Browsed by
Category: Law/Crime

How Trump’s unprecedented effort to prosecute noncitizen voters fell apart

How Trump’s unprecedented effort to prosecute noncitizen voters fell apart

By Peter Elkind, Jen Fifield, Doug Bock Clark, Ken B. Morales and Andy Mannix This story was originally published by ProPublica It was late March when Joe Teirab, the second-in-command at Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office, received an urgent email from Washington. The federal government was scrambling to find criminal cases to back up President Donald Trump’s claims that illegal voting by noncitizens was tipping the scales in American elections. Agents from Homeland Security Investigations, a massive federal law enforcement agency,…

Read More Read More

DHS extensively spied on anti-ICE protesters and leftwing groups, records reveal

DHS extensively spied on anti-ICE protesters and leftwing groups, records reveal

The Guardian reports: Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year. Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning nonprofit groups. Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were…

Read More Read More

U.S. Ambassador Huckabee calls settler siege of Palestinian homes a ‘horrific act of terror’

U.S. Ambassador Huckabee calls settler siege of Palestinian homes a ‘horrific act of terror’

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. Ambassador to Israel condemned the actions of Jewish settlers who are besieging the home of an American Palestinian family in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee called the siege a “horrific act of terror.” Since Sunday, according to local officials and family members, settlers have gathered near the home in the village of Qusra and harassed those inside, defying efforts by the Israeli military to defuse the situation. A group that has…

Read More Read More

Deported to a country he’d never heard of. He may never go free

Deported to a country he’d never heard of. He may never go free

Nicholas Casey reports: As he stepped out of the American military cargo plane, Roberto Mosquera still couldn’t tell where he was or why he had been taken there. When federal immigration agents forced him onto a secret flight 30 hours earlier, it was a hot July afternoon in Texas. Now, after traveling thousands of miles, he felt a cold winter’s morning in the air. He was in the kingdom of Eswatini, a tiny, landlocked country in southern Africa that until…

Read More Read More

Money laundering gets easier: Treasury scales back scrutiny of U.S. shell companies

Money laundering gets easier: Treasury scales back scrutiny of U.S. shell companies

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to scale back scrutiny of the shadowy shell companies that criminals use to launder money and traffic drugs. The initiative follows a yearslong campaign by lobbying groups, which contended that new financial reporting requirements were too onerous for businesses. The Treasury Department said late on Tuesday that it was permanently halting the collection of data about the ownership of private American companies that was required as…

Read More Read More

Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining Supreme Court, analysis shows

Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining Supreme Court, analysis shows

The Guardian reports: The supreme court justice Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from his fossil fuel interests between 2005 and 2024, a new review of financial disclosures shows. The analysis from the non-profit advocacy group and judicial watchdog Court Accountability, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that even at the lowest range of estimates, Alito gained almost $400,000 from his oil and gas interests since being tapped for the high court by George W Bush in 2005. The findings…

Read More Read More

ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks

ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks

The Associated Press reports: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals. ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March, according to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security. The devices are known as the G.L.O.V.E., which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and are…

Read More Read More

More than a million immigrants see protections granting them safe lives in the U.S. suddenly swept away

More than a million immigrants see protections granting them safe lives in the U.S. suddenly swept away

Dara Lind writes: In early 2010, an earthquake devastated Haiti—but, even as Haitians in the U.S. had far less to return to, they received a new opportunity to stay. Reasoning that it was no longer safe to deport anyone back to Haiti, the Obama Administration allowed them to apply for Temporary Protected Status, which meant a U.S. work permit and a written assurance that they wouldn’t be deported. They might not be able to go home again, but they could…

Read More Read More

Money laundering: Trump crypto took $100 million from a shady businessman under investigation

Money laundering: Trump crypto took $100 million from a shady businessman under investigation

The New York Times reports: During the World Cup soccer final in New Jersey last month, Zach Witkoff, co-founder of President Trump’s cryptocurrency company, took in the action from a luxury suite. Joining him was a man who had made the president, and all the company’s co-founders, much richer. Two years earlier, the man, Guren “Bobby” Zhou, was a failed hardwood flooring retailer in Britain who had come under investigation there for money laundering and presided over the collapse of…

Read More Read More

‘Work boots and Subarus’: Local officials say the backlash against Flock cameras is becoming bipartisan

‘Work boots and Subarus’: Local officials say the backlash against Flock cameras is becoming bipartisan

Politico reports: Communities across the U.S. are cutting ties with Flock Safety, one of the country’s leading producers of license plate readers and other surveillance systems, over concerns around mass surveillance and data privacy — and fears over how data could be used in immigration crackdowns. Residents have swarmed city council meetings in states where Flock cameras have cropped up to urge elected officials to cancel contracts or deactivate Flock cameras — arguing that the technology could be used to…

Read More Read More

Trump nominates Project 2025 author to be Interior Department inspector general

Trump nominates Project 2025 author to be Interior Department inspector general

The Hill reports: President Trump has nominated a former White House official and Project 2025 author to be the Interior Department’s internal watchdog, a move that critics say could hurt the integrity of the office’s investigations. Trump nominated Dennis Kirk, one of the authors of a chapter of the conservative policy playbook and a former official in the White House Office of Personnel Management during the first Trump administration, to be the department’s inspector general. Mark Greenblatt, a former inspector…

Read More Read More

At Trump’s DOJ, watchdogs gutted as misconduct complaints soar

At Trump’s DOJ, watchdogs gutted as misconduct complaints soar

Reuters reports: In one courtroom after another, federal judges have accused U.S. President Donald Trump’s Justice Department of an extraordinary spate of misconduct, including making false statements, failing to comply with court orders and improperly using the legal system to harass political opponents. Such rebukes might be expected to trigger a flurry of activity within the department’s two ​internal watchdogs tasked with policing the government’s most powerful law-enforcement agency. But shrinking staffs and fears of political retribution have largely sidelined…

Read More Read More

Meta ordered to pay almost $1 billion over social media harm to children

Meta ordered to pay almost $1 billion over social media harm to children

  Fortune reports: A New Mexico court has ordered Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta to pay $567 million to address harms to young people from its platforms in the second phase of a landmark trial. Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a ruling late Thursday that the bulk of the money — $420 million — will be used for treatment services for young people. The rest will go toward awareness and prevention, screening services and other costs over the next…

Read More Read More

ICE will release body camera video only when it serves the agency’s PR interests

ICE will release body camera video only when it serves the agency’s PR interests

The Associated Press reports: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving to equip officers with body cameras in the next two months but the agency’s policy gives it broad control over what footage will be made public by specifying any releases must be in its “best interests.” After years of delays, ICE said its field officers nationwide will have body-worn cameras by the end of September. The rollout comes after recent fatal shootings by officers enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown…

Read More Read More

AI sends global crime syndicates into fraud nirvana

AI sends global crime syndicates into fraud nirvana

Dark Reading reports: In bad news for financial institutions, online retailers, cryptocurrency exchanges, and people in the dating pool who rely on identity verification to make sure they’re not getting taken for a ride, global fraud gangs are aggressively industrializing their scam efforts. That’s according to Eric Huber, senior manager for adversary intelligence and disruption at TD Bank, who said that major centers for organized crime specializing in financial fraud (notably in Southeast Asia and West Africa) are bypassing “know…

Read More Read More

IRS workers group joins Jan. 6 ‘slush fund’ suit, seeking to block Trump audit carve-out

IRS workers group joins Jan. 6 ‘slush fund’ suit, seeking to block Trump audit carve-out

NBC News reports: An organization representing career Internal Revenue Service employees has joined a lawsuit over the contentious settlement reached in connection with President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, challenging a carve-out that would give him and members of his family immunity from certain tax audits. A Jan. 6 prosecutor fired by the Trump administration and others previously sued to block a fund that could have gone to Trump allies who said they were victims of weaponization, potentially including…

Read More Read More