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L.A. County is bringing on a retired judge to tackle a $4-billion question: How can officials ensure that real victims are compensated from the biggest sex abuse payout in U.S. history — and not people who made up their claims?

The county has tapped Daniel Buckley, a former presiding judge of the county’s Superior Court, to vet cases brought by Downtown LA Law Group after The Times found nine people represented by the firm who said they were paid to sue the county by recruiters. Four of the plaintiffs said they were told to fabricate the claims.

Downtown LA Law Group, or DTLA, has denied paying any of its roughly 2,700 clients, but agreed to cover the cost of Buckley to examine their cases in the $4-billion sex abuse settlement.

In a letter sent to clients Monday, Andrew Morrow, the lead attorney in the firm’s sex abuse cases, noted there are “additional safeguards” and “vetting protocols” underway following recent reports of paid clients, but did not specifically mention the new judge.

“While we categorically deny this ever occurred, we take these matters seriously and welcome the implementation of additional review procedures to ensure false claims do not move forward in the process,” wrote Morrow, the chairman of the firm’s mass torts department.

On Oct. 17, Dawyn Harrison, the top attorney for the county, requested an investigation from the State Bar based on The Times’ reporting, saying she believed some of the settlement would flow to “the pockets of the plaintiffs’ bar” rather than victims.

“The actions described in the article, if true, are despicable and run afoul of ethical duties of attorneys and criminal law in California,” Harrison wrote in a letter to Erika Doherty, the bar’s interim executive director. “I request the State Bar investigate all of the potential fraudulent and illegal activities described in this letter.”

DTLA declined to comment last week. The firm has previously said it works “hard to present only meritorious claims and have systems in place to help weed out false or exaggerated allegations.”

The bulk of the claims will be reviewed by retired Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger, who will decide awards between $100,000 and $3 million.

The amount will depend on the severity of the abuse, the impact on the victim’s life and the amount of evidence provided, according to the allocation protocol. The money will be paid out over five years unless the victim opts to get a one-time check for $150,000.

If the judges find cases they believe are fraudulent, the county can either resolve them through a $50,000 payment or get them removed from the settlement. The county saves money in that case, but runs the risk of the plaintiff continuing to litigate and landing a larger payout from a jury trial.

It’s unusual — but not unheard of — for a neutral arbiter to be appointed to investigate cases from a specific firm in a massive settlement.

Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Barbara Houser, who is overseeing the $2.4-billion trust for victims of the Boy Scouts of Americas sex abuse cases, said last month that she had asked for an “independent third party” to vet the claims brought by Slater Slater Schulman after finding a pattern of “irregularities” and “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs.

Slater Slater Schulman, headquartered in New York City, represents roughly 14,000 victims in the Boy Scouts case. It also represents roughly 3,700 people in the L.A. County settlement — the most of any firm, by far.

On Oct. 14, Lawrence Friedman, a former Department of Justice attorney who headed up the federal watchdog office for the bankruptcy system, spearheaded a blistering motion asking Houser to reduce Slater’s attorneys fees, which he estimated were at least $20 million. Friedman is seeking to push them out of the case, alleging the firm had “run amok” and “dangled the prospect of lottery sized payouts” in front of clients without vetting them.

“The SLATER law firm has little if any quality controls in place to validate the information in the 14,600 claims other than validating that they were real people who had filed the claim,” the motion stated. “…What SLATER has effectively created is simply a ‘Claims Machine’ designed to spit out huge wads of cash for itself!”

Clifford Robert, an outside attorney who is representing Slater Slater Schulman in its issues with the Boy Scouts cases, said the firm’s priority “has been and always will be securing justice on behalf of sexual abuse victims.”

Friedman, who has been outspoken about misconduct by mass tort attorneys in bankruptcy cases, said he now represents dozens of former Slater plaintiffs. The ex-clients alleged the firm waited more than a year before informing them their cases were undergoing additional vetting and their payments would be delayed. The firm told them this September about the outside investigation, which began in June 2024, according to an email attached to the Oct. 14 motion.

“We now agree that there are procedural and factual problems in some of our claim submissions to the Trust,” the three partners of Slater Slater Schulman wrote in a joint email to clients on Sept. 9. “Because of the problematic claims, we have agreed that all of our claim submissions to the Trust be vetted by an independent third party.”

Both judges who will vet the L.A. County sex abuse payouts work for Signature Resolution, a firm that specializes in resolving legal disputes outside the courtroom with a heavyweight roster of former judges and lawyers. Litigation management company BrownGreer will be the settlement administration arm, responsible for making sure the checks go out, liens are settled and the judges have the records they need from the 11,000 plaintiffs.

An additional 414 sex abuse claims that led to a separate $828-million settlement announced Oct. 17 will be reviewed by a different judge with the money distributed over the course of three years. That settlement, which involves claims from three firms that opted to litigate separately from the rest, is expected to receive final approval from the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The county will give the first tranche of money to the fund administered by BrownGreer in January, though it’s unclear when that money will trickle down to victims. The additional fraud review could slow the process as the judges will need to decide what all 11,000 of the claims are worth before any of the money goes out.

“They should have had their duck in the rows at the beginning,” said Tammy Rogers, 56, who sued over sex abuse at a county-run shelter for children in 2022.

Rogers said she has seen her bank account depleted recently following a shoulder surgery and her daughter’s funeral. She said she’s grown skeptical the settlement money will come her way anytime soon after reading the recent coverage of plaintiffs who say they were paid to sue.

“They should have known people were going to come out of the woodwork and do stuff like this,” she said. “They should have taken this time in the beginning, not in the end.”

Tammy Rogers, one of the plaintiffs who sued L.A. County over alleged abuse at MacLaren Hall, says she’s worried the extra vetting may delay payments to victims.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

The number of claims has fluctuated in recent months as some of the firms have dismissed cases from plaintiffs who died, lost interest in their lawsuit, or stopped responding. Since the Times initial investigation ran on Oct. 2, DTLA has asked for the dismissal of at least 14 plaintiffs, according to a Times analysis of court records.

On Oct. 17, the firm asked a judge to dismiss three people in a 63-plaintiff lawsuit filed April 29 who told The Times they’d been paid to sue the county for sex abuse.

Quantavia Smith, whose case DTLA asked to be dismissed without prejudice, previously told The Times a recruiter paid her to join the litigation, but said she had a legitimate sex abuse claim against the county. She said the recruiter drove her to the office of a downtown law firm and then gave her $200.

The firm also asked to dismiss the cases of Nevada Barker and Austin Beagle with prejudice, meaning the cases can’t be refilled. The Times reported this month that the Texan couple were told to make up allegations of abuse at a county-run juvenile hall and provided a script by someone inside the firm’s downtown office. Both said they left the firm with $100.

The Times could not reach the alleged recruiter for comment.

Austin Beagle and Nevada Barker say they were unwittingly ushered into a fraudulent lawsuit against L.A. County filed by Downtown LA Law Group.

(Joe Garcia/For The Times)

On the morning the story published Oct. 16, Beagle and Barker each received an automated email from Vinesign, a legal e-signature site, telling them Downtown LA Law was requesting their signature on a document.

“I wish to affirm my claim that I was sexually abused in a Los Angeles County juvenile facility, and I was never paid to bring this claim forward,” stated the DTLA declaration, which they were asked to sign under the penalty of perjury.

Both said they did not want to sign as it was not true — and the opposite of what had just been published that morning in The Times. Beagle said the firm called twice that morning to discuss.

“We told them just dismiss it,” said Beagle. “We ain’t talking about it.”

Times assistant data and graphics editor Sean Greene contributed to this report.

After 12 years on the Los Angeles City Council, Curren Price will be term-limited out of the legislative body this coming year.

The candidate he hopes will replace him comes from his staff, his deputy chief of staff, Jose Ugarte, who has been referred to in the past as Price’s “right-hand man.”

But with many months to go before ballots are cast, Ugarte is already in hot water with the city’s Ethics Commission.

According to documents released by the commission, Ugarte has agreed to pay a $17,500 fine for repeatedly failing to disclose outside income he made from his lobbying and consulting firm while also working as a council staffer.

A commission investigation found that Ugarte failed to report outside income from his consulting firm, Ugarte & Associates, for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to the documents.

The Ugarte proposed settlement is set to go before the Ethics Commission on Wednesday.

“This was an unintentional clerical reporting error on my part. As soon as I was made aware, I took full responsibility and corrected them,” Ugarte said in a statement emailed to The Times. “I take disclosure seriously. Moving forward, I have implemented steps to ensure nothing is missed.”

Ugarte said his work with Ugarte & Associates never overlapped with his time in Price’s office. He started working for Price in 2013, but left the office in 2019. He returned in 2021. Ugarte & Associates was formed in 2018 and still conducts business. He co-owns the company with his sister.

The settlement comes as Ugarte’s boss faces his own ethics quandary.

Price was indicted two years ago on 10 counts of grand theft by embezzlement after his wife’s consulting firm received payments of more than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from developers before Price voted to approve projects.

Prosecutors also said Price failed to list his wife’s income on his ethics disclosure forms.

Prosecutors have since filed additional charges against Price saying his wife, Del Richardson, was paid hundreds of thousands by the city housing authority while Price voted in favor of millions in grants to the agency. He also wrote a motion to give $30 million to the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 2020 to 2021, a time frame in which Richardson was paid more than $200,000 by the agency.

Price said he supports Ugarte despite the ethics violation.

“This matter dates back to 2021, when he was not employed by the city, and is clerical in nature,” Price said in a statement texted to The Times. “I wholeheartedly support Jose Ugarte, alongside an unprecedented coalition of elected officials, labor groups, and community leaders who stand behind his character, leadership and proven record of results.”

Ugarte is one of the leading candidates running to represent Council District 9, which covers South Los Angeles. He raised $211,206 in the first reporting cycle of the election, far outpacing his rivals.

One of Ugarte’s opponents, Estuardo Mazariegos, called the Ethics Commission findings “very disturbing.”

The Ethics Commission also alleged that Ugarte’s documents about outside income, known as Form 700s, failed to report clients who gave $10,000 or more to Ugarte & Associates.

Those clients were mostly independent expenditures for local candidates.

His firm was paid $128,050 to help with the reelection campaign of Congressman Jimmy Gomez (D-California). It was also paid $222,000 by Elect California to help with the reelection campaign of Mitch O’Farrell among other clients.

“This proposed settlement raises more questions than it answers: Are these the only payments Ugarte hid? Why was he concealing them from the public? And above all, how did these massive payments in outside interests affect Jose Ugarte’s work as a city employee?” Mazariegos said in a statement to The Times.

Robert Barnett, a Washington attorney who represented powerful politicians and many of the biggest stars in TV news business, died Friday after a long, unspecified illness. He was 79.

Barnett’s death in a Washington hospital was confirmed by his wife, retired CBS News correspondent Rita Braver.

A longtime partner at the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly, Barnett was the go-to lawyer for politicians and public officials moving into private life. He helped procure multimillion-dollar book contracts for former Presidents Obama, Clinton and George W. Bush.

Barnett was a Democratic political insider as well. He would play opposing candidates in mock debates to help prepare the presidential tickets of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000, John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004, Hillary Clinton when she first ran for president in 2008, and Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

“I baited [Ferraro] a lot and she got so angry with me that she frequently walked over to me and slugged me on the arm,” Barnett told CNN in 2008. “So I left the process black and blue.”

Barnett was also Bill Clinton’s debate sparring partner during the 1992 presidential campaign. He also advised the Clintons when White House aide and family friend Vince Foster killed himself in 1993 and when the world learned that Bill Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Barnett’s TV news client list included former NBC News anchor Brian Williams, “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, Chris Wallace, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, and Jesse Watters and Peter Doocy at Fox News. He also represented his wife, whom he married in 1972.

Barnett also navigated Ann Curry’s messy exit from NBC’s “Today” in 2012.

As an attorney, Barnett was known for his ability to come up with deals tailored to the needs of his clients.

“Many of these people who come out of government have an enormous number of offers,” Barnett told the Financial Times in 2008. “The first thing we do is sit down and say: ‘What are your goals? Do you want to live here or there? You wanna make money or have fun?’”

One reason many clients gravitated to Barnett is that, unlike agents, he did not take a commission. They paid a high hourly rate for his services, not the traditional agent fees of 10% to 15% of salaries or book advances.

Barnett’s clients believed he gave them 100% regardless of their stature.

“Bob represented me in my negotiations with ABC and made me feel just as important as his more celebrated clients,” retired correspondent Judy Muller wrote on Facebook. “A really decent, smart man.”

The sentiment was shared by CBS News Executive Editor Susan Zirinsky.

“Every person who worked with Bob knew their secrets were safe,” Zirinsky said in an interview. “He was the ultimate protector.”

Barnett also drew praise from the companies that paid the lucrative contracts for his TV clients.

“His pristine integrity, wise counsel and knowledge of our business were an invaluable resource to me over the course of our 30-year relationship,” Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, said in a statement.

Barnett also represented bestselling authors James Patterson and Mary Higgins Clark.

Barnett was born in Waukegan, Ill., where his father operated the local Social Security office and his mother worked part time in a department store. He majored in political science at the University of Wisconsin and received a law degree from the University of Chicago.

He moved to Washington in the early 1970s. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron White and worked as an aide to then-Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota. He joined Williams & Connolly in 1975, and was made a partner three years later.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Meredith Barnett; a sister; and three grandchildren.

President Trump took his most extensive step yet toward overhauling the U.S. legal migration system, with a pair of proclamations that explicitly favor the wealthiest of the world’s prospective expat workers.

Trump on Friday imposed a $100,000 application fee on the widely used H-1B visa program, a move that would drastically increase the cost of visas heavily coveted by some of America’s largest companies — including in the Silicon Valley — seeking to bring in skilled workers from abroad.

The president also unveiled a “Trump Gold Card” visa program — under which, for the price of $1 million, immigrants could get U.S. residency. Businesses could buy residency permits for $2 million per employee, while a new “platinum”-level card set to be issued soon would cost $5 million and allow the holder to come to the U.S. for up to 270 days a year without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income.

The restrictions and fees go into effect on Sunday.

It all amounts to a plan for a new gilded age of immigration to America, where those with the resources to invest are welcomed along with their wallets — while at the same time new barriers to entry are erected for those with lesser means and others seen as taking away jobs that could be occupied by U.S. citizens.

The pomp with which Trump announced the programs echoed the theme — over his right shoulder as he spoke to reporters in the Oval Office was an image of a gold card with his face on it along with traditional American images including a bald eagle, all in gold.

It’s a stark shift from America’s stance toward immigration historically, which welcomed those of various economic backgrounds coming to the country legally in search of a better life and more freedom.

‘Significant disadvantage’

Yet even while Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick mused about the prospects of a windfall for the U.S. Treasury that could total $100 billion or more, immigration attorneys cautioned that a move of this magnitude would cause major disruptions — several of them potentially very expensive to the U.S. economy.

Cleveland-based lawyer David Leopold warned that Trump’s H-1B changes, including the $100,000 fee, would “effectively kill the program.”

“Who’s going to pay $100,000 for a petition? Unless you want to make this an exclusive program for extremely rich people,” said Leopold, a partner at UB Greensfelder, whose clients include physicians on H-1Bs.

Accenture, Cognizant Technology and other IT consulting stocks hit session lows on Friday on the news of the visa fee.

“This is a senseless, terrible policy for financial services firms that makes American firms less competitive in the global market for talent,” said Alexis DuFresne, founder of recruiting firm Archer Search Partners.

DuFresne warned that while some mega funds won’t be daunted by the prospect of a new six-figure fee to import top talent, “it will have a substantial impact at the margins — with mid-sized firms, smaller firms, and up-and-coming, younger talent at a significant disadvantage.”

“We have had clients who have said in the past, prior to this announcement, that they do not want to have to sponsor a visa. We anticipate that that will become a more prevalent part of our conversations with clients and their goalposts going forward.”

A feature, not a bug

Some of that sentiment, if it comes to pass, may be seen by this administration as an asset rather than a problem.

Senior members of Trump’s administration have repeatedly complained — in blunt terms — that too many immigrants are taking American jobs.

In a fact sheet, the White House said American workers are being replaced with lower-paid foreign labor and called it a national security threat. The dynamic is suppressing wages and disincentivizing Americans from choosing careers in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), the White House said.

Trump’s proclamation does anticipate a scenario whereby it can work around the new costs if they became a major burden, allowing for case-by-case exemptions if deemed to be in the national interest. That provision opens a potential window for certain companies or industries to seek an exception to the new fee.

Nonetheless, the intention to skew the H-1B program toward higher-paying jobs is clear.

Trump also plans to order the Labor secretary to undertake a rule-making process to revise prevailing-wage levels for the program, a move intended to limit the use of visas to undercut wages that would otherwise be paid to workers who are U.S. citizens.

Legal risks

Courts may also scrutinize the expansive new fees.

The H-1B $100,000 application fee in particular is at risk of being struck down as “excessive,” said Becky Fu von Trapp, an immigration lawyer in Stowe, Vt. That’s because federal law allows agencies to charge enough to recoup reasonable costs, and most work visa applications currently cost about $5,000. Even the most complex ones, for certain investment visas, usually run less than $10,000 in total.

The move could also incentivize technology firms and other companies reliant on foreign workers to set up offices outside the U.S. to avoid the application fee and associated hassles.

“Companies will reassess the need of who they really need to bring to U.S. and who can be based in Canada or Singapore, where they still have good technology infrastructure and can work remotely,” she said.

The move may also have a chilling effect on international students seeking admission to U.S. universities, since many of them hope to find jobs through the H-1B process upon graduation, she said.

Congress will also weigh in, Lutnick said, noting that lawmakers must also approve the planned platinum card program. He predicted that could happen later this year.

That’s easier said than done.

Republicans only narrowly control the House and the Senate. Immigration has been a particularly challenging issue to legislate for the GOP in years past, sparking clashes between the pro-business wing of the party that wants more high-skilled immigrants to come in, and another group far more skeptical of immigration as a whole who’ve sought to limit new arrivals no matter where they come from.

What’s more, Democrats are broadly furious about the president’s stepped-up immigration enforcement including aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in major U.S. cities including Los Angeles. As such, they have little incentive to cooperate without demanding wholesale reversals of Trump’s existing immigration policies, which he almost surely wouldn’t accept.

Wingrove and Soper write for Bloomberg. Bloomberg reporters Katia Porzecanski and Hema Parmar contributed to this report.

Are we in for a new age of scripted basic cable television? Given the successes of the old age, which threaded its way between broadcast and premium cable TV, a little bolder than the former, less pricier than the latter, making up what it lacked in resources with invention and charm — producing such shows as “The Detour,” “Halt and Catch Fire,” “Lodge 49” and “The Closer,” to name just a few of my favorites — I’d be all for it.

Premiering Friday on the USA Network, lately devoted to sports, reality shows and reruns, the legal drama “The Rainmaker” is the first fruit of an intentional return to the network’s self-styled “blue sky” era, when its slogan was “Characters Welcome” and “optimism” in storytelling was a stated goal. “Psych,” “In Plain Sight,” “Monk” and “Suits” — whose recent success after being recycled onto Netflix would seem to be a factor in this turnaround — were among the series born in that period.

Based on John Grisham’s 1995 novel, faithfully adapted by Francis Ford Coppola into a 1997 film starring Matt Damon and Claire Danes, the TV “Rainmaker” has been kitted out with some new and altered characters and a novel focus, and in order to keep you on the hook across 10 episodes, it stirs in a case of arson and a serial murderer. (And surely some additional complications — only five episodes out of 10 were available for review, so even though I wouldn’t tell you about what’s coming later, I couldn’t.) Serial killer notwithstanding — nothing drearier than a serial killer — the nuts and bolts and girders and panels of a USA show are here — colorful characters, one part comedy to one part drama, a mystery to solve, and just a tiny bit of sex. (This is basic cable, remember.)

We meet hot-headed good guy Rudy Baylor (Milo Callaghan) and his cheery girlfriend Sarah Plankmore (Madison Iseman), both not long out of law school, both yet to take the bar exam, at a legal-aid event, providing free advice to the sort of people who could never afford a lawyer, wouldn’t know where to start or maybe just want someone to listen to their stories. They meet Dot Black (Karen Bryson), who is very much not over the death of her son while in a hospital whose name I can’t recall but for my own convenience will just call Bad Hospital. Badspital. That the hospital — the Badspital — has offered her $50,000 while their motion to dismiss is still pending, sets Rudy to wondering what they might be trying to hide. Anyway, Dot, whom we’ll see again, finds the offer insulting and also needs an apology.

Rudy and Sarah have both been hired by the 800-pound gorilla law firm Tinley Britt. On their first day, he arrives late to work — and bloody, having gotten into a fight with his mother’s shiftless, but large, boyfriend. He proceeds to get into another fight, abstractly, with senior partner Leo F. Drummond (John Slattery), who fires him. (In the novel, Rudy is merely laid off in a merger — not so dramatic!) Moaning to friend and bar-owning sometime boss Prince Thomas (Tommie Earl Jenkins) that he’s been turned down by every other respectable firm in town, Thomas suggests “a not so respectable one.”

John Slattery stars as Leo Drummond, a senior partner at Tinley Britt, the law firm where Rudy is hired and subsequently fired.

(Christopher Barr/USA Network)

Here things depart significantly from the text, and the fun begins.

Rudy is delivered to the law offices of glamorous Jocelyn “Bruiser” Stone (Lana Parrilla) and associates, located in a partly converted Mexican restaurant — though past the receptionist the only associate in sight is “paralawyer” Deck Shifflet (P.J. Byrne). A purely comic character, Deck has failed the bar seven times but has many useful skills and qualities, not least a flexible sense of professional ethics. He insists on calling Rudy “Boo Boo.” It takes him a minute to realize it, but Rudy has found his people.

Gender flipped from the novel’s J. Lyman Stone, Bruiser (when not in court) favors animal prints, plunging necklines and short skirts. “I only need three things,” she says. “Kentucky bourbon, a bloody steak and a man who won’t spend the night.” You get the picture.

But there’s more to her than that. When Rudy, who has been with Deck trolling the Badspital for clients, suggests he wasn’t cut out to be an “ambulance chaser,” she also has this to say.

“You know where the term ambulance chaser came from? It was used by white shoe firms in the ’20s to crap on any lawyer that wasn’t a member of their club. When the contingency-fee law was enacted, small firms rose up full of attorneys who were just like their clients, the ones on the Statue of Liberty, the tired, poor, the huddled masses — those same people are our clients now, and if you think you’re better than them, you’re not. You are them.”

It’s good to know someone still takes Emma Lazarus seriously.

Among the figures Rudy and Deck encounter at the hospital, or the Badspit — oh, never mind — is Melvin Pritcher (Dan Fogler), whom we have seen in the series’ opening scene, escaping a house fire that kills his mother. There are several things to say about him that probably constitute spoilers, so I’ll just note that though Melvin is quite unpleasant, Fogler is very good.

With Sarah working for the Empire and Rudy embedded with the rebels, their relationship has been engineered by the writers to be problematic, possibly to break down — though each does seem to be trying. (They’re good kids.) She’s got a trust fund; he’s doesn’t own a suit of his own, dressing rather in one passed down from a dead brother. They’ll wind up in court opposite one another like Tracy and Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” for Tinley Britt is defending the hospital from Dot, who has become a client of Bruiser’s firm. Their future together is also potentially complicated by Kelly Riker (Robyn Cara), a woman who lives in Rudy’s building who is obviously being abused, and Drummond’s smarmy lieutenant Brad Noonan (Wade Briggs) — of course he’d be named Brad — who has been assigned to weaponize Sarah against Rudy.

Callaghan gives off a scintilla of Matt Damon vibes, but is his own Rudy, keeping his naive idealist free from leading-man tics. Parrilla finds the balance between Bruiser’s sauciness and seriousness; Byrne plays the clown adeptly; and Slattery, a boss again after “Mad Men,” softens his villainy with some Roger Sterling insouciance.

Developed by Michael Seitzman and Jason Richman, it’s a very watchable show — serial killer passages notwithstanding. There’s nothing fancy in the execution — it’s the opposite of stylish — but everything’s clearly defined and dialed up a step past normal into that space we call entertainment. Welcome back to the blue sky.

A decade ago, Jesus Adan Rico breathed a big sigh of relief. That was when the Chino High School student, a Dreamer, learned an immigration judge had effectively shelved his deportation proceedings. Maria Torres, who came to the U.S. at 2 years old, also had her deportation proceedings paused by an immigration judge because she recently married a U.S. citizen.

Yet just eight weeks ago, Adan Rico — now 29, married with a new child — discovered that the Trump administration had revived his deportation case, even though he has renewed his DACA status at least four times. Torres learned the government wants to bring back her case just as she was preparing for her green card interview.

“No matter what we do, no matter how far we go in school, in our jobs and with our families, it doesn’t matter. It is all hanging by a thread,” he said.

Adan Rico and Torres are among thousands of immigrants who have built lives around the assumption they are safe from being detained and deported. Now they face that threat at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, which is giving new life to administratively closed cases in a bid to step up immigration enforcement.

Some lawyers have received dozens of motions to recalendar — the first step to reopen old cases. If lawyers don’t succeed in opposing those motions, the immigrants could wind up back in courthouses that in recent months have become a hub for arrests.

“It has been 10 years,” Adan Rico said. “And all of a sudden our lives are on hold again, at the mercy of these people that think I have no right to be here.”

DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, flanked by Madison Sheahan, left, and Todd Lyons, speaks during a news conference at ICE headquarters in May.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

When asked about the government’s push to restart old proceedings, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin declined to address questions about the administration’s change in policy or respond to attorneys’ complaints about the process. She released a statement similar to others she has offered to the media on immigration inquiries.

“Biden chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including criminals, into the country and used prosecutorial discretion to indefinitely delay their cases and allow them to illegally remain in the United States,” she said. “Now, President Trump and Secretary Noem are following the law and resuming these illegal aliens’ removal proceedings and ensuring their cases are heard by a judge.”

Attorneys handling these proceedings say the government is overwhelming the courts and immigration lawyers by dredging up cases, many of which are a decade or more old. In several of these, clients or their original lawyers have died. In other cases, immigrants have received legal status and were surprised to learn the government was attempting to revive deportation proceedings against them.

Since the 1970s, immigration judges have administratively closed deportation proceedings in order to ease the massive backlog on their dockets and prioritize more urgent cases. The maneuver essentially deferred a case, but didn’t completely dismiss it, giving both the court and the immigrant wiggle room. The idea was that immigrants could pursue other forms of relief such as a hardship waiver or deferred status. The government could reopen the case if needed.

Across the country, immigration attorneys have received a flurry of requests by Homeland Security’s Office of Principal Legal Advisor to revive cases. The motions, attorneys say, appear similar in language, and lack analysis or reference to a change that prompted the decision. In their motions, Trump administration lawyers argue that the targeted immigrants have not been granted green cards and therefore do not have legal status to be here.

The motions urge immigration judges to use their discretion to revive cases and consider whether a person has been detained or the pending application’s “ultimate outcome or likelihood of success.”

What distinguishes immigration proceedings from cases in federal or state courts is that both the lawyers and the judges are part of the executive branch, not the judiciary branch. They answer to Secretary Kristi Noem and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, respectively.

Attorneys and clients are racing against the clock to submit opposition to these motions. Many have become in essence private investigators, tracking down clients they haven’t seen in years. Other attorneys, who have retired, are looking to other immigration attorneys to pick up their client’s case.

“The court is drowning in these motions because we’re trying to resist these,” said David L. Wilson, an immigration attorney at Wilson Law Group in Minneapolis. He first received a batch of 25 government motions at the end of May — and then they kept coming every few weeks. One case involved a client from El Salvador who had been granted Temporary Protected Status, and whose case was administratively closed in 2006.

Adan Rico, a new father who is studying to be an HVAC technician in the Inland Empire, was stunned that the government was seeking to revive deportation proceedings.

The attorney who originally represented him has since died. “If it wasn’t for his daughter calling, I would have never found out my case was reopened,” he said. “The Department of Homeland Security never sent me anything.”

Attorney Patricia M. Corrales speaks at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles office in April.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

His new attorney, Patricia Corrales, said Adan Rico’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status doesn’t come up for renewal until 2027 and it defers deportation proceedings. But Corrales, who has received about a dozen motions, said it appears the government isn’t even checking whether the individuals are alive, much less their immigration status.

One of her cases is that of construction worker Helario Romero Arciniega. Seven years ago, a judge administratively closed deportation proceedings for Romero Arciniega, after he was severely beaten with a metal sprinkler head and had qualified for a visa for crime victims.

This year, government officials filed a motion to bring back the deportation proceedings against the construction worker, even though he had died six months ago.

“They don’t do their homework,” Corrales said of the government lawyers. “They’re very negligent in the manner in which they’re handling these motions to re-calendar.”

Some attorneys have reported delays in their ability to file their opposition motions because the court is so overwhelmed.

When asked about the backlog, Kathryn Mattingly, a spokesperson for the federal immigration court known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review, confirmed that the court “must receive the underlying initial motion before it can accept a response to that motion.”

Some immigrants now in legal limbo were just steps away from finalizing their green card applications.

Maria Torres, an L.A. County resident and mother of two, said she was only 2 years old when she was brought to the U.S. by her family. She grew up undocumented, and when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program became available, applied to gain work authorization.

But in 2019, at 21, she was arrested on suspicion of a misdemeanor DUI, which put her into deportation proceedings. She took the classes and paid her ticket. With deportation proceedings open against her, she was able to get her case closed in 2022 while she sought a visa through her husband, a U.S. citizen.

Her visa was approved, and with just one interview appointment left, Torres felt blindsided when she received a call from her attorney’s office, saying the government wanted to restart deportation proceedings against her.

“I just felt my heart sink and I started crying,” she said. Her attorney submitted a motion opposing the recalendaring of the case, and they are waiting to hear how a judge will rule. In the meantime, she said, she’s hopeful she’ll have her final interview for her approved visa before then.

“People aren’t getting due process,” said attorney Mariela Caravetta. “It’s very unfair to the client because these cases have been sleeping for 10 years.”

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Mariela Caravetta, an immigration attorney in Van Nuys, said that, since early June, about 30 of her clients have been targeted with government motions to reopen their cases.

By law, she has to reply in 10 days. That means she has to track down the client, who may have moved out of state.

“It’s bad faith doing it like that,” said Caravetta, who accused the federal government of flooding the immigration courts in an effort to meet its deportation quotas.

“People aren’t getting due process,” she said. “It’s very unfair to the client because these cases have been sleeping for 10 years.”

Caravetta has convinced some judges to deny the government motions because the clients are seeking ways to legally stay in the country. In a handful of cases, she hasn’t been able to reach her clients.

The government isn’t making an effort to reach out to attorneys to discuss the cases, as is required, she added. “That would save a lot of time for everybody,” she said. Her clients may have U-visas, which give relief to migrants who have been victims of crime and who help investigators or prosecutors. But the government’s motions say, “These people have not done anything to legalize their status, we need a final resolution.”

Matt O’Brien, a former federal immigration judge and deputy executive director of FAIR, which advocates for stricter immigration laws, said the Trump administration is “enforcing the Immigration and Nationality Act the way that Congress wrote it.”

He questioned why attorneys are complaining about cases being recalendared, saying “it’s akin to a motion of reopening a case in any other court.”

Yet for many immigrants whose cases are being revived, the risks are high. Judges have discretion to deny motions to reopen cases, and have done so in some situations, attorneys say. But judges have also approved the government’s request if there is no opposition from the immigrant or their attorney.

At that point, cases are put on the calendar. If it gets scheduled, and the immigrants do not show up to court, they could eventually be ruled “in absentia,” which would make them vulnerable to immediate deportation and bar them from entering the country legally for years.

It all fits with the Trump administration’s goal of increasing deportation numbers, say many immigration lawyers and former officials.

“They are getting the largest pool possible of people that they can remove, and removing them from the country,” said Jason Hauser, the former chief of staff of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “And what stands in the way from that is a working due process of an immigration system.”

In April, Sirce E. Owen, acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, issued a memo criticizing the use of administrative closure, referring to it as “a de facto amnesty program with benefits” because it offers work authorization and deportation protections. Owen, a former immigration judge, rescinded previous Biden administration guidance that offered a more proactive approach to administrative closures.

Owen stated that, as of April, about 379,000 cases were still administratively closed in immigration court and cited them as a contributing factor to the court system’s backlog of 4 million cases.

In immigration courts in Los Angeles and San Diego, attorneys are already seeing these cases come before immigration judges. Many clients have expressed shock and despair at being dragged back into court.

Sherman Oaks attorney Edgardo Quintanilla has seen about 40 cases recently, including some dating back to the 2010s. Clients, he said, are alarmed not only by the government’s legal maneuvers but by the prospect of entering a federal building these days.

“There is always the fear that they may be arrested when they go to the court,” he said. “With everything going on, it is a reasonable fear.”

James Arthur McDonald Jr., an investor and financial analyst who frequently appeared on CNBC, was sentenced to five years in prison for defrauding investors in a multimillion-dollar scheme, the United States Attorney’s Office said on Monday.

McDonald, 53, a former San Gabriel Valley resident, was the CEO and chief investment officer of two Los Angeles-based companies: Hercules Investments LLC and Index Strategy Advisors Inc.

In late 2020, McDonald adopted a “risky short position” betting against the U.S. economy following the presidential election, with the idea that the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the election would trigger a major sell-off in the stock market, according to the Justice Department. However, when the expected market drop did not happen, Hercules’ clients lost between $30 million and $40 million.

McDonald “solicited millions of dollars’ worth of funds from investors” for the purposes of raising capital for Hercules at the start of 2021 after clients complained to the firm’s employees about their losses. However, in doing so, McDonald “misrepresented how the funds would be used” and failed to disclose the firm’s massive losses.

According to the Justice Department, McDonald obtained $675,000 from “one victim group” and then misappropriated most of the money including spending $174,610 at a Porsche dealership and transferring an additional $109,512 to the landlord of a home he was renting in Arcadia.

McDonald also defrauded clients at Index Strategy Advisors, his other firm, said the Justice Department, using less than half of $3.6 million he raised for trading purposes on personal and other expenditures.

McDonald commingled clients’ funds with his personal bank account and used the money to buy luxury cars, pay his rent, make credit card payments, pay off Hercules operating expenses and “to make Ponzi-like payments” to Index Strategy clients — including paying some of those clients using funds from other clients.

Prosecutors claimed that McDonald caused his victims more than $3 million in losses.

“To his victims, [McDonald] seemed to embody the American Dream,” prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum. “But looks can be deceiving, and as [McDonald’s] victims learned, their trust had been betrayed.”

In November 2021, McDonald failed to appear before the Securities and Exchange Commission to testify about the allegations he had defrauded investors, and remained a fugitive until last June when he was found at a residence in Port Orchard, Wash.

At the time of his arrest, law enforcement found a fake Washington, D.C., driver’s license with his photograph and the name “Brian Thomas.”

In April 2024, a U.S. District judge found McDonald and Hercules liable for violating federal securities law and ordered them to pay millions in disgorgement and civil penalties.

McDonald pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud in February.

He will be ordered to pay restitution in this case before a United States district judge at a later date.

A judge on Wednesday rejected a Trump administration request to unseal transcripts from grand jury investigations of Jeffrey Epstein years ago in Florida, though a similar request for the work of a different grand jury is pending in New York.

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg in West Palm Beach said the request to release grand jury documents from 2005 and 2007 did not meet any of the extraordinary exceptions under federal law that could make them public.

The Justice Department last week asked the judge to release records to quell a storm among supporters of President Trump who believe there was a conspiracy to protect Epstein’s clients and conceal videos of crimes being committed and other evidence.

In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche had asked judges in Florida and New York to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, saying “transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.”

Federal grand juries hear evidence in secret and then decide whether there is enough for an indictment. Experts say the transcripts probably would not reveal much because prosecutors typically try to present only enough material to get charges and don’t introduce the entire investigation.

Epstein, a wealthy financier, years later was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges, and Maxwell was charged with helping him abuse teenage girls.

Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in New York City about a month after he was arrested. Investigators concluded he killed himself. Maxwell later was convicted at trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The case attracted attention because of Epstein and Maxwell’s links to famous people, including royals, presidents and billionaires. It also led to some of the biggest conspiracy theories animating Trump’s base.

The furor over records has been stoked by the Justice Department. In February, far-right influencers were invited to the White House and provided with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified.” The binders contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain.

The department on July 7 acknowledged that Epstein did not have a list of clients. It also said no more files related to his case would be made public.

A two-page memo that bore the logos of the FBI and Justice Department, but that was not signed by any individual, said the department determined that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

White writes for the Associated Press.

Skip Brittenham, a prominent Hollywood attorney whose clients included Harrison Ford, Henry Winkler and Eddie Murphy, has died at age 83.

Brittenham died Thursday, said Ziffren Brittenham LLP, the firm he founded in 1978.

“Everyone in our industry knew of Skip’s legal prowess,” the firm said in a statement. “But some may not have known of his quiet generosity, his ability to find humor and opportunity in the darkest moments, and his unwavering belief that media and the entertainment industry must serve people, not the other way around.”

The firm did not disclose the cause of death.

Brittenham was known in the entertainment industry as a powerful dealmaker. Beyond his starry client list, Brittenham helped to forge Pixar’s initial deal with Disney, was behind the splitting of DreamWorks and ushered Disney’s acquisition of Miramax.

“What amuses me most about Skip is he often represents everyone in the deal,” Ford, who was a client before he rose to fame with “Star Wars,” told The Times in 2005. “And, he does a really good job for everybody … I’ve always walked away from every negotiation and thought, ‘Jesus, how did he get that?’”

Ken Ziffren, one of two lawyers with whom Brittenham founded the firm, told The Times in 2005 that early in their partnership, the two discovered they were wooing the same prospective client, comedian Richard Pryor.

“Skip did not back down,” Ziffren said. “He got Pryor.”

Born Harry M. Brittenham, the eldest son of an Air Force fighter pilot, he spent much of his childhood moving from one base to another. Although he attended Air Force Academy, Brittenham got hit in the eye with a squash racket in 1963. His 20-20 vision — a requirement for pilot training — was gone.

He spent four years negotiating contracts for the Air Force before enrolling in law school at UCLA.

Outside of his professional life, Brittenham was a passionate fly-fisher with decades of experience. He competed in and won several worldwide fishing competitions and practiced the sport across six continents.

The love of nature Brittenham tended to as he pursued fly-fishing led him to serve as a longtime board member of Conservation International, a leading environmental organization that honored him with its Heroes of Conservation Award.

Brittenham was also an avid fan of science fiction, and he authored a sci-fi graphic novel titled “Anomaly” in 2012. Speaking with The Times ahead of the book’s release, Brittenham said he wanted to dabble in his creative side and tap into his childhood love for Marvel and DC Comics to show people he was more than just a negotiator.

“I don’t like to just try things out,” he said. “I like to jump all the way in and figure out how to do something unique and different.”

Although Brittenham is remembered as a tenacious lawyer, he also had a reputation as a family man, often leaving the office by 5 p.m. to be with his wife and children.

Brittenham was married to actor and screenwriter Heather Thomas, and he had three daughters: Kristina, Shauna and India. He is also survived by his brother Bud, two devoted sons-in-law Jesse Sisgold and Avi Reiter, and four grandchildren.

Celebrities are all too familiar with the world of deepfakes, the colloquial term for artificial intelligence-generated videos that depict actors and other Hollywood talent falsely doing or saying things that they never agreed to.

To protect themselves, actors including Steve Harvey, Beverly Hills talent agency WME and studios have enlisted the help of Vermillio, a Chicago-based company that tracks famous people’s digital likenesses and intellectual property online. Depending on what its clients want, it can have the material taken down .

But as AI technology continues to improve and becomes more widely available to the general public, regular people are getting scammed too.

Now, Vermillio says it is offering a version of its service for free to everyone.

The move comes as more and more convincing deepfakes continue to proliferate online, making it difficult for social media sites to police such activity. In 2019, there were about 18,000 deepfakes globally and this year, there have been roughly 2 trillion generative creations, said Vermillio Chief Executive and co-founder Dan Neely.

That leaves average Joes at a growing risk of being impersonated online, with little recourse.

“We can’t wait for governments to solve this problem,” Neely said. “We can’t wait for legislators to solve this problem. We can’t wait for other people to solve this problem. We just said it’s the right thing to do, so we should just be doing it.”

With this move, Vermillo is adopting a classic “freemium” model — offering partial service for no charge and up-selling for additional features.

Here’s how it works.

Using its TraceID technology, the company flags problematic content. For paying clients, Vermillio can send take-down requests to sites such as YouTube or Instagram. Additionally, Vermillio says clients can monetize their data by licensing it.

People who sign up for the free version enter information about themselves such as their name, date of birth and social media handles on sites including Instagram or YouTube.

Then, Vermillio will use that information to build a “likeness model” to scour the Internet for potential red flags involving the user’s identity. Then Vermillio alerts the user to what exists online. For example, if someone has created a fake Instagram account of that user, Vermillio would flag that.

Users are notified of this type of content and can decide for themselves what they would like to allow, or take action to remove. If the user wants Vermillio to request take-downs of the inappropriate content, users would need to upgrade to a paid account, which starts at $10 a month and includes five monthly take down requests.

While many social media platforms give an option to users to flag problematic content, Vermillio said it is faster and more effective than having users go directly to YouTube or Instagram to rectify the situation. It has built a network of partners and can escalate take-downs in as quickly as an hour, the company said.

Vermillio executives said some real life examples of deep fakes include celebrity voices used to raise money for fake charities or terrorist organizations, and high school students creating fake pornography of their classmates.

“It’s affecting regular people in the sense that they’re getting scammed by deep fakes, but it’s also affecting teenagers, so people need to understand where they stand,” said Kathleen Grace, Vermillio’s chief strategy officer. “This is an easy way for them to do that.”

While fake social media profiles have existed for years, “generative AI just poured gasoline on it,” Grace said.

The company said hundreds of people use Vermillio’s services, but didn’t specify numbers. By the end of the year, the company expects to have thousands.

Neely said the company isn’t profitable and declined to share revenue figures. Time magazine reported that revenue from Vermillio’s TraceID has increased tenfold from April 2023 to April 2024. The company makes money through the paid versions of its service and licensing. Vermillio has raised $24 million in funding.

Hollywood companies and talent are navigating artificial intelligence in different ways.

Groups such as performers guild SAG-AFTRA are pushing for more state and federal protections against deepfakes. Some celebrities such as Academy Award-winning supporting actor Jamie Lee Curtis struggled to get a fake ad of her on Instagram taken down showing her falsely endorsing a dental product.

WME announced a partnership with Vermillio last year.

“The scale of the issue is extraordinary, so if you’re a rights holder, just trying to understand how much of these AI outputs are based on or utilized my data, my IP in some way, shape or form, is a massive need,” said Chris Jacquemin, WME’s head of digital strategy.

“They’ve obviously proven that TraceID can protect the most important, most high profile public figures in the world,” Jacquemin added. “Opening it up in a much broader application, I think is a huge step forward in really democratizing how anybody can start to police use of their likeness with respect to AI and AI platforms.”

The government’s admission about sex offender signals a retreat from a narrative once pushed by President Trump’s administration.

A United States government review has found no evidence that sex offender Jeffrey Epstein kept a secret client list, and reaffirmed that he died by suicide in federal custody in 2019, undercutting years of conspiracy theories.

The acknowledgement that Epstein did not maintain a list of clients who received underage girls marks a clear retreat from a narrative once promoted by members of US President Donald Trump’s administration. Earlier this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi even claimed in a Fox News interview that such a document was “sitting on my desk”, awaiting her review.

The memo, released on Monday by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI, stated that a “systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list’.” It also found no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent figures, or grounds to pursue investigations against uncharged third parties.

“After a thorough investigation, FBI investigators concluded that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on August 10, 2019,” the memo said. “This conclusion is consistent with previous findings, including the August 19, 2019 autopsy findings of the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the November 2019 position of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in connection with the investigation of federal correctional officers responsible for guarding Epstein, and the June 2023 conclusions of DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General.”

It concluded by saying that “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted”.

The Justice Department also released 10 hours of surveillance footage from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. The footage revealed that no one entered Epstein’s cell on the day he died by suicide.

‘We were all told more was coming’

Conservatives who have sought proof of a government cover-up of Epstein’s activities quickly expressed outrage at the announcement.

Far-right influencer Jack Posobiec posted: “We were all told more was coming. That answers were out there and would be provided. Incredible how utterly mismanaged this Epstein mess has been. And it didn’t have to be.”

Separately, former Trump ally, billionaire Elon Musk, shared an image of a scoreboard reading, “The Official Jeffrey Epstein Pedophile Arrest Counter”, which was set at zero.

On June 5, Musk claimed that Trump appeared in the Epstein files and later posted a video on X showing Trump at a party with Epstein. These posts, now deleted, were part of an ongoing feud between Musk and Trump linked to Trump’s new tax cuts and spending bill.

What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again … pic.twitter.com/CO9xJz68Tf

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2025

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wrote, “Next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed’,” calling the conclusion “over the top sickening”.

‘Epstein’s crimes and death’

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the Justice Department’s “exhaustive investigation”.

When questioned about the client list mentioned in February’s Fox News interview, Leavitt clarified that Bondi was actually referring to the broader collection of Epstein case files.

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on sex trafficking charges, in a suicide that foreclosed the possibility of a trial.

The Justice Department and FBI’s disclosure that Epstein took his own life is hardly a revelation, even though conspiracy theorists have continued to challenge that conclusion.

In November 2019, for instance, then-Attorney General William Barr told the Associated Press news agency that he had reviewed security footage that revealed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died, and expressed confidence that Epstein’s death was a suicide.

However, Epstein’s ties to the rich and famous have led many to believe, without evidence, that others were behind his death, in an effort to cover up their own crimes.

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.

WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Epstein did not maintain a “client list,” the Justice Department acknowledged Monday as it said no more files related to the wealthy financier’s sex trafficking investigation would be made public despite promises from Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi that had raised the expectations of conservative influencers and conspiracy theorists.

The acknowledgment that the well-connected Epstein did not have a list of clients to whom underage girls were trafficked represents a public walk-back of a theory that the Trump administration had helped promote, with Bondi suggesting in a Fox News interview earlier this year that such a document was “sitting on my desk” in preparation for release.

Even as it released video from inside a New York jail meant to definitively prove that Epstein died by suicide, the department also said in a memo that it was refusing to release other evidence investigators had collected. Bondi for weeks had suggested that more material was going to be revealed — “It’s a new administration and everything is going to come out to the public,” she said at one point — after a first document dump she had hyped angered President Trump’s base by failing to deliver revelations.

That episode, in which conservative internet personalities were invited to the White House in February and provided with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified” that contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain, has spurred far-right influencers to lambast and deride Bondi.

After the first release fell flat, Bondi said officials were pouring over a “truckload” of previously withheld evidence she said had been handed over by the FBI. In a March TV interview, she claimed the Biden administration “sat on these documents, no one did anything with them,” adding: “Sadly these people don’t believe in transparency, but I think more unfortunately, I think a lot of them don’t believe in honesty.”

But after a months-long review of evidence in the government’s possession, the Justice Department determined that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” the memo says. The department noted that much of the material was placed under seal by a court to protect victims and “only a fraction” of it “would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial.”

The two-page memo bore the logos of the Justice Department and the FBI but was not signed by any individual official.

“One of our highest priorities is combatting child exploitation and bringing justice to victims,” the memo says. Perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein serves neither of those ends.”

Conservatives who have sought proof of a government cover-up of Epstein’s activities and death expressed outrage Monday over the department’s position. Far-right influencer Jack Posobiec posted: “We were all told more was coming. That answers were out there and would be provided. Incredible how utterly mismanaged this Epstein mess has been. And it didn’t have to be.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wrote that “next the DOJ will say ‘Actually, Jeffrey Epstein never even existed,’ calling it “over the top sickening.” Elon Musk shared a series of photos of a clown applying makeup appearing to mock Bondi for saying the client list doesn’t exist after suggesting months ago that it was on her desk.

Among the evidence that the Justice Department says it has in its possession are photographs and more than 10,000 videos and images that officials said depicted child sex abuse material or “other pornography.” Bondi had earlier suggested that part of the reason for the delay in releasing additional Epstein materials was because the FBI needed to review “tens of thousands” of recordings that she said showed Epstein “with children or child porn.”

The Associated Press published an article last week about the unanswered questions surrounding those videos.

Multiple people who participated in the criminal cases of Epstein and former British socialite girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell told AP that they had not seen and did not know of a trove of recordings along the lines of what Bondi had referenced. Indictments and detention memos also don’t allege the existence of video recordings and neither Epstein nor Maxwell were charged with possession of child sex abuse material even though that would have been easier for prosecutors to prove than the sex trafficking counts they faced.

The AP did find reference in a filing in a civil lawsuit to the discovery by the Epstein estate of videos and pictures that could constitute child sex abuse material, but lawyers involved in that case said a protective order prevents them from discovering the specifics of that evidence.

The Justice Department did not respond to a detailed list of questions from AP about the videos Bondi was referencing.

Monday’s memo does not explain when or where they were located, what they depict and whether they were newly found as investigators scoured their collection of evidence or were known for some time to have been in the government’s possession.

Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on sex trafficking charges, in a suicide that foreclosed the possibility of a trial.

The department’s disclosure that Epstein took his own life is hardly a revelation even though conspiracy theorists have continued to challenge that conclusion.

In 2019, for instance, then-Atty. Gen. William Barr told the AP in an interview that he had personally reviewed security video that revealed that no one entered the area where Epstein was housed on the night he died and Barr had concluded that Epstein’s suicide was the result of “a perfect storm of screw-ups.”

More recently, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have insisted in television and podcast interviews that the evidence was clear that Epstein had killed himself.

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.

New Orleans Pelicans star Zion Williamson has been accused of raping and abusing a woman who says she dated the former Duke standout and No. 1 overall draft pick from 2018-2023.

In a civil lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a woman identified as Jane Doe provides details of two alleged instances in 2020 during which Williamson raped her in a Beverly Hills apartment he was renting at the time.

“These two incidents were not isolated,” the lawsuit states. “Defendant continued to abuse, rape, assault, and batter Plaintiff in California and other states, including Louisiana and Texas, until the relationship ended in 2023.”

Williamson’s attorneys at Barrasso Usdin Kupperman Freeman & Sarver, LLC, denied the accusations in a statement emailed to The Times on Friday.

“The allegations contained in the complaint are categorically false and reckless,” the firm stated. “This appears to be an attempt to exploit a professional athlete driven by a financial motive rather than any legitimate grievance.”

Williamson’s attorneys said he and the accuser “never dated, but did maintain a consensual, casual relationship.” The firm added that “Mr. Williamson also intends to file counterclaims and seek significant damages for this defamatory lawsuit.”

Williamson’s accuser is seeking unspecified damages for nine causes of action that include assault, sexual battery, domestic violence, burglary, stalking and false imprisonment.

“Our client and we do not want to litigate this case in the press. That’s not our intent,” attorney Sam Taylor from the Lanier Law Firm, which is representing the accuser, told The Times on Friday.

“However, I do say this is a very serious case, reflected in the allegations in the complaint. Our client just looks forward to her day in court where she can talk to a jury of her peers and tell them what happened to her and how bad it was and see justice against Mr. Williamson.”

Taylor said that “as of now,” his client is not planning to file lawsuits in any of the other locations where alleged incidents took place.

The Pelicans did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

According to the lawsuit, the two began dating during Williamson’s freshman, and only, year at Duke, where he played during the 2018-19 season.

“During the course of their relationship, Defendant engaged in a continuing pattern of abusive, controlling, and threatening behavior toward Plaintiff,” the lawsuit states. “His wrongful conduct occurred in Louisiana and continued thereafter across several states. The abuse was sexual, physical, emotional, and financial in nature.”

Williamson moved to Beverly Hills for training and rented a house in the area during the fall of 2020, according to the filing. The lawsuit provides explicit details of two alleged instances in which Williamson raped the accuser, “on or about” Sept. 23, 2020, and on Oct. 10, 2020.

The lawsuit also alleges that Williamson committed many other “acts of criminal violence” against his accuser during their relationship, including strangling her multiple times to the point she lost consciousness, suffocating and/or smothering her, beating and kicking her, threatening to kill her and her family members, and pointing a loaded firearm to her head.

Williamson “was either drunk or on cocaine” while allegedly committing many of those acts, the lawsuit states.

“As a direct and proximate result of Defendant’s conduct, Plaintiff has suffered severe emotional distress, anxiety, depression, humiliation, loss of sleep, and other physical and emotional injuries,” the lawsuit states. “As a further direct and proximate result of Defendant’s conduct, Plaintiff has incurred expenses for medical and psychological treatment, therapy, and counseling.”

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has opened a criminal investigation into Motown singer Smokey Robinson after four of his former staffers accused him of sexual assault and wage theft.

Robinson, 85, was sued earlier this month by three former housekeepers and a former personal assistant who allege that the singer, whose legal name is William Robinson, forced them to have sex with him and also failed to pay minimum wage or overtime pay.

The suit, which was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, also accuses the singer’s wife, Frances Robinson, of regularly screaming at the employees, using ethnically pejorative words and failing to do anything to prevent her husband’s sexual abuse despite allegedly being aware of his actions.

The couple’s attorney, Christopher Frost, has denied the allegations. Details of the Sheriff’s Department’s probe were not immediately provided Thursday.

“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Special Victims Bureau is actively investigating criminal allegations involving William Robinson, a.k.a. ‘Smokey Robinson,’” said department spokesperson Nicole Nishida. “The investigation is in the early stages, and we have no further comment.”

Frost said the Sheriff’s Department is required to investigate the allegations because the women filed a police report after filing the lawsuit.

In a statement, Frost called the police report “a desperate attempt to prejudice public opinion and make even more of a media circus than the Plaintiffs were previously able to create” and said his clients welcome the investigation.

“The record will ultimately demonstrate that this is nothing more than a manufactured lawsuit intended to tarnish the good names of Smokey and Frances Robinson, for no other reason than unadulterated avarice,” the statement read.

The lawsuit states that the women previously had reservations about reporting Robinson’s alleged abuse to authorities for several reasons including fear about immigration status, losing their livelihoods, public humiliation and intimidation by Robinson and his influential friends.

Attorneys representing the four woman — who filed the lawsuit as Jane Does — said they were pleased to learn that the Sheriff’s Department had opened an investigation into their clients’ claims of sexual assault.

“Our clients intend to fully cooperate with LASD’s ongoing investigation in the pursuit of seeking justice for themselves and others that may have been similarly assaulted by him [Robinson],” attorneys John Harris and Herbert Hayden said in a statement.

The civil lawsuit accuses the Robinsons of negligence, sexual battery and sexual assault, false imprisonment, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, gender violence, and a hostile work environment, in addition to labor violations related to wages, breaks, meal periods, and holiday and overtime pay, according to the complaint.

The women allege that the “Tracks of My Tears” singer required them to have various types of sex with him — vaginal, oral and digital — over the years at his houses in Chatsworth, Bell Canyon and Las Vegas.

Jane Doe 1 worked for the Robinsons from January 2023 until February 2024. Jane Doe 2 worked from May 2014 to February 2020. Jane Doe 3 worked from February 2012 to April 2024, and Jane Doe 4 worked from October 2006 to April 2024.

Times staff writers Christie D’Zurilla and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

A Los Angeles construction worker from Vietnam was among 13 immigrants roused by guards in full combat gear around 2:30 a.m. one day last week in a Texas detention facility, shackled, forced onto a bus and told they would be deported to Libya, two of the detainees’ lawyers said.

“It was very aggressive. They weren’t allowed to do anything,” said Tin Thanh Nguyen, an attorney for the Los Angeles man, whom he did not identify for fear of retaliation.

Libya, the politically unstable country in North Africa, is beset by “terrorism, unexploded landmines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict,” according to the U.S. State Department. Human rights groups have documented inhumane conditions at detention facilities and migrant camps, including torture, forced labor and rape.

The construction worker, who has a criminal conviction on his record, had lived in the U.S. for decades and has a wife and teenage daughter. He was arrested after appearing at an annual immigration check-in at a Los Angeles office two months ago and then shuffled around to various detention facilities before arriving at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

In the early morning hours of May 7, he was placed on the bus from the detention facility south to what was likely Lackland Air Force Base. From there, he and the rest of the group sat for hours on the tarmac in front of a military plane in the predawn dark, unsure what was going to happen. The men hailed from Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Mali, Burundi, Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico and the Philippines, the attorneys said. None were from Libya.

“My client and the other men on the bus were silent,” Nguyen said in court files. “My client was extremely scared.”

The plane hatch was open. Military personnel bustled in and out, appearing to bring in supplies and fuel the plane. Photographers positioned themselves in front of the military aircraft.

“Suddenly the bus starts moving and heading back to the detention facility,” said Johnny Sinodis, an attorney for another detainee, a Filipino who grew up and went to college in the United States and also had a criminal conviction.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts had issued a warning to the administration to halt any immediate removal to Libya or any other third country, as it would violate a previous court order that officials must provide detainees with due process and notice in their own language. Lawyers had scrambled to get the order after media reports confirmed what their clients had told them: Removals to Libya appeared imminent.

Sinodis said his client and others were returned to the detention unit and placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours.

In his declaration, he said his client spoke to a Mexican and a Bolivian national who were in the group. Each had been told that their home countries would accept them, but the officials still said they were going to send them to Libya.

It’s been a week since the incident, and the lawyers said they are still fighting to stop their clients deportations to a third country.

The Trump administration deported hundreds of mostly Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador, invoking a wartime law to speedily remove accused gang members. Their deportation drew immediate challenges and became the most contentious piece of the immigration crackdown. Officials have also sent people to Panama who were not from that country.

This month, the foreign minister of Rwanda said in a televison interview it was in talks with U.S. officials to take in deported migrants.

It’s unclear how Libya came to be a possible destination for the immigrants. Two governments claim power in the nation. The Tripoli-based Government of National Unity has denied any deal with the Trump administration. The Government of National Stability, based in Benghazi, also rejected reports that it would take deportees.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that it had information that at least 100 Venezuelans held in the Salvadoran megaprison weren’t told they were going to be deported to a third country, had no access to a lawyer and were unable to challenge the removal.

“This situation raises serious concerns regarding a wide array of rights that are fundamental to both U.S. and international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement. “The manner in which some of the individuals were detained and deported — including the use of shackles on them — as well as the demeaning rhetoric used against migrants, has also been profoundly disturbing.”

Sinodis said his client had already been in custody for months and been told that he would be deported to the Philippines in late April. But that month, he was transferred from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash., to Texas. An officer in Tacoma told him the decision to move him there came from “headquarters,” according to court documents.

On May 5, he was scheduled to be interviewed by two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Texas. He expected to learn of his deportation date. Instead, they handed him a one-page document that said he would be deported to Libya. He was shocked, Sinodis said.

The man asked the officers whether there was anything he or his attorney could do to avoid this. They said no.

Nguyen said his client, who doesn’t speak English fluently, had a similar experience on the same day. The officers handed him a document in English that they said would allow him to be free in Libya. He doesn’t even know where Libya is and refused to sign the document. The officers told him he would be deported no matter what he did.

The next day, Sinodis said, his client’s commissary and phone accounts were zeroed out.

Sinodis finally reached an officer at the detention center who told him, “That’s crazy,” when asked about Libya. His client must have misheard, he said. But his client, who grew up on the West Coast, speaks fluent English.

Then on May 7, as things unfolded, the attorney reached another officer at the facility, who said he had no information that the man was going to Libya, and referred him back to an officer in Tacoma. A supervisor downplayed the situation.

“I can assure you this is not an emergency because the emergency does not exist,” the supervisor told him, according to court documents.

Shortly after noon that day, a detention center officer who identified himself as Garza called and told him he was looking into it, but so far had “no explanation” for why his client was told this, but he also couldn’t guarantee it didn’t happen.

Less than an hour later, his client called to tell him that he had been taken to an air base. He said when he was pulled out of his cell in the early morning, he saw the same two officers that interviewed him and asked him to sign the removal papers.

“He asks the officers, ‘Are we still going to Libya?” Sinodis said. “They said yes.”