The legal community is just flooding us with news today. Though I haven’t mentioned all these cases before, it is worth talking about. There are some lessons we can learn.
Not Guilty!
P-Diddy jurors, after one day of deliberations, find him not guilty of of racketeering conspiracy and two counts of sex trafficking by force.
He was found guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.
The counts he was charged with come with 10 years for each count. Chances are he’s not going to get that. He will probably get a couple of years with time served.
Guilty!
According to the New York Post:
Paramount Global and CBS agreed on Tuesday to pay President Trump a sum that could reach north of $30 million to settle the president’s election interference lawsuit against the network.
Trump will receive $16 million up front. This will cover legal fees, costs of the case, and contributions to his future presidential library or charitable causes, to be determined at Trump’s discretion.
There is an anticipation that there will be another allocation in the mid-eight figures set aside for advertisements, public service announcements, or other similar transmissions, in support of conservative causes by the network in the future, Fox News Digital has learned.
With these considerations, CBS would pay well in excess of the $15 million that ABC paid Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit last year. Current Paramount management disputes the additional allocation.
Extremely Guilty
Bryan Kohberger is the former doctoral student in criminology who was charged with the murders of four University of Idaho students—Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves—in November 2022. The killings took place at an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, and drew national attention due to their brutality and the initial mystery surrounding the case1378.
Current Status (as of July 2, 2025):
- Kohberger is expected to plead guilty to all counts at a court hearing today, as part of a plea deal that will spare him the death penalty12346.
- The plea agreement requires him to accept four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murders, and an additional maximum 10-year sentence for burglary12346.
- He will waive all rights to appeal as part of the deal12346.
- The plea was initiated by Kohberger’s defense team, and prosecutors agreed after consulting with the victims’ families136.
- Sentencing is expected to take place later in July, provided Kohberger enters the guilty plea as anticipated36.
Background and Arrest:
- Kohberger was a Ph.D. student at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, just a short drive from Moscow, Idaho78.
- He was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania on December 30, 2022, about six weeks after the murders1378.
- DNA evidence linking Kohberger to a knife sheath found at the crime scene played a central role in his identification and arrest1378.
- Kohberger was indicted on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary78.
The Goncalves family confirmed in a statement to Reuters from their attorney that they learned of the plea deal in a letter from prosecutors and said prosecutors mishandled the deal.
“After more than two years, this is how it concludes with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details. Adding insult to injury, they’re rushing the plea, giving families just one day to coordinate and appear at the courthouse for a plea on July 2.”
Steve Goncalves, father of one of the victims, said: “This is anything but justice. This is the opposite of our will. There was no majority believing that this was acceptable.
“This is not justice. We had an outsider come to our community, kill our kids in their sleep while they’re getting a college education, doing everything that they should do, and we don’t have the courage to hold him accountable. No plea deal. Let’s go for this guy. One hundred percent, let’s do it.”
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/bryan-kohberger-B8ur4UVOQBaCguHdbZuaZA
About Time
According to the Daily Wire:
The White House has struck a deal with the University of Pennsylvania that requires the school to strip trans-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas of the titles he won on the women’s team, The Daily Wire has learned.
The University of Pennsylvania will restore all titles to female athletes that were “misappropriated” by male athletes, according to a landmark agreement between the Trump administration and the University of Pennsylvania, a White House official shared with The Daily Wire.
Thomas competed as a female swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, infamously tying with University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines in 2022 at the NCAAs and taking her trophy — prompting Gaines to take a stand against men in women’s sports.
Trying to Fix Things
According to the Daily Wire:
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills Monday night rolling back parts of a landmark environmental law to remove barriers to tackling the state’s housing shortage.
The California legislature with bipartisan support voted last week to exempt certain projects, such as some high-density housing plans, from onerous California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) reviews and approvals. Newsom pushed the legislation forward, threatening to hold up the state’s budget unless the CEQA rollbacks hit his desk, as well.
“Today’s bill is a game changer, which will be felt for generations to come,” Newsom said in a statement referring to the CEQA overhaul.
Newsom held a press conference Monday evening touting the bills as necessary to rescue the reputation of California’s government and prove that the state is capable of solving pressing problems.
“If we can’t address this issue, we’re going to lose trust, and that’s just the truth,” said Newsom, according to The New York Times. “And so this is so much bigger in many ways than the issue itself. It is about the reputation of not just Sacramento and the legislative leadership and executive leadership, but the reputation of the state of California.”
Newsom has promised to address California’s burgeoning housing shortage since his first campaign for governor in 2018. Now well into his second term and close to being term-limited out of office, Newsom pushed the CEQA reforms forward as he is widely seen as a potential Democratic contender for president in 2028.
CEQA was originally signed into law in 1970 by then-Governor Ronald Reagan. The law at the time it was enacted was thought to only apply to government projects, but a court decision two years later broadened the law’s application to a host of development projects.
Since then, critics have said that the law’s strict review and approval process, believed to be the toughest in the United States, has been abused by environmental activists, labor unions, California residents, and others to extract concessions in exchange for politically sensitive projects or to override construction proposals unpopular with a small group.
Environmental groups rallied against the CEQA reforms. Dozens of groups partnered together to urge lawmakers to reject the bills.
“This bill is the worst anti-environmental bill in California in recent memory,” the groups wrote in a joint letter. “It represents an unprecedented rollback to California’s fundamental environmental and community protections at a time in which the people of California grapple with unprecedented federal attacks to their lives and livelihoods.”