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    US justice department to review conviction of former election clerk

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    Donald Trump’s justice department said it will review the Colorado conviction of former election clerk Tina Peters, who received a nine-year prison sentence for her role in a voting system data-breach scheme as part of an unsuccessful quest to find voter fraud in 2021.Yaakov Roth, an acting assistant attorney general, wrote in a court filing on Monday that the Department of Justice was “reviewing cases across the nation for abuses of the criminal justice process”, including Peters’.“This review will include an evaluation of the state of Colorado’s prosecution of Ms Peters and, in particular, whether the case was ‘oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives’,” Roth wrote, echoing the language in a Trump executive order on “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government”.Peters, then the clerk of Mesa county, allowed a man affiliated with the pillow salesman and election denier Mike Lindell to misuse a security card to access the Mesa county election system. Lindell posted about the DoJ’s statement on his fundraising website, telling donors their assistance had “contributed to positive developments at the Department of Justice that give us hope that the wheels are in motion for the early release of Tina Peters”.Jurors found Peters guilty in August, convicting her on seven counts related to misconduct, conspiracy and impersonation, four of which were felony charges. Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her in October to nine years in prison, calling Peters “as defiant as a defendant that the court has ever seen” and said he believed Peters would do it all over again if she could.Peters had argued for probation and is appealing against her conviction.The DoJ’s statement of interest notes that Peters’ physical and mental health have deteriorated while she’s been in prison, and that “reasonable concerns have been raised” about her case, including the “exceptionally lengthy sentence” the court imposed and the denial of bail for Peters while her appeal plays out. Her appeal deserves “prompt and careful consideration” by the court, Roth wrote.Dan Rubinstein, the Mesa County district attorney, said in a statement that “nothing about the prosecution of Ms Peters was politically motivated”.“In one of the most conservative jurisdictions in Colorado, the same voters who elected Ms Peters, also elected the Republican district attorney who handled the prosecution, and the all-Republican board of county commissioners who unanimously requested the prosecution of Ms Peters on behalf of the citizens she victimized,” Rubinstein said.“Ms Peters was indicted by a grand jury of her peers, and convicted at trial by the jury of her peers that she selected.”Peters has become a cause célèbre on the right, with some Republicans promoting a “free Tina Peters” movement. A small rally in Fort Collins, Colorado, over the weekend called attention to Peters’ appeal, and protesters there insisted she was innocent and had discovered election fraud.Trump cannot pardon Peters because she was convicted of state crimes, not federal ones. Some Colorado Republicans have suggested Trump should withhold federal funds from the state until the Democratic governor Jared Polis agrees to pardon Peters, Colorado’s 9News reports. More

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      Pardoned January 6 rioter said ‘I’m shooting myself’ before Indiana deputy fatally shot him

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      The pardoned US Capitol attacker who was shot to death by an Indiana sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop in January had first told the officer: “I’m shooting myself,” before attempting to retrieve a gun from his car, according to officials as well as newly released video of the encounter.Matthew Huttle’s killing by the deputy – whose body-worn and dashboard cameras captured video of the traffic stop – was “legally justified” and would not lead to any criminal charges, prosecutors said in a statement published on Thursday.Huttle, 42, had traveled to Washington DC with his uncle, Dale, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021 in a desperate attempt to prolong his presidency despite his losing the 2020 White House election to Joe Biden, according to federal prosecutors. Matthew Huttle entered the Capitol for about 15 minutes – recording it on video – and agreed to a plea deal that resulted in about six months of prison for him.Dale Huttle, meanwhile, received 30 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to using a long flagpole to jab a police officer protecting the Capitol.The Huttles were among more than 1,500 Capitol attackers who were pardoned by Trump on 20 January, his first day back in the Oval Office after retaking it by defeating Kamala Harris in November’s election.Six days after Trump’s mass clemency, a deputy stopped Matthew Huttle as he drove at 70mph (113km/h) in a 55mph zone near the line between the north-west Indiana counties of Jasper and Pulaski. The deputy told Huttle he would be arrested for being a habitual traffic offender, which prompted the motorist – who had been ordered out of his car – to say: “No, I can’t go to jail for this.”Huttle later sprinted for his car as the deputy shouted: “No, don’t you do it buddy! No, no, no, no, no!”The deputy and Huttle struggled in the latter man’s car. Video captured Huttle shouting: “I’m shooting myself”, and investigators said he “reached in a manner consistent with retrieving a weapon”.Prosecutors said the deputy fired multiple shots at Huttle – mortally wounding him – after seeing him raise a gun. Investigators subsequently found a loaded 9mm pistol as well as additional ammunition inside Huttle’s car, prosecutors also said.“Based on the evidence … the deputy’s actions were legally justified under Indiana law,” said the statement signed by prosecutor Chris Vawter, which called Huttle’s killing a case of self-defense. “This investigation is now closed, and no charges will be filed.”Attempts to contact an attorney for Huttle were not immediately successful. In court filings pertaining to the case against him in the January 6 attack, Huttle’s attorney, Andrew Hemmer, claimed that his client was “not a believer in any political cause” and only went to the Capitol that day “because he thought it would be a historic moment”.“He had nothing better to do after getting out of jail” in connection with a driving violation, Hemmer wrote of Huttle.Those who criticized the clemency that Trump granted the Capitol attackers included the US’s largest police union, which had endorsed him over Harris, a former prosecutor.The Fraternal Order of Police said in a joint statement with the International Association of Chiefs of Police: “Crimes against law enforcement are not just attacks on individuals or public safety – they are attacks on society and undermine the rule of law.”Huttle was one of multiple pardoned Capitol attackers who have since landed in news headlines over other legal issues.That group included a man left facing unresolved charges in Texas of having solicited a minor.Another pardoned January 6 participant was rearrested on federal gun charges. And yet another was handed a 10-year prison sentence for killing a woman in a 2022 drunk-driving crash, according to authorities. More

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      Mexican drug lord pleads not guilty to killing of DEA agent after US extradition

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      After years as one of US authorities’ most wanted men, the Mexican drug cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero was brought into a New York courtroom on Friday to answer charges that include orchestrating the 1985 killing of a US federal agent.Caro Quintero pleaded not guilty to running a continuing criminal enterprise. Separately, so did Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the leader of another cartel. Carrillo is accused of arranging kidnappings and killings in Mexico but not accused of involvement in the death of the DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.Caro Quintero, Carrillo Fuentes and 27 other Mexican prisoners were sent on Thursday to eight US cities, a move that came as Mexico sought to stave off the Donald Trump administration’s threat of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports next week.For Camarena’s family, the arraignments marked a long-awaited moment.“For 14,631 days, we held on to hope – hope that this moment would come. Hope that we would live to see accountability. And now, that hope has finally turned into reality,” the family said in a statement thanking Trump and everyone who has worked on the case over the years.The White House, in a statement Friday ahead of the arraignments, called Caro Quintero “one of the most evil cartel bosses in the world”.In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on cartels, illegal immigration and fentanyl production.But members of Mexico’s security cabinet on Friday framed the transfer of the 29 prisoners as a national security decision.“It is not a commitment to the United States. It is a commitment to ourselves,” said Mexican attorney general Alejandro Gertz Manero. “The problem of drug trafficking and organized crime has been a true tragedy for our country.”Mexican security secretary Omar García Harfuch said the people sent into US custody were “generators of violence” in Mexico and represented a security threat to both countries.Caro Quintero had long been one of America’s top Mexican targets for extradition.He was one of the founders of a Guadalajara-based cartel and one of the primary suppliers of heroin, cocaine and marijuana to the US in the late 1970s and 1980s.Caro Quintero had Camarena kidnapped, tortured and killed in 1985 because he blamed the agent for a raid on a huge marijuana plantation the year prior, authorities said. Camarena’s killing marked a low point in US-Mexico relations and was dramatized in the popular Netflix series Narcos: Mexico.Caro Quintero had been 28 years into a 40-year sentence in Mexico when an appeals court overturned his verdict in 2013.After his release, he returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody turf battles in the northern Mexico border state of Sonora until he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022, authorities said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCaro Quintero told the Spanish newspaper El País in 2018 that he “never went back to drugs”.“Whoever’s saying it is a liar!” he said, according to the newspaper. “I’m not working any more, let’s be clear about that! I was a drug trafficker 23 years ago, and now I’m not, and I won’t ever be again.”The US, which had added Caro Quintero to the FBI’s 10 most wanted list in 2018 with a $20m reward, sought his extradition immediately after his 2022 arrest. It happened days after the Mexican and US presidents at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Joe Biden respectively, met at the White House.But the request remained in limbo as López Obrador severely curtailed his country’s cooperation with the US to protest undercover American law enforcement operations targeting Mexican political and military officials.Then, in January, a non-profit group representing the Camarena family sent a letter to the new Trump administration urging it to renew the extradition request.Carrillo Fuentes is the brother of the drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of The Skies”, who died in a botched plastic surgery in 1997. Carrillo Fuentes, who was known as “The Viceroy”, continued his brother’s business of smuggling drugs over the border until his arrest in 2014.He was sentenced in 2021 to 28 years in prison for organized crime, money laundering and weapons violations.Among the others extradited are leading members of Mexican organized crime groups recently designated by the Republican administration as “foreign terrorist organizations”.They include cartel leaders, security chiefs from both factions of the Sinaloa cartel, cartel finance operatives and a man wanted in connection with the killing of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy in 2022. More

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      Eric Adams, Trump and a New York story that’s stress-testing the rule of law

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      In both real life and on film, New York City has often been a city linked with public scandals, corruption and high drama.But even Hollywood scriptwriters, so often keen on using the Big Apple as a backdrop, would have been hard-pushed to describe the astonishing events that have played out around the mayor, Eric Adams, in recent days.Last week, the US Department of Justice moved to drop criminal charges against Adams, in what many see as a blatant quid pro quo for getting Adams onboard as a political ally to a Donald Trump administration seemingly intent on launching a radical remaking of American government.It was a move that raised alarm among many residents of the city and legal experts about what many see as Trump – and Adams – undermining the integrity of the US judicial system and American democracy.Earlier this week, a top official at the justice department ordered the acting US attorney in the southern district of New York to stop prosecuting Adams for allegedly accepting bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources.The move was the latest stop in a dramatic term for America’s highest-profile mayor, which has seen the former cop elected as a Democrat but then drift rightwards, especially after Trump was elected and Adams faced prosecution. In heavily Democratic New York, Adams is now seen as an ally to Trump and has even reportedly flirted with the idea of becoming a Republican.Since being indicted in September, Adams has made regular overtures to Trump, including visiting him at his resort in Florida and skipping scheduled Martin Luther King Jr Day events in the city to attend Trump’s inauguration.Some observers said Adams was trying to obtain a pardon from Trump and ignoring his responsibilities as mayor. Adams claimed he has not discussed his legal case with Trump and that he had been talking with the president to help the city.Whatever Adams’s intentions were, Trump now appears to have helped him and, in doing so, added to the perception he will ignore the rule of law when it benefits him politically.“We have an administration that is willing to use its power to benefit favorite people, to the extent it’s able to do so without controversy – or even with controversy,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law. “It’s a truly aggressive decision on the part of DoJ and an indefensible decision.”Adams was elected mayor in November 2021. Before the indictment, he already faced criticism because of the criminal histories of people in his inner circle, his frequent participation in the city’s nightlife and allegations that he did not actually live in the city, among other complaints from residents.“You would see him partying at clubs that my peers were at, and he seemed to fit there very well, more so than the office he was holding,” said Maedot Yidenk, a 27-year-old neuroscientist from Seattle who now lives in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.After his indictment, Adams said the Biden administration had targeted him for prosecution because he had criticized its immigration policies. Prosecutors countered that the investigation had begun before Adams started attacking the federal government over its response to the number of immigrants entering the country.However, Trump agreed with Adams’s assessment and said he would consider pardoning the Democrat.But the justice department instead now wants to dismiss the charges. According to the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, federal prosecutors behind the case “threatened the integrity of the proceedings, including by increasing prejudicial pretrial publicity” and “unduly restricted” the mayor’s ability to “devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that has escalated under the policies of the prior Administration”.View image in fullscreenBove’s justification – that the prosecutor had been keeping Adams from doing his job – is “ridiculous”, according to Gillers.“It would immunize office holders, certainly mayors and governors, from criminal investigation and criminal charges, so long as they were named in that position,” Gillers said. “The real explanation, I think, is that Trump wanted to dismiss the indictment as a favor to Adams, for whatever reason, but to do it in the most neutral way.”Still, Bove has encountered resistance from prosecutors, which has plunged the city’s legal community into turmoil.On Thursday, the interim US attorney for the southern district, Danielle Sassoon, a Republican, resigned and accused the justice department of letting the defendant off in exchange for his help with Trump’s immigration policy. Five other officials in the justice department also resigned.“I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal,” Sassoon wrote to the attorney general, Pam Bondi.Bove responded in a letter to Sassoon, stating that she had been “pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case. You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.”Trump said he had not asked prosecutors to drop the case. But in his letter, Bove wrote that Sassoon was “disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President”.But the scandal did not stop there. Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the New York city council, on Monday called on the mayor to resign. Her demand came just hours after four of Adams’s eight deputy mayors announced they would leave his administration – another crippling blow to his ever more disastrous reputation.Trump could have avoided the legal wrangling by just pardoning Adams, as some predicted he would.“If he does go that route, I think it raises the question why he wouldn’t have done it in the first place,” said Thomas Frampton, an associate law professor at the University of Virginia. “I think the answer is because he wanted to test to see how compliant the [southern district] would be.”Even in a liberal city like New York, there are people who both don’t like Trump – or his efforts to exert control over the justice department – and aren’t sure prosecutors should have filed charges against Adams.Stanley Brezenoff, who once chaired the city’s housing authority and board of correction, argued that the allegations that Adams pressured the fire department to open the Turkish consulate despite safety concerns were “not pretty, but I’m not sure that in and of itself warranted the extent of the criminal justice response”.“I can understand him trying to figure out ways to avoid the retribution,” said Brezenoff, who did not vote for Adams in the last election and has not decided who he will support in the Democratic primary in June: “I may not like that, but you wouldn’t say: ‘Impeach Adams’ because he’s currying favor with Washington, with Trump.”View image in fullscreenKelly Johnson, a mechanical engineer and marine veteran, used to encounter Adams, then a police officer, walking around Brooklyn and through mutual friends. Johnson said he felt that Adams “worked a lot with the community … I didn’t necessarily have anything really bad to say about him”.Johnson, who is Black, appreciates that Adams filled his administration with people of color and thinks that serving as only the city’s second Black mayor is especially difficult.“Everyone is going to make sure that if you’re not all the way clean, the slightest of things that you may do wrong – hell, you could buy a pack of cigarettes off of some government funding – you’ll get impeached,” said Johnson, 52, who lives in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and would consider voting for Adams.There is a long list of candidates in the Democratic primary, and the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is reportedly considering entering the race. Meanwhile, Adams has recently explored running in the Republican primary, the New York Times reported.In the 2021 election, Laurie Levinson, a retiree who lives in the East Village of Manhattan, voted for Maya Wiley, a former lawyer for Mayor Bill de Blasio who has not entered the new race.“There were people who were really, really qualified, like Maya Wiley,” said Levinson, who has not decided whom she will support this time. Like Trump, she said, “Adams is another moron … I can’t wait till the next mayoral races.”Patrick Canfield, a 31-year-old who works in publishing, sees Adams as corrupt and also dislikes his policies, such as increasing the police presence on the city’s subways.“I think we’re witnessing the crumbling of American institutions,” said Canfield, who also lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “Adams is just a microcosm of that.” More

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      Four deputies to New York mayor resign in fallout over dropped corruption charges

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      Four deputies to New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, resigned on Monday as the growing chaos following a justice department request to drop corruption charges against him, widely seen as a reward for his help with Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, engulfs his three-year-old administration.According to reports, four of Adams’ deputies – first deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer, deputy mayor for operations Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for health and human services Anne Williams-Isom, and deputy mayor for public safety Chauncey Parker – said they were stepping down.“I am disappointed to see them go, but given the current challenges, I understand their decision and wish them nothing but success in the future,” Adams said in a statement.Torres-Springer, Williams-Isom and Joshi issued a joint statement, citing “the extraordinary events of the last few weeks” and “oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families” as what led them to the “difficult decision” to leave.Parker said the role was an “honor of a lifetime”.The deputies’ likely departure was first reported by WNBC and the New York Times on Monday, both citing sources within Adams’ administration.A justice department request to drop charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions against Adams last week led to a mutiny by prosecutors in New York who brought the case. At least seven prosecutors have resigned rather than comply with the request.According to WNBC, Adams held a Zoom call on Sunday with at least three of his deputies who expressed their intention to resign. The Democratic mayor is facing mounting calls for his own resignation, first over corruption charges filed last summer, and now over their resignations.Adams has pleaded not guilty, denied any wrongdoing and rejected calls for his resignation. He has also indicated he believes the charges were brought in retaliation for criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies, blaming them for the city’s struggles with absorbing tens of thousands of new arrivals.Adams has reportedly agreed to some cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) immigration agents, including allowing federal authorities to restart operations on Rikers Island, which holds the city’s largest jail.The mayor has also rejected accusations that dropping the federal charges against him would amount to making him a political prisoner of the Trump administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“No matter what they write, no matter all those who are tripping over themselves to state who I am and who I am going to be beholden to and how I am no longer independent, I know who I am,” Adams said on Sunday.Adams said that he is “going nowhere” despite protests calling for his removal by the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul.“And I want you to be clear, you’re going to hear so many rumors and so many things, you’re going to read so much,” Adams told a church congregation on Sunday. “I am going nowhere. Nowhere.” More

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      Under-pressure prosecutors ask to drop Eric Adams charges after seven resign

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      Under immense pressure from Donald Trump’s justice department leadership, prosecutors in Washington have asked a federal judge to dismiss the criminal corruption case against Eric Adams, the New York mayor, rather than see the entire public integrity office be fired.The prosecutors, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette Bacon, filed the request on Friday night to withdraw the charges against Adams that included bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions.The move capped a week of turmoil at the department where seven prosecutors – including the acting US attorney in southern district of New York, the head of the criminal division and the head of the public integrity section – resigned in protest rather than dismiss the case for political reasons.And it followed an extraordinary showdown after the acting deputy attorney general Bove, facing opposition from prosecutors in New York and pushing to bring the justice department to heel, forced the public integrity section to find someone to put their name on the dismissal or be fired themselves.The roughly hour-long meeting, where the public integrity section weighed whether to resign en masse after agreeing that the dismissal of the Adams case was improper, culminated with Sullivan, a veteran career prosecutor, agreeing to take the fall for his colleagues, according to two people familiar with the matter.The decision gave the justice department what it needed to seek the end of the Adams case. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, said in an appearance on Fox News afterwards that the mayor’s case “is being dismissed today”, although that power rests with the presiding US district judge, Dale Ho, in New York.Ho has limited ability to deny the request but could still order an evidentiary hearing into why the department was ordering the end of the corruption case against Adams, which threatens to unearth deeper revelations into the fraught background behind a decision castigated by the lead prosecutor as a quid pro quo deal.The department’s rationale to dismiss the case was necessarily political: Bove had argued that it was impeding Adams from fully cooperating with Trump’s immigration crackdown – and was notably not making the decision based on the strength of the evidence or legal theory underpinning the case.The saga started on Monday. After Bove ordered the charges against Adams to be withdrawn, Danielle Sassoon, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, sent a remarkable letter to the attorney general that said Bove’s directive was “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor”.Sassoon also made a startling accusation in her letter, writing that the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed”.A lawyer for Adams, Alex Spiro, denied the accusation, saying: “The idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us. We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement and we truthfully answered it did.”On Friday, Adams himself said in a statement: “I never offered – nor did anyone offer on my behalf – any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never.”Sassoon, a conservative career prosecutor, also revealed in her letter that her team had intended in recent weeks to add a further obstruction of justice charge against Adams. For good measure, she castigated Bove for scolding a member of her team for taking notes at the meeting and ordering that the notes be confiscated.Apparently realizing that Sassoon would not agree to drop the case, two people familiar with the matter said, Bove attempted to end-run the situation by having the public integrity section at justice department headquarters in Washington take over the case and request its dismissal.The move prompted a wave of resignations from career prosecutors. On Thursday, Bove wrote back to Sassoon criticizing her for insubordination and placing her two lieutenants, Hagan Scotten and Derek Wikstrom, on administrative leave.Meanwhile, in Washington, Kevin Driscoll, the acting head of the criminal division which oversees public integrity, tendered his resignation with John Keller, the acting head of the integrity section itself, rather than go along with the dismissal.After Keller’s departure,Marco Palmieri became the third of four deputy chiefs of the public integrity section to resign, leaving the team without a clear leadership aside from three senior litigation counsels who served under the deputy chiefs.By Friday, Scotten resigned while on administrative leave. In a scathing rebuke of Bove, he wrote: “If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.” More

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      Victims of ‘kids-for-cash’ judge outraged by Biden pardon: ‘What about all of us?’

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      Victims of a former Pennsylvania judge convicted in the so-called kids-for-cash scandal are outraged by Joe Biden’s decision to grant him clemency.In 2011, Michael Conahan was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after he and another judge, Mark Ciavarella, were found guilty of accepting $2.8m in illegal payments in exchange for sending more than 2,300 children – including some as young as eight years old – to private juvenile detention centers.Conahan was released from prison in 2020 due to Covid-19 and placed on house arrest, which had been scheduled to end in 2026.Conahan’s sentence was one of about 1,500 the US president commuted – or shortened – on Thursday while also pardoning 39 Americans who had been convicted of non-violent crimes.In response to Conahan’s pardon, the mother of a boy sent to jail at age 17 before later dying by suicide told the Citizens’ Voice: “I am shocked and I am hurt.”“Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son’s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power,” Sandy Fonzo said to the outlet. “This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer. Right now I am processing and doing the best I can to cope with the pain that this has brought back.”Similarly, Amanda Lorah, who at age 14 was wrongfully imprisoned as part of the scheme, told WBRE: “It’s a big slap in the face for us once again.“We had … time taken away from us. We had no one to talk to, but now we’re talking about the president of the United States to do this. What about all of us?”The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, also condemned Biden’s decision, telling reporters that his fellow Democrat “got it absolutely wrong”, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported.“I’ll offer these thoughts as an outsider, not privy to all the information he looked at, but I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in north-eastern Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said.Biden’s actions Thursday marked the largest instance of presidential clemency carried out in a single day.Describing the move, the White House said: “The president is commuting the sentences of close to 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities.”Attempts to contact Conahan were not immediately successful. More

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      Daniel Penny will be JD Vance’s guest at Army-Navy football game in Maryland

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      JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, confirmed that Daniel Penny, a Marine Corps veteran recently acquitted of homicide charges, will be his invited guest at the Army-Navy football game on Saturday in Maryland.Penny will watch the game from a suite alongside president-elect Donald Trump and other figures in Trump’s next administration, including his defence secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth.“I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage,” Vance posted on X, confirming news first reported by the non-profit publication Notus.The invitation follows Penny’s acquittal on Monday by a New York jury, which found him not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the 2023 death of Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man with a history of arrests, mental illness and medical conditions. Medical evidence revealed that Neely had sickle cell trait, an inherited genetic condition that under extreme physiological stress can potentially compromise blood oxygen transport, a factor Penny’s defence team argued could have contributed to his death.The case sparked nationwide controversy after Penny placed Neely in a chokehold on a New York City subway train in May 2023. Witnesses reported that Neely had been shouting and acting erratically, with one passenger, Juan Alberto Vazquez, telling NBC News at the time that Neely was making aggressive statements about not caring about potential consequences.It will be Penny’s first public appearance since his acquittal, and a high-profile event with deep ties to the military at that.Vance was vocal in his support of Penny, describing the prosecution as a “scandal” and praising the jury’s decision.“Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance posted on X.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPenny, in a sit-down interview with Fox News this week, maintained that he feared for his own safety and that of other passengers during the incident, describing himself as being in a “vulnerable position”.“The guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do, I would never be able to live with myself,” Penny said. “I’d take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed.” More

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      White supremacist Nick Fuentes charged over Chicago pepper-spray incident

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      The notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes is facing battery charges in Illinois because authorities say he pepper-sprayed a woman who had knocked on his front door after he enraged many on the internet by tweeting the misogynistic slogan “your body, my choice” following Donald Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.Fuentes, 26, was arrested on 27 November on a count of misdemeanor battery and released the same day, according to documents filed on Wednesday in the Cook county circuit court that were reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times. He is tentatively scheduled to appear in court on 19 December.The far-right, avowedly antisemitic influencer seemingly sought to make light of his legal predicament on Friday on social media, publishing a post on X that contained a thinly disguised racial slur as well as the words “Free me”.Meanwhile, the Jewish feminist activist pressing the case against Fuentes, 57-year-old Marla Rose, also commented on social media, writing on Facebook: “It. Is. On.” She added “civil case pending” to the post that displayed three fire emojis.Fuentes invited the digital sphere’s fury by celebrating Trump’s return to the presidency at the expense of Kamala Harris on 6 November with a barb tweeted on X reading: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”The post taunting the concept of women’s bodily autonomy – along with the 2022 elimination of federal abortion rights at the hands of a US supreme court dominated by judges either appointed by or aligned with Trump – had gained more than 99.7m views as of Saturday. And some of Fuentes’s political opponents retaliated by publishing his home address on social media while declaring: “Your house, our choice.”Rose ultimately told police that she had gone to record the outside of Fuentes’s home in the Chicago-area suburb of Berwyn on 10 November. He soon allegedly pepper-sprayed her, pushed her on to the concrete and broke her cellphone.Video of the encounter that Rose later released showed Fuentes open his front door as she reached up to ring the doorbell. He extended his left arm while holding a bottle of pepper spray, which prompted Rose to say: “Oh my God, what are you doing?” The phone was then seen falling while Fuentes could be heard saying: “Get the fuck out of here.” Fuentes then seemingly used his foot to drag the phone inside his house before closing the door and locking it.A police report filed on 11 November said another woman driving by Fuentes’s house at the time called officers. That witness described seeing a man shove a woman outside a home, the report recounted.Rose was still at the scene when police arrived, and officers reportedly spoke with her as well as Fuentes separately.The report added that Fuentes claimed to police that he had received death threats as well as “people showing up to his house unannounced” after posting “a political joke online” had left him “in fear for his life”. He eventually “became uncooperative” and refused to further address the confrontation with Rose, as NBC News reported.Rose had “watery” eyes but listed no other visible physical injuries, the report said.Possible punishments for misdemeanor battery under Illinois law include relatively short jail sentences, probation and fines.Some of the earliest news media headlines given to Fuentes came when he withdrew from Boston University after participating in the 2017 white supremacist rally objecting to the removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. A demonstrator protesting the white supremacists was murdered by a neo-Nazi sympathizer who intentionally drove a car into her as well as others.Trump then ignited a scandal by hosting Fuentes as a dinner guest at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 2022 as he geared up to run for a second presidency. Another guest at that dinner was the rapper previously known as Kanye West, who had propagated antisemitic remarks that – among other consequences – cost him a business partnership with the sportswear company Adidas. More