Mike Baker

With only a couple of days left before the opening of the “Joker” movie, law enforcement agencies scrambled to assess the threat level of the message. As detectives waded through the man’s online history, they encountered additional troubling posts: Charels Donnelly, 23, talked about threatening his mother with a gun and described fantasies about hurting women.

“i will shoot any woman any time for any reason,” he posted on Twitter.

Thanks to the state’s fledgling “red flag” law meant to help prevent gun violence, police in Redmond won a temporary court order to seize Donnelly’s weapons from his home: three handguns and three rifles, including an AK-47-style rifle and its accompanying magazines. But a couple of weeks later, he returned to court with a lawyer, testified that his online posts were jokes meant only for his friends, and asked for his guns back.

Facing a spate of calamitous mass shootings, including three in the past week in California, 17 states have adopted “red flag” laws as a vital new tool to seize weapons from people they deem imminently dangerous. But as more authorities rush to take preemptive action against a rise in gun deaths, they are finding themselves colliding with the Constitution and the limitations of those statutes.

Now local courts are having to grapple with First Amendment and Second Amendment implications while trying to discern whether troubling comments are just crass shenanigans, isolated outbursts, or justifiable reasons to take a person’s guns.

Judge Julie Spector, chief civil judge of the King County Superior Court in Seattle, said these types of cases were the kind that could keep a judge up at night. She said that no judge has a crystal ball.

“We’re going to be on the front page if we make a mistake,” Spector said. “Nobody is taking this stuff lightly.”

Petitions Denied

After a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018, lawmakers in Florida moved to adopt a version of a red flag law within three weeks.

A week after the law was adopted, authorities turned their attention to a University of Central Florida student, Chris Velasquez, who had praised mass shooters online, according to court records.

Authorities described interviewing Velasquez and listening to him explain how he might carry out an attack with an AR-15-style rifle at one of his former schools. He described having urges to conduct a mass shooting, but said it would take a significant life event to push him over the edge, according to records filed with the court.

Police used the protection law to temporarily block Velasquez from buying guns, and then sought to extend the restriction. He challenged that, with his lawyer noting that Velasquez had no criminal record, had purchased no guns, and had given no indication that he would act on his comments.

“If it’s not a true or credible threat, it’s constitutionally protected speech,” his lawyer, Kendra Parris, said in an interview.

A judge sided with Velasquez, restoring his rights.

Parris said she has handled about a dozen cases in which she was able to successfully challenge red flag protection orders. But she said most people do not have legal representation to fight these cases.

Marisa McKeown, a deputy district attorney in Santa Clara County, California, said the fact that courts have rejected some protection orders is evidence that the courts are scrutinizing the cases closely. California was one of the first states to adopt a red flag law, in 2014.

“The judges are very thoughtful in weighing and not rubber-stamping,” McKeown said.

In Oregon, for instance, 27 of the 150 red flag petitions filed by the authorities or by individuals were denied.

In Washington, which became one of the first states to adopt a red flag law in 2016 with voter approval, law enforcement officers or other individuals can file a petition for what is called an Extreme Risk Protection Order. The order allows authorities to remove guns from someone who poses a significant near-term danger of harming themselves or others. Officials said it has been used often in situations where people were suicidal.

In September, officials seized weapons from a man thought to be a leader of the neo-Nazi group Attomwaffen, with investigators citing the man’s apparent involvement in hate camps where participants chanted anti-Semitic slurs and slogans like “race war now.” The man did not appear in court to challenge the order.

Last year, King County officials used the red flag law 71 times, and each request was initially granted by a judge, according to the prosecutor’s office. But in about 10 of those cases, the order was not allowed to stand after a follow-up hearing.

In one case, a man who was arrested for driving under the influence made suicidal statements and suggested that he be taken to a mental institution, according to court records. He made reference to school shootings, talked about people he knew selling illegal firearms, and said he did not mix well with people from South Seattle, which is racially diverse, according to records.

The police obtained an order prohibiting the man from having weapons through a red flag filing. But the man later challenged an extension of the protection order. His lawyer said that the man regretted the comments, his other actions did not indicate that he was a risk, he had undergone a mental health evaluation, and the case threatened to disrupt his future.

The judge restored his gun rights.

Federal Action

Second Amendment advocates have long been wary of red flag laws.

Alan Gottlieb, the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, said the laws are designed to seize guns before due process takes place. He said he would like to see consequences for anyone who lies in such a case, and he wants to see gun owners have an initial opportunity to object and make their case.

“You’re guilty until proven innocent,” Gottlieb said of the current systems.

However, Gottlieb believes there are cases in which it may be necessary to take people’s guns away after due process. He said Donnelly had come to his organization for help, but Gottlieb said the posts online were so concerning that the foundation decided not to help Donnelly. Still, the organization is watching for potential cases to challenge misuses of the law.

Donnelly said that while he supports gun rights, he is not an activist. He said he does not necessarily regret his social media postings, but that he was surprised authorities took it seriously, and that he believed the case infringed on his First Amendment rights. He even said he was in favor of some aspects of red flag laws.

“I feel like there are cases where it can be a good thing and cases where it can be a bad thing,” Donnelly said.

The red flag strategy appears to be gaining support. There is an effort to push a federal plan through Congress, where Republicans have shown some support. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump endorsed such a proposal, and other states like New Hampshire are considering the measures.

‘Kill All Women’

At a court hearing in October, Donnelly stood and testified that many of the posts about violence were just jokes for his friends.

In an interview, Donnelly said the comments were essentially mocking the online “incel” community that frequently promotes misogynistic messages. The “Joker” post was riffing on a larger “tickets to Joker” meme in which internet users stereotyped the kinds of people who would attend the movie.

The image of him with two AK-47-style rifles was actually a photo taken nearly a year ago, Donnelly said. He testified that one of the guns was his friend’s weapon, which Donnelly does not possess.

Donnelly’s lawyer, Derek Smith, said Donnelly had no history of criminal or drug issues. He described the seizure of Donnelly’s weapons from his home as an intrusion on both his First Amendment and Second Amendment rights.

“It is crystal clear to Mr. Donnelly that the state is looking over his shoulder, watching everything that he posts, and that if they don’t follow the joke, then they are going to come after him for a violation of his rights,” Smith said.

Kim Wyatt, the prosecutor who leads the department’s red flag program, had Donnelly read back some of his online postings at the hearing.

“Kill all women,” he read in one.

“Prowling the Seattle streets for women to assault. No luck so far. Hopefully my urges will be satisfied soon,” he continued.

Wyatt said the postings illustrated the type of person he was. The post about “Joker” was just the latest, she told the judge.

“We believe that posting is an implied threat of a mass shooting,” she said. “We would ask the court to balance the community safety needs versus the temporary deprivation of Mr. Donnelly’s rights to possess firearms.”

She suggested he perhaps undergo an evaluation before regaining his guns.

Judge Averil Rothrock said that while there was an implied threat in the “Joker” post, the state did not meet the burden in showing the threat as being more than a bad joke.

“The statute is not written such that the court can give the benefit of the doubt to law enforcement at the expense of Mr. Donnelly,” Rothrock said.

Kristen Ellingboe, a spokeswoman for the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility, said that while the organization disagreed with the judge’s decision, she saw it as an example of judges trying to find the right balance.

“That’s part of the grind of figuring out the correct and effective implementation of laws,” she said.

This article originally appeared in

Fearing a Mass Shooting, Police Took His Guns. A Judge Gave Them Back.

REDMOND, Wash. — Authorities in the Seattle area came across an alarming photo on social media at the beginning of October. It showed a man holding two AK-47-style rifles. The caption above read: “one ticket for joker please.”

Their 7-year-old border collie, Katie, was no longer in the room. She had apparently managed to unlatch the door, possibly spooked by a thunderstorm that had swept through the area. At the front desk, an attendant said she had seen an anxious dog bolt out the front door hours before.

The Kings were stunned. In the town of 23,000 people that backs up to the sprawling wilderness near Glacier National Park, surrounded by forests and fields, where would they even start looking?

Over the next 57 days, the couple set out on a desperate search that included night-vision goggles, animal-tracking cameras and horse manure brought in from the family’s farm in Eastern Washington. Carole King, a postal carrier, quit her job.

“Every night going to bed, it was gut-wrenching,” said Verne King. “Is she warm? Did she get to eat today? It tore us up.”

Day 1

‘Like a Crime Scene’

After the initial discovery, the Kings spent the night frantically searching nearby neighborhoods, where alfalfa farms and homes and new shopping centers collide in northern Kalispell.

They were out until about 4 a.m., the Kings said, but saw no sign of the dog. The front-desk attendant asked them to send some photos, and together they began making and distributing flyers around the area.

Hundreds of them were posted on light poles and community mailboxes, and handed out through door-to-door canvassing and at local sports events. They posted Katie’s photo on Facebook pages and lost-pet internet networks. Strangers joined them in walking the neighborhoods in search of Katie.

As former law-enforcement officers from Los Angeles, the Kings knew to look through abandoned buildings. They examined the dirt in alfalfa fields, looking for tracks or dog droppings. They considered the possibility that Katie had been struck by a car on the highway, but without any evidence, they pressed on.

“You think of it like a crime scene,” Verne King said.

Day 15

Traps and Scents

After a couple weeks of searching, the Kings decided to try some more extreme measures. They ordered two game cameras, the kind used by wildlife researchers, that could record video when an animal passed. They ordered animal traps, hoping that food — like the cheese sticks Katie preferred — would coax her into a cage.

Carole King also began going jogging and biking around the neighborhoods, hoping that her sweat could signal the dog that her family was near. They left used T-shirts at strategic locations, as well as Katie’s blanket and dog bowl.

“I don’t think there’s any street we haven’t been on in that area,” Carole King said.

The couple later brought in hair shavings and a couple of buckets of manure from their horses back home and, with approval from local farmers, spread it near traps and other possible locations.

Later, after hearing speculation that Katie might be on the move at night time, the couple acquired night-vision goggles and spent hours out in the cold, hoping to catch a glimpse of Katie traversing a field.

But they saw no activity. The camera footage showed no sign of their dog. The traps? They caught a magpie, a cat and four skunks.

Day 22

Possible Sightings

Tips, however, were coming in. As people reported possible sightings, the Kings scrambled to follow up.

On one occasion, they drove 15 miles to Columbia Falls on a tip, even though it seemed far-fetched. Other times they would go to check even when the description of the dog didn’t sound quite right.

“In our heart, I would always say, ‘If I didn’t follow up, what if that was her and we didn’t do anything?” Carole King said.

Sometimes it would turn out to be a different dog. On one occasion, while they were talking to a landowner at a farm, a woman came up to them and said she had just seen their dog cross the road and run into a canola field. The Kings set off running, calling for Katie.

Day 37

Quitting Her Job

Carole King was still working as a postal carrier back in the Spokane area. For a week in August, she had to return home while her husband continued the search.

She talked with her bosses about taking some time off. But that wasn’t feasible during summer months. Although the money had helped supplement their pensions, she gave her notice.

“Katie was just more important to me,” she said. “I just said, ‘I’ll finish this week, and that’s it.’”

When she returned to Kalispell, Verne King had to return to Spokane. He left a note written for Katie.

“I am going home to care for your brothers and sister,” Verne King said, referring to their two other dogs and a cat. “Instead of saying good bye, I would rather say, ‘See you soon.’”

Day 53

Losing Hope

A month and a half into the search, the Kings still felt hopeful. There was no sign of Katie but also no evidence that she was dead.

By the second week of September, though, Carole King said she was growing demoralized. She was crying and starting to wonder if the dog would never be found.

“I wasn’t ready to go, but I was thinking, What else can I do?” she said.

Missing her house and their other animals, she was planning to return home, about 250 miles away, to spend the weekend. But her husband persuaded her to stay, suggesting one more week. Some of her new friends in Kalispell also encouraged her to persist.

One person had opened their home for the Kings to stay in the area. More than a dozen others committed hours to helping them search. Landowners had welcomed them onto their sprawling properties to look.

“We can’t believe that community up there,” Verne King said. Carole King added, “I got out of it sheer kindness from people — from a stranger to a stranger.”

Day 57

‘I Got Her’

On the morning of Sept. 15, Carole King got another tip, this time from someone in a subdivision near the hotel. The resident said he was looking out the window and was confident that Katie was in his backyard.

She and a friend rushed over. But by the time they got there, whatever he had seen was gone. They walked through the fields nearby, searching with binoculars.

They encountered a couple out for a walk, told them about their search, and the woman pointed to a dog under a nearby tree.

It was a border collie. They began calling Katie’s name. The dog was cautious, wary. Others in the group went silent as Carole King called out to the dog. Katie came running at full speed and leapt into her arms.

“All I could think about was, ‘I’m done. I got her,’” Carole King said. “I was crying, I was holding onto her, wrapped her up in a bear hug. I couldn’t get her in the car fast enough to close her in so I wouldn’t lose her again.”

Katie immediately fell asleep on the front seat of the car. She was dirty, dehydrated and had lost 15 pounds. They took her to an emergency vet, who shed tears upon learning that this was Katie, the dog so much of Kalispell had worked to find.

She Quit Her Job. He Got Night Goggles. They Searched 57 Days for Their Dog.

After a late night at a stock-car race, Carole and Verne King returned to their dog-friendly hotel in Kalispell, Montana, and made a devastating discovery.

San Francisco’s “Homeward Bound” program, started more than a decade ago when Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was the city’s mayor, transports hundreds of people a year. Smaller cities around the country — Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Medford, Oregon, among them — have recently committed funding to the idea.

And in Seattle this past week, a member of the King County Council proposed a major investment into the region’s busing efforts, fearing that the city was on the receiving end of homeless busing programs from too many other cities.

But do these transport programs actually help people find stable housing? For many of those offered a bus ticket, they do not.

In San Francisco, city officials checking on people in the month after busing them out of town found that while many had found a place to live, others were unreachable, missing, in jail or had already returned to homelessness. Within a year, the city found that one out of every eight bus ticket recipients had returned and sought services in San Francisco once again.

In Portland, Oregon, a city that has spent three years sending hundreds of its homeless residents around the country, the numbers were worse. Officials found that three months after the departures, nearly half of those transported who could be reached had lost their promised housing.

“That’s a pretty high failure rate,” said Nan Roman, who leads the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “If we were housing people, I don’t think saying 50% of them returned to homelessness after a housing intervention would be acceptable.”

Busing programs have been a staple response to homelessness for years, but in the past, Roman said, some cities seemed to use them as a way to export their troubles.

The newer programs, she said, are designed to provide homeless people a critical path to stability by linking them with familiar support systems. But she said cities may need to do a better job of screening what is realistically waiting at a new destination and to hand travelers off to services near their new homes.

Jeff Kositsky, the head of San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said he considered that city’s program a success and would do so even if the city’s outcome numbers were worse. He said it was an effort that cost the city little in comparison to other housing services, it helped many people and it freed up resources to assist others.

Portland began its program in 2016. Not wanting to send a troubled person into a place with no support, organizers put protocols in place: Providers must first call ahead to make sure there is a legitimate housing option. Some clients receive luggage to help retain their possessions. For those who might have difficulty on a long bus trip, a plane ticket is also an option.

The city sent away 383 people in the most recent fiscal year, with the top destinations since the start of the program being Las Vegas (29 people), Seattle (17) and Phoenix (12). Fifty-eight percent of those who could be reached after three months remained housed, but most were unreachable.

“It’s not a panacea,” conceded Denis Theriault, a spokesman for Multnomah County’s Joint Office of Homeless Services. But the city is sticking with the program, he said, noting that it is allowing some vulnerable people to go from homelessness to stability.

Seattle has taken a less formal approach to relocation, with no dedicated program for busing.

Seattle offers bus and other transportation help as part of a larger bucket of flexible, one-time financial assistance that can be used in a variety of ways, such as paying parking tickets so someone can regain access to a vehicle, or helping a person with unsightly scars get a wig during the pursuit of a job.

“Our approach is to find the best thing, and that clearly is not always a bus ticket,” said Meg Olberding, a spokeswoman with Seattle’s Human Services Department.

Citing programs in San Francisco and elsewhere, a member of the King County Council, Reagan Dunn, recently proposed a large expansion of the region’s bus-ticket programs, arguing that it has taken on too much of the burden.

“Seattle has become a dead-end street for the nation’s homeless population,” said Dunn, who has proposed $1 million for an effort to expand the county’s transportation option.

But surveys in King County, which includes Seattle, show the problem is largely homegrown. Sixteen percent of the city’s homeless population became homeless outside the county, and 5% reported being outside of Washington state when they lost their housing.

Some of those who might be potential clients in any expanded program said transport can be helpful — in some cases. Kyle Calitri, 36, who was lying on a red mat outside a shelter in downtown Seattle on Friday afternoon, said he has largely lived on the streets since he was a teenager. More than a decade ago, while living homeless in Tennessee, a church helped him get back to family in Florida with a bus ticket. That was a vital opportunity that gave him some temporary stability, he said, though he has continued to live a transient life in recent years.

With the possibility of new funding, he said, he was going to look into the option to help his wife.

Various nonprofits in the Seattle area have already provided some bus tickets. The Seattle-area United Way funded about 116 trips outside the region last year, said Lauren McGowan, senior director for Ending Homelessness and Poverty at United Way of King County.

But McGowan said the idea of committing more money to such programs might be counterproductive when there were so many other urgent needs. She said most people the nonprofit works with are from the Seattle area, where their personal and professional networks are centered, and she worries that spending money on bus tickets to advance a narrative of “reunification” may be an excuse to simply encourage homeless people to go away.

In some cases, she said, people have arrived in Seattle on bus passes from other regions without any housing support lined up.

“Just shipping someone out of town to experience homelessness somewhere else is furthering the trauma that person experiences,” she said, “and furthering this crisis that we have all over the country.”

A Bus Ticket Gets Them Home, but Not Off the Streets

SEATTLE — The solution is cheap and simple: As cities see their homeless populations grow, many are buying one-way bus tickets to send people to a more promising destination, where family or friends can help get them back on their feet.

Worden put her intelligence background to work, asking her bank about the locations of computers that had recently accessed her bank account using her login credentials. The bank got back to her with an answer: One was a computer network registered to NASA.

Worden’s spouse, Anne McClain, was a decorated NASA astronaut on a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. She was about to be part of NASA’s first all-female spacewalk. But the couple’s domestic troubles on Earth, it seemed, had extended into outer space.

McClain acknowledged that she had accessed the bank account from space, insisting through a lawyer that she was merely shepherding the couple’s still-intertwined finances. Worden felt differently. She filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and her family lodged one with NASA’s Office of Inspector General, accusing McClain of identity theft and improper access to Worden’s private financial records.

Investigators from the inspector general’s office have since contacted Worden and McClain, trying to get to the bottom of what may be the first allegation of criminal wrongdoing in space.

“I was pretty appalled that she would go that far. I knew it was not OK,” Worden said.

The five space agencies involved in the space station — from the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada — have long-established procedures to handle any jurisdictional questions that arise when astronauts of various nations are orbiting Earth together. But Mark Sundahl, director of the Global Space Law Center at Cleveland State University, said he was not aware of any previous allegation of a crime committed in space. NASA officials said they were also unaware of any crimes committed on the space station.

McClain, now back on Earth, submitted to an under-oath interview with the inspector general last week. She contends that she was merely doing what she had always done, with Worden’s permission, to make sure the family’s finances were in order.

“She strenuously denies that she did anything improper,” said her lawyer, Rusty Hardin, who added that the astronaut “is totally cooperating.”

Hardin said the bank access from space was an attempt to make sure that there were sufficient funds in Worden’s account to pay bills and care for the child they had been raising. McClain had done the same throughout the relationship, he said, with Worden’s full knowledge. McClain continued using the password that she had used previously and never heard from Worden that the account was now off limits, he added.

A complaint involving bank access from the space station is just one of a number of complex legal issues that have emerged in the age of routine space travel, issues that are expected to grow with the onset of space tourism.

In 2011, NASA organized a sting operation targeting a space engineer’s widow who was looking to sell a moon rock. In 2013, a Russian satellite was damaged after colliding with debris from a satellite that China had destroyed in a 2007 missile test. In 2017, an Austrian businessman sued a space tourism company, seeking to recover his deposit for a planned trip that was not progressing.

“Just because it’s in space doesn’t mean it’s not subject to law,” Sundahl said.

One potential issue that could arise with any criminal case or lawsuit over extraterrestrial bank communications, Sundahl said, is discovery: NASA officials would be wary of opening up highly sensitive computer networks to examination by lawyers, for example. But those sorts of legal questions, he said, are going to be inevitable as people spend more time in outer space.

The couple’s dispute revolved largely around Worden’s son, who was born about a year before the two met.

Worden, who had previously worked at the National Security Agency, resisted allowing McClain to adopt the child, even after they were married at the end of 2014.

In early 2018, while the couple was still married, McClain went to a local court in the Houston area to ask a judge to grant her shared parenting rights and “the exclusive right to designate the primary residence of the child” if the parties could not reach a mutual agreement, according to records. She contended that Worden had an explosive temper and was making poor financial decisions, and she wanted the court to “legally validate my established and deep parental relationship” with the young boy.

Around the same time, McClain apparently posted official NASA photos — now deleted — on her Twitter account, showing herself in her astronaut suit smiling alongside Worden’s son. “The hardest part about training for space is the 4 yr old I have to leave behind every time I walk out the door,” she wrote at the time.

The social media attention angered Worden further, as she did not want McClain to claim to be the mother of the child. Later in 2018, Worden filed for divorce after McClain accused her of assault — something Worden denies and said she believed was part of McClain’s bid to get control of the child. The assault case was later dismissed.

A few months later, after McClain launched to the space station, their dispute continued to escalate. Worden noticed the bank issue. And when word of her concerns reached NASA, officials there immediately raised the issue with McClain, who fired off an email to Worden.

“They specifically mentioned threatening emails from orbit, and accessing bank accounts — not sure where that info comes from,” McClain wrote in an email to Worden.

Despite the turmoil, McClain portrayed no outward signs of trouble on the space station. The Spokane, Washington, native was an acclaimed leader with a decorated past — a West Point graduate who became a commissioned Army officer and flew more than 800 combat hours in Operation Iraqi Freedom before joining NASA in 2013. She remains a lieutenant colonel in the Army, and Stars and Stripes reported this week that she is on a list of candidates NASA is considering to be the first woman on the moon.

In the days after McClain’s email to Worden, Worden filed a complaint with the FTC, accusing McClain of committing identity theft — though she saw no sign that anyone had moved or made use of the funds in the account.

McClain, meanwhile, was gaining national attention for another reason. NASA was promoting the coming milestone of an all-female spacewalk, with McClain set to do work outside the space station with fellow astronaut Christina Koch. But in a sudden switch a few days before the spacewalk, NASA scrapped McCain’s role, explaining that there were not enough suits available in the two women’s size.

“Saturday Night Live” skewered the agency, with actress Aidy Bryant portraying a disappointed McClain with her dreams crushed by poor NASA planning.

A NASA spokeswoman, Megan Sumner, said the decision about the spacewalk was not influenced by any allegations about McClain. Sumner declined to comment about the other issues raised by Worden.

In the days before McClain returned from space in June, Worden’s parents sent a lengthy letter to NASA’s Office of Inspector General, outlining what they described as McClain’s “highly calculated and manipulative campaign” to win custody of the child. In the letter, they included the allegation of the bank account intrusion.

In recent days, Michael Mataya, an investigator specializing in criminal cases with NASA’s Office of Inspector General, and another official have been exploring the issue, said Worden and her mother. Mataya declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman. The trade commission has not responded to the identity theft report, Worden said.

The domestic dispute in space may be the first such investigation, but it is unlikely that it will be the last.

“The more we go out there and spend time out there,” Sundahl said, “all the things we do here are going to happen in space.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/us/nasa-astronaut-anne-mcclain.html" id="6e3117b1-2dae-3b1a-a906-b037f833dc1f">The New York Times</a>.

How a Bitter Divorce Battle on Earth Led to Claims of a Crime in Space

Summer Worden, a former Air Force intelligence officer living in Kansas, has been in the midst of a bitter separation and parenting dispute for much of the past year. So she was surprised when she noticed that her estranged spouse still seemed to know things about her spending. Had she bought a car? How could she afford that?

The announcement from Sheriff Ric Bradshaw of Palm Beach County came a few days after a lawyer, Bradley Edwards, accused Epstein of engaging in “improper sexual contact” during the time he spent outside jail while he was serving time for state charges of soliciting prostitution.

Edwards represents a number of women with allegations about Epstein, who is now facing sex-trafficking charges in Manhattan that could result in a 45-year prison sentence if he is convicted.

An investigator working with Edwards said in an interview Friday that the work-release allegation originated from two women who said they had been brought from another state at age 18 to visit Epstein at his office.

The investigator, Mike Fisten, said the women reported that the meeting turned sexual in nature, with Epstein naked but for a GPS ankle monitor, and that there was sexual activity that included physical contact.

Fisten declined to discuss specifics about the women or their stories, which he said included substantial detail, and the sheriff’s department said it did not know the identities of the women and had not received any complaints.

Epstein’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The sheriff’s office said the investigation would explore potential violations in “any actions taken by the deputies assigned to monitor Epstein during his work-release program.”

“All aspects of the matter will be fully investigated to ensure total transparency and accountability,” the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

As part of a deal negotiated with the U.S. attorney in Miami, Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to two state prostitution charges in Florida and served 13 months in jail. Officials allowed him to spend 12 hours a day, six days a week outside the facility in order to work.

Edwards said this week that he had received information from the women about what transpired during those work hours. Edwards did not release specific information about the person who visited Epstein and said he did not know of any of the visitors to the office who were under 18.

Fisten said that he had long ago sought access to the visitor logs from the work-release program, but wasn’t able to get it. On Thursday, WPTV reported that other records from the department showed Epstein making work-release stops at his home — sometimes for up to three hours.

In a video posted online by the sheriff’s office this month, Chief Deputy Mike Gauger said Epstein was closely monitored during his work-release hours. Epstein had a GPS ankle monitor and was not allowed to wander or even go out for lunch, Gauger said. The monitoring included an on-site deputy, paid for by Epstein, and a sign-in sheet to track limited visitation rights.

“He was not allowed to have family, friends, guests at his office,” Gauger said in the video. “The only ones that were allowed to visit him were his attorneys or his business partner.”

The work-release arrangement was not part of Epstein’s deal with prosecutors, but was approved later by the sheriff’s office. Gauger said that Epstein met the department’s qualifications for the program.

On Thursday, Judge Richard M. Berman of U.S. District Court rejected Epstein’s request to await trial under home detention, saying that he was concerned about whether Epstein would abuse teenage girls if he were released from custody.

The federal indictment in New York accuses Epstein and his employees of paying dozens of underage girls to engage in sex acts at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. He has been detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan since his arrest this month.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/epstein-palm-beach-sheriff-work-release.html" id="ee9562ff-a974-3eff-ab78-a5c631897125">The New York Times</a>.

A sheriff in Florida ordered an internal investigation Friday into whether deputies violated any rules while monitoring Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy New York financier, on a work-release program a decade ago.

Sheriff Orders Investigation Into How Deputies Handled Jeffrey Epstein's Work Release

The announcement from Sheriff Ric Bradshaw of Palm Beach County came a few days after a lawyer, Bradley Edwards, accused Epstein of engaging in “improper sexual contact” during the days he would spend outside jail while he was serving time for state charges of soliciting prostitution. Edwards represents a number of women with allegations about Epstein, who is now facing sex-trafficking charges in Manhattan that could result in a 45-year prison sentence if he is convicted.

Edwards said this week that he has received information from victims, including one who visited Epstein, that he had engaged in improper sexual conduct during some visits he received during those work hours. Edwards did not release specific information about the person who visited Epstein and said he did not know if any of the visitors were under the age of 18.

The federal indictment in New York accuses Epstein and his employees of paying dozens of underage girls to engage in sex acts at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. He has been detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center since his arrest this month.

<h1>More than a month after Alaska lawmakers settled on a plan to cut $5 million in support for the state’s universities, Gov. Mike J. Dunleavy shocked the state last month by using a veto to cut much deeper, taking away $130 million more from the system that gave him his master’s degree.</h1>

Dunleavy, a Republican in his first year as governor, has seized on a hawkish approach to budgeting, in order to fulfill a campaign promise to increase the amount of oil-revenue dividends the state pays each Alaska resident, to about $3,000 a year.

The governor’s slashing of state funding left university leaders blindsided and in turmoil. The university’s supporters have embarked on a desperate scramble to persuade lawmakers to override the governor’s line-item veto, which would reduce the operating funds the university system gets from the state by 41%.

With a special legislative session convening Monday, they have just five days to do so before the cuts become official.

“I think people are actually frightened,” said Maria Williams, a professor who chairs the University of Alaska’s Faculty Alliance. “I’m frightened because I feel that what is happening is a drastic reshaping of the state of Alaska.”

The showdown in Juneau this week comes at a time of economic trouble in the state. While much of the United States has benefited from robust economic growth in recent years, Alaska’s fortunes have been largely tied to those of the state’s declining oil and gas industry. Falling oil revenues have brought on a persistent recession that has forced the state to confront lingering questions about how to best revive its economy.

Faced with looming deficits, political leaders avoided imposing a state sales tax or personal income tax, and chose to balance the budget by reducing payouts from the oil dividend fund instead. But the reductions were unpopular with some voters, and Dunleavy won election last year promising not only to restore the full dividend payments for the future but to fight for catch-up payments to make up for past reductions.

Leaders of the University of Alaska system, which serves more than 26,000 students from Juneau to Fairbanks, expect the governor’s budget cut to result in the shuttering of some satellite campuses, the elimination of hundreds of staff and faculty positions and an unprecedented reduction in the number of students the system is able to serve.

Dunleavy, a former teacher who got a master’s in education from the University of Alaska system, said his cuts to the state budget, including those for the university system, were necessary to lay a better foundation for private-sector job growth. But Jim Johnsen, president of the university, said a strong university system was necessary to develop innovators and training for a workforce that is increasingly dependent on postsecondary education.

“There is really no strong state without a strong university,” Johnsen said. “It just doesn’t exist.”

Paying the dividend

During his campaign last year, Dunleavy vowed to balance the state’s budget while avoiding new taxes, and to provide Alaskans with bigger payouts from the Alaska Permanent Fund, which holds oil revenue for later distribution. Lawmakers gave each Alaskan a $1,600 dividend last year; an old formula for the payouts that the governor hopes to revive would yield payments of about $3,000 a person this year, according to Bryce Edgmon, speaker of the state House.

To raise the dividend while lowering the state’s deficit, Dunleavy proposed a large budget cut for the university system earlier this year. But after the university system worked closely with lawmakers through the budget-writing process, the Legislature settled on a reduction of just $5 million in the $327 million of operating-budget support the state provides.

Johnsen, fearing the governor might not stomach the Legislature’s plan, met with Dunleavy in late May and quietly provided him with a written plan that he regarded as a drastic alternative: A $49 million reduction spread over several years, with significant cuts to personnel and “a reduced capacity to serve our students and our state.” Johnsen said he thought that such a reduction would be a challenge that would force some difficult choices, but one that the university could handle.

“It was an interesting discussion,” Johnsen said in an interview about his talk with the governor. “He nodded his head. He stood up. He shook my hand. He said, ‘We’ll talk.’”

The next time they spoke was the morning of Dunleavy’s veto announcement, he said. Legislative leaders had also been left in the dark.

“I’m shocked by the cuts,” said Edgmon, a political independent who characterized the reductions as “devastating.”

Matt Shuckerow, a spokesman for Dunleavy, said the governor made his intentions clear in his February budget plan and never indicated that he was going to waver from it.

Dunleavy has a tense history with political peers in the state. In 2017, a Republican-led majority ousted him from a committee post in the Legislature after he began breaking with the consensus in his party caucus. Last year, his predecessor as governor, Bill Walker, an independent, dropped his bid for a second term and threw his support behind the Democratic challenger, Mark Begich, in the hope of preventing Dunleavy from winning the governor’s office.

Dunleavy, a Republican in his first year as governor, has seized on a hawkish approach to budgeting, in order to fulfill a campaign promise to increase the amount of oil-revenue dividends the state pays each Alaska resident, to about $3,000 a year.

Mike Baker

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Sheriff Orders Investigation Into How Deputies Handled Jeffrey Epstein's Work Release

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Sheriff Orders Investigation Into How Deputies Handled Jeffrey Epstein's Work Release

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