Judge holds Giuliani in contempt for failing to turn over property to 2 Georgia election workers
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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Monday held Rudy Giuliani in contempt of court for failing to turn over personal property and information to two Georgia election workers he was found to have defamed.
Judge Lewis Liman sided with Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who said Giuliani has “not turned over a single dollar” to satisfy the $148 million judgment against the former New York City mayor.
The election workers said Giuliani failed to relinquish “a signed Joe DiMaggio shirt, signed Reggie Jackson picture, signed Yankee Stadium picture, or many of the various household goods or furnishings that he valued at $20,000 and which public photographs show he possessed in his New York Apartment.”
Giuliani was found liable in 2023 for defaming Freeman and Moss by falsely accusing them of tampering with the 2020 presidential vote in Georgia.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(ROME, Ga.) — The death of a woman this week in a car crash involving a police officer who was responding to a bomb threat against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Georgia home demonstrates the growing danger of swatting, police and experts said.
Swatting refers to when a false threat is made to draw police and first responders to a location.
The woman, identified by police as Tammie Pickelsimer, was killed after crashing into a bomb squad member who was responding to the call, according to a statement from the Rome Police Department.
According to police, the threat was sent by email to them last week, but it was re-routed to a junk folder. Police on Monday discovered the email which correctly listed the congresswoman’s home address.
Greene was not home at the time, but the message from the email specifically targeted the congresswoman’s mailbox, Greene posted on X.
The email spurred a response from police who then sent an officer to monitor the mailbox while waiting for the bomb squad.
Rome police sergeant and bomb squad member David Metroka was en route to join the bomb squad at their headquarters when he crashed into the 66-year-old Pickelsimer, Georgia State Patrol said.
Picklesimer suffered significant injuries and later died at the hospital, according to GSP. The officer had minor injuries and was later released from the hospital.
Police did not find a bomb at Greene’s home. In a statement, the Rome Police Department addressed the dangers of swatting incidents.
“The Rome Police Department continues to work closely with Congresswoman Greene’s staff to address the growing concern of swatting incidents and has implemented protocols to ensure that emergency responses are only triggered when truly necessary,” the police department said in a statement. “This particular situation did not require an emergency response.”
The police department added, “The Rome Police Department extends its heartfelt condolences to the Pickelsimer family during this difficult time. The department holds the individual responsible for sending the threatening email fully accountable for setting this tragic chain of events into motion. In collaboration with Congresswoman Greene’s office, the Rome Police Department is working with federal authorities to ensure the perpetrator is apprehended and brought to justice.”
The Rome Police Department told ABC News the email had an IP address linked to Russia.
Greene said she “felt heartsick,” and expressed her concern over violent political threats in a statement on X.
“These violent political threats have fatal consequences,” she said. “It’s an undue strain on our law enforcement who must treat them seriously. The officer was responding to protect my life. And now, a woman has lost her life because of this despicable act.”
According to John Bandler, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, swatting is a harassment tactic used to dispatch an “arm of government” for emergency services.
Bandler believes the uptick in swatting stems from cyber crimes allowing criminals to commit a crime against someone else without having to get close to it, he said.
“It is a way people can do a crime and they think they won’t get caught doing it,” Bandler said. “And it seems much more an indirect way of doing it.”
Most people are never going to be swatted, Bandler said. But he notes it will be hard to protect yourself from this sort of crime, just like it is to protect yourself from all crime, he said.
Bandler calls for all swatting attempts to be prosecuted as a felony in every state and on the federal level. Swatting becomes a felony on the federal level when it crosses state lines.
He said swatting is extremely dangerous and scatters police efforts.
“Not only are you wasting law enforcement’s time, but you’re triggering that emergency response and that is always going to be dangerous,” Bandler said.
Greene said her office is cooperating with local law enforcement and the FBI as they investigate the threat.
(NEW ORLEANS, LA) — At least 10 people were killed and dozens injured after a man drove a pickup truck through a crowd celebrating New Year’s in New Orleans early Wednesday. The horrific attack came after authorities expressed concerns about vehicle-ramming during large outdoor events this holiday season.
In the weeks leading up to the holidays, federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies warned police around the country that low-tech vehicle-ramming was a key area of concern and that they needed to prepare.
On Dec. 6, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center issued a joint intel bulletin warning law enforcement about the ongoing serious threat posed by lone offenders during the winter holiday season.
The bulletin noted that threat actors have “plotted and conducted attacks against holiday targets” in previous years, with likely targets including public places with “perceived lower levels of security” holding large gatherings or holiday events, and advised governments and law enforcement to “remain vigilant of these threats.”
“Lone offenders have historically used simple tactics, such as edged weapons, firearms, or vehicle ramming, due to their ease of access, ability to inflict mass casualties, and lack of required training,” the bulletin stated.
It cited a November 2021 vehicle-ramming attack that killed six people during a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, among recent incidents during the winter holiday.
In a Dec. 9 assessment for the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration, federal and local agencies wrote that they “remain concerned about the use of vehicle ramming against high-profile outdoor events.”
“Vehicle ramming has become a recurring tactic employed by threat actors in the West, marked by a continued interest by (terrorists, extremists) and lone offenders in targeting crowded pedestrian areas,” they wrote.
In a Dec. 27 New Year’s Eve advisory issued in advance of the annual Las Vegas celebrations, officials noted: “Intentional mass-casualty incidents involving motor vehicles as weapons represent a growing trend in Western countries. This method has resulted in the highest casualty rates per incident within the fields of (intentional mass-casualty incidents).”
On Dec. 20, five people were killed and hundreds injured in a vehicle-ramming attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, officials said. Police believe the suspect — a doctor from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany since 2006 — acted alone.
The motive was preliminarily believed to be linked to “dissatisfaction with the treatment of refugees from Saudi Arabia and how they’ve been treated in Germany,” the local prosecutor said.
A motive in the New Orleans incident remains under investigation. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell described it as a “terrorist attack” and the FBI said it was being investigated as an act of terror.
The suspect was killed after opening fire on law enforcement officers, sources said. Explosive devices discovered in and around the scene on Bourbon Street were apparently found to be viable, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Investigators are working to determine whether the suspect entered the country recently and whether he had a connection to ISIS, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Officials are also probing whether the suspect acted alone or had help from others in planning and executing the attack, Jason Williams, the district attorney of Orleans Parrish, which includes New Orleans, told ABC News. An investigation is underway on whether barricades along Bourbon Street were still up at the time of the attack, he said.
Coming out of the pandemic, law enforcement and intelligence leaders have been sounding alarms about the threat environment and dangers the public is facing from unknown assailants looking to attack large public events.
The New Orleans attack marks the third year in a row that New Year’s events in the U.S. have been marred by violence.
In 2022, a man prosecutors said intended to carry out a jihadist attack with a machete-style knife injured police officers at an access point near the Times Square event in New York City.
In 2023, an SUV loaded with gas cans crashed in front of a theater in Rochester, New York, where a New Year’s concert was being let out. Three people were killed, in addition to the driver of the SUV.
Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.
The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.
“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.
The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.
The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.
For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.
Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.
“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”
A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.
While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.
“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”
Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.
If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.
In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.
While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.
“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.
However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.
“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.
The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.
“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.
Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.
“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”
The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.
“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.
ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
