Jan. 6 defendant requests delay in case, citing potential of pardon from President-elect Trump
ABC/Michael Le Brecht II
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory is already beginning to elicit requests from his supporters charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol for delays in their cases due to the potential they could be pardoned after Trump’s inauguration.
Attorneys for Christopher Carnell, a 21-year-old defendant from North Carolina who was found guilty earlier this year of felony and misdemeanor charges over his participation in the Capitol assault, requested that D.C. District Judge Beryl Howell delay a status hearing in his case scheduled for later this week, citing Trump’s past promises to pardon his supporters.
“Throughout his campaign, President-elect Trump made multiple clemency promises to the January 6 defendants, particularly to those who were nonviolent participants,” their filing said. “Mr. Carnell, who was an 18 year old nonviolent entrant into the Capitol on January 6, is expecting to be relieved of the criminal prosecution that he is currently facing when the new administration takes office.”
The filing further stated Carnell’s attorneys have reached out to Trump’s office to get further information “regarding the timing and expected scope of clemency actions relevant to his case.”
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 1,500 people across the country in the last four years over their roles in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, part of what the Justice Department has described as one of the largest criminal investigations in its history.
The D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office has continued to arrest individuals on a near-daily basis, many of whom have been charged with carrying out violent assaults on police protecting the building.
In addition to Trump’s promises to pardon many of those who participated in the attack, it’s widely expected the ongoing criminal investigation will be shuttered once Trump takes office.
Law enforcement personnel continue to investigate the area around Trump International Golf Club after an apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Sept. 16, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — As the investigation into Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump continues, the FBI is turning its attention to the obliterated serial number of the recovered assault-style weapon, using highly specialized techniques to uncover what’s been altered on the surface of the rifle.
Investigators are working to understand how suspected gunman Ryan Wesley Routh, who, according to court records, has a felony criminal history, allegedly obtained the semi-automatic SKS rifle.
In the tree-lined, chain link fenced area surrounding the Trump International Golf Club where the suspect was spotted by Secret Service personnel Sunday, agents found a digital camera, two bags, including a backpack and a loaded SKS-style 7.62×39 caliber rifle with a scope, according to a criminal complaint released Monday.
The serial number on the rifle “was obliterated and unreadable to the naked eye,” the complaint states.
Analysis into firearms includes conducting an urgent firearms trace. But to begin a gun trace, investigators need a serial number, and in this case, that key information was allegedly obliterated.
However, agents have several forensic techniques they can employ to restore obliterated serial numbers from a firearm.
Sources told ABC News Monday the FBI is forensically examining the firearm at its lab.
How investigators could recover an ‘obliterated’ serial number
Firearms manufactured in or imported to the U.S. are required by law to have a conspicuously engraved, cast or stamped serial number.
SKS-type firearms are not manufactured in the U.S.; they are typically manufactured in Russia or China and imported to the U.S. with stamped serial numbers, according to firearms expert and retired ATF executive Scott Sweetow.
“When the metal is stamped, and the deeper the stamp was originally, the more likely that the metal is to be deformed a significant amount below the surface,” Sweetow said in an interview with ABC News.
“And even if you take a grinder or scratch it out, or try to sand it out, those markings, the impression and the metal were deformed from the original serial number stamping process … those markings are going to typically survive,” Sweetow added.
Using a combination of specialized chemicals and instruments, investigators can reveal the serial numbers that, to the human eye, appear to be permanently removed, according to Sweetow.
As part of the process, chemical treatments are applied to “eat away” some of the defacement, grinding or scratching that was done to obscure the serial number, which is followed by using special instrumentation to view the previously invisible numbers “for what I would almost describe as a shadow that’s left in the metal where it was pressed down,” Sweetow said.
FBI and ATF also possess more advanced capabilities, including x-ray and magnetic resonance imaging, to peer deeper into the metal beyond what can be seen at the surface.
Though obliterated serial numbers can pose a challenge, investigators frequently overcome criminal efforts to hide the numbers.
“It certainly makes it a little tougher for investigators, but so many people obliterate serial numbers now or deface face them that the forensic techniques have gotten actually pretty good, to restore them much better than they were, say, 20 years ago,” Sweetow said.
Routh’s alleged possession of a firearm by a convicted felon carries a potential sentence of 15 years in prison, and the possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number can carry an additional five years if convicted, according to federal statute.
Routh appeared in West Palm Beach federal court on Monday morning. Prosecutors said he is charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Routh did not enter a plea to the charges and was ordered to return to court on Sept. 23 for a pre-detention hearing. His arraignment has been scheduled for Sept. 30.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A landmark bill to ban some dyes in food served at California public schools, aimed at protecting children’s health, is headed to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk to be signed into law after passing the state legislature on Thursday.
Assembly Bill 2316, also known as the California School Food Safety Act, would prohibit six potentially harmful food dye chemicals from being provided in the state’s public schools. It was approved by the California Assembly on Thursday after passing the state Senate earlier in the week.
“California has a responsibility to protect our students from chemicals that harm children and that can interfere with their ability to learn,” Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, who introduced the legislation back in February, said in a statement Thursday, adding, “This bill will empower schools to better protect the health and well-being of our kids and encourage manufacturers to stop using these harmful additives.”
Gabriel was previously successful in his efforts to ban potentially harmful food and drink additives in products sold throughout the state through the passage of the California Food Safety Act last year. The legislation bans potassium bromate, propylparaben, brominated vegetable oil and Red 3 from food that is manufactured, delivered and sold in the Golden State.
Newsom signed the bill into law last October, making California the first state in the U.S. to ban the additives.
Under the newly passed California School Food Safety Act, Red Dye No. 40, Yellow Dye No. 5, Yellow Dye No. 6, Blue Dye No. 1, Blue Dye No. 2 and Green Dye No. 3 will be banned from food served to students in public schools during regular hours.
The bipartisan bill was supported by the Environmental Working Group and Consumer Reports.
Studies suggest that consumption of the six dyes and colorants banned under A.B. 2316 may be linked to hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral problems in some children, as the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment outlined in a 2021 report.
While there are still thousands of chemicals allowed for use in our country’s commercial food system, many of those that have been reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration have not been reevaluated for decades. Red 40, for example, was last evaluated for health risks in 1971.
Reports from the American Academy of Pediatrics align with this push to reassess the safety of artificial food coloring.
“Over the last several decades, studies have raised concerns regarding the effect of [artificial food colorings] on child behavior and their role in exacerbating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms,” doctors write. “Further work is needed to better understand the implications of AFC exposure and resolve the uncertainties across the scientific evidence. The available literature should be interpreted with caution because of the absence of information about the ingredients for a number of reasons, including patent protection.”
Dr. Stephanie Widmer, an ABC News medical contributor, board-certified emergency medicine physician and toxicologist, told “Good Morning America” previously, while discussing California’s earlier harmful chemical ban, “These chemicals are all kind of in different foods and all exert different effects and different concerns.”
“Some of them are associated with neurological problems, some are reproductive problems, some have been linked to cancer,” Widmer said at the time. “It really depends on the substance.”
An F-16 Fighting Falcon, assigned to the 354th Fighter Wing, Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, flies over the Joint Pacific-Alaska Range Complex, Alaska, during exercise Red Flag-Alaska 24-1, April 26, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Julia Lebens, FILE)
(WASHINGTON) — A Russian fighter jet crossed the path of an American F-16 last week coming within 50 feet of the nose of the American jet, said North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which said the Russian pilot’s action “endangered all.”
NORAD released dramatic video on Monday that showed just how close the Russian fighter flew ahead of the American aircraft at a high rate of speed.
The close encounter occurred on Sept. 23 during a flurry of activity by Russian aircraft that over the span of several days had flown through the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) off of Alaska. The Alaska ADIZ is international airspace that stretches 150 miles from the Alaska coastline, but the U.S. requires that any aircraft transiting through it must identify themselves or be intercepted by NORAD aircraft.
On that day, two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets were sent to intercept two Russian Tu-95 bombers and the two Su-35 fighter jets that were escorting them.
The video released by NORAD was taken from a camera mounted in the canopy of the F-16 aircraft providing a view of what the pilot was seeing as the fighter flew near one of the Russian bombers.
Suddenly one of the Russian jets entered the field of view at a high rate of speed coming at what NORAD said was within 50 feet of the American plane’s nose rolling to one side as it flew past.
The video then showed the F-16’s nose wobbling from left to right, either as the American fighter pilot flew through the Russian aircraft’s wake or the pilot maintained control of the aircraft after the close encounter.
“The conduct of one Russian Su-35 was unsafe, unprofessional, and endangered all – not what you’d see in a professional air force,” said Gen. Gregory Guillot, NORAD’s top commander, in a comment posted on X.
A NORAD statement about the intercept that day did not provide any indication that NORAD aircraft had intercepted the Russian planes only detailing that it had “detected and tracked four Russian military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).”
“The Russian aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” said the release. “This Russian activity in the Alaska ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat.”
The close encounter capped two weeks of incidents where NORAD said it had detected and tracked the aircraft as they flew through the ADIZ.
