Trump Attorneys Don't Want To Disclose Which Mar-A-Lago Documents He Claims To Have Declassified
Trump Attorneys Don't Want To Disclose Which Mar-A-Lago Documents He Claims To Have Declassified https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-attorneys-dont-want-to-disclose-which-mar-a-lago-documents-he-claims-to-have-declassified/
Donald Trump’s attorneys said in a filing Monday night that they don’t want to disclose to a court-appointed special master which Mar-a-Lago documents they assert the former president may or may not have declassified.
In a four-page letter to the special master, Trump’s attorneys pushed back against Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie’s apparent proposal that they submit “specific information regarding declassification” to him in the course of his review.
Dearie issued an order Friday summoning both parties to the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, for a preliminary conference Tuesday.
Trump’s attorneys have claimed that until or unless they decide to fight the FBI search warrant or if they decide to offer it as a defense following any potential indictment, they shouldn’t have to disclose details about declassification that would also be shared with the Justice Department.
On his Truth Social platform last month, Trump said, “It was all declassified.” But legal experts have pointed out that it may be irrelevant whether the documents were declassified or not depending on what, if any, charges are filed.
In their own letter to Dearie on Monday, Justice Department lawyers proposed that the special master’s review of the nonclassified material begin at once by scanning all the seized documents and having Trump’s legal team review about 500 pages a day, marking them as privileged or not so prosecutors can agree or disagree and forward them to the special master for his ultimate determination.
Federal prosecutors also suggested that also among the seized materials were “[n]on-documentary items (e.g., items of clothing)” that would be made available to Trump’s counsel and the special master for review at the FBI’s Washington field office.
A separate federal judge set a deadline of Nov. 30 for Dearie to conclude his review and classifications, although the two sides have different thoughts about deadlines for the review and challenges to be argued within the window.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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Lawyers Seek Data In Georgia Election Equipment Breach
Lawyers Seek Data In Georgia Election Equipment Breach https://digitalarizonanews.com/lawyers-seek-data-in-georgia-election-equipment-breach/
ATLANTA – A former Republican Party official in Georgia who was a fake elector in 2020 misrepresented her role in an alleged breach of voting equipment at a rural elections office two months after the last presidential election, according to a court filing.
The filing late Monday is part of a broader lawsuit challenging the security of the state’s voting machines that has been drawn into a separate investigation of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in Georgia.
According to the latest filing, Cathy Latham helped coordinate the arrival of a computer forensics team at the Coffee County elections office on Jan. 7, 2021, welcomed them upon arrival and spent nearly all day there instructing them what to copy. That turned out to be “virtually every component of the voting system,” the court filing says. That directly refutes her testimony in a sworn deposition and her representations in filings with the court, the document states.
The filing comes in response to Latham’s attorneys’ attempt to quash subpoenas for her personal electronic devices, including any cellphones, computers and storage devices.
Robert Cheeley, an attorney for Latham, did not respond to an email seeking comment. He previously said his client doesn’t remember all the details of that day. But he said she “would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election” and “has not acted improperly or illegally.”
Latham said in a deposition last month that she moved to Texas over the summer. In January 2021, she was chair of the Coffee County Republican Party and was the state party caucus chair for more than 125 of Georgia’s smaller counties. Latham also was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
Trump in fact lost Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes to Democrat Joe Biden. The investigation into Trump’s efforts to change the results includes a phone call he made to the Georgia secretary of state suggesting he could “find” just enough votes to make Trump the winner.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office has described the copying of data from Coffee County’s election system as an “alleged unauthorized access.” It’s the latest of several suspected breaches of voting system data around the country tied to Trump allies since his election loss.
Attorney Sidney Powell and other Trump allies were involved in arranging for the copying of the election equipment in Coffee County — it is home to 43,000 people and voted overwhelmingly for Trump — as part of a wider effort to access voting equipment in several states, according to documents produced in response to subpoenas in the long-running lawsuit over Georgia’s voting machines.
Latham’s “data likely will reveal additional details about the work performed and information obtained in the breach, what was done with the compromised software and data, and the people involved in planning and orchestrating the breach, which puts voters and future elections at enormous risk,” the filing says.
An exhibit attached to the Monday filing juxtaposes quotes from Latham’s deposition with images pulled from security camera footage that appear to directly contradict her statements.
Latham said that she went to her job as a high school teacher and stopped by the election office briefly that afternoon. But the video image shows her arriving at 11:37 a.m. while time stamps on other images show her there throughout much of the day. She also said she didn’t see specific people and saw others only briefly, but the video images show otherwise.
The lawsuit that includes the fight over Latham’s personal electronic devices was originally filed several years before the 2020 election by individual voters and the Coalition for Good Governance, an election security advocacy group. It alleges that Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are not secure and seeks to have them replaced by hand-marked paper ballots.
The Monday filing said the plaintiffs have identified multiple specific documents that Latham failed to produce in response to a previous subpoena. It seeks to have a third party make a temporary forensic copy of her devices and search for responsive documents.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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GOPs Election-Year Standing With Independents At Risk
GOP’s Election-Year Standing With Independents At Risk https://digitalarizonanews.com/gops-election-year-standing-with-independents-at-risk-3/
COLUMBUS, Wis. (AP) — Sarah Motiff has voted for Sen. Ron Johnson every time his name appeared on the ballot, starting in 2010 when the Wisconsin Republican was first elected as part of the tea party wave. Fond of his tough views on spending, she began the year planning to support his reelection again.
She became skeptical this summer as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection reported his office discussed giving then-Vice President Mike Pence certificates with fake presidential electors for Donald Trump from Wisconsin and Michigan, part of a broader push to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. Johnson has downplayed the effort and the certificates were never given to Pence, but Motiff, a political independent, wasn’t convinced.
“I’m not going to lie when I say I’ve had some concerns about some of the reports that have come out,” the 52-year-old nonpartisan city councilwoman from Columbus, Wisconsin, said. “It just put a bad taste in my mouth.”
Nudged further by the June U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, Motiff is opposing Johnson and supports his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, in one of the most fiercely-contested Senate races this year.
“Which was really a hard decision for me because I do think he’s done good things in the past,” Motiff said of Johnson. “But this is pretty damaging.”
Motiff’s evolution represents the challenge for Republicans emerging from a tumultuous summer, defined by the court decision, high-profile hearings on former President Donald Trump’s actions during the insurrection and intensifying legal scrutiny of his handling of classified information and efforts to overturn the election. Now, a midterm campaign that the GOP hoped would be a referendum on President Joe Biden and the economy is at risk of becoming a comparison of the two parties, putting Republicans in an unexpectedly defensive position.
In politically-divided Wisconsin where recent elections have been decided by a few thousand votes, the outcome could hinge on self-described independent voters like Motiff.
“Having former President Trump so prominently in the news in so many ways makes it easier for Democrats to frame the midterm as a choice between two competing futures as opposed to a referendum on the Democrat governance,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “That’s hurting Republicans. It’s distracting from the referendum message and allowing more of a focus on a choice of two different parties.”
That tension is playing out in Columbia County, Wisconsin, a constellation of tidy small towns surrounded by rolling dairy farm country, all within commuting distance of Madison.
Statewide, top-of-the-ticket candidates have won by barely a percentage point in the past three elections. Trump won Columbia County by a little more than 500 votes out of 33,000 cast in 2020.
In interviews with more than a dozen independent voters here over two days last week, many were rethinking their support of the GOP this fall.
Steve Gray, a self-described Republican-leaning independent “but never a Trump fan,” opposed the June court decision, because he backs abortion rights. But the 61-year-old school maintenance manager also resented what he saw as an unwelcome political power play by out-of-power Republicans.
“Trump stacked the Supreme Court. We all knew he wanted to overturn Roe,” said Gray, of small-town Rio, where Trump won by two votes in 2020. “That decision was a partisan hand grenade Trump threw into this election.”
The court decision “upended the physics of midterm elections,” said Jesse Stinebring, a pollster advising several Democratic campaigns.
It gave voters the rare opportunity to judge a policy advance backed by the minority party, distracting them from a pure up-or-down vote on majority Democrats, he said.
“The backlash from a political perspective isn’t directed at the traditional party in power, but is actually reframed in terms of this Republican control of the Supreme Court,” Stinebring said.
The decision made Dilaine Noel’s vote automatic.
The 29-year-old data analytics director for a Madison-area business said she had never affiliated with either party.
Despite her grievances about Democrats’ warring moderate and liberal wings, her support for abortion rights gave her no choice than to vote for the party’s candidates this fall.
“By default, I have to move in that direction,” said Noel, from small-town Poynette in the Wisconsin River valley. “I’m being forced to.”
Mary Percifield is a lifelong independent voter who says the abortion decision motivated her to vote Democratic because she worries the court might overturn other rights.
“A right has been taken away from us,” the 68-year-old customer service representative from Pardeeville, said. “I question if a woman’s right to vote will be taken away. A woman’s right for birth control.”
Independent voters who lean neither Democrat nor Republican nationally preferred Biden over Trump, 52% to 37% in 2020, and preferred Democrats over Republicans in U.S. House races by a similar margin in the 2018 midterms, according to AP VoteCast. Independents who lean neither Democrat nor Republican made up 5% of the 2020 electorate and 12% in 2018.
Independents had moved toward Republicans by early this year, seeking answers on the economy, said Republican pollster David Winston, a senior adviser to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. But they have drifted back toward Democrats as efforts by GOP leaders to focus on the economy have clashed with Republican attacks on the Justice Department and Trump’s continuing complaints about the 2020 election.
“Everything is suddenly back in the context of Trump,” Winston said in light of Trump’s prominent endorsement of Senate candidates and protests of the federal investigation into classified documents recovered from his Florida home. “It’s not that Democrats are gaining. It’s that Republicans over the summer were off talking about a variety of things. And independents are thinking, ‘If you’re not talking specifically about the problems that I’m concerned about, why am I listening?’”
Republicans remain optimistic about their chances in November, particularly about netting the handful of seats they need to regain the U.S. House majority. Inflation remains high and, despite a recent uptick, approval of Biden is still low for a party hoping to maintain its hold on power.
The economy remains the most effective message and one that breaks through others, GOP campaign officials say.
“Prices and things are so front-of-mind to people,” said Calvin Moore, the communications director for Congressional Leadership Fund, a superPAC supporting Republican U.S. House candidates. “It’s not just something that’s on the news. It’s something they are experiencing every day in their daily life. It’s something they face themselves every day when they go to the grocery store.”
A shift by independents is particularly meaningful in Wisconsin, as Republicans work to overtake Democrats’ one-seat majority in the Senate.
Johnson, among the most vulnerable Republicans running for reelection this fall, is locked in a tight race with Barnes, Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor. Of the most competitive Senate seats this year, his is the only one held by a Republican.
Though Johnson dismissed testimony about fake electors as staff work which never reached him, it reminded Christian Wood, an independent voter from Lodi, of Johnson’s opposition to certifying the election before Jan. 6. Johnson reversed course after the riot.
“It’s absolutely scary,” said Wood, who has often voted Republican. “To me that’s the most existential threat to our democracy. And to think he was even considering it makes him a non-starter.”
There’s time for an economic message to win out, but it will require news about Trump fading, GOP pollster Ayres said.
Meanwhile, Trump has a full schedule of fall campaign travel for candidates he has endorsed.
“Any distraction from that focus undermines the best Republican message,” he said.
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Trump's Lawyers Argue Against Explaining Declassification Of Mar-A-Lago Documents Mountain Top Media
Trump's Lawyers Argue Against Explaining Declassification Of Mar-A-Lago Documents – Mountain Top Media https://digitalarizonanews.com/trumps-lawyers-argue-against-explaining-declassification-of-mar-a-lago-documents-mountain-top-media/
Trump’s lawyers argue against explaining declassification of Mar-a-Lago documents
mountain top media
Article Updated: September 20, 2022
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Lawyers for Donald Trump pushed back against disclosing information related to the declassification of documents seized last month from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home.
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GOPs Election-Year Standing With Independents At Risk
GOP’s Election-Year Standing With Independents At Risk https://digitalarizonanews.com/gops-election-year-standing-with-independents-at-risk-2/
Dilaine Noel, from politically competitive Columbia County, Wisconsin, talks in a downtown park in Lodi, Wis, on Sept. 12, 2022. The 29-year-old data analyst and political independent says the June U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade is forcing her to vote Democratic this fall “by default.” She is among independent voters nationally who have drifted toward supporting Democrats in November in light of the court decision and mixed messaging from Republicans over the summer. (AP Photo/Thomas Beaumont)
COLUMBUS, Wis. (AP) — Sarah Motiff has voted for Sen. Ron Johnson every time his name appeared on the ballot, starting in 2010 when the Wisconsin Republican was first elected as part of the tea party wave. Fond of his tough views on spending, she began the year planning to support his reelection again.
She became skeptical this summer as the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection reported his office discussed giving then-Vice President Mike Pence certificates with fake presidential electors for Donald Trump from Wisconsin and Michigan, part of a broader push to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. Johnson has downplayed the effort and the certificates were never given to Pence, but Motiff, a political independent, wasn’t convinced.
“I’m not going to lie when I say I’ve had some concerns about some of the reports that have come out,” the 52-year-old nonpartisan city councilwoman from Columbus, Wisconsin, said. “It just put a bad taste in my mouth.”
Nudged further by the June U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, Motiff is opposing Johnson and supports his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, in one of the most fiercely-contested Senate races this year.
“Which was really a hard decision for me because I do think he’s done good things in the past,” Motiff said of Johnson. “But this is pretty damaging.”
Motiff’s evolution represents the challenge for Republicans emerging from a tumultuous summer, defined by the court decision, high-profile hearings on former President Donald Trump’s actions during the insurrection and intensifying legal scrutiny of his handling of classified information and efforts to overturn the election. Now, a midterm campaign that the GOP hoped would be a referendum on President Joe Biden and the economy is at risk of becoming a comparison of the two parties, putting Republicans in an unexpectedly defensive position.
In politically-divided Wisconsin where recent elections have been decided by a few thousand votes, the outcome could hinge on self-described independent voters like Motiff.
“Having former President Trump so prominently in the news in so many ways makes it easier for Democrats to frame the midterm as a choice between two competing futures as opposed to a referendum on the Democrat governance,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “That’s hurting Republicans. It’s distracting from the referendum message and allowing more of a focus on a choice of two different parties.”
That tension is playing out in Columbia County, Wisconsin, a constellation of tidy small towns surrounded by rolling dairy farm country, all within commuting distance of Madison.
Statewide, top-of-the-ticket candidates have won by barely a percentage point in the past three elections. Trump won Columbia County by a little more than 500 votes out of 33,000 cast in 2020.
In interviews with more than a dozen independent voters here over two days last week, many were rethinking their support of the GOP this fall.
Steve Gray, a self-described Republican-leaning independent “but never a Trump fan,” opposed the June court decision, because he backs abortion rights. But the 61-year-old school maintenance manager also resented what he saw as an unwelcome political power play by out-of-power Republicans.
“Trump stacked the Supreme Court. We all knew he wanted to overturn Roe,” said Gray, of small-town Rio, where Trump won by two votes in 2020. “That decision was a partisan hand grenade Trump threw into this election.”
The court decision “upended the physics of midterm elections,” said Jesse Stinebring, a pollster advising several Democratic campaigns.
It gave voters the rare opportunity to judge a policy advance backed by the minority party, distracting them from a pure up-or-down vote on majority Democrats, he said.
“The backlash from a political perspective isn’t directed at the traditional party in power, but is actually reframed in terms of this Republican control of the Supreme Court,” Stinebring said.
The decision made Dilaine Noel’s vote automatic.
The 29-year-old data analytics director for a Madison-area business said she had never affiliated with either party.
Despite her grievances about Democrats’ warring moderate and liberal wings, her support for abortion rights gave her no choice than to vote for the party’s candidates this fall.
“By default, I have to move in that direction,” said Noel, from small-town Poynette in the Wisconsin River valley. “I’m being forced to.”
Mary Percifield is a lifelong independent voter who says the abortion decision motivated her to vote Democratic because she worries the court might overturn other rights.
“A right has been taken away from us,” the 68-year-old customer service representative from Pardeeville, said. “I question if a woman’s right to vote will be taken away. A woman’s right for birth control.”
Independent voters who lean neither Democrat nor Republican nationally preferred Biden over Trump, 52% to 37% in 2020, and preferred Democrats over Republicans in U.S. House races by a similar margin in the 2018 midterms, according to AP VoteCast. Independents who lean neither Democrat nor Republican made up 5% of the 2020 electorate and 12% in 2018.
Independents had moved toward Republicans by early this year, seeking answers on the economy, said Republican pollster David Winston, a senior adviser to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. But they have drifted back toward Democrats as efforts by GOP leaders to focus on the economy have clashed with Republican attacks on the Justice Department and Trump’s continuing complaints about the 2020 election.
“Everything is suddenly back in the context of Trump,” Winston said in light of Trump’s prominent endorsement of Senate candidates and protests of the federal investigation into classified documents recovered from his Florida home. “It’s not that Democrats are gaining. It’s that Republicans over the summer were off talking about a variety of things. And independents are thinking, ‘If you’re not talking specifically about the problems that I’m concerned about, why am I listening?’”
Republicans remain optimistic about their chances in November, particularly about netting the handful of seats they need to regain the U.S. House majority. Inflation remains high and, despite a recent uptick, approval of Biden is still low for a party hoping to maintain its hold on power.
The economy remains the most effective message and one that breaks through others, GOP campaign officials say.
“Prices and things are so front-of-mind to people,” said Calvin Moore, the communications director for Congressional Leadership Fund, a superPAC supporting Republican U.S. House candidates. “It’s not just something that’s on the news. It’s something they are experiencing every day in their daily life. It’s something they face themselves every day when they go to the grocery store.”
A shift by independents is particularly meaningful in Wisconsin, as Republicans work to overtake Democrats’ one-seat majority in the Senate.
Johnson, among the most vulnerable Republicans running for reelection this fall, is locked in a tight race with Barnes, Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor. Of the most competitive Senate seats this year, his is the only one held by a Republican.
Though Johnson dismissed testimony about fake electors as staff work which never reached him, it reminded Christian Wood, an independent voter from Lodi, of Johnson’s opposition to certifying the election before Jan. 6. Johnson reversed course after the riot.
“It’s absolutely scary,” said Wood, who has often voted Republican. “To me that’s the most existential threat to our democracy. And to think he was even considering it makes him a non-starter.”
There’s time for an economic message to win out, but it will require news about Trump fading, GOP pollster Ayres said.
Meanwhile, Trump has a full schedule of fall campaign travel for candidates he has endorsed.
“Any distraction from that focus undermines the best Republican message,” he said.
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'Whatever Happened To Trumps Claim The FBI Planted The Documents?': Asks Ex-Democratic Senator
'Whatever Happened To Trump’s Claim The FBI Planted The Documents?': Asks Ex-Democratic Senator https://digitalarizonanews.com/whatever-happened-to-trumps-claim-the-fbi-planted-the-documents-asks-ex-democratic-senator/
As Donald Trump heads to court to meet his requested special master on Tuesday, he was being asked for anything proving that he declassified any of the stolen government documents.
The court filings never allege that Trump declassified any of the documents, but it’s something that he’d been saying on his social media sites and in radio and television interviews. It had become such a part of the narrative, that Judge Aileen Cannon put the unsubstantiated information in her own ruling.
“The Court does not find it appropriate to accept the Government’s conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion,” Cannon wrote last week in her filing.
It’s setting Tuesday up for a doozy of a court battle, where Trump isn’t expected to appear.
Now that the scandal has reached the six-week mark, former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) is reminiscing about the early days of the social media rants, the rabid press releases and quick excuses from ill-informed Republican loyalists.
“Whatever happened to the defense the FBI came in and planted them?” McCaskill asked about the Trump excuses. The Fox networks spent almost a whole day suggesting the boxes could have been planted. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that no one is certain that the FBI wouldn’t “put things in the boxes to entrap him.”
“What the FBI is probably doing is planting evidence,” said Fox host Jesse Watters said in his Aug. 9 show. Two days later, Watters was saying, it wasn’t so much planting evidence as Trump wanted to take home some reminders of his time in the Oval Office like a paperweight from North Korea, or a little bobblehead of the MBS.
Trump claimed by that point, that he didn’t have any documents anymore. The National Archives asked for them back and he gave them back.
It was only one of the things that Trump said over the course of the week as he searched for something that would explain the reason he had classified documents from the government in his desk drawers and boxes in his closet.
The excuse then became “they’re just news clippings” that some papers may have gotten mixed in with.
In one statement, Trump claimed that people bring their work home all the time. Trump had lost his job by the time he was bringing those documents back to Florida. That same statement also claimed that he’d declassified the documents, which he’d previously said the FBI planted.
After that, they alleged that the FBI was “raiding” Mar-a-Lago because they were part of some wild operation targeting Trump. His MAGA supporters proclaimed: “If they can do this to a former president, imagine what they can do to you.”
Then the excuse became that it was President Baack Obama’s fault because he stole 33,000 government documents for his presidential library. The National Archives came out with a statement explaining that they actually run the Obama archives of documents, as they do with all presidential libraries. None of those documents are classified.
An aide then said that because Trump thought he’d won the presidency and that he’d be able to stay in office that he never really packed anything. So, he simply threw some things in boxes with 40 boxes of paperwork and file folders saying “CLASSIFIED” or “TOP SECRET” in big red letters. It’s hard to believe that Trump was in the White House residence bubble-wrapping things and shoving his clothes in a black trash bag.
The next excuse from Trump is that he’s entitled to the documents because they were his.
“They’re mine,” three of Trump’s advisers told the New York Times that he said repeatedly.
The next excuse became that he needed them to write his book. Trump has already self-published his book, which are pages of photos with post-it notes he has written on and about the photos. The National Archives also disputed this claim because presidents have access to the archives for up to 12 years and Trump could have used that access any time to work on his book. He just never turned over the documents to begin with so they could be cataloged.
At some point in the process there was a comment that he would have given the documents back if they’d just asked. It wasn’t long after Americans learned of the 18-month process that the Archives and the FBI went through trying to get them back by sending letters and talking to his aides. He was then subpoenaed, which went ignored and finally the search was executed.
See McCaskill’s video below:
what happened to the claim the FBI planted the documents? youtu.be
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Trump Lawyers Acknowledge Mar-A-Lago Probe Could Lead To Indictment
Trump Lawyers Acknowledge Mar-A-Lago Probe Could Lead To Indictment https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-lawyers-acknowledge-mar-a-lago-probe-could-lead-to-indictment/
The Justice Department and lawyers for Donald Trump filed separate proposals Monday for conducting an outside review of documents seized at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home, with key disagreements over how the process should work and Trump’s team acknowledging that the criminal probe could lead to an indictment.
Both sides referenced a “draft plan” given to them by Judge Raymond J. Dearie, the newly appointed special master. Trump’s lawyers expressed concern that Dearie posed questions about the documents that the judge who appointed Dearie has left unasked, arguing that Trump might be left at a legal disadvantage if he answered them at this stage of the process.
Specifically, the legal team objected to what it said was Dearie’s request that it “disclose specific information regarding declassification to the Court and to the Government.”
Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the special master and document-review process, has not asked Trump’s lawyers to address whether about 100 documents with classified markings that were seized by the FBI on Aug. 8 might in fact not be classified.
Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly suggested in court filings that the former president could have declassified the documents — but they have not actually asserted that he did so.
In Monday’s filing, Trump’s lawyers wrote that they don’t want Dearie to force Trump to “fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order” — a remarkable statement that acknowledges at least the possibility that the former president or his aides could be criminally charged.
The Justice Department is investigating the possible mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and the possible hiding or destroying of government records. A key issue in the probe is that even after Trump’s team responded to a grand jury subpoena requesting all documents with classified markings that were being kept at Mar-a-Lago, with aides reportedly saying all relevant material had been handed over, the FBI search turned up about 100 more such documents.
The government’s filing Monday evening did not address how Dearie should review the classified documents. Prosecutors said they were waiting to see if the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta would grant their request to stay Cannon’s decision to include the classified documents in the special master review — leaving about 11,000 nonclassified documents and other items.
Prosecutors have said the classified material is by definition the property of the government and cannot be shielded from them by privilege. Cannon’s order barred prosecutors from using the classified materials in their criminal probe until the outside review is complete.
Dearie — a former chief federal judge in New York — is scheduled to meet for the first time with Trump’s lawyers and Justice Department prosecutors Tuesday afternoon. The session, in Dearie’s courtroom in the Brooklyn federal courthouse, will focus on how to proceed.
The Justice Department’s filing said a third-party vendor should be hired to scan the seized documents into a secure software system. Trump’s lawyers would then review the nonclassified documents and decide which should be shielded from criminal investigators because of attorney-client or executive privilege. Prosecutors would note any disagreement with Trump’s defense team, and Dearie would settle any disputes.
“FBI agents will attend and observe the scanning process to maintain the chain of custody of the evidence,” the government wrote.
In earlier filings, the Justice Department had unsuccessfully argued that a special master was unnecessary and that, as a former president, Trump could not assert executive privilege in this investigation. Prosecutors also said that temporarily barring the government from using the documents in its investigation could pose a national security risk.
But Cannon disagreed.
She has ordered Dearie to complete his review by Nov. 30 and said he should prioritize sorting through the classified documents, though she did not provide a timeline as to when that portion must be completed. The Justice Department said it hopes its Monday proposal helps complete the review in an “efficient and timely manner.”
Trump’s team said in its filing that the government should begin to make the classified documents available for review as soon as next week by Dearie — who previously served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles sensitive national security cases.
The Justice Department urged Dearie in its Monday filing to check in with the National Archives and Records Administration — the federal agency charged with maintaining and tracking government records — as he conducts the review.
It also proposed that Dearie conduct weekly reviews with the parties by video or audio conference to resolve questions and ensure smooth operation of the review process.
The government has said that it already reviewed all the seized documents prior to Trump requesting a special master, to separate out any that should be shielded from investigators because of attorney-client privilege. That filter team, approved by the magistrate judge who also approved the search warrant, set aside 64 sets of documents — made up of some 520 pages — that might be considered protected by attorney-client privilege, the government has said.
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Disgraced Crypto Founder Says Hes Not On The Run. But No One Knows Where He Is.
Disgraced Crypto Founder Says He’s Not On The Run. But No One Knows Where He Is. https://digitalarizonanews.com/disgraced-crypto-founder-says-hes-not-on-the-run-but-no-one-knows-where-he-is/
The person most closely associated with last spring’s crypto crash appears to be on the run after an arrest warrant was issued for him — and investigators have asked for Interpol’s help to track him down.
Do Kwon, the South Korean developer of the TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies, is believed to have been in Singapore since at least the spring, when those coins lost nearly all of their value. But Singapore authorities said this weekend he is no longer there, and South Korean investigators have reportedly asked Interpol to issue a “red notice” that would allow officers in member countries to provisionally arrest Kwon pending extradition if they find him.
Last Wednesday the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office issued an arrest warrant for Kwon and five other people who worked on both the currencies and Terraform Labs, the company that Kwon co-founded. Prosecutors did not list the charges, but investors have said he defrauded them in promoting the coins. TerraUSD — which used a computer program that claimed to peg its value to the U.S. dollar — and a related token known as Luna both took off in the past year, with each multiplying in value dozens of times over before crashing in May.
A Terra spokesman did not reply to a request for comment. Kwon also did not reply to a request for comment. He said on Twitter Sunday that “We are in the process of defending ourselves in multiple jurisdictions – we have held ourselves to an extremely high bar of integrity, and look forward to clarifying the truth over the next few months.”
The red-notice request was originally reported by the Financial Times.
The Kwon case is being watched closely as a sign of how aggressively law enforcement will pursue those engaged in allegedly illegal activities in the crypto space. Last month the Treasury Department issued sanctions on Tornado Cash, which helps anonymize crypto transactions, in a strong example of a crackdown on tech-based financial tools.
But the pursuit of individuals in crypto is much rarer, and Kwon’s case could be a bellwether for how other projects that lost large sums of value could be targeted in the courts — and if, eventually, some investors might claw their money back.
The 31-year-old Kwon graduated from Stanford University and briefly worked at Apple before returning to his home country several years ago to found a number of crypto projects, including Luna. Before the spring crash, Kwon was hailed as a visionary and even attracted a cult of everyday fans known as “Lunatics.”
Nor was it just retail traders — Terraform also raised money from respective financiers such as Silicon Valley VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners.
But in May a quick sell-off began for still-unclear reasons, prompting the loss of more than $40 billion in value, according to analysis firm Elliptic, as the price of Luna plunged to nearly zero and TerraUSD went from $1 to $0.11. The collapse helped trigger a broader crypto crash that affected dozens of other assets and companies.
Bitcoin has gone from nearly $40,000 to under $20,000 since the Terra collapse, and the total market value of crypto has plummeted by more than a trillion dollars in just a few months.
Kwon made an attempt to relaunch Luna shortly after, to the outrage of many investors.
Law-enforcement experts said that they believed prosecution of the entrepreneur was possible but challenging given the vagaries of crypto, with the line in the industry between fraud and risky investment often blurry.
“If someone walks into a bank and holds it up for a lot of money with a videotape of the whole thing, well that’s a pretty clear-cut case,” said William Callahan III, a former Drug Enforcement Administration special agent who now serves as director of government and strategic affairs for a crypto company called the Blockchain Intelligence Group. “Investigating and prosecuting something like this requires a much more unique set of skills.”
He said the case against Kwon would likely turn on whether it can be proved he knowingly misled investors in stumping for the coins or was mounting a good-faith campaign for a risky-but-legal-venture.
Some evidence gathered by South Korean investigators so far, according to local media, includes allegations that Kwon and other Terraform executives decided to close their South Korea offices just a week before the currencies crashed. Kwon has said the shuttering was long in the works.
On Sunday the pursuit of Kwon took a surreal social-media turn when Kwon, outspoken on Twitter, took to the platform to deny he is a fugitive.
“I am not ‘on the run’ or anything similar – for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide,” he posted.
But the Seoul prosecutors quickly denied it. He is “obviously on the run,” the office said in a statement, according to local news media agency Yonhap.
Kwon quipped that he would only give away his coordinates if “1) we are friends, 2) we have plans to meet 3) we are involved in a gps based web3 game.”
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Tsunami Threat Passes Following Powerful Earthquake In Mexico | CNN
Tsunami Threat Passes Following Powerful Earthquake In Mexico | CNN https://digitalarizonanews.com/tsunami-threat-passes-following-powerful-earthquake-in-mexico-cnn/
CNN —
A powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake rocked the southwestern coast of Mexico on Monday, killing at least one person, with shaking reported as far away as Mexico city.
The earthquake hit just after 1 p.m. EST, with the epicenter occurring very near the coastline in a sparsely populated region of Michoacan state, according to US Geological Survey data.
In nearby Colima, around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the epicenter, very strong shaking capable of “moderate” damage was reported, while in Mexico City, roughly 500 km (310 miles) away, “light to moderate” shaking was reported.
Local news channels reported that firefighters closed some buildings in Mexico City to the public due to concerns of collapse.
One person lost his life in a shopping center in Manzanillo in the western state of Colima after a fence fell, President López Obrador said on social media, citing José Rafael Ojeda Durán, Secretary of the Navy.
There are no known casualties or damage yet recorded in Mexico City, according to the city’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum.
The quake’s magnitude was initially reported by the US Geological Survey (USGS) as 7.6. Mexico’s national seismological agency later updated the magnitude to 7.7 in a press conference on Monday.
According to USGS, the quake struck about 37 kilometers south east of the city of Aquila, with a depth of about 15.1 kilometers (9 miles).
A Tsunami warning was initially issued immediately after the quake but has since been revised.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said that the tsunami threat has “largely passed.” Latest readings by the organization also showed a decrease in wave heights.
Waves reaching up to 3 meters (9.8 feet) were earlier predicted to hit Mexico and occur along the Pacific coasts of Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru.
The news came on the fifth anniversary of the 2017 earthquake that killed 216 people in Mexico City.
The epicenter of that 7.1-magnitude earthquake was 4.5 km (2.8 miles) east-northeast of San Juan Raboso and 55 km (34.1 miles) south-southwest of the city of Puebla, in Puebla state, the USGS reported at the time.
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Suspect Injured During Shooting Involving Officers In Mesa
Suspect Injured During Shooting Involving Officers In Mesa https://digitalarizonanews.com/suspect-injured-during-shooting-involving-officers-in-mesa/
MESA, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — Police say a suspect was hurt during a shooting involving officers in Mesa on Monday evening. Around 7 p.m., Mesa officers responded to the shooting near Main Street and Alma School Road. It’s unknown what led up to the shooting, but the suspect was later taken to the hospital.
The suspect’s injuries are unknown. No officers were hurt during the shooting. Police say southbound Alma School and Main Street will be closed for several hours. Drivers are asked to use Country Club Drive or Dobson Road.
This is the 49th officer-involved shooting in Maricopa County and the 77th in the state in 2022.
Mesa Police are working an Officer involved shooting at Alma School and Main Streets. All officers are ok and suspect has been transported to the hospital. There is no danger to the public and no suspects are outstanding. pic.twitter.com/klRTMBdlTc
— Mesa Police Dept. (@MesaPD) September 20, 2022
Copyright 2022 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.
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NWS Asking For Feedback From Apache Junction Residents Hit By Flash Flooding
NWS Asking For Feedback From Apache Junction Residents Hit By Flash Flooding https://digitalarizonanews.com/nws-asking-for-feedback-from-apache-junction-residents-hit-by-flash-flooding/
APACHE JUNCTION, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — After an active monsoon season, the National Weather Service is asking East Valley residents to give feedback after experiencing extreme weather this year. The NWS plans to look into how they can protect people from severe weather like flash flooding.
The NWS has put out a survey on their social media accounts, asking for feedback about the flash flood that hit Apache Junction on July 28. The goal is to improve how weather information is delivered to the public.
“We determined that the most significant event this summer was probably the Apache Junction flooding event on July 28,” said Matthew Hirsch, a Meteorologist with the NWS Phoenix. “Up to 2.5 inches of rain actually fell in about an hour. There were also some reports of up to two feet of water that entered some homes.”
Torrential rainfall led to multiple rescues and significant damage. “We are looking for insight into how people respond to hazardous weather events,” Hirsch said. “We are going to consider things like do we need to change our product? Are they clear enough? Also is the information that you need getting to you before the event and during the event?”
Eight other cities are also conducting surveys, including Dallas, Atlanta and Boston. All areas experienced a significant flash flooding event this year. They hope their findings will create a better response for spreading information quickly.
“We are hoping the local forecast office will share it with local emergency managers, and other kinds of weather, safety partners to really improve the way things are done. For instance, they may find out there is more of a role for local emergency managers to play and the survey could point to that,” said Brenda Philips, a research professor with the University of Massachusetts.
If you live in Apache Junction, click here to complete the survey. It takes about 5-10 minutes, and you can remain anonymous. The survey will be open for two more weeks.
Copyright 2022 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.
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Political Ponderings https://digitalarizonanews.com/political-ponderings/
Many different political events made headlines over the summer of 2022 and multiple new issues rose through the political busyness to the top of the public interest.
This new column will cover national, state and local political news and events starting with recapping this past summer and going through the Midterm elections in November.
The summer recap will spend the next few weeks covering four main events in depth; the January 6 investigation committee hearings, the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade to end federal protection of abortion rights, the FBI raid of Former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago and the August primary elections in Wisconsin and across the country.
The House Committee investigating the January 6 attack held eight public televised hearings over the summer to release their ongoing findings.
In order to maximize viewership, the committee hired James Goldston, former president of ABC News, to turn the boring and procedural hearings into “made-for-TV specials,” according to New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters. The hearings featured cliff hangers, dramatic reveals and surprise testimonies to keep the viewers, and the country, on their toes.
The hearings took a focus on Trump and his cabinet leading up to the Capitol attack. They also spent the entire July 21 hearing focused on what Trump did — and didn’t do — in the 187 minutes the Capitol was under siege.
Throughout the eight public hearings several pieces of evidence were revealed:
Trump and his advisors knew he had lost the election but continued to make claims of election fraud.
“I repeatedly told the President in no uncertain terms that I did not see evidence of fraud, you know, that would have affected the outcome of the election,” Bill Barr, Trump’s Attorney General, said. “And frankly, a year and a half later, I haven’t seen anything to change my mind on that.”
Trump knew some of his supporters were armed when he told them to “march down Pennsylvania Avenue” to the Capitol building.
In her testimony to the committee, Cassidy Hutchinson, an assistant to Trump’s Chief of Staff, said he was informed by the secret service that many supporters with weapons were stopped outside his Stop the Steal Rally.
“I overheard the President say, ‘I don’t (obscenity) care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the (obscenity) mags (metal detectors) away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here,’” Hutchinson said.
Trump responded to “Hang Mike Pence” chants with “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” according to a statement by Liz Cheney, Republican congresswoman from Wyoming and committee Vice Chair.
While the committee hearings laid out hours worth of evidence, their effectiveness remains unclear with only 8 percent of Americans polled in August saying the hearings changed their mind about January 6.
Trump published a 12 page response to the hearings in which he denies the committee’s validity and dismisses the hearings as a “smoke and mirror show to deceive the American people.”
“If they had any real evidence, they’d hold real hearings with equal representation,” Trump wrote.
Polls conducted in August after the hearings found the public opinion mostly unchanged and the hearings ineffective in changing anybody’s minds.
The August Monmouth University Poll found 38 percent of Americans believed Trump was responsible for the events of January 6, relatively unchanged from 42 percent in June. 29 percent of Americans, including 61 percent of Republicans, believed President Joe Biden only won the election due to voter fraud. Those numbers were unchanged from June.
The committee is planning to reconvene with a hearing on September 28 and continue to meet through December of this year.
Mohr can be reached at [email protected]
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Hassan Silent As Record 2 Million Migrants Cross Southern Border NH Journal
Hassan Silent As Record 2 Million Migrants Cross Southern Border – NH Journal https://digitalarizonanews.com/hassan-silent-as-record-2-million-migrants-cross-southern-border-nh-journal/
Sen. Maggie Hassan in front of the Trump-era wall at the U.S.-Mexico border in April, 2022.
Sen. Maggie Hassan may sit on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, charged with overseeing U.S. border policy, but she remained mum as word came unauthorized border crossings hit a new one-year record — more than 2 million — and there’s still another month remaining in the current fiscal year, which is how crossings are tabulated.
“It’s official. For the first time, migrant encounters at the border have surpassed two million in one year,” Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported from the border. “Customs and Border Patrol reports there were 203,598 migrant encounters at the border in August, bringing the total for Fiscal Year 2022 to 2,150,370.” That is nearly a 25 percent jump over last year.
The fiscal year ends October 31.
Since entering the U.S. Senate, Hassan has repeatedly voted against funding the border wall President Donald Trump tried to build while he was in office, And she opposes deporting illegal immigrants who successfully make their way into the nation, also known as “interior enforcement.” She also opposed the “remain in Mexico” policy that drastically reduced illegal crossings during the Trump administration, and she voted against funding to maintain the Title 42 policy that has prevented hundreds of thousands of would-be migrants from entering the U.S. to seek asylum.
But when the political winds appeared to have shifted against her as the November election approached, Hassan suddenly reversed her positions. Today she says she supports the Title 42 policy, and she even traveled to the Trump border wall in Arizona to record a campaign video talking up her newfound support for “more physical barriers.”
Hassan has declined to respond to dozens of requests for comment from members of the New Hampshire Press Association on her border policy and voting record on the Homeland Security Committee. She has also declined to say if she agrees with the Biden administration, including Vice President Kamala Harris, when it claims “the border is secure.”
Her GOP opponent retired Gen. Don Bolduc, however, is speaking out.
“Through their ‘border czar’ Kamala Harris, the Biden administration has declared the border ‘secure.’ If only that were the case,” the Bolduc campaign said in a statement. “Sen. Hassan’s unwillingness to speak the truth or stand up to her own political party makes her complicit in this mess, and Americans everywhere are paying the price.”
In the First Congressional District, Rep. Chris Pappas also has a record of voting against border walls, and he voted to give COVID-19 relief checks to illegal immigrants. And, like Hassan, he reversed his stance and now says he supports more aggressive border enforcement.
Karoline Leavitt is the GOP nominee facing Pappas.
“Chris Pappas supports Joe Biden’s policies 100 percent of the time, including his wide open border policy,” Leavitt told NHJournal. “Therefore, Chris Pappas is 100 percent responsible for the illegal invasion of our country and the unprecedented surge in fentanyl pouring into our state.
“While Chris Pappas remains silent during this crisis of lawlessness, I will continue to stand strong for law and order.”
According to Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies, “Over their lifetimes, all the illegal immigrants Biden has so far added to the United States will cost us about $100 billion.”
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A Landmark Supreme Court Fight Over Social Media Now Looks Likely
A Landmark Supreme Court Fight Over Social Media Now Looks Likely https://digitalarizonanews.com/a-landmark-supreme-court-fight-over-social-media-now-looks-likely/
Conflicting lower court rulings about removing controversial material from social media platforms point toward a landmark Supreme Court decision on whether the First Amendment protects Big Tech’s editorial discretion or forbids its censorship of unpopular views.
The stakes are high not just for government and the companies, but because of the increasingly dominant role platforms such as Twitter and Facebook play in American democracy and elections. Social media posts have the potential to amplify disinformation or hateful speech, but removal of controversial viewpoints can stifle public discourse about important political issues.
Governments that say conservative voices are the ones most often eliminated by the decisions of tech companies scored a major victory Friday, when a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a Texas law barring companies from removing posts based political ideology.
“Big Tech’s reign of endless censorship and their suppression of conservative viewpoints is coming to an end,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said after the decision. “These massive corporate entities cannot continue to go unchecked as they silence the voices of millions of Americans.”
But a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit went the other way earlier this year, saying that a similar Florida law violated constitutional protections for tech companies that do not want to host views on their platforms that they find hateful, divisive or false.
Judge Kevin Newsom criticized a depiction of social media platforms as “dumb pipes … reflexively transmitting data from point A to point B.” Instead, he wrote, their “content-moderation decisions constitute the same sort of editorial judgments” entitled to First Amendment protections when made by a newspaper.
All of the appeals court judges considering the Florida and Texas laws have noted the difficulty of applying some Supreme Court precedents regarding legacy media. And all weighing in so far were nominated by Republican presidents, with Newsom and Judge Andrew Oldham, who wrote the conflicting opinion in the Texas case, both nominated by President Donald Trump, who was kicked off Twitter in the aftermath of the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We are in a new arena, a very extensive one, for speakers and for those who would moderate their speech,” wrote Judge Leslie Southwick, who has served on the 5th Circuit for 15 years and dissented from Friday’s decision. “None of the precedents fit seamlessly. … The closest match I see is case law establishing the right of newspapers to control what they do and do not print, and that is the law that guides me until the Supreme Court gives us more.”
It is possible such guidance will come soon, perhaps in the term that begins next month. Disagreements among lower courts about important legal issues is the most likely driver of the Supreme Court’s decision to take up a case, and Florida’s petition challenging the 11th Circuit ruling is due at the high court Wednesday.
When the justices in May decided to keep Texas’s law from taking effect while legal battles continued, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the issue “will plainly merit this court’s review.”
“Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news,” wrote Alito, who was joined by colleagues Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch. “At issue is a ground-breaking Texas law that addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”
Alito added: “It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies.” The court’s majority did not explain its reasoning for blocking the Texas law, but at the time, only a district court had weighed in, and it had ruled for the tech companies.
Oldham’s opinion changed that. He wrote that social media companies “offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment.”
“That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to ‘the freedom of speech,’ ” Oldham wrote. “But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”
Generally, legal experts closely tracking the case said the 5th Circuit decision is at odds with long-standing court precedent and warned that the Texas law would force the companies to disseminate what they consider misinformation and harmful content on their platforms.
“To the extent that politicians have spread conspiracy theories or incitement, that will no longer be grounds for platforms taking them down,” said Evelyn Douek, who teaches about the regulation of online speech at Stanford Law School. Social media platforms, she added, may be forced to keep “a lot of horrible and otherwise hateful speech” that they currently remove and “may become unusable.”
At its core, the First Amendment protects against government infringement on speech. Courts have also held that the First Amendment protects the right of private companies, including newspapers and broadcasters, to control the speech they publish and disseminate. That includes the right of editors not to publish something they don’t want to publish.
In a 2019 decision, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for the court’s conservatives that a private cable access company did not become a government actor subject to the First Amendment’s restrictions just because it was licensed by a government.
In the course of the decision, he touched on the roles of private companies. “Providing some kind of forum for speech is not an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed,” Kavanaugh wrote in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck. “Therefore, a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor.”
The liberals on the court dissented on the specifics of the case but seemed to agree on the rights of private companies. “There are purely private spaces, where the First Amendment is (as relevant here) inapplicable,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “The First Amendment leaves a private store owner (or homeowner), for example, free to remove a customer (or dinner guest) for expressing unwanted views.”
Oldham found that unenlightening for the Texas case, and pointed to a footnote in Kavanaugh’s opinion: “A distinct question not raised here is the degree to which the First Amendment protects private entities such as [media companies] from government legislation or regulation requiring those private entities to open their property for speech by others.”
Oldham distinguished newspapers from social media platforms, which Oldham writes are more akin to “common carriers” like telephone companies. (Thomas also has declared himself open to such a reading of the law.) Legal experts said the court was correct to note the difference, but that online platforms are distinct from phone companies, for instance, which do not cut off service based on the content of a conversation.
“That’s what makes these cases hard,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “We don’t have a doctrinal box to put social media platforms in. They occupy a new space, and they should occupy a new space in the law too, but what does that look like?”
Some laws that would be unconstitutional as applied to news outlets and their publishing decisions, Jaffer suggested, may be permitted when it comes to social media platforms. A social media company could be required, for instance, to explain its decision to remove someone from its platform or to be more transparent about how it moderates content.
Both the Texas and Florida laws have such provisions, and the judges reviewing them were inclined to let them stand.
Alan Z. Rozenshtein, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, agreed with the 5th Circuit’s description of social media platforms as increasingly central to public discussion, and said there is potentially a role for some government regulation of content moderation. But he said the Texas law goes too far, calling the 5th Circuit’s position that content moderation is censorship “extreme.”
The companies, he said, are trying to create platforms that their users “want to hang out on.”
“We can talk about whether or not Nazis and terrorists should have the right to speak, but it’s not straightforward censorship,” he said. “If you have an unmoderated cesspool, that’s great for the trolls, but that’s not conducive to other people’s speech — especially to those who are going to be threatened and turned off. There has to be some balance.”
Tech industry groups representing the social media companies are still weighing how they will respond to the ruling. Lawyers for the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and Netchoice met Monday to discuss how to challenge the decision, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their plans.
They are considering an emergency request to the Supreme Court to block the law from taking effect early next month, the person said. The groups are also considering asking a full complement of 5th Circuit judges to reconsider the case initially decided by a three-judge panel or appealing directly to the high court, potentially forcing a decision that could have broad implications for state legislatures considering legislation similar to the Texas law.
“The fight is far from over, and in the long run we are very confident that any ruling that attempts to legally mandate what viewpoints a private business distributes will not stand,” said Matt Schruers, CCIA president.
Cat...
Her Majesty’s Last Broadcast https://digitalarizonanews.com/her-majestys-last-broadcast/
Critic’s Notebook
The funeral for Queen Elizabeth II honored a seven-decade public life. It also felt like a capstone to the mass TV era that defined her reign.
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The long reign of Queen Elizabeth II began on television, and on Monday a global audience watched her coffin reach its final resting place, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. The hearse was designed to allow spectators to see the coffin as it passed by.Credit…Molly Darlington/Getty Images
Sept. 19, 2022Updated 9:27 p.m. ET
Television introduced Queen Elizabeth II to the world. It was only fitting that television should see her out of it.
The queen’s seven-decade reign almost exactly spanned the modern TV era. Her coronation in 1953 began the age of global video spectacles. Her funeral on Monday was a full-color pageant accessible to billions.
It was a final display of the force of two institutions: the concentrated grandeur of the British monarchy and the power amassed by television to bring viewers to every corner of the world.
“I have to be seen to be believed,” Elizabeth once reportedly said. It was less a boast than an acknowledgment of a modern duty. One had to be seen, whether one liked it or not. It was her source of authority at a time when the crown’s power no longer came through fleets of ships. It was how she provided her country reassurance and projected stability.
The last funeral service for a British monarch, King George VI, was not televised. For one last time, Elizabeth was the first. She entered the world stage, through the new magic of broadcasting, as a resolute young face. She departed it as a bejeweled crown on a purple cushion, transmuted finally into pure visual symbol.
Americans who woke up early Monday (or stayed up, in some time zones) saw striking images aplenty, on every news network. The breathtaking God’s-eye view from above the coffin in Westminster Abbey. The continuous stream of world leaders. The thick crowds along the procession to Windsor, flinging flowers at the motorcade. The corgis.
Viewers also saw and heard something unusual in the TV news environment: long stretches of unnarrated live action — the speaking of prayers, the clop of horse hooves — and moments of stillness. This was notable in the golf-whisper coverage on BBC World News, which let scenes like the loading of the coffin onto a gun carriage play out in silence, its screen bare of the usual lower-thirds captions.
The commercial American networks, being the distant relations at this service, filled in the gaps with chattery bits of history and analysis. News departments called in the Brits. (On Fox News, the reality-TV fixtures Piers Morgan and Sharon Osbourne critiqued Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s media ventures.) “Royal commentators” broke down points of protocol and inventoried the materials and symbolism of the crown, scepter and orb like auction appraisers.
But even American TV fell still during the funeral ceremony. The cameras drank in the Gothic arches of Westminster Abbey, bathed in the hymns of the choirs, goggled at the royal jewels, lingered on the solemn face of Charles III during the performance of — it still sounds strange — “God Save the King.” Finally, we watched from above as bearers carried the coffin step by step across the black-and-white-diamond floor like an ornate chess piece.
The quiet spectating was a gesture of respect but also a kind of tourist’s awe. We had come all this way; of course we wanted to take in the sights.
Some Key Moments in Queen Elizabeth’s Reign
Card 1 of 9
A historic visit. On May 18, 1965, Elizabeth arrived in Bonn on the first state visit by a British monarch to Germany in more than 50 years. The trip formally sealed the reconciliation between the two nations following the world wars.
First grandchild. In 1977, the queen stepped into the role of grandmother for the first time, after Princess Anne gave birth to a son, Peter. Elizabeth’s four children have given her a total of eight grandchildren, who have been followed by several great-grandchildren.
Princess Diana’s death. In a rare televised broadcast ahead of Diana’s funeral in 1997, Queen Elizabeth remembered the Princess of Wales, who died in a car crash in Paris at age 36, as “an exceptional and gifted human being.”
A trip to Ireland. In May 2011, the queen visited the Irish Republic, whose troubled relationship with the British monarchy spanned centuries. The trip, infused with powerful symbols of reconciliation, is considered one of the most politically freighted trips of Elizabeth’s reign.
Breaking a record. As of 5:30 p.m. British time on Sept. 9, 2015, Elizabeth II became Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, surpassing Queen Victoria, her great-great-grandmother. Elizabeth was 89 at the time, and had ruled for 23,226 days, 16 hours and about 30 minutes.
Marking 70 years of marriage. On Nov. 20, 2017, the queen and Prince Philip celebrated their 70th anniversary, becoming the longest-married couple in royal history. The two wed in 1947, as the country and the world was still reeling from the atrocities of World War II.
Elizabeth’s reign was marked by unprecedented visibility, for better or worse. Her coronation in 1953 spurred the British to buy television sets, bringing the country into the TV age and inviting the public into an event once reserved for the upper crust.
This changed something essential in the relation of the masses to the monarchy. The coronation, with its vestments and blessings, signified the exclusive connection of the monarch to God. Once that was no longer exclusive, everything else in the relationship between the ruler and the public was up for negotiation.
Image
The queen was the first British monarch to have a televised coronation, in June 1953.Credit…AFP via Getty Images
The young queen resisted letting in the cameras. The prime minister Winston Churchill worried about making the ritual into a “theatrical performance.” But Elizabeth could no more stop the force of media than her forebear King Canute could halt the tide.
TV undercut the mystique of royalty but spread its image, expanding the queen’s virtual reach even as the colonial empire diminished. There were other surviving monarchies in the world, but the Windsors were the default royals of TV-dom, the main characters in a generational reality-TV soap opera. They became global celebrities, through scandals, weddings, deaths and “The Crown.”
The coronation had worldwide effects too. It began the age when TV would bring the world into your living room live — or at least close to it. In 1953, with live trans-Atlantic broadcasts still not yet possible, CBS and NBC raced to fly the kinescopes of the event across the ocean in airplanes with their seats removed to fit in editing equipment. (They both lost to Canada’s CBC, which got its footage home first.)
The next day’s Times heralded the event as the “birth of international television,” marveling that American viewers “probably saw more than the peers and peeresses in their seats in the transept.” Boy, did they: NBC’s “Today” show coverage, which carried a radio feed of the coronation, included an appearance by its chimpanzee mascot, J. Fred Muggs. Welcome to show business, Your Majesty.
The one limit on cameras at Elizabeth’s coronation was to deny them a view of the ritual anointment of the new queen. By 2022, viewers take divine omniscience for granted. If we can think of it, we should be able to see it.
So after Elizabeth’s death, you could monitor the convoy from Balmoral Castle in Scotland to London, with a glassy hearse designed and lit to make the coffin visible. You could watch the queen’s lying-in-state in Westminster Hall on live video feeds, from numerous angles, the silence broken only by the occasional cry of a baby or cough of a guard. The faces came and went, including the queen’s grandchildren joining the tribute, but the camera’s vigil was constant.
After 70 years, however, television has lost its exclusive empire as well. Even as it broadcast what was described — plausibly but vaguely — as the most-watched event in history, traditional TV shared the funeral audience with the internet and social media.
Elizabeth and the medium that defined her reign were both unifiers of a kind that we might not see again. Though not all of the British support the monarchy, the queen offered her fractious country a sense of constancy. TV brought together disparate populations in the communal experience of seeing the same thing at once.
Now what? Tina Brown, the writer, editor and royal-watcher, asked on CBS, “Will anyone be loved by the nation so much again?” You could also ask: Will Charles’s coronation next year be nearly as big a global media event? Will anything? (You could also ask whether an event like this should be so all-consuming. While American TV news was wall-to-wall with an overseas funeral, Puerto Rico was flooded and without power from Hurricane Fiona.)
Monday’s services felt like a capstone to two eras. For one day, we saw a display of the pageantry that the crown can command and the global audience that TV can.
American TV spent its full morning with the queen. (Well, almost: CBS aired the season premiere of “The Price Is Right.”) The day’s pomp built toward one more never-before-broadcast ceremony, the removal of scepter, orb and crown from the coffin, which was lowered into the vault at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor. Then followed something almost unimaginable: A private burial service, with no TV cameras.
Television got one final spectacle out of Elizabeth’s reign. And the queen had one final moment out of the public eye.
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Mesa Police Investigating 4-Car Crash That Left A Person Dead
Mesa Police Investigating 4-Car Crash That Left A Person Dead https://digitalarizonanews.com/mesa-police-investigating-4-car-crash-that-left-a-person-dead/
Mesa Police investigating 4-car crash that left a person dead
MESA, Ariz. – A four-car crash in Mesa on the evening of Monday, Sept. 19 left a person dead, the police department said.
The crash happened near Val Vista Drive and Pueblo Avenue.
There’s no word on what caused the crash.
The victim hasn’t been identified.
It’s not known if anyone else was injured.
Crash investigation in Mesa on Sept. 19, 2022.
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Fiery crash involving car, big rig leaves 4 dead in Arizona
Authorities are trying to identify four people who died in a fiery crash involving a passenger car and a tractor-tractor near Sedona.
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16-year-old killed in rollover UTV crash, another teen runs from crash to get help, Surprise authorities say
A 16-year-old boy was killed in a rollover UTV crash and another teen involved ran from the crash to get help, Surprise authorities say on Sept. 19.
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Judge Rejects Antitrust Challenge To UnitedHealth Acquisition
Judge Rejects Antitrust Challenge To UnitedHealth Acquisition https://digitalarizonanews.com/judge-rejects-antitrust-challenge-to-unitedhealth-acquisition/
The court’s decision is a win for UnitedHealth, which owns the largest U.S. health insurer and a sprawling healthcare operation. Photo: Minneapolis Star Tribune/ZUMA Press
Updated Sept. 19, 2022 10:23 pm ET
WASHINGTON—A federal judge Monday ruled against a Justice Department antitrust challenge to UnitedHealth Group $13 billion acquisition of health-technology firm Change Healthcare rejecting government claims that the deal would unlawfully suppress competition and limit innovation in health-insurance markets.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ruled for the companies in an opinion that he kept under seal for now because he said it “may contain competitively sensitive information.” The judge said he would release a redacted public version of the ruling in the coming days. In a one-page public order, he denied the Justice Department’s request to block the companies from completing the deal.
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'There's A Time And Place': Trump Team Refuses To Respond To Their Chosen Special Master's Questions
'There's A Time And Place': Trump Team Refuses To Respond To Their Chosen Special Master's Questions https://digitalarizonanews.com/theres-a-time-and-place-trump-team-refuses-to-respond-to-their-chosen-special-masters-questions/
Donald Trump speaks to a large crowd at “An Address to Young America” an event hosted by Students for Trump and Turning Point Action. (Nuno21 / Shutterstock.com)
Lawyers for President Donald Trump refused to give Judge Raymond Dearie any information about the former president’s claims that he declassified all of the documents found at his Palm Beach country club.
The judge has requested the lawyers elaborate, a court filing from the special master said, but his lawyers dismissed it, saying that there would be a “time and place” for that.
“Otherwise, the Special Master process will have forced the Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order,” Trump’s lawyers explained in the court filing.
Former prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, predicted that Trump is about to start a campaign attacking Dearie.
“Dearie’s response to Trump saying it can’t answer as its a possible trial defense is going to be: either you are saying it now or you are not. If you do not now want to claim your declassified docs that is fine, and your choice, but then the docs are not being returned to you,” said Weissmann.
The Trump team will be “ruing the day it proposed Judge Dearie and appalled he is asking for their position on declassification,” Weissmann continued. “As sure as the night follows the day, the next Trump tactic will be denigrating Dearie publicly and asking Cannon to clip his wings.”
The Justice Department’s legal team replied to the Trump team’s hints with their own comments.
“Plaintiff principally seeks to raise questions about the classification status of the records and their categorization under the Presidential Records Act (‘PRA’). But plaintiff does not actually assert — much less provide any evidence — that any of the seized records bearing classification markings have been declassified,” said the DOJ.
“Such possibilities should not be given weight absent plaintiff’s putting forward competent evidence,” the court documents added.
Read the full filing here.
ALSO IN THE NEWS: Trump’s own lawyers ‘steadfastly’ refuse to back up his story in court: former prosecutor
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After 'slow Start', US Companies Embrace Refugees https://digitalarizonanews.com/after-slow-start-us-companies-embrace-refugees/
Abdul Nasir Rahimi told the BBC finding a job had helped to restore his hopes
When Abdul Nasir Rahimi started his job hunt in the US, employers didn’t quite know what to make of him: a former interpreter for the US military in Afghanistan with a law degree and experience overseeing major infrastructure projects.
He made little headway submitting his CV online. Finally at a job fair he managed to land a role as a security manager for the Hilton hotel company.
“I told them I’m not overqualified. I’m ready to work. I have to start from somewhere,” the 36-year-old recalls.
As the flight of millions of people from Afghanistan and Ukraine push the world’s refugee crisis to a brink, America’s corporate world is starting to respond.
Hilton is among the more than 40 major companies, including Amazon, Pfizer and Pepsico, that pledged this week to hire nearly 23,000 refugees over the next three years – one of the biggest public commitments to date.
Their promises do not match the surge in new arrivals. But the interest from the business community marks a massive shift from just a few years ago, says billionaire US businessman Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder of the Chobani yogurt company, who started a non-profit in 2016 that works with firms to ease employment barriers for refugees and coordinated the promises.
“It’s been a really slow start,” said Mr Ulukaya, who said that anti-migrant “propaganda” during years that Donald Trump was president had slowed the willingness of companies to participate.
Hamdi Ulukaya made a fortune selling creamy Greek-style yogurt
Under Mr Trump, the US slashed its refugee allowance and all but closed its borders during the pandemic, admitting fewer than 12,000 refugees in 2020 and 2021.
That number is now on track to double – but it will fall far short of current President Joe Biden’s 125,000 pledge.
Emergency programmes, which do not carry the same kind of financial support, have allowed another nearly 82,000 Afghans and over 100,000 Ukrainians to enter the US in recent months.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said the refugee programme was “decimated under the previous administration” and continues to feel the impact of staffing cuts and Covid.
“We are rebuilding it in a strategic, sustainable way that positions the program on a durable foundation for the future and modernizes the program to be responsive to evolving needs and opportunities,” he said, adding that the government had “resumed refugee interviews in significant numbers”.
Companies are turning to the new arrivals amid an outpouring of concern over the plight of Afghan and Ukrainian refugees, and an exceptionally tight US labour market that has made it hard to find workers.
“Demand for labour is really high and in many ways it’s one of the most powerful factors,” says Erica Bouris, director of economic empowerment for the International Rescue Committee, which has found that Afghan refugees helped by their organisation typically found jobs in about six months, earning an average hourly wage of about $17.
Jonas Prising says some firms remain hesitant
Though most of the new arrivals are authorised to work, many firms in the US remain concerned about getting entangled in complex visa situations, says Jonas Prising, chief executive of the staffing giant Manpower Group, which received some 13,000 applications from refugees in Europe and has placed 1,200 refugees in jobs there.
The company has also committed to finding work for 3,000 refugees in the US.
“The business case for hiring refugees is very, very strong. And it is the right thing to do,” he says. “What’s a little bit different if you compared to the this to the reaction in Europe, is that the complexities around the work permit, and how this is facilitated by the government… still is complex.
“A lot of businesses are still hesitant here in the US. Although they have the intention to hire, they don’t really know how,” he says.
Today, Mr Ulukaya’s Tent Partnership for Refugees works with some 260 companies around the world, providing advice on everything from visa rules to suggestions about helping new arrivals find transportation to get to the new jobs. But until relatively recently much of their work was focused outside the US.
“Companies need to play a role in this,” says Mr Ulukaya, but he also knows the renewed interest could crumble.
“This level of participation and willingness to be part of solving this… is very fragile,” he says. “That’s why it’s a great responsibility for us… to make sure that we take advantage of this moment.”
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September 19 2022 Newscast Cronkite News Arizona PBS
September 19, 2022 Newscast – Cronkite News – Arizona PBS https://digitalarizonanews.com/september-19-2022-newscast-cronkite-news-arizona-pbs/
Afghan refugees share their struggles one year after U.S. troops withdrew, ASU head football coach Herm Edwards is out after a loss to Eastern Michigan
Staff
News Reporter, Phoenix
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Adnan Syed Featured In Serial Podcast Released From Prison
Adnan Syed, Featured In ‘Serial’ Podcast, Released From Prison https://digitalarizonanews.com/adnan-syed-featured-in-serial-podcast-released-from-prison/
Adnan Syed, whose murder case captivated the nation after it was featured on the true-crime podcast “Serial,” was freed from prison Monday after 23 years, his conviction vacated — at least for now — by a judge who found deficiencies in how prosecutors had turned over evidence to defense attorneys decades ago.
Acting on a request from Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn ordered Syed unshackled in the courtroom and sent home while he waits to find out whether prosecutors will seek a new trial or drop their pursuit of him.
Now 42 years old, Syed emerged from the courthouse to a roaring crowd. Dressed in white with a blue tie, he smiled and waved before he was ushered into a car and driven away.
But his continued freedom is not guaranteed.
Phinn said prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether they will retry Syed in the killing of his ex-girlfriend, 18-year-old Hae Min Lee. Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore City, said after the Monday decision that her office had not yet declared him innocent but that he was entitled to a new trial “in the interest of fairness and justice.”
Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) — whose office has previously defended the handling of Syed’s case in court proceedings — blasted the Baltimore prosecutor for acting without consulting his office, and he called the allegations that prosecutors did not hand over evidence to Syed’s defense as they should have “incorrect.”
“Neither State’s Attorney Mosby nor anyone from her office bothered to consult with either the assistant state’s Attorney who prosecuted the case or with anyone in my office regarding these alleged violations,” Frosh said. “The file in this case was made available on several occasions to the defense.”
While he awaits prosecutors’ next move, Syed will be under GPS supervision, Phinn said.
Syed has maintained his innocence since he was arrested for Lee’s murder in February 1999, when he was a 17-year-old in high school. Investigators at the time determined that she died by strangulation, and Syed was convicted of murder in 2000 and sentenced to life behind bars. He had long sought to overturn his conviction and get a new trial, but until recently, he had faced opposition from prosecutors.
Syed’s case was featured on “Serial,” which had its first season in 2014. Host Sarah Koenig detailed the events surrounding the death of Lee, raising questions about the handling of the investigation, the conduct of Syed’s defense and whether Syed might have been innocent.
Over a decade after his conviction, Syed started to see some hope that he would get new legal proceedings.
In 2016, a circuit court vacated Syed’s conviction, citing the “ineffective assistance” of a former attorney who failed to investigate an alibi witness, and in March 2018, the Court of Special Appeals upheld the ruling granting Syed a new trial. But in March 2019, Maryland’s highest court reinstated Syed’s murder conviction.
Then on Wednesday, the Baltimore City state’s attorney office said in a motion in circuit court that it wanted the conviction tossed and Syed released. The office said its own nearly year-long investigation into the case, which was conducted with Syed’s defense, had found new evidence of potential suspects, as well as materials that should have been handed over to defense attorneys that were not.
The move drew widespread praise from supporters of Syed, who have long waged a public and legal campaign for his freedom.
C. Justin Brown, a former attorney for Syed who began representing him in 2009, released a statement that celebrated the ruling, but expressed concern at how long it took to arrive at this decision.
“It has now been revealed that prosecutors were aware of another viable suspect in Hae Min Lee’s murder, but that they sat on that information for more than 20 years,” Brown’s statement said. “While we do not know how this happened, nor whether it was intentional, we do know it is inexcusable.”
But that feeling was not universal.
Young Lee, Hae Min Lee’s brother, said at the hearing Monday that prosecutors’ motion to vacate the conviction left him feeling “betrayed.”
“That’s really tough for me to swallow, and especially for my mom,” he said.
Young Lee said he was “not against investigation or anything of that sort,” adding, “knowing that there could be someone out there free for killing my sister — it’s tough.”
“I ask that you make the right decision,” he said to the judge.
After the hearing, Steven J. Kelly, an attorney for the family, said in a statement: “For more than 20 years, no one has wanted to know the truth about who killed Hae Min Lee more than her family. The Lee family is deeply disappointed that today’s hearing happened so quickly and that they were denied the reasonable notice that would have permitted them to have a meaningful voice in the proceedings.”
Mosby said DNA analysis will help determine whether Syed’s case will be dismissed or if prosecutors will seek a new trial. She said she understands Lee’s brother’s feeling, but that Syed is entitled to fairness in the criminal justice system.
“You have some sort of resolution and believe that you have closure, and the case comes back up and it rips a whole new wound that you think has healed,” Mosby said. “I understand his frustration.”
Prosecutors have not disclosed the identities of the other potential suspects. But Becky Feldman, chief of the state’s attorney’s office Sentencing Review Unit, on Monday described them as “credible, viable suspects.”
According to court filings, one had threatened to make Lee “disappear” and “kill her,” she said, and alleged one of them “engaged in multiple instances of rape and sexual assault.” One had relatives who lived near the area where Lee’s car was found.
Feldman said authorities at the time “improperly cleared” one suspect by relying on a polygraph test that was “not reliable.”
Prosecutors’ filing said the suspects “may be involved individually or may be involved together,” and made references to them throughout the motion as “one of the suspects,” without clarifying which person they were referring to.
The state’s attorney’s investigation also determined that a key witness in the case, Jay Wilds, was inconsistent in his accounts to police. For example, Wilds testified that he had helped Syed bury Lee’s body. But he gave two different accounts to authorities about where he saw the body and a third to the media, according to the motion. Wilds was an important character in the “Serial” podcast.
The investigation also found that the data prosecutors used to corroborate Wilds’s account could have also been misleading or inaccurate. Attorneys used data from incoming calls to place Syed at the site of Lee’s body, but the state’s attorney’s office said in the motion that type of cellphone data “would not be considered reliable information for location.”
“If that evidence had been disclosed, perhaps Adnan would not have missed his high school graduation or 23 years of birthdays, holidays, family gatherings, community events, everyday moments of joy,” said Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney, outside the courthouse on Monday. “Perhaps the real killers would have been brought to justice.”
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Biden Sits 14 Rows Back At Queen Elizabeths Funeral
Biden Sits 14 Rows Back At Queen Elizabeth’s Funeral https://digitalarizonanews.com/biden-sits-14-rows-back-at-queen-elizabeths-funeral/
President Biden may be the world’s most powerful man, but it didn’t ensure him a front-row seat at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in London on Monday.
The president and first lady Jill Biden were seated 14 rows back during the service at Westminster Abbey that drew 2,000 guests — including some 500 of the world’s presidents, kings, princes and prime ministers.
Perhaps taken into consideration was that the couple was among the few dignitaries who were granted permission to travel in their own presidential limousine, nicknamed “The Beast,” for security reasons.
Most other leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, were escorted to the funeral on shuttle buses due to tight security and road restrictions in place across London.
Taking their own transportation meant the Bidens also apparently arrived later than scheduled after getting caught in standstill traffic, the Guardian reported.
President Biden and first lady Jill were seated 14 rows back at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral on Monday.
AP
Biden was seated behind Polish President Andrzej Duda for the service at Westminster Abbey.
Getty Images
Once they finally arrived outside Westminster, the president and first lady were forced to wait to take their seats so they didn’t interrupt the painstakingly choreographed funeral.
The couple had to wait briefly at the doors of the church as a procession of George and Victoria Cross-holders — those awarded the highest military honor — headed into the abbey.
Biden was seated behind Polish President Andrzej Duda and in front of the Czech Republic’s Prime Minister Petr Fiala, according to the seating plan released Monday.
Once they finally arrived outside Westminster, the president and first lady were forced to wait to take their seats so they didn’t interrupt the painstakingly choreographed funeral.
Getty Images
Jill Biden was sitting next to Switzerland’s President Ignazio Cassis.
Higher up the pecking order were the leaders of Commonwealth countries and those that still consider the UK monarch their head of state.
Follow The New York Post’s coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral:
Prince Andrew banned from wearing military uniform to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral
Prince Harry, Meghan Markle relegated to second row at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral
Spider spotted crawling on top of Queen Elizabeth’s casket at funeral
Trudeau, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern were all given more prominent seats inside the abbey than Biden.
The Queen’s service marked the first state funeral in Britain since Winston Churchill was afforded the honor in 1965.
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True Crime Arizona Podcast: 6-Year Manhunt For A Former Marine Ends In Arrest For Girlfriends Murder
True Crime Arizona Podcast: 6-Year Manhunt For A Former Marine Ends In Arrest For Girlfriend’s Murder https://digitalarizonanews.com/true-crime-arizona-podcast-6-year-manhunt-for-a-former-marine-ends-in-arrest-for-girlfriends-murder/
PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — In 2016, Krystal Mitchell and her boyfriend, Raymond “R.J.” McLeod headed from Phoenix to San Diego for vacation with friends. Everything takes a shocking turn when Krystal is found dead in an apartment, with Raymond nowhere to be found. Evidence pointed authorities to identity him as the prime suspect, but McLeod led the U.S. Marshalls on a 6-year international manhunt. Finally in 2022, a tip leads authorities to El Salvador, where they find Raymond McLeod, who is finally behind bars and charged with Krystal’s murder. But the person who played the biggest role in the investigation and his capture? Krystal’s mother.
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Finding Robert Fisher Episode 4 – The Underground Caves: Less than a mile from where Robert Fisher’s car was found in the woods are miles and miles of underground caves. It’s thought he may have been hiding in them at one point, and written evidence found in one of them suggests that may have been the case. We investigate written messages, and dive into the caves ourselves to find out if living in them for some time is realistic. At the same time, a tip from 2004 in Canada still perplexes people with some of the most unusual investigative techniques ever used. We get to the bottom of it.
Finding Robert Fisher Episode 3 – ‘Holy Sh*t, I Was Here’: The investigation takes our crew into the woods where Robert Fisher’s car was found as they prepare to head underground for a search. Briana and Serjio assemble a full team made up of a retired detective on the case, the lead cave searcher at the time Fisher disappeared, and experienced spelunkers, who make realizations about what happened in the woods back in 2001. Meanwhile, a bombshell tip from Mexico shakes up the case – with pictures that shock detectives.
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Scottsdale Community College To Offer Production Assistant Certification Program
Scottsdale Community College To Offer Production Assistant Certification Program https://digitalarizonanews.com/scottsdale-community-college-to-offer-production-assistant-certification-program/
SCOTTSDALE, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) – Scottsdale Community College announced it will be offering a Production Assistant Certification program in October.
The Scottsdale School of Film+Theatre at Scottsdale Community College says the program will train students to be film production assistants. The program will run from Oct. 3-7, 2022, and will return for the next 4 years to come. This year’s cohort will have 40 trainees working with a veteran Hollywood line producer and faculty from SCC. The five-day intensive program will teach students the skills and awareness they need to be stellar production assistants on a film set. The program was created by the Arizona Commerce Authority and the Arizona Production Association.
Matthew Earl Jones, director of Arizona Film and Digital Media, said, “We’re excited that SCC, which is home to one of the leading film schools in the state, has not only agreed to participate in our consortium of five community colleges across Arizona, but that they’ve taken a leading partnership role in developing and sponsoring the initiative, and supporting other colleges as they collaborate to develop this new workforce.”
Arizona’s film industry has seen a recent rise in large-scale film productions in the state. The SCC production assistant program will train more than 2,000 production assistants over the next 5 years. In 2021, the Navajo Nation signed an MOU with the ACA in order to permit filming on location within the Navajo Nation, opening even more doors for interested students.
“To take our industry to the next level, we need to demonstrate that we not only offer high-capability studios and technical infrastructure, but also a robust, qualified production assistant workforce that is ready to hit the ground running,” says Scottsdale School of Film+Theatre Department chair Bill True.
Other community colleges will also participate in the certification opportunity such as Glendale Community College, Coconino Community College, Yavapai College, and Pima Community College. For more information on the Production Assistant Certification program, click here.
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Never Trumpers Frustrated And Whining Over Donald Trump OpEd
Never Trumpers Frustrated And Whining Over Donald Trump – OpEd https://digitalarizonanews.com/never-trumpers-frustrated-and-whining-over-donald-trump-oped/
By Leesa K. Donner*
Impeached twice, investigated by the New York State Attorney General, and raided by the FBI but the American establishment cannot understand the unwavering political power of Donald Trump. The popularity of Orange Man Bad vexes them. They whine about his “continued prominence” and cannot fathom why Trump remains standing after the many knock-out punches that should have dropped him to the mat. Perhaps it is because these people do not understand Mr. Trump or what makes his steadfast following tick.
The Infuriating Popularity of Donald Trump
It is almost as if they do not believe they won in 2020. Every day since that fateful election, Donald J. Trump has graced the front pages of the legacy media almost without exception. Two years later and with midterms rapidly approaching, the Liz Cheney wing of the Republican party remains perplexed. In a New York Timescolumn recently, Never-Trumper David Brooks marveled at the continued political strength of the former president:
“One of the stunning facts of the age is the continued prominence of Donald Trump. His candidates did well in the G.O.P. primaries this year. He won more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. His favorability ratings within his party have been high and basically unchanged since late 2016. In a range of polls, some have actually shown Trump leading President Biden in a race for re-election in 2024.”
Then, as the left (among whom Brooks must be counted) lurched uncontrollably into the truth. “His prominence is astounding because, over the past seven years, the American establishment has spent enormous amounts of energy trying to discredit him,” Brooks whined.
In a rare display of rational thinking, Brooks outlined the many strategies employed by the establishment to take Trump out: This included, but was not limited to, the immorality tactic, various impeachment schemes, and the so-called exposure ploy, which were designed to unmask him as a terrible human being. Frustrated and nonplussed by the inadequacy of these efforts, the thought occurs to Brooks, and likely others, that “The barrage has probably solidified Trump’s hold on his party.”
He got that right.
Never-Trumpers Search for the Holy Grail
Joe Biden & Company appear to have settled upon the strategy of damning the entire lot of Trumpists. By going after the electorate (an unusual approach to be sure), the establishment hopes to marginalize the Trump advocate. The idea is to corner the pro-Trump crowd, and make them appear radical, which is why words like white supremacist, semi-fascist, and Ultra MAGA are being tossed around ad infinitum.
Why employ such a divisive tactic? Because it is designed to persuade the folks who live in the political center. Brooks even admitted as much. “The job was to peel away independents and those Republicans offended by and exhausted by his antics,” he wrote. However, trying to make everyone who supports Mr. Trump into a lunatic has a downside, as is evident by this story shared by The New York Times columnist:
“This week, I talked with a Republican who was incensed by Biden’s approach. He is an 82-year-old émigré from Russia who is thinking of supporting Ron DeSantis in the 2024 primaries because he has less baggage. His parents were killed by the Nazis in World War II. ‘And now Biden’s calling me a fascist?!’ he fumed.”
One wonders if the president and his party satraps have become so insular, they cannot recognize the strategy of making Trump supporters out to be an archetypal anti-Christ is not working. Much like the elderly émigré mentioned above, it may actually be backfiring.
And so, it appears MAGA man and his millions of followers have gotten into their heads, and the establishment is utterly exasperated. The Never-Trump elite may be frustrated that they have not been able to rid the earth of Orange Man Bad, but they continue to search – almost without pause – for an answer. It is if they are locked inside a political maze without entrance or exit. Perhaps they are so confounded because taking the time to understand the average Trump supporter is beneath them. It is class politics to the core – a concept which Donald Trump has fundamentally turned on its head. Although the Shakespearean provenance is disputed, this quote aptly describes the situation: “Love me or hate me, both are in my favor…If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart…If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind.”
*About the author: Leesa K. Donner is Editor-in-Chief of LibertyNation.com. A widely published columnist, Leesa previously worked in the broadcast news industry as a television news anchor, reporter, and producer at NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates in Charlotte, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC. She is the author of “Free At Last: A Life-Changing Journey through the Gospel of Luke.”
Source: This article was published by Liberty Nation
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'Perfect Call!' Trump Rages At Fulton County DA After She Predicts Prison Sentences
'Perfect Call!' Trump Rages At Fulton County DA After She Predicts Prison Sentences https://digitalarizonanews.com/perfect-call-trump-rages-at-fulton-county-da-after-she-predicts-prison-sentences/
If you’re like most people, you’ve received a text or chat message in recent months from a stranger with an attractive profile photograph. It might open with a simple “Hi” or what seems like good-natured confusion about why your phone number seems to be in the person’s address book. But these messages are often far from accidental: They’re the first step in a process intended to steer you from a friendly chat to an online investment to, ultimately, watching your money disappear into the account of a fraudster.
“Pig butchering,” as the technique is known — the phrase alludes to the practice of fattening a hog before slaughter — originated in China, then went global during the pandemic. Today criminal syndicates target people around the world, often by forcing human trafficking victims in Southeast Asia to perpetrate the schemes against their will. ProPublica recently published an in-depth investigation of pig butchering, based on months of interviews with dozens of scam victims, former scam sweatshop workers, advocates, rescue workers, law enforcement and investigators, along with extensive documentary evidence including training manuals for scammers, chat transcripts between scammers and their targets and complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission.
“We’ve had people from all walks of life that have been victimized in these cases and the paydays have been huge,” said Andrew Frey, a financial investigator for the Secret Service, the federal agency that is taking a lead role in combating online crime and trying to help victims recover their stolen funds.
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Opinion | Hey QAnon! Republicans Are Playing Your Song.
Opinion | Hey QAnon! Republicans Are Playing Your Song. https://digitalarizonanews.com/opinion-hey-qanon-republicans-are-playing-your-song/
At a Trump rally in Ohio on Saturday, the former president closed his speech to the strains of a melody widely associated with the QAnon conspiracy movement, which holds that the government is run by a secret cabal of satanic pedophiles.
En masse, audience members fully extended their right arms and pointed their index fingers as Trump proclaimed them to be “one movement,” apparently echoing the name of the song they were hearing, “WWG1WGA” — an abbreviation of the QAnon slogan “where we go one, we go all.”
Trump had used the same theme song earlier at a rally in Pennsylvania, and in a campaign video. He reposted an image of himself on his social media site in which he wore a “Q” lapel pin under the QAnon slogan, “The Storm is Coming” — one of dozens of QAnon-themed posts he has done lately.
He’s continuing to do this despite clear evidence that the paranoid madness (the QAnon fantasy ends in Trump’s opponents being executed) inspires violence. In Michigan this month, a man allegedly shot and killed his wife and dog and injured his daughter. Another daughter told the Detroit News that her father’s mental health had deteriorated as he fell deeper into “crazy ideas,” including QAnon, since the 2020 election.
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In Pennsylvania a few days later, a man wearing a clown wig took a loaded gun into a Dairy Queen, then told police he was armed to “kill Democrats and liberals” and “restore Trump to president king.” A Facebook account that apparently belongs to the man was steeped in QAnon craziness.
Trump’s spokesperson asserted that the rally melody (the one that prompted the one-finger salutes) wasn’t the QAnon anthem “WWG1WGA” — but rather a totally different song that just happens to sound exactly like it.
Right.
In a sense it doesn’t matter what melody Trump uses. He’s singing the QAnon lyrics — and MAGA Republicans are backing him up in four-part harmony.
Verse One:
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, once thought by some to offer a Republican alternative to Trumpism, is heading to Arizona next month to campaign for GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, one of the most flamboyant election deniers in the country. As Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reported, Lake will be the “most MAGA-aligned candidate Youngkin has campaigned for.” Lake, in addition to referring to the 2020 election as the “big steal,” has associated her campaign with leading QAnon figures and has called for jailing her opponent.
Verse Two:
A new survey by The Post finds that in the 19 most closely watched senatorial and gubernatorial races this year, 12 of the Republican candidates (including Lake) have declined to say whether they will accept the election results. This shows that refusing to accept the will of the people is now a feature, not a bug, of the MAGA GOP.
Verse Three:
After failing to generate headlines by sending busloads of migrants to Washington’s Union Station, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott raised the level of cruelty by dumping the baffled migrants in a residential neighborhood of D.C., near the vice president’s residence. Abbott’s fellow Republican, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, raised the inhumanity still further, taking migrants who escaped political repression and economic desperation in Venezuela and flying them to Martha’s Vineyard — where DeSantis knew no safety net awaited them.
Fox News’s Tucker Carlson celebrated the migrants’ humiliation in a racist rant about “sweaty Third World campesinos” in “dirty work pants” who would have “an outdoor goat barbecue” on the island.
Verse Four:
DeSantis isn’t limiting his disdain to refugees from Venezuela’s dictatorship. He ran a campaign ad this month that featured Pastor Larry Jinks, who, as the Jewish publication Forward reported, posted earlier this year that “it’s a shame that the Jews, who should know better, reject their own Messiah.” Jinks objected to peace and unity among religions, saying Jesus taught Christians “to be at odds with any religion that does not acknowledge Jesus.”
Not to be outdone, Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, held a rally with Texas evangelical leader Lance Wallnau, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist who has voiced pro-Putin conspiracy beliefs.
Chorus:
Trump, even before the QAnon melody and salute at his rally Saturday, treated his fans to a full range of delusionary conspiracy notions.
“The FBI colluded with Russia.”
“We have a president who is cognitively impaired.”
“We won the election by a lot.”
“They spy on my campaign.”
Positively everybody was conspiring in the “persecution of the MAGA movement.” The “deep state.” “Racist” (that is, Black) prosecutors. “Menacing forces.” The “enemy-of-the-people” media. FBI agents who “break into” his home.
“A vile group of corrupt, power-hungry globalists, socialists and liberal extremists in Washington has been waging war on the hardworking people of Ohio,” Trump told them. “… Our biggest threat remains the sick, sinister and evil people from within our country.”
QAnon, he’s playing your song.
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