Category: National

(ATHENS, Ga.) — The last moments before Laken Riley was killed while out on a run on the University of Georgia’s campus were shown in court Tuesday on the third day of the trial involving the murder of the 22-year-old nursing student.

The Augusta University student was found dead in a wooded area on the Athens campus on Feb. 22.

Jose Ibarra, 26, is accused of murdering Riley after prosecutors said she “refused to be his rape victim.” Ibarra, an undocumented migrant, was charged with malice murder and felony murder in connection with her death, which became a rallying cry for immigration reform from many conservatives, including President-elect Donald Trump.

On the morning of the murder, at 8:55 a.m., Riley texted her mother, “Good morning, about to go for a run if you’re free to talk,” according to University of Georgia Police Sgt. Sophie Raboud, one of the lead investigators in the case, who testified on Tuesday about Riley’s cellphone activity.

Riley called her mother at 9:03 a.m., then started listening to music, Raboud said. She was captured on a trail camera at 9:05 a.m. running with her iPhone in her left hand toward the intramural fields, Raboud said. She runs out of view of the camera at 9:06 a.m.

At 9:11 a.m., she called 911, Raboud said. Witnesses previously testified that Riley initiated the call through the SOS application on her phone. The dispatcher was not able to speak with anyone before the call was hung up and called back twice with no answer, the witnesses said.

At 9:24 a.m., Riley received a call from her mother that went unanswered, Raboud said.

At 9:38 a.m., her mother texted, “Call me when you can,” Raboud said.

Raboud said Riley’s mother continued to try to reach Riley but the calls went unanswered, before texting at 9:58 a.m., “You’re making me nervous, not answering when you’re out running. Are you OK?”

Riley received subsequent calls from her mother and sister that went unanswered, Raboud said.

At 11:47 a.m., her mother texted, “Please call me, I’m worried sick about you,” Raboud said.

Subsequent calls, including from her stepfather, also went unanswered, Raboud said.

Trail camera footage from later that morning shown in court captured Laken’s roommates, Lilly Steiner and Sofia Magana, on the trail searching for her.

Riley’s roommates reported her missing, and a University of Georgia police officer found her body at 12:38 p.m., witnesses previously testified. Data from the Garmin watch she was wearing on her run showed her heart stopped at 9:28 a.m., witnesses previously testified.

Riley had sustained significant blunt force trauma to her head, including eight injuries to the left side of her skull and an injury just above her right temple, Dr. Michelle DiMarco, who conducted her autopsy, testified on Tuesday. One of the injuries was significant enough that it caused brain bleeding and could have been fatal, she said.

There was also evidence of asphyxiation, though DiMarco said she was unable to categorize how that occurred. Her cause of death was determined to be the “combined effects of blunt force head trauma and asphyxia,” DiMarco said.

Ibarra was interviewed on Feb. 23 in connection with her death and had multiple scratches observable on his arms, police testified. His DNA was found under Riley’s fingernails, prosecutors said. A man was captured on a trail camera the morning of the murder heading toward the intramural fields shortly before 8 a.m., Raboud said.

Prosecutors said the person was wearing clothes similar to what Ibarra had on in a Snapchat selfie posted earlier that morning, including a black Adidas cap.

Ibarra was also seen discarding a bloodied jacket and disposable gloves near his apartment on Feb. 22 at 9:44 a.m., prosecutors said.

Hairs removed from the jacket were determined to have originated from Riley or “someone with hair possessing the same distinct characteristics,” Anne Kisler-Rao, with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab, testified on Tuesday.

The gloves recovered from a bush near Ibarra’s apartment were determined to have matched ones recovered from a drawer in his apartment, GBI specialist Alexander Covin testified on Tuesday. Under cross by the defense, Covin admitted that the gloves may have matched but could also have come from different sources.

Ibarra has pleaded not guilty. He waived his right to a jury trial and the case is being presented in the Athens-Clarke County courtroom to Judge H. Patrick Haggard, who will render a verdict.

Police have said they believe Ibarra — a migrant from Venezuela who officials said illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 — did not know Riley and that this was a “crime of opportunity.”

ABC News’ Janice McDonald contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office said Tuesday they would oppose President-elect Trump’s attempt to dismiss his criminal hush money conviction in New York — but they told the judge they do not object to pausing the case.

The DA’s office faced a Tuesday deadline to propose the next steps in the case after the “unprecedented circumstances” of the former president’s election following his conviction on 34 felony counts earlier this year.

Trump’s sentencing in the criminal case is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 26, though defense attorneys have asked New York Judge Juan Merchan to dismiss the case ahead of Trump’s impending inauguration.

Trump’s lawyers laid out their new argument to dismiss the case in a filing made public Tuesday, writing that the case must be dismissed because a sitting president is immune from prosecution.

“To require President Trump to address further criminal proceedings at this point would not only violate the federal Constitution, but also disrupt the Presidential transition process,” wrote defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, both of whom Trump nominated last week to top DOJ posts.

Prosecutors pushed back on that claim, arguing that presidential immunity would not apply to a defendant who had already been convicted for conduct that is entirely private.

The district attorney’s office instead suggested deferring all remaining proceedings in the case, including the Nov. 26 sentencing, until after Trump leaves the White House in 2029.

“The People deeply respect the Office of the President, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that Defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions. We also deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system,” prosecutors wrote.

Defense lawyers argued that, while Trump is not yet president, presidential immunity equally applies during the transition process and added that their appeal of the case would “take a year or more” and possibly reach the Supreme Court, dragging the case well past Inauguration Day.

“There is no material difference between President Trump’s current status after his overwhelming victory in the national election and that of a sitting President following inauguration,” their filing said.

Judge Merchan will have the final say regarding the next steps in the case.

Since July, Trump’s attorneys have been pushing to have the conviction vacated and the case dismissed by arguing that prosecutors filled “glaring holes in their case” with evidence of official acts that the Supreme Court recently ruled off limits in its landmark presidential immunity decision.

Trump’s lawyers have also argued for a dismissal by citing the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, which urges government officers to take “lawful steps to avoid or minimize disruptions” to the presidential transition.

Prosecutors have argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office has no bearing on Trump’s conviction.

“The People agree that these are unprecedented circumstances,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told the court last week.

Trump was convicted in May of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to silence allegations about a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.

His conviction carries a maximum penalty of up to four years in prison, but first-time offenders would normally receive a lesser sentence.

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(WASHINGTON) — A hacker gained access to an online secure document-sharing file between attorneys involved in a civil lawsuit brought by a close friend of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Documents including unredacted depositions from key witnesses in the case are believed to have been taken, sources said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.

The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.

“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.

The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.

The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.

For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.

Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.

“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”

Cloud seeding can increase seasonal precipitation by about 10%, according to the Desert Research Institute (DRI).

A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.

While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.

“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”

Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.

If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.

In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.

While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.

“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.

However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.

“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.

Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.

The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.

“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.

Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.

“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”

The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.

“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.

ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.

The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.

“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.

The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.

The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.

For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.

Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.

“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”

Cloud seeding can increase seasonal precipitation by about 10%, according to the Desert Research Institute (DRI).

A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.

While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.

“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”

Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.

If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.

In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.

While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.

“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.

However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.

“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.

Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.

The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.

“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.

Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.

“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”

The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.

“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.

ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A massive plume of moisture from the Pacific called an atmospheric river will hit the West Coast on Tuesday afternoon and last into Friday.

The storm is expected to become a bomb cyclone — which means the pressure in the center of the storm will drop 24 millibars within 24 hours.

The storm could be so strong that it even drops close to double that rate — meaning more than 40 millibars in 24 hours.

Numerous alerts for snow, flooding, high wind and high surf have been issued along the West Coast, from the San Francisco Bay area to Oregon to Washington.

Rain totals could surpass 1 foot in Northern California and southern Oregon. More than 3 feet of snow is possible in the higher elevations.

Wind gusts could reach 85 mph along the coast and waves could climb to 34 feet.

By the weekend, some of the rain from this system will make its way to Southern California.

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(NEW YORK) — A man is expected to appear in court Tuesday after allegedly killing three people in an apparent unprovoked stabbing spree in Manhattan, authorities said.

Ramon Rivera, 51, was charged on Monday with three counts of first-degree murder, according to the New York Police Department.

He confessed to the killings during questioning, according to police sources.

The first victim, 36-year-old Angel Lata Landi, was fatally stabbed in the abdomen at 8:22 a.m. Monday in an unprovoked attack by the construction site where he was working on West 19th Street, the NYPD said.

About two hours later, a 68-year-old man was fatally stabbed multiple times on East 30th Street, police said. His identity has not been released.

The third victim, 36-year-old Wilma Augustin, was attacked around 10:55 a.m. at 42nd Street and First Avenue. She had multiple stab wounds in the chest and arm, and she was taken to New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she later died, officials said.

The suspect — who was staying at the Bellevue Men’s Shelter on East 30th Street — appeared to pick the victims at random, police said.

Rivera was apprehended around East 46th Street and First Avenue, police said.

“He just walked up to them and began to attack them,” Chief of Detectives Joe Kenny said at a news conference.

Two bloody kitchen knives were recovered, police said.

Rivera has eight prior arrests in New York City, according to law enforcement, and is believed to have severe mental health challenges, Mayor Eric Adams said. Rivera’s case renewed frustration with the city’s inability to treat people in mental distress and hold people with a history of low-level criminal activity.

“There’s a real question as to why he was on the street,” Adams said.

Rivera’s prior arrests mainly involved shoplifting, officials said. None involved a weapon.

He was out without bail pending trial on his most recent arrests.

He had two documented interactions with the city while in mental distress.

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(WASHINGTON) — The United States has seen a significant increase in the use of clean energy over the last few years; however, Chris Wright, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of energy, has claimed otherwise.

Wright, chief executive of Liberty Energy — the world’s second-largest fracking services company — has made several comments chastising efforts to fight climate change. One example is a video he posted to LinkedIn last year in which he denies the existence of a climate crisis and disputes a global transition to green energy.

“There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either,” Wright said.

Wright has been an outspoken critic of policies aimed at curbing climate change, including the Department of Energy’s goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

While Wright does not dispute the existence of climate change, he has argued that policies aimed at reducing the impact of climate change are misguided and alarmist, claiming that any negative impacts of climate change are “clearly overwhelmed by the benefits of increasing energy consumption.”

But the IPCC, the world’s most authoritative body on climate change, has stated that human-amplified climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe, and this has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people.

And the clean energy momentum the country is experiencing will continue as alternative sources of fuel take more market share in the energy sector, experts told ABC News. That’s despite efforts by Republican politicians to bolster the fossil fuel industry in the U.S.

The Department of Energy’s website even states, “A clean energy revolution is taking place across America, underscored by the steady expansion of the U.S. renewable energy sector.”

And the world now invests almost twice as much in clean energy as it does in fossil fuels. Investment in solar panels now surpasses all other generation technologies combined, according to the International Energy Agency.

“The U.S. is definitely in an energy transition, as is the rest of the globe,” Lori Bird, U.S. energy program director at the World Resource Institute, told ABC News.

Coal is one of the industries in which the energy transition is most apparent, Bird said.

Coal plants are seeing an average of 10,000 megawatts of capacity closures per year, according to the Institute for the Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Installed U.S. coal-fired generation capacity peaked in 2011 at 317,600 megawatts and has experienced a consistent downward trend ever since, the analysis found. In 2020, during the pandemic, coal’s share of power generation in the U.S. fell below 20% for the first time. In 2024 so far, coal’s share of power generation barely topped 16%.

“Based on current announcements and IEEFA research, we expect operating coal capacity to continue its steady decline for the remainder of the decade,” the report states.

Accompanying the sharp decrease in coal generation and usage has been the increase in capacity and storage for electricity generation from solar, wind and battery power, Bird said.

A record 31 gigawatts of solar energy capacity was installed in the U.S. in 2023 — roughly a 55% increase from 2022, according to a report by the World Resource Institute that found that clean energy continues to be the dominant form of new electricity generation in the U.S.

 

“Everywhere you look, in every facet of the economy, there are clean technologies ramping up and being brought to bear,” Julie McNamara, senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ABC News.

In addition, the Inflation Reduction Act stimulated an “unprecedented” slate for the creation of domestic clean energy manufacturing facilities, the report found. Since August 2022, 113 manufacturing facilities or expansions, totaling $421 billion in investments, have been announced, according to American Clean Power.

The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that came before it includes tax credits for both the home and commercial installation of charging stations for electric vehicles, evidence in the growing market share for EVs, which reached 10% in U.S. automotive sales in the third quarter of 2024, Bird said.

But the federal government isn’t the ultimate decider of the energy transition in the U.S., Bird said. While there could be a slowdown in progress during the next administration, the energy transition will continue to be driven by other stakeholders “who want this to happen,” she said.

“It would be impossible to halt the energy transition at this stage,” Bird said.

States in the U.S. are also continuing to pass ambitious climate and energy policies, a trend experts expect to continue despite who is living in the White House. State actions are considered critical to ensuring a successful clean energy transition, as federal actions alone are insufficient, according to the WRI. There are 29 states that have renewable electricity standards or clean energy standards in place, and a third of U.S. states have have standards to shift to 100% clean electricity, Bird said.

At the beginning of 2023, Minnesota adopted a 100% clean energy standard, while Michigan did the same later that year, joining states like California and New York in passing permitting reforms intended to make it easier to build clean energy and transmission.

“While the federal leadership may slow some of this transition, it’s being driven by states,” Bird said.

Another critical piece of the energy transition is tech companies, which are very large users of energy. committing to using sustainable energy to power their data centers, Bird said. One example is Microsoft paying to restart one of the nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania to power the company’s AI data center.

“Those companies that are driving a lot of this want clean energy,” Bird said. “That’s not going to go away. They’re committed.”

Throughout the 2024 election, Republicans stuck to party lines when it comes to rhetoric about the fossil fuel industry, which invests heavily into GOP politicians and candidates, David Konisky, a professor of environmental politics at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, told ABC News in August. The rhetoric often includes misrepresentations on clean energy solutions rather than all-out climate denial, experts told ABC News.

The fossil fuel industry, through its lobbying in government, has attempted to slow any efforts at the energy transition, McNamara said.

“The only reason to say there’s no energy transition underway is to attempt to solidify policies and incentives that that anchor short-term profits for fossil fuel interests,” McNamara said.

Misinformation and disinformation about the climate crisis is “not helpful to the situation,” especially given that people all over the world are already experiencing the impacts of a warming climate in the form of extreme weather events, Bird said, adding that bipartisan support will be crucial going forward.

“We’re hopeful that with the new administration, that additional progress could be made,” Bird said.

ABC News’ Peter Charalambous, Matthew Glasser, Calvin Milliner and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is expected to propose the next steps in Donald Trump’s New York hush money case Tuesday after the “unprecedented circumstances” of the former president’s election following his conviction on 34 felony counts earlier this year.

Trump’s sentencing in the criminal case is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 26, though defense attorneys have urged New York Judge Juan Merchan to dismiss the case ahead of Trump’s impending inauguration.

“The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” defense attorney Emil Bove told the court last week.

Since July, Trump’s attorneys have been pushing to have the conviction vacated and the case dismissed by arguing that prosecutors filled “glaring holes in their case” with evidence of official acts that the Supreme Court recently ruled off limits in its landmark presidential immunity decision.

Trump’s lawyers have also argued for a dismissal by citing the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, which urges government officers to take “lawful steps to avoid or minimize disruptions” to the presidential transition.

While prosecutors have argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office has no bearing on Trump’s conviction, they haven’t publicly signaled a position on the upcoming sentencing since Trump’s election.

Prosecutors requested additional time to advise the court about the “appropriate steps going forward” based on the impact of Trump’s victory.

“The People agree that these are unprecedented circumstances,” prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told the court last week.

Following the joint request for additional time, Judge Merchan delayed his ruling on how the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision impacts Trump’s case, which he originally planned to release last week.

Trump was convicted in May of all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to silence allegations about a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.

His conviction carries a maximum penalty of up to four years in prison, but first-time offenders would normally receive a lesser sentence.

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(WALDORF, Md.) — The Charles County Sheriff’s Office in Maryland is investigating an incident where an elementary school student was allegedly found hanging on a hook in a school bathroom, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office told ABC News on Monday. The injuries to the student were described by his parents as severe bruising on his neck and face.

The alleged incident took place on Friday afternoon at C. Paul Barnhart Elementary School in Waldorf, Maryland.

The parents of the student, whose identity has not been disclosed because he is a minor, spoke out about the incident on the condition of anonymity to protect their son’s identity in an interview with the ABC affiliate in Washington D.C., WJLA.

They said that their son is a second grader in Charles County, Maryland, and is recovering from his injuries.

“[School officials] said that he was choking, so we’re thinking that he was at lunch and he’s choking off of food,” the boy’s mother told WJLA.

In her interview with WJLA, the mother also said that the principal told the family their son was “horseplaying” with a fourth grader in the bathroom and that his jacket accidentally got caught on a hook.

C. Paul Barnhart Elementary School Principal Carrie Burke said in a letter to the community that was obtained by ABC News that the incident occurred while two students were “reportedly horseplaying” in the bathroom when one student’s jacket “got caught on a stall door hook,” and “the student was not able to free themselves and the other student involved was also not able to help them.”

“This student left the bathroom to seek help from staff and reported the incident to administrators. Administrators responded and were able to assist, but staff called 911 for additional precautionary medical support,” Burke added.

Burke claimed misinformation was shared in the community amid confusion over the incident but said that “due to privacy reasons,” she is “not able to share any additional details.”

In her interview with WJLA, the boy’s mother cast doubt on the principal’s statement and is demanding more answers from the school.

“[The principal] said before she got him down, he was foaming out the mouth, unconscious, and it was from horse playing … That doesn’t make sense to me,” she told WJLA.

“I want someone to be held accountable for what happened to our child,” she added.

In a letter to the community, Charles County Public Schools (CCPS) Superintendent Maria Navarro said the school district is investigating the incident.

Navarro pushed back against claims that the school district is “covering up” the circumstances surrounding this incident.

“I have seen comments online stating that the school and CCPS are covering up what happened. This is not true. The principal nor the school system are hiding anything. Rather, we are sharing what information we can while we conduct a full investigation,” Navarro wrote in the letter.

“The investigation is ongoing; speculation about what did or did not happen as well as the circulation of misinformation impedes the investigation process,” Navarro said, adding that on Friday the school resource officer filed a preliminary report with the Charles County Sheriff’s Office.

Navarro said in the letter that “any student who is found to violate the CCPS Code of Student Conduct faces disciplinary consequences, and it is imperative that we have all the information so that we can adequately address consequences.”

ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.

 

 

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