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Senate Democrats seek evidence from FBI sex-trafficking probe of Trump AG pick Matt Gaetz

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Senate Democrats seek evidence from FBI sex-trafficking probe of Trump AG pick Matt Gaetz

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is seen outside a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, January 3, 2023.

Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

The Senate Judiciary Committee asked the FBI on Wednesday for its “complete evidentiary file” of the closed investigation into the alleged sex trafficking of an underage girl by Matt Gaetz, whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped as the next U.S. attorney general.

The request by the committee’s Democratic majority in a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray says “the grave public allegations against Mr. Gaetz speak directly to his fitness to serve as the chief law enforcement officer for the federal government.”

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The letter, obtained by NBC News, noted that Gaetz’s former associate Joel Greenberg pleaded guilty in 2021 “to the sex trafficking charge for which Mr. Gaetz was also investigated.”

“The Senate has a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on presidential nominees, and it is crucial that we review all the information necessary to fulfill this duty as we consider Mr. Gaetz’s nomination,” the letter says.

Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing.

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Gaetz, 42, is a Trump loyalist known for his history of incendiary remarks and attention-grabbing actions in Congress.

He resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented a Florida district, after Trump announced that he would nominate him to lead the Department of Justice.

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The DOJ ended its probe of Gaetz last year without filing charges.

But a sprawling probe into alleged sexual misconduct and other behavior by Gaetz was being conducted by the House Ethics Committee until Gaetz resigned, removing him from the panel’s jurisdiction.

The committee is scheduled to meet behind closed doors Wednesday to discuss whether to publicly release a report on its investigation, according to NBC.

Gaetz’s selection has stoked outrage and panic from Trump’s critics and has reportedly bred concerns even among some of his Senate allies, whose support will be needed to confirm his nomination.

Trump has urged GOP senators to allow him to bypass the Senate confirmation process with recess appointments.

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But Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., predicted Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that, after a “big discussion” with her colleagues the push to bypass the Senate through recess appointments will lose steam.

“I think the issue of recess appointments will probably go away, and it won’t be an integral part of how the president’s going to get his Cabinet through.”

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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U.S. to Withdraw 5,000 Troops From Germany, Pentagon Says

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U.S. to Withdraw 5,000 Troops From Germany, Pentagon Says

Pentagon officials said on Friday that they were pulling 5,000 troops from Germany and would redeploy them to the United States and other posts overseas.

The Defense Department is also canceling a plan developed under the Biden administration to place a missile-equipped artillery unit in Europe.

The moves will return U.S. forces in Europe to the level they were in 2022, before Russia began its war in Ukraine, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the planning process. Last year, the Pentagon redeployed a brigade in Romania and did not send replacement forces.

Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that the withdrawal would be completed over the next six to 12 months.

“This decision follows a thorough review of the department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground,” he said.

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The Defense Department — particularly during both of President Trump’s terms — has for several years considered decreasing the military presence in Germany. But senior defense officials privately made it clear that they wanted the move to be seen as a punishment for Germany, whose recent comments about the U.S. war in Iran have annoyed Mr. Trump.

Earlier this week, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Iran had “humiliated” the United States, and he questioned how Mr. Trump planned to end the conflict.

“The Americans obviously have no strategy,” Mr. Merz said.

Mr. Trump then took to Truth Social, his social media site, to vent.

“The United States is studying and reviewing the possible reduction of Troops in Germany, with a determination to be made over the next short period of time,” he wrote on Thursday.

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Later, he added: “The Chancellor of Germany should spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine (Where he has been totally ineffective!), and fixing his broken Country, especially Immigration and Energy, and less time on interfering with those that are getting rid of the Iran Nuclear threat, thereby making the World, including Germany, a safer place!”

On Friday, while announcing the decision, a senior Pentagon official said that Germany’s failure to contribute to the Iran war effort had frustrated the United States, and that the country’s rhetoric was inappropriate and unhelpful.

The announcement, and the criticism of Germany, represents a shift for Pentagon officials, who recently had praised Germany’s efforts to increase military spending and take over more of the burden of supporting Ukraine.

Even if the Pentagon pulls 5,000 troops out of Germany, the country would still host the second-largest U.S. troop presence in the world, at more than 30,000, behind only Japan.

Defense officials say the United States depends on its bases in Germany to stage many of its operations in the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

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The Iran war has made that clear. Many U.S. troops evacuated from bases in the Middle East that were targeted by Iran were moved to Germany. And many of the U.S. troops wounded in the war have been taken to Germany — to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Ramstein Air Base — for treatment.

The U.S. military’s Africa Command and European Command are also headquartered in Germany.

Defense officials said the reduction would not directly affect Landstuhl or other medical facilities in Germany where U.S. troops receive care.

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Court restricts abortion access across the US by blocking the mailing of mifepristone

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Court restricts abortion access across the US by blocking the mailing of mifepristone

Mifepristone tablets sit on a table at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Ames, Iowa, on July 18, 2024.

Charlie Neibergall/AP


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Charlie Neibergall/AP

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking the mailing of mifepristone. A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in-person at clinics. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail has become a major way that abortions are provided — including to states where bans are in place. The decision sets up a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking mailing of prescriptions of mifepristone.

A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in person at clinics.

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“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,’” the ruling states.

Judges have long deferred to the Food and Drug Administration’s judgments on the safety and appropriate regulation of drugs.

FDA officials under President Donald Trump have repeatedly stated the agency is conducting a new review of mifepristone’s safety, at the direction of the president.

The judges noted in their ruling that FDA “could not say when that review might be complete and admitted it was still collecting data.”

In a court filing, Louisiana’s attorney general and a woman who says she was coerced into taking abortion pills requested that the FDA rules be rolled back to when the pills were allowed to be prescribed and dispensed only in person.

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A Louisiana-based federal judge last month ruled that those allowances undermined the state’s abortion ban but stopped short of undoing the regulations immediately.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail have become a major way that abortions are provided — including to states where bans are in place.

“This is going to affect patients’ access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state in the nation,” said Julia Kaye, an ACLU lawyer. “When telemedicine is restricted, rural communities, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence and communities of color suffer the most.”

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to end early pregnancies. It is typically used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol.

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Because of rare cases of excessive bleeding, the FDA initially imposed strict limits on who could prescribe and distribute the pill — only specially certified physicians and only after an in-person appointment where the person would receive the pill.

Both those requirements were dropped during the COVID-19 years. At the time, FDA officials under President Joe Biden said that after more than 20 years of monitoring mifepristone use, and reviewing dozens of studies involving thousands of women, it was clear that women could safely use the pill without direct supervision.

Friday’s ruling sets up a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

The conservative-majority high court overturned abortion as a nationwide right in 2022 but unanimously preserved access to mifepristone two years later.

That 2024 decision sidestepped the core issues, however, by ruling that the anti-abortion doctors behind the case didn’t have legal standing to sue.

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Jury Convicts Florida Ex-Rep. David Rivera in Conspiracy Trial

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Jury Convicts Florida Ex-Rep. David Rivera in Conspiracy Trial

A federal jury convicted former Representative David Rivera of Florida on Friday, finding him guilty of conspiracy and six other crimes for secretly lobbying officials in Washington on behalf of the Venezuelan government in 2017 and 2018.

Prosecutors presented evidence during the five-week trial in Miami showing that Venezuela’s state-run oil company had secretly hired Mr. Rivera’s consulting firm for $50 million to lobby members of Congress and the White House for a thaw in U.S.-Venezuela relations.

The revelation ran contrary to how Mr. Rivera, a Republican, had portrayed himself in public. He made a political career, first as a state lawmaker and later as a congressman, as a strident anti-Communist. Mr. Rivera served in Congress from 2011 to 2013.

He had previously been the subject of several state and federal investigations into improper campaign dealings. He was also found guilty in the criminal case of failing to register as a foreign agent and money laundering, and faces about 10 years in prison.

His defense lawyers in the criminal case had argued that Mr. Rivera was not working for Nicolás Maduro’s government but rather surreptitiously trying to oust him. They also said that Mr. Rivera did not need to register as a foreign agent because his firm’s contract was with an American company, PDV USA, a U.S. subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, and not with the state-run company itself.

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The 12-member jury also convicted one of Mr. Rivera’s associates, Esther Nuhfer, on four charges. Prosecutors said that Mr. Rivera, 60, split the secret contract earnings, which ultimately amounted to about $20 million after the company terminated the contract, with Ms. Nuhfer and two people who were not charged in the case. Ms. Nuhfer, 52, is a political consultant based in Miami.

Roger Cruz, an assistant U.S. attorney and the lead prosecutor, said in his closing argument on Tuesday that Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer decided to keep the contract secret because of “greed.”

“Without their keeping it secret, they would not have got a single penny,” he said. “If anyone found out, their careers would be over.”

The trial drew widespread attention when it began because prosecutors called Secretary of State Marco Rubio to testify against Mr. Rivera, his longtime friend and former housemate in Tallahassee when they both served in the Florida Legislature.

Mr. Rubio, who has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, was a Republican U.S. senator from Florida in the years that Mr. Rivera was secretly lobbying for Venezuela. Mr. Rubio held two meetings with Mr. Rivera at that time and testified in court that he had no idea about Mr. Rivera’s secret contract.

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Other prosecution witnesses included Brian Ballard, a major lobbyist and top fund-raiser for President Trump, and Hugo Perera, one of the other two men who admitted to taking part in the conspiracy. Mr. Perera was not charged because he agreed to testify against Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer.

Mr. Perera testified that Mr. Rivera and Ms. Nuhfer had kept the contract secret because they knew it would create a political scandal if it became public. Defense lawyers noted that Mr. Perera, a developer who had served prison time for cocaine trafficking and tax fraud in the 1990s, was allowed to keep the roughly $5 million he made from the Venezuela deal.

One of the defense witnesses was Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, a Republican, who testified that he worked with Mr. Rivera in 2017 to try to persuade Mr. Maduro to step down and hold presidential elections. Mr. Sessions also said that he did not know at the time about Mr. Rivera’s secret Venezuela contract.

Edward R. Shohat, one of Mr. Rivera’s defense lawyers, told jurors in his closing argument that prosecutors had tried to confuse them. “All that he was about was removing Mr. Maduro,” Mr. Shohat said of Mr. Rivera.

David O. Markus, a defense lawyer for Ms. Nuhfer, said she had signed onto the contract “in good faith,” believing it was with a U.S. subsidiary. She would never “in a billion years” have tried to help the Maduro government, Mr. Markus said.

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