SOUTH
BRONX/SDNY, June 19 –
The
Federal Reserve and OCC are entertaining
applications by Enova, the parent of high
cost lender CashNetUSA, to acquire
Grasshopper Bank, already deeply engaged
in AI banking. Fed Governor Bowman has
spoken openly of speeding up the rubber
stamping such applications.
She also spoke before a Bank of
America private event
right after the interest rate
vote.
Inner City
Press requested documents including the
Federal Reserve's communications with
Enova, under the Freedom of
Information Act. The Fed denied
the request, then on Inner City
Press' appeal provided
entirely redacted pages and a denial, which said if
you don't agree, you
can sue.
Among
with the denial, the
Fed sent Inner City
Press entirely
redacted pages from
its Additional
Information letter
to Enova, which we
put on our
DocumentCloud here
Inner
City Press has filed
a FOIA lawsuit
against the Fed
for its
communications
with Enova - copy
of complaint,
which went live
on PACER on June
1, on now on
CourtListener,
here.
The Fed
had
30 days to answer -
and still not
even a notice of
appearance.
SDNY COURTHOUSE, June 19 – Unsealing
wrongful hidden court filings is a task Inner City Press
has undertaken first in the U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York, most recently in the Live
Nation trial,
and in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in the OneCoin
/ Sebastian Greenwood case.
Now, Inner City Press has been
seeking unsealing in the District for the District of
Columbia of the Libya / Pan Am 103 case against Abu Agila
Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi. On May 27, citing recent
docketing of Press emailed unsealing requests in the District
of Massachusetts, EDNY,
SDNY and even DDC
- this
judge - in the past, Inner City Press wrote to Judge
Dabney L. Friedrich challenging
"the sealing of the unredacted Motion to
Exclude or Limit Testimony of Proffered Metallurgy Expert
filed under seal at Docket 447-1, pursuant to the Court's
Minute Order of May 15, 2026... The admissibility of
metallurgy expert testimony goes directly to the core of
the government's proof at trial — the physical evidence
linking the defendant to the bomb's construction. The
public, the victims' families, and the press have a
compelling interest in understanding the evidentiary
disputes that will shape the trial's outcome."
Not this or the rest of the letter,
but only this was docketed: "The Court has received via
email an unsealing request from Inner City Press as to the
government's Motion to Exclude or Limit the Testimony of
Proffered Metallurgy Expert, a redacted copy of which
already appears on the public docket. See Dkt. 446. The
request is DENIED because the Court does not accept
letters. See Local Civil Rule 5.1(a). So Ordered by Judge
Dabney L. Friedrich on May 27, 2026."
That rule says "Except when
requested by a judge, correspondence shall not be directed
by the parties or their attorneys to a judge, nor shall
papers be left with or mailed to a judge for filing. (b)
FACSIMILE OR EMAIL. No document shall be transmitted to
the Clerk for filing by means of electronic facsimile or
email transmission except with express leave of Court."
But see below - and, in DDC, 26-mc-89 DLF, filing on
CourtListener here
Having excluded the Press and
public, later on May 27 a filing went in. The
government filed on May 27 its opposition (Dkt. 471) to
the defense's motion to limit or exclude its metallurgy
expert, Dr. Yu-Lung Chiu of the University of Birmingham.
The central issue: a fragment of printed circuit board
known as PT/35(b), which the government says originated
from a MEBO timer — the same type used in the Lockerbie
bomb. Scottish authorities commissioned metallurgical
testing in 2012 and 2013; Dr. Chiu personally analyzed the
raw data and independently concluded that PT/35(b) did
originate from a MEBO timer. That testimony, if admitted,
is a pillar of the government's case.
On June 3, 2026, the government filed
its reply brief (Dkt. 477) in support of its motion to
exclude the defense's metallurgy expert, Dr. Elizabeth
Buc. The government's core argument: Dr. Buc's expert
notice fails to state what her actual opinions are. She
has been noticed to testify about whether the government
expert's analysis "conformed to the principle" of
independent analysis and whether it "reflects confirmation
bias" — but the notice never says what her conclusion is.
Did she find confirmation bias or not? The government
argues that stating a topic without stating an opinion is
not a "complete" statement under Federal Rule of Criminal
Procedure 16(a)(1)(G)(iii), and the Court should not
permit a mid-trial amendment of the notice.
The PT/35(b) fragment — the piece of
printed circuit board the government says came from a MEBO
timer, making it a physical link between the defendant and
the Lockerbie bomb — is at the center of the dispute. The
defense has argued that "a question arose regarding the
provenance" of PT/35(b) following the Scottish trial. The
government's reply calls that framing misleading: the
defense has had the government's metallurgy notice since
October 8, 2025, sought and received an extension of its
responsive notice deadline, and has had "ample
opportunity" to draft a notice stating any affirmative
opinions it actually intends to elicit. The government is
asking Friedrich to hold the line — no new opinions, no
mid-trial amendments.
All of this is being litigated in the
public courtroom — orally, on the record — while the
written motion papers remain sealed or redacted. Inner
City Press's unsealing request, which Friedrich denied
because DDC does not accept letters, sought exactly the
unredacted written arguments now being argued in open
court. The public can hear the lawyers argue but cannot
read what they wrote. That asymmetry — oral argument
public, written record sealed — is what the LCrR 57.6
Miscellaneous filing process is designed to correct
Inner City Press wrote to Judge
Friedrich seeking the unredacted version — and Friedrich
docketed a denial, saying DDC does not accept letters. The
District of Columbia — home to the most consequential
federal prosecutions in America — could be viewed less
accessible to the press than Massachusetts, SDNY, EDNY, or
even DDC itself in past years. See, e.g, days ago in the
District of Massachusetts, this.
If the Press can't similarly
challenge oversealing in DDC, by email, then how?
Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqi told Inner City Press to raise
it with Chief Judge James Boasberg's special assistant
Lisa Klem, and it did. Twice by letter - no answer - and
once by phone - a promise to revert, never fulfilled.
But there is another DDC rule:
LCrR
57.6
APPLICATIONS FOR RELIEF IN A CRIMINAL CASE OR MATTER BY
PERSONS NOT PARTIES TO THE CASE Any news organization or
other interested person, other than a party or a
subpoenaed witness, who seeks relief relating to any
aspect of the proceedings in a criminal case, or relief
relating to a criminal investigative or grand jury
matter, shall file an application for such relief in the
Miscellaneous Docket of with the Court. The application
shall include a statement of the applicant's interest in
the matter as to which relief is sought, a statement of
facts, and a specific prayer for relief. An application
that pertains to a criminal case or matter to which a
judge has been assigned The application shall be served
on the parties to the criminal case and shall be
referred by the Clerk to the trial assigned judge
assigned to the criminal case for determination. An
application that pertains to a criminal investigative or
grand jury matter to which no judge has been assigned
shall be referred by the Clerk to the Chief Judge for
determination.
Sounds good, despite the $52
filing fee.
In DDC, Inner City Press noted 50 "sz"
(seizure) cases, and asked Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui
who had said he'd docket one of his cases to do so. Judge
Faruqui to his credit referred Inner City Press to the
Special Assistant to Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, Lisa
Klem, with whom it has spoken by phone, first about the
January 6 cases and now about these "sz"
cases.
Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh
has recently unsealed
three cases. But more than 70 remain, some of them sure to
relate to ships and other items already
seized.
On June 4 Inner City Press submitted
a MISC filing, and it has now been assigned a docket
number, and assigned to Judge Friedrich: 26-mc-89 DLF, now
on CourtListener here
After ten days - ten - Judge Friedrich
docketed: "MINUTE ORDER directing the petitioner to serve
his motion on the parties in criminal case 22-cr-392 in
accordance with Local Criminal Rule 57.6. So Ordered by
Judge Dabney L. Friedrich on June 14, 2026."
So Inner City Press emailed the application to the US
Attorney's Office (two attorneys) and Federal Defenders
(two attorneys) with a certificate to the Office of the
Clerk of DDC.
On June 15 the US Attorney's Office, to its
credit, confirmed receipt. But despite a re-send, twice to
FD's Laura Koenig and Whitney Ninter, the Federal
Defenders did not. This is why Judge Friedrich
should have just put the letter seeking unseaking into the
docket weeks ago, and had them respond. Note that in
many LCrR
57.6
cases in DDC there appears to be no such certificate
of service in the docket.
This
process was meant to make it more straightforward for
the media to ask to unseal.
This is precisely why Judge
Friedrich should have simply put Inner City Press's original
email letter into the docket weeks ago and directed the
parties to respond at that point — the result would have
been the same, without the weeks of procedural friction.
On June 15, Judge Friedrich issued a
substantive Minute Order that cuts to the heart of why the
sealed record matters. At the June 1 hearing, the defense
argued that the government intends to use statements from
the defendant's alleged confession to prove the existence of
a conspiracy, and then use that same conspiracy to admit
those same statements as co-conspirator statements under
Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(E) — a classic
bootstrapping argument. Friedrich directed the defense to
file a supplemental brief by June 22 addressing whether and
how the government may use the third-party statements in the
confession, together with independent evidence, to prove the
conspiracy. The government's response is due June 26. The
D.C. Circuit's standard — from United States v. Gatling,
96 F.3d 1511, 1520 (D.C. Cir. 1996) — requires independent
evidence of the conspiracy apart from the statement, though
the content of the statement itself may be considered. The
public briefing schedule on the confession is now set. The
unredacted motion papers underlying that dispute remain
sealed.
As of June 19, Judge Friedrich has
neither ruled on Inner City Press's MISC application nor
directed the parties to respond to it. The MISC docket
(26-mc-89 DLF) sits pending, after after certificate of
service docketed by the Clerk's Office.
The metallurgy expert dispute — Dr.
Yu-Lung Chiu for the government, Dr. Elizabeth Buc for the
defense — was argued orally in open court while the written
motion papers that framed the dispute remain sealed. The
confession bootstrapping issue is now fully briefed on a
schedule Friedrich set publicly. Every substantive
development in this case happens in the open courtroom. The
written record that explains and memorializes those
developments is hidden. That is the transparency gap Inner
City Press's application is designed to close. Watch this
site.
SDNY COURTHOUSE, June 20 – The United States versus Live Nation trial began
on March 2 with jury selection, before U.S. District Court
for the Southern District of New York Judge Arun
Subramanian. Then after a week of testimony it
went on pause, and the DOJ and several states settled with
Live Nation.
Inner City Press submitted a
Freedom of Information Act requests to US DOJ on March 27,
2026, and also to states including Washington State (see
below).
DOJ granted expedited
processing, then asked Inner City Press to narrow its
request, which it did.
But just after the jury verdict that
Live Nation is a monopolist, DOJ denied the FOIA request
in full. Inner City Press immediately appeal - and that
was denied.
On May 27, Inner City Press filed a FOIA
lawsuit in SDNY, complaint on CourtListener here.
It has been deemed related to the Just Subramanian trial
case, and DOJ Antitrust Division has filed a notice of
appearance.
While awaiting substantive and
needed action, Oregon among others has provided some
documents while withholding others (and demanding absurd
amounts of money) -
Public records obtained by Inner City Press
from the Oregon Department of Justice under a public
records request reveal a stream of consumer complaints
about Ticketmaster dating to the height of the COVID
pandemic — complaints of refunds promised and never paid,
tickets impossible to download, and in one case, tickets
stolen from a consumer while she was hospitalized, with
Ticketmaster doing nothing about it. The complaints, filed
with Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum's Consumer Protection
Division, span 2020 through 2022.
One Oregon consumer had a $704.25 refund
approved by Ticketmaster on May 13, 2020 — but by August
17, 2020, Ticketmaster's automated system was telling her
the "refund window has passed" and providing no way to
reach a human being. A Portland-area consumer bought
tickets to a concert, received several Ticketmaster
confirmation emails, but could never find the actual
tickets on her account. Ticketmaster, she told the AG, had
no help line and its support email provided no remedy. She
was charged and received nothing. A third Oregon consumer
bought tickets for a Death Cab for Cutie concert in Bend,
Oregon, scheduled for September 6, 2021. The day of the
event, the concert was cancelled. Ticketmaster sent an
email saying a refund was coming. Whether it arrived is
not reflected in the AG records. Nancy Pierce of Portland,
over 65 years old, could not use mobile-only tickets
Ticketmaster issued for a July 2022 transaction — she
asked for printable or mailed tickets instead, was
refused, then asked for a refund of her $716.90. Refused
again. "THEY REFUSED TO REFUND!!! I am due a refund for
unusable tickets!!!!! They are a scam!" she wrote to the
AG.
And perhaps most striking: one Oregon
consumer went into the hospital in July of an unstated
year, received a Ticketmaster email while hospitalized
saying her tickets were available to claim — and someone
else claimed them without her consent. Ticketmaster's
response was to do nothing. Oregon joined the federal
antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster in
2024. It had years of these complaints already on file.
The AG's FOIA office initially demanded $32,520 for 81,392
emails in response to Inner City Press's broader records
request — a fee dispute Inner City Press has challenged
and appealed. What the 81,392 emails contain, and whether
they show a pattern of exactly the kind of conduct
described in these eight individual complaint files,
remains the subject of that ongoing dispute
Watch this site.
March 18 extra on "war room(s)" on X for
Subscribers here
and Substack here
On March 6, Inner City
Press was in the courtroom at 8:30 am, and spoke to push
for further unsealing, including of demonstratives. See
new book, "TicketMonster: US v Live Nation 1," ebook,
audiobook and paperback here.
The case is United States of America et al
v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. et al., 24-cv-3973
(Subramanian)
UN GATE,
June 21 – The corruption and
waste of the United Nations
under Antonio Guterres
continues to spread. While
Guterres invokes legal
immunity for peacekeepers who
rape those they are supposed
to protect, this week will
show the results of his fake
justice system, in a UN he ban
the Press from: "The oral
pronouncement of the Outcome
of the UNAT Judgments rendered
during the Summer Session will
be held on Thursday, 25 June."
His UNDT
already banned Inner City
Press even from virtual
access, after it showed how it
look the side one of Guterres
many sexual harassers. Among
this week's list:
Case 2025-2083
through 2025-2087:
Bourrel-McKinnon v.
International Seabed
Authority. Four cases
consolidated in one appellate
proceeding — an extraordinary
number — involving Marie
Bourrel-McKinnon, the former
Chief of Staff of the
International Seabed Authority
who has spoken publicly about
ISA's governance failures at a
time when the Authority has
been under intense scrutiny
for its role in regulating —
or failing to regulate —
deep-sea mining.
Bourrel-McKinnon joined ISA in
2017, was elevated to Senior
Policy Advisor and Special
Assistant to the
Secretary-General at the P-5
level, had her post
reclassified upward to D-1
Chief of Staff in November
2023, and then had her
fixed-term appointment
terminated. She has brought
cases involving the
termination of her
appointment, the
reclassification of her post,
an amendment to an
administrative instruction she
argues was adopted in abuse of
authority to harm her, and
structural concerns about how
ISA handled her employment.
Inner City Press has published
scoops on corruption at the
Seabed Authority - and asked
the UN Spokesperson. No
answer.
Cases 2025-2059
and 2025-2060:
Secretary-General v.
Samandarov and
Secretary-General v.
Samarasinha. In both cases,
the Secretary-General is the
appellant — meaning UN staff
members won their cases at the
Dispute Tribunal, and now the
UN is asking the Appeals
Tribunal to reverse those
wins. Sanaka Samarasinha is a
Sri Lankan lawyer, journalist,
and senior international civil
servant who served as UN
Resident Coordinator in the
Pacific from 2018 to 2023,
holding the rank of the
Secretary-General's personal
representative across ten
Pacific island
nations.
Cases 2025-2076
(AAM) and 2025-2079 (ABO).
Both anonymous. The UN uses
initials rather than names in
cases that involve sexual
harassment, retaliation for
reporting misconduct, or
similarly sensitive personal
matters. Whether these are
whistleblower retaliation
cases, sexual harassment
cases, or something else
entirely, we don't know yet.
Can we follow up? Guterres has
tried to make it as difficult
as possible. And his
successor?
Cases
2025-2053 and 2025-2061: Two
UNRWA cases. Tamer Shafiq Sous
and Amal Hammoud are both
appealing decisions by the
UNRWA Commissioner-General."
UNRWA, of
course, is asserting immunity
and impunity in the SDNY,
which Inner City Press covers
closely because it actually
has laws. Today's UN doesn't.
How much is it charging to
rent its roof / terrace to
USUN's Mike Waltz for a 4th of
July fireworks boondoggle? And
is that all it takes to avoid
actual reform? Watch this
site.
***
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Other, earlier Inner City Press are
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and some are available in the ProQuest
service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright 2006-2025 Inner City
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permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com
SDNY COURTHOUSE, June 20 – As the
artificial intelligence legal beat ramps up in the U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of New York,
NDCA, Illinois, Florida and elsewhere, Inner City Press
has submitted freedom of information requests to states,
following up on its obtaining and appealing for records
regarding Live Nation and Ticketmaster, including its SDNY
FOIA lawsuit:
Here's from the request filed with
California's Attoney General Bonta:
All records since January 1, 2024,
reflecting the California AG's Consumer Protection
Section's enforcement or oversight activity regarding
artificial intelligence,
including:
• All records reflecting any
California AG investigation or enforcement action under
the Unfair Competition Law (Bus. & Prof. Code §
17200), the False Advertising Law (Bus. & Prof. Code §
17500), or the Consumer Legal Remedies Act (Civ. Code §
1750) directed at AI companies or related to AI chatbot
practices;
• All records reflecting California's
participation in any multistate AG coalition related to AI
safety, deepfakes, AI data practices, or AI harm to
minors, seniors, or vulnerable populations; •
All records reflecting any California AG review of AI
companies' compliance with the California Consumer Privacy
Act (CCPA/CPRA), the California Age-Appropriate Design
Code Act, or any other California privacy or consumer
protection statute; and • All records
reflecting any California AG legal analysis of whether AI
chatbot outputs that cause psychological, physical, or
financial harm to consumers create liability under
California law.
Category C: Consumer Complaints About AI
Services All records since January
1, 2023, reflecting consumer complaints received by the
California AG's office or the California Department of
Consumer Affairs from California residents
regarding: • OpenAI's
ChatGPT, including complaints about harm to minors or
vulnerable users, mental health impacts, sycophancy, data
privacy violations, deceptive outputs, and compulsive
use; • Any AI chatbot or conversational AI
service, including Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini,
Anthropic Claude, Meta AI, xAI Grok, Character.AI,
Replika, or similar services; • AI-generated
content used for fraud or consumer deception, including
deepfake fraud and AI voice cloning scams; and
• Any complaint in which a consumer identified AI
chatbot outputs as contributing to financial loss,
self-harm, suicidal ideation, or dangerous
behavior.
For each category: (a) total complaints
received; (b) number referred to other agencies; (c)
number resulting in enforcement action; and (d) any
aggregate trend analysis. Individual complaints may be
produced with personal identifying information redacted
under Gov. Code § 7928.000.
Category D: OpenAI's Non-Profit to For-Profit
Conversion All records since
January 1, 2024, reflecting the California AG's review of
OpenAI's conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit
entity, including: all communications between the
California AG and OpenAI or its counsel regarding the
restructuring; all records of the commitments OpenAI made
to the California AG in connection with the Statement of
No Objection; all California AG analyses of whether the
restructuring complied with California's charitable trust
laws; and all records of any monitoring or follow-up on
OpenAI's compliance with those
commitments.
Category E: Internal AI Policy and Legal
Analyses All non-privileged
records since January 1, 2024, reflecting the California
AG's internal policy positions, legal analyses, or
memoranda regarding: the application of California's
Unfair Competition Law and Consumer Legal Remedies Act to
AI chatbot outputs; the California Age-Appropriate Design
Code Act's application to AI services; AI safety standards
for minors and vulnerable adults; state authority to
regulate AI; and any California AG position on proposed
federal preemption of state AI
regulation.
Category F: AI Data Centers — Consumer,
Energy, and Community Impact
Records All records since January
1, 2024, reflecting consumer complaints received by, or
enforcement activity undertaken by, the California AG's
office relating to AI data centers located in or proposed
for California, including: •
All consumer or community complaints regarding AI data
center operations, including complaints about: excessive
energy consumption and its effect on California utility
rates and grid reliability; water consumption for cooling
systems and its effect on California water supplies during
drought conditions; noise, light, or other environmental
impacts on neighboring communities; and representations
made by data center operators to local governments, the
California Public Utilities Commission, or the public
about community benefits; • All records
reflecting any California AG investigation or enforcement
action related to data center operators' representations
to local governments, the CPUC, or the California Energy
Commission about energy costs, tax revenue, job creation,
or community impact, including any inquiry into whether
such representations constituted unfair or deceptive
practices under the Unfair Competition Law; •
All records reflecting any California AG communications
with the California Public Utilities Commission, the
California Energy Commission, the State Water Resources
Control Board, or local governments regarding the impact
of AI data center energy and water demand on California
consumers, ratepayers, and water users; • All
records reflecting any California AG review of data center
operators' compliance with California environmental law,
the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), water use
permits, or local zoning representations; and
• All records reflecting any
California AG communications with Microsoft, Google,
Amazon Web Services, Meta, Oracle, Apple, or any other
major AI data center operator regarding facility siting,
energy contracts, water use, or community impact
agreements in California.
Similar requests have been filed
with the other states. Sample for Arizona on June 20,
2026:
"The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has
received your correspondence to Public Records, we will
respond accordingly."
