Washington
DC reaches $750K settlement in Trump inaugural lawsuit
WASHINGTON (AP) — The District of Columbia attorney general said Tuesday that his office had reached a $750,000 settlement to resolve a lawsuit that alleged former President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee overpaid for events at the Trump International Hotel to enrich the former president’s family in the process.
Attorney General Karl Racine announced the settlement agreement in the case against the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the Trump Organization and the Trump International Hotel in Washington in a tweet on Tuesday. The document had not yet been signed by a judge.
The agreement says the case is being resolved “to avoid the cost, burden, and risks of further litigation” and that the organizations “dispute these allegations on numerous grounds and deny having engaged in any wrongdoing or unlawful conduct.”
As part of the agreement, the defendants will pay the District of Columbia a total of $750,000, which will be used to benefit three nonprofit organizations, the settlement paperwork says.
“We’re resolving our lawsuit and sending the message that if you violate DC nonprofit law—no matter how powerful you are—you’ll pay,” Racine said in a tweet.
Racine has said the committee misused nonprofit funds and coordinated with the hotel’s management and members of the Trump family to arrange the events. He said one of the event’s planners raised concerns about pricing with Trump, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Rick Gates, a top campaign official at the time.
The committee has maintained that its finances were independently audited, and that all money was spent in accordance with the law. The committee raised an unprecedented $107 million to host events celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. But the committee’s spending has drawn mounting scrutiny.
Gates, a former Trump campaign aide who cooperated in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, personally managed discussions with the hotel about using the space, including ballrooms and meeting rooms, the attorney general’s office has said. In one instance, Gates contacted Ivanka Trump and told her that he was “a bit worried about the optics” of the committee paying such a high fee, Racine said.
Prosecutors say the committee could have hosted inaugural events at other venues either for free or for reduced costs but didn’t consider those options.
Secretary of State Jena Griswold sued to force Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder to turn over the external hard drives containing the copies and Judge Gary M. Kramer ruled late Friday that Schroeder must follow her lawful orders. Kramer also ordered Schroeder to answer Griswold’s questions about who has had access to the copies in filings.
It’s one of a handful of cases across the United States in which authorities are investigating whether local officials directed or aided in suspected security breaches at their own election offices. Some of them have expressed doubt about the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Schroeder’s lawyer, John Case, declined to comment on the order Monday.
Schroeder has said he copied the hard drives because he wanted to preserve the results of the 2020 election. He first made a copy of the hard drives of the election server, the image cast central computers and the adjudication computer before the state updated voting software. He then made a copy of that set of copies.
During a hearing Friday before the judge issued his order, Case urged Kramer not to allow both copies to be in the same place at the same time in case some disaster like a fire might destroy them. He also asked that Griswold return them to Schroeder after looking at them. Kramer’s order did not address those concerns.
While Schroeder has said that he gave one copy to Case and the other to an unnamed lawyer, Case told Kramer that one copy was now in Schroeder’s office and the other was under his control but not in his possession, without elaborating.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Hunt argued that unless the copies were under Griswold’s control they could end up being used to hack the state’s voting system.
Mississippi
High court: City liable in woman’s death after 911 violation
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The city of Jackson is liable for the wrongful death of a woman who was killed after she called 911 and the operator did not tell her to remain on the line, the Mississippi Supreme Court said in affirming part of a jury’s verdict.
Justices issued the decision Thursday, nearly eight years after Ruth Helen Harrion, 67, was killed after calling about a prowler outside her home, WLBT-TV reported.
The 911 dispatcher did not tell Harrion to stay on the phone, court records show. After the call ended, the prowler entered the home and raped and killed her.
Justices found the city must pay Harrion’s family $500,000 because, under the Mississippi Tort Claims Act, it was liable for the 911 dispatcher’s actions.
However, justices reversed part of the jury’s verdict that awarded her family $1 million after finding the city violated Harrion’s constitutional rights.
The city had previously said it should not be held liable for the actions of its employees.
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s findings that the dispatcher’s “failure to ask Ruth Harrion to remain on the telephone violated written procedures,” and that if the victim had remained on the line “the officers would have known that the prowler had gotten into the house and could have ... saved Ruth Harrion.”
Harrion called 911 after 3 a.m. on July 16, 2014, and a Jackson Police Department shift supervisor, Debra Goldman, answered. Court records indicate after Goldman took Harrion’s name and told her police would be sent, the call disconnected.
“It is disputed which party hung up first. Undisputed and likewise shown by a recording of the call is that Goldman made no attempt to keep ... Harrion on the line,” the court wrote. “Nor did she attempt to determine the prowler’s location or whether Harrion had seen or heard the prowler.”
Two officers, Tammie Heard and Derrick Evans, were sent to the home.
“After they checked around the house and observed no signs of forced entry, they knocked on the front door, but no one answered, and they heard nothing out of the ordinary,” the court wrote.
The officers told dispatch to call Harrion, who never answered. One officer heard the phone ringing from outside the house. They knocked on the door, but no one answered.
