Washington
Man pardoned after storming Capitol is charged with threatening to kill Jeffries
WASHINGTON (AP) — A man whose convictions for storming the U.S. Capitol were erased by President Donald Trump’s mass pardons has been arrested on a charge that he threatened to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Christopher P. Moynihan is accused of sending a text message on Friday noting that Jeffries, a New York Democrat, would be making a speech in New York City this week.
“I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan wrote, according to a report by a state police investigator. Moynihan also wrote that Jeffries “must be eliminated” and texted, “I will kill him for the future,” the police report says.
Moynihan, of Clinton, New York, is charged with a felony count of making a terroristic threat. It was unclear if he had an attorney representing him in the case, and efforts to contact him and his parents by email and phone were unsuccessful.
Moynihan who’s 34, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for joining a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In January, he was among hundreds of convicted Capitol rioters who received a pardon from Trump on the Republican president’s first day back in the White House.
Jeffries thanked investigators “for their swift and decisive action to apprehend a dangerous individual who made a credible death threat against me with every intention to carry it out.”
“Unfortunately, our brave men and women in law enforcement are being forced to spend their time keeping our communities safe from these violent individuals who should never have been pardoned,” Jeffries said in a statement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the case during a news conference on Tuesday and said he did not know any details of the threat against Jeffries.
“We denounce violence from anybody, anytime. Those people should be arrested and tried,” said Johnson, a Louisiana Republican.
The New York State Police said it was notified of the threat by an FBI task force on Saturday. Moynihan was arraigned on Sunday in a local court in New York’s Dutchess County. He is due back in the Town of Clinton Court on Thursday.
Dutchess County District Attorney Anthony Parisi said his office is reviewing the case “for legal and factual sufficiency.”
“Threats made against elected officials and members of the public will not be tolerated,” Parisi said in a statement on Tuesday.
On Jan. 6, Moynihan breached police barricades before entering the Capitol through the Rotunda Door. He entered the Senate chamber, rifled through a notebook on a senator’s desk and joined other rioters in shouting and chanting at the Senate dais, prosecutors said.
“Moynihan did not leave the Senate Chamber until he was forced out by police,” they wrote.
In 2022, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper convicted Moynihan of a felony for obstructing the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Moynihan also pleaded guilty to five other riot-related counts.
California
Man agrees to plead guilty to acting as illegal agent for Beijing
A California man has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government in Southern California while working as a campaign advisor for a local politician.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun is expected to appear in court in Los Angeles on Monday to enter his plea under a deal with federal prosecutors, according to a copy of the agreement available in online court records. It was signed by Sun, his attorney and a prosecutor earlier this month. If the plea is accepted by a judge, Sun could face a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, the agreement says.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles declined to comment on the deal. Sun’s attorney, Adam Olin, also declined to comment.
Under the agreement, Sun acknowledges acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the People’s Republic of China from 2022 to 2024 without notifying the U.S. attorney general as required by law. Sun is a Chinese citizen living in the U.S. legally, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The case against Sun was filed during President Joe Biden’s administration amid a time of rising concern that the Chinese government had cultivated a network of operatives to influence local elections in the U.S. to install politicians who were friendly to Beijing and could help promote Chinese interests. Sun was accused of conspiring with Chen Jun, who was sentenced in New York to 20 months in prison for acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government.
According to the plea deal, Sun received instructions from Chinese government officials to post pro-Beijing content on a website he ran with another individual who became a candidate for local office and won election in 2022. Sun worked as a campaign advisor for the individual and the following year drafted a report for Chinese officials seeking funding and assignments for more pro-Beijing activities, the agreement says.
“Defendant and Individual 1 received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website, and sometimes sought approval from PRC government officials to post other pro-PRC content on the website,” the agreement says.
The individual is not named in court papers. Sun was listed as a campaign treasurer for Arcadia City Council candidate Eileen Wang on a campaign statement filing stamped in February 2022, according to records on the city’s website. Arcadia is a city of nearly 60,000 people northeast of Los Angeles with a large Asian population, according to census data.
After Sun was arrested in December, Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said Sun had no affiliation with the city. Lazzaretto said Wang had not been charged and planned to cooperate with federal officials. A message was left Monday for Wang at Arcadia City Hall.
Texas
Cards Against Humanity and Elon Musk’s SpaceX reach settlement over alleged trespassing
SpaceX has settled a lawsuit filed by the maker of the popular party game Cards Against Humanity over accusations that Elon Musk’s rocket company trespassed and damaged a plot of land the card company owns in Texas.
Texas court records show a settlement was reached in the case last month, just weeks before a jury trial was scheduled to begin on Nov. 3. The card maker said in a statement Monday that it could not disclose the terms, and SpaceX did not return email and telephone messages left with the company and its Texas lawyer seeking comment.
Cards Against Humanity, which is headquartered in Chicago, originally purchased the plot of land in 2017 as part of what it said was a stunt to oppose President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a border wall.
In its lawsuit, Cards Against Humanity alleges SpaceX essentially treated the game company’s property — located in Cameron County in far south Texas — as its own for at least six months.
The lawsuit said SpaceX, which had previously acquired other plots of land near the property, had placed construction materials, such as gravel, and other debris on the land without asking for permission to do so.
Cards Against Humanity said in an email Monday to The Associated Press that SpaceX admitted during the discovery phase of the case to trespassing on its property. The company said a trial “would have cost more than what we were likely to win from SpaceX.”
“The upside is that SpaceX has removed their construction equipment from our land and we’re able to work with a local landscaping company to restore the land to its natural state: devoid of space garbage and pointless border walls.”
The company has previously said 150,000 people had each contributed $15 toward helping purchase the land in Texas and that they had hoped to pay back those donors with proceeds from a settlement.
Over the years, Cards Against Humanity says the land has been maintained in its natural state. It also says it displayed a “no trespassing” sign to warn people they were about to step on private property.
The company was asking for $15 million in damages, which it says includes a loss of vegetation on the land.
“Were we hoping to be able to pay all our fans? Sure. But we did warn them they would ‘probably only be able to get like $2 or most likely nothing,’” the company said.
Minnesota
Woman who cast her dead mother’s ballot for Trump in must write an essay on voting
A Minnesota woman convicted of filling out and submitting a mail-in ballot for her deceased mother in support of Republican Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election was ordered by a judge to write an essay and read a book about voting’s importance to democracy.
Trump, who won a second term last year, has railed against mail-in voting as fraudulent and falsely claimed it as one reason he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Itasca County Attorney Jake Fauchald said the Minnesota case shows how well the election system works and catches attempted voter fraud.
Danielle Christine Miller, 51, of Nashwauk, in a rural area about three hours north of Minneapolis, was charged last fall with three felonies after local election officials notified authorities in October about two absentee ballots that had been flagged for fraud. One of those was from a registered voter who had died, Miller’s mother.
According to court papers, Miller told an investigator that she had filled out her mother’s absentee ballot and signed her mother’s name on its signature envelope. She said her mother was an avid Trump supporter and wanted to vote for him, but she died in August 2024 before receiving an absentee ballot, according to the complaint. Miller also said she signed her mother’s signature as a witness on her own ballot, the document said.
Miller pleaded guilty last week to intentionally making or signing a false certificate. As part her plea, she claimed she was intoxicated when submitting the mail ballots and was unable to precisely remember what she did, but agreed that the evidence could find her guilty, Fauchald said. A message left for Miller’s attorney was not immediately returned.
Minnesota Ninth Judicial District Judge Heidi Chandler on Wednesday dismissed the other two charges. Miller’s sentence includes up to three years of supervised probation and an $885 fine.
The judge also imposed some other unorthodox conditions.
Miller must read a book about the history of voting in America and current related issues, “Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America,” by Erin Geiger Smith; and she was ordered to write a 10-page paper “regarding the importance in voting in a democracy and how election fraud can undermine the voting process.”
Fauchald said the sentence is a fair outcome. He called the paper a unique aspect of sentencing, but a fair expectation.
“I think the sentence that was imposed here is very much designed to help her better understand the importance of those things and make sure that she doesn’t — and quite frankly other people don’t — take the same type of actions in the future,” the prosecutor said.
Man pardoned after storming Capitol is charged with threatening to kill Jeffries
WASHINGTON (AP) — A man whose convictions for storming the U.S. Capitol were erased by President Donald Trump’s mass pardons has been arrested on a charge that he threatened to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Christopher P. Moynihan is accused of sending a text message on Friday noting that Jeffries, a New York Democrat, would be making a speech in New York City this week.
“I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan wrote, according to a report by a state police investigator. Moynihan also wrote that Jeffries “must be eliminated” and texted, “I will kill him for the future,” the police report says.
Moynihan, of Clinton, New York, is charged with a felony count of making a terroristic threat. It was unclear if he had an attorney representing him in the case, and efforts to contact him and his parents by email and phone were unsuccessful.
Moynihan who’s 34, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for joining a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In January, he was among hundreds of convicted Capitol rioters who received a pardon from Trump on the Republican president’s first day back in the White House.
Jeffries thanked investigators “for their swift and decisive action to apprehend a dangerous individual who made a credible death threat against me with every intention to carry it out.”
“Unfortunately, our brave men and women in law enforcement are being forced to spend their time keeping our communities safe from these violent individuals who should never have been pardoned,” Jeffries said in a statement.
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the case during a news conference on Tuesday and said he did not know any details of the threat against Jeffries.
“We denounce violence from anybody, anytime. Those people should be arrested and tried,” said Johnson, a Louisiana Republican.
The New York State Police said it was notified of the threat by an FBI task force on Saturday. Moynihan was arraigned on Sunday in a local court in New York’s Dutchess County. He is due back in the Town of Clinton Court on Thursday.
Dutchess County District Attorney Anthony Parisi said his office is reviewing the case “for legal and factual sufficiency.”
“Threats made against elected officials and members of the public will not be tolerated,” Parisi said in a statement on Tuesday.
On Jan. 6, Moynihan breached police barricades before entering the Capitol through the Rotunda Door. He entered the Senate chamber, rifled through a notebook on a senator’s desk and joined other rioters in shouting and chanting at the Senate dais, prosecutors said.
“Moynihan did not leave the Senate Chamber until he was forced out by police,” they wrote.
In 2022, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper convicted Moynihan of a felony for obstructing the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress for certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Moynihan also pleaded guilty to five other riot-related counts.
California
Man agrees to plead guilty to acting as illegal agent for Beijing
A California man has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government in Southern California while working as a campaign advisor for a local politician.
Yaoning “Mike” Sun is expected to appear in court in Los Angeles on Monday to enter his plea under a deal with federal prosecutors, according to a copy of the agreement available in online court records. It was signed by Sun, his attorney and a prosecutor earlier this month. If the plea is accepted by a judge, Sun could face a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, the agreement says.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles declined to comment on the deal. Sun’s attorney, Adam Olin, also declined to comment.
Under the agreement, Sun acknowledges acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the People’s Republic of China from 2022 to 2024 without notifying the U.S. attorney general as required by law. Sun is a Chinese citizen living in the U.S. legally, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The case against Sun was filed during President Joe Biden’s administration amid a time of rising concern that the Chinese government had cultivated a network of operatives to influence local elections in the U.S. to install politicians who were friendly to Beijing and could help promote Chinese interests. Sun was accused of conspiring with Chen Jun, who was sentenced in New York to 20 months in prison for acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government.
According to the plea deal, Sun received instructions from Chinese government officials to post pro-Beijing content on a website he ran with another individual who became a candidate for local office and won election in 2022. Sun worked as a campaign advisor for the individual and the following year drafted a report for Chinese officials seeking funding and assignments for more pro-Beijing activities, the agreement says.
“Defendant and Individual 1 received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website, and sometimes sought approval from PRC government officials to post other pro-PRC content on the website,” the agreement says.
The individual is not named in court papers. Sun was listed as a campaign treasurer for Arcadia City Council candidate Eileen Wang on a campaign statement filing stamped in February 2022, according to records on the city’s website. Arcadia is a city of nearly 60,000 people northeast of Los Angeles with a large Asian population, according to census data.
After Sun was arrested in December, Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said Sun had no affiliation with the city. Lazzaretto said Wang had not been charged and planned to cooperate with federal officials. A message was left Monday for Wang at Arcadia City Hall.
Texas
Cards Against Humanity and Elon Musk’s SpaceX reach settlement over alleged trespassing
SpaceX has settled a lawsuit filed by the maker of the popular party game Cards Against Humanity over accusations that Elon Musk’s rocket company trespassed and damaged a plot of land the card company owns in Texas.
Texas court records show a settlement was reached in the case last month, just weeks before a jury trial was scheduled to begin on Nov. 3. The card maker said in a statement Monday that it could not disclose the terms, and SpaceX did not return email and telephone messages left with the company and its Texas lawyer seeking comment.
Cards Against Humanity, which is headquartered in Chicago, originally purchased the plot of land in 2017 as part of what it said was a stunt to oppose President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a border wall.
In its lawsuit, Cards Against Humanity alleges SpaceX essentially treated the game company’s property — located in Cameron County in far south Texas — as its own for at least six months.
The lawsuit said SpaceX, which had previously acquired other plots of land near the property, had placed construction materials, such as gravel, and other debris on the land without asking for permission to do so.
Cards Against Humanity said in an email Monday to The Associated Press that SpaceX admitted during the discovery phase of the case to trespassing on its property. The company said a trial “would have cost more than what we were likely to win from SpaceX.”
“The upside is that SpaceX has removed their construction equipment from our land and we’re able to work with a local landscaping company to restore the land to its natural state: devoid of space garbage and pointless border walls.”
The company has previously said 150,000 people had each contributed $15 toward helping purchase the land in Texas and that they had hoped to pay back those donors with proceeds from a settlement.
Over the years, Cards Against Humanity says the land has been maintained in its natural state. It also says it displayed a “no trespassing” sign to warn people they were about to step on private property.
The company was asking for $15 million in damages, which it says includes a loss of vegetation on the land.
“Were we hoping to be able to pay all our fans? Sure. But we did warn them they would ‘probably only be able to get like $2 or most likely nothing,’” the company said.
Minnesota
Woman who cast her dead mother’s ballot for Trump in must write an essay on voting
A Minnesota woman convicted of filling out and submitting a mail-in ballot for her deceased mother in support of Republican Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election was ordered by a judge to write an essay and read a book about voting’s importance to democracy.
Trump, who won a second term last year, has railed against mail-in voting as fraudulent and falsely claimed it as one reason he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Itasca County Attorney Jake Fauchald said the Minnesota case shows how well the election system works and catches attempted voter fraud.
Danielle Christine Miller, 51, of Nashwauk, in a rural area about three hours north of Minneapolis, was charged last fall with three felonies after local election officials notified authorities in October about two absentee ballots that had been flagged for fraud. One of those was from a registered voter who had died, Miller’s mother.
According to court papers, Miller told an investigator that she had filled out her mother’s absentee ballot and signed her mother’s name on its signature envelope. She said her mother was an avid Trump supporter and wanted to vote for him, but she died in August 2024 before receiving an absentee ballot, according to the complaint. Miller also said she signed her mother’s signature as a witness on her own ballot, the document said.
Miller pleaded guilty last week to intentionally making or signing a false certificate. As part her plea, she claimed she was intoxicated when submitting the mail ballots and was unable to precisely remember what she did, but agreed that the evidence could find her guilty, Fauchald said. A message left for Miller’s attorney was not immediately returned.
Minnesota Ninth Judicial District Judge Heidi Chandler on Wednesday dismissed the other two charges. Miller’s sentence includes up to three years of supervised probation and an $885 fine.
The judge also imposed some other unorthodox conditions.
Miller must read a book about the history of voting in America and current related issues, “Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America,” by Erin Geiger Smith; and she was ordered to write a 10-page paper “regarding the importance in voting in a democracy and how election fraud can undermine the voting process.”
Fauchald said the sentence is a fair outcome. He called the paper a unique aspect of sentencing, but a fair expectation.
“I think the sentence that was imposed here is very much designed to help her better understand the importance of those things and make sure that she doesn’t — and quite frankly other people don’t — take the same type of actions in the future,” the prosecutor said.
