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      3 Men With White Supremacist Ties Sentenced in Plan to Attack Power Station

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      Two of the men met through a neo-Nazi online forum and recruited other people to join their scheme, which was rooted in white supremacist ideology, prosecutors said.Three men with white supremacist ties, including two former U.S. Marines, were sentenced to prison last week after plotting to destroy a power station in the northwestern United States, the U.S. Department of Justice said.The men, Paul James Kryscuk, 38; Liam Collins, 25; and Justin Wade Hermanson, 25; received separate sentences on Thursday for charges related to what the Justice Department described as a racially motivated scheme to attack a power grid.The men gathered information on weapons and explosives, manufactured firearms and stole military gear, prosecutors said.Mr. Kryscuk, of Boise, Idaho, was found in October 2020 with a handwritten list of about a dozen places in Idaho and surrounding states that were home to components of the power grid for the northwestern United States, prosecutors said.The Justice Department did not disclose details about where the men wanted to carry out an attack or their ultimate goal. Sentencing documents on the public court system were not available.Mr. Collins, of Johnston, R.I., received the longest sentence of 10 years for aiding and abetting the interstate transportation of unregistered firearms. Mr. Kryscuk was sentenced to six years and six months for conspiracy to destroy an energy facility. Mr. Hermanson, of Swansboro, N.C., was sentenced to one year and nine months for conspiracy to manufacture firearms and ship interstate.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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      How a U.S. Antidoping Law Fueled Global Tensions

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      The Olympics are opening amid outright antagonism between international sports authorities and the United States over American investigations into the handling of doping allegations abroad.In the tumultuous final weeks of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, he signed into law, with little fanfare, bipartisan legislation that gave the United States vast new powers to police doping at competitions like the Olympics.The law authorized the Justice Department to criminally prosecute coaches, trainers, doctors and sports officials from around the world involved in facilitating doping, even if the event was held outside the United States.Nearly four years later, simmering anger among global athletic authorities about use of the law has exploded into public conflict. That has left the Olympic and antidoping movements unsettled as the Summer Games prepare to open on Friday in Paris and raised new questions about the reach of U.S. law enforcement powers abroad.The Justice Department is continuing to investigate whether Chinese antidoping authorities and the World Anti-Doping Agency — the organization, known as WADA, that is supposed to ensure a level playing field in sports — covered up the positive tests of nearly two dozen elite Chinese swimmers who went on to win medals at the last Summer Games.Some of those swimmers are competing again in Paris.The backlash from the investigation intensified on Wednesday when the International Olympic Committee announced that it had awarded the 2034 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. The award came with a stunning catch: The committee, deeply unnerved by the U.S. investigation, insisted on the right to rescind the decision if the United States continues to take actions “where the supreme authority of the World Anti-Doping Agency in the fight against doping is not fully respected.”The move set up a situation in which the bid may be contingent on the results of a Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation and led to new salvos between two camps. On one side are the I.O.C. and WADA, and on the other are Travis Tygart, the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Congress and advocates for athletes.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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      Texas Woman Is Sentenced to 15 Years in Fraud Scheme

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      Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, stole over $100 million from a youth development grant program for children of military families, spending the money on a lavish lifestyle, prosecutors said.A Texas woman who stole over $100 million from a youth development grant program for children of military families and spent the money to fund a lavish lifestyle was sentenced on Tuesday to federal prison, the authorities said.The defendant, Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, pleaded guilty in March to five counts of mail fraud and five counts of filing a false tax return, according to a criminal court docket.Judge Xavier Rodriguez of the Western District of Texas sentenced Ms. Mello on Tuesday to 180 months, or 15 years, in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. According to federal prosecutors, Ms. Mello was a civilian employee for the U.S. Army and worked as a financial manager for a child and youth grant program at the Fort Sam Houston Base in San Antonio. Part of her job was to determine whether funding was available for various organizations that applied to the grant program, called the 4-H Military Partnership Grant.Around the end of 2016 through at least August 2023, Ms. Mello formed a fraudulent business called Child Health and Youth Lifelong Development, which she used to steal Army funds by falsely claiming it provided services to military members and their families, prosecutors said. In some cases, Ms. Mello forged her supervisor’s digital signature on the paperwork, they said.Ms. Mello used her “experience, expert knowledge of the grant program, and accumulated trust,” to swindle her colleagues, prosecutors said.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 Appears to Have Acted Alone, but Motives Remain Unclear

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      The 20-year-old gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania appears to have acted alone, F.B.I. officials said on Sunday, but investigators remain unsure of his motives and political beliefs and have not yet been able to determine what evidence might be on his cellphone.Agents found what officials described as a “rudimentary” explosive device in the gunman’s vehicle, and possible explosives were also found at his residence, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.F.B.I. officials confirmed that the gunman’s father had legally purchased the AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle used in the shooting. But they said it was not clear whether the father gave his son the weapon or whether he took it without permission.Kevin Rojek, the F.B.I. special agent in charge in Pittsburgh, said the family was cooperating with the investigation.Dozens of federal investigators scrambled to determine why the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pa., climbed atop a nearby building and squeezed off a volley of shots on Saturday evening that injured Mr. Trump, killed a man attending the rally with his family and left two other people at the site critically injured before he was killed by a Secret Service sniper.F.B.I. officials said Mr. Crooks did not have a history of mental illness or criminal activity.He does not appear to have left behind any written statement that could easily explain his motivations or provide clues to any external connections or influences, according to a senior law enforcement official.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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      Ohio Mother Killed Trying to Stop a Carjacking With Her Son Inside

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      The woman, 29, was struck by her own vehicle after the suspects began driving away, the police said.Detectives in Columbus, Ohio, this weekend were searching for two men as they investigated the death of a woman who was fatally struck by her own vehicle while trying to stop a carjacking that occurred with her 6-year-old son in the car. Alexa Stakley, 29, was carjacked shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Thursday while picking up her son at the home of a babysitter after wrapping up a shift waiting tables, according to the police. After putting the sleeping 6-year-old inside her 2022 silver Honda SUV, Ms. Stakley walked back toward the babysitter’s house to retrieve an item, according to a police report. As she turned back, Ms. Stakley saw her moving. She was seen “running toward her Honda and was heard screaming for her child,” the police report said. Moments later, Ms. Stakley was struck by the vehicle, suffering a fatal wound to the head. Shortly afterward, two men were seen running away from the area, abandoning the vehicle nearby, the police said. Police officers found the child inside the car unharmed. Carjackings have been called “an important public safety threat” by the Department of Justice, which earlier this year announced it had established 11 task forces to combat the crime in areas of particular concern, like Philadelphia, Chicago and Tampa, Fla. 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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      U.S. and Allies Target Russian Bots Working to Spread Propaganda

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      Intelligence officials from three countries flagged a Russian influence campaign that used artificial intelligence to create nearly 1,000 fake accounts on the social media platform X.The Justice Department said on Tuesday that it had moved to disrupt a covert Russian influence operation that used artificial intelligence to spread propaganda in the United States, Europe and Israel with the goal of undermining support for Ukraine and stoking internal political divisions.Working with the governments of Canada and the Netherlands, as well as officials at Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, the department said it seized two internet domains in the United States and took down 968 inauthentic accounts that the Russian government created after its attack on Ukraine began in 2022.In affidavits released with the announcement, officials with the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon’s Cyber National Mission Force linked the effort to Russia’s Federal Security Service and RT, the state television network that has channels in English and several other languages.The disclosure of such a large, global network of bots confirmed widespread warnings that the popularization of rapidly developing A.I. tools would make it easier to produce and spread dubious content. With A.I., information campaigns can be created in a matter of minutes — the kind of work that in the months before the 2016 presidential election, for example, required an army of office workers.The Russian network used an A.I.-enhanced software package to create scores of fictitious user profiles on X. It did so by registering the users with email accounts on two internet domains, mlrtr.com and otanmail.com. (OTAN, perhaps coincidentally, is the French acronym for the NATO alliance). The software could then generate posts for the accounts — and even repost, like and comment on the posts of other bots in the network.Both domains were based in the United States but controlled by Russian administrators, who used the accounts to promote propaganda produced by the RT television network. In a statement, the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, called it “a generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm.”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-Engineer Charged With Obstructing Inquiry Into Military Crash That Killed 16

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      James Michael Fisher, 67, was arrested on charges that he made false statements during a criminal investigation into a the crash of a Marine Corps aircraft in Mississippi in 2017, the Justice Department said.A former U.S. Air Force engineer has been charged with making false statements and obstructing justice during a federal criminal investigation into a 2017 military plane crash that killed 16 people, the Justice Department said Wednesday.The engineer, James Michael Fisher, 67, formerly of Warner Robins, Ga., had been living in Portugal when he was arrested Tuesday morning on an indictment issued by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Mississippi, the department said in a news release. He is charged with two counts each of making false statement charges and obstruction of justice. If convicted, could receive up to 20 years in prison.According to the department, Mr. Fisher, a former lead propulsion engineer at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex, “engaged in a pattern of conduct intended to avoid scrutiny for his past engineering decisions related to why the crash may have occurred.” He also “knowingly concealed key engineering documents” from investigators and “made materially false statements” to them about his decisions, the department said.The Justice Department did not specify a cause of the crash, which took place on July 10, 2017, in the Mississippi Delta when a U.S. Marine Corps KC-130 aircraft known as Yanky 72 crashed near Itta Bena, Miss., killing 15 members of the Marine Corps and a Navy corpsman. Witnesses at the time said the plane had disintegrated in the air as it neared the ground, prompting an urgent rescue effort in one of the South’s most rural areas. The authorities estimated the debris field was about three miles in diameter.The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for further information on Wednesday evening, and court documents could not immediately be obtained. It was unclear if Mr. Fisher had legal representation. The Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex also did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday evening. Alain Delaquérière More

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      Supreme Court Immunity Ruling Escalates Long Rise of Presidential Power

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      Beyond Donald J. Trump, the decision adds to the seemingly one-way ratchet of executive authority.The Supreme Court’s decision to bestow presidents with immunity from prosecution over official actions is an extraordinary expansion of executive power that will reverberate long after Donald J. Trump is gone.Beyond its immediate implications for the election subversion case against Mr. Trump and the prospect that he may feel less constrained by law if he returns to power, the ruling also adds to the nearly relentless rise of presidential power since the mid-20th century.It had seemed like a constitutional truism in recent years when more than one lower-court opinion addressing novel legal issues raised by Mr. Trump’s norm-breaking behavior observed that presidents are not kings. But suddenly, they do enjoy a kind of monarchical prerogative.“The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an outraged dissent joined by the court’s other two liberals. “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”Dismissing those worries, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, argued that presidents stand apart from regular people, so protecting them from prosecution if they are accused of abusing their powers to commit official crimes is necessary.“Unlike anyone else,” he wrote, “the president is a branch of government, and the Constitution vests in him sweeping powers and duties.”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