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Despite violence breaking out at a vigil for the slain rapper, Nipsey Hussle, local residents will carry on his movement of community investment. USA TODAY

A grand jury has indictedEric Holder for the shooting death ofGrammy-nominated rapperNipsey Hussle, theLos Angeles County District Attorneys Office announced.

Holder was indicted May 9 on one count of murder, two counts each of attempted murder and assault with a firearm and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon,spokesman Greg Risling said in a statement Tuesday, after the indictment was unsealed.

It includes allegations that Holder "personally used a handgun and caused great bodily injury and death."

Prosecutors previously charged Holderwith the same counts, but the indictment means they can skip a preliminary hearing and head to trial.

Nipsey Hussle murder investigation: Everything we know so far

Eric Ronald Holder Jr., 29, who is accused of killing of rapper Nipsey Hussle, appeared for arraignment in Los Angeles with attorney Christopher Darden on April 4, 2019. Darden has since withdrawn from the case, citing death threats.(Photo: Pool, Getty Images)

The 29-year-old suspect pleaded not guilty to all charges Tuesday and is due back in court for a pretrial hearing in June. His bail has been set at$6.53 million.

Holder faces life in state prison if convicted.

He's accused of gunning downHussle,33, whose real name was Ermias Asghedom, outside of the rapper's clothing store in South Los Angeles on March 31. Two others were wounded during the incident.

Holder was arrested April 2 after a nearly 48-hour manhunt.

Related:DJ Khaled releases Nipsey Hussle's final music video 'Higher'

Authorities say the man suspected of fatally shooting rapper Nipsey Hussle has been arrested. Police say 29-year-old Eric Holder was captured Tuesday in Bellflower, near Los Angeles. (April 3) AP Entertainment

Earlier this month, Holder'shigh-profile lawyer, Christopher Darden, filed a motion to withdraw from the case, citing death threats. Holder will now be represented by an attorney in the public defenders office, according to thedistrict attorney's office.

Contributing: Maria Puente, The Associated Press

Related:Christopher Darden wants out as lawyer for Nipsey Hussle accused shooter Eric Holder

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Government prosecutor Joycelyn Ballantine filed an unexpected motion Sunday in the case against Michael Flynn for the express purpose of seeking to protect Flynns former defense team.

Yes, its true and in the prosecutors own words: Government prosecutors said in their filing they want to make certain and clear that counsel [Covington & Burling] may take the necessary steps to vindicate their public reputation by addressing and defending against the defendants claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, and equally to vindicate the integrity of this Courts previous proceedings, the government asks this court to issue the attached proposed order.

Really? Now the US Attorney for the District of Columbia and the Department of Justice are in the business of protecting and working to protect the public reputation of Covington & Burlinga well-known international law firm based in DC? Do the new United States Attorney Timothy Shea and Attorney General William Barr know that federal prosecutorswho had already identified a serious conflict of interest held by Covington in the Flynn caseare subjecting Flynn to more proceedings now to protect Covington?

Supplemental Motion filed by Sidney Powell describing the conflict of interest regarding Covington & Burling along with exhibits.

Flynn motion to dismiss for egregious government misconduct and in the interest of Justice

A serious conflict of interestindisputable because it was recognized by both the government and Covington by November 1, 2017well before Flynn entered a guilty plea or even made a proffer to the prosecutors is one of the main reasons Flynns lawyer Sidney Powell filed to withdraw his guilty plea several weeks ago. She noted in her filing then that his former lawyers failed toadvise him timely, fully or properly of the firms conflict of interest in his case regarding theForeign Agents Registration Actform it filed on his behalf, and by doing so betrayed Mr. Flynn.

In fact, there was no dispute that Covington had a serious conflict and it was so serious that the government raised it with Covington twice, beginning November 1, 2019, as reported.

A spokesman for Covington & Burlingstated in an email to SaraACarter.com after Powell filed her motion to withdraw Flynns guilty plea thatUnder the bar rules, we are limited in our ability to respond publicly even to allegations of this nature, absent the clients consent or a court order.

Well, with government prosecutors fighting on their behalf, Covington & Burling can be rest assured they are not alone.

Prosecutors also argued in Sundays filing that Flynns former attorneys must now testify after he claimed that they failed to appropriately handle his case. The prosecutors asked Sullivanto confirm by court order that Flynn had waived his attorney-client privileges in his communications with his lawyers, then-Robert Kelner, Brian Smith and Steven Anthony.

The government requests that the Court suspend the current briefing schedule concerning the defendants [motion] until such time as the government has been able to confer with Covington regarding the information it seeks, stated the prosecutors. While Covington has indicated a willingness to comply with this request, it has understandably declined to do so in the absence of a Court order confirming the waiver of attorney-client privilege. Obviously, the government and Covington have already been communicating. One wonders who even drafted the motion and how much help Covington provided on it?

Flynn is like David and the DOJ prosecutors are his Goliathadd now the formal and clear opposition of his own former lawyersthe powerful firm headed by former Attorney General Eric Holder and former head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.

Powell argues that point and others in her motion to withdraw his plea, in which she skillfully lays out how the government threatened to drag in his son, Michael Flynn Jr., during former Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation, if he didnt plead guilty to the one count of lying to the FBI and how, once the Special Prosecutors focused on FARA liability, Covington was either going to be a defendant or had to subscribe to the Flynn-lied-to-his-lawyers theory of the prosecution.

Again, its another way prosecutors can squeeze defendants into a guilty plea.

After the prosecutions Sunday filing, however, Judge Emmet T. Sullivan indefinitely delayed Flynns sentencing hearing, making his Flynns Feb. 27 sentencing unlikely.The government prosecutors said Flynns request to withdraw his guilty plea may require testimony from his former lawyers.

Powell told this reporter: The government, at a minimum, should agree to allow Flynn to withdraw his plea. Both the prosecution and Covington recognized the seriousness of the firms conflict of interest. The only person who didnt understand it all was General Flynn himself. As Flynns filing indicates, Covington did not timely or fully or accurately advise him of the situation. When he did finally make it clear to (Covington) that he must consult other counsel, he contacted me. The resulting change in his defense proves the point.

But to put this into perspective one only needs to remember the sequence of events that led to Flynns guilty plea. He pled guilty to one count of lying to the two FBI agents who interviewed him only a few days into his new job as National Security Advisor in the White House regarding the content of his phone conversation with formerRussian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, while Flynn was on vacation in late December in the Dominican Republic.

Unbelievably, Flynn, who has given more than 33 years of his life serving his country in the military is in the fight for his future, family and reputation. But what about the two agents who originally interviewed him at the White House. Those agents,FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka, are now front and center of an ongoing criminal probe by Barr appointed prosecutor John Durham. Durham is investigating the extraordinary malfeasance in FBIs handling the Russia probe.

Strzok has since been fired for his actions in the FBIs probe into the President Donald Trumps 2016 campaign and Pientka, who is still with the FBI, was highly criticized in Inspector General Michael Horowitzs recent report for failing to verify the information contained in the now debunked dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. Flynn has also raised serious issues about all of the exculpatory evidence that was hidden from him by Special Counsel prosecutor Brandon Van Grack who has just been dropped from the pleadings in this case.

Even fired former FBI Director James Comey admitted that the agents didnt believe Flynn had lied to them during their interview with him and now Powell cant get her hands on Flynns first interview with those agentsknown as a 302 report. The prosecutors have told Powell that they do not possess the first 302 report and the FBI refuses to give it up despite repeated requests.

Comey also laughed about how he along with his FBI cohorts set up Flynn up for the interview that took place at the White House on January, 24, 2017. Comey described to MSNBCs Nicolle Wallace that he sent Strzok and Pientka to the White House in a way that would not have occurred under another president. He said the interviewwasnt set up through the White House counsels office, as common practice, but arranged directly with Flynn. He admitted that it was something I probably wouldnt have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration, Comey boasted as the audience erupted in laughter.

More and more, it becomes obvious through Flynns case the egregious behavior of government prosecutors that limits a defendants ability to have the necessary tools to defend themselves before the court.

Its time for DOJ to create a Conviction Integrity Review Unitlike some state prosecutors have formedto review serious claims that prosecutors have hidden exculpatory evidence and engaged in other misconduct and strong-armed tactics to secure convictions at any cost.

As Powell argued in a recent motion stating that the prosecution has shown abject bad faith in pure retaliation against Mr. Flynn since he retained new counsel. This can only be because with new, unconflicted counsel, Mr. Flynn refused to lie for the prosecution.

Powell is referring to the case of Flynns former business partner Bijan Rafiekian, who worked with him at his former security firm the Flynn Intel Group, as previously reported. Last summer, prosecutor Van Grack and others in the Eastern District of Virginia suddenly demanded that Flynn admit to allegations that he said was not true. In Powells motion, she attached the redlined document emailed by Mr. Van Grack that proved her point.

Justice is not a game, and there should be no room for such gamesmanship in the Department of Justice, stated Powell in her filing. She noted that the Justice Department is attempting torewrite history and criticized the prosecutors withdrawal of its recommendation that Flynn be sentenced to probation and by suggesting he had not been forthcoming or cooperative. She also argued that the governments retraction of its prior recommendation and withdrawal of a prior motion placed the government in breach of Flynns plea agreement and warrants withdrawal of his plea by itself.

Michael T. Flynn is innocent, she noted. Mr. Flynn has cooperated with the government in good faith for two years. He gave the prosecution his full cooperation.

Now it remains to be seen what happens from here and when, and if, the scales of liberty will eventually be balanced. Will the Department actually seek Justice now? Flynn certainly hasnt seen any yet. Ms. Ballantines most recent motion makes no mention of seeking the truth. Remarkably, its primary point is to protect Covington & Burling.

Continue reading here:
DOJ Sought Continuance Of Flynn Case To Vindicate Public Reputation Of His Former Legal Team - Sara A. Carter

Netflix is in talks with Nipsey Hussles production company, Marathon Films, for Ava DuVernay to co-produce and possibly direct a documentary about the late rapper.

Although DuVernay has attached herself to direct, its unclear if she has the room in her schedule, given her commitment to helm DC Comics New Gods for Warner Bros. According to a source at Netflix, the project is in preliminary stages and could manifest as a series.

Marathon Films announced in an Instagram post that in addition to DuVernay and her company Array, the untitled project will be executive produced by Roc Nation and Hussles children, Emani and Kross Asghedom.

No final deal has been inked, the post reads. The documentary is very important to the family and will not be fast tracked by monetary gain and/or commercial interest.

Hussle was killed on March 31, 2019, at the age of 33, outside his Marathon Clothing store in Los Angeles. Eric Holder was arrested and charged with murder two days later. Hussle won two posthumous Grammy Awards last month for rap performance and rap/sung performance.

DuVernay worked with Netflix on the documentary 13th, which received an Oscar nomination, and on the limited series When They See Us.

CAA conducted an auction for the rights to the project. DuVernary is repped by CAA and attorneys Nina Shaw and Gordon Bobb. The news was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.

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Nipsey Hussle documentary from Ava DuVernay in the works at Netflix - New York Post

Washington The Department of Justice unveiled charges against four members of China's military for allegedly hacking into the credit agency Equifax and stealing the personal information of millions of Americans in 2017

"This was one of the largest data breaches in history," Attorney General William Barr said at a press conference on Monday. "The scale of the theft was staggering. As alleged in the indictment, the hackers obtained the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of nearly 145 million Americans, and the drivers licenses of at least 10 million Americans."

The four charged are Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei, all of whom are members of the 54th Research Institute, a component of China's People's Liberation Army, prosecutors said. A federal grand jury in Atlanta returned the nine-count indictment on charges of computer fraud, economic espionage and wire fraud. The men have not been taken into custody and are considered wanted by the FBI.

"This is the largest theft of sensitive [personally identifiable information] by state-sponsored hackers ever recorded," FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said. "This indictment is also a reminder that with their attacks on our economy, our cyber infrastructure and our citizens, China is one of the most significant threats to our national security today."

Bowdich said there is no evidence that the stolen personal information of millions of Americans is being used, but acknowledged it could be in the future. Equifax settled a class action lawsuit over the breach for more than $700 million in 2019.

In the indictment, prosecutors said the hackers exploited a vulnerability in a portal on Equifax's website to steal login credentials used to gain access to databases on the company's network. Once inside the network, the hackers ran searches of databases to identify personal information, storing the results in files that were split into smaller pieces to download more efficiently.

The indictment says the hackers used 34 servers in 20 countries to access the Equifax network and used existing encrypted communication channels to "blend in with normal network activity."

The hackers first gained access to the portal in May 2017 and continued to steal information from Equifax's databases until the end of July, according to the indictment. The theft amounted to economic espionage and theft of trade secrets, prosecutors said.

"The hackers also stole Equifax's trade secrets, embodied by the compiled data and complex database designs used to store the personal information," Barr said. "Those trade secrets were the product of decades of investment and hard work by the company."

The attorney general said the Equifax case is consistent with China's "voracious appetite" for personal data about Americans in recent years. He also said it is part of a much broader campaign to steal intellectual property from American businesses through "state-sponsored computer intrusions."

"About 80% of our economic espionage prosecutions have implicated the Chinese government, and about 60% of all trade secret theft cases in recent years involved some connection to China," Barr said.

The Trump administration has raised the alarm about the data security practices of Chinese companies, particularly the massive telecom company Huawei. The administration effectively cut off Huawei's access to U.S. markets in 2019, saying the company posed a security risk because it could be forced to cooperate with surveillance orders by the Chinese government. Last month, the U.K.disregarded those warnings and announced that Huawei would provide equipment for 5G networks in the country, raising concerns about intelligence-sharing between the U.S. and Britain.

At a conference in Washington last week, Barr hinted at upcoming indictments targeting state-sponsored cyberattacks from China and warned against the danger posed by economic espionage. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau "has about 1,000 investigations involving China's attempted theft of U.S.-based technology in all 56 of our field offices, and spanning just about every industry and sector."

On Monday, Barr acknowledged that the U.S. does "not normally bring criminal charges against the members of another country's military or intelligence services outside the United States," but said the "indiscriminate theft" of information about private citizens would not be tolerated.

In 2014, then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced indictments against five Chinese military hackers for stealing trade secrets of six American companies in the nuclear power, metal and solar industries. Those charges were the first the department ever brought against state-sponsored actors for hacking crimes.

Excerpt from:
Justice Department charges 4 members of the Chinese military for massive Equifax hack - WFMYNews2.com

Like many/most Americans, I loathe Donald Trump. I loathe him on his worst day, and I loathe him on his best. He is a bad person and the people who surround him and support him in his family, in the White House, in the Republican Party, in the right-wing think tanks and political action committees are also bad people. I loathe Trump and believe he is bad, not because of anything he has done or said in his private life, but because he brought these private qualities into public life and insinuated them into the fabric of our being as a nation, diminishing and endangering all of us. That is his ultimate abuse of power.

Michael Moore calls Trump an evil genius and warns us not to underestimate him. And we shouldnt. Trump is an insane clown, a gaslighting pathological liar, and a world-destroying narcissist. He is the opposite in every way of what we need and must ask for from our leaders. He has created a cult of personality for freaks and geeks with too many nuts and bolts rattling through their hollow brains. He is a weapon of mass destruction for a crypto-fascist alliance of business and religious extremists whose hubris and arrogance is only exceeded by their will to power. He has tucked the Republican Party establishment in his pocket, from where its members cower and fawn like sniveling royal court parasites.

But Im also mindful that hating Trump only takes us so far. And in reality probably keeps us too near, by which I mean the shock and awe of his presidency (and of his own, entirely effable and malodorous, personal presence) leave us circling our tails with a misbegotten fear-rage that allows its target, who is cunning but not wise, to consistently and easily elude us.

I guess the point is that if Michelle Obama asks us to go high when Trump and his supporters go low, and if Eric Holder, Jemelle Hill, Ibram X. Kendi, and Peter Beinart say otherwise, the truth is the far more difficult but powerful answer that we must contain within ourselves and act on both impulses the high and the low as if each were equally valid and mutually reinforcing imperatives. We must answer fire with fire, and more, but also acknowledge, as we hurl ourselves into the trenches, that the battle will be ultimately be won on higher ground (perhaps the ground of love for everything Donald Trump himself hates).

But hate, suspicion, paranoia, melodrama are in Trumps nature and, apparently in the natures of those who identify with and work for him. No self-contradiction accompanies their dark impulses. They yearn for the street fight and will happily unleash Gangs of New York brass knuckles mayhem where they can. And so tempting as it may be to respond in kind and descend into the chaos with a kind of willful glee and exaltation, the outcome is self-consuming and ultimately self-annihilating.

Philosophically speaking, we also should certainly consider what it is that makes our hatred of Trump and his people any more valid than the hatred he and his people feel for us. Are we privy to truth claims deep and universal which bestow on us this right or freedom to hate that elude Trump and his Republican acolytes, enablers, whisperers, and supporters? What makes us so sure that we are right, and they are wrong, when they are equally sure that they are right, and we are wrong? If the truth is that clear, how can it be so divisive? Can we really, or simply, reduce the difference to matters of white supremacy or misogyny or greed, prevalent as though forces may be? What must we also look to in ourselves to parse these fault lines in our nation?

The experience of loathing Donald Trump, legitimate and important though it may be, does not resolve these conundrums and so gives us no path forward. Indeed, this experience strips the ground from our feet by ignoring the objective realities of our times, and of all times. In other words, beneath the Trump is fill in your most heinous adjective, there are the but whys, and the but hows, the conditioning circumstances that root his rise and influence to forces deeper and more sustaining than a quivering malevolence. There are many ways to think about these whys and hows. Probably the simplest way is to step back and consider if Trump appears to us as a uniquely disturbing and frightening and loathsome human merely being because of who he is. Or is it also because of what he tells us, each of us, about ourselves, about the times in which we live, and about how power discloses and arranges itself in moments of heightened social and environmental stress.

The rest is here:
It's Okay To Hate Donald Trump. But Is It Enough? - Patheos