The slap on the wrist comes after civilian prosecutors initially attempted to pursue a criminal conviction. The Army convinced the court to let it handle the matter internally, however, and the officer was instead prosecuted through the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (UCMJ). Further, Motherboard found while seeking records related to the case that the court documents have since been sealed. 

The case illustrates a disturbing trend where the Pentagon swoops in to protect its soldiers when they commit a crime. If convicted in a civilian court, Sweatland could have served up to a year in jail. Instead, a military judge issued a reprimand, an official black mark on Swetland’s military record. 

When asked if Sweatland would have to register as a sex offer, a representative for the U.S. Army Cadet Command told Motherboard it would comply with state law. “A court-martial convicted Lt. Col. Sweatland of a qualifying sex-related offense. The Army is complying with all sex-related offense processing requirements,” Maj. Dan Lessard, spokesman for U.S. Army Cadet Command, told Motherboard.

At the time of his arrest, Lt. Col. Jacob Sweatland was the head of the Army’s Reserve Offcier’s Training Corps program at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He was responsible for shaping a new generation of U.S. military officers. In September 2022, Sweatland left a key fob with a hidden camera in it at a PacSun in San Luis Obispo. A 16-year-old girl found the camera and turned it in, and the store called the cops.

The cops took a look at the camera and found it still contained images and video from other dressing rooms in the area. Sweatland later called the store asking if anyone had found his key fob. The clerk, who was working with police, told Sweatland that someone had found it and he could come and retrieve it. The cops were waiting at the scene.

The details of the case from San Luis Obispo court records which were publicly available at the time of Sweatland’s arrest but are now sealed as part of his plea deal. Pieces of the records still exist from local reporting over the past few years. According to the now-sealed court records, which said that Sweatland faced charges of resisting arrest and obstructing justice in addition to invasion of privacy, the Lt. Col. fled when he got to the store and saw the cops. The police eventually tracked Sweatland down and arrested him. 

Mustang News, reporting based on court records that were available in 2023, said that Sweatland’s fob contained images from several locations including other retail establishments and the gym at the Cal Poly Rec center. The video was shot “from covert angles” and showed “women’s backsides as they [preformed] various exercises wearing shorts and tight fitting athletic wear.” At the time of his arrest, Sweatland was removed from his position at the University but wasn’t charged for the recordings because they were taken in a public area.

As the case against Sweatland moved forward last year, he and his lawyers did what they could to avoid civilian justice. Before the case was handed over to military prosecutors, Sweatland attempted to get it dismissed as a “Military Diversion.” In California, veterans and servicemembers can ask for courts to dismiss charges if the defendant is “suffering from sexual trauma, traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, or mental health problems as a result of his or her military service.”

According to court records, Sweatland’s defense team claimed that he’d undergone intensive therapy since his arrest. Sweatland’s service was no joke, he deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Colombia and earned a Bronze Star and a Ranger Tab. He saw combat and it’s possible he’s suffering from service related PTSD. But the court of SLO wasn’t buying it.

“The calculated and covert method in which Defendant repeatedly targeted vulnerable young women demonstrates little potential for rehabilitation in the Military Diversion Program,” court records filed by the prosecutors said.

After his attempt at using the Military Diversion Program was thwarted, the Army stepped in. 

“When disposing of allegations of misconduct, the Army regularly coordinates with federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecution authorities. In July 2023, the San Luis Obispo District Attorney’s Office initiated contact with the Army and requested the Army prosecute this case,” Lessard said. “After careful consideration of the evidence and in consultation with the victim, the Army preferred court-martial charges against Lt. Col. Sweatland on July 13, 2023.”

The military conducted an investigation of its own and handed down the reprimand during a special court martial. “On Jan. 22, 2024, at a special court-martial convened at Fort Knox, Ky., Lt. Col. Jacob J. Sweatland was convicted by a military judge, pursuant to his pleas, of one specification of indecent visual recording and one specification of conduct unbecoming an officer in violation of Articles 120c and 133, UCMJ. The military judge sentenced the accused to be reprimanded. The sentence was consistent with the terms of a plea agreement,” Lessard told Motherboard.

He explained that a reprimand is a punitive public censure. “A reprimand reflects negatively on a soldier’s military record and negatively affects a soldier’s career,” Lessard said. Despite the black mark, Sweatland does still have a career. He is currently assigned to the 8th Brigade of U.S. Army Cadet Command and is serving in an administrative role away from cadets.”

The Sweatland case highlights a problem with civilian-military relations and the Pentagon writ large. This is a persistent problem in the Army. In 2017, a soldier at Fort Hood allegedly assaulted his wife and fired a gun as she fled their home. The Army kicked him out of the service but did not pursue a case against him. The same thing happened the same year in Alaska after a soldier was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow soldier.

In both cases, there was physical evidence of the crime and no prosecution. The soldiers were simply allowed to return to civilian life. The Pentagon often runs cover for its soldiers, which creates a separate system of justice for those who serve.

Motherboard asked Cadet Command to respond to concerns that the Army’s handling of Sweatland would be viewed as a slap on the wrist. “A court-martial convicted and punished Lt. Col. Sweatland under adherence to the rules and procedures prescribed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We have no further comment on this matter while it is subject to appellate review,” Lessard said.

Update 2/9: This article was updated with more information from U.S. Army Cadet Command spokesperson Maj. Dan Lessard and the subhed has been changed to reflect this information.

The post An Army Officer Faced Jail Time for Spying on Girls. Then the Pentagon Stepped In. appeared first on VICE.

Florerus, a 33-year-old working with Afghan refugees in Iran on behalf of the EU was detained in April 2022 at Tehran’s airport as he was visiting on a holiday trip and then accused of spying for Iran’s foes, in particular, Israel. He was charged and tried for “corruption on earth,” or stymieing the cause of the Iranian revolution, in the Islamic Republic’s religious courts, a charge that can be punished with death. He is the latest victim of a repeating pattern in which foreign nationals are entangled in a legal ordeal in Iran in order for the country’s ruling mullahs to extort money or other goals from the West.

Afraid that quiet diplomacy wasn’t working, Floderus’s loved ones broke their silence in December last year and, on Thursday, went to Brussels to hold an event to raise awareness of his case with European officials.

Floderus’s sister Ingrid told VICE News: “We are very close with Johan and always spoke on almost a daily basis. He is such a freedom-loving and stubborn person. Since his arrest, we have been only able to talk a few times. I can’t imagine how horrible the situation he is in, but he is still full of life and trying to stay strong.”

“Johan is someone full of life and always had a curious soul, and he always traveled around the world and spoke Farsi, and he visited Iran multiple times, and worked there.”  

In Iran, all foreign nationals are closely monitored, and their movements must be approved by local authorities. Despite repeated calls from both the EU and Sweden to release Floderus, the Iranian judiciary has insisted that they have enough evidence to prosecute him on espionage charges.

The Swede is held in Tehran’s Evin prison and his case is being handled by Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, headed by the clerical judge, Iman Afshari, already notorious for his passing unjust prison sentences on political activists, artists, and women.

Last Sunday, the court concluded Floderus’s hearing after five sessions in an almost-empty courtroom, which the Swedish man attended in a prison uniform with his state-appointed lawyer and translator. Mizan News, the Iranian judiciary’s official outlet, reported that the prosecutors accused Floderus of a “very extensive intelligence cooperation with the Zionist occupation regime,” and said that his travel history was clear evidence of his involvement in activities that “threaten Iran’s national security”.

Afshari gave a week for Floderus’ lawyer to submit their defense, and did not give a verdict date. 

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Despite denials from the Iranian government, rights groups and Western governments have repeatedly accused the Islamic Republic of “hostage diplomacy” by using trumped-up charges such as “corruption on earth” to extract political concessions, release funds held abroad by international sanctions, or in prisoner exchanges.

Floderus’s arrest is likely to put pressure on Sweden in the case of the arrest of Iranian former prison official Hamid Nouri.

Nouri was detained upon arrival at Stockholm Airport in November 2019, and later charged with involvement in the killing of thousands of Iranian political prisoners in 1988. 

The former prison official was sentenced to life “for grave breaches of international humanitarian law and murder,” by a Swedish court after the prosecution asked for the maximum penalty in July 2022. The outcome was hailed as a rare human rights success against Iranian regime officials, but outraged the government in Tehran, which called the case “politically motivated.”

Last Sunday, the Iranian prosecutor asked for the maximum penalty in Floderus’s case – either life in prison or the death sentence given the “important nature and adverse affects of the accused’s actions.”

 The diplomat’s family had kept quiet about the arrest on the advice of the Swedish authorities as they tried to resolve the issue through “silent diplomacy,” and launched a public campaign after the news broke out at the end of last year, and losing hope that Floderus would be released through back-channel talks.

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“Other governments go the distance to protect their citizens, and I hope that Sweden will do that too. Johan is my brother, and his freedom and well-being are the most important thing in the world. So of course I feel that you should use every tool in the toolbox,” said his sister, Ingrid.   

Emily Atkinson, a close friend of Floderus, said: “Johan is someone who always brings people together. We have been left with a massive gap in our life without him, and we are also being taken hostage by the appalling situation,” she said as she struggled to keep back tears during a conversation with VICE News

“I want to say: Johan, hold on. We’re here for you. We’ve rallied for you. We’re speaking up for you, and we’re here waiting for you. Hold on and stay strong.”

The post Family, Friends of Swedish Diplomat Facing Death Penalty in Iran Speak Out appeared first on VICE.

This time looks different. He’s now officially overdue to receive a downright brutal judicial ruling in a case that threatens to dismember his business empire, drain his cash reserves and drive him out of New York State as a businessman forever.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Aurthur Engoron blew through a self-imposed soft end-of-the-month deadline on Wednesday to deliver a judgment in the sweeping multi-million fraud lawsuit brought by the New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump and his company have already been found liable, and are now just waiting to find out the size of the punishment. That decision could land at any moment, zapping Trump’s business like a thunderbolt when it does, in what could easily be the largest financial penalty of Trump’s life.

The New York Attorney General’s Office is seeking $370 million, along with a lifetime ban on Trump working in New York real estate or serving as an executive or director of a company based in the state. Judge Engoron declared Trump and his business liable for fraudulently overstating Trump’s wealth for financial gain in September. Now, the same judge bears sole responsibility for setting the penalty. A spokesperson for the court said Thursday that the ruling has been delayed until early to mid-February.

A $370 million fine would follow Trump’s $83 million defamation loss to writer E. Jean Carroll, in a lawsuit over Trump’s derisive denials of Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her in a New York department store bathroom in the 1990s.

Such mammoth judgements dwarf notable courtroom defeats Trump has faced in the past.

Trump’s company was fined only $1.6 million when it was found criminally liable in late 2022 for paying executives in off-the-books perks in what prosecutors branded an illegal scheme to minimize taxes.

When Trump settled three lawsuits brought against his Trump University real estate training program in November 2016, right after he was elected president, he paid out a total of $25 million. In that instance, the NY Attorney General’s office had accused the operation of fraud, saying the unaccredited, for-profit venture misled its customers by calling the business a “university.”

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The New York AG also had a hand in shutting down the Donald J. Trump Foundation, the personal charity Trump founded in 1987, through a lawsuit that forced the operation to dissolve in 2018. The office accused the charity of engaging in “persistently illegal conduct,” and said Trump used the foundation for his personal and political benefit. Yet when the foundation was shuttered, it was only forced to pay out less than $4 million to eight different charities.

This time, the stakes are much higher.

The potential combined $450 million in damages from both the New York fraud lawsuit and the Carroll case would equal roughly 15 percent of Trump’s $3.1 billion fortune, as estimated by Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Trump himself has boasted that his net worth amounts to some $10 billion or more, but independent experts generally assess his real fortune to be only a fraction of that amount, although still likely in the billions.

Trump claimed last year that his cash stockpiles are “substantially in excess” of $400 million. He may in fact have $600 million in cash, according to Bloomberg estimates.

Trump’s company is notoriously opaque, meaning that it’s hard to know exactly how much damage losing $450 million would inflict. Most of Trump’s known wealth is held in the form of real estate, including Trump Tower and residential and commercial buildings in Manhattan; golf courses around the country; the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida; and his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, NY.

Trump has often boasted about the amount of cash he keeps lying around.

“We have a lot of cash,” Trump said in a deposition with New York attorney general’s office lawyers in April 2023. “I believe we have substantially in excess of $400 million in cash, which is a lot for a developer. Developers usually don’t have cash. They have assets, not cash. We have, I believe, $400-plus [million] and going up very substantially every month.”

Trump won’t have to pay the full amount for either penalty immediately, and hopes to appeal both losses. But the amount will grow while he appeals, rising by 9 percent annually, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Trump spent approximately $50 million in donor money on legal bills and investigation-related expenses in 2023, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. All told, Trump’s various legal committees spent roughly $210 million in 2023, while raising only $200 million, according to Politico. In other words, Trump’s legal fees are draining resources from his political operation, which spent more last year than it took in despite Trump’s incessant fundraising.

Then there’s the question of whether, once this case and its appeals are all wrapped up, Trump’s family business will even be allowed to continue to exist in its current state.

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In September, Judge Engoron caused a stir when, upon finding that Trump had committed fraud, he ordered the revocation of many state certificates Trump needs to run his companies. The judge said that the companies, which hold many of Trump’s assets including Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, should be turned over to a receiver for “dissolution.”

When asked whether he meant that Trump’s buildings should be sold off, Judge Engoron demurred, saying he’d clarify his precise meaning later. That September order is now under appeal.

Yet so far Trump has lodged several other appeals related to the fraud case, including an attempt to remove James from the case, dismiss the suit completely and block multiple subpoenas.

Almost all of those efforts have failed.

The post Trump Is Inching Closer to the Worst Legal Defeat of his Life appeared first on VICE.

Unfortunately for Trump, the answer is: Probably not, according to legal experts who spoke with VICE News. The allegations of an office affair, if true, make the prosecution team look pretty bad, they said—but despite the hoopla, the charge seems unlikely to sink this case, in which Trump and his associates are accused of attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

“It’s sensational, it’s scandalous, and there’s no question that it achieved the goal of reducing the prosecution’s moral superiority,” said Titus Nichols, a Georgia defense attorney and former prosecutor in the Augusta District Attorney’s Office. “But I just don’t see some shining victory in which the defendant walks out with all charges dismissed.” 

Some experts see more cause for concern than others, however, as fresh revelations continue to roll out daily. At least one Georgia lawyer has raised the possibility that a judge could move the entire case to another prosecutor’s office, an outcome that would, at the very least, cause a big delay.

On Thursday, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ordered Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to respond in writing by Feb. 2 to the allegation she had an “improper” relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, as alleged in a Jan. 8 legal filing by the attorney for Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign aide turned codefendant. Roman’s attorney alleged that Willis and Wade took lavish trips together, which were paid for from the same bank account that received Wade’s fee from the district attorney’s office. Wade has earned over $650,000 working for Willis’ team. 

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Willis and Wade haven’t yet directly addressed the substance of the claims. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Feb. 15. 

Wade purchased plane tickets for himself and Willis to Miami in October 2022, and to San Francisco in April 2023, according to bank statements that were filed by Wade’s wife, Jocelyn Mayfield Wade, in their divorce proceedings on Friday. 

Willis broke her silence Sunday in an impassioned speech at Big Bethel AME Church, in which she called Wade a legal “superstar” and a “great friend,” and suggested he’s being singled out for criticism because he’s Black. 

Willis also moved to block a subpoena for her testimony in Wade’s divorce proceedings. A motion filed by her lawyer accused Wade’s wife, Jocelyn, of attempting to interfere with the Trump prosecution. The brief said Jocelyn Wade “has conspired with interested parties in the criminal election interference case to use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass and oppress [Willis].” 

Denial of rights

Roman is seeking to have Willis and Wade removed from the case, and have the charges dismissed against all 15 remaining codefendants, including Trump. Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, didn’t provide direct proof of the relationship in the original filing. But she claimed that sealed records from Wade’s divorce proceedings would buttress the allegation, and she is now trying to get those records unsealed. 

While the facts of the case remain uncertain, so far, the alleged conduct doesn’t look like the kind of thing that will warrant significant interference from a judge, said Nichols. 

To take action against Willis’ office, a judge would need to find that any improper and undisclosed relationship between Willis and Wade violated the defendants’ rights, Nichols said. And that doesn’t appear to be the case, he said. 

“It looks bad,” Nichols said. “But even if all this is true, how does it affect the defendants’ substantive rights?” 

Rebecca Roiphe, an expert on prosecutorial ethics at New York Law School and former prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, agreed. 

“I don’t think the attempt to get the prosecutor removed or the indictment dismissed is going to be successful,” Roiphe said. 

“You need to have a conflict of interest,” she said. “In some cases, courts will dismiss a prosecutor for the strong appearance of impropriety. But in my reading of the cases, it has to be a kind of impropriety that would affect the case.” 

A romantic relationship between Willis and Wade doesn’t create that kind of conflict of interest, because they’re on the same side, Nichols said. 

Some legal experts, however, have argued the situation could be more perilous for the prosecution. 

Willis spent months investigating Trump and his associates before filing a sweeping racketeering case last summer. Prior to bringing the indictment, she and Wade oversaw a months-long Special Purpose Grand Jury investigation that interviewed dozens of witnesses. 

If it could be shown that Willis prolonged the investigation to justify a hefty salary for her romantic partner, then that might be a conflict of interest requiring her removal, Georgia defense attorney Andrew Fleischman wrote in an OpEd in The Daily Beast. 

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Nichols, however, said it would be difficult to demonstrate that Willis unduly prolonged the probe. Her sweeping racketeering indictment of Trump and his associates marks the first time a former president has ever been charged with a crime by a state prosecutor in American history. That’s exactly the kind of complicated case that shouldn’t be rushed, Nichols said. 

Pete Skandalakis, head of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, told The Atlanta Journal Constitution that he’d “be surprised” if the allegations sank the case.

Willis has been criticized for approving hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments for legal fees to Wade for his work on the case. But Willis has the prerogative to make staffing and salary decisions for her office, Skandalakis told the paper. 

“A district attorney can use the funds allocated to the office by the county commissioners as he or she sees fit,” he said. 

The post Trump Probably Can’t Use the Georgia Sex Scandal to Deep-Six His Prosecution appeared first on VICE.

But despite their best efforts, they failed: Trump lost two important tests in court this week. Combined, they augur bad news for Trump’s efforts to wriggle out of facing a criminal trial in 2024. 

In both instances, the big issue at stake is the speed of Trump’s Washington D.C. criminal case over his alleged attempts to subvert the 2020 election—which is emerging as the crucial case to watch of Trump’s four sets of criminal charges, because it’s the most likely to deliver a conviction and a serious prison sentence before election day in 2024. 

Trump’s strategy is to slow the process down, push all his trials past election day, win back the White House, and then use the powers of the presidency to stymie prosecutors indefinitely. But this week, two different courts both showed they intend to move extremely quickly—throwing this gambit into doubt. 

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On Monday, the Supreme Court took just a single day to respond to a request from Smith about a matter that threatens to create a significant delay—in what amounts to a hyperdrive turnaround for the high court. And then, on Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers got even more bad news. The D.C. Court of Appeals also signaled it will move quickly, blowing off Trump’s legal team’s gripes about the holidays. 

“The timeline for Donald Trump to possibly slow down this trial is diminishing,” said Gene Rossi, a former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. “The Supreme Court’s action to expedite its review is a clear sign that the Jan. 6 trial in the District of Columbia will be held sometime in the first half of next year.”

Both the Supreme Court and the D.C. Court of Appeals are essentially working on the same issue, at the same time: Trump’s appeal over his defeated attempt to secure immunity from prosecution. 

Trump has argued that, as a former president, he deserves “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution” for any wrongdoing committed while in office. He also claimed that he should be exempt from this criminal particular prosecution on the grounds of “double jeopardy,” because he was already impeached over the events of Jan. 6 by the House of Representatives (though acquitted by the Senate).  

Trump’s initial attempt to claim immunity was slapped down by the judge overseeing his case, District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. But the case has now been essentially frozen in time while Trump appeals her decision. And that deep freeze will continue while the D.C. Court of Appeals and, potentially, the Supreme Court, resolve the matter. 

Trump is currently scheduled to go to trial in this case on March 4. But if the appeal process takes too long, that date could be pushed back considerably. 

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On Monday, the Supreme Court took only a single day to agree that it will consider Smith’s request that he be allowed to leap-frog the D.C. Court of Appeals and bring the issue all the way to the top court immediately. The high court gave Trump’s lawyers until Dec. 20th to respond.

Then on Wednesday, the D.C. Court of Appeals revealed that it too would move quickly. The appeals court set a briefing schedule that will be wrapped up entirely by Jan. 2—indicating that a decision could land sometime in January, possibly after oral arguments to be scheduled later. 

Earlier that day, Trump’s attorneys urged the D.C. Court of Appeals to take its sweet time, saying that a “reckless rush to judgment” would “irreparably undermine public confidence in the judicial system.”

Trump attorney D. John Sauer argued there is no good reason for the judiciary to attempt to stick to the current March 4 trial date. 

“The date of March 4, 2024, has no talismanic significance,” he wrote. “Aside from the prosecution’s unlawful partisan motives, there is no compelling reason that date must be maintained.”

And what’s more, they argued, working through the holidays would be rough on the lawyers. 

“This proposed schedule would require attorneys and support staff to work round-the-clock through the holidays, inevitably disrupting family and travel plans,” Trump’s team wrote. “It is as if the Special Counsel “growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming, ‘I must find some way to keep Christmas from coming. … But how?’”

The D.C. Court of Appeals brushed aside these arguments.  

The result of all the legal wrangling is that both of the courts that Trump is counting on to slow down his case are moving at break-neck speed—in a sign that his attempts to secure a delay may not save him. 

And Trump’s attorneys, evidently, will have to work through the holidays after all. 

The post Trump Had a Bad Week in Court appeared first on VICE.

The Brittany Clardy Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls Act, named after an 18-year-old Minneapolis woman who went missing in 2013 and was later found dead, models a similar bill passed in Minnesota earlier this year. 

While Black girls and women make up only 15 percent of the female population in the U.S., they made up nearly 34 percent of women reported missing, according to a 2020 study by the National Crime Information Center. 

“My message with this bill is to provide hope,” Rep. Omar told VICE News before announcing the bill at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 52nd Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. Wednesday night. “For it to serve as a beacon of hope to know that the stories of [the victims’] loved ones is going to create legislation that would make it so that other families and survivors don’t have to go through the same things they went through.”

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Clardy’s sister, Lakeisha Lee, headed a task force that pushed to open the Minnesota office. “All the hard work I’ve done and the sacrifices that I’ve made for my family and connecting with other families was worth it,” Lee told VICE News. “This [bill] will be truly giving me a new start, our family and also other families and communities all over. This is just the blueprint. It’s time that Black women and girls are seen and heard and valued throughout that process.”

Clardy was missing for two weeks before her body was found in the trunk of her car. Lee and her family said police did not respond urgently when they reported her missing–a familiar sentiment among families of Black girls who disappear. Nationally, cases involving Black girls and women stay open four times longer than other cases, according to the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination as cited in the Clardy Act. 

The proposed federal office calls for research that involves local community engagement, incorporating focus groups and interviews with Black women and girls with lived experience. It also includes a focus on data collection efforts to build a tracking and reporting infrastructure for missing cases. 

The bill mentions the need to acknowledge that the already established efforts to find missing persons don’t go far enough to address what is happening to Black women specifically. “The existing federal resources dedicated to combating violence against women and girls is not enough to address this problem and additional resources must be targeted directly to protecting, supporting and providing justice to Black women and girls in the United States,” it says.

If passed, the office would be headed by a director appointed by the Attorney General who would be tasked with establishing a national advisory commission and coordinating with state and local agencies to collect data on cases nationwide like the rate at which they are solved and the time the cases stay open compared to similar cases in other demographics. The act also calls for the need to collect data on Amber alerts and missing reports that are classified as runaways, a nod to a common outcry from families who say police often dismiss their loved ones’ disappearances as runaway cases, which do not get the same resources and attention. 

The Clardy Act also incorporates a grant program for community organizers to provide services and training for police, attorneys and judges, and funding for survivor support efforts.

“Our communities are facing a crisis and we can’t wait any longer for action,” Omar said. “Black women deserve to walk freely without the threat of harm.”

The post Democrats Propose Bill to Establish DOJ Office for Missing and Murdered Black Women appeared first on VICE.

And almost two months later, despite desperately seeking answers from authorities, she still has no clear answers. The only explanation she was given by hospital staff on the day of his death was that he died because he drank “a lot of water,” a response that Coba and her family say they cannot accept.

“I’m never going to see him again,” Coba said in Spanish at a community-organized event in Minneapolis in August. “Why does it have to be like this if they are there to take care of us, not to take our lives?”

On July 21, Cristian Rivera-Coba was pronounced dead after a “medical episode” where he was attended to by a detention deputy and medical staff at the Anoka County Jail in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cristian was booked on DUI and car theft charges, and told police he took Percocet pills with fentanyl shortly before he was pulled over on July 18.

When Odulia and the family received news of the medical incident they rushed out to Mercy Hospital where Cristian was transferred after he became unconscious. They say they begged police officers, staff at the jail, and the county for answers, only to be told in passing by hospital workers that he died because he drank too much water.

Alex Mingus, a teacher who knows Cristian’s family and was once an inmate at the Anoka County Jail himself says the drinking “a lot of water” explanation the family received is not very credible in his mind considering the experience he had there. He has been working with the family to get answers.

“You get a plastic cup and you only have a push button sink in your cell,” he told VICE News. “We were only allowed out of the cell a couple hours a day so you wouldn’t have time to access the day room fountain.”

Dr. Andrew Boozary, a primary care physician and adjunct professor of health policy at Columbia University who also created the Gattsuo Centre for Social Medicine to help at-risk populations said that considering Cristian’s age and that he had no known prior medical conditions, the water explanation may need to be explored further.

“You can certainly induce hyponatremia (in which sodium in the body can be diluted due to excessive water drinking and medical conditions and cause the body and mind to swell up), but it has to be a considerable amount of water in a short period,” Boozary told VICE News.

Dr. Suzanne Shoush, a physician who works as an expert witness to coroner inquiries on custody deaths, agrees that details are missing from this case. 

“To hold someone in custody means removing their autonomy. The jailer has exclusive control over the welfare of the person and is therefore exclusively responsible for the conditions in which this man lived and died,” said Shoush, who is also the Indigenous Health Faculty Lead for the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. 

“People who are incarcerated face a nearly insurmountable bias in having medical crises taken seriously. These are super high risk factors in bias preventing a person from accessing the medical care they need. I wonder if this death could have been preventable.” 

Over the past weeks, Odulia has spent hours calling officials for medical reports, only to be told that nothing has been released. VICE News has also been following up with officials for over a month, including the hospital network, as well as county officials for answers. 

On August 3, David Unze, a spokesperson for Sherburne County, told VICE News that the final medical report would take six to eight weeks. Checking back in on September 11, almost two months after Cristian’s death, the autopsy report still hasn’t been released. “We still have not gotten the final autopsy report from the medical examiner,” Unze wrote in an email. 

The hospital network said it could not confirm the cause of death due to patient confidentiality laws.

Making an impassioned plea at the community event, Odulia couldn’t help but break into tears.

“I will never hear ‘I love you mom. No mother should have to go through this,” she said as the community embraced her. “Why Papi? Why?”

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Other attendees at the event also said that Rivera-Coba’s death is another example of the brutality faced by Black and non-white citizens in custody. After all, it’s the same city that saw the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020, which sparked civil rights protests across the nation and world.

“They’re killing our people on the streets and are killing them in a jail to get Black and minority people out of the community,” activist Toshira Garraway said. “We will not lay down. We will not shut up.”

Another speaker in attendance was Del Shea Perry, whose son died in a Minnesota jail in 2018. This August, Perry received a $2.6 million settlement from a Minnesota county and Minnesota-based medical provider after she filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

“Thank you all for coming out and supporting this family and this mother who, like me, is heartbroken over the death of what happened to our son. Enough is enough.” Perry said to the crowd. 

“No one, and I mean no one, under any circumstances should leave a jail in a body bag.”

The family has set-up a GoFundMe for Cristian’s memorial, and also to hire a lawyer to help investigate the case further.

According to an open records request filed by local network KARE 11, there have been at least 50 deaths in Minnesota jails from 2015 to 2020 that are under investigation by the state’s Department of Corrections.

This month, a Minnesota state prison was put under lockdown after 100 inmates refused to go back into their cells, protesting the high temperatures that saw the area nearing 100F (37.7C).

A memorial vigil was held on Sept. 9, 2023 at the site of George Floyd’s death in downtown Minneapolis for Cristian and those protesting police brutality in and the deaths and conditions in the state’s jail houses. 

The post She Was Told Her Son Died in Jail From ‘Drinking Too Much Water’. She Wants Answers. appeared first on VICE.

Carlos Macci, 71, pleaded guilty to narcotics conspiracy in federal court in April. Judge Ronnie Abrams handed down the sentence Tuesday.

“Selling drugs like heroin and fentanyl not only cost Mr. Williams his life but is costing you your freedom,” Abrams told Macci.

Macci was part of a crew that sold drugs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn according to court documents, which allege the group sold Williams “fentanyl-laced heroin” on Sept. 5, 2021, which the actor, who starred in HBO’s The Wire, then died from taking. He was 54.

Through a Spanish translator Macci told the court, “I’m sorry for what has happened.”

Macci is one of four men who were charged with narcotics conspiracy tied to Williams’ death. The others, Irvin Cartagena, Luiz Cruz, and Hector Robles also pleaded guilty in April.

Macci’s lawyer, Benjamin Zeman, told the court Macci has been trapped in a cycle of drug addiction for decades and that an additional prison term “will not help Mr. Macci, it will not help Mr. Williams and it certainly will not help prevent the next overdose.”

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U.S attorney Micah Fergenson said Macci has received time served for his last four offences, but that they did not deter him from using and selling drugs. He also argued that prison could be “beneficial” to Macci by keeping him away from using drugs.

Abrams said this sentencing was “especially hard” because she agreed with arguments from both sides. She acknowledged the personal and societal harms of mass incarceration but said she had a responsibility to protect the public.

“After heroin-laced fentanyl killed Williams, Macci continued selling heroin laced with fentanyl,” she said. But she told Macci he still had an opportunity to define himself “in a positive way.”

Following his prison sentence, Macci will have three years of supervised release, including one year in inpatient rehab.

Williams’ nephew Dominic Dupont also spoke at the hearing.

“Michael K. Williams was a person who believed in love, who believed in an opportunity for people to get themselves together,” he said. His voice caught when he recalled calling his grandmother to inform her of Williams’ death.

He said Macci’s situation “weighs heavily on me,” and said accountability and empathy can co-exist.

After the hearing was over, he said his uncle was an “amazing human being.”

“There are no winners here,” he said.

Williams was found dead in his apartment on September 6, 2021, with drugs and related paraphernalia on a table inside. Several unopened glassines, or bags, of drugs were later tested and came back positive for heroin, fentanyl, para-flurofentanyl (a fentanyl analogue), and the animal tranquilizer xylazine—one of the key components of tranq dope, which is spreading around the U.S., causing users to develop horrible skin wounds. Some of the residue found at Williams’ apartment additionally tested positive for cocaine.

Screenshots taken from surveillance footage showed Cartagena handing Williams something on September 5. In a subsequent controlled buy from the informant, which was audio recorded, the informant asked if the men were selling the same batch of drugs that Williams consumed. According to a sworn affidavit from New York police detective Mark Gurleski, Cruz responded, “What you think that it has — ah, ah, ah, ah — fentanyl and shit? We don’t, don’t fuck with that.”

The baggies purchased did contain fentanyl, police said.

Williams, an acclaimed actor who played Omar Little in The Wire and Albert White on Boardwalk Empire, had spoken publicly about his struggles with addiction, telling the New York Times, “it’s an everyday struggle for me, but I’m fighting” in 2017. He also shared those experiences in his VICE TV series Black Market, which explored various underground economies around the world.

In a letter to Judge Abrams, The Wire creator David Simon, pleaded for leniency for Macci, noting that the show was a critique of drug prohibition and “the human cost underlying those policies.”

“Michael always declared that he was responsible for himself, that his decision whether to use or to cease using would always be his own,” Simon wrote, noting that Williams was publicly opposed to mass incarceration and believed in restorative justice.

He said Williams’ position would be that “no possible good can come from incarcerating a 71-year-old soul, largely illiterate, who has himself struggled with a lifetime of addiction and who has not engaged in street-level sales of narcotics with ambitions of success and profit but rather as someone caught up in the diaspora of addiction.”

Williams would want Macci to take this opportunity to find redemption, he added.

He said while working on the show’s third season, Williams opened up about his addiction, and a crew member stayed with him to help keep him from being tempted to use drugs.

“We became aware of a deep and abiding loneliness that had long accompanied Mike on his journey,” Simon said.

The cases against Williams’ dealers come amid a wider movement to prosecute fentanyl suppliers more aggressively, in some cases charging them with murder, or handing down extremely lengthy prison sentences.

However, drug policy experts have previously told VICE News these harsh punishments can exacerbate the overdose crisis by making people witnessing an overdose more fearful of calling authorities.

A report from the Health in Justice Action Lab found that overdoses increase by nearly 8 percent following media coverage of drug-induced homicide cases.

The post Dealer Involved in Michael K. Williams Overdose Case Sentenced to 30 Months appeared first on VICE.

The doc days of summer 

Today was supposed to be the first pre-trial hearing in Donald Trump and Walt Nauta’s combined 38-count indictment for mishandling classified information, conspiracy, and obstruction. That’s now supposed to happen on Tuesday next week. It’s a small delay, but the first tiny example of how Trump could try to wriggle out from under the mountain of evidence against him. 

Whether it’s Iran attack plans or nuclear secrets, bathrooms or ballrooms, the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) governs how courts handle state secrets when those secrets are evidence. And now we’re all in a crash course to understand how CIPA could help Trump’s lawyers, or even a sympathetic judge, to run out the clock on his charges. 

When submersibles disappear or arcane statutes govern the future of the country, we need experts! I called up Brian Greer, who was an attorney in the CIA’s Office of General Counsel from 2010 to 2018. While there he investigated and prosecuted cases involving classified docs, CIPA, and the Espionage Act. (By the way you can hear Brian on the “Jack” podcast, where he regularly joins to talk about the behind-the-scenes realities of the Mar-a-Lago case.) 

How important is it for Donald Trump to delay this case as much as possible?
It’s probably his most important strategy that’s likely to succeed.. If he delays it past the election, and gets reelected, the case is over. He doesn’t even have to worry about pardoning himself. His Attorney General will dismiss the case. 

The first pre-trial hearing was supposed to be today. It’s now scheduled for Tuesday. Has this delay dynamic already started?
I focus more on DOJ’s proposed trial schedule. They proposed starting to turn over classified evidence to Trump’s team, called classified discovery, on July 10. That we’re already passed. Even if Judge (Aileen) Cannon adopts a schedule on Tuesday, there are still other things that have to happen before classified discovery can even start. You have to get the security clearances for the lawyers approved, which doesn’t appear to have happened yet.  You have to have all the logistics worked out for where the documents are going to be stored. For where the lawyers are going to go to view them.

Then most importantly, you have to have a protective order specifically governing classified information under CIPA section 3, that DOJ hasn’t even proposed yet. They are certainly negotiating it behind the scenes right now with Trump and Walt Nauta’s team. I’m skeptical that they would come to a mutual agreement on it, which means it would have to be litigated. That could take a few weeks to a month. So just on the start of the classified discovery, we’re talking about probably a month delay, is my guess. Unless for some reason they come to an agreement on the protective order.

There’s a lot of concern about Judge Cannon, and whether she’s in the tank for Trump. Given all the complex procedure, when will we know if she’s trying to tilt things his way?  
First, she could say,  we’re going to start the discovery process, and we’re going to delay the scheduling of the trial until we figure out the scope of discovery. That’s a probable outcome, I think, and that’s not that unreasonable actually. I don’t think she’s going to say, “I’m going to schedule the trial for December 2024.” But she could say that we need to hold off scheduling the trial until we know more about the case through discovery. 

When we start to get into the classified discovery disputes, that’s going to be a big part of it. But those are going to be fought out behind the scenes without the public really knowing what’s going on. It’s in that area where there’s a lot of opportunity for delay, and for the judge to facilitate that delay. 

Trump’s team before long will probably file some motions to dismiss the indictment all together. They may make their Presidential Records Act argument, they may make malicious prosecution arguments. They’ll make their argument about the Special Counsel’s appointment being unconstitutional. Those should all normally be easily rejected by the judge. But if she entertains those, obviously we’ll know she’s in the tank for Trump.. 

Judge Cannon has very little experience with criminal trials and zero experience with CIPA cases. Can attorneys take advantage of an inexperienced judge in a very complex case like this? 
They can for sure. There are a bunch of novelties to cases like this that they just aren’t going to understand. It happened in Guantanamo military commission proceedings, where we’ve had a series of judges there who have no experience with cases involving classified information, and the defense counsel has taken advantage of that. I’m not defending everything the government’s done, but that’s a great example of defense lawyers tying up inexperienced judges over how classified information should be handled. 

The first substantive part will involve the government going to her ex parte, meaning without Trump’s lawyers present, to discuss their discovery strategy and what they’re going to produce and getting her approval to apply certain CIPA tools for things like redacting documents, summarizing them, or making substitutions.That’s all going to be done without Trump’s lawyers present. That may itself be odd to her and something she doesn’t react well to. The next phase would be Trump’s lawyers giving notice of the classified information they intend to use at trial. Trump’s lawyers will raise a stink about that, saying it’s unfair that they have to do that, but that’s in the statute. But she might find that unusual too. So there will be opportunities at every step for them to exploit her inexperience. On the flip side, there are also opportunities for the government to educate her at every step along the way.

So given what you know, what are the chances in your estimation of a trial here before the election?
I think the earliest possible date is June 2024. That has enough time to build in all the pretrial classified proceedings, if they go relatively smoothly, and if the government devotes a lot of resources to getting its piece done on time. It’s also after the GOP primary, and it’s after Trump’s May 2024 trial in New York. It’s before the general election really gets ramped up.

But if Judge Cannon isn’t interested in that, it’s not gonna happen. Or if she makes adverse rulings that DOJ has to appeal, that delays things by a couple months. She’s not going to hold a trial in September before the election. So if they thread the needle, it looks like June. 

I kind of love that the outside world suddenly has this desperate need for your area of niche expertise. It’s like how we needed the world’s experts in deep-sea submersibles, and they had a moment. How’s it been having the world crashing into your little corner of the courtroom? 
It’s a little surreal for sure. I’d love to go back to my 2012 self and say, hey, this statute that we and a handful of DOJ lawyers are experts in? Well, now a former president of the United States is gonna be charged with violating it, and by the way, that former president is Donald Trump. And suddenly the whole world is going to be talking about the Espionage Act and CIPA. Even within the government and national security world, they’re considered obscure statutes.

It’s a world of (classified) discovery. Sign your friends up for Breaking the Vote!

News de J’accuse

Fulton County, Georgia has two brand new grand juries, one of which is likely to charge a bunch of people–including Donald Trump–of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

The panels were selected Tuesday, in time for DA Fani Willis’s famous heads up that indictments are coming between July 31 and August 18 (right in the middle of Hot Indictment Summer!) Judge Robert McBurney, who presided over all the greatest hits from the special purpose grand jury, like Mark Meadows trying to avoid going under oath and juror Emily Kohrs mugging on primetime cable, told grand jurors they’d meet twice a week. 

So, it’s on, and none too soon. Internet Lawyers are buzzing with rumors that Special Counsel Jack Smith could try to beat Willis to the punch and charge crimes in the federal Jan. 6 coup plot probe. Special Counsel prosecutors were in the building this week.

Their just deserts? 

Arizona prosecutors are ramping up an investigation into effort’s to overturn the state’s 2020 election. Investigators have been contacting fake electors, election officials, and their lawyers. Stay, in the parlance of our times, tuned!

A price above Rudy

Meanwhile the two former Fulton County election workers Trump dragged into a hell of harassment after the 2020 election want a judge to impose “severe sanctions” on Rudy Giuliani. Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman sued Giuliani for defamation after he helped spread lies about the two cheating with suitcases full of ballots and a mysterious thumb drive that turned out to be a ginger mint.

They’ve already been after Rudy for failing to produce documents for discovery. Now the pair are looking for a default judgment, telling federal Judge Beryl Howell that Giuliani has repeatedly failed to preserve or produce required evidence.

Waning Immunity 

Donald Trump won’t have the federal government to hide behind any more in his suits for allegedly defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. DOJ reversed course this week and told a federal judge it no longer considers Trump’s statements about Carroll when he was in office part of his official presidential duties. That means legal immunity for federal employees against civil suits related to their official duties is gone. 

Carroll already won a $5 million judgement against Trump for sexual abuse in New York stemming from her encounter with Trump in the 1990’s. For years she’s also had a federal defamation suit brewing stemming from the several times Trump denounced her while president. DOJ intervened and argued he was immune from the suit while doing official acts. 

Now DOJ says new facts have come to light, including Trump’s CNN town hall appearance where he called Carroll a “wack job” and her story “fake.” That statement led Carroll to boost her sought damages to $10 million more, and to DOJ concluding that Trump continuing to disparage Carroll while not president means his disparagement while president wasn’t official. 

Trump’s also countersuing Carroll for defamation for saying he “raped” her after the jury in her N.Y. case him civilly liable for sexually abusing her, but not for raping her. 

What lies ahead

This week’s rulings blocking federal agencies from communicating with social media companies about disinformation on their platforms has experts and counterintelligence officials worried it could be a boon for foreign election interference. 

Republican AGs suing the government shopped their suit to Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana they had a strong feeling would be sympathetic. They were right, and now that DOJ lost its effort to lift his injunction, it’s gutted years of efforts to alert companies when suspected foreign-bred disinfo is spreading online. The case is being appealed to the conservative Fifth Circuit. 

Meanwhile, if preventing outright voter fraud is your thing, that’s harder too. For months we’ve been tracking GOP-led states leaving the bipartisan Electronic Registration Information Center, aka ERIC. Eight have now bailed mostly because of conspiracy theories, leaving big holes in states’ ability to track people who register to vote in more than one state. 

Now states are scrambling to make up for a system that experts say was perfectly good to begin with. This is all while subverters are ramping up bogus information requests designed to overwhelm election workers and hamper a clean count in 2024. 

Making Attorneys Get Arrears 

What’s more Trumpy than stiffing your lawyers? Former presidential advisor and probable future federal inmate Steve Bannon was ordered by a New York judge to pay about half a million dollars in fees he owes to his lawyers. 

Bannon’s attorneys in the Jan. 6 committee subpoena matter and his fraud and money laundering indictment in New York for the We Build the Wall scam sued the right-wing podcaster so they could get paid. New York Judge Arlene Bluth ordered Bannon to pay more than $480,000 plus the attorneys’ cost for having to sue him. 

• A man who assaulted police officers with a flagpole on Jan. 6 while out on bail for attempted murder was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison this week. Matthew Beddingfield, off North Carolina, pleaded guilty in January, 2023 to assault and obstruction. Online sleuths identified Beddingfield, who was also seen giving a Nazi salute during the attack on the Capitol. 

• A judge ordered the man who turned up near Barack Obama’s DC residence with weapons last month held until trial. Taylor Taranto went to Obama’s house after Donald Trump posted what he said was Obama’s address on Truth Social. He was arrested on four charges, and his van containing weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition was nearby. 

The judge who issued the order said Taranto, a Navy veteran, had been “let down” while he tried to cope with PTSD. U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui also questioned why the people influencing Taranto’s conspiratorial beliefs about a stolen election haven’t faced any consequences. 

• Former Broadway actor James Beeks was acquitted of the two Jan. 6-related charges against him, after representing himself in a federal bench trial. Beeks was charged with joining in on the Oath Keepers’ plans to storm the Capitol and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. But several charges were dropped, leaving just civil disorder and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding charges. Beeks is just the second Jan. 6 defendant to be acquitted out of more than 1,000 charged.

“Give it a fucking rest, Jordan. I’m at the gym.” –  Ariz. Gov. Katie Hobbs, to MAGA activist Jordan Conradson, while he followed her through a health club asking about election conspiracies.

Epps, I did it again — One of the most persistent and specific right-wing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 involves a Trump-voting, Jan. 6-attending former Marine named Ray Epps. Tucker Carlson told stories about Epps fomenting the riot over and over again before he was fired from Fox. He’s still doing it on his (currently) waning Twitter show. Now Epps and his lawyers just sued Fox for defamation, with Dominion-like expectations of the potential damages. 

Low down dirty shaman — Is “QAnon Shaman” and Jan. 6 convict Jacob Chansley having a real-life beef with antisemitic Internet person Nick Fuentes? Or are the two cagily hyping a far-right Arizona college Republicans event they’re both due to speak at come the end of the month? Honestly, who cares. But what mattered from this whole dumb thing is that three Arizona county GOP chapters, including Maricopa, were touted as sponsors to the event hosting one of the far-right’s most notorious neo-Nazis. 

VICE News’ Tess Owens has the story. The GOPs of Maricopa, Pinal and Yavapai Counties deny they’re sponsoring the event. The claim was entirely plausible, given Ariz. GOP Rep. Paul Gosar’s repeated appearances with Fuentes. Stay tuned, if you dare.

Americans with disabilities act — Are voting restrictions and voter suppression efforts in GOP-controlled states alienating a huge block of American swing voters? Voters with disabilities were evenly split between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016, but swing away from Trump in 2020. Some interesting new data suggests why.

Creeping autocracy in the U.S.

From Margaret Sullivan

The GOP’s going full white nationalist even sooner than I expected.

From The Daily Beast

Mike Luckovich.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The post Donald Trump Reveals His Legal Strategy and It’s Pretty Sad appeared first on VICE.

Trump’s lawyers tried and failed to stop Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman from ordering Trump not to speak about his case with witnesses, or with his co-defendant and personal aide, Walt Nauta, as a condition of his release. 

The order is a common one for criminal defendants. But it now raises the surreal spectacle of a federal judge ordering the notoriously big-mouthed former president to shut the hell up about something. It creates an awkward vibe for Trump and Nauta, since both men still work together and see each other regularly. And it represents a new way in which the legal system is beginning to chip away at Trump’s control over his world, as he’s drawn more deeply into the realm of criminal law as a defendant. 

Trump pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to 37 criminal counts, including violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice, for allegedly squirrelling away classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after his presidency. Trump has denied all wrongdoing. He could face a two-decade long prison sentence if he’s convicted.  

Trump generally hates it when he’s ordered not to do something, and often pushes back against such demands made by people in authority. For example, in his other criminal case in New York City, Judge Juan Merchan politely asked Trump to refrain from doing anything to rile up his supporters or incite violence, since prosecutors have received a lot of threats. Trump responded by mocking the judge’s wife and daughter on stage only hours later. 

In Miami on Tuesday, Judge Goodman ordered the prosecution to give Trump’s legal team a list of witnesses to whom Trump should avoid speaking to about the case. 

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Such witnesses could include other people who still work for Trump, including in security roles and as other types of aides, according to Trump’s legal team. 

“One of the key witnesses we know of is still the president’s lawyer,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told Judge Goodman Tuesday, in an apparent reference to Trump lawyer and crucial witness Evan Corcoran. “We respectfully request that you reconsider that special condition.” 

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But Judge Goodman said nope, he’d like to keep it. So now Trump will have to stick to it, or else risk ending up in even more legal trouble. 

The question now becomes how Trump will treat such an order—and what the judge will decide to do if he feels Trump is refusing to obey a direct order. Normally, if a defendant fails to comply with the conditions of their release, the court can revoke bail and send them to prison until their trial is over.  

Whether a judge would have the guts to do that to a former president–and one currently running in the Republican presidential primary–is anyone’s guess.

The post Donald Trump Lost in His First Battle in Federal Criminal Court appeared first on VICE.