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      Donald Trump ordered to pay E Jean Carroll $83.3m in defamation trial

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      A New York City jury awarded $83.3m to E Jean Carroll in her defamation trial against Donald Trump on Friday.Carroll will receive $18.3m in compensatory damages and $65m in punitive retribution. The former president is paying Carroll compensatory damages of $18.3m – $11m to fund a reputational repair campaign. The $7.3m is for the emotional harm caused by Trump’s 2019 public statements. Carroll and her legal team were beaming as they left court in a black SUV. They did not answer questions immediately after court let out.Moments after the decision was announced, Trump decried it as “absolutely ridiculous” on Truth Social, and said he would be filing an appeal.“I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt focused on me and the Republican Party,” Trump wrote. “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon. They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”The Manhattan federal court decision comes less than one year after Carroll won $5m in her sexual abuse and defamation trial against Trump.This sum stems from Carroll’s rape claim against the president in a June 2019 New York magazine article. The publication ran an excerpt of her then-forthcoming book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal.In that excerpt, Carroll said that Trump raped her inside the dressing room of a luxe Manhattan department store around early 1996. The tenor of Trump’s denials – saying, for example, that she lied and was a political operative – became the subject of her 2019 defamation suit against him.At the time, Carroll could not sue Trump over the alleged assault, as it would have taken place outside the civil statute of limitations. A novel New York state law in 2022, the Adult Survivors Act, opened a one-year window for adult accusers to file suit for incidents outside the civil statute of limitations.Carroll filed another lawsuit, this one over the incident and defamatory statements after Trump’s presidency ended. This lawsuit proceeded to trial first and the judge in both cases, Lewis Kaplan, determined jurors’ findings – that Trump sexually abused Carroll and tarnished her reputation – would be accepted as fact in this trial.As a result, Trump could not re-litigate her sexual abuse claim. The jurors were tasked only with weighing financial penalties for damaging Carroll’s reputation – and the sum required to keep Trump from making still more defamatory statements.“I’m here because Donald Trump assaulted me, and when I wrote about it, he said it never happened,” Carroll said on the stand. “He lied, and it shattered my reputation. I expected him to deny it, but to say it was consensual, when it was not. But that’s what I expected him to say.”She continued: “The thing that really got me about this was, from the White House, he asked if anyone had any information about me, and if they did, to please come forward as soon as possible, because he wanted the world to know what’s really going on – and that people like me should pay dearly.”Trump did not attend Carroll’s first trial but made appearances at the second – marking the first time she confronted him publicly in a courtroom. Trump’s comportment during the courtroom showdowns was in keeping with his infamously bombastic behavior, prompting warnings from the judge.“Mr Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited, and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive, which is what has been reported to me, and if he disregards court orders,” Kaplan warned.“Mr Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial … I understand you are probably very eager for me to do that.”“I would love it, I would love it,” Trump retorted with a gesture.“I know you would, you just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently,” Kaplan said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe end stages of this trial were also marked by another hallmark of Trump’s legacy: Covid-related chaos. On 22 January, trial proceedings were postponed as one juror experienced coronavirus symptoms; his leading attorney, Alina Habba, also told judge Kaplan that she felt unwell and had been exposed to Covid.Trump did take the stand on 25 January. Kaplan restricted the scope of her questions and his responses, as per his prior ruling that he could not re-litigate her claims.Habba was allowed to ask: “Do you stand by your testimony in the deposition?”“One hundred percent, yes,” he said, referring to the deposition in which he denied her claims.“Did you deny the allegation because Ms Carroll made an accusation?”“That’s exactly right. She said something, I consider it a false accusation. No difference,” Trump retorted. This sparked an objection from Carroll’s camp. Kaplan said that everything after “yes, I did” was stricken.“Did you ever instruct anyone to hurt Ms Carroll in your statements?”“No. I just wanted to defend myself, my family, and frankly, the presidency,” Trump said. Carroll’s team objected again. Kaplan deemed that everything after “no” be stricken, so jurors were ordered to disregard this statement.In total, Trump’s direct and cross testimony lasted about two or three minutes. More

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      Andrew Cuomo found to have subjected 13 women to ‘sexually hostile work environment’

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      The former New York governor Andrew Cuomo subjected at least 13 female government employees “to a sexually hostile work environment” and retaliated against four who complained, a formal agreement between the state executive chamber and the US justice department said.“Governor Cuomo repeatedly subjected these female employees to unwelcome, non-consensual sexual contact; ogling; unwelcome sexual comments; gender-based nicknames; comments on their physical appearances; and/or preferential treatment based on their physical appearances,” read the agreement, which was released on Friday.Cuomo, a Democrat and son of a former governor, Mario Cuomo, rose to national prominence during the Covid pandemic in 2020 and was widely held to hold presidential ambitions.He denied accusations of sexual misconduct, but Cuomo resigned in August 2021 after the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said she found 11 such claims credible. He was replaced by his lieutenant, Kathy Hochul.Now 66, Cuomo is fighting civil lawsuits from two accusers and, in the words of the New York Times, “slowly manoeuvring toward re-entering political life”. But, the paper added Friday, such “efforts may be sharply compromised by the justice department findings”.The investigation by the federal civil rights division and the US attorney for the eastern district of New York opened in August 2021.The settlement released Friday said Cuomo “subjected at least 13 female employees of New York state, including executive chamber employees, to a sexually hostile work environment”.The executive chamber was aware of the governor’s conduct but did not “effectively remediate the harassment on a systemic level”.“When employees attempted to raise concerns about Cuomo’s conduct to his senior staff,” the agreement said, “Cuomo’s staff failed to follow equal employment opportunity policies and procedures to promptly report those allegations to the appropriate investigative body.“Indeed, the executive chamber’s response was designed only to protect Cuomo from further accusations.”The investigation “also found that Cuomo’s senior staff were aware of his conduct and retaliated against four of the women he harassed”.The agreement listed reforms to be implemented and some undertaken under Hochul, beginning with the removal of employees held to have “facilitated Cuomo’s misconduct and/or engaged in unlawful retaliation against women who raised concerns”.Rita Glavin, a Cuomo lawyer, told the Times: “This is nothing more than a political settlement with no investigation. Governor Cuomo did not sexually harass anyone.”But Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general in the civil rights division, said: “Executive chamber employees deserve to work without fear of sexual harassment and harsh reprisal when they oppose that harassment.“The conduct in the executive chamber under the former governor, the state’s most powerful elected official, was especially egregious because of the stark power differential involved and the victims’ lack of avenues to report and redress harassment.”Hochul said: “The moment I took office, I knew I needed to root out the culture of harassment that had previously plagued the executive chamber and implement strong policies to promote a safe workplace for all employees, and [I] took immediate action to do so.”Breon Peace, US attorney for the eastern district of New York, said: “We appreciate the governor’s stated determination to make sure that sexual harassment does not recur at the highest level of New York state government.” More

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      Trump abruptly leaves court during closing arguments in E Jean Carroll trial

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      As E Jean Carroll’s second defamation trial against Donald Trump neared its final stage Friday morning in New York, proceedings quickly took a turn for the absurd with the judge threatening his lawyer with “lockup” and the ex-president leaving about 10 minutes into the former Elle writer’s closing argument. Trump returned to court for his defense’s closing.Trump’s abrupt departure came as Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan, was delivering her closing argument – shortly after she noted that he had continued to defame the columnist during this very trial. Trump left.Kaplan had provided a chronology of the harm endured by Carroll due to Trump’s attacks in advance of the remark that appeared to trigger him.“Donald Trump’s denials and vicious accusations were all complete lies. That has already been proven, right in this courtroom, by a jury,” Kaplan said.“This case is also about punishing Donald Trump for what he has done and for what he continues to do,” Kaplan said, adding shortly thereafter: “This trial is about getting him to stop, once and for all.”Kaplan noted that he started to smear Carroll within a day of her last court victory, which found that he had defamed her. “Donald Trump, however, acts as if these rules and laws just don’t apply to him” and pointed out that he spent “this entire trial” attacking Carroll with nefarious posts.It was right about this time that Trump walked out of court.“Excuse me,” Judge Lewis Kaplan said. “The record will reflect that Mr Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom.”At the end of her closing, Roberta Kaplan urged jurors to hold Trump accountable – and insisted that the only way to make him follow the law and stop defaming Carroll would be a hefty penalty.“The one thing Donald Trump cares about is money,” she said. “While Donald Trump may not care about the law, while he certainly does not care about the truth, he does care about money.“The question for you as a jury is this: given Donald Trump’s insistence on continuing to defame Ms Carroll and considering his immense wealth, how much will it take to make him stop?“He thinks the rules that govern everyone else don’t apply to him,” Kaplan added.Trump’s lead attorney in this case, Alina Habba, started delivering her closing around 11.15am and quickly blamed Carroll for the backlash and suggested the former president was the victim.Habba said: “There is no one that can truly express the frustration of the last few years better than my client, the former president of the United States.”Habba then played a video that had been introduced by Carroll’s team in which he doubled down on his denials, in a way her camp contended was defamatory.“I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. The verdict is a disgrace, a continuation of the greatest witch-hunt of of all time,” Trump said in this video clip.“You’re right that’s how he feels. Can you imagine a world where someone can accuse you of a terrible accusation and you defend yourself, respond to reporters on the south lawn as the sitting president?” Habba said.“The president has been consistent. She’s right, he has said this same thing over and over and over again and do you know why he has not wavered? Because it’s the truth,” Habba said, prompting an objection from Carroll’s team.She then started to attack Carroll’s credibility, which appeared to edge toward breeching Kaplan’s prohibition on litigating the facts.“If you violate my instructions again, Ms Habba, you may have consequences,” he warned.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionProceedings appeared poised to be rocky before they started.Within less than 10 minutes of Trump’s arrival to the courtroom, as both sides were discussing items they wanted to include in their closings before jurors entered, the judge threatened Habba, with punishment when she tried to interrupt him, saying: “You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup. Sit down!”As closings unfolded, Trump continued to go on the attack against Carroll, with several posts appearing on his Truth Social account, including one calling her account a “hoax”.Closings came one day after Trump – whom Carroll sued for defamation over his denials of her rape allegation in 2019 – testified for less than five minutes, as the judge had limited what his lawyer could ask him, and what he could say.The judge had previously ruled that jurors’ findings in Carroll’s first trial against Trump – that he sexually abused her around late 1995 and when she came forward in 2019, defamed her – would apply in this trial. This ruling meant that the ex-president couldn’t re-litigate her claims and, as a result, jurors are only weighing damages in the ongoing proceedings. Trump did not attend the first trial.One of the questions Habba was allowed to ask was: “Do you stand by your testimony in the deposition?”, during which he denied Carroll’s claim.“One hundred per cent, yes,” he replied.“Did you deny the allegation because Ms Carroll made an accusation?” Habba pressed.“That’s exactly right. She said something, I consider it a false accusation. No difference,” he said, prompting an objection from Carroll’s team. Kaplan ordered that everything after “yes, I did” would be stricken.“Did you ever instruct anyone to hurt Ms Carroll in your statements?”“No. I just wanted to defend myself, my family, and frankly, the presidency,” Trump answered, prompting yet another objection. Kaplan ordered that everything after “no” be stricken, meaning jurors were directed to disregard his commentary.The jury started deliberating at 1.40pm local time. More

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      Video released of petulant Trump in civil fraud trial deposition

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      Months before Donald Trump’s defiant turn as a witness at his New York civil fraud trial, the former president came face to face with the state attorney general who is suing him when he sat for a deposition last year at her Manhattan office.Video made public on Friday of the seven-hour, closed-door session last April shows the Republican presidential frontrunner’s demeanor going from calm and cool to indignant – at one point ripping into the lawsuit of the attorney general, Letitia James, against him as a “disgrace” and “a terrible thing”.Sitting with arms folded, an incredulous Trump complained to the state lawyer questioning him that he was being forced to “justify myself to you” after decades of success building a real estate empire that is now threatened by the court case.Trump, who contends James’s lawsuit is part of a politically motivated “witch-hunt”, was demonstrative from the outset. The video shows him smirking and pouting his lips as the attorney general, a Democrat, introduced herself and told him that she was “committed to a fair and impartial legal process”.James’s office released the video on Friday in response to requests from media outlets under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Trump’s lawyers previously posted a transcript of his remarks to the trial docket in August.James’s lawsuit accuses Trump, his company and top executives of defrauding banks, insurers, and others by inflating his wealth and exaggerating the value of assets on annual financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.Judge Arthur Engoron, who will decide the case because a jury is not allowed in this type of lawsuit, has said he hopes to have a ruling by the end of January.Friday’s video is a rare chance for the public at large to see Trump as a witness.Cameras were not permitted in the courtroom when Trump testified on 6 November, nor were they allowed for closing arguments in the case on 11 January, when Trump defied the judge and gave a six-minute diatribe after his lawyers spoke.Here are the highlights from Trump’s videotaped deposition:‘You don’t have a case’Telling James and her staff, “you don’t have a case,” Trump insisted the banks she alleges were snookered with lofty valuations suffered no harm, got paid in his deals and “to this day have no complaints”.“Do you know the banks made a lot of money?” Trump asked, previewing his later trial testimony. “Do you know I don’t believe I ever got even a default notice and, even during Covid, the banks were all paid. And yet you’re suing on behalf of banks, I guess. It’s crazy. The whole case is crazy.”Don’t take my word for itTrump said he never felt his financial statements “would be taken very seriously”, and that people who did business with him were given ample warning not to trust them.Trump claimed the statements were mainly for his use, though he conceded financial institutions sometimes asked for them. Even then, he insisted it didn’t matter legally if they were accurate or not, because they came with a disclaimer.“I have a clause in there that says, ‘Don’t believe the statement. Go out and do your own work,’” Trump testified. “You’re supposed to pay no credence to what we say whatsoever.”‘Most important job in the world’After he was elected, Trump said, he was busy solving the world’s problems – like preventing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un from launching a nuclear attack.“I considered this the most important job in the world, saving millions of lives,” Trump testified. “I think you would have nuclear holocaust if I didn’t deal with North Korea. I think you would have a nuclear war, if I weren’t elected. And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth.”Obstructed viewIn one of his more animated moments, Trump urged his inquisitors to look right out the window for a view of his 40 Wall Street office tower – just across the street from James’s office where he testified.Asked how the building was doing, financially, Trump gestured toward the building with his thumb and answered: “Good. It’s right here. Would you like to see it?”“I don’t think we’re allowed to open the windows,” state lawyer Kevin Wallace said.“Open the curtain,” Trump suggested, bobbing his head around waiting for someone to oblige.“No,” Wallace said. More

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      E Jean Carroll lawyer warns Trump plans to turn damages trial into ‘circus’

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      Donald Trump’s legal woes continued to mount as a lawyer in an upcoming defamation case asked a judge to ensure the former president does not disrupt imminent legal proceedings – and, in a separate issue, he was ordered to pay nearly $400,000 in legal fees to the New York Times.In the first of those two cases, a lawyer for E Jean Carroll – a columnist who last year won a $5m jury award against Trump for sexual abuse – urged a judge to take strong measures to ensure Trump does not “sow chaos” when a new jury considers next week if he owes even more in damages.Trump said on Thursday that he would next week attend the Manhattan federal court trial, where a jury will consider a request by lawyers for Carroll that she be awarded $10m in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages for statements Trump has made.“If Mr Trump appears at this trial, whether as a witness or otherwise, his recent statements and behavior strongly suggest that he will seek to sow chaos. Indeed, he may well perceive a benefit in seeking to poison these proceedings,” attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in a letter to Judge Lewis A Kaplan.“There are any number of reasons why Mr Trump might perceive a personal or political benefit from intentionally turning this trial into a circus,” said Roberta Kaplan, who has no relation to the judge.She said she worried about “the possibility that he will seek to testify, and the associated risk that he will violate court orders if he does so”.She recommended that Lewis Kaplan warn Trump of the possible consequences of violating court orders severely limiting what the former president and his lawyers can say at the trial.A lawyer for Trump did not immediately return a message seeking comment from the Associated Press.Meanwhile, ABC News reported that the New York supreme court justice Robert Reed had ordered Trump to pay the New York Times $392,638 in legal fees after a failed lawsuit against the newspaper over its reporting on his tax records.In 2021, Trump sued his niece Mary Trump, the New York Times and three of its reporters. He alleged the reporters were “motivated by a personal vendetta”.But the case was dismissed, paving the way for the Times to get back its financial costs of fighting the matter in court.Citing court papers, ABC reported Reed as stating: “Considering the complexity of the issues presented in this action, the number of causes of action, the experience, ability and reputation of defendants’ attorneys, the considerable amount in dispute, and the attorneys’ success in dismissing the complaint against their defendants … the court finds that $392,638.69 is a reasonable value for the legal services rendered.”The decision is likely to irk Trump more than just financially. He frequently rails against the media and the New York Times in particular.Meanwhile, in the Carroll case, the columnist’s lawyer urged Judge Kaplan in her letter to require Trump to say under oath in open court but without jurors present that he understands he sexually assaulted Carroll and that he spoke falsely with actual malice and lied when he accused her of fabricating her account and impugning her motives.A jury last May awarded Carroll $5m in damages after concluding that, although there was not sufficient evidence to find Trump raped Carroll, there was proof that she was sexually abused at the Bergdorf Goodman store, and Trump defamed her with statements he made in October 2022.Because the defamation award was limited to Trump’s fall 2022 statements, a jury next week will begin considering whether Carroll is entitled to additional damages for statements Trump made about her claims while he was president in 2019 and the day after the verdict last spring.Carroll, 80, testified at last year’s trial that she had suffered emotionally and in her romantic life since Trump attacked her and that his severe denunciation of claims she first made in a 2019 memoir after she was inspired by the #MeToo movement had severely damaged her career and led to threats against her.Trump has repeatedly said that he never assaulted Carroll and didn’t know her and that he suspected she was driven to make claims against him to promote her book and for political reasons.In her letter to the judge on Friday, Kaplan cited Trump’s behavior at a state court proceeding on Thursday in Manhattan where he ignored a judge’s insistence that he keep remarks focused on trial-related matters. Trump said, “I am an innocent man,” adding that he was being “persecuted by someone running for office”.She wrote that Trump’s behavior in state court “provides a potential preview of exactly what we might expect to see at next week’s trial”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      ‘Floored’ union leader called AOC new Springsteen after shock primary win, book says

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      Donald Trump memorably compared the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Eva Perón, the Argentinian first lady known as Evita. But a new book reveals that when the young Latino leftwinger burst on to the US political scene in 2018, one US labour leader made perhaps a more telling comparison – to Bruce Springsteen.“I was floored,” Michael Podhorzer, then political director of the AFL-CIO, told the author Joshua Green. “The best comparison I can make is to the famous Jon Landau line: ‘I’ve seen rock’n’roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.’”Landau is a journalist who became Springsteen’s manager and producer. He passed his famous judgment in May 1974, after seeing Springsteen play at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then 25, Springsteen went on to sell records by the million and win Grammys by the sackful, becoming widely known as the Boss but maintaining his image as a blue-collar hero, true to his New Jersey roots.In Democratic politics, Ocasio-Cortez – widely known as AOC – has built her own star power while maintaining working-class credentials.In 2018, she was a 28-year-old bartender when she scored a historic upset primary win over Joe Crowley, then 56 and a member of Democratic US House leadership, in a New York City district covering parts of Queens and the Bronx.In a campaign ad, Ocasio-Cortez depicted herself as an ordinary New Yorker, hustling to work on the subway.She described Crowley, in contrast, as “a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air”.Green, previously the author of Devil’s Bargain, on Trump’s rise to power, reports Podhorzer’s response in his new book, The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics.A look at three stars of the modern Democratic left, the book will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Podhorzer, Green says, is a union official “who spends his waking hours trying to get voters to care about working people”. Among working people who might appreciate his comparison of Ocasio-Cortez to Springsteen is none other than Crowley, now senior policy director for Dentons, the world’s largest law firm.At a party event on election night in 2018, as he digested the sudden end of his 20-year congressional career, Crowley picked up a guitar and took the stage with a band.“This is for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” he said, launching a cover of Springsteen’s Born to Run.In his epilogue, Green considers a common question: was Ocasio-Cortez born to run for president?Noting how AOC, Warren and Sanders have pushed Democrats left, as evidenced by Joe Biden’s record in office, he writes that Ocasio-Cortez “still gets covered mainly through the lens of ‘the Squad’” – a group of mostly female representatives of color who have achieved prominence on Capitol Hill.“But among the rising generation of Democratic staffers and strategists who will soon run the party, she’s come to be seen as a significant figure in her own right.”Speaking anonymously, a Warren adviser adds: “You can see [AOC] pointing a path toward the future in a way that none of the other Squad members are doing. She’s the one really marking the future of the left in the post-Biden era.” More

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      New York governor vetoes bill to make conviction challenges easier

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      The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, vetoed a bill days before Christmas that would have made it easier for people who have pleaded guilty to crimes to challenge their convictions, a measure that was favored by criminal justice reformers but fiercely opposed by prosecutors.The Democrat said the bill’s “sweeping expansion of eligibility for post-conviction relief” would “upend the judicial system and create an unjustifiable risk of flooding the courts with frivolous claims”, in a veto letter released on Saturday.Under existing state law, criminal defendants who plead guilty are usually barred from trying to get their cases reopened based on a new claim of innocence, except in certain circumstances involving new DNA evidence.The bill passed by the legislature in June would have expanded the types of evidence that could be considered proof of innocence, including video footage or evidence of someone else confessing to a crime. Arguments that a person was coerced into a false guilty plea would have also been considered.Prosecutors and advocates for crime victims warned the bill would have opened the floodgates to endless, frivolous legal appeals by the guilty.The Erie county district attorney, John Flynn, the president of the District Attorney’s Association of the State of New York, wrote in a letter to Hochul in July that the bill would create “an impossible burden on an already overburdened criminal justice system”.The legislation would have benefitted people such as Reginald Cameron, who was exonerated in 2023, years after he pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery in exchange for a lesser sentence. He served more than eight years in prison after he was arrested alongside another person in 1994 in the fatal shooting of Kei Sunada, a 22-year-old Japanese immigrant. Cameron, then 19, had confessed after being questioned for several hours without attorneys.His conviction was thrown out after prosecutors reinvestigated the case, finding inconsistencies between the facts of the crime and the confessions that were the basis for the conviction. The investigation also found the detective that had obtained Cameron’s confessions was also connected to other high-profile cases that resulted in exonerations, including the Central Park Five case.Various states including Texas have implemented several measures over the years intended to stop wrongful convictions. Texas amended a statute in 2015 that allows a convicted person to apply for post-conviction DNA testing. In 2017, another amended rule requires law enforcement agencies to electronically record interrogations of suspects in serious felony cases in their entirety.“We’re pretty out of step when it comes to our post-conviction statute,” Amanda Wallwin, a state policy advocate at the Innocence Project, said of New York.“We claim to be a state that cares about racial justice, that cares about justice period. To allow Texas to outmaneuver us is and should be embarrassing,” she said.In 2018, New York’s highest court affirmed that people who plead guilty cannot challenge their convictions unless they have DNA evidence to support their innocence. That requirement makes it very difficult for defendants to get their cases heard before a judge, even if they have powerful evidence that is not DNA-based.Over the past three decades, the proportion of criminal cases that make it to trial in New York has steadily declined, according to a report by the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. About 99% of misdemeanor charges and 94% of felony charges in the state are resolved by guilty pleas.“In my work, I know there there are a lot of circumstances where people plead guilty to crimes because they are advised or misadvised by their attorneys at the time,” said Donna Aldea, a lawyer at the law firm Barket Epstein Kearon Aldea & LoTurco. “Sometimes they’re afraid that if they go to trial, they’ll face much worse consequences, even if they didn’t commit the crime.”She said the state’s criminal justice system right now is framed in a way that makes it impossible for people to challenge their guilty pleas years later when new evidence emerges, or when they are in a better financial position to challenge their convictions. More

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      Mayor says New York is world’s greatest city because any day could be a new 9/11

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      Asked to sum up 2023 in New York City, the mayor, Eric Adams, chose to give New Yorkers a bizarre warning that they could “wake up” to another 9/11 terrorist attack on any given day.Asked by the WPIX-TV host Dan Mannarino to sum up a “very eventful” year in one word, Adams offered two: “New York”.Then he said: “This is a place where every day you wake up you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our trade center through a person who’s celebrating a new business that’s about to open.“This is a very, very complicated city, and that’s why it’s the greatest city on the globe.”On 11 September 2001, Islamist terrorists crashed two hijacked airliners into the towers of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan. The death toll was 2,977. Thousands were injured and thousands have since died of illnesses related to crash site toxicity.Hijacked planes also crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The attacks fueled 20 years of war, including US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.Adams was not pressed on his bizarre remark to WPIX, though he was later asked what he needed to improve in 2024.“Probably communications,” he said.The Democrat, a former police officer, became the second Black mayor of New York when he took office last year. This month, beset by scandal, he recorded the lowest approval rating ever recorded for a New York mayor by Quinnipiac University polling.Just 28% of respondents said they approved of Adams’s performance.“There’s no good news for Mayor Adams in this poll,” said Mary Snow, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll. “Not only are voters giving him poor grades on the job he’s doing at city hall, their views on his character have dimmed.“As the city faces across-the-board budget cuts while dealing with a migrant crisis, headlines about a federal investigation into the mayor’s 2021 campaign and an accusation of sexual assault leveled against him from 30 years ago are taking a toll.” More