News of the World

[kyonides]

Mark McCloskey Won’t Have Guns or Money Returned,
Despite Pardon, Missouri Judge Rules

St. Louis lawyer Mark McCloskey will not have his guns or the fines he paid returned to him even though he received a governor’s pardon in 2021, a Missouri judge has ruled.

McCloskey and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, both personal injury lawyers, pleaded guilty in June 2021 to misdemeanor charges for assault and harassment, respectively, over an incident in 2020 where they wielded guns as self-defense measures at their property while watching Black Lives Matter protesters walk through their private, gated neighborhood.

They were required to pay maximum fines totaling $2,750. As part of the plea agreement, the two also surrendered the guns they wielded—a Colt AR-15 rifle and a Bryco pistol.

After their convictions, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, on July 30, 2021, pardoned the couple and shortly following the move, McCloskey filed a lawsuit in St. Louis City Circuit Court seeking to have the guns returned and the fines paid back to him and his wife.

Circuit Judge Joan Moriarty rejected the request on Dec. 28, saying that the governor’s pardon doesn’t have any impact on the plea agreement the couple had agreed to.

North Carolina DOJ Not Charging Mark Meadows

The state DOJ’s investigation was prompted by a report in the New Yorker that alleged Meadows potentially committed voter fraud by listing a Scaly Mountain, North Carolina address on his registration form as his residence as of Sept. 20, 2020—three weeks before voter registration cut off.

The report further raised questions about whether Meadows, who worked in the White House during the Trump administration, and his wife actually resided at the residence or used it as a way to vote in the North Carolina elections.

Ultimately, the investigation found there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Meadows and his wife, Debra Meadows, on voter fraud charges.

The state DOJ found that Meadows was engaged in public service in Washington, D.C., and therefore qualified for a residency exception and that his wife signed a year-long lease for the Scaly Mountain residence provided by their landlord.

Further, Debra Meadows was in and around Scaly Mountain in October 2020, according to cell phone records.

I'm worried about how easily they got those  phone records.

Trump’s Tax Returns Contain a Major Revelation

Former President Donald Trump and his wife Melania reported negative income in four of the six years covered by the couple’s joint tax returns, which were released on Friday by the Democrat-controlled House Ways and Means Committee.
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Key information found in the tax returns includes the fact that the Trumps reported negative income in four of the six years covered by the documentation and paid around $1.8 million in taxes.

The release of the documents prompted a sharp rebuke from Trump, who warned that the move sets a dangerous precedent.
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When the Democrat-led panel earlier released preliminary information about the Trumps’ tax returns, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, opposed the move and argued that the information contained in such disclosures could be spun by political foes.
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“The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises,” the former president added.

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally, took to Twitter to say he expects the tax returns to show that the former president made a lot of money but, thanks to loopholes in the tax laws, didn’t pay much in the way of taxes.

Bahamas Regulators Hold $3.5 Billion Worth of FTX Customer Assets

Regulators in the Bahamas are holding on to $3.5 billion worth of FTX assets that it claims are intended to be transferred to those who were monetarily affected by the crypto-fallout as customers of the company have filed a lawsuit to get their dues prioritized.

After crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy in November, around $372 million worth of tokens were stolen from the company by an unknown actor. Based on the information regarding the cyberattack provided by former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the Securities Commission of The Bahamas determined that there was a “significant risk of imminent dissipation” of digital assets owned or under the control of FTX.

The commission thus requested, and subsequently obtained, a court order to safeguard these assets by transferring them to secure digital wallets that are under its exclusive control, according to a press release on Dec. 29.
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The transferred digital assets will be held under the control of the commission on a temporary basis until such time that the Supreme Court asks the commission to hand them over to creditors and customers.

Alternatively, the commission might also transfer assets to the joint provisional liquidators (JPL) to be administered under the rules related to insolvency of the FTX estate.