Legal Random, Random

[ti-amie]

[JazzNU]

I agree with the current top reply to the bottom Tweet


Joe
@rockytech
Replying to
@oliverdarcy

"Don't show the jury the threats that we explicitly condoned because it would prove our case" is not the defense Fox thinks it is.

[Owendonovan]

Why not just ask to bar any evidence against them because, you know, they might lose the case.

[Owendonovan]

The dude is a scumbag and should possibly be removed.

IN LATE JUNE 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.

If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.

For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.

https://www.propublica.org/article/clar ... gifts-crow

[ti-amie]

Molly White
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io
The new team in charge of the FTX bankruptcy have released their first interim report on the failures of control at FTX and related businesses.

It's 43 pages long, let's go through it

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65 ... ading-ltd/

The debtors reiterate the stunning lack of recordkeeping and controls at FTX: "Normally, in a bankruptcy involving a business of the size and complexity of the FTX Group, particularly a business that handles customer and investor funds, there are readily identifiable records, data sources, and processes that can be used to identify and safeguard assets of the estate. Not so with the FTX Group."

"Upon assuming control, the Debtors found a pervasive lack of records and other evidence at the FTX Group of where or how fiat currency and digital assets could be found or accessed, and extensive commingling of assets."

FTX executives "stifled dissent, commingled and misused corporate and customer funds, lied to third parties about their business, [and] joked internally about their tendency to lose track of millions of dollars in assets"

Debtors are having to cobble together financial records from what they're able to find in QuickBooks and Slack records

It sounds like the debtors are limited somewhat by the fact that laptops belonging to SBF and other high-level insiders are currently in the hands of the Bahamian Joint Provisional Liquidators, who've been less than cooperative (according to the US team, at least).

Nishad Singh, Gary Wang, and Caroline Ellison have all pled guilty and are cooperating with the DOJ, making it infeasible for the debtors to interview them for bankruptcy purposes until after the criminal trial is over. They have interviewed others, though.

FTX had "an environment in which a handful of employees had, among them, virtually limitless power to direct transfers of fiat currency and crypto assets and to hire and fire employees, with no effective oversight or controls to act as checks on how they exercised those powers."

"The FTX Group lacked independent or experienced finance, accounting, human resources, information security, or cybersecurity personnel or leadership, and lacked any internal audit function whatsoever. Board oversight, moreover, was also effectively non-existent."

“if Nishad [Singh] got hit by a bus, the whole company would be done. Same issue with Gary [Wang]."

Some new context on the sudden resignation of Brett Harrison in September 2022: he "resigned following a protracted disagreement", after which his bonus was drastically reduced.

In a separate instance, a lawyer who was hired only three months prior, who learned about the North Dimension bank accounts, was "summarily terminated after expressing concerns about Alameda’s lack of corporate controls, capable leadership, and risk management."

"At the time of the bankruptcy filing, the FTX Group did not even have current and complete lists of who its employees were."

"As a general matter, policies and procedures relating to accounting, financial reporting, treasury management, and risk management did not exist, were incomplete, or were highly generic and not appropriate for a firm handling substantial financial assets."

The small accounting firm used by FTX entities for most accounting "appears to have a small number of employees and no specialized knowledge relating to cryptocurrencies or international financial markets".

More QuickBooks shade.

"Fifty-six entities within the FTX Group did not produce financial statements of any kind. Thirty-five FTX Group entities used QuickBooks as their accounting system and relied on a hodgepodge of Google documents, Slack communications, shared drives, and Excel spreadsheets and other non-enterprise solutions to manage their assets and liabilities"

"Approximately 80,000 transactions were simply left as unprocessed accounting entries in catch-all QuickBooks accounts titled 'Ask My Accountant.'"

Sam Bankman-Fried: "Alameda is unauditable... we are only able to ballpark what its balances are, let alone something like a comprehensive transaction history. We sometimes find $50m of assets lying around that we lost track of; such is life"

"Thousands of deposit checks were collected from the FTX Group’s offices, some stale-dated for months, due to the failure of personnel to deposit checks in the ordinary course; instead, deposit checks collected like junk mail."

Transfers in the tens of millions of dollars were approved via Slack emoji, or discussed in disappearing Signal or Telegram chats.

"Only four months after the real estate purchase had closed did the employee enter into a promissory note with Alameda in which he undertook to repay the funds used to purchase the property. Other insiders received purported loans from Alameda for which no promissory notes exist."

Accounts were opened using names and email addresses that were not obviously linked to FTX, using pseudonymous email addresses, in the names of shell companies created for these purposes, or in the names of individuals (including individuals with no direct connection FTX)

"Alameda also transferred funds to insiders to fund personal investments, political contributions, and other expenditures—some of which were nominally 'papered' as personal loans with below-market interest rates and a balloon payment due years in the future."

The document reiterates known allegations about Alameda's "unique ability to trade and withdraw virtually unlimited assets [on FTX], regardless of the size of its account balance and without risk of its positions being liquidated."

[ponchi101]

And neither congress, the senate or the presidency is calling for immediate regulation of this "industry"?

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

Fox News sanctioned for withholding evidence in Dominion defamation case
The judge is giving Dominion Voting Systems a chance to conduct another deposition, at Fox's expense.


April 12, 2023, 1:46 PM EDT
By Jane C. Timm and Amanda Terkel

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis on Wednesday sanctioned Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., for withholding evidence in the Dominion defamation suit, and said he's considering further investigation and censure.

According to a person present in the courtroom, lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems played recordings Fox News producer Abby Grossberg made during 2020, which were not handed over to Dominion's lawyers during discovery.

Grossberg, a former producer for Fox hosts Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, has sued Fox News and said her deposition was coerced. In an amended filing Tuesday, she said she had recorded conversations with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and others.

The sanction gives Dominion a chance to conduct another deposition, at Fox’s expense.

The surprise evidence and sanction comes days before the trial is scheduled to begin in the $1.6 billion defamation case Dominion Voting Systems filed against Fox News and Fox Corp. Davis also said Wednesday he was considering appointing a special master to investigate the Fox legal teams' actions.

On Tuesday, Davis expressed frustration at Fox News for not being straightforward about Rupert Murdoch's role as a leader at Fox News.

"This is a problem," Davis said, according to a court transcript. "I need to feel comfortable when you represent something to me that is the truth."

Fox News did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the sanction but said in a statement Tuesday, "Rupert Murdoch has been listed as executive chairman of FOX News in our SEC filings since 2019 and this filing was referenced by Dominion’s own attorney during his deposition."


https://www.nbcnews.com/media/fox-sanct ... -rcna79377

[Owendonovan]

I really wish "settling" didn't require silence.

[ti-amie]

[Owendonovan]

Clarence, another republican embarrassment, has to go.

Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.

In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the road. What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives.

The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice. The Crow company bought the properties for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother, according to a state tax document and a deed dated Oct. 15, 2014, filed at the Chatham County courthouse.

The purchase put Crow in an unusual position: He now owned the house where the justice’s elderly mother was living. Soon after the sale was completed, contractors began work on tens of thousands of dollars of improvements on the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, which looks out onto a patch of orange trees. The renovations included a carport, a repaired roof and a new fence and gates, according to city permit records and blueprints.

https://www.propublica.org/article/clar ... ate-scotus

[ti-amie]

Clarence, another republican embarrassment, has to go.

Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.

In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the road. What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives.

The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice. The Crow company bought the properties for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother, according to a state tax document and a deed dated Oct. 15, 2014, filed at the Chatham County courthouse.

The purchase put Crow in an unusual position: He now owned the house where the justice’s elderly mother was living. Soon after the sale was completed, contractors began work on tens of thousands of dollars of improvements on the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, which looks out onto a patch of orange trees. The renovations included a carport, a repaired roof and a new fence and gates, according to city permit records and blueprints.

https://www.propublica.org/article/clar ... ate-scotus

If Thomas' mother is living rent/mortgage/utilities free in this house then there is no way, in my mind, Clarence can stay on the bench. Then again I felt he should've been gone years ago. The problem would be what happens to all of the decisions he's been in on?

If he wasn't shameless he should issue a statement that his wife's health is a major concern for him as well as the reputation of the Court itself but he is shameless so I don't know how they're going to get him off the bench.

[Owendonovan]

This racist pig should be deported jailed and never allowed back in this country.

[ti-amie]

This was the reason so many were against him being allowed into this county and allowed to take control of major media outlets. If the media would go back to doing in depth reporting instead of stenography for the RWNJ maybe we'd have a more informed populace.

[ponchi101]

Perhaps one industry in which you need some more regulation? Foreigners cannot own media outlets?
Throwing stuff out there. This guy's influence on the USA (and the world) is nefarious.