Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 186
NEW YORK (AP) — As they unsuccessfully fought to keep Sean "Diddy" Combs out of jail after his sex trafficking arrest, the music mogul's lawyers highlighted a litany of horrors at the Brooklyn federal lockup where he was headed: horrific conditions, rampant violence and multiple deaths. Combs, 54, was sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn on Tuesday — a place that's been described as "hell on earth" and an "ongoing tragedy" — after pleading not guilty in a case that accuses him of physically and sexually abusing women for more t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed into law on Thursday a bill strengthening oversight of the crisis-plagued federal Bureau of Prisons after reporting by The Associated Press exposed systemic corruption, failures and abuse in the federal prison system. The Federal Prison Oversight Act, which passed the Senate on July 10 and the House in May, establishes an independent ombudsman to field and investigate complaints in the wake of sexual assaults and other criminal misconduct by staff, chronic understaffing, escapes and high-profile d...
Derek Chauvin was stabbed in prison 22 times by a former gang leader and one-time FBI informant who told investigators he targeted the ex-Minneapolis police officer because of his notoriety for killing George Floyd, federal prosecutors said Friday. John Turscak was charged with attempted murder a week after the Nov. 24 attack at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona. He told correctional officers he would have killed Chauvin had they not responded so quickly, prosecutors said. Turscak, who is serving a 30-year sentence for...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually abusing Olympic and college female gymnasts, was stabbed multiple times by another inmate at a federal prison in Florida that is experiencing staffing shortages. The attack happened Sunday at United States Penitentiary Coleman, and Nassar was in stable condition on Monday, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. One of the people said Nassar had been stabbed in the back and in the chest. The two officers guarding the unit where Nassar w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The pilot of a business jet that flew over Washington and crashed in a remote part of Virginia appeared to be slumped over and unresponsive, three U.S. officials said Monday, recounting observations by fighter pilots who intercepted the wayward flight. The revelations came as federal investigators trudged through rugged terrain to reach the site where the plane slammed into a mountain Sunday, killing four people. The officials who said that the fighter pilots saw the civilian pilot slumped over had been briefed on the m...
A senior official at the federal Bureau of Prisons has been repeatedly promoted, most recently to one of the highest posts in the agency. And this has happened despite his being accused of beating multiple Black inmates in the 1990s. Since then, people who know Thomas Ray Hinkle say he has repeatedly boasted about the beatings and being part of a violent, racist group of officers that called themselves "The Cowboys." An Associated Press investigation has found the Bureau of Prisons has continued to promote Hinkle despite numerous red flags. It...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Justice Department's investigation into the presence of classified documents at former President Donald Trump's Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election. The appointment of veteran prosecutor Jack Smith, announced just three days after Trump formally launched his 2024 candidacy, is a recognition of the unmistakable political implications of two i...
NEW YORK (AP) — The swift collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX sent more shockwaves through the crypto world on Thursday, with authorities now investigating the firm for potential securities violations and analysts bracing for a further downturn in crypto prices. FTX had agreed earlier this week to sell itself to bigger rival Binance after experiencing the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run. Customers fled the exchange after becoming concerned about whether FTX had sufficient capital. A person familiar with matter said that the D...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee is interviewing Hope Hicks, a longtime aide to former President Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Tuesday's interview comes as the investigation is winding down and as the panel has subpoenaed Trump for an interview in the coming weeks. The person requested anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting. Hicks did not play a major role in the White House response to the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, in which hundreds of Trump's supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol and i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell said Tuesday that federal agents seized his cellphone and questioned him about a Colorado clerk who has been charged in what prosecutors say was a "deceptive scheme" to breach voting system technology used across the country. Lindell was approached in the drive-thru of a Hardee's fast-food restaurant in Mankato, Minnesota, by several FBI agents, he said on his podcast, "The Lindell Report." The agents questioned him about Dominion Voting Systems, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and his c...
BOSTON (AP) — Federal officials are examining whether the employee who reported an explosion at Northeastern University may have lied to investigators and staged the incident, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. Investigators identified inconsistencies in the employee's statement and became skeptical because his injuries did not match wounds typically consistent with an explosion, said one official. The officials could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The N...
Behind a closed chapel office door inside a federal women's prison in California, a chaplain forced inmates seeking his spiritual guidance to have sex with him — exploiting their faith and their powerlessness behind bars for his own gratification, prosecutors said. James Theodore Highhouse, who pleaded guilty in February and is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday, would tell women he abused at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, that everyone in the Bible had sex and that God wanted them to be together, prosecutors s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fourteen of the 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate early this year contained classified documents, many of them top secret, mixed in with miscellaneous newspapers, magazines and personal correspondence, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday. No space at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate was authorized for the storage of classified material, according to the court papers, which laid out the FBI's rationale for searching the property this month, including "probable cause to believe that e...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is asking a federal court to unseal the warrant the FBI used to search the Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday, acknowledging extraordinary public interest in the case about classified records. The request is striking because such documents traditionally remain sealed during a pending investigation. But the Justice Department appeared to recognize that its silence since the search had created a vacuum for bitter verbal attacks by Trump and h...
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination as he testified under oath Wednesday in the New York attorney general's long-running civil investigation into his business dealings, the former president said in a statement. About an hour after arriving at Attorney General Letitia James' Manhattan offices, Trump announced that he "declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution." "I once asked, 'If you're innocent, why a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump said in a lengthy statement Monday that the FBI was conducting a search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and asserted that agents had broken open a safe. A person familiar with the matter said the action was related to a probe of whether Trump had taken classified records from his White House tenure to his Florida residence. The action, which the FBI and Justice Department did not immediately confirm, marks a dramatic escalation in law enforcement scrutiny of Trump and comes as he has been laying the g...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The outgoing director of the Bureau of Prisons has been subpoenaed to testify before a Senate committee examining abuse and corruption in the beleaguered federal agency. Michael Carvajal was served a subpoena to appear at a hearing later this month. The subpoena was announced Monday by Sen. Jon Ossoff, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The committee's subpoena follows an investigation by The Associated Press exposing systemic issues in the agency, including widespread criminal a...
MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — More than five decades after Diane Cusick's lifeless body was discovered in the parking lot of a mall on New York's Long Island, authorities have linked her death to the so-called "Torso Killer," a serial killer already convicted in 11 other killings. The suspect, Richard Cottingham — believed to be one of America's most prolific serial killers — was arraigned Wednesday on a second-degree murder charge in connection with Cusick's 1968 killing. From a hospital bed in New Jersey, where he's already serving a life sente...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A man carrying a gun, a knife and zip ties was arrested Wednesday near Justice Brett Kavanaugh's house in Maryland after threatening to kill the justice. Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, California, was charged with the attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice. During a court hearing, he consented to remain in federal custody for now. Roske was dressed in black when he arrived by taxi just after 1 a.m. outside Kavanaugh's home in a Washington suburb. He had a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro revealed in a court filing Tuesday afternoon that he has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury this week as part of the Justice Department's sprawling probe into the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Navarro, who was a trade adviser to then-President Donald Trump, said he was served by the FBI at his Washington, D.C., house last week. The subpoena is the first known instance of prosecutors seeking testimony from someone who worked in the Trump White House as they investigate t...
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The 18-year-old gunman who authorities say killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket had previously threatened a shooting at his high school and was sent for mental health treatment. A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Payton Gendron had appeared on the radar of police last year after he threatened to carry out a shooting around the time of graduation. Officials also say the gunman had researched the local demographics and arrived in the area a day in advance to conduct reconnaissance with the "express...
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The white gunman accused of massacring 10 Black people in a racist rampage at a Buffalo supermarket planned to keep on killing if he had escaped the scene, the police commissioner said Monday, as the possibility of federal hate crime or domestic terror charges loomed. The gunman, who had crossed the state to target people at the Tops Friendly Market, had talked about shooting up another store as well, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia told CNN. "He was going to get in his car and continue to drive down J...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday took fresh aim at ghost guns, the privately made firearms without serial numbers that are increasingly cropping up in violent crimes, as he struggles to break past gun-control opposition to address firearm deaths. Speaking at the White House, Biden highlighted the Justice Department's work to finalize new regulations to crack down on ghost guns, and announced the nomination of Steve Dettelbach, who served as a U.S. attorney in Ohio from 2009 to 2016, to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is unveiling a completed rule aimed at reining in the proliferation of ghost guns, firearms without serial numbers that have been turning up at crime scenes across the nation in increasing numbers. The White House and the Justice Department argue that regulating the firearms parts and requiring dealers to stamp serial numbers on ghost guns will help drive down violent crime and aid investigators in solving crimes. Gun groups, however, argue that the government is overreaching and that its rule v...
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of two men accused of impersonating federal agents and giving actual Secret Service agents gifts and free apartments in Washington has claimed to have ties to Pakistani intelligence and had visas showing travel to Pakistan and Iran, federal prosecutors said Thursday. The men, Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, were arrested Wednesday. The FBI raided a luxury apartment building in Southeast Washington, where the men were staying and had been offering free apartments and other gifts to U.S. Secret Service agents a...
