(SAN FRANCISCO) — A man was arrested and charged with battery following an alleged incident on a United Airlines flight Sunday, law enforcement officials told ABC News Tuesday.
San Francisco Police said 47-year-old Cody Benjamin Lovins of Montgomery, Texas, was arrested following an alleged “physical altercation” on a plane.
United Airlines said in a statement that a passenger became “disruptive” during boarding on the Houston bound flight. The airline said the passenger allegedly assaulted a crew member.
Naya Jimenez, another passenger on the flight, told ABC affiliate KTRK-TV that the traveler became disruptive after a crew member told him he and his wife were in the wrong seats.
“They had to bring in a gate attendant to try to talk to both of them,” Jimenez said in an interview with KTRK.
Police said Lovins was subsequently “cited and released for battery.”
Video posted to social media showed footage of the incident, during which the passenger allegedly began hitting a crew member.
United called the passenger’s behavior “unacceptable” and said they were banned from future flights with the airline. United said it is working with local law enforcement in their investigation.
So far this year there have been 586 reported unruly passenger incidents, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration. During the same time period in 2022, there were 1,306 reported incidents.
San Francisco International Airport did not immediately respond to request for comment.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — Cash App founder Bob Lee was stabbed three times, twice in the chest and once in the hip, according to autopsy documents released Tuesday.
Lee, 43, an executive at cryptocurrency firm MobileCoin, was killed last month in the San Francisco neighborhood of Rincon Hill, the San Francisco Police Department said.
Doctors at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital performed surgeries on him for hours but could not keep him alive — his death wasn’t called until 6:49 a.m. in the operation room, four hours after the 911 call for help, the autopsy documents show.
His cause of death is listed as multiple stab wounds. One of the strikes, in his left chest, penetrated his heart, the documents show. The deepest wound, in his left upper chest, was approximately 5 inches, according to the records.
When he initially arrived at the hospital, Lee was identified through his driver’s license, though was officially listed as a John Doe until his identity was confirmed through fingerprint comparison, according to the documents.
In his body, the medical examiner found alcohol, cocaine, ketamine and allergy medications, according to the autopsy documents. The records do not specify what could have been from hospital intervention when he was undergoing surgery.
A fellow tech executive has been arrested and charged with murder in connection with Lee’s death. The suspect, 38-year-old Nima Momeni, is the owner of an Emeryville, California-based company called Expand IT.
Momeni’s arraignment, which had been rescheduled to Tuesday, has been again moved to May 18.
Prosecutors allege that Momeni drove Lee to a dark, secluded area on April 4 and stabbed him with a kitchen knife, according to a motion filed last month. Police later found a roughly 4-inch blade at the scene that appeared to have blood on it, the document said.
During the previous afternoon, Lee spent time with Momeni’s sister and a witness, who identified themself as a close friend of Lee, prosecutors said.
Lee reassured Momeni that nothing inappropriate had taken place, the witness said to police.
Early the following morning, at about 2 a.m., camera footage showed Lee and Momeni leaving Lee’s hotel and getting into Momeni’s car, a BMW Z4, prosecutors said.
Video shows the BMW drive to a secluded and dark area where the two men got out of the car. Momeni “moved toward” Lee, and the BMW drove away from the scene at high speed, according to the court document.
Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Eight people and six companies have been charged in a series of indictments with pervasive fraud and corruption in the construction industry, motivated by “greed at all costs,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. said Tuesday while announcing the indictments.
The defendants allegedly deceived government agencies that award projects to minority and women-owned businesses (MWBE).
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is charging the drywall and carpentry company JM3 Construction, its owner Lawrence “Larry” Wecker, project manager Michael Speier, and other co-conspirators for allegedly taking part “in multiple criminal schemes to increase their business and revenues to the detriment of their workers and fair competition within this industry,” Bragg said.
According to one indictment, JM3 Construction falsified business records to make it seem as though the company was working with minority and women-owned businesses, and awarded lucrative city and state contracts.
“These defendants, as charged, enriched themselves at the expense of a program intended to assist minority and women-owned businesses, by deceiving city and state government entities, part of a series of frauds that shortchanged workers and undermined fair competition,” New York City Department of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn E. Strauber said.
Bragg alleges that JM3 obtained government-subsidized affordable housing contracts by listing minority and women-owned contractors on paper, while using non-MWBE contractors to do the work, a scheme that the district attorney said put actual MWBE companies at a disadvantage.
“We have zero tolerance for anyone seeking to defraud the city and harm minority and women-owned businesses,” New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Adolfo Carrión Jr. said in the statement announcing the charges. “We stand by our commitment to diversifying who the city does business with and we thank the Manhattan District Attorney’s office for bringing these bad actors to light.”
Bragg said the company and Wecker stole money from subcontractors and falsified business records, as well as fixed bids for construction projects to guarantee that the company was awarded projects with inflated costs that covered the alleged bribes.
The DA further alleges that JM3 and Wecker inflated the price of a nearly $10 million drywall contract by $400,000, so the company could pay $50,000 to Adrian Esparragoza, a general contractor who gave them the contract.
The district attorney’s office charged Esparragoza with providing insider information to Wecker and Speier to get the contract.
Bragg claims that JM3 Construction used subcontractors with multi-million-dollar payrolls to cash checks, under shell companies, that were allegedly for payments to legitimate subcontractor services.
“None of that cash was reported to the New York State Insurance Fund, meaning workers operating in this very dangerous industry were exposed and underinsured,” Bragg said on Tuesday.
Bragg said the defendants swindled NYSIF out of more than $2 million.
Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Eight people and six companies have been charged in a series of indictments with pervasive fraud and corruption in the construction industry, motivated by “greed at all costs,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. said Tuesday while announcing the indictments.
The defendants allegedly deceived government agencies that award projects to minority and women-owned businesses (MWBE).
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is charging the drywall and carpentry company JM3 Construction, its owner Lawrence “Larry” Wecker, project manager Michael Speier, and other co-conspirators for allegedly taking part “in multiple criminal schemes to increase their business and revenues to the detriment of their workers and fair competition within this industry,” Bragg said.
According to one indictment, JM3 Construction falsified business records to make it seem as though the company was working with minority and women-owned businesses, and awarded lucrative city and state contracts.
“These defendants, as charged, enriched themselves at the expense of a program intended to assist minority and women-owned businesses, by deceiving city and state government entities, part of a series of frauds that shortchanged workers and undermined fair competition,” New York City Department of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn E. Strauber said.
Bragg alleges that JM3 obtained government-subsidized affordable housing contracts by listing minority and women-owned contractors on paper, while using non-MWBE contractors to do the work, a scheme that the district attorney said put actual MWBE companies at a disadvantage.
“We have zero tolerance for anyone seeking to defraud the city and harm minority and women-owned businesses,” New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Adolfo Carrión Jr. said in the statement announcing the charges. “We stand by our commitment to diversifying who the city does business with and we thank the Manhattan District Attorney’s office for bringing these bad actors to light.”
Bragg said the company and Wecker stole money from subcontractors and falsified business records, as well as fixed bids for construction projects to guarantee that the company was awarded projects with inflated costs that covered the alleged bribes.
The DA further alleges that JM3 and Wecker inflated the price of a nearly $10 million drywall contract by $400,000, so the company could pay $50,000 to Adrian Esparragoza, a general contractor who gave them the contract.
The district attorney’s office charged Esparragoza with providing insider information to Wecker and Speier to get the contract.
Bragg claims that JM3 Construction used subcontractors with multi-million-dollar payrolls to cash checks, under shell companies, that were allegedly for payments to legitimate subcontractor services.
“None of that cash was reported to the New York State Insurance Fund, meaning workers operating in this very dangerous industry were exposed and underinsured,” Bragg said on Tuesday.
Bragg said the defendants swindled NYSIF out of more than $2 million.
(NEW ORLEANS) — A third detainee who escaped from a Mississippi jail more than a week ago was found dead inside a vehicle at a New Orleans truck stop on Sunday, authorities said.
Casey Grayson, 34, was one of four men who broke out of the Raymond Detention Center in Hinds County last month, local authorities said.
His cause of death is pending an autopsy, Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones said Tuesday.
“There was drug paraphernalia and suspected narcotics recovered in close proximity to where he was discovered in the vehicle,” Jones told reporters during a press briefing Tuesday, noting that there was no foul play suspected.
Authorities believe a family member may have provided the white pickup truck that Grayson was discovered in following his escape, but “that is still under investigation,” Jones said. A security guard found him unresponsive in the truck and alerted authorities, Jones said.
Since the breach, one of the detainees was killed in a shootout with law enforcement and another was taken into custody in Texas, while a fourth remains at large.
The four detainees escaped through the roof of the Hinds County jail on April 21, according to the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office. The men were discovered missing from the jail early the following day after a headcount, according to Jones. The men were pretrial detainees, meaning they were being held in prison while awaiting trial.
Grayson had been detained since mid-February and was charged with the sale of a controlled substance and grand larceny, according to Jones. The sheriff’s office received information last week that Grayson may have been in the New Orleans area, he said.
The discovery comes after one of the escaped detainees, 51-year-old Jerry Raynes, was captured in Spring Valley, Texas, in the Houston area, last week. He is in the process of being extradited to Mississippi, Jones said Tuesday.
Raynes had been in the Raymond Detention Center since January 2022 after being charged with auto theft and business burglary and has a history of escaping pretrial detention facilities, according to Jones. He faces additional charges of escape and auto theft, the sheriff said.
Another one of the escaped detainees — 22-year-old Dylan Arrington — was killed in a shootout with deputies at a residence in Leake County on April 26, according to Jones. Arrington had barricaded himself inside the home, which somehow became engulfed in flames during the standoff, Jones said.
While on the loose, Arrington was believed to be involved in a fatal carjacking in Jackson on April 24. The victim — identified as the Rev. Anthony Watts — was believed to have pulled over to help after someone crashed a motorcycle before he was fatally shot, authorities said.
Arrington had been in the detention center since April 13 after being charged with auto theft and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, according to the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office.
The fourth detainee was identified by the sheriff’s office as Corey Harrison, 22, who was charged with receiving stolen property and had been detained since April 7.
Jones said Tuesday that Harrison is believed to be affiliated with the Hinds County area but “I do not have an exact location on where he may be at this particular time.”
ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Six people are dead and dozens more injured after a massive pileup Monday in Illinois caused by a sudden dust storm, officials said.
More than 30 people were injured and transported to the hospital, including multiple people with life-threatening injuries, Illinois State Police Maj. Ryan Starrick said during an afternoon press conference. Victims range in age from 2 to 80 years old, Starrick said.
The crash took place at about 11 a.m. local time on Interstate 55 in Montgomery County, officials said. Car accidents were reported on both north and southbound lanes of I-55 for a 2-mile stretch.
Forty to 60 passenger vehicles and at least 30 commercial vehicles were involved in the crash, including two semi-trucks that caught fire, police said.
The cause of the crash was excessive winds blowing dirt from farm fields across the highway, Starrick said. The crash prompted a response from a flurry of emergency vehicles and multiple helicopters.
The Montgomery County Coroner’s Officer confirmed to ABC News the identity of one of the victims as Shirley Harper, 88, of Franklin, Wisconsin, who was a passenger in a vehicle that was being driven by her daughter. Her daughter survived and is currently hospitalized, authorities said.
Leach, who was driving an RV from Illinois to Texas, told ABC News that she had been stuck in traffic behind the massive crash for five hours.
“It actually looks like snow almost when I was sending [my kids] videos,” said Karen Leach, who was caught up in the storm. “And it just it feels like, like the end of the world.”
The stretch of I-55 where the accident took place is expected to be closed at least through the evening, Starrick said.
“My team and I are closely following the devastating crash on I-55 as authorities learn more,” Rep. Nikki Budzinski wrote on Twitter. “Please be safe as this situation continues to unfold.”
The same stretch of interstate was closed again Tuesday “due to high winds and low visibility,” Illinois State Police tweeted, noting that it was ” out of an abundance of caution” and there were no crashes.
ABC News’ Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.
(MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla.) — A Florida woman was arrested and charged with battery on an elected official after she allegedly threw a glass of wine at Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., according to the Walton County Sheriff’s Office.
The incident occurred on Saturday in Miramar Beach, Florida.
Gaetz was at the South Walton Beaches Wine and Food Festival, according to a police report obtained by ABC News.
The woman, identified by police as Selena Jo Chambers, told investigators she tripped and accidentally spilled a drink on Gaetz, but others say it went down differently.
“Representative Gaetz said Chambers and another female had been walking past him and his family cursing at them,” according to the police report. “He believed both females had recognized him as a United States Representative.”
Gaetz told police he was speaking to someone when Chambers allegedly began loudly swearing at him.
“Blaine Odom said he was speaking with Representative Gaetz and saw Selena Chambers swearing loudly at them. Chambers was carrying a drink in her right hand. Chambers thrust the container into the air and the beverage from the drink landed on Representative Gaetz and on Odom’s right shoulder,” according to the police report.
It continued, “Chambers then walked away yelling and flipping him off. Odom said he observed the drink land on Representative Gaetz and also on him. Odom said his clothing was soaked from the drink Chambers threw on him. Odom said he wanted to press charges against Chambers.”
Chambers told investigators she had been drinking. Her friend was not arrested.
Battery on an elected official is a felony and simple battery is a misdemeanor. Chambers was released on $1,000 bond.
She couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Gaetz thanked the sheriff in a statement for taking “swift” action and charging the woman.
It isn’t the first time Gaetz has been the target of an object thrown as him. In 2019, a woman threw a drink at Gaetz during a town hall meeting. That woman was sentenced to 15 days in jail for the incident.
(KEYSVILLE, Ga.) — For nearly three decades, Lucious Abrams says he has gotten letters from the United States Department of Agriculture promising to wipe out his debt –but for him and other Black farmers in the country, receiving relief from the federal government has been a difficult process.
Every morning in the rural town of Keysville, Georgia, the sun rises over 600 acres of farmland that has belonged to Abrams’ family for three generations.
It is now planting season, typically the time when he would start tending to crops, but on this farm, he says nothing is operational.
“We used to grow soybeans, corn, cotton before we were unable to farm,” Abrams told ABC News Live Prime. “This is the devastation that is happening to most Black farmers.”
After accruing over $1.2 million dollars of debt over the course of 28 years, the 70-year-old farmer spends most of his time looking at things he doesn’t have the money to fix.
His financial burdens have hindered his ability to maintain his land and farming equipment.
“I feel like I’ve been left on “‘Gilligan’s island,” Abrams told ABC News senior Congressional correspondent Rachel Scott in an interview.
Land Lost and Justice Deferred
Over the last century, Black farmers have lost more than 12 million acres of land, according to USDA data.
In 1920, 14 percent of all farms were operated by Black farmers, owning more than 16 million acres. But by 2017, that figure had plummeted to 1.7 percent – just half a percent of the country’s 4.7 million acres of farmland, according to the USDA.
On March 6, 2021, Congress approved $4 billion in loan forgiveness for farmers of color in a program aimed to address historic discrimination by the USDA, which has acknowledged routinely denying loans to farmers of color. The USDA told ABC News approximately 19,000 Black farmers were identified and sent letters notifying them that they may be eligible for federal aid under this program.
However, the legislation was halted by a lawsuit from white farmers who claimed they were being excluded because of their race.
“To be eligible for this debt relief, you had to be a minority. If you weren’t a minority, you were excluded,” Sid Miller, Texas Agricultural Commissioner, said in an interview with ABC News.
Miller is a rancher and filed the lawsuit in 2021 as a private citizen.
“I’m all for helping minority farmers and farmers overall, but our Constitution prohibits discrimination,” Miller continued.
Democrats subsequently rewrote the plan in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2021, removing references to race in the eligibility requirements and splitting up relief into two funds: distressed borrowers relief and discriminated borrowers relief.
“It was what it was,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Scott in an interview, reflecting on the decision to rewrite the legislation.
“We have a legal system now dominated by a lot of conservative jurists who would not let that program go forward and we knew that would put more farmers in peril. Congress has done their job now. It’s on the USDA now to make sure that they’re gonna implement this in a way that eligible farmers get the resources they are owed,” Booker continued.
Earlier this year, Booker led a group of several Democrats including Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in reintroducing the Justice for Black Farmers Act which aims to protect black farmers and address historic discrimination in lending.
“I want to see USDA get the farmers the relief that we passed through legislation. It is taking entirely too long. While folks are caught up in bureaucracy and processes, another planting season has come and gone, ” Warnock said.
Meanwhile, farmers like Abrams have been left in limbo for decades with staggering debt.
“The world is turning their head away. This is a moral issue. we are here in America and you’re going to have lawyers put a clause in there and we have no recourse? The Senate, the Congress pass it and we still can’t get justice,” Abrams said.
It’s not the first time Black farmers were promised relief they didn’t receive.
A History of discriminatory practices against Black farmers
Abrams was one of six plaintiffs in the landmark Pigford v. Glickman, a class action lawsuit between the U.S. department of agriculture and Black farmers. The suit claimed that the agency had discriminated against Black farmers on the basis of race and failed to investigate or properly respond to complaints from 1983 to 1997.
It resulted in a $1.2 billion settlement in 1999, but confusion around paperwork and deadlines led to thousands of claims being denied.
The disparities in access to federal aid persist for minority farmers. In 2022, just over a third of all farmers who identified as Black and applied for direct loans were approved, according to an ABC news analysis of USDA data.
In comparison, the data shows, 72 percent of farmers who identified as white and applied for the same loan were approved.
USDA officials told ABC News at least 19,800 distressed farmers have received aid from the relief programs, but the federal agency is not tracking loan recipients by race, making it difficult to see the impact. The agency says payments for discriminated borrower claims won’t be distributed until the end of the year.
“I think we can agree that, yes, we recognize that there were enough disparities in long performance among black and brown farmers that we needed to do something. And I’m convinced that race was a, was a good metric by which to make those decisions, but we were sued,” Dr. DeWayne Goldmon, Senior Advisor for Racial Equity for Tom Vilsack, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.
“We have decided to focus on following the mandate of the law. Right now, we’re focused on implementing it and getting people back farming and participating in programs as fully as they can,” Goldmon added.
Goldmon, who is also a Black farmer, oversees efforts to address racial disparities at USDA and acknowledges the distrust.
“I’ve had conversations with Secretary Vilsack and my other colleagues across the department, in these positions, you know, our task is to move forward as boldly as we can and make sure that we do the work that’s required,” the senior advisor told Scott in an interview.
Soon after ABC News asked the USDA about Abrams’ case, he said he received notice from the department that his debt had been forgiven.
It has been the relief he’s been waiting for.
“I cried tears of Joy. It’s taken me over 30 years. I’m 70-years-old, that’s almost half my life. I’ve had almost 30 years of let downs, but out of all that, I knew that one day God was going to find a way,” Abrams told ABC News.
“I went out to the grave and talked to my mom, my dad and my sisters told them our blessing finally came. We got the debt paid off,” he added.
(NEW YORK) — Donald Trump will not testify in his own defense in writer E. Jean Carroll’s civil defamation and battery case against the former president, Trump’s attorney said Tuesday at the end of the day’s testimony.
Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleges that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations “a Hoax and a lie” and saying “This woman is not my type!” when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s.
She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he raped Carroll or defamed her.
As Judge Lewis Kaplan was asking the lawyers Tuesday to forecast the remainder of the case, defense attorney Joe Tacopina affirmed that he has just one expert witness.
“So Mr. Trump is not going to be coming?” the judge asked. “Correct,” Tacopina said.
“It’s his call,” the judge said. “I understand that. You understand that. He understands that.”
Tacopina had said at the start of the trial that Trump would make the decision as the trial progressed. Trump was not required to appear, as the trial is a civil case and not a criminal one.
During Tuesday’s testimony, a businesswoman told jurors that Trump had groped her during a flight to New York in 1979, in what Carroll’s attorneys said showed a pattern of behavior on Trump’s part. Jessica Leeds is one of two women who the court has ruled are allowed to testify about prior alleged assaults by Trump.
Leeds, who first made her allegations to The New York Times just before the 2016 presidential election, testified that she was on a flight to New York when she was bumped up to first class from her coach seat and wound up next to Trump.
“When I got up there and sat down, the gentleman sitting by the window introduced himself as Donald Trump. We shook hands,” Leeds, who was 37 at the time, testified. “What happened was, they served a meal. And it was cleared and we were sitting there, when all of a sudden Trump decided to kiss me and grope me.”
She said there was no conversation — “It was out of the blue.”
Leeds described the alleged encounter “like a tussle,” saying, “He was trying to kiss me. He was trying to pull me towards him. He was grabbing my breasts. It was like he had 40 million hands.”
“It was when he started putting his hand up my skirt, that gave me a jolt of strength,” testified Leeds, who said she freed herself and went “storming back to my seat in the back of coach.”
Trump has denied the allegations.
Leeds, like Carroll, did not scream or yell during the alleged encounter.
“It never occurred to me to yell out,” Leeds said. When asked “Why not?” by Carroll’s attorney, she said, “I don’t know.”
Leeds recalled waiting until every other passenger had deplaned before she left, because she didn’t want to risk running into Trump again. She said she told no one about the alleged incident.
“I did not tell anybody at work because I didn’t think they would be interested in my experience,” Leeds said. “At that time and that place, in the work environment, men could basically get away with a lot.”
Leeds said she only revealed what allegedly happened to her when Trump started running for president.
“I started off telling my family, telling my children, telling my friends, my neighbors, my book club, anyone and everyone who would listen to me,” Leeds said. “I thought he was not the kind of person we wanted as president.”
Leeds said that three years after the alleged incident, she saw Trump with his pregnant then-wife, Ivana, at a Humane Society of New York gala at Saks Fifth Avenue, where she was giving out table assignments.
“He looked at me and he said, ‘I remember you, you’re that c— from the airplane,'” Leeds said. “It was like a bucket of cold water thrown over my head.”
On cross-examination, Tacopina asked, incredulously, “That was from a few-second interaction from an airplane that he remembered you, apparently?”
Leeds testified that she could not recall the exact date of the alleged assault, could not recall the origin of her LaGuardia-bound flight, and did not know who Trump was at the time, describing him as “some random guy sitting next to me on the airplane.”
“Fair to say you can’t name one witness who saw what happened to you?” Tacopina asked. “Correct,” Leeds replied.
“Not a single person can corroborate your story?” Tacopina asked. “That is correct,” Leeds said.
On re-direct, Carroll’s attorney, Michael Ferrara, asked, “Are you making this up because you hate Donald Trump?”
“No, I’m not making this up,” Leeds answered.
Asked why she didn’t report the alleged assault to her bosses, since it occurred on a business trip, Leeds said, “If I had gone in and complained about what had happened, my feeling was my boss would say to me, ‘That’s really too bad, how about lunch?'”
“I didn’t want any sympathy. I wanted this job,” said Leeds. “It was a good paying job.”
The jury also saw a clip of Trump on the 2016 campaign trial denying Leeds’ accusation, saying, “She would not be my first choice” — echoing his response to Carroll that “she’s not my type.”
Earlier Tuesday, a friend of Carroll, writer Lisa Birnbach, testified that Carroll called her within “five to seven minutes” of Trump’s alleged attack at Bergdorf Goodman’s.
“She told me that Donald Trump recognized her outside or right in the doorway of Bergdorf Goodman, he asked her to help him shop, and assaulted her upstairs in a dressing room,” Birnbach testified.
Birnbach testified that she “thought it was kind of nutty” for Carroll to go to the lingerie department with Trump, but she did not think it was dangerous.
“I had just spent a few days with him,” Birnbach said of Trump, referring to two days she spent at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a Feb. 12, 1996, piece she wrote for New York magazine. “He didn’t strike me as dangerous.”
Birnbach described the alleged assault as she said Carroll relayed it to her, saying, “He slammed his whole arm, pinned her against the wall with his arm and shoulders and with his free hand pulled down her tights.”
“And E. Jean said to me many times, ‘He pulled down my tights, he pulled down my tights.’ Almost like she couldn’t believe it had just happened to her,” Birnbach said.
“As soon as she said that, even though I knew my children didn’t know the word, I ducked out of the room and I whispered ‘E. Jean, he raped you, you should go to the police,'” Birnbach testified.
“She said, ‘No, no I don’t want to go to the police,'” Birnbach told the jury, saying that Carroll made her promise that “‘you will never speak of this again and promise me that you will tell no one.’ And I promised her both those things.”
A former executive at Bergdorf Goodman, Robert Salerno, testified Tuesday that there were no security cameras in the sixth floor lingerie department at the time of the alleged assault. He also testified that he’s seen Trump shop in the store.
In earlier testimony, Carroll described being in somewhat of a stupor when she called Birnbach after leaving the department store, laughing as she relayed her alleged encounter with Trump. It was Birnbach, Carroll said, who told her to stop laughing because she had been raped.
“And even when Lisa said it, it took a real effort for me to take it in,” Carroll testified. “Lisa is the one who focused my brain for that moment. It was Lisa saying that.”
Birnbach said the account that Carroll gave when she went public with the accusation in her 2019 book matched what Carroll told her in the spring of 1996.
“After I read the excerpt, I called E. Jean and told her how brave she was and what a good piece it was,” Birnbach said.
“She’s not a victim,” Birnbach said. “She doesn’t want anybody’s pity. She is somebody who, and I think it’s the way she was raised, instead of wallowing, she puts on lipstick, dusts herself off, and moves on. I think that’s how she has gotten through her life.”
Birnbach told the jury that she supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, was “surprised and upset” Trump won, and, on her podcast, called Trump a “narcissistic sociopath” who is “an infection like herpes that we can’t get rid of.”
But, she said, she was only testifying “because my friend, my good friend, who is a good person, told me something terrible that happened to her. As a result she lost her employment and her life became very, very difficult. I am here because I want the world to know that she was telling the truth.”
The defense has said that Carroll was motivated by “political reasons” to publish her allegation against Trump and, subsequently, sue him for defamation and battery. In its cross-examination of Birnbach, the defense questioned her about unflattering things she has said about Trump online and on various podcasts.
“Do you recall saying in a Facebook post the following: ‘Does it get worse than Donald Trump? I’ll tell you in my entire life I’ve never felt a hatred like a feel toward this person,'” defense attorney Perry Brandt asked Birnbach. He asked if, on a podcast, she said, “President Trump, and I don’t like to use those two words together.” On a different podcast, he asked if she said of Trump, “He’s a madman. He’s a narcissistic sociopath. He’s a malignant sociopath. He’s a Russian agent. He’s bad, he’s bad, and God knows what he can do before he leaves.”
Birnbach testified that all of those things sound like something she would have said.
On re-direct, Carroll’s attorney, Shawn Crowley, asked Birnbach, “When Ms. Carroll had called you in 1996 and told you he had just assaulted her, was he a political figure?” Birnbach replied, “Not at all.”
“Donald Trump in 1996 was a well-known New York person,” Birnbach said. “He was not in politics. He was not near politics. He was a guy who liked publicity and attention and he was also a known womanizer. My friend wasn’t raped by a president. She was assaulted by a guy, a real estate guy.”
“Would you lie to prevent Donald Trump from being president?” Crowley asked.
“Never,” Birnbach replied.
Testimony concluded for the day with the plaintiff’s expert on the witness stand.
Dr. Leslie Lebowitz, a clinical psychologist, testified that she had concluded that Carroll had been harmed by Trump’s alleged assault.
“There were three dominant ways that I felt that she had been harmed,” Lebowitz said. “She has suffered from painful, intrusive memories for many years. She endured a diminishment in how she thought and felt about herself. And perhaps most prominently, she manifests very notable avoidance symptoms which have curtailed her romantic and intimate life and caused profound loss.”
On Monday, under cross examination by defense attorney Joe Tacopina, Carroll said she didn’t contact police after she was allegedly attacked by Trump because, as a woman born in the 1940s, she’s a member of the “silent generation” that didn’t speak up about such things. The exchange came after Tacopina introduced several of her advice columns for Elle magazine in which she suggested that her readers call police in the event of a sexual assault or threat.
“There were numerous times where you’ve advised your readers to call the police” despite Carroll never reporting her own alleged rape to police, Tacopina said to Carroll.
“In most cases I advised my readers to go to the police,” Carroll replied.
“I was born in 1943,” she said. “I am a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and not complain. The fact that I never went to the police is not surprising for someone my age. I would rather have done anything than call the police.”
The answer was stricken from the record as nonresponsive to the question posed, but the exchange continued the defense’s questioning of Carroll’s actions following the alleged assault, and their suggestions that her behavior — not going to the police, not seeking security camera footage, continuing to shop at Bergdorf’s — is at odds with how other sex assault victims might behave.
The nine-member jury of six men and three women is weighing Carroll’s defamation and battery claims and deciding potential monetary damages.
Carroll’s lawsuit is her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.
She previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was “totally lying,” saying, “I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.
If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit — which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.
This month’s trial is taking place as Trump seeks the White House for a third time, while facing numerous legal challenges related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, his handling of classified material after leaving the White House, and possible attempts to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 vote. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said last week she would decide whether to file criminal charges against Trump or his allies this summer.
(FARMVILLE, Va.) — Federal, state and local officials are searching for two inmates who escaped from a Virginia jail, including a man who’s suspected of being involved in the murder of a North Carolina deputy, according to authorities.
Alder Marin-Sotelo, 26, and Bruce Callahan, 44, both federal detainees, escaped over the weekend from the Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, which is about 70 miles west of Richmond, according to the Prince Edward County Sheriff’s Department.
Callahan is convicted of multiple federal drug charges and Marin-Sotelo is convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm, the sheriff’s department said. Both are from North Carolina, the department said.
Alder Marin-Sotelo’s sister, Adriana Marin-Sotelo, has been arrested for allegedly helping her brother escape, Raleigh ABC station WTVD reported. Authorities claim she paid someone $2,500 to leave a car in the jail parking lot for her brother, according to WTVD.
The FBI said he fled in a red or burgundy early 2000 Ford Mustang with a 30-day temporary tag.
Alder Marin-Sotelo was caught on surveillance video climbing over the jail’s fence at 1:40 a.m. Sunday, and four hours later he was seen on video leaving the jail parking lot in the red Mustang, according to a criminal complaint. On Monday, the jail confirmed the inmate wasn’t there, the complaint said. The Prince Edward County Sheriff’s Office said they were notified by the jail Monday morning about the escape.
Alder Marin-Sotelo is also a defendant in the murder of deputy Ned Byrd of the Wake County Sheriff’s Department in North Carolina, Wake County officials said.
Alder Marin-Sotelo and his brother, Arturo Marin-Sotelo, were indicted on murder charges in the August 2022 slaying and both pleaded not guilty, WTVD reported. Arturo Marin-Sotelo allegedly shot Byrd four times after the deputy stopped to check out a suspicious truck, according to WTVD.
The Wake County Sheriff’s Department said, “We are working with our state and federal partners, as well as local authorities in Virginia to ensure all resources are being used to bring the defendant back into custody.”
The U.S. Marshals are leading the manhunt, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
Marshals later announced a $5,000 reward for any information leading to the capture Callahan. The FBI is leading the investigation for Marin-Sotelo, according to a press release, and the Marshals are assisting in the case.
The FBI said Tuesday it’s offering a $50,000 reward for anyone with information leading to an arrest of Alder Alfonso Marin-Sotelo.
