A 56-year-old father opened fire at a Pawtucket, Rhode Island, ice rink during a high school hockey game Monday afternoon, killing two family members, critically injuring three others, and then turning the gun on himself. The shooter, Robert Dorgan, also identified as Roberta Esposito, had posted a threatening message on X just hours before the massacre.
The dead include the mother of Dorgan's hockey-playing son, a senior at North Providence High School, and the student athlete's sibling. Three others, described as two relatives and a family friend, remained in critical condition. Police had not publicly identified the victims at the time of reporting.
Pawtucket Police Chief Tina Goncalves addressed reporters after the shooting:
"It appears that this was a targeted event, that it may be a family dispute."
It was not immediately clear whether the mother killed was Dorgan's ex-wife, Rhonda Dorgan.
On Sunday evening, someone on X called trans Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride a man. The post involved actor Kevin Sorbo. Dorgan responded publicly with a message that now reads like a warning shot:
"Keep bashing us. But do not wonder why we Go BERSERK"
Less than 24 hours later, the New York Post reported, Dorgan walked into an ice rink full of families and children and started shooting.
Police said they are still probing the exact motive. Detectives were reviewing surveillance footage from inside the arena. But the timeline is what it is. A person posted a threat invoking violence in the context of trans-rights grievance, then carried out a mass shooting targeting family members the very next day.
Dorgan underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2020. That same year, Rhonda Dorgan filed for divorce. A court filing obtained by local outlet WPRI listed the grounds as "gender reassignment surgery, narcissistic + personality disorder traits." The divorce was finalized in 2021.
What followed were years of heated court disputes over Dorgan's identity. No specific details about those proceedings have been made public, but they paint a picture of a family in prolonged crisis, the kind that courts can document but rarely resolve.
A woman identified as Dorgan's daughter was spotted leaving the Pawtucket police station after the shooting. She told reporters plainly:
"He shot my family, and he's dead now."
She added that Dorgan "has mental health issues" and was "very sick."
Witnesses described a Good Samaritan, the father of another hockey player, who rushed toward the gunfire rather than away from it. He attempted to subdue Dorgan and, according to witnesses, managed to disarm him. But Dorgan had a backup firearm. The heroism was real. So was its limit.
Chief Goncalves hailed the man's courage. In a scene that should have held nothing more dangerous than a body check, an ordinary dad tried to do what instinct and decency demanded.
This shooting arrived just days after another: 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, a transgender high school dropout in Canada, killed his own mother and stepbrother, then shot six others at his former school in one of Canada's deadliest mass shootings.
Two mass shootings. Two transgender shooters. Back to back.
The cultural establishment will spend the next week doing what it always does: warning against "misuse" of these facts, cautioning that correlation is not causation, and urging restraint in connecting dots that are, frankly, sitting on top of each other. They will frame any discussion of a pattern as bigotry. They will insist the real danger is the conversation itself.
But the question is not whether every transgender person is violent. Obviously not. The question is whether a cultural and medical framework that often accompanies severe mental health distress is getting the scrutiny it deserves, or whether ideological commitments have made that scrutiny impossible. When Dorgan's own daughter says her father was "very sick," and court documents reference narcissistic personality disorder traits alongside gender reassignment surgery, you don't have to be a diagnostician to recognize that something was profoundly wrong long before Monday afternoon.
The left has spent years insisting that gender transition is purely therapeutic, that questioning it is violence, and that anyone who resists the narrative is responsible for harm against trans individuals. Dorgan's X post operated on exactly that logic: you bash us, so don't wonder when we snap. It reframed the shooter as the victim before the first shot was fired.
That framing is not just wrong. It is dangerous. It provides a moral architecture for violence by casting the perpetrator as the oppressed party striking back. And when the bodies are real, the framework collapses under its own weight.
Police are still investigating. The surveillance footage may clarify the sequence of events inside the rink. The relationships between Dorgan and each victim may shed light on whether this was purely domestic or whether the trans-rights grievance expressed online played a motivating role.
But families in Pawtucket already know everything they need to know. They brought their kids to a hockey game. Two people came home in body bags. Three more may not recover.
A high school rink in Rhode Island is now a crime scene. The stick tape and Zamboni marks share the floor with evidence markers. Somewhere, a teenage hockey player just lost his mother and sibling because his father chose carnage over whatever shred of humanity remained.
No manifesto makes that legible. No grievance makes it forgivable.
After two weeks of silence, speculation, and searches that turned up nothing, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos finally announced Monday that the family of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie has been cleared as suspects in her disappearance. Every sibling. Every spouse. All of them.
What Nanos did not announce: who investigators actually suspect.
Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie, vanished after having dinner with her daughter Annie Guthrie and Annie's husband, Tommaso Cioni, on January 31. Cioni was the last person to see her alive, around 9:45 p.m. that evening. When Nancy failed to show up at a friend's house the next day to watch Sunday church, she was reported missing. She has not been seen since.
The announcement reported Monday by the New York Post capped what Nanos himself described as a "grueling two-week investigation," one that placed the Guthrie family under an extraordinary cloud. Annie Guthrie and Cioni's home was searched multiple times in the days following the disappearance. Search and rescue teams combed Nancy's neighborhood. Multiple non-family individuals were detained for questioning last week and released shortly after.
And for the duration, Nanos refused to rule out Cioni as a suspect when pressed by reporters, a posture that fed a growing wave of public speculation about the man who last saw Nancy alive. The sheriff's own silence did the damage.
Then, the day before Monday's announcement, Nanos told the Daily Mail he did not want Cioni to be "wrongly scrutinized" simply because he was the last person to see Nancy. Hours later, law enforcement sources told NBC News that police were "leaning away" from considering family members suspects. By Monday, the formal clearance arrived.
Nanos did not mince words about how the family had been treated in the court of public opinion:
"The family has been nothing but cooperative and gracious and are victims in this case. To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it is cruel. The Guthrie family are victims plain and simple."
Strong words from the man whose own refusal to clear Cioni earlier helped fuel the very scrutiny he now calls cruel.
Here is what the public now knows after two weeks:
That is not a progress report. That is an admission that the investigation has produced no actionable lead that the public is allowed to see.
The delay in clearing the family deserves scrutiny of its own. Law enforcement routinely looks at those closest to a missing person first. That is standard procedure, not misconduct. But there is a difference between quietly investigating family members as part of standard protocol and allowing weeks of public suspicion to calcify around a son-in-law whose only known connection to the disappearance is that he ate dinner with his mother-in-law.
Nanos had every opportunity to get ahead of the narrative. He chose not to. Whether that was investigative caution or simple mismanagement of public communication, the result was the same: a family already enduring the nightmare of a missing loved one was subjected to the additional weight of implied guilt.
Savannah Guthrie, who has been off the air during the ordeal, appeared in an Instagram video with two others pleading to "Bring Nancy Guthrie home." It is a reminder that behind every cable news chyron and social media theory, a family is waiting for a phone call that hasn't come.
Cases like this expose a familiar tension. The public wants information. Law enforcement wants to protect the integrity of an active investigation. Both impulses are legitimate. But when authorities offer nothing, the internet fills the void. Sidebar reports have referenced everything from a ransom letter to DNA results from a glove to a Walmart backpack described as a "very promising lead." None of that has been substantively addressed by the sheriff's office.
Speculation is not evidence. But it thrives where transparency is absent. Nanos now owns a case with no named suspect, no public theory, and a family he spent two weeks allowing to twist in the wind before clearing them.
Nancy Guthrie is 84 years old. She has been missing for more than two weeks. Every day that passes without answers makes those answers less likely to come. The sheriff told us who didn't do it. The question that matters is the one he still cannot answer.
The FBI asked Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos for DNA evidence and a black glove recovered in connection with the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie — the mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie — and he sent it to a private lab in Florida instead.
Not to the FBI's national crime laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, with its world-class forensic capabilities. To a private contractor in Florida that the sheriff's department regularly uses. As the investigation closed in on the two-week mark with no known proof of life, the sheriff with primary jurisdiction effectively cut the FBI out of the evidence chain.
An unnamed FBI source told Reuters the move has real consequences:
"It risks further slowing a case that grows more urgent by the minute."
The same source added:
"It's clear the fastest path to answers is leveraging federal resources and technology."
Pima County has reportedly spent about $200,000 sending evidence to the Florida lab. The FBI's Quantico facility — one of the most advanced forensic operations on the planet — would have processed it at no cost to the county. That's not a close call. That's a jurisdictional turf war dressed up as procedure.
Nancy Guthrie vanished in the early-morning hours of February 1 from her home in Pima County. Doorbell camera footage captured an armed, masked individual tampering with the camera around that time. Family members say she had a sound mind but suffered from limited mobility and needed daily medication to survive.
That last detail matters. Every day without resolution is a day closer to a point of no return.
DNA tests confirmed that traces of blood found on the front porch came from Nancy Guthrie. A black glove was recovered about a mile from the home. Several purported ransom notes have surfaced — delivered not to the family or law enforcement, but to news media outlets. The deadlines in those notes have lapsed. No proof of life has been provided, as The Daily Beast reports.
On Saturday, Savannah Guthrie posted a video alongside her siblings Annie and Camron, speaking directly to whoever took their mother:
"We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her. This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay."
That's a daughter on camera, offering money to her mother's captor, because the investigation hasn't given her family anything else to hold onto.
The FBI's Phoenix field office shared new details about the suspect on Thursday, describing the individual as approximately 5 feet 9 inches to 5 feet 10 inches tall with an average build, wearing a black 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack. The bureau is offering up to $100,000 for information leading to Nancy Guthrie's location or the arrest and conviction of anyone involved.
The doorbell camera images took more than a week to recover from what Patel described on Wednesday as "residual data located in backend systems." A week — in a case where hours matter.
On Tuesday, a man identified only as "Carlos," who described himself as a delivery driver, was brought in for questioning, and his residence was searched. He was released eight hours later. He told reporters he had no idea why he was brought in. No charges were filed.
So the public ledger of this investigation reads: one detained-and-released man who says he knows nothing, doorbell footage that took a week to extract, ransom notes sent to media rather than investigators, and critical physical evidence routed away from the FBI's best forensic tools at the sheriff's discretion.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department holds primary jurisdiction over the case. No one disputes that. The department has accepted the FBI's offer to provide assistance, which decides to bypass the FBI's crime lab all the more puzzling.
You don't accept federal help and then redirect evidence away from federal labs. That's not maintaining jurisdiction. That's maintaining control at the expense of outcomes. A woman is missing. She needs medication to survive. The family is publicly begging for her return. And the sheriff's priority is routing forensic evidence through his department's preferred vendor.
The Daily Beast contacted both the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff's Department for comment. Neither responded. Sheriff Nanos has offered no public explanation for the decision.
Silence, in a case like this, lands differently than it does in routine jurisdictional disputes. A family is waiting. The public is watching. And the man with the evidence won't say why he sent it to Florida instead of Quantico.
Federal investigators have the resources, the technology, and the capacity to process forensic evidence faster than a private lab contracting with a county sheriff's office. That's not opinion — it's infrastructure. The FBI built Quantico specifically for cases like this.
When a missing person case reaches the two-week mark with no arrest, no proof of life, and ransom notes whose deadlines have already expired, the window for a positive outcome narrows sharply. Every institutional friction point — every evidence delay, every jurisdictional standoff — costs time that Nancy Guthrie may not have.
The FBI offered $100,000, its Phoenix field office, and its crime lab. The sheriff took the first two and rejected the third. Somewhere in Florida, a private lab is processing the evidence that might bring a 54-year-old woman's mother home.
Savannah Guthrie and her siblings aren't waiting for jurisdiction to sort itself out. They're on camera, offering to pay a stranger for their mother's life. The least the people running this investigation can do is use the best tools available.
Cardi B kicked off her Little Miss Drama Tour at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, California, on Wednesday night with a message for Immigration and Customs Enforcement: try something.
"B—h, if ICE come in here, we gon' jump they a–es."
The 33-year-old rapper, born Belcalis Marlenis Almanzar, told her audience she had bear mace backstage and declared that federal agents wouldn't be taking her fans. She asked how many Mexicans or Guatemalans were in attendance, sang a brief snippet of "La Cucaracha," then launched into her hit "I Like It" as if threatening federal law enforcement were just another part of the setlist.
The Department of Homeland Security didn't let it slide.
"As long as she doesn't drug and rob our agents, we'll consider that an improvement over her past behavior."
DHS posted the response on its official X page, quote-retweeting coverage of the rapper's comments. No ambiguity. No diplomacy. Just a clean shot referencing a chapter of Cardi B's past she's spent years trying to reframe.
In 2016, Cardi B went on Instagram Live and described — in explicit detail — how she lured men to hotels during her time as a stripper, drugged them, and robbed them. Her own words:
"And I drugged n****s up and I robbed them. That's what I used to do. Nothing was muthaf—in' handed to me, my n—a. Nothing!"
When those comments resurfaced in 2019, she addressed them on social media but never quite disavowed the conduct. Instead, she framed it as survival:
"I made the choices that I did at the time because I had very limited options. I was blessed to have been able to rise from that, but so many women have not. Whether or not they were poor choice at the time, I did what I had to do to survive."
She added that she never claimed to be perfect and described her admissions as speaking her truth — "things that I felt I needed to do to make a living."
This is the person now positioning herself as a moral authority on immigration enforcement. A woman who openly admitted to committing felonies against individuals is now threatening violence against federal agents whose job is to enforce laws Congress passed. The irony doesn't need decoration.
What Cardi B did on that stage wasn't brave. It was cheap. Telling a crowd of fans in a deep-blue California venue that you'll fight ICE costs nothing. There's no risk. There's no courage in performing defiance for an audience that already agrees with you in a state whose political leadership has spent years obstructing federal immigration enforcement.
But the performance matters — not because it changes policy, but because it reveals how normalized hostility toward law enforcement has become in certain cultural corridors. Threatening federal agents is now an applause line. Bear mace as a prop gets cheers, not concern. A rapper with an admitted criminal past gets to cosplay as a civil rights champion, and nobody on the left blinks.
Imagine the reaction if a country music star told a crowd in Nashville they'd assault ATF agents. The think pieces would write themselves. The double standard is the point.
The framing Cardi B leaned into — that ICE is some occupying force coming to snatch innocent people from concerts — only works if you refuse to acknowledge what ICE actually does. These are the agents who dismantle human trafficking networks, arrest violent criminals who've re-entered the country illegally, and enforce the immigration laws that exist precisely because a nation without borders isn't a nation at all.
When a celebrity with a massive platform tells fans to physically attack those agents, she isn't protecting anyone. She's putting her own audience at risk of federal obstruction charges. She's encouraging confrontation that could get someone hurt. And she's doing it from behind a security detail that would absolutely call law enforcement if someone rushed her stage.
That's the contradiction the left never addresses. The people who scream loudest about abolishing enforcement are always the ones most insulated from the consequences of lawlessness.
The department's response was notable for its brevity and its bite. No lengthy press release. No hand-wringing about artistic expression. Just a single sentence that reminded the public exactly who was lecturing them about morality — and what she's admitted to doing.
It's the kind of directness that government agencies have historically avoided, and it landed precisely because it refused to treat celebrity posturing as serious policy discourse. Cardi B made a threat. DHS made a point.
The rapper will sell tickets off this. The clip will circulate. Her fans will call it iconic. But somewhere in Palm Desert on Wednesday night, a woman who drugged and robbed men told a crowd she'd assault federal officers — and half the country was supposed to cheer.
DHS didn't cheer. They remembered.
An NYPD narcotics sergeant has been convicted of second-degree manslaughter after he hurled a cooler filled with drinks at a fleeing drug suspect, killing the man when he crashed his motorized scooter and slammed into a tree. Sgt. Erik Duran, 38, now faces up to 15 years in prison.
Judge Guy Mitchell delivered the verdict on Friday in Bronx criminal court following a bench trial — no jury, just a judge weighing the facts alone. The conviction makes Duran the first NYPD officer in years to be tried for killing someone while on duty. He has already been dismissed from the department.
Sentencing is scheduled for March 19.
On August 23, 2023, authorities say 30-year-old Eric Duprey sold drugs to an undercover officer in the Bronx and then fled the scene on a motorized scooter. Duran, part of the narcotics unit conducting the operation, grabbed a nearby red cooler packed with ice, water, and sodas, and threw it at Duprey as he rode away.
Duprey — who was not wearing a helmet — lost control of the scooter, crashed into a tree, landed on the pavement, and slid beneath a parked car. Prosecutors said he sustained fatal head injuries and died almost instantaneously.
Security footage captured Duran grabbing and hurling the cooler.
Duran testified in his own defense this week, telling the court he acted in a split-second to protect himself and fellow officers from the oncoming scooter:
"He was gonna crash into us. I didn't have time. All I had time for was to try again to stop or to try to get him to change directions. That's all I had the time to think of."
He also said he immediately tried to render aid after seeing the extent of Duprey's injuries. The judge wasn't persuaded. Mitchell convicted Duran of second-degree manslaughter while dismissing the assault charge, finding that prosecutors had failed to show Duran intended to hurt Duprey. He did not deliver a verdict on the lesser criminally negligent homicide charge, having already found Duran guilty on the more serious count, as NY 1 reports.
Mitchell's statement from the bench was pointed:
"The fact that the defendant is a police officer has no bearing. He's a person and will be treated as any other defendant."
On its face, this sounds like equal justice. In practice, it strips away the entire context of why Duran was on that street in the first place — executing a narcotics operation against a man who had just sold drugs to an undercover officer and was actively fleeing. Duran didn't wander into a confrontation. He was doing the job the city asked him to do.
That doesn't automatically excuse the cooler throw. But to say the badge "has no bearing" is to pretend that policing doesn't involve split-second decisions in chaotic, dangerous environments that civilians never face. A construction worker who throws a cooler in a parking lot dispute and a narcotics officer trying to stop a fleeing suspect are not in the same situation, no matter how badly the court wants to flatten the distinction.
The Sergeants Benevolent Association called the conviction a "miscarriage of justice" and said it still believes Duran was innocent. In a statement, the union laid out what many officers across the city are likely thinking:
"The verdict rendered by Judge Mitchell is clearly against the weight of the credible evidence. Verdicts such as this send a terrible message to hard-working cops: should you use force to defend yourself, your fellow police officers or the citizens of the City, no matter how justified your actions, you risk criminal charges and conviction."
That message will land whether city leaders want it to or not. Officers already working in a department demoralized by years of anti-police rhetoric, progressive prosecution, and revolving-door criminal justice now watch a colleague face 15 years for a decision made in seconds during an active narcotics bust. The calculus for every cop in New York just shifted — not toward better policing, but toward less policing. Toward hesitation. Toward doing nothing and letting the suspect ride away.
That's the incentive structure this conviction creates, regardless of whether it was legally sound.
The case was prosecuted by the office of State Attorney General Letitia James, who stated after the verdict:
"Though it cannot return Eric to his loved ones, today's decision gives justice to his memory."
James has built her career on high-profile prosecutions with political resonance. Her office taking the lead here — rather than the local district attorney — is itself a statement about the kind of cases Albany wants to pursue. Prosecuting an NYPD officer for a death that occurred during a drug bust against a suspect who was actively fleeing fits neatly into a progressive framework where police force is treated as inherently suspect and criminal suspects are treated as inherently sympathetic.
Eric Duprey's death is a tragedy. A 30-year-old man is dead. His wife, Orlyanis Velez, spoke outside the courthouse:
"I was waiting for justice just like everybody, but when the moment happens, you can't believe it's happening. It's been a lot of time. These people been killing citizens, been killing everybody. They don't give no reason."
Her grief is real. But the broader narrative her words were woven into — that police officers are systematically "killing citizens" without reason — is the same narrative that has driven anti-police policy in New York for years. Duprey was not stopped at random. He was not an innocent bystander. He had, according to authorities, just completed a drug sale to an undercover officer and was fleeing a narcotics operation.
None of that means he deserved to die. But the refusal to acknowledge even the basic circumstances of the encounter — a drug deal, a flight from law enforcement, a split-second response — tells you everything about how this case will be used politically.
The NYPD confirmed Duran's dismissal in a statement citing New York State Public Officers Law:
"Pursuant to New York State Public Officers Law, a public officer who is convicted of a felony automatically ceases to hold that position."
Automatic. No review, no appeal within the department. A felony conviction and the career is over by operation of law. Duran's attorney and police union representatives had not responded to requests for comment on potential appeals at the time of reporting.
Duran faces sentencing on March 19, where a judge will decide how many of those 15 possible years he'll serve. The decision will be watched closely — not just by Duran's family, but by every officer in the NYPD, weighing whether the risks of proactive policing are still worth taking.
New York asked its officers to get drugs off the street. One of them did, and now he's a felon. The next officer won't throw a cooler. He also won't chase the suspect. He'll stand there, watch the scooter disappear, and file a report that nobody reads.
That's the city Letitia James is building.
Zubayr Al-Bakoush — described as one of the architects of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya — touched down at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. Friday in American custody. He will face prosecution on charges of arson, murder, attempted murder, and terrorism in a DC federal court.
The New York Post reported that an eight-count indictment, filed in November 2025 and unsealed Friday afternoon, charges him with conspiring to provide and actually providing material support to terrorists, including himself, and using those resources to kill U.S. officials, injure others, and set fire to buildings.
He is the third Islamic extremist arrested in connection with the Benghazi assault. Fourteen years after four Americans were killed on sovereign U.S. soil in Libya, one of the men who allegedly led the attack now sits in a federal holding facility.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrest at DOJ headquarters Friday alongside FBI Director Kash Patel and DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro — both of whom had been on the tarmac at Andrews in the early morning hours to receive the prisoner personally.
"Zubayr Al-Bakoush landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. this morning. He is in our custody. He was greeted by Director Patel and US Attorney Jeanine Pirro."
Bondi vowed prosecution "to the fullest extent of the law." She did not mince words about why it mattered.
Bondi drove straight at one of the most infamous moments in the Benghazi saga — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's dismissive response during a 2013 congressional hearing, when Sen. Ron Johnson pressed her on the failures that led to the attack.
"Hillary Clinton famously once said about Benghazi, 'What difference, at this point, does it make?' Well, it makes a difference to Donald Trump. It makes a difference to those families."
"And 14 years later, it makes a difference to law enforcement."
That line landed in a room that understood its weight. Clinton's remark became shorthand for an entire governing philosophy — one that treated accountability as an inconvenience and the deaths of Americans abroad as a political problem to be managed rather than a crime to be avenged. For more than a decade, it served as a kind of permission structure: if the people at the top didn't care, why should the bureaucracy beneath them?
Bondi's message on Friday was the opposite.
"Let this case serve as a reminder. If you commit a crime against the American people anywhere in this world, President Trump's Justice Department will find you. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen. You can run, but you cannot hide."
The 13-page indictment lays out the timeline of an attack that unfolded over hours, hours during which help never arrived.
According to the indictment, Al-Bakoush and others violently breached the Mission's gate around 9:45 p.m. on September 11, 2012, and set fire to its buildings, including a villa housing Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and diplomatic security agent Scott Wickland. Stevens and Smith died trapped inside the compound. Wickland survived.
Roughly half an hour after the initial breach, the attackers retreated and began firing on the complex with handguns, AK-47 assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades. They re-entered the Mission around 11:45 p.m. In the early morning hours of September 12, they turned mortars on the nearby CIA annex, killing CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods and seriously injuring State Department Assistant Regional Officer David Ubben and CIA facility security officer Mark Geist.
The indictment identifies Al-Bakoush and 19 co-conspirators who also allegedly intended to plunder property from the Mission, including documents, maps, and computers containing sensitive information. A confidential federal informant described Al-Bakoush in January 2020 court filings as one of "two key leaders of the Mission attack."
Four Americans are dead. A diplomatic compound in ashes. Classified materials looted. And for 13 hours, the people inside waited for a rescue that never came.
DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro framed the arrest against the original failure — not just of security, but of will.
"An American ambassador, elite military personnel and a State Department employee were all violently murdered. The American cavalry never came. For 13 hours, they waited for help that never came."
A select House committee investigation found that Obama administration officials failed to deploy military assets to Libya despite intelligence warnings of growing danger to American interests. Instead of confronting that failure, the administration constructed a cover story. Five days after the attack, then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on national television and attributed the violence to a spontaneous reaction to an internet video.
"What sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world."
No diplomatic security agents in Benghazi attributed the attack to a video or a protest. It was a coordinated assault carried out by members of the Al Qaeda-linked group Ansar Al Sharia, armed with rifles, RPGs, and mortars. The video narrative was a fabrication — not a misunderstanding, not a premature assessment, but a deliberate choice to mislead the American public weeks before a presidential election.
That context matters now because it explains why accountability took 14 years. When the priority is political survival rather than justice, investigations stall, leads go cold, and terrorists walk free.
Al-Bakoush is the third suspect brought to account. Ahmed Abu Khatallah, described as the attack's leader, was arrested in Libya in June 2014 and initially sentenced in June 2018 to 22 years in prison — a sentence a federal appeals panel called "unreasonably low." He was resentenced in September 2024 to 28 years during the Biden administration. Mustafa al-Imam was captured by U.S. special forces in October 2017 and sentenced in January 2020 to 19 years and eight months.
Two convictions in over a decade. Twenty co-conspirators were named in the indictment. Pirro made clear the work isn't finished.
"The Benghazi saga was a painful one for Americans. It has stayed with all of us. And let me be very clear, there are more of them out there."
"Time will not stop us from going after these predators, no matter how long it takes, in order to fulfill our obligation to those families who suffered horrific pain at the hands of these violent terrorists."
Pirro said her team "will not stop" hunting down other attackers who remain at large, and that she and Patel had kept in touch with family members of the four Americans killed.
FBI Director Kash Patel, who noted he worked on the Benghazi case as a young prosecutor, was on the airfield for the formal foreign transfer of custody.
"When an act of terrorism of this magnitude strikes at the heart of our nation, we go to work."
"I was at the airfield with US Attorney Pirro earlier this morning when we did the formal, foreign transfer of custody of Bakoush into US custody to face prosecution. And her office and the Department of Justice are going to execute justice for the fallen."
Patel declined to disclose where Al-Bakoush was apprehended, citing the need to protect the integrity of the investigation. The operation involved the FBI's New York Field Office, the DOJ's National Security Division Counterterrorism Section, the Department of War, the State Department, and the CIA.
A CIA spokesperson said Director Ratcliffe was "deeply grateful" for the efforts of the DOJ and the FBI:
"CIA and the Nation will never forget the extraordinary sacrifices of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who gave their lives in defense of others and exemplified the very best of our Agency."
There is a reason Benghazi never faded from public memory the way the political class wanted it to. It wasn't partisanship. It wasn't a talking point. It was the image of Americans abandoned by their own government — fighting through the night on a rooftop in a hostile country while Washington deliberated and then lied about what happened.
Chris Stevens. Sean Smith. Glen Doherty. Tyrone Woods. They deserved better from the people who sent them there, and they deserved better from the people who spent years deflecting blame rather than hunting down the men who killed them.
Pirro put it plainly:
"President Trump will make sure that the cavalry comes for Americans, no matter where they are in this world."
Fourteen years late, the cavalry arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. with a prisoner in tow. That's what difference it makes.
Ryan Routh will die in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon sentenced the convicted would-be assassin to life without parole plus seven years on Wednesday in Fort Pierce, Florida, closing the book on one of the most brazen assassination attempts against a political figure in modern American history.
According to The Hill, Routh was convicted on all five counts — trying to assassinate a major presidential candidate, using a firearm in furtherance of a crime, assaulting a federal officer, possessing a firearm as a felon, and using a gun with a defaced serial number. The other sentences will run concurrently.
Judge Cannon did not mince words:
"Your plot to kill was deliberate and evil. You are not a peaceful man. You are not a good man."
On Sept. 15, 2024, while Donald Trump played golf at his West Palm Beach country club, Routh positioned himself in the shrubbery with a rifle. He had spent weeks plotting the attack. A Secret Service agent spotted him before Trump came into view — and when Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, the agent opened fire. Routh dropped the weapon and ran without firing a shot.
That a Secret Service agent's vigilance stood between a presidential candidate and a bullet is the kind of detail that should keep every American up at night. The system worked — barely.
Prosecutors laid out a portrait of a man consumed by obsession. Routh had a large online footprint demonstrating disdain for Trump. He self-published a book in which he encouraged Iran to assassinate Trump and wrote that, as a former Trump voter, he bore part of the blame for electing him. He had multiple previous felony convictions, including possession of stolen goods — meaning he was already barred from possessing firearms under federal law. The gun he carried had a defaced serial number.
Every layer of this story reveals another law broken, another guardrail ignored.
Routh treated his sentencing hearing like a stage. He read from a rambling, 20-page statement — so disconnected from the proceedings that Judge Cannon broke in and gave him five more minutes. She told him none of what he was saying was relevant.
Before sentencing, Routh had filed a motion that included this line:
"Just a quarter of an inch further back and we all would not have to deal with all of this mess."
And this:
"but I always fail at everything (par for the course)."
Cannon called the motion a "disrespectful charade" that made a mockery of the proceedings. She was right. Routh also offered to trade his life in a prisoner swap and invited Trump to "take out his frustrations" on his face. None of this is the behavior of a man grappling with what he did. It is the behavior of a man performing for an audience — any audience.
This was not Routh's first eruption. When the jury found him guilty on all counts in September, the courtroom descended into chaos after he tried to stab himself. He had represented himself for most of the trial, with former federal public defenders serving as standby counsel. Judge Cannon had signed off on that arrangement last summer, though she said she wanted to err on the side of legal representation. Sentencing was initially set for December, but was moved back after Routh decided to use an attorney during the sentencing phase.
Defense attorney Martin L. Roth asked for 20 years plus the mandatory seven for the gun conviction. His argument hinged on one claim:
"At the moment of truth, he chose not to pull the trigger."
He chose not to pull the trigger because a Secret Service agent shot at him first. Framing a failed assassination as an act of restraint takes a particular kind of legal creativity.
Roth went further:
"He's a complex person, I'll give the court that, but he has a very good core."
A good core. A man who plotted for weeks to kill a presidential candidate, aimed a rifle at a federal agent, previously encouraged a foreign adversary to assassinate on his behalf, and carried an illegally possessed firearm with a defaced serial number. Defense attorneys are obligated to advocate for their clients. But words still mean things, and "good core" does not mean what Roth needed it to mean.
In a filing, Roth argued:
"The defendant is two weeks short of being sixty years old. A just punishment would provide a sentence long enough to impose sufficient but not excessive punishment, and to allow defendant to experience freedom again as opposed to dying in prison."
Judge Cannon disagreed. Unanimously and permanently.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Shipley framed the case in the terms it deserves:
"American democracy does not work when individuals take it into their own hands to eliminate candidates. That's what this individual tried to do."
This is not a complicated proposition. When a man with a rifle camps out near a golf course to kill a candidate, the political system itself is under threat. It does not matter which candidate. It does not matter which party. The act is a repudiation of self-governance.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi stated X, reinforcing the point:
"Ryan Routh's heinous attempted assassination of President Trump was not only an attack on our President — it was a direct assault against our entire democratic system."
Bondi thanked prosecutors for ensuring Routh will never walk free again.
Routh is the second person who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign. That fact alone should command sustained national attention. Two assassination attempts against the same presidential candidate in a single election cycle is not a footnote — it is a crisis.
Yet the cultural response has been curiously muted. The rhetoric that frames one side of the political aisle as an existential threat — not merely wrong on policy, but dangerous to human life — has consequences. When political opponents are described in apocalyptic terms, unstable individuals hear permission. Nobody forced Ryan Routh to pick up a rifle. But the temperature of the national conversation is not set by the most dangerous people in the room. It is set by the most powerful.
Routh himself acknowledged this dynamic in his own warped way, writing that as a Trump voter, he felt he bore responsibility. His logic was deranged. But the emotional pathway — from consuming heated political rhetoric to concluding that violent action is justified — is one that institutions, media figures, and political leaders have a duty to interrupt rather than accelerate.
Routh stood before the court and said:
"I did everything I could and lived a good life."
Judge Cannon — nominated by Trump in 2020 — saw it differently. Life without parole. No ambiguity. No second chance. No freedom, ever.
The prosecutors who built this case, the Secret Service agent who spotted a rifle barrel in the bushes before it was too late, and the judge who refused to treat attempted assassination as a complex personal journey all did their jobs. Routh spent weeks planning to end a man's life and alter the course of an election. The system caught him, tried him, convicted him, and locked him away forever.
Ryan Routh wanted to change history. Instead, he will spend every remaining day of his life in a cell, forgotten by the country he tried to wound. That is justice — not performative, not negotiated, not hedged. Final.
In a stunning courtroom finale, Ryan Routh, the man who plotted to take down President Donald Trump, was handed a life sentence plus seven additional years by a Florida judge on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, U.S. Judge Aileen Cannon sentenced Ryan Routh to life in prison for his attempt to assassinate President Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach back in September 2024. After a swift conviction on five felony counts, including attempted assassination and assault on a federal officer, following a two-and-a-half-week trial, Routh faced the full weight of justice.
Cannon also praised law enforcement and witnesses for their role in securing his conviction, while imposing an additional seven-year term on a second count.
Judge Cannon didn’t hold back, calling Routh’s actions outright “evil” during sentencing, as reported by a local ABC affiliate. Her words cut to the core of a nation weary of threats against its leaders, especially one as pivotal as Trump.
She also shut down Routh’s attempt to ramble about unrelated issues like Ukraine, keeping the focus squarely on his heinous act. This isn’t a platform for personal crusades—it’s a court of law.
“Despite all the evil we see, there is a sliver of hope, a sliver of light,” Cannon remarked, pointing to the courage of those who brought Routh to justice. Her faith in the system shines through, a reminder that accountability still holds.
Routh’s scheme was chilling—hiding in bushes at Trump’s golf course, allegedly aiming a military-grade rifle at both the President and a Secret Service agent. Prosecutors painted a picture of months-long planning, with no regard for human life, as detailed in court filings.
Even after conviction, Routh showed no remorse, with writings cited by prosecutors hinting at justifications tied to foreign conflicts or domestic politics. This kind of twisted reasoning is exactly why the justice system had to act decisively.
FBI Director Kash Patel nailed it in his statement, calling Routh’s actions a “despicable attack on our democratic system.” His sentencing, Patel added, proves that such threats won’t be tolerated, reinforcing trust in our institutions.
Routh’s defense, now led by an appointed attorney after he foolishly represented himself at trial, plans to appeal, arguing he couldn’t get a fair shake. They claim he never meant harm, framing his actions as mere protest—hardly convincing given the rifle and the bushes.
Let’s be real: self-representation in a case this grave, despite warnings, was a reckless choice, not a systemic failure. The jury saw through his excuses, convicting him on all five counts with speed and clarity.
This raises broader questions for law-abiding Americans—how do we protect our leaders when ideology drives such dangerous acts? Routh’s psychiatric evaluations, pointing to personality disorders, only deepen the concern about mental health intersecting with political violence.
As a Trump-appointed judge, Cannon faced scrutiny from Routh’s camp over a supposed conflict of interest, a claim she rightly dismissed. Her track record, including tossing out a separate case against Trump, shows a commitment to legal principle over political noise.
For those of us who value strong leadership, this case is a wake-up call about the threats facing Trump and others who dare to challenge the status quo. It’s not just about one man—it’s about safeguarding the voices that fight against overreach and woke dogma.
The fight isn’t over; Routh’s appeal looms, and his lack of regret signals a deeper cultural battle. We must stand firm, ensuring that justice prevails over excuses, and that our nation’s defenders aren’t silenced by those who reject our values.
Tragedy strikes in Delaware as a once-heartwarming love story turns deadly, culminating in a shocking arrest.
William Stevenson, 77, ex-husband of First Lady Jill Biden, was arrested on Monday and charged with first-degree murder in the death of his current wife, Linda Stevenson, 64, as reported by New Castle County Police in Delaware.
Officers responded to a domestic dispute call on Dec. 28 at a Wilmington home, where they found Linda unresponsive, and she was later pronounced dead. Her body was sent to the Delaware Division of Forensic Science for an autopsy, though the cause of death remains undisclosed as of Wednesday.
Stevenson remains in jail after failing to post a $500,000 bail following a grand jury indictment and a weeks-long investigation by detectives. Photos released by police on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, show Stevenson in an undated image and the Wilmington home where the incident occurred. A nearby yard displays a sign reading "Justice for Linda," reflecting community sentiment after the grim discovery.
Back in 2020, Stevenson and Linda appeared on "Inside Edition" during Joe Biden's presidential run against Donald Trump, painting a picture of marital bliss. Linda, smiling and holding her husband’s hand, described him as quite the charmer. Who could have foreseen such a dark turn just five years later?
"Quite a romantic, this guy?" the interviewer asked Linda, to which she replied, "Yeah, yes."
That 2020 interview now feels like a distant memory as allegations of murder overshadow Stevenson’s once-rosy public image. Linda’s obituary, stating she "passed away unexpectedly," notably omitted any mention of her husband, raising eyebrows long before the arrest. A Facebook message from Jan. 14, later deleted, even questioned Stevenson directly about this exclusion, as reported by People.
Let’s not mince words—when a spouse is left out of an obituary, it’s a glaring red flag, especially in a culture obsessed with sanitizing hard truths. The left might rush to call this a private matter, but when murder charges emerge, the public deserves answers, not platitudes.
Jill Biden, married to Stevenson from 1970 to 1975 before tying the knot with Joe Biden in 1977, has understandably stayed silent on the matter. A spokesperson for the former first lady declined to comment, per The Associated Press. It’s a wise move in a society quick to spin personal tragedies into political fodder.
The Wilmington community isn’t holding back, with that "Justice for Linda" sign speaking volumes about local outrage. This isn’t just a family issue; it’s a reminder of how quickly domestic disputes can spiral into irreversible loss. We can’t ignore the need for accountability when lives are cut short under such suspicious circumstances.
Authorities have yet to release a cause of death, which only fuels speculation in an era where transparency often takes a backseat to bureaucratic caution. If there’s nothing to hide, why the delay? The public isn’t asking for gossip—just the facts to make sense of this tragedy.
Stevenson’s recollection of meeting Linda adds a bittersweet layer to this grim tale. "She was sitting across the bar with a common friend," he said in 2020, describing their instant connection. "I said, ‘Is that Linda?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ And from that day on, we have never been apart."
That story of persistence now clashes with the reality of a first-degree murder charge, leaving many to wonder how romance turned to ruin. In a world where the left often pushes narratives of systemic failure over personal responsibility, cases like this demand that we focus on individual actions and consequences.
What happens next in the courtroom could set a precedent for how domestic violence allegations are handled in Delaware and beyond. Conservatives have long argued for tougher penalties and swifter justice in such cases, rejecting the endless delays that erode trust in our legal system. Will Stevenson’s case prove the system can still deliver?
As this unfolds, one thing is clear: Linda Stevenson’s memory deserves more than unanswered questions and deleted social media posts. The push for "Justice for Linda" isn’t just a yard sign—it’s a call to ensure no tragedy is swept under the rug by a culture too afraid to confront ugly truths. Let’s hope the investigation brings clarity, not more shadows.
Is New York City’s judiciary about to be shaped by a man with ties to a law firm under fire for alleged fraud?
Ali Najmi, a close ally of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, was appointed chairman of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary in January, a role that involves screening nominees for family, civil, and interim criminal court positions. Najmi, an election attorney and long-time associate of Mamdani, also joined Liakas Law, PC, as “special counsel” in October 2025, just before Mamdani was elected mayor.
Liakas Law, a Manhattan personal injury firm, faces a federal lawsuit filed last week in Brooklyn by Greater New York Mutual Insurance Company, alleging a massive insurance fraud scheme targeting vulnerable individuals.
Critics are sounding the alarm over Najmi’s dual roles, pointing to glaring ethical concerns. The setup echoes the infamous arrangement of disgraced former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who pocketed millions as “of counsel” to a personal injury firm while wielding immense political power, the New York Post reported.
Najmi’s history with Mamdani runs deep, from representing his Assembly campaigns to being a key player in the Queens Democratic machine over the past decade. Their bond, forged during Najmi’s failed City Council run years ago, raises questions about loyalty trumping accountability. Why are socialists so often involved with shady business and less-than-scrupulous business figures?
The lawsuit against Liakas Law paints a grim picture, accusing the firm of recruiting plaintiffs—often undocumented migrants—to stage accidents and inflate claims with fake medical records. Examples include a client claiming severe disability, only to be photographed celebrating at a bar just months after an alleged 2020 accident.
Liakas Law isn’t a small player—last year, it filed around 20 lawsuits against New York City, with over 50 active cases in court records. With Najmi’s role in City Hall, court watchers are uneasy about the sway he might hold over judicial nominees who could handle such cases. The optics alone are enough to make anyone squirm.
Tom Stebbins, head of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, didn’t mince words on the broader issue. “We have a massive ‘fraudemic’ that is happening on our streets and in our construction sites,” he warned. His concern is spot-on—litigation abuse costs New Yorkers $96 billion last year, per a tort reform group’s estimate.
Stebbins also questioned Najmi’s impartiality, asking, “How could his affiliation with a plaintiff’s firm, and the money that he’s getting from a plaintiff’s firm, not tilt his perspective towards the plaintiff?” That’s the million-dollar question. When power and profit mix, justice often gets left behind.
Let’s not forget Sheldon Silver’s playbook—using his “of counsel” gig at a major asbestos firm to rake in over $3 million in referral fees while pushing policies that benefited his legal cronies. He even blocked tort reform and steered cases to friendly judges. Sound familiar?
Najmi’s defenders, including a Mamdani spokesperson, note his City Hall role is unpaid, but they’ve dodged deeper scrutiny. Liakas spokesperson Hank Sheinkopf dismissed the lawsuit as “baseless,” predicting it won’t survive court review. That’s a bold claim for a firm accused of exploiting the vulnerable.
Najmi himself has distanced himself from the allegations, insisting the litigation predates his involvement with Liakas. Yet, his social media posts, like an Instagram video high-fiving colleagues at the firm, don’t exactly scream detachment. Actions speak louder than disclaimers.
This situation isn’t just about one man—it’s about a system that too often lets political insiders game the rules while regular folks pay the price. New York’s court system is already labeled the second-worst “Judicial Hellhole” in the nation by reform advocates. Do we really need more fuel on that fire?
The potential for conflicts here is staggering, as one observer noted about “innumerable” risks when a top aide moonlights for a litigious firm. Could Najmi nudge Mamdani on policies that pad Liakas Law’s profits? It’s not a stretch to imagine.
As this unfolds, New Yorkers deserve transparency on who shapes their courts, not backroom deals reminiscent of Albany’s worst days. Tort reform remains a distant dream while firms like Liakas allegedly run rampant. It’s high time accountability took the bench.