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Trump’s Lawyers Meet With Prosecutors as Election Interference Charges Loom
Legal Career News |
2023/07/28 12:33
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Lawyers for Donald Trump were meeting Thursday with members of special counsel Jack Smith’s team as a potential indictment loomed over the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The meeting included Trump lawyer John Lauro, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to describe a private gathering. Trump earlier this month was informed by Smith’s office that he was a target of the Justice Department’s investigation, suggesting that an indictment could be soon.
The investigation has focused on the turbulent two month-period after the November 2020 election in which Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden and spread lies that victory was stolen from him. The turmoil resulted in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes. More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot.
In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen — despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even his own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the fraud he alleges.
A spokesman for Smith declined to comment on Thursday’s meeting.
Trump was charged by Smith’s team last month with illegally hoarding classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, Mar-a-Lago, and concealing them from investigators. He was also indicted in New York in March on charges of falsifying business records in connection with an alleged hush money payment to a porn actor. And prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, are preparing to announce charging decisions in the coming weeks related to efforts to subvert the election in that state. |
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Judge upholds the $5 million jury verdict against Trump
Legal Career News |
2023/07/21 07:49
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A federal judge on Wednesday upheld a $5 million jury verdict against Donald Trump, rejecting the former president’s claims that the award was excessive and that the jury vindicated him by failing to conclude he raped a columnist in a luxury department store dressing room in the 1990s.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the jury’s May award of compensatory and punitive damages to writer E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation in the civil case was reasonable.
Trump’s lawyers had asked Kaplan to reduce the jury award to less than $1 million or order a new trial on damages. In their arguments, the lawyers said the jury’s $2 million in compensatory damages granted for Carroll’s sexual assault claim was excessive because the jury concluded that Trump had not raped Carroll at Bergdorf Goodman’s Manhattan store in the spring of 1996.
Kaplan wrote that the jury’s unanimous verdict was almost entirely in favor of Carroll, except that the jury concluded she had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law.”
The judge said the section requires vaginal penetration by a penis while forcible penetration without consent of the vagina or other bodily orifices by fingers or anything else is labeled “sexual abuse” rather than “rape.”
He said the definition of rape was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries, in some federal and state criminal statutes and elsewhere.
The judge said the verdict did not mean that Carroll “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed ... the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Trump’s lawyers were correct in arguing that the $2 million award for sexual abuse would have been excessive if the jury based the compensatory award on a conclusion that Trump had groped Carroll’s breasts through her clothing or similar conduct, the judge said. But, he said, that’s not what the jury found. |
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Suspect in fatal stabbing of Cash App founder pleads not guilty
Legal Career News |
2023/05/17 09:22
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Tech consultant Nima Momeni pleaded not guilty Thursday to a murder charge in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee on the streets of San Francisco.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Victor Hwang ordered Momeni, 38, kept in jail without bail, saying he posed a public safety risk if released. Momeni, who appeared in an orange sweatshirt and pants, did not speak, and his attorney Paula Canny entered the plea on his behalf.
The case has drawn national attention, partly given Lee’s status in the tech world. Lee was found with three stab wounds, including one to the heart, shortly after 2:30 a.m. April 4 and was taken to a hospital where he later died. He was found in the Rincon Hill neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, which has tech offices and condominiums but little activity in the early morning hours.
Lee, 43, created Cash App, a mobile payment service, and was the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin. He was mourned as a loving father of two who made friends wherever he went.
Prosecutors have not provided a motive but say Momeni stabbed Lee after a dispute related to Momeni’s sister, who appeared in court Thursday alongside their mother.
Assistant District Attorney Omid Talai argued Thursday to detain Momeni without bail, saying that the defendant drove Lee to a secluded spot and used a knife that was part of a unique kitchen set belonging to his sister. Police recovered a knife with a 4-inch (10-centimeter) blade at the scene.
Talai said that analysis showed Momeni’s DNA on the handle of the knife and Lee’s DNA on the bloody blade and no evidence that Lee had touched the handle, contradicting Canny’s claim of self-defense for her client.
But Canny said that Momeni did not drive Lee to a secluded spot with the aim of killing him. Instead, she said, Lee directed him to pull over after calling an Uber because the two had argued. The last time Momeni saw Lee, Canny said, Lee was standing upright and walking away.
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Supreme Court asked to preserve abortion pill access rules
Legal Career News |
2023/04/14 15:56
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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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Hong Kong asks Beijing to step in into row over UK lawyer
Legal Career News |
2022/11/30 13:00
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Hong Kong’s leader said on Monday he will ask Beijing to rule whether to let foreign lawyers be involved in national security cases after the city’s top court allowed a prominent pro-democracy publisher to hire a British lawyer for his upcoming trial.
John Lee said the government would ask for a postponement of Jimmy Lai’s high-profile trial that was due to start Thursday. But he did not offer a timetable for the interpretation that could effectively preempt the court judgment.
“At present, there is no effective means to ensure that a counsel from overseas will not have conflict of interest because of his nationality. And there is also no means to ensure that he has not been coerced, compromised, or in any way controlled by foreign governments, associations or persons,” he said.
The move was targeting overseas counsels who do not have the general practice qualification to carry out legal service in Hong Kong, he added.
Lai, the founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily and one of the most prominent figures in the city’s pro-democracy movement, was arrested after Beijing imposed a tough national security law to crack down on dissent following widespread protests in 2019. He faces collusion charges and a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
While the city’s secretary for justice was appealing an earlier ruling that approved Lai to hire a veteran British lawyer at the top court, pro-Beijing politicians and newspapers also voiced objections over the last few days.
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