California
Court sides with Fortnite maker Epic as Apple sanctioned for defying order in App Store case
A federal judge has strongly rebuked Apple, finding that the iPhone maker willfully violated a court injunction in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had ordered Apple to lower the barriers protecting its previously exclusive payment system for in-app digital transactions and allow developers to display links to alternative options. On Wednesday she found that Apple violated a 2021 injunction that, she wrote, sought to “restrain and prohibit the iPhone maker’s anticompetitive conduct” and pricing.
“Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” Gonzalez Rogers said in the ruling, which held Apple in contempt.
She ordered that Apple “no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases.”
Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney said on X the company will return Fortnite to Apple’s U.S. App Store next week.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Epic first filed an antitrust lawsuit in 2020 alleging that Apple had built an illegal monopoly around its popular App Store that makes billions of dollars annually from a then-exclusive payment system collecting commissions ranging from 15% to 30% on in-app commerce.
Although Gonzalez Rogers had rejected the monopoly claims, she ordered Apple to lower the barriers protecting its previously exclusive payment system for in-app digital transactions and allow developers to display links to alternative options. The Supreme Court rejected Apple’s appeal in the case in January 2024.
“In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option,” the judge wrote Wednesday. She accused the company’s Alex Roman, vice-president for finance, of “outright” lying under oath.
“Internally, (longtime Apple executive) Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction, but (CEO) Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
The judge referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.
Wisconsin
Investigators don’t know who leaked a Supreme Court draft abortion order
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Investigators concluded in a report released Wednesday that the leak of a Wisconsin Supreme Court abortion order last year was likely deliberate, but they were unable to determine who was responsible.
The June leak of a draft order showed the court would take a case brought by Planned Parenthood, which is seeking to declare access to abortion a right protected by the
state constitution. A week after the leak was reported, the court issued the order accepting the case.
The draft order, which was not a ruling on the case itself, was obtained by online news outlet Wisconsin Watch.
The Supreme Court’s seven justices, in a statement released with the investigative report, called the leak “a breach of trust the court had not experienced in its history.” All seven justices condemned the leak.
The leaked order in June came in one of two abortion-related cases before the court. The court also heard a second case challenging the 1849 abortion ban brought by Attorney General Joh Kaul. A ruling in that case is pending.
The court has yet to set a date for oral arguments in the Planned Parenthood case that was the subject of the leaked memo.
Investigators questioned 62 people, including all seven Supreme Court justices, staff, interns and people with access to the court during a two-week period in June from the date the draft was available until Wisconsin Watch published its article.
Network logs, including individual web histories, shared folder files, individual folders, and emails from all employees with access to the draft order were also reviewed, the report said.
Additionally, printer data was analyzed to see who may have printed off a copy of the draft order.
“All available leads have been thoroughly pursued, and no suspects have been positively identified at this time,” the report said. It added that there was no evidence that the leak was the result of a breach of the court’s computer system.
The report did conclude that the draft order had been forwarded to the personal email account of Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, one of the four liberal justices on the court who voted to hear the abortion case.
Bradley’s law clerk told investigators that forwarding important documents to Bradley’s personal email account was standard operating procedure.
That was the only time prior to publication of the Wisconsin Watch article that the draft order was forwarded to an email outside of the state court system, the report said.
Bradley did not return an email on Wednesday asking about the report. Wisconsin Watch declined to comment.
Bradley is retiring at the end of her term in August. She is being replaced by Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, who won election to the court in April, ensuring that liberals will maintain their 4-3 majority.
Missing computer data hindered the investigation, the report said. The logs showing websites visited in the two weeks leading up to the Wisconsin Watch story about the leaked order were incomplete, the report said. Only logs from June 26 and June 27 were available, not from June 13 through June 26 as requested. The article was published on June 26.
The lack of those website visitation logs “significantly hampered the ability to thoroughly examine the circumstances surrounding the leak,” the report said. “The issue underscores the importance of proper data management, retention, and verification procedures, especially when such information is crucial for ongoing investigations.”
The court hired an independent investigator to look into the leak because the court does not have an independent law enforcement agency. However, the report did not identify who led the investigation.
Three retired police detectives were hired at a cost of $165,740 to conduct the investigation and write the report, a spokesperson for the state court system said.
Audrey Skwierawski, the director of state courts, said her office would be creating a task force to review the report’s recommendations and propose strategies to reduce the risk of similar incidents in the future.
Investigations into the inner workings of the Wisconsin Supreme Court are rare and fraught.
In 2011, when Bradley accused then-Justice David Prosser of choking her, the Dane County Sheriff’s Department led the investigation. That agency took over the investigation after the chief of Capitol Police at the time said he had a conflict. But Republicans accused the sheriff of having a conflict because he was a Democrat who endorsed Bradley.
The Sauk County district attorney acted as special prosecutor in that case and declined to bring charges.
Nevada
Judge: Ex-FBI informant who made up bribery story about Bidens will stay in prison
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal judge has denied the U.S. government’s request to release from prison a former FBI informant who made up a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes that later became central to Republicans’ impeachment effort.
The decision, issued Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Otis Wright in Los Angeles, comes weeks after a new prosecutor reassigned to Alexander Smirnov’s case jointly filed a motion with his attorneys asking for his release while he appeals his conviction. In the motion, the U.S. government had said it would review its “theory of the case.”
Wright said in his written order that Smirnov is still flight risk, even if prosecutors say they will review his case.
“The fact remains that Smirnov has been convicted and sentenced to seventy-two months in prison, providing ample incentive to flee,” he said.
Smirnov, 44, was sentenced in January after pleading guilty to tax evasion and lying to the FBI about the phony bribery scheme, which was described by the previous prosecutors assigned to the case as an effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
His attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, told The Associated Press in a text that they will appeal the judge’s decision and “continue to advocate for Mr. Smirnov’s release.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment.
Smirnov had been originally prosecuted by former Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, who resigned in January days before President Donald Trump returned to the White House for his second term.
Smirnov has been in custody since February 2024. He was arrested at the Las Vegas airport after returning to the U.S. from overseas.
Smirnov, a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, falsely claimed to his FBI handler that around 2015, executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid then-Vice President Biden and his son $5 million each.
The explosive claim in 2020 came after Smirnov expressed “bias” about Biden as a presidential candidate, according to prosecutors at the time. In reality, investigators found Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017 — after Biden’s term as vice president.
Authorities said Smirnov’s false claim “set off a firestorm in Congress” when it resurfaced years later as part of the House impeachment inquiry into Biden, who won the presidency over Trump in 2020. The Biden administration dismissed the impeachment effort as a “stunt.”
Weiss also brought gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden, who was supposed to be sentenced in December after being convicted at a trial in the gun case and pleading guilty to tax charges. But he was pardoned by his father, who said he believed “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Maine
Lawmaker appeals to Supreme Court over censure by state House
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican state lawmaker from Maine appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday after she was censured by the state House for a social media post about a transgender athlete.
Rep. Laurel Libby argued that the censure by the House has blocked her from speaking and voting on the floor, leaving the residents she represents with no representation.
Libby asked the Supreme Court for an order requiring her legislative votes be counted as her lawsuit plays out.
Her censure came after she posted about a high school athlete who won a girls’ track competition. Libby included a photo of the student and identified them by first name, with the name in quotation marks and said the student had previously competed in boys’ track.
Libby’s post went viral, preceding a public disagreement over the issue between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills. The Trump administration later filed a lawsuit against the state for not complying with the government’s push to ban transgender athletes.
Maine’s Democratic House Speaker, Ryan Fecteau, accused Libby of violating the state’s legislative ethics code and the Maine House of Representatives censured her in February.
Libby said in a lawsuit that the censure violated her right to free speech. A federal judge, though, found that the sanction isn’t severe enough to overcome legal blocks on courts intervening in legislative functions.
Court sides with Fortnite maker Epic as Apple sanctioned for defying order in App Store case
A federal judge has strongly rebuked Apple, finding that the iPhone maker willfully violated a court injunction in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had ordered Apple to lower the barriers protecting its previously exclusive payment system for in-app digital transactions and allow developers to display links to alternative options. On Wednesday she found that Apple violated a 2021 injunction that, she wrote, sought to “restrain and prohibit the iPhone maker’s anticompetitive conduct” and pricing.
“Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” Gonzalez Rogers said in the ruling, which held Apple in contempt.
She ordered that Apple “no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases.”
Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney said on X the company will return Fortnite to Apple’s U.S. App Store next week.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Epic first filed an antitrust lawsuit in 2020 alleging that Apple had built an illegal monopoly around its popular App Store that makes billions of dollars annually from a then-exclusive payment system collecting commissions ranging from 15% to 30% on in-app commerce.
Although Gonzalez Rogers had rejected the monopoly claims, she ordered Apple to lower the barriers protecting its previously exclusive payment system for in-app digital transactions and allow developers to display links to alternative options. The Supreme Court rejected Apple’s appeal in the case in January 2024.
“In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option,” the judge wrote Wednesday. She accused the company’s Alex Roman, vice-president for finance, of “outright” lying under oath.
“Internally, (longtime Apple executive) Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction, but (CEO) Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
The judge referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.
Wisconsin
Investigators don’t know who leaked a Supreme Court draft abortion order
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Investigators concluded in a report released Wednesday that the leak of a Wisconsin Supreme Court abortion order last year was likely deliberate, but they were unable to determine who was responsible.
The June leak of a draft order showed the court would take a case brought by Planned Parenthood, which is seeking to declare access to abortion a right protected by the
state constitution. A week after the leak was reported, the court issued the order accepting the case.
The draft order, which was not a ruling on the case itself, was obtained by online news outlet Wisconsin Watch.
The Supreme Court’s seven justices, in a statement released with the investigative report, called the leak “a breach of trust the court had not experienced in its history.” All seven justices condemned the leak.
The leaked order in June came in one of two abortion-related cases before the court. The court also heard a second case challenging the 1849 abortion ban brought by Attorney General Joh Kaul. A ruling in that case is pending.
The court has yet to set a date for oral arguments in the Planned Parenthood case that was the subject of the leaked memo.
Investigators questioned 62 people, including all seven Supreme Court justices, staff, interns and people with access to the court during a two-week period in June from the date the draft was available until Wisconsin Watch published its article.
Network logs, including individual web histories, shared folder files, individual folders, and emails from all employees with access to the draft order were also reviewed, the report said.
Additionally, printer data was analyzed to see who may have printed off a copy of the draft order.
“All available leads have been thoroughly pursued, and no suspects have been positively identified at this time,” the report said. It added that there was no evidence that the leak was the result of a breach of the court’s computer system.
The report did conclude that the draft order had been forwarded to the personal email account of Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, one of the four liberal justices on the court who voted to hear the abortion case.
Bradley’s law clerk told investigators that forwarding important documents to Bradley’s personal email account was standard operating procedure.
That was the only time prior to publication of the Wisconsin Watch article that the draft order was forwarded to an email outside of the state court system, the report said.
Bradley did not return an email on Wednesday asking about the report. Wisconsin Watch declined to comment.
Bradley is retiring at the end of her term in August. She is being replaced by Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, who won election to the court in April, ensuring that liberals will maintain their 4-3 majority.
Missing computer data hindered the investigation, the report said. The logs showing websites visited in the two weeks leading up to the Wisconsin Watch story about the leaked order were incomplete, the report said. Only logs from June 26 and June 27 were available, not from June 13 through June 26 as requested. The article was published on June 26.
The lack of those website visitation logs “significantly hampered the ability to thoroughly examine the circumstances surrounding the leak,” the report said. “The issue underscores the importance of proper data management, retention, and verification procedures, especially when such information is crucial for ongoing investigations.”
The court hired an independent investigator to look into the leak because the court does not have an independent law enforcement agency. However, the report did not identify who led the investigation.
Three retired police detectives were hired at a cost of $165,740 to conduct the investigation and write the report, a spokesperson for the state court system said.
Audrey Skwierawski, the director of state courts, said her office would be creating a task force to review the report’s recommendations and propose strategies to reduce the risk of similar incidents in the future.
Investigations into the inner workings of the Wisconsin Supreme Court are rare and fraught.
In 2011, when Bradley accused then-Justice David Prosser of choking her, the Dane County Sheriff’s Department led the investigation. That agency took over the investigation after the chief of Capitol Police at the time said he had a conflict. But Republicans accused the sheriff of having a conflict because he was a Democrat who endorsed Bradley.
The Sauk County district attorney acted as special prosecutor in that case and declined to bring charges.
Nevada
Judge: Ex-FBI informant who made up bribery story about Bidens will stay in prison
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal judge has denied the U.S. government’s request to release from prison a former FBI informant who made up a story about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter accepting bribes that later became central to Republicans’ impeachment effort.
The decision, issued Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Otis Wright in Los Angeles, comes weeks after a new prosecutor reassigned to Alexander Smirnov’s case jointly filed a motion with his attorneys asking for his release while he appeals his conviction. In the motion, the U.S. government had said it would review its “theory of the case.”
Wright said in his written order that Smirnov is still flight risk, even if prosecutors say they will review his case.
“The fact remains that Smirnov has been convicted and sentenced to seventy-two months in prison, providing ample incentive to flee,” he said.
Smirnov, 44, was sentenced in January after pleading guilty to tax evasion and lying to the FBI about the phony bribery scheme, which was described by the previous prosecutors assigned to the case as an effort to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
His attorneys, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, told The Associated Press in a text that they will appeal the judge’s decision and “continue to advocate for Mr. Smirnov’s release.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment.
Smirnov had been originally prosecuted by former Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, who resigned in January days before President Donald Trump returned to the White House for his second term.
Smirnov has been in custody since February 2024. He was arrested at the Las Vegas airport after returning to the U.S. from overseas.
Smirnov, a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, falsely claimed to his FBI handler that around 2015, executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid then-Vice President Biden and his son $5 million each.
The explosive claim in 2020 came after Smirnov expressed “bias” about Biden as a presidential candidate, according to prosecutors at the time. In reality, investigators found Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017 — after Biden’s term as vice president.
Authorities said Smirnov’s false claim “set off a firestorm in Congress” when it resurfaced years later as part of the House impeachment inquiry into Biden, who won the presidency over Trump in 2020. The Biden administration dismissed the impeachment effort as a “stunt.”
Weiss also brought gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden, who was supposed to be sentenced in December after being convicted at a trial in the gun case and pleading guilty to tax charges. But he was pardoned by his father, who said he believed “raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
Maine
Lawmaker appeals to Supreme Court over censure by state House
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican state lawmaker from Maine appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday after she was censured by the state House for a social media post about a transgender athlete.
Rep. Laurel Libby argued that the censure by the House has blocked her from speaking and voting on the floor, leaving the residents she represents with no representation.
Libby asked the Supreme Court for an order requiring her legislative votes be counted as her lawsuit plays out.
Her censure came after she posted about a high school athlete who won a girls’ track competition. Libby included a photo of the student and identified them by first name, with the name in quotation marks and said the student had previously competed in boys’ track.
Libby’s post went viral, preceding a public disagreement over the issue between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills. The Trump administration later filed a lawsuit against the state for not complying with the government’s push to ban transgender athletes.
Maine’s Democratic House Speaker, Ryan Fecteau, accused Libby of violating the state’s legislative ethics code and the Maine House of Representatives censured her in February.
Libby said in a lawsuit that the censure violated her right to free speech. A federal judge, though, found that the sanction isn’t severe enough to overcome legal blocks on courts intervening in legislative functions.
