Dozens of groups that have financial ties to Google are filing amicus briefs to the Supreme Court as it deliberates whether the tech giant should be held liable for content posted on its platforms. They all just so happen to be advocating for a ruling that benefits Google.

Nearly 40 nonprofits, legal organizations, and trade associations with financial and personnel ties to Google have formally submitted amicus briefs before the Court in Gonzalez v. Google, accounting for a third of the briefs submitted for the case. The case centers around Section 230, a federal law that shields online platforms from legal liability over content posted by third parties. Section 230 is often the only thing preventing tech firms from financial ruin. If the Court rules against Google, which through platforms such as YouTube hosts a massive trove of content, it would open the company to an endless stream of civil suits.

The Supreme Court requires corporations that submit amicus briefs to disclose their parent companies and list any other publicly held companies that own 10 percent or more of its stock. Nonprofit organizations have no such requirement, which allows the groups shilling for Google to omit their financial ties.

The sheer number of interest groups with ties to Google that have filed amicus briefs on the company’s behalf offers a window into how tech companies work to influence policy through a series of nonprofits and academics. Though designed to appear as outside entities, many of these groups work extensively to further the interests of their donors.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Last year, Google disclosed a list of entities that received the “most substantial contributions” from its lobbying efforts. One of those groups that received cash from the tech giant, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), also has on its board Mark Isakowitz, Google’s vice president of government affairs. Neither Isakowitz’s status as the tech company’s top lobbyist nor Google’s funding of the group were disclosed in the CCIA’s brief.

Google was also one of the top donors to the left-leaning Center for Democracy and Technology, contributing millions to the group over the past decade. The center disclosed a former distinguished engineer at Google as part of its amicus brief, but not any of the company’s financial donations.

If the Court rules against Google in Gonzalez, the internet giant could be forced to pay damages to the family of a woman who died in the November 2015 Paris terror attacks. One of the terrorists was radicalized after watching ISIS recruiting videos on YouTube. The woman’s family argues that the video platform recommended increasingly radical content to that terrorist, which led him to carry out the attack.

Other suits could follow, potentially drying up funds for Google’s affiliated nonprofits. Mike Davis, president and founder of the Internet Accountability Project, told the Washington Free Beacon it’s “not surprising” to see that the same groups submitting amicus briefs are “on Google’s payroll.”

“These Big Tech shills are bought and paid for and should be in no way considered independent,” he said. “The key to Big Tech’s strategy to fend off legislation, regulation, and damaging court rulings is their willingness to reach into their deep pockets and buy off critics.”

Among the other groups petitioning the court is Public Knowledge, which has a former general counsel for Google, Daphne Keller, on its board. The left-wing tech advocacy group coordinated with Google and Twitter during the coronavirus pandemic to track alleged “misinformation” on the platforms. Keller’s past employment at Google was not mentioned in the group’s brief.

Keller filed a separate brief in which she acknowledged her stint at Google but said she “has no ongoing employment or consulting relationship with the company.” Public Knowledge took $50,000 from Google between 2020 and 2021, according to its website. The group was founded in 2001 by Gigi Sohn, President Joe Biden’s nominee to serve on the Federal Communications Commission.

The Chamber of Progress, which also takes Google’s money and was founded in 2020 as a left-wing response to the business-friendly Chamber of Commerce, rushed to the company’s defense as well. Led by a former Google lobbyist, the Chamber of Progress said in its amicus brief that an unfavorable ruling against Google would “strangle continued growth and innovation in the most vital element of our modern economy.”

Google’s influence even extends to sitting members of Congress. Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.)  joined former California congressman Christopher Cox (R.) in submitting a brief supporting Google. Cox sits on the board of the Google-funded nonprofit Net Choice. Cox and Wyden are also the original authors of Section 230.

The High Court will hear oral arguments for Gonzalez on Feb. 21. Justice Clarence Thomas has in recent years expressed a willingness to reconsider the total immunity granted to social media companies under Section 230.

The post Groups on Google Payroll Flood Supreme Court With Briefs Defending Google appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

They won’t get by.

SFGATE reports that the Garcia Hand Picked marijuana brand, launched in 2020 by the family of late Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, one of the most iconic pot smokers in California history, is leaving the state to escape crippling regulations and high taxes under Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.).

The brand’s exit comes at a time when industry experts are predicting a “mass extinction event” that will put thousands of cannabis firms out of business throughout the Golden State:

Andrew DeAngelo, a cannabis consultant and former owner of Harborside, one of the state’s pioneering medical cannabis dispensaries, said the Garcia brand probably learned the same thing that all of California’s pot companies have realized: “You can’t make any money in this market.”

“Not only is Garcia leaving, a lot of people are leaving,” DeAngelo told SFGATE. “It’s a real shame that California is losing out. We’re losing out on jobs and economic activity and other places are benefiting from that.”

Garcia Hand Picked, like most celebrity brands, contracted out its cannabis growing and manufacturing to partner companies and then stamped Jerry Garcia’s face on the packaging. The company said they are looking for a new cannabis supplier, but declined to be interviewed for this story and did not elaborate on how long the brand would be on hiatus in California. Garcia Hand Picked is still available in five other states.

The report goes on to describe the “huge economic hurdles” the state’s marijuana industry has faced since legal sales began in 2018. (Newsom was sworn in as governor in 2019.) Companies have struggled to turn a profit on Newsom’s watch due to California’s “complicated cannabis regulations and high taxes,” not to mention the state’s out-of-control real estate prices. The legal marijuana industry is also struggling to compete with unlicensed growers who undercut the market by breaking the law. Rather than cracking down on these illegal operations, the state government has helped them thrive by relaxing penalties in the name of racial equity.

Newsom, who announced in November he would not challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024, is going to run for president at some point. A politician capable of feeling shame might think twice before attempting to tout his record as governor of a deep-blue state that residents and businesses alike are fleeing at a record pace. Fortunately, that won’t be a problem for Newsom.

READ MORE: Year in Review: California Got Even Crazier in 2022

The post UP IN SMOKE: California Business Climate So Bad Even Jerry Garcia’s Marijuana Company Is Leaving appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

As extreme weather and human activity degrade the world’s arable land, scientists and developers are looking at new and largely unproven methods to save soil for agriculture.

One company is injecting liquid clay into California desert to trap moisture and help fruit to grow, while another in Malaysia boosts soil with droppings from fly larvae. In a Nova Scotia greenhouse, Canadian scientist Vicky Levesque is adding biochar – the burnt residue of plants and wood waste – to soil to help apples grow better.

Long-established soil preservation techniques, such as tilling less and sowing crops during off-seasons, are proving no match for more frequent droughts, floods and temperature extremes. Soil erosion is depleting dirt’s ability to produce food, and could lead to a 10% loss in global crop production by 2050, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

New “soil amendment” solutions, which improve the physical properties of soil, may complement the traditional ways — if they prove profitable and effective.

Biochar, liquid clay and fly larvae droppings are all in limited commercial production. Development of such solutions has accelerated in recent years as soil degradation worsened, said Ole Kristian Sivertsen, chief executive of liquid clay company Desert Control (DSRT.OL), which made its first commercial sale in December.

Bayer AG (BAYGn.DE), the world’s biggest seed company, is among the companies looking at new ways of regenerating soil through Leaps by Bayer, its venture capital unit, said Matthias Berninger, Bayer’s head of sustainability.

Bayer and other companies are already working on non-chemical ways to add nutrients to crops such as adding microbes into soil but products aimed at regenerating farmland go further. Some, like liquid clay and biochar add nutrients while also improving the ground’s ability to retain water, and require fewer applications than fertilizer.

“We have really started to focus on the soil in ways we traditionally wouldn’t have done,” Berninger said in an interview.

Dark Earths

Biochar is an artificial means of creating a carbon-rich product to boost soils, modelled after exceptionally fertile patches of Amazon rainforest called “Dark Earths” that were produced over time as a byproduct of cooking, animal decomposition and manure.

Biochar could be a “great opportunity” for trapping plant-sustaining carbon in the soil, Levesque said, adding that biochar also acts like a water sponge.

Her research, which started in 2012, has shown that clay soil treated with biochar emitted drastically less nitrous oxide, benefiting the atmosphere and trapping more carbon in the ground where it can boost plant growth.

Some types of biochar increased yields of greenhouse tomatoes and sweet peppers by 32% and 54% respectively, while requiring less fertilizer, due to biochar spurring reproduction of bacteria that benefit plant growth.

More research is needed, however, before scientists know how effectively biochar could regenerate different types of soils around the world, she said.

Norway-based Desert Control has spent 18 years and $25 million developing liquid clay to boost soil. Last year, it injected its product into a patch of U.S. desert, where the clay binds with sand to better retain water and nutrients.

Preliminary data from a five-year trial showed that in sand treated with clay, romaine lettuce hearts were on average 21-53% larger than romaine grown under the same conditions without clay, said Robert Masson, an official at University of Arizona’s Yuma County Cooperative Extension, who grew the plants.

In November, Desert Control signed a $182,000 contract with Limoneira Company (LMNR.O), which will initially apply liquid clay to 4,000 trees on two of its citrus farms in the drought-stricken states of California and Arizona. Depending on results, Limoneira intends to expand application in the fourth quarter.

Each application lasts up to five years.

“Cover crops and no-till are good practices but they are far from enough,” Sivertsen said.

In Malaysia, Nutrition Technologies produces “soil conditioner” from frass – the waste and skin of Black Soldier Fly larvae. Composted frass led to a 12% increase in plant-nourishing soil organic matter, something that otherwise declines over time, according to the company’s research.

Nutrition Technologies, which started in 2015, sells an average of 200 tonnes of frass monthly in Malaysia, mainly to farmers who apply it to leafy greens, cucumbers and fruit, said Martin Zorrilla, the company’s chief technology officer.

The company raised $20 million in September, its most recent funding round.

While most Malaysian fertilizer producers now sell frass, volumes are still too low to draw the attention of global agriculture companies, Zorrilla said.

“Ultimately, soil is a living system, which is one reason it takes natural processes so long to build soil and why it is so easy to lose it,” he said.

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Delaware’s governor agreed Monday to consider judicial candidates who have no political affiliation or belong to minor parties, ending a longstanding rule that only Democrats or Republicans could sit on the state’s influential courts, according to a court filing.

The agreement, which was approved a U.S. judge on Monday, leaves in place a requirement in the state’s constitution that no party have more than a “bare majority” of judges on a court, such as 3-2 on the state’s supreme court.

Prior to Monday’s agreement, judicial appointments were limited to the two major parties.

A majority of U.S. companies are incorporated in Delaware and its courts sort out many high-stakes disputes, such as Elon Musk’s bid last year to walk away from his agreement to buy social media platform Twitter Inc, which was overseen by the Court of Chancery.

A spokesman for the governor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The agreement resolves a lawsuit brought by James Adams, who applied to be a judge in the state but was not a member of either major party and was not considered. He argued the major party requirement violated his right to free association under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The bare majority requirement still applies, but now that majority could consist of independents.

Governor John Carney, a Democrat, had argued that the state’s courts are trusted by business leaders because of the balance guaranteed by the “bare majority” rule.

Judicial candidates in the state are selected by a nominating committee and presented to the governor. The governor’s choice must be approved by the state Senate.

A federal judge on Monday blocked New Jersey’s recently enacted bans on carrying guns at beaches or casinos, though she left in place other restrictions passed by the state in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year expanding gun rights nationwide.

The order from U.S. District Judge Renee Marie Bumb in Camden, New Jersey, came in response to a lawsuit brought by seven people and the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs challenging parts of a law signed by Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy in December.

“This marks the beginning of the end for Governor Murphy’s blatantly unconstitutional new carry law, which is going down in flames,” said Scott Bach, executive director of the association, in a statement.

“We look forward to being able to appeal the ruling and are confident that it will be reversed,” said Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for Murphy.

Bumb three weeks ago blocked other parts of the law in a similar lawsuit brought by different plaintiffs. Those measures included bans on carrying guns in public libraries, museums, bars and restaurants and on private property without the owner’s explicit permission, as well as transporting loaded guns in vehicles.

Other parts of the law, including measures tightening gun licensing requirements and handgun safety rules, remain in effect.

The rulings in both cases are temporary restraining orders, which will prevent the bans from being enforced while the lawsuits go forward. They are not final judgments.

Both lawsuits argue that the state’s new restrictions violate the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The law was passed in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in June that the U.S. Constitution protects individuals’ right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense, striking down a New York law governing gun licenses.

The high court’s decision left open the possibility for states to restrict guns in “sensitive places” but said any restrictions must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulation. Bumb found that the challenged restrictions in both cases did not fit in that tradition.

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The Republican head of a key U.S. House of Representatives committee said on Monday that he will pursue bipartisan legislation to better ensure the proper handling of classified documents at the White House when administrations leave office.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said it is essential to have legislation ensuring classified material is not transferred from the offices of the president and vice president to unsecured locations at the end of an administration.

The discovery of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and at other sites including President Joe Biden’s Delaware home have led to the appointment of two different special counsels and raised national security fears.

Classified documents have also turned up at the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence.

“We have to reform the way that documents are boxed up when they leave the president’s and vice president’s office and follow them into the private sector,” Comer told a National Press Club forum.

“Somebody needs to oversee all of the documents that are going into boxes to make sure they’re not classified.”

Comer said that he and Representative Jamie Raskin, the oversight panel’s top Democrat, hope to have a bill in place before Biden leaves office. A Raskin spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

“We’re going to work together in a bipartisan way to come up with a legislative fix prior to this administration leaving and the next information coming into office,” the Kentucky Republican added.

Comer’s committee is scheduled to have a transcribed interview with National Archives General Counsel Gary Stern on Tuesday. The sessions follows a Comer demand for information from the National Archives concerning documents found in Biden’s possession.

The Republican, who has also sought material on the misplaced documents from the White House and Justice Department, said he wants to know if any of the documents found at Biden’s home were handled by the president’s son Hunter Biden, who has long been a target for Republican accusations of influence peddling.

Comer said his panel will hold the first public hearing of its investigation of Biden family business dealings on Feb. 8.

The House Oversight probe is a distraction for Biden and could cast a shadow over the Democratic president as he gears up for a possible 2024 re-election bid.

The committee will hear testimony from three former Twitter employees and the social platform’s handling of information about Hunter Biden.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday said he will visit Poland but does not know when after reports suggested he is considering a trip to Europe to coincide with the Feb. 24 anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden also told reporters that the United States will not be providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Ukraine’s defense minister last week said he will now push for Western fourth- generation fighter planes such as the U.S. F-16 after securing supplies of battle tanks.

Ukraine won a huge boost for its troops last week when Germany and the United States announced plans to provide heavy tanks, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue. Poland, Ukraine’s neighbor on its western border, has positioned itself as one of the Kyiv government’s staunchest allies.

Earlier on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in the southern city of Mykolaiv during a rare visit by a foreign leader to a region close to the front lines.

During the meeting, Zelenskiy said Russia was not ceasing its attacks on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, and pouring in more fighters from the Wagner group, a Russian private military company.

A filing in FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings is shedding light on the true extent of the crypto-trading powerhouse’s influence peddling operation. Last week, FTX filed its creditor matrix, a document that lists former vendors and investors to the company.

The list includes nearly a dozen public relations experts — specialists who generate positive spin in the media on behalf of clients — as well as political consultants, think tanks, and trade groups.

Sometimes, the money went directly to political operations; Majority Forward, a dark-money group designed to elect Senate Democrats, received cash. In some cases, the hired guns, such as PR firms, were paid directly for their services. In others, the groups that received donations maintain that they are independent, but had interests aligned with FTX.

The filing, for instance, listed a donation to the Center for a New American Security, a prominent national security-focused think tank in Washington, D.C., that has worked to shape crypto regulations.

The filing offered a look under the hood of FTX’s intricate maze of influence. On the heels of its meteoric rise as a crypto exchange, FTX quickly began to spend extraordinary amounts of money to buy prestige and friends in high places. Now that the firm stands accused of siphoning off billions of its investors’ dollars — with its disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried charged with fraud in the matter — increased scrutiny is falling on powerbrokers’ dealings with FTX.

The relationships of many of the entities listed in the bankruptcy filing and FTX were already known — the company complied with lobbying disclosures for some of its consultants — but the creditor matrix shows the crypto giant also retained several previously undisclosed professional influence peddlers.

One seasoned political hand tied to FTX without any disclosures is former New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson. His firm, Cojo Strategies, is featured in the FTX vendor list. Another is Susan McCue, a former aide to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has advised many Senate Democrats and played a role in the leadership of several Democratic super PACs and dark-money outfits. Her firm, Message Global, is in the filing.

Other consulting firms with a finger on the pulse of power are sprawled through the creditor matrix, which runs over 116 pages. Another creditor, Patomak Global Partners, a firm that specializes in influencing financial regulators, is led by Paul Atkins, a former Securities and Exchange commissioner. Atkins’s company touts its roster of former government officials as providing “a telescope to anticipate trends on the horizon to help position our clients for long-term success.” (Neither Johnson, McCue, nor Patomak responded to requests for comment.)

Think Tank Crypto Regulations

The donation to CNAS — a powerful think tank with ties to both political parties but known for staffing national security roles in Democratic administrations — came at a time when the organization advocated for crypto regulations with a light touch.

“To compete in the digital-economy race with China, the United States must foster a more innovative fintech environment,” CNAS fellow Yaya J. Fanusie said in testimony to the Senate Finance Committee on July 14, 2021. “If U.S. securities regulation does not evolve to account for the new technical and entrepreneurial capabilities offered by blockchain technology and broadcast data transmission, the United States could be hamstrung in a data revolution that is only just beginning.”

CNAS also maintains a task force on crypto, on which FTX formerly served as a member. The task force corresponded with national security-focused government officials, offering policy advice that reflected the crypto industry’s contention that digital tokens on the blockchain pose a low risk for terror financing.

A readout of a CNAS meeting with the Treasury Department’s Brian Nelson, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, included a summary of the discussion and noted that the official “recognized the work of many in industry to engage in constructive dialogue and support government efforts to mitigate the misuse of virtual assets for money laundering.” The use of crypto for “illicit activities remains below the scale of traditional finance,” Nelson said.

CNAS’s task force is co-chaired by Sigal Mandelker, who used to hold Nelson’s position at the Treasury before resigning in 2019 to enter the private sector. Mandelker now serves as general partner of Ribbit Capital, an investor in FTX. Mandelker spoke at SALT’s Crypto Bahamas conference last summer. The invite-only conference for “leading players in the crypto and traditional finance industry” also featured talks from Bankman-Fried, former President Bill Clinton, and ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mandelker’s talk at Crypto Bahamas was on maintaining permissive crypto regulations.

“The instinct of government is often to focus on risk and not to put as much emphasis on opportunity,” she said. The true risk regulators should be wary of, Mandelker continued, was “shutting down [crypto] innovation.” (Mandelker did not respond to a request for comment.)

“CNAS received a $25,000 donation from FTX in 2022 in general support of CNAS’s independent research on national security,” Shai Korman, CNAS’s director of communications, told The Intercept. “FTX was also a member of the Task Force on Fintech, Crypto, and National Security. FTX is no longer a member of the task force, and CNAS has returned the donation in full.”

PR, Law Firms, and Video Games

FTX once enjoyed a near-mythical status in the media, with splashy cover stories and gushing news articles lauding the crypto powerhouse and Bankman-Fried, its youthful leader. Such coverage rarely emerges organically, and FTX hired an army of public relations firms to burnish its image.

Among them was M Group, a New York-based public relations powerhouse known for its Rolodex of elite journalists. Others under the employ of FTX included TSD Communications and Full Court Press Communications.

The creditor list includes Rational 360, a public relations firm led in part by former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart. Emails obtained by Matt Stoller, the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, show that Rational 360 pressured activists and political influencers to speak out in favor of a bill that would move crypto regulatory authority to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. While the Securities and Exchange Commission handles many enforcement actions against crypto firms, the CFTC is seen as more friendly to crypto interests and has fewer disclosure requirements.

Powerhouse law firms also feature heavily in the most recent bankruptcy disclosure. One firm listed is Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, which represented Russia in a $3 billion bond dispute against Ukraine before it shuttered its Moscow office last year. Buckley LLP, another large law firm based in Washington that appeared on the FTX creditor list, announced earlier this month that it would merge with the San Francisco-based Orrick to create a combined firm with a total of nearly $1.5 billion focused on “forward-looking regulatory and enforcement advice” in the fields of finance and tech.

Among FTX’s listed creditors were a handful of nations — though the contours of the financial relationships remain unknown. Nevertheless, the list of countries reads like a who’s who of nations with lax financial regulations: The British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Isle of Man, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, Seychelles, and Switzerland all appear in the filing.

In addition to national banks and powerful firms in the corporate PR world, the creditor matrix also details luxury restaurants like Carbone in Miami and the luxury Margaritaville resort in Nassau.

The North America League of Legends Championship Series, a property of a premier video game event franchise, is also listed in the creditor matrix. Bankman-Fried, notorious for playing the video game “League of Legends” during pitch meetings with investors, arranged a $96 million sponsorship deal with Riot Games. In December, as the extent of FTX’s deception unfolded, Riot announced it would attempt to cut ties with Bankman-Fried.

The entertainment relationships provided, in some cases, an additional channel for political access. The creditor list includes the talent agency WME, with a memo mentioning actor Larry David, a celebrity endorser of FTX who appeared in a now-infamous Super Bowl commercial promoting the crypto exchange.

WME itself is owned by Endeavor, an investor in FTX that owns 38,000 shares of the company. Endeavor is also run by Ari Emanuel, the brother of Rahm Emanuel, President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Japan.

Editor’s Note: In September 2022, The Intercept received $500,000 from Sam Bankman-Fried’s foundation, Building a Stronger Future, as part of a $4 million grant to fund our pandemic prevention and biosafety coverage. That grant has been suspended. In keeping with our general practice, The Intercept disclosed the funding in subsequent reporting on Bankman-Fried’s political activities.

The post New FTX Filing Pulls Back the Curtain on Sam Bankman-Fried’s Massive Influence Peddling Operation appeared first on The Intercept.

Flanked by the parents of Tyre Nichols and faith and community leaders, civil rights attorney Ben Crump speaks next to a photo of Nichols during a press conference on January 27, 2023 in Memphis, Tennessee.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

• Attorneys for Tyre Nichols’ family suggested a white cop involved in the victim’s arrest got special treatment.
• Officer Preston Hemphill was placed on paid leave in connection to the fatal beating of Nichols. 
• “Why is his identity and the role he played in Tyre’s death just now coming to light?” the lawyers asked.

Attorneys for the family of Tyre Nichols — the Black man who died after being beaten by police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, earlier this month — suggested on Monday that the only known white officer involved in the victim’s arrest was getting special treatment. 

The Memphis Police Department confirmed that officer Preston Hemphill, who is white, was “relieved of duty” and put on paid administrative leave “pending the outcome of the investigation.”

The announcement came days after five fired Memphis police officers — all of whom are Black — were charged with murder in the 29-year-old Nichols’ death. 

An attorney for Hemphill told Insider on Monday that his client “was the third officer at the initial stop” of Nichols on January 7 and that “he was never present at the second scene.”

Lawyers for the Nichols family said that Hemphill can be seen on body camera footage released by the Memphis Police Department last week “violently pulling Nichols from his car while hitting him on the ground with a Taser, later saying, ‘I hope they stomp his ass’ after Nichols ran away.”

“The news today from Memphis officials that Officer Preston Hemphill was reportedly relieved of duty weeks ago, but not yet terminated or charged is extremely disappointing,” Nichols family attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said in a joint statement.

They added, “Why is his identity and the role he played in Tyre’s death just now coming to light? We have asked from the beginning that the Memphis Police Department be transparent with the family and the community — this news seems to indicate that they haven’t risen to the occasion.”

“It certainly begs the question why the white officer involved in this brutal attack was shielded and protected from the public eye, and to date, from sufficient discipline and accountability,” Crump and Romanucci said. 

Insider has asked the Memphis Police Department when exactly Hemphill was placed on administrative leave, but did not immediately receive a response.

A Memphis police spokesperson told CNN that Hemphill had been on administrative leave since the beginning of the investigation.

Meanwhile, the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors could still file more criminal charges in connection to the fatal beating. 

“We are looking at all individuals involved in the events leading up to, during, and after the beating of Tyre Nichols,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement, explaining, “This includes the officer present at the initial encounter who has not — so far — been charged, Memphis Fire Department personnel, and persons who participated in preparing documentation of the incident afterward.”

The DA’s office said it “worked extraordinarily swiftly but thoroughly to charge those whose offenses were plain and clear and directly contributed to the death of Mr. Nichols, but in no way is this investigation over.”

“While we are committed to transparency, we cannot comment on the details of an ongoing investigation or give previews of what charges we may or may not bring,” it continued.