Showing results by author "Matthew Russell Lee" in All Categories

The night before Live Nation's Michael Rapino was to testify in the antitrust trial against him, a flurry of filing went into the docket seeking to seal exhibits he would be asked about. Earlier in the case I had filed to unseal, and largely won. But now things were moving faster. DOJ had dropped out of the case in with a murky settlement deal that let Live Nation keep Ticketmaster. And the proceeding states, as they called themselves, seemed to be acquiescing in the sealing requests. I filed seeking to unseal anyway. This was the big one. And the next morning Rapino, who I'd manage to ...

It was the first day of witnesses in the US v. Live Nation trial when text messages between Patti Kim and John Abbamondi of Barclays Center were discussed but deemed sealed. Later on March 4, I filed a motion to unseal that exhibit, and others in the case. Judge Arun Subramanian granted it: "The Court received the attached communication from Matthew Lee of Inner City Press. It is ORDERED that the text exchange between John Abbamondi and Patti Kim, marked and admitted as Plaintiff Exhibit 654 be unsealed and filed on ECF for public access. It is further ORDERED that Plaintiff Exhibit 230 be ...

On November 16, 2023 a lawsuit against Sean Combs went live in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Within days it was settled. But the 35-page complaint remained in the PACER system. Its first page said, in red, "Trigger Warning: This document contains highly graphic information of a sexual nature, including sexual assault." Inner City Press covered it, and other cases filed in 2024: Lil Rod Jones, Adria English, Jane Doe, Crystal McKinney. On September 17, 2024 Sean Combs was brought by US Marshals before SDNY Magistrate Judge Robyn F. Tarnofsky. He had been ...

Cryptocurrency had come a long way since the draining of the DAO in 2016. Now sandwich attackers cruised the MEV pool looking for victims. Behind them lurked the Low Carb Crusader, eying to kick out the top of the sandwich and leave it open face. Was it a crime? The SDNY prosecutors, at least in 2024 when the case was brought, thought so. But why had the new Administration continued to pursue the case, as it had that of Roman Storm of Tornado Cash? CZ was given a pardon, though the President said he didn't know who he was. Among the Google searches proffered by the SDNY prosecutors against ...

Durante el juicio de Juan Orlando Hernández testificó sobre reuniones con los presidentes estadounidenses Trump, Obama y Biden, haciendo afirmaciones sobre la Guerra contra las Drogas. Pero había sido extraditado de Honduras por cargos de narcotráfico. Este es el relato paso a paso del juicio, con análisis y hasta versos, Narco Presidentes Blues... Juan Orlando Hernández y su abogado principal, Raymond Colón, estaban teniendo un desacuerdo, antes de que Colón interrogara al narcotraficante confeso y asesinara a Devis Rivera Maradiaga. "Le estás dando demasiada importancia", le dijo...

As inside the increasingly marginal United Nations a process begins to select a successor to Antonio Guterres who stole the post from female candidates in 2016 and drove the UN into the ground including through censorship, it is time to review the history. Inner City Press, which Guterres banned from the UN as it reported on his link with briber CEFC China Energy and to sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, both convicted in the SDNY Federal court, closely covered Guterres' dubious selection, and after. Antonio Guterres was out of the United Nations system, getting paid by Lisbon-based ...

Bob Menendez as his nine-week second trial went on got more vocal, on the walk from the courthouse door to his waiting black car, with its New Jersey license plates. We are shredding their case, he said near the end. He explained his decision not to testify by saying the government had not proved every element of their case. But hadn't they proved some? Bob was gone, headed east on Worth Street toward Chinatown's Kim Lau Square. Kurt Wheelock after live tweeting each trial day went down onto Worth Street to try to ask Bob question. He asked him about the Biden - Trump debate - "I'll ...

When at last the Sam Bankman-Fried trial started on October 3, 2023 with jury selection, after Sam had been remanded to the MDC jail, the courtroom on the 26th floor was full, and an overflow room established on the 23rd. The author went back and forth between them, and down to the Press Room he'd been admitted to after six months of covering cases here, after he was thrown out of the UN and took on this new identity. Between the three locations he began to paint of picture of the trial, of Sam and the world around him. The portrait was made up of tweets or Xs, of vlogs filmed out on Foley ...

In outlaw music there is always the question of authenticity. Daniel Hernandez became Tekashi 6ix9ine and hooked up with the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods to shoot a video. Then he became their cash cow, and some of them became his muscle, shoot-out in a Barclay's Center hallway. They turned on Tekashi and he became a cooperator against them, returning to SDNY on violations of supervised release then back out on the concert tour. For drill rapper Kay Flock it was different. He really was from Sev Side, 187th Street. He wasn't an appendage to his group: he was central to it. When with seven he ...

This is a story of the collections cases against former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where he was once US Attorney. It all began in Brooklyn, with Mafia ties alleged, a motivation. Manhattan College in The Bronx to 1965, NYU Law then a clerkship doe Judge Lloyd Francis MacMahon in, where else, SDNY. This Court would keep reappearing, with Giuliani moving from one side of the "v." to the other (he also got sued a lot as NYC Mayor). Rudy rose to acclaim taking on a corrupt politician, Rep. Bertram Podell. With the election of ...

Starting on December 1, 2025 New York State Justice Gregory Carro held a suppression hearing in People versus Luigi Mangione. After two days he announced that all exhibits would be sealed. That night by email, and the next day by fax and then in person, I turned in a letter for Inner City Press, asking to be heard, to unseal exhibits. It happened. And the witnesses, mostly from the Altoona Police Department, follow one after the other on the stand. Just like the stills and snuff film in the exhibit, a picture emerged, of the Altoona Police Department, and the wider world. This is that story...

After Kurt Wheelock was thrown out of the UN for digging and blogging about Secretary General Antonio Guterres' links to the China Energy Fund Committee, he found himself down in DC, covering the spy trial of Pras Michel of the Fugees. Pras was charged with working for Chinese intelligence, trying to get Miles Guo Wengui extradited to China, at the request of Jho Low. Kurt covered the Jho Low case too, even with Jho Low absconded to China. It was in Federal court not in Manhattan but Brooklyn. On trial a former banker from Goldman Sachs, testified against by a cooperator who had been ...

During the trial, BNP's lawyer repeatedly tried to blame others, including China. It wasn't BNP that enabled Bashir, their argument was. It was China. It is true: when I was in South Sudan covering the UN Security Council's whirlwind visit, we stayed in the Beijing Juba hotel. It was a collection of trailers with a narrow walkway between them. In the reception building was a large red flag, that of the People's Republic of China. The CCP had worked with Bashir, and now with Juba. At the UN, China used NGOs like the China Energy Fund Committee to buy access - including to Chad's oil in ...

It was May 24, 2022 in a garden next to the SDNY Federal courthouse. Eric Adams stood at the podium and ran thought his story, his campaign and elevator pitch: "Arrested at 15, negative encounters with the police… South Jamaica, Queens, going into the classroom and finding 'Dummy' written on the back of my chair… Never learned I had dyslexia until I was in college, tempted to drop out… But I turned pain into purpose." The question, to some, was to what purpose? Two and a half years later, Adams was back in SDNY, this time under Federal indictment for Turkish bribes and straw donors. ...

It was a normal U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday, May 10, 2022. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said, "A stablecoin known as TerraUSD experienced a run and declined in value." That had started late on May 8, when UST ostensibly pegged to the U.S. dollar had fallen lower by a penny, then by thirty cents, then sixty. "I certainly think there are many risks associated with cryptocurrencies," Yellen replies to a question from Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada, who had said "the crypto currency market is now larger than the subprime mortgage market which ...

The day of opening arguments in the Trump trial, the line started before dawn. The area beside 111 Centre Street was locked off; some attributed it to increased security after the self-immolation in Collect Pond Park on Friday. There were line-sitters, some of whom became organizers of the lines. After the sun came up, a group of protests of decidedly middle age showed up from the side of the Housing Court building, chanting about election interference. Some asked online, Which side of they on? Since both sides now alleged election interference by the other. Up in the courtroom, Judge ...

Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey pushed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hard right on Cuba and Iran until he ran into an indictment for helping Egypt and Qatar. This is that story. Menendez testified against his mentor William Musto, wearing a bullet-proof vest, and donated for the defense of anti-Castro bombers of Omega 7. By 2024 he decried Jose Uribe who testified against him, after deploying the cards of terrorism, sexual harassment and nepotism against nominees. He wanted his son Rob, who said he did not speak Spanish, to take his seat. He vowed to run as an independent. ...

Kevin Spacey faced a civil trial for sexual misconduct held in October 2022, about an evening in 1986. During the trial his lawyers attacked plaintiff Anthony Rapp, who was 14-years-old when he says Spacey lifted him up like a bride and then grinded against him, as an envious narcissist. Journalist and lawyer Matthew Russell Lee covered the trial in depth, live tweeting the testimony and arguments and putting questions to Spacey outside the SDNY courthouse afterward, including about his flights on Jeffrey Epstein's plane along with Bill Clinton and Chris Tucker https://twitter.com/...

On the second day of Stormy Daniels in the Trump Trial, defense lawyer Susan Necheles asked about her "Make America Horny" tour and whether her boyfriend of the time had thought she'd lost her mind. As to the tour, Daniels said she hadn't named it, and didn't like the name. Questions about attacks by and apparently on the ex-boyfriend were excluded by Justice Merchan. Defense lawyer Todd Blanche, who sat chatting with Trump during many of the sidebars, ended the morning by saying he would be moving to exclude Karen McDougal's testimony, after again moving for a mistrial based on Daniels. It...

This is the story of the prosecution of Daniel Penny, after the death of Jordan Neely in the F Train in Manhattan, and how it resulted in a Not Guilty verdict on Count 2 on December 9, 2024. It is a sequel to "Daniel Penny for Your Thoughts," about the evidence phase of the trial. It covers both sides arguments, the judges rulings, and some narrative in the voice of one Kurt Wheelock, featured in Inner City Press books by Matthew Russell Lee all the way back to "Predatory Bender." Kurt Wheelock leaves his camera and his laptop's external battery in his cubicle in the Press Room of the ...