Trump’s promise to release JFK files sets off all-night scramble by DOJ’s National Security Division
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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department’s National Security Division has been in a scramble trying to meet President Donald Trump’s promise on Monday to release declassified information from the JFK assassination investigation today.
Trump, during a visit Monday to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, announced the government would be releasing all the files on Kennedy’s assassination on Tuesday afternoon.
Less than half an hour after that announcement, the Justice Department’s office that handles foreign surveillance requests and other intelligence-related operations began to shift resources to focus on the task, sources said.
In an email just before 5 p.m. ET Monday, a senior official within DOJ’s Office of Intelligence said that even though the FBI had already conducted “an initial declassification review” of the documents, “all” of the attorneys in the operations section now had to provide “a second set of eyes” to help with this “urgent NSD-wide project.”
Eventually, however, it was other National Security Division attorneys who ended up having to help, sources said.
Attorneys from across the division were up throughout the night, into the early morning hours, each reading through as many as hundreds of pages of documents, sources said. Only prosecutors with an impending arrest or other imminent work did not have to help, sources said.
A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
In promising the release of JFK files today, Trump said Monday that there is “a tremendous amount of paper.”
“You’ve got a lot of reading,” he said. “I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything. I said, ‘Just don’t redact. You can’t redact.'”
Trump in January signed an executive order directing the “full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy” in order to end the decades-long wait for the release of the government’s secret files on Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.
ABC News’ Hannah Demissie and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
(SAINT TERESA, NM) — Two service members were killed and another is in serious condition following a vehicle accident earlier Tuesday in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, the United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) said in a statement.
Shortly before 9 a.m. “Three service members deployed in support of Joint Task Force Southern Border were involved in a vehicle accident,” NORTHCOM said.
Tuesday’s accident are the first fatalities associated with the United States military’s mission along the border with Mexico that have been disclosed.
More than 10,000 active duty service members have been authorized for the border mission.
The cause of the accident is under investigation, officials said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(DENVER) — A U.S. Army soldier stationed in Colorado was arrested on federal drug charges, authorities said Thursday.
Staff Sgt. Juan Gabriel Orona-Rodriguez, a soldier at Fort Carson, was arrested Wednesday evening, the FBI in Denver said.
He faces federal charges related to the distribution of cocaine, the FBI said.
The soldier was taken into custody with the assistance of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Rocky Mountain Field Division, the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division and Fort Carson officials, the FBI said.
“We will continue to cooperate with all agencies involved,” a Fort Carson official said in a statement on Thursday.
The DEA Rocky Mountain Field Division said it is conducting a joint investigation with the FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division.
No additional information on the case has been released.
Fort Carson is located south of Colorado Springs.
It is unclear if the arrest is related to a federal raid of an underground nightclub in Colorado Springs over the weekend.
The DEA said it detained more than 200 people — including members of the military — at an unlicensed nightclub in Colorado Springs early Sunday.
Among them, 114 illegal migrants were taken into custody, with most from Central and South America, officials said.
A Fort Carson spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that 17 service members, including 16 assigned to Fort Carson, were identified at the scene during the nightclub raid and were allowed to leave on their own.
ABC News’ Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said in his speech to a joint session of Congress that he’ll work to protect and support police. But his words set off a backlash that included a Democratic lawmaker accusing him of the “height of hypocrisy” and a former Capitol Police officer noting that Trump pardoned 1,500 people who attacked him and his colleagues during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police Officer who risked his life to defend the Capitol Building as Trump’s supporters rioted in 2021, slammed Trump in a series of posts on the social media site Bluesky as the president was addressing Congress Tuesday night.
“Trump threatens public safety,” Dunn said in one post.
In an expletive-laced post, the 41-year-old Dunn, wrote in all capital letters, “YOU PARDONED OUR ATTACKERS.”
During his speech Tuesday night, Trump did not mention the insurrection, of which, according to the House Jan. 6 committee’s final report, he allegedly engaged in a criminally “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
In his address, the president spoke about getting police officers nationwide “the support, protection and respect they so dearly deserve.”
“They have to get it. They have such a hard, dangerous job,” Trump said. “But we’re going to make it less dangerous. The problem is the bad guys don’t respect the law, but they’re starting to respect it, and they soon will respect it.”
In the first two months of 2025, at least 58 police officers have been shot in the line of duty, including eight who were killed, according to a report released on March 3 by the National Fraternal Order of Police. The report showed that the number of police shootings is down 11% from this time in 2024.
Among the officers killed this year are Virginia Beach Police Officers Cameron Girvin, 25, and Christopher Reese, 30, who authorities said were shot at point-blank range on Feb. 25 as they were already lying on the ground wounded and defenseless following a traffic stop. The suspected killer, who police said died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was identified as 42-year-old John McCoy III, a convicted felon.
Trump said that one of the first steps he has taken since returning to the White House is signing an executive order requiring a mandatory death penalty for anyone convicted of murdering a police officer.
“And tonight, I’m asking Congress to pass that policy into permanent law,” Trump said.
Trump cited the March 25, 2024, fatal shooting of New York Police Officer Jonathan Diller, who was gunned down while conducting a traffic stop in Queens — becoming the first NYPD officer killed in the line of duty in two years. The suspect, who was shot and wounded by Diller’s partner, was identified as 34-year-old Guy Rivera.
Rivera, who has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge, was previously arrested 21 times, according to police records. Also arrested in the fatal shooting, was 41-year-old Lindy Jones, who was in the car with Rivera at the time of the shooting. Jones pleaded not guilty to a charge of being a criminal possession of a weapon and possession of a defaced firearm. Jones had 14 prior arrests including attempted murder and robbery, and was out on bail in connection to a separate crime at the time of the shooting, police records indicate.
“We’re going to get these cold-blooded killers and repeat offenders off our streets. And we’re going to do it fast. Gotta stop it,” said Trump, who attended Diller’s wake.
Trump called on Congress to pass a new crime bill aimed at “getting tougher on repeat offenders while enhancing protections for America’s police officers so they can do their jobs without fear of their lives being totally destroyed.”
Following Trump’s speech, Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, posted a statement on social media accusing Trump of “the height of hypocrisy.”
“Trump talks a big game about standing with … the blue, yet on the first day of his administration he pardoned hundreds of cop-beaters who tried to steal an election on January 6, 2021,” Garcia wrote.
Rep. Judy Chu, D-California, who walked out of Trump’s speech with other Democrats, also took to social media, posting, “Trump insults the American people by saying, ‘let’s bring back law and order.’ Among his first acts as president? Pardoning 1500 violent felons involved in the January 6 attacks on our U.S. Capitol and democracy.”
Rep. Lois Frankel, D-Fla., cited the hundreds of FBI agents and Department of Justice employees who have lost their jobs in the Trump administration’s sweeping reduction in the federal workforce being overseen by billionaire Elon Musk and the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“Purging hundreds of FBI and DOJ agents who investigated the Jan 6 insurrection — career law enforcement officers, not political appointees — does not make us safer, more secure, or prosperous,” Frankel wrote on social media.
