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☆ The criminal charges against Sam Bankman-Fried carry big penalties and jail time if proven, legal experts say
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

If he pleads guilty or ends up being convicted, a federal judge will ultimately decide the length of any prison sentence. And those charges come with potentially big penalties, if he's found guilty: In a sparse indictment unsealed on Tuesday morning, federal prosecutors in Manhattan listed eight criminal counts. Prosecutors leveled multiple conspiracy and wire fraud charges, some of which can be fairly straightforward as they don't require elaborate exposition to support, according to legal experts. It is too soon to tell what, if any, charges Bankman-Fried would be convicted on. But federal criminal statutes prescribe these maximum prison penalties for the following counts:Four counts relating to wire fraud: Maximum sentence for each count is 20 years in prison.

☆ A solo Ticketmaster might attract financial fans
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Jennifer Saba | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

NEW YORK, Dec 15 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The drums are beating louder for a breakup of Live Nation Entertainment (LYV.N). For Live Nation, it’s not entirely clear that the flywheel is spinning smoothly. Live Nation says it is so dominant because it’s so much better than the competition. Putting the complicated legal and regulatory questions aside, there’s probably a financial case for Ticketmaster to become a solo act. Live Nation merged with Ticketmaster in 2010.

☆ U.S. Justice Department reportedly split over charging Binance as crypto world falters
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +15 min

Justice Department regulations say that money laundering charges against a financial institution must be approved by the MLARS chief. Binance's defense attorneys at U.S. law firm Gibson Dunn have held meetings in recent months with Justice Department officials, the four people said. Faced with the Justice Department investigation, Binance hired an external lawyer from U.S. law firm Paul Weiss, Roberto Gonzalez, who was previously Treasury's deputy general counsel. The Justice Department appointed Eun Young Choi, previously Monaco's senior counsel, as NCET's first director. MLARS has a reputation in the Justice Department for moving slowly in reaching prosecution decisions, people familiar with its activities said.

Justice Department regulations say that money laundering charges against a financial institution must be approved by the MLARS chief. Binance's defense attorneys at U.S. law firm Gibson Dunn have held meetings in recent months with Justice Department officials, the four people said. Faced with the Justice Department investigation, Binance hired an external lawyer from U.S. law firm Paul Weiss, Roberto Gonzalez, who was previously Treasury's deputy general counsel. MLARS has a reputation in the Justice Department for moving slowly in reaching prosecution decisions, people familiar with its activities said. Day met with Justice officials in Washington in recent months, three of the people said.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed the DOJ's request, which was first reported by The Washington Post. The request comes after Trump's lawyers recently discovered at least two documents with such markings in a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Florida. That search turned up over 100 documents with such markings, including some marked top secret, in a storage room in Mar-a-Lago and in Trump's office there. Judge Beryl Howell's hearing on the DOJ’s request, and the legal arguments underpinning it, are being kept under wraps because they involve grand jury proceedings. Corcoran drafted the June letter certifying all documents with classification markings had been returned, NBC News has previously reported.

☆ Penguin Random House CEO steps down weeks after judge blocked Simon & Schuster merger
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Rebecca Picciotto | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Penguin Random House said Friday that CEO Markus Dohle will step down at the end of the year, weeks after the collapse of a deal to merge Penguin with Simon & Schuster. A federal judge sided with the Justice Department and blocked Penguin's $2.2 billion acquisition of Simon & Schuster in late October. Soon after the judge's decision, Paramount Global , which owns Simon & Schuster, officially pulled the plug on the deal. "We regret Markus Dohle's decision to leave Bertelsmann and Penguin Random House," said Christoph Mohn, chairman of Penguin parent Bertelsmann's supervisory board. "He has sustainably focused Penguin Random House on growth and profitability.

☆ DOJ undermines Google in Supreme Court case over who's responsible for social media posts
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Lauren Feiner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Section 230 allows for online platforms to engage in good faith content moderation while shielding them from being held responsible for their users' posts. Both the district and appeals courts agreed that Section 230 protected Google from liability for hosting the content. Though it did not take a position on whether Google should ultimately be found liable, the Department recommended the appeals court ruling be vacated and returned to the lower court for further review. But, it added, the claims about "YouTube's use of algorithms and related features to recommend ISIS content require a different analysis." The DOJ said the appeals court did not adequately consider whether the plaintiffs' claims could merit liability under that theory and as a result, the Supreme Court should return the case to the appeals court so they can do so.

☆ The DOJ has asked a court to hold Trump's office in contempt in the Mar-a-Lago documents case
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Sonam Sheth | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to hold former President Donald Trump's office in contempt of court for failing to comply with a subpoena for all the classified documents Trump took from the White House, The Washington Post reported. Trump's team initially turned over 15 boxes of documents to the National Archives in January. The DOJ's request for US District Judge Beryl Howell to hold Trump's team in contempt is indicative of the increasingly combative nature of prosecutors' communications with Trump's office. The report said that Trump's team has refused to designate a custodian despite months of back and forth. Those include the Mar-a-Lago records case as well as the department's inquiry into events surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

☆ Appeals court vacates order appointing Trump Mar-a-Lago search warrant watchdog
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Dan Mangan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

A member of the Secret Service is seen in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on August 9, 2022. Cannon also temporarily blocked the DOJ to review or use the seized documents for its investigation while Dearie's examination of them was pending. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant," the panel wrote. Accordingly, we agree with the government that the district court improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction, and that dismissal of the entire proceeding is required." That justification would be the fact that Trump "is a former President of the United States," the appeals panel noted.

☆ DOJ watchdog seeks independent review of FTX bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Dietrich Knauth | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Dec 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice's bankruptcy watchdog on Thursday called for an independent investigation into the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, saying customers need a neutral party to investigate allegations of "fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, and mismanagement." "The questions at stake here are simply too large and tooimportant to be left to an internal investigation," U.S. Trustee Andrew Vara wrote in court papers. A neutral examiner would also provide more public and transparent findings than an internal review, the U.S. Trustee wrote, which is "especially important because of the wider implications that FTX’s collapse may have for the crypto industry," Vara added.

☆ Appeals court stops the special master review of government records found at Trump's estate
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Azmi Haroun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

An appeals court ruled that a Special Master must stop reviewing Trump's Mar-a-Lago documents. Trump succeeded in having lower courts appoint a Special Master, delaying a federal investigation. The Special Master was set to review thousands of classified documents that the former president kept. In September, Florida Judge Aileen Cannon had appointed a special master in September, which the Justice Department appealed and which drew criticism from the Appeals court judges in their Thursday ruling. The move to appoint a special master opened an unprecedented Pandora's box of concerns for national security experts.

☆ Elon Musk mocks #staywoke shirts at Twitter that were made to support Black Lives Matter and once worn by Jack Dorsey
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-23 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The shirts were promoted by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey and designed to promote Black Lives Matter. Musk deleted a tweet that appeared to defend the police officer who shot Michael Brown in 2014, Bloomberg reported. "Found in closet at Twitter HQ fr," Musk posted on Twitter early Wednesday morning, along with the crying-while-laughing emoji. Musk and a spokesperson for Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication. The officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson, had claimed he shot at Brown in self defense.

Attorneys for former President Donald Trump on Tuesday asked a federal judge in Florida to unseal the probable cause affidavit outlining the Justice Department's criminal investigation into their client. A redacted version of the search warrant affidavit was made public in late August. A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment. The request to Cannon came shortly before lawyers for Trump and the Justice Department were set to face off over Trump's lawsuit in the 11th U.S. The Justice Department is asking the appeals court to dismiss Cannon's order appointing a special master in the case.

☆ E. Jean Carroll is suing Trump again. Here's a rundown of all the pending litigation between the two.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-19 | by ( Ashley Collman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

E. Jean Carroll, who alleges Trump raped her, sued him for defamation more than three years ago. Insider breaks down where the pending litigation between Carroll and Trump stands. That's the day that Carroll plans to file a new lawsuit against Trump, accusing him of battery and defamation, her lawyer explained in a November 17 court filing. With multiple hearings in different courts coming up, Insider breaks down all of the pending litigation between Carroll and Trump, who recently announced he's running for president again in 2024. Five months later, Carroll sued Trump for defamation, alleging he attacked her reputation by claiming she made the story up.

☆ Bill Barr said he thinks the DOJ probably has a 'basis for legitimately indicting' Trump over Mar-a-Lago documents
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-19 | by ( Lloyd Lee | Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Barr said he believed that the Justice Department may have enough evidence to indict Donald Trump. He declined to say if he would have indicted Trump if he was still attorney general. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday named a special counsel to take over investigations involving the former president. Barr, who was once a staunch ally of Trump, served as his attorney general from February 2019 to December 2020. Barr has since continued to rebuke Trump, saying in September the Justice Department was likely justified in raiding Mar-a-Lago.

Garland's decision to appoint a special counsel was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Given that Garland was appointed by President Joe Biden, naming a special counsel would give Garland more distance from the investigation into Trump, who could be Biden’s rival if the president decides to run for re-election. Trump was previously under investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller, who issued his report in 2019 focusing on Russian interference in the 2020 election and Trump’s efforts to interfere with the Justice Department investigation. Garland said he was confident in the DOJ's ability to investigate Trump, but, "I also believe that appointing a special counsel at this time is the right thing to do. Garland added that he will ensure Smith “receives the resources to conduct this work quickly and completely.”

☆ Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing DOJ's Trump cases, is a former war crimes investigator who prosecuted election crimes
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Natalie Musumeci | C. Ryan Barber | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Since 2018, Smith had served as the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague where he investigated war crimes in Kosovo. Since 2018, Smith had served as the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague where he investigated war crimes in Kosovo. Smith's prosecutorial career began nearly three decades ago when he started as an assistant district attorney with the New York County District Attorney's Office in 1994. Smith served with the International Criminal Court from 2008 to 2010 and it was there where he supervised all war crimes investigations conducted by the Office of the Prosecutor. Smith served as the vice president of litigation for the Hospital Corporation of America — the nation's biggest non-governmental healthcare provider — from 2017 to 2018.

☆ Trump's 2024 bid puts the DOJ in a tough position as it continues its investigations into the former president
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Tom Porter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Former President Donald Trump has officially launched his bid for the presidency in 2024. He still faces multiple ongoing Justice Department investigations. The former president, who formally launched his bid for the 2024 Republican nomination on Tuesday, is facing multiple probes from state and federal authorities. These include Justice Department investigations into his retention of classified documents after leaving office and his bid to prevent Joe Biden from taking power in 2020. "We pursue justice without fear or favor," he told NBC News in July, with regards to the DOJ's January 6 probe.

☆ DOJ asks Supreme Court to deny Trump's request to block House Democrats from getting his tax records
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Rebecca-Shabad-Circle-Byline-Template.Jpg | Rebecca Shabad | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice and the House Ways and Means Committee asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to reject former President Donald Trump's request to block the panel from accessing his tax records. Earlier this month, Chief Justice John Roberts Chief temporarily blocked the Ways and Means panel from accessing Trump's tax records. Roberts said the case would remain on hold until the court acts and asked the committee to file a response to Trump’s request by Thursday. After the DOJ's filing, the committee also filed a similar 52-page argument Thursday against Trump's request. “The committee’s purpose in requesting President Trump’s tax returns has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS and everything to do with releasing the president’s tax information to the public,” the lawyers wrote in a recent court filing.

(Reuters) - The shooting death of teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer prompted the U.S. Justice Department's most significant investigation of policing practices since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. The DOJ also pointed out that “police departments in surrounding municipalities and the County” have practices similar to Ferguson, although that issue was “beyond the scope” of the investigation. In fact, federal officials even considered opening another investigation of the St. Louis police department for similar problems, Reuters reported in October 2020. Ferguson officials expressed concerns that the reforms required to stop exploitative policing in their city would “cripple city finances,” Reuters reported in March 2016. (A measure to institute a modest property tax increase to fund the reforms didn't get the required two-thirds majority vote.)

A conflict could arise in the future, if, for example, Aearo and 3M disagreed about the terms of a future settlement, Graham said. If that happened, Kirkland could face disqualification, loss of fees, or even potentially the dismissal of Aearo's bankruptcy case, according to the judge. Kirkland has defended 3M in the MDL, and it represents Aearo in the bankruptcy case that was meant to spur a settlement of the earplug lawsuits. The plaintiffs and the U.S. Department of Justice's bankruptcy watchdog sought to disqualify Kirkland from representing Aearo in the bankruptcy, saying it could not faithfully serve both Aearo and 3M. The case is Aearo Technologies LLC, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana, No.

☆ The Justice Department said that it seized $3.4 billion in bitcoin stolen a decade ago through the 'Silk Road' dark web
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Justice Department announced a seizure of $3.36 billion in stolen bitcoin. Defendant James Zhong pleaded guilty to wire fraud using a dark web market called the Silk Road. The DOJ's statement said that Zhong pled guilty on Friday to committing wire fraud back in September 2012. In February 2022, the department seized about $4 billion of bitcoin in the wake of a 2016 theft. Zhong had stolen the bitcoin by executing a scheme to defraud the Silk Road by creating a string of approximately nine fraud accounts on the site, the statement said.

☆ Accused fraudster Justin Costello has history of posing as billionaire and threatening cops, police say
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Dan Mangan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards Justin Costello yearbook photo"It's easy to be someone you're not, but hard to be yourself," Wisconsin teenager Justin Costello wrote under his senior photo in the Oconomowoc High School yearbook in 1999. Cash and gold bars as detailed in court filing in US District court in San Diego in case of former fugitive Justin Costello. Another San Diego judge then ordered Costello back to Washington state to face trial in DOJ's criminal case in U.S. District Court, court documents show. Costello's recent arrest is not the first time he has run into trouble with the law — or posed as a billionaire, court and police records show. Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards FBI Poster for Justin Costello FBI

☆ Hate speech, online extremism fed Pelosi attack, terror experts believe
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-29 | by ( Heather Timmons | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The frequent targeting of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by online extremists and political opponents likely contributed to the violent attack on her husband Paul, terrorism and extremism experts said. before assaulting Paul Pelosi with a hammer, according to a person briefed on the incident. Pelosi has been demonized online and in public by both far right and far left-leaning political websites and figures. Those theories and people who espouse them are sometimes promoted by more mainstream public figures, amplifying the threats, experts say. Site said the Pelosi attack was being celebrated online by far-right supporters.

☆ 2 Chinese agents tried to bribe an undercover FBI agent with $61,000 in Bitcoin in an attempt to steal classified information: DOJ
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Federal prosecutors say two Chinese agents tried to bribe a government worker to steal information. The duo wanted to obtain secrets about an investigation into a Chinese telecommunications firm. The person they tried to bribe was an undercover FBI agent. He Guochun and Wang Zheng offered an unnamed government employee $61,000 in Bitcoin for secret information regarding the prosecution of a big Chinese telecommunications firm, prosecutors said. He is also charged with two counts of money laundering because of the $61,000 bribe, the complaint said.

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