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San Francisco supervisors vote to allow police to use robots to kill



CNN
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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 Tuesday night to approve a controversial policy that would allow police to deploy robots capable of using lethal force in extraordinary circumstances.

The vote came after heated debate on a policy that would allow officers to use ground-based robots to kill “when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and officers cannot subdue the threat after using alternative force options or de-escalation tactics,” according to the ordinance text.

The measure still requires a second vote next week and the mayor’s approval, the San Francisco Board of Supervisor’s office told CNN.

“There could be an extraordinary circumstance where, in a virtually unimaginable emergency, they might want to deploy lethal force to render, in some horrific situation, somebody from being able to cause further harm,” Supervisor Aaron Peskin said at the board meeting.

But Supervisors Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen and Shamann Walton voted against the policy.

“There is serious potential for misuse and abuse of this military-grade technology, and zero showing of necessity,” Preston said at the meeting.

Ultimately, the board adopted an amendment during the meeting requiring one of two high-ranking San Francisco Police Department leaders to authorize any use of a robot for lethal force.

CNN has reached out to the Board of Supervisors for a copy of the meeting minutes.

Police spokesperson Robert Rueca told the Washington Post the department has a fleet of robots and does not plan to outfit them with firearms. But he said explosive charges could be added to the robots to breach fortified structures, or the robots could be deployed to “contact, incapacitate, or disorient” a dangerous suspect without risking the life of an officer.

In a Wednesday interview with CNN, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott emphasized that the lethal function on the robots would only be used in extreme circumstances.

“These robots would be a last resort,” he said. “If we ever have to exercise that option, it either means lives, innocent lives, have already been lost, or in the balance, and this would be the only option to neutralize that person putting those lives at risk, or the person who has taken those lives.”

The robots are remotely operated by officers with specialized training, Scott said. “Our officers who are trained to operate these robots are very well-trained and very skilled at what they do,” he explained. The robots are “not autonomous” nor “pre-programmed,” he added.

The ordinance passed by the board of supervisors specifies that only officers with the rank of deputy, assistant chief, or chief of police will be able to authorize lethal force using the robots, according to Scott.

“I just want to reiterate and re-emphasize that the equipment is already in our possession,” he said of the robots. “We have never had to use it in that way, and I hope that we never have to use it in that way. But we need the option to be able to save lives in the event that we have that type of tragedy in our city.”

Scott said the technology could be particularly helpful in order to apprehend suspects in mass shootings without putting officers’ lives in danger.

“These events, these mass killings, are all too common,” he said. “And God forbid one happens here, we just need to give our officers the tools to do their jobs.”

Scott referenced a state law passed in 2021 that requires police departments to seek approval from the government bodies that oversee them before fundraising for, acquiring or using military equipment.

“What we are doing and what we trying to do by law is be transparent about how we could use this equipment,” he said. “We don’t want it to be a secret to anybody. We have nothing to hide.”

It has been widely reported that the first known example of US law enforcement using a robot to deploy lethal force was in 2016, when Dallas police killed an armed suspect accused of fatally shooting five police officers by detonating an explosive device placed on a bomb squad robot sent to where the suspect had taken shelter.

Garland praises Oath Keepers verdict, won’t say where Jan. 6 probe goes

A day after a federal jury convicted two far-right extremists of leading a plot to unleash political violence to prevent the inauguration of Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that his Justice Department would continue to “work tirelessly” to hold accountable those responsible for efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors highlighted the defendants’ links to key allies of President Donald Trump, such as Roger Stone, “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani.

But Garland declined to say Wednesday if he expected prosecutors to eventually file charges against them or any other people who did not physically participate in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I don’t want to speculate on other investigations or parts of other investigations,” Garland told reporters at a briefing where he also touted Justice Department efforts to establish federal oversight of the water supply system in Jackson, Miss.

Garland called the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation, and Jackson’s water crisis, “significant matters of public interest.”

“I’m very proud of the attorneys, investigators and staff whose unwavering commitment to rule of law and tireless work resulted in yesterday in these two significant victories,” he said.

The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump

Tuesday’s verdicts upheld a key Justice Department argument laid out in the seven-week-long trial: that the breach of the Capitol was not an isolated event, but rather a culmination or component of wider plotting by extremists who wanted to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Biden. In this case, the jury found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a top deputy, Kelly Meggs, at least partially responsible for staging firearms and preparing to forcibly oppose federal authority. Both were convicted of “seditious conspiracy,” a rarely used charge that is among the most serious levied so far in the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation.

Justice Department officials had been eyeing the Oath Keepers verdict to help decide whether to file criminal charges against other high-profile, pro-Trump figures who had roles in the buildup to the violence, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said prosecutors will also consider the outcome of an upcoming trial involving members of another extremist group, the Proud Boys, scheduled to start in mid-December.

At the briefing with reporters Tuesday, Garland also said that he has asked the House Jan. 6 committee — which has been pursuing a separate investigation into the attack — for all interview transcripts and evidence that it has collected. That’s long been a point of tension between the Justice Department and Congress, with the committee yet to hand over all the materials.

“We would like to have all the transcripts and all the other evidence collected by the committee so that we can use it in the ordinary course of our investigation,” Garland said.

After Trump announced in mid-November that he would run for president in 2024, Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee investigations related to Trump and his advisers after he lost the 2020 election, as well as a separate investigation of Trump’s possession of classified documents after he left the White House.

Acknowledging sensitivity of Trump investigations, Garland appoints Jack Smith special counsel

Defined in the law as an effort by two or more people to “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States,” or to forcibly oppose its authority or laws, seditious conspiracy is rarely charged. Prosecutors often view it as difficult to prove at trial, particularly when other, simpler crimes can be charged for the same conduct.

Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center — a liberal think tank and law firm that had been closely tracking the Rhodes trial — said the guilty verdict is significant.

“It’s not just a delivery of justice in respect to Rhodes and Kelly Meggs — but it is a sign that a jury was able to understand what happened that day as seditious conspiracy,” Fernandes said. “It at least opens up a universe that says it is at least possible to secure such a conviction on acts that led up to Jan. 6.”

But legal experts also warned that the verdict wasn’t a slam-dunk for the government, highlighting how difficult seditious conspiracy cases are to pursue. Three other Oath Keeper associates who were on trial were acquitted on the sedition charges. All five defendants were found guilty of obstructing Congress as members met on Jan. 6 to confirm the results of the 2020 election, a key step in the country’s peaceful transfer of power.

In deciding the seditious conspiracy charge, jurors appeared to focus on written or recorded evidence of conspiratorial intent, a warning sign for prosecutors that the threshold to convict people on this rare charge is high.

Rhodes attorney James Lee Bright said he expects the Justice Department nevertheless to take the mixed verdict as a sign to move “full-steam ahead” with prosecutions against others allegedly involved in the planning of what unfolded on Jan. 6.

The federal prosecutors at Rhodes’ trial made clear that Stone, a long-serving political adviser to Trump who has consistently denied any knowledge of or involvement in illegal acts at the Capitol on Jan. 6, was a focus of inquiry, introducing evidence they said the government obtained from his phone in December 2021.

Who are the Oathkeepers? What you need to know.

On the day that television networks declared Biden had won the election, prosecutors alleged, Rhodes shared a text with Stone, Alexander and Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and others asking: “What’s the plan?”

They also alleged that Rhodes shared a plan with that same “Friends of Stone” encrypted chat group that included bullet points from an anti-government uprising in Serbia that included storming its parliament.

Rhodes also wrote public letters to Trump, urging him to invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military and private militia to ensure he remained in power.

But attorneys for people who worked for Trump, and other Oath Keepers members, expressed skepticism that Trump received or acted on those messages.

“Of the 10 terabytes of evidence that we’ve had available to us in this trial, I can tell you that there is nothing in the body of evidence that we’ve been given or shown that would in any way be indicative of the ability to indict former president Trump for January 6th,” Bright, one of Rhodes’ attorneys, told reporters after Tuesday’s verdict.

On Wednesday, Garland said that the work of Justice Department attorneys in securing the guilty verdicts “makes clear the department will work tirelessly to hold account those responsible for crimes related to attacks on our democracy on Jan 2021.”

Tom Jackman contributed to this report.

Idaho State Police adds patrols to university campus as school holds vigil for 4 students killed in unsolved stabbings



CNN
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Idaho State Police has added four campus patrols and 14 patrols for the general community as the University of Idaho hosts a vigil Wednesday night for the four students fatally stabbed earlier this month.

Several hundred people are attending the vigil on the campus of 9,000 students to commemorate the victims: Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21.

Several family members spoke about their loved ones.

“We lost four beautiful souls,” said Goncalves’ father, Steve.

Investigators have yet to identify a suspect or find the murder weapon, but a spokesperson for the Idaho State Police said they have begun to receive forensic testing results, Fox News reported.

“I do know that each type of testing… some take longer than others. And I also do know that there have been results that have been returned and those go directly to the investigators, so that way they can help, again, paint that picture as we keep talking about,” spokesperson Aaron Snell said, while declining to say who the DNA belonged to.

CNN has reached out to Snell for comment.

State police are assisting police in Moscow, a city of about 26,000 people, with the investigation. The uncertainty and lack of information around the unsolved killings has left the campus emptier than usual after Thanksgiving break.

While there is no official number on how many students returned, Provost and Executive Vice President Torrey Lawrence told CNN professors are reporting that about two-thirds to three-quarters of students are attending in-person.

“This is a heavy situation, and we are moving forward by trying to be supportive of all of our people, our faculty, our staff, our students, and trying to address their needs,” Lawrence said.

One student told CNN that, with a killer not identified, people are “sketched out.”

“It definitely feels a little bit different,” said student Hayden Rich. “It seems kind of a sad setting. It is kind of quiet.”

Snell told CNN on Tuesday they’ve seen an uptick in 911 calls while the cases remain unsolved. Most of those calls are concerning “suspicious person” activity, or “welfare check.”

“We are recognizing that there is heightened fear in the community and so the officers are going to those calls and they’re handling them as they come up,” Snell said.

University of Idahos President Scott Green acknowledged last week that some students did not want to return until a suspect is in custody.

“As such, faculty have been asked to prepare in-person teaching and remote learning options so that each student can choose their method of engagement for the final two weeks of the semester,” he wrote in a statement.

Investigators have released a map depicting the movements of four University of Idaho students the night they were murdered.

Dozens of local, state and federal investigators are still working to determine who carried out the brutal attack. Investigators have yet to identify a suspect or find a weapon – believed to be a fixed-blade knife – and have sifted through more than 1,000 tips and conducted at least 150 interviews.

The four students were found stabbed to death on November 13 in an off-campus home in Moscow. The killings have unsettled the campus community and the town of about 25,000, which had not seen a murder since 2015.

Police said they believe the killings were “targeted” and “isolated” but have not released evidence to back up that analysis. They also initially said there was no threat to the public – but later backtracked on that assurance.

“We cannot say there’s no threat to the community,” Police Chief James Fry said days after the killings.

Authorities said they have not ruled out the possibility that more than one person may be involved in the stabbings.

So far, using the evidence collected at the scene and the trove of tips and interviews, investigators have been able to piece together a rough timeline and a map of the group’s final hours.

On the night of the killings, Goncalves and Mogen were at a sports bar, and Chapin and Kernodle were seen at a fraternity party.

Investigators believe all four victims had returned to the home by 2 a.m. the night of the stabbings. Two surviving roommates had also gone out in Moscow that night, police said, and returned to the house by 1 a.m.

Police earlier said Goncalves and Mogen returned to the home by 1:45 a.m., but they updated the timeline Friday, saying digital evidence showed the pair returned at 1:56 a.m. after visiting a food truck and being driven home by a “private party.”

The next morning, two surviving roommates “summoned friends to the residence because they believed one of the second-floor victims had passed out and was not waking up,” police said in a release. Somebody called 911 from the house at 11:58 a.m. using one of the surviving roommates’ phones.

When police arrived, they found two victims on the second floor and two victims on the third floor. There was no sign of forced entry or damage, police said.

Investigators do not believe the two surviving roommates were involved in the deaths.

A coroner determined the four victims were each stabbed multiple times and were likely asleep when the attacks began. Some of the students had defensive wounds, according to the Latah County coroner.

Student Ava Forsyth said her roommate is staying home because she does not feel safe. Forsyth said she feels “moderately” safe, but “not so much” at night, when she takes advantage of a free campus walking security service.

Rich, the student who said people are “sketched out,” said he decided to come back for the many tests he has this week. Student Lexi Way told CNN that she feels safe with upped campus security and “tends to learn better in class.”

Christine McVie, Hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, Is Dead at 79

Christine McVie, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist who became the biggest hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, one of music’s most popular bands, died on Wednesday. She was 79.

Her family announced her death on Facebook. The statement said she died at a hospital but did not specify its location or give the cause of death. In June, Ms. McVie told Rolling Stone that she was in “quite bad health” and that she had endured debilitating problems with her back.

Ms. McVie’s commercial potency, which hit a high point in the 1970s and ’80s, was on full display on Fleetwood Mac’s “Greatest Hits” anthology, released in 1988, which sold more than eight million copies: She either wrote or co-wrote half of its 16 tracks. Her tally doubled that of the next most prolific member of the band’s trio of singer-songwriters, Stevie Nicks. (The third, Lindsey Buckingham, scored three major Billboard chart-makers on that collection.)

The most popular songs Ms. McVie wrote favored bouncing beats and lively melodies, numbers like “Say You Love Me” (which grazed Billboard’s Top 10), “You Make Loving Fun” (which just broke it), “Hold Me” (No. 4) and “Don’t Stop” (her top smash, which crested at No. 3). But she could also connect with elegant ballads, like “Over My Head” (No. 20) and “Little Lies” (which cracked the publication’s Top Five in 1987).

All those songs had cleanly defined, easily sung melodies, with hints of soul and blues at the core. Her compositions had a simplicity that mirrored their construction. “I don’t struggle over my songs,” Ms. McVie (pronounced mc-VEE) told Rolling Stone in 1977. “I write them quickly.”

In just half an hour, she wrote one of the band’s most beloved songs, “Songbird,” a sensitive ballad that for years served as the band’s closing encore in concert. In 2019, the band’s leader, Mick Fleetwood, told New Musical Express that “Songbird” is the piece he wanted played at his funeral, “to send me off fluttering.”

Ms. McVie’s lyrics often captured the more intoxicating aspects of romance. “I’m definitely not a pessimist,” she told Bob Brunning, the author of the 2004 book “The Fleetwood Mac Story: Rumours and Lies.” “I’m basically a love song writer.”

At the same time, her words accounted for the yearning and disappointments that can lurk below an exciting surface. “I’m good at pathos,” she told Mojo magazine in 2017. “I write about romantic despair a lot, but with a positive spin.”

Ms. McVie’s vocals communicated just as nuanced a range of feeling. Her soulful contralto could sound by turns maternally wise and sexually alive. Her tawny tone had the heady effect of a bourbon with a rich bouquet and a smooth finish. It found a graceful place in harmony with the voices of Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, together forming a signature Fleetwood Mac sound.

“It was that chemistry,” she told Mojo. “The two of them just chirped into the perfect three-way harmony. I just remember thinking, ‘This is it!’”

A sturdy instrumentalist, Ms. McVie played a range of keyboards, often leaning toward the soulful sound of a Hammond B3 organ and the formality of a Yamaha grand piano.

With Fleetwood Mac, she earned five gold, one platinum and seven multiplatinum albums. The band’s biggest success, “Rumours,” released in 1977, was one of the mightiest movers in pop history: It was certified double diamond, representing sales of over 20 million copies.

In 1998, Ms. McVie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with various lineups of Fleetwood Mac, reflecting the frequent (and dramatic) personnel shifts the band experienced throughout its labyrinthine history. Ms. McVie served in incarnations that dated to 1971, but she also had uncredited roles playing keyboards and singing backup as far back as the band’s second album, released in 1968. Before joining Fleetwood Mac, she scored a No. 14 British hit with the blues band Chicken Shack on a cover of Etta James’s “I’d Rather Go Blind” for which she sang lead.

Christine Anne Perfect was born on July 12, 1943, in the Lake District of England to Cyril Perfect, a classical violinist and college music professor and Beatrice (Reece) Perfect, a psychic.

Her father encouraged her to start taking classical piano lessons when she was 11. Her focus changed radically four years later when she came across some sheet music for Fats Domino songs. At that moment, she told Rolling Stone in 1984, “It was goodbye Chopin.”

“I started playing the boogie bass,” she told Mojo. “I got hooked on the blues. Even today, the songs I write use that left hand. It’s rooted in the blues.”

Ms. McVie studied sculpture at Birmingham Art College and for a while considered becoming an art teacher. At the same time, she briefly played in a duo with Spencer Davis, who, along with a teenage Steve Winwood, would later find fame in the Spencer Davis Group. She helped form a band named Shades of Blue with several future members of Chicken Shack.

After graduating from college in 1966, Ms. McVie moved to London and became a window dresser for a department store. One year later, she was asked to join the already formed Chicken Shack as keyboardist and sometime singer. She wrote two songs for the band’s debut album, “40 Blue Fingers, Freshly Packed and Ready to Serve.”

She was twice voted best female vocalist in a Melody Maker readers’ poll, but she left the band in 1969 after marrying John McVie, the bassist in Fleetwood Mac, which had been formed in 1967 and had already recorded three albums. That same year, she recorded a solo album, “The Legendary Christine Perfect Album,” which she later described to Rolling Stone as “so wimpy.”

“I just hate to listen to it,” she said.

Her disappointment in that record, combined with her reluctance to perform, caused Ms. McVie to put music aside for a time. But, in 1970, when Fleetwood Mac’s main draw, the guitarist Peter Green, suddenly quit the band after a ruinous acid trip, Mick Fleetwood invited her to fill out their ranks.

Initially, she found the invitation to join her favorite band “a nerve-racking experience,” she told Rolling Stone. But she rose to the occasion by writing two of the catchiest songs on her first official release with the band, “Future Games” (1971). That release found the band leaning away from British blues and toward progressive Southern Californian folk-rock, aided by the addition of an American player, the singer, songwriter and guitarist Bob Welch.

The band fine-tuned that sound on its 1972 set “Bare Trees,” which sold better and featured one of Ms. McVie’s most soulful songs, “Spare Me a Little of Your Love.” The band’s 1973 release, “Penguin,” went gold. The next collection, “Heroes Are Hard to Find,” was the band’s first to crack the U.S. Top 40. But it was only after the departure of Mr. Welch and the hiring of the romantically involved team of Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham, for the 1975 album simply called “Fleetwood Mac,” that the band began to show its full commercial brio.

Ms. McVie‘s song “Over My Head” began the groundswell by entering Billboard’s Top 20; her “Say You Love Me,” reached No. 11. After a slow buildup, the “Fleetwood Mac” album eventually hit Billboard’s summit.

Just over a year and a half later, the group released “Rumours,” which generated outsize interest not only for its four Top 10 hits (two of them written by Ms. McVie) but also for several highly dramatic behind-the-scenes events within the band’s ranks, which they aired out in the lyrics and openly discussed in the press.

During the creation of the album, the two couples in the band — Ms. Nicks and Mr. Buckingham and the married McVies — broke up. Ms. McVie’s song “You Make Loving Fun” celebrated an affair she was then having with the band’s lighting director. (At first, she told Mr. McVie that the song was about her dog.) The optimistic-sounding “Don’t Stop” was intended to point her ex-husband toward a new life without her.

“We wrote those songs despite ourselves,” Ms. McVie told Mojo. “It was a therapeutic move. The only way we could get this stuff out was to say it, and it came out in a way that was difficult. Imagine trying to sing those songs onstage with the people you’re singing them about.”

It helped dull the pain, she told Mojo, that “we were all very high,” adding, “I don’t think there was a sober day.” And the album’s megasuccess gave the members a different high. “The buzz of realizing you’ve written one of the best albums ever written; it was such a phenomenal time,” Ms. McVie told Attitude magazine in 2019.

But the group yearned to stretch creatively. The result was the less commercial sound of the double-album follow-up, “Tusk,” released in 1979. Though not a success on anything near the scale of “Rumours,” it sold more than two million copies and produced three hits, including Ms. McVie’s “Think About Me.”

The group moved smoothly into the new decade with the 1982 release “Mirage,” which hit No. 1 aided by Ms. McVie’s “Hold Me,” a Top Five hit that was inspired by her tumultuous relationship with the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. Two years later, Ms. McVie issued a solo album that made the Top 30, while its strongest single, “Got a Hold on Me,” broke the Top 10.

In 1987, the reconvened Fleetwood Mac issued “Tango in the Night,” which featured two hits written by Ms. McVie, “Everywhere” and “Little Lies.” (“Little Lies” was written with the Portuguese musician and songwriter Eddie Quintela, whom she had wed the year before. They would divorce in 2003.) Mr. Buckingham left the group shortly afterward, shaking the dynamic that had made their recordings stellar. The 1990 album “Behind the Mask” barely went gold, producing just one Top 40 single (“Save Me,” written by Ms. McVie), while “Time,” issued five years later, was the band’s first unsuccessful album in two decades.

Ms. McVie didn’t tour with the band to support “Time.” But the early 1990s brought broad new attention to her hit “Don’t Stop” when it became the theme song for Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign. In 1993, Mr. Clinton persuaded the five musicians who played on that hit to reunite to perform it at an Inaugural ball.

They came together again in 1997 for a tour, which produced the live album “The Dance,” one of the top-selling concert recordings of all time. Yet by the next year a growing fear of flying, and a desire to return to England from the band’s adopted home of Los Angeles, inspired Ms. McVie to retire to the English countryside.

Five years later, she agreed to add some keyboard parts and backing vocals to a largely ignored Fleetwood Mac album, “Say You Will,” and in 2006 she produced a little-heard solo album, “In the Meantime,” which she recorded and wrote with her guitarist nephew Dan Perfect.

Finally, in 2014, driven by boredom and a growing sense of isolation, she reunited with the prime Mac lineup for the massive “On With The Show” tour. In its wake, Ms. McVie began to write lots of new material, as did Mr. Buckingham, resulting in an album under both their names in 2017, as well as a joint tour. The full band also played shows that year; even though Mr. Buckingham was fired in 2018, Ms. McVie continued to tour with the group in a lineup that included Neil Finn of Crowded House and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In 2021, Ms. McVie sold publishing rights to her entire 115-song catalog for an undisclosed sum.

Information on her survivors was not immediately available.

Throughout her career, Ms. McVie took pride in never being categorized by her gender. “I kind of became one of the guys,” she told the British newspaper The Independent in 2019. “I was always treated with great respect.”

While she always acknowledged the special chemistry of Fleetwood Mac’s most successful lineup, she believed her role transcended it.

“Band members leave and other people take their place,” she told Rolling Stone, “but there was always that space where the piano should be.”

Mistrial declared in actor Danny Masterson’s rape trial

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday after jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked at the trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Mastersonwho was charged with three rapes.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo had ordered the jurors to take Thanksgiving week off and keep deliberating after they told her on Nov. 18 that they could not come to a consensus about the rape allegations after a monthlong trial in which the Church of Scientology played a supporting role.

Masterson, 46, was charged with the rape of three women, including a former girlfriend, in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. He pleaded not guilty and his lawyer said the acts were all consensual. All three women were members of the church at the time, and Masterson remains one.

“I find the jurors hopelessly deadlocked,” Judge Charlaine Olmedo declared after inquiring whether there was anything the court could do to move them closer to reaching a unanimous decision. She set a March date for a retrial.

Jurors said they had voted seven times Tuesday and Wednesday without being able to reach consensus on any of the three counts.

The jury foreman said only two jurors voted for conviction on the first count, four voted for conviction on the second count and five voted to convict on the third count.

Jurors were forced to start deliberations from scratch on Monday when two had to be dismissed because they came down with COVID-19. They deliberated for two days but still could not reach verdicts.

The result was a serious setback for prosecutors, and for the three women who said they were seeking long overdue justice.

The proceedings took place amid a flurry of cases on both coasts with #MeToo connotations, including the Los Angeles trial of Harvey Weinstein just down the hall from Masterson’s. In New York, Kevin Spacey won a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by actor Anthony Rapp in New York, and a jury ordered director and screenwriter Paul Haggis to pay $10 million in a civil case there.

But at the Masterson trial, as at the Haggis trial, the #MeToo implications were largely eclipsed by the specter of Scientology, despite the judge’s insistence that the church not become a de facto defendant.

The women, all referred to as Jane Does and all former members of the church, said they were intimidated, harassed and stalked after Masterson was charged. They have repeated those allegations in a pending lawsuit against the church.

Masterson attorney Philip Cohen said the church was mentioned 700 times during trial and argued that it became an excuse for the prosecution’s failure to build a believable case against Masterson, a prominent Scientologist.

But Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller said the church had tried to silence the women and that was the reason it took two decades for the case to get to trial.

Masterson did not testify. His lawyer presented no defense testimony and instead focused on inconsistencies in the accounts of the three accusers, who he said changed their stories over time and spoke with each other before going to police.

“The key to this case is not when they reported it,” Cohen said during closing arguments. “It’s what they said when they reported it. What they said after they reported it. And what they said at trial.”

Mueller argued that Masterson was a man “for whom ‘no’ never meant ‘no,’” as shown by the graphic and emotional testimony of the three accusers.

Two women said they were served drinks by Masterson and became woozy or passed out before being violently raped. One said she thought she would die as Masterson held a pillow over her face.

An ex-girlfriend said she awoke to finding Masterson having sex with her without her consent. The defense said her claims were undermined because she later had sex with him after they broke up.

Cohen told jurors they could acquit Masterson if they thought he “actually and reasonably believed” the women consented to having sex. Mueller countered that nobody would believe the acts described were consensual, reminding jurors that one woman repeatedly told him “no,” pulled his hair and tried to get out from under him.

Mueller told jurors not to be swayed by defense speculation and said contradictions in the victims’ testimony were signs of authenticity as opposed to accounts that had been scripted.

The charges date to a period when Masterson was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s “That ’70s Show.” The show made stars of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace and is getting an upcoming Netflix reboot with “That ’90s Show.”

Masterson had reunited with Kutcher on the Netflix comedy “The Ranch” but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.

Sam Bankman-Fried Discusses Collapse of FTX: Live Updates

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Alameda Research, a small trading firm that Sam Bankman-Fried founded in 2017 at the age of 25, was the start of his crypto empire — and its undoing.

Alameda’s need for funds to run its trading business was a big reason Mr. Bankman-Fried created FTX in 2019. But the way the two entities were set up meant that trouble in one unit shook up the other as cryptocurrency prices began to drop this past spring.

The main way Alameda made money was straightforward: It bought Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in one part of the world and sold them in another, pocketing the difference. It used “leverage” — or borrowed money — to fuel its trades and make bigger returns.

Eventually, as more sophisticated investors like hedge funds piled in, such trades became much less lucrative for Alameda. Still, with the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies soaring — and expected to keep going up — Alameda had no trouble paying back its loans in either dollars or crypto.

But Mr. Bankman-Fried hit upon an idea: Why not build a cryptocurrency exchange that could bring in revenue to help fund Alameda’s activities?

FTX was born. It moved from Hong Kong to the Bahamas, where Mr. Bankman-Fried built his base of operations, and the exchange took off. In financial presentations to investors, the company claimed in 2021 that it was raking in $1 billion in annual revenue by charging fees to customers who wanted to trade cryptocurrencies on its platform.

The relationship between FTX and Alameda centered on a token created by FTX — called FTT — that the exchange’s customers could use to trade their crypto assets. Alameda served as the token’s main market maker, buying and selling a majority of FTT. FTT was popular with the exchange’s investors, who were enticed by the trading discounts it offered, and Alameda began using its holdings as collateral for more loans to facilitate its trading activities.

The problems cascaded this spring when the crypto market began to teeter. Falling crypto prices reduced the value of FTT, and Alameda struggled to pay its lenders.

Now the relationship between Alameda and FTX — and how the two propped each other up — is coming under scrutiny as prosecutors and regulators investigate the exchange’s collapse.

Trump’s tax returns now in the hands of House Democrats

WASHINGTON — A Democratic-led House committee is now in possession of six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns after a multiyear court fight.

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that it had complied with last week’s Supreme Court decision that paved the way for the returns to be handed over to the House Ways and Means Committee.

The panel didn’t immediately return a request for comment. CNN first reported that the committee had received the tax returns.

Ways and Means Committee members are meeting Thursday, and lawmakers expect to learn more about Trump’s taxes then, one Democrat on the panel told NBC News.

“I’m not sure yet if we will see his taxes then or if we are just going to be walked through them,” the lawmaker said.

It’s unclear what House Democrats plan to do with the documents, especially as they face a GOP-takeover of the House in January. Republicans have made clear they’re not interested or concerned about Trump’s tax records.

Asked Wednesday about next steps, Committee Chairman Richard Neal, said, “I can’t talk about that.”

Neal, D-Mass., also noted that he was legally obligated not to disclose much information about handling Trump’s records.

“I’ll have better answers [after meeting] with the attorneys,” he said.

Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., a Ways and Means Committee member and early proponent of pushing to obtain Trump’s tax returns, told NBC News on Wednesday that the panel “will make a deliberative decision [on Trump’s tax records] by Jan. 3,” when Republicans officially take control of the chamber.

Asked if he would consider making the tax returns public, Pascrell said: “I would.”

The records transfer comes shortly after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s last-ditch plea to block the release of his tax records to House Democrats, just weeks before Republicans take the majority.

Earlier this month, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the Ways and Means panel from accessing Trump’s tax records while the court decided how to act on the former president’s request.

Unlike other recent presidents, Trump has refused to make his tax returns public amid scrutiny of his business affairs, repeatedly claiming that he’s being audited by the IRS. Democrats have been demanding to see the records since the 2016 presidential campaign.

But the legal battle began in April 2019, shortly after Democrats took control of the House, when Neal asked for Trump’s returns and those of related business entities. The Democratic chairman said he sought the information as part of the committee’s inquiries into whether tax law concerning presidents should be amended.

The Treasury Department during Trump’s presidency refused to comply with Neal’s request, saying in May 2019 that he did not have a valid legislative purpose for obtaining the documents. The committee filed a lawsuit two months later in what would become a lengthy battle to secure the returns.

For years, leading tax analysts have said the records must be provided to Congress because under federal law, if the chairs of the Ways and Means panel, the Senate Finance Committee or the Joint Committee on Taxation formally request a person’s tax returns, Treasury Department officials “shall” turn the documents over.

ali vitali circle byline template

Ali Vitali

Ali Vitali is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington.

Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC News based in Washington.

Sahil Kapoor and Jonathan Allen contributed.

Buckingham Palace official quits after asking Black charity CEO where she was ‘really from’



CNN
—

An honorary member of Buckingham Palace has resigned and apologized after a Black charity founder said she was questioned about whether she was really British at a royal reception on Tuesday.

The guest, Ngozi Fulani, is the CEO of Sistah Space, an organization that provides specialist services to women of African and Caribbean heritage affected by abuse.

Fulani was attending a royal function on domestic abuse organized by the Queen Consort on Tuesday evening when she said a member of staff began a line of questioning that the palace called “unacceptable and deeply regrettable.”

Fulani said that the person persistently asked about her heritage and would not accept that she was a British national.

Sistah Space shared a rough transcript of the conversation on Twitter on Wednesday. Fulani said that, after identifying herself as British-born, the person asked her “where do you really come from;” “where do your people come from;” and “when did you first come here?”

When Fulani answered she was from the London neighborhood of Hackney, the household member insisted: “No, what part of Africa are YOU from?” as quoted on the Sistah Space twitter account.

Buckingham Palace, which has not named the household member involved in the incident, said earlier today that the individual concerned had apologized and “stepped aside from her honorary role with immediate effect.”

Sistah Space said that it “serves no purpose to name & shame” the person in question on its Twitter account on Wednesday, adding “it is the system that needs to be revised.”

“Yes the person was offensive, but it serves no purpose to name & shame her, it would make us just as bad. We prefer that this be handled kindly,” Sistah Space said.

British media have identified the Buckingham Palace official as Lady Susan Hussey, who served as the late Queen Elizabeth II’s lady in waiting for more than 60 years and is a godmother to the Prince of Wales.

CNN has reached out to Ngozi Fulani and Buckingham Palace for further comment from the household member in question.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson acknowledged the incident and said the palace was taking the situation “extremely seriously.”

“Unacceptable and deeply regrettable comments have been made. We have reached out to Ngozi Fulani on this matter, and are inviting her to discuss all elements of her experience in person if she wishes,” the spokesperson said.

“In the meantime, the individual concerned would like to express her profound apologies for the hurt caused and has stepped aside from her honorary role with immediate effect.”

News of the encounter came to light as the Prince and Princess of Wales traveled to the US ahead of the second iteration of the Earthshot Prize Awards later this week.

A spokesman for William said: “Racism has no place in our society, these comments were unacceptable. It’s right that the individual concerned has stepped down.”

The incident is likely to revive concerns that the palace is elitist and out of touch when it comes to issues of race and identity.

The palace has, in recent years, faced allegations of racist behavior, including in its hiring practices decades ago and the treatment of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. A former counterterrorism police chief said Tuesday that Meghan and Harry had faced “disgusting and very real” threats from right-wing extremists.

Meghan claimed in an interview with Oprah Winfrey last year that an unnamed member of the family made remarks about the skin color of their unborn baby while she was pregnant with Archie.

Prince William later said the royal family was “very much not a racist family.”

Hakeem Jeffries Elected Leader of House Democrats

WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Wednesday elected new leaders to take the mantle from the three octogenarians who have led them for two decades, ushering in a long-awaited generational change that, for the first time in the history of either party or chamber in Congress, installed a trio of top leaders that includes no white men.

In a display of unity after midterm elections in which they lost the House but had a stronger than expected showing, Democrats skipped a vote and by acclamation elected Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York to be minority leader, making him the first Black person to hold the top spot. Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts was elected as whip, the lead vote counter for House Democrats, and Representative Pete Aguilar of California as the chairman of the party caucus, in charge of messaging.

Mr. Jeffries, 52, Ms. Clark, 59 and Mr. Aguilar, 43, who for years have positioned themselves as an unofficial joint slate of candidates and have patiently waited their turn, ran unopposed after Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who has led the party for two decades, announced this month that she would step aside, paving the way for fresher faces at the top of her party.

Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, had considered trying to remain in leadership and said he had the support to do so, but ultimately decided against it. And Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, had weighed a challenge to Mr. Jeffries for the post of minority leader, but many Democrats said he lacked the votes. Last week, Mr. Schiff told Mr. Jeffries that he was instead exploring a run for Senate, and wished him well in the upcoming leadership election, according to a person familiar with the private conversation who disclosed it on the condition of anonymity.

The mood was jovial on Wednesday inside the ornate committee hearing room across from the Capitol where Democrats met to elect their new leaders.

“We want Petey Pie!” lawmakers chanted as they nominated Mr. Aguilar, using a nickname his grandmother gave him, according to two people in the room.

At another point, Representative Terri Sewell of Alabama led a call-and-response chant for Mr. Jeffries, borrowing a lyric from the rapper Biggie Smalls, whom Mr. Jeffries famously quoted on the Senate floor during former President Donald J. Trump’s first impeachment trial.

“If you don’t know,” Ms. Sewell shouted out, “Now you know,” the members called back.

Democrats, for the most part, said they saw the lack of competitive races as a sign of strength and unity, and a stark contrast to the fractured Republican conference, where Representative Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, is struggling to win the support he needs to become speaker amid a revolt on his right flank. A historically weak midterm performance has handed the G.O.P. a razor-thin House majority for the next Congress, making the job of leading it exceedingly difficult.

“It shows that Democrats are in array, Republicans are in disarray,” said Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, noting that the new slate of leaders, which includes a Black man, a white woman and a Latino man, “reflects the beautiful diversity of America.”

Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said she was excited to have a leader “who actually does represent the diversity of our caucus.”

Mr. Aguilar, in a news conference, said that “while Kevin McCarthy is auctioning off real estate and square footage for every vote he can, we’re united together.” Mr. Jeffries said House Democrats were united because they shared a commitment to fighting for “young people, seniors, immigrants, veterans, the poor, the sick, the afflicted, the least, the lost and the left behind.”

He said Democrats would “push back against extremism whenever necessary.”

Yet some Democrats called the uncontested election a missed opportunity for them to discuss how their party was shifting and how it should move forward.

“This is the most significant generational change that we have seen in House Democrats in several decades,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. “I personally believe that we would benefit from a debate on what that means.”

The leadership elections marked a sea change for the caucus, which for two decades has been led by the same trio of leaders, who effectively froze out dozens of more junior lawmakers who had been waiting to ascend.

Ms. Pelosi’s announcement before Thanksgiving that she would step down from leadership set the long-awaited change in motion. Mr. Hoyer quickly followed suit and Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the whip, said he would relinquish the third-ranking spot and seek a lower position.

His decision to stay in leadership, however, rankled some members.

On Wednesday, Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who is gay, said he planned to challenge Mr. Clyburn for the position of assistant leader.

“With so much at stake, I think it is critical that the House Democratic leadership team fully reflect the diversity of our caucus and the American people by including an L.G.B.T.Q.+ member at the leadership table,” he said in a letter to his colleagues announcing his bid. That race will be decided on Thursday.

In remarks to reporters ahead of the election, Mr. Jeffries described the role he was about to assume as a “solemn responsibility.”

“When we get an opportunity as diverse leaders to serve in positions of consequence, the most meaningful thing that we can do in that space is do an incredibly good job,” Mr. Jeffries said.

He downplayed the divisions among Democrats and expressed confidence in his ability, along with his expected leadership team, to keep the party united in the coming year.

“There’s nothing more unifying than being in the minority and having a cleareyed objective and goal of getting back into the majority so we can continue to deliver big things for everyday Americans,” he said.

Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said he has known Mr. Jeffries, a Brooklyn neighbor, for years and expected to speak with him the same amount he now talks with Ms. Pelosi: about four to five times a day.

“It’s a little like Pelosi,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. “When I first met her, I said, ‘This person is special, she’s going somewhere.’ I felt the same way about Hakeem.”

Mr. Schumer said Mr. Jeffries “always had the leg up” in the race to succeed Ms. Pelosi.

“He’s very good at reaching out to people of many ideologies,” Mr. Schumer said, predicting Mr. Jeffries would be able to reach across party lines.

“There’s going to be a whole bunch of Republicans who are not going to be happy with the MAGA direction of the party, and I couldn’t think of a better person to work with them to try and get some things done,” Mr. Schumer said.

Luke Broadwater and Stephanie Lai contributed reporting.

House votes to avert rail strike, impose deal on unions

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House moved urgently to head off the looming nationwide rail strike on Wednesday, passing a bill that would bind companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached in September but rejected by some of the 12 unions involved.

The measure passed by a vote of 290-137 and now heads to the Senate. If approved there, it will be signed by President Joe Biden, who urged the Senate to act swiftly.

“Without the certainty of a final vote to avoid a shutdown this week, railroads will begin to halt the movement of critical materials like chemicals to clean our drinking water as soon as this weekend,” Biden said. “Let me say that again: without action this week, disruptions to our auto supply chains, our ability to move food to tables, and our ability to remove hazardous waste from gasoline refineries will begin.”

Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau Federation have warned that halting rail service would cause a $2 billion per day hit to the economy.

The bill would impose a compromise labor agreement brokered by the Biden administration that was ultimately voted down by four of the 12 unions representing more than 100,000 employees at large freight rail carriers. The unions have threatened to strike if an agreement can’t be reached before a Dec. 9 deadline.

Lawmakers from both parties expressed reservations about overriding the negotiations. And the intervention was particularly difficult for Democratic lawmakers who have traditionally sought to align themselves with the politically powerful labor unions that criticized Biden’s move to intervene in the contract dispute and block a strike.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to that concern by adding a second vote Wednesday that would add seven days of paid sick leave per year for rail workers covered under the agreement. However, it will take effect only if the Senate goes along and passes both measures. The House passed the sick leave measure as well, but by a much narrower margin, 221-207, as Republicans overwhelmingly opposed it, indicating that prospects for passage of that add-on are slim in the evenly divided Senate.

The call for more paid sick leave was a major sticking point in the talks. The railroads say the unions have agreed in negotiations over the decades to forgo paid sick time in favor of higher wages and strong short-term disability benefits.

The head of the Association of American Railroads trade group said Tuesday that railroads would consider adding paid sick time in the future, but said that change should wait for a new round of negotiations instead of being added now, near the end of three years of contract talks.

The unions maintain that railroads can easily afford to add paid sick time at a time when they are recording record profits. Several of the big railroads involved in these contract talks reported more than $1 billion profit in the third quarter.

“Quite frankly, the fact that paid leave is not part of the final agreement between railroads and labor is, in my opinion, obscene,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. “It should be there and I hope it will be there at the end of this process.”

Most rail workers don’t receive any paid sick time but they do have short-term disability benefits that kick in after as little as four days and can replace some of their income for a year or more. Rail workers do receive vacation and personal leave days, but workers say it’s difficult to use those for illnesses because they must typically be approved far ahead of time.

Republicans also voiced support for the measure to block the strike, but criticized the Biden administration for turning to Congress to “step in to fix the mess.”

“They’ve retreated in failure and they kicked this problem to Congress for us to decide,” said Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo.

Republicans criticized Pelosi’s decision to add the sick leave bill to the mix. They said the Biden administration’s own special board of arbitrators recommended higher wages to compensate the unions for not including sick time in its recommendations.

“Why do we even have the system set up the way it is if Congress is going to come in and make changes to all of the recommendations?” Graves said.

Pelosi sought to position Democrats and the Biden administration as defenders of unions and slammed the rail companies, saying they’ve slashed jobs, increased worker hours and cut corners on safety. But she said Congress needed to intervene.

“Families wouldn’t be able to buy groceries or life-saving medications because it would be even more expensive and perishable goods would spoil before reaching shelves,” Pelosi said.

The compromise agreement that was supported by the railroads and a majority of the unions provides for 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses retroactive to 2020 along with one additional paid leave day. The raises would be the biggest rail workers have received in more than four decades. Workers would have to pay a larger share of their health insurance costs, but their premiums would be capped at 15% of the total cost of the insurance plan. The agreement did not resolve workers’ concerns about schedules that make it hard to take a day off and the lack of more paid sick time.

On several past occasions, Congress has intervened in labor disputes by enacting legislation to delay or prohibit railway and airline strikes.

___

Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska.