(NEW YORK) — China said it will cut its mandatory inbound quarantine by half on Tuesday in the nation’s first move to ease COVID-19 borders restrictions since March 2020. Overseas arrivals into China will now only need to quarantine for seven days at a government facility and then an additional three days in home isolation.
The new measures are down from what was previously 14 days in quarantine and then an additional seven days of home isolation.
The concession from China’s National Health Commission comes days after Shanghai Party Secretary Li Qiang declared victory over COVID-19 over the weekend saying that they “won the war to defend Shanghai” after emerging from months of a bruising lockdown.
The omicron wave that hit China, especially Shanghai and Beijing, during the spring has ebbed and the entire country recorded just one local symptomatic transmission on Monday while zero cases were detected in Shanghai and Beijing for the first time in months.
Chinese health authorities warned, however, the announcement did not mean China was changing course on their zero-COVID goal, but that it was merely responding to the shorter incubation time of the omicron variants in circulation.
“It’s absolutely not loosening up, but a more scientific and targeted approach,” said Lei Zhenglong, an NHC official told the pressing in a briefing Tuesday afternoon.
China remains the largest outlier in the world in terms of COVID restrictions as neighboring countries have either dropped testing requirements or completely reopened.
The country still maintains one of the strictest border measures against COVID-19 in the world as China is still adamant in striving for zero-COVID.
Nevertheless, the easing of measures was greeted with enthusiasm by the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets, both of which rallied nearly a percentage point after the news.
Tuesday’s announcement also relaxed isolation measures for close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases to seven days of home quarantine instead of having to isolate at a government facility.
China’s other domestic zero-COVID measures have not changed which requires people who test positive need to be sent to government quarantine and to test negative every 48 to 72 hours to access most public places and public transportation.
Ukrainian State Emergency Service / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jun 28, 8:17 am
Russian forces in Ukraine ‘are increasingly hollowed out,’ UK says
Ukrainian forces are still consolidating their positions on higher ground in the eastern city of Lyschansak after falling back from nearby Sieverodonetsk, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said Tuesday in an intelligence update.
“Ukrainian forces continue to disrupt Russian command and control with successful strikes deep behind Russian lines,” the ministry added.
According to the ministry, Russian forces over the weekend “launched unusually intense waves of strikes across Ukraine using long-range missiles.”
“These weapons highly likely included the Soviet-era AS-4 KITCHEN and more modern AS-23a KODIAK missiles, fired from both Belarusian and Russian airspace,” the ministry said. “These weapons were designed to take on targets of strategic importance, but Russia continues to expend them in large numbers for tactical advantage. Similarly, it fielded the core elements of six different armies yet achieved only tactical success at Sieverodonetsk.”
“The Russian armed forces are increasingly hollowed out,” the ministry added. “They currently accept a level of degraded combat effectiveness, which is probably unsustainable in the long term.
Jun 28, 6:22 am
Death toll from mall strike rises to 18
The death toll from a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian shopping mall continued to rise Tuesday as rescuers sifted through the charred rubble.
Monday’s attack in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk killed at least 18 people and wounded 59 others, including 25 who remain hospitalized Tuesday, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. A day of mourning for the victims was declared Tuesday in the wider Poltava Oblast.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday in his nightly address that more than 1,000 shoppers and workers were inside the mall during the afternoon attack and that it will take time to “establish the number of victims.” He condemned the incident as “one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history.”
Jun 28, 5:49 am
Ukraine joining NATO could lead to WWIII, Russia warns
Russia warned Tuesday that Ukraine joining NATO could lead to World War III should Kyiv then attempt to encroach on the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
“Crimea is a part of Russia for us. And that means forever,” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview Tuesday with Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty. “Any attempt to encroach on Crimea is a declaration of war against our country. If a NATO member country does so, this would mean a conflict with the North Atlantic Alliance. The World War III. A complete catastrophe.”
“Ukraine within NATO is far more dangerous for our country [than Sweden and Finland],” he added. “And this is linked to what [Russian] President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken about: the presence of unresolved territorial disputes, as well as the difference in understanding of the regions’ status.”
Although Moscow is not opposed to Sweden and Finland joining the military alliance, Russia will still have to reinforce its borders in this case, according to Medvedev.
“Accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO will not pose any new threats to us,” he told Argumenty i Fakty. “If they feel better and calmer by joining the alliance, then so be it. Even without them, without Sweden and Finland, NATO is close to our country.”
“Should this enlargement of NATO happen, the length of its land borders with Russia will more than double. And we will have to strengthen these borders,” he added. “The Baltic region’s non-nuclear status will become a thing of the past, the group of land and naval forces in the northern sector will be seriously increased. No one is happy with it. Nor are the citizens of these two NATO candidate countries.”
Jun 27, 6:42 pm
Zelenskyy calls mall attack one of ‘the most defiant terrorist attack in European history’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out against Russian forces in a recorded speech Monday hours after a missile struck a shopping mall in Kremenchuk, calling the attack “one of the most defiant terrorist attacks in European history.”
“Only totally insane terrorists, who should have no place on earth, can strike missiles at such an object. And this is not an off-target missile strike, this is a calculated Russian strike — exactly at this shopping mall,” Zelenskyy said.
The Ukrainian president said the rescue and salvage efforts were still ongoing.
Ukraine’s Emergency Service reported that 15 people were killed and 59 were injured in the attack as of Monday evening.
“We must be aware that the losses may be significant,” Zelenskyy said.
-ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
Jun 27, 5:36 pm
G-7 leaders ‘condemn’ Russian military strike on mall
G-7 leaders released a statement condemning Russia’s missile strike on a shopping mall in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, saying it constitutes a war crime and that President Vladimir Putin “and those responsible will be held to account.”
“We stand united with Ukraine in mourning the innocent victims of this brutal attack,” they said.
The summit began in Germany on Sunday with a heavy focus on the invasion of Ukraine, and the group announced more steps to try and stop Putin from funding his war.
“Today, we underlined our unwavering support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian aggression, an unjustified war of choice that has been raging for 124 days. We will continue to provide financial, humanitarian as well as military support for Ukraine, for as long as it takes. We will not rest until Russia ends its cruel and senseless war on Ukraine,” G-7 leaders said.
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol will convene Tuesday afternoon for a surprise public hearing, signaling apparent urgency among members to reveal further findings from their year-long inquiry.
The hearing, scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ET, will see the committee “present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony,” the group said in a news release Monday.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top adviser to Donald Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is expected to testify, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. Punchbowl News first reported of her scheduled appearance late Monday.
It’s anticipated that through her testimony, Hutchinson will put a voice to many of the internal White House interactions involving the events of Jan. 6 that have been reported publicly and offer significant insight into Meadows’ actions and interactions with then-President Trump on Jan. 6 and in the days before and after, sources said.
Having already sat four separate times for closed-door depositions with the committee, Hutchinson has been featured in clips publicly displayed by the committee, including some in which she was discussing members of Congress asking the White House for pardons.
The surprise hearing comes after the committee had revised its schedule last week to postpone public events for “several weeks” as it sorted through a wave of new information.
“We have looked at the body of work that we need to get done and have taken in some additional information that’s going to require some additional work,” Committee Chair Bennie Thompson told reporters last week on the decision to go dark for several weeks. “So rather than present hearings that have not been the quality of the hearings of the past, we’ve made a decision to just move them to sometime in July.”
With the committee’s investigation still ongoing, British documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who had substantial access to Trump, his family and closest aides around the Jan. 6 attack, sat last week for an interview behind closed doors and handed over footage including interviews with Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former Vice President Mike Pence.
Lawmakers have also expressed interest in speaking to Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as well as former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who recently lost a runoff to be the Republican nominee for an open Senate seat, told CNN last week that he was willing to testify for the committee — but only in public and about events related to Jan. 6.
Hutchinson’s agreement to testify publicly comes after months of negotiations between the committee and her counsel, sources told ABC News. Hutchinson hired attorney Jody Hunt, who served as chief of staff to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the start of the Trump administration, to represent her as the latest public hearings began earlier this month.
The committee’s last hearing closed with Thompson previewing the focus of hearings to come, calling the insurrection Trump’s “backup plan of stopping the transfer of power” if he couldn’t get away with a “political coup” in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
But Tuesday’s hearing appears to be in addition to the two remaining hearings the committee had already planned, as members continue to lay out what they’ve characterized as a “sophisticated seven-point plan” by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election. (Trump has continually assailed the panel, which includes two Republicans critical of him, as illegitimate; he insists he did nothing wrong.)
As some congressional Democrats push for criminal charges to be brought against Trump and allies as the hearings unfold, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the House committee, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that charges were not his “principal interest” compared to showing the public how the violence unfolded to avoid it being repeated.
“But I know that there’s a great public hunger for individual criminal accountability, and I’ve got confidence in the Department of Justice, in Attorney General Merrick Garland, to do the right thing in terms of making all the difficult decisions about particular cases,” Raskin added.
For his part, Garland has told reporters that he and his prosecutors are closely watching the committee’s hearings, and the Department of Justice sent a letter this month telling the committee’s chief investigator it was “critical” that members “provide us with copies of the transcripts of all its witness interviews,” which the committee so far has declined to do — with Thompson saying that will come “in due time.”
Meanwhile, the department is taking further steps in its own investigation of people in Trump’s circle. Most recently, federal agents served a search warrant for John Eastman, a former Trump attorney at the center of the committee’s investigation. Eastman contended in a new lawsuit that federal agents seized his cell phone as part of that search.
Eastman claims in his suit that the warrant was issued at “the behest of the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General,” which has publicly said it is investigating any efforts by DOJ personnel to interfere in the 2020 election results.
On Wednesday, the same day the warrant was served on Eastman, federal agents conducted a search on the Virginia home of Jeffrey Clark, the former DOJ official who also allegedly sought to aid in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. (The Center for Renewing America, where Clark is a senior fellow, said that the government was being weaponized against him.)
This Week co-anchor Martha Raddatz pressed Raskin in his Sunday appearance on what he saw as the “real impact” of the hearings in the public consciousness, citing a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll that 34% of Americans had been following the hearing somewhat or very closely — “as much as some people are very riveted,” she said.
“People are busy and so we know a lot of people, especially younger people, will learn about the hearings through snippets that go out on TV or online and people now are able to process information in different ways,” Raskin replied. “It’s not like the Watergate hearings where everybody had to be watching at the same moment because of the relatively primitive state of technology then. People are going to be able to absorb this over time.”
Tuesday’s hearing will air at 1 p.m. on ABC News and ABC News Live.
ABC News’ Mike Levine and Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.
(MENDON, Mo.) — Three people are dead and dozens are injured after an Amtrak train derailed after hitting a dump truck that was in an uncontrolled public crossing in Mendon, Missouri, according to Amtrak and officials.
Eight passenger cars and two locomotives, which is where the engines are, derailed at about 12:42 p.m. local time, Amtrak said.
Missouri State Highway Patrol Cpl. Justin Dunn said two of the train passengers were killed, along with someone who was in the dump truck.
Eric McKenzie, the superintendent with Chariton County Ambulance Service, told ABC News at least 50 people were injured.
The train was en route from Los Angeles to Chicago with 243 passengers and 12 crew members on board at the time of the crash, Amtrak said. All the train occupants from the scene were evacuated, according to Dunn.
Dozens of people have been hospitalized. Officials at Hendrick Medical Center accepted seven patients from the scene, while officials at MU Health Care University Hospital/Columbia said its facility was treating 16 patients as of 10 p.m. ET. Pershing Memorial Hospital received between 15 and 20 people from the accident.
Passenger Rob Nightingale, 58, told ABC News Live his car tipped to the side and he climbed through a window to escape. He said he saw a little girl crying and her family trying to comfort her.
Nightingale said he saw some people covered in blood.
Missouri Public Safety officials, highway patrol troopers and other personnel are responding, Gov. Mike Parson tweeted.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it is launching a 14-member go-team to investigate the crash. The team is scheduled to arrive Tuesday.
Mendon is about 100 miles northeast of Kansas City, Missouri.
This comes one day after an Amtrak train collided with a car in California, killing three people.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement, “My thoughts are with the victims and families affected by today’s Missouri train derailment and the Northern California collision that occurred over the weekend. I have been updated on these crashes and my team is in communication with Amtrak and the relevant authorities.”
FRA personnel are en route to Mendon, where they will support NTSB investigators, he added.
(SAN ANTONIO) — At least 46 people were found dead inside a tractor-trailer in San Antonio on Monday in a suspected case of human smuggling, authorities said.
An additional 16 people — 12 adults and four children — were transported to area hospitals after what officials called a “mass casualty event.”
Chris Magnus, commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), told reporters he was “horrified” by the incident.
“Horrified at this tragic loss of life near San Antonio,” Magnus said Monday night. “This speaks to the desperation of migrants who would put their lives in the hands of callous human smugglers who show no regard for human life.”
The incident unfolded Monday evening at around 5:50 p.m. local time, when a nearby worker heard a cry for help and found the tractor-trailer with the doors partially opened and a number of deceased people inside, according to San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus.
The trailer was refrigerated but did not have a visibly working air-conditioning unit and there were no signs of water inside, according to San Antonio Fire Department Chief Charles Hood.
The victims taken to hospitals were hot to the touch and all suffering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion, Hood said. There are no child fatalities that authorities know of, he added.
Three people are in custody in connection with the incident, according to McManus, who added that the case is now a federal investigation.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told ABC News that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) responded to a call on Monday regarding an alleged human smuggling event and, upon arriving at the scene, confirmed the death of more than 40 people.
“HSI continues its enforcement efforts to ensure the safety and well-being of our communities. We will continue to address the serious public safety threat posed by human smuggling organizations and their reckless disregard for the health and safety of those smuggled,” the ICE spokesperson said in a statement. “To report suspicious activity, we encourage people to call the HSI Tip Line at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. All calls are kept confidential.”
“Details will be released as they are available, the criminal investigation remains ongoing,” the ICE spokesperson added. “HSI continues its enforcement efforts to ensure the safety and well-being of our communities.”
The San Antonio Fire Department confirmed to ABC News that HSI and CBP are taking over the investigation from local authorities.
CBP is the umbrella agency of the U.S. Border Patrol, which responded to assist at the scene and is supporting ICE in the federal investigation, according to Magnus, the CBP commissioner.
“We will be working with our federal, state and local partners to assist in every way possible with this investigation,” Magnus told reporters Monday night.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas took to Twitter to say that he was “heartbroken by the tragic loss of life today and am praying for those still fighting for their lives.”
“Far too many lives have been lost as individuals — including families, women, and children — take this dangerous journey,” he tweeted Monday night. “Human smugglers are callous individuals who have no regard for the vulnerable people they exploit and endanger in order to make a profit. We will work alongside our partners to hold those responsible for this tragedy accountable and continue to take action to disrupt smuggling networks.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released more details on the Biden administration’s efforts to combat human smuggling and unauthorized migration in conjunction with the Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles.
The series of operations launched across the Western Hemisphere is part of the largest human smuggling crackdown ever seen in the region, with more than 1,300 deployed personnel and nearly 2,000 smugglers arrested in just two months.
Agencies from across the administration, including the intelligence community and the U.S. Treasury Department, have engaged to disrupt smuggling operations in real-time and strip down the financial backing of the transnational criminal organizations that coordinate these crimes.
“The Biden administration is focused on putting these organizations out of business,” DHS said in a recent statement prior to Monday’s incident. “But human smuggling is, by definition, a transnational problem and we are committed to working with our regional partners in the Americas to commit our collective expertise and resources to put an end to human smuggling.”
ABC News’ Luke Barr, Marilyn Heck, Josh Margolin and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top adviser to former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, is expected to testify Tuesday before the Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol attack, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The committee announced on Monday that a newly scheduled hearing on Tuesday would “present recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony” — but the committee did not say who that witness would be.
Punchbowl first reported the news of her scheduled appearance.
Through her scheduled testimony, Hutchinson is expected to put a voice to many of the internal White House interactions involving the events of Jan. 6 that have been reported publicly, and offer significant insight into Meadows’ actions and interactions with Trump on Jan. 6 and in the days before and after, sources said.
During earlier depositions with the committee, Hutchinson confirmed to committee investigators accounts that Meadows had burned documents in his office, according to sources. Meadows has not commented on those allegations, and it’s not clear if they would have violated any record-keeping regulations.
Hutchinson has met with the committee three separate times for closed-door depositions.
Clips from some of those depositions have already been played publicly, including some where she was discussing members of Congress asking the White House for pardons.
Hutchinson’s agreement to testify publicly comes after months of negotiations between the committee and her counsel, sources said. Hutchinson hired a new attorney, Jody Hunt, earlier this month to represent her as the public Jan. 6 hearings began.
At the start of the Trump administration, Hunt served as chief of staff to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He later became the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Division.
Andy Cross/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Authorities on Wednesday seized the cell phone of John Eastman, the former attorney for Donald Trump at the center of the House committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, as part of the Justice Department’s criminal probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a lawsuit filed by Eastman’s attorney.
In the lawsuit, Eastman’s attorney claims that the agents served the warrant on him last Wednesday evening while he was exiting a restaurant. They claim Eastman was frisked and his iPhone was seized, and that the agents made him provide biometric data to unlock his phone.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Mexico, seeks to have the phone returned to Eastman.
Eastman, a right-wing lawyer, drafted a plan for then-President Trump to cling to power by falsely claiming that then-Vice President Mike Pence could reject legitimate electors during the certification of the election on Jan. 6.
Eastman’s lawsuit claims that the warrant for his phone’s seizure was issued at “the behest of the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General,” which has publicly said it is investigating any efforts by DOJ personnel to interfere in the 2020 election results.
Neither representatives for Eastman nor the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., immediately returned ABC News’ request for comment.
As ABC News first reported last week, federal agents on Wednesday also conducted a search of the Virginia home of Jeffrey Clark, the former DOJ official who also allegedly sought to aid Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
(WASHINGTON) — After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, women in states that now outlaw abortion have scrambled to cobble together piecemeal solutions, including traveling across state lines, an expert told ABC News.
However, for many that won’t be an option, according to Deon Haywood, executive director of New Orleans women’s health organization Women with a Vision.
“If you have a job where you’re being paid hourly and being paid minimum wage, how easy would it be for you to be able to leave your job or existing kids to leave to drive somewhere, to be driven somewhere … to have an abortion and then come back?” Haywood told ABC News.
“It wouldn’t work for them,” she added. “It just wouldn’t work. It’s not practical for their lives, the lives that they are living.”
Forty-nine percent of abortion patients have an income below the poverty line, according to the Guttmacher Institute. And in Louisiana, where Haywood lives, the maternal mortality rate is one of the worst in the nation, especially among Black women. The state has since shuttered its abortion clinics, though a Louisiana judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the state’s “trigger” abortion ban Monday.
“For the Black women I work with who already fear entering the health care system, this just exacerbates that even more,” Haywood said. “The idea that somebody in the state that doesn’t care what we say about Louisiana, in the state that doesn’t care about people, that people will have to carry a child to term when they’re already living in substandard housing, when their children are not getting the best education, when they can barely see their families.”
And for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women, many of whom also struggle with homelessness, accessing safe abortions in a different state is completely out of the question, according to Haywood.
“If one of our clients were to have an unintended pregnancy, then if they’re on probation and parole or house arrest, they’re not going anywhere,” she said.
Haywood said the lack of information and transparency about safe abortion options, especially in Louisiana, which has one of the country’s lowest literacy rates, may also drive women to seek recourse in dangerous home remedies.
“If you get pregnant, we know that people when they’re reacting out of fear we don’t always make the best decision for ourselves, and so we’re unsure what to do,” she said.
“One person wanted to know, ‘How much bleach should I mix with my cold drink or juice to end my pregnancy?'” she added. “We’re saying, ‘Absolutely don’t take bleach, don’t mix any household cleaner or chemicals and ingest them because of the danger of poisoning or death.'”
Haywood’s organization, Women with a Vision, is doubling down on its efforts to equip women of color in New Orleans with reproductive health information and connecting them with safe resources.
“Black women have intersectional lives,” she said. “It’s a particular way that people of color and Black people fight because we don’t have the privilege to sit on one thing.”
“I can’t just talk about abortion and not talk about health care. I can’t talk about health care if I’m not talking about access to housing as a basic, fundamental human right,” she added.
ABC News’ Annie Ochitwa contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Ghislaine Maxwell, the associate of Jeffrey Epstein who lured underage girls into the disgraced financier’s lurid world, could spend much of the rest of her life in prison after she is sentenced Tuesday in New York City following her December conviction on five criminal counts, including sex trafficking.
Maxwell, 60, and Epstein, who died by suicide in jail, “were partners in crime who sexually exploited young girls together,” federal prosecutors said as they asked the judge for a sentence of at least 30 years in prison.
Prosecutors said Maxwell and Epstein selected their victims carefully and asserted that it was no accident the four accusers who testified — “Jane,” “Kate,” Carolyn and Annie — came from single-mother households. The victims were isolated and plied with gifts, flattery, and promises of career help in what federal prosecutor Alison Moe described as a pattern of grooming and abuse.
“Ghislaine Maxwell played an instrumental role in the horrific sexual abuse of multiple young teenage girls,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “As part of a disturbing agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell identified, groomed, and abused multiple victims, while she enjoyed a life of extraordinary luxury and privilege.”
Maxwell’s lawyer said Sunday that she had been placed on suicide watch while awaiting sentencing at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn — even though her attorneys had told the court she was not suicidal and that outside psychologists agreed with that assessment.
Maxwell, who maintains her innocence, accused the government of treating her “as if she were a proxy” for Epstein and asked the judge to impose a sentence well below the maximum 55 years.
“The witnesses at trial testified about Ms. Maxwell’s facilitation of Epstein’s abuse, but Epstein was always the central figure: Epstein was the mastermind, Epstein was the principal abuser, and Epstein orchestrated the crimes for his personal gratification,” defense attorneys said in their sentencing memorandum. “Indeed, had Ghislaine Maxwell never had the profound misfortune of meeting Jeffrey Epstein over 30 years ago, she would not be here.”
The defense also suggested Maxwell was susceptible to Epstein’s influence in part because of her relationship with her father, the late British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, who the defense said verbally and physically abused her.
“Ghislaine vividly recalls a time when, at age 13, she tacked a poster of a pony on the newly painted wall of her bedroom. Rather than mar the paint with tape, she carefully hammered a thin tack to mount the poster,” the defense memo said. “This outraged her father, who took the hammer and banged on Ghislaine’s dominant hand, leaving it severely bruised and painful for weeks to come.”
Prosecutors called Maxwell’s efforts to deflect blame “absurd.”
“If anything stands out from the defendant’s sentencing submission, it is her complete failure to address her offensive conduct and her utter lack of remorse,” federal prosecutors said in their memo to the judge. “Instead of showing even a hint of acceptance of responsibility, the defendant makes a desperate attempt to cast blame wherever else she can.”
Maxwell’s defense insisted at trial that the government’s case relied on the “erroneous memories” of four accusers who defense attorney Laura Menninger said “inserted” Maxwell into accounts that initially included only Epstein.
“The accusers’ memories … started to shift,” Menninger said. “The truth was manipulated and changed over time.”
The defense also argued that money brought the accusers forward “with their personal injury lawyers right there next to them.” Menninger said each accuser took home millions, “and now they are stuck with the stories they told.”
Prosecutors, whose ten-day case included two dozen witnesses, said Maxwell “made the choice to sexually exploit numerous underage girls” as part of a scheme that ran from at least 1994 to 2004. Two women who testified said they were 14 when Epstein began to abuse them, sometimes with Maxwell present or directly involved.
“She personally engaged in sexual abuse when she fondled the breasts of Jane, Annie, and Carolyn. And she used her role as a supposedly respectable, glamorous, older woman to lure these victims into a false sense of security,” prosecutors said.
(UVALDE, Texas) — It’s been one month since the massacre at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 children and two teachers, and forever changed the lives of dozens of families who are now coping to make sense of their new reality.
One of those families is that of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza. Her mother, Kimberly Garcia, and stepfather, Angel Garza, are angry at the pace of the investigation, as well as frustrated as they recount the events of that fateful day.
“It’s day by day, some are better than others. And then more information comes out and it’s like we’re back to square one,” Garza told “Good Morning America.”
“There [were] so many officers at that school. And they were so busy trying to keep us away. And they were so busy trying to tase and put people in handcuffs. Instead of saving our kids, they were doing that, and it makes me hurt so much because my child and these other kids were scared, the way they felt in that classroom,” Garcia said. “These people took an oath. They took that oath to protect. And they didn’t do that. I feel like some of these kids could have been saved, but because they were in there for 77 minutes, we’ll never get to see them again. None of them, none of our kids, all those parents will never see their child, ever.”
In the hours and days since the shooting, Amerie’s parents learned that their daughter was one of the children who tried calling the police that day. Another student in the classroom told Amerie’s parents she had tried keeping Amerie from leaving her side, but that Amerie was determined to help her classmates by getting to a cell phone and calling for help when she was shot.
Now, while they wait for answers, Garza and Garcia are vowing to never stop pushing for change to prevent any other parent from feeling their pain. They are also committed to never let the world forget about their daughter, who they describe as brave, a nurturer, a protector and a fiercely loyal friend.
“She always made sure that people knew that they had a friend,” Garcia said. “She always wanted to help. Always wanted to make people feel just good and just make people know or show people that she was there to help you.”
“She just wasn’t afraid to be different. She didn’t care to be like the cool kids,” Garza said. “She didn’t care to, you know, jump in and do something just because everyone was doing it. She was the type that’s gonna step up for someone and if, you know, somebody’s getting bullied or something, she’s gonna say, ‘hey, that’s not cool’ or she’s gonna stick up for them. She didn’t care if she had, you know, beautiful, perfect, $100 shoes. She didn’t care if she had, you know, designer jewelry on. She didn’t care about none of that. She was comfortable, and she was happy in the skin that she was in.”
In their home, Garcia and Garza now live surrounded by memories of Amerie and all of her artwork, her passion. Her parents smiled as they recounted how she would run into their room, excited to show them her latest clay creation. With summer break around the corner, she was looking forward to sleeping in, playing with her iPad and spending time at home with her mom, they said. Her favorite color was lavender — not purple, and she was quick to correct you on that, her parents said. She was also a fan of BTS and was part of their fanbase, which call themselves “BTS ARMY.”
“Their fanbase is just vowed to just stick together and they just they all support each other and they want to look out for each other, and I think that’s part of the reason that she liked them so much is because, I mean, that’s pretty much who she was,” Garza said.
While working through their grief, her parents are finding ways to honor Amerie, hoping to open an art scholarship in their daughter’s name.
“That would mean the world to her, she would be so proud, we would be so proud for her to carry that and for people to remember that, you know, in her name because, like we said, that was her, an artist,” Garcia said.
Garcia and Garza wish others will be inspired to live life like Amerie.
“Just being more like her, caring about one another,” Garza said. “Don’t be afraid to do things that you love to do. Don’t be afraid to be different.
