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(NEW YORK) — Against the backdrop of polls showing declining Democratic support for Israel — especially among young voters — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s support for candidates is under intense scrutiny and is becoming a dividing line in contentious Democratic primaries from Michigan to New Jersey.

A poll released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center shows that Americans’ views toward Israel are trending negative, especially among Democrats.

The survey found that 6 in 10 Americans have a very or somewhat unfavorable view of Israel. That number is up 7% since last year and 20 percentage points since 2022. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the percentage who have a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion of Israeli was 80%.

One manifestation of those changing views is the increased scrutiny of political contributions from pro-Israel groups, especially AIPAC.

Conflicts over AIPAC funding have been fueled in part by the popularity of the group Citizens Against AIPAC Corruption, better known by their social media handle Track AIPAC, which says it’s a “grassroots effort to reveal and counter the influence of AIPAC and the Israel Lobby by systematically documenting their financial contributions to our federal officials” and accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza — a charge the Israeli government has long denied.

The group churns out graphics of donations to politicians to its audience of 400,000+ followers on X. These numbers include contributions by not just AIPAC but by individuals who have previously donated to groups it says are part of the “pro-Israel lobby.” That approach has received controversy, with critics saying it’s unfair to conflate the donations of individuals with the support of the pro-Israel lobby as whole.

AIPAC has been critical of Track AIPAC’s approach. National spokesperson Deryn Sousa described it in a statement to ABC as “an un-American and undemocratic online campaign that applies selective standards to stigmatize and silence pro‑Israel Democrats.”

Estimates of donations from the pro-Israel lobby were cited by an audience member in a town hall for Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who told the questioner, “If you’re equating “Israel lobby” to Jews, I got a problem with that.”

In Michigan, the Uncommitted National Movement, which encouraged opposition to then-President Joe Biden’s support of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, received more than 100,000 votes in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary in the swing state.

Divisions over support for Israel have continued to dominate that state’s highly competitive Democratic Senate primary. Michigan is home to one of the largest Arab-American populations in the country as well as a sizeable Jewish community.

Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the former Wayne County, Michigan, health director who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, has been the most vocal on the issue, repeatedly calling the war in Gaza a genocide and criticizing his opponents for accepting donations from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups.

Appearing alongside controversial podcaster and political commentator Hasan Piker on the campus of the University of Michigan, El-Sayed took explicit aim at AIPAC, saying, “No longer are we going to sit idly by while AIPAC tells us that the goal of our foreign policy is to align with a foreign government.”

Most of his criticism has been directed towards his opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens. Stevens, who is Jewish, was backed by AIPAC in her 2022 primary challenge of then-Rep. Andy Levin, a progressive Jewish member who had opposed some of Israel’s policies. Stevens recorded a video in support of AIPAC last month. The Democratic Majority for Israel — a pro-Israel group — has endorsed her Senate run.

The third candidate in the race, State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, has criticized Piker for some of his comments on Jews and the conflict in Gaza, calling it a genocide and promising not to take money from AIPAC.

Track AIPAC endorsed El-Sayed, calling him “the only candidate for US Senate in Michigan with the spine to call out Israel’s atrocities,” and saying “his voice can’t be bought.”

Nearby Minnesota also faces a progressive vs. centrist Senate battle between Rep. Angie Craig and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan. While Flanagan has pledged not to take any funds from AIPAC, Craig has received funds in her past congressional races from AIPAC and has been endorsed by the Democratic Majority for Israel.

Craig has not received AIPAC funding in this race. When asked if it planned to make an endorsement in that race, Track AIPAC’s Co-Executive Director Cory Archibald, who has worked as a consultant for progressive Democrats like former Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, said that it will monitor the race “and we know AIPAC has an interest in who wins Minnesota.”

The track record of AIPAC’s spending in some of the year’s early primaries has been mixed. In New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, AIPAC spent $2 million on ads attacking moderate Democratic incumbent Tom Malinowski, who supported some conditions on aid to Israel. That primary was won by progressive Analilia Meija, who has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. Track AIPAC ran an ad supporting her in that race, which marked its first-ever ad buy.

The issue of AIPAC support has emerged on the national level. The Democratic National Committee considered a proposal at its spring conference to condemn the “growing influence” of money in primaries, specifically citing AIPAC. That resolution failed. AIPAC celebrated the decision, saying that “the DNC made clear that all Democrats including millions who are AIPAC members have the right to participate fully in the democratic process.”

Track AIPAC says that despite that setback, it plans to remain “an important voice for change in this cycle and many more to come.”

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(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Army special forces soldier who was indicted last week on charges of using classified information about the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to make more than $400,000 on the prediction market Polymarket pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Manhattan federal court and was released on bond.

Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke appeared in the same courthouse complex where Maduro appeared following the raid on his Caracas compound that Van Dyke helped plan and execute.

Judge Margaret Garnet asked how he pleaded to charges including unlawful use of confidential governmental information for personal gain.

“Not guilty, your honor,” Van Dyke said.

He was accompanied in the courtroom by his attorneys, Zach Intrater, Mark Geragos and Tina Glandian, following his arrest last week at Fort Bragg, where he is posted.

Van Dyke is currently on leave from the Army. His ultimate military status is “unsettled,” Intrater said.

The defense attorney said he expected few disputes over the factual allegations. Instead, Intrater said the case would “largely rise and fall” on motions to eliminate certain evidence and to dismiss the charges.

“This is anything but a usual case,” Intrater said.

In what is believed to be the first case of insider trading on a prediction market, prosecutors alleged that Van Dyke used inside knowledge to place 13 bets on the outcome of the Maduro operation.

According to the indictment, Van Dyke opened a Polymarket account the day after Christmas and began placing bets on Dec. 27 through the evening of Jan. 2 — hours before soldiers entered Venezuelan airspace for the pre-dawn operation. After Trump made the operation public that day, Van Dyke allegedly profited $409,881 from his $33,034 in bets.

Prosecutor Ryan Finkel said there were no plans to add defendants or bring additional charges against Van Dyke but said, “I would not entirely rule it out.”

Judge Garnet released Van Dyke on a $250,000 personal recognizance bond. His travel is restricted to California, where his family lives, North Carolina, where he is posted and New York, where he is being prosecuted.

He has surrendered his firearms. Garnet said she would modify that condition if his military service required him to possess and use a gun.

Finkel said there is a “moderate” amount of evidence in the case including Polymarket records, bank transactions, cryptocurrency exchanges and email accounts. There could also be a certain amount of classified information that would require special handling.

“The events covered by the classified information have now occurred,” Garnet said. She said the case would move faster “if evidence could be declassified to the greatest extent possible.”

Van Dyke’s next court date is Monday, June 8.

Following his arrest on Thursday, Van Dyke briefly appeared in a North Carolina courtroom on Friday. He signed a bond after acknowledging that he understood the charges and potential penalties.

His case is being overseen in New York by the same judge who is presiding over the high-profile federal case against alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione.

Amid mounting criticism of prediction markets for allegedly enabling insider trading, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan said his company is “constantly” monitoring for suspicious activity and referring cases to authorities. Coplan argued that the public nature of prediction markets makes it easier to crack down on insider trading.

“The transparency afforded by onchain markets makes global compliance more effective than ever. Every trade is public, permanent, and auditable. Bad actors leave a trail,” he said.

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(NEW YORK) — A man who was seen on video being beaten and wrongfully arrested by two NYPD officers at a liquor store in Brooklyn has filed a notice saying he plans to sue the department over the incident.

Timothy Brown told reporters Tuesday that he felt “humiliated, disrespected and embarrassed” by the arrest and will never be the same after the April 14 incident.

Brown, a home health aide and security guard, was buying wine at the liquor store after work when he was suddenly approached by two plainclothes detectives who allegedly seized him and attacked him as other customers looked on in shock, according to the notice of claim that he filed with the city.

“What happened to me should not happen to anyone else. It was wrong and it was disgusting. My life will never be the same,” Brown, who was seen with an apparent limp in his walk, holding a cane, and wearing an arm brace, said Tuesday.

The New York Police Department has not immediately commented on the notice, which seeks $100 million in punitive damages over several alleged claims including negligence, false arrest, assault and battery.

The incident was filmed by bystanders and the detectives were not wearing body cameras, according to the notice.

The notice states that NYPD policy requires officers to wear or activate body worn cameras during narcotics enforcement operations.

The NYPD claimed that the undercover detectives allegedly witnessed a narcotics purchase of crack cocaine and that the suspect was seen wearing the same clothes as Brown.

Police said there were no drugs or contraband found on Brown after his arrest, and that he was not the suspect they were looking for. However, the NYPD issued Brown a ticket for resisting arrest and obstruction of government administration.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office ultimately dismissed the charges against Brown.

Brown contests the accusations that he resisted arrest.

“I never resisted arrest not at all,” he said. “There was nothing I could do, I was being beating and battered.”

The detectives did not identify themselves “adequately” when confronting Brown and used “gratuitous and excessive force,”  according to the notice.

The notice contends that Brown was beaten for eight minutes, “slammed into a glass display wall and shelving stocked with glass bottles, causing numerous bottles to shatter” and thrown and dragged across the floor “through broken glass.”

Brown suffered “contusions, lacerations, a black eye, head and facial trauma and injuries to his leg,” according to the notice that he filed.

The two detectives involved in the incident — identified by the department as Volkan Maden and Michael Algerio — are under internal NYPD investigation, had their badges and guns stripped, and are serving on modified duty, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

Additionally, the narcotics module responsible for the incident has been disbanded, the supervising sergeant involved in the incident was placed on modified duty and six other detectives were reassigned, according to the notice. The NYPD has not confirmed these actions.

“We will have more to say about it as the investigation unfolds, but I understand the community’s interest in it, because it is an upsetting video,” Tisch told reporters during an unrelated news conference on April 15.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani echoed that sentiment in a social media post a day after the incident.

“The violence used by NYPD officers in this video is extremely disturbing and unacceptable. Officers should never treat a person this way,” he said.

Detectives Endowment Association President Scott Munro, however, criticized the mayor’s comments in a social media post on April 15 and called for more facts to come out.

“NYPD detectives put their lives on the line daily, doing the dangerous work politicians would never have the courage to do,” he said.

Brown and his mother told reporters that they were disappointed that have not been contacted by the mayor or Tisch.

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(NEW YORK) — A federal grand jury in North Carolina has indicted former FBI Director James Comey over a controversial Instagram post from last year that President Donald Trump and members of his administration claimed was a threat against the president.

Renewing efforts to prosecute one of Trump’s longtime adversaries, Department of Justice prosecutors brought the case after a judge last year threw out an indictment against Comey on unrelated charges.

The new indictment centers on a controversy that erupted nearly a year ago when Comey, in a since-deleted Instagram post, shared a picture showing the numbers “86 47” written in seashells on the beach with the caption “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

Citing the slang meaning of “86” as to “nix” or “get rid” of something, allies of the president alleged that the post was a veiled threat against Trump, and the Department of Homeland Security and Secret Service quickly launched investigations into the posts.

CNN was first to report news of the indictment.

Prosecutors will likely face a high legal bar to prove that the Instagram post constituted a “true threat,” which the Supreme Court in 2023 found required showing an individual understood their message would be perceived as threatening. With the phrase “86 47” increasingly adopted by protesters of the Trump administration, the case could carry sweeping implications for the First Amendment.

When asked about the post last year, Trump suggested that Comey should be prosecuted over the post, which Trump alleged was a call “for the assassination of the president.”

“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear,” Trump told Fox News last year.

At the time, Trump said he would leave a decision about charging Comey to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, though he insisted that Comey was a “dirty cop.”

“When you add his history to that … he’s a dirty cop. And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency, but I’m going to let them make that decision,” Trump said.

Following backlash over the post, Comey removed the photo from Instagram and said he was unaware that the post could be associated with violence.

“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” Comey said on May 15.

The post drew swift criticism from the Trump administration, with White House staff describing the post “deeply concerning” and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard calling for Comey to be imprisoned.

“James Comey in my view should be held accountable and put behind bars for this,” Gabbard told Fox News.

Comey is not the first public figure to face pushback for invoking number “86,” with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer drawing criticism in 2020 for appearing during a television interview with a small figurine of the numbers “86 45” on a table behind her, and similar “86 46” references appearing online during Joe Biden’s presidency.

Comey was indicted last year on unrelated charges for allegedly lying to Congress and obstruction related to his testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020. Comey’s lawyers moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing the case was politically motivated and that the grand jury never saw the charges in their entirety, and the case was ultimately dismissed over issues with the legitimacy of the prosecutor who brought the case.  

The new indictment comes as the Department of Justice in recent weeks has ramped up investigations of some of Trump’s perceived political foes under Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is heading up the Justice Department following Trump’s ouster of Pam Bondi.

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice removed a top career prosecutor from a controversial investigation in Florida after sources told ABC News that she had expressed concerns about a rushed effort to bring criminal charges against former CIA Director John Brennan.

Prosecutors in April also secured an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center — frequently criticized by conservatives for their assessment of hate groups — for bank fraud and money laundering offenses related to its paying of informants to infiltrate such groups. The organization has denied all wrongdoing.

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(NEW YORK) — Former NBA player and coach Damon Jones pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges he tipped off sports bettors about an injured LeBron James and used his own celebrity to lure high rollers to rigged poker games.

Jones, 49, is the first defendant in either case to plead guilty following the arrests of nearly three dozen people at the start of the pro basketball season.

Jones, who wore a black suit and black shirt, entered his guilty pleas during back-to-back hearings Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.

“I would like to sincerely apologize to the court, my family, my peers and also the National Basketball Association,” Jones said during the hearing before Magistrate Judge Joseph Marutollo.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for the Southern Poverty Law Center asked a federal judge Tuesday to demand that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche issue a correction to allegedly “false” statements he made in the aftermath of the indictment of the organization last week, according to a legal filing.

In a motion to the judge presiding over their criminal case in the Middle District of Alabama, attorneys for the SPLC accuse Blanche of lying in an interview he gave to Fox News last Tuesday when he claimed the government did not have information showing the organization has shared information it learned from informants with law enforcement.

“Those statements are false,” attorneys for the SPLC wrote. “Weeks before the indictment, undersigned counsel provided information to the government demonstrating unequivocally that the SPLC had shared information from its informants with law enforcement.”

Blanche, who earlier this month replaced Pam Bondi as attorney general, announced last week that a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging the group with wire, bank fraud and money laundering offenses related to its paying of informants to infiltrate hate groups.

The attorneys write that they previously requested Blanche issue a correction to the statements but that counsel for the government refused.

They specifically cite an April 6 meeting that SPLC attorneys had with prosecutors in Alabama in which they explained in detail how some of their past cooperation with the government had resulted in an indictment of a member of a well-known extremist group. 

The SPLC then sent a letter to the DOJ, which they requested it share with the grand jury, detailing six categories that they argued showed the organization using informants to dismantle white supremacist organizations, which they said undercut the core of the government’s case that argues SPLC used the informants to boost such groups. 

The organization is asking the judge overseeing the case to order the disclosure of grand jury transcripts and issue a separate order restricting the government from making further “prejudicial” statements that could taint a possible jury pool. 

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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Tuesday blocked the Justice Department’s attempt to move Maurene Comey’s lawsuit over her firing as a federal prosecutor out of court.

Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, has joined a private law practice but is suing for unlawful termination after she was fired last year from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

The Justice Department argued that her case belongs before the Merit Systems Protection Board and not in federal district court.

Judge Jesse Furman decided the case belongs with him because Comey was fired pursuant to the president’s executive authority and not the usual procedures for civil servants. 

“Maurene Comey was, by all accounts, an exemplary Assistant United States Attorney. In her nearly ten years working at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, she was assigned some of the country’s highest profile cases, and she consistently received the highest accolades from supervisors and peers alike,” the judge’s opinion said.

“Comey was notified by email from Department of Justice officials in Washington, D.C., that her employment was terminated, effective immediately,” the judge wrote. “She was given one and only one reason for her removal: Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which ‘vest[s]’ the ‘executive Power’ in the President.”

The DOJ, in court filings, has characterized Comey’s case as routine.

“A federal employee’s claims that removal from federal service was arbitrary and capricious or conducted in a manner that did not provide the process to which they contend they were due is not a novel issue,” government attorneys said.

Comey, who prosecuted high-profile defendants including Sean Combs, Robert Hadden, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, alleged she was fired “because her father is former FBI Director James B. Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.”

The next hearing before Judge Furman is May 28.

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