Aurelia Butler

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    Woman Arrested for Spitting on Ed Martin, Former Trump Justice Dept. Official

    Ed Martin, the former interim U.S. attorney for Washington, stepped down from the position earlier this month.Federal police arrested a Washington woman on Thursday and charged her with assault for allegedly spitting on Ed Martin, who was at the time the chief prosecutor for the nation’s capital appointed by President Trump.Earlier this month, Emily Gabriella Sommer, 32 confronted Mr. Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, during an interview with journalists outside of his office in Northwest Washington. Ms. Sommer, who was walking a dog on a leash, approached Mr. Martin, asked him “Who are you?” using an expletive, and then spat on him. As she walked away, she told Mr. Martin, “You are a disgusting man.”Later that evening, a social media account — “@EmilyGabriellaS” with the username “leftits” — then repeatedly confronted Mr. Martin in the replies to his social media posts, mocking him and claiming responsibility for the incident.Mr. Martin stepped down from his position as the interim U.S. attorney earlier this month after it became clear his work for Jan. 6 rioters would stop him from getting confirmed by the Senate. He is now the self-described “captain” of the Justice Department’s “weaponization” group, among other roles, leading President Trump’s campaign to carry out retribution against his perceived enemies. He often appeared to do just that in his role as the top prosecutor in Washington, and it was one of the obstacles in his ultimately doomed path to Senate confirmation to be the capital’s permanent U.S. attorney.According to the criminal complaint submitted in federal court, U.S. marshals interviewed a witness at Ms. Sommer’s home, who identified her as the person who spat on Mr. Martin. In a statement on Thursday, the Justice Department announced that they had arrested and charged Ms. Sommer with one count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding a government official.Although spitting is considered a form of assault in most U.S. jurisdictions, prosecutors do not usually pursue assault cases for spitting unless there is some aggravating circumstance. In 2020, for example, a New York woman was charged with assault of a federal employee for spitting on a postal worker and claiming to have been infected with the coronavirus. A study published in “Forensic Science International” in 2021 found that “spitting is generally considered more of a nuisance than a truly violent act,” adding that one of the exceptions would be potential exposure to an infectious disease. More

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    An Officer Said She Was Disabled. Prosecutors Said She Ran, Skied and Danced.

    Prosecutors said that Nicole Brown, 39, of the Westminster Police Department in California, falsely said that she wasn’t able to work, receiving her salary and benefits while engaging in strenuous activities.Nicole Brown, a police officer in Orange County, Calif., told her bosses in 2022 that she could no longer perform her duties after she sustained a head injury on the job.But according to prosecutors, whatever had happened to her didn’t prevent her from running in road races, skiing or snowboarding, and dancing at a music festival while she illegally collected more than $600,000 in workers’ compensation.This week, Ms. Brown, 39, who worked for the Westminster Police Department, was charged with 15 felonies related to workers’ compensation insurance fraud, according to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.Her stepfather, Peter Gregory Schuman, 57, of Buena Park, Calif., was charged with two felonies charging him with conspiring with Ms. Brown. He is a lawyer who specializes in defending employers and insurance companies against workers’ compensation claims.Ms. Brown was charged with nine felony counts of making a fraudulent statement to obtain compensation; six felony counts of making a fraudulent insurance benefit claim; and one felony enhancement of committing an aggravated white-collar crime worth over $100,000, court records show.Her lawyer, Brian Gurwitz, said on Thursday that Ms. Brown’s on-duty injury “continues to cause her severe limitations in her daily life.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Ex-McKinsey Partner Sentenced in Obstruction Case

    The consultant had deleted records involving McKinsey’s role in pushing OxyContin sales and driving the opioid crisis.A former senior partner at McKinsey & Company was sentenced on Thursday to six months in prison for destroying records that shed light on the firm’s role in the national opioid crisis.The partner, Martin Elling, 60, had pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice as part of a federal case against the firm and its efforts to “turbocharge” sales of OxyContin during an overdose epidemic that had already killed hundreds of thousands of people. McKinsey agreed to pay $650 million to end that investigation last December.The records purge happened in 2018, when Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, was facing multiple lawsuits. Mr. Elling emailed a colleague who worked with him on the Purdue account, writing: “It probably makes sense to have a quick conversation with the risk committee to see if we should be doing anything” other than “eliminating all our documents and emails. Suspect not but as things get tougher there someone might turn to us.”Mr. Elling was fired after The New York Times reported about the exchange in 2020.After he sent that email, Mr. Elling proceeded to delete files related to his work with Purdue, according to the Justice Department, which performed a forensic analysis of his laptop.In a statement on Thursday, Mr. Elling’s legal team confirmed the sentencing and said he “fully accepts responsibility for his conduct, for which he is extremely sorry.” Besides the six-month prison term, handed down in Federal District Court in Abingdon, Va., Mr. Elling will serve 1,000 hours of community service over two years of supervised release.McKinsey’s work with clients around the world has come under intense public scrutiny in recent years, leading the firm to pay out more than $1.5 billion in fines and penalties. Last year, McKinsey’s work in China was the focus of a Senate hearing, and the firm agreed to pay more than $122 million to resolve a bribery investigation involving a branch in South Africa.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Shock at Harvard After Government Says International Students Must Go

    Fear and confusion mounted quickly on Thursday as international students, who make up more than a quarter of the university’s enrollment, sought clarity or reassurance.Just before the Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would bar international students from Harvard, staff members from the university’s International Office met with graduating seniors at the Kennedy School of Government, congratulating them on their degrees — and on surviving the chaos of recent months.Then, within minutes of the meeting’s end, news alerts lit up the students’ phones. Chaos was breaking out again: Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, had notified Harvard that its permission to enroll international students was revoked. With that, the degrees and futures of thousands of Harvard students — and an integral piece of the university’s identity and culture — were plunged into deep uncertainty.“There are so many students from all over the world who came to Harvard to make it a better place and to change America and change their home countries for the better,” said Karl Molden, a student from Vienna who had just completed his sophomore year. “Now it’s all at risk of falling apart, which is breaking my heart.”The university has faced rapid-fire aggressions since its president, Alan M. Garber, told the Trump administration in April that Harvard would not give in to demands to change its hiring and admissions practices and its curriculum. After the government froze more than $2 billion in grants, Harvard filed suit in federal court in Boston. Since then, the administration has gutted the university’s research funding, upending budgets and forcing some hard-hit programs to reimagine their scope and mission.The end of international enrollment would transform a university where 6,800 students, more than a quarter of the total, come from other countries, a number that has grown steadily in recent decades. Graduate programs would be hit especially hard.At the Kennedy School, 59 percent of students come from outside the United States. International students make up 40 percent of the enrollment at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and 35 percent at the Harvard Business School.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Can the Trump Administration Stop Harvard From Enrolling International Students?

    The Trump administration is relying on an obscure bureaucratic lever to stop the school, the latest in a series of aggressive moves.The Trump administration wants to halt Harvard from enrolling international students. But how can the federal government dictate which students a private university can and cannot enroll?The government has enormous power over who comes into the United States, and who doesn’t. For college and universities, the Department of Homeland Security has a vast system just to manage and track the enrollment of the hundreds of thousands of international students studying across the country at any given time.But a school needs government certification to use this database, known as SEVIS, for the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. And this vulnerability is what the Trump administration is exploiting against Harvard.Homeland Security says that effective immediately, it has revoked a certification that allows Harvard to have access to SEVIS. Oddly enough, the students may still have valid visas. But Harvard is no longer able to log them into this all-important database.The announcement was a significant escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure Harvard to fall in line with the president’s agenda.Here’s what we know so far.How does Harvard use the SEVIS database?For each international student, Harvard inputs data into SEVIS to show that a student is enrolled full time, and thus meeting the terms of the visa that the student was issued.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Gunman Fired Repeatedly at Young Couple Outside Jewish Museum, F.B.I. Says

    The authorities said the shooter was motivated by opposition to the war in Gaza when he killed two young Israeli Embassy employees in Washington.The gathering at the Capital Jewish Museum was quintessential Washington — a nighttime reception hosted by a national advocacy group, bringing together young professionals and foreign diplomats in a neighborhood not far from the Capitol.On the street outside, a man who looked like just another young Washingtonian in a blue jacket and a backpack was pacing back and forth.As two young aides at the Israeli Embassy who were dating left the reception, he turned to face their backs and pulled a 9-millimeter handgun from his waistband, according to an F.B.I. affidavit that cited surveillance video. Then he shot them again and again, reloading his pistol, shooting even after they fell and as the young woman was trying to crawl away.The gunman then went inside the museum, where guests thought he was a bystander who had fled the shooting, and someone offered him a glass of water. Moments later, when the police apprehended him, he let out a cry that has become familiar on college campuses and at protests around the world: “Free, free Palestine!”The killings punctuated a moment of rising tension in the United States and around the world, as college campuses, European capitals and American politics have been transformed by anger over the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s devastating bombing campaign in Gaza.Across the world, offenses against Jewish people and property have increased sharply since the Hamas attacks and have remained at historically high levels as Israel has waged a military offensive and aid blockade that the Gaza Health Ministry says has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and left the population on the brink of starvation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Arresting International Students or Revoking Visas

    Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California provided temporary relief to some international students while a legal battle continues.A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s wide-reaching effort to detain and deport international students, barring the federal government from arresting those students or revoking their visas while the case plays out in court.Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush, granted a temporary injunction protecting international students who were among the thousands whose visas were revoked earlier this year without clear justification, writing that government officials had “uniformly wreaked havoc” and “likely exceeded their authority and acted arbitrarily and capriciously” by the mass revocation of students’ immigration status.“The relief the court grants provides plaintiffs with a measure of stability and certainty,” Judge White wrote in the 21-page order. “That they will be able to continue their studies or their employment without the threat of re-termination hanging over their heads.”Judge White’s ruling said that the order applied to all “similarly situated individuals” who participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which is the system governing student visas. In the order, he expressed suspicion that the Trump administration was trying to place future visa “terminations beyond judicial review.”“At each turn in this and similar litigation across the nation,” Judge White wrote, “defendants have abruptly changed course to satisfy courts’ expressed concerns. It is unclear how this game of whack-a-mole will end unless defendants are enjoined from skirting their own mandatory regulations.”The order comes hours after the Trump administration halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, and it is likely that this nationwide order could at least in part prevent the Trump administration’s move from being enforced. More

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    Brian K. Williams Agrees to Plead Guilty in L.A. Bomb Threat Case

    The former City Hall aide, considered by colleagues a steady presence, faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.A former Los Angeles official agreed Thursday to plead guilty to a felony charge after fabricating a bomb threat against the City Hall he was hired to protect as the deputy mayor of public safety.Brian K. Williams, 61, who rose from the city attorney’s office to become a deputy in two mayoral administrations, admitted in a plea deal that he had concocted a bomb threat and called it in to City Hall last October, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said in a statement.Under the terms of the deal, the statement said, Mr. Williams — who oversaw public safety for Mayor Karen Bass until she put him on administrative leave in December — has agreed to plead guilty to a single felony charge of “information with threats regarding fire and explosives.”“In an era of heated political rhetoric that has sometimes escalated into violence, we cannot allow public officials to make bomb threats,” said Bill Essayli, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.At Los Angeles City Hall, where Mr. Williams had been considered by colleagues a steady and affable presence, a spokesman for Mayor Bass expressed disappointment. “Like many, we were shocked when these allegations were first made and we are saddened by this conclusion,” Zach Seidl, the spokesman, said.During the January fires that devastated Los Angeles, supporters of the mayor widely blamed her initial absence on the lack of a strong public safety adviser, who might have briefed her more fully than the fire chief, whom she later demoted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More