• Some 60,000 DoorDash delivery workers will split a $16.75M settlement, NY officials said Monday.
• The settlement ends a probe into deceptive tipping practices.
• DoorDash used tips to offset driver salaries, deceiving customers and workers, AG Letitia James said.

DoorDash will pay a $16.75 million settlement to resolve a probe led by New York officials into the delivery platform's tipping practices.

The settlement will be split among some 60,000 delivery workers — known as "Dashers" — and will range from between $10 and $14,000 per worker, Attorney General Letitia James said Monday.

For years, DoorDash used tips to offset what it paid its Dashers, James told reporters in announcing the settlement.

In an example provided by James, if Dashers were offered a guaranteed amount of $10 for a delivery, and the customer did not tip, DoorDash would pay the Dasher the promised $10.

But if the customer tipped $3, then DoorDash would let the Dasher keep that tip and pay only $7 out of its own corporate coffers.

The practice was kept secret from customers and DoorDash delivery workers, James said. Dashers did not know that their tips were not adding to their income, she said. And customers had no idea that their tips were not subsidizing their Dashers' incomes and were instead helping the company save money.

New York, which also worked with Illinois and DC on the probe, gained access to communications among DoorDash executives who worried that their Dashers would "figure out" what was going on, James told reporters.

"Doordash executives knew how deceptive this policy was," she said. "They knew it wasn't right but they did it anyway."

Under the settlement, the New York AG's office will set up a website for Dashers to use to claim their money. DoorDash will be required to end the tip-sharing practice and lack of transparency in how tips are handled, and for the next three years must report to the AG's office every 6 months on compliance.

A DoorDash spokesperson told Business Insider that the "pay model" cited by the AGs office was in place between 2017 and 2019, and has not been used in the last six years.

"We remain committed to making sure that Dasher earnings are always fair and transparent, and the allegations settled were related to an old pay model that was retired in 2019. To be clear: Dashers always keep 100% of tips from orders on the DoorDash app," a spokesperson said.

This story was updated to include comment from DoorDash.

• Federal employees are now suing to stop Musk's midnight "What did you do last week" email and threat.
• DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management failed to follow protocol, an updated lawsuit says.
• The new lawsuit was filed by unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Federal employees have answered the DOGE inquiry — "What did you do last week?" — with a new, amended lawsuit.

As a midnight ET deadline to respond looms, unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers on Monday filed the amended lawsuit in federal court in California.

The lawsuit accuses billionaire Trump advisor Elon Musk of violating the law by demanding, via an email on Saturday titled "What did you do last week," that they justify their jobs or face firing.

The lawsuit names as defendants the Office of Personnel Management and its acting director, Charles Ezell.

It was first filed Wednesday to challenge what it called the agency's "assembly-line fashion" firing of tens of thousands of probationary employees, meaning those within the first two years of their current federal jobs.

Monday's updated version of the lawsuit adds a dozen paragraphs addressing the "What did you do last week" email.

The email was sent to all federal workers by the OMB on Saturday from a new [email protected] address, and under a "High Importance" designation. It demanded five bullet points listing "what you accomplished last week," and set an 11:59 p.m. ET deadline.

It was not signed by a government official, but it had Elon Musk's blessing, Monday's amended lawsuit said. The billionaire's @elonmusk X account had heralded the email's arrival, the updated lawsuit said.

"Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week," Musk's post said.

Failure to respond by midnight Monday would be considered a resignation, Musk's post said.

The demands and threats made by Musk and the OPM are illegal, just as the mass firing of probationary employees was illegal, lawyers for the AFL-CIO, and for groups supporting national parks and veterans, said in Monday's updated lawsuit.

It alleges that the OPM failed to publish notice of the new directive "in the Federal Register or anywhere else," in violation of federal procedural requirements.

"Subsequent to the OPM email notification on February 22, 2025, at least some federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began telling their employees not to respond to this OPM surprise request," it said.

The Pentagon told employees to pause any response.

The amended lawsuit seeks an immediate halt to the firings and the "What did you do last week" directive.

A White House representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the updated lawsuit.

• Rapper Jay-Z was named in a civil lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs in December.
• The lawsuit accused both entertainment moguls of sexually assaulting a minor.
• The attorney for the Jane Doe plaintiff who filed the suit dropped the case on Friday.

A lawsuit that tangled rapper Jay-Z into a legal battle concerning sexual assault allegations against Sean 'Diddy' Combs was dropped on Friday, court documents showed.

In a notice filed Friday in Manhattan federal court, attorneys representing the "Jane Doe" plaintiff who brought forward the lawsuit against the two music moguls said the case was "voluntarily dismissed with prejudice."

Tony Buzbee, a high-profile lawyer representing the plaintiff, declined to comment.

Combs' legal team told Business Insider in an email that the "complete dismissal" of the lawsuit was "yet another confirmation that these lawsuits are built on falsehoods, not facts."

In their statement, Combs' attorneys denied that their client ever committed sexual assault or was involved in human trafficking.

Dropping the lawsuit with prejudice means the plaintiff will not be allowed to bring the same case back to court, Neama Rahmani, a personal injury attorney and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told BI.

Dozens of legal cases have been brought against Combs, one of the most influential figures in hip-hop history, containing allegations of sexual assault, physical abuse, or sex trafficking.

On September 16, a federal grand jury indicted Combs on felony charges, including sex trafficking and racketeering. Combs, who has denied the charges, has remained at a detention center in Brooklyn since his arrest that month.

A separate lawsuit, unrelated to the grand jury indictment, was filed in October by a Jane Doe. The lawsuit accused Combs of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl at a house party. Attorneys wrote in the suit that the plaintiff sought damages to be determined at a trial.

The initial filing contained references to "another male celebrity, Celebrity A," who was also accused, in the lawsuit, of engaging in the sexual assault of a minor.

In December, attorneys representing the plaintiff revealed in an amended complaint that that celebrity was Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter.

"The pleading speaks for itself," Buzbee said in a statement at the time. "This is a very serious matter that will be litigated in court."

Carter denied the allegations and, in a personal statement posted on social media, said Buzbee was blackmailing him into settling out of court.

"These allegations are so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!! Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree? These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case," the statement said.

The state of New York passed the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act in 2022, which gives a lookback window for people to file civil claims regarding an incident that may have happened more than nine years ago until February 28, 2025.

Given that the lookback window is closing and the Jane Doe's attorneys filed to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, Rahmani said the case is "pretty much dead in the water."

In a legal filing from January, Carter sought to dismiss the lawsuit and place monetary sanctions against Buzbee. That filing said the Jane Doe's case contained "substantial inaccuracies," including an NBC News interview with the Jane Doe's father, who appeared to contradict some of the details outlined in the civil lawsuit.

The lawsuit, for example, said that the 13-year-old was picked up from the after-party where she was assaulted. Her father said he had no memory of picking up his young daughter from the event.

Rahmani said the plaintiff's attorneys' move to dismiss the lawsuit involving Carter will likely have no impact on the dozens of ongoing legal battles against Combs

"I don't think it's gonna move the needle," he said.

• Teisto's ex-lawyer — Holland's "Taxman to the Stars" — has been sentenced to 30 months on tax fraud.
• Prosecutors say Frank Butselaar hid $100M in income for his clientele of rich Dutch DJs and models.
• He may have to pay back the $19M in taxes that the IRS says he saved Tiesto and fellow DJ Afrojack.

The longtime tax attorney for world-famous DJs Tiesto and Afrojack was sentenced in New York on Thursday to 30 months in prison for tax fraud.

The sentencing was bad news for Frank Butselaar, a 65-year-old tax consultant known in the Dutch press as the "taxman to the stars."

But it may be good news for Tiesto and Afrojack, his former clients.

Butselaar, a Dutch citizen and until 2013 a partner at the Amsterdam office of Greenberg Traurig, is now being asked to pay $19.25 million in restitution. That's the total amount that federal prosecutors say Butselaar saved the two DJs in taxes through a fraudulent web of offshore shelters.

In other words, the feds want Butselaar, the tax lawyer, to square up with the IRS, rather than the clients themselves.

"We're claiming he shouldn't have to pay anything," Butselaar's attorney, Kerry Lawrence, told Business Insider on Friday. "He's not the taxpayer."

Meanwhile, Tiesto and Afrojack, who have not been accused of wrongdoing, have quietly resolved their differences with the IRS at a huge discount, Lawrence said.

"They've paid up, I think, a very small portion of it, and the IRS is not looking to them for anything more," he said of Tiesto, given name Tijs Verwest, and Afrojack, given name Nick van de Wall.

Tiesto and Afrojack, both Dutch citizens, have faced no charges in the tax-shelter scheme. In fact, prosecutors have repeatedly said that the two were unaware of Butselaar's frauds on their behalf.

Representatives for the two DJs did not immediately return requests for comment on Friday.

In detailing the allegations against Butselaar in court papers, prosecutors have alleged that the two DJs were able to save a combined $19 million in US taxes through an offshore tax-shelter scheme Butselaar ran on their behalf from 2012 to 2018.

Prosecutors say that during those seven years, Tiesto and Afrojack were deemed US tax residents because they were temporarily living here. As tax residents, the two were therefore obligated to pay income taxes to the IRS on their worldwide income, prosecutors said.

At the time, both were spinning electronic dance music at clubs and stadiums around the world.

Tiesto, in particular, was earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

Widely considered the "Godfather of EDM," Tiesto was one of the originators of the trance style of electronic dance music in the mid-90s.

During the seven years of the scheme, Tiesto's music had its own station on Sirius XM. Three of his tracks were included in the soundtrack at the Bellagio Fountains in Vegas, and in 2014 he headlined the Global Citizen Festival in New York City with Jay-Z and No Doubt.

Forbes estimated that in 2017 — the last full year that prosecutors say Butselaar ran his scheme — Tiesto earned $39 million.

According to the charges against him, Butselaar hid a total of $100 million of his wealthy clients' foreign-earned income by diverting it into shell corporations and trusts in Cypress and Guernsey. At least two Dutch fashion models were among what prosecutors called his "high-net-worth clients."

Butselaar would file tax paperwork indicating that his clients' friends and family members were the beneficiaries of those shell corporations and trusts. The true beneficiaries were the DJs and fashion models themselves, prosecutors said.

"His clients retained control — and expected to benefit from — the income they generated and collected in their trusts, and Butselaar used the fig leaf of a nominee beneficiary to conceal this income from the IRS," prosecutors wrote in July.

Prosecutors alleged that as part of the scheme, Butselaar filed a false tax return for Afrojack for the tax year 2013, and for Tiesto for the tax years 2014 through 2017.

While the scheme was operating, Butselaar was repeatedly warned that the income being collected offshore for his clients was reportable, prosecutors wrote in November. Six different professionals — including American CPAs and tax lawyers — told Butselaar that the offshore income being accumulated outside the US for the two DJs needed to be reported to the IRS, prosecutors wrote.

The former tax accountant initially fought his indictment, which alleged conspiracy against the United States and multiple counts of filing false tax returns.

Defense lawyers argued in court papers last year that there was nothing nefarious about the structure of foreign trusts and holding companies Butselaar set up for his clients.

It was "the ordinary practice of artists and entertainers throughout the world" to set up so-called loan-out corporations that would act as their "contracting entities," Butselaar's attorneys wrote in May.

Butselaar went to trial in White Plains, New York in October. The trial was halted after seven days of testimony, and on November 4, Butselaar accepted a plea deal, admitting to a single charge of aiding in the filing of a false tax return.

He admitted he worked with partners at an unnamed US management firm to conceal Afrojack's offshore income in his 2013 US resident tax return.

"He was facing decades in jail," had he lost at trial, Lawrence told BI when asked why his client, a married father of four, took the plea.

Butselaar has, to date, spent 21 months in pretrial detention. The time includes detention in Italy, where he and his family have a vacation home, and time at a jail some 25 miles north of New York City, where he remains held.

Given that time already served, he will likely complete his 30-month sentence and be freed from jail in about six months, Lawrence, the defense lawyer, told BI.

In court papers filed ahead of Thursday's sentencing, Lawrence complained that multiple unnamed people in the two DJs "advisory orbit" have avoided criminal charges, as have his client's unnamed alleged coconspirators.

The two DJs have likewise carried on with their careers, with only Butselaar paying any real penalty.

"Tiesto is scheduled to take the stage in India tonight," Lawrence told the judge at sentencing on Thursday.

"And Afrojack is scheduled to appear in Italy next week," he said, adding, "Mr. Butselaar never blamed anyone else for doing anything improper and asked us not to do so."

US District Judge Cathy Seibel has 90 days after imposing the sentence to make a finding on restitution. She said Thursday that she will weigh arguments for and against the prosecution's $19 million demand before ruling.

• In a joint letter filed Thursday, Lively and Baldoni said they didn't plan on negotiating.
• They asked the Manhattan judge in their legal war to exempt them from federal mediation.
• Any settlement talks at this stage would be "premature," their lawyers said.

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, the warring costars of the summer box-office hit "It Ends With Us," have reached an agreement, of sorts, in their two-month legal battle. They have agreed to keep disagreeing.

On Thursday, lawyers for both sides filed a joint letter to the Manhattan judge presiding over their now consolidated cross-fire federal lawsuits, in which Lively accuses Baldoni of sexually harassing her on the set and he accuses her of defamation.

Their joint letter said they had zero interest in seeing a mediator and negotiating a settlement, despite the court ordering them in late January to begin the dispute-resolution process.

The letter asked US District Judge Lewis Liman to exempt them from mediation. Litigants in employment-related cases are required to participate in a dispute-resolution program unless a judge orders otherwise.

The Lively and Baldoni legal teams have known since late January "that settlement discussions would be premature," the letter to the judge said.

After conferring again on Friday, the parties continued to agree that mediation was "inappropriate," the letter said. The judge can decide at any time whether to let the parties off the mediation hook.

Besides coordination scheduling in late January, Thursday's "agree-to-disagree" letter is the first joint agreement in the growing Lively-Baldoni case file.

The legal teams are otherwise quite busy. Both sides are preparing to file motions in which they will ask the judge to dismiss the other side's claims, the letter said.

The web of Lively-Baldoni litigation also continues to widen.

Lively's lawsuit, filed on New Year's Eve, names as defendants Baldoni's film studio, his fellow producers, and his publicists, who she alleges engaged in a retaliatory social media smear campaign against her after learning she was accusing him of harassment.

Baldoni's lawsuit, filed two weeks later and seeking $400 million in defamation damages, lists Lively's husband, the "Deadpool" star Ryan Reynolds, as a defendant, along with her publicists.

A former publicist for Baldoni has filed a separate lawsuit, as has Baldoni's former so-called crisis guru. Thursday's joint letter said Lively's team was preparing to "imminently" add still more defendants to the list of people she's suing.

A trial date has been set for March 2026.

• Sam Altman wants to use Elon Musk's OpenAI takeover bid against him in court.
• Altman asked the judge in the tech bros' yearlong court battle to look at the bid letter.
• Altman says it shows Musk is contradicting himself when he fights OpenAI's efforts to go for-profit.

Sam Altman, in a court filing late Wednesday, asked a federal judge to take a look at the letter Elon Musk sent on Monday in a bid to take over OpenAI for $97.5 billion.

The request, filed with a federal judge in California, is Altman's latest move in fighting Musk's yearlong lawsuit seeking to halt OpenAI's transition into a fully for-profit entity.

Altman argues the letter is relevant to that battle. His new filing asks US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to let him use it to show that Musk is contradicting himself when he fights OpenAI's efforts to go for-profit.

He's asking Gonzalez Rogers to add the letter to everything he's already filed in fighting Musk's request that the judge halt that transition.

Musk's takeover-bid letter was attached as an exhibit to Wednesday night's filing.

In the filing, Altman's attorney told the judge that the letter was sent by a group of private investors, including Antonio Gracias and Gavin Baker, led by Musk in his capacity as xAI's CEO.

The attorney, Jordan Eth, wrote that the letter "purports to make an unsolicited bid" to acquire all OpenAI assets.

"Musk's purported takeover bid cannot be reconciled with the charitable trust claim he is advancing in this Court, or the injunction he is seeking on the back of that claim," Eth wrote.

Eth argued the letter showed that Musk had contradicted himself. In Musk v. Altman, the lawyer wrote, Musk is seeking an injunction barring any conversion of OpenAI into a for-profit enterprise.

"But out of court, those constraints evidently do not apply, so long as Musk and his allies are the buyers," Eth wrote. "Musk would have OpenAI, Inc. transfer all of its assets to him, for his economic benefit and that of his competing AI business and hand-picked private investors."

An attorney for Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Altman has been fighting hard in recent days against Musk's request that the judge halt what the lawsuit alleges is OpenAI's unlawful quashing of competition and its betrayal of its nonprofit origins.

Earlier Wednesday, Altman's attorney accused Musk of having "no facts" to back up his claims.

Altman has met Musk's takeover bid with a resounding no thank you, saying OpenAI is "not for sale."

Also Wednesday, Musk said in a separate court filing that he'd drop the $97.4 billion OpenAI bid if it remained a nonprofit.

• The latest volley was fired Wednesday in Musk's lawsuit against Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Microsoft.
• Musk wants a judge to halt what he alleges are OpenAI's unlawful anti-competitive practices.
• Musk has provided "no facts" to show OpenAI is unlawfully quashing competition, Altman's side wrote.

The latest volley was fired Wednesday in the ongoing legal battle between the world's biggest tech titans — with Sam Altman complaining in court papers that Elon Musk has "no facts" to back his claim that OpenAI is unlawfully quashing the competition.

"No facts support the existence of this conspiracy," a lawyer for Altman wrote in a 33-page court filing to a federal judge in Oakland, California.

Musk also hasn't shown he has been harmed in any way by what he alleges are OpenAI's anti-competitive actions, Altman's lawyer argued.

Musk's 107-page lawsuit accuses Altman of fraud, self-dealing, and "unfair competition."

"He claims he will suffer irreparable harm absent judicial intervention, but provides no plausible account of how or why," Altman's lawyer, Jordan Eth, wrote in Wednesday's filing.

The filing is Altman's response to Musk's request that US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers order an immediate halt to what Musk alleges is OpenAI's unfair and illegal restraint on its competitors.

Musk wants Gonzalez Rogers to immediately block OpenAI's ongoing transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity. Musk also wants the judge to bar OpenAI from mandating that its investors not invest in competing tech companies, including Grok, the chatbot developed by Musk's own AI company, xAI.

Lawyers for Musk and Altman last sparred in the lawsuit a week ago, at a virtual hearing before Gonzalez Rogers. The judge voiced skepticism at the hearing over Musk's "irreparable harm" claims, at one point summing up the warring factions this way: "I have billionaires versus billionaires."

"How can I say as a matter of law there is a likely restraint on trade when your client has raised $11 billion?" for xAI, she asked Musk attorney Marc Toberoff.

Wednesday's filing by Altman's side echoed the judge's skepticism.

"Leveraging Musk's influence, and the 'web of companies' under his control, xAI has become a major player in a highly competitive industry, raising capital at unprecedented speed and scale," Altman's filing said.

Musk's startup "increased its valuation to $50 billion in a new funding round last month, making it the second most valuable private AI developer behind OpenAI," the filing said.

Musk has used that investment infusion to quickly build "what is believed to be the world's largest supercomputer, dubbed 'Colossus,'" Altman's filing said.

Granting the "sweeping" relief sought by Musk "would debilitate OpenAI's business, board deliberations, and mission to create safe and beneficial AI — all to the advantage of Musk and his own AI company," the filing added.

The judge has not said when she will be ruling on Musk's request. A lawyer for Musk did not immediately return a request for comment.

Altman and his codefendants have also asked the judge to dismiss Musk's now nearly year-old lawsuit in its entirety — a separate paperwork battle that is scheduled to continue into late May.

The judge said last week that the parties should be prepared for trial at the end of next year at the earliest.

• Sean "Diddy" Combs has sued NBCUniversal for $100 million.
• The lawsuit accuses NBCUniversal of defamation by airing falsehoods in a documentary about him.
• The "Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy" documentary is streaming on Peacock.

Sean "Diddy" Combs has filed a defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal over the media company's recent documentary "Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy."

The lawsuit, filed in New York state court on Wednesday, accuses NBC of "shamelessly" airing "falsehoods," including that Combs sexually assaulted minors — an allegation in the documentary that Combs says was "based entirely on a false claim by an anonymous interviewee."

Combs also says in the lawsuit that the documentary "maliciously" accuses him of murdering a series of rivals and close friends, including longtime partner Kimberly Porter, rappers Christopher "Biggie" Wallace, and Heavy D, given name Dwight Arrington Myers.

"In the Documentary, Defendants accuse Mr. Combs of horrible crimes, including serial murder and sexual assault of minors — knowing that there is not a shred of evidence to support them," the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also names Peacock TV and Ample Entertainment as defendants. Peacock, an NBC subsidiary, streamed the documentary, and Ample was the production company responsible for producing it.

Representatives for NBCUniversal didn't immediately return a request for comment by Business Insider. Ample couldn't immediately be reached.

The defendants worked together to "line their own pockets at the expense of truth, decency, and basic standards of professional journalism," the lawsuit says of the documentary, which first aired in January.

"As described in today's lawsuit, NBCUniversal Media, LLC, Peacock TV, LLC, and Ample LLC made a conscious decision to line their own pockets at the expense of truth, decency, and basic standards of professional journalism," Combs' attorney, Erica Wolff, said in a statement. "Grossly exploiting the trust of their audience and racing to outdo their competition for the most salacious Diddy exposé."

Combs is awaiting trial in Manhattan on federal charges including racketeering and sex trafficking. He has pleaded not guilty and has repeatedly denied allegations of sexual abuse in his criminal case and in multiple lawsuits accusing him of drugging and assaulting men and women over the past two decades.

The lawsuit Combs filed on Wednesday takes aim at portions of the documentary he says make false allegations against him, addressing each in strong language and lengthy detail.

Combs accuses the documentary of implying he had sex with minors — an allegation he says is based on a single interviewee who falsely claimed he saw two girls follow him into a room. The documentary includes the interviewee's "groundless speculation that 'for sure they were underage.'," the lawsuit says.

The allegation was likely "rehashed from a baseless lawsuit seeking $30 million," Combs' lawsuit says, in a reference to a February, 2024, lawsuit filed against the rapper by music producer Rodney Jones, Jr.

That lawsuit "has already been discredited by those adult women in their 30s referenced in that lawsuit who have come forward to say that they were adults at the time," Combs argues.

The rap entrepreneur takes special issue in his lawsuit with a suggestion in the documentary that Combs was responsible for Porter's death.

He calls Porter the mother to four of his children, his romantic partner for more than a decade, and "the love of his life." Porter died in 2018 at the age of 47 from lobar pneumonia.

"The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office has confirmed that her death was from natural causes and that there has never been any evidence of foul play," Combs' lawsuit says.

"The Documentary advances the false narrative that it cannot be a 'coincidence' that Ms. Porter and others in Mr. Combs's orbit have died, in a malicious attempt to insinuate that Mr. Combs murdered them."

Of Biggie — who died in a drive-by shooting in 1997 — Combs says in his lawsuit, "There has never been a hint of evidence to suggest that Mr. Combs was involved in the tragic murder of his friend."

Two other friends' deaths were addressed in the documentary — those of music executive Andre Harrell, who suffered heart failure in 2020, and Dwight Arrington Myers, a rapper and producer who had a fatal pulmonary embolism in 2011, Combs' lawsuit says.

People interviewed in the documentary, including Porter's ex Al B. Sure, speculate without evidence that Combs must have been involved with the deaths of Porter, Biggie, Harrell, and Myers, the lawsuit says.

"Defendants Ample and NBCU knew those statements were false or published them in reckless disregard for the truth," the suit says.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

• Macy's wants a judge to remove it from a sexual assault lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs.
• The suit says Macy's violated a gender-violence law by ignoring an attack at the Herald Square store.
• The plaintiff himself describes Diddy as "an equal opportunity sexual predator," Macy's argues.

Macy's wants to be removed as a defendant in a sexual assault lawsuit against Sean "Diddy" Combs — and their arguments for dismissal include calling the rap entrepreneur "an equal opportunity sexual predator."

The October lawsuit accuses Macy's of violating a New York City gender-violence law by covering up an alleged attack by Combs on a male employee at the Herald Square flagship store in 2008.

The worldwide department chain argues the plaintiff, only identified as John Doe, cannot accuse Macy's of gender bias because, in the very same lawsuit, Doe himself describes Combs as willing to attack both men and women.

"Plaintiff's own allegations establish not only that this was a same-sex assault, but that Mr. Combs sexually assaulted both men and women, without regard to gender," the Macy's lawyers argued in court papers last week.

"Plaintiff does not address the fact that his own allegations establish that Mr. Combs was an equal opportunity sexual predator."

A spokesperson for Combs declined to comment on Macy's argument, instead referring BI to his own motion to dismiss the case against himself and his companies, filed Tuesday.

His motion also challenges the applicability of New York's gender-violence law. Combs has repeatedly denied any sexual assaults.

"Mr. Combs denies the entirely false and salacious claims against him in the Complaint and is confident that he and the Company Defendants (against whom no misconduct or participation is even alleged) would be fully vindicated if this case were to proceed to trial," his dismissal motion said.

District Court Judge J. Paul Oetken's decision on whether to dismiss Macy's could come at any time. A decision on Combs' dismissal bid is not due until sometime after the plaintiff responds.

Macy's is the deepest-pocket defendant by far in any of a blizzard of more than 30 sex-assault lawsuits filed against the rapper in the past year.

The plaintiff says in his lawsuit that at the time of the alleged attack, he was working at Macy's flagship Manhattan store for Ecko, a rival hip-hop fashion brand to Combs' Sean John Clothing.

His 19-page lawsuit alleges that he was working in a stockroom when Combs entered with three armed bodyguards who struck him and threatened to kill him.

Combs then orally raped him in the stockroom, while calling him "Ecko" and taunting, "You like that, white boy?" the lawsuit alleges. After what was alleged to be a two-minute attack, Combs then grabbed armfuls of Sean Jean clothing, left the stockroom with his bodyguards, and proceeded to hand out clothes to shoppers "as if nothing had happened," the lawsuit claims.

The plaintiff alleges that the chain did nothing to support him when he came forward with his allegations against Combs, and instead fired him to protect a multimillion-dollar deal with Sean Jean.

In fighting to be dropped as a defendant, lawyers for Macy's argued that the lawsuit does not allege store employees were in any way involved in the attack.

Macy's lawyers also pointed to the New York City Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law. The lawyers for the man had argued in their lawsuit that the gender violence law entitled their client to seek damages from Macy's.

Macy's countered that the law does not permit claims against corporations for assaults prior to 2022, and that the lawsuit failed to offer any evidence that the alleged violence was motivated by gender bias.

Combs' alleged "white boy" taunt does not refer to gender bias, Macy's lawyers argued in papers signed by attorney Daniel Kotler.

The word "boy" in that scenario "functions primarily as a term of status and belittlement (boy versus man) rather than as a gendered comment (boy versus girl) — it is in effect an inversion of the classically racist use of the term 'boy' to degrade or belittle African Americans," Macy's side argued.

Kotler did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

Buzbee, the lead attorney for the plaintiff, counters in court papers that the New York gender-violence law does cover corporations involved in attacks prior to 2022. He also argues that "the fact that Combs violently assaulted people of both genders does not somehow exempt him" from the law.

"A pretty novel argument that should fail," Buzbee told Business Insider on Tuesday of Macy's dismissal arguments.

• A judge on Monday found Trump was flouting his order from last week that paused a spending freeze.
• The judge ordered the administration to restore and resume the funding immediately.
• The order was by the federal judge in Rhode Island overseeing a lawsuit brought by 22 states and DC.

The Trump administration is violating a federal court order by continuing to freeze funding for federal programs, a judge in Rhode Island found Monday.

In a sharply worded response, US District Judge John J. McConnell Jr., who's overseeing a lawsuit brought by 22 states and the District of Columbia, ordered the administration to immediately restore and resume the funding.

The order is the first major challenge after recent suggestions that if President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the Department of Government Efficiency's leader, Elon Musk, don't like what a judge orders, one option is to ignore it, Michel Paradis, who teaches constitutional law at Columbia Law School, said.

Over the past few days, Vance wrote on X, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," and Musk posted his support of an X user's suggestion that Trump openly defy the courts. Trump, meanwhile, said over the weekend that judges shouldn't be allowed to challenge recent DOGE actions.

"That's some tough language. The judge is not messing around," Paradis told Business Insider of Monday's order.

"It's return fire, to the extent that the Trump administration has declared that neither Congress nor the courts are allowed to question his authority," he added.

McConnell said his order was a response to evidence from the plaintiff states indicating that the pause on the freeze — which he said was causing "irreparable harm" and was "likely unconstitutional" — was being flouted.

"The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds," the judge wrote.

That evidence included descriptions of funding to the plaintiff states still being disrupted, including money from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services, including funds for the Head Start program.

"The Defendants must immediately restore frozen funding" while the court weighs the states' claims and the government's arguments on behalf of the freeze, the judge wrote.

Trump's side quickly filed a notice with the court that it is appealing both the judge's original January 31 order and Monday's order.

Asked whether the Trump administration would comply with the latest order, a White House spokesperson responded by criticizing the legal challenges to the president's recent executive orders.

"Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful," Harrison Fields, the principal White House deputy press secretary, said.

"Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people," who elected Trump to "restore common-sense policies," he said.

Paradis said McConnell could find the defendants — who include Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — in contempt if his court order continues to be ignored.

Trump is also a defendant in the lawsuit. But holding a sitting president in contempt is a "constitutionally complex issue" and a "totally open question," Paradis said.

"There are plenty of people who say that just as you can't prosecute the president, you can't hold them in contempt because it creates a separation of powers problem," he said.

"But there's no question whatsoever that you can hold his subordinates, including Cabinet secretaries, very much in contempt of court and that he could do nothing about that," Paradis said of Trump. Contempt can be punishable by fines or jail as the judge sees fit, Paradis added.

February 10, 2025: This story was updated to include more details from the order and Trump's notice of appeal.

• President Donald Trump's executive orders have faced a slew of legal roadblocks.
• Judges have blocked orders on birthright citizenship, transgender inmate rehousing, and spending.
• Trump's tariff plans for Canada and Mexico were paused after negotiations.

Some of President Donald Trump's boldest moves during his new administration's seismic first three weeks have been grounded before ever taking flight.

The administration and its Department of Governmental Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, the world's richest man, promised a list of swift-moving changes to the US government's operations. While some of those plans have progressed, others were put on hold, either in the courts or by the administration itself.

The White House says this is all part of a long game that Trump, ultimately, will win.

"Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful," Harrison Fields, the principal White House deputy press secretary, told BI on Friday.

And as for Trump's walked-back plans to hit our closest neighbors with tariffs — that was an all-out victory, said another White House spokesman, Kush Desai, who said Trump changed course on Mexico and Canada after "critical concessions" from both countries.

Still, much of Trump 2.0 remains on ice for now.

For those who haven't been able to keep up with the firehouse of actions announced by the White House and DOGE, here are the key ones that have been held up — for now.

A 'fork in the road' resignation offer

A federal judge in Massachusetts delayed Trump's plan to root out federal employees with buyout offers.

On January 28, the Trump administration gave just over two million government workers the chance to resign and maintain full pay and benefits until September 30. The so-called "fork in the road" resignation offer was a strategy straight out of Musk's playbook.

US District Judge George O'Toole Jr. on Thursday extended the buyout deadline until at least Monday, just hours before the actual deadline. The order came in response to a lawsuit brought by labor union groups. A Trump administration official told BI that over 40,000 federal workers had taken the buyout as of Wednesday.

Musk's DOGE and the Treasury

The White House launched another fiscal bombshell on February 3 when Trump told reporters he had given Treasury data access to Musk, whose DOGE is tasked with cutting government spending.

The idea that DOGE would have access to the personal information of millions of Americans — including anyone who had ever paid taxes, taken a federal loan, or collected Social Security — resulted in another legal challenge.

On Thursday, a federal judge in California set strict interim limits on the Treasury data, banning DOGE from accessing it directly.

Then, Saturday morning, another federal judge temporarily blocked a slew of people — including special government employees (like Musk), political appointees, and government employees not assigned by the Treasury — from accessing the Treasury's payment systems. The judge also ordered those who had gained new access to the systems to destroy all copies they may have made of materials and records they downloaded.

In the order, US District Judge Paul Engelmayer cited the risk of "disclosure of sensitive and confidential information" and the "heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking."

A freeze on federal spending

On January 27 — the first full Monday of Trump 2.0 — Trump budget officials dropped a bombshell memo ordering the temporary freezing of "all federal financial assistance" beginning 5 p.m. the following day, so that the spending could be reviewed. In an instant, the future of billions of dollars in federal funding was thrown into question.

The shockwaves were just as swift, even in the hours before the freeze was to take place. Medicaid portals used by states to access federal reimbursement quickly shut down across the country. Head Start funds were frozen in some states. Officials in California wondered if FEMA wildfire assistance was at risk.

Judges presiding over two hastily-drafted lawsuits issued separate injunctions blocking the freeze, including a federal judge in DC whose order came down minutes before the 5 p.m deadline.

The next day, Matthew Vaeth, director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent out a second memo. It said that the first memo is no longer in effect.

Backing off from tariff threats

Trump touted his plans to impose new 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and they were set to go into effect on Tuesday.

The announcements were met with retaliatory plans from both countries, where leaders said they'd enforce their own tariffs on American products.

The expected trade war rattled the markets. On Monday, stocks and crypto tumbled, while the US dollar and oil climbed.

In the end, though, these tariffs that left American investors scrambling were put on hold.

Trump and Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, struck a deal on border policy, delaying the expected tariff on Mexican imports for 30 days. Similarly, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau negotiated a pause until March for that set of tariffs.

A similar threat of 25% tariffs on goods from Colombia was put on hold after the country agreed to accept all deportation flights from the US.

An additional 10% tariff on imports from China did go into effect Tuesday, and was quickly matched by retaliatory tariffs on US exports to that country.

Bid to end birthright citizenship

Trump's executive order seeking to abolish the constitutional right of birthright citizenship has been indefinitely blocked by two separate federal judges.

A judge in Washington state issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the order on Thursday, just a day after a Maryland judge did the same. The order — one of the first signed by Trump after he was sworn into office — has been challenged in the courts by more than 20 Democratic-run states and immigrant rights advocates who have argued it violates the 14th Amendment.

Judge John Coughenour of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington temporarily halted the order on January 23, calling the move to end automatic citizenship to US-born children of parents who are in the country illegally "blatantly unconstitutional."

Coughenour issued his Thursday ruling following the decision by Maryland US District Judge Deborah Boardman. Boardman wrote that Trump's order "conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year-old binding Supreme Court precedent, and runs counter to our nation's 250-year history of citizenship by birth."

Dropping USAID into the 'wood chipper'

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing 2,200 USAID employees on paid leave.

The workers, some of whom are overseas, were set to go on leave just before midnight Friday.

Musk said in an X post on Monday that he had "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper."

The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, however, filed a lawsuit against the administration's USAID cuts on Thursday, arguing that the moves to dismantle it were made without congressional authorization.

Constitutional law experts told Business Insider that dismantling the agency without congressional approval is indisputably illegal.

Forcing transgender women inmates into men's prisons

Trump's Day One order to house transgender women into men's men's facilities at federal prisons has also been blocked in the courts.

The order says the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary shall "ensure that males are not detained in women's prisons" and calls to end gender-affirming care for transgender inmates. It was challenged in two lawsuits brought by a handful of transgender women in prison.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, DC, granted the plaintiffs' request for a temporary restraining order on Tuesday. In his order, Lamberth wrote that the plaintiffs "have straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow" if the restraining order request was denied.

Lamberth's order followed a separate ruling by US District Judge George O'Toole in Massachusetts, who also issued a temporary restraining order on January 26.

• Federal courts have already trimmed Donald Trump and Elon Musk's sails.
• But judges have surprisingly little recourse if Trump and Musk defy their rulings.
• If anyone is punished for such defiance, it likely won't be the president.

Federal judges keep ruling against President Trump, but they have no real power to enforce their decisions.

"The president has much more force at his disposal than do the courts," Cornell Law School professor Michael Dorf told Business Insider.

For instance, despite a federal court order Monday barring the administration's spending freeze, numerous Environmental Protection Agency programs remain inaccessible to their intended recipients. US District Judge John McConnell said state agencies have a "rightful concern" that they still couldn't access some programs.

Constitutional law experts warn that if a president chose to defy court orders, judges would have limited options. The consequences would likely fall on lower-level officials, not the president himself, said Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.

"At the very least, you would have a possible contempt citation directed at a particular official who has refused to comply with a court order," Gerhardt told BI, "If they indicate they are defying it because of his order, then the court is going to include the president in the citation of contempt."

But enforcing even that would fall to the Justice Department — which answers to Trump.

Gerhardt pointed to recent examples of Trump testing limits: The president fired inspectors general without providing Congress the legally required notification and list of reasons for dismissal.

Some in Trump's orbit have previously said the president should actively confront the judiciary. Long before he was elected last November, Vice President JD Vance argued that Trump should forge ahead with bold actions and dare federal judges who try to stand in his way.

"I think that what Trump should, like, if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state," Vance said in 2021 on a podcast. "Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'" (Many historians believe Andrew Jackson likely never said that.)

Presidents have expressed their displeasure with court rulings, but fundamentally ignoring a federal judge is another matter.

Michel Paradis, who teaches constitutional law at Columbia Law School, said that judges are likely to look unfavorably on any deliberate actions to defy their rulings.

"To the extent the administration's actions are viewed as improvisational, erratic, or deliberately pushing previously settled boundaries in a haphazard way, that would make any normal judge — regardless of personal politics — skeptical," Paradis told BI.

Behind the apparent disorder, Gerhardt sees a deliberate strategy.

"Part of Trump's strategy is to manifest that defiance in many ways, so it becomes very difficult to keep track of all of them," he said, "We're not just talking about one thing, it's many things. And I think one reason why there are many things is because it overwhelms the system."

• Sam Altman has denied Elon Musk's claim that OpenAI bars investors from investing in competitors.
• "That is false," Altman said Thursday in a sworn statement to a California judge.
• He said investors were told only that they'd lose OpenAI data access if they invested in a rival.

Sam Altman has personally disputed an accusation now at the center of Elon Musk's federal racketeering lawsuit against him: Musk's claim that OpenAI investors must agree to a fund-no-competitor "edict."

"That claim is false," Altman said late Wednesday in a sworn declaration to the judge presiding over Musk's lawsuit, originally filed in February 2024.

The Tesla CEO and DOGE head is accusing Altman of colluding with Microsoft to unlawfully crush competition — including by barring OpenAI's outside investors from also investing in rival AI companies during a funding round that closed in the fall.

Altman's declaration was filed in opposition to Musk's demand for an immediate injunction against OpenAI.

If approved by the judge, the injunction would ban OpenAI from forcing investors to agree not to invest in other AI companies and would freeze the tech giant's transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity.

"I did not tell any investor in the October 2024 funding round that
their ability to invest in OpenAI was subject to that condition, nor to my knowledge did anyone else at OpenAI," Altman said in the page-long declaration.

There were indeed some restrictions, but those were limited and nothing like what Musk described, Altman told US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who hears cases in Oakland.

Investors who had ongoing access to confidential OpenAI information were told that access would be terminated "if they made non-passive investments in OpenAI's competitors," Altman told the judge.

"That restriction is necessary to protect against the misuse of OpenAI's competitively-sensitive information, and I understand it is industry standard for that reason," Altman's statement said.

Altman added that in explaining that limited restriction, he did not tell investors that they would lose the ability to invest in OpenAI if they chose to fund Musk's xAI or any other competitor.

Musk's claim that Altman, his colleague turned rival, was forcing OpenAI investors to agree to the investment ban was raised in detail during a hearing on the lawsuit held before Gonzalez Rogers on Tuesday.

The two men helped cofound OpenAI in 2015. Musk invested $44 million in the venture before their falling out three years later.

Alleging a violation of federal antitrust laws, Musk's attorney Marc Toberoff told the judge on Tuesday that OpenAI's high-value investors were required to agree to the investment ban as a condition of investing, and "not just in the latest funding round."

The Biden administration's Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission also said that such a ban would violate federal antitrust law, Toberoff said.

Altman's company is weighing a new funding round that could hike its value to $340 billion, all the while claiming to be a charitable enterprise, Musk's lawyer told the judge.

"OpenAI — already with 70% of the market, in conjunction with Microsoft — is seeking to strangle their competitors in the crib," he said.

Responding to Musk's claim at Tuesday's hearing, attorneys for Altman and Microsoft said OpenAI's investors were never told to boycott competitors.

In fact, Altman's attorney Sarah Eddy told the judge that there were investors who put money in both xAI and OpenAI.

"Some investors in OpenAI agreed that in the event they became non-passive investors or with governance rights in other competitors, they would cease getting certain confidential information from OpenAI. That is the agreement that's established by the evidence," Eddy told the judge.

The judge did not say when she expected to rule on the proposed injunction.

Altman and his codefendants — who include OpenAI, Microsoft, OpenAI's cofounder Gregory Brockman, and the billionaire LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman — are seeking a dismissal of the lawsuit. A hearing on those dismissal motions is set for May 28.

Attorneys for Musk and Altman said Tuesday that they'd be ready for trial by the end of 2026 at the earliest.

Correction: February 6, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated when Elon Musk's lawsuit was originally filed. It was in February 2024, not March.

• The Treasury agreed on Wednesday night not to share millions of Americans' sensitive data with DOGE.
• The agreement was approved Thursday by a DC judge, and now strictly limits data sharing.
• At a hearing earlier Wednesday, a Treasury lawyer said no one at DOGE had direct access to the data.

The Treasury Department has agreed that it would not directly share the personal financial data of millions of Americans with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

The agreement, struck between the Treasury and a group of plaintiffs representing government unions on Wednesday night, was approved Thursday morning by US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who sits in Washington, DC.

The judge had asked for language limiting the sharing during an hourlong court hearing on Wednesday, at which a government lawyer said only two Musk allies had any access to the data.

Under the language agreed upon by the two sides, those two Musk allies would continue to have read-only access to Treasury records maintained by the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

The two were identified in court as Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause and Marko Elez, who has worked at SpaceX and X, formerly Twitter.

Beyond Krause and Elez, the Fiscal Service records could only be accessed by Treasury employees who have "a need for the record or system of records in the performance of their duties," according to the order.

The access limits would stand in effect while the union groups' lawsuit proceeds.

Later on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Elez, 25, had resigned from his government post after the paper asked the White House about a deleted social-media account that it reported was linked to Elez and advocated for racism and eugenics. A White House spokesperson confirmed Elez had resigned.

Elez's resignation will have no impact on the judge's order, said Nandan Joshi, who represents the three unions in the lawsuit, which was filed against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday.

"The order that the judge entered this morning required the Treasury not improperly share information, and he is still bound by that," Joshi told Business Insider of Elez.

"It would be a theft of federal data if he is still holding onto or accessing the data," Joshi added.

The contention that Krause and Elez were the only Musk allies with any access to the records was met with skepticism on Wednesday afternoon by one of the lawyers seeking to ensure the data's privacy.

"We remain concerned that the records — the personal information of our association's members — are still compromised," said the lawyer, Joshi said at the hearing.

"If there's a compromise, it's impossible to unbreak the egg," Joshi said.

Treasury officials have so far not been forthcoming on what access the two Musk allies have to the data, Joshi told the judge.

"We don't take it as a given that two individuals by themselves, without outside assistance, will manage the supposed task of rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse in a system that handles over a billion payments a year, and trillions and trillions of dollars of payments," he said.

The lawyer representing Bessent and the Treasury Department, Bradley P. Humphreys, countered during the hearing that only Elez had direct access to the data and that "he briefs and reports to Mr. Krause, who does not have direct access."

"Only those two individuals have been given any access," Humphreys said, adding that as special government employees of the Treasury Department, both were subject to federal ethics and confidentiality requirements.

Asked by the judge if Krause and Elez had distributed the fiscal data to "anybody else," Humphreys said "As far as we are aware, no, they have not, outside the Treasury Department."

That includes Musk, the lawyer added.

"Does he have access to it? Can he go look at it? Has he gone and looked at it?" the judge asked of Musk.

"No, your honor. To our knowledge he has not," Humphreys answered.

The Bessent lawsuit challenges what it calls the Treasury's ongoing release to DOGE of sensitive data from anyone who pays federal taxes, collects Social Security, or otherwise engages financially with the government.

Lawyers for the unions asked to block the sharing of this Treasury data with DOGE while the lawsuit proceeds.

The Treasury and Bessent "have unlawfully implemented and are unlawfully maintaining a system that enables records and information about individuals to be accessed and disclosed to unauthorized parties," the unions argue in court documents.

"The scale of the intrusion into individuals' privacy is massive and unprecedented," the unions say.

The lawsuit was filed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, and the Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO. It alleges that releasing the names and financial details of people in the Treasury's database would violate federal data-privacy law and Internal Revenue Service regulations.

February 6, 2025 — This story was updated to include the resignation of Marko Elez.

• Luigi Mangione has added a free-of-charge death penalty expert to his legal team.
• A veteran of terror cases, Avi Moskowitz also reps a Pakistani accused in a Trump assassination plot.
• Moskowitz's work on behalf of Mangione will be paid for by federal taxpayer dollars.

Luigi Mangione, the Ivy League grad charged in the execution-style shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has added a free-of-charge death penalty expert to his defense team.

Mangione's newest attorney — appointed by the judge this week with his team's consent — is Avraham Chaim Moskowitz, a veteran death penalty attorney who also reps a Pakistani man accused of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump and other political figures.

The federal courts mandate and pay for legal experts — termed "learned counsel" — to join the defense teams of defendants charged in capitol cases.

Moskowitz's most notorious case is from the 1990s, when he defended Ramzi Yousef, the Kuwaiti terrorist convicted of lighting the 20-foot fuse that set off the first World Trade Center bombing in New York. The 1993 bombing killed six people and injured more than 1,000 more.

Mangione is being held without bail in a federal jail in Brooklyn, awaiting a yet-scheduled trial on murder charges that, by law, could result in the death penalty or life in prison. Prosecutors have yet to say publicly if they will seek the death penalty in the case.

Mangione's lead attorneys remain Marc Agnifilo and Karen Friedman Agnifilo, the husband-wife defense team behind the Manhattan firm of Agnifilo Intrater LLP.

The team "is pleased to have Avi Moskowitz lend his considerable expertise in death penalty cases as 'learned counsel,'" a spokesperson for the firm told Business Insider.

"The charges could not be more serious and our client needs every resource at his disposal to fight these unprecedented charges in three jurisdictions."

Moskowitz was appointed by the court from a panel of federally-approved expert attorneys. A magistrate judge approved his appointment on Tuesday, according to court papers.

Moskowitz's other current high-profile client is Asif Raza Merchant, 46, a Pakistani with ties to Iran who was arrested in July and accused of paying undercover agents to assassinate Trump and other political figures. Moskowitz did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the appointment Wednesday morning.

Mangione is the son of a wealthy real estate family from Maryland. A software developer and University of Pennsylvania graduate, he was arrested in Pennsylvania on December 9 after a five-day manhunt. Thompson was shot December 4 in Midtown Manhattan, on the sidewalk outside a UnitedHealthcare board meeting where the CEO was about to deliver an address.

The federal charges against Mangione allege he targeted Thompson specifically at least six weeks before shooting the 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota.

Federal prosecutors say they recovered writings from Mangione that implicate him in the shooting.

"What do you do? You wack the C.E.O. at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention," he allegedly wrote in a spiral notebook law enforcement says he was carrying when arrested.

"It's targeted, precise, and doesn't risk innocents," officials said he wrote.

Mangione also faces parallel state charges out of the Manhattan District Attorney's office that allege he murdered Thompson as an act of terrorism.

In Pennsylvania, he faces state forgery and firearms charges as arresting officers said they recovered a false New Jersey driver's license, a black, 3D printed pistol, a silver silencer, and seven nine-millimeter full metal jacket rounds.

• Attorneys for Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman went head to head in a California courtroom Tuesday.
• A judge considered Musk's bid to block OpenAI's transition to a for-profit entity.
• The judge called the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's claims of "irreparable harm" a "stretch."

Calling Elon Musk's high-profile lawsuit against Sam Altman a case of "billionaires versus billionaires," US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers pulled no punches in her California courtroom Tuesday.

The federal judge said she's not opposed to a trial being held on at least some of the claims brought by the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. In the case, Musk accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of civil racketeering and fraud.

Commenting on motions to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Altman's OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft, Gonzalez Rogers told the attorneys in an Oakland courtroom, "I've spent a lot of time with this complaint, I can tell you right now, it will be granted in part and denied in part."

"I don't know what happened, but I certainly am not throwing something out on a motion to dismiss when it is plausible that what Mr. Musk is saying is true," the judge said. "We'll find out, he'll sit on the stand, he'll present it to a jury. A jury will decide who is right. So something's going to trial."

Attorneys for Musk and Altman said they'd be ready for trial at the end of next year at the earliest.

Tuesday's hearing was held so that Gonzalez Rogers could hear arguments for and against Musk's request for a preliminary injunction to block OpenAI's ongoing transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity. If granted, the injunction would stall OpenAI's conversion.

Musk also wants the injunction to stop OpenAI from allegedly mandating that its investors not invest in its competitors.

"They haven't been able to demonstrate any harm they will suffer absent an injunction," OpenAI attorney William Savitt told the judge. "He asks for sweeping relief to straightjacket a competitor," Savitt said of Musk's own artificial intelligence venture, xAI.

Gonzalez Rogers did not immediately rule on the matter, but said that the kind of relief Musk seeks is "extraordinary" and "rarely granted."

The judge also called questioned Musk's ability to claim "irreparable harm" in this case.

"I have billionaires versus billionaires," said Gonzalez Rogers.

"For me to say, as a matter of law, that something that you should be granted relief in this kind of environment is a stretch," the judge told Musk's attorney, Marc Toberoff, who shot back, "I don't believe it's a stretch."

At another point the judge asked Toberoff how much Musk has raised for xAI — "How many billions at this point?"

"How can I say as a matter of law there is a likely restraint on trade when your client has raised $11 billion?" she asked.

Skepticism from the judge

At one point, the judge scoffed at the idea that Musk or investors were in the dark about OpenAI's for-profit intentions. "The notion that people don't know what's going on who are investing is incredible," she said, given that they've spent more than $300 billion in funding into the company.

And Musk is no babe in the woods, she quipped, "especially since he's running the government right now, who knows."

When Toberoff began explaining that xAI has had to build its own infrastructure "from scratch" — unlike OpenAI, which could rely on Microsoft's massive cloud servers — the judge quipped, "Well, the Chinese seem to think it's not that expensive" in a reference to the Chinese startup DeepSeek.

Musk's lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI — the company the two men helped cofound a decade ago — accuses Altman of betraying OpenAI's founding mission as a nonprofit research lab dedicated to keeping AI technology safe and freely available for the good of mankind. An amended lawsuit brought by Musk alleges fraud, breach of contract, racketeering, and violations of antitrust laws, among other complaints.

The suit — which alleges OpenAI and Microsoft violated antitrust laws by asking investors not to back competing AI firms like Musk's own xAI — accuses Altman and other OpenAI executives of deceiving Musk into cofounding the company.

"Altman repeatedly assured Musk and regulators that the nonprofit structure guaranteed neutrality and a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value or individual enrichment," the lawsuit says.

It adds, "But after Musk lent his name to the venture as its co-chairman, invested significant time, tens of millions of dollars in seed capital, and recruited top AI scientists for OpenAI, Inc., Musk and the nonprofit's namesake objective were betrayed by Altman and his accomplices."

The judge did not immediately rule on Musk's request for an injunction — but she voiced strong skepticism.

"It's not my job to somehow stop competition, and things are very murky still in terms of what's going on between Musk and xAI — and OpenAI and Microsoft on the other hand," she said.

"This county values competition," Gonzalez Rogers added. "You are asking me to get involved in the playing field. And this particular judge is not making the playing field uneven."

• The feds say Javice tricked JPMorgan Chase into paying $175M for her financial aid startup, Frank.
• On Tuesday, a Manhattan judge set parameters for a February 18 criminal trial.
• No one can mention Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, he ruled — unless Javice opens the door.

Charlie Javice — the young tech entrepreneur accused of tricking the nation's largest bank into paying $175 million for her college financial-aid startup — once had a lot to say about Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes.

Javice called Holmes' defrauded investors "sophisticated assholes," and complained that "investors should be blamed," according to a pair of WhatsApp messages that were discussed at a pretrial hearing in Manhattan on Tuesday.

When Javice and her ex-number two at their startup, Frank, go on trial for allegedly defrauding JPMorgan Chase later this month, federal prosecutors will be barred from making any mention of Theranos or Holmes, a judge ruled during the hearing.

And those WhatsApp messages between Javice and codefendant Olivier Amar, in particular, are definitely not coming into evidence, he said, unless either defendant opens the door by mentioning them on the witness stand.

"The potential for prejudice outweighs anything probative," US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said in precluding the use of the two messages that prosecutors had optimistically labeled "Government Exhibit 802."

The two WhatsApp messages are from 2022, "in the midst of their own efforts to defraud JPMC," the government alleged in court papers last week, in asking the judge to allow the "highly probative" texts into evidence at a trial scheduled to begin February 18.

Federal prosecutors allege that over months of negotiations, Javice and Amar repeatedly lied to Chase about the success of Frank, a for-profit tech company that Javice launched at age 24 and which featured software to help students apply for college financial aid.

Javice fraudulently claimed that Fank had 4.5 million customers, prosecutors allege, and created fake spreadsheets to trick the bank into believing they existed. She personally stood to gain $45 million in stock and salary from the deal, according to prosecutors.

"The government seeks only to offer the defendants' own statements about the defendants' own contemporaneous views about Holmes' criminal conduct, while in the midst of concealing the defendants' own criminal conspiracy," federal prosecutors wrote in asking last week for the judge's permission to use the WhatsApp messages as trial evidence.

In the messages, Javice and Amar are "calling the conviction 'dangerous,' and repeating many of the defenses they intend in their own case," prosecutors wrote.

That includes what prosecutors call a blame-the-victim defense.

"Investors should be blamed on letting a 19-year-old go rogue," Javice commiserated with Amar in the messages, referring to Holmes, who founded Theranos at age 19.

Perhaps most damagingly, the texts appear to show Javice drawing a distinction between a health-based fraud, like the one Holmes was convicted of, and a fraud based on financial aid.

"I think health is different," Javice tells her number two in the first of the two contested, and now stricken, WhatsApp messages.

"They talk about how she was unfairly treated," Assistant US Attorney Georgia V. Kostopoulos told the judge Tuesday, in her failed argument for admitting the messages.

"They say health is different" the prosecutor told the judge. "They're saying that it's different to lie about patients' health data than it is to lie about student data."

In their own court filings, defense lawyers for Javice and Amar had asked the judge to bar any mention at trial of "well-known, unrelated third parties convicted of fraud, specifically Elizabeth Holmes, Bernie Madoff, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Martim Skreli, which the government has signaled it intends to introduce in its case-in-chief."

Federal prosecutors say they have no intention of mentioning any of these infamous fradusters at trial.

Javice, who was once on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list, recently lost a bid to be tried separately from Amar. It was revealed at a court hearing last month that Amar plans to go on the offensive against Javice during the trial.

Both Javice and Amar have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit securities, wire, and bank fraud.

• A judge on Monday told the warring lawyers in the Lively-Baldoni case to nix the public trash talk.
• The order to play nice came during an acrimonious hearing in federal court in Manhattan.
• Also at the hearing, Lively's lawyer said she planned to sue more defendants by Friday.

A judge on Monday ordered the warring parties in the sprawling litigation between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni to stop trash-talking each other's clients on television and online.

The order to play nice in public — in other words, to follow New York state rules banning attorney statements that could prejudice a jury, or else face financial sanctions — came during an acrimonious hearing in federal court in Manhattan.

Lawyers for the "It Ends With Us" costars took turns at a podium reading from each other's press statements and pointing figurative fingers over who was the worst offender and who "started" the dueling media campaigns that have become a sideshow to the court case.

"This was not started by us, your honor," Baldoni's lead lawyer, Bryan Freedman, told the judge at one point Monday.

Baldoni and Lively did not attend the hearing, which was their attorneys' first courtroom face-off in the litigation. Lively accuses Baldoni of sexually harassing her during the film's production. Baldoni alleges in a $400 million countersuit against Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, that her accusations are libelous.

At the hearing Monday, a lawyer for Lively, Michael Gottlieb, accused Baldoni's lawyer of repeatedly insulting his client, including by calling her "a bully" last month on the conservative host Megyn Kelly's podcast.

Gottlieb also alleged the Baldoni attorney said on Kelly's show "that if Blake Lively, if she was sexually harassed, then she wouldn't have returned to the film."

"There's no guardrails in place," Gottlieb said, his voice angry. "We have to do our work in this case, and then we have to go on shows and argue about what this particular evidence or text message shows?"

Baldoni's lawyer, meanwhile, said that his client had lost "tens of millions of dollars" from the negative publicity. He alleged Lively's legal team planted a New York Times story that "was completely devastating" to the actor months before any filing was ever made in the case. "They very pointedly used the press and The New York Times," Freedman said.

"That is a disputed point," US District Judge Lewis J. Liman responded.

The judge told the lawyers for Lively and Baldoni to follow New York's rules of attorney conduct concerning pretrial publicity. The rules bar lawyers from making out-of-court statements that they know could impugn the character or reputation of a witness.

What's already on the official court docket "gives plenty for the public to feast on," the judge said. The judge added that he was concerned that if the public warring did not stop, there would be "satellite litigation" in which the attorneys sued each other over their statements.

The judge also issued a warning — if the public battle continued, he would move up the trial date, set for March 2026, so that the dispute would be shortened.

"If it turns out that this ends up being litigated in the press in a way that will prejudice the opportunities of the parties for a fair trial, then one of the tools that the court does have available to it is to accelerate the date of the trial," the judge said.

Also at the hearing, Lively's lawyer said he would be filing an amended lawsuit on Friday to add to the list of defendants she's suing. The lawyer did not say who would be added.

• Amazon has agreed to block sales of skin-lightening creams containing dangerous amounts of mercury.
• The agreement settles a decadelong lawsuit brought by the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow.
• Amazon must comply with California's Proposition 65, which protects consumers from toxic products.

Amazon on Friday settled a decadelong legal battle by agreeing to block skin-lightening creams containing dangerous amounts of mercury from its website.

The settlement requires that Amazon pay a total of $6 million in civil penalties and legal fees. Amazon must also take specific measures to prevent brands and third-party sellers from offering FDA-banned creams — those containing more than .0065% mercury — on the site.

The settlement, which does not require that Amazon admit wrongdoing, ends a lawsuit originally brought in California by a group of anonymous plaintiffs and As You Sow, a nonprofit that works with corporations to promote environmental and social responsibility.

The lawsuit was later joined by the California attorney general's office, which sued Amazon under the state's Proposition 65 and its Unfair Competition Law. The AG's office will receive $600,000 of the settlement money.

A spokesperson for Amazon said the company has worked in good faith with the AG's office and is pleased to have the matter resolved.

The original 2014 lawsuit alleged that Amazon, at one point, had 27 products for sale containing high amounts of mercury, sometimes at tens of thousands of times the allowable levels. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause prenatal defects and life-threatening kidney, brain, and central nervous system damage.

Amazon knows which brands have already been flagged by regulators as violating FDA standards and California health and safety codes, and their internal filters are capable of flagging others, said Rachel S. Doughty, a plaintiff attorney for the original lawsuit.

Many of the dangerous skin products have easily targeted "red flags" in their listings, the plaintiffs had argued. Most were made in Mexico and Pakistan, for example. Products claiming to both whiten skin and treat acne were also red flags, because mercury is the only ingredient known to do both, they had argued.

"I have seen an improvement in their website in the ten years since we filed the first case," Doughty told Business Insider. "And that means you will have a harder time finding well-known skin-whitening and lightening products on their website that have mercury in them."

She said she hopes that the settlement will prompt Amazon to be vigilant in policing its site for other potentially toxic products.

"I hope that internally, they don't want this to happen again, and that they are looking for other things that may have mercury, lead, cadmium, and a whole host of other chemicals," she said.

Amazon said in an emailed statement that the company does not tolerate illegal or evasive behavior from the businesses that sell through its site.

"In this case, all products in question were evasively listed by bad actors and once identified, were removed," the statement said.

"We have proactive measures in place to prevent prohibited products from being listed and we continuously monitor our store. If we discover a product was undetected by our automated checks, we address the issue immediately and refine our controls."

• OpenAI and the White House have accused DeepSeek of using ChatGPT to cheaply train its new chatbot.
• Experts in tech law say OpenAI has little recourse under intellectual property and contract law.
• OpenAI's terms of use may apply, but are largely unenforcible, experts say.

This week, OpenAI and the White House accused DeepSeek of something akin to theft.

In a flurry of press statements, they said the China-based upstart had bombarded OpenAI's chatbots with queries, hoovering up the resulting data trove to quickly and cheaply train a model that's now almost as good.

The Trump administration's top AI "czar" said this training process, called "distilling," amounts to intellectual property theft. OpenAI, meanwhile, told Business Insider and other outlets that it is investigating whether "DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models."

OpenAI is not saying if the company plans to pursue legal action, instead promising what a spokesperson termed "aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology."

But could they? Could they sue DeepSeek on "you stole our content" grounds, much like the grounds OpenAI was itself sued on in an ongoing 2023 copyright claim filed by The New York Times and other news outlets?

Business Insider posed this question to experts in technology law, who said challenging DeepSeek in the courts would be an uphill battle for OpenAI, now that the content-appropriation shoe is on the other foot.

OpenAI would have a hard time proving an intellectual property or copyright claim, these lawyers said.

"The question is whether ChatGPT outputs" — meaning the answers it generates in response to queries — "are copyrightable at all," said Mason Kortz of Harvard Law School.

That's because it's unclear that the answers ChatGPT spits out qualify as "creativity," he said.

"There's a doctrine that says creative expression is copyrightable, but facts and ideas are not," explained Kortz, who teaches at Harvard's Cyberlaw Clinic.

"There's a huge question in intellectual property law right now about whether the outputs of a generative AI can ever constitute creative expression or if they are necessarily unprotected facts."

Could OpenAI roll those dice anyway, and claim that its outputs actually are protected?

That would be unlikely, the lawyers said.

OpenAI is already on the record in the New York Times copyright case arguing that training AI is an allowable "fair use" exception to copyright protection.

If they do a 180 and tell DeepSeek that training is not a fair use, "that might come back to kind of bite them," said Kortz. "DeepSeek could say, 'Hey, weren't you just saying that training is fair use?'"

There's arguably a distinction between the Times and DeepSeek cases, Kortz adds.

"Maybe it's more transformative to turn news articles into a model" — as the Times accuses OpenAI of doing — "than it is to turn outputs of a model into another model" as DeepSeek may have done, Kortz said.

"But this still puts OpenAI in a pretty tricky situation with regard to the line it's been towing regarding fair use."

A breach of contract lawsuit is more likely

A breach-of-contract lawsuit is much likelier than an IP-based lawsuit, though it comes with its own set of problems, said Anupam Chander, who teaches technology law at Georgetown University.

The terms of service for Big Tech chatbots like those developed by OpenAI and Anthopic forbid using their content as training fodder for a competing AI model.

"So perhaps that's the lawsuit you might possibly bring — a contract-based claim, not an IP-based claim," Chander said.

"Not 'you copied something from me,' but that you benefited from my model to do something that you were not allowed to do under our contract."

There's a possible hitch, Chander and Kortz say. OpenAI's terms of service require that most claims be resolved through arbitration, not lawsuits. There's an exception for lawsuits "to stop unauthorized use or abuse of the Service or intellectual property infringement or misappropriation.

There's a larger hitch, though, experts say.

"You should know that the brilliant scholar Mark Lemley and a coauthor argue that AI terms of use are likely unenforceable," Chander said. He was referring to a January 10 paper, The Mirage of Artificial Intelligence Terms of Use Restrictions, by Stanford Law's Mark A. Lemley and Peter Henderson of Princeton University's Center for Information Technology.

To date, "no model creator has actually tried to enforce these terms with monetary penalties or injunctive relief," the paper says.

"This is likely for good reason: we think that the legal enforceability of these licenses is questionable," it says. That's in part because model outputs "are largely not copyrightable" and because laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act "offer limited recourse," it argues.

"I think they are likely unenforceable," Lemley told BI of OpenAI's terms of service, "because DeepSeek didn't take anything copyrighted by OpenAI, and because courts generally won't enforce agreements not to compete in the absence of an IP right that would prevent that competition."

Lawsuits between parties in different nations, each with its own legal and enforcement systems, are always tricky, Kortz said.

Even if OpenAI cleared all the above hurdles and won a judgment from a US court or arbitrator, "in order to get DeepSeek to turn over money or stop doing what it's doing, the enforcement would come down to the Chinese legal system," he said.

Here, OpenAI would be at the mercy of another extremely complicated area of law — the enforcement of foreign judgments and the balancing of individual and corporate rights and national sovereignty — that stretches back to before the founding of the United States.

"So this is, a long, complicated, fraught process," Kortz added.

Could OpenAI have protected itself better from a distilling incursion?

"They could have used technical measures to block repeated access to their site," Lemley said. "But doing so would also interfere with normal customers."

He added, "I don't think they could, or should, have a valid legal claim against the searching of uncopyrightable information from a public site."

Representatives for DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"We know that groups in the PRC are actively working to use methods, including what's known as distillation, to try to replicate advanced U.S. AI models," OpenAI spokesperson Rhianna Donaldson told BI in an emailed statement.

"We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more," the statement said. "We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology and will continue working closely with the US government to protect the most capable models being built here."