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A Virginia man accused of stockpiling bombs pleads guilty
Court Watch |
2025/07/19 12:24
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A Virginia man pleaded guilty Friday in a federal case that accused him of stockpiling the largest number of finished explosives in FBI history and of using then-President Joe Biden’s photo for target practice.
Brad Spafford pleaded guilty in federal court in Norfolk to possession of an unregistered short barrel rifle and possession of an unregistered destructive device, according to court documents. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for December.
Federal authorities said they seized about 150 pipe bombs and other homemade devices last fall at Spafford’s home in Isle of Wight County, which is northwest of Norfolk.
The investigation into Spafford began in 2023 when an informant told authorities that Spafford was stockpiling weapons and ammunition, according to court documents. The informant, a friend and member of law enforcement, told authorities that Spafford was using pictures of then-President Joe Biden for target practice and that “he believed political assassinations should be brought back,” prosecutors wrote.
Two weeks after the assassination attempt of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2024, Spafford told the informant, “bro I hope the shooter doesn’t miss Kamala,” according to court documents. Former Vice President Kamala Harris had recently announced she was running for president. On around the same day, Spafford told the informant that he was pursuing a sniper qualification at the local gun range, court records stated.
Spafford stored a highly unstable explosive material in a garage freezer next to “Hot Pockets and frozen corn on the cob,” according to court documents. Investigators also said they found explosive devices in an unsecured backpack labeled “#NoLivesMatter.”
Spafford has remained in jail since his arrest last December. U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen ruled against his release last January, writing that Spafford has “shown the capacity for extreme danger.” She also noted that Spafford lost three fingers in an accident involving homemade explosives in 2021.
Spafford had initially pleaded not guilty to the charges in January. Defense attorneys had argued at the time that Spafford, who is married and a father of two young daughters, works a steady job as a machinist and has no criminal record.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Swartz said at Spafford’s January detention hearing that investigators had gathered information on him since January 2023, during which Spafford never threatened anyone.
“And what has he done during those two years?” Swartz said. “He purchased a home. He’s raised his children. He’s in a great marriage. He has a fantastic job, and those things all still exist for him.”
Investigators, however, said they had limited knowledge of the homemade bombs until an informant visited Spafford’s home, federal prosecutors wrote in a filing.
“But once the defendant stated on a recorded wire that he had an unstable primary explosive in the freezer in October 2024, the government moved swiftly,” prosecutors wrote.
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Man charged with killing Minnesota lawmaker plans to plead not guilty
Court News |
2025/07/15 12:25
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A Minnesota man plans to plead not guilty to charges he killed the top Democratic leader in the state House and her husband after wounding another lawmaker and his wife, his attorney said.
Vance Boelter, 57, is due in federal court for his arraignment on Sept. 12 under an order issued late Tuesday, hours after a grand jury indicted him on six counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations. The murder charges could carry the federal death penalty.
At a news conference Tuesday, prosecutors released a rambling handwritten letter they say Boelter wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel in which he confessed to the June 14 shootings of Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. However, the letter doesn’t make clear why he targeted the couples.
Boelter’s federal defender, Manny Atwal, said in an email that the weighty charges do not come as a surprise.
“The indictment starts the process of receiving discovery which will allow me to evaluate the case,” Atwal said Tuesday. She did not immediately comment Wednesday on any possible defense strategies.
At his last court appearance, Boelter said he was “looking forward to the facts about the 14th coming out.”
While the scheduling order set a trial date of Nov. 3, Atwal said it was “very unlikely” to happen so soon.
Investigators have already gathered a huge amount of evidence that both sides will need time to evaluate. The scheduling order acknowledges that both sides may find grounds for seeking extensions. And the potential for a death sentence adds yet another level of complexity.
The acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, reiterated Tuesday that they consider the former House speaker’s death a “political assassination” and the wounding of Sen. John Hoffman an “attempted assassination.”
But Thompson told reporters a decision on whether to seek the death penalty “will not come for several months.” He said it will ultimately be up to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, with input from the capital case unit at the Department of Justice, local prosecutors and the victims.
Minnesota abolished its state death penalty in 1911, but the Trump administration says it intends to be aggressive in seeking capital punishment for eligible federal crimes.
Boelter’s motivations remain murky. Friends have described him as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had been struggling to find work. Boelter allegedly made lists of politicians in Minnesota and other states — all or mostly Democrats — and attorneys at national law firms. In an interview published by the New York Post on Saturday, Boelter insisted the shootings had nothing to do with his opposition to abortion or his support for President Donald Trump, but he declined to elaborate on that point.
“There is little evidence showing why he turned to political violence and extremism,” Thompson said.
Prosecutors say Boelter was disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car early June 14 when he went to the Hoffmans’ home in the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin. He allegedly shot the senator nine times, and his wife, Yvette, eight times, but they survived.
Boelter later allegedly went to the Hortmans’ home in nearby Brooklyn Park and killed both of them. Their dog was so gravely injured that he had to be euthanized.
Investigators found Boelter’s letter to the FBI director in the car he abandoned near his rural home in Green Isle, west of Minneapolis. He surrendered the night after the shootings following what authorities have called the largest search for a suspect in Minnesota history. |
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Court clears the way for Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce
Court News |
2025/07/13 09:00
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs.
The justices overrode lower court orders that temporarily froze the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency.
The court said in an unsigned order that no specific cuts were in front of the justices, only an executive order issued by Trump and an administration directive for agencies to undertake job reductions.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenting vote, accusing her colleagues of a “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.”
Jackson warned of enormous real-world consequences. “This executive action promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it,” she wrote.
The high court action continued a remarkable winning streak for Trump, who the justices have allowed to move forward with significant parts of his plan to remake the federal government. The Supreme Court’s intervention so far has been on the frequent emergency appeals the Justice Department has filed objecting to lower-court rulings as improperly intruding on presidential authority.
The Republican president has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate for the work, and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE. Musk recently left his role.
“Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling is another definitive victory for the President and his administration. It clearly rebukes the continued assaults on the President’s constitutionally authorized executive powers by leftist judges who are trying to prevent the President from achieving government efficiency across the federal government,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.
In May, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trump’s administration needs congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block Illston’s order, finding that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nation’s food-safety system and health care for veterans.
Illston directed numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management. Illston was nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton.
The labor unions and nonprofit groups that sued over the downsizing offered the justices several examples of what would happen if it were allowed to take effect, including cuts of 40% to 50% at several agencies. Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco were among cities that also sued.
“Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy. This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the parties that sued said in a joint statement.
Among the agencies affected by the order are the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, the Interior, State, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs. It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency. |
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Georgia appeals court upholds ruling saying election officials must certify results
Court Watch |
2025/07/09 09:00
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A Georgia appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that said county election officials in the state must vote to certify results according to deadlines set in law.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney had ruled in October that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Republican Fulton County election board member Julie Adams, who abstained from certifying primary election results last year.
A three-judge panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals last week upheld McBurney’s ruling, saying “Adams’ contention that the trial court erred by declaring she had a mandatory duty to certify election results is without merit.”
Certification, an administrative task that involves certifying the number of votes, became a political flashpoint when President Donald Trump tried to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 general election. Republicans in several swing states refused to certify results during primary elections last year, and some sued to try to keep from being forced to sign off on election results.
In the run-up to last year’s presidential election, Democrats and some voting rights groups worried that Trump-allied election officials could refuse to certify election results if he were to lose to then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump ended up beating Harris.
Georgia law says county election superintendents, which are generally multimember boards, shall certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election, or the Tuesday after if Monday is a holiday.
McBurney had written in his order that Georgia law allows county election officials to examine whether fraud has occurred and what should be done about it. They should share any concerns with the appropriate authorities for criminal prosecution or use them to file an election challenge in court, but cannot use their concerns to justify not certifying results, the judge wrote.
The Court of Appeals opinion echoed McBurney’s ruling.
The appeals court also noted that state law limits county election officials’ review of documents to instances when the total number of votes exceeds the total number of voters or ballots and also limits the review to documents related to the relevant precinct. To the extent that McBurney’s ruling allows a more expansive review, the judges sent it back to him for reconsideration.
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US completes deportation of 8 men to South Sudan after weeks of legal wrangling
Legal Interview |
2025/07/06 10:28
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Eight men deported from the United States in May and held under guard for weeks at an American military base in the African nation of Djibouti while their legal challenges played out in court have now reached the Trump administration’s intended destination, war-torn South Sudan, a country the State Department advises against travel to due to “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
The immigrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan arrived in South Sudan on Friday after a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to relocate them in a case that had gone to the Supreme Court, which had permitted their removal from the U.S. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the U.S.
“This was a win for the rule of law, safety and security of the American people,” said Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin in a statement Saturday announcing the men’s arrival in South Sudan, a chaotic country in danger once more of collapsing into civil war.
The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the transfer of the men who had been put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan. That meant that the South Sudan transfer could be completed after the flight was detoured to a base in Djibouti, where they men were held in a converted shipping container. The flight was detoured after a federal judge found the administration had violated his order by failing to allow the men a chance to challenge the removal.
The court’s conservative majority had ruled in June that immigration officials could quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger.
A flurry of court hearings on Independence Day resulted a temporary hold on the deportations while a judge evaluated a last-ditch appeal by the men’s before the judge decided he was powerless to halt their removals and that the person best positioned to rule on the request was a Boston judge whose rulings led to the initial halt of the administration’s effort to begin deportations to South Sudan.
By Friday evening, that judge had issued a brief ruling concluding the Supreme Court had tied his hands.
The men had final orders of removal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said. Authorities have reached agreements with other countries to house immigrants if authorities cannot quickly send them back to their homelands.
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