Free Republic

May 24 (Reuters) - Singer Tina Turner has died aged 83, one of her representatives said on Wednesday. Turner, often called the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll", was one of the biggest recording artists of all time, known for hits such as "What's Love Got to Do with It" and "(Simply) The Best".

A judge on Monday dismissed the only remaining legal claim in Republican Kari Lake's challenge of her loss in last year's race for Arizona governor, affirming the election of Democrat Katie Hobbs. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson said Lake failed to prove her claim that Maricopa County did not verify signatures on mail ballots as required by law. Lake was among the most vocal of last year's Republican candidates promoting former President Donald Trump's election lies, which she made the centerpiece of her campaign. She has built a loyal following among Trump supporters and is openly considering...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Michael Adams, Kentucky’s incumbent secretary of state, easily won the Republican primary on Tuesday against two challengers. Adams had garnered 63.9% percent of the vote by 7:02 p.m. The Associated Press called the race at that point. He will face Democratic opponent Buddy Wheatley, a former state House member from Covington, in the November election. As the state’s chief elections official, Adams ran for reelection on accomplishments ranging from increased early voting to removing dead voters from voting lists. But he attracted two primary challengers -- Steve Knipper, who campaigned on unproven claims about Kentucky election...

A former Manhattan district attorney’s office prosecutor refused to answer questions about Alvin Bragg’s 34-count felony indictment of former President Donald Trump after he was subpoenaed to appear by House Republicans. Mark Pomerantz, who resigned from the prosecutor’s office in February 2022 after District Attorney Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, didn’t pursue the charges that were then finally filed earlier this year by Bragg, declined to answer any questions about the Trump investigation on Friday. “I am here because I respect the rule of law," Pomerantz said behind closed doors in front of the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee. “What I do...

NEW YORK -- One day after embattled Rep. George Santos pleaded not guilty to federal fraud and money laundering charges, a deal Santos struck with Brazilian authorities to avoid prosecution in a fraud case there was expected to be finalized. Santos was back in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, followed by a throng of reporters, a day after he pleaded not guilty to federal fraud, money laundering and making false statements in connection with his 2022 Congressional campaign. "I'm going to fight the witch hunt. I'm going to take care of clearing my name," Santos said Wednesday. But now the embattled...

Eight of the so-called "fake electors" in Georgia who were allegedly involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state have accepted immunity in the Fulton County probe into the matter, according to their lawyer. In a court filing in the case on Friday, an attorney who represents 10 of the fake electors said the Fulton County district attorney's office reached out in April to provide an immunity offer for eight of her clients. "After reviewing the actual, written offers of immunity, each of those eight electors accepted their immunity offer," the filing by the...

A Florida jury on Thursday found Andrew Gillum, a once-rising star in the Democratic Party, not guilty of lying to the FBI but was deadlocked on 17 other charges against him stemming from allegations he illegally solicited campaign donations and then funneled them into his account. The former Tallahassee mayor faced 17 counts of wire fraud and a wire fraud conspiracy count, each carrying a maximum of 20 years behind bars. He was also charged with a single count of lying to the FBI, which carries a five-year maximum sentence. He pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. The...

WASHINGTON — At least four members of the far-right Proud Boys organization were found guilty Thursday of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl each faced nine counts, and were found guilty on the rare charge of seditious conspiracy under a Civil War-era statute. They were also found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The jury has only reached a partial verdict, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly said Thursday, and the verdicts on other charges are still being read.

Former President Donald Trump will not put up a defense in his civil trial on allegations that he raped former columnist E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s, his attorneys told a judge presiding over the case Wednesday. Trump's legal team had planned an expert witness to attempt to rebut Carroll's allegations in the case, but that witness was unable to testify due to "health issues," attorney Joe Tacopina told U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan. The expert was one of two people on the defense's witness list before the trial in a Manhattan court. The other person was Trump, though...

A New York judge tossed Donald Trump’s $100 million lawsuit against the New York Times and ordered him to pay all of the paper’s legal fees, according to a ruling Wednesday. The former president’s claims that the Gray Lady and three of its reporters hatched an “insidious plot” to get his private tax records “fail as a matter of constitutional law,” New York Supreme Court Justice Robert Reed wrote in the decision. In the 2021 suit, the embattled 45th president alleged that Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russ Buettner schemed with Trump’s niece, Mary, to disclose his 20-year-old...

A federal judge in New York on Monday denied former President Donald Trump's bid for a mistrial in writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit alleging that Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. In an 18-page filing hours ahead of his second day of cross-examining Carroll, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina accused U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, of making “pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings” against his client. Barring a mistrial ruling, Tacopina requested that Kaplan “correct the record for each and every instance in which the Court has mischaracterized the facts of this...

Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday granted a request from the Justice Department to leave in place the Food and Drug Administration's approval of a widely used abortion pill, preserving access to the drug and reinstating a number of steps by the agency that made it easier to obtain while legal proceedings continue. The decision from the conservative court came in the most significant case involving abortion since it overturned Roe v. Wade less than one year ago, a ruling that threw the legal landscape into chaos and led to near-total bans on abortion in more than 12 states....

Washington — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito extended a temporary pause on a lower court order that imposed limitations on the widely used abortion pill mifepristone to Friday at 11:59 p.m. The brief order issued by Alito preserves broad access to mifepristone for two more days.

The Fulton County District Attorney’s office has offered immunity deals to some of the alternate GOP electors who met at the Georgia Capitol and cast phony Electoral College votes for Donald Trump following the 2020 election. In a court motion filed Tuesday, the DA’s office also disclosed that it has been interviewing several of those Republicans in recent weeks, and that some of them accused a fellow elector of committing “acts that are violations of Georgia law,” the motion stated, without revealing specifics. The DA’s office filed the motion in an attempt to disqualify from the case attorney Kimberly Burroughs...

The governor of Oklahoma has called for the resignations of the sheriff and other top officials in a rural county after they were recorded talking about "beating, killing and burying" a father/son team of local reporters — and lamenting that they could no longer hang Black people with a “damned rope.” Gov. Kevin Stitt called for McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, county Commissioner Mark Jennings, sheriff's investigator Alicia Manning, and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix to step down after the McCurtain County Gazette-News published an article over the weekend about what was captured on the recording. “I am both appalled and...

A top lawyer for former President Donald Trump reportedly recused himself from the Mar-a-Lago classified files case after appearing before a grand jury. Despite his recusal, Evan Corcoran is still working for Trump on special counsel Jack Smith's inquiry into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the Washington Post reported. Corcoran was recently ordered to answer questions about a subpoena against Trump's team for sensitive documents that were issued last May, Typically, legal ethics rules stipulate that lawyers shouldn't work for clients in cases where they could become key witnesses. Corcoran’s recusal could be temporary as the rule is not yet...

NEW YORK -- The digital media conglomerate Starboard said Friday it purchased the conservative social media site Parler and will temporarily take down the app as it undergoes a “strategic assessment.” The deal came months after another acquisition agreement with rapper Kanye West, legally known as Ye, collapsed in November. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed by either company. Parler said the deal was concluded on April 7. Parler caters to right-wing, far right and libertarian voices and fashions itself as a platform with fewer rules in support of free speech. It was briefly booted off the internet...

An outside review of ballot printing mishaps in Maricopa County during the 2022 midterm elections that caused long lines and vote tabulation delays in critical Arizona races blamed the headaches on printer failures and paper ballot thickness. Maricopa County, which includes the Phoenix area, contains 60% of Arizona’s voters and has been a hotbed for election denialism in the last two cycles. Former President Donald Trump alleged widespread fraud in Maricopa County tipped the state to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, while failed 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has cited Maricopa County election woes in her...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — He may have been expelled Thursday evening, but Justin Jones is back in the Tennessee House of Representatives. The ousted legislator was reappointed to his former seat in the 52nd District in Nashville by the Metro Council Monday afternoon, two business days after he was officially expelled from the House for breaking decorum rules on the House floor March 30. Jones faced expulsion along with fellow Democrats Gloria Johnson of Knoxville and Justin Pearson of Memphis. Johnson survived the expulsion vote by one, but Pearson was ousted as well Thursday. The move was met with national...

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - Fox News said on Sunday it has reached a settlement with a Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil, ending a defamation case in which Khalil said he was falsely accused on air of helping to rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election against Donald Trump. Khalil had filed a defamation suit against the news outlet and former host Lou Dobbs, arguing in filings that they had fabricated claims he and other Venezuelans were involved in "orchestrating a non-existent scheme to rig or fix the election" against the former Republican president. A short letter sent to U.S. District Judge...