New York
Weinstein accuser is being sued for defamation. The plaintiff: Her sister
NEW YORK (AP) — Two sisters testified at Harvey Weinstein’s most recent criminal trial. Kaja Sokola accused the disgraced movie mogul of sexual assault. Ewa Sokola was called as a witness to boost her claims, but ultimately ended up helping the defense.
Now, Ewa Sokola is suing Kaja for defamation, alleging in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court that the psychotherapist and ex-model’s public remarks amount to libel and are damaging Ewa’s reputation and business as a cardiologist in Poland.
Ewa Sokola says that her younger sister has made false statements subjecting her to public hatred, shame, contempt, ridicule, ostracism and disgrace in Wroclaw, Poland. She seeks unspecified damages.
In a split verdict in June, Weinstein was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on film and television production assistant and producer Miriam Haley and acquitted on a charge involving Kaja Sokola’s allegations of similar conduct. Both women said they were assaulted in 2006.
The judge declared a mistrial on the final charge, alleging Weinstein raped former actor Jessica Mann, after the jury foreperson declined to deliberate further.
Weinstein has not yet been sentenced as a judge weighs a defense request to throw out the verdict after two jurors told Weinstein’s lawyers that other jurors had bullied them into convicting him. Judge Curtis Farber is expected to rule on Jan. 8.
Kaja Sokola has said her sister’s testimony at Weinstein’s state court trial in New York earlier this year undermined her own testimony that he forced oral sex at a Manhattan hotel just before her 20th birthday.
Weinstein had arranged for Kaja Sokola to be an extra for a day in the film “The Nanny Diaries,” and separately agreed to meet her and Ewa. After they chatted, she testified, Weinstein told her he had a script to show her in his hotel room, and she went up with him. There, she said, Weinstein pushed her onto a bed and assaulted her.
After the trial, Kaja Sokola criticized her sister’s testimony, saying that though she was called as a prosecution witness, she ended up serving Weinstein’s cause by providing his lawyers with a journal in which she wrote about the men who had sexually assaulted her in her life but did not include Weinstein.
According to the lawsuit, Kaja Sokola repeatedly characterized her sister’s testimony as a personal “betrayal” and falsely accused her of omitting journals in which she described what happened with Weinstein.
The lawsuit also said Kaja Sokola had falsely accused Ewa Sokola of homicide, theft, falsification of medical records, sexual impropriety and immoral conduct, and of colluding with Weinstein’s defense team.
The lawsuit said Kaja Sokola’s false claims have cost Ewa Sokola referrals and led to a reduction in patients and employees for her medical practice while damaging her professional reputation and her standing within the medical community.
New York
Judge green lights driver’s license law, rejecting a Trump challenge
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge gave a green light Tuesday to New York’s so-called Green Light Law, rejecting the Trump administration’s bid to stop the state from giving people driver’s licenses without having them prove they are in the country legally.
U.S. District Judge Anne M. Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Republican administration — which challenged the law under President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration — had failed to support its claims that the state law usurps federal law or that it unlawfully regulates or unlawfully discriminates against the federal government.
The Justice Department sued the state over the law in February, naming Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, as defendants. At a news conference announcing the lawsuit, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the officials, both Democrats, of prioritizing “illegal aliens over American citizens.”
“As I said from the start, our laws protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,” James said in a statement Friday. “I will always stand up for New Yorkers and the rule of law.”
Nardacci, appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, wrote that her job was not to evaluate the desirability of the Green Light Law as a policy matter. Rather, she said in a 23-page opinion, it was to assess whether the Trump administration’s arguments established that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which gives federal laws precedence over state laws.
The administration, she wrote, has “failed to state such a claim.”
The Green Light Law was enacted partly to improve public safety on the roads, as people without licenses sometimes drove without one, or without having passed a road test. The state also makes it easier for holders of such licenses to get auto insurance, thus cutting down on crashes involving uninsured drivers.
Under the law, people who don’t have a valid Social Security number can submit alternative forms of ID that include valid passports and driver’s licenses issued in other countries. Applicants must still get a permit and pass a road test to qualify for a “standard driver’s license.” It does not apply to commercial driver’s licenses.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit sought to strike down the law as “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them.” It highlighted a provision that requires the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner to inform people who are in the country illegally when a federal immigration agency has requested their information.
In 2020, during Trump’s first term, his administration sought to pressure New York into changing the law by barring anyone from the state from enrolling in trusted traveler programs, meaning they would spend longer amounts of time going through security lines at airports.
The governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, offered to restore federal access to driving records on a limited basis, but said he wouldn’t let immigration agents see lists of people who had applied for the special licenses available to immigrants who couldn’t prove legal residency in the U.S. The administration ultimately restored New Yorkers’ access to the trusted traveler program after a brief legal fight.
In the lawsuit rejected Tuesday, the administration argued that it could be easier to enforce federal immigration priorities if federal authorities had unfettered access to New York’s driver information. Nardacci, echoing a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a county clerk’s earlier challenge to the law, wrote that such information “remains available to federal immigration authorities” through a lawful court order or judicial warrant.
Turkey
Court orders release of Turkish journalist from prison pending outcome of appeal
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A Turkish court on Monday ordered the release of veteran journalist Fatih Altayli from prison pending the outcome of his appeal against a conviction for allegedly threatening President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Altayli, 63, a longtime columnist whose YouTube programs drew hundreds of thousands of viewers daily, was sentenced last month to four years and two months in prison. He had been arrested in June on charges of threatening the president during one of his broadcasts — a case critics described as an attempt to silence a prominent government opponent.
The regional appeals court ruled for his release from prison, citing the absence of any flight risk, the fact that evidence had already been collected, and the time he had already spent in detention, according to state-run Anadolu Agency.
Altayli's arrest stemmed from remarks on his program "Fatih Altayli Comments," in which he discussed a survey showing more than 70% of the public opposed a lifetime presidency for Erdogan, who has ruled for over two decades. Altayli said he was not surprised by the result, noting that Turkish society favored checks on authority.
"Look at the history of this nation," he said. "This is a nation which strangled its sultan when they didn't like him or want him. There are quite a few Ottoman sultans who were assassinated, strangled, or whose deaths were made to look like suicide."
Altayli has strongly denied that his comments amounted to a threat against Erdogan.
Following his arrest, he continued to provide commentary through letters relayed by his lawyers, though he later suspended the program.
With much of Turkey's mainstream media owned by pro-government businesses or directly controlled by the state, many independent journalists have turned to YouTube as a platform for uncensored reporting.
California
Woman charged with murder in her 9-year-old daughter’s death
A California woman has been charged with murder after the remains of her missing 9-year-old daughter were found in Utah, authorities said Tuesday.
Ashlee Buzzard, 40, was arrested Tuesday after bullet cartridges found near her daughter’s body were linked to a used cartridge case found in her home, said Santa Barbara County’s Sheriff-Coroner Bill Brown. Authorities found 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard’s body Dec. 6 in a rural area of Utah after a man and woman taking photos off of State Route 24 reported they had discovered remains.
Officers could not immediately identify her but concluded she died from gunshot wounds to the head, Brown said. The FBI’s DNA analysis of the body found a familial DNA match to Buzzard.
Detectives also found similar ammunition in a car Buzzard had rented, authorities said.
Buzzard is being held without bail at the Northern Branch Jail in Santa Barbara, Brown said.
Online jail records did not list a court date or attorney who could speak on Buzzard’s behalf. The public defender’s office represented her in another case in November but did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A school administrator reported Melodee Buzzard’s prolonged absence Oct. 14. Deputies went to the family’s residence in Lompoc, but Buzzard would not say where her daughter was.
Buzzard left California with her daughter on Oct. 7, driving a rented white 2024 Chevrolet Malibu, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. They traveled as far as Nebraska with stops in Nevada, Arizona and Utah, and a return route included Kansas. Melodee Buzzard was last seen Oct. 9 on video surveillance near the Colorado-Utah line.
Detectives learned the mother and daughter changed their appearance during travel. Video from the rental car office in Lompoc shows the child wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a wig that was darker and straighter than her natural hair, police said. The video shows her mother wearing a long, curly haired wig.
Buzzard swapped wigs throughout the trip and changed the license plate of the rental car to avoid detection, police said. Buzzard returned home on Oct. 10 but her daughter was not with her, the sheriff’s office said.
Brown said the crime was “calculated, cold-blooded” and premeditated, though a motive has not been determined.
“Today, we stand together in grief, but also with resolve,” Brown said. “Melodee deserved a far better life than she had.”
Officials said the weapon has not been found, and the case remains under investigation.
Lilly Denes told the Los Angeles Times that her granddaughter was loveable, always smiling and well-behaved. Denes’ son, the child’s father, died when she was 6 months old. A detective told Denes on the phone Tuesday that authorities had “found the baby and the baby is with her dad,” Denes said.
“I knew he was telling me that the baby is dead,” Denes said.
Weinstein accuser is being sued for defamation. The plaintiff: Her sister
NEW YORK (AP) — Two sisters testified at Harvey Weinstein’s most recent criminal trial. Kaja Sokola accused the disgraced movie mogul of sexual assault. Ewa Sokola was called as a witness to boost her claims, but ultimately ended up helping the defense.
Now, Ewa Sokola is suing Kaja for defamation, alleging in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court that the psychotherapist and ex-model’s public remarks amount to libel and are damaging Ewa’s reputation and business as a cardiologist in Poland.
Ewa Sokola says that her younger sister has made false statements subjecting her to public hatred, shame, contempt, ridicule, ostracism and disgrace in Wroclaw, Poland. She seeks unspecified damages.
In a split verdict in June, Weinstein was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on film and television production assistant and producer Miriam Haley and acquitted on a charge involving Kaja Sokola’s allegations of similar conduct. Both women said they were assaulted in 2006.
The judge declared a mistrial on the final charge, alleging Weinstein raped former actor Jessica Mann, after the jury foreperson declined to deliberate further.
Weinstein has not yet been sentenced as a judge weighs a defense request to throw out the verdict after two jurors told Weinstein’s lawyers that other jurors had bullied them into convicting him. Judge Curtis Farber is expected to rule on Jan. 8.
Kaja Sokola has said her sister’s testimony at Weinstein’s state court trial in New York earlier this year undermined her own testimony that he forced oral sex at a Manhattan hotel just before her 20th birthday.
Weinstein had arranged for Kaja Sokola to be an extra for a day in the film “The Nanny Diaries,” and separately agreed to meet her and Ewa. After they chatted, she testified, Weinstein told her he had a script to show her in his hotel room, and she went up with him. There, she said, Weinstein pushed her onto a bed and assaulted her.
After the trial, Kaja Sokola criticized her sister’s testimony, saying that though she was called as a prosecution witness, she ended up serving Weinstein’s cause by providing his lawyers with a journal in which she wrote about the men who had sexually assaulted her in her life but did not include Weinstein.
According to the lawsuit, Kaja Sokola repeatedly characterized her sister’s testimony as a personal “betrayal” and falsely accused her of omitting journals in which she described what happened with Weinstein.
The lawsuit also said Kaja Sokola had falsely accused Ewa Sokola of homicide, theft, falsification of medical records, sexual impropriety and immoral conduct, and of colluding with Weinstein’s defense team.
The lawsuit said Kaja Sokola’s false claims have cost Ewa Sokola referrals and led to a reduction in patients and employees for her medical practice while damaging her professional reputation and her standing within the medical community.
New York
Judge green lights driver’s license law, rejecting a Trump challenge
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge gave a green light Tuesday to New York’s so-called Green Light Law, rejecting the Trump administration’s bid to stop the state from giving people driver’s licenses without having them prove they are in the country legally.
U.S. District Judge Anne M. Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Republican administration — which challenged the law under President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration — had failed to support its claims that the state law usurps federal law or that it unlawfully regulates or unlawfully discriminates against the federal government.
The Justice Department sued the state over the law in February, naming Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, as defendants. At a news conference announcing the lawsuit, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the officials, both Democrats, of prioritizing “illegal aliens over American citizens.”
“As I said from the start, our laws protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,” James said in a statement Friday. “I will always stand up for New Yorkers and the rule of law.”
Nardacci, appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, wrote that her job was not to evaluate the desirability of the Green Light Law as a policy matter. Rather, she said in a 23-page opinion, it was to assess whether the Trump administration’s arguments established that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which gives federal laws precedence over state laws.
The administration, she wrote, has “failed to state such a claim.”
The Green Light Law was enacted partly to improve public safety on the roads, as people without licenses sometimes drove without one, or without having passed a road test. The state also makes it easier for holders of such licenses to get auto insurance, thus cutting down on crashes involving uninsured drivers.
Under the law, people who don’t have a valid Social Security number can submit alternative forms of ID that include valid passports and driver’s licenses issued in other countries. Applicants must still get a permit and pass a road test to qualify for a “standard driver’s license.” It does not apply to commercial driver’s licenses.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit sought to strike down the law as “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them.” It highlighted a provision that requires the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner to inform people who are in the country illegally when a federal immigration agency has requested their information.
In 2020, during Trump’s first term, his administration sought to pressure New York into changing the law by barring anyone from the state from enrolling in trusted traveler programs, meaning they would spend longer amounts of time going through security lines at airports.
The governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, offered to restore federal access to driving records on a limited basis, but said he wouldn’t let immigration agents see lists of people who had applied for the special licenses available to immigrants who couldn’t prove legal residency in the U.S. The administration ultimately restored New Yorkers’ access to the trusted traveler program after a brief legal fight.
In the lawsuit rejected Tuesday, the administration argued that it could be easier to enforce federal immigration priorities if federal authorities had unfettered access to New York’s driver information. Nardacci, echoing a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a county clerk’s earlier challenge to the law, wrote that such information “remains available to federal immigration authorities” through a lawful court order or judicial warrant.
Turkey
Court orders release of Turkish journalist from prison pending outcome of appeal
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A Turkish court on Monday ordered the release of veteran journalist Fatih Altayli from prison pending the outcome of his appeal against a conviction for allegedly threatening President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Altayli, 63, a longtime columnist whose YouTube programs drew hundreds of thousands of viewers daily, was sentenced last month to four years and two months in prison. He had been arrested in June on charges of threatening the president during one of his broadcasts — a case critics described as an attempt to silence a prominent government opponent.
The regional appeals court ruled for his release from prison, citing the absence of any flight risk, the fact that evidence had already been collected, and the time he had already spent in detention, according to state-run Anadolu Agency.
Altayli's arrest stemmed from remarks on his program "Fatih Altayli Comments," in which he discussed a survey showing more than 70% of the public opposed a lifetime presidency for Erdogan, who has ruled for over two decades. Altayli said he was not surprised by the result, noting that Turkish society favored checks on authority.
"Look at the history of this nation," he said. "This is a nation which strangled its sultan when they didn't like him or want him. There are quite a few Ottoman sultans who were assassinated, strangled, or whose deaths were made to look like suicide."
Altayli has strongly denied that his comments amounted to a threat against Erdogan.
Following his arrest, he continued to provide commentary through letters relayed by his lawyers, though he later suspended the program.
With much of Turkey's mainstream media owned by pro-government businesses or directly controlled by the state, many independent journalists have turned to YouTube as a platform for uncensored reporting.
California
Woman charged with murder in her 9-year-old daughter’s death
A California woman has been charged with murder after the remains of her missing 9-year-old daughter were found in Utah, authorities said Tuesday.
Ashlee Buzzard, 40, was arrested Tuesday after bullet cartridges found near her daughter’s body were linked to a used cartridge case found in her home, said Santa Barbara County’s Sheriff-Coroner Bill Brown. Authorities found 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard’s body Dec. 6 in a rural area of Utah after a man and woman taking photos off of State Route 24 reported they had discovered remains.
Officers could not immediately identify her but concluded she died from gunshot wounds to the head, Brown said. The FBI’s DNA analysis of the body found a familial DNA match to Buzzard.
Detectives also found similar ammunition in a car Buzzard had rented, authorities said.
Buzzard is being held without bail at the Northern Branch Jail in Santa Barbara, Brown said.
Online jail records did not list a court date or attorney who could speak on Buzzard’s behalf. The public defender’s office represented her in another case in November but did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A school administrator reported Melodee Buzzard’s prolonged absence Oct. 14. Deputies went to the family’s residence in Lompoc, but Buzzard would not say where her daughter was.
Buzzard left California with her daughter on Oct. 7, driving a rented white 2024 Chevrolet Malibu, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. They traveled as far as Nebraska with stops in Nevada, Arizona and Utah, and a return route included Kansas. Melodee Buzzard was last seen Oct. 9 on video surveillance near the Colorado-Utah line.
Detectives learned the mother and daughter changed their appearance during travel. Video from the rental car office in Lompoc shows the child wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a wig that was darker and straighter than her natural hair, police said. The video shows her mother wearing a long, curly haired wig.
Buzzard swapped wigs throughout the trip and changed the license plate of the rental car to avoid detection, police said. Buzzard returned home on Oct. 10 but her daughter was not with her, the sheriff’s office said.
Brown said the crime was “calculated, cold-blooded” and premeditated, though a motive has not been determined.
“Today, we stand together in grief, but also with resolve,” Brown said. “Melodee deserved a far better life than she had.”
Officials said the weapon has not been found, and the case remains under investigation.
Lilly Denes told the Los Angeles Times that her granddaughter was loveable, always smiling and well-behaved. Denes’ son, the child’s father, died when she was 6 months old. A detective told Denes on the phone Tuesday that authorities had “found the baby and the baby is with her dad,” Denes said.
“I knew he was telling me that the baby is dead,” Denes said.
