Capitol Police hire prosecutors as threats rise
WASHINGTON — The Capitol Police, facing a flood of violent threats against members of Congress that is expected to rise with the upcoming November elections, have begun hiring prosecutors dedicated to going after people who threaten lawmakers.
Frustrated that threat cases viewed as serious by the police often do not lead to punishment, the agency has added three attorneys and detailed them to the Department of Justice to pursue such cases that specifically focus on the unique types of threats faced by federal lawmakers.
The hires are part of an array of security changes the agency has implemented to better protect members of Congress after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The Capitol Police are requesting $906 million next fiscal year, an increase of more than $60 million over what they sought last year. That total includes the salaries of three prosecutors — two who were hired last year and one this year — who are responsible for ensuring that suspects accused of making credible threats to members of Congress are punished in court.
“One of the issues we faced over the years is the number of threat prosecutions versus the number of threats is actually pretty low,” Tad DiBiase, general counsel for the Capitol Police, said in an interview.
Last year, the Capitol Police investigated 8,008 threat cases, the second-highest total on record in the agency’s history. That number, which includes investigations into concerning statements and direct threats, is expected to increase this year in line with a general uptick that precedes elections.
But only 27 percent of the serious, specific threats that the police referred to federal prosecutions in 2023, for example, were ever prosecuted.
Top law enforcement officials on Capitol Hill have said little publicly about threats against members of Congress. But in recent interviews, DiBiase and Ashan Benedict, the office’s newly hired assistant chief of protective and intelligence operations, were unusually candid about their efforts to adapt to a new, heightened threat environment and protect lawmakers — and how their agents are constantly swamped by a barrage of dangerous rhetoric that is on the rise.
Delay on sending Mayorkas impeachment articles
WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson will delay sending the House’s articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate this week as previously planned after Republican senators requested more time Tuesday to build support for holding a full trial.
The sudden change of plans cast fresh doubts on the proceedings, the historic first impeachment of a Cabinet secretary in roughly 150 years. Seeking to rebuke the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border, House Republicans impeached Mayorkas in February but delayed sending the articles while they finished work on government funding legislation.
Johnson had planned to send the impeachment charges to the Senate on Wednesday evening. But as it became clear that Democrats, who hold majority control of the chamber, had the votes to quickly dismiss them, Senate Republicans requested that Johnson delay until next week. They hoped the tactic would prolong the process.
While Republicans have argued against a speedy dismissal of charges, most Senate Republicans did just that when Donald Trump, the former president, was impeached a second time on charges he incited an insurrection in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He was ultimately acquitted.
“Our members want to have an opportunity not only to debate but also to have some votes on issues they want to raise,” said South Dakota Senator John Thune, the second-ranking Republican Senate leader. Under procedural rules, senators are required to convene as jurors the day after the articles of impeachment are transmitted for a trial.
“There is no reason whatsoever for the Senate to abdicate its responsibility to hold an impeachment trial,” Johnson’s spokesperson, Taylor Haulsee, said in a statement announcing the delay.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who has decried the impeachment push as a “sham,” suggested Democrats still plan to deal with the charges quickly.
Court rejects Trump attempt to delay hush money trial
NEW YORK — A New York appeals court judge Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay his hush money criminal trial, taking just 12 minutes to swat aside an argument that it should be postponed while the former president fights a gag order.
Justice Cynthia Kern’s ruling was the second time in as many days that the state’s mid-level appeals court refused to postpone the trial, set to begin next week, further narrowing any plausible path to the delay that Trump’s legal team has repeatedly sought.
Trump’s lawyers wanted the trial delayed until a full panel of appellate court judges could hear arguments on lifting or modifying a gag order that bans him from making public statements about jurors, witnesses, and others connected to the hush-money case.
Fla. woman sentenced for stealing Ashley Biden’s diary
NEW YORK — A federal judge in Manhattan sentenced a Florida woman on Tuesday to a month in prison for her role in a brazen scheme to steal the diary of President Biden’s daughter and sell it to a right-wing group in the hope of disrupting the 2020 election.
The conduct of the woman, Aimee Harris, “was despicable and consequently very serious,” Judge Laura Taylor Swain of US District Court for the Southern District of New York said before handing down a punishment.
Harris, 41, tested the patience of prosecutors and the judge overseeing the case after she missed repeated sentencing dates, jeopardizing what otherwise appeared to be a likely path to probation. In August 2022, she pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport the stolen diary to New York, where she met with employees of the group, Project Veritas, and sold it for $40,000 just weeks before the election.
The judge also sentenced her to three years’ probation, along with three months of home confinement, and ordered her to pay back the money she earned from the sale.
In a statement provided to the court, Ashley Biden described what happened to her as “one of the most heinous forms of bullying.”
Trump’s mug shot becomes defiant 2024 symbol
CONWAY, S.C. — After Quinzell Williams stepped out of an Uber near a campaign rally featuring Donald Trump, a passing couple did a double take.
“Aren’t you embarrassed to be wearing that?” they asked, Williams recalled.
He was wearing a T-shirt with Donald Trump’s mug shot from Fulton County, Ga., plastered across the front.
“No, no, no, no,” he replied that day in February. “Wearing it with pride.”
The mug shot, which the jail released in August after prosecutors charged Trump with illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia, has become an iconic image for the former president’s supporters. They don T-shirts displaying Trump’s scowl. They’ve purchased mugs and can coolers from the Trump campaign promoting the photo. Some of the merchandise is rendered in the same colorized style as Barack Obama’s iconic HOPE emblem from 2008.
To many of them, the mug shot has become a symbol of defiance — the same backlash to the prosecutions that Trump portrays as politicized, helping him consolidate support in the Republican primary.
“Wearing the shirt is a middle finger to all the indictments,” said Orlando Perez, a mechanical engineering student who got one at the Florida Republican Party’s convention. “We can see through all the indictments thrown his way, the lies and the BS. It’s making him stronger.”
To some Trump critics, the photo is a disturbing encapsulation of alleged behavior they find revolting.
“We need to step back a bit and clear our eyes from the fog from what Trump is putting out there and recognize he’s no different from any other criminal defendant,” said Michael Steele, a former Republican National Committee chairman who has become a vocal Trump critic.