Justice Department demands 2024 election ballots from Wayne County, Michigan
Voters cast ballots at the polls inside Central United Methodist Church on November 5, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. (Sarah Rice/Getty Images)
(WAYNE COUNTY, Mich.) — The Justice Department has demanded 2024 federal election ballots and records from Wayne County, Michigan, according to a letter posted online by state officials early Monday morning.
The letter, from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, references three voter fraud convictions from the 2020 election and a civil case alleging fraud that was dismissed in 2020.
“Based on this history of fraud convictions and other allegations concerning the election procedures in Wayne County and, for the purpose of ensuring that the foregoing federal election laws were not violated in the November 2024 federal election, we are requesting that you produce the following election-related records from that election: all ballots (including absentee and provisional), ballot receipts, and ballot envelopes,” the DOJ letter said.
State officials said the letter is a continuation of President Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere with the election process, following his recent executive order regarding mail-in voting and the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots in Fulton County, Georgia.
“Once again, President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to sabotage our democratic process and turn it into his own personal agency to interfere in state elections. This request is as absurd as it is baseless,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement. “Successful convictions underline that Michigan’s safeguards work and that instances of voter fraud are rare and addressed.”
“Using these prosecutions and recycling debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories as justification to demand copies of the ballots of Michigan residents is a clear attempt to bully clerks and spread fear, even after Donald Trump won Michigan in 2024. If this administration wants to bring this circus to our state, my office is prepared to protect the people’s right to vote,” Nessel said.
Michigan state officials also say that none of the examples provided in the letter were from the 2024 election cycle.
Representatives from the Justice Department and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
FBI agents in January removed 700 boxes containing ballots and other materials associated with the 2020 election from a Fulton County election site after obtaining a search warrant based on unproven claims of widespread voting irregularities.
Trump has long criticized the outcome of the 2020 election, personally pushing to overturn the results after his loss and later being indicted in two criminal cases over his actions. Those cases have since been dismissed, and Trump has continued to push for criminal accountability for what he baselessly alleged was a stolen election.
Crosses dedicated to the 21 victims of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary are placed in front of the school on Monday, Feb. 26, 2024 in Uvalde. (Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas) — Nearly four years after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, a jury is set to decide whether a police officer should be held criminally responsible in connection with one of the worst school shootings in American history.
Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, charged with allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by failing to respond to the crisis as it unfolded.
Prosecutors allege that Gonzales, one of the first of nearly 400 officers to respond to the rampage, failed to engage the shooter despite knowing his location, having time to respond and being trained to handle active shooters. It ultimately took 77 minutes for law enforcement to mount a counter-assault that would kill the gunman.
Ever since the shooting tore apart Uvalde on May 24, 2022, families of the victims have been seeking accountability and answers. Many have argued their children might have been saved had police confronted the gunman more quickly.
The trial, being staged 200 miles from Uvalde in Corpus Christi, marks an exceedingly rare instance of prosecutors seeking to convict a member of law enforcement for a response to a school shooting.
Prosecutors in June 2024 charged both Gonzales and Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — the on-site commander on the day of the shooting — with multiple counts of endangerment and abandonment of a child.
Gonzales and Arredondo are the only officers charged. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Investigations have determined that Salvador Ramos, 18, acted alone in carrying out the massacre. He was killed on-site at Robb Elementary School.
Gonzales was charged with 29 felony counts, one for each of the 19 fourth-graders who died in the shooting and 10 students who survived in classroom 112.
According to the indictment, he “failed to engage, distract or delay the shooter” after hearing the gunshots and learning about the shooter’s location.
Arredondo was charged with 10 felony counts for allegedly endangering the 10 survivors by delaying the law enforcement response and not following active shooter protocols.
Arredondo and Gonzales were charged at the same time, but Gonzales will be facing trial first and alone.
Arredondo’s case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal lawsuit filed after the U.S. Border Patrol refused repeated efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview Border Patrol agents who responded to the shooting, including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman at the school.
Each count carries a maximum of two years in prison, though judges and juries in Texas have broad discretion in imposing sentences, according to Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
“There’s a lot of different ways that this could go,” she said. “All the children who were so horrifically killed that would seem to motivate a longer sentence for anyone who is found to have some fault.”
Ahead of trial, prosecutors issued at least 75 subpoenas to potential witnesses, including police officers, teachers, and families of victims, according to court filings.
More than 20 members of the elite Texas Rangers, 16 members of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, and multiple physicians from nearby hospitals have received subpoenas, according to court filings.
In the attempt to make their case against Gonzales, prosecutors turned to a child endangerment law more commonly used to prosecute negligent parents or caretakers responsible for things like leaving a child in a hot car or without supervision at a beach. The law has rarely been used against police officers, experts noted, because of the difficulty in proving they had a legal obligation to the children.
“The critical issue here is whether the individual has a duty to act,” said Thompson, the law professor in Houston.
According to Houston-based defense attorney Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube, prosecutors will need to establish that Gonzales had a legal duty — not just a moral obligation — to intervene and that he failed to follow his training for active shooter scenarios.
“The jury is going to have the nasty task of looking through some horrible things to determine if he had the duty to act,” she said, referencing evidence such as body camera footage and frantic 911 calls from the shooting.
Legal experts who spoke with ABC News noted that Gonzales’ role as a responding officer — not the commander or case agent at the scene — could make it tough to convince the jury the man’s conduct amounted to a crime.
If prosecutors can secure a conviction, it would mark the first time that a police officer has been held accountable for how they carried out their duties at a mass shooting to which they responded.
Prosecutors rarely attempt to charge police officers who have responded to mass shootings, according to Phil Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who maintains a database of police officers who have been arrested. Of the 25,000 arrests since 2005 included in the database, Stinson identified only two prosecutions similar to those against Gonzales and Arredondo.
Defense attorneys for Gonzales have argued he is being unfairly scapegoated for a crime he didn’t commit and that he did all he could to save and rescue children who were in imminent danger.
“Those precious souls were stolen by a monster that day, but that monster was not Adrian [Gonazales],” defense attorney Nico LaHood told ABC affiliate KSAT in San Antonio. “He was there, he was present. He was going into danger. And so the narrative of the government is something we’re going to contest highly, and that’s going to be the point of contention before this jury.”
Court filings shed little light on the case Gonzales’ lawyers will mount, though attorneys have signaled plans to use drone footage from Robb Elementary to assist them.
“The factual circumstances of this case intricately entail the timing and spatial proximity of the actors and events unfolding at Robb Elementary school on the day of the murders,” attorneys wrote in a court filing.
NTSB investigators walk the scene of the March 22 collision between an Air Canada Express plane and a firefighting vehicle on Runway 4 at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, March 23, 2026. (NTSB)
(NEW YORK) — Antoine Forest has been identified by his family as one of the two pilots killed when a regional Air Canada jet collided with a Port Authority airport vehicle at LaGuardia Airport in New York City.
Sunday night’s on-the-ground crash killed both pilots, left dozens injured and prompted LaGuardia to shut down for more than 12 hours.
The collision happened shortly after Air Canada Flight 8646, which was carrying four crew members and 72 passengers, touched down from Montreal around 11:45 p.m., according to Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia. The plane, which was operated by Jazz Aviation, struck a rescue-and-firefighting vehicle responding to another aircraft, officials said.
Preliminary data shows the plane was traveling between 93 and 105 mph when it impacted the fire truck, FlightRadar24 told ABC News.
At least 43 people — from the plane and the fire truck — were taken to hospitals, officials said.
One passenger on the flight, Joe, said that as the plane was landing, he noticed some emergency vehicles on the tarmac.
“Right before the impacts, we felt something, maybe like an emergency brake that was pulled, or some kind of hard stop, before we hit the truck,” Joe, who did not want to use his last name, told ABC News Live. “But prior to that, there was nothing out of the ordinary that I had noticed.”
“Because I was seated in the emergency aisle, somebody in the plane had shouted, ‘Emergency exits open,'” Joe said. “So at that time, I pulled the lever down, attached the door, put it to the side of the plane, and a few of us had exited through the emergency exit onto the wing of the plane. And FDNY and Port Authority Police directed us to slide down the wing. … It was very low to the ground and easy to get off.”
Joe, who was on the flight with his fiancé, said Monday evening that they were “pretty shaken up, still kind of in shock.”
“And just heartbroken for, obviously, the pilots, and all those that are injured,” Joe said.
He said he believes the pilots “saved many lives on that flight — and my heart’s just broken for them.”
LaGuardia shut down after the crash and slowly resumed flights at 2 p.m. Monday. The runway where the collision occurred will remain closed until 7 a.m. Friday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.
Ghislaine Maxwell attends VIP Evening of Conversation for Women’s Brain Health Initiative on October 18, 2016 in New York City. (Jimi Celeste/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — As federal investigators built a case against Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, they discovered emails they believed suggested that she was arranging young women to have sex with then Prince Andrew, according to a new review of documents released earlier this year by the Department of Justice.
A search warrant application signed just days before Maxwell’s 2020 arrest identified at least three instances when Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell appeared to discuss arrangements for young women, including ahead of his official state visit to Peru in 2002.
“As for girls well I leave that entirely to you,” said an email believed to have been sent by Mountbatten-Windsor to Maxwell in Feb. 2002, signed “Masses of love A”
In another email identified by the FBI, Mountbatten-Windsor asked Maxwell about helping him find “some new inappropriate friends,” according to the search warrant affidavit.
“I am up here at Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family,” Mountbatten-Windsor wrote in August 2001. “Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?”
Months later ahead of his official visit to Peru, Maxwell shared with Mountbatten-Windsor an email in which she asked an acquaintance in Peru to help find him people who are “intelligent pretty fun” and can be “to be friendly and discreet.”
“Some sight seeing some 2 legged sight seeing (read intelligent pretty fun and from good families) and he will be very happy. I know I can rely on you to show him a wonderful time and that you will only introduce him to friends that you can trust and rely on to be friendly and discreet and fun,” Maxwell wrote in March 2002.
“Got it I will ring him today if I can. Love you A,” an email associated with Mountbatten-Windsor responded.
According to a search application released earlier this year by the Department of Justice, the FBI believed those emails showed Andrew and Maxwell “discussing her attempts to arrange for young females to engage in sex acts” with him. The messages were cited as part of an application to get a judge’s permission to search dozens of electronic devices seized from Epstein’s residences.
Neither the palace nor a representative for the former Prince Andrew responded to a request for comment from ABC News.
Mountbatten-Windsor has long denied any wrongdoing, and Maxwell — who was convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2021 — was never charged with arranging women for Mountbatten-Windsor. As part of that prosecution, investigators unsuccessfully sought to interview Mountbatten-Windsor in 2020.
“To date, Prince Andrew has provided zero cooperation,” former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in January 2020.
The disclosure of the new documents come as police in the United Kingdom are renewing their scrutiny of Mountbatten-Windsor. In an interview with ABC News earlier this month, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said his office was seeking unredacted materials related to Epstein from the Department of Justice.
“There’s a whole range of suggested sexual allegations and those are being assessed at the moment to see whether any of them do actually merit a criminal investigation,” Rowley said.
