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      Georgia Attorney General Says Election Board Is Operating Outside Its Authority

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      The Georgia State Election Board is set to vote on Friday on a package of nearly a dozen rules that would change the way elections are conducted amid growing pressure from almost every level of Georgia state government advising the board that it is operating outside of its legal authority.The rules under consideration include conservative policy goals like introducing hand-counting of ballots and expanding access for partisan poll watchers. The proposals come just 45 days before the election, after poll workers have been trained and ballots have been mailed to overseas voters.On Thursday, the attorney general’s office took the rare step of weighing in on the proposed rules, saying they “very likely exceed the board’s statutory authority.”The fight comes as the election board is under increasing pressure from critics already concerned that it has been rewriting the rules of the game in a key swing state to favor former President Donald J. Trump, including potentially disrupting certification of the election if Mr. Trump loses in November. Last month, the board granted local officials new power over the election-certification process, a change that opponents say could sow chaos.Elizabeth Young, a senior assistant attorney general, characterized five specific new election proposals as either exceeding the board’s legal reach or as an unnecessary redundancy, including the hand-counting proposal.“There are thus no provisions in the statutes cited in support of these proposed rules that permit counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level prior to delivery to the election superintendent for tabulation,” Ms. Young wrote in a letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times. “Accordingly, these proposed rules are not tethered to any statute — and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do.”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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      No Criminal Charges Expected in Aftermath of Maui Wildfire

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      Hawaii’s attorney general released the latest findings on the 2023 fire that destroyed much of the town of Lahaina, finding a range of shortcomings in the response.Investigators in Hawaii have found a series of failures that contributed to last year’s deadly wildfire in the town of Lahaina, but the state attorney general’s office said on Friday that it did not expect to file criminal charges against anyone involved in the response.The attorney general, Anne Lopez, released a report identifying a range of problems in the response to the fire, including a statewide culture of minimizing the risks posed by wildfires, a lack of preparedness on the island of Maui even when conditions were forecast to be dangerous, and a series of flawed decisions during the fire that delayed evacuating people who were in danger. The fire ultimately left more than 100 people dead.But a spokeswoman for the attorney general said that based on the information gathered thus far, no criminal charges would be filed. “This report makes it clear that no one event, person or action caused the result or outcomes of this fire,” Ms. Lopez said at a news conference in Honolulu.Several agencies have now released a series of lengthy reports about the inferno — Friday’s was more than 500 pages — but none of them have answered some of the key remaining questions, including the reason for delays in sending evacuation alerts to cellphones and a conclusive determination of how the fire started and spread.Residents on the hillside more than a mile above the town’s waterfront reported seeing fire emerge next to a downed power line in the morning and start to spread in the same area in the afternoon, but the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has yet to release a final determination.From wherever it started, the fire raced rapidly through town. Evacuation routes were blocked, cell towers went down, and fire hydrants ran dry.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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      Correction Officers Who Failed to Aid Dying Inmate Won’t Be Charged

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      Correction Department rules “do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the New York attorney general’s office said.Michael Nieves sliced his throat with a razor around 11:40 a.m. on Aug. 25, 2022. For the next 10 minutes, correction workers at the Rikers Island jail complex stood by his cell and watched him bleed without providing medical care.Mr. Nieves later died.The failure by three correction workers to offer aid was “an omission” that contributed to Mr. Nieves’s death, the New York attorney general’s office of special investigation found in a report published on Tuesday. But because Mr. Nieves might have died even had he received immediate medical help, the attorney general, Letitia James, said her office would not charge the workers criminally.In a surprising finding, the report also said that the workers had followed correction department rules by deciding not to render help.“The D.O.C.’s rules and regulations do not clearly require officers to provide immediate care to people with severely bleeding wounds,” the attorney general’s office said in a news release.The decision not to charge the corrections workers “is incredibly disappointing,” said Samuel Shapiro, a lawyer hired by members of Mr. Nieves’s family, who have filed a lawsuit against the city in federal court. Describing surveillance footage that captures Mr. Nieves’s suicide attempt and the workers’ response, Mr. Shapiro said, “It is incredibly disturbing to watch city employees stand there as Mr. Nieves is slowly bleeding to death from his neck and do nothing to help him.”The Department of Correction suspended all three workers for 30 days. When they returned to work, they were prohibited from having contact with detainees. In May 2023, two officers, Beethoven Joseph and Jeron Smith, were accused by the department of violating rules and a directive on suicide prevention and intervention. The disciplinary proceedings are still pending, the attorney general’s office said.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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      Latino Civil Rights Group Demands Inquiry Into Texas Voter Fraud Raids

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      A Latino civil rights group is asking the Department of Justice to open an investigation into a series of raids conducted on Latino voting activists and political operatives as part of sprawling voter fraud inquiry by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton.The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said that many of those targeted were Democratic leaders and election volunteers, and that some were older residents. Gabriel Rosales, the director of the group’s Texas chapter, said that officers conducting the raids took cellphones, computers and documents. He called the raids “alarming” and said they were an effort to suppress Latino voters.In a statement last week, Mr. Paxton, a Republican, described the raids, carried out in counties near San Antonio and South Texas, as part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” that began two years ago to look into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting. His office has said that it will not comment on the investigation because it is still underway.That investigation is part of a unit, the election integrity unit, which was created as Republican-led states sought to crack down on supposed voter crime after former President Donald J. Trump began making false claims of fraud in the wake of the 2020 election. Experts have found that voter fraud remains rare.For 35 years, Ms. Martinez has been a member of the League of United Latin American Citizens, instructing Latino residents stay engaged in politics.Christopher Lee for The New York Times“I’ve been involved in politics all of my life,” Ms. Martinez said.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesWe 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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      Incumbent Andrew Bailey Wins Republican Primary for Missouri A.G.

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      The Missouri attorney general, Andrew Bailey, won the primary election on Tuesday to be Republican Party’s candidate for attorney general in the November general election, The Associated Press said.Mr. Bailey, who was appointed by Gov. Mike Parson in 2022, now seeks a full four-year term in a post has been a steppingstone for his predecessors, Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley, both of whom are sitting U.S. senators.In his 19 months as the state’s attorney general, Mr. Bailey has plunged the office into heated legal and political fights. He has sought to keep prisoners locked up after their exonerations, withheld approval of a ballot initiative to restore abortion rights, and tried to restrict gender-affirming health care for adults and children. He also tried to sue New York State over its criminal prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump and mounted legal challenges to President Biden’s policies on student loan forgiveness, immigration, gun regulation and other issues.Even so, Mr. Bailey spent much of the primary race jockeying with his opponent, Will Scharf, over who was more loyal to Mr. Trump. Mr. Scharf is one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, appearing before the Supreme Court on his behalf in the presidential immunity case that was decided in Mr. Trump’s favor last month. Mr. Trump endorsed both candidates, saying on his social media platform, Truth Social, “Both have fearlessly confronted the Radical Left’s destructive Lawfare and Weaponization of ‘Justice’ with Great Wisdom, Courage, and Strength!”Mr. Bailey, who Mr. Scharf has accused of being soft on crime, routinely opposed efforts by prisoners to prove their innocence or to leave prison once they had done so. This summer he delayed the release of two exonerated prisoners, Sandra Hemme and Christopher Dunn, and sought unsuccessfully to block a hearing on DNA evidence that pointed to the innocence of a death row prisoner, Marcellus Williams, who is scheduled for execution in September.Mr. Bailey, 43, grew up in Missouri and earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Missouri. Mr. Scharf, 38, is from New York and is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School. A clerkship for a federal judge brought him to Missouri.Neither candidate had previously run for office.Mr. Bailey will face Elad Gross, a Democrat, who ran unopposed in his party’s primary. More

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      Prosecutors Use Menendez Couple’s Texts to Depict Them as Collaborators

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      Senator Robert Menendez is accused of bribery and corruption. His lawyers have attempted to shift the blame to his wife, Nadine.In January 2019, Senator Robert Menendez placed a seven-minute call to New Jersey’s attorney general, Gurbir Grewal, in what prosecutors say was an effort to quash an insurance fraud case.A New Jersey businessman, Jose Uribe, had been desperate to make the fraud charges disappear, prosecutors say. He had turned to Nadine Menendez — who married the senator the next year — for help.In the hours and days before the senator’s call, there was a flurry of communication between Ms. Menendez, Mr. Uribe and a second businessman who is charged with the senator and his wife in an elaborate bribery scheme. Ms. Menendez would often contact the senator soon after texting with the men, sometimes using an alternate phone that the couple referred to as her “007” phone.The messages were shared Wednesday with jurors over hours of testimony from an F.B.I. special agent during the fourth week of Mr. Menendez’s bribery trial. The agent was responsible for verifying the accuracy of a chart summarizing more than 1,100 pieces of evidence, including emails, texts and voice mail recordings.Taken together, the messages appeared to be part of the prosecution’s effort to undercut a central element of Mr. Menendez’s defense: that he and his wife lived largely separate lives, and that he was unaware of her interactions with the men now accused of bribing the couple in exchange for political favors from the senator.Prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York took pains on Wednesday to instead present the senator and his wife as close collaborators who spoke regularly and were intimately involved in mundane details of each other’s daily lives.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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      Giuliani Is Served Arizona Indictment Notice After His 80th Birthday Party

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      After trying to reach him for weeks, officials served him the notice as he left his 80th birthday party. He is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.Rudolph W. Giuliani was served with a notice of his indictment in the Arizona election interference case on Friday night, becoming the last of the 18 defendants to receive the notice after nearly a month of unsuccessful attempts by the authorities.The indictment against Mr. Giuliani, Donald J. Trump’s former personal lawyer, and others includes conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges related to their attempts to change the results of the 2020 election in the state in favor of Mr. Trump, according to prosecutors. Among the other defendants are Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, along with all of the fake electors who acted on Mr. Trump’s behalf to keep him in power despite his defeat there.Richie Taylor, a spokesman for Kris Mayes, Arizona’s attorney general who brought the indictment, said that Mr. Giuliani was served on Friday night at around 11 p.m. in Palm Beach County, Fla., as he left his 80th birthday party. “The agents by no means disrupted his event. They waited to serve him outside as he left,” Mr. Taylor said.Mr. Giuliani’s spokesman, Ted Goodman, confirmed in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Giuliani was served “after the party, after guests had left and as he was walking to the car.”“He was unfazed and enjoyed an incredible evening with hundreds of people, from all walks of life, who love and respect him for his contributions to society,” Mr. Goodman said. “We look forward to full vindication soon.”Mr. Giuliani is expected to appear in court on Tuesday unless the court grants a delay, Mr. Taylor said. A trial in the Arizona election interference case has been tentatively set to start in mid-October.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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      Transportation Dept. and State Attorneys General Will Look Into Airline Complaints

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      Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a new partnership with more than a dozen state attorneys general that aims to improve protections for air travelers.Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday announced a new partnership with more than a dozen state attorneys general to investigate consumer complaints against airlines.The partnership sets up a process for state attorney general’s offices to review complaints from travelers and then pass the baton to the federal Transportation Department, which could take enforcement action against airlines.“The support that’s being offered by state attorney general’s offices means that our capacity to protect airline passengers is expanding,” Mr. Buttigieg said at Denver International Airport, where he appeared with Colorado’s attorney general, Phil Weiser, a Democrat who is among those joining the partnership.The federal-state initiative is Mr. Buttigieg’s latest step aimed at improving protections for air travelers and ensuring that airlines are held accountable when they err. The Transportation Department has issued more than $164 million in penalties against airlines during his tenure, according to the agency. Mr. Buttigieg has also pressed airlines to seat children with their parents for free and to improve the services they offer to travelers who experience lengthy delays or cancellations.The Transportation Department said attorneys general from 15 states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin — had signed agreements to be part of the partnership.The attorneys general from the District of Columbia, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands also have joined, the department said, bringing the total number involved to 18. Of those, 16 are Democrats and two are Republicans.Under federal law, states are generally barred from enforcing their own consumer protection laws against airlines. State attorneys general have pushed for federal legislation that would empower them to take action against airlines, just as they can against companies in other industries.The new partnership does not grant them that power. Instead, their offices would investigate complaints from travelers, and if they determine that federal consumer protection rules may have been violated, they could refer the matter to the Transportation Department under a fast-track process. The federal agency would then review the complaint and could take enforcement action.“The ideal world would be one where states are given formal authority to enforce consumer protection law alongside the Department of Transportation,” Mr. Weiser said. “Congress has failed to act on that thus far, but we are not waiting for action.”In a statement, Airlines for America, a trade group representing the country’s largest air carriers, said it regularly worked with the Transportation Department and state attorneys general to improve the flying experience for travelers.“We appreciate the role of state attorneys general and their work on behalf of consumers,” the group said, adding that it looked forward to continuing to work with them. More