ReportWire

Tag: FBI

  • Will a shutdown finally shrink government?

    This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch discuss whether the impending government shutdown will actually rein in the federal bureaucracy. They consider whether there is anything to gain from a shutdown, how past shutdowns have played out, and whether the risk of growing executive power outweighs the risk of uncontrolled spending.

    They also examine the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey and whether it’s about retribution or substance, President Donald Trump’s deployment of federal troops to Portland, and New York Mayor Eric Adams’ decision to exit the mayoral race. A listener question prompts a conversation about cyclical theories of history and whether frameworks like The Fourth Turning help explain our current moment or merely provide the illusion of clarity.

     

    0:00—Shutdown showdown and shrinking the government

    9:24—Russell Vought and the growth of executive power

    25:34—James Comey faces an indictment

    31:38—Eric Adams drops out of NYC mayoral race

    40:42—Listener question on cyclical frameworks in history

    48:06—Trump sends federal police to Portland

    56:30—Weekly cultural recommendations

     

    “Government Set To Shut Down Tomorrow,” by Liz Wolfe

    “The American New Right Looks Like the European Old Right,” by Jack Nicastro and Phillip W. Magness

    “How GOP Fiscal Sanity Died, in 7 Easy Steps,” by Matt Welch

    “Shutdown Highlights Basic Fact: Most of Government is ‘Non-Essential’,” by Nick Gillespie

    “The Libertarian Case for Postmodernism,” by Nick Gillespie

    “In Trump’s Tussle With James Comey, You Should Hope Everybody Loses,” by J.D. Tuccille

    “Trump’s Public Comments Could Further Complicate the Shaky Case Against James Comey,” by Jacob Sullum

    “Kash Patel Tellingly Ties James Comey’s Indictment to the Legally Unrelated ‘Russiagate Hoax,’” by Jacob Sullum

    “The Deep-State Liars of the #Resistance,” by Matt Welch

    “What Does It Mean for Trump To Designate Antifa a ‘Terrorist Organization’?” by Matthew Petti

    “The Tom Cotton Do-Over,” by Matt Welch

    “The Dream of the ’90s Died in Portland,” by Nancy Rommelmann

    “Assata Shakur Stood With the Oppressors,” by Billy Binion

    r/NYC on Reddit: “Eric Adams wore this custom made robe to a Rosh Hashanah service in Brooklyn yesterday.”

     

    Upcoming Reason Events

    “Is mass immigration good for America?” Join us for a Reason Versus live debate on October 2 in Washington, D.C.

     

     

    Today’s Sponsor:

    You believe in limited government and support organizations that champion the ideals of a free society.  But have you ensured that your charitable giving will leave a lasting legacy of liberty? Without a plan in place, your charitable legacy could fade—or worse, be redirected to causes that don’t align with your values. At DonorsTrust, they help you secure your philanthropic vision for the long term. With a donor-advised fund, you can ensure that the groups you care about continue to receive support, even beyond your lifetime. And unlike other donor-advised funds, DonorsTrust respects your libertarian principles and ensures your charitable capital remains committed to advancing individual liberty. Your giving should reflect your values—not just today, but for years to come. Your Vision.  Your Values.  Your Impact. Go to http://DonorsTrust.org/Reason to ensure your philanthropy continues to champion liberty for generations to come.

    Peter Suderman

    Source link

  • Lindsey Halligan is already making mistakes prosecuting James Comey

    Lindsey Halligan’s debut as a federal prosecutor has drawn close scrutiny after a series of early errors surfaced in court filings related to the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

    Halligan, previously known as a private attorney and one of Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, assumed the role of U.S. Attorney only recently and has never prosecuted a case before.

    Newsweek contacted the DOJ for comment via email outside of normal office hours on Monday.

    Why It Matters

    The missteps go beyond clerical slips: they test the strength and fairness of the government’s case and the credibility of the Justice Department itself.

    Procedural errors can delay or weaken a prosecution, giving defense lawyers leverage to argue overreach. They also risk reinforcing criticism that this politically charged indictment—announced soon after Donald Trump publicly urged charges against political opponents—is more about pressure than law.

    How Halligan recovers from these mistakes could shape not just the outcome of the Comey case but public trust in the department’s independence and competence.

    What To Know

    Problems in Halligan’s initial filings, including duplicate case numbers and clerical errors such as misspellings in official documents have been flagged.

    A widely shared social media post on X noted she “doesn’t know the difference between a bedrock principle and a bedrock ‘principal’.”

    The difference between the two is about word meaning—and in legal writing, it’s important:

    • Principle (with “le” at the end) means a fundamental truth, rule, or concept.
      Example: “Due process is a bedrock principle of American law.”
    • Principal (with “al” at the end) means a leader or main person (like a school principal) or can mean “main” or “primary.”
      Example: “The principal reason for dismissal was lack of evidence.”

    So “bedrock principle” is correct when you mean a foundational idea or standard. “Bedrock principal” would incorrectly suggest a foundational person or primary figure, which doesn’t make sense in legal filings.

    While U.S. Magistrate Judge Vaala was also described on X September 28, 2025, as “trying to untangle Lindsey Halligan’s first adventure in indicting someone.”

    Some social media commentary veered into personal territory—mentioning Halligan’s past role as Donald Trump’s lawyer—but the concerns raised publicly are framed around prosecutorial competence and case management.

    Questions about Halligan’s preparedness intensified when The Washington Post reported she “presented the Comey indictment all by herself to the grand jury,” citing people familiar with the matter.

    Legal Debate Over The Charges

    The case accuses Comey of misleading investigators about authorizing leaks during his tenure at the FBI.

    The prosecution’s path will not be straightforward. To convict under 18 U.S.C. §1001(a) (2), prosecutors must prove the statements were false, that Comey knew they were false when made, and that they were material to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s inquiry. Proving intent—showing deliberate deception rather than mistake or faulty memory—has historically been difficult with senior officials and complex testimony.

    And the legal theory behind the indictment is contested, including by some who have criticized Comey previously.

    Fox News legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said on Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street that the charges appear weak. “Well, I don’t think there’s a case,” McCarthy told Bartiromo on September 26.

    He said the indictment seems “premised on something that’s not true, which is that [Andrew] McCabe said that Comey authorized him to leak to the Wall Street Journal. … McCabe said that he directed the leak, and he told Comey about it after the fact. So, it’s true that Comey never authorized it in the sense of OK’ing it before it happened. So, I don’t see how they can make that case.”

    McCarthy also noted: “If you were talking about the information that was provided to the FISA court … that’s not what this case is about,” underscoring that the indictment focuses narrowly on a single disclosure.

    Not The First DOJ Misstep — But Unusual At This Level

    Filing mistakes are not unheard of in federal litigation, but they rarely surface repeatedly in a high-profile case led by a U.S. Attorney.

    In 2017, the Justice Department briefly misspelled then–acting Attorney General Sally Yates’s name in a filing, and in 2020 a DOJ motion in the Michael Flynn case cited the wrong date for a judge’s order; both were corrected quickly and drew little attention.

    Halligan, 36, the newly installed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia—one of the most consequential federal prosecutorial offices in the country—spent most of her career in Florida insurance litigation before joining Trump’s legal team during the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation.

    Court records indicate she has participated in only three federal cases prior to this appointment.

    What stands out with Halligan’s early work is the combination of multiple procedural errors—including duplicate case numbers and the “principle/principal” slip — and her lack of prior prosecutorial experience while serving in one of the department’s most senior roles.

    What People Are Saying

    Carol Leonnig and Vaughn Hillyard added September 26, on X that “Lindsey Halligan, the newly installed U.S. Attorney who has never prosecuted a case, presented the Comey indictment all by herself to the grand jury … She may have a problem finding a prosecutor in office to work on the case.”

    What Happens Next

    The case now moves into pretrial motions, where Comey’s lawyers will challenge the charges and cite early filing errors. Halligan can correct those mistakes and may add experienced prosecutors, though support is uncertain.

    If the case survives, discovery will test the evidence that Comey authorized leaks as political scrutiny grows. Judges often allow technical fixes, but repeated missteps could damage the prosecution’s credibility and shape views of Halligan’s leadership.

    Source link

  • Trump’s public comments could further complicate the shaky case against James Comey

    Lindsey Halligan seemed out of her depth on Thursday evening, when she presented a two-count indictment of former FBI Director James Comey to a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala was puzzled because she had received two versions of the indictment, both signed by the grand jury’s foreperson, that seemed inconsistent with each other.

    Halligan, a defense lawyer with no prosecutorial experience whom President Donald Trump had appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia just a few days earlier, said she had “only reviewed” one of the indictments, “did not see the other one,” and didn’t “know where that came from.” When Vaala pointed out that the document Halligan claimed she never saw “has your signature on it,” the neophyte prosecutor was nonplussed. “OK,” she said. “Well.”

    That embarrassing episode reinforced the impression that Trump, in his eagerness to pursue a personal vendetta against Comey, had settled on an agent who was manifestly unqualified to run one of the country’s most prominent U.S. attorney’s offices. Trump’s desperate thirst for revenge, which was also evident in his public comments about the case, supports an argument that Comey’s lawyers are apt to make in seeking dismissal of the charges against him: that he is a victim of selective or vindictive prosecution.

    A claim of selective prosecution alleges that the defendant was singled out for punishment when “similarly situated individuals” were not charged. Vindictive prosecution entails punishing a defendant for exercising his procedural rights. If Halligan files additional charges against Comey, for example, he could argue that she was retaliating against him for challenging the original indictment.

    Such claims are rarely successful because they require evidence that a prosecutorial decision was influenced by improper motives. But in this case, there is no shortage of evidence that the decision to accuse Comey of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020 was driven by presidential pique.

    Trump fired Comey in 2017 out of anger at the FBI investigation of alleged ties between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government. In the years since, Trump has made no secret of his desire to punish Comey for that “witch hunt,” which FBI Director Kash Patel cited in defending the indictment even though the charges are legally unrelated to the Russia probe.

    Those charges, which include one count of “willfully and knowingly” making “a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement” to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding, were filed just five days before they would have been barred by the five-year statute of limitations. The Justice Department nearly missed that deadline because neither career prosecutors nor Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Seibert, thought there was sufficient evidence to justify the charges announced on Thursday.

    According to news reports citing unnamed sources, top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, were also skeptical. But the president was clear about what he wanted to happen.

    “We can’t delay any longer,” Trump declared in a September 20 Truth Social post that directly addressed Bondi. “It’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

    Who were “they”? Trump specifically mentioned Comey, along with two other nemeses: Sen. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.) and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

    By that point, Trump had already fired Seibert and picked Halligan, who was sworn in two days later, to replace him. Trump described Halligan, who had served on his personal defense team, as “a really good lawyer.”

    Judging from Halligan’s encounter with Vaala, that may have been an overstatement. “This has never happened before,” Vaala remarked. “I’ve been handed two documents [in the Comey case] that are inconsistent with one another. There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the [grand jury] foreperson.”

    One indictment listed the two charges approved by the grand jury, while the other mentioned a third count that the grand jury rejected, involving allegedly false statements during the same Senate hearing. The latter document, Vaala noted, described “a failure to concur in an indictment” but did not specify which count was rejected, so “it looks like they failed to concur across all three counts.” The judge said she was “a little confused as to why I was handed two things with the same case number that are inconsistent.”

    The fact that the grand jury rejected any of the charges against Comey was itself remarkable. Because such proceedings entail a one-sided presentation of allegations that the government claims establish probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, grand juries almost never decline to indict. In fiscal year 2016, according to a Justice Department report, U.S. attorneys opened about 152,000 cases, just six of which ended in “no bill” from a grand jury.

    It was even more striking that a U.S. attorney, confronted by such a rare situation, would accidentally submit two seemingly contradictory grand jury reports. Halligan’s confusion reflects both her inexperience and the unseemly haste with which she rushed to obtain the indictment demanded by the president before it was too late. Tellingly, that indictment was signed by Halligan alone, without the signatures of any underlings who agreed that the charges were legally justified.

    After the indictment was announced, Trump publicly gloated. That evening, he described Comey as “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to,” adding that “he has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”

    The next morning, Trump called Comey “A DIRTY COP.” That evening, he thanked Patel and “the outstanding members of the FBI” for “their brilliant work on the recent Indictment of the Worst FBI Director in the History of our Country, James ‘Dirty Cop’ Comey.” He said “the level of enthusiasm by the FBI was incredible” but understandable because “they knew Comey for what he is, and was”—i.e., “a total SLIMEBALL!”

    Trump added an even worse insult while speaking to reporters on Friday. “James Comey essentially was a Democrat,” the president said. “He was worse than a Democrat.”

    Although Trump suggested that Comey was getting what he deserved for being a terrible person, a “SLIMEBALL,” and “worse than a Democrat,” none of those is actually a crime. The accusation that Comey was “A DIRTY COP” came closer to conduct that might justify a criminal charge. But the indictment does not allege corruption or abuse of power. And despite Patel’s framing, it is not even legally related to “Russiagate.”

    Rather, the indictment involves Comey’s reaffirmation of his earlier testimony that he never authorized anyone at the FBI to be “an anonymous source in news stories about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation”—i.e., the FBI probe that examined Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified material as secretary of state, including her use of a private email server. That denial was a lie, the indictment says, because Comey “then and there knew” that “he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.”

    The rejected count indicates that “PERSON 1” is Clinton, and the exchange with Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) cited in the indictment suggests that “PERSON 3” is former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who in 2016 authorized the disclosure of information about an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation to The Wall Street Journal. The day after the Journal‘s story ran, McCabe claimed, he informed Comey of what he had done, and his boss expressed approval.

    When the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigated the leak, Comey contradicted that account, and the OIG credited his version of events. The resulting OIG report concluded that “McCabe did not tell Comey on or around October 31 (or at any other time) that he (McCabe) had authorized the disclosure of information about the [Clinton Foundation] Investigation to the WSJ.” It added that “had McCabe done so, we believe that Comey would have objected to the disclosure.”

    In addition to that assessment, the case against Comey is complicated by doubts as to exactly what Comey was denying when he told Cruz that he stood by his earlier testimony, which involved the email investigation rather than the Clinton Foundation probe. It is not hard to see why Seibert and the prosecutors working for him did not think the case was worth pursuing.

    None of that mattered to Trump, who was determined to get Comey one way or another. “The whole thing is just bizarro,” former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, a legal analyst at National Review, told Politico. “This is the kind of thing that should never ever happen.…This case should never go to trial because it’s obvious from the four corners of the indictment that there’s no case.”

    McCarthy elaborates on that point in a National Review essay. “The vindictive indictment the Trump Justice Department barely managed to get a grand jury to approve on Thursday is so ill-conceived and incompetently drafted, he should be able to get it thrown out on a pretrial motion to dismiss,” McCarthy writes, noting that the skimpy two-page indictment lacks “any description of the incident involving McCabe, Clinton, and Comey out of which the perjury charge supposedly arises.”

    In any case, McCarthy says, McCabe “is not a credible witness, particularly on this subject.” The OIG, he notes, “found that Comey’s account that he did not approve the leak was overwhelmingly corroborated while McCabe’s account was full of holes.” And even if Halligan believes (or claims to believe) McCabe rather than Comey, McCabe did not claim that Comey “authorized” the Wall Street Journal leak—only that he expressed approval after the fact.

    Halligan overlooked these problems in her eagerness to do what Trump wanted. The case against Comey is “the very definition of selective and vindictive prosecution,” says Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. “By demanding the prosecutions, Trump may have undercut any possibility of success by providing the people on his ‘enemies list’ with a built-in defense.”

    Duke University law professor Samuel W. Buell was skeptical of that argument in an interview with The New York Times. “Trump’s being really crass and blatant about the ways he is talking about all that stuff,” Buell said. “But I don’t know that that’s going to give rise to a motion that would invalidate a whole prosecution.”

    Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law, likewise noted that the case against Comey is “not like other cases where we typically see such claims.” But “that doesn’t mean it can’t fall within the concerns and the legal standards for vindictive and selection prosecution,” she added.

    At the very least, Trump has given Comey’s lawyers ammunition they would not otherwise have. A former Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor, who “was granted anonymity because he fears retaliation for speaking about the case,” thinks Trump’s statements pose a serious problem for Halligan. “If I’m defending Comey, that Trump order to Pam Bondi to prosecute him, that’s a big problem,” he told Politico. “That’s going to bite them in a big way.…Comey could become the poster child for selective prosecution.”

    Jacob Sullum

    Source link

  • Who Was Thomas Sanford? What We Know About Michigan Mass Shooting Suspect

    Thomas Jacob Sanford of Burton, Michigan has been identified as the suspect in the mass shooting that killed two and injured eight others at a Mormon Church Sunday, Grand Blanc Police Chief William Renye said during a Sunday evening press conference.

    The incident started with a car driving into the building before a fire broke out and the suspect began shooting at the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan around 10:25 a.m.

    Renye said the 40-year-old suspect was killed in the parking lot of the church less than ten minutes after the first call came in for the shooting.

    The suspect was engaged by two officers who were at the church when the incident occurred, one was a DNR officer and the other worked for Grand Blanc Police, Renye said during an earlier press conference.

    Multiple agencies, including the FBI and ATF, are investigating the deadly shooting.

    Of the eight surviving victims, one remains in critical condition while seven others are in stable condition, Renye said.

    The identities of the injured and deceased have not yet been released.

    This is a breaking news story. Updates to come.

    Source link

  • FBI’s Patel clarifies role of hundreds of agents on Jan 6, says Wray lied to Congress

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    EXCLUSIVE: The FBI responded on Saturday to a report that 274 plainclothes agents were at the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, clarifying the role of bureau personnel while still blasting former Director Christopher Wray.

    While the agents were on hand, they were sent in after the riot had begun to try to control the unruly crowd, officials told Fox News Digital. That is not the proper role of FBI agents, and Wray was not forthcoming about what happened when he testified numerous times on Capitol Hill, Director Kash Patel said.

    “Agents were sent into a crowd control mission after the riot was declared by Metro Police – something that goes against FBI standards,” Patel told Fox News Digital. “This was the failure of a corrupt leadership that lied to Congress and to the American people about what really happened.”

    He added, “Thanks to agents coming forward, we are now uncovering the truth. We are fully committed to transparency, and justice and accountability continues with this FBI.” 

    There’s no indication any FBI agents were involved in any events related to Trump’s speech on the morning of Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an FBI official told Fox News Digital, adding that Wray should have disclosed that agents were there when he was asked by congressional leaders.

    FBI’S KASH PATEL VOWS ‘DEFINITIVE ANSWER’ ON TOP JAN 6 QUESTION IS ‘COMING’

    The FBI responded on Saturday after President Donald Trump said that former FBI Director Christopher Wray “has some major explaining to do” following a report that said 274 plainclothes agents were at the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.  (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

    President Donald Trump, citing a report that the agents were in the crowd which did not make clear their mission, said earlier that Wray, “has some major explaining to do.”

    “It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed, against all Rules, Regulations, Protocols, and Standards, 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Saturday afternoon following a report from The Blaze, revealing the number of agents that were there. 

    Trump added, “This is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again! That’s right, as it now turns out, FBI Agents were at, and in, the January 6th Protest, probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists, but certainly not as ‘Law Enforcement Officials.’”

    The president said he wanted to know each officer’s identity and what they were doing at the U.S. Capitol. 

    “Many Great American Patriots were made to pay a very big price only for the love of their Country,” he said, referring to Trump supporters who faced charges for their involvement on Jan. 6.

    Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of every person charged for involvement on Jan. 6 after he took office this year. 

    DOJ INSPECTOR GENERAL DOES NOT DENY FBI INFORMANTS WERE AMONG JAN. 6 CROWD

    Christopher Wray speaking to Congress

    Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 15, 2023, “If you are asking if the violence at the Capitol was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources or agents, the answer is no.”  (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

    He concluded, “I owe this investigation of ‘Dirty Cops and Crooked Politicians’ to them! Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do. That’s two in a row, Comey and Wray, who got caught LYING, with our Great Country at stake. WE CAN NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN TO AMERICA AGAIN!” 

    Citing a senior congressional source, the Blaze report said that the number of agents wasn’t “necessarily a surprise” because the FBI often “embeds countersurveillance personnel at large events.”

    Wray told a House Committee on Nov. 15, 2023, “If you are asking if the violence at the Capitol was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources or agents, the answer is no,” but he wouldn’t disclose if any agents or sources were embedded within the crowd. 

    Kash Patel speaking

    FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that agents were sent to the Capitol on Jan. 6 for crowd control after it was declared a riot against agency policy.  (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

    The 274 agents also includes those who were responding to the pipe bombs placed near the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters the night before Jan. 6, according to Politico. 

    Trump nominated Wray as FBI director in 2017 after he fired former FBI director James Comey, who was just indicted by a grand jury this week for allegedly making false statements to Congress. 

    FBI AGENTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY ARE TOLD TO RESIGN, RETIRE OR BE FIRED

    A report released last December by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said: “We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,” although he acknowledged there were 26 paid informants, but only three of them were assigned by the FBI to be there.

    The report also said that FBI personnel were sent to the Capitol at the request of overwhelmed Capitol Police to help with crowd control. 

    Horowitz said that none of the informants were allowed to incite the crowd, break the law or enter the U.S. Capitol. 

    Police pushing back rioters

    Rioters and U.S. Capitol police battle over a barricade at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    In its reporting, Blaze noted that there may have been confusion regarding “plainclothes” and “undercover,” meaning both the inspector general and the FBI could be telling the truth. 

    Many of the agents weren’t happy to have been sent to the Capitol to do crowd control, another official told Fox News Digital. It was a chaotic scene with no pre-planning that contradicted the agency’s original plan to not get involved in the event. The official said that agents are not trained to do crowd control. 

    The first agents arrived at the Capitol around 2:30 p.m. — there’s no evidence there were any there before a riot was declared — and agents continued to arrive after that, the official added. 

    Police on Jan. 6

    Trump supporters clash with police and security forces at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    Wray had testified before Congress prior to the inspector general’s report being released in December, but Patel called out Wray for deflecting and giving a “D.C. answer” when pressed by lawmakers. 

    “Why it took a ton of time and questioning in Congress for the director to get that point is what I’m trying to eliminate from the FBI,” Patel said. “If Congress asks you a question under oath, whether or not there were sources in [or] around Jan. 6th at the Capitol, you as the director of the FBI need to know that and not deflect and give a D.C. answer. You have to be prepared for that.”

    Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

    Source link

  • Trump says he expects charges for other adversaries after Comey indictment

    Donald Trump said on Friday that he expected more people whom he considers his political enemies to face criminal charges, a day after the justice department indicted former FBI director James Comey and faced a torrent of criticism for enacting the president’s campaign of retribution.

    “It’s not a list, but I think there’ll be others,” Trump said as he departed the White House to travel to the Ryder Cup golf tournament. “I mean, they’re corrupt. They were corrupt radical left Democrats.”

    Related: Who has Trump targeted so far besides Comey in his retribution campaign?

    Trump’s blunt remarks underscored the perilous moment for his political adversaries, given that the justice department pressed ahead with criminal charges against Comey, even though it was widely seen – inside and outside the administration – to be a weak case.

    The indictment against Comey, filed in federal district court on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, alleged that he misled lawmakers in September 2020 when he stood by his previous testimony to Congress claiming he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak to reporters.

    Prosecutors alleged that statement was not true and that Comey had authorized his friend and Columbia law school professor Dan Richman to leak to reporters about an investigation into Hilary Clinton, when Richman worked for a short time as a special government employee at the FBI.

    But the underlying evidence against Comey, which remains unclear from the two-page indictment, was considered to be insufficient for a conviction. The issues were laid out in a memo and Erik Siebert, the then interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, declined to bring charges.

    Trump fired Siebert within days and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, most recently a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience. Halligan was briefed on the problems with the case but pressed forward with charges anyway, presenting the case herself to the grand jury.

    The grand jury returned an indictment on two counts but declined to approve a third. Even then, only 14 out of 23 grand jurors voted to bring the false statement charge, barely more than the 12-person threshold, court documents show.

    The fraught nature of the Comey indictment raised fresh fears that Trump’s political appointees at justice department headquarters in Washington and at its field offices elsewhere will feel emboldened to pursue criminal cases against the president’s other adversaries.

    Among other people, Trump has fixated in recent weeks on criminal investigations against the New York attorney general Letitia James and Democratic senator Adam Schiff over mortgage fraud allegations. James brought a civil fraud case against Trump last year and Schiff led the first impeachment trial.

    Last weekend, before Comey’s indictment, Trump called on his attorney general Pam Bondi to pursue Comey, James and Schiff. “They impeached me twice and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

    The administration also launched a criminal investigation into former CIA director John Brennan, who Trump despises for his role in the US intelligence community’s assessment in 2016 about Russian malign influence operations aimed at helping the Trump campaign.

    Last month, the FBI also searched the home and office of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, over allegations he mishandled classified documents. The FBI recovered documents with classification markings but Bolton’s lawyer claimed they had been declassified.

    Source link

  • Heritage Foundation Uses Bogus Stat to Push a Trans Terrorism Classification

    In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, the Republican policy apparatus went immediately to work. The Heritage Foundation, which published Project 2025, and its spinoff, the Oversight Project, issued a call for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to designate “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism,” or TIVE, as a domestic terrorism threat category. The push comes as President Donald Trump just signed an executive order that seeks to mobilize federal law enforcement against vaguely defined domestic terror networks.

    The Heritage Foundation and Oversight Project document, which defines “transgender ideology” as “a belief that wholly or partially rejects fundamental science about human sex being biologically determined before birth, binary, and immutable,” grounds its policy recommendations in a startling claim: “Experts estimate that 50% of all major (non-gang related) school shootings since 2015 have involved or likely involved transgender ideology.”

    When WIRED asked for the data behind this claim, the Oversight Project did not respond; the Heritage Foundation pointed to a tweet from one of its vice presidents, Roger Severino, claiming that “50% of major (non-gang) school shootings since 2015” involve a transgender shooter or trans-related motive. Severino also lays out what appears to be his entire dataset: eight shootings, four of which, he claims, involve “a trans-identifying shooter and/or a likely trans-ideology related motivation.”

    The data tell a different story.

    Since 2015, at least four dozen shootings have taken place on school grounds, according to data from the K-12 School Shooting Database, which has tracked every incident involving a gun on school grounds since 1966. Only three perpetrators in the database—the 2019 shooter at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado and the Covenant School shooter in Nashville in 2023 among them—have been credibly identified in public reporting as transgender or undergoing gender-affirming care. Nashville police concluded the shooter there was not motivated by a clear political or ideological agenda, but prioritized notoriety and infamy. In Colorado, investigators say one of the shooters, a transgender boy, cited bullying and long-standing mental health struggles as motivations.

    In an August shooting, a 23-year-old individual opened fire outside Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. The shooter had legally changed their name and written about conflict over gender identity, but there is no public evidence they consistently identified as transgender, making classification uncertain. Police say the attack was fueled by hostility toward Jews, Christians, and minorities, along with a quest for notoriety. Prosecutors added the animus was sweeping, saying the shooter “expressed hate towards almost every group imaginable.”

    The K-12 database, the most comprehensive of its kind, does not include gender data for about 12.5 percent of school shooters since 2015, which only makes it more difficult to draw firm conclusions about broader patterns.

    Other mass shootings at schools, including Parkland in 2018 and Uvalde in 2022, were carried out by young men with histories of grievance, misogyny, or violent ideation. None were tied to “transgender ideology.”

    The larger pattern, researchers say, points in the opposite direction: White supremacist, anti-government, and misogynist beliefs account for the lion’s share of ideologically motivated gun violence. Targeting “transgender ideology” as a terrorism category, they warn, confuses identity with ideology, risks licensing violence against anyone who defies gender norms, and shifts attention away from the real drivers of schoolyard violence.

    Dell Cameron, Andrew Couts

    Source link

  • Assata Shakur, Black Liberation Activist and aunt of Tupac, dies in Havana at 78

    Havana (CNN) — Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army member and fugitive with a $2 million FBI reward on her head, died in Havana where she had received political asylum from Fidel Castro, the Cuban Foreign Ministry announced Friday.

    According to the short announcement, Shakur, who was also known as Joanne Chesimard, died Thursday from “health ailments and her advanced age.”

    Shakur, who was also the godmother and step-aunt of slain rapper Tupac Shakur, was 78 years old.

    An outspoken proponent of armed revolution in the United States, Shakur was convicted for her role in a 1973 shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that killed a state trooper. Shakur was herself wounded in the exchange of gunfire and claimed that the FBI had targeted her for assassination as part of a widespread campaign against black militant organizations in the 1960s and 70s.

    While serving a life sentence for the murder of State Trooper Werner Foerster, Shakur escaped prison in New Jersey in 1979 and began her life on the run.

    Assata is transferred by authorities from Riker’s Island prison to the Middlesex County jail in January 1976 to await trial in the murder of state trooper Werner Foerster. Credit: Frank Hurley / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images via CNN Newsource

    She resurfaced in 1984 in Cuba where then Cuban leader Fidel Castro awarded her political asylum. While living in Cuba, Shakur wrote books, appeared in a documentary and mocked US efforts to force her extradition.

    In 2013 the FBI made Shakur the first woman on its most wanted terrorists list and, with the state of New Jersey Attorney, increased the reward for her capture to $2 million.

    Her asylum on the communist-run island among a handful of other US fugitives from justice provided fodder for anti-Castro activists who argued that Cuba should be remain on the US State Department list of countries that sponsor state terrorism.

    Patrick Oppmann and CNN

    Source link

  • Kash Patel tellingly ties James Comey’s indictment to the legally unrelated ‘Russiagate hoax’

    In his 2023 book Government Gangsters, Kash Patel, now the director of the FBI, described a “deep state” conspiracy against Donald Trump that he equated with a conspiracy to subvert democracy and the Constitution. An appendix to the book listed 60 “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State,” whom Patel described as “corrupt actors of the first order.” The list included former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017 out of anger over the FBI’s investigation of alleged ties between his presidential campaign and the Russian government.

    After Trump picked Patel to run the FBI, the nominee assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that, despite his vow to “come after” the “conspirators,” there would be “no politicization at the FBI” and “no retributive actions” against the president’s enemies. Thursday’s indictment of Comey, which charges him with two felonies based on allegedly false congressional testimony in September 2020, epitomizes the emptiness of that promise.

    As Patel tells it, the indictment, which was filed just a few days before the charges would have been barred by the five-year statute of limitations, is not a “retributive action.” Rather, it is “another step” in keeping the FBI’s “promise of full accountability.” It just so happens that accountability in this case coincides with pursuing one of the president’s many personal vendettas.

    “For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust,” Patel said in a press release. “Every day, we continue the fight to earn that trust back, and under my leadership, this FBI will confront the problem head-on. Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose. Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account—no matter their perch. No one is above the law.”

    Despite that framing, the Comey indictment, on its face, has nothing to do with “the Russiagate hoax.” It alleges that Comey lied during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on September 30, 2020, when he reaffirmed his earlier testimony that he had not authorized anyone at the FBI to “be an anonymous source in news stories about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation”—i.e., the FBI probe that examined Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified material as secretary of state, including her use of a private email server.

    As Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) noted at the 2020 hearing, Comey’s testimony contradicted what Andrew McCabe, Comey’s former deputy, had told the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG). McCabe claimed Comey had approved the disclosure of information about an FBI probe of the Clinton Foundation to The Wall Street Journal, which mentioned that new wrinkle in a story about the email investigation published on October 30, 2016. But the OIG report on the leak credited Comey’s version of events and portrayed McCabe as persistently dishonest.

    “McCabe lacked candor when he told Comey, or made statements that led Comey to believe, that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did,” the report said. “McCabe lacked candor when he told [FBI] agents that he had not authorized the disclosure to the WSJ and did not know who did….McCabe lacked candor when he stated that he told Comey on October 31, 2016, that he [McCabe] had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ” and that “Comey agreed it was a ‘good’ idea.”

    The OIG report concluded that “McCabe did not tell Comey on or around October 31 (or at any other time) that he (McCabe) had authorized the disclosure of information about the [Clinton Foundation] Investigation to the WSJ.” It added that “had McCabe done so, we believe that Comey would have objected to the disclosure.”

    Based on the contrary assumption that McCabe was telling the truth, the indictment charges Comey with “willfully and knowingly” making “a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement” to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under 18 USC 1001(a)(2), that’s a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The indictment also alleges a related felony, subject to the same maximum penalty, under 18 USC 1505, which applies to someone who “corruptly” attempts to “influence, obstruct, or impede” a congressional proceeding.

    To successfully defend Comey against those charges, National Review‘s Jim Geraghty notes, his lawyers “will have to convince at least one juror that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is a duplicitous SOB who lied when he claimed Comey had given permission to leak the information when Comey did not. That does not exactly sound like Mission: Impossible.”

    Given the weakness of the case against Comey, it is not surprising that career prosecutors did not think it was worth pursuing. That resistance explains why the indictment is signed only by Lindsey Halligan, a former Trump lawyer with no prosecutorial experience whom the president appointed as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia this month after her predecessor, Erik Seibert, proved insufficiently receptive to pursuing charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, another Trump nemesis. Even Attorney General Pam Bondi, who on Thursday claimed Comey’s indictment reflected the Justice Department’s “commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” reportedly was skeptical of the case in private.

    It is telling that Patel explicitly tied Comey’s indictment to “the Russiagate hoax” even though the charges are legally unrelated to that investigation. In a December 2023 podcast interview, Patel made it clear that he was determined to punish the “corrupt actors” who had wronged Trump even if it required some legal creativity. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” he said. “But yeah, we’re putting all of you on notice.”

    Jacob Sullum

    Source link

  • Former FBI Director James Comey Charged With Lying To Congress



    The Justice Department Thursday charged former FBI Director James Comey with perjury and obstruction of Congress.

    “No one is above the law,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”

    “Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability,” FBI Director Kash Patel said. “For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust.”

    ““Every day, we continue the fight to earn that trust back, and under my leadership, this FBI will confront the problem head-on,” he added. “Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose. Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account—no matter their perch. No one is above the law.”

    The DOJ alleges Comey lied in testimony to Congress, a charge that carries a sentence of up to five years in prison.

    He faces charges of a false statement and obstruction of a congressional investigation.

    The DOJ’s complaint concerns testimony Comey delivered in September 2020 on his handling of the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. 

    In that testimony, Comey asserted that he had not authorized the leak of information on the investigation to the media.

    Comey headed up the Russia investigation briefly during his tenure as FBI director before President Donald Trump fired him in May 2017.

    The charges against Comey come just days before the five-year statute of limitations for perjury was set to take effect on Sept. 30.

    Comey’s case will be heard in the Eastern District of Virginia. That office is headed by U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former White House aide who was appointed recently following the resignation of Erik Siebert, the previous attorney for the district. 

    Syndicated with permission from The Daily Signal.

    Tyler ONeil

    Source link

  • ‘I’m not afraid’: Former FBI director responds after being indicted

    This indictment filed overnight does not specifically mention the Russia investigation, but it does accuse Comey of making *** false statement and obstructing *** congressional proceeding. Comey’s accused of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation into Russia meddling with the 2016 election and whether he authorized *** leak to the press. Now timing is everything. Last week, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey resigned after President Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney General. Social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey. The president then nominated US Attorney Lindsay Halligan, former personal attorney to the president. Halligan quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to *** grand jury shortly after charges were filed. Comey responded, My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have *** trial. And keep the faith. Overnight, President Trump posted on social media saying that Comey has been bad for the country and is being held responsible for his crimes against the nation. If Comey is convicted, he faces up to 5 years in prison at the White House. I’m Rachel Horzheimer.

    ‘I’m not afraid’: Former FBI Director responds to indictment

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly lying to Congress about the Russia investigation, prompting a response from Comey expressing confidence in the judicial system.

    Updated: 7:52 AM EDT Sep 26, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his testimony in 2020 about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.The indictment, filed Thursday night, does not specifically mention the Russia investigation but outlines charges against Comey for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation and whether he authorized a leak to the press. Last week, Erik Siebert, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey, resigned after President Donald Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.In a social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey, James, and Trump’s other political enemies, writing to Bondi, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” President Trump then nominated U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney to the president, who quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to a grand jury.Halligan rushed to present the case to a grand jury because prosecutors had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired.Shortly after the charges were filed, Comey responded in a video posted on his social media, saying, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.” Overnight, President Trump posted on social media, calling Comey “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” and saying Comey is “being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”Trump continued by posting early Friday morning, “JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP.”If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison.Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his testimony in 2020 about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

    The indictment, filed Thursday night, does not specifically mention the Russia investigation but outlines charges against Comey for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation and whether he authorized a leak to the press.

    Last week, Erik Siebert, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey, resigned after President Donald Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.

    In a social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey, James, and Trump’s other political enemies, writing to Bondi, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” President Trump then nominated U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney to the president, who quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to a grand jury.

    Halligan rushed to present the case to a grand jury because prosecutors had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired.

    Shortly after the charges were filed, Comey responded in a video posted on his social media, saying, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

    Overnight, President Trump posted on social media, calling Comey “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” and saying Comey is “being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”

    Trump continued by posting early Friday morning, “JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP.”

    If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:


    Source link

  • Comey’s Son-in-Law Quits DOJ After Ex-Director’s Indictment

    Former FBI Director James Comey’s son-in-law resigned from his position with the Department of Justice (DOJ) just minutes after his father-in-law was indicted on charges of making a false statement to Congress and obstruction.

    Troy Edwards, serving as deputy chief of the DOJ’s National Security Section, submitted a one-sentence resignation letter to Lindsey Halligan, the newly appointed acting U.S. attorney in Virginia’s Eastern District and President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer.

    Why It Matters

    Comey is the first senior government official to face federal charges connected to the 2016 investigation of alleged Russian interference in the presidential election. Trump has repeatedly denounced the probe as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt.”

    Multiple government reviews found evidence that Moscow sought to help his campaign against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

    The Thursday indictment charges Comey with making a false statement and obstruction, centering on testimony Trump’s former FBI chief gave in September 2020 before the Senate in which he said he had never authorized anyone to act as an anonymous source to reporters during the Russia investigation.

    Prosecutors allege that Comey’s statement was false and obstructed congressional oversight, and they had until Tuesday to file charges or miss the five-year statute of limitations.

    What To Know

    Edwards submitted his resignation letter to Halligan, who replaced Erik Siebert in the Eastern District of Virginia. He simply wrote: “To uphold my oath to the Constitution and country, I hereby resign as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in the Department of Justice effective immediately.”

    Edwards held a role that covered the Pentagon and CIA headquarters, handling high-profile espionage cases, according to the Associated Press (AP). He was among the prosecutors involved in the conviction of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes for orchestrating a violent plot to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    He was also present during Comey’s indictment, sitting in the front row of the courtroom gallery.

    In a video post to Instagram, Comey denied the charges leveled against him, NBC News reported: “My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial and keep the faith,” Comey said in the video.

    Trump, meanwhile, celebrated the indictment, which followed his pressure on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring charges against a number of his political enemies, including Comey, as named in a Truth Social post.

    The president said there was “JUSTICE IN AMERICA” now that “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” was indicted.

    What People Are Saying

    Bondi, on X: “No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”

    Roger Stone, former adviser and longtime ally of Trump, on X: “I was indicted for lying under oath to Congress despite the fact that no misstatement I made was material nor hid any underlying crime. James Comey lied to cover up the greatest dirty trick in American history — the Russian Collusion Hoax. This is ironic justice.”

    What Happens Next

    Comey is expected to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, at 10 a.m. October 9, according to CNN.

    This article includes reporting by the AP.

    Source link

  • Ex-FBI director James Comey indicted on two charges as Trump pushes to prosecute political enemies

    James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of justice, in the latest move in the president’s expansive retribution campaign against his political adversaries.

    “No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, said in a statement on Thursday.

    Trump celebrated the charges in a post on Truth Social.

    “JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI,” he wrote in a post. “Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    The indictment came shortly after Trump instructed Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence.

    The charges came less than a week after Lindsey Halligan was installed as the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia, after Trump fired her predecessor, Erik Siebert, after he declined to bring charges against Comey over concerns there was insufficient evidence.

    Halligan, most recently a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who has no prosecutorial experience, was also presented with a memo earlier this week laying out why charges should not be brought. But the justice department still pushed it through, people familiar with the matter said.

    The indictment, filed in federal court in the eastern district of Virginia, shows grand jurors charged Comey was charged with obstructing “a congressional investigation into the disclosure of sensitive information” and making a false statement to the FBI when he said he did not authorize someone at the agency to be an anonymous source. Prosecutors sought a third charge against Comey, but grand jurors rejected the request, court documents show.

    “Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability,” Kash Patel, the FBI director, said in a statement.

    Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, condemned the charges.

    “Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics,” he said in a statement. “This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power. Our system depends on prosecutors making decisions based on evidence and the law, not on the personal grudges of a politician determined to settle scores.”

    Days before submitting his resignation under pressure, Siebert reportedly conveyed to his superiors at the justice department that the cases against Comey and James were unlikely to result in charges.

    In social media posts on Saturday, Trump claimed that Comey, James and a third political opponent, Democratic senator Adam Schiff of California, were “guilty as hell” and that his supporters were upset that “nothing has been done”.

    “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump posted. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

    Trump’s contempt for Comey stretches back to the early days of his first term, when according to Comey, Trump sought to secure a pledge of loyalty from the then FBI director, who refused. At the time, Comey was leading the criminal investigation into Russian meddling in the US election. Trump dismissed Comey in May 2017.

    Earlier this year, Comey was investigated by the Secret Service after he shared and then deleted a cryptic social media post of seashells in the formation of “8647” that Trump’s allies alleged was an incitement of violence against the president.

    Comey said he opposed violence of any kind and said he was unaware that “86” had a violent connotation. Comey voluntarily sat for an interview with the agency.

    Source link

  • Former FBI Director James Comey indicted

    (CNN) — Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted by a federal grand jury, an extraordinary escalation in President Donald Trump’s effort to prosecute his political enemies.

    Comey, a longtime adversary of the president, is now the first senior government official to face federal charges in one of Trump’s largest grievances: the 2016 investigation into whether his first presidential campaign colluded with Russia.

    “JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

    Comey has been charged with giving false statements and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, and he could face up to five years in prison if convicted.

    Both charges are connected to his September 30, 2020, testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. A source told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the indictment for lying to Congress is related to the FBI’s “Arctic haze” leak investigation, related to classified information that ended up in four different newspaper articles.

    Appearing by Zoom, Comey testified that “he had not authorized someone else to be an anonymous source in news reports,” the indictment said. “That statement was false.”

    Comey responded to the indictment in an Instagram video, saying, “Let’s have a trial. And keep the faith.”

    “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent,” he added.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on X, “No one is above the law.”

    “Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Bondi wrote. “We will follow the facts in this case.”

    Inside the courthouse

    The charges were presented by Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s former personal attorney and the new top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. She was not accompanied by any career prosecutor and is the only Justice Department official who signed the charging documents.

    During a brief hearing, a judge announced the new case against Comey and said publicly that 14 jurors agreed to indict on the counts of false statements in the jurisdiction of a congressional proceeding and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.

    Halligan, who had never presented to a grand jury, did a crash course to prepare with DOJ attorneys and FBI officials ahead of Thursday, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. Halligan participated in a number of “practice runs” and spent hours going through the material in preparation.

    Comey was charged for an alleged false statement he made to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 30, 2020, though he had been asked the same question years earlier under oath.

    Prosecutors say Comey authorized a leak to the media about an FBI investigation via an anonymous source, but he then told the Senate he had not.

    In his 2020 Senate hearing, appearing by Zoom, Sen. Ted Cruz read to Comey an exchange he had with a different senator, Chuck Grassley, during congressional testimony three years prior.

    Cruz said to Comey in 2020:

    “On May 3rd, 2017, in this committee, Chairman Grassley asked you point blank, ‘Have you ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?’ You responded under oath, ‘Never.’ He then asked you, ‘Have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration?’ You responded again under oath, ‘No.’”

    Comey then said to Cruz: “I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.”

    Grand jury rejected third charge against Comey

    A court record made public on Thursday certified that the grand jury voted “no” on indicting Comey on another alleged false statement to Congress — a very unusual occurrence in the federal court system.

    That other false statement allegation, which is not part of the indictment of Comey, according to this record, appears to pinpoint Comey’s answer when he was asked about an alleged plan from Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.

    “That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” Comey testified in 2020 in response to a question from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

    In the Senate Judiciary Committee testimony, Graham told Comey about an alleged plan in 2016 where Clinton wanted to distract the public from her use of a private email server and fuel the 2016 Russia investigation around Trump and Russian hackers hurting the US elections.

    That question and answer has long fed conservative theories about Comey wanting to hurt Trump and assist Clinton during the campaign and into Trump’s first presidency.

    The grand jury did not have a majority of 12 yes votes, out of a possible 23, to indict Comey for that exchange with Graham, according to the court record.

    Comey’s son-in-law resigns

    Comey’s son-in-law, Troy A. Edwards, Jr., resigned Thursday from his position as a senior national security prosecutor shortly after the former FBI director was indicted, according to a letter obtained by CNN.

    In a one-sentence letter to Halligan, Edwards wrote: “To uphold my oath to the Constitution and country, I hereby resign as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in the Department of Justice effective immediately.”

    Previous concerns about charges

    The indictment Thursday evening comes as CNN previously reported concerns Bondi and prosecutors have had about the case.

    Bondi is facing pressure from Trump, who is demanding his political enemies face criminal charges as he once did. But attorneys inside the Eastern District of Virginia recently wrote a memo detailing their reservations over seeking the indictment, ABC News first reported.

    Bondi had concerns about the case, which focuses on whether Comey made false statements during congressional testimony involving the 2016 investigation into Russian interference in the US presidential election, according to a person familiar with her thinking, though she believes it would be possible to bring an indictment.

    Late Thursday, Bondi replied to CNN’s reporting, stating, “That is a flat out lie.”

    The attorney general had dinner at the White House Rose Garden with Trump and others Wednesday evening.

    ‘I just want people to act’

    Publicly and privately, Trump has complained that prosecutors were willing to bring numerous criminal cases against him while he was out of office, noting that in those instances he was charged with whatever they had at the time, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The person added that Trump has repeatedly said that the Justice Department should bring the best case it can when it comes to his political opponents and let the court decide the rest.

    “I just want people to act. And we want to act fast,” Trump told reporters Saturday as he departed the White House. “If they’re not guilty, that’s fine. If they are guilty, or if they should be charged, they should be charged, and we have to do it now.”

    Some inside the White House view Halligan’s willingness to bring the case as her jumping on a grenade to please Trump – though that is why she was picked to take on the role of leading the Eastern District of Virginia. While several Justice Department officials are worried about the strength of any case against Comey, multiple political aides share a different view: they prosecuted Trump, so people like Comey deserve to be prosecuted, too.

    Comey is expected to be arraigned in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on October 9, according to the court record.

    CNN’s Britney Lavecchia, Casey Gannon and Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.

    This story has been updated with additional developments and details of the charges from the Justice Department.

    Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez, Aileen Graef, Katelyn Polantz, Kaitlan Collins, Kristen Holmes and CNN

    Source link

  • “At Professional Risk”: Charging Comey Could Land Lindsey Halligan in Hot Water

    When Donald Trump replaced US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert with Lindsey Halligan recently, he made no secret of her job responsibilities: Go after Adam Schiff, Letitia James, and James Comey. “We can’t delay any longer,” the president wrote in a social media post to his attorney general, Pam Bondi, noting that “Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer.”

    Halligan is expected to fulfill her boss’s demands: Though prosecutors reportedly advised against charging Comey for lack of probable cause, she is expected to indict the former FBI director in the coming days.

    That should satisfy Trump, who has long nursed a grudge against Comey over the Russia investigation that loomed over the beginning of his first term. But it could also open up Halligan to legal trouble, an ethics professor at her law school tells Vanity Fair.

    Halligan is a member of the Florida bar, explains Anthony V. Alfieri, director of the Center for Ethics and Public Service at Miami University School of Law, where Halligan earned her JD in 2013. That means she is bound by the Florida Rules of Professional Conduct. “She carries special responsibilities of a prosecutor in a criminal case,” Alfieri says. “Among those responsibilities is the core duty to refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause.” Additionally, rules prohibit her “from engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, deceit, or misrepresentation,” says Alfieri, who did not know Halligan in school.

    “In sum,” Alfieri says, “Halligan’s charging of Comey in Virginia puts Halligan herself at professional risk of disciplinary prosecution in Florida.”

    Halligan comes to her post with no prosecutorial experience: She worked in insurance law until 2022, when she began working for Trump, including on his classified documents case. When Trump returned to office in 2025, she was appointed senior associate staff secretary in his White House, overseeing his effort to root out “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian. Now, she finds herself in the unusual position of having to find something to charge Comey with—before a statute of limitations runs out on Tuesday. “This isn’t normally a problem prosecutors face, as they start with a crime, then figure out whodunnit, rather than starting with a person and only then deciding whatthedun,” as Benjamin Wittes and Anna Bower wrote in Lawfare on Wednesday. “But Trump wants Comey charged and is convinced he’s guilty of something, and it’s your job now to figure out what.”

    Comey, who was appointed by Barack Obama, led the FBI from 2013 to 2017. Two years into his tenure, the bureau opened its inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. In July 2016, just before she formally accepted the Democratic nomination for president, Comey announced that while the investigation found she had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified materials, there was no cause to bring charges. But that October—less than two weeks before Election Day—Comey publicly announced the probe had been reopened. The inquiry did not alter the FBI’s initial findings from the first investigation, but his public comments were widely seen as a major influence on the 2016 election.

    Eric Lutz

    Source link

  • Mangione, Catholic Church shooter, Charlie Kirk shooter, ICE shooter all used engraved bullets

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    A gunman who opened fire at a Dallas immigration facility Wednesday allegedly left behind a bullet casing inscribed with the phrase “anti-ICE,” part of a recent trend of suspects in high-profile shootings signaling their possible motives through their ammunition.

    FBI Director Kash Patel shared a picture of the casings, saying one was engraved and “shows an ideological motive” behind the attack. The incident followed the accused killer of Charlie Kirk inscribing gamer-inspired antifascist messaging on bullet casings and Luigi Mangione using words on his casings linked to health insurance companies.

    The suspect in the Dallas incident, Joshua Jahn, 29, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after killing one detainee and critically injuring two others, the Department of Homeland Security said.

    ANTI-ICE MESSAGE FOUND ON SHOOTER’S ROUNDS IN DEADLY ATTACK AT ICE FACILITY, FBI SAYS

    FBI Director Kash Patel said investigators recovered these rounds from the scene in Dallas where a gunman opened fire on the local ICE field office on Sept. 24, 2025.  (FBI)

    While detainees were the victims, Jahn fired “indiscriminately” and was “motivated by a hatred for ICE,” the DHS said.

    Tyler Robinson, 22, is facing murder charges in Utah and stands accused of assassinating Christian conservative activist Kirk during a speaking event at a college this month. Four bullet casings recovered with Robinson’s firearm contained phrases popular in gaming culture, including a direct mention of fascism and a possible reference to an antifascist Italian folk song.

    Local and federal authorities have said Robinson had become more political in recent years and was inspired by a hatred for Kirk.

    In Luigi Mangione’s case, evidence has shown the 27-year-old struggled with chronic back pain and had at some point documented frustrations with the health insurance industry, which prosecutors have tied to writing found on Mangione’s ammunition.

    AFTER DALLAS ICE SHOOTING, VANCE SAYS THOSE WHO DENIGRATE LAW ENFORCEMENT CAN ‘GO STRAIGHT TO HELL’

    Luigi Mangione seated in court as judge drops terrorism charges.

    Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Supreme Court for a hearing in the murder case filed against him for killing CEO Brian Thompson, Sept. 16, 2025. (Curtis Means for DailyMail/Pool)

    Mangione stands accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, whose killing on a sidewalk in New York City was captured in chilling surveillance footage as Thompson entered a hotel for a conference. Bullets recovered at the crime scene contained three words popular with critics who say health insurers mishandle claims.

    “In preparing for the crime, the defendant took the time to write the words ‘Deny,’ ‘Depose,’ and ‘Delay’ on the bullets he used — two of which were recovered at the scene of the murder as shell casings (because the bullets had been fired) and one of which was recovered as a live round,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.

    The apparent pattern of young suspected killers marking their crimes with ideological messages on spent and unspent munitions comes as politically charged violence takes center stage in the national discourse.

    A vast majority of voters in a recent Quinnipiac survey said the nation is in a “political crisis” and that political violence is a “very serious” issue. An Atlantic analysis of hundreds of terrorism incidents found that patterns in left-wing and right-wing attacks have fluctuated over three decades but that a rise in left-wing terrorism began when Trump was elected in 2016.

    Attackers sending their politicized messages through writings is not new, though the writings have more commonly been known to crop up in various types of manifestos.

    Tyler Robinson on camera at his first court hearing.

    Tyler Robinson appears by camera before 4th District Court Judge Tony Graf on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, for his initial court appearance in Provo, Utah. (Scott G Winterton/Pool via Deseret News)

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    Last month, Robin Westman, 23, opened fire through the windows of a Catholic Church in Minneapolis during Mass, killing two children and injuring more than a dozen others before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    Police identified videos that Westman may have posted that included writings using the Cyrillic alphabet. One video also showed firearms and magazines with names of past mass shooters, “Kill Donald Trump” and “Where is your God?” scrawled on them.

    Ashley Oliver is a reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business, covering the Justice Department and legal affairs. Email story tips to ashley.oliver@fox.com.

    Source link

  • WATCH: Defiant Kash Patel says he’s ‘proud’ to lead FBI after explosive hearing

    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    After facing intense criticism from Democrats during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week, embattled FBI Director Kash Patel remained defiant, saying that he is “proud” to lead the nation’s premier investigations agency.  

    Speaking with reporters after the hearing, Patel, who was confirmed to the role by the Senate in late February, touted its historic recruiting efforts, saying that the agency “has the most applicants to become FBI agents and intel analysts in the history of the FBI.”

    One of the major criticisms he received from Democratic senators during the hearing was for initially misstating on social media that conservative leader Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer was in custody.

    Patel has conceded that he could have worded his social media post better, but that he does not regret it because he issued it in the name of transparency.

    ANTIFA AGITATORS DISRUPT BOSTON CHARLIE KIRK VIGIL; 2 ARRESTED

    FBI Director Kash Patel testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 16, 2025. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Speaking after the hearing, Patel added that “the American people are seeing and hearing what the FBI is doing on a daily basis, crushing violent crime and defending the homeland.”

    “So, I’m proud to be the director of the FBI that has seen the most significant, expansive application pool in history,” he said.

    In his opening statement to the committee, Patel listed a series of accomplishments the agency has achieved since President Donald Trump took office, including tens of thousands of arrests, a realignment of the agency and an emphasis on cracking down on illicit drugs.

    Patel acknowledged the growing criticism over his direction of the FBI and challenged lawmakers on the panel to come after him, saying, “I’m not going anywhere” and “if you want to criticize my 16 years of service, please bring it on.” 

    58 HOUSE DEMS VOTE AGAINST RESOLUTION HONORING ‘LIFE AND LEGACY’ OF CHARLIE KIRK

    FBI Director Kash Patel

    FBI Director Kash Patel opened his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee with an update on the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk as scrutiny lingers on his handling of the case.  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    Patel was also scrutinized over a wave of firings at the FBI, which some have alleged were politically motivated.  

    Ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., criticized Patel’s deference to Trump, saying the director “installed MAGA loyalists” to key positions and initiated internal “loyalty tests,” including polygraph tests. Durbin claimed that some FBI officials who failed those tests needed waivers to continue working at the bureau.

    Durbin also noted that Patel has little experience working in law enforcement, calling his inexperience “staggering” and accusing him of fast-tracking similarly unqualified recruits to fill the FBI’s open jobs.

    Patel was also grilled by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, for requiring FBI field agents to perform push-ups as part of their physical fitness standards.

    SENATE REPUBLICANS BLOCK DEMOCRATS’ ‘FILTHY’ COUNTEROFFER AS SHUTDOWN DEADLINE LOOMS

    Cory Booker at hearing

    Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., questions Patel during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Sept. 16, 2025. (Jim Watson/Getty Images)

    Hirono expressed concerns that female agents may be negatively impacted by the push-up requirement, saying, “There are concerns about whether or not being able to do these kinds of harsh pull-ups is really required of FBI agents.”

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP 

    Patel responded, “If you want to chase down a bad guy, excuse me, and put him in handcuffs, you had better be able to do a pull-up.”

    In a particularly tense exchange, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., drilled into Patel, saying, “I think you’re not going to be around long” and “I think this might be your last oversight hearing, because as much as you supplicate yourself to the will of Donald Trump and not the Constitution of the United States of America, Donald Trump has shown us in his first term, and in this term, he is not loyal to people like you.”

    Patel shot back that Booker’s “rant of false information does not bring this country together,” before adding, “It’s my time, not yours.”

    Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr, Ashley Oliver and Alex Miller contributed to this report.

    Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

    Source link

  • Trump border czar Tom Homan reportedly accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents

    The FBI reportedly recorded Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover agents who were posing as business contractors last year.

    A new report from MSNBC on Saturday reveals that the agents recorded Homan, six weeks before the 2024 election, allegedly promising to assist in securing government contracts across the border security industry during Trump’s second term.

    Six sources familiar with the matter told MSNBC that the FBI and justice department – then run by Joe Biden’s administration – had intended to hold off and assess whether Homan would follow through on his alleged promises after he was appointed as Trump’s border czar. However, the investigation stalled after Trump took office, and in recent weeks, officials appointed by Trump decided to close the case, according to MSNBC.

    According to the sources, a justice department official who was appointed by Trump called the case a “deep state” investigation.

    In a separate statement to MSNBC, the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said: “This matter originated under the previous administration and was subjected to a full review by FBI agents and justice department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”

    They added: “The Department’s resources must remain focused on real threats to the American people, not baseless investigations. As a result, the investigation has been closed.”

    The White House deputy press secretary, Abigail Jackson, told MSNBC the investigation was “blatantly political”. Jackson added that it was “yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using its resources to target President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country”.

    Homan was captured on video accepting $50,000 in cash at a meeting spot in Texas on 20 September 2024, according to an internal summary of the case reviewed by MSNBC and sources who spoke to the outlet.

    Four sources familiar with the matter told MSNBC that multiple federal officials believed they had a solid criminal case against Homan for conspiracy to commit bribery. However, since Homan was not a public official at the time he accepted the money and Trump had not yet become president, his actions did not meet the criteria for a standard bribery charge.

    Officials eventually decided to continue monitoring Homan once he joined Trump’s second presidential administration. MSNBC reports that officials had been looking at four potential criminal charges including conspiracy, bribery and two kinds of fraud, before Trump’s new justice department shut down the investigation.

    Homan, who was previously the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during Trump’s first term, was appointed by Trump to run what he has described as the “biggest deportation” project the US has ever seen. Prior to his appointment as border czar, Homan was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the Washington DC-based thinktank behind Project 2025.

    After the MSNBC report was published, Adam Schiff, a California Democratic senator and a former federal prosecutor, wrote on social media: “Border Czar Tom Homan was caught by the FBI accepting bribes – on camera – to deliver government contracts in exchange for $50,000 in cash. Pam Bondi knew. Kash Patel knew. Emil Bove knew. And they made the investigation go away. A corrupt attempt to conceal brazen graft.”

    In an angry outburst on his social media platform on Saturday night, Trump appeared to direct his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to appoint a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, so that she could seek criminal charges against Schiff and another of the president’s political rivals, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. Trump has demanded that both Schiff and James be prosecuted on mortgage fraud claims both deny.

    On Friday, the prosecutor who was serving as the district’s interim US attorney, Erik Siebert, was forced out, reportedly for refusing to bring charges against James, due to a lack of evidence. Trump insisted on Saturday that he had fired Siebert for political reasons. Late Saturday, Trump announced that he would nominate Halligan, his former personal lawyer and a one-time contestant in the Miss Colorado USA beauty pageant now serving as a special assistant to the president, to replace Siebert.

    Source link

  • ‘This guy was scary’: Ex-Chicago cop, Outfit hitman Steve Mandell dies in prison

    For much of his life, death seemed to follow Steve Mandell.

    In his early days, Mandell was, of all things, a Chicago vice cop. After being kicked off the force for insurance fraud, he used his police training to become a prolific robber, extortionist, drug dealer and, according to state and federal law enforcement, a cold-blooded killer.

    Over time, the bodies piled up: A suspected informant executed in his car at a downtown intersection; Mandell’s own father found hogtied and shot in a trunk; A trucking firm owner fished out of the Des Plaines River days after telling his wife he was going to meet Mandell and never came back.

    And then there was the case that landed Mandell in prison for life: a macabre plot foiled by the FBI in 2012 to kidnap and extort wealthy businessmen, then torture and dismember them in his own, custom-built killing chamber.

    Last week, after spending a decade in one of the country’s highest security prisons, Mandell died of an undisclosed illness at a federal medical prison facility in North Carolina, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. He was 74.

    While never one of Chicago’s more high-profile mob figures, Mandell, who once went by the name Steven Manning, has a story that’s unique even in the city’s heavily chronicled underworld.

    Not only was he the first former law enforcement officer to ever be sentenced to Illinois’ Death Row, he later became a celebrated exoneree and won a landmark $6.5 million judgment against the FBI for framing him — only to have the judge reverse the jury’s award.

    His reputation for meticulous planning, along with a bipolar personality that could switch from charming to chilling in an instant, made Mandell a feared figure even among those used to dealing with some of the city’s more unsavory individuals.

    “This guy was scary,” said George Michael, the Northwest Side real estate magnate who worked undercover with the FBI to help bring Mandell down. “He spoke about death like most people would speak about the weather.”

    After Mandell’s stunning arrest in October 2012, one former prosecutor told the Tribune he was “one of the most dangerous criminals I ever dealt with.”

    That sentiment was echoed Friday by Ted McNamara, the former boss of the Chicago FBI’s organized crime section who oversaw the operation that took Mandell down. Even McNamara, who investigated the top echelon of the Chicago Outfit, couldn’t believe some of the things Mandell said on tape.

    “He was diabolical,” McNamara said. “If you went to a movie studio and said this is the basis of a movie they would laugh at you.”

    Now that Mandell is dead, the full extent of his criminal activities will likely never be publicly aired. Among the unsolved crimes law enforcement believed he had a role in was the slaying of popular Italian restaurateur Giacomo Ruggirello, whose body was found in his still-smoldering Highland Park home at the same time Mandell was planning his torture chamber.

    The Tribune reported a video camera hidden by the FBI in a picture frame at Michael’s realty office captured Mandell talking about the fire on the same day it happened, leaning in to Michael and asking, “Do you think they respect my work now?’”

    Mandell was never charged with that crime, which is officially still an open investigation, according to Highland Park police.

    Michael told the Tribune on Friday it was just one of many spine-tingling moments he had with Mandell as he tried to earn his trust.

    “There are many other secrets that go with him to the grave,” Michael said.

    Early days

    Mandell was in his early 20s when he joined the Chicago Police Department, but the 10-year veteran resigned in 1983 after he was convicted in an insurance fraud scheme. He soon was linked to several burglary and jewelry theft rings in Chicago’s underworld.

    In 1985, the Illinois State Police issued an internal criminal intelligence bulletin that listed Mandell, then known as Manning, as a known member of a crew that specialized in drug dealing, luxury auto theft, and burglarizing jewelry stores and coin shops, court records show.

    The crew was made up of several former police officers, including Mandell and his longtime associate, former Willow Springs cop Gary Engel, who knew how to bypass complex alarms and were known to monitor police radio frequencies and even conduct counter-surveillance on law enforcement, the bulletin stated.

    “Crew members are known to telephone law enforcement agencies and represent themselves as police officers in order to acquire information,” the bulletin stated. “They have also used the same method to enter police buildings unchallenged.”

    Mandell was convicted of burglary in 1987 and sentenced to four years in prison. He also had worked at times as an informant for the FBI but quit that role by the time of his conviction, records show.

    In 1990, after authorities received a tip from a reputed Missouri mobster, Mandell and Engel were arrested in Chicago and charged with taking part in the kidnapping of two Kansas City drug traffickers six years earlier. Both were later convicted; Manning was sentenced to life in prison and Engel 90 years behind bars.

    While Mandell was being held in the Cook County Jail on the kidnapping charge, authorities used notorious jailhouse informant Tommy Dye to try to obtain a confession from Mandell to the killing of Jimmy Pellegrino, a drug dealer and trucking firm owner whose body had been discovered gagged and bound with duct tape, shot in the head and dumped in the Des Plaines River.

    Dye secretly recorded Mandell, but the recording contained no admissions by Manning to the murder. However, Dye claimed Mandell had confessed to him during a two-second inaudible gap on the tape.

    At trial, Pellegrino’s widow, Joyce, testified that her husband had told her as he was leaving for a meeting with Mandell “that if he turns up dead I should go to (the FBI)” and tell them that Mandell killed him.

    In urging the judge to impose a death sentence, prosecutors linked Mandell to two other murders, including the 1986 slaying of his own father, Boris, whose body was found frozen in the trunk of his car at Hawthorn Center in Vernon Hills on March 10, 1986.

    In addition, witnesses at the sentencing testified that two other underworld associates had gone missing around the time they were supposed to have met with Mandell.

    Mandell was sent to Death Row, but both the kidnapping and murder cases later fell apart on appeal. “The only people to blame for this case is the FBI themselves,” Mandell told the Tribune on the day in 2004 that he walked out of a Missouri jail, free of both cases after 14 years in custody.

    Mandell sued, claiming two FBI agents had fabricated evidence and coached Dye to falsely implicate Mandell in the jailhouse confession. In a surprise, the federal jury agreed that the agents had framed Mandell in the murder as well as the Missouri kidnapping and awarded him $6.5 million. However, a judge later threw out the damages, and Mandell never saw a penny.

    William Gamboney, a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney who prosecuted Mandell in the Pellegrino case, told the Tribune in 2012 that investigators knew a dangerous person was back on the street.

    “The feeling was he got away with something,” Gamboney said.

    Recorded conversations

    Mandell disappeared from Chicago for a spell after that decision, but within five years he was back on the FBIs radar, this time after he was introduced to Michael at a lunch meeting at La Scarola, an Italian restaurant on West Grand Avenue frequented by Chicago mob leaders.

    McNamara, the former FBI organized crime boss, said Friday that most of the younger agents, who were investigating a Grand Avenue burglary crew at the time, didn’t know who Mandell was.

    “I remember (my case agent) comes to me and says ‘Have you ever heard of this guy Steve Manning? One of my sources just bumped into him and he’s talking about doing all this stuff,’” McNamara said. “I said ‘Have him keep talking.’ It was amazing…We didn’t go after him. He just showed up.”

    With Michael’s cooperation, investigators were able to capture Mandell on tape in his own words, discussing with palpable glee not only his plan to abduct and murder rich businessmen — starting with suburban real estate baron Steve Campbell, whom he jokingly referred to as “Soupy Sales” — but also a separate plot to kill a reputed mobster and take control of his piece of a lucrative Bridgeview strip club.

    At the direction of the FBI, Michael found Mandell a Devon Avenue storefront to rent and helped him revamp it into a veritable torture chamber where bodies could be drained of blood and chopped into pieces — a location they jokingly referred to as “Club Med.”

    In the recorded conversations, Mandell discussed his frustration with what he perceived to be weak and ineffective Outfit bosses, including Albert “Little Guy” Vena, identified in testimony as the reputed leader of the mob’s Elmwood Park crew.

    “I’ll show you what Elmwood Park really looks like,” Mandell said to Michael on one video recording, making a slitting motion across this throat on the video. “I can get really nasty.”

    On the night of Oct. 25, 2012, an FBI agent borrowed Campbell’s hat and Hawaiian shirt and drove his car to Michael’s realty office on North Milwaukee Avenue, where the abduction was to take place, according to trial testimony.

    McNamara recalled a surreal moment as he and an FBI SWAT team were staged about a mile away near a Sports Authority parking lot. They were watching a live feed of the undercover video from Club Med, where Mandell and his accomplice, Gary Engel, the former Willow Springs cop, were sitting calmly, sipping on Dunkin Donuts coffee.

    “This is literally like 45 minutes before they were about to go chop up this guy,” McNamara said. “Suddenly, Mandell says, ‘Ah (expletive ), I gotta go get a ski mask.’ So he leaves the location and drives to the Sports Authority…We are maybe 400 yards away from him.”

    Soon after Mandell’s last-minute errand, he and Engel were arrested as they pulled into the parking lot in an unmarked Crown Victoria outfitted with police lights and scanners.

    Inside the vehicle were zip ties, a bogus arrest warrant and pre-typed quit claim deeds for Campbell’s properties that they planned to force him to sign, the evidence showed.

    When agents searched another one of Mandell’s vehicles, they found a drill that’s commonly used to crack into locks and safes as well as “bump keys” that burglars often employ to open doors without leaving signs of forced entry, according to trial testimony.

    Next to that equipment was a folder marked “Investigative File” that contained the names of at least four wealthy people Mandell targeted for surveillance, including a real estate lawyer, the owner of a well-known grocery store chain, and shoe factory executive Chaim Kohanchi, according to testimony.

    “It was only going to be the beginning for him,” Michael said Friday. “He had many, many people in his sights, and he was pretty excited about it.”

    jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

    Source link

  • Fairfax County becomes 1st Virginia school district to start using FBI background check program – WTOP News

    Fairfax County Public Schools has started using the FBI’s Rap Back continuous background check program, which is expected will enhance current safety protocols.

    Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia has started using the FBI’s Rap Back continuous background check program, a step district leaders expect will enhance current safety protocols.

    Virginia’s largest school division is the first in the state to start using the program, which has been implemented through a collaboration with Virginia State Police. The school system has been working with the agency for more than a year to launch the program.

    The implementation comes three years after an incident involving a Glasgow Middle School counselor resulted in calls for stronger safety measures, including the use of the Rap Back program. The school system learned Darren Thornton was able to remain on the job for over a year, despite an arrest and conviction for a sex offense.

    Chesterfield County police said they tried to alert then-Superintendent Scott Brabrand, but the messages bounced back. The district only learned about the first arrest and conviction when Thornton was arrested for a second time.

    Virginia State Police were directed to use services, such as the Rap Back program, as part of legislation passed through the state’s General Assembly.

    “Rap Back is continuous fingerprinting monitoring,” said William Solomon, Fairfax County Public Schools’ HR chief. “Previously, all of our employees were fingerprinted as required by law, but that fingerprinting is point-in-time.”

    The program allows the division to monitor results regularly, rather than get “point-in-time results,” Solomon said. Whenever there’s an arrest or conviction, or criminal or court activity, the school division is notified immediately and can take any necessary steps.

    Before, employees were required to self-report those circumstances within 24 hours, and police are responsible for notifying the school district of criminal activity.

    “That can lead to certain gaps because you’re relying on people to send emails or people to send information, versus a system that’s able to tell you in real time, rapid fashion,” Solomon said.

    So far, 32,000 school division employees have been enrolled in Rap Back, and the remaining 8,000 workers are expected to be enrolled by October, Solomon said. They’re sending between 700 and 1,500 prints each day to Virginia State Police.

    Independent contractors and Level 3 volunteers, those working directly with students without staff oversight, will also be enrolled.

    Fairfax County is piloting the rollout before other Virginia school systems start to use the program.

    “It helps keep students safe because you know immediately,” Solomon said. “As an administration and as a school system, we can take immediate action when there is an arrest, a conviction or other criminal activity that would require us to take action.”

    In a statement, Superintendent Michelle Reid said the district is “converting a reactive safety measure into a proactive safeguard for our entire school community.”

    Asked if use of the program has already led the school system to get information it might have received late or not at all without using it, Solomon said, “I can share with you that the system is working as intended.”

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Scott Gelman

    Source link