Tag Archives: criminal convictions

US

Trump Org. fined $1.6 million after conviction for 17 felonies, including tax fraud

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New York
CNN
 — 

The Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge Friday for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme, a symbolic moment because it is the only judgment for a criminal conviction that has come close to former President Donald Trump.

Two Trump entities, The Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp., were convicted last month of 17 felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records.

Under New York law, the most the companies can be fined is about $1.6 million, a penalty the Trump Organization can easily afford.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Judge Juan Merchan to make the Trump Org. pay the maximum fine, though he admitted that it will have a “minimal impact” on a multibillion-dollar company.

“We all know that these corporations cannot go to jail as Allen Weisselberg has,” Steinglass said Friday, referring to the Trump Organization’s long-time chief financial officer who was sentenced to five months in jail earlier this week as part of a deal he reached with prosecutors. “The only way to effectively deter such conduct is to make it as expensive as possible.”

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, told CNN that the fine against the Trump Org. is important but he also wants lawmakers to raise the fines for companies that break the law.

“It’s important regardless of who the defendant is, because it’s cheating and greed and cheating the taxpayers,” Bragg said. “It obviously becomes more consequential given that it involved the former president’s corporation and CFO. It sends a message – I hope it sends a message to New Yorkers that you know we’re one system of justice and that this kind of conduct, regardless of who you are, won’t be countenanced in Manhattan.”

But, Bragg said, the fine isn’t enough of a penalty.

“It isn’t sufficient. Plain and simple,” Bragg said, saying the law should “reflect what I think many of us see, particularly those who sat through the trial and saw the 13 year you know pattern of deep greed and misconduct laid bare, we should have stiffer penalties for conduct like that.”

The Trump Org. entities have 14 days to pay the fine.

The real estate business is not at risk of being dismantled because there is no mechanism under the law to dissolve the company. No individual will go to jail based on the jury’s verdict. However, a felony conviction could impact the Trump Organization’s reputation and ability to do business or obtain loans or contracts.

Trump and his family were not charged in this case, but the former president was mentioned repeatedly during the trial by prosecutors about his connection to the un-taxed benefits doled out to certain executives, including company-funded apartments, car leases and personal expenses. One prosecutor said Trump “explicitly sanctioned” tax fraud.

One of the jurors told CNN that the jury saw a “culture of fraud,” at the Trump Organization, but referred to Trump as a nondescript “Bob Smith” at times when talking about the company owner’s awareness of the crimes in relation to the charges.

Weisselberg last year pleaded guilty to 15 felonies related to the tax fraud scheme and agreed to testify truthfully against the company at trial.

He remained on paid leave at the Trump Organization, where he was compensated a little more than $1 million a year, until Tuesday when he was sentenced. Weisselberg received a severance package that one person familiar with the deal called “generous.”

Merchan, who sentenced Weisselberg, said at the time that but for the deal he would have given Weisselberg more time in jail after listening to the evidence at trial.

Merchan said he found most “offensive” a $6,000 payroll check Weisselberg had made out to his wife, who never worked for Trump, so she could become eligible for Social Security benefits.

A Trump Org. spokesperson said that Weisselberg “is a victim,” as is the company and former president.

“New York has become the crime and murder capital of the world, yet these politically motivated prosecutors will stop at nothing to get President Trump and continue the never ending witch-hunt which began the day he announced his presidency,” the spokesperson said. “We did nothing wrong and we will appeal this verdict.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office continues to investigate the company’s business practices.

Prosecutors are conducting a wide-ranging investigation and in recent months their focus has returned to the company’s involvement in hush-money payments made to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels from going public with an affair with Trump just before the 2016 election, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has denied the affair.

Prosecutors are also looking into potential insurance fraud after new material came to light from the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into the accuracy of the Trump Organization’s financial statements, the people said.

The biggest threat currently facing the company could be New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil lawsuit, which has alleged Trump, his three eldest children, Weisselberg and others defrauded lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of multiple Trump Org. properties for more than a decade.

In addition to money, James, a Democrat, is seeking to permanently bar Trump and the children named in the lawsuit from serving as a director of a business registered in New York state. She is also seeking to cancel the Trump Organization’s corporate certificate, which if granted by a judge, could effectively force the company to cease operations in New York state.

The judge overseeing the lawsuit put an independent monitor in place to review the Trump Organization’s financial statements and business decisions. He recently denied motions to dismiss the case and said he considered sanctioning Trump’s attorneys. The trial is set for October.

Trump has denied wrongdoing and said the lawsuit is politically motivated.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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US

Ana Montes, American convicted of spying for Cuba, released from US federal prison after 20 years

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CNN
 — 

Ana Montes, an American citizen convicted of spying for Cuba, has been released from US federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, according to Federal Bureau of Prison online records.

Cuba recruited Montes for spying in the 1980s and she was employed by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency as an analyst from 1985-2001. She was eventually promoted to be the DIA’s top Cuba analyst.

The FBI and DIA began investigating her in the fall of 2000 but, in response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, she had access to plans for US attacks against Afghanistan and the Taliban.

On September 21, 2001, Montes was arrested in Washington, DC, and charged with conspiracy to deliver defense information to Cuba.

In early 2002, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to espionage. The judge who sentenced Montes ordered her to be supervised on release from prison for five years.

Regarding Montes’ release, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio slammed Montes for betraying the US and assisting Cuba’s communist regime.

“Americans should remember Ana Belén Montes for who she really is, despite the fact that she has served her time in prison. If we forget this spy’s story, it will surely repeat itself,” Rubio said in a statement released on Saturday.

Ana Montes, now 65, was known as the Queen of Cuba, an American who for over a decade and a half handed over so many US military secrets to Havana that experts say the US may never know the full extent of the damage.

In 1984, Montes was working a clerical job at the Justice Department in Washington and studying for a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University.

She often found herself railing against President Ronald Reagan’s support for rebels fighting pro-communist regimes in Central America.

“She felt that the US didn’t have the right to impose its will on other countries,” said FBI Special Agent Pete Lapp, the man who eventually led the investigation against Montes, and ultimately arrested her.

Her anger about US foreign policy complicated her relationships and drew the attention of Cubans who enticed her to turn her back on friends, family and her own country.

Someone at Johns Hopkins noticed Montes’ passionate views about Cuba and soon she was introduced to recruiters, and agreed to help the Cuban cause.

At about the same time, Montes applied for a job at the Defense Intelligence Agency, where workers handle US military secrets on a daily basis. When she started there in 1985, the FBI says she was already a fully recruited Cuban spy.

One night in 1996, Montes was called to consult at the Pentagon during an ongoing international incident, but she broke protocol by failing to remain on duty until dismissed. This raised suspicion.

Four years later, DIA counterintelligence officer Scott Carmichael heard the FBI was looking for a mole – an unidentified spy inside the DIA who was working for Cuba.

The suspect had traveled to the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, at a specific time. When he looked up a list of DIA employees who visited Gitmo during those dates, a familiar name popped up – Ana Montes.

“The moment I saw her name, I knew,” Carmichael said.

After that, Carmichael and FBI agent Lapp teamed up to prove that the DIA’s Queen of Cuba was really a spy.

Thanks to “very sensitive” intelligence, it was known that the unidentified DIA mole had bought a specific brand, make and model of computer at a specific time in 1996 from an unknown store in Alexandria, Virginia.

Lapp was able to find the store’s original record that linked that computer to Montes, confirming their beliefs.

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Entertainment

Harvey Weinstein: Los Angeles jury deadlocks on factors that could have increased his sentence

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CNN
 — 

After convicting former film producer Harvey Weinstein of rape and sexual assault, a Los Angeles jury could not reach a unanimous verdict Tuesday on alleged aggravating factors that could have increased his sentence.

The three charges Weinstein was convicted of – rape, sexual penetration by foreign object and forcible oral copulation – were all tied to one of his accusers, Jane Doe 1, a model and actress who testified the movie mogul assaulted her in a Beverly Hills hotel room in February 2013.

Jurors were asked to determine if Jane Doe 1 was harmed and particularly vulnerable, and if Weinstein committed the crimes with planning, professionalism, or sophistication.

Ten members of the jury found the aggravating factors had been met, but two jurors could not be swayed, one of the jurors told CNN.

“The jury has said they are not able to reach a unanimous verdict on these issues,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench said, according to a pool report. “I am going to declare a mistrial with respect to the allegations.”

Had the jury found Weinstein guilty of the aggravating factors, a new California law would have then allowed the judge to enact a harsher sentence.

Jurors had deliberated for several hours Tuesday. After the jury indicated further deliberations would not sway them, neither the prosecution or the defense pushed to have the jurors deliberate further.

When Lench asked prosecutor Paul Thompson if Weinstein will be retried on the deadlock counts, the pool report said he responded: “We need to consult the victims first and foremost.”

Weinstein’s sentencing was tentatively set for January 9, with Lench allowing only Jane Doe 1 to offer a victim impact statement. He is expected to serve 18 years.

“Harvey Weinstein forever destroyed a part of me that night in 2013. I will never get that back,” said Jane Doe 1 in a statement released through her attorney. “The criminal trial was brutal. Weinstein’s lawyers put me through hell on the witness stand. But I knew I had to see this through the end, and I did … I hope Harvey Weinstein never sees the outside of a prison cell during his lifetime.”

The disgraced movie mogul was found guilty Monday of three of seven charges against him in his second sexual assault trial. The jury acquitted Weinstein of one count of sexual battery by restraint against a massage therapist in a hotel room in 2010.

They were a hung jury on one count of sexual battery by restraint, one count of forcible oral copulation and one count of rape related to two other women – including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a filmmaker and first partner to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Weinstein had pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. His spokesman said he was “disappointed” with the outcome of the trial but “he is prepared to continue fighting for his innocence.”

The verdict was reached as jurors entered their third week of deliberations, meeting for a total of 41 hours over a period of 10 days following weeks of oftentimes emotional testimony.

Two jurors who spoke with CNN after they were dismissed from court Tuesday shared their thoughts on the trial, both saying politics played absolutely no role in their deliberations.

“Everyone realized the weight of this trial. There’s a lot riding on this for both sides,” said Michael, a 62-year-old juror who declined to share his last name.

Michael said the contact the accusers had with Weinstein following their alleged assaults was a key factor in deciding the verdict. That was specifically applied to Siebel Newsom, who, according to dozens of emails presented as evidence in the trial, maintained contact with Weinstein.

Michael said he found Jane Doe 1 to be the most convincing.

“We felt horrible for everybody,” but felt like the addition of uncharged witnesses became confusing for some jurors, said Jay, another juror who also declined to share his last name.

“Everybody seemed believable. It’s hard to prove all of them with time and memory,” Jay added.

Elizabeth Fegan, an attorney representing Siebel Newsom, who was identified in court as Jane Doe 4, said they were disappointed the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on the charges related to her client.

“My client, Jane Doe 4, shared her story not with an expectation to testify but to support all the survivors who bravely came forward,” Fegan said in a statement to CNN. “While we are heartened that the jury found Weinstein guilty on some of the counts, we are disappointed that the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on Jane Doe 4. She will continue to fight for all women and all survivors of abuse against a system that permits the victim to be shamed and re-traumatized in the name of justice.”

Weinstein is two years into a 23-year sentence for a 2020 New York conviction, which his attorneys have appealed, putting more attention on the outcome of the trial in Los Angeles.

The weekslong Los Angeles trial saw emotional testimony from Weinstein’s accusers – a model, a dancer, a massage therapist and Siebel Newsom – all of whom were asked to recount the details of their allegations against him, provide details of meetings with the producer from years ago, and explain their reactions to the alleged assaults.

Additionally, four women testified they were subjected to similar behavior by Weinstein in other jurisdictions.

Weinstein initially faced 11 charges, but four counts connected to an unnamed woman were dropped without explanation. She did not testify in the trial.

In closing arguments, Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez called Weinstein a “titan” who used his power in Hollywood to prey on and silence women.

Meanwhile, Weinstein’s attorneys maintained the allegations are either fabricated or occurred consensually as part of a “transactional relationship” with the movie producer, repeatedly saying there is no evidence of assault.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson called the accusers “fame and fortune seekers.”

Jane Doe 2, who was identified as Lauren Young, told her attorney Gloria Allred by phone that she was happy Weinstein was convicted on some counts despite there being a mistrial on her count, Allred said in a news conference after the verdict.

“I am relieved that Harvey Weinstein has been convicted because he deserves to be punished for the crimes that he committed, and he can no longer use his power to intimidate and sexually assault more women,” Young said in a statement read by Allred.

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US

Rodney Reed: Supreme Court hears death row inmate’s appeal for new DNA testing

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CNN
 — 

The Supreme Court struggled with the case of Rodney Reed on Tuesday, a Black death row inmate seeking post-conviction DNA evidence to prove his innocence. He claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing a White woman in Texas in 1998.

Since his conviction, Texas courts have rejected his various appeals. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed support, signing a petition asking the state to halt his execution.

At oral arguments, a lawyer for the state suggested Reed was making his arguments in order to delay his execution, but it was unclear if the lawyer swayed all of the conservative justices. The state warned against inmates being able to “avail themselves” of “endless procedure in state courts.”

The case puts a new focus on the testing of DNA crime-scene evidence and when an inmate can make a claim to access the technology in a plea of innocence. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a group that represents Reed and other clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

Justice Elena Kagan seemed to agree with Reed’s attorney, saying it was important for the full appeals process to play out before an inmate asked a federal court to intervene.

“Isn’t the simplest thing just to say that the person isn’t harmed until the state process has come to an end and we know for a fact what the state judgment is?” she asked.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also agreed, noting that if an inmate were to bring the challenge before the state proceedings were over, a federal court would likely move to put the appeal on hold until the state action concludes.

But Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern at one point for inmates seeking to avoid an immediate appeal as a way to “put off” an execution.

For his part, Justice Brett Kavanaugh was interested in the “practical problems” courts would face if an inmate had to bring a federal court challenge before the state procedures were exhausted.

Court precedent allows a state prisoner who has been denied in state court to pursue a post-conviction claim for DNA testing in federal court. But Reed’s case raises a statute of limitations question about whether such a claim can be brought at the end of state court litigation or at the moment a trial court denied DNA testing.

Lower courts have split on the issue and the distinction is key for Reed as a federal appeals court ruled that he waited too long to bring his claim. How the Supreme Court rules could impact other death row inmates across the country seeking to test new evidence. And comes as DNA testing has become a more utilized means to exonerate those who have been wrongly convicted.

Reed has been on death row for the murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites.

A passerby found Stites’ body near a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators targeted Reed because his sperm was found inside her. Reed acknowledged the two were having an affair, but says that her fiancé, a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the last to see her alive.

Reed claims that over the last two decades he has discovered a “considerable body of evidence” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would point to Fennell as the murder suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody and Reed claims that numerous witnesses said he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her cheating on him. Reed seeks to test the belt found at the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

The Texas law at issue allows a convicted person to obtain post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if the court finds that certain conditions are met. Reed was denied. He came to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was denied again. Now he is challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due process rights.

But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that he waited too long to bring the claim. “An injury accrues when a plaintiff first becomes aware, or should have become aware, that his right had been violated.” The court said that he became aware of that in 2014 and that his current claim is “time barred.”

Reed’s lawyers argued that he could only bring the claim once the state appeals court had ruled, at the end of state court litigation. In court, Parker Rider-Longmaid said that the “clock doesn’t start ticking” until state court proceedings come to an end. He said Texas’ reading of the law would mean that other procedures in the appellate process are “irrelevant.”

Janai Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund supports Reed arguing in briefs that the “overwhelming majority of incarcerated persons exonerated through DNA evidence since its introduction in 1989, have been people of color and primarily Black men.”

Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone II responded in court papers that at trial the state introduced “substantial” evidence that Reed had “sexually assaulted multiple other women.” Besides arguing that the suit is untimely, he also says that Reed’s claim cannot be brought because he lacks the legal right, or “standing,” to bring the case.

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US

Adnan Syed: Judge vacates conviction of ‘Serial’ podcast subject

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Baltimore
CNN
 — 

A judge on Monday approved a motion by prosecutors to vacate the murder conviction of Adnan Syed, the subject of the first season of the popular “Serial” podcast, who has maintained he is innocent in the 1999 slaying of his ex-girlfriend.

Baltimore prosecutors filed the motion last week asking for a new trial for Syed, who has been serving a life sentence after he was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment in connection to the killing of Hae Min Lee.

In explaining her decision to vacate, Baltimore City Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn cited material in the state investigation ​that was not properly turned over to defense attorneys​, as well as ​the existence of two suspects ​who may have been improperly cleared as part of the investigation.

Her ruling was met by cheers and tears in the courtroom. Syed – who attended the hearing wearing a white button-down shirt, a dark tie and a kufi cap – was not handcuffed, but his feet were. After the ruling, officials uncuffed his ankles, and soon after, Syed walked out of the courthouse to cheers and applause from supporters. He did not stop to speak to reporters as he got into a vehicle.

“We’re not yet declaring Adnan Syed is innocent,” Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Monday following the judge’s ruling. “But we are declaring that in the interest of fairness and justice he is entitled to a new trial.”

Prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to pursue a new trial, and they are waiting for DNA analysis that they are trying to expedite to determine whether Adnan’s case is dismissed or the case is set for trial. But that mandate, Mosby said, is “separate and apart” from the investigation into who killed Lee.

In the meantime, Syed will wear an ankle monitor with tracking, according to Becky Feldman, chief of the Sentencing Review Unit of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office.

Twenty-three years after he went to prison, “we now know what Adnan and his loved ones have always known, that Adnan’s trial was profoundly and outrageously unfair. Evidence was hidden from him, evidence that pointed to other people as the killers,” Assistant Public Defender Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney and director of the Innocence Project Clinic, said in a statement following the ruling.

The hearing comes nearly eight years after the “Serial” podcast dug into his case, raising questions about the conviction and his legal representation. In doing so, the podcast reached a huge audience and set off a true-crime podcasting boom as well as further examinations of the case, including the HBO docuseries “The Case Against Adnan Syed.”

Prosecutors moved to vacate Syed’s conviction following a nearly year-long investigation, they said in a news release last week. At the time, Mosby said prosecutors were “not asserting, at this time, that Mr. Syed is innocent” but that the state “lacks confidence in the integrity of the conviction” and that Syed should get a new trial.

The reinvestigation of the case revealed evidence about the possible involvement of two suspects other than Syed, including a person who said they would make Lee “disappear” and that “(h)e would kill her,” prosecutors said. Syed’s attorneys said he and his legal team were unaware that information existed until this year.

Defense attorneys praised the prosecution’s motion to vacate the conviction as righting a wrong.

“Given the stunning lack of reliable evidence implicating Mr. Syed, coupled with increasing evidence pointing to other suspects, this unjust conviction cannot stand,” Suter said in a statement last week.

Maryland public defender Natasha Dartigue in a news release called the case “a true example of how justice delayed is justice denied. An innocent man spends decades wrongly incarcerated, while any information or evidence that could help identify the actual perpetrator becomes increasingly difficult to pursue.”

Adnan and Lee were seniors at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County in January 1999 when she disappeared. Her strangled body was discovered in a city forest three weeks later.

Syed and prosecutors in March filed a joint motion for post-conviction DNA testing, saying that since the crime occurred more than two decades ago, “DNA testing has changed and improved drastically.”

The March motion asked that the victim’s clothing be tested for touch DNA, which was not available at the time of trial. Items now being tested were not previously tested in 2018 – when the Baltimore City Police Lab tested various items for DNA – with the exception of the victim’s fingernail clippings, Mosby’s statement said.

Mosby said the motion to vacate was filed along with Sentencing Review Unit Chief Becky Feldman. Syed was a juvenile when convicted.

The alternative suspects were known persons at the time of the original investigation “and were not properly ruled out nor disclosed to the defense,” according to Mosby’s statement.

The state is not disclosing the names of the suspects but said that, according to the trial file, one of them said, “He would make her (Ms. Lee) disappear. He would kill her.”

The investigation also revealed that one suspect was convicted of attacking a woman in her vehicle, according to the statement. The second suspect was convicted of engaging in serial rape and sexual assault, the statement said.

Some of the information was available at the time of the trial, the statement said, and some came to light later. It is not clear when these assaults took place.

Lee’s car was located “directly behind the house of one of the suspect’s family members,” the statement said.

Attorneys for Syed brought the case to the attention of the sentencing review unit in April 2021.

Syed’s attorneys “identified significant reliability issues regarding the most critical pieces of evidence at trial,” Mosby’s statement said.

In the 2019 HBO docuseries “The Case Against Adnan Syed,” an attorney for Syed said his client’s DNA was not found on any of the 12 samples retrieved from the victim’s body and car. That testing was not part of the official investigation by authorities. HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.

At trial, prosecutors relied on testimony from a friend, Jay Wilds, who said he helped Syed dig a hole for Lee’s body. To corroborate his account, prosecutors presented cell phone records and expert witness testimony to place Syed at the site where Lee was buried.

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