Manhattan DA asks judge not to throw out Trump’s criminal hush money conviction
(NEW YORK) –Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday asked a New York judge to reject former President Donald Trump’s attempt to throw out his criminal hush money conviction, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity “has nothing to say about defendant’s conviction.”
Trump earlier this month asked Judge Juan Merchan to vacate his conviction on the grounds that the trial was “tainted” by evidence and testimony that was made off-limits after the Supreme Court ruled Trump has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
Prosecutors said in Thursday’s court filing that paying hush money to an adult film actress is “entirely personal” with “no relationship whatsoever to any official duty of the presidency.”
The former president was found guilty in May of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
The jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts after seeing “overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt,” prosecutors argued in the filing.
Trump argued that certain evidence presented at trial — including testimony from former White House aide Hope Hicks and Trump’s tweets about his former attorney Michael Cohen — related to his official acts as president and should now be considered inadmissible in light of the Supreme Court opinion.
Prosecutors pushed back in their filing.
“The challenged Tweets bear no resemblance to the kinds of public comments that the Supreme Court indicated would qualify as official presidential conduct,” the district attorney’s office said. “Defendant’s Tweets conveying his personal opinion about his private attorney do not bear any conceivable relationship to any official duty of the Presidency.”
Prosecutors also argued that testimony from Hicks, who was once Trump’s communications director, “related solely to unofficial conduct.”
“[T]he evidence that he claims is affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling constitutes only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof that the jury considered in finding him guilty of all 34 felony charges beyond a reasonable doubt,” the filing said.
Earlier this month, Judge Merchan postponed Trump’s sentencing in the case from July 11 to Sept. 18 so he could consider Trump’s request to vacate his conviction.
(MAUI, Hawaii.) –Scientists say they still don’t understand the full extent of the damage the Maui wildfires did to the corals and marine ecosystem off the west coast of the island.
After an initial blaze sparked into a weeklong series of wildfires, the needs of those on land — resulting from at least 100 people dead or missing as well as entire neighborhoods obliterated — remained the priority in the months following, leaving little resources left to monitor the marine environment, researchers told ABC News.
“We almost felt like it was even inappropriate at first to talk about the research we were doing, just because there was so much pain on our island,” Liz Yannell, program manager at Hui O Ka Wai Ola, a citizen science network based in Maui, told ABC News.
The immediate concern for the coastlines was the debris that was washing into the water offshore, as well as any ash and other toxins that affect air and water quality being carried by the smoke, John Starmer, science director at the Maui Nui Marine Resource Council, told ABC News. In addition, the boats that sank were leaking fuel and other chemicals into the Pacific Ocean.
The murky water appeared so precarious that “nobody wanted to get in” to examine it, Starmer said.
“It was difficult to really get a sense of what the conditions were,” he said.
Researchers initially used a remotely operated vehicle and artificial intelligence to map the reefs off the coastline. Once there was less fear about contamination levels in the water, researchers began to conduct dive surveys. They have been testing the water quality for a suite of samples for metals and other general water quality parameters, like nutrients, Andrea Kealoha, assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told ABC News.
It was clear from the onset of the fire recovery that the cleanup efforts would be long, difficult and arduous and that the wildfires would have lasting environmental impacts on the island.
When the fires struck, environmental advocates feared the first big rain that would come in the wet season — typically in November, which would have been just three months after the wildfires, Yannell said.
But mother nature was on Maui’s side this time, with the “first flush” not occurring until Jan. 10, giving crews much more time to clear piles of debris, she added.
Still, despite the delayed rains, massive plumes of sediment washed over the reefs in the runoff when the first big storm moved through, Starmer said.
“Once it hits the water, you can’t really do anything about it,” he said.
Researchers say they have found metals in the water — such as copper, which is often used to prevent barnacles from growing on boats.
Despite the widespread devastation and the gargantuan cleanup mission, there is no evidence that the corals or marine ecosystem as a whole in West Maui were physically damaged as a result of the fire, the researchers said.
Visually, there are no impacts, Kealoha said.
“That doesn’t mean that we’re out of the woods yet,” Starmer said.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography has established a monitoring site in Launiupoko, just south of Lahaina and adjacent to the dump site where they are putting the wildfire debris, following concern expressed in the local community about contamination from that dump impacting the nearby reefs at Launiupoko and Olowalu, the marine research institution announced last week.
Researchers cautioned against conflating the current lack of evidence with the possibility that the marine ecosystem in West Maui were left unscathed by the wildfires in the longterm.
Continued testing is starting to present evidence that there is chemical pollution and other residual environmental consequences of the fires, Starmer said. The toxins are likely bioaccumulating and moving up the food chain, with some fish testing positive for PCBs and PAHs — industrial chemicals — he added.
Complicating monitoring efforts is the fact that wildfires — especially urban fires than contain man-made chemicals — rarely occur near reef systems. Therefore, the researchers don’t know what to expect. They barely know what they’re looking for, they said.
“There’s not any substantial research that was easy to find about urban fires next to coastal waters and what that means for a coral reef ecosystem that’s already so delicate and already struggling,” Yannell said.
Globally, coral reef systems are struggling due to stressors like pollution and increasing ocean temperatures. Overall, the longterm health of the marine ecosystem in West Maui is unclear, and marine researchers will continue their quest to understand how the corals were affected and attempt to prevent runoff contaminated with toxins from rushing into the ocean.
But signs of a recovering marine ecosystem are present. The humpback whales have returned to the region on their annual migration routes, monk seals have taken up residence on their favorite beaches and crabs have reclaimed their favorite spots along the shore, Yannell said.
One of the silver linings of the wildfire aftermath is the reefs have “had a break from people,” such as tourists and surfers, similarly to what happened during the isolation measures of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kealoha said.
“While the world above water has completely changed, the reefs look fairly healthy and comparable to pre-fire coral cover data,” Orion McCarthy, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said in a statement. “It’s still too early to say there is no impact.”
(WINDER, Ga.) — When a gunman opened fire outside Stephanie Reyna’s classroom at Apalachee High School in Georgia, killing math teacher and football coach Richard Aspinwall, she said her classmates jumped into action, shutting and barricading their door.
The chaos began when Reyna, 17, said her class “heard banging on the lockers right outside of the classroom door.”
Brayan Maldonado, also 17, said it sounded like someone had been pushed up against a locker.
“My teacher, Coach Aspinwall, he opened the door, and he ran outside to see what’s going on,” Reyna told ABC News.
“We heard some popping sounds,” Reyna said. “We just stopped, we froze, we didn’t know what was going on. … So we all ran to the back of the classroom. We hid in the corner.”
Reyna said she and her 17 classmates were lying on the ground for several minutes when they heard more popping sounds.
“That’s when we realized that our classroom door was still open,” Reyna said.
Maldonado said he started to hear “a little bit of breathing” and “a little bit of groaning.”
The students then saw Aspinwall on the ground, they said.
“He was just there, in the doorway, just laying there,” Reyna said. “He was trying to crawl back to us … we just think he was trying to get to us.”
“A couple minutes passed by. He’s taking his breaths,” Maldonado said. “And then we hear his final breaths.”
“Then one of my classmates got the courage to stand up from his position of hiding” and drag Aspinwall’s body into their classroom, Maldonado said.
“That encouraged me to stand up,” Maldonado said.
He said he and his classmates closed the door and barricaded it with cabinets, desks and chairs.
“We were just putting anything we possibly could to make sure [the shooter] couldn’t get in,” Maldonado said.
Once the door was secured, Reyna and Maldonado said they tried to console their classmates.
“Some were hyperventilating, some were crying,” Maldonado said. “I was really trying to calm everyone down. Once everyone was calm, I got calm and all the feelings kicked in.”
Reyna said first responders evacuated the students to another classroom before they joined the rest of the school at the football field.
Aspinwall, fellow teacher Christina Irimie, and two students were killed in Wednesday morning’s shooting in Winder. Nine others were injured.
The 14-year-old suspect, Colt Gray, a student at the school, surrendered at the scene to the school resource officers and was taken into custody, authorities said.
Gray is charged with four counts of felony murder and will be tried as an adult, authorities said. A motive is not known.
(NEW YORK) — The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department arrested a man Tuesday in connection with the Line Fire ravaging areas east of Los Angeles since Sept. 5.
Justin Wayne Halstenberg, a 34-year-old man from Norco, was identified “as the suspect who started a fire in the area of Baseline Road and Alpin Street in the city of Highland, also known as the Line Fire,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a press release.
Halstenberg was being held on suspicion of arson with his bail set at $80,000, officials said.
The Line Fire — one of three large wildfires tearing through southern California — burned 32,905 acres and was at 14% containment as of Sunday night, with around 65,600 structures threatened, according to the latest update by Cal Fire.
Authorities issued evacuation orders for 13,300 structures with another 52,300 under evacuation warnings.
No structures are confirmed damaged or destroyed. Three firefighters have been injured in the effort to contain the blaze, fire officials said.
“The Line Fire continues to grow in steep terrain with difficult access, especially in the Big Bear area,” Cal Fire said. “Near-vertical slopes make putting in control lines challenging.”
Stronger winds were expected through Tuesday night, “which could lead to drops in relative humidity and greater fire spread,” Cal Fire said. “Towards the end of the week, cooler weather may moderate fire activity.”
California authorities are grappling with two other growing wildfires — the Bridge Fire in Angeles National Forest and the Airport Fire straddling Orange and Riverside counties.
Gov. Gavin Newsom requested Federal Emergency Management Agency aid Tuesday evening to “secure vital resources to suppress the Bridge and Airport fires.”
The Bridge Fire — burning since Sept. 8 — was at 34,240 acres and 0% containment on Tuesday night, Cal Fire said, having seen substantial growth throughout the day.
“High winds and low humidity are aiding the spread of the fire,” Cal Fire’s update said.
The Airport Fire — which began on Sept. 9 — was at 19,028 acres and 0% containment. The blaze is threatening 10,500 structures and has so far injured five firefighters and two civilians, Cal Fire said.
Newsom said in a Tuesday press release that the response effort across southern California includes “thousands of boots on the ground, including firefighters, soldiers, law enforcement and first responders, as well as air assets including 51 helicopters and nine fixed-wing aircraft.”
This week, the governor called in National Guard troops and aircraft to aid the fire containment efforts.