Man accused of murder after fight with deputy in Corona resulted in shooting death of woman

• June 12, 2024

The reported fight for a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy’s gun in Corona on Tuesday resulted in a San Diego County resident being arrested on suspicion of murder and mayhem after the deputy shot to death a woman involved in the struggle and the deputy was hospitalized, the Sheriff’s Department said.

Eric Nourani, 33, was also booked into Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside on suspicion of attempted murder of a peace officer. He was being held in lieu of $1 million bail, jail records show.

The District Attorney’s Office will ultimately decide whether to attempt to hold Nourani responsible for the woman’s death. No charges had been announced as of Wednesday afternoon, June 12.

A person of the same name and age as Nourani has three criminal cases listed in San Diego County, but details on those were not available Tuesday. The most recent was in 2014. Nourani has no documented criminal record in Riverside or San Bernardino counties.

The deputy was the victim of the mayhem accusation, said Lt. Deirdre Vickers, a sheriff’s spokeswoman. The state Penal Code describes mayhem as cutting off, disabling or rendering a limb useless, or cutting a tongue or putting out an eye or slitting a nose or lip.

Vickers declined to elaborate on the deputy’s injuries or say whether they were career-threatening, but he was released from the hospital where he was treated after several hours.

The confrontation happened just after 1 a.m. when a deputy tried to talk to several people who were in the 1000 block of West 6th Street. He chased them when they ran. The man lunged at the deputy as the deputy turned a corner, and they fought, the department said. The woman was shot when she joined the fight for the gun, the department said.

Bystanders eventually helped the deputy subdue the man.

The Coroner’s Office had not released the woman’s name as of Wednesday afternoon.

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​ Orange County Register 

Alexander: Jerry West’s indelible impact on Southern California

• June 12, 2024

Jerry West taught multiple generations of Southern Californians various lessons through the years.

For children of the ’60s, his and the Lakers’ struggles through the decade against the Boston Celtics reminded us that life wasn’t fair, and valiant effort wasn’t necessarily its own reward. What else could you divine from someone who was named MVP twice of postseasons in which his team lost (the 1960 NCAA Tournament and the 1969 NBA Finals)?

For those who came of age in the ’80s, and then the first decade of this century, watching the teams built by West the executive and the championship celebrations that followed reminded us how much fun winning could be, and it probably spoiled us more than a little bit.

West, who died early Wednesday morning at the age of 86, was equal parts superstar and tragic figure as a player. Thanks to the late Chick Hearn’s words-eye view, we knew him as “Mr. Clutch,” the guy in whose hands you wanted the ball at the end of a close game. (He hated that nickname, by the way). He became The Logo, the model for the NBA’s insignia.

He soldiered on despite frequent injuries, including nine broken noses. That year he won MVP of the NBA Finals despite losing? He injured his hamstring and had to be carried off the floor in the waning moments of Game 5 at the Forum. Then he played in Games 6 and 7, with the hamstring heavily taped and after cross-country flights in each case. After what turned out to be a sixth loss to Bill Russell and the Celtics in that decade, even Boston players felt sorry for him.

And West also showed us that the rewards eventually come if you persevere. West finally won a championship as a player in 1972, the Lakers’ first title in Los Angeles, and the irony is that the player who is fifth in career playoff scoring (29.1 points a game) and No. 1 in all-time Finals points (1,679 to LeBron James’ 1,562) had his worst Finals in that triumphant moment.

Then, after retiring, he came back as the team’s coach for three seasons in the late ’70s, only to realize he hated the job – and he really wasn’t bad at it, with a 145-101 record, but said during a 1995 interview, “I was in the process of a lot of terrible personal things in my life, and emotionally I couldn’t do it. I was too angry, too immature. It wasn’t something that really excited me. … I didn’t have any fun with it, and I didn’t do the right thing for our players.”

But West then had a magnificent third act as an executive and talent evaluator.

He was a scout and consultant for the first two titles of the Showtime era, succeeded Bill Sharman as the Lakers’ general manager in 1982 and augmented the Magic Johnson/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar roster by adding James Worthy, Michael Cooper and A.C. Green and trading for Byron Scott. (And don’t forget that West resisted, vehemently and to the point of risking his job, a proposal from owner Jerry Buss to trade Worthy to Dallas for Mark Aguirre and Roy Tarpley in 1986.)

He walked away from the Lakers in August of 2000, one year into the Phil Jackson era and four years after bringing Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant to L.A. The pursuit of O’Neal as a free agent in the summer of 1996 forced West to check into the hospital from exhaustion when it was over.

“Emotionally, every day we were on edge,” he told us on the first day of training camp in Hawaii in 1996, watching O’Neal go through his first Lakers workout. “It’s almost like you’re betting your life that you’re going to be able to get something done.”

Bottom line? West helped assemble two of the NBA’s great dynasties, and if you want to find the roots of Laker Exceptionalism, there they are.

Maybe West’s post-playing career was God’s version of a makeup call. He earned nine championship rings overall: Seven with the Lakers (’72 as a player, ’80 and ’82 as a scout/executive, ’85, ’87, 88 and 2000 as general manager), and two more in 2015 and ’17 as a consultant with the Golden State Warriors, before he left that organization to join the Clippers as a consultant.

Consider that West, already inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1979, was voted in as a contributor in April and will be honored posthumously for a record third time. Additionally, he was an Olympic gold medal winner, in 1960 in Rome, for which he and the team were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2010.

He was a 14-time All-Star and a 12-time All-NBA selection. As noted, he’s No. 1 in NBA Finals points, including the memorable 63-foot heave at the end of Game 3 of the 1970 Finals against the Knicks to tie a game that the Lakers, naturally, lost in overtime.

“He was the Michael Jordan of our day,” said the late Rod Hundley, a former teammate at West Virginia and with the Lakers and later the Utah Jazz play-by-play announcer.

Amazingly, West won only two NBA Executive of the Year awards, in 1995 with the Lakers and 2004 with the Memphis Grizzlies after leaving the Lakers. And before that ’95 vote, then-Utah Jazz executive Scott Layden paid him the ultimate compliment:

“I don’t think we should insult Jerry West by giving him executive of the year. I think we should name the award after him.”

Maybe the league will do so now.

There was this about Jerry West, as well: Few superstars – indeed, few accomplished people in any profession – were as self-effacing. Maybe it was an outgrowth of his turbulent home life while growing up, and it’s probably no accident that the subtitle of his autobiography was “My Charmed, Tormented Life,” but he often seemed almost embarrassed by praise and honors.

He talked in a 1995 interview of being a perfectionist – “a horrible burden because you’re not really satisfied with anything” – and about preferring not to dwell on the past or reminisce about his accomplishments or memories. During that interview, in his office in The Forum, he explained the plaques and pictures and framed jersey on the walls this way:

“When someone walks into your office, they expect you to have some basketball memorabilia up. If you went into my house you’d never know I ever played basketball.”

Years later, during a speech in 2017, he elaborated.

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“No matter what people write, no matter what people say, no one knows what goes on inside you. Honestly, it’s sometimes really embarrassing for me. People make a fuss over me over things I’ve been involved in. I didn’t choose to do what I did in my life. It chose me. I had a skill – I didn’t know I had a skill – and I had a mind. I had a heart.

“There’s a quote from Carl Sandberg that somebody sent me years ago … Nothing happens unless a person dreams. I was a dreamer. Having an opportunity to talk about my life, hopefully it’ll inspire someone, somewhere along the way.”

That, too, is a lesson.

[email protected]

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers trade for infield depth, adding Cavan Biggio from the Blue Jays

• June 12, 2024

LOS ANGELES – The Dodgers added more infield depth, acquiring veteran utility man Cavan Biggio from the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday for minor-league right-hander Braydon Fisher.

The Dodgers are expected to option outfielder Miguel Vargas to Triple-A Oklahoma City to make room on the active roster.

Biggio, 29, has six seasons of experience with the Blue Jays, batting .227 with 48 home runs and 176 RBIs in 490 career games. He was batting just .200 with two home runs and nine RBIs in 44 games this season before he was designated for assignment Friday.

The son of Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, who played 20 seasons for the Houston Astros, has played every position but pitcher and catcher. The left-handed hitter could split time at third base with Kiké Hernandez until Max Muncy returns from an oblique injury.

On Tuesday, manager Dave Roberts suggested that Muncy’s recovery will still take some time. The veteran third baseman has not played since May 15. Hernandez has played the bulk of the time at third base, but was batting .190 in 19 games since Muncy went on the IL.

“He’s running, throwing, catching the baseball, but as far as swinging, he’s not doing that,” Roberts said of Muncy. “I don’t know when we’re gonna pick that up. No updated timeline. If you’re not swinging the bat, I just don’t know what that progression looks like.”

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Biggio, a Houston native and Notre Dame product, has 80 games of experience at third base (68 starts) and played four games (two starts) at the position this season.

Fisher, 23, was a fourth-round draft pick in 2018 out of Clear Falls High School in League City, Texas. He was 2-1 with a 5.68 ERA this season in 15 combined relief appearances between Double-A Tulsa and Oklahoma City. He has a 5.51 ERA across 134 career minor league appearances (12 starts).

Vargas, 24, was 5-for-20 (.250) with one home run and four RBIs across eight games with the Dodgers this season.

In 107 major league games over the past three seasons, Vargas is a career .195 hitter with nine home runs and 44 RBIs. By contrast, in 99 games at Triple-A over the past two seasons, Vargas was batting .291 with 18 home runs and 81 RBIs.

​ Orange County Register 

For Sandy Hook shooting survivors, high school graduation is a ‘bittersweet’ milestone

• June 12, 2024

NEWTOWN, Conn. — The students who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 live with their trauma — and without their friends — every day.

Sitting around a table at the Edmund Town Hall in Newtown on their last Friday as high school students, five seniors who survived the shooting were making plans to leave Sandy Hook soon, heading off to college campuses and careers. Many of their future plans are driven by the advocacy work that has helped them heal.

The weight of their loss is heavy this week as they prepare to accept their diplomas without 20 of their friends. And the fear that they carry with them is palpable with every bang of a door closing and every shuffle of a footstep in the hall behind them.

Eleven-and-a-half years after they ran for their lives through the neighborhood near their school and huddled beside backpacks in their cubbies, the fear still sneaks up on them in the form of a quickened heart rate and a held breath.

Sandy Hook survivors honor fallen classmates with vow to keep advocating for gun violence prevention

Their classroom daydreams drift to escape routes and hiding places. Where is the closest window? Would they fit under that desk? They think about it when their back is to a door. When they’re in a crowd at a concert. Would they fight? Run? Help their friends?

Those were decisions they never should have had to make, but did, when a gunman stormed their school and massacred their classmates and teachers on Dec. 14, 2012.

As they prepare to graduate from Newtown High School on Wednesday, they’re vowing to continue to fight for gun violence prevention until no other child has to make those same decisions.

“Graduation is a really big milestone in our lives. And I think walking across that stage will be a really bittersweet moment.” says Junior Newtown Action Alliance’s Grace Fischer, 18. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

‘Bittersweet’ memories

Lilly Wasilnak, Ella Seaver, Emma Ehrens, Matt Holden and Grace Fischer are members of the Junior Newtown Action Alliance, a grassroots gun violence prevention organization started in Newtown in the wake of the shooting.

The five teens drifted into town hall in staggered waves on Friday after returning from Washington D.C. On Thursday, a group of six survivors and their parents walked into the White House and sat down with Vice President Kamala Harris, telling her what they saw, heard and felt as their classmates were killed around them in the first grade.

They hope their stories will reach the Oval Office and, in turn, help influence the national policy changes they’ve been hoping for since they were 6 and 7 years old.

When contemplating how they felt meeting Harris and how they have felt throughout their senior year as they posed for prom pictures, chose their dorm rooms and picked up their caps and gowns, the word that came to mind for this group of five survivors was the same: “Bittersweet.”

“Graduation is a really big milestone in our lives,” said Fischer. “And I think walking across that stage will be a really bittersweet moment.”

“Everything is bittersweet,” said Seaver. “You smile and cry on the same things.”

In between all the things that trigger flashbacks to the worst moments of their lives, they also get glimmers of the lives their friends did get to live.

They remember pretending to be parents in the kindergarten school kitchen and tracing out drawings of barn animals on the classroom rug.

Emma Ehrens, 17, says she grasps on to what she can remember back in 2012, like how she envied her friend’s perfect brunette curls or how her teacher taught her to tie her shoes. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

“Do you remember chasing the boys around the playground?” Fischer asked, laughing as the group often does when they talk about fond memories of their friends.

They talk about birthday parties and playdates, painting cardboard houses and pushing their friends in plastic toy cars. They share memories of playground swings and a knocked out baby tooth, making Papier-mâché fans and playing in a friends’ pool.

They remember making a childhood vow to “marry that girl someday” and not knowing if it would have come true. And wishing a happy birthday to a little girl whose birthday party, planned for the next day, would never happen.

For Fischer, it’s hard to think about childhood and think of anything but the shooting. She wishes she could just focus on moments when she made friends, ate ice cream cones.

Others wish they had memories of games they played to share with their own kids someday. But the tragedy, they said, has taken too great a toll on their lives.

As the seniors prepare to leave Sandy Hook, they try to keep the happy memories of their classmates close. Even as they fade with time and trauma.

Sandy Hook survivors such as Matt Holden, 17, try to keep the memories of their fallen classmates close. “Sometimes (people) kind of forget that they were people too, they weren’t just victims. They were people we knew, we loved.” (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

Ehrens, now 17, said one of the young girls who was killed was one of her best friends in their first years of school.

“I can’t remember what she sounds like and it kills me,” she said. She grasps on to what she can remember, how her teacher taught her to tie her shoes and blow her bubble gum and how she envied her friend’s perfect brunette curls.

“It was so curly, it was so cute. I don’t want to forget that, but there’s no part of her left here besides her memory,” she said.

So they keep mementos in their bedrooms, many of which may soon be packed up and brought to dorm rooms across the country: A Lightning McQueen toy, a Hello Kitty necklace, a teddy bear, a framed photo of two kindergartners coloring.

“You’re trying to remember the people and these memories,” said Seaver. “You’re trying everything to hold onto this thread of them that sometimes feels like it’s slipping away.”

But the survivors will not let the kids and teachers they left behind in their school be forgotten.

“To the rest of the world it seems like a list of names, but to us they were so much more than that,” said Wasilnak. “They were these bright, bubbly fun people who shaped our childhoods. And even though we didn’t get to know them for a long time they have had such an influence on all of us.”

“Sometimes (people) kind of forget that they were people too, they weren’t just victims,” added Holden. “They were people we knew, we loved. So remember them for who they were, not just who they are now that they’re not with us.”

“There is a community that has been built,” said Seaver. “There’s always a shoulder that you can go cry on, laugh with, smile and just break down with if you need to, because this isn’t something that goes away within the first year of this happening. We’re here, 11, 12 years later, still talking about it.”

“To the rest of the world it seems like a list of names, but to us they were so much more than that,” says Lilly Wasilnak, as she gets ready to graduate from Newtown High School without 20 of their classmates. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

Journey to advocacy

Just as they sat with Harris and shared their stories, they went around the same circle when they first joined the Jr. Newtown Action Alliance, recounting what they could and could not remember.

“When all of us kind of started this journey we all sat down and shared our stories with each other,” said Seaver. “And it’s kind of like a puzzle piece. Because so many of us remember different things, things that we’ve purposely tried to erase from our memory to save ourselves. (It) hurts to remember, but it also really reminds you that you’re not alone, unfortunately so.”

Talking about their memories and trauma ahead of graduation, they said, helped them understand how their entire lives have been shaped by what happened in 2012.

“We all got put in this club that we don’t want to be in, but we’re kind of forced to be in,” said Wasilnak.

They meet with other survivors across the country to inspire hope, to learn how they are coping. They call their lawmakers and lobby against those who oppose assault weapon bans.

“There is a community that has been built,” said Ella Seaver, 18. “There’s always a shoulder that you can go cry on, laugh with, smile and just break down with if you need to, because this isn’t something that goes away.” (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

These students, and many like them, have marched on Washington D.C., met face-to-face with members of Congress, lobbied on Capital Hill and now gone into the White House, urging the adults who are meant to protect them to please do so.

They want to get ghost guns off the streets, to prevent DIY guns from being manufactured. They want safe storage laws and background checks and safer schools.

The long lasting ripple effect of mass shootings is something the Sandy Hook survivors hope they can help other Americans understand across the map, across the political aisle and in positions of power.

Fischer said they tell their stories to inspire change but also “to remember that our story wasn’t just the time that we spent in that school. It is the 11 years after when our stories continued, the therapy and the funerals were had to go through. It didn’t end that day.”

“It doesn’t just affect the students or teachers who were in the building, it’s the parents who had to go pick up their kids from the fire station and see all the chaos and see the parents of the children that were lost,” added Seaver. “It’s the siblings that were old enough to understand what happened. It’s the first responders who had to be there and be strong enough to deal with it but ultimately are also falling apart on the inside.”

All of those people are the reasons they continue to work toward change.

“We have a purpose. We don’t want more kids to have to go through what we did or more kids to have to lose their lives to guns,” said Wasilnak.

They want to prevent other towns from facing the same fate and they don’t want survivors who aren’t ready to speak out to endure any further pain.

“As powerful as it is to share your voice, it’s painful. Simply put,” said Seaver.

“We have to be the voices for those who aren’t ready yet,” said Wasilnak.

So they tell their stories again and again and again because if they don’t, who will?

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Most of the survivors have been through years of therapy and are still not at the finish line. They may be done with their classwork in Newtown schools, but they’ll never be done working through what they experienced there.

“We’ve all overcome so much to get here and there’s still so much to overcome,” said Seaver. “Going into the real world and going into college and even beyond that. It seems like it’s one specific day that affected us, but it’s so much more than that.”

They want people to know that they wish they weren’t doing this work, but they’re doing it to save lives.

“These people were the kids that we played at the playground with every single day. Those happy memories of them, I think, will always be in our minds,” said Fischer. “We don’t want to think of them as just victims, they were our friends.”

As they accept their diplomas Wednesday, the survivors hope that they receive “more than thoughts and prayers” — that peers, future professors, college roommates and all the new people they meet will honor their first-grade classmates with action, advocacy and their votes.

​ Orange County Register 

Manhattan DA Bragg, prosecutor from Trump hush money trial to testify before Congress

• June 12, 2024

Molly Crane-Newman | New York Daily News

NEW YORK — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and a member of the prosecution team that secured Donald Trump’s conviction for covering up a conspiracy to hide information from voters on Tuesday agreed to testify about the case before Congress next month.

“It undermines the rule of law to spread dangerous misinformation, baseless claims, and conspiracy theories following the jury’s return of a full-count felony conviction in People v. Trump,” a spokesperson for Bragg said in a statement to the New York Daily News.

“Nonetheless, we respect our government institutions and plan to appear voluntarily before the subcommittee after sentencing.”

Bragg and Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo, who delivered the prosecution’s opening statement at the hush money trial, will voluntarily submit to questions from the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee on July 12, a day after Trump’s sentencing. Both have been the subject of relentless attacks from the right alleging their involvement in a Democrat-led plot to prevent the former president from regaining power.

A jury found Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30 following a seven-week trial in Manhattan Supreme Court, making him the first U.S president ever to be convicted of a crime. Trump has vowed to appeal and could face prison time when he returns to court. He is also accused of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election and hoarding and mishandling sensitive government documents in three other cases, in which he’s pleaded not guilty.

The Manhattan charges stemmed from Trump’s reimbursement to Michael Cohen for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels 11 days out from the 2016 election within a scheme to disguise sordid allegations about his past from the electorate that also included payoffs to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman.

In the latest effort of many by Trump-backing Republicans to bring into disrepute criminal accusations against their leading contender for president, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan requested Bragg and Colangelo testify before the subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which he chairs, the day after Trump’s conviction in May.

Trump’s allies have alleged Colangelo and Bragg’s crossover at the New York attorney general’s office and Colangelo’s former position at the Department of Justice is evidence of a conspiracy to take him down orchestrated by the White House. President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted of gun charges in a DOJ case carrying up to 25 years on Tuesday.

The House Judiciary Committee announced Tuesday that it would also hold a hearing this Thursday to review the DA’s “political prosecution of President Trump.”

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In a letter to the committee first reported by ABC News Tuesday, assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte said “extraordinary steps” taken to investigate claims by Trump’s allies in Congress found no back channel between the DOJ and the DA.

“(The) conspiracy theory that the recent jury verdict in New York state court was somehow controlled by the Department is not only false, it is irresponsible,” Uriarte wrote.

“Indeed, accusations of wrongdoing made without — and in fact contrary to — evidence undermine confidence in the justice system and have contributed to increased threats of violence and attacks on career law enforcement officials and prosecutors.”

Uriarte categorically denied any collaboration between the state-run DA’s office and the federal DOJ against Trump and said he believed that was clear to those levying allegations.

“The Department has no control over the District Attorney, just as the District Attorney has no control over the Department,” Uriarte wrote.

“The Committee knows this.”

©2024 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Biden plan to brand Trump a felon is hobbled by son’s conviction

• June 12, 2024

Hadriana Lowenkron | (TNS) Bloomberg News

Hunter Biden, like Donald Trump, is now a convicted felon — a personal and political blow to his father, President Joe Biden, that complicates his 2024 campaign for reelection.

The younger Biden is the first child of a sitting U.S. president convicted of a felony. He was found guilty of violating federal laws for illegally buying a gun during a period he was taking crack cocaine. Jurors delivered their verdict after deliberating for three hours, capping a one-week trial in a prosecution brought by his father’s own Justice Department.

That outcome, and another trial for Hunter — on tax charges starting in September, just two months before voters head to the polls — threaten to hang over Biden’s campaign, posing a painful messaging test in his race against Trump. The president has assailed Trump as a “convicted felon,” to capitalize on the first former U.S. president found guilty of a felony for falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments.

“I am the President, but I am also a Dad,” Biden said in a statement moments after Hunter’s verdict. “Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery.”

Biden, who has said he would not pardon his son, said he would “respect the judicial process” as Hunter considers an appeal, adding that he and the first lady, Jill Biden, “will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.”

How the conviction impacts the president’s campaign against Trump, whom he has cast as a threat to the rule of law, as well as the effect on voter perceptions of both candidates remain unclear. What is certain is Hunter Biden and Trump’s cases are poised to run on parallel tracks during the campaign as they face sentencing and potential appeals, another twist to an already close race.

Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University, acknowledged the difficult situation facing the president.

“He did promise us a return to normalcy and it’s not normal for presidents to comment on trials like this in such a way,” Belt said, ahead of the verdict. “He really wants to avoid the perception of partiality.”

The political challenge posed by the conviction was almost immediately apparent. The verdict came in just hours before the president was poised to deliver remarks on his administration’s steps to ratchet up scrutiny on gun purchases at an Everytown for Gun Safety event. (Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, helped found and is a current supporter of Everytown for Gun Safety.)

Republican Scrutiny

A planned deal between Hunter and prosecutors that would have avoided jail time fell apart last year. Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed a special counsel, David Weiss, who would indict Hunter Biden on the gun and tax charges. Hunter’s lawyers have accused Weiss of caving to political pressure from Republicans who cast the initial plea agreement as a sweetheart deal for the president’s son.

Trump nominated Weiss to serve as the U.S. attorney for Delaware and was kept on by Biden. He was appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2023 to manage the cases against Hunter Biden.

Republicans have long tried to connect Hunter’s troubles and business dealings to his father, without evidence or success. House Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry into the president, an effort that is all but dead. No evidence has turned up showing the president benefited from his son’s misdeeds.

Democratic strategist Basil Smikle said Republicans “may seize on a guilty verdict and continue to find ways to connect the president to the actions of his son, even though it’s been clear that the president hasn’t been involved such that it would impact his presidency.”

Cornell Belcher, another Democratic strategist, predicted Americans would be able to separate the son’s troubles from his father.

“They’re not going to hold the president accountable for something that his child was accused of, just the way they would not want to be held accountable for something that their child is accused of,” Belcher said.

Trump’s campaign in a statement called Hunter’s trial “a distraction from the real crimes” of the president and repeated unsubstantiated claims of corruption.

Trump Impact

Trump, who faces three additional criminal indictments, though the trials are unlikely to happen before the election, has assailed his prosecutions as politically motivated and orchestrated by the president, without evidence. A day after Trump’s conviction, Biden spoke from the White House, criticizing the Republican as “dangerous” and “irresponsible” for saying the hush-money trial was rigged.

Some political strategists predicted Biden could use Trump’s guilty verdict to appeal to independents and undecided voters. John Malcolm, vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government, suggested that approach would be undermined by a guilty verdict for Hunter.

“That’s going to blunt the sting of the Trump conviction, although how much I don’t know,” he said.

A conviction secured by the DOJ against the president’s own son could also help Democrats undercut Trump’s claims the agency is targeting him politically, but linking the cases that way pose its own risks to Biden.

Smikle, the Democratic strategist, called Biden “very careful about drawing a line between what’s personal and what’s governmental.” He said the president can speak about Hunter best from “the perspective of a father who cares deeply about his son without necessarily bringing it to the campaign.”

But he also saw little impact on Biden or Trump supporters.

“If you’re going to vote for Joe Biden, this is not going to deter you,” Smikle said. “If you’re going to vote for Donald Trump, this will give you more reason to vote for Donald Trump.”

___

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Elizabeth Holmes appears to gain ground as her appeal is heard

• June 12, 2024

A lawyer for imprisoned fraudster Elizabeth Holmes on Tuesday appeared to make headway with the trio of judges weighing her bid for a new trial.

Holmes, 40, was convicted by a jury in early 2022 on four felony counts of defrauding investors in Theranos, her now-defunct Palo Alto blood-testing startup. On Tuesday, her appeal was heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, with one of her lawyers and a prosecutor facing off before a three-judge panel.

Holmes’s lawyer, Amy Saharia, claimed that Judge Edward Davila, who presided over the trial in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, had improperly allowed former Theranos scientist Dr. Kingshuk Das to give expert testimony before the jury. Appellate court Judge Ryan Nelson indicated in comments Tuesday that she may have a point.

“There’s a pretty good story here for Ms. Holmes,” Nelson said. “They do have a pretty good basis for some unfairness here.”

Even so, he noted that her conviction is supported by “pretty overwhelming evidence.”

Much of the 50-minute hearing was consumed by arguments over whether the judge in Holmes’ trial broke court rules by letting Das tell the jury his opinions about how poorly Theranos’ technology performed. Appeals courts can order new trials if they find trial judges made mistakes in applying the law or if proceedings were not fair.

Jurors in Holmes’ four-month trial in San Jose U.S. District Court heard that Das’ examination of Theranos’ processes and technology led him to void all the test results — 50,000 to 60,000 of them — from the company’s problematic ‘Edison’ blood-analyzer devices. Das told the jury that after he informed Holmes that her devices “were apparently malperforming from the very beginning,” she countered with an “alternative explanation” that the problems arose from the company’s quality-assurance processes, not its machines.

But Saharia argued that statements by Das, including “I found these instruments to be unsuitable for clinical use,” broke court rules and should never have been heard. His testimony about whether the technology worked represented opinions based on scientific evidence, and under court rules, such statements in a jury trial can only come from witnesses who go through the court process of being deemed experts, Saharia argued.

Nelson said he had “some problems” with the testimony Davila allowed Das to provide and suggested that prosecutors used Das to “get in some of that testimony” that should have only come from an expert witness.

Federal prosecutor Kelly Volkar told the judges Davila “carefully parsed” Das’ testimony and sustained several objections from Holmes’ lawyers when Das was being questioned on the witness stand.

“This was a case where every issue was often litigated to death,” Volkar said, adding that Davila “took great care in making rulings.”

Judge Jacqueline Nguyen said Davila properly allowed Das to discuss what he told Holmes. But Nguyen appeared to agree that the testimony requiring “highly specialized knowledge” was not appropriate for a witness not court-approved as an expert.

Saharia said Holmes’ legal team does not dispute that Theranos testing was inaccurate.

“The central issue in this case was whether Ms. Holmes knowingly misrepresented the capabilities of Theranos’ technology,” Saharia said. “She in good faith believed in the accuracy of this technology.”

Holmes, a Stanford University dropout, was charged in 2018 in connection with $878 million in losses among Theranos investors. Davila pegged the hit to investors resulting from her criminal conduct at $381 million.

In November 2022, Davila sentenced Holmes, a mother of two young children, to 11 years and three months in prison. Holmes, U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate No. 24965-111, has slashed about two years off her sentence — likely through good behavior and taking programs at her minimum-security prison — and is scheduled to walk free in August 2032.

Theranos, founded by Holmes in 2003 and once valued at $9 billion, claimed its machines could use just a few drops of blood from a finger-prick to perform more than a thousand tests, for everything from diabetes and cancer to pregnancy and HIV infection.

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Jurors in Holmes’ trial heard evidence that Holmes doctored internal Theranos documents by adding pilfered pharmaceutical companies’ logos to suggest the firms had validated her technology, and that she and Theranos had falsely suggested to investors that her machines were in battlefield use. The jury also heard that Theranos provided investors with wildly inflated revenue expectations and that it sought to cover up the poor performance of its machines.

Federal criminal appeals succeed at very low rates, according to the federal courts system. If Holmes loses, she could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but its justices only hear about 100 to 150 appeals per year of the more than 7,000 it is typically asked to review, according to the courts system. The judges Tuesday did not say when they would rule on her appeal.

Also on Tuesday in the same court, Patrick Looby, a lawyer representing Holmes and former Theranos president Sunny Balwani argued before the three judges that Davila’s order that the pair pay more than $450 million in restitution to investors should be thrown out.

Looby argued that their fraud did not rob Theranos of its “residual” value. “The fact that the investors may have had difficulty selling their shares is not owing to the fraud,” Looby asserted. “It’s just the nature of investing in a private company.”

Volkar argued that victims had “no opportunity” to recoup their costs.

Nelson appeared to agree.

“If you can’t recoup,” Nelson said, “it’s not residual value.”

​ Orange County Register 

YouTuber, Comicstorian creator Ben Potter killed in Colorado crash

• June 12, 2024

Popular YouTuber and Windsor resident Ben Potter, who brought comic books to life as audio dramas on his channel Comicstorian, was killed in a single-vehicle crash on Interstate 25 near Fort Collins, Colorado, on Saturday.

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Potter, 40, was driving southbound on I-25 near mile 267.5 at 9:19 a.m. when his silver Toyota 4Runner drove off the right shoulder, crossed the frontage road and rolled several times, according to the Colorado State Patrol. He died at the scene.

Potter was wearing a seatbelt and was the only person in the vehicle, CSP said in a news release Tuesday. No other vehicles were involved in the crash.

Investigators do not believe drugs, alcohol or excessive speed were factors in the crash, according to the agency.

Potter’s wife, Nathalie Potter, described him as supportive, loving, genuine and a good listener in a post on social media site X.

“He would do his best to make everyone laugh and make sure they were okay. He was our rock and he’d reassure his loved ones whenever they needed it,” Nathalie Potter wrote.

Comicstorian has amassed more than 3 million subscribers and published nearly 4,000 videos since Potter started posting 10 years ago, according to the channel’s YouTube page.

Potter’s love of exciting stories and well-written characters sparked his YouTube career, she wrote, and the Comicstorian team intends to keep going “to honor him by continuing to tell great stories by great people, as well as to keep the memory of our very own superhero alive.”

​ Orange County Register