Showing results by author "Matthew Russell Lee" in All Categories

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 ...

In outlaw music there is always the question of authenticity. Daniel Hernandez became Tekashi 6ix9ine and hooked up with the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods to shoot a video. Then he became their cash cow, and some of them became his muscle, shoot-out in a Barclay's Center hallway. They turned on Tekashi and he became a cooperator against them, returning to SDNY on violations of supervised release then back out on the concert tour. For drill rapper Kay Flock it was different. He really was from Sev Side, 187th Street. He wasn't an appendage to his group: he was central to it. When with seven he ...

When Donald Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche gave his closing argument he declared Michael Cohen the GLOAT: the Greatest Liar of All Time. He said the prosecution had manipulated evidence, noting that Cohen's texts to Trump's bodyguard Keith Schiller about the 14-year-old crank caller had not been in the list the prosecutors showed the jury. He questioned what Cohen called his recording of Trump, and how it ended, Blanche also told the jurors that a guilty verdict could put Trump in prison. Immediately after the jurors left for lunch, the prosecutor demanded a curative instruction. After Blanche...

This is a story of the collections cases against former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where he was once US Attorney. It all began in Brooklyn, with Mafia ties alleged, a motivation. Manhattan College in The Bronx to 1965, NYU Law then a clerkship doe Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon in, where else, SDNY. This Court would keep reappearing, with Giuliani moving from one side of the "v." to the other (he also got sued a lot as NYC Mayor). Rudy rose to acclaim taking on a corrupt politician, Rep. Bertram Podell. With the election of ...

This is the story of the trial in People of the State of New York versus Daniel Penny, to the closings. Onto a subway car like this one he got on, a muffin in his jacket pocket wrapped in plastic, a spleen speckled, it would turn out, by sickle cell disease. But that is not what killed him, Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran would say. Was it an improper blood choke, or the terror he inspired, in a lady from Park Slope with her baby, a Nike brand ambassador on the way to Rucker Park? Even the Bronx school girls said they were frightened, even if one did later drop the dime on the white...

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 night before the second Carroll - Trump trial it was colder in Iowa than in New York. Still, the first snow in 700 days drifted down on Worth Street in front of the courthouse, where the NYPD barricades had already been set up. The circus was about to begin. And Kurt Wheelock began to get ready. Well before the 9:30 am kickoff Trump was at the defense table, whispering with Alina Habba all dressed in white. There was a third lawyer, not in the docket, and Judge Kaplan would soon shut him down. But for now it was a stand-off: E. Jean Carroll with Robbie Kaplan at the front table, E. Jean...

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 ...

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/...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

Puffery to promote a business is longstanding tradition. But the current era of technology brings a new spin to it: Elizabeth Holmes and her too magical blood testing machine, Trevor Milton and his ostensibly hydrogen truck being pushed down hill, Do Kwon and his not-so-stable coin crashing and burning. Retail victims worldwide continue to write in to the court, and to Inner City Press which reports on it. Charlie Javice though, as indicted, had a single victim: JPMorgan Chase, all the way to the top, Jamie Dimon. He ordered that the deal be done, before the email addressed had even been ...

In the Trump Trial, Michael Cohen's second day of cross examination heated up just before lunchtime. Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche, who had been looping around for some time, zeroed in on fourteen minutes on October 4, 2016. It was just past 8 pm on that day that Cohen testified he had texted and then called Trump's body guard Keith Schiller, to tell Trump that the Stormy Daniels matter had been taken care of. The call, the record of which was put into evidence by the prosecutors, was one minute and thirty-six second long. Blanche turned the clock back a quarter of an hour. He got Cohen to ...

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...

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. ...

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, ...

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 ...

Kurt Wheelock is a journalist who was thrown out of the United Nations. Now reporting from the courthouse in Lower Manhattan, he stumbles on the sealed case of a briber whom the Chinese government wants back, if necessary in exchange for any American in its grasp. But Marvin Lo goes for a stroll from the Trump Tower condo where he is under pre-trial release. The man he visits ends up under the UN. Lawyer Matthew Randall Long, from an office above the Ali Baba fruit stand in Chatham Square, files motions to unseal, and to pierce diplomatic immunity. DOA media launches a podcast, manipulated ...