Legal proceedings – Attorney Legal Counsel

Fox attorneys seek to dismiss shareholder lawsuit over reporting of vote rigging allegations in 2020

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 11:57:34 +0000

WILMINGTON, Del. — Attorneys for Fox Corp. asked a Delaware judge Friday to dismiss a shareholder lawsuit seeking to hold current and former company officials personally liable for the financial fallout stemming from Fox News reports regarding alleged vote rigging in the 2020 election.

Five New York City public employee pension funds, along with Oregon’s public employee retirement fund, allege that former chairman Rupert Murdoch and other Fox Corp. leaders deliberately turned a blind eye to liability risks posed by reporting false claims of vote rigging by election technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic USA.

Smartmatic is suing Fox News for defamation in New York, alleging damages of $2.7 billion. It recently settled a lawsuit in the District of Columbia against One America News Network, another conservative outlet, over reports of vote fraud.

Dominion also filed several defamation lawsuits against those who spread conspiracy theories blaming its election equipment for Donald Trump’s loss in 2020. Last year, Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion in Delaware for $787 million.

The shareholder plaintiffs also allege that Fox corporate leaders ignored “red flags” about liability arising from a 2017 report suggesting that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer, may have been killed because he had leaked Democratic party emails to Wikileaks during the 2016 presidential campaign. Rich, 27, was shot in 2016 in Washington, D.C., in what authorities have said was an attempted robbery.

Fox News retracted the Seth Rich story a week after its initial broadcast, but Rich’s parents sued the network for falsely portraying their son as a criminal and traitor. Fox News settled the lawsuit in 2020 for “millions of dollars,” shortly before program hosts Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity were to be deposed, according to the shareholder lawsuit.

Joel Friedlander, an attorney for the institutional shareholders, argued that Fox officials waited until the company’s reporting about Rich became a national scandal before addressing the issue. Similarly, according to the shareholders, corporate officials, including Rupert Murdoch and his son, CEO Lachlan Murdoch, allowed Fox News to continue broadcasting false narratives about the 2020 election, despite internal communications suggesting that they knew there was no evidence to support the conspiracy theories.

“The Murdochs could have minimized future monetary exposure, but they chose not to,” Friedlander said. Instead, he argued, they engaged in “bad-faith decision making” with other defendants in a profit-driven effort to retain viewers and remain in Trump’s good graces.

“Decisions were made at the highest level to promote pro-Trump conspiracy theories without editorial control,” Friedlander said.

Defense attorneys argue that the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit without first demanding that the Fox Corp. board take action, as required under Delaware law. They say the plaintiffs also failed to demonstrate that a pre-suit demand on the Fox board would have been futile because at least half of the directors face a substantial likelihood of liability or are not independent of someone who does.

Beyond the “demand futility” issue, defense attorneys also argue that allegations that Fox officials breached their fiduciary duties fail to meet the pleading standards under Delaware and therefore should be dismissed.

Defense attorney William Savitt argued, for example, that neither the Rich settlement, which he described as “immaterial,” nor the allegedly defamatory statements about Dominion and Smartmatic constitute red flags putting directors on notice about the risk of defamation liability. Nor do they demonstrate that directors acted in bad faith or that Fox “utterly failed” to implement and monitor a system to report and mitigate legal risks, including defamation liability risk, according to the defendants.

Savitt noted that the Rich article was promptly retracted, and that the settlement included no admission of liability. The Dominion and Smartmatic statements, meanwhile, gave rise themselves to the currently liability issues and therefore can not serve as red flags about future liability risks, according to the defendants.

“A ‘red flag’ must be what the term commonly implies — warning of a risk of a liability-causing event that allows the directors to take action to avert the event, not notice that a liability-causing event has already occurred,” defense attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss.

Defense attorneys also say there are no factual allegations to support claims that Fox officials condoned illegal conduct in pursuit of corporate profits, or that they deliberately ignored their oversight responsibilities. They note that a “bad outcome” is not sufficient to demonstrate “bad faith.”

Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster is expected to rule within 90 days.

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$2.3B awarded in sex abuse lawsuit that named Mormon church

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 11:59:13 +0000

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A woman who was molested for years by her stepfather has been awarded $2.28 billion by a California jury in a lawsuit that also implicated her mother and the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which both parents were active, her attorneys announced.

The panel in Riverside County Superior Court awarded damages Tuesday to a woman described in court papers only as Jane Doe, who said she was sexually assaulted by her stepfather from age 5 until she was 14, according to an announcement by the law firm of Gary A. Dordick.

The lawsuit alleged that beginning in the 1980s, the stepfather sexually abused the girl. The assaults took place at their Lake Elsinore home and at events, meetings, and property of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the lawsuit said.

“These ongoing acts of abuse brought Plaintiff to the brink of suicide,” according to the lawsuit.

In addition to the stepfather, the negligence and sexual abuse suit also named the church and the woman’s mother. It alleged that the woman repeatedly told church officials, including local bishops, about the sexual abuse but that they failed to report it to law enforcement in violation of church policy and also used “intimidation and shaming tactics” to keep her from telling anyone outside the church.

The AP is not naming the stepfather nor the mother to shield the identity of the victim. An email to the stepfather’s attorney seeking comment wasn’t returned.

The stepfather was arrested in 1997 after Jane Doe told her high school basketball coach about the abuse, the suit said. He pleaded guilty to committing lewd acts with a child under age 14 and spent three years in state prison, according to the lawsuit.

While denying wrongdoing, the church settled its part of the lawsuit for $1 million in December, and the woman’s mother settled for $200,000 in February, according to the woman’s lawyers.

The stepfather failed to appear at trial on the first day of jury selection and withdrew his answer to the lawsuit rather than face a warrant for his arrest, and “accordingly, his attorney was not able to participate in the trial,” the law firm said in an email.

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Cases affected by California county’s illegal use of jail informants jumps to 57, new analysis finds

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 06:44:19 +0000

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — The California public defender who sounded the alarm about Orange County’s illegal use of jailhouse informants says the number of major criminal cases that have unraveled because of the scandal has jumped from about a dozen to 57.

A new analysis by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders finds 35 homicide cases and 22 serious felony cases saw convictions overturned, charges dropped and sentences dramatically reduced, the Orange County Register reported Tuesday.

“We already knew that this was the largest and longest running informant scandal in U.S. history, but there had never been a complete accounting of the cases with changed outcomes,” Sanders told the newspaper. The analysis was partly based on data from the district attorney’s office.

With Sanders first raising concerns in 2014, state and federal investigators confirmed that Orange County prosecutors and law enforcement officers systematically violated the constitutional rights of criminal defendants with the illegal use of jailhouse informants.

Some informants collected up to $1,500 a case to coax confessions out of targeted inmates. Many of those inmates had a constitutional right not to be questioned by informants because they had already been charged and retained attorneys.

Some of the informants used threats of violence to persuade their targets to talk, which is not allowed by law. Prosecutors failed to disclose to defense attorneys the use of informants and their histories.

All of the impacted cases came during the tenure of former District attorney Tony Rackauckas. The use of informants under current DA Todd Spitzer is more restricted.

Spitzer said in a statement that much of Sanders’ analysis was previously compiled by the DA’s office and shared with the U.S. Department of Justice.

“We have a team of prosecutors tasked with reviewing each one of these cases and ensuring all of our discovery obligations have been met, and to take any further remedial action, if necessary,” he said. “In addition, the Orange County District attorney’s Office has expanded the role of our Conviction Integrity Unit by adopting a policy to review any wrongful conviction claim.”

Authorities can use jailhouse informants but can’t have them deliberately elicit information from defendants once they are represented by lawyers. In addition, prosecutors are required to turn over evidence to defense attorneys that could be seen as favorable to their clients.

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Football player Matt Araiza dropped from woman’s rape lawsuit and won’t sue for defamation

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 08:24:15 +0000

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Former Buffalo Bills punter Matt Araiza is being dropped from a lawsuit filed by a woman who alleged she was raped by San Diego State University football players in 2021.

The woman agreed Tuesday to dismiss Araiza from the lawsuit she filed last year, while Araiza agreed to dismiss his defamation countersuit against her, his attorneys said in a statement.

He’ll be removed from the suit in the next week, won’t pay any money to the woman and reserves the right to sue her attorney for harm caused, the statement said, terming the agreement “bittersweet.”

“Matt has been forced to defend himself for the last sixteen months against false accusations and a campaign to ruin his career in the NFL. He will never get this time in his life back,” attorneys Dick Semerdjian and Kristen Bush said.

“Thankfully, there was extensive evidence that was key to securing Matt’s voluntary dismissal from this lawsuit,” the statement added. “Matt was and has always been innocent. The case is over, and Matt has prevailed.”

Araiza said Wednesday that the ordeal has “changed me a lot” and that he wants another shot at the NFL.

“My name, my reputation — this will be tied to me forever, that won’t go away,” he said at a news conference. “It was tough to watch the pain that it caused my family, because I have been proven innocent but they for sure had absolutely nothing to do with this.”

Araiza said he continues to work out.

“When I was cut, I was an NFL starter, had just beat out an NFL veteran. I was on a four-year contract and that wont be handed back to me. No one in the NFL is going to go, ‘Here’s the job that you once had,’ so working to regain where I was at is my primary goal right now,” Araiza said. “I’m confident that I will be able to regain my NFL career — whenever that is. I believe it’s more of a when, not an if.”

The defamation lawsuit against the woman, described in court documents only as Jane Doe, was “legally baseless,” but her first legal bill topped $20,000 and she “simply cannot afford to defend herself,” her attorney, Dan Gilleon, said in a statement reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“Plus she has been beat down by Araiza’s PR campaign and is frankly over it,” he said in a text, the news outlet reported.

The lawsuit against four other former San Diego State University players will continue.

An email from The Associated Press seeking comment from Gilleon wasn’t immediately answered Tuesday night.

Araiza was nicknamed the “Punt God” and honored as a consensus All-American in 2021 for his booming kicks that helped SDSU to a school-best 12-2 season in his senior year. He was selected by the Bills in the sixth round of the 2022 NFL draft but released two days after the filing of the lawsuit.

The woman alleged that she was 17 and attending an off-campus party in October 2021 when Araiza, then 21, had sex with her in a side yard at an off-campus house before bringing her into a bedroom where a group of men took turns raping her. She reported the alleged assault to San Diego police the next day.

Araiza has said he stayed in the backyard and never entered the home during the party and that he left nearly a half-hour before the alleged raping occurred.

He and most of the other players the woman is suing have said their encounters with her were consensual.

After a monthlong police investigation, the San Diego County District attorney’s Office announced in December that it would not file criminal charges. Several media outlets obtained an audio recording of a meeting between prosecutors and the woman in which deputy District attorney Trisha Amador said she concluded, based on a witness statement, that Araiza “wasn’t even at the party anymore” when the alleged raping could have occurred and wasn’t visible in videos that were recovered.

Earlier this year, the New York Jets hosted Araiza for a workout at the team’s facility, six days after a San Diego State investigation found no wrongdoing by him in connection with the alleged rape.

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

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2 Los Angeles County men exonerated after spending decades in prison

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 07:40:09 +0000

LOS ANGELES — Two men who spent decades in prison for crimes they didn’t commit have been exonerated and freed, the Los Angeles County district attorney announced Wednesday.

Giovanni Hernandez and Miguel Solorio had their convictions vacated earlier this year and on Wednesday a judge found them factually innocent, the District attorney‘s Office said in an email.

At a news conference, District attorney George Gascón apologized to both men.

“It’s truly devastating when people are wrongfully convicted, especially when they were so young at the time of their arrest. In the case of Mr. Solorio, he was 19 years old. Mr. Hernandez was just 14 years old,” Gascón said.

After two trials, Hernandez was convicted in 2012 of killing 16-year-old Gary Ortiz during a 2006 drive-by shooting in Culver City. He was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison. Hernandez said he was at home with his family at the time of the shooting.

He was exonerated after his case was twice submitted to the Conviction Integrity Unit of the District attorney‘s Office.

Investigators interviewed witnesses who hadn’t previously been contacted and analyzed Hernandez’s cellphone records, which showed he wasn’t near the shooting location, according to a statement from the DA’s office.

Solorio spent 25 years in prison following his conviction for the 1998 shooting of an 81-year-old woman, Mary Bramlett, in an unincorporated county area near Whittier.

Authorities contended Solorio was driving a car containing gang members who mistakenly shot Bramlett while she was stopped at a red light. She had been driving home with some friends after playing bridge at church.

Solorio, who said he had spent the evening with his girlfriend, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

His attorney submitted an innocence claim in 2021 to the Conviction Integrity Unit, which concluded on the basis of new evidence that Solorio had been misidentified in a photo lineup, the DA’s office statement said.

Hernandez was represented by the Juvenile Innocence and Fair Sentencing Clinic at Loyola Law School and Solorio was represented by the Northern California Innocence Project.

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Family of Los Angeles deputy killed in ambush shooting plans to sue county over forced overtime

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 07:56:56 +0000

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The parents of a Los Angeles County deputy who was shot and killed while sitting in his patrol car plan to file a lawsuit accusing the sheriff’s department and county leaders of putting law enforcement officers at risk by making them work excessive overtime because of severe understaffing, an attorney announced Tuesday.

Investigators said Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer, 30, was ambushed Sept. 16 while waiting for a traffic light to change in Palmdale, a city of more than 167,000 residents in the high desert of northern LA County.

“I don’t want any parent to ever have to sit at a Thanksgiving or holiday dinner with someone missing, like we had to this year,” the deputy’s mother, Kim Clinkunbroomer, said tearfully at a news conference.

“Had he not been fatigued and exhausted, he would have responded safely; he’d be here today,” said the deputy’s father, Michael Clinkunbroomer.

Clinkunbroomer had racked up 69 hours of overtime in the two weeks leading up to the shooting and had worked a double shift the day before, said attorney Brad Gage, who represents the slain deputy’s parents. Clinkunbroomer was so exhausted from being overworked that his senses were dulled and he missed “the telltale signs” of an impending ambush, Gage said.

Prosecutors have charged Kevin Cataneo Salazar, 29, with one count of murder, plus special circumstance allegations of murder of a peace officer, murder committed by lying in wait, murder committed by firing from a car and personal use of a firearm. Cataneo Salazar has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Gage said in a government claim filed Monday that Clinkunbroomer was forced to work up to 100 hours of overtime each month. Gage accuses Sheriff Robert Luna, department officials and county leaders of knowingly endangering the lives of law enforcement officers by enforcing excessive amounts of mandatory overtime.

The claim is the precursor to a wrongful death lawsuit and names the county sheriff’s department and Board of Supervisors. County officials have 45 days to respond to the claim before a lawsuit can be filed.

Gage said the lawsuit would seek $20 million in damages and changes to sheriff’s department staffing and scheduling policies.

In a statement Tuesday, the sheriff’s department did not comment on the potential lawsuit. Luna, who was sworn in as sheriff a year ago, has previously vowed to make increasing the number of deputies a priority.

“The senseless ambush murder of Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer was the epitome of evil and the Department continues to mourn his death. We lost a valued member of our Department family who was committed to serving our communities,” the department statement said. “The Sheriff’s Department remains committed to securing a successful prosecution against the individual responsible for Ryan’s murder. Our thoughts continue to remain with the entire Clinkunbroomer family.”

Law enforcement officers and members of the public are at risk because “fatigue resulting from these demanding work schedules impairs the deputies’ ability to stay alert and respond effectively in the line of duty,” the claim states.

“Sheriff Luna and the Board of Supervisors knew of the dangers to their employees as a result of intentionally forcing overtime, but intentionally pursued such actions in conscious disregard of the rights and safety of deputies,” Gage writes in the claim.

The Board of Supervisors did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the allegations.

“Everybody likes to work a bit of overtime, to earn a bit of extra money, but they don’t want to work so much overtime that they’re unable to take care of themselves and others,” said Gage, the family’s attorney.

The head of the deputies’ union said limited staffing is an ongoing problem in Los Angeles, but did not respond to specific questions about average overtime worked by its members.

“The department’s staffing crisis is pushing our deputies to, and sadly sometimes beyond, their limits. We need our elected officials to take a more aggressive and intelligent approach to addressing the department’s inability to recruit and retain qualified people,” said a statement from Rich Pippin, president of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. “Failure to do so can only result in more tragic outcomes, not only for our deputy sheriffs, but for the millions of people who rely on them for protection.”

The Police Executive Research Forum in Washington, D.C., tracks staffing problems at law enforcement agencies nationwide. “What you’re seeing in LA, you’re seeing across the country,” said Chuck Wexler, the forum’s executive director. “It’s a huge issue.”

Wexler said Tuesday that fewer young people want to work in law enforcement and current police officers are retiring and resigning faster than they can be replaced. The result is more overtime for officers and deputies currently on the job.

“And what you’re finding is increased overtime, for some officers, is contributing to them leaving their jobs,” Wexler said. “It’s a generational thing. Younger officers would rather have more free time than overtime.”

Prosecutors haven’t laid out a motive in the criminal case or said whether Clinkunbroomer and Cataneo Salazar previously knew each other.

Authorities said the deputy was “targeted” but would not say whether Cataneo Salazar was seeking to harm Clinkunbroomer specifically or any member of law enforcement generally.

Cataneo Salazar allegedly followed Clinkunbroomer just before 6 p.m. as he left the sheriff’s Palmdale Station, the district attorney’s office said in a September news release.

The deputy was “waiting for a red light to turn” when he was shot, Luna said at the time.

Cataneo Salazar was arrested after an hourslong standoff with sheriff’s deputies. He had barricaded himself inside his family’s Palmdale home.

His mother, Marle Salazar, told the Los Angeles Times her son was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic about five years ago. He would say he was hearing voices in his head, she said, and sometimes claimed that cars or people were following him. He twice attempted suicide and had been hospitalized at least once, she said.

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Oregon must get criminal defendants attorneys within 7 days or release them from jail, judge says

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 23:42:13 +0000

A federal judge has ordered Oregon counties to release criminal defendants from jail if they aren’t appointed an attorney within a week of their first court appearance.

The state is one of many that have struggled to ensure their public defense systems meet the requirements of the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, and Oregon has faced multiple lawsuits over the issue in recent years.

Ruling Thursday in a case filed this year by the Federal Public Defender’s Office, U.S. District Judge Michael McShane said indigent defendants are essentially being locked up and deprived of a voice simply because they are too poor to hire their own lawyer.

“While the reasons underlying the shortage of publicly funded attorneys in Oregon are complex, all parties agree that the state is facing a crisis in its constitutional mandate to provide qualified attorneys to those charged with crimes,” McShane wrote.

Fixing the problem will take systemic change and time, the judge said, “But the luxury of time, unfortunately, is not something that many petitioners have when faced with a criminal prosecution.”

Roughly 135 people were in Oregon jails without access to attorneys at the end of October, the judge said. Many of them had technically been appointed public defenders but no attorney ever actually showed up to represent them. State laws generally require that criminal defendants have their first court appearance within 36 hours of being arrested, though that time frame doesn’t include weekends.

The ruling will go into effect Nov. 16.

Judges in Multnomah County, which is home to Portland, routinely dismiss cases due to a lack of defense attorneys. More than 300 cases, most of them felonies, were dismissed in 2022.

The county’s top prosecutor, Mike Schmidt, has called the shortage “an urgent threat to public safety” and said 10 cases were dismissed between Oct. 20 and Nov. 2.

Public defenders say uncompetitive pay, high stress and overwhelming caseloads affect staffing levels, and the state has historically relied on a contracting system that made it difficult to track which attorneys are assigned to which cases. Lawmakers passed a public defense reform bill earlier this year, but the reforms will take time to implement.

The U.S. Constitution says people charged with a crime have a right to an attorney, but it’s up to states to decide how to make sure that happens. States have carried out that constitutional mandate with varying degrees of success.

“America’s dirty little secret is that thousands of people go to jail every single day in our country without ever having spoken to an attorney,” said David Carroll, executive director and founder of the Sixth Amendment Center, which advocates for equal access in the criminal justice system.

Earlier this year the Mississippi Supreme Court changed that state’s rules so that poor criminal defendants must be appointed an attorney before they are indicted. The indictment process in Mississippi can sometimes take a year or more, forcing indigent criminal defendants to spend months or longer in jail without anyone to fight for their legal rights, Carroll said.

But Mississippi, like most states, lacks enforcement mechanisms to make sure the criminal defense requirements are actually followed, Carroll said.

The lack of enforcement mechanisms means improvements are sometimes forced by lawsuits rather than legislation.

In August the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine obtained a settlement over the failure of that state’s public defender system with a state agency’s commitment to press for more funding, additional public defender offices and other improvements.

A 2004 ruling in a Missouri state court took action similar to this week’s Oregon ruling, ordering that indigent inmates could not be held in lieu of bail for more than seven days without an attorney. But civil rights advocates said the problems continued, and additional lawsuits were filed in 2017 and 2020. In February of this year, a state judge ordered that poor defendants facing imprisonment must be provided a public defender no later than two weeks after they qualify for representation.

Idaho has also faced lawsuits over its patchwork public defense system, which has been plagued by high caseloads and long waits for representation. In 2022 the Idaho Legislature passed a bill shifting the cost of public defense services from the counties to the state starting in 2025.

The ACLU of Idaho, which has brought a class-action lawsuit against the state, has said the new funding scheme still falls sort. A trial in the case is set for February.

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GOP lawmakers clash with Attorney General Garland over Hunter Biden investigation | News

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 16:15:38 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans clashed with attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday, accusing him and the Justice Department of the “weaponization” of the the department’s work in favor of President Joe Biden ‘s son Hunter.

Garland’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee was the first in two years and came at an unprecedented moment in the department’s history: He’s overseeing two cases against Donald Trump, the first former president to face criminal charges, and another against the sitting president’s son, Hunter Biden.

Republicans on the committee — led by Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman — came out of the gate with accusations that the Justice Department is protecting the Biden family, while targeting his opponent, Trump.

“There’s one investigation protecting President Biden. There’s another one attacking President Trump,” Jordan, Republican of Ohio, said in his opening statement. “The Justice Department’s got both sides of the equation covered.”

Garland defended the country’s largest law enforcement agency — more than 115,000 employees — at a time when political and physical threats against agents and their families are on the rise.

“Our job is not to take orders from the president, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” the attorney general said.

He added, “I am not the president’s lawyer. I will also add that I am not Congress’s prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people.”

Early in the hearing, Republican Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana asked Garland whether he had talked with anyone at FBI headquarters about the Hunter Biden investigation. The attorney general’s response began with a long pause before he said: “I don’t recollect the answer to that question,” later adding “I don’t believe that I did.”

Garland then said repeatedly that he purposely kept the details of the investigation at arms length, to keep a promise not to interfere.

Democrats sought to focus on other criminal-justice issues, including domestic terrorism, hate crimes and gun violence. Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the committee, decried what he called Republicans’ focus on “long discredited conspiracy theories” about Hunter Biden and a laptop said to have belonged to him.

“That is their goal. They want to divide this country and make our government appear like it’s broken,” Nadler said.

The Democrats labored to undermine what they see as Republican misinformation in their ongoing defense of Trump, who is now the Republican front-runner to challenge Biden in next year’s election. They say Republicans are trying to detract attention from the indicted former president’s legal challenges and turn a negative spotlight on Biden.

Garland’s testimony also comes just over a week after Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., launched an impeachment inquiry into his boss, Biden, with a special focus on the Justice Department’s handling of Hunter Biden’s yearslong case.

The White House has dismissed the impeachment inquiry as baseless and worked to focus the conversation on policy instead. Hunter Biden’s legal team, on the other hand, has gone on the offensive against GOP critics, most recently filing suit against the Internal Revenue Service after two of its agents raised whistleblower claims to Congress about the handling of the investigation.

Republicans contend that the Justice Department — both under Trump and now Biden — has failed to fully probe the allegations against the younger Biden, ranging from his work on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma to his tax filings in California and Washington D.C.

An investigation into Hunter Biden had been run by the U.S. attorney for Delaware, Trump appointee David Weiss, who Garland had kept on to finish the probe and insulate it from claims of political interference. Garland granted Weiss special counsel status last month, giving him broad authority to investigate and report his findings.

Asked by Republican Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina whether he had tried to figure out if Weiss was facing any hurdles in bringing charges against the president’s son, Garland said he had purposely kept his distance to keep a promise not to interfere.

“The way to not interfere was to not investigate an investigation,” Garland said.

Weiss, since 2018, oversees the day-to-day running of the probe and another special counsel, Jack Smith, is in charge of the Trump investigation, though Garland retains final say on both as attorney general.

Last week, Weiss used that new authority to indict Hunter Biden on federal firearms charges, putting the case on track toward a possible trial as the 2024 election looms.

The Republican chairmen of the Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees launched an investigation into Weiss’ handling of the case, which was first opened in 2018 after two IRS agents claimed in congressional testimony in May that the Justice Department improperly interfered with their work.

Gary Shapley, a veteran IRS agent assigned to the case, testified to Congress that Weiss said in October 2022 that he was not the “deciding person whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden. That testimony has been disputed by two FBI agents also in that meeting who told lawmakers that they have no recollection of Weiss saying that.

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PEGASYSTEMS INVESTIGATION INITIATED BY FORMER LOUISIANA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Kahn Swick & … | News

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Sat, 26 Aug 2023 14:04:46 +0000

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 25, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Former attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., Esq., a partner at the law firm of Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC (“KSF”), announces that KSF has commenced an investigation into Pegasystems Inc. (NasdaqGS: PEGA).

On May 9, 2022, the Company disclosed that a Virginia state court jury deliberating over a lawsuit brought by one of its principal competitors, Appian Corporation (“Appian”), for stealing its trade secrets and violating the commonwealth’s computer crime law had awarded Appian more than $2 billion for the Company’s “willful and malicious” trade secret misappropriation.

The Company was subsequently sued in a securities class action lawsuit alleging that the Company’s senior executives and employees participated in a conspiracy to misappropriate Appian trade secrets in order to enhance its products and win business over Appian, deceived investors when it promised to “[n]ever use illegal or questionable means to acquire a competitor’s trade secrets or other confidential information,” and encouraged and rewarded the participants with cash bonuses. Recently, the court presiding over that case denied the Company’s motion to dismiss, allowing the case to move forward.

KSF’s investigation is focusing on whether Pegasystems’ officers and/or directors breached their fiduciary duties to its shareholders or otherwise violated state or federal laws.

If you have information that would assist KSF in its investigation, or have been a long-term holder of Pegasystems shares and would like to discuss your legal rights, you may, without obligation or cost to you, call toll-free at 1-833-938-0905 or email KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nasdaqgs-pega/ to learn more.

About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is one of the nation’s premier boutique securities litigation law firms. KSF serves a variety of clients – including public institutional investors, hedge funds, money managers and retail investors – in seeking recoveries for investment losses emanating from corporate fraud or malfeasance by publicly traded companies. KSF has offices in New York, California, Louisiana and New Jersey.

To learn more about KSF, you may visit ksfcounsel.com.

Contact:

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

Lewis Kahn, Managing Partner

lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com

1-877-515-1850

1100 Poydras St., Suite 960

New Orleans, LA 70163

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The post PEGASYSTEMS INVESTIGATION INITIATED BY FORMER LOUISIANA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Kahn Swick & … | News appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.

Attorneys for Jennings man on death row ask Supreme Court to postpone execution

attorneylegalcounsel99 — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 13:17:31 +0000

By JIM SALTER
Associated Press

ST. LOUIS — The attorney for a Missouri man facing lethal injection next week said Tuesday that he will ask the state Supreme Court to postpone the execution by three or four months to allow more time to investigate his innocence claim.

Leonard Taylor, 58, faces execution Feb. 7 for the deaths of his girlfriend and her three children in suburban St. Louis in 2004. attorney Kent Gipson had asked St. Louis County Prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing on Taylor’s claim that he was out of state when the killings occurred, but Bell on Monday said he wouldn’t file such a motion.

Bell on Tuesday sent a letter to the Supreme Court in support of postponing Taylor’s execution to allow time for “additional review” of the victims’ times of death.

Gipson said he would ask the Missouri Supreme Court to postpone the execution date by 90 to 120 days so that experts can seek to determine how long the victims were dead before their bodies were found — a question at the heart of the case.

Taylor had an extensive criminal record and was the live-in boyfriend of Angela Rowe. Her relatives had not heard from her for several days and asked police to go to her home in Jennings. On Dec. 3, 2004, officers found the bodies of Rowe, her 10-year-old daughter Alexus Conley, 6-year-old daughter AcQreya Conley and 5-year-old son Tyrese Conley.

All four had been shot to death. Taylor was arrested days later in Kentucky.

What remains unknown is precisely when the victims were killed. That’s key to Taylor’s innocence claim as he boarded a flight to California on Nov. 26, 2004 — eight days before the discovery of the bodies.

Gipson said authorities first believed the killings happened only a few days before the bodies were found, at the time when Taylor was in California. But at Taylor’s trial, medical examiner Phillip Burch said the killings could have happened two or three weeks before the discovery of the bodies.

“Several of (Rowe’s) family members and a neighbor who had no reason to lie at all saw her alive after Leonard left town,” Gipson said.

Meanwhile, Taylor’s adult daughter, Deja Taylor, claimed in a recent court filing that she and her father called Angela Rowe during his visit to California. Deja Taylor said she spoke with Rowe and one of the children. The court filing said Deja Taylor’s mother and sister corroborated her story.

The execution would be the third in Missouri in three months, all involving cases out of St. Louis County. Kevin Johnson was executed in November for killing a police officer in 2005. Amber McLaughlin was put to death Jan. 3 for killing a woman in 2003. It was believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S.

The Post-Dispatch contributed to this story.

The first recorded use of the death penalty in Missouri was in 1810.

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The post Attorneys for Jennings man on death row ask Supreme Court to postpone execution appeared first on Attorney Legal Counsel.