New charges against Minneapolis policemen as protests continue

By Brendan O’Brien

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) – Prosecutors on Wednesday leveled new criminal charges against four Minneapolis policemen implicated in the death of a black man pinned by his neck to the street during an arrest that sparked more than a week of nationwide protest and civil strife.

The added murder charge filed against one officer already in custody and the arrest of three more accused of playing a role in the killing of George Floyd, 46, came as several nights of escalating unrest gave way to mostly peaceful protests.

Thousands of demonstrators massed near the White House lit up their cellphone flashlights and sang along to the 1970s soul tune “Lean on Me,” before resuming a chorus of anti-police chants.

In a further display of self-policing seen in Washington and elsewhere this week, a number of protesters urge some of their more provocative cohorts to stop taunting police and leave.

Several major cities scaled back or lifted curfews imposed for the past few days. But not all was calm.

In New York City’s Brooklyn borough, police in riot gear charged into a crowd of about 1,000 protesters defying a local curfew, albeit peacefully, near an outdoor plaza, and clubbed demonstrators and journalists as they scurried for cover in a downpour of heavy rain.

The confrontation in Brooklyn seemed to be the biggest exception to a calmer night, hours after the new charges in Minneapolis.

Thousands of people sit on the street next to Seattle City Hall during a protest calling for a 50% defunding of the Seattle Police Department and investment in community-based solutions in Seattle, Washington, U.S. June 3, 2020. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson

MORE CHARGES

Derek Chauvin, jailed Friday on charges of third-degree murder and manslaughter, was newly charged with second-degree murder.

The added charge, defined under Minnesota law as unintentionally causing another person’s death in the commission of a felony offense, can carry a sentence of up to 40 years, 15 years longer than the maximum sentence for third-degree murder.

Chauvin, 44, was the white officer seen in widely circulated video footage kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd gasped for air and repeatedly groaned, “Please, I can’t breathe.”

Floyd, whom police suspected of trying to pass a counterfeit bill to pay for cigarettes, was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after the May 25 encounter.

Three fellow officers fired from the Minneapolis police department along with Chauvin the next day were charged on Wednesday – each with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and manslaughter.

The three men – Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao – have also been taken into custody. Aiding and abetting second-degree murder carries the same maximum punishment as the underlying offense – 40 years in prison.

Floyd’s death has become the latest flashpoint for long-simmering rage over police brutality against African Americans, propelling the issue of racial justice to the top of the political agenda five months before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3.

The spectacle of city streets flooded with angry though mostly peaceful protesters – punctuated by scenes of arson, looting and clashes with police – have fueled a sense of crisis.

The upheavals have flared following weeks of social lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced millions of Americans out of work and disproportionately affected minorities.

TRIAL MONTHS AWAY

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a black former U.S. congressman, has requested bail of $1 million for each of the four former officers charged in the Floyd case.

“This is a significant step forward on the road to justice, and we are gratified that this important action was brought before George Floyd’s body was laid to rest,” Benjamin Crump, attorney for the Floyd family, said in a statement.

Ellison told a news conference winning a conviction “will be hard,” noting that Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, whose office filed the original charges against Chauvin, is the only prosecutor in the state to have successfully convicted a police officer for murder.

Fully investigating the case “is going to take months,” he said.

Protests erupted in Minneapolis the night after Floyd’s death and quickly spread to dozens of cities large and small across the United States.

In many cities, demonstrators defying nighttime curfews have been met by police in riot gear firing tear gas, mace and rubber bullets to disperse unruly crowds. National Guard troops have been activated in several states to assist local law enforcement.

Authorities and some protest organizers have blamed much of the lawlessness on outside agitators and criminal elements.

DEPLOYING TROOPS

Republican President Donald Trump has said justice must be done in Floyd’s case but also touted a hard line against violent protests, threatening to use the military to restore order.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he did not back deploying troops to patrol the country.

“The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now,” he told a news briefing.

At the south Minneapolis street corner where Floyd was arrested, a crowd of hundreds stood in a vigil on Wednesday, some with their fists in the air, some weeping.

“These are baby steps,” Kenneth Williams, 54, a black U.S. Navy veteran who lives nearby, said of the newly announced criminal charges in the case. “Somebody should have stepped up and done something at the scene that day.”

“Cops have been getting away with this for years, but now we have cameras,” he added.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien, Brendan McDermid, Nathan Layne, Maria Caspani, Rich McKay, Jonathan Allen, Sharon Bernstein, Dan Whitcomb, Lisa Lambert, Susan Heavey, Phil Stewart, Daphne Psaledakis, Andy Sullivan and Idrees Ali; Writing by Paul Simao and Steve Gorman; Editing by Howard Goller, Bill Tarrant, Cynthia Osterman and Lincoln Feast.)

U.S. charges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with espionage

FILE PHOTO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves Southwark Crown Court after being sentenced in London, Britain, May 1, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo

By Sarah N. Lynch and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department unveiled 17 new criminal charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday, saying he unlawfully published the names of classified sources and conspired with and assisted ex-Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in obtaining access to classified information.

The superseding indictment comes a little more than a month after the Justice Department unsealed a narrower criminal case against Assange.

Assange was initially charged with conspiring with Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He now faces a total of 18 criminal counts and could face many decades in prison if convicted.

“These unprecedented charges demonstrate the gravity of the threat the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange poses to all journalists in their endeavor to inform the public about actions that have been taken by the U.S. government,” said Barry Pollack, an American attorney for Assange.

The Justice Department said that not only did Assange aid and encourage Manning with the theft of classified materials, but he jeopardized the lives of human sources that included Afghans, Iraqis, journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates and political dissidents from repressive regimes by publishing their identities.

Law enforcement officials said on Thursday that the State Department had pleaded with Assange not to reveal the identities of such sources, but Wikileaks ignored the warning.

Manning was arrested in May 2010 and convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage in connection with the 2010 Wikileaks disclosures.

President Barack Obama reduced Manning’s sentence to 7 years from 35 years, but she is now in jail after repeatedly refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Assange.

Wikileaks describes itself as specializing in the publication of “censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption.”

Assange is now fighting extradition to the United States, after Ecuador in April revoked his seven-year asylum in the country’s London embassy. He was arrested that day, April 11, by British police as he left the embassy.

He is now serving a 50-week sentence in a London jail for skipping bail when he fled to the Ecuadorean embassy in 2012.

The decision to charge Assange with espionage crimes is notable and unusual. Most cases involving the theft of classified information have targeted government employees, like Manning, and not the people who publish the information itself.

In the wake of Assange’s arrest, prosecutors in Sweden re-opened a criminal investigation into allegations that Assange sexually assaulted a woman during a visit to Sweden.

Swedish authorities recently indicated they may send British authorities a fresh request for Assange’s extradition.

The decision regarding which country should have its chance to prosecute him first is now in the hands of Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Britain’s interior security minister.

The Justice Department’s quick turnaround with the filing of a more substantial indictment against Assange is not surprising.

Under extradition rules, the United States had only a 60-day window from the date of Assange’s arrest in London to add more charges. After that, foreign governments do not generally accept superseding charges.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Leslie Adler and Phil Berlowitz)

Lori Loughlin latest to surrender after $25 million U.S. college cheat scheme exposed

FILE PHOTO: Actress Lori Loughlin arrives at the People's Choice Awards 2017 in Los Angeles, California, U.S., January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok/File Photo

By Nate Raymond and Alex Dobuzinskis

BOSTON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Full House” actor Lori Loughlin and the former head of financial firm Pimco are due to face criminal charges on Wednesday related to a $25 million scheme to help wealthy Americans secure places for their children in top U.S. colleges.

The two are among 50 people charged for taking part in the largest such scam in U.S. history, which steered students into elite universities including Yale, Georgetown and Stanford by cheating the admissions process.

Loughlin was taken into custody by FBI agents in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning, Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said. Former Pimco Chief Executive Douglas Hodge is due to be arraigned in federal court in Boston, officials said.

Another parent charged in the scheme, Manuel Henriquez, resigned as chief executive officer of the finance company Hercules Capital, the company said early on Wednesday.

The mastermind of the scheme, William “Rick” Singer, on Tuesday pleaded guilty to racketeering charges. Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston say his company, Edge College & Career Network, amassed $25 million through the fraud.

Singer ended up cooperating with investigators last year, helping them record incriminating conversations he had with Loughlin, Henriquez and other parents.

The elaborate scheme involved bribing the administrators of college entrance tests to allow a child’s wrong answers to be corrected and bribing university athletic coaches to attest a child was a gifted athlete even if he or she was anything but.

In some instances, Singer helped doctor photographs to make a child appear athletic. Parents made their payments to a sham charity that Singer ran, prosecutors said, which also allowed them to make a fraudulent tax write-off. The sham charity, the Key Worldwide Foundation, purported to help provide an education to “underprivileged students.”

It was unclear how many children benefited from the scheme, though investigators said more parents and coaches may yet be charged. In telephone conversations intercepted by investigators, Singer brags he helped 760 students in just the first few months of 2018 and 96 the year before, while in other conversations he reassures parents that he has helped more than 20 or 30 other students cheat in recent years.

Loughlin is accused of paying Singer $500,000 to help cheat her daughters’ way into the University of Southern California (USC) by bribing rowing coaches at the school to pretend the girls were gifted rowers. Her husband, the designer Mossimo Gianulli, is also charged with fraud, and appeared in court in Los Angeles on Tuesday before being released on $1 million bail.

One of the daughters, Olivia Gianulli, has become a prominent influencer on social media under the name “Olivia Jade.”

“Officially a college student!” she captioned an Instagram photograph she posted in September, which showed her in her USC dorm room decorated with items she had ordered from online retailer Amazon, which paid her for the post.

Other prominent parents charged by the Boston U.S. attorney’s office include Felicity Huffman, the actor who starred in “Desperate Housewives”; Gordon Caplan, the co-chairman of international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher; and Bill McGlashan Jr., who heads a buyout investment arm of private equity firm TPG Capital.

Representatives of accused parents either declined to comment or did not respond to inquiries. Several of the coaches accused of accepting bribes have been fired, placed on leave or have resigned.

(Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Scott Malone and Susan Thomas)