Month: April 2024

On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump said that a new court ruling in Arizona upholding a near total ban on abortion in the state – based on a 19th-century law – had gone too far and “needs to be straightened out.” Under the law from 1864, anyone who performs the procedure or helps a woman access that care could face felony charges and up to two to five years in prison. The law includes an exception to save the woman’s life.

Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters after landing at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport ahead of a campaign fundraiser; when asked if the Arizona court’s judges went too far, Trump replied: “Yeah, they did …It’s all about states’ rights and it needs to be straightened out …And I’m sure that the governor and everybody else will bring it back into reason and that will be taken care of.” Trump also reiterated his position that the issue of abortion should be left up to states: “It’s the will of the people,” he said, adding that he would not sign a federal abortion ban if he is elected president again and Congress sends such legislation to his desk (per ABC News.)

When asked about a Florida court decision earlier this month that upheld the state’s 15-week ban and paved the way for a six-week ban, Trump said that “is probably going to change” while emphasizing his part in the “incredible achievement” of overruling Roe v. Wade’s abortion protections and leaving it up to the states: “We did that and now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want. It’s the will of the people. Arizona is going to definitely change, everybody wants that to happen.”

President Joe Biden’s campaign spokesman Michael Tyler responded by slamming Trump’s comments, saying the former President “lies constantly – about everything — but has one track record: banning abortion every chance he gets. Donald Trump owns the suffering and chaos happening right now, including in Arizona, because he proudly overturned Roe – something he called ‘an incredible thing’ and ‘pretty amazing’ just today.”

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Ex-Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg was sentenced on Wednesday to five months in jail for perjury after he lied under oath during his testimony in former President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial and during the investigation that preceded it. Weisselberg, 76, was ordered to serve his sentence at New York’s Riker’s Island after reaching a plea agreement last month. The hearing lasted only about two minutes.

Judge Laurie Peterson said during sentencing: “The promise is five months of incarceration. Mr. Weisselberg is there anything you’d like to say?” Weisselberg replied, “No your honor,” before he was handcuffed and taken out of the courtroom into custody.

Weisselberg was accused of committing perjury in a deposition and during testimony in Trump’s trial, including allegedly lying when he said in July 2020 that he learned Trump’s triplex apartment had been overvalued from a Forbes report, though he actually knew about it well beforehand. During his trial testimony, Weisselberg struggled to explain why the apartment, which is less than 11,000 square feet, was listed on Trump’s statements of financial condition as 30,000 square feet. Weisselberg pleaded guilty last month to two felony counts of perjury that charged him with lying under oath.

In a statement after the sentencing, Weisselberg’s attorney, Seth L. Rosenberg, said his client “accepted responsibility for his conduct and now looks forward to the end of this life-altering experience and to returning to his family and his retirement.” (per NBC News)

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The Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a 160-year-old law is still enforceable, making abortion a felony. The 4-2 court ruling upholds the 1864 law still on the books in the state, in a decision that effectively bans abortion. The Arizona Supreme Court’s new decision effectively undoes a lower court’s ruling that stated that a more recent 15-week ban from March 2022 superseded the 1864 law. The Arizona Supreme Court said it would put its decision on hold for 14 days, saying it would send the case back to a lower court so that court could consider “additional constitutional challenges” that haven’t yet been cleared up.

The 1864 law in Arizona – which was codified in 1901, and again in 1913 — includes an exception to save the woman’s life, but makes abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one. Per NBC News, this Civil War-era law, which was enacted a half-century before Arizona gained statehood, was never repealed and an appellate court ruled last year that it could remain on the books as long as it was “harmonized” with a 2022 law, leading to substantial confusion in Arizona regarding exactly when during a pregnancy abortion was outlawed.

President Joe Biden blasted the ruling in a statement from the White House: “Millions of Arizonans will soon live under an even more extreme and dangerous abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest.” Biden called the ban “cruel” and “a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom,” while promising to “continue to fight to protect reproductive rights.”

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Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley, each will spend the next 10-15 years in prison in Tuesday’s first-of-its-kind penalty. Per NPR, both parents were found guilty in separate trials on four counts of involuntary manslaughter; each of those charges carried a maximum penalty of 15 years, and the sentences are to be served concurrently.

James Crumbley, 47, and wife Jennifer, 46, are the nation’s first parents to be convicted and sentenced on charges arising from a shooting carried out by their child. They will each receive credit for 858 days already served. They each received the maximum sentences sought by prosecutors after they were found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in separate trials in February and March for the killing of Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17, in the school shooting carried out by their son, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time the shooting happened on Nov. 30, 2021.

Ethan Crumbley used a semi-automatic pistol to open fire on his classmates in 2022; Ethan, now 17, pleaded guilty as an adult to the four murders, terrorism and related charges in the 2021 shooting at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit, and was sentenced in December to life in prison without parole. Jennifer and James Crumbley had bought the firearm for him for target shooting.

As Judge Cheryl Matthews handed down the ruling in Pontiac, Mich., she noted to the courtroom the warning signs about Ethan Crumbley, adding that “parents are not expected to be psychic …But these convictions are not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could’ve halted an oncoming runaway train .. Opportunity knocked over and over again and was ignored. No one answered.”

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