WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials confirmed Wednesday that they briefed Donald Trump's campaign on Iranian threats against the Republican presidential nominee.
The agency acknowledged in a statement sent to The Associated Press that the briefing occurred but declined to say whether there is evidence of a new plot targeting Trump, or whether the briefing focused instead on previously reported threats from Iran.
In a statement Tuesday, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the meeting included information about “real and specific” threats to “assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States."
The Trump campaign declined to discuss further details of Tuesday’s briefing.
Iran has not been linked to attempts on Trump’s life at a rally in Pennsylvania in July and at his Florida golf course this month. In the first attempt, authorities shot and killed the gunman who shot Trump and arrested the suspect at the scene in the second.
But U.S. officials have long been concerned about Iran, which they see as a threat to both Trump and former Trump administration officials and have accused of trying to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.
In July, authorities said they had received word of an Iranian threat on Trump's life and boosted security for the candidate as a result. The following month a Pakistani man alleged to have links to Iran was charged in a plot to carry out political assassinations on U.S. soil. Law enforcement did not name the targets of the alleged plot, but legal filings suggest Trump was a potential target.
Iranian hackers also stole information from Trump's campaign and sought, unsuccessfully, to interest news organizations and President Joe Biden's campaign in the material. There's no indication that any of the recipients responded.
Along with Russia and China, Iran has also mounted an extensive online influence operation designed to stoke discord and polarization ahead of the November election, intelligence officials have said. Iran also opposes Trump's reelection, seeing him as the candidate more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran.
Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.
Speaking on CBS This Morning, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said authorities have been tracking Iran’s threats against “a number of senior officials” including Trump as well as people now serving in the Biden administration.
“This is something we’ve been tracking very intensely for a long time,” Blinken said.
In 2022, an Iranian operative was charged in a plot to murder former National Security Advisor John Bolton in presumed retaliation for a U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani.
The Secret Service did not respond to requests for information about new threats against Trump and whether they had recently beefed up security for the campaign in response. But the agency has already said publicly that since the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, the former president is receiving the highest levels of protection the agency can provide.
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Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Police in a majority Black Mississippi city discriminate against Black people, use excessive force and retaliate against its critics, the Justice Department said Thursday in a scathing report detailing findings of an investigation into civil rights abuses.
The Lexington Police Department “has created a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law" in one of the poorest counties in America, according to the Justice Department. Investigators found that police also sexually harassed women and kept people behind bars for minor offenses because they couldn't afford to pay fines.
“Today’s findings show that the Lexington Police Department abandoned its sacred position of trust in the community by routinely violating the constitutional rights of those it was sworn to protect,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an emailed statement.
A Lexington Police Department staff member who answered a phone call seeking comment said Police Chief Charles Henderson was not immediately available for an interview.
The Justice Deport report outlines a stunning pattern of racially disparate policing and harassment in Lexington — a rural town of about 1,200 people, approximately 76 percent of whom are Black.
Investigators traced a stark uptick in racial disparities back to an intentional change in police tactics overseen by the police department's former chief, who was fired after using racial slurs and talking about how many people he had killed in the line of duty. Under that former chief, Sam Dobbins, who is white, Lexington police officers dramatically increased arrests for low-level offenses.
As a result, the odds that a person arrested by Lexington police officers was Black would climb by 125%.
The Justice Department found police routinely arrested people for low-level violations and then left them to languish behind bars until they could come up with the money to pay a fine.
One man was jailed for four days because he refilled a cup of coffee at a gas station while only paying for one cup. Another woman was arrested and chained to a bench at a police station for parking in a space reserved for people with disabilities, according to the report. Another officer told a 60-year-old Black woman that she had to pay an old $90 fine to get out of jail.
“You better find some money, or you’re going to jail," the officer said, according to the report.
The police department used excessive force and disproportionately targeted Black people for arrests, investigators also found. Black people who committed traffic offenses were arrested while white people who committed similar traffic offenses were not, prosecutors said.
Investigators reviewed body camera footage to review racial disparities in the use of force. In all the incidents investigators said they never saw an officer use force against a white person while they repeatedly used force against Black people.
Lexington residents owe police $1.7 million in outstanding fines, and the city court has issued bench warrants seeking the arrest of more than 650 people — roughly half of the city’s population — because of unpaid fines, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke told reporters.
“In America, being poor is not a crime. But in Lexington, their practices punish people for poverty,” Clarke said.
Investigators also found that officers used Tasers like a “cattle-prod” to punish people and punch or kick people who are unarmed and handcuffed. In one case, an officer kicked an unarmed Black man so hard that he wet himself, according to the report. The officer told the dispatcher: “I didn't give two (expletive) about his civil rights," the report says.
"Black people bear the brunt of the Lexington police department’s illegal conduct,” Clarke said.
The Justice Department’s investigation and report followed the filing of a federal lawsuit in 2022 by a group of residents who accused the police department of “terrorizing” residents through false arrests, intimidation and other abuses.
It also follows the June 2023 arrest of Jill Collen Jefferson, the president of JULIAN, the civil rights organization that filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of residents. The organization had previously obtained an audio recording of then-Lexington Police Chief Dobbins using racial slurs and talking about how many people he had killed in the line of duty.
According to the Justice Department, racial disparities in arrests continued to increase under Henderson, who is Black. In 2019, Black people were 2.5 times more likely to be arrested by Lexington police officers than white people. By 2023, after Dobbins’s departure, Black people were almost 18 times more likely to be arrested.
In June, Jefferson was arrested after filming a traffic stop conducted by Lexington police officers. The arrest came nine days after Clarke had traveled to Lexington to meet with community members about alleged police misconduct.
Federal prosecutors have said the probe into Lexington is part of a broader effort to crack down on unconstitutional policing at small and mid-size police departments and in underserved regions throughout the Deep South.
"Gone are the days when rural isolation and remoteness could conceal the injustice of unconstitutional policing," said Todd Gee, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi. Addressing other police departments in the country, Gee said: “Make changes now if your agency is policing in these same unlawful ways.”
FILE - A Lexington, Miss., police cruiser is parked outside their facility near the town square, Aug. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
