N.S. names new information and privacy commissioner
David Nurse's appointment was announced Monday. He takes over from Tricia Ralph, whose five-year term wrapped up at the end of February.
According to a news release from the Justice Department, Nurse worked as a lawyer for the Nova Scotia Department of Justice and the province's Office of Immigration. He also owned and operated a law firm, was a lawyer with the Northwest Territories government in addition to working for the Halifax law firm McInnes Cooper in the past.
In a statement, Nurse said "protecting Nova Scotians' right to know and balancing that with their right to privacy is an important responsibility and one that I do not take lightly.
"I look forward to serving Nova Scotians in this capacity and to working collaboratively to strengthen transparency and trust in our public institutions."
work that appears to be taking longer than expected.
It also comes on the heels of concerns from his predecessor about the state of the system and that recent government legislation would have given department officials the power to reject access to information requests if they decided they were vexatious, frivolous or lacking in specificity.
In the face of those concerns and public criticism, the Progressive Conservative government amended the legislation to remove the specificity requirement and require department officials to apply to the privacy commissioner for approval before being able to reject an access to information application.
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Winnipeg Free Press
6 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
The Justice Department seeks voter and election information from at least 19 states, AP finds
NEW YORK (AP) — The requests have come in letters, emails and phone calls. The specifics vary, but the target is consistent: The U.S. Department of Justice is ramping up an effort to get voter data and other election information from the states. Over the past three months, the department's voting section has requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally. Of those, nine are Democrats, five are Republicans and one is a bipartisan commission. In Colorado, the department demanded 'all records' relating to the 2024 election and any records the state retained from the 2020 election. Department lawyers have contacted officials in at least seven states to propose a meeting about forging an information-sharing agreement related to instances of voting or election fraud. The idea, they say in the emails, is for states to help the department enforce the law. The unusually expansive outreach has raised alarm among some election officials because states have the constitutional authority to run elections and federal law protects the sharing of individual data with the government. It also signals the transformation of the Justice Department's involvement in elections under President Donald Trump. The department historically has focused on protecting access to the ballot box. Today, it is taking steps to crack down on voter fraud and noncitizen voting, both of which are rare but have been the subject of years of false claims from Trump and his allies. The department's actions come alongside a broader effort by the administration to investigate past elections and influence the 2026 midterms. The Republican president has called for a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden and continues to falsely claim he won. Trump also has pushed Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional maps to create more House seats favorable to the GOP. The Justice Department does not typically 'engage in fishing expeditions' to find laws that may potentially have been broken and has traditionally been independent from the president, said David Becker, a former department lawyer who leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research. 'Now it seems to be operating differently,' he said. The department responded with an emailed 'no comment' to a list of questions submitted by the AP seeking details about the communications with state officials. Requests to states vary and some are specific Election offices in Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Utah, and Wisconsin confirmed to the AP that they received letters from the voting section requesting their statewide voter registration lists. At least one other, Oklahoma, received the request by phone. Many requests included basic questions about the procedures states use to comply with federal voting laws, such as how states identify and remove duplicate voter registrations or deceased or otherwise ineligible voters. Certain questions were more state-specific and referenced data points or perceived inconsistencies from a recent survey from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an AP review of several of the letters showed. The Justice Department already has filed suit against the state election board in North Carolina alleging it failed to comply with a part of the federal Help America Vote Act that relates to voter registration records. More inquiries are likely on the way There are signs the department's outreach isn't done. It told the National Association of Secretaries of State that 'all states would be contacted eventually,' said Maria Benson, a NASS spokeswoman. The organization has asked the department to join a virtual meeting of its elections committee to answer questions about the letters, Benson said. Some officials have raised concerns about how the voter data will be used and protected. Election officials in at least four California counties — Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and San Francisco —said the Justice Department sent them letters asking for voter roll records. The letters asked for the number of people removed from the rolls for being noncitizens and for their voting records, dates of birth and ID numbers. Officials in Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Wisconsin confirmed to the AP that they received an email from two department lawyers requesting a call about a potential 'information-sharing agreement.' The goal, according to several copies of the emails reviewed by the AP, was for states to provide the government with information about instances of election fraud to help the Justice Department 'enforce Federal election laws and protect the integrity of Federal elections.' One of those sending the emails was a senior counsel in the criminal division. The emails referred to Trump's March executive order on elections, part of which directs the attorney general to enter information-sharing agreements with state election officials to the 'maximum extent possible.' Skeptical state election officials assess how to reply Election officials in several states that received requests for their voter registration information have not responded. Some said they were reviewing the inquiries. Officials in some other states provided public versions of voter registration lists to the department, with certain personal information such as Social Security numbers blacked out. Elsewhere, state officials answered procedural questions from the Justice Department but refused to provide the voter lists. In Minnesota, the office of Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said the federal agency is not legally entitled to the information. In a July 25 letter to the Justice Department's voting section, Simon's general counsel, Justin Erickson, said the list 'contains sensitive personal identifying information on several million individuals.' He said the office had obligations under federal and state law to not disclose any information from the statewide list unless expressly required by law. In a recent letter, Republican lawmakers in the state called on Simon to comply with the federal request as a way 'to protect the voting rights of the citizens of Minnesota.' Maine's secretary of state, Democrat Shenna Bellows, said the administration's request overstepped the federal government's bounds and that the state will not fulfill it. She said doing so would violate voter privacy. The department 'doesn't get to know everything about you just because they want to,' Bellows said. Some Justice Department requests are questionable, lawyers say There is nothing inherently wrong with the Justice Department requesting information on state procedures or the states providing it, said Justin Levitt, a former deputy assistant attorney general who teaches at Loyola Law School. But the department's requests for voter registration data are more problematic, he said. That is because of the Privacy Act of 1974, which put strict guidelines on data collection by the federal government. The government is required to issue a notice in the Federal Register and notify appropriate congressional committees when it seeks personally identifiable information about individuals. Becker said there is nothing in federal law that compels states to comply with requests for sensitive personal data about their residents. He added that while the outreach about information-sharing agreements was largely innocuous, the involvement of a criminal attorney could be seen as intimidating. 'You can understand how people would be concerned,' he said. ___ Fields reported from Washington. Associated Press state government reporters from around the country contributed to this report.
CTV News
20 hours ago
- CTV News
Watchdog agency investigating ex-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith for alleged illegal political activity
Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to the media about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Aug. 1, 2023, at an office of the Department of Justice in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — An independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees has opened an investigation into Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel who brought two criminal cases against then-candidate Donald Trump before his election to the White House last year. The Office of Special Counsel confirmed Saturday that it was investigating Smith on allegations he engaged in political activity through his inquiries into Trump. Smith was named special counsel by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 and his special counsel title is entirely distinct from the agency now investigating him. The office has no criminal enforcement power but does have the authority to impose fines and other sanctions for violations. It was not clear what basis exists to contend that Smith's investigations were political in nature or that he violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that bans certain public officials from engaging in political activity. Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, had earlier this week encouraged the office to scrutinize Smith's activities and had alleged that his conduct was designed to help then-President Joe Biden and his vice president Kamala Harris, both Democrats. Smith brought two cases against Trump, one accusing him of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the other of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Both were brought in 2023, well over a year before the 2024 presidential election, and indictments in the two cases cited what Smith and his team described as clear violations of well-established federal law. Garland has repeatedly said politics played no part in the handling of the cases. Both cases were abandoned by Smith after Trump's November win, with the prosecutor citing longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president. There was no immediate indication that the same office investigating Smith had opened investigations into the Justice Department special counsels who were appointed by Garland to investigate Biden and his son Hunter. The White House had no immediate comment on the investigation into Smith, which was first reported by The New York Post. The office has been riven by leadership tumult over the last year. An earlier chief, Hampton Dellinger, was abruptly fired by the Trump administration and initially sued to get his job back before abandoning the court fight. Trump's trade representative, Jamieson Greer, is also serving as acting special counsel. Trump selected as his replacement Paul Ingrassia, a former right-wing podcast host who has praised criminally charged influencer Andrew Tate as a 'extraordinary human being' and promoted the false claim that the 2020 election was rigged. A Senate panel was set to consider his nomination at a hearing last month, but it was pulled from the agenda. By Darlene Superville And Eric Tucker, The Associated Press
Global News
2 days ago
- Global News
Family of Virginia Giuffre pleads with Trump not to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell
The family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein's most high-profile sex trafficking survivors, is asking U.S. President Donald Trump not to pardon the late financier's aide, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in Epstein's underage abuse ring. The request comes in the wake of U.S. deputy attorney General Todd Blanche's meeting with Maxwell at a Florida prison, and days after Trump suggested that he ended his friendship with Epstein because he poached employees from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, including Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year. Blanche facilitated the meeting with Maxwell, a British socialite and the daughter of late media mogul Robert Maxwell, in an ongoing effort by the Justice Department to cast itself as transparent following fierce backlash from some of Trump's supporters over an earlier refusal to release additional records in the Epstein investigation. Story continues below advertisement The encounter stoked speculation that Trump may pardon Maxwell. On Friday, she was moved from a prison in Florida to a lower-security prison camp in Texas. 'We can confirm, Ghislaine Maxwell is in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Bryan, in Bryan, Texas,' the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement. The prison is described as a minimum-security federal prison camp housing 635 female inmates. Maxwell had previously been held at FCI Tallahassee, a low-security federal correctional institution with a detention centre housing 1,191 male and female inmates. Giuffre's family said Trump's invocation of her earlier this week was unexpected and questioned whether he was aware of the full extent of Maxwell and Epstein's abuse of their late relative. 'It was shocking to hear President Trump invoke our sister and say that he was aware that Virginia had been 'stolen' from Mar-a-Lago. It makes us ask if he was aware of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's criminal actions, especially given his statement two years later that his good friend Jeffrey 'likes women on the younger side … no doubt about it.' We and the public are asking for answers; survivors deserve this,' the family said. View image in full screen Pictured are Ghislaine Maxwell and Donald Trump at the 50th anniversary of the Ford Modeling Agency and Pantene hair care products on Oct. 30, 1997. Richard Corkery / Getty Images On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president mentioned Giuffre in response to a question from a reporter who mentioned her. Story continues below advertisement 'He did not bring her up. The fact remains that President Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of his club for being a creep to his female employees,' she said in a statement, NBC News reported. Get daily National news Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Giuffre's family said it was 'convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell who targeted and preyed upon our then 16-year-old sister, Virginia, from Mar-a-Lago, where she was working in 2000, several years before Epstein and President Trump had their falling out.' The Giuffre family responded Friday to Maxwell's transfer to a new prison facility and criticized the Trump administration's 'preferential treatment' of the convicted sex offender, as reported by CNN's Kaitlan Collins. A new statement from the family of Virginia Giuffre and several of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's accusers: 'It is with horror and outrage that we object to the preferential treatment convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has received. Ghislaine Maxwell is a… — Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 1, 2025 Story continues below advertisement 'Ghislaine Maxwell is a sexual predator who physically assaulted minor children on multiple occasions, and she should never be shown any leniency. Yet, without any notification to the Maxwell victims, the government overnight has moved Maxwell to a minimum security luxury prison in Texas,' they said. The family said Maxwell's transfer is 'the justice system failing victims right before our eyes,' and that the American people should be outraged by it. They also urged the Trump administration not to 'credit a word Maxwell says,' and accused the government of orchestrating 'a cover-up.' 'The victims deserve better,' the statement concluded. Maxwell's lawyer, David Oscar Markus, said Friday there have been 'no asks and no promises' regarding a pardon but told reporters that his client 'would welcome any relief.' Meanwhile, Giuffre's family had previously said clemency for Maxwell should never be an option. 'The government and the President should never consider giving Ghislaine Maxwell any leniency,' the family said. 'Ghislaine Maxwell is a monster who deserves to rot in prison for the rest of her life for the extraordinary violence and abuse she put not just our sister Virginia through, but many other survivors, who may number in the thousands,' they said. Story continues below advertisement Asked last week if he would pardon Maxwell, Trump told reporters he had not considered it but that he was 'allowed to do it.' A Trump administration official told the outlet after the family's initial statement was released that 'no leniency is being given or discussed.' 'The president himself has said that clemency for Maxwell is not something he is even thinking about at this time,' they said. — With files from The Associated Press
