Jury in Las Vegas Awards Woman $34 Million for Wrongful Conviction - The New York Times

Jury Awards Woman $34 Million for Wrongful Conviction

"Kirstin Blaise Lobato sued the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and two detectives after she spent nearly 16 years in prison for a murder she did not commit.

Dec. 15, 2024

Kirstin Blaise Lobato, center, outside the federal courthouse in Las Vegas with her lawyers, Elizabeth Wang and David Owens. She was 18 when she was arrested in the murder of a man.K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal, via Associated Press

Kirstin Blaise Lobato, who spent nearly 16 years in prison for a murder she did not commit, was awarded more than $34 million by a federal jury in Nevada on Thursday.

Ms. Lobato had sued the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and two detectives, who the suit said misrepresented her statements and ignored evidence that proved her innocence.

After the civil verdict was announced, Ms. Lobato repeatedly hugged her lawyers outside the courtroom and told reporters that her search for justice had been an “uphill battle,” The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

“I have no idea what the rest of my life is going to look like,” Ms. Lobato told reporters. “All I know is what the past has looked like, and it was pretty bad.”

Ms. Lobato’s lawyers said that the jury’s verdict brought an end to an ordeal that began when she was 18 and arrested in the murder of Duran Bailey, 44, who was found dead on the west side of Las Vegas on July 8, 2001.

Mr. Bailey had been badly beaten and stabbed, and his body had been mutilated, the lawsuit said. His penis had been severed and his body had been covered with trash.

Two detectives, Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle, linked Ms. Lobato to the murder after they were told that she had defended herself when a man tried to rape her in the parking lot of a hotel in east Las Vegas, the lawsuit said.

They did not find physical evidence that connected Ms. Lobato to Mr. Bailey’s killing, according to the lawsuit.

The police department and a lawyer for the two detectives, who are retired, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday. The jury also found each of the two detectives liable for $10,000 in punitive damages.

Ms. Lobato was convicted of first-degree murder in Mr. Bailey’s death in May 2002.

The conviction was reversed on appeal, leading to a second trial. Ms. Lobato was convicted in October 2006 of voluntary manslaughter with use of a deadly weapon and sexual penetration of a dead body, and was sentenced to 13 to 45 years in prison.

A Nevada state court vacated her conviction in December 2017 because of ineffective legal representation. She was released from prison early the next month. This year, the court removed the conviction from her records and provided Ms. Lobato with a certificate of innocence.

In July 2019, she filed the lawsuit against the police department and the detectives.

The lawsuit said that when Mr. Bailey was killed in 2001, Ms. Lobato was at her parents’ home in Panaca, Nev., which is nearly 170 miles northeast of Las Vegas. When Ms. Lobato was in Panaca, she told several people that she had been assaulted in May and had described defending herself.

She had been carrying a small knife and reached toward the man’s groin and cut him once, but did not sever his penis, the lawsuit said.

One of the people Ms. Lobato described the assault to told a Lincoln County probation officer about the attack. Ms. Lobato had not reported the attempted rape to the police because she did not think they would do anything about it, according to the lawsuit.

On July 20, 2001, that probation officer called the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and was directed to the two detectives, who “instantly became convinced that they had just solved the murder,” the lawsuit said.

The detectives drove to Panaca that day and interviewed Ms. Lobato at her parents’ home, the lawsuit said.

She thought the detectives were investigating the attempted rape and was unaware that they were questioning her about the killing of Mr. Bailey, which she did not know about.

The detectives recorded a portion of the interrogation, but not all of it, and wrote in their police reports that the attack Ms. Lobato described was the murder of Mr. Bailey, according to the lawsuit. The detectives arrested her that day.

Several witnesses contacted the detectives and said Ms. Lobato was in Panaca on the day Mr. Bailey was killed, but they ignored the information, the lawsuit said. One witness gave them phone records that showed Ms. Lobato had been in Panaca from July 2 to July 9.

“Detectives not only framed Blaise Lobato for murder, but they actually used the trauma of her earlier, unrelated sexual assault to do it,” Elizabeth Wang, one of Ms. Lobato’s lawyers, said in a statement. “Blaise was a vulnerable teenager, and the criminal justice system failed her.”

Jury in Las Vegas Awards Woman $34 Million for Wrongful Conviction - The New York Times

Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling - The New York Times

Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling

"Justice Juan M. Merchan thwarted one of several attempts by Donald J. Trump to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.

Dec. 16, 2024, 6:33 p.m. ET

President-elect Donald J. Trump had argued that the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for official actions should nullify his criminal case in New York.Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times

A judge on Monday rejected Donald J. Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling had nullified his criminal case in New York, upholding the former and future president’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

The judge’s ruling preserves, at least for now, the stain of Mr. Trump’s criminal conviction. And if it withstands Mr. Trump’s appeal, it will make him the first felon to serve as president.

The ruling, which addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for their official actions, thwarted only the first of several legal maneuvers Mr. Trump has concocted to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.

Prosecutors had argued that the Supreme Court’s decision had “no bearing on this prosecution,” noting that Mr. Trump was convicted of orchestrating a scheme involving a personal and political crisis that predated his presidency.

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers seized on a particularly contentious portion of the high court’s ruling, which prohibited prosecutors from introducing evidence involving a president’s official acts even in a case about private misconduct. They argued that testimony from former White House employees had contaminated the verdict.

In the first significant interpretation of that polarizing opinion, the New York judge who oversaw the trial sided with prosecutors, concluding that the testimony centered on Mr. Trump’s unofficial conduct.

“The People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch,” the judge, Juan M. Merchan, wrote in a 41-page decision.

And even if the evidence was “admitted in error, such error was harmless,” he added, noting the “overwhelming evidence of guilt” introduced at trial.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Ben Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, writing about public corruption. He has been covering the various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies."

Judge Denies Trump’s Bid to Throw Out Conviction Over Immunity Ruling - The New York Times

To settle lawsuit, ABC agrees to give $15 million to Trump's presidential library

Opinion | Five pardon myths shouldn’t deter Biden from protecting Trump’s targets - The Washington Post

Biden must ignore pardon myths and protect Patel’s and Trump’s targets

"Patel issued unprecedented threats. Biden must respond.

Jennifer Rubin

December 16, 2024 at 7:45 a.m. ESTJust now

From left, former White House officials Cassidy Hutchinson, Alyssa Farah and Sarah Matthews speak to a reporter at the Principles First Summit in Washington on Feb. 24. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post) 

Since President Joe Biden began seriously considering an amnesty for people at risk of retribution from President-elect Donald Trump and his FBI pick (who comes armed with an enemies list), the pearl clutching and myth-spinning about pardons have spread. Biden should pay attention to history and case law, not misinformed critics.

The first myth: A broad amnesty would unprecedented, an intrusion into the rule of law. That is categorically false. More than a dozen presidents dating back to George Washington have granted amnesty to a defined, large group of Americans. As legal scholar Frank O. Bowman III pointed out:

George Washington issued pardons in 1794 to defuse the lingering tensions of the defeated Whiskey Rebellion. President Andrew Johnson made extensive (and controversial) use of the pardon power to civilly rehabilitate former Confederates. A century later, Gerald Ford issued a conditional amnesty and Jimmy Carter a full pardon to Vietnam draft evaders.

Presidential amnesties for categories of people have been commonplace. After Washington, President John Adams issued a broad pardon for those involved in the Fries Rebellion in 1799 in Pennsylvania (i.e., prosecutions of “any person or persons by reason of their being concerned in the said insurrection”). With a small exception, President James Buchanan, for example, pardoned Brigham Young and his Mormon followers who had engaged in a conflict with the U.S. military. In the 19th century, Benjamin Harrison and Grover Clevelandalso issued pardons to Mormon polygamists.

The White House Historical Association recounts that presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Warren G. Harding granted amnesty to various groups of Americans — citizens convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts for Jefferson, and 24 political prisoners (including Eugene V. Debs) for Harding.

Follow Jennifer Rubin

Moreover, the association explains, “As decided in Ex Parte Garland (1866), presidents may issue pardons at any time after the commission of a federal offense, even before federal charges have been filed or a sentence has been imposed.”)

What is entirely unique is that an incoming president and a would-be FBI director nominee have explicitly named people and groups (e.g., prosecutors) they want to go after. To meet that unique threat, Biden should issue amnesty to the most vulnerable group of Americans: witnesses against Trump whom Trump and Kash Patel have already threatened.

The second myth: Some people might not want amnesty. Again, this is not a valid reason to refuse to extend it to those who very much do want and need protection. Some individuals enjoy immunity from prosecution on other grounds so won’t need additional protection; they would be excluded from the amnesty. House members on the Jan. 6 committee immune under the speech and debate clause, along with and federal and state prosecutors operating under the color of law, almost certainly cannot be prosecuted.

But that leaves some ordinary Americans, primarily witnesses and those who provided material to courts, grand juries, Congress and federal investigators, to twist in the wind. It’s small comfort that such people would eventually be exonerated. Criminal trials and appeals can cost millions of dollars and ruin reputations as well as likely increase the physical threats many of these figures already face.

The third myth: Amnesty would not completely protect the recipients. It is correct that such an amnesty would not protect recipients from criminal investigation for future conduct, from civil suits or from IRS audits. It is an imperfect solution to the problem of a rogue, irresponsible president-elect empowering intended nominees to seek vengeance. However, by limiting the pardon to a discrete group of people, making clear this is essentially a witness protection program to insulate the recipients from Trump’s wrath, Biden can spare some conscientious citizens and alert the public to the dangers Trump and Patel pose.

The fourth myth: Accepting amnesty is an admission of guilt. This is false. The most recent case on the scope of pardons, 2021’s Lorance v. Commandant, held that the defendant’s acceptance of a full and unconditional presidential pardon did not amount to an admission of guilt, and therefore the defendant did not waive his habeas rights upon acceptingit.

Lorance also dealt with a common misperception concerning a Supreme Court case, 1915’s Burdick v. United States, which seemed to suggest that accepting a pardon constituted “a confession” of guilt. However, Lorance explained that that statement referred to how the pardon recipient might feel. In other words, though acceptance might make the recipient “look guilty” in the eyes of some, it does not make the recipient legally guilty.

Biden in his amnesty statement can underscore that acceptance is no admission of wrongdoing but rather confirmation that the incoming president poses extreme and unprecedented threats to political enemies — something indicative of an authoritarian regime, not a great democracy.

The fifth myth: This would open the door to pardon abuses by Trump and/or mar Biden’s legacy. The first is laughable given Trump’s pardon track record (e.g., Michael Flynn, Sheriff Joe Arpaio) and his plans to pardon those convicted of violent crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. He needs no excuse to flout democratic norms. (By the way, Biden might not have considered amnesty had not Trump recently repeated his threats and chosen Patel for FBI director with barely a whisper of complaint from Republicans. If Trump renounced revenge and found a fit nominee, none of this might be necessary.)

As for Biden, his Hunter Biden pardon statement explained that he acted because “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.” It certainly follows that he should act to keep raw politics — unabashedly announced in advance — from leading to a miscarriage of justice.

If ordinary citizens face retribution for daring to testify against powerful bullies, few will do so. To preserve the justice system, to encourage people to provide evidence, Biden should grant them amnesty — in effect setting up a witness protection program. It is the least he can do for selfless Americans."

Opinion | Five pardon myths shouldn’t deter Biden from protecting Trump’s targets - The Washington Post

Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims - The New York Times

Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims

"A staff report by the Senate labor committee, led by Bernie Sanders, uncovered evidence of internal concern about high injury rates at the e-commerce giant.

Dec. 16, 2024Updated 10:21 a.m. ET

An Amazon fulfillment center in St. Petersburg, Fla. A Senate committee report found that Amazon executives rejected recommendations to ease enforcement of production quotas.Octavio Jones for The New York Times

By Noam Scheiber

Noam Scheiber has covered working conditions at Amazon for more than five years.

For years, worker advocates and some government officials have argued that Amazon’s strict production quotas lead to high rates of injury for its warehouse employees. And for years, Amazon has rejected the criticism, arguing that it doesn’t use strict quotas, and that its injury rates are falling close to or below the industry average.

On Sunday, the majority staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which is led by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, published an investigationthat found that Amazon itself had documented the link between its quotas and elevated injury rates.

Internal company documents collected by Mr. Sanders’s investigators show that Amazon health and safety personnel recommended relaxing enforcement of the production quotas to lower injury rates, but that senior executives rejected the recommendations apparently because they worried about the effect on the company’s performance.

The report also affirmed the findings of investigations undertaken by a union-backed groupshowing that injury rates at Amazon were almost twice the average for the rest of the industry.

“The shockingly dangerous working conditions at Amazon’s warehouses revealed in this 160-page report are beyond unacceptable,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement. “Amazon’s executives repeatedly chose to put profits ahead of the health and safety of its workers by ignoring recommendations that would substantially reduce injuries.”

Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the internal studies and recommendations that Mr. Sanders’s report cited were later found by the company to be invalid. “Senator Sanders’s report is wrong on the facts and weaves together out-of-date documents and unverifiable anecdotes to create a preconceived narrative,” she said.

She noted a recent ruling by a judge in Washington State that rejected a regulator’s allegations that Amazon required employees to work at an unsafe pace, and said the injury rates had recently improved. “The facts are, our expectations for our employees are safe and reasonable,” Ms. Nantel said.

Last year, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited more than half a dozen Amazon warehouses for exposing workers to high risks of joint and soft-tissue injuries, including back injuries.Octavio Jones for The New York Times

In an internal study known as Project Elderwand, which Amazon began in 2021, Amazon health and safety personnel identified an upper limit on the number of repeated motions a worker could make while picking items from robotic shelving units before injury rates increased substantially. That limit was equivalent to picking about 216 items per hour over a 10-hour shift. They found that Amazon workers, responding to productivity quotas, typically went well over that limit — picking more than 266 items per hour.

The study recommended that Amazon use software to track workers’ pace and require additional breaks to limit the number of repeated motions and keep workers under the threshold.

In another internal study, known as Project Soteria, which began in 2020 and continued through 2022, Amazon investigators found evidence that a faster pace of work led to a higher rate of injuries. The study recommended that Amazon suspend discipline for employees who failed to meet their productivity targets and that it give employees more time off from work, both of which appeared to reduce injury rates.

But Amazon executives ultimately rejected the recommendations of both reports, according to documents uncovered by Mr. Sanders’s office. The Senate labor committee staff found evidence suggesting that executives were concerned that carrying out the recommendations could lower productivity at Amazon’s warehouses or hurt the “customer experience.”

Mr. Sanders’s report also uncovered a third internal Amazon study that took issue with Project Soteria. In it, another team of Amazon researchers disputed the idea that there was a link between the pace of work and the risk of injury. It concluded that some workers were inherently more prone to getting injured.

Amazon said on Sunday that Project Soteria was an example of its practice of assigning multiple teams to study safety: One team explored a potential link between speed and injuries, and another evaluated the methodology and findings and concluded that they were flawed.

In one Amazon report, officials identified an upper limit on the number of times a worker could repeat a motion before injury rates increased significantly. Meron Tekie Menghistab for The New York Times

The findings in the Senate report are consistent with investigations conducted by state and federal regulators in recent years. Last year, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited more than half a dozen Amazon warehouses for exposing workers to high risks of joint and soft-tissue injuries, including back injuries.

The agency has said the elevated injury risks were related to the high frequency with which workers lifted items, the heavy weight of the items, the awkward body movements required to lift the items and the long hours that employees worked. OSHA proposed fines of more than $100,000 across the warehouses it cited; Amazon has appealed the citations.

In California, regulators fined Amazon nearly $6 million this year for violating a law that requires companies to provide written disclosures of quotas, and which forbids quotas that prevent employees from following health and safety laws or taking state-mandated breaks. Amazon said it appealed the citations.

Regulators in Washington State cited Amazon for safety violations earlier this decade, but a state judge threw out several citations this year after a monthslong trial. The state regulator referred to Project Soteria in its case, but the judge found that the state did not sufficiently establish a relationship between the pace of work and injury rates. The regulator is appealing the decision in state court.

Amazon has said that it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars improving safety in recent years, and that injury rates have declined as a result, including a large drop for the most serious injuries. The company has long maintained that it doesn’t have strict or “fixed” quotas. It says it has performance targets that are evaluated over longer periods and that take into account factors beyond sheer productivity, like an employee’s experience level and how other workers at the site are performing.

But employees have said for years that they are subject to warnings or disciplinary action if they fail to complete a certain number of actions per hour, and interviews conducted by Mr. Sanders’s office affirm this. Amazon workers told investigators that they could be disciplined for failing to pick items from shelving units at target rates in the hundreds per hour.

An Amazon same-day facility in the Bronx. The Senate investigation also found that Amazon makes it difficult for workers to receive appropriate medical care when they are injured. Victor Llorente for The New York Times

The report also identifies what it says are flaws in how Amazon compares its own injury rates with the rest of the industry. While Amazon says its injury rates are roughly average for large warehouses, Mr. Sanders’s team argued that this calculation was heavily skewed by including Amazon in the overall data set, which drives up the average. Amazon also tends to restrict the comparison to warehouses with 1,000 or more employees even though it operates many smaller warehouses.

When Amazon is removed from the average and compared with other companies, and when the analysis includes warehouses of any size, its injury rates were more than 1.8 times that of other companies in each of the past seven years, Mr. Sanders’s report concludes. The findings are similar to those of a union-backed group.

Amazon defended its methodology, saying that benchmarking against the overall industry average was standard practice.

Mr. Sanders’s report also found that Amazon made it difficult for workers to receive appropriate medical care when injured. It found that Amazon often discouraged workers from seeking medical attention outside their warehouse and sent them to an internal health facility that was not equipped to provide more than first aid, even when they had potentially serious long-term injuries. It said the company frequently denied workers the accommodations they needed to deal with injuries sustained on the job.

Amazon has denied discouraging workers from seeking outside medical attention and has said its accommodations policies meet or exceed state and federal requirements.

Noam Scheiber is a Chicago-based reporter who covers workers and the workplace. He spent nearly 15 years at The New Republic, where he covered economic policy and three presidential campaigns. More about Noam Scheiber"

Amazon Disregarded Internal Warnings on Injuries, Senate Investigation Claims - The New York Times

Mayor Adams Is Denied Public Money for His Re-election Campaign - The New York Times

Mayor Adams Is Denied Public Money for His Re-election Campaign

(Trump with 34 felony convictions plus initiating and insurrection was allowed to run for election and crime loving voters reelected him. This is America)

"The New York City Campaign Finance Board voted to withhold as much as $4.3 million in matching funds from Mayor Eric Adams, hampering his re-election bid.

Dec. 16, 2024Updated 10:57 a.m. ET

Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer who ran for mayor in 2021 on a public safety message, has seen his approval rating fall to a record low.Brittainy Newman for The New York Times

Mayor Eric Adams was denied public matching funds for his re-election campaign on Monday amid concerns about his fund-raising practices, dealing a major setback to his bid for a second term.

The New York City Campaign Finance Board ruled that Mr. Adams could not participate in a program that awards an eight-for-one match of small-dollar donations, withholding as much as $4.3 million.

“After thoroughly reviewing all available information including the details of the indictment of Mayor Adams, the board has determined that there is reason to believe the Adams campaign has engaged in conduct detrimental to the matching-funds program in violation of law,” said Frederick P. Schaffer, the board’s chair.

Mr. Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges in September and is expected to go on trial in April; his top adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, resigned on Sunday amid a grand jury investigation by prosecutors in Manhattan.

The mayor, who has seen his approval rating fall to a record low, is facing a difficult path to re-election next year, and the denial of matching funds places him at a significant disadvantage. He will have less money to spend on television advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts in a competitive race, and could be forced to devote more time to fund-raising.

The board’s denial of matching funds is not unprecedented. John Liu, a top mayoral candidate in 2013, was denied $3.5 million in public matching funds after two campaign workers were convicted in a straw-donor scandal. The decision exacerbated his political problems, and he finished the Democratic primary race in fourth place.

The federal indictment against Mr. Adams accused him of soliciting and accepting straw donations for both his 2021 campaign and his 2025 re-election campaign. Prosecutors said that he conspired with foreign nationals to illegally funnel money into his campaign coffers and his team encouraged businessmen to have employees make donations and reimburse them.

Some elected officials and good government groups had called on the Campaign Finance Board to deny Mr. Adams public matching funds. Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, wrote a letter to the board this month arguing that the Adams campaign had shown a “persistent and pervasive disregard" for the law.

“It is incumbent on the board to exercise its discretion to address the myriad failings of Eric Adams to comply with the law by finding that he is ineligible for matching funds,” she wrote, “and so demonstrate to New Yorkers that no person is above the law.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Bianca Pallaro is a Times reporter who combines traditional reporting with data analysis skills to investigate wrongdoing and explain complex issues by turning numbers into insightful information. More about Bianca Pallaro"

Mayor Adams Is Denied Public Money for His Re-election Campaign - The New York Times

Trump and His Picks Threaten More Lawsuits Over Critical Coverage - The New York Times

Trump and His Picks Threaten More Lawsuits Over Critical Coverage

"The small flurry of threatened defamation suits is the latest sign that the incoming Trump administration appears poised to do what it can to crack down on unfavorable media coverage.

Dec. 16, 2024, 10:45 a.m. ET23m ago

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, on Capitol Hill last week.Tom Brenner for The New York Times

By David Enrich

David Enrich’s latest book, to be published in 2025, is about the weaponization of libel law and the campaign to limit press freedoms.

• Dec. 15, 2024

The legal threats have arrived in various forms. One aired on CNN. Another came over the phone. More arrived in letters or emails.

All of them appeared aimed at intimidating news outlets and others who have criticized or questioned President-elect Donald J. Trump and his nominees to run the Pentagon and F.B.I.

The small flurry of threatened defamation lawsuits is the latest sign that the incoming Trump administration appears poised to do what it can to crack down on unfavorable media coverage. Before and after the election, Mr. Trump and his allies have discussed subpoenaing news organizations, prosecuting journalists and their sources, revoking networks’ broadcast licenses and eliminating funding for public radio and television.

Actual or threatened libel lawsuits are another weapon at their disposal — and they are being deployed even before Mr. Trump moves back into the White House.

It is notoriously difficult for public figures like Mr. Trump to win defamation lawsuits. Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent — which Mr. Trump and some of his allies want to see weakened or overturned — plaintiffs must prove that a publisher knew a defamatory statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for its accuracy.

But that high bar has not stopped a wide range of politicians, business leaders and others from threatening or filing such suits — a strategy that often seems tailored to cause news outlets and individuals to rein in aggressive coverage of the public figures.

The strategy can pay other dividends as well.

On Saturday, ABC News said it had agreed to give $15 million to Mr. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum to settle a defamation suit that Mr. Trump filed against the network and one of its anchors, George Stephanopoulos. Mr. Trump sued in March after Mr. Stephanopoulos inaccurately said the former president had been found “liable for rape” in a civil trial in New York, though the judge in the case later noted that the state has a narrow legal definition of rape. In fact, Mr. Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse.

The settlement followed months of attacks by Mr. Trump and his allies on ABC News, with the once and future president going so far as to say that the network should lose its federal broadcast license.

The deal set off criticism of ABC News by those who perceived the network as needlessly bowing down to Mr. Trump. And it led some legal and media experts to wonder whether the outcome would embolden Mr. Trump and others to intensify their assault on the media, at a moment when many news organizations are struggling with declining public trust and deteriorating finances.

Even before the settlement was reached, Elizabeth McNamara, a prominent media lawyer, said she expected that the trend “is only going to increase,” given the political environment.

“There’s been a pattern and practice for the past couple of years of using defamation litigation as a tactic to harass or test the boundary of case law,” said Ms. McNamara, who represented ABC News and Mr. Stephanopoulos but was speaking in general. (Her law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, has also represented The New York Times.)

Over the past several weeks, lawyers for Mr. Trump and two of his most high-profile nominees — Pete Hegseth, the potential defense secretary, and Kash Patel, whom Mr. Trump has picked to run the F.B.I. — warned journalists and others of defamation lawsuits for what they had said or written.

Mr. Hegseth, until recently a Fox News host, was accused of sexual assault in 2017. While he denies the allegation, he struck a confidential settlement with his accuser. 

In an interview on CNN this month, Mr. Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, said the woman was free to speak publicly. But, he warned, “if she repeats these false statements, then she will be subject to a defamation lawsuit.”

Mr. Parlatore, who previously represented Mr. Trump, said in an interview that he had delivered a similar warning directly to the accuser’s lawyer. “I suspect that she’s not going to come forward at all,” Mr. Parlatore said. “There’s no benefit. It’s all downside.”

Mr. Parlatore has also recently warned news outlets, including Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, that their planned articles about Mr. Hegseth’s past, including drinking and marital problems, could be defamatory, potentially exposing them to litigation, according to four people at the magazines and an email reviewed by The Times. Despite the warnings, both outlets published the articles. (Mr. Hegseth has denied having a drinking problem.)

Mr. Parlatore said he was not trying to squelch negative coverage by issuing baseless threats. Instead, he said, he was seeking to prevent the spread of false information about his client. “I don’t threaten things that I don’t intend to do,” he said. (Mr. Parlatore previously sued a New York Times reporter for defamation on behalf of a former Navy SEAL, Edward Gallagher. Mr. Gallagher later dropped the suit.)

Other lawyers representing prominent conservatives portrayed the growing popularity of libel litigation as a bipartisan trend, pointing to successful lawsuits against Fox News, Alex Jones and Rudolph W. Giuliani. But those cases were brought by private companies and individuals, not those seeking or holding public office.

Mr. Patel, who held senior positions in the first Trump administration, said before the election that he would use a job in the next administration “to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

Mr. Patel’s most recent threat was aimed not at a journalist but at Olivia Troye, who was a senior aide to Vice President Mike Pence. In a recent MSNBC appearance, Ms. Troye denounced Mr. Patel as a delusional liar. Mr. Patel’s lawyer, Jesse R. Binnall, fired off a letter demanding that she publicly retract her remarks. Absent a retraction, he wrote, “Mr. Patel will take swift legal action to uphold his rights and reputation.”

In response, Ms. Troye’s lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, sent Mr. Binnall an image of a “Monty Python” character sticking out his tongue in a taunt.

Mr. Patel and Mr. Binnall have routinely threatened or filed libel lawsuits. In 2021, Mr. Patel created the Kash Patel Legal Offense Trust, in part to finance such suits. The trust helped bankroll a defamation suit that Richard Grenell, a senior official in the first Trump administration, brought against Ms. Troye in 2022, according to a court filing in the case. Ms. Troye has sought to have the lawsuit dismissed.

Mr. Binnall is also Mr. Grenell’s lawyer. His other clients in defamation cases have included Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn; a former Republican congressman, Devin Nunes; and Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina, who recently sued CNN for linking him to lewd comments on pornography websites. (Mr. Robinson denied posting the comments. CNN is seeking to have the suit dismissed.) Mr. Binnall also has a suit pending against The Times on behalf of the right-wing group 1st Amendment Praetorian.

Lawyers like Mr. Binnall “have been using lawfare against perceived and actual enemies for years,” Mr. Zaid, the lawyer for Ms. Troye, said in an interview, describing the tactics as an attempt at intimidation.

Over the decades, Mr. Trump himself has filed repeated lawsuits against media companies and others for what he considered unfair or unfavorable coverage. Aside from his settlement with ABC News, Mr. Trump has hardly ever prevailed. He currently has a pending libel suit against the board that hands out Pulitzer Prizes. In October, he sued CBS News, contending that it engaged in deceptive trade practices in a “60 Minutes” interview of Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a 10-page letter sent days before the November election, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Edward Andrew Paltzik, accused The Times of publishing three articles that were “deceptive, malicious, intentional, defamatory, disparaging, distorted, fabricated, false, and misleading.” The letter demanded that The Times retract and apologize for the pieces.

Otherwise, Mr. Paltzik wrote, “President Trump will have no alternative but to enforce his legal and equitable rights.” He concluded, “BE GUIDED ACCORDINGLY.”

David McCraw, a lawyer for The Times, responded two days later. He defended the articles’ accuracy. And he described Mr. Paltzik’s letter as “premised on the deeply troubling notion that anyone who dares to report unfavorable facts about a presidential candidate is engaged in ‘sabotage’ (as opposed to, say, contributing to the free exchange of information and ideas that makes our democracy possible).”

David Enrich is the business investigations editor for The Times. His coverage has focused on law and business as well as the banking industry. He has reported on corporate law firms, the First Amendment and libel law, which is the topic of his latest book “Murder the Truth."More about David Enrich"

"New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)

U.S. Supreme Court

"... Held: A State cannot, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, award damages to a public official for defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves "actual malice" -- that the statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false. Pp. 376 U. S. 265-292.

(a) Application by state courts of a rule of law, whether statutory or not, to award a judgment in a civil action, is "state action" under the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 376 U. S. 265.

(b) Expression does not lose constitutional protection to which it would otherwise be entitled because it appears in the form of a paid advertisement. Pp. 376 U. S. 265-266.

Page 376 U. S. 255

(c) Factual error, content defamatory of official reputation, or both, are insufficient to warrant an award of damages for false statements unless "actual malice" -- knowledge that statements are false or in reckless disregard of the truth -- is alleged and proved. Pp. 376 U. S. 279-283.

(d) State court judgment entered upon a general verdict which does not differentiate between punitive damages, as to which, under state law, actual malice must be proved, and general damages, as to which it is "presumed," precludes any determination as to the basis of the verdict, and requires reversal, where presumption of malice is inconsistent with federal constitutional requirements. P. 376 U. S. 284.

(e) The evidence was constitutionally insufficient to support the judgment for respondent, since it failed to support a finding that the statements were made with actual malice or that they related to respondent. Pp. 376 U. S. 285-292.

273 Ala. 656, 144 So. 2d 25, reversed and remanded."

Trump and His Picks Threaten More Lawsuits Over Critical Coverage - The New York Times