Search ongoing for woman visiting California who was last seen at beach bonfire
Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office
(SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Calif.) — Authorities said they are searching for an at-risk woman who was last seen at a bonfire on a California beach.
Danielle Staley, 35, of Utah, went missing while visiting the California Central Coast with a friend, according to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office.
She was last seen with a group of people at a bonfire on Rio Del Mar State Beach in Aptos shortly before midnight on Nov. 6, according to the sheriff’s office.
She was reported missing the following day, the sheriff’s office said.
Investigators have not ruled out foul play, and Staley is considered at-risk due to the circumstances of her disappearance, according to the sheriff’s office.
“Staley’s personal belongings were found on the beach, and she has not been in contact with her family — behavior that is uncharacteristic and has raised additional concern,” the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “At this time, investigators are not ruling out foul play; however, the case is being treated as a missing person at risk due to the circumstances.”
Staley has been visiting the area with a friend, and they had been staying in a camper van near Rio Del Mar State Beach, according to the sheriff’s office.
The friend is cooperating with authorities, the sheriff’s office said.
Residents and businesses with surveillance video in the areas of Rio Del Mar Beach, Beach Drive, Treasure Island and Spreckels Drive have been asked to contact the sheriff’s office so deputies can review the footage.
“Detectives have been diligently working to track down any information and continue to do so,” the sheriff’s office said.
Authorities described Staley as 5’6″ and 120 pounds with blonde hair. She was last seen wearing a dark, hooded sweatshirt and leopard print leggings.
Anyone with information on Staley is urged to contact the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office at 831-471-1121.
In this Aug. 1, 2023, file photo, Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on an unsealed indictment, including four felony counts against former President Donald Trump, in Washington, D.C. Drew Angerer/Getty Images, FILE
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys representing former special counsel Jack Smith sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley Tuesday seeking to correct what they call “inaccurate” claims that Smith wiretapped or spied on Republican lawmakers as part of his investigation into President Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
“Although you have not reached out to us to discuss this matter, we are compelled to correct inaccurate assertions made by you and others concerning the issuance of a grand jury subpoena for the toll records of eight Senators and one Member of the House of Representatives,” attorneys Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski wrote. “Mr. Smith’s actions as Special Counsel were consistent with the decisions of a prosecutor who has devoted his career to following the facts and the law, without fear or favor and without regard for the political consequences.”
The outreach from Smith’s team is the latest in a series of efforts by the former special counsel to correct the record on his parallel investigations into Trump that resulted in two indictments for Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified records after leaving the White House in his first term and his attempt to subvert the 2020 election result.
Trump pleaded not guilty in both cases before both were dropped following Trump’s reelection, due to a long-standing Justice Department policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
Both cases have since been cast by senior leadership of Trump’s Justice Department — many of whom previously served as Trump’s personal attorneys — as prime examples of political weaponization of law enforcement.
In the letter from his attorneys, as well as two public appearances on university panels, Smith has disputed that he or his team were ever motivated by politics in their prosecutions of the president.
In their letter Tuesday, Smith’s attorneys sought to refute a narrative stemming from a document released by the FBI on the eve of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month.
The record showed that during Smith’s investigation, his office sought limited phone toll data from eight senators and a member of the House in the days surrounding the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
While such records would not involve the content of any phone calls or messages, multiple Republicans on the committee incorrectly claimed at the hearing the next day that Smith had “tapped” their phones or “spied” on them.
“What was going on here? Who ordered this? Who ordered the tapping of the phones of United States Senators?” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley asked Bondi during the hearing.
“We will be looking at all aspects of this, and I have talked to Director Patel at length about this,” Bondi responded, referring to FBI Director Kash Patel.
Smith’s attorneys, in their letter, stood firmly behind the move to seek the toll records as “entirely proper, lawful, and consistent with established Department of Justice policy,” and further confirmed that Smith received approval to do so from career officials in the Department’s Public Integrity Section.
“The subpoena’s limited temporal range is consistent with a focused effort to confirm or refute reports by multiple news outlets that during and after the January 6 riots at the Capitol, President Trump and his surrogates attempted to call Senators to urge them to delay certification of the 2020 election results,” Breuer and Koski wrote. “In fact, by the time Mr. Smith’s team conducted the toll records analysis, it had been reported that President Trump and Rudy Giuliani tried calling Senators for such a purpose, with one Senator releasing a voicemail from Mr. Giuliani.”
Smith’s attorneys also noted that, during Trump’s first term, the Justice Department “purportedly obtained communications records from two Democratic Members of Congress” as part of an investigation into media leaks.
The letter also criticizes Patel for suggesting in a statement that Smith sought to cover up his office’s use of the toll records, claiming he put them “in a “lockbox in a vault, and then put that vault in a cyber place where no one can see or search these files.”
“It is not clear what cyber place in a vault in a lockbox Director Patel is describing, but Mr. Smith’s use of these records is inconsistent with someone who was trying to conceal them,” the letter said.
Smith’s attorneys point to Smith’s final report on his probe, released in January of this year, which specifically describes some of the calls made to Republican senators during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and contains as a footnote that refers to the use of toll records in Smith’s investigation.
“Moreover, the precise records at issue were produced in discovery to President Trump’s personal lawyers, some of whom now serve in senior positions within the Department of Justice,” Smith’s attorneys added in their letter.
(DES MOINES, Iowa) — A now-former school superintendent who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has been charged by federal prosecutors in Iowa with one count of being an “illegal alien in possession of firearms,” according to court records.
Former Des Moines Public School Superintendent Ian Roberts was charged by complaint on Wednesday, according to the case docket. The complaint remains under seal.
He is set for an initial appearance Thursday afternoon before a magistrate judge. The docket indicates that the appearance will be by video.
The docket also indicates that he was arrested on Thursday. He had been in ICE detention at the Woodbury County Jail in Sioux City, though he has since been taken into custody by the Department of Justice on a federal warrant for his arrest, according to Woodbury County Sheriff Chad Sheehan.
Roberts, 54, was initially detained by ICE agents on Friday. He was in possession of a loaded handgun, a fixed-blade hunting knife and $3,000 in cash, according to ICE.
Roberts, a native of Guyana, had a final order of removal issued by a judge in 2024 and no work authorization in the U.S., according to ICE. He resigned as the superintendent of the Des Moines Public Schools on Tuesday.
Roberts joined the district in July 2023 and had previously held leadership positions in school districts across the U.S. for 20 years, according to Des Moines School Board Chair Jackie Norris.
The Des Moines School Board was not aware of Roberts’ immigration issues at the time of his hiring, according to Norris, who said following his detainment that the board is taking ICE’s allegations “very seriously.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(EVANSTON, Ill.) — Officials in Illinois are searching for a Northwestern University professor who was reported missing after leaving home to go on a walk, according to the Evanston Police Department.
Nina Kraus, a 72-year-old professor at the university’s school of communication, was last seen on Monday after she left her Evanston home to go on a walk at approximately 9 a.m. local time, officials said. Her family reported her missing the same day, officials said.
“The University is hopeful that with the community’s help, we can find Professor Kraus and assure her safety,” Northwestern said in a press release on Monday.
She was last seen wearing long pants and a windbreaker, and was believed to be carrying a dark backpack, officials said.
Kraus is 5 feet, 4 inches tall, weighs approximately 140 pounds and has long silver hair, police said.
On Tuesday, police said they would be flying drones along the waterfront of Lake Michigan as part of the investigation.
According to her faculty bio, Kraus’ is a “scientist, inventor and amateur musician who studies the biology of auditory learning.”
“My research on sound and the brain aims to understand how our life in sound, for better or worse, alters the processing of sound in the brain, makes us us, and affects the world we live in,” Kraus wrote in her bio.
Officials said anyone with information on Kraus’ whereabouts should contact police at 847-866-5000.
