It’s no secret that the Trump administration is thin-skinned about criticism and intolerant of efforts to document its activities. Administration officials smear ideological opponents and those who monitor Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as potential “domestic terrorists.” So, it’s no surprise the administration is targeting online channels where its opponents coordinate. It’s no surprise, that is, but it’s an intolerable attack by yet another presidential administration on free speech rights.
Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged tech companies to resist federal demands for data about users who have been critical of the administration.
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“DHS has consistently targeted people engaged in First Amendment activity,” warns Mario Trujillo, a senior staff attorney for the civil liberties group. “Among other things, the agency has issued subpoenas to technology companies to unmask or locate people who have documented ICE’s activities in their community, criticized the government, or attended protests.”
Trujillo emphasizes that the subpoenas “are unlawful” and that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been leery of testing their legitimacy. In November, DHS withdrew a subpoena seeking details about Instagram users who posted about ICE raids in Los Angeles rather than defend the document in court.
EFF recommends that tech companies abide by recommendations developed with the ACLU of Northern California. Among other things, it urges that subpoena recipients fight the demands in court, inform targeted users so they can secure legal assistance, and resist gag orders that seek to prevent recipients from warning users and publicly discussing the situation.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is also battling the administration’s war against critics. As reported by Reason‘s August Billings, FIRE is suing the federal government on behalf of two plaintiffs who created a Facebook group and an app that helped people document ICE activities.
“As U.S. citizens, we have the right to keep each other informed about what our government officials are doing and how they’re doing it,” commented Mark Hodges, one of the plaintiffs.
The problem is that the Trump administration doesn’t recognize that right. In December. Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella asked a DHS representative if the feds considered following or recording federal agents to be obstruction of justice. He was told, “That sure sounds like obstruction of justice.”
Since then, after violent clashes in Minneapolis culminating in two killings of protesters by federal agents, the FBI has opened an investigation into Signal group chats used by opponents of the federal immigration crackdown.
“That sort of Signal chat being coordinated with individuals, not just locally in Minnesota, but maybe even around the country,” FBI Director Kash Patel commented, “if that leads to a break in the federal statute or a violation of some law, then we are going to arrest people.”
Patel claims the investigation will result in arrests “if” Signal chats lead to violations of law, but that’s a big “if” that could be applied to any conversation at any time. Recording, tracking, and sharing information about government enforcers is perfectly illegal.
“While the Supreme Court itself hasn’t yet faced the issue squarely, the seven federal circuits that have done so—the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 10th, and 11th—all agree that the First Amendment protects the right to record police performing their duties in public,” points out Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies.
The Trump administration must have some lawyers on staff who told them the same thing. So, federal officials have complained that critics are doxing—collecting and publicizing information about—federal agents and that this is, perhaps, illegal-ish.
“Videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online is doxing our agents,” DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told the Center for Media and Democracy last September. “We will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”
But doxxing isn’t illegally harassing. It’s not illegal anything.
“Government officials and employees don’t enjoy special immunity from ‘doxxing’,” writes David L. Hudson, Jr., associate professor of law at Belmont University, for FIRE. “Merely disclosing the names of government agents or places where they carry out their official duties is constitutionally protected speech, especially when tied to political criticism.”
If collected information is then used to do something illegal—like attack people in their homes—that’s a different matter. But it’s that extra action that violates the law, not the gathering of faces, names, and addresses. Unfortunately, the administration (like many of its predecessors) seems to have a problem with criticism and opposition of any sort.
In the wake of the assassination of conservative figure Charlie Kirk, when many Americans were understandably profoundly upset by the crime, the White House issued a memo charging that “common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi followed up with a directive to federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to target “domestic terrorists” identified in part by “extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment.”
It’s true that these viewpoints can inspire crimes—just look at Kirk’s murder, for starters. But if you target beliefs rather than violent actions, you go down a dangerous path that threatens everybody. Under the last administration, the FBI investigated fans of the Gadsden flag and other “Revolutionary War imagery.” In both cases, government officials clearly targeted opponents, not crimes. The intent was to stifle people’s right to dissent, not address real threats to the public.
That’s why the EFF, FIRE, tech companies, and regular people need to resist efforts to investigate critics of the government and to shut down communications platforms. They need to resist not because the critics are always right, but because governments can’t be permitted to target and muzzle their opponents.
Pam Bondi snaps at Congressmen. Over the course of five hours of testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Pam Bondi gave increasingly agitated responses to members’ questions about the Epstein files her department recently released.
She called ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D–Md.) a “washed-up loser lawyer” and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) a “failed politician” with “Trump derangement syndrome.”
At the hearing, members pressed Bondi on a range of things related to Jeffrey Epstein and her department’s release of documents related to the dead, disgraced financier. In particular, representatives pressed Bondi on why material on Epstein’s associates was redacted, but the names, pictures, and other sensitive information of victims were not.
For the most part, Bondi did not give direct answers, preferring instead insults and odd nonsequiturs about how the stock market was at record heights.
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On the one hand, one can understand some of Bondi’s frustrations. Committee hearings like yesterday’s are largely political theater.
A lot of Democrats’ “questions” were really just partisan grandstanding, like when Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D–Wash.) asked Epstein victims in the audience to stand so that Bondi could apologize to them for failing to redact their names.
Bondi wasn’t wrong when she said several times that Democrats did not care that much about Epstein when Joe Biden was president and Merrick Garland was attorney general.
Still, even when Democrats asked more measured, substantive questions, like when Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D–Calif.) pressed Bondi on whether some of Epstein’s emails suggested that there were still coconspirators left to prosecute, the attorney general still resorted to evasions and insults.
A problem of one’s own making. Generally, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for Bondi at all. The debacle over the Epstein files is one of her own making.
It was Bondi who seemed to say in an interview that she had Epstein’s (probably mythical) client list sitting on her desk waiting to be released, before walking it back. It was Bondi who made a big show of giving right-wing influencers binders labeled “Epstein files” filled with redacted or already public documents.
That game of promising more transparency on Epstein while offering none has spectacularly backfired. In the end, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in a near-unanimous vote. When asked follow-up questions about those files, Bondi broke down.
Even in the face of partisan, showy committee questions, it would be nice to have an attorney general who was modestly professional and interested in transparency.
Scenes from D.C.:The latest war of religion has broken out on X about whether America’s youth is becoming more Christian and, more specifically, more Catholic.
Researcher and former pastor Ryan Burge says not really. Per Burge, 2023’s surge in Catholicism was an outlier. Every year since then has shown a steady, stagnant percentage of Catholic Zoomers.
There is no surge of Catholicism among Gen Z.
The 2023 Cooperative Election Study showed a surge in Catholic numbers.
I’d really encourage everyone to listen to Burge’s recent appearance on Ross Douthat’s podcast, where he breaks down America’s religiosity in more detail.
But a stagnating church is not the case in Washington, D.C., says Robert Schmad in response to Burge’s post.
We have a lot of data points confirming there is no national mass Catholic conversion among American youths.
Staffers in DC, however, certainly think it’s happening. That’s because – among them specifically – there absolutely is an ongoing conversion movement.
My own anecdotal experience matches Schmad’s take. My 150-year-old D.C. parish has welcomed record numbers of converts in recent years. Long-time parishioners tell me that Mass attendance has exploded.
Perhaps that’s just more evidence of Catholic decline: A shrinking number of faithful are concentrating in fewer, more vibrant parishes.
Or maybe not. The next Great Awakening has to start somewhere. Perhaps centralized nodes of intense religiosity are what’s necessary to revive true religion in America.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is urging state utility regulators to reconsider their approval of special power contracts for a massive data center planned in Washtenaw County, warning the fast-tracked decision could leave electric customers exposed to higher costs.
The project, tied to Oracle, OpenAI, and developer Related Digital, would be among the largest data centers in the country and is expected to consume as much electricity as nearly one million homes. Its scale has caused concerns among residents, environmental advocates, and consumer watchdogs about long-term impacts on electric rates, grid reliability, and the environment.
Nessel’s move also pits her against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a fellow Democrat who has publicly backed the data center as “the largest economic project in Michigan history.” Whitmer celebrated the project when it was announced last fall, citing thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of permanent positions.
On Thursday, U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat, released what he called “terms of engagement” aimed at protecting communities from higher utility bills, grid strain, and environmental harm tied to data centers.
At least 15 data center projects have been proposed across the state in the past year.
The split among Democrats is part of a broader debate over whether Michigan should keep fast-tracking energy-hungry data center projects tied to the AI boom.
In her petition, Nessel challenges the commission’s authority to approve the contracts behind closed doors without holding a contested case hearing that would allow discovery, sworn testimony, and full public review. She also questions whether the conditions imposed by the commission are meaningful or enforceable.
In a statement Friday, the Michigan Public Service Commission said it “looks forward to considering Nessel’s petition for rehearing,” but the commission “unequivocally rejects any claim that these contracts were inadequately reviewed.”
The commission said its professional staff, advisory staff, and commissioners were provided with unredacted versions of the special contracts and reviewed them thoroughly to ensure existing customers are protected. The commission said its order recognizes DTE’s legal obligation to serve the data center while imposing what it described as the strongest consumer protections for a data center power contract in the country.
The attorney general is seeking clarification on how those conditions would protect ratepayers, noting that many appear to rely on repeated assurances from DTE, rather than concrete commitments backed by evidence. Nessel also objected to the commission allowing DTE to serve as the project’s financial backstop, rather than requiring the data center operator to provide sufficient collateral to cover potential risks.
“I remain extremely disappointed with the Commission’s decision to fast-track DTE’s secret data center contracts without holding a contested case hearing,” Nessel said in a statement. “This was an irresponsible approach that cut corners and shut out the public and their advocates. Granting approval of these contracts ex parte serves only the interests of DTE and the billion-dollar businesses involved, like Oracle, OpenAI, and Related Companies, not the Michigan public the Commission is meant to protect. ”
She said the commission’s approval process served the interests of DTE and the companies behind the project rather than Michigan residents.
“The Commission imposed some conditions on DTE to supposedly hold ratepayers harmless, but these conditions and how they’ll be enforced remain unclear,” Nessel said. “As Michigan’s chief consumer advocate, it is my responsibility to ensure utility customers in this state are adequately protected, especially on a project so massive, so expensive, and so unprecedented.”
Large portions of the contracts remain heavily redacted, preventing outside parties from verifying DTE’s claims that serving the data center will not raise rates for existing customers. Nessel said a contested case is necessary to review the full contracts, assess affordability claims, and confirm that protections, such as collateral requirements and exit fees are in place.
The commission ordered DTE to formally accept its conditions within 30 days of its Dec. 18 order. Nessel said that timeline complicates decisions about whether further legal challenges are necessary, prompting her office to file the rehearing petition in part to preserve its arguments.
More than 5,000 public comments opposing the data center power deal were submitted to the commission ahead of its December vote. Critics argue the rush to approve the contracts is part of a broader pattern as deep-pocketed utilities and developers seek to capitalize on the AI boom, which is driving a nationwide surge in electricity demand from large-scale data centers.
“As my office continues to review all potential options to defend energy customers in our state, we must demand further clarity on what protections the Commission has put in place and continue to demand a full contested case concerning these still-secret contracts,” Nessel said.
UTICA, N.Y. (AP) — A former New York state prison guard convicted of murder for his role in the brutal beating of an inmate that was captured on body-camera footage was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison.
David Kingsley also received a 25-year sentence for a manslaughter conviction in the case. He is the only former guard convicted of murder in the death of Robert Brooks, who was pummeled by corrections officers on the night of Dec. 9, 2024, at Marcy Correctional Facility. Five other guards charged in the 43-year-old Black man’s death have pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Video footage of Brooks in handcuffs being punched and stomped by guards triggered widespread shock and calls for reform in New York’s prisons.
Six guards were indicted by a grand jury for murder charges brought earlier this year by the special prosecutor, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, who also charged four others with lesser crimes. Three of the defendants charged with murder later pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter.
Prosecutors said Kingsley deserved the maximum sentence because he refused to take responsibility for his actions and made Brooks’ family go through the trauma of a trial. Speaking in court before the sentence was imposed, Kingsley apologized to Brooks’ relatives for his role in the “senseless” actions that led to his death.
The victim’s son, Robert Brooks Jr., said that he hopes the case will prevent similar incidents in the future. Brooks’ brother, Jared Ricks, added that while forgiveness is a long way off, justice being served is a step on that path.
Kingsley, 45, was one of three guards tried before a jury in October on charges of murder and first-degree manslaughter. He was the only one of the trio found guilty. Body-camera footage played at the trial showed him holding Brooks by the neck and lifting him as multiple guards surrounded the handcuffed man.
A final defendant is scheduled to stand trial Jan. 12 on a second-degree manslaughter charge. Another guard was released from prison this month as he attempts to withdraw his guilty plea to second-degree manslaughter.
Fitzpatrick became the special prosecutor after state Attorney General Letitia James recused herself, citing her office’s representation of several officers in separate lawsuits. He also is prosecuting guards in the fatal beating of Messiah Nantwi on March 1 at a nearby prison, the Mid-State Correctional Facility. Ten guards were indicted in April, including two who are charged with murder, in Nantwi’s death.
The prisons are about 180 miles (290 kilometers) northwest of New York City.
This image provided by the New York State Attorney General office shows body camera footage of correction officers beating a handcuffed man, Robert Brooks, at the Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County, N.Y., Dec. 9, 2024. (New York State Attorney General office via AP, File)
WOBURN — A case that stretched more than eight years reached its conclusion this week, as retired Dracut physician, Dr. Richard Miron, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and other charges tied to the illegal prescribing of opioids that led to a Lowell patient’s death.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office said Miron, 83, became the first doctor in Massachusetts to be convicted on involuntary manslaughter for prescribing opioids — a conviction that stemmed from the 2016 death of 50-year-old Michelle Craib. He also pleaded guilty to defrauding MassHealth and illegally prescribing medication to patients for no legitimate medical purpose.
Miron was ultimately sentenced in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn on Monday to what amounts to five years of probation, allowing him to avoid prison time.
Miron’s attorney, Stephen Weymouth, said on Wednesday that he was prepared and confident to go to trial in a case that has faced a series of delays over the years, but after a conversation with his client earlier this month, the main concern became the possibility of serving time behind bars.
“From the very beginning he said, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, and I want to go to trial,’” Weymouth said about Miron. “But then he said he did not want to go to jail.”
Weymouth pointed out that Miron was facing 47 charges, and any one of them could have resulted in a jail sentence. He said that prosecutors had previously sought four to five years in a plea deal, and the involuntary manslaughter charge carried a maximum of 20 years.
“Going to trial would have been a mistake because all it would have taken was one guilty hook and he would have gotten a pretty lengthy sentence, and I just couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t take any chances,” Weymouth said. “If he had gone to trial and lost, who knows what would have happened.”
Miron was indicted by a Middlesex County grand jury in December 2018 following an investigation that began in September 2017 by the AG’s Office, then headed by now-Gov. Maura Healey. Aside from involuntary manslaughter, he was charged with 23 counts of illegally prescribing controlled substances and 23 counts of filing false Medicaid claims.
From September 2015 to February 2016, the AG’s Office said Miron, a solo practitioner of internal medicine, was the largest provider of high-dose, short-acting oxycodone prescriptions among all MassHealth care providers statewide.
The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office determined Craib’s death was caused by acute intoxication from the combined effects of fentanyl, morphine, codeine, and butalbital — all prescribed by Miron. The AG’s Office said Miron was aware that Craib had previously overdosed on opioids he had prescribed, yet he continued to issue large doses to her on multiple occasions leading up to her death.
Prosecutors also said Miron illegally prescribed opioids to several other at-risk patients for no legitimate medical purpose. The illegal prescriptions Miron issued led pharmacies to unknowingly submit false bills to MassHealth for medication.
MassHealth terminated Miron from its program in September 2017, and he stopped practicing medicine in November 2018, following an agreement with the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine.
In 2023, Miron’s daughter, Linda Miron, penned a 17-page letter to the AG’s Office urging that the case be dropped. She argued that prosecuting her father — who had already relinquished his medical license and lived under pretrial probation since 2018 — was not in the interest of justice.
“To bring this flawed case to trial does not seem to me to be the best use of the Commonwealth’s resources, and I urge you to drop your prosecution of this case in the interest of justice,” Linda Miron said in the letter. “More broadly, I fear that prosecuting someone who was willing to take on disenfranchised, medically and psychologically complicated patients here in the Commonwealth, when some other physicians refused to take on MassHealth patients, will further discourage other physicians from treating these patients who deserve compassionate care.”
The case marched on until Monday, when Miron appeared in Middlesex Superior Court before Judge Cathleen Campbell, where it was finally resolved.
According to the AG’s Office, Miron was sentenced to two and a half years in a house of correction on illegal prescribing, suspended for five years — meaning he will serve the term as probation rather than prison time, unless he violates probation, in which case the sentence could be imposed. He was sentenced to five years of probation on the involuntary manslaughter charge. For Medicaid fraud, Miron was sentenced to six months in a house of correction, suspended for five years.
As part of his probation, Miron was ordered to pay full restitution to MassHealth and barred from practicing medicine or seeking reinstatement of his license.
According to Weymouth, Miron was glad to put the case behind him and most of all to avoid prison time. He noted that Miron had already given up his medical career and had no intention of practicing again.
In a press release announcing the case’s conclusion on Tuesday, the AG’s Office said the case reflects their “commitment to addressing the root causes of the opioid crisis and holding companies and individuals accountable for their role in contributing to the nationwide epidemic.”
Earlier this year, the release states, Campbell helped negotiate a $7.4 billion settlement in principle with Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, which is expected to bring up to $105 million to Massachusetts. To date, the office said they have secured more than $1 billion in opioid-related recoveries, with more than $390 million already received. Those funds are being directed to the state’s Opioid Recovery and Remediation Fund and distributed to cities and towns to support prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery efforts.
The AG’s Office added in the release that valuable assistance with the investigation into Miron’s case was provided by the Lowell Police Department, the State Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and MassHealth.
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“One tier of justice for all Americans,” the U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, wrote Thursday on X, shortly after a federal grand jury in Virginia indicted the New York attorney general, Letitia James, on charges of bank fraud and making false statements. Bondi had made a similar point, two weeks before, after the indictment of the former F.B.I. director James Comey. “No one is above the law,” she proclaimed. This self-satisfied triumphalism misconstrues the danger posed by the prosecutions of James and Comey—and by the other cases that President Donald Trump has demanded be brought against his perceived political enemies, which may soon follow. The issue here, contrary to the Administration’s framing, is not that these individuals had previously evaded accountability for allegedly criminal activity. (Those worried about the powerful being able to skirt the law should refer to Trump v. United States, in which the Supreme Court granted Presidents near-complete immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Some people, it turns out, actually are above the law.) Rather, the problem with the Trump-directed prosecutions is about a different, and even more pernicious, form of unequal treatment: that this Administration will use the justice system to selectively punish those who incur the President’s wrath. The essence of impartial justice is treating like conduct alike—not identifying the target and then finding the crime.
Trump’s supporters often insist that Democrats, including James, weaponized the justice system against him first. Indeed, James, while running for attorney general back in 2018, had some intemperate and ill-advised words for Trump. “I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate President,” she vowed. After she was elected, her statements were even more pointed, and even more arguably improper for a law-enforcement official: “As the next attorney general of his home state, I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real-estate dealings.” In office, James delivered. She brought a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump, his children, and his company, accusing them of having inflated the value of their properties to lenders and insurers in order to obtain more favorable terms. The judge who heard the case, Arthur Engoron, sided with James. “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience,” he wrote in his decision, imposing a fine that, with interest, grew to more than half a billion dollars. (In August, a divided appeals court ruled that the penalty was excessive, but let the fraud conviction stand so that it could be reviewed by a higher court.)
More to the point, even if James misused her office to go after Trump, the acceptable reaction is not to repeat that offense. Trump may be a self-described counterpuncher, but payback has no place in the “Principles of Federal Prosecution,” the bible that governs how federal prosecutors should conduct themselves. And so the question raised by the indictment of James is: would any other federal prosecutor have brought this case against any other defendant? The indictment is, like the Comey charges, notably lacking in detail—but the answer seems to be a resounding no.
Given that Trump had publicly demanded that James be prosecuted, her indictment was hardly unexpected. The precise fraud alleged, however, was a surprise. In April, Bill Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent the Department of Justice a “criminal referral” that cited James’s 2023 purchase of a house in Norfolk, Virginia. James, Pulte charged, had said on one form that the property would be her “primary residence,” though it was actually for her niece—a fact that James had stated elsewhere. Instead, the indictment focussed on James’s purchase of another house in Norfolk in 2020, for a hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars. In the process of buying this other property, James had signed a “second-home rider” that, according to the indictment, required her “to occupy and use the property as her secondary residence.” The rider itself, containing standard language from Fannie Mae, stipulated that James would “keep the Property available primarily as a residence for Borrower’s personal use and enjoyment for at least one year.”
The indictment alleges that James did not use the property as her second home; instead, it asserts, she rented the house to a family of three, although it does not provide specifics. It also states that James’s application for homeowner’s insurance described the property as “owner-occupied,” even though her federal tax forms treated it as “rental real estate.” By obtaining the mortgage for a second home rather than for an investment, according to the indictment, James was able to borrow at a lower rate (three per cent as opposed to 3.815 per cent) and receive a larger seller credit. This “scheme and artifice to defraud” lenders “by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises” resulted in nearly nineteen thousand dollars in “ill-gotten gains” over the life of the loan, the indictment alleges.
Does all this rise to the level of a crime that federal prosecutors usually pursue? Do these actions constitute “tremendous breaches of the public trust,” as the newly Trump-installed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer with no previous prosecutorial experience, claimed? Federal mortgage-fraud prosecutions are exceptionally rare. In 2024, only thirty-eight people were sentenced for federal mortgage fraud, four more than in the previous year, according to statistics compiled by the United States Sentencing Commission. The amount allegedly at issue in the James case is so paltry that it would not normally draw the attention of federal prosecutors. The fraud that James supposedly committed is seldom prosecuted as a standalone offense. “I do not know of a single instance in which a prosecution was brought based solely on occupancy fraud, much less for renting out a second home,” Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown who specializes in consumer-finance law and mortgage contracts, told me. For example, the former Trump-campaign chair Paul Manafort, was accused of occupancy fraud, after he claimed that his daughter lived in a SoHo condominium in order to obtain a larger mortgage, but it was part of a sprawling twenty-five count indictment. In addition, as Molly Roberts noted on Lawfare, it’s unclear whether James even violated the second-home restrictions; Fannie Mae rewrote the rider language in 2019 to clarify that homeowners can indeed let their properties, even during the first year of ownership. James’s New York State financial-disclosure forms only reported income from the property—between one thousand and five thousand dollars—in a single year, 2020. According to a source familiar with James’s finances, the house was occupied by James’s great-niece, who did not pay rent and has lived there for years.
Even if prosecutors can show that James violated the terms of the loan, they will also face the hurdle of proving that any such deception was intentional. “An occupancy fraud charge like the one brought against James is very hard to prove standing alone because it requires proving that the borrower never intended to keep the occupancy promise,” Levitin observed. It’s no wonder that Halligan’s predecessor reportedly refused to bring the charges against James, and career prosecutors balked as well. “Bottom line: this is a very, very weak case that looks like prosecutorial misconduct, frankly,” Levitin said. “It’s a case that would never be brought if there were not a political vendetta against James.”
This case does not reflect “one tier of justice for all Americans.” Prosecutors, who have limited resources, are supposed to exercise discretion, not exact retribution. The “Principles of Federal Prosecution” caution that a “determination to prosecute represents a policy judgment that the fundamental interests of society require the application of federal criminal law to a particular set of circumstances.” The indictment of James serves only one fundamental interest: Trump’s insatiable thirst for revenge. ♦
A judge temporarily blocked California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s attempt to take over Los Angeles County’s beleaguered juvenile halls on Friday, finding that despite evidence of a “systemic failure” to improve poor conditions, Bonta had not met the legal grounds necessary to strip away local control.
After years of scandals — including frequent drug overdoses and incidents of staff violence against youths — Bonta filed a motion in July to place the county’s juvenile halls in “receivership,” meaning a court-appointed monitor would manage the facilities, set their budgets and oversee the hiring and firing of staff. An ongoing staffing crisis previously led a state oversight body to deem two of L.A. County’s halls unfit to house children.
L.A. County entered into a settlement with the California Department of Justice in 2021 to mandate improvements, but oversight bodies and a Times investigation earlier this year found the Probation Department was falling far short of fixing many issues, as required by the agreement.
On Friday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Hernandez chastised Bonta for failing to clearly lay out tasks for the Probation Department to abide by in the 2021 settlement. Hernandez said the attorney general’s office’s filings failed to show that a state takeover would lead to “a transformation of the juvenile halls.”
The steps the Probation Department needs to take to meet the terms of the settlement have been articulated in court filings and reports published by the L.A. County Office of the Inspector General for several years. Hernandez was only assigned to oversee the settlement in recent months and spent much of Friday’s hearing complaining about a lack of “clarity” in the case.
Hernandez wrote that Bonta’s motion had set off alarm bells about the Probation Department’s management of the halls.
“Going forward, the court expects all parties to have an ‘all-hands’ mentality,” the judge wrote in a tentative ruling earlier this week, which he adopted Friday morning.
Hernandez said he would not rule out the possibility of a receivership in the future, but wanted more direct testimony from parties, including Probation Department Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa and the court-appointed monitor over the settlement, Michael Dempsey. A hearing was set for Oct. 24.
The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The Department remains fully committed to making the necessary changes to bring our juvenile institutions to where they need to be,” Vicky Waters, the Probation Department’s chief spokesperson, said in a statement. “However, to achieve that goal, we must have both the authority and support to remove barriers that hinder progress rather than perpetuate no-win situations.”
The California attorney general’s office began investigating L.A. County’s juvenile halls in 2018 and found probation officers were using pepper spray excessively, failing to provide proper educational and therapeutic programming and detaining youths in solitary confinement for far too long.
Bonta said in July that the county has failed to improve “75%” of what they were mandated to change in the 2021 settlement.
A 2022 Times investigation revealed a massive staffing shortage was leading to significant injuries for both youths and probation officers. By May of 2023, the California Board of State and Community Corrections ordered Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar shuttered due to unsafe conditions. That same month, an 18-year-old died of an overdose while in custody.
The county soon reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, but the facility quickly became the site of a riot, an escape attempt and more drug overdoses. Last year, the California attorney general’s office won indictments against 30 officers who either orchestrated or allowed youths to engage in “gladiator fights.” That investigation was sparked by video of officers allowing eight youths to pummel another teen inside Los Padrinos, which has also been deemed unfit to house youths by a state commission.
In court Friday, Laura Fair, an attorney from the attorney general’s office, said that while she understood Hernandez’s position, she expressed concern that teens are still in danger while in the Probation Department’s custody.
“The youth in the halls continue to be in grave danger and continue to suffer irreparable harm every day,” she said.
She declined to comment further outside the courtroom. Waters, the Probation Department’s spokesperson, said she was unaware of the situation Fair was describing but would look into it.
Despite the litany of fiascoes over the last few years, probation leaders still argued in court filings that Bonta had gone too far.
“The County remains open to exploring any path that will lead to better outcomes. But it strongly opposes the DOJ’s ill-conceived proposal, which will only harm the youth in the County’s care by sowing chaos and inconsistency,” county lawyers wrote in an opposition motion submitted last month. “The DOJ’s request is almost literally without precedent. No state judge in California history has ever placed a correctional institution into receivership.”
Under the leadership of Viera Rosa, who took office in 2023, the Probation Department has made improvements to its efforts to keep drugs out of the hall, rectify staffing issues and hold its own officers accountable for misconduct, the county argued.
The department has placed “airport-grade” body scanners and drug-sniffing dogs at the entrances to both Nidorf and Los Padrinos in order to stymie the influx of narcotics into the halls, according to Robert Dugdale, an attorney representing the county.
Dugdale also touted the department’s hiring of Robert Arcos, a former high-ranking member of the Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County district attorney’s office, to oversee security in the facilities.
The motion claimed it was the Probation Department that first uncovered the evidence that led to the gladiator fight prosecutions. Bonta said in March that his office launched its investigation after it reviewed leaked footage of one of the incidents.
In August, the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, warned 40 states and six territories to remove references to gender ideology from the educational materials of the federally funded Personal Responsibility Education Program, also known as PREP, which instructs teens to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. The agency gave the states 60 days to remove references or risk losing federal funding.
“The federal government’s far-reaching efforts to erase people who don’t fit one of two gender labels is illegal and wrong—and would deny services to millions more in the process,” Brown said in a public statement. “These young people are treated equally under Washington state and federal laws, and we intend to make sure of it.”
In August, the Administration for Children and Families terminated the PREP grant to California when the state did not remove the gender ideology from the education material.
“Accountability is coming,” HHS Acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison said in public statement in August after the warning letter to the states and territories. “Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation or advance dangerous ideological agendas. The Trump administration will ensure that PREP reflects the intent of Congress, not the priorities of the Left.”
The complaint alleges the administration’s gender policy would mean a loss of $35 million in federal funding for the 16 plaintiff states and Washington, D.C., if they keep teaching gender ideology. The plaintiff states also contend the administration’s move violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act and violates the intent of Congress in creating the grant program.
Former state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez is running to become Florida’s next Attorney General. Credit:Facebook/Jose Javier Rodriguez
Florida will see its minimum wage rise to $14 per hour on Sept. 30, thanks to a ballot initiative approved by Florida voters in 2020.
And yet, the state has no state agency or division authorized to actually enforce Florida’s wage laws — meaning, if a worker believes their boss is failing to pay them all of what they’re owed, or is stealing their tips, they have very few options for recourse.
Since 2005, the year Florida voters first established a state minimum wage in the first place, just one state official has had the authority to hold employers accountable for ensuring workers are paid at least minimum wage: Florida’s Attorney General.
Under Florida statutes, the state Attorney General has the power to impose a fine of $1,000 per violation, payable to the state, for any employer found to have willfully violated minimum wage requirements.
As Orlando Weekly has reported before, however, there is no evidence that the Attorney General’s office has ever done this in the 20 years they’ve had the authority to do so. A report from the Economic Policy Institute found that Florida has the highest minimum wage violation rate of the 10 most populous states in the country, and research indicates that as the minimum wage goes up, so too do employer violations.
An analysis by the Florida Policy Institute and Rutgers University’s Center for Innovation in Worker Organization found that, after Florida’s minimum wage increased in 2005, the state’s minimum wage violation rate more than doubled to 17 percent by the end of 2007, disproportionately affecting workers in agriculture, real estate and the service industry.
Establishing a strong enforcement mechanism for catching minimum wage violations, and holding violators accountable for cheating workers of their hard-earned wages, however, hasn’t been a priority of the state Attorney General’s Office. The office, currently led by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ally James Uthmeier, doesn’t even mention on its website that it is the only state agency that is able to do so.
Jose Javier Rodriguez, a workers’ rights lawyer and former Democratic state senator who’s running in 2026 to replace Uthmeier, wants to change that.
“For decades, the Attorney General’s Office has functioned to prop up the powerful and corrupt and not to look out for the people,” Rodriguez told Orlando Weekly in an interview. “State attorneys general routinely enforce state labor laws, including state minimum wages, routinely bringing actions on behalf of defrauded workers — except in Florida,” he said.
The wild west of labor law
According to the Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers and Northwestern University, U.S. workers lose tens of billions of dollars each year from being paid less than their state’s minimum wage. And Florida, a state with a workforce of more than 11 million, including roughly 1 million workers earning minimum wage, is uniquely vulnerable.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush dismantled Florida’s state department of labor more than 20 years ago, abolishing the only state agency tasked with enforcing the state’s wage and hour laws. No replacement for the former state agency has been established in Florida since, despite repeated efforts by Democratic state lawmakers who are in the minority in the Florida Legislature.
“The minimum wage has largely been unenforced for, really, as long as Florida’s had a minimum wage,” Alexis Tsoukalas, a policy analyst for the Florida Policy Institute who’s co-authored reports on the issue, previously told Orlando Weekly.
Indeed, the Nation reported back in 2016 that then-state AG Pam Bondi — currently serving as U.S. Attorney General under President Donald Trump — took no action to hold employers responsible for violating the minimum wage in Florida for years. Records obtained by the Weekly show her successor Ashley Moody didn’t do much to hold employers responsible for this either.
In 2023, for instance, her office helped just one person — a Hungry Howie’s pizza delivery driver — recover about $500 after the assistant attorney general from Moody’s office sent an ominous warning to his employer. Still, the office didn’t take any official enforcement action to get the spooked employer to pay up. Nor did his employer, a franchisee in Hudson, face any penalty for violating Florida’s minimum wage law in the first place.
“I recommend that you make private efforts to remedy any other employees whose wages were similarly underpaid to avoid further complaints being levied against you,” then-Assistant Attorney General Rebecca Snyder wrote in an email to the Hungry Howie’s franchisee, obtained by Orlando Weekly through a public records request.
“The minimum wage has largely been unenforced for, really, as long as Florida’s had a minimum wage”
Alex Tsoukalas, Florida Policy Institute
It’s unclear whether Florida’s current AG, Uthmeier, has a firm position on the issue himself. Uthmeier, a 37 year-old Republican who formerly served as DeSantis’ chief of staff, was appointed by DeSantis to become Attorney General in February to fill a vacancy left by Moody, who was similarly appointed to fill former Sen. Marco Rubio’s seat in the U.S. Senate.
Orlando Weekly requested records from the state Attorney General’s Office in June, under Uthmeier’s leadership, asking for minimum wage complaints their office has received over the last year and any actions they’ve taken to address them. Despite an initial acknowledgement of our request, and multiple follow-ups, the office has failed to produce any records responsive to our request as yet.
Florida Attorney General Uthmeier Credit: Photo via Attorney General James Uthmeier/X
As Rodriguez pointed out in our interview, it’s not unusual for state attorneys general and other state officials elsewhere to take on the responsibility of cracking down on wage theft.
In Rhode Island, a state with a workforce roughly 20 times smaller than Florida’s, the Attorney General’s Office received more than 300 “actionable” cases of wage theft last year, and recovered nearly $1 million in owed wages. The small, Democratic-led northeastern state actually has its own state labor department, unlike Florida, and recently moved to make willfully committing wage theft a felony offense, up from a misdemeanor.
Over a two-year period, Massachusetts’ Attorney General secured over $2.8 million in back pay for more than 3,000 workers in the construction industry alone, in addition to $1.7 million in penalties from employers, payable to the state.
New York State Attorney Letitia James has similarly taken an aggressive approach to the issue — for instance, reaching a $16.75 million settlement with DoorDash for wage theft earlier this year. She’s also recovered unpaid wages and tips for nail salon workers, bar employees, and Uber and Lyft drivers, among others.
The state of New Jersey — albeit, independently of its Attorney General’s office — even has a digital wall of shame (“Workplace Accountability in Labor List”) for employers who commit wage theft and other violations.
Trouble on the horizon
The idea that employers can illegally cheat workers of their lawfully earned wages in Florida without facing repercussions is a thought that is especially troubling, with Florida’s minimum wage set to go up at the end of the month.
Under a ballot initiative approved by nearly 61 percent of Florida voters in 2020, Florida’s minimum wage is on a gradual path to reach $15 next Sept. 30. It’s currently $13 for non-tipped workers, and $9.98 for workers who earn tips. On Sept. 30, 2025, that minimum hourly rate will rise to $14.
State Attorney General candidate Rodriguez, who most recently served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Joe Biden, is keenly aware of the lack of attention in Florida to the issue of wage theft. A longtime employment lawyer, Rodriguez joined other worker advocates roughly 20 years ago as they sought transparency on minimum wage enforcement from then-Florida AG Pam Bondi.
“Quite frankly, it sucks.”
Morgan & Morgan attorney Ryan Morgan
“The attorney general’s office is simply not enforcing the minimum wage in the way that other states do,” Rodriguez told ABC News affiliate WTXL in 2015. “We basically have it in the constitution and we have it in the books, but as far as any state enforcement … that is it.”
Floridians first voted to establish a state minimum wage, separate from the federal minimum wage, in 2004. At the time, the federal minimum wage was $5.15 an hour.
Although federal investigators in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division are authorized to investigate complaints of wage theft in Florida (including but not limited to minimum wage violations), they are only authorized to recover wages up to the federal minimum wage — which currently sits at just $7.25 an hour.
Plus, the federal Wage and Hour Division is understaffed and overburdened. As of May, the division had fewer than half the number of investigators it had at its peak in 1978, according to a recent analysis, despite the fact that it’s today tasked with protecting the rights of three times as many workers.
In the absence of help from the state government in combating wage theft, some community organizations — including the Farmworker Association of Florida — have stepped up to help fill gaps. In addition, at least a half-dozen local municipalities in Florida, including Osceola County, have established their own local wage theft programs.
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The Farmworker Association of Florida works with the U.S. Department of Labor to help victims of wage theft recover pay they are lawfully owed.
Rodriguez was part of the effort to create Florida’s first local wage recovery program in Miami-Dade County back in 2010, as part of a coalition of groups in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. In just the first year alone, the program resulted in more than 600 prosecutions and $1.7 million recovered in stolen pay, the New York Times reported at the time.
“The county didn’t have a big budget,” Rodriguez recalled. “So the design that I came up with for these groups was sort of based on almost like code enforcement, right? It’s a self-enforcement thing. You get a hearing officer, you get an order that then can be turned into a court order, but you don’t need a lawyer. What you get is you get an opportunity to come in and prove your case in front of a hearing examiner, and then you can go ahead and enforce it,” he explained.
Since employment lawyers have a low acceptance rate for wage theft cases as it is — especially instances of wage theft that only involve a few hundred or thousand dollars — the importance of having an alternative program is important.
“Our acceptance rates on the wage and hour cases are below 10 percent,” Morgan & Morgan attorney Ryan Morgan previously told Orlando Weekly, adding that this is in line with acceptance rates of other firms.
“Even we just don’t have enough manpower and hours of the day to handle every case. And so when you’re looking at it, you do have to make difficult choices at times,” Morgan added. “And quite frankly, it sucks.”
Vying to become Florida’s next chief legal officer
Florida’s Attorney General is an elected official who serves as the state’s chief legal officer, responsible for protecting Floridians from fraud, enforcing antitrust laws, defending the state in civil litigation cases, and going after criminal activity such as drug trafficking and identity theft.
The AG is typically elected by Florida voters every four years. Uthmeier, a Republican, was appointed by DeSantis to fill the remainder of former AG Moody’s term earlier this year following her own appointment to the U.S. Senate. His current term ends in January 2027.
Rodriguez, based in the Miami area, faces an uphill battle to defeat Uthmeier. As the incumbent — who routinely finds himself in headlines for his enforcement of the state’s harsh immigration policies — Uthmeier has name recognition. He’s a Republican, backed by his party in a state where the GOP currently has a more than 1 million edge over Democrats in voter registration.
Rodriguez, who’s running on an anti-corruption platform, was first elected to the Florida House in 2012 before running for the state Senate in 2016, where he served for four years. Rodriguez in 2020 narrowly lost his bid for re-election to the Florida Senate by just 40 votes to Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia, after corporate interests reportedly paid a “ghost” candidate with the same last name as his to run as a no-party candidate against him.
“It came out that [Florida Power & Light] was the funder of that, and the reason why they were so upset with me is because there was nobody else in state government standing up for their customers and against them than me,” said Rodriguez, who had filed legislation in 2019 that FPL opposed. “They wanted to take me out,” he continued. “And I think that, you know, if voters want any proof that they’re going to have a fighter in the Attorney General’s office, I think that’s it.”
Eighth Circuit Solicitor David Stumbo officially launched his bid for South Carolina attorney general Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025. (Photo provided by Stumbo campaign)
The chief prosecutor for Abbeville, Greenwood, Newberry and Laurens counties officially launched his bid for South Carolina attorney general.
Eighth Circuit Solicitor David Stumbo became the third GOP candidate to announce his candidacy Tuesday during an event at the Laurens County Museum, promising to be “tough on crime.”
Stumbo, a former assistant attorney general, was first elected solicitor in 2012.
“Political promises don’t protect people – verdicts do,” he said in a statement. “For over twenty years, I’ve gone toe-to-toe with predators, traffickers, and violent criminals, and I’ve beaten them. That’s the kind of fight, and the kind of victory, you can count on with me as your Attorney General.”
Stumbo also promised to combat illegal immigration, as well as drug and human trafficking.
“Criminal illegal aliens, listen closely,” he said in a statement. “Anyone who tries to prey on our people, hear me now: you are not welcome in South Carolina.”
“Like President Trump, I will crush fentanyl, smash the cartels, and treat traffickers like the terrorists they are,” he added.
He appeared to call out both of his GOP primary opponents in his announcement.
“I am the only conservative Republican prosecutor in this race,” Stumbo said in a statement. “Others may chase headlines or switch parties when it suits them. I’ve always been a conservative, always been a Republican, and always been a prosecutor who delivers convictions that stick.”
The race for attorney general is wide open for the first time in 16 years as Republican Alan Wilson, first elected attorney general in 2010, runs for governor in 2026.
No one has announced a bid to be the Democrat nominee. South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democrat as attorney general in 35 years.
Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who was convicted of perjury in 2016 after a wide-ranging scandal rocked state politics, will launch a new podcast on Tuesday to discuss her journey since exiting office.
Kane teased her new show, “Through the HurriKANE,” with a recorded message posted on Instagram.
“Have you ever looked down and seen the pieces of your life on the floor — and wondered what happened?” Kane asks. “You haven’t just been through a storm. You’ve been through a hurricane. Sometimes we think that we’ll never have joy. We’ll never have love again. We’ll never have a normal life again.”
Kane, 59, promised the podcast will teach listeners about “resilience, healing and finding hope in the storm.”
In 2012, Kane was elected as Pennsylvania’s first Democrat and first woman to serve as attorney general. The Scranton native entered office as a rising figure in Democratic politics, having earned a key endorsement from former President Bill Clinton after previously working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
A promising start to Kane’s term as the state’s top prosecutor unraveled when she was accused of leaking confidential grand jury documents to the Philadelphia Daily News. Prosecutors said Kane shared the documents, which involved a 2009 investigation into the former head of the NAACP in Philadelphia, as an act of vengeance against a pair of rival former state prosecutors. Kane took exception to their own alleged leaks of information about her decision not to charge a group of Philadelphia legislators who had been implicated in a bribery scheme.
During the probe of Kane’s conduct, she was accused of lying to a grand jury tasked with investigating the leaked documents.
In 2015, Kane was charged with perjury, obstructing justice, conspiracy and official oppression. She did not testify at her trial in Montgomery County the next year, and she resigned from office the day after her conviction.
“This case is about ego — the ego of a politician consumed with her image from Day One,” Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy said at the sentencing in Norristown. “This case is about retaliation and revenge against perceived enemies who this defendant … felt had embarrassed her in the press.”
Kane was sentenced to serve 10 to 23 months in prison. After losing her appeal in 2018, she ultimately served eight months in the Montgomery County prison before she was released on five years of probation.
Prosecutors described Kane’s tenure as driven by personal and political vendettas that wore down morale in her office.
The year before Kane was charged, she released nearly 400 pages of emails containing pornographic, racist and misogynistic content that had been shared among high-ranking state officials — including judges and prosecutors — during former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration. The emails were discovered during an internal review of the state’s investigation into Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children at Penn State University. The scandal led to the resignations of several officials, including a former state Supreme Court justice, but was not directly tied to Kane’s own political downfall.
Kane made headlines again in 2022 when she was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving after a minor crash with another car in Scranton. She was acquitted later that year.
Kane’s podcast, touted as “the story you didn’t know you needed to hear,” will be available on all major podcast platforms on Tuesday.
The District of Columbia on Thursday sued to stop President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard during his law enforcement intervention in Washington.The city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, said the surge of troops essentially amounts to an “involuntary military occupation.” He argued in the federal lawsuit that the deployment, coinciding with an executive order Aug. 11, that now involves more than 1,000 troops is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.A federal judge in California recently ruled that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles after days of protests over immigration raids in June was illegal.The Republican administration is appealing that decision and Trump has said he is ready to order federal intervention in Chicago and Baltimore, despite staunch opposition in those Democrat-led cities. That court ruling, however, does not directly apply to Washington, where the president has more control over the Guard than in states.The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment to the new lawsuit.Members of the D.C. National Guard have had their orders extended through December, according to a Guard official. While that does not necessarily mean all those troops will serve that long, it is a strong indication that their role will not wind down soon.Several GOP-led states have added National Guard troops to the ranks of those patrolling the streets and neighborhoods of the nation’s capital.Schwalb’s filing contends the deployment also violates the Home Rule Act, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, because Trump acted without the mayor’s consent and is wrongly asserting federal control over units from other states.The city’s attorney general, an elected official, is its top legal officer and is separate from Washington’s federal U.S. attorney, who is appointed by the president.The lawsuit is the second from Schwalb against the Trump administration since the president asserted control over the city’s police department and sent in the Guard, actions that have been with protests from some residents.Trump has said the operation is necessary to combat crime in the district, and Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has pointed to a steep drop in offenses such as carjackings since it began.Violent crime has been an issue in the capital for years, though data showed it was on the decline at the start of Trump’s intervention.
WASHINGTON —
The District of Columbia on Thursday sued to stop President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard during his law enforcement intervention in Washington.
The city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, said the surge of troops essentially amounts to an “involuntary military occupation.” He argued in the federal lawsuit that the deployment, coinciding with an executive order Aug. 11, that now involves more than 1,000 troops is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement.
A federal judge in California recently ruled that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles after days of protests over immigration raids in June was illegal.
The Republican administration is appealing that decision and Trump has said he is ready to order federal intervention in Chicago and Baltimore, despite staunch opposition in those Democrat-led cities. That court ruling, however, does not directly apply to Washington, where the president has more control over the Guard than in states.
The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment to the new lawsuit.
Members of the D.C. National Guard have had their orders extended through December, according to a Guard official. While that does not necessarily mean all those troops will serve that long, it is a strong indication that their role will not wind down soon.
Several GOP-led states have added National Guard troops to the ranks of those patrolling the streets and neighborhoods of the nation’s capital.
Schwalb’s filing contends the deployment also violates the Home Rule Act, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, because Trump acted without the mayor’s consent and is wrongly asserting federal control over units from other states.
The city’s attorney general, an elected official, is its top legal officer and is separate from Washington’s federal U.S. attorney, who is appointed by the president.
The lawsuit is the second from Schwalb against the Trump administration since the president asserted control over the city’s police department and sent in the Guard, actions that have been with protests from some residents.
Trump has said the operation is necessary to combat crime in the district, and Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has pointed to a steep drop in offenses such as carjackings since it began.
Violent crime has been an issue in the capital for years, though data showed it was on the decline at the start of Trump’s intervention.
Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday endorsed his former top deputy, Aaron Reitz, to succeed him, giving Reitz a significant boost in the four-candidate Republican primary to be Texas’ top civil lawyer.
Paxton’s endorsement comes after Sen. Ted Cruz, a former solicitor general of Texas, backed Rep. Chip Roy for attorney general. Both Reitz and Roy have served as Paxton’s legal deputies and Cruz’s chief of staff throughout their tenures.
But while Paxton and Roy publicly split in 2020, when Roy called for Paxton to step down after the attorney general’s senior staff reported him to the FBI for alleged bribery and abuse of office, Reitz has positioned himself as the heir to Paxton’s movement, calling himself the attorney general’s “offensive coordinator.”
In his endorsement, Paxton agreed with that assessment, crediting Reitz with handling some of the office’s most high-profile — and controversial — cases.
“He drove our Texas v. Biden docket and spearheaded some of our most consequential battles — on border security, immigration, Big Tech, Covid tyranny, energy and the environment, pro-life, Second Amendment, religious liberty, free speech, and election integrity,” Paxton said in a statement. “Aaron Reitz is the only candidate who is fully vetted, battle-tested, proven, and ready to be Attorney General.”
Reitz and Roy’s careers working for prominent Texas Republicans have mirrored each other in numerous ways.
Roy was the first top aide tapped by both Cruz and Paxton in their current roles. He served as Cruz’s first chief of staff from 2012 through 2014, helping pioneer Cruz’s strategy during the 2013 government shutdown over Obamacare, and then was hired by Paxton as the newly elected attorney general’s first assistant attorney general.
Roy held that position as Paxton’s second in command through early 2016, at which point Roy left after Paxton incited a dramatic staff shake-up in the wake of the embattled attorney general’s first legal troubles. Roy went on to be elected to Congress in a Central Texas district in 2018, a position he has held ever since.
Reitz’s career played out in the reverse order. He was Paxton’s deputy attorney general for legal affairs from 2020 to 2023 before leaving to be Cruz’s chief of staff through early 2025. He then went on to a short stint at the Department of Justice this year before resigning to announce his run for attorney general.
Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general under then-Attorney General Greg Abbott, endorsed Roy on Saturday. While noting that Texas is “blessed” to have a strong slate of conservatives running for the position and that he is friends with each candidate, Cruz said he has known Roy for nearly two decades and, during that time, Roy has consistently displayed the “courage, integrity and conviction” required to be attorney general.
“As my very first chief of staff, Chip has been a close friend and ally of mine for over 12 years,” Cruz said in a statement. “We have been in more fights together than I can count, and I know Chip will always, always, always fight for conservative values.”
Both Cruz and Paxton had previously been letting the attorney general race, the first prominent statewide seat to open up for Texas Republicans in years, play out without weighing in. But Roy’s entry into the race Thursday appears to have upended both men’s calculations.
Roy received further endorsements from some of Congress’ most conservative members, including a fellow Texan, Rep. Keith Self of McKinney. He also won the backing of Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, Byron Donalds, R-Florida, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
State Sens. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston and Joan Huffman, R-Houston are also running to succeed Paxton. Paxton is forgoing running for a fourth term to instead challenge Sen. John Cornyn in a primary.
Both Reitz and Roy have positioned themselves as the ideological heirs to Paxton’s conservative legal movement, which has put Texas at the forefront of high-profile cases on religious liberty, abortion and election law.
Calling himself the “only pro-Paxton candidate in the race”, Reitz pledged to continue his old boss’ fights.
“Under Ken Paxton, Texas has been a shining example for the conservative movement on how to fight and win against the enemies of Law, Order, and Liberty,” Reitz said in a statement. “My promise to Texans is that I will keep my foot on the gas and energetically carry on Paxton’s legacy.”
Though Paxton and Roy have split over the former’s conduct, Roy said in an interview with conservative radio host Mark Davis Thursday that the two share a similar conservative worldview.
“Ken and his team have done a great job fighting to defend Texas,” Roy said in the radio interview. “We’re going to continue that legacy going forward.”
More all-star speakers confirmed for The Texas Tribune Festival, Nov. 13–15! This year’s lineup just got even more exciting with the addition of State Rep. Caroline Fairly, R-Amarillo; former United States Attorney General Eric Holder; Abby Phillip, anchor of “CNN NewsNight”; Aaron Reitz, 2026 Republican candidate for Texas Attorney General; and State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin. Get your tickets today!
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ) — With Attorney General Andrew Bailey set to head to Washington, D.C., this September to work for the FBI after being tapped by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Gov. Mike Kehoe has appointed a new attorney general.
Kehoe said Tuesday that Catherine Hanaway will take over Sept. 8. She will be the first female attorney general.
Hanaway was a Republican House Speaker from 2003-2005, the first and only woman to hold the post.
Bailey, a Republican, previously challenged COVID-19 masking in schools as well as gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers. Bailey also created the anti-human trafficking task force and was a strong supporter of pro-law enforcement legislation.
Bailey also has a record as a state official loyal to President Donald Trump, supporting administration policies with dozens of legal filings since he took office in January 2023. Former Gov. Mike Parson appointed Bailey in 2022, and he was elected to AG in 2024.
Democratic House Minority Leader Rep. Ashley Aune said in a statement Monday that the House Minority Caucus hopes Kehoe will appoint a competent attorney general.”
“Bailey’s departure gives the governor an opportunity to appoint a competent and
professional attorney general who will defend the rights of all Missourians instead of wasting
taxpayer money on frivolous culture war lawsuits that regularly get laughed out of court, Aune said.
Hanaway works for the law firm Husch Blackwell, representing white collar clients in areas such as lobbying law, fraud and money laundering. One of her clients is the Grain Belt Express, a renewable energy project that Bailey staunchly opposed.
Kehoe, in making the announcement, said Hanaway was a champion for conservative Missouri values.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis highlighted law and order priorities, including protecting from fentanyl and illegal drugs, and curbing illegal immigration, with Attorney General Ashley Moody, Sheriff Grady Judd, and others in law enforcement.
Last year, Governor DeSantis signed legislation establishing the State Assistance for Fentanyl Eradication (SAFE) grant program, which provides law enforcement with the funding needed to conduct large-scale drug operations across the state, including many in Central Florida.
Florida has also enacted a suite of legislation to crack down on crime, curb illegal immigration, increase penalties for drug and human traffickers, and recruit law enforcement officers to the state.
And when two state attorneys refused to carry out the duties of their positions and enforce the law, Governor DeSantis removed them from office.
“Leadership matters,” said Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. “Law and order is maintained when leaders insist on enforcing the law. Florida has enacted legislation to combat crime, recruited police officers from all over the country, refused to allow cities to defund the police, and—when necessary—removed rogue state attorneys who refused to enforce the law.”
“Florida is a law-and-order state, and through proactive leadership and diligent law enforcement efforts we continue to prosper, break tourism records and lead in new business formations,” said Attorney General Ashley Moody. “This is due in large part to the brave men and women in law enforcement, and we will always work to ensure they are supported by Florida leadership.”
In 2023, the Governor approved $20 million in funding for Florida’s SAFE program administered by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. This state-funded grant has allowed local law enforcement agencies to effectively fight against drug trafficking and get hundreds of pounds of deadly drugs off our streets.
“I commend Governor DeSantis and the Florida legislature for their support of law enforcement in Florida,” said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. “We are a law and order state, and proud of it. Because of this, our communities are thriving. Florida is a safe place to live, work, and play.”
Examples of Florida being a law and order state from SAFE grant success stories include:
In January 2024, the Polk County Sheriffs Office utilized SAFE to arrest 11 suspects trafficking in fentanyl and cocaine, seizing 30 pounds of cocaine and nearly 8 pounds of fentanyl.
In March 2024, Santa Rosa County and Escambia County Sheriffs’ offices, working alongside the DEA, seized 3 grams of fentanyl, marijuana, prescription pills, and several handguns.
In April 2024, FDLE operations in conjunction with Sheriffs’ Offices in Seminole County and Palm Beach County resulted in arrests of nearly 40 drug traffickers.
In April 2024, officers in the Fort Myers region successfully seized nearly 4kg of cocaine, 90g of fentanyl, 69g of MDMA, 375g of marijuana, two AR-15 weapons, and more than $60,000 in currency.
In July 2024, FDLE Pensacola, Santa Rosa County and Okaloosa County Sheriff’s offices, Fort Walton Beach Police Department, FHP, and the DEA announced the arrest of 19 drug traffickers facing charges including trafficking in cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, conspiracy to distribute, and racketeering.
In August 2024, a SAFE-funded investigation dismantled a drug trafficking operation in St. Petersburg which was responsible for manufacturing hundreds of doses of fentanyl daily throughout Polk County, specifically in Lakeland.
Officers confiscated 10.7 kilos of fentanyl, along with cocaine, oxycodone, marijuana, 3 illegal firearms, and over $500,000 in cash.
“Florida is a national model in eradicating drugs from our communities and taking criminals off the street,” said Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Executive Director Dave Kerner. “In every corner of this great state, you will find State Troopers and local law enforcement working together to interdict drugs and arrest those who profit off of it. Instead of being demonized, Governor DeSantis celebrates the dangerous work our law enforcement officers do every day, and our men and women in law enforcement deeply appreciate that.”
In total, SAFE funds have resulted in over 650 arrests and the seizure of more than 145 pounds of fentanyl, 220 pounds of cocaine, and 60,000 fentanyl pills – numbers officials say show Florida is a law and order state.
“Thanks to Governor Ron DeSantis and his leadership, Florida’s law enforcement officers have arrested hundreds of dangerous drug traffickers and taken fentanyl and other deadly drugs off our streets,” said Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass. “Florida is a national role model and stands in stark contrast to crime-plagued blue states.”
House Republicans will take their first step towards holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress on Thursday for refusing to turn over the audio recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden.Video above: Special Counsel Robert Hur testifies before House committee about his report on Biden’s handling of classified documentsThe House Oversight and Judiciary committees will each hold markups on their respective reports recommending a contempt of Congress resolution against Garland for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. If passed out of the committees, the resolutions would next go to the House floor for a vote by the whole chamber. It is not clear when that vote would be held.Shortly after Hur closed his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents in February, Republicans subpoenaed the Department of Justice for a number of documents and information, including the audio recordings of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.While Hur’s probe led to no charges against the president, Republicans have seized on Hur’s description of Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in his final report.CNN has sued for access to recordings of federal investigators’ interview with Biden in the now-closed probe over his handling of classified documents.Through their subpoenas to DOJ, House Republicans have argued that the audio recordings are crucial to their impeachment inquiry into Biden, which remains stalled as the prospects of the investigation ending in impeachment are increasingly unlikely. Without the votes in their narrow majority or evidence of an impeachable offense, Republicans are now struggling with how to end their probe and are looking for ways to target other members of the Biden administration.Video below: Special counsel report says Biden willfully retained classified infoThe Department has made the majority of the subpoenaed materials available to House Republicans, including transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, but it has doubled down on its decision to not release the audio files of the interviews, stating that Republicans have not established a legitimate legislative purpose for demanding these recordings.In their contempt reports, Republicans stated that DOJ does not get to determine what information is useful to their investigation, and argued that the verbal nuances of an audio recording provide unique insight into a subject that are not reflected in a transcript.“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to dictate to Congress how to proceed with an impeachment inquiry or to conduct its oversight,” the report reads.In a recent letter to the Republican-led committees, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote to the House Oversight and Judiciary panels that Republicans do not need the audio recordings since DOJ turned over the transcripts, which would address Republican allegations made about the president as part of their impeachment inquiry.“It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it,” Uriarte wrote.DOJ has also outlined distinct privacy concerns related to an audio recording of an interview compared to a written transcript, and how the release of such an audio file could dissuade cooperation from future witnesses in criminal investigations.Raising concerns that Republicans want these audio files for political purposes, he added: “the Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”Republicans, meanwhile, argue in their report that while the transcripts of the interviews reflect what was said, “they do not reflect important verbal context, such as tone or tenor, or nonverbal context, such as pauses or pace of delivery.”Such pauses and inflections, Republicans claim, “can provide indications of a witness’s ability to recall events, or whether the individual is intentionally giving evasive or nonresponsive testimony to investigators.”Republicans pointed to a recent example of when a transcript and audio recording of the president diverged, stating that at a speech last month, Biden read a teleprompter cue out loud during his speech, which was reflected in the recording of the event but not in the initial transcript of his remarks.The House Oversight Committee pushed back the start time of its Thursday markup so that Republican committee members can attend the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York City, two sources familiar with the planning told CNN.When asked to comment on the reason for the schedule change, an Oversight Committee spokeswoman told CNN, “Due to member schedule conflicts, the markup is now starting at a different time to accommodate members’ schedules.”
WASHINGTON —
House Republicans will take their first step towards holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress on Thursday for refusing to turn over the audio recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden.
Video above: Special Counsel Robert Hur testifies before House committee about his report on Biden’s handling of classified documents
The House Oversight and Judiciary committees will each hold markups on their respective reports recommending a contempt of Congress resolution against Garland for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. If passed out of the committees, the resolutions would next go to the House floor for a vote by the whole chamber. It is not clear when that vote would be held.
Shortly after Hur closed his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents in February, Republicans subpoenaed the Department of Justice for a number of documents and information, including the audio recordings of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer.
While Hur’s probe led to no charges against the president, Republicans have seized on Hur’s description of Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in his final report.
CNN has sued for access to recordings of federal investigators’ interview with Biden in the now-closed probe over his handling of classified documents.
Through their subpoenas to DOJ, House Republicans have argued that the audio recordings are crucial to their impeachment inquiry into Biden, which remains stalled as the prospects of the investigation ending in impeachment are increasingly unlikely. Without the votes in their narrow majority or evidence of an impeachable offense, Republicans are now struggling with how to end their probe and are looking for ways to target other members of the Biden administration.
Video below: Special counsel report says Biden willfully retained classified info
The Department has made the majority of the subpoenaed materials available to House Republicans, including transcripts of the special counsel’s interviews with Biden and his ghostwriter, but it has doubled down on its decision to not release the audio files of the interviews, stating that Republicans have not established a legitimate legislative purpose for demanding these recordings.
In their contempt reports, Republicans stated that DOJ does not get to determine what information is useful to their investigation, and argued that the verbal nuances of an audio recording provide unique insight into a subject that are not reflected in a transcript.
“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to dictate to Congress how to proceed with an impeachment inquiry or to conduct its oversight,” the report reads.
In a recent letter to the Republican-led committees, DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote to the House Oversight and Judiciary panels that Republicans do not need the audio recordings since DOJ turned over the transcripts, which would address Republican allegations made about the president as part of their impeachment inquiry.
“It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it,” Uriarte wrote.
DOJ has also outlined distinct privacy concerns related to an audio recording of an interview compared to a written transcript, and how the release of such an audio file could dissuade cooperation from future witnesses in criminal investigations.
Raising concerns that Republicans want these audio files for political purposes, he added: “the Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”
Republicans, meanwhile, argue in their report that while the transcripts of the interviews reflect what was said, “they do not reflect important verbal context, such as tone or tenor, or nonverbal context, such as pauses or pace of delivery.”
Such pauses and inflections, Republicans claim, “can provide indications of a witness’s ability to recall events, or whether the individual is intentionally giving evasive or nonresponsive testimony to investigators.”
Republicans pointed to a recent example of when a transcript and audio recording of the president diverged, stating that at a speech last month, Biden read a teleprompter cue out loud during his speech, which was reflected in the recording of the event but not in the initial transcript of his remarks.
The House Oversight Committee pushed back the start time of its Thursday markup so that Republican committee members can attend the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York City, two sources familiar with the planning told CNN.
When asked to comment on the reason for the schedule change, an Oversight Committee spokeswoman told CNN, “Due to member schedule conflicts, the markup is now starting at a different time to accommodate members’ schedules.”
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WTVD) — Many will gather at a memorial service for Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas M. Weeks Jr. Monday morning.
Weeks died after being shot by a convicted felon last week in Charlotte.
US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Director Ron Davis of the U.S. Marshals Service will deliver remarks. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco will also attend.
The U.S. Marshall and seven other officers went to serve a warrant to Terry Clark Hughes Jr, 39, believed to have illegal firearms in the 5000 block of Galway Drive in the North Tryon Division. That’s when the officers were shot at.
Weeks and Joshua Eyer — whose memorial service was Friday — were among the four officers killed in the shootout. Four others were injured.
The memorial starts at 10:30 a.m. at the Bojangles Coliseum on East Independence Boulevard in Charlotte.
California’s attorney general filed criminal charges Wednesday against one of L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón’s top advisors, who supervises high-profile and sensitive cases including police misconduct, fraud and public corruption.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced the 11 felony counts against Assistant Dist. Atty. Diana Teran in a press statement. He accused her of improperly downloading confidential records of police officers in 2018 while she was working for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Teran then “impermissibly used that data” after joining Gascón’s office three years later, Bonta said.
The confidential records concern 11 sheriff’s deputies, according to a criminal complaint filed in L.A. Superior Court. The deputies’ names were not included in the court filing.
The announcement of criminal charges against one of Gascón’s top advisors — particularly one so closely tied to his agenda of law enforcement accountability and criminal justice reform — sent shock waves across the state’s legal community and was expected to have a far-reaching impact on active and future criminal cases handled by Gascón’s office, while also fueling fresh controversy as he pursues reelection this year.
“No one is above the law,” said Bonta, a fellow Democrat and police reform advocate, in a statement issued by his press office. “Public officials are called to serve the people and the State of California with integrity and honesty. At the California Department of Justice, we will continue to fight for the people of California and hold those who break the law accountable.”
Teran referred questions to her attorney, James Spertus, who called the case “dead on arrival” and said he was stunned to see the charges, since his client had been cooperating with a criminal investigation into the allegations.
“They’re charging her for doing something within the scope of her employment, that she has a duty to do,” Spertus said in an interview Wednesday.
Teran, who has been a lawyer for more than 35 years, worked for years as a deputy district attorney in L.A. County before assuming posts involving law enforcement monitoring and oversight. In 2018, she served as a constitutional policing advisor to the Sheriff’s Department, then as a consultant to the Office of Inspector General, which provides oversight to the department. In 2019, she became a law enforcement accountability advisor with the L.A. County public defender’s office.
After Gascón’s election victory, Teran joined his administration in early 2021 as a special advisor and later began running the Justice System Integrity Division, or JSID, which handles prosecutions of police and attorney misconduct. Her hiring was one of many criticized by longtime prosecutors frustrated by Gascón’s willingness to empower attorneys who had previously done defense work.
Gascón recently promoted Teran to assistant district attorney, giving her supervisory authority over units that prosecute organized crime, white collar crime and corruption, as well as crimes by law enforcement and attorneys.
Teran’s current employment status is unclear, and a spokesperson for Gascón’s office declined to specify whether she remains an assistant district attorney.
The criminal complaint offers little detail about the underlying allegations. A source familiar with the case who was not authorized to speak on the record said the charges related to documents that Teran had downloaded while she worked at the Sheriff’s Department and were subsequently provided to the discovery unit at the D.A.’s office.
Spertus said that the investigation into his client was sparked by a complaint from former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who routinely clashed with those who attempted to provide oversight of his department, including Teran. In a livestream Wednesday evening, Villanueva echoed that, saying that in 2019 he alerted the FBI and the attorney general to concerns about Teran downloading information he described as a “massive data breach.”
Though the complaint does not spell out what data Teran may have illegally misused, Spertus said he believed state prosecutors were erroneously trying to charge Teran for uploading public documents to the district attorney’s “Brady List.”
Under the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brady vs. Maryland, prosecutors must turn over evidence favorable to defendants, which could include information that undermines a police officer’s credibility or reveals past dishonesty or wrongdoing. The Brady List refers to a database of law enforcement officers who have been accused or convicted of on-duty misconduct.
Spertus believed the documents and data in question were either obtained through public court files or involved findings of dishonesty against sheriff’s deputies, which would be public record under Senate Bill 1421, California’s landmark police transparency law.
That law, which makes information about serious uses of force, allegations of sexual assault or dishonesty by California police officers a public record, did not go into effect until Jan. 1, 2019. Teran is alleged to have obtained the information in question in 2018.
“It’s unsustainable on its face,” Spertus said of the allegation. “You don’t need permission to use public information. They can’t say that she wrongfully took anything,” he said, adding, “She had documents in her possession. She had an obligation to her employer to build out the Brady database.”
In a statement to The Times, Villanueva called the charges against Teran “a vindication of my administration” and credited state prosecutors with uncovering “the truth.”
“Many more public corruption cases involving Los Angeles County elected leaders and their appointees are being investigated by Mr. Bonta’s office, and based on what I know of the evidence, I expect further indictments,” Villanueva added.
Gascón did not directly address the charges against Teran, but in a statement he defended his office’s handling of confidential law enforcement records.
“When I took office, we developed a protocol that ensured we complied with our constitutional obligations under Brady — which requires us to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense, a category that includes law enforcement’s prior misconduct — while simultaneously complying with state and federal law around privacy. I stand by that protocol,” Gascón said Wednesday.
Gascón emphasized that the case would not deter him from carrying out his agenda.
“I remain committed to upholding transparency and ensuring police accountability within Los Angeles County,” he said in the statement.
Gascón’s opponent in the district attorney’s race, Nathan Hochman, pounced on the charges.
“This is just the latest example of Gascón’s demonstrated record of poor judgment and lack of leadership in running the district attorney’s office,” Hochman said in a written response. “Promoting Teran to Assistant District Attorney, ironically in charge of ethics and integrity, even occurred despite legitimate objections from many experienced prosecutors.”
This is not the first time Teran has been publicly accused of misconduct while in Gascón’s employ.
Late last year, the former second in command of the JSID unit filed a civil suit alleging that Teran ordered prosecutors to delay announcing the decision not to charge a sheriff’s deputy in a high-profile excessive-force case because of how it might affect the reelection bid of then-Sheriff Villanueva.
Richard Pippin, president of the Assn. of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the union that represents rank-and-file sheriff’s deputies, called for a broader investigation into the “deeply troubling” allegations.
“During her tenure with the sheriff’s department, Diana Teran’s contempt for the people who strive to keep our communities safe was apparent, and so we weren’t surprised to see District Attorney George Gascón place her in a position as one of his top advisors,” Pippin said in a statement Wednesday. “ALADS is demanding a complete investigation of all matters, access to sensitive records and other actions taken by Diana Teran and her staff during her entire tenure. This investigation should not be limited in scope or effort.”
A Los Angeles police officer who shot and killed a 14-year-old girl through the wall of a changing room at a Burlington Coat Factory store in North Hollywood was cleared of wrongdoing Tuesday by the California Department of Justice.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office said Officer William Jones used reasonable force in the 2021 incident because he was responding to a report of a possible active shooter.
That information turned out to be wrong — the suspect, Daniel Elena-Lopez, was carrying a bike lock, not a gun.
Footage released by the Los Angeles Police Department showed that when Jones arrived at the scene, toting a high-powered rifle, he rushed to the front of a phalanx of officers advancing toward the store’s home goods section, where he opened fire almost immediately upon encountering Elena-Lopez.
One of rounds that Jones fired “skipped off” a floor tile, the attorney general’s report said, and sailed into a fitting room where Valentina Orellana-Peralta was hiding with her mother. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The shooting drew widespread outrage and grief, while bringing demands for the officer who killed her to be criminally charged. The Orellana-Peralta family has a pending civil lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, alleging failures in training and oversight contributed to the deadly outcome. Attorneys in the case did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The LAPD did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the case.
While an internal LAPD review panel was split on whether Jones’ decision to open fire was justified, then-chief Michel Moore ultimately ruled in 2022 that the shots violated department policy and that the officer should have taken more time to assess the situation. In a rare split with the chief, the Police Commission concluded that only Jones’ second and third shots were out of policy.
No LAPD officer has been charged in an on-duty shooting by county or state prosecutors in nearly two decades. Under Dist. Atty. George Gascón, L.A. County prosecutors have been more aggressive in filing cases against law enforcement officers who use force on duty though, bringing assault and manslaughter charges against Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and Torrance police officers in recent years.
The attorney general’s office noted Jones had heard reports that Elena-Lopez was threatening customers at the store with a gun. The information was later amended, but it’s not clear whether Jones heard these later radio broadcasts, the office said. A toxicology report showed Elena-Lopez had been using methamphetamine.
Orellana-Peralta was a bystander in the store. She had arrived from her native Chile about six months prior, her family said, with dreams of becoming an engineer and a U.S. citizen. According to her family’s lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court earlier this month, the girl’s mother “watched helplessly as her daughter died while still in her arms.”
The attorney general’s office said that other officers at the scene had formulated a plan to try to stop Elena-Lopez by firing a .40mm “less-lethal” round at him, but Jones was unaware of their plan. Jones’ perception that he was shooting to stop an armed threat means he can’t be held criminally liable for the errant bullet that killed the teenager, based on a legal theory known as “transferred intent,” the office said.
The attorney general’s report called for the LAPD to improve its communication and coordination in emergency responses, but said it could not pursue charges against Jones because the killing of Orellana Peralta was “unintended and unforeseeable.”
After reviewing the report, civil rights attorney Jim DeSimone, who has brought wrongful-death suits against law enforcement agencies across the state, said the case highlights the need for officers to have better “situational awareness” before opening fire.
“It’s clear that with the number of officers, and less-lethal options, that Mr. Lopez could have been apprehended without killing an innocent human being,” he said.
Times staff writer James Queally contributed to this report.
Previously, the hands of state attorneys general have been tied when it came to airline consumer complaints.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttgieg unveil a new partnership at the Denver International Airport on April 16, 2024.
Paolo Zialcita/CPR News
Thousands of people shuffle through Denver International Airport on any given day, and statistically, a decent number of them will report having a poor experience with an airline.
From a cordoned-off section of the airport’s ticketing booths, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday that they’ll soon be more equipped to protect travelers from those sorts of struggles. The pair announced a new partnership between several states, territories, and the Department of Transportation, which will help resolve consumer complaints against airlines more quickly.
Weiser, who led the effort among 25 attorneys general to create the partnership, said he’s recently seen an increased need to hold airlines accountable.
“During the pandemic, we know the [Department of Transportation] was besieged with complaints, so were we,” he said. “The complaints against Frontier Airlines rose to the top of the charts, and we were seeking answers on that. But without this protocol in place, we didn’t know what the status was, and it did take years to get a resolution.”
Under federal law, the central responsibility for addressing consumer complaints about airlines lies with the Department of Transportation. As such, states like Colorado have been unable to fully pursue their own actions against airlines.
The new partnership will authorize state justice departments across the country to investigate complaints against airlines, ticket agents, and other air travel companies. If necessary, states will also be able to refer complaints to the DOT’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection.
Both states and the federal government will investigate a wide range of issues, including lost baggage, disrupted itineraries, and missing refunds.
“When many things like that happen, those aren’t just inconveniences, they’re violations that we as a department can do something about,” Buttigieg said.
Buttigieg acknowledged the need for a partnership between states and his agency due to the vast number of complaints nationwide.
“It has been clear that we need more resources, that we need allies, that we need a force multiplier to help us get that work done,” he said.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg at the Denver International Airport on April 16, 2024.Paolo Zialcita/CPR News
The DOT has worked to increase awareness of consumer rights to help airline travelers know when to file complaints. A comprehensive rundown is available on the department’s website.
“I’ve yet to see an airline that is enthusiastic about being held accountable, but our view is this actually benefits the airline industry as a whole because when passengers, customers know that they’re going to have a better experience, they’re going to have a better feeling about choosing to fly with any airline in this country,” Weiser said.
Coloradans who have complaints against airlines and other travel agencies regulated by the federal government can file them at StopFraudColorado.gov.
The partnership will last for two years, with an option to extend it for additional two-year intervals when it ends. Other states and territories that have joined include California, the District of Columbia, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
