appeal

The U.S. Justice Department moved Friday to voluntarily dismiss its lawsuit challenging the counting of 20,000 ballots in California, arguing the relief it sought is now impossible given Tuesday’s midterm election has concluded.

The Justice Department had sought a court order requiring state and Los Angeles County election officials to set aside the ballots, which it alleged could be from noncitizen voters. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter and a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had both rejected that request, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a Trump administration appeal to those lower court rulings — with no noted dissents.

Carter had ruled that the government’s request was probably unconstitutional, given the Constitution gives states and Congress power over elections, not the executive, and probably ran afoul of federal law barring sweeping vetting of voter rolls in the immediate run-up to an election.

However, he had set a schedule moving forward for additional fact-finding in the case — including by appointing a special master to dig into the data the federal government was relying on to assert the 20,000 voters were potentially noncitizens.

In a filing before Carter on Friday, Assistant U.S. Atty. Julie Hamill in Los Angeles wrote that that court process was no longer necessary, as it would not provide the relief that the federal government was seeking by filing its lawsuit.

“In light of the Supreme Court’s denial, the United States is evaluating how to best ensure that American votes are protected, including by preventing vote dilution by noncitizens. In addition, by the time of this Court’s hearing on Nov. 13 in this matter, California will have already commingled the challenged ballots with lawful ones,” Hamill wrote. “There is then no way to get the challenged ballots segregated. As a result, the relief the United States sought and needed is no longer available — rendering voluntary dismissal necessary.”

Hamill wrote that the Trump administration had sought to “protect American voters and to prevent the irreparable harm of state and local election officials including illegally cast votes in the final vote tabulation,” but had “exhausted its appeals to obtain timely relief” by going to — and being denied by — the Supreme Court.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli’s office in Los Angeles — where Hamill works — referred questions about the filing to the Justice Department.

Kiersten Pels, a Justice Department spokesperson, said the litigation at issue was “moot” but that the Trump administration “is not backing down” in its targeting of alleged noncitizen voters, including in a separate case in which it is still demanding that California “conduct proper list maintenance, including removing noncitizens from the state’s voter rolls — which will be crucial to ensure fair elections in the future.”

Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a defendant in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, another defendant, said he was “pleased that the administration has accepted the clarity of the court findings” against it and ended its lawsuit.

“At each stage of this election, and in response to the Department of Justice, we have been clear that state and federal law sets well-defined standards for verifying and challenging voter eligibility,” Logan said. “Our commitment and focus remain on the fair, secure, accurate, and legal processes we are engaged in to complete and certify the election.”

California Atty. Gen Rob Bonta, in a statement, said that after losing in every court it tried, including the Supreme Court, “the Trump Administration has given up its latest unlawful effort to interfere with California’s elections and disenfranchise eligible voters.”

Bonta added: “Rest assured: California has and always will defend your fundamental right to vote.”

Tricia Webber, president of the California Assn. of Clerks and Election Officials, said state election officials “are very pleased” with the voluntary dismissal of the case — which she said “affirms that our elections are administered with the utmost integrity and care.”

“At the same time, we are under no illusions. We recognize that this issue is unlikely to go away permanently, and we remain fully prepared to continue defending California’s election administration against future challenges,” she said. “We will always stand ready to protect every eligible voter’s right to participate in a fair and secure election process.”

The administration’s filing — three days after President Trump’s party took a drubbing in the midterms — marks a sudden and unremarkable conclusion to an unprecedented court battle in the days leading up to the election, when the federal government sought permission from the courts to force state and local elections officials to set aside votes during an ongoing election.

Carter had rejected the administration’s request for immediate intervention in a blistering Oct. 28 ruling, calling its allegations about the ineligible voters “not credible” and warning that the proposed action could disenfranchise eligible voters and sow chaos in the ongoing midterm election.

“This request violates longstanding constitutional principles mandating that states have control over their elections,” Carter wrote. “If [the Trump administration’s] last-minute request for relief were granted, either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process.”

While Justice Department officials characterized the relief it had requested from the court as “targeted and modest,” Carter had reached a sharply different conclusion — writing that the administration’s demands would “wreak havoc” on an ongoing election and “create a chilling effect on election workers and voters alike, and discount the votes of United States citizens.”

The reliability of the government’s list became a central issue in the litigation. Logan’s office said its review of about 200 flagged voters found that a substantial portion appeared to have been born in the United States, a finding Homeland Security officials disputed.

Election officials elsewhere in California also reported problems with the lists, including names of people who did not appear to live in their counties or to be registered voters. Justice Department officials sent letters to election officials across the state, demanding that they sequester flagged ballots and warning of potential criminal penalties if they failed to comply.

The three-judge 9th Circuit panel that heard the federal government’s appeal to Carter’s ruling — composed of two appointees of President Trump and one of President Biden — came to some of the same conclusions Carter did in a 2-1 ruling. One of the Trump appointees dissented, writing that he would have ruled for the administration.

Carter ordered an expedited hearing on the state’s and county’s motions to dismiss the case and the government’s motion for a preliminary injunction. He ordered all parties by Nov. 6 to submit witness lists, including experts, regarding the reliability of the list of voters and the methodology behind it. He ordered both sides to appear at the Nov. 13 hearing, with submitted witnesses prepared to take the stand.

Ending the litigation now will forestall that process to detail the origins of the administration’s list — which is still being used by federal prosecutors in California to target individual voters for criminal prosecution.

NEW YORK — New York appeals judges grilled President Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors Thursday about his bid to erase his historic hush money conviction, but the court didn’t signal how or when it would rule.

The judges delved into legal theory, presidential immunity and some evidence in Trump’s 2024 trial. Convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to obscure a $130,000 payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, Trump denies any wrongdoing. He has turned to state and federal courts in hopes of unwinding the verdict.

Trump, who denounced the case on social media as recently as September, didn’t attend Thursday’s court session.

Much of the back-and-forth focused on prosecutors’ theory that the hush money was meant to keep unflattering information about Trump away from the electorate before the 2016 vote, and that it amounted to an illegal campaign contribution under the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Trump lawyer Robert Giuffra Jr. told the judges that Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg’s office has no place tying a case to a federal election law.

“We think it’s the most obvious ground for reversal,” he said.

Prosecutors argued that they weren’t prosecuting an alleged federal campaign finance offense, but rather presenting it as a factor underlying what they claim was a Trump-orchestrated conspiracy.

“So are you relying upon FECA in order to prove your falsifying business records [charge]?” Justice Troy Webber asked.

“Only partially,” replied Bragg’s appeals chief, Steven Wu, adding that it was “important only to show that the purpose for the falsifying business records here was to conceal that conspiracy.”

Judges drill down on question about White House conversations

The appeal also concerns whether jurors should have been allowed to hear testimony about supposed White House workflow and conversations — some with then-Communications Director Hope Hicks — and even Trump social media posts during his first term. His lawyers cite presidential immunity for official acts, and they argue his official conduct included responding to the Daniels drama once it became public in 2018.

“Ms. Hicks was serving as a White House official,” talking with the president about how to respond to press inquiries that implicitly concerned his fitness for office, Giuffra told the appeals judges.

Wu countered later: “In this conversation, they were not speaking about a press response. … The president was talking to her about his private opinion.”

The appeals judges pressed both sides about the matter and the specifics of Hicks’ testimony. She told jurors that she asked Trump how he wanted to respond, but as for what he said, she testified only that he expressed relief that the Daniels story hadn’t emerged during the campaign.

Bragg’s office contends that all the White House-related evidence was fair game. The conversations were “unofficial conduct,” some of the other evidence was public record, and some was a general description of office practices, prosecutors say. They maintain that even if some of the evidence should have been excluded, its admission was a “harmless error” that doesn’t warrant overturning a conviction that rested on “a mountain” of other proof against Trump.

Justice Bahaati E. Pitt-Burke wondered aloud about that.

“If you take all of those things cumulatively, right, and there’s a problem with this evidence, there’s a problem with this evidence, at what point … does it stop being harmless error and turn into something else?” she asked.

“It would have to be a lot more than there was in this case,” Wu responded.

Trump’s lawyers also have argued the case was political

While the appeal turns on complex legal disputes, political overtones aren’t hard to find. The very first paragraph of one of the Trump team’s court filings contended that the case was the flimsy product of “immense political pressure” on a Democratic prosecutor to go after Trump — rhetoric that echoes the Republican president’s own oft-repeated claims in the court of public opinion.

The May 2024 verdict made Trump the first former — and now current — U.S. president with a criminal conviction. Though historic, it didn’t impede his return to the White House or subject him to any punishment.

The trial involved $130,000 that Daniels got from Trump’s then-fixer and lawyer, Michael Cohen, weeks before the 2016 election. The money bought, for a time, her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with the married Trump a decade earlier. He says that nothing sexual happened between them.

Trump’s company reimbursed Cohen in 2017, logging those payments as legal expenses.

Trump’s lawyers argue there’s only “weak” evidence that he even knew about Cohen’s dealings at the time. His trial attorneys also said that payments to Cohen were indeed legal expenses, and that any hush money expended on Trump’s behalf wasn’t hidden campaign spending, just an effort to avoid embarrassing his family.

The distinction matters because, under New York law, falsifying business records isn’t a felony unless it’s done with an intent to commit or conceal a separate crime.

While pursuing his state appeal, Trump also has been trying to shift the case to federal court and have it dismissed on immunity grounds. A federal judge said no — for the third time — in August. Trump’s attorneys are appealing that decision, with arguments set for Nov. 16.

Peltz and Sisak write for the Associated Press.

Court rules Patterson will spend the rest of her life behind bars after denying parole.

An Australian court has dismissed an appeal by “mushroom murderer” Erin Patterson against her conviction and ruled that she should spend the rest of her life behind bars.

A three-judge panel at the Supreme Court of Victoria delivered its ruling on Friday. The justices said that Patterson, who was convicted last year of murdering three of her estranged husband’s ⁠relatives with a meal ⁠laced with deadly mushrooms, should not have the chance of parole.

“This offending was extraordinarily cold and calculated, and stands to be ⁠denounced in the strongest terms,” Justice Stephen McLeish, speaking on behalf ⁠of the panel, told the Melbourne court.

“In all the circumstances, after anxious consideration, we have concluded that the case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate ⁠to fix a non-parole period.”

Patterson, then 51, was ⁠convicted for the murder of her mother-in-law and father-in-law, Gail and Donald Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, by serving them a lunch of beef wellington laced with death cap mushrooms.

She was also convicted of the attempted ‌murder of Ian Wilkinson, Heather’s husband, who survived the meal.

Her crimes involved an “elaborate series of deceptions” including falsely claiming a cancer diagnosis to explain the absence of her two children from the lunch, the judge noted.

The survivor testified that Patterson had told her guests she wanted their advice about what to tell the children about her diagnosis.

Patterson was sentenced to ⁠life in prison with a 33-year non-parole period, among the longest terms ever handed to a woman in Australia. She has always denied wrongdoing, saying the deaths were accidental.

Her lawyers had argued that certain evidence should have been kept from the trial, that her cross-examination ‌was unfair, and that placing the jury in the same hotel as other parties to the case compromised the result. Judges found these grounds for an appeal to be insufficient.

She can apply to Australia’s High Court to overturn the verdicts on her sentence and her convictions. The High Court is her last appeal option.

Patterson is only the second woman in Australia to be imprisoned for life without possibility of parole. The first is meatworker Katherine Knight, who was sentenced in New South Wales state in 2001 for the murder a year earlier of her partner John Price, whom she’d stabbed at least 37 times.

Imprisoned “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson on Tuesday suffered a legal blow that ensures he will remain behind bars for at least another decade.

Three California appeals court judges rejected Masterson’s efforts to overturn his 2023 rape convictions and allegations that he did not receive a fair trial, deciding in an opinion filed in the state’s 2nd District Court of Appeals that “judgment is affirmed.”

The decision “ignores the extraordinary new evidence that has been before them for more than a year,” Masterson attorney Cliff Gardner said, referencing statements from “both complaining witnesses that their sexual experiences” with the actor were “both consensual and positive.”

“Danny is serving a life sentence for crimes he did not commit,” Gardner added in his statement. “No one in California — not defendants and not victims who have actually been the victim of a sex crime — is safer by virtue of today’s unfortunate decision.”

Masterson’s legal team is seeking further review in California Supreme Court and exploring additional legal action regarding evidence presented to the jury.

Attorneys for Masterson first filed their notice to appeal the actor’s conviction in November 2023, then filed a 242-page opening brief in December 2024. Key witness testimonies changed over time, the court excluded significant exculpatory evidence and judicial rulings skewed the jury’s view of the evidence against Masterson, his lawyers alleged at the time. The attorneys also argued that “jurors had significant reservations.”

A mix of errors by another defense attorney and a law enforcement investigation heavily biased against Masterson’s faith led to a wrongful conviction, the actor’s attorney Eric Multhaup alleged in another motion filed November 2025. Multhaup said Tuesday in a statement that the appeals court judges’ recent decision “are fundamentally wrong.”

“The Court of Appeal did not address any of the exculpatory evidence that was contained in the habeas corpus petition, and instead justified the denial with a one-paragraph summary of the one-sided evidence presented by the prosecution,” Multhaup alleged. “This cursory treatment reflects poorly on the administration of justice in the Court of Appeal, and will be rectified by a petition to the California Supreme Court.”

Los Angeles prosecutors charged Masterson in 2020 for three counts of rape involving three different women in the early 2000s. He denied all wrongdoing and maintained all sexual encounters were consensual. He also framed the accusations as an attack of the Church of Scientology. The women said they took years to report the rapes to police out of fear of retaliation from the church.

Masterson first went to trial in 2022, but jurors failed to reach a verdict on any of the three counts, leading the case to end in a mistrial. He was tried a second time in 2023 and found guilty of raping two women, both former members of the Church of Scientology. The jury was deadlocked on a third woman’s accusations. His attorneys argued in December 2024 that there was “no physical evidence supporting the state’s theory [of rape]” and the case was a “a pure credibility contest.”

The actor is currently carrying out his sentence at the California Men’s Colony prison in San Luis Obispo. According to a state database, he will be eligible for parole in June 2042, but is scheduled for a consultation in May 2038.

Times staff writers Clara Harter and James Queally contributed to this report.

A federal appeals court Monday denied an emergency request from the U.S. Justice Department to step in and block California election officials from counting about 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship the Trump administration has questioned.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — composed of two judges appointed by President Trump and one by President Biden — ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the request, given that a lower district court has not yet made a ruling on it.

But two of the three judges also wrote separately to make clear they also would have denied the Trump administration’s request on other grounds, if they did have jurisdiction.

In an unsigned order — joined by Judge Mark J. Bennett, one of the Trump appointees, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, the Biden appointee — the court granted a request from Los Angeles County to dismiss the appeal, writing that the Trump administration “failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider” its request for a temporary restraining order barring the ballots from being counted before filing its unusual appeal to the appellate panel.

The court found that the “emergency” the Trump administration asserted was in part a “self-constructed one” and that delays in the district court were partly attributable to its “own delay in filing suit, in realizing that existing California state law governs the issuance and processing of ballots, in recognizing that California has millions of registered voters and processes ballots on a schedule aligned with that scale, and in communicating to the court its desired relief.”

Both Bennett and Sanchez also each wrote a concurring opinion — in which they made clear that they would have denied the Trump administration’s request even if they did have jurisdiction, too.

Sanchez wrote that federal law would bar the court from issuing such a demand on state elections officials so close to an election.

“The United States seeks to have a federal court dictate to California the manner in which it must administer its own electoral process by segregating mail-in ballots and undertaking a citizenship verification process the State has never done before,” Sanchez wrote. “The proposed injunction would transform California’s election rules for an election that is already underway and would cause widespread confusion among voters and election officials, divert election administration resources, and ‘usher in electoral chaos.’”

Bennett wrote that he would have denied the Trump administration’s emergency request for several reasons beyond jurisdiction, including that it would be likely unconstitutional under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which he wrote “confers broad authority only on Congress and the States, not the Executive,” and Congress has not acted to say that California’s existing laws for ensuring only U.S. citizens vote are problematic.

“Thus, under the Elections Clause, the legislature’s statutory scheme remains as the only method to do so,” Bennett wrote.

Bennett wrote that there are existing California laws to deal with the harm the Trump administration claims it is suffering, but that granting its request to intervene could “result in immense hardship” to the state “and harm the public by risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and putting the entire tabulation process in jeopardy.”

Bennett wrote that the Trump administration “offered no workable plan of any kind as to how the remedy it seeks could be accomplished in practice without potential catastrophic consequences to California’s ongoing election.”

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, the other Trump appointee, dissented — arguing the Trump administration was well within its legal rights to intervene, and the appellate court did have jurisdiction to grant its request and bar the state “from accepting and processing ballots likely cast by aliens until their citizenship could be verified.”

“The question — does the federal government have the power to stop this potential attack on the integrity of our elections? Under both federal law and the Constitution, the answer must be ‘yes,’” Bumatay wrote. “Simply, the federal government has a sovereign interest in safeguarding federal elections and ensuring that the votes of noncitizens do not undermine our electoral results.”

The ruling clears the way for the lower court to proceed with a hearing scheduled Tuesday afternoon before U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in Los Angeles.

Carter, an appointee of President Clinton, previously rejected an attempt by the Trump administration to obtain California’s full voter rolls, calling that demand unlawful and a threat to democracy in January. Other federal judges made similar rulings in dozens of states across the country.

The question at issue Tuesday — and hashed over by the appellate court during oral arguments Sunday — is whether the courts should bar the state, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan from processing and tabulating the flagged ballots until they can provide to the Trump administration proof that those individuals are citizens.

The Trump administration has argued in court filings that the federal government is suffering irreparable harm each day such counting is allowed to continue, as once California ballots are removed from their mail envelopes or cast in person, there is “no way to associate the voter with the ballot” or resegregate those ballots from others.

More than 3 million ballots have already been cast in the upcoming Nov. 3 midterm elections statewide, and more than 500,000 have already been cast in L.A. County.

Attorneys for California, Weber and Logan have argued in court filings that the administration’s demands to segregate 20,000 ballots and vet those voters for citizenship with just days to go before the election are impossible to comply with and would cause catastrophic disruptions if elections officials across the state were forced to try.

They have also said the demands are clearly unconstitutional, illegal under state and federal law, and based on federal immigration and third-party data sets that have been shown to be deeply flawed, inaccurate and inclusive of legitimate voters.

While the appellate court’s formal ruling Monday adhered closely to the technical issue of jurisdiction, its conversation Sunday did not — with both Bennett and Sanchez expressing substantial doubts about the lawfulness of the Trump administration’s request, just as they did in their separate concurrences.

Bennett grilled Matthew Donnelly, the attorney for the Justice Department, on how the executive branch’s demands squared with the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly gives states the power to set laws regarding the time, place and manner of elections and Congress — not the executive branch — oversight over those laws.

Bennett said that while the Trump administration is “unhappy” with how California law ensures voters are citizens — namely by requiring that they attest to their citizenship upon registration — the state has the right to determine its election laws under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, and Congress has not challenged its process.

“It seems to me that you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law the California Legislature has adopted pursuant to the Elections Clause,” Bennett said. “How can we do that?”

Bennett and Sanchez both questioned how the appellate court could step in and adjudicate whether to grant the Trump administration’s request to intervene in the state’s election when it is not a fact-finding body, and the district court was never given a chance to develop a record of facts — including around the dueling and contradicting claims about the origins and reliability of the federal government’s list of “likely” noncitizen voters and the state’s claims that an order forcing them to segregate out the votes at this late stage in the election would cause catastrophic harm to the election process.

Carter is sure to pick those issues back up on Tuesday.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport will announce its verdict on the title after it was awarded to Morocco by CAF.

A decision on Senegal’s appeal ‌‌after being stripped of this year’s Africa Cup of Nations title will be made ⁠⁠at the end of ⁠⁠November, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has confirmed.

“This process will require several weeks, with the CAS Award expected at the end of November 2026,” the court said in a statement on Monday.

Senegal are contesting the decision by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to declare Morocco champions, despite Senegal beating the hosts ⁠⁠1-0 after extra time in January’s final in Rabat. Their arguments, plus those of Morocco and CAF, were heard by CAS in Lausanne on October 8.

At the time, CAS said ⁠⁠it expected a decision within days but has now decided to issue a complete ruling, including legal grounds, known as a CAS Award.

Senegal walked off the pitch for 14 minutes ‌‌after a penalty was awarded against them late in regulation time, with several players returning to the dressing room in protest before they resumed play.

Morocco missed the spot kick, sending the match into extra time, where Senegal scored the winner to secure victory.

However, they were stripped of the title two months later after CAF’s Appeal Board ruled that Senegal had forfeited the match by walking off the pitch, overturning the result and awarding a 3-0 victory to ⁠⁠Morocco.

Senegal quickly followed with an appeal to CAS, ⁠⁠which was lodged on March 25 but heard some six months later. The basis of their arguments is that the referee’s decision is final and he allowed the match to be completed.

“I know it’s a long wait for the fans, ⁠ ⁠a few months after the final between Senegal and Morocco,” CAS Director General Matthieu Reeb said outside the hearing earlier this month.

“The facts are set, are clear and the discussions will be on some procedural issues and legal aspects,” he added.

The CAS panel is presided over by French sports law expert Gerald Simon, with the assistance of Italian international law ‌‌professor Luigi Fumagalli and Hamburg-based lawyer and professor of law at the University of Zurich, Ulrich Haas.

CAS decisions are called awards and hold the same value as a national court judgement. CAS awards may be enforced by sports federations or state courts, depending on the circumstances.