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      Rudy Giuliani found to be in contempt of court again for 2020 election lies

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      Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court on Friday for continuing to spread lies about two former Georgia election workers after a jury awarded the women a $148m defamation judgment.Federal judge Beryl Howell in Washington DC is the second federal judge in a matter of days to find the former New York City mayor in contempt of court.Howell found that Giuliani violated court orders barring him from defaming Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman. She ordered him to review trial testimony and other materials from the case and warned him that future violations could result in possible jail time.A statement from Giuliani’s attorney, Ted Goodman, said: “The public should know that mayor Rudy Giuliani never had the opportunity to defend himself on the facts in the defamation case.“This is an important point that many Americans still don’t realize due to biased coverage and a campaign to silence Mayor Giuliani. This contempt ruling is designed to prevent Mayor Giuliani from exercising his constitutional rights.”Moss and Freeman sued Rudy Giuliani for defamation for falsely accusing them of committing election fraud in connection with the 2020 election. They said his lies upended their lives with racist threats and harassment.A jury sided with the mother and daughter, who are Black, in December 2023 and awarded them $75m in punitive damages plus roughly $73m in other damages.Attorneys for the plaintiffs asked Howell to impose civil contempt sanctions against Giuliani after they said he continued to falsely accuse Moss and Freeman of committing election fraud in connection with the 2020 election.Shortly before Friday’s hearing began, Giuliani slammed the judge in a social media post, calling her “bloodthirsty” and biased against him and the proceeding a “hypocritical waste of time”.On Monday in New York, Judge Lewis Liman found Giuliani in contempt of court for related claims that he failed to turn over evidence to help the judge decide whether he can keep a Palm Beach, Florida, condominium.Giuliani, who testified in Liman’s Manhattan courtroom on 3 January, said he didn’t turn over everything because he believed the requests were overly broad, inappropriate or even a “trap” set by the plaintiffs’ lawyers.Giuliani, 80, said in a court filing that before Friday’s hearing that he was having travel-related concerns about his health and safety. He said he gets death threats and has been told to be careful about traveling.“I had hoped the Court would understand and accommodate my needs. However, it appears I was mistaken,” he said in the filing.On the witness stand during Giuliani’s trial, Moss and Freeman described fearing for their lives after becoming the target of a false conspiracy theory that Giuliani and other Republicans spread as they tried to keep Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump, for whom Giuliani has previously worked as an attorney, won November’s White House election against the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and will be sworn in for a second Oval Office term on 20 January.Moss told jurors she tried to change her appearance, seldom leaves her home and suffers from panic attacks.“Money will never solve all my problems,” Freeman told reporters after the jury’s verdict. “I can never move back into the house that I call home. I will always have to be careful about where I go and who I choose to share my name with. I miss my home. I miss my neighbors and I miss my name.” More

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      DoJ to release part of report on Trump’s attempt to overturn 2020 election

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      Attorney general Merrick Garland intends to release the first part of the highly-anticipated special counsel report into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election but will withhold the second part about Trump’s retention of classified documents, the justice department said on Wednesday.The full report by the special counsel, Jack Smith, will also be made available to the top Democrat and Republican on the House and Senate judiciary committees as long as they agree to keep the contents of the second part confidential, the department also said.Exactly when the first part of the report will become public remains unclear, since it is still temporarily blocked by a court order issued by the federal judge who presided in the documents case. The justice department’s intentions were disclosed in a court filing challenging the order.The move to make the report public still faces several hurdles. Even if the 11th circuit quickly rules in favor of release, Trump is expected to make a final challenge to the supreme court in an effort to buy time and shred the report before his 20 January inauguration.Ever since Trump won the election, ending the possibility of the cases going to trial, Smith has been preparing a final report into the Trump cases and their charging decisions, as is required under the special counsel regulations at the end of a case.The report is confidential and first gets sent to the attorney general, who has the power to decide how much becomes public. Garland had previously pledged to publish at least some of it, and the justice department’s court filings suggest the entire first volume will be released.Trump’s lawyers, including Todd Blanche who has been tapped by Trump to be his incoming deputy attorney general, reviewed a draft version of the report over the weekend in Washington and took issue with its findings but also with its very existence.The lawyers objected to Smith even being allowed to complete a report and asked that Garland remove him from his post. If Garland disagrees and Smith produces a report, the decision on whether it should become public should be left to the incoming attorney general, the lawyers suggested.The lawyers leaned heavily into their contention that Smith was improperly appointed because he was not confirmed by the Senate before he took the job – the basis on which the US district judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Trump.The Trump legal team also argued that the release of the report would unfairly prejudice Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s former co-defendants in the documents case, against whom the justice department is separately trying to resurrect the case on appeal.On Tuesday, Cannon granted a temporary injunction that prohibited the justice department from releasing the report outside of the agency until three days after the 11th circuit decided the matter.To get around the documents case situation, the special counsel’s team told the 11th circuit in its reply brief on Wednesday that it would withhold the second part of the report that discusses Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and his efforts to obstruct justice.“This limited disclosure will further the public interest in keeping congressional leadership apprised of the significant matter within the Department while safeguarding defendants’ interests,” the filing said. More

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      US electors to certify Trump’s win in process targeted by fake electors in 2020

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      Electors will meet in all 50 states on Tuesday to ratify the second election of Donald Trump to the presidency, a process typically no more than a ceremonial step to the White House for the winner of an election.Usually, it lacks drama. But four years ago on 20 December 2020, Republican activists met in seven states won by Joe Biden – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – to sign false certificates of ascertainment proclaiming victory for Donald Trump and Mike Pence, to be sent to the National Archives and to Congress.Prosecutors have described the intent behind this act of “fake electors” as the provision of a rationale for the vice-president to either declare Trump president or to throw the election to Congress to decide on 6 January 2021. On that day, rioters breached the US Capitol intent on subverting the results of the election.The constitution states that on the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday of December after a presidential election, each state’s presidential electors gather in each state’s capitol to cast their vote in the electoral college for president and vice-president. The electoral college is an artifact of the politics of slavery; created at the insistence of southern states because it initially enhanced the voting power of states with larger enslaved populations due to the apportionment value of the three-fifths compromise.The re-election of Trump in November by a decisive margin, coupled with the relative acceptance of the results by his political opponents, suggests no second wave of shenanigans on Tuesday.Nonetheless, Congress tightened up language about how the process works after the January 6 insurrection, the latest of periodic adjustments to the 248-year-old tradition of the electoral college. The Electoral Count Reform Act clarified that the legislatures of states that use an election to choose a president cannot simply appoint electors after the fact if there is some kind of election “failure”.The reforms require the executive of each state to certify an election at least six days before the electoral count, and that this certification is conclusive unless a state or federal court concludes otherwise. It limited the kind of objections members of Congress could make to the votes of electors. It also ensured that a mob with bad intentions could not change the outcome, by explicitly designating the vice-president’s role in counting votes as a ministerial, ceremonial act.The one thing the 2022 reforms didn’t do is require states to hold a presidential election.Stated in article II, section 1, clause 2 of the constitution: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress … ”The US supreme court ruled in Bush v Gore that states do not actually have to hold an election at all, but if they do it has to conform with 14th amendment rules for equal protection.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe “manner” state legislatures have chosen in the past has included allowing voters to choose them by electoral district, or with legislators choosing themselves – as Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey and South Carolina did in the first presidential election.Electors appointed to the college are obligated to vote for the winning candidate. Some vote for someone else anyway. It’s rare – fewer than 100 out of more than 14,000 people over the life of the country. The modern record is seven, set in 2016.So-called faithless electors have never overturned an election, but dozens of electors have cast ballots for a candidate not of their party over the years. Thirty-three states and Washington DC have state laws prohibiting electors from casting ballots for someone other than the winner of the election. In 2016, four electors for Hillary Clinton in the state of Washington cast their votes for Colin Powell or Faith Spotted Eagle instead and were fined $1,000 for doing so.Five states make the act of a faithless elector a crime; California law makes it a felony punishable by up to three years in prison to break ranks. More

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      Justice Dept. Charges 2 Men in Deadly Drone Attack on U.S. Soldiers

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      The men are accused of supplying key parts in Iranian drones that killed three U.S. service members and injured dozens of others at an American military base in Jordan.The Justice Department has charged two men with illegally supplying parts used in an Iranian-backed militia’s drone attack in January that killed three U.S. service members and injured more than 40 others at an American military base in Jordan, federal prosecutors in Boston announced on Monday.Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, 42, a dual U.S.-Iranian national of Natick, Mass., and Mohammad Abedini, 38, of Tehran, were charged with conspiring to export sophisticated electronic components to Iran, violating American export control and sanctions laws.Mr. Abedini was also charged with providing material support, resulting in death, to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military that the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization.Mr. Sadeghi was arrested on Monday and made an initial appearance in the federal court in Boston. Mr. Abedini was arrested, also on Monday, in Italy by Italian authorities at the request of the United States.Iran has made serious advances in the design and production of military drones in recent years, and has stepped up its transfer to terrorist groups across the Middle East, including Hamas and Hezbollah.Iran has used its drone program to build its global importance and increase weapons sales but has suffered setbacks in its confrontation with Israel. In April, Iran launched an attack on Israel that largely failed. Israel intercepted most of the roughly 200 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYT Crossword Answers for Dec. 17, 2024

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      Kathy Lowden makes a few changes.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesTUESDAY PUZZLE — When the cold weather first sets in, which often happens right around this time of year in New York City, the gloomy, chilly days that sweep through can bring about the winter blues. On days like those, I am especially grateful for the reliably sunny experience of solving a crossword. You can have your SAD lamp; it’s word puzzles for me (and possibly for some of you, too).It’s particularly delightful amid such melancholy to encounter a puzzle constructed by Kathy Lowden, because she is an utter whiz at whimsical themes. On Halloween last year, she collaborated with Erik Piepenburg, a writer and horror columnist, to pull off the perfect fright of a puzzle, in which movie titles combined to form a scary story. This October, she brought us a series of witty rhymes for groups of various people and things: dozens of cousins, oodles of poodles and so on. Today’s theme uses wordplay of another kind, but retains Ms. Lowden’s signature winking style of humor. Let’s smile on it together, shall we?Today’s ThemeThere are technically only two terms in today’s themed entries, but their cleverness is in triplicate. A [Snide comment about a collectible figurine?], for instance, is a KNICKKNACK KNOCK (17A). A [Kerfuffle over beach footwear?] would be a FLIP-FLOP FLAP (26A). If you’re experiencing a [Feeling of guilt after cheating at table tennis?], it might be referred to as a PINGPONG PANG (48A). And [Singer Parton when she’s aimlessly wasting time?] is DILLYDALLY DOLLY (63A).Only the vowels change from syllable to syllable, and the effect is just wondrous. It reminded me of a tongue-twister that we used in my college acting classes to warm up our voices, though that had decidedly darker instances of alliteration than those used in today’s grid:To sit in solemn silence on a dull, dark dockIn a pestilential prison with a lifelong lockAwaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shockFrom a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.Tricky Clues33A. As someone without a putting bone in her body, I don’t quite relate to the idea that GOLF is [“a good walk spoiled,” per Mark Twain]. The implication, as I understand it, is that an otherwise pleasant walk through green fields is rendered monotonous when it’s just for a round of golf. To my mind, the quote makes more sense if the “good walk” being spoiled is that of a non-golfer’s when hit in the head by a stray ball.40A/7D. If you discover two identical clues in a puzzle — in this grid, it’s [“Scram!”] — you’ve stumbled onto what we call twin clues. Be careful, though: While the hints may have similar meanings, their entries are never “twins.” At 40A, [“Scram!”] solves to GIT! At 7D, the same clue solves to SCAT!We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vanuatu Earthquake Triggers Tsunami Alert

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      Forecasters said tsunami waves hitting the coastline of the Pacific Island nation could reach up to a meter, or 3.2 feet, above the tide level.A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck near the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu early Tuesday afternoon local time, according to the United States Geological Survey.The epicenter of the earthquake was about 18 miles off the coast of Port Vila, Vanuatu’s coastal capital, the agency said. The country is about 1,000 miles northeast of Australia and comprises over 80 islands with a population of about 300,000.Tsunami waves reaching up to 3.2 feet above the tide level were possible for some costal areas of Vanuatu, the U.S. Tsunami Warning System said. Waves of less than one foot were possible for the coasts of nearby island nations like Fiji, Kiribati and New Caledonia, it said.This is a developing story. More

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      An Excruciating Wait for Abundant Life Christian School Families After Shooting

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      Inside Abundant Life Christian School, a chilling message came over the intercom late Monday morning: “Lockdown. This is not a drill.”Teachers herded students out of view, a sixth-grader recalled. Then there was banging, and screaming. “Everybody started freaking out,” said the student, Breken Ives.The sirens came minutes later.“Police car after police car,” said John Diaz de Leon, a retiree in his 60s who lives near the school in Madison, Wis., and who soon headed outside to see what was bringing so many squad cars to usually quiet Buckeye Road.It would be hours before anyone knew any of the details that the police disclosed in a series of news conferences — including that the shooter was a student at the small private school, and that a teacher and a fellow student had been killed and six others injured.Mr. Diaz de Leon had tuned into a police scanner and heard the words “triage” and “D.O.A.” — dead on arrival. Outside the school, he watched as two police officers with long guns drawn approached the school building, leading a police dog. Soon, groups of students began running out, some coatless and holding hands.All around Madison, parents began to rush toward the school. One father, Mike Brube, was blocks away at work, he said, when he saw the police cruisers screaming by, sirens blaring.He drove straight to the school where his seventh-grader, Angel, had been enrolled throughout childhood. “The school is Christian, and it’s like a family place,” Mr. Brube said.Viktoriya Gonzales was among the parents who waited anxiously near the school for hours to be reunited with their children. Some of the students were held back to talk with police officers as the authorities began to investigate.Ms. Gonzales had heard from other students that her son, 12, was safe but “severely traumatized, because he was right by the shooter.”“That’s all I know,” she said. More