Justice Department Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the company has established a monopoly with the iPhone that has harmed consumers, developers and competitors. “Each step in Apple’s course of conduct built and reinforced the moat around its smartphone monopoly,” the government said in the lawsuit filed Thursday.

antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation as soon as next month, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.Live Nation’s subsidiary Ticketmaster, which for decades has been condemned for hardball tactics and high prices, was also widely criticized in 2022 after botched ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour, feeding demands that the two companies be investigated for harming consumers.The lawsuit would allege that Live Nation had leveraged its dominance in a way that undermined competition for ticketing live events, the WSJ report said.The DOJ and Live Nation did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.Shares of the Ticketmaster-parent dropped about 6% in extended trading.Last year, Live Nation was issued a subpoena by a US Senate panel for documents pertaining to ticket pricing, fees and secondary sales.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Steven Miron and Steven Newhouse resigned from the Warner Bros. Discovery board after the Justice Department informed them it was investigating “whether their service on the Board of Directors violated Section 8 of the Clayton Antitrust Act,” the company announced Monday. Miron, CEO of media company Advance/Newhouse Partnership and a senior executive officer at the Newhouse family’s investment business Advance, and Newhouse, co-president of Advance, were both independent directors of Warner Bros.

Donald Trump‘s first criminal trial is now scheduled to start on April 15.

A judge delayed Donald Trump‘s New York criminal trial, in which he faces charges related to hush money payments paid to Stormy Daniels, by at least 30 days.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Binance Holdings, operator of the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, pleaded guilty to U.S. criminal charges that it violated the Bank Secrecy Act and other laws and will pay $4.3 billion to resolve the investigation, the Justice Department said Tuesday. In addition, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao entered a guilty plea of failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program in violation of the BSA, according to the DOJ.

Killers of the Flower Moon,” by David Grann, which details how the Osage fell victim to a string of murders.One was killed with poisoned whiskey (there may have been more), others got shot and Bill and Rita Smith, a white man married to an Osage woman had their home blown up. The pure greed of it all was made evident when William King Hale (often referred to, simply, as King), a wealthy rancher who held considerable sway over Native Americans and whites alike, took out a $25,000 life insurance policy on an Osage man named Henry Roan. A doctor who examined Roan for the policy asked Hale if he planned on killing Roan.

Adam Aron, the CEO of AMC Theatres, revealed that he had been the victim of an “elaborate criminal extortion.” The chief of the world’s largest cinema chain didn’t reveal details about what he described as a “blackmail attempt” other than to claim they were “related to false allegations about my personal life.” Aron says there has been a “vigorous” criminal investigation taken by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, and he had reported the situation to the FBI and Justice Department.

A former contractor for the Internal Revenue Service has been charged with leaking tax information to news outlets about thousands of the country’s wealthiest people.

Google’s lopsided command of the search market was put on trial on Tuesday, as federal and state attorneys argued that the tech giant unfairly abused its dominance at the expense of rivals and start ups.

Bill Maher did not hold back about his thoughts on a Trump vs. Biden matchup for 2024 on Joe Rogan’s podcast The Joe Rogan Experience over the weekend.

It was not until the Republican presidential debate entered its second hour that Fox News anchor Bret Baier addressed “the elephant not in this room” — the indictments of no-show Donald Trump.

U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who has been overseeing the investigation into Hunter Biden, has been appointed to the post of special counsel, a move intended to give him a new level of independence from the Justice Department.

Politico reported on Friday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.Shares of Live Nation dropped 5% in extended trading on Friday.Earlier this year, senators slammed Live Nation’s lack of transparency and inability to block bot purchases of tickets following a major fiasco involving ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s long-awaited concert tour.The potential lawsuit could claim that the entertainment giant is abusing its power over the live music industry, Politico reported, adding that the timing of the case was not firm and the DOJ could decide to drop it.Live Nation and the DOJ did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote for Thursday on whether to cite Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg with contempt of Congress. claiming that he has failed to comply with a subpoena.

UPDATE, 1:41 PM: Former ABC News producer James Gordon Meek today pleaded guilty to “transportation and possession of child sexual abuse material,” according to the Department of Justice.

There’s no place like prison?

George Santos is seemingly in deep water.

Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right group Proud Boys, was convicted along with three other members of the organization for their roles in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

saw witnesses like Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions take the stand and testify under oath. Prosecutors alleged at trial that the Fugees founder immersed himself in American politics at the behest of Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, who paid him millions to help launder money Low had allegedly embezzled from a state-owned investment fund in his home country. The alleged scheme involved payments to Barack Obama's 2012 presidential reelection campaign and efforts to convince the Trump administration to extradite a Chinese national. Low remains at large, but was charged as a codefendant in Michel's case and played a major role in witness testimony and evidence presented to the jury.

Trump admitted that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is “probably” his biggest challenger for the GOP presidential nomination.Of course, he immediately added that “we’re not going to have much of a challenge.” But Fallon thinks there was one other addendum to that.“Trump said his only other rivals are the Justice Department and high cholesterol,” he said. Indeed, the former president remains under several investigations, though not all of them are specifically from the Justice Department.

, has been sentenced to life in federal prison following his conviction for arranging the 2016 murder of his nephew.Norman learned his fate on Thursday morning in St. Louis federal court following the week-long trial back in September.

A former producer for ABC News has been arrested on a charge of transportation of child pornography, nine months after he resigned abruptly at the network amid an FBI search of his home.

President Joe Biden wants limits placed on concert ticket fees and TV and internet providers’ early termination charges, as the White House seizes on the practices as a sign of lack of competition in various business sectors.

UPDATED with the latest: January 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters today that the group has set its final meeting for Monday, at which is will refer charges in “five or six categories” to entities such as the Justice Department. He indicated the referrals were still being finalized, but that they would be made public at Monday’s gathering.

Disgraced crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested today in the Bahamas, the Justice Department said. The Attorney General’s office of the Caribbean nation said the bust was made after U.S. prosecutors formally charged the founder and former CEO of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, whose wild story is a hot commodity in Hollywood.

Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, is the focus of an antitrust investigation that predates the Taylor Swift ticket snafu this week, according to a report.

A federal judge ruled in favor of the Justice Department in its effort to block to merger of Penguin Random House with Simon & Schuster.

A Mexican citizen has been sentenced to nine years in prison following a record-breaking drug seizure of more than 17,500 pounds of methamphetamine and another 388 pounds of fentanyl from a truck trying to enter the United States, federal prosecutors said Friday.  Carlos Martin Quintana-Arias admitted to driving the tractor-trailer on Nov. 18, 2021, through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego, California, the Justice Department said.  The Otay Mesa, California, Commercial Port of Entry is one of three ports of entry in the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan region in California. (Google Maps) He pleaded guilty earlier this year to the importation of a controlled substance.

wants to testify — comparing him to Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men” — so that he can formally take credit for inciting such masses, Navarro was skeptical that it’d even be possible for Trump to appear in court this late in the investigation.“Listen, the subpoena yesterday, that’s mostly symbolic. Trump is not going to show up,” Navarro said bluntly. “He’s not going to show up, and there’s no time before the elections, and there’s not time before this committee disbands for him to show up.”Navarro added that she’s so angry at this point, but all that can really be done is for people to vote, and vote Trump allies out of office.

The January 6th Committee returned on Thursday with what may be a closing argument before a large TV audience on Donald Trump’s role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to the deadly siege of the Capitol.

A self-described "incel," or "involuntary celibate," from Ohio on Tuesday pleaded guilty to plotting a mass shooting of about 3,000 women, including sorority girls, according to the Justice Department. Tres Genco, 22, of Hillsboro admitted to planning a hate crime to shoot women at an Ohio university in 2021.

Donald Trump got exactly what he was demanding, as usual — the Justice Department on Friday released to the public the affidavit used to get the warrant to raid Mar-A-Lago.

The FBI has searched Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate as part of an investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence, sources have said. Disclosing the search in a lengthy statement, the former US president said that agents opened up a safe at his home and described their work as an "unannounced raid" that he likened to "prosecutorial misconduct".

Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by police in a raid on an apartment where she was sleeping.The charges against defendants Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meany, Kelly Goodlett and Brett Hankison include various civil rights violations, conspiracy, use of force offenses and obstruction. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the civil rights offenses stem from three officers' alleged falsification of the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant that authorized the raid — which mistakenly targeted Taylor's apartment.«The federal charges announced today allege that members of the place-based investigations unit falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms.

EXCLUSIVE: James Lesure has been tapped as a series regular on ABC’s new hourlong series The Rookie: Feds, headlined by Niecy Nash-Betts.