New York
Activist wants ex-DOJ official off panel of judges weighing appeal
NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student fighting deportation, have asked Judge Emil Bove to step aside from an appellate panel that could weigh in on his case because of Bove’s previous role as a top Justice Department official involved in investigating student protesters.
Khalil’s lawyers this week asked that the full complement of judges on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals — minus Bove — review and reverse a January ruling by a panel of three 3rd Circuit judges that put the Trump administration one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the pro-Palestinian activist.
As the Justice Department’s Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, Bove “directed immigration enforcement investigations and decisions against student protesters on college campuses,” including at Columbia, Khalil’s lawyers wrote.
Bove’s immigration enforcement work “demonstrates the existence, or at least the appearance of, a conflict of interest” that should disqualify him from having a say in Khalil’s appeal, they said.
Bove has been a judge on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since September. Prior to his role at the Justice Department, he served as one of President Donald Trump’s defense lawyers, representing him in criminal matters including the hush-money case in New York that ended in Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts.
The decision on recusal is up to Bove himself. The Justice Department, whose lawyers are representing the government in Khalil’s appeal, “sees no basis for recusal but defers to Judge Bove,” according to court papers.
Through the 3rd Circuit court, Bove declined to comment.
During the judicial confirmation process, Bove acknowledged that his Justice Department position, overseeing criminal and civil matters across the country, “could give rise to actual or potential conflicts” and that he would recuse himself “in cases that I was personally involved in should any such matter come before the court.”
Khalil, a legal permanent resident, was the first person whose arrest became publicly known during the crackdown on noncitizens who publicly criticized Israel and its actions in Gaza.
He remains in the U.S. with his wife, an American citizen, and their young son while he fights the January ruling that found a New Jersey federal judge who had sided with him didn’t have jurisdiction to decide the matter. Federal law requires detention and deportation challenges to move through the separate immigration court system first, the ruling said.
The three-judge panel’s 2-1 decision didn’t resolve the key issue in Khalil’s case: whether the Trump administration’s effort to throw Khalil out of the U.S. over his campus activism and criticism of Israel is unconstitutional. He then spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail, missing the birth of his son.
The Trump administration has accused Khalil of leading activities “aligned to Hamas,” though they have not presented evidence to support the claim and have not accused him of criminal conduct. They also accused him of failing to disclose information on his green card application.
Khalil, who was born in Syria to a Palestinian family and holds Algerian citizenship, has dismissed the allegations as “baseless and ridiculous,” framing his arrest and detention as a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
The government justified Khalil’s arrest under a seldom-used statute that allows for the expulsion of noncitizens whose beliefs are deemed to pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests.
In February 2025, a month before Khalil’s arrest, Bove co-authored a memorandum on the Justice Department’s formation of a task force geared toward “Investigating and prosecuting acts of terrorism, antisemitic civil rights violations, and other federal crimes committed by Hamas supporters in the United States, including on college campuses.”
Colorado
Court orders resentencing for ex-county clerk
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado appeals court ruled Thursday that a former county clerk convicted in a scheme that attempted to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election should be resentenced.
Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison term after being convicted of state crimes for sneaking in an outside computer expert to make a copy of her county’s election computer system during a software update in 2021. A photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were later posted on social media and a conservative website.
Judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals said that a judge should not have considered Peters’ continued promotion of election fraud conspiracies when he sentenced her in 2024. The court sent Peters’ case back to a lower court for a judge to issue a new sentence.
Peters’ release has become a cause celebre in the election conspiracy movement. President Donald Trump has pressured Colorado to set her free.
Peters was unapologetic when she was sentenced by Judge Matthew Barrett and insisted that she tried to unearth what she believed was fraud for the greater good. He ripped into her, calling her a “charlatan” who had used her position to “peddle snake oil.”
Peters was the former clerk in Mesa County, in the far western part of Colorado, and convicted by jurors in the Republican stronghold that has supported Trump.
Trump has threatened to take “harsh measures” against Colorado unless the state releases her. In February, Trump said Colorado was “suffering a big price” for refusing to release her.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, has accused the Trump administration of waging a “revenge campaign” by choking off funds and ending federal programs over the state’s refusal to free Peters.
The Justice Department inserted itself into Peters’ bid to be released while her state appeal was considered. The federal Bureau of Prisons tried to get Peters moved to a federal prison. After both efforts failed, Trump announced a pardon for Peters, which was considered symbolic since Colorado says it doesn’t apply to her state convictions.
But in January, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said he was considering granting clemency for Peters, calling her sentence “unusual and harsh” for a first-time, non-violent offender.
Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state.
Peters’ lawyers didn’t deny that she used the security badge of a local man she pretended to hire to allow the an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make a copy of the Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during an annual software update in 2021.
But they said she only wanted to preserve election data and find out whether any outside actor had accessed the system while ballots were being counted. They said she didn’t want the information made public.
Louisiana
U.S. appeals court denies bid from families of Boeing 737 Max crash victims to reopen criminal case
A federal appeals court has denied a request from dozens of families to reopen a criminal case against Boeing over two fatal 737 Max crashes more than seven years ago.
Lawyers for the families had argued that the U.S. Department of Justice failed to properly consult them before reaching a deal last year with Boeing that led a lower court to dismiss a criminal conspiracy charge against the company. The charge stemmed from allegations that Boeing misled federal regulators about a flight-control system linked to the crashes, which killed 346 people.
In a unanimous decision released Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it disagreed with the families’ claims that federal prosecutors had violated their rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and therefore could not revive the case.
Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, called the ruling “badly flawed.”
“The victims’ families were never given a meaningful opportunity to shape the negotiations between the Justice Department and Boeing, dating back to 2020,” Cassell said in a statement.
The aircraft manufacturer declined to comment, but at a hearing last month in New Orleans before the appellate court, Boeing attorney Paul Clement said more than 60 other families “affirmatively supported” the deal and dozens more did not oppose it.
“Boeing deeply regrets” the tragic crashes, Clement had said, and “has taken extraordinary steps to improve its internal processes and has paid substantial compensation” to the victims’ families.
The deal allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution in exchange for paying or investing an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation to victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures.
At the same hearing, federal prosecutors told the judges that the government has, for years, “solicited and weighed the views of the crash victims’ families as it’s decided whether and how to prosecute the Boeing Company.”
All passengers and crew died when the 737 Max jets crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019 — a Lion Air flight that plunged into the sea off the coast of Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed into a field shortly after takeoff.
Catherine Berthet, whose daughter Camille Geoffroy was among the 157 killed in the second crash, said she is “sad and outraged” by the court’s decision. The ruling, she said in a statement, highlights the criminal justice system’s “inability to see where the public’s and passengers’ best interests truly lie.”
The case had taken many twists and turns. The Justice Department first charged Boeing in 2021 with defrauding the government but agreed not to prosecute if the company paid a settlement and took steps to comply with anti-fraud laws.
Federal prosecutors later determined in 2024 that Boeing had violated that agreement, and the company agreed to plead guilty to the charge. But U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas, who oversaw the case for years, rejected the plea deal and directed the two sides to resume negotiations.
The Justice Department returned last May with the new deal and a request to withdraw the criminal charge altogether, which O’Connor approved in November. Prosecutors argued that going to trial carried the risk that a jury might acquit Boeing entirely.
In dismissing the case, O’Connor said prosecutors hadn’t acted in bad faith and had explained their decision and met their obligations under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.
O’Connor also said that case law prevented him from blocking the dismissal simply because he disagreed with the government’s view that the new deal with Boeing served the public interest.
The case centered around a software system that Boeing developed for the 737 Max, which airlines began flying in 2017. Boeing billed it as an update to its 737 family that wouldn’t require much additional pilot training.
But the Max did include significant changes — most notably, the addition of an automated flight-control system designed to help account for the plane’s larger engines. Investigators found that Boeing did not inform key Federal Aviation Administration personnel about changes it had made to the software before regulators set pilot training requirements for the Max and certified it for flight.
In both of the fatal crashes, that software pitched the nose of the plane down repeatedly based on faulty readings from a single sensor, and the pilots were unable to regain control.
“One can only hope that another Boeing crash won’t be the outcome of this badly flawed ruling,” Cassell, the lawyer for the families, said Tuesday.
Activist wants ex-DOJ official off panel of judges weighing appeal
NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student fighting deportation, have asked Judge Emil Bove to step aside from an appellate panel that could weigh in on his case because of Bove’s previous role as a top Justice Department official involved in investigating student protesters.
Khalil’s lawyers this week asked that the full complement of judges on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals — minus Bove — review and reverse a January ruling by a panel of three 3rd Circuit judges that put the Trump administration one step closer to detaining and ultimately deporting the pro-Palestinian activist.
As the Justice Department’s Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, Bove “directed immigration enforcement investigations and decisions against student protesters on college campuses,” including at Columbia, Khalil’s lawyers wrote.
Bove’s immigration enforcement work “demonstrates the existence, or at least the appearance of, a conflict of interest” that should disqualify him from having a say in Khalil’s appeal, they said.
Bove has been a judge on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since September. Prior to his role at the Justice Department, he served as one of President Donald Trump’s defense lawyers, representing him in criminal matters including the hush-money case in New York that ended in Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts.
The decision on recusal is up to Bove himself. The Justice Department, whose lawyers are representing the government in Khalil’s appeal, “sees no basis for recusal but defers to Judge Bove,” according to court papers.
Through the 3rd Circuit court, Bove declined to comment.
During the judicial confirmation process, Bove acknowledged that his Justice Department position, overseeing criminal and civil matters across the country, “could give rise to actual or potential conflicts” and that he would recuse himself “in cases that I was personally involved in should any such matter come before the court.”
Khalil, a legal permanent resident, was the first person whose arrest became publicly known during the crackdown on noncitizens who publicly criticized Israel and its actions in Gaza.
He remains in the U.S. with his wife, an American citizen, and their young son while he fights the January ruling that found a New Jersey federal judge who had sided with him didn’t have jurisdiction to decide the matter. Federal law requires detention and deportation challenges to move through the separate immigration court system first, the ruling said.
The three-judge panel’s 2-1 decision didn’t resolve the key issue in Khalil’s case: whether the Trump administration’s effort to throw Khalil out of the U.S. over his campus activism and criticism of Israel is unconstitutional. He then spent three months detained in a Louisiana immigration jail, missing the birth of his son.
The Trump administration has accused Khalil of leading activities “aligned to Hamas,” though they have not presented evidence to support the claim and have not accused him of criminal conduct. They also accused him of failing to disclose information on his green card application.
Khalil, who was born in Syria to a Palestinian family and holds Algerian citizenship, has dismissed the allegations as “baseless and ridiculous,” framing his arrest and detention as a “direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
The government justified Khalil’s arrest under a seldom-used statute that allows for the expulsion of noncitizens whose beliefs are deemed to pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests.
In February 2025, a month before Khalil’s arrest, Bove co-authored a memorandum on the Justice Department’s formation of a task force geared toward “Investigating and prosecuting acts of terrorism, antisemitic civil rights violations, and other federal crimes committed by Hamas supporters in the United States, including on college campuses.”
Colorado
Court orders resentencing for ex-county clerk
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado appeals court ruled Thursday that a former county clerk convicted in a scheme that attempted to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election should be resentenced.
Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison term after being convicted of state crimes for sneaking in an outside computer expert to make a copy of her county’s election computer system during a software update in 2021. A photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were later posted on social media and a conservative website.
Judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals said that a judge should not have considered Peters’ continued promotion of election fraud conspiracies when he sentenced her in 2024. The court sent Peters’ case back to a lower court for a judge to issue a new sentence.
Peters’ release has become a cause celebre in the election conspiracy movement. President Donald Trump has pressured Colorado to set her free.
Peters was unapologetic when she was sentenced by Judge Matthew Barrett and insisted that she tried to unearth what she believed was fraud for the greater good. He ripped into her, calling her a “charlatan” who had used her position to “peddle snake oil.”
Peters was the former clerk in Mesa County, in the far western part of Colorado, and convicted by jurors in the Republican stronghold that has supported Trump.
Trump has threatened to take “harsh measures” against Colorado unless the state releases her. In February, Trump said Colorado was “suffering a big price” for refusing to release her.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, has accused the Trump administration of waging a “revenge campaign” by choking off funds and ending federal programs over the state’s refusal to free Peters.
The Justice Department inserted itself into Peters’ bid to be released while her state appeal was considered. The federal Bureau of Prisons tried to get Peters moved to a federal prison. After both efforts failed, Trump announced a pardon for Peters, which was considered symbolic since Colorado says it doesn’t apply to her state convictions.
But in January, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said he was considering granting clemency for Peters, calling her sentence “unusual and harsh” for a first-time, non-violent offender.
Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state.
Peters’ lawyers didn’t deny that she used the security badge of a local man she pretended to hire to allow the an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make a copy of the Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during an annual software update in 2021.
But they said she only wanted to preserve election data and find out whether any outside actor had accessed the system while ballots were being counted. They said she didn’t want the information made public.
Louisiana
U.S. appeals court denies bid from families of Boeing 737 Max crash victims to reopen criminal case
A federal appeals court has denied a request from dozens of families to reopen a criminal case against Boeing over two fatal 737 Max crashes more than seven years ago.
Lawyers for the families had argued that the U.S. Department of Justice failed to properly consult them before reaching a deal last year with Boeing that led a lower court to dismiss a criminal conspiracy charge against the company. The charge stemmed from allegations that Boeing misled federal regulators about a flight-control system linked to the crashes, which killed 346 people.
In a unanimous decision released Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it disagreed with the families’ claims that federal prosecutors had violated their rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and therefore could not revive the case.
Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, called the ruling “badly flawed.”
“The victims’ families were never given a meaningful opportunity to shape the negotiations between the Justice Department and Boeing, dating back to 2020,” Cassell said in a statement.
The aircraft manufacturer declined to comment, but at a hearing last month in New Orleans before the appellate court, Boeing attorney Paul Clement said more than 60 other families “affirmatively supported” the deal and dozens more did not oppose it.
“Boeing deeply regrets” the tragic crashes, Clement had said, and “has taken extraordinary steps to improve its internal processes and has paid substantial compensation” to the victims’ families.
The deal allowed Boeing to avoid prosecution in exchange for paying or investing an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation to victims’ families, and internal safety and quality measures.
At the same hearing, federal prosecutors told the judges that the government has, for years, “solicited and weighed the views of the crash victims’ families as it’s decided whether and how to prosecute the Boeing Company.”
All passengers and crew died when the 737 Max jets crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019 — a Lion Air flight that plunged into the sea off the coast of Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed into a field shortly after takeoff.
Catherine Berthet, whose daughter Camille Geoffroy was among the 157 killed in the second crash, said she is “sad and outraged” by the court’s decision. The ruling, she said in a statement, highlights the criminal justice system’s “inability to see where the public’s and passengers’ best interests truly lie.”
The case had taken many twists and turns. The Justice Department first charged Boeing in 2021 with defrauding the government but agreed not to prosecute if the company paid a settlement and took steps to comply with anti-fraud laws.
Federal prosecutors later determined in 2024 that Boeing had violated that agreement, and the company agreed to plead guilty to the charge. But U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas, who oversaw the case for years, rejected the plea deal and directed the two sides to resume negotiations.
The Justice Department returned last May with the new deal and a request to withdraw the criminal charge altogether, which O’Connor approved in November. Prosecutors argued that going to trial carried the risk that a jury might acquit Boeing entirely.
In dismissing the case, O’Connor said prosecutors hadn’t acted in bad faith and had explained their decision and met their obligations under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.
O’Connor also said that case law prevented him from blocking the dismissal simply because he disagreed with the government’s view that the new deal with Boeing served the public interest.
The case centered around a software system that Boeing developed for the 737 Max, which airlines began flying in 2017. Boeing billed it as an update to its 737 family that wouldn’t require much additional pilot training.
But the Max did include significant changes — most notably, the addition of an automated flight-control system designed to help account for the plane’s larger engines. Investigators found that Boeing did not inform key Federal Aviation Administration personnel about changes it had made to the software before regulators set pilot training requirements for the Max and certified it for flight.
In both of the fatal crashes, that software pitched the nose of the plane down repeatedly based on faulty readings from a single sensor, and the pilots were unable to regain control.
“One can only hope that another Boeing crash won’t be the outcome of this badly flawed ruling,” Cassell, the lawyer for the families, said Tuesday.
