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Mexican cartel leader’s son convicted of violent role in drug trafficking plot
Legal Interview |
2024/09/21 06:26
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The son of a Mexican drug cartel leader was convicted Friday of charges that he used violence, including the deadly downing of a military helicopter, to help his father operate one of the country’s largest and most dangerous narcotics trafficking organizations.
Rubén Oseguera, known as “El Menchito,” is the son of fugitive Jalisco New Generation cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera and served as the “CJNG” cartel’s second-in-command before his extradition to the U.S. in February 2020.
A federal jury in Washington, D.C., deliberated for several hours over two days before finding the younger Oseguera guilty of both counts in his indictment: conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for U.S. importation and using a firearm in a drug conspiracy.
“El Menchito now joins the growing list of high-ranking Cartel leaders that the Justice Department has convicted in an American courtroom,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an emailed statement. “We are grateful to our Mexican law enforcement partners for their extensive cooperation and sacrifice in holding accountable leaders of the Jalisco Cartel.”
The younger Oseguera, who was born in California and holds dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 10 by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison.
Oseguera didn’t have an obvious reaction to the jury’s verdict. One of his lawyers patted him on his shoulder before he was led out of the courtroom.
The U.S. government has offered a reward of up $10 million for information leading to the arrest of the elder Oseguera, whose alias, “El Mencho,” is a play on his first name.
Prosecutors showed jurors a rifle bearing Oseguera’s nicknames, “Menchito” and “JR,” along with the cartel’s acronym. The gun was in his possession when he was arrested.
“JR” also was etched on a belt found at the site where a Mexican military helicopter crashed after cartel members shot the aircraft down with a rocket-propelled grenade in 2015. Prosecutors said the younger Oseguera, now 34, ordered subordinates to shoot down the helicopter in Jalisco, Mexico, so that he and his father could avoid capture. At least nine people on board the helicopter were killed in the attack, according to prosecutors.
Oseguera ordered the killings of at least 100 people and frequently bragged about murders and kidnappings, according to prosecutors. They said he personally shot and killed at least two people, including a rival drug trafficker and a disobedient subordinate.
During the trial’s closing arguments Thursday, Justice Department prosecutor Kaitlin Sahni described Oseguera as “a prince, an heir to an empire.”
“But this wasn’t a fairytale,” she said. “This was the story of the defendant’s drugs, guns and murder, told to you by the people who saw it firsthand.”
Jurors heard testimony from six cooperating witnesses who tied Oseguera to drug trafficking.
Defense attorney Anthony Colombo tried to attack the witnesses’ credibility and motives, calling them “sociopaths” who told self-serving lies about his client.
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Google faces new antitrust trial after ruling declaring search engine a monopoly
Legal Interview |
2024/09/11 08:14
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One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.
The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.
The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends in court papers.
They allege that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.
“It’s worth saying the quiet part out loud,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement. “One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here.”
Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock to reach audiences.
In her opening statement, Google lawyer Karen Dunn likened the government’s case to a “time capsule with with a Blackberry, an iPod and a Blockbuster video card.”
Dunn said Supreme Court precedents warn judges about “the serious risk of error or unintended consequences” when dealing with rapidly emerging technology and considering whether antitrust law requires intervention. She also warned that any action taken against Google won’t benefit small businesses but will simply allow other tech behemoths like Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok to fill the void.
According to Google’s annual reports, revenue has actually declined in recent years for Google Networks, the division of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant that includes such services as AdSense and Google Ad Manager that are at the heart of the case, from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023,
The trial that began Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, over the alleged ad tech monopoly was initially going to be a jury trial, but Google maneuvered to force a bench trial, writing a check to the federal government for more than $2 million to moot the only claim brought by the government that required a jury.
The case will now be decided by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton and is best known for high-profile terrorism trials including that of Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Brinkema, though, also has experience with highly technical civil trials, working in a courthouse that sees an outsize number of patent infringement cases.
The Virginia case comes on the heels of a major defeat for Google over its search engine, which generates the majority of the company’s $307 billion in annual revenue. A judge in the District of Columbia declared the search engine a monopoly, maintained in part by tens of billions of dollars Google pays each year to companies like Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine presented to consumers when they buy iPhones and other gadgets.
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Biden unveils a proposal to establish term limits for the Supreme Court
Legal Interview |
2024/07/28 18:15
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President Joe Biden has unveiled a long-awaited proposal for changes at the U.S. Supreme Court, calling on Congress to establish term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. He’s also pressing lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity.
The White House on Monday detailed the contours of Biden’s court proposal, one that appears to have little chance of being approved by a closely divided Congress with just 99 days to go before Election Day.
Still, Democrats hope it’ll help focus voters as they consider their choices in a tight election. The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has sought to frame her race against Republican ex-President Donald Trump as “a choice between freedom and chaos,” quickly endorsed the Biden proposal. She added that the changes are needed because “there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court.”
The White House is looking to tap into the growing outrage among Democrats about the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issuing opinions that overturned landmark decisions on abortion rights and federal regulatory powers that stood for decades.
Liberals also have expressed dismay over revelations about what they say are questionable relationships and decisions by some members of the conservative wing of the court that suggest their impartiality is compromised.
“I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers,” Biden argues in a Washington Post op-ed published Monday. “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”
Harris later issued a statement saying the American people must have confidence in a Supreme Court blighted by ethics scandals and decisions overturning long-standing precedent. She said the reforms being proposed “will help to restore confidence in the Court, strengthen our democracy, and ensure no one is above the law.”
The president planned to speak about his proposal later Monday during an address at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Biden is calling for doing away with lifetime appointments to the court. He says Congress should pass legislation to establish a system in which the sitting president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in service on the court. He argues term limits would help ensure that court membership changes with some regularity and adds a measure of predictability to the nomination process.
He also wants Congress to pass legislation establishing a court code of ethics that would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. |
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Three Americans in alleged coup attempt appear in Congo military court
Legal Interview |
2024/06/07 15:05
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Three Americans accused of being involved in last month’s coup attempt in Congo appeared in a military court in the country’s capital, Kinshasa, on Friday, along with dozens of other defendants who were lined up on plastic chairs before the judge on the first day of the hearing.
The proceedings before the open-air military court were broadcast live on the local television channel.
Six people were killed during the botched coup attempt led by the little-known opposition figure Christian Malanga last month that targeted the presidential palace and a close ally of President Felix Tshisekedi. Malanga was shot and killed soon after live-streaming the attack for resisting arrest, the Congolese army said.
The defendants face a number of charges, many punishable by death, including terrorism, murder and criminal association. The court said there were 53 names on the list, but the names of Malanga and one other person were removed after death certificates were produced.
Alongside Malanga’s 21-year-old son Marcel Malanga — who is a U.S. citizen — two other Americans are on trial for their alleged role in the attack. All three requested an interpreter to translate the proceedings from French to English.
Malanga’s son was the first to be questioned by the judge, who asked him to confirm his name and other personal details. The military official chosen to translate for him was apparently unable to understand English well.
Eventually, a journalist was selected from the media to replace him, but he too had trouble translating numbers and the details of the proceedings.
“He’s not interpreting right. We need a different interpreter who understands English, please,” Marcel Malanga told the judge after the journalist incorrectly translated his zip code.
But no other translator emerged and the defendants had to make do with the journalist, who worked for the national radio. Malanga appeared frustrated and defiant as the interview stumbled ahead.
Tyler Thompson Jr, 21, flew to Africa from Utah with the younger Malanga for what his family believed was a vacation, with all expenses paid by the elder Malanga. The young men had played high school football together in Salt Lake City suburbs. Other teammates accused Marcel of offering up to $100,000 to join him on a “security job” in Congo.
Thompson appeared before the court with a shaved head and sores on his skin, looking nervous and lost as he confirmed his name and other personal details to the judge.
His stepmother, Miranda Thompson, told The Associated Press that the family found out about the hearing too late to arrange travel to Congo but hoped to be present for future court dates. Before this week, the family had no proof he was still alive.
“We’re thrilled with the confirmation,” she said.
Miranda Thompson had worried that her stepson might not even know that his family knew he’d been arrested. On Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Congo told the AP it had yet to gain access to the American prisoners to provide consular services before the trial. |
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Appeals court upholds Steve Bannon’s contempt of Congress conviction
Legal Interview |
2024/05/10 10:10
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A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld the criminal conviction of Donald Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected Bannon’s challenges to his contempt of Congress conviction. Bannon had been sentenced to four months in prison, but the judge overseeing the case had allowed him to stay free pending appeal.
Bannon’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. His lawyers could ask the full D.C. appeals court to hear the matter.
The congressional committee sought Bannon’s testimony over his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Bannon had initially argued that his testimony was protected by Trump’s claim of executive privilege. But the House panel and the Justice Department contend such a claim is dubious because Trump had fired Bannon from the White House in 2017 and Bannon was thus a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president in the run-up to the riot .
A second Trump aide, trade advisor Peter Navarro, was also convicted of contempt of Congress and reported to prison in March to serve his four-month sentence. |
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