The interrogation of a Libyan militant accused of playing an instrumental role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks was conducted lawfully and may be admitted at his trial next month, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper on Monday rejected defense attorneys’ claims that the militant, Mustafa al-Imam, had been suffering from mental trauma and seasickness when he agreed to speak with American officials aboard a U.S. Navy vessel days after his 2017 abduction in Libya.

In a separate ruling, Cooper recently refused to dismiss murder and terrorism charges against al-Imam, clearing the way for him to stand trial May 6 in Washington.

The fiery assaults on the U.S. compounds in Benghazi killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, and prompted a multiyear political fracas in which Republicans accused the Obama administration of a bungled response. 

Al-Imam is the second militant to stand trial. Ahmed Abu Khattala, the head of an Islamist extremist militia who directed the attacks, was convicted in 2017 of terrorism-related counts but acquitted of murder. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison

While Khattala’s case initially unfolded as a major courthouse spectacle but ended in a mixed verdict for the government, Al-Imam’s trial is proceeding with minimal attention.

Al-Imam originally faced a single count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists resulting in death. But the Justice Department last year quietly brought a 17-count superseding indictment charging him with murder in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens, communications specialist Sean Smith and security officers Tyrone Snowden Woods and Glen Anthony Doherty.

The new charges virtually mirror those brought against Khattala, who was accused of driving to the diplomatic mission on Sept. 11, 2012, and breaching the main gate with militants who attacked with assault rifles, grenades and other weapons. The initial attack killed Stevens and Smith and set the mission ablaze. Woods and Doherty were later killed at a CIA annex.

Prosecutors acknowledged they lacked evidence of Khattala actually firing any weapons, but said the violence was aimed at killing American personnel at the compound and looting the buildings of documents, maps and computers.

Civilian court

Khattala’s capture by U.S. special forces in 2014, and subsequent transport aboard a Navy ship revived the legal and political debate about how the United States government should treat foreign militants overseas. The decision to prosecute Khattala in federal court in Washington was an affirmation by the Obama administration in its faith that civilian courts could guarantee swifter and surer justice than military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Al-Imam is being tried in a civilian court despite the Trump administration’s earlier contention that such suspects are better sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Al-Imam’s arrest, five years after the attack, marked the first publicly known operation since President Donald Trump took office targeting those accused of involvement in Benghazi.

The government has revealed few details about Al-Imam’s alleged role in the attacks. Prosecutors described him in court filings as a close associate of Khattala who “helped orchestrate and participated in the attacks.”

Accusations

Al-Imam is accused of entering the U.S. mission compound in Benghazi “at the direction of Abu Khattala” and taking sensitive material that identified the location of the CIA annex about a mile away from the mission “as the evacuation point for Department of State personnel,” according to the indictment.

Following the initial assault on the mission, the indictment says, al-Imam returned to a camp with Khattala “and other attackers, where a large group of armed extremists began assembling for the attack on the annex.”

The annex was twice targeted by mortar fire hours after the attack on the mission, killing Woods and Doherty, the two CIA security contractors defending the annex from the rooftop.

Al-Imam’s defense attorneys declined to comment on the charges. They said in a recent court filing that the Justice Department “has the unusual advantage of having essentially tried this case once already,” referring to the proceedings against Khattala.

The trial, which is expected to last about a month, will focus in part on al-Imam’s “demonstrated biases before the attack,” as well as “admissions” he made to law enforcement aboard a U.S. naval vessel following his capture in Misrata, Libya, prosecutors said in court filings.

Al-Imam gave three interviews to U.S. officials before requesting an attorney, according to the court filings, acknowledging that he accompanied Khattala to the U.S. mission on the day of the attack.

FBI records show al-Imam admitted stealing a phone and map from the mission “but did not want to be known as a thief.”
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U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday a Democratic bid to restore the 2015 net neutrality rules is “dead on arrival in the Senate.”

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote later on Tuesday on a Democratic plan to reinstate the Obama-era rules and overturn a December 2017 decision by the Federal Communications Commission to reverse the rules and hand sweeping authority to internet providers to recast how Americans access the internet.

The bill mirrors an effort last year to reverse the FCC’s order, approved on a 3-2 vote, that repealed rules barring providers from blocking or slowing internet content or offering paid “fast lanes.”

The reversal of net neutrality rules was a win for internet providers such as Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., but was opposed by companies like Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc.

On Monday, the White House told Congress that if the bill were approved, President Donald Trump’s advisers would recommend he veto it. The White House “strongly opposes” the measure that would “return to the heavy-handed regulatory approach of the previous administration,” it said in a statement.

The bill would repeal the order introduced by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, bar the FCC from reinstating it or a substantially similar order and reinstate the 2015 net neutrality order. The House will also consider a series of amendments.

Representative Mike Doyle, a Democrat, said Tuesday the bill “puts a cop on the beat to make sure our internet service providers aren’t acting in an unjust, unreasonable or discriminatory way.”

 
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“Full House” star Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband, Mossimo Giannulli, and 14 other parents were hit Tuesday with a new money laundering charge in the sweeping college admissions bribery scheme.

The move comes a day after fellow actress Felicity Huffman, 12 other parents and a coach agreed to plead guilty — signaling an escalation in the case against the parents who are continuing to fight the allegations against them.

Loughlin and Giannulli were among 33 prominent parents accused of participating in a scheme that involved rigging college entrance exams and bribing coaches at elite universities.

They were arrested last month on a single charge of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. An indictment brought Tuesday adds a charge of money laundering conspiracy against the couple and 14 other parents.

Amy and Gregory Colburn, a California couple accused of paying $25,000 to cheat on their son’s SAT, were indicted on the money laundering and mail fraud conspiracy charges last month.

The parents are accused of paying an admissions consultant, Rick Singer, to cheat on their children’s college entrance exams and get their children admitted as athletic recruits at such elite schools as Georgetown and Yale.

Loughlin and Giannulli are accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters into the University of Southern California as crew team recruits, even though neither of them played the sport.

They appeared in Boston federal court briefly last week and were not asked to enter a plea. They have not publicly addressed the allegations against them.

Other parents indicted on the new charge Tuesday include Michelle Janavs, whose family developed the microwave snack line Hot Pockets before selling their company, and William McGlashan, who co-founded an investment fund with U2’s Bono in 2017.

Huffman, the 56-year-old Emmy-winner who stared in ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” was accused of paying $15,000 disguised as a charitable donation to have a proctor correct the answers on her daughter’s SAT. She and the 12 other parents agreed to plead guilty Monday to a single charge of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

Prosecutors say they will seek a prison sentence that’s on the low end of between four and 10 months for Huffman.

In her first public comments since her arrest, Huffman took responsibility for her actions and said she would accept the consequences.

“My daughter knew absolutely nothing about my actions, and in my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her. This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life. My desire to help my daughter is no excuse to break the law or engage in dishonesty,” she said after her plea deal was announced.
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U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell said on Monday he would seek the Democratic nomination for president, joining a crowded field seeking to take on Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Swalwell, a third-term congressman from a California district south of San Francisco, made the announcement during a taping of CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which airs later on Monday. The program tweeted a clip of Swalwell saying he was running for president.

Swalwell said tackling student debt and gun violence were among the reasons he jumped into the Democratic primary race.

“None of that is going to change until we get a leader who is willing to go big on the issues we take on, be bold in the solutions we offer, and do good in the way that we govern. I’m ready to solve these problems. I’m running for president,” Swalwell said.

Swalwell, 38, is now among the youngest candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination, along with Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Representative Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, both of whom are 37. Thirty-five is the minimum age to serve as U.S. president.

Swalwell cited his work on the House Intelligence Committee and his founding of Future Forum, a group of more than 25 Democratic lawmakers that visits universities and community colleges to discuss issues important to millennial voters like student loan debt and climate change, among the reasons he would be a qualified White House candidate.

In his first House campaign, Swalwell defeated a Democratic incumbent who had been in office since 1973, seven years before Swalwell was born.

Since joining Congress, Swalwell has advocated for raising the cap on the portion of salary that is subject to the Social Security payroll tax. He has also proposed a “mobile Congress” that would allow lawmakers to cast votes remotely from their districts.

Swalwell grew up in Iowa and California. He attended Campbell University in North Carolina on a soccer scholarship for two years before transferring to the University of Maryland, where he earned his bachelor’s and law degrees.

Other House lawmakers in the Democratic race include Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who announced his bid last week. Former Representative Beto O’Rourke from Texas is also a contender.

U.S. senators vying for the Democratic presidential nomination include Kamala Harris of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
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A U.S. judge on Monday issued an injunction halting the Trump administration’s policy of sending some asylum-seekers back across the southern border to wait out their cases in Mexico.

The ruling is slated to take effect on Friday, according to the order by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco. The injunction will apply nationwide.

The ruling removes at least temporarily a controversial Trump administration strategy aimed at slowing a flood of immigrants, mostly from Central America, that swelled last month to the highest level in a decade.

Because of limits on how long children are legally allowed to be held in detention, many of the families are released to await U.S. immigration court hearings, a process that can take years because of ballooning backlogs. In response, the Trump administration in January started sending some migrants to wait out their U.S. court dates in Mexican border cities.

The Department of Homeland Security said last week that it planned to expand the program.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
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