Author: openjargon

• The hush-money courtroom erupted in shouts after a Trump witness openly challenged the judge.
• "You don't give me the side-eye and you don't roll your eyes," the judge chided witness Robert Costello.
• The judge then kicked reporters out of the courtroom to scold the witness some more.

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's ongoing hush-money trial ripped into one of the former president's witnesses Monday for heckling his rulings — then cleared the courtroom of journalists to scold the witness some more.

The witness, attorney Robert Costello, was called by the defense to attack the credibility of key prosecution witness Michael Cohen.

But the Nassau County-based attorney repeatedly chafed at being interrupted by the judge sustaining prosecution objections, at one point muttering "Jeez."

Within minutes of taking the stand, Costello was in open conflict with New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the case.

"Mr. Costello I wanted to — I'd like to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom, ok?" Merchan began, after dismissing the jury.

"If you don't like my ruling you don't say 'Jeez," you don't give me side eye, and you don't roll your eyes," the judge scolded.

"You don't say 'strike it,'" the judge told the witness, adding that it's his job, not the witness' to strike testimony.

In response to the scolding, Costello glared at the judge. "Are you staring me down?" the judge asked him.

"Clear the courtroom!" he ordered.

Court officers then cleared journalists from the courtroom — many of them shouting in protest as they left. But the lawyers and the front-row entourages of the defense and the prosecution were allowed to remain.

Robert Balin, an attorney representing a consortium of media organizations, protested but was removed as well. The video and audio feed to the court's overflow room — a second courtroom where press and members of the public watch the trial on screens — was cut off.

After a few minutes, journalists were led back into the courtroom, and questioning from Trump's lawyer, Emil Bove, resumed.

Ahead of Costello's testimony, Merchan issued rulings limiting what Costello would be permitted to testify about.

Cohen — the prosecution's key witness in the case over allegations that Trump's falsified business records to disguise a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels — previously testified that Costello was part of Trump's "pressure campaign" to keep him from flipping against Trump in 2018. Costello served as a "back channel" to Trump through his friend, the lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Cohen said.

Merchan said Trump's lawyers could ask about his meetings and calls with Cohen, but could not have a "trial within a trial" about the scope of the alleged pressure campaign.

Bove asked such questions anyway. Merchan repeatedly sustained objections from prosecutors and called sidebar conferences, which journalists could not hear.

During one of these conferences, Costello audibly said "ridiculous" from the witness stand and let out a heavy sigh.

Costello backed up the narrative from Trump's lawyers that Cohen paid hush money to Stormy Daniels on his own, without Trump's knowledge.

"Michael Cohen said numerous times that President Trump knew nothing about these payments," Costello said. "That he did this on his own. And he did this numerous times."

Costello has been a frequent critic of the Manhattan District Attorney's case against Trump.

He spoke in front of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives committee on the "weaponization of government," echoing Trump's claims that the case is politically motivated.

• In 2020, President Biden won Nevada by bringing together a broad Democratic coalition.
• But he faces tough headwinds this year, as the state's economy has lagged relative to the country.
• Polls show Trump with an edge on the economy, a dynamic Biden will have to change to win reelection.

For over fifteen years, Nevada has been a major success story for the Democratic Party.

The late Sen. Harry Reid was instrumental in building up the state party, which led to high-profile victories like Barack Obama's presidential victories in 2008 and 2012, Catherine Cortez Masto's Senate win in 2016, and President Joe Biden's win in 2020.

After years of GOP dominance in Nevada, it seemed as though Democrats had finally cracked the code for consistent victories, with a coalition of young voters, union members, Black and Latino voters, and suburbanites fueling their political ascent in the state.

But ahead of November, Biden is currently the underdog in Nevada, weighed down by the state's slow economic recovery during the coronavirus pandemic. And how he shapes his economic message to voters across the state could very well determine whether or not he wins reelection.

Nevada's outsized importance

Nevada only has six electoral votes, but the race between Biden and former President Donald Trump could come down to a few thousand — or even a few hundred votes — in key battleground states across the country.

The last GOP presidential nominee to win Nevada was George W. Bush in November 2004 — nearly 20 years ago.

During that timespan, Nevada saw a population spike — largely centered in the Las Vegas and Reno areas — with a state population of 2.4 million residents in 2005 increasing to nearly 3.2 million residents last year.

Nevada was deeply impacted by the Great Recession, as the housing downturn depressed home prices and led to high unemployment in various sectors — namely construction, finance, and real estate.

And then the pandemic in 2020 shuttered the Las Vegas Strip for weeks, an unprecedented blow to leisure travel and the hospitality industry overall. With another significant economic calamity affecting Nevada, the ramifications were bound to collide with Biden's economic pitch to voters.

Biden's dilemma

In 2020, Biden won Nevada by a 50% to 48% margin over his GOP rival, similar to the 2.4-point edge that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton enjoyed over Trump (47.9% to 45.5%) in 2016.

But both results were a steep departure from Obama's robust 12.5- and nearly 7-point wins in 2008 and 2012.

Biden will have to work hard to address some of the top concerns of Nevada voters: inflation, housing affordability, and health care.

And the president has his work cut out for him, as Trump is leading him in Nevada by a sizable margin in recent polling.

A New York Times/Siena College survey conducted from late April through early May showed Trump ahead Biden by a 12-point margin (50% to 38%) among registered voters in Nevada. When independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are in the mix, Biden's support plummets to 27%, with Trump taking 41% and Kennedy Jr. at 12%, followed by Stein with 2% support.

A plurality of Nevada voters (22%) listed the economy as their top issue, and a whopping 82% of voters said that the economy was "only fair" or "poor." Only 17% of Nevada voters rated the economy as "good" or "excellent." And by a 61% to 32% margin, Nevada voters believe Trump would be better at handling the economy.

The Biden campaign has responded aggressively to tackle this narrative.

The president visited Nevada in March to make his pitch for boosting affordable housing. The month before, he met with culinary workers — a highly influential voting bloc — while in Las Vegas. And Vice President Kamala Harris has traveled to Nevada four times this year, promoting the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and advocating for reproductive rights in an election where abortion will be a key issue.

Another matter for Biden: The bipartisan infrastructure law is a huge accomplishment for his administration. Yet it will take years for many voters to see the results, including the creation of jobs.

Biden's biggest challenge is sharpening an economic message that voters will respond to across the country. And Nevada is increasingly looking like the place where he'll need to do it to stay in the White House.

• Attorneys are seating a jury in the Brooklyn fraud trial of Ozy Media cofounder Carlos Watson
• Prosecutors allege Watson orchestrated a scheme to defraud investors and lenders. 
• Watson's defense attorneys have argued that racial bias played a role in his indictment.

Attorneys began jury selection in the criminal fraud trial of Carlos Watson, the cofounder of the fallen digital media startup Ozy Media.

Federal prosecutors accuse Watson, the face of the company, of orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors and lenders of tens of millions dollars by deliberately misrepresenting Ozy's financial and business assets.

The trial is set in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

According to prosecutors, between 2018 and 2021, Watson and other executives engaged in the scheme "through material misrepresentations and omissions" about Ozy's financial results, debts, audience numbers, and investors' identities and the sizes of their investments, among other things.

Prosecutors say Watson conspired to impersonate media company executives during interactions with Ozy's lenders and prospective investors.

Watson has been charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. If convicted of the charges, he faces up to 37 years in prison.

Opening statements in the trial are expected to begin next week, and it's not yet clear what Watson's defense will be, but his attorneys have argued in court documents that racial bias played a role when he was indicted in February 2023.

In an August motion to dismiss the indictment, which was unsuccessful, Watson's attorneys argued that the "well-known and well-documented practices of puffing and bluffing venture funding" may not be the "archetypes of ideal moral behavior," but are a "critical part of an economic system that has created the incredible innovations of the last decades from Apple and Google to Tesla and Airbnb."

The defense attorneys said in the court filing that during the time of Ozy's development, early-stage investors had a swath of digital media companies to choose from, including BuzzFeed and Vice Media.

"While these companies were and are household names, they have either completely collapsed or are financially struggling, as are similarly situated digital media firms," the attorneys wrote.

"Their founders reportedly — and in some cases, admittedly — engaged in conduct that differs from the conduct charged in Mr. Watson's Indictment in only one way: their conduct was, by orders of magnitude, far more egregious. And yet they have not been indicted," the filing read.

The lawyers continued, "The fact that Carlos Watson and his company have been indicted is not the only difference between them and their peer founders and companies. The others are white and white-owned. Carlos Watson is a Black man and Ozy Media was majority-owned by people of color."

Attorneys for Watson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on Monday.

Ozy was launched in 2013, and by 2020, the startup had raised more than $80 million from investors, including Marc Lasry, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Ron Conway. Axel Springer, which owns Business Insider, was also an investor.

The company's demise was sparked by a series of articles by Ben Smith, who joined The New York Times as a media columnist after leading BuzzFeed's news division.

Smith reported in a September 2021 article that Samir Rao, Ozy's cofounder and chief operating officer — who, along with Ozy's chief of staff Suzee Han, has pleaded guilty to charges relating to their roles in the fraud scheme — impersonated a YouTube executive in a meeting with investors at Goldman Sachs.

Smith also reported on claims that Ozy significantly exaggerated its audience figures in public statements.

Ozy filed a lawsuit against Smith, his news website Semafor and Buzzfeed in December, alleging that he violated a nondisclosure agreement and stole trade secrets from Ozy to build his own media company.

Representatives for Smith and Semafor did not immediately respond to a request for comment by BI. BuzzFeed declined to comment.

• Adult content creator Belle Delphine did a viral stunt in 2019 where she sold jars of her bathwater.
• She made about $90,000, but PayPal froze her account and kept the money as a fine for each sale.
• Five years later, PayPal returned her money after Business Insider asked the company about it.

In 2019, adult creator Belle Delphine had grown a massive following on Instagram (she would later be banned from the platform) as a cosplayer and model. Posing in a pink wig and cat ears, she had a knack for lightly trolling her extremely online fans. When she announced she was going to sell jars of her "gamergirl bathwater" for $30 apiece, the stunt went viral, and she sold hundreds of jars within three days.

But five years after the stunt, Delphine announced that PayPal, which she used to process the $30 payments, froze her account and kept the $90,000 she had made from the bathwater jars.

"I knew it would be a better news story to say that I made 'sOoOo much money' from selling my bathwater so I just kept this secret," Delphine wrote on X. "Ultimately I'm still glad I did it since it was a really funny time on the internet when it happened."

Don't worry — this story has a happy ending. After Delphine tweeted about her years-old problems with PayPal, and several media outlets (including Business Insider) contacted PayPal to ask about the situation, the $90,000 has been returned to Delphine as of this week.

PayPal's policy on adult and sexual content permits sales of physical goods like DVDs or magazines (or bathwater jars), but only for transactions within the US. Delphine is based in the UK.

But PayPal went beyond just shutting down her account. At the time, PayPal's policy allowed it to issue a fine of $2,500 for each violation of its rules. Each jar of bathwater Delphine sold counted as a violation.

A PayPal spokesperson said they could not comment on individual accounts but told Business Insider that PayPal dropped its policy on the $2,500 fines about a year ago.

It seems that because of that rule change, PayPal decided to release Delphine's funds and return the money to her. But that didn't happen automatically — it was only once Delphine, who has 2 million followers on X, posted about the situation earlier this month and the tweet went viral.

"If I didn't have any [social media] following, they wouldn't have given my money back," Delphine contended to Business Insider. "Which is so shitty because what are all the normal non-social media users meant to do in this situation? I followed all the normal protocols and was roadblocked and gave up."

Adult content creators have struggled for years with payment processors. In 2020, Mastercard and Visa cut ties with Pornhub over concerns about child sexual exploitation material on the site. Other processors similarly have been skittish about the risk of unlawful material; even a crypto-based adult content processor called SpankPay shut down after its banking partner cut ties.

"The Twitter post I made about it had SO many comments of people saying PayPal did the exact same thing to them," Delphine said. (BI couldn't verify the claims of the commenters, and PayPal wouldn't comment on individual accounts.) Still, Delphine said, "It was shocking, to be honest."

• US Navy warships in the Middle East have been facing off against anti-ship ballistic missiles.
• The Houthis introduced these missiles into combat for the first time in late 2023.
• The captain of an American destroyer said they are "way faster" than anything else.

US Navy warships operating in the Red Sea have been intercepting deadly ballistic missiles that are "way faster" than anything else, according to the commanding officer of an American destroyer that has been involved in shooting them down.

Anti-ship ballistic missiles are a dangerous weapon that no military had ever faced in combat until recently when the Houthis started firing them into key Middle Eastern waterways late last year as part of their ongoing attacks on international shipping lanes.

Since then, the Iran-backed rebels have fired dozens of anti-ship ballistic missiles into the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. US warships in the region have intercepted these missiles on numerous occasions, though some of the weapons have struck commercial vessels. Civilians were killed during an attack in March.

An anti-ship ballistic missile "is just way faster than anything else, Cmdr. Jeremy Robertson, captain of the guided-missile destroyer USS Carney, told reporters during a media event on Monday. He said that while the missiles are a challenge, "we have certain capabilities to be able to detect stuff like that."

The Carney was the first US warship in the region to intercept Houthi threats in the fight that began in October 2023. The destroyer was involved in dozens of engagements during its monthslong deployment — destroying anti-ship ballistic missiles, land-attack cruise missiles, and drones — and it also carried out multiple strikes against the rebels inside Yemen.

The Houthis maintain a sizable arsenal of anti-ship ballistic missiles, according to an analysis by the the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

Some of the missiles are Iranian in origin, while others just contain parts from Tehran. US Central Command has not identified specific missiles that have been used in any of the Houthi attacks, but ballistic missiles, generally, fly at faster speeds than cruise missiles.

The anti-ship ballistic missile "threat is very challenging — it's very dynamic, and it's very fast," Robertson said. "These are certainly very dangerous areas, and every interaction is completely different from one another."

Robertson said that his sailors work very quickly to engage these missiles because they must. From start to finish, the complex process of detecting a threat, making sure it's real, sorting the trajectory, and engaging, may last "anywhere from nine to 20 seconds," he said.

The Carney was ready for the threat though. "Our systems are doing exactly what we've designed them to do," Robertson said. "We have training pipelines that build on this threat as well, and so we certainly do a lot of training to make sure the team is ready to handle that threat."

During a visit to the Red Sea earlier this year, Business Insider spoke with Navy officers aboard USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, an aircraft carrier, and USS Gravely, a destroyer, about the Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile threat.

They similarly praised the combat systems on their warships for working as intended and said their sailors are properly leaning and training to defeat the threats.

Anti-ship ballistic missiles emerged as a growing concern for the US military long before the conflict with the Houthi conflict began, as Washington looks across the Pacific at China and its growing arsenal of formidable, long-range missiles.

A potential clash between the US and China would unfold across the maritime domain, making anti-ship capabilities a crucial factor.

Experts, including former Navy officers, previously told BI that the Houthi anti-ship missile capabilities don't quite stack up against what China has in its arsenal. Still, the ongoing engagements in the Middle East are providing the Navy with valuable, first-ever combat experience — and information — to deal with these dangerous missiles.

The Carney has also taken on other missile threats beyond those launched by the Houthis during its lengthy deployment.

Last month, after the destroyer moved out of the Middle East and into the eastern Mediterranean Sea, it used its SM-3 interceptors for the first time to shoot down an Iranian medium-range ballistic missile amid Tehran's unprecedented aerial attack against Israel.

The Carney finally returned home to Mayport, Florida on Sunday to wrap up a deployment that lasted more than seven months.

"I could not be more proud of what the Carney team has done since September," Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said aboard the warship earlier this month, welcoming the crew back to the US.

"Called to action on the very first day that you entered the US 5th Fleet, you conducted 51 engagements in six months," Franchetti said. "The last time our Navy directly engaged the enemy to the degree that you have was way back in World War II."