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Financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of girls and young women began as early as 1985 and targeted victims as young as 13 years old, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by nine accusers against his estate.

The accusers, known as Jane Doe I through Jane Doe IX, are among more than 20 women so far to formally seek compensation from Epstein’s $577 million estate, after he killed himself on Aug. 10 in a Manhattan jail cell.

Epstein’s death at age 66 was ruled a suicide, and came five weeks after his arrest on federal charges he trafficked dozens of underage girls from at least 2002 to 2005. He had pleaded not guilty. Many accusers have said his abuses occurred last decade.

Continue reading “Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuses began by 1985, targeted 13-year-old, lawsuit claims”

President Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm must hand over eight years of his tax returns to New York prosecutors, a U.S. appeals court ruled Monday, the latest setback for Trump in his tenacious efforts to keep his finances secret.

The ruling by a unanimous three-judge panel of the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the ability of prosecutors to enforce a subpoena for the returns against accounting firm Mazars LLP. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Trump, said the Republican president will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose 5-4 conservative majority includes two justices appointed by Trump.

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A senior White House official on Thursday acknowledged that President Donald Trump held up $391 million in military aid to Ukraine in part to pressure the Ukrainians to look into an allegation about the 2016 U.S presidential election that has been debunked as a conspiracy theory.

Trump and administration officials had denied for weeks that it had demanded a “quid pro quo” – a Latin phrase meaning a favor for a favor – for delivering the U.S. aid, a key part of a controversy that has triggered an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives against the Republican president.

Continue reading “White House acknowledges strings attached in Trump withholding Ukraine aid”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s new term opens on Monday with the conservative majority in a position to take a more aggressive rightward turn on divisive issues including abortion, gay rights and gun control while also refereeing legal brawls involving President Donald Trump.

The court has moved to the right since Trump took office, with a 5-4 conservative majority that includes two justices he appointed: Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Neil Gorsuch in 2017.

“We will likely see the court move further and faster in a rightward direction,” said Irv Gornstein, executive director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute.

Continue reading “U.S. Supreme Court to tackle gay rights, guns, abortion and Trump”

Facebook can be ordered to police and remove illegal content worldwide, Europe’s top court said on Thursday, in a landmark ruling that rights activists say raises concerns some countries could use it to silence critics.

The judgment means social platforms can be forced to seek out hateful content deemed illegal by a national court in the 28-country bloc rather than wait for requests to remove posts as it currently does under EU rules.

Continue reading “Facebook can be forced to remove content worldwide after landmark EU court ruling”