Trump ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $83.3M
From the Washington Post recap, we get this statement by the Judge:
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told the anonymous jury that while they are now free to speak publicly, he didn't advise it. "My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury and I wont say anything more about it."
What an awful reality to live in where jurors are suggested they never speak of their serving, while serving on a civil suit with an ex-President.
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"The Jan. 6 Riot Inquiry So Far: Three Years, Hundreds of Prison Sentences"
An interactive article on NYT about the progress of the cases against January 6th rioters. It has animations as you scroll to provide visuals for data points, helping give context to the numbers it rattles off.
As of December, about 1,240 people had been arrested in connection with the attack, accused of crimes ranging from trespassing, a misdemeanor, to seditious conspiracy, a felony.
Around 170 people have been convicted at trial, while only two people have been fully acquitted. Approximately 710 people have pleaded guilty …
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Some climate related lawsuits underway in 2024
An interesting read as I wasn't aware of any of these cases. Includes a lawsuit by some teens against California (like the one in Montana last year), a lawsuit against Delta for falsely claiming carbon neutrality in marketing, as well as one against the US government over the (Biden) approved Willow Project for drilling in the arctic.
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NYT suing OpenAI and Microsoft for use of Copyrighted Work
Excerpts from the NYT's own article about the lawsuit:
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.
The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.
The lawsuit could test the emerging legal contours of generative A.I. technologies — so called for the text, images and other content they can create after learning from large data sets — and could carry major implications for the news industry. The Times is among a small number of outlets that have built successful business models from online journalism, but dozens of newspapers and magazines have been hobbled by readers’ migration to the internet.
At the same time, OpenAI and other A.I. tech firms — which use a wide variety of online texts, from newspaper articles to poems to screenplays, to train chatbots — are attracting billions of dollars in funding.
OpenAI is now valued by investors at more than $80 billion. Microsoft has committed $13 billion to OpenAI and has incorporated the company’s technology into its Bing search engine.
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An overview of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial
I find it hard to think that Bankman-Fried was just a guy who got in over his head. He has the education and background to understand what was going on.
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"Trump charged in probe of Jan. 6, efforts to overturn 2020 election"
The article also linked to the 4-page PDF detailing the indictment. The four counts against Trump and unnamed coconspirators.
Not from the article, but pulled from elsewhere, this is the summary of the counts:
- A conspiracy to defraud the United States "by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit to obstruct the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election," according to the special counsel's office. This count carries a 5-year maximum sentence.
- A conspiracy to impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified. This count carries a 20-year maximum sentence.
- A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have that vote counted. This count carries a 10-year maximum sentence.
- Obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct and impede, the certification of the electoral vote. This count carries a 20-year maximum sentence.
Doing further reading, here is a piece on Politico: Key revelations, groundbreaking strategies and notable omissions in the new Trump indictment
The indictment does not identify any of the six alleged co-conspirators who prosecutors say unlawfully agreed to aid Trump's bid to subvert the election. But five of them were readily identifiable based on the widely known details in the indictment. They are:
- Rudy Giuliani, Trump's lawyer and the leader of an effort to pressure state legislators to reverse election results.
- John Eastman, a constitutional lawyer who helped develop the strategy to pressure Mike Pence to overturn the election on Jan. 6.
- Sidney Powell, a conservative lawyer who pushed fringe theories about manipulation of voting machines.
- Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who pressed DOJ leaders to sow doubt about the election results.
- Ken Chesebro, an architect of key elements of Trump's fake elector strategy.
The identity of the sixth alleged co-conspirator, a political consultant, was not immediately verifiable, but the indictment says that person played a role in the effort to assemble false slates of pro-Trump presidential electors in states that Biden won.
The article also highlights the following revelations from the indictment:
- Prosecutors say Trump offered — and Clark accepted — the job of acting attorney general on Jan. 3, 2021. The select committee found phone records listing Clark as "acting attorney general" before Trump rescinded the appointment under the threat of mass resignations from DOJ leaders, but the committee did not confirm that Trump had made the official appointment.
- Prosecutors say that Pat Philbin, Trump's deputy White House counsel, warned Clark that if he and Trump pressed ahead with plans to stay in power past Biden's scheduled inauguration, there would be "riots in the streets" across the country. According to the indictment, Clark responded, "That's why we have an Insurrection Act."
- The indictment reveals that Mike Pence kept contemporaneous notes, including of his conversations with Trump in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6. In one Dec. 29, 2020, conversation, Trump falsely told Pence that the Justice Department had identified "major infractions" in election integrity, prosecutors say.
And the last part, at the end of the article which I found notable. I had considered the second point, but not really the first or third, but seeing them called out here makes me wonder about them as well.
Many of the central details in the indictment tracked closely with the evidence amassed by the Jan. 6 select committee. But large swaths of the committee's probe went unmentioned. Among them:
- The indictment makes no reference to the organization of Trump's Jan. 6 rally or the financing that went into it.
- It omits evidence of Trump's serious consideration of a plan to use federal or military power to seize voting machines from several states in which Trump disputed the outcome.
- It includes no allegations of any links between Trump and the extremist groups who attacked the Capitol or references to others featured by the Jan. 6 committee as key players, like Roger Stone, Steve Bannon and Alex Jones.
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"It's Time To Learn To Love Procedure and the Nuance of Law"
I follow this blog's author, Teri Kanefield, on Mastodon and quite enjoyed this explanation around the letter Trump received, what it likely means, and more insights into the way this process works.
I particularly enjoyed this section:
Trump’s Trial Schedule
- January 15: The next Jean E. Carroll trial (civil)
- March: Manhattan hush-money case (criminal)
- May: Stolen documents case (criminal)
Plus, we’re expecting two more indictments, one from Georgia and of course, one for the J6 insurrection. You can see that Trump’s 2024 trial dance card is getting full.
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"Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll"
What a disgrace of a human to have held the highest office of the country.
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"Get out of Crypto now" - former SEC Lawyer
A massive Tweet from an ex-SEC Lawyer:
Get out of crypto platforms now, I can't say it any plainer. Having worked as an attorney in the SEC Enforcement Division for almost 20 years (including 11 years as Chief of the SEC Office of Internet Enforcement), I believe that we now know for certain that crypto trading platforms are under a U.S. regulatory/law enforcement siege which has only just begun.
And before you chop my head off with vitriol, ad hominems and OK Boomerisms, please allow me to explain the situation with only facts and research.
And before you label me a bureaucratic, washed-up SEC shill, please bear in mind that while I may indeed be washed up (!), I am typically an outspoken and dedicated SEC critic (see, e.g., https://twitter.com/JohnReedStark/status/1656774452388962305?s=20). I also have no stake of any kind in the cryptoverse. I am 100% objective, independent and neutral. Just seeking truth, always.
My take is that the SEC is spot-on with their crypto-related enforcement efforts. No matter what the carnival barkers promise, it is axiomatic that crypto trading platforms are high-risk, perilous and inherently unsafe. Please read on to understand my reasoning.
Why A Lack of SEC Registration Matters
U.S. SEC registration of financial firms: (1) mandates that investor funds and securities be handled appropriately without conflicts of interest; (2) ensures that investors understand the risks involved in purchasing the often illiquid and speculative securities that are traded on a cryptocurrency platform; (3) makes buyers aware of the last prices on securities traded over a cryptocurrency platform; and (4) provides adequate disclosures regarding their trading policies, practices and procedures.
Overall, entities providing financial services must carefully handle access to, and control of, investor funds, and provide all users with adequate protection and fortification.
With traditional SEC-registered financial firms, the SEC has unlimited and instantaneous visibility into every aspect of operations. With crypto trading platforms, the SEC lacks any sort of oversight and access — and has scant ability to detect, investigate and deter fraudulent conduct. As a result, the crypto marketplace operates without much supervision, lacking:
--The hallmarks of the traditional transparent surveillance program of a financial firm like an SEC-registered broker-dealer or investment adviser, so the SEC cannot analyze or verify market trading and clearing activity, customer identities and other critical data for risk and fraud;
--SEC and/or Financial Industry Regulatory Authority licensure of individuals involved in crypto trading, operation, promotion, etc., so the SEC cannot detect individual misconduct and enforce violations; -Traditional accountability structures and fiduciaries of financial firms, so the SEC cannot ensure that every customer's interest is protected and held sacrosanct; and
--The compliance systems, personnel and infrastructure, so the SEC cannot know where crypto came from or who holds most of it; and -The verification and investigatory routine and for cause SEC or FINRA examinations, inspections and audits, so the SEC and FINRA cannot patrol, supervise or verify critical customer protections and compliance mechanisms.
What the Crypto Regulatory Vacuum Means
For customers of digital asset platforms like most so-called crypto exchanges, there is not just a gap in customer protections, but a chasm. For example unlike SEC-registered financial firms, crypto trading platforms have:
-No record-keeping and archiving requirements with respect to operations, communications, trading or any other aspect of business;
-No requirements regarding the pricing or order flow of transactions or the use internal platforms and payment systems by employees;
-No reason to abide by U.S. statutes and rules prohibiting manipulation, insider trading, trading ahead of customers and other fraudulent behavior by customers or employees;
-No mandated cybersecurity requirements or standards to combat online attackers and protect customer privacy;
-No requirement to establish mandated training or code of conduct requirements;
-No obligation to have in place internal compliance, customer service and whistleblower teams to address and archive customer complaints;
-No requirement to reverse charges if any dispute or problem arises;
-No mandated robust and documented processes for the redress and management of customer complaints (N.B. that and even if there was a formal complaint filing structure in a digital asset trading platform, the pseudo-anonymous nature of virtual currencies, ease of cross-border and interstate transport, and the lack of a formal banking edifice creates enormous challenges for law enforcement to investigate and apprehend any individuals who use cryptocurrencies for illegal activities);
-No obligation to follow publicly disseminated national best bid and offer and other related best execution requirements;
-No minimum financial standards for operation, liquidity, and net capital; -No U.S. governmental team of objective auditors and examiners to inspect and scrutinize the fairness, execution and transparency of transactions;
-No requirement to ensure consistency of trading operations i.e. that the trading protocols used, which determine how orders interact and execute, and access to a platform's trading services, are the same for all users; and
-No obligation to design ethics and compliance codes for Wall Street entities (regardless of registration status) which would ban their employees from investing in cryptocurrency or NFT investments based on the same arguments as the ban of initial public offerings and options – i.e. that they are too risky and may tempt an employee to steal if not prohibitive.
It's all straight-forward and commonsensical. SEC registration establishes critical requirements that protect investors from individual risk and protect capital markets from global systemic risk. The requirements also make U.S. markets among the safest, most robust, most vibrant and most desirable marketplaces in the world.
Thanks for reading. With my blessing (and nothing but love for you), please feel free to launch the hate. Full Stop.
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Surprising decrease in murder rates so far in 2023
Originally found via the blog, Popular Information, though he harps much more on the lack of press coverage for it. Which seems to be two-fold from my perspective: 1, it's only five months into the year so it seems early to celebrate, and 2., celebrating a large decrease with thousands still dying is hard to spin / spell.
Murder is down about 12 percent year-to-date in more than 90 cities that have released data for 2023, compared with data as of the same date in 2022. Big cities tend to slightly amplify the national trend—a 5 percent decline in murder rates in big cities would likely translate to a smaller decline nationally. But even so, the drop shown in the preliminary data is astonishing.
The good news comes with the caveat that murder is not uniformly falling everywhere. Memphis, for example, has experienced an uptick following the killing of Tyre Nichols in January. Additionally, even a record double-digit percent decline in murder in 2023 would still mean that a couple thousand more people will be murdered in America this year than in 2019. Finally, mass shootings are on the rise even as overall gun violence appears to be falling.
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"Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Legal Team Plagued by Infighting, Backstabbing"
Right up until the day Donald Trump's federal indictment was unsealed, the legal team tasked with defending him was engaged in petty internal feuds — including fights over TV appearances, accusations of disloyalty, and even a so-called "coup," three people familiar with the situation, as well as others on or close to Trump's legal defense, tell Rolling Stone.
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Details of the Donald Trump Indictment
After Trump left office, I resolved to not give him more of an imprint on my blog. He was done as a politician (at least temporarily) and I just had enough of letting him be in the narrative of my life. But this indictment is not fucking around and it needs to be remembered.
The guys at Crooked Media were crowing about it on a clip I saw on TikTok. One saying how it was so funny as a document that the DOJ had crossed the writer picket line.
And it is no joke. 37 charges. Incredible. Potentially over 400 years in prison.
Additionally I saw that two of his lawyers resigned today. But when you see things like this in the WaPo article:
The document, complete with color photographs and witness accounts of breathtaking criminal conduct, lays down a marker for a legal and political battle to come that could reshape the 2024 presidential race, the politics of national security, and the public's perception of the Justice Department and the 45th president of the United States.
"Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?" Trump allegedly asked when his lawyers told him in May 2022 that they had to comply with a grand jury subpoena seeking the return of any documents marked classified. In that same conversation, he praised a lawyer for Hillary Clinton for what he claimed was the act of deleting 30,000 of her emails when she was in government.
"He did a great job," Trump allegedly said.
It's not hard to imagine why they decided they should probably get as far away from the orange turd as fast as they can.
I have no idea how fast or slow this process will be, but it certainly seems like they aren't going to drag their feet on this:
Smith signaled that prosecutors would try to move quickly to bring the case to trial.
The timing will be critical, because Trump faces a March trial in Manhattan in an unrelated case in which he is accused of arranging illegal hush money payments to women during his 2016 presidential campaign. Separately, state prosecutors in Georgia are considering filing charges this summer over Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, and Smith is investigating those efforts on the federal level. And any trial in mid-2024 could crash up against the major parties’ nominating conventions.
I can only dream that Trump's segment in the history books is riddled with shame and horror at what a fucking idiot people in America felt deserved a chance in the big chair.
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Two other bits of good news yesterday
I know I mentioned the death of Pat Roberts yesterday, but due to travel I neglected to celebrate the other two bits of wonderful news from the day:
First, Donald Trump was indicted on seven counts - We had known indictments were coming from the leaks, but to finally see it is historic and going to be a huge deal. They wouldn't do it without an air tight case, and now it's just about getting through it.
Second, the Supreme Court upholds Alabama is gerrymandered is huge.
By a 5-to-4 vote, a coalition of conservative and liberal justices reaffirmed the court's 1986 precedent interpreting how legislative districts must be drawn under the landmark voting rights act, as amended in 1982. The court said that in Alabama, a state where there are seven congressional seats and one in four voters is black, the Republican-dominated state legislature had denied African American voters a reasonable chance to elect a second representative of their choice.
The decision could reverberate across other states, with reconsideration of how congressional lines are drawn in areas with significant Black populations.
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California won a Supreme Court case about humane pig treatment in meat production
Should California be able to require higher welfare standards for farm animals raised in other states if products from those animals are to be sold in California? On May 11, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld California’s position by a 5-4 vote in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross.
While the ruling was fractured and reflected complex legal questions, it is a major victory for those working to improve farm animal welfare. A number of states will undoubtedly take advantage of the power that the Supreme Court has recognized.
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Supreme Court allows abortion medication to remain on market
Additional reading:
- The Supreme Court Protects Access to the Abortion Pill Mifepristone—At Least for Now (motherjones.com)
- The Supreme Court Preserves Abortion Pill Access—Temporarily (wired.com)
- Supreme Court pauses abortion pill restrictions from taking effect during appeal (thehill.com)
- The Supreme Court rules mifepristone can remain available – here's how 2 conflicting federal court decisions led to this point (theconversation.com)
- The Justices Pass on an Abortion-Pill Ban (theatlantic.com)
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Alec Baldwin charged with involuntary manslaughter from 2022 movie set killing
This is truly a shame and I have complicated feelings on how I think the judgment should go. Coincidentally I was just discussing Baldwin last night with friends while playing Boardgames, his scene in Glengarry Glenross came up.
As a child we didn't have guns in the house (I would later learn dad had a revolver in case of emergencies) but it was pounded into my head to not even point toy guns at people, only at "rocks and trees." And when in Boy Scouts they taught careful weapon safety with guns and with bows and arrows. On a movie set, obviously they have to operate differently, which is why they are supposed to have careful and very strict controls over these weapons.
When I worked at the theme parks, some of the park attractions also made use of weapons (the stage shows) and I recall hearing about them also going through very strict safety protocols. The people handling the stage weapons were never alone, always triple checked, always locked away, etc.
It's a tragedy which has to be pursued and investigated, but also shines a light on the thousands of other deaths which don't have the rigorous public eye because they don't involve someone from Hollywood. In the wake of school shootings my gun control ire spikes, but I don't fall on the "take all the guns" - many people have legitimate reasons for wanting them, however the need for strict licensing, buying limits and cool off periods, background checks, and gun safety education are paramount if we are to continue to allow such relatively unfettered access to them. Also, the idea that private individuals need AR15 style weapons is absurd. Those people are delusional.
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Washington DC discusses a TLDR Bill against awful Terms of Services
I wasn't aware of it, but poster 'tgsovlerkhgsel' on Hacker News shared this insight into how Germany handles this:
Don't bother. Just ban/declare invalid any surprising clauses, with a regularly updated list of prohibited abusive terms that people try to slip in.
Germany has an explicit rule like that (§ 305c BGB): terms that are so unusual that the counterparty didn't have to expect them are null and void, and any ambiguities are interpreted against the side using reusable T&C's. Terms are further invalid (§ 307 BGB) if they unfairly disadvantage the other party against good faith etc.
The real meat starts in 308 and following, explicitly banning many terms - for example arbitration requirements (309 item 14).
So, doing my due diligence, I was curious to read the actual law. And as such I discovered the German government provides their laws in official translations.
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NYC Jury Finds Trump Orgs Guilty on All Counts
The Trump Organization's two affiliate companies on trial in New York City were found guilty of all nine counts of tax fraud and related crimes on Monday, as jurors ended a long trial with a swift verdict against the former American president's corporate empire.
The Manhattan jury concluded that former President Donald Trump's eponymous companies dodged taxes by playing accounting games: showering their executives with benefits, reducing their official salary, and paying them at times as if they were "independent contractors."
This trial is not to be confused with the half dozen other legal challenges currently targeting the former president. Trump is facing a quickly developing Department of Justice criminal investigation into the way he tried to cling to power in 2020 by lying to the American public about supposed voting fraud and inciting an attack on Congress, plus a probe into the way he kept classified documents at his Palm Beach mansion-club. He's also the target of a local Georgia criminal investigation into his attempts to intimidate an elections official there into flipping that election's results.
This trial is also separate from the civil case brought on by the New York Attorney General, who is trying to shut down the company and seize its assets over the way it regularly lied about its real estate portfolio—making up non-existent building space and inflating values to obtain better bank loans or maximize tax-write offs on donated land.
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"Trump presented his Russia hoax theory to a court. It went poorly."
The opening to this article is so good:
One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump's tenure in American politics has been the extent to which he remained cocooned in his own world.
As president, that was often literal: He moved from the White House to his properties to tightly controlled events and to boisterous political rallies, rarely coming across critics or skeptics. It was also true of his presence in the public conversation. He had his Twitter universe and his Fox News conversations and he was content. Outsiders would peek in and report on what he was doing and saying and how it was received, but with a Star-Trek like result: There was no observable impact on the universe being watched.
It was a rhetorical terrarium, self-contained and self-sufficient. An ecosystem where nonsense thrived and spread, where false accusations competed Darwinistically for dominance. So his vague dismissals of the Russia investigation as a hoax in early 2017 had, by 2021, become complicated organisms, vines stretching and intertwining throughout the pro-Trump media universe.
And the finishing, while not as strong as the opening is quite good as well:
The judge made very clear that he understood Trump's suit for what it obviously is.
"At its core, the problem with Plaintiff's Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm ... instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum," he wrote.
The appropriate forum is cable news or Truth Social. You can't simply pluck a mushroom off a rotting log and transplant it onto a table and expect it to thrive. It needs the right environment, one in which credulity and fealty are abundant.
The real world is simply too inhospitable.
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"The Trump Mar-a-Lago search was justified"
Perhaps the only time I will link to Fox News. A good editorial which dives into the legitimacy of the Mar-a-Lago search.
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Allen Weisselberg, ex-Trump CFO, please guilty in court
A top executive at former President Donald Trump’s family business pleaded guilty Thursday to evading taxes on a free apartment and other perks, striking a deal with prosecutors that could make him a star witness against the company at a trial this fall.
Allen Weisselberg, a senior Trump Organization adviser and formerly the company’s longtime chief financial officer, pleaded guilty to all 15 of the charges he faced in the case.
In a low, somewhat hoarse voice, Weisselberg admitted taking in over $1.7 million worth of untaxed extras — including school tuition for his grandchildren, free rent for a Manhattan apartment and lease payments for a luxury car — and explicitly keeping some of the plums off the books.
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Historican Heather Cox Richardson's notes from August 11th
I quite enjoy her write ups as sort of a review and wrap up on the day's news with primarily a focus on the US government and Trump. Here is an excerpt from the linked post:
This afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a brief press conference in which he announced that the unjustified attacks on the Department of Justice (DOJ) have led it to file a motion to unseal the search warrant the FBI used and a redacted version of the receipt for the things removed from the premises. He also confirmed that copies of the warrant and the property receipt were left with Trump, as regulations require. Had Trump wanted to release them, he could have…and he still can, at any time.
Contrary to right-wing reports, Trump’s lawyer was at Mar-a-Lago during the search, which a federal court authorized after finding probable cause. Garland said that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and he also pointed out that the Department of Justice did not publicize the search; the former president did. Because of the public interest in the matter—and to clear up confusion over it—the department is asking a judge to unseal the documents.
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