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Category: Law/Crime

Trump appointee who assaulted Capitol officers on Jan. 6 sentenced to nearly 6 years

Trump appointee who assaulted Capitol officers on Jan. 6 sentenced to nearly 6 years

NBC News reports: A former Donald Trump political appointee at the State Department who tried to storm the Capitol and assaulted law enforcement officers on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to 70 months in prison on Friday. Federico Klein was arrested in March 2021 and convicted of eight felonies as well as misdemeanor offenses by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, also a Trump appointee, in July 2023 following a bench trial. Klein did not speak during his sentencing hearing and…

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Mark Meadows slapped with book publisher lawsuit over false election claims

Mark Meadows slapped with book publisher lawsuit over false election claims

Rolling Stone reports: Mark Meadows‘ book publisher has sued the former Trump administration chief of staff over breach of contract allegations relating to false claims he made regarding the 2020 Presidential Election. In the lawsuit filed Friday and obtained by Rolling Stone, book publisher All Seasons Press (ASP) alleged that Meadows had originally “promised and represented that all statements” in his 2021 memoir The Chief’s Chief were “‘true and based on reasonable research for accuracy,’ and that he ‘has not…

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Trump’s Truth Social page is a riot of witness intimidation

Trump’s Truth Social page is a riot of witness intimidation

Liz Dye writes: On August 6, Alabama man Arthur Ray Hanson, II, left a voicemail threatening Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis with violence if she charged Donald Trump with interference in the 2020 election. “I would be very afraid if I were you because you can’t be around people all the time that are going to protect you,” he said on the recorded call. “When you charge Trump on that fourth indictment, anytime you’re alone, be looking over your…

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If Trump wins, his allies want lawyers who will bless a more radical agenda

If Trump wins, his allies want lawyers who will bless a more radical agenda

The New York Times reports: Close allies of Donald J. Trump are preparing to populate a new administration with a more aggressive breed of right-wing lawyer, dispensing with traditional conservatives who they believe stymied his agenda in his first term. The allies have been drawing up lists of lawyers they view as ideologically and temperamentally suited to serve in a second Trump administration. Their aim is to reduce the chances that politically appointed lawyers would frustrate a more radical White…

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Top Trump allies facing charges lose lawyers after failing to pay legal bills

Top Trump allies facing charges lose lawyers after failing to pay legal bills

The Guardian reports: A trio of top Donald Trump allies who have racked up huge legal expenses to defend themselves from either criminal charges, convictions or defamation lawsuits have lost key lawyers for failing to pay six- and seven-figure bills in a sign of the huge legal problems they face. The hefty legal bills of the ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, underscore the scale of the criminal and civil charges that…

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Ivanka Trump helped her dad lie about his net worth

Ivanka Trump helped her dad lie about his net worth

Forbes reports: Ivanka Trump is expected to testify on Friday in a $250 million fraud case that the New York attorney general is waging against her father and his associates. That’s bad news for Ivanka, who tried to get out of taking the stand. But it might be even worse news for her father, who employed Ivanka in his years-long con to convince the world that he had more money than he actually did. The attorney general will have plenty…

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Colorado judge rejects Trump’s bid to toss lawsuit aimed at keeping him off 2024 ballot

Colorado judge rejects Trump’s bid to toss lawsuit aimed at keeping him off 2024 ballot

NBC News reports: A Colorado judge on Wednesday denied the latest attempt by former President Donald Trump to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to remove him from the state’s 2024 ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. The decision comes just days before a trial on Trump’s eligibility for the ballot is expected to begin. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of six voters in Denver district court last month, says Trump should be disqualified from running…

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Sidney Powell still pushing claims that 2020 election was rigged after pleading guilty to election interference

Sidney Powell still pushing claims that 2020 election was rigged after pleading guilty to election interference

Insider reports: On X, formerly known as Twitter, she has shared posts purporting that the 2020 election was rigged and that law enforcement was politically biased against conservatives. Over the weekend, Powell shared a post complaining that Trump “can’t even have attorney client privilege.” She also shared a post that said a new survey found many Democrats believed “cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election.” On Monday, she asked her followers to watch “Police State,” a new movie from…

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Ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows granted immunity, tells special counsel he warned Trump about 2020 claims

Ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows granted immunity, tells special counsel he warned Trump about 2020 claims

ABC News reports: Former President Donald Trump’s final chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith’s team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came only after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter. The sources said Meadows informed Smith’s team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations…

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Trump operates ‘like the mafia’ says Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt

Trump operates ‘like the mafia’ says Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt

The New York Times reports: New details of how an American president and an Australian billionaire bonded over their mutual self-interest help to document the transactional ethos of the Trump presidency, and show how Mr. Trump melded his White House with his personal business in a way that, according to prosecutors, had ramifications for national security. Mr. Pratt was hardly the only favor seeker circling Mar-a-Lago, which became the fulcrum of the president’s two overlapping worlds, and a marketplace of…

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Trump’s really bad week

Trump’s really bad week

Joyce Vance writes: It turns out it wasn’t just a bad day for Trump, as I captioned my column Thursday night. It was a bad week. A really bad week. After Sidney Powell’s guilty plea, there was Kenneth Chesebro’s plea. His was to a felony charge of filing false information, but like Powell, he spends no time in prison and will be eligible under Georgia’s first-time offender provision to have his record expunged after he completes his probationary sentence successfully….

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A shadowy corner of international law is threatening climate action, UN expert warns

A shadowy corner of international law is threatening climate action, UN expert warns

Inside Climate News reports: Soon after Italy approved a ban on offshore oil drilling, in 2015, the country received some alarming news: A British oil company that had been planning to drill was suing the government, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. The company, called Rockhopper, brought its claim not in Italian courts but through a system of international arbitration that allows foreign investors to sue governments. Last year, the company won the case along with an order…

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Jordan’s King Abdullah: International law loses all value if it is implemented selectively

Jordan’s King Abdullah: International law loses all value if it is implemented selectively

كلمة جلالة الملك عبدالله الثاني في #قمة_القاهرة_للسلام التي تستضيفها جمهورية مصر العربية في إطار الجهود المبذولة لوقف الحرب على غزة #الأردن His Majesty King Abdullah II’s Speech at the #CairoSummitForPeace, held within the framework of efforts to stop the war on Gaza#Jordan pic.twitter.com/UrFf0XwjbU — RHC (@RHCJO) October 21, 2023 [Remarks in English start at minute 1 in the video above.] Cairo Peace Summit, October 21, 2023 Allow me to speak in English to our friends from Europe and the world…

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Samantha Woll, Detroit synagogue president, found stabbed to death outside her home

Samantha Woll, Detroit synagogue president, found stabbed to death outside her home

Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports: Samantha Woll, a Democratic activist and prominent Jewish lay leader in Detroit, was stabbed to death outside her home. Police found Woll, 40, at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday in the city’s Lafayette Park neighborhood, local media said. She had been stabbed multiple times and was unresponsive. A trail of blood led to her home, which police believe may be the scene of the crime, the Detroit Free Press reported. No motive was known. Woll’s murder comes…

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Back-to-back plea deals pose grave legal threat to Donald Trump

Back-to-back plea deals pose grave legal threat to Donald Trump

CNN reports: Two stalwart allies of former President Donald Trump flipped against him this week, a staggering turn of events that could now pose a grave threat to his ability to fend off criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The rapid-fire developments are a massive boost for prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the separate but overlapping federal case against Trump that was filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. The pleas are…

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Team Trump never dreamed Sidney Powell would flip on them — and then Kenneth Chesebro flipped too

Team Trump never dreamed Sidney Powell would flip on them — and then Kenneth Chesebro flipped too

Rolling Stone reports: Sidney Powell was the wildest of MAGA diehards — someone who swore long past the bitter end that Donald Trump won by a landslide in 2020, and insinuated that a long-dead Venezuelan dictator helped hatch a plot that flipped votes away from her guy. That’s why the former president and much of his inner circle didn’t think the conspiracy-addled lawyer would ever cooperate with prosecutors seeking to convict the ex-president. “Crazy as she was, she really believed…

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