Politics

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Daniel Penny, a military veteran who subdued an agitated New York subway rider and was acquitted of homicide this week, has been invited by Vice President-elect JD Vance to join Donald Trump’s suite at the Army-Navy football game on Saturday.

The Marine veteran was cleared of criminally negligent homicide in Jordan Neely ’s 2023 death. A more serious manslaughter charge was dismissed last week.

Vance said Penny, 26, accepted his invitation to join the president-elect and him at the game.

“Daniel’s a good guy, and New York’s mob district attorney tried to ruin his life for having a backbone,” Vance said in a post on X. “I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage.”

The case sparked national debate, with some hailing Penny as a hero for attempting to subdue a man he considered a menace to public safety and others seeing him as a white vigilante who choked a Black man to death.

Political figures on the right have defended Penny since he was charged for the death in May 2023. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination and was tapped by Trump last month to lead an effort along with billionaire Elon Musk to cut government spending, donated money to his legal defense fund.

After the acquittal, Penny gave an extensive interview to Fox News and declared he’s “not a confrontational person.” He told the network that he wouldn’t have been able to live with “the guilt I would have felt if someone did get hurt, if he did do what he was threatening to do.”

“I’ll take a million court appearances and people calling me names and people hating me, just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed,” Penny said.

Trump has not referred to the case publicly recently, but last year he told The Messenger that he thought Penny and other people on the subway were “in great danger.”

Some New Yorkers protested the trial outcome this week, holding signs and chanting Jordan Neely’s name in a Manhattan square.

Vance, who served in the Marine Corps, including in Iraq, said this week that “justice was done in this case” and Penny never should have been prosecuted.

Penny has been hailed a hero by many, but Neely’s death also divided the city as residents grapple with how to respond to mental health crises threatening public safety.

Passengers said Neely had expressed willingness to die, go to jail or even to kill. The former street performer was homeless, had schizophrenia and had synthetic marijuana in his system. He had been convicted of assaulting people at subway stations.

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Social media users are misrepresenting a report released Thursday by the Justice Department inspector general’s office, falsely claiming that it’s proof the FBI orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

The watchdog report examined a number of areas, including whether major intelligence failures preceded the riot and whether the FBI in some way provoked the violence. Claims spreading online focus on the report’s finding that 26 FBI informants were in Washington for election-related protests on Jan. 6, including three who had been tasked with traveling to the city to report on others who were potentially planning to attend the events.

Although 17 of those informants either entered the Capitol or a restricted area around the building during the riot, none of the 26 total informants were authorized to do so by the bureau, according to the report. Nor were they authorized to otherwise break the law or encourage others to do so.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: A December 2024 report released by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General is proof that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a setup by the FBI.

THE FACTS: That’s false. The report found that no undercover FBI employees were at the riot on Jan. 6 and that none of the bureau’s informants were authorized to participate. Informants, also known as confidential human sources, work with the FBI to provide information, but are not on the bureau’s payroll. Undercover agents are employed by the FBI.

According to the report, 26 informants were in Washington on Jan. 6 in connection with the day’s events. FBI field offices only informed the Washington Field Office or FBI headquarters of five informants that were to be in the field on Jan. 6. Of the total 26 informants, four entered the Capitol during the riot and an additional 13 entered a restricted area around the Capitol. But none were authorized to do so by the FBI, nor were they given permission to break other laws or encourage others to do the same. The remaining nine informants did not engage in any illegal activities.

None of the 17 informants who entered the Capitol or surrounding restricted area have been prosecuted, the report says. A footnote states that after reviewing a draft of the report, the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said that it “generally has not charged those individuals whose only crime on January 6, 2021 was to enter restricted grounds surrounding the Capitol, which has resulted in the Office declining to charge hundreds of individuals; and we have treated the CHSs consistent with this approach.”

The assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office’s counterterrorism division told the inspector general’s office that he “denied a request from an FBI office to have an undercover employee engage in investigative activity on January 6.” He, along with then-Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Steven D’Antuono, said that FBI policy prohibits undercover employees at First Amendment-protected events without investigative authority.

Many social media users drew false conclusions from the report’s findings.

“JANUARY 6th WAS A SETUP!” reads one X post that had received more than 11,400 likes and shares as of Friday. “New inspector general report shows that 26 FBI/DOJ confidential sources were in the crowd on January 6th, and some of them went into the Capitol and restricted areas. Is it a coincidence that Wray put in his resignation notice yesterday? TREASON!”

The mention of Wray’s resignation refers to FBI Director Christopher Wray’s announcement Wednesday that he plans to resign at the end of President Joe Biden’s term in January.

Other users highlighted the fact that there were 26 FBI informants in Washington on Jan. 6, but omitted key information about the findings of the report.

These claims echo a fringe conspiracy theory advanced by some Republicans in Congress that the FBI played a role in instigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters determined to overturn Republican Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden stormed the Capitol in a violent clash with police. The report knocks that theory down. Wray called such theories “ludicrous” at a congressional hearing last year.

Asked for comment on the false claims spreading online, Stephanie Logan, a spokesperson for the inspector general’s office, pointed The Associated Press to a press release about the report.

In addition to its findings about the the FBI’s involvement on Jan. 6, the report said that the FBI, in an action its now-deputy director described as a “basic step that was missed,” failed to canvass informants across all 56 of its field offices for any relevant intelligence ahead of time. That was a step, the report concluded, “that could have helped the FBI and its law enforcement partners with their preparations in advance of January 6.” However, it did credit the bureau for preparing for the possibility of violence and for trying to identify known “domestic terrorism subjects” who planned to come to Washington that day.

The FBI said in a letter responding to the report that it accepts the inspection general’s recommendation “regarding potential process improvements for future events.”

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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

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(Reuters) – Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. lender, plans to contribute to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural committee but has yet to decide on the amount, a BofA spokesperson said Friday.

BofA, along with JPMorgan Chase & Co, were the two largest bank contributors to Trump’s 2017 inauguration. JPMorgan representatives declined to comment on Friday.

The inaugural committee plans and finances inaugural events, including opening ceremonies and parades, galas and balls, but not the swearing-in ceremony itself, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Bank of America contributed $1 million to both Trump’s first inaugural fund and to President Joe Biden’s in 2021. JPMorgan donated $500,000 for Trump’s 2017 inaugural festivities.

(Reporting by Douglas Gillison)

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By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday released a long-awaited strategy for countering anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate, up sharply since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, calling for urgent, continued work to reduce discrimination and bias.

The 64-page document, which maps out more than 100 executive branch actions, comes weeks before the inauguration of former President Donald Trump, who imposed a travel ban on people from some majority Muslim countries during his first term that Biden rescinded on his first day in office.

It mirrors a comprehensive strategy to fight antisemitism released by the White House in September 2023, and comes more than a year after death of six-year-old boy Wadea Al-Fayoume, stabbed by a man who targeted him and his mother because they were Palestinian-American.

In a foreword to the strategy, Biden called the attacks on the Chicago boy and his mother “heinous acts” and noted a spike in anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate crimes, discrimination and bullying that he called wrong and unacceptable.

“Muslims and Arabs deserve to live with dignity and enjoy every right to the fullest extent along with all of their fellow Americans,” Biden wrote. “Policies that result in discrimination against entire communities are wrong and fail to keep us safe.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, called the strategy “too little, too late” and faulted the White House for not promising any changes to a federal watchlist and “no-fly” list that includes many Arab and Muslim Americans, and for failing to end the war in Gaza, which has been driving Islamophobia.

Jim Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, predicted the incoming Trump administration would disown the strategy, but welcomed the White House’s expansion to include anti-Arab hate instead of focusing solely on acts directed against Muslims.

The Trump transition team had no immediate comment on the strategy or whether it would support it.

Trump, who won support from some Muslim voters angry about Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, has said he will ban entry to the U.S. of anyone who questions Israel’s right to exist and revoke visas of foreign students who are “antisemitic.”

Tensions between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups surged on some U.S. campuses after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, with human rights advocates warning of rising antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — With Mitt Romney set to exit the U.S. Senate, Washington will be without one of its strongest conservative critics of Donald Trump when the president retakes the White House in the new year.

The retiring senator will reflect on his two-decade political career, which included the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, a term as Massachusetts governor and several skirmishes with Trump loyalists in Congress, at a final news conference Friday in Salt Lake City.

Romney, 77, chose not to run for reelection this year after representing Utah in the Senate since 2019. He has said he wants to focus on getting more young people involved in politics after he leaves office in January but has not shared specific plans.

Once the standard-bearer of the Republican Party, Romney watched his brand of moderate conservatism shift from establishment to outlier as Trump took hold of the party.

He soon became the voice of Congress’ centrist core, leading negotiations for the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure law — one of the Biden administration’s crowning achievements — and a major COVID-19 relief package.

Political observers worry his departure may create a vacuum of strong centrist voices who can keep bipartisanship alive at a time of increased polarization in Washington.

Romney will be succeeded in the Senate by Republican U.S. Rep. John Curtis, who has developed a reputation for pushing back against party leaders such as Trump who falsely claim climate change is a hoax. Eyes will be on Curtis and other moderate Republicans who might break with the party in votes to confirm Trump’s cabinet picks.

In 2020, Romney became the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president from their own party in an impeachment trial. He was the sole Republican in Congress to vote to convict Trump at his two impeachment trials. Trump was acquitted by the Senate both times.

Earlier this year, Romney pledged not to vote for Trump but declined to join some other high-profile Republicans in endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris, saying he wanted to preserve his future ability to help rebuild the Republican Party.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Republicans will meet Tuesday as required under federal law to cast the state’s Electoral College votes for President-elect Donald Trump, not a day earlier as state law calls for, after elections officials and the state Department of Justice agreed that is the proper day to do it.

The Wisconsin Republican Party sued last week seeking an order to resolve which of the two dates it should meet. The state Department of Justice and the Wisconsin Elections Commission agreed that the votes should be cast Tuesday in accordance with federal law. The Justice Department asked that the case be dismissed.

U.S. District Judge James Pederson dismissed the case Thursday because everyone agreed that federal law should be followed, essentially making the lawsuit moot.

State law calls for the electors to meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. But federal law requires the meeting to be the first Tuesday following the second Wednesday.

The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature, recognizing the conflict, attempted to bring the state into compliance with federal law last session. The Senate passed the bill 31-1, but it never got a vote in the Assembly.

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(Reuters) – Amazon is donating $1 million to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund and the company will air the event on its Prime Video service, an Amazon spokesperson said on Thursday.

The Prime Video represents an in-kind donation worth another $1 million, the spokesperson said. The donations were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Amazon joins another tech giant, Meta Platforms, in donating to the Jan. 20 Trump inauguration. Meta will also give $1 million, a company spokesperson said.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chairman, will meet with Trump next week, the president-elect said on Thursday in an interview with CNBC.

Trump has criticized the coverage of his first term as president by the Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos.

The Post decided not to endorse a candidate in the November presidential election. The decision blocked an endorsement of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, according to National Public Radio.

Bezos defended the move not to issue an endorsement, saying in an opinion piece in the paper that “most people believe the media is biased” and the Post and other newspapers needed to boost their credibility.

Trump raised a record $106.7 million for his 2017 inauguration festivities.

(Reporting by Greg Bensinger; writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Heather Timmons and Saad Sayeed)

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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams met with President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming “border czar” on Thursday, with the Democratic mayor expressing an enthusiasm to work with the incoming administration to pursue violent criminals in the city while Trump promises mass deportations.

The mayor’s meeting with Tom Homan, who will oversee the southern and northern borders and be responsible for deportation efforts in the Trump administration, came as Adams has welcomed parts of the president-elect’s hardline immigration platform.

Adams told reporters at a brief news conference that he and Homan agreed on pursuing people who commit violent crimes in the city but did not disclose additional details or future plans.

“We’re not going to be a safe haven for those who commit repeated violent crimes against innocent migrants, immigrants and longstanding New Yorkers,” he said. “That was my conversation today with the border czar, to figure out how to go after those individuals who are repeatedly committing crimes in our city.”

Homan said the two connected as career law enforcement officers and that he came away from the meeting with “a whole new outlook on the mayor.”

“I’ve called him out this past year, many times, about being more of a politician than a police officer. I was wrong,” Homan said during an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw on his Merit TV network. “He came through today as a police officer and a mayor that cares about the safety and security of his city.”

The meeting marked Adams’ latest and most definitive step toward collaborating with the Trump administration, a development that has startled critics in one of the country’s most liberal cities.

In the weeks since Trump’s election win, Adams has mused about potentially scaling back the city’s so-called sanctuary policies and coordinating with the incoming administration on immigration. He has also said migrants accused of crimes shouldn’t have due process rights under the Constitution, though he eventually walked back those comments.

The mayor further stunned Democrats when he sidestepped questions last week on whether he would consider changing parties to become a Republican, telling journalists that he was part of the “American party.” Adams later clarified that he would remain a Democrat.

For Adams, a centrist Democrat known for quarreling with the city’s progressive left, the recent comments on immigration follow frustration with the Biden administration over its immigration policies and a surge of international migrants in the city.

He has maintained his positions have not changed and argues he’s trying to protect New Yorkers, pointing to the law-and-order platform he has staked out throughout his political career and while running for mayor.

At his news conference Thursday, Adams reiterated his commitment to New York’s generous social safety net.

“We’re going to tell those who are here, who are law-abiding, to continue to utilize the services that are open to the city, the services that they have a right to utilize, educating their children, health care, public protection,” he said. “But we will not be the safe haven for those who commit violent acts.”

While the education of all children present in the U.S. is already guaranteed by a Supreme Court ruling, New York also offers social services like healthcare and emergency shelter to low-income residents, including those in the country illegally. City and state grants also provide significant access to lawyers, which is not guaranteed in the immigration court as they are in the criminal court.

Still, Adams’ recent rhetoric has been seen by some critics as an attempt to cozy up to Trump, who could potentially offer a presidential pardon in his federal corruption case. Adams has been charged with accepting luxury travel perks and illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish official and other foreign nationals looking to buy his influence. He has pleaded not guilty.

Homan, who was Trump’s former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, also met this week with Republicans in Illinois, where he called on Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, to start negotiations over how Trump’s mass deportation plans, according to local media.

While meeting with Adams, Homan said, “We traded ideas, we traded, strategies. He told me what he liked and didn’t like about immigration policies. … There’s things we don’t agree on, but we agree on the most important things.”

Separately, New York City officials this week announced continued efforts to shrink a huge emergency shelter system for migrants because of a steady decline in new arrivals. Among planned shelter closures is a massive tent complex built on a federally owned former airport in Brooklyn, which advocates warned could be a prime target for Trump’s mass deportation plan.

Elsewhere, Republican governors and lawmakers in some states are rolling out proposals that could help Trump carry out his promised deportations.

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Izaguirre reported from Albany, New York.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A newly elected state lawmaker in West Virginia is facing at least one felony and is accused of making terroristic threats.

Joseph de Soto, 61, was arrested by state police Thursday in Martinsburg following an investigation that found he made “several threatening/intimidating threats against government officials,” according to a statement from Lt. Leslie T. Goldie Jr. of the West Virginia State Police. The lieutenant did not provide details about the threats or to whom they were directed.

One of de Soto’s alleged targets was West Virginia Republican Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw, the television station WVDM reported, citing a criminal complaint.

De Soto was elected to his first term in the West Virginia House as a Republican representing part of Berkeley County in the state’s eastern panhandle in November, receiving 72% of the vote in the general election after defeating two other Republicans in the May primary.

De Soto did not immediately return a phone or email message Thursday seeking comment. The case is still under investigation, state police said.

West Virginia GOP Party Chair Matt Herridge said Thursday that Republican officials in the state “disavow and condemn” de Soto’s actions.

“Our elected officials sacrifice a lot to serve their communities, and it is a travesty for anyone to face the additional burden of threats made against themselves and their families,” he said in a statement.

De Soto changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat on Wednesday — the day before his arrest, said Mike Queen, a spokesperson for the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office. Queen said although officials are allowed to change their party affiliation after they’re sworn in, the office was researching whether a candidate elected under the banner of one party could switch to another before officially taking office.

“The West Virginia State Police and the West Virginia Capitol Police take all threats against government process seriously,” Goldie Jr. said. “Any person making these threats used to intimidate, disrupt, or coerce the members of our West Virginia legislature or other governmental bodies will not be tolerated.”

If convicted, de Soto could face a maximum fine of $25,000 and three years in prison.

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI did not send undercover agents to participate in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and did not authorize its informants to enter the building or engage in violence, the U.S. Justice Department’s internal watchdog said on Thursday.

The findings by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz run counter to far-right conspiracy theories by supporters of President-elect Donald Trump who have repeatedly made baseless claims suggesting that FBI operatives were secretly involved in the Capitol riot.

One such false claim pertained to James Ray Epps, an Arizona man who entered the Capitol that day. Epps, who was charged last year with a misdemeanor for entering a restricted building or grounds, was falsely accused by Trump’s supporters and by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson of being an undercover government informant.

Horowitz’s report comes a little more than a month before Trump will be sworn in for his second term as president. He has pledged to grant clemency to many of the people who stormed the Capitol as soon as his first day in office.

The report found that the FBI could have done more ahead of the Jan. 6 attack by canvassing its field offices for intelligence from informants to prepare for what was to come.

Twenty-six FBI confidential informants were in Washington, D.C., on the day of the attack, the report said.

Three of them were tasked with reporting on domestic terrorism case subjects. One of those three entered the Capitol that day, while two others entered a restricted area around the Capitol.

The other 23 informants who were in Washington to attend protests did so on their own initiative and were not asked by the bureau to attend the events, the report said.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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