Mostrando resultados por autor "Matthew Russell Lee" en Todas las categorías

Cryptocurrency had come a long way since the draining of the DAO in 2016. Now sandwich attackers cruised the MEV pool looking for victims. Behind them lurked the Low Carb Crusader, eying to kick out the top of the sandwich and leave it open face. Was it a crime? The SDNY prosecutors, at least in 2024 when the case was brought, thought so. But why had the new Administration continued to pursue the case, as it had that of Roman Storm of Tornado Cash? CZ was given a pardon, though the President said he didn't know who he was. Among the Google searches proffered by the SDNY prosecutors against ...

Bob Menendez as his nine-week second trial went on got more vocal, on the walk from the courthouse door to his waiting black car, with its New Jersey license plates. We are shredding their case, he said near the end. He explained his decision not to testify by saying the government had not proved every element of their case. But hadn't they proved some? Bob was gone, headed east on Worth Street toward Chinatown's Kim Lau Square. Kurt Wheelock after live tweeting each trial day went down onto Worth Street to try to ask Bob question. He asked him about the Biden - Trump debate - "I'll ...

Durante el juicio de Juan Orlando Hernández testificó sobre reuniones con los presidentes estadounidenses Trump, Obama y Biden, haciendo afirmaciones sobre la Guerra contra las Drogas. Pero había sido extraditado de Honduras por cargos de narcotráfico. Este es el relato paso a paso del juicio, con análisis y hasta versos, Narco Presidentes Blues... Juan Orlando Hernández y su abogado principal, Raymond Colón, estaban teniendo un desacuerdo, antes de que Colón interrogara al narcotraficante confeso y asesinara a Devis Rivera Maradiaga. "Le estás dando demasiada importancia", le dijo...

During the trial, BNP's lawyer repeatedly tried to blame others, including China. It wasn't BNP that enabled Bashir, their argument was. It was China. It is true: when I was in South Sudan covering the UN Security Council's whirlwind visit, we stayed in the Beijing Juba hotel. It was a collection of trailers with a narrow walkway between them. In the reception building was a large red flag, that of the People's Republic of China. The CCP had worked with Bashir, and now with Juba. At the UN, China used NGOs like the China Energy Fund Committee to buy access - including to Chad's oil in ...

On November 16, 2023 a lawsuit against Sean Combs went live in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Within days it was settled. But the 35-page complaint remained in the PACER system. Its first page said, in red, "Trigger Warning: This document contains highly graphic information of a sexual nature, including sexual assault." Inner City Press covered it, and other cases filed in 2024: Lil Rod Jones, Adria English, Jane Doe, Crystal McKinney. On September 17, 2024 Sean Combs was brought by US Marshals before SDNY Magistrate Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky. He had been ...

After Kurt Wheelock was thrown out of the UN for digging and blogging about Secretary General Antonio Guterres' links to the China Energy Fund Committee, he found himself down in DC, covering the spy trial of Pras Michel of the Fugees. Pras was charged with working for Chinese intelligence, trying to get Miles Guo Wengui extradited to China, at the request of Jho Low. Kurt covered the Jho Low case too, even with Jho Low absconded to China. It was in Federal court not in Manhattan but Brooklyn. On trial a former banker from Goldman Sachs, testified against by a cooperator who had been ...

This is the story of the trial in People of the State of New York versus Daniel Penny, to the closings. Onto a subway car like this one he got on, a muffin in his jacket pocket wrapped in plastic, a spleen speckled, it would turn out, by sickle cell disease. But that is not what killed him, Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran would say. Was it an improper blood choke, or the terror he inspired, in a lady from Park Slope with her baby, a Nike brand ambassador on the way to Rucker Park? Even the Bronx school girls said they were frightened, even if one did later drop the dime on the white...

It was May 24, 2022 in a garden next to the SDNY Federal courthouse. Eric Adams stood at the podium and ran thought his story, his campaign and elevator pitch: "Arrested at 15, negative encounters with the police… South Jamaica, Queens, going into the classroom and finding 'Dummy' written on the back of my chair… Never learned I had dyslexia until I was in college, tempted to drop out… But I turned pain into purpose." The question, to some, was to what purpose? Two and a half years later, Adams was back in SDNY, this time under Federal indictment for Turkish bribes and straw donors. ...

Kevin Spacey faced a civil trial for sexual misconduct held in October 2022, about an evening in 1986. During the trial his lawyers attacked plaintiff Anthony Rapp, who was 14-years-old when he says Spacey lifted him up like a bride and then grinded against him, as an envious narcissist. Journalist and lawyer Matthew Russell Lee covered the trial in depth, live tweeting the testimony and arguments and putting questions to Spacey outside the SDNY courthouse afterward, including about his flights on Jeffrey Epstein's plane along with Bill Clinton and Chris Tucker https://twitter.com/...

Puffery to promote a business is longstanding tradition. But the current era of technology brings a new spin to it: Elizabeth Holmes and her too magical blood testing machine, Trevor Milton and his ostensibly hydrogen truck being pushed down hill, Do Kwon and his not-so-stable coin crashing and burning. Retail victims worldwide continue to write in to the court, and to Inner City Press which reports on it. Charlie Javice though, as indicted, had a single victim: JPMorgan Chase, all the way to the top, Jamie Dimon. He ordered that the deal be done, before the email addressed had even been ...

Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey pushed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hard right on Cuba and Iran until he ran into an indictment for helping Egypt and Qatar. This is that story. Menendez testified against his mentor William Musto, wearing a bullet-proof vest, and donated for the defense of anti-Castro bombers of Omega 7. By 2024 he decried Jose Uribe who testified against him, after deploying the cards of terrorism, sexual harassment and nepotism against nominees. He wanted his son Rob, who said he did not speak Spanish, to take his seat. He vowed to run as an independent. ...

This is the story of the prosecution of Daniel Penny, after the death of Jordan Neely in the F Train in Manhattan, and how it resulted in a Not Guilty verdict on Count 2 on December 9, 2024. It is a sequel to "Daniel Penny for Your Thoughts," about the evidence phase of the trial. It covers both sides arguments, the judges rulings, and some narrative in the voice of one Kurt Wheelock, featured in Inner City Press books by Matthew Russell Lee all the way back to "Predatory Bender." Kurt Wheelock leaves his camera and his laptop's external battery in his cubicle in the Press Room of the ...

In outlaw music there is always the question of authenticity. Daniel Hernandez became Tekashi 6ix9ine and hooked up with the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods to shoot a video. Then he became their cash cow, and some of them became his muscle, shoot-out in a Barclay's Center hallway. They turned on Tekashi and he became a cooperator against them, returning to SDNY on violations of supervised release then back out on the concert tour. For drill rapper Kay Flock it was different. He really was from Sev Side, 187th Street. He wasn't an appendage to his group: he was central to it. When with seven he ...

On Luigi Mangione who would go first, the City or the Feds? The letter Mangione was arrested with in the Altoona McDonalds was addressed the "the Feds." But Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg struck first. To announce the indictment, on terrorism charges no less, he invited the press to a conference on December 17. Kurt Wheelock RSVP-ed and went. It was up to the 8th floor, in the building across Hogan Place from 100 Centre Street. Then down a long hallway to the training room. Cameras were on the riser, and a few seats remained. Kurt took one and prepared to live-tweet, as he would the whole case. ...

The night before the second Carroll - Trump trial it was colder in Iowa than in New York. Still, the first snow in 700 days drifted down on Worth Street in front of the courthouse, where the NYPD barricades had already been set up. The circus was about to begin. And Kurt Wheelock began to get ready. Well before the 9:30 am kickoff Trump was at the defense table, whispering with Alina Habba all dressed in white. There was a third lawyer, not in the docket, and Judge Kaplan would soon shut him down. But for now it was a stand-off: E. Jean Carroll with Robbie Kaplan at the front table, E. Jean...

A movie with an anti-domestic violence message has resulted in charges of sexual harassment by a woman who downplayed the DV aspect of the film, against a man who played it up, then countersued for defamation. It Ends With Us? Not really. On February 3, 2025 Kurt Wheelock went in early to the SDNY to live-tweet the hearing on the lawyers' out-of-court statements. Outside the courthouse there were paparazzi. Kurt filmed them then went in. At 11 am Judge Lewis J. Liman came in to an "All Rise!" He asked Justin Baldoni's lawyer why he had filed a 168 page narrative with his amended complaint. ...

When Donald Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche gave his closing argument he declared Michael Cohen the GLOAT: the Greatest Liar of All Time. He said the prosecution had manipulated evidence, noting that Cohen's texts to Trump's bodyguard Keith Schiller about the 14-year-old crank caller had not been in the list the prosecutors showed the jury. He questioned what Cohen called his recording of Trump, and how it ended, Blanche also told the jurors that a guilty verdict could put Trump in prison. Immediately after the jurors left for lunch, the prosecutor demanded a curative instruction. After Blanche...

When at last the Sam Bankman-Fried trial started on October 3, 2023 with jury selection, after Sam had been remanded to the MDC jail, the courtroom on the 26th floor was full, and an overflow room established on the 23rd. The author went back and forth between them, and down to the Press Room he'd been admitted to after six months of covering cases here, after he was thrown out of the UN and took on this new identity. Between the three locations he began to paint of picture of the trial, of Sam and the world around him. The portrait was made up of tweets or Xs, of vlogs filmed out on Foley ...

With Roman Storm on trial for his crypto mixer Tornado Cash, I spent July 2025 digging in different directions. I filed a motion to unseal the Storm trial transcript, the day I heard and reported the prosecutors threatening to bring low some from Dragonfly, only to have it disappear behind redaction. My motion was docketed, but responded due August 19, after the trial. Did the Administration in Washington, so recently bragging about the passage of the GENIUS Act, sign off on these threats? Or was it another disconnect, another failure to follow through as so far on UN reform? The day of ...

This is a story of the collections cases against former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where he was once US Attorney. It all began in Brooklyn, with Mafia ties alleged, a motivation. Manhattan College in The Bronx to 1965, NYU Law then a clerkship doe Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon in, where else, SDNY. This Court would keep reappearing, with Giuliani moving from one side of the "v." to the other (he also got sued a lot as NYC Mayor). Rudy rose to acclaim taking on a corrupt politician, Rep. Bertram Podell. With the election of ...