What You Need to Know: Friday, February 23
Trump owes big, Assange might be extradited, Alabama rules embryos are children, Nevada deals with a voting glitch, and the KC shooting drums up false conspiracy theories
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Content warning: The last section of today’s newsletter discusses the Super Bowl parade shooting in Kansas City, Missouri.
What happened with Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial?
How did the trial conclude? On Friday, February 16, Judge Arthur F. Engoron ordered Donald Trump to pay $450 million in penalties and interest for “engag[ing] in a yearslong conspiracy with top executives at his company, the Trump Organization, to deceive banks and insurers about the size of his wealth and [the value of] Trump Tower in Manhattan and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.” The judge determined that the profits from Trump’s ventures were “ill-gotten gains,” elaborating that without Trump’s falsification of financial records, he wouldn’t have received lower loan interest rates which allowed him to expand his real estate holdings rapidly.
Judge Engoron found Trump guilty of five fraud charges, including “falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, and conspiracy to falsify business records.” The judge also ruled that Trump and his sons are banned from serving as directors of any New York company for three years.
How has Trump responded? Will he have to pay up? Trump, in response to the ruling, claimed the decision was “weaponization against a political opponent,” asserting his political opponents are attacking him for “having built a perfect company, great cash, great buildings, great everything.” Trump’s legal team protested that the former president himself did not encourage falsifying the documents and that the accountants who prepared the financial documents were responsible. Trump’s legal team will likely appeal Engoron’s decision, claiming the amount Trump must pay is unreasonable because there are no “traditional victims” or a single entity who was negatively impacted by Trump's falsehoods. However, to avoid making immediate payments on the penalty, Trump must secure a bond from the state verifying that he possesses the funds to pay the judgment amount. This bond prevents him from being obligated to make payments while the appeal process is underway.
How will this impact Trump’s businesses? His campaign? Trump, who is now facing restrictions on his ability to operate businesses in New York and a hefty fine, could face financial difficulties going into the 2024 election. In addition to the $450 million fine, Trump faces a $83.3 million judgment from a recent defamation case. Trump supporters are taking his political indictments as further evidence of election interference, claiming Trump is a “victim of a Democratic cabal led by President Biden.”
Why am I hearing about Wikileaks and Julian Assange again?
Who is Julian Assange? What did he do? In 2006, Australian-born Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks, a secure platform that allowed leaked documents to be published online. In 2010, Assange and Wikileaks published thousands of military documents outlining previously hidden information about civilian deaths and diplomatic dealings on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also published a classified video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that resulted in the death of two Reuters journalists.
What happened? Where is Assange now? In 2019, Assange was charged by the U.S. Justice Department with 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act, which criminalizes gathering, transmitting, or losing sensitive defense information. Currently, Assange resides in Belmarsh Prison in London for breaching bail on a matter unrelated to the Wikileaks case. In 2019, U.S. prosecutors requested that the U.K. extradite Assange so he could stand trial in Virginia, claiming Assange endangered the lives of informants and disclosed classified information about U.S. security. U.K. courts denied the extradition order in 2021, citing Assange’s declining mental health and increased suicide risk if he was moved to a U.S. prison. However, after reevaluating Assange, courts approved the extradition request in 2022, and it has since been appealed.
What is the current state of the extradition order? Judges on Britain’s High Court are expected to make the final ruling on Assange’s extradition order in the coming weeks. Assange claims that he will face cruel treatment in the United States, asserting he believes he would “risk of treatment amounting to torture or other forms of punishment.” U.S. officials claim that Assange would be allowed a fair trial. Assange’s home government has also petitioned to have him sent back to Australia, calling for his immediate release. Human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, are also calling for the charges against Assange to be dropped.
Alabama said what about embryos?
What happened? On Friday, February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court, in a ruling that declared frozen embryos equivalent to children, declared: "Unborn children are 'children' … without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics." The decision comes as a result of three wrongful death cases brought to the court by couples who had frozen embryos accidentally damaged by a fertility clinic. In the ruling, justices claimed that the 1872 state law allowing parents to pursue legal charges in the event there is a death of their minor child “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location." This decision expanded on the court’s definition of a child, elaborating on their previous ruling that found a fetus killed while a woman is pregnant to be punishable under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.
What are the implications of the ruling? Barbara Collura, the CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association, told the Associated Press, “This ruling is stating that a fertilized egg, which is a clump of cells, is now a person. It really puts into question, the practice of IVF.” In vitro fertilization – the process by which eggs are harvested, fertilized externally, and implanted if a person or couple can’t conceive on their own – is a sought-after option for the one in six individuals experiencing infertility. The ruling, which claims the embryos are alive, raises questions about the legality of freezing, destroying, or donating embryos for patients and providers. Often, patients will use IVF to check for genetic abnormalities in the embryo, implanting only the healthy ones. However, under the ruling, people could be sued for destroying the embryos they choose not to implant. Doctors who discard the unused embryos also worry they could face criminal repercussions.
In response to the ruling, fertility clinics are pausing their IVF services. The University of Alabama at Birmingham Health System stated: “We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments.”
What happens now? It is unlikely that the Supreme Court will review this case, as the ruling falls within Alabama’s interpretation of its state constitution. In the coming months, experts predict that it will be increasingly difficult to receive IVF services in Alabama. Reproductive rights advocates expressed concern about how the case will be used to set a precedent in other states attempting to target fertility treatments, noting the ruling is a “horrifying signal of what’s to come across the country.”
What was that brief voting glitch in Nevada about?
What happened? On Sunday night, Nevada voters raised alarm when they noticed irregularities upon checking their voter histories. On Monday evening, the Secretary of State's office issued a statement, attributing the irregularity to county workers' failure to update voter registration data properly. Specifically, when a voter is sent a mail-in ballot and doesn’t return it, “additional steps [must] be taken [by county workers] to ensure that voters who did not return their ballot do not have vote history.” This can result in the site displaying inaccurate data if not done correctly. This is why some voters discovered discrepancies upon reviewing their voter records, indicating that they had supposedly cast their votes through a mail-in ballot for the Nevada primary on February 6, despite not having done so.
Does this impact the outcome of the primary? In addition to clarifying the error, the Secretary of State’s office noted that the voter history is maintained separately from Nevada’s election results. According to the office, “SilverStateElection.NV.gov, which posts election results and county canvasses of the votes are accurate and unaffected by the technical issues, according to the secretary of state’s office.”
How has the response online been? Accounts and personalities that have previously promoted false voter fraud conspiracies claim that the error is proof that the Nevada primary – and by extension all elections – are rigged. Fox News reporter Jesse Watters discussed the glitch in voter history, stating, “We are just supposed to trust that no one voted in our name?? They tell us our elections are secure, then we discover [they are] rigged.” Others claimed that the situation was further evidence that Democrats are rigging elections using mail-in ballots. Host of “Conspiracy Truths” Mindy Robinson furthered this point, writing on X, “We should just return to one day, paper ballots with ID that was cheaper and faster than any of these riggable machines anyway?”
What’s with all these claims about the Kansas City shooting?
What happened? On February 15, one person was killed, and 22 people were injured, in a shooting that took place near Kansas City’s Union Station. Several hundred people were gathered to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory at the time of the incident. Kansas City police say the shooting was caused by a dispute, and there was no evidence of “terrorism or homegrown violent extremism.” Currently, two adults have been charged with the murder of one victim.
What conspiracy theories have developed? Shortly after the incident, far-right accounts began spreading claims on social media that the shooter had been identified as an undocumented immigrant in his 40s named “Sahil Omar.” Falsified rumors accusing a man named “Sahil Omar” have been circulating since 2022, linking this name to shootings in “Las Vegas and Prague, sexual assault on the London Underground, and gas explosions in Texas.” However, there was no one named “Sahil Omar” involved in the Kansas shooting or any of the incidents referenced above.
Anti-immigrant sentiment Several of the posts circulating that identified “Sahil Omar” as the shooter advocated for mass deportation of undocumented individuals and stricter border policies by correlating terrorism with a name that sounds “foreign.” Two Missouri state senators, Denny Hoskins and Rick Brattin, also disseminated the claim that Omar was involved in the shooting and called on President Biden to “close the border.” Another post on TikTok linking “Sahil Omar” to the incident wrote, "I knew it was gonna be an illegal!!!"