Mangino discusses murder of missing teen on Law & Crime

Watch my interview with Chris Stewart of the Law & Crime Network discussing the missing teen strangled with jumper cables.

 To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Veterans in Congress targeted after video about ignoring 'illegal orders'

Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a social media video urging U.S. troops to defy “illegal orders” say the FBI has contacted them to begin scheduling interviews, signaling a possible inquiry into the matter, reported The Associated Press.

It would mark the second investigation tied to the video, coming a day after the Pentagon said it was reviewing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over potential violations of military law. The FBI and Pentagon actions come after President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition and said it is “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post.

Together, the inquiries mark an extraordinary escalation for federal law enforcement and military institutions that traditionally steer clear of partisan clashes. They also underscore the administration’s willingness to push legal limits against its critics, even when they are sitting members of Congress. Lawmakers in the video urge troops to reject any illegal orders from their superiors, something they are already duty-bound to do.

“President Trump is using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass Members of Congress,” a group of four Democratic House members said in a statement Tuesday. “Yesterday, the FBI contacted the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms requesting interviews.”

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/John McDonnell, File)

Democrats call inquiry a ‘scare tactic’

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, one of the six Democratic lawmakers in the video, told reporters Tuesday that “last night the counterterrorism division at the FBI sent a note to the members of Congress, saying they are opening what appears to be an inquiry against the six of us.” Slotkin called it a “scare tactic by” Trump.

“Whether you agree with the video or don’t agree with the video, the question to me is: is this the appropriate response for a president of the United States to go after and seek to weaponize the federal government against those he disagrees with?” said Slotkin.

The group of four Democratic House members said in their statement that “no amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution.”

All six of the Democratic lawmakers in the video have served in the military or intelligence community.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska criticized both inquiries on social media, saying that accusing the lawmakers “of treason and sedition for rightfully pointing out that servicemembers can refuse illegal orders is reckless and flat-out wrong.”

“The Department of Defense and FBI surely have more important priorities than this frivolous investigation,” wrote Murkowski.

FBI Director Kash Patel speaks with reporters during a news conference at the Department of Justice, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FBI provides no insight into interview requests

The FBI went through the top security officials for the House and Senate to request interviews with each of the six lawmakers. The lawmakers said they had no further information and the FBI has not made clear on what basis they were seeking the interviews.

The FBI declined to comment Tuesday, but Director Kash Patel, in an interview with journalist Catherine Herridge, described it as an “ongoing matter” in explaining why he could not discuss details.

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Arrests for drugs and guns plummet as focus remains immigration

Amid President Trump’s immigration crackdown, special agents at the Homeland Security Department have made fewer arrests for drug crimes and seized fewer weapons than they did the previous fiscal year, according to internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times.

The numbers reflect a shift in priorities as top officials at the department pulled special agents off drug, gun and other complex criminal investigations under pressure from the White House to deport more undocumented immigrants, current and former federal officials told The Times.

The impact was clear, with immigration arrests soaring. The number of people arrested by homeland security special agents for civil immigration offenses went from roughly 5,000 to a record of more than 94,500, the data shows.

Among the key figures in the documents:

Narcotics arrests fell by roughly 11 percent.

Agents opened 15 percent fewer new investigations into narcotics crimes.

The number of weapons seized fell dramatically, declining from nearly 41,400 to fewer than 11,200 — a 73 percent drop.

The data comes from an internal report by Homeland Security Investigations, the agency’s crime-fighting arm. The report offers a comparison of enforcement statistics between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025, and the same period during the previous year. That time frame includes roughly four months of the Biden administration and eight months of the Trump administration.

Overall, the report shows that criminal arrests went up to more than 46,000, a 41 percent rise. The increase was driven in part by several types of investigations often related to immigration, such as human smuggling and trafficking. But roughly 12,000 of the arrests were not categorized by crime type, making it difficult to assess the kinds of cases that accounted for the reported rise.

The Times reported last week that H.S.I.’s investigations into major crimes, including child exploitation and terrorism financing, had faltered after special agents were ordered to assist with the immigration crackdown. Dozens of officials who have worked under the current Trump administration said the shifts had hindered their case work.

The newly disclosed data reveals the extent of the change under H.S.I., which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement but generally focuses on criminal investigations involving threats like financial fraud, drug smuggling and sex trafficking, not civil immigration violations. Another component of ICE, called Enforcement and Removal Operations, has typically handled immigration enforcement.

The numbers were circulated in recent days within H.S.I. but have not been released publicly. No data is included for the fiscal years before 2024, which is also not publicly available in similar detail.

In a message to H.S.I. employees that accompanied the report, the agency’s acting leader, John A. Condon, highlighted the civil immigration arrests, calling them a “monumental achievement that underscores your operational impact and commitment to mission.” Those arrests are counted separately from criminal ones.

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George Washington's first Thanksgiving 'a civic celebration in which “we may then all unite"'

 Maurizio Valsania writing for The Conversation:

On Thursday, Nov. 26, 1789, George Washington woke early. Assisted by his enslaved valets – William “Billy” Lee and the young Christopher Sheels – he powdered his hair, put on his favorite black velvet suit, tied his white neckwear and donned his yellow gloves.

Finally ready, he set out to travel the short distance from the President’s House, at what used to be 3 Cherry St., New York, and St. Paul’s Chapel, which still stands at 209 Broadway.

He had an important aim that day: to celebrate Thanksgiving. Washington had thought carefully about this Thanksgiving, the first of his presidency. On Oct. 3, 1789, following the recommendation of a joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives, Washington had issued a proclamation. He urged the people of the United States to celebrate “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer.”

But Washington believed that particular Thanksgiving in 1789 was a crucial occasion. He would use it to call on the people he now led to hold their new country together in the face of forces that he knew could pull it apart.

Devotion in the service of unity

It was not the first Thanksgiving Americans celebrated. The first took place at Plymouth colony in the autumn of 1621 – Pilgrims held a feast to thank God for their first harvest and invited members of the neighboring Wampanoag tribe.

It was not even the first national Thanksgiving – which was held on Dec. 18, 1777, at then-General Washington’s behest. Nor was Thanksgiving yet a federal holiday to be observed every last Thursday of November – it became so with the 1863 proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln.

Nov. 26, 1789, was a Thursday, and the weather was miserable. Few New Yorkers showed up at St. Paul’s Chapel to see the president: “I went to St. Pauls Chapel,” Washington wrote in his diary, “though it was most inclement and stormy.” There were “but few people at Church.”

The president had prepared for the occasion. He also contributed a sizable sum of his own money to buy beer and food for prisoners confined for debt in the New York City jail. The donation was deemed to be a magnanimous and moving gesture, suitable to the spirit of the holiday. A week later, in an advertisement in the Dec. 3 issue of the New York Journal, those very prisoners returned their “grateful thanks” to their president “for his very acceptable donation on Thursday last.”

Washington’s first Thanksgiving as a president may have not been tremendously successful, given the scarce attendance at the church service.

Yet, as a scholar writing a biography about Washington, I believe it was an important step in his much larger political plan to bring the executive branch to the people’s doorstep.

What Washington wanted was a virtuous kind of populism in the new country he led. Washington’s populism wasn’t about inciting an angry mob; it was about sharing in their rituals, worshiping their God, speaking their own language. And he did so in the sole interest of the American people.

Thanksgiving 1789, for Washington, was at once religious and more than religious. Washington’s proclamation invoked devotional language, literally. The upcoming festivity, in his words, could “be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

But Washington’s main concern was political. The nation was recently formed, and he feared that it could easily collapse. Its many internal divisions and separate interests could be lethal. Consequently, the president wanted this holiday to be a civic celebration in which “we may then all unite.”

‘Pardon our national…transgressions’

As its first president, Washington recognized that the United States was born out of slavery, conquest and violence as much as of sacred principle. Civic unification required acknowledgment of these flaws. Thus, in the proclamation, Washington asked God “to pardon our national and other transgressions.”

A tremendously self-aware man, Washington knew that he was a deeply flawed person himself.

He was a slave owner, a relentless pursuer of African American fugitives and a destroyer of Native American villages. He was also a warrior who deployed brutality against enemies. He was a commander who resorted to corporal punishment with his own soldiers. Washington believed that he was not a saint to be mindlessly imitated. This made him humble in his duties.

More importantly, Washington also grasped the power of his symbolic position as president. He sought to leverage that for the good of the nation.

As president, Washington could not advertise his actions effectively via Twitter and social media. He had to show himself around constantly, no matter the weather. He had to painstakingly attend balls, plays, dinners, public receptions and of course the church. Every occasion, every Thanksgiving counted.

Through his outings, Washington met with a diversity of people, including those who were second-class citizens or were not citizens at all. Women, for example, greeted Washington at nearly every stop of the extended presidential trips he took between 1789 and 1791. Textile workers in New England, Jewish leaders in Newport, many enslaved persons in the South and churchgoers everywhere did the same.

These women and men, in bondage or free, believers or skeptics, played a part in the invention of a new political theater. Maybe, it was just a theatrical illusion. But these individuals – just like the prisoners in the New York City jail – thanked President Washington because they felt they were voices in a larger political culture.

Washington made sure his Thanksgiving message – not simply a message, but a “proclamation” – sounded clear and strong: May God “render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed.”

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Trump accuses Democrat leaders in Congress of sedition, what does it mean?

President Donald Trump accused six Democratic members of Congress of committing sedition, a claim that his administration has stuck to amid a fierce national debate that began when the lawmakers urged military and intelligence personnel to “refuse illegal orders.”

The Democratic members, who are all veterans or members of the intelligence community, shared a video online last week in which they accused Trump’s administration of pitting service members against American citizens and warned against orders that would violate the Constitution, reported the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The lawmakers did not reference specific orders, but members have spoken against strikes in the Caribbean and Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in American cities — both of which have faced legal scrutiny — as cause for concern.

Trump first responded to the video with a string of posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, calling for the lawmakers to be arrested and put on trial for sedition, “punishable by DEATH,” and sharing posts against them, including one that called for them to be hanged.

Two of the members represent Pennsylvania: U.S. Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D., Chester), an Air Force veteran, and Chris Deluzio (D., Allegheny), a Navy veteran.

On Monday, the Department of Defense announced that it would investigate Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), a former naval officer and the one veteran in the video who is still obligated to follow military laws because he served long enough to become a military retiree. The announcement threatened to call Kelly back to active duty for court-martial proceedings.

On Tuesday, a Justice Department official told Reuters that the FBI has requested interviews with the Democrats who appeared in the video, which some of the lawmakers publicly corroborated. The FBI declined to comment when reached by The Inquirer.

As the debate over the video escalates in the wake of Trump’s sedition accusation and his administration’s actions, a rarely used charge and the intricacies of military law have been thrown into the spotlight.

What is sedition, and is it punishable by death?

Sedition is an incitement of a rebellion or encouragement of attacking authority, or, in other words, the intent to overthrow the government, according to legal and military experts. When acting with others, it is called seditious conspiracy.

Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were convicted of seditious conspiracy for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but within hours of beginning his second term, Trump granted sweeping pardons and commutations for those charged in the riot.

For civilians, sedition is a violation of federal law and carries prison time. It is not punishable by death.

Active-duty military, however, must follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). While the military law has overlap with civilian law, it is more expansive, controlling, and strict, said Sean Timmons, a Houston-based attorney specializing in military law who previously served as an active-duty U.S. Army captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) program.

“In the civilian world you have a lot more defenses, and you have full First Amendment protections,” said Timmons, a managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC. “Whereas in the military, your First Amendment rights are quite limited.”

The maximum punishment for active military is death, but it can be far lower, he said.

Service members must be on active duty to be prosecuted under the UCMJ, but the conduct does not have to have taken place during active duty. This means that retirees like Kelly can be recalled for active duty to face UCMJ prosecution over their behavior while they were not on active duty.

What is an illegal order?

Members of Trump’s administration have pointed to the UCMJ rule that says members must follow lawful orders and orders should be presumed to be lawful. Service members can be punished for not following orders.

However, military rules also prohibit service members from following orders that are undoubtedly illegal — a point the lawmakers get at in their video — and they can be punished for doing so.

But whether orders are legal is supposed to be up to officers, not rank-and-file members, Timmons said.

“If you don’t comply, you could be charged with failure to follow orders and other crimes,” he said.

The exceptions (those obviously illegal crimes) would be war crimes like raping prisoners, deliberating killing civilians without justification, or torture, not day-to-day acts that would break the law, he explained.

Take the example of burning down an enemy’s structure.

“If your military unit says to burn it down because it’s part of the military objective, that’s a lawful order, even though it’s an illegal act,” he said. “It’s a war crime if it’s to burn down a daycare with kids inside.”

The boat strikes in the Caribbean have been in a legal gray area, he said, but “if your command says it’s legal, you’re supposed to execute.”

“The military system is harsh, cruel, and unfair … but it’s the system we have in place, and it’s designed that way to ensure discipline, obedience, and compliance,” he added.

Did the lawmakers commit sedition?

Claire Finkelstein, founder and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School and an expert in military ethics, said accusing the lawmakers of sedition “makes absolutely no sense, especially in a case in which they’re just reminding servicemen of their obligation not to follow illegal orders, which is a fundamental part of the UCMJ.”

“One has to really work hard to fill in the blanks here,” she said.

Timmons said five out of the six lawmakers have their freedom of speech to rely on as a protection.

“Just having divergent political views that the commander-in-chief doesn’t like, for civilians, there’s no liability, there’s no repercussions,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Trump’s administration cannot investigate them for “seditious behavior” anyway.

Kelly, on the other hand, was “on thin ice” by participating in a video that seems to undermine Trump’s authority, he said, and it’s not “totally crazy” to argue he engaged in seditious behavior under military law.

That being said, prosecutors would have to prove that his intent was to “cause a revolt within the ranks,” which would be “very hard,” he said.

“But could they make him miserable and humiliate him and charge him? Yes,” he said.

“Is that politically wise? Absolutely not. Is it reckless? Of course. But, technically, can they do it? Yes,” he added.

What are members of Trump’s administration saying?

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday the White House supports the investigation into Kelly and accused him of trying to “intimidate” active-duty members with the video.

“Sen. Mark Kelly well knows the rules of the military and the respect that one must have for the chain of command,” she said.

“You can’t have a functioning military if there is disorder and chaos within the ranks, and that’s what these Democrat members were encouraging,” she added.

In a social media post on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the lawmakers the “seditious six.”

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Mangino discusses dismissal of charges against Comey and James

Watch my interview with Lindsay McCoy on WFMJ-TV21 examining the dismissal of criminal charges against James Comey and Letitia James.

To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Pennsylvania seeks to standardize criminal diversion programs for juveniles

State lawmakers have moved a proposal to standardize and expand programs that divert children to alternatives to the criminal justice system after they’re arrested. Supporters say the approach yields positive outcomes. reported the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. 

House Bill 144 would require counties to offer diversion to minors facing non-violent felony and misdemeanor charges, unless it’s their third or subsequent offense within three or fewer years. 

“Decades of research show us unequivocally that when youth are charged with less serious crimes, they have better outcomes – for public safety and in their lives – when they are diverted from the juvenile justice system,” said sponsor Rep. Rick Krajewski (D-Philadelphia).  

The measure also would prohibit diversion programs from requiring kids to plead guilty or to pay any fees. 

Utah, Washington, Kentucky and South Dakota are among states where standardized requirements for diversion programs have been linked to reduced recidivism and incarceration among children. 

In Pennsylvania, all counties do offer diversion of some kind. And the vast majority of first-time juvenile offenders – more than 80% annually during 2020-24 – in Pennsylvania end up being diverted before their cases are fully adjudicated, according to the state’s Juvenile Court Judges Commission report from 2024.

But some advocates say programs’ setup and utilization rates vary widely across the commonwealth. 

The range was between 2% (Monroe County) and 69% (York County) of young people diverted before formal charges were filed, according to data in a report released by the state’s Juvenile Justice Task Force in 2021. 

“While we acknowledge that there are many local actors who are implementing diversion programs effectively, it cannot be ignored that a lack of guidance from our state statute means that a youth in Lancaster may not have the same opportunity for a second chance as a young person in Philadelphia or even York,” Krajewski said. “As a state legislator, it is my responsibility to ensure that every child, no matter their zip code or county, is given the same fair shot.”

Juvenile Court Judges Commission (JCJC) Executive Director Robert Tomassini raised concerns about relying on that data, which is from 2018, during an informational hearing about the bill earlier this fall.

The commission’s report from 2024 provides more recent statistics. They’re based on allegations rather than individuals.

However, this metric likewise ranges widely among counties between 35% (Monroe) and 96% (Northumberland), according to Children First PA.

Tomassini didn’t respond to requests for comment; JCJC colleagues deferred to him.

The House Children & Youth Committee passed the bill, 21-5, before recessing for the holidays. 

Rep. Scott Barger, who represents parts of Blair and Huntingdon counties, is among Republicans who voted in favor of the bill. He said he’s experienced diversion’s effectiveness firsthand as a vocational minister working alongside faith-based and secular programs. 

“I’ve seen diversion programs kind of intercept some of these kiddos from being treated as though they’ve got no hope for redemption, and bumping them towards a second chance or a different way of looking at life,”  said Barger, adding he does have some concerns about what expanding diversion would cost local governments. 

Research has documented saving money from using diversion short term because the programs cost less than “formally processing youth” – including potential stays in juvenile detention or residential placement. Studies have shown long-term benefits of diversion, including better public safety outcomes and enhanced life prospects compared to formal justice system processing.

Republicans Kate Klunk (York County), Brenda Pugh (Luzerne), Jamie Walsh (Luzerne), Gary Day (Lehigh) and John Schlegel (Lebanon) voted against it.

The measure echoes some of the recommendations from the Juvenile Justice Task Force. Diversion was among main focus areas for the panel, convened in the wake of revelations of abuse at Glen Mills in Delaware County and other residential facilities. 

Since the task force released a report with recommendations four years ago, two laws have since been enacted that explicitly address issues raised, according to Stefanie Arbutina, policy director of Children First PA, which tracks related legislation. 

One requires courts to revisit kids’ cases more frequently (every three months instead of every nine). Another standardizes the expungement process, establishing automatic triggers for courts to clean out minors’ records. 

Both stem from legislation sponsored by state Sen. Lisa Baker, a Republican representing all of Wyoming and Susquehanna counties and parts of Wayne and Luzerne counties. She serves as chair of her chamber’s Judiciary Committee.

To read more CLICK HERE

 

Law & Crime: The case against James Comey gets weaker by the day

Matthew T. Mangino
Law & Crime
November 23, 2025

On Sept. 30, when I wrote for Law&Crime about why James Comey's lawyers should be happy after his indictment, I underestimated the weakness of the government's case against the former head of the FBI.

The indictment against Comey charges him with lying to and obstructing Congress during an appearance he made in September 2020 in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the hearing, he was asked questions about whether he had authorized anyone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source in newspaper articles about the Russian election interference investigation.

This past September, Erik Siebert, interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was being pressured by the Trump administration to indict Comey. Seibert resisted, presumably because the U.S. ttorney's office felt the case lacked merit. He voiced concerns about the viability of the case and his office's memo declining prosecution.

On Sept. 19, Trump said he wanted Siebert "out." Siebert resigned later that day. The following day on social media, President Trump demanded Attorney General Pam Bondi appoint a replacement for Siebert and bring charges against Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Trump continued, "we can't delay any longer."

That social media post by the president was a gift — a gift that keeps on giving. As the Jeffrey Epstein scandal forced the president to capitulate to Congress on the release of the investigative files, Trump publicly asked Bondi to go after "Democrats" linked to Epstein.

Months ago, Bondi said there were no more criminal charges coming from the Epstein evidence.

Her response to Trump's post: "Thank you, Mr. President. SDNY U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I've asked him to take the lead. As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people."

Comey's attorneys, as expected, have asked the federal judge overseeing the case to dismiss the charges against him because they were politically motivated, a vindictive prosecution against a political enemy of the president.

According to Politico, one of Comey's lawyers, Michael Dreeben, a former deputy solicitor general who has argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, seized on Trump's post and Bondi's acquiescence.

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In a hearing this week, Dreeben spent an hour laying out why the court should conclude that the indictment against Comey was brought solely because of Trump's "personal animus" toward Comey.

To no one's surprise, Dreeben pointed to Bondi's recent kowtowing to Trump on yet another call for political retribution. "We have never before seen in this country a blatant use of criminal justice to achieve political ends," argued Dreeben.

How can things possibly get worse for the Comey prosecution? Well, let me tell you. When Trump fired Seibert, Lindsey Halligan was appointed interim U.S. attorney. With literally no experience in criminal law, Halligan was forced to seek a grand jury indictment before the statute of limitations on Comey's alleged crimes expired on Sept. 30, 2025.

Apparently, the novice prosecutor who was charged with getting an indictment against a former director of the FBI may have made some mistakes. First, during the hearing, Halligan allegedly misrepresented to the grand jury that Comey could not exercise his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. I don't know if that is a fatal error, but anyone who has a television knows that suspects and defendants — real or written into a crime drama script — have "the right to remain silent."

The more interesting problem, one that Halligan admitted in court on Nov. 19, is that apparently not all grand jurors had an opportunity to review the two-count indictment, approved after the grand jury rejected one of the counts in the initial three-count indictment.

U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff briefly asked Halligan to answer some questions. He told Halligan, "You're counsel of record. You can address the court," asking her to explain whether any grand jurors beyond the foreperson were present when the original indictment and a narrower substitute were presented to a magistrate judge.

"The foreperson and another grand juror was also present," Halligan said, apparently confirming that a significant majority of jurors did not see the second indictment.

According to Politico, the judge said he "just wanted to make sure" that the indictment had not been seen by the full grand jury. Again, Halligan confirmed that it had not.

The prosecution of Comey appears to be in serious jeopardy. Nachmanoff could rule as early as next week.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll (2010) was released by McFarland Publishing. He is a regular contributor to Law & Crime. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Violent crime touches college football team

 A UAB football player stabbed two teammates Saturday morning, hours before the team's game against USF, the university said in a statement, reported ESPN.

The two wounded players were in stable condition, interim coach Alex Mortensen said at the postgame news conference. He added that the team decided to play to honor graduating seniors in the last home game of the season, though several players understandably sat out due to the incident.

The teammate suspected in the stabbing was in custody, the university said. The school did not release the names of the players involved.

Daniel Mincey, an offensive lineman who transferred to the school in May, was arrested and booked on charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder in the afternoon, according to Jefferson County Jail records. He was in custody in Birmingham and appeared to be the only UAB player arrested Saturday.

It was not immediately clear if Mincey had legal representation. Attempts to reach family members for comment were not immediately successful.

UAB officials would not confirm that Mincey was involved.

The team's online roster lists Mincey as a 6-foot-4 redshirt freshman from Pompano Beach, Florida, who was previously at the University of Kentucky.

Mortensen said that once the team decided to play, the Blazers focused on their normal game-day routines. He also said counseling was being made available for players who want it.

The coach declined to share further details about the incident, citing the ongoing investigation.

The stabbing occurred on campus at the Football Operations Building.

The Blazers lost 48-18 to USF to fall to 3-8 this season and 1-6 in the American Conference. Their last game is Nov. 29 at Tulsa.

To read more CLICK HERE

'Quiet, piggy' an insult too far

 Rachel Leingang of the Guardian writes:

It’s one outrage in days full of outrageous material.

“Quiet, piggy,” Donald Trump told a female reporter in a press gaggle, pointing his finger at her angrily.

It wasn’t the first time – not even the hundredth time – the US president has attacked the media. And it’s hard for any storyline to break through the administration’s “flood the zone” strategy, much less one like this. Nothing seems to stick. But the “quiet, piggy” clip has taken off, several days after the admonishment occurred on Air Force One last Friday, and without much help from the media itself.

“I don’t know why the ‘Piggy’ thing is bothering me so much,” wrote Hank Green, a YouTuber and author. “It’s one more unforgivable thing in a list of 20,000 unforgivable things, but I’ve been mad about it for like 12 straight hours.”

Trump is going through a string of losses: Democrats dominating in off-year elections, having to reverse course on the Epstein files, Republicans refusing to get rid of the filibuster to end the shutdown, a faltering economy. There’s a possibility that he’s losing his air of impenetrability, and his grip on the right could maybe, just maybe, be loosening.

The anger he displayed in the clip could be a sign of someone on the back foot, overreacting to a question Bloomberg correspondent Catherine Lucey was asking about why Trump was fighting against releasing the Epstein files “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files”. The files related to the child sexual abuser released so far by Congress show that Epstein communicated regularly, and derogatorily, about women with a host of prominent friends.

Lashing out at a female reporter with a derogatory insult amid a news cycle dominated by politicians splitting hairs over a man who ran a sex-trafficking outfit – it was pretty on the nose.

But the clip also pinged around the internet in the same news cycle as Trump telling another female reporter it was rude to ask Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist whom the CIA determined was killed at the direction of the crown prince.

“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” Trump said of Khashoggi, responding to a question from ABC News’s Mary Bruce. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him, or didn’t like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”

The combined force of two outbursts at female journalists in a single news cycle – for asking about a child sexual abuser and a murdered colleague – went beyond the standard-fare Trumpian attacks on the media.

Part of the collective ire could be that no one in the press gaggle jumped to Lucey’s defense in the video, underlining that those attacked by Trump often stand alone while others fear becoming next on his list; the media backbone that stiffened in his first term has wilted, under exhaustion and at the hands of Trump-friendly owners, in his second. The condemnations of Trump and accolades for both journalists came after the fact.

“These incidents are not isolated; they are part of an unmistakable pattern of hostility – often directed at women – that undermines the essential role of a free and independent press,” the Society of Professional Journalists said in a statement Wednesday.

The White House, meanwhile, has doubled down on the comment, saying Lucey had “behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane”, providing no details on what that meant. “If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take,” they said.

Beyond the clip’s power to outrage, though, is a sign that the leftwing media ecosystem and its creators are starting to command attention and elevate stories that media outlets aren’t jumping on. As Democratic digital strategist Parker Butler pointed out on X, the “quiet, piggy” clip grabbed millions of views on online accounts four days after it happened, saying: “It got almost NO coverage when he said it … A viral post can shape an entire news cycle.”

And some Democrats who’ve taken the strategy of being Trump back to Trump, including California governor Gavin Newsom’s press office, are using the clip to bully the president back, Photoshopping Trump’s face onto pigs and repeatedly tweeting “quiet, piggy”.

In Trump 2.0, you never know which affronts to decency will stick in people’s minds. This one, though, has a symbolism that seems to be resonating.

“Portland has reclaimed the frog as a symbol of its resistance to Trump’s efforts to militarize the city,” former US attorney and commentator Joyce Alene wrote on X. “Perhaps women should claim the glamorous, sassy Muppet Miss Piggy, a known diva with a fierce karate chop, as their own symbol.”

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Florida carries out 17th execution of 2025

 The 44th Execution of 2025

Richard Barry Randolph convicted of raping and fatal beating his manager at a Florida convenience store in 1988 was put to death on November 20. 2025 in the state’s record 17th execution this year, reported The Associated Press.

Randolph, 63, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Randolph was convicted of murder, armed robbery, sexual battery and grand theft and sentenced to death in 1989 for the killing of Minnie Ruth McCollum.

The curtain to the death chamber went up exactly at 6:00 p.m., the scheduled execution time, and authorities began administering the drugs two minutes later after Randolph had no last words.

As the drugs flowed, Randolph’s eyes were closed and his face twitched slightly. He breathed heavily for a few minutes before going still, the color drained from his face. A warden shook Randolph and yelled his name, but there was no reaction and no movement. A medic was called in at 6:11 p.m. and Randolph was subsequently pronounced dead.

Jordan Kirkland, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said at a news briefing afterward that the family of the victim had asked him to thank Gov. Ron DeSantis on their behalf. Kirkland said earlier that three members of the victim’s family had planned to be witnesses but he didn’t elaborate.

DeSantis, the Republican who signed the death warrant, has ordered more executions in a single year than any Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976. The previous state record was eight executions in 2014. DeSantis said recently that his goal is to bring justice to victims’ families who have waited decades for the death sentences to be carried out.

According to court records, Randolph attempted in August 1988 to break into the safe at a convenience store in Palatka, where he had previously worked. Randolph was spotted by the manager, McCollum, and the two began to struggle.

Randolph then beat, strangled, stabbed and raped McCollum before leaving the store and taking the woman’s car, the records show.

Three women witnessed Randolph leaving the store and called the sheriff’s office after seeing through the window that the store was in disarray. A deputy responded and found McCollum still alive. Taken to a hospital in a coma, she died six days later of severe brain injuries, according to doctors.

Randolph was arrested shortly afterward at a Jacksonville grocery store while trying to borrow money and also cash in lottery tickets stolen from the convenience store, according to deputies. Investigators said Randolph admitted to the attack and directed them to bloody clothing he had discarded.

The Florida Supreme Court denied Randolph’s appeals last week. He had argued that a lower court had abused its discretion in denying him access to public records and that his own lawyers had acted without his consent. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Randolph’s final appeal Thursday morning.

Including Randolph, a total of 44 men have died by court-ordered execution this year in the U.S., and more than a dozen other people are scheduled to be put to death during the rest of 2025 and next year.

Florida has executed more people than any other state this year, trailed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas with five each. Two more executions are planned next month in Florida under death warrants signed by DeSantis.

Mark Allen Geralds, 58, is scheduled for Florida’s 18th execution on Dec. 9. He was convicted of fatally stabbing a woman during home invasion robbery.

Frank Athen Walls, 58, is set for Florida’s 19th execution on Dec. 18. He was convicted of fatally shooting a man and woman during home invasion robbery, and he later confessed to three other killings.

Florida’s lethal injections are carried out with a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

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DOJ throttles dissent with law prohibiting "impeding" federal officials

 The videos have become commonplace. Federal officers wearing masks and bulletproof vests subdue a moped driver in the middle of a busy D.C. street. A 70-year-old protester in Chicago is pushed to the ground by an armed Border Patrol agent holding a riot gun. In Los Angeles, an agent shoves away a demonstrator, reported The Atlantic.

These videos capture the aggressive tactics of immigration officers under the second Trump administration. But they share something else, too. In each instance, following documented violence by federal officers toward protesters and immigrants, the Justice Department pressed charges—against the victim of that violence. Those three people, according to the DOJ, had all broken a law prohibiting “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” federal officials.

As the government continues to attempt mass deportations, that law, Section 111 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, has become a favored tool of the Justice Department for painting opposition to immigration enforcement as a corrosive, lawless force. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security often describe these cases in exaggerated language, even referring to defendants as “domestic terrorists,” though the law has nothing to do with terrorism. Across the country, prosecutors have charged case after case in federal court—one against a member of Congress; one against a congressional candidate; another against a bystander who happened to walk by a protest at the wrong time; and, most memorably, another against a Washington, D.C. man who hurled a sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer, creating an instant symbol of protest for a city patrolled by the National Guard and other federal forces. 

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CREATORS: Trump Administration's Crackdown on Expression Reminiscent of McCarthy Era

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
November 18, 2025

McCarthyism hearkens back to a dark time in American history. The term has entered political nomenclature to describe government activity that suppresses unfavorable political or social views. The American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as "The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, to suppress opposition."

Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy was a little-known junior senator from Wisconsin until February 1950, when he claimed, in a speech given in Wheeling, W.Va., that he possessed a list of 205 card-carrying Communists employed by the U.S. Department of State.

The speech launched Sen. McCarthy into the national spotlight. Although the blacklisting of Hollywood luminaries is often thought of as a McCarthy-era witch hunt, the sinister work of the House Un-American Activities Committee predated him.

However, McCarthy's subsequent anti-communist crusade heavily contributed to the climate of fear and blacklisting that followed, and impacted many people in Hollywood, academia, business and the military.

As chairman of the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee, Sen. McCarthy conducted hearings on communist subversion in America and investigated alleged communist infiltration of the Armed Forces.

Some have pointed to — with growing concern — similarities between McCarthy and the Trump administration. Ruth Conniff of the Wisconsin Examiner interviewed David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of "A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father," a book about his father's journey after being blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

Maraniss told Conniff, "There are several obvious haunting similarities," between McCarthy and President Donald Trump, "the demonization of others, the calling of all opponents Marxist or communists or enemies of the state, the gross manipulation of truth, the use of fear to stifle dissent and pressure to silence the media or get the press to go along."

Maraniss ominously pointed out, "McCarthy was only a senator, and now we're dealing with the president, with full control of the levers of power which McCarthy did not have, ranging from the Justice Department to the military."

During the first year of Trump's second term, the federal government has aggressively cracked down on political expression reminiscent of some of the most troubling periods in America's history.

The administration has asked for — and been provided with — the prosecution of the president's political opponents. They have fired government employees for taking positions perceived as disloyal to Trump. They have even gone after unfriendly law firms, withdrawing security clearances and government contracts.

The Department of "Defense" is now the Department of "War." Nearly all national news organizations are banned from the Pentagon. The president pushed for blocking AP reporters from the White House press pool because the wire service refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America."

Trump pushed to withhold funding for colleges and universities, coaxing large payments to reinstate funding. He has investigated media companies, filing lawsuits and demanding huge settlements by implying industry mergers may be in jeopardy.

Is there a tipping point when it comes to the authoritarian machination of the Trump administration? For all the unease, discomfort and fear caused by McCarthy, his reign of fear lasted all of four years.

For Sen. McCarthy, public sentiment turned against him following his reckless attacks on the U.S. Army in the summer of 1954. The Army had retained a noted attorney, Joseph Welch, who challenged McCarthy on live television.

In an exchange that became historic, McCarthy brought up the fact that a young lawyer in Welch's office had once belonged to an organization suspected of being a communist front group. Welch was angered by McCarthy's blatant attack on his young associate. He responded with vigor and emotion, pointedly asking McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Within six months, McCarthy was censured by the U.S. Senate. In less than three years, he died a disgraced and broken man.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Mangino discusses murder of cheerleader on Law & Crime Network

Watch my interview with Elizabeth Millner of Law & Crime Network regarding the murder of an Alabama high school cheerleader at a bonfire with friends.

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Judge: 'Government misconduct' may result in dismissing charges against James Comey

A federal magistrate judge said that the criminal case against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, could be in trouble, according to The New York Times. The case is in jeopardy because of a series of apparent errors committed in front of the grand jury by Lindsey Halligan, the inexperienced prosecutor picked by President Trump to oversee the matter.

The remarkable rebuke of Ms. Halligan came in a 24-page ruling in which the magistrate judge, William E. Fitzpatrick, ordered her to give Mr. Comey’s lawyers all of the grand jury materials she used to obtain the indictment and raised the question of whether “government misconduct” in the case might require dismissing the charges altogether.

In his ruling, Judge Fitzpatrick said that when Ms. Halligan appeared — by herself — in front of the grand jury in September to seek an indictment accusing Mr. Comey of lying to and obstructing Congress in 2020 testimony, she made at least two “fundamental and highly prejudicial” misstatements of the law. He also pointed out that the grand jury materials he ordered her to turn over to him for his review this month appeared to be incomplete and “likely do not reflect the full proceedings.”

“The court is finding that the government’s actions in this case — whether purposeful, reckless or negligent — raise genuine issues of misconduct, are inextricably linked to the government’s grand jury presentation and deserve to be fully explored by the defense,” Judge Fitzpatrick wrote.

As part of his ruling, the judge ordered prosecutors to provide Mr. Comey’s lawyers by Monday evening with the same grand jury materials that he himself has already looked at — a measure he described as “an extraordinary remedy.” Typically, grand jury notes are kept secret before trial, even from defendants and their lawyers.

But the disclosure was needed, Judge Fitzpatrick said, to permit Mr. Comey’s legal team to delve into the question of whether Ms. Halligan and an F.B.I. agent who testified in front of the grand jury had conducted themselves properly when they secured the indictment.

Minutes before the first portion of the grand jury notes were to be handed over to Mr. Comey’s legal team, prosecutors filed an emergency request seeking to halt Judge Fitzpatrick’s order. Calling it “contrary to law,” the prosecutors said they wanted to quickly raise objections to the ruling in front of Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff, the district court judge who is overseeing the case.

The ruling by Judge Fitzpatrick was only the most recent setback in the Justice Department’s efforts to bring charges against Mr. Comey — a decision that was initially rejected by Ms. Halligan’s predecessor as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik S. Siebert. In an extraordinary move, Mr. Trump ousted Mr. Siebert in September to make way for Ms. Halligan after he suggested there was insufficient evidence to file an indictment against Mr. Comey.

Judge Fitzpatrick’s harsh words came just days after a different judge involved in the Comey case raised doubts about a separate question pertaining to Ms. Halligan: namely, whether Attorney General Pam Bondi had lawfully appointed her to her post as U.S. attorney in the first place. The judge overseeing that issue said she would make a decision on the matter by Thanksgiving.

The indictment against Mr. Comey charges him with lying to and obstructing Congress during an appearance he made in September 2020 in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the hearing, he was asked questions about whether he had authorized anyone at the F.B.I. to serve as an anonymous source in newspaper articles about sensitive investigations.

Ms. Halligan, who had never worked on a criminal case until she was thrust into the Comey prosecution, has faced extensive scrutiny from the moment Mr. Trump installed her atop the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia against the wishes of many career prosecutors there. Her critics have pointed out that her previous experience in the law was limited to working as an insurance lawyer and serving as a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump.

It is extremely unusual for judges to examine how prosecutors act in front of grand juries, let alone to openly criticize their conduct. But that is exactly what Judge Fitzpatrick did to Ms. Halligan.

He noted that during her grand jury presentation she appears to have misrepresented a basic tenet of the law by suggesting that Mr. Comey did not have the right, under the Fifth Amendment, to avoid testifying at his own trial.

She also appears to have made another astonishing error, Judge Fitzpatrick said. In his ruling, he pointed out that she told grand jurors that they did not have to rely solely “on the record before them” to return an indictment against Mr. Comey, but instead “could be assured the government had more evidence — perhaps better evidence — that would be presented at trial.”

The judge also said that Ms. Halligan appears to have botched her efforts to pare down the three-count indictment she had initially sought against Mr. Comey after grand jurors rejected one of the charges. Moreover, he noted that the grand jury transcripts he later received from her did not appear to contain her presentation of the second, two-charge indictment to the grand jury, leaving the record incomplete.

If, however, a second presentation was never made, then the court “is in uncharted legal territory,” he went on.

That would suggest, he wrote, “that the indictment returned in open court was not the same charging document presented to and deliberated upon by the grand jury.”

“Either way,” the judge concluded, “this unusual series of events, still not fully explained by the prosecutor’s declaration, calls into question the presumption of regularity generally associated with grand jury proceedings, and provides another genuine issue the defense may raise to challenge the manner in which the government obtained the indictment.”

Judge Fitzpatrick mentioned one more potential problem with the government’s grand jury presentation. He questioned whether the F.B.I. agent who was the sole witness to have testified may have inadvertently disclosed information that should not have been revealed because of the attorney-client privilege.

Ultimately, the decision about whether to dismiss the case based on these purported grand jury errors will lie with Judge Nachmanoff, the district court judge. Judge Nachmanoff has already scheduled a hearing for early December to consider separate but related claims by Mr. Comey’s lawyers that Ms. Halligan had abused the grand jury process.

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Alito and colleagues challenge compassionate release

 Madiba K. Dennie writing for Balls & Strikes:

 Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in three cases about the conditions under which federal judges can reduce a prison sentence. As a general rule, judges may not modify a term of imprisonment once it’s been imposed. But four decades ago, Congress enacted a statutory exception for compassionate release, empowering judges to shorten a prison term if “extraordinary and compelling reasons” warrant relief.

Congress did not, however, give much guidance as to what a compelling reason actually is, beyond specifying that rehabilitation alone is insufficient, and that any sentence reduction must be “consistent with applicable policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.” Identifying qualifying circumstances is thus up to individual judges evaluating requests for release—and, of course, a matter of some debate

In the first case the Court heard, Fernandez v. United States, a district court judge reduced a sentence because he doubted the reliability of the evidence, and had concerns about a significant sentencing disparity between Fernandez and one of his co-defendants. A federal appeals court then held that the district court judge had abused his discretion because he should not have considered Fernandez’s potential innocence—something neither Congress nor the Sentencing Commission ever said.

In the other two cases, Rutherford v. United States and Carter v. United States, judges said they could not consider the fact that the defendants asking for a sentence reduction would have received significantly shorter prison terms had they been convicted after Congress enacted the First Step Act of 2018, a bipartisan criminal justice reform law. But this, too, is not so simple: The Sentencing Commission has explicitly said judges can consider factors like this under certain circumstances.

The uninspiring success rate of the defendants in these three cases—zero for three—doesn’t support an inference that judges are especially inclined to find “extraordinary and compelling reasons” to reduce a prison sentence. Yet Justice Samuel Alito spent Wednesday morning defending the sanctity of mandatory minimum sentences, deeply disturbed by the notion that judges could be letting people out of prison for little reason other than their personal belief that prison is bad. 

“There are a lot of district judges and other federal judges who don’t like mandatory minimums,” Alito said to Fernandez’s counsel. “Could a district judge say, ‘You know what, that mandatory minimum is too much under the circumstances of this case, so I’m going to grant a sentence reduction?’” he asked. 

Alito pressed Rutherford’s counsel, David Frederick, on this same issue. “Is it a permissible factor for a judge to include in the determination a disapproval of the mandatory minimum?” Alito asked. Frederick politely responded with the answer the statute already provides: that a judge would be abusing their discretion if they just didn’t like mandatory minimums, but would be within their discretion if they thought departing from a mandatory minimum was justified by the circumstances of the particular case. Alito was unsatisfied. “I don’t quite see the difference between those two things,” he said.

To illustrate the difference, Frederick offered a hypothetical, imagining a 75-year-old with a life-threatening disease in a prison without adequate medical facilities. “It is not an abuse of discretion for the court to say that, in this particular circumstance, that mandatory minimum is too harsh,” said Frederick. At this, Chief Justice John Roberts interrupted. “Well, you really shouldn’t call it a mandatory minimum then,” said Roberts. “You probably should call it something like the presumptive minimum depending upon subsequent developments.”

Alito later moved to Carter’s counsel, David O’Neill, who also affirmed that district courts could not reduce sentences solely because they disagree with mandatory minimums as a matter of principle. When Alito asked if any provision of the statute “specifically” states that, Carter, too, explained that any categorical approach would be at odds with a statute that’s “all about the individual circumstances.”

If Alito really wants to be angry about the criminal legal system, there are countless real problems he can choose from. His choice to fixate on hypothetical judges with vendettas against mandatory minimums instead is an illustrative example of the conservative conception of criminal law. In Alito’s view, the criminal legal system already does what it is supposed to do: inflict maximum punishment. Any attempts to reform that system are inherently illegitimate.

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