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Trial begins over Texas ‘Trump Train’ highway confrontation
Headline News |
2024/08/31 22:32
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A federal trial is set to begin Monday over claims that supporters of former President Donald Trump threatened and harassed a Biden-Harris campaign bus in Texas four years ago, disrupting the campaign on the last day of early voting.
The civil trial over the so-called “Trump Train” comes as Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris race into the final two months of their head-to-head fight for the White House in November.
Democrats on the bus said they feared for their lives as Trump supporters in dozens of trucks and cars nearly caused collisions, harassing their convoy for more than 90 minutes, hitting a Biden-Harris campaign staffer’s car and forcing the bus driver to repeatedly swerve for safety.
“For at least 90 minutes, defendants terrorized and menaced the driver and passengers,” the lawsuit alleges. “They played a madcap game of highway ‘chicken’ coming within three to four inches of the bus. They tried to run the bus off the road.”
The highway confrontation prompted an FBI investigation, which led then-President Trump to declare that in his opinion, “these patriots did nothing wrong.” Among those suing is former Texas state senator and Democratic nominee for governor Wendy Davis, who was on the bus that day. Davis rose to prominence in 2013 with her 13-hour filibuster of an anti-abortion bill in the state Capitol. The other three plaintiffs are a campaign volunteer, staffer and the bus driver.
The lawsuit names six defendants, accusing them of violating the “Ku Klux Klan Act,” an 1871 federal law to stop political violence and intimidation tactics.
The same law was used in part to indict Trump on federal election interference charges over attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Enacted by Congress during the Reconstruction Era, the law was created to protect Black men’s right to vote by prohibiting political violence.
Videos of the confrontation on Oct. 30, 2020, that were shared on social media, including some recorded by the Trump supporters, show a group of cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — riding alongside the campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin. The Trump supporters at times boxed in the bus, slowed it down, kept it from exiting the highway and repeatedly forced the bus driver to make evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision, the lawsuit says.
On the two previous days, Biden-Harris supporters were subjected to death threats, with some Trump supporters displaying weapons, according to the lawsuit. These threats in combination with the highway confrontation led Democrats to cancel an event later in the day.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, alleges the defendants were members of local groups near San Antonio that coordinated the confrontation.
Francisco Canseco, an attorney for three of the defendants, said his clients acted lawfully and did not infringe on the free speech rights of those on the bus. “It’s more of a constitutional issue,” Canseco said. “It’s more of who has the greater right to speak behind their candidate.”
Judge Robert Pitman, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, is set to preside over Monday’s trial. He denied the defendants’ pretrial motion for a summary judgment in their favor, ruling last month that the KKK Act prohibits the physical intimidation of people traveling to political rallies, even when racial bias isn’t a factor.
While one of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, argued his group had a First Amendment right to demonstrate support for their candidate, the judge wrote that “assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression.”
“Just as the First Amendment does not protect a driver waving a political flag from running a red light, it does not protect Defendants from allegedly threatening Plaintiffs with reckless driving,” Pitman wrote.
A prior lawsuit filed over the “Trump Train” alleged the San Marcos Police Department violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by failing to send a police escort after multiple 911 calls were made and a bus rider said his life was threatened. It accused officers of privately laughing and joking about the emergency calls. San Marcos settled the lawsuit in 2023 for $175,000 and a requirement that law enforcement get training on responding to political violence. |
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Venezuela’s Supreme Court certifies Maduro’s claims that he won presidential election
Legal News |
2024/08/25 22:24
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Venezuela’s Supreme Court has backed President Nicolás Maduro’s claims that he won last month’s presidential election and said voting tallies published online showing he lost by a landslide were forged.
The ruling is the latest attempt by Maduro to blunt protests and international criticism that erupted after the contested July 28 vote in which the self-proclaimed socialist leader was seeking a third, six-year term.
The high court is packed with Maduro loyalists and has almost never ruled against the government.
Its decision, read Thursday in an event attended by senior officials and foreign diplomats, came in response to a request by Maduro to review vote totals showing he had won by more than 1 million votes.
The main opposition coalition has accused Maduro of trying to steal the vote.
Thanks to a superb ground game on election day, opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide and which show opposition candidate Edmundo González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.
The official tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that makes it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.
“An attempt to judicialize the results doesn’t change the truth: we won overwhelmingly and we have the voting records to prove it,” González, standing before a Venezuelan flag, said in a video posted on social media.
The high court’s ruling certifying the results contradicts the findings of experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center who were invited to observe the election and which both determined the results announced by authorities lacked credibility. Specifically, the outside experts noted that authorities didn’t release a breakdown of results by each of the 30,000 voting booths nationwide, as they have in almost every previous election.
The government has claimed — without evidence — that a foreign cyberattack staged by hackers from North Macedonia delayed the vote counting on election night and publication of the disaggregated results.
González was the only one of 10 candidates who did not participate in the Supreme Court’s audit, a fact noted by the justices, who in their ruling accused him of trying to spread panic.
The former diplomat and his chief backer, opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado, went into hiding after the election as security forces arrested more than 2,000 people and cracked down on demonstrations that erupted spontaneously throughout the country protesting the results.
Numerous foreign governments, including the U.S. as well as several allies of Maduro, have called on authorities to release the full breakdown of results.
Gabriel Boric, the leftist president of Chile and one of the main critics of Maduro’s election gambit, lambasted the high court’s certification. |
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Arkansas Supreme Court upholds rejection of abortion ballot measure
Top Legal News |
2024/08/21 05:25
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The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s rejection of signature petitions for an abortion rights ballot initiative on Thursday, keeping the proposal from going before voters in November.
READ MORE: Arkansas election officials reject petitions submitted to put abortion rights on 2024 ballot
The ruling dashed the hopes of organizers, who submitted the petitions, of getting the constitutional amendment measure on the ballot in the predominantly Republican state, where many top leaders tout their opposition to abortion.
Election officials said Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the measure, did not properly submit documentation regarding the signature gatherers it hired. The group disputed that assertion and argued it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed.
“We find that the Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification,” the court said in a 4-3 ruling.
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision removing the nationwide right to abortion, there has been a push to have voters decide the matter state by state.
Arkansas currently bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is endangered due to a medical emergency.
The proposed amendment would have prohibited laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation and allowed the procedure later on in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth. It would not have created a constitutional right to abortion.
The ballot proposal lacked support from national abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood because it would still have allowed abortion to be banned after 20 weeks, which is earlier than other states where it remains legal.
Had they all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures, submitted on the state’s July 5 deadline, would have been enough to qualify for the ballot. The threshold was 90,704 signatures from registered voters, and from a minimum of 50 counties.
In a earlier filing with the court, election officials said that 87,675 of the signatures submitted were collected by volunteers with the campaign. Election officials said it could not determine whether 912 of the signatures came from volunteer or paid canvassers.
Arkansans for Limited Government and election officials disagreed over whether the petitions complied with a 2013 state law requiring campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and confirming that rules for gathering signatures were explained to them.
Supporters of the measure said they followed the law with their documentation, including affidavits identifying each paid gatherer. They have also argued the abortion petitions are being handled differently than other initiative campaigns this year, pointing to similar filings by two other groups.
State records show that the abortion campaign did submit, on June 27, a signed affidavit including a list of paid canvassers and a statement saying the petition rules had been explained to them. Moreover, the July 5 submission included affidavits from each paid worker acknowledging that the group provided them with all the rules and regulations required by law.
The state argued in court that this documentation did not comply because it was not signed by someone with the canvassing company rather than the initiative campaign itself. The state said the statement also needed to be submitted alongside the petitions.
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Ukraine ratifies the statute for joining the International Criminal Court
Legal Watch |
2024/08/16 05:25
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Ukraine ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, taking a step toward membership that Kyiv says will increase chances of prosecuting war crimes by Russians and boost victims’ chances of receiving compensation.
Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, voted Wednesday to ratify the founding treaty of the ICC, which currently has 124 member states.
“We are trying to take real steps on all of the fronts of international justice to bring the Russian Federation to justice,” said Deputy Justice Minister Iryna Mudra.
“The ratification of the Rome Statute will increase the chances of victims receiving compensation for Russian war crimes,” she added.
Ukraine is not a member of the court but has accepted its jurisdiction dating back to 2013. The court’s prosecution office opened an investigation in 2022.
In 2023 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, over allegations of war crimes involving the forced deportation of Ukrainian children. The following year, more warrants were issued for Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
Membership of the ICC also is a requirement for joining the European Union, which Ukraine hopes to do. It was formally accepted as a candidate in June 2022, four months after Russia began its full-scale invasion.
The document was initially signed by the Ukrainian government in 2000, but the Constitutional Court blocked ratification in 2001 and declaring it unconstitutional to authorize the ICC to rule on Ukraine’s actions.
The question of ICC membership resurfaced in 2014, after Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
However, many Ukrainians feared that ratification of the Rome Statute could allow the ICC to prosecute Ukrainian citizens participating in the armed conflict on Ukrainian territory.
To reflect those concerns, the legislation contains a clause that says Ukraine will not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction in cases where the crimes may have been committed by Ukrainian nationals. |
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Hearing in Karen Read case expected to focus on jury deliberations
Law Firm Business |
2024/08/09 20:14
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nse attorneys for Karen Read are expected to argue Friday that two charges in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend be dismissed, focusing on the jury deliberations that led to a mistrial.
Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in January 2022. Her two-month trial ended when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations. A new trial is set to begin Jan. 27.
In several motions since the mistrial, the defense contends four jurors have said the jury unanimously reached a not guilty verdict on second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident and were deadlocked on the remaining manslaughter charge. Trying her again on those two charges would be unconstitutional double jeopardy, they said.
They also reported that one juror told them “no one thought she hit him on purpose or even thought she hit him on purpose.”
The defense also argues Judge Beverly Cannone abruptly announced the mistrial without questioning jurors about where they stood on each of the three charges Read faced and without giving lawyers for either side a chance to comment.
Prosecutors described the defense’s request to drop charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident as an “unsubstantiated but sensational post-trial claim” based on “hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.”
But in another motion, prosecutors acknowledged they received a voicemail from someone who identified themselves as a juror and confirmed the jury had reached a unanimous decision on the two charges. Subsequently, they received emails from three individuals who also identified themselves as jurors and wanted to speak to them anonymously.
Prosecutors said they responded by telling the trio that they welcomed discussing the state’s evidence in the case but were “ethically prohibited from inquiring as to the substance of your jury deliberations.” They also said they could not promise confidentiality.
As they push against a retrial, the defense wants the judge to hold a “post-verdict inquiry” and question all 12 jurors if necessary to establish the record they say should have been created before the mistrial was declared, showing jurors “unanimously acquitted the defendant of two of the three charges against her.”
Prosecutors argued the defense was given a chance to respond and, after one note from the jury indicating it was deadlocked, told the court there had been sufficient time and advocated for the jury to be declared deadlocked. Prosecutors wanted deliberations to continue, which they did before a mistrial was declared the following day.
“Contrary to the representation made in the defendant’s motion and supporting affidavits, the defendant advocated for and consented to a mistrial, as she had adequate opportunities to object and instead remained silent which removes any double jeopardy bar to retrial,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.
Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, had been out drinking with O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police who was found outside the Canton, Massachusetts, home of another Boston police officer. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense contended O’Keefe was killed inside the home after Read dropped him off and that those involved chose to frame her because she was a “convenient outsider.” |
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Turkey formally asks to join the genocide case against Israel at the UN court
Headline News |
2024/08/05 03:15
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Turkey on Wednesday filed a request with a U.N. court to join South Africa’s lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, the foreign minister said.
Turkey’s ambassador to the Netherlands, accompanied by a group of Turkish legislators, submitted a declaration of intervention to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
With the development, Turkey, one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza, becomes the latest nation seeking to participate in the case. Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua and Libya have also asked to join the case, as have Palestinian officials. The court’s decision on their requests is still pending.
“We have just submitted our application to the International Court of Justice to intervene in the genocide case filed against Israel,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan wrote on the social media platform X. “Emboldened by the impunity for its crimes, Israel is killing more and more innocent Palestinians every day.”
“The international community must do its part to stop the genocide; it must put the necessary pressure on Israel and its supporters,” he said. “Turkey will make every effort to do so.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Israel of genocide, called for it to be punished in international courts and criticized Western nations for backing Israel. In May, Turkey suspended trade with Israel, citing its assault on Gaza.
In contrast to Western nations that have designated Hamas a terrorist organization, Erdogan has commended the group, calling it a liberation movement.
South Africa brought a case to the International Court of Justice late last year, accusing Israel of violating the genocide convention through its military operations in Gaza.
Israel has strongly rejected accusations of genocide and has argued that the war in Gaza is a legitimate defensive action against Hamas militants for their Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people and in which 250 hostages were taken.
If admitted to the case, the countries who joined would be able to make written submissions and speak at public hearings.
Preliminary hearings have already been held in the genocide case against Israel, but the court is expected to take years to reach a final decision.
“No country in the world is above international law,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said on X earlier. “The case at the International Court of Justice is extremely important in terms of ensuring that the crimes committed by Israel do not go unpunished.”
Keceli also called for the immediate implementations of precautionary measures ordered by the court, including a halt to military offensive and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Since Erdogan took power in 2003, former allies Turkey and Israel have experienced a volatile relationship, marked by periods of severe friction and reconciliation. The war in Gaza has disrupted the most recent attempts at normalizing ties.
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Mexican drug cartel leader ‘El Mayo’ Zambada makes a court appearance in Texas
Court Center |
2024/08/02 03:15
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A powerful Mexican drug cartel leader on Thursday made his second appearance in federal court in Texas after being taken into U.S. custody last week.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, 76, used a wheelchair for the hearing before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso. Zambada, the longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, eluded authorities for decades until a plane carrying him and Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of notorious drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán,” landed at an airport near El Paso on July 25. Both men were arrested and remain jailed. They are charged in the U.S. with various drug crimes.
Discussions during the short hearing Thursday included whether Zambada would be tried with co-defendants or separately. He is being held without bond and pleaded not guilty during a short hearing last week, where he also used a wheelchair.
His next hearing date was set for Sept. 9. His attorneys declined to comment after Thursday’s hearing.
One of his attorneys, Frank Perez, previously has alleged his client was kidnapped by Guzmán López and brought to the U.S. aboard a private plane. Guzmán López, 38, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to drug trafficking and other charges in federal court in Chicago.
Zambada was thought to be more involved in day-to-day operations of the cartel than his better-known and flashier boss, “El Chapo,” who was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. in 2019.
Zambada is charged in a number of U.S. cases, including in New York and California. Prosecutors brought a new indictment against him in New York in February, describing him as the “principal leader of the criminal enterprise responsible for importing enormous quantities of narcotics into the United States.”
The capture of Zambada and Guzmán López has fueled theories about how federal authorities pulled it off and prompted Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to take the unusual step of issuing a public appeal to drug cartels not to fight each other.
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