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Bernard Kerik, who served as New York City’s police commissioner on Sept. 11 and later pleaded guilty to federal corruption and tax crimes, died on Thursday at the age of 69.

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed Kerik’s death “after a private battle with illness,” and praised Kerik as “a warrior, a patriot, and one of the most courageous public servants this country has ever known.”

“With over forty years of service in law enforcement and national security, he dedicated his life to protecting the American people. As the 40th Police Commissioner of New York City,...

Devil on Campus, the 2024 Lifetime crime thriller is based on the story of infamous Lawrence Ray, who manipulated several of his daughter’s friends for years into doing unthinkable things, from extortion to prostitution. There’s already a true crime documentary titled Stolen Youth about the cult leader. This time, though, it’s getting a Lifetime treatment. If you’ve watched Lifetime movies before, then you know that these movies can be described as sort of anti-arthouse. They are always overly dramatic, filled with loud acting, meandering narratives, and botched climaxes. At best, they’re guilty pleasure; at worst, they’re sheer torture, although I personally never find a Lifetime movie to be boring. Devil on Campus, despite the story and its utterly serious context, is a true-blue Lifetime movie for sure, except it has one thing that most of these movies don’t have. That would be an astonishing performance by its lead actor,...

A crowd of anti-Donald Trump protesters repeatedly shouted down a group of Maga lawmakers outside of a lower Manhattan courthouse while a press briefing was taking place.

Last week, several of the former president’s allies made an appearance to rail against Trump’s prosecution in his New York hush money trial and emphasized their devotion to him.

The group included South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, former New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik, ex-Trump administration official Kash Patel, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia).

When Trump’s supporters gathered to talk with the press and deliver their statements of support for the former president, protesters in the crowd jeered at and heckled them.

The police tried to keep the protesters at bay, but their sounds drowned out the Maga lawmakers from declaring support for Trump.

“I wanted this country to understand that prosecutors around...

High profile — and deeply polarizing — attorney Joseph Tacopina is no longer representing Donald Trump in the ex-president’s cases in New York City. Tacopina had previously represented Trump in a criminal hush money case as well as in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation civil suit last year.

Reps for Tacopina didn’t immediately reply to request for comment. Trump campaign spokesman Steve Cheung said in a statement that Trump “has the most experienced, qualified, disciplined, and overall strongest legal team ever assembled.”

Trump currently faces a flurry...

Jack Smith’s latest indictment of Donald Trump isn’t yet two weeks old, but the alleged “co-conspirators” it identifies are already beginning to turn on each other — and some of them aren’t even being subtle about it.

A number of the ex-president’s chief lieutenants and alleged co-conspirators in the plot to overturn the election, such as conservative attorney John Eastman, have insisted the effort was perfectly legal and based on sound evidence. Others, however, have recently sought to distance themselves from the efforts of others, implicitly heaping...

Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis is expected to present her case against Donald Trump to a grand jury this coming week, and she reportedly has some bombshell evidence: messages connecting Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies to a voting systems breach in the state.

According to CNN, Trump allies began efforts to access the Dominion voting machines in deep red Coffee County in mid-December as the then-president attempted to make a case that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Tapper: Sources tell CNN that Atlanta...

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation appears to be zeroing in on Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-theory-obsessed lawyer who was a key figure in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Four sources with knowledge of the matter, several witnesses, and Trump allies who’ve appeared before the special counsel — including at least one in the past few days — team seem to agree: Powell should be preparing now for Smith to bring criminal charges.

On Monday, Bernie Kerik — a longtime Rudy Giuliani associate and a Trump ally who worked on...

In the days and hours before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, diehard Donald Trump allies gathered at Washington’s Willard Hotel, hunkered down as the last-ditch efforts to overturn the 2020 election went forward. What exactly they were doing in those meetings was a subject of intense interest for Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation, but the committee ran into the limits of its powers as it struggled to reconstruct the specifics of those eleventh-hour meetings.

Now, special counsel Jack Smith’s office is taking its shot, hoping to figure out exactly what went down...

Donald Trump hasn’t surrendered to authorities yet. But his lawyers are already fighting — with themselves.

Days after the former president’s indictment at the hands of Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, some of Trump’s lawyers are taking aim at Joe Tacopina, his co-lead defense attorney in the Bragg case.

A source familiar with the matter and another person close to Trump tell Rolling Stone that a number of Trump’s other current lawyers have privately described Tacopina as “dumb” and a “loudmouth.”

Tacopina is no stranger to made-for-tabloid drama:...

Content warning: This post contains mentions of emotional and psychological abuse.

"Stolen Youth," Hulu's new docuseries that explores Larry Ray's reign of psychological terror over a group of Sarah Lawrence college students, is extremely difficult to watch. The three-part series, released on Feb. 8, contains many real videos taken during the students' time living with Ray, and many feature verbal and physical abuse.

The story of what would become known as the "cult at Sarah Lawrence" first broke when The Cut published an exposé in 2019. It detailed how Ray had moved into his daughter Talia's dorm at Sarah Lawrence, quickly developing a hold over her roommates by regaling them with self-improvement advice. He claimed his knowledge was drawn from his years in the Marines, but Ray had lied about that - along with many other aspects of his life.

Anyone who followed the story in 2019 knows what happened next.

This article contains spoilers for Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence.

When news first broke in 2020 that a man named Larry Ray had been arrested for operating a sex cult at Sarah Lawrence College, the casual news observer could be forgiven for finding the ensuing headlines slightly humorous at first.

The existence of a hippie sex cult would be in keeping with some prevailing stereotypes attached to the prestigious college in Yonkers, New York. Originally a women’s institution of higher learning, Sarah Lawrence became coeducational in 1968 and has since developed a reputation for its wealthy, creative, socially liberal, and generally “out there” student body.

Of all the colleges in the United States, of course the libertines at Sarah Lawrence would be the ones to “yes and” themselves into a sex cult. But as more bits of information began to trickle out it began to become clear that...

In the ‘90s teen romcom 10 Things I Hate About You, Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles), the film’s Riot Grrrl rebel who listens to Letters to Cleo and idolizes Sylvia Plath, wants nothing more than to attend Sarah Lawrence College. The choice tracks. A liberal arts college with less than 2,000 students nestled on 44 wooded acres in the suburb of Yonkers, New York, Sarah Lawrence not only boasts a certain sylvan-secluded charm, but also caters to artists and creatives, counting J.J. Abrams, Julianna Margulies, Carly Simon and Vera Wang among its notable alumni.

Half the battle in pulling together a creatively successful true-crime documentary is, surely, finding the right story — one that can hold our interest and can, potentially, generate insights beyond the simple facts of the case. But the other half, the filmmaker’s approach, matters every bit as much. In narrating the famous tale of a bizarre ring of extortion that bloomed at Sarah Lawrence College in the early 2010s, “Stolen Youth” director Zach Heinzerling certainly has his subject. But with a startling rawness and directness, Heinzerling’s work makes a case for itself as an unusually sensitive and strong outing in its genre.

Those familiar with the case of Larry Ray, a parent of a Sarah Lawrence student who moved into his daughter’s housing at the Bronxville, N.Y., liberal arts college, may have learned about it from coverage in New York Magazine, which ran a lengthy feature on...

The Department of Justice has issued around 40 subpoenas in the past week seeking information about former President Donald Trump’s plans to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The New York Times reported Monday on the number of subpoenas issued, as well as noting that two Trump advisers — Boris Epshteyn and Mike Roman — had their phones seized.

Dan Scavino, Trump’s long-term social media guru, was among those to receive subpoenas, as was Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who has also been under scrutiny by the Jan.

Soon after Jan. 6, an associate of Rudy Giuliani attempted to get a message to then-President Donald Trump seeking a “general pardon” and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the lawyer who played a key role in attempts to overturn the 2020 election. This is according to an upcoming book by journalist Andrew Kirtzman, Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor, an advance copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

Maria Ryan, Giuliani’s podcast co-host, allegedly sent a letter with the asks to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows,...

Behind closed doors this summer, Donald Trump and his advisers have been narrowing the shortlist of criminal defense attorneys he’d need to take on the Justice Department. The former president has had preliminary conversations with Tim Parlatore, a lawyer best known for successfully representing an accused war criminal, about possible legal strategies should the department escalate its probe or hit Trump with charges, two people with knowledge of the matter and a third source briefed on it tell Rolling Stone.

Trump’s conversations with Parlatore and other newly retained...

The Jan. 6 committee began its seventh public hearing on Tuesday by laying out the extent to which former President Trump had been informed by those around him that there was no evidence the election was stolen. Trump was undeterred. The tension between the former president and the fellow election conspiracy theorists he surrounded himself and the administration figures who acknowledged Biden’s win boiled over during a heated Dec. 18 meeting at the White House.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) described the meeting as “heated and profane,” noting that it included “challenges to a physical fight.

Jan. 6 Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Monday that former President Trump was urged by his campaign advisers to not declare victory on Election Day, that he knew before the election that the counting of mail-in ballots would not be complete until days after the election, and that he declaration of victory came at the urging of a drunk former mayor.

“President Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on Election Night, and instead followed the course recommended by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani to just claim he...

President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, while also issuing a pardon to the notorious financier Michael Milken, the New York Times reports.

Blagojevich earned his infamy back in 2008 when he was caught essentially trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat after the latter was elected president. He was eventually sentenced to 14 years in prison on federal corruption charges. In announcing his decision to commute Blagojevich’s sentence, Trump told reporters: “He served eight years in jail, a long time. He seems like a very nice person,...

President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor and Celebrity Apprentice contestant, while giving pardons to such high-profile figures as former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr., junk bond king Michael Milken and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.

As he headed off on a trip to Los Angeles, where he will attend a fundraiser in Beverly Hills, Trump told reporters that he saw Blagojevich’s wife on TV appealing for a pardon or commutation.

“He served eight years in jail — that’s a long time,” Trump said. “I watched his wife on television. I don’t know him very well. He was on for a short while The Apprentice years ago. Seemed like a very nice person.”

Blagojevich was convicted of trying to “sell” the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama when he became president in 2009. He was sentenced to 14 years in...

Who needs real juries? That is the question posed by Fox’s new series You the Jury — which is giving the American public the chance to hand down the verdict on controversial civil court cases. Each episode will see viewers decide the outcome of cases in real time after seeing prosecution and defense lawyers battle it out at a hearing. The show is something of a cross between American Idol and The People’s Court, and features well-known attorneys Jose Baez, who defended Casey Anthony; Benjamin Crump, who has represented Trayvon Martin’s family; and Joseph Tacopina, who defended former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Those lawyers (along with Areva...read more...

Quentin Tarantino can't help himself. In early December, after spending the second half of 2015 supplying the thinkpiece industry with one piping-hot take after another, the filmmaker confessed to The Guardian that sitting down for a bunch of long-form interview features may not have been such a great idea. "If I keep giving them fish," he said, "and they're giving me back chum in 450 different outlets, I don't know why I'm doing it." Then less than two weeks later, Tarantino appeared on The Howard Stern Show, where he accused Disney of...

Megyn Kelly and Richard Fowler will probably not be breaking bread together on Thanksgiving. The host of Fox News’ “The Kelly File” got into a heated exchange on Tuesday with guest Fowler — a liberal contributor to the cable news channel — over live footage of a black protester starting down a Chicago police officer. Kelly called it “an extraordinary moment,” while Fowler opined that it was simply a silent protest. “This cop hasn’t done anything wrong,” she countered. Also Read: Megyn Kelly Panel Explodes Over Racism, Political Correctness at University of Missouri (Video) Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, another guest on the primetime.

Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik had a lot to say about the protesters in Ferguson when he appeared on CNN despite the fact that he was not on the ground there and was simply watching on television like the rest of America. Kerik defended the actions of the police last night in Ferguson, saying, "You cannot allow people to act like savages, you cannot allow people to act like animals."...

Mel Gibson and his "Lethal Weapon" alter ego Martin Riggs both come with their share of baggage, but former NYC top cop Bernard Kerik says he'd love to have him on his force ... and we think he means Riggs, not Mel.Kerik was roaming the halls of the Senate building Tuesday when our photog quizzed him on his favorite police movies (think 1970s NYC) and if a loose cannon like Riggs could have ever served under him.

Last Wednesday evening, Mediaite hosted a major panel event in Austin, Texas, focusing on mass incarceration and criminal justice reform. Sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute, the event was called "Rule of Law: How the Criminal Justice System Impacts Well-Being" and featured Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe, former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Executive Director Norman Reimer, and Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for Effective Justice Director Marc A. Levin.

An attorney for scandal-plagued baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez has filed a defamation lawsuit against two reporters for the New York Daily News and former New York Police Department commissioner Bernard Kerik, claiming that the trio conspired to defame him with a trumped-up disciplinary complaint. In the suit, filed in U.S. district court in New York on Wednesday, Joseph Tacopina accuses Daily News reporters Nathanial Vinton and Michael O’Keeffe of working with Kerik to smear Tacopina’s reputation. Also read: NY Yankees Star Alex Rodriguez Sues Mlb Over Banned-Substances Investigation “This case presents a unique and outrageous set of facts: a conspiracy between two.

The comparisons between the Watergate scandal and the current fracas threatening to engulf Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation may as of yet be premature, but one thing does tie them together: the dizzying number of people that may be involved. While most of the coverage has hovered over the British wing of the operation, Lawrence O'Donnell took a peek tonight at the American potentially involved, and suggested the secrets of Murdoch's American operation may lie with one dubious source: corrupt former New York City police chief Bernard Kerik.

Did Roger Ailes encourage publishing luminary Judith Regan to lie over her her reported affair with former NY Police chief and longtime Giuliani ally Bernard Kerik? So claims an explosive report in today's NY Times that alleges that unsealed documents reveal Ms. Regan recorded the phone call in which Ailes talks about the illicit affair and suggests that the existence of a taped call may have impacted her $10 Million settlement upon leaving Harper-Collins, which like Fox News, is also owned by News Corp.

Here’s today’s talk of the media town, and it’s a doozy. When Judith Regan was unceremoniously fired by Harper Collins in 2006 on the heels of an "ill-advised" book project ("If I Did It") involving O.J. Simpson, she sued News Corp., the owner of the publishing imprint, for $100 million for wrongful termination. In the suit -- which was settled out of court for a reported $10.7 million -- Regan alleged that a senior executive at the company told her to lie to federal investigators about her affair with Bernard Kerik, the...

About a year after her dismissal, former publishing powerhouse Judith Regan filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit Tuesday in New York against her former employer, HarperCollins and News Corp.

Regan claims her firing was part of a "deliberate smear campaign" by the media conglomerate to destroy her credibility and reputation.

Regan also claims that politics is at the heart of her dismissal, and not the alleged tastelessness of her attempt to publish O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It".

The suit claims that it was Rupert Murdoch's political agenda to advance presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani that got her fired in the first place. In particular, the suit claims, her affair with former New York Police Commissioner and former Guiliani aide Bernard Kerik and her knowledge of Kerik's legal woes led to her sacking.

Regan's suit follows by one week Kerik's indictment by a grand jury for conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and lying to the IRS.