Minnesota
Minneapolis police chief resigns after interfering with an investigation, mayor says
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who was hired to oversee reforms in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, chose to resign rather than face disciplinary action for interfering with an investigation into his conduct, Mayor Jacob Frey announced Tuesday.
O’Hara, who led local police during the recent federal immigration crackdown in the city, was under investigation on accusations that he was engaging in intimate relationships with city employees.
While those allegations were never substantiated, Frey said investigators found that O’Hara had interfered with the probe. He is accused of deleting a contact card from his city-issued cell phone in an attempt to shield evidence and telling another city employee about the investigation after he was instructed to keep it quiet, according to a written reprimand obtained by The Associated Press.
The mayor told O’Hara he would be disciplined, which could include his termination. He chose to resign instead, Frey said.
The city still has 17 open complaints against O’Hara — separate from the investigation that resulted in disciplinary action — and will continue investigating, mayor’s office spokesperson Jennifer Lor said. Lor could not comment on the nature of those complaints.
O’Hara became the chief in 2022 as the department was at the center of a nationwide reckoning over racism and brutality in policing. Two years prior, Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white officer in Minneapolis, igniting global Black Lives Matter protests and calls to defund the police.
Last year, Minneapolis entered an agreement with the federal government to overhaul its police training and use-of-force policies in the wake Floyd’s murder. The U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump canceled the agreement months later.
O’Hara oversaw the law enforcement response to the deadly Annunciation Catholic School shooting last August.
He criticized immigration enforcement tactics in December after a federal agent kneeled on a woman’s back during an arrest and then tried to drag her to a car.
Assistant Police Chief Katie Blackwell has stepped in to lead the department during the search for a new chief, Frey said.
Washington
Trump’s DOJ scrubs website of news releases about Jan. 6 defendants
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Justice is acknowledging it has removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, calling the information about the prosecutions “partisan propaganda.”
The purge of news releases documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings is the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically rewrite the history of the assault on the Capitol, when hundreds of supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to halt the congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump, on his first day back in office in January 2025, pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes during the Capitol assault, including those convicted of attacking officers with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and crutch.
On Monday, the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund meant to compensate Trump allies who feel they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not ruled out that rioters convicted of violence will be eligible for payouts, prompting bipartisan anger in Congress.
After a journalist on Friday observed on the social media platform X that the Justice Department was “quietly” removing news releases on its website that were related to the Jan. 6 attack, including about a Texas man who pleaded guilty to assault and also faced separate state charges of soliciting a minor, the department responded through its “rapid response” account that there was “nothing ‘quiet’ about it.”
“We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes,” the post said. “This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”
Among the releases removed from the site were those concerning seditious conspiracy cases against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, far-right extremist groups. The Justice Department, in an unopposed motion last month, asked a federal appeals court to vacate those seditious conspiracy convictions, a request that was granted Thursday. The department on Friday moved to dismiss the cases against the group members.
New York
Judge drops charges against ex-Fox executive
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge dismissed charges against a convicted former Fox television executive Wednesday after a prosecutor said charges brought in a U.S.-led effort to battle corruption in international soccer “doesn’t fit within” the priorities of the Trump administration.
Judge Pamela K. Chen accepted the explanation provided by U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. about why the government wanted to dismiss the indictment against Hernan Lopez.
A smiling Lopez, the former CEO of Fox International Channels, later left the Brooklyn federal courthouse, telling reporters he was relieved that “a case that never should have started is finally over.”
Nocella told Chen that the administration preferred to focus on domestic and foreign terrorist organizations, national security, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking and violent gangs.
The judge said Nocella’s stated reason, along with an explanation in a written document submitted to the court, “does provide sufficient justification” to accept the request to dismiss the indictment.
Lopez and Full Play Group SA, a South American sports media company, were convicted in 2023 of paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to nab broadcasting rights to the World Cup and other top soccer matches. But they were subsequently granted an acquittal by Chen.
An appeals court reinstated the convictions in July, but additional appeals followed and the fate of the prosecution had been uncertain.
Chen said during Wednesday’s hearing that she was not basing her decision to dismiss the indictment “in any way” on her prior decision granting the acquittal.
Prosecutors told the Supreme Court in December that the government has now determined that “dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” though they did not expand on their rationale.
Minneapolis police chief resigns after interfering with an investigation, mayor says
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, who was hired to oversee reforms in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, chose to resign rather than face disciplinary action for interfering with an investigation into his conduct, Mayor Jacob Frey announced Tuesday.
O’Hara, who led local police during the recent federal immigration crackdown in the city, was under investigation on accusations that he was engaging in intimate relationships with city employees.
While those allegations were never substantiated, Frey said investigators found that O’Hara had interfered with the probe. He is accused of deleting a contact card from his city-issued cell phone in an attempt to shield evidence and telling another city employee about the investigation after he was instructed to keep it quiet, according to a written reprimand obtained by The Associated Press.
The mayor told O’Hara he would be disciplined, which could include his termination. He chose to resign instead, Frey said.
The city still has 17 open complaints against O’Hara — separate from the investigation that resulted in disciplinary action — and will continue investigating, mayor’s office spokesperson Jennifer Lor said. Lor could not comment on the nature of those complaints.
O’Hara became the chief in 2022 as the department was at the center of a nationwide reckoning over racism and brutality in policing. Two years prior, Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white officer in Minneapolis, igniting global Black Lives Matter protests and calls to defund the police.
Last year, Minneapolis entered an agreement with the federal government to overhaul its police training and use-of-force policies in the wake Floyd’s murder. The U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump canceled the agreement months later.
O’Hara oversaw the law enforcement response to the deadly Annunciation Catholic School shooting last August.
He criticized immigration enforcement tactics in December after a federal agent kneeled on a woman’s back during an arrest and then tried to drag her to a car.
Assistant Police Chief Katie Blackwell has stepped in to lead the department during the search for a new chief, Frey said.
Washington
Trump’s DOJ scrubs website of news releases about Jan. 6 defendants
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Justice is acknowledging it has removed from its website news releases about criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, calling the information about the prosecutions “partisan propaganda.”
The purge of news releases documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings is the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically rewrite the history of the assault on the Capitol, when hundreds of supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to halt the congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump, on his first day back in office in January 2025, pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes during the Capitol assault, including those convicted of attacking officers with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and crutch.
On Monday, the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund meant to compensate Trump allies who feel they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not ruled out that rioters convicted of violence will be eligible for payouts, prompting bipartisan anger in Congress.
After a journalist on Friday observed on the social media platform X that the Justice Department was “quietly” removing news releases on its website that were related to the Jan. 6 attack, including about a Texas man who pleaded guilty to assault and also faced separate state charges of soliciting a minor, the department responded through its “rapid response” account that there was “nothing ‘quiet’ about it.”
“We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes,” the post said. “This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”
Among the releases removed from the site were those concerning seditious conspiracy cases against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, far-right extremist groups. The Justice Department, in an unopposed motion last month, asked a federal appeals court to vacate those seditious conspiracy convictions, a request that was granted Thursday. The department on Friday moved to dismiss the cases against the group members.
New York
Judge drops charges against ex-Fox executive
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge dismissed charges against a convicted former Fox television executive Wednesday after a prosecutor said charges brought in a U.S.-led effort to battle corruption in international soccer “doesn’t fit within” the priorities of the Trump administration.
Judge Pamela K. Chen accepted the explanation provided by U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. about why the government wanted to dismiss the indictment against Hernan Lopez.
A smiling Lopez, the former CEO of Fox International Channels, later left the Brooklyn federal courthouse, telling reporters he was relieved that “a case that never should have started is finally over.”
Nocella told Chen that the administration preferred to focus on domestic and foreign terrorist organizations, national security, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking and violent gangs.
The judge said Nocella’s stated reason, along with an explanation in a written document submitted to the court, “does provide sufficient justification” to accept the request to dismiss the indictment.
Lopez and Full Play Group SA, a South American sports media company, were convicted in 2023 of paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to nab broadcasting rights to the World Cup and other top soccer matches. But they were subsequently granted an acquittal by Chen.
An appeals court reinstated the convictions in July, but additional appeals followed and the fate of the prosecution had been uncertain.
Chen said during Wednesday’s hearing that she was not basing her decision to dismiss the indictment “in any way” on her prior decision granting the acquittal.
Prosecutors told the Supreme Court in December that the government has now determined that “dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice,” though they did not expand on their rationale.
