A campaign to ban facial recognition on college campuses has just been launched by the non-profit organizations Fight for the Future and Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Facial recognition technology is already being deployed in some public school systems, so the organizers want to get ahead of the spread of pervasive surveillance to higher education.
Vendors like FaceFirst and Ellucian are already offering biometric surveillance technologies to college administrators.
“Facial recognition systems are a great alternative to plastic cards, password systems, attendance registers, and manual processes, and the technology represents an upgrade to secure systems access from mobile devices,” explains Raja Saravanan, head of software architecture at Ellucian, in his pitch to colleges. He cheerfully adds that facial recognition software can be configured to check class attendance while also monitoring students’ nonverbal reactions in real-time as they listen to lectures.
With regard to enhancing campus security, Saravanan noted, “Recently, one of the top universities in China, Beijing Normal University, implemented a facial recognition system to prevent intruders entering student dorms.” That example is not especially reassuring considering that China’s authoritarian government is deploying hundreds of millions of cameras hooked to facial recognition as a mainstay of its social credit surveillance state.
In order to “foster a culture of trust around facial tracking,” Saravanan recommends that campus facial recognition be rolled out incrementally and acknowledges that “students and faculty may want the ability to opt out.” He adds, “It’s important to design an experience that doesn’t convey a culture of surveillance.” Of course, pervasive tracking of where, when, and with whom students and faculty interact even to the point of monitoring their facial expressions to determine their moment-to-moment emotional states in real-time will necessarily result in a culture of surveillance.
“Facial recognition represents a dystopic advancement of the police state,” states the ban campaign website. Why? “Facial recognition is unlike any other form of surveillance,” explains the campaign. “It enables automated and ubiquitous monitoring of an entire population, and it is nearly impossible to avoid. If we don’t stop it from spreading, it will be used not to keep us safe, but to control and oppress us—just as it is already being used in authoritarian states.”
Of perhaps more immediate concern, notes Erica Darragh, a board member at Students for Sensible Drug Policy, is that “if a university’s facial recognition system gets hacked, students can’t just change our faces and our lives like a credit card number.”
The ban organizers suggest that natural campus allies for the campaign include Young Democratic Socialists, Students for Liberty, and Young Americans for Liberty.
Check out the ban campaign’s scorecard listing the responses and non-responses from nearly 100 top universities on whether or not they plan to deploy campus facial recognition technology.
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Prof. Adam Levitin (Georgetown Law) has the story on his Credit Slips blog. There is some controversy about the underlying land deal, which the Washington Post covered last year; Prof. Levitin thinks Mulvaney’s “move [was] allowed by the rules, but also totally in bad faith,” but my UCLA colleague Prof. Lynn Lopucki disagrees, arguing that the underlying financial transaction—”strategic purchase and foreclosure of a mortgage”—is commonplace and generally not considered to be in bad faith. Prof. Levitin’s post, though, focuses on the sealing of the court records in the lawsuit over the deal:
Incredibly, even the court’s order is under seal. I’ve never seen an order deciding a foreclosure action that is under seal. It’s frankly ridiculous. This is a dodgy land deal, not a state secret….
There is also an update to the post about some of the documents being available unsealed in the appellate file. I can’t speak to the underlying transaction, but it does seem to me hard to justify the sealing.
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The United States dropped 7,423 bombs on Afghanistan last year—that’s an average of more than 20 per day—narrowly surpassing the previous record set in 2018.
It’s a statistic that belies the notion that President Donald Trump is an anti-war commander-in-chief, and one that suggests America is still no closer to winning its longest military conflict.
Trump has overseen a massive escalation in the amount of ordnance fired at Afghanistan in the past two years, according to a new report from the U.S Air Force. But other than blasting thousands of new craters in the war-torn country and terrorizing the people unfortunate enough to live there, there is little evidence that bombing the hell out of what’s left of the country is accomplishing any vital U.S. interest. Amid the record-breaking year of attacks, the Trump administration was holding on-and-off peace talks with the Taliban—you know, the same group we went to war nearly two decades ago to remove—aimed at handing over control of the country.
Not all of those 7,423 weapons were “bombs” in the traditional sense of the word. The report counted various types of ordnance, including missile strikes, large-caliber (105mm or greater) shells fired by combat aircraft, and strafing fire from 20mm cannons. U.S. and other coalition aircraft flew more than 8,800 missions in Afghanistan last year, and more than a quarter of those missions resulted in the firing of munitions, according to the Air Force report.
Still, it is perhaps unsurprising that the escalation in the number of explosive weapons fired at Afghanistan has coincided with an escalation in civilian deaths there. In 2018, when the U.S. dropped a then-record 7,362 bombs on the country, the United Nations documented 3,804 civilian deaths caused by ongoing conflicts in the country. About a quarter of those deaths were attributed to “pro-government forces,” including Afghan national security forces, international military forces, and other pro-government militias.
Full data for 2019 has yet to be released by the United Nations. But through October of last year it looked like Afghanistan was on pace for its bloodiest year since at least 2009. Already in 2020, at least 15 civilians were killed by a U.S. airstrike in western Afghanistan.
It’s true that most of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan are the result of terrorism and militia attacks, but it’s equally true that the increase in U.S. bombing is not making Afghans any safer—in fact, it seems to be contributing to an overall escalation in violence.
Trump has also escalated the Afghanistan conflict in other ways. In 2017, he increased the numbers of troops deployed there by 3,000 in an attempt to finally “win” the war. But just like his predecessor—President Barack Obama hiked Afghanistan deployments by nearly 30,000 in 2010—Trump’s attempt to break the quagmire in Central Asia has led to more bloodshed but little success.
And now the Trump administration does not even appear willing to explain its Afghanistan strategy to Congress. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to appear at a congressional hearing this week in which lawmakers grappled with the “Afghanistan Papers” published in December by The Washington Post. The Post‘s document dump showed that the Pentagon has been lying for years about the status of the war in Afghanistan, while top military brass have privately concluded that the U.S. has no clear strategy or path to victory.
Trump came into office promising to end America’s wasteful post-9/11 wars. He’s so far squandered his opportunity to do so.
Withdrawing from Afghanistan without a clear strategy for the country’s future might invite chaos. Still, it’s hard to argue that it would be any less productive for U.S. interests than the Trump administration’s current “pray-and-spray” approach, which is saturating the country with explosives and blood but seems to be accomplishing little else.
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A police officer in Prince George’s County, Maryland, shot and killed a man on Monday evening who was handcuffed and strapped into the passenger side of a police car.
Adding to the mystery of why a police officer might feel the need to shoot a handcuffed man is the vague manner in which the incident has been reported—a passive style of writing that would be comical if the outcome weren’t so serious.
The Associated Press opened its report of the shooting with this doozy of a sentence: “A man who had been handcuffed with his arms behind his back by police in Maryland was shot and killed inside an officer’s cruiser.”
When you put it like that, the shooter could have been anybody! The report further explains that the suspect (identified by CBS affiliate WUSA as William Green) had allegedly struck several vehicles while driving in Silver Hill. Witnesses called 911, and when the police responded they reportedly believed that Green was under the influence of drugs, possibly PCP.
Police cuffed Green, put him in the passenger seat of the police car, and strapped him in. An officer then got behind the wheel. It’s not entirely clear what happened next. Two witnesses said they heard or saw a struggle going on inside the car and then heard gunshots.
And then a whole lot of passive voice happened. Here’s how WTOP worded it: “The man was struck multiple times with the officer’s duty weapon.” WUSA reports, “Police said the suspect was struck several times by the officer’s duty weapon.” They didn’t even indicate that the guy was shot with bullets; they just went with what seems to be the police department’s own wording. By contrast, WUSA’s televised report flat out says that the police “shot and killed a suspect.”
We don’t yet know why the police officer shot the man. Body cameras are not yet mandatory for police in Prince George’s County, though activists have been pressuring for years to push the county council to make it happen. Instead, police are looking for surveillance video from nearby locations to see if anything else captures the shooting.
The American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Maryland has responded in a prepared statement with a call for police body cameras, noting other recent incidences of police violence involving the Prince George’s County Police Department that have not been recorded.
“It was only this past fall, in September 2019, that Leonard Shand, a black man also apparently in a disoriented state, was shot and killed by PGPD and officers from the Mt. Rainier and Hyattsville Police Departments,”said Deborah Jeon, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland. “In that case, police claimed to have spent nearly 30 minutes containing Mr. Shand and using ‘less than lethal force,’ which is not the same thing as de-escalation. No mental health professional was called to the scene to peacefully de-escalate the situation. Again, officers from PGPD did not wear body cameras.
“And it was only this past October that a black man, Demonte Ward-Blake, was beaten by PGPD officers during a traffic stop and paralyzed from the waist down,” Shand continued. “Again, the officers from this encounter did not wear body cameras. It is unknown if the officers were held accountable for their actions.”
Perhaps the county should take a closer look at what’s going on with suspects once they’re loaded into police cars. Just last October, a former Prince George’s County police officer was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail for repeatedly punching a man in the face who was handcuffed and belted in the passenger’s seat of a police car. That seems awfully similar to what happened to Green, though at least the guy wasn’t shot—wait, I mean, he wasn’t “struck multiple times by the officer’s duty weapon.”
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Prof. Adam Levitin (Georgetown Law) has the story on his Credit Slips blog. There is some controversy about the underlying land deal, which the Washington Post covered last year; Prof. Levitin thinks Mulvaney’s “move [was] allowed by the rules, but also totally in bad faith,” but my UCLA colleague Prof. Lynn Lopucki disagrees, arguing that the underlying financial transaction—”strategic purchase and foreclosure of a mortgage”—is commonplace and generally not considered to be in bad faith. Prof. Levitin’s post, though, focuses on the sealing of the court records in the lawsuit over the deal:
Incredibly, even the court’s order is under seal. I’ve never seen an order deciding a foreclosure action that is under seal. It’s frankly ridiculous. This is a dodgy land deal, not a state secret….
There is also an update to the post about some of the documents being available unsealed in the appellate file. I can’t speak to the underlying transaction, but it does seem to me hard to justify the sealing.
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The United States dropped 7,423 bombs on Afghanistan last year—that’s an average of more than 20 per day—narrowly surpassing the previous record set in 2018.
It’s a statistic that belies the notion that President Donald Trump is an anti-war commander-in-chief, and one that suggests America is still no closer to winning its longest military conflict.
Trump has overseen a massive escalation in the amount of ordnance fired at Afghanistan in the past two years, according to a new report from the U.S Air Force. But other than blasting thousands of new craters in the war-torn country and terrorizing the people unfortunate enough to live there, there is little evidence that bombing the hell out of what’s left of the country is accomplishing any vital U.S. interest. Amid the record-breaking year of attacks, the Trump administration was holding on-and-off peace talks with the Taliban—you know, the same group we went to war nearly two decades ago to remove—aimed at handing over control of the country.
Not all of those 7,423 weapons were “bombs” in the traditional sense of the word. The report counted various types of ordnance, including missile strikes, large-caliber (105mm or greater) shells fired by combat aircraft, and strafing fire from 20mm cannons. U.S. and other coalition aircraft flew more than 8,800 missions in Afghanistan last year, and more than a quarter of those missions resulted in the firing of munitions, according to the Air Force report.
Still, it is perhaps unsurprising that the escalation in the number of explosive weapons fired at Afghanistan has coincided with an escalation in civilian deaths there. In 2018, when the U.S. dropped a then-record 7,362 bombs on the country, the United Nations documented 3,804 civilian deaths caused by ongoing conflicts in the country. About a quarter of those deaths were attributed to “pro-government forces,” including Afghan national security forces, international military forces, and other pro-government militias.
Full data for 2019 has yet to be released by the United Nations. But through October of last year it looked like Afghanistan was on pace for its bloodiest year since at least 2009. Already in 2020, at least 15 civilians were killed by a U.S. airstrike in western Afghanistan.
It’s true that most of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan are the result of terrorism and militia attacks, but it’s equally true that the increase in U.S. bombing is not making Afghans any safer—in fact, it seems to be contributing to an overall escalation in violence.
Trump has also escalated the Afghanistan conflict in other ways. In 2017, he increased the numbers of troops deployed there by 3,000 in an attempt to finally “win” the war. But just like his predecessor—President Barack Obama hiked Afghanistan deployments by nearly 30,000 in 2010—Trump’s attempt to break the quagmire in Central Asia has led to more bloodshed but little success.
And now the Trump administration does not even appear willing to explain its Afghanistan strategy to Congress. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to appear at a congressional hearing this week in which lawmakers grappled with the “Afghanistan Papers” published in December by The Washington Post. The Post‘s document dump showed that the Pentagon has been lying for years about the status of the war in Afghanistan, while top military brass have privately concluded that the U.S. has no clear strategy or path to victory.
Trump came into office promising to end America’s wasteful post-9/11 wars. He’s so far squandered his opportunity to do so.
Withdrawing from Afghanistan without a clear strategy for the country’s future might invite chaos. Still, it’s hard to argue that it would be any less productive for U.S. interests than the Trump administration’s current “pray-and-spray” approach, which is saturating the country with explosives and blood but seems to be accomplishing little else.
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All Eyes On Apple: Will The Market’s Biggest Pillar Finally Crack
It is safe to say that of all the companies reporting this earnings season, only one truly matters: Apple, which is reporting today after the close at 4:30pm ET.
As we showed recently, tech firms have driven over half of market cap appreciation in the S&P 500 in the last 12 months, and not on earnings growth but purely on multiple expansion. Furthermore, as Morgan Stanley recently calculated, currently the top five companies in the S&P 500 make up 18% of the total market cap.
And no company plays a bigger role in this total than the world’s most valuable company, Apple, whose $1.4 trillion market cap is 130% higher since Tim Cook guided down expectations just one year ago.
But what is even more mind-blowing is that AAPL managed to more than double its market cap even as its earnings have been virtually unchanged over the past year, once again showing the power of central banks in expanding P/E multiples, which for AAPL is now the highest in a decade at ~24x.
Apple’s average PE over the past decade was about 14x, lagging other high-growth companies with recurring revenue and reflecting its singular dependence on iPhones sales and reliance on persuading consumers to upgrade their phones year after year.
“The run-up in the stock is a concern, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a bit of a pullback in the near future,” said People’s United Advisors chief equity strategist John Conlon, who added that Apple’s services business has become his main reason for owning stock.
Even more remarkable is that as AAPL exploded higher, the company stopped reporting the number of iPhones since “it wasn’t a good metric” although what it really meant is that iPhone sales growth for years had been declining.
And so, instead of pure iPhone sales, services and wearables have taken up the slack, although a big part for the recent surge has been “hopes for 5G iPhone” which will be released later in 2020 (yet which some have warned will be a huge dud). What followed was an unprecedented scramble by sell-side analysts to chase the price, which also benefited from Apple’s record buyback, and raise price targets without raising earnings forecasts.
And so, as Hedge Fund Telemetry writes, “the bar is high headed into this report” – indeed, with the stock priced beyond perfection and at the highest PE in decades, any adverse surprises would have a dire effect not only on the stock prices but the broader S&P which has used ETF-darling AAPL as its core support pillar.
So what that in mind, here is what the market is expecting (although note that Apple will no longer be reporting broken out iPhone numbers):
Q1 gross margin estimate 38.0% (range 37.5% to 38.8%)
iPhone units 66.67 million
iPhone ASP $785.07, down 3.7% y/y
While there is probably not much room for surprises in the current quarter numbers, all eyes will be on the company’s forecast for next quarter, which Wall Street expects to look as follows:
Needless to say, any Apple commentary about the impact of Coronavirus on iphone demand or supply chains will be critical. As a reminder, earlier today the Nikkei leaked what could be seen as both positive and negative guidance.
Positive in that “Apple has asked suppliers to make up to 80 million iPhones over the first half of this year, an increase of over 10% from last year’s production schedule that could boost the company’s near-record share price.”
Apple, which reports fourth-quarter results after Tuesday’s U.S. market close, has booked orders for up to 65 million of its older iPhones, mostly from the iPhone 11 series, and up to 15 million units of a new cut-price model that it plans to unveil in March. Apple ordered 73 million iPhones over the same period last year, according to GF Securities data.
Yet the leaked guidance negative in that “suppliers warned that the blistering pace of production could be complicated by the outbreak of the coronavirus in China’s Hubei Province, given that their main manufacturing centers are in nearby Henan and Guangdong provinces, which had more than 100 confirmed cases as of Monday afternoon, and in Shanghai, with over 50 confirmed cases.”
In addition to the guidance, investors will be looking for fresh evidence the iPhone maker should be treated as a producer of high-margin, subscription services after its stock market value touched $1.4 trillion and its earnings multiple trades at decade highs. For the fiscal first quarter, which ended in December, analysts on average expect services revenue to jump 19.7% to $13.0 billion, according to Refinitiv.
Overall quarterly revenue is expected to rise 5.0% to $88.5 billion, with adjusted net income inching up 1.5% to $20.3 billion and earnings per share of $4.55.
In the September quarter, Apple said its services revenue hit $12.51 billion, topping analysts expectations of $12.15 billion. Services accounted for 20% of total revenue in that quarter, up from 17% in the same quarter the year before. Apple also gave cost of sales data showing gross margins for its services segment rose to 64% from a 61% a year earlier. That is far more generous than Apple’s overall gross margin of around 38% in recent years.
Apple has also increased the emphasis on its AppleCare, its extended warranty program. For example, the iPhone’s “settings” now includes reminders encouraging people to buy or renew their AppleCare plans.
As Reuters notes, Apple’s recent strong stock performance has been perpetuated by fund managers buying its shares in order to avoid underperforming their benchmarks, a trend that could reverse when the recent rally ends, Cowen analyst Krish Sankar wrote in a client note last week.
Finally, here are some additional thoughts on what to expect later today from Hedge Fund Telemetry:
Tim Cook has been smart by being cozy with President Trump to keep Apple away from the tariff risk. They have bought back in the past year nearly $50 billion in stock. Apple has attributed over 20% of the gains in the Nasdaq 100. It’s nearly worth $1.4 billion and the stock is trading at the highest multiple in ages ~26x.
It’s the most owned stock in the US within almost every type of fund or ETF. Short interest is low at 1.5 days to cover. Warren Buffett has Apple as his largest position that is now over 30% of his portfolio more than double his next largest holding. The front page holders of Apple have been net sellers in the last quarterly filings simply because it’s become too large of a position especially with Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street the largest passive funds which hold nearly 20% of Apple.
Earnings tonight should be inline but the guidance for the next quarter is +7%. This is aggressive and likely will be guided down especially without any new products planned. The average price target for Apple with sell-side analysts is at 300 down 5% from here.
There are 27 buys, 14 holds, and 7 sell ratings. China sales early in the last quarter were burdened by the tariff war (and is an unknown) and should be at risk with the Coronavirus this quarter from a sales and supply chain point of view. (another big unknown).
And while the S&P has so far weathered the impact of the Chinese coronavirus relatively well, trading just 1% below its all time record high, a far bigger test for the broader market will be what happens if AAPL finally disappoints, and its stock tumbles after reporting earnings. For the answer: tune in at 430pm ET.
A police officer in Prince George’s County, Maryland, shot and killed a man on Monday evening who was handcuffed and strapped into the passenger side of a police car.
Adding to the mystery of why a police officer might feel the need to shoot a handcuffed man is the vague manner in which the incident has been reported—a passive style of writing that would be comical if the outcome weren’t so serious.
The Associated Press opened its report of the shooting with this doozy of a sentence: “A man who had been handcuffed with his arms behind his back by police in Maryland was shot and killed inside an officer’s cruiser.”
When you put it like that, the shooter could have been anybody! The report further explains that the suspect (identified by CBS affiliate WUSA as William Green) had allegedly struck several vehicles while driving in Silver Hill. Witnesses called 911, and when the police responded they reportedly believed that Green was under the influence of drugs, possibly PCP.
Police cuffed Green, put him in the passenger seat of the police car, and strapped him in. An officer then got behind the wheel. It’s not entirely clear what happened next. Two witnesses said they heard or saw a struggle going on inside the car and then heard gunshots.
And then a whole lot of passive voice happened. Here’s how WTOP worded it: “The man was struck multiple times with the officer’s duty weapon.” WUSA reports, “Police said the suspect was struck several times by the officer’s duty weapon.” They didn’t even indicate that the guy was shot with bullets; they just went with what seems to be the police department’s own wording. By contrast, WUSA’s televised report flat out says that the police “shot and killed a suspect.”
We don’t yet know why the police officer shot the man. Body cameras are not yet mandatory for police in Prince George’s County, though activists have been pressuring for years to push the county council to make it happen. Instead, police are looking for surveillance video from nearby locations to see if anything else captures the shooting.
The American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Maryland has responded in a prepared statement with a call for police body cameras, noting other recent incidences of police violence involving the Prince George’s County Police Department that have not been recorded.
“It was only this past fall, in September 2019, that Leonard Shand, a black man also apparently in a disoriented state, was shot and killed by PGPD and officers from the Mt. Rainier and Hyattsville Police Departments,”said Deborah Jeon, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland. “In that case, police claimed to have spent nearly 30 minutes containing Mr. Shand and using ‘less than lethal force,’ which is not the same thing as de-escalation. No mental health professional was called to the scene to peacefully de-escalate the situation. Again, officers from PGPD did not wear body cameras.
“And it was only this past October that a black man, Demonte Ward-Blake, was beaten by PGPD officers during a traffic stop and paralyzed from the waist down,” Shand continued. “Again, the officers from this encounter did not wear body cameras. It is unknown if the officers were held accountable for their actions.”
Perhaps the county should take a closer look at what’s going on with suspects once they’re loaded into police cars. Just last October, a former Prince George’s County police officer was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail for repeatedly punching a man in the face who was handcuffed and belted in the passenger’s seat of a police car. That seems awfully similar to what happened to Green, though at least the guy wasn’t shot—wait, I mean, he wasn’t “struck multiple times by the officer’s duty weapon.”
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CBO Projects Budget Deficit Surpassing $1 Trillion This Year, Sees US Debt Growing Exponentially After
For those who have been following the trajectory of the US budget deficit in fiscal 2020, which as we showed two weeks ago blew out to a nine year high in the first quarter of 2020…
… it will come as no surprise that according to the latest, just released CBO forecast, in 2020 the US budget deficit will rise above $1 trillion, or $1.05TN to be specific when the fiscal year ends on Sept 30, 2020, the biggest deficit since 2011, which is $31BN more than the deficit reached in 2019. Relative to GDP, this year’s deficit would be about the same as last year’s shortfall—4.6 percent of GDP—which is the difference between revenues equal to 16.4 percent of GDP and outlays equal to 21.0 percent of GDP.
As the CBO writes, the US will spend $1 trillion more than it collects in 2020 and deficits will exceed that amount every year for the foreseeable future, in other words in perpetuity. As a share of GDP, the deficit will be at least 4.3% every year through 2030, and will only grow higher after that. That would be the longest stretch of budget deficits exceeding 4% of GDP over the past century, according to CBO, to wit:
CBO currently projects a federal deficit of $1.0 trillion in 2020; in its baseline budget projections, deficits average $1.3 trillion per year and total $13.1 trillion over the 2021–2030 period. Relative to the size of the economy, deficits would remain above 4.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in every year between 2020 and 2030. Other than a six-year period during and immediately after World War II, the deficit over the past century has not exceeded 4.0 percent for more than five consecutive years.
Over the next decade, the CBO whose forecasts are traditionally overly optimistic, expects cumulative deficits to hit $13.1 trillion. And with spending now officially out of control, debt held by the public will be 81% of GDP this year and is projected to reach 98% by 2030. That stems from the combination of tax cuts and projected increases in spending—particularly on safety-net programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
The CBO’s projections assume that Congress will allow current spending and tax law to occur without any changes. Deficits and debt would be larger than projected if Congress extends individual tax cuts beyond their scheduled expiration at the end of 2025.
The biggest irony, however, is when one recalls that during his 2016 campaign, President Trump talked about paying off the federal debt within eight years. In reality, the CBO now expects that by 2030, total Federal debt will rise from $16.8TN currently (excluding debt paid in to Social Security), to a staggering $31.447 trillion in 2030…
… and to grow literally exponentially after that.
In other words, the MMT that will be launched after the next financial crisis, and which will see the Fed directly monetize US debt issuance from the Treasury until the dollar finally loses its reserve currency status, is now factored in.
Hunter Biden Settles Paternity Case; Avoids Courtroom Confrontation Over Financial Info
Hunter Biden reached a temporary settlement agreement in his child support case just 48 hours before a deadline for a mandatory court appearance to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt for failing to submit overdue financial information.
Biden’s baby-mama, an Arkansas stripper, filed the paternity suit last May. On Monday afternoon, Arkansas Circuit Court Judge Holly Meyer approved the tentative agreement – postponing Biden’s in-court appearance originally scheduled for Wednesday.
Child support payments will begin on Feb 1, according to a copy of the order filed in the Independence County Circuit Court, which redacted the monthly amount. The final figure, however, will be determined after Biden turns over relevant financial records. He also agreed to pay support dating back to November, 2018.
dunno guys, but feels like if Trump had a son driving around in a new Porsche while pretending he didn’t have money for child support for a baby he lied about fathering with a stripper, the media in general might make a bigger deal of it https://t.co/zGBdFo5jdZ
“He’s doing the right thing by finally stepping up and paying what he should’ve been paying,” said Roberts’ lawyer, Clint Lancaster, in a Monday statement to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Monday, adding “He’s going to begin paying monthly child support. He’s going to pay retroactive child support back to November of 2018. And he’s going to pay attorney’s fees and costs.”
If Biden turns over financial documents by March 1st, the contempt motions will be withdrawn.
The agreement delayed a hearing on motions to hold Biden in contempt that were filed by Roberts’s attorneys last week. Her attorneys claim Biden has failed to provide information ordered by the court, including the names of any of his businesses, tax documents, and all sources of income for the past five years. The contempt motions will be considered during the next scheduled pretrial hearing on Mar. 13 and will be withdrawn if Biden turns over the relevant documents by Mar. 1, according to the deal.
Biden also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to Roberts for her “attorneys fees and costs.” –Washington Examiner
Biden – who has been living in a $12k/month rental home in the Hollywood Hills, has denied that he’s the child’s father despite a court-ordered DNA test determining he was. His attorney, Brent Langdon, told the Gazette that the agreement would “avoid the necessity of a hearing on Wednesday.”
