Free Republic

A federal judge this week allowed a Venezuelan businessman’s defamation lawsuit to continue against Fox News and host Lou Dobbs over statements accusing the man of helping rig the 2020 presidential election. Majed Khalil filed the suit last year, alleging statements made on Dobbs’s Twitter account and by Sidney Powell on Dobbs’s show defamed Khalil by accusing him of executing an “electoral 9/11” and helping change ballot counts in voting machines. Dobbs, the Fox Corporation and Fox News moved to dismiss the case in January, arguing the statements were protected under the First Amendment and were not said with actual...

US District Judge Ronnie Abrams rejected Cooper’s claim on Wednesday that she was defamed when ex-employer Franklin Templeton, a holding company, axed her one day after the viral altercation in Central Park. Cooper claimed that Franklin Templeton and its chief executive Jenny Johnson perpetuated her image as a “privileged white female ‘Karen’” by making public statements about firing her after conducting an investigation into the incident. In May 2020, Cooper went viral after video showed her yelling at birder Christian Cooper and calling the police to claim an “African American man” was “threatening” her while she was walking her dog...

The We Build the Wall campaign to crowdfund a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border was spearheaded by Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage and Steve Bannon, the erstwhile chief White House strategist to former President Donald Trump. Along with two associates, Kolfage and Bannon were indicted in August 2020 on charges that they siphoned donors’ money from the organization for their personal use. Steve Bannon was pardoned by President Trump. Brian Kolfage pleaded guilty after months of threats and abuse by his government. It should be noted that the We Build the Wall organization accomplished more than the US government and...

A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that California's ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday the law violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms and a San Diego judge should have blocked what it called "an almost total ban on semiautomatic centerfire rifles" for young adults.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, ruled that a hunting license requirement for purchases of rifles or shotguns by adults under 21 who are not in the military or law enforcement was reasonable A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday ruled that California's ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional, a move gun-rights advocates hope will pave the way for similar rulings in other courts. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law violates the Second Amendment and that a San Diego judge should have blocked what is called...

LOS ANGELES -- A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that California's ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday the law violates the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms and a San Diego judge should have blocked what it called "an almost total ban on semiautomatic centerfire rifles" for young adults.

Microsoft Corporation legal documents obtained by Project Veritas show that after a U.S. District Court Judge rejected the DOJ’s argument to ignore Project Veritas’ “journalistic privileges,” the DOJ went behind the judge’s back to obtain an extension on two sealed non-disclosure orders from a magistrate judge to conceal the fact they already had unsupervised and unfettered access to privileged emails and contacts of eight Project Veritas journalists. • Judge Torres had ruled that prosecutors must operate under the supervision of a Special Master to ensure first amendment protections are upheld for Project Veritas journalists and their source material. • These...

One of the reasons the 1st Amendment gives protection to the free press is because they are supposed to be one of the most important checks against a tyrannical government. Independence and protection for journalists can be argued as one of the biggest reasons the United States has flourished for a quarter millenium. Project Veritas has been targeted by our government on multiple occasions they do not abide by the standing orders given to journalists that they must be supportive of progressive ideologies. While most major news outlets pander to the left willingly, offering cover for corrupt Democrats while seeking...

James O’Keefe on Tuesday revealed the Biden DOJ spied on Project Veritas journalists with sealed search warrants then concealed the communications from a federal judge. Project Veritas obtained legal documents from Microsoft Corporation revealing the DOJ obtained an extension on two sealed search warrants after a federal judge denied the Department’s efforts to “unsupervised and unfettered access to privileged emails and contacts of eight PV journalists.” According to O’Keefe, Judge Torres ruled that federal prosecutors must be supervised by a Special Master to protect the journalists’ First Amendment rights. The documents obtained by Project Veritas prove the DOJ went behind...

NEW YORK, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Former U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin asked a U.S. court on Monday for a new trial after losing her defamation case against the New York Times (NYT.N) earlier this month, and requested that the judge overseeing the case be disqualified. Palin's attorneys said last week they would take those steps because several jurors received push notifications on their cellphones before deliberations were over about U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff's decision to dismiss the case regardless of their verdict.

NEW YORK, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate, plans to seek a new trial and have the judge disqualified after losing her defamation case against the New York Times. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan discussed Palin's plan at a hearing on Wednesday, and said he will issue a written opinion by March 1 explaining why he dismissed her case while jurors were deliberating. He said he would speed up the opinion because of the "fracas" surrounding the dismissal. The unusual hearing came eight days after jurors rejected...

A former business partner of Hunter Biden was sentenced Monday to more than a year in prison for his role in a scheme to defraud a Native American tribe of some $60 million in bonds. The defendant, Devon Archer, was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison by Manhattan Judge Ronnie Abrams, who said the crime was “too serious” to let him just walk. “There’s no dispute about the harm caused to real people,” Abrams said, noting that the defrauded tribe, the Oglala Sioux, is one of the poorest in the nation. Archer will also have to...

Legal experts have slammed the Clinton-appointed New York judge who tossed Sarah Palin's libel lawsuit against The New York Times while jurors are still deliberating the case and say he's effectively hobbled the jury. 'I would have expected the judge to wait for the jury to return its verdict before ruling on the motion for judgment as a matter of law, because there was no urgency to issuing that ruling,' attorney Mitchell Epner, of Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC, told Law & Crime on Monday. 'Nothing would have changed if he had waited for the verdict to have been announced, or...

A federal judge said on Monday that he will dismiss Sarah Palin’s libel case against The New York Times, concluding that Palin’s lawyers had failed to show the publication acted with actual malice.

Porn star Stormy Daniels detailed how her former attorney, Michael Avenatti, allegedly stole hundreds of thousands in book advance money from her – and lied to her about the missing funds almost every day for five months at his trial Thursday. Daniels, wearing a black dress, a red sweater and black high heels, took the stand at Avenatti’s criminal trial in Manhattan federal court – and walked jurors through a series of text messages and documents that showed her communication with her former attorney as she navigated a six-figure book deal in 2018.

Stormy Daniels, the porn star who catapulted herself and Michael Avenatti to fame with lawsuits against former President Donald Trump, will have a starring role in court beginning Monday when prosecutors try to prove that the California lawyer cheated her of $300,000 in book proceeds. Her testimony in Manhattan federal court will be pivotal for prosecutors trying to prove Avenatti engaged in wire fraud and aggravated identity theft to keep from giving his client money he had received from her publisher. Opening statements are set for Monday. Daniels is not expected to testify until Tuesday, at the earliest. Avenatti, 50,...

Michael Avenatti, the disgraced celebrity lawyer and fierce Donald Trump critic, is scheduled to go on trial Monday in Manhattan for allegedly swindling ex-porn star Stormy Daniels out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Avenatti is accused of fleecing Daniels – his former client – of about $300,000 in money she stood to collect for a 2018 advance on a book about her alleged affair with Trump.

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tested positive for COVID-19, which may delay her civil suit against the New York Times that was scheduled to go to trial Monday, one of her attorneys said. Palin is scheduled to take another test Monday morning and if that yields a negative result, her trial could resume with jury selection later in the day. If she tests positive again, however, Manhattan federal Judge Jed Rakoff will delay the trial until Feb. 3, attorney Shane Vogt said. “She is, of course, unvaccinated,” Rakoff said in court Monday morning while discussing the logistics.

Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has tested positive for Covid, and is unvaccinated, a federal judge told a courtroom Monday just as a civil defamation trial involving the one-time-Alaska governor and the New York Times was set to begin. Palin, who disclosed in March that she had been diagnosed then with the coronavirus, said last month that she will get a Covid-19 vaccine “over my dead body.”

The trial will begin this week in former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R) defamation case against The New York Times over a corrected editorial linking her to "political incitement." Palin’s case is set to be heard in a Manhattan federal court beginning Monday, where the former vice presidential candidate will try and convince jurors that the newspaper and its former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her in an opinion piece, according to Reuters.