Free Republic

A federal judge in New York has rejected former President Donald Trump's request to move his hush-money criminal case into federal court. "Trump has failed to show that the conduct charged by the Indictment is for or relating to any act performed by or for the President under color of the official acts of a President," Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote in his ruling Wednesday. Trump has pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election. He...

New York State Attorney General Letitia James signed off on a Harvey Weinstein settlement deal that included terms she supposedly promised victims' attorney wouldn't be included. The settlement deal that James approved was negotiated by lawyer Elizabeth Fegan, acting on behalf of multiple Weinstein accusers and is now off the table after it was rejected by Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein on July 14. In his decision, Hellerstein called the deal 'obnoxious' and said that Fegan 'was wasting (her) time.'

Michael Cohen was cut loose from federal prison Friday afternoon — a day after a judge ruled he was thrown in jail as “retaliation” for planning to write a tell-all book about President Trump. Cohen was walked out of Otisville prison in central New York at about 1 p.m., his lawyer, Danya Perry, said. He was picked up by his son and is headed to his apartment in Manhattan. “Mr. Cohen is extremely gratified that the court upheld his fundamental constitutional right to speak freely and publicly,” Perry added in a statement. His release comes a day after Judge Alvin...

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered Michael Cohen, former attorney to President Trump, released from prison, agreeing with Cohen's lawyers that he was wrongly taken back into custody for criticizing the president. Cohen, who was serving a federal fraud sentence, was released on home confinement as prisons were emptied to the COVID-19 pandemic. A week after tweeting that he was finishing a tell-all book about Trump, a probation officer told him he would have to agree to a complete ban on speaking in public, including by publishing a book, as a condition of continued home confinement, according to court documents....

Here's what we know: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for selling U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union after one of the most sensational Cold War-era espionage trials. They were convicted in 1951 owing, largely, to the testimony of David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother. Here's what we don't know: How credible Greenglass' testimony was in court. Greenglass himself spent nearly a decade in prison for his role in the conspiracy. The Army sergeant stole nuclear intelligence from Los Alamos, N.M., and said he passed it on to the Rosenbergs. At the trial, he said Ethel Rosenberg typed...

Not a week goes by that some part of the Left does not hurt America. But in the past two weeks, three examples stood out for the degree of such harm. The first example involved the ACLU, which has threatened Southwest Airlines with a lawsuit. Southwest ordered a passenger off a flight after she refused to cover her T-shirt on which was printed an expletive -- "Fu--ers" -- referring to President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The ACLU position is not surprising. That organization had once defended a high school student whose...

Updated: 06:22 PM EDT Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photos By LARRY NEUMEISTER, AP NEW YORK (Sept. 29) - A federal judge Thursday ordered the release of dozens more pictures of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib, rejecting government arguments that the images would provoke terrorists and incite violence against U.S. troops in Iraq.

NEW YORK - Suggesting the government was acting as if it had something to hide, a federal judge Wednesday gave Washington one month to release records related to the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein chastised officials for moving at a "glacial pace" in responding to nearly year-old Freedom of Information Act requests from the American Civil Liberties Union and four other watchdog organizations. "If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the public should know of our government's treatment of individuals captured and held abroad," Hellerstein wrote. "We are a nation that...