A former teacher of a charter school in St. Paul was sentenced to one month of house arrest and three years of probation Wednesday for having criminal sexual contact with his 16-year-old student in 2023 after he was fired for continuing to contact the girl.

Brandon Michael Bunney, who had taught at Hmong College Prep Academy, pleaded guilty in Ramsey County District Court in March to felony fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct after reaching an agreement that included a stayed prison sentence to probation and no more than two months in the workhouse.

Brandon Michael Bunney (Courtesy of the Scott County Sheriff’s Office)

Bunney, 43, of Savage, was initially charged in February 2024 with third-degree criminal sexual conduct for incidents between July 25, 2023, and mid-September that year while being in a position of authority over her.

Bunney’s attorney, Marsh Halberg, said Wednesday the charge stemmed from a consensual relationship with the 16-year-old within 120 days of his May 18 firing from the school.

In general, the legal age of consent in Minnesota is 16, however, the statute for third-degree criminal sexual conduct includes a “120-day rule” that prohibits anyone who was in a position of authority over someone from having sexual contact with them during the time frame.

“Had they waited a few more weeks to enter into their relationship, no offense would have been committed,” Halberg wrote in a sentencing memo.

Rumors of an inappropriate relationship between Bunney and the girl began to surface at Hmong College Prep in spring 2023, the criminal complaint said. School administration told him several times to stop contacting the girl, and he was fired from his teaching job for failing to do so.

After his firing, Bunney began spending more time with the girl. Numerous messages between them began six days after he was fired. By July 2023, Bunney was sending the girl messages describing sexual acts he wanted to engage in with her, the complaint said.

She told police it started with sexual touching in his car on St. Paul’s East Side and progressed to sexual penetration at an Apple Valley house where he lived at the time, the complaint said.

In an interview with police, Bunney said he was fired from the high school because of a “perception that I hung out with a student,” the complaint said. He said that “a bunch of people had concerns” and he was told to “kinda ghost” the girl, but he didn’t.

Three months after his firing from Hmong College Prep, Bunney joined Nicollet Middle School in Burnsville. He taught math at the school until Feb. 23, 2024, when he was arrested and officials at Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District 191 say they learned of the allegations from police.

Bunney’s wife of 14 years filed for divorce in April 2024, according to court records.

‘These are two consenting people’

Halberg told the court Wednesday that it was around September 2024 when Bunney understood the law, that he “kind of did a 180 in the sense of acknowledgement. And, before that, it was like, why is it anybody’s business? These are two consenting people, age of consent.”

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Halberg said Bunney has been cooperative and remorseful, and that a psychosexual exam concluded he has less than a 3% chance of reoffending.

Halberg asked Judge Richard Kyle to give Bunney no jail time or, in the alternative, that he serve any time sentenced on electronic home monitoring with work release privileges.

Kyle imposed the latter, adding, “but I’m going to reduce the amount that’s been requested. I think a little bit is appropriate, given what happened here.”

Bunney’s sentence is a stay of imposition, which means the felony conviction will be considered a misdemeanor if he successfully completes probation. His conditions of probation include registering as a predatory offender; no contact with the victim; and no position of authority — paid or volunteer — over minors.

NEW YORK (AP) — Jurors in Harvey Weinstein’s sex crimes retrial are due to start deliberating Thursday, with dozens of witnesses, scores of documents and two days of closing arguments to sift through.

The seven-woman, five-man jury will start its private discussions after getting legal instructions from the judge Thursday morning.

Closing arguments concluded Wednesday, with prosecutor Nicole Blumberg saying the former movie studio boss “held the golden ticket” to show-business success and used it to sexually assault women who were afraid to cross him.

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Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty to raping a woman in 2013 and forcing oral sex on two others in 2006. Defense lawyer Arthur Aidala told jurors Tuesday that Weinstein had entirely consensual encounters with the women, arguing that they were “using him” to advance their fledgling careers in entertainment.

Over the last seven years, the case has been seen as something of a crucible for the #MeToo movement. The anti-sexual-misconduct outcry took flight after allegations against Weinstein became public in 2017.

He was later convicted of sex crimes in New York and California. The New York conviction was overturned last year, and the case was sent back for retrial.

The new trial was expanded to include an accuser who wasn’t part of the first trial. One of the criminal sex act charges is based on her allegations.

Weinstein chose not to testify.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must give migrants sent to an El Salvador prison a chance to challenge their removals.

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U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg said that people who were sent to the prison in March under an 18th-century wartime law haven’t been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges.

The ruling is the latest milestone in a monthslong legal saga over the fate of deportees imprisoned at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new Make America Healthy Again report offers a road to wellness for the nation’s children paved not with the gold-standard science he promised, but with pyrite.

The report, created by a MAHA commission that includes all of President Donald Trump’s cabinet members, mixes nuggets of truth— like the idea that it’s important to focus on kids’ health — with gross misrepresentations of scientific research. Some of the studies are even made up.

The nonprofit news organization Notus first reported that some of the commission’s findings relied on research that doesn’t exist. The document, released last week, includes seven fabricated studies related to kids’ mental health and the overprescribing of medications for ADHD, depression and asthma. The New York Times later identified several other fake citations.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attributed the inclusion of phony publications to “formatting issues” that would be corrected. An updated report that omits those studies and cleans up bizarre errors in several others has since been uploaded to the White House website. That version contained fresh errors, Notus reported.

Many suspect that the fake citations are the product of AI. That alone should be disqualifying. Rather than the thoughtful, evidence-based assessment our kids deserve, the first major report on Kennedy’s cornerstone initiative was a slapped-together treatise.

But there’s a bigger problem.

If the MAHA team did rely on AI to generate supporting data — and it seems likely it did — it wasn’t just cutting corners. It confirms this project was never a good faith effort to begin with. The team was assembling evidence to reinforce conclusions that supported Kennedy’s well-known narrative.

That pattern is bolstered by the report’s interpretation of the real studies it cites. Data is conveniently twisted to fit Kennedy’s personal beliefs. A recurring tendency is to exaggerate the size of the current problem by minimizing the significance of those in the past.

For example, the report points to a fivefold rise in the rates of celiac disease since the 1980s but fails to acknowledge a dramatic increase in diagnosis and awareness of the autoimmune disorder. The same is true for the report’s discussions of inflammatory bowel disease, childhood cancer and autism.

None of this should be surprising. In nearly every interview he gives, Kennedy repeats the same inflated statistics to drive home the terrible state of our kids’ health. His goal seems to be to scare the public into acquiescence. If the problem is this bad, if our kids are this sick, if health agencies have failed them this profoundly, why not blindly follow his ideas for fixing it?

Something more insidious is at play with all of the half-baked or made-up statistics. He is using them to undermine the real experts, making it increasingly hard for Americans to understand whose advice to trust. And ultimately, his willfully misleading analysis provides cover while he dismantles longstanding norms for scientific research and health policy.

In just a few short months, the secretary has wielded his authority in unprecedented and dangerous ways.

For example, amid the largest measles outbreak in 30 years, instead of emphasizing vaccines — which can prevent the disease — he asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop guidelines for treatments. There are no proven treatments for measles. At least three people have died, and nearly 1,100 cases of the disease have been reported.

In another disturbing move, Kennedy said he would unilaterally change the CDC’s COVID vaccine guidelines to preclude pregnant women and children from receiving shots. That upended the longstanding process that relies on outside experts’ careful analysis and open debate before making such decisions. Days later, the CDC amended its regulations to incorporate some, but not all of Kennedy’s proposed changes, leaving many confused not only about the actual policy but who sets it.

We should worry that his approach to measles and COVID is a preview of how he will treat the value of other routine shots. One of the most alarming sections of the report questions the evidence behind and safety of the childhood vaccine schedule and — without evidence — suggests it could be linked to chronic disease.

Kennedy has also used his platform to push policy changes on the use of fluoride in drinking water, which he has repeatedly linked to lower IQs (a tenuous claim that experts say is based on fluoride levels not used in the U.S). Fluoridation is regulated by state and local municipalities, but Kennedy said he would direct the CDC to stop recommending the practice and the Food and Drug Administration — also under his purview — later banned fluoride supplements based on unsubstantiated claims that they harm gut health.

His rhetoric on the topic appears to have emboldened the first two state bans on fluoride in public water. The MAHA report’s agenda suggests more changes are to come. Meanwhile, new research in JAMA found that removing fluoride from drinking water would result in 25 million more cavities in children at a cost of $9.8 billion to the U.S. healthcare system over five years.

Kennedy’s next move appears to be wresting control of health and science research altogether. “We’re probably going to stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and those other journals because they’re all corrupt,” he said on a recent podcast with wellness influencer Gary Brecka.

Unless those top-tier journals “change dramatically,” health agencies will “create our own journals in-house,” he added. In other words, he’ll have a ready-made platform to showcase data that justifies whatever policy he wants to roll out next.

In another troubling sign of how data could be warped to fit a political agenda, President Donald Trump signed an executive order after the report was released directing a restoration of “gold standard science.”

The goal sounds reasonable enough: to ensure research is reproducible and reverse a decline in public trust in science and health agencies. But the language of the directive is concerning. It not only challenges the credibility of several agencies — including the CDC —  but suggests someone like Kennedy could exploit the language of research integrity to crack down on findings that don’t fit his personal agenda.

Kennedy has called the MAHA report “the diagnosis” and says he will “deliver the prescription” in the next 60 days. Given what we’ve seen over the last few months, we should worry what form that takes — and the far reaching consequences it could have on both American kids and the health infrastructure designed to protect them.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was executive editor of Chemical & Engineering News.