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Tag: investigations

  • EXCLUSIVE: Dozens of Mar-a-Lago staff, from servers to aides, are subpoenaed in classified documents probe | CNN Politics

    EXCLUSIVE: Dozens of Mar-a-Lago staff, from servers to aides, are subpoenaed in classified documents probe | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    At least two dozen people – from Mar-a-Lago resort staff to members of Donald Trump’s inner circle at the Florida estate – have been subpoenaed to testify to a federal grand jury that’s investigating the former president’s handling of classified documents, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

    On Thursday, Trump’s communications aide Margo Martin, who worked in the White House and then moved with Trump to Florida, appeared before the grand jury in Washington, DC. One of special counsel Jack Smith’s senior-most prosecutors was involved in the interview.

    Martin, who is among a small group of former White House advisers who have remained employed by Trump after he left office, declined to answer any questions when approached by a CNN reporter.

    Smith has sought testimony from a range of people close to Trump – from his own attorneys who represent him in the matter to staffers who work on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, including a housekeeper and restaurant servers, sources said.

    The staffers are of interest to investigators because of what they may have seen or heard while on their daily duties around the estate, including whether they saw boxes or documents in Trump’s office suite or elsewhere.

    “They’re casting an extremely wide net – anyone and everyone who might have seen something,” said one source familiar with the Justice Department’s efforts.

    For instance, federal investigators have talked to a Mar-a-Lago staff member seen on security camera footage moving boxes from a storage room with Trump aide Walt Nauta, who has already spoken with investigators.

    Many of the Mar-a-Lago staffers are being represented by counsel paid for by Trump entities, according to sources and federal elections records.

    The Justice Department has been investigating potential mishandling of national security records and possible obstruction for about a year. FBI agents recovered more than 100 classified documents during a search of Mar-a-Lago last summer. Since then, Trump’s legal team has turned over additional classified material.

    An aerial view of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 31, 2022.

    Classified docs found at Mar-a-Lago months after searches

    The federal probe previously subpoenaed top Trump advisers, such as former White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and former Trump adviser and Pentagon official Kash Patel.

    Meanwhile, Smith continues to pursue Trump defense lawyer Evan Corcoran. In an earlier appearance before the grand jury, Corcoran declined to answer questions about his conversations with Trump related to the classified documents, citing attorney-client privilege. Prosecutors are asking a judge to find that he must answer because the conversations may have been part of advancing a crime or fraud.

    A ruling is expected from the DC District Court on Corcoran as early as this week.

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  • There’s a new chief judge in DC who could help determine the fate of Donald Trump | CNN Politics

    There’s a new chief judge in DC who could help determine the fate of Donald Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A new chief judge in the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, is poised to take over as that position has become one of the most influential in the nation’s capital, playing a key role in deciding issues that could factor into whether former President Donald Trump is indicted.

    Chief Judge Beryl Howell, who has served in that role since 2016, has repeatedly green-lit Justice Department requests to pursue information about Trump’s actions, from his top advisers and lawyers and even inside the White House. She’ll be succeeded by James “Jeb” Boasberg, a fellow Barack Obama appointee and one-time Brett Kavanaugh law school roommate who’s well-known in Washington.

    While presiding over the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2020 and 2021, Boasberg encouraged the declassification of information so that the public could read proceedings related to the FBI’s probe into possible collusion between Trump and Russia.

    If the Justice Department were to indict Trump, the case would be randomly assigned to one of the district court’s judges, meaning the chief could handle the case but may not. Still, the chief judge has unusual sway over the pace and scope of investigations as the Justice Department attempts to enforce its grand jury subpoenas, obtain warrants and access evidence it has collected by arguing to the chief judge in sealed proceedings.

    “This court would be ready,” Howell said in a recent interview with CNN, when asked about the historic possibility of a Trump indictment. She added any judge on that court “would do it justice.”

    Howell, who steps down from the position on Friday, may conclude her tenure by issuing decisions in sealed cases related to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago. Already, she granted Kash Patel – a former administration official – immunity for testimony he provided the grand jury investigation. She also held off a Justice Department request to place Trump in contempt for his alleged failure to turn over subpoenaed classified documents.

    The DC federal courthouse has embraced its role in major criminal investigations of politicians in the past. A framed Time Magazine is displayed outside the courthouse with the District Court’s Watergate-era Chief Judge John Sirica on the cover. Howell, in recent years, has nodded to Sirica, who allowed federal investigators access to records related to then-President Richard Nixon that hastened his resignation.

    Sirica embraced an unusually public role in one of the most fraught criminal investigations ever in Washington. Howell and Boasberg prefer working behind the scenes.

    “Neither of us will be Time’s person of the year,” Boasberg told CNN.

    Much of Howell’s work on those cases remains under seal, but details have trickled out on approximately 10 cases related to Smith’s investigation. Those include ongoing challenges around a grand jury subpoena of former Vice President Mike Pence and the Justice Department’s attempt to force Trump defense attorney Evan Corcoran to answer potentially incriminating questions about his interactions with Trump on classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

    Still, the chief judge’s role generates attention because the cases before the court in recent years have been so politically charged – and sometimes criticized publicly by Trump himself.

    Fan social media accounts sprung up about Howell, with one TikTok user getting tens of thousands of views. The posts generally highlight Howell’s no-nonsense quips and vivid facial expressions in public speeches.

    Howell said she and other judges were shocked to discover the clips of her on TikTok.

    “I just do my job. We’re all pretty much a bunch of nerds,” she said. “For a nerdy lawyer, getting novel, important cases is a dream.”

    Howell said she’s been surprised and at times uncomfortable with being the focus of attention in the investigations around Trump. Still, she regularly pens searing opinions allowing for public and congressional access to grand jury-related matters.

    Following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, Howell became one of the most cutting voices in the federal government’s response, handling several proceedings of rioter defendants early on. She also had to manage a courthouse in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic, as it faced an influx of new criminal cases like it never had before.

    The courthouse was closed on January 6, but Howell recognized as she watched the rioters overwhelm the Capitol building that the DC District Court would handle the brunt of cases. She called the senior judges who had largely reduced their case loads and asked them if they would take on more criminal rioter cases.

    “We’re going to be very busy,” Howell remembers telling them. Nearly all agreed to take on full criminal dockets – a testament to the DC bench’s camaraderie.

    Later, in a riot defendant’s proceeding that the public was able to listen to by calling in on a phone line, Howell spoke furiously about how she could see armed guards from her chambers’ window overlooking the National Mall.

    “We’re still living here in Washington, DC, with the consequences of the violence that this defendant is alleged to have participated in,” she said at the hearing in 2021.

    In the known cases during the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation and the current Smith probe, Howell has repeatedly sided with investigators seeking confidential information in their probes.

    In her last weeks as chief, Howell has made clear in her orders that she is trying to make public as much as she can – though there are severe limitations from higher courts that protect the secrecy of the grand jury in ongoing investigations.

    She allowed the Justice Department access to GOP Rep. Scott Perry’s phone contents in the election interference investigation, a ruling now under appeal at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Howell also ruled against Trump in attempts he made to protect presidential communications with former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Deputy Patrick Philbin and vice presidential advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short, eliciting their testimony.

    Yet she is denying requests from journalists for access to grand jury records from the ongoing Trump January 6 investigation.

    One of those opinions railed against the DC Circuit precedent that severely limits when judges, including her, can allow grand jury materials to be released.

    “If public interest in a significant and historical event or high-level government officials could serve as the sole ground to justify the disclosure of grand jury matters in exceptional circumstances, the petitioners’ case here would be incredibly strong,” Howell wrote. “Unfortunately for petitioners, that is not the standard for disclosure of grand jury material.”

    Boasberg recently told CNN that he hopes to keep a similar approach to Howell on transparency around sealed proceedings – doing what he can to make public information under the law, when it’s possible.

    Chief U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Beryl A. Howell

    At the FISA court, Boasberg released redacted orders he wrote, chastising the FBI for relying on applications to the court that contained misleading information, including when the investigators sought to surveil Carter Page, a former Trump adviser who was criminally investigated after the 2016 campaign but never charged.

    In one partially redacted opinion, Boasberg wrote that the “frequency and seriousness of these errors in a case that, given its sensitive nature, had an unusually high level of review at both DOJ and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have called into question the reliability of the information proffered in other FBI applications.”

    More recently, Boasberg had before him the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to compel GOP megadonor Steve Wynn to register as a foreign agent for his alleged efforts to lobby the Trump administration on behalf of the Chinese. Boasberg agreed with Wynn to dismiss the case, and it is now on appeal before the DC US Circuit Court of Appeals.

    Like Howell, Boasberg did not hide his concerns about appeals court precedent that he said constrained his approach. He also showed his sense of humor. The Wynn opinion included multiple references to lyrics by the 1990s hip hop band the Fugees, as a member of the band was accused of having connections to the alleged influence scheme.

    Boasberg was confirmed to the federal bench in 2011, after receiving a nod from President George W. Bush for a position on the DC Superior Court eight years prior. The local DC Court is where the former college basketball player cut his chops as assistant US attorney, specializing in homicide prosecutions.

    In DC legal circles, he’s earned a reputation for being friendly with a wide social circle and grew up with several prominent Washingtonians.

    “Jeb is so social and Beryl is very reserved,” said Amy Jeffress, a prominent Washington defense lawyer whose spouse, Christopher “Casey” Cooper, is also a judge in the DC District Court.

    Boasberg is currently the president of the Edward Bennett Williams Inn of Court, a professional advancement organization for DC attorneys that regularly brings together top prosecutors and defense lawyers.

    As a student at Yale Law School, Boasberg lived in a house with now-Justice Kavanaugh and six other law students. The group of former roommates still remain close and organize annual trips together.

    “Fairness is very important to him,” said Jim Brochin, an attorney who lived with Boasberg in the eight-person Yale Law house.

    Brochin pointed to Boasberg’s experience as a prosecutor trying murder cases, including some of the “hardest” cases his office had at the time, as well as his time as a judge leading the FISA court.

    “He is not afraid of tackling hard subjects,” Brochin said. “Nothing fazes him.”

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  • Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg cites ‘uptick’ in aviation incidents at FAA safety summit reviewing ‘serious close calls’ | CNN

    Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg cites ‘uptick’ in aviation incidents at FAA safety summit reviewing ‘serious close calls’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday there has been an “uptick” in recent aviation incidents and called on participants at a Federal Aviation Administration safety summit to help find the “root causes” of the issues.

    “We are particularly concerned because we have seen an uptick in serious close calls,” Buttigieg said in his opening remarks, referring to a series of near collisions on runways across the US.

    The summit comes after the FAA said it was investigating another close call between commercial airliners. The most recent close call was at Reagan National Airport near Washington, DC – the seventh since the start of this year.

    On March 7, Republic Airways Flight 4736 crossed a runway, without clearance, that United Airlines Flight 2003 was using for takeoff, according to a preliminary review, the FAA said. The United pilot had just been cleared for takeoff, the agency said.

    “An air traffic controller noticed the situation and immediately canceled the takeoff clearance for the United flight,” the FAA said.

    The FAA safety summit in McLean, Virginia, is the first of its kind since 2009 and kicks off a sweeping safety review the agency is conducting in the wake of the incursions.

    “Today is about the entire system, which means it’s about all of us,” Buttigieg said at the summit’s opening on Wednesday. The summit includes safety investigators, industry representatives, union leaders, and others.

    Buttigieg said Wednesday’s summit is the first in a series of coordinated events the FAA will conduct to find out what’s working well and what “new steps” need to be taken to ensure safety.

    Air travel has had a strong safety record and is the safest form of travel, Buttigieg said, but “we dare not” take that record for granted.

    The chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board told participants in the summit that the safety agency has made seven recommendations on runway collisions that have not been enacted.

    “One is 23 years old and still appropriate today on technology warning pilots of an impending collision,” chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said.

    “How many times are we going to have to issue the same recommendations over and over and over again?” she asked.

    Homendy said she’s already found one common issue with the six runway incursions they are investigating. In each case, the cockpit voice recorder, known as one of the black boxes, was overwritten, preventing investigators from hearing what took place on the flight deck.

    “All federal agencies here today need to ask: Are we doing everything possible to make our skies safer? We’ve been asking ourselves that very question at the NTSB,” she said.

    Nick Calio, president and CEO of Airlines for America, the trade association representing the major airlines, told the summit, “There’s constant self-evaluation always going on.”

    Calio said the airlines are looking at their data to try to find ways to make aviation safer so that close calls on runways, like those under investigation by the NTSB, don’t happen.

    “I don’t want to speculate a lot on what’s happened there, because they’re all under investigation. And we’re all trying to determine what is going on. Is this a trend? Is this a pattern?” he said.

    Rich Santa, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association union, cited a lack of staffing in air traffic control towers as a potential culprit.

    “Unfortunately, we have a staffing issue right now, as air traffic controllers. We are 1,200 certified professional controllers less now than we were 10 years ago,” he said at the summit. “It’s time for us to accurately and adequately staff the facilities.”

    Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen told the summit the agency is “continuing to hire” and is on pace to hire 1,500 controllers this year and another 1,800 next year.

    The NTSB is investigating the string of runway incursions involving commercial airliners. The near-collisions on US runways also have prompted federal safety investigators to open a sweeping review.

    Last month, a Southwest passenger jet and a FedEx cargo plane came as close as 100 feet from colliding at an Austin, Texas, airport, and it was a pilot – not air traffic controllers – who averted disaster, according to Homendy.

    In January, there was an alarming close call similar to this latest one. A Delta Air Lines flight was taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport when air traffic controllers “noticed another aircraft crossing the runway in front of the departing jetliner,” the FAA said in a statement.

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  • On eve of safety summit, FAA investigates another runway close call | CNN

    On eve of safety summit, FAA investigates another runway close call | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating yet another close call between commercial airliners, this time at Reagan National Airport near Washington, DC – the seventh since the start of this year.

    On March 7, Republic Airways Flight 4736 crossed a runway, without clearance, that United Airlines Flight 2003 was using for takeoff, according to a preliminary review, the FAA said. The United pilot had just been cleared for takeoff from the runway, the agency said.

    “An air traffic controller noticed the situation and immediately canceled the takeoff clearance for the United flight,” the FAA said.

    Recordings accessed from LiveATC.net show air traffic controllers in the tower exclaiming, “United 2003 cancel takeoff clearance!” The crew of the United flight responded, “Aborting takeoff, United 2003.”

    The pilot of the Republic flight had been cleared to cross a different runway, “but turned on the wrong taxiway,” the FAA said.

    The news of yet another close call comes ahead of Wednesday’s FAA safety summit, the first of its kind since 2009. The summit kicks off a sweeping safety review that the agency is conducting in the wake of these incursions.

    Last month, a Southwest passenger jet and a FedEx cargo plane came as close as 100 feet from colliding at an Austin, Texas, airport, and it was a pilot – not air traffic controllers – who averted disaster, according to Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

    And in January, there was an alarming close call similar to this latest one. A Delta Air Lines flight was taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport when air traffic controllers “noticed another aircraft crossing the runway in front of the departing jetliner,” the FAA said in a statement.

    “S–t!” exclaimed the controller from the tower of John F. Kennedy International Airport on Friday night. “Delta 1943 cancel takeoff clearance!”

    The Delta plane “stopped its takeoff roll approximately 1,000 feet before reaching the point where American Airlines Flight 106, a Boeing 777, had crossed from an adjacent taxiway,” the FAA said.

    The NTSB – which is investigating the six other runway incursions involving commercial airliners – told CNN it is aware of the latest incident but has not yet launched an investigation.

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  • Family of environmental activist killed while protesting ‘Cop City’ files lawsuit against Atlanta in search for answers | CNN

    Family of environmental activist killed while protesting ‘Cop City’ files lawsuit against Atlanta in search for answers | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The family of an environmental activist killed while protesting a planned law enforcement training facility in Atlanta earlier this year has filed a lawsuit against the city, seeking the release of records to aid in their search for answers about what led to the fatal shooting.

    “We’re here because Manuel Paez Terán’s family wants answers,” Jeff Filipovits, an attorney for the family, told reporters in a news conference Monday. “And we are not getting any answers.”

    The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the shooting, has said officers shot Terán after the activist shot and seriously wounded a state trooper on January 18, 2023, as law enforcement worked to clear protesters from the forested site of the proposed facility, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents who fear it will further militarize police and harm the environment.

    Activists have disputed the GBI’s claim, and the family’s attorneys say an autopsy commissioned by the family and released Monday indicates the activist was seated and had their hands raised when they sustained at least some of the wounds.

    But that autopsy – which notes Terán was shot about a dozen times by ammunition used in handguns and shotguns and could neither prove nor disprove the allegation the activist was armed – “is not enough for us to work backward from it to figure out what happened,” Filipovits said Monday.

    The lawsuit aims to have a Georgia court order the city of Atlanta to turn over police department records the family’s attorneys previously requested, including any images and video or audio recordings related to authorities’ operation on January 18. But those requests have been stymied by what the attorneys and their lawsuit allege is a “coordinated effort” by the state to “prevent public records from being released to Manuel’s family and the public at large.”

    “My heart is destroyed,” Belkis Terán, the mother of the activist, said at Monday’s news conference, adding she is trying to continue her child’s legacy but still lacks the answers she needs. “I want answers for my child’s homicide. I’m asking for answers to my child’s homicide.”

    A spokesperson for the city of Atlanta declined to comment Monday, citing the pending litigation. Reached for comment Monday, the GBI referred CNN to earlier statements. In a news release last week, the agency said its actions were aimed at preventing the “inappropriate release of evidence” to “ensure the facts of the incident are not tainted.” The GBI “continues to work diligently to protect the integrity of the investigation and will turn our findings over to an appointed prosecutor for review and action.” The investigation so far, it added, “still supports our initial assessment.”

    The city initially responded to a January request for information from attorneys by saying the Atlanta Police Department had identified relevant records that would be released on a “rolling basis,” according to Wingo Smith, another attorney representing the family, and the lawsuit. On February 8, the family’s attorneys had received 14 videos from body-worn cameras that were also released to reporters, the lawsuit says.

    On February 13, however, the director of the GBI’s Legal Division sent a letter to the Atlanta police chief asking the department to “withhold those records” related to the GBI’s investigation, the lawsuit says. According to the letter, provided as an exhibit in the family’s lawsuit, the GBI explained the records were evidence in an ongoing investigation, and thus exempt from public disclosure.

    The next day, the state Department of Law sent a letter to the city, according to the lawsuit, and on February 15, Atlanta police sent a revised response to the attorneys, saying it would “not be releasing further footage at this time.”

    The planned police facility – slated to include among other things, a shooting range, a burn building and a mock city – has received fierce pushback from several groups. Among them are residents who feel there was little public input, conservationists who worry it will carve out a chunk of much-needed forest land and activists who say it will militarize police forces and contribute to further instances of police brutality. Those backing the facility say it’s needed to help boost police morale and recruitment efforts.

    Tensions between law enforcement and protesters have continued to rise since Terán’s death, reaching a fever pitch earlier this month when nearly two dozen demonstrators were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in connection to violent clashes at the site. Authorities said officers and construction equipment were assailed with Molotov cocktails, commercial-grade fireworks, bricks and large rocks.

    Eli Bennett, a defense attorney for some of those charged, claimed his clients had been wrongfully arrested “more than a mile” from those clashes and about “an hour or two” after footage showed demonstrators lobbing fireworks and Molotov cocktails at police.

    “They all deny it,” he added, speaking about his clients. “Police moved in with an overwhelming display of force,” Bennett told CNN about the arrests.

    A makeshift memorial to Terán is seen on February 6, 2023.

    The attorneys on Monday also publicly released the autopsy commissioned by the family and performed by a forensic pathologist, who detailed the numerous gunshot wounds Terán suffered to their feet, legs, abdomen, arms, hands and head.

    Most of the wounds indicate they were caused by handguns, the autopsy notes, though others appear consistent with shotgun ammunition. There were no entrance wounds on Terán’s back, the pathologist wrote, indicating the activist “was facing the multiple individuals who were firing their weapons at him during the entire interval in which the shooting occurred.”

    The wounds, the pathologist writes, “indicate that the decedent was most probably in a seated position, cross-legged, with the left leg partially over the right leg.”

    “At some point during the course of being shot, the decedent was able to raise (their) hands and arms up in front of (their) body, with (their) palms facing towards (their) upper body,” it says.

    “It is impossible to determine if the decedent had been holding a firearm, or not holding a firearm, either before (they were) shot or while (they were) being shot the multiple times.”

    The official autopsy, performed by the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office, has not been released.

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  • What’s going on with all the runway close calls | CNN Politics

    What’s going on with all the runway close calls | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    There have been six close calls on US runways this year, which has led to a fair amount of news coverage, some alarm among the flying public and a lot of calls for answers – including from the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration Billy Nolen, who testified on Capitol Hill this week.

    Unable to explain the spike, Nolen told lawmakers the agency wants to get to the bottom of things at a safety summit planned for next week. There are also specific investigations into each incident in Boston; Burbank, California; Austin, Texas; Honolulu; New York; and Sarasota, Florida.

    I talked to CNN’s Pete Muntean, who not only covers aviation but is also a pilot and flight instructor, for his perspective on what the heck is going on.

    Our conversation, conducted by phone, is below. Stick with it for an interesting bonus story on how low-flying planes are used to find poachers in Africa.

    WOLF: Six close calls in recent weeks. Are these all distinct events? Or should we view them as one larger issue?

    MUNTEAN: There’s definitely a constant theme because they’re the same type of event, which is officially known as a runway incursion. It is where two airplanes essentially get in the way of one another on or near the runway.

    These types of events can range from really minor to more egregious. What we saw at JFK in New York in January, that had to be one of the more egregious ones. The air traffic controller had to swoop in and stop a flight that was barreling down the runway toward a crossing, taxiing (Boeing) triple seven from taking off.

    That is a more extreme, severe example. There have been some examples where the airplanes get within a few hundred feet of one another, maybe as close as 100 feet. One of the cases like in Austin.

    But they’re not really caused, necessarily, by the same thing. That’s, of course, something that investigators will look at.

    (On Wednesday) the acting head of the FAA on Capitol Hill said that if there are dots to connect, they’ll connect them in this safety summit next week, although it doesn’t seem like there was any real common trigger. No common cause.

    RELATED: FAA to conduct sweeping safety review after multiple incidents

    WOLF: Who is supposed to keep these from happening? Is it the air traffic controllers? Is it the pilots? How is it supposed to work?

    MUNTEAN: There are multiple different layers of safeguards in place in the air traffic system, especially at these busy airports where there are a lot of airliners coming in and out in a lot of varying conditions, a lot of different times of day.

    Some of the responsibility falls on air traffic control. Of course, it’s their job to keep airplanes from running into one another. Some of the responsibility falls on the flight crew to keep it so that they follow the instructions of air traffic control, that they remain vigilant all the time, if they’re taxiing across runways or taking off from a runway that’s crisscrossing with another one as they’re about to land.

    The good news is that in commercial aviation in the US – which has a stellar track record, by the way – there are two trained pilots at all times. And there are a lot of eyeballs essentially making it so that these things don’t happen.

    The pilots can intercede at any point, and in some cases they have. They’ve just essentially called their own go-arounds to make it so that they don’t come in contact with an airplane. In some cases, the air traffic controllers will call it. The onus is on a few different layers here.

    I’m a pilot, but I just did a demonstration with a former NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigator at a busy airport, Dulles (in Virginia), and it begs pointing out that some of the safeguards are as simple as paint on the runway and taxiways to remind pilots not to taxi too close to the runway. Some of it is in the phraseology that’s used on the radio. Some of it is in the procedures and training the pilots get.

    I think every pilot that’s out there now – and if you talk to professional pilots this is something that weighs on them – this has been a chronic problem for aviation for a while. But now, because of these headlines, it’s especially top of mind for pilots and air traffic controllers and regulators and safety advocates.

    WOLF: You said it’s a chronic problem. Is there any indication or any data to suggest this is happening more often? Or are we in the media just paying attention to it?

    MUNTEAN: I think these events are getting more attention. No doubt that these six that we have seen so far this year are extreme. Usually they don’t happen with such severity, with such frequency.

    But the FAA, at every layer of aviation from commercial aviation on down to small airplanes and private airports, they’re always trying to remind pilots to remain vigilant. Something that pilots really train for in their first flying lesson is how to behave in and respect the environment around an airport.

    In some ways, it’s like flying with a loaded gun. You have to be really, really careful.

    The reason why these are happening, one pilot told me – who’s the representative for a large union of airline pilots and a major airline – he said the system is just under so much pressure right now. There’s a lot of corporate pressure for airlines to get back on their feet after the pandemic.

    There’s a lot of new pilots flying right now, who may have matriculated from regional airlines to larger airlines. A lot of the old guard have retired. Pilots have left just because they were given voluntary leave packages as a result of the downturn of the pandemic.

    There are a ton of different factors at play.

    The fact that we’re sort of paying attention to these more just sort of highlights that nobody can ever let their guard down.

    WOLF: Is the current air traffic system that we’re using technologically up to snuff?

    MUNTEAN: I think it is. And I think the FAA would say that it is, because they have added in so many layers of technology to make it so that these incidents are avoided.

    They have technology that can sense, at some larger airports, whether or not a pilot is lined up with the wrong thing, if they were aiming for a runway but instead aimed for a taxiway to land on – which has happened before.

    They have more lighting on the pavement that warns pilots, essentially like a stoplight, to make it so they don’t go rolling across a runway as they are taxiing across one.

    There are even systems that make it so that they can sense, using radar and other technologies, where airplanes are on the ground and not just in the air. Some of these runway incursions are caused simply by airplanes being in the wrong place as they are taxiing and not necessarily in the air.

    I think the system is up to snuff. I think the FAA would say the system is up to snuff. But they’re also using this as a moment to sort of reinspect and have some introspection on the matter and whether or not they could be doing more to make it so that these problems can be avoided.

    WOLF: You already pointed out that commercial aviation in the US is incredibly safe.

    MUNTEAN: The last time there was a fatality was 2018, which was kind of a freak accident, where a person got hit on a Southwest flight by a fan blade that broke up in a jet engine.

    We’re reporting on crashes that don’t happen. These are close calls, sure, but nobody’s been hurt. Nobody’s been killed. So it kind of shows, in a way, how safe the system is.

    WOLF: Is there a spot in the system that is particularly weak? Is it takeoff or landing? What is the thing that makes pilots most nervous?

    MUNTEAN: The common theme is having so many airplanes close together. That’s sort of the inherent flaw of an airport, right? You bring in airplanes and take off and land. You may be using multiple different runways at the same time. There’s a lot of demand in the air traffic right now.

    Every airport is different, right?

    Some airports may have a lot of runways that are parallel and a lot of taxiways that are parallel to one another, like at Dulles the other day, where we went. There are three runways lined up: one left, one center and one right. They’re all headed the same direction to the north. You have to be really careful that you’re lined up with the right one.

    There are a few different things that you can do in the airplane to mitigate that and make sure that you have a safeguard of your own. But I think it really varies by the airport. In some places, there are intersecting runways. There are taxiways that have confusing turns.

    The FAA does granular looks at things like this, where they say something like this taxiway design isn’t all that great, there may be a blind spot here, as you’re taxiing you may approach this at a 45-degree angle or it could be a 90-degree angle where somebody in the cockpit can see more.

    Also when conditions are changing – we saw in the Austin incident the weather was abysmal at that time. It was very low cloud ceilings and very low visibility where the pilots were able to get an indication that there was somebody on the runway, an approaching FedEx flight and a Southwest flight that was still on the runway that hadn’t taken off yet.

    They weren’t necessarily able to see that (Southwest flight), so far as we know, by their eyeball.

    There are a lot of things at play. You can’t just say it’s any one different thing. And remember, these pilots are often going in and out of different places multiple times a day. The responsibility is on everybody.

    WOLF: Do pilots face the same sort of difficult lifestyle we’ve been hearing about for train operators?

    MUNTEAN: There’s a ton of regulation that protects pilots. We see that occasionally getting better. Even flight attendants have gotten longer rest rules recently, where they’re able to rest between trips for a longer period of time.

    There’s always friction between organized labor, work groups and the companies that they work for. A lot of times it comes down to regulators and what they are able to do for workers. Pretty much every major airline right now – their pilot groups, as well as a lot of major flight attendant groups – are going through contract negotiations with their companies.

    Some of the safety and protection, unions would say, comes from a good deal that protects not only their ability to work but also keeps pilots and passengers safe. Organized labor and unions have a lot to say about this, and they want to make sure that they are treated fairly to make it so that these incidents don’t happen.

    I just talked to Dennis Tajer, who’s the representative of the Allied Pilots Association, which represents all the American Airlines pilots, and he said this is something that we’ve kind of been pounding our fists on the podium about, we’ve said for about a year that the air traffic system and the aviation system and the airline system are just under too much pressure, and now you’re seeing the result of that.

    It’s on not only regulators like the FAA, the Department of Transportation but also companies to make sure that these major airlines – which are huge corporations – to make sure that their pilots are safe and doing the job properly with the proper amount of rest, with the proper amount of resources.

    WOLF: Right. It’s in nobody’s interest for there to be an incident.

    MUNTEAN: Everyone says safety is a top priority, of course.

    But depending on your viewpoint, safety can have a lot of different meanings.

    WOLF: It’s always been my sense that air traffic is one of the most, if not the most, government-regulated systems in the country. Unlike other areas where there might be a move toward deregulation, this is something the government controls and is going to continue to control.

    MUNTEAN: It’s super regulated because a lot of the rules are, frankly, written in blood.

    When you talk about this runway incursion issue, the landmark case is the Tenerife accident (in 1977), where KLM and Pan Am 747s that both diverted to Tenerife, an island near Spain, ran into one another and killed a bunch of people. There were some survivors, but it was a classic runway incursion incident.

    One of the airplanes was back taxiing down the runway, as the KLM crew essentially blasted off without regard for where the other airplane was. They couldn’t see it because the weather was poor.

    These regulations are often born out of horrible disasters. And I think the thing to point out here is that we have avoided disaster in these six cases, but in some cases came pretty close. It underscores why things were so regulated and also why the regulators are taking this so seriously.

    WOLF: What are you looking out for?

    MUNTEAN: I would point out these things are still under investigation. And the National Transportation Safety Board has tried to shed a lot of light on this issue. I asked Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB, why do you think these things are happening more?

    She said, well, it’s possible that these things are happening more. It’s also possible that these things are getting more attention. It doesn’t matter; it’s good that these things are being brought to the spotlight.

    That could ultimately have a huge impact on safety. Aviation is not waiting for another Tenerife. They’re taking these one-off scares and really trying to learn from them.

    WOLF: You sound very passionate about all of this.

    MUNTEAN: I love flying more than anything. The cool part of my job is I get to talk about aviation for a living, and it’s something I’m so passionate about.

    I also instruct and teach people. I just came back from this incredible trip in Kenya where I got to instruct for the Kenya Wildlife Service Airwing, flying with essentially rangers, who are also pilots, with an anti-poaching air force.

    And that was just incredibly cool, but the focus is safety. Maybe I’m a little biased, but aviation is just like something I always geek out on. It’s fun to talk about. …

    I was invited with a group of instructors to go there, and we were in a national park south of Nairobi, called Tsavo West. We flew with 19 different pilots. Three instructors from the States essentially go down and audit their flying ability and safety.

    They’re very, very good pilots. Because they fly at a few hundred feet, guarding against poachers and spotting wildlife, they don’t have a ton of margin for error. We did a lot of brush-up things with them, and they were all very appreciative, and it was a very cool and rewarding experience flying smaller airplanes.

    Those are the type of airplanes that are best suited for that mission, because they can fly low and slow and have a lot of visibility. You can’t do that in a jet.

    It’s sort of like flying into Jurassic Park, because you see elephants all the time, and we saw rhinos and more zebras than I can ever count, and giraffes. But these pilots do a really important job, and (it) was really cool to be a part of it.

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  • ‘Y’all ain’t never been to Mexico.’ How a road trip over the border took a deadly turn | CNN

    ‘Y’all ain’t never been to Mexico.’ How a road trip over the border took a deadly turn | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Four South Carolinians in a white minivan pulled out the parking lot of a Motel 6 surrounded by palmettos and onto an expressway in Brownsville, Texas – zooming past strip malls lined with taquerias, auto repair shops and law offices with Spanish names – for the short drive to the Mexican border city of Matamoros.

    At one of the busiest border crossings in the country, the American citizens that Friday morning joined other motorists and pedestrians on trips for work or to see family, cheaper medical procedures and medications, or margarita lunches at brightly painted restaurants where menu prices are listed in pesos and dollars.

    About 9:20 a.m., LaTavia Washington McGee, a 33-year-old mother of six, and her three friends from South Carolina crossed the Brownsville and Matamoros Express International Bridge. They were already running late for Washington McGee’s appointment for a medical procedure.

    Around that time, the minivan moves along a rundown section of Matamoros, according to a livestream video taken by one of the minivan’s occupants that was obtained and analyzed by CNN.

    “Y’all ain’t never been to Mexico,” said one of the men inside the van. “Y’all don’t know what it’s like in Mexi.”

    Moments later, the man said, “Hola,” and there was laughter during a road trip that would soon take a deadly turn in the lawless border town.

    In broad daylight, at 11:45 a.m., the van was intercepted and fired upon. All occupants were shot except for Washington McGee. A Mexican woman was killed by a stray bullet about a block and a half away.

    Video showed the attackers, armed with rifles and wearing protective vests, tossing Washington McGee – “like trash” in the words of her mother, Barbara McLeod Burgess – onto the bed of a pickup.

    The gunmen, believed to be connected to the Gulf drug cartel, dragged the other victims onto the truck. Two appeared limp, leaving a trail of blood on the ground of the busy intersection. The abductors then drove away.

    Within days Mexican security forces found two of the Americans – Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown – dead in a small wooden shack on a desolate road leading to Playa Bagdad, near the spot where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico. Another man, Eric Williams, was wounded. And Washington McGee was found alive following a violent kidnapping that has become a flash point between neighboring countries and brought international attention to a Mexican border city where little-noticed killings and disappearances are part of everyday life.

    “If they were Mexicans this would not have happened with such speed,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an expert on smuggling who is a professor at George Mason University and has lived and worked in near Brownsville border, said of the rescue. “It would not have happened at all. It doesn’t happen with Mexicans, particularly in that state.”

    By Friday, a week after the kidnappings, Mexican authorities announced that five people had been arrested for the attack. A day earlier, the Gulf cartel purportedly issued a letter of apology and handed over five members to local authorities, according to online images and a version of the letter obtained by CNN from an official familiar with the ongoing investigation. A sixth man, who authorities said had been guarding the hostages, was arrested when the Americans were found on Tuesday.

    The four Americans that Friday morning drove into a country where authorities have struggled for small victories in a long and deadly battle against drug cartels. The conflict has claimed the lives of thousands of Mexicans, from innocent bystanders to journalists to government officials and political candidates.

    It’s unclear how much the friends in the rented minivan knew about the crime-ridden border city, where factions of the powerful Gulf cartel have been warring for turf, along with control of human trafficking, kidnapping and extortion rackets. Matamoros is in the northeast state of Tamaulipas, where an explosion of homicides, kidnappings and disappearances rarely make international news.

    “I know her,” said Washington McGee’s best friend, Cheryl Orange, who traveled with the group from South Carolina to Texas on March 2 but stayed behind because she did not have proper identification to cross the border. “She’s not going to travel to danger.”

    The trip was Washington McGee’s second to Mexico for a medical procedure, according to her mother. She had surgery across the border two or three years ago, Barbara Burgess said.

    Matamoros, with a population of more than 500,000 people, sits just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. The US State Department in October issued a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for US citizens visiting Tamaulipas, citing gun battles, kidnapping and forced disappearances.

    Cheryl Orange vpx 01

    Friend of Americans kidnapped in Mexico recounts the moments before they went missing

    On the day of the kidnappings, Tamaulipas authorities issued a warning to parents to keep their children home from school in Matamoros because of shootings. The US embassy and consulates in Mexico warned staff to avoid downtown Matamoros.

    The Americans are believed to have been targeted by mistake and were not the intended victims, according to a US official with knowledge of the investigation. Authorities believe cartel members likely mistook them for Haitian smugglers, the official said. US authorities have not identified any concerning criminal history on the part of the Americans.

    On Friday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador alluded to the purported “criminal background in the United States” of the Americans but did not elaborate on how that related to the deadly kidnapping. López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” anti-crime policy – focusing on social programs rather than confrontation with criminal gangs – has come under fire at home and abroad.

    CNN is looking into López Obrador’s claims about the criminal history of the US citizens.

    US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar on Friday declined comment on the motivation behind the kidnappings.

    Asked what she wanted people to know about her friends, Orange said: “I want the world to leave us alone and stop being mean. I want them to have a heart because everyone has a past.”

    The disappearance of the four Americans has become an international incident.

    The FBI launched an investigation and announced a $50,000 reward for their return and the arrest of those involved. The White House and State Department condemned the abduction and killings. Some Republicans in Congress called for a US military invasion of Mexico to combat the cartels. Others called for the US to designate the cartels as “terrorist organizations.”

    Orange said she and the other four Americans embarked on their journey from South Carolina on Thursday.

    “It was a road trip,” she said. They tagged along with Washington McGee, who was scheduled to have a medical procedure across the border, Orange told Brownsville police when she reported her friends missing a day after the kidnapping.

    Mexico is the second most popular destination for medical tourism globally, with an estimated 1.4 million to 3 million patients traveling into the country for inexpensive treatment in 2020, according to Patients Beyond Borders, an international healthcare consulting company.

    Woodard, who was killed in the kidnapping, would have celebrated his 34th birthday on Thursday, according to his father, James Woodard.

    Washington McGee and Shaeed Woodard were cousins – “like two peas in a pod” – and she invited him on the trip to Mexico for an early birthday celebration, James Woodard said.

    “They loved each other,” he said of the cousins.

    Orange said the men were expected to drop off Washington McGee at the doctor’s officer in Matamoros and return to the hotel about 15 minutes later. She fell asleep after taking a shower at the Motel 6. “I was exhausted, you know, from the long hours, from the long ride,” she said.

    She woke up about 5 p.m. and they hadn’t returned. Orange told police she tried calling her friends but couldn’t get through.

    latavia mother mexico vpx

    Victim’s mom reveals what daughter told her about killings

    The four friends never arrived at the doctor’s office for Washington McGee’s 7:30 a.m. appointment. One of them called the office that Friday morning to say they were running late.

    At some point after 11 a.m. a gray Volkswagen Jetta is seen following their minivan, according to surveillance video obtained by Mexican prosecutors.

    About 40 minutes later several vehicles appear to be trailing the minivan and, at 11:45 a.m., the Americans were intercepted by gunmen.

    Burgess said her daughter later told her by phone that the minivan was struck by another vehicle before the shooting started.

    In video that circulated online after the kidnapping, McGee Washington is seen sitting on the ground next to the white minivan. A bullet appeared to pierce the middle of driver’s side window. Three other people can be seen on the road as cars on the busy intersection start steering away from the danger.

    McGee Washington is shoved onto the back of a pickup before her three friends were lifted and tossed beside her.

    “She said the others tried to run and they got shot at the same time,” Burgess said her daughter told her after the Americans were found on Tuesday.

    “She watched them die,” Burgess said of Woodard and Zindell Brown.

    Burgess watched the video, she said, and “I thought she was done,” referring to her daughter.

    In the wee hours after reporting her friends missing, Orange watched the widely circulated video of the abduction.

    “My body clenched up. I dropped the phone. My stomach was in knots and I just began praying for the return of them,” she said.

    James Woodard was also pained by the video he saw on television.

    “That was so hard for me to see,” he said. “He was a baby and for him to be taken from me like that was very hurtful.”

    The missing Americans' van at the scene where they were last seen. Video shows the four being loaded into the back of a pickup truck. Their current whereabouts are unknown.

    Shocking video shows moment kidnapped Americans were loaded into pickup truck

    In the days after the kidnapping, Mexican authorities combed through surveillance video from the downtown intersection. They contacted US authorities after discovering documents in the rented minivan with North Carolina plates, which were traced by officials across the border. Mexican investigators also managed to identify the truck used by the gunmen.

    Investigators processed vehicles, and obtained ballistics and fingerprint data. They also collected biological samples for genetic profiles, Mexican officials said.

    After identifying the truck used by the gunmen, several unsuccessful searches were conducted by heavily armed Mexican security forces from various agencies.

    The Americans had been moved to several places “to create confusion and avoid rescue efforts,” Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said.

    Burgess said her daughter told her the abductors moved the four Americans “from place to place” and finally hid them in “a little place and it stank.”

    “All of them were hustled in and were staying together,” she said.

    At 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the Americans were found in a small red wooden shack in a field outside the city. Mexican authorities arrested a man who they said was guarding the house. Images from the scene showed McGee barefoot and covered in dirt, with streaks of blood on her left leg.

    Mexico dispatched hundreds of security forces to Matamoros in what the defense ministry said was a move to safeguard “the well-being of citizens.”

    The swift response by authorities to the Americans’ kidnapping raised eyebrows in a country where desperate relatives of people who have gone missing over the years have banded together to conduct their own investigations. More than 100,000 Mexicans and migrants have disappeared in the country over the years, with no explanation of their fate.

    After the frantic rescue, Orange said hearing Washington MaGee’s voice on the phone was “music to my ears.”

    “This lady was facing death damn near and she said, ‘I was worried about you,’” Orange recalled.

    The bodies of Woodard and Brown were turned over to US authorities on Thursday.

    Washington McGee told CNN Saturday she is grateful to be back home with her family in South Carolina.

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  • What to know about NY prosecutors’ probe into Trump’s role in hush money scheme | CNN Politics

    What to know about NY prosecutors’ probe into Trump’s role in hush money scheme | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Manhattan prosecutors’ invitation to Donald Trump to testify in an investigation into a hush money scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels has thrust the yearslong probe into the spotlight as officials weigh whether to charge the former president.

    Prosecutors in District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office have asked Trump to appear before the grand jury investigating the matter.

    The request represents the clearest indication yet that investigators are nearing a decision on whether to take the unprecedented step of indicting a former president since potential defendants in New York are required by law to be notified and invited to appear before a grand jury weighing charges.

    Here’s what to know about the hush money investigation.

    The Manhattan DA’s investigation first began under Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance, when Trump was still in the White House. It relates to a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels in late October 2016, days before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair.

    At issue in the investigation is the payment made to Daniels and the Trump Organization’s reimbursement to Cohen.

    According to court filings in Cohen’s own federal prosecution, Trump Org. executives authorized payments to him totaling $420,000 to cover his original $130,000 payment and tax liabilities and reward him with a bonus.

    The Manhattan DA’s investigation has hung over Trump since his presidency, and is just one of several probes the former president is facing as he makes his third bid for the White House.

    Hush money payments aren’t illegal. Prosecutors are weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying the business records of the Trump Organization for how it reflected the reimbursement of the payment to Cohen, who said he advanced the money to Daniels. Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York.

    Prosecutors are also weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying business records in the first degree for falsifying a record with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal another crime, which in this case could be a violation of campaign finance laws. That is a Class E felony and carries a sentence of a minimum of one year and as much as four years. To prove the case, prosecutors would need to show Trump intended to commit a crime.

    The Trump Organization noted the reimbursements as a legal expense in its internal books. Trump has previously denied knowledge of the payment.

    If the district attorney’s office moves forward with charges, it would represent a rare moment in history: Trump would be the first former US president ever indicted and also the first major presidential candidate under indictment seeking office.

    The former president has said he “wouldn’t even think about leaving” the 2024 race if charged.

    A decision to bring charges would not be without risk or guarantee a conviction. Trump’s lawyers could challenge whether campaign finance laws would apply as a crime to make the case a felony, for instance.

    In a lengthy response on his Truth Social account Thursday night, Trump said in part, “I did absolutely nothing wrong, I never had an affair with Stormy Daniels.”

    Trump is meeting with his legal team this weekend to consider his options and possibly make a decision on whether to appear before the grand jury, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.

    It’s not clear when Trump would need to make a decision on the grand jury invitation extended by Bragg’s office, nor whether there’s a firm deadline.

    An attorney for Trump said Friday that any prosecution related to hush money payments to an adult film star would be “completely unprecedented” and accused the Manhattan district attorney of targeting the former president for “political reasons and personal animus.”

    Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said in a statement shared with CNN that the campaign finance laws in this case, which is related to seven-year-old allegations, are “murky” and that the underlying legal theories of a possible case are “untested.”

    “This DA and the former DA have been scouring every aspect of President Trump’s personal life and business affairs for years in search of a crime and needs to stop. This is simply not what our justice system is about,” Tacopina said.

    Cohen, Trump’s onetime fixer, played a central role in the hush money episode and is involved in the investigation.

    He has admitted to paying $130,000 to Daniels to stop her from going public about the alleged affair with Trump just before the 2016 election. He also helped arrange a $150,000 payment from the publisher of the National Enquirer to Karen McDougal to kill her story claiming a 10-month affair with Trump. Trump also denies an affair with McDougal.

    Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to eight counts, including two counts of campaign-finance violations for orchestrating or making payments during the 2016 campaign.

    Cohen met with the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Friday and is set to appear Monday as well.

    Speaking to reporters has he walked into court Friday, Cohen said he has not yet testified in front of a grand jury.

    “I have to applaud District Attorney Bragg for giving Donald the opportunity to come in and to tell his story,” he said. “Now knowing Donald as well as I do, understand that, he doesn’t tell the truth. It’s one thing to turn around and to lie on your ‘Untruth Social’ and it’s another thing to turn around and to lie before a grand jury. So I don’t suspect that he’s going to be coming.”

    For her part, Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford, said in 2021 that she had not yet testified in the probe but that she would “love nothing more than” to be interviewed by prosecutors investigating the Trump Organization.

    Daniels said at the time that her attorney has been in contact with Manhattan and New York state investigators and that she has had meetings with them about other issues. She said if she were asked to talk to investigators or a grand jury she would “tell them everything I know.”

    She wrote a tell-all book in 2018 that described the alleged affair in graphic detail, with her then-attorney saying that the book was intended to prove her story about having sex with Trump is true.

    Bragg’s investigation has continued to move forward in recent months as it neared this latest development.

    Trump’s lawyer recently met with the district attorney’s office, one source told CNN. His legal team has been concerned with Bragg’s intentions because of recently ramped up activity at the grand jury, according to another source familiar with the matter.

    Former Trump White House aides Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway recently appeared before the grand jury. And CNN reported last month that Jeffrey McConney, the controller of the Trump Organization, would appear in front of the grand jury, according to people familiar with matter.

    McConney is one of the highest-ranking financial officers at the Trump Organization and has responsibility for its books and records.

    Trump’s attorneys would likely be offered a chance to persuade the DA’s team that an indictment is not warranted.

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  • 5 arrested in deadly kidnapping of Americans in Mexico after cartel issues apology letter and hands over members | CNN

    5 arrested in deadly kidnapping of Americans in Mexico after cartel issues apology letter and hands over members | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Mexican authorities arrested five people in connection to the kidnappings of four Americans in Matamoros, Mexico, Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica said on Twitter Friday.

    Earlier, a cartel apologized for carrying out what one victim’s father has called “a senseless crime” that left two Americans and one Mexican woman dead.

    The case remained “very confusing” to investigators, who were still obtaining information on the kidnapping last Friday and considering all angles, a Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office official familiar with the investigation told CNN before news broke of the arrests.

    An apology letter was issued Thursday by the Gulf Cartel, which is believed to be responsible for the kidnappings, and the group handed over five of its members to local authorities, according to images circulating online and a version of the letter obtained by CNN from an official familiar with the ongoing investigation.

    CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of the photos and has asked Mexican and US authorities for comment.

    “The [Gulf Cartel] apologizes to the society of Matamoros, the relatives of Ms. Areli, and the affected American people and families,” reads the handwritten letter, referring to a Mexican woman who was also killed by a stray bullet in the shootout.

    Though investigators believe the letter to be authentic, Mexican and US law enforcement officials participating in the investigation strongly doubt the sincerity of the group’s apology, the official who shared the letter with CNN said.

    One person already had been detained in connection with the Americans’ deaths who was undertaking “surveillance functions of the victims,” Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said Tuesday, identifying the individual as 24-year-old Jose “N.” Officials would not confirm whether the man has any affiliations with criminal organizations.

    The bodies of two Americans killed – Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown – were delivered to US diplomatic authorities Thursday after undergoing forensic examination, Barrios Mojica said in a tweet.

    “I’ve tried to make sense out of it and tried to be strong about it,” Woodard’s father, James Woodard, told reporters Thursday, which would have been his son’s 34th birthday. “It just was a senseless crime.”

    The two survivors – Latavia Washington McGee and Eric Williams – returned to the US on Tuesday to be treated in a hospital. Williams, who had been shot three times in his legs, has since undergone two surgeries and had rods placed in his legs, his wife said on a GoFundMe page to raise money for Williams’s medical and living expenses.

    A fifth American group member, Cheryl Orange, planned to travel with the group on the day of the kidnapping but had to stay behind because she did not have proper identification to cross the border. She told CNN that she has battled the guilt of narrowly missing the attack.

    “I beat myself up in the beginning about that and I have everybody telling me that I need to be grateful. I really wish I was by Tay’s side,” Orange said, referring to her “best friend,” Washington McGee by her nickname “Tay.”

    The tight-knit group had traveled from South Carolina to Matamoros so that Washington McGee could undergo a medical procedure. But the friends were violently intercepted by gunmen who fired into the Americans’ van, roughly loaded them into the back of a truck and took them away, according to Washington McGee’s mother and a video of the encounter.

    The victims were shuttled to multiple locations before they were found in a house around Matamoros Tuesday, Villarreal said. Tamaulipas prosecutors have since found an ambulance that was used to transport the victims to first aid treatment at a clinic, which authorities have also located, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

    As the group of friends crossed into Matamoros last Friday, Orange stayed behind at their hotel in Brownsville, Texas, becoming increasingly concerned as evening came and the friends hadn’t returned, she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday.

    “I said something’s not right,” Orange said. She reached out to her boyfriend and Washington McGee’s brother to say she was getting worried.

    When it came time for Orange to check out of their hotel the next morning, there was still no sign of Washington McGee and the others, Orange said. At that point, she became so concerned that she decided to call the police.

    Orange reported the group missing on Saturday to Brownsville Police, according to a police report. The report states that police checked a local jail to make sure that no one in the party had been taken into custody, but no other action was taken.

    Eventually, Orange saw the video of the kidnapping that was circulating online, showing Washington McGee being shoved into the back of a truck by armed gunmen and the other victims’ bodies being dragged in beside her.

    “My body clenched up. I dropped the phone. My stomach was in knots and I just began praying for the return of them,” she said of seeing the video.

    Upon finally hearing Washington McGee’s voice after she was discovered alive, Orange was able to feel some relief. “It put me at ease a little bit. It was music to my ears to hear her voice,” she said.

    Meanwhile, the families of Woodard and Brown are left to grapple with the loss of their loved ones.

    “That was hard for me to see those videos and see him dragged and thrown on the back of a vehicle. It’s like god was preparing me already to know that it was probably the worst,” Woodard’s father said of watching the video of the kidnapping.

    Woodard had accompanied his cousin, Washington McGee to Mexico for her procedure, but also to celebrate his upcoming 34th birthday, his father said. He described his son as a “sweetheart” and a “loving person.”

    “If you told me this day was coming I would have never believed it,” James Woodard said. He later added, “A parent never expects to lose a child.”

    US and Mexican law enforcement officials suspect the Gulf Cartel’s apology letter was issued after the kidnapping exposed the cartel to considerable public attention and scrutiny of its actions, according to the US official who confirmed the letter’s authenticity.

    In its letter, the cartel apologized to “the society of Matamoros, the relatives of Ms. Areli, and the affected American people and families,” referring to the Mexican woman who was killed by a stray bullet.

    It is common for Mexican cartels, especially in the northeast of the country, to release messages to the authorities or rival groups in the aftermath of high-profile incidents, according to Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University who studies the cartels.

    The apology came after the arrest of a local Gulf Cartel leader, who was wanted for past kidnappings, in the city of Reynosa, about 55 miles west of Matamoros, according to a US official briefed on the apprehension.

    Any connection to last week’s kidnapping of the Americans is unclear. But, as CNN has reported, the official believes members of the Gulf Cartel attacked the Americans in Matamoros, after mistaking them for Haitian drug smugglers.

    The local cartel leader, Ernesto Sanchez-Rivera, is also known as “Metro 22” and is known to also have ties to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the source added.

    CNN has reached out to the local prosecutor for more information on the apprehension but has not yet received a response.

    The kidnapping of Americans has brought increased scrutiny to efforts to reign in cartel violence in Mexico, including from Republican lawmakers in the US who have called for designating cartels as terrorist organizations and signaled their plans to file legislation allowing the US military to operate in Mexico.

    The pressure from Republicans has been met with a swift rebuke from Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who says the actions would infringe on Mexican sovereignty.

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  • Bodies of 2 Mexico kidnapping victims expected to be returned to the US for further autopsies, source says | CNN

    Bodies of 2 Mexico kidnapping victims expected to be returned to the US for further autopsies, source says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The bodies of two Americans killed in an armed kidnapping in Mexico are expected to be returned to the US on Thursday, a source from the Mexico Attorney General’s Office tells CNN, after two survivors of the attack returned to the US for treatment at a hospital.

    The remains of Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown likely will be transported to a funeral home in Brownsville, Texas, a US official familiar with the investigation said. The repatriation would come two days after the bodies were discovered alongside their two surviving friends in a house around the Mexican city of Matamoros.

    Autopsies were completed Wednesday morning in Mexico, an official from the Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office told CNN, though Mexican authorities have not released causes of death. Second autopsies will be performed in the US, the US official said.

    CNN has reached out to the US State Department about the repatriation of remains.

    The deceased were part of a group of four friends from South Carolina who had driven Friday into Matamoros so one of them, Latavia Washington McGee, could undergo a medical procedure, two family members told CNN. But their trip was violently interrupted when unidentified gunmen fired on their van, then loaded the Americans into a vehicle and drove them away, the FBI said.

    An innocent Mexican bystander was also killed by a stray bullet almost a block and a half from where the Americans were kidnapped, according to Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal.

    Survivor Eric Williams was shot three times in the legs, his wife Michele Williams told CNN. When he and McGee were discovered alive Tuesday, Williams was taken to a hospital in Texas for surgery, she said.

    Washington McGee was also taken to the hospital, her mother, Barbara Burgess, told CNN, though Mexican authorities said she was uninjured.

    “She watched them die,” Burgess said, recounting what Washington McGee told her about the kidnapping. “They were driving through and a van came up and hit them, and that’s when they started shooting at the car, shooting inside the van. … She said the others tried to run and they got shot at the same time.”

    Washington McGee and Brown are cousins who were raised together as closely as siblings, Burgess said.

    “He was a good person, and I miss him,” Burgess said of Brown. “I loved him. (There’s) nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”

    Investigators believe the group was targeted by a Mexican cartel who mistook them for Haitian drug smugglers, a US official familiar with the investigation told CNN on Monday, and the kidnapping has renewed attention to efforts by US and Mexican officials to combat organized crime in Mexico.

    During a Wednesday news briefing held by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a government-sponsored fact-checking agency claimed reports of the Americans being mistaken for Haitian drug traffickers are false. The president said “adversaries” in Mexico and the US are attempting to make a “scandal” of the case.

    CNN has reached out to investigators in the US and Mexico, as well as the fact-checking agency.

    Mexican authorities are still investigating the kidnapping. One person, identified as 24-year-old Jose “N,” was detained when the Americans were found Tuesday, according to Villarreal, though officials would not confirm whether he is connected to a criminal organization.

    The kidnapping of the four friends on Friday spurred a days-long investigation by local and federal Mexican officials, who say they were in almost-constant contact with US authorities until the two survivors and the victims’ bodies were finally discovered.

    The four friends had booked a hotel in Brownsville, Texas, and were planning to drive to a doctor’s office in Matamoros on Friday for Washington McGee to undergo a medical procedure, a close friend who did not want to be identified told CNN.

    matamoros mexico kidnapping scene

    Video shows Americans kidnapped in Mexico being loaded into pickup truck

    At about 9:18 a.m. Friday, the group crossed into Matamoros, Villarreal said. But on their way to the clinic, the group became lost and were struggling to contact the doctor’s office for directions due to a poor phone signal, the close friend said.

    Suddenly, another vehicle collided into the group’s van and gunmen began shooting at the group, sending some of the friends running, according to Burgess, who recounted her daughter’s experience. “They all got shot at the same time,” she said.

    A video obtained by CNN shows Washington McGee being shoved onto the bed of a white pickup truck by a group of armed men, who then begin dragging at least two other limp bodies into the truck. Burgess, when asked about the video, said her daughter was treated “like trash.”

    The Americans were then taken from the scene in the vehicle, according to an FBI account of the kidnapping.

    Over the next few days, the groups was moved to several different locations to “create confusion and avoid rescue efforts,” Villarreal said.

    Meanwhile, Mexican investigators were searching for the missing group, sifting through surveillance footage and processing the vehicles and ballistics found at the scene, officials said.

    After noticing the Americans’ van had North Carolina license plates, Mexican authorities reached out to US officials, who were able to run the plates, according to Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica. They were also able to identify the gunmen’s truck, he said.

    “Several searches” were then initiated across multiple agencies, and the group was ultimately found in a “wooden house” in or near Matamoros on Tuesday morning, Villarreal said.

    Though US law enforcement were not involved in the search on the ground, federal and local agencies in Mexico were cooperating in the effort and a joint task force was created to communicate with US officials, Barrios Mojica said.

    The fatal kidnapping – and the possibility it was carried out by a cartel – has brought increased attention to ongoing efforts by US and Mexican officials to curb cartel activity that is a primary driver of the fentanyl trade between the countries.

    A US delegation traveled to Mexico this week to “discuss our governments’ ongoing cooperation in combating illicit fentanyl,” a national security council spokesman told CNN Wednesday.

    The visit comes as fentanyl – a potent synthetic opioid – fuels a record number of overdose deaths in the US, with Mexico being the “dominant source” of the drug in the US, according to a government report released last year.

    The delegation plans to address the kidnapping and discuss a “fundamental strategy to attack the cartels,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Wednesday.

    President Joe Biden promised “strong penalties to crack down on fentanyl trafficking” in his State of the Union address last month. His administration has since sanctioned several cartel members and associated groups for their participation in the drug trade.

    López Obrador said there was “good cooperation” underway between the two countries on anti-drug efforts, but resisted calls from some Republican lawmakers in the US to designate cartels as terrorist organizations, saying it would infringe on Mexican sovereignty.

    “We do not get involved in seeing what the gangs in the United States that distribute fentanyl are doing or how the drug is distributed in the United States,” López Obrador said at his daily news conference in Mexico City.

    Ongoing talks between the US and Mexico are “working in a coordinated manner with respect to sovereignty,” he said.

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  • Memphis officials to release more video from Tyre Nichols’ deadly beating today, after saying a 7th officer was fired | CNN

    Memphis officials to release more video from Tyre Nichols’ deadly beating today, after saying a 7th officer was fired | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Officials in Memphis are expected Wednesday to release about 20 more hours of video relating to January’s deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols – as well as some records of the city’s now-finished internal probe into 13 police officers and four fire department personnel, a Memphis official said.

    The anticipated release comes a day after the official revealed that a seventh police officer has been fired and others were suspended or left the force after the brutal encounter in the western Tennessee city. Previously, authorities said six officers were fired, five of whom have been criminally charged.

    The city’s internal investigations into the beatings have finished, so the city intends to release the additional video footage Wednesday afternoon, Memphis Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Sink told a city council committee Tuesday morning.

    The unreleased footage most notably will include audio of what was said after the beating and after an ambulance took Nichols to a hospital, and it could play an investigative role as his office contemplates additional charges, the county prosecutor previously told CNN.

    Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was repeatedly punched and kicked by Memphis police officers following a traffic stop and brief pursuit on foot on January 7. Nichols was hospitalized after the beating and died three days later.

    Five police officers, who are also Black, were fired following an internal investigation and were indicted on criminal charges January 26.

    Body camera videos and surveillance footage from the arrest were released on January 27, showing the severity of the beating to the public and drawing widespread condemnation from residents and police officials alike. The video shook a nation long accustomed to videos of police brutality – especially against people of color – and spurred protests and vigils in Memphis and other major US cities.

    The video released in January contradicted what officers said happened in the initial police report filed after Nichols’ beating, the county prosecutor said, and spurred renewed national debate on justice in policing and reform.

    In early February Shelby County prosecutor Steven Mulroy told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer the video released in January are “the relevant parts” of the initial stop and the beating after the foot chase, but the yet-to-be-released footage could play a role in investigations.

    Potential charges of “false reporting” related to the initial police report were being investigated, Erica Williams, a spokesperson for Mulroy’s office, told CNN around the same time.

    When asked whether anyone new will face criminal charges now that the city’s investigation is finished, Williams told CNN on Tuesday: “Not at this time.” Mulroy’s office previously told CNN it would wait for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to conclude an investigation before deciding on more charges.

    The city will also release Wednesday some records related to the internal probes of the 13 police officers and four fire department personnel, including documents indicating what they were being investigated for, Sink said.

    Other investigative files have information that needs to be redacted, and will be posted online when that is completed, she added without giving a timeline.

    But Sink already announced the bottom line on Tuesday: Seven police officers were fired, three were suspended, one retired and two had their investigations dropped as result of the probes, she said.

    That was the first time the city announced a seventh officer was fired. That person’s name, and details about what the officer is accused of doing, weren’t immediately released.

    Also, the officer who retired likely would have been terminated, Sink said without elaborating about what that officer was accused of doing.

    The city has previously said that three Memphis fire department personnel who responded to the scene – two emergency medical technicians and a fire lieutenant – were fired, though none was criminally charged. On Tuesday, Sink said a fourth fire department worker was suspended. Sink did not elaborate.

    The two fired EMTs did not conduct a primary examination of Nichols for the first 19 minutes they were on scene, and the lieutenant stayed in a fire truck, according to a state emergency medical services board.

    A council member asked Sink whether anyone who struck Nichols was still part of either the police department or fire department.

    “No. All of those officers … have been charged criminally,” Sink said.

    Those five former Memphis police officers indicted in January were arraigned February 17 on criminal charges.

    Five former Memphis police officers face criminal chagres in connection with the death of Tyre Nichols. Top: Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III. Bottom: Desmond Mills Jr., Justin Smith.

    Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr. each face charges of second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. Second-degree murder in Tennessee is considered a Class A felony punishable by 15 to 60 years in prison.

    Their attorneys entered not guilty pleas on their behalf. They are due back in court on May 1.

    The five charged officers were part of the department’s SCORPION unit, which was launched in 2021 to take on a rise in violent crime in Memphis. Shortly after video of Nichols’ arrest was released in January, Memphis police announced the unit would be permanently deactivated as a sign the department was taking “proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted.”

    Police in February identified a sixth officer who was fired. Preston Hemphill, who is White, saying he was accused of violating departmental policies including those covering personal conduct and truthfulness.

    Sink said February 7 that seven officers – beyond the six who’d been fired at the time – were facing disciplinary action for policy violations. Tuesday’s announcement covers the discipline decisions for all 13.

    In addition, two Shelby County Sheriff’s Office deputies who were at the scene were suspended for five days each without pay for their parts in the case, according to a sheriff’s office news release obtained by CNN affiliate WHBQ.

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  • NTSB investigating Norfolk Southern’s safety culture after conductor is killed in accident involving dump truck in Ohio | CNN

    NTSB investigating Norfolk Southern’s safety culture after conductor is killed in accident involving dump truck in Ohio | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Norfolk Southern conductor was killed Tuesday after being struck by a dump truck at a facility in Ohio, prompting a National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the railway’s safety culture due to the “number and significance” of recent accidents.

    The conductor, identified as 46-year-old Louis Shuster, was fatally injured early Tuesday morning at the Cleveland-Cliffs Cleveland Works property, the railroad said in a news release. It is the third incident involving the railroad in the state in just over a month.

    Shuster was struck when a dump truck carrying limestone collided with the front left side of the first car of the train. He was outside the car when he was struck, a Cleveland police spokesperson told CNN.

    Norfolk Southern is working with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, the Cleveland Police Department and Cleveland-Cliffs representatives to learn more, it said.

    The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter that it had sent crews to the scene.

    The NTSB said in a statement later that its safety culture probe encompasses multiple incidents and three deaths since December 2021, including the toxic East Palestine derailment and the employee killed earlier Tuesday. It is already investigating a October 28 derailment in Sandusky, Ohio.

    “The NTSB is concerned that several organizational factors may be involved in the accidents, including safety culture,” the board said in a statement. “The NTSB will conduct an in-depth investigation into the safety practices and culture of the company. At the same time, the company should not wait to improve safety and the NTSB urges it to do so immediately.”

    Norfolk Southern’s CEO is scheduled to testify before a Senate committee Thursday.

    “Norfolk Southern has been in touch with the conductor’s family and will do all it can to support them and his colleagues. We are grieving the loss of a colleague today. Our hearts go out to his loved ones during this extremely difficult time,” the railroad said.

    Shuster was member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and employed as a Norfolk Southern conductor, according to the union.

    “Lou was a passionate and dedicated union brother,” said Pat Redmond, Local Chairman of BLET Division 607. “He was always there for his coworkers. He was very active in helping veterans who worked on the railroad and veterans all across our community.”

    Shuster, a resident of Broadview Heights, Ohio, was president of BLET Division 607 in Cleveland. Shuster has a 16-year-old son and cared for his elderly parents, and was an Army veteran, the union said.

    “This was a tragic situation and it’s a devastating loss for the Shuster family as well as the members of this union,” said BLET National President Eddie Hall. “All railroad accidents are avoidable. This collision underscores the need for significant improvements in rail safety for both workers and the public.”

    Cleveland-Cliffs is a flat-rolled steel company, according to its website, and its Cleveland Works facility sits on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland.

    CNN has reached out to Cleveland-Cliffs, Cleveland police and the Ohio governor’s office for more information.

    The conductor’s death comes as Norfolk Southern is facing criticism for two recent derailments in Ohio, including one in East Palestine last month that resulted in the release and burning of a toxic chemical that left nearby residents complaining of headaches, coughing and rashes they believe are tied to the fiery crash.

    As the railroad works with the Environmental Protection Agency to remediate the site, it announced a new six-point safety plan Monday designed to help prevent similar derailments in the future.

    And in Springfield, about 200 miles southwest of East Palestine, another Norfolk Southern freight train derailed Saturday.

    The crash knocked out power and the area and resulted in a temporary shelter-in-place order for homes within 1,000 feet of the scene. Crews later determined nothing had spilled from the derailed cars and there was no environmental harm.

    Casualties, including injuries and deaths, involving railroad employees are not uncommon, according to data from the Federal Railroad Administration, which shows there were more than 13,500 incidents involving on-duty employees across the industry in 2022, including 1,060 involving Norfolk Southern employees.

    Forty-two rail employees died while on duty last year, the administration said. Five of those individuals were Norfolk Southern employees.

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  • 4 Americans missing in Mexico identified by family members as a South Carolina mother and her friends who were traveling for a medical procedure | CNN

    4 Americans missing in Mexico identified by family members as a South Carolina mother and her friends who were traveling for a medical procedure | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The four Americans who authorities say were kidnapped in Mexico on Friday were a tight-knit group of friends traveling from South Carolina so one of them – a mother of six – could undergo a medical procedure across the border, two family members told CNN.

    Latavia “Tay” Washington McGee, 33, drove to Mexico with Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown and their friend Eric for the procedure but she never made it to her doctor’s appointment on Friday, her mother Barbara Burgess told CNN.

    On Sunday, Burgess said she was informed by the FBI that her daughter had been kidnapped and was in danger. “They said if she calls me to call them,” she said.

    Mexican authorities are still searching for the missing Americans, who drove into the border city of Matamoros on Friday, where they were fired upon by unidentified gunman and “placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men,” according to the FBI.

    An innocent Mexican bystander was also killed in the encounter, US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said.

    Investigators believe the Americans were mistakenly targeted by a Mexican cartel that likely mistook them for Haitian drug smugglers, a US official familiar with the ongoing investigation tells CNN.

    The US citizens have no concerning criminal history that has been identified by investigators, the source said.

    The group of friends, who were bonded “like glue,” grew up together in South Carolina, Brown’s sister Zalandria Brown told CNN. She added, that she and her brother are also close. “Zindell is like my shadow, he’s like my son, he’s like my hip bone. We’re just tight like that.”

    This was the second time Washington McGee, a mother of six children, had gone to Mexico for a medical procedure, her mother said. About two to three years ago, Burgess said, her daughter traveled to the country for a surgery.

    Mexico has become a popular destination for “medical tourism,” attracting travelers who may be seeking cheaper alternatives or medical treatments that are unapproved or unavailable in the US. But the CDC warns the growing trend can carry dangerous risks depending on the destination and facility, including infection and possible post-procedure complications.

    Receipts found in the group’s vehicle also indicated the Americans were in Mexico for medical procedures, a US official with knowledge of the investigation tells CNN.

    Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday that the group had crossed the border to “buy medicines” and assured the “whole government” is working to resolve the case.

    Federal and local Mexican authorities are participating in the effort to locate the missing Americans, Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica said Monday.

    The White House and US State Department are “closely following” the case, spokespeople said in briefings Monday.

    “These sorts of attacks are unacceptable. Our thoughts are with the families of these individuals and we stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday, adding that the State and Homeland Security departments are coordinating with Mexican authorities.

    “We will continue to coordinate with Mexico and push them to bring those responsible to justice,” Jean-Pierre said.

    CNN has reached out to the FBI, the Tamaulipas Secretary of Public Security’s office and the Mexican Attorney General’s Office for more information.

    Washington McGee’s aunt, Mary McFadden, told CNN that when the family hadn’t heard from the group of friends by Sunday, they began searching online for any news related to their travel destination. Then, the family saw a video McFadden described as showing her niece being kidnapped.

    “We recognized her and her blonde hair,” McFadden said. She said she also recognized her niece’s clothing from a live video Washington McGee had posted to Facebook earlier Friday.

    “This happened in plain daylight. We don’t know if she is dead or alive. The last picture we saw, she was walking alive,” McFadden said.

    “She is a mother and we need her to come back here for her kids,” she said, adding that Washington McGee’s children range in age from 6 to 18 years old.

    A video obtained by CNN shows a woman and other unidentified people being roughly loaded into a white pickup truck. CNN has confirmed the video matches the incident but has not independently confirmed it is the four Americans shown in the video.

    The video shows the woman being pulled or pushed onto the bed of the truck by two unidentified people as a third visibly armed man watches. The three men then appear to drag at least two limp people onto the truck bed, the video shows.

    Additionally, photos obtained by CNN appear to show fragments of the scene where the situation occurred, including the car believed to have been driven by the Americans crashed with another vehicle before they were taken at gunpoint from the scene.

    The US citizens were driving a white minivan with North Carolina plates, according to the FBI in San Antonio.

    The FBI would not confirm the authenticity of the photos, but CNN has geolocated the images and confirmed their authenticity with a US official with knowledge of the investigation.

    Two vehicles rest in Matamoros, Mexico, at the scene which a US official said is connected to the missing Americans.

    The photos also show a woman looking at and then sitting next to three people lying on the ground outside a white minivan. All the doors of the van are open. It is unclear whether the four people in the photos are the US citizens.

    The woman then appears to have been loaded onto the bed of a white pickup truck, beside which several people can be seen lying on the street, the photos show.

    One photo shows that an ambulance arrived, but it’s unclear if medical attention was being provided.

    Investigators trying to locate the US citizens and identify those involved in the alleged kidnapping have been working to gather surveillance footage, collect ballistics and fingerprint evidence, take biological samples for genetic profiles and process the vehicles involved, Tamaulipas officials said.

    A joint task force of federal and state agencies has been created for “processing all the information related to the case” and maintaining constant communication with US officials, Barrios Mojica, the Tamaulipas Attorney General, said.

    “Given the presumption that they are American citizens, a line of direct communication was established with US authorities to exchange information and dedicated to locating them. These communications are being carried out at the highest level between the State Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the United States Embassy in Mexico,” Barrios Mojica said.

    The FBI is also requesting the public’s help in finding the Americans and identifying anyone involved in the incident. The agency announced a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims and the arrest of those responsible.

    Ongoing violence has plagued some Mexican cities as they become the backdrop of organized crime and drug trafficking operations, which the country’s government has been battling since at least 2006.

    Matamoros, a city in the state of Tamaulipas, has a population of more than 500,000 people and is located just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. The city has recently been the site of a large encampment of asylum-seeking migrants hoping to cross into the US.

    The US State Department has issued a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for US citizens thinking of going to Tamaulipas, citing crime and kidnapping.

    “Criminal groups target public and private passenger buses, as well as private automobiles traveling through Tamaulipas, often taking passengers and demanding ransom payments,” the State Department advisory says.

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  • Norfolk Southern announces new safety measures after East Palestine disaster as NTSB probes another Ohio train derailment | CNN

    Norfolk Southern announces new safety measures after East Palestine disaster as NTSB probes another Ohio train derailment | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    As federal investigators visit the site of another Norfolk Southern train derailment in Ohio, the company vowed new safety measures in response to its toxic train wreck that ravaged the town of East Palestine.

    Norfolk Southern will revamp its hot bearing detector network as part of a new six-point safety plan, the company announced Monday.

    “Hot bearing” or “hot box” detectors use infrared sensors to record the temperatures of railroad bearings as trains pass by. If they sense an overheated bearing, the detectors trigger an alarm, which notifies the train crew they should stop and inspect the rail car for a potential failure.

    After the February 3 toxic derailment in East Palestine, investigators discovered hot bearing sensors detected a wheel bearing heating up miles before it eventually failed – but didn’t alert the train’s crew until it was too late, according to a February 23 preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board.

    Currently, the average distance between detectors on the Norfolk Southern network is 13.9 miles. On Monday, the company announced it would examine every area where the distance between detectors is greater than 15 miles and would develop a plan to deploy additional detectors where needed.

    Norfolk Southern said other new safety measures would include:

    • Working with manufacturers of “multi-scan” hot bearing detectors, which are able to “scan a greater cross-section of a railcar’s bearings and wheels” to accelerate development and testing.

    • Adding 13 “acoustic bearing” detectors that analyze the acoustic signature of vibration inside the axle and would be able to identify potential problems that a visual inspection could not. These detectors would be added to “high-traffic” routes in Norfolk Southern’s core network.

    • Collaborating with Georgia Tech to advance safety inspection technology using “machine vision and algorithms powered by artificial intelligence to identify defects and needed repairs.”

    • Accelerating the installation of new inspection technology, including the use of high-resolution cameras stationed in strategic locations on its Premier Corridor, which is the train line that connects the Northeast and the Midwest and runs through East Palestine.

    About 200 miles southwest of East Palestine, NTSB investigators arrived Monday in Springfield Ohio – where a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed Saturday.

    Investigators will be “looking at the condition of the track, the mechanical condition of the train, operations, the position of the cars in the train, and signal and train control among other things,” the NTSB said in a statement. “They will also be collecting event recorder data, on-board image recorders, and will conduct interviews with the crew and other witnesses.”

    Investigators with the agency are expected to release a preliminary report in two to three weeks.

    The 212-car freight train was heading south through Clark County en route to Birmingham, Alabama, when 28 of its cars derailed – downing large power lines, knocking out power and temporarily prompting shelter-in-place orders for homes within 1,000 feet.

    Crews later determined there were no spills from the derailed cars, and authorities said there was no environmental harm.

    “There was no release of any chemical or any hazardous material to the soil, to the air, to the water,” Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Anne Vogel said Sunday.

    The cause of the derailment remains under investigation, Norfolk Southern said.

    Four of the derailed tank cars had previously been carrying diesel exhaust fluid and an additive commonly used in wastewater treatment, but they were empty when they derailed, Norfolk Southern General Manager of Operations Kraig Barner said.

    “There’s always a small residual amount left in the tanks,” Smith told CNN. “The derailed tank cars are not hazardous.”

    Those empty tankers carried residual product in “very minor amounts” that “dried very quickly,” Springfield Fire Assistant Chief Matt Smith said. He said his team checked the crash site and confirmed nothing had spilled onto the ground.

    But one car was carrying PVC pellets that affected the soil at the crash site, Vogel said. She said that the EPA “will be onsite ensuring that as cars are removed by Norfolk Southern that the soil is not impacted under the ground.”

    After the derailment, authorities sought to assure the community in Clark County that their air, water and soil are safe.

    “Since there have been no releases, we’re looking at clean air, clean soil and clean water for our residents,” Clark County Health Commissioner Charles Patterson said. “Technicians will continue to be on site to ensure that there isn’t any contamination that has been missed.”

    While the two recent train derailments in Ohio have made national news, data from the Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis shows there have been at least 1,000 derailments in the United States each year during the past decade.

    The process of removing soil from under the tracks at the East Palestine derailment site started Saturday, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said. The agency had ordered Norfolk Southern to remediate the site, including the excavation of potentially contaminated soil.

    The work could take up to two months, depending on weather conditions and other unforeseen delays, the agency said. The EPA said nearby residents might notice additional odors during that time.

    Some 1,900 feet of rail has been fully removed from the crash site, and about one half of the contaminated soil beneath the removed line has been excavated, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s office said Monday.

    About 3.2 million gallons of liquid waste and about 2,000 tons of solid waste have been removed, DeWine’s office said, citing the state’s EPA.

    While the soil work is underway, Norfolk Southern has agreed to provide financial assistance to residents for various necessities, including temporary lodging, travel, food and clothing, the EPA said.

    Impacts from the East Palestine derailment were also felt in other nearby communities in Pennsylvania, where Norfolk Southern has made an “initial agreement” to pay millions for damages there, officials said Monday.

    The railroad will establish a $1 million community relief fund to support local businesses and residents impacted by the crash in Beaver and Lawrence counties, a news release from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office said.

    Norfolk Southern also agreed to pay $5 million to reimburse Pennsylvania fire departments that have to replace damaged or contaminated equipment after responding to the derailment, the release said. The agreement also includes money to cover some operating and response costs for Pennsylvania’s environmental protection, health and emergency management departments.

    These payments would be separate from other “applicable legal obligations” that may be imposed, the release said.

    Norfolk Southern earned a record $3.3 billion in net income last year, more than 400 times greater than the $7.4 million that Shapiro said the company agreed to pay to Pennsylvania communities.

    The company spent $4.2 billion on share repurchases and dividends to shareholders and has plans to repurchase another $7.5 billion in shares going forward, or more than 1,000 times the initial amount it has promised to Pennsylvania.

    The East Palestine derailment fueled outcry among residents who have reported headaches, coughing and other ailments after the fiery crash.

    The train was hauling the dangerous chemical vinyl chloride and other chemicals that are feared to have leaked into the surrounding ecosystem.

    Some employees who responded to the East Palestine crash site were not given proper protective equipment and have experienced migraines and nausea, the American Rail System Federation – a union for railroad workers – said in a letter last week.

    Norfolk Southern said it had not received any reports of injury or illness from employees involved in the initial response.

    “Norfolk Southern was on-scene immediately after the derailment and coordinated our response with hazardous material professionals,” the railroad said in a statement.

    The company also said “required PPE was utilized, all in addition to air monitoring that was established within an hour.”

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  • Fact check: Trump delivers wildly dishonest speech at CPAC | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Trump delivers wildly dishonest speech at CPAC | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    As president, Donald Trump made some of his most thoroughly dishonest speeches at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

    As he embarks on another campaign for the presidency, Trump delivered another CPAC doozy Saturday night.

    Trump’s lengthy address to the right-wing gathering in Maryland was filled with wildly inaccurate claims about his own presidency, Joe Biden’s presidency, foreign affairs, crime, elections and other subjects.

    Here is a fact check of 23 of the false claims Trump made. (And that’s far from the total.)

    Crime in Manhattan

    While Trump criticized Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has been investigating Trump’s company, he claimed that “killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan.”

    Facts First: It isn’t even close to true that Manhattan is experiencing a number of killings that nobody has ever seen. The region classified by the New York Police Department as Manhattan North had 43 reported murders in 2022; that region had 379 reported murders in 1990 and 306 murders in 1993. The Manhattan South region had 35 reported murders in 2022 versus 124 reported murders in 1990 and 86 murders in 1993. New York City as a whole is also nowhere near record homicide levels; the city had 438 reported murders in 2022 versus 2,262 in 1990 and 1,927 in 1993.

    Manhattan North had just eight reported murders this year through February 19, while Manhattan South had one. The city as a whole had 49 reported murders.

    The National Guard and Minnesota

    Talking about rioting amid racial justice protests after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Trump claimed he had been ready to send in the National Guard in Seattle, then added, “We saved Minneapolis. The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that. Because it’s up to the governor, the Democrat governor. They never want any help. They don’t mind – it’s almost like they don’t mind to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s something wrong with these people.”

    Facts First: This is a reversal of reality. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, not Trump, was the one who deployed the Minnesota National Guard during the 2020 unrest; Walz first activated the Guard more than seven hours before Trump publicly threatened to deploy the Guard himself. Walz’s office told CNN in 2020 that the governor activated the Guard in response to requests from officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul – cities also run by Democrats.

    Trump has repeatedly made the false claim that he was the one who sent the Guard to Minneapolis. You can read a longer fact check, from 2020, here.

    Trump’s executive order on monuments

    Trump boasted that he had taken effective action as president to stop the destruction of statues and memorials. He claimed: “I passed and signed an executive order. Anybody that does that gets 10 years in jail, with no negotiation – it’s not ’10’ but it turns into three months.” He added: “But we passed it. It was a very old law, and we found it – one of my very good legal people along with [adviser] Stephen Miller, they found it. They said, ‘Sir, I don’t know if you want to try and bring this back.’ I said. ‘I do.’”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. He did not create a mandatory 10-year sentence for people who damage monuments. In fact, his 2020 executive order did not mandate any increase in sentences.

    Rather, the executive order simply directed the attorney general to “prioritize” investigations and prosecutions of monument-destruction cases and declared that it is federal policy to prosecute such cases to the fullest extent permitted under existing law, including an existing law that allowed a sentence of up to 10 years in prison for willfully damaging federal property. The executive order did nothing to force judges to impose a 10-year sentence.

    Vandalism in Portland

    Trump claimed, “How’s Portland doing? They don’t even have storefronts anymore. Everything’s two-by-four’s because they get burned down every week.”

    Facts First: This is a major exaggeration. Portland obviously still has hundreds of active storefronts, though it has struggled with downtown commercial vacancies for various reasons, and some businesses are sometimes vandalized by protesters. Trump has for years exaggerated the extent of property damage from protest vandalism in Portland.

    Russian expansionism

    Boasting of his foreign policy record, Trump claimed, “I was also the only president where Russia didn’t take over a country during my term.”

    Facts First: While it’s true that Russia didn’t take over a country during Trump’s term, it’s not true that he was the only US president under whom Russia didn’t take over a country. “Totally false,” Michael Khodarkovsky, a Loyola University Chicago history professor who is an expert on Russian imperialism, said in an email. “If by Russia he means the current Russian Federation that existed since 1991, then the best example is Clinton, 1992-98. During this time Russia fought a war in Chechnya, but Chechnya was not a country but one of Russia’s regions.”

    Khodarkovsky added, “If by Russia he means the USSR, as people often do, then from 1945, when the USSR occupied much of Eastern Europe until 1979, when USSR invaded Afghanistan, Moscow did not take over any new country. It only sent forces into countries it had taken over in 1945 (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968).”

    NATO funding

    Trump said while talking about NATO funding: “And I told delinquent foreign nations – they were delinquent, they weren’t paying their bills – that if they wanted our protection, they had to pay up, and they had to pay up now.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that NATO countries weren’t paying “bills” until Trump came along or that they were “delinquent” in the sense of failing to pay bills – as numerous fact-checkers pointed out when Trump repeatedly used such language during his presidency. NATO members haven’t been failing to pay their share of the organization’s common budget to run the organization. And while it’s true that most NATO countries were not (and still are not) meeting NATO’s target of each country spending a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defense, that 2% figure is what NATO calls a “guideline”; it is not some sort of binding contract, and it does not create liabilities. An official NATO recommitment to the 2% guideline in 2014 merely said that members not currently at that level would “aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade.”

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg did credit Trump for securing increases in European NATO members’ defense spending, but it’s worth noting that those countries’ spending had also increased in the last two years of the Obama administration following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the recommitment that year to the 2% guideline. NATO notes on its website that 2022 was “the eighth consecutive year of rising defence spending across European Allies and Canada.”

    NATO’s existence

    Boasting of how he had secured additional funding for NATO from countries, Trump claimed, “Actually, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense.

    There was never any indication that NATO, created in 1949, would have ceased to exist in the early 2020s without additional funding from some members. The alliance was stable even with many members not meeting the alliance’s guideline of having members spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

    We don’t often fact-check claims about what might have happened in an alternative scenario, but this Trump claim has no basis in reality. “The quote doesn’t make sense, obviously,” said Erwan Lagadec, research professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and an expert on NATO.

    Lagadec noted that NATO has had no trouble getting allies to cover the roughly $3 billion in annual “direct” funding for the organization, which is “peanuts” to this group of countries. And he said that the only NATO member that had given “any sign” in recent years that it was thinking about leaving the alliance “was … the US, under Trump.” Lagadec added that the US leaving the alliance is one scenario that could realistically kill it, but that clearly wasn’t what Trump was talking about in his remarks on spending levels.

    James Goldgeier, an American University professor of international relations and Brookings Institution visiting fellow, said in an email: “NATO was founded in 1949, so it seems very clear that Donald Trump had nothing to do with its existence. In fact, the worry was that he would pull the US out of NATO, as his national security adviser warned he would do if he had been reelected.”

    The cost of NATO’s headquarters

    Trump mocked NATO’s headquarters, saying, “They spent – an office building that cost $3 billion. It’s like a skyscraper in Manhattan laid on its side. It’s one of the longest buildings I’ve ever seen. And I said, ‘You should have – instead of spending $3 billion, you should have spent $500 million building the greatest bunker you’ve ever seen. Because Russia didn’t – wouldn’t even need an airplane attack. One tank one shot through that beautiful glass building and it’s gone.’”

    Facts First: NATO did spend a lot of money on its headquarters in Belgium, but Trump’s “$3 billion” figure is a major exaggeration. When Trump used the same inaccurate figure in early 2020, NATO told CNN that the headquarters was actually constructed for a sum under the approved budget of about $1.18 billion euro, which is about $1.3 billion at exchange rates as of Sunday morning.

    The Pulitzer Prize

    Trump made his usual argument that The Washington Post and The New York Times should not have won a prestigious journalism award, a 2018 Pulitzer Prize, for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election and its connections to Trump’s team. He then said, “And they were exactly wrong. And now they’ve even admitted that it was a hoax. It was a total hoax, and they got the prize.”

    Facts First: The Times and Post have not made any sort of “hoax” admission. “The claim is completely false,” Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said in an email on Sunday.

    Stadtlander continued: “When our Pulitzer Prize shared with The Washington Post was challenged by the former President, the award was upheld by the Pulitzer Prize Board after an independent review. The board stated that ‘no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.’ The Times’s reporting was also substantiated by the Mueller investigation and Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the matter.”

    The Post referred CNN to that same July statement from the Pulitzer Prize Board.

    Awareness of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline

    Trump claimed of his opposition to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany: “Nord Stream 2 – Nobody ever heard of it … right? Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along. I started talking about Nord Stream 2. I had to go call it ‘the pipeline’ because nobody knew what I was talking about.”

    Facts First: This is standard Trump hyperbole; it’s just not true that “nobody” had heard of Nord Stream 2 before he began discussing it. Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic discussion before Trump took office. In fact, Biden publicly criticized it as vice president in 2016. Trump may well have generated increased US awareness to the controversial project, but “nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along” isn’t true.

    Trump and Nord Stream 2

    Trump claimed, “I got along very well with Putin even though I’m the one that ended his pipeline. Remember they said, ‘Trump is giving a lot to Russia.’ Really? Putin actually said to me, ‘If you’re my friend, I’d hate like hell to see you as my enemy.’ Because I ended the pipeline, right? Do you remember? Nord Stream 2.” He continued, “I ended it. It was dead.”

    Facts First: Trump did not kill Nord Stream 2. While he did approve sanctions on companies working on the project, that move came nearly three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already around an estimated 90% complete – and the state-owned Russian gas company behind the project said shortly after the sanctions that it would complete the pipeline itself. The company announced in December 2020 that construction was resuming. And with days left in Trump’s term in January 2021, Germany announced that it had renewed permission for construction in its waters.

    The pipeline never began operations; Germany ended up halting the project as Russia was about to invade Ukraine early last year. The pipeline was damaged later in the year in what has been described as an act of sabotage.

    The Obama administration and Ukraine

    Trump claimed that while he provided lethal assistance to Ukraine, the Obama administration “didn’t want to get involved” and merely “supplied the bedsheets.” He said, “Do you remember? They supplied the bedsheets. And maybe even some pillows from [pillow businessman] Mike [Lindell], who’s sitting right over here. … But they supplied the bedsheets.”

    Facts First: This is inaccurate. While it’s true that the Obama administration declined to provide weapons to Ukraine, it provided more than $600 million in security assistance to Ukraine between 2014 and 2016 that involved far more than bedsheets. The aid included counter-artillery and counter-mortar radars, armored Humvees, tactical drones, night vision devices and medical supplies.

    Biden and a Ukrainian prosecutor

    Trump claimed that Biden, as vice president, held back a billion dollars from Ukraine until the country fired a prosecutor who was “after Hunter” and a company that was paying him. Trump was referring to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, who sat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

    Facts First: This is baseless. There has never been any evidence that Hunter Biden was under investigation by the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who had been widely faulted by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and European countries for failing to investigate corruption. A former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor and a top anti-corruption activist have both said the Burisma-related investigation was dormant at the time Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin.

    Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, told The Washington Post in 2019: “Shokin was not investigating. He didn’t want to investigate Burisma. And Shokin was fired not because he wanted to do that investigation, but quite to the contrary, because he failed that investigation.” In addition, Shokin’s successor as prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg in 2019: “Hunter Biden did not violate any Ukrainian laws – at least as of now, we do not see any wrongdoing.”

    Biden, as vice president, was carrying out the policy of the US and its allies, not pursuing his own agenda, in threatening to withhold a billion-dollar US loan guarantee if the Ukrainian government did not sack Shokin. CNN fact-checked Trump’s claims on this subject at length in 2019.

    Trump and job creation

    Promising to save Americans’ jobs if he is elected again, Trump claimed, “We had the greatest job history of any president ever.”

    Facts First: This is false. The US lost about 2.7 million jobs during Trump’s presidency, the worst overall jobs record for any president. The net loss was largely because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but even Trump’s pre-pandemic jobs record – about 6.7 million jobs added – was far from the greatest of any president ever. The economy added more than 11.5 million jobs in the first term of Democratic President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

    Tariffs on China

    Trump repeated a trade claim he made frequently during his presidency. Speaking of China, he said he “charged them” with tariffs that had the effect of “bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our Treasury from China. Thank you very much, China.” He claimed that he did this even though “no other president had gotten even 10 cents – not one president got anything from them.”

    Facts First: As we have written repeatedly, it’s not true that no president before Trump had generated any revenue through tariffs on goods from China. In reality, the US has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries, and FactCheck.org reported in 2019 that the US generated an “average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb.” Also, American importers, not Chinese exporters, make the actual tariff payments – and study after study during Trump’s presidency found that Americans were bearing most of the cost of the tariffs.

    The trade deficit with China

    Trump went on to repeat a false claim he made more than 100 times as president – that the US used to have a trade deficit with China of more than $500 billion. He claimed it was “five-, six-, seven-hundred billion dollars a year.”

    Facts First: The US has never had a $500 billion, $600 billion or $700 billion trade deficit with China even if you only count trade in goods and ignore the services trade in which the US runs a surplus with China. The pre-Trump record for a goods deficit with China was about $367 billion in 2015. The goods deficit hit a new record of about $418 billion under Trump in 2018 before falling back under $400 billion in subsequent years.

    Trump and the 2020 election

    Trump said people claim they want to run against him even though, he claimed, he won the 2020 election. He said, “I won the second election, OK, won it by a lot. You know, when they say, when they say Biden won, the smart people know that didn’t [happen].”

    Facts First: This is Trump’s regular lie. He lost the 2020 election to Biden fair and square, 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. Biden earned more than 7 million more votes than Trump did.

    Democrats and elections

    Trump said Democrats are only good at “disinformation” and “cheating on elections.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. There is just no basis for a broad claim that Democrats are election cheaters. Election fraud and voter fraud are exceedingly rare in US elections, though such crimes are occasionally committed by officials and supporters of both parties. (We’ll ignore Trump’s subjective claim about “disinformation.”)

    The liberation of the ISIS caliphate

    Trump repeated his familiar story about how he had supposedly liberated the “caliphate” of terror group ISIS in “three weeks.” This time, he said, “In fact, with the ISIS caliphate, a certain general said it could only be done in three years, ‘and probably it can’t be done at all, sir.’ And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq, met a great general. ‘Sir, I can do it in three weeks.’ You’ve heard that story. ‘I can do it in three weeks, sir.’ ‘How are you going to do that?’ They explained it. I did it in three weeks. I was told it couldn’t be done at all, that it would take at least three years. Did it in three weeks. Knocked out 100% of the ISIS caliphate.”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim of eliminating the ISIS caliphate in “three weeks” isn’t true; the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency, in 2019. Even if Trump was starting the clock at the time of his visit to Iraq, in late December 2018, the liberation was proclaimed more than two and a half months later. In addition, Trump gave himself far too much credit for the defeat of the caliphate, as he has in the past, when he said “I did it”: Kurdish forces did much of the ground fighting, and there was major progress against the caliphate under President Barack Obama in 2015 and 2016.

    IHS Markit, an information company that studied the changing size of the caliphate, reported two days before Trump’s 2017 inauguration that the caliphate shrunk by 23% in 2016 after shrinking by 14% in 2015. “The Islamic State suffered unprecedented territorial losses in 2016, including key areas vital for the group’s governance project,” an analyst there said in a statement at the time.

    Military equipment left in Afghanistan

    Trump claimed, as he has before, that the US left behind $85 billion worth of military equipment when it withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. He said of the leader of the Taliban: “Now he’s got $85 billion worth of our equipment that I bought – $85 billion.” He added later: “The thing that nobody ever talks about, we lost 13 [soldiers], we lost $85 billion worth of the greatest military equipment in the world.”

    Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan government forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of about $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.

    As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress has appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment.

    The Afghanistan withdrawal and the F-16

    Trump claimed that the Taliban acquired F-16 fighter planes because of the US withdrawal, saying: “They feared the F-16s. And now they own them. Think of it.”

    Facts First: This is false. F-16s were not among the equipment abandoned upon the US withdrawal and the collapse of the Afghan armed forces, since the Afghan armed forces did not fly F-16s.

    The border wall

    Trump claimed that he had kept his promise to complete a wall on the border with Mexico: “As you know, I built hundreds of miles of wall and completed that task as promised. And then I began to add even more in areas that seemed to be allowing a lot of people to come in.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that Trump “completed” the border wall. According to an official “Border Wall Status” report written by US Customs and Border Protection two days after Trump left office, about 458 miles of wall had been completed under Trump – but about 280 more miles that had been identified for wall construction had not been completed.

    The report, provided to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez, said that, of those 280 miles left to go, about 74 miles were “in the pre-construction phase and have not yet been awarded, in locations where no barriers currently exist,” and that 206 miles were “currently under contract, in place of dilapidated and outdated designs and in locations where no barriers previously existed.”

    Latin America and deportations

    Trump told his familiar story about how, until he was president, the US was unable to deport MS-13 gang members to other countries, “especially” Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras because those countries “didn’t want them.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that, as a rule, Guatemala and Honduras wouldn’t take back migrants being deported from the US during Obama’s administration, though there were some individual exceptions.

    In 2016, just prior to Trump’s presidency, neither Guatemala nor Honduras was on the list of countries that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considered “recalcitrant,” or uncooperative, in accepting the return of their nationals.

    For the 2016 fiscal year, Obama’s last full fiscal year in office, ICE reported that Guatemala and Honduras ranked second and third, behind only Mexico, in terms of the country of citizenship of people being removed from the US. You can read a longer fact check, from 2019, here.

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  • House Ethics Committee announces investigation into embattled Rep. George Santos | CNN Politics

    House Ethics Committee announces investigation into embattled Rep. George Santos | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House Ethics Committee announced Thursday it is officially moving forward with a probe into embattled Rep. George Santos as the New York Republican faces mounting legal issues and calls to resign for extensively lying about his resume and biography.

    The Ethics Committee said in a news release that it voted to set up an investigative subcommittee with authority to look into a number issues, including whether Santos may have engaged in unlawful activity related to his 2022 congressional campaign.

    According to the release, the investigative panel will have jurisdiction to determine whether Santos “may have engaged in unlawful activity with respect to his 2022 congressional campaign; failed to properly disclose required information on statements filed with the House; violated federal conflict of interest laws in connection with his role in a firm providing fiduciary services; and/or engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual seeking employment in his congressional office.”

    Santos responded to the announcement in a tweet.

    “The House Committee on Ethics has opened an investigation, and Congressman George Santos is fully cooperating,” his office’s Twitter account wrote. “There will be no further comment made at this time.”

    Santos told CNN in early February that he is “not concerned” about a House ethics probe or about New York constituents calling on him to resign.

    “You’re saying that the freedom of speech of my constituents is a distraction to my work?” Santos said. “Do you think people are a distraction to the work I’m doing here?”

    In a recent interview with Piers Morgan, Santos also suggested the local grassroots campaigns demanding his ouster were not representative of the district. But a poll released on Monday by Siena College found that 66% of New Yorkers wanted him out – including 58% of Republicans.

    “The ‘good’ news for Santos is that even in these hyper partisan times, he’s found a way to get Democrats, Republicans and independents to agree about a political figure,” pollster Steven Greenberg said in the survey’s release. “The bad news for Santos is that the political figure they agree on is him, and they overwhelmingly view him unfavorably.”

    Apart from outlandish lies about his personal life, academic and professional record, Santos has been implicated in a litany of shady business operations, including his work at Harbor City Capital Corp. in 2020 and 2021, a company the SEC called a “classic Ponzi scheme” in an April 2021 complaint against the firm. (Santos was not listed in the complaint.)

    More potentially damaging, though, might be increased scrutiny of his campaign finances. CNN reported late last year that federal prosecutors in New York were looking into issues surrounding his wealth and loans totaling more than $700,000 he made to his successful 2022 campaign. Santos has repeatedly said the cash he put into the campaign was legally obtained. But a complaint from a campaign watchdog group has questioned the source of that financial windfall. Just two years earlier, Santos had reported a salary of $55,000 and no assets.

    Additionally, the campaign’s bookkeeping has also come under a harsh spotlight, especially following the revelation that his former treasure listed dozens of expenses just a penny beneath the legal threshold for keeping receipts.

    That treasurer, Nancy Marks, has since been replaced. But the true identity of her successor remains a mystery.

    On the Hill, Santos will also now have to answer for an accusation by a prospective staffer who claims Santos made an unwanted sexual advance toward him during a private encounter in the congressman’s office. Shortly after he rebuffed Santos, the accuser says, he was denied a job. Santos has denied the claims.

    The individual, Derek Myers, said in a House Ethics complaint that Santos “touched” his groin before allegedly inviting him to his home and said his husband was out of town, according to a copy of the document provided to CNN last month.

    Santos has brushed off repeated calls for his resignation, including from fellow Republican House members and local Republican officials. He has played coy when asked if he plans to seek re-election, though filed required paperwork to keep the option open.

    GOP leaders in Washington have stopped short of demanding he leave, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy allowed him to be seated to a pair of House committees. Santos, though, chose to withdraw from those assignments as the furor over his lies intensified in late January.

    The Ethics Committee also said in a statement Thursday that it is extending its inquiry into New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and whether she may have accepted unallowed gifts as a member of Congress. The committee released a report by the Office of Congressional Ethics, which said that Ocasio-Cortez “may have accepted impermissible gifts associated with her attendance at the Met Gala in 2021.”

    Counsel for Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement to the committee that “though no Ethics violation has been found, the Office of Congressional Ethics (‘OCE’) did identify that there were delays in paying vendors for costs associated with the Congresswoman’s attendance at the Met Gala. The Congresswoman finds these delays unacceptable, and she has taken several steps to ensure nothing of this nature will ever happen again.”

    “Even after OCE’s exhaustive review of the Congresswoman’s personal communications, there is no record of the Congresswoman refusing to pay for these expenses,” David Mitrani wrote in the letter. “To the contrary, there are several explicit, documented communications, from prior to OCE’s review, that show the Congresswoman understood that she had to pay for these expenses from her own personal funds – as she ultimately did. We are confident the Ethics Committee will dismiss this matter.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Jury begins deliberating in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial | CNN

    Jury begins deliberating in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The jury began to deliberate Thursday in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh, the disgraced attorney accused of fatally shooting his wife and son at their South Carolina hunting property in 2021.

    The 12 jurors will deliberate until they come to a unanimous verdict on two counts of murder and two weapons charges. Murdaugh, 54, has pleaded not guilty in the deaths of his wife Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and son Paul Murdaugh.

    Earlier Thursday, Murdaugh’s defense team delivered closing arguments and said law enforcement was too quick to pinpoint him as the main suspect in the killings by the dog kennels on the sprawling estate.

    “We believe that we’ve shown conclusively that (the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division) failed miserably in investigating this case,” attorney Jim Griffin said. “And had they done a competent job, Alex would have been excluded from that circle (of suspects) a year ago or two years ago.”

    Over about two hours, Griffin also mocked the prosecution’s theory of motive, explained away Murdaugh’s lies, accused investigators of fabricating evidence and criticized the supposed timeline as unconvincing.

    Follow live updates

    In a rebuttal, prosecutor John Meadors took offense at the defense’s accusations of wrongdoing.

    “I find it offensive that the defense … is claiming law enforcement didn’t do their job, while he is withholding and obstructing justice by not saying ‘I was down at the kennels.’ ”

    The deliberations come after a six-week trial heavy on brutal gore, phone forensics, a mysterious blue tarp, extensive financial wrongdoing and the defendant’s own lies.

    Prosecutors called 61 witnesses over three weeks of testimony to show Murdaugh was the only person who had the motive, means and opportunity to kill his wife and son on their property known as Moselle in Islandton, South Carolina, on the night of June 7, 2021.

    With little to no direct evidence, such as bloody clothing or eyewitnesses, prosecutors have hinged their case on consequential video placing Murdaugh at the crime scene that night despite his repeated assertions otherwise.

    The defense case was highlighted by Murdaugh himself, who offered dramatic testimony over two days last week in which he flatly denied killing his wife and son. At the same time, he admitted he had lied to investigators about his whereabouts just prior to the killings due to paranoia from his drug addiction. He further admitted to stealing millions of dollars from his former clients and law firm and lying to cover his tracks.

    The stranger-than-fiction case has brought national attention – including Netflix and HBO Max documentaries – on Alex Murdaugh, the former personal injury attorney and member of a dynastic family in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather served as the local prosecutor consecutively from 1920 to 2006.

    Murdaugh was a partner at a powerful law firm with his name on it. But that prominence belied underlying issues, and the killings of his wife and son were followed by accusations of misappropriated funds, his resignation, a bizarre alleged suicide-for-hire and insurance scam plot, a stint in rehab for drug addiction, dozens of financial crimes, his disbarment and, ultimately, the murder charges.

    He separately faces 99 charges related to alleged financial crimes that will be adjudicated at a later trial.

    Defense attorney Jim Griffin, right, questions Alex Murdaugh, left, as he gives testimony during his murder trial at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023. The 54-year-old attorney is standing trial on two counts of murder in the shootings of his wife and son at their Colleton County, S.C., home and hunting lodge on June 7, 2021. (Grace Beahm Alford/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool)

    See what happened when Alex Murdaugh took the stand

    Griffin’s closing arguments, taken together, sought to undercut the prosecution and raise reasonable doubt about the case.

    He said the agency failed to investigate hair found in Murdaugh’s wife’s hand, take fingerprint evidence, examine footwear and tire impressions, or test DNA on the victims’ clothes.

    “They had decided, ‘Unless we find somebody else, it’s going to be Alex,’” he said.

    The prosecution has argued Murdaugh’s motive in the killings was to distract and delay investigations into his financial wrongdoing. Griffin mocked that theory as nonsensical and noted that Murdaugh tried to kill himself in September 2021, calling that a “natural” response to being exposed.

    “It’s totally illogical, irrational and insane … for someone to kill their loved ones when their criminal conduct is exposed,” he argued.

    Griffin acknowledged Murdaugh had lied about being at the dog kennels where his wife and son were killed on the night of the murders. He said the lies were to hide his drug addiction and financial problems – not because he killed his family.

    “Because that’s what addicts do. Addicts lie,” Griffin said. “He lied because he had a closet full of skeletons, and he didn’t want any more scrutiny on him.”

    Griffin said that once Murdaugh’s years of financial fraud were exposed in September 2021, investigators began fabricating evidence about blood spatter on Murdaugh’s clothes and a blue jacket with gunshot residue.

    “I hate to say this, but the evidence is crystal clear, from that moment they started fabricating evidence against Alex. That’s an awful charge,” he said. “I don’t make that claim lightly.”

    Griffin attacked the prosecution’s assertion that the guns used in the killings were “family weapons,” saying there was no firm evidence to support that. He also criticized the prosecution’s proposed timeline of the killings, noting that it was mainly made up of information about whether Paul’s and Maggie’s phones were being used.

    “There’s no direct evidence of him doing anything,” he said.

    He further noted that the prosecution’s timeline indicated Paul and Maggie were killed at about 8:49 or 8:50 p.m. and that Murdaugh left the property for his mother’s house at 9:07 p.m., leaving only about 17 minutes to clean up the bloody scene.

    “He would have to be a magician to make all that evidence disappear,” Griffin said.

    murdaugh juror vpx

    See where jurors walked through Murdaugh crime scene

    In the prosecution’s telling, the motive was Murdaugh’s attempt to distract and delay investigations into his growing financial problems. The means were two family-owned weapons, prosecutors argued. And the opportunity was Murdaugh’s presence at the crime scene, as revealed in a pivotal video and confirmed by his own testimony, minutes before the murders.

    “This defendant … has fooled everyone, everyone, everyone who thought they were close to him,” prosecutor Creighton Waters told the jury. “Everyone who thought they knew who he was, he’s fooled them all. He fooled Maggie and Paul, too, and they paid for it with their lives. Don’t let him fool you, too.”

    Waters first laid out a decade-long timeline of Murdaugh’s financial wrongdoing to show his motive in the killings.

    For one, the chief financial officer of his law firm testified she had confronted Murdaugh about missing funds on the morning of June 7, 2021.

    Second, Murdaugh was facing a lawsuit from the family of Mallory Beach, a 19-year-old woman who was killed in February 2019 when a boat allegedly driven by Paul, and owned by Murdaugh, crashed. A hearing in that civil case was scheduled for June 10, 2021, and had the potential to reveal his financial problems, prosecutors argued.

    Next, Waters worked to show that Murdaugh had been at the kennels that night and had lied about it.

    Murdaugh had long denied that he went to the kennels that night, but a video taken on Paul’s phone at 8:44 p.m. includes audio of Murdaugh’s voice in the background. After about a dozen friends and family members identified his voice on the video, Murdaugh took the stand and admitted he was there and that he he’d lied to police.

    “Why in the world would an innocent, reasonable father and husband lie about that, and lie about it so early? He didn’t know that (video) was there.”

    Further, Waters said Murdaugh had the “means” to commit the murders, in particular the weapons in the crime. Maggie was killed by a Blackout rifle and Paul was killed by a shotgun, and Waters said both were family weapons.

    Finally, the prosecution walked through Murdaugh’s series of lies about the case, particularly about his presence at the kennels. Murdaugh, he said, “lies convincingly and easily and he can do it at a drop of a hat.”

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  • FAA is investigating a close call between 2 aircraft at Boston Logan | CNN

    FAA is investigating a close call between 2 aircraft at Boston Logan | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Air traffic controllers stopped a departing private jet from running into a JetBlue flight as it was coming in to land Monday night in Boston, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

    The FAA says it is investigating the incident. This is the fifth close call involving a commercial airliner on a runway this year.

    The two planes involved in Monday night’s apparent close call at Boston Logan International Airport came within 565 feet (172 meters) of colliding, according to Flightradar24’s preliminary review of its data.

    Asked for comment on the Flightradar24 analysis, the agency told CNN, “The FAA will determine the closest proximity between the two aircraft as part of the investigation.”

    “According to a preliminary review, the pilot of a Learjet 60 took off without clearance while JetBlue Flight 206 was preparing to land on an intersecting runway,” the FAA said in a statement on Tuesday.

    “JetBlue 206, go around,” said the controller in Boston Logan’s tower, according to recordings archived by LiveATC.net.

    The FAA says its air traffic controller told the crew of the Learjet to “line up and wait” on Runway 9 as the JetBlue Embraer 190 approached the intersecting Runway 4 Right.

    “The Learjet pilot read back the instructions clearly but began a takeoff roll instead,” the FAA said in a statement. “The pilot of the JetBlue aircraft took evasive action and initiated a climb-out as the Learjet crossed the intersection.”

    The National Transportation Safety Board tells CNN it has not launched an investigation into the incident at Boston Logan, though it has investigated four other runway incursions involving commercial airliners at major US airports this year.

    On Friday, the agency announced it was investigating a possible “runway incursion” in Burbank, California, involving Mesa and SkyWest regional airliners.

    Three other incidents have occurred at Honolulu, Austin and New York’s JFK airport this year.

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  • Ransomware attack on US Marshals Service affects ‘law enforcement sensitive information’ | CNN Politics

    Ransomware attack on US Marshals Service affects ‘law enforcement sensitive information’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A ransomware attack on the US Marshals Service has affected a computer system containing “law enforcement sensitive information,” including personal information belonging to targets of investigations, a US Marshals Service spokesperson said Monday evening.

    “The affected system contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, administrative information, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of USMS investigations, third parties, and certain USMS employees,” spokesperson Drew Wade said in a statement.

    The Marshals Service, which handles federal prisoners across the US and pursues fugitives, discovered the hack and theft of data from its network on February 17. The service “disconnected the affected system, and the Department of Justice initiated a forensic investigation,” Wade said in the statement.

    The Justice Department subsequently determined it “constitutes a major incident,” according to the statement. A “major incident” is a hack that is significant enough that it requires a federal agency to notify Congress.

    A senior official familiar with the matter told CNN that no data related to the witness protection program was obtained during the incident.

    The Justice Department’s investigation into the incident is ongoing.

    NBC News first reported on the incident.

    It’s at least the second significant malicious cyber incident to affect US federal law enforcement agencies in February.

    The FBI had to move to contain malicious activity on part of its computer network earlier this month, CNN first reported at the time. FBI officials believe that incident involved an FBI computer system used in investigations of images of child sexual exploitation, two sources briefed on the matter told CNN.

    There was no immediate indication that the US Marshals Service and FBI cyber incidents were related.

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  • House GOP committees plot investigations into East Palestine derailment | CNN Politics

    House GOP committees plot investigations into East Palestine derailment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A series of House Republican committees are plotting to launch investigations into the toxic train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, multiple committee aides told CNN.

    GOP lawmakers are vowing to use their oversight power to dig into what they describe as the Biden administration’s flawed response to the train wreck, which has left East Palestine’s residents afraid to use the city’s air and municipal water after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed on February 3.

    They have also left the door open to holding hearings on the subject, including potentially bringing in Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to testify publicly, the aides said, though such decisions have not yet been made.

    The GOP’s increased urgency for oversight comes as several lawmakers have criticized President Joe Biden for not visiting East Palestine. Biden told reporters on Friday he has no plans to travel to the site of the derailment and defended his administration’s response to the wreck.

    The House committees on Transportation and Infrastructure, Energy and Commerce and Oversight are among the panels vowing to find answers to what happened, as well as hold the Biden administration and rail industry accountable for the fallout.

    Some GOP members of the committees are also discussing a potential field hearing in East Palestine, though no official plans have been made yet, sources familiar with the talks tell CNN.

    Axios first reported on the committees’ plans.

    The Energy and Commerce Committee has asked the EPA to appear before the panel’s Environment, Manufacturing & Critical Materials subcommittee chaired by GOP Rep. Bill Johnson, who represents East Palestine, a committee aide told CNN.

    Johnson and Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Washington state Republican, formally kicked off their probe on February 17, when they sent a letter to Regan demanding answers on a timeline of events relating to the train wreck, a list of the chemicals on board, materials relating to the EPA’s and local agencies’ response, as well as other information regarding the derailment.

    Johnson and McMorris Rodgers gave the EPA until March 3 to respond to their request.

    The Energy and Commerce Committee has asked for an all-members briefing, a committee briefing, as well as a hearing date from EPA officials. A source familiar told CNN they are still awaiting a response.

    The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee plans to “keep Members informed as facts come out,” committee spokesman Justin Harclerode told CNN. The committee is also closely watching the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the incident.

    “The important thing is to learn exactly what happened, what factors played a role in the accident, and what factors did not. The Committee is staying engaged on this issue, but no one should jump to any conclusions or act without all the facts. Which is exactly what the NTSB is working to provide through their investigation,” Harclerode said.

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer, meanwhile, sent a letter to Buttigieg on Friday, in which he called the incident “an environmental and public health emergency that now threatens Americans across state lines.” The Kentucky Republican requested that Buttigieg turn over a series of documents relating to the derailment, including when the administration first learned of the incident and communications regarding the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s handling of materials in the derailment.

    “At this time, Chairman Comer is focused on acquiring the documents and information requested in his February 24 letter to Secretary Buttigieg,” Comer spokesman Austin Hacker told CNN.

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