Georgia
Judge orders prosecutors to reply to Trump challenge
ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia judge on Monday ordered the Fulton County district attorney’s office to respond to a motion by former President Donald Trump to throw out a report by a special grand jury that investigated attempts to interfere in the state’s 2020 presidential election.
The motion by Trump’s legal team also seeks to toss out all testimony from the inquiry and to bar Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from continuing to investigate or prosecute Trump.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered Willis to respond by May 1 and to let him know whether an in-person hearing is needed to resolve any issues. A spokesperson for Willis said her office would reply through its court filings.
The filing is an effort by Trump to escape one of the multiple legal challenges he faces, including a state inquiry in New York into hush money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president as well as a pair of U.S. Justice Department criminal investigations. One examines his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. The other examines Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents at his Florida estate.
Willis began her investigation shortly after the release of a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that conversation, the then-president suggested that Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, could “find” the exact number of votes needed to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden.
The special grand jury heard from about 75 witnesses and considered other evidence before issuing a report that includes recommendations for Willis on criminal charges. McBurney released the report’s introduction and conclusion, as well as a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath, but the rest of the report has remained under wraps so far.
Willis said in a January hearing that decisions on indictments were “imminent.”
The challenge by Trump’s legal team, filed last Monday, also contended that McBurney misinterpreted Georgia law and erred by not disqualifying Willis from the entire probe when he ruled in July that Willis could not pursue charges against Burt Jones, now Georgia’s lieutenant governor.
Trump’s lawyers asked for another judge besides McBurney to hear the challenge. He did not acknowledge that push in Monday’s brief order.
The lawyers also faulted Willis for granting repeated news interviews, citing a list of 39 media appearances and saying her comments cast “a shadow of bias over her office and the entire investigation.”
Trump’s lawyers similarly argued that interviews that the foreperson and other grand jurors have given should disqualify the case.
Washington
Supreme Court rejects case of Oklahoma teen killed by police
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t hear a civil rights case brought by the parents of a teenager who was naked and unarmed when he was fatally shot by an Oklahoma police officer in 2019.
The high court on Monday rejected without comment the lawsuit bought by the parents of Isaiah Lewis. Police have said that the 17-year-old was shot after he broke into a home in Edmond and attacked two officers. They have said that a stun gun had no effect on him.
Lewis’ lawyers wrote that on the day he was shot he had inadvertently smoked marijuana laced with PCP. His parents argued that he was experiencing a mental health crisis and that police used excessive force.
An autopsy report found Lewis suffered a total of four gunshot wounds to his face, thighs and groin.
A federal trial court judge had allowed the lawsuit against the officer who shot Lewis to go forward, but a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver reversed that ruling. The Supreme Court’s decision not to take the case leaves the appeals court ruling in place.
Oregon
Chipotle agrees to pay after closing store that sought union
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Chipotle Mexican Grill has agreed to pay $240,000 to former employees as part of a settlement stemming from a complaint that the company violated federal law by closing a restaurant where workers wanted to unionize.
Chipotle announced it was permanently closing its Augusta, Maine, location last year after workers filed a National Labor Relations Board petition for a union election. The NLRB later said the closure was illegal.
The Maine location was the first in the chain to file a union petition. The settlement, released by union officials on Monday, states that two dozen employees will receive payments from Chipotle and they will be placed on a preferential hiring list for other Maine locations.
The company must also post a notice in dozens of stores in New England that it won’t close stores or discriminate against employees due to union support, the settlement states.
“It sends a message to corporations that shutting down a store and blackballing workers didn’t work for Chipotle and it won’t work for them either,” said Brandi McNease, a former employee of the Augusta store and the lead organizer of the union drive, in a statement provided by the Maine AFL-CIO.
Chipotle said in a statement that it settled the lawsuit because fighting it would have been burdensome and expensive. The company respects “our employees’ rights to organize under the National Labor Relations Act” and is “committed to ensuring a fair and just work environment that provides opportunities to all,” said Laurie Schalow, chief corporate affairs officer for the company, in a statement.
“We settled this case not because we did anything wrong, but because the time, energy and cost to litigate would have far outweighed the settlement agreement,” Schalow said.
The Augusta location closed last summer. Workers described the closure as retaliation for the union drive, but company representatives said the closure wasn’t related to unionization.
The payments the workers are receiving vary based on their average number of hours worked, pay rate and longevity prior to store closing, union officials said.
There are currently 10 other open unfair labor practice cases against Chipotle, said Kayla Blado, a spokesperson with the National Labor Relations Board’s Office of Congressional and Public Affairs. Parties agreed in January to a settlement on four of these, Blado said.
