Ron Jeremy was indicted on more than 30 sexual assault counts involving 21 victims over a period of more than two decades, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.
The indictment replaces the criminal charges filed last year. A grand jury returned the indictment August 19 after considering all the accusations from the 2020 charges, according to the announcement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.
The 67-year-old adult film star, born Ronald Jeremy Hyatt, has remained in jail since being arrested last summer on $6.6 million bail.
Jeremy pleaded not guilty to all charges.
“Far too often, survivors of sexual assault suffer in isolation,” District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement, according to the industry publication. “We must ensure that survivors have all options available to help with recovery, including trauma-informed services for healing and support to report such crimes.”
Jeremy is scheduled to return to court on October 12 for a pretrial conference.
David John Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
(ATLANTA) — After months of speculation, fueled in part by public urging from former President Donald Trump, former NFL star and Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker has officially launched his campaign for Georgia’s 2022 Senate race against Sen. Raphael Warnock.
“Our country is at a crossroads, and I can’t sit on the sidelines anymore. America is the greatest country in the world, but too many politicians in Washington are afraid to say that. … I have lived the American Dream, but I am concerned it is slipping away for many people,” Walker said in a statement Wednesday, pledging to “stand up for conservative values” if elected to the U.S. Senate.
Walker’s entry into the race marks a new phase in the Republican primary for what is set to be one of the most competitive races of the midterms and a top pick-up opportunity for Republicans. As the first electoral test since the state flipped for President Joe Biden in November and gave Democrats the slimmest of Senate majorities in January by electing Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Republicans are eager to show that Georgia is not a blue state.
In response to Walker filing his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission Tuesday, the Democratic Party of Georgia released a statement calling Walker’s entrance “the nightmare scenario” for the GOP.
“Walker’s entrance into Georgia’s chaotic GOP Senate primary is the nightmare scenario that Republicans have spent the entire cycle trying to avoid. By the end of this long, divisive, and expensive intra-party fight, it’ll be clear that none of these candidates are focused on the issues that matter most to Georgians,” state party spokesperson Dan Gottlieb said in a statement.
While three other candidates have already launched bids, the race has been at somewhat of a standstill while Walker mulled a run.
None of the candidates on the GOP side has the national name recognition or profile that Walker brings with him, but one competitor — Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black — has already been elected to statewide office, a position he’s been elected to three times. He also has the endorsement of former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal.
Black has worked to solidify himself as the front-runner before Walker entered the race. He took on Walker before he announced his campaign, contrasting himself with the longtime Texas resident by touting his lifelong Georgian credentials.
“Welcome back to Georgia. Welcome to the U.S. Senate race. You know, I’ve been a big fan of yours since we were in college together before you moved away,” Black quipped in a video response to Walker filing his candidacy on Tuesday. Black was a student at University of Georgia when Walker was a freshman.
In addition to Black, also in the race to take on Warnock are Kelvin King, an Air Force veteran and owner of a metro-Atlanta construction firm, and Latham Saddler, a former Navy SEAL and National Security Council director of intelligence programs in the Trump administration.
Like King and Saddler, Walker has never been elected to office, but he enters the race as a front-runner — a status that could be solidified quickly with an endorsement from his longtime friend, the former president.
While he’d been living in Texas for decades before exploring a run in Georgia, and only re-registered to vote in the state last week, 59-year-old Walker grew up in the Peach State and played for the University of Georgia Bulldogs. The Bulldogs won the national title his freshman year and Walker came up just shy of winning the coveted college football trophy that year, placing third for the Heisman, but going on to win it his junior year.
Walker’s allegiance to Trump was evident throughout the 2020 campaign, while he acted as a surrogate for the former president. He appeared by video at the Republican National Convention in August to commend Trump’s character and dispute allegations he is racist. Last September, he participated in a radio ad touting Trump’s record of “fighting to improve the lives of Black Americans.”
But winning the primary is one thing; winning the general election is another — and having Trump’s “complete and total endorsement” — should he officially get it, as expected — could be a liability come November 2022, when the candidate will need to appeal to more than just base voters to come out on top.
Should he win the primary, he’ll also be up against a fundraising powerhouse. Coming in behind Ossoff and now-Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, Warnock raised the third-most money of any Senate candidate in the 2020 cycle. As of the end of June, the most recent campaign finance filing candidates have had to submit, the Georgia senator had over $10.5 million in the bank and received over $6 million in contributions in the second three-month period of 2021. He’s also the top fundraiser so far for the 2022 cycle, according to the FEC.
While senators serve six-year terms, Warnock, the first Black senator elected to represent Georgia, is facing voters again after just two years because he won a special election to finish out retired Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term. But in the twin January runoffs, Warnock bested Biden’s November margin over Trump by nearly eight-fold and earned about 19,000 more votes than Ossoff did against former GOP Sen. David Perdue.
(ALBANY, N.Y.) — Newly sworn-in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’s cleaned house and removed individuals who allegedly contributed to a culture that allowed for sexual harassment under her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo officially left office this week after a report by the New York Attorney General’s Office released earlier this month alleged he sexually harassed 11 women. Cuomo has repeatedly denied claims of sexual harassment and said he was resigning to prevent the distraction of an impeachment trial, though he was certain he would win.
The staffers implicated in the report “are no longer part of this administration,” she said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday morning.
The day after he announced he’d resign, she vowed to fire anyone connected to the report who contributed to the culture of sexual harassment.
“It’s over. None of this is going to be accepted. I’ve surrounded myself with talented, young women and I want them to be the role models to others,” she said. “It’s a culture where they’re going to be OK. You don’t have to look over your shoulder. You don’t have to worry about harassment.”
Several Cuomo aides and staffers implicated in the report, including former secretary Melissa DeRosa and former Financial Services Superintendent Linda Lacewell, had already left state government. DeRosa, considered one of Cuomo’s top confidantes, stepped down just days before the governor announced his resignation. Lacewell left her position on Tuesday, the same day as Cuomo.
A number of state legislators had demanded that officials close to Cuomo and his scandals be removed as Albany moved forward under new leadership.
New York Republican Sen. Robert Ortt demanded a “clean slate,” adding in a statement earlier this month, “I am calling for the immediate resignation of state agency officials with direct ties to the soon-to-be former Governor and the many scandals that have plagued state government.”
When asked how the culture will change now that she’s at the helm, Hochul told MSNBC, “Anyone who crosses the line will be addressed by me.”
She said she’ll require in-person sexual harassment and ethics training for all state government employees.
Basil Smikle, a political strategist and lecturer at Columbia’s School of International Public Affairs, told ABC News her decision to remove those staffers “sends a message to voters that the era of Andrew Cuomo is over.”
“It was a clear intent on her part. She talked a lot about accountability and transparency. The act itself is a follow through,” he said.
However, it may be a bigger challenge to change the culture in Albany as a whole.
“It would be wrong to assume that these early moves will erase all of the toxicity. She has to undertake a more thorough and sweeping investigation of state agencies, state contracts, even relationships with legislators and center her administrative policies on diversity and on women to really be able to affect the substantial change in the long run,” he added.
Hochul also said Wednesday she’s looking into staffers involved in the controversial handling of nursing home data during the pandemic.
“I need to continue working to identify principles involved in those decisions,” she told “Morning Joe.”
She noted she’s asked for a 45-day period to assemble her team.
“There’s just a lot of things that weren’t happening and I’m going to make them happen,” she said. “Transparency will be a hallmark of my administration.”
(WASHINGTON) — After President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of all U.S. troops by Aug. 31, the U.S. will continue to help U.S. citizens and residents and Afghans who worked with Americans or are otherwise at risk from the Taliban get out of the country, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
But it’s unclear how that will be possible after the U.S. cedes control of the airport to the Taliban and ends evacuation flights — and it will mean leaving thousands of Afghans that the administration had previously said they would help behind.
Biden and Blinken have each said that the U.S. is “on track to complete our mission” before that Aug. 31 deadline, without specifying what the administration considers the scope of that mission — including how many Afghans they will evacuate.
In contrast, Blinken detailed how many Americans the U.S. has evacuated — some 4,500 to date — and how many the administration believes are left behind — 500 with whom the State Department has made contact with and up to 1,000 more who registered with the embassy.
“Let me be crystal clear about this — there is no deadline on our work to help any remaining American citizens who decide they want to leave to do so, along with the many Afghans who have stood by us over these many years and want to leave and have been unable to do so. That effort will continue every day past Aug. 31st,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday.
But starting on Sept. 1, that effort will rely on the Taliban, whose spokesperson said Tuesday they will not let Afghans leave the country.
In contrast, Blinken said, “The Taliban have made public and private commitments to provide and permit safe passage for Americans, for third-country nationals and Afghans at risk going forward past Aug. 31st” and to keep Kabul’s international airport running.
He added the U.S., backed by international allies, will hold them to it, without specifying how beyond using “every diplomatic, economic, political and assistance tool at my disposal (and) working closely with allies and partners who feel very much the same way.”
The U.S. is in discussions already with the international community on how to keep the airport open, according to American officials, including countries like Qatar and Turkey that have closer ties to the Taliban.
Blinken didn’t detail what levers the U.S. could use to hold the Taliban to its promises, but he did say that if it let “people who want to leave Afghanistan” leave, upheld basic rights and prevented its territory from becoming a launching pad for terror attacks, “that’s a government we can work with.”
Pressed on whether the administration was abandoning Afghan allies, including interpreters or translators who weren’t far enough along in the special immigrant visa process, a senior State Department official told ABC News, “We have always said that we are committed to bringing out Americans who wish to be repatriated. We are going to do as much as we can for as many people as we can beyond that.”
But while the administration never specified how many Afghans that applied to, it has said repeatedly it would help those who served the U.S. military and diplomatic missions over the last 20 years.
“Our message to those women and men is clear — there is a home for you in the United States if you so choose, and we will stand with you just as you stood with us,” Biden said on July 8, before the Taliban surprised the administration with the speed with which it took over Afghanistan.
The senior State Department official said that “commitment we have to individuals who may be at risk” has to be weighed against “the safety and security of our diplomats, of our service members, of others who are involved in this operation.” Biden, Blinken and other officials have said the threat from the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan remains high, putting U.S. military and diplomatic personnel in danger.
“We’re operating in a hostile environment in a city and country now controlled by the Taliban, with the very real possibility of an ISIS-K attack. We’re taking every precaution, but this is very high-risk,” Blinken said Wednesday.
While the U.S. has been unclear about which Afghan interpreters will be evacuated, Blinken was more explicit about pledging to help those who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Several staffers have been blocked by Taliban fighters from approaching the Kabul airport and getting their seats on evacuation flights.
“Along with American citizens, nothing is more important to me as secretary of state than to do right by the people who have been working side-by-side with American diplomats in our embassy,” Blinken said. “We are relentlessly focused on getting the locally-employed staff out of Afghanistan and out of harm’s way, and let me leave it at that for now.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Taliban wrested control of more than just territory from Afghan forces as it tore through Afghanistan this month. By the time the militant group toppled Kabul on Aug. 14, images had emerged showing its fighters holding American-made rifles and posing next to Blackhawk helicopters.
Pentagon officials have told ABC News they don’t have a clear idea of just how much U.S.-made equipment is now in the hands of the Taliban, but government reports give clues to what the group could now have in its arsenal.
Since 2005, the U.S. has spent a total of about $80 billion on Afghan troops and police through the congressional Afghanistan Security Forces Fund, the main source of such money. More than $18 billion went specifically to “equipment and transportation,” according to a July report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR.
The rest of the money went toward sustainment, training, operations and infrastructure.
The weapons given to Afghan forces between 2004-2016 included more than 25,000 grenade launchers, nearly 65,000 machine guns and about 360,000 rifles, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. The firearms consisted of U.S. service rifles like the M16 and M4 as well as some Russian-designed AK-47s and Dragunov sniper rifles.
Thousands of indirect-fire weapons such as mortars and 122mm howitzers were also given to the Afghans.
“We don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone, but certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters last week.
In addition to conventional weapons, the U.S. gave the Afghans a large fleet of air and ground vehicles.
ABC News Senior Foreign Correspondent Ian Pannell, who was in Kabul as the Taliban took over the city, reported seeing Taliban militants driving Humvees. This is perhaps not surprising when considering the defeated Afghan security forces were given some 22,000 Humvees during the course of the war, according to the GAO report.
Add to that 42,000 Ford Ranger pick-up trucks and about 1,000 MRAPs, the large, heavy vehicles used to protect troops against roadside bombs.
For air operations, the U.S. provided the Afghan air force with 40 scout/attack MD-530 “little bird” helicopters, more than 30 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and 23 A-29 Super Tucano propeller attack planes.
Not all of these were left for the Taliban. In a rare public appearance last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, “I have received reports of a number of aircraft that were flown into Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.”
Videos have shown Taliban fighters posing by some of these aircraft, but a new Taliban air force is not likely to emerge, according to former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and ABC News contributor Steve Ganyard.
“The U.S. airplanes, they won’t be able to maintain — they’ll likely sell them for cash,” he said. “It’s the ground equipment they’ll use.”
Keeping advanced aircraft in flying condition takes serious maintenance ability and mechanical expertise — something the Afghan air force itself struggled with, even with American assistance.
While much U.S.-made materiel is now under Taliban control, it’s possible the military will try to remove some of it from the equation sometime after the expected Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, according to Ganyard.
“The U.S. will have the option of bombing the storage areas and destroying equipment once the airlift of American citizens is complete,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack on Wednesday sent records requests to eight government agencies, seeking records from the Trump White House and administration related to the Capitol Hill riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The letters, the first investigative steps taken by the panel since its July hearing, suggest the panel is ramping up its far-reaching inquiry that aims to examine efforts in and around the Trump administration to challenge and overturn the election results before, during and after the Jan. 6 attack.
It could also spark a lengthy legal battle with the former president and his attorneys, who have criticized the inquiry and vowed to challenge efforts to obtain testimony and records.
The panel sent requests to the National Archives — which maintains and preserves Trump White House records — the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and Interior, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and several intelligence community agencies.
Its 12-page letter to the National Archives also requested records pertaining to more than 30 White House aides, lawyers, Trump family members and outside advisers, along with West Wing communications, records and visitors logs on and around the day of the Capitol riot.
The requests to the Justice Department and Pentagon are focused on records related to the “potential invocation of the Insurrection Act” and martial law – both proposed by several Trump allies outside the administration aiming to challenge the election results.
The panel is also seeking communications between the Justice Department and the former president’s campaign legal team “dealing with the validity of the 2020 election of challenges to the election’s outcome.”
“We will look at all records at some point,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters on Monday, adding that the committee has a list of “several hundred people” investigators hope to contact as part of their investigation.
The panel requested from the Department of Homeland Security records related to intelligence gathered on threats prior to the Capitol attack, including those against Vice President Mike Pence, as well as Secret Service records regarding the protection of Pence and his family.
The panel is also poised to issue records preservation requests to telecommunications and social media companies, ahead of any potential subpoenas, for the phone, text, email and social media records of individuals of interest to the investigation – including, potentially members of Congress.
The committee, whose nine members meet in person or over Zoom roughly twice a week, could hold its next hearing in September when Congress reconvenes.
Of all Trent Reznor‘s many different, out-of-left-field projects, producing a Halsey album is perhaps the most surprising. As the Nine Inch Nails frontman tells Entertainment Weekly, he felt the same way.
“It was completely unexpected,” Reznor says. “‘Would you be interested in working on this project that was not something that you had planned or even thought about?’ And it caught me in the moment, where I said, ‘Let me hear what you’re talking about.'”
“To my surprise, I really had fun writing material in a format I’d never thought about before,” he continues. “I found myself excited. I wanted to get up even earlier to start working on it.”
Reznor produced the album, which is titled If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, alongside his NIN band mate and scoring partner Atticus Ross. What attracted him to the project, Reznor explains, was how artistically genuine it felt.
“I thought, ‘Well, I haven’t thought through all the repercussions of what it means to my career or to my people or to her people or how I’m f***ing myself in this, but it’s exciting to me as an artist for the right reasons,'” Reznor says. “It’s not for a trophy or a paycheck or anything. The end result of working on that Halsey record is Atticus and I went into it with a set understanding of what we thought we were doing and we came out the other end realizing we don’t know everything.”
Reznor’s main concern about the project now, though, is that he hopes “other people won’t think it’s a piece of s***.”
“Maybe I f***ed it up a little bit much,” he says.
If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power arrives this Friday, August 27.
After teasing she was dropping solo music, Chloe Bailey of Chloe X Halle is loving the anticipation of performing for the first time as a solo artist at the upcoming MTV VMAs.
“I’m so excited. Thank you @MTV,” she commented on Instagram. “Told y’all it was coming.”
As previously reported, the 23-year-old entertainer will debut her upcoming single, “Have Mercy,” at the awards show on September 12 at Barclays Center in New York City. Last year, she and sister Halle performed their song “Ungodly Hour” during the VMAs pre-show.
Chloe will return to Barclays Center in October for the Lights On Festival, hosted and curated by H.E.R. The list of performers for the two-day event on October 21 and 22 also includes Maxwell, SWV, Bryson Tiller, Skip Marley, Ari Lennox, Queen Naija and many more.
While Chloe prepares her solo debut album, 21-year-old Halle completed production last month for her starring role as Princess Ariel in Disney’s new version of The Little Mermaid. The sisters also appear together in the black-ish spinoff, grown-ish, starring Yara Shahidi.
The Grateful Dead and the Rhino label have partnered with Amazon Prime’s music-themed streaming The Coda Collection to launch a series of archival concert films.
Three professionally filmed Grateful Dead performances from the latter part of the band’s career have been confirmed as part of the series. The first, which is available now, documents a July 2, 1989, stadium show in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
The concert, which is available via streaming for the first time, featured Dead classics like “Playing in the Band,” “Friend of the Devil,” “Truckin'” and “Sugar Magnolia,” a medley combining Traffic‘s “Dear Mr. Fantasy” and The Beatles‘ “Hey Jude,” and covers of Bob Dylan‘s “Queen Jane Approximately” and “Quinn the Eskimo.”
Upcoming Dead concert films will include a Live in Washington, D.C. 7/12/89 and Live at Giants Stadium 6/17/91, which will premiere on September 8 and September 29, respectively.
The latter show, held at the now-demolished East Rutherford, New Jersey, football stadium, saw Bruce Hornsby joining the band as guest keyboardist and included a rare performance of “Dark Star Jam.”
Future installments of the series will feature performances from various other eras of The Grateful Dead. Fans can explore more information about the shows at the free CodaCollection.co website.
The Coda Collection is available to Amazon Prime members for $4.99 a month. A seven-day free trial also is offered.
Maj. W. Chris Clyne/Oregon National Guard Public Affairs via U.S. National Guard
(SALEM, Ore.) — Hundreds of National Guard members are on the ground in Oregon to help with a COVID-19 surge that’s overwhelming hospitals across the state.
Oregon has 1,000 COVID-19 patients in hospitals, according to state data, the highest ever in the pandemic. Gov. Kate Brown called the news a “terrifying milestone.”
The state seen cases skyrocket over the past six weeks, with nearly 3,000 reported Tuesday, according to the Oregon Health Authority’s COVID-19 dashboard. The state has 45 available adult ICU beds out of 667, roughly 7%, as of Tuesday.
The Oregon National Guard members — 500 initially were deployed on Aug. 20 — said they’re helping with nonclinical work and COVID-19 testing in 20 hospitals.
The state also has requested doctors, nurses, paramedics and respiratory therapists from out of state. At least 24 FEMA-deployed emergency medical technicians also have been sent out to assist at six Oregon hospitals, Brown said earlier this week.
Three Asante network hospitals in Jackson and Josephine counties in southern Oregon are reeling from a critical surge in COVID-19 cases. In those two counties, just four of 56 staffed adult ICU beds were available, according to the latest Oregon Health Authority data.
The Asante hospital network told ABC News that 80 National Guard members arrived on Aug. 19 and have been assigned to nonclinical support functions, including manning the COVID-19 hotline and assisting with drive-thru testing.
The hospital network reported 181 COVID-19 inpatients on Wednesday, a new record, and at least 9 in 10 hadn’t been vaccinated.
“All three of our hospitals are over capacity. Our ICUs are full. We’re putting two patients in ICU rooms at our Grants Pass hospital. These rooms are built to only house one patient,” Asante spokesperson Lauren Van Sickle told ABC News.
The hospital said capacity has not gone below 90% in the past six months and more than 400 surgeries have been canceled to deal with the surge, Van Sickle said.
In Jackson County, COVID-19 hospitalizations surged sevenfold from the beginning of July to the beginning of August.
Our hospital is actually in a really dire state right now,” Jackie DeSilva, the emergency preparedness manager with Asante, told ABC Portland, Oregon, affiliate KATU. “We are overflowing with patients.”
“We are actually extending our ICU beds into non-conventional areas that would not normally be considered ICU units so we can care for the patients,” she added.
State health officer Dr. Dean Sidelinger said in a statement Tuesday that current hospitalizations “far exceed” pre-vaccination surges last fall and winter, and a majority of those in hospitals aren’t vaccinated. So far 71.4% of those 18 and older are fully vaccinated in Oregon, according to state data.
“This is putting an unprecedented strain on our local hospitals. Already, we have seen some hospitals suspend much-needed medical procedures because of the overflowing capacity. This affects every Oregonian family and it is not sustainable,” he said.
Brown has been buckling down on public safety measures to cope with the surge in cases announcing a mask mandate for public outdoor settings on Tuesday, regardless of vaccination status, starting Friday. She also announced last week that health care workers and K-12 educators, staff and volunteers must be fully vaccinated.
