evidence

It was not a good day for Dr. Phil.

Phillip McGraw, the genial celebrity psychologist who spent a career calling out the behavior of others and doling out zingers, found himself upbraided by a bankruptcy judge.

Merit Street Media, McGraw’s new network, had filed for bankruptcy protection in July, a little more than a year after he launched the media startup, and then sued its distribution partner, Trinity Broadcasting Network.

During a nearly three-hour hearing in Dallas last month, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Scott Everett said that he’d “never seen a case” like the Chapter 11 filing McGraw’s company was attempting.

Everett cited evidence indicating McGraw had “violated” a court order by deleting “unflattering” text messages that allegedly described his plan to use the bankruptcy to “wipe out” creditor claims.

“What makes this case unique, unfortunately, is that it has been plagued with the attempted destruction of relevant evidence and less than truthful testimony by some of the key players,” said Everett, alluding to McGraw and his associates in the case.

Everett ruled that Merit Street be liquidated.

Following the hearing, a spokesperson for McGraw’s production company vigorously denied the accusation that he destroyed evidence and said he is appealing the ruling.

“Dr. McGraw’s excellent record of integrity, success and service to millions over two decades speaks for itself,” said Chip Babcock, attorney for McGraw’s production company.

The unraveling of McGraw’s media venture was a gut punch for the celebrity therapist who has assiduously built a reputation — and tremendous personal wealth — as one of the most trusted voices on television. But his fortunes faded amid a dying market for syndicated TV and clashes with a distributor and partner.

After 21 years as host of the successful syndicated talk show “Dr. Phil,” McGraw went out on his own last year. He launched Merit Street Media in Texas, a company that he said would promote “family values” and serve as an antidote to “woke” culture, only to find that his ambitions collided with a new television reality.

Unlike “Dr. Phil,” Merit Street was untethered to the well-oiled machine of Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, where it was filmed, and top-tier distribution partner CBS.

Moreover, the sheer force of McGraw’s personality could not overcome the fact that linear TV is on the wane. Syndicated daytime TV shows are no longer the cash cows they used to be as most viewers consume content through streaming and other digital outlets such as YouTube and TikTok.

“By the time he put this new company together, the ‘Dr. Phil’ era had kind of ended,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “There is a shelf life to these characters and he reached his.”

An Oprah favorite

McGraw rose from clinical psychologist to an American living room staple and self-help guru in the late 1990s after Oprah Winfrey anointed him as her protégé.

Television’s then-reigning queen hired McGraw to prepare for her libel case brought by Texas cattlemen in 1997. They claimed her comments during an episode about mad cow disease disparaged them and caused beef prices to drop.

Winfrey prevailed, but it was McGraw, a former linebacker with the commanding presence of a sheriff from an old-time western, who emerged victorious.

Oprah Winfrey launched “Dr. Phil” after he advised her during her Texas cattlemen’s libel trial in the late 1990s.

(Christopher Smith / Invision / AP)

Much like books, pajama sets and certain chocolate brands, McGraw became one of Oprah’s favorite things. Recast as “Dr. Phil,” she featured him during weekly segments on her hugely popular talk show, starting in 1998. By 2002, a “Dr. Phil” spinoff began airing five days a week, produced by Winfrey’s Harpo Productions.

The show was distributed by CBS Media Ventures and filmed on a soundstage at Paramount studios on Melrose Avenue with a live audience, and it became the de facto voice for home viewers.

McGraw quickly earned a massive following for dispensing advice to cheating spouses, drug addicts, troubled teens, meddling in-laws, infamous criminals and celebrities. He delivered his no-nonsense, often blunt assessments wrapped in folksy Southern sayings such as “No matter how flat you make a pancake, it’s still got two sides.”

For more than two decades, “Dr. Phil” was a top-rated syndicated daytime talk show — 11 of those seasons at No. 1 — garnering 31 Daytime Emmy nominations. He was catapulted to stardom, appearing everywhere from late-night talk shows to sitcom cameos, even a character on “Sesame Street,” Dr. Feel. In 2020, he received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

Dr. Phil McGraw with his wife, Robin McGraw, his son Jay McGraw and his wife, Erica Dahm, as well as their two children, London and Avery, at the ceremony celebrating Dr. Phil receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

(Getty Images)

McGraw leveraged “Dr. Phil” as a launching pad for his ever-growing empire of bestselling books and various ancillary businesses, including a virtual addiction recovery program, a telemedicine app and production company, Stage 29, with his son Jay McGraw that produced shows like daytime’s “The Doctors.”

But as McGraw’s popularity and influence grew, so did the controversies.

The family of Britney Spears criticized him after he visited the troubled pop star when she was hospitalized on a psychiatric hold and issued a news release saying she was “in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention.”

A spokesperson for the Spears family said, “Rather than helping the family’s situation, the celebrity psychologist caused additional damage.”

McGraw later told viewers on his show that “I definitely think if I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t make any statement at all. Period.”

Claims of conflict

Questions were also raised that McGraw used his show to promote businesses and products connected to his family and affiliates, sometimes without fully disclosing those ties.

In 2006, McGraw settled a lawsuit for $10.5 million with consumers who alleged that he defrauded them by making false claims about a line of nutritional and weight-loss supplements that he endorsed on “Dr. Phil.”

He faced a Federal Trade Commission investigation into false advertising and the line was eventually discontinued.

McGraw denied the allegations and did not admit to wrongdoing or misrepresentation in the settlement.

“Dr. McGraw’s career stands among the most successful in television history,” Babcock said. “His programs always have been completely transparent, with all brand integrations under full network oversight and full FCC compliance.”

The on-air promotion of McGraw’s family businesses, such as his wife Robin McGraw’s skincare line and lifestyle brand and his son Jay McGraw’s books during “integrations,” also drew scrutiny.

Dr. Phil McGraw and son Jay McGraw.

(Jason LaVeris / FilmMagic)

“Dr. Phil” episodes frequently featured guests suffering from addiction who were often offered the opportunity to check into a treatment facility at the end of the episode.

In 2017, an investigation by STAT News and the Boston Globe alleged that the show highlighted specific treatment facilities in exchange for those recovery programs purchasing various products affiliated with McGraw.

A spokesman for the show had denied the allegations, saying that “any suggestion that appearances on Dr. Phil’s show are linked to the purchase or use of this program is false.”

McGraw’s wattage remained undimmed. He continued to branch into new ventures. He launched a podcast in 2019, “Phil in the Blanks,” and prime-time TV shows like “Bull,” a legal drama on CBS based on his experiences as a trial strategist, and another CBS legal drama, “So Help Me Todd.”

The “Dr. Phil” show has said that since its premiere, it has provided $35 million in resources to its guests after they appeared.

During the last years of “Dr. Phil,” staffers and viewers noticed that programming began to shift away from advising relationships, parenting and money issues to more conservative and cultural issues such as immigration and transgender athletes.

“He took a political slant already, but once COVID hit, [the show] skewed more and more political,” said one former longtime “Dr. Phil” staffer who declined to be named out of fear of retaliation.

During an appearance on Fox News in April 2020, McGraw said that pandemic lockdowns would be more fatal than the virus, drawing a widespread backlash on social media.

McGraw later posted a video saying he supported CDC guidelines but was concerned about the mental health effects of long-term quarantine.

“He was very good about getting big stories, but we had no input, and believe me, if we ever wanted to or tried, we’d be just told ‘no,’” said a former executive at CBS, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Starting over in Texas

In 2023, McGraw announced that he was leaving CBS and returning to Texas to launch a new venture and broaden his audience, citing “grave concerns for the American family” and that he was “determined to help restore a clarity of purpose as well as our core values.”

Merit Street built a studio in a former AT&T call center in Fort Worth. Many of the staffers were veterans of “Dr. Phil” or had worked on McGraw-related content and relocated from Los Angeles to Texas.

Dr. Phil and President Trump at the National Day of Prayer event at the White House in May.

(Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)

The network, whose name was derived from meritocracy (with shades of main street), premiered in April 2024.

“Merit Street Media will be a resource of information and strategies to fight for America and its families, which are under a cultural ‘woke’ assault as never before,” McGraw said in a statement.

McGraw aired “exclusive” interviews with Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his flagship, “Dr. Phil Primetime.”

Programming consisted of a slate of news, entertainment and conservative commentary programs with former syndicated television stars Nancy Grace and Steve Harvey, whose Steve Harvey Global had a 5% stake in the company, according to Merit’s bankruptcy filings.

In January, McGraw made headlines when he taped interviews with Trump’s top border policy advisor Tom Homan during controversial immigration raids by ICE agents in Los Angeles.

But Merit struggled to find an audience; only 27,000 viewers tuned into the network weekly during 2024, placing it at 130 out of 153 U.S. channels, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“It’s totally false to say Merit had bad ratings,” Babcock said. “For a startup, it was like a rocket ship; at one point it passed CNN in the first few months of its existence.”

Merit soon scrapped the live audience for “Dr. Phil Primetime” and eventually production on its original programming came to a halt.

Four months after the network’s debut, the company cut 30% of its staff, including workers who had relocated from Los Angeles.

Facing mounting debts, Merit filed for bankruptcy protection in July, listing liabilities of at least $100 million.

“You could see the writing on the wall,” said the former CBS executive. “Ratings for syndication were dropping.”

While still a household name, McGraw was part of a waning breed of TV syndication stars — Judge Judy, Maury Povich and Ellen DeGeneres among them — whose shows were fast becoming nostalgic relics.

Former McGraw staffers from his CBS days said it appeared that he thought he could simply translate his name recognition and longtime popularity to the new venture, but failed to grasp the new digital media landscape.

“The programming model that he launched in 2024 was more appropriate two decades earlier,” said Syracuse University’s Thompson.

Merit Street faced internal strife as well, according to former staffers and court filings.

Former employees described tensions between Los Angeles transplants and less experienced nonunion crews.

“It was total disorganization,” said one former field producer who had worked for the “Dr. Phil” show and then relocated to Texas to work for Merit Street, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution. “Everyone kept saying this was a startup, and maybe it was. People made decisions but had no idea what they were doing,” the producer added.

A representative of McGraw’s production company conceded the startup had growing pains.

“The company thought they could produce the same quality production with less people,” he said.

Compounding matters, relations between Merit and its business and broadcast partner TBN also soured.

Merit alleged in its lawsuit that TBN provided “comically dysfunctional” technical services, with teleprompters and monitors blacked out during live programs before a studio audience.

The suit further alleged that TBN failed to pay TV distributors and had reneged on its promise to cover $100 million in production services and other costs.

McGraw, through his production company, bankrolled the struggling enterprise from December 2024 to May 2025, lending it $25 million, according to Merit’s lawsuit.

For its part, TBN accused McGraw and his production company Peteski Productions of “fraudulent inducement,” alleging in a countersuit that it had invested $100 million into Merit and that McGraw and Peteski had failed to bring in promised advertising revenue.

TBN said McGraw reached out to the company as a potential replacement for CBS as a distribution partner during the latter half of 2022.

“McGraw specifically represented to TBN that he wanted to change networks because of what he perceived to be CBS’s censorship of the content aired on the ‘Dr. Phil Show.’ As McGraw put it, ‘I don’t want snot-nose lawyers telling me what I can and can’t say on TV,’” the lawsuit states.

Instead, they claimed in their complaint, McGraw and his company engaged in a “fraudulent scheme” to fleece TBN, a not-for-profit corporation.

In a statement to Variety, a spokesperson for McGraw and his production company called TBN’s lawsuit “riddled with provable lies.”

TBN did not respond to a request for comment.

Merit also clashed with another partner: Professional Bull Riders, which in November 2024 canceled its four-year contract with Merit and pulled its content, claiming the company had failed to pay the fees it owed.

Professional Bull Riders claims Merit Street stopped paying its broadcast fees and is owed $181 million.

(Anadolu via Getty Images)

PBR, which later signed with Fox Nation and CBS, alleged in a separate lawsuit that Merit breached their contract and is seeking $181 million.

“We’re glad he’s being held accountable,” said Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, parent company of PBR, in a statement to The Times.

“Merit Street agreed to work out its differences with PBR in a confidential proceeding which is ongoing. We were therefore surprised that PBR would publicly accuse us of violating our agreement when the facts are in dispute,” the company said in an earlier statement.

Two weeks after Merit filed for bankruptcy, McGraw announced the launch of another new network, Envoy Media Co., that would include live, “balanced news,” original entertainment programming and “immersive viewer experiences,” as well as original programming from friend and former Merit stakeholder Steve Harvey.

Last month, Envoy struck a distribution deal with Charter Communications.

“Dr. McGraw remains deeply proud of his past work and the millions of people it has reached. He’s now turning that same purpose and energy toward Envoy Media,” Babcock said.

But the Merit legal drama is far from over.

TBN has since alleged that Merit Street filed for bankruptcy in bad faith as a way to secure funding for Envoy.

A spokesperson for Peteski called TBN’s allegation “blatantly false” and said Envoy is independently financed.

Earlier this month, Judge Everett rejected Merit’s motion to pause the company’s liquidation while his ruling is appealed. He cited deleted texts in which McGraw described plans by Merit to file for bankruptcy protection to “wipe out” debts from its main creditors, TBN and PBR.

“Candor to the court is critical,” said Everett during his original ruling, and then declared that Merit Street Media “was as dead as a door nail when the bankruptcy was filed.”

President Trump’s pledge to terminate temporary legal protections for Somalis living in Minnesota is triggering fear in the state’s deeply rooted immigrant community, along with doubts about whether the White House has the legal authority to enact the directive as described.

In a social media post late Friday, Trump said he would “immediately” strip Somali residents in Minnesota of Temporary Protected Status, a legal safeguard against deportation for immigrants from certain countries.

The announcement was immediately challenged by some state leaders and immigration experts, who characterized Trump’s declaration as a legally dubious effort to sow fear and suspicion toward Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the nation.

“There’s no legal mechanism that allows the president to terminate protected status for a particular community or state that he has beef with,” said Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center.

“This is Trump doing what he always does: demagoguing immigrants without justification or evidence and using that demagoguery in an attempt to take away important life-saving protections,” she added.

The protection has been extended 27 times for Somalis since 1991, with U.S. authorities determining that it was unsafe for people already in the United States to return to Somalia.

The Trump administration could, however, move to revoke the legal protection for Somalis nationally. But that move would affect only a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of Somalis living in Minnesota. A report produced for Congress in August put the number of Somalis covered by TPS at 705 nationwide.

“I am a citizen and so are [the] majority of Somalis in America,” Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat born in Somalia, said in a social media post Friday. “Good luck celebrating a policy change that really doesn’t have much impact on the Somalis you love to hate.”

Still, advocates warned the move could inflame hate against a community at a time of rising Islamophobia.

“This is not just a bureaucratic change,” said Jaylani Hussein, president of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “It is a political attack on the Somali and Muslim community driven by Islamophobic and hateful rhetoric.”

In his social media post, Trump claimed, without offering evidence, that Somali gangs had targeted Minnesota residents and referred to the state as a “hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.”

Federal prosecutors have in recent weeks brought charges against dozens of people in a social-services fraud scheme. Some of the defendants are from Somalia.

Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, has noted that Minnesota consistently ranks among the safest states in the country.

“It’s not surprising that the president has chosen to broadly target an entire community,” Walz said Friday. “This is what he does to change the subject.”

Community advocates say that the Somali diaspora in Minnesota has helped to revitalize downtown corridors in Minneapolis and plays a prominent role in the state’s politics.

“The truth is that the Somali community is beloved and long-woven into the fabric of many neighborhoods and communities in Minnesota,” Altman said. “Destabilizing families and communities makes all of us less safe and not more.”

As part of a broader push to adopt hard-line immigration policies, the Trump administration has moved to withdraw various protections that had allowed immigrants to remain in the United States and work legally.

That included ending TPS for 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians who were granted protection under former President Biden. The Trump administration has also sought to limit protections previously extended to migrants from Cuba and Syria, among other countries.

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

Recent imagery indicates that China is progressing with work on a new aircraft carrier, its fourth, which is expected by many sources to introduce nuclear propulsion. A new detail that is now visible of the makings of the ship’s hull structure would appear to directly support this. The development comes just a week after the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) commissioned its first domestically produced carrier, the Fujian. Meanwhile, there are increasing reports that Beijing may also still be working on at least one more conventionally powered carrier, too.

Imagery of the new carrier, commonly referred to as the Type 004, shows the vessel taking shape at Dalian shipyard in China’s Liaoning province. Visible now is what looks to be a reactor containment structure, which would be a key indicator of its propulsion system. Certainly, the structure is broadly similar to that which is found in U.S. nuclear-powered supercarriers, and there is a general consensus that what we can see here is related to the future installation of a nuclear reactor. However, there remains the possibility that this could be some other test ship or potentially a test module. It could also be a case of this feature looking like it exists for one purpose, but it ends up being for another, although that seems less unlikely.

Renderings related to the Type 004 design that have emerged in the past have shown similarities to the U.S. Navy’s Ford class, as well as France’s future New Generation Aircraft Carrier, both of which are nuclear-powered.

In its latest assessment of Chinese military power, the Pentagon doesn’t explicitly mention a nuclear-powered carrier, but does note that China’s “next generation of carriers” will be characterized by “greater endurance,” which “will increase the striking power of a potential PLAN carrier battle group when deployed to areas beyond the PRC’s immediate periphery.”

In March of this year, Yuan Huazhi, political commissar for the PLAN, confirmed that construction of a fourth carrier had begun, but declined to answer whether it would be nuclear-powered.

Almost exactly a year ago, evidence emerged that China had constructed a land-based prototype nuclear reactor suitable for a large surface warship. The so-called Dragon Might project is located at a mountain site outside the city of Leshan, in Sichuan province.

The shift to nuclear power for China’s fourth carrier is hugely significant.

Nuclear propulsion will give the Type 004 effectively unlimited range. It will also help meet the power-generation requirements of ever-improving sensors and other mission systems. A nuclear-powered supercarrier would go a long way toward closing the technical gap with the U.S. Navy, and would see China join France as the only other nation operating a nuclear-powered flattop.

Previous satellite imagery confirmed that construction work on the carrier was underway in Dalian before May 2024, when a module, a section of the flight deck, first appeared in satellite imagery.

Apparently evident in the module were trenches for catapult tracks, suggesting that the Type 004 will have two waist catapults, in addition to the two bow catapults. This would match the arrangement of the Nimitz and Ford classes and would add an extra catapult compared with China’s third carrier, the Type 003 Fujian, which has a single catapult in the waist position.

In other respects, too, the Type 004 is expected to be an overall more advanced design than Liaoning and Shandong, which are by now well established with the PLAN fleet, as well as the Fujian.

Like Fujian — and in contrast to the two previous carriers — the Type 004 will be equipped to launch aircraft via catapults. The earlier Shandong and the Liaoning are both short takeoff but arrested recovery, or STOBAR, types with prominent ‘ski jump’ takeoff ramps. Catapults offer numerous advantages, especially when it comes to launching aircraft at higher gross weights, which translates to larger fuel and ordnance loads. They can also generally accommodate a wider array of aircraft types, too. This includes larger and slower designs, like the KJ-600 carrier-based airborne early warning and control aircraft, as well as smaller ones, such as drones.

Like the Fujian, the Type 004 will presumably be equipped with an advanced electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS), a type of equipment otherwise only in use with the U.S. Navy.

As well as the aforementioned KJ-600, the Type 004’s air wing will likely include the J-35 stealth fighter, supported by advanced developments of the J-15 multirole fighter, including an electronic warfare variant. The carrier is also likely to embark various drones, such as navalized versions of the GJ-11 uncrewed combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), plus helicopters.

Intriguingly, however, China is reportedly also working in parallel on another new carrier, this one being conventionally powered.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that, in addition to the Type 004 at Dalian, China is poised to start working on a conventionally powered carrier at Jiangnan in Shanghai. This location would make sense inasmuch as this was the yard that built the Fujian. If these reports are correct, the finished product would likely be an improved Type 003 design.

Via Chaos314159/SDF:

“The latest Sentinel satellite imagery suggests that Jiangnan is cleaning a platform outside the dock, raising questions about whether this indicates the start of construction on the so-called Type 003A aircraft carrier.”

Does anyone know more? 🤨🤔 pic.twitter.com/sCSduadhM0

— @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) November 11, 2025

Considering China’s huge shipbuilding capacity, it might well make sense to pursue two distinct new-generation carrier designs. An improved Type 003 — which some observers have begun to dub Type 003A — would offer the advantages of a proven design and lower costs, while the more ambitious Type 004 would be more expensive and higher risk.

The model below depicts a follow-on conventionally powered carrier, with the pennant number CV-19, but the source is unknown, and it may or may not be official. Notably, however, the island superstructure has major similarities with that seen on the large-scale, land-based aircraft carrier test facility in Wuhan.

There’s also an argument that China doesn’t necessarily need nuclear-powered carriers for many of its missions. While a nuclear-powered carrier would be a huge advantage for sustained blue-water operations across the globe, for contingencies closer to home, such as in the Taiwan Strait, and even in the disputed South China Sea, a force of conventionally powered flattops is still highly relevant. Conventionally powered carriers have the added advantage that they can be built more quickly and fielded in greater numbers given a set budget, although they are more dependent on a steady supply train, which can be vulnerable in a time of conflict. For its part, even a nuclear-powered carrier still requires a steady supply of other supplies, including fuel for its air wing and for its escorts.

At the same time, it should be noted that China is also working to introduce a number of very large big-deck amphibious assault ships, referred to as the Type 076. Each will feature at least one electromagnetic catapult that is expected to be primarily used to launch drones, as you can read more about here. Again, these would appear to be tailor-made for missions directed against Taiwan, as well as for power projection in the South China Sea.

Continued construction work on what is increasingly likely to be a nuclear-powered carrier, and the possibility of another type of conventional flattop in the works, highlight China’s high ambitions as a naval power and the resources they are willing to invest to achieve their maritime vision. While these developments are significant, it should also be recalled that, for the time being, the PLAN’s fleet of three conventionally powered carriers is still vastly outmatched by the U.S. Navy’s 11 active nuclear-powered supercarriers. Nevertheless, the gap is growing smaller at what seems like an increasing pace.

Contact the author: [email protected]

MINNEAPOLIS — Attorneys in the case of a man charged with killing a top Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her husband said Wednesday that prosecutors have turned over a massive amount of evidence to the defense, and that his lawyers need more time to review it.

Federal prosecutor Harry Jacobs told the court that investigators have provided substantially all of the evidence they have collected against Vance Boelter. He has pleaded not guilty to murder in the killing of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and to attempted murder in the shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Some evidence, such as lab reports, continues to come in.

Federal defender Manny Atwal said at the status conference that the evidence includes more than130,000 pages of PDF documents, more than 800 hours of audio and video recordings, and more than 2,000 photographs from what authorities have called the largest hunt for a suspect in Minnesota history.

Atwal said her team has spent close to 110 hours just downloading the material — not reviewing it — and that they’re still evaluating the evidence, a process she said has gone slowly due to the federal government shutdown.

“That’s not unusual for a complex case but it is lot of information for us to review,” Atwal told Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster.

Jacobs said he didn’t have a timeline for when the Department of Justice would decide whether to seek the death penalty against Boelter. The decision will be up to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.

Foster scheduled the next status conference for Feb. 12 and asked prosecutors to keep the defense and court updated in the meantime about their death penalty decision. She did not set a trial date.

Hortman and her husband, Mark, and Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot by a man who came to their suburban homes in the early hours of June 14, disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car.

Boelter, 58, was captured near his home in rural Green Isle late the next day. He faces federal and state charges including murder and attempted murder in what prosecutors have called a political assassination.

Boelter, who was wearing orange and yellow jail clothing, said nothing during the nine-minute hearing.

Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911 and has never had a federal death penalty case. But the Trump administration is pushing for greater use of capital punishment.

Boelter’s attorney has not commented on the substance of the allegations. His motivations remain murky and statements he has made to some media haven’t been fully clear. Friends have described him as a politically conservative evangelical Christian, and occasional preacher and missionary.

Boelter claimed to the conservative outlet Blaze News in August that he never intended to shoot anyone that night but that his plans went horribly wrong.

He told Blaze in a series of hundreds of texts via his jail’s messaging system that he went to the Hoffmans’ home to make citizen’s arrests over what he called his two-year undercover investigation into 400 deaths from the COVID-19 vaccine that he believed were being covered up by the state.

But he told Blaze he opened fire when the Hoffmans and their adult daughter tried to push him out the door and spoiled his plan. He did not explain why he went on to allegedly shoot the Hortmans and their golden retriever, Gilbert, who had to be euthanized.

Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said when she announced Boelter’s indictment on state charges in August that she gave no credence to the claims Boelter had made from jail.

In other recent developments, a Sibley County judge last month granted Boelter’s wife a divorce.

Karnowski writes for the Associated Press.

The Los Angeles Police Department took more than a year to begin fully disclosing domestic abuse allegations against officers after the state passed a law that mandates reporting and can trigger permanent bans from police work in California.

The revelation came out through testimony at an administrative hearing last month for a rookie LAPD officer who was fired after the department alleged she committed time card fraud and physically assaulted her former romantic partner, a fellow cop.

A sergeant from the LAPD’s serious misconduct unit testified in a proceeding against Tawny Ramirez, according to Ramirez’s attorney and evidence from the closed-door hearing reviewed by The Times. The sergeant said the department did not start reporting certain spousal abuse cases to the state until after Ramirez was terminated in early February 2024. That is more than a year after rules took effect requiring the LAPD and other police agencies to promptly report officers accused of “serious misconduct” to the state’s police accreditation body, which grants authorization to work in law enforcement.

Senate Bill 2, passed in 2021, made domestic violence one of the nine categories of “serious misconduct” — including excessive force, dishonesty, sexual assault and acts of bias on the basis of factors including race, sexual orientation and gender — that police agencies are obligated to report to the state’s Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training, or POST.

The LAPD sergeant testified that the reporting practices were based on guidance from POST’s former compliance director, who said at a training session that agencies did not have to “report first-time misdemeanor domestic violence,” according to Ramirez’s attorney Nicole Castronovo and the hearing evidence reviewed by The Times.

Ramirez appealed the basis for her firing and has maintained she did not commit any misconduct. She denied allegations she abused her former partner.

LAPD officials believed the partial POST reporting went “against best practices” and tried to get the directive in writing, the sergeant testified, but still went along with what the official advised, according to Castronovo and the hearing evidence.

When the department sought further clarification from the POST compliance director’s successor, officials were informed that nearly all domestic-related incidents must be reported, Castronovo said.

She said she tried to press the LAPD about how many of these cases may have gone unreported, but the department said it didn’t know.

When SB 2 took effect in January 2023, police agencies were supposed to start disclosing “serious misconduct” to POST within 10 days of learning of credible allegations.

The sergeant who testified declined comment and directed questions to the department’s press office, which in a statement said that at the time SB 2 was being rolled out the LAPD “consulted” with POST “to determine which misconduct types required reporting.”

“The Department was advised that first-time, non-aggravated domestic battery did not meet the reporting threshold,” the statement read. “The Department followed this guidance, reporting only those cases with aggravating factors. In 2024, the Department adopted a new standard of reporting all allegations of domestic battery, regardless of severity.”

Ramirez’s lawyer said the testimony raises questions about the LAPD’s compliance with the law — and whether it has gone back to report other officers’ past offenses.

“It’s very scary to think that that crime wouldn’t be reported,” Castronovo said.

The LAPD accused Ramirez of assaulting her ex, Jorge Alvarado, in May 2023 based on a texted photo he provided that showed yellowish bruising on his arm from where she had squeezed it, according to the hearing evidence. Ramirez maintains Alvarado was bruised during consensual sex and argued at her at an administrative hearing that the department was unwilling to consider emails, text messages and other evidence she tried to provide that cast doubt on her accuser’s account.

The couple started dating in 2022 while both were at the Police Academy, according to Ramirez. She claims she tried to end the relationship after a few months when Alvarado turned overbearing and possessive. A colleague from Topanga Division helped her fill out an application for a temporary restraining order, Ramirez said.

A judge denied the stay away order on the grounds that Ramirez wasn’t in imminent danger, and Alvarado did not face any charges.

Alvarado did not respond to a request for comment sent to his department email.

According to hearing evidence, Alvarado first disclosed the alleged abuse by Ramirez during an interview with LAPD Internal Affairs in January 2024. Ramirez was fired less than a month later — weeks shy of completing her 18-month probationary period — after the department alleged that she lied about her reason for taking time off from work.

Meagan Poulos, a spokesperson for POST, said she wasn’t familiar with Ramirez’s case but if anything, the state agency deals with police departments “over-reporting” misconduct. Poulos said data on serious misconduct reports from the LAPD were not immediately available for review.

She added that reporting is not mandatory for spousal abuse cases that are quickly deemed unfounded or that don’t prompt an Internal Affairs investigation, and suggested LAPD officials may have “misconstrued” that to mean they didn’t have to report any such cases.

“I don’t know if that’s the case in this particular case, but I can say that’s not something that POST would advise any agency to not do,” she said.

According to Poulos and data from the agency, in 2023 there were 250-plus law enforcement agencies — the vast majority of which have fewer than 50 officers — that didn’t report a single case of serious misconduct. She said the agency regularly sends out reminders about their obligations under SB 2.

Larger agencies like the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have their own coordinators or standalone units charged with referring qualifying cases to state authorities for consideration. In a brief statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it has been its “practice since the inception of SB 2 to report all allegations of acts that violate the law.”

POST revoked 57 officers’ certification this year, compared to 84 last year. Another 43 officers voluntarily surrendered their certifications, while 77 had theirs at least temporarily suspended.

A POST notification doesn’t automatically result in an officer losing his or her policing certificate. Cases are reviewed by a disciplinary board comprised of civilians with a professional or personal background related to police accountability. That board convenes every few months to review POST’s investigation of misconduct allegations and recommend whether the commission should seek decertification.

Ramirez told The Times the LAPD initially said domestic violence had nothing to do with her firing. She says she was unfairly accused of violating department policy during a 2023 incident in Canoga Park in which she and another officer used force while trying to take a man into custody. It was only later that the photos of Alvarado’s bruises were used against her, Ramirez said, along with an allegation of time card fraud — which she also denies.

The LAPD said Ramirez lied and told her supervisor she needed time off to take care her of her ailing brother when she actually went to apply for a job at the Beverly Hills Police Department.

Ramirez said she was a caregiver for her brother — who has since died — and that she was applying to the Beverly Hills job in an attempt to get away from Alvarado.

Alvarado was placed on administrative leave after Ramirez reported him but has since completed his probationary period and been elevated to the rank of Police Officer II.

A decision from the LAPD disciplinary review process on whether Ramirez can be fired remains pending. She thinks it’s unfair her ex has been allowed to return to work while she’s stuck in limbo.

“Here I am still trying to get my job back and he’s a happy officer, enjoying his benefits, while I’m living this nightmare,” she said.

Times staff writer Connor Sheets and The Associated Press contributed to this report.