US President Donald Trump issued pardons Monday to around 1,500 people convicted for their roles in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, where rioters stormed the legislative building seeking to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. Alongside the full pardons, Trump commuted the sentences of 14 other January 6 defendants, including Oath Keepers leader [...]

Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol breached Seoul’s Western District Court early Sunday after the court authorized a warrant for Yoon’s formal arrest and the president was taken into custody, according to national media outlet Yonhap News. Images and video unverified by JURIST purport to show protesters entering the courthouse through a [...]

Israeli ministers passed a ceasefire deal with Hamas in a 24-8 vote hours after the deal was approved by the country’s security cabinet, local media reported early Saturday. The deal—mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US—was initially announced on Wednesday but hit road bumps as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that final details had [...]

A report by Special Counsel Jack Smith released Tuesday detailed the prosecutor’s rationale behind the election interference prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump. Released nearly two months after Trump’s federal charges were dropped, Smith’s report explained various decisions made during the prosecution effort and detailed its trajectory before ending due to Trump’s 2024 election victory. Smith [...]

New York Judge Juan Merchan gave US president-elect Donald Trump an “unconditional discharge” during a sentencing hearing Friday,  formally convicting the president-elect on 34 felony counts of falsified business records without further penalties such as prison time or fines. Reporter Adam Klasfeld relayed that Merchan deemed the unconditional discharge the “only lawful sentence” in this [...]

The US Supreme Court refused to halt president-elect Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush-money criminal case by a 5-4 vote Thursday. The court reasoned that the likely sentence of an “unconditional discharge” would not hamper Trump’s transition to the presidency and that evidentiary issues raised by Trump’s lawyers could be resolved through regular appeals. A [...]

South Korea’s public prosecution ended their attempt to arrest President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday after being impeded by the Presidential Security Service, according to national media outlet Yonhap, with the ex-president’s security service announcing that it would not allow the arrest to proceed. Newspaper Hankook Ilbo reported that prosecutors plan to pursue abuse of [...]

The Georgia Court of Appeals removed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the election interference case against president-elect Donald Trump and 18 others on Thursday over Willis’ previously undisclosed relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. The appeals court agreed with the trial court that the relationship created an “appearance of impropriety,” and found that [...]

Special prosecutor Jack Smith dropped two criminal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, including his 2020 election interference case and an appeal in his classified documents case, which had been dismissed in July. According to Smith’s court filing, the Department of Justice (DOJ) determined it would be unconstitutional to prosecute Trump because of [...]

William Hibbitts is JURIST’s Deputy Editorial Director, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He filed this dispatch from Halifax.  The atmosphere in Halifax was marked by contrasts Saturday. On the one hand, Canada’s largest east coast city and longtime Atlantic naval base was yet again hosting the Halifax International Security Forum, an annual conference attended [...]