California radiologist, wife fatally shot in driveway in targeted attack, police say
Law enforcement on the scene after two people were shot and killed in Simi Valley, Calif., Dec. 1, 2025. KABC.
(SIMI VALLEY, Calif.) — A California doctor and his wife were shot and killed in their Simi Valley home in a targeted attack, not a random incident, according to police.
Dr. Eric Cordes and wife, Vicki, were shot multiple times in their open garage on Sunday. The couple was taken to a local hospital and later died of their injuries, the Simi Valley Police Department told ABC News.
Simi Valley Police said they’re actively investigating the murders and they believe there is no threat to the community.
Police would not reveal any information on possible suspects or the motive for the attack.
Dr. Cordes worked with Focus Medical Imaging for several years before his killing, the radiology clinic told ABC News.”
Dr. Eric Cordes was a brilliant, hard working doctor, and a respected colleague. He served the Simi Valley community and surrounding areas throughout his entire 30 plus year career. His tragic passing will leave a huge hole that will take a long time to fill,” Focus Medical Imaging said.
Adventist Health Simi Valley, where he also worked, called the couple’s killing a “shocking loss.”
“The Adventist Health Simi Valley community is heartbroken by the tragic deaths of our longtime colleague, Dr. Eric Cordes, and his wife, Vicki. Dr. Cordes was a highly respected, board-certified radiologist and beloved physician who served this community with compassion and excellence for nearly 30 years,” the hospital told ABC News in a statement.
Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump is ramping up a war of words with the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois, suggesting in a social media post on Wednesday that they “should be in jail” for refusing to protect ICE agents.
Trump’s social media post came as Texas National Guard troops arrived in Illinois on Monday night and were preparing to be deployed in Chicago.
“Illinois will not let the Trump administration continue on their authoritarian march without resisting,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said on Tuesday as the Texas National Guard troops appeared at an Army Reserve training center in the Chicago suburb of Elwood.
“We will use every lever at our disposal to stop this power grab because military troops should not be used against American communities,” Pritzker said.
The military deployment drew outrage from Democratic leaders, as well as from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
“Donald Trump declared war on Chicago. That’s what he did. What the Trump administration is doing is intentionally fomenting chaos,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “The federal government is out of control. This is one of the most dangerous times in our nation’s history.”
Trump fired back on Wednesday on social media.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE Officers!” the president wrote. “Governor Pritzker also.”
Johnson responded in a social media post on Wednesday, writing, “This is not the first time Trump has tried to have a Black man unjustly arrested. I’m not going anywhere.”
Pritzker also reacted to Trump’s post, writing on social media on Wednesday, “I will not back down.”
“Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power,” Pritzker said. “What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”
The back-and-forth between the Illinois leaders, both Democrats, came as after Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Chicago. The act, which dates back to 1807, empowers the president to nationally deploy the military and federalize National Guard units to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or an armed rebellion against the federal government.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, Trump said he did not yet see the need to use the Insurrection Act, but “if I had to enact it, I’d do it, if people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up.”
Meanwhile, the Texas National Guard has been seen at an Army Reserve training center in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, ABC News has learned.
Groups of soldiers were seen walking the grounds of training center in Elwood, with most of the troops apparently having arrived on Monday night, according to ABC News’ Chicago station WLS.
Pritzker said at a news conference on Monday that over the weekend, he called on Abbott “to immediately withdraw his support of this decision” to send the Texas National Guard members to Chicago.
Earlier Tuesday, Abbott had replied to Pritzker on social media, saying, “I fully authorized the President to call up 400 members of the Texas National Guard to ensure safety for federal officials.”
The deployment drew outrage from Democratic leaders, as well as Chicago Mayor Johnson.
“Donald Trump declared war on Chicago. That’s what he did. What the Trump administration is doing is intentionally fomenting chaos,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “The federal government is out of control. This is one of the most dangerous times in our nation’s history.”
(WASHINGTON) — With the future of the prosecution of James Comey in doubt after a judge expressed alarm Monday about a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” in the case, lawyers for the former FBI director are due in federal court Wednesday to argue that the indictment be thrown out over concerns it’s the product of a vindictive prosecution.
Defense lawyers have argued that the prosecutors are engaging in an act of political retribution at the behest of President Donald Trump — who they allege “expressly sought charges regardless of the facts” — to punish Comey for his outspoken criticism of the president.
“Bedrock principles of due process and equal protection have long ensured that government officials may not use courts to punish and imprison their perceived personal and political enemies. But that is exactly what happened here,” Comey’s lawyers argued in court filings.
Amid an ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Trump abruptly fired Comey in 2017 and has repeatedly called for him to be criminally charged. A prosecutor handpicked by Trump brought an indictment against Comey in September, despite career prosecutors identifying critical flaws in the case and recommending against charges, ABC News previously reported.
“Objective evidence establishes that President Trump directed the prosecution of Mr. Comey in retaliation for Mr. Comey’s public criticisms and to punish Mr. Comey because of personal spite,” Comey’s attorneys argued.
Comey’s lawyers have argued that the case should be thrown out because Trump has “genuine animus” for the former FBI director, and the case itself would likely not have been brought absent the intervention of the president himself.
When Trump’s original pick to lead the United States Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia declined to bring charges against Trump’s adversaries, the president fired him and installed his former defense attorney with what sources said was the express mandate of bringing charges against Comey and others.
“When no career prosecutor would carry out those orders, the President publicly forced the interim U.S. Attorney to resign and directed the Attorney General to effectuate ‘justice’ against Mr. Comey,” Comey’s lawyers argued.
The two-count indictment against Comey claims that he lied to Congress when he testified that he never authorized other FBI officials to leak information to the press, despite allegedly directing a Columbia University professor to pass information to a New York Times reporter. Comey pleaded not guilty to the charges and denies ever authorizing anyone at the FBI to leak information on his behalf.
Prosecutors argue that Comey’s motion falls short of the high legal standard to prove a vindictive prosecution, claiming that he cannot prove the case was brought “solely to punish” him for his criticism of the president. Highlighting Comey’s role leading the FBI, prosecutors argued that him making false statements “implicates societal interests of the highest order. ”
“The Executive cannot be expected to ignore agency heads lying about official actions simply because they later become outspoken critics,” prosecutors argued.
Instead of directly refuting what defense lawyers say is “smoking gun evidence” — a Sept. 20 social media post in which Trump directly demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi act “NOW!!!” to prosecute Comey — prosecutors have sought to infuse the record with emails and notes suggesting that Comey used a conduit to pass information to the press. Prosecutors have also argued that Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who made the unusual move to present Comey’s indictment before a grand jury on her own, does not have animus for Comey, even if the president does.
Prosecutors also pushed back on the claim that Trump’s social media posts prove that the prosecution is vindictive; instead, they argue that Trump’s social media posts alleging Comey committed crimes create “a years-long record of legitimate” reasons to bring a case against the former FBI director.
“The defendant primarily cites the President’s social-media posts. These posts reflect the President’s view that the defendant has committed crimes that should be met with prosecution. They may even suggest that the President disfavors the defendant. But they are not direct evidence of a vindictive motive,” prosecutors wrote.
Wednesday’s hearing comes as Halligan’s actions are attracting scrutiny from a magistrate judge who expressed alarm that a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” may have irreparably harmed the case. In a scathing ruling on Monday, Judge William Fitzpatrick said he identified at least two instances when Halligan made “fundamental misstatements of the law” during her grand jury presentation as well as raised concerns that Comey’s indictment may not have been fully presented to the grand jury.
“If this procedure did not take place, then the Court is in uncharted legal territory in that the indictment returned in open court was not the same charging document presented to and deliberated upon by the grand jury,” Fitzpatrick said.
Fitzpatrick ordered prosecutors to hand over audio recordings of the grand jury proceedings to defense lawyers, though U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff delayed that decision to hear objections from prosecutors. The dispute is expected to come up during Wednesday’s hearing in addition to the motion to dismiss.
(WASHINGTON) — Lawyers for President Donald Trump are asking a federal judge in Florida to deny a request by the Wall Street Journal and its parent companies, Dow Jones and News Corp, to dismiss a $10 billion defamation lawsuit over the paper’s reporting on the bawdy letter allegedly penned by Trump that appeared in a birthday book for disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a court filing late Monday, Trump’s lawyers argued that the July article and surrounding coverage were a “deliberate smear campaign designed to damage President Trump’s reputation” and subject the president to “public hatred and ridicule.” They also requested oral arguments over the Journal’s recent motion to dismiss.
“Defendants did not publish the Article on the front page of The Wall Street Journal based on a mere harmless joke between friends,” Monday’s filing said. “Indeed, such an assertion strains credulity beyond repair. The Article, and the surrounding media around it, were all a deliberate smear campaign designed to damage President Trump’s reputation.”
Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding and participating in Epstein’s trafficking of underage girls, told Justice Department officials in August that Epstein had asked her to coordinate contributions to his 2003 50th birthday book from friends and associates, but said she could not recall if Trump, then a private citizen, was among those who responded.
Last month the House Oversight Committee released records from Epstein’s estate that included a copy of a birthday book with the alleged letter from Trump that the newspaper had described.
Trump, who filed suit against the Journal in July, has continued to argue the letter is fake and that the signature on the letter is not his.
Acknowledging the release of the letter by the House Oversight panel, Trump’s lawyers alleged that the Wall Street Journal was still “deliberate and malicious” because the reporting suggested that the letter was not only authored by Trump but also on-brand for the president.
“Defendants cannot hide behind a few words buried within the text — words that refer to the letter ‘bearing Trump’s name’ — while simultaneously ignoring their deliberate portrayal of the letter as being authored and sent by President Trump to Epstein in 2003,” the filing said.
The Wall Street Journal has stood by its reporting.
“Because Plaintiff has publicly admitted that he was Epstein’s friend in the early 2000s, his reputation cannot be harmed by the suggestion that he was friends with Epstein in 2003. Indeed, he was listed in the Birthday Book as a ‘friend’ of Epstein. The fact that his relationship with Epstein may now be a political liability — over 20 years after the Birthday Book was presented to Epstein — does not change this conclusion,” the Journal contended in its request for dismissal.
While the Journal’s reporting included a denial from President Trump, his lawyers argued in Mondays filing that the publication still acted with a “reckless disregard for the truth” because the request for comment was rushed and the reporting allegedly cast doubt on the president’s claim.
“Although Defendants included Plaintiff’s denial, they did so in a way that made it seem as if Plaintiff’s denial was false. This kind of reckless disregard for the truth by Defendants provides a sufficient basis for an inference of actual malice,” the filing said.
