Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ conviction upheld by US appeals court
(NEW YORK) — A U.S. appeals court has upheld the conviction of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who is serving more than 11 years in prison for defrauding investors with false claims about her company’s blood-testing technology.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the fraud convictions, sentences and $452 million restitution order for Holmes and her second in command, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — Multiple incendiary devices were found at a Tesla dealership in Austin, Texas, on Monday morning, according to the Austin Police Department.
Officers located the “suspicious devices” after responding to a Tesla dealership on U.S. Route 183 just after 8 a.m. local time and called the Austin Police Department Bomb Squad to investigate, police said in a statement.
The devices were determined to be incendiary and were “taken into police custody without incident,” officials said.
Police said it is an ongoing investigation, and had no further information to release at this time.
Recent attacks aimed at Tesla dealerships, vehicles and charging stations have been reported in Las Vegas; Seattle; Kansas City, Missouri; and Charleston, South Carolina, as well as other cities across the United States since Tesla CEO Elon Musk began his role with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
In a public announcement Friday evening, the FBI said incidents targeting Teslas have been recorded in at least nine states since January, including arson, gunfire and graffiti.
“These criminal actions appear to have been conducted by lone offenders, and all known incidents occurred at night,” the FBI said in the public service announcement. “Individuals require little planning to use rudimentary tactics, such as improvised incendiary devices and firearms, and may perceive these attacks as victimless property crimes.”
The FBI urged the public to be vigilant and to look out for suspicious activity in areas around Tesla dealerships.
(NEW ORLEANS) — Just a little over a month since 14 people were killed and dozens more were injured in a truck-ramming terror attack on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street, the victims and first responders of the rampage will be honored at Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, according to the NFL.
For the eleventh time, the Super Bowl will be played in the Big Easy, but the normally festive atmosphere will include a somber tribute to the victims and the heroes of the New Year’s Day tragedy.
While the NFL is keeping details of the ceremony under wraps, league spokesperson Brian McCarthy told ABC News, “We will appropriately honor the victims and first responders.”
The big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles will be played in front of more than 75,000 fans expected to attend the game at the Caesars Superdome and millions more around the world watching on TV.
Among the crowd at the game are expected to be some of the survivors of the attack, firefighters and paramedics who rushed to the chaotic scene to treat the injured, and police who stopped the attack by killing the suspect during a gun battle.
During the Sugar Bowl, a college football playoff game that was delayed a day due to the attack, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell led a moment of silence before the game, also played at the Superdome, and former President Joe Biden addressed the crowd in a video statement, saying, “The spirit of New Orleans can never be kept down.”
President Donald Trump is planning to attend Sunday’s Super Bowl, according to White House officials. It will mark the first time a sitting president will appear at the game.
A spokesperson for the city of New Orleans referred ABC News to the NFL about Sunday’s plans to honor the victims and first responders of the Jan. 1 attack.
Over the past week, players on the Super Bowl teams, as well as the New Orleans Saints, have been surprising survivors of the attack with tickets to the big game.
On Monday, Saints linebacker Demario Davis teamed up with a furniture company to gift Stevey Kells, a nurse who rushed to provide first aid to victims of the attack, with tickets to the game.
It’s a resilient city. That response began with the first responders, those who were on scene and those who had to react quickly, and she was there,” Davis told reporters after presenting Kells the tickets. “So, it means a lot. To be able to give back to somebody who’s given so much, was awesome. That’s what it’s all about.”
Eagles players also gifted Super Bowl tickets to Ryan Quigley, a former Princeton University football player and Eagles fan who was injured in the attack and whose friend, 27-year-old Martin “Tiger” Bech, was killed.
Eagles player Brandon Graham surprised Quigley with two Super Bowl tickets last week after the team invited Quigley and Bech’s sister to the Eagles practice facility in Philadelphia.
“We wanted to tell you the real reason we brought you. It’s OK if you’re not feeling it, but we would love to have you down for the Super Bowl,” Graham told Quigley in a video the team shared on its Facebook page.
In the video, Quigley said his best friend, Bech, was the “biggest fan” of the Eagles.
“We went to every home game last year,” Quigley told Graham in the video. “All year… I told him if we make it, ‘I promise I’m gonna take you to the Super Bowl.’ So, I’d love nothing more than to still take him.”
The Super Bowl will unfold under tight security with more than 2,700 state, federal and local law enforcement members securing the game, according to officials.
“We have reviewed and re-reviewed all the details of what happened on Jan. 1,” NFL Chief of Security Cathy Lanier said during a news conference on Monday. “We have reviewed and re-reviewed each of our roles within the overarching security plan, and we have reassessed and stressed tested — our timing, our communication protocols, our contingency measures and our emergency response plans multiple times over, over the past several weeks.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at least 700 Homeland Security personnel will be on the ground in New Orleans to bolster security at the game and more will be added if the need arises. Noem said that at this point, there have been no specific credible threats reported.
“This Super Bowl exemplifies how we come together to safeguard our traditions, how we come together to make sure that the public is well-informed and gets the chance to celebrate something that is very special to us, our culture, to our people and our families,” Noem said.
(WASHINGTON) — When more than a dozen MAGA-aligned activists and social media influencers gathered at the White House last week, they had no idea they were about to be handed binders titled “Epstein Files: Phase 1”– and neither did senior White House officials who organized the event, according to multiple sources familiar with the event.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team did not inform White House officials in advance that she planned to distribute the binders, which contained almost no new information regarding convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein — and now the move has ruffled feathers among those closest to President Donald Trump, including his senior White House staff, sources tell ABC News.
The move faced widespread criticism, not only from Democrats but also from some of the president’s most loyal supporters.
White House staff moved quickly to try and contain the fallout, privately reaching out to influencers who were critical of Bondi and the move online, according to sources.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, responding to a request for comment from ABC News, said, “Everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump. Any notion to the contrary is completely false.”
Officials with the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while facing federal child sex trafficking charges. The well-connected financier, who owned a private island estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has long been rumored to have kept a “client list” of celebrities and politicians, which right-wing influencers have accused authorities of hiding. Multiple sources familiar with both civil and criminal cases against Epstein say no such list has been discovered.
The night before last week’s event, Bondi told Fox News that the Justice Department planned to publish “a lot of flight logs” and “a lot of names” related to Epstein. However, the binders largely consisted of information previously made public through criminal or civil litigation surrounding Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, leading senior White House staffers to question why Bondi was even teasing the release of new information in the first place.
Ahead of the Justice Department’s public release, Bondi directed her staff to compile binders of the materials to distribute to the influencers at the event, sources said. She also instructed her team not to inform White House officials of the plan, according to multiple sources, apparently thinking the surprise would be well received inside the West Wing.
The White House had organized the event a week earlier to engage influential pro-Trump voices who the president credits with aiding his 2024 campaign. According to multiple sources, the agenda never included distributing Epstein-related materials.
During the gathering in the Roosevelt Room, influencers including Liz Wheeler, Rogan O’Handley and Chaya Raichik, the creator of Libs of TikTok, met with Leavitt and Vice President JD Vance. Then, Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel entered the room and handed out binders labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” with the words “By Order of Attorney General Pam Bondi & FBI Director Kash Patel” printed on the cover and the word “Declassified” stamped across the top — though the documents did not contain any official government declassification markings.
The information had not yet been posted on the Justice Department website when press cameras, set up to cover British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit, captured influencers leaving the West Wing. Some were seen smiling while holding MAGA hats and the binders — giving the impression they contained new revelations about one of the most infamous sex trafficking criminals in modern history.
The images quickly went viral, generating a mix of speculation, confusion and outrage across the political spectrum.
“If you look at the traffic online over the Epstein release, I have never seen the Left and the Right come together in a moment on a debacle,” Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz said on CNN.
Behind the scenes, Trump White House officials pointed the finger at Bondi, who they say quietly arranged the release without notifying senior staff, multiple sources told ABC News.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, who leads a congressional task force overseeing the release of Epstein-related documents, condemned the move on X, calling it a “complete disappointment” and saying she had not been informed of the plan.
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, also blasted the handling of the release, writing on X: “The Epstein files were released in an unprofessional manner with paid, partisan social media influencers to curate their binders for us. I can’t trust anything in the binder. Neither should you.”
Bondi proceeded to react to the fallout by accusing the FBI’s New York office of withholding information about the Epstein investigation, but did not specify what material she believed the office to be withholding. She demanded that the office “hand over all records in its possession relating to Epstein” by 8 a.m. last Friday.
The Epstein material released last week contained previously published pilots’ logs and included redactions performed by prosecutors on the case to protect the identities of potential victims, as well as Epstein’s so-called “black book” that has previously been made public.
One document never before seen is what the Justice Department is calling “Evidence List,” a three-page catalog of material apparently obtained through searches of Epstein’s properties in New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Bondi claimed in an interview Monday night with Fox’s Sean Hannity that she has since received “thousands of pages of documents” that she has the FBI sifting through, but did not detail what exactly had been turned over.
On Monday, James Dennehy, the head of the FBI in New York and a well-regarded leader in the New York law enforcement community, told the office he was forced to submit his resignation on Friday as assistant director-in-charge of one of the FBI’s most visible posts. Dennehy said he was not given a reason for the decision.
