Latest news with #Artau
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Editorial: Trump's Florida judicial picks spur doubts
When the U.S. Senate considers five Floridians who are up for federal judgeships, three of them should be forced to answer a familiar Washington question: What did you know and when did you know it? Ed Artau and Jordan Pratt are Florida appellate judges who recently wrote opinions sure to please President Donald Trump, who announced their nominations last week. It would impugn their fitness to be federal judges if they knew at the time that Trump was considering them for the federal bench. Their generally hard-right leanings are an issue, too, casting additional doubt on whether either of them should be confirmed by the Senate. Trump's third Florida nominee, John Guard, is chief deputy state attorney general. He signed off on the $67 million Medicaid settlement that earmarked $10 million to First Lady Casey DeSantis' Hope Florida Foundation. The money apparently flowed through to a political committee helping Gov. Ron DeSantis defeat the recreational-marijuana amendment last November. State Attorney Jack Campbell in Tallahassee has begun a criminal investigation into the diversion of that money, and Sen. Rick Scott has said that Guard should have to answer 'some questions' about it. Some obvious ones: Did he know where the money would go? Was it an appropriation that only the Legislature should have made? Scott isn't on the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Florida's other senator, Ashley Moody, is. Because Moody was Guard's boss when he signed off on the settlement, she should disqualify herself from voting on his nomination. Artau, a judge of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, flagrantly flattered Trump's cause when the court ruled in February that he could continue suing non-Floridians on the Pulitzer Prize Board in a state court. Trump claims they defamed him by awarding prizes to the Washington Post and the New York Times for their coverage of alleged Russian interference in the 2020 election. From a First Amendment standpoint, the suit is preposterous. The main opinion of a three-judge panel gave a simple 'yes' to that jurisdictional question and did not go into the main issue of whether the Pulitzer board had libeled Trump. Artau's concurring opinion reads as if Trump wrote it. It quoted Trump's claim that it was all 'fake news,' a 'phony witch hunt' and 'a big hoax.' The rest of the 12 pages — six times as long as the opinion — was pro-Trump, too. Artau has not replied to our email asking if he knew Trump was considering him for a federal judgeship when he wrote that opinion. The public deserves to know. Artau wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court should reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark case that raised the standard for defamation lawsuits by public officials. Trump and his lawyers have repeatedly made the same argument. In an earlier, unrelated case, Artau dissented from a majority opinion overturning the resisting-arrest conviction of a woman who had been photographing Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. Pratt, a judge of the Fifth District Court of Appeal at Daytona Beach, wrote the opinion last month striking down the Florida law allowing minors to obtain a judge's permission for an abortion rather than to have to notify their parents and obtain their consent. His opinion for a unanimous panel embraced a far-fetched legal theory that the 14th Amendment gives parents an inherent right to be informed and to consent. The other Floridians whom Trump is nominating are Judge Anne-Leigh Gaylord Moe of Florida's Second District Court of Appeal and Kyle Dudek, a federal magistrate judge in Fort Myers. All the nominees except Dudek are known members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization that has had extraordinary influence in judicial appointments by Trump as well as DeSantis. Artau flaunted his Federalist ties when he unsuccessfully sought a Florida Supreme Court appointment from DeSantis. The society's standing with Trump would appear to be shaky now in light of the tantrum the president pitched last week over a three-judge federal court's ruling against his tariffs. That outburst came just after he had announced the five Florida nominations. And it was over the top, even for Trump, in that he didn't assail just the ruling but denounced Leonard Leo, former executive vice president of the Federalist Society, and the group itself for 'bad advice they gave me on numerous legal occasions.' The outburst was likely just another attempt to intimidate federal judges into treating him as deferentially as the Republican Congress does. Nevertheless, there's great danger in his reckless jawboning. It is evident in a surge of threats against federal judges and their families. A total of 373 were investigated by the U.S. Marshals Service in just the first five months of this year, compared to 509 all last year. There have also been more than 100 unsolicited pizza deliveries, a menacing way of saying 'We know where you live.' If any judge or family member is harmed, the world will know who incited it. ____ ___
Miami Herald
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Trump nominates Palm Beach judge with Cuban roots to federal bench in South Florida
Ed Artau, a state appeals court judge in Palm Beach County, has been nominated to be a federal judge in the Southern District of Florida. President Donald Trump announced the nomination on his social media platform late Wednesday, praising Artau for his career as an appellate judge since 2020, a circuit court judge between 2014 and 2020, and previously as general counsel to the South Florida Water Management District. Artau, 59, the son of Cuban immigrants who attended Georgetown University Law Center, will replace a vacancy created by outgoing U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. Scola, based in Miami, became a senior judge last year with a reduced caseload. 'Ed has a GREAT track record of restoring LAW AND ORDER and, most importantly, Common Sense (which is, sadly, rare these days!),' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. 'I know Ed will do a GREAT job for the State of Florida, and our Nation.' Artau has been a member of the Republican Party and the conservative Federalist Society, which exerts a significant influence on judicial appointments at the state and federal levels. At the same time, Trump also nominated four other state judges for vacancies on the federal bench in the Middle District of Florida. They are: Kyle Dudek, Anne-Leigh Gaylord Moe, John Guard and Jordan Pratt. All five nominees will have hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee before the U.S. Senate votes on their confirmation.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump scores ‘unequivocal victory' against Pulitzer Prize board members, court denies request to dismiss suit
President Donald Trump scored yet another legal victory on Wednesday when a Florida appellate court unanimously affirmed the trial court order denying the Pulitzer Prize defendants' motions to dismiss the president's lawsuit. Trump filed a defamation lawsuit in 2022 against the Pulitzer Prize Board over the 2018 National Reporting prizes given to the New York Times and Washington Post for coverage of the "now-debunked theory" of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election. The appellate opinion found that the trial court does have jurisdiction over the out-of-state defendants, and that the statement at the heart of this case is actionable. "Today's ruling is an unequivocal victory for President Trump in his pursuit of justice against the Pulitzer Prize board members for their dishonest and defamatory conduct. President Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in fake news, lies and smears to account and he looks forward to seeing his powerful cases through to a just conclusion," Quincy Bird, attorney for President Trump, told Fox News Digital. Trump Scores Big Legal Win Against Pulitzer Prize Board Members As Lawsuit Moves To Discovery Judge Ed Artau wrote a lengthy concurrence in which he described the "now-debunked allegations that [Trump] colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election," and agreed with the unanimous opinion of the court. "As noted in the President's complaint, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Attorney General William Barr, the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the United States Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence all concluded 'there was no evidence of collusion between President Trump, the Trump Campaign, and Russia.' In other words, as the President asserts, '[t]he Russia Collusion Hoax was dead, at least until Defendants [as members of the Pulitzer Prize board] attempted to resurrect it' by conspiring to publish a defamatory statement falsely implying that the President colluded with the Russians," Judge Artau ruled in a filing obtained by Fox News Digital. Read On The Fox News App "I join the unanimous majority opinion because I agree that Florida's long-arm statute and the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause allow for the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the non-resident defendants for their alleged roles in conspiring to issue the defamatory statement standing by the debunked allegations that the President colluded with the Russians," the judge continued. "But I write separately to address the merits of the President's defamation and conspiracy claims because the nonresident defendants challenge them here by arguing that they are not actionable under Florida's long-arm statute. Thus, the merits of the President's claims are crucial to our jurisdictional analysis and will be addressed in this opinion." Judge Artau added that "the trial court correctly concluded that it had personal jurisdiction over the non-resident defendants because the President satisfied his twofold burden to (1) bring the action under Florida's longarm statute (statutory prong), and (2) establish that the non-resident defendants had sufficient minimum contacts with Florida under the conspiracy theory of jurisdiction (constitutional prong)." The judge said the defendants "dispute the merits of the President's claims by arguing that the statement at issue is not actionable under the long-arm statute because it constitutes pure opinion, rather than a defamatory statement of fact or mixed opinion," but must also "argue that even if the statement was not one of pure opinion, it did not create a false impression about the President." Judge Artau explained that for a statement to be actionable in defamation "it must be one of fact or mixed opinion rather than simply a statement of pure opinion." Trump Files Defamation Suit Against Members Of Pulitzer Prize Board For Defending 'Debunked' Russiagate Honors "The statement here was actionable as one of fact because it detailed both the procedure the Pulitzer Prize board members followed to conclude that they would not rescind the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting and the reasoning for not rescinding the awards," he wrote. "The board members vouched for the truth of reporting that had been debunked by all credible sources charged with investigating the false claim that the President colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Attorney General William Barr, the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the United States Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence," Judge Artau added. "Therefore, because the statement at issue was one of fact or mixed opinion, and constitutes a claim for defamation by implication, Florida's long-arm statute allows for the exercise of jurisdiction." The judge noted that Florida law recognizes the conspiracy theory of jurisdiction. "As the trial court correctly concluded after considering the evidence submitted, the President met his burden to prove that jurisdiction could be exercised over the non-resident defendants," he wrote. Judge Artau suggested that the Supreme Court revisit whether the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan ruling, which limits when public figures can sue for defamation, "should continue to be the law of the land despite historical evidence showing it does not comport with the original understanding of the First Amendment." "The President has met his burden of establishing jurisdiction to proceed with his asserted claims that the non-resident defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth," Judge Artau wrote. Therefore, the trial court correctly denied the non-resident defendants' motion to dismiss the President's claims over the asserted publication of defamatory 'FAKE NEWS.'" Pulitzer Prizes Stand By 2018 Russiagate Honors To Ny Times, Wapo After Scathing Letter From Trump's Team The lawsuit states that a "demonstrably false connection was and remains the stated basis" for the coverage that received the prestigious award. The staff of the Times and Post shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's transition team and his eventual administration," according to the Pulitzer website. "A large swath of Americans had a tremendous misunderstanding of the truth at the time the Times' and the Post's propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax dominated the media," the complaint states. "Remarkably, they were rewarded for lying to the American public." The complaint made a series of points indicating why it feels the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories are unworthy of the honor, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller failing to find evidence of collusion, and a DOJ Inspector General Report outlining malfeasance by federal investigators. Trump Scolds Pulitzer Prize Board For Standing By 2018 Russiagate Honors: 'Biggest Reporting Failure' The Pulitzer Prize Board provided Fox News Digital with the following statement: "This lawsuit is about intimidation of the press and those who support it—and we will not be intimidated. The Pulitzer Board will continue to recognize the accomplishments of journalists, writers, artists and composers at the highest level. We look forward to continuing our defense of journalism." Trump's team previously called for "a full and fair correction, apology, or retraction" to be issued, in addition to the 2018 prizes being rescinded, but the Pulitzer Prize Board declared the awards would stand. "The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign--submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize," the Pulitzer Prize Board previously wrote. This latest legal victory comes on the heels of ABC News' $15 million settlement and Meta's $25 million settlement with Trump in recent weeks. CBS News' parent company Paramount is reportedly mulling its own settlement to end the network's high-stakes legal battle against Trump. Trump also has filed a lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and veteran pollster Ann Selzer. The case against the Pulitzer board members is one of the many legal fronts, criminal and civil, being coordinated by Trump's Senior Counsel Boris Epshteyn. Fox News Digital's Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report. Original article source: Trump scores 'unequivocal victory' against Pulitzer Prize board members, court denies request to dismiss suit
Miami Herald
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Florida appeals court rules that Trump can pursue lawsuit against Pulitzer board
A Florida appeals court Wednesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to pursue a defamation lawsuit against Pulitzer Prize board members in a dispute rooted in the organization awarding a prize to The New York Times and The Washington Post for reporting about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. A three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal rejected arguments that the lawsuit should be dismissed against Pulitzer board members and other people associated with the board who live outside of Florida. The lawsuit, which Trump filed in 2022 in Okeechobee County, contends that he was defamed by a statement posted online by the Pulitzer board. That statement came after Trump requested that the board rescind the joint 2018 award to the two newspapers. The board commissioned two independent reviews of the Times and Post stories and declined to rescind the award decision. The board statement, which was later posted online, said in part that the 'reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.' The Pulitzer board members argued the lawsuit should be dismissed, in part, because 19 of the defendants were not Florida residents. They argued that as a result, Florida courts did not have legal 'jurisdiction' over those defendants. The only other defendant was Neil Brown, president of the St. Petersburg-based Poynter Institute. Circuit Judge Robert Pegg rejected the jurisdiction argument involving the out-of-state residents, leading the defendants to appeal. But the appeals-court panel Wednesday upheld Pegg's decision. 'Trump's operative pleading sufficiently pled that the defendants engaged in a conspiracy to defame him,' said Wednesday's main opinion, written by Judge Jeffrey Kuntz and joined by Judges Burton Conner and Ed Artau. 'Further, the defendants issued the website public statement in response to the requests of a Florida resident — Trump. They did so in a meeting attended remotely by a Florida resident (Brown) who also conducted an editing review of the proposed website statement while in Florida.' The opinion does not resolve the underlying allegations in the lawsuit. But Artau issued a concurring opinion that referred to 'now-debunked allegations that he (Trump) colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election.' Artau wrote that Trump 'has met his burden of establishing jurisdiction to proceed with his asserted claims that the non-resident defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth by knowingly conspiring with the Florida resident defendant to defame the president by publishing the statement.' 'Therefore, the trial court correctly denied the non-resident defendants' motion to dismiss the President's claims over the asserted publication of defamatory 'FAKE NEWS,'' Artau wrote. Read and search the 400-page Mueller report here In a brief filed in August, attorneys for the Pulitzer board members disputed that the statement published by the board was defamatory. 'The board statement asserts that the award-winning articles 'on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign' do not contain any 'passages or headlines, contentions or assertions' that have been 'discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.' That statement is not defamatory because it does not reasonably convey the implication that Trump colluded with Russia, nor does it signal that the board affirmatively endorsed that implication,' the brief said. 'Moreover, even if the board statement conveyed that implication, it discloses all the facts — set out in the articles themselves — on which that conclusion would be based, rendering the board statement a nonactionable 'pure opinion.' The board statement thus does not amount to a 'tortious act' and the non-resident defendants are not subject to personal jurisdiction in Florida.' Also, the attorneys argued that there 'is no dispute that the members who drafted the board statement did so outside of Florida, the members who approved the board statement did so outside of Florida, the administrator who edited the board statement did so outside of Florida, and the staff member who published the board statement online did so outside of Florida. It is likewise beyond dispute that the board did not direct the board statement into Florida. Precedent is clear that, in these circumstances, the non-resident defendants are not subject to personal jurisdiction in Florida as a matter of due process.' Kuntz's opinion referred to 19 members of the Pulitzer board. But the brief said the 19 out-of-state defendants included board members, former board members and administrators.
Fox News
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Trump scores ‘unequivocal victory' against Pulitzer Prize board members, court denies request to dismiss suit
President Donald Trump scored yet another legal victory on Wednesday when a Florida appellate court unanimously affirmed the trial court order denying the Pulitzer Prize defendants' motions to dismiss the president's lawsuit. Trump filed a defamation lawsuit in 2022 against the Pulitzer Prize Board over the 2018 National Reporting prizes given to the New York Times and Washington Post for coverage of the "now-debunked theory" of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election. The appellate opinion found that the trial court does have jurisdiction over the out-of-state defendants, and that the statement at the heart of this case is actionable. "Today's ruling is an unequivocal victory for President Trump in his pursuit of justice against the Pulitzer Prize board members for their dishonest and defamatory conduct. President Trump is committed to holding those who traffic in fake news, lies and smears to account and he looks forward to seeing his powerful cases through to a just conclusion," Quincy Bird, attorney for President Trump, told Fox News Digital. Judge Ed Artau wrote a lengthy concurrence in which he described the "now-debunked allegations that [Trump] colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election," and agreed with the unanimous opinion of the court. "As noted in the President's complaint, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Attorney General William Barr, the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the United States Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence all concluded 'there was no evidence of collusion between President Trump, the Trump Campaign, and Russia.' In other words, as the President asserts, '[t]he Russia Collusion Hoax was dead, at least until Defendants [as members of the Pulitzer Prize board] attempted to resurrect it' by conspiring to publish a defamatory statement falsely implying that the President colluded with the Russians," Judge Artau ruled in a filing obtained by Fox News Digital. "I join the unanimous majority opinion because I agree that Florida's long-arm statute and the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause allow for the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the non-resident defendants for their alleged roles in conspiring to issue the defamatory statement standing by the debunked allegations that the President colluded with the Russians," the judge continued. "But I write separately to address the merits of the President's defamation and conspiracy claims because the nonresident defendants challenge them here by arguing that they are not actionable under Florida's long-arm statute. Thus, the merits of the President's claims are crucial to our jurisdictional analysis and will be addressed in this opinion." Judge Artau added that "the trial court correctly concluded that it had personal jurisdiction over the non-resident defendants because the President satisfied his twofold burden to (1) bring the action under Florida's longarm statute (statutory prong), and (2) establish that the non-resident defendants had sufficient minimum contacts with Florida under the conspiracy theory of jurisdiction (constitutional prong)." The judge said the defendants "dispute the merits of the President's claims by arguing that the statement at issue is not actionable under the long-arm statute because it constitutes pure opinion, rather than a defamatory statement of fact or mixed opinion," but must also "argue that even if the statement was not one of pure opinion, it did not create a false impression about the President." Judge Artau explained that for a statement to be actionable in defamation "it must be one of fact or mixed opinion rather than simply a statement of pure opinion." "The statement here was actionable as one of fact because it detailed both the procedure the Pulitzer Prize board members followed to conclude that they would not rescind the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting and the reasoning for not rescinding the awards," he wrote. "The board members vouched for the truth of reporting that had been debunked by all credible sources charged with investigating the false claim that the President colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Attorney General William Barr, the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the United States Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence," Judge Artau added. "Therefore, because the statement at issue was one of fact or mixed opinion, and constitutes a claim for defamation by implication, Florida's long-arm statute allows for the exercise of jurisdiction." The judge noted that Florida law recognizes the conspiracy theory of jurisdiction. "As the trial court correctly concluded after considering the evidence submitted, the President met his burden to prove that jurisdiction could be exercised over the non-resident defendants," he wrote. Judge Artau suggested that the Supreme Court revisit whether the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan ruling, which limits when public figures can sue for defamation, "should continue to be the law of the land despite historical evidence showing it does not comport with the original understanding of the First Amendment." "The President has met his burden of establishing jurisdiction to proceed with his asserted claims that the non-resident defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth," Judge Artau wrote. Therefore, the trial court correctly denied the non-resident defendants' motion to dismiss the President's claims over the asserted publication of defamatory 'FAKE NEWS.'" The Pulitzer Prizes did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit states that a "demonstrably false connection was and remains the stated basis" for the coverage that received the prestigious award. The staff of the Times and Post shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for "deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect's transition team and his eventual administration," according to the Pulitzer website. "A large swath of Americans had a tremendous misunderstanding of the truth at the time the Times' and the Post's propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax dominated the media," the complaint states. "Remarkably, they were rewarded for lying to the American public." The complaint made a series of points indicating why it feels the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories are unworthy of the honor, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller failing to find evidence of collusion, and a DOJ Inspector General Report outlining malfeasance by federal investigators. Trump's team previously called for "a full and fair correction, apology, or retraction" to be issued, in addition to the 2018 prizes being rescinded, but the Pulitzer Prize Board declared the awards would stand. "The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign--submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize," the Pulitzer Prize Board previously wrote. This latest legal victory comes on the heels of ABC News' $15 million settlement and Meta's $25 million settlement with Trump in recent weeks. CBS News' parent company Paramount is reportedly mulling its own settlement to end the network's high-stakes legal battle against Trump. Trump also has filed a lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and veteran pollster Ann Selzer. The case against the Pulitzer board members is one of the many legal fronts, criminal and civil, being coordinated by Trump's Senior Counsel Boris Epshteyn.
