
DOJ recommends one day in jail for ex-cop in Breonna Taylor raid
July 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Justice filed a memo on Thursday recommending one day in jail for former Louisville, Ky., police detective Brett Hankison, who shot into Breonna Taylor's apartment 10 times but didn't injure anyone.
Breonna Taylor, an emergency room technician, was awakened from sleep March 13, 2020, by police with a falsified "no-knock warrant." Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, thought the officers were intruders and shot at them. The police opened fire, and another officer shot and killed Taylor. Hankison was outside the apartment and shot into the window 10 times. Hankison was convicted of deprivation of rights under color of law in November. He faces up to life in prison.
Prosecutors wrote in the filing they were unaware of another case "in which a police officer has been charged with depriving the rights of another person under the Fourth Amendment for returning fire and not injuring anyone."
A pre-sentence report from the U.S. Probation Office recommended a sentence between 11.25 and 14 years, USA Today reported. The DOJ says that range was incorrectly calculated and "excessive." It recommends the court "grant a significant downward departure."
The memo was signed by Robert J. Keenum, senior counsel for the DOJ's civil rights division, and Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for the department. Neither was involved with the case.
The memo prompted a strong response.
"The fact that Donald Trump's DOJ thinks Breonna Taylor's life is worth just a one-day jail sentence is morally reprehensible and deeply insulting. This is a dark day for our entire city," Rep. Morgan McGarvey, D-Ky., said in a statement. McGarvey represents Louisville.
Former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said the police did knock and announce themselves. But Taylor's neighbors and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said they heard no knock or announcement. Walker has since gotten a $2 million settlement against the city.
Hankison is white, and he was the first convicted in the case. The other officers were not convicted. Hankison was previously acquitted on a state charge.
The memo said that Hankison's suffered enough.
"Here, multiple prosecutions against defendant Hankison were brought, and only one of three juries -- the last one -- found him guilty on these facts, and then only on one charge," the memo says. "The government respects the jury's verdict, which will almost certainly ensure that defendant Hankison never serves as a law enforcement officer again and will also likely ensure that he never legally possesses a firearm again."
But others disagreed with DOJ's request.
Hankison's shots "missed a sleeping baby by about two feet," said former Justice Department Civil Rights Division official Samatha Trepel on LinkedIn. She believes the court will see the request as "transparent, last minute political interference into a case that was tried by non-political, longtime career prosecutors who obtained this conviction in front of an all-white jury of Kentucky citizens before a Trump-appointed judge."

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CNN
16 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Trump's Epstein claims keep falling apart
We don't yet know the full story of the Trump administration's sudden reluctance to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Its reversal appears to have coincided with the president being told his name appeared in the files, but there are gobs of unanswered questions. What we do know is that Trump keeps making some very curious claims about the situation and about his ties to Epstein. Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. But in an effort to downplay the whole thing, he's added fuel to the fire with the kind of dodgy claims that he himself once suggested could raise suspicions about one's ties to the convicted sex offender. The most recent is his denial last week that Attorney General Pam Bondi had told him his name was in the Epstein files. 'No, no,' Trump said July 15. 'She's given us just a very quick briefing.' It turns out Bondi had, in fact, told Trump precisely that back in May, CNN confirmed Wednesday. And not only that, but sources familiar with the Justice Department's review of the files told CNN they appeared to include several unsubstantiated claims about Trump and others. DOJ found those claims not to be credible, according to the sources, but whatever those claims were, they could have posed problems for Trump if aired publicly. Trump has also denied writing a letter bearing his name that the Wall Street Journal reported was given to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003 — a period in which plenty of evidence suggests he and Epstein had a relationship. The letter included an outline of a naked woman and a strange, imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein in which Trump concludes by saying, 'May every day be another wonderful secret,' according to the Journal. The president is suing the newspaper and its owner, his oft-ally Rupert Murdoch, saying the letter is a 'fake.' Part of Trump's public denials have rested on the idea that it simply wasn't in his character to draw things. 'I never wrote a picture in my life,' Trump said at one point. 'I don't draw pictures,' he added at another. It didn't take long to find plenty of evidence that contradicted that. Trump drawings have been auctioned off. He wrote in a 2008 letter that he donated an autographed doodle every year to a charity. A charity director told CNN that Trump sent her two signed drawings in 2004, the year after the Epstein birthday letter. After that report, a White House spokesman watered down Trump's denial, saying Trump didn't draw things but adding the qualifier 'like the outlet described.' And now more evidence is calling these claims into question. The New York Times reported late Thursday that Trump's name also appeared on a contributor list for the album of letters for Epstein's 50th birthday. The Journal also reported the contributors included Bill Clinton and a Wall Street billionaire, suggesting powerful people besides Trump also participated. (A source close to the former president told CNN that his last contact with Epstein was 20 years ago and that he hasn't been accused of wrongdoing.) Perhaps tellingly, Trump on Friday appeared to concede that the letter could be real, but again denied he had written it. 'Now, somebody could have written a letter and used my name, and that's happened a lot,' he said. But these are hardly the only Trump claims about his ties to Epstein that have fallen victim to basic scrutiny. Trump claimed in 2019, after Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors, that he was 'wasn't of fan' of Epstein's. He suggested their relationship was more incidental than anything else, because of where they lived: 'I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him.' But mounting evidence keeps suggesting a closer and more friendly relationship than that, at least before the two of them had a falling out in the 2000s. Trump not only called Epstein a 'terrific guy' in 2002, but the Times reported Thursday that Trump gave Epstein a signed copy of his book in 1997, writing, 'To Jeff — You are the greatest!' And there's plenty more where that came from suggesting a once-close relationship, as CNN's Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck reported this week. Also in 2019, Trump downplayed his ties to Britain's Prince Andrew, who has been the subject of Epstein-related allegations that Buckingham Palace denies. 'I don't know Prince Andrew,' Trump said, adding: 'I don't know him, no.' In fact, Trump had been photographed meeting with the Duke of York just months earlier, during a state visit to the UK. Prince Andrew's official Twitter account posted about a breakfast meeting with Trump. And there was also a photo of them together at Mar-a-Lago in 2000. Trump told People magazine at the time that Andrew was 'a lot of fun to be with.' And last year, Trump claimed on social media, 'I was never on Epstein's Plane …' In fact, Trump flew on it seven times in the 1990s, according to flight logs released as a part of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell's legal proceedings. What was most striking about that denial is that those flight logs had already been released years prior. The question becomes: Why go to such easily disprovable places and make claims that are so suspect? If the truth is so benign, why the need to stretch it or disregard it? Why suggest you weren't a fan of a guy you were obviously chummy with? Why deny you drew pictures when your drawings are public record? Trump has a demonstrated history of lying and misleading about many subjects, but this would seem to be one you'd want to get right so you don't seed suspicion. And, as it turns out, that's a point that was once made by none other than Trump – at least when talking about Clinton's ties to Epstein. 'I know he was on his plane 27 times, and he said he was on the plane four times,' Trump said in 2019, while answering a question about why he retweeted a post that made baseless suggestions about Clinton being involved in Epstein's death. 'But when they checked the plane logs, Bill Clinton, who was a very good friend of Epstein – he was on the plane about 27 or 28 times. So why did he say four times?' The difference that Trump alluded to appeared to owe in large part to Clinton having taken multi-leg trips on the plane, in which each leg counts as an individual flight on the logs. But the question Trump raised is a good one. Indeed, why would someone misrepresent Epstein-related things? And why would a president do so repeatedly like this?

Epoch Times
18 minutes ago
- Epoch Times
Stefanik, Issa Reintroduce Bill to Ban Handgun Roster Restrictions in States
The restrictions make it challenging for firearm manufacturers to introduce new models, the lawmakers said. Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) have reintroduced the 'Modern Firearm Safety Act,' which aims to prevent states such as California and New York from restricting gun access to citizens, Stefanik's office said in a July 24 statement If passed, states and agencies would be banned from imposing regulations that require a handgun to incorporate a design feature, functionality, safety mechanism, or performance standard not mandated by federal statute, the bill states When state or local governments impose requirements that a handgun model incorporate features not present on the model, it can artificially inflate prices, according to the bill. Story continues below advertisement Such measures 'present safety concerns by altering the intended design and function of the affected models; violate the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and pose an unacceptable restraint on interstate commerce,' the bill states. According to the July 24 statement, the bill will prohibit states from 'enacting unconstitutional 'handgun rosters' that prevent law-abiding citizens from accessing modern, safer handgun models and require firearm manufacturers to adopt costly and unnecessary features, making it nearly impossible to sell new handguns.' A handgun roster refers to a list of handguns that have been approved for sale within a specific jurisdiction based on meeting safety and restrictive requirements. For instance, a handgun roster in California requires that a gun model in the state must pass certain tests and be certified for sale by the state's Department of Justice before it can be sold. At present, New York, Maryland, California, and the District of Columbia have enacted 'restrictive handgun rosters,' with other states considering similar measures, according to the statement. Story continues below advertisement Due to these stringent standards, firearms sold to people include 'costly and unnecessary features' such as magazine disconnect mechanisms, loaded chamber indicators, and microstamping technology, and these requirements are making it nearly impossible for gun manufacturers to introduce new handgun models to the market, according to the statement. Microstamping technology causes a firearm's firing pin to imprint microscopic characters onto ammunition cartridge cases when a gun is fired, according to a July 18 statement from the California Attorney General's office. These characters represent the weapon's make, model , and serial number. As such, when law enforcement finds cartridge cases at crime scenes, they can check the imprinted code and identify the firearm. The Modern Firearm Safety Act would prohibit states from mandating loaded chamber indicators, magazine disconnect mechanisms, and microstamping for handguns, a move that will restore the Second Amendment in states with such restrictive gun regulations, according to the lawmakers. Story continues below advertisement A visitor picks up a revolver at the Charter Arms booth at the 2025 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits held in the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Ga., on April 25, 2025.'For decades, the clear Constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners have been targeted for elimination, and handgun rosters are only one of the cynical schemes used to undermine the Second Amendment through the pretense of firearm safety,' Issa, who first introduced the bill last year, said. 'These rosters impose excessive and unnecessary requirements that actually restrict access to firearms equipped with the most up-to-date safety features, and that's why I'm proud to partner with my friend Rep. Stefanik to defend sacred rights and end these unjust restrictions.' Protecting Gun Rights The Modern Firearm Safety Act also coincides with a ruling from a federal district court, which judged California's handgun roster requirements to be unconstitutional, according to the July 24 statement. In March 2023, District Judge Cormac Carney issued a ruling in favor of the California Rifle & Pistol Association (CRPA) and four individuals who had challenged the constitutionality of California's Unsafe Handgun Act. Story continues below advertisement Enacted in 1990, the legislation required new handguns to have three specific features: loaded chamber indicators to show whether the gun is loaded, magazine disconnect mechanisms to prevent the gun from being fired if the magazine is not fully inserted, and microstamping capability. The reintroduction of the Modern Firearm Safety Act comes amid the Trump administration's efforts to protect Second Amendment rights in the country. On Feb. 7, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for a review of orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other government actions related to the Second Amendment between January 2021 and January 2025, the period of the Biden administration. In late March, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued an interim final rule taking over from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives the responsibility of deciding whether to restore gun ownership rights to individuals whose Second Amendment rights were revoked by a court. The DOJ recently proposed a rule to restore Second Amendment rights to individuals convicted of certain crimes who are not likely to act in a way that poses a danger to public safety. 'For too long, countless Americans with criminal histories have been permanently disenfranchised from exercising the right to keep and bear arms—a right every bit as constitutionally enshrined as the right to vote, the right to free speech, and the right to free exercise of religion—irrespective of whether they actually pose a threat,' Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a July 18 statement.
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Trump and 'terrific guy' Jeffrey Epstein's party boy friendship ended badly
Long before the little black book, before the conspiracy theories, before one died by suicide in jail and one ascended to the White House, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were poster boys for '90s New York City excess. Parties. Models. Mansions. They danced with cheerleaders at Mar-a-Lago and dined with celebrities in Manhattan. Trump flew on Epstein's private jet between New York – where they lived blocks apart − and Florida, where they owned mansions 2 miles from each other. Their lives intersected over decades, with Epstein once claiming he introduced Trump to his third wife, Melania. 'Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were both horny rich guys with an eye for young models,' Michael Gross, author of the 1995 book 'Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women,' told USA TODAY. Now, their friendship plagues Trump's second term in the White House. More: Who is Ghislaine Maxwell? DOJ turns to Jeffrey Epstein's ex-partner. Trump hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing in the Epstein case, but he is among the dozens of politicians, actors and tech leaders connected to the billionaire who was first convicted in 2008 of paying teenage girls for sex acts and accused in 2019 in a sprawling sex trafficking scheme. Epstein died before he went to trial on those charges. Though dead nearly six years, Epstein now dominates Trump's agenda amid a tornado of outrage since the White House and Department of Justice tried to close the book on the case after the president and his closest allies – including the attorney general and the FBI director – spent years claiming Democrats had suppressed evidence of an Epstein 'client list' and a wider child abuse conspiracy. More: Can Trump pardon Ghislaine Maxwell? When does Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator get out? "We already know almost everything there is to be known about the Epstein files. The story isn't Epstein anymore. It's Donald Trump talking about Epstein," says Mike Rothschild, author of "The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything." Trump's MAGA movement has rebelled after being promised lurid Epstein revelations by the very officials who now say there are none. On July 22, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, sent the House of Representatives on an early summer recess to prevent passage of a bipartisan measure forcing the DOJ to release its Epstein documents. "The GOP is so intent on not talking about Epstein and not releasing any details, it makes you wonder if there is something they don't want released," Rothschild said. "It starts driving you toward conspiracy theory." More: Trump's Epstein problem grows: Even his voters want more files released On July 22, Trump said the Epstein furor was 'sort of a witch hunt,' and railed against the media, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama. One day later, the Wall Street Journal and CNN reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump in May that he was named multiple times in the government's files on Epstein. But long before Epstein's conviction and questions about who might want his secrets buried, he and Trump were charter members of a decadent New York party scene. When Donald met Jeffrey Epstein and Trump met, it's believed, in 1990 when Epstein bought a mansion 2 miles from Trump's Mar-a-Lago club and estate. Born seven years and a borough apart in New York, Epstein was from Brooklyn and Trump from Queens. They partied hard, but neither drank alcohol. Trump was living loud in 1990. He had divorced his first wife, Ivana, with whom he had three children, and was dating model Marla Maples. Epstein was rich and single, a former high school teacher running his own financial advisory firm. Trump was known for hosting parties at the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time, that attracted rich men and younger women. 'If they were checking IDs, it was to make sure the girls were young enough,' Gross, who's known Trump for more than 40 years, said jokingly. It wasn't enough to simply invite models to events: Trump started his own agency and Epstein invested in one. Trump launched Trump Models in 1999. It represented Melania Knauss, who would later become his wife, and signed on teen models such as Alexia Palmer. More: Speaker Mike Johnson to shut down House early amid Jeffrey Epstein drama Epstein would later invest in Jean-Luc Brunel's MC2 modeling agency. Brunel had been banned from his former agency in Europe after accusations of abuse. Trump and Epstein were 'representative of a type that has nibbled at the edges of the modeling business. If you're in the market for women as sex toys, a higher echelon of that is models. They are, by definition, beautiful women. They also are beautiful young women,' Gross says. 'You can go from there.' Brunel was suspected of transporting girls or young women for Epstein. In 2022, less than three years after Epstein's death, he died by suicide in a French jail. 'Rhythm is a Dancer' In July 2019, after Epstein's arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, Trump said in the Oval Office that he was 'not a fan' of the financier. But it wasn't always that way. In 1992, Epstein joined Trump for a party at Mar-a-Lago, where a video shows Trump chatting and laughing next to Epstein. Trump sways to the Eurodance hit 'Rhythm is a Dancer,' as the pair hang with cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins. Later that year, Trump and Epstein would again meet at Mar-a-Lago, at an invite-only event for a 'calendar girl' competition organized by George Houraney, according to The New York Times. The Florida businessman had created the event at Trump's request. "At the very first party,' Houraney told the Times, 'I said, 'Who's coming tonight? I have 28 girls coming.' It was him and Epstein.' Epstein moved into one of the largest private homes in Manhattan in 1995, a townhouse previously owned by billionaire Victoria's Secret owner Les Wexner. Trump was 1 mile away in a penthouse at Trump Tower. 'Terrific guy,' he famously told New York magazine in 2002 for a story that called Epstein an "international money man of mystery." 'He's a lot of fun to be with," Trump said. "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." 'I sort of get away with things' When his modeling agency never quite took off, Trump turned to beauty pageants. In October 1996, he bought Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA. In a 2005 interview with Howard Stern, Trump bragged about his access to contestants, some of whom were as young as 14. 'I'll go backstage before a show and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else and no men are anywhere …. I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it,' Trump told Stern. 'The girls are standing there with no clothes on, and so I sort of get away with things like that,' he said. Tasha Dixon was competing in the Miss USA pageant in 2001 in Gary, Indiana, when she, a former Miss Arizona, met Trump. He walked in, she told CNN, as contestants changed into their bikinis. The theme that year was empowering women. "Who do you complain to? He owns the pageant,' she said. As Trump approached his third marriage − and alleged affairs, which he denies, with an adult film star and a former Playboy playmate − court testimony shows his friend Epstein was abusing teenagers. Sometime in the summer of 2000, a 16-year-old Mar-a-Lago locker room assistant was recruited into Epstein's circle by Epstein's procuror and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. She would later accuse Epstein and Maxwell of years of sexual abuse. Virginia Giuffre died by suicide last April at the age of 41. A lenient 2008 plea deal Epstein received from state and federal prosecutors in Florida included restitution to 36 victims. A 2019 federal indictment cited "dozens" of victims. The breakup In 2003, The Wall Street Journal reported, Epstein received a leather-bound volume of tributes from friends for his 50th birthday. A lewd message in the book was attributed to Trump, the paper reported. It ended: 'Happy Birthday − and may every day be another wonderful secret.' (Trump denied writing the letter and has sued The Wall Street Journal over the report.) A year after Epstein turned 50, Trump, in his book "Trump ‒ How to Get Rich," described a call from a person he called "the mysterious Jeffrey." "As mysterious as Jeffrey is, he's one of the few people I know who can get by on just a first name," Trump wrote. "My staff never asks for a last name in his case, which in a way puts him up there with Elvis." But that year, Epstein and Trump fell out over an oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach called Maison de l'Amitie − the House of Friendship. Trump outbid Epstein for the estate, paying $41 million, and in 2008 flipped it for $95 million to a Russian billionaire. Other reports say they broke after Ghislaine Maxwell solicited the daughter of a Mar-a-Lago member and her father complained to Trump. 'The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep," said White House Communications Director Steven Cheung. Maxwell is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking a minor to Epstein for sexual abuse. After her 2020 arrest, when asked if Maxwell might cut a deal with prosecutors, Trump said: "I just wish her well." On July 24, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously served as a criminal defense lawyer for Trump, flew to Florida to meet Maxwell at a women's prison. 'Boring stuff' Trump and Epstein appear to have not spoken for 15 years before his death. As Epstein continues to dog his presidency, Trump says he's bewildered by the attention. 'I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody," he told reporters. "It's pretty boring stuff.' Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focusing on health and wellness. She is the author of "Stepping Back from the Ledge: A Daughter's Search for Truth and Renewal," and can be reached at ltrujillo@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Inside the rise (and ugly fall) of the Trump-Epstein friendship