that is Justice Alito, in recent weeks, making very real and serious errors in his opinions. They’re actually prompting corrections from sources that he cites, who say, “No, my work reflects the opposite of what you’re claiming.” I’d love for you to unpack that. Mark…

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Vermont becomes first state to enact law requiring oil companies pay for damage from climate change

Vermont becomes first state to enact law requiring oil companies pay for damage from climate change

The Associated Press reports: Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather. Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday, saying he is very concerned about the costs and outcome of the small state taking on “Big Oil” alone in what will likely…

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Trump bungled the trial

Trump bungled the trial

Ankush Khardori writes: It may not have been the trial that the country deserves, but it’s the trial that we got. On Thursday, Donald Trump became the first president in U.S. history to become a convicted felon thanks to a jury of 12 New Yorkers. The verdict was swift, coming after less than two days of deliberations in the hush money trial. But a conviction was not inevitable. The legal issues were intricate and in some key respects novel, and…

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Following his conviction on all counts, Donald Trump’s future is now in Judge Merchan’s hands

Following his conviction on all counts, Donald Trump’s future is now in Judge Merchan’s hands

Time magazine reports: [Following Donald Trump’s conviction, t]he experienced New York Supreme Court judge who has presided over Trump’s Manhattan trial for six weeks will have several thorny decisions before him including whether he should send a former President to jail or probation, and if any sentence should be postponed until after Trump has exhausted his appeals. Every decision would reverberate across the political landscape and, depending on the timing, could greatly affect the election in November. That’s a lot…

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Israeli campaign against ICC may be ‘crimes against justice’, say legal experts

Israeli campaign against ICC may be ‘crimes against justice’, say legal experts

The Guardian reports: Efforts by Israel’s intelligence agencies to undermine and influence the international criminal court (ICC) could amount to “offences against the administration of justice” and should be investigated by its chief prosecutor, legal experts have said. Responding to revelations about Israeli surveillance and espionage operations against the ICC, multiple leading international law experts said the conduct of Israeli intelligence services could amount to criminal offences. The disclosures about Israel’s nine-year campaign against the court were published on Tuesday…

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How to force Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves in the Jan. 6 cases

How to force Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves in the Jan. 6 cases

Rep. Jamie Raskin writes: Everyone assumes that nothing can be done about the recusal situation because the highest court in the land has the lowest ethical standards — no binding ethics code or process outside of personal reflection. Each justice decides for him- or herself whether he or she can be impartial. Of course, Justices Alito and Thomas could choose to recuse themselves — wouldn’t that be nice? But begging them to do the right thing misses a far more…

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Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the International Criminal Court exposed

Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the International Criminal Court exposed

The Guardian reports: When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately.” Karim Khan did not provide specific details of attempts to interfere in the ICC’s work, but he noted a clause in the court’s foundational treaty that made any such interference a criminal…

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EU foreign ministers discuss sanctions against Israel

EU foreign ministers discuss sanctions against Israel

Politico reports: EU foreign ministers have for the first time engaged in a “significant” discussion on sanctioning Israel if it doesn’t comply with international humanitarian law, Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said Monday. “There was a very clear consensus about the need to uphold the international humanitarian legal institutions,” Martin told reporters following the Foreign Affairs Council. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled Friday that Israel must immediately halt its offensive in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, and…

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Latin America shows why ecocide must be an international crime

Latin America shows why ecocide must be an international crime

Rodrigo Lledó writes: Before leaving power in 1990, Chilean general and dictator Augusto Pinochet created a legal framework that guaranteed him absolute impunity. It didn’t work. He was arrested on charges of genocide and terrorism in London in 1998 by order of the Spanish justice system and, upon his return to Chile, finally had to face justice. Years later, I had the opportunity to lead a team of public lawyers trying nearly 900 cases of crimes against humanity during the…

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Israel is committing genocide, says Human Rights Watch founder and Holocaust survivor, Aryeh Neier

Israel is committing genocide, says Human Rights Watch founder and Holocaust survivor, Aryeh Neier

Read Aryeh Neier’s article on Israel and the question of genocide here: https://t.co/nX1cUoauuC https://t.co/zQomIrXw16 — The New York Review of Books (@nybooks) May 27, 2024 Columbia University World Leaders Forum: Before joining the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations as President in September 1993, Aryeh Neier spent twelve years as Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, of which he was a founder in 1978. Prior to that position, he worked for the American Civil Liberties Union for fifteen years,…

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Violent crackdown on pro-Palestine march raises doubts about policing reform in NYPD

Violent crackdown on pro-Palestine march raises doubts about policing reform in NYPD

The Associated Press reports: When New York City resolved a lawsuit brought by Black Lives Matter demonstrators last year by agreeing to overhaul how police respond to protests, Mayor Eric Adams praised the suite of reforms as sensible steps to “move our city forward.” But some civil rights lawyers are now questioning the mayor’s commitment to the deal in the wake of the New York Police Department’s aggressive response to a pro-Palestinian demonstration Saturday. Police arrested more than 40 people…

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