Donald Trump, ever the showman, did everything he could to turn his three-month New York bank fraud trial into a circus. And he intended to finish off this spectacle with a little less P. T. Barnum and a little more Perry Mason, dramatically closing the case on Thursday by making the exceedingly rare—and ill-advised—decision to deliver his own closing arguments.

Alas, reality isn’t a weekly, hour-long 1950s CBS television legal drama.

On Wednesday, just a day before the last scheduled hearing in the case, court filings revealed how talks completely broke down between Trump’s lawyers and Justice Arthur F. Engoron.

Emails filed in court show that the judge tentatively approved Trump’s request that he make a formal appearance in court to make the case’s final argument on his own—as long as he’d follow the same rules his defense lawyers would.

In a blog post last week, the hackers from groups called KibOrg and NLB shared screenshots of what appears to be an internal database belonging to Alfa-Bank, as well as personal details of several Russian individuals as "confirmation" of the breach. Within the database, the hackers say there are over 30 million records including names, birthdates, account numbers and phone numbers of Russian customers.

Adding some legitimacy to those claims, a Ukrainian intelligence official who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation confirmed to NPR that Ukraine's top counterintelligence agency, the SBU, helped the hacktivists breach Alfa-Bank.

While the hacktivists did not immediately respond to a request to discuss the breach, they wrote in the blog post — posted on their own site — that they would be sharing the data obtained from Alfa-Bank with investigative journalists.

skilled Ukrainian hackers and cybersecurity experts have become hacktivists, as well as official and unofficial advisers to Ukrainian government agencies.

Those agencies have officially acknowledged their importance. During an exclusive interview with NPR in August, the head of the SBU's Cyber Division Illia Vitiuk said that it is part of his job to both monitor and to some extent "direct" or "give advice" to hacktivists supporting its work against Russian spies. "This is like our cyber territorial defense," continued Vitiuk. He says part of the reason his service works so closely with private citizens is to make sure they use their powers for good. "It's very important that after the war ... these people work for the benefit of our country."

Ukrainian hacktivists have notched several wins in recent weeks beyond the apparent Alfa-Bank breach.

Most recently, the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance broke into servers of a major ransomware gang with ties to Russia called Trigona. Cybersecurity experts told NPR the breach appeared legitimate, and the group's website was taken down. A representative of the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance who goes by @vx_her1t told NPR the group is still going through the stolen data and will release "anything of value" after their review.

Alfa-Bank is known for catering to Russia's upper echelon. The U.S. government sanctioned the bank and many of its board members following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022.

In October 2016, media outlets reported that data collected by some of the world’s most renowned cybersecurity experts had identified frequent and unexplained communications between an email server used by the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest financial institutions. Those publications set off speculation about a possible secret back-channel of communications, as well as a series of lawsuits and investigations that culminated last week with the indictment of the same former federal cybercrime prosecutor who brought the data to the attention of the FBI five years ago.

Since 2018, access to an exhaustive report commissioned by the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on data that prompted those experts to seek out the FBI has been limited to a handful of Senate committee leaders, Alfa Bank, and special prosecutors appointed to look into the origins of the FBI investigation on alleged ties between Trump and Russia.

That report is now public, ironically thanks to a pair of lawsuits filed by Alfa Bank, which doesn’t directly dispute the information collected by the researchers. Rather, it claims that the data they found was the result of a “highly sophisticated cyberattacks against it in 2016 and 2017” intended “to fabricate apparent communications” between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

The researchers said they couldn’t be sure what kind of communications between those servers had caused the DNS lookups, but concluded that the data would be extremely difficult to fabricate..

a close-up photo of tortillas with beans posted last year could be traced back to a Facebook page called Primera Fila Mx, Ortiz said. And an image she shared in 2022 featuring a plate of tortillas with a ranch as the backdrop was linked to a 2019 image shared by the Comida De Rancho Facebook page.

“As a proud Latina who knows how to cook, homemade Mexican food tastes better from a gas stove,” Flores wrote in a post accompanying a photo of eggs and tortillas. The photo was first posted on Facebook in 2021 by the Guatemala-based Izabal Magazine, Ortiz said.

The Tribune linked another photo Flores had posted of flame-grilled beef, sausage and tortillas to a Facebook page from Tamaulipas. It also found that her post about the “simple things in life” — like a “good breakfast” — could be traced back to a Mexican food photographer.

Flores told Valley Central, a Texas NBC affiliate, that the controversy had led her to gain over 8,000 new social media followers.

But for Ortiz, the low-stakes incident gives rise to skepticism about a politician who’s in the midst of a fierce battle for a competitive district.

“I’m of the belief that if somebody, especially an elected official, is willing to do something like this, it makes you really question what they would do once elected,” he said.

On November 21, 2023, a federal jury in the Northern District of Illinois delivered its verdict finding that the two largest domestic egg producers, Cal-Maine Foods Inc. and Rose Acre Farms Inc., together with two egg-industry trade groups, conspired to reduce supply in order to artificially drive up the price of eggs.

.....This case demonstrates that the domestic market for eggs is vulnerable to manipulation. It also goes to show that producers really can be held accountable for unreasonable restraints on trade which violate federal antitrust laws — especially since two previous price-fixing cases brought by grocery stores and other direct purchasers of eggs failed.

Perhaps the recent verdict has certain members of the egg industry shaking in their boots, given that similar (albeit possibly legally distinct) behavior seems to have taken place in 2022. Yet, in light of the decade-and-a-half window between the end of the proven misconduct and the imposition of legal liability, with inevitable appeals still on the horizon, perhaps the threat is too distant to have any meaningful deterrent effect on today’s corporations.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” according to a legal maxim with deep historical roots. We don’t put many of our treasured legal maxims into actual practice, however, and we’re sure not at risk of effectuating this one anytime soon based on the recent result in the egg price-fixing case.

Don’t worry yourself though: I’m making a mental note to follow up on this story sometime around the end of 2037 and will fill you in accordingly. We’ll get to the bottom of this.

On May 17, 2021, Israeli airstrikes damaged the main Covid-19 testing center in Gaza City, in the occupied Gaza Strip. The Middle East Eye reported that four people were injured in the attack, including one doctor from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. According to reports, this airstrike hit a residential building and caused extensive damage to other buildings including an orphanage, a high school, and the Palestinian Ministry of Health offices.

Ashraf Al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Health Ministry, said in 2021 that the strikes “threaten to undermine the efforts of the health ministry in the face of the Covid pandemic.” According to Business Insider, the May attack caused the center to stop administering tests at a time when there was a high positivity rate and a low vaccination rate in Gaza. And just days before, a separate Israeli airstrike killed Dr. Ayman Abu al-Ouf, one of the leading doctors who oversaw the response to the coronavirus pandemic at Al-Shifa Hospital, alongside 12 members of his family.

Now, two and half years later, Gaza faces severe healthcare collapse after more than 20,000 civilians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 70% of them women and children. As many as 50,000 other civilians have been injured, disabled, and face health risks due to supply blockades and destroyed infrastructure in the territory in widespread attacks that historical scholars are calling a potential genocide.

Karamo, a former community college instructor and election-denying activist who was elevated to her post in February, has indicated she would not respect Saturday’s vote, setting the stage for a potentially messy court battle over party leadership..........

........A report released last month by Warren Carpenter, a former congressional district chair and one-time Karamo supporter, said the state party was mired in debt, on the “brink of bankruptcy” and “essentially non-functional” under her leadership.

Calls for Karamo to step down came three years after she made claims of election fraud on her Christian podcast that would propel her to a leading voice in Donald Trump’s campaign discrediting the 2020 election..........

.......“I think the chaos is far from over,” Roe said. “If this turns out to be a binding vote, I don’t think she [Karamo] or her supporters will go quietly and there will probably continue to be skirmishes throughout the election cycle.”

As the special meeting got underway on Saturday, Karamo’s administration announced it would consider a plan under which candidates for elected office would no longer be chosen by voters in a primary but by precinct delegates in a caucus.

Karamo continued to espouse her outlandish views last year after winning the party seat, echoing the QAnon conspiracy theory that a shadowy cabal of elites are harvesting children’s organs.

“There’s a ton of money involved in those freshly harvested organs,” Karamo said on a 2020 podcast hosted by RedPill78, a conspiracy theory website. She has also called Beyonce´ and Jay-Z “satanists”, said yoga is a satanic ritual and described Cardi B as a “tool of Lucifer”.

Late Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that Flynn had called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on December 29, the same day that Obama had slapped new sanctions on Russia in retaliation for its hack of the US election. The conversation covered the sanctions, and, according to two officials, suggested that the Trump administration would be rolling back the sanctions in the future.

That would mean Flynn had been actively trying to undermine Obama administration policy while not yet in office

Dec 31, 2020
🚨 Listen here please.
If you are “antifa”, “anti-fascist”, or just really hate nazis and want to punch them in the face, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GO TO DC ON 1/6.

If you do, they will USE you to create more fascism. They WANT you there.

Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙
@jimstewartson
·
Dec 31, 2020
This is not a guess btw. They are openly discussing this as a tactic. The Proud Boys are talking about dressing up in black and fighting each other to pretend aNtiFa is burning shit down.

LET THEM. It won’t work unless you show up. DON’T.
Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙
@jimstewartson
·
Dec 31, 2020
Here’s more detail on what they’re doing — #tEhStorm:
Quote
Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙
@jimstewartson
·
Dec 30, 2020
OK, guys. I regret to inform you that the QAnon finale appears to have arrived.

Here is the hashtag I will use for this part of our collective nightmare:
#tEhStorm 😑
1/
Show more
Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙
@jimstewartson
·
Dec 31, 2020
Relevant. 😑

Enrique Tarrio, head of the Proud Boys, is ANNOUNCING that he wants this fight with ANTIFA. WHY?

Roger Stone is why. Tarrio is Roger’s bitch. Roger is Trump’s bitch.

This really is not complicated. STAY THE FUCK AWAY.

Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙
@jimstewartson
·
Dec 31, 2020
And of course there is always this fucking traitor to make sure everyone’s clear who’s in charge.

At the end he says, “See you on the 6th.”

BTW, for levity, he will bring the MyPillow guy. I’m not kidding in any way.
@realMikeLindell
is a noxious narcissistic fascist. 🤷‍♂️

"My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than can be reasonably expected; but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you...

— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) January 1, 2021

Documents obtained by the committee showed that, beginning at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 6, top officials at the Defense Department received pleas for help from the Capitol Police chief, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington and other officials. But the National Guard did not arrive until 5:20 p.m., more than four hours after the Capitol perimeter had been breached.

“The National Guard was literally waiting, all ready to go, and they didn’t receive the green light for a critical time period, hours on end,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California and a member of the committee.
Lawmakers had tough questions for Gen. Charles Flynn, who commands the U.S. Army Pacific, and Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, the director of the Army staff, both of whom were involved in a key phone call with police leaders during the riot in which Army officials worried aloud about the “optics” of sending in the Guard, according to those involved. It was the first time lawmakers had heard from either general.

In their testimony, they described the frantic call in which the chiefs of the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police became agitated as they tried unsuccessfully to get military support while rioters attacked their officers at the Capitol.......

........General Flynn is the brother of Michael T. Flynn, President Donald J. Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser who has emerged as one of the former president’s biggest promoters of the lie of a stolen election.