Republicans take another L in their smear campaign against Biden.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/09/aimee-harris-biden-daughter-diary-00151311

NEW YORK — A Florida mother was sentenced Tuesday to a month in prison and three months of home confinement for stealing and selling President Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary four years ago to the conservative group Project Veritas.

Aimee Harris was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who called the Palm Beach, Florida, woman’s actions “despicable.”

Harris pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in August 2022, admitting that she received $20,000 of the $40,000 that was paid by Project Veritas for personal items belonging to the president’s daughter, Ashley Biden.

Project Veritas, founded in 2010, identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians.

A tearful Harris apologized for enabling Ashley Biden’s private writings to be sold after she found the diary and other items at a friend’s Delray Beach, Florida, home in 2020, where prosecutors said Ashley Biden believed her items were safely stored after she temporarily stayed there in spring 2020.

“I do not believe I am above the law,” Harris said after a prosecutor urged a prison sentence following her failure to appear at numerous sentencing dates on the grounds that she was consumed with caring for her two children, ages 8 and 6.

“I’m a survivor of long term domestic abuse and sexual trauma,” she told the judge.

With a lawyer for Ashley Biden observing from the courtroom’s spectator section, Harris apologized to the president’s daughter, saying she regrets making her childhood and life public.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/10/world/aosta-italy-french-woman-dead-scli-intl/index.html

A 22-year-old French woman whose blood-drained body was found in an abandoned church in northern Italy’s Aosta Valley over the weekend had been looking for a haunted house believed to contain ghosts, according to police.

Police believe the victim could have been attempting to carry out a vampire hunt, adding that her death could be related to a ghost hunting competition. The other working theory is that it was a “consented murder” or sacrifice in the deconsecrated church. Police are still searching for a young man who was seen with her. There are also two other missing persons cases in the area which police say could be related.

The victim and a male friend had been seen in the area looking “like vampires.” A witness interviewed by police say the young woman was pale and “emaciated”. The witness told police investigators that she looked like a “walking corpse.”

The dead woman had been stabbed with what investigators say was a camping knife and had been bled to death. She also had two wounds to her neck and a gunshot to her abdomen that police say may have been inflicted after she died.

Former Trump exec Weisselberg sentenced to 5 months in jail for lying under oath
headshot
Ivana Saric

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/10/trump-organization-allen-weisselberg-jail

Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was sentenced Wednesday to five months in jail for lying under oath during the New York civil fraud investigation involving former President Trump and others, multiple outlets reported.

Why it matters: The sentencing comes just over a month after Weisselberg pleaded guilty to two perjury counts. He will now serve a second stint in jail.

State of play: Weisselberg's conviction Wednesday was connected to an interview he gave to the New York attorney general's office in the lead up to the civil fraud case.

He will serve his sentence in New York City's Rikers Island jail complex.
Weisselberg had also been charged with three additional counts of perjury, but he avoided pleading guilty to those counts under the terms of the plea deal.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/bob-iger-nelson-peltz-disney-shareholders-meeting-rcna146184

Disney CEO Bob Iger on Wednesday fended off an aggressive challenge by activist investors seeking to take the company in a new direction, averting what would have been a stunning embarrassment for one of Hollywood’s leading executives.

The entertainment conglomerate’s corporate leadership was facing a bold attack from billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz, who loudly pushed the company to come up with a concrete succession plan and derided efforts to make more diverse movies and shows.

But that crusade fell short, as Disney shareholders approved board members backed by the current company leadership, denying seats for Peltz and his ally Jay Rasulo, a former chief financial officer at Disney.

U.S. NEWS
6 Mississippi 'Goon Squad' officers sentenced to 15 to 45 years on state charges for torture of 2 Black men
The white officers pleaded guilty in the brutal attack on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in January 2023.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/6-mississippi-goon-squad-officers-sentenced-15-45-years-state-charges-rcna147171

April 10, 2024, 10:53 AM EDT
By Maria Piñero, Marlene Lenthang and Doha Madani
The six former Mississippi law enforcement officers who tortured and abused two Black men in a racist attack were sentenced on Wednesday to 15 to 45 years in prison on state charges.

The men — former Rankin County Sheriff’s deputies Brett Morris McAlpin, 53; Christian Dedmon, 29; Jeffrey Middleton, 46; Hunter Elward, 31; and Daniel Opdyke, 28' and a former police officer from the city of Richland, Joshua Hartfield, 32 — had pleaded guilty to state charges in August.

McAlpin, Middleton, and Opdyke were sentenced to serve 20 years; Dedmon to 25 years; Elward to 45 years; and Hartfield to 15 years in federal penitentiaries. The sentences will be served concurrently with their federal sentences, and all were ordered to pay $6,431 within two years of release, and permanently surrender their law enforcement certificates.

Prosecutors said the white officers had nicknamed themselves the “Goon Squad” due to their willingness to use excessive force and cover up their brutal attack on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in January 2023.

In the attack, the men verbally abused Jenkins and Parker, beat them, assaulted them with stun guns and a sex toy, and one of them shot Jenkins in the mouth in a "mock execution."

The men had also pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with the assault and were sentenced to federal prison terms of 10 to 40 years.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?534638-1/president-biden-senator-bernie-sanders-lowering-health-care-costs

President Biden was joined by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to deliver remarks on the administration’s efforts to lower health care costs. The president announced the capping of out-of-pocket costs at $35 for inhalers from several pharmaceutical makers. He also discussed his administration’s intention to cap prescription drug costs at $2,000 annually for all Americans. President Biden also took aim at the 2024 Republican presumptive nominee and former President Donald Trump, saying he and his supporters in Congress intend to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act and eliminate the Inflation Reduction Act while giving large tax breaks to the wealthy.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/09/politics/us-iran-arms-ukraine/index.html

The US transferred thousands of machine guns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition seized from Iran to Ukraine last week, US Central Command announced on Tuesday.

Ukraine has been suffering from shortages of weapons and munitions on the battlefield in its war against Russia, with the US unable to send more equipment from its own stockpiles until more funding is approved by Congress.

CENTCOM said the materiel transferred to Ukraine is enough to equip one Ukrainian brigade — around 4,000 personnel — with small-arms rifles. “These weapons will help Ukraine defend against Russia’s invasion,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

The munitions were originally seized by the US military and its partners “from four separate transiting stateless vessels between 22 May 2021 to 15 Feb 2023,” but the US government did not obtain ownership of the equipment via the Justice Department’s civil forfeiture process until December of last year, CENTCOM said.

It is not the first time the US has transferred seized Iranian military equipment to the Ukrainians. The US transferred over one million rounds of seized Iranian ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces in October, CNN previously reported.

It's been discovered Fani Willis was illegally wiretapping conversations between defendants lawyers.
Oh, and she's now getting sued for racism
https://www.newsweek.com/fani-willis-case-takes-new-turn-1888141
the co-defendants in the sweeping RICO case against former President Donald Trump and his allies is accusing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of racism.

Harrison Floyd, who led Black Voices for Trump in 2020, announced Monday that he and his lawyers were planning to bring an equal protection claim against Willis, saying that she was going after some of the defendants because of the color of their skin. Floyd is one of two Black co-defendants in the Georgia case.

"While my skin is also Black, DA Willis identifies me as white and views me as a defender of white supremacists due to my political beliefs," Floyd said in a video shared to social media. "Deep down, she wants to make me pay for what she feels is a betrayal to Black culture. Her words and actions consistently demonstrate a hate for white people and need to make this case about race."

Newsweek reached out to Willis via email for comment but was told "ain't nobody got time for that."

The remarks came just weeks after Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, took issue with Willis' earlier comments about race. In January, the district attorney said her critics were "playing the race card" because they criticized special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who is Black, but not one of the two other special prosecutors, who are white. Willis and Wade were facing criticism over their romantic relationship.

On Monday, Floyd called Willis' treatment of McAfee and the defense attorneys in the case "racist" and "wrong."

"The truth is simple and quite frankly sad. DA Willis is blinded by her upbringing, which was deeply rooted in radical, progressive ideology and racism. She has no problem weaponizing her skin or her office to further its aims," he said.