WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans on Capitol Hill said Monday they need more information about the agreement between the United States and Iran announced by President Donald Trump, and some are expressing skepticism as they ask the White House for details.

The agreement announced Sunday to end the war in Iran, set for a ceremonial signing Friday in Geneva, is centered around reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the United States’ naval blockade in the region, along with financial incentives for Iran if it meets certain benchmarks. But Senate Republicans and Democrats who returned to Washington on Monday said there were still many unanswered questions about the deal and they need thorough briefings before it is finalized.

“I just don’t know enough about it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters in the Capitol. “Even the people who follow this stuff closely up here don’t know that much about it.”

Congressional leaders and intelligence committees generally receive higher-level intelligence briefings before rank-and-file members, and they are notified of major developments before they are announced. But Thune said he had not been personally briefed on the deal.

“I think that my understanding of what it entails — and, again, not having seen anything — it would require, I think the issues are going to be compliance, and how are you going to enforce that,” Thune said.

Thune’s concerns were echoed by several other GOP senators.

“If it’s a secret deal then how can I take it seriously?” asked Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Vice President JD Vance told ABC News on Monday that the White House would release the text this week, “and what everybody will see is that Iran doesn’t get a dime of money unless they perform their obligations.”

Senators have questions about details

Trump has not yet explained how his agreement will address Iran’s nuclear program, including who will be in charge of verifying that Iran is in compliance and who will destroy or remove highly enriched uranium believed to be buried under nuclear sites that were badly damaged by U.S. strikes last summer.

A memorandum of understanding also includes the possibility of releasing Iran’s frozen funds, sanctions relief and a $300 billion fund to help rebuild Iran if Tehran meets certain benchmarks, senior U.S. officials told reporters Monday. But the document has not been released.

Thune said he wants to know more about the conditions on the financial incentives for Iran. He said the deal would be a “good one” if the incentives are conditioned upon Iran winding down its nuclear program and getting rid of the enriched uranium, “preventing them from having a nuclear capability in the future.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said he is hopeful but “until you see the final document, it’s hard to make an assessment.”

“I go into it very skeptical of the government of Iran,” Kennedy said. “They learn to lie before they learn to talk. So any agreement we make with them has to have guardrails. It has to have a way to judge through independent inspection if they’re doing what they say they’re doing.”

Senate could have a vote

Under the Iran nuclear agreement review act passed by Congress during the Obama era, any deal the U.S. reaches concerning Iran’s nuclear material must be submitted within a certain amount of time to Congress for review. But it is up to Congress whether that happens — it is not required.

President Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the JCPOA, was submitted for what’s called a vote of disapproval in the Senate. The outcome did not roll back the agreement, but put the senators on record with their support or opposition.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump and a longtime hawk on Iran, has appeared skeptical over the emerging agreement. He said he is “pulling for a deal” but Congress will need to review and vote on it, and he wants to see the memorandum that the two countries have agreed on.

“The way Iran describes it, it’s awful. The way we describe it, it makes sense to me,” Graham, R-S.C., said. “Let’s look at it and see what it actually is.”

Graham has said he wants Vance, whom he called “the architect of the deal,” to present it to lawmakers.

Vance responded to Graham on Monday, saying in the interview with ABC that he would “caution Lindsey Graham and anybody else not to believe the hard-liner propaganda in Iran, but to believe what’s actually in the agreement.”

Even though Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is the son of the last supreme leader, and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard still has significant authority in Iran, Vance told CNN in a separate interview that “fundamentally, it is a much different group of people.” He insisted that the conflict had unlocked much more direct communication with high-level Iranian officials and that the relationship was “fundamentally transformed.”

Next steps in Congress unclear

Most Senate Republicans said they want to review the deal, but it was still unclear whether they would have a vote, or if Congress could pass it.

Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said he doesn’t think an up-or-down vote is necessary.

“You have the camp that wants us to lose and then you have a camp that wants a forever war,” Schmitt said. “President Trump’s not in either one of those camps, and neither am I.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he expects the Senate will get the final say. But he praised Trump for making “the single most consequential decision of his presidency” by attacking Iran.

“I think he made America safer,” Cruz said. “The president as commander in chief acted decisively to stop that ayatollah from getting nuclear weapons.”

Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who serves on the Intelligence Committee, said he expects there are still many more steps to the process before any package would come to Congress for review.

“Seems like early reports are showing that this is kind of the first step,” he said. “Once we have a final agreement, we need to take it up and pass it. … If you want a long-term agreement it’s got to be law.”

Democrats ask what has changed

Democrats questioned how the deal will improve upon the U.S. position before the war — and how it differs from Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal.

“For all his critique of JCPOA, we had international observers, we actually had an alliance there that included the Europeans, and Russia and China were all signatories,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said there are more questions than answers, including what happens to the Iranian nuclear program and sanctions on Iranian oil.

Trump has spent “tens of billions of dollars” and service members and Iranians have died, “and he still cannot explain how one family in Massachusetts is better off,” Warren said.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said an end to what has been a costly and unpopular war would be a good resolution, but he wants to hear more details.

“An off ramp is good because it was a war that should have never been started,” he said.

___

Associated Press writers Michelle Price in Washington and Bill Barrow in Alpharetta, Georgia, contributed to this report.

From: To:

Subject: RE: Subject possibly flying into Teterboro
Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2019 17:10:55 +0000
Importance: Normal

Attachments: 19 Cr._490_Epstein_Arrest Warrant_(002).pdf

“

Hi all,

We received a hit notification that our sub will be landing at Teterboro at 1720 tomorrow, 7/6/2019. I’ve attached a copy of the arrest warrant. Identifiers are below.

Sub: Jeffrey Epstein
DOB: 1/20/1953
Tail #: N212JE

Thank you for your assistance with this. Please let me know if there is anything else you’d need. We’d like to plan to meet at Teterboro around 3:30pm to be there early in case of an earlier landing.

Thanks again,

SA

FBI New York
VCAC/Human Trafficking

C:

From:

[mailto:

Sent: Monday, July 01, 2019 11:28 AM

To:

Cc:

Subject: RE: Subject possibly flying into Teterboro

Good morning all,

Please let me know as soon as you’re aware of his pending arrival/departure from Teterboro. In dealing with private/charter aircraft notifications, our systems don’t always identify a specific subject correctly.

My pleasure,

From:

Sent: Monday, July 1, 2019 11:18 AM

To:
Cc:

Subject: Re: Subject possibly flying into Teterboro

EFTA00038049

NEW YORK — As Luigi Mangione’s team of attorneys heads back to state court in Manhattan this week for a key pretrial hearing, public support for the 28-year-old continues to grow.

Some legal experts say Mangione’s populist appeal, fueled in part by what many describe as his Instagram-ready good looks, could complicate state and federal trials.

“The concern you have as a prosecutor is that public support is going to make it into the jury room,” said Richard Schoenstein, a legal analyst and defense attorney.

Mangione is accused of stalking and murdering Brian Thompson, age 50, a health insurance executive and father of two, on a Manhattan street in 2024. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

His crowd-sourced legal defense fund now tops $1.5 million, with more than 42,000 donors. According to a pro-Mangione website created by volunteers, he has also received nearly 7,000 personal letters from dozens of countries around the world.

Gary Galperin, a former assistant district attorney in New York County who teaches at Cardozo School of Law, agrees jury selection will be challenging because of Mangione’s popularity.

“You may come to find that one or more jurors who seemed [unbiased] harbor views that could derail the deliberations,” he said.

A CEO’s killing, the rise of a folk hero

Supporters of Luigi Mangione raise signs outside Manhattan federal court on Jan. 9 in New York.

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Another risk, say Schoenstein, Galperin and others, is that some jurors could come to see Mangione’s state and federal trials as a referendum on the costly, frustrating and often inaccessible U.S. healthcare system.

According to federal prosecutors, a notebook kept by Mangione “contained several handwritten pages that express hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular.”

Mangione’s writings allegedly included a plan to “wack” an insurance company CEO.

Schoenstein thinks many Mangione supporters are so outraged by U.S. healthcare that they view his alleged violence as a legitimate political statement.

“There definitely are people out there who assume this defendant committed the crime, but support him in doing so,” he said.

Evan Clarkson, an assistant professor at Utah Valley University who has studied the phenomenon of Mangione’s popular support, says he began his research after many of his students told him they felt “conflicted” about Mangione’s alleged crimes.

“There are some students who believe he is absolutely a justified vigilante … against this system, the American healthcare system, that they think is unjust.”

Clarkson and other experts think Mangione’s political appeal is being further fueled by the fact that he’s young and photogenic.

Images of Mangione shirtless have gone viral on social media platforms. His fans have written poetry and songs about him and flooded the prison where he’s detained with photographs.

Luigi Mangione, accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, attends a court hearing on May 18 to rule on the admissibility of evidence and setting of trial date in New York.

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“He’s hot — and our [research] paper does talk about the role of his physical attractiveness,” Clarkson said, noting that views expressed about Mangione’s appearance are a “powerful predictor of people’s attitudes about him.”

Daniel Byman, an expert on domestic political violence in the U.S. at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agrees Mangione’s physical appearance is a significant factor.

He compares Mangione’s relatively broad cultural support to that of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

“Che Guevara was a very bloody revolutionary and yet his poster was on dorm room walls,” Byman said. “Mangione [like Guevara] is a good-looking guy.”

Mangione’s legal team declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a statement posted on a website they created to communicate with supporters, his attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, rejected the idea that her client espoused political violence.

State trial scheduled to begin in September

In a separate statement, Mangione himself, currently behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, acknowledged the personal connection many of his supporters feel.

Luigi Mangione, a suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is escorted by police on Dec. 19, 2024, in New York.

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“I am overwhelmed by — and grateful for — everyone who has written me to share their stories and express their support,” Mangione said in the undated post.

It’s unclear how the political and cultural currents surrounding Mangione will play out in court.

His team has won significant legal victories. Last September, a state judge tossed out terrorism charges filed against Mangione. Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that Mangione won’t face the death penalty.

But prosecutors have also won key rulings, including a decision last month by state Judge Gregory Carro to allow crucial pieces of evidence to be presented at trial.

“I found that ruling, at the end of the day, to be a compelling win for the prosecutors,” said Schoenstein, the legal analyst. “The gun, the silencer and the notebook [which allegedly belonged to Mangione] are all coming into evidence. It seems like a very strong case for the prosecution.”

The state trial is scheduled to begin in early September, with the federal trial delayed to next year. In a comment left online, while donating $5,000 to Mangione’s legal fund, one supporter made it clear they see the upcoming trials as political persecution.

“I am disturbed by what the government is doing to you,” the donor wrote. “For them, it was and always will be about protecting the 1%. Head up, Luigi. We are right here with you.”

If found guilty on the remaining charges, Mangione could face life in prison without the possibility of parole.