Former Memphis officers found guilty of lesser charge in beating death of Tyre Nichols
(Reuters) — A federal jury convicted three former Memphis police officers of lesser charges on Thursday stemming from the 2023 beating death of Black motorist Tyre Nichols, but cleared them of more serious charges that could have resulted in life in prison, local media reported.
All three of the former officers were convicted of witness tampering and one of them was also convicted of a second count of conspiracy to witness-tamper. But all three were found not guilty of the two more serious counts of civil rights violations, Memphis media outlets reported from the courthouse.
The officers still face a potential murder trial in Tennessee state court.
US says it disrupted Russian efforts to hack government agencies
(Reuters) — The United States has seized 41 internet domains used by Russian intelligence agents and their proxies to hack into government agencies including the Pentagon and State Department, the Justice Department said on Thursday.
The department in a statement said it had acted concurrently with a Microsoft effort to take down 66 internet domains used by the same actors. The seized domains were used by hackers linked to a unit of the Russian Federal Security Service.
The hackers had used the domains in a spear-phishing campaign aimed at getting access to information from U.S. companies, former employees of the U.S. intelligence community, former and current Department of Defense and State Department employees, U.S. military defense contractors, and staff at the Department of Energy, the DOJ said.
The seized domains were used by hackers belonging to the “Callisto Group” and its partners, which the DOJ described as a unit within the FSB. The group, also known as “Cold River” or “Star Blizzard,” first appeared on the radar of intelligence professionals after it targeted Britain’s foreign office in 2016.
The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Former county clerk gets 9 years in prison for tampering with voting machines
(NYT) — Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison after being found guilty in August of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump.
At a hearing in Grand Junction, Colorado, Judge Matthew D. Barrett scolded Peters sternly from the bench, telling her he had imposed the severe penalty because she had repeatedly advanced false claims about Trump’s defeat and in so doing become a celebrity among those who denied that he lost the race.
“But you are no hero, you abused your position and you are a charlatan,” Barrett said, adding, “You cannot help but lie as easy as you breathe.”
The sentence was the first to be handed down against a local election official found liable for security breaches of voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems. After Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden, pro-Trump activists across the country sought to gain access to Dominion machines, hoping to prove they had been used in a plot to flip votes from Trump to Biden.
But all of those efforts failed, and local officials in many cases opened investigations like the one into Peters.
Trump moves to toss Jan. 6 charges, citing SCOTUS ruling
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Donald Trump on Thursday urged a federal judge to toss out two obstruction charges central to the case that the former U.S. president illegally sought to overturn his 2020 election defeat, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling raising the legal bar for those offenses.
Lawyers for Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, argued in a court filing that the Supreme Court’s ruling requires U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss charges accusing Trump of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding – the congressional certification of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2021 – and conspiring to do so.
Top Democrats call for resignation of Homeland Security internal watchdog
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Two top Democrats in the U.S. Congress called for the internal watchdog of the Department of Homeland Security to resign on Thursday, after the release of a nonpartisan report alleging repeated misconduct and obstruction.
DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari’s conduct was “evidence that he has seriously compromised the public’s trust and is plainly not fit to serve in a position that requires him to guard the public interest and act beyond reproach,” Representative Jamie Raskin, top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, and Representative Bennie Thompson, the senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a joint statement.
A report released by the independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency said that Cuffari, appointed by Republican President Donald Trump in 2019, lied to Congress about previous investigations into his misconduct, and said he wasted $1.4 million of taxpayer dollars on investigations of former senior staff in personal retaliation suits.
US judge deals setback to GOP suit against Biden student debt relief
(Reuters) — A federal judge has dealt a setback to a legal challenge by seven Republican-led states to the latest student debt forgiveness plan from President Joe Biden’s administration, removing Georgia from the case and moving it to Missouri.
U.S. District Judge J. Randal Hall, based in Augusta, Georgia, took the action on Wednesday, one day before a temporary restraining order he issued on Sept. 5 blocking the administration from proceeding with the plan — a U.S. Department of Education regulation that is still not finalized — was set to expire.
Hall ruled that Georgia, which along with Missouri had led the lawsuit, failed to show it would be harmed by the administration’s plan to forgive $73 billion in student loan debt held by millions of Americans.
The judge removed Georgia from the case for lack of legal standing despite the state’s claim of potential tax revenue losses, and transferred the litigation to federal court in Missouri.
Foreigners flee Lebanon as Israeli offensive intensifies
ATHENS/LARNACA, Cyprus (Reuters) — Foreign nationals from Europe, Asia and the Middle East fled Lebanon on Thursday as Israel’s bombing of the capital Beirut intensified and governments worldwide urged their citizens to get out.
Some countries provided air evacuations, while elsewhere hundreds of people boarded crowded ferries or smaller vessels as bombs fell on the heart of the city.
Israel on Thursday urged residents to evacuate more than 20 towns in southern Lebanon, in an escalating conflict that has drawn in Iran and risks drawing in the United States.