TV News LIES

A federal judge won’t throw out a lawsuit against Donald Trump’s administration over plans for a nearly $1.8 billion compensation fund for the president’s allies after officials refused to provide a sworn statement that the fund is actually dead.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema wanted officials to file a “short, written declaration under the penalty of perjury” that the government won’t take any action to “create or operate” what critics have called a slush fund for Trump’s allies.

Government attorneys refused, so the lawsuit is still alive, and the case could now go to trial, the judge said Thursday.

Despite telling members of Congress that the government is “not moving forward” with the fund, Blanche said he’s “not committing to put anything in writing” and refused to rescind a memo establishing the fund. Last week, the Justice Department called the judge’s request for a written statement “unnecessary” and said it amounted to judicial “overreach.”

More...

An executive order by President Trump that seeks to enlist the U.S. Postal Service to limit voting by mail has hit a legal hurdle.

On Thursday, a Boston-based judge blocked key parts of the order that, at least so far, has not directly affected mail-in voting for this year's midterm primary elections.

The ruling applies to this fall's general election and earlier races in nearly two dozen mainly Democratic-led states, plus Washington, D.C., that filed one of the five lawsuits against Trump's order.

The legal fight, however, is likely to continue. The Trump administration is expected to appeal the new ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, as a separate appeal of an earlier ruling by another federal judge moves forward in a similar set of lawsuits based in D.C.

More...

On Thursday, a federal judge based in Washington, D.C., ordered the Justice Department to unredact additional pages of the Epstein files in a suit brought by attorney and independent journalist Katie Phang.

The preliminary injunction orders redactions be removed in key documents of interest in the files, including “at least eight email exchanges with Mr. Epstein regarding a ‘torture video’ and sexual activity with young women, including minors” as well as interviews with a woman who said she was abused by President Trump as a minor.

He also rebuffed the idea that Phang could have simply requested the documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), noting that the department itself had previously said the Epstein Files Transparency Act “directed a much broader and less redacted release of the files than would have been made under the FOIA. Certain exemptions which may have been made under FOIA were not made” in the Epstein Act release.

The Justice Department must either produce the documents or “show cause” as to why they cannot comply.

More...

It’s the day after Mother’s Day, the first one Elizabeth Soto has spent apart from her three children. Sitting in jail in Wichita Falls, Texas, her face is washed out by the overhead fluorescent lighting, and her dingy jumpsuit blends into the cinder block walls surrounding her.

Speaking through a glass separator, she tells me she celebrated the holiday with her children over the jail’s video-call system while they had dinner at their grandmother’s. “I’ve been a full-time mother all of their lives,” she said. “I’ve never been away from them.”

Soto’s children have not visited her in jail, which lies on Texas’s northern border near Oklahoma, hours from their home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Elizabeth Soto has only seen her husband, Ines Soto, once over the past year, the longest they’ve spent apart since they first started dating more than 20 years ago. He is being held in a federal prison more than 100 miles away.

On Tuesday, Elizabeth was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison; Ines’s sentencing is set for 1 July. All because, as she put it: “They didn’t like my book club.” Her laugh doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

Last year on the Fourth of July, a small group from Dallas-Fort Worth held a night-time noise demonstration, setting off fireworks outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility south of the cities, in solidarity with the detainees. A few protesters broke away and spray-painted graffiti on employees’ cars and a security post, slashed the tires on a government van, and broke a security camera. The facility’s guards ordered the protesters to disperse, and most of them did. When a police officer arrived at the scene, drawing his gun, an armed protester shot her rifle, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

More...

The Microsoft founder Bill Gates told US members of Congress that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had sought to “blackmail” him over his extramarital affairs, according to a transcript of the testimony.

The tech pioneer testified behind closed doors before the House oversight committee on 10 June regarding his friendship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes.

According to the transcript released by the committee on Tuesday, Gates spoke of “veiled” threats and said Epstein had considered exploiting his own knowledge of Gates’s extramarital affairs to force him to remain in Epstein’s orbit, even as Gates was distancing himself from Epstein.

“I was not blackmailed, but you know, as you look at these emails, you know, it looks like Mr Epstein’s brainstorming was going in that direction,” Gates added, referring to documents from the Epstein case released in January by the US Department of Justice.

More...

Michigan is not obligated to hand over sensitive voter data to the Trump administration, a federal appeals court decided on Wednesday.

A divided three-judge panel for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Title III of the 1960 Civil Rights Act does not authorize the Justice Department to compel the state to provide its unredacted voter roll, which contains the dates of birth, partial social security numbers and driver’s license numbers of every registered voter in the state.

Judge Andre Mathis, a Biden appointee, authored the majority opinion. He was joined by Senior Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., a Clinton appointee.

Judge John Nalbandian, who was nominated by President Trump in his first term, dissented.

The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia in an attempt to force compliance with its demand, but those efforts have been repeatedly rejected at the district court level. Its cases against California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Arizona, Wisconsin, Maine and Maryland have also been dismissed.

More...