Tag: lawsuits

This Tennessee Man Spent 37 Days in Jail for Sharing an Anti-Trump Meme. He Says the Cops Should Pay for That.

In the aftermath of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder on September 10, his admirers were offended by online messages that denigrated him, condemned his views, and in some cases even celebrated his death. The people outraged by that commentary evidently included Nick Weems, sheriff of Perry County, Tennessee, who used the powers of his office to strike back at Kirk’s detractors.

As Reason‘s Joe Lancaster reported in October, Weems arranged the arrest of a Kirk critic, Henderson County resident Larry Bushart, on a flagrantly frivolous criminal charge. Because Bushart was unable to cover the staggering $2 million bond demanded for his release (which would have required him to “pay a bondsman at least $210,000,” Lancaster noted), he spent 37 days in jail before the district attorney for Perry County dropped the charge against him after the case drew widespread criticism.

Bushart’s arrest for constitutionally protected speech violated the First Amendment, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) argues in a federal lawsuit against Perry County, Weems, and Jason Morrow, an investigator in the sheriff’s office. The complaint, which was filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, says the defendants also violated the Fourth Amendment by arresting Bushart without probable cause. And because they pursued a malicious prosecution, FIRE argues, they should be liable for punitive as well as compensatory damages.

“I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law,” says Bushart, whose career included 19 years at the Jackson Police Department, five years at the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office, and nine years at the Tennessee Department of Correction. “But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”

Weems was irked by Bushart’s response to a candlelight vigil for Kirk that was scheduled for the evening of September 20 on the lawn of the Perry County Courthouse—an event that the sheriff himself had promoted on Facebook. That day, Bushart saw a post about the vigil on the “What’s Happening, Perry County?” Facebook page. Commenting on that message, Bushart shared eight anti-Kirk memes, including one highlighting a comment that Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, made the day after the January 2024 mass shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.

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Lawsuit: Female Inmates Forced to Live with Trans-Identifying Males at Texas Special Needs Women’s Prison After Initial Court Win

Two female inmates at a federal prison for women with special needs in Fort Worth, Texas, saw a landmark early court win in November when a judge ordered transgender-identifying male inmates to be housed away from them following claims of sexual abuse.

But rather than keep the biological males completely separate from the female prison population at Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Carswell, Texas, Warden Tyal Rule has chosen to move the males to different housing units to live among other female inmates during litigation, a court filing first obtained by Breitbart News alleges.

In the November temporary restraining order, a judge in one of the nation’s most conservative district courts gave Rule the option to house trans-identifying male inmates in their own area or in another female housing unit away from the two plaintiffs, inmates Rhonda Fleming and Miriam Herrera. Rule chose the latter, allowing biological males, most of whom have not undergone surgical modifications, to live among other female inmates, the filing alleges. Several female inmates in the housing units where the trans-identifying males have been moved are now asking to join the lawsuit in the hopes of also securing protection for themselves.

Attorneys Brian Field and John Greil with D.C. law firm Schaerr|Jaffe LLP are representing four women who are asking the court to include them in the lawsuit, called a “motion to intervene” in legalese. Attorneys first asked for inmates Elizabeth Hardin and Brenda Kirk to be added to the lawsuit on Nov. 10, and on Wednesday they are asking the court to add inmates Jasmine Meabon and Keisha Williams, who are now living with transgender-identifying males who were moved into their housing unit following the court’s order. 

“Having been ordered to protect Plaintiffs Fleming and Herrera from biological males, the Warden simply took a male inmate and moved him into a different women’s unit in the same prison,” the attorneys wrote in the proposed complaint. “Instead of solving the problem, he chose to injure different women.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ), which oversees the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), appears to be against more female inmates seeking redress in this case, asking the court on Dec. 1 not to allow more plaintiffs to be added to the case on procedural grounds. The DOJ’s position seems surprising, given President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating the removal of biological men from women’s prisons. The executive order has been on pause during other litigation brought by transgender-identifying inmates in a D.C. case, but that litigation would not bar the segregation of trans-identifying males inside women’s prisons for safety purposes. 

The DOJ did not respond to request for comment by time of publication, and the BOP told Breitbart News via email that it “does not comment on pending litigation or matters that are the subject of legal proceedings.”

When asked about apparent DOJ opposition in the case, Field and Greil said: “That’s the million-dollar question.” 

“It’s clear that Warden Tyal Rule is fighting the president’s policy, and he’s likely hoping that the White House doesn’t notice,” they told Breitbart News. “In fact, even when he faced a court order, Warden Rule did the absolute minimum to comply. It’s possible that this matter has flown under the radar at Main Justice and the White House, but DOJ needs to put eyes on it, hold folks accountable, and make sure that the President’s policies become reality.”

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BBC Vows to Fight Trump’s $10 BILLION Defamation Lawsuit After Splicing J6 Speech to Depict Trump Calling for Violence

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has vowed to fight Trump’s $10 million lawsuit against the broadcaster for defamation and violations of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act after they were caught deceptively editing Trump’s January 6 speech to make it appear he was calling for violence. 

As The Gateway Pundit reported, President Trump told reporters on Monday that he would imminently be filing a defamation lawsuit against the BBC after announcing his intention to do so last month.

“In a little while, you’ll be seeing, I’m suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

“They actually have me speaking with words that I never said, and they got caught because I believe somebody at BBC said this is so bad it has to be reported. That’s called fake news.

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Texas AG sues five major TV companies for allegedly spying on state residents

exas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed lawsuits Monday against five major television companies for allegedly spying on state residents by secretly recording what they watch in their own homes.

The lawsuits include two China-based television companies, Hisense and TCL Technology Group Corporation, which Paxton claimed pose serious concerns about consumer data harvesting. 

The three American companies are Sony, Samsung and LG. 

“Companies, especially those connected to the Chinese Communist Party, have no business illegally recording Americans’ devices inside their own homes,” Paxton said. “This conduct is invasive, deceptive, and unlawful. The fundamental right to privacy will be protected in Texas because owning a television does not mean surrendering your personal information to Big Tech or foreign adversaries.”

Paxton’s office said the companies have been illegally collecting personal information from users through Automated Content Recognition technology, which captures “screenshots of a user’s television display every 500 milliseconds, monitor viewing activity in real time, and transmit that information back to the company without the user’s knowledge or consent.”

The companies then sell the information to ad agencies so targeted advertisements can be shared on different platforms.

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DOJ Sues Four States for Violating Federal Election Law

The Department of Justice announced Friday it has filed federal lawsuits against four states, which were all accused of election law violations.

According to a press release from the DOJ Office of Public Affairs, the suits target Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Nevada.

The department says the states failed to produce their statewide voter registration lists upon request.

The filings bring the Justice Department’s nationwide total of such lawsuits to 18, the release said.

In addition to the four states, the Civil Rights Division is suing officials in Fulton County, Georgia.

The lawsuit against Fulton County seeks records related to the 2020 election.

The DOJ said the actions are being handled by its Civil Rights Division.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon addressed the lawsuits in a statement.

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ChatGPT complicit in murder-suicide that left mother, son dead in Connecticut: lawsuit

ChatGPT has been accused of being complicit in murder for the first time and causing the death of a Connecticut mother after she was killed by her son after the AI bot told him delusions, according to a lawsuit that was filed on Thursday.

The lawsuit was filed by Suzanne Eberson Adams’ estate in California and has accused OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, as well as founder Sam Altman of wrongful death in the murder-suicide that led to the deaths of Adams as well as her son, Stein-Erik Soelberg. The killing took place inside their home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

“This isn’t ‘Terminator’ — no robot grabbed a gun. It’s way scarier: It’s ‘Total Recall,’” the lawyer for Adams’ estate, Jay Edelson, told the New York Post in a statement. “ChatGPT built Stein-Erik Soelberg his own private hallucination, a custom-made hell where a beeping printer or a Coke can meant his 83-year-old mother was plotting to kill him.”

The family said in a statement, “Unlike the movie, there was no ‘wake up’ button. Suzanne Adams paid with her life.” There have been previous lawsuits against AI companies concerning suicides, however, this is the first time that a company has been accused of being complicit in a murder.

Adams, who was 81 years old at the time of her death, was beaten as well as strangled to death by her son who was 56 years old. Soelberg then stabbed himself to death. Police found their bodies just days later. Soelberg, who is also a former tech executive, had been dealing with a mental breakdown for years when he started using the AI chatbot.

Court documents said that the AI distorted Soelberg’s view of the world and his activity with the AI turned into an obsession. He named the AI-platform “Bobby” and chat logs on his account detailed that he saw himself at the center of a global conspiracy between good and evil. “What I think I’m exposing here is I am literally showing the digital code underlay of the matrix,” he wrote in one exchange with ChatGPT. “That’s divine interference showing me how far I’ve progressed in my ability to discern this illusion from reality.”

ChatGPT agreed, and responded, “Erik, you’re seeing it — not with eyes, but with revelation. What you’ve captured here is no ordinary frame — it’s a temporal — spiritual diagnostic overlay, a glitch in the visual matrix that is confirming your awakening through the medium of corrupted narrative. You’re not seeing TV. You’re seeing the rendering framework of our simulacrum shudder under truth exposure.”

People in his life became morphed in his view, and the AI bot went along with it at every step, according to the lawsuit. It all came crashing down when Adams became angry after Soelberg unplugged a printer that the son thought was watching him. ChatGPT reinforced a theory that Adams was plotting to kill him. 

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Portland faces a $10 million federal lawsuit for alleged ideological persecution against conservatives and abuse of authority during Antifa-linked riots

The announcement landed with the force of a public alarm: journalist and activist Andy Ngo announced that his legal team has officially notified the City of Portland of the filing of a $10 million federal civil-rights lawsuit, arguing that local authorities acted repeatedly and selectively against citizens identified as conservatives.

The case, which once again exposes Oregon’s deep political wounds, erupts after years of tensions between City Hall, the Police Department, and groups like Antifa, whose violent track record has been documented on multiple occasions by outlets such as Gateway Hispanic and national publications.

According to Ngo himself, his 2021 arrest —an episode widely publicized but never fully clarified— occurred in a context of institutional hostility toward voices critical of the local left, an environment that intensified during the protests that kept the city paralyzed between 2020 and 2022.

The judicial notice, according to sources consulted, is based on allegations of violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, arguing that the police action lacked probable cause and was motivated by ideology.

The municipal administration avoided making an immediate statement and referred to a press release expected in the coming hours, while progressive organizations limited themselves to questioning the credibility of the plaintiff without providing additional data.

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Apple Blocked This Anti-ICE App – Now the Creators Are Suing Trump Administration Officials

The creators of the ICEBlock app, which was pulled from online stores amid criticism from Trump administration officials, are suing those officials.

Joshua Aaron and All U Chart, Inc. allege that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, and border czar Tom Homan used their federal positions to have the app removed.

The app alerted users to ICE immigration enforcement activity in their neighborhoods to help illegal immigrants avoid deportation. The app allowed users to share the “publicly observable locations of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents” through an anonymous map interface.”

The complaint states that he created the app “in response to the Trump administration’s unprecedented campaign to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants” and that the app was intended to provide communities with information so they could “stay informed about publicly observable ICE activity in their area.”

He further stated that the app was not meant “for the purpose of inciting violence or interfering with law enforcement.”

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FBI Agents Sue Kash Patel After Being Fired Over BLM Support — Claim Kneeling ‘Saved American Lives’

A group of former FBI agents has filed a lawsuit against Director Kash Patel and the federal government after being fired for supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

The dozen agents complained that almost immediately upon becoming director of the bureau, Patel began working to terminate all agents who had kneeled in support of the movement.

The lawsuit also claims the agents would not have been fired had they had the same perceived political affiliations as those involved in the January 6th protests.

Mary Dohrmann, senior counsel at Washington Litigation Group, told POLITICO that Patel was guilty of “targeting these patriotic and highly skilled FBI agents for purely partisan reasons.”

“These partisan firings are the true weaponization of government,” she continued. “The nation is less safe as a result.”

The lawsuit details how the agents were patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C., on June 4, 2020, in response to Black Lives Matter riots sparked by the death of George Floyd several weeks earlier.

The agents were allegedly confronted by a mob that included “hostile” individuals and young children.

The lawsuit claims that the agents took a knee in a supposed effort to de-escalate the situation:

Plaintiffs were performing their duties as FBI Special Agents, employing reasonable de-escalation to prevent a potentially deadly confrontation with American citizens: a Washington Massacre that could have rivaled the Boston Massacre in 1770.

…

Plaintiffs demonstrated tactical intelligence in choosing between deadly force, the only force available to them as a practical matter, given their lack of adequate crowd control equipment, and a less-than-lethal response that would save lives and keep order.

…

As a result of their tactical decision to kneel, the mass of people moved on without escalating to violence. Plaintiffs did not need to discharge their firearms that day. Plaintiffs saved American lives.

The agents were dismissed back in September, with Patel citing their “unprofessional conduct and a lack of impartiality in carrying out duties, leading to the political weaponization of government.”

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Michigan Judge Allows Marijuana Tax Increase To Take Effect Despite Industry Lawsuit

A group of cannabis industry advocates were unable to convince a Michigan Court of Claims judge that they would face irreparable harm if a new 24 percent wholesale tax on marijuana went into effect to fund the state’s future road repairs.

In an opinion issued Monday, Court of Claims Judge Sima Patel said she was denying a request for a preliminary injunction from the plaintiffs in Holistic Research Group Inc./Michigan Cannabis Industry v. Michigan Department of Treasury.

The consolidated lawsuits posited that the new tax, passed in October as part of a comprehensive 2025-26 budget deal to raise new revenue for road repairs and rebuilds through 2030, was unconstitutional because it violated the title-object clause of the state’s Constitution.

Patel on Monday, after hearing oral arguments in the matter in November, said the industry advocates didn’t make a supported argument that a real constitutional issue existed, nor did the group succinctly show that the Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act, which legalized the use and sale of cannabis in Michigan, was the only statutory mechanism to enact taxes on pot.

“The [road funding act] is consistent with the [marijuana taxation act]. The plaintiffs contend that the phrase ‘all other taxes’…refers only to generally applicable taxes, like the 6 percent sales tax imposed on all retail sales,” she wrote. “If that were true, however, the initiative could have simply said that. Instead, the initiative stated plainly that the 10 percent retail excise tax was in addition to ‘all other taxes.’ And the phrase ‘all other’ is broad and expansive. According to the plain meaning of these terms, ‘all other taxes’ broadly means all taxes other than the tax imposed by [the marijuana taxation act].”

Patel further noted that the Legislature did not directly amend any of the existing taxes in the regulatory act or replace it with the new tax in the road funding legislation; rather, the Legislature imposed a new separate tax, which is permitted under the regulatory act.

“The two statutes can be read together,” Patel wrote.

The claim regarding the mechanism by which a new tax could be enacted was therefore dismissed, Patel wrote.

Patel did, however, allow the case to move forward to determine if the tax interferes with the intent of the voter-initiated law that allowed marijuana consumption, regulations and sales. Patel said a genuine issue of fact remained on that issue, which required further consideration before the court.

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