08 December 22
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The real, pitiful meaning of the company’s tax fraud convictions.
By day’s end, Trump’s hand-picked candidate, Herschel Walker, had lost a runoff for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia—further evidence of Trump’s toxic effect on the Republican Party’s electoral prospects in purple states. And hours earlier, the Washington Post reported that the new Justice Department special counsel, Jack Smith, had sent a wave of subpoenas to local officials in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin as part of an investigation into Trump’s efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election—an investigation that could put the former president in criminal jeopardy.
By contrast, the guilty verdict rendered Tuesday—which relates to charges that two Trump entities paid more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation to former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and other executives as part of a scheme to dodge federal and state income and payroll taxes—likely won’t have huge ramifications for Trump or his business empire.
That the former president has more to worry about than those convictions says something about the mounting legal and political challenges facing him. But it also says a lot about the consequences of corporate criminal liability, which—in Trump’s case—might be little more than a nothingburger.
For one thing, the financial penalty in the New York case—the only legal consequence that’s more than symbolic—will be capped at $1.61 million ($250,000 for each of six tax counts, plus $10,000 for each of 11 nontax counts). That’s serious money for you and me, but peanuts for the former president, whose net worth, according to Forbes, was approximately $3.2 billion as of September 2022. To put the penalty in perspective, $1.61 million is only about one-fourth as much as Trump’s Truth Social network lost in the first half of 2022 alone. (The exact amount of the financial penalty will be determined by a judge at sentencing next month.)
Moreover, while many headlines on Tuesday proclaimed that the “Trump Organization” had been found guilty, the convictions don’t apply to the entire Trump business empire. The Manhattan district attorney brought charges and obtained convictions against only two of Trump’s myriad entities: Trump Corporation, which employs senior managers of the Trump Organization; and Trump Payroll Corp., which processes paychecks for Trump Organization staff.
Even for those two entities, conviction is not a death sentence. Plenty of other firms have rebounded from criminal convictions, including the retail giant Wal-Mart Stores; oil behemoth Exxon Mobil; the biopharmaceutical firms Abbott Laboratories, Bayer, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, and Pfizer; the carmaker Volkswagen; and financial institutions Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS. The Zürich-headquartered bank Credit Suisse pleaded guilty in 2014 to criminal tax fraud charges far more serious than anything alleged against the two Trump entities—that it had helped U.S. clients hide potentially billions of dollars from the IRS—and it, too, survived the fallout.
A criminal conviction can be devastating in an industry such as accounting, where a firm’s viability depends upon its reputation for trustworthiness. But it’s doubtful that the Trump Organization’s customers and counterparties—for example, tenants at its properties, patrons at its golf courses, and financial institutions that have extended credit to Trump-affiliated borrowers—believed before Tuesday that the Trump Organization was a paragon of virtue. Given all of Trump’s well-publicized misdeeds over the past several years, it boggles the mind to think that anyone who has continued to do business with Trump up until now would quit just because 12 jurors in a Manhattan courtroom concluded that two Trump subsidiaries perpetrated a 15-year-long tax fraud.
To be sure, we don’t know what nuggets might be lurking inside Trump’s loan covenants, which theoretically could include terms that allow lenders to accelerate payments if Trump-affiliated entities are convicted criminally. The Trump Organization has had nearly a year and a half since the indictment of the two entities to prepare for any liquidity consequences of a conviction, though long-term planning isn’t exactly the former president’s forte.
Personally, though, Trump appears to have dodged another bullet: While Weisselberg pleaded guilty, testified against the Trump companies, and now faces five months in prison, Weisselberg didn’t directly implicate his longtime boss. It remains to be seen whether Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and not lose any voters, as he once boasted, but he evidently can preside over entities that engage in brazen tax fraud—out of a Fifth Avenue office, no less—and for all practical purposes get away with it.
Still, the famous teetotaler who happens to own a winery shouldn’t be toasting to his victory just yet.
First, the tax fraud case that resulted in Tuesday’s guilty verdict isn’t the most significant legal threat that Trump faces in New York. The civil lawsuit filed in September by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, three of his children, and a dozen other individuals and entities in the Trump orbit could lead to much larger financial consequences—up to $250 million in disgorgement—as well as a five-year bar on Trump engaging in commercial real estate acquisitions in the state and a lifetime ban against him serving as a director or officer of any New York–registered business entity. (The bank and insurance fraud allegations in that lawsuit are unrelated to the tax fraud charges that led to Tuesday’s convictions.) Meanwhile, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has reportedly resumed a criminal probe into hush-money payments to actress Stormy Daniels, though Bragg would face high legal hurdles if he sought to bring charges against Trump in that case.
More worryingly for the former president, the subpoenas to local officials in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin reported Tuesday—which ask for all communications from June 2020 through Inauguration Day in 2021 with Trump, Trump’s campaign, and a long list of Trump allies that includes former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani—are a further signal that special counsel Jack Smith’s inquiry is kicking into high gear. The famously aggressive Smith, who was named special counsel by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland last month, has shown a willingness—even eagerness—to bring charges against high-profile defendants in the past.
So Trump still might face a criminal indictment in the next two years—in Smith’s Jan. 6–related inquiry or in an investigation by the D.A. in Georgia’s Fulton County regarding interference in that state’s 2020 vote count. On Tuesday, a Florida appeals court upheld a state trial judge’s order compelling former national security adviser Michael Flynn to testify before a grand jury in the Fulton County case.
Finally, the Georgia runoff results—the last in a string of midterm setbacks for Trump-picked candidates—are likely to lead more voters and elected officials within the GOP to seek an alternate standard-bearer two years from now. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who has butted heads with Trump since 2020, waltzed to reelection last month by more than a 7 percentage point margin against Democrat Stacey Abrams. Meanwhile, Walker—who has gone all-in on the former president’s election fraud theories—lost Tuesday night in the same state by almost 3 percentage points (a margin that may change slightly as the last few ballots are tallied). If the Jan. 6 insurrection didn’t lead Republicans to dump Trump, it’s hard to see how criminal tax convictions for two of his companies would change the calculus. But the fact that he has become the GOP’s biggest loser at the ballot box in general elections—especially in swing states that are pivotal to the party’s Electoral College prospects—may be grounds for mutiny.
So while criminal charges against the former president could endanger his future as a free private citizen, and the verdict from Georgia voters suggests that his political future is in doubt, too, Tuesday’s convictions in the New York tax fraud case won’t be Trump’s Waterloo.
And that fact is arguably as much of a scandal as the 15-year tax fraud scheme that the Manhattan D.A. uncovered. Corporate crime ought to be more than a nothingburger for the entities that perpetrate it, and maybe Tuesday’s verdict will motivate New York to revisit its low caps on financial penalties. The optimal penalty for corporate misdeeds might be hard to specify precisely, but it probably ought to be high enough to make a 17-count criminal conviction for a corporation the worst part of its owner’s day.
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Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who was detained and accused of espionage, holds a sign as he stands inside a defendants' cage during his verdict hearing in Moscow on Monday. (photo: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: Who Is the Russian Arms Dealer That the US Exchanged for Brittney Griner?
“I am greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four-year anniversary of my arrest is coming up," Whelan said in a phone interview with CNN from the penal colony where he is being held in a remote part of Russia. “I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here.”
Whelan said he "was led to believe that things were moving in the right direction, and that the governments were negotiating and that something would happen fairly soon.”
The Biden administration announced Thursday that Griner was freed in exchange for Viktor Bout, a convicted arms dealer who had been serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States.
Whelan’s brother, David, said Thursday that the Biden administration “made the right decision” in agreeing to the prisoner swap that freed Griner.
“I am so glad that Brittney Griner is on her way home,” David Whelan said in a lengthy statement. “As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays.
“There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed and for them to go home,” David Whelan continued. “The Biden Administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn't going to happen.”
Earlier this year, the White House reportedly offered to exchange Bout as part of a potential deal to secure the release of Griner and Whelan.
Griner was detained in Moscow on drug-related charges in February and later sentenced to nine years in prison. Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive and former U.S. Marine, has been jailed in Russia since 2018 on espionage charges.
David Whelan said that U.S. officials let the family know in advance that Paul would not be part of the Griner-Bout swap.
“That early warning meant that our family has been able to mentally prepare for what is now a public disappointment for us,” David Whelan said. “And a catastrophe for Paul.”
Griner is the second American to be released in a prisoner swap with Russia this year. Trevor Reed, a 30-year-old U.S. Marine veteran, was released in a prisoner swap with Moscow in April.
At the White House, President Biden said that the U.S. has not given up on securing Whelan’s release.
“We did not forget about Brittney, and we have not forgotten about Paul,” Biden said. “This was not a choice of which American to bring home.”
“We brought home Trevor Reed when we had a chance earlier this year,” the president continued. “Sadly, for illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up.”
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One reason quality journalism survived after the 1960s is that institutions like the New York Times bent so as not to break. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty)
Members of NewsGuild of New York say they are stopping work in protest at management’s failure to reach deal on new contract
Newsroom employees and other members of the NewsGuild of New York say they are fed up with bargaining that has dragged on since their last contract expired in March 2021. The union announced last week that more than 1,100 employees would stage a 24-hour work stoppage starting at 12.01am on Thursday unless the two sides reached a contract deal.
Nick Confessore, a political correspondent on the paper’s national desk, told the Guardian being on strike felt like being “in mourning”.
“Our job is to cover the story,” he said. “Today, I’m stepping back from my keyboard, because I feel that in order to build a New York Times that can serve our readers best in the future, we need a better deal with the people who are here.”
He added: “We want a deal. We all have things we’d rather be doing.”
A major point of conflict in negotiations is a wage increase that averages out to 2.875%, far less than the 5% average increase the union has asked for.
Union members including Dana Goldstein, a domestic correspondent who has been with the company for six years, said the offered wage increase was “discouraging”, particularly at a time when layoffs are sweeping the news industry and the US economy is being battered by inflation.
Goldstein said: “The raises they are offering [amount] to less than a 3% annual raise over the course of this contract. In this economic climate, and given the really, very wonderful profits that the Times is making as a successful company, just a 3% annual raise is not enough for our members.”
Goldstein also expressed disappointment with the salary floor, currently $45,000 a year. The union is asking for at least $65,000.
“That’s not a living wage in New York City, which is the most expensive city in the world,” Goldstein said. “We have members whose landlords have asked for rent increases of $1,000 over the last year.”
Negotiations took place on Tuesday and some of Wednesday but the sides remained far apart on issues including wages and remote-work policies.
On Wednesday evening the union said via Twitter a deal had not been reached and the walkout was happening.
“We were ready to work for as long as it took to reach a fair deal,” it said, “but management walked away from the table with five hours to go”.
“We know what we’re worth,” the union added.
On Thursday the NewsGuild tweeted that workers were “now officially on work stoppage, the first of this scale at the company in four decades. It’s never an easy decision to refuse to do work you love, but our members are willing to do what it takes to win a better newsroom for all”.
A Times spokesperson, Danielle Rhoades Ha, said the company was still in negotiations when they were told that the strike was happening.
“It is disappointing that they are taking such an extreme action when we are not at an impasse,” she said.
Strike supporters include members of the live news desk, which covers breaking news. Employees were planning a rally for Thursday afternoon outside the newspaper’s office near Times Square.
Rhoades Ha told the Associated Press the company had “solid plans in place” to continue producing content, including relying on international reporters and other journalists who are not union members.
In a note to guild-represented staff, the deputy managing editor, Cliff Levy, called the planned strike “puzzling” and “an unsettling moment in negotiations over a new contract”. He said it would be the first strike by the bargaining unit since 1981 and “comes despite intensifying efforts by the company to make progress”.
But in a letter signed by more than 1,000 employees, the NewsGuild said management had been “dragging its feet” for nearly two years and “time is running out to reach a fair contract” by the end of the year.
The NewsGuild also said the company told employees planning to strike they would not get paid during the walkout. Members were asked to work extra hours to get work done ahead of the strike, according to the union.
The Times has seen other, shorter walkouts in recent years, including a half-day protest in August by a new union representing technology workers who claimed unfair labor practices.
In one breakthrough that both sides called significant, the company backed off its proposal to replace the existing adjustable pension plan with an enhanced 401(k) retirement plan. The Times offered instead to let the union choose between the two. The company also agreed to expand fertility treatment benefits.
Levy said the company had offered to raise wages by 5.5% upon ratification of the contract, followed by 3% hikes in 2023 and 2024. That would be an increase from the 2.2% annual increases in the expired contract. The union contends that this would not represent a true 5.5% average annual wage raise.
Stacy Cowley, a finance reporter and union representative, said the union was seeking 10% pay raises at ratification, which she said would make up for raises not received over the past two years.
She also said the union wanted the contract to guarantee employees the option to work remotely some of the time, if their roles allow it, but the company wanted the right to recall workers to the office full time. Cowley said the Times had required staff to be in office three days a week but many had been showing up less often in an informal protest.
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Last year, the Biden administration banned American companies from doing business with the Israeli NSO Group. (photo: Keren Manor/Reuters)
The market for commercial spyware — which allows governments to invade mobile phones and vacuum up data — is booming. Even the U.S. government is using it.
But the global industry for commercial spyware — which allows governments to invade mobile phones and vacuum up data — continues to boom. Even the U.S. government is using it.
The Drug Enforcement Administration is secretly deploying spyware from a different Israeli firm, according to five people familiar with the agency’s operations, in the first confirmed use of commercial spyware by the federal government.
At the same time, the use of spyware continues to proliferate around the world, with new firms — which employ former Israeli cyberintelligence veterans, some of whom worked for NSO — stepping in to fill the void left by the blacklisting. With this next generation of firms, technology that once was in the hands of a small number of nations is now ubiquitous — transforming the landscape of government spying.
One firm, selling a hacking tool called Predator and run by a former Israeli general from offices in Greece, is at the center of a political scandal in Athens over the spyware’s use against politicians and journalists.
After questions from The New York Times, the Greek government admitted that it gave the company, Intellexa, licenses to sell Predator to at least one country with a history of repression, Madagascar. The Times has also obtained a business proposal that Intellexa made to sell its products to Ukraine, which turned down the sales pitch.
Predator was found to have been used in another dozen countries since 2021, illustrating the continued demand among governments and the lack of robust international efforts to limit the use of such tools.
The Times investigation is based on an examination of thousands of pages of documents — including sealed court documents in Cyprus, classified parliamentary testimonies in Greece and a secret Israeli military police investigation — as well as interviews with more than two dozen government and judicial officials, law enforcement agents, business executives and hacking victims in five countries.
The most sophisticated spyware tools — like NSO’s Pegasus — have “zero-click” technology, meaning they can stealthily and remotely extract everything from a target’s mobile phone, without the user having to click on a malicious link to give Pegasus remote access. They can also turn the mobile phone into a tracking and secret recording device, allowing the phone to spy on its owner. But hacking tools without zero-click capability, which are considerably cheaper, also have a significant market.
Commercial spyware has been used by intelligence services and police forces to hack phones used by drug networks and terrorist groups. But it has also been abused by numerous authoritarian regimes and democracies to spy on political opponents and journalists. This has led governments to a sometimes tortured rationale for their use — including an emerging White House position that the justification for using these powerful weapons depends in part on who is using them and against whom.
The Biden administration is trying to impose some degree of order to the global chaos, but in this environment, the United States has played both arsonist and firefighter. Besides the D.E.A.’s use of spyware — in this case, a tool called Graphite, made by the Israeli firm Paragon — the C.I.A. during the Trump administration purchased Pegasus for the government of Djibouti, which used the hacking tool for at least a year. And F.B.I. officials made a push in late 2020 and the first half of 2021 to deploy Pegasus in their own criminal investigations before the bureau ultimately abandoned the idea.
In a statement to The Times, the Drug Enforcement Administration said that “the men and women of the D.E.A. are using every lawful investigative tool available to pursue the foreign-based cartels and individuals operating around the world responsible for the drug-poisoning deaths of 107,622 Americans last year.”
Steven Feldstein, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, has documented the use of spyware by at least 73 countries.
“The penalties against NSO and its ilk are important,” he said. “But in reality, other vendors are stepping in. And there’s no sign it’s going away.”
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Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, center, a Democrat who is the top official in Texas' largest county. (photo: Michael Wyke/AP)
Republicans are accusing Harris County officials of "election improprieties" that resulted in delayed polling site openings, paper ballot shortages and staffing issues on Election Day, among other things.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced last month that she was mandated to open an investigation into the county's midterm election following requests from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas secretary of state's office.
In a Nov. 14 letter, the secretary of state's office told Ogg that it was seeking to review "possible unlawful conduct regarding the handling of blank paper ballots" during the election. State officials say their preliminary investigation, based on interviews with election judges, found the county may have been in violation of at least two sections of the Texas Election Code. In the letter itself, the secretary of state's office did not provide any evidence of intentional criminal conduct.
Due to the ongoing investigation, state officials said they were unable to answer questions about the possible criminal charges against Harris County. The secretary of state's office added that it had staffers in Harris County to help resolve issues on Election Day.
However, local officials in Houston say this probe is part of a multi-year Republican effort to intimidate the state's most racially diverse and populous county.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee told NPR the investigation is "just an escalation of the unnecessary and unwarranted scrutiny that they've applied to Harris County elections since the county went blue" in 2018.
In the past several years, Menefee said, state Republicans have filed lawsuits against the county, and threatened more. He says state election officials have also conducted multiple audits in the county, which have now escalated to a criminal investigation.
"It's unsurprising but unfortunately it is incredibly shocking that they would stoop to this level to try to suggest criminal conduct when the folks here on the ground are just doing the best they can to run elections," Menefee said.
Harris County has had election woes
Over the past several years, Harris County elections have been plagued with various issues.
Following the state's March primary this year, then-Harris County Supervisor of Elections Isabel Longoria resigned after thousands of mail ballots were not counted on Election Day, as required by state law. It was reported that there were also issues with voting machines and staffing.
And during the November election this year, many of the technical and staffing issues persisted, according to reports filed by election inspectors to the secretary of state.
Election inspectors — who are neutral third-party observers, often state employees who volunteer each election year — reported issues at some polling sites with getting voting machines to work and with scanning ballots, along with certain locations not having enough poll workers and equipment.
In a statement last month, Abbott said "voters in Harris County deserve to know what happened" during the election.
"Integrity in the election process is essential," he said. "To achieve that standard, a thorough investigation is warranted."
Menefee said these issues are not unheard of in counties of Harris' size. It has roughly 4.7 million residents.
"When you have that many people involved in the election process you are going to have issues pop up," he said.
Menefee said the county has "always had logistical and operational issues," due to the fact that the county has to run hundreds of polling sites every election. He said that's been true when both Democrats and Republicans ran elections there.
The issue of intent is key
Daniel Griffith — senior policy director for Secure Democracy USA, an election policy advocacy group — said proving intent could be a hurdle to any criminal charges.
"In order to make out something that rises to the criminal level, they would have to prove really a premeditated intent," he told NPR.
According to at least one of the sections of the election code cited by the Texas secretary of state's office, "a person commits an offense if the person is responsible for distributing election supplies for an election and intentionally fails to distribute any of the supplies by the deadline."
Menefee said he believes the investigation is not going to find evidence that there was any intent among county staff to create problems for voters in 2022.
"I am sure when the smoke clears on this you are not going to find any examples of people trying to break the law or trying to sabotage our elections," he said. "Instead you are going to find errors with good people trying to do good work."
Increased criminalization of elections
Ultimately what is happening in Texas, Griffith said, is part of a larger trend in Republican-led states. He said there has been an increase in criminalizing elections.
"These issues I think are being used to a certain extent to justify this additional involvement of law enforcement," Griffith said.
He pointed to Florida state leaders recently creating an elections crimes unit and Georgia lawmakers expanding law enforcement investigatory power in elections, which he says could intimidate voters and election workers.
In Texas, the state's Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, has charged a record number of people with alleged voter fraud. GOP state lawmakers have also passed new laws that increase potential criminal penalties against voters and election workers. Voting rights advocates have said many of these criminal offenses are related to innocent mistakes people make while casting ballots.
Griffith said instead of criminal investigations, state leaders in Texas should be working with Harris County officials to solve the problems they are facing — which could include more funding and resources for the large county.
"The atmosphere right now does not allow for those conversations," he said. "The involvement of law enforcement only increases the inability to communicate and officials to cooperate."
This escalation in tension comes right as Texas lawmakers are preparing for a legislative session early next year. In the past few sessions, Harris County elections have been the focus of many hearings and even prominent voting measures.
Griffith said Texas lawmakers have already pre-filed bills that would increase law enforcement involvement in state elections.
He said he's also worried this new investigation is a precursor to the state playing a bigger role in Harris County elections, similar to certain efforts in Georgia.
Menefee said this is a concern of his, as well.
"It's definitely a fear that we have here in Harris County that the state of Texas is going to use all these basic errors as a pretext to take over our elections," he said.
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A police motorcycle burns during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran on Sept. 19. (photo: Wana News Agency/Reuters)
ALSO SEE: Iranian Forces Shooting at Faces and Genitals of Female Protesters, Medics Say
The prisoner — identified by Mizan, the news site of the country’s judiciary, as Mohsen Shekari — was convicted of “waging war against God” on Nov. 20 and sentenced to death by Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, Mizan said. Authorities accused him of repeatedly attacking a paramilitary guard with a knife and of disturbing public order by blocking a thoroughfare in Iran’s capital, Tehran, during a protest in late September.
“Iranian authorities have executed a protester, sentenced to death in show trials without any due process,” tweeted Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights.
His execution “must be [met] with STRONG reactions otherwise we will be facing daily executions of protesters,” wrote Amiry-Moghaddam. “This execution must have rapid practical consequences internationally.”
The execution followed a three-day, nationwide labor strike in support of the protests that was the country’s largest in decades and raised the pressure on authorities to respond to the unrest that they appear unable, so far, to contain.
The HRANA activist news agency estimates that more than 400 civilians have been killed and some 18,000 arrested in nearly three months of protests, which began in September in response to the alleged police killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini and have grown into broad calls to oust Iran’s clerical leaders.
Along with Tehran’s ongoing campaigns of violence and intimidation, including military-style assaults on Kurdish areas, since mid-November Iranian authorities have sentenced at least a dozen people to death for crimes allegedly committed during protests, human rights groups estimate. More people stand accused of capital crimes and could face the death penalty if convicted.
Exact figures are difficult to determine as Iranian authorities often do not release details on the status of detainees, have blocked and restricted communication networks, and have threatened the families of deceased and arrested protesters against speaking out.
The U.N. special rapporteur on Iran, Javaid Rehman, told Reuters in late November that he was worried by the “campaign” of death sentences accompanying the crackdown.
Experts have looked to whether Tehran carries out executions as a harbinger of its response to the ongoing uprising — whether it would continue with its repression, or violently ramp up efforts to squash any protests.
On Monday, a branch of the Revolutionary Court in Karaj, outside Tehran, sentenced five people to death over charges that they killed a member of the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force connected to the Revolutionary Guard, during a demonstration in November. Another 10 people who were part of the same mass trial were given lengthy prison sentences, including three minors who were the first known protesting juveniles to be charged with a capital crime.
Iran, which is among the world’s top countries for executions of both adults and minors, has over the last decade and a half executed several people for participating in anti-government protests. But Tehran has also commuted or quietly not applied some sentences.
Political prisoners are typically tried in revolutionary courts, a parallel-track legal system designed to protect the Iranian regime, resulting in a judicial system stacked against the protesters and little expectation of a fair trial or due process.
Trials often rely on fabricated evidence and defendants are frequently tortured or forced into making confessions and incriminating statements, rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly documented.
Defendants tried in the Revolutionary Court are also denied lawyers of their choosing; Shekari’s court-appointed lawyers’ request to appeal his sentence was denied, Mizan said.
Shekari told the court that an acquaintance offered him to money to attack security forces, Mizan reported. After his execution, state media released edited clips of Shekari’s alleged confessions.
Iran’s leaders have blamed the ongoing unrest on “foreign instigators,” such as the CIA, without citing evidence.
The judge who tried Shekari’s case, Abolghassem Salavati, is nicknamed “the Judge of Death” because of his reputation for handing out lengthy prison and death sentences.
In 2019, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Salavati for sentencing “political prisoners, human right activists, media workers and others seeking to exercise freedom of assembly to lengthy prison terms as well as several death sentences.”
The massive crude pipeline, which can carry more than 600,000 barrels of oil from Canada to US markets, was shuttered Wednesday night.
West Texas Intermediate oil futures briefly jumped above $75 per barrel. Physical crude prices on the Gulf Coast also surged on expectations of tighter supplies following the outage.
A prolonged disruption would significantly tighten the availability of oil in Cushing, Oklahoma, the delivery point for benchmark US futures. Inventories at the hub are already at their lowest since July — and at multi-year lows seasonally — after refineries ramped up processing in response to strong gasoline demand. The outage comes at the end of a year in which record fuel prices have become a major domestic political issue.
The Keystone system begins in western Canada and runs to Nebraska, where it splits. One branch heads east to Illinois and the other runs south through Oklahoma and onward to America’s refining hub on the Texas Gulf Coast.
The spill follows several other leaks to hit Keystone in the past several years. The system was shut in October 2019 after it spilled thousands of barrels of oil in North Dakota.
Traders said they expect the latest outage to last upwards of a week since it affects a waterway, which can potentially complicate cleanup efforts. Calgary-based TC didn’t immediately provide an estimate of how much crude leaked or a timeline for a restart.
The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy confirmed the incident occurred in Kansas. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a federal regulator, said it deployed personnel to the site of an oil leak near Washington, Kansas, on Wednesday.
“PHMSA’s investigation of the cause of the leak is ongoing,” the agency said.
With refinery runs in the Midwest at their strongest since August, the US crude market could now get very tight. WTI rose as much as 4.8% before paring gains. It traded at $72.44 at 12:06pm. in New York. The nearest time spread for the benchmark surged as much as 53 cents into a bullish backwardation structure, a phenomenon that typically shows there’s concern about supply.
Physical markets in the US Gulf Coast are signaling tightness, too. Gulf Coast sour crude prices have risen in response to the outage. Mars Blend, a medium sour benchmark, strengthened by about 30 cents, according to Link Data Services.
In contrast, heavy crudes such as Western Canadian Select (WCS) in Canada declined by $4.70 a barrel, according to data from Bloomberg, as the outage threatens to back up more Canadian crude in the Hardisty area.
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