By JENNIFER PELTZ

Smartmatic won’t be required to give Fox News a trove of information about U.S. federal charges against the voting machine company’s co-founder over alleged bribery in the Philippines, a judge ruled Thursday.

Fox News and parent Fox Corp. sought the information to help fight Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation suit over broadcasts about the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Smartmatic says its business was gutted when Fox aired false claims that the election-tech company helped rig the voting.

Fox says it was simply reporting on newsworthy allegations made by then-President Donald Trump and his allies.

The Aug. 8 indictment of Smartmatic co-founder Roger Piñate and two other executives concerns a geographically distant matter: Smartmatic’s efforts to get work in the Philippines between 2015 and 2018.

But Fox maintains the criminal case is pertinent to Smartmatic’s business prospects, and therefore to the election-tech company’s claims about what it lost and stands to lose because of Fox’s 2020 coverage.

“As of Aug 8, governments will have to take into account the risks of doing business with a company (where some executives have been) accused of serious corruption by the U.S. Department of Justice,” Fox lawyer Brad Masters told a New York court Thursday.

He asked the court to order Smartmatic to provide any documents that it has given to the DOJ for the bribery investigation; any customer inquiries about the criminal charges; and any staff communications about the matter and its impact on the company.

The indictment accuses Piñate and two other Smartmatic executives of scheming to pay over $1 million in bribes to a Filipino election official to deploy the company’s machines and pay promptly for them. Federal prosecutors say the payments were made through sham loan agreements and via a slush fund created by overcharging for the machines.

Piñate, who has served as Smartmatic’s president, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to violate the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and to money laundering. It’s unclear from court records whether the other two executives have entered pleas.

Boca Raton, Florida-based Smartmatic itself isn’t charged in the criminal case. The company put the executives on leave and sought to reassure voters that elections are “conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency.”

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Smartmatic’s lawyers contend the indictment is irrelevant to the defamation suit, which is about election-fraud allegations made by Trump’s attorneys.

“There’s merely an allegation, which is probative of nothing,” Smartmatic attorney Caitlin Kovacs argued Thursday. She suggested Fox wanted to “stand up here and play prosecutor to the jury” and “accuse Smartmatic of a crime that they didn’t commit.”

Judge David B. Cohen denied two similar requests from Fox while the federal investigation was ongoing, and said Thursday that the indictment didn’t change his mind.

“It’s a mere accusation. It raises no presumption of guilt,” he said.

Smartmatic is suing Fox and multiple current or former on-air hosts over shows in which Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell portrayed the company as part of a broad conspiracy to steal the 2020 vote from Trump, a Republican and the winner of this year’s election.

Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in battleground states and Trump’s own then-attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they uncover any credible evidence that the vote was tainted. Dozens of courts, including some presided over by judges whom Trump appointed, rejected his fraud claims.

Fox News ultimately aired an interview with an election technology expert who refuted the allegations against Smartmatic.

Fox is countersuing Smartmatic, claiming the defamation case violates a New York law against baseless suits aimed at squelching reporting or criticism on public issues.

Smartmatic recently settled defamation suits against One America News Network and Newsmax. Fox News settled for $787 million last year with another voting-technology company, Dominion Voting Systems.

By ADRIAN SAINZ and JONATHAN MATTISE

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Memphis’ mayor pushed back Thursday against the need for a Justice Department deal to enact reforms in light of the scathing findings of an investigation into the Memphis Police Department, saying the city has already made hundreds of positive changes since the beating death of Tyre Nichols.

Although he didn’t rule out eventually agreeing to a consent decree with the Justice Department, Mayor Paul Young said he thinks the city can make changes more effectively without committing to a binding pact. The 17-month federal investigation launched after Nichols’ death found that Memphis officers routinely use unwarranted force and disproportionately target Black people.

“We believe we can make more effective and meaningful change by working together with community input and independent national experts than with a bureaucratic, costly, and complicated federal government consent decree,” Young said at a news conference.

His remarks came minutes after a top Justice Department official warned that the DOJ could sue to require reforms of Memphis’ police force should the city refuse to sign an agreement.

With a more police-friendly administration about to take over in Washington, the city could be biding its time in the hopes that the Justice Department under Donald Trump could let the matter drop. Neither Justice Department nor city officials were willing to delve into that issue — the mayor said he would have the same position regardless of the presidential election’s outcome; and acting U.S. Attorney Reagan Fondren said federal prosecutors will continue their work regardless of who’s in the White House.

The investigation determined that police in Tennessee’s second-largest city have violated citizens’ constitutional rights and civil rights, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said at a Thursday news conference, describing the lengthy review as “comprehensive and exhaustive.”

The police department’s practices violate the Constitution and federal law, and “harm and demean people and they promote distrust, undermining the fundamental safety mission of a police department,” Clarke said.

The fatal beating of Nichols by officers after he ran away from a January 2023 traffic stop exposed serious problems in police department, from its use of excessive force to its mistreatment of Black people in the majority-Black city, according to the investigation report released Wednesday.

Nichols, who was kicked, punched and beaten with a baton, died three days after his encounter with police. Nichols was Black, as are the former officers involved in his beating. His death led to national protests, raised the volume on calls for police reforms in the U.S., and directed intense scrutiny towards the Memphis Police Department, more than half of whose members are Black, including Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis.

The federal probe looked at the department’s “pattern or practice” of how it uses force and conducts stops, searches and arrests, and whether it engages in discriminatory policing.

It found that officers would punch, kick and use other force against people who were already handcuffed or restrained, which it described as unconstitutional but which were nearly always approved after the fact by supervisors. Officers resort to force likely to cause pain or injury “almost immediately in response to low-level, nonviolent offenses, even when people are not aggressive,” investigators determined.

“Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve,” according to the report.

Memphis officers cite or arrest Black people for loitering or curfew violations at 13 times the rate it does for white people, and cite or arrest Black people for disorderly conduct at 3.6 times the rate of white people, the report said.

Police video showed officers pepper-spraying Nichols and hitting him with a Taser before he ran from a traffic stop. Five officers chased down Nichols just steps from his home as he called out for his mother. The video showed the officers milling about, talking and laughing as Nichols struggled with his injuries.

The officers were fired, charged in state court with murder, and indicted by a federal grand jury on civil rights and witness tampering charges. Two pleaded guilty to federal charges under plea deals. The other three were convicted at trial on split verdicts.

Although the report mentions the Nichols case, it also describes others, including one in which officers pepper-sprayed, kicked and fired a Taser at an unarmed man with a mental illness who tried to take a $2 soda from a gas station.

The investigation cited police training that “primed officers to believe that force was the most likely way to end an encounter,” rather than talking to a suspect to de-escalate a situation. In one training example, officers were told that, “If a fight is unavoidable, hurt them first and hurt them bad.”

In a Wednesday letter to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the city attorney said Memphis had received the a DOJ’s consent decree request but wouldn’t agree to one until it had thoroughly reviewed the report.

A consent decree requires reforms overseen by an independent monitor and approved by a federal judge. The federal oversight can continue for years, and violations could result in fines paid by the city.

Other police departments have faced federal investigations in recent years, including Minneapolis’ after the killing of George Floyd, and the police force in Louisville, Kentucky, following the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor.

Mattise reported from Nashville. Associated Press reporter Kristin M. Hall contributed from Chicago.

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, LISA MASCARO and LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Hegseth has spent the week on Capitol Hill trying to reassure Republican senators that he is fit to lead President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Defense in the wake of high-profile allegations about excessive drinking and sexual assault.

But senators in both parties have also expressed concern about another issue — Hegseth’s frequent comments that women should not serve in frontline military combat jobs.

As the former Army National Guard major and combat veteran fights to salvage his Cabinet nomination, meeting with senators for a fourth day Thursday with promises not to drink on the job and assurances he never engaged in sexual misconduct, his professional views on women troops are coming under deeper scrutiny.

North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer said Wednesday that he confronted Hegseth about the issue when they spoke one-on-one.

“I said to him, just so you know, Joni Ernst and Tammy Duckworth deserve a great deal of respect,” Cramer said, referring to two female senators who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee — both of whom are combat veterans.

The role of women in the military is another entry in the far-right’s efforts to return the armed forces back to an earlier era, something Hegseth has embraced with Trump’s approach to end “woke” programs that foster diversity, equity and inclusion in the ranks. The DEI movement is coming under attack as Trump prepares to return to the White House, and he has vowed to fire generals whom he deems “woke.”

Military and defense leaders, however, have argued that it would be fundamentally wrong to eliminate half the population from critical combat posts, and they have flatly denied that standards were lowered to allow women to qualify.

In remarks Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the service of women, including in his own combat units when he was a commander in Iraq.

“If I get a little fired up about this, it’s just because this isn’t 1950. It isn’t 1948. It is 2024,” Austin said.

As Hegseth went office to office this week meeting with GOP senators, he brushed back questions about his past views that women should not serve in combat roles.

“We have amazing women who serve our military,” Hegseth said Tuesday, “amazing women who serve in our military.”

Pressed if they should serve in combat, Hegseth said they already do.

But that’s a turnaround from his earlier statements. Hegseth said as recently as last month that women “straight up” should not serve in combat roles.

It “hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he said in a podcast before he was nominated by Trump.

In his own writings, he has expanded on views of a more masculine-focused military. Those views are running into icy resistance in the Senate from both sides of the political aisle.

Ernst of Iowa — herself a former Army National Guard member, a retired lieutenant colonel who spent more than two decades in the service — was circumspect after her meeting with Hegseth, saying only that they had a “frank and thorough conversation.”

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She demurred Thursday on whether she will support his nomination, praising his service but telling Fox News that a “very thorough vetting” is needed.

A Republican, Ernst has championed women in service and also, having spoken openly about surviving sexual assault while in college, worked to ensure a safe environment for women in uniform.

On Thursday, Hegseth said his meeting with Ernst was “productive” and that Trump “is behind us all the way.”

As he walked into a meeting with South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds on Thursday, Hegseth said he’s “fighting and ready to go.”

Sitting with Rounds in his office a few minutes later, Hegseth told reporters that there is “an incredible amount of knowledge” in the Senate and on the Senate Armed Services committee and that “I welcome that knowledge, I welcome that advice. That’s why we’re here.”

Hegseth has yet to meet with Duckworth or any of the other Democrats on the committee. Duckworth, a Democrat and Purple Heart recipient who piloted a Blackhawk helicopter during the Iraq War, and lost both legs when it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, also rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring after 23 years in the Reserve forces. She later served as an assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Cramer added that he told Hegseth that his confirmation hearing “won’t be pleasant” as Democrats, in particular, grill him on his views.

Trump, for now, appears to be standing aside as Hegseth fights to preserve his nomination, even as suggestions float about a possible replacement pick, including former Trump rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to lead the Pentagon.

About 17.5% of the more than 1.3 million active-duty service members are women, a total that has grown steadily over the past two decades. They have served in combat in a wide array of military jobs, including as pilots and intelligence officers for years.

The Pentagon formally opened all combat jobs to women in 2015, including frontline infantry and armor posts, and since then thousands of women have been in jobs that until that time were male-only.

As of this year, nearly 4,800 women are serving in Army infantry, armor and artillery job, more than 150 have completed the Army Ranger course and a small number have qualified for more elite special operations units, including as Army Green Berets.