Court ruling complicates UK government's efforts to house asylum seekers
Politicians on the right capitalized on a temporary injunction that blocked housing asylum seekers in a hotel in Epping, on the outskirts of London, to encourage other communities to also go to court.
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San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Defamation case against Fox News highlights role of its hosts in promoting 2020 election falsehoods
NEW YORK (AP) — Court papers in a voting technology company's $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News point to Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro as leaders in spreading false stories about election fraud in the weeks after Democrat Joe Biden's victory over President Donald Trump in 2020. Arguments for summary judgment by Smartmatic were filed in lightly redacted form this week at the New York Supreme Court. It's like a bad rerun for Fox: Similar revelations about its conduct following the 2020 election came in a lawsuit by another company falsely accused of doctoring votes, Dominion Voting Systems. Fox agreed to pay Dominion $787 million in a 2023 settlement after the judge found it was 'CRYSTAL CLEAR' that none of the claims against the voting system company were true. In short: Fox let Trump aides spread conspiracy theories despite knowing they were false because it was what their viewers wanted to hear. Fox was trying to hold on to viewers who were angry at the network for saying Biden had won the election. Fox said it was covering a newsworthy story. It accuses the London-based company, which had only Los Angeles County as a client for the 2020 election, of exaggerating its claims of damages in the hope of receiving a financial windfall. Pirro now working in the second Trump administration The focus on Pirro is noteworthy because the former Fox personality now serves in Trump's second administration as U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. Smartmatic, relying on emails and text messages revealed as part of the case, said Pirro was using her position as a Fox host in 2020 to help Trump and persuade him to pardon her ex-husband, Albert Pirro, who was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion. Trump pardoned him before leaving office in 2021. In a text to then-Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in September 2020, Pirro said, 'I'm the No. 1 watched show on news cable all weekend. I work so hard for the President and the party,' Smartmatic said in court papers. One of her own producers, Jerry Andrews, called Pirro a 'reckless maniac,' Smartmatic said. He texted after one of her shows in November that it was 'rife (with) conspiracy theories and bs and is yet another example of why this woman should never be on live television." The court papers said Pirro also suggested 'evidence' of supposed fraud to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell that she could use on a television appearance — material that also was spread by Bartiromo. Bartiromo still works at Fox, and in 2020 had shows on both the news channel and Fox Business Network. The court papers uncovered messages showing her desire to help Trump: 'I am very worried. Please please please overturn this. Bring the evidence, I know you can,' she texted to Powell. Dobbs, whose business show was canceled by Fox in February 2021, texted to Powell four days after the election, saying 'I'm going to do what I can to help stop what is now a coup d'etat in (its) final days — perhaps moments," a reference to Biden's victory. Dobbs died in 2024. A central figure in Fox's 'pivot' Smartmatic portrayed Pirro as a central figure in Fox's 'pivot' to deemphasize Biden's victory because it angered Trump fans. Instead, the network found that ratings jumped whenever claims of election fraud were discussed, it said. As in the Dominion case, the discovery process helped Smartmatic find messages and statements that seem embarrassing in retrospect. For example, in early December, Fox's Jesse Watters texted colleague Greg Gutfeld that 'Think of how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL.' Fox, in a response to the newly-revealed court papers, pointed to an ongoing corruption case involving Smartmatic and its executives, including a claim by federal prosecutors that it used money from the sale of voting machines to set up a 'slush fund' for bribing foreign officials. 'The evidence shows that Smartmatic's business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump's lawyers on Fox News and that Smartmatic grossly inflated its damage claims to generate headlines and chill free speech,' Fox said. 'Now, in the aftermath of Smartmatic's executives getting indicted for bribery charges, we are eager and ready to continue defending our press freedoms.' ___
Fox News
3 hours ago
- Fox News
Judge who fined Trump $500 million gets the books thrown at him
In New York, a court revealed that a leading citizen had cooked the books by inflating questionable figures without any support in reality. Moreover, his wild overvaluation was widely viewed as motivated by his self-aggrandizement. The final reported figures are so absurdly inflated that they were rejected in their entirety. In the end, he was off by over half a billion dollars. That man is Judge Arthur Engoron. After a New York appellate court unanimously threw out Engoron's absurd half-a-billion-dollar judgment and interest against President Donald Trump, the irony was crushing. It was Engoron who seemed, as he characterized Trump witnesses, as having "simply denied reality." It made his notorious reliance on an assessment of Mar-a-Lago as worth between $18 million and $27.6 million seem like good accounting. In the end, he could not get a single judge to preserve a single dollar of that fine. For some of us who covered that trial, the most vivid image of Engoron came at the start. He indicated that he did not want cameras in the courtroom, but when the networks showed up, Engoron took off his glasses and seemed to pose for the cameras. It was a "Sunset Boulevard" moment. We only need Gloria Swanson looking into the camera to speak to "those wonderful people out there in the dark!" and announcing "all right, [Ms. James], I'm ready for my close-up." The close-up was not a good idea, and, on appeal, it was perfectly disastrous. The court found little legal or factual basis for his fine. The purported witnesses not only did not lose a dime, but they testified that they made money on the loans and wanted new loans with the Trump administration. That did not move Engoron. From the start, he was speaking to those "wonderful people out there." You did not have to go far. In both the civil and criminal trials of Trump in New York, there was a carnival atmosphere in the street outside the courthouse. It was really not derangement as much as delirium. Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James had injected lawfare directly into the veins of New Yorkers. Pledging in her campaign to bag Trump (without bothering to name any crime or violation), James was elected based on her recreational rather than legal appeal. Yet, James could not have succeeded if she had not had a judge willing to ignore reality and cook the books on the fines. She needed a partner in lawfare. She needed Engoron. Even for some anti-Trump commentators, the judgment was impossible to defend and some acknowledged that they had never seen any case like this one brought in New York. Judge David Friedman gave Engoron a close-up that would have made Swanson wince. He detailed how the underlying law "has never been used in the way it is being used in this case – namely, to attack successful, private, commercial transactions, negotiated at arm's length between highly sophisticated parties fully capable of monitoring and defending their own interests." He accused Engoron of participating in an effort clearly directed by James at "ending with the derailment of President Trump's political career and the destruction of his real estate business." Other judges said that Engoron's fine was so off base and engorged that it was an unconstitutional order under the Eighth Amendment, protecting citizens from "cruel and unusual" punishments. So, Engoron not only inflated the figures but shredded the Constitution in his effort to deliver a blow against Trump. Trump can now appeal the residual parts of the Engoron decision imposing limits on the Trump family doing business in New York. Some of those limits could be moot by the time of any final judgment. Ironically, if Engoron had shown a modicum of restraint, he might have secured a victory. During the trial in New York, I said that he would have been smart to impose a dollar fine and limited injunctive relief. That, however, required a modicum of judicial restraint and judgment. Instead, Engoron chose to walk down the stairway into infamy. He was off by half a billion dollars, which could put him in the Bernie Madoff class of judges. In other words, if he wanted to be remembered on that first day, Arthur Engoron succeeded.
Bloomberg
3 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Mike Pence Urges Trump to Rethink Nvidia Deal, Equity Stake in Intel
Former Vice President Mike Pence expressed concerns about the US government taking an equity stake in Intel Corp. and a cut of Nvidia Corp. 's AI chip sales to China. 'This was not a strategy that we employed during the Trump-Pence years,' Pence said during an interview Thursday on Bloomberg Television's Balance of Power. 'I have great concerns about having the US government take a position in, with gold shares in Nippon Steel or just the latest discussions about taking a percent of Intel.'
