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Tag: investigations

  • Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

    Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump and his role in January 6, 2021, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

    Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, the source said. They want the former vice president to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the 2020 election and the day of the attack on the US Capitol.

    The subpoena marks an important milestone in the Justice Department’s two-year criminal investigation, now led by the special counsel, into the efforts by Trump and allies to impede the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. Pence is an important witness who has detailed in a memoir some of his interactions with Trump in the weeks after the election, a move that likely opens the door for the Justice Department to override at least some of Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    Pence’s attorney Emmet Flood is known as a hawk on executive privilege, and people familiar with the discussions have said Pence was expected to claim at least some limits on providing details of his direct conversations with Trump. Depending on his responses, prosecutors have the option to ask a judge to compel him to answer additional questions and override Trump’s executive privilege claims.

    ABC News first reported on the subpoena.

    Pence’s office declined to confirm he had been subpoenaed. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment to CNN on the matter.

    Months of negotiations preceded the subpoena to the former vice president, CNN has reported.

    Justice Department prosecutors had reached out to Pence’s representatives to seek his testimony in the criminal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Pence’s team had indicated he was open to discussing a possible agreement with DOJ to provide some testimony, one person said.

    That request occurred before the department appointed Smith to oversee two Trump-related investigations, the January 6-related probe and another into alleged mishandling of classified materials found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

    In November, Pence published his memoir that detailed some of his interactions with Trump as the former president sought to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden. Pence and his team knew that the book’s publication would raise the prospect that the Justice Department would likely seek information about those interactions as part of its criminal investigation, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

    Pence rebuffed an interview request from the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, but allowed top aides to provide testimony in the House’s probe, as well as in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation. The DOJ successfully secured answers from top Pence advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

    There are no plans for Trump’s team to challenge the grand jury subpoena of Pence at this time, according to a source familiar with its thinking. But it would still be possible for Trump to attempt to assert executive privilege over some conversations they had, if Pence declines to detail those conversations to the grand jury.

    So far, Trump’s team has lost those challenges when Pence’s deputies and two White House counsel’s office attorneys testified, following Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s rulings that they must answer questions they initially refused to because of confidentiality around the presidency.

    Howell’s tenure as chief judge of the DC District Court ends in mid-March, meaning a different federal judge, James Boasberg, could be the one to field privilege disputes in the continuing grand jury investigation.

    CNN reported earlier Thursday that Smith had also subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien in both of the Trump-related probes, according to a source familiar with the matter. O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

    Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security secretary was separately interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the probe into 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, former acting secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • First on CNN: Trump’s former national security adviser subpoenaed in special counsel probes of classified documents, January 6 | CNN Politics

    First on CNN: Trump’s former national security adviser subpoenaed in special counsel probes of classified documents, January 6 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith in both his investigation into classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and the probe related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

    CNN has reached out to O’Brien for comment.

    O’Brien considered resigning from his post over Trump’s response to the violence on January 6, 2021, but ultimately decided to remain in the job, CNN previously reported. The National Security Council should have been involved in the handling of classified documents at end of the Trump presidency, and O’Brien may have knowledge of how those records ended up at Mar-a-Lago.

    Separately, Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the ongoing special counsel investigation related to 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

    Wolf declined to comment on his recent interview with federal investigators, which was first reported by Bloomberg. A spokesman for Smith also declined to comment.

    The interview comes after Wolf’s former deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, testified last month before a federal grand jury as part of Smith’s election interference probe. When Cuccinelli was asked at the time whether privilege claims arose, he said: “They did, and I didn’t say anything.”

    O’Brien, Wolf and Cuccinelli were previously interviewed by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.

    For the time being, Smith has not sought testimony from a handful of other potentially relevant Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller or former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, two other sources tell CNN.

    In the days after the January 6 attack, Wolf urged Trump and all elected officials to condemn the violence on Capitol Hill, calling what transpired “tragic and sickening.”

    “While I have consistently condemned political violence on both sides of the aisle, specifically violence directed at law enforcement, we now see some supporters of the President using violence as a means to achieve political ends,” Wolf said at the time. “This is unacceptable.”

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  • US senators seek answers from Meta on whether user data was accessed by China, Russia and others | CNN Business

    US senators seek answers from Meta on whether user data was accessed by China, Russia and others | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Top US lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee want answers from Meta on a newly disclosed internal investigation it conducted in 2018 that found tens of thousands of software developers in China, Russia and other “high-risk” countries may have had access to detailed Facebook user data before the company clamped down on that access beginning in 2014.

    In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, Sens. Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, the chair and vice-chair of the Senate committee, cited a document unsealed last week in an ongoing privacy lawsuit involving the company.

    That document, an internal slide presentation from 2018, suggested that nearly 87,000 developers in China, 42,000 in Russia and a handful based in Cuba, Iran and North Korea had access to Facebook user information through an earlier version of the company’s programming interfaces. The presentation provides an interim update on the probe, which found, among other things, that Iran was home to a “significant number of seemingly Russian developers” of Facebook apps.

    The document does not explicitly outline what types of information the developers could have accessed, but it focuses on a period prior to 2014, before Facebook had restricted third-party access to data such as political views, relationship statuses and education history, among other things.

    The congressional letter seeks more information about the outcome of the investigation, with a particular focus on whether Facebook users’ data could have ended up in the hands of Chinese or Russian intelligence agencies.

    “We have grave concerns about the extent to which this access could have enabled foreign intelligence service activity, ranging from foreign malign influence to targeting and counter-intelligence activity,” the lawmakers wrote.

    The findings are “especially remarkable given that Facebook has never been permitted to operate in [China],” they added.

    Meta’s investigation, launched after the company’s Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, had focused on third-party app developers with access to “large amounts of information” and whose software had exhibited “suspicious activity.”

    On Tuesday, Meta told CNN in a statement that the document cited in the letter references data practices that are no longer in effect at the company.

    “These documents are an artifact from a different product at a different time,” said Meta spokesman Andy Stone. “Many years ago, we made substantive changes to our platform, shutting down developers’ access to key types of data on Facebook while reviewing and approving all apps that request access to sensitive information.”

    Meta declined to answer whether the app developer investigation is still ongoing or how many apps have been reviewed since the 2018 slide presentation, which was unsealed in court last week. The document had projected the probe would continue at least through 2020.

    In recent years, policymakers have increasingly sounded the alarm about data leakages to foreign adversaries. Hostile governments could seek to use Americans’ personal information to spread disinformation or identify intelligence targets, US officials have said.

    Those fears have culminated most visibly in tensions with the short-form video app TikTok, whose links to China through its parent company have prompted the US government and numerous states to ban the app from official devices. US officials have also sought to block Chinese telecom firms from the US market over similar concerns.

    But the lawmakers’ letter highlights how worries about data access by foreign adversaries extends beyond TikTok and encompasses some of the largest social media platforms.

    Although Meta has moved on with different, more restrictive policies for developers, Warner and Rubio called for the company to explain what information may have been transferred to China, Russia and other nations in the past, and for any evidence the company may have that the data has been abused to target Americans or engage in propaganda campaigns.

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  • 5 derailed train cars carrying hazardous material at risk of exploding are no longer burning, official says | CNN

    5 derailed train cars carrying hazardous material at risk of exploding are no longer burning, official says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Five train cars that contained vinyl chloride, a potentially explosive chemical, are no longer burning after a train derailment in Ohio, a Norfolk Southern official said Tuesday.

    The burning stopped after a controlled release of the unstable, toxic chemical Monday at the train derailment site in East Palestine, near the Pennsylvania border.

    Four of those five cars have been cleared from the wreckage, and crews are working to remove the fifth car, Norfolk Southern official Scott Deutsch said Tuesday.

    The train, which partially derailed Friday, had more than 100 cars. About 20 of those cars were carrying hazardous materials, said the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the incident.

    “There have been no reports of significant injuries – either in the initial derailment or in the controlled detonation last night,” Ohio Department of Public Safety Director Andy Wilson said Tuesday.

    But it’s not yet clear when residents who were ordered to evacuate can return home, East Palestine Fire Chief Keith Drabick said Tuesday.

    “Once the Ohio Department of Health, the United States Environmental Protection Agency in conjunction with the East Palestine Fire Department and Norfolk Southern Railroad have determined that this is safe for East Palestine residents to return to their homes – and, quite frankly, once I feel safe for my family to return – we will lift that evacuation order and start returning people home,” Drabick said.

    Three days of anxiety about a potentially deadly explosion culminated in a loud boom Monday, when crews started the controlled release of vinyl chloride into a pit to burn it away.

    A large plume of black smoke shot up toward the sky and the operation went as planned.

    “The detonation went perfect,” Deutsch said. “We’re already to the point where the cars became safe. They were not safe prior to this.”

    Vinyl chloride is a man-made chemical used to make PVC and it burns easily at room temperature.

    It can cause dizziness, sleepiness and headaches; and has been linked to an increased risk of cancer in the liver, brain, lungs and blood.

    Breathing high levels of vinyl chloride can make someone pass out or die if they don’t get fresh air, the Ohio Department of Health said.

    The train derailment Friday led to a massive inferno and increased pressure inside the hot steel.

    By Sunday evening, the burning wreckage threatened a catastrophic explosion capable of spewing toxic fumes and firing shrapnel up to a mile away, officials said.

    Mandatory evacuations were ordered over several square miles straddling the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

    After the breach, officials detected “slightly elevated” readings of the phosgene and hydrogen chloride in the burn area and “only one minor hit for the hydrogen chloride downwind of the burn area” within the exclusion zone, the EPA’s James Justice said Monday evening.

    Such readings were expected after the controlled release, Justice said.

    As for East Palestine’s water supply, no impacts to the waterway were detected as of Monday evening, an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency official said.

    A team will continue to monitor the air and water quality in the area, officials said.

    Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who had also called for evacuations, said Monday evening that air and water quality is being monitored closely and no concerning readings had been detected so far.

    But he told Pennsylvanians who live within 2 miles of the East Palestine derailment to keep sheltering in place with their windows and doors closed Monday evening.

    Derailed train cars smoldered Monday in East Palestine, Ohio.

    The derailment has upended life in East Palestine, a village of about 5,000 people. Schools have been closed for the rest of the week, and some residents haven’t been home since the initial evacuation orders Friday.

    When the Norfolk Southern train crashed in East Palestine, about 10 of 20 cars carrying hazardous materials derailed.

    One rail car carrying vinyl chloride became a focus of concern when its malfunctioning safety valves prevented the release of the chemical inside, a Columbiana County Emergency Management Agency official said.

    That meant “the car’s just building pressure inside the steel shell, and that’s a problem,” Deutsch said Monday.

    But after the controlled release, “There’s no pressure now in the cars,” he said.

    On Monday afternoon, charges were used to blow small holes in each rail car, allowing the vinyl chloride to spill into a flare-lined trench.

    While the cause of the derailment remains under investigation, National Transportation Safety Board Member Michael Graham said Sunday that there was a mechanical failure warning before the crash.

    “The crew did receive an alarm from a wayside defect detector shortly before the derailment, indicating a mechanical issue,” Graham said. “Then an emergency brake application initiated.”

    Investigators also identified the point of derailment and found video showing “preliminary indications of mechanical issues” on one of the railcar axles, he said.

    The NTSB has requested records from Norfolk Southern and is investigating when the potential defect happened and the response from the train’s crew, which included an engineer, conductor and conductor trainee.

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  • A freight train derailment in Ohio puts US infrastructure back in a bruising spotlight | CNN Politics

    A freight train derailment in Ohio puts US infrastructure back in a bruising spotlight | CNN Politics

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


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    On the eve of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, American infrastructure is back in the worst kind of spotlight.

    The fiery derailment of train cars carrying hazardous chemicals on the eastern edge of Ohio has led to an evacuation zone across both Ohio and Pennsylvania.

    Five of the derailed train cars are carrying vinyl chloride – a chemical that is currently unstable and could explode, hurling toxic fumes into the air and shooting deadly shrapnel as far as a mile away, officials said.

    “There is a high probability of a toxic gas release and/or explosion,” Columbiana County Sheriff Brian McLaughlin warned. “Please, for your own safety, remove your families from danger.”

    The derailment is, of course, felt most acutely in the surrounding community, where residents who don’t evacuate face arrest. But the incident also highlights the exact kind of concern that led to a considerable investment in rail projects as part of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure law passed in late 2021.

    To better understand the derailment in Ohio, and how current or future legislation could help avoid similar situations, we turned to Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California.

    Our conversation, conducted over the phone and lightly edited for flow and brevity, is below.

    Since the fire in Ohio is still burning, investigators haven’t been able to walk around the crash site.

    But officials have identified the point of derailment and found video showing “preliminary indications of mechanical issues” on one of the railcar axles. The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating when the potential defect happened and the response from the crew.

    LEBLANC: What are the investigators going to be looking into here?

    MESHKATI: This accident will be investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is an independent federal safety investigation organization. They do a very good job and thorough job, independently.

    They will look at this accident from an interdisciplinary standpoint. They’ll look for equipment failure, they’ll look for mental fatigue, the signaling electronics, and also they will look at the human factors and organizational safety culture.

    The other organization that most probably will do an investigation is the Federal Railroad Administration, which is a regulatory agency, part of the Department of Transportation.

    NTSB typically does an excellent job, and the FRA. Hopefully they will come up with some recommendations to proactively address this issue.

    LEBLANC: How often do these recommendations actually turn into new policies or guidance?

    MESHKATI: That’s an excellent question without an excellent answer.

    The National Transportation Safety Board, they issue a report at the end of the year. They have something which is called the “most wanted list” that they put their recommendations for safety improvement for railroads on based on accident investigations.

    And then it’s up to these different organizations or private sector regulatory agencies to implement recommendations. Again, NTSB doesn’t have enforcement power. They can make recommendations.

    Rail travel is recognized as the safest method of transporting hazardous materials in the US, according to the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration.

    “The vast majority of hazardous materials shipped by rail tank car every year arrive safely and without incident, and railroads generally have an outstanding record in moving shipments of hazardous materials safely,” FRA says on its website.

    LEBLANC: How common is it for freight trains to carry hazardous material? Is it unusual?

    MESHKATI: No. They do that, and they do it fairly safely. Unfortunately, this type of thing happens, but they’re preventable because these are the types of accidents, if it’s a derailment – the causes of derailment are fairly understandable.

    It could be due to the mental fatigue or the tracks or it could be the speed or not following the procedures.

    Passenger and freight rail received $66 billion in the sprawling bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021. Implementation, however, will take years.

    LEBLANC: Once fully implemented, will the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package help prevent derailments similar to this one? Is there other legislation that could help?

    MESHKATI: I think money and funding is important, but what we need – this is my personal opinion based on my 38 years of research – what we need in the railroad industry is dedicated, committed leadership to safety.

    You can throw around as much money as much as you want. But see, here is the thing – technological systems are composed of three subsystems: a human subsystem, organizational subsystem and technological subsystem.

    And they are like the three links in a chain. A chain breaks at its weakest link. We can put all the money that we have on the technological subsystems, get the better tracks, get better computers, get better positive train control and everything.

    But what about the human and organizational subsystems? We need to give adequate attention to them. And that’s where a committed, informed leadership comes into play.

    When a freight train travels across the country, two people are in the cab of the locomotive working to keep the train, its often hazardous and flammable contents, and the communities they are passing through, all safe.

    Now the railroads are saying that, given today’s modern technology, just one person is enough. But the rail unions say single-person crews pose a tremendous safety risk, not just to the engineer working alone in the cab for hours on end, but to all the communities the trains pass through.

    LEBLANC: What are your thoughts on this proposal to staff freight trains with just one person?

    MESHKATI: I have studied this issue for many, many years.

    I’ve seen the disastrous impact that the consolidation and crew reduction could have on the safety of technological systems. This is something that we need to learn from other industries and just curb our irrational exuberance for this because the technology is available.

    Yes, there is an AI technology that can monitor the routine pattern.

    “That’s why we don’t need a human” – this is a very simple-minded, irrational exuberance.

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  • Southwest and FedEx jets came within 100 feet of collision at airport in Texas, investigators say | CNN

    Southwest and FedEx jets came within 100 feet of collision at airport in Texas, investigators say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Southwest passenger jet and a FedEx cargo plane came as close as 100 feet from colliding Saturday at the main airport in Texas’ capital, and it was a pilot – not air traffic controllers – who averted disaster, a top federal investigator says.

    Controllers at Austin’s international airport had cleared the arriving FedEx Boeing 767 and a departing Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 jet to use the same runway, and the FedEx crew “realized that they were overflying the Southwest plane,” Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN Monday.

    The FedEx pilot told the Southwest crew to abort taking off, she said.

    The FedEx plane, meanwhile, climbed as its crew aborted their landing to help avoid a collision, the Federal Aviation Administration has said.

    “I’m very proud of the FedEx flight crew and that pilot,” Homendy said. “They saved, in my view, 128 people from a potential catastrophe.”

    “It was very close, and we believe less than 100 feet,” Homendy said.

    Controllers had cleared the Southwest departure from runway 18 Left when the FedEx jet was about 3.2 nautical miles away, she said. Controllers also confirmed to the FedEx crew that it could land on 18 Left when the FedEx plane was 2.19 nautical miles out.

    The NTSB in 2017 recommended widespread adoption of technology – known as Airport Surface Detection Equipment, or ASDE – designed to notify controllers and prevent this type of collision.

    That system, Homendy said, played a role in preventing a runway collision last month between taxiing and departing aircraft at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. But it is being used at only 35 airports and was not deployed at the Austin airport, she said.

    “Air traffic control in this situation can see the FedEx plane on radar. They cannot in Austin see where Southwest is on the ground,” Homendy said.

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  • Former Manhattan attorney says ‘many bits and pieces of evidence’ exist to charge Trump | CNN Politics

    Former Manhattan attorney says ‘many bits and pieces of evidence’ exist to charge Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A former Manhattan special assistant district attorney who investigated Donald Trump said Sunday night there are “many bits and pieces of evidence” the district attorney could use to bring criminal charges against the former president.

    Mark Pomerantz, a former senior prosecutor on the Manhattan DA’s team investigating Trump and his organization’s business dealings, said prosecutors weighing similar evidence against anyone other than the former president would have moved ahead with charges in a “flat second.”

    Pomerantz made the comments in a “60 Minutes” interview promoting a new book about his time investigating Trump. He pointed to evidence he had access to during the investigation – principal among them, that Trump personally signed off on inflating his own net worth to obtain more favorable banks loans.

    “There were many bits and pieces of evidence on which we could rely in making that case,” Pomerantz told CBS’s Bill Whitaker.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, filed a civil lawsuit against Trump, his eldest children and others alleging they were engaged in a decade long fraud by using inaccurate financial statements to obtain favorable loan and insurance rates and tax treatment. The burden of proof in a civil lawsuit is lower than what prosecutors need to prove a criminal case. Trump has called the lawsuit politically motivated and has denied any wrongdoing.

    The allegations come nearly a year after Pomerantz resigned from the DA’s office in protest and days before the release of his new book, which has prompted pushback from District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

    Pomerantz resigned after Bragg, who was newly sworn into office, refused to give him a green light to seek an indictment against Trump. The district attorney’s office previously brought tax fraud charges against the Trump Organization and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty.

    Pomerantz resigned last February along with general counsel Carey Dunne.

    “If you take the exact same conduct – and make it not about Donald Trump and not about a former president of the United States, would the case have been indicted? It would have been indicted in a flat second,” Pomerantz said Sunday. He called Bragg’s decision not to bring the case a “grave failure of justice.”

    Pomerantz’s claims detailed in his forthcoming book have drawn the ire of his former boss and the DA’s Association of the State of New York, who claim that a former prosecutor speaking out about a case he used to be a part of could damage its integrity.

    Bragg’s office asked to review the book before its publication out of concern it would reveal information obtained from a grand jury. Simon & Schuster, the publisher, moved ahead with publication.

    “After closely reviewing all the evidence from Mr. Pomerantz’s investigation, I came to the same conclusion as several senior prosecutors involved in the case, and also those I brought on: more work was needed. Put another way, Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff,” Bragg said in a statement to CNN.

    Bragg added that he hasn’t “read the book, and won’t comment on any ongoing investigation because of the harm it could cause to the case. But I do hope there is at least one section where Mr. Pomerantz recognizes his former colleagues for how much they have achieved on the Trump matter over the last year since his departure.”

    In January, a New York judge fined the Trump Organization $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme, a symbolic moment because it is the only judgment for a criminal conviction that has come close to the former president.

    Two Trump entities, The Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp., were convicted last year of 17 felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records. Trump himself was never charged or convicted.

    On Sunday Pomerantz expanded on what evidence he believes they had against Trump, including Trump’s signature on a Deutsche Bank loan certifying that all of his financial statements were accurate.

    “He warrants that the financial statements are true and correct in all material respects. Finally of course on the guaranty is his sharpie signature, Donald J. Trump,” Pomerantz said. He also alleges he has documents proving Trump knew the accurate size of his 10,996-square-foot Fifth Avenue condominium, but lied anyways, claiming in 2015 and 2016 accounting documents that it was really 30,000 square feet.

    CNN previously reported that some prosecutors did not believe they had enough evidence to prove Trump’s intent and they lacked a credible narrator to explain how the financial statements were put together.

    In a letter to Pomerantz, Trump’s lawyer threatened legal action against the former prosecutor if he releases the book. The lawyer, Joe Tacopina, told CNN in a statement that Pomerantz’s “desperate attempt to sell books will cost him everything. Not to mention, it is clear that he was very much in the minority in his position that President Trump committed a crime.”

    In the book, which publishes on Tuesday, Pomerantz compares Trump to John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family, according to an advanced copy obtained by The New York Times, and lays out the complicated investigation that saw many close to the former president charged with crimes.

    Meanwhile, Bragg’s office last week accelerated its investigation into Trump’s alleged role in a hush money payment made to silence adult film star Stormy Daniel’s allegations of an affair. Trump has denied the affair.

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  • Exclusive: Supreme Court justices used personal emails for work and ‘burn bags’ were left open in hallways, sources say | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: Supreme Court justices used personal emails for work and ‘burn bags’ were left open in hallways, sources say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Long before the leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, some Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts for sensitive transmissions instead of secure servers set up to guard such information, among other security lapses not made public in the court’s report on the investigation last month.

    New details revealed to CNN by multiple sources familiar with the court’s operations offer an even more detailed picture of yearslong lax internal procedures that could have endangered security, led to the leak and hindered an investigation into the culprit.

    Supreme Court employees also used printers that didn’t produce logs – or were able to print sensitive documents off-site without tracking – and “burn bags” meant to ensure the safe destruction of materials were left open and unattended in hallways.

    “This has been going on for years,” one former employee said.

    The problem with the justices’ use of emails persisted in part because some justices were slow to adopt to the technology and some court employees were nervous about confronting them to urge them to take precautions, one person said. Such behavior meant that justices weren’t setting an example to take security seriously.

    The justices were “not masters of information security protocol,” one former court employee told CNN.

    In a statement attached to the final report, the court called the leak a “grave assault” on the court’s legitimacy and the marshal of the court issued a road map to improve security.

    The report and the new revelations of weak protocols come as the court is trying to protect its own legitimacy after an embarrassing leak and allegations (prompted by the recent rash of high profile cases breaking along familiar ideological lines) that it has simply become another political branch. The 20-page report and its still secret “Annex A” raised some questions as to whether the entire investigation should have been outsourced to someone without close ties to the court.

    Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff reviewed and endorsed the Supreme Court’s internal investigation into the leak. However, the court did not disclose Chertoff had been paid at least $1 million in recent years to perform security assessments for the court.

    The court declined to comment.

    In her report last month, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley noted that the “court’s current method of destroying court sensitive documents has vulnerabilities that should be addressed.”

    Three former employees told CNN of loose security around burn bags that are supplied to chambers to deal with sensitive documents. A burn bag is a security bag that holds sensitive documents which will ultimately be destroyed by fire or shredding.

    There was no uniform rule that established a procedure for these paper bags with red stripes. Instead, the justices each have their own protocols. According to a source familiar with the court’s security practices, employees have the option to use the burn bags which are later taken to the basement of the building and emptied into locked bins so that they can be retrieved by a shredding company.

    Another source questioned how the burn bags were handled before they were collected. The source said some colleagues would staple a burn bag shut. Others simply filled them to capacity and left them near their desks. But some burn bags were simply left in the hallway outside of chambers, presumably so that they could be taken to the basement. It would not have been difficult, the source suggested, for someone with access to the non-public area of the court to access sensitive documents.

    Another vulnerability outlined by Curley was printer logs meant to track document production. A former employee highlights something that Curley did not detail: employees who had VPN access could print documents from any computer, making it difficult to track copies. Curley made an important concession in the report that some locally connected printers only logged the last 60 documents printed.

    A look at the timeline of the leak reveals how such a system would be problematic for investigators.

    That’s because the initial draft was distributed internally on February 10, 2022. But the leak investigation only started in May when Politico published the draft opinion. Some of those print logs would almost surely no longer exist because the 60-document threshold had been reached.

    Curley did not go into great detail, but she did suggest the court “institute tracking mechanisms” in the future.

    Another potential problem revolved – especially during Covid – around the possibility that opinions could leave the building. According to the report, Court Information System User Guidelines prohibit “attempting to leave facilities with Court Sensitive Information (hard copy or electronic) without proper authorization.”

    But during Covid many such regulations were necessarily relaxed. And even with the rule in place, one source said, there were no mechanisms to check what was actually being taken from the court. To be sure, the hallways in the areas of the court that are closed to the public were guarded and protected by doors with a numerical code necessary to enter, but the code wasn’t necessarily changed very often.

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  • Comparing the classified document discoveries plaguing Biden, Trump and Pence | CNN Politics

    Comparing the classified document discoveries plaguing Biden, Trump and Pence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Washington – President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence are all facing scrutiny regarding their potential mishandling of classified documents.

    In all three cases, sensitive government materials were found in places where they shouldn’t have ended up. But there are key distinctions that differentiate each situation, including how Biden, Trump and Pence responded to the discovery of documents and how aggressively the Justice Department is currently investigating.

    Here’s a breakdown of the similarities and differences between the Biden, Trump and Pence cases.

    The Biden and Pence situations are similar – their lawyers discovered the classified documents, alerted the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and turned over the papers. In Biden’s case, FBI agents later found additional documents when they searched his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

    Trump followed a different path. After he left the White House, NARA realized that materials were missing. In May 2021, they reached out to Trump’s lawyers who negotiated for months over the voluntary return of several boxes of important documents.

    The Justice Department obtained a subpoena in May 2022, a year after NARA’s initial flag, after suspecting that Trump was still holding onto some classified records. Trump gave back more files but didn’t return everything in his possession. The FBI later executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, where more documents were found. The search was the first time in American history that a former president’s home was searched as part of a criminal investigation.

    The exact number is unknown in Biden’s case. Approximately 20 classified documents had been recovered before the FBI searched Biden’s home in Wilmington. The FBI uncovered even more classified files during that search, but neither side has publicly disclosed the specific number of additional documents found.

    For Trump, more than 325 classified records have been recovered. This includes documents returned voluntarily to NARA, turned over to the Justice Department under subpoena, and found by the FBI.

    With Pence’s situation, CNN has reported that his team found about a dozen documents at his Indiana home.

    Some of Biden’s documents were marked “top secret,” which is the highest level of classification. Some of those documents had an “SCI” designation, which stands for “sensitive compartmented information” and refers to extremely sensitive material gleaned from US intelligence sources.

    At least 60 of the Trump documents were labeled “top secret,” including some files with SCI markings. There were also some documents with “SAP” designation, which stands for “special access programs” and is used for documents that are closely held with special protocols for who can access the material.

    A source who was briefed on some of the Pence documents previously told CNN that the government papers recovered from his home were “lower level” classification, without any SCI or SAP markings.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland brought on special prosecutors to investigate Biden and Trump. The Trump matter is being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed in November. And the Biden matter is being investigated by special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed in January.

    CNN has previously reported that the FBI and Justice Department are conducting a review of the Pence documents and how they ended up at his home. This is less than a full-blown criminal probe.

    The Trump investigation has progressed the farthest. Federal prosecutors got a subpoena, demanded the return of all classified documents and tried to hold Trump in contempt when he didn’t fully comply. Investigators also got a judge to approve a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and CNN has reported that there is an active grand jury based in Washington, DC, that recently heard testimony from witnesses.

    In this file image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and redacted by in part by the FBI, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 search by the FBI of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

    There haven’t been any known subpoenas or search warrants in the Biden inquiry, though the FBI has conducted voluntary interviews with some of the people on Biden’s team who handled documents.

    There aren’t any known subpoenas, search warrants or FBI interviews in the Pence-related review.

    Biden and Pence both maintain that they engaged early with NARA to return missing documents and are cooperating fully with the Justice Department.

    Whether it was intentional or not, Trump repeatedly missed opportunities to return the documents to the government. Criminal prosecutors eventually concluded that there might have been intentional efforts to hold onto the documents, and Trump is now under investigation for potential obstruction.

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  • 2 witnesses in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial testify Murdaugh’s voice is on video made just before killings | CNN

    2 witnesses in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial testify Murdaugh’s voice is on video made just before killings | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two witnesses in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh told the court Wednesday they are “100%” certain that Murdaugh’s voice is on footage prosecutors say undermines the disgraced former South Carolina attorney’s claim he was not present at the scene of the killings when his wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul were fatally shot.

    The video, just short of a minute long, was filmed on Paul’s phone starting at 8:44 p.m. the night of the killings in 2021, according to Lt. David Britton Dove, a supervisor in the computer crimes center at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division who extracted forensic data from the phones belonging to Murdaugh, his son and his wife. In his review of the trio’s phones, the footage was the only video or photo Dove deemed relevant to the investigation, he said, telling the court it appeared to be recorded in the area of the Murdaugh family’s kennels.

    Three different voices could be heard in the footage, Dove testified Wednesday. And while Dove did not personally know the voices, he said, “You can tell that they’re different voices.”

    Prosecutors believe one of those voices belongs to Murdaugh, and that voice is the only other on the video besides the victims and places him at the scene at the time of the murders. Two witnesses Wednesday backed up that claim.

    Rogan Gibson, who described himself as a close friend of Paul’s and the Murdaughs as being like a second family, told investigators shortly after the killings that along with the voices of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, he was “99% sure” the third person heard was Alex Murdaugh. Last November, he told investigators that he was 100% sure, and repeated that in court Wednesday.

    When asked by state prosecutor Creighton Waters if he recognized Alex’s voice, Gibson said, “Yes, sir.”

    “100%?” asked Waters. “Yes, sir” replied Gibson.

    Will Loving, another witness who was Paul’s friend, also testified that he was “100%” sure it was Alex’s voice on the video.

    Prosecutors have indicated cell phone evidence is key in their case against Murdaugh, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of his wife Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and his 22-year-old son Paul on June 7, 2021.

    Murdaugh called 911 the night of the killings to report he’d found his wife and son shot dead at the family’s home in Islandton, South Carolina – a property known as Moselle.

    But prosecutors accuse Murdaugh of committing the murders to distract attention from a series of alleged illicit schemes he was running to avoid “personal legal and financial ruin,” per court filings. Separate from the murder charges, he is also facing 99 charges stemming from alleged financial crimes, per the state attorney general.

    Evidence will show, the state has claimed, that Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes were “about to come to light” when his wife and son were killed.

    Gibson said he had known the Murdochs practically all his life, and testified that it was Alex Murdaugh’s voice that could be heard in the video calling for the family’s yellow lab, Bubba, to drop a chicken from his mouth.

    Paul Murdaugh called Gibson the night of the shooting, at 8:40 p.m., to ask if something was wrong with Gibson’s dog, Cash, which was in a kennel at the Murdaugh property. The two tried to hold a video call so that Gibson could see the dog, but the reception was not good enough, Gibson testified. Paul told him he would take a video of the dog and send it to him if the FaceTime call didn’t work, Gibson said, but he never received the footage.

    Gibson testified that he tried to call and text Paul after the failed video call, but his friend never responded.

    Murdaugh appeared to sob while the video played in court the first time.

    Prosecutor Waters of the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office – which is prosecuting the case due to the Murdaugh family’s decades-old ties with the local solicitor’s office – teased the video in his opening statement last week, saying that while Alex claimed to investigators he was napping at the house, video evidence would show he was present at the family’s kennels, where the bodies of his son and wife were found.

    “You’ll see that video and you’ll hear from witnesses that identify Paul’s voice, Maggie’s voice and Alex’s voice,” Waters said, telling the court Paul was filming a dog that belonged to his friend because they were concerned about the animal’s tail. Murdaugh “told anyone who would listen he was never there … The evidence will show that he was there. He was at the murder scene with the two victims” minutes before Paul’s phone “locks forever.”

    In his own opening statement, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said the audio from the video obtained by the prosecution would simply show Murdaugh and his wife having a “normal discussion” with “no animosity.” Paul is “very happy,” Harpootlian claimed. “Nobody’s down there threatening him. Daddy is not pulling out a shotgun and killing him.”

    During cross examination by the defense Wednesday, Gibson said Alex and Paul Murdaugh had a great relationship, and spoke about Alex as an affectionate and loving father who was involved with his sons. Alex was like a second father to him, Gibson said.

    Murdaugh cried a lot and “was just real distraught, sad, just tore up” about the deaths, Gibson testified.

    “Can you think of any circumstance that you can envision, knowing them as you do, where Alex would brutally murder Paul and Maggie?” defense attorney Jim Griffin asked.

    “Not that I can think of,” Gibson answered.

    The defense attorney also questioned Gibson about the sheds, workshops and vehicles frequently being left unlocked at the Murdaugh property, and guns often left unprotected or just laying around. Gibson conceded it would be easy for someone to sneak on the property and steal something. On redirect from the prosecution, Gibson acknowledged he had never heard Paul complain about people doing that.

    In his testimony Tuesday, Dove, the 15th witness called by the prosecution, detailed the communications of Maggie’s phone the night of the killings, including a text from Alex at 9:47 p.m. that read, “Call me babe.” It was never read.

    In his opening statement last week, Waters told the jury Murdaugh repeatedly called his wife that evening before texting her that he was going to visit his mother and driving to Almeda, South Carolina.

    “It’s up to you,” Waters said, “to decide whether or not he’s trying to manufacture an alibi.”

    According to Dove’s testimony Tuesday, the night she was killed, Maggie read two text messages – at 8:31 p.m. and 8:49 p.m. – in a group chat with family about Murdaugh’s father, who was in ailing health, seconds before her phone locked for the final time.

    The display of Maggie’s phone turned off minutes later, at 8:53 p.m. At 8:54 p.m., the orientation changed to landscape and the camera activated – an indication, Dove said, the phone was moved and the camera tried to locate Maggie’s face in an unsuccessful attempt to unlock.

    Maggie’s phone showed repeated missed calls from her husband over the course of the next hour, Dove testified, along with evidence it had switched to portrait mode. That, the expert said, was another indication the phone was likely held in someone’s hand. A final call from Murdaugh was missed just before 10:04 p.m.

    But those calls appeared to be missing from Murdaugh’s phone, Dove said Wednesday, testifying that call logs show a gap in calls between June 4 and 10:25 p.m. the night of June 7.

    “A gap like that would indicate” that calls were “actually removed from there,” Dove said, adding the only way to remove the calls from the log would be to do so manually.

    Asked specifically if the calls were deleted from the log, Dove said, “it would appear that way,” noting there was no way to know when they were deleted or who was responsible.

    Additionally, Murdaugh was in the same group chat as his wife when relatives were texting about his dying father, Dove said Wednesday. And while evidence shows Maggie read both messages, Murdaugh did not read them until the next day, Dove said, despite telling state investigators about his concern for his father’s health.

    This behavior appeared to be outside Murdaugh’s typical texting habits, Dove testified, saying Murdaugh typically had a habit of checking texts within 5 minutes, or sometimes 30 to 40 minutes.

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  • Cohen says he handed over phones to Manhattan DA | CNN Politics

    Cohen says he handed over phones to Manhattan DA | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Michael Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s former attorney, has handed over his cell phones to Manhattan prosecutors, he told “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday.

    Prosecutors are zeroing in on the Trump Organization’s involvement in hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels as part of an effort to stop her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump days before the 2016 presidential election. A grand jury in New York has been convened to hear evidence related to the effort, sources familiar with the matter have told CNN.

    Cohen met last month with the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Trump has denied the affair.

    CNN has reported that former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was set to meet with prosecutors this week as part of the probe. The district attorney’s office also reached out to Keith Davidson, who represented Daniels in the hush money deal, in recent weeks.

    Manhattan prosecutors are looking into whether Trump and his business falsified business records by improperly treating the reimbursement as a legal expense. That charge is a misdemeanor in New York unless it can be tied to another crime, such as campaign finance laws.

    Prosecutors working under the previous DA, Cy Vance, had explored bringing charges related to the hush money scheme but some attorneys on the team were not convinced that a charge involving a federal election law violation would survive legal challenges, people familiar with the investigation told CNN.

    Last year, a jury convicted two Trump Organization entities of a decade-long tax fraud scheme, which appears to have emboldened prosecutors.

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

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  • Apple has infringed on worker rights, NLRB investigators say | CNN Business

    Apple has infringed on worker rights, NLRB investigators say | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Apple has illegally imposed rules on its employees that prohibit them from discussing their wages and engaging in other protected activity, according to investigators at the National Labor Relations Board.

    The findings by NLRB agents determined that “various work rules, handbook rules, and confidentiality rules at Apple” are unlawful because they “reasonably tend to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees” who attempt to assert their labor rights, NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado told CNN Tuesday.

    The probe involved several allegations dating to 2021, Blado said, some of which accused Apple of interfering with employee attempts to collect salary data and of “suppressive activity that has enabled abuse and harassment of organizers.” One of the charges claimed Apple had maintained “work rules that prohibit employees from discussing wages, hours, or other terms or conditions of employment.”

    Apple declined to comment. The agency findings were first reported by Bloomberg.

    The determinations could put pressure on Apple to settle the charges or risk facing a formal complaint by NLRB prosecutors in an internal administrative law proceeding — which could result in an order to change Apple’s business practices. The NLRB does not have the power to impose penalties, but can force employers to implement “make-whole remedies,” according to its website.

    According to Bloomberg, the cases in question were brought by two former Apple employees, one of whom cited an email from CEO Tim Cook vowing to crack down on information leaks at the company. Only some of the charges filed have been made public through Freedom of Information Act requests, and those that are available on the NLRB website are partially redacted. The contents of investigators’ findings also have not been made public.

    But Blado said as part of the investigation an NLRB regional office had “found merit to a charge alleging statements and conduct by Apple — including high-level executives — also violated the National Labor Relations Act.”

    Apple has previously clashed with the NLRB over its handling of workers looking to unionize at its retail stores.

    Apple was hit with a complaint from the NLRB over allegations that it interrogated employees regarding their support for a union and selectively prohibited the placement of pro-union fliers in a break room at a New York City Apple store. Apple pushed back at those claims in a filing with the NLRB.

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  • Retired Air Force officer set to plead guilty to storing classified information at his Florida home | CNN Politics

    Retired Air Force officer set to plead guilty to storing classified information at his Florida home | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who stored files with classified information at his Florida home is set to plead guilty in February to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information, according to court documents.

    The defendant, Robert Birchum, served in the Air Force for more than 30 years and previously held top secret clearance. According to his plea agreement, he stored hundreds of files that contained information marked as top secret, secret or confidential classified outside of authorized locations.

    In 2017, investigators found a thumb drive, two hard drives and paper documents containing classified information in Birchum’s possession, including at his home, court documents state. Two of the files on the thumb drive at Birchum’s home contained information on the National Security Agency’s “methods of collection, and identify targets’ vulnerabilities,” according to the plea.

    CNN has reached out to Birchum’s attorney for comment.

    A plea hearing is set for February 21 in a district court in Florida, and he faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

    The Daily Beast first reported on the plea agreement.

    The case comes to a close as Washington is embroiled in controversy over the handling of classified documents by President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence. Two special counsels are investigating Biden and Trump, and the Justice Department is reviewing the Pence case.

    While Birchum had top secret clearance through his various positions in the Air Force, including as an Intelligence Officer, “(t)he defendant’s residence was not a location authorized to store classified information, and the defendant knew as much,” the plea agreement states.

    On a hard drive at his home, investigators found 10 files that had “information marked as Secret,” according to the agreement, as well as 48 paper documents that also contained information marked as secret. On the thumb drive recovered from his home, investigators say they found 135 files marked as containing classified information.

    Separately, in a temporary residence overseas outside of a designated sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), investigators say they found another hard drive containing 117 files with classified national defense information.

    According to court filings, Birchum retired from the Air Force in 2018. An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment.

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  • Developments in Trump documents probe foretell a 2024 campaign clouded by legal tangles | CNN Politics

    Developments in Trump documents probe foretell a 2024 campaign clouded by legal tangles | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    There’s never been a presidential campaign like it.

    Donald Trump is taking every step of his bid for a third consecutive Republican nomination amid a darkening storm of legal uncertainty.

    The twice-impeached former president, who tried to steal an election and is accused of fomenting an insurrection, launched his first two-state campaign swing on Saturday as he seeks a stunning political comeback.

    Then on Monday, Trump’s potential exposure – in two of his multiple strands of legal peril – appeared to grow, foreshadowing a campaign likely to be repeatedly punctuated by distractions from criminal investigations.

    In a new twist to his classified material saga, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Katelyn Polantz reported that two people who found two classified documents in a Trump storage facility in Florida testified before a federal grand jury. Federal prosecutors are also pushing to look at files on a laptop of at least one staff member around Trump at Mar-a-Lago, CNN reported. The former president has not been charged with a crime, but these developments are the latest sign of an aggressive approach by special counsel Jack Smith in probing the matter. And it shows how a regular drumbeat of legal problems could detract from the former president’s attempts to inject energy into a so-far tepid campaign – especially given the multiple criminal threats he may face.

    On another front, The New York Times reported that a district attorney in Manhattan is presenting evidence to another grand jury probing Trump’s alleged role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Last week, a district attorney in Georgia said decisions are imminent on charges related to Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. It is not known whether the ex-president is directly targeted by the investigation. This all comes as Smith is also probing Trump’s role in the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.

    The unique and extraordinary legal tangle surrounding Trump means that a third straight US election will be tainted by controversies that will drag the FBI and the Justice Department further into a political morass. (President Joe Biden is also facing a special counsel investigation over his handling of documents from his time as vice president, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who’s eying a 2024 bid, is under DOJ review for similar issues.) This follows the Hillary Clinton email flap in 2016 and investigations into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia during that White House bid, as well as Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.

    The fact that Trump is seeking the presidency again, under an extraordinary legal cloud, could have significant consequences for the wider 2024 campaign. Some of his potential Republican rivals, wary of trying to take him down, might hope that his legal troubles will do the job for them. Perceptions that Trump is caught in a web of criminal investigation might also further tarnish his personal political brand, which has already contributed to some Republican loses in national elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

    Still, Trump is a master of leveraging attempts to call him to account, legally and politically. He’s already built a central foundation of his new presidential quest around the idea that he’s being political persecuted by Justice Department investigations and what he claims are rogue Democratic prosecutors.

    “We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. It’s all investigation, investigation,” the ex-president said on the trail over the weekend.

    This is a message that may be attractive to some of Trump’s base voters who themselves feel alienated from the federal government and previously bought into his claims about a “deep state” conspiracy against him. It’s also a technique, in which a strongman leader argues that he is taking the heat so his followers don’t have to, that is a familiar page in the authority playbooks of demagogues throughout history.

    As is normal, it is not known what the people who found the classified documents at the Florida storage facility may have said to the grand jury. But the ex-president is being investigated not just for possible violations of the Espionage Act, but also for potential obstruction of justice related to the documents.

    The two individuals, who were hired to search four of Trump’s properties last fall months after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the summer, were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances last week. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources familiar with the investigation said.

    Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday that the latest development was a sign of an advanced special counsel investigation and could indicate that Smith was leaning toward indictments.

    “It sounds like he is trying to lock in their testimony, to understand how they would testify at trial, whether it is incriminating evidence against Trump or exculpatory evidence that the prosecutors would then have that and have it solidified.”

    The simple, politically charged act of investigating an ex-president was always bound to create a political furor. The fact that Trump is running for the White House again multiplies the stakes and means profound decisions are ahead for Attorney General Merrick Garland if evidence suggests Trump should be charged.

    On a more granular level, the report about the grand jury underscores that for all the political noise, the investigation into Trump’s haul of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is taking place inside its own legal bubble.

    This remains the case, despite the political gift handed to Trump with the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and at a Washington office he once used that should have been handed back when he left the vice presidency. Some classified material was also found at Pence’s Indiana home.

    Those discoveries allowed Trump to claim that he was being unfairly singled out, even if the cases have significant differences. Any Trump attempt to argue that he, like Biden and Pence, inadvertently took documents to his home will be undermined by the fact that he claimed the material belonged to him, and not the government, and what appears to be repeated refusals to give it back.

    Fresh indications of the momentum in the Trump documents special counsel probe followed the latest sign of a lopsided approach to the controversy over classified material by House Republicans, who are hammering Biden over documents but giving Trump a free pass.

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer was, for example, asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown this weekend why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home but was fixated upon the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises by lawyers and an unknown number also found during an FBI search of the president’s home this month.

    “If someone can show me evidence that there was influence peddling with those classified documents that were in the possession of President Trump, then we would certainly expand it,” the Kentucky Republican said. He went on to accuse Biden and his family of being “very cozy” with people from the Chinese Communist party but offered no evidence of such links or that they had anything to do with classified documents. His remarks left the impression that his committee is seeking to find evidence to condemn Biden but is treating Trump differently – exactly the kind of double standard the GOP has claimed the DOJ is employing toward Trump.

    The two special counsel investigations probing Trump and Biden’s retention of secret documents are unfolding independently. In a legal sense, there is no overlap between them. But they will both be subject to the same political inferno if findings are made public.

    Were Trump, for instance, to be prosecuted – over what so far appears to be a larger haul of documents and conduct that may add up to obstruction – and Biden is not, the ex-president would incite a firestorm of protest among his supporters. Even though the sitting president enjoys protections from prosecution because of historic Justice Department guidance, it’s hard to see how the political ground for prosecuting just one of them could hold firm – especially if Biden and Trump are rival presidential candidates in 2024.

    From the outside, it appears as if Biden and Pence were far more cooperative with the DOJ and the FBI after some classified documents were found at their properties than Trump has been. It took a search warrant for FBI agents to get into Mar-a-Lago, and the ex-president claimed that presidential documents that belonged to the federal government when he left office belonged to him. But voters might find it hard to understand nuanced legal differences between the two cases – a factor the House Republican counter-attack based on Biden’s documents made more likely.

    As the political fallout from the classified documents furor deepened on Monday, the country got a reminder of the treatment that can await lower-ranking members of the federal workforce when secret material is taken home.

    CNN’s Holmes Lybrand reported that court documents show that a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, who stored files with classified information at his Florida home, will plead guilty in February to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information.

    Robert Birchum served in the Air Force for more than 30 years and previously held top secret clearance. According to his plea agreement, he stored hundreds of files that contained information marked as top secret, secret or confidential classified outside of authorized locations. A plea agreement stated that “the defendant’s residence was not a location authorized to store classified information, and the defendant knew as much.”

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  • A 6th Memphis officer is off the force, and 3 fire department workers are fired as new details emerge from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

    A 6th Memphis officer is off the force, and 3 fire department workers are fired as new details emerge from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic videos and descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    [Breaking news update, published at 5:55 p.m. ET]

    Three Memphis Fire Department personnel who responded to the Tyre Nichols beating have been fired, according to the department.

    [Previous story, published at 5:04 p.m. ET]

    Fallout from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols now includes a sixth Memphis officer removed from duties, demands for more criminal charges against officers and calls for nationwide police reform.

    Officer Preston Hemphill “was relieved of duty with the other officers” involved in the January 7 encounter with Nichols, Memphis police Maj. Karen Rudolph said Monday.

    Hemphill has actually been on administrative leave since the beginning of the investigation, Memphis police spokesperson Kimberly Elder told CNN. Elder declined to say whether Hemphill is being paid or whether any other officers were put on leave.

    Body cam footage reveals Hemphill fired a Taser at Nichols and saying, “One of them prongs hit the bastard.”

    Later, Hemphill says to another officer: “I hope they stomp his ass.”

    Five other Memphis officers have been fired and face charges of second-degree murder in connection with the beating death of Nichols.

    Hemphill has not been charged. “He was never present at the second scene” that escalated to the beating, and Hemphill has been cooperating with the investigation, his attorney Lee Gerald said.

    Attorneys for Nichols’ family wonder why authorities were quick to fire five Black police officers and charge them with murder – while staying relatively quiet about Hemphill role in the encounter.

    “The news today from Memphis officials that Officer Preston Hemphill was reportedly relieved of duty weeks ago, but not yet terminated or charged, is extremely disappointing. Why is his identity and the role he played in Tyre’s death just now coming to light?” attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said in a statement Monday.

    “It certainly begs the question why the White officer involved in this brutal attack was shielded and protected from the public eye.”

    But officials knew releasing video footage of Nichols’ beating without filing charges against officers could be “incendiary,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Sunday. “The best solution was to expedite the investigation and to expedite the consideration of charges so that the charges could come first and then the release of the video,” he said.

    Video of the gruesome beating “outraged” the Memphis police chief. The footage showed “acts that defy humanity,” Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said.

    The attack has fueled broader public scrutiny of how US police use force, especially against people of color. And weeks after Nichols’ death, many questions remain. Among them:

    • Whether more officers will face charges or other: Memphis City Council member Frank Colvett said he wanted to know why more officers at the scene of Nichols’ beating scene had not been disciplined or suspended.

    It’s also not clear whether Hemphill or others will face criminal charges. “We are looking at all of the officers and first responders at the scene,” Shelby County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Erica Williams said Monday. “They could face charges, or they could not, but we are looking at everyone.”

    It was “unprecedented” for indictment charges against the officers to come within weeks, said Mulroy, the Shelby County district attorney.

    • How Memphis’ police chief will fare: While some have praised Chief Davis’ swift action in the case, she also created the controversial SCORPION unit that the charged officers were linked to. “There is a reckoning coming for the police department and for the leadership,” Colvett said. “She’s going to have to answer not just to the council but to the citizens – and really the world.”

    • What happens to fire and sheriff’s personnel: Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

    And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.

    • If Nichols’ death spurs national-level police reform: The Congressional Black Caucus has asked for a meeting with President Joe Biden this week to push for negotiations on police reform.

    Video of the fatal encounter is difficult to watch. It starts with a traffic stop and later shows officers repeatedly beating Nichols with batons, punching him and kicking him – even as his hands are restrained behind his back at one point.

    Nichols is heard calling for his mother as he was kicked and pepper-sprayed.

    He was left slumped to the ground in handcuffs. Another 23 minutes passed before a stretcher arrived at the scene. Nichols was hospitalized and died three days later.

    “All of these officers failed their oath,” said Crump, one of the attorneys representing the Nichols family, “They failed their oath to protect and serve.”

    At the residential street corner where Nichols was beaten, mourners created a makeshift memorial. Across the country, protesters marched in cities including New York, Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles.

    Nichols’ family remembered him as a good son and father who enjoyed skateboarding, photography and sunsets. They recalled his smile and hugs and mourned the moments they’ll never have again.

    Family members promised to “keep saying his name until justice is served.”

    Protesters gather Saturday in New York to denounce the police beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.

    The five fired officers charged in connection with Nichols’ beating – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr. – are expected to be arraigned February 17.

    From top left: Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Demetrius Haley. From bottom left: Justin Smith and Tadarrius Bean.

    Mills Jr. didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation with Nichols and instead was a “victim” of the system he worked within, his attorney, Blake Ballin, told CNN.

    Martin’s attorney, William Massey, said “no one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die.”

    Attorneys for the other former officers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The Memphis Police Association declined to comment on the terminations beyond saying the city of Memphis and Nichols’ family “deserve to know the complete account of the events leading up to his death and what may have contributed to it,” the union said in a statement.

    The Shelby County district attorney’s office said each of the five fired officers face seven counts, including: second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated kidnapping in possession of a deadly weapon, official misconduct and official oppression.

    But a second-degree murder charge – which requires intent to kill – might be harder to prove than a first-degree felony murder charge, said Alexis Hoag-Fordjour, assistant professor of law and co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice at Brooklyn Law School.

    “For first-degree felony murder, it means that a murder happened in conjunction with an underlying felony,” said Hoag-Fordjour, noting she practiced law in Tennessee.

    “Here, every single charge that the Memphis district attorney charged these five individuals with were felonies. And the underlying felony that would support a first-degree murder charge – felony murder – is kidnapping.”

    The kidnapping counts against officers may seem unusual because “we obviously deputize law enforcement officials to make seizures, to make arrests,” Hoag-Fordjour told “CNN This Morning” on Monday.

    “But at this point … what would have been legitimate behavior crossed the line into illegitimacy.”

    While first-degree felony murder might be easier to prove, Hoag-Fordjour said, second-degree murder convictions are still possible.

    Under Tennessee law, a person can be convicted of second-degree murder if they could be reasonably certain their actions would result in somebody’s death, Hoag-Fordjour said.

    And some of the blows dealt to Nichols – including kicks to the head and strikes with a baton while he was subdued on the ground – could be deemed deadly, she said.

    The five fired officers charged in Nichols’ beating were members of the now-scrapped SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) unit, Memphis police spokesperson Maj. Karen Rudolph said Saturday.

    Hemphill, the officer placed on administrative leave, was also a member of the SCORPION unit, a source familiar with his assignment confirmed to CNN.

    The unit, launched in 2021, put officers into areas where police were tracking upticks in violent crime.

    “That reprehensible conduct we saw in that video, we think this was part of the culture of the SCORPION unit,” Crump said.

    “We demanded that they disbanded immediately before we see anything like this happen again,” he said. “It was the culture that was just as guilty for killing Tyre Nichols as those officers.”

    Memphis police will permanently deactivate the unit. “While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted,” the department said.

    Colvett supported the dismantling of the SCORPION unit.

    “I think the smart move and the mayor is correct in shutting it down,” the council member said. “These kinds of actions are not representative of the Memphis Police Department.”

    The case should give the city a chance to “dig deeper” into community and police relations, City Council member Michalyn Easter-Thomas said.

    “We saw a very peaceful and direct sense of protest in the city of Memphis, and I think it’s because maybe we do have faith and hope that the system is going to get it right this time,” Easter-Thomas said.

    Crump called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 but t.

    “The brutal beating of Tyre Nichols was murder and is a grim reminder that we still have a long way to go in solving systemic police violence in America,” Congressional Black Caucus chair Rep. Steven Horsford said Sunday in a statement.

    The Tennessee State Conference NAACP president applauded Davis for “doing the right thing” by not waiting six months to a year to fire the officers who beat Tyre Nichols.

    But she had had harsher words for Congress: “By failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality, you’re writing another Black man’s obituary,” said Gloria Sweet-Love. “The blood of Black America is on your hands. So, stand up and do something.”

    On the state level, two Democratic lawmakers said they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the general assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline.

    The bills would seek to address mental health care for law enforcement officers, hiring, training, discipline practices and other topics, said Tennessee state Rep. G.A. Hardaway, who represents a part of Memphis and Shelby County.

    While Democrats hold the minority, with 24 representatives compared to 99 GOP representatives, this legislation is not partisan and should pass on both sides of the legislature, Rep. Joe Towns Jr. said.

    “You would be hard-pressed to look at this footage (of Tyre Nichols) and see what happened to that young man, OK, and not want to do something,” he said. “If a dog in this county was beaten like that, what the hell would happen?”

    Correction: An earlier version of this story had the wrong first name for Tyre Nichols.

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  • DOJ tells senators it is working to satisfy Trump and Biden document demands without harming special counsel probes | CNN Politics

    DOJ tells senators it is working to satisfy Trump and Biden document demands without harming special counsel probes | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department has told lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee that it is working to satisfy their demands for information about classified documents found at properties of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump without harming ongoing special counsel investigations into both matters, according to a new letter obtained by CNN.

    The DOJ letter, dated Saturday, responds to the committee’s August request for information about the documents recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and follow-up inquiries by the panel about classified material found at the Penn Biden Center as well as Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.

    “We are working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to support the provision of information that will satisfy the Committee’s responsibilities without harming the ongoing Special Counsel investigations,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote to Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, the Intelligence panel’s top lawmakers.

    “Although one of the Special Counsels was appointed only on January 12, prosecutors on both matters are actively working to enable sharing information with the Committee,” Uriarte said.

    The letter also notes that the DOJ “worked in good faith to schedule a briefing in September 2022,” but since that time, there have been “significant developments, including the appointment of two separate Special Counsels to handle the respective matters.”

    “The Department looks forward to continuing to engage with the Committee to meet its needs while protecting the Department’s interests,” the letter states.

    The DOJ’s response, which was also sent to the top lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, comes with Warner and Rubio reiterating their call for department to share the classified documents obtained from the properties of Biden and Trump.

    In an interview Sunday with “Face the Nation” on CBS, Warner and Rubio objected to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s policy to withhold the documents until the special counsels handling each investigation give authorization. Warner said the DOJ policy “doesn’t hold water.”

    “Our job is to make sure there’s not an intelligence compromise, and while the Director of National Intelligence had been willing to brief us earlier, now that you’ve got the special counsel, the notion that we’re going to be left in limbo, and we can’t do our job, that just cannot stand,” the Virginia Democrat said.

    Rubio called into question the logic behind the Justice Department’s position to not share the documents with the committee, arguing that as members of the Senate Intelligence panel, it’s likely they already have the proper clearance to view the documents.

    “I don’t know how congressional oversight on the document, actually knowing what they are, in any way impedes an investigation,” the Florida Republican said. “These are probably materials we already have access to. We just don’t know which ones they are.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Prosecutors in Alex Murdaugh murder trial play recording of his first interview after bodies of his son and wife were found | CNN

    Prosecutors in Alex Murdaugh murder trial play recording of his first interview after bodies of his son and wife were found | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    On the third day of the murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh, prosecutors showed the court video of Murdaugh’s first interview with authorities after his wife and son were found killed.

    In the interview, which had not been released publicly previously, Murdaugh described arriving at the scene where he could see the two bodies and told investigator he could see things were “bad” when he first pulled up to the home.

    Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime related to the deaths of his wife, Margaret, and son, Paul, who was 22 at the time of the June 7, 2021 crime. Opening statements for Murdaugh’s murder trial began earlier this week and is now in recess for the weekend, with the prosecution’s ninth witness still on the stand.

    In the interview played in court on Friday, Murdaugh told investigators he had left home that night to go check on his mother, who is a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient.

    Murdaugh said that after arriving and seeing the bodies, he tried to turn his son’s body over and then went over to his wife. He told investigators he touched both of them to try and take their pulse, adding he “tried to do it as limited as possible,” according to the video recording.

    He said there was blood around his son’s body but that he didn’t see anything else around other than Paul’s cellphone. Murdaugh broke down several times during the interview.

    Murdaugh said he called 911 and later his brothers and a good friend.

    Colleton County, South Carolina, Sheriff’s Office Det. Laura Rutland, who was among the officers who interviewed Murdaugh hours after the bodies were found, testified on Friday she did not see footprints or knee prints in the blood near Paul’s body.

    She also testified that she had seen Murdaugh’s hands and shirt that night and he was “clean,” telling the court she did not see any blood on him.

    In the video recording played in court, Murdaugh was asked by another law enforcement officer if there had been any problems and Murdaugh responded,”Nothing that I know of,” but added there had been negative publicity following a boat accident that Paul, his son, was involved in.

    At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges of boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm and causing death in connection to a 2019 boat crash that claimed the life of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, court records show.

    Alex Murdaugh said in the recording there had been some “vile stuff’ online directed at his son and that Paul had been “punched and hit and just attacked a lot,” but acknowledge he had not witnessed those incidents.

    Murdaugh then went on to allude about a man he recently had hired who Murdaugh said had allegedly shared a “freaky” story with Paul about getting drafted on an undercover team to “kill radical Black Panthers.”

    “I really do not think that in all honesty that it’s him, but I think you oughta check it out,” Murdaugh continued, according to the recording.

    Murdaugh also told investigators he owned about 20 or 25 guns.

    During cross examination, defense attorney Jim Griffin questioned Rutland about how another agent collected the clothing that Murdaugh was wearing that night and asked her if she had followed proper protocol, seeming to question the integrity of the investigation.

    Griffin also asked Rutland about notes in her report that night which said Murdaugh’s wife appeared to have strands of brown hair in her hands and fingers and that Paul appeared to have scratches on his face. Rutland told the court she noted what she observed.

    The prosecution also called as their eighth witness another agent, who testified she collected samples from the two bodies and a ninth witness, also an agent, who is expected to resume testimony on Monday morning.

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  • A timeline of the investigations into Tyre Nichols’ death after a traffic stop and arrest by Memphis police | CNN

    A timeline of the investigations into Tyre Nichols’ death after a traffic stop and arrest by Memphis police | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly three weeks after a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee, resulted in a violent arrest and subsequent death of a driver, police are expected to release footage of the incident to the public.

    Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was hospitalized after the arrest on January 7 and died three days later from injuries sustained, according to police. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department, who are also Black, were fired and face criminal charges.

    The family of Nichols and attorneys have met with police and city officials to view the traffic stop’s video recordings, which have been described as a vicious, prolonged beating that lasted for minutes after officers chased down a fleeing Nichols.

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis decried the officers’ conduct, adding additional officers continue to be investigated.

    “This is not just a professional failing,” Davis said. “This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual. This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane. And in the vein of transparency, when the video is released in the coming days, you will see this for yourselves.”

    After charges were announced Thursday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said of the accelerated investigation, “We have worked to get a resolution to these matters in record time because we take them extremely seriously.”

    Here’s what we know about the timeline of the incident, investigations from authorities and reaction from Nichols’ family:

    On January 7 at approximately 8:30 p.m., officers pulled over a vehicle for suspected reckless driving, according to a statement from Memphis police.

    “A confrontation occurred” between officers and the vehicle’s driver – later identified as Nichols – who then fled on foot, according to Memphis police. Officers apprehended him and “another confrontation occurred,” resulting in Nichols’ arrest, police said.

    An ambulance was called to the scene of the arrest after Nichols complained of shortness of breath, police said, and he was transported to a nearby hospital in critical condition.

    On January 10, three days after the stop, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced Nichols had died due to injuries sustained in the “use-of-force incident with officers,” according to a statement.

    Following the traffic stop, the officers involved were relieved of duty – a standard departmental procedure while an investigation into their use of force began, Memphis police said. The TBI and the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office were also enlisted to investigate.

    Preliminary findings indicated the serious nature of the officers’ conduct during the stop, police said.

    “After reviewing various sources of information involving this incident, I have found that it is necessary to take immediate and appropriate action,” Chief Davis said in a statement released January 15. “Today, the department is serving notice to the officers involved of the impending administrative actions.”

    The department needed to follow a required procedural process before disciplining or terminating government civil servant employees, the statement added.

    In the days after Nichols’ death, his family’s attorney Ben Crump repeatedly voiced their desire for the release of body camera and surveillance footage of the traffic stop.

    “This kind of in-custody death destroys community trust if agencies are not swiftly transparent,” Crump said in a statement.

    On January 18, the Department of Justice said a civil rights investigation has been opened into the death of Nichols.

    “Last week, Tyre Nichols tragically died, a few days after he was involved in an incident where Memphis Police Department officers used force during his arrest,” Kevin G. Ritz, US Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, said in a statement.

    Acknowledging the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s ongoing efforts, the US Attorney’s office “in coordination with the FBI Memphis Field Office and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, has opened a civil rights investigation,” Ritz said, declining to provide further details.

    After its internal investigation, Memphis police identified and fired five officers involved in the traffic stop due to their violation of multiple department policies.

    Officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith were terminated for failing in their “excessive use of force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid,” the department said in a statement.

    “The egregious nature of this incident is not a reflection of the good work our officers perform, with integrity every day,” Davis said.

    A statement from the Memphis Police Association, the union representing the officers, declined to comment on the terminations beyond saying that the city of Memphis and Nichols’ family “deserve to know the complete account of the events leading up to his death and what may have contributed to it.”

    Nichols family attorneys Crump and Antonio Romanucci called the firing of the five officers “the first step towards achieving justice for Tyre and his family.”

    Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” were also fired, department Public Information Officer Qwanesha Ward told CNN’s Nadia Romero.

    After meeting with officials to watch the unreleased police video of the arrest, Nichols’ family and their attorneys described their horror at what they saw.

    “He was defenseless the entire time. He was a human piñata for those police officers. It was an unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for three minutes. That is what we saw in that video,” Romanucci said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

    “What I saw on the video today was horrific,” Rodney Wells, Nichols’ stepfather, said Monday. “No father, mother should have to witness what I saw today.”

    Crump described the video as “appalling,” “deplorable” and “heinous.” He said RowVaughn Wells, Nichols’ mother, was unable to get through viewing the first minute of the footage after hearing Nichols ask, “What did I do?” At the end of the footage, Nichols can be heard calling for his mother three times, the attorney said.

    According to preliminary results of an autopsy commissioned by attorneys for his family, Nichols suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” CNN has requested a copy of the autopsy, which Crump said will be available when the full report is ready.

    Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy told CNN on Tuesday his office was ensuring all necessary interviews with those involved had been conducted before the footage’s release.

    “A lot of the people’s questions about what exactly happened will, of course, be answered once people see the video,” Mulroy said, noting he believes the city will release enough footage to show the “entirety of the incident, from the very beginning to the very end.”

    Civil rights attorney Ben Crump speaks at a news conference with the family of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, as RowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre, right, and Tyre's stepfather Rodney Wells, along with attorney Tony Romanucci, left, also stand with Crump, in Memphis, Tenn., Monday, Jan. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Tyre Nichols’ family speaks out after seeing police footage of police beating

    A grand jury indicted the five officers fired by Memphis police on several charges, according to the county’s district attorney.

    Martin III, Smith, Bean, Haley and Mills, Jr. were each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, according to both Shelby County criminal court and Shelby County jail records.

    “While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” Mulroy said during a news conference.

    All five former officers reported to Shelby County Jail on Thursday, with four bonding out by early Friday morning, jail records showed.

    ben crump tyre nichols

    Crump: Nichols video will ‘remind you of Rodney King’

    Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled RowVaughn Wells’ first name.

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  • Five former Memphis police officers indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping in Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

    Five former Memphis police officers indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping in Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Five former Memphis police officers who were fired for their actions during the arrest of Tyre Nichols earlier this month were indicted on charges including murder and kidnapping, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy announced Thursday.

    The former officers, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., have each been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, Mulroy said.

    “While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” he said.

    Live updates on the Tyre Nichols case

    Second-degree murder is defined in Tennessee as a “knowing killing of another” and is considered a Class A felony punishable by between 15 to 60 years in prison.

    The criminal charges come about three weeks after Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was hospitalized after a traffic stop and “confrontation” with Memphis police that family attorneys have called a savage beating. Nichols died from his injuries on January 10, three days after the arrest, authorities said.

    Four of the officers remained in custody Thursday evening, after being booked into the Shelby County Jail. Bond was set at $350,000 for Haley, 30, and Martin, 30, and $250,000 for Bean, 24, and Smith, 28, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Mills, 32, posted $250,000 bond Thursday evening and was released, according to jail records.

    In a joint news conference Thursday afternoon, Blake Ballin, an attorney for Mills, and William Massey, Martin’s attorney, said they have not yet watched the video of the police encounter, which is expected to be released to the public Friday.

    Ballin described Mills as a “respectful father,” who was “devastated” to be accused in the killing. Mills, previously a jailer in Mississippi and Tennessee, was in the process of posting bond Thursday to secure his release and plans to enter a not guilty plea in court, his attorney said. Ballin said he had not spoken to Mills specifically about Nichols.

    Martin also intended to post bond and will also plead not guilty, his attorney said. “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” Massey said.

    Other officers’ attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Police nationwide have been under heightened scrutiny for how they treat Black people, particularly since the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the mass protest movement known as Black Lives Matter. Officials in Memphis have braced for potential civil unrest due to Nichols’ death and have called for peaceful protests.

    President Joe Biden said in a Thursday statement the killing is a “painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment, and dignity for all.”

    Video of the fatal police encounter, a mix of body-camera and pole-cam video, is expected to be released publicly after 6 p.m. Friday, Mulroy said.

    Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday night, Mulroy said that while he can’t definitively say what caused the encounter to escalate, the video shows that the officers were “already highly charged up” from the start of the video and “it just escalated further from there.”

    The video doesn’t capture the beginning of the altercation between the officers and Nichols but rather “cuts in as the first encounter is in progress,” Mulroy said.

    “What struck me (about the video) is how many different incidents of unwarranted force occurred sporadically by different individuals over a long period of time,” the district attorney added.

    Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said the fatal encounter was not proper policing.

    “I’m sickened by what I saw and what we’ve learned from our extensive and thorough investigation,” he said. “I’ve seen the video, and as DA Mulroy stated, you will too. In a word, it’s absolutely appalling.”

    Nichols’ family and attorneys were shown the video on Monday and said it shows officers severely beating Nichols and compared it to the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King in 1991.

    “The news today from Memphis officials that these five officers are being held criminally accountable for their deadly and brutal actions gives us hope as we continue to push for justice for Tyre,” attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said Thursday.

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis took on the position in June 2021.

    The five Memphis police officers, who are also Black, were fired last week for violating policies on excessive use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid, the department said.

    In a YouTube video released late Wednesday, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis condemned the officers’ actions and called for peaceful protests when the arrest video is released.

    “This is not just a professional failing. This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual,” Davis said in the video, her first on-camera comments about the arrest. “This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane.”

    “I expect our citizens to exercise their First Amendment right to protest to demand action and results. But we need to ensure our community is safe in this process,” said Davis, the first Black woman to serve as Memphis police chief. “None of this is a calling card for inciting violence or destruction on our community or against our citizens.”

    The five terminated officers all joined the department in the last six years, according to police. Other Memphis police officers are still under investigation for department policy violations related to the incident, the chief said.

    In a statement posted Thursday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the city had initiated an “outside, independent review” of the training, policies and operations of the police department’s specialized units. At least two of the officers belonged to one of those special units, according to their attorneys.

    Two members of the city’s fire department who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” also were relieved of duty, a fire spokesperson said. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced an investigation into Nichols’ death and the US Department of Justice and FBI have opened a civil rights investigation.

    Mulroy said the investigation is ongoing and there could be further charges going forward.

    Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies nationwide are bracing for protests and potential unrest following the release of video, multiple sources told CNN.

    The Memphis Police Department has terminated five police officers in connection with the death of Tyre Nichols. Top: Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmit Martin. Bottom: Desmond Mills Jr., Justin Smith

    Nichols, the father of a 4-year-old, had worked with his stepfather at FedEx for about nine months, his family said. He was fond of skateboarding in Shelby Farms Park, Starbucks with friends and photographing sunsets, and he had his mother’s name tattooed on his arm, the family said. He also had the digestive issue known as Crohn’s disease and so was a slim 140 to 145 pounds despite his 6-foot-3-inch height, his mother said.

    On January 7, he was pulled over by Memphis officers on suspicion of reckless driving, police said in their initial statement on the incident. As officers approached the vehicle, a “confrontation” occurred and Nichols fled on foot, police said. The officers pursued him and they had another “confrontation” before he was taken into custody, police said.

    Nichols then complained of shortness of breath, was taken to a local hospital in critical condition and died three days later, police said.

    In Memphis police scanner audio, a person says there was “one male Black running” and called to “set up a perimeter.” Another message says “he’s fighting at this time.”

    On Thursday, Mulroy offered a few further details, saying the serious injuries occurred at the second confrontation. He also said Nichols was taken away in an ambulance after “some period of time of waiting around.”

    Attorneys for Nichols’ family who watched video of the arrest on Monday described it as a heinous police beating that lasted three long minutes. Crump said Nichols was tased, pepper-sprayed and restrained, and Romanucci said he was kicked.

    “He was defenseless the entire time. He was a human piñata for those police officers. It was an unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for three minutes. That is what we saw in that video,” Romanucci said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

    Nichols had “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” according to the attorneys, citing preliminary results of an autopsy they commissioned.

    Among the charges, the officers were indicted on two counts of aggravated kidnapping: one for possession of a weapon and one for bodily injury.

    “At a certain point in the sequence of events, it is our view that this, if it was a legal detention to begin with, it certainly became illegal at a certain point, and it was an unlawful detention,” Mulroy said.

    Less than a month after the murder of Floyd, the Memphis Police Department amended its duty to intervene policy, according to a copy of the policy sent to CNN by the MPD.

    “Any member who directly observes another member engaged in dangerous or criminal conduct or abuse of a subject shall take reasonable action to intervene,” the policy, sent out on June 9, 2020, said.

    “A member shall immediately report to the Department any violation of policies and regulations or any other improper conduct which is contrary to the policy, order, or directives of the Department.”

    The policy went on to say “this reporting requirement also applies to allegations of uses of force not yet reported.”

    Correction: A previous version of this story gave the wrong spelling for the name of one of the arrested officers. According to the indictment, it is Tadarrius Bean.

    Previous versions of this story spelled Emmitt Martin’s name incorrectly.

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  • Brett Kavanaugh Fast Facts | CNN

    Brett Kavanaugh Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

    Birth date: February 12, 1965

    Birth place: Washington, DC

    Birth name: Brett Michael Kavanaugh

    Father: Everett Edward Kavanaugh Jr., president of a trade association

    Mother: Martha Kavanaugh, teacher, prosecutor and judge

    Marriage: Ashley (Estes) Kavanaugh

    Children: Liza and Margaret

    Education: Yale College, B.A., 1987, graduated cum laude; Yale Law School, J.D., 1990

    Religion: Roman Catholic

    Regularly taught courses on separation of powers and on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School.

    Kavanaugh finished the Boston Marathon in 2010 and in 2015.

    1990-1991 – Law clerk to Judge Walter Stapleton of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

    1991-1992 – Clerks for Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

    1992-1993 – Attorney with the Solicitor General’s Office at the Department of Justice.

    1993-1994 – Serves as law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy.

    1994-1997 and 1998 – Associate counsel for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation, which leads to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

    1997-1998 and 1999-2001 – Partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, DC.

    2001-2003 – Serves as associate counsel and then senior associate counsel to President George W. Bush.

    July 25, 2003 – Bush nominates Kavanaugh to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the Senate doesn’t vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination for almost three years.

    July 2003-May 2006 – Serves as assistant and staff secretary to Bush.

    May 26, 2006 – The Senate confirms Kavanaugh to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 57-36.

    May 30, 2006 – Sworn in by Kennedy.

    July 9, 2018 – President Donald Trump announces Kavanaugh as his nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Kennedy’s retirement.

    September 4-7, 2018 – Confirmation hearings are held on Capitol Hill. A Senate Judiciary Committee vote is tentatively slated for the week of September 17.

    September 16, 2018 – The Washington Post publishes an article about a California psychology professor who accuses Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her when they were both teenagers at a house party during the early 1980s. Christine Blasey Ford says she initially sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein about the incident when Kavanaugh’s name was included on a shortlist for the Supreme Court. Ford tells the newspaper she initially did not want to go public but she decided to talk on the record because her letter to Feinstein had been leaked to the media. Kavanaugh denies that such an incident ever took place.

    September 23, 2018 – The New Yorker magazine publishes a report about a second allegation of sexual misconduct, prompting Feinstein to call for a postponement of confirmation proceedings. The magazine article centers on a college classmate from Yale, Deborah Ramirez who says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while a group of students were drinking at a party in a dorm during the 1983-1984 academic year. Kavanaugh denies the allegation and a White House spokeswoman dismisses the claim as uncorroborated.

    September 27, 2018 – Kavanaugh and Ford testify during an all-day hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    September 28, 2018 – GOP Senator Jeff Flake, a member of the Judiciary Committee, agrees to vote yes, paving the way to a floor vote but he says the FBI should reopen its background investigation of Kavanaugh and spend a week looking into claims made by Kavanaugh’s accusers. Trump later agrees to direct the FBI to reopen its background check but the probe will be limited in scope and must be completed in a week.

    October 3, 2018 – The FBI completes its supplemental background check and sends the information to the Senate late in the day.

    October 4, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed by Kavanaugh in which argues that he is an independent, impartial judge. He expresses regret for a few of his statements during the September 27 hearing, explaining that he was frustrated and emotional. He pledges, going forward, that litigants and colleagues will be treated with respect. The same day, retired Justice John Paul Stevens says that Kavanaugh’s comments during his confirmation hearings suggest bias. Stevens says Kavanaugh should not serve on the Supreme Court.

    October 6, 2018 – The Senate confirms Kavanaugh with a 50-48 vote. He is sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts during a private ceremony. The vote takes place amid public protests for and against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

    September 14, 2019 – The New York Times publishes an article adapted from a forthcoming book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh” that contains a new allegation of college sexual misconduct. According to the report, the FBI did not investigate the new allegation and the bureau did not speak with witnesses to verify Ramirez’s original claim.

    July 2020 – An exclusive CNN report says Kavanaugh urged his colleagues in a series of private memos this spring to consider avoiding decisions in major disputes over abortion and Democratic subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, according to multiple sources familiar with the inner workings of the court.

    October 28, 2020 – Kavanaugh tweaks a line in his controversial opinion on Wisconsin mail-in voting, after he received criticism for incorrectly saying Vermont had not changed its election rules due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    July 22, 2021 – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse releases a letter from the FBI disclosing that it received more than 4,500 tips on a phone line in 2018 as part of a background investigation Kavanaugh and provided “relevant” ones to former President Trump’s White House counsel.

    October 1, 2021 – The Supreme Court announces that Kavanaugh has tested positive for Covid-19. This is the first publicly known case of coronavirus among the high court’s justices. Kavanaugh was fully vaccinated, according to the court.

    June 8, 2022 – Nicholas John Roske is arrested near Kavanaugh’s house, after calling emergency authorities to say he was having suicidal thoughts, had a firearm in his suitcase, and had traveled from California “to kill a specific US Supreme Court Justice.” The Justice Department charges him with attempting to kidnap or murder a US judge.

    January 20, 2023 – “Justice,” a documentary examining the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival.

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