Anthony Stewart, who was Paul Hogan’s accountant, is facing up to five years behind bars if he is convicted of the alleged conspiracy to defraud the US.
Trump appears to leave door open for second debate with Harris: ‘Maybe if I got in the right mood’ FOX
* * * Ready your bets: Election gambling is going mainstream in the US Politico
Appeals court puts U.S. election bets on hold mere hours after a judge allowed it PBS
Staffer for NYC mayor fired amid extortion reports after NYPD commissioner resigns FOX
How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak
The New York Times [gift link]: “…But the chief justice and Justice Kavanaugh had spent formative years as White House lawyers, working to protect presidential power. At oral arguments, Justice Kavanaugh and some other conservatives worried aloud that presidents without sufficient immunity might become overly cautious or vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions. Chief Justice Roberts, echoing his critique in the February memo, called the logic of the appeals court ruling circular. “As I read it, it says simply a former president can be prosecuted because he’s being prosecuted,” he said…
When the justices met in private shortly after the arguments, the six conservatives voted in favor of Mr. Trump and greatly expanding presidential immunity. The three liberals voted against. After the chief justice circulated a draft on June 1, and Justice Sotomayor responded that she would consider a partial compromise, her invitation appeared to go nowhere. That left the chief justice with plenty of requests for changes from members of his own majority, but only one main challenger: Justice Barrett. After he filed his draft majority opinion, she seemed somewhat skeptical, saying she intended to vote with him, but could not join on three points, according to people familiar with the discussions. Inside the chief’s chambers, all four of his clerks participated in a furious rewriting effort.
Later, others at the court wondered if the chief justice had taken on too much. The writing of a majority opinion requires responding to suggestions and edits from other justices, addressing any dissents, and crafting an analysis to withstand scrutiny. He had assigned himself seven majority opinions over the term, five of them blockbuster cases. Months earlier, on the ballot case, the chief justice had sought consensus.
But the immunity decision, which was issued on July 1 and set off a national uproar, reflected a court cleaved sharply in two. The majority awarded sweeping immunity to Mr. Trump. The opinion did not say whether any of the crimes he had been accused of were fair game for prosecution, even though Mr. Trump’s lawyer had repeatedly conceded in oral arguments that some of the charges against his client appeared to concern purely private acts outside the role of president…”
Washington Post [gift article]: “After Change Healthcare, a technology company owned by UnitedHealth Group, reported a giant ransomware attack, you may have received a letter by mail letting you know your data has been compromised. But you get a lot of random stuff in the mail, too.
How can you determine if the letter is legitimate, and what will it take to protect your accounts and identity? Large-scale data breaches happen so frequently that it can be tough to keep track. In the first half of 2024, cyberattacks increased 14 percent compared with the same period last year, according to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). In March, consumers learned a hack at a third-party company exposed Amex account information. A few weeks later, data from millions of AT&T accounts popped up online. And in August, a data broker lost control of a massive dataset that contained Social Security numbers.
Some tech critics and cybersecurity experts accuse companies of playing fast and loose with people’s data — collecting too much and failing to properly secure it. Some companies even make a business model out of collecting and combining giant datasets, including profiles of individual people. Each data breach, meanwhile, puts victims at risk of identity theft, which can be a costly and frustrating problem to untangle…”
Some Lawyers Using Venmo Are Exposing Confidential Client Information
Lawsites - and they May Not Even Know It – “Multiple lawyers who are using the payments app Venmo in their law practices are exposing client information to the public — and they may not even know it.
These accounts expose client names and sometimes other details, such as payment amounts, the nature of the representation, or even the client’s financial straits. Model Rule 1.6 of the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct prohibits a lawyer from revealing information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent. The ABA has said in an ethics opinion that this rule prohibits lawyers from revealing even the identity of a client..Venmo is a so-called “social payments platform.”
The “social” in that description means that anyone on the internet may be able to see the transaction. This viewability can be disabled. Any Venmo user can set their account to be private, in which case the transaction can be seen only by the two participants.
A different setting, “friends only,” allows your transactions to be seen only by people you have friended on Venmo. But the default setting is public, and that means that when a lawyer uses Venmo without changing that default setting, every transaction is viewable by the public…”
Misinformation Dashboard: Election 2024
“A tool tracking the topics and tactics of 2024 election misinformation Election misinformation poses an existential threat to democracy but can be difficult to analyze and assess through individually debunked falsehoods published by different fact-check organizations.
Collecting and cataloguing examples of misinformation reveals valuable insights into the common disinformation tactics and narratives that threaten to influence public opinion about the 2024 election.”
