Bureau

WASHINGTON — Hours after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, FBI Director Kash Patel declared online that “the subject” in the killing was in custody. The shooter was not. The two men who had been detained were quickly released. Utah officials acknowledged that the gunman remained at large.

The false assurance was more than a slip. It spotlighted the high-stakes uncertainty surrounding Patel’s leadership of the bureau when its credibility is under extraordinary pressure, as is his own.

Patel now approaches congressional oversight hearings this week facing not just questions about that investigation but broader doubts about whether he can stabilize a federal law enforcement agency fragmented by political fights and internal upheaval.

Democrats are poised to press Patel on a purge of senior executives that has prompted a lawsuit, his pursuit of President Trump’s grievances over the Russia investigation long after it ended, and a realignment of resources that has prioritized illegal immigration and street crime over the FBI’s traditional pursuits.

The hearings will offer Patel his most consequential stage yet, and perhaps the clearest test of whether he can convince the country that the FBI, under his watch, can avoid compounding its mistakes in a time of political violence and deepening distrust.

“Because of the skepticism that some members of the Senate have had and still have, it’s extremely important that he perform very well at these oversight hearings” on Tuesday and Wednesday, said Gregory Brower, the FBI’s former top congressional affairs official.

The FBI declined to comment about Patel’s coming testimony.

Inaccurate claim after Kirk shooting

Kirk’s killing was always going to be a closely scrutinized investigation, not only because it was the latest burst of political violence in the U.S. but also because of Kirk’s friendships with Trump, Patel and other administration figures and allies.

While agents investigated, Patel posted on X that “the subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said at a near-contemporaneous news conference that “whoever did this, we will find you,” suggesting authorities were still searching. Patel soon after posted that the person “in custody” had been released.

Two people were initially held for questioning in the case, but neither was a suspect.

As the search stretched on, Patel angrily vented to FBI personnel Thursday about what he perceived as a failure to keep him informed, including that he was not quickly shown a photograph of the suspected shooter. That’s according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press. The New York Times earlier reported details of the call.

Asked about the scrutiny of Patel’s performance, the FBI said it had worked with local law enforcement to bring the suspect, Tyler Robinson, to justice and “will continue to be transparent.”

Patel’s overall response did not go unnoticed in conservative circles. One prominent GOP strategist, Christopher Rufo, posted that it was “time for Republicans to assess whether Kash Patel is the right man to run the FBI.”

FBI personnel purge

On the same day Kirk was killed, Patel also faced a lawsuit from three FBI senior executives fired in an August purge that they characterized as a Trump administration retribution campaign.

Among them was Brian Driscoll, who as acting FBI director in the early days of the administration resisted Justice Department demands for names of agents who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Driscoll alleged in the lawsuit that he was let go after he challenged the leadership’s desire to terminate an FBI pilot who had been wrongly identified on social media as having been part of the FBI search for classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump, while out of office, was indicted for his role in Jan. 6 and the classified documents case.

The upheaval continues a trend that began before Patel took over, when more than a half-dozen senior executives were forced out under a Justice Department rationale that they could not be “trusted” to implement Trump’s agenda.

There’s since been significant turnover in leadership at the FBI’s 55 field offices. Some left because of promotions or retirements, but others because of ultimatums to accept new assignments or resign. The head of the Salt Lake City office, an experienced counterterrorism investigator, was pushed out of her position weeks before Kirk was killed at a Utah college, said people familiar with the move.

FBI’s priorities shift

Patel arrived at the FBI having been a sharp critic of its leadership, including for the Trump indictments and investigations that he says politicized the institution. Under Patel and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, the FBI and Justice Department have become entangled in their own politically fraught investigations, such as one focused on New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James.

He’s moved quickly to remake the bureau, with the FBI and Justice Department working to investigate one of the Republican president’s chief grievances — the years-old Trump-Russia investigation. Trump calls that probe, which found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him get elected but did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump’s campaign, a “hoax.”

The Justice Department appeared to confirm in an unusual statement that it was investigating former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, pivotal players in the Russia investigation, but did not say for what. Bondi has directed that evidence be presented to a grand jury.

Critics of the new Russia inquiry consider it a transparent attempt to turn the page from the fierce backlash the FBI and Justice Department endured from Trump’s base following the July announcement that those agencies would not be releasing any additional documents from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.

Patel has meanwhile elevated the fight against street crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration to the top of the FBI’s agenda, in alignment with Trump’s agenda.

The bureau defends its aggressive policing in American cities that the Trump administration contends have been consumed by crime, despite falling crime rates in recent years in the cities targeted. Patel says the thousands of resulting arrests, many immigration-related, are “what happens when you let good cops be good cops.”

Critics say the street crime focus draws attention and resources from the sophisticated public corruption and national security threats for which the bureau has long been primarily, if not solely, responsible for investigating.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

Aug. 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Monday nominated economist E.J. Antoni as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a non-partisan agency he has criticized.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, the chief economist with the conservative Heritage Foundation would replace Erika McEntarfer, who was fired by Trump on Aug. 1, alleging that she had manipulated the jobs reports for three months.

“I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Highly Respected Economist, Dr. E.J. Antoni, as the next Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE. I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role. Congratulations E.J.!”

Before the Heritage Foundation, he worked for the Texas Public Policy Commission. He holds master’s and doctorate degrees in economics from Northern Illinois University.

Last week, Antoni posted on X: “There are better ways to collect, process, and disseminate data — that is the task for the next BLS commissioner, and only consistent delivery of accurate data in a timely manner will rebuild the trust that has been lost over the last several years.”

On Nov. 13, one week after Trump was elected again, he wrote on X: “DOGE needs to take a chainsaw to the BLS.”

Antoni had called for the firing of McEntarfer on Steve Bannon‘s podcast after the July jobs report was released. Later that day, she lost her job.

“Last weeks Job’s Report was RIGGED,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, three days after the report came out. “Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!!”

Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist for a portion of his first term, had advocated for hiring Antoni, who interviewed for the post, The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported.

Senate Republicans hold a 53-47 advantage and confirmation only requires 50 votes. In January 2024, McEntarfer was confirmed 86-8.

“I don’t think there’s any grounds at all for this, for this firing, and it really hurts the statistical system,” William Beach, who was nominated by Trump during his first term, said on CNN earlier this month. “Suppose that they get a new commissioner … And they do a bad number. Well, everybody’s going to think, ‘well, it’s not as bad as it probably really is,’ because they’re going to suspect political influence. So, this is damaging.”

The BLS distributes data that is used by agencies, including the Federal Reserve, and companies. Besides monthly jobs reports, BLS also provides data on occupations, including wages and job outlook. Consumer spending is also analyzed.

The report showed 73,000 new jobs in July and unemployment rose to 4.2% from 4.1%, which was predicted and still historically low.

But the previous two months were adjusted downward. May was revised from 144,000 jobs added to 19,000 jobs added, and June’s revision went from 147,000 jobs added to 14,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Situation Summary.

The BLS said that monthly revisions “result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.”

Josh Jackson’s “The Enduring Wild: A Journey Into California’s Public Lands” is a story of adventures across 41 California landscapes, with photos of beautiful places you are unlikely to have seen, in locations ranging from the Mojave Desert to the Elkhorn Ridge Wilderness in Mendocino County. Early on, the author lays out mind-bending stats: more than 618 million acres in the United States are federally owned public land and 245 million of those belong to the Bureau of Land Management.

Public lands, he notes, “are areas of land and water owned collectively by the citizens and managed by the Federal government.” These lands “are our common ground, a gift of seismic proportions that belongs to all of us.”

Drive across the United States and consider that 28% of all of that is yours. Ours.

Jackson’s assertion that we are all landowners is a clarion call amid a GOP-led push to sell off public land. The shadow of the current assault on public lands weighs heavy while reading this lovely book.

The book has endearing origins. When Jackson could not get a reservation for weekend camping with his kids, a buddy suggested that he try the BLM. Until that moment he had never even heard of the Bureau of Land Management. Yet, 15.3% of the total landmass in California is … BLM.

Jackson starts out with history: All these lands were taken from Native American peoples, and he does not overlook that BLM used to be jokingly referred to as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. In 1976, a turnaround came via the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which built a multi-use mandate to emphasize hiking and conservation as much grazing and extraction (a.k.a. mining). This effort to soften the heavy use of public lands by for-profit individuals and companies led to the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion and the election of President Reagan. Arguably, we’ve been struggling with finding the multi-use balance ever after.

Jackson’s first BLM foray was out to the Trona Pinnacles in the Mojave Desert, where he and his two older children camped, playing in a wonderland where “hundreds of tufa spires protrude like drip-style sand castles out of the wide-open desert floor that extend for miles in every direction,” while his wife, Kari, an E.R. nurse, stayed home with their newborn. The pandemic shutdown in 2020 inspired Kari’s suggestion, “Why don’t you start going to see all these BLM lands?”

Jackson’s love affair with BLM lands was not immediate, as just a few miles into his next hike in the Rainbow Basin Natural Area near Barstow, he was underwhelmed, like he was missing something. A few miles later, he sat and considered a Terry Tempest Williams quote from “Refuge”: “If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.” Revisiting this quote on repeat, Jackson had an emotional shift, deciding to stop hiking and … start walking.

On his next trip to the Amargosa Canyon, Jackson began by reaching out to the Amargosa Conservancy, learning about the Timbisha Shoshone people whose ancestral land this is, about past mining and dozens of plant and animal species. Committed to going at the pace of discovery, he admired the enchanting, striated geology of Rainbow Mountain, cherished creosote, mesquite and the brave diversity of desert flora and was struck by the gaze of an arrogant coyote. On his return, he found that in three hours, he had only traveled … a mile.

Yet it was during this meander that his writing made a steep drop into seeing, feeling, connecting, plunging toward transcendence.

A highlight of the book is a repeat trip to Central California’s Carrizo Plain, first during a drought, silenced by its sere magnificence. After the heavy rains of 2023, he joined Cal Poly San Luis Obispo botanist Emma Fryer and was overcome by the delirious beauty of a superbloom, feeling like “I had wandered into the Land of Oz.” Fryer observed that the drought was so severe that only the hardy native seed survived within the soil, releasing their beauty the moment water allowed them to come to life. Seeing the same place twice was revelatory, both familiar and completely new.

It’s hard to tell if the places he visits gets more beautiful over the course of the book or his capacity to appreciate them and share his joy has grown. Despite the frequent paucity of BLM cartographic resources, apparently Jackson never got lost or worried about dropping the thread of a trail. Describing his father, Jackson might as well be talking about himself: “I have no memories of my dad being worried or fearful in unfamiliar situations.” Nevertheless, toward the end of the book, when he and his hardy father camped next to the rushing Eel River, Jackson did worry about bears breaking into their tent. Fortunately, the bears did not arrive but, inspired by William Cronon’s “The Trouble With Wilderness,” Jackson’s heart opened as he realized that “Nature” is not out there; nature is wherever we are.

Back in Los Angeles taking long walks with his daughter, past bodegas and car washes, he saw jacaranda, heard owls and coyotes and realized the wild had been here all along. An urban sycamore claimed its space regardless of enclosing cement and car exhaust, as spectacular and venerable as any sycamore in the state.

Can the places Jackson visited for his book endure public larceny? He is tracking the answer to this question, real time, on his Substack, where he’s currently describing the shocking attempts to sell millions of acres of BLM land.

“It’s been a wild few weeks for BLM lands. 540,385 acres in Nevada and Utah were on the chopping block to be sold off,” Jackson recently noted. “Everyone was talking about the land totals — but no one was showing what the landscapes actually looked like. So, I decided to go see them.”

Great advice: Bring a friend, pack water and go.

Watts’ writing has appeared in Earth Island Journal, New York Times motherlode blog, Sierra Magazine and local venues. Her first novel is “Tree.”

A controversial proposal to sell off millions of acres of public lands across Western states — including large swaths of California — was stripped Monday from Republican’s tax and spending bill for violating Senate rules.

Senator Mike Lee (R–Utah) had advanced a mandate to sell up to 3.3 million acres of public land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for the stated purpose of addressing housing needs — an intent that opponents didn’t believe was guaranteed by the language in the provision.

Late Monday, Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian — who advises the government body on interpreting procedural rules — determined the proposal didn’t pass muster under the the Byrd Rule, which prevents the inclusion of provisions that are extraneous to the budget in a reconciliation bill.

The move initially appeared to scuttle Lee’s plan, which has drawn bipartisan backlash. But Lee, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, took to the social media platform X to say the fight wasn’t over.

“Yes, the Byrd Rule limits what can go in the reconciliation bill, but I’m doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward,” Lee wrote in a post Monday night.

In the post, he outlined changes, including removing all Forest Service land and limiting eligible Bureau of Land Management land to an area within a radius of five miles of population centers. He wrote that housing prices are “crushing young families,” and suggested that his proposed changes would alleviate such economic barriers.

Utah’s Deseret News reported that Lee submitted a revised proposal with new restrictions on Tuesday morning.

Environmentalists and public land advocates celebrated MacDonough’s decision to reject Lee’s proposal, even as they braced for an ongoing battle.

“This is a significant win for public lands,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director for Center for Western Priorities, in a statement. “Thankfully, the Senate parliamentarian has seen Senator Lee’s ridiculous attempt to sell off millions of acres of public lands for what it is — an ideological crusade against public lands, not a serious proposal to raise revenue for the federal government.”

Lydia Weiss, senior director of government relations for the Wilderness Society, a conservation nonprofit, described the rejection of the proposal as “deafening.”

“And the people across the West who raised their voices to reject the idea of public land sales don’t seem particularly interested in a revised bill,” she added. “They seem interested in this bad idea going away once and for all.”

The proposal, before it was nixed, would have made more than 16 million acres of land in California eligible for sale, according to the Wilderness Society.

Vulnerable areas included roadless stretches in the northern reaches of the Angeles National Forest, which offer recreation opportunities to millions of people living in the Los Angeles Basin and protects wildlife corridors, the group said. Other at-risk areas included portions of San Bernardino, Inyo and Cleveland national forests as well as BLM land in the Mojave Desert, such as Coyote Dry Lake Bed outside of Joshua Tree National Park.

WASHINGTON — Republicans have suffered a sizable setback on one key aspect of President Trump’s big bill after their plans to gut the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and other provisions from the Senate Banking Committee ran into procedural violations with the Senate parliamentarian.

Republicans in the Senate proposed zeroing out funding for the CFPB, the landmark agency set up in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, to save $6.4 billion. The bureau had been designed as a way to better protect Americans from financial fraud, but has been opposed by many GOP lawmakers since its inception. The Trump administration has targeted the CFPB as an example of government overregulation and overreach.

The findings by the Senate parliamentarian’s office, which is working overtime scrubbing Trump’s overall bill to ensure it aligns with the chamber’s strict “Byrd Rule” processes, signal a tough road ahead. The most daunting questions are still to come, as GOP leadership rushes to muscle Trump’s signature package to the floor for votes by his Fourth of July deadline.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Banking Committee that drafted the provisions in question, said in a statement, “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”

For Democrats, who have been fighting Trump’s 1,000-page package at every step, the parliamentarian’s advisory amounted to a significant win.

“Democrats fought back, and we will keep fighting back against this ugly bill,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, who engineered the creation of the CFPB before she was elected to Congress.

Warren said that GOP proposals “are a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk — all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires.”

The parliamentarian’s rulings, while advisory, are rarely, if ever ignored.

With the majority in Congress, Republicans have been drafting a sweeping package that extends some $4.5-trillion tax cuts Trump approved during his first term, in 2017, that otherwise expire at the end of the year. It adds $350 billion to national security, including billions for Trump’s mass deportation agenda. And it slashes some $1 trillion from Medicaid, food stamps and other government programs.

All told, the package is estimated to add at least $2.4 trillion to the nation’s deficits over the decade, and leave 10.9 million more people without healthcare coverage, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s review of the House-passed package, which is now undergoing revisions in the Senate.

The parliamentarian’s office is responsible for determining if the package adheres to the Byrd Rule, named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was considered one of the masters of Senate procedure. The rule essentially bars policy matters from being addressed in the budget reconciliation process.

Senate GOP leaders are using the budget reconciliation process, which is increasingly how big bills move through Congress, because it allows passage on a simple majority vote, rather than face a filibuster with the higher 60-vote threshold.

But if any of the bill’s provisions violate the Byrd Rule, that means they can be challenged at the tougher 60-vote threshold, which is a tall order in the 53-47 Senate. Leaders are often forced to strip those proposals from the package, even though doing so risks losing support from lawmakers who championed those provisions.

One of the biggest questions ahead for the parliamentarian will be over the Senate GOP’s proposal to use “current policy” as opposed to “current law” to determine the baseline budget and whether the overall package adds significantly to deficits.

Already the Senate parliamentarian’s office has waded through several titles of Trump’s big bill, including those from the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Energy & Public Works Committee.

The Banking panel offered a modest bill, just eight pages, and much of it was deemed out of compliance.

The parliamentarian found that in addition to gutting the CFPB, other provisions aimed at rolling back entities put in place after the 2008 financial crisis would violate the Byrd Rule. Those include a GOP provision to limit the Financial Research Fund, which was set up to conduct analysis, saving nearly $300 million; and another to shift the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which conducts oversight of accounting firms, to the Securities and Exchange Commission and terminate positions, saving $773 million.

The GOP plan to change the pay schedule for employees at the Federal Reserve, saving $1.4 billion, was also determined to be in violation of the Byrd Rule.

The parliamentarian’s office also raised Byrd Rule violations over GOP proposals to repeal certain aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act, including on emission standards for some model year 2027 light-duty and medium-duty vehicles.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

R. Kelly collapsed in prison Friday and had to be hospitalized outside prison walls, then didn’t get care that hospital staff said he needed, his attorney alleged in a Monday court filing.

The disgraced R&B singer’s attorney said federal prison officials attempted to kill Kelly by drug overdose Friday, two days after a previous motion was filed stating that the “I Believe I Can Fly” singer was in danger from an interstate plot involving prison authorities and the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.

Authorities are allegedly trying to prevent Kelly from spilling compromising information about misconduct by the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons, per court documents filed on Kelly’s behalf and reviewed by The Times.

The federal government dismissed the intentional overdose allegations, filing a response Tuesday that characterized the idea of a prison murder plot as “fantastic” and “fanciful.”

Kelly, 58, is serving 30-year and 20-year federal sentences that are largely concurrent at the FCI Butner prison facility in North Carolina after convictions in Illinois and New York for child sex crimes and racketeering.

Last week, attorney Beau B. Brindley filed an emergency furlough request on the singer’s behalf, stating that he was the target of a Bureau of Prisons-related murder plot involving a member or members of the racist Aryan Brotherhood being told to order his killing. The filing included a sworn declaration from Brotherhood honcho Mikeal Glenn Stine, who has been incarcerated since 1982 and said he chose to come clean to Kelly about the alleged plot because he is “a dying man” with terminal cancer and wanted Bureau of Prisons officials to be held accountable for decades of using inmates for their own purposes.

The solution? Brindley asked that his client to be sent to home detention for an unspecified amount of time until the threat is gone. The filing insisted that time was “of the essence” in a plot that allegedly was hatched in February 2023.

That threat, he said in the Monday filing, loomed larger than ever after Kelly was taken to solitary confinement early last week with medicines for sleep and anxiety in his possession, then was given additional medications by prison officials along with instructions on how to take them. Brindley said he filed the initial motion alleging the murder plot two days after that, on June 12.

“In the early morning hours of June 13, 2025, Mr. Kelly awoke,” the additional Monday motion said. “He felt faint. He was dizzy. He started to see black spots in his vision. Mr. Kelly tried to get up, but fell to the ground. He crawled to the door of the cell and lost consciousness. He was placed on a gurney. Prison officials wanted him to be taken to the on-site medical facility, but staff there could not assist him. Consequently, Mr. Kelly was taken by ambulance to nearby Duke University Hospital. While in the ambulance, he heard one of the prison officers with him state: ‘this is going to open a whole new can of worms.’ ”

Kelly learned at the hospital that he had been given a life-threatening overdose amount of medication, Brindley said in the Monday motion. The singer was hospitalized for two days for treatment.

“[W]ithin two days of the filing of his [initial] motion, Bureau of Prisons officials administered an amount of medication that significantly exceeded a safe dose and caused Mr. Kelly to overdose, putting his life in jeopardy. They gave him an amount of medicine that could have killed him,” the Monday motion said.

In a response to the Kelly team’s initial filing from last week, prosecutors said Tuesday that the singer was asking the court to let him go home indefinitely “under the guise of a fanciful conspiracy.” They argued that the district court in Illinois doesn’t have jurisdiction over Kelly’s request for a change in his sentence and therefore need not consider the request.

“The government disputes the fantastic allegations in Kelly’s motion,” U.S. Atty. Andrew S. Boutros wrote. “Kelly is in prison because he is a serial child molester whose criminal abuse of children dates back to at least President Clinton’s first term in office — decades before Kelly was taken into federal custody.”

Kelly’s legal team doubled down on its allegations Tuesday in a reply to that government response, alleging that “the Federal Bureau of Prisons is taking active steps to kill Robert Kelly” and had “overdosed Mr. Kelly on medications and nearly killed him,” then “took him out of a hospital at gunpoint and denied him surgery on blood clots in his lungs that the hospital said needed immediate intervention.”

The blood clots reference was related to an allegation that Kelly had been seeking medical care for a swollen leg but had been denied.

“The government doesn’t care if R. Kelly is killed in the Bureau of Prisons,” Brindley said in his Tuesday reply. “They don’t care if he dies in solitary confinement. That is obvious. The smug and sanctimonious tenor of their briefing makes that plain. But there is nothing sanctimonious about what is happening to Mr. Kelly.”

An attorney for R. Kelly is painting a picture of corruption and deceit among the ranks of the federal Bureau of Prison’s staff and inmates, alleging there is a target on his client’s back that can be removed only if the disgraced R&B singer is sent home.

Beau Brindley is asking that Kelly be placed in temporary home confinement while serving his decades-long sex trafficking sentences. He alleges that a trio of prison officials plotted to have the singer killed by a terminally ill member of the Aryan Brotherhood who — except for a brief stint when he escaped from prison — has been in federal custody since 1982.

An emergency motion for that temporary furlough was filed Tuesday in federal court, and documents were obtained and reviewed by The Times.

In addition to detailing the supposed murder plot, the motion alleges that Kelly’s private communications while in custody were “stolen” from him by people working with various prosecutors who took the information and used it against the singer at trial. One witness never intended to testify against Kelly, the motion says, until she was approached by one of the people who allegedly stole those communications.

The motion alleges that three prison officials, including a warden and an assistant warden, conspired to have Kelly killed by another inmate, Mikeal Glenn Stine. Stine, a self-proclaimed “Commissioner” of the Aryan Brotherhood who joined the racist gang in prison, said in a declaration that an official who was not one of the wardens had previously directed him to order multiple “assaults, beatings, and killings of inmates.” That official approached him in February 2023 about ending Kelly’s life.

Stine said he first met that official during the 13 years he spent at a federal Supermax prison in Colorado, and that the alleged victims were targeted because they had been making things rough for the BOP. Stine said he had “ordered multiple assaults and murders” at the official’s requestand at various federal prisons, and he participated in some of the attacks himself.

The official told him in 2023 that there was a high-profile inmate in North Carolina “whose high-priced lawyers are going to expose a bunch of damaging information that will harm other Bureau of Prisons officers and higher-ups” and that he wanted Stine “to help to eliminate the problem,” according to Stine.

After asking Stine if he knew who R. Kelly was, the declaration said, the official told him “that Kelly is a rapist. He told me Kelly raped little white girls. He told me Kelly was scum. And he told me that Kelly was someone the A.B. would want gone. It is R. Kelly who poses the threat to the BOP.”

Stine said he was transferred to North Carolina in October 2023. He was in the medical unit from then until March 2025 when he finally wound up in Kelly’s unit, the court document said.

Stine, who says he has terminal cancer, said he was told that once he got into Kelly’s unit he should “execute” the singer. He said he was told he would be charged for the murder, but that evidence would be “mishandled” and he wouldn’t be convicted. Then, Stine said, he would be “permitted to escape” while in transit, as he had done when he escaped previously, and could live out his final months as a “free man.” Stine said he agreed to the deal but changed his mind after keeping an eye on Kelly for a few weeks.

Instead of killing the singer, Stine said in his May 19 declaration, “I told him the truth. I told him that I had been sent to kill him. I told him how and by who. And I told him his life was absolutely in danger.”

Stine said that a prison execution was nothing new for him, but killing Kelly “to hide misconduct by [Bureau of Prisons] officers and government officials is something that should not happen. … And it is going to happen to him if no one takes action.” He stated that time was “of the essence.”

Kelly’s attorney, Brindley, said in his motion that his client’s “continued incarceration while he knows his life is in jeopardy constitutes cruel and unusual punishment,” a violation of his constitutional rights. The attorney said Kelly has already been attacked in prison by others.

In his motion, Brindley accused the U.S. Attorney’s Office of knowingly conspiring to use information protected by attorney-client privilege, including information procured from one of Kelly’s cellmates. That cellmate provided a declaration stating he had stolen privileged legal documents and delivered them to a BOP investigator who copied them and sent them for use by prosecutors in both of Kelly’s trials.

“This conspiracy involved the Bureau of Prisons and was apparently orchestrated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” the motion says. “There is no room left to speculate about some way that the U.S. Attorney’s Office did not know about the corrupt conduct of these cooperating persons.”

According to the motion, Kelly got a call from a prison official in North Carolina, who warned him that the government knew his attorneys had been meeting with the cellmate who provided the declaration.

“The official then advised Mr. Kelly that he was in danger and that Mr. Kelly needed to be careful. The BOP official intimated that Mr. Kelly was not safe in Bureau of Prisons custody,” the motion says. “The BOP official further advised that Mr. Kelly should avoid the mess hall.”

The motion alleges that Kelly was already attacked by another inmate who, after the fact, wrote a letter saying had put him up to it. It says Stine approached Kelly and came clean about the alleged murder plot on April 11.

“On June 6, 2025, the defense learned that a second member of the Aryan Brotherhood, who is housed at FCI Butner, had just been approached by [a BOP official] and directed to carry out the execution of Mr. Kelly and Mr. Stine,” the motion states. Methods of murder that were discussed allegedly included mixing poison into the food at the chow hall and in the commissary.

“Time is now of the essence,” Brindley wrote. “It is with these breathtaking facts in mind that Mr. Kelly asks this Court for an extraordinary legal remedy: his release from Bureau of Prisons custody.”

Admitting that Kelly was asking for an “extraordinary” remedy to his problem, the attorney cited the allegations in his motion and offered a sweeping indictment of the federal prison system.

“The circumstances set forth above are as extraordinary as they are terrifying,” Brindley wrote. “Incarcerated persons have no redress for protection outside of the guards that are hired to keep them safe. When the hierarchy under which those guards work has sanctioned and ordered an inmate’s execution, then there is no safety for that inmate.

“The declaration of Mr. Stine shows that inmate murder at the behest of prison officials is neither new nor uncommon. It happens regularly and without consequence. Hence, the threat to Mr. Kelly’s life continues each day that no action is taken.”

June 3 (UPI) — At 7.4 million, the number of job openings was little changed in April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.

During the month, both hires and what the bureau called “total separations” were little changed at 5.6 million and 5.3 million, respectively, experts said.

Also, within separations, quits (at 3.2 million) and layoffs and discharges (at 1.8 million), recorded little change, bureau experts said.

The bureau’s update included estimates of the number and rate of job openings, hires and separations for the total nonfarm sector. Job openings include all the positions that are open on the last business day of the month.

Hires and separations include all changes to the payroll during the entire month, as well.

In their Tuesday release on the numbers, bureau officials said the April statistics and rate of job openings were little changed at 7.4 million and 4.4 percent.

Experts noted that the number of job openings decreased in accommodation and food services (-135,000) and in state and local government, education (-51,000). Meanwhile, the number of job openings increased in arts, entertainment, and recreation (+43,000) and in mining and logging (+10,000), they said.

Additionally, the number of hires was little changed in all industries in April, they said.

The number of total separations in April was little changed at 5.3 million while the total separations rate remained unchanged at 3.3 percent. Total separations increased in federal government (+9,000).

In April, the number and rate of quits were little changed at 3.2 million and 2.0 percent, respectively. The number of quits was down by 220,000 over the year, bureau officials said. In April, the number and rate of layoffs and discharges were little changed at 1.8 million and 1.1 percent, respectively.

According to April numbers, layoffs and discharges increased in health care and social assistance (+52,000) but decreased in state and local government, excluding education (-14,000) and in federal government (-4,000).

May’s numbers are scheduled for release next month, the bureau said.

Two tribal nations filed a lawsuit saying that the federal government used the trust fund money of tribes to pay for boarding schools where generations of Native children were systematically abused.

In the lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the Wichita Tribe and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California said that by the U.S. government’s own admission, the schools were funded using money raised by forcing tribal nations into treaties to cede their lands. That money was to be held in trust for the collective benefit of tribes.

“The United States Government, the trustee over Native children’s education and these funds, has never accounted for the funds that it took, or detailed how, or even whether, those funds were ultimately expended. It has failed to identify any funds that remain,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education. A spokesperson for the Interior declined to comment on pending litigation.

In 2022, the Department of the Interior, under the direction of Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to run the agency, released a scathing report on the legacy of the boarding school era, in which Native children were stolen from their homes, forced to assimilate, and in many cases physically, sexually and mentally abused. Countless children died at the schools, many of whom were buried in unmarked graves at the institutions.

That report detailed the U.S. government’s intentions of using the boarding schools as a way to both strip Native children of their culture and dispossess their tribal nations of land.

The tribes are asking the court to make the U.S. account for the estimated $23.3 billion it appropriated for the boarding school program, detail how that money was invested, and list the remaining funds that were taken by the U.S. and allocated for the education of Native children.

Last year, President Biden issued a formal apology for the government’s boarding school policy, calling it “a sin on our soul” and “one of the most horrific chapters” in American history. But in April, the administration of President Trump cut $1.6 million from projects meant to capture and digitize stories of boarding school survivors.

Brewer writes for the Associated Press.