And in October, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered colleges to shut down all SJP chapters. The University of Florida SJP chapter sued DeSantis in November and said the governor’s order was a violation of free speech. A federal court denied the chapter’s request for a preliminary injunction in January and found that Florida officials did not intend to deactivate all SJP chapters after comments by the Florida University System chancellor walking back DeSantis’s order.

In October, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares opened an investigation into AMP and said his office had reason to believe that the organization was soliciting contributions without proper registration. Miyares, a Republican, had also called on state law enforcement agencies to donate tactical gear to Israeli citizens.

Last week, Congress adopted a resolution that would further chill speech from organizations like SJP. The resolution employs a controversial definition of antisemitism that includes any attempts to draw comparisons between the actions of the Israeli government and Nazis. The House voted 320 to 91 to adopt the working definition of antisemitism published in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The lead author of the definition has said it “was never intended to be a campus hate speech code.”

October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division”

Four lawsuits alleging Hamas ties against Students for Justice in Palestine, the AP, UNRWA, and a cryptocurrency exchange share many of the same plaintiffs.

Akela Lacy

May 10 2024, 2:44 p.m.

Survivors of the October 7 attacks filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court last week alleging links between Hamas and the pro-Palestinian student groups leading nationwide protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. The survivors claim the student groups are liable for monetary damages because of the purported terrorism links.

“When someone tells you they are aiding and abetting terrorists — believe them.” That’s the opening line the suit filed Wednesday against the Palestinian advocacy groups American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine, the umbrella group supporting student organizers for Palestine, which supports more than 350 Palestine solidarity groups, including more than 200 campus organizations across the country.

The lawsuit is part of a nationwide crackdown on pro-Palestine activism, especially on campus. It was filed a day after police in New York City deployed militarized forces to remove students from campus encampments protesting the war on Gaza and arrested hundreds.

Some or all of the nine plaintiffs in the suit are involved in a raft of other civil suits related to the October 7 attacks. Among the defendants they’ve pursued in court are major media organizations and United Nations agencies.

The survivors of the October 7 attack alleged that American Muslims for Palestine “serves as Hamas’s propaganda division in the United States.” 

“Through NSJP, AMP uses propaganda to intimidate, convince, and recruit uninformed, misguided, and impressionable college students to serve as foot soldiers for Hamas on campus and beyond,” the October 7 survivors wrote in their suit.

The lawsuits rely on anti-terrorism laws that made it possible to bring civil cases for acts of international terrorism, including provisions around bans on material support to terrorism that have long been controversially applied. At the time of their passage, members of Congress who pushed the anti-terror laws linked them directly to crackdowns on pro-Palestine activities, according to a recent white paper from the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal.

“For years, CCR and others have been warning of the abuse of broad ‘material support’ laws to shrink the space for Palestinian rights,” said Diala Shamas, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The group represented another Palestinian rights organization in what Shamas said was “years-long, meritless litigation” brought by the Jewish National Fund, a group that funds Israeli settlements.

“The law’s provision of civil damages means that private actors — including those with seemingly endless resources — can bog you down in costly and distracting litigation,” Shamas said. “This means that Palestinians and those who support their rights become ‘high risk’ — and those who they rely on — charities, funders, banks or social media companies — are chilled from further engagement. The goal is to isolate Palestinians.”

Four Survivor Lawsuits

The nine plaintiffs include six survivors of the October 7 Hamas attacks. Five people attended the Supernova music festival, and another was attacked at Zikim Beach, where 19 civilians were killed as Hamas militants tried to overrun nearby military outposts.

Two other plaintiffs who were not home on October 7 had homes in Kibbutz Holit, the site of additional Hamas attacks. Another plaintiff’s brother was killed at the festival. (Lawyers for the plaintiffs, AMP, and SJP did not respond to requests for comment.)

The AMP suit is the fourth federal suit filed this year by members of the group.

Last month, eight of the same plaintiffs sued the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, claiming that it gave material support to Hamas by allowing the militant group to fundraise on the platform. In November, the Treasury Department said Hamas and “a range of illicit actors” had used Binance to funnel money to their groups. Binance lawyers asked for an extension to reply to the complaint and have until August to do so. In April, the company’s former chief executive was sentenced to four months in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering violations.

Five of the plaintiffs in the American Muslims for Palestine suit also sued the news agency The Associated Press in February. The plaintiffs alleged that the AP used photographs from “known Hamas associates who were gleefully embedded with the Hamas terrorists during the October 7th attacks.” Lawyers for the AP moved to dismiss the complaint for failing to state a claim and asked to stay discovery pending adjudication of the motion to dismiss.

In March, the same group of nine plus another October 7 survivor sued the U.S. committee of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNWRA, the largest humanitarian organization operating in Gaza. The suit against UNRWA claims that the group “financed and aided” Hamas, a frequent refrain from Israeli officials that has gone unsubstantiated, according to an independent review released in April. UNRWA lawyers were granted an extension and have until May 28 to respond to the complaint.

Following Israeli officials’ allegations, major donors initially cut funding to UNRWA, but later reversed the decisions — except for the United States, the group’s biggest donor, where Congress blocked funding as part of the budget package approved this spring.

The major corporate law firm Greenberg Traurig has taken on the latest case. The National Jewish Advocacy Center has taken on the three other cases. The group did not respond to a request for comment.

Crackdown on Student Groups

Student advocates for Palestine have faced concerted and sometimes violent crackdowns by school administrators and police. Mainstream media outlets uncritically repeat unsubstantiated claims that they support Hamas.

Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, which are at the center of much campus organizing, have faced harsh censorship since October. The group was singled out in congressional hearings that have pressured university administrators to further crack down on Palestinian advocacy on campus.

Columbia University suspended its SJP chapter and its chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace in November. The New York Civil Liberties Union and Palestine Legal sued the university over the suspension in March in the New York Supreme Court. The case is pending.

American University placed its SJP chapter on probation in April after the group held a silent indoor demonstration; the school banned indoor protests in January. Rutgers University suspended the SJP chapter on its New Brunswick campus in December and claimed that the group had protested in “nonpublic forums” and caused disruption on campus; the suspension was lifted in January. (I am a co-teacher of a class at Rutgers.)

George Washington University suspended its SJP chapter in November after the group projected statements onto a library building calling for the university to divest from Israel. The projected images said GWU had blood on its hands and used the phrase “Glory to our martyrs,” a cultural reference to any Palestinian killed by Israel that was interpreted by outsiders as an endorsement of Hamas.

Brandeis was the first private university to ban its SJP chapter in November, claiming that the group “openly supports Hamas.”

Exclusive: In Tesla Autopilot probe, US prosecutors focus on securities, wire fraud

By Mike Spector and Chris Prentice

May 8, 2024 10:05 AM EDT · Updated 3 hours ago

May 8 (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors are examining whether Tesla (TSLA.O) committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems assist with steering, braking and lane changes - but are not fully autonomous. While Tesla has warned drivers to stay ready to take over driving, the Justice Department is examining other statements by Tesla and Chief Executive Elon Musk suggesting its cars can drive themselves.

U.S. regulators have separately investigated hundreds of crashes, including fatal ones, that have occurred in Teslas with Autopilot engaged, resulting in a mass recall by the automaker.

Reuters exclusively reported the U.S. criminal investigation into Tesla in October 2022, and is now the first to report the specific criminal liability federal prosecutors are examining.

Investigators are exploring whether Tesla committed wire fraud, which involves deception in interstate communications, by misleading consumers about its driver-assistance systems, the sources said. They are also examining whether Tesla committed securities fraud by deceiving investors, two of the sources said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Tesla’s representations about driver-assistance systems to investors, one of the people said. The SEC declined to comment.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Last October, it disclosed in a filing that the Justice Department had asked the company for information about Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The probe, which is not evidence of wrongdoing, could result in criminal charges, civil sanctions, or no action. Prosecutors are far from deciding how to proceed, one of the sources said, in part because they are sifting through voluminous documents Tesla provided in response to subpoenas.

Reuters could not determine the specific statements prosecutors are reviewing as potentially illegal. Musk has aggressively touted the prowess of Tesla’s driver-assistance technology for nearly a decade.

Tesla videos demonstrating the technology that remain archived on its website say: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

A Tesla engineer testified in 2022 in a lawsuit over a fatal crash involving Autopilot that one of the videos, posted in October 2016, intended to show the technology’s potential and did not accurately portray its capabilities at the time. Musk nevertheless posted the video on social media, writing: “Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway streets, then finds a parking spot.”

In a conference call with reporters in 2016, Musk described Autopilot as “probably better” than a human driver. During an October 2022 call, Musk addressed a forthcoming FSD upgrade he said would allow customers to travel “to your work, your friend’s house, to the grocery store without you touching the wheel.”

Musk is increasingly focused on self-driving technology as Tesla's car sales and profit slump. Tesla recently slashed costs through mass layoffs and shelved plans for a long-awaited $25,000 model that had been expected to drive sales growth.

“Going balls to the wall for autonomy is a blindingly obvious move,” the billionaire executive posted on his social-media platform X in mid-April. Tesla shares, down more than 28% so far this year, surged in late April when Musk visited China and made progress toward approvals to sell FSD there.

Musk has repeatedly promised self-driving Teslas for about a decade. "Mere failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud," Tesla lawyers said in a 2022 court filing.

LEGAL CHALLENGES

Prosecutors scrutinizing Tesla’s autonomous-car claims are proceeding with caution, recognizing the legal hurdles they face, the people familiar with the inquiry said.

They will need to demonstrate that Tesla’s claims crossed a line from legal salesmanship to material and knowingly false statements that unlawfully harmed consumers or investors, three legal experts uninvolved in the probe told Reuters.

U.S. courts previously have ruled that “puffery” or “corporate optimism” regarding product claims do not amount to fraud. In 2008, a federal appeals court ruled that statements of corporate optimism alone do not demonstrate that a company official intentionally misled investors.

Justice Department officials will likely seek internal Tesla communications as evidence that Musk or others knew they were making false statements, said Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor and former federal prosecutor. That is a challenge, Richman said, but the safety risk involved in overselling self-driving systems also “speaks to the seriousness with which prosecutors, a judge and jury would take the statements.”

FATAL CRASHES

Tesla’s claims about Autopilot and FSD have also drawn scrutiny in regulatory investigations and lawsuits.

Safety regulators and courts have raised concerns in recent months that corporate messaging about the technology - including the brand names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving - have imbued customers with a false sense of security.

In April, the Washington State Patrol arrested a man on suspicion of vehicular homicide after his Tesla, with Autopilot engaged, struck and killed a motorcyclist while the driver looked at his phone, police records show. In a probable-cause statement, a trooper cited the driver’s “admitted inattention to driving, while on autopilot mode ... putting trust in the machine to drive for him.”

In Washington state, a driver remains "responsible for the safe and legal operation of that vehicle" regardless of its technological capabilities, a state patrol spokesperson told Reuters.

The same month, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into whether a Tesla recall of more than 2 million vehicles in December adequately addressed safety issues with Autopilot.

NHTSA declined to comment.

The recall followed a long-running probe opened by regulators after cars with Autopilot engaged repeatedly crashed into vehicles at first-responder emergency scenes. Regulators subsequently examined hundreds of crashes where Autopilot was engaged and identified 14 deaths and 54 injuries.

Tesla disputed NHTSA's findings but agreed to the recall, which employed over-the-air software updates intended to alert inattentive drivers.

The NHTSA investigation found “a critical safety gap between drivers’ expectations” of Tesla’s technology “and the system’s true capabilities,” according to agency records. “This gap led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes.”

Reporting by Mike Spector and Chris Prentice in New York Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco and David Shepardson in Washington Editing by Brian Thevenot and Matthew Lewis