‘Family torn apart’: Kouri Richins juror describes emotional murder deliberations ahead of guilty verdict

(NEW YORK) — The White House’s new policy for preserving presidential records risks allowing the Trump administration to “unlawfully destroy important records,” a group of Senate Democrats warned in a letter to the White House Counsel on Wednesday.

Thirteen Senate Democrats are seeking assurances from the White House that it would continue to preserve presidential records, saying they had grown “deeply concerned” with recent steps the Trump administration had taken to loosen rules dictating document retention.

The Democrats’ missive comes after the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) wrote an opinion this month that deemed the Presidential Records Act — a Watergate-era law that changed the legal ownership of presidential records from private to public — to be unconstitutional and “untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose.” 

One day after the opinion was issued, White House Counsel David Warrington issued new guidance for White House staffers to adopt new document retention policies based on the DOJ’s new determination about the legality of the Presidential Records Act.

“The 1978 law is a significant departure from historical practice. For 200 years the presidency existed without the legislative branch invading the rights of the executive branch,” Warrington said in a memo that was later included in a court filing.

Led by Sen. Adam Schiff of California, the Democrats wrote to White House Counsel David Warrington that they feared “the President and his staff” will use the OLC option to “unlawfully destroy important records covered by the [Presidential Records Act].”

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the Democrats’ letter reflects “a fundamental misunderstanding of the Administration’s policy.”

“The new White House records retention policy makes it clear that important records will be preserved,” Jackson added.

The senators, in their letter, alluded to what they characterized as President Donald Trump’s “unlawful personal retention and mismanagement of classified documents” in requesting a briefing from White House officials on their “records management procedures” at some point before the end of his term. Trump was indicted after his first term for allegedly storing classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate and obstructing investigators, though the case was dismissed over U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s concerns about the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith. 

Drafted in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Presidential Records Act was passed in 1978 to ensure the preservation of presidential records. Every president since Ronald Reagan has been subject to the law, which places the National Archives and Records Administration in control of the official records — such as emails, phone records, and other documentary material created by the president and his staff in the course of their duties — once the president leaves office.

Under the PRA, which is overseen by Congress, former presidents have up to 12 years after leaving office to turn over all their presidential records.

During President Trump’s current term, his administration has moved to unwind record retention protocols. Earlier this month, Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser wrote an opinion that would upend the established process for ensuring the public ownership of presidential records, arguing that “the PRA exceeds the oversight power [of Congress] because it serves no identifiable and valid legislative purpose.”

With three years left in Trump’s second term, his Department of Justice now says the president “need not further comply” with the law governing the handover of his presidential records once he leaves office. 

The day after the publication of the Justice Department’s opinion, Warrington issued new guidance for the Executive Office of the President regarding the preserve of records going forward. While the memo said that staff could use policies developed under the PRA, Warrington said the new policy would cover the retention of both classified and unclassified material going forward.

In their letter to Warrington on Wednesday, the senators asserted that administration “does not have the authority to override Supreme Court rulings or unilaterally overturn laws passed by Congress.”  

Within a week of the OLC opinion and new White House guidance, the country’s largest group of a historians and a watchdog organization brought a lawsuit seeking to force the Trump administration to comply with the PRA.

“The Executive Branch has nullified the determinations of the other two branches of government so that the President may claim these official government records to be his own,” the lawsuit said.

Lawyers with the Department of Justice have defended the policy in court filings, arguing the PRA is an “unconstitutional and ahistorical imposition on presidential autonomy.”

As part of the lawsuit, the Trump administration released the new White House guidance on document retention. The Director of Archival Operations at the National Archives, meanwhile, said that the agency continues to “preserve all Presidential records in its custody” and plans to continue processing requests to access those records. 

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(NEW YORK) — Kouri Richins, a Utah woman accused of fatally poisoning her husband with fentanyl, who self-published a children’s book on grieving following his death, has been found guilty of murder following a weekslong trial.

The Summit County jury began deliberating late Monday afternoon before reaching a verdict after about three hours. She was found guilty on all five counts, including aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder.

Kouri Richins looked down and remained still while the judge read out each guilty verdict. Her sentencing has been scheduled for May 13.

During closing arguments earlier Monday, prosecutors alleged that the mom of three was obsessed with appearing “privileged, affluent and successful” and killed her husband to help pay the debts of her floundering home flipping business and to get a “fresh start.”

The defense, meanwhile, said the case was “sloppy” and “driven by bias” and argued that the state failed to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.

Kouri Richins, 35, was charged with aggravated murder in connection with the 2022 death of her husband, Eric Richins, following a lengthy investigation. Prosecutors allege she spiked his drink with a lethal dose of fentanyl that she purchased illicitly after asking two people for the “Michael Jackson drug.”

“Kouri Richins was a suburban mother, real estate agent. She does not know a lot about the illicit street drug world, but she knows Michael Jackson died from taking drugs,” prosecutor Brad Bloodworth said during closing arguments on Monday. “She doesn’t know how to order a street drug, but she knows she wants the Michael Jackson stuff. She knows she wants it because it is lethal. It is fatal. It kills. And she wanted lethal, fatal death.”

Her charges also include attempted aggravated murder, with prosecutors alleging she gave her husband a sandwich laced with fentanyl on Valentine’s Day two weeks before his death in an initial, failed attempt to kill him.

Kouri Richins was also accused of committing insurance fraud by taking out a $100,000 insurance policy on his life with his forged signature and then submitting a claim following his alleged murder.

She pleaded not guilty and has maintained her innocence.

Her husband, 39-year-old Eric Richins, was found dead in bed on March 4, 2022. An autopsy determined that he died from fentanyl intoxication, and the level of fentanyl in his blood was approximately five times the lethal dosage, according to the charging document. The medical examiner determined the fentanyl was “illicit fentanyl,” not medical grade, according to the charging document.

Prosecutors allege that Kouri Richins purchased illicit fentanyl pills shortly before the Valentine’s Day incident and again before his death, at which point she allegedly asked for stronger drugs.

‘Downward financial death spiral’: Prosecutor
During his closing argument, Bloodworth said Kouri Richins was in “financial desperation” due to her realty company’s debts and needed a significant influx of cash immediately. He alleged she believed she would have financially benefited from her husband’s death — without realizing that his assets were in a trust for their children.

Bloodworth said October 2021 was the “beginning of the downward financial death spiral” of Kouri Richins’ realty business, and that she had a growing debt picture nearing $8 million.

He alleged Kouri Richins intended to cause her husband’s death as early as December 2021, when she was booked a vacation with her boyfriend for April 2022.

“Kouri Richins did not book that trip thinking Eric Richins would be alive in April, she booked it knowing he would not,” Bloodworth said.

Bloodworth referred to evidence that he alleged showed she intended to cause her husband’s death. A witness testified during the trial that in December 2021 Kouri Richins said to her that “in many ways it would be better” if Eric Richins “were dead.” In February 19, 2022, days after the alleged attempted murder attempt, prosecutors said Kouri Richins texted her boyfriend, “If he could just go away and you could just be here! Life would be so perfect!!”

Bloodworth said Kouri Richins tried to cover up her alleged role in her husband’s death, starting with the 911 call.

“Listen to how she tells the 911 dispatcher where she was when Eric died. She is distancing herself,” Bloodworth said before the call was played again for jurors. “Rather than, ‘He’s not breathing. He has no pulse. I have to figure out what to do. I need help,’ she’s saying, ‘Hey, look, I was not there. I was in my son’s room.’ That’s her alibi. She’s distancing herself from the time and the place that she murdered Eric.”

Bloodworth also said the call shows that the 911 operator asked Kouri Richins to perform CPR on her husband for 6 minutes before she purportedly did. “She is not immediately trying to revive him,” he said. 

Bloodworth said Kouri Richins deleted her texts and phone logs with multiple people, including her former housecleaner, Carmen Lauber, who testified about obtaining illicit drugs at Kouri Richins’ request in the weeks prior to Eric Richins’ death. He argued that Kouri Richins was worried about being investigated and her deleted messages in the wake of her husband’s death, as evidenced by searches on her phone such as, “can cops force you to do a lie detector test” and “can deleted text messages be retrieved from an iPhone.”

When the toxicology report showed that Eric Richins died from a fentanyl overdose, Bloodworth argued that Kouri Richins then needed to “explain” the presence of the drug — and that she allegedly planned to do so by claiming she got them for her husband at his request.

Bloodworth argued that Eric Richins did not die of an accidental overdose, citing testimony from his friends and family who said he did not use illicit drugs. He also argued that he did not die by suicide and had “every reason to live” — foremost being his three young sons.

“The evidence proves that Kouri Richins murdered, attempted to murder Eric Richins and that she committed two counts of insurance fraud and forgery,”  he said. “The evidence does not support any other explanation.”

Defense argues case had ‘confirmation bias’
Defense attorney Wendy Lewis argued during her closing that the case was impacted by confirmation bias from the start.

“Instead of looking at the evidence to determine what happened, the state has, they determined what happened, and then they found the evidence to support it,” Lewis said.

Lewis argued that there was “no evidence” that there was fentanyl in Eric Richins’ drink the night he died and that investigators failed to look into his recent trip to Mexico, which the defense had insinuated could have been the source of the fentanyl, or to test an old prescription bottle that was on his nightstand.

Lewis raised questions about the testimony of Lauber, who testified pursuant to several grants of immunity.

“Carmen Lauber was not able to tell you that she bought fentanyl. She agreed on the stand that it was the detectives that first put the word fentanyl in her mouth, in her head. She was told by detectives in this case that she bought fentanyl. ‘Eric died of fentanyl. You bought drugs. You bought fentanyl,'” Lewis said. “She took that story and she ran with it because she had everything to lose.”

On the affair, Lewis said Kouri Richins broke things off with her boyfriend and they never went on the trip. On the phone searches, Lewis argued that Kouri Richins was worried because she was innocent.

“Of course she’s worried. An innocent person would be worried. Anyone would be worried if they just found out that they are a suspect in a homicide investigation,” Lewis said. “She would have been scared to death.”

Lewis touched on Kouri Richin’s money troubles, acknowledging that the house flipping business was “struggling,” but argued that Eric Richins was “worth so much more to Kouri alive.”

She claimed that Kouri Richins was being judged for how she grieved.

“They want you to look at a woman in the worst moment of her life and to judge her grief,” Lewis said. “There is no wrong way to grieve.”

Lewis told the jury that if they believe Kouri Richins “accidentally obtained fentanyl,” and that Eric Richins then took those pills voluntarily and died, she argued that it is “not aggravated murder” and that they “must find Kouri Richins not guilty.”

On the alleged insurance scheme, Lewis argued that the state has not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that there was any fraud or forgery.

“The state has not proven their case,” Lewis said. “They don’t have the evidence that Kouri Richins killed her husband, so instead, they have tried to show you as much evidence as they possibly can to convince you she’s the sort of person who would.”

Prior to delivering its closing argument, the defense submitted a motion for mistrial, alleging that the state’s closing was full of “wild speculation,” dehumanized Kouri Richins and inappropriately commented on her demeanor. The motion was denied.

In his rebuttal, Bloodworth acknowledged that much of the evidence in the case is circumstantial.

“People do not video themselves poisoning their spouse,” he said. “But circumstantial evidence is just as good as direct evidence.”

Bloodworth argued that there was “plenty of proof to convict” Kouri Richins based on Lauber’s corroborated testimony. He also argued that much of the defense’s argument is based around trying to explain a letter found in Kouri Richins’ jail cell that prosecutors said appears to outline testimony for her brother instructing him to say that her husband got fentanyl from Mexico.

“All the evidence in this case proves that Kouri Richins murdered her husband, the father of her three children, Eric Richins,” he said. “There is no other rational explanation.”

“And despite all the evidence, Kouri Richins doubles down and blames Eric,” he continued.

Kouri Richins did not testify during the three-week trial and the defense called no witnesses.

During his testimony, the lead detective in the case said that Kouri Richins paid a ghostwriter for her children’s book.

A month prior to her arrest in May 2023, the mom of three young sons appeared on a “Good Things Utah” segment on Salt Lake City ABC affiliate KTVX to promote the book. In the segment, Kouri Richins said her husband of nine years died “unexpectedly” and that his death “completely took us all by shock.

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(NEW YORK) — Three people were arrested Thursday in the January armed hijacking of a truck making a delivery at the Apple store in the Americana shopping center in Manhasset, New York City.

The delivery truck was filled with Apple merchandise valued at more than $1 million. The stolen goods included hundreds of devices and other accessories, including MacBooks, iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches, federal prosecutors said.

Alan Christhofer Cedeno-Ferrer, Michael Mejia-Nunez and Ennait Alexis Sirett-Padilla are accused of hijacking the truck and forcing the delivery workers to drive to a secluded location where they made off with more than $1.2 million worth of Apple products.

Victims were preparing to unload the merchandise when a black Honda Accord pulled up to the delivery truck. Three masked men, armed with handguns, got out of the car and approached the victims, according to court records.

They forced victim-1 into the back of the truck and zip-tied his hands. Victim-2 was ordered at gunpoint, into the driver’s seat to drive the truck. He was directed to a secluded parking area behind an office building less than a half mile away and then ordered into the back of the delivery truck with Victim-1, where his hands were also zip-tied, according to prosecutors.

The Accord and the delivery truck were followed to the location by a Home Depot box truck, authorities said. As captured by surveillance cameras, the Home Depot truck backed up to the rear of the delivery truck, so the cargo sections were aligned, according to prosecutors.

The Apple merchandise was then moved from the delivery truck to the Home Depot truck. Once they finished, they closed the cargo door to the delivery truck with the victims inside and left the location. One of the victims was able to free himself and call 911, according to prosecutors.

The defendants are expected to appear in federal court later Thursday, when federal prosecutors will seek their detention.

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