Federal prosecutor reportedly resigned over concern new investigation of Ábrego García was politically motivated
A career federal prosecutor resigned in protest the same day that charges were filed against Kilmar Ábrego García, following an investigation that apparently began after the mistaken deportation of the Maryland resident became a legal and political headache for the Trump administration, ABC News reports.
Ben Schrader, announced his resignation as the chief of the criminal division at the US attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee in a LinkedIn post on 21 May, the same day the indictment of Ábrego García was signed by the acting US attorney for that district.
Sources told ABC News that Schrader stepped down because of concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.
“Earlier today, after nearly 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, I resigned as Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee”, Schrader wrote on LinkedIn that day. “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. I wish all of my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and across the Department the best as they seek to do justice on behalf of the American people.”
At a news conference on Friday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to say exactly when the investigation that led to the charges was opened, but she told reporters that the indictment was based on “recently found facts” about a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, and that “thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Ábrego García, this investigation continued”.
The indictment was signed by Robert McGuire, who has been the acting US attorney in Nashville since December, and three senior prosecutors from the justice department’s Joint Task Force Vulcan, which was created during the first Trump administration “to dismantle MS-13”.
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Updated at 18.08 EDT
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Trump cites lawyer who defended him in impeachment trial saying Epstein had no dirt on him
Donald Trump, who is again enjoying a long weekend at one of his golf courses, took a moment to respond, obliquely, to Elon Musk’s unsourced claim on Thursday that the Trump administration has not released all of the files from the sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is implicated in his late friend’s crimes.
During an Air Force One flight to New Jersey on Friday, Trump shared a comment from David Schoen, a lawyer who defended the president at his second impeachment trial in 2021, over the January 6 riot.
“I was hired to lead Jeffrey Epstein’s defense as his criminal lawyer 9 days before he died”, Schoen wrote on Musk’s social media platform X on Thursday. “He sought my advice for months before that. I can say authoritatively, unequivocally, and definitively that he had no information to hurt President Trump. I specifically asked him!”
Following Musk’s post on Thursday, which was viewed more than 200 million times (according to Musk’s company), Schoen also wrote on the billionaire’s platform: “I can tell you unequivocally as someone who would know that President Trump never did anything wrong with Jeffrey Epstein.”
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Updated at 18.45 EDT
Federal prosecutor reportedly resigned over concern new investigation of Ábrego García was politically motivated
A career federal prosecutor resigned in protest the same day that charges were filed against Kilmar Ábrego García, following an investigation that apparently began after the mistaken deportation of the Maryland resident became a legal and political headache for the Trump administration, ABC News reports.
Ben Schrader, announced his resignation as the chief of the criminal division at the US attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee in a LinkedIn post on 21 May, the same day the indictment of Ábrego García was signed by the acting US attorney for that district.
Sources told ABC News that Schrader stepped down because of concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.
“Earlier today, after nearly 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, I resigned as Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee”, Schrader wrote on LinkedIn that day. “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. I wish all of my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and across the Department the best as they seek to do justice on behalf of the American people.”
At a news conference on Friday, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, refused to say exactly when the investigation that led to the charges was opened, but she told reporters that the indictment was based on “recently found facts” about a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, and that “thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Ábrego García, this investigation continued”.
The indictment was signed by Robert McGuire, who has been the acting US attorney in Nashville since December, and three senior prosecutors from the justice department’s Joint Task Force Vulcan, which was created during the first Trump administration “to dismantle MS-13”.
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Updated at 18.08 EDT
Senator Van Hollen says Trump administration ‘relented’ to his demand to give Ábrego García due process
In a new statement, Senator Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who visited Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador, reiterated the point he made after his trip in April, when he said that he was “not defending the man” but “defending the rights of this man to due process”.
Here is Van Hollen’s new statement:
“For months the Trump Administration flouted the Supreme Court and our Constitution. Today, they appear to have finally relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and with the due process rights afforded to everyone in the United States. As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights – and the rights of all. The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”
This restates what Van Hollen said in an interview with ABC News in April, of the Trump administration: “Here’s where they should put their facts: they should oput it before the court. They should put up or shut up in court.”
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Updated at 17.16 EDT
El Salvador’s president piles in on White House trolling of Democratic senator by invoking staged photo
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, joined the White House in attacking Senator Chris Van Hollen on social media with a post on Elon Musk’s X in which he referred back to a staged photograph of the Maryland senator’s meeting Kilmar Ábrego García in April.
Referencing the release of Ábrego García from custody in El Salvador on Friday, Bukele wrote: we work with the Trump administration, and if they request the return of a gang member to face charges, of course we wouldn’t refuse.”
He added: “No more margaritas under custody”.
On his return from El Salvador in April, however, Van Hollen accused the government of El Salvador of creating the hoax he called “Margarita-gate”, by placing a pair of cocktail glasses on the table between himself and Ábrego García as they met to make it look as though they were enjoying drinks.
Those photographs were posted on X by Bukele, along with a caption that downplayed the seriousness of the situation by falsely claiming that the senator and the wrongly deported man had been “sipping margaritas” as they met.
But the senator said that the drinks were placed there during the meeting by someone from the Salvadoran government before the photographs were taken and that neither he nor Ábrego García had touched them. Van Hollen pointed out that there was visual evidence for this in the photographs: the rims of both glasses were covered in salt or sugar, but it was clear from the images that neither glass had been drunk from, since the rims were undisturbed.
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Updated at 17.30 EDT
US supreme court allows ‘Doge’ broad access to social security data
The US supreme court on Friday permitted the so-called ‘department of government efficiency’, or Doge, a team set up by former Trump aide Elon Musk to take a chainsaw to the federal workforce, broad access to personal information on millions of Americans in Social Security Administration data systems while a legal challenge plays out, Reuters reports.
At the request of the Justice Department, the justices put on hold US district judge Ellen Hollander’s order that had largely blocked Doge’s access to “personally identifiable information” in data such as medical and financial records while litigation proceeds in a lower court. Hollander found that allowing Doge unfettered access likely would violate a federal privacy law.
The court’s brief, unsigned order did not provide a rationale for siding with Doge. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented from the order.
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Updated at 17.30 EDT
White House uses new charges against Ábrego García to attack Democrats
White House officials have wasted no time in using the newly announced criminal charges against Kilmar Ábrego García to attack Democrats who objected to his deportation without due process in violation of a previous court order.
Writing on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, the White House’s official account dedicated to partisan “rapid response” resurfaced an April post from Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat whose constituents include Ábrego García’s wife, to suggest that he should now be ashamed of having stood up for the undocumented Maryland resident’s due process rights.
“A grand jury found his full-time job was human smuggling, Chris,” the White House account commented. “He spent his entire life abusing people – including women and children. This is who you spent so much time defending. Shame on you.”
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, also using the platform owned by a former Trump aide who called for the president to be impeached just yesterday, claimed that the indictment against Ábrego García “proves the unhinged Democrat Party was wrong, and their stenographers in the Fake News Media were once again played like fools”.
Apparently unaware that the allegations have yet to be tested in court, the president’s chief spokesperson insisted that “Democrat lawmakers” including Van Hollen, “and every single so-called ‘journalist’ who defended this illegal criminal abuser must immediately apologize to Garcia’s victims”.
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Updated at 17.31 EDT
US attorney general says Kilmar Ábrego García has been returned to the US and indicted on human smuggling charges
At a news conference, the US attorney general, Pamela Bondi, just announced that Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order, has been returned to the United States and charged with criminal charges related to smuggling undocumented immigrants inside the United States.
Bondi said that the US government presented an arrest warrant for Ábrego García to El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.
She also said that the grand jury indictment on 21 May was based on recently discovered facts and that the grand jury “found that over the past nine years, Ábrego García has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring.”
“Upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his country of El Salvador”, Bondi said.
Bondi suggested that Ábrego García was involved in other crimes, based on what unnamed co-conspirators allege, but he was only indicted on two counts related to the alleged smuggling.
In response to a reporter’s question, Bondi said that Ábrego García would serve a prison sentence in the US if convicted, on charges that carry a possible sentence of 10 years, and then be deported to El Salvador again.
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Updated at 16.26 EDT
US criminal indictment charges Kilmar Ábrego García with transporting undocumented immigrants in 2022
We are waiting for the start of a livestreamed justice department news conference, which is expected to deal with the indictment of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador and is reportedly on his way back to the United States to face new criminal charges stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee which prompted officers to suspect that he might have been transporting undocumented migrants.
The criminal indictment, which was filed on 21 May, accuses Ábrego García of being “a member and associate” of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 and charges him with taking part in a conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants inside the United States.
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Updated at 16.01 EDT
The reportedly imminent return to the United States of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order that he should not be sent there because he had a reasonable fear of persecution in that country, comes nearly two months after the attorney general, Pamela Jo Bondi, insisted that it would never happen.
“He is not coming back to our country” Bondi told reporters at a news conference on 16 April. “President Bukele said he was not sending him back. That’s the end of the story.”
Asked if she could provide evidence that he was a member of the MS-13 gang, Bondi said only that the allegation was contained in a 2019 court hearing.
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Kilmar Ábrego García on his way back to the US to face criminal charges – report
Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to El Salvador, is on his way back to the US where he will face criminal charges, ABC News is reporting, citing sources.
A federal grand jury has indicted Ábrego García for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the US, according to the report.
The outlet, citing sources, reports that a two-count indictment, filed under seal in federal court in Tennessee last month, alleges that Ábrego García participated in a years-long conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.
Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, according to the report. The alleged conspiracy spanned nearly a decade, according to the report.
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Updated at 15.22 EDT
US and China to hold trade talks on 9 June in London, says Trump
A US trade delegation including three cabinet officials will meet with trade representatives from China in London on Monday “with reference to the trade deal”, Donald Trump has announced.
He posted on Truth Social:
I am pleased to announce that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, will be meeting in London on Monday, June 9, 2025, with Representatives of China, with reference to the Trade Deal. The meeting should go very well. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
It comes a day after Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping held a “very good” phone call during which they discussed “some of the intricacies of our recently made, and agreed to, Trade Deal”, Trump said.
Trump also said Xi had invited him to visit China, an invitation he aid he reciprocated.
Xi said of the call that a “consensus has been reached”, adding that the two sides “should enhance consensus” as well as “reduce misunderstanding, strengthen cooperation” and “enhance exchanges”. “Dialogue, cooperation is the only right choice for China and the US,” the Chinese president said.
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Updated at 14.39 EDT
Analysis: Money can’t buy him love – Republicans give Elon Musk the cold shoulder
Robert Tait
Elon Musk may believe his money bought the presidential election and the House of the Representatives for the Republicans. But he is discovering painfully and quickly that it has not bought him love, loyalty or even fear among many GOP members of Congress on Capitol Hill.
Faced with the choice of siding with Musk, the world’s richest man, or Donald Trump, after the two staged a public relationship breakdown for the ages on Thursday, most Republicans went with the man in the Oval Office, who has shown an unerring grasp of the tactics of political intimidation and who remains the world’s most powerful figure even without the boss of Tesla and SpaceX by his side.
The billionaire tech entrepreneur, who poured about $275m into Trump’s campaign last year, tried to remind Washington’s political classes of his financial muscle on Thursday during an outpouring of slights against a man for whom he had once professed platonic love and was still showering with praise up until a week before.
One after another, Republican House members came out to condemn him and defend Trump, despite having earlier been told by Musk that “you know you did wrong” in voting for what has become Trump’s signature legislation that seeks to extend vast tax cuts for the rich.
Troy Nehls, a GOP representative from Texas, captured the tone, addressing Musk before television cameras:
You’ve lost your damn mind. Enough is enough. Stop this.
It chimed with the sentiments of many others. “Nobody elected Elon Musk, and a whole lot of people don’t even like him, to be honest with you, even on both sides,” Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey congressman, told Axios.
“We’re getting people calling our offices 100% in support of President Trump,” Kevin Hern, a representative from Oklahoma, told the site.
Every tweet that goes out, people are more lockstep behind President Trump and (Musk is) losing favour.
Republicans were balancing the strength of Trump’s voice among GOP voters versus the power of the increasingly unpopular Musk’s money – and most had little doubt which matters most.
“On the value of Elon playing against us in primaries compared to Trump endorsing us in primaries, the latter is 100 times more relevant,” Axios quoted one unnamed representative as saying.
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Updated at 14.27 EDT
Trump administration preparing to strip federal funding from California – CNN
Lauren Gambino
The Trump administration is preparing to make good on the president’s threat to strip “large scale” federal funding from California, an effort that could begin as early as Friday, according to CNN.
The report says agencies have been directed to start identifying grants the administration can withhold from the state. A whistleblower reportedly told a congressional committee that the administration was planning to cut all research grants to California.
The White House has not commented on the plans. The timeline remains speculative, and it is unclear what grants would be targeted.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding as a way to force states, institutions and universities to comply with his agenda. Last week, he said California could lose “large scale” funding “maybe permanently” if the state continued to allow transgender athletes to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
The declaration appeared to be in reference to a transgender track-and-field star from southern California. On Saturday, she won two gold medals and a silver, which she shared with other teen athletes under a new rule by the state’s high school sports body.
Trump had also repeatedly threatened to withhold federal disaster aid, assailing the state’s Democratic leaders for their handling of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles earlier this year.
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Updated at 13.58 EDT
More from House speaker Mike Johnson, who has told CNBC he has been texting with Elon Musk and hopes the dispute is resolved quickly.
He said of the “big, beautiful bill”:
I don’t argue with (Musk) about how to build rockets and I wish he wouldn’t argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it.
Johnson earlier issued a warning: “Do not second-guess and don’t ever challenge the president of the United States, Donald Trump.”
He had also projected confidence that the Trump-Musk dispute won’t affect prospects for the tax and border bill. “Members are not shaken at all,” he said. “We’re going to pass this legislation on our deadline.”
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Updated at 13.31 EDT
