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CHICAGO (AP) — A judge in Chicago ruled Friday that an attorney for Jussie Smollett might have defamed two Black brothers who testified that they participated in a fake racist and homophobic attack on the actor when she suggested they had been wearing “whiteface.” U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland’s ruling centers on comments Tina Glandian made on NBC’s “Today” show in March 2019, shortly after the Cook County State’s Attorney announced it was dropping charges accusing Smollett of lying to police about the incident two months earlier. Discussing how Smollett had told police that one of his attackers was white,...

The Justice Department has been ordered to provide internal documents associated with its decision to prosecute former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. This is a victory for Bannon, who maintains that he had a valid legal basis for refusing to obey a subpoena from the House’s Jan. 6 special panel. U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols ordered the Justice Department to provide Bannon’s team with “statements or writings” that demonstrate how the decision to charge Bannon with contempt of Congress square with longstanding legal opinions of the Justice Department that hold that former presidential advisers are generally exempt from congressional subpoenas....

A federal judge has dismissed a felony obstruction charge alleging a participant in Jan. 6 Capitol riot attempted to prevent the certification of the 2020 Electoral College results. The ruling Tuesday by U.S. District Judge for the D.C. Circuit Carl J. Nichols, a Trump administration appointee, marks the second time in eight days the judge has issued such a dismissal. Nichols ruled in the case against Joseph Fischer, who works for the North Cornwall Township Police Department in Pennsylvania, that the obstruction charge does not stand. "Nothing in Count Three (or the superseding indictment generally) alleges, let alone implies, that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday ordered the Justice Department to provide former President Donald Trump's adviser Steve Bannon access to certain sensitive internal legal opinions or other related records that could potentially help bolster his defense against criminal contempt of Congress charges. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols told prosecutors they must produce "statements or writings reflecting official DOJ policy," including nonpublic opinions, that relate to "the department's policy on prosecuting or not prosecuting government or former government officials raising executive privilege claims or defenses of immunity."..... As part of his reasoning, Costello cited a number of prior...

A federal judge has thrown out an obstruction charge against a defendant charged with breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a ruling that could reverberate across hundreds of cases stemming from the attack on Congress. In a 29-page opinion issued Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols ruled that ambiguities in the federal obstruction law required him to narrow the case against defendant Garret Miller, who is facing multiple felony charges connected to the attack. Under that narrow interpretation, Nichols ruled, defendants can be charged with obstruction only if they directly attempt to affect “a document, record, or other...

WASHINGTON — A judge on Friday blocked a shameless Democrat electoral challenge that sought to disqualify Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina from running for re-election by labeling him an insurrectionist.U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, an appointee of President Donald J. Trump, stepped in to squelch an effort by Democrat lawyers in North Carolina who had filed a motion before the state’s Board of Elections declaring Mr. Cawthorn, 26, ineligible for re-election under the Constitution. They had contended that the first-term Republican’s support for Patriots who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, made him an “insurrectionist,” and therefore...

A federal judge on Friday blocked a legal challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-N.C.) candidacy filed over allegations he helped spur the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill. Richard Myers, a Trump-appointed federal judge in the eastern district of North Carolina, approved Cawthorn’s request for a preliminary injunction to the challenge to his reelection bid.

A whistleblower lawsuit alleging fraud during Pfizer’s COVID vaccine trials is moving forward, after a district court judge unsealed the complaint, including 400 pages of exhibits. Brook Jackson in January 2021 sued Pfizer and two companies the drugmaker contracted with to work on the trials: Ventavia Research Group and ICON PLC. Jackson worked for Ventavia for a brief period in 2020 before being fired after she filed a complaint with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over alleged improprieties she observed during the vaccine trials. She also gave The BMJ a cache of internal company documents, photos and recordings...

On Monday the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Navy's request to reinstate the U.S. Navy's COVID-19 vaccine requirement. In November, dozens of U.S. Navy SEALs claimed they were wrongfully denied COVID vaccination exemptions on religious grounds. The suit, which lists 35 unnamed service members, argues that that the Defense Department's mandate violates their First Amendment rights. While the percentage of vaccinated active duty personnel in each service is at 95 percent or higher, the number of unvaccinated personnel is close to 30,000. The Navy itself has previously said that it has not granted an exemption to any...

In U.S. Navy Seals 1-26 v. Biden, (5th Cir., Feb. 28, 2022), the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to grant the Navy a partial stay of an injunction issued by a Texas federal district court protecting 35 special warfare personnel who object on religious grounds to complying with the military's COVID vaccine mandate. The court said in part: Defendants have not demonstrated “paramount interests” that justify vaccinating these 35 Plaintiffs against COVID-19 in violation of their religious beliefs. They insist that “given the small units and remote locations in which special-operations forces typically operate, military commanders have determined...

(CNN)With only a few days left in February, court watchers are trying to read tea leaves as to the identity of President Joe Biden's pick for the Supreme Court before his end-of-the-month deadline -- and a federal court on Thursday increased the buzz around DC Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit deviated from its typical procedure by issuing an opinion on a Thursday -- breaking with its usual schedule of Tuesday and Friday release days. Notably, Jackson -- who has interviewed with Biden for the Supreme Court nomination -- was...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to put greater emphasis on the potential damage from greenhouse gas emissions when creating rules for polluting industries. U.S. District Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana sided with Republican attorneys general who said the administration’s raising the cost estimate of carbon dioxide emissions threatened to drive up energy costs while decreasing state revenues from energy production. The judge issued an injunction that bars the administration from using the higher cost estimate, which puts a dollar value on damages caused by every additional ton of...

After several days of bad news on the redistricting front, including a bad decision in North Carolina for the GOP-drawn map there, a big win has been delivered to Republicans. The US Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 to halt a lower court order in Alabama that it must redraw its previously passed Congressional map.That means a 6-1 Republican to Democrat map will now go into effect in 2022, and given the makeup of the Supreme Court, there’s no reason to believe it gets struck down at any point past that.BREAKING: By a 5–4 vote, with Roberts joining the liberals in...

Just days before the FDA was set to release over 12,000 documents related to the experimental Covid-19 vaccines, Pfizer asked a federal court to allow it to intervene before any information is released to the public.Unsurprisingly, the FDA wholeheartedly agreed, asking the court to allow the vaccine maker to ‘help’ curate the documents, which would also buy the agency more time to release the much anticipated, and likely damning, data. (snip) Federal officials in the FDA and DOJ also told the court that they want Pfizer’s ‘help’ with redacting the documents because of “the unprecedented speed with which the Court...

As explained in prior posts, in a lawsuit seeking all of the documents the FDA relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, a federal judge shot down the FDA’s requested rate of 500 pages per month and instead ordered the FDA to produce at the rate of 55,000 pages per month starting on March 1. Since the government has trillions of dollars of our money, it is putting it to good use by fighting to assure that the public has the least amount of transparency possible. To that end, it has now asked the Court to make the public wait...

As a rule, few things are less likely to be the source of humor than court decisions. Sometimes there are excellent puns or low-key snark, but you don’t find belly-laugh material. Usually. Last Friday, a panel of the Ninth Circuit published a decision on a complaint arising from Ventura, California, that covered both the COVID panic and the Second Amendment. During the height of the COVID panic, that county ordered firing ranges, and gun shops closed. Presumably, this is because the Wuhan virus has a particular affinity for recreational venues. Several groups and individuals sued to overturn the order as...

In one opinion published last week, 9th Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke said Ventura County, California, violated the Second Amendment when it shut down gun stores early in the COVID-19 pandemic. In another opinion the same day, VanDyke said the county's policy was perfectly consistent with the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. That second, tongue-in-cheek opinion was meant to illustrate the disrespect that the 9th Circuit and other federal appeals courts have shown for the Second Amendment since 2008, when the Supreme Court explicitly recognized that the provision guarantees an individual right to armed self-defense. The Court may finally...

@julie_kelly2 Brandon Straka, who pleaded guilty to class B misdemeanor of disorderly conduct, berated by Trump judge and sentenced to 3 months home detention, 3 years probation and $5k fine.

A Florida man pleaded guilty to federal charges of threatening to kill Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Palm Beach Gardens resident Paul Vernon Hoeffer, 60, pleaded guilty to interstate transmission of threats to injure in federal court in Ft. Pierce, the DOJ stated. He faces up to 15 years in federal prison. In March of 2019, Hoeffer called the office of the Speaker, stating that he had come a "long way" to "rattle" her head with bullets and threatened to behead her. The DOJ also stated that he had...

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. judge in Texas issued a nationwide injunction on Friday barring the federal government from enforcing President Joe Biden's requirement that federal workers without qualifying medical or religious exemptions be vaccinated for COVID-19. Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of Texas by then-President Donald Trump, ruled that opponents of Biden's vaccination mandate for federal employees were likely to succeed at trial and blocked the government from enforcing the requirement.