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US Monthly Headline News October 2023 - Page 1
Story by Sam Levine in New York

He created an agency to crack down on voter fraud with troublesome results
Voter fraud is exceedingly rare, both in Florida and across the United States. But in 2022, DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature created a new agency, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, to crack down on it. The agency was one of the first of its kind in the country. DeSantis initially proposed funding it with $6m and filling it with 52 staffers. The proposal prompted outrage, with some noting it would have more manpower than some local law enforcement agencies have to investigate murder. The legislature eventually funded it with $1.1m in 2022 for 15 positions and increased the budget to $1.4m this year. Voting rights advocates saw the move as a thinly veiled effort to intimidate people into not voting.

He’s prosecuted people confused about their eligibility to vote
In August 2022, DeSantis held a press conference flanked by uniformed law enforcement officers announcing he was arresting 20 people and charging them with illegally registering and voting. They were the first charges filed under the Office of Election Crimes and Security and each charge carried a maximum of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Fourteen of those charged were Black, and at least two of the men were arrested by armed officers.

It quickly emerged that all of those charged were confused about whether they could vote, partly because of a new state law. All 20 had prior criminal convictions that made them ineligible to vote, but said they had not been told that. All of them had received voter registration cards in the mail. Voting advocates said the prosecutions were thinly veiled efforts to discourage people with felony convictions from trying to vote after Florida changed the rules around their eligibility with bipartisan support.
Card, an Army reservist, had been committed to a mental health facility earlier this year.
Christopher Wilson, Kate Murphy and Dylan Stableford

A massive manhunt continued Friday for a man suspected of killing 18 people and injuring 13 others at a bowling alley and restaurant in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday night. Residents of Lewiston and surrounding areas were urged to shelter-in-place as authorities searched for the gunman. Police identified the suspect as Robert Card, a 40-year-old Army reservist who had been recently committed to a mental health facility.
Story by Areeba Shah

Fulton County prosecutors have been in talks about potential plea deals with at least six more co-defendants in the Fulton County, Georgia, indictment related to former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, CNN reported.

District Attorney Fani Willis' office has a clearly defined strategy: to persuade as many co-defendants as they can to cooperate against Trump “to convict” the most serious offenders, legal experts say.

“This has been Willis’ strategy the whole time,” former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Salon. “She never wanted to try 19 defendants. She wanted 18 guilty pleas and one trial against Donald Trump.”

Robert Cheeley, a pro-Trump lawyer, declined a plea agreement, his attorney told the news outlet. But at least five other co-defendants, including former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton and former Trump campaign official Mike Roman, have engaged in discussions regarding potential plea deals with the D.A.’s office, according to CNN. Three other defendants have also been in talks about a potential plea deal with prosecutors.

Among the 19 defendants in the Fulton County case, four individuals, including three attorneys who played direct roles in Trump's efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia, have already agreed to plea deals. In some instances, they have pleaded guilty to felony charges in return for a more lenient sentencing recommendation.
Story by Kathleen Culliton

The political party who put forward speaker nominations including a man who believes critical race theory should be "defunded" and another who described himself as Ku Klux Klan chief David Duke, but "without the baggage," is racist, a former White House reporter contends.

Salon columnist Brian Karem Thursday compared the Grand Old Party's "clown show" effort to elect a speaker of the House with the antics of a former U.S. President, who currently faces criminal charges in two states and the District of Columbia.

"The party is racist, misogynistic, anti-poor, elitist, delusional and greedy for power at all costs," Karem wrote. "That also perfectly describes Trump. This is his spirit writ large, trying and failing on another grand scale."

Karem only fleetingly references the role Trump played in choosing the House's next speaker — his anti-Emmer screed torpedoed the moderate Republican's chances of claiming the position — by describing Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as a "a full-on Donald Trump sycophant."

Johnson has already been dubbed "MAGA Mike" for his efforts in trying to overturn the 2020 election, which included echoing false fraud claims and leading an amicus brief filed in Texas to overturn the results.
Story by By Clare Foran, Haley Talbot, Morgan Rimmer and Kristin Wilson, CNN

The Republican-led House elected Rep. Mike Johnson as the new House speaker on Wednesday – a major leadership change that comes three weeks after the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy. Johnson, a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump and a key congressional figure in the failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election, will now take the reins of the bitterly divided House Republican majority and faces the looming threat of a government shutdown next month.

Johnson’s elevation puts an end to the paralysis the House had been stuck in after McCarthy was pushed out by hardline conservatives – an unprecedented move that plunged the chamber into uncharted territory. Republicans tried and failed three separate times to coalesce behind a new speaker nominee before ultimately uniting around Johnson, a conservative lawmaker who has so far had a relatively low profile on the national stage. In a remarkable show of unity following weeks of fierce GOP infighting, the Louisiana Republican was elected with 220 votes and no Republican defections.
Bettersten Wade’s search for her adult son ended when she discovered that an officer had run him over — and without telling her, authorities buried him in a pauper’s field.
By Jon Schuppe

JACKSON, Miss. — Seven months of searching for her lost son brought Bettersten Wade to a dirt road leading into the woods, past an empty horse stable and a scrapyard. The last time she’d seen her middle child, Dexter Wade, 37, was on the night of March 5, as he left home with a friend. She reported him missing, and Jackson police told her they’d been unable to find him, she said.

It wasn’t until 172 excruciating days after his disappearance that Bettersten learned the truth: Dexter had been killed less than an hour after he’d left home, struck by a Jackson police car as he crossed a nearby interstate highway. Police had known Dexter’s name, and hers, but failed to contact her, instead letting his body go unclaimed for months in the county morgue. Now it was early October, and Bettersten had finally been told where she could find her son.
Story by Holly Bailey

ATLANTA — Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, plans to plead guilty Tuesday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, according to a court document. This will make her the third attorney associated with the former president to accept a plea deal in the sweeping criminal racketeering case. Ellis, who had been facing two charges including violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering act, is expected to plead guilty to a reduced charge in court on Tuesday.

She will become the fourth Trump co-defendant to plead guilty in the case. Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall, accused of playing a wide-ranging role in the conspiracy to reverse Trump’s loss in Georgia, pleaded guilty Sept. 29 in a cooperation deal with prosecutors. Former pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro each pleaded guilty last week on the eve of their scheduled joint trial in the case.
Story by Bethan Sexton For Dailymail.Com

Two former police chiefs in North Carolina and North Dakota are among five people who have been charged with conspiracy to illegally buy and sell machine guns and other regulated firearms. Matthew Jeremy Hall, 53, and James Sawyer, 50, who were Chiefs of Police in Coats, North Carolina and Ray, North Dakota respectively, are facing up to five years in jail over the federal charges.

They have been accused of obtaining the weapons, which included restricted short-barreled rifles, by falsely claiming they would be used in demos to their respective police forces over a two year period starting in June 2018. Ray resigned from his post in February of this year citing health reasons. Hall became Chief in 2011 according to his LinkedIn profile which still lists him as in charge, although he is absent from the Coats police website.

The cops were indicted by the DOJ on Friday along with Sean Reidpath Sullivan, 38, of Gambrills, Maryland; Larry Allen Vickers, 60, of Charlotte, North Carolina and James Christopher Tafoya, 45, from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
ABC News

Sidney Powell, one of 18 co-defendants in former President Donald Trump's election interference case in Georgia, has taken a plea deal in which she has agreed to testify in the case. She is pleading guilty to six misdemeanor charges, according to the agreement read in court Thursday. She will get 12 months of probation for each count, as well as a $6,000 fine. As part of the agreement, Powell must "testify truthfully about any co-defendants" involved in the case and "provide all documents to the district attorney's office" relevant to their case against the other co-defendants, according to Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee.

Steve Sadow, Trump's lead counsel in the Georgia case, responded to Powell's plea deal by telling ABC News in a statement, "Assuming truthful testimony in the Fulton County case, it will be favorable to my overall defense strategy." Powell's plea comes a day before she was scheduled to go on trial along with co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro. Chesebro, according to sources, last month rejected a similar plea deal with the state, ABC News was first to report yesterday. Regarding Powell's plea deal, former Georgia prosecutor Chris Timmons told ABC News, "From the D.A.'s Office's perspective, it can help them in a number of ways. It focuses the trial to acts that are relevant to Mr. Chesebro. It also means the State's witnesses are facing one cross examination instead of two."
Story by Carl Gibson

Pro-Trump influencer Douglass Mackey is now headed to federal prison to serve a seven-month sentence after being convicted by a federal jury in March. Prosecutors asked for Mackey, who was arrested in 2021, to serve between six months and a year behind bars.

Mackey, a West Palm Beach, Florida resident who went by the name "Ricky Vaughn," was found guilty on one count of conspiracy against rights for trying to defraud Hillary Clinton supporters in the 2016 election. According to the New York Times, Judge Ann M. Donnelly, of the Eastern District of New York, said while sentencing Mackey that he was "one of the leading members" of the conspiracy to prevent Clinton supporters from voting, adding that it was "nothing short of an assault on our democracy."

The conspiracy in question stemmed from a series of posts, meant to look like they were from the former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, encouraging Black and Latino supporters to vote by text message or through social media, knowing that those votes would not actually be counted. One of those posts showed a Black woman holding a sign, and another post was in Spanish, and included the Clinton campaign logo with fine print attached that read "Hillary for President."
Story by Matthew Chapman

A professional appraiser cited in five years of Trump Organization documents told the New York judge overseeing a fraud trial that he actually never evaluated several of the buildings in question, reported ABC News. Doug Larson, who works for the real estate firm Newmark, was listed in a series of Trump Organization documents as having appraised properties like 40 Wall Street, Trump Tower, and the retail space adjoining Trump Tower known as "Niketown."

But under questioning by state attorney Mark Ladov, Larson denied having done the appraisal work. "Is it fair to say that Mr. Trump valued Trump Tower at $526 million in conjunction with you?" said Ladov. "No, that is incorrect," Larson replied.
By Holly Yan, Devon M. Sayers and Aaron Cooper, CNN

Birmingham, Alabama CNN — Almost two decades after Natalee Holloway vanished in Aruba, the man long suspected of killing the Alabama teen has confessed to her killing, according to a court filing. “It’s over. Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder. He is the killer,”Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, said Wednesday. “He gave a proffer in which he finally confessed to killing Natalee,” Holloway said. “After 18 years, Natalie’s case is solved.” In a proffer, a defendant offers information they know about a crime, often as part of a plea deal.

Van der Sloot, 36, pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to extorting and defrauding the Holloway family. He was accused of trying to sell information about the location of Holloway’s remains to her family in exchange for $250,000. Holloway’s body has never been found. In 2012, an Alabama judge signed an order declaring her legally dead. But on Wednesday, a federal judge who reviewed van der Sloot’s proffer said there’s a reason why Natalee Holloway’s body would never be found – though she did not elaborate.
Story by Tim Dickinson

Sam Bushman wears many hats. All of them scream extremist. Bushman is the new CEO of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association - a far-right group, with far-reaching influence, that preaches that the nation's sheriffs have authority to judge the constitutionality of laws, and to block enforcement of any they deem objectionable.

Bushman is also the owner of Liberty News Radio, a right-wing radio and podcast network that provides a soapbox for white separatists, including airing shows that platform former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and Charlottesville Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler. Bushman hosts his own radio show on the network, and used his airtime on Juneteenth 2023 to blast Martin Luther King Jr. as a "thug." In an interview with Rolling Stone, he doubled down, calling the civil rights icon "a bad guy in many, many, many ways." This July, Bushman broadcast from a neo-Confederate carnival called Dixie Fest, where he platformed an author who called for the South to "secede from what is really a degenerate empire."

Bushman's intersection with white separatists is concerning on its own terms. "Folks that Sam runs with are seeking secession and the creation of a white nationalist entity in the South," says Chuck Tanner, research chief for the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based nonprofit that watchdogs far-right movements.
By SOPHIA TAREEN

CHICAGO (AP) — An Illinois landlord accused of fatally stabbing a 6-year-old Muslim boy and seriously wounding his mother was charged with a hate crime after police and relatives said he singled out the victims because of their faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas.

In recent days, police in U.S. cities and federal authorities have been on high alert for violence driven by antisemitic or Islamophobic sentiments. FBI officials, along with Jewish and Muslim groups, have reported an increase of hateful and threatening rhetoric.

In the Chicago-area case, officers found the 32-year-old woman and boy late Saturday morning at a home in an unincorporated area of Plainfield Township, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on social media.
Story by Sarah K. Burris

Donald Trump's trial in Manhattan continued Tuesday with the Trump Organization's former CFO Allen Weisselberg confessing he approved company financial documents so that Trump wouldn't default on loans. ABC News, which has a running blog update of the trial, cited the moment, revealing that it was he and not Trump who approved loan documents that grossly exaggerated the assets. Certifying Trump's financial statements were "true, correct and complete," Weisselberg said that he signed them.
Opinion by Stuart Stevens

It’s often said that Donald Trump has a cultlike following. But that’s far too benign. “Star Wars” has a cultlike following. Taylor Swift has her cult of “Swifties.” A political organization that has no platform other than loyalty to the leader is not a cult, it’s an autocratic movement. The tragicomic chaos in the House in the last week is the natural result of a political party that has lived under Trump’s thumb. It should end any pretense that the current Republican Party is a serious governing party.

As Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”: “Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise. The totalitarian movements, each in its own way, have done their utmost to get rid of the party programs which specified concrete content and which they inherited from earlier, non‑totalitarian stages of development.” It seems like another time in another galaxy, but not that long ago there actually was some ideological diversity within the Republican Party.

On Day 5 of Donald Trump's fraud trial in New York, former Trump Org official Jeffrey McConney was grilled on the stand about the loose methods used to evaluate the worth of Trump's real estate holdings, resulting in grossly inflated numbers. Kristy Greenberg, former federal prosecutor, discusses with Alex Wagner.
by Anna Maria Barry-Jester

Ever since he was a medical student, Dr. Neil Martinson has confronted the horrors of tuberculosis, the world’s oldest and deadliest pandemic. For more than 30 years, patients have streamed into the South African clinics where he has worked — migrant workers, malnourished children and pregnant women with HIV — coughing up blood. Some were so emaciated, he could see their ribs. They’d breathed in the contagious bacteria from a cough on a crowded bus or in the homes of loved ones who didn’t know they had TB. Once infected, their best option was to spend months swallowing pills that often carried terrible side effects. Many died.

So, when Martinson joined a call in April 2018, he was anxious for the verdict about a tuberculosis vaccine he’d helped test on hundreds of people. The results blew him away: The shot prevented over half of those infected from getting sick; it was the biggest TB vaccine breakthrough in a century. He hung up, excited, and waited for the next step, a trial that would determine whether the shot was safe and effective enough to sell. Weeks passed. Then months. More than five years after the call, he’s still waiting, because the company that owns the vaccine decided to prioritize far more lucrative business.
By Geoff Bennett, By Ali Schmitz

Former President Trump was in court Monday for a civil fraud trial over his real estate dealings. The judge already ruled on one of the arguments from prosecutors last week, saying Trump and his executives fraudulently inflated the value of real estate holdings. The judge still has to weigh in on other claims in the suit. Geoff Bennett discussed the case with Russ Buettner of The New York Times.
By Mike Hayes, Aditi Sangal, Leinz Vales, Maureen Chowdhury and Elise Hammond, CNN

Court has wrapped for the day and the first witness for the attorney general will continue testimony Tuesday
From CNN's Aaron Cooper, Lauren del Valle, Kara Scannell and Laura Dolan

Court has wrapped for the day in the Trump civil fraud trial. The first witness for the New York attorney general, Trump’s former long-time accountant Donald Bender, testified about financial documents from 2011.  

Mazars USA, the accounting firm where Bender worked, would not have issued these statements of financial condition if the Trump Organization did not represent that the numbers were accurate, Bender testified.  Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s former longtime chief financial officer, signed on behalf of Trump that the documents from 2011 were accurate, he added. Additionally, Mazars would not have issued these statements if they learned the numbers were not true, Bender said.
MSNBC

The civil business fraud trial against former President Donald Trump is set to begin Monday in New York City. The New York Times' Ross Buettner and Andrew Weissmann join Morning Joe to discuss.
Ximena Bustillo | NPR

A civil business fraud trial against former President Donald Trump begins in New York on Monday. Trump and other defendants are accused of exaggerating the value of their real estate.

If found guilty, Trump, who said he's "going to court ... to fight for my name and reputation," would have to pay $250 million in damages and be banned from doing business in New York state. This is one of four pending lawsuits Trump is facing in New York alone while he is seeking reelection in the 2024 presidential race.

The lawsuit alleges Trump committed fraud to do business
After a three-year investigation, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit in September 2022 claiming Trump and his executive team engaged in fraudulent business practices. This includes allegations the value of Trump's business and the market value of his real estate holdings in New York state and in Florida were inflated in order to land deals, and negotiate with banks and insurers.
Nina Totenberg at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Supreme Court formally opens a new term on Monday, with all manner of political lightning rods already on its docket, or on their way. Guns, abortion, extreme partisan gerrymandering ... you thought those legal issues were gone, or at least resolved? The conservative court seemed to think so, too. But those issues are back this term.

Take abortion: When the conservative majority struck down Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion, the conservative justices said they were simply returning to the states the question of whether abortion could be legal. Similarly, in another case, the conservative justices ruled that the court was out of the business of policing any form of extreme partisan gerrymandering. And in a broad ruling about gun rights, it said that in the future, gun regulations would be legal only if they were analogous to regulations at the time the constitution was written.
David Gura

As disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried gears up for the start of his trial on Tuesday, two people close to him are now facing legal trouble of their own: his parents. For almost a year, Bankman-Fried's mom and dad, both of whom are well-respected professors at Stanford Law School, have accompanied their son to pretrial proceedings at a courthouse in Manhattan.

But now Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman are being sued by FTX, which filed for bankruptcy late last year. Lawyers are trying to claw back millions of dollars from them — in cash and gifts, including a $16.4 million villa in The Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered before filing for bankruptcy late last year.

The civil suit against Sam Bankman-Fried's parents alleges they helped run their son's crypto empire, and that for their work — some official, some unofficial — they were handsomely rewarded.
by Mychael Schnell

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) announced over the weekend that he will force a vote on ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his post this week, following through on threats Gaetz has levied in recent weeks and answering a dare McCarthy himself made recently.

Gaetz announced his plans to bring a motion to vacate against McCarthy one day after the Speaker worked with Democrats to pass a continuing resolution and keep the government open, a reality the Florida Republican had been warning against for weeks.

Following the vote, McCarthy dared his detractors to make the motion — “If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it “ — putting the ball in Gaetz’s court and prompting the Florida lawmaker to put his money where his mouth is after weeks of repeated threats and heightened rhetoric. Gaetz can bring the motion as early as Monday.

Also this week, the House will continue consideration of full-year appropriations bills as Congress stares down the next funding deadline, Nov. 17. And the focus will be on funding for Ukraine after the stopgap bill over the weekend excluded money for the embattled nation.
By Kyung Lah and Kaanita Iyer, CNN

CNN — California Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint Laphonza Butler, the president of EMILY’s List, to fill the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, his office confirmed Sunday evening. Butler will become the sole Black female senator serving in Congress and only the third in US history. Feinstein, the longest-serving female US senator in history, died last week at 90.

The selection of Butler, first reported by Politico, comes as Democrats hold a narrow Senate majority and uncertainty looms over New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s political future amid outcry from his Democratic colleagues over his federal indictment.

Butler has been the president of EMILY’s List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, since the group’s board of directors appointed her in 2021, when she became the first woman of color to lead the organization. She previously worked at Airbnb as a director of public policy and campaigns and advised Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign, but much of her background is in the labor movement, serving as a union president in California.
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