Law (US)

Subterms

    Latest story

    188 Shares21 Views

    Congressman Ro Khanna warns officials not to impede Epstein files release: ‘They will be prosecuted’

    by

    Democratic congressman Ro Khanna was a major force behind the legislative campaign that led Donald Trump to back down from his opposition and sign into law a bill compelling the release of files related to the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.With the justice department now required to release the documents within 30 days, Khanna has a warning for those in the Trump administration who may find themselves pressed to withhold information: comply or face the consequences.“Now, it’s federal law for those documents to be released, and if the justice officials don’t release it, they will be prosecuted, and they … could be prosecuted in a future administration,” Khanna told the Guardian on Wednesday evening, shortly before Trump put his signature on a bill intended to reveal the truth about what he spent weeks calling a “Democrat hoax”.“The career officials [that] are making these decisions have to think that they’re going to be subject to future contempt of Congress or criminal prosecution, and they’re taking a huge risk … if they violate that, given that administrations change,” the California lawmaker added.As Democrats eye regaining control of the House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections, Khanna also expressed his support for issuing a subpoena to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former British royal who was stripped of his titles over his affiliation with Epstein.A top UK minister has since said Mountbatten-Windsor should answer questions about the relationship from US lawmakers, and Khanna and other Democrats asked Mountbatten-Windsor to sit for a deposition voluntarily, though the former prince has not responded.“We could subpoena him, because then, if he ever visited the United States, he’d be in contempt of Congress, and … face prosecution,” Khanna said. “Maybe he never wants to visit the United States, but if he does, he would have to comply with the subpoena.”It would be up to the House of Representatives’s Republican majority to issue a subpoena, and Khanna said he had suggested doing so to James Comer, the Republican chair of the oversight committee, which is also investigating the Epstein case. He has not heard back, and spokespeople for Comer did not respond to a request for comment.A financier and one-time friend of the president, Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, after pleading guilty in 2008 to a sexual abuse charge in Florida after a deal with prosecutors. During last year’s campaign, Trump and his allies insinuated that there was more to be revealed about Epstein and his interactions with global elites, but in July, the justice department and FBI announced that they would release no further information.That sparked an outcry among Trump’s supporters as well as many of his opponents, which continued even after the president dismissed the concern as a politically motivated attack. Khanna then collaborated with Republican congressman Thomas Massie on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which requires the release of the government’s files about Epstein. To overcome the objections of the House speaker, Mike Johnson, Massie circulated a discharge petition among lawmakers to force a vote on the bill.The petition took weeks to receive the 218 signatures necessary to succeed, due in part due to the 43-day government shutdown and Johnson’s refusal to swear in a newly elected Democratic representative. Earlier this week, Trump dropped his opposition to the bill, and the House approved it overwhelmingly. The Senate later agreed to pass it unanimously.“We cracked the Maga base. It’s the first time anyone has ever cracked the Maga base,” Khanna said, adding that the “courage of the survivors” of Epstein, who twice traveled to the US Capitol to publicly press for the release of the files, was similarly pivotal.The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, has been accused of undoing the justice department’s independence from the White House, and recently opened an investigation into ties between Democrats and Epstein at Trump’s request.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder the law, she is now tasked with releasing a wide range of files related to Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and others who interacted with them, though there are exemptions for materials related to open investigations or that could jeopardize national security.Khanna would not speculate on what may be revealed by the files, but signaled that Democrats would not let the issue drop, and would pursue officials who do not follow the law, though that will likely have to wait until they reclaim the majority in one chamber of Congress.“If we have the House, the people will be held in contempt and in front of Congress if they’re not complying. And if there’s a new administration, they’re very likely to enforce the law if people have violated it,” he said.The Epstein files have already generated uncomfortable headlines for powerful Democrats, including Larry Summers, a former treasury secretary under Bill Clinton who this week announced he would stop teaching at Harvard University after emails released by the House oversight committee reignited questions about his ties with Epstein.Khanna said he was not concerned by the possibility that the documents could cost others in his party their reputation.“I believe that we need a clearing, frankly, of the elite governing class … whether they were Democrats or Republicans,” he said.“We need a generational change, and if there are people who are caught up in protecting sex offenders or people caught up in participating in sex trafficking or abuse of underage girls, they should not be part of the future of politics.” More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares28 Views

      in US Politics

      US judge halts Trump’s deployment of the national guard to Washington DC

      by

      A federal judge on Thursday halted for now Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to Washington DC, dealing the president a temporary legal setback to his efforts to send the military to US cities over the objections of local leaders.US district judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of former president Joe Biden, temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying national guard troops to enforce the law in the nation’s capital without approval from its mayor.Cobb paused her ruling until 11 December to allow the Trump administration to appeal.The legal fight is playing out alongside several others across the country as Trump presses against longstanding but rarely tested constraints on presidents using troops to enforce domestic law.The DC attorney general, Brian Schwalb, an elected Democrat, sued on 4 September after Trump announced the deployment on 11 August.The lawsuit accused Trump of unlawfully usurping control of the city’s law enforcement and violating a law prohibiting troops from performing domestic police work.Trump has unique law enforcement powers in Washington, which is not part of any state, but local officials say he overstepped by supplanting the mayor’s policing authority and violated legal prohibitions against federal troops engaging in civilian police work.Trump administration lawyers called the lawsuit a political stunt in court filings and said the president is free to deploy troops to Washington without the approval of local leaders. The administration also claims the troops are operating lawfully and successfully reducing crime.Trump, a Republican, has also moved to deploy troops in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to combat what he describes as lawlessness and violent unrest over his crackdown on illegal immigration.Democratic leaders of those cities and their states have sued to block the deployments, saying they amount to an attempt to punish political foes with militarized shows of force. More

    • 125 Shares18 Views

      in US Politics

      Full grand jury didn’t see final Comey indictment, prosecutors admit

      by

      Federal prosecutors on Wednesday said they had never presented the final version of the indictment filed against James Comey to a full federal grand jury, a concession that adds to mounting challenges in their effort to prosecute the former FBI director.Prosecutors acknowledged the omission during a Wednesday hearing in which Comey’s lawyers argued the case against him should be dismissed because it was a selective and vindictive prosecution.Comey was indicted on 26 September on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding in connection with testimony he gave in 2020 in which he said he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding Hillary Clinton.Court documents from September show that Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally installed as a top prosecutor in the case, had sought an additional false statement charge against Comey, but that grand jurors had rejected it.Once the grand jury rejected the charge, Halligan could have had the full grand jury vote again on a copy of the indictment that only included the two charges they voted to indict on, or presented the judge with a three-count indictment crossing out the count on which the grand jury had chosen not to indict on. But, pressed on Wednesday by Michael Nachmanoff, the US district judge overseeing the case, Halligan confirmed that only the foreperson and another grand juror had seen the revised indictment that had only the two charges the grand jury had voted to indict on, CNN and Lawfare reported on Wednesday.Comey’s team therefore views the indictment as null. “There is no indictment Mr Comey is facing,” Michael Dreeben, one of Comey’s lawyers said in court on Wednesday. N Tyler Lemons, an assistant US attorney handling the case, argued that there wasn’t a problem because the final version of the indictment merely removed a charge rejected by the grand jury. “The new indictment wasn’t a new indictment,” he said, according to the Washington Post.Andrew Tessman, a former federal prosecutor in West Virginia and Washington DC, said he saw the issue as “highly problematic” and a “fatal flaw”. “This is just not how grand jury operates,” he said.Halligan is a former insurance lawyer who presented the case to the grand jury herself despite never having previously handled a criminal case.A transcript of the hearing in which the indictment was returned in Comey’s case obtained by CBS News shows some confusion over the indictment. The magistrate judge overseeing it said she had been given two versions of the indictment.“The reason we want to cross all of our T’s and dot all of our I’s in these situations is because the court is also going to take it very seriously for the same reasons. And if you screw up one step in this process, then you’re risking the whole case going away in an embarrassing fashion,” Tessman said. “The US attorney’s office is going to take this whole process very seriously, but the court is going to take it even more seriously. And if they see one thing wrong with how the case was presented to the grand jury, they’re going to err on the side of protecting people’s constitutional rights.”“It’s understandable. You pulled a random insurance lawyer off the street and you put her into the grand jury with no training and no other experienced attorney there,” he added. “It’s not surprising at all that some big mistake was made.”Nachmanoff gave the justice department until 5pm on Wednesday to further explain what happened.Before Trump installed Halligan, it was widely reported that career prosecutors believed there was not sufficient evidence to charge Comey with a crime. On Wednesday, Lemons said the deputy attorney general’s office had instructed him not to disclose whether a memo outlining the reasons for not prosecuting the case existed.Wednesday’s hearing came days after a magistrate judge handling the case said there may have been “government misconduct” and that Halligan made at least two “fundamental and highly prejudicial” misstatements of law to the grand jury. The magistrate judge ordered the prosecutors to take the highly unusual step of turning over grand jury materials to Comey’s team. That order is on hold while an appeal is pending. More

    • 125 Shares66 Views

      in US Politics

      Trans air force members sue Trump administration over denied pension

      by

      A group of 17 transgender US air force members has sued the Trump administration for denying them early retirement pensions and benefits.The complaint, submitted in federal court, describes the government’s move against them as “unlawful and invalid”.The legal action follows the air force’s confirmation it would deny early retirement benefits to all transgender service members with 15 to 18 years of military experience, a decision that effectively pushes them out of the military with no retirement support at all.“The Air Force’s own retirement instruction provides that retirement orders may only be rescinded under very limited circumstances, none of which were present here,” the lawsuit says.Among the named plaintiffs are Logan Ireland, Ashley Davis, Kira Brimhall and Lindell Walley.Glad Law, one of the advocacy groups behind the lawsuit who is representing the affected service members, said the revocation of early retirement support had ripped away financial support and benefits these families were counting on after long years of excellent service to their country.“These service members will lose $1-2m in lifetime benefits, jeopardizing their families’ economic security,” Glad Law said in a statement. “The action also strips the airmen and their families of access to TRICARE, the military health insurance program, which would have provided access to civilian health care providers beyond VA [Veterans Administration] facilities.”The lawsuit came amid the latest escalation by the Trump administration to prohibit transgender people from joining the military and to remove those already serving. The Pentagon has argued that transgender people are medically unfit, something civil rights activists have pushed back on and say constitutes illegal discrimination.In March, a federal judge blocked Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from military service. US district judge Ana Reyes in Washington DC ruled that the order likely violated their constitutional rights. Pentagon officials have said in the past that 4,200 service members were diagnosed with “gender dysphoria”, which they use as an identifier of being transgender.The air force, however, has stood apart in its enforcement of policies that go beyond just separating troops from military service. As well as rescinding early retirement benefits, the service rolled out a new policy in August to deny transgender members the right to argue before a board of their peers for the right to continue serving.The most recent lawsuit, the latest in a string, is challenging that.According to the court documents, the “plaintiffs’ retirement orders remain valid and effective”. Their legal team are calling for these “orders to be reinstated” and pushing for “their military records be corrected accordingly”. The lawsuit also says “interest, costs and attorney’s fees” must be accounted for and “further relief as the court deems just and proper.”Ireland, a master sergeant in the air force with 15 years of service, told the Associated Press: “The military taught me to lead and fight, not retreat.“Stripping away my retirement sends the message that those values only apply on the battlefield, not when a service member needs them most.” More

    • 138 Shares59 Views

      in US Politics

      Judge bars Trump administration from cutting funding to University of California

      by

      The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system’s federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late on Friday in a sharply worded decision.US district judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding to the university based on alleged discrimination without giving notice to affected faculty and conducting a hearing, among other requirements.The administration over the summer demanded the University of California, Los Angeles, pay $1.2bn to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first public university to be targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations.It has also frozen or paused federal funding over similar claims against private colleges, including Columbia University.In her ruling, Lin said labor unions and other groups representing UC faculty, students and employees had provided “overwhelming evidence” that the Trump administration was “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke’, ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities”.“Agency officials, as well as the president and vice-president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of pre-eminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune,” Lin wrote.She added: “It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California.”At UC, which is facing a series of civil rights investigations, she found the administration had engaged in “coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the first amendment and 10th amendment”.Messages sent to the White House and the US Department of Justice after hours on Friday were not immediately returned. Lin’s order will remain in effect indefinitely.The president of the University of California, James B Milliken, has said the size of the UCLA fine would devastate the UC system, whose campuses are viewed as some of the top public colleges in the nation.UC is in settlement talks with the administration and is not a party to the lawsuit before Lin, who was nominated to the bench by Joe Biden, a Democrat. In a statement, the university system said it “remains committed to protecting the mission, governance and academic freedom of the university”.The administration has demanded UCLA comply with its views on gender identity and establish a process to make sure foreign students are not admitted if they are likely to engage in anti-American, anti-western or antisemitic “disruptions or harassment”, among other requirements outlined in a settlement proposal made public in October.The administration has previously struck deals with Brown University for $50m and Columbia University for $221m.Lin cited declarations by UC faculty and staff that the administration’s moves were prompting them to stop teaching or researching topics they were “afraid were too ‘left’ or ‘woke’”.Her injunction also blocks the administration from “conditioning the grant or continuance of federal funding on the UC’s agreement to any measures that would violate the rights of plaintiffs’ members under the first amendment”.She cited efforts to force the UC schools to screen international students based on “’anti-western” or “‘anti-American’” views, restrict research and teaching, or adopt specific definitions of “male” and “female” as examples of such measures.Donald Trump has decried elite colleges as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism.His administration has launched investigations of dozens of universities, claiming they have failed to end the use of racial preferences in violation of civil rights law. The Republican administration says diversity, equity and inclusion efforts discriminate against white and Asian American students. More

    • 138 Shares50 Views

      in US Politics

      US judge bars Trump from cutting off University of California funds

      by

      A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding and threatening hefty fines against the University of California amid the administration’s attempts to coerce elite US universities into adopting and promoting conservative ideals.US district judge Rita Lin of San Francisco issued the preliminary injunction late Friday, saying the government was not allowed to demand payments from the California school system over the administration’s claims that it violates civil rights by allowing antisemitism and practising affirmative action.In her ruling, Lin said that the plaintiffs – who include UC faculty, researchers and students – have submitted “overwhelming evidence” illustrating the Trump administration’s “concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities”.Lin ruled that the government had a “playbook of initiating civil rights investigations” at universities in order to cut federal funding, “bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune”.In July, the Trump administration froze $584m in federal funding for the University of California, Los Angeles, while accusing the university of discrimination and violating civil rights over its handling of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The administration claimed UCLA was “acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students”.In October, the administration proposed a deal to nine prominent universities in the US that promised funding in exchange for schools imposing policies and changes that included banning race or sex as considerations in admissions and hiring and removing departments that “purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas”.While the University of California school system was not offered the deal, the University of Southern California – a private institution – was.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, responded to the offer with a warning that any California universities that signed Trump’s proposed settlement would lose their state funding.Democracy Forward, a progressive legal advocacy group, called the Trump administration’s efforts to influence policy at universities “strong-arm tactics”.“This is not just a harmful attempt to stifle speech, it is a betrayal of the constitution and a dangerous step toward autocracy,” the group said in a statement. More

    • 213 Shares83 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Trump and Epstein: the truth about Maga and its conspiracy theories | Editorial

      by

      It is 20 years since Florida police first investigated the financier Jeffrey Epstein for the sexual abuse of underage girls; six years since he killed himself in prison following his arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges; and more than a year since Donald Trump said that he would have “no problem” with releasing the FBI files on the offender.As the Democratic politician Ro Khanna noted, releasing the files “was core to Trump’s promise … It was his central theme that the American corrupt elite had betrayed forgotten Americans”. The question is not only what Epstein’s associates did, but also what they knew and what they did not do. It is not only about their own behaviour, but about any knowledge or suspicion of his crimes, and willingness to overlook them.Yet the Maga base is still waiting. Mr Trump has said that he had “no idea” about Epstein’s crimes. On Wednesday, questions were reignited by the Democrats’ release of emails in which Epstein described Mr Trump as “that dog that hasn’t barked”, adding that “[victim’s name redacted] spent hours at my house with him”. Republicans said the victim was the late Virginia Giuffre, who told lawyers that “I don’t think Donald Trump participated in anything”. Separately, Epstein wrote that “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine [Maxwell] to stop” and that “Trump knew of it” but “he never got a massage”.Mr Trump, who has mainstreamed and legitimised conspiracy politics and the championing of emotion over fact, attacks the issue as a “hoax”. The very people who urged Maga supporters to pursue this story – such as Kash Patel, now FBI chief – abruptly changed their minds this year without adequate explanation. Republicans released thousands of documents in response to the emails published by Democrats. But Mr Trump faces a bipartisan demand for the full release of the files, with members of the Maga far right joining Democrats.The Republicans took a drubbing in off-year elections last week, and Mr Trump’s approval rating is the lowest of this term. The ending of the longest government shutdown in history – after a handful of Democrats folded on Wednesday – relieved the White House, but opens the way for a vote on releasing the files, expected next week.Mr Trump has shaken off troubles that would have ended any other political career – including E Jean Carroll’s successful civil suit against him for sexual abuse (which he is again asking the supreme court to dismiss) and two dozen allegations of sexual assault, which he denies. The full release of documents might aid him: the slow drip of information has kept the scandal running and made it look, rightly or wrongly, as if the administration has something worse to hide.For the Maga base, previously fired up by lurid and false “Pizzagate” claims of a paedophile ring connected to the Democratic political elite, this remains a burning issue. Their claims about Epstein’s circle have at times been partisan, provably wrong and antisemitic. Yet it’s hard to deny that the mills of justice usually grind slower when the rich and well-connected are involved, and that powerful figures who benefited from a relationship with Epstein, such as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson, have sought to avoid scrutiny and minimise their ties. It took the courage of victims and dogged reporting to make Epstein accountable, and it took far too long. A fuller reckoning for his associates – from across the political spectrum – is overdue.

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 113 Shares60 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct, newly released emails suggest

      by

      Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files reportedly detailing the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office.Later on Wednesday, the committee’s Republican majority countered by releasing its own tranche of 23,000 documents, accusing Democrats of “cherry picking” the memos “to generate clickbait”.Trump, meanwhile, fired off a post to his Truth Social platform in which he said Democrats “are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects”.The president urged House members to focus instead on the upcoming vote to reopen the government: “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”Numerous victims have said they were assaulted at Epstein’s infamous parties that took place at his home in New York, his Florida mansion and at his compound at Little St James in the US Virgin Islands, to which “clients” would be ferried by private jet.In one of the memos released Wednesday, Epstein alleged to his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in April 2011 that Trump had had a lengthy engagement in the company of one of the disgraced financier’s sex-trafficked victims.“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [victim’s name redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned,” the message reads.In her reply, Maxwell says: “I have been thinking about that.”A second message, sent by Epstein to Trump biographer Michael Wolff in January 2019, indicates that Trump had asked him to resign from Mar-a-Lago, the president’s exclusive members-only club in Florida.But, Epstein says, he was “never a member ever” and adds “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”.Epstein’s longtime friend and co-conspirator Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence after her conviction for sex-trafficking crimes, including procuring girls to be abused.A third message, sent by Epstein to Wolff in December 2015, solicited the author’s advice about fashioning a response for Trump to questions CNN was reportedly preparing to ask him about their relationship.“If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein asks.“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responds.“If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you …“Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”Trump has consistently denied having knowledge of Epstein’s activities, which included the operation of a sex-trafficking ring that procured teen girls for wealthy and influential associates. Epstein killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in a lunchtime press briefing at the White House, called the release of the emails “a manufactured hoax by the Democratic party” to distract from the reopening of the government.She also expanded on an earlier statement in which she identified the unnamed victim in the redacted email as Virginia Giuffre, who named Epstein, Maxwell and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, among her abusers, but never publicly accused Trump.In her posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Giuffre said she was recruited by Maxwell from Mar-a-Lago, where she worked as a teenager. She died by suicide in April aged 41.“Ms Giuffre, and God rest her soul, maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her,” Leavitt said.“It’s a question worth asking the Democratic party why they chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and is, unfortunately, no longer with us.”Leavitt insisted that “these emails proved absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong”.Democrats, however, have accused the White House of covering up Trump’s alleged involvement and have consistently called on Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, to release documents about the scandal, which have come to be known as the Epstein files.In a statement, the oversight committee’s ranking member, Robert Garcia, said: “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president.”Other Democrats joined calls for more transparency from the White House.Ro Khanna, a California Democratic representative, said that this was “exactly why” he was working with the Republican representative Thomas Massie to force a House floor vote on the full release of the Epstein files.“The public deserves transparency and the survivors deserve justice,” he said.In a post to X, Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator, wrote: “Americans deserve the full truth. The administration needs to keep its promise and release the Epstein files.”A vote could come quickly as the House prepares to reconvene Wednesday after the lengthy government shutdown.The Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, who has wavered on the release of the full tranche of Epstein investigation records, has said he will swear in Arizona’s newly elected representative Adelita Grijalva, set to be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition that would force a vote.“Republicans are running a pedophile protection program. They are intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said on Tuesday, accusing Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in for seven weeks to defend Trump.Maxwell, meanwhile, is seeking a commutation of her sentence from Trump, according to Democrats on the House judiciary committee.The supreme court last month rejected Maxwell’s appeal to overturn her criminal conviction.Additional reporting by Shrai Popat More

    • 200 Shares98 Views

      in US Politics

      With his threat of a $1bn lawsuit against BBC, Trump’s assault on the media goes global

      by

      Donald Trump has, for years, used legal threats and lawsuits to pressure news companies who put out coverage he does not like. After his return to power, a string of US broadcasters and tech firms have paid tens of millions of dollars to settle such cases.The president has now gone global with this campaign, crossing the pond to threaten the BBC with a $1bn lawsuit over an episode of the Panorama documentary program that aired more than a year ago.A lawyer representing Trump accused the BBC of “defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” in stitching together Trump’s comments from his January 6 speech in Washington DC to make it sound like he was encouraging his supporters to “fight like hell” at the US Capitol, hours before a deadly insurrection unfolded.Already, two top BBC executives have resigned over the controversy. A lawyer for Trump said the BBC’s broadcast has caused Trump “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” and suggested it violated Florida law – even though BBC iPlayer, the main streaming platform that carries Panorama, and BBC One, the main TV channel that broadcasts it, are not available in the US.The BBC has said it will review the correspondence from Trump’s legal team “and respond directly in due course”.The saga is only the latest chapter in a campaign meant to keep media institutions that cover Trump on their toes. Often, legal letters sent to media companies on his behalf have not actually led to lawsuits – though many journalists say they have contributed to a chilling effect on coverage.But Trump has also followed through on several lawsuits, and since his re-election one year ago, a series of media and tech companies have chosen to take the easy way out by agreeing to significant settlements. Several of those companies have business before his administration.In July, Paramount, parent company of CBS News, chose to settle a case that Trump had filed in the state of Texas arguing that the company had violated consumer protection laws by misleadingly editing a 60 Minutes interview of then vice-president Kamala Harris. Many legal experts viewed the case as easily winnable for Paramount, considering the unrelated statute he sued under – and that Trump could not credibly claim to have been harmed by the segment since he defeated Harris in the election.But company leadership viewed the lawsuit as an unnecessary distraction, particularly as it sought his government’s approval of a merger with Skydance Media. Paramount ultimately paid $16m.Trump also won a settlement last year from ABC, owned by Disney, which he had sued over comments made by anchor George Stephanopoulos. ABC agreed to pay $15m.When combining Trump’s settlements with ABC, CBS and cases against both Facebook parent company Meta and YouTube, which is owned by Google, he has racked up over $80m in agreements. Most of this money is slated to go toward the building of Trump’s presidential library, rather than to him personally.Now the BBC in his sights. Unlike CBS, owned by Paramount Skydance, and ABC, owned by Disney, the BBC is not part of a complicated corporate empire: it is independent, although its unique structure as a publicly funded organization invites intense scrutiny.Because of the timing of the Panorama broadcast, one week before the 5 November 2024 presidential election, a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of so-called “election interference”, a similar charge to the CBS case. “President Trump will continue to hold accountable those who traffic in lies, deception, and fake news,” they told the Guardian.The legal letter cites the actual malice standard necessary to win defamation cases in the US. To meet that bar, Trump’s team would have to prove that someone with authority at the BBC knew that the edited package falsely portrayed Trump to have encouraged violence, and chose not to act on that knowledge.David A Logan, professor emeritus at the Roger Williams School of Law in Rhode Island, said Trump’s allegations against the BBC closely “track” those he made against CBS – though in that case, CBS had merely used two different parts of the same answer in separate broadcasts, rather than pulling together comments from opposite ends of the Harris interview.“I am reluctant to say which is worse journalism,” Logan said, but he noted that the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and chief executive of BBC News Deborah Turness “signals that the BBC thinks it’s plenty bad behavior”.Mark Stephens, an international media lawyer at the firm Howard Kennedy, said Trump’s team likely targeted the US to potentially file the case because the statute of limitations – one year from the date of the broadcast, which was 28 October 2024 – has passed in the UK.Still, he said that Trump’s team would face “jurisdictional hurdles” if it filed the lawsuit. Because the program was not easily viewable in Florida, Stephens said it could be challenging to prove that someone in the state had seen it. “The question I would ask myself early on is: How can someone in Florida think the worst of Donald Trump if they haven’t seen the publication?” (The legal letter noted the segment in question has been distributed “through various digital mediums”.)If Trump chooses to sue, Stephens said the case would bring renewed attention to Trump’s comments, and any role he might have played in fomenting the violence of January 6. (Trump claims he did no such thing.)“If he sues, he opens a Pandora’s box, and in that Pandora’s box is every damning quote he’s ever uttered about Jan 6,” said Stephens. “So this isn’t the hill to die on, in my view. It’s a legal cliff edge, and if he jumps, there’s a high chance he’ll fall.” More