The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the deadly collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
The investigation is focusing on the circumstances leading up to the incident and whether all federal laws were followed by the crew of the ship responsible.
ABC News cites a source who says the bureau is investigating any potential criminal wrongdoing, centered on whether any crew members knew of any issues the ship may have had before leaving port.
The report seems to suggest some concerns over potential negligence when, on March 26th, the massive Dali container ship lost power and struck a support column of the bridge, causing it to collapse.
The tragic event resulted in the deaths of six workers.
This probe is separate from the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation. The NTSB is primarily looking into how the ship lost power and collided with the bridge.
The FBI has been present aboard the cargo ship Dali conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity. The agency has not commented further on the investigation.
🚨 #BREAKING: FBI OPENS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION INTO BALTIMORE BRIDGE COLLAPSE
The probe will reportedly in part be looking into whether the crew left the port KNOWING the vessel had “serious systems problems,” according to two U.S. officials. pic.twitter.com/DQLRsBj1UL
The Daily Mail indicates that the crew remains onboard as FBI agents were seen arriving at the ship earlier today.
They are reportedly investigating “whether the 22-strong crew of the Dali knew it had serious systemic issues before they left the Maryland port.”
There is no indication that the criminal investigation into the Baltimore bridge collapse involves any intentional acts by the crew. Nor is there any indication they are looking into hacking of the ship’s systems.
Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott is also calling in outside firms to “hold responsible all entities accountable for the Key Bridge tragedy.”
Moments after the collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore the FBI announced that the incident was an accident and called all other speculation dangerous misinformation. There was no way they could have known AND this is why Americans no longer trust the FBI. pic.twitter.com/fWHBMa4Lvo
The Port of Baltimore, where the bridge is located, is a significant commuter port. It is one of the busiest in the United States.
Early reports suggested that the collapse would result in nearly $15 million in daily economic activity being lost due to the incident.
Rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge after its collapse could take anywhere from 18 months to several years.
The cost of rebuilding is estimated to be at least $400 million but could be more than twice that amount.
The timeline and cost depend on various factors. Those factors include the design of the new bridge, the efficiency of government officials in navigating the bureaucracy of approving permits and awarding contracts, and the speed of debris removal and channel clearance for maritime traffic to resume.
President Biden visited the site of the bridge collapse in early April and said taxpayers would foot the bill.
During his visit, Biden said it is his “intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstruction of that bridge.”
The criminal probe will be overseen by the US District Attorney’s office in Maryland, according to the Daily Mail.
A controversial US wiretap program days from expiration cleared a major hurdle on its way to being reauthorized.
After months of delays, false starts, and interventions by lawmakers working to preserve and expand the US intelligence community’s spy powers, the House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years.
Legislation extending the program—controversial for being abused by the government—passed in the House in a 273–147 vote. The Senate has yet to pass its own bill.
Section 702 permits the US government to wiretap communications between Americans and foreigners overseas. Hundreds of millions of calls, texts, and emails are intercepted by government spies each with the “compelled assistance” of US communications providers.
The government may strictly target foreigners believed to possess “foreign intelligence information,” but it also eavesdrops on the conversations of an untold number of Americans each year. (The government claims it is impossible to determine how many Americans get swept up by the program.) The government argues that Americans are not themselves being targeted and thus the wiretaps are legal. Nevertheless, their calls, texts, and emails may be stored by the government for years, and can later be accessed by law enforcement without a judge’s permission.
The House bill also dramatically expands the statutory definition for communication service providers, something FISA experts, including Marc Zwillinger—one of the few people to advise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)—have publicly warned against.
“Anti-reformers not only are refusing common-sense reforms to FISA, they’re pushing for a major expansion of warrantless spying on Americans,” US senator Ron Wyden tells WIRED. “Their amendment would force your cable guy to be a government spy and assist in monitoring Americans’ communications without a warrant.”
The FBI’s track record of abusing the program kicked off a rare détente last fall between progressive Democrats and pro-Trump Republicans—both bothered equally by the FBI’s targeting of activists, journalists, and a sitting member of Congress. But in a major victory for the Biden administration, House members voted down an amendment earlier in the day that would’ve imposed new warrant requirements on federal agencies accessing Americans’ 702 data.
“Many members who tanked this vote have long histories of voting for this specific privacy protection,” says Sean Vitka, policy director at the civil-liberties-focused nonprofit Demand Progress, “including former speaker Pelosi, Representative Lieu, and Representative Neguse.”
The warrant amendment was passed earlier this year by the House Judiciary Committee, whose long-held jurisdiction over FISA has been challenged by friends of the intelligence community. Analysis by the Brennan Center this week found that 80 percent of the base text of the FISA reauthorization bill had been authored by intelligence committee members.
“Three million Americans’ data was searched in this database of information,” says Representative Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “The FBI wasn’t even following its own rules when they conducted those searches. That’s why we need a warrant.”
Representative Mike Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, campaigned alongside top spy agency officials for months to defeat the warrant amendment, arguing they’d cost the bureau precious time and impede national security investigations. The communications are legally collected and already in the government’s possession, Turner argued; no further approval should be required to inspect them.
For the third time since December, House Speaker Mike Johnson has failed to wrangle support for reauthorizing a critical US surveillance program, raising questions about the future of a law that compels certain businesses to wiretap foreigners on the government’s behalf.
Johnson lost 19 Republicans on Tuesday in a procedural vote that traditionally falls along party lines. Republicans control the House of Representatives but only by a razor-thin margin. The failed vote comes just hours after former US president Donald Trump ordered Republicans to “Kill FISA” in a 2 am post on Truth Social, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, under which the program is authorized.
The Section 702 surveillance program, which targets foreigners overseas while sweeping up a large amount of US communications as well, is set to sunset on April 19. The program was extended by four months in late December following Johnson’s first failed attempt to hold a vote.
Congressional sources tell WIRED they have no idea what the next steps will be.
The program itself will carry on into the next year, regardless of whether Johnson manages to muster up another vote in the next week. Congress does not directly authorize the surveillance. Instead, it allows the US intelligence services to seek “certifications” from a secret surveillance court on a yearly basis.
The Justice Department applied for new certifications in February. Last week, it announced they’d been approved by the court. The government’s power to issue new directives under the program without Congress’s approval, however, remains in question.
The certifications, which are required only due to the “incidental” collection of US calls, generally permit the program’s use in cases involving terrorism, cybercrime, and weapons proliferation. US intelligence officials have also touted the program as crucial in combating the flood of fentanyl-related substances entering the US from overseas.
Although the government says it only “targets” foreigners, it has acknowledged collecting a large amount of US communications in the process. (The actual amount, it says, is impossible to calculate.) Nevertheless, it claims that once those communications are in the government’s possession, it is constitutional for federal agents to review those wiretaps without a warrant.
An unlikely coalition of progressives and conservative lawmakers formed last year in a push to end these warrantless searches, many of the Republicans involved vocal critics of the FBI following its misuse of FISA to target a Trump campaign staffer in 2016. (The 702 program, which is only one part of FISA, was not implicated in that particular controversy.)
Privacy experts have criticized proposed changes to the Section 702 program championed by members of the House Intelligence Committee, as well as Johnson, who had previously voted in favor of a warrant requirement despite now opposing it.
“It seems Congressional leadership needs to be reminded that these privacy protections are overwhelmingly popular,” says Sean Vitka, policy director at Demand Progress, a civil liberties–focused nonprofit. “Surveillance reformers remain willing and able to do that.”
A group of attorneys—among the few to ever present arguments before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—said in a statement on Tuesday that an amendment offered up by the Intel committee risked dramatically increasing the number of US businesses forced to cooperate with the program.
Declassified filings released by the FISA court last year revealed that the FBI had misused the 702 program more than 278,000 times, including, as reported by The Washington Post, against “crime victims, January 6 riot suspects, people arrested at protests after the policing killing of George Floyd in 2020 and—in one case—19,000 donors to a congressional candidate.”
James Czerniawaski, a senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity, a Washington, DC, think tank pushing for changes to Section 702, says that despite recognizing its value, it remained a “troubled program” in need of “significant and meaningful reforms.”
“The outcome of today was completely avoidable,” he says, “but it requires the Intelligence Community and its allies to recognize that its days of unaccountable and unconditional spying on Americans are over.”
Federal officials are searching for more potential victims of a Texas man who recently pled guilty to cyberstalking women for almost three years in Colorado, Texas and Arizona.
Hugo Iram Cardona Jr., 21, used a scheme involving two-factor authentication — an electronic authentication method — to hack into the Snapchat accounts of at least 15 young women, then steal their intimate photos and videos, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Texas reports.
The Odessa man reached out to his victims on social media platforms like Instagram and “demanded that they ‘apologize,’ or he would publicly release the content,” according to the federal government office. He also pressured most of the young women into video chatting with him “while engaging in sexually explicit conduct.”
Cardona has pled guilty to three counts of cyberstalking and is scheduled for sentencing on June 3. Each count could result in up to 10 years in prison.
Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations and El Paso Police Department are trying to uncover any additional potential victims. The offenses likely took place between Aug. 15, 2020, and June 1, 2023.
Cardona used several phone numbers from the TextNow phone service to contact his victims, along with various Instagram accounts. His handles included: “idkprii85,” “designoiram,” “juniorrriram,” “urfavpapi,” “urdvddyjunie” and “juniorrhernandez.” He’s also linked to the following Snapchat accounts: “juniepri,” “asap_juniorrr” and “juniorrriram.”
Anyone who was in contact with Cardona using those accounts or phone numbers during the three-year period are asked to fill out a victim questionnaire. Officials say that victim identities will remain private and case-related information is kept confidential.
A convicted Beverly Hills con artist with a long history of swindles pleaded guilty to another one Friday, admitting that he duped investors out of more than $18 million by concocting a sham cannabis empire while completing a sentence in a prior criminal case.
Mark Roy Anderson, 69, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. He duped his victims with false claims that he ran companies invested in hemp farms and cannabis-infused retail products, as well as a sham bottling business.
Anderson, his investors discovered, is a convicted con artist who started swindling people at least three decades ago. He launched his purported hemp business immediately after his May 2019 release from the federal prison in Texas where he had served more than 11 years for an oil investment scam, federal authorities said.
In the first scheme he pleaded guilty to Friday, Anderson tricked investors in 2020 and 2021 into providing funding for his company, called Harvest Farm Group, to harvest and process hemp grown on his farm into medical-grade cannabidiol (CBD) isolate — a chemical found in marijuana — to be sold for a substantial profit.
Anderson persuaded investors to invest in Harvest Farm Group by falsely representing that, through the company, he owned and operated a hemp farm in Kern County. He also lied that he had already completed successful and profitable harvests of hemp from the farm, which the FBI said did not exist.
He also falsely said he was using his own machinery and equipment to convert the hemp into CBD isolate and Delta 8, a psychoactive substance that, like CBD isolate, could be used in consumer products ranging from olive oil to body cream, federal officials said.
In the second scheme, Anderson deceived investors from April 2021 to May 2023 by soliciting money for sham companies Bio Pharma and Verta Bottling companies, by claiming that these businesses successfully manufactured, bottled, and packaged commercial products.
Anderson falsely stated that his bottling companies owned and possessed millions of dollars’ worth of assets, including hemp biomass, CBD isolate, CBD oil, manufacturing equipment and a lease for a warehouse to manufacture and sell its products.
Anderson used some of the money to buy a $1.3-million gated residence surrounded by citrus groves in Ojai, according to the FBI. He diverted another $2.3 million to personal expenses, including more than $650,000 for vintage and luxury automobiles, $13,000 for chartered private jet flights and $142,000 for merchandise from Williams-Sonoma, Ferragamo, Crate & Barrel and other retailers, the FBI alleged in a criminal complaint.
He has agreed to forfeit his ill-gotten gains from these schemes, including 15 cars — one of them a Ferrari — and his Ojai real estate.
Anderson, a disbarred lawyer, has a federal court hearing set for Aug. 23. He faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each count.
Former Times staff writer Michael Finnegan contributed to this report.
A former Navy submarine technician was arrested after law enforcement says he drove an SUV into the FBI headquarters near Atlanta on Monday afternoon. It is still unclear why the suspect, Ervin Lee Bolling, attempted to force entry into the headquarters, but research conducted by the nonpartisan public-interest nonprofit Advance Democracy and shared exclusively with WIRED has found that accounts believed to be associated with Bolling shared numerous conspiracy theories on social media platforms, including X and Facebook.
Just after noon on Monday, Bolling rammed his burnt-orange SUV with South Carolina license plates into the final barrier at FBI Atlanta’s headquarters, wrote Matthew Upshaw, an FBI agent assigned to the Atlanta office, in a sworn affidavit on Tuesday. Upshaw added that after Bolling crashed the SUV, he left the car and tried to follow an FBI employee into the secure parking lot. When agents instructed Bolling to sit on a curb, he refused and tried again to enter the premises. The affidavit also stated that Bolling resisted arrest when agents subsequently tried to detain him.
Bolling was charged on Tuesday with destruction of government property, according to court records reviewed by WIRED.
Advance Democracy researchers identified an account on X with the handle @alohatiger11, a reference to the Clemson University mascot which Bolling has expressed support for on his public Facebook page. The handle is similar to usernames on other platforms like Telegram and Cash App, and also bears similarities to a Facebook page with Bolling’s name. The profile picture used in the X account also resembles a picture of the same man shown in Bolling’s public Facebook profile. The X account is currently set to private, but dozens of its old posts are still publicly viewable through the Internet Archive.
In December 2020, the X account responded to a post about a federal government stimulus bill that stated, “Wonder what it will take for people to wake up.” The X account believed to be associated with Bolling responded, “I’m awake. Just looking for a good militia to join.”
Around the same time, social media accounts seemingly associated with Bolling repeatedly boosted QAnon content and interacted with QAnon promoters, including by posting a link to a now-deleted QAnon-associated YouTube channel alongside the comment: “Release the Kraken”—in direct reference to Sidney Powell’s failed legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
On what’s believed to be Bolling’s Facebook account, there were various posts related to anti-vaccine memes as well.
The accounts also posted in support of former president Donald Trump. In December 2020, “I love you” was posted in response to a post on X from Trump that falsely claimed the election had been rigged by Democrats.
Courtney Bolling, who is identified as the suspect’s wife on Facebook, did not respond to requests for comment via phone or messages sent to her social media profiles. No legal counsel is listed on record for Bolling.
It is so far unclear how Bolling came to espouse these beliefs, but far-right groups and extremists have for decades used social media platforms as a way of spreading conspiracies and radicalizing new members. In recent years there have been numerous examples of far-right groups making online claims or threats that have been quickly followed by real-world violence.
A senior Defense Department official who attended the NATO summit in Lithuania last year suffered symptoms of Havana Syndrome, the Pentagon said on Monday. The syndrome includes a series of mysterious illnesses reported by Americans who’ve served overseas. David Martin has the latest.
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This report is the result of a joint investigation by 60 Minutes, The Insider, and Der Spiegel
Tonight we have important developments in our five-year investigation of mysterious brain injuries reported by U.S. national security officials. The injured include White House staff, CIA officers, FBI agents, military officers and their families. Many believe that they were wounded by a secret weapon that fires a high-energy beam of microwaves or ultrasound. This is our fourth story and for the first time, we have evidence of who might be responsible. Most of the injured have fought for America, often in secret. And they’re frustrated that the U.S. government publicly doubts that an adversary is targeting Americans.
One of them is Carrie. We’re disguising her and not using her last name because she’s still an FBI agent working in counterintelligence. She says, in 2021, she was home in Florida when she was hit by a crippling force.
Carrie: And bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids. That feeling when it gets too close to your eardrum? It’s like that, you know, times ten. It was like a high pitched, metallic drilling noise, and it knocked me forward at, like, a 45 degree angle this way.
She says she was by a window in her laundry room.
Carrie: My right ear was line-of-sight to that window while this thing was happening in my ear. And when I leaned forward it kind a—it didn’t knock me over, but it knocked me forward. I immediately felt pressure, and pressure and pain started coursing from inside my right ear, down my jaw, down my neck and into my chest.
At the same time, FBI agent Carrie told us, the battery in her phone began to swell until it broke the case. Finally she passed out on a couch. Because of chest pain, she was checked by a cardiologist and then returned to duty.
Carrie: And I remember complaining to my colleagues for months after that I felt like I had early Alzheimer’s. Short term memory, long term memory, confusing memories, uh, multitasking. My baseline changed. I was not the same person.
60 Minutes has agreed to withhold the last name of “Carrie,” a Havana Syndrome victim who is still an FBI agent working in counterintelligence.
60 Minutes
Carrie’s story matches those we’ve uncovered over the years.
Olivia Troye: It was like this piercing feeling on the side of my head. It was like, I remember it was on the right side of my head and I, I got like vertigo.
Olivia Troye was Homeland Security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. In our 2022 report, she told us she was hit outside the White House.
Anonymous: And then severe ear pain started. So I liken it to if you put a Q-tip too far and you bounce it off your eardrum. Well, imagine takin’ a sharp pencil and just kinda pokin’ that.
And this man told us he was among the first publicly known cases in 2016 from our embassy in Cuba. That’s how the incidents became known as “Havana Syndrome.” He’s medically retired from an agency we can’t name– blind in one eye and struggling for balance.
A major medical study for the government was led by Dr. David Relman of Stanford University. In our 2022 report he told us…
Dr. David Relman: What we found was we thought clear evidence of an injury to the auditory and vestibular system of the brain. Everything starting with the inner ear where humans perceive sound and sense balance, and then translate those perceptions into brain electrical signals.
His study found, “directed pulsed (radio frequency) energy…appears to be the most plausible mechanism…” For example, a focused beam of microwaves or acoustic ultrasound. More than 100 officials or family members have unexplained, persistent, symptoms.
Carrie: If I turn too fast, my gyroscope is off, essentially. It’s like a step behind where I’m supposed to be. So I’ll turn too fast, and I will literally walk right into the wall or the door frame.
Now, for the first time, the case of FBI agent Carrie suggests which adversary might be responsible. She spoke with the FBI’s permission but wasn’t allowed to discuss the cases she was on when she was hit. We have learned from other sources one of those cases involve this Mustang going 110 miles an hour.
Deputy (on bodycam video from 2020): Pull over, Pull over!
In 2020, near Key West, Florida, deputies tried to stop the Mustang for speeding. It ran 15 miles until it hit spike strips laid in its path.
Deputy (on bodycam video from 2020): Get out! Put it down! Get on the ground now.
A search of the car found notes of bank accounts.
Deputy (on bodycam video from 2020): Citibank…Discover Savings $75,000…
And this device, that looks like a walkie-talkie, can erase the car’s computer data including its GPS record. There was also a Russian passport.
Deputy (on bodycam video from 2020): What’s your first name?
Vitalii Kovalev (on bodycam video from 2020): Vitalii. V-I-T-A-L-I-I.
Vitalii Kovalev was the driver, from St. Petersburg—Russia not Florida.
Deputy (on bodycam video from 2020): Why did you run? Be honest with me.
Vitalii Kovalev (on bodycam video from 2020): I don’t know.
Deputy (on bodycam video from 2020): You know why you ran.
Vitalii Kovalev (on bodycam video from 2020): I don’t know.
And we don’t know why he ran. But what we learned suggests he was a Russian spy.
Christo Grozev: What we see here is Vitalii Kovalev fitting exactly this formula.
Christo Grozev is a journalist, legendary for unmasking Russian plots. In 2020, he uncovered the names of the Russian secret agents who poisoned Vladimir Putin’s rival Alexey Navalny. Grozev is lead investigator for our collaborator on this story, The Insider, a magazine by Russian exiles. We asked him to trace Vitalii Kovalev.
Christo Grozev is a journalist for The Insider, an investigative magazine by Russian exiles.
60 Minutes
Christo Grozev: He studied in a military institute. He studied radio electronics with a particular focus on use within the military of micro-electronics. He had all the technology know-how that would be required for somebody to be assisting an operation that requires high technology. But then all of a sudden, after working for two years in a military institute he up and decides to become a chef.
Kovalev immigrated to the U.S. and worked as a chef in New York and Washington D.C., even appearing at far left, in a TV cooking segment.
But Kovalev was actually a Russian military electrical engineer with a top secret security clearance.
Scott Pelley: Can someone like Kovalev simply decide to drop all of that and become a chef?
Christo Grozev: It is not an easy job to just leave that behind. Once you’re in the military, and you’ve been trained, and the Ministry of Defense has invested in you, you remain at their beck and call for the rest of your life.
We don’t know what Kovalev was up to but our sources say, over months, he spent 80 hours being interviewed by FBI agent Carrie, who had investigated multiple Russian spies. Kovalev pled guilty to evading police and reckless driving. He was sentenced to 30 months. While he was in jail, Carrie says she was hit in Florida and, a year later, when she awoke to the same symptoms in the middle of the night in California.
Carrie: It felt like I was stuck in this state of, like, disorientation, not able to function. Like, what is happening? And my whole body was pulsing,
Mark Zaid is Carrie’s attorney. He has a security clearance and for decades, has represented Americans working in national security. Zaid has more than two dozen clients suffering symptoms of Havana Syndrome, which the government now calls “anomalous health incidents.”
Mark Zaid: I have CIA and State Department clients as well, who believe they’ve been impacted domestically. There are dozens of CIA cases that have happened domestically that is at least believed. And, and we’re not even just talking about physical manifestation. We’re talking about evidence of computer issues in the midst of the incident where computer screens just literally stop working or go flicker on and off.
Scott Pelley: Do you know whether there are other FBI agents who have also suffered from these anomalous health incidents?
Mark Zaid: There are other FBI agents and personnel, not just agents, analysts. I represent one other FBI person who was impacted in Miami. And I also know of FBI personnel who believe they were hit overseas in the last decade.
Scott Pelley: Were any of these members of the FBI counterintelligence people in addition to Carrie?
Mark Zaid: The one thread that I know of with the FBI personnel that is common among most if not all of my clients other than the family members connected to the employee, was they were all doing something relating to Russia.
Attorney Mark Zaid
60 Minutes
Vitalii Kovalev served his time and in 2022, went back to Russia—ignoring American warnings that he was in danger because he’d spent so much time with the FBI. Christo Grozev found this death certificate from last year, which says Kovalev was killed at the front in Ukraine.
Scott Pelley: Do you think Kovalev was sent to Ukraine as a punishment?
Christo Grozev: One theory is that he was sent there in order for him to be disposed of.
Scott Pelley: Is Kovalev really dead, or is this another cover story?
Christo Grozev: That is a very good question. And we actually worked on both hypotheses for a while. I do believe at this point that he was dead.
Carrie: We’re dealing with energy weapons. It’s not going anywhere. Look how effective it’s been. It’s next generation weaponry. And, unfortunately, it’s been refined on some of us, and we’re the test subjects.
U.S. intelligence says, publicly, there is no credible evidence that an adversary is inflicting brain injuries on national security officials. And yet, more than 100 Americans have symptoms that scientists say could be caused by a beam of microwaves or, acoustic ultrasound. The Pentagon launched an investigation run by a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel. Greg Edgreen has never spoken publicly until now.
Scott Pelley: Are we being attacked?
Greg Edgreen: My personal opinion, yes.
Scott Pelley: By whom?
Greg Edgreen: Russia.
Greg Edgreen ran the investigation for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He would not discuss classified information but he described his team’s work from 2021 to 2023.
Greg Edgreen: We were collecting a large body of data, ranging from signals intelligence, human intelligence, open-source reporting. Anything regarding the internet, travel records, financial records, you name it. Unfortunately I can’t get into specifics, based on the classification. But I can tell you at a very early stage, I started to focus on Moscow.
Scott Pelley: Can you tell me about the patterns you began to see?
Greg Edgreen: One of the things I started to notice was the caliber of our officer that was being impacted. This wasn’t happening to our worst or our middle-range officers. This was happening to our top 5%, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency. And consistently there was a Russia nexus. There was some angle where they had worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and done extremely well.
Scott Pelley: What has been the impact on American national security?
Greg Edgreen: The impact has been that the intelligence officers and our diplomats working abroad are being removed from their posts with traumatic brain injuries. They’re being neutralized.
Greg Edgreen and Scott Pelley
60 Minutes
Tonight, we’re reporting for the first time, an incident at last year’s NATO summit in Lithuania—a meeting that focused largely on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was attended by President Biden. Multiple sources tell us that a senior official of the Department of Defense was struck by the symptoms and sought medical treatment. We told Greg Edgreen what we’d learned.
Greg Edgreen: It tells me that there are no barriers on what Moscow will do, on who they will attack, and that if we don’t face this head on, the problem is going to get worse.
The problem first appeared in public in 2016. U.S. officials reported being hurt in Cuba and the incidents became known as Havana Syndrome. But we have learned it started two years earlier when at least four Americans reported symptoms in Frankfurt, Germany. There is also evidence of what could be revenge attacks. For example, in 2014, three CIA officers were stationed in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s obsession. 2014 was the year that a popular revolt overthrew Putin’s preferred leader. Later, those CIA officers went on to other assignments and reported being hit, one in Uzbekistan, one in Vietnam, and the third officer’s family was hit in London.
If it is Russia, investigative reporter Christo Grozev believes he knows who’s involved. In 2018, Grozev was the first to discover the existence of a top secret Russian intelligence unit which goes by a number, 29155.
Christo Grozev: These are people who are trained to be versatile assassins and sabotage operators. They are trained in countersurveillance, they are trained in explosives, they’re trained to be using poison, and technology equipment to actually inflict pain or damage to the targets.
Grozev works with our collaborators on this report, a magazine called The Insider and Germany’s Der Spiegel. he has a long track record uncovering Russian documents. And Grozev says he found one that may link 29155 to a directed energy weapon.
Christo Grozev: And when I saw it, I literally had tears in my eyes, because it was spelling out what they had been doing.
It’s a piece of accounting. An officer of 29155 received a bonus for work on quote, “potential capabilities of non-lethal acoustic weapons…”
Christo Grozev: Which told us that this particular unit had been engaged with somewhere, somehow, empirical tests of a directed energy unit.
Scott Pelley: There it is, written down in black and white.
Christo Grozev: It’s the closest to a receipt you can have for this.
Christo Grozev
60 Minutes
We’ve also found that Russia’s 29155 may have been present in Tbilisi, Georgia when Americans reported incidents there.
Scott Pelley: Do you believe that you were attacked?
Anonymous: Absolutely.
She asked us to withhold her name for her safety. She’s the wife of a Justice Department official who was with the embassy in Tbilisi. She’s a nurse with a Ph.D. in anesthesiology. On Oct. 7, 2021, she says that she was in her laundry room when she was blindsided by a sound.
Anonymous: As I’m reaching into the dryer– I am completely consumed by a piercing sound that I can only describe as when you listen to a movie and the main character is also consumed by the sound after a bomb goes off. That is similar to the sound that I heard. And it just pierced my ears, came in my left side, felt like it came through the window, into my left ear. I immediately felt fullness in my head, and just a piercing headache. And when I realized that I needed to get out of the laundry room, I left the room, and went into our bedroom next door, and projectile vomited in our bathroom
We have learned that hers was the second incident that week. Sources tell us, earlier, in the neighborhood, a U.S. official, their spouse and child were hit. We have also learned of a phone call that was intercepted nearby. A man says in Russian, “Is it supposed to have blinking green lights?” and “Should I leave it on all night.” We have no idea what he was talking about but, the next day, the incidents began.
Sources tell us that an investigation centered on this Russian, Albert Averyanov. His name, on travel manifests and phone records, appears alongside known members of Unit 29155. He is also the son of the commander.
Christo Grozev: He was groomed to become a member of the unit since he was 16. His number is in the phone books of all members of the unit. Clearly, he’s more than just the son of the boss. He’s a colleague of these people.
Grozev found Albert Averyanov’s phone was turned off during the Tbilisi incidents but our sources say there’s evidence someone in Tbilisi logged into Averyanov’s personal email during this time. Most likely, Grozev believes, Averyanov himself—placing him in the city.
Christo Grozev: We believe members of Unit 29155 were there in order to facilitate, supervise, or maybe even personally implement attacks on American diplomats, on American government officials, using an acoustic weapon.
Scott Pelley: After you were able to get out of the laundry room, call your husband, what did you do then?
Anonymous: I went downstairs. I first looked on our security camera, which is right beside our front door, to see if anyone was outside. There was a vehicle right outside of our gate. I took a photo of that vehicle and noticed that it was not a vehicle that I recognized. And I went outside.
Scott Pelley: Did you see anyone around the vehicle?
Anonymous: I did.
Scott Pelley: We sent you a photograph of Albert Averyanov. And this is the picture that we sent you.
Anonymous: You did.
Scott Pelley: And I wonder if that looks anything like the man you saw outside your home.
Anonymous: It absolutely does. And when I received this photo, I had a visceral reaction. It made me feel sick. I cannot absolutely say for certainty that it is this man, but I can tell you that even to this day, looking at him makes me feel that same visceral reaction. And I can absolutely say that this looks like the man that I saw in the street.
This 40-year-old wife and mother is among the most severely injured people we have met.
Anonymous: My headaches and brain fog continued. Later on into that weekend, I started having trouble walking down the stairs, specifically at night. I had trouble finding the steps to get down the stairs. So my coordination and vestibular system started just really falling apart.
She was medically evacuated. And now doctors say she has holes in her inner ear canals—the vestibular system that creates the sense of balance. Two surgeries put metal plates in her skull. Another surgery is likely.
Despite experiences like hers, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said last year it’s “very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible.” But the DNI also acknowledged that some intelligence agencies had only “low” or “moderate” confidence in that assessment. This month, the National Institutes of Health reported results of brain scans. NIH said there’s no evidence of physical damage. but the medical science of so-called anomalous health incidents remains vigorously debated. For its part, the Director of National Intelligence says the symptoms probably result from “… preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors.” Attorney Mark Zaid represents more than two dozen ahi clients.
Scott Pelley: What do you make of the intelligence community assessment?
Mark Zaid: So I’ve had access to classified information relating to AHI. I can’t reveal it. I wouldn’t reveal it. I will tell you that I don’t believe it to be the entire story, and I know of information that undermines or contradicts what they are saying publicly.
Scott Pelley: Are you saying that the government wants to cover this up?
Mark Zaid: There is, in my view, without a doubt, evidence of a cover up. Now, some of that cover up is not necessarily that, oh, we found a weapon and we don’t want anybody to know about it. What I’ve seen more so is we see lines of inquiry that would take us potentially to answers we don’t want to have to deal with, so we’re not going to explore any of those avenues.
Greg Edgreen
60 Minutes
Greg Edgreen: “You know, if my mother had seen what I saw, she would say, ‘It’s the Russians, stupid.’”
Greg Edgreen who ran the military investigation told us he had the Pentagon’s support but, in the Trump, and Biden administrations, he says, the bar for proof was set impossibly high.
Greg Edgreen: I think it was set so high because we did not, as a country, and a government, want to face some very hard truths.
Scott Pelley: And what are those?
Greg Edgreen: Can we secure America? Are these massive counterintelligence failures? Can we protect American soil and our people on American soil? Are we being attacked? And if we’re being attacked, is that an act of war?
After what he learned in his classified investigation, Greg Edgreen retired from the Army to start a company to help the victims. He hopes to channel government contracts into treatment programs.
As with all spy stories, much is classified and what remains is circumstantial. None of the witnesses tonight wanted to speak. Some fear for their families. But all felt compelled to shine a light on what they see as a war of shadows –a war America may not be winning.
Christo Grozev: If this is what we’ve seen with the hundreds of cases of Anomalous Health Incidents, I can assure that this has become probably Putin’s biggest victory. In his own mind this has been Russia’s biggest victory against the West.
Scott Pelley: In terms of the long-term, would you consider this to be life-altering?
Anonymous: Absolutely life-altering. For our whole family.
“Targeting Americans” statements
Prior to 60 Minutes’ March 31, 2024, broadcast which featured correspondent Scott Pelley’s report on Havana Syndrome, we reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the White House, and the FBI for comments on our story, “Targeting Americans.”
They responded to 60 Minutes with the following statements:
Office of the Director of National Intelligence:
“We continue to closely examine anomalous health incidents (AHIs), particularly in areas we have identified as requiring additional research and analysis. Most IC agencies have concluded that it is very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs. IC agencies have varying confidence levels because we still have gaps given the challenges collecting on foreign adversaries—as we do on many issues involving them. As part of its review, the IC identified critical assumptions surrounding the initial AHIs reported in Cuba from 2016 to 2018, which framed the IC’s understanding of this phenomenon, but were not borne out by subsequent medical and technical analysis. In light of this and the evidence that points away from a foreign adversary, causal mechanism, or unique syndromes linked to AHIs, IC agencies assess those symptoms reported by U.S. personnel probably were the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary. These findings do not call into question the very real experiences and symptoms that our colleagues and their family members have reported. We continue to prioritize our work on such incidents, allocating resources and expertise across the government, pursuing multiple lines of inquiry and seeking information to fill the gaps we have identified.”
White House:
“At the start of the Biden-Harris Administration and again following the 2023 Intelligence Community assessment, the White House has directed departments and agencies across the federal government to prioritize investigations into the cause of AHIs and to examine reports thoroughly; to ensure that U.S. Government personnel and their families who report AHIs receive the support and timely access to medical care that they need; and to take reports of AHIs seriously and treat personnel with respect and compassion. The Biden-Harris administration continues to emphasize the importance of prioritizing efforts to comprehensively examine the effects and potential causes of AHIs.”
FBI:
“The issue of Anomalous Health Incidents is a top priority for the FBI, as the protection, health and well-being of our employees and colleagues across the federal government is paramount. We will continue to work alongside our partners in the intelligence community as part of the interagency effort to determine how we can best protect our personnel. The FBI takes all U.S. government personnel who report symptoms seriously. In keeping with this practice, the FBI has messaged its workforce on how to respond if they experience an AHI, how to report an incident, and where they can receive medical evaluations for symptoms or persistent effects.
Produced by Oriana Zill de Granados and Michael Rey. Associate producers: Emily Gordon, Kit Ramgopal and Jamie Woods. Broadcast Associate: Michelle Karim. Edited by Michael Mongulla and Joe Schanzer.
Scott Pelley, one of the most experienced and awarded journalists today, has been reporting stories for “60 Minutes” since 2004. The 2023-24 season is his 20th on the broadcast. Scott has won half of all major awards earned by “60 Minutes” during his tenure at the venerable CBS newsmagazine.
Passengers on board the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that suffered a terrifying midair blowout in January have received a letter from the FBI saying they may be victims “of a crime.”Attorney Mark Lindquist, who represents multiple passengers that were on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, shared with CNN the letter that the FBI office in Seattle sent to passengers on Tuesday.“I’m contacting you because we have identified you as a possible victim of a crime,” the letter reads in part. It also notes that the FBI is currently investigating the case.“My clients and I welcome the DOJ investigation,” Lindquist told CNN, “We want accountability. We want answers. We want safer Boeing planes. And a DOJ investigation helps advance our goals.”Attorney Robert Clifford, who represents many family members of the 2019 crash victims of a Boeing 737 Max jet flown by Ethiopian Air as well as some of the recent Alaska Air passengers, said some of his clients on Alaska Air also got the letter notifying them that they could be crime victims.“I’m certain everyone on the plane will be getting this letter,” he told CNN. “The families of the Ethiopian Air victims should have also been considered crime victims.”In addition to the letters that went out to passengers, flight attendants aboard Alaska Air Flight 1282 have been interviewed by investigators from the Justice Department, according to people familiar with the situation.The letters were first reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.“The FBI does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” FBI Seattle’s Public Affairs Office wrote in an email to CNN, citing Department of Justice policy.Video below: Door plugs and missing bolts? The Boeing 737 Max 9 investigation explainedBoeing’s potential criminal liabilityBut Justice opened a probe into the incident and Boeing in February. That investigation carries the potential to upend a controversial deferred prosecution agreement that Boeing reached with the Justice Department in the final month of the Trump administration.The settlement, which was criticized by families of crash victims and members of Congress, was over charges that Boeing defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration during the original certification process for the 737 Max jets. Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion as part of that settlement, but most of that was money Boeing had already agreed to pay to the airlines that had purchased the Max jets grounded for 20 months following the Ethiopian Air crash and an earlier crash in Indonesia.The deferred prosecution agreement could have ended the threat of Boeing facing criminal liability for those earlier fraud charges. But the Alaska Air incident came just days before a three-year probation-like period was due to end, so the criminal probe could expose Boeing to charges not just for the Alaska Air incident but also the earlier allegations of criminal wrongdoing.Boeing declined to comment.On Jan. 5, 171 passengers and six crew members boarded the flight in Portland, Oregon, bound for Ontario, California. Abruptly after take off, a panel of the fuselage called the “door plug” blew off, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing. A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the jet, which was delivered to Alaska by Boeing in October, had left Boeing’s factory without the four bolts needed to keep the door plug in place.While the NTSB has yet to assess blame for the missing bolts, it has criticized Boeing for not having the documentation available showing who worked on the door plug when the plane was at Boeing’s factory.The FAA has also found multiple problems with production practices of both Boeing and its major supplier Spirit AeroSystems following a six-week audit of Boeing triggered by the Jan. 5 door plug blowout.Subpoenas from the Justice Department were also recently sent seeking documents and information that may be related to Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems and mentions the “door plug” that is used in the Boeing 737 Max 9s, according to a report from Bloomberg.Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told investors last month that “We caused the problem, and we understand that. Whatever conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened.”The development comes the same week Boeing said it will report massive losses in the first quarter stemming from the Alaska Airlines incident.The losses will be in part because of compensation to airlines that owned the Max 9, which was grounded for three weeks after the incident. Alaska Air CEO Ben Minicucci told investors last month that the incident cost his airline about $150 million, and that it expected to be compensated for those losses by Boeing.The other contributors to losses will be “all the things we’re doing around the factory,” Chief Financial Officer Brian West said on Wednesday, leading to slower production at its 737 Max plant in Renton Washington.
ATLANTA —
Passengers on board the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that suffered a terrifying midair blowout in January have received a letter from the FBI saying they may be victims “of a crime.”
Attorney Mark Lindquist, who represents multiple passengers that were on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, shared with CNN the letter that the FBI office in Seattle sent to passengers on Tuesday.
“I’m contacting you because we have identified you as a possible victim of a crime,” the letter reads in part. It also notes that the FBI is currently investigating the case.
“My clients and I welcome the DOJ investigation,” Lindquist told CNN, “We want accountability. We want answers. We want safer Boeing planes. And a DOJ investigation helps advance our goals.”
Attorney Robert Clifford, who represents many family members of the 2019 crash victims of a Boeing 737 Max jet flown by Ethiopian Air as well as some of the recent Alaska Air passengers, said some of his clients on Alaska Air also got the letter notifying them that they could be crime victims.
“I’m certain everyone on the plane will be getting this letter,” he told CNN. “The families of the Ethiopian Air victims should have also been considered crime victims.”
In addition to the letters that went out to passengers, flight attendants aboard Alaska Air Flight 1282 have been interviewed by investigators from the Justice Department, according to people familiar with the situation.
The letters were first reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
“The FBI does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” FBI Seattle’s Public Affairs Office wrote in an email to CNN, citing Department of Justice policy.
Video below: Door plugs and missing bolts? The Boeing 737 Max 9 investigation explained
Boeing’s potential criminal liability
But Justice opened a probe into the incident and Boeing in February. That investigation carries the potential to upend a controversial deferred prosecution agreement that Boeing reached with the Justice Department in the final month of the Trump administration.
The settlement, which was criticized by families of crash victims and members of Congress, was over charges that Boeing defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration during the original certification process for the 737 Max jets. Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion as part of that settlement, but most of that was money Boeing had already agreed to pay to the airlines that had purchased the Max jets grounded for 20 months following the Ethiopian Air crash and an earlier crash in Indonesia.
The deferred prosecution agreement could have ended the threat of Boeing facing criminal liability for those earlier fraud charges. But the Alaska Air incident came just days before a three-year probation-like period was due to end, so the criminal probe could expose Boeing to charges not just for the Alaska Air incident but also the earlier allegations of criminal wrongdoing.
Boeing declined to comment.
On Jan. 5, 171 passengers and six crew members boarded the flight in Portland, Oregon, bound for Ontario, California. Abruptly after take off, a panel of the fuselage called the “door plug” blew off, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing.
A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the jet, which was delivered to Alaska by Boeing in October, had left Boeing’s factory without the four bolts needed to keep the door plug in place.
While the NTSB has yet to assess blame for the missing bolts, it has criticized Boeing for not having the documentation available showing who worked on the door plug when the plane was at Boeing’s factory.
The FAA has also found multiple problems with production practices of both Boeing and its major supplier Spirit AeroSystems following a six-week audit of Boeing triggered by the Jan. 5 door plug blowout.
Subpoenas from the Justice Department were also recently sent seeking documents and information that may be related to Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems and mentions the “door plug” that is used in the Boeing 737 Max 9s, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told investors last month that “We caused the problem, and we understand that. Whatever conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened.”
The development comes the same week Boeing said it will report massive losses in the first quarter stemming from the Alaska Airlines incident.
The losses will be in part because of compensation to airlines that owned the Max 9, which was grounded for three weeks after the incident. Alaska Air CEO Ben Minicucci told investors last month that the incident cost his airline about $150 million, and that it expected to be compensated for those losses by Boeing.
The other contributors to losses will be “all the things we’re doing around the factory,” Chief Financial Officer Brian West said on Wednesday, leading to slower production at its 737 Max plant in Renton Washington.
A bill introduced by senators Dick Durbin and Mike Lee to reauthorize the Section 702 surveillance program is the fifth introduced in the US Congress this winter. The authority is threatening to expire in a month, disrupting a global wiretapping program said to inform a third of articles in the President’s Daily Briefing—a morning “tour d’horizon” of US spies’ top concerns.
But the stakes aren’t exactly so clear. With or without Congress, the Biden administration is seeking court approval to extend the 702 program into 2025. From the moment US representative Mike Johnson assumed the House speakership, he’s been unable to orchestrate a vote on the program. Outgunned most recently by Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Johnson was forced to kill a vote after a month of negotiations.
This, even though Congress can essentially agree on one thing if nothing else: that the 702 program is vital to the national defense and that it can’t be allowed to expire. Johnson has, once again, vowed to hold a vote on the matter, this time after Easter. And historically, this is where things have begun to fall apart.
The biggest hurdle to reauthorizing the program is a dispute between lawmakers over whether the government should get search warrants before looking up Americans using 702, a massive wiretap database full of millions of email, voice, and text conversations intercepted by spies.
The Durbin-Lee bill contains tweaks designed, its authors say, to meet the Biden administration halfway. While all the legislation up to this point has wrestled over the title of “reform bill,” Durbin’s has set its sights on an idea far more defensible: The Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act, he says, is a “bill of compromise.”
Unlike other reform bills, the SAFE Act would not require the FBI to obtain a warrant to find out if the 702 database contains an American’s communications. Only if the search produces results would investigators need a warrant, and only if they wanted to read what the messages say.
Without going to court, investigators could learn whether the communications they’re after exist, whether the person they’re looking at communicated with any foreigners under US surveillance, and when exactly those conversations took place. As it’s generally trivial for law enforcement to obtain these kinds of records anyway, this is a compromise that doesn’t serve up a major loss for lawmakers on the side of reform.
The tweak will add to the difficulty the FBI is having convincing lawmakers that warrants will hinder investigations or destroy the program altogether. “This narrow warrant requirement is carefully crafted to ensure that it is feasible to implement,” Durbin says, “and sufficiently flexible to accommodate legitimate security needs.”
“There is little doubt that Section 702 is a valuable national security tool,” adds Durbin, but the program sweeps up “massive amounts of Americans’ communications.”
“Even after implementing compliance measures, the FBI still conducted more than 200,000 warrantless searches of Americans’ communications in just one year—more than 500 warrantless searches per day,” he says.
A six-page document that sat in the Rosenbach Museum for a century made its way to Washington, D.C., on Thursday ahead of its long-awaited journey home to Peru.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken formally repatriated the stolen relic, a 1599 contract establishing the first theatrical company in the Americas, in a Washington, D.C., ceremony with Javier González-Olaechea, the foreign affairs minister for Peru. It will now return to the Peruvian national archives in Lima.
“Thanks to very good work between our governments, we were able to return these documents to make sure that the extraordinary cultural heritage of Peru is further reinforced,” Blinken said.
An FBI investigation revealed that the document was torn from a bound volume in the national archives of Peru. Little is known about the theft, but the pages were later purchased by A.S.W. Rosenbach, the founder and namesake of the Philadelphia rare book collection, in the 1920s. The Rosenbach Museum voluntarily relinquished the manuscript to the FBI in November.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office also participated in the investigation, which began in 2017 at the request of the Peruvian government.
“It’s been an honor for our office to assist in the return of this centuries-old manuscript to the people of Peru,” U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said in a statement. “The document represents a unique part of Peru’s history, and its repatriation reflects the Department of Justice’s ongoing commitment to protecting cultural heritage, not just in our own country, but around the world.”
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – 70 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies looked to hire at the 2nd Annual Recruiting Women into Law Enforcement event. Many agencies, like the F.B.I. and New York State Police, have pledged to increase the percentage of female recruits to 30 percent by the year 2030.
Agencies from around the Capital Region, central New York and Vermont were present at the Albany Capital Center to answer questions for interested candidates. Some were on the fence when they walked into the building, like UAlbany student Jaya Dixon.
“I’m kind of leaning toward it now. Once I came here, I was kind of influenced by, especially, all the women on the panel. It was very important seeing women, especially women of color, in law enforcement knowing that it’s a kind of male-dominated area,” said Dixon, who is a junior majoring in communications and minoring in Spanish.
One example was New York State Police Lieutenant Treneé Young, who spoke on the panel.
“I am very, very honored to be able to let them know that there is a path forward in law enforcement, if it’s what you choose,” said Young.
On Thursday she will blaze the trail as the first African American woman to become a captain for the New York State Police.
Young will be the first African American woman to rise to the rank of captain for the New York State Police on Thursday.
“It feels great. I can’t believe that my journey is playing out this way and I’m really excited. I look forward to setting an example and being a role model for all the people who are going to come behind me,” said Young.
She certainly made an impression on Dixon, who said Young’s story inspired her.
“I was really influenced and I think now that I’ve seen and heard their stories, I’m more interested in it now. I think it’s kind of confirmed but I’m still just exploring for the most part,” said Dixon.
If you’re thinking about pursuing a career in law enforcement, organizers recommend you start by researching the agency you’re most interested in, then go for it.
You know, even if this woman wasn’t going to prison we wouldn’t trust her as our pediatrician!
Dr. Stephanie Russell was a beloved small town children’s doctor in Kentucky. She had an office totally decorated in Disney themes. Sounds like a sweet woman… until she was charged in a murder-for-hire plot, that is. Dr. Russell was arrested way back in May 2022 after allegedly trying to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband. Apparently she was furious her ex, Rick Crabtree, had been awarded sole custody of their two children. But the murder didn’t work out. Turns out the person she spoke to online — and agreed to pay $7,000 to kill Crabtree — was actually an undercover FBI agent. Oops! Now she’s charged with one count of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.
But the case just took a very strange, magical turn…
Innerestingly, it was the defense who revealed this odd wrinkle in the case, per Law&Crime. They revealed a bevy of Whatsapp messages showing Stephanie didn’t jump right to a hitman. She first tried… voodoo? Witchcraft? We’re not sure which. But she reached out to the supernatural, in any case.
In the messages, she speaks to someone going only by the name Mama, from whom she is discussing buying a “death spell” for her ex. She asks:
“What is your success rate? Your price? Your guarantee?”
“Mama” then responds with the disturbingly reassuring messages:
“death success rates are 85%”
“price depends on the number of people”
“100% guarantee or money back”
Ultimately they land on $580 for a death spell for just one guy. With the money back guarantee? Damn, that seems like a reasonable deal. But that wasn’t enough for Steph. The not-so-good doctor asks for more specifics about the spell, even referencing animal sacrifice and the Afro-Brazilian religious tradition known as Quimbanda. But Mama shuts her down, saying simply:
“It’s a death spell my dear not a love spell. i can’t tell you inside details but i will do your job.”
But Dr. Russell didn’t stop there. For someone willing to believe in spells she could purchase, she stayed dubious — seemingly determined not to be an easy mark. She may have been new to the sorcery game, but she did what any savvy buyer would do. She shopped around.
She messaged someone just known as “Spiritual Healer” with the prompt that she was “looking for a death spell.” This one told her:
“Yes I will cast death Spell for you.”
She actually did get a better offer here, $430, only half up front, and the promise of “100% result in 6hours.” But Russell refused to pay up front at all, pleading with the Spiritual Healer, “Can I please pay after? I cannot afford to pay without results.”
The Spiritual Healer actually drops to $150 up front, citing the need to pay for the ingredients for the spell. The doc haggles down to $50. Amazing. Finally getting the price she wanted, Stephanie gives the magician her ex’s name and photo. However, she wants one more assurance — that this won’t involve Quimbanda. Spiritual Healer answers that it will be Voodoo only.
That seems to be that. But she reaches out to a third person going by “Sk” — this one tells her no, it’s not Quimbanda but rather “indian vedic magic.” But after Stephanie sends the name and photo, Sk actually advises her against using a death spell. Still, she tells them:
“The only way we will have peace is if he dies.”
But Sk warns her that “killing him etc is going to harm you and family as he has some type of protection on him.” They say he is actually “into black magic” — and as such suggest she purchase a “banishing spell only.” Dr. Russell forces the issue, asking:
“Is there anything you can do to cause the death?”
They don’t seem to want to touch it. And of course we know where she ended up after the magic didn’t pan out for her — hiring an undercover fed.
So why did the defense offer all this? Doesn’t it kind of prove she was trying to pay someone to kill Crabtree, even if it was through unorthodox means? Well, they argue it proves Russell wasn’t in her right mind. They’re arguing she didn’t have the mental capacity to be convicted of the crime she’s charged with — essentially because she was crazy enough to try to use magic!
“Ms. Russell’s mental health was severely disturbed, from both the empirical and clinical perspectives, when she engaged in the conduct alleged in the indictment… In March 2022, Ms. Russell reached out to self-described spiritualists for help, asking (with all credulity) for a ‘death spell’ on her ex-husband.”
We appreciate the legal curveball, but… will it work? One would have to be out of their mind to believe a spell could actually work, but then again, enough people believe in all sorts of supernatural things and just call it having faith in their religion, so… if she’s crazy, are all religious followers? We’ll have to see what the court thinks. The trial is set to begin April 22 in Louisville.
What do YOU think, Perezcious readers? Does this make her more guilty? Less? Mentally incapable? Or just eccentric? Tell us your thoughts in the comments (below)!
(FOX40.COM) — A Southern California man has been sentenced to nearly two years in prison after an FBI investigation found he and three other Korean nationals were responsible for a “check-kiting bust out” scam that led to a loss of over $200,000 to various banks throughout the Sacramento area.
According to the Department of Justice, the schemers would get real Korean passports with new photos and fake names and use them to open bank accounts with a small amount of cash. Those accounts would stay dormant until the schemers believed the bank would allow them to deposit a check and withdraw a portion of the money before it cleared. •Video Above: Card skimming scams: What you need to know
This would be done by writing checks from various accounts with insufficient funds, depositing checks into the accounts initially created with the Korean passports, and then withdrawing the money before the checks cleared.
The DOJ added that the scammers would access the funds by purchasing a money order and depositing it into another bank account associated with the scheme.
According to the Department of Justice, the “bust-out” scam resulted in a loss of $273,800 to the banks. Based on additional, unsuccessful attempts to conduct the scheme, the total intended loss was $466,318.
Three other Korean nationals between the ages of 47 and 55 were previously sentenced for their connection to this scheme. Their sentences ranged from two years to seven years.
The Los Angeles man, 60, who was sentenced on Thursday received a sentence of 21 months in prison.
The Department of Justice did not specify the banks affected by the scheme, but they said that the scam was done in “the Sacramento area and elsewhere.”
Six days before Christmas, the US Department of Justice loudly announced a win in the ongoing fight against the scourge of ransomware: An FBI-led, international operation had targeted the notorious hacking group known as BlackCat or AlphV, releasing decryption keys to foil its ransom attempts against hundreds of victims and seizing the dark web sites it had used to threaten and extort them. “In disrupting the BlackCat ransomware group, the Justice Department has once again hacked the hackers,” deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco declared in a statement.
Two months and one week later, however, those hackers don’t appear particularly “disrupted.” For the last seven days and counting, BlackCat has held hostage the medical firm Change Healthcare, crippling its software in hospitals and pharmacies across the United States, leading to delays in drug prescriptions for an untold number of patients.
The ongoing outage at Change Healthcare, first reported to be a BlackCat attack by Reuters, represents a particularly grim incident in the ransomware epidemic not just due to its severity, its length, and the potential toll on victims’ health. Ransomware-tracking analysts say it also illustrates how even law enforcement’s wins against ransomware groups appear to be increasingly short-lived, as the hackers that law enforcement target in carefully coordinated busts simply rebuild and restart their attacks with impunity.
“Because we can’t arrest the core operators that are in Russia or in areas that are uncooperative with law enforcement, we can’t stop them,” says Allan Liska, a ransomware-focused researcher for cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Instead, Liska says, law enforcement often has had to settle for spending months or years arranging takedowns that target infrastructure or aid victims, but without laying hands on the attacks’ perpetrators. “The threat actors just need to regroup, get drunk for a weekend, and then start right back up,” Liska says.
In another, more recent bust, the UK’s National Crime Agency last week led a broad takedown effort against the notorious Lockbit ransomware group, hijacking its infrastructure, seizing many of its cryptocurrency wallets, taking down its dark web sites, and even obtaining information about its operators and partners. Yet less than a week later, Lockbit has already launched a fresh dark web site where it continues to extort its victims, showing countdown timers for each one that indicate the remaining days or hours before it dumps their stolen data online.
None of that means law enforcement’s BlackCat or Lockbit operations haven’t had some effect. BlackCat listed 28 victims on its dark web site for February so far, a significant drop from the 60-plus Recorded Future counted on its site in December prior to the FBI’s takedown. (Change Healthcare isn’t currently listed among BlackCat’s current victims on its site, though the hackers reportedly took credit for the attack, according to ransomware-tracking site Breaches.net. Change Healthcare also didn’t respond to WIRED’s request for comment on the cyberattack.)
Lockbit, for its part, may be hiding the extent of its disruption behind the bluster of its new leak site, argues Brett Callow, a ransomware analyst at security firm Emsisoft. He says that the group is likely downplaying last week’s bust in part to avoid losing the trust of its affiliate partners, the hackers who penetrate victim networks on Lockbit’s behalf and might be spooked by the possibility that Lockbit has been compromised by law enforcement.
In four motions filed late last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Florida, Donald Trump’s lawyers seek dismissal of 40 felony charges based on his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House in January 2021. They argue that his decision to keep the documents is shielded by “absolute” presidential immunity for “official acts,” that he had complete discretion to designate records as personal rather than presidential, and that the charges related to mishandling “national defense information” are based on an “unconstitutionally vague” statute. They also argue that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who obtained the indictment, was improperly appointed, making all of the charges invalid.
The motion based on presidential immunity, which seeks dismissal of the 32 counts alleging unlawful retention of specific classified documents, rehashes the argument that a D.C. Circuit panel unanimously rejected this month in the federal case based on Trump’s attempts to remain in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election. “The D.C. Circuit’s analysis is not persuasive,” Trump’s lawyers write, “and President Trump is pursuing further review of that erroneous decision, including en banc review if allowed, and review in the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.” They say U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the documents case in Florida, “should not follow the D.C. Circuit’s non-binding, poorly reasoned decision.”
As Trump sees it, the separation of powers bars federal courts from sitting in judgment of a former president’s “official acts,” whether in the context of a civil case or in the context of a criminal prosecution. The D.C. Circuit, including Republican appointee Karen L. Henderson, was troubled by the implications of that position, which would allow presidents to commit grave crimes, including assassination of political opponents, without being held accountable unless they were impeached and removed from office based on the same conduct.
Trump’s lawyers read the Supreme Court’s 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison as prohibiting judicial review of any presidential act. But as the D.C. Circuit emphasized, federal courts historically have passed judgment on the legality of presidential decisions, most famously in the 1952 case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. In that case, the appeals court noted, the Supreme Court “exercised its cognizance over Presidential action to dramatic effect” by holding that “President Harry Truman’s executive order seizing control of most of the country’s steel mills exceeded his constitutional and statutory authority and was therefore invalid.”
Strictly speaking, however, Youngstown dealt with an order issued by the secretary of commerce rather than the president himself. “To be sure,” Trump’s lawyers say, federal courts “sometimes review the validity of the official acts of subordinate executive officials below the president, and such review may reflect indirectly on the lawfulness of the president’s own acts or directives. But the authority of judicial review of the official acts of subordinate officers has never been held to extend to the official acts of the president himself.”
Marbury drew a distinction between “discretionary” and “ministerial” acts. Regarding the first category, Chief Justice John Marshall said in the majority opinion, “the President is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion, and is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience.” In that situation, he said, “the subjects are political and the decision of the executive is conclusive,” meaning it “can never be examinable by the courts.”
But that is not true, Marshall added, “when the legislature proceeds to impose on [an executive official] other duties; when he is directed peremptorily to perform certain acts; when the rights of individuals are dependent on the performance of those acts.” Then “he is so far the officer of the law, is amenable to the laws for his conduct, and cannot at his discretion, sport away the vested rights of others.” In those circumstances, he is acting as a “ministerial officer compellable to do his duty, and if he refuses, is liable to indictment.”
Although Trump’s lawyers do not explicitly address that distinction, they argue that the counts charging him with illegally retaining 32 listed classified documents are based on 1) presidential decisions that 2) fell within the “discretionary” category. Both of those conclusions seem dubious.
The indictment says Trump “caused scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported” from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s lawyers say the indictment “makes clear that this decision and the related transportation of records occurred while President Trump was still in office.”
As Trump’s lawyers see it, in other words, the first 32 counts are all based on actions that he took as president. That interpretation seems problematic based on the text of the statute and the wording of the indictment.
Trump is charged with violating 18 USC 793(e), which applies to someone who has “unauthorized possession” of “information relating to the national defense” and “willfully retains” it when he “has reason to believe” it “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” The indictment says Trump “did willfully retain the documents and fail to deliver them to the officer and employee of the United States entitled to receive them.”
Retaining the documents and failing to deliver them are distinct from the initial act of transportation. While the latter may have happened while Trump was still in office, the former included his conduct during the year and a half that elapsed from the end of his term until an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago discovered the 32 documents, along with 70 or so others marked as classified, on August 8, 2022. During that time, Trump delivered some classified documents but retained others, even after he claimed to comply with a federal subpoena demanding their return. But for that continuing resistance, the FBI would not have obtained a search warrant and Trump would not be facing these charges.
Why does Trump think the initial act of bringing the documents to Mar-a-Lago was within his discretion as president? Under the Presidential Records Act, he argues in another motion, he had complete authority to classify documents as personal, meaning he could keep them rather than turn them over to the National Archives. His possession of those documents therefore was not “unauthorized,” as required for a conviction under Section 793(e). And since the FBI’s investigation was not legally justified, Trump’s lawyers say, the other eight counts, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, concealing records, and lying to federal investigators, also should be dismissed.
That reading of the Presidential Records Act is counterintuitive given its motivation and text. The impetus for the law was President Richard Nixon’s assertion of the very authority that Trump is now claiming. Rather than allow a president to destroy or retain official documents at will, Congress declared that “the United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.”
The law defines presidential records as “documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President’s immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.” That term excludes “personal records,” defined as “all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.”
As Trump reads the Presidential Records Act, however, it “conferred unreviewable discretion on President Trump to designate the records at issue as personal.” That interpretation would, on its face, render the statute a nullity. If a president has total discretion to decide that a document is “of a purely private or nonpublic character,” regardless of its content, the situation that Congress sought to rectify would be unchanged in practice.
Trump also argues that Section 793(e), as applied to him, violates his Fifth Amendment right to due process because it is so vague that it does not “give people of common intelligence fair notice of what the law demands of them.” In particular, his lawyers say, the phrases “unauthorized possession,” “relating to the national defense,” and “entitled to receive” have no clear meaning.
Finally, Trump says the indictment is invalid because “the Appointments Clause does not permit the Attorney General to appoint, without Senate confirmation, a private citizen and like-minded political ally to wield the prosecutorial power of the United States.” Smith therefore “lacks the authority to prosecute this action.”
The Appointments Clause empowers the president to “appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law.” Because there is “no statute establishing the Office of Special Counsel,” Trump’s motion says, “Smith’s appointment is invalid and any prosecutorial power he seeks to wield is ultra vires”—i.e., without legal authority.
This question, the motion says, is “an issue of first impression in the Eleventh Circuit,” which includes Florida. But in 2019, the D.C. Circuit rejected the argument that Trump is deploying here, holding that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was an “inferior” rather than “principal” officer, meaning that Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had the authority to appoint him.
Trump is asking Cannon to approve “discovery and pretrial hearings on factual disputes” relevant to his motions. That is apt to delay the trial in this case, which had been scheduled to begin on May 20.
The Section 793(e) charges require the government to show that the 32 documents listed in the indictment contained information that could compromise national security, a task complicated by their classified status. But the obstruction-related counts, which include allegations that Trump defied the federal subpoena, deliberately concealed classified records, and tried to cover up his cover-up by instructing his underlings to delete incriminating surveillance camera footage, may be the strongest charges that he faces across four criminal cases. Assuming the government can prove the facts it alleges in the indictment, it seems pretty clear that Trump is guilty of multiple felonies, including half a dozen that are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Washington — A federal contractor working for the FBI has been arrested after allegedly stealing an FBI vehicle from bureau headquarters Tuesday afternoon.
Later, a handgun magazine belonging to the agent who drove the car was found inside the vehicle, charging documents filed Wednesday revealed.
John Worrell, of Virginia, worked for an outside government contracting agency and was assigned to FBI headquarters, prosecutors said, when he allegedly stole the dark green four-door Ford sedan from an FBI garage and drove to another FBI facility in Vienna, Virginia. There, investigators say Worrell displayed the credentials of the federal agent to whom the car was assigned and tried to gain entry to the facility.
Worrell isn’t an FBI agent or a law enforcement officer, but he was authorized to be at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., because of his work as a contractor.
He “claimed to have a classified meeting at the Vienna FBI facility,” but did not have the necessary access cards, prompting officials to deny him entry there, according to court documents. Worrell allegedly tried to enter the Vienna facility a second time and after again being denied, he spent about 45 minutes in the parking area.
Worrell later provided his real identification to security officials at the Vienna facility, who called the police.
Prosecutors alleged that during a consensual search of the FBI-issued vehicle by police, officers uncovered a “loaded handgun magazine” from a fanny pack inside the car that belonged to the unnamed agent who drives the car. Court documents indicated Worrell wasn’t aware that the magazine was inside, since he told officers he was not aware of any weapons in the car.
During an interview, Worrell told investigators he “believed he had been receiving coded messages, which appeared in various forms including e-mails, ‘stage whispering,’ and a variety of different context clues over the course of several weeks, indicating that [he] was in danger, and thus he was attempting to go to a secure facility where he could be ‘safe,’” according to charging documents.
Investigators said in court documents that limited parking at the FBI headquarters requires keys to be left inside cars parked in its garage “to allow vehicles to be moved by authorized personnel on an as-needed basis.” The unnamed agent’s credentials were also inside.
After discovering the vehicle was missing at 1:15 p.m. on Tuesday, the FBI agent searched the garage and alerted security at 2:22 p.m., nearly two hours after security camera footage viewed after the incident showed the car leaving headquarters.
During his interview with investigators, Worrell admitted that he did not have permission to use the car, according to court documents. It is unclear if he is still employed by the unnamed government contracting agency.
Last year, an FBI agent was carjacked in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood after two individuals held the agent at gunpoint amid a surge of car thefts in the nation’s capital. The vehicle was found less than an hour later, about a mile from the site of the theft.
An attorney for Worrell could not be immediately identified.
The FBI declined to comment on this report and referred CBS News to court records.
Robert Legare is a CBS News multiplatform reporter and producer covering the Justice Department, federal courts and investigations. He was previously an associate producer for the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell.”
Washington — Hackers backed by the Chinese government are targeting U.S. water treatment plants and electrical grids, strategically positioning themselves within critical infrastructure systems to “wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress Wednesday.
“There has been far too little public focus on the fact that PRC hackers are targeting our critical infrastructure,” Wray warned the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, according to excerpts of his remarks obtained by CBS News. “The risk that poses to every American requires our attention — now.”
The head of the FBI and other national security officials — including Jen Easterly, who leads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — are testifying at a congressional hearing focused on the cybersecurity threat posed by China’s government.
Wray told Congress that much of the framework upon which Americans rely for daily tasks, like oil and natural gas pipelines and transportation systems, is vulnerable to a cyberattack by hackers supported by China’s ruling party.
FBI Director, Christopher Wray, testifies during a Congressional full committee hearing on the “The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] Cyber Threat to the American Homeland and National Security” in Washington, DC, January 31, 2024.
JULIA NIKHINSON/AFP via Getty Images
The Justice Department and FBI announced Wednesday that they’ve disrupted the hacking operation known as “Volt Typhoon,” a China-backed hacking operation that officials said targeted critical infrastructure in the U.S. and other nations.
Active since mid-2021, researchers at Microsoft previously determined it “could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises.”
U.S. investigators obtained a court order to delete the botnet malware on infected routers and later took measures to prevent future reinfection. Remotely disabling hackers behind cyberattacks as they did in this case is a new weapon in the U.S. government’s cyber defense arsenal.
Volt Typhoon utilizes botnets – networks of infected internet-connected devices that can be used to bring down sensitive targets. Typically, initial access is gained through unsecured home routers or modems.
“Through the course of an investigation, the FBI determined the best action was to conduct a technical operation to decisively neutralize the botnet in a timely and coordinated manner,” the senior FBI official said, “curtailing the PRC’s ability to further target U.S. entities.”
“The United States will continue to dismantle malicious cyber operations – including those sponsored by foreign governments – that undermine the security of the American people,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Wednesday.
Activity by the China-based hacking group reportedly alarmed U.S. officials, given its proximity to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. China has ramped up its military activities near the island in recent years in response to what Beijing claims is “collusion” between Taiwan and the U.S.
The naval port in Guam would play a critically important role in launching any U.S. military response in the event of a Taiwanese invasion. Microsoft noted at the time that Chinese intelligence and military hackers routinely prioritize espionage and the gathering of information.
Last week, senior officials from the National Security Agency (NSA) warned that part of the PRC’s strategy behind Volt Typhoon could be to distract the U.S. in the event of conflict over Taiwan.
“This is unique in that it’s prepositioning on critical infrastructure, on military networks, to be able to deliver effects at the time and place of their choosing so that they can disrupt our ability to support military activities or to distract us, to get us to focus on a domestic incident at a time when something’s flaring up in a different part of the world,” said Rob Joyce, cybersecurity director at NSA, adding that the PRC doesn’t “want us facing the foreign aspects of that.”
“[T]he reason it’s a whole-of-government effort is because every sector, potentially, is being targeted and impacted and we really have to be all in unison on how we’re doing mitigation,” added Morgan Adamski, chief of the NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, which works with private sector companies to detect and prevent against cyber threats.
Joyce said efforts were ongoing across the government to convince China’s leadership that civilian targets should be out of bounds.
“We have to get to the point where PRC leadership decides that the embarrassment in the international community of being caught at this, the horror of the international community that somebody would hold civilians at risk with cyber is intolerable,” he said.
Earlier this month, the FBI and CISA also pushed out a new alert, warning that Chinese-manufactured drones, or UAS, pose a “significant risk” to critical infrastructure and U.S. national security.
“The use of Chinese-manufactured UAS in critical infrastructure operations risks exposing sensitive information to PRC authorities, jeopardizing U.S. national security, economic security, and public health and safety,” the bulletin read.
Other top public officials, like Attorney General Merrick Garland, have also warned of the threat China’s government poses to Americans’ well being, economic prosperity and innovation. In the last year, the Justice Department has announced novel cases calling out Chinese chemical companies for aiding the fentanyl epidemic and secret Chinese police stations working to quiet Chinese dissidents living in the U.S.
“Today, and literally every day, they’re actively attacking our economic security, engaging in wholesale theft of our innovation, and our personal and corporate data,” Wray told Congress Wednesday. “They target our freedoms, reaching inside our borders, across America, to silence, coerce, and threaten our citizens and residents.”
Last year, the Justice Department launched the Disruptive Technology Strike Force to target rival nations like China that seek to use American high-tech advances to undermine national security and upset the rule of law.
U.S. officials are paying more attention to how foreign adversaries try to use investments to gain access to American technology and data. In announcing the department’s new initiative last February, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the Biden administration is looking at options to enable federal regulators to monitor the flow of American money into foreign tech sectors, while making sure those funds do not advance the national security interests of other nations, including China.
Robert Legare is a CBS News multiplatform reporter and producer covering the Justice Department, federal courts and investigations. He was previously an associate producer for the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell.”
LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Federal authorities in Los Angeles on Tuesday announced a major blow against an international drug organization allegedly responsible for trafficking large quantities of narcotics through the United States and Canada.
Officials said two indictments unsealed in Los Angeles on Tuesday name 19 people now facing charges in connection with “Operation Dead Hand” – including nine Southern California residents.
Ten of those 19 have been arrested in recent days in cities that include Los Angeles, Sacramento, Miami, Odessa (Texas), Montreal, Toronto and Calgary.
The indictments say investigators seized drugs worth $16-28 million, including 845 kilograms of methamphetamine, 951 kilograms of cocaine, 20 kilograms of fentanyl and 4 kilograms of heroin. They also seized $900,000 in cash.
They noted that the quantities of those seizures only reflected operations during the few months of the investigation, indicating how active and large the network has been throughout its existence.
Authorities displayed some of the drugs, weapons and cash seized from a drug ring allegedly operating between Southern California and Canada.
The sophisticated operation involved Mexican cartels, an Italian mafia figure based in Montreal and a network of drivers employed by dozens of trucking companies, authorities say.
“This is a takedown of a wide ranging international drug trafficking conspiracy,” said Martin Estrada, U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. “This conspiracy spanned three countries that involve drug suppliers connected to cartels in Mexico, drug distributors and brokers in Los Angeles, Canadian truck drivers and a network that exported drugs into Canada and even an associate of the Italian mafia in Montreal, Canada.”
The Southern California residents charged in the indictments include: Carlos Barragan, 51, of Long Beach; Corell Carbajal Garcia, 38, of Hemet; Esteban Sinhue Mercado, 24, of San Jacinto; Daniel Antonio Trejo Huerta, 43, of Riverside; Ignacio Lopez, 53, Santa Ana; Orlando Velasco Jr., 29, of Stanton; Angel Larry Sandoval, 32, of Bell Gardens; Jorge Pina Nicols, 22, of Long Beach; and Bryan Ureta Valenzuela, 24, of Ontario.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a long history of seeing Russia everywhere when it comes to things she doesn’t like.
Now she says that protesters demanding a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza might be “connected to Russia” and are spreading “Putin’s message.”
To solve the issue, she says she’s going to ask the FBI to investigate. You can’t make this stuff up.
Asked about protests calling for ceasefire in Gaza, @SpeakerPelosi tells @DanaBashCNN: calling for ceasefire is “Putin’s message”. Some may be organic, “some are connected to Russia… financing should be investigated. I want to ask the FBI to investigate that”.
Democrats just can’t let this Russia stuff go. No matter where they look, they see Putin and sound more deranged than the parody characters in Dr. Strangelove.
NBC News reports, “Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Sunday said she hopes to ask the FBI to investigate protesters calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and suggested that some of the antiwar demonstrations are linked to Russia.”
Pelosi said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that she believes that some of the protesters are “connected” to Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.
Seriously, is there anyone out there who isn’t collecting rubles from Putin? Where’s my free money?
On CNN, Nancy Pelosi says that some protestors calling for a Gaza ceasefire and ending arms transfers to Ukraine are telling “Mister Putin’s message.”
“For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message, Mr. Putin’s message. Make no mistake. This is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It’s about Putin’s message,” Pelosi said.
“I think some of these — some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia, and I say that having looked at this for a long time now,” she continued.
Pressed on whether she thinks some of the protesters are Russian plants, Pelosi said she would like to have the FBI look into the matter.
“I didn’t say they’re plants. I think some financing should be investigated,” she said. “And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”
More than two thirds of Americans support a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza in a November Reuters poll, a number that has continued to increase according to the data.
That was two months ago. Does Pelosi legitimately think these people are just hooked up with Putin? Or maybe…
Maybe they don’t like seeing so many people dying. Israel had every right to retaliate for the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7th, but with thousands of Palestinians now dead and a large degree of them women and children, at some point is it rational to call for an end to the killing?
Donald Trump, who in contrast to Joe Biden was responsible for several peace treaties between Israel and historically hostile Arab neighbors, has certainly said this.
But we already know Pelosi thinks he’s in bed with Russia.
Nancy Pelosi is already an absurd politician in many ways.
And here’s a brand new one.
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is a professional writer and editor with over 15 years of experience in conservative media and Republican politics. He… More about John Hanson
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