Amber Alert issued for 5-year-old girl left unattended in running vehicle that was then stolen: Police
Police in St. Louis County said they are searching for a missing-5-year-old girl. (St. Louis County Police Department)
(AFFTON, Mo.) — A 5-year-old girl is missing after she was left unattended in a running vehicle that was then stolen, authorities in Missouri said Monday.
An Amber Alert has been issued for Aleise Dawson, who was taken around 8 a.m. local time in Affton, Missouri, according to the St. Louis County Police Department.
“The vehicle has been recovered, but the child has not,” the St. Louis County Police Department said.
The child started living with a guardian, who is believed to be a relative, within the past few weeks, according to St. Louis County Police Department spokesperson Vera Clay.
The guardian had placed the child in the car, gone inside a residence to get something and “came back out and the car was gone,” Clay said during a press briefing on Monday.
Officers responded to search for Aleise, and the vehicle was located several blocks away, according to Clay.
It is unclear if the person who took the vehicle is known to the child and guardian, or if this was “completely random,” Clay said. Police are treating it as an abduction, she said.
“There’s a 5-year-old out there and no one knows where she is. So we are going to utilize every resource that we have available to our department,” including helicopter air support, Clay said.
The police department said it does not have a photograph of the child, whom they described as a Black girl standing 2 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 60 pounds. She has four ponytails and was last seen wearing a pink T-shirt with the words “Flower Power” on it and blue shorts, police said.
Anyone with information is urged to call 636-529-8210 or 911.
New York Attorney General Letitia James stands silently during a press conference at the office of the Attorney General, on Dec. 15, 2025, in New York. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — Subpoenas issued to New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of a civil rights investigation into her fraud case against Donald Trump are invalid because the U.S. attorney in Albany who issued them lacked lawful authority, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
“The subpoenas are unenforceable due to a threshold defect,” U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield determined, writing that John Sarcone “was not lawfully serving as Acting U.S. Attorney when the subpoenas were issued.”
Sarcone’s appointment bypassed the requirements that govern who can exercise the power of a U.S. attorney, the judge said, similar to the way a judge ruled in November that Lindsey Halligan lacked the authority to bring charges against James and former FBI Director James Comey in Virginia.
Sarcone, like Halligan, was neither Senate confirmed nor appointed by the federal judiciary in the Northern District of New York.
Sarcone issued subpoenas to James as part of an investigation into whether she violated President Trump’s civil rights when she sued him over a decade’s worth of alleged business fraud.
Trump was found liable in 2024 for overstating his net worth, resulting in banks and insurance companies giving him more favorable terms. The half billion-dollar judgment was subsequently thrown out on appeal and is currently before the state’s highest court, though the finding stands.
James argued that Sarcone’s subpoenas were issued as an act of retaliation, but Judge Schofield said she did not need to address that at this stage because her ruling tossed out the subpoenas due to the faulty “workaround” Trump used to try to give Sarcone authority he did not have.
“Since August 2025, courts in New Jersey, Nevada and California have held that similarly installed acting U.S. Attorneys lacked lawful authority,” Schofield said, referencing, among other examples, Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to install his former personal attorney Alina Habba as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
“This decision is an important win for the rule of law and we will continue to defend our office’s successful litigation from this administration’s political attacks,” a spokesman for James said Thursday.
Lindsey Halligan, attorney for Donald Trump, looks on during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House, on March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — In an 11-page court filing, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Acting U.S. attorney Lindsay Halligan blasted a federal judge Tuesday for what they called an “inquisition” against Halligan for continuing to represent herself as U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Virginia, after another judge found she was not legally allowed to serve in the role.
Halligan, a former White House aide who was appointed interim U.S. attorney by President Donald Trump, secured indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, only to have them thrown out when U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie determined in November that she had been unlawfully appointed without being either Senate confirmed or appointed by the federal judiciary.
Last week, U.S. District Judge David Novak ordered the Justice Department to explain why Halligan was still using the title after her office issued an indictment in which she was identified as U.S. attorney in the document’s signature block.
In their court filing on Tuesday, Bondi, Blanche and Halligan slammed Judge Novak’s order.
“The Court’s thinly veiled threat to use attorney discipline to cudgel the Executive Branch into conforming its legal position in all criminal prosecutions to the views of a single district judge is a gross abuse of power and an affront to the separation of powers,” the filing said. “The bottom line is that Ms. Halligan has not ‘misrepresented’ anything and the Court is flat wrong to suggest that any change to the Government’s signature block is warranted in this or any other case.”
“Contrary to this Court’s suggestion, nothing in the Comey and James dismissal orders prohibits Ms. Halligan from performing the functions of or holding herself out as the United States Attorney,” said the filing. “Although Judge Currie concluded that Ms. Halligan was unlawfully appointed under Section 546, she did not purport to enjoin Ms. Halligan from continuing to oversee the office or from identifying herself as the United States Attorney in the Government’s signature blocks.”
The DOJ officials said Judge Novak had a “fixation” on Halligan’s signature block, which was “untethered from how federal courts actually operate.”
They argued that the court has no authority to strike her signature from the block.
A poster of celebrity real estate agents Tal and Oren Alexander along with their brother Alon (Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A jury has found the Alexander brothers guilty on all counts in their federal sex trafficking trial in New York City.
Jury deliberations began Thursday for the former real estate titans, Oren and Alon Alexander, 38-year-old twins, along with their brother, Tal Alexander, 39, who have denied sexually assaulting anyone or running a sex trafficking conspiracy, as prosecutors have charged. They pleaded not guilty.
Throughout the five-week trial, 11 women testified that they were sexually assaulted by one or more of the brothers. At least eight of the women claimed they were drugged by one of the Alexanders.
“These are chilling, reprehensible, and unacceptable acts,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, whose office prosecuted the case, said in a statement following the verdict. “We commend the victims for their courage in coming forward and testifying at the trial. They bravely overcame the pain of reliving the abuses inflicted upon them and, as a result, prevented others from becoming victims.”
A spokesperson for the Alexander family called the verdict “deeply disappointing.”
“We believe there are substantial problems with the evidence and the way this case was presented,” the spokesperson, Juda S. Engelmayer, said in a statement. “The legal process does not end here. We will continue fighting every day until justice is done and the three brothers regain their freedom.”
An attorney for one of the brothers also vowed to keep fighting.
“There are a lot of avenues open to us. We’re not gonna stop,” Marc Agnifilo, who represented Oren Alexander, said outside court on Monday. “We believe in our client’s innocence and we’re not gonna stop fighting until we prevail. And we believe that we will one day prevail.”
The brothers’ federal sentencing has been set for Aug. 6.
Oren and Tal Alexander gained notoriety in New York’s luxury real estate market through their company, Alexander Group, and have been under federal investigation alongside Alon since late 2024.
They have been accused of luring women to nightclubs and parties, then drugging and sexually assaulting them.
In his closing statement, federal prosecutor Andrew Jones said there is “crushing evidence” that the brothers “masqueraded as party boys when really they were predators” who committed an “array of federal sex offenses.”
Jones recounted the graphic accounts of the alleged victims and said the wealthy brothers had a “playbook” luring women with exclusive parties, yachts and luxury travel so they could assault them.
“Once they had their victims where they wanted them, the defendants assaulted them using force, using drugs, or using both,” Jones said.
Then, the brothers allegedly bragged about their exploits in blog posts with titles like “It’s not rape if… you use her tears as lube” and “It’s not rape if… she secretly wants it.”
Jones told the jury the allegations are corroborated “by the sheer number of other victims who testified here — women who never met each other, who have each led different lives, in different professions, sometimes in different cities. But they had one horrific thing in common — they were each raped by these men. And they described near identical experiences of their assaults.”
During closing arguments, defense attorney Howard Srebnick conceded the brothers could be “obnoxious” and their conduct “inappropriate,” but he told the jury, “Nobody was being assaulted, nobody had been trafficked.”
Srebnick urged jurors to reject the government’s case against his client, Alon Alexander, insisting prosecutors failed to meet their burden of proof.
In her closing argument, Deanna Paul said the brothers “are not mobsters,” though sometimes they acted like “entitled a——-.”
A defense attorney for Tal Alexander, Paul argued that prosecutors have asked the jury to “connect dots that really aren’t there.”
In his summations, Agnifilo suggested to the jury that the victims in this case were dissatisfied with their encounters with the Alexanders, which motivated them to testify in this trial.
