- Nationals owner disputes Stephen Strasburg retirement talks USA TODAY
- Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg will NOT have ‘farewell’ press conference, owner Mark Lerner confirms amid contract standoff with retiree Daily Mail
- Nationals owner slams leaks about Stephen Strasburg’s reported retirement: ‘Regrettable’ New York Post
- Mark D. Lerner releases statement on Stephen Strasburg’s retirement MLB.com
- Nationals cancel Stephen Strasburg’s retirement press conference over financial disagreements, per reports CBS Sports
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Tag Archives: Disputes
Colin Jost disputes Pete Davidson’s claim that they were both ‘stoned’ when they paid $280,100 for a decommissioned Staten Island ferry: ‘I was actually stone-cold sober’ – Yahoo Entertainment
- Colin Jost disputes Pete Davidson’s claim that they were both ‘stoned’ when they paid $280,100 for a decommissioned Staten Island ferry: ‘I was actually stone-cold sober’ Yahoo Entertainment
- Colin Jost was not stoned when he and Pete Davidson bought $280K ferry Insider
- Colin Jost says he was ‘actually stone-cold sober’ when buying ferry with Pete Davidson USA TODAY
- Colin Jost Was Sober When He Bought Staten Island Ferry BuzzFeed
- Colin Jost Responds to Pete Davidson’s Claim They Were ‘Very Stoned’ When They Bought Ferry Just Jared
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Dallas Cowboys’ Will McClay Disputes ‘Ashamed’ Deion Sanders’ HBCU NFL Draft Accusation – FanNation Dallas Cowboys News, Analysis and More – Sports Illustrated
- Dallas Cowboys’ Will McClay Disputes ‘Ashamed’ Deion Sanders’ HBCU NFL Draft Accusation – FanNation Dallas Cowboys News, Analysis and More Sports Illustrated
- Here’s the problem with Deion Sanders acting like a hero for HBCU athletes Yahoo Sports
- Patriots pick agrees ‘1000%’ with Deion Sanders’ comments on lack of HBCU players selected in NFL Draft Fox News
- Cowboys’ Will McClay counters Deion Sanders’ “ashamed” criticism NBC Sports
- NFL World Reacts To What Shannon Sharpe Said About Deion Sanders The Spun
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As China envoy disputes ex-Soviet states’ sovereignty, revisiting Beijing’s ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy – ThePrint
- As China envoy disputes ex-Soviet states’ sovereignty, revisiting Beijing’s ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy ThePrint
- China says it will keep backing Central Asian nations’ sovereignty after outcry over envoy’s remarks Yahoo News
- Chinese Ambassador Questions Sovereignty Of Former Soviet Countries | English News | News18 CNN-News18
- Letter: China’s ambassador has done diplomacy a service Financial Times
- Western anger over China’s ambiguity on Ukraine cannot hide growing divisions in EU over support for Kyiv The Conversation
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Priscilla Presley disputes trust of late Lisa Marie Presley
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Priscilla Presley has filed legal documents disputing who oversees the estate of her late daughter Lisa Marie Presley.
The filing in Los Angeles Superior Court last week disputes the validity of a 2016 amendment to Lisa Marie Presley’s living trust that removed Priscilla Presley and a former business manager as trustees and replaced them with Lisa Marie Presley’s two oldest children, Riley Keough and Benjamin Keough, if she died or became incapacitated. Benjamin Keough died in 2020.
A living trust is a form of estate planning that allows a person to control their assets while alive, but have them distributed if they die. It serves the function of a will if a separate will is not filed, as appears to be the case with Lisa Marie Presley.
Lisa Marie Presley, a singer and the only child of Elvis Presley, died at a California hospital at age 54 on Jan. 12 after paramedics answered a 911 call reporting a woman in cardiac arrest. The Los Angeles County coroner is investigating, and has not yet given a cause of death. She was laid to rest at her family home, Graceland, on Jan. 22.
Priscilla Presley’s court filing says there are several issues that bring the living trust amendment’s authenticity into doubt.
The filing says they include a failure to notify Priscilla Presley of the change as required, a misspelling of Priscilla Presley’s name in a document supposedly signed by her daughter, an atypical signature from Lisa Marie Presley, and a lack of a witness or notarization. It asks a judge to declare the amendment invalid.
The filing says that the business manager, Barry Siegel, intended to resign, which according to the prior terms of the trust would leave Priscilla Presley, 77, and Riley Keough, 33, as co-trustees.
A message seeking comment from representatives of Riley Keough was not immediately returned.
Lisa Marie Presley left three surviving children. In addition to Riley Keough, her daughter with first husband Danny Keough, she had 14-year-old twin daughters with her fourth husband, Michael Lockwood.
Presley was declared divorced from Lockwood in 2021, but the two were still disputing finances in family court when she died.
Priscilla Presley’s filing is among the first of what are likely to be many legal maneuvers surrounding the estate of Lisa Marie Presley, the only heir of Elvis Presley.
It is not clear, however, how much that estate is worth. A lawsuit Lisa Marie Presley filed in 2018 alleging Siegel had mismanaged the trust said it had been worth in excess of $100 million, but most of that had been depleted.
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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
Priscilla Presley Disputes ‘Invalid’ Amendment to Lisa Marie’s Trust – Rolling Stone
In the wake of her daughter’s sudden death two weeks ago, Priscilla Presley is asking a California judge to step in and reject an alleged 2016 amendment to Lisa Marie Presley’s living trust as “invalid.”
Elvis’s widow claims in a new court filing that since Lisa Marie’s Jan. 12 death, she has “discovered” a disputed document seeking to remove her and former business manager Barry Siegel as co-trustees of her daughter’s Promenade Trust. The origins of the alleged amendment were not clear from the 2016 filing.
The alleged amendment, dated March 11, 2016, names Lisa Marie’s daughter Riley Keough and now-deceased son Benjamin Keough as replacement co-trustees, the new filing in Los Angeles County probate court reads.
The position is a powerful one. According to SEC filings, The Promenade Trust retained a 15 percent interest in Elvis Presley Enterprises — the company that controls Graceland and the licensing of Elvis Presley’s intellectual property — after Lisa Marie sold an 85 percent share of the business for $50 million in cash, more than $22 million in stock and the repayment of debts topping $25 million in 2005.
“There are many issues surrounding the authenticity and validity of the purported 2016 amendment,” Priscilla and her lawyer claim in the new 13-page filing obtained by Rolling Stone.
They allege the document was “never delivered” to Priscilla during Lisa Marie’s lifetime, as required by “express terms” of the trust agreement, that it misspells Priscilla’s name, that it wasn’t witnessed or notarized and that “Lisa Marie’s signature appears inconsistent with her usual and customary signature.”
Importantly, they say the signature page does not contain any text of the actual amendment “which can present a higher risk for fraud.”
For these reasons, they’re asking for a court order “determining that the purported 2016 amendment is invalid, confirming the validity and existence of the restated 2010 trust, and confirming that petitioner is a current trustee of the trust.”
Priscilla’s lawyer, Brian M. Malloy, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
TMZ, which first reported the court filing, characterized the filing as a “contentious” move that pits Priscilla against her granddaughter, Riley Keough. But Riley remains one of the trust’s beneficiaries along with her two surviving sisters, Finley and Harper Lockwood, regardless. Benjamin Keough died by suicide in 2020.
At Lisa Marie’s funeral, both Priscilla and Riley Keough shared emotional tributes to the singer who died at age 54 after being treated for cardiac arrest at her Calabasas home. Lisa Marie’s official cause of death has been deferred by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner pending “more investigation.”
Rural Arizona county delays certifying midterm results as election disputes persist
CNN
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Officials in a rural Arizona county Monday delayed the certification of November’s midterm elections, missing the legal deadline and leading the Arizona secretary of state’s office to sue over the county’s failure to sign off on the results.
By a 2-1 vote Monday morning, the Republican majority on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors pushed back certification until Friday, citing concerns about voting machines. Because Monday was the deadline for all 15 Arizona counties to certify their results, Cochise’s action could put at risk the votes of some 47,000 county residents and could inject chaos into the election if those votes go uncounted.
In the lawsuit filed by the office of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs – a Democrat who will be the state’s next governor – officials said failing to certify the election results violates state law and could “potentially disenfranchise” the county’s voters.
CNN has reached out to the supervisors for comment.
Arizona official rebuts Kari Lake’s claim about vote counting
The standoff between officials in Cochise County and the Arizona secretary of state’s office illustrates how election misinformation is continuing to stoke controversy about the 2022 results in some corners of the country even though many of the candidates who echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were defeated in November.
A crowd of grassroots activists turned up at a special meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to loudly protest that county’s election administration procedures during a public comment portion of the meeting after problems with printers at voting locations on Election Day led to long lines at about a third of the county’s voting locations. In a new letter to the state attorney general’s office – which had demanded an explanation of the problems – the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said that “no voter was disenfranchised because of the difficulty the county experienced with some of its printers.”
Disputes over the results have erupted elsewhere.
In Pennsylvania, where counties also faced a Monday deadline to certify their general election balloting, local officials have faced an onslaught of petitions demanding recounts. And officials in Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, deadlocked Monday on whether to certify the results, according to multiple media reports. Election officials there did not respond to inquiries from CNN on Monday afternoon.
In a statement to CNN, officials with the Pennsylvania Department of State said they have reached out to Luzerne officials “to inquire about the board’s decision and their intended next steps.”
On Election Day, a paper shortage in Luzerne County prompted a court-ordered extension of in-person voting.
Arizona, another key battleground state, has long been a cauldron of election conspiracies. GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and GOP secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, both of whom pushed Trump’s lies about 2020, have refused to concede their races, as they continue to sow doubts about this year’s election results.
Kari Lake won’t commit to accepting 2022 election results
Lake’s campaign filed a lawsuit last week demanding more information from Maricopa County’s elections department about the number of voters who checked in to polling places compared to the ballots cast. And Arizona’s GOP attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh – who, like Lake and Finchem, was backed by Trump – filed a lawsuit in the state superior court in Maricopa County last week challenging the election results based on what the suit describes as errors in the management of the election.
Hamadeh is trailing his opponent Democrat Kris Mayes by 510 votes as their race heads toward a recount. But the lawsuit asks the court to issue an injunction prohibiting the Arizona secretary of state from certifying Mayes as the winner and asks the court to declare Hamadeh as the winner. A recount cannot begin until the state’s votes are certified.
Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director of All Voting is Local, said the drama over certification of the votes and the refusal by losing candidates to back down is part of an “infrastructure of election denial” that has been building since the 2020 election in Arizona.
“Those folks are going to continue to try and find fertile ground for their efforts to undermine our elections. They are not going to give up,” Gulotta said. “We had a whole slate of election deniers, many of whom were not elected.”
But their refusal to concede “was inevitable in Arizona, at least in this cycle, given the candidates. These aren’t good losers,” he added. “They said from the beginning that they would be bad losers.”
In Cochise County, the Republican officials on the county Board of Supervisors advocated for the delay, citing concerns about voting machines.
Ann English, the Democratic chairwoman, argued that there was “no reason for us to delay.”
But Republican commissioners Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, who have cited claims that the machines were not properly certified, voted to delay signing off on the results. Monday’s action marked the second time the Republican-controlled board has delayed certification. And it marked the latest effort by Republicans on the board to register their disapproval of vote-tallying machines. Earlier this month, they attempted to mount an expansive hand count audit of the midterm results, pitting them against Cochise’s election director and the county attorney, who warned that the gambit might break the law.
State election officials said the concerns cited by the Republican majority about the vote-tallying machines are rooted in debunked conspiracy theories.
The state’s election director Kori Lorick has confirmed in writing that the voting machines had been tested and certified – a point Hobbs reiterated in Monday’s lawsuit. She is asking the court to force the board to certify the results by Thursday.
An initial deadline of December 5 had been set for statewide certification. In the lawsuit, Hobbs’ lawyers said state law does allow for a slight delay if her office has not received a county’s results, but not past December 8 – or 30 days after the election.
“Absent this Court’s intervention, the Secretary will have no choice but to complete statewide canvass by December 8 without Cochise County’s votes included,” her lawyers added.
If votes from this Republican stronghold somehow went uncounted, it could flip two races to Democrats: the contest for state superintendent and a congressional race in which Republican Juan Ciscomani already has been projected as the winner by CNN and other outlets.
In a recent opinion piece published in The Arizona Republic, two former election officials in Maricopa County – said the courts were likely to step in and force Cochise to certify the results.
But Republican Helen Purcell, a former Maricopa County recorder, and Tammy Patrick, a Democrat and the county’s former federal compliance officer, warned that “a Republican-controlled board of supervisors could end up disenfranchising their own voters and hand Democrats even more victories in the midterms.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
Bayonetta’s Original Voice Actor Disputes Claims, Says She Only Asked For ‘A Fair, Living Wage’
Hellena Taylor, the original voice actor for PlatinumGames’ Bayonetta and one of the parties at the centre of a prolonged and messy public dispute over casting and wages, has tonight issued a new statement addressing allegations that have been made against her over the past week.
The saga, which has seen claims of underpayment made, voice actors abused and a prominent developer temporarily disappear from Twitter, began when Taylor made a series of recent videos in which she accused PlatinumGames of offering her an insultingly-low pay offer to reprise her role as Bayonetta for the upcoming third game.
The role was subsequently given to Jennifer Hale—who has issued her own statements—while a Bloomberg report said PlatinumGames had originally offered to pay Taylor somewhere between $3,000 and $4,000 per four-hour session for at least five recording sessions, for a total of at least $15,000. It’s then said that when Taylor instead asked for a “six-figure sum” to voice the character, negotiations broke down.
Tonight, Taylor wrote a series of Tweets disputing some of the figures in these reports, saying:
It has come to my attention that some people are calling me a liar and golddigger. I feel the need to defend myself and my reputation in the industry.
As I posted on part three of my video thread. I explained that their first offer was too low. That offer was 10,000 dollars total. Remember, this is 450 million dollar franchise, (not counting merchandise.) I then wrote in Japanese to Hideki Kamiya, asking for what I was worth. I thought that as a creative, he would understand. He replied saying how much he valued my contribution to the game and how much the fans wanted me to voice the game. I was then offered an extra 5,0000! [Note: it appears this is a typo, and that Taylor means 5,000]
So, I declined to voice the game. I then heard nothing from them for 11 months. They then offered me a flat fee to voice some lines for 4,000 dollars. Any other lies, such as 4,000 for 5 sessions are total fabrications.
There were not “extensive negotiations.” I’ve also been informed of ridiculous fictions, such as I asked for 250,000 dollars. I am a team player. I was just asking for a fair, living wage in line with the value that I bring to this game.
I was paid a shockingly low total of £3000 total for the first game. A little more for the second. I wanted to voice her. I have drummed up interest in this game ever since I started on Twitter in 2011.
Brad Pitt’s rep disputes details in Angelina Jolie’s latest allegations about 2016 airplane incident
CNN
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A countersuit filed Tuesday by actress Angelina Jolie against her ex-husband Brad Pitt includes more information about an alleged physical altercation between the former couple that took place on a plane in 2016.
In a statement to CNN, a representative for Pitt called the latest allegations “completely untrue.”
Jolie and Pitt are battling over Jolie’s sale of her stake in their joint French winery, Chateau Miraval. Jolie sold her half of the winery in 2021 to Tenute del Mondo, a subsidiary of Stoli Group, controlled by Russian oligarch Yuri Shefler.
Pitt sued Jolie in February, claiming that he and Jolie had an agreement that neither would sell without the other’s consent.
Jolie claims in her countersuit that there was never any such agreement and that she sold her portion of the winery in an effort to have “financial independence” from Pitt and to “have some form of peace and closure to this deeply painful and traumatic chapter of her and their children’s lives.”
In the court documents, obtained by CNN, Jolie also shares more details about an alleged incident on a private plane on September 14, 2016, five days before she filed for divorce.
In a section of Jolie’s counterclaim titled “Why Jolie separated from Pitt,” the document alleges that, before arriving to the airport, Pitt got into an argument with one of their six children, who at the time were between the ages of 8 and 15. The filing goes on to allege that on the plane Jolie asked Pitt “what was wrong?” and that Pitt went on to verbally attack her and then an hour and a half later “pulled” her into the bathroom, “grabbed Jolie by the head and shook her, and then grabbed her shoulders and shook her again before pushing her into the bathroom wall.”
The claim also alleges, “Pitt choked one of the children and struck another in the face. Some of the children pleaded with Pitt to stop. They were all frightened. Many were crying.”
In a statement provided to CNN on Tuesday, a representative for Pitt said: “(Jolie’s) story continues to evolve each time she tells it with new, unsubstantiated claims. Brad has accepted responsibility for what he did but will not for things he didn’t do. These new allegations are completely untrue.”
CNN previously reported some of these details from a heavily redacted FBI report in August.
Pitt was not arrested or charged in connection with the incident after the FBI completed an investigation in 2016.
“In response to allegations made following a flight within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States which landed in Los Angeles carrying Mr. Brad Pitt and his children, the FBI has conducted a review of the circumstances and will not pursue further investigation. No charges have been filed in this matter,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said in a statement to CNN at the time.
“All parties have had this information for nearly six years and was used in previous legal proceedings. There is nothing new here and serves no purpose other than being a media stunt meant to inflict pain,” a source close to Pitt said of the August report.
CNN has reached out to representatives for Jolie regarding the most recent court filing, which states that during the plane incident, Pitt allegedly “lunged at his own child and Jolie grabbed him from behind to stop him. To get Jolie off his back, Pitt threw himself backwards into the airplane’s seats injuring Jolie’s back and elbow.”
The court documents also claim that the children “rushed in and all bravely tried to protect each other” and that Jolie and the children “sat still and silent under blankets. Nobody dared to go to the bathroom.”
For this reason, the legal documents state, Jolie and her six children have not been able to return to Chateau Miraval due to the “pain Pitt inflicted on the family that day.”
Many of the details in Jolie’s countersuit echo those made in a countersuit filed last month by Nouvel LLC, Jolie’s former company.
In his earlier claim, Pitt had alleged that Jolie “did nothing to drive (the) growth” of the business, which he turned into a “multimillion dollar international success story.”
In its countersuit, Nouvel disputed this, saying “Pitt refused to grant Jolie or Nouvel equal access to Chateau Miraval’s records or an equal voice over management,” effectively “holding the most significant part of her net worth hostage.”
Jolie’s countersuit adds that “like other couples,” the two “divided their responsibilities and generally split costs.”
“Jolie made her career as an actor and director secondary to her primary responsibility of raising the children. She also oversaw the day-to-day running of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, to which she not only contributed substantial amounts of time but also substantial amounts of cash (over twice what Pitt contributed),” the document states. “Pitt continued with his Hollywood career and took primary responsibility for renovating the chateau.”
She also claims that she repeatedly tried to sell her stake in the winery to Pitt, as recently as last year and that Pitt was going to buy her portion for $54.5 million in February but that Pitt “demanded” she sign a broad non-disparagement clause “that would prohibit Jolie from discussing outside of court any of Pitt’s personal conduct toward her or the family,” inherently including the allegations of abuse from the 2016 incident.
Jolie claims that she refused to sign this clause and called it “an abusive and controlling deal-breaker.”
The counterclaim asks the court to declare Jolie’s sale of her stake final so that the actress can “move on from the winery and chateau.”
New evidence disputes Trump’s citizenship question rationale for census
The nearly 500 documents include several drafts of an August 2017 memorandum prepared by a Commerce Department lawyer and political appointee, James Uthmeier, in which he initially warned that using a citizenship question for apportionment would probably be illegal and violate the constitution, the report said.
In later drafts, Uthmeier and another political appointee, Earl Comstock, revised the draft to say there was “nothing illegal or unconstitutional about adding a citizenship question” and claiming the Founding Fathers “intended the apportionment count to be based on legal inhabitants,” the report said. In December 2017, the Justice Department sent a formal request to the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, asking it to add the question; in March 2018, Ross announced it would be added to the 2020 Census.
“Today’s Committee memo pulls back the curtain on this shameful conduct and shows clearly how the Trump Administration secretly tried to manipulate the census for political gain while lying to the public and Congress about their goals,” Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.
The administration’s effort to add the question lasted two years. It was challenged by civil rights groups who blasted it as an effort to undercount Latinos and scare immigrant communities from participating in a survey that determines congressional apportionment and redistricting, as well as the disbursement of $1.5 trillion in federal funds annually.
The new evidence echoes documents that surfaced during litigation over the question, including a study by a Republican operative that found adding a citizenship question would benefit Republicans in redistricting.
“It was obvious it was just a farce,” said former Census Bureau director John Thompson, who testified at the time, saying the bureau under Ross had not done proper testing of the citizenship question before adding it. “I’m glad the committee got the materials to reinforce that, but it was not surprising.”
Thomas Wolf, deputy director of the Democracy Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, said, “Lest anyone doubted that what the Trump administration was up to was wrong, these documents show that even the Trump administration itself knew that what it was doing was illegal.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the administration’s stated rationale for adding the question was “contrived,” and the administration dropped the effort. It then said it would instead block undocumented immigrants from being counted for apportionment, setting off another volley of court battles that lasted until the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
That attempt ultimately failed when, because of pandemic-related delays, the Census Bureau was unable to deliver state population totals to the president before he left office. The administration was also unable to explain how it planned to identify and count undocumented immigrants, for whom there is no official tally.
The documents obtained by the committee had been withheld by the Trump administration despite subpoenas, the report said, adding that the committee had faced “unprecedented obstruction” from administration officials. Ross and then-Attorney General William P. Barr were held in contempt of Congress after refusing to produce them, the report noted, adding that the previously withheld or redacted documents were finally released “after more than two years of litigation, and the arrival of a new administration.”
Maloney introduced a bill last week that she said is designed to protect the Census Bureau against future attempts to politicize it. H.R. 8326, the Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act, would prevent the removal of a Census Bureau director without just cause, limit the number of political appointees at the bureau and prohibit the secretary of commerce from adding topics or questions to the survey “unless he or she followed the existing statutory requirements to notify Congress in advance.” It would also bar new questions from appearing on the decennial census form unless they have been “researched, tested, certified by the Secretary, and evaluated by the Government Accountability Office.”
Thompson praised the bill. “I think it would protect the independence of the Census Bureau,” he said. “I’m very enthusiastic about the bill. … I hope it gets enacted.”
But even if it is, it might not fully insulate the bureau from partisan interference, he said. Under a Republican House and Senate, “the Congress could direct the Census Bureau to collect citizenship [information] on the census, and then there could be a fight to get the citizenship question on the 2030 Census,” he said, adding, “Congress could try to pass a law saying you need to do apportionment by citizenship.”
The bar for passing a constitutional amendment would be high, Wolf said. However, the Trump administration’s effort to add the citizenship question and exclude undocumented people from apportionment “indicates that the 2020 Census was in grave peril and we escaped only through a combination of significant legal victories and a certain amount of luck,” he said. “The census is clearly too fragile to continue in its imperiled state.”
Along with limiting political appointees and giving additional powers to the Census Bureau director, as Maloney’s bill proposes, Wolf suggested curtailing the president’s ability to influence apportionment, as Trump proposed to do. By law, reapportionment of the 435 House seats is supposed to happen automatically based on state population totals.
“The president’s role in the apportionment process was supposed to be administerial,” Wolf said. “That’s why it’s called automatic apportionment.”