Threats in the U.S. have been rising, since Hamas invaded Israel a week ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray and FBI officials said Sunday in a rare phone briefing for reporters.
“The threat is very much ongoing and in fact, the threat picture continues to evolve,” Wray said. “Here in the U.S., we cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or other foreign terrorist organizations could exploit the conflict to call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil.”
He said that Jews and Muslims alike, as well as their institutions and houses of worship, have been threatened in the U.S. and told reporters that the bureau is “moving quickly to mitigate” the threats.
Wray, in an address Saturday to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, also noted “an increase in reported threats” and in particular warned that “we’ve got to be on the lookout … for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own.”
He urged police chiefs to “stay vigilant” because as first responders, “you’re often the first to see the signs that someone may be mobilizing to violence.”
Senior FBI officials said most of the threats are not credible, and some have been addressed. As Wray suggested, the bureau’s biggest concern is a lone wolf-style assailant who is not on their radars.
This type of threat is best addressed through tips from the public, the officials said. They told reporters that there have been threats against Muslim facilities as well as Jewish facilities. Threats against Muslim centers are up, although the level of antisemitic threats is also spiking.
The FBI is working through Joint Terrorism Task Forces to mitigate threats and keep these communities safe, Wray said.
The FBI director twice said that he was “horrified…by the brutality committed at the hands of Hamas” and said that countering terrorism is the bureau’s No. 1 priority. “We will not tolerate violence motivated by hate and extremism, he said.
Wray also said that the bureau’s legal attaché office in Tel Aviv is working with Israeli and U.S. Embassy partners “to locate and identify all Americans who’ve been impacted in the region, including those who remain unaccounted for.” He added that victim services specialists are working with victims and their families at home and abroad.
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The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into claims that the police department for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, abused and tortured suspects, the FBI announced Friday.
Numerous lawsuits allege that the Street Crimes Unit of the Baton Rouge Police Department abused drug suspects at a recently shuttered narcotics processing center — an unmarked warehouse nicknamed the “Brave Cave.”
The FBI said experienced prosecutors and agents are “reviewing allegations that members of the department may have abused their authority.”
Baton Rouge police said in a statement that its chief, Murphy Paul “met with FBI officials and requested their assistance to ensure an independent review of these complaints.”
In late August, Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome announced that the “Brave Cave” was being permanently closed, and that the Street Crimes Unit was also being disbanded.
This comes as a federal lawsuit filed earlier this week by Ternell Brown, a grandmother, alleges that police officers conducted an unlawful strip-search on her.
Lawsuits allege that the Street Crimes Unit of the Baton Rouge Police Department in Louisiana abused drug suspects in the Narcotics Processing Facility, an unmarked warehouse nicknamed the “Brave Cave.”
Brown civil lawsuit via U.S. District Court in Louisiana
The lawsuit alleges that officers pulled over Brown while she was driving with her husband near her Baton Rouge neighborhood in a black Dodge Charger in June. Police officers ordered the couple out of the car and searched the vehicle, finding pills in a container, court documents said. Brown said the pills were prescription and she was in “lawful possession” of the medication. Police officers became suspicious when they found she was carrying two different types of prescription pills in one container, the complaint said.
Officers then, without Brown’s consent or a warrant, the complaint states, took her to the unit’s “Brave Cave.” The Street Crimes Unit used the warehouse as its “home base,” the lawsuit alleged, to conduct unlawful strip searches.
Police held Brown for two hours, the lawsuit reads, during which she was told to strip, and after an invasive search, “she was released from the facility without being charged with a crime.”
“What occurred to Mrs. Brown is unconscionable and should never happen in America,” her attorney, Ryan Keith Thompson, said in a statement to CBS News.
Baton Rouge police said in its statement Friday that it was “committed to addressing these troubling accusations,” adding that it has “initiated administrative and criminal investigations.”
The Justice Department said its investigation is being conducted by the FBI, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday is set to come face-to-face with his most ardent critics as House Republicans prepare to use a routine oversight hearing to interrogate him about what they claim is the “weaponization” of the Justice Department under President Joe Biden.
Garland is appearing before the House Judiciary Committee for the first time in two years and at an unprecedented moment in the Justice Department’s history: He’s overseeing two cases against Donald Trump, the first former president to face criminal charges, and another against the sitting president’s son, Hunter Biden.
“Our job is not to take orders from the president, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” Garland will say, according to prepared remarks.
“ ‘I am not the President’s lawyer. I will also add that I am not Congress’s prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people.’ ”
— Attorney General Merrick Garland in prepared remarks
Republicans on the committee were tight-lipped about what they planned to ask Garland, telling the Associated Press on Tuesday that they wanted to keep lines of attack under wraps until the hearing.
But Garland will likely face tense and heated questions about the Trump and Hunter Biden criminal cases, forcing him to defend the country’s largest law enforcement agency at a time when political and physical threats against agents and their families are on the rise.
“All of us at the Justice Department recognize that with this work comes public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate oversight. These are appropriate and important given the gravity of the matters before the department,” Garland will say, according to his prepared remarks. “But singling out individual career public servants who are just doing their jobs is dangerous — particularly at a time of increased threats to the safety of public servants and their families.”
Democrats say they plan to “act as kind of a truth squad” against what they see as Republican misinformation and their ongoing defense of Trump, who is now the Republican frontrunner to challenge Biden in next year’s election. They say Republicans are trying to detract attention from the indicted former president’s legal challenges and turn a negative spotlight on Biden.
“I’ll be using this opportunity to highlight just how destructive that is of our system of justice and how once again, it is the GOP willing to undermine our institutions in the defense of their indefensible candidate for president,” Rep. Adam Schiff, a senior Democrat on the committee, told the AP.
Garland’s testimony also comes just over a week after Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from inland south-central California, launched an impeachment inquiry into his boss, Biden, with a special focus on the Justice Department’s handling of Hunter Biden’s years-long case.
The White House has dismissed the impeachment inquiry as baseless and worked to focus the conversation on policy instead. Hunter Biden’s legal team, on the other hand, has gone on the offensive against GOP critics, most recently filing suit against the Internal Revenue Service after two of its agents raised whistleblower claims to Congress about the handling of the investigation.
Republicans contend that the Justice Department — both under Trump and now Biden — has failed to fully probe the allegations against the younger Biden, ranging from his work on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma to his tax filings in California and Washington, D.C.
“I am not the President’s lawyer. I will also add that I am not Congress’s prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people,” Garland is expected to say.
“ Democrats have said they plan to ‘act as kind of a truth squad’ at the House hearing. ”
An investigation into Hunter Biden had been run by the U.S. attorney for Delaware, Trump appointee David Weiss, who Garland had kept on to finish the probe and insulate it from claims of political interference. Garland granted Weiss special counsel status last month, giving him broad authority to investigate and report his findings. He oversees the day-to-day running of the probe and another special counsel, Jack Smith, is in charge of the Trump investigation, though Garland retains final say on both as attorney general.
The Republican chairmen of the Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees launched an investigation into Weiss’ handling of the case, which was first opened in 2018 after two IRS agents claimed in congressional testimony in May that the Justice Department improperly interfered with their work.
Gary Shapley, a veteran IRS agent assigned to the case, testified to Congress that Weiss indicated in October 2022 that he was not the “deciding person whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden.
That testimony has been disputed by two FBI agents who were also in the room for that meeting.
Hunter Biden has since sued the IRS, alleging that the episode has breached his right to privacy.
A Michigan jury on Friday found three men not guilty in a 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. They were among 14 men who were charged in the case. In total, nine were convicted and five acquitted.
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Man who made threats against Biden fatally shot in FBI raid in Utah, sources say; Six decades later, Medal of Honor recipient finally gets the recognition he deserves
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FBI agents serving a search warrant at a home in Provo, Utah, on Wednesday shot and killed a man during a confrontation, authorities said. Sources told CBS News the man had been under investigation for making threats against President Biden and several other officials. Ed O’Keefe has details.
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Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago property manager accused of conspiring with former President Trump to delete security footage and of lying to the FBI, made his first court appearance Monday. It’s the latest in a series of legal issues for the former president. Robert Costa takes a look at Trump’s ongoing legal cases.
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There has been a trace of marijuana at the White House, discovered by the Secret Service at the West Wing’s executive entrance. The search was made by the Secret Service, and all of these unusual drug busts have been showing up since the Biden Administration.
FILE PHOTO: A general view of the White House, where over the Fourth of July holiday weekend cocaine was discovered in an entry area where visitors place electronics and other belongings before taking tours, in Washington, U.S. June 12, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo(REUTERS)
On July 2nd, during a routine sweep, it was brought to the attention of a Secret Service agent that a white powder-like substance had been discovered. After running tests, it was found that this powder-like substance was nothing but cocaine. The narcotics were found in the hallway of the West Wing’s executive entrance.
Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in his statement, “No one was arrested in these incidents because the weight of the marijuana confiscated did not meet the legal threshold for federal charges or DC misdemeanor criminal charges as the District of Columbia had decriminalized possession.” The marijuana was collected by the officers and eventually destroyed.
In 2022, while passing through security and screening, people were caught in possession of marijuana twice before, making this the third time narcotics were found on the property. Biden Administration to be held suspicious and…
Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) confirmed Wednesday that he has spoken with the FBI as part of an ongoing investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Bowers told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins he was interviewed for about four hours a few months ago as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump and his allies’ efforts after he lost the 2020 race to Joe Biden. The revelation adds new context to the Justice Department’s probe and suggests a broad scope for any potential charges that could encompass misbehavior conducted across multiple states.
In a separate case, Trump was indicted last month on 37 federal criminal counts related to his handling of classified documents.
“I am hesitant to talk about any subpoenas, et cetera. But I have been interviewed by the FBI,” Bowers said Wednesday. He noted the interviewers’ questions made him think their investigation was broad, although he said he had offered “nothing new.”
“There is a lot of information about attorneys that work with them. About Mr. Giuliani that made the calls and visited us. And other members of [Trump’s] team, who they were, when the meetings were, what was discussed in those meetings or in that meeting,” he added. “And so I presume that all of them are involved. How that shakes out as the threshold evidence? I don’t know. I just dabble with a paintbrush.”
Bowers testified before lawmakers last year that he rejected the president’s efforts, led at the time by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former personal attorney, to change Arizona’s presidential election results despite there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
“I said, ‘Look, you are asking me to do something that is counter to my oath when I swore to the Constitution to uphold it, and I also swore to the Constitution and the laws of the state of Arizona,’” Bowers said he told Giuliani, according to his testimony before the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “This is totally foreign as an idea or a theory, to me, and I would never do anything of such magnitude without deep consultation with qualified attorneys.”
The CNN interview comes just a week after The Washington Post detailed Trump’s attempts to pressure Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to overturn the 2020 results in the state. Trump reportedly called Ducey in hopes the governor would help substantiate his false claims of election fraud. Ducey did not do so, and he certified the state’s election results on Nov. 30, 2020.
The effort bears striking similarities to Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia. The then-president called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) in the waning days of his administration, urging the official to help him “find” additional votes that would see him defeat Biden.
Smith has reportedly been nearing charging decisions in the investigation over the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Investigators have interviewed or subpoenaed a host of people in the Trump orbit in recent months, including Giuliani, Raffensperger and other election officials in Arizona.
Republican lawmakers in Montana are sharing that they received letters with white powder as federal agents investigate mysterious substances similarly mailed to GOP officials in two other states.
In a Friday night tweet, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said he has received “disturbing” reports of anonymous threats sent to legislators. The Montana attorney general posted on Facebook that the local sheriff’s office collected evidence after his mother, a state representative, opened one letter with a “white powder substance” sent to her home address.
I’ve received disturbing reports that Montana legislators are receiving anonymous, threatening letters containing white powder. The state will bring to bear whatever resources are needed to support law enforcement officers as they investigate.
— Governor Greg Gianforte (@GovGianforte) June 24, 2023
“PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS about opening your mail,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said in the post directed toward legislators. “If you receive a suspicious package, contact law enforcement immediately.”
Republican officials in Tennessee and Kansas have recently received similar letters. A legislative office building in Nashville temporarily locked down on Thursday after the House Speaker said multiple Republican leaders got mail with “a white powder substance.” The letters included “obvious threats made by a liberal activist specifically targeting Republicans,” according to a House Republican Caucus spokesperson who did not provide further details.
The FBI said Thursday that ongoing lab tests did not indicate any risk to public safety.
About 100 such letters have been sent to lawmakers and public officials across Kansas, according to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Preliminary tests did not detect any common dangerous toxins and no injuries have been reported.
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A former FBI intelligence analyst charged with the same violation of the Espionage Act as former President Donald Trump was sentenced this week to nearly four years in prison by a Missouri federal judge.
Kendra Kingsbury admitted in 2017 to having more than 380 classified documents in her home in digital and physical formats while she was employed by the FBI’s Kansas City division, court records show. She held the highest level of security clearance available during her more than 12 years at the agency.
Kingsbury was indicted in May 2021 on two counts of having willfully retained national defense information — a violation of Title 18 U.S.C., Section 793(e) — and pleaded guilty last October.
Trump is currently facing 31 counts of violating Title 18 U.S.C., Section 793(e); he faces a total of 37 charges.
Judge Stephen R. Bough, an Obama appointee, sentenced Kingsbury to three years and 10 months behind bars.
“I cannot fathom why you would jeopardize our nation by leaving these types of documents in your bathtub,” Bough told her in court, according to the Kansas City Star.
Prosecutors had asked for four years and nine months, while Kingsbury’s attorney, Marc Ermine, asked only for probation, citing problems in his client’s personal life that allegedly contributed to her poor judgment.
Court records show that Kingsbury had been assigned to a series of “different FBI ‘squads,’ each of which had a particular focus, such as illegal drug trafficking, violent crime, violent gangs and counterintelligence.”
The records she was accused of keeping improperly related to “specific open investigations across multiple field offices,” “sensitive human source operations in national security investigations,” “intelligence gaps regarding hostile foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations,” including information about al Qaeda, and “the technical capabilities of the FBI against counterintelligence and counterterrorism targets.”
Prosecutors said that an investigation into “what uses the defendant put to the classified documents she illegally removed from the secure workspace,” revealed “more questions and concerns than answers.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the dozens of charges against him, claiming in an interview after his arraignment that he was allowed to have the documents. Photographs included in his indictment showed how the former president kept stacks of banker’s boxes in various rooms of his Florida golf resort, including an ornate bathroom.
The Department of Justice delayed plans to investigate Donald Trump and his associates’ links to January 6 and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a bombshell investigative report by The Washington Post.
It took nearly a year after the Capitol attack for a DOJ inquiry to commence, and the FBI only opened its investigation into the fake electors’ plot in April 2022.
The Post attributed the DOJ’s slow-walking to “a wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him.”
High-ranking officials at the DOJ, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Christopher Wray remained wed to this approach “even as evidence emerged of an organized, weeks-long effort by Trump and his advisers before Jan. 6 to pressure state leaders, Justice officials, and Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Biden’s victory.”
“A decision was made early on to focus DOJ resources on the riot,” one former Justice Department official familiar with internal debates over department strategy told the Post. “The notion of opening up on Trump and high-level political operatives was seen as fraught with peril. When Lisa [Monaco] and Garland came on board, they were fully onboard with that approach.”
The strategy came even as Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. during the early months of 2021, promised soon after the attack that prosecutors were “looking at all actors, not only the people who went into the building.”
The approach generated dissension within DOJ ranks. The Post investigation revealed that “some prosecutors” below Garland and Monaco “chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him.”
Department employees tasked with putting together briefing materials for the attorney general and his deputy were told to steer clear of mentioning Trump or Trump allies. One former Justice official told the Post, “You couldn’t use the T word.”
“You can take it to the extreme,” Peter Zeidenberg, who was part of a special counsel probe of the Bush White House in the 2000s, said of the department’s desire to avoid the appearance of political impropriety. “You work so hard not to be a partisan that you’re failing to do your job,” he told the Post.
When the DOJ finally began investigating the fake elector scheme in early 2022, the bipartisan House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack was already conducting its own inquiry into top Trump officials and allies. The Post quoted a person familiar with internal DOJ discussions who “felt as though the department was reacting to the House committee’s work as well as heightened media coverage and commentary,” drawing attention to the scheme. “Only after they were embarrassed did they start looking,” the person said.
The U.S. intelligence community routinely acquires “a significant amount” of Americans’ personal data, according to a new report released this week by a top spy agency.
The report outlined both privacy and counterintelligence concerns stemming from the ability of U.S. government agencies and foreign adversaries to draw from a growing pool of potentially sensitive information available online.
Absent proper controls, commercially available information, known as CAI, “can reveal sensitive and intimate information about the personal attributes, private behavior, social connections, and speech of U.S. persons and non-U.S. persons,” the report, compiled last year by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, found.
“It can be misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations, and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals,” it said. “Even subject to appropriate controls, CAI can increase the power of the government’s ability to peer into private lives to levels that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other social expectations.”
Dated January of 2022, the report was written by an expert panel convened by Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence. It was declassified earlier this month and publicly released this week.
Redacted in places, the report noted that the market for online data is “evolving both qualitatively…and quantitatively,” and can include meaningful information on American citizens and be acquired in bulk. Even when anonymized, agencies can cross-reference data sets to reveal information about specific individuals.
“Today, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, CAI includes information on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity that historically could have been obtained, if at all, only through targeted (and predicated) collection, and that could be used to cause harm to an individual’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety,” the report said.
Information from social media, digital transactions and smartphone software for medical, travel, facial recognition and geolocation services are among the types of data widely available for purchase. It can be used to identify individuals who attend protests or participate in certain religious activities. Adversaries can use it to identify U.S. military or intelligence personnel, or build profiles on public figures, the panel wrote.
The report recommended that the intelligence community develop a set of standards for its purchase and use of online data, noting it would be at a “significant disadvantage” — to those such as foreign adversaries — if it lost access to certain datasets.
“CAI is increasingly powerful for intelligence and increasingly sensitive for individual privacy and civil liberties, and the [intelligence community] therefore needs to develop more refined policies to govern its acquisition and treatment,” the panel wrote.
In a statement, Haines said the intelligence community was working on a framework governing the use of such data. Once finalized, Haines said, “we will make as much of it publicly available as possible.”
“I remain committed to sharing as much as possible about the [intelligence community]’s activities with the American people,” she said.
Haines first promised to evaluate the intelligence community’s use of commercial data during her confirmation hearing under questioning by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon in 2021. She again committed to publicly releasing the findings earlier this year.
“If the government can buy its way around Fourth Amendment due-process, there will be few meaningful limits on government surveillance,” Wyden said in a statement this week. “Meanwhile, Congress needs to pass legislation to put guardrails around government purchases, to rein in private companies that collect and sell this data, and keep Americans’ personal information out of the hands of our adversaries.”
Washington — The indictment of former President Donald Trump by a federal grand jury in Florida includes the most detailed look yet into special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into allegations that Trump mishandled classified documents and obstructed the probe itself.
The 44-page document, unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida last week, outlines the types of highly sensitive documents Trump allegedly had at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, and includes key pieces of evidence gleaned from aides’ communications and notes from Trump’s own lawyer.
The former president is charged with 37 felony counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of classified documents and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Trump has not been found guilty of any crime and has repeatedly asserted he has done nothing wrong. He is set to appear for an arraignment in federal court in Florida on Tuesday, where he is expected to plead not guilty.
Here are the top takeaways from the grand jury’s indictment:
Trump faces 37 federal felony counts
The charges Trump faces under the indictment include:
31 counts of willful retention of classified documents
1 count of conspiracy to obstruct justice
1 count of withholding a document or record
1 count of corruptly concealing a document or record
1 count of concealing a document in a federal investigation
1 count of scheme to conceal
and 1 count of making false statements and representations.
Trump kept “hundreds” of classified documents after leaving office
While he was president, Trump collected hundreds of letters, notes, photos, memorabilia and documents in bankers’ boxes that he kept at the White House. The indictment alleges that “hundreds” of classified documents were mixed in with other material, and that Trump arranged for “scores” of the boxes to be moved to Mar-a-Lago as he was preparing to leave office.
According to the indictment, the documents included information about:
U.S. nuclear programs
Defense and weapons capabilities of the U.S. and other countries
Vulnerabilities of the U.S. and its allies to attack
How the U.S. would retaliate in response to an attack
The documents included material prepared by the CIA, NSA, the Pentagon, the Energy Department and other intelligence agencies.
Once he left office in January 2021, Trump was not authorized to have access to these documents and they were not kept in the type of secure facility meant to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, the indictment notes.
The documents at the center of the 31 charges of retaining classified information range from top secret to secret, the two highest classification levels for national security information.
Trump showed sensitive documents to others at least twice
The indictment alleges that Trump showed sensitive documents to others on at least two occasions at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. The indictment says he had some of the boxes moved to the club where he spends his summers in May 2021.
That July, Trump was speaking to a writer, a publisher and two staffers in a conversation that was being recorded. The indictment says he showed them a “‘plan of attack’ that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official.”
The former president, according to the indictment, “told the individuals that the plan was ‘highly confidential’ and ‘secret.’ TRUMP also said, ‘as president I could have declassified it,’ and, ‘Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.’” CBS News has previously reported that Trump was referencing Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and included remarks related to Iran and how to confront it militarily.
Several weeks later, Trump showed a member of his political action committee “a classified map related to a military operation” and told the person “that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close,” according to the indictment.
None of the people involved in either conversation held security clearances that would allow them to view classified material, the indictment notes.
The boxes were stored in a ballroom, a bathroom, storage room and Trump’s residence
Waltine “Walt” Nauta, Trump’s former personal aide, is charged as a co-conspirator for allegedly helping Trump obstruct the probe and for lying to federal investigators.
The indictment outlines Nauta’s alleged involvement in moving the boxes to different rooms throughout Mar-a-Lago, reconstructing their path using text messages from two Trump employees — referred to as “Trump Employee 1” and “Trump Employee 2” — and Nauta himself.
When Trump left the White House, some of the boxes were first stored in a ballroom before being moved to the “business center” and then a bathroom:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records being stored on the stage in the White and Gold Ballroom at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Justice Department via AP
Stacks of boxes can be observed in a bathroom and shower at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Justice Department via Getty Images
In May 2021, Trump allegedly ordered them moved into a cleared-out storage room that was “near the liquor supply closet, linen room, lock shop, and various other rooms” and could be “reached from multiple outside entrances.” The indictment includes a photo showing more than 80 boxes in the storage room once they were moved in June:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records that had been stored in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after they were moved to a storage room on June 24, 2021.
Justice Department via AP
Nauta and another aide would later move some of the boxes to and from Trump’s residence at the club.
Nauta found several boxes spilled onto the floor
In December 2021, Nauta texted Trump Employee 2 with two photos showing several boxes that had seemingly been knocked over, their contents spilling out onto the floor of the storage room. At least one document on the floor was marked secret:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records on Dec. 7, 2021, in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that had fallen over with contents spilling onto the floor.
Justice Department via AP
Trump Employee 2 replied, “Oh no oh no.” The indictment doesn’t indicate how or why the boxes had been spilled.
Under pressure from the National Archives, Trump allegedly personally reviewed some boxes
The National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, is the federal agency responsible for collecting and preserving presidential records. By the end of 2021, NARA officials had been demanding for months that Trump hand over records he had kept after leaving the White House.
Between November 2021 and January 2022, text messages included in the indictment indicate Nauta and Trump Employee 2 brought several boxes to Trump’s residence on the Mar-a-Lago property for him to review. In one instance, Trump Employee 2 printed out a photo of dozens of boxes stacked in the storage room and taped it on one of the boxes delivered to Trump’s residence so he could see how they were being kept:
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, that were photographed on Nov. 12, 2021.
Justice Department via AP
In December, a Trump representative who had been in contact with NARA pushed Trump Employee 2 to provide a tally of how many boxes Trump had so he could inform Archives officials. “12 [i]s his number,” the aide replied, according to the indictment.
On Jan. 13, Nauta texted that Trump was still “tracking” the boxes and said there would be “more to follow today on whether he wants to go through more today or tomorrow.” Four days later, Nauta and Trump Employee 2 loaded 15 boxes into Nauta’s car and then a truck to deliver them to NARA.
A NARA review determined that 14 of the 15 boxes contained documents with classified markings. The FBI would later determine that the boxes included 197 documents with classified markings ranging from confidential to top secret.
On Feb. 9, 2022, NARA referred the matter to the Justice Department. The FBI opened a criminal investigation in March, and a federal grand jury convened in April.
Trump and Nauta allegedly hid documents from a Trump attorney looking for them
The grand jury issued a subpoena on May 11, 2022, demanding all documents with classified markings in the possession of Trump or his office. On May 23, Trump met with two attorneys — known as Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 in the indictment — to discuss how he would respond.
Details in the indictment and a subsequent court battle make clear that Trump Attorney 1 is Evan Corcoran, an experienced criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. The section of the indictment detailing Trump’s response to the subpoena relies heavily on Corcoran’s contemporaneous notes and subsequent testimony.
Attorney M. Evan Corcoran arrives at federal court in Washington on July 22, 2022.
Jose Luis Magana / AP
The notes provide some of the clearest indications of Trump’s state of mind as he apparently tried to avoid having to hand over the boxes. The indictment lays out how Trump responded, according to Corcoran, when the attorneys said they would need to look through the boxes to respond to the subpoena:
I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes.
Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?
Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?
Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?
Eventually, Trump agreed that Corcoran would return to Mar-a-Lago on June 2 to search for the boxes, and he said he would delay his plans to travel to Bedminster in order to be there.
Between May 23 and June 2, the indictment says Nauta moved a total of 64 boxes from the storage room to Trump’s residence “at TRUMP’s direction.” Nauta brought 30 boxes back to the storage room on June 2 before Corcoran arrived to conduct his search.
Nauta escorted Corcoran to the storage room, where the attorney spent nearly three hours looking for documents with classified markings. The attorney found 38 such documents and placed them in a folder that he wrapped with clear duct tape. After his search, he met with Trump, who, according to Corcoran, asked, “Did you find anything? … Is it bad? Good?”
Corcoran arranged for an FBI agent to meet him at Mar-a-Lago the next day to take the folder. He also asked a third attorney not involved in the search to sign a certification stating that all documents responsive to the subpoena had been located and handed over after a “diligent search” of “the boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida.”
The indictment states: “These statements were false because, among other reasons, TRUMP had directed NAUTA to move boxes before Trump Attorney 1’s June 2 review, so that many boxes were not searched and many documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena could not be found — and in fact were not found — by Trump Attorney 1.”
The FBI found 102 documents with classified markings in its August 2022 search
A woman talks to Palm Beach police officer in front of former President Donald Trump’s house at Mar-A-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida.
Eva Marie Uzcategui / Getty Images
Federal agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, to find any remaining documents with classified markings, a dramatic development that thrust the case into the public eye.
The FBI found a total of 102 documents with classified markings. Twenty-seven were found in Trump’s office and 75 were found in the storage room. Seventeen were top secret, a designation reserved for information that would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security” if exposed.
The 31 charges Trump faces for retaining documents all concern documents seized in the FBI’s search or those handed over by Corcoran in response to the May 23 subpoena. Trump is not charged with retaining any of the documents he voluntarily handed over to NARA earlier in 2022.
Nauta allegedly lied to investigators about what he knew
Walt Nauta, an aide to former President Donald Trump, follows Trump as they board his airplane at Palm Beach International Airport on Monday, March 13, 2023.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Nauta, the former Trump aide, is charged with five counts alongside Trump as a co-defendant. The 38th count in the indictment targets him specifically, accusing him of lying to federal agents who questioned him on May 26, 2022.
The indictment says he told investigators he was not aware of any boxes being moved to Trump’s residence, and said he first became aware of them when he was asked to help move them into a truck to hand over to NARA.
Asked if he “could help us understand, like, where they were kept, how they were kept, were they secured, were they locked,” Nauta allegedly replied, “I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t — I honestly just don’t know.”
Corcoran’s testimony is central to the case
Earlier this year, Corcoran refused to discuss his interactions with Trump before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., citing attorney-client privilege.
But that privilege comes with what’s known as the “crime-fraud exception,” which says it does not apply if a client uses a lawyer’s services to commit a crime. In sealed proceedings in March, a federal judge ruled in favor of the special counsel’s office and ordered Corcoran to testify before the grand jury and provide evidence to federal investigators.
Now Trump’s attorneys could seek to have his testimony excluded from the Florida case on the same attorney-client privilege grounds that a judge in Washington rejected.
Melissa Quinn and Robert Costa contributed to this report.
Photos included in the federal indictment filed against Donald Trump show boxes allegedly containing classified documents stored in unusual locations — stacked on a ballroom stage and in a bathroom next to a shower and toilet at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s residence in Florida.
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records being stored on the stage in the White and Gold Ballroom at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
The indictment states that Mar-a-Lago “was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents” after Trump left office.
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records stored in a bathroom and shower in the Lake Room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla.
AP
Prosecutors pointed out that “tens of thousands of members and guests” visited the “active social club” at Mar-a-Lago for more than a year after Trump left the White House.
“Nevertheless, Trump stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club — including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room,” according to the indictment.
Another photograph contained in the indictment shows one box in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago tipped over on the ground, with materials spilling out from it. The indictment states that on Dec. 7, 2021, Walt Nauta, an aide to Trump, discovered the fallen box and texted an unidentified Trump employee, “I opened the door and found this…” with two photos of the scene.
This image, contained in the indictment against former President Donald Trump, shows boxes of records on Dec. 7, 2021, in a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., that had fallen over with contents spilling onto the floor.
Contained among the items in the box was a document marked “SECRET/REL TO USA, FVEY,” meaning it was releasable only to the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the U.S., prosecutors said.
Prosecutors allege that Trump directed his attorney to sign a “sworn certification” that all the classified documents had been turned over to the FBI —when Trump knew there were more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel who filed the charges, said in his first public statement that the country has “one set of laws” and that they apply to everyone.
WASHINGTON ― The FBI privately briefed lawmakers Monday about an unverified tip the bureau received in 2020 that Joe Biden had been involved in a bribery scheme when he was vice president.
Republicans have said the source of the allegation is highly credible while admitting they don’t know whether it’s true or not.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) declared after the briefing on Monday that the FBI had not determined the allegation to be untrue, though he didn’t say it had found the tip credible, either.
“Today, FBI officials confirmed that the unclassified FBI-generated record has not been disproven and is currently being used in an ongoing investigation,” Comer told reporters after a briefing in a Capitol basement.
But Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the committee, said he learned from the briefing that the Justice Department under President Donald Trump looked into the tip and found that it wasn’t worth a full investigation.
“They decided there was no grounds to escalate this up the investigative-prosecutorial chain,” Raskin said. “If there’s a complaint, the complaint is with Attorney General William Barr, the Trump Justice Department and the team that the Trump administration appointed to look into it.”
In 2020, Barr said the Justice Department was looking into material that former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani had gathered from Ukraine in an effort to find dirt on Biden. Barr said at the time that “we can’t take anything we received from Ukraine at face value.” No charges resulted from the Giuliani material, though it may have sparked an investigation into Hunter Biden in addition to one led by federal prosecutors in Delaware.
Comer has previously said the tip, delivered to the FBI in June 2020, reflected a “very credible” allegation that Biden had something to do with a $5 million bribe involving a foreign national. The allegation has emerged as a key to Comer’s quest to tie Biden himself to the “influence peddling” of his family members, whom Comer has said received millions in sketchy payments from foreign sources.
Comer refused the DOJ’s initial offer to let lawmakers see the document at FBI headquarters, but then agreed to take a look after the FBI offered to bring it over to the Capitol.
Even though the FBI showed them the document on Monday, Comer said Republicans would still initiate contempt proceedings against FBI Director Christopher Wray because they weren’t allowed to keep a copy.
“At the briefing, the FBI again refused to hand over the unclassified record to the custody of the House Oversight Committee, and we will now initiate contempt of Congress hearings this Thursday,” Comer said.
Asked why he needed his own copy of the form, Comer complained that press accounts of the dispute emphasized that the allegation remains unverified. He stressed that the FBI’s source is highly credible and suggested reporters ought to describe the allegations that way.
“Remember, the main reason they’re not wanting to make this public is because they’re concerned about the source,” Comer said, without explaining why it should be made public anyway.
Raskin stressed that the source himself couldn’t vouch for the incriminating tip.
“What we’re talking about here is a confidential human source reporting a conversation with someone else,” Raskin said. “What we’re talking about is secondhand hearsay.”
The DOJ has maintained that the document reflects unverified claims collected by a line FBI agent, that the form itself lacks context and that disclosing the information could compromise confidential sources and investigations.
Somehow, Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have previously seen the document, the two said last week. Grassley has repeatedly said he didn’t know if the allegations were true, just that he wanted the Justice Department to say whether it had investigated.
“We are not interested in whether the allegations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not,” Grassley told Fox News last week. “We’re responsible for making sure the FBI does its job, and that’s what we want to know.”
NEW YORK (AP) — The Department of Justice has informed former Vice President Mike Pence ‘s legal team that it will not pursue criminal charges related to the discovery of classified documents at his Indiana home.
The department sent a letter to Pence’s attorney on Thursday informing him that, after an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information, no criminal charges will be sought.
FBI agents raided the Tampa home of Tim Burke, a former journalist who runs a media and political consulting firm, at 6 a.m. on May 8 and spent nearly 10 hours seizing computers, a phone, and other electronic equipment. At the time, Burke declined to share the search warrant with media outlets, and the FBI refused to provide any information about the raid.
But on Friday, the Tampa Bay Timesreported that the raid was connected to leaked clips of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that went viral over the past year.
The Times reportedly obtained a letter sent by U.S. assistant attorney Jay Trezevant to Fox News that describes an ongoing criminal probe into hacks at the company. Though the letter doesn’t mention Burke or accuse him of any wrongdoing, the Times was able to confirm that the raid was related to the probe. Burke declined to comment after the Times contacted him and read parts of the letter.
The criminal probe, the Times reports, “concerns allegations of unauthorized computer access; interception of wire, oral or electronic communication; conspiracy; and other federal crimes.” According to the letter, the hacked material refers to footage of Carlson published by Vice and Media Matters for America. The Vice clip, published in October, includes parts of an interview Carlson conducted with rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, that were cut from the ultimate broadcast in which the artist made a number of antisemitic statements.
The Media Matters clips were published in quick succession during the week after Carlson’s ouster in April. They capture the former host making a number of vulgar comments, including proposing to discuss “the fine points” of sexual technique with British newscaster Piers Morgan, calling a Dominion Voting Systems lawyer a “slimy little motherfucker,” and asking his makeup artist about pillow fights in the women’s bathroom.
The federal prosecutor’s letter specifies that neither media company is accused of any wrongdoing, according to the Times.
The leaked footage has caused major headaches for Fox leadership. The Daily Beastreported that Fox executives were “full-on freaked out” about the Ye footage, and in early May, a Fox lawyer sent Media Matters a cease-and-desist letter, demanding it remove the leaked videos. The liberal media watchdog refused, and the clips remain on the site.
“Reporting on newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism. For Fox to argue otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense that they’re a news operation,” Media Matters president Angelo Carusone wrote in a statement at the time. “Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns.”
Around the time of the raid, Burke’s wife, Tampa City Council member Lynn Hurtak, said the warrant was “solely related to my husband’s work as a journalist.” Burke worked from 2018 to 2019 as a video director for The Daily Beast, where much of his work focused on right-wing media. In a 2022 Netflix documentary, Burke revealed that he’d once been part of the online hacking group Anonymous. “I developed a reputation as somebody who finds things,” he said.
Since the raid, Burke’s 100-plus follower Twitter account has been dormant, and his personal and business websites no longer work, the Timesreported.
The FBI has disclosed a potential threat to Queen Elizabeth II during her 1983 trip to the United States. The documents were released this week on the FBI’s records website. Elizabeth died last September after a 70-year reign.
The queen’s West Coast visit with her husband, Prince Philip, included a stop in San Francisco in March 1983. CBS San Francisco reported that one document appears to detail a tip gathered around a month before that visit from San Francisco police regarding a phone call from “a man who claimed that his daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet.”
Four years earlier in 1979, IRA paramilitaries opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland killed Louis Mountbatten, the last colonial governor of India and an uncle of Philip, in a bomb attack.
According to the documents, the man said he was going to “attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth” by either dropping an object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the queen’s royal yacht or trying to kill her during a visit to Yosemite National Park. The documents said the Secret Service intended to close the bridge’s walkways as the yacht drew near.
Queen Elizabeth ll makes a speech as President Ronald Reagan looks on during a banquet on March 3, 1983, in San Francisco.
Anwar Hussein/Getty Images
The names of the San Francisco police officer who received the phone call and the caller were redacted in the documents, which did not indicate whether precautions were taken at Yosemite or whether any arrests were made. A March 7, 1983, memo indicated the queen completed the U.S. visit “without incident” and that “no further investigation is warranted.”
A separate file among the documents, dated 1989, pointed out that while the FBI was unaware of any specific threats against the queen, “the possibility of threats against the British monarchy is ever present from the Irish Republican Army.”
In 1970, suspected IRA sympathizers unsuccessfully attempted to derail Elizabeth’s train west of Sydney, while in 1981 the IRA tried to bomb her on a visit to Shetland, off the northeast coast of Scotland.
In the same year, a mentally disturbed teenager fired a single shot toward the queen’s car during a visit to New Zealand. Christopher Lewis fired the shot as she toured the South Island city of Dunedin.
The botched attempt was covered up by police at the time and only came to light in 2018 when New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service spy agency released documents following a media request.
Also in 1981, another teenager fired six blanks at Elizabeth during the monarch’s Trooping the Color birthday parade in central London.
The queen quickly calmed her startled horse and carried on while the teenager told soldiers who disarmed him he had “wanted to be famous.”
The following year, in one of the most famous security breaches of her reign, Michael Fagan managed to get into the queen’s bedroom and spent 10 minutes talking to her before she could raise the alarm.
The unemployed decorator had a few drinks and scaled the walls of Buckingham Palace, climbing up a drainpipe to enter the queen’s London residence.
He wandered into her bedroom and reportedly sat on the end of the bed for a chat with the perturbed monarch before a palace staffer lured him away with the promise of a shot of whisky.
The FBI documents detailed other security concerns involving the queen’s visits to various U.S. cities. When she attended a Baltimore Orioles game with President George H.W. Bush in May 1991, several dozen demonstrators in the park chanted slogans condemning Britain’s policy in Northern Ireland.
On September 8, 2022, after more than 70 years on the British throne, Elizabeth died at Balmoral Castle, her official residence in Scotland. She was 96.
Officials at the FBI improperly searched a foreign intelligence database as they investigated suspects in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots and more than 100 people arrested in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in June 2020, according declassified court opinions released Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
One FBI analyst also looked up information on more than 19,000 donors to a congressional candidate whose campaign was, in the view of the analyst, a possible “target of foreign influence,” but a subsequent review found only eight of the individuals had potential foreign links, according to the documents. (Officials who briefed reporters on Friday said the candidate, who was running against an incumbent, was ultimately not elected to Congress.)
All of the incidents took place before a range of internal changes were instituted by the FBI beginning in summer of 2021.
“As a result, these compliance incidents do not reflect FBI’s querying practices subsequent to the full deployment of the remedial measures,” said Rebecca Richards, head of ODNI’s Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Transparency.
Richards said the FBI had made “substantial reforms” to its query activities under Section 702 for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, legislation that allows for electronic spying on foreign targets. The 702 database, which intelligence and law enforcement officials can search, can include Americans’ data if they are in contact with foreign surveillance targets.
“We’re not trying to hide from this stuff, but this type of noncompliance is unacceptable,” a senior FBI official said. “And that’s why we put these reforms in place to stop that from happening in the future.”
Among the changes made to the querying process is a new requirement that analysts include a written justification for running a search involving a U.S. person, rather than choosing an option from a dropdown menu.
“This remedial measure is important because it helps users engage better with the [query] standard and explain in their own words why it meets the requirements,” a senior Justice Department official said, adding that extra training and guidelines issued by the government had helped “reduce misunderstandings” about the process.
Analysts now also have to “opt in” to searches of collected foreign intelligence; a prior default setting caused “inadvertent queries” of that data.
“We’re seen a significant impact, in our view, from that change,” the DOJ official said.
The public release of the significantly redacted court opinions comes as debate in Congress intensifies over the reauthorization of Section 702, which expires at the end of this year. National security officials have argued the tool is essential in counterterrorism, cybersecurity and transnational crime cases. But privacy advocates and some lawmakers have called for substantial reforms to the law.
“Today’s disclosures underscore the need for Congress to rein in the FBI’s egregious abuses of this law, including warrantless searches using the names of people who donated to a congressional candidate,” said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “These unlawful searches undermine our core constitutional rights and threaten the bedrock of our democracy.”
Connecticut Democrat Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the FBI’s efforts had already reduced compliance incidents, but that it was “crystal clear from our Committee’s oversight that additional changes are required to ensure that the FBI, and other agencies, are faithful stewards of this powerful and irreplaceable national security tool.”
“I remain committed to working with Chairman Turner and the rest of the Congress to protect Americans’ constitutional rights while also preserving the capabilities we need to protect our nation,” Himes said.
“If Section 702 is to be reauthorized, there must be statutory reforms to ensure that the checks and balances are in place to put an end to these abuses,” said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Officials said Friday that additional FBI compliance reports would be released “soon,” given the “high level of attention” from Congress and the public in the course of the reauthorization debate.
The Justice Department official said the “vast majority” of non-compliance incidents had stemmed from “a good-faith misunderstanding.”
“Accountability is levied where there is actual misconduct,” she said. “But again, that, in practice, is very rare.”
