(WASHINGTON) — An Oklahoma man admitted Wednesday to cyberstalking Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., and threatening Hern and his wife, federal prosecutors announced.
Keith Charles Eisenberger, 39, of Bartlesville, pleaded guilty to three federal charges, including cyberstalking; threatening to kidnap and assault a member of Congress; and threatening to kidnap and assault the spouse of a member of Congress, the Justice Department said in a statement.
He was first charged in May.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will not tolerate online threats of violence meant to intimidate elected officials or members of our community. Keith Eisenberger now understands there are legal repercussions to committing these criminal acts,” said U.S. Attorney Clint Johnson.
According to the Justice Department, Eisenberger admitted to prosecutors that he threatened and harassed Hern online from Nov. 27, 2018, to May 11, 2022, and ultimately threatened to assault and kidnap Hern to interfere with his official duties. He later threatened to kidnap and assault Hern’s wife.
Prosecutors said the concerning comments started in 2018 when Hern first assumed office and became increasingly violent as time went on. The threats were made during visits to Hern’s office in Washington and over the phone and social media.
During one visit to Hern’s office in 2019, Eisenberger told Capitol Police that he was angry because he thought Hern had been appointed to the seat without Eisenberger being considered for it, prosecutors said.
In a plea agreement, prosecutors and an attorney for Eisenberger agreed that sentencing guidelines call for 36 months in prison, the Justice Department said. He will then undergo 36 months of supervised release, according to the agreement.
Eisenberger’s guilty plea comes at a time of what law enforcement has called heightened concern over political violence.
A Seattle man was recently charged with felony stalking after allegedly yelling racial epithets outside the home of Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
Another man was arrested in June for allegedly threatening to kill Brett Kavanaugh while outside the Supreme Court justice’s home.
And in Ohio on Thursday, a suspected “domestic violent extremist” was fatally shot after attempting to break into an FBI office there, leading to an hours-long standoff.
(NEW YORK) — Ever wondered what cereal would taste like if it was spicy?
Thanks to Cinnamon Toast Crunch you don’t have to wonder any more.
The classic cereal brand is giving their sweet cinnamon taste a spicy twist and a new name: CinnaFuego Toast Crunch.
According to the brand, the new cereal looks the same as the original with “the added hot sensation of a spicy pepper.” You heard that right.
“CTC is always looking to give our fans the most absurd and exciting experiences,” Mindy Murray, General Mills’ senior marketing communications manager, said in a press release.
CinnaFuego Toast Crunch is sold in a new resealable pouch so consumers can enjoy the new spicy cereal as a snack.
“We can’t wait for CTC lovers to try CinnaFuego, and if they dare, eat it with some milk for breakfast,” Murray added.
Shop the new spicy cereal for $5.48 while supplies last.
(NEW YORK) — The Justice Department unsealed charges Wednesday against an Iranian national and member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who prosecutors say tried to arrange the murder of John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.
The criminal complaint was filed against 45-year-old Shahram Poursafi. Prosecutors allege that Poursafi tried to arrange the murder of Bolton in “likely” retaliation for the murder of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed on Jan. 3, 2020, during the Trump administration.
Poursafi remains at large abroad.
In a statement after the charges were unsealed, Bolton called Iranian rulers “liars, terrorists and enemies of the United States.”
“Their radical, anti-American objectives are unchanged; their commitments are worthless; and their global threat is growing,” Bolton said, in part.
Nasser Kanani, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iran, called the charges “baseless” and said the United States continues to claim “endless” and false accusations against Iran.
“In a new story-telling, the American judicial authorities have raised accusations without providing valid documents and necessary documents,” said Kanani, in a statement translated from Persian.
ABC News’ “Start Here” spoke to Marine Col. Stephen Ganyard, a former State Department official and now ABC News contributor, on the alleged plot to kill one of the United States’ most high-profile officials.
START HERE: John Bolton was a United Nations ambassador for George W. Bush [and] he was the national security adviser under Donald Trump…but he’s not in office now. Why would someone want to kill John Bolton?
GANYARD: Revenge Brad. It was payback. Remember that John Bolton was probably the hawk [and] probably pushed President Trump to take out Soleimani when the U.S. had the chance.
When they assassinated Soleimani back in 2020, understanding who Soleimani was within the Iranian society, understanding he was nearly a demigod.
There was nobody more powerful in Iran other than the supreme leader. So here is a hugely powerful man that was seen as a hero in the eyes of the Iranian people who needed a hero.
Who had brought together a serious military strategy in the Middle East, that pulled together Iran and Syria and Hezbollah and all of the efforts the Iranians had in the Middle East.
He unified the Iranian people. He unified the Iranian military in a way that no other commander had done and no other non-secular commander had ever done.
START HERE:What was the plan [to kill Bolton]? Do we know about who [the suspect] is and what he was doing?
GANYARD: We have a name, [but] we don’t know much more than that.
Clearly some kind of plot like this would have to be approved at the highest levels in Tehran, but we don’t know what this person’s position is. We don’t know whether they were part of the intelligence services, whether they’re part of the Quds Force.
We just know that the Department of Justice developed enough evidence, whether that was voice transcripts, whether it was text, whether it was emails, but they developed enough to get an indictment of this guy who isn’t even in the United States.
So very, very fuzzy, but he is likely within the hierarchy of the Iranian intelligence services and the Iranian government.
START HERE:Suppose these allegations are true. What would’ve happened if this was successful? What was Iran planning on happening in the fallout of a major attack?
GANYARD: It would’ve put the Biden administration in a very tough place.
Remember, the time that this would’ve gone down, the Biden administration was negotiating, trying to revive the nuclear deal that the Obama administration had put in place, that the Trump administration had discarded.
So if something like this would happen, that whole effort by the Biden administration, which he had talked about as candidate Biden, would’ve gone by the wayside. There was no way that he could agree to something with the Iranians.
Even worse, there may have been a requirement for retaliation, for the United States to do something militarily, to pay back the Iranians for assassinating a senior United States government official.
START HERE:So we could have found ourselves at war, is what you’re saying, if this was successful?
GANYARD:We could have, depending on how egregious it was and how the Biden administration reacted, there could have been some sort of a military retaliation.
And in that part of the world, it’s really hard to know whether you are lighting a fire or you’re putting one out.
START HERE:Well, from the U.S. perspective, the DOJ did not have to release this information [but] they chose to… What is about to happen for the U.S. and Iran going forward?
GANYARD: So this seems like it’s a warning. Here’s why: We know that the Iranians offered this U.S. person $300,000 to kill Bolton. But they said, “Once you do that, we got a million dollars for somebody else that we’re already surveilling.”
GANYARD: So this is something where the Department of Justice and the FBI said, “We know that we are not gonna get this guy that we’re gonna indict, but we have to fire a warning shot across their bow. We have to make it clear. We know what’s going on here and you better not do it again, or even try to do it again because there will be consequences.”
(NEW YORK) — What’s better than The Always Pan? A Mini Always Pan!
After much demand from consumers, Our Place has introduced a smaller version of their Always Pan and Perfect Pot.
“We got hundreds of requests for a smaller Always Pan and Perfect Pot for studio apartments, dorm rooms, travel, and also just for something to use when you’re cooking for one,” Shiza Shahid, co-founder of Our Place, said in a press release.
The minis have the same features as the full-size versions like nontoxic and nonstick ceramic coating.
“The minis are everything you’ve come to love about Our Place cookware, but now in a smaller size designed for versatility and convenience,” Shahid added.
You can shop the mini versions as a set or on their own.
Exterior of the Cincinnati Field Office building. – FBI.gov
(CINCINNATI) — Ricky Shiffer, the man armed with an AR-15 style rifle and believed by authorities to have tried to break into the FBI’s Cincinnati field office Thursday is a “suspected domestic violent extremist,” according to law enforcement officials briefed on the probe.
Law enforcement is now investigating social media posts apparently linked to the suspect, which called for violence in the days after the FBI search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, the officials told ABC News.
The unprecedented search of a former president’s residence ignited a firestorm among Republicans and Trump’s supporters and sparked a wave of messages online hinting at potential violence. Law enforcement officials have been monitoring for threats since the raid was conducted.
Shiffer was fatally shot by police after he allegedly raised a gun toward law enforcement officers, an Ohio State Highway Patrol spokesperson said during a press briefing.
Social media posts believed to belong to Shiffer on Twitter and TruthSocial, Trump’s own social network, suggest the suspected gunman was likely “motivated by a combination of conspiratorial beliefs related to former President Trump and the 2020 election (among others), interest in killing federal law enforcement, and the recent search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week,” according to a briefing compiled by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that monitors extremism and hate speech online.
ABC News has reviewed a series of recent posts to accounts believed to be Shiffer’s on “TruthSocial” that call for “war” and for FBI agents to be killed “on sight.”
In one post on Thursday, Shiffer appeared to detail his failed attempt to enter the FBI building, writing, “it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I.”
The account allegedly tied to Shiffer has since been removed.
Trump Media & Technology Group, which founded “TruthSocial,” did not respond to a request for comment.
According to social media posts and photographs, Shiffer was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to ISD analysts that have combed the accounts. Investigators are actively working to determine whether Shiffer was, in fact, at the Capitol during the insurrection.
The ISD report also details that Shiffer appeared to encourage others to “Save ammunition” and “Get in touch with the Proud Boys” in posts on the video streaming website Rumble. Any connections he might have had to the Proud Boys are also a key focus of the probe, officials said.
(ATLANTA) — Brianna Grier, a mother of 3-year-old twins who died last month in police custody, was remembered Thursday by her family as a loving, caring person.
Rev. Al Sharpton spoke at Grier’s funeral, which took place at West Hunter Baptist Church in Atlanta.
“The program says that we come to celebrate a life, but we also come to condemn a passing,” Sharpton said.
He continued, “These two young twins … one day we will have to tell them the story of what happened to their mother. But the troubling thing is that they will ask, ‘Why?’ And I’m here today to join others in saying that Georgia is going to have to start answering why.”
Preliminary findings of an independent autopsy ordered by Grier’s family declared her cause of death to be severe blunt force injury to the head. Results of an official autopsy being conducted as part of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s review of Grier’s death are still pending, according to a GBI representative.
The 28-year-old was arrested by Hancock County Sheriff’s Office deputies on July 15 after Grier’s mother called 911 to report that her daughter was experiencing a mental health crisis, according to the family and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Grier fell out of the police car’s rear passenger door after it was not properly closed. Grier had been handcuffed and was not wearing a seat belt, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The Hancock County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Sharpton said $5,000 from the National Action Network will go toward a fund for Grier’s daughters’ education. He then went on to criticize the sheriff’s office and its initial claims that Grier kicked open the door to the police car, causing her to fall out.
“That’s why if the county don’t do something about Brianna, we’re going to the Justice Department,” Sharpton said at the funeral. “Her life mattered and that’s why we’re here.”
Grier’s father, Marvin Grier, said: “The night that this happened, we called the police for help … not death. We are here to seek justice, accountability, transparency. That’s all we’re asking for. We need answers.”
(WASHINGTON) — The FBI executed an unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday in search of evidence reportedly tied to his alleged mishandling of government documents.
It’s believed to be the first search by the federal agency of the residence of a current or former U.S. president. Sources told ABC News that the raid was related to the 15 boxes of documents that Trump took to his Palm Beach home when he departed the White House — some of which the National Archives has said were marked classified.
Trump and other Republicans have sharply criticized the raid as a partisan attack and have demanded an explanation.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Aug 12, 7:07 AM EDT
Trump calls for ‘immediate release’ of search warrant
Former President Donald Trump is calling for “the immediate release” of the warrant that allowed FBI agents to search his Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday.
“Not only will I not oppose the release of documents related to the unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in of my home in Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago, I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents, even though they have been drawn up by radical left Democrats and possible future political opponents, who have a strong and powerful vested interest in attacking me much as they have done for the last 6 years,” Trump said late Thursday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“This unprecedented political weaponization of law enforcement is inappropriate and highly unethical,” he added. “The world is watching as our Country is being brought to a new low, not only on our border, crime, economy, energy, national security, and so much more, but also with respect to our sacred elections!”
(NEW YORK) — A few days after learning about the deadly shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Jim Witt, superintendent of Lake Local Schools in northern Ohio, reached out to a school safety organization he’s worked with for over a decade.
“It’s unfortunate,” Witt said, but “every time we have a Uvalde situation,” he emails the Educator’s School Safety Network to ask what they need to know and what needs to be changed.
“We want to do everything we can to stay current with what is going on in school safety,” he said.
As more has come to light on one of the worst school shootings in U.S history — most notably the shortcomings of the law enforcement response — schools across the country are reexamining their active shooter plans and implementing new measures, from requiring clear backpacks to more controversial steps like arming teachers.
While active shooters in schools remain exceedingly rare, they are on the increase in recent years, federal data shows, and they have an outsized impact on perceptions of safety.
For Witt, the incident at Uvalde — where the gunman entered the school through a door that didn’t latch properly — reinforced what his district already does, including having a planned entrance, maintaining a relationship with local police, checking in with students and the “vigilance of locking doors.”
“When our school bells ring, our custodians — you can set your watch by it — they go and make sure that all of the exit doors are locked,” said Witt. “My administrative staff and I walk around campus every day and included in our walks is checking those doors to make sure that they are locked and they are closed and they’re latched.”
A Texas state legislature investigation into the Uvalde shooting found that while the elementary school had adopted security policies to ensure that exterior doors and internal classroom doors were locked during school hours, those protocols were mostly ignored.
The shooting in Uvalde — in which the 18-year-old alleged gunman killed 19 students and two teachers — and other recent school shootings also demonstrate the importance of measures to reduce student access to guns, including conversations on proper gun storage and “red flag laws,” Rob Wilcox, federal legal director for the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety, told ABC News.
“To keep our schools safe and to keep our students safe, no matter where they are in the community, schools and community members really need to work together,” Wilcox said.
Consistency and communication
Months before the massacre at Robb Elementary School, Kristine Martin, the assistant superintendent of Washington Local Schools in Toledo, Ohio, was spearheading a school safety audit to determine their vulnerabilities.
“I think any time something like that happens, we always reflect on what are we doing and what are our practices and what can we do better or differently,” she said. “We started this work before that, but it just speaks to the urgency of the work.”
One of the areas the school focused on based on the audit was consistency. When students return in the fall, the district’s 10 buildings will have new kiosks — paid for through a state education grant — to sign in visitors and dispense a standard visitor pass across the campus. Every school employee will also be required to wear their staff IDs, which previously wasn’t a uniform practice across buildings.
“Kids in an emergency need to know who is a safe person,” Martin said.
Though schools may turn their focus to active shooter drills, Amy Klinger, founder of the Educator’s School Safety Network, which provides schools with safety training and resources, advises that they take an “all-hazards approach” that takes into account other scenarios that may be more likely to happen, such as violent fights that do not involve firearms, issues with noncustodial parents and severe weather.
“When you have this heavy emphasis on active shooter, lockdown sort of drills, and that’s the only training that people get, then you have situations where people don’t realize the importance of the doors being locked, and the importance of carrying their keys and carrying their radio or their phone and having appropriate communications,” Klinger said.
“What I would hope for schools is that they really begin to look at kind of an all-hazards approach that says, what are we doing about access control? Does our communication plan work? Can people really get notifications? And that we look beyond just, we did a lockdown drill where everybody hid in the corner and now we’re all safe,” she continued. “Because Ulvade demonstrated that that’s not the case.”
The Texas state legislature investigation into the Uvalde shooting found a range of communication failures, from the lack of a command post being established by responding law enforcement to problematic radio reception inside the school building. It also found that Uvalde school district employees did not always reliably receive alerts like an active shooter situation for reasons including poor wi-fi coverage and turned-off phones.
In the wake of the Uvalde shooting, the Texas Education Agency plans to review external entry points of every school in Texas, as well as review each district’s safety protocols, the Texas Tribune reported. ABC News has reached out to the agency for an update on its reviews.
Among the recommendations in an interim report by the Arkansas School Safety Commission drafted in response to the mass shooting in Uvalde were that all exterior school building doors and classroom doors should remain closed and locked during school hours, and that school districts should develop a “layered two-way communication access between staff to ensure information sharing during critical incidents,” such as the use of intercoms, radios and cell phones.
Preventing gun access
The accused gunman in the Uvalde shooting legally purchased the assault rifle used in the shooting when he turned 18, authorities said. That has led Uvalde community leaders to call on the state to hold a special legislative session to consider raising the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic assault-style rifles from 18 to 21.
Nearly 80% of school shooters under the age of 18 acquire guns from the home of family or close friends, according to Everytown — which makes secure storage a key part of preventing gun violence in schools, Wilcox said.
“We’ve seen really encouraging action across the country as schools step up to make sure that everyone in their community knows how important it is to securely store firearms in the home,” Wilcox said.
Last month, the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education voted to amend its student/parent handbook to include information about the secure storage of firearms. The move came nearly a year after one of the students in the district, 13-year-old Bennie Hargrove, was fatally shot during lunch at school. The accused shooter — a fellow student — allegedly brought his father’s unsecured gun to school.
Much of this work happens at the school board level, Wilcox said. Though last month, the California governor signed a bill that requires schools to include information related to the safe storage of firearms in an annual notice sent to parents or guardians. The bill was drafted in reaction to a 2021 school shooting at a Michigan high school, in which an alleged 15-year-old gunman fatally shot four of his classmates.
Another tool that schools could use to limit students’ access to guns is extreme risk protection orders, often known as “red flag laws,” Wilcox said.
Addressing warning signs
The Texas House of Representatives committee report on the Robb Elementary School shooting revealed the accused school shooter exhibited many warning signs prior to the massacre.
“If a student is showing that they’re in crisis and you’re taking steps to intervene, then you may want to use an extreme risk protection order to ensure that there’s no access to guns by that young person,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox pointed to testimony by a Baltimore sheriff who told state legislators in 2019 that in the first few months of Maryland’s red flag law going into effect, his office seized firearms in five instances that involved schools.
For Witt, part of maintaining a safe school includes having meaningful relationships with students.
“If a student has a broken leg, you know it because he or she is on crutches and there’s a cast on the leg. If a student is suffering from depression or some other type of mental health illness, you can’t see it,” he said. “That’s why the relationship becomes even more imperative, so those kids not only have an outlet to talk to someone about their situation, but also if there’s a possibility of danger, you can address it in a meaningful and helpful way.”
Mental health support is a focus; the Arkansas School Safety Commission advised in its interim report that all students should have access to mental health services, and that all school districts should provide youth mental health first aid training to all staff that interacts with students.
For Wilcox, having a positive school climate is one part of preventing school violence, so that someone in crisis can get help and prevent harming themselves or others.
“But at the same time,” he said, “we need everyone in the community to make sure that there’s no easy access to guns for young people.”
(CHICAGO) — Certain iconic imagery brings to mind traditional American summer activities: the smell of hamburgers cooking on a grill, marching bands with drum lines and kids catching candy thrown from colorful floats. These are all a part of the Bud Billiken Parade in Chicago.
First held in 1929, the Bud Billiken Parade is the largest African American parade in the United States, according to its organizers. It’s also one of the three largest parades in the country overall, along with the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Every year on the second Saturday of August, participants of the Bud Billiken Parade march and dance their way through the streets of Chicago.
Robert Sengstacke Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender newspaper, and his editor, David Kellum, created the fictional character Bud Billiken in 1923 as a mascot for a youth group they had set up in the community. A Billiken is a mythical good-luck figure that was popular in the early part of the 20th century. Kellum then decided to have a day of celebration for Black youth and the Bud Billiken Parade was born.
Like many other public events, the parade was canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19.
“As our community continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic over the past couple of years, it is exciting that we are able to come together this year and celebrate the students of Chicago as they head back to school,” said the Bud Billiken Parade chair, Myiti Sengstacke-Rice, who is also the president and CEO of Chicago Defender Charities.
The 93rd annual Bud Billiken Parade will kick off on Aug. 13.
