3 sheriff’s deputies shot in Florida, governor says
Stock image of police lights. Douglas Sacha/Getty Images
(INDIAN RIVER COUNTY, Fla.) — At least three deputies were shot Friday morning in Indian River County, Florida, according to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis said officials are monitoring the incident.
“There is a lot going on. Just know Florida Department of Law Enforcement is engaged, working with the sheriff and the local community. We will hope for the best results of that,” DeSantis said during an unrelated press conference on Friday.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier also confirmed the shooting during an unrelated press conference on Friday. Uthmeier did not provide any further details on the incident, but held a moment of silence.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump said Friday evening he has signed a commutation releasing scandal-plagued former congressman George Santos from prison “immediately.”
Santos, 37, was less than three months into serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison after being convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
The ex-lawmaker was released from prison just before 11 p.m. on Friday night and was picked up by his family, according to a statement from his lawyer, Joe Murray.
“Once they arrived, [Santos] walked right out and hopped into their car and drove home,” Murray said.
In a social media post, Trump said Santos, whom he called “somewhat of a ‘rogue,'” had the “Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
“George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated. Therefore, I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY. Good luck George, have a great life!” Trump said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, which successfully prosecuted Santos, had no comment.
According to the clemency grant, a photo of which was posted on X by U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, Trump granted Santos an “immediate commutation of his entire sentence to time served with no further fines, restitution, probation, supervised release, or other conditions.”
An attorney for Santos told ABC News while en route to the federal prison that they expect he will be released Friday night but are waiting for official word.
The attorney said that Martin and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were extremely helpful in getting the commutation across the finish line, and noted that several members of Congress, including Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Tim Burchett, were very aggressive in campaigning for his release.
Santos pleaded guilty to a series of fraud crimes and was sentenced in April to 87 months in prison — the maximum he faced — and two years of supervised release.
The commutation comes days after the South Shore Press published a “passionate plea” from Santos to Trump, in which he expressed his support and asked that the president “allow me the opportunity to return to my family, my friends, and my community.”
“During my short tenure in Congress, I stood firmly behind your agenda — 100% of the time,” Santos wrote in the letter, published Monday. “I championed policies that strengthened our economy, defended our borders, and restored America’s standing on the world stage. I did it proudly, Sir, because I believed — and still believe — in the mission you set out to accomplish for the American people.”
Santos said in the letter that he was being held in “complete isolation” following an alleged death threat.
“Mr. President, I have nowhere else to turn. You have always been a man of second chances, a leader who believes in redemption and renewal. I am asking you now, from the depths of my heart, to extend that same belief to me,” he wrote.
Rep. Greene, who had recently called on Trump to commute Santos’ sentence, thanked the president for doing so on Friday, saying on X that the former congressman was “unfairly treated and put in solitary confinement, which is torture!!”
Santos pleaded guilty in August 2024, in which he admitted to claiming relatives had made contributions to his campaign when, in fact, they had not. Santos conceded he was trying to meet the fundraising threshold to qualify for financial help from the National Republican Congressional Committee.
He also stipulated that he committed other fraud, including charging donor credit cards without authorization and convincing donors to give money by falsely stating the money would be used for TV ads. He also stipulated he stole public money by applying for and receiving unemployment benefits during the pandemic to which he was not entitled.
As part of his plea deal, he agreed to pay nearly $600,000 in restitution and forfeiture.
Santos was expelled from Congress in December 2023, just under a year after assuming office to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
His expulsion from Congress followed accusations of ethics violations and other wrongdoing in a scathing report by the House Ethics Committee that claimed he was a fabulist and fraudster who used the prestige of political office to bilk tens of thousands of dollars out of other people.
Several New York House Republicans — who led the charge to expel George Santos from the House — criticized Trump’s commutation.
“George Santos didn’t merely lie — he stole millions, defrauded an election, and his crimes (for which he pled guilty) warrant more than a three-month sentence. He should devote the rest of his life to demonstrating remorse and making restitution to those he wronged,” New York GOP Rep. Nick LaLota, who represents a district on Long Island, said in a post on X.
New York GOP Rep. Andrew Garbarino, who is the current chair of the Homeland Security Committee and sat on the committee that investigated Santos, said in a statement that “less than three months” in prison is “not justice.”
Several House Democrats also condemned Trump’s move.
“Donald Trump has time to free serial fraudster George Santos from prison. But he can’t be bothered to address the Republican healthcare crisis crushing working class Americans. The extremists are insulting you every single day,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a post on X.
Former Olympic snowboarder and Canadian national Ryan Wedding is seen in photos released by the FBI. FBI
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department unsealed new charges against a former Canadian Olympian snowboarder who is allegedly the “largest distributor of cocaine” in Canada, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The charges allege Ryan Wedding ordered the killing of a witness who was set to testify against him in a U.S. federal trial in a drug trafficking case, prosecutors said.
“Wedding collaborates closely with the Sinaloa Cartel, a foreign terrorist organization, to flood not only American but also Canadian communities with cocaine coming from Colombia,” Bondi said at a press briefing Wednesday. “His organization is responsible for importing approximately six metric tons of cocaine a year into Los Angeles via semi trucks from Mexico.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Bryan Kohberger appears at the Ada County Courthouse for his sentencing hearing, July 23, 2025, in Boise, Idaho. (Kyle Green/Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — As part of his studies in the fall of 2022, then-criminology Washington State University Ph.D. student Bryan Kohberger proposed researching criminals’ emotions and how they made decisions. In November, the scholar of crime would go on to stab four college students to death.
Buried in nearly 700 pages of evidence photos, the Idaho State Police released a trove of Kohberger’s homework assignments from his Pullman, Washington, apartment. The pictures were released in response to public records requests, including from ABC News.
They are among the thousands of pages of records now being released in the wake of Kohberger’s decision to plead guilty to killing Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in July.
“Not all criminal actions reflect a rational, instrumental process,” Kohberger wrote for one of his classes. “Crimes of passion involve reactive violence, which manifests due to intense emotional arousal, confounding notions of an exclusively cold, criminal calculus.”
He said he wanted to understand “how emotions, both positively and negatively valanced, influence the decision-making involved in burglary before, during and after crime-commission.” He suggested conducting “in-person, semi-structured” jailhouse interviews.
Investigators pored over everything they found among Kohberger’s possessions in order to help piece together a portrait of their suspect. Kohberger’s writings indicated that he had not only steeped himself in studying crime — he had shown desire to get inside criminals’ heads, according to investigators.
“That, in and of itself, would not make him a criminal. There’s others out there that are deeply fascinated in studying people that would never probably even consider committing the crime,” said Ed Jacobson, who was the FBI’s Acting Supervisor for the Couer d’Alene and Lewiston offices during the Moscow investigation.
“Once we arrested him, the [Behavioral Analysis Unit] is out there. They are going through the phones. They’re going through every bit of information we’ve gathered on this guy,” Jacobson said. “We’re looking for evidence we can show in court. They’re looking at it as the broader spectrum. They’re trying to get into this guy’s thinking patterns. It goes to knowledge, and potentially motive. Doesn’t make him guilty — but a lot of other stuff did.”
Prosecutors had planned to use Kohberger’s homework against him at trial. They would have used some of his assignments to show he had intently “studied crime” — and knew exactly how to cover his tracks after committing murder. “He had that knowledge and skill,” lead prosecutor Bill Thompson said at the July 2 plea hearing.
The now-admitted killer also wrote at length about how “procedural injustice” in the American system “has produced many false confessions.”
“False guilty pleas manifest due to a lack of judicial oversight and plea deals that seem to compel defendants to enter them,” Kohberger wrote. “If defendants fail to accept a plea bargain, prosecutors will pursue the strictest charges.”
“Some people simply plead guilty to crimes they did not commit as to choose the lesser of two evils,” he said. Kohberger also pointed to “eyewitness misidentification” as an issue and noted a potential remedy: “increasing video surveillance in public places.”
In another paper, Kohberger described how “imprudent application of prosecutorial power” fostered mass incarceration. He wrote about a 2005 murder case involving a woman who was convicted of her mother’s murder, and who later won her release. Kohberger wrote how the prosecutor “behaved highly unethically” and the woman was “forced” to “accept the evidence against her.”
“If she failed to comply, this would leave [the accused woman] with no future, and in an attempt to salvage what was left of her life, she acquiesced,” Kohberger wrote. “Though one cannot ascertain [her] actual guilt, her case is reminiscent of the rushed process that precipitates false imprisonment.”
Another seven-page paper explored what Kohberger called a “gruesome” stabbing murder case. “Blood pooled around him and was spattered on the walls and television near his body,” Kohberger said, describing how the victim was found. He noted grisly details from the scene “would be a reminder of the seriousness” of the crime to jurors. Kohberger added that the alleged killer’s DNA evidence was found at the scene which belied his “initial account.”
In an essay quiz dated Oct. 19, 2022, Kohberger discussed whether the death penalty is a “valid public policy, especially in the context of history and morality.” He argued that in fact, capital punishment is not effective.
“There is no evidence of deterrent effects, and there remains an even better argument that, rather than preventing anarchy and disorder, the divisive policy may increase it in due time,” Kohberger wrote. In his papers on the death penalty, he cited some of the same court decisions his lawyers would later use in an unsuccessful attempt to take the death penalty off the table in his own case.
By the end of the fall 2022 semester, Kohberger’s status at the university was in jeopardy, according to police records.
Just 11 days before he would carry out the quadruple killing, Kohberger was sent a letter from his graduate program how to adjust his behavior — or face further discipline.
The “improvement plan,” dated Nov. 2, 2022 and issued by WSU Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, directed Kohberger to establish goals and meet with a supervisor weekly. Among the steps he was directed to take was to “make sure weekly goals are progressively harder to ensure progress throughout the rest of the semester.”
