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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(EL PASO, Texas) — The wife of an active-duty U.S. Army sergeant with 27 years of service was released from immigration custody on Thursday.
Deisy Fidelina Rivera Ortega was taken into custody on April 14 in El Paso, Texas, while attending a routine immigration interview related to a “Parole in Place” application — a program designed to allow undocumented family members of military personnel to remain in the U.S. legally.
She was released after being in federal custody for one month, her attorney told ABC News.
Rivera Ortega is married to Sgt. 1st Class Jose Serrano, a U.S. Army sergeant stationed at Fort Bliss who has been deployed to Afghanistan three times. He told ABC News last month that he and his wife had been “doing everything by the book.”
“She goes to work or to church,” Serrano said. “That’s the life of my wife, Deisy.”
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth said she personally called Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to request Rivera Ortega’s release.
“I’m thankful to Secretary Mullin for heeding my personal call to release Deisy, but she — and so many others — should never have been in this situation to begin with,” Duckworth said in a statement to ABC News.
“Deisy was doing everything ‘the right way’: attending her Military Parole in Place interview, when she was detained by ICE with no warrant and no explanation,” said Duckworth, a Army veteran. “There is no higher betrayal to our heroes than having one of their family members deported by the same nation they sacrificed to defend.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Rivera Ortega — who currently works for IHG Army Hotels at Fort Bliss — has a valid work permit through 2030 and was previously granted withholding of removal from her home country, El Salvador, according to documents reviewed by ABC News.
After being detained in April, she was facing deportation to a third country.
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(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center asked a federal judge Tuesday to demand that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issue a correction to allegedly “false” statements he made in the aftermath of the indictment of the organization last week, according to a legal filing.
In a motion to the judge presiding over their criminal case in the Middle District of Alabama, attorneys for the SPLC accuse Blanche of lying in an interview he gave to Fox News last Tuesday when he claimed the government did not have information showing the organization has shared information it learned from informants with law enforcement.
“Those statements are false,” attorneys for the SPLC wrote. “Weeks before the indictment, undersigned counsel provided information to the government demonstrating unequivocally that the SPLC had shared information from its informants with law enforcement.”
Blanche, who earlier this month replaced Pam Bondi as attorney general, announced last week that a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging the group with wire, bank fraud and money laundering offenses related to its paying of informants to infiltrate hate groups.
The attorneys write that they previously requested Blanche issue a correction to the statements but that counsel for the government refused.
They specifically cite an April 6 meeting that SPLC attorneys had with prosecutors in Alabama in which they explained in detail how some of their past cooperation with the government had resulted in an indictment of a member of a well-known extremist group.
The SPLC then sent a letter to the DOJ, which they requested it share with the grand jury, detailing six categories that they argued showed the organization using informants to dismantle white supremacist organizations, which they said undercut the core of the government’s case that argues SPLC used the informants to boost such groups.
The organization is asking the judge overseeing the case to order the disclosure of grand jury transcripts and issue a separate order restricting the government from making further “prejudicial” statements that could taint a possible jury pool.
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(WASHINGTON) — The federal judge presiding over the White House ballroom case on Thursday clarified his ruling to say that security-related work can go on, particularly below ground, but that work on the ballroom itself still cannot proceed without authorization from lawmakers.
Judge Richard Leon ruled on March 31 that President Donald Trump can’t build the planned ballroom without authorization from Congress.
In addition to issuing Thursday’s clarification, Judge Leon stayed his ruling by another seven days to allow the White House to pursue further appeals.
The revised decision came at the direction of a D.C. Circuit appeals court panel, which ruled 2 to 1 last Saturday that Leon’s initial ruling needed to be clarified.
But in elaborating on the exceptions in his order, Leon also warned the Trump administration that security concerns are not a “blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” saying that it is “neither a reasonable nor a correct reading” of his order for the White House to claim that the ballroom is itself part of a security upgrade, as it did in a recent court filing.
“It is, to say the least, incredible, if not disingenuous, that Defendants now argue that my Order does not stop ballroom construction because of the safety-and-security exception!” Leon wrote.
Leon said his revised order would allow for “below-ground construction of national security facilities, work necessary to provide for presidential security, and construction necessary to protect and secure the White House and the construction site itself.”
Trump officials argued that items such as bulletproof windows, missile-resistant columns and drone-proof roofs — features of the planned ballroom — were necessary to enhance security of the executive mansion.
“While these features may well be beneficial, Defendants have not provided any national security justification for why these features must be installed immediately such that they should be excluded from the scope of the injunction,” Leon said, noting the appeals court panel’s own presumption that it would likely take months, if not years, for those upgrades to be completed.
Leon concluded his opinion by saying he has “no desire or intention to be dragooned into the role of construction manager,” and trusts that Trump and his aides will implement his ruling “in good faith and with the benefit of this clarification.”
Pointing to his latest stay, which is now set to expire next Thursday, Leon warned in a footnote that “any above-ground construction over the next seven days that is not in compliance with my Amended Order is at risk of being taken down pending the resolution of this case.”
The Trump administration filed a notice of appeal to the D.C. Circuit court following the judge’s revised order Thursday.
Trump also blasted Leon’s clarification in a social media post Thursday afternoon.
“This highly political Judge, and his illegal overreach, is out of control, and costing our Nation greatly,” Trump wrote.
Saying that the ballroom project will include “Bomb Shelters, a State of the Art Hospital and Medical Facilities, Protective Partitioning, Top Secret Military Installations, Structures, and Equipment, Protective Missile Resistant Steel, Columns, Roofs, and Beams, Drone Proof Ceilings and Roofs, Military Grade Venting, and Bullet, Ballistic, and Blast Proof Glass,” Trump claimed that Judge Leon’s ruling means that “no future President, living in the White House without this Ballroom, can ever be Safe and Secure at Events, Future Inaugurations, or Global Summits.”
The White House announced the construction of a 90,000-square foot ballroom in late July, and demolition began suddenly on the East Wing in late October when workers were spotted tearing down the wing of the White House.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed a lawsuit in December seeking to stop the ballroom construction until the project completes the standard federal review process and the administration seeks public comment on the proposed changes to the White House.
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