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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

By JOSHUA GOODMAN and JIM MUSTIAN

MIAMI (AP) — Less than three years after President Joe Biden pardoned a close ally of Nicolás Maduro, the Justice Department is once again targeting the businessman, The Associated Press has learned, an investigation that could bolster the U.S. prosecution of the deposed Venezuelan leader.

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Federal prosecutors for months have been digging into Alex Saab’s role in an alleged bribery conspiracy involving Venezuelan government contracts to import food, according to two former law enforcement officials who spoke to AP about the ongoing probe on the condition of anonymity.

Saab, 54, amassed a fortune through Venezuelan government contracts. But the Colombian-born businessman, long described by U.S. officials as Maduro’s “bag man,” fell out of favor with the country’s new leadership that took power following the U.S. ouster of the Venezuelan president last month.

The Justice Department’s newfound interest in Saab is taking place against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s efforts to stabilize relations with the oil-rich nation. The investigation stems from a 2021 case the Justice Department brought against Saab’s longtime partner, Alvaro Pulido, the former law enforcement officials said. That prosecution, out of Miami, centers around the so-called CLAP program set up by Maduro to provide staples — rice, corn flour, cooking oil — to poor Venezuelans struggling to feed themselves at a time of rampant hyperinflation and a crumbling currency.

The renewed scrutiny marks a reversal of fortunes for Saab, who escaped an earlier U.S. prosecution for an unrelated bribery scheme after Biden pardoned him as part of a prisoner swap for several Americans jailed in Venezuela.

His whereabouts remained unknown Tuesday, days after conflicting news accounts suggested he had been detained or brought in for questioning – at least temporarily – by officials in Venezuela at the request of the Trump administration.

FILE – Pedestrians walk near a poster asking for the freedom of Colombian businessman and Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab, in Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 9, 2021. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, File)

Neither U.S. officials nor acting President Delcy Rodriguez’s government has commented. Luigi Giuliano, an Italian attorney, said he met Saab last week in the Venezuelan capital and denied he was detained but declined further comment. Saab’s U.S. attorney, Neil Schuster, also didn’t comment.

Since taking over from Maduro on Jan. 3, Rodríguez has demoted Saab, firing him from her cabinet and stripping him of his role as the main conduit for foreign companies looking to invest in Venezuela.

Biden pardons Saab over objections by law enforcement

Over the objections of law enforcement, Biden in 2023 agreed to free Saab in exchange for the release of several imprisoned Americans and Venezuela’s return of a fugitive foreign defense contractor known as “Fat Leonard.” The deal came as part of an effort by the Biden White House to roll back sanctions and lure Maduro into holding a free and fair presidential election.

Fresh charges against individuals previously granted clemency are rare and can only be secured for crimes committed outside the defined scope of the pardon, said Frank Bowman, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law who is writing a book on pardons.

Saab’s pardon was narrowly tailored to a 2019 indictment — the case number is cited in the pardon itself — related to a contract he and Pulido allegedly won through bribes to build low-income housing units in Venezuela that were never built.

Saab’s pardon came with a number of conditions, Bowman noted, including that he remain outside the United States and not commit any further crimes against it. “This is a voidable pardon,” he said.

Insider connections fuel Saab’s rise

In Venezuela’s graft-ridden patronage system, where loyalty and insider connections are paramount, few insiders prospered like Saab. He first came onto the radar of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration more than a decade ago, after amassing a large number of contracts with Maduro’s socialist administration.

In 2016, a pro-Maduro governor allegedly hired a company controlled by Pulido to import from Mexico 10 million food boxes at $34 per box. He allegedly did so knowing that the real cost of purchasing and sending the boxes to Venezuela was far less and demanded kickbacks. One of those who allegedly signed off on the deal and helped set up a web of companies to hide the bribe payments was Saab, who is identified in the indictment as “Co-Conspirator 1.”

Saab was arrested in 2020 after his private jet made a refueling stop in Cape Verde en route to Iran on what the Venezuelan government described as a humanitarian mission to circumvent U.S. sanctions.

Maduro celebrated Saab’s return in 2023 as a “triumph for truth” over what he called a U.S.-led campaign of lies, threats and torture against someone he considered a Venezuelan diplomat. But several Republicans criticized the deal, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, who wrote a letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland saying history “should remember (Saab) as a predator of vulnerable people.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the federal investigation of Saab. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment.

Witness against Maduro?

Should he be returned to U.S. custody, Saab could become a valuable witness against Maduro, the former law enforcement officials said. Saab secretly met with the DEA before his first arrest and, in a closed-door court hearing in 2022, his lawyers revealed that the businessman, for years, helped the DEA untangle corruption in Maduro’s inner circle. As part of that cooperation, he forfeited more than $12 million in illegal proceeds from dirty business dealings.

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami, said Saab could be a valuable character witness against Maduro even if he himself has not been charged with drug trafficking like the former Venezuelan leader.

“The indictment against Maduro contained a lot of salacious allegations, but there was little in the way of corroboration,” said Weinstein. “Saab, if the reports about his own criminal activity and closeness to Maduro are true, can describe for jurors a range of criminal activity that is alleged to have taken place across Maduro’s government.”

Saab also has ties to Rodríguez, the Trump administration’s preferred partner to succeed Maduro. The AP reported last month that the DEA has examined Rodríguez’s involvement in government contracts awarded to Saab. The U.S. government has never publicly accused Rodríguez of any criminal wrongdoing.

This story is part of an investigation that includes the FRONTLINE documentary “Crisis in Venezuela,” premiering Feb. 10, 2026, on PBS. Watch the documentary at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App, on PBS stations and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.

Mustian reported from New York. Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker contributed reporting from Washington.