Tag: trial

Trump heads to NY to face civil trial after suing ex-lawyer for $500mn

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New York: Former US President Donald Trump is heading back to New York City for a civil trial after filing a $500 million suit against his former lawyer, Michael Cohen — the prime witness against him in the criminal case against him.
In the case filed in a federal court in Florida on Wednesday, Trump alleged that Cohen had violated his contract with him as his lawyer, disclosed confidential information and spread “falsehoods”.
Cohen had acted as Trump’s “fixer” paying $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to buy her silence after she claimed to have had an affair with the former President.

That is one of the elements in the 34 charges filed last week against Trump by Manhattan Prosecutor Alvin Bragg who alleges that the payoff was illegally disguised as a lawyer’s fees.
Cohen was convicted on tax and election finance charges in connection with the payoff.
On Thursday, Trump is scheduled to participate in a legal process called deposition in connection with a $250 million civil lawsuit filed by New York’s Attorney General Letitia James against the former President, three of his children involved in his business and the Trump Organization alleging they falsified financial statements to obtain loans.
In a deposition, the accused or witnesses appear before lawyers away from a courtroom without the judge being present and their testimony and cross-examination are recorded and presented at trial to cut the actual trial time in court with a judge.
Last August, a deposition was taken with Trump in the case during which he is reported to have refused to answer about 400 questions claiming constitutional protection against being made to make self-incriminating statements.

He does not face prison term in the civil case, but that is a possibility if he is convicted in the New York criminal case or any others that arise in the ongoing investigations by a prosecutor in Georgia into whether he tried to manipulate the 2020 election results there or by a federal special attorney into his role in last year’s riot that resulted in an attack on the Capitol by his supporters and into his handling of secret documents.
On Tuesday, Trump told a Fox News interviewer that he intends to run for President in next year’s election even if he is convicted.
Asked if he would back out if convicted, Trump said: “I’d never drop out; it’s not my thing, I wouldn’t do it.”
The US Constitution does not bar a convict from running for President.
Adding to the web of litigation, Bragg filed a federal case against Republican Representative Jim Jordan, the chair of the House of Representatives Judicial Committee, to block the panel’s investigation into his prosecution of Trump.
Jordan has alleged that Bragg’s prosecution was political.
Meanwhile, the Judiciary Committee is bringing its battle with Bragg to his home turf holding a hearing on crime in the city.
The committee said that it would probe how what it called “Bragg’s pro-crime, anti-victim policies” contributed “to an increase in violent crime”.
Bragg had been criticised even by his own party leaders for being lax in prosecuting violent crimes or keeping violent offenders in custody.
Major crimes soared 22 per cent last year across New York City, but there are signs it is ebbing with a drop of 5.6 per cent in February.
The prosecutions against Trump are expected to gain momentum as the Republican Party campaigns for the presidential nomination get underway starting in August with the first candidate’s debate.
The only candidates to officially announce their run against Trump are former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and two Indian-Americans — Nikki Haley, a former member of his cabinet; and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author.
Republican Senator Tim Scott, an African-American who was first appointed to the Senate by Haley when she was the governor of South Carolina, announced on Wednesday that he was setting up a committee to explore a run for the nomination.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is considered a front-runner to challenge Trump, has not announced his candidacy, and neither have former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who were considering joining the race.
Trump is far and away the leader for the Republican nomination to take on President Joe Biden, with 51.7 per cent support and a lead of 26.7 per cent over nearest rival DeSantis, according to an aggregation of polls by RealClear Politics.
Despite facing criminal charges Trump was 1.7 per cent ahead of Biden, 44.1 per cent to 42.7 per cent, according to the latest RealClear Politics aggregation, with Trump’s lead widening in two of the three polls conducted after his indictment on March 30.
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#Trump #heads #face #civil #trial #suing #exlawyer #500mn
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 13, 2023
Trump seeks delay of defamation trial, citing ‘media frenzy’ caused by Manhattan indictment

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Tacopina acknowledged that Trump draws blanket media coverage at nearly all times — but he said Google searches indicated a particularly intense surge of coverage of the charges brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg earlier this month. Those charges include claims that Trump falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star to cover up an affair. Because those charges relate to Carroll’s claims of “sexual misconduct,” Tacopina said, there’s a particularly acute risk that jurors in the civil trial will conflate the issues.
Kaplan has seemed intent on charging ahead with Trump’s civil case despite the surrounding chaos caused by the indictment. He recently backed a bid to permit jurors in the civil trial anonymity, citing the potential threats to their safety caused by Trump’s rhetoric — particularly toward Bragg and the judge in his criminal case.
But Trump’s effort to delay the civil case until at least May 23 underscores the extraordinary challenge of subjecting a former president — particularly one who garners intense media coverage at all times — to a civil or criminal trial before an impartial jury.
Trump’s tangle of legal threats is only likely to intensify, as several other criminal matters approach the charging stage. That includes an investigation by Atlanta-area DA Fani Willis, who has said charging decisions for Trump and his allies are “imminent” in a case about his bid to subvert Georgia’s election laws in 2020. At the federal level, special counsel Jack Smith appears to be reaching the final stages of his probe into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office, and he’s begun penetrating Trump’s inner circle in a separate probe of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election.
Tacopina didn’t mention those other looming matters. Rather he said he expected a “cooling off” period after the Manhattan indictment to arrive by late May, when the immediacy of the Bragg news had faded. The next big milestone in that case, he said, was in August, when Trump is expected to file a motion to dismiss his case.
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#Trump #seeks #delay #defamation #trial #citing #media #frenzy #caused #Manhattan #indictment
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 12, 2023
AAP: 2023 will be a trial run before 2014 Lok Sabha elections for the party

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When Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal launched his Aam Admi party in 2012 and bid for power the following year, no one thought he would find political space and sustain himself.
A decade later, today, he has changed from the self-projected role of an angry young man to an ‘ambitious young man’ with grand plans for himself and his young Party.
With two states- Delhi and Punjab- under his belt, Kejriwal wants to lead the Opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. He has three goals:

Expand his Party to as many states as possible.
Find a place in the country’s political high table.
Position himself as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s primary challenger.
His optimism comes out in his recent prophecy, “Time is very powerful; nothing is permanent in the world. If one thinks that one will remain in power forever, then that’s not going to happen. Today we’re in power in Delhi, and they’re (BJP) in power in Centre; Tomorrow it might happen we’ll be in power in Centre,”
The AAP’s political journey has seen dramatic twists and turns. The Party has grown beyond recognition, and the BJP has overtaken Congress. At the same time, the Grand Old Party has shrunk.
Born from India Against Corruption movement, the AAP decimated Congress and the BJP in the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections. After 49 days, he quit as chief minister, only to return in 2015 and 2021. The AAP has no Lok Sabha MP but boasts 10 members in the Rajya Sabha. It is the only Party other than the Congress and the BJP to control power in two states, Delhi and Punjab.
The Party lost miserably in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Delhi. At another level, AAP faced a setback as it could not muster even one percent of votes in the assembly elections in Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. But the landslide win in Punjab last year brought back cheers.

After last year’s Gujarat polls, AAP is again ascending by gaining the national party status. It is the ninth national Party.
Compared to AAP, Samajwadi Party, JD(U), Telugu Desam, Rashtriya Janata Dal, and Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi couldn’t move beyond their turf. Parties like NCP, TMC, CPI, and BSP face derecognition.
Like many other Opposition parties, AAP faced pinpricks from the Centre. These have demoralized the Party and created a fear complex. After weighing the pros and cons, the AAP chief has decided to take on the BJP headlong, particularly after the recent arrests of his two ministers, Sisodia and Satyednra Jain.
For instance, despite the mutual discomfort between the two rivals -AAP and Congress- Kejriwal blasted BJP after the recent court verdict and the subsequent disqualification of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi from Lok Sabha.
The AAP chief alleged Modi is the most corrupt Prime Minister. He criticized the Prime Minister for his alleged closeness to industrialist Gautam Adani, who became the world’s second wealthiest man and joined the Opposition in their demand for a Joint Parliamentary probe last session.
He has questioned Modi’s educational qualifications and asked if his “degree is fake”. This came a day after Gujarat High Court fined Kejriwal and ruled that Prime Minister’s degree details were unnecessary.
Kejriwal went to the Lion’s Den Gujarat by talking about his “Delhi model.” during the last year’s Assembly polls. Modi came to power propagating his ‘Gujarat model.”
Kejriwal has openly joined other opposition leaders to challenge Modi before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
There are many ifs and buts before Kejriwal could achieve his goals. AAP continues to concentrate on bread-and-butter issues and those about the common man. Kejriwal plays a soft Hindutva to attract Hindu voters. He wants to win voters by offering freebies. But the strategy in the North may or may not work in the Southern states.
To succeed, Kejriwal must build his Party and sell his ‘Delhi model” successfully. Several factors influence the voters, including grassroots organization, anti-BJP sentiment, a credible local face, and the potential for implementing the Delhi model.
Secondly, Kejriwal needs to build second-line state leaders. The Party’s founding members, such as Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Shazia Ilmi, Kumar Vishwas, and Ashutosh, and civil society members, in the past decade, quit the Party protesting against Kejriwal’s highhandedness. Before the 2022 Assembly election, at least 11 MLAs either quit the Party or were disqualified.
Thirdly, he has made a personality cult around himself, and all powers are centred on him. He must learn to share power instead of concentrating entirely on himself.
The fourth is to build friendships with other opposition leaders and mend fences with Congress. If only two fronts exist, then Congress will not support him.
2023 will be a trial run before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections for all parties, but more so for AAP. Ultimately, win or lose depends on his electoral calculations and voters’ reactions.
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#AAP #trial #run #Lok #Sabha #elections #party
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 12, 2023
‘Delay, delay, delay’: How Trump could push his trial into the heart of campaign season

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Among the moves that could chew up time: an attempt to dismiss the entire case, a bid to relocate his trial outside of New York City, an effort to disqualify the prosecutor or judge in his case, a bid to move the case from state to federal court, extensive negotiations over security protocols for his appearances in court and a motion to reduce his charges from felonies to misdemeanors.
Trump’s lawyers have also signaled they are likely to try to get the judge to pry into the grand jury proceedings, looking to show that the charges lack probable cause or that there was some impropriety in instructing the grand jurors. Such efforts are almost impossible in federal courts, but allowed in New York.
“You’d … make a motion to ask for the court to review the grand jury minutes and determine whether or not the D.A. presented legally sufficient evidence,” said Michael Scotto, a former chief of the Rackets Bureau in the same Manhattan D.A.’s office prosecuting Trump. “It’s not the lockbox it is in the federal system.”
Ironically, Trump could also cause delay by complaining about the prosecution’s own foot-dragging. He can argue that the delay in filing charges over events that occurred about six years ago violates his due process rights under the New York constitution, Scotto added.
The first indication of Trump’s posture will likely come Tuesday at his arraignment, when a deadline will be set for various motions in the case. That will be followed by a relatively strict series of “adjournment dates” for other phases of the case. One of those deadlines arrives in early May: a 35-day post-arraignment deadline for District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to provide all relevant documents and evidence to Trump’s defense team. Trump’s attorneys are sure to use each of those inflection points to file a new series of motions, Christian said.
The judge expected to preside over Trump’s case, Juan Merchan, will no doubt be on the lookout for frivolous efforts to prolong the case, she added.
Under the Sixth Amendment, all criminal defendants have the right to a speedy trial, but many defendants nonetheless seek to postpone their day of reckoning. Buying time would be particularly attractive for Trump because of the legal uncertainty that would arise if he wins the presidential election in November 2024. In that scenario, some constitutional scholars believe the need to serve in office would override the consequences of a conviction, including any prison sentence.
The recently completed criminal trial for the Trump Organization and a related company on tax-related charges took almost 16 months from indictment to opening statements. The Iowa caucuses are in 10 months, and the presidential general election is 19 months away.

After a five-week trial in the Trump Org case, a jury convicted the Trump companies on all 17 felony charges and the judge imposed a $1.6 million fine. That case was held in the same courthouse where Trump is expected to be tried in the hush money case, and was overseen by the same judge.
The new case against Trump, which involves a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, appears to be factually simpler and to involve a smaller set of transactions than the tax case. So prosecutors could try to move it along more swiftly than the tax case.
Last year, Trump managed to delay federal prosecutors’ efforts to review thousands of documents seized from his home by the FBI by — in essence — suing the federal government. A judge, whom Trump had appointed just before leaving office, supported his bid to appoint a special master to review the matter instead, delaying proceedings for two months before a federal appeals court rebuffed her effort.
Trump may already have briefly delayed his own indictment by sending lawyer Robert Costello to the grand jury to testify last Monday. He emerged to claim that he’d intrigued grand jurors with talk of important documents they’d not been shown. Talk of Trump’s indictment then fell quiet for a week or so, before the blockbuster announcement Thursday.
Don’t be surprised, however, if the initial sounds from Trump’s lawyers are about a speedy resolution of the case. Indeed, Trump attorney James Trusty — who’s not handling the New York criminal case — said Friday that he expects Trump’s team to move quickly for a dismissal of the charges.
“I would think in very short order, you’ll see a motion to dismiss or several motions to dismiss,” Trusty told CNN. “It’ll be soon. I think this will be something you can expect in days or weeks, not weeks or months.”
Defense attorneys often demand a speedy trial at the outset of a case, only to repeatedly press for delays as the trial date nears. Some delays may also be inevitable because of Trump’s reelection bid and the slew of other legal entanglements he faces, including two scheduled trials in civil cases and the possibility of more criminal charges from ongoing probes in Georgia and Washington, D.C.
The indictment this week presents unique complications for Bragg and the New York court system, but it’s not the first time judges and lawyers have had to jockey around a Trump presidential campaign.
When Trump announced his presidential bid in 2015, he’d already been mired for more than five years in litigation over claims that his Trump University real estate training program defrauded participants out of tens of millions of dollars in so-called tuition.
In March 2016, as Trump was trouncing his rivals in the Republican primaries, his lawyers pressed a federal judge to delay a trial in the civil fraud case even further.
“This will be a zoo if it goes to trial” in August, Trump lawyer Daniel Petrocelli told U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel.
Petrocelli even accused the plaintiffs of timing court filings to inject inflammatory accusations into a presidential debate, and he questioned whether Trump could receive a fair trial in light of the “poisoned” atmosphere.
Curiel — who faced a series of racist public attacks from Trump — wound up concluding that a trial amid the presidential campaign would be unwise. He set it for after the November election and warned there’d be no further delay if Trump won and had obligations related to the transition.
Ten days before that trial was to begin, Trump and his companies agreed to settle the federal suits and another in New York for a total of $25 million.
Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said Friday there’s “zero, zee-ro” chance of Trump making a similar deal in the criminal hush money case and pleading guilty. “President Trump will not take a plea deal in the case,” Tacopina told NBC. “It’s not going to happen. There’s no crime.”
Even before the indictment, Trump’s lawyers were in court earlier this month arguing for delay in the high-stakes, civil lawsuit that New York Attorney General Tish James is pursuing against Trump, his businesses and most of his children.
The litigation, filed by James last September after several years of investigation, seeks severe financial penalties and strict limits on the Trump firms and family members due to what the attorney general claims is wide-scale fraud in their insurance, banking and tax dealings.
“No previous case, much less one of similar complexity, has been forced through lightning-round discovery and tried at this pace,” Trump lawyers complained as they pleaded with Justice Arthur Engoron to push back an Oct. 2 trial date and effectively delay the courtroom showdown into 2024.
Engoron was having none of it, declaring that the October trial date was “written in stone.” Still, Trump lawyer Christopher Kise seemed to hold out some hope of postponement. Asked about the judge’s declaration that the trial is definitely happening in October, Kise told Reuters: “For now, it is.”
That trial, plus the potential for additional criminal indictments of Trump in at least three other ongoing probes — one helmed by a district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, and two by the Justice Department’s special counsel Jack Smith — could also scramble the timeline in New York.
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#Delay #delay #delay #Trump #push #trial #heart #campaign #season
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 1, 2023
Judge sends Dominion lawsuit against Fox News to trial

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Some uncertainty remained about who at Fox authorized specific broadcasts and what those people knew or believed at the time, Davis continued.
“The Court does not weigh the evidence to determine who may have been responsible for publication and if such people acted with actual malice – these are genuine issues of material fact and therefore must be determined by a jury,” the judge wrote in his 81-page ruling.
Fox reacted to the ruling by insisting that the company is standing up for free-speech principles.
“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news. Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings,” the company said.
A spokesperson for Dominion welcomed Davis’ ruling. “We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial,” the firm said.
Davis has set jury selection for April 13 and the trial to begin in April 17 in Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington, assuming that the sides don’t reach a financial settlement in the meantime.
The trial is expected to feature testimony from top Fox personalities including Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and others. The pre-trial litigation has already uncovered documents showing that the hosts and anchors did not believe many of the charges being leveled on their programs and that, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 race, the company was desperately looking for ways to keep its Trump-supporting viewers from defecting to rivals like Newsmax and One America News.
Dominion filed the suit in 2021, contending that Fox gravely damaged the voting company’s reputation by repeatedly airing false charges about it even after being given details about the misstatements.

In recent court filings, Fox’s attorneys argued that the network wasn’t endorsing the claims leveled by Trump and allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, but was simply conveying newsworthy statements being issued by important public figures. The judge rejected those arguments.
“Fox dedicates little to its argument on falsity. It claims that ‘[t]he question is whether the press reported the “true” fact that the President made those allegations,’” Davis wrote. “However, falsity refers to the content of the statement, not the act of republishing it. Therefore, the question of falsity is whether the content of the allegations was true, not whether Fox truthfully republished the allegations.”
Davis also said Fox’s reports and interviews often aired the claims without rebuttal or context, further undercutting the network’s arguments.
“The evidence does not support that FNN conducted good-faith, disinterested reporting….FNN’s failure to reveal extensive contradicting evidence from the public sphere and Dominion itself indicates its reporting was not disinterested,” the judge wrote.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 1, 2023
Juror in Oath Keepers trial reveals secrets from the deliberation room

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“His defense attorney tried to get him to fall apart by yelling at him and not letting him wear his headset,” Ellen recalled. “He was torturing his client to get us to feel sympathy.”
What was worse, the juror recalled, was that the judge ultimately instructed the jury not to consider Isaacs’ autism as a defense against his potential crimes, which meant the entire spectacle had been “a waste of time.”
The result of the jury’s six-day deliberations was a conviction of four defendants — including Isaacs — on all of the charges they faced. A fifth defendant, Bennie Parker, was convicted of one felony count and a misdemeanor but acquitted of other charges, and a sixth, Michael Greene, was convicted of a single misdemeanor charge and acquitted of several others.
Jurors rarely provide public commentary about their service, especially not to the detailed degree that Ellen did in her C-SPAN interview. She revealed that she worked with Lamb for more than 30 years and agreed to sit with him after he contacted her following the trial. The result was an eye-opening look at the jury’s lengthy deliberations: the fault-lines, the close calls and the persuasion efforts that resulted in guilty verdicts on most of the counts.
Isaacs’ attorney, Charles Greene, acknowledged that most of the jury recoiled at his posture toward his autistic client. It was all by design, he said, because he viewed acquittal as possible only if the jury could see Isaacs’ profound struggle.
“The strategy was: The jury’s going to hate me, but usually when you kick a puppy, the jury hates the person who kicks the puppy but they have sympathy for the puppy,” Greene told POLITICO.
He said that he had prepped for the testimony for days, running it by Isaacs’ family to ensure it wouldn’t cause a medical episode, but said he didn’t warn Isaacs because he needed his client’s response to be genuine.
“We had to wing it … He couldn’t be prepared for it. He couldn’t know what was coming,” Greene said. “I was crying. I didn’t like doing it. The days leading up to it, just thinking about it, it was traumatic for me too. I had to do it in a way that came across as heartless.”

Ellen indicated that she and another juror who happened to be a lawyer helped spearhead a lot of the deliberations. Some jurors, she said, did not seem to have followed every twist and turn of the trial. Others, she said, seemed to have preconceived notions against convicting anyone regardless of the facts — which the jury had to overcome to arrive at its verdict. And when she completed her service, after a five-week trial and lengthy deliberations, Ellen came away with a conclusion: If she were ever on trial, she would waive her right to a jury and instead let the judge decide her fate.
“I would never want my fate in the hands of people who are mostly completely ill-equipped to understand what’s going on,” she said.
Ellen described the extraordinary volume of evidence jurors had to sift through as they considered the 34 counts against the six defendants — part of prosecutors’ video evidence trove that is unparalleled in American history. She said she grew exasperated at times with some jurors’ insistence that they had to rely only on direct evidence to reach a conviction, rather than circumstantial evidence that can point to someone’s guilt. But despite these frustrations, she ultimately compared the experience to “12 Angry Men” and a “made-for-TV movie” in which jurors understood the gravity of their charge and the significance of the case they had just witnessed.
Ellen indicated that of the four defendants who took the stand “three did harm to themselves by testifying.” One of them, she said, was Bennie Parker, whose testimony she said helped convince the jury that there was a plan to storm the Capitol even before the group arrived at the building. That testimony, she said, damaged other defendants, including Parker’s wife Sandra, who was convicted on several counts for which Parker — who didn’t enter the building — was acquitted.
Another defendant, Connie Meggs — whose husband Kelly Meggs was convicted of seditious conspiracy in November for his Jan. 6 actions — made implausible claims on the stand that led the jury to doubt her testimony, Ellen said.
Ellen saved her harshest remarks for some of the defense lawyers in the case, who she said at times acted in ways that perplexed and even upset the jury. For example, the lawyer for one defendant, Laura Steele, didn’t put on a case for his client but noticeably laughed repeatedly throughout the trial, Ellen said.
“I was horrified,” she said.
As she went through each of the counts the jury considered, Ellen said the decision on convicting four defendants of “obstruction of an official proceeding” — a felony that carries a 20-year maximum sentence — was relatively “easy.”
“Did they obstruct Congress? Yes. Next,” she said.
What was more in dispute was how to handle the two defendants who never entered the Capitol: Parker and Michael Greene. Some jurors appeared convinced that only those who went inside the building could be convicted of the charge, and Ellen said she disagreed, citing the testimony of police officers who insisted Congress couldn’t return until the entire Capitol grounds were cleared of rioters.
Ultimately, Parker and Greene were both acquitted of the charge, though Parker was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct Congress — a result of what Ellen said was his own testimony about his thought process outside the Capitol.
“The jury was so divided on this,” she said, noting that some had considered whether Parker should only be convicted of a misdemeanor trespassing charge. She noted that jurors were shown a long gun that Parker had stashed at a house in Virginia before traveling to Washington.
Ellen insisted that the jury was focused entirely on the facts and law and did not enter the case with preconceived notions about the defendants. At times, she said, they grappled with the “heartbreaking” story of the Parkers, an older couple who were members of an Ohio-based militia before deciding to come to Washington with Jessica Watkins, a local Oath Keepers leader.
“They said they wanted to fight. But I don’t think they meant that literally at first,” Ellen said, adding, “There was a lot of sympathy. We feel like they stumbled into something.”
It was Bennie Parker’s interview with a foreign journalist “that I think just sealed his fate,” she added, noting that he told the interviewer what the mob was doing was likely illegal but “there’s so many of us, what could they possibly do to us.” And Parker added, “We are prepared to bring arms,” she recalled.
Ellen said some of the jurors have kept in touch since the trial and have continued to text about developments now that they’re able to read news about the case and understand the perception of their verdict.
She said she was shocked that she was allowed to join the jury, given her long history at C-SPAN.
She remembered thinking, “How could they allow a person from the media, who their staff was in the middle of the insurrection and various television equipment was being destroyed from other networks that could’ve been ours. I don’t even know if it was or wasn’t.”
Ellen said she volunteered during jury selection that she worked for C-SPAN, finding it odd that she was never asked to identify an employer until the later rounds of questioning. Though three defense witnesses jumped up to question her, they ultimately agreed she could be an impartial juror.
“Did you want to be on the jury?” Lamb asked.
“Yes,” Ellen replied.
“When did you make that decision?” Lamb said.
“When I get the summons,” she added. “I’ve always wanted to be on a jury my whole life.”
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#Juror #Oath #Keepers #trial #reveals #secrets #deliberation #room
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 29, 2023
Penguin moves Delhi HC against trial court injunction on Rana Kapoor book

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New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued notice to former Yes Bank Managing Director Rana Kapoor on an appeal by publishing house Penguin Random House India against a trial court order asking them to refrain from publishing and distributing a book on him.
A single-judge bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri directed Kapoor to file his reply and listed the matter for the next hearing on July 24.
The case stems from a Rs 466 crore Yes Bank scam.
Journalist Furquan Moharkan published a book titled “The Banker Who Crushed His Diamonds: The Yes Bank Story” in February 2021.
Kapoor has, however, opposed it sayimg that the book makes false allegations against him which are extremely prejudicial to the ongoing investigation.
The trial court passed the ex-parte ad interim injunction order against Moharkan’s publication and distribution of the book on December 22, 2021, and the same was confirmed on January 28, 2023.
Book publisher Penguin, in its appeal before the High Court, contended that the trial court failed to appreciate the fact that Kapoor approached the court 11 months after the publication of the book.
The argument further claimed that Kapoor was aware of the book’s planned release as early as June 2020, when the author approached his daughter to get their version of the story and she answered through her lawyer, warning him not to publish.

It further added that by not providing a discussion on merits or assigning proper reasons, especially on why the entire book is being injuncted, the trial court went beyond the Supreme Court’s judgements and it amounts to a blanket censorship, and a violation of free speech rights.
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#Penguin #moves #Delhi #trial #court #injunction #Rana #Kapoor #book
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 16, 2023
Judge okays use of Access Hollywood tape in Trump defamation trial

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In the tape, a recording from 2005 that was widely scrutinized during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump boasts, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” adding: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”
Though Carroll’s 2019 lawsuit alleges only defamation, not sexual assault itself, Judge Kaplan found that “in order to prevail on her libel claim, Ms. Carroll must prove that Mr. Trump sexually assaulted her.”
Without proving the underlying claim of sexual assault, the judge wrote, “she cannot establish that Mr. Trump’s charge that her story was a lie and a hoax was false.”
In November, Carroll also filed a second lawsuit in New York alleging defamation and battery under a new state law. The 2019 lawsuit is set to go to trial in April. A judge hasn’t ruled whether the two cases will be combined.
Trump has denied defaming or assaulting Carroll. “We maintain the utmost confidence that our client will be vindicated at the upcoming trial,” a lawyer for Trump, Alina Habba, said in a statement Friday.
The judge’s ruling Friday will also permit Carroll to use the testimony of Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, two women who alleged Trump assaulted them in the years before he ran for office. Leeds alleged Trump groped her while they flew on an airplane together. Stoynoff alleged he sexually assaulted her while she was reporting a story for People Magazine.
Trump has denied both of their accounts.
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#Judge #okays #Access #Hollywood #tape #Trump #defamation #trial
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 11, 2023
‘Spill’ of classified info derails Proud Boys trial

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Miller sent her final list to prosecutors, who then packaged the messages into an Excel spreadsheet that they provided to defense lawyers. But unbeknownst to them, the messages Miller initially filtered out — including some that DOJ officials say are likely classified — were left in the final document as “hidden” rows in the Excel spreadsheet. Defense counsel stumbled upon them and began grilling Miller about them in front of jurors in the case.
Overnight, Justice Department attorneys told the defense team they were concerned there had been a “spill” of classified information in the hidden messages they accessed. And on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Tim Kelly paused the trial — already in its third month — to determine how to handle the error.
It’s the latest hiccup in a seditious conspiracy trial that has been marked by excruciating delays and extended legal disputes. Prosecutors say Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and four leaders of the group schemed to prevent the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. The group, according to the Justice Department, split into teams that helped engineer the breach of police lines and, ultimately, the building itself, when one of the defendants, Dominic Pezzola, smashed a Senate-wing window with a stolen riot shield.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jocelyn Ballantine, who is supervising the case for the Justice Department, acknowledged the likely “spill” of classified information Thursday morning. She raised particular concerns about a message sent to Miller by another agent who works on covert activity — and who she said did not work on the Proud Boys case — describing a supervisor’s order to “destroy 338 items of evidence.”
“That could impact a classified equity,” Ballantine said.
Defense lawyers cried foul, though, noting that the government’s claims of “classified” material arrived just as the defense sounded the alarm about the content of some of the inadvertently disclosed messages. While Miller testified Wednesday she had produced about “25 rows” of messages, defense lawyers said there were thousands of rows of hidden messages that included contents they contended were directly relevant to their case.
Some of the messages appeared to reveal that FBI agents accessed contacts between defendant Zachary Rehl and his attorney, which led Miller to tell a colleague she thought Rehl would take his case to trial. In another message, an FBI agent tells Miller, “You need to go into that CHS report you just put and edit out that I was present.” After defense attorneys began to press Miller about the attorney-client messages on Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors objected, and Kelly halted the trial to permit the parties to debate the matter.
After hearing arguments Thursday, Kelly ordered defense attorneys to refrain from reviewing or disseminating the messages until the FBI was able to conduct a classification review, a process that Ballantine said could likely be completed by the end of the day Thursday.

The flare-up comes as prosecutors are nearing the end of their case against the Proud Boys. They’ve laid out evidence showing that Tarrio and his allies developed a sense of existential dread about a Biden presidency and quickly embraced Trump’s claims of fraud in the days and weeks after his defeat in the 2020 election. As Jan. 6 neared, the group’s leaders grew increasingly disillusioned with police — who they accused of insufficiently acting to investigate a man who stabbed several Proud Boys at a December 2020 rally in Washington. And they set up a new chapter, dubbed the “Ministry of Self Defense,” that included men they believed would follow orders.
A week before Jan. 6, Tarrio received a document from a girlfriend titled “1776 Returns” that sketched out a plan to occupy federal buildings in order to derail and delay Congress’ proceedings to certify the 2020 election.
Defense attorneys have contended that the group is little more than a glorified drinking club that had no actual plan to either storm the Capitol or prevent Biden from taking office. Miller’s testimony portrayed the group’s march through Washington on Jan. 6 as an organized and concerted advance toward the Capitol that pinpointed weaknesses in Capitol Police defenses and exploited them to help facilitate the breach of the Capitol.
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#Spill #classified #info #derails #Proud #Boys #trial
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 9, 2023
Excise Policy Case: Manish Sisodia moves bail plea in trial court

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New Delhi: Former Delhi Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia, who is presently in CBI remand, moved a regular bail petition in a trial court on Friday.
Sisodia was recently arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for alleged irregularities in the framing and implementation of the excise policy of GNCTD.
According to the lawyer concerned, hearing on the bail plea will be held on Saturday. Sisodia is also scheduled to be produced on Saturday at the end of his remand period granted on February 27, 2023.
Rouse Avenue Court on Monday while sending Sisodia to CBI remand directed that the interrogation of the accused during the remand period shall be conducted at some place having CCTV coverage in accordance with guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court and the said footage shall be preserved by the CBI.
Special Judge MK Nagpal on February 27, 2023, decided to send Manish Sisodia to CBI remand till March 4, 2023. Sisodia was arrested on Sunday in an ongoing investigation of a case related to alleged irregularities in the framing and implementation of the excise policy of GNCTD.
The court said, keeping in view the facts and circumstances, the accused is being remanded to CBI custody for a period of five days i.e. till March 4, 2023, for his further and extensive interrogation.
The court observed that the accused had joined the investigation of this case on two earlier occasions, but it has also been observed that he has failed to provide satisfactory answers to most of the questions put to him during his examination and interrogation conducted and has thus, failed to legitimately explain the incriminating evidence which has allegedly surfaced against him in the investigation conducted so far.
It is true that he cannot be expected to make self-incriminating statements, but the interests of justice and of a fair investigation require that he should come up with some legitimate answers to the questions which are being put to him by the Investigation officer.

Some of his subordinates are found to have disclosed certain facts which can be taken as incriminating against him and some documentary evidence against him has also already surfaced a proper and fair investigation requires that some genuine and legitimate answers to the questions being put to him about the same are to be found and hence, in considered opinion of this court, this can only be done during custodial interrogation of the accused, noted the court.
During arguments, CBI counsel told the court that the Delhi Deputy CM’s custodial interrogation is required for an effective investigation into the case. While seeking five days’ remand of Sisodia, CBI said, “Conspiracy was hatched in a very planned and secret manner.”
Meanwhile, senior Advocate Dayan Krishnan appeared for Sisodia and opposed the remand application of CBI.
“If someone is not willing to say something, that cannot be a ground for arrest,” argued Sisodia’s lawyer.
“What should I do with a phone that I changed? I am a minister, I cannot send it to a second-hand shop, it would have important data. CBI confronted me with the material but I did not confess. The remand application says I gave evasive replies. This cannot be a ground for remand. They search my residence on August 19, 2022. I hand over my phone. They called me to join the investigation and I joined. I cooperated,” Advocate Dayan Krishnan argued for Delhi Deputy CM.
The CBI on Sunday released a statement on Sisodia’s arrests, claiming he was giving evasive replies and wasn’t cooperating in the ongoing investigation of the liquor scam case.
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#Excise #Policy #Case #Manish #Sisodia #moves #bail #plea #trial #court
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 3, 2023