Trump orders attacks against Houthis in Yemen

(NEW YORK) — Steve Bannon, the confidant of President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty Tuesday to defrauding New Yorkers who donated to “We Build the Wall,” an online fundraiser for Trump’s signature project during his first term, in exchange for a sentence without prison time.

“The parties have worked out a plea agreement. Mr. Bannon will plead guilty to count 5 of the indictment, which is scheme to defraud in the indictment. He will receive a conditional discharge,” prosecutor Jeffrey Levinson said.

The guilty plea to the felony charge represents Bannon’s second criminal conviction after he served prison time for contempt of Congress.

Bannon showed up to court in a brown barn jacket, his brushed-back gray hair spilling over the upturned collar. He sat at the defense table signing papers before Judge April Newbauer affirmed that Bannon now wanted to plead guilty.

“Is that what you wish to do?” Newbauer asked.

“Yes, your honor,” Bannon replied, before acknowledging he acted to defraud multiple donors.

“Do you now plead guilty to count 5, scheme to defraud?” the court clerk asked. “Yes,” Bannon responded.

The judge imposed the agreed upon sentence of a three-year conditional discharge, during which time Bannon cannot serve as a director of a charity or fundraise for a nonprofit. He is also barred from using data gathered from “We Build the Wall” donors.

Bannon said after the hearing that he would call on new Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James and investigate Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom brought successful cases against Trump.

“Letitia James is the existential threat to the Trump administration,” Bannon said.

Defense attorney Arthur Aidala said he counseled Bannon to plead out because he did not think Bannon could get a fair shake from jurors in Manhattan.

“This is a spectacular disposition with him,” Aidala said, noting the conditional discharge puts no real limitations on Bannon other than charitable work.

Bragg released a statement after the plea agreement, saying, “This resolution achieves our primary goal: to protect New York’s charities and New Yorkers’ charitable giving from fraud. With this felony plea, the defendant will not be able to serve as an officer, director, or in any fiduciary position, or fundraise for, any charitable associations with assets in New York State, nor can he use or sell WBTW donors’ information. New York has an important interest in rooting out fraud in our markets, our corporations, and our charities, and we will continue to do just that.”

“We Build the Wall” promised 100% of donations would fund a wall along the U.S. southern border, but Bannon redirected money elsewhere.

Bannon, who served as a senior adviser to Trump during his first term, was indicted in September 2022. He previously pleaded not guilty and the trial was scheduled to begin on March 4.

Bannon was initially charged in federal court with three co-defendants. However, Trump pardoned Bannon, but not the co-defendants, whose asset forfeitures through prosecution recouped money for defrauded donors.

Bannon defrauded donors to the nonprofit by falsely promising that none of the money they donated would be used to pay the salary of “We Build the Wall” president Brian Kolfage, while secretly funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to him by laundering it through third-party entities, prosecutors said.

The campaign represented that “We Build the Wall” would use the money to privately construct the border wall, and prosecutors said a “central piece of the public messaging in support of this fundraising effort was that Kolfage was not taking a penny of compensation.” Financial records show Kolfage was paid, according to a secret salary arrangement, an upfront payment of $100,000 and monthly payments of approximately $20,000.

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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has ordered that the FBI must release some records related to its investigation of President Donald Trump’s handling of presidential records that have been sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In a memorandum opinion issued Monday, Judge Beryl Howell wrote, “Given the current circumstances and legal landscape—including that President Trump now enjoys absolute and presumptive immunity from criminal liability, the government has dismissed criminal charges against President Trump and … and no pending or even contemplated criminal enforcement action within the applicable statute of limitations on the topics of responsive records is at all likely,” the exemptions the FBI cited to block the release of information no longer apply.

Exactly three years ago, on Feb. 10, 2022, Axios reported that New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman’s then-upcoming book, “Confidence Man,” included a claim that White House staff “periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging” the presidential toilet.

Trump issued a statement calling the story “another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book.” (A footnote in Howell’s opinion notes, “In August of 2022, Haberman released photos of notes at the bottom of two toilets, and, according to her sources, one photo was allegedly of a White House toilet while the other toilet was overseas.”)

Eight days later, on Feb. 18, 2022, a letter from the National Archives described how President Trump allegedly brought classified records to his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago after losing the 2020 election.

This kicked off a high-stakes legal fight to return the records to government control and would eventually lead to an FBI search of Trump’s residence. What came next were felony charges and a series of stunning legal and political victories that would propel Trump back into office and make the charges he faced effectively disappear.

But as questions swirled around the February 2022 allegations of mishandling of records by Trump, Bloomberg News reporter Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request for six categories of documents. The first five categories pertained to documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, but the sixth category requested information about any records mentioning “Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were destroyed and … allegedly flushed down the toilet.”

The FBI argued they were exempt from responding to the request about the Mar-a-Lago investigation citing possible harm that could come to a prosecution and issued a so-called “Glomar” response to part six of the request, meaning the FBI would not confirm or deny the existence of records about alleged toilet documents.

The term Glomar is a reference to a secret CIA operation during the Cold War to raise a lost Soviet submarine from the ocean floor — when details of the operation began to leak the government provided a response that neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the operation.

Some of the information from the Mar-a-Lago investigation files was eventually released but the sixth category has remained secret.

The landmark Trump immunity case that held a president is presumptively immune from criminal prosecution for official acts and his election victory which brought a dismissal to the case had the effect of wiping away the constraints that had permitted the FBI to withhold records under FOIA.

Howell writes, “somewhat ironically, the constitutional and procedural safeguards attached to the criminal process include significant confidentiality mechanisms,” but for an immune president, such protections, “may simply be unavailable, as it is here.”

“The FBI’s Glomar response is improper, and the categorical withholding of the responsive records contained within the Mar-a-Lago investigative file is insupportable where, as here, no pending law enforcement proceeding exists, or can be reasonably anticipated, and the Mar-a-Lago investigation has been iced,” Howell writes.

No records were released immediately in the case, but the parties must submit a joint status report in 10 days to propose a schedule to conclude this case. It is unclear if the government will seek an appeal to block any further release.

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(WASHINGTON) — Transgender U.S. service members will be separated from the military unless they receive an exemption, according to a new Pentagon policy disclosed in a court filing on Wednesday.

According to the memo, the Pentagon must create a procedure to identify troops who are transgender by March 26 and orders that the separation of individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria must be completed by June 25.

Those to be separated from the military will include service members receiving some form of treatment or hormones for that diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who have gone through a gender-affirming surgery.

The new policy was included as an exhibit in the federal case of Talbott v. Trump, a federal lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order that rolled back the previous policy allowing transgender service members to serve in the military.

“Military service by Service members and applicants for military service who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria is incompatible with military service,” the memo said.

“Service by these individuals is not in the best interests of the Military Services and is not clearly consistent with the interests of national security,” said the memo.

“Individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are no longer eligible for military service,” it added.

The service members who will be separated will receive honorable discharges unless their record indicates they should receive a lower-level discharge. Receiving an honorable discharge means they would be able to receive benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“The Department only recognizes two sexes: male and female. An individual’s sex is immutable, unchanging during a person’s life. All Service members will only serve in accordance with their sex,” according to the memo.

The new policy will allow certain exemptions from separation or allow enlistment on a case-by-case basis separation if they can provide that “there is a compelling Government interest in retaining the Service member that directly supports warfighting capabilities.”

Current service members can also apply for an exemption if they can prove that they have been stable in their sex for three months “without clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning,” and that they never attempted to transition to another sex; and will adhere to all standards for the service member’s sex.

On Feb. 7, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo that lifted the Pentagon’s previous policy on transgender service and said the U.S. military would no longer allow transgender individuals to join and would stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender dysphoria. He also set a timeline for the Pentagon to develop an implementation plan for the new policy.

There are currently 4,240 active-duty, Guard and Reserve service members who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, according to a defense official.

Since 2014, the total number of diagnoses for gender dysphoria was 5,773 with 1,000 of those having gone through gender-affirming surgery. The total costs for treatments, hormones and surgeries during that time frame was $52 million, said the official.

There are about 2.1 million service members in the U.S. military — and about 1.3 million of them are on active duty.

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