A private jet bound for the Bahamas crashed in Palm Beach County, Fla., Sunday afternoon, killing all nine people on board. The Learjet 60, which had taken off from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas, went down at about 12:50 p.m. ET near Cresthaven, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. Dashcam footage posted to social media by an eyewitness showed the aircraft falling toward the ground beside a road and exploding into a fireball, narrowly missing cars and homes. Duffy called the crash a “horrific tragedy” in a post on X, adding: “Please join me in praying for the families and loved ones of those we lost.” Air traffic control audio posted on LiveATC captured the crew’s comments leading up to the crash. Someone in the cockpit can be heard saying “Mayday, mayday,” reporting the plane was descending at 10,000 feet per minute, Reuters reported. “We’re going to crash into the ground,” the person said. The impact left a “massive crater” near the entrance to a mobile home park, Palm Beach County Commissioner Joel Flores said at a news conference. About 600 residents were evacuated to two shelters, he said.The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation, and the cause is not yet known.What we knowThe aircraft crashed in a residential area in Greenacres.Anadolu via Getty ImagesThe Learjet 60 took off from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, bound for North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. FAA records list the owner as a Delaware corporation.The National Weather Service had a flood watch in effect for the area of the crash, Palm Beach County, through Monday afternoon, with rain expected on and off across South Florida.In air traffic control audio posted on LiveATC, someone in the cockpit said they were “managing the ice” but faced “moderate” turbulence and were seeking “better rides.” AP reported the crew also asked to climb.Less than a minute later, the person said “Mayday, mayday,” reporting the plane was suddenly descending at 10,000 feet per minute. Seconds later, the person declared an emergency, with the descent rate reaching 20,000 feet per minute.Less than 20 seconds later, the person said: “We’re going to crash into the ground,” before reporting the descent rate had reached 22,000 feet per minute as the plane began to bank. Flightradar24 data showed the vertical descent rate at one point exceeded 32,000 feet per minute. The last words heard from the cockpit were “we’re out of time.”Accuweather reported that thunderstorms in the area produced heavy rainfall and lightning.The jet is reported to have descended at a peak of 32,000 feet per minute.Anadolu via Getty ImagesDriver Aki Kuusisto’s dashcam footage captured the moment the jet hit the ground. “I heard a whistling noise, a big bang, and I saw a fireball,” he told CBS News. “It felt like it was right next to us… you could feel it in the car.”Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there were no immediate reports of anyone injured on the ground.Authorities haven’t confirmed what caused the crash or identified the people on board. Steve Arroyo, an aviation safety expert, told the Associated Press that ice and turbulence could have caused the plane to stall.What have officials said?The FAA said the aircraft departed Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas and was heading to North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas when the crash took place.The FAA said it was investigating and would provide further updates. DeSantis told reporters during a Sunday briefing that there were no reports of anyone on the ground being injured despite “a lot of debris” that was strewn over a “pretty significant distance.” “It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” DeSantis said. “It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the crash a “horrific tragedy” and said the FAA and Department of Transportation would be investigating the incident.What did eyewitnesses say?Anthony Blackmon, who lives around 500 feet from the site of the crash, told NBC Miami that debris from the crash struck his home. “Debris was everywhere,” he said. “Debris hit my house. Everything was on fire. The road was on fire. I’ve always seen it on the news, never thought it would happen so close to somebody like how it happened today.” Adam Itayem told WPTV, “It sounded like a loud boom. I thought it was thunder,” adding, “I saw a big crater in the ground and water coming out of the crater and a big fire too.””I heard and felt the boom,” Andrew Mannino told CNN, saying he saw a “large black cloud immerse in the air,” adding, “The power immediately went out and is still out.”Around 600 people were evacuated by Palm Beach County authorities while federal officials investigate the crash.”We’re waiting for someone to give us answers about what we’re going to do, because they’re not even letting us into the community to get our clothes,” local resident Jesus Solorzano told WPTV.What we know about the victimsCamila Corteleti identified her 20-year-old daughter, Nathalia Filgueiras, as one of the pilots of the private jet that crashed Sunday afternoon, the New York Times reported on Monday. Corteleti said her daughter earned her pilot’s license at age 17. Filgueiras had logged more than 1,300 hours of flight time and was working for a private charter firm based in Fort Lauderdale, according to her mother.Nathalia Gadelha Filgueirasitsnatfilg/ThreadsIt’s not clear who the other pilot was or who was at the controls at the time of the crash, the New York Times reported.The other victims have not yet been identified.This article originally appeared on Yahoo News at https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/article/learjet-plane-crash-in-florida-kills-all-9-on-board-what-we-know-111242550.html

Prosecutors announced in court on Nov. 2 that they intend to retry Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who killed her three young children. Clancy, 36, was charged with murder for killing her children Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, on Jan. 24, 2023, by strangling them with exercise bands in the basement of their Duxbury home. Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington argued she can’t be held criminally responsible, Massachusetts’ version of the insanity defense, because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings. Clancy’s triple murder trial ended with a hung jury in early September, leaving her fate in limbo. Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague said prosecutors want to retry Clancy but are waiting to decide what charges she will face until Judge William Sullivan makes a decision on three motions, including a defense motion to dismiss the murder charges. “Your honor, this would be a retrial. As to what that looks like will depend,” Sprague said. “We’re not at that point yet.” Reddington argued prosecutors don’t need to know the outcome of the motions to determine what charges they will retry Clancy on. “Why do we not know if the next trial will be murder in the first degree, or a lesser charge or no charge?” he asked. Reddington said he wants Sullivan, who is approaching mandatory retirement in June, to preside over the trial in the spring. Sullivan said requested the parties appear on Nov. 16 for another hearing. If Sullivan dismisses the defense’s motion to dismiss at that hearing, the parties will then select a trial date, which Sullivan said he is hoping to schedule in March. Judge to weigh motion to dismiss The defense team pushed to have the charges against Clancy dismissed altogether and launch an investigation into the holdout juror. Defense attorney Martin Weinberg argued on Nov. 2 that retrying Clancy would violate constitutional protections against double jeopardy because Sullivan should have questioned the jury more thoroughly after receiving notes indicating one juror was refusing to follow the court’s instruction on reasonable doubt, an allegation the holdout juror has denied. Sullivan interjected, noting he did question the jurors individually before declaring a mistrial on Sept. 4. Weinberg said the question Sullivan asked was “simply constitutionally insufficient to probe what was going on in that jury room.” Prosecutors opposed the defense’s motion, saying the mistrial was properly declared after the jury repeatedly reported it was deadlocked. Sprague argued that Sullivan could not have questioned the jurors further without probing the substance of deliberations, which is prohibited, and even if he could have done so, the appropriate response wouldn’t be dismissing the charges. “It’s not for the trial judge to choose sides in a deadlocked jury and decide,” she said. Sullivan said he would take the matter under advisement. Defense argues for holdout juror probe Reddington also requested the holdout juror’s phone, phone records and confidential questionnaire, among other records. Reddington asked the court to question the juror about the truthfulness of a questionnaire and his answers during jury selection, a “sworn assurance” from Sept. 3, and the use of a cell phone or receipt of outside information during deliberations. In a fiery exchange on Nov. 2, Reddington said he has evidence the holdout juror was using his cellphone and researching altruistic filicide during deliberations. Reddington said the juror was also dishonest about his criminal history on his questionnaire. Heather O’Connor, an attorney for the holdout juror, said that the mistrial decision had to be made based on what was known at the time and that these allegations came to light after the jury was dismissed. “And to be clear Juror Doe does not concede any of those allegations,” O’Connor said. Sullivan said he would take the matter under advisement. Prosecutors push for gag order Prosecutors also asked the court to prohibit defense attorneys, as well as themselves, from speaking to the media in a way that would “have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing the criminal proceedings.” Sprague argued Reddington has already made many statements that were inappropriate and “calculated to affect the public’s perception of the case,” including asking for a presidential pardon and saying the other jurors were “robbed” by the holdout. A defense attorney opposed that motion, arguing that such an order would constitute “prior restraint” of speech that infringes upon both Reddington’s and Clancy’s First Amendment rights. They said that no trial date had been set and the impact of these alleged comments on a potential future jury is “merely speculative.” Sullivan said he would also take this matter under advisement. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Prosecutors intend to retry Lindsay Clancy for killing her 3 childrenThis article originally appeared on USA TODAY at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/crime/2026/11/02/lindsay-clancy-retrial-case-update/92560776007/

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday in its push to sideline thousands of disputed California mail ballots the day before the pivotal midterm elections. The emergency appeal came after a divided appeals court rejected the request to set aside some 20,000 ballots from people the federal government suspects may not be citizens. The federal government says those ballots should not be counted until the voters’ status can be verified. California officials say the list is highly unreliable and likely includes many people who are U.S. citizens. The Republican Trump administration has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year, despite them being rare. A district court judge forcefully denied the Justice Department’s request and warned that the demand could disenfranchise citizens in Tuesday’s midterm elections to determine control of Congress. The Justice Department asked the high court for a “limited injunction” that would direct California to set aside the ballots while the case plays out. “Once California commingles the challenged ballots with lawful ones, there is no way to get the challenged ballots back,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. Voting has been underway in California, a largely Democratic state, since early October. All of the state’s roughly 23 million registered voters are mailed a ballot. Hundreds of thousands of ballots have already been processed. California election officials have said that finding and setting aside the challenged ballots now would be logistically impossible. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said the appeal “reeks of desperation and is another attempt to undermine our elections and trample on the rule of law.” Lower courts have sided with the state, with a district judge warning that segregating ballots would “wreak havoc” on the midterm elections and erode trust in the democratic process. “If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger,” wrote U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. A 2-1 appeals court panel upheld his order, with one judge appointed by Trump and another appointed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, voting in favor. The third judge on the panel, also appointed by Trump, argued in a dissent that California’s unwillingness to separate the ballots encourages the “violation of federal law.” The Justice Department has sought to move the case along quickly, unsuccessfully asking an appeals court to intervene early. Trump’s administration has racked up a series of wins in emergency appeals before the Supreme Court in his second term, but the justices previously rejected the president’s push to restrict mail ballots ahead of the midterms. __ Associated Press writer Sophie Austin in Sacramento contributed to this report. ___ Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.This article originally appeared on Associated Press at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-administration-appeals-supreme-court-162957570.html

On Election Day, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers will face off in what may be the marquee battle of the 2026 midterms: the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters in Michigan. It’s a contest that could decide which party controls the U.S. Senate. Democrats currently hold 47 Senate seats, including two independents who caucus with them. They need 51 to win back the chamber. (A 50-50 split would give Vice President JD Vance the tiebreaking vote.) Polls suggest that flipping four Republican seats is very possible, but Democrats are also playing defense in Georgia, New Hampshire and Michigan. The Great Lakes State looks like the closest of the three. Democrats are pinning their hopes on El-Sayed, an unapologetic 42-year-old progressive who’s pushing policies such as Medicare for All and ending U.S. military aid to Israel; who’s willing to confront his critics and his own party’s establishment; and who’s vying to become America’s first Muslim senator.Republicans have handed the reins to Rogers, a 63-year-old former congressman who lost an extremely close Senate race to Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin two years ago, and who has since broken with President Trump on tariffs and the war in Iran.The race has been rocked by several controversies, and the biggest came Sunday, two days before the election. Rep. Haley Stevens, the Democrat El-Sayed narrowly defeated in the primary, endorsed Rogers after the two worshipped together at Perfecting Church in Detroit.”Our Democratic nominee for Senate said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” Stevens said in a video. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.”Stevens had said days earlier that she would vote for El-Sayed, and the two were due to appear together Sunday for the first time since August. That plan collapsed after she called on him to condemn an outside group’s ad tying U.S. support for Israel to grocery prices. His campaign then asked her to stay away, NBC News reported.Defending her stance, Stevens told CNN on Sunday the decision was a “weight off my shoulders” and said she had decided to switch allegiances because El-Sayed had been getting “angrier and angrier” throughout the campaign.When Stevens announced her change in support for Rogers, she maintained that she was “still a very proud Democrat.” Michigan’s Democratic Party chair, Curtis Hertel, fumed over the decision in a Sunday post on X, writing, “Congresswoman Stevens is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.” Trump told a rally in Iowa on Sunday that he’d “love” Stevens to join the Republican Party and said she’d been “very brave” to endorse Rogers. Rep. Debbie Dingell, who helped arrange the event, told the AP before the endorsement that she had called it off. “I’m the one who pulled it because it had become way too distracting,” she said.”I would rather not distract from the key issues of this campaign,” El-Sayed said Saturday. He attended a different Detroit church Sunday with Dingell and other Democrats, and did not address the dispute there, the AP reported. Stevens’s longtime chief of staff resigned after the church visit, and more staff were expected to leave, the AP reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.On Sunday, El-Sayed spoke with reporters before a unity event with other Democrats and reacted to Stevens’s endorsement, saying, “At the end of the day, I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens.” “This is a state of 10 million people who deserve a lot better from their government. I’m a lot more focused on the 9,999,998 that are not the ones you guys are talking about,” El-Sayed said, referring to Stevens and Rogers.Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on social media on Sunday that Stevens’s reversal was a “despicable betrayal.”Jason Turkish, Stevens’s fiancé, said last week that he would vote for Rogers because of El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.”Every time [El-Sayed] talks about genocide, Jews get death threats,” Turkish, a Michigan lawyer and registered Democrat, claimed Oct. 28 at a Rogers campaign event. “We have never seen a candidate for U.S. Senate act so recklessly toward the safety of Jews in the community as we have seen from Abdul.”Further raising the stakes is the fact that Michigan couldn’t be more purple, having swung to Trump in 2016, then Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, then back to Trump in 2024 — always by slim margins. Here’s everything you need to know about the Michigan Senate contest.Who’s winning? Here’s what the polls say.Twelve polls have been conducted in October. Eleven of them have shown El-Sayed with leads ranging from 1 to 7 percentage points. New surveys from both CBS Detroit and CNN give El-Sayed a 7-point lead. The only recent poll to show Rogers ahead (by 2 points) was sponsored by a group affiliated with the former congressman. All of those polls were taken before Stevens’s endorsement.To close the gap on Election Day, Rogers has been reaching out to two groups who backed Stevens over El-Sayed in the primary: Black and Jewish Democrats. In August, Stevens won a majority of Michigan’s large counties with significant Black populations by an average of 8.5 percentage points. She also won Detroit with more than 60% of the vote, making El-Sayed the first Michigan Democrat since 2018 to win a statewide primary without winning the state’s largest city. El-Sayed shakes hands with former President Barack Obama during a campaign event on Oct. 24, 2026, in Detroit. AP Photo/Paul SancyaSome members of Michigan’s Jewish community also gravitated toward Stevens because El-Sayed has called the war in Gaza a “genocide” and accused Democrats who refuse to do the same of lacking the courage necessary “to stand up to Donald Trump.” “Killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil,” El-Sayed told CNN in April. “It’s not how evil is this one versus that one. Hamas: evil. Israeli government: evil. We can say both.”It remains to be seen whether Rogers’s outreach will pay off; he’s also targeting more reliable Republican constituencies such as the nearly 4 million Michiganders ages 50 and older. So far, polls suggest that El-Sayed’s strategy — trying to maximize his support among anti-establishment voters, Arab Americans and young voters — has put him ahead in the polls. But the polls have overestimated El-Sayed before. In the run-up to August’s primary, several surveys showed El-Sayed with a double-digit lead over Stevens. The race ended up being much closer than expected, with El-Sayed edging Stevens by less than 1 percentage point. How controversial has the race been? El-Sayed’s background has also made him the target of persistent attacks from Republicans, with Trump going so far as to call him a “jihadist” and accuse him of being “on the side of the terrorists.” Vice President JD Vance recently said El-Sayed had “zero attachment” to the United States. El-Sayed is a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in Michigan. Rogers has claimed without evidence that El-Sayed has supported the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist groups.In a recent exchange at a town hall with a critic who asked him whether he denounced the Muslim Brotherhood, El-Sayed highlighted what he called the “implicit” suggestion in the question: the assumption that he’ll have “dual loyalties” because of his faith. “I’m not running to be a Muslim senator,” he said. “I’m running for the U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim.”After Trump referred to El-Sayed as “Mohammed” — his middle name — the Democrat responded in what has become his signature pugnacious style. “I don’t care how he pronounces my name,” El-Sayed said during a rally in Grand Rapids on Oct. 25. “Because he can just go on and call me ‘senator’ after November. I will be Senator Mohamed to you, bro.”Trump watches a video of El-Sayed during a campaign rally on Oct. 25, 2026, in Port Huron, Mich.AP Photo/Julia Demaree NikhinsonMeanwhile, El-Sayed has campaigned with Hasan Piker, a Marxist streamer whom other Democrats have called antisemitic and even anti-American. “If perfectly inoffensive won elections, then Donald Trump would never have been president,” El-Sayed said in April when reporters questioned his choice of allies. An independent left-wing group affiliated with Piker’s uncle, commentator Cenk Uygur, also recently released an ad linking U.S. support for Israel to high grocery prices. The ad shows two parents shopping for their kids’ lunch items; the mom tells the dad to put a carton of eggs back on the shelf. “They don’t like eggs anymore?” the dad asks.”No, they like eggs,” the mom answers. “But we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.”Some Democrats and Republicans have urged El-Sayed to denounce the content of the ad rather than just distancing himself from it. “That has nothing to do with our campaign,” El-Sayed said of the ad. “It’s certainly not what I want to be talking about right now.”Who is El-Sayed? El-Sayed, 42, was born on Halloween 1984 in Rochester Hills, Mich. — a northern suburb of Detroit. His parents were immigrants from Egypt, and his first language was Arabic. He captained his high school’s wrestling, football and lacrosse teams, then continued to play club lacrosse at the University of Michigan, where he majored in biology and political science. El-Sayed went on to study medicine at Michigan, Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar) and Columbia University, where he received his MD. Before politics, he pursued a career in public health epidemiology as a tenure-track professor, and later led the Detroit health department. In 2017, El-Sayed, then just 32, resigned as Detroit’s health director to run for governor. He said at the time he was inspired by his work on the Flint water crisis. He was endorsed by prominent progressives — Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — but lost the Democratic primary to Gretchen Whitmer by more than 20 percentage points.After a stint as Wayne County health director, El-Sayed decided to try again in 2026. He has since become the most prominent Democratic insurgent to channel left-wing disillusionment with politics and outrage over Israel’s actions in Gaza to win his party’s nomination in a state where more moderate candidates typically prevail. His argument is that even in so-called purple states such as Michigan, Democrats have a better shot at success when they pick buzzy, big-swing progressives over safe, “electable” incrementalists.Who is Rogers? Rogers was born in Livingston County, Mich., in 1963. He earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and sociology from Adrian College in 1985 before joining the Army. After four years of military service, Rogers joined the FBI as a special agent based in Chicago. His work with federal law enforcement focused on countering organized crime and public corruption. Rogers began his political career in 1994, when he was elected to a seat in the Michigan state legislature. He served for six years before launching his first bid for Congress. Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina campaigns for Rogers in Muskegon, Mich., on Oct. 30, 2026.AP Photo/Paul SancyaRogers was elected to the House of Representatives in one of the closest races of the 2000 election cycle, defeating Democrat Dianne Byrum by just 111 votes. During his 14-year tenure in the House, Rogers was a key conservative voice on national security and intelligence issues. He spent four years as chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee, much of that time focused on what he describes as “the economic and national security danger posed by China.” Rogers left Congress in 2015 and quickly began a career in media. He hosted a daily syndicated radio show called Something to Think About with Mike Rogers and worked as a commentator for CNN.Rogers returned to run for the Senate in 2024. Roughly six months after that loss, he announced his plan to run again in 2026. Rogers is a conservative Republican on most issues — including abortion, immigration and transgender rights — but his opinion on Trump has shifted through the years. Over the past few weeks, Rogers has retreated from his early support for the president on two key issues: calling for Trump to end the “tariff war” with Canada and saying the conflict in Iran should also “end quickly.”This article originally appeared on Yahoo News at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/article/haley-stevens-endorses-mike-rogers-over-abdul-el-sayed-who-has-a-better-chance-of-winning-michigans-marquee-senate-battle-190415696.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of lying to Congress about Hunter Biden, citing what he said was “weaponization” of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department just before the midterm elections. In a scathing, hourlong ruling read from the bench, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said the investigation that produced the charges against Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides was rushed, conducted at the behest of Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel and dogged by “critical mistakes” that require the dismissal of the case. “I am deeply troubled by what has happened here in this case,” Faruqui said. “What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization.” The ruling may not bring a permanent end to the matter because the Justice Department still has the option of pursuing an indictment, even though it has struggled during the Trump administration to persuade grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions like this one. In the meantime, it nonetheless amounts to a resounding rebuke of a department the judge said could have sought an indictment at any time but instead opted for transparently political purposes to file a criminal complaint in the immediate run-up to Tuesday’s midterm voting. “I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar,” Faruqui said, alluding to the proximity of the charges to the elections, which will determine control of Congress for the last two years of the Republican president’s second term. Prosecutors had accused the two former FBI officials of falsely downplaying to Congress their knowledge of investigations into President Joe Biden’s son and of a laptop the younger Biden dropped off at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019. But Faruqui said the Justice Department had failed to establish in its complaint that any statements made during 2023 testimony were intentionally false and had affected lawmakers’ investigation of Hunter Biden or that the former officials had any motive to deceive. “Without motive, without direct evidence, I have nothing” to go on, Faruqui said to establish probable cause needed to affirm the complaint. Lawyers for Floris, who after the ruling hugged supporters outside the courtroom, said the “so-called prosecution was nothing more than a politically motivated smear campaign aimed at scoring political points before the midterm elections.” “The charges brought under the clearly discredited authority of the Department of Justice should never have been brought in the first place,” the attorneys said in a statement. The judge identified a political motive and ‘critical mistakes’ The dismissal followed a dramatic three-day hearing last week in which an FBI agent who had been assigned to investigate the case conceded that the inquiry had been regarded around his office as something of a “witch hunt” and that he himself had regarded it as a “huge distraction” from his ordinary case work. The agent, Bryan Witt, said the investigation had been opened one day after a primetime election security speech from Trump in which he rehashed longstanding grievances over his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, a Democrat. He said the investigation was assigned to his Kansas City, Missouri, office and that Patel, a close Trump ally, demanded and received constant updates — something Witt said was unusual. Recounting the pressure to deliver that Witt said he operated under, Faruqui faulted the Trump administration for a rushed investigation that undermined the results. “The rush to charge led to critical mistakes,” he said. Among the errors the magistrate cited was that the complaint said that the two officials had provided sworn testimony to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee when they were not under oath. The judge’s concerns about the case were apparent almost immediately, when he raised questions about why the Justice Department had charged the case through a criminal complaint — which is more typically done when investigators have a pressing need to take a defendant into custody — as opposed to an indictment that requires a grand jury’s approval. “It is self-evident that the U.S. attorney’s office is avoiding taking this case to a grand jury,” Faruqui said. Last week, the Justice Department failed to secure a grand jury indictment against Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House staffer who provided dramatic but disputed testimony against Trump before a House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection. Then, at a preliminary hearing last week, Faruqui criticized the Justice Department for filing overnight an amended complaint with an additional criminal charge straight to the docket instead of first clearing the new charge with the court — something he said he had never seen before. The case concerns years-old questions about a laptop The case centers on a laptop that the Justice Department says Hunter Biden abandoned at a Wilmington, Delaware, computer repair shop in 2019. The laptop’s existence was publicly disclosed in October 2020 with a New York Post story that reported on some of the laptop’s contents. Floris and Benavides were leaders of the FBI Foreign Influence Task Force, or FITF, which was set up to monitor efforts by other countries to meddle in American politics but was disbanded last year by the Trump administration after years of Republican criticism. The Justice Department accused them of falsely downplaying their knowledge of the laptop when they appeared before the House Judiciary Committee as it was conducting its own investigation of Hunter Biden’s business dealings. A prosecutor argued last week that the former officials may have had an incentive to minimize their knowledge of the laptop because Joe Biden was president at the time they were questioned and to distance themselves from the fact that the FITF did not publicly correct a narrative from some Democrats and former intelligence officials that the laptop might have been connected to Russian disinformation. Trump’s then-intelligence director, John Ratcliffe, said after the laptop was publicized that there were no signs of foreign involvement. Defense lawyers challenged that characterization. Faruqui said prosecutors had not identified a plausible motive for why the former officials might have made intentionally false statements.This article originally appeared on Associated Press at https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/judge-dismisses-complaint-against-2-153427170.html