Free Republic

The New York Times doesn’t often defend its journalistic practices before a jury. But later this month, the “Gray Lady” will indeed do so as the influential newspaper has a trial date with Sarah Palin. Very much under the radar, jury selection in the four-year-old case begins on Jan. 24. The former vice presidential candidate alleges being defamed by a 2017 editorial linking one of her political action committee ads to a 2011 mass shooting that severely wounded then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. James Bennet, the author of the editorial, picked up on the use of crosshairs in the advertisement and...

A federal judge on Tuesday approved a plan to restructure Puerto Rico's bond debt, which had plunged the U.S. territory into the country's largest municipal bankruptcy in history. Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled in favor of the Plan of Adjustment that was years in the making, through arduous negotiations between the island's Fiscal Oversight Board, debtors and the government. According to Board officials, the plan will reduce Puerto Rico's debt by 80 percent and save the island more than $50 billion in debt payments. Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said the approval of the plan "represents a great step for...

Jan. 14 (UPI) -- A federal judge on Friday ordered former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli to pay $64.6 million for illegally ballooning the price of a drug to treat parasitic diseases. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York also barred Shkreli from the pharmaceutical industry for life. "Banning an individual from an entire industry and limiting his future capacity to make a living in that field is a serious remedy and must be done with care and only if equity demands," she wrote in her ruling. "Shkreli's egregious, deliberate, repetitive, long-running and ultimately dangerous illegal...

Sarah Palin wants jurors to be barred from seeing footage of her appearance on “The Masked Singer” in her defamation case against the New York Times that may go to trial in the coming weeks.

Click here to view the full articleOn the same day a jury convicted disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell on five of six counts of sex trafficking related to her former lover Jeffrey Epstein, another Epstein associate received ominous legal news. According to Reuters, two New York judges ordered Wednesday that the 2009 settlement between Epstein and Virginia Giuffre, one of the financier’s numerous accusers, be made public. Giuffre, who said she was trafficked by Epstein, has accused Britain’s Prince Andrew of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager.

A 2009 settlement agreement between deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre, who alleges she was abused by Epstein and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was under 18 years old, will be made public next week, Reuters reported. U.S. District Judges Lewis Kaplan and Loretta Preska on Wednesday ordered that the agreement be released on or around Jan. 3, saying they found no reason to keep it sealed, per the wire service. Giuffre has brought a lawsuit against Andrew, saying that she was forced to have sexual contact with the Duke of York when she...

"A U.S. federal judge ruled in favor of the relatives of former national security adviser Michael Flynn Thursday, allowing them to move forward with a lawsuit against CNN. The relatives, Flynn's brother and sister-in-law, allege that CNN wrongly portrayed them as QAnon conspiracy followers, according to a report. While U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Woods mostly upheld a magistrate judge's recommendation to throw out the pair's defamation case, he allowed the Flynns to proceed with accusations that CNN portrayed them in a "false light." ..."

A federal judge in Manhattan overturned a roughly $4.5 billion settlement between OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and members of the Sackler family who own the drugmaker, a surprising decision that raises questions about the future of the company and its owners, who have been accused of fueling the nation’s opioid crisis. Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York ruled late Thursday that legal releases that would shield members of the Sackler family from civil opioid lawsuits are not permitted under the bankruptcy.

Click here to view the full articleThe media has been on a non-stop attack against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell since he expressed doubts about the results of the 2020 presidential election and Mike took action against one outlet.But Lindell was defeated in his court case against the British tabloid The Daily Mail who he accused of defaming him, Newsweek reported.A federal judge sided with the news outlet, saying that the article that Lindell cited as defaming “cannot be reasonably construed as defamatory.”Lindell, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, first sued the Daily Mail tabloid in January after it...

A federal judge is siding with Project Veritas over its request for an independent party to review the cellphones the FBI seized from the group's founder James O'Keefe. On Wednesday, District Court Judge Analisa Torres from the Southern District of New York is ordering a "special master" to be appointed to oversee the review of O'Keefe's devices, citing "potential First Amendment concerns." "The Court recognizes, as other courts in this district have concluded, that ‘the Southern District prosecutors have integrity and decency,' and the filter team alone could conduct the review ‘with utmost integrity,’" Torres wrote. "However, the Court determines...

VIDEOSleepy Joe's nominee for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Dale Ho, was caught blatantly lying under oath before the U.S. Senate. If there is at least one Democrat Senator who thinks lying to the Senate is disqualifying to serve as a judge, then his nomination is toast. Oh, and Sleepy Joe can convincingly claim that he wasn't even aware of Ho's existence since he can say he just signed a piece of paper his handlers put in front of him without him knowing what was even on it.

Alison Julie Nathan has previously served as a special assistant to resident Barack Obama and also as his associate White House counsel.. As the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell begins on November 29, 2021, some questions may finally be answered about the sex scandal involving late Jeffery Epstein. Maxwell was arrested on July 2, 2020, and is one of the few remaining links investigators have to Epstein after he died suspiciously while he was in jail. The trial is likely to finally tell us how far, wide and deeply Epstein's sex trafficking ring had spread, especially in the elite circles he...

Judge Alison Nathan is likely to be nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The federal judge overseeing British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking case is set to be recommended for higher court – sparking concerns about possible ethical conflicts. New York Senator Chuck Schumer announced on Tuesday he is going to recommend to President Joe Biden that he nominate Alison J. Nathan, 49, to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Project Veritas founder and Journalist James O’Keefe just received good news from the United States District Court of Southern New York.His attorney Harmeet Dhillon tweeted this out:BREAKING! The federal court has just ordered the DOJ to STOP extracting data from our client, journalist James O’Keefe’s phone, and ordered a hearing. Counsel for Project Veritas asked the court to do this yesterday!pic.twitter.com/nBrmf4myuj— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) November 11, 2021District Court Judge Analisa Torres ordered that:By November 12, 2021, the Government must confirm that it has paused its extraction and review of the contents of the O’Keefe’s phones;By November 16, 2021, the...

Prince Andrew must be questioned under oath by Virginia Giuffre's lawyers in her civil sexual assault case by mid-July next year, a US judge has ruled. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan set the deadline of 14 July 2022 to complete depositions in a scheduling order agreed to by lawyers for Andrew and Ms Giuffre It means the questioning could clash with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations, which will take place in June. Andrew has vehemently denied allegations he sexually assaulted Ms Giuffre when she was a teenager. Under something known as "Mutual Legal Assistance" (MLA), both prosecutors and the...

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is drowning in red ink, having lost $9.2 billion in 2020 alone. Things weren’t looking rosy before the pandemic, either. In fact, America’s mail carrier has shed more than $80 billion over the past 15 years. When faced with such gargantuan losses, many businesses swiftly introduce far-reaching changes to pivot back to profitability. But owing to the strange, tangled status of the USPS as a government-managed enterprise, key decisions to get the agency back into the black are undermined by the actions of other branches of government. In recent years, the judicial branch has played...

Some months after Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice signaled it would back former President Donald Trump in a lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll, a federal judge refused on Wednesday to let that development prevent the litigation from proceeding in his courtroom. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Trump’s request for a stay of all proceedings, without comment. Carroll claims that the former president defamed her by falsely denying that he raped her in the dressing room of the department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s, but for roughly a year, proceedings have revolved less around her allegations...

On 11 September 2015, Liberty Activist Michael Picard was protesting a Connecticut speed trap when he was accosted, his property illegally seized, and three Connecticut State Troopers conspired to violate his rights and charge him with disturbing the peace. This correspondent wrote about the situation in 2016. Here is how Picard described the situation back then. Here are the words of Michael Picard:Back on Friday, September 11th, 2015, in West Hartford, CT, I was illegally detained, frisked and searched, and my gun, permit and camera were seized, I was threatened with arrest for interfering (apparently, freedom of speech passes for...

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...