By MARK ANDERSON

HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) — They were introduced one by one, six ex-players who represent Raiders royalty. Four Hall of Famers. Five Super Bowl champions. All six at least made the big game.

Three took seats to the left and the other three to the right before new Las Vegas coach Klint Kubiak was formally introduced Tuesday and sat with general manager John Spytek in the middle with the club’s three Lombardi Trophies in front of them.

Those players — Marcus Allen, Rich Gannon, Mike Haynes, Howie Long, Jim Plunkett and Charles Woodson — maintained serious looks on their faces as if kickoff was about to begin. And, in a sense, it was.

Their presence was a reminder of the daunting challenge Kubiak faces in trying to connect the present to the Raiders’ long-ago glorious past.

The Raiders haven’t won a playoff game since their last Super Bowl appearance in the 2002 season. They have made the postseason just twice since, most recently in the 2021 season. Kubiak will be their fifth full-time coach since moving to Las Vegas in 2020.

“This is no ordinary job,” said Kubiak, just two days removed from serving as offensive coordinator on the Seahawks’ Super Bowl-championship team. “This is the silver and black. This is the Raiders. This is a historic franchise. So when the opportunity came up to stay in Seattle and continue there or to have a chance to come here and compete with this organization, it was a no-brainer.”

Kubiak acknowledged the task in front of him, but will take a day to bask in the Super Bowl parade on Wednesday in Seattle.

Then he will have a number of issues to confront, including hiring a coaching staff — most notably offensive and defensive coordinators. He also will begin to dig into what to do with the No. 1 overall draft pick the Raiders own, as well as the more than $91 million in salary-cap space, according to overthecap.com. And then there’s the Maxx Crosby situation.

Kubiak said he was just getting started when it comes to hiring his assistants as well as examining the roster needs. He stopped far short of saying the Raiders will draft Fernando Mendoza, even though it’s widely believed Las Vegas will take the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who guided Indiana to a highly unlikely national championship.

Owner Mark Davis watched Mendoza that night in Miami Gardens, Florida, and was joined by Spytek and minority owner Tom Brady. Davis hinted the organization was taking a strong look at Mendoza, and the Raiders preferred to hire a coach with an offensive background “that could grow with somebody.”

“It started being, in my mind, that’s the direction we wanted to go,” Davis said. “But at the same time, he had to win the job because there were some good candidates that we spoke to.”

One big selling point was Kubiak’s work with quarterback Sam Darnold.

Darnold completed 67.7% of his passes for 4,048 yards with 25 touchdowns and 14 interceptions this season. Drafted third overall by the New York Jets in 2018, Darnold was considered a bust until leading Minnesota to a 14-win season in 2024. Then came another 14-win season with the Seahawks that culminated with Darnold hoisting the Lombardi Trophy.

“I’m really proud of the process that we put in place,” Spytek said. “We set out to take our time, to be deliberate, to be meticulous, to find the right leader for this organization going forward. We have a uniquely challenging offseason with the first overall pick and new leadership with the head coach, but that’s why it was so important to us to find the right man to lead this organization forward.”

The elephant that wasn’t in the room during the presser was Crosby. Multiple reports have said the star pass rusher wants out of the Raiders after being sidelined the final two games this past season and that he also wasn’t interested in a rebuild.

But Crosby, even if he wasn’t in the team room for the news conference, was in the building and among the Raiders to greet Kubiak upon his arrival. They even had coffee together.

“We want him to be a part of our success going forward,” Kubiak said. “There’s no doubt about that. He’s one of the best players in the NFL, so that’s a no brainer to get to work with Maxx and see him continue to have success with this organization.”

Davis said he definitely wanted to keep Crosby in Las Vegas.

“Maxx has been a great, great Raider,” Davis said. “He is a great Raider.”

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

By STEVE KARNOWSKI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A former federal prosecutor who quit amid a dispute with the Trump administration is now representing former CNN host Don Lemon, who was one of nine people indicted for their alleged roles in disrupting a service at a Minnesota church where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official was a pastor.

Related Articles

Federal judge dismisses attempt to obtain Michigan voter data in latest rejection of DOJ

Close Maduro ally pardoned by Biden once again a target of US criminal investigation

Moderna says FDA refuses its application for new mRNA flu vaccine

Privacy activists call on California to remove covert license plate readers

U.S. citizens and legal residents sue over aggressive immigration raid at Idaho horse racing track

A court filing Tuesday shows that Lemon has hired former interim U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who had been leading the sprawling investigation and prosecution of major fraud cases for the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office until he resigned last month.

Several prosecutors have now left the office at a time of growing frustration with the administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown and the Justice Department’s response to fatal shootings of two people by federal officers in Minneapolis.

Lemon had previously said through another attorney that he planned to plead not guilty to federal civil rights charges over his coverage of the church protest. He has said he was not affiliated with the group that disrupted the church service, and that he was there in his capacity as an independent journalist. The indictment alleges various actions by the group that entered the church, including what Lemon said as he reported on the event for his livestream show.

Lemon is scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 13 in federal court in St. Paul.

The Trump administration has cited the Minnesota fraud cases, in which most defendants have come from the state’s large Somali community, as justification for its immigration crackdown in the state. Thompson estimated in December that the losses to taxpayers from several fraud cases being prosecuted in Minnesota could total $9 billion.

FILE – Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson speaks to reporters at a news conference July 15, 2025, in Minneapolis. (Jeff Wheeler/Star Tribune via AP, File)

Thompson recently formed his own law firm with Harry Jacobs, another former federal prosecutor who resigned amid the upheaval in the office. Jacobs had been lead prosecutor in the case of Vance Boelter, who has pleaded not guilty in last year’s assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the nonfatal shootings of a state senator and his wife.

The firm’s website describes them as “battle tested and seasoned” trial lawyers.

Thompson did not immediately reply to messages seeking comment Tuesday.

By THOMAS ADAMSON

PARIS (AP) — A French prosecutor on Tuesday made public the identity of a 79-year-old man accused of raping and sexually assaulting 89 minors over more than five decades, launching an appeal for witnesses and possible victims in what authorities described as an unusually sprawling case spanning multiple countries.

Related Articles

Close Maduro ally pardoned by Biden once again a target of US criminal investigation

Israeli minister calls West Bank measures ‘de facto sovereignty,’ says no future Palestinian state

Survey says democracies’ anti-corruption efforts are slipping and raises concern about the US

Netanyahu wants Trump to demand more from Iran. The leaders will meet this week

Russia can’t attack NATO this year but plans to boost its own forces, an intelligence chief says

Grenoble prosecutor Étienne Manteaux said the suspect, Jacques Leveugle, also acknowledged killing his mother and aunt, prompting a parallel investigation.

Laveugle was placed under formal investigation in February 2024 for aggravated rape and sexual assault of minors and has been held in pretrial detention since April 2025. Laveugle had worked in schools, as a private tutor and as a cave exploring guide among other roles, the prosecutor said.

The serial rape case hinges on writings investigators say were compiled by the suspect himself in a digital “memoir” found on a USB drive by a relative, and later turned over to authorities.

Prosecutors say the texts — described as 15 volumes — enabled investigators to identify 89 alleged victims, boys aged 13 to 17 at the time of the alleged assaults, from 1967 to 2022.

Manteaux said the suspect’s writings describe sexual acts with minors in multiple countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Morocco, Algeria, Niger, the Philippines and India, as well as the French territory of New Caledonia.

He added that he chose to publicize the man’s name to encourage other victims to speak out. People under investigation in France are not normally named.

“This name must be known because the goal is to allow possible victims to come forward,” he said at a news conference.

Authorities set up a hotline and released photos of Laveugle over the decades, and said anyone who believes they were a victim or has information should contact them.

The prosecutor said investigators had hoped to identify all alleged victims without a public appeal, but found that the documents often contained incomplete identities, complicating efforts to locate people decades later.

“We thought we would be able, internally, to identify all the victims,” Manteaux said, but “we realized we were up against a wall.”

Manteaux also said the suspect has acknowledged smothering his mother to death when she was in the terminal phase of cancer, and later killing his 92-year-old aunt.

Regarding the aunt, Manteaux said the suspect told investigators that “because he had to return to the Cévennes (region of France) and she begged him not to leave, he also chose to put her to death.”

Investigators in France believe a man now in custody sexually abused children around the world for decades. (AP Digital Embed)

France is still reeling from the Gisèle Pelicot case, one of the country’s most shocking recent sexual violence trials, in which a husband was convicted of drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her over years. In both cases, investigators say, a digital trail proved decisive — recordings and files in Pelicot’s case, and the USB drive in the Grenoble investigation.

Manteaux emphasized the need to move quickly in investigating Laveugle’s alleged rapes.

“There is urgency,” he said on RTL radio, citing the suspect’s age and the difficulty of tracing victims across 55 years.

Investigators said the alleged assaults occurred in France and in foreign countries, where authorities say the man worked as an educator.

He spent many years in Morocco working as a tutor for low-income families, where he is suspected of abusing at least 10 victims, the prosecutor told The Associated Press in a written statement. Laveugle’s stays in Morocco spanned from 1974 to 2024, and he was living in the North African country when he was arrested upon a return trip to France.

Laveugle lived in Algeria in 1967-1969 and 1971-1975, where he worked as a teacher and is suspected of abusing at least two children, the statement said.

Akram Oubachir in Rabat, Morocco contributed to this report.

By ISABELLA VOLMERT

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit from the Department of Justice that sought to obtain Michigan’s voter rolls, marking the latest judicial rejection in President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging attempts to gain access to voter data from states.

Related Articles

Close Maduro ally pardoned by Biden once again a target of US criminal investigation

Moderna says FDA refuses its application for new mRNA flu vaccine

Privacy activists call on California to remove covert license plate readers

U.S. citizens and legal residents sue over aggressive immigration raid at Idaho horse racing track

Immigrant rights groups seek to dismiss a Republican lawsuit to exclude noncitizens from US census

The Justice Department has sued at least 23 states and the District of Columbia in its effort to obtain detailed voter information. In an opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Hala Y. Jarbou, a Trump nominee, said the laws cited by the Justice Department in its complaint, including the Civil Rights Act of 1960, do not require the disclosure of the records it sought.

The Justice Department has said it is seeking the data as part of an effort to ensure election security, but Democratic officials, including Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, say the demand violates state and federal privacy laws. Election officials have raised concerns that federal officials are trying to use the sensitive data for other purposes, such as searching for potential noncitizens on the rolls.

Elections in the United States are administered at the state and local level, where individual voter information is kept.

Natalie Baldassarre, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, declined to comment when reached by email and did not say whether the department will appeal the decision.

In July, the Justice Department requested voter records from the state of Michigan, including a copy of Michigan’s unredacted voter registration list. In September, Michigan officials said the state would only share public voter registration information, which does not include identifying information such as birth dates, addresses and partial Social Security numbers, prompting the federal lawsuit.

FILE – People wait to cast their ballot at the Horatio Williams Foundation in downtown Detroit, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun,File)

“Today’s decision affirms that the law is on our side,” Benson said in a statement Tuesday.

The Justice Department argued in court documents that the information was necessary to ensure Michigan was properly maintaining voter registrations, and cited three federal laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1960, National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote act of 2022.

The three laws, “do not allow the United States to obtain the records at issue in this case,” Jarbou wrote in her opinion.

Federal judges have also dismissed similar lawsuits in Oregon and California. A federal judge in Georgia recently dismissed a similar suit after ruling the federal government had sued in the wrong city.