Justice

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has settled for roughly $1.2 million a lawsuit from Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor to President Trump who pleaded guilty during the Republican’s first term to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a top Russian diplomat and was later pardoned.

Court papers filed Wednesday do not reveal the settlement amount, but a person familiar with the matter, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to disclose nonpublic information, confirmed the total as about $1.2 million.

The settlement resolves a 2023 lawsuit in which Flynn sought at least $50 million and asserted that the criminal case against him amounted to a malicious prosecution. It also represents a stark turnabout in position for a Justice Department that during the Biden administration had pressed a judge to dismiss Flynn’s complaint. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, a former personal lawyer for the president, has openly criticized the Russia investigation in which Flynn was charged and the Justice Department in the last year has opened investigations into former officials who participated in that inquiry.

The Justice Department cast the settlement as an “important step in redressing” what it says was a “historic injustice” of the Russia investigation that shadowed Trump for much of his first term.

“This Department of Justice will continue to pursue accountability at all levels for this wrongdoing. Such weaponization of the federal government must never be allowed to happen again,” a spokesperson said.

In a separate statement, Flynn said: “Nothing can fully compensate for the hell that my family and I have endured over these many years — the relentless attacks, the destruction of reputations, the financial ruin, and the profound personal toll inflicted upon us all. No amount of money or formal resolution can erase the pain caused by a prosecution that should never have been brought.”

The settlement is the latest turn in the long-running legal saga involving Flynn, one of six Trump associates charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. That investigation found Russia interfered in the election on Trump’s behalf and that the Trump campaign eagerly welcomed the help, but it ultimately found insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who vigorously campaigned at Trump’s side, served for weeks as his first national security advisor before being pushed out of his position. He remained a Trump ally even after agreeing to cooperate with Mueller’s team. He was pardoned in the final weeks of the president’s first term.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI when he said he had not discussed with the Russian envoy, Sergey Kislyak, sanctions that the outgoing Obama administration had just imposed on Russia for election interference. During that conversation, Flynn advised that Russia be “even-keeled” in response to the punitive measures, and assured him “we can have a better conversation” about relations between the countries after Trump became president.

The conversation alarmed the FBI, which at the time was investigating whether the Trump campaign and Russia had coordinated to sway the election. In addition, White House officials were stating publicly that Flynn and Kislyak had not discussed sanctions, which the FBI knew was untrue.

Flynn was ousted from his position in February 2017 after news broke that Obama administration officials had warned the White House that Flynn had indeed discussed sanctions with Kislyak and was vulnerable to blackmail. He pleaded guilty months later to a false statement charge.

But Flynn later sought to withdraw his guilty plea, saying federal prosecutors had acted in “bad faith” and broken their end of the bargain when they sought prison time for him.

The Justice Department in 2020 moved to dismiss the case, asserting that the FBI had no basis to interview Flynn about Kislyak and that any statements he made during the interview were not material to the FBI’s broader counterintelligence probe.

Flynn was pardoned by Trump in November 2020, ending the court case and the legal wrangling.

In his lawsuit, Flynn maintained his innocence and said he was targeted by the “virulently anti-Trump leadership” of the FBI’s Russia investigation. He contended that investigators pursued him despite knowing there was no evidence of a crime and coerced his guilty plea.

“He was falsely branded as a traitor to his country, lost at least tens of millions of dollars of business opportunities and future lifetime earning potential, was maliciously prosecuted and spent substantial monies in his own defense,” says the lawsuit, adding that Flynn will continue to suffer “mental and emotional pain.”

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.

Exactly at 10 o’clock on a Monday morning, the strike of a gavel echoes through the courtroom, and the nine black-robed justices of the Supreme Court emerge from behind a red velvet curtain. As those assembled in the ornate hall take their seats, the lead lawyer rises, and the arguments begin.

Soon, most of the justices are up on their elbows, hurling questions at the attorneys. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg take turns poking holes in the advocate’s argument. Justice Antonin Scalia, sympathetic to his case, leaps in to prop up his contention. “Aren’t you really arguing that . . . ,” Scalia offers helpfully.

Anthony M. Kennedy, looking pensive, asks a philosophical question. Troubled by the answer, Justices David Souter and John Paul Stevens want to know how far the advocate seeks to push his claim. All the while, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist leafs through the briefs, trying to find a disputed passage of the law in question.

But one justice looks out of place. At the far end of the bench, Justice Clarence Thomas rocks back in his leather chair and gazes at the ceiling. He rubs his eyes and stares off into the distance. Sometimes, Thomas has a brooding look, as if he is pondering deeply. More often, he just looks bored.

“I don’t understand it. He is engaged,” says a former Thomas clerk, who like most of those who have worked for him, expresses great admiration for the justice. “He likes to argue out the issues in chambers” and displays a special interest in bankruptcy law and state tax disputes, he says. But Thomas’ interest is not apparent in the courtroom. While Scalia and Ginsburg may ask five or six questions during a one-hour argument, Thomas asked not a single question during the last term of the court.

Lawyers in Washington and visitors to the courtroom never fail to comment on how removed he seems. “What’s wrong with Clarence Thomas?” one lawyer new to the high court commented. “He just sits there.”

That’s a marked contrast from his 18 months on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, says a judge who observed him then. “He’s like two different people,” says the judge. “He was talkative, gregarious on our court, a real participant. Now he seems to be in a shell.”

This eerie courtroom silence has marked Thomas’ career for all of the three years since he inadvertently became the best-known member of the Supreme Court. At first it seemed that he was simply trying to retreat, somehow, from the stinging visibility of the “he said, she said” confrontation with Prof. Anita Hill that made him the ostensible villain in a TV drama about sexual harassment. It was, perhaps, the worst imaginable fate for a fiercely proud and intensely dignified man.

For a time he was the most carefully watched, most reviled man in town. On the November day he took the oath of office at the court, his ceremonial walk down the marble steps was cut short when a small group of protesters began to boo and shout, “Down with the Male Supremacist Court.” Not surprisingly, rather than beam for assembled photographers, Thomas turned away and walked back into the basement of the court. A few months later, the new justice accepted an invitation to judge a moot court competition at Seton Hall University Law School but canceled when word came that a women’s student group was planning a candlelight vigil.

Wounded, Thomas retreated into the silence that protects a judge who is even more rigid and dogmatic than his opponents feared. As the hoopla over the man has died down, his judicial record has become clearer. He has compiled the most conservative voting record on a conservative court and lambasted his colleagues for refusing to go further in changing the law. He has voted to revoke the right to abortion and return some prayer to the public schools. He cast a key vote to cut off further hearings in a death penalty case, even when newly revealed evidence might have proven the defendant’s innocence. He cast the deciding votes to make it harder for minorities to prove they were victims of job discrimination, harder for victims of stock fraud to sue lawyers and harder for environmentalists to be heard in court.

“He has shown himself to be exactly what his opponents said he would be: a knee-jerk right-winger,” says University of Virginia law professor Pamela Karlan. “He was always going to be tainted somewhat for how he got to the court, but I think he is going to be more tainted by how he is acting now. He’s shown no capacity for growth.”

Georgetown University Law Center Associate Dean Mark Tushnet concurs. “So far, it’s been the least impressive performance of any justice since Whittaker,” he says, referring to justly forgotten Charles Whittaker, who resigned from the court in 1962 after having a nervous breakdown in his fifth year.

But friends and admirers say Thomas is unfairly treated because he is a conservative. “He is not the justice that the NAACP would like,” says Stephen McAllister, a former Thomas clerk who teaches law at the University of Kansas. “He brings his own perspective to the law, but he certainly knows what it was like to grow up poor and black.”

Fueling the debate are Thomas’ activities outside the court. The confirmation fight separated Thomas’ allies from his enemies, and it deepened an already strong commitment to conservative values. While other justices avoid any appearance of partisanship, he boasts of his friendship with conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, speaks mostly to gatherings of conservatives, brags about not reading the papers and indulges a “not politically correct” fondness for smoking cigars and driving a black Corvette.

Both his demeanor and his record have renewed questions about his qualifications for the high court. No one, not even Thomas himself, had rushed to defend President George Bush’s assessment that he was “the best man for the job.” After all, he had had no significant legal experience as a prosecutor, defense attorney, trial lawyer, law professor or judge and had spent only a year as Bush’s appointee to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington when he was nominated to the Supreme Court. But at the very least, Thomas promised, he would be impartial. “My personal views have no place in adjudication,” he said. “I can assure you, I have no agenda.”

Many of those who believed him, such as Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican who cast a key vote for him, now admit they are dismayed by Thomas’ record. “Frankly, I have been very disappointed with his first three years,” Specter says. “I had thought his roots would show. But he came out of those hearings a changed man, an embittered man.”

*

Each day when the court is in session, Thomas and his wife, Virginia, leave their new home in suburban Virginia and drive into town before most Washingtonians have hit the road. “We travel everywhere together, like a pair of nuns,” Thomas tells friends. His wife, a senior policy coordinator for the House Republican Conference, was said by friends to have been deeply hurt by her husband’s confirmation ordeal. She said they survived by praying together. It “was not a normal political battle. It was spiritual warfare. Good versus evil,” she told a People magazine interviewer a few days after his confirmation.

Theirs is a strange sort of celebrity: They are instantly recognized but seldom seen outside carefully chosen venues. While none of the justices sits for TV interviews on Sunday morning, most make the rounds of bar groups, civic organizations and law schools, giving speeches and answering questions about the work of the court. As members of the nation’s highest court, they can count on a warm reception and instant respect.

Not so with the youngest justice. “It’s like he’s in the federal witness protection program,” says one prominent Washington lawyer.

Thomas has told friends he quit watching most television–for a time, he was a regular punch line on some sitcoms–and stopped reading most newspapers and magazines, with the exception of reliably conservative publications such the Washington Times. (He also refused requests to be interviewed for this story.) “They can say absolutely anything they want about me. I will never read them again to see it,” he told one friendly interviewer last year.

But the confirmation struggle sealed his loyalty to those who stood with him. Each morning as he lifts weights in the Supreme Court’s gym before his workday begins, he says he likes to listen to tapes of Rush Limbaugh poking fun at feminists, environmentalists and all manner of liberal crusaders.

The men are more than passing acquaintances. On May 27, when the rotund entertainer married for the third time in a ceremony at the home of Virginia and Clarence Thomas, the justice performed the official duties. After a sit-down dinner, the assembled guests gathered for “cigars and adult beverages on the deck,” according to Limbaugh’s office.

Among friends, Thomas hardly appears to be a bitter man hidden in his shell. “He is not brooding or angry at all,” says McAllister, his former clerk. “I found him to be warm, supportive and friendly. He has a positive outlook.” He has a big handshake and a hearty laugh, although his eyes have a wary look. As a speaker, he has an endearingly personal style. Far from being the polished high official whose comments drift above the audience, Thomas speaks slowly, emotionally, as if measuring each word to describe his joys and pain. Almost invariably he speaks of his childhood and recounts stories about his grandfather. Even if the tales are a bit familiar now, he comes across as warm, genuine and personal.

From the start, conservatives pointed to Thomas life story as his main qualification for the high office. Here was a man, the vaunted story went, who was born to a teen-age mother in a dirt-floor shanty near the marshes of Pinpoint, Ga., and grew up poor in the segregated South. When his mother could no longer care for him, young Thomas was rescued first by his grandparents and then by the Catholic schools, working his way through Holy Cross College and then Yale Law School, where he graduated a year behind Bill Clinton. “I was drunk with anger,” he told students at Holy Cross, describing himself in the late 1960s, “out of control with hostility toward what I saw as the oppression around me.”

But his up-from-poverty experience brought him to far different conclusions than did the middle-class upbringing of Thurgood Marshall, his black liberal predecessor on the court. Success depends on hard work and individual effort, says Thomas, espousing the lessons that conservatives champion, and government welfare checks or official “affirmative action” preferences serve only to hurt blacks by dampening their drive and cheapening their accomplishments.

Thomas was denouncing his sister back home in Pinpoint for being dependent on her monthly welfare check when he came to the attention of leaders of the incoming Ronald Reagan Administration at a 1980 conference of young conservatives in San Francisco. (The sister, Emma Mae Martin, was receiving welfare assistance while raising her children and caring for an aunt but soon after worked her way off welfare.)

Offers of government positions followed, and despite Thomas’ having announced that he would not work on “black issues,” he became assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department in 1981. A year later, he was named chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency charged with enforcing the laws against job discrimination, though he often seemed skeptical of its mandate. He had no patience with the civil rights activists who urged him to enforce the law more vigorously. All they do, he said, is “bitch, bitch, bitch, moan and whine and whine.”

In a steady round of provocative speeches, he denounced the conventionally liberal positions on race and civil rights, criticized environmentalists, called for strengthening property rights and praised as “splendid” an article calling for the reversal of the Roe vs. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

His star rose quickly in the Reagan Administration, and Bush’s Court of Appeals appointment signaled what came next: He’d be the designated Republican successor to the aging Justice Thurgood Marshall.

In five days of Senate testimony–largely obscured by Anita Hill’s later accusations–Thomas publicly backed away from many of his earlier statements. “A judge must be fair and impartial,” Thomas said in his opening statement to the committee. “A judge must not bring to his job, to the court, the baggage of preconceived notions, of ideology, and certainly not an agenda.”

When asked about his previous comments on affirmative action or the right to abortion, about his criticisms of liberal decisions and his long track record of deriding the civil rights establishment, Thomas reverted to the same theme. He denied he had any such strong views, and regardless, none of it would affect his judicial role. A justice has a nearly sacred duty “to strip down like a runner, to eliminate agendas, to eliminate ideologies,” he said. When interpreting the law, “it is the will of the legislature that counts,” he added reassuringly.

Thomas raised eyebrows when he testified that he had never discussed or debated Roe vs. Wade, even during his law school days when the case was decided. Asked about the separation of church and state and the so-called “Lemon test” often criticized by conservatives, Thomas replied that he had “no quarrel” with it. (The term refers to the court’s 1971 ruling in Lemon vs. Kurtzman that it will strike down any law or government program that has religious purpose, advances religion or creates “an entanglement” between church and state.) “I think the wall of separation is an appropriate metaphor,” Thomas commented, sounding more like a Jeffersonian liberal than a Reagan-era conservative.

He also praised the doctrine of stare decisis , Latin for letting the matter stay as decided. Many senators were skeptical, but the nominee sought to reassure them. “I understand your concern that people come here and they might tell you A and then do B,” he told one senator who had pressed him on the abortion issue. “But I can assure you . . . I have no agenda.”

This was not the Clarence Thomas whose provocatively conservative speeches, articles and statements the committee Democrats had reviewed for weeks prior to the hearing. And it was not the Clarence Thomas whose true views became clear soon after he took his seat.

*

Thomas’ first opportunity to weigh in on abortion came in January of 1992, two months into his tenure, when the court agreed to hear a case from Pennsylvania challenging that state’s new abortion regulations. The law didn’t prohibit abortion but required pregnant teen-agers to obtain parental consent, wait 24 hours before undergoing the procedure and, if they were married, to inform their husbands in advance.

Though the case of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey did not require the court to decide the fate of Roe vs. Wade and the right to abortion, and Pennsylvania’s lawyers urged the court to uphold the regulations as consistent with Roe, it looked like a suitable vehicle for the court’s conservatives, who were determined to overturn the abortion right. Three years earlier, in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, four members of the court–Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy and Byron White–had indicated a willingness to reverse Roe vs. Wade. Clarence Thomas could provide the fifth vote.

But that majority didn’t coalesce in the Casey case. Kennedy, citing the importance of precedent and stare decisis , joined an opinion affirming women’s basic right to choose abortion, and Roe was upheld. As expected, however, Thomas took the other side, signing on to one dissent by Rehnquist that called for Roe to be overturned and to a second, more fiery one from Scalia that compared the abortion ruling to the Dred Scott decision, the pre-Civil War era ruling that sanctioned slavery. Pretty strong stuff for someone who had had no views on the matter just a few months earlier. Since neither side in the case had argued that Roe vs. Wade should be flatly overturned, Thomas could have filed an opinion upholding the Pennsylvania regulations, but deferring a ruling on the broader question of Roe vs. Wade. According to the scuttlebutt from the court’s clerks that year, however, no such half-step was even considered in Thomas’ chambers. The justice’s mind was made up.

“He clearly lied to them (his confirmation committee) about legal issues, “ says Karlan, the University of Virginia professor. “I think he perjured himself about Roe.”

That same term, the issue of prayer in the public schools returned to the docket. For a decade, lawyers for the Reagan and Bush administrations had pressed the court to permit more religion in the schools and to stop insisting on such a strict separation of church and state. They had made little progress, but pressed ahead in a case from Rhode Island that arose when a middle-school principal invited a cleric to deliver a prayer at a graduation ceremony. After a Jewish parent complained, a federal judge ruled that the graduation prayer was unconstitutional and could not be repeated.

The case of Lee vs. Weisman was appealed to the high court when again there was a surprising setback for the conservatives. Thomas did join them once again, but Kennedy switched to the liberal side, and a 5-4 majority upheld the judge’s ruling, saying that officially sponsored religious invocations have no place in the public schools. An angry Scalia slammed the decision as as “jurisprudential disaster” and demanded the scrapping of the Lemon test for judging religion cases. Thomas, who had said he had “no quarrel” with the standard a few months before, signed Scalia’s dissent.

In his first three years on the court, Justice Thomas has rarely had a chance to write a major opinion. Having staked out a position on the far right, he rarely affects the outcome in key cases, except to supply the fifth vote for a conservative majority. He seems less interested in being an influential coalition builder than in forcefully stating his position. So far, his voice has been heard more loudly in political circles than within the confines of the court. So repeatedly, the chief justice has assigned him to write mundane decisions involving federal jurisdiction or bankruptcy disputes. However, Thomas has strongly asserted himself in two areas of law: prisoners’ rights and voting rights. Parting company even from conservatives such as Chief Justice Rehnquist, Thomas has called for reversing precedents that have benefited inmates and Southern blacks.

Thomas had been on the bench just two weeks when the court heard a case involving Keith Hudson, an inmate in a Louisiana prison. Late one night, Hudson, locked in his cell, got into an argument with a nearby guard, Jack McMillian. Assisted by two other guards, McMillian handcuffed and shackled the prisoner and took him into a hallway. As the others held Hudson, McMillian punched him in the face and jaw and kicked him in the stomach. A supervisor on duty watched but merely told the guards “not to have too much fun.” Hudson emerged with a badly swollen face, loosened teeth and a cracked dental plate.

Hudson sued the officers in federal court, alleging he had suffered cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. A magistrate concluded that the beating was unrelated to any disciplinary purpose and awarded Hudson $800 in damages.

On a 7-2 vote, the court upheld the magistrate’s decision in Hudson vs. McMillian. Justice O’Connor said prison guards have broad authority to use all necessary force to enforce discipline or put down disturbances, but “the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” violates the Eighth Amendment. Thomas, however, argued that the prisoner’s injuries were at most “minor” and accused his colleagues of creating “a National Code of Prison Regulation.”

His written dissent attracted attention, and not just for its strident conclusion. During his confirmation hearings, Thomas had displayed a minimal knowledge of constitutional law. He drew a blank, for example, when Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked him to name some of the most important high-court rulings of the past 20 years. But his dissent in the Hudson case delved into early English law and quoted a series of precedents from the 19th Century.

Around the court, that was seen as a sign that Thomas had turned over his writing duties to his young clerks. Most justices employ their clerks to do research or write preliminary drafts, but their final opinions tend to reflect their own personal styles. Not so with Thomas. “I don’t see any distinctive touches, what you might call ‘Thomasisms’ in his opinions,” says a veteran attorney who appears regularly before the high court.

The dissent in the prisoner’s case argued that in the 18th Century, “cruel and unusual punishments” referred to the punishment imposed by a judge. Therefore, the court should limit the Eighth Amendment only to officially imposed punishments and not to “a deprivation suffered in prison.” Of course, if Thomas’ view became the law, prison guards could use electric shocks, cattle prods and other means of torture without violating the ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

More than a few observers remembered how Thomas had, during his confirmation hearings, told the senators that he could identify with the plight of prisoners. From his courthouse window, he said, he saw “busload after busload” of young men going into the jailhouse. Leaning forward intently, he’d concluded, “I say to myself almost every day, but for the grace of God, there go I.”

Scalia, the court’s liveliest intellect, its most energetic questioner and its best writer, signed Thomas’ dissent, but he later confided to a friend that he did not fully agree with it. Rather, he wanted to protect his embattled new colleague from being “out there all alone.”

Twice since then, the court has revisited the issue of prisoners’ rights, and in both instances, Thomas has slammed the majority for adhering to the view that the Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment in prison. “Judges or juries, but not jailers, impose punishment,” he wrote in a dissent issued in June. This time, however, Thomas spoke only for himself. Scalia had joined with the majority.

*

Thomas has stepped boldly into the mine field of voting-rights law, the controversial area that was the undoing of C. Lani Guinier in her bid to become Clinton’s attorney general. Unquestionably, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has had an enormous impact in the South. Under penalty of that law, Southern officials could no longer use techniques “subtle as well as obvious” to nullify the votes of blacks, and finally, a century after the Civil War, black citizens have gained a voice in government. The reach of the law, however, is uncertain, and Thomas has taken an active role in trying to define it. Some had expected him to show a special sensitivity because of his background, but instead he urged the court to overturn past rulings favoring blacks.

One case testing the act’s limits came before the court in his first month on the bench. In 1986, Lawrence Presley became the first black man in this century to be elected a county commissioner in Etowah County, Ala., after a judge ordered the county to select its commissioners by district, rather than county-wide. Presley won a seat in a new black-majority district, and the post was a powerful one, since each commissioner also controlled the budget for road maintenance in his section of the county. Soon after Presley was elected, however, the new county council voted to put all road decisions in the hands of the whole commission. With one stroke, the white majority had regained all power.

Presley sued, contending that this move to strip him of power violated the Voting Rights Act. But on a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court rejected the claim in Presley vs. Etowah County. “This is a case where a few pages of history are far more illuminating than volumes of logic,” John Paul Stevens wrote for the three dissenters. Congress wanted to end schemes used to deprive blacks of political power, so the court should enforce the will of Congress, not thwart it, he said.

But writing for a conservative majority, Justice Kennedy said the 1965 law applies only “with respect to voting,” not to “routine actions of state and local governments.” Thomas joined his opinion.

Alice Presley told Emerge magazine that her husband had, in the tumultuous days of Thomas’ confirmation, believed that because of his background, “we ought to give the guy a chance.” But after the 1992 ruling, Presley, who died in January, 1993, realized he had made a mistake. “That really hurt him more than the decision. He would walk around saying, ‘I can’t believe Thomas voted against me,’ ” Alice Presley said.

Last year, Thomas cast the deciding fifth vote to rule that drawing congressional boundaries solely to create black-majority districts violated the constitutional rights of whites. And this year, Thomas went even further and disputed the entire 25-year history of using the Voting Rights Act to help elect more blacks in the South.

The issue arose in an unusual case from rural Bleckley County, Ga., where all power is exercised by a single county commissioner who acts as both executive and legislature. Blacks, who make up 20% of the population, said they were excluded from power and filed a suit under the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals, relying on Congress’ 1982 amendments to the voting rights law, agreed with the black voters and ordered the county to switch to a five-member commission.

Those amendments underlined that any “standard, practice or procedure” used in the electoral process would violate the law if it denied racial and ethnic minorities the right “to elect representatives of their choice.” If a large black or Latino population is denied representation because of the way district boundaries are drawn, those lines are illegal, even if they were not intended to discriminate. Minorities are not guaranteed proportional representation, but the law tells judges they must examine “the extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the state or political subdivision.”

On the high court, the justices voted 5 to 4 to overturn the appeals court and uphold Bleckley County’s single commissioner system. Why? Three members of the majority–Kennedy, Rehnquist and O’Connor–said the courts can’t decide the size of a governing body because there is no “benchmark” for deciding what is fair. If Bleckley would need five commissioners to give blacks a voice, should the next county have 20 commissioners so it could serve a group with 5% of the population? they asked.

But Thomas, in a 59-page separate opinion, took the view that the Voting Rights Act does not cover the make-up of governing boards and the drawing of electoral boundaries, no matter what their effect on minorities. He said he would reject 25 years of court precedent on the issue and ignore what Congress has said on the subject.

His broad arguments, though familiar, have a certain power. The law as currently interpreted “encourages federal courts to segregate voters into racially designated districts . . . . In doing so, we have collaborated in what may aptly be termed the racial Balkanization of the nation,” he wrote.

Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot called his opinion, which Scalia joined, an “intellectual bombshell” and a “tour de force.” This is Thomas at his best, arguing that there is a price to pay for elevating race as the all-important factor in politics and the law.

But Thomas’ view of the law has one obvious drawback: Congress does not agree with him. As Justice Stevens pointed out in an opinion joined by Souter, Ginsburg and Blackmun, it is “crystal clear” that Congress wrote the law to apply to voting districts that denied minorities the right “to elect representatives of their choice.”

Sen. Specter, who had closely questioned Thomas to seek assurance that the nominee would abide by long-standing interpretations of federal civil rights law, heard Thomas give the desired assurances. “If there is a longstanding interpretation and Congress does not act . . . that certainly would be, at least from my way of looking at a statute, evidence that cannot be ignored in revisiting that particular statute,” he told Specter. But that was just the kind of longstanding interpretation of the voting-rights law that Thomas ignored in June.

*

While no one has proved whether Thomas told the truth when he “categorically denied” all of Anita Hill’s accusations, there is ample reason to believe that he did not honestly describe his legal views in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee.

That’s not a problem in the eyes of those who strongly supported Thomas from the beginning. “I think he is proving to be an excellent justice,” says Charles Cooper, the former Reagan Administration lawyer. C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel under George Bush, praises Thomas’ opinions on voting rights and the prisoners’ cases as “gutsy, not politically correct. I think he’s doing a great job. He’s been just what I had hoped for,” Gray says. Danforth says he has paid little attention to his performance on the court. “I stood by him as a friend,” he replies. “I’m not a critic.”

But disappointment and anger are strong in other circles. Ralph Neas, the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, concludes that Thomas has been exactly what he feared. “We opposed him because we thought he would be a right-wing ideologue, and that’s what he’s been,” Neas says. Before, Scalia had been generally seen as the court’s most conservative justice, and Thomas has voted with him in 86% of the cases. It is the closest pairing of justices since the liberal tandem of William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall retired.

Harsh criticism has come from blacks. Last November, Emerge magazine, which appeals to black professionals, published a scathing attack on Thomas titled “Betrayed” in which several black Republicans who supported Thomas three years ago said they now regret having done so. Film director Spike Lee commented that “Malcolm X, if he were alive today, would call Thomas a handkerchief head, a chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom.” The magazine’s cover featured a photo of Thomas with his head wrapped in a handkerchief.

Reactions to Thomas differ so sharply in part because his friends indeed see a different person. Consider these two stories:

Sen. Danforth calls Thomas “warm, pleasant, funny, inspiring, just a delightful person to be with.” To illustrate, he cites his summer interns, who expressed an interest in seeing the Supreme Court. “I called Clarence, and he had them come over the next day. He took time with every one of them. The personal warmth just comes through. That’s the real Clarence Thomas,” the senator says.

William L. Robinson, dean of the District of Columbia School of Law, also wanted to bring some young students by the Supreme Court. A black civil rights lawyer who knew Thomas from his EEOC days, Robinson considered the justice a friend, even if they disagreed on the law.

“It would really mean a lot to these kids if they could see someone like him (Thomas) who made it. I just hoped he would duck his head in the room and maybe say ‘hello’ while we were there,” Robinson says. He called Thomas’s chambers repeatedly, explained why he was calling and left messages. “He wouldn’t even call me back. And I guess I’m pissed about it now,” Robinson says. That’s the real Clarence Thomas, too.

A more confident Thomas was on display this spring as the justice showed a new willingness to get outside the court. He gave talks at his high school and college alma maters, discussed crime before the Federalist Society, spoke to judges in New York and Baltimore, dropped by uninvited to chat with the disc jockeys at a local “oldies” radio station and even donned a football jersey and visited the practice field of his favorite team, the Dallas Cowboys. Why the Cowboys? Because the local Redskins are hugely popular in Washington and their arch-rival, the Cowboys, are generally hated, he explains. He also says he likes the Los Angeles Raiders “because everybody hates them.”

His Federalist Society speech on crime was powerful and provocative, sounding like the Thomas of old. He blamed the “rights revolution,” promoted by 1960s-era liberals, for much of the crime and mayhem that besets America’s cities today. It’s a view gaining increasing currency in Republican circles.

One thing seems certain. Justice Thomas and the controversy that follows him figure to be with us for many years to come. This fall, two new books on his confirmation fight are due to be published. Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson of the Wall Street Journal take a critical look in “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas.” The authors are not promising a “smoking gun” about sexual harassment, but they do say that the Bush White House deliberately painted a misleading picture of Thomas.

Meanwhile, Danforth gives an insider’s account of the 10-day fight to save his friend’s nomination in a book entitled, “Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas.” Danforth, according to an account in Washingtonian magazine, describes how Thomas’ nomination was saved by a quick prayer session in the moments before Thomas presented his final defense. Thomas, his wife, Virginia, and Danforth, along with Danforth’s wife, Sally, met in the restroom of Danforth’s office, the story goes, praying and listening to a recording of “Onward Christian Soldiers.” “We reached out to each other and held hands as we listened: ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.’ I looked at Clarence. His eyes were closed, his head bowed; his foot beat time to the music.”

“An effective criminal justice system–one that holds people accountable for harmful conduct–simply cannot be sustained under conditions where there are boundless excuses for violent behavior and no moral authority for the state to punish,” Thomas said. He ticked off the modern-day explanations for crime–”poverty, substandard education, faltering families, unemployment, systemic racism”–but none of them can excuse an individual’s wrongdoing, he said. While he offered no precise recommendations for what can be done, his message about crime and personal responsibility seems sure to win broad approval.

As for the 46-year-old Thomas, he tells almost every audience that he is “getting comfortable” being a justice and is settling in for a long stay. “It’s a joy to work at the court,” he told a meeting of federal judges in New York. “And in good health, I hope to be there for another four decades or more.”

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department sent a subpoena to former FBI Director James Comey as part of an investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials waged a years-long conspiracy against President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

The grand jury subpoena was issued last week by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, according to the people, who asked not to be identified speaking about an ongoing investigation.

The subpoena seeks information about Comey’s role in putting together an intelligence assessment about Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to the people.

The U.S. attorney’s office has previously sent subpoenas to other former U.S. officials. The office is conducting a sweeping investigation into whether former U.S. officials allegedly took actions to sabotage Trump starting in 2016 through his indictment over the handling of classified documents in 2023.

The new subpoena, reported earlier by Axios, marks an escalation of Justice Department efforts targeting Comey in particular, who Trump has repeatedly said should be investigated.

Comey was previously indicted by a grand jury at the request of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia for allegedly lying to senators during a congressional hearing — a claim that Comey has denied. The indictment was dismissed after a federal judge ruled that the U.S. attorney was unlawfully appointed. The Justice Department is appealing the ruling.

A lawyer for Comey declined to comment Thursday. The U.S. attorney’s office in Miami didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump and Comey have had a contentious relationship. Trump fired Comey as FBI director in 2017 during his first term as president. Since then, Comey and Trump have publicly criticized each other.

Strohm writes for Bloomberg News.

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday stormed out of a closed-door briefing on the Jeffrey Epstein files by Justice Department leaders, and said they would push to force Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to answer questions under oath about the case that has plagued the Trump administration.

Bondi and Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche went to Capitol Hill to try to quell bipartisan frustration over the Justice Department’s handling of millions of files related to Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation.

But less than an hour into the briefing, Democrats walked out in protest of the arrangement and said they would press to enforce a subpoena for Bondi to appear for a sworn deposition next month.

“We want her under oath because we do not trust her,” said Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost.

Asked by reporters after the briefing whether she would comply with the subpoena, Bondi said, “I made it crystal clear I will follow the law.” She also defended the department’s handling of the Epstein files, saying officials are proud of their work to release millions of documents to the public.

The committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer, accused Democrats of political grandstanding.

“This for us, for the Republicans, it’s about getting answers,” Comer said after the briefing. “For the Democrats, it’s a political game, and they just demonstrated that today. There’s no reason for them to walk out and clutch their pearls and act like they were offended and outraged.”

Justice Department leaders had hoped the release of documents tied to the disgraced financier would put an end to a political saga that has dogged the president’s second term, but the agency remains consumed by questions and criticism over Epstein’s case and its management of the files. Bondi has accused Democrats of using the furor over the documents to distract from Trump’s political successes, even though some of the most vocal criticism has come from members of the president’s own party.

Five Republicans on the committee voted with Democrats to support the subpoena for Bondi to appear for a deposition on April 14. Lawmakers have accused the Justice Department of withholding too many files and criticized the agency for haphazard redactions that exposed intimate details about victims.

The Justice Department has called the subpoena “completely unnecessary,” noting that members of Congress have been invited to view unredacted files at the Justice Department and that department leaders have made themselves available to answer questions from lawmakers.

The department has sought to assure lawmakers and the public that there has been no effort to shield President Trump, who says he cut ties with Epstein years ago after an earlier friendship, or any other high-profile figures close to Epstein from potential embarrassment. Justice Department leaders have also rejected suggestions that they have ignored victims and insist that while there is no evidence in the files to prosecute anyone else, they remain committed to investigating should new information come forward.

“I’m not trying to defend Epstein — I’m not,” Blanche said in an interview this week with Katie Miller, who is married to top Trump advisor Stephen Miller. “I do defend the work that this department is doing today, right now, which is going after every single perpetrator anyway, and if there is a narrative that exists that we are ignoring Epstein victims, that is false.”

The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, 64, was convicted in December 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role over a decade in sexually exploiting and abusing underage girls with Epstein.

Criminal investigations into the financier have long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have suspected government cover-ups and clamored for a full accounting.

After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needed to be redacted, or blacked out. The Justice Department in January said it was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents along with more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

Richer and Groves write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday quashed Justice Department subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve in January, a severe blow to an investigation that has already attracted strong criticism on Capitol Hill.

Judge James Boasberg said that a “mountain of evidence suggests” that the purpose of the subpoenas was simply to pressure the Fed to cut its key interest rate, as President Trump has repeatedly demanded.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell revealed the investigation Jan. 11, prompting Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican to block consideration of Trump’s pick to replace Powell as Fed chair when his term expires May. 15.

Rugaber writes for the Associated Press.

Iranian state TV video shows the Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i speaking to a reporter when a blast, described by officials as an Israeli strike, hit near the al-Quds Day rally in Tehran. Despite the explosion, he continued marching with crowds taking part in the annual pro-Palestinian demonstration.

Published on
11/03/2026 – 16:15 GMT+1

A probe has been initiated by the US Justice Department into Iran’s use of Binance, the world’s largest crypto platform, to circumvent US sanctions and provide financial backing to terrorist organisations with ties to the IRGC, according to The Wall Street Journal.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

The US DOJ’s examination stems from company documents and accounts provided by individuals familiar with the matter.

Authorities have contacted people with direct knowledge of the Iranian-linked transactions to request interviews and collect evidence, as per the WSJ report.

A monitor appointed by the US Treasury Department has reportedly asked Binance for details on the Iranian transactions, including information about a business partner responsible for a large share of the flows.

At this stage, it remains uncertain whether the investigation targets Binance for any potential misconduct or if it is confined to activity by customers on the platform.

A spokesperson for the company told the WSJ that Binance “categorically did not directly transact with any sanctioned entities”.

This development brings the company back to the centre of US regulatory attention, just months after its founder received a presidential pardon, highlighting persistent challenges in enforcing sanctions within the rapidly evolving crypto and fintech sectors.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, widely known as CZ, was pardoned by President Trump back in October.

The investigation reopens scrutiny of the exchange, which pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaching US sanctions and banking laws. That case resulted in a record $4.3bn (€3.7bn) penalty and a requirement for ongoing US oversight.

Under the terms of the 2023 agreement, Binance must actively screen clients for terrorism financing and sanctions breaches, as well as report suspicious activity promptly to authorities.

US congressional inquiry adds pressure

The developments have also drawn attention from Capitol Hill.

US Senator Richard Blumenthal, a senior Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, opened a formal inquiry last month into Binance’s handling of the Iranian transactions.

Citing the scale of the unreported flows, approaching nearly $2bn (€1.7bn) to sanctioned entities, and the suspension of internal investigators, Blumenthal questioned whether the exchange had met its obligations under US sanctions and banking laws.

He requested detailed records from Binance, which responded by describing media coverage as inaccurate and highlighting its “best-in-class compliance programme”.

The senator later described that reply as evasive and insufficient to address his concerns.

The timing of the US DOJ’s probe coincides with heightened efforts to disrupt financing networks linked to Iran’s IRGC.

Ahead of joint military actions with Israel against Iran, Washington stepped up measures to cut off revenue streams, particularly those involving crypto assets used to repatriate proceeds from oil sales to China.

In January, the US Treasury Department sanctioned two smaller crypto exchanges for moving large sums to digital wallets connected to the IRGC.

Scott MacFarlane, a high-profile hire for CBS News five years ago, announced Monday he is leaving the network.

MacFarlane told colleagues in an email that the departure is his decision.

“I will always value the opportunity I had to work alongside the talented and committed professionals here,” MacFarlane said. “I’m proud to have had the words ‘CBS correspondent’ next to my name and always will be.”

MacFarlane added that he looks forward to “some independence and finding new spaces to share my work in line with my personal goals.”

MacFarlane is the first significant name to depart CBS News since parent company Paramount won its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery on Feb. 27. CBS News is likely to be combined with Warner Bros. Discovery‘s CNN if the deal gets regulatory approval.

Journalists at CBS News have also been concerned over the moves by Bari Weiss, the contrarian opinion writer and founder of the digital news site the Free Press who was brought in as editor in chief of the division. Weiss was recruited by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison with a mandate to move CBS News to the political center.

Weiss is expected to make significant changes to “60 Minutes” and other CBS News programs in the coming months.

Executives at other TV news organizations say privately that they are seeing a heavy influx of resumes from CBS News journalists due to the upheaval at the company.

MacFarlane covered Congress and the Justice Department. CBS viewers saw him featured during extended network coverage of the State of the Union addresses and election nights.

MacFarlane was in Butler, Pa., during the assassination attempt of President Trump in July 2024. He reported the first accounts of the shooting scene and emergency responses moments after the shots were fired.

Before arriving at CBS News, MacFarlane served for eight years as an investigative reporter for WRC-TV, the NBC station in Washington, D.C.

Aimee Zambrano is a Venezuelan anthropologist, researcher, and consultant who has made significant contributions to the struggle against gender-based violence in the country. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Women’s Studies. She is the founder of the Utopix Femicide Monitor, a platform that collects data on femicides from open sources. In this interview, Zambrano sheds light on the main challenges to advance a feminist agenda in Venezuela.

How has gender-based violence evolved in Venezuela in recent years?

It is difficult to answer precisely because there are no official figures. The former Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, presented some figures, but he did not break them down; rather, he spoke in general terms about a period during his tenure. So it is very difficult to assess what changes have occurred, especially in quantitative terms. 

We undertake a partial registry based on cases that appear in the media, so these are not official figures. But it is enough to see patterns emerging. We have been monitoring since 2019 and saw an increase in femicides in 2020 due to the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which also led to an increase in all types of gender-based violence, not only in Venezuela but in most countries around the world. In 2019, when we began monitoring, we recorded 167 femicides, then in 2020 we recorded 256. In 2021, there was a decrease and we counted 239 cases. In 2022 and 2023, there were 240 and 201, respectively. In 2024, we recorded 188 femicides, and for 2025, we estimate that the figure will be around 165.

There has been a decrease in the number of perpetrated femicides. However, when we look at other forms of violence, such as attempted femicides, we are seeing an increase compared to previous years. This is a warning sign because these are attempts to murder women that leave physical, psychological, and social consequences on both the survivor and her environment. We have also seen an increase in femicides of Venezuelan women abroad year after year. We are also witnessing a large number of cases of sexual abuse, especially child sexual abuse and trafficking, both abroad and in our country. Similarly, here in Venezuela, the disappearance of women is not classified as a type of gender-based violence, but according to various investigations we have carried out, disappearance or abduction, in the specific case of women, girls, and teenagers, is directly related to gender-based violence, and many of these disappearances are associated with femicides where the bodies are hidden, or cases of gender-based violence where the aggressors end up confining the victim. At the same time, we have seen a large number of cases of vicarious violence, where the aggressor inflicts violence on children, family members, or even pets.

So, a decrease in the number of femicides does not mean that other forms of violence are not on the rise. It is also important to talk about political violence. In the context of the July 2024 presidential elections, two femicides occurred and we saw threats against many community leaders by right-wing groups, who persecuted and harassed them. The same goes for media violence, social media, and artificial intelligence. In fact, there need to be changes in the laws so that these new forms of violence can be punished.

How does the lack of official and updated figures from the Venezuelan government affect the implementation of effective public policies to combat gender-based violence?

It has a huge impact. It’s not that there are no figures, but that they are not public. In fact, several public programs such as the Mamá Rosa Plan for Gender Equality and Equity, the various homeland plans, and even the Organic Law on Women’s Right to a Life Free of Violence, mandate that the state must create an observatory for gender-based violence. 

The absence of data means that we cannot measure the efficacy of the public policies that are being enacted. Statistics could also allow organizations to develop proposals, not only legislative ones, but also from women’s groups, which must also participate in the elaboration of these policies.

It is often said that the deterioration of living conditions in Venezuela disproportionately affects women, but what does this mean in practice? Does it also impact the number of femicides?

Yes. We were affected by the rentier culture, the crisis, and economic sanctions. It has been a multifactorial phenomenon. The rentier culture did not change, public policies depended on oil revenues, and a series of US-led unilateral coercive measures were imposed on us that affected all aspects of life. In crises, it is always women’s bodies that pay the price. Currently, we have to work four or five jobs, usually informal ones, to make ends meet. For those of us with children, it is even worse, because we also have the burden of unpaid work in the home. The same is true for the care of the elderly or people with disabilities, which always falls on our shoulders. 

In Venezuela, the vast majority of heads of households are women, who are either alone or part of extended families of women living together and raising children. In addition to this, women are the ones who make up a large part of the social fabric, they are grassroots leaders. At the same time, the country is experiencing a crisis in services, electricity, water, and gas, which further increases the burden of care work. Women have to figure out how to get water for cooking, washing, and bathing their children, how to cope when there is no electricity, or how to cook without gas, especially in the interior of the country, where public services are in a more dire state. 

Does this have an impact on the number of femicides? It does. Violent, aggressive men find themselves in the midst of an economic crisis, where there is unemployment or underpaid work, they become increasingly frustrated, and where do they take out all this frustration? On women, their partners, their families, their homes. It would be interesting to see if GDP figures or periods of high inflation correlate with peaks in femicides. 

With the US attacks on January 3, we saw the kidnapping of Cilia Flores and also the rise to power of the first female president, albeit in an acting capacity, Delcy Rodríguez. How can this be interpreted from a feminist perspective?

The bombing of Venezuela was a flagrant violation of international law, but we also saw how National Assembly Deputy Cilia Flores appeared during the arraignment hearing in New York with bruises on her face and body. Her attorney requested medical attention, which indicates that during the operation she was the victim of violence by the US military. This, of course, is indicative of what foreign powers do when they bomb and invade other countries, especially in the Global South, where they do so to extract natural resources. 

Talking with friends, I have realized that many of us feel violated, as women, by everything that has happened. Now the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, has a very difficult task: to take the reins of the state with a gun to her head. It takes a lot of courage to face this. In addition, after the bombing, Trump’s threat to her was very direct: do what I want or you will be worse off than Maduro. It is difficult to take on that role and have the responsibility of preventing more lives from being lost. 

In the current context, what are Venezuela’s main challenges in terms of the feminist agenda? You have suggested, for example, the need to create a structural feminist emergency plan. What would that look like?

The first thing is to define what that feminist agenda is, because in Venezuela there are different grassroots movements and organizations with different political stances, and polarization sometimes makes it very difficult to unify the points. Sometimes we try, but the efforts can get fragmented again due to specific political events. I would say that there is the issue of gender violence and also the decriminalization of abortion in Venezuela, as common ground that unifies many of us. We also demand a justice system that has a gender and feminist perspective because the current one is built from an androcentric, patriarchal perspective; that is, it is a justice system created by men and for men. An amnesty law is currently being implemented, so this has to be included in it. 

By a feminist emergency structural plan, we mean that the Ministry for Women and Gender Equality should not be the only institution responsible for public policies relating to women and the LGBTIQ+ population. It should rather involve the entire state. I am not saying anything new because this already appears in the Organic Law on Women’s Right to a Life Free of Violence and also in the Mamá Rosa plan, which was supposed to culminate in 2019, but almost nothing that was stipulated ended up being implemented. All ministries, all affiliated entities, all state institutions, including governors’ and mayors’ offices, must address gender issues, and a robust budget is needed for this. For example, the Ministry of Communication must run ongoing campaigns in the media and on social networks about the different forms of violence and the telephone hotlines and websites where incidents can be reported. The Ministry of Housing must focus on creating shelters for victims. The Ministry of Education must review the curriculum to include gender studies, comprehensive sexuality education, and different types of violence, as well as implement protocols for care in schools, high schools, and universities. In addition, all state officials have a duty to educate themselves on the issue.

How do you assess the retreat of the state in certain areas and the growing “NGOization” leveraged by Western funding?

It’s complex because initiatives, activities, marches, etc., require resources, and many of our organizations don’t have them. In addition, there is another factor at play here, which is the proliferation of religious groups, especially Pentecostal evangelicals, who have grown significantly in Venezuela, have a presence within the state and within political parties, and are also very wealthy, which allows them to carry out campaigns, mobilizations, etc. Feminist movements face many obstacles because most of us also have to work several jobs and take care of our homes and communities. So it is difficult to keep up with evangelical and conservative right-wing groups. 

I think we need to identify who the enemies are, who targets our rights, and then assess the contradictions and coordinate women’s and feminist movements. I make the distinction because there are women’s organizations that do not necessarily identify as feminist. But we have to grow, see what issues unite us, and begin a series of actions. I always make this call: despite our political differences, let’s try to unite around an agenda that unites us all.

How does social media influence the proliferation of violence, and gender violence in particular?

I believe that violence has always been present, but now it is exposed because some forms of violence that we used to consider normal or common have been explained or denormalized. In addition, social media and the internet allow us all to learn about different cases in different parts of the world. But, on the other hand, we have the issue of anonymity and lack of accountability, meaning that people can say outrageous things, threaten, insult, and commit violence facilitated by technology. Social media also allows virtual groups to come together to commit violence, and there are also certain influencers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok spreading crazy ideas. Guys like El Temach in Mexico, who speak to you from their machismo, what some call “toxic masculinity” but I call “the healthy descendant of patriarchy.” 

There is also another point here: the algorithm. For example, a teenager starts searching for content about exercise, and soon after, the algorithm will introduce them to these influencers, thus creating mass communities such as incels, which organize themselves through forums like Reddit. This also breaks down the entire social fabric of face-to-face interactions, and people end up isolated but believing they are “accompanied on social media.” All of this leads to disorders such as anxiety and depression. In addition, teenage girls and women become caught up in the aspirational idea of having a certain type of body, aesthetic violence, etc. In short, I’m not saying this from a moralistic point of view, but social networks have encouraged a lot of violence. Besides, who owns these networks? What ideology do they profess? What are they using them for? We have to investigate so we can arm ourselves and fight this battle.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday released additional Jeffrey Epstein files involving uncorroborated accusations made by a woman against President Trump that the department said had been mistakenly withheld during an earlier review.

The department said last week that it was working to determine if any records were improperly withheld after several news organizations reported that the massive tranche of records that had been made public didn’t include some files documenting a series of interviews conducted in 2019 with a woman who made an allegation against Trump.

The accuser was interviewed by the FBI four times as it sought to assess her account but a summary of only one of those interviews had been included in the publicly released files.

On Thursday, the department said those files had been “incorrectly coded as duplicative,” and therefore were inadvertently not published along with other investigative documents related to the disgraced financier, who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.

“As we have consistently done, if any member of the public reported concerns with information in the library, the Department would review, make any corrections, and republish online,” the department said in a post on X.

Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The department noted in January that some of the documents contain “untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”

The new disclosures come as Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi faces continued turmoil over the department’s handling of the files released under a law passed by Congress after months of public and political pressure. Five Republicans on the House Oversight Committee joined Democrats in voting Wednesday to subpoena Bondi, demanding that she answer questions under oath in a sign of mounting frustration among members of the president’s own party.

The Trump administration has faced constant political headaches since the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the department of hiding certain documents or over-redacting files, or in some cases, not redacting enough. In some cases, the department inadvertently released nude photos showing the faces of potential victims as well as names, email addresses and other identifying information that was either unredacted or not fully obscured.

Department officials have defended their handling of the files, saying they took pains to release the files as quickly as possible under the law while also protecting victims. Department officials have said errors were inevitable given the volume of the materials, the number of lawyers viewing the files and the speed at which the department had to release them. The department has said it’s entitled to withhold records that exposed potential abuse victims, were duplicates or protected by legal privileges, or related to an ongoing criminal investigation.

Some of the new records published Thursday pertained to a woman who contacted the FBI shortly after Epstein’s 2019 arrest and claimed that a man named “Jeff” living in Hilton Head, South Carolina, had raped her there in the 1980s when she was around 13 years old. The woman told the agents she didn’t know the man’s identity at the time, but decades later concluded he was Jeffrey Epstein when a friend texted her his photo from a news story.

In a follow-up interview a month later, the woman added a host of other claims, including that Epstein had schemed to have her mother sent to prison, beaten her, arranged sexual encounters with other men and once flew her to either New Jersey or New York, where she claimed to have bitten Trump after he tried to sexually assault her.

Agents spoke with the woman two more times, at one point asking her to provide more detail on her supposed interactions with Trump, but reported that she declined to answer additional questions and broke off contact. There’s no indication that Epstein ever lived in South Carolina and it was unclear whether Trump and Epstein knew each other during the time period involved.

The woman’s report was one of a number of uncorroborated, sometimes fantastical, reports that federal agents received from members of the public alleging misconduct by Trump and other famous people in the months and years after Epstein’s arrest.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

The killing of prominent Iraqi women’s rights activist Yanar Mohammed has fuelled an outpouring of grief and calls for justice, with advocates from around the world remembering Mohammed as a “courageous” voice.

Mohammed, 66, was killed earlier this week after unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire outside her home in the north of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.

“Despite being rushed to the hospital and attempts to save her life, she succumbed to her wounds,” the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, a group that Mohammed co-founded, said in a statement shared on social media.

“We at the Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq condemn in the strongest terms this cowardly terrorist crime, which we consider a direct attack on the feminist struggle and the values of freedom and equality.”

Several international rights groups also condemned Mohammed’s killing, with Amnesty International on Wednesday decrying the deadly attack as “brutal” and “a calculated assault to stifle human rights defenders, especially those defending women’s rights”.

The organisation, which said Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al‑Sudani ordered an investigation into the killing, also called on the Iraqi authorities to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice.

“Yanar Mohammed … dedicated her life to defending women’s rights,” Amnesty’s Iraq researcher, Razaw Salihy, said in a statement. “The Iraqi authorities must stop this pattern of targeted attacks in their tracks, and take seriously the sustained smear campaigns designed to discredit and endanger activists.”

Mohammed was one of Iraq’s most prominent women’s rights activists, working since the early 2000s “to protect women facing gender-based violence, including domestic abuse, trafficking, and so-called ‘honour killings’”, Front Line Defenders said.

Her work included the establishment of safe houses, which sheltered hundreds of women experiencing exploitation and abuse.

In a 2022 interview with Al Jazeera, Mohammed described her organisation’s efforts to support Iraqi women who survived violence at the hands of ISIS (ISIL), which had seized control of large swathes of the country.

“Muslim-Arab women who were enslaved by ISIL and have not found a place to go back to, they are still living in the shadows of the society,” she said at the time.

“Not less than 10,000 women were the victims of ISIL attack[s], and this femicide is not really acknowledged by the international community or dealt with in a way that keeps the dignity or the respect [of], or compensates, those who were the victims.”

Years of threats

Mohammed had been the target of death threats for decades, “aimed at dissuading her from defending women’s rights”, Front Line Defenders said. “Yet she remained defiant in the face of threats from ISIS and other armed groups.”

In 2016, she was awarded the Rafto Prize “for her tireless work for women’s rights in Iraq under extremely challenging conditions”.

The Rafto Foundation, the Norway-based nonprofit group that administers the award, said it was “deeply shaken” by her killing. “We are deeply shocked by this brutal attack on one of the most courageous human rights defenders of our time,” the foundation said in a statement.

“The assassination represents not only an attack on Yanar Mohammed as a person, but also on the fundamental values she dedicated her life to defending: women’s freedom, democracy, and universal human rights.”

Other activists and human rights groups also paid tribute to Mohammed this week, with Human Rights Watch describing her as “one of Iraq’s most courageous advocates for women’s rights” for more than two decades.

“Yanar was a dear colleague and friend to so many of us in the women’s rights and feminist community, one of our icons. She spent her life standing up for women’s rights in the most dangerous environment,” said Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International.

“She faced constant threats, but she never stopped. And today we cry and mourn her energy, her commitment, her profound humanity, her amazing courage.”

WASHINGTON — A year into the Trump administration’s ratcheted-up mass deportation effort, approval rates for asylum seekers have plummeted as immigrants are too afraid to show up for court hearings.

Fewer than 3% of asylum cases decided in January were approved — a record low, according to Mobile Pathways, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes federal immigration data. That’s compared with an 18% approval rate in January 2025.

Nationally, 20% of immigrants seeking asylum missed their hearings in January, compared with half that rate a year earlier. Asylum seekers with pending applications are in the country legally, but under federal law, failing to appear for a hearing can result in a deportation order.

In Los Angeles County immigration courts — among the largest in the country — the trend is substantially starker: no-shows made up 56% of the asylum hearings in January, compared with 14% a year earlier.

“That’s not fluctuation,” said Bartlomiej Skorupa, chief operating officer of Mobile Pathways. “That’s collapse.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said the Trump administration is restoring integrity to immigration courts.

As of December, nearly 3.4 million cases were pending in immigration courts, with more than 2.3 million of them asylum cases, according to TRAC, a data research organization.

The rise in the number of people avoiding asylum hearings helps explain another trend in the immigration court system. Over the last year, the number of asylum cases marked “abandoned” has doubled.

Immigration attorneys say cases can be classified as abandoned for various reasons: An applicant missed a deadline, filled out a form incorrectly, or just decided to leave the U.S.

But the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that administers immigration courts, can label a case abandoned if the applicant fails to show up for a hearing. Nationwide, the number of cases considered abandoned doubled over the last year to make up about 41% of those decided in January.

It takes an average of four years for immigrants to receive an asylum hearing, though a final decision can take longer with appeals, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

During the Biden administration, most asylum claims were not issued decisions by an immigration judge; instead, many were administratively closed, or paused and taken off judges’ dockets. While the case is inactive, the person can remain in the U.S., work legally and pursue other avenues of relief.

But such a policy is vulnerable to being reversed by a subsequent administration, Migration Policy Institute experts wrote in a November report.

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles, said the increase in no-shows is in part because the Trump administration began reopening asylum cases that had been administratively closed for many years.

Many of those people are no longer in contact with their attorney, if they had one, and would be difficult to notify of a new hearing.

A decade ago, a significant portion of asylum seekers came from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, many of whom settled in Southern California.

Since President Trump returned to the White House, Los Angeles was one of the earliest cities where federal agents began arresting immigrants at courthouses. Immigrants have become afraid to engage with any law enforcement authorities, Toczylowski said.

The government’s goal, she said, “is not due process or pursuing justice for people in immigration courts — it’s deportation orders. If people don’t show up in court, that’s a way for them to meet their metrics.”

Immigration courts are housed within the Department of Justice and judges have long complained that they lack full independence from executive branch overreach. The department disputes that, saying judges are independent adjudicators who decide cases individually.

More than 100 immigration judges have been fired since Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges. That’s down from 735 judges in last fiscal year.

Last summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice after removing the requirement for temporary immigration judges to have immigration law experience.

Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge who was fired last year from the San Francisco Immigration Court, said the 3% asylum grant rate in January is shockingly low.

Johnson, who was vice president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, said decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals throughout the last several months have limited asylum law. Immigration judges must abide by the precedent set in those cases.

One such case, for example, reverses prior interpretations to now limit gender-based asylum, finding that persecution claims based solely on gender, or gender combined with nationality, don’t generally don’t meet the definition of a “particular social group” — one of the five categories under U.S. asylum law.

Another factor contributing to lowered asylum approvals, he said, is that the federal government has started seeking to dismiss asylum cases by forcing migrants to start over in a “safe third country.”

These requests stem from the increasing number of so-called asylum cooperative agreements, which allow federal officials to send certain migrants to other countries — including less stable places such as Honduras, Uganda and Ecuador — instead of continuing to seek asylum in the U.S.

“It has really been a restriction in the availability for asylum and other related protection,” he said.

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, one of the authors of the Migration Policy Institute report, pointed to a post last month on X by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who said that asylum “is limited to individuals fleeing extremely narrow categories of state persecution.”

“None of the groups illegally crossing the border fit that criteria,” Miller wrote. “No one in Mexico or Ecuador or Honduras etc live in nations where there is any state persecution of any protected class.”

But Bush-Joseph cautioned that it’s not yet clear whether the Trump administration’s asylum changes are legal.

“Even though there are executive actions in place that are restricting access to asylum, those are being challenged in court and I don’t think that we know how all of this will turn out,” she said. “A lot of people are being deported in the meantime and they may not get the chance to come back.”

WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. House lawmakers on Thursday that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s or Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes at the start of two days of depositions that will also include former President Clinton.

“I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein,” Hillary Clinton said in an opening statement she shared on social media.

The closed-door depositions in the Clintons’ hometown of Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet north of New York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress.

Yet the demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of underage girls has become a near-unstoppable force on Capitol Hill and beyond.

President Trump, a Republican who has expressed regret that the Clintons are being forced to testify, bowed last year to pressure to release case files on Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial. The Clintons, too, agreed to testify after their offers of sworn statements were rebuffed by the Oversight panel and its chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., threatened criminal contempt of Congress charges against them.

“We have a very clear record that we’ve been willing to talk about,” Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the BBC earlier this month. She added that her husband had flown with Epstein for charitable trips and that she did not recall meeting Epstein but had interacted with Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and confidant, at conferences hosted by the Clinton Foundation.

Maxwell, a British socialite, also attended the 2010 wedding of their daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

“We are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited and totally unrelated to their behavior or their crimes, and we want to do it in public,” Hillary Clinton said.

Bill Clinton, however, has emerged as a top target for Republicans amid the political struggle over who receives the most scrutiny for their ties to Epstein. Several photos of the former president were included in the first tranche of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in January, including a number of him with women whose faces were redacted. Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing in his relationship with Epstein.

Comer has also pointed to Hillary Clinton’s work as secretary of state to address sex trafficking as another reason to insist on her deposition. The committee’s investigation has sought to understand why the Department of Justice under previous presidential administrations did not seek further charges against Epstein following a 2008 arrangement in which he pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl but avoided federal charges.

Yet conspiracy theories, especially on the right, have swirled for years around the Clintons and their connections to Epstein and Maxwell, who argues she was wrongfully convicted. Republicans have long wanted to press the Clintons for answers.

“I mean if you’re the wife of Bill Clinton, aren’t you going to have some questions about your husband’s activities?” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the House Oversight Committee. “We only go where the facts take us. We didn’t put the president and the secretary in this position. They put themselves in it.”

Democrats, now being led by a new generation of politicians, have prioritized transparency around Epstein over defending the former leaders of their party. Several Democratic lawmakers joined with Republicans on the Oversight panel to advance the contempt of Congress charges against the Clintons last month. Several said they had no relationship with the Clintons and owed no loyalty to them.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, said that both Republican and Democratic administrations “have failed survivors in not getting more information out to the public.” He also said he wanted to ask about Epstein’s possible ties to foreign governments.

Democrats are also coming off an effort this week to confront Trump about his administration’s handling of the Epstein files by taking women who survived Epstein’s abuse as their guests to Trump’s State of the Union address. Even senior Democrats, such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, said it was appropriate for the committee to interview anyone, including the former president, who was connected to Epstein.

“We want to hear from everyone,” Pelosi said, adding that she did not see why Hillary Clinton was being interviewed and that it was important to “believe survivors.”

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — For the first time in more than 40 years, a former president will appeal directly before Congress to fend off criminal allegations.

Former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify before the House Oversight Committee this week in its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators.

The couple agreed to appear after a contentious exchange with committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who accused them of resisting congressional oversight and withholding information about their ties to Epstein and convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in previous testimony. The pair have denied wrongdoing and accused Comer of conducting a politically motivated “kangaroo court” designed to keep them in the news and deflect from President Trump’s ties to the notorious sex offender.

“They negotiated in good faith. You did not,” Clinton spokesperson Angel Ureña said in a statement, referring to Comer. “They told you under oath what they know, but you don’t care. But the former President and former Secretary of State will be there. They look forward to setting a precedent that applies to everyone.”

Hillary Clinton will appear Thursday, and the former president is due the following day. The closed-door deposition will be recorded, with video set for release later.

How did we get here?

Bill Clinton has said he “had no inkling of the crimes” Epstein was committing and learned of them only through media reports. The former president took four trips on Epstein’s private jet between 2002 and 2003, which included travel for work related to the Clinton Foundation, a Clinton spokesperson confirmed in 2019.

He is expected to face questions regarding a series of photos released by the Department of Justice, one of which appears to show the ex-president in a hot tub with Epstein and a woman whose face is redacted. Congress only recently gained access to records pertaining to the Justice Department’s Epstein investigation after lawmakers forced the files’ unredacted release late December.

“The Clintons’ testimony is critical to understanding Epstein’s sex trafficking network and the ways they sought to curry favor and influence to shield themselves from scrutiny,” Comer said at a committee meeting last week.

Hillary Clinton maintains that she never met Epstein, but says she encountered Maxwell “many years ago.” She detailed her objections to the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation in a BBC interview last week.

“They are slow-walking it, they are redacting the names of men who are in it, they are stonewalling legitimate requests from members of Congress,” she said, calling the department’s investigation a “cover-up.”

The pair contend that Republicans are using the high-profile interview to draw attention from accusations levied against the president and the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) accused the department Tuesday of violating both the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena and the Epstein Files Transparency Act when it obscured files related to accusations that Trump sexually abused a minor. Garcia was permitted to review unredacted evidence logs and said the Justice Department “appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes.”

“To be clear the claims are unfounded and false and if they have any shred of credibility they certainly would have been weaponized against Trump already,” the Justice Department said in December.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

Consequences for major players

The interviews come as British police last week arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, the most high-profile person caught up so far in the unfolding saga.

Consequences have been severe in Europe, with former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland charged with “gross corruption.” In the United Kingdom, Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States, was forced out of the House of Lords before he was arrested Monday.

The files’ release triggered a wave of resignations by business leaders over ties to Epstein and Maxwell, including Hyatt Hotels’ Thomas Pritzker, Goldman Sachs counsel and former Obama staffer Kathy Ruemmler and DP World Chief Executive Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem.

Stateside, Democrats are crying foul over what they see as the Justice Department holding back crucial case files — 50% by some estimations — and delaying investigations into American elites, including some of the president’s close associates.

“Over two dozen people have resigned — CEOs, members of government worldwide — but I haven’t seen any arrests or investigations here in the United States from this Department of Justice,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said on the House floor Tuesday.

What comes next?

Regardless of what is revealed in their testimony, the Clintons could still face contempt charges from Congress for refusing to comply with previous committee subpoenas.

“The Clintons must be held accountable for their actions. And Democrats must support these measures, or they will be exposed as hypocrites,” Comer said at a committee meeting last week.

The former first couple hope their appearance will set a precedent for Trump and other key names in the files to appear before Congress.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a Fremont Democrat and co-author of the legislation that compelled the release of the Epstein files, remains hopeful that those who participated in Epstein’s sexual abuses will be held to account for their actions.

In an interview last week, Khanna said the arrest of former Prince Andrew is evidence that it will happen. Khanna called it a “game changer.”

“This sets the standard for accountability,” he said. “I believe you’re going to see the elite of the Epstein class start to fall both in the United States and around the world.”