Washington, D.C

DOJ Allegedly Told Medical Examiner to Dispose of Baby Remains

Published

2 years ago

February 6, 2024

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: The Department of Justice reportedly advised the Washington, D.C. Medical Examiner to discard the remains of aborted preemie-sized babies, according to an attorney with the Thomas More Society.

Those baby remains are from an abortion clinic in Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood of D.C. Pro-life activists believe the baby bodies are evidence that a D.C. abortionist was performing illegal abortions, but for two years now, D.C. authorities have stonewalled any questions about the babies’ deaths.

“Just today, I got a call from the medical examiner’s office indicating that the DOJ has advised them that there is no reason to keep those babies anymore,” attorney Martin Cannon, who is representing pro-life activists charged by the DOJ, told The Daily Signal on a phone call late Monday evening. “And the medical examiner’s office accordingly tells me that if we don’t have an order to the contrary, by the end of this week, a court order, they will dispose of the babies.”

The DOJ and the D.C. Medical Examiner did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story.

Cannon said that he received a call from the D.C. Medical Examiner’s office on Monday related to the case of Lauren Handy, one of the pro-life activists he is representing. Handy is a pro-life activist charged by the DOJ with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act when she sought to prevent the abortions of unborn babies by blocking women from accessing a D.C. abortion clinic in 2020.

A federal jury found Handy and four other pro-life activists guilty in August, and Handy is currently awaiting sentencing in an Alexandria, Virginia jail.

Cannon, who was in D.C. on Monday visiting Handy and her fellow pro-life activists, had been in communication with a forensic pathologist who was considering examining the babies ahead of the activists’ trial.

“I had the agreement of the medical examiner to accommodate that,” Cannon said of the forensic pathologist’s examination. But shortly before Handy’s trial, he said, the pathologist became unable to do the examination.

“The condition of those babies and the circumstances under which they died is still relevant to the case,” he pointed out. “It’s pertinent to sentencing. And I’ve been making some efforts lately to find another pathologist and see what we can do. And, of course, I have advised the medical examiner’s office of that.”

In light of the medical examiner’s call, he questioned why the medical examiner’s office would take “such stark marching orders from the DOJ.”

“If I understand the structure of things correctly, there’s no real reason the DOJ should have such sway over the examiner’s office,” he said. “Beyond Lauren’s case, there is a general need to have these babies examined. There is literally exactly a 50% chance that two of these babies … there’s a 50% chance that each of them was born alive and left to die… There’s some chance that the others were subject to illegal partial birth abortions.”

“The DOJ knows this,” Cannon said. “Those are federal crimes.”

The attorney warned that in order for the baby bodies to be preserved, lawmakers on Capitol Hill that have the authority to investigate the matter “ought to do it immediately” and issue a letter to the medical examiner’s office stating that there is going to be an investigation and ordering the medical examiner not to dispose of the babies.

“I think that would solve the problem,” he said. “And then, of course, we get an investigation.”

In March 2022, the DOJ charged Handy and eight others with “conspiracy against rights and a [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act offense.”

Handy has said that she was motivated to stop abortions from occurring inside Washington Surgi-Clinic after she viewed an undercover video published by the pro-life group Live Action that allegedly showed abortionist Cesare Santangelo discussing how he would allow babies to die if they were accidentally delivered during abortions.

In March 2022, Handy and her colleague Terrisa Bukovinac discovered the bodies of five preemie-sized aborted babies’ bodies in a box of fetal remains outside the Foggy Bottom-based abortion facility. That box also contained over a hundred pulverized remains of first-trimester babies, they said.

The District does not have any laws that regulate how late during pregnancy a baby can be aborted. So when the babies’ bodies were originally brought to light, D.C. police shrugged off the matter.

Ashan Benedict, the Metropolitan Police Department’s executive assistant chief of police, went so far as to tell reporters in April 2022 that the babies appeared to have been aborted “in accordance with D.C. law.”

Police have repeatedly told The Daily Signal since then that the case is still “under investigation.” Authorities will not share whether autopsies have been performed on the babies’ remains. The MPD confirmed in early August that the investigation is still open.

The mayor’s office has completely stonewalled questions about the babies. Even the office of the chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia directs queries to the mayor’s office—specifically, to Dora Taylor-Lowe, who refuses to answer The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.

It remains unclear whether autopsies have been performed on the bodies of the five babies, whose bodies were photographed by Bukovinac. (Warning: These images are graphic and disturbing.)

And though D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser refused to address the possibility that Santangelo was criminally aborting late-term babies in the nation’s capital, she did accuse Handy of “tampering with fetal remains” in an April 2022 letter to Republican lawmakers highlighting that Handy herself faced FACE Act charges for blocking the entrance to a D.C. abortion clinic in October 2020.

Handy’s involvement in the discovery of the babies, as well as her participation in the October 2020 “blockade,” according to Bowser, are potentially “serious violations of federal law.”

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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Washington, D.C

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

Published

37 minutes ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

4 things to know about the weather:

Chances of rain in the morning
Gusty Sunday
Chilly Monday
Temps will rise again through the work week

Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.

After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.

The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.

Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.

However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.

QuickCast

SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s

MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s

Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.

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Washington, D.C

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2026

Press Room

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.

In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.

“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”

Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.

Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.

“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.

“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”

Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”

A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.

Rachel Reeves posted this image on Instagram from Washington DC on Thursday with the message: ‘Friends that run together – work together.’ Photograph: Rachel Reeves/Instagram

Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.

Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.

But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.

“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”

At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.

The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.

Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.

For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.

“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”

For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.

In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.

Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.

“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”

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