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Steve Bannon pleads guilty and avoids jail time in border wall fraud case
Headline News |
2025/02/14 04:22
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Steve Bannon pleaded guilty on Tuesday to defrauding donors to a private effort to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, ending a case the conservative strategist decried as a “political persecution.”
Spared from jail as part of a plea deal, he left court saying he “felt like a million bucks.”
Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in state court in Manhattan to one count of scheme to defraud, a low-level felony. The case involved We Build the Wall, a non-profit that Bannon himself once suspected was a scam.
Bannon, 71, must stay out of trouble for three years to avoid additional punishment, including possible jail time. He also can’t raise money or serve as an officer or director for charities in New York and can’t use, sell, or possess any data gathered from border wall donors. Bannon had been scheduled to go to trial March 4.
His lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said Bannon wanted to “put up a fight,” but opted to plead guilty after weighing how a jury in heavily Democratic Manhattan might judge him. Under the deal, prosecutors agreed to drop money laundering and conspiracy charges against him.
Bannon’s plea deal came just days after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the Justice Department to investigate what Trump called the “ weaponization of prosecutorial power.”
Outside court, Bannon urged Bondi to immediately open criminal investigations into Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted him, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who sued Trump over his business practices and is leading legal challenges to his administration’s policies. Both are Democrats.
Bragg “can call a grand jury at any time” and “set up criminal charges on the most bogus efforts,” Bannon said. He called James the “queen of lawfare” and warned that Trump and his allies “ought to be worried about this out-of-control city.”
Bragg and James’ office didn’t immediately respond to Bannon’s comments.
Bragg took up the case and charged Bannon with state offenses after Trump cut a federal prosecution short with a pardon in the final hours of his first term in 2021. Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes, not state offenses.
Bannon was charged with falsely promising donors, including some in New York, that all money given to We Build the Wall would go toward erecting a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Instead, prosecutors alleged the money was used to enrich Bannon and others involved in the project.
The campaign, launched in 2018 after Trump fired Bannon as his chief strategist, quickly raised over $20 million and privately built a few miles of fencing along the border. It soon ran into trouble with the International Boundary and Water Commission, came under federal investigation and drew criticism from Trump, the Republican whose policy the charity was founded to support.
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Trump suspends US foreign assistance for 90 days pending reviews
Headline News |
2025/01/24 10:02
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending all U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they are aligned with his policy goals.
It was not immediately clear how much assistance would initially be affected by the Monday order as funding for many programs has already been appropriated by Congress and is obligated to be spent, if not already spent.
The order, among many Trump signed on his first day back in office, said the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values” and “serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”
Consequently, Trump declared that “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing last week that “every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions:
“Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?” he said.
The order signed by Trump leaves it up to Rubio or his designee to make such determinations, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget. The State Department and the U.S. Agency for
International Development are the main agencies that oversee foreign assistance.
Trump has long railed against foreign aid despite the fact that such assistance typically amounts to roughly 1% of the federal budget, except under unusual circumstances such as the billions in weaponry provided to Ukraine. Trump has been critical of the amount shipped to Ukraine to help bolster its defenses against Russia’s invasion.
The last official accounting of foreign aid in the Biden administration dates from mid-December and budget year 2023. It shows that $68 billion had been obligated for programs abroad that range from disaster relief to health and pro-democracy initiatives in 204 countries and regions.
Some of the biggest recipients of U.S. assistance, Israel ($3.3 billion per year), Egypt ($1.5 billion per year) and Jordan ($1.7 billion per year) are unlikely to see dramatic reductions, as those amounts are included in long-term packages that date back decades and are in some cases governed by treaty obligations.
Funding for U.N. agencies, including peacekeeping, human rights and refugee agencies, have been traditional targets for Republican administrations to slash or otherwise cut. The first Trump administration moved to reduce foreign aid spending, suspending payments to various UN agencies, including the U.N. Population Fund, and funding to the Palestinian Authority.
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Appeals court overturns ex-49er Dana Stubblefield’s rape conviction
Headline News |
2024/12/24 12:03
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A California appeals court has overturned the rape conviction of former San Francisco 49er Dana Stubblefield after determining prosecutors made racially discriminatory statements during the Black man’s trial.
The retired football player was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in October 2020 after being convicted of raping a developmentally disabled woman in 2015 who prosecutors said he lured to his home with the promise of a babysitting job.
The Sixth Court of Appeals found Wednesday that prosecutors violated the California Racial Justice Act of 2020, a law passed during a summer of protest over the police killing of George Floyd. The measure bars prosecutors from seeking a criminal conviction or imposing a sentence on the basis of race.
Prior to the law, defendants who wanted to challenge their convictions on the basis of racial bias had to prove there was “purposeful discrimination,” a difficult legal standard to meet.
The appeals court said prosecutors used “racially discriminatory language” that required them to overturn Stubblefield’s conviction.
The case was “infected with tremendous error from the minute we started the trial,” said Stubblefield’s lead attorney, Kenneth Rosenfeld.
In April 2015, Stubblefield contacted the then-31-year-old woman on a babysitting website and arranged an interview, prosecutors said.
According to a report by the Morgan Hill Police Department, the interview lasted about 20 minutes. She later received a text from Stubblefield saying he wanted to pay her for her time that day, and she went back to the house.
The woman reported to the police that Stubblefield raped her at gunpoint, then gave her $80 and let her go. DNA evidence matched that of Stubblefield, the report said.
During the trial, prosecutors said police never searched Stubblefield’s house and never introduced a gun into evidence, saying it was because he was famous Black man and it would “open up a storm of controversy,” according to the appellate decision.
By saying Stubblefield’s race was a factor in law enforcement’s decision not to search his house, prosecutors implied the house would’ve been searched and a gun found had Stubblefield not been Black, the appeals court said. The reference to controversy also links Stubblefield to the events after the recent killing of Floyd based on his race.
Defense attorneys said there was no rape, and Stubblefield said the woman consented to sex in exchange for money.
“The trial had a biased judge who didn’t allow the evidence from the defense, the fact that she was a sex worker, to be heard in front of a jury,” Rosenfeld said. He called the incident a “transactional occasion” between Stubblefield and the woman.
He remains in custody until a hearing next week, during which his attorneys will ask a judge to approve a motion to release him. Prosecutors have several options, including asking the court to stay their decision so they can appeal to the state’s Supreme Court, or refile charges.
The Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office said it was “studying the opinion.”
Stubblefield began his 11-year lineman career in the NFL with the 49ers in 1993 as the league’s defensive rookie of the year. He later won the NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors in 1997 before leaving the team to play for Washington. He returned to the Bay Area to finish his career, playing with the 49ers in 2000-01 and the Raiders in 2003. |
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Court seems reluctant to block state bans on medical treatments for minors
Headline News |
2024/12/04 20:05
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Hearing a high-profile culture-war clash, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed reluctant Wednesday to block Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
The justices’ decision, not expected for several months, could affect similar laws enacted by another 25 states and a range of other efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use.
The case is coming before a conservative-dominated court after a presidential election in which Donald Trump and his allies promised to roll back protections for transgender people.
In arguments that passed the two-hour mark Wednesday, five conservative justices voiced varying degrees of skepticism of arguments made by the Biden administration and lawyers for Tennessee families challenging the ban.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted in the majority in a 2020 case in favor of transgender rights, questioned whether judges, rather than lawmakers, should be weighing in on a question of regulating medical procedures, an area usually left to the states.
”The Constitution leaves that question to the people’s representatives, rather than to nine people, none of whom is a doctor,” Roberts said in an exchange with ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio.
The court’s three liberal justices seem firmly on the side of the challengers. But it’s not clear that any of the court’s six conservatives will go along. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion in 2020, has yet to say anything.
Four years ago, the court ruled in favor of Aimee Stephens, who was fired by a Michigan funeral home after she informed its owner that she was a transgender woman. The court held that transgender people, as well as gay and lesbian people, are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.
The Biden administration and the families and health care providers who challenged the Tennessee law are urging the justices to apply the same sort of analysis that the majority, made up of liberal and conservative justices, embraced in the case four years ago when it found that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.
The issue in the Tennessee case is whether the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires the government to treat similarly situated people the same.
Tennessee’s law bans puberty blockers and hormone treatments for transgender minors, but not “across the board,” lawyers for the families wrote in their Supreme Court brief. The lead lawyer, Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, is the first openly transgender person to argue in front of the justices. |
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Court backs Texas over razor wire installed on US-Mexico border
Headline News |
2024/11/26 03:22
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A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled that Border Patrol agents cannot cut razor wire that Texas installed on the U.S.-Mexico border in the town of Eagle Pass, which has become the center of the state’s aggressive measures to curb migrant crossings.
The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a victory for Texas in a long-running rift over immigration policy with the Biden administration, which has also sought to remove floating barriers installed on the Rio Grande.
Texas has continued to install razor wire along its roughly 1,200-mile (1,900 kilometers) border with Mexico over the past year. In a 2-1 ruling, the court issued an injunction blocking Border Patrol agents from damaging the wire in Eagle Pass.
“We continue adding more razor wire border barrier,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott posted on the social platform X in response to the ruling. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
Some migrants have been injured by the sharp wire, and the Justice Department has argued the barrier impedes the U.S. government’s ability to patrol the border, including coming to the aid of migrants in need of help. Texas contended in the lawsuit originally filed last year that federal government was “undermining” the state’s border security efforts by cutting the razor wire.
The ruling comes ahead of President-elect Donald Trump returning to office and pledging a crackdown on immigration. Earlier this month, a Texas official offered a parcel of rural ranchland along the U.S.-Mexico border to use as a staging area for potential mass deportations.
Arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped 40% from an all-time high in December. U.S. officials mostly credit Mexican vigilance around rail yards and highway checkpoint. |
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Court overturns actor Jussie Smollett's 2019 conviction in hate crime hoax case
Headline News |
2024/11/18 07:52
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The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned actor Jussie Smollett's conviction on allegations that he staged a racist and homophobic attack against himself in downtown Chicago in 2019 and lied to police.
Smollett's appeal argued that a special prosecutor should not have been allowed to intervene after the Cook County state's attorney initially dropped charges. The state's highest court heard arguments in September.
Smollett, who is Black and gay, claimed two men assaulted him, spouted racial and homophobic slurs and tossed a noose around his neck, leading to a massive search for suspects by Chicago police detectives and kicking up an international uproar. Smollett was on the television drama "Empire," which filmed in Chicago, and prosecutors alleged he staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio's response to hate mail he received.
A jury convicted him of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021. Smollett has maintained his innocence.
His attorneys have argued that the case was over when the Cook County state's attorney's office dropped an initial 16 counts of disorderly conduct after Smollett performed community service and forfeited a $10,000 bond. intervene after the Cook County state's attorney initially dropped charges.
The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned actor Jussie Smollett's conviction on allegations that he staged a racist and homophobic attack against himself in downtown Chicago in 2019 and lied to police.
Smollett's appeal argued that a special prosecutor should not have been allowed to intervene after the Cook County state's attorney initially dropped charges. The state's highest court heard arguments in September.
Smollett, who is Black and gay, claimed two men assaulted him, spouted racial and homophobic slurs and tossed a noose around his neck, leading to a massive search for suspects by Chicago police detectives and kicking up an international uproar. Smollett was on the television drama "Empire," which filmed in Chicago, and prosecutors alleged he staged the attack because he was unhappy with the studio's response to hate mail he received.
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A jury convicted him of five counts of disorderly conduct in 2021. Smollett has maintained his innocence.
His attorneys have argued that the case was over when the Cook County state's attorney's office dropped an initial 16 counts of disorderly conduct after Smollett performed community service and forfeited a $10,000 bond. |
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VA asks US Supreme Court to reinstate removals of 1,600 voter registrations
Headline News |
2024/10/25 23:02
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Virginia on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to allow the state to remove roughly 1,600 voters from its rolls that it believes are noncitizens.
The request comes after a federal appeals court on Sunday unanimously upheld a federal judge’s order restoring the registrations of those 1,600 voters, whom the judge said were illegally purged under an executive order by the state’s Republican governor.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he ordered the daily removals in an effort to keep noncitizens from voting. But U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles ruled late last week that Youngkin’s program was illegal under federal law because it systematically purged voters during a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of the November election.
The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued to block Youngkin’s removal program earlier this month. They argued that the quiet period is in place to ensure that legitimate voters aren’t removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that can’t be rectified in a timely manner.'
The ruling Sunday from the three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the judge who ordered the restoration of voters’ registrations.
The appeals court said Virginia is wrong to assert that it is being forced to restore 1,600 noncitizens to the voter rolls. The judges found that Virginia’s process for removing voters established no proof that those purged were actually noncitizens.
Youngkin’s executive order, issued in August, required daily checks of data from the Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls to identify noncitizens.
State officials said any voter identified as a noncitizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form attesting to their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.
The plaintiffs said that, as a result of the program, a legitimate voter and citizen could have his or her registration canceled simply by checking the wrong box on a DMV form. The plaintiffs presented evidence showing that at least some of those removed were in fact citizens.
A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.
The appeal filed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday by Virginia’s Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, asks the high court to intervene by Tuesday. Without any intervention, the injunction issued last week by Giles requires Virginia to notify affect voters and local registrars by Wednesday of the restorations she ordered.
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