Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Avenatti, the brash California lawyer who publicly sparred with then-President Donald Trump before criminal fraud charges on two coasts disrupted his rapid ascent to fame, faces sentencing in one of those cases Thursday. Over a year after a jury concluded Avenatti tried to extort millions of dollars from Nike by threatening the company with bad publicity, U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe will sentence him in Manhattan. Avenatti was convicted on charges that he tried to extort up to $25 million from the Beaverton, Oregon-based sportswear giant as he represented a Los Angeles youth basketball...

Manhattan District Judge William H. Pauley III died on July 5, 2021, at the age of 68. William H. Pauley’s cause of death was announced after his passing. American senior judge Pauley died Tuesday morning, according to a court official. He had been previously diagnosed with cancer. May he rest in peace. William H. Pauley III was born on August 14, 1952, in Glen Cove, New York. In 1974, he received an Artium Baccalaureus degree from Duke University. Pauley served as a law clerk for the Office of the Nassau County Attorney in NY from 1977 to 1978. He also...

A judge has ruled that dozens more documents about Ghislaine Maxwell's personal affairs should be made public, including some that could reveal more about her finances and her relationship to the Clintons. Judge Loretta Preska said that unsealing the documents would not impact Maxwell's right to a fair trial in November as her lawyers have claimed. Among the documents which will be made public in two weeks' time will be Maxwell's efforts to quash requests from Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who sued Maxwell for defamation, to obtain her financial records.

Federal judge Analisa Torres, an Obama appointee, dismissed a shooting case against a reputed gang banger because the grand jury that indicted him was drawn from a grand jury pool in White Plains with an “underrepresentation of Black and Latinx individuals.”It looks to me that Judge Torres is using an invented term, Latinx” to invoke an invented right. Via the New York Post:“The Government has failed to meet its burden by coming forward with evidence rebutting the presumption that such underrepresentation was the result of purposeful discrimination,” she wrote Monday.“Therefore, Defendant has established a violation of his Fifth Amendment right...

A federal judge in Manhattan tossed an indictment against a Bronx shooting suspect because of a lack of racial diversity in the White Plains grand jury pool — the first such ruling since city cases were moved to the suburban county amid the pandemic. Judge Analisa Torres sided with defendant William Scott, who had argued that black and Hispanic people were underrepresented in the grand jury pool that returned an indictment against him in June of last year. Scott was charged with possessing ammunition in connection to a shooting in the Bronx, but was charged in the Southern District of...

A federal judge in Manhattan tossed an indictment against a Bronx shooting suspect because of a lack of racial diversity in the White Plains grand jury pool — the first such ruling since city cases were moved to the suburban county amid the pandemic. Judge Analisa Torres sided with defendant William Scott, who had argued that black and Hispanic people were underrepresented in the grand jury pool that returned an indictment against him in June of last year. Scott was charged with possessing ammunition in connection to a shooting in the Bronx, but was charged in the Southern District of...

The Justice Department argued in a brief filed Monday that it should be permitted to substitute itself for former President Donald Trump as defendant in a defamation lawsuit brought by a longtime magazine columnist, E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of rape, continuing the argument it had initiated under the previous administration even as the White House has changed hands. "Then-President Trump's response to Ms. Carroll's serious allegations of sexual assault included statements that questioned her credibility in terms that were crude and disrespectful," Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals. "But...

Ghislaine Maxwell wants to get her hands on the diary of a teenage girl who says she was sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein in 1996. On Friday, a federal court in New York City nixed that request. The alleged accomplice to the dead pedophile’s elite empire of sexual abuse has been trying to obtain Annie Farmer‘s teenage diary since early April of this year. U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan barred a subpoena request for the diary aimed at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in late April but held open the possibility that it could eventually be produced - asking the...

A federal judge agreed to appoint the same special master from the government's case against Michael Cohen in 2018 to review whether materials seized from the homes and offices of Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing are subject to attorney-client privilege....

The white woman who was recorded on video calling police to claim that a Black bird-watcher was threatening her in New York City's Central Park last year filed suit against her former employer, alleging that the company did not properly consider her fear for personal safety prior to firing her. Amy Cooper filed a federal complaint against investment management company Franklin Templeton on Tuesday, alleging that the company terminated her based on her race and gender while also failing to properly investigate the viral incident that made national headlines. The lawsuit, filed exactly a year after the Central Park confrontation,...

BREAKING: Judge dismisses indictment against ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon https://t.co/1kkOc1TzEv— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) May 25, 2021 Judge dismisses indictment against Steve Bannon NEW YORK — An indictment against Steve Bannon was dismissed Tuesday over the objection of prosecutors who said it should stand despite Trump’s decision to pardon his former chief strategist. The dismissal came in a written ruling by U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres, who called it the “proper course.” The Manhattan jurist said it was not the practice of the region’s federal courts to remove a defendant from a case’s docket without resolving the indictment. And she...

Federal judge ruled Trump can't enforce non-disclosure agreement he required his campaign aides to sign U.S. District Court Judge Paul Gardephe, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said the language was too broad and unenforceable 'The non-disclosure provision is thus much broader than what the Campaign asserts is necessary to protect its legitimate interests, and, therefore, is not reasonable,' he ruled Issue came about when Jessica Denson, a Hispanic outreach director for Trump in 2016, accused the campaign of sex discrimination in a separate lawsuit In return, the campaign accused her of violating the non-disclosure

Yesterday a New York federal district court in United States v. Village of Airmont, (SD NY, March 15, 2021), entered a consent decree requiring modification of the village's zoning code. A press release by the Department of Justice describes the order: [The preliminary injunction mandates] that the Village... immediately cease enforcement of zoning code provisions enacted in 2018 that discriminate against Orthodox Jewish residents in violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.... [T]he zoning code provisions at issue limit the amount of space in private homes that can be used as a Residential Place of Worship..., restrict...

On Thursday, a pastor who previously lived a homosexual lifestyle made his appeal in a unique case regarding discrimination and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which protects Big Tech companies from liability for the content third-parties post on their platforms. The pastor is suing Vimeo for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and religion after the platform banned him from publishing videos telling the stories of people who identify as ex-gay. “This is a case of grave importance because it is about whether big tech platforms can unlawfully discriminate against persons based on religion or sexual...

In Agudath Israel of America v. Cuomo, (2d Cir., Nov. 9, 2020), the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision refused to grant an injunction pending appeal to a group of Jewish synagogues and to the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn in a case challenging New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's restrictions on spots in which clusters of COVD-19 cases have broken out. (See prior posting.) The majority said in part: The Court fully understands the impact the executive order has had on houses of worship throughout the affected zones. Nevertheless, the Appellants cannot clear the high bar necessary...

A federal judge named Joe Biden as a possible “witness” along with his son Hunter in a criminal fraud case last year that ended in the convictions of two of Hunter’s business partners, according to little-noticed court documents. The Democratic presidential candidate’s appearance on a witness list casts new doubt on his claims he knew nothing about his son’s shady business dealings. Hunter Biden blamed one of his convicted partners — Devon Archer — for his father's name appearing on a list of potential witnesses in a juror questionnaire in the case, which was filed Jan. 11, 2019. In a...

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New York ruled Tuesday that the Justice Department cannot step in to shield President Donald Trump from a libel lawsuit filed by a woman who claims he raped her in a New York City department store more than 20 years ago. The Justice Department had sought to block the lawsuit, filed by former gossip columnist E. Jean Carroll, by arguing that the president was acting in his official capacity when he told White House reporters that she made up the rape story. Carroll sued, claiming that his statements branding her a liar damaged her...

Devon Archer was convicted of defrauding the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe out of bond-sale proceeds. Hunter Biden was not implicated in the scheme, which defrauded the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe out of the proceeds of bond sales. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File/AP Photo A federal appeals court reinstated the fraud conviction of Hunter Biden’s former business partner on Wednesday, reversing a lower court judge who had granted his request for a retrial. Hunter Biden was not implicated in the scheme, which defrauded the Oglala Sioux Indian tribe out of the proceeds of bond sales. But the scheme was committed under...

The Trump administration will begin to retroactively apply its controversial "public charge" rule to immigrants, following a court decision that lifted a nationwide injunction on the policy. A notice posted on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website said the rule will apply to all future and pending green card applications and petitions postmarked or submitted electronically as of Feb. 24, 2020. The move to reimpose the rule comes after the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 11 overturned a nationwide injunction on the policy that had been imposed earlier in the summer because of the coronavirus pandemic....

Preet Bharara knew about FBI leaks two years before his office denied them. No one has been punished Preet Bharara is often mentioned as a possible U.S. attorney general in a Joe Biden administration after building a reputation as a hard-charging federal prosecutor and self-proclaimed ethicist teaching law school and dispensing morality on Twitter. But one of the last cases he handled as the chief federal prosecutor in New York City cuts against the grain of his carefully manicured image, exposing widespread leaking by the FBI — and knowledge of it by the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office — during the...