7 cops shot one after the other while responding to call for help from apartment
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(SAN ANTONIO) — Seven police officers have been shot one after the other after responding to a call made from inside a home in San Antonio, Texas, police said.
The incident occurred Wednesday evening when police officers received a call from an apartment in San Antonio, Texas, from somebody reporting that their family member was in distress and needed immediate help, authorities said.
However, as police responded to the scene, they were shot one after the other in succession, according to San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus.
The first officer who responded was shot in the lower extremities with the second officer shot shortly after, police said.
A third responding officer subsequently arrived on scene and was shot before the last officer responded and was struck by a bullet in the upper torso, police confirmed.
No further details were given on the other three.
All of the officers were immediately taken to the hospital where they are being treated for non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said.
The identities of the police officers involved have not yet been released but McManus said that each of them had between four to eight years of experience on the force.
The suspect — a male in his 40s — has also not yet been identified but police said they are working on trying to get the person out of the apartment with the assistance of a SWAT team.
Police said that the suspect involved in the shooting had been arrested on Jan. 18 for two charges of assault and a one DWI charge. He was currently out on bond, McManus said.
No other information was made available and the investigation is currently ongoing.
(ATLANTA, Ga.) — The Georgia Court of Appeals has disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from her prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump and his co-defendants in their election interference case.
“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” the court ruled.
The indictment against Trump and his co-defendants still stands, the court said.
Trump and 18 others pleaded not guilty last year to all charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.
Defendants Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Scott Hall subsequently took plea deals in exchange for agreeing to testify against other defendants.
Thursday’s ruling leaves the question of who takes over the case — and whether it continues — to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia. That decision may be delayed if Trump or Willis continues their appeal to the state’s highest court, Georgia’s Supreme Court.
The case has been on pause after Trump and his co-defendants launched an effort to have Willis disqualified from the case over her relationship with fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade. Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee declined to disqualify Willis, leading Trump to appeal that decision.
The appeals court ruled to disqualify Willis and her entire office from the case because “no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings,” the ruling said.
“The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring,” the order said, reversing Judge McAfee’s original decision.
Wade, who had been the lead prosecutor in the case, resigned as special prosecutor in March after McAfee issued his ruling that either Willis or Wade must step aside from the case due to a “significant appearance of impropriety” stemming from a romantic relationship between the DA and the prosecutor.
While the appeals court disqualified Willis and her office, it did not find enough evidence to justify “the extreme sanction” of tossing the entire indictment against Trump and his co-defendants, as Trump had sought in his appeal.
“While this is the rare case in which DA Willis and her office must be disqualified due to a significant appearance of impropriety, we cannot conclude that the record also supports the imposition of the extreme sanction of dismissal of the indictment under the appropriate standard,” the ruling said.
Judge Clay Land — one of the three judges on the appeals panel — dissented from the decision, arguing that reversing the trial court “violates well-established precedent, threatens the discretion given to trial courts, and blurs the distinction between our respective courts.”
Land argued that the appearance of impropriety — rather than a true conflict of interest — is not enough to reverse Judge McAfee’s decision not to disqualify Willis.
“For at least the last 43 years, our appellate courts have held that an appearance of impropriety, without an actual conflict of interest or actual impropriety, provides no basis for the reversal of a trial court’s denial of a motion to disqualify,” he wrote.
In his dissent, Land emphasized that the trial court found that Willis did not have a conflict of interest and rejected the allegations of impropriety stemming from her relationship with Wade, including the allegation that she received a financial benefit from his hiring.
“It was certainly critical of her choices and chastised her for making them. I take no issue with that criticism, and if the trial court had chosen, in its discretion, to disqualify her and her office, this would be a different case,” he wrote. “But that is not the remedy the trial court chose, and I believe our case law prohibits us from rejecting that remedy just because we don’t like it or just because we might have gone further had we been the trial judge.”
(WASHINGTON) — The federal judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s classified documents case has blocked the Department of Justice from sharing special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on his probe with select members of Congress.
Judge Aileen Cannon, in an order issued one day after Trump’s inauguration, offered a scathing criticism of the Department of Justice’s “startling” conduct and willingness to “gamble” with the rights of Trump’s former co-defendants by attempting to allow four members of Congress to review Smith’s final report as directed by DOJ policy.
“Prosecutors play a special role in our criminal justice system and are entrusted and expected to do justice,” Cannon wrote. “The Department of Justice’s position on Defendants’ Emergency Motion … has not been faithful to that obligation.”
Trump pleaded not guilty in June 2023 to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information. The former president, along with his longtime aide Walt Nauta and staffer Carlos De Oliveira, also pleaded not guilty in a superseding indictment to allegedly attempting to delete surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Judge Cannon dismissed the case in July based on the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment, and Smith dropped Trump from his appeal of the case after the election due to a longstanding Department of Justice policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president — but the Justice Department appealed the dismissal of the case against Nauta and De Oliveira.
Cannon, in her ruling issued Tuesday, criticized prosecutors for being willing to release sensitive court materials — including material pursuant to grand jury subpoenas — while the case against Trump’s former co-defendants is ongoing.
“In short, the Department offers no valid justification for the purportedly urgent desire to release to members of Congress case information in an ongoing criminal proceeding,” Cannon wrote.
Cannon expressed concern that the report, if shown to members of Congress, could be leaked publicly and prevent Trump’s former co-defendants from having a fair trial.
“This Court lacks any means to enforce any proffered conditions of confidentiality, to the extent they even exist in memorialized form. And most fundamentally, the Department has offered no valid reason to engage in this gamble with the Defendants’ rights,” the order said.
Cannon’s order remains in effect at least 30 days after the case proceedings conclude, at which point the Justice Department can advise the court about their position on the order.
The DOJ’s new leadership under the Trump is not expected to press for the report’s release, making it unlikely that the report will ever see the light of day.
(WASHINGTON) A U.S. Secret Service agent fired shots near the home of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen early Tuesday morning after a confrontation with occupants in a vehicle near her residence.
At about 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, an agent working in the vicinity of Yellen’s home “observed a sedan with multiple occupants who were attempting to open car doors along the street,” the Secret Service said in a statement.
“As the sedan approached the agent, a confrontation occurred between the agent and the car’s occupants,” the Secret Service said.
The agent fired their weapon, but there is no indication the gunfire struck anyone, the Secret Service said.
The car’s occupants fled the scene, and local police are now looking for them.
“There was no threat to any protectees during this incident and no protectees were harmed,” the Secret Service said.
The incident is now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department.
