New York City Mayor Eric Adams attends a news conference on November 14, 2023, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by a federal grand jury, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
In a speech addressed to New Yorkers on Wednesday, Adams vowed to fight what he called the “entirely false” indictment with “every ounce of my strength and my spirit.”
“I always knew that If I stood my ground for all of you that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams said.
Adams is the city’s first sitting mayor to be indicted.
The exact charges remain sealed as of Wednesday night, but the initial investigation expanded from campaign finance to bid-rigging and more, sources said.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.
Adams is not expected to appear in court until next week, sources told ABC News.
Adams, a former police captain who was elected as mayor of NYC less than three years ago, has spent nearly a year under the cloud of federal investigations.
Federal authorities have been investigating the possibility of corruption at City Hall, issuing subpoenas for Adams and members of his inner circle.
Two weeks ago, Adams accepted the resignation of Edward Caban, his handpicked police commissioner, after authorities issued a subpoena for his phones. The mayor’s chief counsel, Lisa Zornberg, also stepped down.
This week, New York City Public Schools Chancellor David Banks announced plans to retire at the end of the year. Banks had also turned his phone over to federal authorities.
Banks’ younger brothers, Philip Banks, the deputy mayor for public safety, and Terence Banks, also had their phones seized. David Banks’ fiancée, Sheena Wright, the first deputy mayor, had her phone seized as well.
Since being elected as New York City’s 110th mayor, Adams has been vocal about always following the rules and said he has known of no “misdoings” within his administration.
“If I am charged, I am innocent and I will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit,” Adams said in a statement Wednesday night.
Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller who is running for mayor next year, released a statement on X following the news of the indictment.
“First and foremost, this is a sad day for New Yorkers. Trust in public institutions — especially City Hall — is essential for our local democracy to function and for our city to flourish. The hardworking people of New York City deserve a city government and leadership they can trust. Right now, they don’t have it,” Lander said.
Lander called for Adams to step down from his position as mayor.
“The most appropriate path forward is for him to step down so that New York City can get the full focus its leadership demands,” Lander said.
If Adams were to heed the calls to resign, the New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams, would become acting mayor. Lander follows Williams in the line of succession.
Earlier Wednesday, Democratic House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called for Adams’ resignation, saying, “For the good of the city, he should resign.”
“I do not see how Mayor Adams can continue governing New York City,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X. “The flood of resignations and vacancies are threatening gov function. Nonstop investigations will make it impossible to recruit and retain a qualified administration.”
(LOS ANGELES) — The man who allegedly hijacked a bus in Los Angeles and led police on an hourlong chase while holding the driver at gunpoint has been identified as Lamont Campbell, a 51-year-old man from L.A., according to the LAPD.
Campbell was arrested on murder charges after allegedly carjacking a bus early Wednesday morning in southern Los Angeles which ultimately left a currently unnamed 48-year-old Hispanic man from L.A. dead after Campbell allegedly shot him with a semi-automatic handgun, according to police.
The incident began at approximately 12:46 a.m. when the Los Angeles Police Department received radio calls about a disturbance on a bus in the area of Manchester Street and Figueroa Street in southern Los Angeles, Deputy Chief Donald Graham said in a briefing Wednesday morning.
“Officers located the Metro bus at South Figueroa Street and West 117th Street. Upon finding the bus, they observed passengers running from it and seeking help from the officers,” LAPD said in a statement on Wednesday evening. “The officers quickly learned from the passengers that there was an armed suspect on the Metro bus. They attempted to stop the bus but were unsuccessful, later discovering that the armed suspect had instructed the driver not to stop.”
Multiple spike strips were deployed by officers during the pursuit, deflating several tires on the bus and ultimately causing it to stop at 6th Street and Alameda Boulevard, according to LAPD.
“SWAT personnel quickly observed that a victim was down inside the bus, formulated a tactical plan, and made entry without delay. The suspect was taken into custody without further incident,” authorities said.
Officers immediately began to render medical aid to the victim who was suffering from gunshot wounds before he was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced deceased, LAPD confirmed.
Police have not yet given a motive in the case but did say that Campbell has since been charged with murder and booked at the 77th Area Jail where he is being held on a $2 million bail.
(NEW YORK) — A massive black market scheme that diverted and resold critical prescription drugs potentially put unsuspecting patients in the path of harm and bilked the U.S. government out of millions of dollars, according to federal charging documents unsealed Wednesday.
The illicit operation was allegedly led, aided and abetted by multiple pharmacy owners and employees in Puerto Rico, as well as a medical facility procurement worker who “used his position” to steal legitimate medications from the warehouse before they hit the market and then resold them at a “steep discount” to individual pharmacy owners, according to an indictment.
The 27 people indicted in the scheme include a onetime Olympic basketball player, officials at the U.S. Department of Health’s Office of Inspector General told ABC News. Of those indicted, one has already pleaded guilty, officials said.
Eddin Orlando Santiago-Cordero, aka “Guayacan,” allegedly served as one of many unlicensed wholesale distributors, according to an indictment. Decades before facing charges in the scheme, he was on Puerto Rico’s Olympic roster, a spokesperson for the HHS-OIG told ABC News.
Early Wednesday, federal authorities arrested some of the individuals allegedly involved in the operation across Puerto Rico and in Florida, the HHS-OIG spokesperson said.
More than 100 different drugs — many of grave necessity to the people who take them — were part of the drug diversion scheme, the charging documents said. These drugs include multiple HIV+ medications, insulin, thyroid medication, antipsychotic / schizophrenia medication, alcohol and opioid addiction medication, blood thinners, asthma and COPD medications, IV antibiotics to treat serious infections like meningitis or sepsis, hormone replacement therapy estrogen, malaria medication, popular obesity and diabetes drugs including Ozempic and Mounjaro, as well as medication used for erectile dysfunction and enlarged prostate.
Those drugs were snatched before reaching retail, often stored in resealable plastic baggies without markings — and importantly, without the conditions needed to maintain some of the meds’ safety and effectiveness, the charging documents say. One example cited in the court documents is insulin, which must be refrigerated.
“It becomes difficult, if not impossible, for regulators such as the FDA, law enforcement, or end-users to know whether the prescription drug package actually contains the correct drug or the correct dose” once the meds are diverted, court documents said. “Law enforcement officers, regulators, and end users would not know whether the prescription drug was altered, stored in improper conditions, or had its potency adversely affected.”
Nearly $21 million in fraudulent funds — just shy of $14 million of that from ill-gotten gains selling misbranded and diverted prescriptions and more than $7.6 million of that from false Medicare and Medicaid claims — were netted in the alleged scheme, court documents allege.
The alleged operation is part of an “alarming” and a “growing” trend, HHS-OIG’s special agent in charge of the New York Regional Office Naomi Gruchacz told ABC News in an exclusive interview ahead of the takedown she helped lead.
“The motivation oftentimes to conduct this type of scheme is for greed,” Gruchacz said. “They’re making a financial profit. The greed takes over and even though the community is put at risk, that’s overlooked — even though oftentimes it’s happening in the same community that these healthcare providers should be servicing.”
Since syndicates like these operate outside official channels’ guardrails it’s not only near-impossible to track if the drugs are downgraded or even what they purport to be — it’s also hard to track where exactly the diverted prescriptions go, and into whose hands, an HHS-OIG spokesperson said.
Co-conspirators of the operation “sold prescription drugs in resealable clear plastic bags without any labels and adequate directions,” paid each other in cash, and sent shipments of diverted drugs via the United States Postal Service “as well as private and commercial carriers using fictitious names and addresses,” the charging documents said.
“We have seen in other investigations that sometimes the medication is sold on legitimate, wholesale distribution websites,” Gruchacz said.
Syndicates like this one have at times collected drugs from patients who ration and sell their own prescriptions for a kickback, she said.
“It is patient harm that we’re talking about, both on the front end – the patient that should be taking the medication, and on the back end if a patient is unknowingly receiving a diverted medication,” Gruchacz said. “We don’t know how it’s being stored. We don’t know if it’s expired.”
Attorney information for Santiago-Cordero and other defendants was not immediately available.
(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — The judge overseeing the federal trial of three ex-Memphis police officers charged in connection with the January 2023 beating death of Tyre Nichols told the jury on Wednesday to disregard the emotional part of the previous day’s testimony from a former officer who pleaded guilty to charges connected to Nichols’ death.
Judge Mark Norris was referring to Desmond Mills Jr.’s statements on the witness stand Tuesday as he described how he felt when watching the police body camera footage from the night of Nichols’ beating, according to WATN-TV, the ABC affiliate in Memphis covering the case in the courtroom.
“I wish I would’ve stopped the punches. It hurts to watch. It hurts inside so much,” said Desmond Mills Jr., who cried during his testimony, according to WATN. “It felt bad every time the picture is on the screen to know I’m a part of that. I made his child fatherless. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know ‘sorry’ won’t bring him back, but I pray his child has everything he needs growing up.”
Justin Smith, Demetrius Haley and Tadarrius Bean were charged on Sept. 12, 2023, with violating Nichols’ civil rights through excessive use of force, unlawful assault, failing to intervene in the assault and failing to render medical aid. These charges carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The officers have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Mills and Emmitt Martin III, the two other officers who were also charged in this case, have pleaded guilty to some of the federal charges.
Mills pleaded guilty to two of the four counts in the indictment — excessive force and failing to intervene, as well as conspiring to cover up his use of unlawful force, according to the DOJ. The government said it will recommend a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, based on the terms of Mills’ plea agreement.
Martin pleaded guilty to excessive force and failure to intervene, as well as conspiracy to witness tamper, according to court records. The other two charges will be dropped at sentencing, which has been scheduled for Dec. 5, according to the court records.
“We’re praying for everyone involved,” Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney representing the Nichols’ family, said during a prayer vigil Wednesday morning outside the courthouse when asked for his response regarding Mills’ emotional testimony.
Crump said this trial was one of the most emotional trials he has ever attended, a sentiment shared by Antonio Romanucci, his co-counsel.
“In my career, which is now over 40 years,” Romanucci said, “I have never seen such testimony as I did yesterday — police officer who had such contrition. [Former] Officer Mills, without knowing it, just talked about why we’re here, and that’s for accountability.”
The prosecution told ABC News earlier this month that they will not have any statements until after the trial. The defense attorneys did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Within the courtroom, defense attorneys cross-examined Mills regarding the use of his baton on Nichols, which Mills said on Tuesday he used to hit Nichols three times the night of their encounter, according to WATN.
Mills claimed that he didn’t use the baton to hit Nichols in the head, but admitted that he used it improperly since it’s only meant to be used in self-defense, according to WATN. He said it was the first time he ever used his baton or used excessive force on a suspect.
Mills noted that the use of his baton was not because verbal commands weren’t working on Nichols when asked by the defense, according to WATN.
Mills reiterated his testimony from Tuesday that he was angry and he sprayed himself with pepper spray, and therefore used excessive force on Nichols, according to WATN.
“I was angry because I just [pepper] sprayed myself in the face,” Mills said on Tuesday, according to WATN. “I didn’t give him a chance to give me his hands.”
Mills disagreed with Bean’s attorney when he asked Mills if he was the only one who could intervene to stop the beating, since Mills didn’t have his hands on Nichols that night, according to WATN. The ex-officer claimed that the other officers could have moved Nichols away from the strikes and punches while they held his hands.
Mills admitted to the defense that the reason he changed his statement about what happened that night was because he took a plea deal from prosecutors, according to WATN. He said he lied in earlier statements.
Mills told prosecutors that when he told Lt. Dewayne Smith, his former supervisor, that the arrest was done “by the book,” he only said that to hide what really happened, according to WATN. The ex-officer claimed that there was a mutual understanding that their off-camera conversations would go unreported.
“I needed this job for my wife and kids,” Mills said when the prosecution asked why he was not initially truthful about the encounter. “This job has good insurance. I have children with special needs. I needed this job for my family. I let them down.”
Mills was asked about response to resistance forms from the incident, stating they weren’t accurate and that Nichols, “was not aggressive at all,” according to WATN.
Mills said that Haley asked him if Mills’ body camera captured him during the encounter with Nichols.
“I hope I’m not on there,” Mills said Haley told him.
Body-camera footage shows that Nichols fled after police pulled him over on Jan. 7, 2023, for allegedly driving recklessly, then shocked him with a Taser and pepper-sprayed him.
Officers allegedly then beat Nichols minutes later after tracking him down. After the police encounter, Nichols was transferred to the hospital in critical condition.
“I was going along, either way, [with] the cover-up,” Mills said. “Hoping for the best that Mr. Nichols would survive and this whole thing would blow over.”
Nichols, 29, died in the hospital on Jan. 10, 2023. Footage shows the officers walking around, talking to each other as Nichols was injured and sitting on the ground.
Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said she has been unable to substantiate that Nichols was driving recklessly. The incident triggered protests and calls for police reform.
After the police encounter, Nichols was transferred to the hospital in critical condition. The medical examiner’s official autopsy report for Nichols showed he “died of brain injuries from blunt force trauma,” the district attorney’s office told Nichols’ family in May 2023.
The five former officers charged in this case were all members of the Memphis Police Department SCORPION unit — a crime suppression unit that was disbanded after Nichols’ death. All of the officers were fired for violating MPD policies.
“As an officer, I respond to scenes where the victim looks like Mr. Nichols [did after he was beaten],” Mills said. “This was the first time I was a part of it.”
(NEW YORK) — Attorneys for former President Donald Trump will return to court Thursday, seeking to reverse the ruling from a New York judge that held him liable for business fraud and ordered him to pay $454 million.
Lawyers will present oral arguments before an intermediate appeals court in New York, following a February ruling from Judge Arthur Engoron that found Trump liable for frauds that Engoron said “shock the conscience.”
Trump, his eldest sons, and two top Trump Organization executives exaggerated Trump’s wealth to secure better terms from lenders, Engoron found during an 11-week trial in Lower Manhattan.
In a written submission to the New York Appellate Division’s First Department prior to Thursday’s hearing, Trump’s attorneys pressed many of the same arguments they made during the trial, insisting that New York Attorney General Letitia James misused the law to bring a political case, and arguing that Trump undervalued, not overvalued, his assets.
“President Trump stands among the most visionary and iconic real estate developers in American history,” the defense filing said. “As trial evidence highlighted, banks and lenders vied eagerly for his business. They acknowledged his unique ‘vision’ and unparalleled ‘expertise,’ and they recognized that dealing with him would deliver ‘tremendous’ value.”
The attorney general’s office said it was not required to prove any lender was harmed.
“Indeed, one of [the law’s] core remedial purposes is to protect the honesty and integrity of commercial marketplaces in New York by stopping fraudulent and illegal practices before they cause financial losses to market participants or broader harms to the public,” the office wrote in a submission to the appellate court.
The attorney general’s office argued that Engoron correctly decided Trump and his codefendants “used a variety of deceptive strategies to vastly misrepresent the values of nearly all the assets and asset categories,” inflating his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion.
Engoron, in his ruling, determined that Trump valued his apartment as if its square footage was triple its actual size; that he valued rent regulated apartments as if they were unregulated; and that he valued his Mar-a-Lago estate as if deed restrictions did not exist.
Trump, following the ruling, secured a $175 million bond while he appeals the judgment.
(SANTA MARIA, Calif.) — A man allegedly threw an explosive device inside a California courthouse on Wednesday, injuring five people, the same day he was set to be arraigned on firearms violations, authorities said.
The explosion was reported around 8:48 a.m. PT Wednesday at the Santa Maria Courthouse in Santa Barbara County.
The suspect allegedly lunged through the courthouse doors and tossed a small bag past the weapons screening station, and the bag exploded as it hit the floor outside of the local arraignment room, Darrel Parker, the court executive officer, told ABC News.
Five people suffered non-life-threatening injuries from the explosion, including burns, according to Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Undersheriff Craig Bonner.
The suspect, identified by the sheriff’s office as 20-year-old Nathaniel McGuire, will be booked on multiple local charges, including attempted murder, using an explosive device and attempting to kill someone, and possession of explosive devices, Bonner said. He will be held without bail, Bonner said.
Authorities believe the explosion was the result of an “intentionally set improvised explosive device,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff public information officer Raquel Zick wrote on social media.
The suspect was detained as he attempted to enter his car outside the courthouse, Bonner said. He was wearing body armor under his jacket, according to Bonner. He also allegedly had weapons and ammunition in his car, Parker said.
The suspect’s alleged motivation in the explosion “appeared to have stemmed from a recent arrest” by the sheriff’s office, Bonner said during a press briefing Wednesday evening.
In that case, McGuire was arrested for firearms violations on July 28, Bonner said. Deputies had seized a “loaded and concealed revolver that was in McGuire’s pants pocket and was not registered to him,” Bonner said.
He was set to be arraigned in that case Wednesday morning, Bonner said. Court records show his arraignment was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. PT at the Santa Maria Courthouse on a charge of carrying a loaded firearm. An attorney for McGuire was not listed in that case.
Detectives are working with Santa Barbara County Fire to see if the suspect is associated with several recent additional arson fires, Bonner said.
Authorities do not believe there are any additional safety concerns at this time, Bonner said.
The FBI is also investigating the incident. The suspect has no known ties to terrorism, authorities said.
Five people were injured in the explosion, Bonner said. They have all since been treated and released from a local hospital, he said. The victims were all civilians, with no court employees among those injured, Parker said.
The courthouse will remain closed on Thursday amid the investigation.
“We will thoroughly review this incident to make sure that we could take whatever steps are necessary to reduce the chance of this ever happening again in the court,” Parker said during the press briefing.
(CLEVES, Ohio) — Officials in Hamilton County, Ohio, on Wednesday, lifted the evacuation order that was put in place the night before over a chemical leak from a railcar.
Hamilton County’s Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency previously told anyone within half a mile of the rail yard to leave the area immediately.
Authorities confirmed Tuesday night that the leak was styrene, a flammable liquid used to make plastics and rubber, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
“The risk of an explosion is our primary concern,” an official said at a Tuesday night news conference. “We are asking residents within a three-quarter-mile radius to shelter in place as a precaution. Experts have assured us that this is well within the safety norms.”
By Wednesday morning, the rail car was no longer “venting,” officials said at a brief press conference.
No one, including train employees, was injured in the incident, officials said.
Officials said 210 homes in Cleves and Whitewater Townships were located in the designated evacuation zone, though how many people were impacted was not immediately known.
The train consisted of 29 cars, some of which were also carrying styrene, officials said.
“Our first priority upon arriving at the scene was removing anything in close proximity to the leak,” an official confirmed Tuesday.
Only one car was found to have leaked styrene, they said.
Cleves Township is almost 17 miles from Cincinnati, while Whitewater Township is about 22 miles away.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg urged those in the area to follow the directions of officials in a social media post on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were briefed on the incident, White House officials said in a statement.
“The President has directed his team to provide any resources that may be needed,” the official said. “We urge residents to heed the warnings of emergency personnel, especially those instructed to evacuate.”
Ohio senator and vice presidential nominee JD Vance said in a statement on X that he and his team were monitoring the incident.
“My team and I are closely tracking a potentially hazardous chemical leak coming from a railcar near Cleves, Ohio,” Vance said. “Local authorities are working diligently to keep everyone safe. We will continue to monitor the situation until it has been resolved.”
(SANTA MARIA, Calif.) — Six people suffered non-life-threatening injuries from an explosion at the Santa Maria Courthouse in California, officials said.
One person of interest — an adult male — was detained and is being interviewed, Santa Barbara County Sheriff public information officer Raquel Zick wrote on social media.
Authorities believe the explosion was the result of an “intentionally set improvised explosive device,” Zick said.
The suspect allegedly lunged through the courthouse doors and tossed a small bag past the weapons screening station, and the bag exploded as it hit the floor outside of the local arraignment room, the court executive officer told ABC News.
The suspect ran toward his car and was apprehended by a deputy, the officer said. The man also reportedly had weapons and ammunition in his car, the officer added.
The bomb team is processing the scene, Zick said.
Police don’t believe there are any outstanding suspects, she added.
A spokesperson for Marian Regional Medical Center told ABC News the hospital received six patients in the incident. Three are in fair condition and two are in good condition, the spokesperson said. The condition of the sixth person is unknown but is not believed to be serious.
The courthouse is closed for the day and city buildings within one block of the courthouse are temporarily closed, said Mark Van de Camp, spokesperson for the city of Santa Maria.
(WASHINGTON) — A piece of the Titan’s carbon-fiber hull recovered after the submersible’s deadly catastrophic implosion showed “anomalies,” a National Transportation Safety Board engineer said Wednesday during a weekslong hearing on the incident.
Don Kramer, the acting chief of the NTSB’s materials laboratory, testified during the U.S. Coast Guard’s hearing into the June 2023 implosion of the OceanGate submersible while on a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck.
Kramer said his team examined material from the manufacturing of the hull and found “several anomalies within the composite and the adhesive joints, including waviness, wrinkles, porosity and voids.”
They also examined a piece of the hull recovered from the ocean floor and found similar anomalies, including “waviness and wrinkles within the hull layers” and voids within the adhesive that joined the layers, he said. The recovered hull also showed “features consistent with rubbing damage at one of those adhesive joints.”
Kramer said the Titan debris on the ocean floor showed that the hull “encountered a significant amount of delamination” — or separating into layers — most of which was within or adjacent to co-bonded adhesive interfaces.
Asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the delaminations, voids or rubbing damage could have been present before the implosion, as opposed to being caused by the implosion, Kramer said he is not offering analysis as to when they occurred.
Further asked by OceanGate’s counsel whether any of the issues he observed could have caused the implosion, Kramer said that is “still subject to our own internal analysis at this point.”
Strain response after loud bang on dive 80
Kramer also discussed the loud bang passengers heard as the Titan ascended during a dive that occurred a year before the implosion, on July 15, 2022 — referred to as dive 80 — which has been referenced throughout the two-week hearing. The bang was also detected by the Titan’s real-time monitoring system, which had sensors to detect acoustic events, as well as multiple strain gages to monitor mechanical strain, he said.
Kramer said his team determined that the hull’s strain response changed after this loud bang incident in subsequent dives in 2022. He said the strain gage data showed a change in the strain in the hull for four of the eight gages.
“Those changes persisted from dive to dive,” he said.
There was no difference when comparing the strain response to a dive prior to dive 80, Kramer said.
No strain data is available for dives conducted in 2023, according to Kramer.
Phil Brooks, OceanGate’s former engineering director, testified on Monday that following the loud bang on dive 80, the strain gage data showed a minor “shift,” though they did not see “any further shifts in strain data” on subsequent dives in 2022. Nothing “really seemed out of the ordinary,” and OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush made the decision to continue dives, Brooks said.
Asked how his team arrived at its determination on the change in strain response based on the graphs of the available data, Kramer said, “I guess it’s a matter of opinion as to whether one can discern the changes in strain output.”
Brooks said Rush theorized that the loud bang was caused by the frame “readjusting back to its original shape” as it returned to the surface.
Kramer noted that the NTSB’s investigation is still ongoing, and the scope of his presentation was therefore limited.
Marine Technology Society draft letter to Rush
William Kohnen, the CEO and founder of submersible maker Hydrospace Group, said during his testimony on Wednesday that he would not have made a carbon-fiber hull. He said it would cost “too much money” and “is really, really difficult.”
The investigators asked Kohnen about a draft Marine Technology Society letter he wrote in March 2018 to Rush based on public safety concerns raised during a conference.
“This was considered an issue of where we as consensus, as professionals in this industry, had significant concerns — not on one particular thing, but the overall approach of neglecting the years of experience and tradition and diligence that we applied,” he said.
Kohnen said the letter was signed by around 40 members and went through other drafts, though the Marine Technology Society board never approved sending it to Rush on behalf of the society. Rush still managed to get a copy of the original draft letter, which Kohnen said they discussed over the phone.
During the call, Kohnen said he told Rush he found the language on OceanGate’s website confusing for the general public not familiar with submersibles and that they were “highly inferring” the experimental sub was classed, when that wasn’t the case. He said the website was subsequently updated.
Kohnen stressed the importance of classification and regulations to build safe submersibles.
“We have a record of 50 years without a single fatality until Titan,” he said. “It does indicate the power of our regulation.”
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion, which killed five people, including Rush.
The hearing on the incident is scheduled to run through Friday.
The main purpose of the hearing is to uncover the facts related to the implosion and to make recommendations, the Coast Guard said.
(BALTIMORE) — A Maryland woman who pleaded guilty to a neo-Nazi plot to attack multiple energy substations surrounding Baltimore was sentenced Wednesday to 18 years in prison and a lifetime of supervision upon her release, according the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maryland.
Sarah Beth Clendaniel pleaded guilty in May to federal conspiracy and firearms charges.
Clendaniel communicated her plans to use a high-powered rifle to shoot through key infrastructure at five substations that the U.S. government estimated could have caused roughly $75 million in damage, had the plot not been foiled, according to prosecutors.
Clendaniel and a co-defendant still set to face trial, Brandon Russell — who co-founded the neo-Nazi group AtomWaffen — believed the destruction of the substations would lead to a “cascading failure” of Baltimore’s electrical grid that would “permanently completely lay this city to waste,” Clendaniel said in recorded conversations with a confidential informant, according to federal prosecutors.
Russell had been incarcerated when the two first met, stemming from a 2018 conviction related to his possession of an unregistered destructive device, officials said.
Prosecutors described the scheme as a racism-fueled plot to spark mass chaos in the majority-Black city.
“If we can pull off what I’m hoping … this would be legendary,” Clendaniel was quoted in charging documents telling the informant.
Clendaniel agreed that if she were to carry out the attacks the total costs of repairs to the energy facilities would have exceeded $100,000, according to plea documents.
The pair crafted their plot to shoot up the five substations while both were out on probation, according to charging documents, when Russell began communicating with a confidential FBI source in 2022 about his hopes of attacking critical infrastructure sites.
Russell allegedly told the informant that “putting holes in transformers … is the greatest thing somebody can do,” and told the informant they should carry out an attack “when there is greatest strain on the grid” to incur mass disruption, according to court documents. Russell further told the informant of Clendaniel and his alleged coordination with her to attack an energy facility and offered to connect the two to coordinate their attacks in order to “maximize impact.”
Upon meeting the informant, Clendaniel told them in early 2023 that she expected she would die of a terminal illness in a few months and was hoping to obtain a rifle as soon as possible in order to attack five substations she had singled out around Baltimore — all on the same day, prosecutors said.
“[Clendaniel] described how there was a ‘ring’ around Baltimore and if they hit a number of them all in the same day, they ‘would completely destroy this whole city,'” the affidavit stated.
