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#Police Misconduct Attorneys New York
mariacallous · 8 months
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Beaten, blinded by pepper spray, corralled like animals, and indiscriminately arrested for marching against police violence and racial injustice. Such was the fate hundreds of people suffered at the hands of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers in late May and early June of 2020, as thousands of people across the United States protested the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Three years later, the City of New York has agreed to pay $9,950 each to some 1,380 protesters as part of a settlement of a class action lawsuit. Costing taxpayers more than $13 million, it’s the largest amount paid to protesters in US history, according to the protesters' legal team.
Lawyers secured the settlement with the aid of a little-known tool that helped them quickly categorize and analyze terabytes of video footage from police body cams, helicopter surveillance, and social media. “We had multiple weeks of protests. We had protests spanning the city of New York. We had thousands of arrests,” says David Rankin, a partner at the law firm Beldock, Levine & Hoffman who was part of the protesters’ legal team. “We had tens of thousands of hours of body cam footage, we had text messages, we had emails, we had just an absolute truckload of data to get through.”
The path through all this data was carved by Codec, a video categorization tool developed by the civil liberties-focused design agency SITU Research. Launched in June 2022, the tool is proving essential in legal battles around the world, where hours of disparate video footage can reveal orchestrated, state-backed violence against protesters.
Clip by Clip
Dozens of videos shared with WIRED show how the legal team built their case. Using this data, which also included geospatial information, time stamps, and the category of the alleged misconduct, we were able to build a map that allows anyone to watch the police incidents that were central to the lawsuit. Each dot represents an incident the legal team characterized as police misconduct. Of the 72 videos the legal team flagged as most pertinent to their case, the map includes 47 videos recorded by police body cams or surveillance cameras. The locations of the remaining 25 videos, which appear to have been taken from social media and other sources, are also pinpointed on the map. In total, the legal team analyzed more than 6,300 videos. 
Some of the videos on the map contain graphic violence, and viewer discretion is advised. Videos will autoplay with the sound on.
Among the videos we reviewed, an NYPD officer can be seen running down the sidewalk while pepper-spraying a person who’s standing against a building, entirely out of the officer’s way. In another video, an officer hits a protester with a car door while driving down the street. Another video shows a group of officers interlocking arms as one of them says, “Just like we fucking practiced.” The officers then charge a group of protesters before singling out a person on the sidewalk and beating them with batons. Taken together, the footage demonstrates widespread, systematic police misconduct during protests that spanned from May 28 to June 4, 2020, across multiple neighborhoods in New York City, according to the lawsuit.
While looting and vandalism took place in several neighborhoods during the protests, the demonstrations were largely peaceful. The defendants in the lawsuit have not admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and city attorneys deny an orchestrated effort to violate protesters’ rights. Reached for comment, the NYPD referred WIRED to the city’s Law Department, which has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Remy Green, a partner at Cohen & Green and a member of the protesters’ legal team, says the use of police body cameras, which have been touted as a step in the right direction for civil liberties, has become “a kind of band-aid solution to police brutality.” A single video can only reveal so much, Green says, and police departments can use this limitation to obfuscate what really happened. Protests that are met with an extreme police response require a zoomed-out vantage point, which is what Codec allowed the legal team to create. “It gives you a much more comprehensive look at the activities that occurred,” says Green.
Hard Pivot
The idea of using Codec in the lawsuit came from a related case settled earlier this year. Here, Human Rights Watch worked with SITU Research to analyze video footage of protests in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx, one of New York City’s five boroughs. Their work proved that the NYPD used an anti-protest tactic called “kettling”—trapping a group of people so they can’t escape—just prior to a government-mandated curfew, thus ensuring that they were in violation of the order. In March, a lawsuit against the city over the NYPD’s use of kettling ended in a $21,500 payout to each of more than 300 Mott Haven protesters, which is estimated to be the highest per-person settlement for a mass arrest in US history. The NYPD said in a statement following the settlement that it has since “re-envisioned” its “policies and training for policing large-scale demonstrations.”
Having seen the forensic video investigation SITU’s work on the Mott Haven protests produced, Rankin asked for help conducting a similar investigation. But this time it wouldn’t focus on police conduct during a single protest in one neighborhood, but rather protests across New York City.
Now an open source tool that’s free to use, Codec was first built for internal use only, according to Brad Samuels, a founding partner of SITU who oversees its research division. Codec categorizes video files using a range of criteria, including the location where a video was taken and the time and date it was recorded. Analysts can add their own parameters, such as whether a video shows police use of pepper spray, which enables them to more easily pinpoint clips that are relevant to an investigation.
Early on, the SITU team focused on international incidents, such as the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine and a 2019 uprising in Iraq in which security forces fired military-grade tear gas canisters directly at protesters’ heads. After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the US-based SITU team “pivoted hard” to investigate domestic incidents. The agency’s focus on the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that followed resulted in investigations into police misconduct in Portland, Oregon, and Charlotte, North Carolina. Investigations in Mott Haven and across New York City are the latest to join that list.
The legal team behind the New York City-wide lawsuit, which operated through the National Lawyers Guild, a civil rights-focused nonprofit, obtained thousands of videos from the NYPD, the city, and social media feeds, most of which were unpublished until this week. Using Codec, analysts pinpointed four broad categories of what the legal team characterized as police misconduct: improper arrests, improper use of pepper spray, improper baton strikes, and excessive force.
While Codec greatly enhanced the legal team’s ability to analyze thousands of videos, it still took “a lot of human hours” to make the data usable and identify specific moments that were useful for their case, Rankin says. This included identifying the location of specific police interactions, categorizing the alleged misconduct, and adding accurate time stamps—all of which require ample hours of human work to complete, even with Codec’s help.
In future cases that require high-volume video analysis, however, that job may become easier. Samuels says the SITU team is currently working to add layers of machine learning and computer vision to Codec. He hopes that by next year the system can be tasked with, for example, detecting batons in footage—something that is currently done manually.
Widespread protests like those that took place in 2020 don’t often happen in the US. And Rankin points out that cases like the one settled this week are rare. But Green says they’re not nearly rare enough. “Our role as civil rights attorneys, I like to think, is to attempt to put ourselves out of a job,” Green says. “This settlement marks a high-water mark in terms of financial accountability, but I don’t see myself losing my job anytime soon.”
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cogitoergofun · 8 months
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The one-time head of security for former mayor Bill de Blasio pleaded guilty in Manhattan on Wednesday to deleting text messages and refusing to give investigators his cellphone during a probe into Mr. de Blasio’s misuse of city funds.
Howard Redmond, who as an inspector led the New York Police Department’s Executive Protection Unit, had tried to keep the device from the Department of Investigation, which were conducting the probe.
Mr. Redmond, 58, who had been charged by the Manhattan district attorney, pleaded guilty to two felony counts of tampering with physical evidence. He also pleaded guilty to two counts of official misconduct and two counts of obstructing governmental administration, both misdemeanor charges.
“Inspector Redmond engaged in a clear and brazen pattern of obstruction and tampering,” Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said in a statement. “Position and rank do not exempt anyone from cooperating and participating with a law enforcement investigation.”
The political and personal services rendered by Mr. Redmond’s unit were detailed in a Department of Investigation report in 2021 when Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, had just three months left in office. At the time, Mr. de Blasio, who also had flirted with presidential politics, was considering a run for governor. During his two terms as mayor, he had faced several investigations into his fund-raising. Prosecutors in 2017 raised concerns about his practices, but did not bring criminal charges.
Mr. Redmond, whose unit was assigned to protect the mayor, also became a target for investigators. As part of his plea deal, he had to provide proof that he had left the Police Department, Samantha Dworken, an assistant district attorney, said in court.
“He did not resign or retire, he was fired. The defendant’s obstructive conduct in this case ended his career,” Ms. Dworken said.
He ignored requests from Police Department lawyers and flouted the oversight authority of the watchdog Department of Investigation, she added, calling him “evasive.”
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Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says he's got a plan to keep former President Donald Trump from being prosecuted after being indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan on Thursday — assaulting a police officer and engaging in robbery.
"How can President Trump avoid prosecution in New York?," asked Graham on Twitter. "On the way to the DA's office on Tuesday, Trump should smash some windows, rob a few shops and punch a cop."
The senator added: "He would be released IMMEDIATELY!"
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Graham, a close Trump ally and one of just five senators who've publicly endorsed the former president's 2024 campaign, appeared to be making a joke playing off conservative critiques of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's record on crime in the city.
As they've rushed to Trump's defense amid a grand jury indictment in Bragg's probe into Trump's handling of a "hush money" payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels, many Republicans have argued that Bragg has not done enough to prosecute other crimes in the city and should shift his focus.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in a tweet criticizing Bragg, said the DA "routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public."
And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a potential rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — said that Bragg "consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and to excuse criminal misconduct. Yet, now he is stretching the law to target a political opponent."
A progressive prosecutor, Bragg has come under fire for emphasizing criminal justice reform and seeking to reduce incarceration. Most controversially, he issued a "Day One memo" instructing prosecutors to only pursue jail time for the most violent offenses, which he later walked back.
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reasoningdaily · 1 year
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Los Angeles Times: Op-Ed: How can we get justice for Tyre Nichols and other victims of police brutality?
On Jan. 7, Memphis police officers stopped 29-year-old Tyre Nichols for a traffic violation and then beat him so viciously that they broke his neck and sent him into cardiac arrest.
Nichols died three days later. Memphis, Tenn., Police Chief Cerelyn Davis has called the beating “heinous, reckless, and inhumane” and fired the five officers involved. On Thursday, the district attorney announced that the officers had been arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Late Friday, the city released video footage of the horrific beating.
Less than three years after George Floyd was murdered, there are hauntingly familiar calls for justice for Tyre Nichols. We have been here far too many times before.
Reports of people beaten and killed by police have periodically put the failures of our criminal justice system on the front pages of newspapers. In response, legislative committees have held hearings. Reports have been issued, documenting racist policing, unlawful arrests and excessive force. Reforms have been put into place. Then, invariably, the country’s attention has been drawn elsewhere and the conversation has gone quiet.
When the world watched Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murder Floyd, the conversation began anew. In some ways, it felt different this time around. Police chiefs around the country immediately and unequivocally condemned Floyd’s killing. Protests were larger and more racially diverse than ever before. Important reforms got traction at the federal, state and local levels.
But then the nation’s sense of urgency began to slip: Protests died down; proposed reforms were voted down; Black Lives Matter murals painted in bright colors on city streets began to fade. Despite unprecedented attention paid to police misconduct and violence in 2020, police killed more people in 2022 than they had in any year since experts began tracking these killings. Now we are poised for yet another painful reckoning.
In the weeks after Floyd was murdered, calls for reform focused on ending a legal protection for police called “qualified immunity.” Officers are entitled to qualified immunity — which shields them from liability in civil cases — even if they have violated the Constitution, so long as they have not violated “clearly established law.”
The Supreme Court has defined clearly established law in such a narrow way that officers have been granted qualified immunity even when they have stolen more than $225,000 during a search, used a police dog to assault a man who had surrendered and sat on a man’s neck and back until he died. Although some large cities and counties pay tens of millions each year to resolve misconduct lawsuits against their officers, these and many other horrific cases have been dismissed on qualified immunity grounds.
After Floyd’s murder, Congress and many states took up legislation that would in effect end qualified immunity. But union officials and other defenders of the status quo argued passionately against them, claiming that police officers and local governments would be bankrupted for reasonable mistakes without qualified immunity.
There is no evidence to support such claims. Officers wouldn’t be bankrupted without qualified immunity; local governments almost always pick up the tab when their officers are sued and these payouts amount to less than 1% of most governments’ budgets. And the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 4th Amendment further shields officers from liability when they make reasonable mistakes. But, in many places, the fears stoked by opponents of these reform bills have proved more powerful than facts on the ground.
Currently, several states, including New York, Washington and New Hampshire, have reintroduced police reform bills. I testified in favor of Washington’s bill earlier this week and listened as opponents of the bill raised the very same groundless concerns that have led to other bills’ defeat.
The killing of Tyre Nichols should serve as a reminder of what is at stake in the continuing debate about police violence and reform. It’s not the phantom menace of more lawsuits against the police, but how our society allows these horrible injustices to happen again and again and what we owe to victims of government misconduct and abuse.
Ending qualified immunity won’t end all the problems in policing — far from it. There are many other legal protections shielding law enforcement officers from justice in the courts and from discipline and termination by their departments.
We also need to ask broader questions about what we empower police to do, and how to restore trust between law enforcement and communities they serve. But for now, eliminating qualified immunity is an important first step, given the egregious misconduct it protects.
I’d hoped that we wouldn’t have to see another killing on a viral video to restart the national conversation about police reform. Yet here we are. This time, we must focus on facts, not fear-mongering.
Myths about the dangers of making it too easy to sue police have made a mess of our system. We need a shared understanding of why officers must be held accountable for their actions, and a commitment to end senseless legal protections that embolden police and leave victims without a meaningful remedy.
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beardedmrbean · 2 years
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Anchorage, Alaska -- An Alaskan woman, who is facing murder charges in the brutal slayings of two men, told the cops she always wanted to be a serial killer.
Brianna Star Wassillie, 24, is facing murder charges for strangling two victims, Gregory Pitka, 34, and Travis Sheldon, 36, on July 3 in the Sand Lake neighborhood, Anchorage Daily News reported. The police complaint said Brianna strangled one of her victims with the strings of his own hoodie. 
Brianna met Pitka in a parking lot and asked him to steal alcohol for her. When Pitka refused, Brianna allegedly beat him up and left. After a while, she returned to the scene and choked him to death before sexually assaulting his lifeless body. She then covered his body with a blanket and left the scene, the complaint stated.
The woman met Sheldon, her second victim, the same day. Brianna shared a beer with Sheldon in the woods before strangling him.
“For apparently no reason, she decides to strangle him, as well,” Curci said during the court hearing held Tuesday. “And when Travis Sheldon lost consciousness, the defendant picked up a rock — in her own words, ‘to get it done.’ She hit him on the head with a rock several times and Travis Sheldon died.”
Investigators found the bodies, and eventually tied Wassillie to the two murders after finding a letter along with an ID that belonged to Pitka.
The homeless woman has no prior criminal history, but admitted she wanted to be a serial killer right from when she was a child, a prosecutor said in the court session.
The court heard Wassillie admitted to killing several animals in the past as part of her journey to becoming a murderer.
“…She had repeatedly wondered what it would be like to take a life,” Anchorage Assistant District Attorney Alice Curci said during the court hearing, according to the New York Post.
“She admitted to killing several animals over the years — torturing them and taking videos of this,” the prosecutor added.
Officials said Wassillie had written about killing and sexually assaulting a man in the letter.
While speaking to cops, Wassillie admitted to the two killings, which Curci described as “entirely senseless” murders.
Wassillie “is an absolute danger to the community,” Curci said at the hearing.
The woman is being held at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River on two charges of first-degree murder and one misdemeanor count of misconduct involving a corpse.
A judge set her bail at $500,000 cash performance and $500,000 cash appearance.
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bllsbailey · 1 month
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Fani Willis’ Ex-Black Panther Father Testifies In Defense Of Daughter’s Relationship With Prosecutor
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John Floyd, father of Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis, speaks at the witness stand during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald John Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse on February 16, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. Judge Scott McAfee is hearing testimony as to whether DA Fani Willis and Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade should be disqualified from the case for allegedly lying about a personal relationship.
At a hearing on Friday, the father of Fani Willis—the lead prosecutor in the Georgia election case against 45th President Donald Trump—was asked to give a statement.
According to newly released recordings, John C. Floyd III, the father of the Georgia district attorney, was a well-known Black Panther who referred to the police as the “enemy.”
Academic scholars were informed by Floyd that, during the 1960s, he saw the police in his hometown of Los Angeles as an “occupying army” and “nothing but trouble.”
80-year-old Floyd had also previously referred to a well-known White politician of the time, Jesse M. Unruh, as a “Texas cracker.” Additionally, he implied that he was a believer in the conspiracy that claims that the CIA killed Malcolm X, according to The New York Post.
According to Willis, who purportedly speaks with her father “up to ten times a day,” his principles still serve as a source of guidance for her. Although, she avoided talking specifically about his time as a Black Panther.
As a judge considered whether Willis should be dismissed in the case for her clear misconduct, he was questioned over his daughter’s relationship with the special prosecutor that she assigned to the case. However, according to John Floyd, his daughter did not date Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor, but rather a “disc jockey” between 2019 and 2020.
He also said that she was forced to leave her home in 2021 as a result of threats from the disc jockey.
Mike Roman, one of Donald Trump’s several co-defendants in the case, has claimed that Willis profited monetarily from her association with Wade, in addition to keeping their secret romance hidden from colleagues.
To ascertain the veracity of such claims and whether they constitute misconduct, the court in the case has heard testimony regarding the relationship in detail for two days, including topics such as how Willis celebrated her 50th birthday and her “refusal to accept checks.”
In the event that Roman’s assertions are supported by the evidence, Judge Scott McAfee has stated that he may remove Willis from the Trump case. Her removal would most likely force the prosecution of Trump to be delayed for months at the very least, potentially until after November’s presidential election, where he is assumed to be the 2024 Republican nominee.
This is because a new team would have to take over the case.
Following his daughter’s emotionally combative testimony on the stand for most of Thursday, Floyd gave his testimony on Friday morning.
He stated in the Fulton County courthouse that he would “sometimes every day” visit her lover, the disc jockey. He remembered cleaning up after him, who he said would leave music “paraphernalia” all over his daughter’s house.
Floyd also said that from December 2019 to December 2022, he resided at Willis’s residence in south Fulton County. He maintained to the attorneys that, up until 2023, he had never met Wade.
“I just found out when other folks found out,” Floyd said.
Floyd’s testimony differed from the testimony made on Thursday by Willis’s former coworker and friend, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, who claimed that their relationship began prior to the Trump case in 2019. Yeartie said in court that she had “no doubt” the couple’s relationship began in 2019, having personally seen them “hugging and kissing” years earlier.
In order to determine the extent to which the connection impacted the case, the chronology is crucial. Following a multi-year investigation, Willis accused Trump and eighteen co-defendants in August 2023 of plotting to have the Georgia results of the 2020 election thrown out.
In November 2021, the same year she was appointed chief prosecutor of the county, she appointed Wade as a special prosecutor on the case.
Attorneys have claimed that Wade covered her travel costs for opulent trips, such as those to Belize and Aruba.
Early in February, Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade admitted their close connection, but they refuted any conflict of interest or improper financial behavior.
According to Willis, she used cash that was held in her house to reimburse Wade for vacation costs. Floyd told the court that he also kept cash on hand in his house, noting that this was “common among Black households.”
Attorneys attempting to remove Willis from office frequently questioned him about his time living at her house.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 16, 2024
🚨NEW: This is a clip of Fani Willis from 2020 where she says she would fire any employee who sleeps with a co-worker, promises to not date “anybody that works under me,” and said it would be “unfortunate” if taxpayers had to fund sex misconduct lawsuits pic.twitter.com/tEUTM8DVEJ— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 19, 2024
SEE IT: Fani Willis refuses to hand over her records, claiming, “I am not on trial for trying to steal an election, like these people are.” WATCH pic.twitter.com/RNRRXfAxSQ— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) February 15, 2024
Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts
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cygexcen · 2 months
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Unsealed court records offer new detail on old sex abuse allegations against Jeffrey Epstein
NEW YORK (AP) — Amid great hype, a new batch of previously secret court documents was unsealed late Wednesday related to Jeffrey Epstein, the jet-setting financier who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.#Epstein  #EpsteinList #Epsteinadasi #EpsteinClientList EpsteinIsland EpsteinFiles EpsteinDocs
Social media has been rife in recent weeks with posts speculating the documents amounted to a list of rich and powerful men who were Epstein’s “clients” or “co-conspirators.”
There was no such list. The first 40 documents in the court-ordered release largely consisted of already public material revealed through nearly two decades of newspaper stories, TV documentaries, interviews, legal cases and books about the Epstein scandal.
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Still, the records — including transcripts of interviews with some of Epstein’s victims and old police reports — contained reminders that the millionaire surrounded himself with famous and powerful figures, including a few who have also been accused of misconduct.
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There were mentions of Epstein’s past friendship with Bill Clinton — who is not accused of any wrongdoing — and of Britain’s Prince Andrew, who previously settled a lawsuit accusing him of having sex with a 17-year-old girl who traveled with Epstein.
Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg testified in a newly released deposition that she once met Michael Jackson at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, home, but that nothing untoward happened with the late pop icon.
The documents being unsealed are related to a lawsuit filed in 2015 by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre. She is one of dozens of women who sued Epstein for abusing them at his homes in Florida, New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands and New Mexico. This suit was against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who is now serving a 20-year prison term for helping recruit and abuse his victims.
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Giuffre’s lawsuit was settled in 2017, but the court had kept some documents blacked-out or sealed because of concerns about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and others whose names had come up during the legal battle. More documents were to be released in coming days.
Among newly unsealed records were court memos in which Giuffre’s lawyers complained that some women who had worked for Epstein were proving difficult to serve with subpoenas, as was Epstein himself. Two of those women had invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when questioned in other lawsuits about whether they had helped procure young women for Epstein to abuse.
Maxwell, in her deposition, chaffed at being asked about Giuffre’s allegations that she had arranged for her to have sexual encounters with Prince Andrew. She also reacted angrily to being asked about whether she had purchased sex toys or revealing outfits, or seen young, topless women at Epstein’s home.
One former member of Epstein’s domestic staff said in a deposition that he felt uncomfortable with the number of young women showing up at the house, and felt threatened by Maxwell to stay quiet.
Other documents included legal arguments over whether Giuffre should be allowed more time to depose potential witnesses, including Clinton. Giuffre never alleged he was involved in illegal behavior, but her attorneys said the former president was a “key person who can provide information about his close relationship” with Maxwell and Epstein.
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Maxwell’s attorneys countered that Clinton testimony was not relevant.
The records included depositions of several Epstein victims, many of whom have told their stories publicly previously.
In her May 2016 deposition, Sjoberg described going to a dinner at one of Epstein’s homes also attended by magician David Copperfield.
She said Copperfield did magic tricks before asking if she was aware “that girls were getting paid to find other girls.” One of the key allegations against Epstein and Maxwell was that some of the girls he paid for sex acts then acted as recruiters to find him other victims. Sjoberg said Copperfield didn’t get more specific about what he meant.
A publicist for Copperfield did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
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Sjoberg also shed new light on an April 2001 trip to New York in which she said Prince Andrew touched her breast while they posed for a photo at Epstein’s Manhattan town house.
In the testimony, some of which appeared as excerpts in previous court filings, Sjoberg said she and Giuffre had flown with Epstein to New York on his private jet. Maxwell and Prince Andrew met them there.
At one point, she testified, Maxwell called her to an upstairs closet where they pulled out a puppet of Prince Andrew that had been made for a television program.
“It looked like him,” Sjoberg said. “And she brought it down and presented it to him; and that was a great joke, because apparently it was a production from a show on BBC.”
“And they decided to take a picture with it, in which Virginia and Andrew sat on a couch. They put the puppet on Virginia’s lap, and I sat on Andrew’s lap, and they put the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took a photo.”
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On the way to New York, Sjoberg testified, Epstein’s jet diverted to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and spent a few hours at one of Donald Trump’s casinos, because of bad weather.
Upon hearing the change of plans, Sjoberg recalled Epstein saying, “Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to” the casino. Sjoberg wasn’t asked if they’d met up with Trump that night. Later in her testimony, she said she was never asked to give Trump a massage.
Sjoberg also testified that though she never met Clinton, Epstein once remarked to her that “Clinton likes them young,” a remark she took as a reference to young women or girls.
Clinton has previously said through a spokesperson that while he traveled on Epstein’s jet several times, he never visited his homes, had no knowledge of his crimes, and hadn’t spoken to him since his conviction. Trump has also said that he once thought Epstein was a “terrific guy,” but that they later had a falling out.
In her deposition, Giuffre said the summer she turned 17, she was lured away from a job as a spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to become a “masseuse” for Epstein — a job that involved performing sexual acts.
She settled a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2022 in which she claimed he had sexually abused her during a trip to London. That same year, Giuffre withdrew an accusation she had made against Epstein’s former attorney, law professor Alan Dershowitz, saying she “ may have made a mistake ” in identifying him as an abuser.
The records released Wednesday included many references to Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent close to Epstein who was awaiting trial on charges that he raped underage girls when he killed himself in a Paris jail in 2022. Giuffre was among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse.
Clinton’s name also came up because Giuffre was questioned by Maxwell’s lawyers about inaccuracies in newspaper reports about her time with Epstein, including a story quoting her as saying she had ridden in a helicopter with Clinton and flirted with Trump. Giuffre said neither of those things actually happened.
The judge said a handful of names should remain blacked out in the documents because they would identify people who were sexually abused. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they decide to tell their stories publicly, as Giuffre and Sjoberg have done.
Even before the documents were released, misinformation about what was in them abounded. Social media users wrongly claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s name might appear in the documents, spurred by a crack New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers made Tuesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.”
Kimmel said in a response on X that he had never met Epstein and that Rodgers’ “reckless words put my family in danger.”
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Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. Larry Neumeister in New York contributed.
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xxxjarchiexxx · 4 months
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A woman who was charged with murdering her husband in 2020 sued the New York City Police Department, alleging that police officers fabricated the confession that was the basis of the case against her. The federal civil rights lawsuit also alleges that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office obtained a search warrant for an email account she created to draw attention to her case — and never disclosed it, as required by law.  Prosecutors dropped their case against Tracy McCarter last December, citing insufficient evidence. In the lawsuit, which was filed on November 2 in the Southern District of New York, McCarter said she had “sustained serious physical and psychological harm as a result of being wrongfully arrested, charged, imprisoned, searched, and prosecuted.”  The lawsuit names four NYPD officers who were involved with the arrest and one investigator from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office who worked on the case. All four of the police officers have previously faced civilian complaints of misconduct, though such allegations are famously hard to prove. A spokesperson for the NYPD declined to comment on whether any of the officers are being investigated in relation to McCarter’s case, citing the pending litigation. The district attorney’s office declined to comment on the allegation involving the undisclosed search warrant. 
30 November 2023
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danackmanlaw · 6 months
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mariacallous · 1 year
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New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Wednesday secured a $30.5 million payment from CBS after she accused the media company of attempting cover up incidents of sexual harassment from former CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves.
In a 37-page report, James said CBS executives worked to conceal facts from shareholders and the public that would pose a risk to Moonves and the company, including through an attempted cover-up of a 2017 sexual assault report filed with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
Moonves resigned as the head of CBS in 2018 after facing a slew of sexual harassment and physical and sexual assault allegations from at least 12 women.
James said in addition to attempting to cover up multiple instances of sexual misconduct, at least one CBS executive, former Chief Communications Officer Gil Schwartz, sold millions of dollars of company stock before the allegations became public, violating New York’s laws on insider trading.
“CBS and Leslie Moonves’ attempts to silence victims, lie to the public, and mislead investors can only be described as reprehensible,” the attorney general said in a statement. “As a publicly traded company, CBS failed its most basic duty to be honest and transparent with the public and investors.”
“Today’s action should send a strong message to companies across New York that profiting off injustice will not be tolerated and those who violate the law will be held accountable,” she added.
CBS will pay $28 million to the state, with $22 million of that going to CBS shareholders and the additional $6 million going toward bolstering the reporting and investigating process for complaints of sexual harassment and assault.
Moonves will pay $2.5 million, which will go toward CBS shareholders.
CBS, which is now owned by Paramount Global and is based in New York, will also have to reform human resources practices around sexual harassment and provide biannual reports to the New York Office of the Attorney General (OAG).
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, a spokesperson for Paramount said “We are pleased to have reached an agreement in principle to resolve this matter concerning events from 2018 with the New York Attorney General’s Office, without any admission of liability or wrongdoing.” 
According to the OAG report, the 2017 confidential sexual harassment report filed with the LAPD involved an attempted cover-up involving CBS executives and a police captain.
The OAG did not name the victim, but that year a police report was filed by Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, who said Moonves forced her to perform oral sex and also threw her against a wall in the 1980s.
According to the OAG, the unidentified LAPD captain allegedly shared an unredacted police report with CBS staff and Moonves and worked with the officer for months until the details about the assault became public.
The LAPD captain also allegedly ordered the investigating officer to contact and “admonish” the complainant to not speak with the press.
“We worked so hard to try to avoid this day. I am so completely sad,” the LAPD captain wrote in one text released by the OAG after the details were publicized.
New York prosecutors also allege that Moonves and CBS delivered misleading statements about the assault, including that they had just been learning of it when, in fact, they had been trying to cover up the incident.
The allegations against Moonves arose during a pivotal time during the #MeToo era, when women were stepping forward to tell stories about being harassed by powerful players in the business, media and entertainment world.
Moonves’s actions were reported by The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow, not long after sexual assault allegations were first reported on media mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was later convicted for rape.
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cogitoergofun · 3 months
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When Barbara and Belvett Richards learned that the police had killed their son, they couldn’t understand it. How, on that September day in 2017, did their youngest child come to be shot in his own apartment by officers from the New York Police Department?
Miguel Richards, who was 31, grew up in Jamaica and had moved to New York about a year earlier after coming to the United States through a work-study program. His father’s friend gave him a job doing office work, and he rented a room in the Bronx. But he started to struggle, becoming reclusive and skipping days of work. His mother, with whom he was particularly close, pleaded with him to return to Jamaica. “It’s as if I sensed something was going to happen,” she says. “I was calling him, calling him, calling him: ‘Miguel, come home. Come home.’”
His parents knew he had never been violent, had never been arrested and had never had any issues with the police. What details they managed to gather came from the Bronx district attorney: Richards’ landlord, who hadn’t seen him for weeks, asked the police to check on him. The officers who responded found Richards standing still in his own bedroom, holding a small folding knife. And 15 minutes later, they shot him.
Richards’ death marked a historic turning point. It was the first time a killing by officers was recorded by a body camera in New York. The new program was announced just months before as heralding a new era of accountability. Now, a week after the shooting, the department posted on its website a compilation of footage from four of the responding officers. The video, the department said in an introduction to the presentation, was produced “for clear viewing of the event as a totality.” And as far as the department was concerned, the narrative was clear. Sometimes “the use of deadly force is unavoidable,” the police commissioner at the time, James O’Neill, wrote in an internal message. The level of restraint shown by all officers, he said, is “nothing short of exceptional.” And, he added, “releasing footage from critical incidents like this will help firmly establish your restraint in the use of force.”
Richards’ parents were not convinced. Belvett watched footage at the district attorney’s office. What he saw, and what was released, did not, in fact, show that the use of deadly force was unavoidable. He later learned that the department had not released all the footage. What else didn’t they know about their son’s death?
When body-worn cameras were introduced a decade ago, they seemed to hold the promise of a revolution. Once police officers knew they were being filmed, surely they would think twice about engaging in misconduct. And if they crossed the line, they would be held accountable: The public, no longer having to rely on official accounts, would know about wrongdoing. Police and civilian oversight agencies would be able to use footage to punish officers and improve training. In an outlay that would ultimately cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the technology represented the largest new investment in policing in a generation.
Yet without deeper changes, it was a fix bound to fall far short of those hopes. In every city, the police ostensibly report to mayors and other elected officials. But in practice, they have been given wide latitude to run their departments as they wish and to police — and protect — themselves. And so as policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? Instead, they defaulted to leaving police departments, including New York’s, with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. In turn, departments across the country have routinely delayed releasing footage, released only partial or redacted video or refused to release it at all. They have frequently failed to discipline or fire officers when body cameras document abuse and have kept footage from the agencies charged with investigating police misconduct.
Even when departments have stated policies of transparency, they don’t always follow them. Three years ago, after George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers and amid a wave of protests against police violence, the New York Police Department said it would publish footage of so-called critical incidents “within 30 days.” There have been 380 such incidents since then. The department has released footage within a month just twice.
And the department often does not release video at all. There have been 28 shootings of civilians this year by New York officers (through the first week of December). The department has released footage in just seven of these cases (also through the first week of December) and has not done so in any of the last 16.
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markpine · 8 months
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I contacted the Manhattan District Attorney's office to report that I suspect people I know are paying New York City law enforcement to harass me. 
The Manhattan District Attorney's office has a "Report Police Misconduct" page on the website: 
https://manhattanda.org/policemisconduct/
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mystlnewsonline · 9 months
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Police Officer Dion Johnson - New York - AG Report
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New York Attorney General James’ Law Enforcement Misconduct Investigative Office Releases Report on Saugerties Police Officer Dion Johnson NEW YORK (STL.News) New York Attorney General Letitia James’ Law Enforcement Misconduct Investigative Office (LEMIO) Friday released its report on multiple complaints filed against Saugerties Police Department (SPD) Officer Dion Johnson.  The SPD referred complaints against Officer Johnson, including allegations of harassment and sexual assault from a member of the public and from coworkers, to LEMIO pursuant to Executive Law 75(5)(b), which requires law enforcement agencies to refer cases in which an officer has been subject to five or more complaints in a two-year period to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) for review.  The SPD fully cooperated with LEMIO.  After a thorough investigation, including interviews with complainants and SPD command staff, and a review of SPD and Albany Police Department (APD) investigative and personnel files and agency policies, LEMIO concluded that Officer Johnson engaged in a pattern of misconduct involving inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature, and recommended that SPD seek to terminate him for these actions. During Officer Johnson’s employment at APD and SPD, he was the subject of multiple complaints and disciplinary actions regarding allegations of untruthfulness, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.  As a result of the complaints and allegations detailed below, SPD suspended Officer Johnson for 10 days and put him on probation for a year.  However, upon review of the officer’s conduct, LEMIO concluded that SPD’s disciplinary actions were not sufficient, given the severity of Officer Johnson’s offenses.  In the report, LEMIO provides recommendations to SPD, including the termination of Officer Johnson and updates to agency policies and practices regarding sexual misconduct and internal personnel investigations. Overview of Misconduct In August 2020, a civilian filed a complaint with SPD alleging Officer Johnson repeatedly harassed her, sending inappropriate messages and pictures, and sexually assaulted her while he was on duty.  An internal SPD investigation found that Officer Johnson committed three SPD rule violations, but there was not sufficient evidence that he violated criminal law.  LEMIO concluded it is more likely than not that Officer Johnson engaged in non-consensual physical contact with the complainant and was not truthful during his sworn interview with SPD. In September 2020, another SPD officer filed complaints that Officer Johnson, who was already under investigation, touched her in a sexual manner while on duty and previously sent her an inappropriate and unwelcome message on social media.  The internal investigation conducted by SPD found that Officer Johnson violated SPD’s sexual harassment policies, and LEMIO reached the same conclusion. In October 2021, a second SPD officer reported Officer Johnson for sexual harassment and inappropriate touching.  The agency’s investigation found the complaint to be unsubstantiated, but LEMIO concludes that the incident did constitute sexual harassment. Prior to his employment with SPD, Officer Johnson worked for APD.  The investigation also found that while working at APD, Officer Johnson was accused of repeatedly misleading his supervisor regarding his eligibility for overtime in violation of APD policies.  Officer Johnson resigned from APD shortly after his supervisor recommended that he face administrative charges for these violations.  When Officer Johnson applied for a position with SPD, an SPD investigator contacted the APD supervisor for a reference check, but the APD supervisor failed to inform SPD of his misconduct. Following a thorough review of the facts, LEMIO concluded that Officer Johnson engaged in a pattern of repeated misconduct.  In the report released today, LEMIO recommended that Officer Johnson be terminated from his position at SPD and that SPD take additional remedial actions, including: Update and improve its policies and practices regarding sexual misconduct and internal investigations, including establishing presumptive penalties for officers found to have engaged in misconduct and implementing trauma-informed protocols for investigations; and In cases involving potentially serious criminal allegations against an officer, such as the civilian complaint filed against Officer Johnson, SPD should notify and consult with the Ulster County District Attorney’s office. The LEMIO was established by Executive Law 75 for the purpose of increasing public safety, protecting civil liberties and civil rights, ensuring compliance with constitutional protections and local, state, and federal laws, and increasing public confidence in law enforcement.  Pursuant to Executive Law 75(5)(b), covered agencies are required to refer to LEMIO instances in which an officer has been subject to five or more complaints within two years.  LEMIO is then required to investigate such complaints to determine whether the subject officer engaged in a pattern or practice of misconduct, use of excessive force, or acts of dishonesty.  Executive Law 75 authorizes LEMIO to provide remedial recommendations to the covered agency. SOURCE: New York Attorney General Read the full article
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beardedmrbean · 1 year
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NEW YORK — The city of New York is settling lawsuits filed on behalf of two men who were exonerated last year for the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, agreeing to pay $26 million for the wrongful convictions which led to both men spending decades behind bars.
The state of New York will pay an additional $10 million. David Shanies, an attorney representing the men, confirmed the settlements on Sunday.
"Muhammad Aziz, Khalil Islam, and their families suffered because of these unjust convictions for more than 50 years," said Shanies said in an email. "The City recognized the grave injustices done here, and I commend the sincerity and speed with which the Comptroller's Office and the Corporation Counsel moved to resolve the lawsuits."
Shanies said the settlements send a message that "police and prosecutorial misconduct cause tremendous damage, and we must remain vigilant to identify and correct injustices."
Last year, a Manhattan judge dismissed the convictions of Aziz, now 84, and Islam, who died in 2009, after prosecutors said new evidence of witness intimidation and suppression of exculpatory evidence had undermined the case against the men. Then-District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. apologized for law enforcement's "serious, unacceptable violations of law and the public trust."
The New York City Law Department, through a spokesperson, said Sunday it "stands by" Vance's opinion that the men were wrongfully convicted and the financial agreement "brings some measure of justice to individuals who spent decades in prison and bore the stigma of being falsely accused of murdering an iconic figure."
Shanies said over the next few weeks the settlement documents will be signed and the New York court that handles probate matters will have to approve the settlement for Islam's estate. The total $36 million will be divided equally between Aziz and the estate of Islam.
Aziz and Islam, who maintained their innocence from the start in the 1965 killing at Upper Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom, were paroled in the 1980s.
Malcolm X gained national prominence as the voice of the Nation of Islam, exhorting Black people to claim their civil rights "by any means necessary." His autobiography, written with Alex Haley, remains a classic work of modern American literature.
Near the end of Malcolm X's life, he split with the Black Muslim organization and, after a trip to Mecca, started speaking about the potential for racial unity. It earned him the ire of some in the Nation of Islam, who saw him as a traitor.
He was shot to death while beginning a speech Feb. 21, 1965. He was 39.
Aziz and Islam, then known as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, and a third man were convicted of murder in March 1966. They were sentenced to life in prison.
The third man, Mujahid Abdul Halim — also known as Talmadge Hayer and Thomas Hagan — admitted to shooting Malcolm X but said neither Aziz nor Islam was involved. The two offered alibis, and no physical evidence linked them to the crime. The case hinged on eyewitnesses, although there were inconsistencies in their testimony.
Attorneys for Aziz and Islam said in complaints that both Aziz and Islam were at their homes in the Bronx when Malcolm X was killed. They said Aziz spent 20 years in prison and more than 55 years living with the hardship and indignity attendant to being unjustly branded as a convicted murderer of one of the most important civil rights leaders in history.
Islam spent 22 years in prison and died still hoping to clear his name.
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getmanlaw · 1 year
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Fair Trial/Free Press Conference: Local media, the law, and alleged police misconduct
Albany Law School, the New York University School of Law, and the New York Fair Trial/Free Press Conference are sponsoring 2023 Fair Trial/Free Press Conference, to be held on April 24, 2023, from 11:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Hear from a distinguished panel of judges, prosecutors, print and broadcast journalists, media counsel, and other practicing attorneys during the Fair Trial/Free Press Conference.
The conference combines a discussion of a hypothetical scenario with an overview of media law. Panelists will discuss the legal, political, and ethical issues that arise after a reporter is arrested while covering a police-involved shooting.
This free event is open to the public. Lunch will be provided and CLE credits are available to attorneys who register and attend.
Interested persons can attend in person in New York City and the event will be live-streamed as well.
For more information, including how to register, click here.
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bllsbailey · 4 months
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Gold Bars Confiscated At Senator Menendez’s Residence Linked To 2013 Armed Robbery
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Senator Bob Menendez, (D-N.J.), departs a New York City court after pleading not guilty to new charges on October 23, 2023 in New York City. Menendez was arraigned on new charges alleging that he, along with his wife, accepted bribes from the Egyptian government and conspired to act as a foreign agent while serving as a member of Congress. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A new report claims that Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey had four gold bars hidden at his house that had previously been stolen from the businessman who is suspected of bribing the legislator.
According to NBC, the serial numbers on some of the gold bars that the FBI discovered during a raid in June 2022 on Menendez’s house in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, match the ones that Fred Daibes reported to police during an armed robbery in 2013.
During the 2013 theft, thieves stole 22 gold bars and $500,000 in cash from Daibes’ Edgewater, New Jersey, home, according to the outlet.
Authorities arrested four suspects and confiscated the stolen gold.
Police have established a clear connection between Daibes, a real estate developer in New Jersey and fundraiser for Menendez, and at least some of the gold discovered in Menendez’s residence based on the matching serial numbers.
Daibes is said to have bought the senator’s cooperation in obstructing a federal prosecution of him, among other favors.
“Each gold bar has its own serial number,” Daibes told investigators in 2014. “They’re all stamped … you’ll never see two stamped the same way.”
Daibes also confirmed that the bars truly belonged to him by signing “property release forms” in order to receive the gold back.
Federal corruption accusations against Menendez, 69, concerning an alleged multi-year bribery conspiracy were brought against him in September.
Menendez and his 56-year-old wife Nadine are accused by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York of three conspiracy counts related to an alleged “corrupt bribery agreement” that benefited the couple, three New Jersey businessmen named Daibes, Wael Hana, and Jose Uribe, as well as the Egyptian government.
According to the prosecution, Daibes delivered Nadine two one-kilogram gold bars in March 2022, at a time when the price of gold was $60,000 per kilogram (132,277.36 lbs).
Details of the indictment described how Daibes’ driver’s fingerprints were subsequently found on an envelope that contained thousands of dollars in cash, which was taken from the couple’s residence.
The FBI discovered a total of thirteen gold bars and $566,000 in cash, some of which were put into the senators’ jacket pockets, during its investigation into the suspected bribery plot.
Menendez has often been urged to step down from his position in the Senate, including by other Democrats like Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.), but he has adamantly denied any misconduct.
He and his spouse are said to have taken bribes from Daibes in return for the senator’s assistance in defending him against criminal charges related to bank fraud.
According to reports, the New Jersey Democrat assisted Daibes by suggesting that President Biden appoint Philip Sellinger to the position of United States attorney for New Jersey.
Menendez may spend up to 45 years in jail if he is found guilty on all counts.
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