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Category: Law/Crime

FBI said to have investigated New York Times reporter after article on Patel’s girlfriend

FBI said to have investigated New York Times reporter after article on Patel’s girlfriend

The New York Times reports: The F.B.I. began investigating a New York Times reporter last month after she wrote about the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation, according to a person briefed on the matter. Agents interviewed the girlfriend, queried databases for information on the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, and recommended moving forward to determine whether Ms. Williamson broke federal stalking laws, the person said. Those actions prompted concerns among some…

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Sebastian Gorka: The counterterrorism czar without a counterterrorism plan

Sebastian Gorka: The counterterrorism czar without a counterterrorism plan

By Hannah Allam This story was originally published by ProPublica March unfolded like a stress test for U.S. counterterrorism authorities. The month opened with a gunman in an Iranian-flag shirt killing three people at a bar in Texas. Then, an attack with homemade explosives outside the mayor’s mansion in New York City. Next came a deadly shooting March 12 on a Virginia college campus and, the same afternoon, a car-ramming at a Michigan synagogue. Days later, agents arrested a man…

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Kash Patel’s drinking problem poses a national security danger

Kash Patel’s drinking problem poses a national security danger

Sarah Fitzpatrick writes: On Friday, April 10, as FBI Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.” Patel oversees an agency…

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Caught in the crackdown: As arrests at anti-ICE protests piled up, prosecutions crumbled

Caught in the crackdown: As arrests at anti-ICE protests piled up, prosecutions crumbled

By A.C. Thompson, ProPublica and FRONTLINE, and Gabrielle Schonder, FRONTLINE This story was originally published by ProPublica The National Guard soldiers in desert camo piled out of unmarked vans in East Los Angeles last June, cordoning off East Sixth Street, a residential street lined with single family houses, and blocking a nearby road leading to an elementary school. A squad of federal agents moved in flinging flash-bang grenades — explosives designed to disorient — into a small home before storming…

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Inside Trump’s effort to ‘take over’ the midterm elections

Inside Trump’s effort to ‘take over’ the midterm elections

By Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield This story was originally published by ProPublica In mid-December 2020, federal officials responsible for protecting American elections from fraud converged in a windowless, dim, fortified room at the Justice Department’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters. They had been summoned by Attorney General William Barr. Over the preceding weeks, Donald Trump’s claims that the presidential election had been stolen from him had reached a crescendo. He’d become obsessed with a conspiracy theory that voting machines…

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How ICE jail echoes life in occupied Palestine

How ICE jail echoes life in occupied Palestine

The Guardian reports: A Palestinian woman who was released last month after spending a year in a Texas immigration detention center told the Guardian in an exclusive interview that she sees “a lot of similarities” between the treatment of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and that of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Leqaa Kordia, who was detained by ICE following her arrest at a protest against Israel’s war in Gaza, says that she will continue to speak…

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‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon

‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon

The Guardian reports: The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery…

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‘It would be catastrophic’: A Supreme Court decision could upend Alaska’s crucial Senate race

‘It would be catastrophic’: A Supreme Court decision could upend Alaska’s crucial Senate race

Politico reports: In the villages that dot Kodiak Island off the coast of southwest Alaska, the post arrives by plane. Mailing a ballot to the archipelago’s hub takes at least two days — if the region’s frequent storms haven’t grounded air traffic. It’s a common problem across Alaska. And it’s a big reason why the state allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted for up to 10 days afterward, a critical reprieve for voters in remote communities that…

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Judges fired after blocking deportations of pro-Palestinian students

Judges fired after blocking deportations of pro-Palestinian students

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who dismissed high-profile deportation cases against international students who had advocated for Palestinians. The firings of the judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, marked the latest efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the country’s immigration courts. The administration has dismissed dozens of immigration judges and, according to those on the bench, has put judges under pressure to deny asylum claims and order deportations. Unlike federal judges…

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Ten minutes of mass murder as Israel pummels Lebanon, killing hundreds

Ten minutes of mass murder as Israel pummels Lebanon, killing hundreds

The Guardian reports: The flood of wounded came after Israel bombed more than 100 targets across Lebanon in those 10 minutes on Wednesday, killing more than 300 people and wounding 1,165, according to an initial count by Lebanon’s civil defence. The death toll, which was expected to rise as more bodies were found, was higher than Beirut’s 2020 port explosion – one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history. The Israeli military said it had hit Hezbollah “command and…

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Government ordered to turn over files on Renee Good’s killer, ICE agent, Jonathan Ross

Government ordered to turn over files on Renee Good’s killer, ICE agent, Jonathan Ross

The Intercept reports: Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are being forced to turn over critical information on the shooting of Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross in relation to a separate case involving Ross. Prosecutors have until May 1 to provide a slew of records, including Ross’s personnel file, to a magistrate judge to review and determine which files should be released. The materials could shine light on the killing of Good, an observer who died after…

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Trump’s Iran threats look like self-incrimination for potential war crimes

Trump’s Iran threats look like self-incrimination for potential war crimes

The New York Times reports: President Trump’s threat on Tuesday to wipe out Iran’s entire civilization escalated days of bellicose rhetoric in which he has made what appear to be self-incriminating statements about an intent to commit war crimes if the Iranian government does not submit to his demands. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, adding: “We will…

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As Trump threatens to commit war crimes in Iran, his ‘own morality’ is nowhere to be found

As Trump threatens to commit war crimes in Iran, his ‘own morality’ is nowhere to be found

Edward Wong writes: Power plants, desalination stations, oil wells, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. They are the foundations of civilian life in Iran, and their destruction by American and Israeli forces would cause widespread suffering among the country’s 93 million people — and in most cases would be considered a war crime under international law. Yet President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do exactly that, with the aim of sending Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” as…

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Trump’s life in peril if he doesn’t get his ballroom without delay, DOJ claims

Trump’s life in peril if he doesn’t get his ballroom without delay, DOJ claims

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration has appealed a federal judge’s order to halt the construction of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, arguing in an emergency motion that pausing the $400 million project would raise national security risks. The motion, which was filed Friday night in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, argues that U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s “shocking, unprecedented, and improper injunction” to stop construction would imperil Trump, his family and White House…

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My citizenship, up for debate

My citizenship, up for debate

Pablo Andreu writes: I was born in the wee hours of Dec.15, 1980 at St. Mary’s Hospital, now Hoboken University Medical, the same hospital where Frank Sinatra was born. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I learned my family was undocumented at my birth and on through my early childhood. I was an adult by the time I realized I had gained U.S. citizenship through birthright, which the Trump administration is now attempting to strike down. On Wednesday…

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Trump’s anti-voting order may backfire, damaging DOJ’s voter roll campaign

Trump’s anti-voting order may backfire, damaging DOJ’s voter roll campaign

Democracy Docket reports: President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting is highly likely to be declared unconstitutional and blocked by courts. But it might also screw up the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) 30 ongoing lawsuits for state voter rolls. Legal experts say the voter suppression diktat may be as strategically foolish as it is doomed. “The only real legal effect of this executive order might be to kill the remaining DOJ lawsuits seeking to seize voter data,” said David…

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