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

It was the first day of witnesses in the US v. Live Nation trial when text messages between Patti Kim and John Abbamondi of Barclays Center were discussed but deemed sealed. Later on March 4, I filed a motion to unseal that exhibit, and others in the case. Judge Arun Subramanian granted it: "The Court received the attached communication from Matthew Lee of Inner City Press. It is ORDERED that the text exchange between John Abbamondi and Patti Kim, marked and admitted as Plaintiff Exhibit 654 be unsealed and filed on ECF for public access. It is further ORDERED that Plaintiff Exhibit 230 be ...

As inside the increasingly marginal United Nations a process begins to select a successor to Antonio Guterres who stole the post from female candidates in 2016 and drove the UN into the ground including through censorship, it is time to review the history. Inner City Press, which Guterres banned from the UN as it reported on his link with briber CEFC China Energy and to sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, both convicted in the SDNY Federal court, closely covered Guterres' dubious selection, and after. Antonio Guterres was out of the United Nations system, getting paid by Lisbon-based ...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

Generational fraud, SDNY Judge Engelmayer called it. Bigger that SBF, Mashinsky or OneCoin's Sebastian Greenwood (of whose sentencing memos Inner City Press won unsealing), the US Attorney's Office said. Never enough punishment, some of the victims said. A set-up, supporters still maintained, even after sentencing. This is that story, of the indictment, guilty plea and sentencing of Do Kwon of Terra Labs and Luna. CZ got a pardon; SBF is still waiting in US prison, with Do Kwon now bound halfway through to South Korea. Roman Storm awaits sentencing, the Peraire-Buenos await retrial. ...

Starting on December 1, 2025 New York State Justice Gregory Carro held a suppression hearing in People versus Luigi Mangione. After two days he announced that all exhibits would be sealed. That night by email, and the next day by fax and then in person, I turned in a letter for Inner City Press, asking to be heard, to unseal exhibits. It happened. And the witnesses, mostly from the Altoona Police Department, follow one after the other on the stand. Just like the stills and snuff film in the exhibit, a picture emerged, of the Altoona Police Department, and the wider world. This is that story...

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. ...

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 ...

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. ...

They put sanctions on Tornado Cash. And then they took them off. Still the prosecution of Roman Storm proceeded, right into trial in the Southern District of New York. I was there in Judge Failla's sixth-floor courtroom when she ruled, North Korea in, weapons of mass destruction out. I was there a week later when the Ronin hack witness, in from Vietnam, described finding 170,000 Ethereum missing, tracking it back to Tornado Cash but of course no further. They called it a privacy tool, a way to beat the relentless transparency of the blockchain. The prosecutors described Roman, the one they ...

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. ...

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 ...

They used to have their own building, the Sovereign District of New York. Built in the same style as the notorious jail next to it, where Jeffrey Epstein died, it still stands but empty in front of NYPD's One Police Plaza. The Southern District prosecutors now share 26 Federal Plaza with a plethora of other agencies. The building hired an outside security firm. One of their guards coerced a Burmese asylum seeker into sex in a second floor storage room.The Sovereign District let him plead out to false statements. It was unclear if the victim of the crime-that-went away was even notified, ...

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/...

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 ...

It was a normal U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday, May 10, 2022. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, "A stablecoin known as TerraUSD experienced a run and declined in value." That had started late on May 8, when UST ostensibly pegged to the U.S. dollar had fallen lower by a penny, then by thirty cents, then sixty. "I certainly think there are many risks associated with cryptocurrencies," Yellen replies to a question from Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, who had said "the crypto currency market is now larger than the subprime mortgage market which ...

The day of opening arguments in the Trump trial, the line started before dawn. The area beside 111 Centre Street was locked off; some attributed it to increased security after the self-immolation in Collect Pond Park on Friday. There were line-sitters, some of whom became organizers of the lines. After the sun came up, a group of protests of decidedly middle age showed up from the side of the Housing Court building, chanting about election interference. Some asked online, Which side of they on? Since both sides now alleged election interference by the other. Up in the courtroom, Judge ...

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 ...

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. ...