New York
Ex-Abercrombie & Fitch CEO is ruled unfit for trial and ordered hospitalized
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge ruled Friday that the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch is not competent to stand trial on sex trafficking charges and ordered him hospitalized to see if his mental condition improves.
Michael Jeffries’ lawyers sought the ruling last month, writing in a letter filed in a New York federal court that the 80-year-old requires around-the-clock care because he has Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia and the “residual effects of a traumatic brain injury.”
The defense, as well as prosecutors, requested that Jeffries be placed in federal Bureau of Prisons custody so he can be hospitalized and receive treatment that might allow his criminal case to proceed.
“The court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant is presently suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent to the extent that he is unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense,” Judge Nusrat Choudhury wrote in her decision.
She directed the attorney general’s office to place Jeffries in a hospital for up to four months.
Jeffries has been free on $10 million bond since pleading not guilty in October to federal charges of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution.
Prosecutors say he, his romantic partner and a third man used the promise of modeling jobs to lure men to drug-fueled sex parties in New York City, the Hamptons and other locations.
The charges announced in October echo sexual misconduct accusations made in a civil case and the media in recent years.
In their letter, Jeffries’ lawyers said at least four medical professionals concluded that their client’s cognitive issues are “progressive and incurable” and that he will not “regain his competency and cannot be restored to competency in the future.”
Jeffries left Abercrombie in 2014 after more than two decades at the helm. His partner, Matthew Smith, has also pleaded not guilty and remains out on bond, as has their co-defendant, James Jacobson.
Washington
Judge blocks Trump executive order targeting elite law firm
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday permanently blocked a White House executive order targeting an elite law firm, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against the legal profession.
U.S. District Beryl Howell said the executive order against the firm of Perkins Coie amounted to “unconstitutional retaliation” as she ordered that it be nullified and that the Trump administration halt any enforcement of it.
“No American President,” Howell wrote in her 102-page order, “has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”
The ruling was most definitive rejection to date of Trump’s spate of similarly worded executive orders against some of the country’s most elite law firms, part of a broader effort by the president to reshape American civil society by targeting perceived adversaries in hopes of extracting concessions from them and bending them to his will. Several of the firms singled out for sanction have either done legal work that Trump has opposed, or currently have or previously had associations with prosecutors who at one point investigated the president.
The edicts have ordered that the security clearances of attorneys at the targeted firms be suspended, that federal contracts be terminated and that their employees be barred from federal buildings. The punished law firms have called the executive orders an affront to the legal system and at odds with the foundational principle that lawyers should be free to represent whomever they’d like without fear of government reprisal.
In the case of Perkins Coie, the White House cited its representation of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 presidential race. Trump has also railed against one of the firm’s former lawyers, Marc Elias, who engaged the services of an opposition research firm that in turn hired a former British spy who produced files of research examining potential ties between Trump and Russia. Elias left the firm 2021.
In her opinion, Howell wrote that Perkins Coie was targeted because the firm “expressed support for employment policies the President does not like, represented clients the President does not like, represented clients seeking litigation results the President does not like, and represented clients challenging some of the President’s actions, which he also does not like.”
“That,” she wrote, “is unconstitutional retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple.”
The decision was not surprising given that Howell had earlier temporarily blocked multiple provisions of the order and had expressed deep misgivings about the edict at a more recent hearing, when she grilled a Justice Department lawyer who was tasked with justifying it. Her ruling Friday permanently bars enforcement of the executive order. She also directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to provide copies of her opinion to all government departments and agencies that had previously received the executive order.
The other law firms that have challenged orders against them —WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey — have succeeded in at least temporarily blocking the orders. ‘
But other major firms have sought to avert orders by preemptively reaching settlements that require them, among other things, to collectively dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal services in support of causes the Trump administration says it supports.
Wisconsin
Prosecutor clears Ohio police of wrongdoing in fatal shooting
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin prosecutor cleared police officers from Ohio of any criminal liability Monday in a fatal shooting last summer near the Republican National Convention.
Officers from Columbus, Ohio, were among thousands of officers from multiple jurisdictions providing extra security for the July convention in Milwaukee.
According to a letter Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern sent Columbus Division of Police Chief Elane Bryant on Monday, a group of 14 Columbus officers had gathered in a park near the convention arena for a briefing on July 16 when they saw 43-year-old Samuel Sharpe approaching another man with a knife in each hand. The officers opened fire after Sharpe refused to drop his knives and lunged at the man.
The shooting was not connected to the convention, but people in the neighborhoods around the park questioned how out-of-state police could justify killing a Wisconsin resident.
Lovern wrote in the letter that Wisconsin law allows someone to use deadly force to protect someone else if that person believes it’s necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. The five officers who fired on Sharpe told investigators they believed Sharpe meant to seriously injure or kill the other man, Lovern wrote.
Officers could be heard on body camera footage before the shooting identifying themselves as police and ordering Sharpe to drop his knives, but Sharpe ignored them and continued toward the man, Lovern said.
A voicemail left with the Columbus Division of Police’s public information office seeking comment on Lovern’s decision wasn’t immediately returned.
Florida
Olympian track medalist charged with battery on female athlete
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — An Olympic track medalist is charged in Florida with punching a woman, a hurdler who also competed in the Olympics.
A Broward County Sheriff’s Office arrest report says that Fred Kerley, 29, allegedly hit Alaysha Johnson with a closed fist at a hotel near Fort Lauderdale on Thursday. Kerley is charged with misdemeanor battery in the incident that left Johnson with a bloody nose.
Kerley won a silver medal in the 100-meter race at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and a bronze medal in the same event at the Paris Olympic Games in 2024, where Johnson also competed. The arrest report says they previously had a relationship and got into a heated argument at the Florida hotel where they were staying before a track meet in the area.
Kerley’s attorney, Richard Cooper, said in an email Saturday that he has “a target on his back” that leads to unfounded allegations by “fierce and sometimes jealous competitors.”
“We ask the public not to rush to judgment as the exculpatory facts eventually come to light,” Cooper said. “Fred looks forward to getting back to competing and away from distractions as his legal team works to resolve these accusations.”
It’s not Kerley’s first brush with the law. This comes just a few months after he was arrested for allegedly punching a Miami Beach police officer on Jan 2., an incident in which police used a Taser on him. He was also charged in May with domestic battery against his wife, according to court records.
His lawyers say he is innocent of those charges as well.
New Jersey
Second person charged with arson in Pine Barrens fire
A second person has been charged with arson in the wildfire in New Jersey's Pine Barrens that has grown into the state's second-largest fire in nearly two decades.
Prosecutors said Friday that a 17-year-old was arrested and charged with arson, aggravated arson and hindering apprehension. His name was not released because he is a juvenile.
The fire that has been burning for nearly two weeks is 80% contained, according to the state Forest Fire Service. The blaze in southern New Jersey's Ocean County has spread across 24 square miles (62 square kilometers). No injuries have been reported.
A 19-year-old man from Waretown was charged with arson a week ago. Prosecutors say Joseph Kling set wood pallets on fire and left the area. On Friday, prosecutors said Kling and a few other people took the pallets from a recycling center, drove to a heavily wooded area and used gasoline to start the fire.
Kling's attorney said at a detention hearing Friday that Kling did not intend to set the wildfire or destroy any property.
The Pine Barrens sit between Philadelphia and the Atlantic coast, a region with quick-draining sandy soil and trees with still-developing leaves where winds can kick up, drying out the forest floor.
Ex-Abercrombie & Fitch CEO is ruled unfit for trial and ordered hospitalized
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge ruled Friday that the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch is not competent to stand trial on sex trafficking charges and ordered him hospitalized to see if his mental condition improves.
Michael Jeffries’ lawyers sought the ruling last month, writing in a letter filed in a New York federal court that the 80-year-old requires around-the-clock care because he has Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia and the “residual effects of a traumatic brain injury.”
The defense, as well as prosecutors, requested that Jeffries be placed in federal Bureau of Prisons custody so he can be hospitalized and receive treatment that might allow his criminal case to proceed.
“The court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant is presently suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering him mentally incompetent to the extent that he is unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him or to assist properly in his defense,” Judge Nusrat Choudhury wrote in her decision.
She directed the attorney general’s office to place Jeffries in a hospital for up to four months.
Jeffries has been free on $10 million bond since pleading not guilty in October to federal charges of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution.
Prosecutors say he, his romantic partner and a third man used the promise of modeling jobs to lure men to drug-fueled sex parties in New York City, the Hamptons and other locations.
The charges announced in October echo sexual misconduct accusations made in a civil case and the media in recent years.
In their letter, Jeffries’ lawyers said at least four medical professionals concluded that their client’s cognitive issues are “progressive and incurable” and that he will not “regain his competency and cannot be restored to competency in the future.”
Jeffries left Abercrombie in 2014 after more than two decades at the helm. His partner, Matthew Smith, has also pleaded not guilty and remains out on bond, as has their co-defendant, James Jacobson.
Washington
Judge blocks Trump executive order targeting elite law firm
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday permanently blocked a White House executive order targeting an elite law firm, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against the legal profession.
U.S. District Beryl Howell said the executive order against the firm of Perkins Coie amounted to “unconstitutional retaliation” as she ordered that it be nullified and that the Trump administration halt any enforcement of it.
“No American President,” Howell wrote in her 102-page order, “has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’”
The ruling was most definitive rejection to date of Trump’s spate of similarly worded executive orders against some of the country’s most elite law firms, part of a broader effort by the president to reshape American civil society by targeting perceived adversaries in hopes of extracting concessions from them and bending them to his will. Several of the firms singled out for sanction have either done legal work that Trump has opposed, or currently have or previously had associations with prosecutors who at one point investigated the president.
The edicts have ordered that the security clearances of attorneys at the targeted firms be suspended, that federal contracts be terminated and that their employees be barred from federal buildings. The punished law firms have called the executive orders an affront to the legal system and at odds with the foundational principle that lawyers should be free to represent whomever they’d like without fear of government reprisal.
In the case of Perkins Coie, the White House cited its representation of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 presidential race. Trump has also railed against one of the firm’s former lawyers, Marc Elias, who engaged the services of an opposition research firm that in turn hired a former British spy who produced files of research examining potential ties between Trump and Russia. Elias left the firm 2021.
In her opinion, Howell wrote that Perkins Coie was targeted because the firm “expressed support for employment policies the President does not like, represented clients the President does not like, represented clients seeking litigation results the President does not like, and represented clients challenging some of the President’s actions, which he also does not like.”
“That,” she wrote, “is unconstitutional retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple.”
The decision was not surprising given that Howell had earlier temporarily blocked multiple provisions of the order and had expressed deep misgivings about the edict at a more recent hearing, when she grilled a Justice Department lawyer who was tasked with justifying it. Her ruling Friday permanently bars enforcement of the executive order. She also directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to provide copies of her opinion to all government departments and agencies that had previously received the executive order.
The other law firms that have challenged orders against them —WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey — have succeeded in at least temporarily blocking the orders. ‘
But other major firms have sought to avert orders by preemptively reaching settlements that require them, among other things, to collectively dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal services in support of causes the Trump administration says it supports.
Wisconsin
Prosecutor clears Ohio police of wrongdoing in fatal shooting
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin prosecutor cleared police officers from Ohio of any criminal liability Monday in a fatal shooting last summer near the Republican National Convention.
Officers from Columbus, Ohio, were among thousands of officers from multiple jurisdictions providing extra security for the July convention in Milwaukee.
According to a letter Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern sent Columbus Division of Police Chief Elane Bryant on Monday, a group of 14 Columbus officers had gathered in a park near the convention arena for a briefing on July 16 when they saw 43-year-old Samuel Sharpe approaching another man with a knife in each hand. The officers opened fire after Sharpe refused to drop his knives and lunged at the man.
The shooting was not connected to the convention, but people in the neighborhoods around the park questioned how out-of-state police could justify killing a Wisconsin resident.
Lovern wrote in the letter that Wisconsin law allows someone to use deadly force to protect someone else if that person believes it’s necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. The five officers who fired on Sharpe told investigators they believed Sharpe meant to seriously injure or kill the other man, Lovern wrote.
Officers could be heard on body camera footage before the shooting identifying themselves as police and ordering Sharpe to drop his knives, but Sharpe ignored them and continued toward the man, Lovern said.
A voicemail left with the Columbus Division of Police’s public information office seeking comment on Lovern’s decision wasn’t immediately returned.
Florida
Olympian track medalist charged with battery on female athlete
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — An Olympic track medalist is charged in Florida with punching a woman, a hurdler who also competed in the Olympics.
A Broward County Sheriff’s Office arrest report says that Fred Kerley, 29, allegedly hit Alaysha Johnson with a closed fist at a hotel near Fort Lauderdale on Thursday. Kerley is charged with misdemeanor battery in the incident that left Johnson with a bloody nose.
Kerley won a silver medal in the 100-meter race at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and a bronze medal in the same event at the Paris Olympic Games in 2024, where Johnson also competed. The arrest report says they previously had a relationship and got into a heated argument at the Florida hotel where they were staying before a track meet in the area.
Kerley’s attorney, Richard Cooper, said in an email Saturday that he has “a target on his back” that leads to unfounded allegations by “fierce and sometimes jealous competitors.”
“We ask the public not to rush to judgment as the exculpatory facts eventually come to light,” Cooper said. “Fred looks forward to getting back to competing and away from distractions as his legal team works to resolve these accusations.”
It’s not Kerley’s first brush with the law. This comes just a few months after he was arrested for allegedly punching a Miami Beach police officer on Jan 2., an incident in which police used a Taser on him. He was also charged in May with domestic battery against his wife, according to court records.
His lawyers say he is innocent of those charges as well.
New Jersey
Second person charged with arson in Pine Barrens fire
A second person has been charged with arson in the wildfire in New Jersey's Pine Barrens that has grown into the state's second-largest fire in nearly two decades.
Prosecutors said Friday that a 17-year-old was arrested and charged with arson, aggravated arson and hindering apprehension. His name was not released because he is a juvenile.
The fire that has been burning for nearly two weeks is 80% contained, according to the state Forest Fire Service. The blaze in southern New Jersey's Ocean County has spread across 24 square miles (62 square kilometers). No injuries have been reported.
A 19-year-old man from Waretown was charged with arson a week ago. Prosecutors say Joseph Kling set wood pallets on fire and left the area. On Friday, prosecutors said Kling and a few other people took the pallets from a recycling center, drove to a heavily wooded area and used gasoline to start the fire.
Kling's attorney said at a detention hearing Friday that Kling did not intend to set the wildfire or destroy any property.
The Pine Barrens sit between Philadelphia and the Atlantic coast, a region with quick-draining sandy soil and trees with still-developing leaves where winds can kick up, drying out the forest floor.
