WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert S. III, the FBI director who transformed the nation’s premier law enforcement agency into a terrorism-fighting force after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and who later became special counsel in charge of , has died. He was 81.

“With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away” on Friday night, his family said in a statement Saturday. “His family asks that their privacy be respected.”

At the FBI, Mueller set about almost immediately overhauling the bureau’s mission to meet the law enforcement needs of the 21st century, beginning his 12-year tenure just one week before the and serving across presidents of both political parties. The cataclysmic event instantaneously switched the bureau’s top priority from solving domestic crime to preventing terrorism, a shift that imposed an almost impossibly difficult standard on Mueller and the rest of the federal government: preventing 99 out of 100 terrorist plots wasn’t good enough.

Later, into whether the Trump campaign illegally coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race. His on Trump’s behalf and that the Trump campaign welcomed the help, but Mueller and his team ultimately found insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy and did not make a prosecutorial decision about whether Trump had obstructed justice.

Mueller was maligned throughout the two-year investigation by Trump, who regularly derided it as a “witch hunt.” But the patrician Princeton graduate and Vietnam veteran who walked away from a lucrative midcareer job to stay in public service remained silent throughout the criticism, exhibiting an old-school, buttoned-down style that made him an anachronism during a social media-saturated era.

Trump posted on social media after the announcement of Mueller’s death: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” The Republican president added, “He can no longer hurt innocent people!”

Republican President George W. Bush, who nominated Mueller, said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened” by Mueller’s death and praised him for having “dedicated his life to public service” and for overhauling the FBI’s mission. Democratic President Barack Obama, who kept Mueller on even after his 10-year term had expired, called him “one of the finest directors in the history of the FBI” who saved “countless lives” after transforming the bureau.

“But it was his relentless commitment to the rule of law and his unwavering belief in our bedrock values that made him one of the most respected public servants of our time,” Obama added.

The FBI did not respond to a request seeking comment and current , a Trump loyalist, did not immediately note the death on social media. The FBI Agents Association cited Mueller’s “commitment to public service and to the FBI’s mission.“

A second act as an investigator of a sitting president

The second-longest-serving director in FBI history, behind only J. Edgar Hoover, Mueller held the job until 2013 after agreeing to Obama’s request to remain on the job after the conclusion of his tenure.

After several years in private practice, Mueller was asked by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to return to public service as in the Trump-Russia inquiry.

Mueller’s stern visage and taciturn demeanor matched the seriousness of the mission, as his team spent nearly two years quietly conducting one of the most consequential, yet divisive, investigations in Justice Department history. He held no news conferences and made no public appearances during the investigation, remaining quiet despite attacks from Trump and his supporters and creating an aura of mystery around his work.

All told, Mueller brought criminal charges against six of the president’s associates, including his and .

His released in April 2019 identified substantial contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia but did not allege a criminal conspiracy. Mueller laid out damaging details about Trump’s efforts to seize control of the investigation, and even shut it down, though he declined to decide whether Trump had broken the law, in part because of department policy barring the indictment of a sitting president.

But, in perhaps the most memorable language of the report, Mueller pointedly noted: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”

The nebulous conclusion did not deliver the knockout punch to the administration that some Trump opponents had hoped for, nor did it trigger a sustained push by House Democrats to impeach the president — on separate allegations related to Ukraine.

The outcome also left room for Attorney General to insert his own views. He and his team made their own determination that Trump did not obstruct justice, and he and Mueller privately tangled over a four-page summary letter from Barr that Mueller felt did not adequately capture his report’s conclusions.

Mueller deflated Democrats during a highly anticipated congressional hearing on his report when he offered terse, one-word answers and appeared uncertain in his testimony. Frequently, he seemed to waver on details of his investigation. It was hardly the commanding performance many had expected from Mueller, who had a towering reputation in Washington.

Over the next months, Barr made clear his own disagreements with the foundations of the Russia investigation, moving to dismiss a false-statements prosecution that Mueller had brought against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, even though that investigation ended in a guilty plea.

Mueller’s tenure as special counsel was the capstone of a career spent in government.

FBI transformed into a national security agency

At his 2001 confirmation hearing, Mueller spoke emphatically about the FBI’s role in combating everything from health care fraud to crimes against children and described the agency he would soon lead as “vital to the preservation of our civil order and our civil rights.”

“One could hardly overstate the significance of the FBI in the life of every American,” he said.

It quickly became clear that his time as FBI director would be defined by the Sept. 11 attacks and its aftermath as an FBI granted broad new surveillance and national security powers scrambled to confront an ascendant al-Qaida and interrupt plots and take terrorists off the street before they could act.

It was a new model of policing for an FBI that had long been accustomed to investigating crimes that had already occurred.

When he became FBI director, “I had expected to focus on areas familiar to me as a prosecutor: drug cases, white-collar criminal cases and violent crime,” Mueller told a group of lawyers in October 2012.

Instead, “we had to focus on long-term, strategic change. We had to enhance our intelligence capabilities and upgrade our technology. We had to build upon strong partnerships and forge new friendships, both here at home and abroad.”

In response, the FBI shifted 2,000 of the total 5,000 agents in the bureau’s criminal programs to national security.

In hindsight, the transformation was a success. At the time, there were problems, and Mueller said as much. In a speech near the end of his tenure, Mueller recalled “those days when we were under attack by the media and being clobbered by Congress; when the attorney general was not at all happy with me.”

Among the issues: The Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI circumvented the law to obtain thousands of phone call records for terrorism investigations.

Mueller decided that the FBI would not take part in abusive interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists, but the policy was not effectively communicated down the line for nearly two years. In an effort to move the FBI into a paperless environment, the bureau spent over $600 million on two computer systems — one that was 2½ years overdue and a predecessor that was only partially completed and had to be scrapped after consultants declared it obsolete and riddled with problems.

For the nation’s top law enforcement agency, it was a rocky trip through rough terrain.

But there were many successes as well, including thwarted terror plots and headline-making criminal cases like the one against fraudster Bernie Madoff. The Republican also cultivated an apolitical reputation on the job, nearly quitting in a clash with the Bush administration over a surveillance program that he and his successor, James Comey, considered unlawful.

He famously stood alongside Comey, then deputy attorney general, during a dramatic 2004 hospital standoff over federal wiretapping rules. The two men planted themselves at the bedside of the ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft to block Bush administration officials from making an end run to get Ashcroft’s permission to reauthorize a secret no-warrant wiretapping program.

In an extraordinary vote of confidence, Congress, at the Obama administration’s request, approved a two-year extension for Mueller to remain at his post.

“A great American died today, one I was lucky enough to learn from and stand beside,” Comey said in an Instagram post.

Another former FBI director, Christopher Wray, who was appointed during Trump’s first term and then served under President Joe Biden, said in a separate statement that Mueller was the “consummate straight shooter.”

“As everyone at the FBI who worked for, or with him, is well aware, Bob Mueller embodied the virtue of prioritizing service to the country over self, and he always put the mission first,” Wray said.

A Marine who served in Vietnam before becoming a prosecutor

Mueller was born in New York City and grew up in a well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia.

He received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a master’s degree in international relations from New York University. He then joined the Marines, serving for three years as an officer during the Vietnam War. He led a rifle platoon and was awarded a Bronze Star, Purple Heart and two Navy Commendation Medals. Following his military service, Mueller earned a law degree from the University of Virginia.

Mueller became a federal prosecutor and relished the work of handling criminal cases. He rose quickly through the ranks in U.S. attorneys’ offices in San Francisco and Boston from 1976 to 1988. Later, as head of the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington, he oversaw a range of high-profile prosecutions that chalked up victories against targets as varied as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and New York crime boss John Gotti.

In a mid-career switch that shocked colleagues, Mueller left a job at a prestigious law firm to join the homicide division of the U.S. attorney’s office in the nation’s capital. There, he immersed himself as a senior litigator in a bulging caseload of unsolved drug-related murders in a city rife with violence.

Mueller was driven by a career-long passion for the painstaking work of building successful criminal cases. Even as head of the FBI, he would dig into the details of investigations, some of them major cases but others less so, sometimes surprising agents who suddenly found themselves on the phone with the director.

“The management books will tell you that as the head of an organization, you should focus on the vision,” Mueller once said. But “for me there were and are today those areas where one needs to be substantially personally involved,” especially in regard to “the terrorist threat and the need to know and understand that threat to its roots.”

Two terrorist attacks occurred toward the end of Mueller’s watch: the Boston Marathon bombing and the Fort Hood shootings in Texas. Both weighed heavily on him, he acknowledged in an interview two weeks before his departure.

“You sit down with victims’ families, you see the pain they go through and you always wonder whether there isn’t something more” that could have been done, he said.

___ Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — When the Justice Department was announcing the highest-profile prosecution in its history in Washington, Attorney General Merrick Garland was 100 miles away, meeting with local police in Philadelphia.

He stepped outside briefly to speak about how the decision to indict Donald Trump for conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election came from career prosecutors and was led by a special counsel committed to “accountability and independence.”

In other words, this wasn’t about politics.

Try as Garland might, though, there is no escaping the politics of the moment when the Justice Department of a president who is running for reelection is indicting his chief political rival, the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

And though he has distanced himself from the investigation since he appointed special counsel Jack Smith 10 months ago, Garland has the last word on matters related to the prosecution of Trump as long as he is the attorney general.

The Justice Department is facing its biggest test in history — navigating unprecedented conditions in American democracy while trying to fight back against relentless attacks on its own credibility and that of the U.S. election system. The success or failure of the case has the potential to affect the standing of the department for years to come.

“In grand terms this is a really huge historic moment for the Department of Justice,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

President Joe Biden has sought to distance himself from the Justice Department to avoid any appearance of meddling when the agency is not only probing Trump, but also the president����ap son Hunter. But it����ap going to get more challenging for Biden, too. Anything he says about the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol from now on could complicate matters for prosecutors. And any trial is likely to take place against the backdrop of the 2024 presidential election.

The latest indictment is the third criminal case filed against Trump this year, but the first to try to hold him criminally responsible for his efforts to cling to power in the weeks between his election loss and the Capitol attack that stunned the world. He pleaded not guilty on Thursday before a federal magistrate judge and was ordered not to speak about the case with any potential witnesses.

Trump has said he did nothing wrong and has accused Smith of trying to thwart his chances of returning to the White House in 2024. Trump and other Republicans have railed against the investigation and the Justice Department in general, claiming a two-tiered system of justice that vilifies Trump and goes easy on Biden’s son, who was accused of tax crimes after a yearslong probe.

“Another dark day in America as Joe Biden continues to weaponize his corrupt Department of Justice against his leading political opponent Donald J. Trump,” said U.S. Rep Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.

Trump’s own Justice Department was subject to complaints of politicization, drawing heavy criticism as the federal probe of Russia’s 2016 election interference thrust prosecutors center stage and dragged out scandals that Trump seized on as proof of a “deep state” operating against him.

The release of the Russia report by special counsel Robert Mueller was colored by politics, with then-Attorney General William Barr issuing a four-page memo ahead of the report that was widely criticized as spinning the investigation’s findings in favor of Trump. Mueller’s actual report — two volumes and 448 pages — was far more nuanced and laid out in part how Trump directed others to influence or curtail the Russia investigation after the special counsel’s appointment in May 2017.

On Nov. 9, 2020, as Trump began to suggest with no evidence there might be widespread voter fraud, Barr issued a directive pushing prosecutors to investigate any suspected instances. But by the waning days of the Trump administration Barr had turned against Trump, telling The Associated Press before he told the president that there had been no widespread election fraud.

Garland, a longtime federal appeals court judge who had been Barack Obama’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court but never got a hearing, was chosen by President Biden to be a stabilizing force. He promised to return the Justice Department to “normal,” restoring its reputation for political independence and ensuring equal justice.

Throughout his career, Garland has been steeped in Justice Department procedures and norms, and as a judge his decisions were thorough but “judicially modest,” said Jamie Gorelick, a lawyer who served as deputy attorney general in the 1990s and has been a Garland colleague and friend for decades.

“His view was, you do what you need to thoroughly and well and you don’t reach, you don’t do more than you have to do,” she said.

While Garland hasn’t been directly involved with the Trump case since naming Smith as special counsel, the indictment handed down Tuesday reflects a similar approach, she said. “It doesn’t rely on crazy new theories. It does not try to do more when less would be more effective,” she said.

Indeed, the indictment covered much of same ground that played out on live TV, or was unearthed in the House investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, where violent protesters beat and bloodied police officers, smashed through windows and occupied the Capitol for hours.

If Smith loses the case, the Justice Department could lose credibility, particularly as the barrage of Republican attacks against the department grows. If prosecutors win, a former president could see time behind bars. If Trump is reelected, he could undo the charges and has said he plans to “completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI,” part of a larger effort by Trump to push more power toward the presidency.

“There are pieces now in play that the Justice Department is going to continue to take on for years to come,” said Robert Sanders, a senior lecturer of national security at the University of New Haven. “The next 12 months are going to be a critical stage in the history of this nation.”

Against that fraught backdrop, the broader work of the department goes on.

On the same day Trump was arraigned in Washington, federal prosecutors announced guilty pleas in a racist assault on two Black men who were brutalized during a home raid in Mississippi. And U.S. officials also announced the arrest of two U.S. Navy soldiers for spying for China in California.

Garland, during his Philadelphia visit, went almost immediately back to the community event he’d gone there to observe, chatting with police officers outside, as reporters shouted questions about the unprecedented indictment. But Garland wouldn’t bite.

“I appointed Jack Smith special council to take on the ongoing investigation in order to underline the department����ap commitment to accountability and independence,” he said. “Any questions about this matter will have to be answered by the filings made in the courtroom.”

___

Associated Press writers Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Jim McKee is standing at the end of a line that snakes through five aisles of fiction inside the Books-A-Million store in Florida’s capital city.

He is smiling because in a matter of minutes, the book he’s holding will be signed by its author, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor who McKee believes should be the nation’s next president. But as a former Donald Trump loyalist, the 44-year-old Tallahassee attorney almost whispers when he first says it out loud.

“Personally, I’d rather see DeSantis win the Republican primary than Trump,” McKee says softly, having to repeat himself to be heard. His voice soon grows louder.

“Trump has upset so many people,” McKee says. “DeSantis is more palatable. He has a good story to tell.”

Indeed, conversations throughout Tallahassee’s book stores, conference rooms, state house offices and sports bars reveal that DeSantis’ allies are gaining confidence as Trump’s legal woes mount. The former president faces a possible indictment in New York over his role in a hush money scheme during the 2016 campaign to prevent porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public about an extramarital sexual encounter, which he denies.

The optimism around DeSantis comes even as an unlikely collection of establishment-minded Republican officials and Make America Great Again influencers raise concerns about the Florida governor’s readiness for the national stage. DeSantis has stumbled at times under the weight of intensifying national scrutiny as he builds out his political organization and introduces himself to voters in key primary states.

DeSantis’ allies privately scoffed at recent reports of anonymous concerns over the direction of his campaign, noting there is no campaign. The 44-year-old governor isn’t expected to launch his White House bid for at least two more months. And the first presidential primary contest is roughly 10 months away.

For now, DeSantis’ team, headquartered here on the front edge of Florida’s Panhandle, believes he holds a position of strength among Republican voters. And as Trump fights to undermine DeSantis, his strongest Republican rival, the Florida governor’s growing coalition is eager to highlight the contrast between the two men.

On one side stands Trump, a twice-impeached former president carrying a new level of turmoil into the 2024 presidential contest. On the other is DeSantis, a big-state governor coming off a commanding reelection, who is a far more disciplined messenger and hyperfocused on enacting conservative policies.

“Of all the things that Donald Trump has done and accomplished in his life, it����ap just constant chaos. And I think the American people are just tired of it,” said Florida state Rep. Spencer Roach, a former Trump supporter who thinks DeSantis would be “a very formidable presidential candidate.”

Most voters have only just begun to analyze the differences between the dueling Republican stars as the 2024 presidential election season opens under a cloud of unprecedented scandal.

A former president has never been arrested, but prosecutors in New York, Georgia and Washington are leading criminal probes of Trump’s behavior on multiple fronts that could potentially produce indictments in the coming days, weeks or months.

The politics are murky at best.

Should Trump be charged, DeSantis supporters concede that Trump would likely benefit politically — in the short term, at least — as the GOP base rushes to defend their former leader from what they see as a weaponized justice system. But in the long term, DeSantis’ team believes primary voters will view Trump’s legal challenges as an acute reminder of his extraordinary baggage that could lead to another Republican disappointment in 2024.

Meanwhile, Trump is using his mounting legal challenges as a cudgel to force Republican rivals to line up the GOP behind him. It����ap the same playbook he employed successfully last summer after the FBI raided his Florida estate to seize classified documents and during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

DeSantis condemned the New York prosecutor’s potential indictment over the last week under intense pressure from MAGA influencers and after other White House prospects had offered their own criticism.

“I hope it doesn’t come to where you end up seeing this going forward,” DeSantis said in an interview with Piers Morgan, without mentioning Trump by name. “People see that as weaponizing the justice system. So I think it����ap fundamentally wrong to do that.”

And while DeSantis sprinkled a few jabs at Trump and his leadership style throughout the same interview, such remarks are mild in comparison to Trump’s scorched-earth broadsides against him.

Last week alone, the former president seized on DeSantis’ votes as a congressman to cut Social Security and Medicare and attacked his record as Florida governor on violent crime, public health and education. Trump also shared a photo suggesting impropriety when DeSantis was a teacher two decades ago, despite no evidence of that.

At a rally over the weekend in Waco, Texas, Trump said DeSantis was “dropping like a rock.”

In an effort to combat the perception that his numbers might be slipping, DeSantis’ allies quietly distributed polling conducted last week in Iowa and New Hampshire by the Republican firm Public ����ap Strategies that suggests vulnerability for Trump.

Meanwhile, DeSantis is only just beginning to navigate the intense national scrutiny that comes with being a top-tier presidential prospect.

DeSantis’ recent reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “a territorial dispute ” — a statement he has since walked back — sowed doubt among some would-be supporters about whether he’s ready for prime time. There are also consistent concerns that he doesn’t have the charisma necessary to connect with voters on a personal level.

“I have heard that there is concern out there that he doesn’t have the ability to go the distance because of his interpersonal skills,” said New York-based Republican donor Eric Levine, a fierce Trump critic. “If it����ap a race between him and Trump, I’m a Ron DeSantis guy. But I don’t know if I’m with either of them right now.”

At Thursday’s book signing in Tallahassee, the Florida governor made little effort to speak to people who had waited in the long line — aside from an obligatory “Hey, how are you?” — as he signed their books. Most of the one-on-one interactions were silent and spanned less than 10 seconds as he scribbled his name on the inside cover.

DeSantis’ staff wouldn’t allow pictures.

At the same event, DeSantis did not answer when asked by an Associated Press reporter whether Trump was being treated fairly by prosecutors.

His decision to ignore the mainstream press, just as he often ignores Trump’s attacks, is not new. In fact, his allies praise the approach as an example of the discipline that makes him a better presidential contender than Trump.

Yet it carries risks.

By not engaging more directly with the former president in particular, DeSantis is adopting a similar playbook as Trump’s 2016 Republican rivals — including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — who ignored Trump for much of that campaign. Each ultimately went on the attack more directly, but by that time, Trump had built an insurmountable lead.

“DeSantis will not shrink from the fight. That����ap not how he’s operated in Florida politics to this point,” said Matt Caldwell, a former state representative who shared the statewide ballot with DeSantis in 2018 as a candidate for state agriculture commissioner. “One could argue that he’s got the upper hand, so he’s only engaging when he has to.”

Instead of 2016, Caldwell likened Trump’s challenges in 2024 to the 1996 presidential election when President Bill Clinton faced serious allegations of sexual impropriety that nearly sank his reelection.

“At end of the day, this is just a hubbub about money and sex, which isn’t a whole lot different from 1996,” Caldwell said. “I don’t like this, and I didn’t like ’96. But Bill Clinton won reelection.”

___

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in Waco, Texas, contributed to this report.

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While gathered in a private suite at the Phoenix Park Hotel, an Oath Keeper member says he heard their leader, Stewart Rhodes, repeatedly urge the person on the phone to tell Trump to call upon militia groups to fight to keep the president in power.

“I just want to fight,” Rhodes said after hanging up with the person, who denied Rhodes’ appeal to speak directly to the Republican president, court records say.

Federal prosecutors have not said who they believe Rhodes was speaking to on that call, which was detailed in court documents in the case of an Oath Keeper member who has pleaded guilty in the riot. An attorney for Rhodes says the call never happened.

The story, however, has raised questions about whether the extremist group boss may have had the ear of someone close to Trump on Jan. 6 — an issue that could take center stage when the House committee that����ap investigating the insurrection holds its next public hearing on Tuesday.

The Jan. 6 committee has said it is looking closely at any ties between people in Trump’s orbit and extremist groups accused of helping put into motion the violence at the Capitol.

Top leaders and members of the Oath Keepers and another far-right group — the Proud Boys — have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the most serious cases the Justice Department has brought so far in the Jan. 6 attack.

Neither federal prosecutors nor House investigators have alleged that anyone in the Trump White House was in communication with extremist groups in the run-up to Jan. 6.

But at least two men close to Trump — longtime friend Roger Stone and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn — have known contacts with far-right groups and extremists who, in some cases, are alleged to have been involved in Jan. 6.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, also told the House committee that she heard the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers mentioned leading up to the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6. But no further details about that have been revealed.

Cassie Miller, a Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst who has provided the committee with information about extremists, said she expects lawmakers to build on that testimony and possibly reveal more information about connections between people close to Trump and groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

“Right now, things are very blurry,” Miller said.

During the committee’s last televised hearing, Hutchinson told lawmakers that Trump instructed Meadows to speak with Stone and Flynn the day before the riot. Hutchinson said Meadows called both Flynn and Stone on the evening of Jan. 5, but she said she didn’t know what they spoke about.

In posts on the social media platform Telegram after the hearing, Stone denied ever speaking to Meadows on the phone. When asked by The Associated Press for comment about the call, Flynn’s brother replied in an email that the Jan. 6 hearing “is a clown show.”

Neither Stone nor Flynn has been charged in connection to the Capitol riot, and both of them have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before the House committee. Trump pardoned each of them after they were convicted by jurors or pleaded guilty in cases unrelated to Jan. 6.

During events in Washington before the riot, Stone used members of the Oath Keepers — a far-right militia group that recruits current and former military, first responders and law enforcement — as security guards.

Photos and video on Jan. 5 and 6 show Stone flanked by people dressed in Oath Keepers gear. Among them was Joshua James, then the leader of the group’s Alabama chapter, who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and is cooperating with authorities investigating the insurrection.

Stone, an informal Trump adviser, has denied having any knowledge of or involvement in anything illegal on Jan. 6.

“The Oath Keepers provided security for me on the voluntary basis on January 5. Nothing more nothing less,” he wrote recently on Telegram.

On Friday, attorneys for Rhodes told the committee that their client wants to testify in person and publicly. A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment, but it����ap unlikely lawmakers would agree to Rhodes’ conditions.

The committee already interviewed Rhodes for hours behind closed doors, but he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination under the direction of his attorneys when asked about the post-election period, one of his lawyers, James Lee Bright, told the AP. Bright said Rhodes now wants to “confront the narrative they are portraying,” which he believes is “completely wrong.”

Rhodes, a former U.S. Army paratrooper, and four co-defendants are scheduled for trial in Washington in September. The Oath Keepers have largely avoided public forums since Jan. 6, and it����ap unclear who is handling the “day to day” operations of the group with Rhodes behind bars, said Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

The Oath Keepers have denied there was any plan to storm the Capitol. They say their communications and planning leading up to Jan. 6 was only about providing security for right-wing figures like Stone before the riot as well as protecting themselves against possible attacks from antifa activists.

Stone has also not been shy about a close association with Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman who is scheduled to stand trial in December on sedition charges alongside other members of the extremist group that refers to itself as a politically incorrect men’s club for “Western chauvinists.”

In February 2019 — one month after being charged with witness tampering and other crimes in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation — Stone was summoned back to court to answer for a post on his Instagram account featuring a photo of the judge with what appeared to be the crosshairs of a gun. On the witness stand, Stone publicly identified Tarrio as one of five or six “volunteers” who provided him with images and content to post on social media. Stone said his house functioned as a headquarters for his volunteers.

Trump commuted Stone’s 40-month prison sentence in that case days before he was due to report to prison and pardoned him months later.

The Proud Boys have been trying to forge connections with mainstream Republican figures since Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes started the group in 2016, Miller said.

A Proud Boys member told the Jan. 6 committee that membership in the group skyrocketed after Trump refused to outright condemn the group during his first debate with Biden. Instead, Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

And while extremist groups tend to collapse after law-enforcement authorities jail their top leaders, that hasn’t seemed to have happened to the Proud Boys. Despite a brief lull in activity after the riot, 2021 became one of the most active years for the extremist group, according to Miller.

Flynn also had contact with some far-right groups before Jan. 6. In the weeks after the election, Flynn became a leading figure in the campaign to sow doubt about the results and urge Trump to take extraordinary measures to stay in power.

Flynn called Trump’s loss a “coup in progress,” and publicly suggested Trump should seize voting machines and floated the idea of martial law. He and several allies ultimately brought those ideas directly to Trump in an Oval Office meeting that December. Flynn was also a featured speaker at a large rally in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020, backing Trump’s desperate efforts to subvert his election loss.

In text messages later filed in court, Rhodes — the Oath Keepers leader — and other members discussed how members of the group had worked with another far-right group, 1st Amendment Praetorians, or 1AP, to provide personal security to Flynn that day. A photograph taken by UPI shows Flynn leaving the rally with Rhodes and at least one member of 1AP.

The House committee has subpoenaed 1AP Founder Robert Patrick Lewis, noting in a letter to Lewis that he claimed to coordinate regularly with Flynn and also claimed to be in contact with Rhodes prior to Jan. 6.

Lewis, who has not been charged in Jan. 6, has said the group was made up of military and law enforcement veterans, and provided pro bono security and intelligence in the months after the election. In a recent defamation lawsuit, Lewis and another member of 1AP, Philip Luelsdorff, have denied involvement with the planning or execution of the Capitol attack, and said that 1AP has never been a militia or paramilitary group.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation before being pardoned by Trump a little more than a month before the Capitol riot.

Richer reported from Boston, Smith from Providence, Rhode Island, and Kunzelman from College Park, Maryland. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

While gathered in a private suite at the Phoenix Park Hotel, an Oath Keeper member says he heard their leader, Stewart Rhodes, repeatedly urge the person on the phone to tell Trump to call upon militia groups to fight to keep the president in power.

“I just want to fight,” Rhodes said after hanging up with the person, who denied Rhodes’ appeal to speak directly to the president, court records say.

Federal prosecutors have not said who they believe Rhodes was speaking to on that call, which was detailed in court documents in the case of an Oath Keeper member who has pleaded guilty in the riot. An attorney for Rhodes says the call never happened.

The story, however, has raised questions about whether the extremist group boss may have had the ear of someone close to Trump on Jan. 6 — an issue that could take center stage when the House committee that����ap investigating the insurrection holds its next public hearing on Tuesday.

The Jan. 6 committee has said it is looking closely at any ties between people in Trump’s orbit and extremist groups accused of helping put into motion the violence at the Capitol.

Top leaders and members of the Oath Keepers and another far-right group — the Proud Boys — have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the most serious cases the Justice Department has brought so far in the Jan. 6 attack.

Neither federal prosecutors nor House investigators have alleged that anyone in the Trump White House was in communication with extremist groups in the run-up to Jan. 6.

But at least two men close to Trump — longtime friend Roger Stone and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn — have known contacts with far-right groups and extremists who, in some cases, are alleged to have been involved in Jan. 6.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, also told the House committee that she heard the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers mentioned leading up to the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6. But no further details about that have been revealed.

Cassie Miller, a Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst who has provided the committee with information about extremists, said she expects lawmakers to build on that testimony and possibly reveal more information about connections between people close to Trump and groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

“Right now, things are very blurry,” Miller said.

During the committee’s last televised hearing, Hutchinson told lawmakers that Trump instructed Meadows to speak with Stone and Flynn the day before the riot. Hutchinson said Meadows called both Flynn and Stone on the evening of Jan. 5, but she said she didn’t know what they spoke about.

In posts on the social media platform Telegram after the hearing, Stone denied ever speaking to Meadows on the phone. When asked by The Associated Press for comment about the call, Flynn’s brother replied in an email that the Jan. 6 hearing “is a clown show.”

Neither Stone nor Flynn have been charged in connection to the Capitol riot and both of them have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before the House committee. Trump pardoned each of them after they were convicted by jurors or pleaded guilty in cases unrelated to Jan. 6.

During events in Washington before the riot, Stone used members of the Oath Keepers — a far-right militia group that recruits current and former military, first responders and law enforcement — as security guards.

Photos and video on Jan. 5 and 6 show Stone flanked by people dressed in Oath Keepers gear. Among them was Joshua James, then the leader of the group’s Alabama chapter, who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and is cooperating with authorities investigating the insurrection.

Stone, an informal Trump adviser, has denied having any knowledge of or involvement in anything illegal on Jan. 6.

“The Oath Keepers provided security for me on the voluntary basis on January 5. Nothing more nothing less,” he wrote recently on Telegram.

On Friday, attorneys for Rhodes told the committee that their client wants to testify in person and publicly. A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment, but it����ap unlikely lawmakers would agree to Rhodes’ conditions.

The committee already interviewed Rhodes for hours behind closed doors, but he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination under the direction of his attorneys when asked about the post-election period, one of his lawyers, James Lee Bright, told the AP. Bright said Rhodes now wants to “confront the narrative they are portraying,” which he believes is “completely wrong.”

Rhodes, a former U.S. Army paratrooper, and four co-defendants are scheduled for trial in Washington in September. The Oath Keepers have largely avoided public forums since Jan. 6, and it����ap unclear who is handling the “day to day” operations of the group with Rhodes behind bars, said Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

The Oath Keepers have denied there was any plan to storm the Capitol. They say their communications and planning leading up to Jan. 6 was only about providing security for right-wing figures like Stone before the riot as well as protecting themselves against possible attacks from antifa activists.

Stone has also not been shy about a close association with Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman who is scheduled to stand trial in December on sedition charges alongside other members of the extremist group that refers to itself as a politically incorrect men’s club for “Western chauvinists.”

In February 2019 — one month after being charged with witness tampering and other crimes in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation — Stone was summoned back to court to answer for a post on his Instagram account featuring a photo of the judge with what appeared to be the crosshairs of a gun. On the witness stand, Stone publicly identified Tarrio as one of five or six “volunteers” who provided him with images and content to post on social media. Stone said his house functioned as a headquarters for his volunteers.

Trump commuted Stone’s 40-month prison sentence in that case days before he was due to report to prison and pardoned him months later.

The Proud Boys have been trying to forge connections with mainstream Republican figures since Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes started the group in 2016, Miller said.

A Proud Boys member told the Jan. 6 committee that membership in the group skyrocketed after Trump refused to outright condemn the group during his first debate with Biden. Instead, Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

And while extremist groups tend to collapse after law-enforcement authorities jail their top leaders, that hasn’t seemed to have happened to the Proud Boys. Despite a brief lull in activity after the riot, 2021 became one of the most active years for the extremist group, according to Miller.

Flynn also had contact with some far-right groups before Jan. 6. In the weeks after the election, Flynn became a leading figure in the campaign to sow doubt about the results and urge Trump to take extraordinary measures to stay in power.

Flynn called Trump’s loss a “coup in progress,” and publicly suggested Trump should seize voting machines and floated the idea of martial law. He and several allies ultimately brought those ideas directly to Trump in an Oval Office meeting that December. Flynn was also a featured speaker at a large rally in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020, backing Trump’s desperate efforts to subvert his election loss.

In text messages later filed in court, Rhodes — the Oath Keepers leader — and other members discussed how members of the group had worked with another far-right group, 1st Amendment Praetorians, or 1AP, to provide personal security to Flynn that day. A photograph taken by UPI shows Flynn leaving the rally with Rhodes and at least one member of 1AP.

The House committee has subpoenaed 1AP Founder Robert Patrick Lewis, noting in a letter to Lewis that he claimed to coordinate regularly with Flynn and also claimed to be in contact with Rhodes prior to Jan. 6.

Lewis, who has not been charged in Jan. 6, has said the group was made up of military and law enforcement veterans, and provided pro bono security and intelligence in the months after the election. In a recent defamation lawsuit, Lewis and another member of 1AP, Philip Luelsdorff, have denied involvement with the planning or execution of the Capitol attack, and said that 1AP has never been a militia or paramilitary group.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation before being pardoned by Trump a little more than a month before the Capitol riot.

Richer reported from Boston, Smith from Providence, Rhode Island, and Kunzelman from College Park, Maryland. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Re: “And what for those who graduated debt free?” May 22 commentary

The commentary by Dick Wadhams did not list one positive thing about the idea of reducing college debt for individuals. Paying off college loans will yet have to be debated; it is not a law.

In debating this idea, positive ideas must be on the table also. FDR signed into law the GI Bill in 1944, and about half of the 16 million World War II veterans took part in this federal program. It has been said that a dollar invested in each young GI paid our economy back sevenfold. This was a good investment in America’s future. Reducing college loans would do the same.

Paying off some college debt would be stimulative for our economy. Young people being helped in this way would be able to buy new cars, homes, vacations, start new businesses sooner, invest in the stock market with retirement accounts sooner, etc. This earlier investment would lift all boats with higher market valuations and more tax base to use in paying down federal debt. It is pro-jobs. Even people who did not go to college would be helped by people buying more products from the companies they work for, again, lifting all boats, including Republican boats.

Even President Trump knew this. In 2017 he signed the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, also called the Forever GI Bill, into law. This bill expanded veterans’ educational benefits. Paying off some college debt can also be considered an investment in America’s future.

Truman Sager, Windsor

My experience closely mirrors Dick Wadhams’ as I was raised on a farm in northwestern Illinois and worked since a very young age. My parents raised six children and greatly sacrificed to help their children attend college and graduate debt-free. We all worked in the summer and also had part-time jobs while attending college. Through hard work and sacrifice, we were all able to send our children to college and allow them to graduate debt-free.

The idea of forgiving student debt is a slap in the face for all those hardworking students and parents who either paid or borrowed funds and subsequently paid off loans for their college education.

Bradley Mitchell, Morrison

I graduated from college in the 1970s. Like Wadhams, I supported myself through college back then. However, what Mr. Wadhams fails to do is put college tuition in context.

At the University of Colorado in 1978, full-time tuition at Boulder was $333 per semester with fees of about $90 for a total of about $423 for the semester. In today’s dollars that would be about $1,875. Tuition for a full load at Boulder in 2022 these days ranges from $7,118 (Arts and Sciences) to $9,854/semester (Business) plus $883 in fees each semester. One major difference between now and then is the direct state support for the University of Colorado, which has lowered significantly.

What Wadhams is essentially saying to today’s college students is, “I got mine from the state, but you can’t have yours.”

In 1978, you were able to support yourself and at the same time walk out of college with little to no debt. Today that is not possible unless you have very rich parents or you are an academic/athletic superstar with lots of scholarships.

Ask yourself the following: What high school graduate has between $64,000 to $85,00 at his disposal to pay for fours of college tuition and fees?

Michael Connelly, Golden

I don’t believe the election was stolen, but . . .

Re: “It����ap Trump’s party, and he’ll lie if he wants to,” May 22 commentary

Your readers will recognize the title of Jamelle Bouie’s article as a paraphrase of Lesley Gore’s 1963 hit song, “I’ll Cry If I Want To,” but his article is about lying rather than crying. Specifically, it����ap about what the author refers to as the “Big Lie” — Donald Trump’s position that the 2020 election was stolen from him via election fraud.

Personally, I don’t believe the election was stolen. If it had been, at least one of the numerous courts in which Trump filed legal action would have found substantial evidence. But that has not happened, at least not yet.

My lack of complete certainty is born from having let liberal news outlets persuade me five years ago that Trump-Russia collusion was real, so real in fact that it merited an investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Trump told us a thousand times along the way that it was all a big hoax, the biggest in American history. We now know, of course, that he was right.

Not only was it a hoax, but Hillary Clinton’s ex-campaign manager testified in a high-profile trial last week that Clinton approved sharing uncorroborated and false information with the press about the Trump organization and a Russian bank during the 2016 election. The Russia-Trump narrative that Clinton authorized did enormous harm to the country.

Many were certain in 2017 that then-President Trump would be formally charged with collusion. But it turned out they were wrong, and they might be wrong about the “Big Lie” too.

J. Steve Holloway, Lakewood

The hard choices of pregnancy, loss and life

Re: “Health risks, money, rape — Why these eight women chose to have an abortion,” May 22 news story

My heart goes out to the women in the article who chose abortions.

What we are not talking about are the additional consequences of forced birth if Roe vs. Wade is overturned.

Many states are including exemptions in their abortion legislation if the mother’s life is at risk. Who exactly decides when the mother’s life is at risk?

In our case, after being diagnosed with preeclampsia, my sister, her husband, and her doctor were the ones who decided she should stay in the hospital so her son’s lungs could grow stronger.

Her life was at risk, but it was a risk they decided to take. In the 25th week of her pregnancy, medical professionals concluded that she should deliver immediately. I shudder to think if some commission or government bureaucracy had to be contacted to assure that this was an acceptable termination of pregnancy under an archaic law. We could have lost both my sister and her baby.

Her nurse told me that my sister kissed her baby boy’s forehead before she died. He’s now old enough to start a family of his own, hopefully in a state that honors the sanctity of a woman’s body and the trusted and confidential relationship between a woman and her doctor.

A million things can go wrong during a pregnancy, but a million things can go right. Any involvement by the government or any third party is morally wrong in such a personal and heartbreaking decision.

Christine Betts, Denver

It was with great interest that I read the article about the eight women who chose to have abortions because when I was pregnant, I had every single risk factor that these women had, but I recognized that the life of my child had intrinsic worth.

For the sake of balanced reporting, I hope the Denver Post publishes the narratives of similar women who decided against abortion because there are other life-affirming solutions. I am the daughter of, the sister of, and the mother of an unplanned pregnancy and each of our lives is worth living.

Just like them, I endured pregnancy-shaming, a verbally abusive partner, unsupportive family, under-employment, zero maternity leave; I was un-insurable with a fetus who had a potentially lethal complication.

These hardships were not due to my pregnancy but due to a society that does not think pregnant women and mothers should have the same access to college, career and creativity as others. Despite these set backs I am in a good place now, and I did it as a mother.

Rebecca Sposato, Denver

Whether it����ap a pandemic or a shooting, American’s seem to value life less

Re: “Is mass death now tolerated in U.S.?” May 22 news story

On the front page, there was a thought-provoking article about whether we have become more tolerant of incidents resulting in mass deaths, including those from COVID and also deaths resulting from gun violence. I think many of us have become more tolerant.

I often point to the Sandy Hook shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, in which 20 first-graders and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., were shot and killed. Many of us thought this incident was so horrible that it would definitely result in gun control.

However, it didn’t happen, and since then, I have been very concerned about the decency or lack of in this country.

Contrast the United States’ response to Sandy Hook with that of New Zealand’s response to a mass shooting in their country. Almost immediately in New Zealand, gun control measures were implemented, and there was very little opposition.

The loss of human life in this country, whether from gun violence or from a public health crisis, does not mean what it once did. It is very concerning.

David Ryan, Montrose

When it is our time to go, is it our time to say so?

Re: “Doctor-assisted suicide for mental illness?” May 22 commentary

Krista Kafer’s column on assisted suicide deals with the greatest reality in life. Everybody dies. When and how?

She is right about not having mentally ill people decide to end it all.

On the other hand, those of sound mind and unsound body should be given that option. Why make them suffer for six months when death is inevitable? I think an off-ramp should be an option for anyone 80 years old or older who finds it compatible with their religious or other convictions.

I greatly admire those who struggle to overcome great odds. Those who run races on artificial legs that have replaced legs blown off in combat are among the many who overcome great obstacles to create meaningful lives for themselves.

God bless anyone who forges ahead in the face of great physical challenges.

In my mid-80s, with numerous health challenges, I wouldn’t mind an off-ramp when life becomes more than I wish to bear.

My wife and family have been wonderful to me during my various health problems, and I would never check out voluntarily without proper procedures and consultations. However, when does it become apparent that you have stayed too long at the party?

If my doctors can prop me up enough to give my life some meaning, I’m happy to stick around.

Otherwise, I’m ready to face the inevitable and join most of my contemporaries who have experienced the inevitable.

It gives me comfort, perhaps foolishly, to think that a baby is born to replace each person who dies.

We had our shot at life.

Let them have theirs.

John Dellinger, Aurora

Two examples of mass death on the front page of The Post

Re: “Health risks, money, rape — Why these eight women chose to have an abortion” and

“Is mass death now tolerated in U.S.?” May 22 news stories

Sunday’s adjoining front page articles present a tragic paradox.

Author Michelle R. Smith wonders whether society has become tolerant of mass death, giving examples of COVID-19, AIDS and gun violence.

The adjacent front page article by Saja Hindi outlines the factors leading to abortions by eight women since Roe.

I suggest that America indeed has become inured to mass death as a result of the 60 million abortion deaths of preborn children since Roe vs. Wade.

We need look no further than the other side of the Post����ap front page to understand America’s tolerance for mass deaths.

Ken Jordan, Fort Collins

Bad behavior in Colorado Parks and Wildlife

Re: “Probe includes comments by director, Black employee,” May 20 news story

It seems no one in the Colorado Parks and Wildlife incident has behaved or communicated well.

Alease Lee has every right to be offended by Director Dan Prenzlow’s reported remark, but to project profane language in public emails is also offensive and an unpersuasive means to demonstrate her indignation.

I don’t think Supreme Court Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson would have progressed very far in the confirmation hearings if she had used such language to address remarks that she was pedophile-friendly.

I think both of these Parks and Wildlife employees owe an apology to the public for so poorly representing a state agency.

C Greenman, Lakewood

Message for the NRA from a frustrated teacher and mother

Re: “19 children killed,” May 25 news story

To the people of the NRA, what is your justification for why an 18-year-old can have access to an AR-15 assault weapon?

This isn’t about your rights. What about the rights of those children and their right to live? When a large majority of our population suffers from mental illness so profound that they would think shooting up a movie theater, a grocery store, a church or a school is the answer, how can keeping access to guns be the solution?

Even more sick than this is the fact that decades after the Columbine High School shooting, this country has grown numb. The people in charge are NOT being held accountable because they are still under the thumb of the NRA, who pay millions of dollars lobbying Congress to not pass gun legislation.

What world are we living in, where money is the end-all be-all, more important than the lives of children? High levels of metal found in baby food? A formula shortage? Mass murders at school?

What sick reality is this? Money and power trump all, even the lives of children!?

And what does someone like me even do? I am a teacher. I am a mother. I went online and signed petitions and donated money and I’ve been taught my vote “counts,” but do I have faith in the people running this country to do anything?

No.

When my children are in school, decades from now, do I think this could happen again? Yes. That is sick.

Alexandra Harnisch, Montrose

More RTD riders could mean better service

More RTD riders mean a better and better-funded system. Good, well-funded public transit systems remove cars from the road.

Cars kill thousands of Americans annually, are a major source of air pollution, contribute to the unsustainable growth of cities into sprawling exurbs, degrade the health of drivers who travel too many miles but don’t physically move enough, and make valuable public space essentially privatized and inhospitably barren and dangerous.

Public transit is important because it����ap the only sustainable, viable, affordable option to move millions of people every day in a city,
and as Denverites, we have a real opportunity to get out of the car and onto the bus or the light rail.

I take the RTD, but I don’t ride it as often as I’d like.

Even for the popular 15/15L along Colfax Avenue, wait times can be high and it costs $6 for my 1.5-mile ride downtown and back.

RTD isn’t perfect, but it����ap the only system
we have. And we can make it better.

Increased ridership and public interest in RTD will help push dollars toward buses and light rails and help make Denver a more accessible city.

Take a ride on an RTD line. Take a ride for your next outing or to get to work. Think about your experience and how it could be better, and share with your family, friends, RTD representative and community.

Austin Miller, Denver

We must respond to Uvalde

Re: “19 children killed,” May 25 news story

Another horrific shooting and families left to grieve for the rest of their lives. Why are we so stupid that we can’t enact reasonable gun-control laws? Why aren’t we pressuring our legislators to ban assault weapons and demand expanded background checks? Gun deaths in this country are an epidemic that will only continue until we stand up and demand action.

Karen Roberts, Littleton

What if we had a constitutional amendment that read: “Because transportation is critical for the economy of a free state, the right to own a horse and tie it up at any business that serves the public shall not be infringed.” Would we interpret it today to apply to automobiles? Would driver’s licensing, vehicle registration, and parking regulations be a matter for the Supreme Court to judge? Could people graze their horses in public parks?

The Second Amendment bases the right to bear arms on the need for a well-regulated militia to ensure the security of the country. At the time the Constitution was written, citizen soldiers with their own primitive weapons (by today’s standards) had recently opposed the British at Lexington and Concord.

Today we have a National Guard and its armories. The Guard fulfills the need for a well-regulated militia, and its members do not have to provide their own flintlocks. We no longer need a completely unregulated armed citizenry to ensure our security. In fact, our well-armed citizenry has proven, time and again, to be destructive of that end.

We should interpret the Second Amendment in the context of our times. Instead of repealing it, just declare it moot! States and communities should have the right to regulate guns according to the wishes of their citizens, just like with cars and other matters of law.

David Wolf, Lakewood

I am a proud gun owner. I love the freedom to own a firearm, codified by the Constitution of the United States, upheld by the court, and defended by my fellow Americans. I am also in shock and full of sorrow.

As I write this, news continues to come in on the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. The most important question: What possesses a person, just 18, to walk into a school in his community and open fire? Why, per local news, did it take two and a half hours for parents to get kids? Why was this shooter in the school for about an hour? How did he have such easy access to classrooms? Why can we not come together as adults and find common ground to address this and not have an “all or nothing” mentality? Why can’t we let the families grieve before the politics start?

I will not give up my guns, but I absolutely understand the responsibility of this freedom, and we’re failing.

Craig Winter, Aurora

I’ve already given up attending concerts, fairs and rallies because of mass shootings. Now must I also be afraid to go to the grocery store, movie theater and school and use public transportation? Apparently so.

Listen up, legislators. It is way past time to enact meaningful gun control measures.

And by the way, you’d best also focus on mental health. Murdering 19 children in a school isn’t entirely a gun issue, although it would not have occurred without this weapon.

Terri Tilliss, Parker

In the wake of recent horrific mass murders, left-leaning politicians will renew their call for gun control. Exactly the opposite is what is required to halt the slaughter of innocent children in schools.

Teachers and security officers must be given their own handguns and they must be taught how to use them. Labeling certain areas of a community — especially schools — gun-free zones makes it easy for crazies and others bent on killing to carry out their psychotic plans.

More security in the person of parents, veterans, and the like, if they are not sufficiently armed themselves, will not be able quickly to apprehend a maniac intent on taking innocent lives. We must put guns within their reach.“Gun control” may be a powerful election-year slogan, but it does not come close to the positive solution of “arm the teachers!”

Mary Anne Little, Denver

Developer metro district abuse must be stopped

Re: “Developers can still abuse taxpayers,” May 1 editorial

I wholeheartedly agree with your editorial. The developers take advantage of legal devices to continue abusing the homeowners who buy into their projects.

These metro district bonds are the closest thing to immortality there is on this Earth, and the only true beneficiaries are the developers who rake in millions of dollars over and above the profits they make on the homes themselves.

I just attended an “open house” where the developer touted all the wonderful things they have done and will do for us, but the true cost paid by us was glossed over and an honest answer to homeowner questions was not available. The cherry on top was the disclosure that all the metro special districts are what developers used to insensitively call “slaves” to a “master” district. The “master” dictates the mill levies that the “slave” districts are required to put on the homeowners.

It is cleverly constructed so that even if and when the resident homeowners get elected to their respective boards, the master is insulated and will never be taken over by homeowners.

In our case, the “master” has no actual residents, only fictional “residents” who are employees or shareholders of the developer. We will eventually get out from under these usurious bonds, as state law limits the life of the bond-issuing capability to a mere 40 years. That����ap about twice as long as my remaining life expectancy.

I applaud your sunlighting of this abuse and strongly urge our state representatives to put an end to it.

Jack Sosebee, Commerce City

Good work exposing the solar tariff troubles

Re: “Tariffs may dim solar industry,” May 15 business story

Your Sunday article by Judith Kohler on the potential damage to the solar industry by a U.S. Department of Commerce investigation of tariff evasion tactics by Chinese panel makers is a perfect example of needed oversight by a free press.

Whether investigations are prompted by business interests concerned about damage to their bottom line or by the government trying to redress inequities or potential damage to citizens, a clear look at a problem in a broader context is an essential corrective to give the general public a better idea of where its true interest lies.

In this case, a well-intentioned government effort to prevent cheating by the Chinese may cripple a crucial effort to convert to solar in time to save our climate and long-term prospects. In another, it could highlight the tendency of corporations to maximize short-term gains for investors like ourselves at the expense of its own relevance to a changing world.

Clear-eyed reporting is as necessary as air and water to all our citizens. Keep up the good work.

Deborah Fialka, Denver

Don’t end patient metrics from care facilities

Re: “Better care for the mentally ill,” May 21 letter to the editor

The letter writer’s assertion that demonstrated patient improvement as a metric for future facility funding “promotes” fraud is flawed. Yes, it can create the opportunity for fraud but does not “promote” it.

Furthermore, what other means can those controlling the purse strings rely on, if not assessment results? To remove this from the means for funding justification would also remove accountability and transparency, not to mention incentive on the part of mental care professionals to help ensure that patients are on a good path to recovery. And helping the mentally ill is the goal here, right?

Gary Rauchenecker, Golden

What about Fifth Amendment?

Re: “Bill to combat fentanyl passes,” May 13 news story

While the benefits of Colorado’s legislative bill criminalizing possession of even a dusting of fentanyl can be debated, the lawmakers’ last-minute change regarding burden of proof is, without any doubt, a corruption of long-standing constitutional tenets of American justice.

The bill, as passed now, provides that a person charged for holding any drug with even a trace of fentanyl is prosecutable for a felony. Once charged, in order to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor, the bill imposes upon the defendant a “burden of proof” to prove he or she did not know the substance contained fentanyl. Out the window goes Fifth Amendment protections, particularly if the basic allegation of the possession itself is at issue.

That such a development has taken place in Colorado’s Democrat-dominated legislature is ironic, and the published quote of state Sen. Brittany Pettersen (D), cheering on this notion of a defendant����ap chance to “prove his innocence,” is disturbing, to say the least.

Hopefully, our appellate courts will soon hear a test case allowing them to invalidate the law, which will prompt the legislature to get it right.

Peter Ehrlich, Denver

Three degrees, debt-free

All this back and forth in the national and local media about student debt bemuses me. I have heard no one address the issue as I will herein. When I graduated high school, I came from a single-parent family of very limited means. At the time, there were very few vehicles for paying college tuition. “You want a loan, kid? What collateral do you have?”

So, how to get an advanced education? Solution: I enlisted in the U.S. Army for three years with a promise that the Army would train me in a six-month tech program. After discharge, I worked all through my four-year B.S. program and received an NIH grant to support my master’s degree. Later in life, my GI Bill benefits kicked in and supported me during my three-year doctoral program. I managed to earn these three degrees completely debt-free.

Wake up, youngsters! Where there’s a will, there’s a way! Just how badly do you want it?

Gene Abkarian, Fort Collins

Ruling on religious grounds

Re: “There’s no comparison between abortion and same-sex marriage,” May 19 letter to the editor

The writer misses the point of the article he is criticizing. Nobody is arguing that there are substantive similarities between abortion and same-sex marriage. Obviously, there are important differences, as cited in the letter. The point is that people in the Supreme Court and Congress are using their religious beliefs to determine their positions on important issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

If they succeed in denying the right of a woman (and her husband and her doctors) to determine whether or not to have an abortion, there will be other targets, including same-sex marriage and birth control. One of the crucial tenets of the First Amendment is the right of people to practice their religious beliefs without interference from the government. That means, in particular, that the government (e.g., Supreme Court, Congress) is not allowed to establish laws based on religious beliefs.

What we are experiencing is the right wing trying to cram their religious beliefs down the throats of the rest of us. The Roe vs. Wade debate is a manifestation of that, and so are the debates related to LGBTQ rights.

James W. Craft, Broomfield

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A jury was picked Monday in the trial of a lawyer for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign who is accused of lying to the FBI as it investigated potential ties between Donald Trump and Russia in 2016.

The case against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity attorney who represented the Clinton campaign in 2016, is the first trial arising from the ongoing investigation by special counsel John Durham and will test the strength of evidence he and his team have gathered while scrutinizing the early days of the Trump-Russia probe for potential misconduct.

Sussmann appeared in court with his lawyers Monday as both sides worked to select jurors to hear the case, which is expected to last about two weeks. Prospective jurors who had already filled out questionnaires filed one-by-one into the courtroom to answer follow-up questions about topics including political contributions during the 2016 election and their opinions on lawyers and the criminal justice system.

The jury was finalized soon after 5 p.m. on Monday. Opening statements are set for Tuesday.

The case alleges a single false statement by Sussmann, but the stakes are high nonetheless: An acquittal is likely to hasten questions about the Durham probe’s purpose and cost to taxpayers while a guilty verdict will almost certainly energize Trump supporters who have long looked to Durham to expose what they see as biased treatment of the former president.

Sussmann is accused of misleading the FBI’s then-general counsel during a September 2016 meeting in which he presented research showing what he said might be a suspicious backchannel of communications between computer servers of the Trump Organization and Russia-based Alfa Bank.

Prosecutors allege Sussmann lied by saying that he wasn’t attending the meeting on behalf of any particular client when they say he was actually acting on behalf of two clients: the Clinton campaign and a technology executive who had helped assemble the computer data.

Durham’s team says that had the FBI been told the truth, it would have factored into the bureau’s assessment of the credibility of the Alfa Bank claims as it weighed whether to begin investigating. The FBI did look into the matter but ultimately found nothing suspicious.

Sussmann’s lawyers deny he lied but say the alleged misstatement isn’t relevant in any event since there’s no evidence that what the FBI knew or didn’t know about his political affiliations had any bearing on its decision-making about whether to investigate.

Durham was appointed in 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr to look for any misconduct as the U.S. government was examining potential coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to tip the outcome of the election. An investigation by an earlier special counsel, Robert Mueller, did not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign though it did find that Russia sought to aid Trump’s election bid.

The Alfa Bank matter was a peripheral part of the FBI’s investigation and the allegations of furtive contact were not even mentioned in Mueller’s 2019 report.

Durham’s work has resulted in three criminal cases, but only the one against Sussmann has reached trial.

In 2020, a former FBI lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to altering an email related to secret FBI surveillance of an ex-Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. In applying for warrants to eavesdrop on Page, the FBI relied on research files of anti-Trump information known colloquially as the “Steele dossier” that contained rumors and uncorroborated claims.

Last year, Durham charged a Russia analyst who was a source for that dossier with lying to the FBI about his own sources of information — among them, a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter. Igor Danchenko has pleaded not guilty. The case is pending.

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The announcement by Inspector General Michael Horowitz came shortly after Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco made the request for an internal investigation. Horowitz said he would examine whether the data subpoenaed by the Justice Department and turned over by Apple followed department policy and “whether any such uses, or the investigations, were based upon improper considerations.”

Horowitz said he would also investigate similar Trump-era seizures of journalists’ phone records.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and another Democratic member of the panel, California Rep. Eric Swalwell, said Apple notified them last month that their metadata had been subpoenaed and turned over to the Justice Department in 2018, as their committee was investigating the former president’s ties to Russia. Schiff was then the top Democrat on the panel, which was led by Republicans.

While the Justice Department routinely investigates leaked information, including classified intelligence, subpoenaing the private information of members of Congress is extraordinarily rare. The disclosures, first reported by The New York Times, raise questions about what the Justice Department’s justification was for spying on another branch of government and whether it was done for political reasons.

In a statement, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said the Trump administration’s conduct is “shocking” and “clearly fits within an appalling trend that represents the opposite of how authority should be used.”

Bates said one of President Joe Biden’s top reasons for seeking the presidency was “his predecessor’s unjustifiable abuses of power, including the repugnant ways he tried to force his political interests upon the Department of Justice.”

The Trump administration’s secretive move to gain access to the data came as the president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations — in Congress and by then-special counsel Robert Mueller — into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump called the probes a “witch hunt,” regularly criticized Democrats and Mueller on Twitter and dismissed as “fake news” leaks he found harmful to his agenda. As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a Justice Department he often regarded as his personal law firm.

Swalwell and Schiff were two of the most visible Democrats on the committee during the Russia probe, making frequent appearances on cable news. Trump watched those channels closely, if not obsessively, and seethed over the coverage.

Schiff said the seizures suggest “the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president” and urged the Justice Department to do “a full damage assessment of the conduct of the department over the last four years.”

Senate Democratic leaders immediately demanded that former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, who both oversaw Trump’s leak probes, testify about the secret subpoenas. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said in a statement that “this appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants” must be investigated. They said Barr and Sessions are subject to a subpoena if they refuse.

Prosecutors from Trump’s Justice Department had subpoenaed Apple for the data. The records of at least 12 people connected to the intelligence panel were eventually shared by the company, including aides, former aides and family members. One was a minor.

The subpoena, issued in February 2018, requested information on 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses, Apple said. It also included a non-disclosure order that prohibited the company from notifying any of the people, the company said in a statement. The subpoena didn’t include any context about the investigation and it would have been “virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users’ accounts,” the company said.

Apple informed the committee last month that the records had been shared and that the investigation had been closed, but did not give extensive detail. The committee official and the two others with knowledge of the data seizures were granted anonymity to discuss them.

The Justice Department obtained the metadata — often records of calls, texts and locations — but not other content from the devices, like photos, messages or emails. The order prohibiting Apple from discussing the subpoena, or notifying the people whose records were being seized, was extended three times, one each year, Apple said.

“We regularly challenge warrants, subpoenas and nondisclosure orders and have made it our policy to inform affected customers of governmental requests about them just as soon as possible,” the company statement said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement that the data seizures “appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy” by the former president.

“The news about the politicization of the Trump Administration Justice Department is harrowing,” she said.

The committee official said the House intelligence panel will ask Apple to look into whether additional lawmakers were targeted. The Justice Department has not been forthcoming on questions such as whether the investigation was properly predicated and whether it only focused on Democrats, the official said.

It is unclear why Trump’s Justice Department would have targeted a minor as part of the probe. Swalwell, confirming that he was told his records were seized, told CNN on Thursday night that he was aware a minor was involved and believed that person was “targeted punitively and not for any reason in law.”

The Senate Intelligence Committee was not similarly targeted, according to a fourth person who was aware of the probe and granted anonymity to discuss it.

There’s no indication that the Justice Department used the records to prosecute anyone. After some information related to the Russia investigation was declassified and made public during the later years of the Trump administration, some of the prosecutors were concerned that even if they could bring a leak case, conviction would be unlikely, one of the people said.

Federal agents questioned at least one former committee staff member in 2020, the person said, and ultimately, prosecutors weren’t able to substantiate a case.

The news follows revelations that the Justice Department had secretly seized phone records belonging to reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN as part of criminal leak investigations. Following an outcry from press freedom organizations, the Justice Department announced last week that it would cease the practice of going after journalists’ sourcing information.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

The search was the latest development in an inquiry that overlapped with the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, who was accused of pressuring the leaders of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son.

The probe involves a complex web of international characters who dealt with Giuliani as he tried to stir up support for a Ukrainian investigation of the Bidens.

Federal prosecutors haven’t disclosed which elements of Giuliani’s work are the focus of their probe, currently being led by Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

But at least one part is an examination of whether Giuliani failed to disclose to the U.S. government work he did on behalf of foreign entities.

WHY IS GIULIANI UNDER INVESTIGATION?

Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, said the search warrants involved an allegation that Giuliani failed to register as a foreign agent.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act, originally passed before World War II to expose Nazi propaganda, requires people to disclose to the Justice Department when they have been hired to lobby in the U.S. on behalf of foreign governments, figures or political entities.

Criminal prosecutions under the law were once rare, but there have been a number of high-profile cases in recent years, including during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of failing to register work he’d done for a political party in Ukraine. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, admitted making false statements about work he’d done for Turkey.

In addition, Imaad Zuberi, a political fundraiser who attracted attention for large donations to Trump’s inaugural committee, was sentenced in February to 12 years in prison for a violation of the foreign agents’ act and other crimes.

WHAT WORK DID GIULIANI DO ON BEHALF OF UKRANIAN INTERESTS?

In numerous interviews, Giuliani has said that his work in Ukraine was intended to benefit only one person: Trump.

His goal, he has said, was to get the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

However, at least some of the Ukrainian characters dealing with Giuliani as he tried to dig up dirt on the Bidens have said they also wanted his help with matters related to the U.S. government.

They included Ukraine’s then-prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko. In interviews, Lutsenko has said he asked for Giuliani’s help arranging a meeting with the U.S. attorney general to discuss efforts to recover looted national assets. He also spoke with Giuliani about his clashes with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. The Trump administration later removed Yovanovitch from her post.

If Giuliani lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian figures, he might have been obligated to disclose that work.

WHAT HAS GIULIANI SAID?

Costello, Giuliani’s lawyer, castigated Wednesday’s FBI raid as corrupt and said he can demonstrate that the former New York mayor did no work as a foreign agent.

Giuliani previously told The Associated Press he “never represented a foreign anything before the U.S. government.”

In the past, Giuliani has acknowledged that he considered taking on some Ukrainian figures and the Ukrainian government as paying clients, including Lutsenko, but said he ultimately decided not to do so.

That included deals that would have paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a New York Times report in 2019.

“I thought that would be too complicated,” Giuliani told the newspaper at the time. “I never received a penny.”

HAVE GIULIANI OR HIS ASSOCIATES BEEN CHARGED WITH ANYTHING?

Giuliani has not been charged with any crime and federal prosecutors have not publicly accused him of any misconduct.

Some of Giuliani’s associates in his campaign to dig up dirt on the Bidens have, however, been indicted.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who helped arrange Giuliani’s meetings with Ukrainian figures, face federal charges that they helped foreigners make illegal campaign contributions to American politicians, including a pro-Trump political action committee, while trying to gain influence in government.

Initially, prosecutors had accused them of also secretly working on behalf of an unnamed Ukrainian official who wanted the removal of the U.S. ambassador, but that allegation was subsequently quietly erased from a superseding indictment.

It isn’t part of the criminal case, but Parnas in 2019 also helped arrange for an Ukrainian tycoon, Dmitry Firtash, to hire lawyers to lobby the U.S. Justice Department to drop an international bribery charge pending against him in Chicago.

Firtash has said in interviews that at one time he was paying $300,000 per month to those lawyers, Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, who were also involved in Giuliani’s campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

The FBI also executed a search warrant Wednesday on a phone belonging to Toensing, who has said she is not a target of the investigation.

Some documents that Toensing or diGenova gathered, ostensibly as part of Firtash’s attempts to fight extradition from Austria, wound up being the basis of conservative media reports that Joe Biden had tried to block a Ukrainian prosecutor from investigating the gas company that had put Hunter Biden on its board.

Biden did press for the prosecutor’s firing, but that����ap because he was reflecting the official position of not only the Obama administration but many Western countries that the prosecutor was perceived as soft on corruption.

A Treasury Department statement Thursday offered a potentially significant clue, asserting that Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant, had shared sensitive campaign and polling information with Russian intelligence services.

Kilimnik has long been alleged by U.S. officials to have ties to Russian intelligence. But the statement in a broader Treasury Department sanctions announcement was the first time the U.S. government had so directly drawn a connection from the Trump campaign to the Kremlin’s intelligence services. The revelation was all the more startling because it went beyond any allegation made in either special counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report or in an even more damning and detailed document released last year by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Both those investigations were unable to determine what Kilimnik did with the data and whether he shared it further.

The issue resurfaced Thursday because Kilimnik was one of 32 people and entities sanctioned by the U.S. government for interference in the 2020 election. Officials say Kilimnik sought to promote the bogus narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 election.

Kilimnik was a key but mysterious figure in Mueller’s investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. A business associate of Manafort����ap who worked closely with him, even managing his firm’s office in Kyiv, Kilimnik is mentioned by name 156 times in the Mueller report. He was also indicted alongside Manafort on witness tampering allegations, but has not appeared in the U.S. to face those charges. The FBI has issued a $250,000 award for information leading to his arrest.

A key episode examined by Mueller involved Manafort����ap decision to share campaign polling data with Kilimnik — something prosecutors say Manafort lied about when questioned. Investigators scrutinized a series of secretive encounters between the men, including one in August 2016 at the Grand Havana Club in New York.

There, according to statements provided by Mueller, Manafort briefed Kilimnik on internal campaign data and messaging and they discussed battleground states.

The exchange of polling data was an eye-catching data point, especially since it suggested Russia could have exploited such inside information to target influence campaigns aimed at boosting Trump’s election bid in 2016.

But Mueller’s team said it couldn’t “reliably determine” Manafort����ap purpose in sharing it, nor assess what Kilimnik may have done with it — in part due to questions over Manafort����ap credibility. The Senate committee also came up empty, though its report drew attention for its characterization of Kilimnik as a Russian intelligence officer.

It was not clear what new information, if any, led to the Treasury Department����ap assessment that Kilimnik had “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy.” A Treasury Department spokesman did not return an email seeking comment.

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