Washington
Trump pardons husband of GOP supporter Rep. Harshbarger
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned Tennessee Republican Rep. Diana Harshbarger’s husband, who pleaded guilty more than a decade ago to health care fraud and other crimes and served time in federal prison.
Robert Harshbarger Jr. was a licensed pharmacist in 2013 when he admitted substituting a cheaper drug imported from China that was not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the iron sucrose that the FDA had approved for kidney dialysis patients to use. He was sentenced to and served four years in prison.
Trump signed the pardon document on Friday, according to the website of the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice. It was among several pardons the Republican president issued, including to a former speaker of the Tennessee House and to former Major League Baseball slugger and New York Mets great Darryl Strawberry.
Trump last week also pardoned a former New York police sergeant who was convicted of helping China try to scare an ex-official into going back to his homeland. On Monday, Trump pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows and many others accused of backing his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
A White House official on Tuesday defended the pardon for Harshbarger, saying that he was a victim of “excessive prosecution” and that the drug substitution he made was a common practice among pharmacists known as “compounding,” in which unapproved drugs are provided to patients based on their condition or for other reasons. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss the reasoning behind Trump’s clemency decision.
Presidents have broad constitutional powers to grant pardons, which do not erase criminal convictions but can be seen as acts of justice or mercy, often in cases that can further public welfare.
Harshbarger turned to the Chinese drug due to a backlog of the iron sucrose drug, the White House official said. No patients were alleged to have been harmed by the substitution, and doctors seemed to prefer the drug Harshbarger gave them because it was easier to administer, the official said.
Prosecutors said that even though there were no reports of patients being harmed, Harshbarger’s substitution still put patients at risk since the FDA cannot assure the safety and effectiveness of products from other countries.
Harshbarger has served his sentence, the official said. He also was ordered to pay restitution, pay a fine and forfeit $425,000 in cash.
Rep. Harshbarger, who is also a licensed pharmacist, was first elected to the U.S. House in 2020 and has been a strong supporter of Trump. She spoke in support of Trump outside his hush money criminal trial in New York in 2024 and in other settings.
Trump has backed all of her congressional campaigns and offered her his “Complete and Total Endorsement” for reelection in 2026 in a Nov. 3 social media post.
She was not a member of Congress when her husband pleaded guilty in 2013 to one count of distributing a misbranded drug and one count of health care fraud.
Robert Harshbarger’s license was revoked in 2013 after the conviction, according to the website of the Tennessee Department of Health. The congresswoman remains licensed, the records show.
Colorado
Trump pardons man who took brief detour as he ran up and down Grand Teton in record time
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned a trail runner who briefly took a prohibited trail on his way to a record time up and down the tallest peak in the Teton Range of western Wyoming.
The pardon for Michelino Sunseri, unlike recent pardons of Trump allies, appeared apolitical.
Sunseri, 33, ran up and down Grand Teton, the 13,775-foot (4,200-meter) centerpiece of the iconic Teton Range, in 2 hours, 50 minutes, 50 seconds in 2024.
It was an epic feat: The run covered 13.3 miles (21.4 kilometers), gaining 7,000 feet (2,133 meters) in elevation, then back down again in western Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.
But on the way down, Sunseri left a switchback to avoid casual hikers. Going off-trail in a national park is considered a no-no because it can cause erosion, especially when a shortcut over time becomes a popular way to go.
Sunseri, who was open about taking the two-minute detour, got a misdemeanor conviction from a judge in September.
Before the pardon, prosecutors agreed to seek dismissal if Sunseri completed 60 hours of community service and a course on wilderness stewardship, according to Sunseri’s attorneys.
The judge expressed concern about that change, however, and set another hearing in the case. The pardon now renders any deal moot.
Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed concern about “overcriminalization” of minor offenses in national parks, said Sunseri’s attorney, Ed Bushnell.
“I do believe, had Democrats been in power, we would’ve been seeing a similar result,” Bushnell said of the pardon.
Idaho
State AG’s office says no charges warranted against sheriff after turbulent town hall
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Attorney General’s Office has declined to file charges against a northern Idaho sheriff after investigating a turbulent legislative town hall meeting during which a woman was forcibly removed by security dressed in plainclothes.
The chaos at the February meeting in Coeur d’Alene drew widespread attention with videos posted online going viral showing the woman being pulled from the audience after heckling the speakers. The video showed Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris telling Teresa Borrenpohl to leave, and then stepping back and recording on his cellphone as multiple unidentified men approached and began grabbing her, dragging her out of the meeting. The men were security officers with LEAR Asset Management, but were not wearing any identification or uniforms, and witnesses said they repeatedly refused to identify themselves.
After the incident, Kootenai County Undersheriff Brett Nelson released a statement saying the agency will have a “complete and independent investigation of the incident conducted by an outside agency.”
In a Nov. 3 letter, the Idaho Attorney General’s office said it began the investigation after it received several “public corruption complaints” requesting that the office look into whether the sheriff should be charged with battery. The investigation showed the sheriff, “indisputably had law enforcement jurisdiction at the event,” the attorney general’s office wrote, and criminal charges were not merited.
“The investigation did not uncover any evidence to suggest the sheriff acted in bad faith or with malice, and criminal charges would not be appropriate,” the attorney general’s office wrote.
Norris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Borrenpohl, a Democratic legislative candidate who has run unsuccessfully in the deeply Republican region, later filed a tort claim against Kootenai County alleging that her constitutional rights were violated by both the security team and Norris. The county has not yet responded to the tort claim, Borrenpohl’s attorney Wendy Olson said.
“The Attorney General, according to his statement, was solely looking at whether the crime of battery was committed by Sheriff Norris. A criminal charge requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and the Attorney General’s Office declined based on that standard and based on the evidence it reviewed,” Olson said. “Civil cases and constitutional claims are governed by a different burden and require different evidence.”
Olson said Borrenpohl cannot comment further, because she is anticipated to be a witness in upcoming criminal proceedings in Coeur d’Alene.
Prosecutors in northern Idaho filed misdemeanor charges of battery, false imprisonment, and violation of security agent duties and uniform requirements against four security guards in connection with the incident. They pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to stand trial in December.
South Carolina
Court rejects final death row appeal focused on brain damage from mother’s drinking
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s highest court has refused to stop the execution of a man who killed three people over five days more than 20 years ago while leaving taunting messages for police in the blood of one of his victims.
Stephen Bryant, 44, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Friday by firing squad at a Columbia prison.
Lawyers for Bryant made a last-ditch appeal arguing that the judge who sentenced him to die never got to consider how badly his brain was damaged from his mother’s alcohol and drug use while pregnant.
But the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected that appeal late Monday, writing that even if Bryant’s defense had done more investigation into whether he had Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, it simply would have given a different reason for his problems while not changing the outcome of a death sentence.
“By any stretch, (Bryant) demonstrated a high level of planning, decision making, and calculation,” the justices wrote in Monday’s unanimous decision.
Bryant is being executed for killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen in his home in October 2004. Investigators said Bryant burned Tietjen’s eyes with cigarettes after shooting him and painted “catch me if u can” and other taunting messages on the wall with the victim’s blood.
Prosecutors said he also shot and killed two men he was giving rides to as they stepped out of his truck to urinate over five days that terrorized Sumter County.
In what may be their final appeal, Bryant’s lawyers said that although his original defense team had noted that he was unnerved in the months before the killings because he couldn’t stop thinking about being sexually abused by relatives as a child, they didn’t detail how that abuse had affected his ability to conform to the law.
Bryant’s lawyers said he didn’t get a full brain scan before his 2008 trial that could have identified in utero damage that was never repaired, according to court papers.
They also included what they said was newly uncovered evidence including a 2024 interview with a clinical psychologist where Bryant described abuse he suffered from male relatives, his mother, a preacher’s wife and several strippers in his neighborhood before he became a teenager.
The justices sided with prosecutors who said the three killings, along with another shooting and two burglaries mostly along dirt roads in the rural Sumter County east of Columbia weren’t impulsive crimes from a damaged brain but were methodical and cunning.
Bryant can still ask the governor to reduce his death sentence to life in prison in a decision that, if made, won’t be announced until minutes before the execution is set to start. No South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of the death penalty.
Bryant will be the third man executed by firing squad in South Carolina this year.
Struggles to find drugs to use for lethal injection led to an unintended 13-year pause in executions and prompted state lawmakers to introduce the method that’s often associated with mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America’s Old West or as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Outside of South Carolina, only three other prisoners in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad since 1977. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.
Bryant’s execution will be the seventh in South Carolina since executions restarted in September 2024. All the others have chosen execution by lethal injection after the state was able to obtain the drug needed because of a secrecy law. The state also has an electric chair.
Bryant will have a hood placed on his head before he is shot by three volunteers from 15 feet away.
Trump pardons husband of GOP supporter Rep. Harshbarger
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned Tennessee Republican Rep. Diana Harshbarger’s husband, who pleaded guilty more than a decade ago to health care fraud and other crimes and served time in federal prison.
Robert Harshbarger Jr. was a licensed pharmacist in 2013 when he admitted substituting a cheaper drug imported from China that was not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the iron sucrose that the FDA had approved for kidney dialysis patients to use. He was sentenced to and served four years in prison.
Trump signed the pardon document on Friday, according to the website of the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice. It was among several pardons the Republican president issued, including to a former speaker of the Tennessee House and to former Major League Baseball slugger and New York Mets great Darryl Strawberry.
Trump last week also pardoned a former New York police sergeant who was convicted of helping China try to scare an ex-official into going back to his homeland. On Monday, Trump pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows and many others accused of backing his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
A White House official on Tuesday defended the pardon for Harshbarger, saying that he was a victim of “excessive prosecution” and that the drug substitution he made was a common practice among pharmacists known as “compounding,” in which unapproved drugs are provided to patients based on their condition or for other reasons. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss the reasoning behind Trump’s clemency decision.
Presidents have broad constitutional powers to grant pardons, which do not erase criminal convictions but can be seen as acts of justice or mercy, often in cases that can further public welfare.
Harshbarger turned to the Chinese drug due to a backlog of the iron sucrose drug, the White House official said. No patients were alleged to have been harmed by the substitution, and doctors seemed to prefer the drug Harshbarger gave them because it was easier to administer, the official said.
Prosecutors said that even though there were no reports of patients being harmed, Harshbarger’s substitution still put patients at risk since the FDA cannot assure the safety and effectiveness of products from other countries.
Harshbarger has served his sentence, the official said. He also was ordered to pay restitution, pay a fine and forfeit $425,000 in cash.
Rep. Harshbarger, who is also a licensed pharmacist, was first elected to the U.S. House in 2020 and has been a strong supporter of Trump. She spoke in support of Trump outside his hush money criminal trial in New York in 2024 and in other settings.
Trump has backed all of her congressional campaigns and offered her his “Complete and Total Endorsement” for reelection in 2026 in a Nov. 3 social media post.
She was not a member of Congress when her husband pleaded guilty in 2013 to one count of distributing a misbranded drug and one count of health care fraud.
Robert Harshbarger’s license was revoked in 2013 after the conviction, according to the website of the Tennessee Department of Health. The congresswoman remains licensed, the records show.
Colorado
Trump pardons man who took brief detour as he ran up and down Grand Teton in record time
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned a trail runner who briefly took a prohibited trail on his way to a record time up and down the tallest peak in the Teton Range of western Wyoming.
The pardon for Michelino Sunseri, unlike recent pardons of Trump allies, appeared apolitical.
Sunseri, 33, ran up and down Grand Teton, the 13,775-foot (4,200-meter) centerpiece of the iconic Teton Range, in 2 hours, 50 minutes, 50 seconds in 2024.
It was an epic feat: The run covered 13.3 miles (21.4 kilometers), gaining 7,000 feet (2,133 meters) in elevation, then back down again in western Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.
But on the way down, Sunseri left a switchback to avoid casual hikers. Going off-trail in a national park is considered a no-no because it can cause erosion, especially when a shortcut over time becomes a popular way to go.
Sunseri, who was open about taking the two-minute detour, got a misdemeanor conviction from a judge in September.
Before the pardon, prosecutors agreed to seek dismissal if Sunseri completed 60 hours of community service and a course on wilderness stewardship, according to Sunseri’s attorneys.
The judge expressed concern about that change, however, and set another hearing in the case. The pardon now renders any deal moot.
Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed concern about “overcriminalization” of minor offenses in national parks, said Sunseri’s attorney, Ed Bushnell.
“I do believe, had Democrats been in power, we would’ve been seeing a similar result,” Bushnell said of the pardon.
Idaho
State AG’s office says no charges warranted against sheriff after turbulent town hall
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Attorney General’s Office has declined to file charges against a northern Idaho sheriff after investigating a turbulent legislative town hall meeting during which a woman was forcibly removed by security dressed in plainclothes.
The chaos at the February meeting in Coeur d’Alene drew widespread attention with videos posted online going viral showing the woman being pulled from the audience after heckling the speakers. The video showed Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris telling Teresa Borrenpohl to leave, and then stepping back and recording on his cellphone as multiple unidentified men approached and began grabbing her, dragging her out of the meeting. The men were security officers with LEAR Asset Management, but were not wearing any identification or uniforms, and witnesses said they repeatedly refused to identify themselves.
After the incident, Kootenai County Undersheriff Brett Nelson released a statement saying the agency will have a “complete and independent investigation of the incident conducted by an outside agency.”
In a Nov. 3 letter, the Idaho Attorney General’s office said it began the investigation after it received several “public corruption complaints” requesting that the office look into whether the sheriff should be charged with battery. The investigation showed the sheriff, “indisputably had law enforcement jurisdiction at the event,” the attorney general’s office wrote, and criminal charges were not merited.
“The investigation did not uncover any evidence to suggest the sheriff acted in bad faith or with malice, and criminal charges would not be appropriate,” the attorney general’s office wrote.
Norris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Borrenpohl, a Democratic legislative candidate who has run unsuccessfully in the deeply Republican region, later filed a tort claim against Kootenai County alleging that her constitutional rights were violated by both the security team and Norris. The county has not yet responded to the tort claim, Borrenpohl’s attorney Wendy Olson said.
“The Attorney General, according to his statement, was solely looking at whether the crime of battery was committed by Sheriff Norris. A criminal charge requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and the Attorney General’s Office declined based on that standard and based on the evidence it reviewed,” Olson said. “Civil cases and constitutional claims are governed by a different burden and require different evidence.”
Olson said Borrenpohl cannot comment further, because she is anticipated to be a witness in upcoming criminal proceedings in Coeur d’Alene.
Prosecutors in northern Idaho filed misdemeanor charges of battery, false imprisonment, and violation of security agent duties and uniform requirements against four security guards in connection with the incident. They pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to stand trial in December.
South Carolina
Court rejects final death row appeal focused on brain damage from mother’s drinking
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s highest court has refused to stop the execution of a man who killed three people over five days more than 20 years ago while leaving taunting messages for police in the blood of one of his victims.
Stephen Bryant, 44, is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Friday by firing squad at a Columbia prison.
Lawyers for Bryant made a last-ditch appeal arguing that the judge who sentenced him to die never got to consider how badly his brain was damaged from his mother’s alcohol and drug use while pregnant.
But the South Carolina Supreme Court rejected that appeal late Monday, writing that even if Bryant’s defense had done more investigation into whether he had Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, it simply would have given a different reason for his problems while not changing the outcome of a death sentence.
“By any stretch, (Bryant) demonstrated a high level of planning, decision making, and calculation,” the justices wrote in Monday’s unanimous decision.
Bryant is being executed for killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen in his home in October 2004. Investigators said Bryant burned Tietjen’s eyes with cigarettes after shooting him and painted “catch me if u can” and other taunting messages on the wall with the victim’s blood.
Prosecutors said he also shot and killed two men he was giving rides to as they stepped out of his truck to urinate over five days that terrorized Sumter County.
In what may be their final appeal, Bryant’s lawyers said that although his original defense team had noted that he was unnerved in the months before the killings because he couldn’t stop thinking about being sexually abused by relatives as a child, they didn’t detail how that abuse had affected his ability to conform to the law.
Bryant’s lawyers said he didn’t get a full brain scan before his 2008 trial that could have identified in utero damage that was never repaired, according to court papers.
They also included what they said was newly uncovered evidence including a 2024 interview with a clinical psychologist where Bryant described abuse he suffered from male relatives, his mother, a preacher’s wife and several strippers in his neighborhood before he became a teenager.
The justices sided with prosecutors who said the three killings, along with another shooting and two burglaries mostly along dirt roads in the rural Sumter County east of Columbia weren’t impulsive crimes from a damaged brain but were methodical and cunning.
Bryant can still ask the governor to reduce his death sentence to life in prison in a decision that, if made, won’t be announced until minutes before the execution is set to start. No South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of the death penalty.
Bryant will be the third man executed by firing squad in South Carolina this year.
Struggles to find drugs to use for lethal injection led to an unintended 13-year pause in executions and prompted state lawmakers to introduce the method that’s often associated with mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America’s Old West or as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Outside of South Carolina, only three other prisoners in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad since 1977. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.
Bryant’s execution will be the seventh in South Carolina since executions restarted in September 2024. All the others have chosen execution by lethal injection after the state was able to obtain the drug needed because of a secrecy law. The state also has an electric chair.
Bryant will have a hood placed on his head before he is shot by three volunteers from 15 feet away.
