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Over 29,100 years ‘lost’ in prison in wrongful convictions, database finds

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Sidney Holmes, who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 400 years, was exonerated after 34 years in prison. Lamar Johnson was wrongfully convicted of a shooting without physical evidence connecting him to the incident and sentenced to life in prison. Leon Benson has been freed after 25 years of a more than 60-year sentence for a crime he maintains he did not commit.

These men are just a few in the more than a dozen people have been exonerated so far this year, due to wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, false confessions, police failure to disclose evidence and more.

These exonerations have been recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations since 1989, an exoneration-tracking project hosted by University of California Irvine, University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law.

There have been at least 3,287 exonerations recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations since 1989.

More than 29,100 years have been “lost” in prison due to “wrongful convictions” that have been uncovered thus far, according to the registry.

“We’ve all been raised to believe that our system is a great system that works well, that we identify the right people, we convict the right people, we give people the right sentences,” said attorney Marissa Boyers Bluestine, assistant director at the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, in an interview with ABC News.

“It has been a very hard awakening for a lot of people to realize that that’s just not always the case,” she said.

The registry found that the most often cited factors for wrongful convictions are: witness misidentification, false accusation, false confession, faulty forensic evidence, inadequate legal defense, police misconduct and prosecutorial misconduct.

In some cases, the methods used to collect evidence in the past have since been proven to be scientifically unreliable, according to experts. This was the case with Sidney Holmes, whose armed robbery conviction was recently overturned in part because of misidentification, which was partly due to outdated photo and live lineup practices commonly used by law enforcement in the 1980s, officials say.

Black people represent 53% of the 3,200 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations, despite making up just 13.6% of the American population. Black people represent 38% of the incarcerated population, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

“Innocent Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes,” the registry said in a 2022 report.

According to Bluestine, the only way to overturn someone’s conviction is to have “something new, something different that wasn’t heard by the trial court.”

“That’s why it takes 10, 15, 30 years to undo those convictions because we have to wait for that evidence to become available to change how we’re seeing a conviction,” she said.

The list of exonerated people is long. Here are just some of the wrongfully convicted cases that have been overturned so far in 2023:

Sidney Holmes

Holmes, 57, served more than 34 years of a 400-year prison sentence before the Broward State Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit (CRU) in Florida reinvestigated the case and determined he did not commit armed robbery.

The CRU found that there is “no evidence” connecting Holmes to the robbery besides a flawed identification of him and the vehicle involved in the robbery.

The CRU found that witness identification of Holmes was likely a “misidentification,” partly due to the photo and live lineup practices commonly used by law enforcement at the time, which are “scientifically unreliable,” according to the state attorney’s office.

Lamar Johnson

In Missouri, Lamar Johnson spent roughly 28 years behind bars for a murder he said he did not commit. He was convicted of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in 1994, according to Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner’s motion to vacate his conviction. Johnson was sentenced to life in prison.

Gardner asserted that Johnson was innocent and erroneously convicted, citing Johnson’s alibi and a lack of physical evidence connecting Johnson to the murder.

According to Gardner, the identification of Johnson was the state’s “only direct evidence.”

Judge David Mason vacated Johnson’s conviction in February.

“Today the courts righted a wrong – vacating the sentence of Mr. Lamar Johnson following his wrongful conviction in 1995,” said Gardner in a Feb. 14 statement on the decision. “Most importantly, we celebrate with Mr. Johnson and his family as he walks out of the courtroom as a free man.”

Leon Benson

Leon Benson was convicted of first-degree murder in 1999, and spent roughly 25 years in prison before the Marion County Superior Court Judge Shatrese M. Flowers in Indiana threw out his conviction in early March.

A joint re-investigation by the University of San Francisco School of Law Racial Justice Clinic and the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office revealed that “evidence buried in the police file by the lead detective pointed to another man as the murderer.”

Researchers found that conflicting testimony and the missing evidence identified someone else in the 1998 shooting death of Kasey Schoen in Indianapolis.

“Truth never dies,” Benson said, according to a press release from the University of San Francisco. “It is only rediscovered.”

Teen arrested in murder of transgender woman, second suspect remains at large

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(HOUSTON) — A 17-year-old boy has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a transgender woman as Houston police continue to search for a second suspect.

Marisela Castro, 39, was found lying in the road outside a home shortly before 2 a.m. on July 29, 2022, according to Houston police.

Castro and another person had just gotten out of her car when she was shot, police said.

The two suspects fled in Castro’s car before ditching the vehicle nearby, police said.

Houston police announced on Thursday that a 17-year-old, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, is now in custody on a capital murder charge. But police believe the 17-year-old was not the one who shot Castro and authorities say they’re still searching for the unidentified second suspect.

Police would not comment on a possible motive.

Houston police asked anyone with information to call its homicide division at 713-308-3600 or submit a tip anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.

Class action suit filed against Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company, executives

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — SVB Financial Group and top executives have been named in a federal lawsuit amid the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the largest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis.

A shareholder from Wisconsin, who says he lost about $12,000, is named as a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit seeking class action status against SVB who announced a $1.8 billion loss on the sale of securities on March 8.

The lawsuit against SVB Financial Group, CEO Greg Becker and CFO Daniel Beck was filed in the U.S. district court for the Northern district of California on Monday. It is looking for damages to be awarded to people like Chandra Vanipenta who said he invested in SVB between June 16, 2021, and March 10, 2023.

“$12,000 is a lot of money,” Chandra Vanipenta told ABC News.

Vanipenta, 51, is the father of two children and works in the software industry and said he had done his homework and read several financial reports about SVP, prior to investing. He said the company sounded solid and none of the financial reports mentioned warnings from the Federal Reserve about potential interest rate hikes.

“There was no indication of any risk,” Vanipenta said.

Vanipenta said the rapidly falling share price took him totally off guard, and that he lost every penny of $12,000 dollars in SVP shares he bought through his online brokerage account.

He said he bought the shares when the share price was over $200 a share.

“I never thought that it (the share price) would go to zero! And so suddenly,” he said.

The lawsuit states that annual reports for 2020 through 2022, “understated the risks posed to the company by not disclosing that likely interest rate hikes, as outlined by the Fed, had the potential to cause irrevocable damage to the company.”

The lawsuit adds that Becker and Beck “intended to deceive Plaintiff and other members of the Class, or in the alternative, acted with reckless disregard for the truth when they failed to ascertain and disclose the true facts in the statements made by them … to members of the investing public…”

“I feel bad. I should have sold earlier,” Vanipenta said.

Vanipenta said when he learned his once valuable shares were worth nothing, he contacted a law firm to help him. Vanipenta’s lawyer, Laurence Paul Rosen, would not comment on the “pending litigation.”

A partner from a New York based law firm, Levi & Korsinsky, LLP, told ABC News that they plan to file a separate class action lawsuit imminently against SVB.

“We are extremely interested in this, and are looking into it. We will probably be filing our own case this week or next,” Adam M. Apton, a partner in the firm, told ABC News.

ABC News reached out to SVB for comment but have not yet received a response.

New report suggests COVID pandemic’s origins linked to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A new report suggests the virus that causes COVID-19 may be linked to raccoon dogs that were illegally being sold at a wet seafood market in China.

First reported in The Atlantic, a team of scientists from around the world announced Thursday they believe the virus, SARS-CoV-2, originated at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where the outbreak began.

It comes amid swirling debate about the origins of the pandemic, after a report from the U.S. Department of Energy concluded with “low confidence” that it was the result of a lab leak.

According to the report, researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention uploaded new data from swab samples collected in January 2020 at the market — including of the floors, walls and cages containing animals — to the open global genome sequencing database GISAID.

From there, the international team, which included virologists and biologists, downloaded the samples and analyzed them.

The samples that came back positive for the virus also contained genetic material of several animals, particularly large amounts matching the common raccoon dog.

Although this doesn’t definitively prove that the virus definitely jumped from raccoon dogs to humans, the team said it is the strongest evidence to date of the natural transmission theory.

“This is a really strong indication that animals at the market were infected,” Dr. Angela Rasmussen, one of the virologists involved in the new report, told The Atlantic. “There’s really no other explanation that makes any sense.”

Members of the research team, who have not yet published their findings, did not immediately return ABC News’ request for comment.

The findings also support other scientific research indicating that the virus likely spilled over from animals into people in and around the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

Raccoon dogs are known to harbor other viruses that jump from animals to humans. For example, a October 2003 report found a virus very similar to SARS-CoV-1, which is a cousin of the new coronavirus, in a raccoon dog and among humans at a live animal market in Guangdong, China.

Although most experts now believe the SARS outbreak in 2002-03 in China was linked to bats, raccoon dogs are believed to have been brief accidental hosts of the virus.

Currently, four U.S. agencies and the National Intelligence Council say the virus was the result of natural transmission that jumped from animals to humans.

Late last month, the Department of Energy changed its stance from “undecided” to “low confidence” that the COVID-19 pandemic “most likely” was the result of a laboratory leak, becoming the second agency, after the FBI, to believe a lab accident resulted in the global health emergency.

Body camera footage released in fatal police shooting of anti-violence activist Najee Seabrooks

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Hours of body camera footage was released Thursday in the fatal police shooting of Najee Seabrooks, a New Jersey anti-violence activist who called 911 during an apparent mental health crisis.

Seabrooks, 31, of Paterson, was shot five hours after police responded to his home on March 3, according to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, which released redacted footage and 911 calls made by Seabrooks amid its investigation into the deadly incident.

The fatal shooting of Seabrooks, who worked for the anti-violence organization Paterson Healing Collective, has sparked protests and calls for reform.

According to the state attorney general’s office, officers from the Paterson Police Department responded to Seabrooks’ apartment around 7:43 a.m. “in response to a 911 call from an individual in distress” and found him locked inside a bathroom.

Members of Seabrooks’ family told officers he had been “hallucinating and behaving erratically” and may have been “experiencing a bad reaction to something he had smoked,” the state attorney general’s office said. In 911 calls, Seabrooks can be heard asking for someone to help escort him to his car because he’s received threats.

Seabrooks told police that “people are trying to kill me, I need an escort,” though the officers at the scene determined there were no threats, the attorney general’s office said.

Seabrooks told officers he had two knives and a gun and at one point can be heard saying “that he was going to die in the bathroom and take one of the officers with him,” the attorney general’s office said.

Throughout the incident, additional officers, crisis negotiators, members of the department’s emergency response team and emergency medical services responded to the apartment as police and family members attempted to get Seabrooks to come out of the bathroom to receive help, authorities said.

“At various times during the encounter officers deployed approximately 15 less than lethal sponge-tipped projectiles some of which struck Mr. Seabrooks, but were not effective in subduing him,” the attorney general’s office said.

As armed officers stood outside the bathroom door, Seabrooks at one point remarked they were going to shoot him.

“Nobody’s going to shoot you,” an officer says.

The officers told him to “drop the knives” and to come out of the bathroom to get help.

At approximately 12:35 p.m., Seabrooks could be seen coming out of the bathroom while holding a knife in his hand. An officer can be heard yelling “drop it” right before two members of the Emergency Response Team — identified as Officer Anzore Tsay and Officer Jose Hernandez — opened fire, striking him.

Seabrooks was transported to a local hospital and pronounced dead at 12:51 p.m., authorities said.

The investigation into Seabrooks’ death is ongoing. Once completed, it will be presented to a grand jury to determine if any officers involved should be charged, the attorney general’s office said.

Representatives of Seabrooks’ family reviewed the footage prior to its public release, according to the attorney general’s office.

In the wake of the fatal shooting, the Paterson Healing Collective had called for the release of body camera footage of the incident. It has also called for the officers involved in the shooting to be placed on administrative leave, and the creation of a non-carceral crisis response team and a civilian complaint review board that could have “investigatory and subpoena power.”

Irvo Otieno’s family, attorneys react to viewing police video for first time

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The family of Irvo Otieno, a man who died in police custody earlier this month, reacted to the recent death of the Virginia man during a Thursday news conference.

Three days after being arrested on March 3, Otieno was transported to Central State, a psychiatric hospital in Petersburg, Virginia from Henrico County jail after reportedly suffering a mental health crisis. The same day on March 6, Otieno was pronounced dead.

On Thursday, family attorneys Ben Crump and Mark Krudys, alongside family members of Otieno, viewed videos from the day leading up to his death.

According to attorneys for the family at the press conference, there were seven deputies who held Otieno down for around 11 to 12 minutes, eventually causing him to suffer from asphyxia.

“You see in the majority of the video that he seems to be in between lifelessness and unconsciousness, but yet you see him being restrained so brutally with a knee on his neck,” Crump said during the conference. “The weight of seven individuals on his body while he’s face down, handcuffed with leg irons. … It is so unnecessary, it’s so unjustifiable.”

Caroline Ouko, Otieno’s mother, described during the conference that her son was having a mental health crisis and was initially transported to Henrico Doctors’ Hospital on March 3, a hospital farther than the family’s residence. While in the hospital, Otieno was arrested and taken to Henrico Police Department without the ability to see his family, according to his mother.

“Even though Irvo was going through mental illness, what I saw today was heartbreaking America. It was disturbing. It was traumatic. My son was tortured,” Ouko said. “Mental illness should not be your ticket to death. There was a chance to rescue him, there was a chance to stop what was going on. And I don’t understand how all systems failed him.”

Although the Henrico County Sheriff’s Office is conducting an independent review of the incident alongside an investigation by Virginia State Police, the attorneys call the Department of Justice to intervene.

Seven deputies from the Henrico County Sheriff’s Office were arrested and charged with second-degree murder in the death of the 28-year-old on Wednesday and during their court appearance, Dinwiddie County Attorney Ann Baskervill alleged that Otieno had been victim to hours of assaults prior to his death.

Krudys told the press that Otieno had been subject to previous brutality in his cell while he was handcuffed before he was taken to Central State.

“He’s naked. He’s lost. … There’s feces on the ground. It is so inhumane,” Krudys said. “We also saw a glimpse of the video where it’s like an animal being carried by legs and arms, with his pants falling off him, into the vehicle.”

Henrico County Sheriff Alisa A. Gregory released a statement the week after Otieno’s death, extending her “deepest sympathies and condolences” to Otieno’s family and friends.

“The events of March 6, at their core, represent a tragedy because Mr. Otieno’s life was lost. This loss is felt by not only those close to him but our entire community,” Gregory said in the statement.

Otieno’s older brother emotionally spoke during the press conference, telling the public that after viewing the footage, he’d “witnessed a homicide.”

“What I saw was a lifeless human being, without any representation. No regard to his human life,” he said. “At what point do we stop preserving life? At one point do we consider mental illness a crime? Can someone explain to me why my brother is not here right now?”

The seven deputies arrested were Randy Joseph Boyer, 57; Dwayne Alan Bramble, 37; Jermaine Lavar Branch, 45; Bradley Thomas Disse, 43; Tabitha Renee Levere, 50; Brandon Edwards Rodgers, 48; and Kaiyell Dajour Sanders, 30.

Each of the seven deputies appeared in court on Wednesday.

A lawyer for Branch spoke in court Wednesday, saying the officer allegedly “did not administer any blows to the deceased, or violence towards him, other than simply trying to restrain him.”

Branch’s lawyer, Cary Bowen, told ABC News by phone that Cabell Baskervill was trying to fashion the case as something that is “malicious.”

“There was no weapon used. There was no pummeling or anything like that. I think everybody agrees,” Bowen said. “And the way she was casting it was that they ended up suffocating. He couldn’t breathe. And she’s acting like the guy didn’t resist and he wasn’t manic or bipolar or whatever. Just a nice guy who they’re picking on.”

Three more individuals were arrested Thursday: Darian M. Blackwell, 23; Wavie L. Jones, 34; and Sadarius D. Williams, 27.

No plea deals have been entered as of Thursday. The three additional people involved in the arrest will appear in court on Tuesday.

“He was murdered,” Ouko said. “They smothered the breath out of my baby. They murdered my baby. … Why did they do that? What right did they have to do that?”

Hunter Biden files counterclaims against computer repairman over handling of infamous laptop

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(WILMINGTON, Del.) — Attorneys representing Hunter Biden filed his answer and counterclaims alleging invasion of privacy in response to a defamation lawsuit brought by the Delaware-based computer repairman who they say triggered the infamous laptop controversy in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

The step represents a major escalation in the younger Biden’s increasingly aggressive legal posture toward some of his most vocal critics and those who allegedly trafficked his personal information.

The suit, filed in a Delaware federal court, targets John Paul Mac Isaac, a computer repairman who in April 2019 purportedly obtained and later disseminated data from a laptop allegedly belonging to the president’s son. The counterclaim is in response to a defamation lawsuit filed by Mac Isaac against Hunter Biden and others in October 2019, which is ongoing.

“[Hunter] Biden had more than a reasonable expectation of privacy that any data that he created or maintained … would not be accessed, copied, disseminated, or posted on the Internet for others to use against him or his family or for the public to view,” according to the countersuit.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden challenged Mac Isaac’s claim that the laptop and an external hard drive became his property when Hunter Biden failed to retrieve them within 90 days of leaving them at the repairman’s Wilmington, Delaware, shop for servicing, citing the fine print of a repair order allegedly signed by Hunter Biden at the time.

“Contrary to Mac Isaac’s Repair Authorization form, Delaware law provides that tangible personal property is deemed abandoned” when the rightful owner has failed to “assert or declare property rights to the property for a period of 1 year,” lawyers for Biden wrote in legal documents.

The counterclaim adds that “other obligations must then also be satisfied before obtaining lawful title, such as the court sending notice to the owner and the petitioner posting notice in five or more public places, and advertising the petition in a newspaper.”

Hunter Biden is seeking a jury trial and unspecified “compensatory damages” from Mac Isaac. A lawyer for Mac Isaac did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Friday’s counterclaim is the latest turn in an increasingly offensive legal tack from the younger Biden, who until recently had largely avoided public confrontations about his business dealings.

In recent months, a revamped legal team led by well-known criminal defense attorney Abbe Lowell has penned a flurry of cease-and-desist letters on Hunter Biden’s behalf, and has threatened litigation against some of his most vocal critics, including Mac Isaac.

The computer repairman emerged as a central figure in the drama surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop in the waning days of the 2020 presidential campaign, when images, emails, and text messages allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden emerged in public and galvanized the national conversation as voters took to the polls.

According to accounts given by Mac Isaac and his attorney, on April 12, 2019, Hunter Biden arrived at Mac Isaac’s computer repair shop with three damaged devices and asked if the data could be recovered. Days later, Mac Isaac said, he asked Hunter Biden to return to the shop to retrieve the devices and pay an $85 service fee. Mac Isaac has said he never heard back from Hunter Biden, and the invoice was never paid.

After 90 days, according to Mac Isaac and his attorney, the abandoned laptop became Mac Isaac’s property, pursuant to the work order agreement Hunter Biden allegedly signed when he first visited Mac Isaac’s shop.

Mac Isaac subsequently turned the laptop and external hard drive over to the FBI in December 2019, and later sought to share information from the devices with then-President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who made the contents of the devices available to other Trump allies and some news outlets in the weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election.

ABC News has not reviewed nor verified the contents of the laptop or hard drive.

Mac Isaac initially sued Hunter Biden for defamation, alongside Rep. Adam Schiff, Politico, and CNN, in Delaware state court. Earlier this month the case was moved to the U.S. District Court in Delaware, where Hunter Biden filed his counterclaim.

In their countersuit, attorneys for Hunter Biden disputed Mac Isaac’s claim to have acted both legally and responsibly with data found on the laptop and hard drive.

“Reputable computer companies and repair people routinely delete personal data contained on devices that are exchanged, left behind or abandoned,” the lawyers wrote. “They do not open, copy, and then provide that data to others, as Mac Isaac did here.”

In addition to providing copies to the FBI and Giuliani, Mac Isaac sought to distribute copies of the contents of the laptop and hard drive to several allies of the former president, including Republican lawmakers, and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he said.

The countersuit draws heavily from Mac Isaac’s own writings and public commentary regarding his intentions in sharing the data, accusing the repairman of being motivated by his preference of Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Lawyers for Hunter Biden wrote that “Mac Isaac intended and knew, or clearly should have known, that people to whom he provided the data that he believed to belong to Mr. Biden would use it against then-candidate Joseph Biden and to assist then-President Trump.”

This new legal offensive comes as congressional scrutiny of President Biden’s family ramps up and federal prosecutors press forward in their yearslong probe of Hunter Biden’s tax affairs and overseas business endeavors.

Hunter Biden has repeatedly said he is cooperating with federal investigators and remains “100% certain” that he will be cleared of any wrongdoing. President Biden has said he and his son never discussed his foreign business dealings, and there are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president in any way. The White House has repeatedly sought to distance the president from the Justice Department probe.

Michael Cohen ‘absolutely’ prepared to testify against Trump if he’s indicted

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America Friday, said he was “absolutely” prepared for cross-examination in a potential trial after completing his testimony this week before a Manhattan grand jury mulling charges against Trump.

“I was working for a man who ultimately became president of the United States, and, yes, there are things that we did that were wrong — for example, the hush-money payment — but I never expected that democracy would be on the line as a direct result of the former president,” Cohen told ABC News Anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Trump’s one-time fixer said he’s not worried about allies of Trump attacking his testimony.

“The facts are the facts. The truth is the truth and the truth will always rise so I’m not worried about anything that they want to come at me with,” he said.

Cohen did not divulge what prosecutors, investigating the 2016 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, asked him specifically after he met with them twice this week, but said, in his view, they have enough evidence to indict and convict the former president.

“I promise you and I promise the American people that all the information that is needed in order to create the indictment to get a prosecution and a conviction is in the hands of the district attorney,” Cohen said.

Stephanopoulos asked Cohen his biggest regret, and he said it was accepting a job from Trump in 2007.

“That’s my biggest regret. There was absolutely no reason for it. I didn’t need to work for him and I probably shouldn’t have. I should have listened to my wife, my daughter, my son and not accepted the job, but I did and, yeah, it’s cost me a lot. It’s cost my family a lot. Our happiness, finances, my law license,” he said. “But most importantly, as I said to you almost five years ago today that my wife, my daughter, my son and my country have my first loyalty and they always will.”

Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think justice will be served?”

“I know it will be,” Cohen replied.

Cohen tweeted a reminder ahead of the interview that five years ago he told Stephanopoulos that⁩ his first loyalty was not to Trump but to his family and country, promising to discuss how he’s adhered to the words since.

Trump’s one-time fixer paid $130,000 to Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign to allegedly keep her quiet about an affair she claimed to have had with Trump. The former president has denied an “affair” and his attorneys have framed the funds as an extortion payment.

“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One in 2018, denying knowledge of the payment.

But the Manhattan district attorney’s office has been investigating whether Trump falsified business records when the Trump Organization allegedly reimbursed Cohen for the payment and then recorded the reimbursement as a legal expense.

Cohen served prison time after he pleaded guilty to federal charges that included campaign finance violations related to the hush payment. Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, noted Wednesday that when federal prosecutors charged Cohen they said that Trump — identified in court records as Individual 1 — directed Cohen to make the $130,000 hush payment, after which his reimbursement to Cohen was falsely logged in the Trump Organization’s records, according to prosecutors.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, met with prosecutors Wednesday over Zoom after former Trump advisers Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway and several other witnesses testified recently.

Prosecutors also invited Trump last week to testify in the probe — the clearest indication yet that they’re nearing a decision on whether to indict him.

No current or former U.S. president has even been indicted for criminal conduct.

ABC News’ Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.

Lawmakers research AI to help better legislate tech

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — With the rise of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, members of Congress are trying to get ahead of the curve and ensure the technology doesn’t get out of control.

And they’re taking different approaches to find the best solution.

U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) is taking graduate level courses on AI for his machine learning master’s degree at George Mason University. The 72-year-old lawmaker told ABC News that he doesn’t know enough about the technology but needs to stay on top of it to properly legislate it.

“I’m never going to be a scientist, but I’m helping make policy on some really important things,” he said.

The congressman said his wife recently used the AI in the Bing search engine using his name, and the results came back with falsehoods.

“So how do we regulate that? And especially because we, more than any other country in the world, have this deep, deep-seated commitment to free speech,” he said.

The new Bing is currently in public preview, a Microsoft spokesperson told ABC News.

“We’ve received a lot of helpful user feedback and have quickly responded with updates to address issues and continue to improve the experience,” the spokesperson said.

Beyer warned though that there are concerns about AI, such as impersonations, cheating and other fraud, but it is still too early to regulate it.

“It’s really hard to say, ‘Hey, here’s what I think we should do because it’s so new.’ We don’t know the upsides or the downsides,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), an MIT graduate, however, argued that now is the time for Congress to act. In January, Auchincloss showed off how powerful AI can be by reading the first speech on the House floor that was entirely written by ChatGPT.

He warned that tech companies won’t be writing the rules of AI.

“This can’t be social media to 2.0 where policymakers for 15 years, allowed companies to get big, to get rich and to not sufficiently interrogate the effects on society, on politics, on the media, that their technology was having. We have got to be ahead of this wave of innovation not behind,” he told ABC News.

U.S. Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif), a former video game designer who has a master’s degree in AI, told ABC News that he’s constantly had to educate his colleagues on the tech.

He said while the concerns that AI will take away jobs and disrupt lives are legitimate, the technology has had many benefits in advancing medicine, computer technology and other areas.

“What we can’t do is throw the baby out with the bathwater and regulate without understanding what we’re doing,” Obernolte told ABC News. “Because if we do that, we’re going to stifle the development of something that can be incredibly beneficial.”

Still, the elected officials said they will be keeping an eye on any developments.

“There is a meaningful thing there. But I have real trouble imagining what legislation would protect us from that creative destruction. It’s like, almost going back to the atomic bomb. You can’t uninvent it,” Beyer said.

Pension funds report millions in losses amid Silicon Valley Bank collapse

March 17, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — An Ohio public pension fund for teachers revealed it lost millions by holding more than $27 million in Silicon Valley Bank shares before the bank’s collapse.

The State Teachers Retirement System (STRS) of Ohio stated that the shares represented a minuscule portion of its overall holdings –.03% of the total fund — which held over $88.8 billion in assets as of June 2022. The statement confirmed that the bank had no shares of Signature or Silvergate banks, which collapsed in the past weeks.

STRS is a pension fund for over 500,000 current and former public educators in Ohio.

“The collective actions taken by the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure and backstop deposits have helped to mitigate the situation facing the banking industry,” STRS wrote in their statement. “STRS Ohio continues to monitor and assess the impact of these developments.”

The multi-million dollar loss comes as another repercussion of the ongoing financial crisis. Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the U.S., collapsed one week ago, followed by the collapse of Signature Bank. Silvergate Bank, which specialized in providing services to cryptocurrency users, also liquidated its assets earlier in March.

The financial crisis has impacted other pension funds, including North Carolina’s state pension fund and California’s public employee retirement fund.

In a statement to ABC News’ Raleigh station WTVD, North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell said the state’s pension fund held about $9.9 million in Silicon Valley Bank and $7.8 million in Signature Bank stock. Similar to STRS, the limited exposure to North Carolina amounted to only .01% of the total value of the impacted portfolios.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which covers 1.5 million people, also revealed it had roughly $67 million in exposure to Silicon Valley Bank and $11 million in exposure to Signature Bank at a board meeting this week. The nation’s largest public pension fund with over $422 billion, CalPERS suffered a relatively small impact from the financial crisis.

The losses in California, Ohio and North Carolina represent a fraction of the losses suffered by a Swedish pension fund representing over 2.6 million people that invested over $1.1 billion in Signature and Silicon Valley Bank. Magnus Billing, the CEO of Alecta, told Bloomberg that the investments were a “big failure” and that the fund would likely write off their holdings as a loss.

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