Giuliani gets to keep apartments, World Series rings in settlement with election workers
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(NEW YORK) — Rudy Giuliani reached a settlement agreement with two former election workers he was found to have defamed, a joint letter from both parties said Thursday.
The former New York City mayor had been a no-show to his non-jury civil trial that was set to begin Thursday in Manhattan federal court. The proceedings had been adjourned until Tuesday.
“All parties reached a resolution,” Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Cammarata, said outside court.
He read a statement from Giuliani that said the settlement does not include an admission of guilt.
Giuliani’s statement said he gets to keep his New York co-op and Florida condominium along with all his personal belongings. He has agreed not to talk about Freeman and Moss in a defamatory way.
Andrew Giuliani said he will retain possession of the World Series rings, which he has said his father gifted to him.
Giuliani was scheduled to be the first witness in the case, which was to decide whether he must turn over his Florida condo to the two Georgia election workers.
When ABC News asked whether Giuliani was coming to court on Thursday morning, his attorney said “I’m not going to comment on anything right now.” Asked whether Giuliani was OK, the attorney responded “yes.”
A jury found Giuliani liable in 2023 for defaming Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss by falsely accusing them of tampering with the 2020 presidential vote in Georgia, and awarded the two election workers a $148 judgment.
The former New York City mayor has already turned over a Mercedes and other assets to the women, but is fighting to keep the condo, which he claims as his permanent residence.
Giuliani has been disbarred in New York and in Washington after his law license was stripped over his efforts aiding former President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election.
He has been held in contempt twice this month by two different federal judges, and is also fighting to keep three Yankees World Series rings that he owns.
John McDonnell/ for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Family members of the victims of the plane crash in Washington, D.C., visited the crash site on Sunday morning.
Dozens of the victims’ loved ones could be seen gathered by the Potomac River to commemorate the 67 people killed in the deadly midair collision last week.
An American Airlines regional jet collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday night near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
There were no survivors.
Among those lost in the crash were a civil rights attorney, a biology professor, several champion figure skaters and many others.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator J. Todd Inman was asked Saturday during a press briefing about his interactions with the victims’ families and others who have been directly impacted by the incident.
“They’re all just hurt and they want answers, and we want to give them answers,” he said. “It’s horrible. No one has to suffer this.”
The Army Corps of Engineers is expected to begin removing the jet and helicopter wreckage from the Potomac River on Monday.
(WASHINGTON) — Fourteen states have filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, challenging Musk’s role as head of the new Department of Government Efficiency and accusing him of being a “designated agent of chaos” whose “sweeping authority” is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
“Musk’s seemingly limitless and unchecked power to strip the government of its workforce and eliminate entire departments with the stroke of a pen, or a click of a mouse, would have been shocking to those who won this country’s independence,” reads the complaint, which was filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Led by the state of New Mexico, the lawsuit argues — in often dramatic terms — that the Appointments Clause of the Constitution calls for someone with such significant and “expansive authority” as Musk to be formally nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
“There is no greater threat to democracy than the accumulation of state power in the hands of a single, unelected individual,” says the lawsuit, filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez and officials from Arizona, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, California, Nevada, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii. “Although our constitutional system was designed to prevent the abuses of an 18th century monarch, the instruments of unchecked power are no less dangerous in the hands of a 21st century tech baron.” Two of the 14 states are led by Republican governors.
Separately, 26 current and former USAID employees and contractors brought suit against Musk Thursday in a lawsuit that makes the same constitutional claim. That suit, filed in federal court in Maryland, asks a judge to block Musk and any DOGE subordinates from continuing their budget-slashing work unless Musk is nominated by Trump for an official position and confirmed by the Senate.
“The scope and reach of his executive authority appear unprecedented in U.S. history,” that lawsuit says. “His power includes, at least, the authority to cease the payment of congressionally approved funds, access sensitive and confidential data across government agencies, cut off systems access to federal employees and contractors at will, and take over and dismantle entire independent federal agencies.”
The suit filed by the 14 states says the Constitution blocks the president from overriding “existing laws concerning the structure of the Executive Branch and federal spending.” As a result, the suit says, the commander-in-chief from is forbidden from creating — or even “extinguishing” — federal agencies, and from “slashing federal programs or offering lengthy severance packages as a means of radically winnowing the federal workforce,” in a nod to the Trump administration’s “deferred retirement” offer to government employees.
DOGE, led by Musk as the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign promise to trim the federal government, has found itself in the crosshairs of multiple federal lawsuits, which allege that it has improperly accessed sensitive records and is unlawfully gutting government agencies. Federal judges have temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing sensitive data at the Treasury Department, while the Department of Education recently reached an agreement to limit DOGE’s access to student loan records.
A lawsuit challenging the dismantling of USAID also resulted in a temporary order that blocks the agency from placing more than 2,000 employees on leave.
“[T]he President does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally dismantle the government. Nor could he delegate such expansive authority to an unelected, unconfirmed individual,” Thursday’s lawsuit says.
The Appointments Clause of the Constitution has generally been interpreted to require that anyone deemed a “principal officer” of the U.S. government must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The White House has called Musk a “special government employee” as head of DOGE.
But in their lawsuit Thursday, the states insisted that Musk has such “significant authority” and such “unprecedented and seemingly limitless access across the federal government,” while reporting “solely to President Trump,” that he is actually serving as a “principal officer.”
“Musk is far more than an adviser to the White House,” the lawsuit says. “He executes the President’s agenda by exercising virtually unchecked power across the entire Executive branch, making decisions about expenditures, contracts, government property, regulations, and the very existence of federal agencies.”
The lawsuit claims that Musk’s DOGE “has inserted itself into at least 17 federal agencies,” and that Musk has “authority to direct and veto the staffing decisions of” multiple federal agencies.
“The specifics of Musk’s conduct within various agencies confirm that he is wielding the power of a principal officer, a principal officer that has never previously existed,” the lawsuit says.
“As a result, all of Musk’s actions are [beyond his authority] and contrary to law,” says the suit.
The 14 states are asking a federal judge to at least temporarily limit Musk’s ability to cut or otherwise overhaul federal agencies, and they want the judge to declare “that Musk’s officer-level governmental actions to date, including those of his subordinates and designees” are unlawful.
Both Musk and the Trump administration have insisted that Musk and DOGE are simply rooting out vast government waste and potentially even criminal corruption within federal agencies.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has repeatedly said Musk is “complying with all applicable federal laws.”
(MADISON, WI) — Details are still emerging about the course of the Madison, Wisconsin, school shooting that left three people — among them the 15-year-old female shooter — dead and several others injured on Monday.
Police said that Natalie Rupnow, who went by Samantha, used a handgun to kill one teacher and one fellow student in the shooting.
Rupnow died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound before officers reached the school, police said. Officers did not fire their weapons.
Two students sustained life-threatening injuries and are in critical condition, while one teacher and two other students were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
Police said in a Monday briefing that the shooting was contained to “a classroom in a study hall full of students from multiple grade levels.”
Police have not yet suggested any motive for the attack nor said whether they believe the victims were specifically targeted.
The suspect’s father reportedly spoke with police at one of their facilities shortly after the incident. Police are “trying to determine what he knew or may have not known about what happened today, but again, he lost someone as well,” Barnes said.
“The parents are fully cooperating, we have no reason to believe that they have committed a crime at this time,” Barnes said.
A second-grader made the 911 call, Barnes said. “Let that soak in for a minute,” Barnes added. “A second-grade student called 911 at 10:57 a.m. to report a shooting at school.”
President Joe Biden called the incident “shocking and unconscionable” in a statement Monday evening that called on Congress to act, “now.”
He insisted that they pass “commonsense” gun safety laws including universal background checks, a national red flag law and a ban on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“It is unacceptable that we are unable to protect our children from this scourge of gun violence,” the statement said, adding, “We cannot continue to accept it as normal.”
Biden also mentioned his administration’s efforts to combat the gun violence epidemic in the United States, including the implementation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, while stating that more needed to be done and offering his prayers to those affected in Madison.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement, “There are no words to describe the devastation and heartbreak we feel,” calling the shooting a “gut-wrenching tragedy.”
Evers said he and his wife are “praying for the families and loved ones of those whose lives were so senselessly taken and for the educators, staff, and the entire Abundant Life school community.”
“It is unthinkable that a kid or an educator might wake up and go to school one morning and never come home,” he said. “This should never happen, and I will never accept this as a foregone reality or stop working to change it.”
