President Donald Trump has pardoned a Nevada Republican who was awaiting sentencing on federal charges that she used money intended for a statue in honor of a slain police officer for personal expenses, including plastic surgery, the Associated Press reported.
In 2022, Michelle Fiore, a former Las Vegas City Council member and state legislator, ran for state treasurer but was not elected. In October, she was found guilty of six counts of federal fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud. She remained out of custody until her sentencing, which was scheduled for next month.
In a lengthy statement on Facebook yesterday, the loyal Trump supporter expressed gratitude to the president while accusing the US government and "select media outlets" of a decades-long conspiracy against her.
The pardon, issued on Wednesday, came less than a week after Fiore's request for a new trial was denied. She had faced the possibility of spending decades in prison, the AP notes.
During the trial, federal prosecutors said that Fiore, 54, had raised more than $70,000 for a statue of a Las Vegas police officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty in 2014. Instead, she spent some of it on cosmetic surgery, rent and her daughter's wedding.
"Michelle Fiore exploited the tragedy to line her own pockets," said U.S. Attorney Dahud Askar.
Nevada Democratic Party Chairwoman Hillary Barrett called the pardon "reckless" and "a slap in the face" to law enforcement officers.
Fiore, who has no legal training, was appointed judge in deep-red Nye County in 2022, shortly after losing her campaign for state treasurer. In her statement yesterday, she said she planned to return to court next week.
Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at closing large-scale mining of minerals from the ocean depths, including in international waters, in a challenge to the International Seabed Authority (ISBA), which theoretically has jurisdiction over territories outside the economic zones of states, reported Agence France-Presse.
The text requires US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to "expedite the processing" of applications "and the issuance of exploration and mining permits" of minerals from territories not under U.S. jurisdiction.
Trump has also asked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to take the same measures for territorial waters.
According to a senior U.S. official, the initiative should allow for the extraction of one billion tons of materials within ten years.
The IMO has jurisdiction over the seabed in international waters under agreements that the U.S. has never ratified.
"By starting to mine minerals in international waters, unlike the rest of the world, the government is paving the way for other countries to do the same," Jeff Waters, vice president of the non-governmental organization Ocean Conservancy, said in a statement.
"And this will have negative consequences for all of us and for the oceans on which we depend," he warned.
Trump's order points out that "the United States faces an unprecedented economic and national security challenge related to securing supplies of key minerals without relying on foreign adversaries".
US President Donald Trump has refrained from defining the mass killings of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as "genocide", which is a new change in the policy of his predecessor Joe Biden, reported Agence France-Presse.
Turkey, whose leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan has established close ties with Trump, has always denied that the Ottoman Empire committed genocide and seeks to prevent any international recognition.
In the annual message issued by US presidents on the occasion of the anniversary, Trump paid tribute to "the memory of those precious lives that were taken in one of the worst catastrophes of the 20 century".
In 2021, Biden became the first president to recognize the genocide, and explicitly paid "honor to the memory of all Armenians who died in the genocide that began on this date 106 years ago",
"President Trump's refusal to recognize the Armenian Genocide by the United States constitutes a shameful capitulation to Turkish threats," said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America.
According to Yerevan, up to 1.5 million people died between 1915 and 1916, amid the repression of the Armenian Christian minority by the Ottoman authorities, which they considered pro-Russian and disloyal to the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey does not recognize these events, estimates the number of Armenians killed at 300,000 to 500,000, and claims that an equal number of Turks died in the unrest, after many Armenians sided with Russian forces.
Armenia and its influential diaspora have long campaigned for international recognition of the tragedy as genocide. So far, 34 countries, including the United States, France, Germany, Brazil and Russia, have officially defined the events as genocide, AFP recalls.
US President Donald Trump said he would interview Jeffrey Goldberg, a magazine editor who was mistakenly added to an unclassified messaging group that was used by senior officials to share plans for an attack on Yemen's Houthi rebels in March, Reuters reported.
In a post on the social network "Truth Social", Trump said that two other journalists from "The Atlantic" magazine would join the interview.
"Politico" recalls that Goldberg implicated the White House in "Signalgate" after he was inadvertently added to a chat group on the "Signal" app with senior administration officials as they discussed military plans, and later released the messages after the White House downplayed them.
"I'm doing this interview out of curiosity and as a competition with myself, just to see if it's possible for "The Atlantic" to "tell the truth,"" Trump said today on "Truth Social". "Are they capable of writing an honest story about "TRUMP"? The way I see it, what's so bad about it - I WON!".
Goldberg will be joined by "The Atlantic" contributors Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, Trump said. Last month, in response to their request to interview him, Trump said Parker was "as awful as I've ever known her" and said she was "unable to do an honest and fair interview." Scherer, he said, "has never written a fair piece about me, only negative, and practically always LIES."
The president has repeatedly denounced The Atlantic as a "failing magazine," and in the midst of Signalgate, he called Goldberg a "scumbag" whose reporting was "bad for the country."