Washington
Agent hit by buckshot from the gun of man charged in correspondents’ dinner attack, prosecutor says
WASHINGTON (AP) — Authorities have determined that buckshot from the gun of the man charged with trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in an attempt to kill President Donald Trump struck a Secret Service agent, according to the federal prosecutor overseeing the investigation.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said last week there was no evidence the agent was hit by friendly fire during the incident at a Washington hotel on April 25, but she went beyond that Sunday in saying a shot from one of Cole Tomas Allen’s weapons hit the officer’s bullet-resistant vest.
“We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant’s Mossberg pump-action shotgun was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer,” she told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It is definitively his bullet.”
Allen, who remains behind bars for now pending his trial, was injured during the attack but was not shot. The officer survived.
His attorneys on Sunday filed a document with the court saying they learned he was no longer on suicide watch and sought to withdraw a motion formally seeking to remove him from such supervision.
On Thursday, Pirro posted a video on social media showing the moment that authorities say a man with guns and knives attempted to storm the media gala. Questions have lingered about whose bullet struck the officer as the suspect ran through security with a long gun toward the ballroom packed with journalists, administration officials and others.
A phone call to lawyers representing Allen went unanswered on Sunday.
Allen has been charged with attempted assassination of the president, as well as two additional firearms counts, including discharging a weapon during a crime of violence. He faces up to life in prison if convicted of the assassination count alone.
Allen, 31, is from Torrance, California. He worked as a part-time tutor for a test preparation company and is an amateur video game developer.
Washington
Supreme Court restores access to abortion pill mifepristone through telehealth, mail and pharmacies
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday restored broad access to the abortion pill mifepristone, blocking a ruling that had threatened to upend one of the main ways abortions are provided across the nation.
The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito temporarily allows women seeking abortions to obtain the pill at pharmacies or through the mail, without an in-person visit to a doctor.
Those rules had been in effect for several years until a federal appeals court imposed new restrictions last week.
The majority of abortions in the U.S. are obtained through medications, usually a combination of mifepristone and a second drug, misoprostol. The availability of those drugs has blunted the impact of abortion bans that most Republican-led states have sought to enforce since a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Louisiana sued to restrict access to mifepristone, asserting that its availability undermined the ban there.
Some Democratic-led states have laws that seek to give legal protection to those who prescribe the drugs via telehealth to patients in states with bans.
Alito’s order will remain in effect for another week while both sides respond and the court more fully considers the issue.
Manufacturers of mifepristone filed emergency appeals asking the Supreme Court to step in.
Kristan Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life, decried Monday’s decision.
“Pill pushers receive every benefit of the doubt, including today, as Justice Alito allows pill traffickers and big pharma to operate temporarily while arguments are sent to the Court,” she said in a statement.
After Friday’s ruling from the appeals court, some groups that prescribe abortion pills by telehealth had planned to switch to misoprostol-only regimens.
Dr. Angel Foster, founder of The Massachusetts Abortion Access Project, said her organization was preparing to send misoprostol only on Monday afternoon but was able to switch back.
“Regardless of what happens with this regulatory issue, we and other groups will continue to provide high-quality abortion care to patients in all 50 states,” she said.
Washington
Judge in dispute over Washington golf course tells Trump officials not to cut trees without notice
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge told the U.S. government Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid a legal dispute at a historic Washington golf course that President Donald Trump plans to renovate.
U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet in the case brought by the DC Preservation League. She also told the National Park Service that it should first discuss any plans with government lawyers if it was going to cut down more than 10 trees.
Monday’s hearing came after the plaintiff’s emergency petition seeking to stop work at the course, citing news reports that major renovations were to begin Monday.
Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the Park Service, said during the hearing there was no plan to begin such work Monday but added that a safety assessment was underway.
Reyes told the parties she didn’t want to play the role of the “Parks and Rec” department, an allusion to the sitcom, but said she also didn’t want trees being bulldozed.
“I’m no Amy Poehler,” she said referring to the show’s star.
At one point during Monday’s hearing, the judge said she was made aware that closure signs had been put up at the site, which led to Griess asking someone to check. He later reported that there were no such signs. Reyes asked that if any such signs were found that the government’s attorney be told.
The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior argues that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park, including the East Potomac Golf Course, would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The roughly 130-year-old act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.” The course itself opened in 1919.
Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside of Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.
Arizona
Fugees rapper Pras reports to prison to begin 14-year sentence
SAFFORD, Ariz (AP) — Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees has reported to federal prison to begin a 14-year sentence following a conviction over illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
Michel reported to prison Thursday, a spokesperson said, with federal records listing him as an inmate at a low-security correctional institution in Arizona.
“Today is a painful day for Pras, for his family, and for everyone who believes in a fair system of justice. Pras honors the legal process as he reports to begin his sentence,” said Erica Dumas, a spokesperson for Michel, adding that his legal team is still contesting his charges.
“This chapter is difficult, but it is not his final one,” Dumas said.
Michel, 53, was convicted in 2023 on 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. He was sentenced late last year.
Prosecutors said he obtained over $120 million from Malaysian billionaire Low Taek Jho — also known as Jho Low — and steered some of that money through straw donors to Obama’s campaign. Michel also tried to end a U.S. Justice Department investigation of Low, tampered with two witnesses and perjured himself at trial, prosecutors said. Low has maintained his innocence.
Michel was a founding member of the Fugees along with childhood friends Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, with the group going on to win two Grammy Awards and selling tens of millions of albums.
California
Prosecutors say arson suspect in Palisades Fire was angry ‘at the world’
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The man accused of sparking the deadly Palisades Fire in Los Angeles was upset that he didn’t have plans for New Year’s Eve and ranted about being angry at the world before the initial blaze was sparked, according to court documents filed by prosecutors.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, has pleaded not guilty to starting what became one of the most destructive wildfires in California history. It began Jan. 7, 2025, in hillside neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Malibu and killed 12 people. Prosecutors say Rinderknecht started a fire on Jan. 1 that burned undetected deep in root systems before flaring back up a week later.
Rinderknecht’s trial is set to begin June 8. His attorneys say he is being used as a scapegoat for the Los Angeles Fire Department’s failure to fully extinguish the earlier blaze.
An outline of the prosecutors’ strategy — with details about the defendant’s alleged state of mind on the night before the first fire began — appears in an April 29 pre-trial memo filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Witnesses reported that Rinderknecht had been driving erratically while on Uber routes around the Palisades on New Year’s Eve, said prosecutors. His passengers described him as “angry, intense, driving erratically, and ranting about being ‘pissed off at the world,’” the memo said.
According to court filings, Rinderknecht ranted to passengers about accused UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione, capitalism and vigilantism. In an interview with investigators on Jan. 24, when asked why someone might commit arson in the Palisades, Rinderknecht “responded that it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them,’” and again referenced Mangione’s alleged crime, the documents said.
In addition, prosecutors said Rinderknecht was distraught over a failed relationship and upset about thwarted plans for New Year’s Eve.
“My client maintains his innocence as he has from the beginning and we look forward to clearing his name at trial,” Rinderknecht’s attorney Steve Haney said in an email Sunday. “The offered motive that my client started a fire on NYs Eve because he did not have date speaks for itself.”
Haney held a news conference in March to call for Rinderknecht’s release from jail in light of evidence he said shows he is not responsible for the blaze. Haney pointed to a deposition in which a firefighter testified that he noticed the ground was still smoldering from the fire on Jan. 2 and alerted a supervisors that there were hot spots. That testimony was gathered as part of a lawsuit filed by fire victims against the city.
A battalion chief had testified that he walked the perimeter of the burn area four times throughout the day and ensured all hot spots were out.
Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore, who was appointed in October, has said he is concerned about the differences in the firefighters’ testimonies and commissioned an independent report on how the Jan. 1 fire was handled.
Haney has said this evidence was not available to the defense when Rinderknecht was indicted.
Agent hit by buckshot from the gun of man charged in correspondents’ dinner attack, prosecutor says
WASHINGTON (AP) — Authorities have determined that buckshot from the gun of the man charged with trying to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in an attempt to kill President Donald Trump struck a Secret Service agent, according to the federal prosecutor overseeing the investigation.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said last week there was no evidence the agent was hit by friendly fire during the incident at a Washington hotel on April 25, but she went beyond that Sunday in saying a shot from one of Cole Tomas Allen’s weapons hit the officer’s bullet-resistant vest.
“We now can establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant’s Mossberg pump-action shotgun was intertwined with the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer,” she told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It is definitively his bullet.”
Allen, who remains behind bars for now pending his trial, was injured during the attack but was not shot. The officer survived.
His attorneys on Sunday filed a document with the court saying they learned he was no longer on suicide watch and sought to withdraw a motion formally seeking to remove him from such supervision.
On Thursday, Pirro posted a video on social media showing the moment that authorities say a man with guns and knives attempted to storm the media gala. Questions have lingered about whose bullet struck the officer as the suspect ran through security with a long gun toward the ballroom packed with journalists, administration officials and others.
A phone call to lawyers representing Allen went unanswered on Sunday.
Allen has been charged with attempted assassination of the president, as well as two additional firearms counts, including discharging a weapon during a crime of violence. He faces up to life in prison if convicted of the assassination count alone.
Allen, 31, is from Torrance, California. He worked as a part-time tutor for a test preparation company and is an amateur video game developer.
Washington
Supreme Court restores access to abortion pill mifepristone through telehealth, mail and pharmacies
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday restored broad access to the abortion pill mifepristone, blocking a ruling that had threatened to upend one of the main ways abortions are provided across the nation.
The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito temporarily allows women seeking abortions to obtain the pill at pharmacies or through the mail, without an in-person visit to a doctor.
Those rules had been in effect for several years until a federal appeals court imposed new restrictions last week.
The majority of abortions in the U.S. are obtained through medications, usually a combination of mifepristone and a second drug, misoprostol. The availability of those drugs has blunted the impact of abortion bans that most Republican-led states have sought to enforce since a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Louisiana sued to restrict access to mifepristone, asserting that its availability undermined the ban there.
Some Democratic-led states have laws that seek to give legal protection to those who prescribe the drugs via telehealth to patients in states with bans.
Alito’s order will remain in effect for another week while both sides respond and the court more fully considers the issue.
Manufacturers of mifepristone filed emergency appeals asking the Supreme Court to step in.
Kristan Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life, decried Monday’s decision.
“Pill pushers receive every benefit of the doubt, including today, as Justice Alito allows pill traffickers and big pharma to operate temporarily while arguments are sent to the Court,” she said in a statement.
After Friday’s ruling from the appeals court, some groups that prescribe abortion pills by telehealth had planned to switch to misoprostol-only regimens.
Dr. Angel Foster, founder of The Massachusetts Abortion Access Project, said her organization was preparing to send misoprostol only on Monday afternoon but was able to switch back.
“Regardless of what happens with this regulatory issue, we and other groups will continue to provide high-quality abortion care to patients in all 50 states,” she said.
Washington
Judge in dispute over Washington golf course tells Trump officials not to cut trees without notice
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge told the U.S. government Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid a legal dispute at a historic Washington golf course that President Donald Trump plans to renovate.
U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet in the case brought by the DC Preservation League. She also told the National Park Service that it should first discuss any plans with government lawyers if it was going to cut down more than 10 trees.
Monday’s hearing came after the plaintiff’s emergency petition seeking to stop work at the course, citing news reports that major renovations were to begin Monday.
Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the Park Service, said during the hearing there was no plan to begin such work Monday but added that a safety assessment was underway.
Reyes told the parties she didn’t want to play the role of the “Parks and Rec” department, an allusion to the sitcom, but said she also didn’t want trees being bulldozed.
“I’m no Amy Poehler,” she said referring to the show’s star.
At one point during Monday’s hearing, the judge said she was made aware that closure signs had been put up at the site, which led to Griess asking someone to check. He later reported that there were no such signs. Reyes asked that if any such signs were found that the government’s attorney be told.
The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior argues that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park, including the East Potomac Golf Course, would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The roughly 130-year-old act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.” The course itself opened in 1919.
Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside of Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.
Arizona
Fugees rapper Pras reports to prison to begin 14-year sentence
SAFFORD, Ariz (AP) — Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees has reported to federal prison to begin a 14-year sentence following a conviction over illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
Michel reported to prison Thursday, a spokesperson said, with federal records listing him as an inmate at a low-security correctional institution in Arizona.
“Today is a painful day for Pras, for his family, and for everyone who believes in a fair system of justice. Pras honors the legal process as he reports to begin his sentence,” said Erica Dumas, a spokesperson for Michel, adding that his legal team is still contesting his charges.
“This chapter is difficult, but it is not his final one,” Dumas said.
Michel, 53, was convicted in 2023 on 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. He was sentenced late last year.
Prosecutors said he obtained over $120 million from Malaysian billionaire Low Taek Jho — also known as Jho Low — and steered some of that money through straw donors to Obama’s campaign. Michel also tried to end a U.S. Justice Department investigation of Low, tampered with two witnesses and perjured himself at trial, prosecutors said. Low has maintained his innocence.
Michel was a founding member of the Fugees along with childhood friends Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, with the group going on to win two Grammy Awards and selling tens of millions of albums.
California
Prosecutors say arson suspect in Palisades Fire was angry ‘at the world’
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The man accused of sparking the deadly Palisades Fire in Los Angeles was upset that he didn’t have plans for New Year’s Eve and ranted about being angry at the world before the initial blaze was sparked, according to court documents filed by prosecutors.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, has pleaded not guilty to starting what became one of the most destructive wildfires in California history. It began Jan. 7, 2025, in hillside neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Malibu and killed 12 people. Prosecutors say Rinderknecht started a fire on Jan. 1 that burned undetected deep in root systems before flaring back up a week later.
Rinderknecht’s trial is set to begin June 8. His attorneys say he is being used as a scapegoat for the Los Angeles Fire Department’s failure to fully extinguish the earlier blaze.
An outline of the prosecutors’ strategy — with details about the defendant’s alleged state of mind on the night before the first fire began — appears in an April 29 pre-trial memo filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Witnesses reported that Rinderknecht had been driving erratically while on Uber routes around the Palisades on New Year’s Eve, said prosecutors. His passengers described him as “angry, intense, driving erratically, and ranting about being ‘pissed off at the world,’” the memo said.
According to court filings, Rinderknecht ranted to passengers about accused UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione, capitalism and vigilantism. In an interview with investigators on Jan. 24, when asked why someone might commit arson in the Palisades, Rinderknecht “responded that it would be out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them,’” and again referenced Mangione’s alleged crime, the documents said.
In addition, prosecutors said Rinderknecht was distraught over a failed relationship and upset about thwarted plans for New Year’s Eve.
“My client maintains his innocence as he has from the beginning and we look forward to clearing his name at trial,” Rinderknecht’s attorney Steve Haney said in an email Sunday. “The offered motive that my client started a fire on NYs Eve because he did not have date speaks for itself.”
Haney held a news conference in March to call for Rinderknecht’s release from jail in light of evidence he said shows he is not responsible for the blaze. Haney pointed to a deposition in which a firefighter testified that he noticed the ground was still smoldering from the fire on Jan. 2 and alerted a supervisors that there were hot spots. That testimony was gathered as part of a lawsuit filed by fire victims against the city.
A battalion chief had testified that he walked the perimeter of the burn area four times throughout the day and ensured all hot spots were out.
Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore, who was appointed in October, has said he is concerned about the differences in the firefighters’ testimonies and commissioned an independent report on how the Jan. 1 fire was handled.
Haney has said this evidence was not available to the defense when Rinderknecht was indicted.
