By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Tennessee man pleaded guilty on Friday to hacking the U.S. Supreme Court’s filing system more than two dozen times, court records show.

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Nicholas Moore, 24, of Springfield, Tennessee, also admitted that he illegally accessed records from AmeriCorps’ computer servers and a Department of Veterans Affairs electronic platform.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to sentence Moore on April 17.

Moore pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of computer fraud, which carries a maximum prison sentence of one year. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office charged him last week.

In 2023, Moore used stolen credentials to hack into the Supreme Court’s filing system on 25 different days, a court filing says. He accessed personal records belonging to the person whose credentials he used, then posted information about the person on an Instagram account using the handle “@ihackedthegovernment,” according to the filing.

Moore also pleaded guilty to using stolen credentials to access a user’s personal information from AmeriCorps’ computer servers and from a U.S. Marine Corps veteran’s account on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ “MyHealtheVet” platform. He posted screenshots of information that he accessed from both computer systems on the same Instagram account.

By MANUEL VALDES

With breaches and tail slapping, a pod of orca whales put on a show near Seattle on Friday.

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The close encounter attracted dozens of people to the shore of the West Seattle neighborhood. Whale watchers identified the pod as Bigg’s killer whales, a group that hunts sea mammals and lives in the Salish Sea. The pod was seemingly hunting.

Among the people watching from Alki beach was Summer Staley. She drove from across the city to catch the whales after seeing a post on the Orca Network’s Facebook page alerting of the pod’s arrival. The group tracks whales using reports from people on land and in the water.

“It’s just such a beautiful connection with nature and with the universe to be sharing the same space with these beautiful creatures,” said Staley, who has seen the whales a few dozen times over the last year. “How lucky am I to be able to share this space with them?”

The whales breached and tail slapped for about hour. Sea birds and a bald eagle trailed the pod, looking for scraps.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety says state law enforcement agencies will be standing ready this weekend in Minneapolis to keep protesters safe but it is up to them to show the rest of the country that they can peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights.

State officials are preparing for a rally organized by conservative influencers and the potential for counter-protests and demonstrations by local groups.

Far-right activist Jake Lang, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Florida, said on X that thousands of people are coming to Minnesota to march as “Christian Crusaders” supporting ICE agents and calling for the arrest of Gov. Tim Walz.

Members of the Minnesota State Patrol, the Department of Natural Resources and Metro Transit and University of Minnesota police will be out supporting local law enforcement, and the National Guard will be on stand-by, said Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson during a Friday afternoon press conference.

He urged protesters to remain peaceful.

“We recognize and understand the deep concern and grief that they, and so many in our community and across the country, are still feeling following some recent events in our state,” Jacobson said. “We also know that demonstrations include strong emotions, beliefs and desires to be heard. And it is critical that those voices are expressed safely, so that they can be heard.”

Any actions that harm people, destroy property or jeopardize public safety will not be tolerated by law enforcement and could result in arrest, he said.

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By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER

NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor said Friday that a judge lacks the authority to appoint a neutral expert to oversee the public release of documents in the sex trafficking probe of financier Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

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Judge Paul A. Engelmayer was told in a letter signed by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton that he must reject a request made earlier this week by the congressional cosponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act to appoint a neutral expert.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, say they have “urgent and grave concerns” about the slow release of only a small number of millions of documents that began last month.

In a filing to the judge they said they believed “criminal violations have taken place” in the release process.

Clayton, though, said Khanna and Massie do not have standing with the court that would allow them to seek the “extraordinary” relief of the appointment of a special master and independent monitor.

Engelmayer “lacks the authority” to grant such a request, he said, particularly because the congressional representatives who made the request are not parties to the criminal case that led to Maxwell’s December 2021 sex trafficking conviction and subsequent 20-year prison sentence for recruiting girls and women for Epstein to abuse and aiding the abuse.

Epstein died in a federal jail in New York City in August 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. The death was ruled a suicide.

The Justice Department expects to update the court “again shortly” regarding its progress in turning over documents from the Epstein and Maxwell investigative files, Clayton said in the letter.

The Justice Department has said the files’ release was slowed by redactions required to protect the identities of abuse victims.

In their letter, Khanna and Massie wrote that the Department of Justice’s release of only 12,000 documents out of more than 2 million documents being reviewed was a “flagrant violation” of the law’s release requirements and had caused “serious trauma to survivors.”

“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” the congressmen said as they asked for the appointment of an independent monitor to ensure all documents and electronically stored information are immediately made public.

They also recommended that a court-appointed monitor be given authority to prepare reports about the true nature and extent of the document production and whether improper redactions or conduct have taken place.