Court pauses appeal of Trump’s classified documents case
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(WASHINGTON) — A federal appeals court has granted Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to pause his appeal of President-elect Donald Trump’s classified documents case until Dec. 2.
Smith asked for a delay earlier this week to assess the “unprecedented circumstance” of Trump’s election and impending presidential inauguration.
The move is part of Smith’s winding down of his two cases against Trump — the classified documents case and the federal election interference case — due to longstanding Department of Justice policy that prohibits a sitting president from facing criminal prosecution while in office.
“As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, one of the defendants in this case, Donald J. Trump, is expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025,” the filing said.
Smith asked to hold the appeal in abeyance and push the next filing deadline until Dec. 2 “to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the case against Trump and his co-defendants this summer, ruling that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional because he was not appointed by the president or confirmed by Congress.
Prosecutors then appealed that decision to the Atlanta-based United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
The judge in Trump’s federal election interference case paused all upcoming deadlines last week, following a request from Smith. Trump pleaded not guilty and denied all wrongdoing in that case.
(OHIO) — Jurors heard contrasting theories during opening statements in the murder trial of former Columbus, Ohio, police officer Adam Coy who is accused of killing Andre Hill, an unarmed Black man, in December 2020.
While a prosecutor on Thursday painted the defendant’s actions as “reckless” and “unreasonable,” a defense attorney contended Coy was “justified in using deadly force.”
Coy, who is white, is facing charges of causing Hill’s death, felonious assault and reckless homicide stemming from the Dec. 22, 2020, shooting. Prosecutors said the 47-year-old Hill was holding a cell phone in one hand and a set of keys in the other when he was shot dead in the garage of a home belonging to a friend.
In her opening statement, Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Renee Amlin said Hill was complying with Coy’s orders to step out of the garage when he was shot four times.
“The state of Ohio expects that at the end of this case, it will have proven to you beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant Adam Coy is guilty of all three of those crimes,” Amlin told the jury seated in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas.
Amlin said that among the prosecution witnesses slated to testify is Columbus police Officer Amy Detweiler, who was with Coy when the shooting erupted around 1:30 a.m. Both officers responded to a neighbor’s 911 call complaining about a suspicious SUV parked on the street with its engine running.
She said that before the shooting, Coy approached Hill who was seated in the running SUV and that Hill explained he was waiting for a friend to come out of her home. She said Hill showed Coy a text message on his phone from his friend, reading, “I’ll be right out.”
Amlin said that when Coy went back to his patrol car, Hill exited the SUV and entered the open garage of his friend’s home. She said that when Ditweiler arrived separately at the scene, the two officers approached Hill and instructed him to step out of the garage and that Hill was shot when he complied with Coy’s orders.
The jury, according to Amlin, will also be shown Coy’s body-worn camera video that captured the shooting.
Amlin told the jurors that the state would prove beyond reasonable doubt that Coy was “reckless” and that his use of deadly force was not justified.
“The evidence will show that Andre Hill was not armed. He did not have a firearm,” the prosecutor said.
But defense attorney Kaitlyn Stephens told the jury that Coy was following police training when he perceived Hill as a threat.
“You are going to hear from the state’s own witnesses that actual possession of a weapon is irrelevant, that police officers are allowed to be mistaken,” Stephens said.
She told the jury that Coy believed a “mass of keys” Hill had in his right hand was a revolver and that the officer was forced to make a split-second decision to open fire in self-defense.
“You are going to hear that on Dec. 22, 2020, my client believed he was going to get shot. He yells ‘gun, gun,’ steps off the line, draws his weapons and fires at what he honestly believed was a revolver being leveled at his direction,” Stephens told the panel. “You are going to hear that he was mistaken, that it was not a revolver, but instead that glint of steel turned out to be a metal mass of keys.”
Stephens said the defense plans to call two Ohio veteran officers to testify as experts on police training and to counter the testimony of the state’s police training expert.
“You are going to hear that officers do not have to wait until they see the glint of steel, that what matters is how the hand was being presented because an action is faster than a reaction,” Stephens said.
Stephens added, “The evidence will show that our client was not reckless. He did what he was trained to do, and what he was trained to do was shoot to stop the threat.”
Coy was fired from the Columbus Police Department about a week after the shooting.
About a month after the shooting, Coy was arrested and indicted in the killing of Hill. Coy has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has not made any public comments on the case.
If convicted, Coy, who is free on $1 million bail, could face a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Neither Coy nor Detweiler turned their body-worn cameras on until after the shooting, but Coy’s camera had a “look-back” function that automatically activated and recorded 60 seconds of the episode without sound, including capturing the shooting.
The body camera footage also showed that as Hill lay dying on the floor of the garage, none of the officers who responded to the incident appeared to immediately provide first aid, officials said.
National civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Hill’s family, alleged that the officers waited up to 15 minutes before before they started giving Hill first aid, citing his review of the body camera footage.
After officers on the scene turned their body cameras on, a woman came out of the house and told officers that Hill was a guest and said, according to body camera footage released in the case, “He was bringing me Christmas money. He didn’t do anything.”
In May 2021, the City of Columbus agreed to a $10 million wrongful death settlement with Hill’s family, the highest amount ever paid by the city.
The indictment of Coy came just days after the Columbus City Council also passed Andre’s Law, which was named after Hill and requires Columbus police officers to turn on their body cameras when responding to calls and to immediately render first aid after a use-of-force incident.
ABC News’ Olivia Osteen contributed to this report.
Teen believed to be armed stopped from entering Wisconsin elementary school. Via Kenosha Police Department
(KENOSHA, Wis.) — Authorities in Wisconsin say an armed 13-year-old carrying a backpack and duffel bag was stopped from entering an elementary school Thursday morning after being confronted by school staff and taken into custody several hours later.
“We narrowly missed a tragedy,” Kenosha Police Chief Patrick D. Patton told reporters Thursday.
The 13-year-old, who previously attended Roosevelt Elementary School, attempted to enter the building at about 9 a.m. local time, Patton said.
The suspect tried to enter through other doors to the school building, but was not able to get in, Kenosha Unified School District Superintendent Jeffrey Weiss told reporters at a news conference. He then approached the front entrance and was buzzed into a vestibule area. Two school employees confronted the student, who got nervous and then fled, Weiss said.
“I can’t stress … really how heroic our office staff was,” Weiss said, adding “They helped avert a disaster.”
Police later identified the teen suspect, thanks to tips from the community.
“We can confirm that this was not just a suspicious individual, we believe that this was actually an armed suspect with a firearm and there was no legitimate reason to enter the school,” Patton said at a later news conference.
Police took the suspect into custody shortly after 2 p.m. local time. During the earlier news conference, police played a video they said depicted the suspect with a firearm and said the suspect looked up school shootings online and made comments to fellow students for weeks leading up to the incident.
Kenosha is located about 40 miles south of Milwaukee.
(NEW YORK) — The satirical website The Onion purchased InfoWars on Thursday, a capstone on years of litigation and bankruptcy proceedings following InfoWars founder Alex Jones’ defamation of families associated with the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
Those families backed The Onion’s bid to purchase InfoWars’ intellectual property, including its website, customer lists and inventory, certain social media accounts and the production equipment used to put Jones on the air. The Connecticut families agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion’s bid, enabling its success.
The families said the purchase would put an end to Jones’ misinformation campaign.
“We were told this outcome would be nearly impossible, but we are no strangers to impossible fights. The world needs to see that having a platform does not mean you are above accountability — the dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” said Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting.
In 2022, the families that brought the case against Jones in Connecticut secured a $1.4 billion verdict in their defamation lawsuit. A Texas bankruptcy court ruled on the liquidation of Jones’ assets in June of this year, handing over control to an independent trustee tasked with selling them off to generate the greatest possible value for the families.
“From day one, these families have fought against all odds to bring true accountability to Alex Jones and his corrupt business. Our clients knew that true accountability meant an end to Infowars and an end to Jones’ ability to spread lies, pain and fear at scale. After surviving unimaginable loss with courage and integrity, they rejected Jones’ hollow offers for allegedly more money if they would only let him stay on the air because doing so would have put other families in harm’s way,” said Chris Mattei, attorney for the Connecticut plaintiffs and partner at Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder.
Jones had filed for bankruptcy last year in a bid to avoid paying the billion-dollar judgment, but a judge ruled he still had to settle with the Sandy Hook families.
Bankruptcy often staves off legal judgments but not if they are the result of willful and malicious injury. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston decided that standard was satisfied in Jones’ case.
“[I]n Jones’s case, the language of the jury instruction confirms that the damages awarded flow from the allegation of intent to harm the Plaintiffs – not allegations of recklessness,” Lopez wrote in his ruling.
Jones had claimed on his InfoWars show that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School — which killed 26 people, including 20 elementary students — was performed by actors following a script written by government officials to bolster the push for gun control.
