indictment

I may be revealing a secret cherished by columnists the world over, but I admit that among the columns we relish writing the most fall into the “I told you so” genre.

Case in point: In April last year, in a column about the gambling mess ensnaring Shohei Ohtani’s then-interpreter, I warned that the pro sports leagues’ enthusiastic embrace of betting would inevitably produce a major scandal.

“It might not surface in the next months or even years,” I wrote, “but it will happen.”

The calendar, as it turned out, ticked over at 19 months. Last Thursday, federal prosecutors charged National Basketball Assn. player Terry Rozier and former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones with fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to fix bets on NBA games. Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was charged in a separate indictment linking him to a Mafia scheme to fix poker games; Jones was also named in that indictment.

The NBA has placed Billups and Rozier on leave. They’re both due to appear in federal court in Brooklyn over the next few weeks to enter pleas, though both have asserted their innocence.

It may not be easy for the league to wash its hands of this mess. All the professional sports leagues spent years shunning gambling as a threat to their public image of integrity before embracing the siren call of big-time sports betting, bringing gambling companies and their ever-increasing customer base into their tents. But the NBA was ahead of the crowd.

In a 2014 op-ed, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver effectively cried “uncle” in the league’s battle against gambling.

“For more than two decades,” he wrote, “the National Basketball Association has opposed the expansion of legal sports betting, as have the other major professional sports leagues in the United States.” The leagues supported a 1992 federal law prohibiting sports betting except in grandfathered venues, such as Las Vegas.

They took a stern position against players and personnel caught betting on their games and their sports, dating to 1919 and the so-called Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series for the benefit of a gambling ring. Major League Baseball hired an austere federal judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, as its commissioner and gave him unchecked authority to clean up the game. He banned the eight players from baseball forever.

In recent times, Silver observed in his op-ed, the American appetite for sports betting has only risen. Accordingly, he called for legalizing the practice so it could be “brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”

(The 1992 law was overturned by the Supreme Court, and legalized sports betting spread coast to coast.)

Given the subsequent developments, one can tag Silver for his childlike innocence in counting on the government to regulate an industry collecting billions of dollars a year from millions of users while operating with a legal imprimatur.

Silver wrote that among his “most important responsibilities as commissioner of the N.B.A. is to protect the integrity of professional basketball and preserve public confidence in the league and our sport.”

When I asked the NBA if Silver has had second thoughts about his 2014 op-ed, the league replied, “We continue to believe that a legal, regulated, and monitored sports betting market is far superior to an illegal one operating underground,” and suggested that a single federal regulator would be preferable to the existing state-by-state patchwork, though the activities alleged in the federal indictments almost surely would be crimes in any state. Silver did say during a broadcast interview Friday that the case gave him “a pit in my stomach.”

The league’s ability to monitor the behavior of its own people is questionable. Consider a March 23, 2024, Charlotte Hornets game against the New Orleans Pelicans. According to the indictment, Rozier let the gambling conspirators know that he would take himself out of the game early, allowing them to profit from bets that his stats would fall short of bookmakers’ expectations.

The NBA, alerted by sports wagering companies to “aberrational behavior” involving Rozier in the game, investigated but later said it could find any “violation of NBA rules.”

The NBA can hardly claim to have been blindsided by the new indictments. Only last year, another federal gambling case erupted involving NBA games.

In that case, prosecutors alleged that a gambler named Ammar Awawdeh forced then-Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter to take himself out of a game early. That led gamblers who knew of the arrangement to bet that his stats for the game would fall short of expectations; those insiders made more than $100,000 on their bets, the prosecutors charged.

According to text messages filed with the 2024 indictments, Awawdeh acknowledged “forcing” Porter to participate in the scheme to help clear some of his gambling debts.

Awawdeh engaged in plea negotiations in the case, but the outcome couldn’t be determined. Porter pleaded guilty to related federal fraud charges, and is scheduled to be sentenced in December. The NBA has banned Porter for life.

Awawdeh was also named in last week’s indictment over the alleged poker scam.

In recent years, the pro leagues have cozied up to the gambling industry, claiming that their interest is merely “fan engagement” — that is, keeping TV viewers in front of their sets even during blowout games.

Only 11 states bar sports gambling today. They include the customary anti-gambling holdouts Utah and Hawaii, and California, where ballot measures to legalize sports gambling were defeated in 2022. As I mentioned in 2024, the perils of this expansion are manifest.

They’ve created a new underclass of gambling addicts while largely failing to fulfill their advocates’ assurances that state-sponsored and regulated gambling would produce a new, risk-free revenue stream for state and local budgets. The outcomes of some games have come under suspicion even where no evidence of fixing has been found.

The leagues have gone beyond just tolerating gambling; they’ve made partnership and sponsorship deals with the major sports gambling companies. The two leading companies, FanDuel and DraftKings, are official corporate gambling partners of the NBA, National Football League and Major League Baseball.

During broadcasts and steaming of games, it’s common to see in-game statistical projections on-screen — what are the chances of this hitter striking out, or hitting a home run, for instance.

During the seventh inning of Game 2 Saturday, Fox flashed a projection that there was a 36% chance that Yoshinobu Yamamoto would pitch 9+ innings. (He went the distance.)

The only reason to offer such projections is to feed the appetite for in-game proposition, or “prop,” bets. These are fundamentally bookmakers’ estimates. They don’t tell ordinary viewers anything they need to know to enjoy the coming innings, but do give bettors something to chew on before putting money down on the proposition “will Yamamoto pitch a complete game?”

In-game prop bets, as it happens, are like heroin to the vulnerable, offering instant gratification (or dismay). They “may be associated with risky gambling behavior,” according to the National Council on Problem Gaming. Draftkings heavily promotes prop bets on its sportsbook web page.

In a memo issued Monday, the NBA singled out prop bets as trouble spots: “In particular,” the memo says, “proposition bets on individual player performance involve heightened integrity concerns and require additional scrutiny.”

The major gaming companies have rolled out new ways to keep bettors betting. Smartphone apps, for example. In the old days no one could place a legal sports bet without traveling to Las Vegas, a built-in curb on problem gambling. Today, anyone with a smartphone can place a bet, often without certifying their age or financial resources.

“The advent of smartphones in 2007 and the Supreme Court decision in 2018 opened the door to fully frictionless, 24/7 legal gambling,” problem gambling experts Jonathan D. Cohen and Isaac Rose-Berman wrote recently.

I asked FanDuel and DraftKings if they accepted any responsibility for problem gaming in the U.S. DraftKings didn’t reply. A spokesman for FanDuel told me by email that the company “takes problem gambling seriously and continually works to identify at-risk behavior … including when a customer attempts to deposit significantly more than what they typically do,” or “excessive time on site, chasing losses or signals from customer service interactions.” In those cases, the company sometimes imposes deposit limits or timeouts or can exclude the user entirely.

That brings us to the latest indictments. The feds identified seven NBA games in 2023 and 2024, including the 2023 game in which Rozier allegedly tipped confederates to his decision to bench himself.

Among the others were a 2023 Trail Blazers game in which gamblers were tipped that the team would sit its best players so it would lose, thereby acquiring a better position in the upcoming NBA draft; and two Lakers games in which Jones allegedly tipped gamblers that star LeBron James, a friend since they played together on the Cleveland Cavaliers, was hurt and wouldn’t be playing.

“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight,” Jones allegedly told a contact before the first game, against the Milwaukee Bucks. James sat it out and the Lakers lost. James isn’t identified by name in the indictment, but its description of his roles helped identify him. James hasn’t made a public comment about the case, but he hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.

Can anything stem this tide? The smart bet at this moment is “no.” There’s just too much money riding on the continued expansion of sports betting: DraftKings has more than doubled its revenue since 2022, reaching $4.8 billion last year, and nearly doubling its monthly average users to 3.7 million. FanDuel is owned by a British gambling conglomerate, so its U.S. sports revenue is difficult to parse.

That’s a lot of money to be thrown around promoting more sports gambling, making it harder for governments to regulate and for sports leagues to turn up their noses at the income. Keeping their image for integrity intact in this world of greedy and needy players and voracious gamblers is only going to get harder.

Poker chip trays that can secretly read cards.

Glasses that can detect card markings.

Rigged underground games run by the New York mafia.

NBA figures exchanging insider information as part of illegal betting schemes.

These are some of the wild allegations filed in two criminal complaints this week by federal prosecutors in one of the most sweeping and sensational betting scandals in recent professional sports history.

At the heart of one of the cases, prosecutors charged several figures using private insider NBA information, such as when players would sit out, to help others profit in leveraged bets online.

But the allegations go far deeper, including a connection to the Lakers, the mob and more.

Here are four key allegations:

1. High-roller games with high-tech cheating

Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, who played with the Clippers for two seasons and later was a member of Clippers coach Ty Lue’s staff before earning the Trail Blazers head coaching job, is charged with rigging underground poker games that three of New York’s Mafia families backed, authorities said.

Billups and Damon Jones, a retired NBA player, according to one of the two indictments revealed Thursday, were used to attract wealthy players to the games and were referred to as “Face Cards.” But according to the federal indictment, the two were part of the cheating teams. In exchange for taking part in the games, the “Face Cards” received part of the winnings.

The teams, according to court filings, used rigged shuffling machines that read deck cards and predicted which player on the table would have the best poker hand and relayed that information to someone, referred to as the operator. That person then relayed that information to one member of the cheating team on the table, known as the “Quarterback,” or “Driver,” according to court filings.

In some cases, the cheating teams used poker chip trays that could secretly read the cards on the table. In other cases, players used glasses that could detect special markings on the cards.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella of Brooklyn said at a press conference said the defendants used “special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards” and tables that “could read cards face down on the table … because of the X-ray technology.”

He cited “other cheating technologies, such as poker chip tray analyzers, which is a poker chip tray that secretly reads cards using a hidden camera,.”

“Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity; men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others,” Chris Heywood, Billups’ attorney, said in a statement Tuesday night. “To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his Hall-of-Fame legacy, his reputation, and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game.”

2. Alleged mob ties

The games in the New York area were backed by three of New York’s organized crime families: the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese Mafia families, authorities said. According to the complaint, at least a dozen of the 31 defendants were associates or members of those three families.

Among those named in the indictment was Joseph Lanni, identified as a captain in the Gambino crime family. Known as “Joe Brooklyn,” Lanni was also named as a defendant in a 2023 racketeering, extortion and witness retaliation indictment, where members and associates of the Gambino family were accused of trying to take control of New York’s carting and demolition industries.

Last week, Lanni pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy, according to court records.

3. A tip about LeBron James

Federal prosecutors allege that between December 2022 and March 2024, the defendants , used inside information to defraud bettors, including which players would be sitting out games and when players would “pull themselves out of games early for purported injuries or illnesses.”

Damon Jones, a retired NBA player and friend of LeBron James is accused of inside information for sports betting related to the Lakers and specifically “Player 3,” a prominent NBA player.

Although the indictment does not name the player — the date referenced in 2023 when the player sat out matches when James sat out against the Milwaukee Bucks due to ankle soreness. According to the indictment, Jones, a friend of James, profited from the non-public information.

“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out!” Jones texted an unnamed co-conspirator, according to the indictment. “[Player 3] is out tonight.”

On Thursday, the Lakers declined to comment on the investigation. A person close to LeBron James told The Times that the Lakers star didn’t know that Jones was allegedly selling injury information to gamblers placing bets. Neither James or the Lakers have been accused of any wrongdoing.

3. A ‘shady’ injury

According to the indictment, when Terry Rozier was playing for the Hornets, he told others he was planning to leave the game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing others to place wagers that raked in thousands of dollars, New York Police Commissioner Jennifer Tisch said.

Rozier and other defendants allegedly provided that information to other co-conspirators in exchange for either a flat fee or a share of betting profits.

Another game involving Rozier that has been in question was played a day earlier, on March 23, 2023, between the Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans. Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of that game — and not only did not return that night, citing a foot issue, but also did not play again that season.

Posts still online from March 23, 2023, show that some bettors were furious with sportsbooks that evening when it became evident that Rozier was not going to return, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had gone on regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.

NORFOLK, Va. — New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James is set to make her first court appearance in a mortgage fraud case on Friday, the third adversary of President Trump to face a judge on federal charges in recent weeks.

James was indicted earlier this month on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a 2020 home purchase in Norfolk, Va. The charges came shortly after the official who had been overseeing the investigation was pushed out by the Trump administration and the Republican president publicly called on the Justice Department to take action against James and other political foes.

James, a Democrat who has sued Trump and his administration dozens of times, has denied wrongdoing and decried the indictment as “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.”

The indictment stems from James’ purchase of a modest house in Norfolk, where she has family. During the sale, she signed a standard document called a “second home rider” in which she agreed to keep the property primarily for her “personal use and enjoyment for at least one year,” unless the lender agreed otherwise.

Rather than using the home as a second residence, the indictment alleges, James rented it out to a family of three. According to the indictment, the misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties.

James drew Trump’s ire when she won a staggering judgment against the president and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements. An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud.

James’ indictment followed the resignation of Erik Siebert as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he resisted Trump administration pressure to bring charges. Siebert was replaced with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor and presented James’ case to the grand jury herself.

On Thursday, lawyers for James asked for an order prohibiting prosecutors from disclosing to the news media information about the investigation, or materials from the case, outside of court.

The motion followed the revelation from earlier this week that Halligan contacted via an encrypted text messaging platform a reporter from Lawfare, a media organization that covers legal and national security issues, to discuss the James prosecution and complain about coverage of it. The reporter published the exchange that she and Halligan had.

“The exchange was a stunning disclosure of internal government information,” lawyers for James wrote.

They added: “It has been reported that Ms. Halligan has no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. But all federal prosecutors are required to know and follow the rules governing their conduct from their first day on the job, and so any lack of experience cannot excuse their violation.”

The motion also asks that the government be required to preserve all communications with representatives of the media as well as to prevent the deletion of any records or communications related to the investigation and the prosecution of the case.

Separately on Thursday, defense lawyers said they intended to challenge Halligan’s appointment, a step also taken this week by attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey in a different case filed by Halligan. Comey has been charged with lying to Congress in a criminal case filed days after Trump appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute him, and he has pleaded not guilty.

A third Trump adversary, former national security adviser John Bolton, pleaded not guilty last week to charges against him of emailing classified information to family members and keeping top secret documents at his Maryland home.

The Justice Department has also been investigating mortgage fraud allegations against Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, whom Trump has called to be prosecuted over allegations related to a property in Maryland. In a separate mortgage investigation, authorities have been probing allegations against Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, who is challenging a Trump administration effort to remove her from her job. Schiff and Cook have denied wrongdoing.

Finely and Richer write for the Associated Press. Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

GREENBELT, Md. — John Bolton arrived at a federal courthouse Friday to surrender to authorities and make his first court appearance on charges accusing the former Trump administration national security adviser of storing top secret records at home and sharing with relatives diary-like notes that contained classified information.

The 18-count federal indictment Thursday also suggests classified information was exposed when operatives believed to be linked to the Iranian government hacked Bolton’s email account and gained access to sensitive material he had shared. A Bolton representative told the FBI in 2021 that his emails had been hacked, prosecutors say, but did not reveal that Bolton had shared classified information through the account or that the hackers had possession of government secrets.

The closely watched case centers on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on American power and who served for more than a year in Trump’s first administration before being fired in 2019. He later published a book highly critical of Trump.

The third case against a Trump adversary in the past month will unfold against the backdrop of concerns that the Justice Department is pursuing the Republican president’s political enemies while at the same time sparing his allies from scrutiny.

“Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,” Bolton said in a statement.

Even so, the indictment is significantly more detailed in its allegations than earlier cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Unlike in those cases filed by a hastily appointed U.S. attorney, Bolton’s indictment was signed by career national security prosecutors. While the Bolton investigation burst into public view in August when the FBI searched his home in Maryland and his office in Washington, the inquiry was well underway by the time Trump had taken office in January.

Sharing of classified secrets

The indictment filed in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, alleges that between 2018 and this past August, Bolton shared with two relatives more than 1,000 pages of information about his day-to-day activities in government.

The material included “diary-like” entries with information classified as high as top secret that he had learned from meetings with other U.S. government officials, from intelligence briefings or talks with foreign leaders, according to the indictment. After sending one document, Bolton wrote in a message to his relatives, “None of which we talk about!!!” In response, one of his relatives wrote, “Shhhhh,” prosecutors said.

The indictment says that among the material shared was information about foreign adversaries that in some cases revealed details about sources and methods used by the government to collect intelligence.

The two family members were not identified in court papers, but a person familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic details, identified them as Bolton’s wife and daughter.

The indictment also suggests Bolton was aware of the impropriety of sharing classified information with people not authorized to receive it, citing an April news media interview in which he chastised Trump administration officials for using Signal to discuss sensitive military details. Though the anecdote is meant by prosecutors to show Bolton understood proper protocol for government secrets, Bolton’s legal team may also point to it to argue a double standard in enforcement because the Justice Department is not known to have opened any investigation into the Signal episode.

Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement that the “underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago.”

He said the charges stem from portions of Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career in government and included unclassified information that was shared only with his immediate family and was known to the FBI as far back as 2021.

“Like many public officials throughout history,” Lowell said, “Bolton kept diaries — that is not a crime.” He said Bolton “did not unlawfully share or store any information.”

Controversy over a book

Bolton suggested the criminal case was an outgrowth of an unsuccessful Justice Department effort after he left government to block the publication of his 2020 book “The Room Where It Happened,” which portrayed Trump as grossly misinformed about foreign policy.

The Trump administration asserted that Bolton’s manuscript contained classified information that could harm national security if exposed. Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer had classified information.

In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump’s third national security adviser. His brief tenure was characterized by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine. Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure.

Bolton subsequently criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government in his book, including by alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to Ukraine to that country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trump’s Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of Biden’s family.

Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “washed-up guy” and a “crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War Six.”

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press. Durkin Richer reported from Washington.

GREENBELT, Md. — Former Trump administration national security advisor John Bolton was charged Thursday in a federal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.

The investigation into Bolton, who served for more than a year in President Trump’s first administration before being fired in 2019, burst into public view in August when the FBI searched his home in Maryland and his office in Washington for classified records he may have held onto from his years in government.

The existence of the indictment was confirmed to the AP by a person familiar with the matter who could not publicly discuss the charges and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Agents during the August search seized multiple documents labeled “classified,” “confidential” and “secret” from Bolton’s office, according to previously unsealed court filings. Some of the seized records appeared to concern weapons of mass destruction, national “strategic communication” and the U.S. mission to the United Nations, the filings stated.

The indictment sets the stage for a closely watched court case centering on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on American power and who after leaving Trump’s first government emerged as a prominent and vocal critic of the president. Though the investigation that produced the indictment began before Trump’s second term, the case will unfold against the backdrop of broader concerns that his Justice Department is being weaponized to go after his political adversaries.

It follows separate indictments over the last month accusing former FBI Director James Comey of lying to Congress and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James of committing bank fraud and making a false statement, charges they both deny. Both of those cases were filed in federal court in Virginia by a prosecutor Trump hastily installed in the position after growing frustrated that investigations into high-profile enemies had not resulted in prosecution.

The Bolton case, by contrast, was filed in Maryland by a U.S. attorney who before being elevated to the job had been a career prosecutor in the office.

Questions about Bolton’s handling of classified information date back years. He faced a lawsuit and a Justice Department investigation after leaving office related to information in a 2020 book he published, “The Room Where it Happened,” that portrayed Trump as grossly uninformed about foreign policy.

The Trump administration asserted that Bolton’s manuscript included classified information that could harm national security if exposed. Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer contained classified information.

A search warrant affidavit that was previously unsealed said a National Security Council official had reviewed the book manuscript and told Bolton in 2020 that it appeared to contain “significant amounts” of classified information, some at a top-secret level.

Bolton’s attorney Abbe Lowell has said that many of the documents seized in August had been approved as part of a pre-publication review for Bolton’s book. He said that many were decades old, from Bolton’s long career in the State Department, as an assistant attorney general and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The indictment is a dramatic moment in Bolton’s long career in government. He served in the Justice Department during President Reagan’s administration and was the State Department’s point man on arms control during George W. Bush’s presidency. Bolton was nominated by Bush to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but the strong supporter of the Iraq war was unable to win Senate confirmation and resigned after serving 17 months as a Bush recess appointment. That allowed him to hold the job on a temporary basis without Senate confirmation.

In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump’s third national security advisor. But his brief tenure was characterized by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.

Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure, with Trump announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted Bolton’s resignation. Bolton subsequently criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government in his 2020 book, including by alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to the country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trump’s Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of his family.

Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “washed-up guy” and a “crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War Six.” Trump also said at the time that the book contained “highly classified information” and that Bolton “did not have approval” for publishing it.

Tucker, Durkin Richer and Kunzelman write for the Associated Press. Tucker and Durkin Richer reported from Washington.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to face a criminal case that has thrown a spotlight on the Justice Department’s efforts to target adversaries of President Trump.

The arraignment is expected to be brief, but the moment is nonetheless loaded with significance given that the case has amplified concerns the Justice Department is being weaponized in pursuit of Trump’s political enemies and is operating at the behest of a White House determined to seek retribution for perceived wrongs against the president.

Comey entered a not guilty plea through his lawyer at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., to allegations that he lied to Congress five years go. The plea kick-starts a process of legal wrangling in which defense lawyers will almost certainly move to get the indictment dismissed before trial, possibly by arguing the case amounts to a selective or vindictive prosecution.

The indictment two weeks ago followed an extraordinary chain of events that saw Trump publicly implore Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against Comey and other perceived adversaries. The Republican president also replaced the veteran attorney who had been overseeing the investigation with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor. Halligan rushed to file charges before a legal deadline lapsed despite warnings from other lawyers in the office that the evidence was insufficient for an indictment.

What the indictment says

The two-count indictment alleges that Comey made a false statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, by denying he had authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source to the news media and that he obstructed a congressional proceeding. Comey has denied any wrongdoing and has said he was looking forward to a trial. The indictment does not identify the associate or say what information may have been discussed with the media, making it challenging to assess the strength of the evidence or to even fully parse the allegations.

Though an indictment is typically just the start of a protracted court process, the Justice Department has trumpeted the development itself as something of a win, regardless of the outcome. Trump administration officials are likely to point to any conviction as proof the case was well-justified, but an acquittal or even dismissal may also be held up as further support for their long-running contention the criminal justice system is stacked against them.

The judge was nominated by Biden

The judge randomly assigned to the case, Michael Nachmanoff, was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and is a former chief federal defender. Known for methodical preparation and a cool temperament, the judge and his background have already drawn Trump’s attention, with the president deriding him as a “Crooked Joe Biden appointed Judge.”

Besides Comey, the Justice Department is also investigating other foes of the president, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

Several Comey family members arrived in court Wednesday morning ahead of the arraignment, including his daughter Maurene, who was fired by the Justice Department earlier this year from her position as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, as well as Troy Edwards Jr., a son-in-law of Comey’s who minutes after Comey was indicted resigned his job as a prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia — the same office that filed the charges.

Trump and Comey’s fraught relationship

The indictment was the latest chapter in a long-broken relationship between Trump and Comey.

Trump arrived in office in January 2017 as Comey, appointed to the FBI director job by President Obama four years earlier, was overseeing an investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The dynamic was fraught from the start, with Comey briefing Trump weeks before he took office on the existence of uncorroborated and sexually salacious gossip in a dossier of opposition research compiled by a former British spy.

In their first several private interactions, Comey would later reveal, Trump asked his FBI director to pledge his loyalty to him and to drop an FBI investigation into his administration’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Comey said Trump also asked him to announce that Trump himself was not under investigation as part of the broader inquiry into Russian election interference, something Comey did not do.

Comey was abruptly fired in May 2017 while at an event in Los Angeles, with Trump later saying he was thinking about “this Russia thing” when he decided to terminate him. The firing was investigated by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller as an act of potential obstruction of justice.

Comey in 2018 published a memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” that painted Trump in deeply unflattering ways, likening him to a mafia don and characterizing him as unethical and “untethered to truth.”

Trump, for his part, continued to angrily vent at Comey as the Russia investigation led by Mueller dominated headlines for the next two years and shadowed his first administration. On social media, he repeatedly claimed Comey should face charges for “treason” — an accusation Comey dismissed as “dumb lies” — and called him an “untruthful slime ball.”

Tucker, Richer and Kunzelman write for the Associated Press. Tucker reported from Washington.

WASHINGTON — The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey is only two pages and alleges he falsely testified to Congress in 2020 about authorizing someone to be an anonymous source in news stories.

That brevity belies a convoluted and contentious backstory. The events at the heart of the disputed testimony are among the most heavily scrutinized in the bureau’s history, generating internal and congressional investigations that have produced thousands of pages of records and transcripts.

Those investigations were focused on how Comey and his agents conducted high-stakes inquiries into whether Russia had unlawfully colluded with Republican Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton and her use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.

Here are some things to know about that period and how they fit into Comey’s indictment:

What are the allegations?

The indictment alleges that Comey made a false statement in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The single quote from the indictment appears to be from an interaction with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Prosecutors contend that Comey lied when he denied having authorized anyone at the FBI to be an anonymous source to the media, alleging he had done so by telling someone identified as “Person 3” in the indictment to speak to reporters.

“It’s such a bare-bones indictment,” said Solomon Wisenberg, a former federal prosecutor and now a defense attorney in private practice. “We do not know what the evidence is going to be” at trial, he said.

What did Comey say to Congress?

Wisenberg said the testimony in question appears to have come when Cruz was pressing Comey over the role that his deputy director at the time, Andrew McCabe, played in authorizing a leak to the Wall Street Journal for a story examining how the FBI handled an investigation into Clinton’s use of the private email server.

Cruz’s question was complicated, but it boiled down to pitting Comey against McCabe. The senator noted that Comey told Congress in 2017 he had not authorized anyone to speak to reporters. But Cruz asserted that McCabe had “publicly and repeatedly said he leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it.”

“Who’s telling the truth?” Cruz asked.

Comey answered: “I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.”

At that time, Comey had been put on the spot by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Comey was asked whether he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation.”

Comey answered, “No.”

The indictment says Comey falsely stated that he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports,” but Comey appears not to have used that phrasing during the 2020 hearing at issue, potentially complicating efforts to establish that he made a false statement.

What may have sparked the questions?

“Person 3” is not identified in the indictment, but appears to have been discussing an investigation related to Clinton, based on a clearer reference in a felony charge that grand jurors rejected. Comey figured in several inquiries into alleged leaks in the Clinton investigation, all of which generated extensive paper trails.

One involved McCabe and the Journal story. McCabe told the Justice Department’s inspector general that he had authorized a subordinate to talk to the Journal reporter and had told Comey about that interaction after the fact.

It’s unlikely the indictment is focused on that episode because McCabe never told investigators that Comey had authorized him to talk to the media, only that the FBI director was aware that McCabe had done so.

Two other leak investigations involved a friend of Comey’s who served for a time as a paid government advisor to the director. That advisor, Daniel Richman, has told investigators he spoke to the media to help shape perceptions of the embattled FBI chief.

Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, was interviewed by FBI agents in 2019 about leaks to the media that concerned the bureau’s investigation into Clinton. Richman said Comey had never authorized him to speak to the media about the Clinton investigation but he acknowledged Comey was aware that he sometimes engaged with reporters.

Comey has acknowledged using Richman as a conduit to the media in another matter. After Comey was fired by Trump in 2017, he gave Richman a memo that detailed his interactions with the president. Comey later testified to Congress that he had authorized Richman to disclose the contents of the memo to journalists with the hopes of spurring the appointment of a special counsel who might investigate Trump.

How did we get here?

Trump and Comey have been engaged in a long-running feud. Trump blames Comey for having started an investigation into Russia’s election meddling on behalf of Trump’s 2016 campaign that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller. Mueller spent the better part of two years investigating whether Trump’s campaign illegally colluded with the Kremlin.

In the end, Mueller uncovered no evidence that Trump or his associates criminally colluded with Russia, but found that they had welcomed Moscow’s assistance and that Trump had obstructed justice during the investigation. Those findings were largely adopted by bipartisan congressional reports on the matter.

Trump, who was convicted of felony fraud last year, has long vented about the “Russia hoax,” which shadowed and defined the early years of his first term. He has spent the ensuing years bashing Comey and saying he should be charged with treason.

Just days before the indictment, Trump publicly urged his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to act against Comey and two other perceived Trump enemies: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump posted on social media last week. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW.”

Within hours of the indictment being returned, Trump turned again to social media to gloat: “JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey.”

Comey has remained resolute in his defense, while criticizing Trump on a host of matters. In a 2018 memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” Comey compared Trump to a mafia don and said he was unethical and “untethered to truth.”

Like Trump, Comey took to social media after his indictment.

“My family and I have known for years there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” he said. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So, let’s have a trial.”

Tau writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

Three women opposed to President Trump’s intense immigration raids in Los Angeles were indicted Friday on charges of illegally “doxing” a U.S. Customs and Immigration agent, authorities said.

Ashleigh Brown, Cynthia Raygoza and Sandra Carmona Samane face charges of disclosing the personal information of a federal agent and conspiracy, according to an indictment unsealed late Friday.

Brown, who is from Colorado and goes by the nickname “AK,” has been described as one of the founders of “ice_out_ofla” an Instagram page with more than 28,000 followers that plays a role in organizing demonstrations against immigration enforcement, according to the social media page and an email reviewed by The Times.

According to the indictment, the three women followed an ICE agent from the federal building on 300 North Los Angeles Street in downtown L.A. to the agent’s residence in Baldwin Park.

They live-streamed the entire event, according to the indictment. Once they arrived at the agent’s home, prosecutors allege the women got out and shouted “la migra lives here,” and “ICE lives on your street and you should know,” according to the indictment.

“Our brave federal agents put their lives on the line every day to keep our nation safe,” Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said in a statement. “The conduct of these defendants are deeply offensive to law enforcement officers and their families. If you threaten, dox, or harm in any manner one of our agents or employees, you will face prosecution and prison time.”

An attorney for Samane, 25, of Los Angeles, said she intends to plead not guilty at an arraignment next month and declined further comment.

The Federal Public Defender’s Office, which is representing Brown, 38, of Aurora, Colo., did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Court records did not list an attorney for Raygoza, 37, of Riverside.

Footage published to the ice_out_ofla Instagram page seemed to capture Brown’s arrest earlier this week. The video shows a man in green fatigues and body armor saying he has a warrant for her arrest, while reaching through what appears to be the shattered driver’s side window of her car. Brown asks what the warrant is for while the man can be seen holding a collapsible baton. Then the video cuts out.

Posts on the Instagram page describe Brown as a “political prisoner.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to questions about whether the women specifically shouted out the agent’s address online or what the defendants specifically did to “incite the commission of a crime of violence against a federal agent,” as the indictment alleges.

Federal law enforcement leaders have repeatedly expressed concern about the “doxing” of agents with ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as residents of Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities continue to protest the Trump administration’s sprawling deportation efforts.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem threatened to prosecute people for publishing agents’ personal information last month in response to fliers in Portland that called for people to collect intel on ICE.

But the indictment returned Friday appeared to be the first prosecution related to such tactics.

Critics of the Trump administration’s operations have expressed outrage over ICE and CBP agents wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves in public while hunting undocumented immigrants throughout Southern California.

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that forbids federal law enforcement from wearing masks while operating in California. The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law, leading some legal experts to question whether state officials can actually enforce the legislation.

WASHINGTON — On a Phoenix tarmac in 2016, former President Clinton and U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch had a serendipitous meeting on a private jet. The exchange caused a political firestorm. At a time when the Justice Department was investigating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, the appearance of impropriety prompted a national scandal.

“Lynch made law enforcement decisions for political purposes,” Donald Trump, her Republican rival that year, would later write of the meeting on Twitter. “Totally illegal!”

It was the beginning of a pattern from Trump claiming political interference by Democrats and career public servants in Justice Department matters, regardless of the evidence.

Now, Trump’s years-long claim that it was his opponents who politicized the justice system has become the basis for the most aggressive spree of political prosecutions in modern American history.

“What Trump is doing now with the U.S. attorneys is really in complete opposition to how the people who created those offices imagined what those officials would do — the Founders simply did not envision the office in this way,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the history department at Washington University in St. Louis.

“From the inception of the Justice Department,” he added, “one of the most remarkable things is how it was never used in this way.”

On Thursday, at Trump’s express direction, federal charges were filed against James Comey, the former FBI director, alleging he gave false testimony before Congress and attempted to obstruct a congressional proceeding five years ago.

The indictment was secured from a federal grand jury after Trump fired a U.S. attorney with doubts about the strength of the case — replacing him with a loyalist, and telling Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi openly on social media to pursue charges against him and others.

“JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP,” Trump wrote on social media after the charges were filed. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, denies the charges.

“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way,” Comey said in a statement posted online. “We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.

“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice. But I have great confidence in the federal judicial system,” Comey continued. “And I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

Behind the charges against Comey, legal experts see a weak case wielded as a cudgel in a political persecution of Trump’s perceived enemy. Comey is accused of lying about authorizing a leak to the media about an FBI investigation through an anonymous source.

It is only the latest example. Over the summer, Trump’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, used his position to accuse three of the president’s political foes of mortgage fraud, referring the cases to the Justice Department for potential charges — actions actively encouraged by Trump online.

“It’s not a list,” Trump said Thursday, asked whether more prosecutions are coming. “I think there will be others. They’re corrupt. These were corrupt radical left Democrats. Comey essentially was Dem — he’s worse than a Democrat.”

The president’s overt use of the Justice Department as a partisan tool threatens a new era of political persecutions that could well backfire on his own allies. The Supreme Court has made clear that presidents enjoy broad immunity for their actions while in office. But their aides do not. Bondi, Pulte and others, just like Comey, are obligated to provide occasional testimony to House and Senate committees under oath.

“The Comey indictment is notable for its personalized politicization being so open,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College. “The same actions carried out clandestinely would seem scandalous, because they are — and the fact they were so blatantly advertised does not make them less corrupt.”

But the Comey case can also be seen as a test of the viability of a prosecution based purely on politics. Already, lawyers for Trump’s other legal targets have said they plan on using his overt threats against them to get cases against their clients thrown out in court.

This week, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, defended Trump’s vocal advocacy for criminal charges against political foes as a matter of “accountability.”

“We are not going to tolerate gaslighting from anyone in the media, from anyone on the other side who is trying to say that it’s the president who is weaponizing the DOJ,” Leavitt said.

“You look at people like [California Sen.] Adam Schiff, and like James Comey, and like [New York Atty. Gen.] Letitia James, who the president is rightfully frustrated with,” she continued. “He wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abused their power, who abused their oath of office to target the former president.”

But Trump’s accusations against Democrats have routinely failed the tests of inspectors general, journalistic inquiry and public scrutiny.

When Trump was investigated over potential coordination between his campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 race, he claimed a liberal, “deep state” cabal was behind an inquiry based on, as the special prosecutor’s report concluded, “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”

And when charged with federal crimes over his handling of highly classified material, and his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, he dismissed the charges as a witch hunt choreographed by President Biden and his attorney general, a claim that had no basis in fact.

The special counsel investigations against Trump, Kastor said, were “prosecutions, not persecutions.”

“His claims that the investigations surrounding him are specious — the investigations were appropriate,” Kastor added. “These investigations are not.”

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

Former FBI Director James Comey is a longtime critic of US President Donald Trump, and testified against him in 2020.

Former FBI Director James Comey says he is innocent of criminal charges following his indictment by a United States court for allegedly making false statements and obstruction of justice.

“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I am innocent, so let’s have a trial and keep the faith,” Comey said in a video posted on Instagram on Thursday evening in the US.

The charges against Comey stem from his 2020 statement to the US Senate Judiciary Committee that he did not authorise the FBI to leak information about an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017 until he was fired by Trump shortly into his first term in office.

Since then, he has become a well-known critic of the US President.

Trump wrote a celebratory post on Truth Social following news of the ex-FBI chief’s indictment.

“JUSTICE FOR AMERICA!” Trump wrote on Thursday evening in the US.

“One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI,” the US President wrote.

The charges against Comey mark the first time that Trump has secured an indictment against one of his many high-profile critics.

On Saturday, Trump urged US Attorney General Pam Bondi to level charges against Comey as well as California Senator Adam B Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a post on Truth Social.

Sept. 17 (UPI) — The Trump administration has announced the unsealing of an indictment and a multimillion-dollar reward for information on the leader of a Sinaloa Cartel-linked gang, as it cracks down on the infamous narcotics trafficking organization.

Federal law enforcement accuses Juan Jose Ponce Felix, also known as El Ruso, of being the leader of Los Rusos, a Mexican gang controlling the Mexicali drug trafficking corridor and a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel.

“Ponce Felix’s organization directly manages the distribution of millions of dollars’ worth of narcotics, particularly cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin, from Mexico to the U.S.,” the Drug Enforcement Administration said in a statement, adding with proceeds sent back to Mexico.

According to the State Department, Felix is not only the leader of Los Rusos, but its founder as the primary armed wing of La Mayiza, a powerful faction of the U.S.-designated Sinaloa Cartel.

La Mayiza was co-founded by Ismael Zambada Garcia, also known as El Mayo, who pleaded guilty in the United States in late August to being the leader of the criminal enterprise.

The DEA alleges that Ponce Felix, in 2012, before he became the leader of Los Rusos, worked with Zambada Garcia, leading a “fleet of cartel soldiers” in 2012, who conducted kidnappings, hostage takings, torture and murder.

He has been charged four times in two different California districts.

Along with the unsealing of the indictment, the State Department offered a reward of $5 million for information that leads to his arrest or conviction.

“For years, Ponce Felix has resorted to kidnapping, torture and murder to maintain his grip on power,” DEA Administrator Terrance Cole said in a statement.

“This reward underscores this administration’s whole-of-government approach and unwavering commitment to destroy the Sinaloa Cartel.”

The announcement comes weeks after the DEA led a four-day domestic operation from Aug. 25 to 29, targeting the Sinaloa Cartel, which resulted in 617 arrests and the seizure of drugs, 420 firearms and more than $11 million in U.S. currency.

A federal grand jury has charged two brothers in Southern California with tax evasion on more than $1.1 million in income they allegedly received in part from a years-long scheme selling tee times on local golf courses.

Se Youn “Steve” Kim, 41, and his identical twin brother, Hee Youn “Ted” Kim, 41, were arrested Thursday morning by federal authorities and pleaded not guilty.

From 2021 to 2023, the Kim brothers’ tee time brokering business scooped up thousands of reservation slots at golf courses across the U.S., including at least 17 public golf courses in Southern California, according to the indictment filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court.

The brothers used online platforms including KakaoTalk, a Korean instant messaging app, to reach their customers. Federal prosecutors say that by quickly nabbing popular early morning tee times almost immediately after they were available to the public, the brothers “created a monopoly” of Southern California golf courses.

The prevalence of tee-time brokering was reported by The Times last year, in which scores of local golfers shared frustrations over their inability to secure a tee time on public courses in L.A.

“Finally, it’s justice,” said Joseph Lee, a vocal critic of tee time brokers who helped collect evidence and met with federal prosecutors during their investigation of the Kim brothers. “For a long time, L.A. golfers have been frustrated by these illegal tee time brokers and their resale market. Authorities have finally recognized the seriousness of the issue.”

Anthony Solis, the attorney representing Ted Kim, said he did not immediately have a response on behalf of his client. The attorney representing Steve Kim did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Federal prosecutors said the brothers had customers pay reservation fees to their personal accounts via Venmo, Zelle, and other applications. The tee time brokering business netted the brothers nearly $700,000 between 2021 and 2023, according to the indictment. The brothers, who also worked as MRI technicians, are accused of willfully failing to report a combined $1.1 million in income to the Internal Revenue Service for 2022 and 2023.

The Kim brothers are also accused of failing to pay taxes that the IRS had assessed. Rather than paying off mounting tax debts, the indictment alleges that the brothers made lavish purchases at Chanel, Cartier, Prada and Louis Vuitton.

In a brief interview with The Times last year, Ted Kim said that he used up to five devices and relied on unspecified friends to secure tee times. He said he is on the same playing field as every other golfer in L.A. and does not use bots to game the system.

“It’s not like I’m taking advantage of technology. I’m booking myself,” Kim told The Times in an interview. “I’m not doing anything illegal.”

Kim told the newspaper that he profited a couple thousand dollars a month, and framed his business as a way of helping elderly Korean golfers without tech savvy to navigate the online golf reservation system.

“I’m just helping Korean seniors, because they have a right to play golf, because all the Koreans play golf, right? Without my help, they actually struggle,” he said.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

NEW YORK — A former top aide to New York City Mayor Eric Adams was hit Thursday with a second wave of bribery charges in a swirling corruption investigation of City Hall, with prosecutors alleging she exchanged political favors for cash, home renovations and a speaking role on a TV show.

Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ former chief of staff and closest confidant, her son Glenn D. Martin, former state Sen. Jesse Hamilton and two of Adams’ political donors, siblings Tony and Gina Argento, are among those facing new charges.

Lewis-Martin and the other defendants were expected to appear in court on Thursday.

Adams himself has not been charged, but the case will thrust the corruption allegations that have dogged the Democrat back into focus as he seeks to regain voters’ trust ahead of a contested election in November. A spokesperson for Adams did not immediately return a request for comment.

On Thursday, Lewis-Martin was charged with four additional counts of conspiracy and bribe receiving in a series of indictments Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg described as “classic bribery conspiracies that had a deep and wide-ranging impact on city government.”

“As alleged, Lewis-Martin consistently overrode the expertise of public servants so she could line her own pockets. While she allegedly received more than $75,000 in bribes and an appearance on a TV show, every other New Yorker lost out,” Bragg said in a statement.

Lewis-Martin’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, vowed to fight the charges, saying, “This is not justice — it is a distortion of the truth and a troubling example of politically motivated ‘lawfare.’”

She resigned last December ahead of her indictment in a separate case in which she and her son are accused of taking bribes in exchange for speedy approval of construction projects. That case is still pending. She has continued to volunteer for the Adams campaign while awaiting trial.

The fresh round of indictments brought against Adams’ close allies could add to political headwinds already facing the mayor, whose own indictment on federal bribery charges was abandoned by President Trump’s administration earlier this year.

The corruption scandals have opened the door to challengers in the upcoming election, including the Democratic primary winner, Zohran Mamdani, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Adams is running as an independent, claiming the case brought against him — in which he was accused of accepting bribes and travel perks from foreign interests — had prevented him from campaigning in the Democratic primary. Those charges were dismissed in April following an extraordinary intervention by U.S. Justice Department officials, who said the case was impeding Adams from assisting in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

In the months since, the status of other federal probes linked to Adams’ key allies, including his former police commissioner and several deputy mayors, has remained uncertain. The new charges were brought by Bragg, who prosecuted Trump last year and who is also running for reelection.

Both federal and state investigators seized Lewis-Martin’s phone at Kennedy Airport last September as she returned from a trip to Japan with several colleagues.

Hours later, Lewis-Martin appeared on her attorney’s radio show, denying that she had “done anything illegal to the magnitude or scale that requires the federal government and the DA’s office to investigate us.”

Both she and her son pleaded not guilty to charges of accepting improper gifts worth more than $100,000 in exchange for speeding construction approvals for two real estate investors.

Earlier this week, a spokesperson for Adams’ campaign, Todd Shapiro, said the mayor would stand with Lewis-Martin.

“Ingrid has dedicated her life to the people of New York City,” Shapiro said, “and she deserves the presumption of innocence and the support of those who know her best.”

Last week, federal prosecutors wrapped up their two remaining Adams-related cases.

Mohamed Bahi, who served as the mayor’s chief liaison to the Muslim community, pleaded guilty to soliciting straw donations to Adams’ campaign, and Brooklyn construction magnate Erden Arkan was sentenced to a year of probation for his involvement in a straw donor scheme.

Offenhartz, Sisak and Izaguirre write for the Associated Press.

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell was indicted Friday in what prosecutors called a years-long scheme to hide a romantic relationship with her bodyguard, who is accused of being paid as if he was working even when they met alone in apartments and traveled to vineyards for wine tasting.

Cantrell faces charges of conspiracy, fraud and obstruction, less than five months before she leaves office because of term limits. The first female mayor in New Orleans’ 300-year history was elected twice but now becomes the city’s first mayor to be charged while in office.

“Public corruption has crippled us for years and years,” acting U.S. Atty. Michael Simpson said, referring to Louisiana’s notorious history. “And this is extremely significant.”

Cantrell’s bodyguard, Jeffrey Vappie, was facing charges of wire fraud and making false statements. He has pleaded not guilty. A grand jury returned an 18-count indictment Friday that added Cantrell to the case.

They are accused of exchanging encrypted messages through WhatsApp to avoid detection and then deleting the conversations. The mayor and Vappie have said their relationship was strictly professional, but the indictment portrayed it as “personal and intimate.”

The city of New Orleans said in a statement that it was aware of the indictment and that the mayor’s attorney is reviewing it.

“Until his review is complete, the City will not comment further on this matter,” the statement said.

Cantrell hasn’t sent out a message on her official social media feed on X since July 15, when she said the city was experiencing historic declines in crime.

In a WhatsApp exchange, the indictment says, Vappie reminisced about accompanying Cantrell to Scotland in October 2021, saying that was “where it all started.”

Cantrell and Vappie used WhatsApp for more than 15,000 messages, including efforts to harass a citizen, delete evidence, make false statements to FBI agents, “and ultimately to commit perjury before a federal grand jury,” Simpson said.

They met in an apartment while Vappie claimed to be on duty, and she arranged for him to attend 14 trips, Simpson said. The trips, he added, were described by her as times “when they were truly alone.”

New Orleans taxpayers paid more than $70,000 for Vappie’s travel, the prosecutor said.

Authorities cited a September 2022 rendezvous on Martha’s Vineyard, a trip Cantrell took instead of attending a conference in Miami. Vappie’s travel to the island was covered by the city to attend a separate conference, authorities said. “The times when we are truly [traveling] is what spoils me the most,” the mayor wrote to him that month.

Simpson said Cantrell lied in an affidavit that she activated a function on her phone that automatically deleted messages in 2021 though she didn’t activate that feature until December 2022, a month after the media began speculating on the pair’s conduct.

When a private citizen took photos of them dining together and drinking wine, Cantrell filed a police report and sought a restraining order, Simpson said.

Vappie retired from the Police Department in 2024.

Cantrell and her remaining allies have said that she has been unfairly targeted as a Black woman and held to a different standard than male officials, her executive powers at City Hall sabotaged. Simpson denied claims that any of it played a role in the investigation.

“It’s irrelevant that it’s romance or that it’s female,” he told reporters, adding that the allegations were “an incredible betrayal of people’s confidence in their own government.”

Cantrell, a Democrat, has clashed with City Council members during a turbulent second term and survived a recall effort in 2022.

“This is a sad day for the people of New Orleans,” Monet Brignac, a spokesperson for City Council President JP Morrell, said as news of the indictment spread.

In 2014, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced to 10 years in prison for bribery, money laundering, fraud and tax crimes. The charges stemmed from his two terms as mayor from 2002 to 2010. He was granted supervised release from prison in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As she heads into her final months in office, Cantrell has alienated former confidants and supporters, and her civic profile has receded. Her early achievements were eclipsed by self-inflicted wounds and bitter feuds with a hostile City Council, political observers say. The mayor’s role has weakened since voters approved changes to the city’s charter that were meant to curb mayoral authority.

Earlier this year, Cantrell said she has faced “very disrespectful, insulting, in some cases kind of unimaginable” treatment. Her husband, attorney Jason Cantrell, died in 2023.

Mustian, Brook and Hollingsworth write for the Associated Press. Mustian and Brook reported from New Orleans, Hollingsworth from Mission, Kan. AP writer Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.

Just hours after the Trump administration moved to extend U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli’s term as Los Angeles’ top federal law enforcement official, prosecutors moved to dismiss charges in a pair of controversial criminal cases, including one involving a donor to the president.

In a motion filed late Tuesday, federal prosecutors sought to dismiss an indictment accusing Andrew Wiederhorn, ex-CEO of the company that owns the Fatburger and Johnny Rockets chains, of carrying out a $47 million “sham loan” scheme.

Prosecutors also sought to dismiss charges against L.A. County sheriff’s deputy Trevor Kirk, who has already been convicted and sentenced in an excessive force case after he attacked a woman in a supermarket parking lot in 2023.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office declined comment. Both cases had already drawn significant controversy during Essayli’s turbulent run as L.A.’s top federal prosecutor.

Days before Essayli’s initial appointment in April, Adam Schleifer, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the criminal case against Wiederhorn, was fired at the behest of the White House.

Schleifer alleged in appealing the decision that his firing was motivated in part by his prosecution of Wiederhorn, a Trump donor who has maintained his innocence.

According to three sources familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly, Essayli had a meeting with Wiederhorn’s defense team shortly after he was appointed. The meeting included former U.S. Atty. Nicola T. Hanna, whom the sources said was in charge of the office when the investigation into Wiederhorn began and is now on Wiederhorn’s defense team.

According to those sources, Essayli suggested shortly after the meeting ended that the cases against Wiederhorn could be dismissed if Essayli was permanently appointed.

“From day one, we have maintained Andy’s innocence,” Hanna said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are extremely grateful that the U.S. Attorney’s Office listened to our arguments and determined, in the interests of justice, that all charges should be dropped.”

Hanna has not responded to requests for comment about the prior meeting with Essayli.

Earlier on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Essayli would be named acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, a move that extends his term another 210 days.

Under normal procedures, U.S. Attorneys must receive Senate confirmation or be appointed by a federal judicial panel. But facing opposition to Trump’s picks in the Senate, the administration has used a similar tactic to skirt legal norms and keep its chosen prosecutors in power in New York, New Jersey and Nevada in recent weeks.

The indictment against Wiederhorn also alleged he was aided by the company’s former chief financial officer, Rebecca D. Hershinger, and his outside accountant, William J. Amon. The U.S. attorney’s office moved to to dismiss the indictment against all three defendants, as well as charges against their company, Fat Brands.

“From day one, we have said Rebecca Hershinger was innocent,” attorney Michael J. Proctor of the law firm of Iversen Proctor LLP said in a statement. “We are grateful that the government has acknowledged the case should be dismissed.”

Wiederhorn was also under indictment on a gun charge, which prosecutors moved to dismiss as well. Wiederhorn is banned from possessing firearms after he pleaded guilty in 2004 to charges of paying an illegal gratuity to his associate and filing a false tax return. He spent 15 months in prison and paid a $2-million fine.

Late Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s office also moved to dismiss an indictment against Alejandro Orellana, a 29-year-old ex-Marine who had been accused of aiding in civil disorder for passing out gas masks during large scale protests against immigration raids in Southern California.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment. Orellana’s case was one of the few indictments Essayli’s prosecutors had won related to alleged misconduct during the protests, and Essayli had fervently defended the charges when questioned by a Times reporter last month.

“He wasn’t handing masks out at the beach … they’re covering their faces. They’re wearing backpacks. These weren’t peaceful protesters,” Essayli said. “They weren’t holding up signs, with a political message. They came to do violence.”

Orellana issued a statement Tuesday that declared: “Protesting is not a crime. Defending my community is not a crime.”

“I want to thank all the supporters across the country who mobilized to get the charges dropped,” he said. “We won because we’re on the right side of history and our cause is just.”

Kirk, the sheriff’s deputy, was convicted of assault under color of authority in February and faced 10 years in prison for hurling a woman to the ground and pepper spraying her while responding to a reported robbery at a Lancaster supermarket in 2023. The victim, Jacy Houseton, was filming Kirk at the time but was not armed or actively committing a crime.

Kirk and his defense team have argued Houseton matched the description of a suspect given to Kirk as he responded.

Kirk was set to self-surrender next month, on August 28.

“We support that obviously without any objections and I think it’s within the confines of the law,” Kirk’s attorney, Tom Yu, said.

Caree Harper, who has represented Houseton, said she was notified Tuesday afternoon by Asst. U.S. Atty. Robert Keenan of the plan to dismiss the indictment against Kirk.

“We thought Trump’s new U.S. Attorneys office could not stoop any lower, but it seems like Mr. Essayli & Mr. Keenan’s insistence on being Trevor Kirk’s BEST defense attorney has no limits,” Harper said in an email.

Reached by phone, Harper called the news “disappointing and disheartening,” citing the fact that the judge in the case “already gave him an unbelievable break.”

“They don’t want him to spend one day in jail. They don’t want him in cuffs at all,” Harper said. “This is a travesty of justice yet again.”

A judge on Wednesday rejected a Trump administration request to unseal transcripts from grand jury investigations of Jeffrey Epstein years ago in Florida, though a similar request for the work of a different grand jury is pending in New York.

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg in West Palm Beach said the request to release grand jury documents from 2005 and 2007 did not meet any of the extraordinary exceptions under federal law that could make them public.

The Justice Department last week asked the judge to release records to quell a storm among supporters of President Trump who believe there was a conspiracy to protect Epstein’s clients and conceal videos of crimes being committed and other evidence.

In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche had asked judges in Florida and New York to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, saying “transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.”

Federal grand juries hear evidence in secret and then decide whether there is enough for an indictment. Experts say the transcripts probably would not reveal much because prosecutors typically try to present only enough material to get charges and don’t introduce the entire investigation.

Epstein, a wealthy financier, years later was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges, and Maxwell was charged with helping him abuse teenage girls.

Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in New York City about a month after he was arrested. Investigators concluded he killed himself. Maxwell later was convicted at trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The case attracted attention because of Epstein and Maxwell’s links to famous people, including royals, presidents and billionaires. It also led to some of the biggest conspiracy theories animating Trump’s base.

The furor over records has been stoked by the Justice Department. In February, far-right influencers were invited to the White House and provided with binders marked “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified.” The binders contained documents that had largely already been in the public domain.

The department on July 7 acknowledged that Epstein did not have a list of clients. It also said no more files related to his case would be made public.

A two-page memo that bore the logos of the FBI and Justice Department, but that was not signed by any individual, said the department determined that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.”

White writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — A Justice Department request to unseal grand jury transcripts in the prosecution of chronic sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend is unlikely to produce much, if anything, to satisfy the public’s appetite for new revelations about the financier’s crimes, former federal prosecutors say.

Attorney Sarah Krissoff, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan from from 2008 to 2021, called the request in the prosecutions of Epstein and imprisoned British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell “a distraction.”

President Trump “is trying to present himself as if he’s doing something here and it really is nothing,” Krissoff told the Associated Press in a weekend interview.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche made the request Friday, asking judges to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and Maxwell, saying in a statement that “transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.”

The request came as the administration sought to contain the public outcry that followed its announcement that it would not be releasing additional files from the Epstein inquiry despite previously promising it would.

Epstein killed himself at age 66 in his federal jail cell in August 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges, while Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed after her December 2021 sex trafficking conviction for luring girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.

Krissoff and Joshua Naftalis, a Manhattan federal prosecutor for 11 years before entering private practice in 2023, said grand jury presentations are purposely brief.

Naftalis said Southern District prosecutors present just enough to a grand jury to get an indictment, but “it’s not going to be everything the FBI and investigators have figured out about Maxwell and Epstein.”

“People want the entire file from however long. That’s just not what this is,” he said, estimating that the transcripts, at most, probably amount to a few hundred pages.

“It’s not going to be much,” Krissoff said, estimating the length at as little as 60 pages “because the Southern District of New York’s practice is to put as little information as possible into the grand jury.”

“They basically spoon-feed the indictment to the grand jury. That’s what we’re going to see,” she said. “I just think it’s not going to be that interesting. … I don’t think it’s going to be anything new.”

Both former prosecutors said that grand jury witnesses in Manhattan are usually federal agents summarizing their witness interviews.

That practice might conflict with the public perception of some state and federal grand jury proceedings, where witnesses likely to testify at a trial are brought before grand juries during lengthy proceedings prior to indictments or when grand juries are used as an investigatory tool.

In Manhattan, federal prosecutors “are trying to get a particular result so they present the case very narrowly and inform the grand jury what they want them to do,” Krissoff said.

Krissoff predicted that judges who presided over the Epstein and Maxwell cases would reject the government’s request.

With Maxwell, a petition is before the U.S. Supreme Court, so appeals have not been exhausted. With Epstein, the charges are related to the Maxwell case and the anonymity of scores of victims who have not gone public is at stake, although Blanche requested that victim identities be protected.

“This is not a 50-, 60-, 80-year-old case,” Krissoff noted. “There’s still someone in custody.”

She said that citing “public intrigue, interest and excitement” about a case was probably not enough to convince a judge to release the transcripts despite a 1997 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said judges have wide discretion and that public interest alone can justify releasing grand jury information.

Krissoff called it “mind-blowingly strange” that Justice Department officials in Washington are increasingly directly filing requests and arguments in the Southern District of New York, where the prosecutor’s office has long been labeled the “Sovereign District of New York” for its independence from outside influence.

“To have the attorney general and deputy attorney general meddling in an SDNY case is unheard of,” she said.

Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor and Fordham Law School criminal law professor, said judges who presided over the Epstein and Maxwell cases may take weeks or months to rule.

“Especially here where the case involved witnesses or victims of sexual abuse, many of which are underage, the judge is going to be very cautious about what the judge releases,” she said.

Bader said she didn’t see the government’s quest aimed at satisfying the public’s desire to explore conspiracy theories “trumping — pardon the pun — the well-established notions of protecting the secrecy of the grand jury process.”

“I’m sure that all the line prosecutors who really sort of appreciate the secrecy and special relationship they have with the grand jury are not happy that DOJ is asking the court to release these transcripts,” she added.

Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, called Trump’s comments and influence in the Epstein matter “unprecedented” and “extraordinarily unusual” because he is a sitting president.

He said it was not surprising that some former prosecutors are alarmed that the request to unseal the grand jury materials came two days after the firing of Manhattan Assistant U.S. Atty. Maurene Comey, who worked on the Epstein and Maxwell cases.

“If federal prosecutors have to worry about the professional consequences of refusing to go along with the political or personal agenda of powerful people, then we are in a very different place than I’ve understood the federal Department of Justice to be in over the last 30 years of my career,” he said.

Krissoff said the uncertain environment that has current prosecutors feeling unsettled is shared by government employees she speaks with at other agencies as part of her work in private practice.

“The thing I hear most often is this is a strange time. Things aren’t working the way we’re used to them working,” she said.

Neumeister writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.