The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey is a federal court in the Third Circuit.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the U.S. government, responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice in the United States, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries. The department was formed in 1870 during the Ulysses S. Grant administration.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States, and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U.S. counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.
At issue in the case was a film, Military Takeover in New York City, a work of fiction concerning the events of the upcoming New Year's Eve 1999. Produced by Michael Zieper of West Caldwell, New Jersey, the film was posted on the Internet at CrowdedTheater.com. The film was similar in its fictional portrayal of supposedly real events to The War of the Worlds and The Blair Witch Project.
West Caldwell is a township located in the West Essex area in northwestern Essex County, New Jersey. It is located approximately 16 miles (26 km) west of Manhattan and 6 miles (9.7 km) northwest of Newark. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 10,759, reflecting a decline of 474 (-4.2%) from the 11,233 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 811 (+7.8%) from the 10,422 counted in the 1990 Census.
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It tells the fictional story of three student filmmakers—Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard—who hike in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland in 1994 to film a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The three disappeared, but their equipment and footage is discovered a year later. The purportedly "recovered footage" is the film the viewer sees.
A segment about the film was broadcast on New York television station UPN 9 on November 10, 1999; that night, West Caldwell police and FBI agents went to Zieper's home, although he was not arrested. Agent Joe Metzinger of the FBI, one of the defendants named in the case, was involved in the investigation of Military Takeover in New York City.
The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that launched on January 16, 1995. The network was originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries and United Television; Viacom turned the network into a joint venture in 1996 after acquiring a 50% stake in the network, and subsequently purchased Chris-Craft's remaining stake in 2000. In December 2005, UPN was spun off to CBS Corporation when Viacom split into two separate companies.
The United States Attorney General (A.G.) is the chief lawyer of the federal government of the United States and head of the United States Department of Justice per 28 U.S.C. § 503, concerned with all legal affairs.
Janet Wood Reno was an American lawyer who served as the Attorney General of the United States from 1993 until 2001. President Bill Clinton nominated Reno on February 11, 1993, and the Senate confirmed her the following month. She was the first woman to serve as Attorney General and the second-longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history, after William Wirt.
Louis Joseph Freeh is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001. Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was later appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton. He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." Officially nonpartisan, the organization has been supported and criticized by liberal and conservative organizations alike. The ACLU works through litigation and lobbying and it has over 1,200,000 members and an annual budget of over $100 million. Local affiliates of the ACLU are active in almost all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases when it considers civil liberties to be at risk. Legal support from the ACLU can take the form of direct legal representation or preparation of amicus curiae briefs expressing legal arguments when another law firm is already providing representation.
Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine in United States federal law that shields government officials from being sued for discretionary actions performed within their official capacity, unless their actions violated "clearly established" federal law or constitutional rights. Qualified immunity thus protects officials who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions," but does not protect "the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law".
Abscam was a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sting operation in the late 1970s and early 1980s that led to the convictions of seven members of the United States Congress, among others. The two-year investigation initially targeted trafficking in stolen property and corruption of prestigious businessmen, but was later converted to a public corruption investigation. The FBI was aided by the Justice Department and a convicted con-man in videotaping politicians accepting bribes from a fictitious Arabian company in return for various political favors.
Katrina Leung was a former high value Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant and PRC Ministry of State Security (MSS) agent who, on April 9, 2003, was indicted by the United States Department of Justice for "Unauthorized Copying of National Defense Information with Intent to Injure or Benefit a Foreign Nation". Her case was later dismissed on January 6, 2005 because of prosecutorial misconduct, but an appeal by the U.S. Attorney resulted in a plea bargain of guilty to lesser charges on December 16, 2005. She was alleged by the United States Government to have contaminated twenty years of intelligence relating to the People's Republic of China, as well as critically compromising the FBI's Chinese counterintelligence program.
Robert Swan Mueller III is an American attorney and current Special Counsel of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and related matters. He served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), from 2001 to 2013.
Patrick J. Fitzgerald is an American lawyer and partner at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom since October 2012.
The Waco siege was the siege of a compound belonging to the Branch Davidians, carried out by American federal and Texas state law enforcement, as well as the U.S. military, between February 28 and April 19, 1993. The Branch Davidians were led by David Koresh and were headquartered at Mount Carmel Center ranch in the community of Axtell, Texas, 13 miles east-northeast of Waco. Suspecting the group of stockpiling illegal weapons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) obtained a search warrant for the compound and arrest warrants for Koresh and a select few of the group's members.
Steven Jay Hatfill is an American physician, virologist and biological weapons expert.
The LaRouche criminal trials in the mid-1980s stemmed from federal and state investigations into the activities of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche and members of his movement. They were charged with conspiring to commit fraud and soliciting loans they had no intention of repaying. LaRouche and his supporters disputed the charges, claiming the trials were politically motivated.
Lon Tomohisa Horiuchi is the American FBI agent who shot and killed Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge in 1992. An FBI HRT sniper and former United States Army officer, he was involved in controversial deployments during the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff and 1993 Waco siege. In 1997, Horiuchi was charged with manslaughter for the death of Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge, but the charges were later dropped.
Jeff Jamar is a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent in Charge (SAC), who was in charge of FBI squad in the 1993 Waco siege.
A national security letter (NSL) is an administrative subpoena issued by the United States government to gather information for national security purposes. NSLs do not require prior approval from a judge. The Stored Communications Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, and Right to Financial Privacy Act authorize the United States government to seek such information that is "relevant" to authorized national security investigations. By law, NSLs can request only non-content information, for example, transactional records and phone numbers dialed, but never the content of telephone calls or e-mails.
The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States' primary federal law enforcement agency, and is responsible for its day-to-day operations. The FBI Director is appointed for a single 10-year term by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate. The FBI is an agency within the Department of Justice (DOJ), and thus the Director reports to the Attorney General of the United States.
Michael John Garcia is an American lawyer, judge and former government official. Since February 2016, he has served as an Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, that state's highest court. He is a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (2005–2008). Between his service as United States Attorney and his appointment to the Court of Appeals, Garcia was a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. He has also served as chairman of El Museo del Barrio.
Herbert Jay Stern is a New Jersey criminal defense lawyer. Earlier in his career, Stern served as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey and the United States Court for Berlin. He presided over a hijacking trial that was the only case ever tried in an American court in the occupied American Sector of West Berlin. He wrote a book about that case, Judgment in Berlin, which became a movie in which his role was played by Martin Sheen. He was part of the team that successfully handled several major corruption and organized crime trials in New Jersey. These are memorialized in his recent book, Diary of a DA: The True Story of the Prosecutor Who Took On the Mob, Fought Corruption, and Won. (2012)
Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. ___ (2017), is a Supreme Court of the United States case in which the Court determined unlawfully present aliens arrested in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks cannot sue for money high level federal officials for the conditions of their confinement. The case was consolidated with Hastey v. Abbasi, and Ashcroft v. Abbasi. It was argued on January 18, 2017.
Joaquin "Jack" Garcia, also known as Jock and Jocko, is a retired FBI agent best known for his undercover work infiltrating the Gambino crime family in New York City. Garcia is regarded as one of the most successful and prolific agents in the history of the FBI.
William H. Pauley III is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Sergey Aleynikov is a former Goldman Sachs computer programmer. Between 2009 and 2016, he was twice prosecuted for the same conduct of allegedly copying proprietary computer source code from his employer, Goldman Sachs, before joining a competing firm. His first prosecution in federal court in New York ultimately resulted in acquittal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The outcome of his second prosecution and trial in New York state court was a split verdict dismissed by court, which acquitted him on all counts. That order of dismissal was later overturned by New York Court of Appeals, which took a very broad interpretation of the statute, and on recommendation of prosecutors he was sentenced to time served. He is currently appealing that conviction on double jeopardy grounds. His story inspired Michael Lewis's bestseller Flash Boys.
Operation Bid Rig is an ongoing, long-term investigation into political corruption in New Jersey conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service, and the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey since 2002.
Operation Family Secrets was an FBI investigation of mob related crimes in Chicago. The FBI called it one of the most successful investigations of organized crime that it had ever conducted.
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