The Gibson County sheriff has been indicted on 22 charges for improperly profiting off inmate labor.
Sheriff Paul Thomas was indicted on charges of theft, forgery, computer crimes and official misconduct.
Read the full storyThe Gibson County sheriff has been indicted on 22 charges for improperly profiting off inmate labor.
Sheriff Paul Thomas was indicted on charges of theft, forgery, computer crimes and official misconduct.
Read the full storyTom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said the “weaponized” Department of Justice is going after everyday Americans just as former President Donald Trump predicted, pointing to the case of The Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy who is ordered to appear in court on Monday, June 17 after his publication reported on the journal entries of Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale.
Read the full storyThe Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) marked the three year anniversary of the disappearance of Summer Wells with a video update on the case.
“We don’t have the evidence in this case to know for sure whether Summer was abducted or whether or not she walked away from her home and became lost,” said Josh Melton, the assistant director of TBI’s Criminal Investigation Division, in a video posted to X. “It’s really important for us to not focus all our attention on just one of those two.”
Read the full storyHunter Biden is dropping a lawsuit against former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani that accused him of manipulating data found on the first son’s laptop.
Hunter’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, filed the stipulation for dismissing the case Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Read the full storyA former Virginia delegate has filed an injunction against the city of Chesapeake for its prosecutions of speed camera violations in a case that could have implications for the whole state.
Virginia law allows the city to prosecute cases in a way that may violate the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution, according to attorney and former delegate for Hampton Roads District 83 Tim Anderson.
Read the full storyPennsylvania tenants and homeowners may soon get clear legislative guidance overcoming improperly claimed “squatter’s rights.”
On Wednesday, the state Senate OK’d a clear outline for property owners to remove squatters who have claimed rights to a dwelling that conflicts with state law.
Read the full storyCovenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote at least 17 times about her gender, struggle with her gender identity, or transgenderism either directly or indirectly in the journal police recovered from her vehicle.
The Tennessee Star confirmed last week it obtained about 80 pages of Hale’s writings from the journal, as well as documents related to the police investigation, from a source familiar with the Covenant case.
Read the full storyThe Supreme Court on Friday struck down a federal rule put in place during former President Donald Trump’s administration that prohibited bump stocks for guns, handing a major victory to Second Amendment advocates.
In a 6-3, ruling, the court ruled the devices added to semiautomatic weapons to make them fire faster does not convert weapons into prohibited machine guns.
Read the full storyFormer acting Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark raised three concerns on Thursday in response to news that Michael Patrick Leahy, the editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Star and CEO of its publisher Star News Digital Media, Inc. (SNDM), was compelled to appear in court on Monday.
Tennessee Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea L. Myles first ordered Leahy to appear in court on June 10 after The Star published dozens of articles reporting the journal entries of Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale. The Star confirmed last week it obtained Hale’s journal and a portion of police documents from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation.
Read the full storyCovenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote in the journal police recovered from her vehicle about her social isolation and inability to live independently.
The Tennessee Star confirmed last week it obtained about 80 pages of Hale’s writings from a source close to the Covenant investigation, including the lengthy entry titled “My Brain… This Life.”
Read the full storyCovenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a biological female who identified as a transgender male, wrote in her journal about consuming Bud Light just over one month after the Anheuser-Busch InBev brewing company paid Dylan Mulvaney, a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman, to promote its product.
The Tennessee Star confirmed last week it obtained about 80 pages of Hale’s writings, recovered from her vehicle by police, from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation.
Read the full storyThe Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) on Friday confirmed the authenticity of the 80 pages of writings from the journal of Covenant School killer Audrey Hale, which were obtained by The Tennessee Star last week.
A Friday morning legal filing by the police department involves a declaration by MNPD Lieutenant Alfredo Arevalo, who claimed to have information about the possible identity of the individual or group of people who provided the Covenant materials to The Star.
Read the full storyAccording to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), two Blount County sheriff’s deputies were shot in the line of duty Tuesday afternoon.
TBI said the deputies were called to a domestic disturbance.
Read the full storyThree coalitions of business interests are suing the Biden administration over its recently-finalized emissions standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles.
The coalitions — which include the American Petroleum Institute (API), the American Farm Bureau, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), numerous car dealers and more — filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Thursday morning to try to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rules, which critics have characterized as an electric vehicle (EV) “mandate.” The regulations will require manufacturers to ensure that up to 56 percent of all new light-duty vehicle sales are EVs by model year 2032, according to the EPA.
Read the full storyMaricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell has no plans to stand down after Attorney General Kris Mayes requested that there only be one investigation into the Hobbs administration’s “pay to play” scheme allegations.
Sunshine Residential Homes gave nearly $400,000 to Hobbs and the state Democratic Party, and it was one of the group home operators with contracts with the state that received a substantial increase in its daily per child pay rate, roughly 60%, by the Department of Child Safety, the Arizona Republic reported. Mayes has already opened an investigation following a request by Senate President Pro Tempore T.J. Shope, but Mitchell is also planning to assist the Auditor General’s office after they reached out to Mitchell.
Read the full storyOhio’s attorney general and Columbus-based policy group are responding to the city of Columbus’ attempt to lift a restraining order and implement a series of gun regulations passed in 2022.
However, the Republican AG and The Buckeye Institute are on different sides.
Read the full storyA Michigan judge partially ruled against Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s lenient guidance on signature verification, following a lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee.
On Wednesday, Michigan Court of Claims Judge Christopher Yates ruled “that the ‘initial presumption’ of validity in signature verification of absentee-ballot applications and envelopes mandated by the December 2023 guidance manual” issued by Benson “is incompatible with the Constitution and laws of the State of Michigan.”
Read the full storyA Texas judge granted an injunction Tuesday against a new Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) rule that changes the definition of a “firearms dealer.”
The ATF rule broadens the definition of “engaged in business” to extend beyond merely a “gunsmith or pawnbroker.” Trump-appointed federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that the plaintiffs had met the legal standards to be granted an injunction until the lawsuit is resolved.
Read the full storyTop officials at the Department of Justice are downplaying recently disclosed documents showing FBI agents were authorized to use deadly force during their 2022 raid of Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
Responding to Trump’s claim that “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau was following “standard operating procedure” as it executed a search warrant on Aug. 8, 2022, regarding classified material that the former president was holding at Mar-a-Lago.
Read the full storyWith the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop having been verified again – this time in court – data extracted from it about the first son’s long-history of tax problems will likely be key to federal prosecutors in Biden’s upcoming tax evasion trial.
The contents of the hard drive, obtained and authenticated by the FBI as early as December 2019 will show the first son’s tax delinquency and unsuccessful efforts to settle his massive debts with the IRS while continuing to spend beyond his means, according to emails obtained from the laptop by Just the News.
Read the full storyIn the wake of his conviction in a New York court, President Trump has complained that the process was rigged against him, that the whole proceeding was a corrupt effort to persecute him with a view to influencing the 2024 presidential election. In response, many of his opponents have criticized him for undermining public confidence in our system of criminal justice and thus harming our democracy—a criticism that has been magnified by many in the media.
Read the full storyA handful of entries in the journal recovered from the vehicle of Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale appear to suggest she might have assigned a numerological meaning to the date of her devastating attack which claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adults.
The Tennessee Star confirmed last week it obtained about 80 pages of Hale’s writings from a source close to the Covenant investigation. Among these entries are multiple pages that suggest Hale assigned special significance to the numbers 2 and 7.
Read the full storyCovenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote about drinking Bud Light around the time she published a now-deleted “suicide note” on social media, according to a journal police recovered from her vehicle.
The Tennessee Star confirmed last week it obtained about 80 pages of Hale’s writings from a source close to the Covenant investigation, including an entry that mentioned consuming alcohol less than two weeks before her devastating attack that claimed the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members on March 27, 2023.
Read the full storyMichael Patrick Leahy, who is the editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Star and the CEO of Star News Digital Media, Inc., on Thursday filed an emergency appeal with the Middle Tennessee Court of Appeals.
Leahy seeks to obtain a stay to would stop the Show Cause Hearing set in the June 10 order by Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea L. Myles for Monday in the Tennessee case to unseal the writings of Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale.
Read the full storyThe Supreme Court sided unanimously Thursday against several doctors and pro-life medical associations who brought a challenge to the abortion pill.
In FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the Supreme Court held that the doctors do not have standing to challenge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to roll back safety regulations for the abortion pill. While recognizing the plaintiffs have “sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority rulings that those kind of objections are not enough to show the doctors would be injured by the FDA’s actions, noting the federal courts are “the wrong forum” for addressing their concerns.
Read the full storyAn emergency motion filed on Wednesday requests Tennessee Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea L. Myles set aside her June 10 court order which established a show cause hearing on Monday after dozens of articles including writings from a journal recovered from Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale were published by The Tennessee Star.
Michael Patrick Leahy, who is the CEO of Star News Digital Media, Inc. and the editor-in-chief of The Star, was ordered by Myles to appear in court on Monday after WSMV 4 reporter Stacey Cameron claimed he called the court to ask Myles “if she was considering holding the Star or anyone else in contempt” due to its reporting.
Read the full storyThe abortion debate in Wisconsin’s next race for the state supreme court is now set, just a day after a Dane County judge jumped into the race.
Judge Susan Crawford announced her campaign Monday.
Read the full storyThough Hunter Biden was found guilty Tuesday on federal gun charges – on crimes dating back to 2018 – the first son’s legal troubles are far from over, and House Republicans leading impeachment inquiry into his father, President Joe Biden, say this should be only the beginning of the accountability.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement following the conviction that his client’s legal team “will continue to vigorously pursue all the legal challenges available to Hunter.”
Read the full storyPresident Biden stepped off Marine One, walked across the tarmac of the Delaware Air National Guard base, and embraced his son Hunter, a convicted felon.
Tuesday marks the first time in American history that a child of a sitting president was convicted of a crime. The news complicates life for Biden ahead of an election and sent the first family into a hasty and literal retreat. The president had been slated to remain at the White House. After the conviction, he traveled instead to his Wilmington estate.
Read the full storyTexas and Montana have sued the Biden administration over another federal rule change it implemented, this time over one that requires states to pay for “gender transition” procedures through their Medicaid programs.
It also requires health-care providers to perform such procedures in states where the practice has been banned, including in Montana and Texas. Their state legislatures passed bills their governors signed into law prohibiting “gender transition” procedures from being performed on minors in their states, among other restrictions.
Read the full storyA photograph of medication bottles prescribed to Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale reveals she was given a fifth, previously unknown prescription. This is in addition to the four medications previously reported by The Tennessee Star.
The image of the prescription bottles, obtained by The Star from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation, depicts four orange, semi-transparent prescription bottles with blue lids and white labels. All of the bottles are prescribed to Audrey E. Hale and bear the name of a psychiatric nurse practitioner who runs a practice based in Nashville.
Read the full storyCovenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale wrote entries in her journal about her social isolation about one month before her devastating attack on March 27, 2023.
The Star confirmed last week it obtained 80 pages of Hale’s writings from a journal police recovered from her vehicle at the Covenant School from a source familiar with the investigation.
Read the full storyThe FBI declined on Monday to confirm to The Tennessee Star the authenticity of a memo it sent to the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) that “strongly discourages” the release of “legacy tokens” left by those who commit devastating attacks like the Covenant School attack orchestrated by Audrey Elizabeth Hale.
The Star published the memo last week, revealing it was addressed to MNPD Chief John Drake and sent on May 11, 2023.
Read the full storyCrom Carmichael and Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Tennessee Star, said lawmakers and entities on the Left are attempting to discredit the U.S. Supreme Court as the nation’s highest court hands down decisions in cases that the Left strongly disagrees with.
“There’s a lot of effort now by the left to try to discredit certain Supreme Court justices individually and then to also discredit the Supreme Court as an institution. The left will elevate the Supreme Court institutionally back when the Supreme Court rubber stamps what the left wants. Right now, they’re not getting what they want so now they are attacking individual Supreme Court justices for tiny things,” Carmichael explained on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Read the full storyShasta County Superior Court Judge Stephen H. Baker heard arguments on Tuesday in an election contest brought by Laura Hobbs, who ran for Shasta County Supervisor earlier this year. Hobbs lost the District 2 race to Allen Long by 14 votes. Hobbs alleged numerous election irregularities, including malconduct by election officials. Baker is expected to conclude the trial on Wednesday.
Hobbs’ attorney Alex Haberbush, who is also an attorney for Donald Trump’s former attorney John Eastman, told The Arizona Sun Times after the first day of trial concluded, “Walking into today’s hearing, we were facing at least half a dozen arguments from our opponents as to why our case should be dismissed, and today we left with only one, whether malconduct by election workers must be intentional.” He said, “Intentionality is not the standard, and the misconduct by Deputy Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut easily surpassed the actual standard.”
Read the full storyTennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman urged a federal judge in Kentucky to block the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) finalized rule to rewrite Title IX to encompass gender identity and sexual orientation.
Read the full storyUnited Auto Workers President Shawn Fain is currently under investigation by a federal court-appointed watchdog, according to a court filing released on Monday.
Neil Barofsky is leading the investigation into whether Fain abused his power as head of the union in violation of a 2020 consent decree between the UAW and the U.S. Department of Justice that prevented a full federal takeover of the union.
Read the full storyThe Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) ordered Hawkins County Schools on Monday to implement a number of measures to “end racial discrimination in its schools.”
A DOJ-led investigation into Hawkins County Schools that began in March 2023 found that the school system was “deliberately indifferent to known race-based harassment in its schools” and was ordered to spend at least three years under a federal settlement with the DOJ.
Read the full storyThe jury found Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree for his reimbursement of a $130,000 payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and prosecutor Matthew Colangelo agreed to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on July 12, which is one day after former President Trump’s sentencing hearing in the hush money case where he was found guilty
Read the full storySome of Tennessee’s federal lawmakers Tuesday reacted to the news that Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, was convicted on felony gun charges.
The younger Biden was found guilty of making a false statement in the purchase of a gun, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed gun dealer, and possession of a gun by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance in a federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.
Read the full storyThe State Bar of Arizona’s (SBA) disciplinary panel, led by Democratic Judge Margaret Downie, suspended the law license of Kari Lake’s attorney Bryan Blehm for 60 days over his efforts to combat election corruption. The order was issued last Friday and the suspension goes into effect on July 7.
“What they’re going to do is they’re going to sanction the f*** out of me with costs and fees to try to prevent me from practicing law again.” Blehm said in a video posted on X. “That’s what the end result is going to be.” Blehm was disciplined for stating in a pleading that 35,563 ballots were inserted into the 2022 election. The Arizona Supreme Court sanctioned him $2,000 for the statement.
Read the full storyA Minnesota farmer claimed victory in a lawsuit filed against the state in January that said his race and sex placed him at the back of the line to receive grants to buy farmland.
Gov. Tim Waltz recently signed legislation that rolls back the state’s policy of prioritizing “emerging farmers” based on characteristics such as race and sex.
Read the full storyMore Republican state officials are calling on Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell to investigate the “pay to play” allegations involving the Hobbs administration and Sunshine Residential Homes.
Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, has already opened an investigation triggered by a letter from Senate President Pro Tempore T.J. Shope after the Arizona Republic story broke with the allegations that the group home company got better daily pay rates per child after donating around $400,000 to Hobbs’ campaign, inaugural fund, and the state Democratic Party. Mitchell, a Republican, also said she may open an investigation after the Auditor General’s office reached out to her.
Read the full storyA pair of Republican lawmakers on Monday slammed the January 6 committee’s report on the Capitol riot, after footage of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi taking the blame for the security failure revealed errors in the committee’s findings.
Pelosi said in the video that she “takes responsibility” for not preparing better for the riot, where thousands of supporters of former President Donald Trump interrupted the certification of the electoral college votes after the 2020 presidential election.
Read the full storyFBI officials conducting a top-secret security clearance review for a longtime employee asked witnesses whether that employee was known to support former President Donald Trump, if he had expressed concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine or had attended a Second Amendment rally, according to internal memos that prompted a complaint to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog alleging political bias inside the bureau.
The employee’s security clearance was revoked months after the interviews, which confirmed his support for Trump and gun rights and his concerns about the COVID vaccine, according to the documents obtained by Just the News.
Read the full storyAttorney General Merrick Garland says the Justice Department and agency employees have now become the target of “dangerous” and “unfound attacks,” as the GOP-led House attempt to hold him in contempt of Congress.
“Continued unfounded attacks against the Justice Department’s employees are dangerous for people’s safety. They are dangerous for our democracy. This must stop,” Garland wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.
Read the full storyBefore Audrey Elizabeth Hale claimed the lives of three 9-year-old children and three adults in her devastating March 27, 2023 attack at the Covenant School, she wrote in a journal recovered by police of her desire to “inflict pain” and share the “same fate” with a former friend and middle school classmate who is now a Nashville radio personality.
The Tennessee Star confirmed last Wednesday it obtained photographic images showing 80 pages written by Hale in a journal recovered from her vehicle from a source familiar with the Covenant investigation.
Read the full storyCovenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale expressed frustrations in her journal with her brain in entries that appeared to reference her purported autism diagnosis and struggles with gender identity.
The Tennessee Star reported last Wednesday it obtained 80 pages of Hale’s writings, in the form of 40 photographic images of her journal captured by law enforcement.
Read the full storyThe verdict comes after six days of testimony from witnesses that include ex-girlfriends, an ex-wife, and law enforcement officials. Biden did not testify in his own case.
The jury in the Hunter Biden gun trial on Tuesday found the first son guilty on all three federal charges in connection with the purchase of a gun in 2018.
Read the full storyThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says it needs help locating other potential victims of a serial child exploiter from east Tennessee.
Last week, a federal grand jury in Knoxville returned a three-count indictment against James Thompson, 71, of Lookout Mountain. The indictment alleges that Thompson transported minors across state lines with the intent of engaging in sexual activity back in 2000.
Read the full story