LOS ANGELES — A California man has been sentenced to eight years in prison after admitting to shipping weapons and ammunition to North Korea that he said were to be used for a surprise attack on South Korea, authorities said Tuesday.
Shenghua Wen, 42, came to the U.S. from China on a student visa in 2012 and remained in the country illegally after it expired, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Wen pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, the statement says. He was sentenced on Monday.
Wen told investigators that before he entered the U.S., he met with North Korean officials at an embassy in China, where they instructed him to procure goods for the North Korean government. He also admitted that he tried to buy uniforms to disguise North Korean soldiers for the surprise attack, a federal complaint says.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has demonstrated an intent to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons along the North’s border with South Korea, a U.S. ally, recently delivering nuclear-capable missile launchers to frontline military units.
United Nations resolutions ban North Korea from importing or exporting weapons.
In 2022, North Korean officials contacted him via an online messaging app and instructed him to buy firearms, prosecutors said. He shipped two containers of weapons and other items from Long Beach, California, to North Korea via Hong Kong in 2023. He told U.S. authorities that he was wired about $2 million to do so, according to the complaint.
Authorities did not specify in the complaint the types of weapons that were exported.
To carry out his operation, Wen purchased a business in 2023 called Super Armory, a federal firearms licensee, for $150,000, and registered it under his business partner’s name in Texas. He had other people purchase the firearms and then drove them to California, misrepresenting the shipments as a refrigerator and camera parts. Investigators did not say whether Wen had organized any shipments during his first 10 years in the U.S.
The FBI in September seized 50,000 rounds of ammunition from Wen’s home in the LA suburb of Ontario that had been stored in a van parked in the driveway, the complaint says. They also seized a chemical threat identification device and a transmission detective device that Wen said he planned to send to the North Korean government for military use, the complaint says.
As his administration faces mounting pressure to release Justice Department files related the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case, President Donald Trump is highlighting a different criminal justice issue — cashless bail.
He suggested in a Truth Social post this week that eliminating cash bail as a condition of pretrial release from jail has led to rising crime in U.S. cities that have enacted these reforms. However, studies have shown no clear link.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP: “Crime in American Cities started to significantly rise when they went to CASHLESS BAIL. The WORST criminals are flooding our streets and endangering even our great law enforcement officers. It is a complete disaster, and must be ended, IMMEDIATELY!”
THE FACTS: Data has not determined the impact of cashless bail on crime rates. But experts say it is incorrect to claim that there is an adverse connection.
“I don’t know of any valid studies corroborating the President’s claim and would love to know what the Administration offers in support,” said Kellen Funk, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies pretrial procedure and bail bonding. “In my professional judgment I’d call the claim demonstrably false and inflammatory.”
Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, the main lobbying arm of the cash bail industry, also pointed to a lack of evidence.
“Studies are inconclusive in terms of whether bail reforms have had an impact on overall crime numbers,” he said. “This is due to pretrial crime being a small subset of overall crime. It is also difficult to categorize reforms as being ‘cashless’ or not, i.e., policies where preventative detention is introduced as an alternative to being held on bail.”
Different jurisdictions, different laws
In 2023, Illinois became the first state to completely eliminate cash bail when the state Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law abolishing it. The move was part of an expansive criminal justice overhaul adopted in 2021 known as the SAFE-T Act. Under the change, a judge decides whether to release the defendant prior to their trial, weighing factors such as their criminal charges, if they could pose any danger to others and if they are considered a flight risk.
Loyola University of Chicago’s Center for Criminal Justice published a 2024 report on Illinois’ new cashless bail policy, one year after it went into effect. It acknowledges that there is not yet enough data to know what impact the law has had on crime, but that crime in Illinois did not increase after its implementation. Violent and property crime declined in some counties.
A number of other jurisdictions, including New Jersey, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., have nearly eliminated cash bail or limited its use. Many include exceptions for high-level crimes.
Proponents of eliminating cash bail describe it as a penalty on poverty, suggesting that the wealthy can pay their way out of jail to await trial while those with fewer financial resources have to sit it out behind bars. Critics have argued that bail is a time-honored way to ensure defendants released from jail show up for court proceedings. They warn that violent criminals will be released pending trial, giving them license to commit other crimes.
A lack of consensus
Studies have shown mixed results regarding the impact of cashless bail on crime. Many focus on the recidivism of individual defendants rather than overall crime rates.
A 2024 report published by the Brennan Center for Justice saw “no statistically significant relationship” between bail reform and crime rates. It looked at crime rate data from 2015 through 2021 for 33 cities across the U.S., 22 of which had instituted some type of bail reform. Researchers used a statistical method to determine if crime rates had diverged in those with reforms and those without.
Ames Grawert, the report’s co-author and senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, said this conclusion “holds true for trends in crime overall or specifically violent crime.”
Similarly, a 2023 paper published in the American Economic Journal found no evidence that cash bail helps ensure defendants will show up in court or prevents crime among those who are released while awaiting trial. The paper evaluated the impact of a 2018 policy instituted by the Philadelphia’s district attorney that instructed prosecutors not to set bail for certain offenses.
A 2019 court decree in Harris County, Texas, requires most people charged with a misdemeanor to be released without bail while awaiting trial. The latest report from the monitoring team responsible for tracking the impact of this decision, released in 2024, notes that the number of people arrested for misdemeanors has declined by more than 15% since 2015. The number of those rearrested within one year has similarly declined, with rearrest rates remaining stable in recent years.
Asked what data Trump was using to support his claim, the White House pointed to a 2022 report from the district attorney’s office in Yolo County, California, that looked at how a temporary cashless bail system implemented across the state to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks in courts and jails impacted recidivism. It found that out of 595 individuals released between April 2020 and May 2021 under this system, 70.6% were arrested again after they were released. A little more than half were rearrested more than once.
A more recent paper, published in February by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, also explored the effects of California’s decision to suspend most bail during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reports that implementation of this policy “caused notable increases in both the likelihood and number of rearrests within 30 days.” However, a return to cash bail did not impact the number of rearrests for any type of offense. The paper acknowledges that other factors, such as societal disruption from the pandemic, could have contributed to the initial increase.
Many contributing factors
It is difficult to pinpoint specific explanations for why crime rises and falls.
The American Bail Coalition’s Clayton noted that other policies that have had a negative impact on crime, implemented concurrently with bail reforms, make it “difficult to isolate or elevate one or more causes over the others.”
Paul Heaton, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies criminal justice interventions, had a similar outlook.
“Certainly there are some policy levers that people look at — the size of the police force and certain policies around sentencing,” he said. “But there’s a lot of variation in crime that I think even criminologists don’t necessarily fully understand.”
BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s security forces arrested the son-in-law of the country’s former longtime military ruler, Than Shwe, for allegedly posting inflammatory statements on his Facebook account, the state-run media said Friday.
Nay Soe Maung, a 67-year-old retired colonel and a former army medical officer, was the latest to be arrested and jailed for writing Facebook posts that allegedly spread inflammatory news.
His arrest came two weeks after he posted criticism of the current military leader and his condolences for the death of Zaw Myint Maung, a senior member of Myanmar’s former ruling party whose government was ousted during the 2021 military takeover.
The state-run The Mirror Daily newspaper said Nay Soe Maung was detained and prosecuted at a police station in Pyigyidagun township in Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city on Wednesday.
Friday’s report said people who make incitements or share propaganda and support for opposition groups on social media will be prosecuted under the country’s laws including counter-terrorism, electronic transactions, sedition and incitement.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb.1, 2021. The army’s takeover triggered mass public protests that the military and police responded to with lethal force, triggering armed resistance and violence that has escalated into a civil war.
Myanmar’s military leadership is known for being close-knit, secretive and sensitive.
Data for Myanmar, an independent research group, said in a report last month that about 1,691 people were detained for criticizing the military regime and showing support for opposition groups on social media since the army takeover.
Nay Soe Maung is married to a daughter of dictator Than Shwe, who ruled from 1992 until 2011, when he handed power to a nominally civilian, pro-military government. During his rule, he led a feared junta that brutally crushed dissent and routinely jailed political opponents, including Suu Kyi, the charismatic face of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement.
Nay Soe Maung served as a lecturer and rector of the University of Public Health, Yangon, the country’s largest city, after retiring as army doctor.
Before the army’s 2021 takeover, he had express support for the previous government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and joined peaceful protests on the streets in Yangon after the military arrested her during the takeover.
Days before his arrest, he posted condolences on the death of Zaw Myint Maung, Suu Kyi’s colleague and spokesperson of her NLD party.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday from Michael Cohen, who wanted to hold his former boss and ex-president Donald Trump liable for a jailing he said was retaliation for writing a tell-all memoir.
The justices did not detail their reasoning in the brief, routine order released just over two weeks before Election Day where Trump is running for another term.
Trump attorney Alina Habba said the Supreme Court had correctly denied Cohen’s petition, and “he must finally abandon his frivolous and desperate claims.”
Cohen has framed the suit as an accountability measure, saying in court documents the case raises “fundamental questions about the meaning and value of constitutional rights.”
Cohen had asked the high court to revive a lawsuit tossed out by lower courts. Those judges found people couldn’t generally sue over claims they were jailed for criticizing a president, and that the situation had been dealt with when Cohen was released from custody.
He filed the lawsuit after his early release from prison was quickly reversed.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to charges connected in part to the payment of hush money to porn actor Stormy Daniels to avoid damage to Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
Cohen said Trump had directed the hush money payment, a contention that later became a key part of the New York trial where Trump was convicted this year.
The former president has denied any wrongdoing.
Cohen served more than a year of his three-year sentence, and was released as authorities worked to contain the coronavirus outbreak in federal prisons.
But he was returned to prison weeks later, though, after authorities claimed he failed to accept certain terms of his release. Cohen said he had asked if a condition forbidding him from speaking with the media and publishing his book could be removed.
He served 16 days in solitary confinement before he was again freed on the orders of a judge who said he’d been jailed in retaliation for his desire to publish a book critical of the president and to discuss it on social media.
Cohen sued Trump and then-Attorney General William Barr, along with various prison and probation officials.
LAS VEGAS — A former Las Vegas-area Democratic elected official was sentenced Wednesday to serve at least 28 years in Nevada state prison for killing an investigative journalist who wrote articles critical of his conduct in office two years ago and exposed an intimate relationship with a female coworker.
A judge invoked sentencing enhancements for elements including use of a deadly weapon, laying in wait and the age of the reporter to add eight years to the minimum 20-year sentence that a jury set in August after finding Robert Telles guilty of murder.
Telles, 47, testified in his defense and denied stabbing Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German to death in September 2022. But evidence against him was strong — including his DNA beneath German’s fingernails.
At the time, Telles was the elected administrator of a county office that handles unclaimed estate and probate property cases. He has been jailed without bail since his arrest several days after the attack.
Telles’ defense attorney, Robert Draskovich, has said Telles intends to appeal his conviction.
Telles lost his primary for a second term in office after German’s stories in May and June 2022 described turmoil and bullying at the Clark County Public Administrator/Guardian office and a romantic relationship between Telles and a female employee. His law license was suspended following his arrest.
Police sought public help to identify a person captured on neighborhood security video driving a maroon SUV and walking while wearing a broad straw hat that hid his face and an oversized orange long-sleeve shirt. Prosecutor Pamela Weckerly showed footage of the person wearing orange slipping into the side yard where German was stabbed, slashed and left dead.
At Telles’ house, police found a maroon SUV and cut-up pieces of a straw hat and a gray athletic shoe that looked like those worn by the person seen on neighborhood video. Authorities did not find the orange long-sleeve shirt or a murder weapon.
Telles testified for several rambling hours at his trial, admitting for the first time that reports of the office romance were true. He denied killing German and said he was “framed” by a broad conspiracy involving a real estate company, police, DNA analysts, former co-workers and others. He told the jury he was victimized for crusading to root out corruption
“I am not the kind of person who would stab someone. I didn’t kill Mr. German,” Telles said. “And that’s my testimony.”
But evidence against Telles was strong — including his DNA beneath German’s fingernails. Prosecutor Christopher Hamner said Telles blamed German for destroying his career, ruining his reputation and threatening his marriage.
Telles told the jury he took a walk and went to a gym at the time German was killed. But evidence showed Telles’ wife sent text messages to him about the same time killed asking, “Where are you?” Prosecutors said Telles left his cellphone at home so he couldn’t be tracked.
The jury deliberated nearly 12 hours over three days before finding Telles guilty. The panel heard pained sentencing hearing testimony from German’s brother and two sisters, along with emotional pleas for leniency from Telles’ wife, ex-wife and mother, before deciding that Telles could be eligible for parole.
Clark County District Court Judge Michelle Leavitt was able to add up to eight years to Telles’ sentence for using a deadly weapon in a willful, deliberate, premeditated killing; because German was older than 60 years old; and for lying in wait before the attack.
District Attorney Steve Wolfson said he was “hopeful and confident” the judge would impose a sentence that could keep Telles behind bars for the rest of his life.
“This defendant has shown absolutely no remorse, no acceptance of responsibility,” said the Democratic elected regional prosecutor. “And in fact, his behavior is such that I believe he is an extreme danger to the community if he is ever released.”
German was the only journalist killed in the U.S. in 2022, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The nonprofit has records of 17 media workers killed in the U.S. since 1992.
Katherine Jacobsen, the U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator at the committee, said in August that Telles’ conviction sent “an important message that the killing of journalists will not be tolerated.”
Telles’ attorney, Robert Draskovich, has said Telles intends to appeal his conviction.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California and Nevada voters will decide in November whether to ban forced prison labor by removing language from their state constitutions rooted in the legacy of chattel slavery.
The measures aim to protect incarcerated people from being forced to work under the threat of punishment in the states, where it is not uncommon for prisoners to be paid less than $1 an hour to fight fires, clean prison cells, make license plates or do yard work at cemeteries.
Nevada incarcerates about 10,000 people. All prisoners in the state are required to work or be in vocational training for 40 hours each week, unless they have a medical exemption. Some of them make as little as 35 cents hourly.
Voters will weigh the proposals during one of the most historic elections in modern history, said Jamilia Land, an advocate with the Abolish Slavery National Network who has spent years trying to get the California measure passed.
“California, as well as Nevada, has an opportunity to end legalized, constitutional slavery within our states, in its entirety, while at the same time we have the first Black woman running for president,” she said of Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic bid as the first Black and Asian American woman to earn a major party’s nomination for the nation’s highest office.
Several other states such as Colorado, Alabama and Tennessee have in recent years done away with exceptions for slavery and involuntary servitude, though the changes were not immediate. In Colorado — the first state to get rid of an exception for slavery from its constitution in 2018 — incarcerated people alleged in a lawsuit filed in 2022 against the corrections department that they had still been forced to work.
“What it did do — it created a constitutional right for a whole class of people that didn’t previously exist,” said Kamau Allen, a co-founder of the Abolish Slavery National Network who advocated for the Colorado measure.
Nevada’s proposal aims to abolish from the constitution both slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime. California’s constitution was changed in the 1970s to remove an exemption for slavery, but the involuntary servitude exception remains on the books.
Wildland firefighting is among the most sought-after prison work programs in Nevada. Those eligible for the program are paid around $24 per day.
“There are a lot of people who are incarcerated that want to do meaningful work. Now are they treated fairly? No,” said Chris Peterson, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, which supports the measure. “They’re getting paid pennies on the hour, where other people get paid dollars, to do incredibly dangerous work.”
Peterson pointed to a state law that created a modified workers’ compensation program for incarcerated people who are injured on the job. Under that program, the amount awarded is based on the person’s average monthly wage when the injury occurred.
In 2016, Darrell White, an injured prison firefighter who filed a claim under the modified program, learned he would receive a monthly disability payment of “$22.30 for a daily rate of $0.50.” By then, White already had been freed from prison, but he was left unable to work for months while he recovered from surgery to repair his fractured finger, which required physical therapy.
White sued the state prison system and Division of Forestry, saying his disability payments should have been calculated based on the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 at the time. The case went all the way up to the Nevada Supreme Court, which rejected his appeal, saying it remained an “open question” whether Nevada prisoners were constitutionally entitled to minimum wage compensation.
“It should be obvious that it is patently unfair to pay Mr. White $0.50 per day,” his lawyer, Travis Barrick, wrote in the appeal, adding that White’s needs while incarcerated were minimal compared to his needs after his release, including housing and utilities, food and transportation. “It is inconceivable that he could meet these needs on $0.50 per day.”
The California state Senate rejected a previous version of the proposal in 2022 after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration cited concerns about the cost if the state had to start paying all prisoners the minimum wage.
Newsom signed a law earlier this year that would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to create a voluntary work program. The agency would set wages for people incarcerated in state prisons under the law. But the law would only take effect if voters approve the forced labor ban.
The law and accompanying measure will give incarcerated people more of an opportunity for rehabilitation through therapy or education instead of being forced to work, said California Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Democrat representing Solano County who authored this year’s proposal.
Wilson suffered from trauma growing up in a household with dysfunction and abuse, she said. She was able to work through her trauma by going to therapy. But her brother, who did not get the same help, instead ended up in prison, she said.
“It’s just a tale of two stories of what happens when someone who has been traumatized, has anger issues and gets the rehabilitative work that they need to — what they could do with their life,” Wilson said.
Yannick Ortega, a formerly incarcerated woman who now works at an addiction recovery center in Fresno, California, was forced to work various jobs during the first half of her time serving 20 years in prison for a murder conviction, she said.
“When you are sentenced to prison, that is the punishment,” said Ortega, who later became a certified paralegal and substance abuse counselor by pursuing her education while working in prison. “You’re away from having the freedom to do anything on your own accord.”
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Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @ sophieadanna
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — A former Singaporean Cabinet minister was sentenced Thursday to a year in prison after he pleaded guilty to charges of receiving illegal gifts, in a rare criminal case involving a minister in the Asian financial hub.
Former Transport Minister S. Iswaran had pleaded guilty last week to one count of obstructing justice and four of accepting gifts from people with whom he had official business. He was the first minister to be charged and imprisoned in nearly half a century.
Justice Vincent Hoong, in his ruling, said holders of high office “must be expected to avoid any perception that they are susceptible to influence by pecuniary benefits.”
“I am of the view that it is appropriate to impose a sentence in excess of both parties’ positions,” Hoong said as he handed down a total of 12 months imprisonment for the five charges. The defense had asked for no more than eight weeks in prison, while the prosecution had pushed for six to seven months imprisonment.
The court approved Iswaran’s request to delay the start of his sentence to Monday, Channel News Asia reported. He remains out on bail for now. It is unclear if he will appeal the sentence.
Iswaran was initially charged with 35 counts, but prosecutors proceeded with only five, while reducing two counts of corruption to receiving illegal gifts. Prosecutors said they will apply for the remaining 30 charges to be taken into consideration for sentencing. No reasons were given for the move.
Iswaran received gifts worth over 74,000 Singapore dollars ($57,000) from Ong Beng Seng, a Singapore-based Malaysian property tycoon, and businessperson Lum Kok Seng. The gifts included tickets to Singapore’s Formula 1 race, wine and whisky and a luxury Brompton bike. Ong owns the right to the local F1 race, and Iswaran was chair of and later adviser to the Grand Prix’s steering committee.
The Attorney-General’s Chambers said it will decide whether to charge Ong and Lum after the case against Iswaran has been resolved.
Singapore ’s ministers are among the world’s best paid. Although the amount involved in Iswaran’s case appeared to be relatively minor, his indictment is an embarrassment to the ruling People’s Action Party, which prides itself on a clean image. Singapore was ranked among the world’s top five least-corrupt nations, according to Transparency International’s corruption perception index.
The last Cabinet minister charged with graft was Wee Toon Boon, who was found guilty in 1975 and jailed for accepting gifts in exchange for helping a businessperson. Another Cabinet minister was investigated for graft in 1986, but died before charges were filed.
Iswaran had resigned just before he was charged. His trial comes just over four months after Singapore installed new Prime Minister Lawrence Wong after Lee Hsien Loong stepped down after 20 years.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will formally apologize for slavery and its lingering effects on Black Americans in the state under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Thursday.
The legislation was part of a package of reparations bills introduced this year that seek to offer repair for decades of policies that drove racial disparities for African Americans. Newsom also approved laws to improve protections against hair discrimination for athletes and increase oversight over the banning of books in state prisons.
“The State of California accepts responsibility for the role we played in promoting, facilitating, and permitting the institution of slavery, as well as its enduring legacy of persistent racial disparities,” the Democratic governor said in a statement. “Building on decades of work, California is now taking another important step forward in recognizing the grave injustices of the past –- and making amends for the harms caused.”
Newsom signed the bills after vetoing a proposal Wednesday that would have helped Black families reclaim or be compensated for property that was unjustly seized by the government through eminent domain. The bill by itself would not have been able to take full effect because lawmakers blocked another bill to create a reparations agency that would have reviewed claims.
California entered the union as a free state in 1850. In practice, it sanctioned slavery and approved policies and practices that thwarted Black people from owning homes and starting businesses. Black families were terrorized, their communities aggressively policed and their neighborhoods polluted, according to a report published by a first-in-the-nation state reparations task force.
Efforts to study reparations at the federal level have stalled in Congress for decades. Illinois and New York state passed laws in recent years creating reparations commissions. Local officials in Boston and New York City have voted to create task forces studying reparations. Evanston, Illinois, launched a program to provide housing assistance to Black residents to help atone for past discrimination.
California has moved further along on the issue than any other state. But state lawmakers did not introduce legislation this year to give widespread direct payments to African Americans, which frustrated some reparations advocates.
He already signed laws included in the reparations package aimed at improving outcomes for students of color in K-12 career education programs. Another proposal the Black caucus backed this year that would ban forced labor as a punishment for crime in the state constitution will be on the ballot in November.
State Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democrat representing Culver City, called legislation he authored to increase oversight over books banned in state prisons “a first step” to fix a “shadowy” process in which the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation decides which books to ban.
The corrections department maintains a list of disapproved publications it bans after determining the content could pose a security threat, includes obscene material or otherwise violates department rules.
The new law authorizes the Office of the Inspector General, which oversees the state prison system, to review works on the list and evaluate the department’s reasoning for banning them. It requires the agency to notify the office of any changes made to the list, and it makes the office post the list on its website.
“We need transparency in this process,” Bryan said. “We need to know what books are banned, and we need a mechanism for removing books off of that list.”
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Sophie Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on X: @sophieadanna
VENICE, Italy (AP) — “ Joker ” is a hard act to follow. Todd Phillips’ dark, Scorsese-inspired character study about the Batman villain made over a billion dollars at the box office, won Joaquin Phoenix his first Oscar, dominated the cultural discourse for months and created a new movie landmark.
It wasn’t for everyone, but it got under people’s skin.
Knowing that it was a fool’s errand to try to do it again, Phillips and Phoenix pivoted, or rather, pirouetted into what would become “ Joker: Folie à Deux.” The dark and fantastical musical journey goes deeper into the mind of Arthur Fleck as he awaits trial for murder and falls in love with a fellow Arkham inmate, Lee, played by Lady Gaga. There is singing, dancing and mayhem.
If Phillips and Phoenix have learned anything over the years, it’s that the scarier something is, the better. So once again they rebelled against expectations and went for broke with something that’s already sharply divided critics.
As with the first, audiences will get to decide for themselves when it opens in theaters on Oct. 4.
“HOW ARE YOU GOING TO GET JOAQUIN PHOENIX TO DO A SEQUEL?”
Any comic book movie that makes a billion dollars is going to have the sequel talk. But with “Joker” it was never a given that it would go anywhere: Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t do sequels. Yet it turned out, Phoenix wasn’t quite done with Arthur Fleck yet either.
During the first, the actor wondered what this character would look like in different situations. He and the on-set photographer mocked up classic movie posters, like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Yentl” with the Joker in them and showed them to Phillips.
“Sometimes you’re just done with something and other times you have an ongoing interest,” Phoenix said. “There was just more to explore. … I just felt like we weren’t done.”
So Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver got to work on a new script, one that leaned into the music in Arthur Fleck’s head. Then his dreary Arkham life turns to Technicolor when he meets and falls for Lee, a Joker superfan.
“Joaquin Phoenix is not going to do a line drive. He’s not going to do something that’s fan service,” Phillips said. “He wanted to be as scared as he was with the first movie. So, we tried to make something that is as audacious and out there and hopefully people get it.”
LADY GAGA FINDS LEE’S VOICE, AND LOSES HER OWN
One decision that’s already sparking debate is casting someone with a voice like Lady Gaga’s and not using that instrument to its full power. Phillips, who was a producer on “A Star is Born,” wanted someone who “brought music with them.” But Lee isn’t a singer.
Actor Lady Gaga and director Todd Phillips delight in returning to Venice Film Festival with “Joker: Folie à Deux,” as Gaga reveals why she sings differently in the eagerly anticipated sequel. (Sept. 5)
“Singing is so second nature to me, and making music and performing on stage is so inside of me. Especially this music,” Gaga said. “I worked extensively on untraining myself for this movie and throwing away as much as I could all the time to make sure I was never locking into what I do. I had to really kind of erase it all.”
Phoenix, who wasn’t quite sure what it would be like working with someone who has such a larger-than-life superstar persona, found Gaga to be refreshingly unpretentious and available. And as an actor, he admired her commitment to the character.
“Her power is in singing and singing a particular way,” he said. “For her to sacrifice that through character, to do something that people would call a musical, but to not be performing it in the way that would sound best as a singer but to approach it from the character was a very difficult process. I was really impressed with her willingness to do that.”
In addition to writing a “waltz that falls apart” for the film, Gaga is releasing a companion album, “Harlequin” on Friday with song titles including “Oh, When the Saints,” “World on a String,” “If My Friends Could See Me Now” and “That’s Life.”
Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix at the Venice Film Festival. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)
SORRY PUDDIN’, THIS AIN’T MARGOT ROBBIE’S HARLEY QUINN
“We’re never going to outdo what Margot Robbie did,” Phillips said. “You have to do something 180 degrees in the other direction.”
Sure, Lee will still casually light something on fire to get some time alone with Joker, but the tumult is more internal. And Gaga threw herself into making Lee something new: A real person, grounded in a reality that came before her.
“I spent a lot of my time on developing her inner life (which) for me had a lot to do with her storm and what thing was always making her about to explode,” Gaga said. “There’s a particular kind of danger that she carries with her, but it’s inside and it’s kind of explosive.”
“DO YOU JUST WANT A BRUTE?”
Phoenix and Brendan Gleeson, background center, in a scene from “Joker: Folie à Deux.” (Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
Brendan Gleeson didn’t have much hesitation about joining the ensemble. He’d worked with Phoenix before on “The Village” and was in awe of what he’d done on the first movie.
“He has an absolute relentless integrity and curiosity and drive,” Gleeson said. “He won’t just plough the same furrow for its own sake.”
But he also didn’t want to play the simple version of an Arkham prison guard.
“I said, look, do you just want a brute? Because I’m not sure I just want to do a brute,” Gleeson said. “He wanted something more. We tried to find layers in this guy.”
CREATING MAYHEM
Anyone who has worked with Phoenix knows that he likes to keep things fresh. That may mean something as small as changing the location of a prop or as big as throwing out choreography that you’ve been rehearsing for months at the last minute.
“I think we both love mayhem and not just in movies but on the set,” Phillips said. “It had to feel like anything can happen.”
Gaga, director Todd Phillips, and Joaquin Phoenix at the Venice Film Festival. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP, File)
With the crew 95% the same as the first, everyone was ready to be flexible. Gaga, too, dove right in, suggesting that they sing live on camera.
“It changed the whole making of the film,” Phillips said. “We were not only singing live, we were singing live differently every take.”
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT?
Since Arthur killed Robert De Niro’s talk show host Murray Franklin on live television in the first film, he’s become a kind of icon and curiosity thanks in no small part to an oft referenced, but never seen, television movie that was made about him. Now, the trial is going to be televised as well.
“Underneath it all, there’s this idea of corruption and how everything is corrupt in the system, from the prison system to the judicial system to the idea of entertainment, quite frankly,” Phillips said. “This idea that in the States at least, everything is entertainment. A court trial could be entertainment, and a presidential election can be entertainment. So, if that’s true, what is entertainment?”
NO LONGER A COMPLETE WILD CARD
It’s easier to be to the insurgent, not the incumbent, Phillips said. Although a Joker film is never going to fly completely under the radar, the spotlight is undoubtedly more intense this time around.
“You do feel like you have a larger target on your back,” Phillips said.
While much of the film was made on Warner Bros. soundstages in Los Angeles, the production did go back to New York to film again on the Bronx staircase (which now come up on Google Maps as the Joker Stairs) and outside a Manhattan courthouse. The production staged a massive protest scene, with Gaga, almost concurrently with the media frenzy around the Donald Trump hush money trial as if there weren’t enough eyes on them already.
Some are also handwringing about the sequel’s bigger budget and whether it can match the success of the first. But Phillips has learned to take it in stride.
“There’s a different amount of pressure, but that just comes with making movies,” he said. “You can’t please everybody and you just kind of go for it.”
Gleeson has an even sunnier outlook.
“It has kind of arthouse movie integrity on a blockbuster scale. It’s great news for cinema, is the way I look on it,” Gleeson said. “If these event movies can continue to have depth and can be so conflicting like this one, is we needn’t worry about the future of cinema.”
SO, IS IT A MUSICAL?
Phoenix and Lady Gaga in a scene from “Joker: Folie à Deux.” (Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
One thing Phillips didn’t mean to do was ignite a discourse about what is and isn’t a musical. He’s just trying to manage expectations.
“People go, ‘what do you mean it’s not a musical?’ And it is a musical. It has all the elements of a musical. But I guess what I mean by it is all the musicals I’ve seen leave me happy at the end for the most part, ‘Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ not being one of them. This has so much sadness in it that I just didn’t want to be misleading to people.”
NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs is staying locked up after a judge Wednesday rejected the hip-hop mogul’s proposal that he await his sex trafficking trial in the luxury of his Florida mansion instead of a grim Brooklyn federal jail.
U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter ruled that Combs’ plan — which included a $50 million bail offer, GPS monitoring and strict limitations on visitors — was “insufficient” to ensure the safety of the community and the integrity of his case.
Carter, agreeing with prosecutors who fought to keep Combs in jail, found that “no condition or set of conditions” governing his release could guard against the risk of him threatening or harming witnesses — a central charge in his case.
Combs’ lawyers were making their second attempt in as many days to spring him from the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he has been held since pleading not guilty Tuesday to charges he physically and sexually abused women for years.
Combs has been in federal custody since his arrest Monday night at a Manhattan hotel. A federal magistrate on Tuesday rejected Combs’ initial bail request. On Wednesday, he and his lawyers struck out with Carter, the judge who will preside over his trial.
Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo says he will now ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Carter’s ruling and release Combs. In the meantime, he wants Combs moved from the Brooklyn lockup, which has been plagued by rampant violence and horrific conditions, to a jail in New Jersey. Carter said decisions on placement are entirely up to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
“I’m not going to let him sit in that jail a day longer than he has to,” Agnifilo said to reporters outside the courtroom.
Combs looked at family members and tapped his heart several times as Wednesday’s hearing began, then sat stoically as he listened to arguments. Afterward, as federal agents led him away, his relatives somberly embraced and exchanged hand slaps.
Combs, 54, is accused in an indictment of using his “power and prestige” to induce female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs” that Combs arranged, participated in and often recorded on video. The events would sometimes last days and Combs and victims would often receive IV fluids to recover, the indictment said.
The indictment alleges Combs coerced and abused women for years, with the help of a network of associates and employees, while using blackmail and violent acts including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings to keep victims from speaking out.
Arguing to keep Combs in jail, prosecutor Emily Johnson told Carter that the once-celebrated rapper has a long history of intimidating both accusers and witnesses to his alleged abuse. She cited text messages from women who said Combs forced them into “Freak Offs” and then threatened to leak videos of them engaging in sex acts.
Johnson said Combs’ defense team was “minimizing and horrifically understating” Combs’ propensity for violence, taking issue with his lawyer’s portrayal of a 2016 assault at a Los Angeles hotel as a lovers’ quarrel. Security video of the event, which only came to light in May, showed Combs hitting and kicking his then-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in a hotel hallway.
“What’s love got to do with that?” an incredulous Carter asked.
Johnson also seized on a text message from a woman who said Combs dragged her down a hallway by her hair. According to Johnson, the woman told the rapper: “I’m not a rag doll, I’m someone’s child.”
“There is a longstanding pattern of abuse here,” Johnson said.
Combs’ Florida house is on Star Island, a man-made dollop of land in Biscayne Bay near Miami Beach, reachable only by a causeway or boat. It is among the most expensive places to live in the United States. Combs’ request echoed that of a long line of wealthy defendants who have offered to post multimillion-dollar bails in exchange for home detention in luxurious surroundings.
If he had been granted bail, Combs would have been confined to his home, with visits restricted to family, property caretakers and friends who are not considered co-conspirators, his lawyers said. After prosecutors said they served a search warrant Tuesday on Combs’ private security chief, his lawyers offered to hire a new firm to monitor him and ensure he abided by the proposed agreement.
Carter was unmoved, questioning the plan as an “allegedly fool-proof system.”
Many allegations in Combs’ indictment parallel accusations in a November lawsuit filed by Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura. Combs settled the suit the next day, but its allegations have followed him since.
The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Ventura did.
Without naming Ventura but clearly referring to her, Agnifilo argued that the entire criminal case is an outgrowth of one long-term, troubled-but-consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. The “Freak Offs,” he contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.
“The sex and the violence were totally separate and motivated by totally different things,” Agnifilo said, contending that Combs and Cassie brought sex workers into their relationship because “that was the way these two adults chose to be intimate.”
Prosecutors portrayed the scope as larger. They said they had interviewed more than 50 victims and witnesses.
Like many aging hip-hop figures, Bad Boy Records founder Combs had established a gentler public image. The father of seven was a respected businessman whose annual Hamptons “White Party” was once a must-have invitation for the jet-setting elite.
But prosecutors said he facilitated his crimes using the same companies, people and methods that vaulted him to power. They said they would prove the charges with financial and travel records, electronic communications and videos of the “Freak Offs.”
In March, authorities raided Combs’ Los Angeles and Florida homes, seizing drugs, videos and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, prosecutors said. They said agents also seized guns and ammunition, including three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers.
A conviction on every charge would require a mandatory 15 years in prison with the possibility of a life sentence.
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This story has been edited to correct the spelling of Cassie’s legal first name: Casandra, not Cassandra.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Seven news organizations filed a legal motion Friday asking the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make public the plea agreement that prosecutors struck with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two fellow defendants.
The plea agreements, filed early last month and promptly sealed, triggered objections from Republican lawmakers and families of some of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks. The controversy grew when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced days later he was revoking the deal, the product of two years of negotiations among government prosecutors and defense attorneys that were overseen by Austin’s department.
Austin’s move caused upheaval in the pretrial hearings now in their second decade at Guantanamo, leading the three defendants to suspend participation in any further pretrial hearings. Their lawyers pursued new complaints that Austin’s move was illegal and amounted to unlawful interference by him and the GOP lawmakers.
Seven news organizations — Fox News, NBC, NPR, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Univision — filed the claim with the military commission. It argues that the Guantanamo court had failed to establish any significant harm to U.S. government interests from allowing the public to know terms of the agreement.
The public’s need to know what is in the sealed records “has only been heightened as the Pretrial Agreements have become embroiled in political controversy,” lawyers for the news organizations argued in Friday’s motion. “Far from threatening any compelling government interest, public access to these records will temper rampant speculation and accusation.”
The defendants’ legal challenges to Austin’s actions and government prosecutors’ response to those also remain under seal.
The George W. Bush administration set up the military commission at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo after the 2001 attacks. The 9/11 case remains in pretrial hearings after more than a decade, as judges, the government and defense attorneys hash out the extent to which the defendants’ torture during years in CIA custody after their capture has rendered evidence legally inadmissible. Staff turnover and the court’s distance from the U.S. also have slowed proceedings.
Members of the press and public must travel to Guantanamo to watch the trial, or to military installations in the U.S. to watch by remote video. Court filings typically are sealed indefinitely for security reviews that search for any classified information.
LONDON (AP) — The bosses of water companies that pollute waterways could go to prison under a new law the British government says will help clean up the country’s sewage-clogged rivers, lakes and beaches.
A bill introduced in Parliament on Thursday will give regulators the ability to ban bonuses for executives of polluting firms and bring criminal charges against lawbreakers, with the possibility of up to two years’ imprisonment for executives who obstruct investigations.
The state of Britain’s waterways made a stink during the campaign for a July 4 national election. For critics of the Conservative Party that had been in office since 2010, dirty water was a pungent symbol of Britain’s aging infrastructure and the effects of privatization of essential utilities.
The private companies that provide combined water and sewage services routinely discharge sewage into waterways when rain overwhelms sewer systems often dating from the Victorian era. Critics say the firms have failed to invest in upgrading infrastructure – but have continued to pay dividends to shareholders.
Water companies say they want to invest in upgrades but accuse the industry’s financial regulator, Ofwat, of not allowing them to raise customers’ bills enough to finance improvements.
The center-left Labour Party government elected in July has promised to clean up the “unacceptable” state of Britain’s waters.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed said that “water executives will no longer line their own pockets whilst pumping out this filth.”
The bill, which must be approved by lawmakers, also would strengthen powers of the regulators and force water companies to publish real-time data of all sewage spills.
Clean-water campaigner Feargal Sharkey said it was good news that “after years of denial at least there is a government prepared to accept and recognize the scale of the problem.”
But he said existing anti-pollution laws have rarely, if ever, been used.
“We don’t need new regulations, we don’t need new laws, we’ve got 35 years’ worth of laws that have never been applied,” Sharkey told Sky News. “You should force them to go out and apply the law as it stands today, that would have been a massive step forward.”
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Bahrain’s king pardoned 457 prisoners Wednesday night to mark his 25th anniversary as the island nation’s ruler, with one activist saying many of those freed appeared to be political prisoners.
The announcement by the state-run Bahrain News Agency marks another mass release of prisoners in the Persian Gulf kingdom that has experienced repeated crackdowns on all dissent in the years following its 2011 Arab Spring protests.
There was no list of names of the prisoners released by the order of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who has ruled Bahrain first as its emir in 1999 before Bahrain became a kingdom in 2002.
Bahrain’s government did not answer questions from The Associated Press, but said the pardon “further demonstrates Bahrain’s commitment to criminal justice, with an opportunity today for over 450 individuals to positively re-integrate back into society.”
“Authorities have been meeting with … hundreds, saying to them they would be released very soon,” Alwadaei said. “It seems to be targeting mostly political prisoners.”
He added: “This is a really optimistic step and it does seem to be also coming within a regional context where Bahrain is trying to normalize with Iran.”
Bahrain’s Shiite majority long has complained about mistreatment and abuse from the government overseen by the ruling Sunni Al Khalifa family. Addressing activists’ complaints could help Bahrain ease tensions with Iran despite decades of enmity, particularly after Saudi Arabia reached a Chinese-mediate detente with Tehran last year.
In April, King Hamad pardoned 1,584 prisoners, including over 650 considered to be political prisoners by the institute.
Prominent Bahraini activists being held include Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a dual Danish Bahraini national convicted of internationally criticized terrorism charges and held in what a United Nations panel calls an “arbitrary” imprisonment ever since.
Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet, is an island off the coast of Saudi Arabia that’s about the size of New York City with a population of around 1.5 million people.
Since Bahrain put down the 2011 protests with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it has imprisoned activists, deported others, stripped hundreds of their citizenship and closed its leading independent newspaper.
MEXICO CITY — Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, one of Mexico’s most-feared drug lords, has been released from a U.S. prison after serving most of a 25-year prison sentence, authorities confirmed Friday.
A U.S. Bureau of Prisons official said Cárdenas Guillén had been released from prison and was placed in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That would normally suggest he would be deported back to Mexico.
A Mexican official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said Cárdenas Guillén faces two arrest warrants in Mexico, making it likely he would be detained upon arrival.
Cárdenas Guillén was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010 and ordered to forfeit tens of millions of dollars. It was not clear why he did not serve his full sentence, but he had been extradited to the U.S. in January 2007.
The 57-year-old native of the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars through the Gulf cartel, based in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.
He created the Zetas, a gang of former Mexican special forces soldiers who he recruited to become his private army and hit squad. They committed acts of terror that regularly involved slaughtering dozens of people, decapitating them or dumping heaps of hacked-up bodies on roadways.
The Zetas lived on long after Cárdenas Guillén was captured in 2003. By 2010, the Zetas had formed their own cartel, spreading terror-style attacks across Mexico as far south as Tabasco until their top leaders were killed or arrested in 2012-2013.
An offshoot of the Zetas, the Northeast cartel, continues to control the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas.
But Cárdenas Guillén’s own gang, the Gulf cartel, has become hopelessly splintered after more than a decade of bloody infighting between factions with names like The Metros, The Cyclones, The Reds and The Scorpions.
Cárdenas Guillén’s own nickname was “El Mata Amigos,” or “The one who kills his friends.”
Cárdenas Guillén’s most brazen act was when he surrounded and stopped a vehicle carrying two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and one of their informants in 1999 in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.
His gunmen pointed their weapons at the agents and demanded they hand over the informant, who would almost certainly be tortured and killed. The agents toughed it out and refused, reminding him it would be a bad decision to kill employees of the DEA. Cárdenas Guillén eventually called off his gunmen, but not before reportedly saying “You gringos, this is my territory.”
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Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington, D.C.
Three people were indicted Thursday on federal charges with bribery for allegedly conspiring to smuggle weapons, narcotics and phones into the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center in Holmesburg.
Breyanna Cornish, 29, and Jawayne Brown, 40, of Philadelphia, allegedly plotted with Ahmad Nasir, 43, an inmate currently at SCI Greene, a maximum-security prison in Franklin Township, Pennsylvania.
Brown and Nasir received additional charges for conspiracy to possess Suboxone with intent to distribute. The Schedule III controlled substance is typically used to treat opioid addiction.
The trio now face potentially lengthy sentences and hefty fines. If convicted, Cornish could spend up 15 years in prison and pay a $500,000 fine, while Brown would face a maximum sentence of 25 years and a $1 million fine. Nasir faces the steepest sentence, with a possible 35 years’ imprisonment and $1.5 million fine.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not release further details on the alleged conspiracy. The Federal Bureau of Investigation led the case.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Kentucky man who was the first rioter to enter the U.S. Capitol during a mob’s attack on the building was sentenced on Tuesday to more than four years in prison.
A police officer who tried to subdue Michael Sparks with pepper spray described him as a catalyst for the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Senate that day recessed less than one minute after Sparks jumped into the building through a broken window. Sparks then joined other rioters in chasing a police officer up flights of stairs.
Before learning his sentencing, Sparks told the judge that he still believes the 2020 presidential election was marred by fraud and “completely taken from the American public.”
“I am remorseful that what transpired that day didn’t help anybody,” Sparks said. “I am remorseful that our country is in the state it’s in.”
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who sentenced Sparks to four years and five months, told him that there was nothing patriotic about his prominent role in what was a “national disgrace.”
“I don’t really think you appreciate the full gravity of what happened that day and, quite frankly, the full seriousness of what you did,” the judge said.
Federal prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of four years and nine months for Sparks, a 47-year-old former factory worker from Cecilia, Kentucky.
Defense attorney Scott Wendelsdorf asked the judge to sentence Sparks to one year of home detention instead of prison.
A jury convicted Sparks of all six charges that he faced, including a felony count of interfering with police during a civil disorder. Sparks didn’t testify at his trial in Washington, D.C.
In the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, Sparks used social media to promote conspiracy theories about election fraud and advocate for a civil war.
“It’s time to drag them out of Congress. It’s tyranny,” he posted on Facebook three days before the riot.
Sparks traveled to Washington, D.C, with co-workers from an electronics and components plant in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. They attended then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on Jan. 6.
After the rally, Sparks and a friend, Joseph Howe, joined a crowd in marching to the Capitol. Both of them wore tactical vests. Howe was captured on video repeatedly saying, “we’re getting in that building.”
Off camera, Sparks added: “All it’s going to take is one person to go. The rest is following,” according to prosecutors. Sparks’ attorney argued that the evidence doesn’t prove that Sparks made that statement.
“Of course, both Sparks and Howe were more right than perhaps anyone else knew at the time — it was just a short time later that Sparks made history as the very first person to go inside, and the rest indeed followed,” prosecutors wrote.
Dominic Pezzola, a member of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group, used a police shield to break a window next to the Senate Wing Door. Capitol Police Sgt. Victor Nichols sprayed Sparks in the face as he hopped through the shattered glass.
Nichols testified that Sparks acted “like a green light for everybody behind him, and everyone followed right behind him because it was like it was okay to go into the building.” Nichols also said Sparks’ actions were “the catalyst for the building being completely breached.”
Undeterred by pepper spray, Sparks joined other rioters in chasing Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman as he retreated up the stairs and found backup from other officers near the Senate chamber.
“This is our America!” Sparks screamed at police. He left the building about 10 minutes later.
Sparks’ attorney downplayed his client’s distinction as the first rioter to enter the building.
“While technically true in a time-line sense, he did not lead the crowd into the building or cause the breach through which he and others entered,” Wendelsdorf wrote. “Actually, there were eight different points of access that day separately and independently exploited by the protestors.”
But the judge said when and where Sparks entered the Capitol was an important factor in his sentencing.
“I think it’s undeniable that the first person” to enter the Capitol “would have an emboldening and encouraging effect on everyone who was at least in your vicinity,” Kelly told Sparks. “To say it wasn’t a material, key point in the mob’s taking of the Capitol, I think, is just ignoring the obvious.”
Sparks was arrested in Kentucky less than a month after the riot. Sparks and Howe were charged together in a November 2022 indictment. Howe pleaded guilty to assault and obstruction charges and was sentenced last year to four years and two months in prison.
More than 1,400 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 950 riot defendants have been convicted and sentenced. More than 600 of them have received terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — A court in Romania’s capital Thursday placed the divisive internet influencer Andrew Tate under house arrest for 30 days, as prosecutors investigate a sprawling new case that involves allegations of human trafficking of minors and sex with a minor.
The Bucharest Tribunal’s decision comes a day after prosecutors detained six people including Tate, 37, and his brother Tristan Tate, 36, after masked police raided four homes in Bucharest and nearby Ilfov county. Prosecutors had asked the court to remand the brothers in custody for 30 days. Tristan has been placed under judicial control, which typically involves geographical restrictions and reporting periodically to the police.
The brothers’ spokesperson, Mateea Petrescu, responded to the decision by saying the judge denied prosecutors’ request due to the brothers’ “exemplary behavior” while previously under preventative arrest measures in a separate case, and that they firmly deny all of the allegations against them and “remain steadfast in proving their innocence.”
The Tate brothers, both former kickboxers and dual British-U.S. citizens, are already awaiting trial in Romania in a separate human trafficking case along with two Romanian women. Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four last year.
In the new case, Romania’s anti-organized crime agency DIICOT said it is investigating allegations of human trafficking, including the trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, forming an organized criminal group, money laundering, and influencing statements. The alleged crimes date between 2014 and 2024.
DIICOT said the defendants used the coercive “loverboy” method to exploit 34 vulnerable victims who were forced to produce pornographic materials for a fee online, and that more than $2.8 million (2.5 million euros) it generated was kept by the defendants.
An unnamed foreign man also sexually exploited a 17-year-old foreigner, DIICOT alleges, and said he kept all of the $1.5 million (1.3 million euros) made from the criminal activity. The same man “repeatedly had sexual relations and acts” with a 15-year-old, the agency alleges.
Outside the court after the judge issued his house arrest measure, Andrew Tate told reporters that many of the alleged victims in the new case have statements in the Tate brother’s defense. “This is a set-up, it’s absolutely disgusting, fair play to that judge who saw through the bullshit and let us free,” he said.
Andrew Tate, who has 9.9 million followers on the social media platform X, is known for expressing misogynistic views online and has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him. He was previously banned from various social media platforms for misogynistic views and hate speech.
“During the entire criminal process, the investigated persons benefit from the procedural rights and guarantees provided by the Code of Criminal Procedure, as well as the presumption of innocence,” DIICOT said.
During the police raids on Wednesday, which also involved scouring the Tate brothers’ large property near Bucharest, authorities seized 16 luxury vehicles, a motorbike, laptops, thousands of dollars in cash, luxury watches, and data storage drives.
The latest case against the Tates adds to a litany of legal woes against them.
After the Tate brothers’ arrest in December 2022, they were held for three months in police detention before being moved to house arrest. They were later restricted to Bucharest municipality and nearby Ilfov county, and then to Romania.
In April, the Bucharest Tribunal ruled in that case that prosecutors’ case file against them met the legal criteria and that a trial could start but did not set a date for it to begin.
Last month, a court overturned an earlier decision that allowed the Tate brothers to leave Romania as they await trial. The earlier court ruled on July 5 that they could leave the country as long as they remained within the 27-member European Union. The decision was final.
In March, the Tate brothers also appeared at the Bucharest Court of Appeal in a separate case, after British authorities issued arrest warrants over allegations of sexual aggression in a U.K. case dating back to 2012-2015. The appeals court granted the British request to extradite the the Tates to the U.K., but only after legal proceedings in Romania have concluded.
BUCHAREST, Romania — A court in Romania’s capital Thursday placed the divisive internet influencer Andrew Tate under house arrest for 30 days, as prosecutors investigate a sprawling new case that involves allegations of human trafficking of minors and sex with a minor.
The Bucharest Tribunal’s decision comes a day after prosecutors detained six people including Tate, 37, and his brother Tristan Tate, 36, after masked police raided four homes in Bucharest and nearby Ilfov county. Prosecutors had asked the court to remand the brothers in custody for 30 days. Tristan has been placed under judicial control, which typically involves geographical restrictions and reporting periodically to the police.
The brothers’ spokesperson, Mateea Petrescu, responded to the decision by saying the judge denied prosecutors’ request due to the brothers’ “exemplary behavior” while previously under preventative arrest measures in a separate case, and that they firmly deny all of the allegations against them and “remain steadfast in proving their innocence.”
The Tate brothers, both former kickboxers and dual British-U.S. citizens, are already awaiting trial in Romania in a separate human trafficking case along with two Romanian women. Romanian prosecutors formally indicted all four last year.
In the new case, Romania’s anti-organized crime agency DIICOT said it is investigating allegations of human trafficking, including the trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, forming an organized criminal group, money laundering, and influencing statements. The alleged crimes date between 2014 and 2024.
DIICOT said the defendants used the coercive “loverboy” method to exploit 34 vulnerable victims who were forced to produce pornographic materials for a fee online, and that more than $2.8 million (2.5 million euros) it generated was kept by the defendants.
An unnamed foreign man also sexually exploited a 17-year-old foreigner, DIICOT alleges, and said he kept all of the $1.5 million (1.3 million euros) made from the criminal activity. The same man “repeatedly had sexual relations and acts” with a 15-year-old, the agency alleges.
Outside the court after the judge issued his house arrest measure, Andrew Tate told reporters that many of the alleged victims in the new case have statements in the Tate brother’s defense. “This is a set-up, it’s absolutely disgusting, fair play to that judge who saw through the bullshit and let us free,” he said.
Andrew Tate, who has 9.9 million followers on the social media platform X, is known for expressing misogynistic views online and has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him. He was previously banned from various social media platforms for misogynistic views and hate speech.
“During the entire criminal process, the investigated persons benefit from the procedural rights and guarantees provided by the Code of Criminal Procedure, as well as the presumption of innocence,” DIICOT said.
During the police raids on Wednesday, which also involved scouring the Tate brothers’ large property near Bucharest, authorities seized 16 luxury vehicles, a motorbike, laptops, thousands of dollars in cash, luxury watches, and data storage drives.
The latest case against the Tates adds to a litany of legal woes against them.
After the Tate brothers’ arrest in December 2022, they were held for three months in police detention before being moved to house arrest. They were later restricted to Bucharest municipality and nearby Ilfov county, and then to Romania.
In April, the Bucharest Tribunal ruled in that case that prosecutors’ case file against them met the legal criteria and that a trial could start but did not set a date for it to begin.
Last month, a court overturned an earlier decision that allowed the Tate brothers to leave Romania as they await trial. The earlier court ruled on July 5 that they could leave the country as long as they remained within the 27-member European Union. The decision was final.
In March, the Tate brothers also appeared at the Bucharest Court of Appeal in a separate case, after British authorities issued arrest warrants over allegations of sexual aggression in a U.K. case dating back to 2012-2015. The appeals court granted the British request to extradite the the Tates to the U.K., but only after legal proceedings in Romania have concluded.
BOISE, Idaho — An Idaho man has been arrested in connection with the shooting death of a woman in California more than 50 years ago, authorities said.
DNA evidence led investigators to identify Michael Eugene Mullen, 75, as a suspect in the death of Nina “Nadine” Fischer in 1973, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said. Mullen was arrested near Salmon, Idaho, on Wednesday, and he is being held in jail while awaiting extradition to California.
Mullen’s defense attorney, Dan Brown, did not immediately respond to voice and email messages left for him on Saturday.
Fischer lived in San Rafael, California, with her husband and young daughter when the 31-year-old was killed in November 1973, the Marin County Sheriff’s office said in a news release. Both Fischer and her husband were Swedish nationals, and they were preparing to move back to Sweden at the time.
Fischer’s husband found her body when he returned home from work. She had been sexually assaulted and shot three times, and her 2-year-old child was found unharmed in another room.
Law enforcement officials questioned some witnesses — including movers and an assessor who had been at the house that day — but the investigation turned up no leads and the case went cold, according to newspaper articles published after her death.
In 2021, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office sent the case to the California Department of Justice’s Familial Search Program. The program compares DNA from crime scenes to a DNA database in an effort to try to find relatives of a potential suspect. After several months, the DNA resulted in a possible lead, and after three more years of investigation Mullen was identified as the suspect, the sheriff’s office said.
The Marin County District Attorney’s office and sheriff’s office worked with the Idaho State Police and the Lemhi County Sheriff’s Office to arrest Mullen on suspicion of murder. He is being held in the Lemhi County jail.
Bloomberg News apologized and disciplined employees on Monday for prematurely publishing a story last week that revealed a prisoner exchange involving the United States and Russia that led to the release of detained American journalist Evan Gershkovich.
Bloomberg’s story, released before the prisoners had actually been freed, violated the company’s ethical standards, John Micklethwait, Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, said in a memo to his staff.
The company would not say how many employees were disciplined and would not identify them. The story carried the bylines of Jennifer Jacobs, senior White House reporter for Bloomberg News, and Cagan Koc, Amsterdam bureau chief.
“We take accuracy very seriously,” Micklethwait said in the memo. “But we also have a responsibility to do the right thing. In this case we didn’t.”
Besides Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich, the exchange freed Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive jailed since 2018, and Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist with dual U.S.-Russia citizenship. In return, the U.S. and other countries gave up Russians who had been charged or convicted of serious crimes.
Gershkovich’s imprisonment on espionage charges that his family and newspaper denied attracted particular attention in the journalism community, and the Journal campaigned vigorously for his release. Word of the deal had begun to spread among people familiar with the cases and the White House briefed reporters about it on an embargoed basis — meaning the journalists agreed not to release the information until given an official go-ahead.
Officials wanted to keep the news under wraps until the prisoners were safely released into U.S. custody for fear that public knowledge could scuttle the deal, and the Bloomberg story was published while a plane carrying them was flying to a drop-off point.
“This was not about a broken embargo,” The Wall Street Journal said in a statement Monday. “It was a report that Evan had been freed when in fact he had not yet been. We’re happy that Bloomberg corrected it.”
Jacobs, in a statement issued on X, said that at no time did she do anything inconsistent with the embargo or that knowingly would put anyone at risk. She also noted that reporters don’t have the final say over when a story is published or with what headline.
“As a journalist, the idea that I would jeopardize the safety of a fellow reporter is deeply upsetting on a level that’s difficult to describe,” Jacobs said. “I am so happy that Evan Gershkovich and the others are home.”
The initial Bloomberg story, which moved at 7:41 a.m. on Thursday, said that Russia was releasing Gershkovich and Whelan as part of a major prison swap, “according to people familiar with the situation.” It was updated more than an hour later to say that the prisoners had not yet been released.
The White House officially lifted its embargo at 11:33 a.m.
Bloomberg’s story put pressure on other news outlets to try to match it through other sources, without breaking the terms of the embargo agreements. The Associated Press, for example, sent an alert at 10:41 a.m. that Gershkovich and Whelan were being freed, quoting Turkish officials.
Shortly after the initial story moved, a Bloomberg editor wrote on X that “it is one of the greatest honors on my career to have helped break this news. I love my job and my colleagues,” according to New York magazine. That post didn’t sit well with other journalists who were aware of what was going on but were constrained from reporting it.
Micklethwait said he had apologized to Wall Street Journal editor Emma Tucker on Thursday, which the Journal confirmed. “Given the Wall Street Journal’s tireless efforts on their reporter’s behalf, this was clearly their story to lead the way on,” he said.
He said he was also writing personally to each of the freed prisoners to apologize.
Wall Street Journal reporter Dustin Volz, who covers the intelligence world, thanked Bloomberg for the apology in a post on X.
“Their premature story on Thursday caused a lot of people to panic and could have led to real harm,” Volz wrote. “It didn’t, thankfully, but it’s nice to see them own the mistake.”
