Talk of the Town
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department has reached an agreement with President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn to pay him roughly $1.2 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the former general claiming he was politically targeted for prosecution during Trump’s first administration, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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(MINNEAPOLIS) — A 11-year-old boy from Minneapolis will be recognized with a Citizen Honor Award in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday for helping save a classmate’s life during a mass shooting at their school.
Victor Greenawalt is among this year’s six honorees — five individuals and one nonprofit — for showing “extraordinary bravery far beyond his years,” the Congressional Medal of Honor Society said in a statement. “Instinctively, Victor protected a classmate with his own body, directly saving their life.”
Victor was injured when he used his body to shield his friend from the gunfire at Annunciation Catholic School, according to MPR News.
“My friend Victor, like, saved me though. He laid on top of me, but he got hit,” the friend, Weston Halsne, told Minneapolis station KARE last year. “He was really brave.”
An 8-year-old and 10-year-old sitting in pews were killed and many others were injured when the shooter opened fire through the windows of the school’s church on Aug. 27, 2025. The shooter died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Victor is receiving the young hero award, which honors Americans 17 years old or younger “for their courage in a dire situation,” the Congressional Medal of Honor Society said.
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(NEW YORK) — The parents of a Seattle-area teenager who was allegedly pushed to take his own life by a member of the online extremist network “764” have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Discord, claiming the social media giant “caused” their son’s suicide and “abetted one of the most depraved and dangerous child abuse cults in modern history.”
According to the lawsuit, Discord “supplied 764 with unlimited victims,” including 13-year-old Jay Taylor, who in January 2022 died by suicide outside of a local grocery store in Gig Harbor, Washington.
“It’s almost biblical in its definition of evil, what happened,” Jay Taylor’s father, Colby, told ABC News in an exclusive interview in November.
As ABC News has previously reported, 764 members find vulnerable victims on popular platforms, elicit private information and intimate sexual images from them, and then use that sensitive material to blackmail victims into mutilating themselves, harming others, or taking other violent action.
Members of 764 often host live online chats so others can watch the self-harm and violence in real time. The further they can push their victims, the more stature and respect they will receive within 764, authorities say.
“Discord [provided] 764 access to its platform, failed to take reasonable steps to prevent or disrupt such exploitation, and affirmatively maintained the same product design and defaults that enabled the abuse,” the new 31-page lawsuit alleges.
Colby Taylor previously told ABC News that he and his wife, Leslie, were preparing to file a lawsuit against Discord, hoping that legal action would pressure the platform to do more to stop online predators. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in a Pierce County, Washington, court, seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
As the Taylors described it to ABC News, Jay Taylor was a vulnerable victim. He was “funny” and “sweet,” and he had a knack for drawing and crafts, his mother recalled. But by the start of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic had left Jay feeling isolated and lonely. And though he was assigned female at birth, he was in the midst of a gender transition, exacerbating his feelings of loneliness, his parents said.
In January 2022, Jay posted a message to Discord, saying, “I’m looking for friends, preferably LGBTQ for crochet buddies,” Jay’s father recalled.
Someone responded to Jay’s message, bringing him into a live chat with several others. Within an hour or so, the others in the group chat began telling Jay he should kill himself, Jay’s parents recounted.
A Discord user who called himself “White Tiger” online was leading the charge, directing others to push and manipulate Jay, according to Jay’s parents.
“Eventually, the pressure took hold of Jay,” their lawsuit says.
The FBI later identified “White Tiger” as a young German-Iranian medical student from Hamburg, Germany. He is currently on trial in Hamburg, charged with Jay Taylor’s murder and more than 200 other counts for the alleged abuse of dozens of victims. According to the Taylors’ lawsuit, Discord poses “a foreseeable risk of harm to youth users” and is “not reasonably safe as designed.”
“From the outset, Discord designed a platform structurally rife with obvious, risk-amplifying features–and when those risks materialized through 764, Discord housed it, grew it, and meanwhile marketed itself to more child users, guaranteeing their exploitation,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit further alleges that Discord is “refusing to invest in commonsense safety measures” and “deliberately understaffs and under-resources its safety and response team, employing a tiny fraction of what is needed to effectively control abusive conduct.”
764 was started on Discord by a teenager in Stephenville, Texas, who named it after the first three digits of his local ZIP code. Born in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when teenagers were stuck inside and flocked to online spaces, 764 was an even more vicious offshoot of other online groups exploiting children through blackmail and self-harm, authorities said.
Since then, 764 has spread around the world, growing into more of an ideology than a singular group, experts say. And other groups, inspired by 764, have formed with different names but identical tactics and goals. As of November, the FBI was investigating more than 350 people across the United States with suspected ties to 764 or similar networks.
The number has only increased since then, experts say. On Tuesday, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, James Comer, R-Kentucky, sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, demanding that FBI officials brief committee staff on the agency’s efforts to “track and apprehend” members of 764.
Citing reporting from ABC News, Comer wrote that the “disturbing tactics attributed to this network” warrant “rigorous oversight and an evaluation of whether existing federal countermeasures are effective and adequately resourced to combat these elusive online perpetrators.”
In September, Patel told lawmakers during a public Senate hearing that fighting 764 is now “a priority” for the FBI. He called 764-related crimes a new form of “modern-day terrorism in America.”
On Friday, a spokesperson for Discord said the company is reviewing the new lawsuit filed by Colby and Leslie Taylor.
After ABC News interviewed the Taylors several months ago, a Discord representative told ABC News in a statement that the platform is “committed to user safety” and that the “horrific actions of groups like this have no place on Discord or anywhere in society.”
According to a Discord spokesperson, the platform invests “heavily” in specialized teams and newly-developed artificial intelligence tools that can “disrupt these networks, remove violative content, and take action against bad actors on our platform.”
Discord also said it shares intelligence with other platforms, which can help identify bad actors even before Discord has spotted them, and Discord said it cooperates with law enforcement, proactively providing tips and other information to them.
Its tips have led to many arrests, including the arrest of Bradley Cadenhead, the Texas teen who started 764 and is now serving an 80-year sentence in state prison after pleading guilty to child pornography-related charges. And Discord recently announced new tools aimed at giving parents more control and more insight into their children’s accounts.
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(NEW YORK) — Two improvised explosive devices brought to a counterprotest outside Gracie Mansion in New York City are being investigated as “an act of ISIS-inspired terrorism,” and the two suspects arrested in connection with the incident are facing federal terrorism charges, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday.
The devices contained the volatile substance TATP and were made to “injure, maim or worse,” Tisch said of Saturday’s incident.
“These were not hoax devices or smoke bombs. They were improvised explosive devices,” Tisch said during a news conference outside Gracie Mansion with New York City Mayor Zohran Mandami, the city’s first Muslim mayor.
Tisch said a third suspected IED was found in the car of the two suspects parked on the East Side of Manhattan, prompting an immediate evacuation of homes in the area. She said the device did not test positive for explosives.
All of the devices are being sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for additional testing, Tisch said.
Two Pennsylvania men who are in custody in connection with the devices will be charged with federal crimes, Tisch said. The complaint has not yet been unsealed.
The suspects were identified as Emir Balat of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, and Ibrahim Kayumi of Newton, Pennsylvania, Tisch said.
“They’re suspected of coming here to commit an act of terrorism,” Mamdani said. “Anyone who comes to NYC to bring violence to our streets will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
The explosives were deployed at an anti-Muslim protest outside Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence, that was organized by far-right, anti-immigrant provocateur Jack Lang, officials said. The event was called “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City.”
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