Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) walks through the Senate subway on December 09, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Sunday criticized President Donald Trump’s military mission off Venezuela’s coast, calling the seizures of multiple oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea “a provocation and a prelude to war.”
“I’m not for confiscating these liners. I’m not for blowing up these boats of unarmed people that are suspected of being drug dealers. I’m not for any of this,” Paul told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Paul also described the administration’s policy of handling suspected drug traffickers as “bizarre and contradictory.”
“And then why is the former president [Juan Orlando] Hernandez of Honduras, who was in jail for 45 years, why is he released?” Paul asked. “So, some narco-terrorists are really OK and other narco-terrorists we’re going to blow up. And then some of them, if they’re not designated as a terrorist, we might arrest them.”
Here are more highlights from Paul’s interview:
On Erika Kirk and Marco Rubio’s 2028 Vance endorsement Karl: Is JD Vance the heir apparent here?
Paul: I think there needs to be representatives in the Republican Party who still believe international trade is good, who still believe in free market capitalism, who still believe in low taxes. See, it used to separate conservatives and liberals that conservatives thought it was a spending problem. We didn’t want more revenue. We wanted less spending. But now all these pro terror protectionists, they love taxes, and so they tax, tax, tax, and then they brag about all the revenue coming in. That has never been a conservative position. So I’m going to continue to try to lead a conservative free market wing of the party, and we’ll see where things lead over time.
Karl: And that’s not JD Vance.
Paul: No.
On retaliatory strikes in Syria Paul: You know, it’s hard not to want to hit back when they kill some of our own. But I would like to go back, really, to the first Trump administration when he said he didn’t want the troops there. There’s like 900 troops, maybe a thousand, maybe 1,500. They’re not enough to fight a war. They’re not enough to be an effective strategic force. What they are is a target and a tripwire.
So we’ve done this retaliatory strike. Now, now, Donald Trump ought to do what Donald Trump proposed in the first administration, what Ronald Reagan did after the 1983 bomb. He left. There’s no reason for us to be in Syria. We need to leave Syria and not be a trip wire to getting back involved in another war.
On the potential for a one-year extension for ACA subsidies Paul: Look, we have health care in our country for poor people. It’s called Medicaid. All of the rest of this stuff has not worked. Obamacare has been a failure. President Obama said it would bring premiums down. Premiums gone through the roof. Every time we give more subsidies, the premiums go higher. I have a plan that says everybody in this marketplace, and it’s only about 4%, everybody in this marketplace should be able to go to Amazon or Costco or Sam’s Club and as a group, a large group — millions of people in the group — negotiate with Big Insurance to bring prices down. It’s the only proposal out there that — that has a chance of bringing prices down.
(NEW YORK) — Repeat atmospheric rivers continue to point relentless streams of rain and gusty wind toward the West Coast.
The current system over the Northwest has diminished, but it is still raining in Washington and Northern California and more significant precipitation is on the way later this weekend.
Another Flood Watch is in effect for parts of western Washington and western Oregon until Saturday afternoon for lingering flooding and some spotty rain that could add to it.
The ground remains saturated in these areas and streams remain elevated. This will lower the threshold for additional flooding in the days ahead.
The next atmospheric river will focus primarily on northern California this time, beginning later Saturday and continuing through Sunday.
A Flood Watch is up for much of Northern California, including Redding and Sacramento. Some areas could get up to 4 to 6+ inches.
The extreme Pacific Northwest won’t see as much rain but won’t be completely spared, with a widespread 1 to 2 inches likely. Mountain snow in the Cascades will also come in the order of feet.
On Christmas Eve Wednesday, another coastal storm will set its sights on the West Coast, but this time Southern California will bear the brunt.
Places like Los Angeles and San Diego are facing the threat of over 4 inches of rain, as well as gusty winds. The Sierra Nevada mountains are also looking at 2 to 4 feet of snow, which would render many mountain passes impassible.
Meanwhile, the Northeast has quieted down after being battered by rain and wind on Friday. This made life difficult for those beginning to travel for the holidays.
Many spots saw wind gusts greater than 60 mph, knocking down trees and power lines as well as causing flight delays.
In the storm’s wake, chilly but quieter weather has moved in. Winds have also eased, making for improved travel conditions.
Much of the holiday week will be well above average temperature-wise across the country, with dry and quiet conditions apart from the West Coast.
Dozens of cities are facing record high temperatures across the center of the country. This list includes St. Louis, Kansas City, Tulsa, Amarillo, Sioux Falls, Amarillo and Albuquerque.
Luigi Mangione attends a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on December 18, 2025 in New York City. (Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Attorneys for Luigi Mangione are arguing the death penalty should be suspended from his federal murder case due to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s alleged “conflict of interest,” according to a new court filing.
In an overnight court filing, defense attorneys accused Bondi of failing to disclose her work at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, which “lists United Health Group as a regular client,” and “that she personally financially profited from Ballard’s lucrative relationship with UHG.”
Mangione is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson in New York City in December 2024. He has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that accused him of stalking and murdering Thompson and has been fighting the government’s notice of intent to seek the death penalty if he’s convicted.
The defense called it a conflict of interest that should have stopped Bondi from directing prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
“When Ms. Bondi left Ballard Partners to become the Attorney General in 2025, the very first defendant she personally selected to be executed was the man accused of killing the CEO of her former client,” the defense filing argued.
“The Attorney General’s financial connection to UHG represents a conflict of interest that should have caused her to recuse herself from making any decisions on this case,” attorneys for Mangione wrote.
The defense argued the pursuit of the death penalty violates Mangione’s due process rights.
“The Attorney General’s past and present financial interest in Ballard Partners, which continues to lobby the government on behalf of UHG and UHC, implicates Mr. Mangione’s due process rights because the very person empowered to seek his death has a financial stake in the case she is prosecuting,” the filing said.
The United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York customarily declines to comment on ongoing cases and is expected to file a written response to the defense argument.
Attorneys for Mangione have been fighting to exclude evidence from his forthcoming murder trial in state court. The new defense filing in the federal case used some of the testimony from that suppression hearing to argue the evidence should also be excluded from Mangione’s federal case.
The defense argued the search of Mangione’s backpack was illegal because, at the time, he was handcuffed, separated from his backpack by several feet and was surrounded by Altoona police officers.
“There was no reasonable possibility that Mr. Mangione could have evaded the numerous officers surrounding him and opened his zippered backpack while rear cuffed. Accordingly, law enforcement’s search of Mr. Mangione’s backpack at the McDonald’s cannot be justified as a search incident to a lawful arrest,” the defense wrote.
The pretrial hearing for the state case concluded on Thursday. New York Judge Gregory Carro gave the defense until Jan. 29 to make its final argument about what evidence should be excluded in writing. Prosecutors have until March 5 to respond. The defense then has two weeks to submit a response.
Carro said he expected to issue his decision about what, if any, evidence to exclude on May 18, at which point he would also set a date for trial.
Esa engineer Michaela Benthaus, photographed in the anteroom of the Munich office of the German Press Agency dpa. (Felix Hörhager/picture alliance via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Blue Origin made history Saturday, sending for the first time a person who uses a wheelchair past the Kármán line, an internationally recognized boundary of space that’s 62 miles above Earth.
Michaela “Michi” Benthaus, who suffered a spinal cord injury after a mountain biking accident in 2018, and her five teammates, who nicknamed themselves the “Out of the Blue” crew, spent several minutes in microgravity before safely returning to Earth with the assistance of parachutes and a retro thrust system. The entire mission lasted about 10 minutes.
During the webcast, Blue Origin said that the launch tower, equipped with an elevator, and the crew capsule did not require any modifications for Benthaus, as they were originally designed to accommodate individuals with disabilities and reduced mobility.
Blue Origin also partners with AstroAccess, “a project dedicated to promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration by paving the way for disabled astronauts,” that is sponsored by the nonprofit SciAccess, Inc.
Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, told ABC News this week she was eager to participate, especially because she feels as if she has waited “very long for it.”
“I am excited to show the world that also wheelchair users can go on a suborbital flight, and I’m really happy that Blue Origin is supporting this,” Benthaus told ABC News on Wednesday.
In a Blue Origin profile video of Benthaus shown prior to the launch, she said, “I think there’s was not like this one moment when I realized my dream of going to space was not over.”
“I really, really figured out how inaccessible our world still is and how sometimes socially excluding a wheelchair can be even though now one is actively excluding you,” she added.
In a statement, Blue Origin said the “crew exemplifies the breadth and diversity of people who can now experience spaceflight, from engineers and scientists to entrepreneurs, teachers, and investors from all over the world. Each brings their unique perspective and passion for exploration. Michi’s flight is particularly meaningful, demonstrating that space is for everyone, and we are proud to help her achieve this dream.”
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Coast Guard is currently interdicting a sanctioned vessel off the coast of Venezuela in international waters of the Caribbean Sea, according to three U.S. officials.
No further details were available as to the name of the ship or where exactly the operation is taking place.
This is the second sanctioned vessel seized by the United States. On Dec. 10, an elite U.S. Coast Guard tactical operations team, with the support of U.S. Navy helicopters, boarded and seized The Skipper, an oil tanker sanctioned for being part of an illicit oil operation involving Venezuela.
Reuters was first to report that a second sanctioned vessel is currently being seized by the Coast Guard.
(NEW YORK) — The No. 2 official in the Justice Department told ABC News in an interview Friday that there has been “no effort” to redact President Donald Trump’s name from the release of files stemming from federal investigations into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked Friday in an interview by ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas whether every document that mentions Trump will be released as the government continues its rollout of hundreds of thousands of files in the coming weeks.
“Assuming it’s consistent with the law, yes,” Blanche said. “So there’s no effort to hold anything back because there’s the name Donald J. Trump or anybody else’s name, Bill Clinton’s name, Reid Hoffman’s name. There’s no effort to hold back or not hold back because of that and — and so — but again, we’re not, we’re not redacting the names of famous men and women that are associated with Epstein.”
When directly pressed over whether there’s been any order to DOJ personnel to redact materials involving Trump, Blanche rejected any such suggestion and accused Democratic lawmakers of using selective disclosures from Epstein’s estate to present Trump in a negative light.
“President Trump has certainly said from the beginning that he expects all files that can be released to be released and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Blanche said.
Blanche sat for the interview just hours before the department released its first tranche of thousands of files, which contained little information related to Trump and instead included images of former President Bill Clinton without context, which were highlighted on social media by DOJ and White House officials.
A spokesperson for Clinton accused the department of selectively disclosing the pictures in a statement and denied that they showed any wrongdoing by the former president.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday only to protect Bill Clinton,” Clinton’s spokesperson Angel Urena said Friday. “They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton.”
“Everyone, especially MAGA, expects answers, not scapegoats,” the spokesperson said.
In the ABC News interview, Blanche further sought to defend the department’s decision not to release the entirety of its files subject to disclosure under the bill signed into law by Trump, which gave the Justice Department a 30-day deadline to release the entirety of its Epstein investigative files.
“I did not say that all the files will not be released, I said all the files will not be released today,” Blanche said when asked about an interview he gave earlier Friday to Fox News. “And the law is very specific that the Department of Justice is required to make sure that we protect victims. And as recently as Wednesday, we learned of additional victim names, and so we’ve received over 1,200 names of victims and their family members since we started this process. And so there’s an established precedent that in a situation like this, where it’s in essence impossible for us to comply with the law today, that we comply with the law, consistent with the law.”
When asked whether the public should be confident that Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s personal defense attorney, would act in the public’s interest over Trump, Blanche said the American people should look at what the department ultimately releases.
“Your confidence should be in the fact that for decades, lots of people have been trying to go after President Trump falsely, and when it came to the Epstein saga, it’s exactly the same story.”
Blanche added that the process to make redactions to the documents, “was not Attorney General [Pam] Bondi, [FBI] Director Patel, Todd Blanche going through and coding millions of documents and saying, ‘yes, no, yes, no.’ You have multiple, dozens and dozens of the most highly trained lawyers in the Department of Justice working for the National Security Division. These are career lawyers engaged in this process.”
Blanche defends prison transfer of Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell
In the interview, Blanche also defended the department’s controversial move over the summer to transfer Epstein’s convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a lower security prison facility just days after he sat for an interview with her over two days in Florida.
In an interview released by Vanity Fair earlier this week, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles denied that Trump was involved in the decision and said he disapproved of Maxwell’s transfer.
While Blanche said he was “not permitted” to talk about security for individual inmates, he said Maxwell was facing “multiple threats” that warranted her being moved to a separate low-security facility in Texas.
“At the time that she was moved, there were multiple threats against her life, and like happens all the time at the Bureau of Prisons when that happens, one of the things that one of the options available to the warden and the security system within the Bureau of Prisons is to move the inmate,” Blanche said. “She’s not released. She’s in federal prison.”
Blanche further denied Maxwell was receiving any preferential treatment in the new facility, despite recent whistleblower disclosures released by congressional Democrats.
Blanche says investigations into Comey, James will continue
ABC News separately asked Blanche whether the department plans to continue pursuing prosecutions against two of Trump’s top political targets, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey after a federal judge tossed their indictments in November on the basis that a Trump-installed prosecutor was unlawfully appointed.
Two separate federal grand juries in the past two weeks have rejected the department’s efforts to re-indict James on mortgage fraud charges and a separate federal judge in Washington, D.C., has restricted prosecutors from accessing key evidence in their probe of Comey.
Blanche confirmed the department’s investigation into Comey “is continuing” and said it was “not a mystery” that DOJ plans to still seek charges against him and rejected any suggestion the prosecution was “vindictive.”
James and Comey have denied all wrongdoing.
When asked about the interview that Wiles, the White House chief of staff, gave to Vanity Fair in which she candidly appeared to concede the DOJ’s prosecution of James was “retribution,” Blanche again defended the department’s actions.
“Because we’re looking at the evidence, we’re investigating them, investigating the cases. We have law enforcement, career law enforcement, doing the investigations are being presented to a grand jury in the normal course,” Blanche said.
ABC News has previously reported that career prosecutors on both the James and Comey investigations recommended prosecutors not pursue either indictment based on what they considered the lack of sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.
(ROCHESTER, N.Y.) — Three police officers in Rochester, New York, were shot Friday night “without warning at close range” while responding to a domestic call at a home, police said.
Emergency services received a call from a man who said his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend was attempting to break into her home and possibly had a gun, according to the Rochester Police Department. The caller also told dispatchers he had a legal permit for a firearm and was carrying a pistol.
Officers arrived a short time later and located the suspect, identified by the caller as the ex-boyfriend, along the side of the house, authorities said.
“He immediately pulled out a handgun and fired multiple shots from close range toward the officers and the victim, striking two officers,” Rochester Police Chief David Smith said during a Saturday morning news conference.
Additional shots were fired, including an exchange of gunfire between the suspect and the man who called police, which resulted in the caller being shot multiple times, Smith said.
The suspect fled the scene but was located within minutes by another officer, who was also shot after being fired upon by the suspect.
That officer and others on scene returned fire, striking the suspect multiple times and killing him, police said.
One officer was shot multiple times in the upper body and is listed in stable condition. Another officer was shot in the upper body, rushed to surgery and is listed in critical but stable condition.
A third officer suffered serious injuries but is in stable condition, authorities said. The man who initially called police was shot multiple times and remains in serious but non-life-threatening condition.
Police have not released the identities of those involved and the investigation is currently ongoing.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (center) is celebrated by participants at a rally marking the anniversary of a battle on the day Venezuelan opposition leader Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (Jesus Vargas/picture alliance via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Oil prices jumped about 3% after President Donald Trump this week threatened to blockade all sanctioned oil tankers traveling in and out of Venezuela.
Venezuela, which has the largest known oil reserves in the world, exports hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil each day.
The threatened blockade risks a reduction of global oil supply and an amplification of geopolitical uncertainty — both of which could further push up oil prices and, in turn, pinch drivers at the pump, some analysts told ABC News.
But, they added, the effect on prices will likely remain muted unless the conflict escalates significantly, since Venezuela accounts for less than 1% of global oil output and most of its oil is sold on the black market.
Here’s what to know about what the threatened U.S. blockade means for oil and gasoline prices:
Where does the blockade stand and how has Venezuela responded? On Tuesday, Trump threatened what he called a “blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers traveling in and out of Venezuela, ratcheting up pressure on the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose government depends in part on revenue derived from oil sales.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.”
A day later, Maduro said Venezuela would continue to trade oil, defying Trump’s threat.
“Trade in and out will continue — our oil and all our natural wealth that by the constitution and Bolivar’s legacy belongs — our wealth, our land, and our oil — to its only legitimate owner, which for centuries and centuries has been our sovereign people of Venezuela,” Maduro said on Wednesday, originally in Spanish.
The U.S. currently has 11 warships in the Caribbean — the most in decades — but even with an increased military presence, that would likely not be enough to put in place a blockade in the traditional sense, which involves sealing a country’s coastline completely and would effectively have been a declaration of war.
Why has the threatened blockade pushed up oil prices? The threatened blockade of sanctioned oil tankers drove up the U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures price — a key measure of U.S. oil prices — by about 3%, landing the price around $56.50 per barrel.
The measure had dropped to its lowest level since 2021 on Tuesday, just hours before Trump’s announcement. The dip in prices stemmed from a glut of oil alongside relatively slow global economic growth, which has constricted demand for fossil fuels.
“Everybody and their grandmother is bearish on oil prices,” Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, told ABC News.
The threatened blockade disrupted those price doldrums, at least to a minor degree, some experts said.
Venezuela has exported about 749,000 barrels per day this year, with at least half that oil going to China, according to data from Kpler. That oil output amounts to less than 1% of global supply.
The news caused a “knee-jerk reaction” in oil markets due to heightened uncertainty tied to the U.S.-Venezuela conflict, Christopher Tang, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies supply chains, told ABC News. A continued standoff could push oil prices up to around $65 or $70 per barrel, but they’re unlikely to go much higher, Tang added.
“It’s not going to go up to $100 a barrel,” Tang said.
What could the threatened Venezuelan oil blockade mean for gas prices? A jump in oil prices typically brings about an ensuing uptick in the cost of gasoline at the pump, some experts said, since crude oil makes up the key ingredient in auto fuel.
“The single most important price driver of gasoline is crude oil. As crude oil goes up, we expect gasoline to go up,” Timothy Fitzgerald, a professor of business economics at the University of Tennessee who studies the petroleum industry, told ABC News.
The average price of a gallon of gas stands at about $2.88, which marks a 5% decline from a year earlier, AAA data showed. Gas prices are hovering near their lowest level in four years due in part to the low cost of crude oil.
Police patrol Brown University following a mass shooting yesterday that left at least two people dead and nine others injured on December 14, 2025 in Providence, Rhode Island. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(PROVIDENCE, R.I.) — The mayor of Providence is asking FBI Director Kash Patel to give the $50,000 reward offered for information in the Brown University mass shooting to a local tipster who provided a detailed account of the suspect.
The man, only identified by authorities in a criminal complaint as “John,” provided the Providence Police Department with the most detailed account of the suspect, later identified as 48-year-old Carlos Neves Valente, and the gray Nissan Sentra he was driving — first on a Reddit post and later to authorities.
“One individual amongst those who provided tips stands out above the rest: John,” Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said in the letter obtained by ABC News. “As discussed with the media last night, John is no less than a hero. His bravery, selflessness and stewardship on behalf of his community went far beyond what anyone could ever hope from a tip. I believe that our community is breathing easier today because of the extraordinary assistance John provided to our law enforcement agencies. I am writing to you today to request that the entirety of the $50,000 reward be issued to this incredible Providence neighbor.”
The FBI previously said there was a $50,000 reward for any information leading to the suspect.
In the letter, Smiley said law enforcement worked for 130 hours straight to find and identify the gunman — but that John was pivotal to the investigation.
“He blew this case right open,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told reporters at a news conference on Thursday night. “He blew it open.”
It all began unfolding three days after the shooting when an anonymous source tipped off authorities to a post John had made on the website Reddit, according to the Rhode Island criminal complaint detailing the evidence against the suspected shooter.
“I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” John wrote in the post, describing “odd” behavior by the suspect.
After noticing the man they believed to be John interacting with the suspect in surveillance footage, police released images of him and asked for help in identifying him on Wednesday. Later that day, John approached a Providence police officer and said he was the person they were looking for.
John told detectives that he first encountered the suspect in the bathroom of Brown University’s Barus & Holley building in the hours before the Dec. 13 shooting and was suspicious, according to the affidavit.
John followed Neves Valente outside, where he said he observed the suspect approaching his car, the affidavit noted. The suspect and John would lock eyes as Neves Valente repeatedly walked around the block, in what John would describe “as a game of cat and mouse,” according to the affidavit.
The tip and surveillance video, along with the use of license-plate reader technology, led investigators to a car rental agency in Massachusetts where Neves Valente had rented the Nissan under his own name, authorities said.
Investigators tracked Neves Valente to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, on the border with Massachusetts, where they found his body inside.
Authorities said Neves Valente burst into a lecture hall on the Brown campus on Dec. 13 and opened fire, killing two students and wounding nine others, before fleeing the scene. Two days later, he fatally shot MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in the foyer of his apartment building in Brookline, Massachusetts, according to authorities.
Officials haven’t released a motive, but Neves Velente briefly attended Brown University in the early 2000s and studied in the same prestigious physics engineering program in the 1990s with Loureiro in their native Portugal.
A memorial set up by Brown University outside of the Barus and Holley building on December 18, 2025. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — New details about how police caught up to Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, the 48-year-old former Brown University graduate student who allegedly perpetrated a mass shooting at Brown and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, have emerged after a dayslong manhunt where officials said he made a series of moves designed to evade authorities.
Authorities credited the work of a tipster who they say “blew this case out in the open.”
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said local police helped track down Neves Valente, who was found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit on Thursday, in part thanks to surveillance video and a tip from an anonymous source that pointed authorities to a post on social media platform Reddit.
The tip referenced a post in which the Reddit user — later identified as John — called for police to “look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates,” according to the affidavit.
“I’m being dead serious,” the Reddit post read. “That was the car he was driving.”
After noticing the man they believed to be John interacting with the suspect on surveillance footage, police released images of him and asked for help in identifying him on Wednesday. Later that day, John approached a Providence police officer and said he was the person they were looking for.
John told detectives that he encountered the suspect in the bathroom of Brown University’s Barus & Holley building in the hours before Dec. 13 shooting and was suspicious, according to the affidavit.
John followed Neves Valente outside, where he said he observed the suspect approaching his car, the affidavit noted. The suspect and John would lock eyes as Neves Valente repeatedly walked around the block, in what John would describe “as a game of cat and mouse,” according to the affidavit.
“At some point they [John and Neves Valente] encountered each other on George Street, at which time, the Suspect ran in the opposite direction. John then ran up behind the person of interest, slowed to a good speed-walk and walked past the Suspect,” the affidavit said.
Ultimately, John questioned Neves Valente why he was circling the block prompting a response from the suspect, before John walked away, according to the affidavit.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told reporters John’s information was crucial in tracking the suspect.
“I remember last night watching his interview, and he blew this case right open,” he said.
The tip and surveillance video, along with the use of license-plate reader technology, led investigators to a car rental agency in Massachusetts.
There, police obtained a copy of the rental agreement with the suspect’s name, as well as video of the suspect that matched the videos of the person of interest seen on the Brown University campus on the day of the shooting, the complaint said.
That discovery ultimately led investigators to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where the suspect was found dead, officials said.
Financial records and video evidence confirmed that the storage unit belonged to the alleged suspect and that the rental vehicle was connected to both the Rhode Island and Massachusetts cases.
Authorities identified the suspect as Neves Valente, a Portuguese national and former Brown University student whose last known address was in Miami, Florida. Officials said Neves Valente died by suicide Thursday evening.
Officials confirmed that Neves Valente was found with a satchel containing two firearms, and evidence recovered from the vehicle matched what was found at the Providence crime scene.
Federal authorities confirmed that shortly before 9 p.m. on Thursday, FBI SWAT teams executed court-authorized search warrants at a storage facility in Salem, which is where they found Neves Valente’s body.
The autopsy performed by the New Hampshire Department of Justice Office of the Chief Medical Examiner estimated that Neves Valente died on Tuesday, one day after the professor was killed at MIT, according to investigators.
Portugal’s Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) confirmed to ABC News that Cláudio Manuel Neves Neves Valente studied between 1995 and 2000 in the school’s physics engineering program, the same one attended at the time by slain MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro.
A 1998 announcement in Portugal’s official Diario da República referred to Neves Valente’s appointment as a teaching assistant at IST and a 2000 notice in the same publication mentions his termination from the role.
A spokesperson for IST declined to comment further on Neves Valente’s history at the institution, due to the ongoing investigation and out of respect for the friends and family of Loureiro.
Brown officials confirmed that Neves Valente was enrolled at the university from the fall of 2000 through the spring of 2001 as a graduate student in physics, entering Brown’s graduate program in September 2000 before taking a leave of absence in April 2001 and formally withdrawing in 2003.
“He was not a current student, was not an employee and did not receive a degree from the University, attending for only three semesters as a graduate student until taking a leave in 2001 and formally withdrawing effective July 31, 2003,” Brown University President Christina Paxson wrote in a letter to students and faculty Thursday.
During his time at Brown, he was enrolled only in physics courses, which were typically held in the Barus & Holley building. University records indicate he has had no active affiliation with Brown for more than two decades.
Police said the suspect acted alone and that there is no indication, at this time, of additional planned attacks. Investigators have not identified any writings, known criminal history or clear motive.
Officials said forensic teams are still processing evidence recovered in New Hampshire, including firearms, and will compare it with ballistic and DNA evidence from the Providence crime scene.
Paxson said the university is still reviewing how the suspect gained access to the building. She said the building was unlocked that day because exams were being held, and the university will examine security procedures moving forward.
Investigators said Neves Valente obtained lawful permanency in April 2017 and was issued a green card.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in an X post that Neves Valente received his visa through the diversity visa lottery program, and announced that, at President Donald Trump’s direction, she was pausing the program.
Each year, the State Department awards up to 50,000 immigrant visas to “winners” of the diversity visa lottery. The program was created by Congress in 1990 to allow applicants from countries with low rates of immigration into the U.S. to come here.
The winners are selected at random, but they must still go through a lengthy application process, which includes submitting criminal records, being interviewed at an embassy or consulate, and meeting other requirements, such as having a High School Diploma or two years of work experience. Applicants are then allowed to apply for lawful permanent resident status.
Investigators said they identified Neves Valente by name late Wednesday night and weighed whether releasing his identity could cause him to flee or take further action.
Officials said they believed he might return the rental car in Boston or attempt to leave the area, and they wanted the opportunity to arrest him without alerting him that police were closing in.
Officials said it remains unclear exactly when the suspect took his own life, but noted that he signed into the storage facility but was never seen leaving.
The site was secured by federal agents, and investigators said an autopsy will help determine the timing of his death.
ABC News’ Armando Garcia and Christopher Looft contributed to this report.
