Judge Blocks Texas Investigation of Trans Teen's Parents

A Texas judge on Wednesday blocked the state from investigating the parents of a transgender teenager over gender-confirmation treatments but stopped short of preventing the state from looking into other reports about children receiving similar care.

District Judge Amy Clark Meachum issued a temporary order halting the investigation by the Department of Family and Protective Services into the parents of the 16-year-old girl. The parents sued over the investigation and Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s order last week that officials look into reports of such treatments as abuse.

Meachum wrote that the parents and the teen “face the imminent and ongoing deprivation of their constitutional rights, the potential loss of necessary medical care, and the stigma attached to being the subject of an unfounded child abuse investigation.”

Meachum set a March 11 hearing on whether to issue a broader temporary order blocking enforcement of Abbott’s directive.

‘Unfathomably cruel’

The lawsuit marked the first report of parents being investigated following Abbott’s directive and an earlier nonbinding legal opinion by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton labeling certain gender-confirmation treatments as “child abuse.” The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal sued the state Tuesday on behalf of the teen.

“We appreciate the relief granted to our clients, but this should never have happened and is unfathomably cruel,” Brian Klosterboer, ACLU of Texas attorney, said in a statement. “Families should not have to fear being separated because they are providing the best possible health care for their children.”

Spokespersons for Abbott’s and Paxton’s offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday night. A spokesperson for DFPS said there would be “deliberate discussions” about next steps.

The ruling came as President Joe Biden’s administration announced new steps to protect transgender children and their families in response to Abbott’s order. Biden condemned state laws targeting transgender people in his State of the Union address Tuesday.

“Like so many anti-transgender attacks proliferating in states across the country, the governor’s actions callously threaten to harm children and their families just to score political points,” the president said in a statement Wednesday night. “These actions are terrifying many families in Texas and beyond. And they must stop.”

Meachum issued the order hours after attorneys for the state and for the parents appeared before her via Zoom in a brief hearing.

Paul Castillo, Lambda Legal’s senior counsel, told Meachum that allowing the order to be enforced would cause “irreparable” harm to the teen’s parents and other families.

“It is unconscionable for DFPS to still pursue any investigation or inflict more trauma and harm,” Castillo said in a statement after the judge’s ruling.

The groups also represent a clinical psychologist who has said the order will force her to choose between reporting her clients to the state or facing the loss of her license and other penalties.

Ryan Kercher, an attorney with Paxton’s office, told Meachum that the governor’s order and the earlier opinion don’t require the state to investigate every transgender child receiving gender-confirmation care.

Restrictions meet opposition

Abbott’s directive and the attorney general’s opinion go against the nation’s largest medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which have opposed Republican-backed restrictions filed in statehouses nationwide.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday encouraged anyone targeted by a child welfare investigation because of Abbott’s order to contact the agency’s civil rights office. The department also released guidance saying that despite the order in Texas, health care providers are not required to disclose private patient information regarding gender confirming care.

Arkansas last year became the first state to pass a law prohibiting gender confirming treatments for minors, and Tennessee approved a similar measure. A judge blocked Arkansas’ law, and the state is appealing.

The Texas lawsuit does not identify the family by name. The suit said the mother works for DFPS on the review of reports of abuse and neglect. The day of Abbott’s order, she asked her supervisor how it would affect the agency’s policy, according to the lawsuit.

The mother was placed on leave because she has a transgender daughter, and the following day, she was informed her family would be investigated in accordance with the governor’s directive, the suit said. The teen has received puberty-delaying medication and hormone therapy.

DFPS said Tuesday that it had received three reports since Abbott’s order and Paxton’s opinion but would not say whether any resulted in investigations.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Castillo said he was aware of at least two other families being investigated. He also said some medical providers have stopped providing prescriptions for gender confirming care because of the governor’s order.

Judge Rules Trump, Eldest Children Must Testify in Fraud Case

washington — 

A New York State Supreme Court judge on Thursday ruled that former President Donald Trump and his two oldest children will have to submit to questioning by the state’s attorney general in a civil investigation into potential fraud at the Trump Organization.

Attorneys representing Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and his daughter Ivanka Trump had moved to have subpoenas for their testimony canceled. They contended that it was improper for New York Attorney General Letitia James to be pursuing both a civil and a criminal investigation at the same time. James is cooperating in a criminal case that was brought by the district attorney of Manhattan.

Judge Arthur Engoron said that the Trumps’ legal argument “completely misses the mark” and that the attorney general was within her rights to demand testimony from Trump and his children.

However, while the name of the court on which Engoron sits, the Supreme Court of the state of New York, seems to suggest the ruling’s finality, the outcome is not so certain. The state of New York has two levels of judicial review that are above the Supreme Court — first the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, and finally the Court of Appeals.

This means that the Trumps have the right to appeal Engoron’s ruling, something their attorneys signaled Thursday that they planned to do.

FILE – Michael Cohen, a former attorney to President Donald Trump is seen outside his apartment building, in New York, May 6, 2019.

Case background

The case James is pursuing against Trump has its roots in revelations dating to the closing days of the Trump presidency, when Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress that he was aware of financial irregularities in the Trump Organization’s bookkeeping.

Specifically, Cohen alleged that Trump and Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, systematically under-reported the value of the company’s assets when disclosing them for tax purposes, in order to minimize the firm’s tax liability. Additionally, Cohen said, they would overstate the value of the same assets when pledging them as collateral for bank loans and other financial transactions.

Last month, James submitted a filing to the court listing multiple instances in which the Trump Organization had provided information to different parties in different transactions that was contradicted elsewhere.

In the same filing, James referred to testimony from Weisselberg indicating that Trump kept paper records of his financial transactions, but despite requests from her office, none of those records had been disclosed to investigators.

A raucous hearing

The judge’s ruling on Thursday followed a hearing Wednesday in which the attorney representing Donald Trump, Alina Habba, complained that the investigation was political in nature and ought to be shut down.

More than once, Habba had to be warned to stop interrupting Engoron when he was speaking, and she was also criticized for directly addressing Kevin Wallace, an attorney working for James’ office, a breach of courtroom protocol.

“I want to know, Mr. Wallace, Ms. James, are you going to go after Hillary Clinton for what she’s doing to my client?” Habba demanded at one point. “That she spied at Trump Tower in your state? Are you going to look into her business dealings?”

Habba was referring to a debunked claim that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had somehow conspired to spy on Trump while he was president.

FILE – New York Attorney General Letitia James acknowledges questions from journalists at a news conference, in New York, May 21, 2021.

Unsparing ruling

The claims from Trump’s attorney that James’ investigation has a political taint are based pledges she made as a candidate running for attorney general. James regularly promised to investigate Trump’s business dealings.

In his ruling, Engoron acknowledged that fact, but said that in his view, the significant evidence suggesting potential wrongdoing by the Trump Organization meant that failing to mount an investigation “would have been a blatant dereliction of duty” on James’ part.

“Indeed, the impetus for the investigation was not personal animus, not racial or ethnic or other discrimination, not campaign promises, but was sworn congressional testimony by former Trump associate Michael Cohen that respondents were ‘cooking the books’” he wrote.

Engoron also dismissed the claim by attorneys representing the Trumps that, by forcing them to testify in a civil case, the attorney general would be collecting statements that could be used against them in the criminal probe.

Engoron noted that the Trumps would retain their “absolute right” under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to refuse to answer any questions that they feel might incriminate them. He reminded them that a third Trump child, Eric Trump, had invoked his right more than 500 times in testimony provided in the same case.

Trump, James respond

After the ruling was issued Thursday, Trump issued a rambling statement that repeated the claim that Clinton had spied on him while he was in the White House, attacked James for comments she made about him during her run for office, and insisted there was no basis for either her civil case or the criminal case being pursued by the Manhattan district attorney.

“It is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history—and remember, I can’t get a fair hearing in New York because of the hatred of me by Judges and the judiciary. It is not possible!” Trump wrote.

“Today, justice prevailed,” James said in a statement released by her office.

It continued, “No one will be permitted to stand in the way of the pursuit of justice, no matter how powerful they are. No one is above the law.”

Judge Rejects Effort by Trump to Toss January 6 Lawsuits

WASHINGTON — 

A federal judge on Friday rejected efforts by former President Donald Trump to toss out conspiracy lawsuits filed by lawmakers and two Capitol police officers, saying in his ruling that the former president’s words “plausibly” led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said in his ruling that Trump’s words during a rally before the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol were likely “words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment.”

“Only in the most extraordinary circumstances could a court not recognize that the First Amendment protects a president’s speech,” Mehta wrote. “But the court believes this is that case.”

The order is the latest example of growing legal peril for the former president. Just hours earlier, the National Archives said records found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort contained classified information and that it had notified the Justice Department.

On Thursday, a judge in New York ruled that Trump and two of his children must answer questions under oath in New York state’s civil investigation into his business practices. Another judge ordered that his company’s financial chief be subjected to questioning in another probe by the District of Columbia attorney general’s office. And earlier this week, the firm that prepared Trump’s annual financial statements said the documents, used to secure lucrative loans and burnish Trump’s image as a wealthy businessman, “should no longer be relied upon.”

During a planned rally on the Ellipse just hours before Congress was to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump told his supporters to “Fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He said, “(We’re) going to try to and give (weak Republicans) the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country,” and then told the crowd to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Mehta said Trump’s speech could have directed people to break the law. But the judge dismissed similar charges made against Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and lawyer Rudy Giuliani, saying their speech was protected by the First Amendment. Mehta did not yet rule on another motion to dismiss from Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks, also named in the suits.

The lawsuits, filed by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby and initially by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., argued that Trump, Trump Jr., Giuliani and Brooks made “false and incendiary allegations of fraud and theft, and in direct response to the Defendant’s express calls for violence at the rally, a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol.”

Thompson later dropped out of the lawsuit when he was named to lead the Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. The NAACP continued in his stead.

The lawsuits cite a federal civil rights law that was enacted to counter the Ku Klux Klan’s intimidation of officials. They spell out in detail how the Trumps, Giuliani and Brooks spread baseless claims of election fraud, both before and after the 2020 presidential election was declared and charged that they helped to spin up the thousands of rioters before they stormed the Capitol. Five people died as a result of the violence on Jan. 6, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

They have all denied the allegations.

Mehta said Trump’s efforts to dismiss the case ignored the theory that his words sparked what followed, but that argument was plausible.

“In this one-of-a-kind case, the First Amendment does not shield the president from liability,” Mehta wrote.

Trump Must Testify in New York Investigation, Judge Rules

NEW YORK — 

A judge ruled Thursday that former President Donald Trump must answer questions under oath in New York state’s civil investigation into his business practices.

Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., to comply with subpoenas issued in December by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump and his two children must sit for a deposition within 21 days, Engoron said.

Engoron issued the ruling after a two-hour hearing with lawyers for the Trumps and James’ office.

“In the final analysis, a State Attorney General commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities’ principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so,” Engoron wrote in his decision.

FILE – Ivanka Trump, left, and Donald Trump Jr. arrive on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2017.

Spokespeople for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling, which is likely to be appealed.

James, a Democrat, said her investigation has uncovered evidence Trump’s company used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits.

Trump’s lawyers told Engoron during the hearing that having him sit for a civil deposition now, while his company is also the subject of a parallel criminal investigation, is an improper attempt to get around a state law barring prosecutors from calling someone to testify before a criminal grand jury without giving them immunity.

“If she wants sworn testimony from my client, he’s entitled to immunity. He gets immunity for what he says, or he says nothing,” Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, Ronald Fischetti, said in the hearing, which was conducted by video conference.

If Trump were to testify in the civil probe, anything he says could be used against him in the criminal investigation being overseen by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Trump could invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in a deposition — something he’s criticized others for doing in the past.

A lawyer for the attorney general’s office, Kevin Wallace, told the judge that it wasn’t unusual to have civil and criminal investigations proceeding at the same time.

“Mr. Trump is a high-profile individual, yes. That’s unique,” Wallace said. “It’s unique that so many people are paying attention to a rather dry hearing about subpoena enforcement. But the legal issues that we’re dealing with here are pretty standard.”

Another Trump son, Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization’s finance chief Allen Weisselberg, have previously sat for depositions in the civil investigation — and invoked their Fifth Amendment rights hundreds of times when they were questioned by investigators in 2020.

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., both of whom have been executives in their family’s Trump Organization, said during the court hearing that so far he had no reason to believe either is a target of the district attorney’s criminal investigation.

In a statement Tuesday, Trump railed against what he called a “sham investigation of a great company that has done a spectacular job for New York and beyond” and a racially motivated “continuation of a Witch Hunt the likes of which has never been seen in this Country before.”

Wallace noted the state attorney general’s office was investigating Trump-related matters as far back as 2013, including probes into his charitable foundation and a Trump University real estate training program that started long before James was elected.

In a court filing this week, James included a letter from Trump’s longtime accounting firm advising him to no longer rely on years of financial statements it prepared based on his company’s valuations, given the questions about their accuracy.

Federal Judge Throws Out Oil Lease Sale in Gulf of Mexico

A federal court has rejected a plan to lease millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico for offshore oil drilling, saying the Biden administration did not adequately consider the lease sale’s effect on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, violating a bedrock environmental law.

The decision Thursday by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington sends the proposed lease sale back to the Interior Department to decide next steps. The judge said it was up to Interior to decide whether to go forward with the sale after a revised review, scrap it or take other steps.

Environmental groups hailed the decision and said the ruling gave President Joe Biden a chance to follow through on a campaign promise to stop offshore leasing in federal waters. The decision was released on the one-year anniversary of a federal leasing moratorium Biden ordered as part of his efforts to combat climate change.

“We are pleased that the court invalidated Interior’s illegal lease sale,” said Brettny Hardy, a senior attorney for Earthjustice, one of the environmental groups that challenged the sale.

“This administration must meet this critical moment and honor the campaign promises President Biden made by stopping offshore leasing once and for all,” Hardy added. “We simply cannot continue to make investments in the fossil fuel industry to the peril of our communities and increasingly warming planet.”

A spokesperson for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the agency was reviewing the decision.

Energy companies including Shell, BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil offered a combined $192 million for drilling rights on federal oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico in November.

The Interior Department auction came after attorneys general from Republican states led by Louisiana successfully challenged a suspension on sales that Biden imposed when he took office.

Companies bid on 308 tracts totaling nearly 6,950 square kilometers. It marked the largest acreage and second-highest bid total since Gulf-wide bidding resumed in 2017.

The auction was conducted even as Biden has tried to cajole other world leaders into strengthening efforts against global warming, including at United Nations climate talks in Scotland in early November. While Biden has taken a number of actions on climate change, he has faced resistance in Congress and a sweeping $2 trillion social and environmental spending package remains stalled. The so-called “Build Back Better” plan contains $550 billion in spending and tax credits aimed at promoting clean energy.

In his 68-page ruling, Contreras said Interior failed to consider the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the lease sale, violating the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law.

“Barreling full-steam ahead with blinders on was simply not a reasonable action for BOEM to have taken here,” he said, referring to Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Environmental reviews of the lease auction — conducted under former President Donald Trump and affirmed under Biden — reached the unlikely conclusion that extracting and burning more oil and gas from the Gulf would result in fewer climate-changing emissions than leaving it.

Similar claims in two other cases, in Alaska, were rejected by federal courts after challenges from environmentalists.

Federal officials have since changed their emissions modeling methods but said it was too late to use that approach for the November auction.

The National Ocean Industries Association, which represents the offshore industry, slammed the ruling and called U.S. oil and gas production crucial to curbing inflation and strengthening national security.

“The U.S. offshore region is vital to American energy security and continued leases are essential in keeping energy flowing from this strategic national asset,” said Erik Milito, the group’s president. “Uncertainty around the future of the U.S. federal offshore leasing program” would benefit Russia and other adversaries, he said.

The administration has proposed another round of oil and gas sales in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana and other states. Interior Department officials proceeded despite concluding that burning the fuels could lead to billions of dollars in potential future climate damage.

Emissions from burning and extracting fossil fuels from public lands and waters account for about a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Cruise Ship Changes Course After US Judge Orders Seizure

MIAMI, FLORIDA — 

A cruise ship that was supposed to dock in Miami sailed to the Bahamas instead after a U.S. judge granted an order to seize the vessel as part of a lawsuit over unpaid fuel.

Cruise trackers show Crystal Symphony currently docked in the Bahamian island of Bimini.

Passengers were taken by ferry to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday.

“We all feel we were abducted by luxurious pirates!” passenger Stephen Heard Fales posted on Facebook.

It was unclear how many passengers were aboard, with one news outlet reporting 300 and another, 700. According to the company website, the vessel can carry up to 848 passengers.

The ship was scheduled to land in Miami on Saturday. But a federal judge in Miami issued an arrest warrant for the ship on Thursday, a maritime practice where a U.S. Marshal goes aboard the vessel and takes charge of it once it enters U.S. waters.

Passengers and entertainers said on social media they were surprised to find out about the legal case. One guest posted a letter on Facebook from Crystal Cruises Management that said the change in itinerary was due to “non-technical operational issues.”

The lawsuit was filed in a Miami federal court by Peninsula Petroleum Far East against the ship under a maritime procedure that allows actions against vessels for unpaid debts. The complaint says Crystal Symphony was chartered or managed by Crystal Cruises and Star Cruises, which are both sued for breach of contract for owing $4.6 million in fuel.

Crystal Cruises announced earlier this week that it was suspending operations through late April. Besides Crystal Symphony, it has two other ships currently cruising, which end their voyages on Jan. 30 in Aruba and on Feb. 4 in Argentina.

“Suspending operations will provide Crystal’s management team with an opportunity to evaluate the current state of business and examine various options moving forward,” said the company in a statement earlier this week.