Trump again assails federal judge at center of deportation flight controversy
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is lashing out again against the top federal judge of the Washington, D.C. circuit, who issued an order stopping deportation flights of alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.
“If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!” Trump wrote early Wednesday morning in a post on Truth Social, reacting to U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order on Saturday to stop deportation flights that were already in the air.
It also comes after Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment.
“Many people have called for his impeachment, the impeachment of this judge. I don’t know who the judge is, but he’s radical left,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in a Fox News interview on Tuesday.
“He was Obama-appointed, and he actually said we shouldn’t be able to take criminals, killers, murderers, horrible, the worst people, gang members, gang leaders, that we shouldn’t be allowed to take them out of our country,” Trump said. “That’s not for a local judge to be making that determination.”
In the wake of Trump’s call for impeachment, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts issued an unusual statement rebuking the move.”For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in the statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Congress can impeach a judge if a simple majority is reached in the House. If the articles were taken up and ultimately clear the House, the Senate would need to hold a trial. It would require a two-thirds majority vote in the upper chamber to convict a judge.
It’s rare, but not unprecedented, for members of Congress to file articles of impeachment against a judge.
Trump, meanwhile, brushed off Roberts’ criticism, saying, “He didn’t mention my name in the statement. I just saw it quickly. He didn’t mention my name.”
(BOSTON) — A Massachusetts woman is on trial again for the death of her police officer boyfriend, after a jury was unable to reach a verdict in the initial murder trial last year.
Karen Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, in January 2022. The prosecution alleges that, following a night of drinking in Canton, Read struck O’Keefe with her SUV outside of a private residence, then left the scene. An autopsy found that he died of hypothermia and blunt force injuries to the head.
Read’s defense attorneys have long centered on allegations that the defendant was the subject of a cover-up.
Read has maintained her innocence. She pleaded not guilty to charges including second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and leaving the scene of a collision causing death.
During opening statements Tuesday in Norfolk County Superior Court in Dedham, special prosecutor Hank Brennan focused on numerous accounts Read has given in interviews with the media, in which he claims Read makes a series of “admissions.” Brennan announced his intent to present Read’s numerous statements to the media as important evidence in the Commonwealth’s case.
“You are going to hear from her own lips, and many of her statements, her admissions to her extraordinary intoxication. Her admissions to driving the Lexus. Her admissions to being angry at John that night,” he said.
Brennan directed the jury’s attention to a clip of the defendant’s interview from October 2024.
“I didn’t think I ‘hit him,’ hit him,” Read said in the interview. “But could I have clipped him, could I have tapped him in the knee and incapacitated him?”
Brennan told jurors they will see a host of video and DNA evidence during the trial, including what he said is DNA of O’Keefe’s hair recovered from Read’s bumper.
He also pointed to evidence pulled from Read’s Lexus, which he said will show that the defendant’s vehicle reversed at least 70 feet around the time of the alleged murder. Brennan repeatedly highlighted the broken taillight identified on the defendant’s vehicle as evidence that her Lexus struck O’Keefe.
Defense attorney Alan Jackson asserted in his opening statement that Read did not cause the death of O’Keefe.
“There was no collision with John O’Keefe,” Jackson repeated three times.
Jackson said the assertion that O’Keefe was struck by Read’s Lexus SUV is “contrary to science.”
“John O’Keefe did not die from being hit by a vehicle, period,” Jackson said.
Jackson promised to show the jury that the police investigation on which the Commonwealth has based its case is “riddled with errors.”
He made numerous references to personal relationships that investigating officers held with witnesses in this case, including Boston police officer Brian Albert, who owned the residence where O’Keefe was found dead on the lawn.
The attorney also criticized the involvement of former Massachusetts State Police Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator in the case. Jackson introduced Proctor as “a longtime family friend of the Alberts who has been disgraced by his own agency,” alluding to his dismissal by state police.
“You’ll see from the evidence in this case that this case carries a malignancy, one that is spread through the investigation,” Jackson said. “It’s spread through the prosecution from the very start, from the jump, a cancer that cannot be cut out, a cancer that cannot be cured, and that cancer has a name. His name is Michael Proctor.”
The attorney promised to show the jury personal text messages between Proctor and his high school friends, in which he made vulgar and sexist comments about Read. Jackson then alleged that Proctor admitted in the same text conversation to seizing the defendant’s cell phone without her permission and searching her phone for nude photos.
Proctor’s family responded to Jackson’s opening statement, calling it “yet another example of the distasteful, and shameless fabrication of lies that embodies their defense strategy” in a statement to ABC Boston affiliate WCVB.
“Jackson is under no oath to tell the truth; he does not have to speak in truths,” the statement continued. “The defense team continues to do anything to deflect from facts of the case and continues to use inappropriate analogies like casting someone as a cancer. We wholeheartedly believe the truth will prevail in this case, and justice for Officer John O’Keefe and his family will be achieved.”
The Commonwealth’s first witness, Timothy Nuttall, a Canton firefighter and paramedic who administered medical aid to O’Keefe, testified that he heard Read say, “I hit him,” at the scene.
“She said, ‘I hit him, I hit him, I hit him,'” Nuttall said. “I remember it very distinctly.”
In his cross-examination, Jackson focused on the witness’ ability to accurately recall details from that morning.
Jackson pointed to an inconsistency between Nuttall’s testimony in Read’s first trial, where he stated that Read said, “I hit him,” twice, and his statements Tuesday in court, where he now claims she repeated the statement three times.
“So your memory is clearer today, now, as you sit here, than it was a year ago, when you testified it was two times?” Jackson asked.
“Yes, sir,” Nuttall said with a nod.
The next witness, Kerry Roberts, testified that she saw Read point to an abnormality in the taillight of her SUV the morning that O’Keefe was found and that she recalled seeing a piece missing.
Roberts will resume her testimony on Wednesday. The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks.
Hours before the proceedings began on Tuesday, roughly two dozen protesters supporting Read gathered near the courthouse. Judge Beverly Cannone ordered a 200-foot no-protest zone around the courthouse in the interest of ensuring a fair trial.
A man “lingering and filming” within the buffer zone was arrested Tuesday morning after police say he ignored multiple requests to leave the zone, Massachusetts State Police said. The Arlington man was expected to be arraigned Tuesday on a trespassing charge, police said.
ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
(GLASGOW, Ky.) — Eli Heacock was like many 16-year-olds.
The Glasgow, Kentucky, teenager enjoyed playing tennis, telling “dad jokes” and spending time with his father, who his mom said was “his best friend.”
“He was our tornado. He kept us on our toes all the time,” said his mother, Shannon Heacock.
But everything changed in an instant after Eli Heacock died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Feb. 28, his mom told ABC News.
Since his death, his mom said local and federal investigators have said they believe Eli Heacock may have been targeted in an alleged sextortion scheme.
“Eli was on a good track. We had no reason to believe there was an issue at all. We knew nothing about sextortion or how it works,” Eli Heacock’s father, John Burnett, told ABC News.
Sextortion is a term “used to describe a crime in which an offender coerces a minor to create and send sexually explicit images or video,” according to the FBI. Once the offender receives the explicit content from the child, they then threaten to release the compromising content “unless the victim produces additional explicit material,” the FBI said on its website.
One type of sextortion is “financially motivated sextortion,” which follows a similar pattern, but is motivated by the goal of financial gain, not sexual gratification, the FBI said. After receiving explicit material, the offender will threaten to release the content unless a payment is made, the FBI said.
Financial sextortion has resulted “in an alarming number of deaths by suicide,” the FBI said on its website.
But, the explicit pictures do not need to be taken by the child to qualify as sextortion, Burnett said. In his son’s case, he said the offender made AI-generated images of Eli Heacock, sent them to the teenager and demanded $3,000 or else the pictures would be released or his family would be harmed.
“Their intention was to convince Eli their sincerity that they could, in fact, harm him or someone he loved with pictures that they generated,” Burnett told ABC News.
His mother said she regularly checked her son’s phone, but the interaction occurred during the night and the situation must have “put him in panic mode.”
In the text messages she saw, her son sent a portion of money to the offender, to which the anonymous user replied, “This is not enough.”
Eli Heacock’s twin sister discovered her brother’s body, ran to her parents and said “Eli was hurt,” Shannon Heacock said.
The 16-year-old was rushed to the hospital, but succumbed to his injuries on Feb. 28, his mother said.
“How can your lives change that fast over merely $3,000 someone wanted off the internet from a kid? I play a lot of ‘What if I did this? What if I did that?’ We don’t need anybody to add to our guilt because we carry it very heavily right now,” Shannon Heacock told ABC News.
Upon arriving at the hospital, a local FBI detective reviewed Eli Heacock’s phone, recognized it as a potential sextortion case and put the teenager’s phone on airplane mode, his mother said.
The investigation into Eli Heacock’s death is still in its beginning stages, his father said, with both local detectives and federal investigators reviewing the contents of the 16-year-old’s phone.
The family has also been in contact with Rep. Steve Riley, a lawmaker in the Kentucky House of Representatives, who has championed a bill in the Kentucky legislature making sextortion a felony and establishing penalties for those convicted of the crime. The bill is now on its way to Gov. Andy Beshear to be signed into law, Shannon Heacock said.
The Heacocks are not the only family mourning the loss of a loved one after a sextortion scheme. In 2023 alone, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received 26,718 reports of financial sextortion — up from 10,731 reports in 2022.
Shannon Heacock urges parents to check their children’s phones at all times because, in her experience, “even the happiest child is hiding something.”
“It’s no longer to be scared of the white van that drives around, you have to be scared of the internet,” Shannon Heacock said.
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal, substance use or other mental health crises please call or text 988. You will reach a trained crisis counselor for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also go to 988lifeline.org.
(TEXAS) — A large part of South Texas is reeling from life-threatening flooding that began overnight and continued into Friday morning.
Thunderstorms began Wednesday, with another round of heavy rainfall on Thursday afternoon and evening. The rain is expected to continue through Friday afternoon, forecasts show.
The National Weather Service issued flash flooding emergency warnings multiple times on Thursday and overnight for South McAllen and Harlingen — both located in the Rio Grande Valley in the southernmost parts of Texas.
“This is a particularly dangerous situation,” the NWS said in a statement issued Thursday night, urging people to avoid travel unless fleeing a region subject to flooding or are under an evacuation order.
The region received between 6 inches and a foot of rain or more in some areas, according to the NWS. McAllen got more than 6 inches of rain, while more than 14 inches was recorded at the Valley International Airport in Harlingen.
The NWS received reports for several vehicles stranded on Interstate 2 in waist-deep water, according to the agency. Dozens of water rescues took place as a result of the flash flooding.
Video shows first responders in inflatable boats rescuing people stranded on roadways. The South Texas Health System hospital in McAllen experienced minor flooding on its first floor.
Flooding continued into Friday morning, with rivers nearly overflowing. A flood watch is in effect for parts of South Texas and southern Louisiana.
Water levels at the Arroyo Colorado River at Harlingen are nearing a record-breaking 30 feet. There is no precedent for the kind of damage a 30-foot water level in the Arroyo Colorado River could do, according to the NWS. The previous record water levels measured at the Arroyo Colorado River was 24 feet.
The flooding stemmed from a stationary boundary — a front between warm and cold air masses that moves very slowly or not at all. A band of significantly heavy storms was forming over the same hard-hit areas on Friday morning. A storm with 3-inch rain rates was forming over Harlingen on Friday morning.
The system also conjured up a tornado, with a twister reported near Edcouch, Texas, about 25 miles northeast of McAllen, that damaged several structures.
The potential for showers and thunderstorms in this region is expected to continue through the afternoon, with the threat ending Friday evening, forecasts show.
