New York Attorney General, Letitia James, speaks after pleading not guilty outside the United States District Court, on Oct. 24, 2025, in Norfolk, Va. (AP Photo/John Clark, File)2025-12-04T23:29:44Z NORFOLK, Va. (AP) The Justice Department failed Thursday to secure a new indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James after a judge dismissed the previous mortgage fraud prosecution encouraged by President Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter.Prosecutors went back to a grand jury in Virginia after a judges ruling halting the prosecution of James and another longtime Trump foe, former FBI Director James Comey, on the grounds that the U.S. attorney who presented the cases was illegally appointed.The Justice Department could go back to the grand jury to try again. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. James was initially charged in October by the U.S. attorney installed by the Trump administration to replace the prosecutor who resigned under pressure to bring criminal cases against Comey and James. James denied any wrongdoing and accused the administration of using the justice system to seek revenge against Trumps political opponents.The allegations related to James purchase of a modest house in Norfolk, where she has family. During the sale, she signed a standard document called a second home rider in which she agreed to keep the property primarily for her personal use and enjoyment for at least one year, unless the lender agreed otherwise. Rather than using the home as a second residence, James rented it out to a family of three, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties, prosecutors alleged. Even if the charges are resurrected, the Justice Department could face obstacles in securing a conviction against James. James lawyers separately argued the case was a vindictive prosecution brought to punish the Trump critic who spent years investigating and suing the Republican president and won a staggering judgment in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements. The fine was later tossed out by a higher court, but both sides are appealing. The defense had also alleged outrageous government conduct preceding her indictment, which the defense argued warrants the cases dismissal. The judge hadnt ruled on the defenses arguments on those matters before dismissing the case last month over the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney. U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie took issue with the mechanism the Trump administration employed to appoint Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, to lead one of the Justice Departments most elite and important offices. Halligan was named as a replacement for Erik Siebert, a veteran prosecutor in the office and interim U.S. attorney who resigned in September amid Trump administration pressure to file charges against both Comey and James. He stepped aside after Trump told reporters he wanted Siebert out. The following night, Trump said he would be nominating Halligan to the role of interim U.S. attorney and publicly implored Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against his political opponents, saying in a Truth Social post that, We cant delay any longer, its killing our reputation and credibility and JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! Comey was indicted three days after Halligan was sworn in by Bondi, and James was charged two weeks after that.The Justice Department had defended Halligans appointment but has also revealed that Bondi had given Halligan a separate position of Special Attorney, presumably as a way to protect the indictments from the possibility of collapse. But Currie said such a retroactive designation could not save the cases.Though the defendants had asked for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning the Justice Department would be barred from bringing them again, Currie instead dismissed them without prejudice leaving open the possibility that prosecutors could try to file the charges again.______Richer reported from Washington. ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Richer covers the Justice Department and federal courts. She joined The AP in 2013 and is based in Washington. twitter OLIVIA DIAZ Diaz covers Virginia politics with the Associated Press. twitter mailto

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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been one of the most vociferous defenders of President Donald Trumps expansive use of executive authority, withholding billions of dollars in federal funding to states and dismissing protests of the White Houses boundary-pushing behavior as the gripings of disenfranchised Democrats.But court documents reviewed by ProPublica show that a decade ago, as a House member, Duffy took a drastically different position on presidential power, articulating a full-throated defense of Congress role as a check on the president one that resembled the very arguments made by speakers at recent anti-Trump No Kings rallies around the country.In an assertive, thoroughly researched 2015 legal brief, Duffy, then a Republican representative from Wisconsin, detailed the history of Americas creation in reaction to the absolute power of the English crown, invoking the Magna Carta and the Founding Fathers as he made the case for the separation of powers.Just as Congress may not bestow upon the President Congresss own exclusive power to make, or to repeal, federal law, Duffy argued, citing a 1998 court decision, it may not bestow upon the Executive its own exclusive power of the purse.The brief went on to cite James Madisons account of the Constitutional Convention, where there was unanimous agreement that Congress, not the President, should control the purse.At the time, Duffy filed the friend-of-the-court brief in support of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gets funded. Duffy, who chaired the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, maintained that the agencys unique funding system its dollars come directly from the Federal Reserve System rather than by a congressional appropriation improperly bypassed lawmakers authority.The 39-page brief was filed under Duffys name along with a nonprofit group aligned with the Republican legal activist Leonard Leo and submitted by a preeminent conservative lawyer. Today, it stands in stark contrast to Duffys own actions as transportation secretary in the first year of Trumps second stint in the White House. Indeed, his attempts to restrict congressionally appropriated transportation funding across all 50 states this year have been condemned by a congressional watchdog and federal judges, resulting in stinging public rebukes from the other branches of government that echo his own 2015 position.Peter Levine, a civics expert at Tufts University, said that while it could be that Duffys views on presidential power have evolved over time, his apparent flip-flopping on something as fundamental as the meaning of the Constitution raises the prospect that Duffy may just be playing a game for power.The Constitution is a promise to continue to apply the same rules and norms over time to everybody, he added. When political actors completely ignore that, and just go after their own thing, I dont think the Constitution can actually function.In response to questions, a Department of Transportation spokesperson asked for a copy of Duffys brief. But after ProPublica provided it, the spokesperson stopped responding. A message sent to a number listed for Duffy hasnt been returned.The expansion of executive power has been a hallmark of Trumps second administration. The president issued a whopping 214 executive orders between Jan. 20 and Nov. 20, according to the The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In both number and ambition, the orders and resulting actions are exceeded on these dimensions in the last century only by Franklin D. Roosevelt, one Harvard Law School professor recently noted.Duffy has cited some of those directives as he has withheld congressionally approved transportation funds. And administration officials have defended doing so, claiming that a post-Watergate law asserting Congress power over spending improperly restrains the presidents authority.But a congressional watchdog and the courts have taken issue with that expansive interpretation of federal authority.For Duffy, the first instance came in May, when the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, concluded that the DOT had violated the law when it halted payments in February from a $5 billion fund for electric car charging stations that Congress approved under former President Joe Bidens bipartisan infrastructure law.The Constitution specifically vests Congress with the power of the purse, the congressional watchdog wrote, arguing that the payments should resume. The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation.A White House spokesperson called the GAOs opinion incorrect when it was issued and argued that the DOT was appropriately using its authority.In June, a federal judge in Washington ordered transportation officials to lift the pause after a handful of states sued Duffy and the DOT, writing that when the executive branch treads upon the will of the Legislative Branch, its up to the court to remediate the situation and restore the balance of power.The government has moved to dismiss the lawsuit, writing that it had revamped the grant application process for the charging station money and also that the states constitutional concerns were unfounded, since another part of the Constitution vests the President with broad, discretionary authority to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. The suit is ongoing.Separately, a federal judge last month sided with states that had challenged an attempt by Duffy to condition billions of dollars more in federal funds for highway maintenance and other core transportation functions in exchange for helping the administration detain immigrants.Should Congress have wished, it could have attempted to entice State cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement through lawful means, and it could have sought to empower federal agencies to assist it in doing so, John McConnell Jr., the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, wrote in a Nov. 4 decision blocking Duffys actions.But it didnt, he said, and instead administration officials had transgressed well-settled constitutional limitations on federal funding conditions.The Constitution demands the Court set aside this lawless behavior, he wrote.The lawsuits are among hundreds of legal actions this year challenging the constitutionality of the White Houses various actions, including its attempts to halt the disbursement of hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending that Congress had previously approved.As for the legal challenge Duffy supported in 2015, it was ultimately unsuccessful and the Supreme Court last year affirmed the constitutionality of the CFPBs funding mechanism.Yet the ruling has not insulated the bureau from the Trump administration, and officials have advanced novel legal theories to achieve what Duffy sought a decade ago. The administration now argues that since the Fed operates at a loss, it has no profits to transfer to the CFPB.As a result, the bureau is being starved. According to a recent court filing by government lawyers, it will run out of operating funds by early next year.The post Trumps Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Once Defended Congress Power of the Purse. Now He Defies It. appeared first on ProPublica.

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There were so many details in the womens reports to law enforcement that were hard for me to read. That they were just little girls when it happened. That a man many knew as the fun uncle had touched them sexually under their skirts and tops. And that it happened in church or while swimming at the lake or during games of hide-and-seek. They were as young as 5 years old, according to the police reports. Some could even remember what they were wearing when it happened: a fluffy multicolored skirt; a pair of jeans with purple flowers on them.But by the time my co-reporter from the Minnesota Star Tribune, Andy Mannix, and I got those accounts spanning from the early 1990s to the 2010s the girls abuser, Clint Massie, had already pleaded guilty to four counts of felony sexual conduct with victims under 13. In March of this year, he began a 7 1/2 year prison sentence. Arguably, the case was over.But we kept hearing from the victims and alleged victims, former church members, investigators and prosecutors that the outcome had fallen far short of true accountability. Massie, they told us, was a symptom of a much larger problem within the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, or OALC, which he and his victims attended. They told us the leaders of this little-known faith tradition pressured victims to forgive Massie, then to forget about the abuse and never speak of it again. In some cases, these forgiveness sessions took place between the children and Massie; one girl described the terror she felt being hugged by Massie as her father and a preacher looked on.These sessions allowed Massie to evade arrest and prosecution for years. Even after the victims came forward to law enforcement as adults, attempts to silence them continued, according to the prosecutor who charged the case.This was like a fucking machine, said assistant St. Louis County attorney Mike Ryan, that was basically trying to roll over these girls.That sentiment hit me especially hard the day I received a roughly 40-minute video of an interview between sheriffs detectives in St. Louis County, where Duluth is located, and two OALC preachers. My attention was on Daryl Bruckelmyer, a preacher and leader of the church in Duluth; several of Massies victims claimed that either they or their parents had disclosed the abuse to Bruckelmyer, but that he did little beyond a forgiveness session.We had hoped to sit down with Bruckelmyer and ask him about his involvement with the Massie case, but also about his church, its beliefs and its customs. But he declined to comment or to answer a detailed list of questions. A spokesperson for the Woodland Park OALC in Duluth also said in a statement that the church has fully complied with the law in the referenced case, and its a matter of legal record. He declined to comment further. Massie also did not respond to requests for comment.So the video was the first and only time I heard Bruckelmyer explain himself in his own words. Heres what stood out to me as I watched the recording and what helped me understand the mechanisms that allowed repeated sexual abuse to continue as an open secret.Massies Preacher Knew of the AbuseI had wondered if Bruckelmyer might deny ever hearing about Massies abuse. But he did not.How many female victims do you think have come forward and said something to you? Sgt. Adam Kleffman, the lead investigator, asked.Theres only been a few, Bruckelmyer responded. One, two, three.Its not every day you see a recording of someone admitting that they knew about the abuse of children yet did little about it.Bruckelmyer implied that he misunderstood mandated reporter laws in Minnesota (though another detective explained the law to him just three years earlier) and that he had warned Massie to stay away from children. He insisted that they made no attempt to hide Massie and encouraged victims to go to law enforcement.But the words he chose stood out to me as well: We dont protect either one.Kimberly Lowe, a lawyer and crisis manager for the church, said its preachers are unpaid and therefore might not be legally required to report sexual abuse of children. Asked if she believes the preachers are mandated reporters under Minnesota law, Lowe would only say that the language of the statute is unclear.Sgt. Adam Kleffman, right, of the St. Louis County Sheriffs Office was the investigator on the Clint Massie case. Leila Navidi/The Minnesota Star TribuneChurch Policies Did Not Align With Minnesota LawAt one point, Bruckelmyer pulled out two sheets of paper and passed them across the table to the investigators. It was a list of tools to help prevent violence, harassment and sexual abuse from occurring, issued by the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church of America.We have guidelines in the church that we are told and instructed as a protection for both, Bruckelmyer explained.Many of the guidelines made sense: education, counseling for victims and so forth. But when I obtained a copy of the document, I zeroed in on the part of the policy that seemed to describe a forgiveness session: When harm has taken place: Individual conversations with the victim If possible, individual conversations with the abuser. Later, but only if appropriate, a conversation with both parties together.The document did not mention mandatory reporting laws and instead seemed to give preachers wide latitude on whether to involve law enforcement.As soon as I watched that document slide across the table, it was clear to me that this issue went beyond Minnesota. The OALC has 33 locations spread across the U.S. and Canada. In our months of reporting, we spoke to over a dozen alleged victims, some of whom named other church members as possible perpetrators in Delaware, Michigan, Wyoming, Washington state and South Dakota.We plan to continue this reporting.An Intentional Isolation From the Modern WorldAt one point in the video, Kleffman asked Bruckelmyer if he was aware of how sexual abuse scandals have played out in other churches specifically, he said, that once one victim comes forward, its common for more victims to speak out as well. He cited a recent, local example: the conviction of a youth pastor from Vineyard Church in Duluth for felony sexual conduct with underage parishioners.But Bruckelmyer said he was unfamiliar with the case.I was struck by the lack of understanding that some church leaders and members demonstrated when it came to the impact of sexual assault on children, as well as an ignorance of other, similar sexual abuse scandals. But it seemed to go hand in hand with the ways that OALC members cut themselves off from certain aspects of modern life.Former members told us that dancing, music, movies and television are all considered sinful. One former church member told my reporting partner that, as a child, she overheard a Taylor Swift song and was desperate to find another church member to confess to or risk going to hell.We attended a Sunday service in Duluth, at the invitation of a spokesperson for the church, and were provided with literature that described some of the OALCs history and philosophy.We Christians want to follow Jesus example and live a life that is simple and modest, whether it be our dress, our home or our way of life, the booklet reads. We do not believe it is right, nor do we have a need, to engage in worldly pleasures, alcohol and other drugs. The friendship we have in the church is so much more.Bruckelmyer was on the dais with the other preachers but would not come speak with us. So I tried to take in what I could: the hymns sung without accompaniment, the scarves on womens heads and the toys in childrens hands.During the three-hour service, I sat in a pew, fascinated by this small glimpse into a faith tradition and a lifestyle that I previously knew nothing about. Watching these families, particularly the young mothers with daughters in their arms, I couldnt help thinking again about what wed read in those police reports in particular, the allegations that this sexual abuse has affected multiple generations of families. What these women and girls went through, not just the abuse but the silence that followed, shocks the conscience. We wrote this story to break that silence. Maybe it could prevent this from happening again.The post What a Recorded Interview Between Police and Preachers Reveals About How a Minnesota Church Handled Sexual Abuse appeared first on ProPublica.

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