A special grand jury that investigated whether Donald Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia heard a recording of the former president pushing a top state lawmaker to call a special session to overturn his loss in the state, according to a newspaper report.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Wednesday that it spoke to five members of the special grand jury who said they heard a recording of a phone call between Trump and Georgia House Speaker David Ralston that had not previously been reported and has not been made public. Ralston, who died in November, did not call a special session in the weeks after the November 2020 election.
The five grand jurors — three men and two women — spoke to the newspaper but declined to be named because they were concerned about their safety and privacy.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the Georgia investigation in early 2021, shortly after another recording of a phone call between Trump and a top state official was made public. During that Jan. 2, 2021, phone call, Trump suggested that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to reverse his narrow loss in the state.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Friday that he plans to sign a measure that would effectively ban abortion clinics from operating in the state, meaning hospitals will soon be the only places where they can be provided in the state.
After passing through the state Senate on Thursday with minor amendments, it returned to the Utah House of Representatives Friday morning, where it was approved and then sent to the governor for final approval. The move comes less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, returning the power to regulate abortions to states.
Cox told reporters that he will sign the legislation, which also clarifies the definition of abortion to address legal liability concerns providers voiced about the way exceptions are worded in state law — a provision that he and Republican lawmakers called a compromise.
“One of the concerns with the trigger bill that medical providers had across the state was there was a lack of clarity that would have made it hard for them to perform legal abortions,” Cox said.
The measure is one of several that members of Utah’s Republican-supermajority statehouse has passed this year while abortion restrictions approved in years past are on hold because of a state court injunction. It has faced fierce opposition from business, civil liberties and abortion rights groups, including Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, which operates three of the four abortion clinics in the state.
A police department in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has been ordered to release its full policy on the use of force after failing to convince the state appeals court that portions should be concealed from the public.
The court noted that Amy Hjerstedt’s request in Sault Ste. Marie followed the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in 2020.
“Michigan has a strong public policy favoring public access to government information,” Judge Sima Patel said Tuesday in a 3-0 opinion.
“Although certain information may be exempt from disclosure, the statutory exemptions are not intended to shield public bodies from the transparency that FOIA was designed to foster,” Patel said, referring to Michigan’s public records law.
Sault Ste. Marie, population 13,400, gave Hjerstedt only a heavily redacted copy of its policy. The redactions centered on use-of-force considerations and other strategies.
A police department in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has been ordered to release its full policy on the use of force after failing to convince the state appeals court that portions should be concealed from the public.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing investigations into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the event.
The subpoena to Pence as part of the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith was served in recent days, according to the person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Thursday to discuss a sensitive issue.
The extraordinary scenario of a former vice president potentially testifying against his former boss in a criminal investigation comes as Pence considers launching a 2024 Republican presidential bid against Trump. The two have been estranged since a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.
The subpoena is an aggressive step from a prosecutor who for years led the Justice Department’s public corruption section and who oversaw indictments against major political figures. The move sets the stage for a likely executive privilege fight, given Pence’s close proximity to Trump for four years as major decisions were being contemplated and planned. It is unclear whether efforts to secure voluntary testimony from Pence stalled before the subpoena was issued.
The new Republican majority on North Carolina’s Supreme Court agreed on Friday to rehear redistricting and voter identification cases less than two months after the court’s previous edition, led by Democrats, issued major opinions going against GOP legislators who had been sued.
The extraordinary decisions, granted in orders backed by five justices with the Republican voter registrations on the seven-member court, mean the issues will return to the court for oral arguments in mid-March. With hopes of getting new legal results, lawmakers led by House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger asked two weeks ago that the justices rehear the litigation.
The two Democratic justices lamented the orders and said they stood against more than 200 years of court history in which rehearings have been exceedingly rare. They said it appeared it was happening simply because the court’s partisan makeup had changed. Two new Republican justices took office in early January after winning November elections for seats held by Democrats.
“The legal issues are the same; the evidence is the same; and the controlling law is the same,” Associate Justice Anita Earls wrote in the dissent of the order agreeing to rehear the redistricting case. “The only thing that has changed is the political composition of the Court.”
The GOP lawmakers’ attorneys contend the previous 4-3 Democratic majority got it wrong in December when they struck down a state Senate map the legislature drew and upheld congressional boundaries drawn by trial judges but opposed by Republicans. They said those same Democrats erred when upholding the invalidation of a 2018 law requiring photo identification to vote when they applied the wrong legal standard.
The rehearings ultimately could lead to new opinions that reinstate the photo ID mandate and strike down precedent from the Supreme Court in February 2022 declaring the state constitution outlawed extensive partisan gerrymandering. That landmark redistricting ruling prevented maps drawn by Republican legislators that were expected to secure long-term Republican advantages in the General Assembly and within the state’s congressional delegation.
A physicians’ group based in the Midwest lacks legal standing to challenge a 25-year-old Mississippi Supreme Court ruling recognizing a right to abortion under the state constitution, lawyers for six women who support abortion rights argued in court papers filed Friday.
“This case was brought by an out-of-state organization that obviously believes the government should force Mississippi women to carry pregnancies to term and give birth against their will,” Mississippi Center for Justice attorney Rob McDuff said Friday, adding that those who filed suit have “no practical stake in this particular case.”
The legal fight could be more about principle than practicality because Mississippi’s only abortion clinic shut down in July, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upended abortion rights nationwide with a case that originated in the state.
Like some other conservative states, Mississippi had a “trigger” that would ban most abortions once the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling was overturned.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists filed a lawsuit in November in a Mississippi court, saying the state has a potential conflict between the 2007 trigger law and the 1998 ruling, Pro-Choice Mississippi v. Fordice, which held that abortion is a right protected by the the state Constitution.
“Elective abortions in Mississippi appear to be both statutorily illegal and constitutionally protected at the same time,” attorneys from the Mississippi Justice Institute argued in representing the anti-abortion physicians. They said physicians need clarification to avoid possible punishment by medical institutions.
Leaders of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which provides certification to doctors in the field, have said they do not expect doctors to violate their moral beliefs. But the anti-abortion doctors in this case called those assurances insufficient.
The website of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists shows the group is based in Indiana and says it has member physicians in Mississippi and other states.
Mississippi Center for Justice and Democracy Forward Foundation, both of which are legal services groups that support abortion rights, filed Friday to intervene on behalf of the six women and asked a judge to dismiss the case.
Oregon is launching a new abortion hotline offering free legal advice to callers, moving to further defend abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer and eliminated federal protections for the procedure.
The state’s Department of Justice announced the initiative Monday. It is modeled on similar hotlines launched by the attorneys general of New York and Delaware, as states where abortion remains legal have seen an increase in the number of patients traveling from areas where the procedure has been banned or restricted.
“The Hotline will fill an important need in our state for callers to understand the status of our reproductive health laws, including issues related to abortion access,” Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in a news release. “This is especially important because we share a border with Idaho, which has a near-total abortion ban.”
Abortion remains legal at all stages of pregnancy in Oregon, which has worked with California and Washington to promote the West Coast as a safe haven for the procedure.
People can call the anonymous hotline from any state for free legal advice and receive a call back from a lawyer within 48 hours.
Breaking Legal News - POSTED: 2023/03/16 15:29
