Judge again says Trump-appointed US attorney is serving unlawfully
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York John A. Sarcone III at a news conference on Monday, April 28, 2025, in the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the James T. Foley Federal Courthouse in Albany, N.Y. Will Waldron/Albany Times Union via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A day after ruling that Trump-appointed U.S. attorney John Sarcone is not lawfully serving in his position, a federal judge has denied Sarcone’s application to release tax information for an investigation his office is conducting.
U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield on Thursday disqualified Sarcone from serving as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, and quashed subpoenas he had issued as part of an investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James.
On Friday, Schofield ruled that Sarcone lacks the authority to request a court order directing the Internal Revenue Service to disclose tax return information for a criminal probe.
“The Application is denied because Mr. Sarcone was not lawfully serving as Acting United States Attorney and therefore lacked authority to authorize the Application,” Schofield wrote. “Because Mr. Sarcone was not lawfully serving as Acting U.S. Attorney for NDNY, the Application fails to satisfy statutory requirements and provides no basis to permit disclosure of federal tax return information.”
In disqualifying Sarcone, Schofield joined several other judges across the country who have similarly disqualified federal prosecutors after maneuvers by the Trump administration to bypass the usual way they’re installed into office.
Last month The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a lower court judge’s ruling disqualifying President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Alina Habba from serving as U.S. attorney in New Jersey, and in November a federal judge in Virginia dismissed criminal cases against James and former FBI Director James Comey after concluding the prosecutor who brought them, former White House aide Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed.
Neither Sarcone, Habba or Halligan were either confirmed by the U.S. Senate or appointed by the federal judiciary.
It is not clear whose tax return information Sarcone was seeking in his application to the court, only that it is “a limited liability company.”
The October application claimed there was reasonable cause to believe that certain criminal acts have been committed, that the tax return information may be relevant to those crimes, and that the information cannot reasonably be obtained from any other source.
People tend to a memorial for Renee Nicole Good near the site of her shooting on January 8, 2026 in Minneapolis. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mom fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday in an alleged vehicle-ramming incident, “sparkled” and “was made of sunshine,” her wife said in an emotional statement to Minnesota Public Radio.
Becca Good told MPR Friday that on Jan. 7., she and her wife “stopped to support our neighbors” before the incident, which was caught on video and has sparked outrage and protests, occurred.
“We had whistles. They had guns,” she said, according to the statement.
Videos of the incident where Good is seen in her maroon Honda SUV as ICE agents confronted her have gone viral and sparked outcry from people around the country who say that Good was unnecessarily killed.
According to Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, Good was allegedly “attempting to run over our law enforcement officers” with her car when an ICE officer fatally shot her.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz have disputed the federal government’s claims surrounding what led up to the shooting, saying video of the incident shows the agent’s actions were not self-defense.
Messages of sympathy for Renee Good have been pouring out since the shooting.
“Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow,” Becca Good said in her statement.
“Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole,” she added.
Renee Good was a 2020 graduate from Old Dominion University in Virginia, according to the school’s president, Brian Hemphill, who said it is “with great sadness that Old Dominion University mourns the loss of one of our own.”
She graduated from the College of Arts and Letters with a degree in English, according to Hemphill.
“May Renee’s life be a reminder of what unites us: freedom, love, and peace,” he said in a statement. “My hope is for compassion, healing, and reflection at a time that is becoming one of the darkest and most uncertain periods in our nation’s history.”
Walz said that Good is survived by a 6-year-old child. During a news conference Thursday the governor offered his “deepest sympathies” to her family “on an unimaginable tragedy.”
Renee Good was also the mother of two other children, according to her wife. The 6-year-old’s father died, according to Becca Good.
“I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way,” she told MPR.
Becca Good told MPR she and her wife moved to Minnesota “to make a better life for ourselves.”
“Our whole extended road trip here, we held hands in the car while our son drew all over the windows to pass the time and the miles,” she said.
Becca Good talked about the “vibrant and welcoming community,” the two met once they arrived.
“Here, I had finally found peace and safe harbor. That has been taken from me forever,” she said.
“We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness. Renee lived this belief every day. She is pure love. She is pure joy. She is pure sunshine,” Becca Good added.
DHS, along with President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has called the agent’s actions “self-defense” and said he followed ICE training.
Noem said during a press conference on Wednesday that Good was using her car as a “deadly weapon” and said it was an “act of domestic terrorism.”
Minneapolis police said preliminary information indicates that she was in her car and blocking the road.
“At some point, a federal law enforcement officer approached her on foot, and the vehicle began to drive off,” police said. “At least two shots were fired … the vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway.”
“There is nothing to indicate that this woman was the target of any law enforcement investigation or activity,” police added.
Becca Good told MPR that on Jan. 7. she and her wife “stopped to support our neighbors.”
“We had whistles. They had guns,” she said.
Renee Good suffered gunshot wounds to the head and was transported to an area hospital, where she died, according to city officials.
Following the shooting, a large crowd gathered in the area, which is less than a mile from where George Floyd was killed in May 2020.
Gov. Walz said he has issued a “warning order” to prepare the Minnesota National Guard, saying there are soldiers in training and prepared to be deployed “if necessary,” while urging “peaceful resistance.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James stands silently during a press conference at the office of the Attorney General, on Dec. 15, 2025, in New York. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — Subpoenas issued to New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of a civil rights investigation into her fraud case against Donald Trump are invalid because the U.S. attorney in Albany who issued them lacked lawful authority, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
“The subpoenas are unenforceable due to a threshold defect,” U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield determined, writing that John Sarcone “was not lawfully serving as Acting U.S. Attorney when the subpoenas were issued.”
Sarcone’s appointment bypassed the requirements that govern who can exercise the power of a U.S. attorney, the judge said, similar to the way a judge ruled in November that Lindsey Halligan lacked the authority to bring charges against James and former FBI Director James Comey in Virginia.
Sarcone, like Halligan, was neither Senate confirmed nor appointed by the federal judiciary in the Northern District of New York.
Sarcone issued subpoenas to James as part of an investigation into whether she violated President Trump’s civil rights when she sued him over a decade’s worth of alleged business fraud.
Trump was found liable in 2024 for overstating his net worth, resulting in banks and insurance companies giving him more favorable terms. The half billion-dollar judgment was subsequently thrown out on appeal and is currently before the state’s highest court, though the finding stands.
James argued that Sarcone’s subpoenas were issued as an act of retaliation, but Judge Schofield said she did not need to address that at this stage because her ruling tossed out the subpoenas due to the faulty “workaround” Trump used to try to give Sarcone authority he did not have.
“Since August 2025, courts in New Jersey, Nevada and California have held that similarly installed acting U.S. Attorneys lacked lawful authority,” Schofield said, referencing, among other examples, Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to install his former personal attorney Alina Habba as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
“This decision is an important win for the rule of law and we will continue to defend our office’s successful litigation from this administration’s political attacks,” a spokesman for James said Thursday.
Crosses dedicated to the 21 victims of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary are placed in front of the school on Monday, Feb. 26, 2024 in Uvalde. (Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas) — Nearly four years after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, a jury is set to decide whether a police officer should be held criminally responsible in connection with one of the worst school shootings in American history.
Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, charged with allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by failing to respond to the crisis as it unfolded.
Prosecutors allege that Gonzales, one of the first of nearly 400 officers to respond to the rampage, failed to engage the shooter despite knowing his location, having time to respond and being trained to handle active shooters. It ultimately took 77 minutes for law enforcement to mount a counter-assault that would kill the gunman.
Ever since the shooting tore apart Uvalde on May 24, 2022, families of the victims have been seeking accountability and answers. Many have argued their children might have been saved had police confronted the gunman more quickly.
The trial, being staged 200 miles from Uvalde in Corpus Christi, marks an exceedingly rare instance of prosecutors seeking to convict a member of law enforcement for a response to a school shooting.
Prosecutors in June 2024 charged both Gonzales and Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — the on-site commander on the day of the shooting — with multiple counts of endangerment and abandonment of a child.
Gonzales and Arredondo are the only officers charged. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Investigations have determined that Salvador Ramos, 18, acted alone in carrying out the massacre. He was killed on-site at Robb Elementary School.
Gonzales was charged with 29 felony counts, one for each of the 19 fourth-graders who died in the shooting and 10 students who survived in classroom 112.
According to the indictment, he “failed to engage, distract or delay the shooter” after hearing the gunshots and learning about the shooter’s location.
Arredondo was charged with 10 felony counts for allegedly endangering the 10 survivors by delaying the law enforcement response and not following active shooter protocols.
Arredondo and Gonzales were charged at the same time, but Gonzales will be facing trial first and alone.
Arredondo’s case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal lawsuit filed after the U.S. Border Patrol refused repeated efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview Border Patrol agents who responded to the shooting, including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman at the school.
Each count carries a maximum of two years in prison, though judges and juries in Texas have broad discretion in imposing sentences, according to Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
“There’s a lot of different ways that this could go,” she said. “All the children who were so horrifically killed that would seem to motivate a longer sentence for anyone who is found to have some fault.”
Ahead of trial, prosecutors issued at least 75 subpoenas to potential witnesses, including police officers, teachers, and families of victims, according to court filings.
More than 20 members of the elite Texas Rangers, 16 members of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, and multiple physicians from nearby hospitals have received subpoenas, according to court filings.
In the attempt to make their case against Gonzales, prosecutors turned to a child endangerment law more commonly used to prosecute negligent parents or caretakers responsible for things like leaving a child in a hot car or without supervision at a beach. The law has rarely been used against police officers, experts noted, because of the difficulty in proving they had a legal obligation to the children.
“The critical issue here is whether the individual has a duty to act,” said Thompson, the law professor in Houston.
According to Houston-based defense attorney Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube, prosecutors will need to establish that Gonzales had a legal duty — not just a moral obligation — to intervene and that he failed to follow his training for active shooter scenarios.
“The jury is going to have the nasty task of looking through some horrible things to determine if he had the duty to act,” she said, referencing evidence such as body camera footage and frantic 911 calls from the shooting.
Legal experts who spoke with ABC News noted that Gonzales’ role as a responding officer — not the commander or case agent at the scene — could make it tough to convince the jury the man’s conduct amounted to a crime.
If prosecutors can secure a conviction, it would mark the first time that a police officer has been held accountable for how they carried out their duties at a mass shooting to which they responded.
Prosecutors rarely attempt to charge police officers who have responded to mass shootings, according to Phil Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who maintains a database of police officers who have been arrested. Of the 25,000 arrests since 2005 included in the database, Stinson identified only two prosecutions similar to those against Gonzales and Arredondo.
Defense attorneys for Gonzales have argued he is being unfairly scapegoated for a crime he didn’t commit and that he did all he could to save and rescue children who were in imminent danger.
“Those precious souls were stolen by a monster that day, but that monster was not Adrian [Gonazales],” defense attorney Nico LaHood told ABC affiliate KSAT in San Antonio. “He was there, he was present. He was going into danger. And so the narrative of the government is something we’re going to contest highly, and that’s going to be the point of contention before this jury.”
Court filings shed little light on the case Gonzales’ lawyers will mount, though attorneys have signaled plans to use drone footage from Robb Elementary to assist them.
“The factual circumstances of this case intricately entail the timing and spatial proximity of the actors and events unfolding at Robb Elementary school on the day of the murders,” attorneys wrote in a court filing.
