Legal

The woman who was violently beaten by Zac Stacy is set to testify in court against the ex-NFL player on Wednesday ... hoping a judge makes it harder for Stacy to be released from custody.

Kristin Evans will be in the Orange County, Fla. courtroom in just minutes ... arguing that Stacy's bond should be heavily increased.

A judge initially set the bond at $10,150 for Stacy -- who was charged with two felonies over the Nov. 16 attack on Evans -- but Evans argued on social media afterward that was nowhere near enough.

Evans said she feared Stacy would try to hurt her again if he was released from custody -- and now wants a judge to up his bond amount at the hearing.

Stacy, meanwhile, has been ordered to be in the courtroom in person -- and it's all slated to begin at 7 AM PT.

As we previously reported, Stacy was hit with one count of aggravated battery and one count of criminal mischief after video showed him punching Evans and then throwing her into a television in Oakland, Fla. earlier this month.

Stacy wasn't initially apprehended at the scene, but he was ultimately arrested in the Orlando area on Nov. 18.

Kyle Rittenhouse is making the rounds in right-wing circles -- and his latest stop was with none other than Donald Trump ... who's fully in his corner in the wake of his trial and acquittal.

DT was on Sean Hannity's show when he revealed he got some face time with Rittenhouse, who'd apparently just left "a little while ago" from his Florida resort home, Mar-a-Lago. It's unclear exactly when this meeting took place -- Hannity said he interviewed DT Monday.

Anyway, Trump wasn't shy to let the FOX News audience know how he felt about the whole case -- telling Hannity that Rittenhouse never should've been put through the wringer... calling the whole thing "prosecutorial misconduct."

DT also made it clear he's a fan of Rittenhouse, and seems to think he's a fine young man -- whom he says is a supporter of his, unlike "the other guy" ... whoever that may be.

The 2 of them posed for a couple shots in what looks to be Trump's office -- where there were tons of photos of the former President shaking hands with world leaders ... including a clear photo of Trump meeting Kim Jong-un.

As we reported ... Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges, with a verdict finding him not guilty of murder -- or any wrongdoing, as the jury felt he was acting in self-defense when he shot and killed 2 people and injured a third.

Kyle Rittenhouse has denied being a white supremacist, and even claims to be fully in support of Black Lives Matter -- but a prominent leader in the org itself isn't so sure.

We spoke to Melina Abdullah -- the co-founder of L.A.'s BLM chapter -- and she's not buying Rittenhouse's assertion he's down with the cause. She tells us, from what she's seen ... it's total BS.

Check it out ... Abdullah tells us she thinks his claims of backing BLM don't match up to his history -- and she says the proof is in the pudding. Abdullah makes reference to photos of him flashing perceived "white power" signs online.

She was referring to the now-infamous image from last year that circulated all over social media -- showing Rittenhouse in a bar after his release from jail, flashing what looks like the OK sign ... which many see as a blatant white supremacist gesture. Rittenhouse has denied that's what he meant.

Still, Melina says something doesn't feel right ... she believes the fact he's cozying up to right-wing media types -- like Tucker Carlson, with whom he did an interview last week -- doesn't help Rittenhouse's case for being a BLM backer.

She suggests Rittenhouse is being used as a pawn, perhaps unsuspectingly, by folks she thinks are more interested in racial division than unity.

Again, Rittenhouse has firmly denied being a white supremacist and/or a racist -- and insists his case and actions last summer in Kenosha had nothing to do with race.

As we reported ... KR was found not guilty of all charges against him, as the jury felt he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed 2 people that night.

The man cops say is responsible for running his SUV through a Wisconsin Christmas parade, killing 5 people, and injuring dozens more has just been charged ... and is about to make a first appearance in court.

According to documents released Tuesday, Darrell Brooks Jr. has been hit with 5 counts of first-degree intentional homicide -- one count for each person killed. The docs recount how Brooks ignored attempts by both civilians and police officers to stop his vehicle.

Not only that, officers claim there were several moments when Brooks had the opportunity to exit the parade route and he stayed in ... increasing his speed and mowing people down.

In all, there were at least 62 injured by Brooks ... the 5 casualties were all adults, but we know children were among the injured.

As we reported, Brooks' arrest was captured on doorbell surveillance shortly after the massacre. He had asked the homeowners to use a phone, saying he was waiting on an Uber ... but cops were quick to catch up to him.

Brooks, who at one time had a very small-scale rap career featured the same vehicle he used in the attack in one of his videos.

Johnny Manziel is officially a single man -- the ex-NFL quarterback's divorce from Bre Tiesi has been finalized, TMZ Sports has learned.

Court records show the judge signed off on the divorce earlier this month ... which means both Johnny and Bre are solo-dolo in the eyes of the state of California.

We spoke with Bre, who said the two are "still cool" with each other and speak often ... and she wishes him nothing but the best.

Of course, both sides had already moved on to other people -- in fact, Bre recently dated Jennifer Lopez's ex, Casper Smart.

Johnny credited Bre with saving his life in the past ... and later said his marriage -- and divorce -- helped him grow as a person.

"I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for my relationship and getting married," Manziel said at the time.

"I wouldn't have the same attitude towards everything else if I wouldn't have gone through the divorce and stuff, too, if I wouldn't have gone through that with Bre. 100% there's no chance."

We broke the story -- Bre and Johnny first started dating in 2016 ... and Johnny proposed in March 2017. The couple got hitched in 2018 before breaking things off a year later.

Tiesi had previously called Manziel out for allegedly cheating on her ... saying, "vows were broken."

Shaquille O'Neal says his former weed business partners stiffed him out of a ton of cash -- and now he's suing them for more than $1 MILLION.

The Big Diesel spelled it all out in a new lawsuit, obtained by TMZ Sports, in which the NBA legend claims he and his fellow plaintiff, Jerome Crawford, invested $150k into a new marijuana biz way back in December 2016.

In the suit, Shaq says their investment was supposed to help the company "pursue opportunities in the field of legal cannabis."

O'Neal, though, claims that by late 2017 ... the company "seemingly had no licenses, no revenue, and no operations."

Shaq says when he and his attorneys pressed for details on how their money was being used, the company initially didn't respond.

In 2018, Shaq says after he threatened litigation, the company agreed to pay him and Crawford back in installments of $10,000 each.

The problem ... Shaq claims the company only paid the first installment of $20k -- and now, he is suing to get his initial investment back with interest ... plus a lot more for allegedly mismanaging the company.

In a day that saw more than 30 new lawsuits filed against Travis Scott and the organizers of Astroworld, now event staffers are filing legal papers of their own ... including two security guards who say the event has left them permanently scarred.

Samuel and Jackson Bush say they were hired by AJ Melino and Associates to work security at the event. The docs claim that while only 50,000 people bought tickets, there were many more in attendance ... and the massive crowd caused bigger problems.

Both men claim mental and physical injuries from working the event. Jackson says he witnessed CPR being performed on lifeless bodies and pulled a person from a crowd crush who ended up dying.

The lawsuit is asking for more than $1 million in damages ... and going after not only Travis, but Live Nation, AJ Melino, Cactus Jack Records and others in the process.

As we reported, the new filings are just a fraction of what's already come in. Just last week, a $2 billion lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 280 attendees ... prior to that, another lawsuit for $750 million was filed against Travis and others.

Cops continue to investigate exactly what went wrong, but from almost all fan accounts, overcrowding and crowd surges seem to be to blame.

Travis remained out of the public eye since the festival, and 10 people have died after suffering injuries at the concert ... he's offered to pay funeral expenses and set up an account where families can get in touch with his team to work things out.

Travis' attorney, Ed McPherson tells us, "It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis's crew. This also runs afoul of HPD's own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019."

He continues, "Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again."

Evander Kane's divorce case has just taken another nasty turn ... the NHL player is now claiming his ex faked a pregnancy the last few months, and he's asking a judge to order her to take a mental exam to prove she's fit to care for their daughter.

It's all in new court docs, obtained by TMZ Sports, in which Kane says his estranged wife, Anna Kane, has been lying to him about her pregnancy since July.

The San Jose Sharks star claims up until earlier this month, he had believed Anna was pregnant with their second child, which was due in February 2022.

Evander says Anna had spoken about the baby often, and he says he had seen her belly grow with his own eyes throughout the last several weeks.

Evander, though, says after he reviewed recent medical bills -- it was brought to his attention that Anna had actually had an abortion way back in July.

Evander is accusing Anna of pretending to be pregnant for months ... going as far as wearing "some sort of pregnancy belly" to deceive him and cause him mental trauma.

Evander says all of it is so deeply disturbing, he's worried about the potential impact it might have on the couple's daughter -- and he's now requesting the court step in and give him full custody of their girl while also ordering Anna to undergo an examination to prove she's mentally stable.

For her part, Anna said in her own court docs that she did have the abortion in July, and acknowledged "I was less than forthcoming with [Evander] with regards to my decision."

She admitted in the docs that she "did not inform [Evander] or the court that I was no longer pregnant." She did deny, however, wearing any sort of prosthetics in an attempt to look pregnant.

Anna also claimed in her docs she is mentally stable and is fully capable of caring for the couple's daughter -- and is asking the court to deny Evander's requests.

Evander has been granted temporary custody of the child -- with a hearing on the matter slated for December.

Ghislaine Maxwell seems to be full of secrets -- including what she knows about Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful pals, and one journo is hoping to unlock the mystery once and for all.

The British socialite -- who was tight with Epstein for years before he was charged anew in 2019, and subsequently killed himself -- is about to have her day in court over alleged sex trafficking, among other charges she's facing ... which will be decided at trial later this month.

Of course, many see Maxwell as the key to unlocking the long suspected malfeasance Epstein was conducting with underage girls -- and that goes doubly so for reporter Vicky Ward.

We talked to Vicky on "TMZ Live" about the "Chasing Ghislaine" documentary she's just released on Discovery+, and she tells us a lot of new information is uncovered through her investigation ... one she's been digging into and working on for over a decade now.

Something that's clear to Vicky about Epstein's alleged criminal acts is he clearly had a support system of influential allies spanning the entire globe. Many of those ties to powerful people have already been exposed -- but Vicky wonders how they could NOT have known what Epstein was doing.

She does not suggest any one of these men participated in anything unseemly themselves ... but in her eyes (and, frankly, the eyes of many) there's no reason they should've been as cozy with the guy ... especially knowing his sordid history.

Two former Washington Nationals employees who coached pitching in the org's minor league ranks say the MLB team's COVID vaccine mandate wrongfully led to their firings earlier this year ... and now, they're suing over it all.

The two pitching coaches -- Lawrence Pardo and Brad Holman -- spelled it all out in a lawsuit filed Monday ... saying they did not want to take the vaccines for religious reasons.

But, in the docs, they say their requests for exemptions were rebuked by the Nationals ... and they were eventually terminated over it.

In the docs, Pardo and Holman say back on Aug. 12, the team issued a vaccine mandate, explaining if employees, excluding players, did not have at least one shot by Sept. 10, they'd be fired.

Both Pardo and Holman, though, say they could not take the shots because they claim the vaccines "were developed from or tested on aborted fetal cells."

As self-proclaimed strong opponents of abortion, Pardo and Holman both believed that gave them a religious exemption.

But, the two say the team denied their requests for exemptions ... and then canned them.

Pardo and Holman are now suing for damages, saying they were discriminated against on the basis of religion.

Kevin Spacey cost the creative forces behind Netflix's hit 'House of Cards' a crap ton of money due to his alleged sexual misconduct -- and now, the guy's been ordered to pony up millions over it.

The disgraced actor lost an arbitration case he's been involved in for the past few years now with a couple of companies called MRC II and Knight Takes King Productions -- a distribution company and production company, respectively.

The two companies claimed they were doing the heavy lifting on 'HOC,' especially for the 6th season they were producing for the streaming giant ... with Kevin, obviously, being a huge part of it.

An arbitrator ruled last year that Spacey's alleged behavior did, in fact, cause MRC and Knight substantial harm by essentially torpedoing the final season ... but KS had appealed that decision, only to lose again earlier this month.

Now, the companies are asking the court to confirm the arbitration award ... which would leave Spacey and his loan-out and producing companies on the hook for about $31 million. The lion's share of the award is for compensatory damages -- more than $29.5 mil -- and the remaining million and change cover attorneys' fees and costs.

MRC and KTKP argued that there was an internal investigation of Spacey's behavior -- which included claims he'd sexually harassed/assaulted production members working on 'House of Cards' -- and after doing a deep dive, they say they found many of those accusations to be true and terminated his contract. They say his conduct caused them to suffer substantial losses ... which led to the litigation.

Spacey has avoided criminal liability thus far ... but on the civil side of things, this is a big ding. He's remained mostly low-key since the allegations surfaced -- although, he is getting back to work slowly but surely.

Tamir Rice's mother sees a parallel between the killing of her young son and the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse -- and it's an unjust one in her eyes ... one that warrants what she calls a takeover.

We spoke to Samaria Rice about the verdict from last week, and she makes no bones about it ... she thinks him being found not guilty is BS, and that KR should be behind bars. Of course, the backdrop to that is her 12-year-old, Tamir, was gunned down for doing far less.

You'll recall ... Tamir was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer in 2014 after somebody called in saying he had a gun -- which turned out to be nothing but a toy.

With that in mind, Samaria breaks down exactly what she sees wrong with the Rittenhouse case ... detailing everything from him being there with a semi-automatic weapon, to being able to shoot two people in the streets ... and still avoid all consequences.

She makes a startling statement, saying "this country needs to be overthrown."

As jarring as her words are, it's probably how a lot of people feel in the wake of Rittenhouse ... despite the self-defense law that a jury clearly saw as applicable here, many feel justice wasn't served.

Henry Ruggs is back in the public eye ... the ex-Raiders star just showed up to a Las Vegas courthouse after a judge ordered him to appear over a missed breath test.

Ruggs entered the court in a black shirt, black pants and black bowtie -- and walked with seemingly no issues whatsoever.

Of course, the last time we saw Ruggs in public was in a courtroom on Nov. 3 -- the day after he was accused of slamming his Corvette into a Toyota and killing a woman and her dog.

At that hearing, where Ruggs posted bond and was released from custody, the football player was seen in a neck brace and a wheelchair.

The 22-year-old, though, appeared to be just fine Monday morning ... showing no signs of long-term injuries suffered in the crash.

As we previously reported, Ruggs was ordered to appear before a judge Monday after he allegedly missed a required alcohol breath test.

As part of the conditions of his release, Ruggs has been ordered to submit to alcohol testing several times a day -- and at a hearing last week, a judge said he missed one of those check-ins.

There's a chance Ruggs could be put back behind bars over it all -- the hearing to discuss the matter is currently underway right now. We'll keep you posted on how it unfolds.

Britney Spears says she's ready to tell her story to the world -- potentially even through Oprah -- but there's still a lot to be hammered out before, or even if, that happens.

Britney had fans buzzing this week when she posted a video and teased, "I might as well do a hint of my thoughts on the gram before I go and set things square on @Oprah."

Sources close to Spears tell us at this time, there's nothing set with Oprah. In fact, we're told there aren't any interviews lined up for Britney at all right now ... whether TV, print or podcast/radio.

Our sources say Britney's still just enjoying adjusting to life without the conservatorship, and while she is open to sitting down and telling her story at some point ... it won't be in the near future.

TMZ broke the story, there's currently a plan being put into place to consolidate 2 of the singer's trusts -- one established in 2004, the other in 2018 -- into one account to be controlled by Britney.

Not only are her finances being organized, Britney's team has also created a list of recommendations to keep Britney safe ... urging her to take necessary medications, attend doctor appointments, refrain from using drugs and alcohol and even limit driving.

Again, those things are only recommendations, and it will be up to Britney whether or not to take them into consideration in her day-to-day.

DaBaby was allegedly assaulted by his baby mama DaniLeigh, and now her brother wants to beat the crap out of him ... legally, of course.

We got Brandon Bills at The Grove in Los Angeles and talked to him about challenging his sister's ex to a celebrity boxing match.

Brandon, who's also a rapper himself, says he would win handily ... guaranteeing the fight would end with DaBaby out cold on the canvas.

As we reported ... DaBaby and DaniLeigh got into a blowout argument this week in North Carolina, and cops later charged her with 2 counts of simple assault after police made 2 visits to DaBaby's home.

DaBaby also posted a video where he seemed to accuse her of using their baby for clout, vowing to take care of the child himself despite all the drama playing out in the public eye.

TMZ Sports has obtained video of Nigel Bradham's weed bust arrest ... and in the footage, you can clearly see cops seizing a firearm from the NFL player's Corvette.

The stop all went down in Leon County, Fla. on Nov. 13 ... after police say they discovered the tag on his sportscar did not belong to the ride.

During the stop ... officers say they found 3.5 pounds of marijuana as well two guns in the expensive whip.

In the police dashcam footage from the scene, you can see one officer pulled a gun from the glove box right after pulling over the former Philadelphia Eagles linebacker.

Later, after putting 32-year-old Bradham in the back of a squad car, officers can be seen pulling bags of what looks like weed from the vehicle.

At one point during the video, you can hear an officer claiming he found a second gun in the car -- saying into his mic, "He told me there wasn't another one, and there's another one. Frickin' A bud."

Bradham was eventually arrested and hit with two felony weed charges -- as well as one felony gun charge. Cops say one of the firearms removed from the car came back as stolen when they checked the system.