{"id":2320,"date":"2024-08-20T18:26:34","date_gmt":"2024-08-20T18:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/taylor-swift-donald-trump-youngboy-plea-more-music-law-news\/"},"modified":"2024-08-20T18:26:34","modified_gmt":"2024-08-20T18:26:34","slug":"taylor-swift-donald-trump-youngboy-plea-more-music-law-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/taylor-swift-donald-trump-youngboy-plea-more-music-law-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift & Donald Trump, YoungBoy Plea & More Music Law News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: Taylor Swift\u2019s legal options after Donald Trump falsely claims she endorsed him; a guilty plea for YoungBoy Never Broke Again on a federal gun charge; Mariah Carey\u2019s arguments to dismiss a copyright case over \u201cAll I Want For Christmas\u201d; and much more.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: Will Taylor Protect Her \u2026 Reputation?\u00a0<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tWhen Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump <\/strong>posted AI-generated images to social media that falsely suggested Taylor Swift had endorsed him, many Swifties and Democrats asked the same question all at once: Can she sue him?\u00a0<\/p>\n

After all, Taylor is no MAGA fan. In 2020, she urged her legions of fans to vote Trump out of office, blasting him for \u201cstoking the fires of white supremacy and racism\u201d and endorsing then-candidate Joe Biden<\/strong>. The superstar hasn\u2019t endorsed anybody yet in 2024, but you can be pretty certain that it\u2019s not going to be Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But there it was: an AI-generated image of Swift herself, dressed up as Uncle Sam in the style of a World War II-era recruiting poster, bearing a clear message: \u201cTaylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.\u201d At the top of the post, Trump himself responded to the apparent endorsement: \u201cI accept!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can Taylor file a lawsuit? On what grounds? And should she do so? Go read our full story here<\/a> <\/strong>to find out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tYOUNGBOY GUILTY PLEA <\/strong>\u2013 YoungBoy Never Broke Again (aka NBA YoungBoy) notified a judge<\/a><\/strong> that he would plead guilty to a federal gun charge that has seen him held under house arrest for more than two years while awaiting trial. But the deal won\u2019t resolve dozens of newer charges in Utah over claims that he ran a \u201clarge scale prescription fraud ring\u201d while living under house arrest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CLASS DISMISSED<\/strong> \u2013 Adidas AG won a ruling<\/a> <\/strong>tossing out a class action that claimed the company violated U.S. securities laws by failing to warn shareholders about internal offensive behavior from Ye (formerly Kanye West) before the company split with him in 2022. Though the judge said she did not condone his \u201cerratic, inappropriate, and antisemitic\u201d behavior and said it was \u201ctroubling\u201d that it had happened at Adidas, she ruled that the company\u2019s actions didn\u2019t rise to securities fraud: \u201cThe question before this court is not whether to admonish Ye or hold Adidas morally accountable for Ye\u2019s conduct.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

SAMPLE SETTLEMENT <\/strong>\u2013 Elsewhere in Kanye-world, the rapper reached a settlement<\/a><\/strong> in a copyright lawsuit that accused him of using an uncleared sample from the pioneering rap group Boogie Down Productions in his song \u201cLife of the Party.\u201d The case was one of more than a dozen such cases he\u2019s faced during his career, including a high-profile battle with the estate of Donna Summer that settled earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

GRACELAND SCAM<\/strong> \u2013 A Missouri woman named Lisa Jeanine Findley was arrested and charged<\/a><\/strong> with attempting to defraud the family of Elvis Presley and steal their ownership interest in Graceland. The alleged scheme is what led to the bizarre, largely unexplained incident that saw the famed Memphis mansion seemingly put up for auction earlier this summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

NO MORE YSL TRIAL? <\/strong>As Young Thug\u2019s gang trial drags on in Atlanta, a Republican challenger to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis<\/strong> now says she will end the case<\/a><\/strong> if she\u2019s elected. In a statement, Courtney Kramer<\/strong> said the trial against Thug\u2019s YSL was designed to \u201cbring fame\u201d to Willis rather than \u201cbring justice to the community,\u201d and that it\u2019s resulted in \u201cendless amounts of taxpayer dollars\u201d being spent \u201con a prosecution that is based almost entirely on witnesses with little to no credibility.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

HIPGNOSIS SUES MANILOW <\/strong>\u2013 Hipgnosis Song Fund filed a lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>against Barry Manilow in U.K. court over bonus payments relating to its acquisition of the singer\u2019s catalog four years ago, accusing the singer of breach of contract and other wrongdoing over a deal that saw the company buy the rights to 917 songs including \u201cMandy,\u201d \u201cLooks Like We Made It\u201d and many others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CHRISTMAS CLASH<\/strong> \u2013 Mariah Carey asked a federal judge<\/a><\/strong> to dismiss a lawsuit claiming she stole her perennial holiday classic \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You\u201d from an earlier song of the same name by songwriter Vince Vance. The star\u2019s lawyers argued that the two songs share only \u201can unprotectable jumble of elements,\u201d including \u201ca title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs,\u201d a series of \u201cChristmas tropes\u201d and other rudimental elements \u201cscattered throughout these completely different songs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

RONDO DRUG PLEA <\/strong>\u2013 Rapper Quando Rondo pleaded guilty<\/a><\/strong> to a single charge of conspiracy to possess and distribute marijuana, resolving an indictment issued in December that saddled him with more extensive charges involving conspiracy to sell methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine. State gang and drug charges are still pending against him.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1570,153,593,310,3066,3029,3028,409,1053],"class_list":["post-2320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-donald","tag-law","tag-music","tag-news","tag-plea","tag-swift","tag-taylor","tag-trump","tag-youngboy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}