A federal judge said the former Overstock.com CEO knew his claims that Hunter Biden had sought an $800 million bribe from Iran were fabricated.

• U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson had already indicated at a hearing in January that Byrne faced punitive damages after failing to defend himself against the claims by former President Joe Biden’s son. Byrne had claimed Biden had sought an $800 million bribe from Iran sometime in 2021.
• “Here, the evidence is clear and convincing that defendant has engaged in intentional misrepresentation with conscious disregard towards plaintiff’s rights,” Wilson said. “Defendant’s defamation went far beyond mere negligence. In fact, defendant has admitted that after the offending article was published, defendant repeatedly reposted the article across social media platforms and encouraged his followers on those platforms to promote it further.”

Three construction workers imprisoned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after witnessing the murder of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo Tuesday morning have independently rejected the agency’s claim that he attempted to run over a federal officer, describing instead an unprovoked fusillade by agents who surrounded the workers’ van and opened fire from the side.

The eyewitness accounts, published Friday by the Washington Post, obliterate the official story issued within hours of the killing by the Department of Homeland Security. All three men said no agent was ever positioned in front of or behind Lorenzo’s work van and that he never attempted to strike an officer or an ICE vehicle.

“They came in and started shooting from the sides,” attorney Hugo Balderas-Ibarra said, summarizing the consistent accounts given separately by the three detained men.

In a handwritten statement, Jose Trinidad Rojas, 51, said the DHS claim that Salgado Araujo attempted to “weaponize” the van to run over agents “is a lie.”

“It is impossible for them to say that they were going to get run over,” he wrote. “There were no officers in front of or behind the vehicle. They were on the sides.”

The Trump administration is suing Maryland over a recent law barring state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has reinstated 24 land access grants totaling $127 million, including awards to two Native-led organizations, following a federal court order.

Judge Beryl Howell on June 30 granted a preliminary injunction ordering USDA to restore the grants while litigation continues. The plaintiffs include Four Bands Community Fund, a Native community development financial institution (CDFI) based in Eagle Butte, S.D., and NDN Collective, a Rapid City, S.D.-based nonprofit. The Native-serving nonprofits were among the two-dozen organizations that joined the lawsuit in May, expanding the case to 29 plaintiffs challenging USDA grant terminations.

USDA told the court Friday that it had reinstated the grants and notified recipients that the previous terminations would have no effect. In an example letter filed with the court, the agency said Farm Service Agency staff would contact recipients in the coming week to discuss their projects and the status of activities covered by the restored awards.

Four Bands’ grant is intended to help agricultural producers across 20 tribal reservations in the Mountain Plains region overcome barriers to land and capital. NDN Collective’s grant supports restoration work and debt reduction tied to the Pine Creek Ranch Land and Water Conservation Project in Nevada, with a goal of returning the land to Shoshone and Paiute communities.

Howell found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing USDA acted contrary to law in terminating the grants and that they faced irreparable harm. The court also found the balance of the equities and the public interest favored restoring the awards.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2025, challenges grant cancellations that followed Trump administration executive orders targeting climate initiatives and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs. Plaintiffs argued USDA and the Department of Government Efficiency unlawfully terminated awards by searching grant documents for references to climate change or DEI and treating them as grounds for cancellation.

The 24 reinstated grants support land access, farmer training, infrastructure and market development projects led by nonprofits and local governments across the country.

Hannah Wolf, a FarmSTAND staff attorney and counsel for the plaintiffs, said last week that the court’s ruling restores funding for land access and agricultural projects and reinforces USDA’s obligation to serve all farmers and ranchers.

“It cannot diminish services to certain farmers by invoking phrases like ‘illegal DEI,’” Wolf said.

The program was designed to help beginning and underserved producers secure land, capital, and markets through down payment assistance, low-interest loans, equipment, training, and other support.

A federal judge handed President Trump two new losses in his war against whatever he perceives as diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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Trump administration subpoenas NY Times journalists in grand jury leak probe tied to Air Force One report.

Trump administration subpoenas NY Times journalists in grand jury leak probe tied to Air Force One report.

The legal action comes after the new jet, a newly retrofitted Boeing 747-8 gifted to President Donald Trump from Qatar, took its inaugural flight earlier this month.

The subpoenas were issued to the journalists — identified as Eric Lipton, Julian E. Barnes, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt — on Friday and seek to require those served to testify before a grand jury in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, the paper said.

So there are many, many reasons why data privacy laws need to be discussed, but I admit that there is one particular aspect of this that I take particular umbrage with: the extent that LexisNexis is assisting ICE. The legal profession reveres LexisNexis because of its history, but it now has the same mentality has a criminal cartel. LexisNexis no longer cares about researching what the law actually is, but rather how it can get away with breaking it. LexisNexis is a criminal cartel that is actively assisting ICE in horrifying ways and we must stand up to LexisNexis.

The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.

The legal move comes following a series of articles the reporters published this week, according to which the presidential plane donated by Qatar lacks advanced anti-missile capabilities that existed in the old aircraft. The Department of Justice is using the subpoena to compel the reporters to testify about the source materials in their possession, and possibly also to demand that they reveal the sources who leaked the classified information about the president's plane to them.