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Trump gag order reinstated in New York civil fraud trial
Legal Watch |
2023/11/26 08:26
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A New York appeals court Thursday reinstated a gag order that barred Donald Trump from commenting about court personnel after the former president repeatedly disparaged a law clerk in his New York civil fraud trial.
The one-sentence decision came two weeks after an individual appellate judge put the gag order on hold while the appeals process played out.
Trial judge Arthur Engoron, who imposed the restriction, said he now planned to enforce it “rigorously and vigorously.”
Trump attorney Christopher Kise called it “a tragic day for the rule of law.” Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, complained that the gag order was “nothing but attempted election interference, which is failing terribly.”
Engoron imposed the gag order Oct. 3 after Trump posted a derogatory comment about the judge’s law clerk to social media. The post, which included a baseless allegation about the clerk’s personal life, came the second day of the trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit.
James’ lawsuit alleges Trump exaggerated his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and make deals. Trump denies any wrongdoing. The Republican 2024 front-runner contends the lawsuit is a political attack instigated by James and furthered by Engoron, both Democrats.
Over the trial’s first few weeks, Engoron fined Trump $15,000 for violating the gag order. The judge expanded the order — which initially covered only parties in the case — to include lawyers after Trump’s attorneys questioned clerk Allison Greenfield’s prominent role on the bench. She sits alongside the judge, exchanging notes and advising him during testimony.
Trump’s lawyers sued Engoron, challenging his gag order as an abuse of power.
State lawyers supported the restriction, saying it was a reasonable step to protect Engoron’s staff. An attorney for the court system tied Trump’s comments to an uptick in nasty calls and messages directed at the judge and law clerk.
A court security captain wrote in a sworn statement last week that Greenfield has been receiving 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and 30-50 messages per day on social media, LinkedIn and two personal email addresses.
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Biden’s second try at student loan cancellation moves forward with debate
Legal Watch |
2023/10/13 17:47
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President Joe Biden’s second attempt at student loan cancellation began moving forward Tuesday with a round of hearings to negotiate the details of a new plan.
In a process known as negotiated rulemaking, 14 people chosen by the Biden administration are meeting for the first of three hearings on student loan relief. Their goal is to guide the Education Department toward a proposal after the Supreme Court rejected Biden’s first plan in June.
The negotiators all come from outside the federal government and represent a range of viewpoints on student loans. The panel includes students and officials from a range of colleges, along with loan servicers, state officials and advocates including the NAACP.
In opening remarks, Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said the student debt crisis has threatened to undercut the promise of higher education.
“Student loan debt in this country has grown so large that it siphons off the benefits of college for many students,” Kvaal said in prepared remarks. “Some loans made to young adults stretch into retirement with no hope of being repaid. These debt burdens are shared by families and communities.”
Biden directed the Education Department to find another path to loan relief after the conservative court ruled that he couldn’t cancel loans using a 2003 law called the HEROES Act.
The latest attempt will rest on a sweeping law known as the Higher Education Act, which gives the education secretary authority to waive student loans — although how far that power extends is the subject of legal debate. The department is going through the negotiated rulemaking process to change or add federal rules clarifying how the secretary can cancel debt. |
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Grieving families confront Pittsburgh shooter at death penalty sentencing
Legal Watch |
2023/08/04 02:40
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Grieving families confronted the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter at his sentencing hearing Thursday, one day after a jury determined that capital punishment was appropriate for the perpetrator of the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.
The hearing at the federal courthouse in Pittsburgh got underway, with some 22 witnesses — survivors of the 2018 massacre and relatives of the 11 people who were fatally shot — expected to deliver victim impact statements.
U.S. District Judge Robert Colville was expected to formally sentence Robert Bowers to death later Thursday.
“Mr. Bowers, you met my beloved husband in the kitchen. Your callous disregard for the person he was repulses me,” testified Peg Durachko, wife of 65-year-old Dr. Richard Gottfried, a dentist who was shot and killed. “Your hateful act took my soulmate from me.”
Mark Simon, whose parents, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, were killed in the attack, testified he still has their bloodied prayer shawl. He said he remains haunted by the 911 call placed by his mother, whom Bowers shot while she was on the line.
“My parents died alone, without any living soul to comfort them or to hold their hand in their last moments,” said Simon, condemning “that defendant” as evil and cowardly and urging the judge to show him no mercy.
“You will never be forgiven. Never,” Simon told Bowers.
Bowers, a 50-year-old truck driver from suburban Baldwin, ranted about Jews online before carrying out the attack at Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. He told police at the scene that “all these Jews must die” and has since expressed pride in the killings.
Jurors were unanimous in finding that Bowers’ attack was motivated by his hatred of Jews, and that he chose Tree of Life for its location in one of the largest and most historic Jewish communities in the nation so he could “maximize the devastation, amplify the harm of his crimes, and instill fear within the local, national, and international Jewish communities.” They also found that Bowers lacked remorse.
The jury rejected defense claims that Bowers has schizophrenia and that his delusions about Jewish people spurred the attack.
Bowers, who was armed with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons, also shot and wounded seven, including five responding police officers.
He was convicted in June of 63 federal counts, including hate crimes resulting in death and obstruction of the free exercise of religion resulting in death. |
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Yale student who reported rape can be sued for defamation
Legal Watch |
2023/06/27 23:50
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In a decision scrutinizing how colleges investigate sexual assault allegations, Connecticut’s highest court ruled Friday that a former Yale student is not immune from a defamation lawsuit by a fellow student who was exonerated in criminal court after she accused him of rape.
The Connecticut court ruled 7-0 that because he had fewer rights to defend himself in university proceedings than he would in criminal court, the rape accuser can’t benefit fully from immunity granted to witnesses in criminal proceedings.
The unanimous ruling came despite warnings from more than a dozen violence prevention groups that such immunity is crucial to prevent rape victims from being discouraged to come forward.
It’s one of the few state court rulings on the topic in any U.S. court and could be cited widely in future cases, legal experts said. It ruled that Jane Doe, the pseudonym she used in court proceedings, was not immune from liability for statements she made to Yale investigators accusing fellow student Saifullah Khan of raping her in her dorm room in October 2015.
The decision could add to the already vexing problem of sexual assaults going unreported, violence prevention groups said in a brief to the state Supreme Court.
“Without protections from retaliation, including absolute immunity, victims will be dissuaded from using school reporting and disciplinary processes and will lose out on their education while perpetrators dodge accountability,” a lawyer for the groups wrote in a filing supporting the accuser’s immunity rights.
Khan is suing Doe and Yale over the rape allegations and his November 2018 expulsion from the school, saying the sex was consensual. Khan was criminally charged, but a jury acquitted him earlier in 2018. |
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Russia indicts ICC prosecutor, judge who issued war crimes
Legal Watch |
2023/05/22 20:03
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Russia on Sunday announced indictments in absentia for a judge and prosecutor of the International Criminal Court who issued a war crimes warrant for President Vladimir Putin.
A statement from the national Investigative Committee said the judge, Rosario Salvatore Aitala, and prosecutor Khan Karim Asad Ahmad are both charged with “preparing to attack a representative of a foreign country enjoying international protection in order to complicate international relations.”
Each also faces other charges. Conviction could bring prison terms of up to 12 years. The committee also said other ICC officials are being investigated.
The March warrant against Putin accuses him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. The court also charged Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian presidential commissioner for children’s rights.
It was the first time the global court has issued a warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. |
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‘Rust’ movie medic gets $1.15 million partial settlement
Legal Watch |
2023/05/12 22:08
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A New Mexico judge has approved a $1.15 million settlement between a medic who worked on the “Rust” film set and one of several defendants she accused of negligence in the fatal 2021 shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin during a rehearsal.
Court records show the partial settlement between Cherlyn Schaefer and prop master Sarah Zachry was approved during a hearing Monday. Schaefer told the judge there’s not a day that goes by when she doesn’t think about what happened, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
In her civil complaint, Schaefer said she fought desperately in a failed attempt to save the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. She said the shock, trauma and emotional distress that followed has made it impossible for her to continue working in her field.
Prosecutors dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against the actor and producer last month, citing new evidence and the need for more time to investigate.
State District Judge Kathleen McGarry Ellenwood had entered a default judgment against Zachry in November after the film worker failed to file responses within court deadlines.
Zachry’s current attorney, Nathan Winger, told the court Monday that her previous attorney, William Waggoner, let deadlines pass without her permission, and she intends to seek damages from him to fund her settlement with Schaefer. Waggoner disputes the claim.
Justin Rodriguez, one of several attorneys representing Schaefer, said the settlement “is a small portion of what we expect to receive in the future.” The remaining defendants include Rust Movie Productions, weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director David Halls, but not Baldwin.
Schaefer’s complaint claims Zachry and Gutierrez-Reed failed to ensure there were no live rounds in Baldwin’s weapon. An involuntary manslaughter charge remains pending against Gutierrez-Reed, but her attorneys have said they fully expect her to be exonerated. |
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Supreme Court asked to preserve abortion pill access rules
Legal Watch |
2023/04/14 22:29
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The Biden administration and a drug manufacturer asked the Supreme Court on Friday to preserve access to an abortion drug free from restrictions imposed by lower court rulings, while a legal fight continues.
The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories both warned of “regulatory chaos” and harm to women if the high court doesn’t block an appeals court ruling in a case from Texas that had the effect of tightening Food and Drug Administration rules under which the drug, mifepristone, can be prescribed and dispensed.
The new limits would take effect Saturday unless the court acts before then.
“This application concerns unprecedented lower court orders countermanding FDA’s scientific judgment and unleashing regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote Friday, less than two days after the appellate ruling.
A lawyer for the anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations suing over mifepristone said the justices should reject the drugmaker’s and the administration’s pleas and allow the appeals court-ordered changes to take effect.
The fight over mifepristone lands at the Supreme Court less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.
The justices are being asked for a temporary order to keep in place Food and Drug Administration regulations governing mifepristone. Such an order would give them time to more fully consider each side’s arguments without the pressure of a deadline.
The Biden administration and Danco, which is based in New York, also want a more lasting order that would keep the current rules in place as long as the legal fight over mifepristone continues. As a fallback, they asked the court to take up the issue, hear arguments and decide by early summer a legal challenge to mifepristone that anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations filed last year.
The court rarely acts so quickly to grant full review of cases before at least one appeals court has thoroughly examined the legal issues involved.
A ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Wednesday would prevent the pill, used in the most common abortion method, from being mailed or prescribed without an in-person visit to a doctor. It also would withdraw the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone for use beyond the seventh week of pregnancy. The FDA says it’s safe through 10 weeks. |
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