hearings

Oct. 24 (UPI) — Former special counsel Jack Smith wants to testify in open hearings before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees about his investigations of President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, Smith’s lawyers sent letters to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who lead the chambers’ panels. Trump was indicted in two cases: attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and possession of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

On Oct. 14, Jordan demanded that he testify behind closed doors with a transcript available, writing “your testimony is necessary to understand the full extent to which the Biden-Harris Justice Department weaponized federal law enforcement.” Jordan accused him of prosecutorial overreach and evidence manipulation.

But Smith, who resigned from his position before Trump returned to office in January, wants the hearings in public.

“Given the many mischaracterizations of Mr. Smith’s investigation into President Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Mr. Smith respectfully requests the opportunity to testify in open hearings before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees,” his attorneys, Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski, wrote.

Smith will need approval from the Justice Department, where he was employed when Joe Biden was president.

Smith’s attorneys said he will need guidance so he won’t violate rules to guard jury testimony.

“He is prepared to answer questions about the Special Counsel’s investigation and prosecution, but requires assurance from the Department of Justice that he will not be punished for doing so,” the letter said.

Smith’s lawyers also asked for “access to the Special Counsel files, which he no longer has the ability to access.”

“Jack Smith certainly has a lot of answering to do, but first, Congress needs to have all the facts at its disposal,” Grassley told CNN in a statement. “Hearings should follow once the investigative foundation has been firmly set, which is why I’m actively working with the DOJ and FBI to collect all relevant records that Mr. Smith had years to become familiar with.”

Smith issued reports on both cases but the one on Trump’s handling of sensitive documents found at Mar-a-Lago hasn’t been released. Attorney General Merrick Garland, before leaving office, said he wouldn’t release the report because of a criminal case involving two of Trump’s co-defendants was ongoing. But when Trump was elected president again, both cases were dropped.

The president and Republicans in Congress have accused Smith of pursuing politically motivated cases against Trump in an effort to undermine his candidacy for a second term.

But Smith “steadfastly adhered to established legal standards and Department of Justice guidelines, consistent with his approach throughout his career as a dedicated public servant,” while leading the investigations, the letter said.

Rep. Jamie Raskkin, a Democrat serving a district in Maryland, told The Hill that Smith’s offer should be accepted.

“Mr. Smith has made clear that he is prepared to address those allegations publicly, and I can think of no reason to deny the American people the opportunity to hear his testimony, under oath and with questioning from Members of both parties, and to let all Americans judge for themselves the integrity of Mr. Smith’s investigations,” Raskin wrote Thursday.

“There is no reason his appearance should be in the shadows of a backroom and subject to the usual tiresome partisan tactics of leak-and-distort.”

This week, it was reported Trump is pressing for his Justice Department to pay roughly $230 million as a settlement for two investigations. One involved the documents case and the other was ties of his 2016 campaign to the Russian government, which was investigated by another special counsel, Robert Mueller. No charges in the latter were made because of the ability to indict a sitting president.

Smith hadn’t spoken much publicly about his office’s investigations or through case failings.

On Oct. 8, he was interviewed by Andrew Weissman at University College London. Weissman was part of Mueller’s investigations and is now an MSNBC analyst.

“The idea that politics played a role in who worked on that case, or who got chosen, is ludicrous,” Smith told Weissmann.

“The people on my team were similar to what I saw throughout the [Department of Justice] throughout my career,” he said. “Apolitical people who wanted to do the right thing and do public service.”

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) — As the United States faces shifts stemming from President Donald Trump‘s climate priorities and changes within the Environmental Protection Agency, Republican lawmakers held back-to-back hearings Tuesday to challenge climate intervention strategies and EPA enforcement under former President Joe Biden.

The House Oversight Committee hearings unfolded against the backdrop of major Trump administration moves to roll back environmental oversight.

Since January, the EPA has enacted changes that scrap emissions reporting and dismantle research offices, a signal Democratic lawmakers think the agency is prioritizing industry concerns and cost savings over transparency and scientific independence.

On Tuesday morning, the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee met to discuss “Playing God with the Weather-A Disastrous Forecast,” which focused heavily on geoengineering and weather modification.

Later in the day, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement held a hearing on “From Protection to Persecution: EPA Enforcement Gone Rogue Under the Biden Administration,” which focused on instances of the EPA’s involvement in small businesses.

Chairman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., opened the morning hearing by placing modern climate intervention in a long tradition of weather control, from Native American rain dances to Cold War era military projects, but warned today’s techniques of cloud seeding, carbon removal and blocking sunlight could pose unpredictable risks to human health and agriculture.

Greene argued that efforts to fight what she called a “climate change hoax” could lead to reckless global experiments.

“Some scientists think they can predict and control the impact of geoengineering, but even the best scientific models will never be able to capture all of God’s wonderful creation and nature’s mysteries,” she said.

Some lawmakers warned of unchecked experimentation with climate interventions, and the administration has signaled it will not pursue new regulatory frameworks for geoengineering research, but instead emphasize transparency and voluntary disclosure.

This was solidified when a video of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was shared at the hearing. Zeldin explained his commitment to total transparency by promising to publicly release all geoengineering research so that “baseless conspiracies” will be met “head on.”

On Friday, the agency proposed ending a rule that required about 8,000 facilities to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions — a program that provided transparency into the country’s biggest polluters.

In the afternoon, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement looked at the EPA in a different light, focusing on what Republican lawmakers cited as an aggressive policy during the Biden administration.

“Instead of pursuing massive industrial polluters who employ highly paid legal defense teams, EPA under the Biden administration chose to focus on mom-and-pop shops, and with the shops that have limited means to argue their case against the legal might of the Department of Justice backed by the EPA,” Chairman Clay Higgins, R-La, said.

He added: “Often, EPA’s enforcement actions involved raids on shops by teams of armed EPA agents who intimidated small businesses with threats of criminal prosecution.”

The committee showcased small businesses as examples of what GOP
members called EPA’s overreach, including one from Higgins’ home state of Louisiana.

Kory Willis, owner and founder of Power Performances Enterprise Inc. of Baton Rouge, who runs a performance tuning shop, described an almost decade-long legal fight that culminated in a consent decree that nearly put him out of business.

According to an EPA press release in 2022, federal prosecutors described Willis’ company as among the country’s leading developers of “delete tunes” — software that disables emissions controls in diesel trucks.

Court records show his company tuned more than 175,000 vehicles, moving over $1 million in products monthly at its peak, with emissions expected to release more than 100 million pounds of excess pollutants over the lifetime of those vehicles.

Another witness, Eric Schaeffer, former executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and EPA Office of Civil Enforcement director, subtly questioned Willis in his testimony.

“If you’re stuck behind a diesel truck, or a bunch of diesel trucks, in a traffic jam, and being showered with soot, live in an apartment next to a highway or the is city cooked by smog … don’t you have the right to breathe clean air? We used to think so,” Schaeffer said.

In its press release, the EPA said “Diesel emissions include multiple hazardous compounds and harm human health and the environment. Diesel emissions have been found to cause and worsen respiratory ailments such as asthma and lung cancer. One study indicated that 21,000 American deaths annually are attributable to diesel particulate matter.”

In March 2022, Willis and Power Performances Enterprise Inc. pleaded guilty to conspiracy and Clean Air Act violations, agreeing to pay $3.1 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to stop selling defeat devices.

Schaeffer noted that the crackdown on defeat devices did not begin with the Biden administration.

“The launching of this enforcement initiative to crack down on the sale of these aftermarket devices started under the Trump administration in President Trump’s first term,” he said, pointing to EPA guidance at the time that warned of criminal penalties and urged companies to self-disclose violations.

Since then, federal courts have consistently upheld that the Clean Air Act covers aftermarket tampering devices.

Democratic members pushed back on the GOP positions, framing the hearing as not an examination of enforcement tools, but instead as part of the broader efforts for this administration to roll back environmental protections.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., highlighted the dismantling of environmental justice functions, warning that loosened oversight would leave vulnerable communities more exposed to soot, asthma and cancer.

For example, in July, the EPA announced it was dismantling its Office of Research and Development, the branch long responsible for the agency’s core scientific work, laying off many staff.

A new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions will replace it — a change that EPA officials under Trump say will streamline research and save nearly $750 million.

Together, the hearings and EPA’s actions indicated a present and future narrowing of the agency’s enforcement reach, pulling back climate transparency rules and reframing scientific research.

Sept. 3 (UPI) — South Korea’s governing Democratic Party said Wednesday that it will push for National Assembly hearings this month on the troubles facing debt-laden Home Plus, the country’s No. 2 discount chain, and its owner MBK Partners, one of Asia’s leading private equity funds.

Rep. Min Byung-deok of the Democratic Party said that lawmakers should act quickly. He heads the party’s committee designed to protect the rights of economically vulnerable groups.

“We will try to move forward with hearings regarding Home Plus in September. Since the parliamentary inspection is slated for October, this month is the deadline to do so,” Min told UPI in a phone interview.

“We plan to summon MBK Chairman Michael Byungju Kim and executives from both MBK and Home Plus. Toward that end, we will ask for the cooperation of the opposition People Power Party,” he added.

The Democratic Party has accused MBK of driving Home Plus into decline by prioritizing its own benefits over the retailer’s financial health.

The People Power Party, however, has been cautious about the proposal, arguing that the legislature should wait for the outcome of police and prosecution probes.

Against this backdrop, Rep. Min pressed prosecutors to speed up their investigation into the case and arrest Kim.

“The MBK scandal is not just an issue for one retail company. It is a grave crime that threatens the very foundation of our national economy and erodes trust in the financial markets,” the lawmaker commented.

“The prosecution must act without delay to arrest Chairman Kim and other MBK executives to show the public results through a swift and thorough investigation,” he said.

In 2015, MBK acquired Home Plus from Tesco in a $5.1 billion deal. Since 2021, however, the retail chain has suffered consecutive annual losses, prompting it to seek court-supervised corporate rehabilitation this March.

MBK, having waived its rights to 2.5 trillion won ($1.8 billion) in common equity, is now focused on facilitating a sale, though Home Plus has yet to secure a new buyer.

More than 35 years after murdering their parents in a volley of shotgun blasts, brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez are the closest to freedom since they were arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

The siblings — who infamously gunned down their mother and father in 1989 at the family’s Beverly Hills home — will go before a California parole board this week.

In recent years, the brothers have become a cause celebre amid mounting evidence that the slayings followed years of sexual abuse by their father.

A Los Angeles County judge agreed to resentence them earlier this year over the objections of L.A.’s top prosecutor.

Now, if the parole board finds they have been rehabilitated, the brothers could soon be sent home to reunite with the family members who have spent years fighting for their release.

But just because the brothers were resentenced doesn’t mean the parole process will be smooth sailing.

When are the hearings? Can I watch?

The brothers will each have individual hearings. Erik, 54, will go before the board at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday. The hearing for Lyle, 57, will take place at approximately the same time on Friday. Each hearing is expected to last between two and three hours, and the board will likely make a decision immediately, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Parole board hearings take place over video conference. The brothers will appear from a room in the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office and the brothers’ parole attorney, Heidi Rummel, will also appear remotely.

While parole hearings are a matter of public record, CDCR does not live stream the events. A Times reporter will watch the hearing live in Sacramento and publish the results immediately after.

How does a parole board hearing work? Who gets to speak?

The bulk of a parole board hearing involves the commissioners questioning the person who is seeking release from prison. But other parties play a role as well.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, or a prosecutor from his office, will be able to argue against release.

The district attorney’s office filed a 75-page “statement of view” with the parole board which details what prosecutors describe as the brothers’ “shifting stories” about the night of the murders. Such details include their attempts to arrange for an alibi and the fact that they “convincingly and repeatedly” lied to investigators and relatives that the killings must have been a mafia hit.

Hochman and his prosecutors have also attacked the idea that the brothers killed in self-defense. Despite the abuse allegations against their father, prosecutors say there is no evidence that Jose or Kitty planned to kill the brothers on the night of the murders.

Normally, the family of the victim in a case would also be able to speak against release if they so chose. However, the vast majority of Kitty and Jose Menendez’s living relatives want the brothers set free and formed a coalition to advocate for Erik and Lyle years ago. Several of them intend to speak and others have submitted letters in support of the brothers, according to Laziza Lambert, a family spokeswoman.

Milton Anderson, Kitty Menendez’s brother, was opposed to Erik and Lyle’s release but he died earlier this year. His attorney, R.J. Dreiling, said he does not have standing to take part in the hearings and it was unclear what, if any, record will be made of Anderson’s objections.

Why are the brothers eligible for parole? What factors will the parole board consider?

The brothers won their resentencing hearing in May. Former Dist. Atty. George Gascón sought to have the brothers resentenced to 50-years-to-life in prison last year, and L.A. County Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic agreed because Hochman’s prosecutors could not prove that Erik and Lyle posed an unreasonable risk to the public.

Since the brothers were under the age of 26 at the time of the murders, the reduced sentence made them eligible for parole under California’s youthful offender law.

The parole board must consider a wide array of factors, according to CDCR, including an applicant’s criminal history, level of self-control at the time of crime, their behavior while in prison and personal growth over that time, their post-release plans and the facts of the crime itself.

“The parole board must give great weight to the youth of the brothers at the time of the crime, and ultimately decide if they pose an unreasonable risk to public safety,” said Dmitry Gorin, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor.

While Gorin said there is a “strong case” for the brothers to receive parole, he also noted it is rare for the board to grant freedom to convicted killers, especially in a case with the level of brutality seen in the Menendez slayings. The fact that the brothers admitted to wrongdoing in the killings in open court earlier this year might aid them, according to Gorin.

The brothers could face blistering opposition from Hochman and his prosecutors, who sought to revisit the bloody crime scene time and time again during Erik and Lyle’s resentencing hearing.

“We have consistently opposed their release because they have not demonstrated full insight into their crimes or shown that they have been fully rehabilitated, and therefore continue to pose a risk to society,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement. “We will evaluate our final position based on the evidence presented at the hearing.”

The parole board can also consider any violations of CDCR rules in the brothers’ files, and some recent alleged slip-ups by Erik and Lyle have raised the eyebrows of legal experts.

“They have serious rule violations, including fights, including not coming in from the yards when they were told to. That doesn’t sound that bad, but it can be, depends on what they were doing in the yard,” said Nancy Tetrault, who successfully represented Leslie Van Houten, a devout follower of Charles Manson, before the parole board in 2023.

Tetrault also noted that the brothers have been caught with cell phones behind bars, a violation of prison rules that could be problematic for the parole board.

“It’s a very serious rule violation,” she said. “Why? Because that is the connection to criminality outside of prison.”

Both Gorin and Terault said it is unlikely that the board would render different decisions each day. Given they are accused of the same crime, the results of Erik’s hearing on Thursday will likely forecast what happens to Lyle 24 hours later.

What happens after the decision?

If the parole board grants release for one or both brothers, Gov. Gavin Newsom will have the right to review or reject the decision within 120 days. While Newsom hasn’t publicly commented on the case — and has separately considered granting the brothers’ clemency — his track record on high-profile parole cases doesn’t bode well for the brothers.

When the parole board granted release for Sirhan Sirhan — the man convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy in downtown Los Angeles — Newsom overruled them. The governor also overruled the parole board multiple times when they sought to release Van Houten, though his decision was eventually thrown out by a California appeals court.

Newsom declined through a spokeswoman to comment before the hearing on whether he believed the brothers should be released.

If the board denies the brothers, a new hearing can be set anytime within the next three to 15 years. Applicants can petition for a new hearing earlier than that if they argue the circumstances of their case have changed.

“For example, if they completed, you know, an intense class on inside or something like that, and they think that they deserve to be heard within a year,” Tetrault said.

Newsom could also refer the decision to the entire state parole board for a second opinion, as he did in the case of convicted killer Stephanie Lazarus, a former LAPD detective.

The brothers would still have other paths to freedom even without parole. Newsom could still grant them clemency, and a motion for a new trial is still working its way through the legal system.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court Monday again made it harder for Death Row inmates and other criminals to challenge their convictions in a federal court by claiming their constitutional rights were violated by state courts.

The pair of 6-3 rulings, including one in a California case, could speed the pace of executions around the nation. Many inmates have kept their legal cases–and themselves–alive by contesting their convictions in prolonged battles in federal courts.

In one decision, the justices reinstated a death sentence against a Sonoma County man who in 1975 shot and killed his wife. The second ruling involved a Virginia case.

Together, the rulings send a now-familiar message: Convicted criminals should not routinely get a second chance to contest their cases in a federal court.

About 95% of criminal cases nationwide are handled in the state courts. During the 1960s and ‘70s, however, the Supreme Court encouraged federal judges to closely review state cases to make sure that a defendant’s rights under the U.S. Constitution were protected. Inmates took advantage of this protection by filing a petition of habeas corpus to transfer their cases from a state to a federal court.

But under Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the high court has stressed the opposite. Federal judges should not casually meddle in state court matters, the conservative majority has said.

The California case concerned whether an inmate should get a second chance to contend that he was unfairly induced to incriminate himself.

The defendant in the case, Owen Duane Nunnemaker, was sentenced to death for the 1975 slaying of his estranged wife, Alice. Nunnemaker went to her home in Sebastopol, Calif., shot her at close range and cut a phone cord to prevent her children from calling for help. She died of her wounds.

He later claimed he loved her, but was temporarily deranged. Prosecutors, however, sent a police psychiatrist to interview Nunnemaker, who found him calm and rational. During the trial, the psychiatrist gave damaging testimony against the defendant, who was convicted and sentenced to death.

In his appeal in state courts, Nunnemaker said his Miranda rights were violated because the psychiatrist never warned him his statements could be used against him. The California appellate courts ruled that it was too late for Nunnemaker to raise this Miranda issue. His lawyer should have objected during the trial, the judges said.

Without giving a reason, the California Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.

But he fared better in the federal courts. Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit of Court Appeals ruled that Nunnemaker was entitled to a hearing before a federal judge to see whether his constitutional rights had been violated.

The Supreme Court said the 9th Circuit erred in the case, Ylst vs. Nunnemaker, 90-68. The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the federal appeals court should have presumed that the California courts declined to hear Nunnemaker’s appeal for procedural reasons, and the federal courts have no power to second-guess those procedural rules.

In their dissent from the ruling, Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens said, “The Court today continues its crusade to erect petty procedural barriers” to raising constitutional claims in the federal courts.

Monday’s other death penalty case ruling was written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, herself a former state judge. She rejected the claim of a Virginia Death Row inmate that his initial appeal of his conviction still should be considered by that state’s court system, even though his lawyer was three days late in filing it.

The case “concerns the respect the federal courts owe the states,” O’Connor said. Because the state rules forbid the consideration of a late appeal, the federal courts must do the same, she said in Coleman vs. Thompson, 89-7662.

Law enforcement spokesmen praised the rulings for upholding valid criminal convictions. The decisions mean that an old legal challenge “cannot be resuscitated by some sympathetic federal judge,” said Charles Hobson of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento. But Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), whose House subcommittee is considering the federal habeas corpus laws, lambasted the court. The decisions “force innocent prisoners to pay the ultimate price for the errors of their lawyers in a state court,” Edwards said.