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Focusing heavily on the threat he says former US President Donald Trump poses to American democracy, President Joe Biden kicked off his reelection campaign by pledging to make the defense of the country’s democratic system the central theme of his 2024 campaign and potential second term. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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new york — The longtime head of the National Rifle Association said Friday he is resigning, just days before the start of a civil trial over allegations he diverted millions of dollars from the powerful gun rights organization to pay for personal travel, private security and other lavish perks.

Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president and chief executive officer, said his departure is effective Jan. 31. The trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against him, the NRA and others who’ve served as executives is scheduled to start Monday. LaPierre is among the witnesses expected to testify. The NRA said it will continue to fight the lawsuit.

“With pride in all that we have accomplished, I am announcing my resignation from the NRA,” LaPierre said in a statement released by the organization, which said he was exiting for health reasons. “I’ve been a card-carrying member of this organization for most of my adult life, and I will never stop supporting the NRA and its fight to defend Second Amendment freedom. My passion for our cause burns as deeply as ever.”

James, a Democrat, called LaPierre’s resignation an “important victory in our case” and confirmed that the trial will go on as scheduled. His exit “validates our claims against him, but it will not insulate him or the NRA from accountability,” James said in a statement.

Andrew Arulanandam, a top NRA lieutenant who has served as LaPierre’s spokesperson, will assume his roles on an interim basis, the organization said.

LaPierre, 74, has led the NRA’s day-to-day operations since 1991, acting as the face and vehement voice of its gun-rights agenda and becoming one of the most influential figures in shaping U.S. gun policy. He once warned of “jack-booted government thugs” busting down doors to seize guns, called for armed guards in every school after a spate of shootings, and condemned gun control advocates as “opportunists” who “exploit tragedy for gain.”

In recent years though, the NRA has been beset by financial troubles, dwindling membership and infighting among its 76-member board, along with lingering questions about LaPierre’s leadership and spending. In 2021, at LaPierre’s direction, the NRA filed for bankruptcy and sought to incorporate in Texas instead of New York — but a judge rejected the move, saying it was a transparent attempt to avoid culpability in James’ lawsuit.

Gun control advocates lauded LaPierre’s resignation, mocking his oft-repeated talking point in the wake of myriad mass shootings over the years.

“Thoughts and prayers to Wayne LaPierre,” said Kris Brown, president of the gun control advocacy group Brady. “He’s going to need them to be able to sleep at night. Wayne LaPierre spent three decades peddling the Big Lie that more guns make us safer — all at the expense of countless lives. He has blood on his hands, and I won’t miss him.”

James’ lawsuit accuses LaPierre and other executives of abusing their power and spending tens of millions of dollars in organization funds on personal trips, no-show contracts and other questionable expenditures.

The suit claims LaPierre spent millions on private jet flights and personal security and accepting expensive gifts — such as African safaris and use of a 32-meter yacht — from vendors.

He is also accused of setting himself up with a $17 million contract with the NRA if he were to exit the organization, spending NRA money on travel consultants, luxury car services, and private jet flights for himself and his family.

Phillip Journey, an ex-NRA board member who clashed with LaPierre and is expected to testify at the New York trial, said LaPierre’s resignation doesn’t resolve open questions before the court or fix persistent rot within the organization.

“Honestly, the grifters are a snake with many heads and this is just one,” said Journey, a Kansas judge who is running to rejoin the NRA board.

Journey also testified at the NRA’s bankruptcy trial in Texas and said he anticipates there is enough evidence for James to prove her case.

James is seeking to ban LaPierre and the other executives from serving in leadership positions of any not-for-profit or charitable organization conducting business in New York, which would effectively remove them from any involvement with the NRA.

Though now headquartered in Virginia, the NRA was chartered as a nonprofit charity in New York in 1871 by returning Union Army officers who sought to improve marksmanship among soldiers. It remains incorporated in the state.
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WASHINGTON — Members of far-right extremist groups. Former police officers. An Olympic gold medalist swimmer. And active-duty U.S. Marines.

They are among the hundreds of people who have been convicted in the massive prosecution of the January 6, 2021, riot in the three years since the stunned nation watched the U.S. Capitol attack unfold on live TV.

Washington’s federal courthouse remains flooded with trials, guilty plea hearings and sentencings stemming from what has become the largest criminal investigation in American history. And the hunt for suspects is far from over.

“We cannot replace votes and deliberation with violence and intimidation,” Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters on Thursday.

Authorities are still working to identify more than 80 people wanted for acts of violence at the Capitol and to find out who placed pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic national committees’ offices the day before the Capitol attack. And they continue to regularly make new arrests, even as some January 6 defendants are being released from prison after completing their sentences.

The cases are playing out at the same courthouse where Donald Trump is scheduled to stand trial in March in the case accusing the former president of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in the run-up to the Capitol attack.

“The Justice Department will hold all January 6 perpetrators at any level accountable under the law, whether they were present that day or otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday.

He said the cases filed by Graves and the special counsel in Trump’s federal case, Jack Smith, show the department is “abiding by the long-standing norms to ensure independence and integrity or our investigations.”

Here is a look at where the cases against the January 6 defendants stand: 

By the numbers

More than 1,230 people have been charged with federal crimes in the riot, ranging from misdemeanor offenses such as trespassing to felonies such as assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy. Roughly 730 people have pleaded guilty to charges, while another roughly 170 have been convicted of at least one charge at a trial decided by a judge or a jury, according to an Associated Press database. 

Two defendants have been acquitted of all charges, and those were trials decided by a judge rather than a jury. 

About 750 people have been sentenced, with almost two-thirds receiving some time behind bars. Prison sentences have ranged from a few days of intermittent confinement to 22 years in prison. The longest sentence was handed down to Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys national chairman who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors described as a plot to stop the transfer of power from Trump, a Republican, to Joe Biden, a Democrat. 

Many rioters are already out of prison after completing their sentences, including some defendants who engaged in violence. Scott Fairlamb — a New Jersey man who punched a police officer during the riot and was the first January 6 defendant to be sentenced for assaulting law enforcement — was released from Bureau of Prisons’ custody in June. 

All eyes on the Supreme Court

Defense attorneys and prosecutors are closely watching a case that will soon be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court that could impact hundreds of January 6 defendants. The justices agreed last month to hear one rioter’s challenge to prosecutors’ use of the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, which refers to the disruption of Congress’ certification of Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump. 

More than 300 January 6 defendants have been charged with the obstruction offense, and so has Trump in the federal case brought by special counsel Smith. Lawyers representing rioters have argued the charge was inappropriately brought against January 6 defendants. 

The justices will hear arguments in March or April, with a decision expected by early summer. But their review of the obstruction charge is already having some impact on the January 6 prosecutions. At least two defendants have convinced judges to delay their sentencing until after the Supreme Court rules on the matter. 

Rioters on the lam

Dozens of people believed to have assaulted law enforcement during the riot have yet to be identified by authorities, according to Graves. And the statute of limitations for the crimes is five years, which means they would have to be charged by January 6, 2026, he said. 

Several defendants have also fled after being charged, including a Proud Boys member from Florida who disappeared while he was on house arrest after he was convicted of using pepper spray gel on police officers. Christopher Worrell, who spent weeks on the lam, was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison. 

The FBI is still searching for some defendants who have been on the run for months, including a brother-sister pair from Florida. Olivia Pollock disappeared shortly before her trial was supposed to begin in March. Her brother, Jonathan Pollock, is also missing. The FBI has offered a reward of up to $30,000 for information leading to the arrest of Jonathan Pollock, who is accused of thrusting a riot shield into an officer’s face and throat, pulling an officer down steps and punching others. 

Another defendant, Evan Neumann, fled the U.S. two months after his December 2021 indictment and is believed to be living in Belarus. 

What about the pipe bomber?

One of the biggest remaining mysteries surrounding the riot is the identity of the person who placed two pipe bombs outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic national committees the day before the Capitol attack. Last year, authorities increased the reward to up to $500,000 for information leading to the person’s arrest. It remains unclear whether there was a connection between the pipe bombs and the riot. 

Investigators have spent thousands of hours over the last three years doing interviews and combing through evidence and tips from the public, said David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office. 

“We urge anyone who may have previously hesitated to come forward or who may not have realized they had important information to contact us and share anything relevant,” he said in an emailed statement on Thursday. 

The explosive devices were placed outside the two buildings between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on January 5, 2021, but officers didn’t find them until the next day. The bombs were rendered safe, and no one was hurt. 
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This week the United States Department of Justice unsealed formerly confidential documents pertaining to convicted sexual offender Jeffrey Epstein. Some of the documents mention big names, including former U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, Britain’s Prince Andrew and others. Aron Ranen reports on the story from New York City.
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NEW YORK — Glynis Johns, a Tony Award-winning stage and screen star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the classic movie Mary Poppins and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be Send in the Clowns by Stephen Sondheim, has died. She was 100.

Mitch Clem, her manager, said she died Thursday at an assisted living home in Los Angeles of natural causes. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”

Johns was known to be a perfectionist about her profession — precise, analytical and opinionated. The roles she took had to be multifaceted. Anything less was giving less than her all.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m not interested in playing the role on only one level,” she told The Associated Press in 1990. “The whole point of first-class acting is to make a reality of it.  To be real. And I have to make sense of it in my own mind in order to be real.”

Johns’ greatest triumph was playing Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, for which she won a Tony in 1973. Sondheim wrote the show’s hit song Send in the Clowns to suit her distinctive husky voice, but she lost the part in the 1977 film version to Elizabeth Taylor.

“I’ve had other songs written for me, but nothing like that,” Johns told the AP in 1990. “It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given in the theater.”

Others who followed Johns in singing Sondheim’s most popular song include Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Olivia Newton-John. It also appeared in season two of Yellowjackets in 2023, sung by Elijah Wood. 

Back when it was being conceived, A Little Night Music had gone into rehearsal with some of the book and score unfinished, including a solo song for Johns. Director Hal Prince suggested she and co-star Len Cariou improvise a scene or two to give book writer Hugh Wheeler some ideas. 

“Hal said ‘Why don’t you just say what you feel,'” she recalled to the AP. “When Len and I did that, Hal got on the phone to Steve Sondheim and said, ‘I think you’d better get in a cab and get round here and watch what they’re doing because you are going to get the idea for Glynis’ solo.'”

Johns was the fourth generation of an English theatrical family. Her father, Mervyn Johns, had a long career as a character actor, and her mother was a pianist. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa, because her parents were visiting the area on tour at the time of her birth.

Johns was a dancer at 12 and an actor at 14 in London’s West End. Her breakthrough role was as the amorous mermaid in the title of the 1948 hit comedy Miranda.

“I was quite an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was just fine; I swam like a porpoise,” she told Newsday in 1998. In 1960’s The Sundowners, with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum, she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. (She lost out to Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry.)

Other highlights include playing the mother in Mary Poppins, the movie that introduced Julie Andrews and where she sang the rousing tune Sister Suffragette. She also starred in the 1989 Broadway revival of The Circle, W. Somerset Maugham’s romantic comedy about love, marriage and fidelity, opposite Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger.

“I’ve retired many times. My personal life has come before my work. The theater is just part of my life. It probably uses my highest sense of intelligence, so therefore I have to come back to it, to realize that I’ve got the talent. I’m not as good doing anything else,” she told the AP.

To prepare for A Coffin in Egypt, Horton Foote’s 1998 play about a grand dame reminiscing about her life on and off a ranch on the Texas prairie, she asked the Texas-born Foote to record a short tape of himself reading some lines and used it as her coach.

In a 1991 revival of A Little Night Music in Los Angeles, she played Madame Armfeldt, the mother of Desiree, the part she had created. In 1963, she starred in her own TV sitcom, Glynis. 

Johns lived all around the world and had four husbands. The first was the father of her only child, the late Gareth Forwood, an actor who died in 2007.
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