- Prosecutors: FTX’s Bankman-Fried is harassing a key witness at his upcoming trial The Times of Israel
- Prosecutors accuse Sam Bankman-Fried of leaking ex-girlfriend’s private notes to the New York Times CNN
- Sam Bankman-Fried’s saga is odder than ever as new allegations pour in SFGATE
- Caroline Ellison kept a Google Doc about working for FTX CEO—and ex-boyfriend—Sam Bankman-Fried: ‘I can’t wait to go home and turn off my phone’ Fortune
- News Explorer — Ex-Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison Admits She Wasn’t ‘Well Suited’ for Role Decrypt
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Harassing
Indiana man charged with stalking, harassing Taylor Swift after allegedly sending threatening messages and showing up at concert – CNN
- Indiana man charged with stalking, harassing Taylor Swift after allegedly sending threatening messages and showing up at concert CNN
- Video: Indiana man accused of stalking Taylor Swift previously involved in Arizona police chase FOX 32 Chicago
- Man allegedly threatened Taylor Swift with bomb, called her father and managers Fox News
- Indiana man jailed for stalking Taylor Swift per report, showed up at Nashville residence & Nissan Stadium WZTV
- ‘Stalker’ who declared Taylor Swift as ‘soulmate’ arrested after showing up at her Nashville home Daily Mail
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Amazon Says FTC Is Harassing Jeff Bezos, Top Executives in Prime Probe
WASHINGTON—
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN 1.11%
is accusing the Federal Trade Commission of making excessive and unreasonable demands on founder
Jeff Bezos
and company executives as the agency probes Amazon’s Prime membership program.
In a petition to the FTC filed earlier this month and recently made public, Amazon says the agency’s demands on the company have been “overly broad and burdensome,” and its legal tactics have been unfair.
It specifically requests that the FTC quash civil subpoenas issued to Mr. Bezos and Chief Executive
Andy Jassy,
contending that the FTC hasn’t identified a reason why their testimony is necessary.
An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment.
The commission launched the Amazon investigation and it wasn’t immediately clear how it would respond to the company’s request. But the 49-page filing offers a glimpse into the FTC’s investigative practices, at least through Amazon’s lens.
The filing offers further insight into the FTC’s focus on so-called dark patterns—online platform-design tactics intended to manipulate users into signing up for unwanted or unnecessary services, or to prevent them from canceling.
Dark patterns have been a particular concern for FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan, and the agency last year issued a new enforcement-policy statement warning companies against deploying them.
Seattle headquarters of Amazon, which contends that its sign-up and cancellation processes are clear and straightforward.
Photo:
David Ryder/Getty Images
The FTC’s original civil subpoena to Amazon said its Prime investigation focused on whether the company has engaged in unfair or deceptive practices by automatically enrolling consumers in the service, or failing to provide a simple mechanism for them to stop recurring charges, according to Amazon’s petition.
The Amazon filing, which was earlier reported by Business Insider, contends that its sign-up and cancellation processes are clear and straightforward.
To be sure, legal disputes over the scope of government investigations are common. Still, the Amazon petition also could provide further ammunition for business critics of Ms. Khan, who has become a target for groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who say she is overstepping her authority.
“The FTC is proving time and time again under Khan’s leadership that it isn’t acting in good faith, it’s not acting within the law, and is intent on hurting tech,” said Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, an industry-backed group that favors market-oriented policies toward the internet.
Among other claims, the Amazon filing asserts that the agency staff has come under pressure from FTC brass to wrap up the investigation later this year and has made excessive and unreasonable demands for information.
The FTC has been investigating Amazon’s marketing and cancellation practices for its Prime subscription service since March 2021, according to Amazon, which said that the probe has expanded into other subscription programs.
Under Chairwoman Lina Khan, the FTC has taken a more aggressive stance on enforcement.
Photo:
Tom Williams/Zuma Press
Those other programs include Audible, Amazon Music, Kindle Unlimited and Subscribe & Save, according to Amazon’s petition.
Amazon says it produced about 37,000 pages of documents in response to the agency’s initial demands. The company says the FTC staff unexpectedly disengaged from the investigation for several months.
Then in April, the company says it was notified that the FTC had put a new attorney in charge of the investigation and that staff was under “tremendous pressure” to finish the investigation—and was under instructions to make recommendations on the case before the fall.
At the same time, the staff increased its investigative demands and imposed tight deadlines for complying. The FTC also sought the testimony of almost 20 current and former Amazon employees by delivering requests to their homes, according to the petition.
The FTC under Ms. Khan has taken a more aggressive stance on enforcement. Amazon had previously sought, without success, for Ms. Khan to recuse herself from the investigation based on her past critical statements of the tech giant.
According to the Amazon petition, the FTC staff also has attempted to prevent Amazon attorneys from representing individual employees, according to the petition. The company says that is unfair.
The company also complained that the FTC is unfairly demanding to question Messrs. Bezos and Jassy about issues they don’t follow closely.
“Preparing either to testify regarding the granular details of business operations for which they have no unique knowledge and no day-to-day responsibilities would be a tremendous burden on them, on counsel and on Amazon,” the petition says.
Under FTC rules, companies can object to investigative demands made by the agency’s staff. The commission has 40 days to respond to the petition. Amazon’s petition seeks to quash or limit the agency’s latest civil subpoena to the company, or at least extend the deadline for compliance to mid-September.
Amazon’s trouble in Washington isn’t limited to the FTC. Democratic and Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee have asked the Justice Department to investigate Amazon and some of its executives for what they said was possible criminal obstruction of Congress.
Amazon is also a target of antitrust legislation that, if passed, would bar it and other online giants from giving preferential treatment to their own products and services, such as steering consumers to in-house products instead of competitors’ offerings.
Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com
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Canada accuses China of harassing its military aircraft in Asia
On “several occasions” between April 26 and May 26, Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) planes came into close interaction with China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), Canada’s National Defense Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
“In these interactions, PLAAF aircraft did not adhere to international air safety norms. These interactions are unprofessional and/or put the safety of our RCAF personnel at risk,” the statement said.
“In some instances, the RCAF aircrew felt sufficiently at risk that they had to quickly modify their own flight path in order to increase separation and avoid a potential collision with the intercepting aircraft.”
China, which is in the midst of a national holiday, has yet to publicly comment on the events.
Trudeau told reporters on Thursday that he took “this situation very seriously.”
“Canada is an active part of an important mission in the North Pacific to ensure that the sanctions applied to North Korea are properly enforced, and the fact that China would have chosen to do this is extremely troubling,” he said at an event in Alberta.
“We will be bringing it up directly with Chinese officials and counterparts and ensuring that this doesn’t continue to be part of an escalatory pattern.”
Canada said the pilots of China’s planes were “very clearly visible” as they attempted to divert Canada’s jets from their flight path in international airspace.
The mission is part of a U.N. effort to monitor sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to the state’s nuclear weapon tests and ballistic missile launches. The Canadian CP-140 Aurora aircraft, along with crew, are stationed in Japan as part of the mission.
Such aerial interactions, sometimes known as “buzzing,” are “of concern and of increasing frequency,” Canada’s Defense Department said, adding that the occurrences have been “addressed through diplomatic channels.”
Last week, Russia and China flew strategic bombers over the Sea of Japan (also known as the East Sea) and the East China Sea while President Biden was in Tokyo wrapping up his first trip to Asia. It was their first joint military exercise since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, some experts have said the “no limits” diplomatic relationship affirmed between the two countries in recent months is already being tested, with tensions over trade and how much geopolitical support China is willing to give to Russia amid the war.
Ties between Ottawa and Beijing frayed after Canada detained top Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018 at the request of U.S. authorities amid charges of bank and wire fraud. Soon after her arrest, Beijing imprisoned two Canadian men in China — Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor — in what Western officials termed tit-for-tat “hostage diplomacy.” All three individuals were released last year and returned to their homelands.
Amanda Coletta contributed to this report.
AP urges DeSantis to end harassing tweets aimed at reporter
NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press called on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to end “harassing behavior” by one of his press aides against an AP reporter who received threats and other online abuse.
Incoming AP CEO Daisy Veerasingham sent a letter Friday to DeSantis protesting tweets by press secretary Christina Pushaw directed at a Tallahassee, Florida-based reporter in response to a story he wrote pointing out one of DeSantis’ multimillion-dollar donors invests in a company making the COVID-19 treatment drug Regeneron. DeSantis has been touting the monoclonal antibody treatment throughout the state.
In a since-deleted tweet, Pushaw retweeted the article with the message “drag them,” which led to abusive messages being sent to him.
DeSantis should “assure the people of Florida that there is no place” for such behavior in their government, Veerasingham, AP’s vice president and chief operating officer, wrote. She will become AP’s CEO in January.
“While we can disagree about stories, it is unacceptable and dangerous for a public official to encourage the systemic bullying of journalists,” Veerasingham wrote.
Pushaw said she did not mean her “drag them” comment to be taken as a threat, and she deleted it because she realized not everyone would know what it means.
Nicki Minaj and Husband Sued, Accused of Harassing Sexual Assault Victim
A woman who accused the rapper Nicki Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, of sexual assault during high school filed a lawsuit on Friday against the couple, alleging that they harassed and intimidated her while trying to convince her to recant her account.
The case dates back to 1994, when Jennifer Hough, then 16, reported to the police that Mr. Petty — a 16-year-old she had known growing up in Jamaica, Queens — had raped her after leading her into a home at knife point, the lawsuit says. Mr. Petty was arrested that day and was charged with first-degree rape, and subsequently pleaded guilty to attempted rape, said Kim Livingston, a spokeswoman with the Queens district attorney’s office. He served about four and a half years in prison, according to inmate records.
According to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Ms. Hough, 43, and her family members started to receive communications from people claiming to be connected with Ms. Minaj and Mr. Petty shortly after Mr. Petty was arrested last year for failing to register as a sex offender in California. The lawsuit alleges harassment and witness intimidation, as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress by Ms. Minaj and Mr. Petty, and seeks unspecified damages. It also alleges sexual assault and battery against Mr. Petty, referring to the mid-90s case.
A representative for Ms. Minaj did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Petty, Michael Goldstein, declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says that an intermediary offered Ms. Hough $20,000 in exchange for signing a prepared statement recanting the accusation. At one point last year, the lawsuit says, Ms. Minaj called Ms. Hough, saying that she had heard Ms. Hough was willing to “help out”; days later, it says, Ms. Hough and her family members received an “onslaught of harassing calls and unsolicited visits” from people she believed to be associated with the couple.
Ms. Hough “has not worked since May of 2020 due to severe depression, paranoia, constant moving, harassment and threats from the defendants and their associates,” the lawsuit says. “She is currently living in isolation out of fear of retaliation.”
According to the lawsuit, Ms. Hough was on her way to school on Sept. 16, 1994, when she ran into Mr. Petty, a boy she knew from the neighborhood. The lawsuit says that Mr. Petty held a knife at her back as he led her to a house around the corner, where Ms. Hough said he raped her. The suit says that Ms. Hough escaped, ran to her high school and told security guards, who called the police.
In an interview, Ms. Hough said that as her case was prosecuted, she faced harassment and retaliation in the neighborhood, prompting her family to force her to attend a court hearing for Mr. Petty and request that the charges be dropped — a request that was denied. At the time, the suit says, Mr. Petty had already accepted a plea deal.
Ms. Hough said in an interview that she left New York City after the ordeal, and for years, it remained in the past: “I didn’t think it would be something that would come back and slap me in the face 20-something years later.”
But in 2018, Ms. Minaj — a chart-topping rapper with a fiercely loyal social media following — posted about her relationship with Mr. Petty on Instagram, and questions about his status as a sex offender surfaced.
Ms. Hough said in an interview that she had spoken to YouTube bloggers to defend herself and respond to an Instagram comment from Ms. Minaj that stated that Ms. Hough and Mr. Petty had been in a relationship at the time of the assault and that Mr. Petty was younger than Ms. Hough. (They were never in a relationship, and they were the same age, according to the lawsuit.)
After Mr. Petty was arrested in 2020, Ms. Hough reconnected with a childhood friend from Queens, the lawsuit says, and told him she “wished it could all just go away forever.” Ms. Hough said that the friend replied, “I can make that happen.”
The suit says that a few days later, the friend told Ms. Hough that Ms. Minaj had asked for her phone number, and the rapper later called her and offered to fly Ms. Hough out to Los Angeles or fly her publicist out to Ms. Hough; Ms. Hough said she declined and told the rapper, “I need you to know woman to woman, that this happened.”
The lawsuit says there were then a series of encounters where Ms. Hough or her family members were offered inducements if she would recant: $500,000 at one point, $20,000 at another, with a proposed bonus that Ms. Minaj would send birthday videos to Ms. Hough’s daughter. Ms. Hough said she declined.
Ms. Hough said in the interview that she never expressed interest in a bribe and was adamantly against recanting her story.
“If I lie now and say that I lied then, you know what that does?” she said. “Do you know what that’s going to say to my two little girls, or even my sons?”
Ms. Hough said in the interview that at one point she told the intermediary that the $500,000 offer was “not good enough.” She said she had been trying to deflect the conversation, not to express interest in a bribe. Tyrone Blackburn, a lawyer representing Ms. Hough, said Ms. Hough’s comment was an effort to dissuade the intermediary from thinking she would accept anything.
At one point last fall, the suit says, Ms. Hough was contacted by a lawyer for Mr. Petty, who asked her about a recantation letter. In response to threatening calls and her own growing paranoia, the suit says that Ms. Hough moved three times in one year.
“I feel like I’m living in secret,” she said in the interview, “like I can’t tell people my exact location.”
Joe Coscarelli contributed reporting. Alain Delaqueriere contributed research.
White House deputy press secretary suspended after allegations of verbally harassing a reporter
WASHINGTON — A White House press aide was suspended for a week without pay on Friday, the administration announced, after a report detailed allegations that he verbally harassed and threatened a female reporter from Politico.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Friday that deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo had been suspended for one week without pay following a report from Vanity Fair that said Ducklo had threatened the reporter after he learned that Politico was planning to publish an article on his relationship with a reporter at Axios.
Ducklo is expected to return to work after the suspension. Ducklo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Joe Biden campaigned on a message that he would restore respect and civility to the White House, frequently criticizing the behavior of the previous president and his staff, including how the press was treated.
“I am not joking when I say this: If you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. No ifs, ands, or buts,” Biden said during a virtual swearing-in of appointees his first week in office.
People magazine reported this month that Ducklo, a former employee of the NBC News communications department, is dating Alexi McCammond, a reporter at Axios who is also a contributor for NBC and MSNBC, in an article that was tweeted approvingly by several top White House officials. Politico then reported that it had informed the White House that it intended to publish an article shortly before the People magazine article appeared.
Vanity Fair reported that Ducklo had called Tara Palmeri, a Politico reporter, and threatened her when he learned Politico had planned to publish an article.
The Vanity Fair article said that Ducklo made “derogatory and misogynistic comments” to Palmeri and threatened to “destroy” her.
Psaki said that Ducklo would no longer be assigned to work with Politico reporters once he returned from his suspension.
“TJ Ducklo has apologized to the reporter, with whom he had a heated conversation about his personal life. He is the first to acknowledge this is not the standard of behavior set out by the President,” Psaki said in a tweet. “In addition to his initial apology, he has sent the reporter a personal note expressing his profound regret.”
“I take this very seriously,” Psaki told reporters Friday afternoon. “He [Ducklo] is the first to acknowledge this is not the standard of behavior set out by the president nor is it the standard of behavior set by me.”
Psaki said that while she was not excusing Ducklo’s behavior, the story he discussed with the Politico reporter was about his personal life and not an issue related to White House policy. Psaki acknowledged that the White House did not immediately suspend Ducklo after learning of the incident, bur rather after they were made aware of the Vanity Fair article.
Psaki said that she had not discussed Ducklo’s behavior with Biden directly but had addressed it with White House chief of staff Ron Klain.
When asked how female reporters outside of Politico were supposed to feel comfortable working with Ducklo when he returns, Psaki reiterated that Ducklo’s behavior was “completely unacceptable” and that she had been clear “this will never happen again and is not going to be tolerated here at the White House.”
Jimmy Kimmel Unloads on QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for Harassing Parkland Survivor
On Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel moved away from his favorite target, the coup-complicit congressman Ted Cruz, and toward the Q-complicit Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia who subscribes to QAnon—a baseless, batshit-insane conspiracy theory positing that Donald Trump is a messianic figure battling a cabal of sex-trafficker pedophiles comprised of some of the biggest names in Hollywood and the Democratic Party (this despite the fact that Trump palled around with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein).
“The chair of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel…tried to distance the party from QAnon. She said it’s beyond fringe and dangerous,” explained Kimmel during his late-night monologue. “QAnon is so fringe, in fact, Republicans in the House just put their screwiest, Q-iest member on the Education and Labor Committee—that is Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia.”
Then, Kimmel introduced his audience to Greene, who has never met a bonkers conspiracy theory she didn’t love.
“If you don’t know who this person is, I wish I didn’t too. She is the lady who, among other things, called for Nancy Pelosi’s execution; called for Joe Biden’s impeachment on his first day in office; and she believes our former governor here in California, Jerry Brown, used space lasers to set the wildfires here. She saw the Austin Powers movie and thought it was a documentary, I guess,” cracked Kimmel.
Greene is also a COVID skeptic who refused to wear a mask in a secure, tightly-packed room with other congresspeople during the storming of the U.S. Capitol; believes in Pizzagate, the debunked theory that Democrats were operating a child sex-trafficking ring under a D.C. pizza shop; said the elections of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to Congress represented an “Islamic invasion of our government”; called the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville an “inside job”; pushed the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that “Zionist supremacists” are trying to replace whites with migrants; has repeatedly questioned the 9/11 attacks; and called the Christchurch, Sandy Hook, and Parkland shootings “false flags.” And again, she supported executing Democratic leaders.
“Marjorie also called some of the terrible school shootings ‘false flag operations,’ meaning the perpetrators weren’t who we think they were,” offered Kimmel. “And here she is stalking and harassing a child not long after he watched his friends get slaughtered in school.”
He then threw to a video of Greene trailing David Hogg, a Parkland school shooting survivor (and teenager), barking at him and branding him a “coward.”
“The coward she was yelling at there is a teenager named David Hogg. He’s an activist. She referred to him online as ‘Little Hitler.’ I wonder how it would go over with the Fox News and Ted Cruz crew if Nancy Pelosi called for Marjorie Taylor Greene to be executed and called a teenage kid Hitler? You think they’d have anything to say?” asked Kimmel. “Well, it was the other way around, and guess what? Most of them have nothing to say. Instead, they assigned her to the education committee—hoping she would get one? I don’t know.”