Report on FBI's Trump-Russia investigation: Some problems but not the 'crime of the century'

WASHINGTON (AP) — An investigation into the origins of the FBI's probe into ties between Russia and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign has finally been concluded, with the prosecutor leading the inquiry submitting a much-awaited report that found major flaws.

The report, the culmination of a four-year investigation into possible misconduct by U.S. government officials, contained withering criticism of the FBI but few significant revelations. Nonetheless, it will give fodder to Trump supporters who have long denounced the Russia investigation, as well as Trump opponents who say the Durham team's meager court record shows their probe was a politically motivated farce.

A look at the investigation and the report:

WHO IS JOHN DURHAM?

Durham has spent decades as a Justice Department prosecutor, with past assignments including investigations into the FBI's cozy relationship with mobsters in Boston and the CIA's destruction of videotapes of its harsh interrogations of terrorism subjects.

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3 people killed by New Mexico gunman who shot and wounded 2 officers, police say

FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP) — Three people were killed and two police officers were among at least seven people injured Monday when an 18-year-old opened fire in a northwestern New Mexico community before law enforcement fatally shot the suspect, authorities said.

The shootings occurred around 11 a.m. in Farmington, a city of about 50,000 people near the Utah state line that is a supply line and bedroom community to the region’s oil and natural gas industry.

Officers responding to several calls about a shooting found “a chaotic scene” where a man was firing at people on a residential street, Farmington Police Deputy Chief Baric Crum said during a news conference.

Police confronted the suspect before fatally shooting him. They found three people dead.

Crum did not identify the suspect and said he didn’t know the ages of any of the victims. Police were trying to determine why he was in the neighborhood.

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Pence allies launching super PAC to back former vice president's expected 2024 candidacy

NEW YORK (AP) — Allies of former Vice President Mike Pence are launching a new super PAC to support his expected candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“Committed to America,” the Pence-sanctioned group, will be publicly launching Tuesday, according to people familiar with the project, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share details of the planning and strategy.

“The country’s at real crossroads and the Republican Party needs a strong conservative candidate who can win,” said Scott Reed, the longtime GOP consultant, who will co-chair the group. “Pence has the experience, the unparalleled character, communication skills and the conservative credentials to win both the nomination and a general election.”

The launch is the latest sign that Pence is moving ahead with his expected bid for the GOP nomination — a move that would put him in direct contention with his former boss, former President Donald Trump. Pence has said he will announce his plans “well before late June” and aides have been discussing potential launch dates for a campaign as early as May, but more likely in June. In the meantime, Pence has kept a busy schedule of visits to early-voting states, policy speeches and media interviews as he gears up for a run.

The new group will be co-chaired by Reed, who previously served as political director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. Joining him will be former Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who developed a close friendship with Pence when they served in the House and is a former chair of the House Republican Conference.

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South Korea and Japan use G-7 to push improvement in ties long marked by animosity

TOKYO (AP) — Amid the high-level efforts to deal with a raft of global emergencies, this weekend's Group of 7 summit of rich democracies will also see an unusual diplomatic reconciliation as the leaders of Japan and South Korea look to continue mending ties that have been marked for years by animosity and bickering.

At first glance the two neighbors would seem to be natural partners. They are powerful, advanced democracies and staunch U.S. allies in a region beset with autocratic threats. The continuing fallout, however, from centuries of complicated, acrimonious history, culminating in the brutal 1910-1945 Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula, has resulted in more wariness than friendship.

A big part of the sudden recent shift in tone is a shared focus on China's growing aggressiveness, t he threat of North Korea's fast-improving arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles — and deep worry about how Russia's war in Ukraine is influencing both issues. Some diplomatic nudging by Washington, which provides military protection for both its allies and wants them to more strongly counter China's rising global influence, has also helped.

Tokyo and Seoul “understand that their survival, both nationally and politically, depends on subordinating themselves to the U.S. President Joe Biden administration’s global and regional priorities,” according to Daniel Sneider, an East Asia lecturer at Stanford University.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's invitation for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to be a guest at the G-7 talks in Hiroshima is only the most recent sign of these reset ties. It follows back-to-back summits by the leaders, which hadn't happened in years. Japan also agreed to South Korea's request to send an experts’ team later this month to visit the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant to view preparation for a planned release into the ocean of treated but still slightly radioactive wastewater.

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Fire at New Zealand hostel kills at least 6 people, prime minister says

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A fire ripped through a hostel in New Zealand’s capital overnight, killing at least six people and forcing others to flee the four-story building in their pajamas in what a fire chief on Tuesday called his “worst nightmare.”

Fifty-two people had made it out of the building but firefighters were still trying to account for others, Wellington fire chief Nick Pyatt said.

Loafers Lodge resident Tala Sili told news outlet RNZ that he saw smoke pouring through under his door and opened it find the hallway pitch black.

“I was on the top floor and I couldn’t go through the hallway because there was just too much smoke, so I jumped out the window," Sili said.

He said he fell onto a roof two floors below.

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Man in custody after baseball bat attack hurts 2, including intern, at congressman's Virginia office

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A man with a metal baseball bat walked into the northern Virginia office of U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly on Monday, asked for him, then struck two of his workers with the bat, including an intern in her first day on the job, police and the congressman said.

The attack marked the latest in an uptick in violence aimed at lawmakers or those close to them.

Fairfax City Police said officers arrived minutes afterward and detained the man. The two staff members were treated for injuries that were not life-threatening.

The veteran Democratic congressman, who wasn't in the office at the time, said in an interview that the suspect was known to police in Fairfax County, adding, “he's never made threats to us so it was unprovoked, unexpected and inexplicable.”

“I have no reason to believe that his motivation was politically motivated, but it is possible that the sort of toxic political environment we all live in, you know, set him off, and I would just hope all of us would take a little more time to be careful about what we say and how we say it,” he said.

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Georgia prosecutor fights back against Trump attempt to remove her from election probe

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia prosecutor who's investigating whether Donald Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state fought back Monday against the former president's attempt to remove her from the case and exclude certain evidence.

Trump's Georgia legal team in March asked the court to toss out the report of a special grand jury that had been seated in the case and to prevent prosecutors from using any evidence or testimony stemming from the panel’s investigation. They also asked that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office be barred from continuing to investigate or prosecute the case.

Willis responded in a filing Monday that the Trump's motion is “procedurally flawed” and advances “arguments that lack merit.”

For more than two years now, Willis has been investigating the actions Trump and others took in the wake of the 2020 election. She took the unusual step last year of asking for a special grand jury to aid the investigation, saying the panel's subpoena power would allow her team to compel the testimony of people who might not otherwise cooperate.

The special grand jury, which did not have the power to issue indictments, was seated last May and dissolved in January after hearing from 75 witnesses and submitting a report with recommendations for Willis. Though most of that report remains under wraps for now according to a judge's order, the panel's foreperson has said without naming names that the special grand jury recommended charging multiple people.

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Number of migrants fell 50% at US southern border after immigration changes

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of migrants encountered at the southern border fell 50% during the last three days compared with the days leading up to the end of a key pandemic-era regulation, U.S. officials said Monday.

But a high number of migrants are still in U.S. custody, although the number has fallen “significantly” since last week, said Blas Nunez-Neto, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security.

The ability of U.S. Border Patrol to hold migrants has been a key concern as more migrants came to the border in the days leading up to the end of immigration restrictions linked to the pandemic, referred to as Title 42. The administration is facing a lawsuit aimed at curtailing its ability to release migrants from custody even when facilities are over capacity.

At one point last week, more than 27,000 migrants were in custody along the border, a number that may top 45,000 by the end of May if the powers to more quickly release migrants from custody when facilities are over capacity are curtailed, said Matthew Hudak, deputy Border Patrol chief, in a court filing last week related to the lawsuit.

Nunez-Neto said border officials had been encountering a little less than 5,000 people a day since Title 42 expired at midnight Thursday and new U.S. enforcement measures went into effect Friday. He did not give exact numbers.

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Striking Hollywood writers vow not to picket Tony Awards, opening the door to some kind of show

NEW YORK (AP) — Striking members of the Writers Guild of America have said they will not picket next month's Tony Award telecast, clearing a thorny issue facing show organizers and opening the door for some sort of Broadway razzle-dazzle on TV.

The union last week denied a request by Tony organizers to have a waiver for their June 11 glitzy live telecast. It reiterated that in a statement late Monday, saying the guild “will not negotiate an interim agreement or a waiver for the Tony Awards.”

But the guild gave some hope that some sort of Tony show might go on, saying organizers “are altering this year’s show to conform with specific requests from the WGA, and therefore the WGA will not be picketing the show.” What is being altered was not clear, but it may be to allow a non-scripted version of the Tonys to go on.

The strike, which has already darkened late-night TV shows like “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert "and “Saturday Night Live” and delayed the making of scripted TV shows, was jeopardizing theater's biggest night, one that many Broadway shows rely on to attract interest with millions of people watching.

The union — representing 11,500 writers of film, television and other entertainment forms — has been on strike since May 2, primarily over royalties from streaming media. While the guild doesn't represent Broadway writers, it does represent writers who work on the Tonys telecast.

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Hintz and teen Johnston score as Stars beat Kraken 2-1 in Game 7 to advance to West final

DALLAS (AP) — Roope Hintz and 19-year-old Wyatt Johnston scored goals and the Dallas Stars advanced to the Western Conference final with a 2-1 win over the Seattle Kraken in Game 7 on Monday night.

Dallas moves on to play first-year Stars coach Pete DeBoer's former team, the Vegas Golden Knights. Game 1 of the West final is Friday night in Las Vegas.

DeBoer improved to 7-0 in Game 7s, this being the fourth different team he led to a win in the finale of a best-of-seven series that went the distance. Darryl Sutter and Scott Bowman are the only other coaches to do that.

It was the fourth time in five seasons the Stars got a Game 7 — the others were all away from home. They hadn't won a Game 7 at home since 2000, when they made the Stanley Cup Final. In the only other Game 7 they hosted at American Airlines Center, the Stars lost 6-1 to St. Louis in a second-round series in 2016.

Johnston made it 2-0 with 7:12 left, when he gather a puck that ricocheted off the back boards to the left of the Seattle net. He then sent a shot that went off the shoulder and mask of goalie Phillip Grubauer before going into the net.

News from © The Associated Press, 2023