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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in Tennessee will hear arguments Thursday over whether the government is being vindictive in pursuing a human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

The hearing comes after the judge, Waverly Crenshaw Jr., canceled the trial in the case in December and wrote in a court order that there was enough evidence to hold a hearing on the question of vindictive prosecution. 

The government is currently blocked from deporting Abrego Garcia, who was released from immigration detention in December. In a separate case last week, a federal judge ruled that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot re-detain him because his 90-day detention period had expired and the government lacked a viable plan for his deportation.

The Salvadoran native, who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution. The Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which he and his attorneys deny.

He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, to which he pleaded not guilty.

After being released into the custody of his brother in Maryland pending trial, he was again detained by immigration authorities before being released in December.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump did not mention their names in his speech, but Alex Pretti and Renee Good loomed over the State of the Union address.

Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, and Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, were both fatally shot in January by federal law enforcement deployed to Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge” immigration crackdown.

While the deaths of Good, who was killed on Jan. 7, and Pretti, who was killed on Jan. 24, were captured on video and garnered national attention, the president did not broach the subject of their demise.

But some Democrats attending the State of the Union attempted to invoke their names during Trump’s hour-and-48-minute speech.

During the address, Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., held up photos of Pretti and Good that included a caption in all capital letters, reading, “PREMEDITATED MURDER.”

Trump has previously lamented the deaths of Good and Pretti and instituted a drawdown in federal law enforcement in Minneapolis in the wake of their deaths.

During his speech Tuesday, the president blamed the Democrats for the current partial government shutdown stemming from an impasse over immigration enforcement. Funding for the Department of Homeland Security ran out on Feb. 14.

“Now they have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers,” Trump said of the Democrats. “Tonight, I’m demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security, homeland security of the United States, and also for helping people clean up their snow.”

At one point, Trump prompted heckling from Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., when he said the Democrats should be “ashamed.”

“One of the great things about the State of the Union is how it gives Americans the chance to see clearly what their representatives really believe,” Trump said in his speech. “So, tonight I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

While it appeared that all of the Republican lawmakers in the chamber stood up and applauded, most of the Democrats remained seated.

While seated next to each other, Omar and Tlaib repeatedly shouted at Trump. Omar was heard yelling, “You have killed Americans! You have killed Americans!” in an apparent reference to the deaths of Good and Pretti.

Tlaib shouted “liar” and referenced the Epstein files.

The barbs from Tlaib and Omar continued as Trump said, “I’m also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens, in many cases, drug lords, murderers, all over our country. They’re blocking the removal of these people out of our country. And you should be ashamed of yourself.”

During her rebuttal address for the Democrats, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said the nation’s “broken immigration system is something to be fixed — not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities.”

“And yet, our president has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans — and they have done it without a warrant,” Spanberger said.

She added, “They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies, they have sent children — a little boy in a blue bunny hat — to far-off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens on our streets.”

In a statement released immediately after the State of the Union, Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., also mentioned the killings of Good and Pretti.

“Here in Minnesota, we have seen what happens when President Trump gets his way and a Republican majority in Congress goes along,” McCollum said. “We’ve seen the damage from masked, unidentifiable federal agents invading and occupying our communities to sow chaos, violence, and division. We’ve seen Minnesotans racially profiled and assaulted. We’ve seen the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein appears to have successfully hidden a trove of potential evidence of his crimes from investigators for more than a decade, according to documents released this month by the Department of Justice. 

Internal correspondence between Epstein’s attorneys and private investigators, as well as previously sealed court filings, suggest that the disgraced financier went to extreme lengths to hide the potential evidence during the critical three-year period when local and federal law enforcement began investigating him before he secured a lenient plea deal that allowed him to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. 

Less than two weeks before the Palm Beach Police Department raided Epstein’s mansion in October 2005, a private investigator retained by Roy Black, a criminal defense lawyer for the disgraced financier, removed a trove of evidence from the home, including multiple computers, more than two dozen phone directories, and sexually explicit material, according to documents released by the DOJ.

State and federal prosecutors appeared to have never accessed the materials while they investigated Epstein, potentially shielding Epstein from criminal exposure and contributing to how he was able to evade justice for more than a decade. 

A 2020 report from the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility about the issues with the investigation later concluded that the computers contained “potentially critical” evidence that could have changed the trajectory of the case. 

“There was good reason to believe the computers contained relevant — and potentially critical — information; and it was clear Epstein did not want the contents of his computers disclosed,” the report said. 

In the two decades that have followed — despite multiple investigations into Epstein’s criminal actions — the boxes of sensitive evidence appear to have been passed between representatives of Epstein but never fully recovered by law enforcement. 

While law enforcement has long been aware of the removed computers, documents released earlier this month by the Department of Justice for the first time shed light on the evidence removed from the home and the ill-fated effort to retrieve them by law enforcement. 

The documents outlining the trove of removed evidence were first reported by The Telegraph. 

‘Items of potential evidentiary value’

According to a 2005 memo from private investigator William Riley to Black, another private investigator, Paul Lavery, visited Epstein’s Palm Beach home at Black’s direction to remove “items of potential evidentiary value” from the home. 

Attempts by ABC News to contact Lavery and Riley Wednesday about the developments were unsuccessful. Riley’s partner in his private investigative firm Steve Kiraly declined to comment.

Black died last year, and an attorney at his former firm said he was occupied with an ongoing trial on Wednesday and unavailable.  

Searching Epstein’s home less than two weeks before police would raid it, Lavery removed more than a hundred pieces of potential evidence, including three computers, 29 bound telephone directories, a three-page listing of nearby masseuses, and at least ten photos of nude or partially nude women, according to the memo. At least two of the photos had handwritten messages on them, including from a woman who wrote, “You better never forget about me” before signing her name and ending the note “Class of 2005,” the memo said.  

Lavery also removed more than dozen items of sexual paraphernalia, five pieces of women’s underwear, Epstein’s concealed carry permit, an Epstein identification card for Harvard University, and more than $2,000 in cash, according to the memo. Among the removed items was also more than forty mainly pornographic VHS tapes and books titled “‘Compleat Slave’ — creating and living an erotic dominant/submissive lifestyle” and “‘Training with Miss Abernathy’ — a workbook for erotic slaves and their owners,” the memo said.  

The detective with the Palm Beach Police Department who was in charge of the investigation noted in a court filing that several items in Epstein’s home “were conspicuously absent” when they arrived to execute the search warrant. 

“For example, there were several hanging file folders that had their contents removed, and the pre-existing security cameras that I had observed during my last visit to Mr. Epstein’s residence were in place but were not connected to recording equipment,” he said in the filing. “In addition, at each location where a computer had been present, computer monitors, printers, and other peripheral devices were present but the computers (CPU-Central processing unit) themselves were removed.”

A FBI later agent attested in a then-sealed court filing that the items “were purposely removed from Mr. Epstein’s home in anticipation of an execution of a search warrant” and may contain vital evidence. 

“A review of Mr. Epstein’s computers may provide additional electronically stored message logs which could be further evidence of Mr. Epstein’s intent to travel to engage in sexual activity with teenagers he recruited from five Palm Beach County high schools,” the court filing said. 

According to the filing, one of the computers potentially contained critical surveillance camera footage because it previously was hard-wired to the home’s surveillance system. 

“The FBI investigation has determined that Mr. Epstein was actively involved in lewd and lascivious conduct with minor females as early as March 2004. To the extent that Mr. Epstein tries to deny that any or all of the victims ever visited his home, video footage of them at the house would rebut such a claim,” the filing said. 

A review of the Department of Justice’s Epstein library and an index of evidence released last year by the Trump administration earlier this year suggests the materials were never fully recovered by law enforcement. Testimony from an FBI analyst during the 2021 trial of Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell suggested that investigators recovered a copy of at least one of the computers, though the original computers and physical documents appear to have never been located. 

‘She needed to gather the stuff from the house’

The removal of the computers and other items was memorialized in multiple interviews conducted by law enforcement in the following two decades. 

A woman who worked as a personal assistant for Epstein told the FBI in 2021 that she was instructed by the disgraced financier to gather his items so an unidentified man could collect them from Epstein’s Palm Beach Home. 

“[She] recalled the conversation she had with EPSTEIN was where he told her that something happened to his detriment and she needed to gather the stuff from the house,” an FBI agent wrote in a report summarizing her account. 

While the assistant said she believed she would likely be meeting with a member of law enforcement, she said she arrived at the home, gathered the material, and provided it to an unknown man. The assistant said she similarly removed items from Epstein’s island. 

Epstein’s property manager also recounted the handover in his interview with federal agents, describing that Lavery retrieved the computers in the fall of 2005. 

In the following years, law enforcement unsuccessfully made multiple attempts to retrieve the items, though court documents suggest that their attempt to recover the evidence was largely focused on the three computers, rather than the trove of physical evidence — such as dozens of address books and sexual paraphernalia — that were also removed from the home. 

‘Never seen the equipment again’

As the investigation into Epstein heightened in the months following the search, Epstein’s lawyers fought to keep the materials out of the hands of law enforcement, arguing in previously sealed grand jury materials that the attempt to recover the materials were “simply the most recent of a series of highly intrusive and unusual attempts to acquire highly personal and/or privileged information” about Epstein. 

In court filings, Epstein’s attorneys appeared to acknowledge that the items were removed from the home prior to the search but argued the materials were irrelevant to the investigation and protected by attorney-client privilege. 

“Without disclosing any work done by Mr. Riley or his firm on Mr. Epstein’s behalf and at my direction, any actions thereafter taken by him or the firm were taken in connection with the legal representation of Mr. Epstein,” Epstein’s attorney Roy Black told the court in a then-sealed motion. 

The exact location of the materials in the months following the search is not clear, though recently released documents suggest that the materials quickly changed hands. According to notes taken by federal agents in 2007, Lavery claims that he promptly delivered the items to Riley, another private investigator who worked for Epstein and managed multiple storage units for the financier, the Telegraph first reported. 

“I took the items that were given to me,” Lavery said, according to notes. “Never seen the equipment again.”

Riley was subpoenaed for the information but appears to never have handed over the material, objecting to the requests with the help of Epstein’s lawyers. During the critical three-year period when Epstein was investigated by law enforcement before reaching a plea deal that allowed him to avoid a lengthy prison sentence, the trove of evidence was never accessed by law enforcement. 

When Epstein fulfilled his objection to plead guilty in state court pursuant to his non-prosecution agreement, the grand jury subpoena was withdrawn. When victims suing Epstein began seeking the materials in 2009, lawyers for the convicted sex offender appeared to spring into action to further ensure the materials would not be disclosed, citing the terms of the non-prosecution agreement. 

“Over the weekend I learned that plaintiff’s counsel are looking to get from me the computers and paperwork I took from Jeff’s house prior to the Search Warrant. I have them locked in storage and would like to know what to do with them,” Riley told an attorney for Epstein. “They are no longer needed in the criminal case, I assume.” 

Riley later confirmed in a letter to Epstein’s attorney Robert Critton that he would continue storing the materials in a “safe and secure location.”

“If at any time, you are unable to maintain possession of those materials or have any concern whatsoever that Mr. Epstein’s possession may be compromised in any manner, please advise me immediately such that we can take the necessary actions to protect and preserve those materials as is required in the Non-Prosecution Agreement,” Critton wrote in a letter memorializing their conservation. Critton died in 2020. 

Email correspondence between Riley and Epstein suggest that the disgraced financier was paying to keep the materials in a storage unit as late as 2010, though their location in the following decade — when investigators in New York opened a new investigation into Epstein and charged him with sex crimes before his 2019 death by suicide — appears to still be a mystery. 

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