lawyer

NEW YORK — Billionaire Leon Black has filed a federal defamation lawsuit against Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) for public comments the Democratic congressman made tying him to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The suit, filed Wednesday, comes less than two months after the House approved a resolution holding Black in contempt of Congress for defying the Oversight Committee’s subpoenas in its investigation into Epstein.

In June, Black appeared for a voluntary interview at the committee during which he denied any knowledge of Epstein’s sex trafficking network.

Weeks later, Garcia said during a TV interview that “Leon Black is at the center of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes” and that Black “was one of the last people to actually interact” with Epstein before he committed suicide in prison.

In addition, Garcia said that he had “talked to survivors that have credibly named Leon Black as someone that was involved in direct abuse of women and was directly involved” with Epstein.

Those statements were false and were made maliciously, Black asserts through his lawyers. The defamation lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York seeks a jury trial and $7.25 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

“Congressman Garcia’s knowing lies have caused real and significant ongoing harm to Mr. Black. His physical safety has been threatened, he has received a barrage of hateful calls, emails, and social media posts, and his business and philanthropic endeavors have suffered,” the filing states.

Garcia’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.

In September, Garcia called the contempt resolution against Black “an important step toward justice and accountability.”

Black had refused to respond to subpoenas asking him to appear and to turn over any potential nondisclosure agreements involving the investigation into Epstein.

Black’s lawyers have repeatedly denounced the Oversight Committee’s pursuit of the former head of a private equity firm as an abuse of congressional power. They have maintained he had no knowledge of any of Epstein’s criminal conduct.

Black was among several prominent figures, including Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, who had been asked to appear as part of the Oversight Committee’s long-running probe of Epstein. Survivors of Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse have told personal stories of being young women in a trafficking enterprise organized by Epstein and his colleague Ghislaine Maxwell.

My fellow Californians, let us begin with an intelligence test.

Our great state has been voting since early October. Folks have been mailing in their ballots, dropping them off at collection sites and even showing up at in-person centers.

So raise your hand if you know — or even just assume — elections officials have been doing something with those ballots as they arrive, other than just throwing them in a pile.

Congratulations, hand-raisers. You are now officially smarter than the entire U.S. Department of Justice. Or at least more honest.

On Sunday, the lawyers for the DOJ managed to get a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to convene a rare emergency hearing because, OMG, people are actually voting and California is processing ballots!

Who could have possibly known?

Even though it’s literally law that counties count ballots in a timely manner; even though it’s happened in every other election; even though the daily tallies of how many ballots are received are posted online by the secretary of State; even though there are live camera feeds of ballots being processed in Los Angeles — somehow the U.S. government didn’t know this normal election procedure was happening, it claimed.

It wasn’t until late Friday, when DOJ lawyers read a filing by California DOJ lawyers laying out that L.A. is, like, actually opening mail-in ballots, that the U.S. DOJ realized that ballots are being opened. About 600,000 so far in L.A.

That seemed “absurd on its face,” argued California Deputy Solicitor Gen. Samuel P. Siegel.

Armed with this previously unknowable information, Trump’s lawyers were begging the appeals court to take their flimsy, constitutionally questionable case away from the judge who had already promised to rule on their requests on Tuesday and immediately give them an injunction to further their election conspiracy claims.

Most folks are aware of the background of this drama, but here’s the quick recap.

President Trump for years has falsely but incessantly claimed that Democrats are colluding with undocumented people to help them sneak into the country in exchange for illegally voting in mass numbers for Democrats. This is not happening, but the president is obsessed with this conspiracy, so much so that he is weaponizing the Department of Justice to attack states, California in particular, in a bid to prove his delusions correct, and perhaps as a bonus, undermine democracy.

A few months ago, the DOJ came to the state of California and claimed it had a list of 190,000 people it believed were illegally registered to vote. That list has since dropped to 20,000. But with all the investigative power of the government hard at work on this, only 28 people in California have been indicted by the feds during this no-holds-barred effort, and it looks as though not all of those cases will hold up.

Undeterred, Trump lawyers tried to get a California judge to order the state (and Los Angeles) to set aside ballots that it claims to have doubts about. They asked the judge in that case for a temporary restraining order forcing L.A. County to do that, and the judge agreed to rule on that request early next week, in an already-expedited fashion.

But then the Trump lawyers learned about all that ballot processing and demanded the judge instead rule by Saturday afternoon — though the reasoning here seems iffy. When the federal judge assigned to the case didn’t rule by Saturday, an absurd ask that didn’t even allow enough time for lawyers to file briefs, the feds ran to the 9th Circuit, claiming that failing to rule on Saturday was a de facto denial of their request.

Basically, it seems the Trump lawyers were arguing two things. First, that once ballots are counted, they can’t be uncounted, and if there are illegal ballots, that hurts all voters. Sure, OK.

But again, there is no evidence this is happening in any widespread fashion, and the lists of potential vote scofflaws compiled by the government have been shown to be error-ridden. They may also involve the use of a mysterious non-government “third party” to gather the information that not even the Trump lawyers could identify Sunday.

DOJ lawyers also claimed they had just learned that once a ballot is taken out of the envelope, there was no way to reconnect that ballot to the voter who cast it — because our votes are anonymous. Therefore, the 20,000 ballots had to be grabbed before they were separated from the documents inside.

The lawyers did not explain why they needed to know how a person voted to confirm they illegally voted. The envelopes are retained by county elections officials, but apparently the Trump lawyers feel it’s critical to tie them to particular votes.

But here’s the thing — there are simply not enough illegal voters to sway a Los Angeles election, or a California one for that matter. We have a system to ferrets out problematic ballots right now, and a separate criminal system that can hold illegal voters accountable. Two weeks before an election isn’t a time to demand ballots be withheld — unless you’re trying to undermine trust.

The appellate judges did not seem impressed by the federal laywers’ arguments, questioning more than once if the 9th Circuit even had jurisdiction since states are in charge of elections, not the federal government. There was even some reading of the 10th Amendment. You know, the one the don’t-tread-on-me types love that reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States.”

We should expect a ruling sooner rather than later, but the real question remains, why the emergency? The DOJ is involved in another voting lawsuit in Washington, D.C., where the plaintiffs, led by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, have asked for a restraining order of their own stopping the government from creating national lists of who it thinks should vote, and using janky, secretive information gathering to do it.

It’s also true that the original case was reassigned from a Trump-appointed judge to one appointed by Bill Clinton. There has been speculation the switch may have been viewed unfavorably by the feds, though the Clinton-appointed judge, David O. Carter, was given the case because of his experience in the subject matter.

The D.C. restraining order could be decided in the next few days. I’m not saying the cases are related, or that the judge should or does matter, but the Trump DOJ’s argument in California is basically that its list of 20,000 is really solid, reliable information.

If the D.C. federal judge rules first that the government information gathering is potentially both an overreach and sloppy, it makes it that much harder for another judge, or the appellate court for that matter, to rule that the list is so critical that they must step in.

So maybe there is an emergency.

Just not the one the government is claiming.

It was less than a month before the Nov. 3 election when Los Angeles city attorney front-runner Marissa Roy realized she’d missed her lucky manicure.

A deputy attorney general in the California Department of Justice, she had scarcely slept since her team clinched its historic $17-billion settlement with Meta in August. She’d been canvassing hundreds of voters and sounding out scores of deputy city attorneys in her bid to transform the troubled office where she’d launched her career in 2017 into the “largest public interest law firm” in L.A.

Between filming TikTok spots and prepping for formal debates, Roy has been fine-tuning her plans to avenge exploited tenants and claw back stolen wages, tame runaway civil liability, protect victims of child abuse and domestic violence, and join other elected attorneys in lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Nails didn’t make the cut.

“There’s just been too much to do,” Roy said of the chrome gel ritual she inaugurated as a volunteer for Eunisses Hernandez in 2022.

Marissa Roy outside L.A. City Hall. “I wanted the slogan ‘let’s sue it’ — that was violently nixed,” she said of her campaign.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Seen one way, Roy’s talismanic manicure is an object lesson for her fiercest critics: all flash and no substance, evidence the 34-year-old lacks the “gravitas” to be among the state’s most powerful elected lawyers.

But like the iridescent glitter in her campaign-matched chrome polish, the meaning shifts with the viewer’s perspective.

To supporters on the city’s restive left and the clique of California city attorneys eager to add Roy to their group chat, it’s a winking show of solidarity burnished through years of knocking on doors for fellow up-and-coming progressives. It was metallic blue for Hernandez, silver for Ysabel Jurado and ultraviolet for her own historic primary upset in June. Her backers see fierce loyalty reflected in the polish, a ritual she started while hunting salon wage thieves to sue.

“I wanted the slogan ‘let’s sue it’ — that was violently nixed,” Roy said of her campaign.

With her Democratic Socialists of America sass, bright amethyst blazers and Bollywood needle drops on Instagram, the lifelong Angeleno cuts a stark contrast to her rival, Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, 58, who leapfrogged to a second-place finish in the primaries amid a stoic, law-and-order campaign that sometimes slipped into Spencer Pratt-style dystopian imagery.

McKinney’s boosters point to his extraordinary biography — from penniless orphan to director of special prosecutions in the country’s largest district attorney’s office — and celebrated courtroom prowess as evidence he is better suited to handle the 120,000 violations referred to the city attorney for potential charges every year.

“John has the experience, stature, reputation, and gravitas to do the job and will be both effective and respected,” said former Los Angeles City Atty. Burt Pines. “I do not have the same confidence in her.”

Campaign materials for the Los Angeles city attorney candidate at a canvassing event in Silverlake.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Roy’s allies counter that prosecuting misdemeanors is only a third of the city attorney’s job — and typically the less complex part. Whereas McKinney has never worked a civil case, Roy has managed multicity litigation and shares the credit for legal victories no attorney could secure alone. In the Meta case, Roy and her team had argued that the social media giant had intentionally designed its products to hook young children and repeatedly misled the public about known risks.

“She was one of the original four team members in California that stayed up until 2 a.m. filing the [Meta] complaint,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. “She helped develop our legal strategy, particularly our deception theory, which was our core theory of legal liability for the case.”

Similarly, while McKinney’s camp paints a lawman of singular personal ability, Roy supporters describe her as brilliant, driven, and eager to lift the best and brightest around her.

“She is tenacious and works around the clock,” said San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu.

She’s also infamously bubbly: When a canvasser door-knocked 9th Circuit Judge Richard Paez, for whom Roy had clerked, he reportedly asked the volunteer to give her a hug.

“She has a natural enthusiasm about her that is infectious,” said Mark Ramos, chair of Los Angeles County Democratic Party. “She’s [always] shown up, and showing up matters.”

Which matters more — individual virtue or collaborative ingenuity — now in effect divides the race for the most abstruse job in local politics: Four of L.A’s former city attorneys have endorsed McKinney, while California’s current top elected lawyers have largely lined up behind Roy.

A head-to-head match with McKinney was not what Roy envisioned last year when she launched her campaign to unseat the incumbent city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto. After charming L.A.’s major power brokers, she had hoped to win the primary outright and avoid a runoff so she could focus exclusively on the Meta trial in August.

“I had been planning for things to end in June,” she said.

Feldstein Soto was bogged down by scandal and soaring civil liability costs for the city. She also faced criticism for ducking challenges to President Trump’s policies, including the deployment of military troops to Los Angeles last year, a fight the city joined but did not lead.

By early spring, Roy had racked up endorsements from the state’s legal elites and leftist kingmaker Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). She earned the imprimatur of the city’s powerful Democratic clubs and its influential labor unions, while enjoying widespread support from a democratic socialist base.

Marissa Roy, left, candidate for Los Angeles city attorney, and Alyssa Acevedo, with Service Employees International Union canvass in Silverlake.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

L.A. voters want “the transformational leadership that they’re seeing in [New York Mayor Zohran] Mamdani, and also in Mayor [Daniel] Lurie in San Francisco,” said L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, a longtime friend of Roy’s and among her earliest endorsers. “Angelenos are increasingly impatient in wanting to see that change come to their city, too.”

Then, in April, Feldstein Soto slipped from unpopular to politically radioactive after hackers stole thousands of LAPD files from her office. That inspired a late-breaking police union endorsement and a surge of corporate cash for McKinney, boosting him to a second-place finish and knocking out Feldstein Soto in a historic rout.

McKinney touts the city attorney’s prosecutor role as a means to stem quality-of-life crimes and curb homelessness. Roy has promised to keep more Angelenos housed and protect their livelihoods through “affirmative litigation” — suits brought against slumlords and exploitative corporations under the state’s Unfair Competition Law.

“When you file these suits, you have complete discretion,” said Pines, the former city attorney who successfully lobbied the state to extend Los Angeles that power in 1977 and watched in dismay as Feldstein Soto left it to whither.

In recent years, affirmative litigation has become an essential tool for defending against punitive federal policy and recovering public funds, Pines and others said.

Seeing the San Francisco city attorney’s office sue to overturn California’s ban on gay marriage — a law that would have stymied her gay younger brother — inspired Roy to give up her elementary school dream of decoding ancient texts to pursue the law.

“Childhood Marissa spent recesses in the library buried in books about ancient Egypt,” Roy said. “It was San Francisco suing — that was when I began to become aware of the power of lawyers.”

Unlike her opponent, Roy grew up comfortably in Monrovia, largely shielded from the sacrifices her family made to afford her an elite education. The daughter of an Indian immigrant mother and a white American father, she graduated from Flintridge Prep and attended University of Southern California on scholarship.

While studying law at Yale, she interned in the affirmative litigation department in the San Francisco city attorney’s office — a program Chiu lauded as “an essential training ground for the next generation of government lawyers” in a recent law review article.

Roy and her supporters say those early experiences cemented her commitment to teamwork, which is central to the less glamorous, more costly side of the city attorney’s job: serving as general counsel for myriad city agencies and legal advisor to City Hall.

“There’s absolutely more collaboration and it’s more significant given the things we’re up against,” said San Diego City Atty. Heather Ferbert, a close ally of Roy’s.

John McKinney, a Los Angeles County prosecutor running against Marissa Roy to become L.A. city attorney, speaks during a news conference on May 5, 2026.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

Ferbert and others pointed to a surge in lawsuits against municipalities over everything from sidewalk trip-and-falls to police misconduct — cases that can lead to seven- or eight-figure payouts.

“If it’s not extremely unusual, it doesn’t make it to the city attorney’s desk,” said Oakland City Atty. Ryan Richardson, who endorsed Roy.

As a deputy city attorney, Roy spearheaded a trio of major wage-theft suits just a month after she was admitted to the bar. Independent expenditure groups supporting McKinney spent more than $350,000 trying to strip her of that title because she was paid by a nonprofit — an common arrangement employed by government law offices across the U.S. — while the city attorney’s office itself gave her permission to use it, and lists her as such in its court filings.

McKinney has since sought to paint Roy as the second coming of George Gascón, the polarizing district attorney who was drubbed in 2024 — a move that assumes most voters are still thinking about Gascón, or are likely to see the graying “godfather of progressive prosecutors” in a raven-haired deputy attorney general.

“The only way you disprove that is by putting your head down and doing the work 10 times harder,” Roy said. “Voters are smarter than that. People in the coalition see these tactics and are tired of them too.”

Growing up without “two nickels to rub together,” John McKinney never thought he’d be a lawyer.

At the beginning of 2026, sitting in his office as one of the highest-ranking prosecutors in Los Angeles County, McKinney had no designs on trying to become L.A.’s city attorney.

But if he can beat progressive darling Marissa Roy next month and finish off an upstart campaign that barely had a pulse six months ago, McKinney would complete a lifelong underdog story that saw him go from working as a house painter and substitute teacher to pay for college to serving as the top lawyer for the second-largest city in America.

A highly regarded trial lawyer, McKinney, 58, claims an undefeated record in homicide trials and has won convictions in some of the region’s most infamous crimes, including the murder of beloved L.A. hip-hop star Nipsey Hussle. He reached his longtime perch in the district attorney’s office’s major crimes unit after a lifetime of struggle. Both of McKinney’s parents died before he was 5, and he was raised by his oldest sister in a cramped household with half a dozen other children in Passaic, N.J.

John McKinney speaks at a news conference at the Los Angeles Police Protective League in May.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

McKinney beams with pride while discussing his hardscrabble East Coast upbringing — whether praising his sister’s hustle for working “six days a week,” or refusing to turn in his Yankees hat in a Dodger blue city. In interviews, he’ll sneak in a verbal jab at Roy, then finish the insult with a wry smirk. McKinney notes he’s been a prosecutor almost as long as his 34-year-old opponent has been alive.

“She’s never tried a case,” McKinney said. “When you’re running for city attorney overseeing trial lawyers and having to make high-impact decisions on whether to settle a case for $20 million or not, you should at least know what it’s like to go through a jury trial.”

Roy was part of the team that secured a $17-billion settlement from Meta in a landmark case this year, and has tried many cases decided by judges, rather than jury panels. She’s pushed back on McKinney’s barbs, noting he has no experience handling civil cases, a core component of the job.

McKinney has focused his campaign on lessening the city’s homelessness crisis by leveraging people into treatment, tackling quality-of-life crimes, and reducing the city’s out-of-control legal costs.

But he faces an uphill battle. Roy, a deputy state attorney general, has been campaigning for more than a year and raised more than twice as much money as McKinney. With the backing of both the county’s Democratic Party and the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, Roy won June’s primary easily, outpacing McKinney by 15 percentage points. Both finished far ahead of City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto.

Marissa Roy, a deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice, is running against John McKinney to become L.A.’s next city attorney.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman leads a strong coalition of law enforcement support for McKinney, who has also been endorsed by four former city attorneys, two prior district attorneys and several City Council members, including Traci Park.

McKinney has emphasized the word “Democrat” in his ads, a nod to Roy’s attempts to cast him as the preferred choice of Republicans who won’t stand up to the Trump administration if elected. Although McKinney rubbed elbows with Republicans during efforts to recall then-Dist. Atty. George Gascón and employed fundraisers who worked with Trump, he says he “despises” the president and was disgusted by immigration raids in the city last year.

McKinney thinks Roy’s emphasis on fighting Trump speaks to a misunderstanding of the job. Across the country, it has been state attorneys general, not city attorneys, who have spearhead litigation against the White House, said McKinney, who dismissed the partisan attacks as a “misleading smear campaign.”

“Her lack of management experience and jury trial experience has not gone unnoticed by voters and her platform of wanting to turn the city attorney’s office into the country’s largest public interest law firm is out of alignment with the issues important to voters: public safety, homelessness and protecting taxpayer dollars,” he said.

Long before he was concerned about winning an elected office, McKinney was simply worried about survival.

The youngest of seven children, McKinney lost his mother to cancer when he was only 2. His father passed away unexpectedly three years later. His oldest sister, Ora, was recently divorced with three kids of her own but took in McKinney and his sister. He remained especially close to Ora — whom he described as his “mother, father and best friend” — until she passed away last year.

With his caretaker working nearly round the clock, McKinney said, he easily could have run in the streets with friends caught up in the crack cocaine boom of the 1980s. But McKinney said his sister’s determination inspired him to choose a better path.

“My sister made me believe there was really no limit to what I could do in life if I worked hard enough for it,” he said.

McKinney isn’t seeking sympathy, but believes sharing his backstory shows he’s “lived a life that mirrors a lot of the adversity Angelenos face every day.”

For much of his career in L.A., McKinney was seen as one of the district attorney’s office’s premier trial lawyers. He said he had no interest in management or politics until Gascón was elected in 2020. McKinney was one of several prosecutors to publicly criticize and sue Gascón. His involvement in the failed bid to recall Gascón put him in a political spotlight for the first time. He frequently spoke at recall events — which sometimes overlapped with rallies against Gov. Gavin Newsom and promoted conservative causes — and later joined the crowded field vying to replace Gascón in 2024.

Colleagues said McKinney has a history of being able to reach across ideological and cultural aisles. Bobby Grace, a veteran prosecutor who has worked with McKinney for decades, said he had a knack for getting people to take risks to take the stand in important cases.

“I think that’s where he made his reputation as a good trial lawyer,” Grace said. “To be successful, particularly in gangs, you’ve got to be able to convince witnesses who don’t want to come forward, and I think that was really his strength.”

Although he failed to gain traction in the race to unseat Gascón, finishing far behind Hochman, he caught the future district attorney’s eye and the two became allies. When Hochman took office, he put McKinney in charge of specialized prosecutions, giving him oversight of a wide range of cases, including cop killings, juvenile crimes, gang homicides and child abuse.

McKinney said he wasn’t even thinking about getting into the city attorney race until the middle of January, when a number of people approached him about entering.

City attorney candidate John McKinney, left, walks through Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles on July 1.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

By March, McKinney was scrambling to get a campaign together, and Hochman was quick to lend the fundraisers and managers who helped him oust Gascón.

He soon ascended from nonfactor to legitimate contender. Frustrated with ballooning legal costs and her handling of a department data breach, the city’s powerful police union abandoned Feldstein Soto and backed McKinney. Independent expenditures — political interest groups that can spend unlimited amounts in campaigns if they don’t coordinate with candidates — doled out $3 million to support McKinney.

In total, records show those groups have spent nearly $5 million on McKinney. More than half of that money has come from a venture capitalist who has publicly praised Elon Musk and a political action committee run by Airbnb, the rental giant currently facing a lawsuit from the city for price gouging during the wildfires.

McKinney insists campaign support won’t influence his decision-making in office. He has vowed to sue Airbnb if it engages in price gouging, and he knows the Los Angeles Police Department is a major factor in the city’s rising litigation costs. Given his law enforcement background, he argues he’s better positioned to influence police than Roy.

“I think because they know I’m not coming at them from a vindictive point of view, trying to underfund them or undermine them, that my criticism will be taken for what it’s worth, which is to make them stronger, to make them more trusted and more effective,” he said.

Whereas Hochman often compared L.A. to crime-plagued “Gotham City,” McKinney acknowledges the city’s more recent struggles are not with violence, but with quality-of-life crimes: unchecked homeless encampments, street racing, animal abuse on Skid Row.

Walking around Skid Row this summer, McKinney spoke with several people who approached from tents and other jerry-rigged structures. He listened closely as they explained their struggles and pleaded for help in a part of the city few residents ever set foot in. He describes his approach to the city’s homeless crisis as one of “compassionate accountability.”

“Every person who is living on the street has had some tragic circumstance in their life,” he said that day.

McKinney acknowledged he can’t do anything about a lack of housing as city attorney, but he can better manage the way L.A. throws resources at the problem. That includes more sophisticated audits of community-based organizations that have contracts with the city to aid unhoused people, he said.

Ultimately, he does not want to punish people who are suffering, but thinks the city attorney’s office can use its power of prosecution to pressure homeless defendants suffering from addiction or mental health issues into treatment. The mission is a personal one for McKinney, who grew up with a schizophrenic nephew whose slow decline he watched for years.

“When I talk about compassionate accountability, it’s not just a campaign slogan for me,” he said. “It’s real. These are real people.”

Oct. 22, 2026 8:59 AM PT

MIAMI — A federal judge on Thursday ordered President Trump to sit for a deposition in his $10-billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11.

The order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett came as the BBC’s lawyers complained that Trump had delayed his appearance. Attorney Charles Tobin said that with two months left in the discovery period, “we still haven’t been able to depose the plaintiff.”

He noted there was an agreed-upon date of Oct. 16, but that the Republican president canceled it for a “matter of national importance.” Tobin said Trump was in fact campaigning in Georgia that day.

“He was participating in party politics and prioritized that over sitting for the deposition,” Tobin said.

Lett said Trump must sit for a deposition by Dec. 11, or face sanctions up to dismissal of his lawsuit — unless the discovery period was extended past Dec. 18.

The BBC asked the judge last week to compel Trump to appear. The British broadcaster says Trump is trying to delay his appearance until January 2027. The judge has threatened sanctions if Trump fails to comply with the court’s schedule.

Trump, who has often avoided depositions, filed his lawsuit against the BBC last December, seeking $10 billion in damages. He accused the publicly funded broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices related to a documentary, “Trump: A Second Chance.”

The BBC acknowledged that filmmakers spliced together quotes from different sections of the speech Trump delivered to his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, before the storming of the U.S. Capitol, to make it seem he was directly urging violence. The broadcaster apologized over the editing, and the head of the BBC and its top news executive both resigned. The BBC has denied Trump’s claims that it defamed him.

Trump’s lawyers say Jack Smith ‘lacks personal knowledge’ of issues in the case

To bolster its defense, the broadcaster subpoenaed former special counsel Jack Smith earlier this month. Trump’s lawyers argued, in a joint filing asking for a hearing on the matter, that there was no good reason for Smith, who is not a party to the case, to appear.

“Smith lacks any personal knowledge regarding the issues in this matter,” they argued in the filing. “He was not present when President Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech … was made, nor did he participate in its preparation. Smith does not have any personal knowledge regarding President Trump’s state of mind at the time the Speech was given.”

Trump’s side also argued that “Smith’s testimony would be duplicative,” because he published a lengthy report on the events of Jan. 6 and also testified for many hours. “The entirety of his testimony is publicly available,” it argued.

The BBC countered, in the same filing, that there were few more knowledgeable sources about the events of Jan. 6 than Smith, who studied and investigated them for years.

“It is difficult to imagine a more authoritative source on these issues than Mr. Smith, who spent years gathering evidence on those topics with the force of the Justice Department and the power of the grand jury behind him,” the BBC’s lawyers argued.

“No one forced Plaintiff to file this lawsuit and to dispute that his speech on January 6 incited the violence that followed at the Capitol. But as long as he chooses to maintain the case, he cannot commit the fundamental injustice of preventing the BBC from obtaining the evidence it needs to robustly defend itself on every element of his claim…”

When will Trump sit for a deposition?

In a filing Oct. 13, the BBC’s lawyers said they first requested dates for a deposition in July, and followed up repeatedly, with both sides eventually agreeing on Oct. 16.

After weeks of silence, they wrote, “Plaintiff’s counsel responded on September 28, 2026, indicating that ‘the President is no longer available for his deposition on October 16 due to other matters of national importance’ and that counsel would ‘endeavor to provide you with a replacement date by the end of this week.’ He did not.”

They said they were then told that Trump “has no availability whatsoever for a deposition” before discovery is set to close on Dec. 18, and that Trump would instead make himself available the second or third week of January.

Tobin wrote in the filing, “Those delays have flouted the cooperative spirit of discovery and precluded the BBC from obtaining the evidence necessary to robustly litigate its defense.”

Fischer and Noveck write for the Associated Press. Noveck reported from New York.

PHOENIX — The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to toss out $122,000 in legal costs that lawyers for former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake were ordered to pay for false and misleading statements they made in a lawsuit that sought to require a hand-count of all ballots in the 2022 midterm elections.

The nation’s highest court on Tuesday denied a request from Andrew D. Parker, an attorney who represented Lake in the lawsuit, to review a lower-court decision over the legal costs arising from the unsuccessful litigation.

The lawsuit by Lake and state lawmaker Mark Finchem sought to ban electronic tabulation devices. It was dismissed by a judge who found Lake and Finchem lacked standing to sue and that their lawsuit was filed too close to the election.

In 2022, Lake lost the governor’s race to Democrat Katie Hobbs and Finchem was defeated in the secretary of state’s race by Democrat Andrian Fontes. Both Republicans had promoted the narrative that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.

Maricopa County had sought sanctions against Lake, Finchem and their lawyers, alleging they broke a court rule by making unfounded allegations and by not conducting the necessary research before filing the lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge John Tuchi later concluded the lawsuit’s claims lacked an adequate basis in fact, that the standard inquiry attorneys must make before pressing litigation hadn’t been done and that the lawyers acted recklessly in seeking a court order based on frivolous claims.

The requirement to pay the legal fees applies to the lawyers who pressed the lawsuit, not to Lake and Finchem.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected appeals over the lawsuit’s dismissal and the awarding of the legal fees.

The Associated Press left phone and email messages Tuesday for Parker, whose firm is based in Minneapolis.

Earlier this year, Parker asked the Supreme Court to throw out the requirement to pay Maricopa County’s legal fees in the case, arguing such sanctions would deter attorneys from bringing aggressive or novel legal claims.

Maricopa County said lawyers for Lake and Finchem had disregarded a letter that identified false allegations they had made in their lawsuit and relied on some of those claims in a later court filing. The county’s attorneys said those who brought the lawsuit failed to present evidence to support their allegations and falsely alleged that Arizona didn’t use paper ballots and that its electronic voting systems hadn’t been subjected to expert analysis.

Billeaud writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — The new White House press secretary is facing mounting questions about her background and resume as she transitions into her role as the public face of the Trump administration.

Katie Zacharia has long described herself as a lawyer as she has worked to establish herself as a commentator for conservative outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax. But so far, she and the White House have offered no evidence that she passed the bar exam in any state or in China, where she worked for a large law firm years ago.

The questions add to the confusion surrounding President Trump’s decision to hire Zacharia, who had worked for his social media company for only a few months when he announced her appointment and whose debut at the podium on Tuesday has been widely panned.

Afterward, the president was asked by reporters where Zacharia had passed the bar exam, following a report by the independent outlet Popular Information that she did not appear to be licensed in any state.

Trump stepped aside to allow Zacharia to answer.

“When I moved to China,” she responded over the sound of Marine One whirring in the background. It is unclear what she had intended to say or whether she had finished the sentence.

China’s notoriously difficult National Unified Legal Professional Qualification Examination can be taken only by Chinese citizens.

Asked what credentials she held, the White House passed along a statement from Zacharia, who received a bachelor of arts degree from Pepperdine University in 2007 and received her law degree from Pepperdine Caruso School of Law in 2011, according to the school and her LinkedIn bio.

“I practiced international transaction law, with all the appropriate credentials,” it read.

Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, added that Zacharia was “uniquely qualified and whip smart to help inform the American people about all the great things President Trump and his Administration have been doing, and she will do an incredible job as press secretary.”

A resume under scrutiny

According to her LinkedIn profile, Zacharia has been the senior communications advisor at the Trump Media & Technology Group since June and spent two months as deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security this year.

From 2011 to 2013, it says, she served as an associate on the International Practice Team at the Zhong Lun Law Firm in Beijing. She also worked as the manager of fundraising and communications for Compassion for Migrant Children, which assists the children of migrant workers, from 2012 to 2013.

More recently, it says she served as general counsel for Fix California, a group started by Trump administration official Richard Grenell.

Neither the firm nor the two groups responded to questions about her tenure and background.

Zacharia has long called herself a lawyer. On Instagram, she describes herself as the White House press secretary, “Wife, Mom, & Lawyer” (with three heart emojis after “Mom”).

And her official author page at the California Globe, where she wrote occasional commentary, says that, in addition to being a “regular commentator on Fox News, Newsmax,” she has “extensive experience in political advocacy, international corporate law, and non-profit work, including time as outside counsel for the World Bank and IFC in Beijing.”

A June 2026 news release from NovaRed Mining Inc. announcing her appointment to the company’s advisory board, which was first reported by Popular Information, said her “professional experience includes work related to international legal and financial transactions, including matters involving organizations associated with the World Bank Group and the International Finance Corporation during her tenure with Zhong Lun Law Firm in Beijing.”

In announcing her hire on his social media site, Trump described Zacharia as “a distinguished Graduate of Pepperdine University, and the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, an attorney, and a frequent Commentator on outlets, including Fox News and Newsmax.”

“She has an unblemished record of support, and has been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning. She is, likewise, a devoted fan and member of MAGA!” he added.

‘No record’ found

Zacharia is not listed as a member of the state bar in California, where she currently resides, according to a public database.

Rick Coca, a spokesperson for the State Bar of California, a regulatory agency that oversees state licensing, said in a statement that it has “no record of Kate Sharon Zacharia or Kate Sharon Black” or any version of her married or maiden names “having been licensed to practice law in California.”

Popular Information said the same was the case in all 50 states it had queried, plus Washington.

In response, the watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint Wednesday with the State Bar of California asking it to investigate whether Zacharia misrepresented herself as a lawyer in violation of California law.

“In California, calling yourself a lawyer without a license isn’t puffery; it’s a crime. The State Bar should investigate whether Ms. Zacharia has misled the public about her credentials and hold her accountable if she has,” said the watchdog group’s executive director, Michelle Kuppersmith, in a statement.

The State Bar said it could not confirm whether the agency had received the complaint or was conducting an investigation, citing confidentiality laws.

Colvin writes for the Associated Press.

KATIE Price’s third and final day of evidence at Kieran Hayler’s alleged rape trial spiralled into fiery court outbursts and a stark warning from the judge.

The former glamour model lashed out at Hayler’s lawyer – accusing her of “slander” and ranting: “I won’t have anybody call me a liar”.

Despiter being slapped down about her outbursts, Katie continued to row with Arlette Piercy as her cross-examination became more heated.

In one tense exchange, she asked the defence lawyer: “Are you calling me a liar?”

Ms Piercy replied: “I am.”

Katie then responded: “I don’t need to be here. You can see in black and white something’s gone on.

‘RAPE’ CASE

Russell Brand told pal ‘I may have gone too far’ with woman he ‘raped in hotel’

KATIE FURY

Katie Price rants ‘I won’t be called a liar’ in fiery exchange at Hayler trial

“I won’t have anybody call me a liar.”

Katie also branded Hayler, who is accused of raping and sexually a 13-year-old girl, a “wrong’un” and said: “You shouldn’t turn this case against me”.

She continued: “The real reason why we’re here is what he’s done to a child, not me.”

Ms Piercy then said she “can’t continue like this” after Katie repeatedly spoke over her.

She said: “Because you know I’m right.

“I won’t have anyone tell me I’m a liar. I’m not a liar.”

After Ms Piercy then referenced “cocaine and booze benders”, the reality star snapped back: “That’s discrimination.

“Everyone knows I self-medicated on coke due to Kieran introducing it.

“You are wrong and trying to discriminate me. The press know it all because of my journey. I ended up in therapy and tried to kill myself twice.

“You’re not going to slander my name. I don’t care if you are a barrister, you are not going to slander my name like that.

“I don’t need to sit here like a therapy session.”

Judge Mark van der Zwart was forced to intervene and told Katie to “stop talking please”.

He urged: “Take a drink, take a breath, take a moment.”

As she continued to try to talk, the judge continued: “Ms Price, let’s leave it there please.”

It came after she was given a prior warning by the judge to keep her views to herself following another rant yesterday.

Katie had claimed there were “other kids that haven’t come forward” during yet another tense exchange with Ms Piercy.

But the judge said: “When you’re being asked questions today please would you not mention any beliefs you may have whether Kieran Hayler has behaved inappropriately with anyone else apart from (the complainant).”

When she began repeating other allegations, she was slapped down by the judge.

He said: “I’m going to stop you there, Ms Price.

“Ms Price, golden rule: when I talk, nobody else does.”

She replied: “OK, sorry.”

Hayler has denied the allegations, which allegedly took place in West Sussex while he was married to Katie.

The complainant is not a member of his or Katie’s extended family.

Katie, 48, yesterday told jurors she did not have “any venom” against her ex-husband and said their split was “amicable”.

She also said she had not read any media reports of his trial because she had been “handcuffed to Suella Braverman all week” for a Channel 4 show.

Jurors were told how she had messaged the girl and vowed to make her a “little star” while quizzing her about whether she had kissed Hayler.

The exchange happened in May 2017 – eight months after the last alleged attack by Hayler, it was said.

Katie wrote: “I WON’T say anything and I PROMISE I’ll protect you!

“I’m only asking as this is a serious allegation to say.”

The girl, who was 14 at the time of the message exchange, replied: “It was just a flirt thing and he knew it was wrong. Nothing happened.”

Katie said: “Was it just a flirt and what did he do to realise it was wrong? Did he try (to) kiss you?

“I won’t bring (it) up anymore (I) just want (the) truth! I will make you a little star.

“Please help and tell me… as long as I know the truth, I won’t say. I PROMISE.”

Giving evidence behind a screen, Katie said it was “just a figure of speech” and claimed there was “no agenda or nothing behind it”.

She also denied being “angry and vengeful” towards Hayler and said she did not have a “vendetta” against him.

She ended her evidence yesterday by opening up about her mum Amy, 74, who has lung condition Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF).

Katie said: “My mum’s dying at the moment and I haven’t been able to see her (because) I’ve got a cold… she’s got days.

“I did promise my mum I’d see her tomorrow.”

The girl, now 23, reported her allegations to the NSPCC in 2021.

The children’s charity then referred it to police and she was interviewed by cops in December 2021, with Hayler questioned the following month.

He denied any of the allegations took place and that anything sexual occurred.

Jurors heard he also told police in his first interview of the allegations in January 2022 that he believed he was being “set up”.

He said “100 per cent” he had not raped the girl, adding: “No never, the thought someone thinks I would do that is horrible, it makes me feel sick.”

Hayler also said to officers that he believed Katie had “planted a seed to (the complainant)”.

He added: “It’s like a smear campaign to ruin me.

“For this to come completely out of the blue I feel like somebody here is trying to set me up.

“Kate would put pressure on anybody. For her to not have anything on me I think kills her a little bit inside.”

In court, Katie described the allegations as “disgusting” but said she never went to the press or police about it and it was the complainant who reported it.

Hayler, who has worked as a stripper and actor, married Katie at a luxury resort in the Bahamas in 2013.

He was her third husband following her marriages to singer Peter Andre and cage fighter Alex Reid.

Katie and Hayler split in 2018 and formally divorced in 2021.

The trial continues.

The NFL is urging the Supreme Court to rule on the regulation of prediction markets, arguing in an amicus brief filed Thursday that states — which already regulate legal sports books — are better positioned to oversee sports-related contracts “given the current landscape.”

The NFL is supporting New Jersey’s request for the Supreme Court to rule on the governing authority for prediction markets, which provide an opportunity to trade — or wager — on the result of future events. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has maintained it has exclusive federal jurisdiction, while states have argued that the array of typically yes-or-no questions is akin to gambling and falls under their purview.

“Absent the clarity that only this Court can provide, (prediction market) operators will continue exploiting the gap between state and federal regulation, endangering consumers and the integrity of sports events across the country,” lawyers for the NFL wrote.

According to the NFL’s brief, on the first Sunday of this season, more than half of the trading volume on prediction markets — $1.8 billion out of $3.3 billion total — was related to the league.

“Any delay from the Court will result in increasing consumer harm and risk to game integrity,” the NFL wrote in its brief.

Kalshi spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana said its top priority is market integrity, and she pointed to its partnerships with the NHL, Major League Baseball and other sports organizations as evidence.

“Contrary to the NFL’s statements, the CFTC is actively policing sports-related markets, which are now listed on nearly every U.S. commodities exchange,” Diana said. “The CFTC’s ongoing rulemaking addresses many of the NFL’s supposed concerns. And those rules sit atop the same comprehensive system of federal enforcement that protects trillions of dollars of transactions in U.S. markets.”

A Polymarket spokesperson said the operator “shares the NFL’s commitment to preserving the integrity of the game,” and it is working on “a harmonized federal framework that delivers a stronger, more consistent form of integrity compared to a patchwork of disconnected state laws built for a bygone era.”

Ohio filed a brief on Wednesday urging the high court to side with New Jersey and preserve the power of all states to regulate prediction markets, as they do casino gambling and sports betting. The filing was backed by 38 states, including Republican and Democratic attorneys general from states including Arkansas, California, Illinois, Missouri, New York, South Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Roughly 20 states are involved in litigation over prediction markets, and a split has formed between appeals courts, making it more likely that the Supreme Court will take up the issue. The 6th and 9th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals have ruled in favor of states seeking to regulate prediction markets, while the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Kalshi in a ruling earlier this year.

“As between the two approaches, the NFL believes the Sixth and Ninth Circuits got it right, given the current landscape,” lawyers for the league wrote in their brief.

The NFL also is questioning the CFTC’s enforcement capabilities. In its filing, the league writes that the commission has 543 employees and their responsibilities include a range of derivatives beyond event contracts.

“Without adequate staff engaged in oversight and enforcement, even the best regulations cannot meaningfully ensure game integrity and consumer protection,” lawyers wrote in the NFL brief.

A message was left by the AP seeking comment from the CFTC.

The NFL has urged the CFTC and prediction markets to adopt a list of prohibited wagers that it feels pose the greatest threats to game integrity, according to the brief, but they have declined thus far. It also has asked the commission to adopt an age limit of 21 for trading on prediction markets, up from the current 18.

Diana said Kalshi has tried to collaborate with the NFL on market integrity, but it has received no response.

Cohen writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writer Marc Levy contributed to this report.