Robert

A Los Angeles County judge who has been accused of sexual harassment, making racist remarks and mistreating fellow members of the bench was officially removed from office Tuesday, officials said.

The state Commission on Judicial Performance upheld 17 findings of misconduct against Judge Robert Draper, 84, according to a disciplinary document made public Tuesday.

“Judge Draper persistently violated the standards governing judicial behavior and engaged in extensive and severe misconduct,” the commission said in a statement. “Judge Draper’s misconduct reflected either a concerning lack of familiarity with ethical precepts, or an unwillingness to conform to those precepts.”

Earlier this year, Draper compared the commission to the “Russian Mafia” in an interview with The Times where he denied all wrongdoing and claimed the charges were political payback for his opposition to another judge’s bid to become L.A. County’s presiding justice.

In an e-mail to The Times, Draper said the commission’s ruling was “wrong” and that he plans to seek review from the California Supreme Court, which he said “will look at the actual facts and not simply the characterization of those facts by the Examiners.”

“Kind of like what every citizen is entitled to – a presumption of innocence, a fair opportunity to be heard by an unbiased panel, decision makers who are willing to actually look at the real facts in a complete way and apply the legally required standard of proof rather than simply reciting it, and then ignoring it,” he wrote. “It just amazes me that I have had to go this far in order to have these standards for the first time applied.”

The Commission has only ordered the removal of 14 judges across the state since 2002, according to its website.

The removal order was the final step in a years-long fall from grace for Draper. A well-respected veteran member of the bench, colleagues began expressing concern about his decline in 2022. In 2023, according to a letter sent to the state commission, he was barred from hearing cases and re-assigned to a Santa Monica Courthouse department that colleagues likened to a “closet.” When a Times reporter visited the building earlier this year, staff on site said Draper almost never came in.

In letters sent to the commission in 2022 and 2023, two of the L.A. County Superior Court’s top judges accused Draper of sending abusive e-mails to colleagues replete with racist and abusive language. In one letter, then-Presiding Justice Samantha Jessner said Draper was “unable to carry out the duties and responsibilities of a judge” due to deteriorating mental and physical health.

“He has demonstrated a flagging handle on reality,” L.A. County Superior Court Judge Eric Taylor wrote.

Draper was accused of sexual harassment, making racist remarks and callous behavior all over the course of one hearing in 2022.

According to court records and testimony given at Draper’s six-day removal hearing earlier this year, the judge allegedly stroked a female lawyer’s hair after going on a tangent to a Black attorney about “Black history, Black football players, the Civil Rights Act, and the Black Lives Matter movement,” even though the case had nothing to do with those issues.

The commission described Draper’s misconduct as “extensive” and argued his alleged racist behavior continued while testifying in his May removal hearing. While testifying he referred two specific Black people as “very black in terms of pigmentation” and “way Black,” according to the commission.

He was also accused of making crude remarks to a group of female attorneys while in chambers. Reflecting on his time as a civil attorney, he recalled how male lawyers would deride female secretaries, insisting they learn to “f— better than they could type,” according to testimony given by attorney Janice Brown at Draper’s hearing earlier this year.

Draper lost his bid for re-election in June to former L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Tal K. Valbuena by nearly 13 points, after the L.A. County Bar Assn. rated Draper as “unqualified” for service.

The race highlighted the lengths the insular judicial community would go to protect their own from election challenges. Despite well-known concerns about Draper’s fitness, a political action committee run by fellow judges gave $72,500 to his campaign, state election finance records show. The PAC did not respond to prior inquiries from The Times.

A fellow judge, speaking on condition of anonymity because judges are not allowed to speak to the press, described the end of Draper’s career as a “super sad situation.”

“Perhaps it should spur California to consider enacting what most states have — a mandatory retirement age,” the judge said.

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.

Missouri officials have determined the official cause of death for “Days of Our Lives” actor Robert Kelker-Kelly, who died this month at age 62.

Kelker-Kelly died of arteriosclerotic heart disease, the St. Charles county regional medical examiner of Missouri confirmed to The Times. The actor’s death was deemed natural. Arteriosclerosis occurs when blood vessels carrying oxygen and nutrients from the heart to the body become thick and stiff, according to the Mayo Clinic. The coroner’s report confirms details previously disclosed by law enforcement and emergency personnel.

The actor, who worked as a pilot later in life, died Oct. 3 after he complained of chest pain and became unresponsive, police confirmed earlier this month. Officers reported with paramedics to the actor’s home for a report of an unconscious man who was not breathing.

“Life-saving measures were administered but were unsuccessful,” police said.

Kelker-Kelly’s wife, Allison Kelly, informed authorities the actor complained of pain in his left arm and chest while on the drive home from Spirit Airport, People reported. The actor asked his wife to pull the car over to vomit and said he did not need to go to the hospital. He reportedly continued experiencing pain at home. Kelly found her husband unresponsive, alerted authorities and administered CPR.

Kelker-Kelly was best known for his work in long-running daytime dramas “Another World” and “Days of Our Lives,” where he portrayed the rebellious heartthrob Beauregard “Bo” Brady from 1992 to 1995. He began his turn as Bo, which lasted for more than 586 episodes, following the departure of original actor Peter Reckell, who would return to the show off and on in the following decades.

He debuted in “Another World” in 1987 and appeared in more than 400 episodes in a handful of roles until 1998, according to the actor’s IMDb page. He was also known for his work as Stavros Cassadine in “General Hospital” and its spinoff series “Port Charles.” Kelker-Kelly’s “General Hospital” tenure lasted from 2001 to 2014 and was his final TV role. His television credits also include “Jack’s Place,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Rescue 77.”

A day after the Tennessee Titans released defensive tackle Jordan Elliott after an alleged incident involving a gun at the team’s practice facility, coach Robert Saleh defended the veteran player as “a good man” who “had a terrible lapse in judgment that I recognize as a call for help more than a criminal act.”

The Titans announced Elliott’s dismissal on Tuesday but provided no details on the incident that prompted it. The NFL confirmed Wednesday that it was looking into the matter.

“The league’s firearm policy prohibits any personnel from bringing a firearm to club facilities, stadiums, and team hotels and on team planes or buses,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in an email. “The club promptly notified the league of the matter which is under review.”

Details have since emerged that Elliott got into an altercation with offensive lineman JC Latham at practice last Thursday, then went out to his car in the players’ parking lot to get his gun, according to reports by multiple media outlets. Latham told reporters Wednesday that the incident between him and Elliott just happened in the “heat of the moment” and “we’d actually never had an argument leading up to it.”

“It’s no bad blood,” Latham said. “Nothing personal on my end.”

Defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers reportedly helped Elliott regain his composure before anything happened involving the gun. Latham said he was still on the practice field and not with Elliott when Franklin-Myers intervened.

“The D-line room is really close,” Saleh told reporters Wednesday, “and for JFM to go out there and just kind of help Jordan with whatever he was dealing with at that moment I thought was really admirable on JFM’s part.”

Elliott played five seasons with the Cleveland Browns and two with the San Francisco 49ers before signing a two-year, $8-million deal with the Titans this past offseason. Saleh, who was the 49ers’ defensive coordinator last season, told reporters Wednesday that the Titans and the league provided Elliott “with clinicians he needed to speak to help him in that moment.”

“He’s never committed a crime in his entire life, and he pulled a gun in the parking lot,” Saleh said. “And the first question that I think everyone forgets to ask is why would a great man, a great father, a man who shows up on time every day, works his ass off every day, contributes the way he’s supposed to contribute, is well-liked in the locker room — why did he go off the rails and grab a gun?

“To me, those are small signs of a cry for help, in terms of obviously there’s something greater happening,” he continued. “And I thought the team and the NFL did an outstanding job with regards to pausing and asking those questions and checking every single box with regards to getting him the help that he needs.”

Saleh added: “I will stand on the table for Jordan’s character. Unfortunately, rules are rules with regard to guns on property, and sometimes it’s far greater than the knee-jerk reaction of kicking somebody when they’re down. My message to 31 other teams would be: If you need a hell of a run-stopping D-tackle that can help you on a playoff run, give me a call. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about him.”

The Swedish academy says the academics’ models are ‘now used by central banks and ​governments around the world’.

The ⁠2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences has been awarded to US academics Robert Hall and Michael ⁠Woodford for their work on how monetary and fiscal policy can help stabilise fluctuations in the economy, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The winners of the prestigious award, formally known ⁠as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel and the final prize to be given out this year, were announced on Monday.

The two laureates developed new macroeconomic models that improve people’s ability to implement effective stabilisation policies, enabling fiscal and monetary policy measures that can reduce damaging swings in the economy.

“The laureates’ work has provided us ‌with a stable theoretical foundation for the models that are now used by central banks and governments around the world,” John Hassler, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said in a statement.

“With them, we are better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises or sudden changes in how much households consume.”

During the oil crises in the 1970s, the existing Keynesian models used to determine when and how measures should be implemented to tackle recessions or other economic fluctuations stopped working. Hall and Woodford then developed new tools to understand what policy responses could be the most effective.

“Rather than basing the models on statistical links between macroeconomic variables, such as inflation, production and consumption, they chose to build them on a microeconomic foundation,” the academy said. “This encompasses an understanding of how the total mass of individual households and businesses affect the economy through their actions.”

The economics prize, first awarded ⁠in 1969, is not part of the five original awards ⁠created in the 1895 will of industrialist and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel, but was instead established by Sweden’s central bank.

The majority of previous laureates have been from the United States. Only three women have ⁠ever won, most recently Claudia Goldin in 2023 for her work on how gender has affected pay and employment over time ⁠in the US.

Last year’s winners – Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt – won for ‌their work on “creative destruction” and how new technology and production methods can boost growth and living standards.

Like the other Nobel awards, the economics prize consists of a diploma, a gold medal, and a $1.2m cheque.

The Nobel prizes for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace were announced last ‌week, with South African jurist Navi Pillay and Canadian writer Anne Carson among the winners.