|
|
|
A man who threatened to kill Democratic election officials pleads guilty
Court Watch |
2024/10/29 08:46
|
A Colorado man repeatedly made online threats about killing the top elections officials in his state and Arizona — both Democrats — as well as a judge and law enforcement agents, according to a guilty plea he entered Wednesday.
Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, acknowledged to a federal judge in Denver that his comments were made “out of fear, hate and anger,” as he sat dressed in a khaki jail uniform before pleading guilty to one count of transmitting interstate threats. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 3.
Brockbank’s case is the 16th conviction secured by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which Attorney General Merrick Garland formed in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting the election community.
Earlier this year, French actor Judith Godrèche called on France’s film industry to “face the truth” on sexual violence and physical abuse during the Cesar Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that men accused of rape no longer rule the (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.
“As we approach Election Day, the Justice Department’s warning remains clear: anyone who illegally threatens an election worker, official, or volunteer will face the consequences,” Garland said in a statement.
Brockbank did not elaborate Wednesday on the threats he made, and court documents outlining the plea agreement were not immediately made public. His lawyer Thomas Ward declined to comment after the hearing.
However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado said in statement that the plea agreement included the threats Brockbank made against the election officials — identified in evidence as Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor.
Griswold has been outspoken nationally on elections security and has received threats in the past over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure. Her office says she has gotten more frequent and more violent threats since September 2023, when a group of voters filed a lawsuit attempting to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot.
“I refuse to be intimidated and will continue to make sure every eligible Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated voter can make their voices heard in our elections,” Griswold said in a statement issued after Brockbank’s plea.
Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021. According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators after his arrest that he’s not a “vigilante” and hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.” He has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest in Cortez, Colorado.
Brockbank criticized the government’s response to Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted this year for allowing a breach of her election system inspired by false claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential race, according to court documents. He also was upset in December 2023 after a divided Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.
In one social media post in August 2022, referring to Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank said: “Once those people start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other,” according to copies of the threats included in court documents. In September 2021, Brockbank said Griswold needed to “hang by the neck till she is Dead Dead Dead,” saying he and other “every day people” needed to hold her and others accountable, prosecutors said.
Brockbank also posted in October 2021 that he could use his rifle to “put a bullet” in the head of a state judge who had overseen Brockbank’s probation for his fourth conviction for driving under the influence, under the plea agreement, prosecutors said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Supreme Court leaves in place two Biden environmental regulations
Court Watch |
2024/10/03 10:43
|
The Supreme Court left in place Friday two Biden administration environmental regulations aimed at reducing industry emissions of planet-warming methane and toxic mercury.
The justices did not detail their reasoning in the orders, which came after a flurry of emergency applications to block the rules from industry groups and Republican-leaning states. There were no noted dissents.
The high court is still considering challenges to a third Environmental Protection Agency rule aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.
The regulations are part of a broader effort by the Biden administration aimed at curbing climate change that includes financial incentives to buy electric vehicles and upgrade infrastructure, and rules tightening tailpipe pollution standards for cars and trucks.
The industry groups and states had argued the EPA overstepped its authority and set unattainable standards with the new regulations. The EPA, though, said the rules are squarely within its legal responsibilities and would protect the public.
An EPA spokesperson said Friday the agency is pleased that the Supreme Court denied applications to stay the final methane and mercury rules. EPA believes the rule tightening methane emissions from oil and gas drilling will deliver major climate and health benefits for all Americans, while the mercury rule will limit hazardous pollution from coal-fired power plants, spokesperson Remmington Belford said.
The methane rule will build on innovative technologies and solutions that many oil- and gas-producing states and companies are already using or have committed to use, while the mercury and air toxics rule “will ensure that the nation’s coal-fired power plants meet up-to-date standards for hazardous air pollutants,” Belford said.
Both rules are firmly grounded in the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act, he said. The Supreme Court has shot down other environmental regulations in recent years, including a landmark decision that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in 2022, and another that halted the agency’s air-pollution-fighting “good neighbor” rule.
The methane rule puts new requirements on the oil and gas industry, which is the largest emitter of the gas that’s a key contributor to climate change. A lower court previously refused to halt the regulation.
Methane is the main component in natural gas and is far more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. Sharp cuts in methane emissions are a global priority — including the United States — to slow the rate of climate change.
The methane rule targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells. It also regulates smaller wells that will be required to find and plug methane leaks.
Studies have found that smaller wells produce just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas but account for up to half the methane emissions from well sites. The plan also calls for a phased-in requirement for energy companies to eliminate routine flaring, or burning of natural gas that is produced by new oil wells.
The states challenging the rule called the new standards “impossible to meet” and said they amounted to an “attack” on the industry.
The mercury rule, meanwhile, came after a reversal of a move by the Trump administration. It updated regulations that were more than a decade old for emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants that can affect the nervous system, kidneys and fetal development.
Industry groups and conservative-leaning states argued emissions were already low enough, and the new standards could force the shuttering coal-fired power plants. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Republican challenge to New York's mail voting expansion
Court Watch |
2024/07/27 18:44
|
New York’s highest court heard arguments Tuesday in a Republican challenge of a law that allows any registered voter to cast a mail-in ballot during the early voting period.
The case, which is led by Rep. Elise Stefanik and includes other lawmakers and the Republican National Committee, is part of a widespread GOP effort to tighten voting rules after the 2020 election.
Democrats approved the mail voting expansion law last year. The Republican challenge argues that it violates voting provisions in the state Constitution.
The hourlong arguments before the New York Court of Appeals in Albany hinged on technical readings of the Constitution, specifically whether certain passages would allow for the state Legislature to expand mail voting access.
At certain points in the hearing, judges quizzed attorneys on whether a constitutional provision that says eligible voters are entitled to vote “at every election” would mean a physical polling place or simply the election in general.
Michael Y. Hawrylchak, an attorney representing the Republicans, said that provision “presupposes a physical place” for in-person voting. Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey W. Lang, who is representing the state, said the phrase “just refers to a process of selecting an office holder” and not any physical polling place.
Democrats first tried to expand mail voting through a constitutional amendment in 2021, but voters rejected the proposal after a campaign from conservatives who said it would lead to voter fraud.
Lower courts have dismissed the Republican lawsuit in decisions that said the Legislature has the constitutional authority to make rules on voting and the Constitution doesn’t require voting specifically to occur in person on election day.
It is unclear when the Court of Appeals will rule.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Supreme Court strips the SEC of a critical enforcement tool in fraud cases
Court Watch |
2024/07/02 10:30
|
The Supreme Court on Thursday stripped the Securities and Exchange Commission of a major tool in fighting securities fraud in a decision that also could have far-reaching effects on other regulatory agencies.
The justices ruled in a 6-3 vote that people accused of fraud by the SEC, which regulates securities markets, have the right to a jury trial in federal court. The in-house proceedings the SEC has used in some civil fraud complaints, including against Houston hedge fund manager George Jarkesy, violate the Constitution, the court said.
“A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court’s conservative majority.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who read from her dissent in the courtroom, said that “litigants who seek to dismantle the administrative state” would rejoice in the decision.
Federal agencies that oversee safety in mines and other workplaces are among many that can only impose civil penalties in in-house, administrative proceedings, Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.
“For those and countless other agencies, all the majority can say is tough luck; get a new statute from Congress,” she wrote.
The case is among several this term in which conservative and business interests are urging the nine-member court to constrict federal regulators. The court’s six conservatives already have done so, including in a decision last year that sharply limited environmental regulators’ ability to police water pollution in wetlands.
Still awaiting decision are cases calling on the court to overturn the 40-year-old ruling colloquially known as Chevron, which has made it easier to sustain regulation of the environment, public, health, worker safety and consumer protection. Some of the same parties that supported Jarkesy at the Supreme Court are calling for Chevron to be overturned.
The SEC was awarded more than $5 billion in civil penalties in the 2023 government spending year that ended Sept. 30, the agency said in a news release. It was unclear how much of that money came through in-house proceedings or lawsuits in federal court.
The agency had already reduced the number of cases it brings in administrative proceedings pending the Supreme Court’s resolution of the case.
The high court rejected arguments advanced by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that relied on a 50-year-old decision in which the court ruled that in-house proceedings did not violate the Constitution’s right to a jury trial in civil lawsuits.
The justices ruled in favor of Jarkesy after the SEC appealed a decision in which the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out stiff financial penalties against Jarkesy and his Patriot28 investment adviser.
The appeals court found that the SEC’s case against Jarkesy, resulting in a $300,000 civil fine and the repayment of $680,000 in allegedly ill-gotten gains, should have been heard in a federal court instead of before one of the SEC’s administrative law judges. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Supreme Court will take up state bans on gender-affirming care for minors
Court Watch |
2024/06/24 15:22
|
The Supreme Court on Monday jumped into the fight over transgender rights, agreeing to hear an appeal from the Biden administration seeking to block state bans on gender-affirming care.
The justices’ action comes as Republican-led states have enacted a variety of restrictions on health care for transgender people, school sports participation, bathroom usage and drag shows. The administration and Democratic-led states have extended protections for transgender people, including a new federal regulation that seeks to protect transgender students.
The case before the high court involves a law in Tennessee that restrict puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors. The federal appeals court in Cincinnati allowed laws in Tennessee and Kentucky to take effect after they had been blocked by lower courts. (The high court did not act on a separate appeal from Kentucky.)
“Without this Court’s prompt intervention, transgender youth and their families will remain in limbo, uncertain of whether and where they can access needed medical care,” lawyers for the transgender teens in Tennessee told the justices.
Actor Elliot Page, the Oscar-nominated star of “Juno,” “Inception” and “The Umbrella Academy,” was among 57 transgender people who joined a legal filing in support of Supreme Court review.
Arguments will take place in the fall. Last month, South Carolina became the 25th state to adopt a law restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, even though such treatments have been available in the United States for more than a decade and are endorsed by major medical associations.
Most of the state restrictions face lawsuits. The justices had previously allowed Idaho to generally enforce its restrictions, after they had been blocked by lower courts.
At least 24 states have laws barring transgender women and girls from competing in certain women’s or girls’ sports competitions. At least 11 states have adopted laws barring transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s bathrooms at public schools, and in some cases other government facilities. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Investment Fraud Litigation |
|
|
|
|
Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws. Securities Arbitration. Generally speaking, securities fraud consists of deceptive practices in the stock and commodity markets, and occurs when investors are enticed to part with their money based on untrue statements.
|
|
|
| |
| |
| |
|
The content contained on the web site has been prepared by Securities Law News as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case. | Affordable Law Firm Website Design by Law Promo |
|
Legal News RSS Feed
