Tag: bribery

Fox News Notches Big Win Against Smartmatic as Appeals Court Grants Access to Damning Insider Info

Fox News lawyers fighting off a defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic Voting Systems have been granted access to new ammunition.

Last week, Fox was granted access to materials connected with a 2024 federal bribery indictment concerning company co-founder and president Roger Piñate and other company executives, according to The Wrap.

The Justice Department has alleged that more than $1 million in bribes went from company executives to a Philippine official in an attempt to influence which voting machines were used in the nation’s 2016 elections, according to a Justice Department news release.

Those charged have pleaded not guilty.

Fox claimed that the charges are relevant to its defense because Smartmatic was suffering for reasons other than Fox’s coverage of the 2020 election, according to The Wrap.

“We are pleased with the Court’s ruling that materials about Smartmatic executives’ indictments are ‘plainly relevant’ to its lack of damages. The factual evidence shows that Smartmatic’s business and reputation were badly suffering long before any claims by President Trump’s lawyers on Fox News,” Fox said in a statement.

In a separate filing calling for summary judgment in its favor, Fox argued that Smartmatic’s sales had “cratered” before the 2020 election.

Fox  sought to undercut Smartmatic’s claim that it was damaged by saying that the company’s books show “no profit record to serve as a basis for projecting millions of dollars in future profits.”

Smartmatic fired back against Fox News in a separate filing, according to CNN.

The company alleged in court documents that Fox “orchestrated the destruction of text messages across all levels of their corporate hierarchy … despite a clear duty to preserve evidence.”

Smartmatic claimed Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch “deleted their texts” in an “extensive and willful” fashion.

Fox said the allegation was a “desperate attempt to distract” from the ruling in Fox’s favor.

“Smartmatic weakly attempts to resurrect stale, baseless discovery issues that actually were disclosed by Fox and resolved two years ago,” a Fox representative said.

“These issues have no bearing on the merits of Smartmatic’s case, which has fallen apart at every turn,” the Fox representative said.

As noted by The Wrap. Smartmatic is seeking $2.7 billion from Fox.

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Retired 4-star Navy admiral found guilty in bribery case

The Navy’s former No. 2 officer on Monday was found guilty of bribery and other counts related to steering work to a company in exchange for a job after leaving the service, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Retired Adm. Robert Burke, former Navy vice chief of naval operations, was convicted of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, performing acts affecting a personal financial interest and concealing material facts. His conviction makes him the senior-most member of the U.S. military ever found guilty of committing a federal crime while serving on active duty.

“When you abuse your position and betray the public trust to line your own pockets, it undermines the confidence in the government you represent,” interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a statement. “Our office, with our law enforcement partners, will root out corruption — be it bribes or illegal contracts — and hold accountable the perpetrators, no matter what title or rank they hold.”

Burke, 63, of Coconut Creek, Fla., was arrested last year and charged with the crimes along with the co-CEOs of technology services firm Next Jump — the company he joined after retirement — Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger. 

Kim and Messenger, both of New York, were each charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, according to the case’s unsealed indictment. They face trial in August, which is when Burke will be sentenced. 

The saga marks a devastating blow to the Navy, which in the past several years has struggled with a loss of confidence in numerous top officers, command failures and bribery scandals. 

Burke, who served aboard attack and ballistic missile submarines, rose through the ranks to eventually become chief of naval personnel in 2016 followed by vice chief of naval operations in June 2019. He then took command of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and Allied Joint Forces Command in June 2020 before retiring in summer 2022.

Kim and Messenger, meanwhile, via their company Next Jump, provided a workforce training pilot program to a small component of the Navy from August 2018 through July 2019. The deal appeared to turn sour, however, and the Navy terminated a contract with the company in late 2019 and directed it not to contact Burke.

But in summer 2021, Messenger and Kim met with Burke in Washington, D.C., to reestablish their company’s business relationship with the Navy. While at the meeting, the two “agreed that Burke would use his position as a Navy Admiral to steer a contract” to their firm — as well as influence other Navy officers to award another contract to the company — in exchange for his future employment there, according to the Justice Department. 

Burke in December 2021 then ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump to train personnel under Burke’s command in Italy and Spain, which the company performed in January 2022. 

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Multiple Mississippi elected officials indicted in federal bribery investigation

Several top elected officials in Mississippi’s most populous county are now defendants in a federal bribery probe.

HuffPost reporter Sam Levine tweeted an announcement from the Department of Justice, stating that an indictment was unsealed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Mississippi in which three high-profile officials have officially been charged with “participating in a bribery scheme to enrich themselves.”

According to the indictment, Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens and Jackson city council member (and former council president) Aaron Banks are all named as defendants. Mayor Lumumba confirmed his indictment to local NBC affiliate WLBT on Wednesday.

The indictment alleges that Jackson’s mayor, the district attorney in Jackson and members of Jackson’s city council conspired to accept bribes in exchange for official acts benefiting purported real estate developers,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, who heads the DOJ’s Criminal Division.

“Officials who abuse their positions of authority to enrich themselves undermine public confidence in government. The Justice Department is committed to restoring that confidence by working with its law enforcement partners to investigate and prosecute public corruption.”

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Dem Senator Bob Menendez Found Guilty Of Accepting Cash, Gold, Benz Bribes

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was convicted on all 16 counts in a sweeping pay-for-play scheme to sell his office to foreign powers and shady businessmen in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, solid gold bars, and a Mercedes Benz.

A jury of 12 convicted him on charges including wire fraud, bribery and extortion – making Menendez the seventh sitting US senator to be convicted of a federal crime, placing pressure on him to resign before his term expires at year-end.

Menendez and his wife Nadine were accused by prosecutors of orchestrating a bribery scheme while he was head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he acted as an agent of Egypt, and intervened to quash a separate criminal prosecution in New Jersey in exchange for payoffs – and then tried to cover it up.

“It wasn’t enough for him to be one of the most powerful people in Washington,” said federal prosecutor Paul M. Monteleoni in his closing argument. “But he also wanted to use it to pile up riches for himself and his wife.”

Menendez’s attorney, Adam Fee, suggested that the senator’s actions had been “100 percent appropriate,” and accused the government of using “half-truths” to misrepresent the case. Fee also argued that the cash and gold weren’t bribes, but instead generous gifts to Ms. Menendez during “lean times.”

Menendez is set for sentencing on Oct. 29. 

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Supreme Court overturns ex-mayor’s bribery conviction, narrowing the scope of public corruption law

The Supreme Court overturned the bribery conviction of a former Indiana mayor on Wednesday, the latest in a series of decisions narrowing the scope of federal public corruption law.

The high court’s 6-3 opinion along ideological lines found the law criminalizes bribes given before an official act, not rewards handed out after.

“Some gratuities can be problematic. Others are commonplace and might be innocuous,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote. The lines aren’t always clear, especially since many state and local officials have other jobs, he said.

The high court sided with James Snyder, a Republican who was convicted of taking $13,000 from a trucking company after prosecutors said he steered about $1 million worth of city contracts to the company.

In a sharply worded dissent joined by her liberal colleagues, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the distinction between bribes and gratuities ignores the wording of the law aimed at rooting out public corruption.

“Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one that only today’s court could love,” she wrote.

The decision continues a pattern in recent years of the court restricting the government’s ability to use broad federal laws to prosecute public corruption cases. The justices also overturned the bribery conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2016 and sharply curbed prosecutors’ use of an anti-fraud law in the case of ex-Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling in 2010.

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Arizona Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes to Launch Criminal Investigation into Gov. Katie Hobbs for Bribery and Fraud

Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes, who “won” the 2022 election by 280 votes from Trump-endorsed Abe Hamadeh, will launch a criminal investigation into Governor Katie Hobbs over a pay-to-play scheme.

As reported by The Gateway Pundit, these allegations stem from significant donations made to a dark money group, which was used for Hobbs’ inaugural events, potentially influencing state contract decisions.

Hobbs’ ethical conduct was called into question by GOP State Legislators after she solicited donations of up to $250,000 using a 501(c)(4) nonprofit group for inaugural events.

Interestingly, the nonprofit used by Hobbs shares an address with Coppersmith Brockelman PLC, the Democrat law firm that represented her in Kari Lake’s lawsuit challenging the 2022 midterm election results.

Among the donors to Hobbs’ inauguration were Sunshine Residential Homes and its affiliates, who contributed significant sums only to later receive a rate increase for their youth group home services.

According to The Arizona Republic reporter, Stacey Barchenger, “DCS approved what amounts to a nearly 60% increase in the rate that Sunshine Residential Homes Inc. charges to care for a child for a day, meaning potentially millions of dollars more going to the company at taxpayers’ expense.”

Interestingly, no other standard group home provider was approved for any rate increase during Hobbs’ tenure.

Sunshine Residential Homes initially sought a 20% rate increase in December 2022 but was denied by DCS on February 6, 2023. Just three days later, Sunshine donated $100,000 to a dark-money fund created by Hobbs’ campaign. Notably, the company had only recently begun contributing to political campaigns in Arizona.

Sunshine made two six-figure donations totaling 200,000 to the Arizona Democratic Party when Hobbs was running for governor. Additionally, Sunshine’s CEO and his wife personally donated nearly the maximum amount, 5,000 each, to Hobbs’ campaign. After Hobbs’ election, the company donated another $200,000, half of which went directly to Hobbs’ inauguration fund through her dark money group.

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Rep. Cuellar’s Bribery charges expose Azerbaijan’s influence game

On May 2, U.S. law enforcement indicted Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) on charges of taking at least $360,000 in bribes from companies controlled by the government of Azerbaijan. In exchange for money, Cuellar would attempt to shape the U.S. foreign policy towards Azerbaijan by spreading narratives favorable to that nation’s interests through speeches and legislative measures.

While the challenge of undue foreign interference in U.S. politics is not new, the case of Azerbaijan highlights a particular vulnerability in U.S. foreign policy: Washington’s fixation on inflexible alliances and enmities provides a fertile ground for foreign actors to exploit it to promote their own parochial agendas that have little to do with U.S. interests.

Azerbaijan has been an adept player on the Washington scene since the early 1990s when the country’s abundant hydrocarbon riches boosted its claims to geostrategic relevance. As detailed in a Quincy Institute brief, since 2015 Azerbaijan spent over $7 million on lobbying efforts in Washington, according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) records. And, as the indictment of Cuellar shows, that is likely only a tip of the iceberg: Azerbaijan has a long track record of illicit influence operations known as “caviar diplomacy” consisting of bribing politicians in the U.S. and Europe to promote its interests. In fact, in January 2024 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted to suspend Azerbaijan’s membership due, in part, to those corrupt dealings.

Azerbaijan’s efforts have to be seen in the context of its decades-long conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh — a historically Armenian-majority region but within the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan. To garner U.S. and EU support, Baku’s lobbying machine, including PR firms, friendly politicians, pundits, and think tanks pitched the country as the West’s geopolitical asset against Russia and Iran — Azerbaijan borders both. As a Washington insider, who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, familiar with Cuellar’s case and Baku’s broader lobbying schemes put it, playing up Russian and Iranian threats is an old trick used by Baku to “attract attention on the Hill.”

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Chicago Alderman and her chief of staff indicted on bribery charges

Accused of accepting bribes in exchange for political favors, a Chicago Alderman and her chief of staff were indicted Thursday on federal bribery charges. The chief of staff was also charged in a separate scheme to purchase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits at a discount.

According to the indictment, Chicago Alderman Carrie Austin and her chief of staff, Chester Wilson Jr., conspired with construction contractors offering to provide free home improvements for assistance in acquiring city development projects between 2016 and 2019. Both Austin and Wilson allegedly abused their positions by accepting bribes, including free home improvement materials, home improvement services, furniture, and appliances.

Between December 2016 and February 2019, multiple text messages and emails recorded conversations between the public officials and the contractors with requests for kitchen cabinets, bathroom tiles, granite countertops, etc. in exchange for help obtaining city development projects. Both Austin and Wilson allegedly made illicit requests for home improvement materials and services at properties owned by each of them.

Questioned by FBI agents on June 19, 2019, Austin allegedly gave false statements when she denied receiving bribes from the contractors. Austin only admitted to receiving a cake from one of the contractors.

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