By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered another review of the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and of the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed American troops and Afghans.

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President Donald Trump and Hegseth have repeatedly blasted the Biden administration for the withdrawal, which Hegseth said Tuesday was “disastrous and embarrassing.” He said the new review will interview witnesses, analyze the decision-making and “get the truth.”

There have already been multiple reviews of the withdrawal by the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command, the State Department and Congress, which have involved hundreds of interviews and studies of videos, photographs and other footage and data. It’s unclear what specific new information the new review is seeking.

The Abbey Gate bombing during the final days of the Afghanistan withdrawal killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans, and wounded scores more. It triggered widespread debate and congressional criticism, fueled by searing photographs of desperate Afghans trying to crowd into the airport to get out of Kabul, with some clinging to U.S. military aircraft as they were taking off.

A detailed U.S. military review was ordered in 2023 to expand the number of people interviewed, after a Marine injured in the blast said snipers believed they saw the possible bomber but couldn’t get approval to take him out.

The findings, released in 2024, refuted those assertions and concluded that the bombing was not preventable. A congressional review was highly critical of the withdrawal, saying the Biden administration did not adequately prepare for it or for all the contingencies and put personnel in danger.

Others, however, have faulted the State Department for not moving quickly enough to decide on an evacuation, resulting in a rush to get out as the Taliban took control of the country. Critics have also blamed Trump for making a deal with the Taliban in 2020 when he was president to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which decreased the number of forces on the ground as the pullout went on.

Both Trump and then-President Joe Biden wanted an end to the war and U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

The new review will be led by Sean Parnell, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs. He will convene a panel that will provide updates “at appropriate times,” but there is no time frame or deadline for any report, which is very unusual.

PHOENIX (AP) — Twenty people, a mental health business and a church were charged in an indictment that alleged Arizona’s Medicaid program was defrauded $60 million in a scheme involving billing for mental health treatment and addiction rehabilitation, the latest indictment in a series of crackdowns in the state focusing on sober living homes.

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The indictment announced Tuesday alleged Happy House Behavioral Health LLC was paid the money for services that were either never provided or only partially completed and that there was billing for clients who were deceased and incarcerated.

Authorities say sober living homes referred clients to the behavioral health business, which received money from the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System and then paid the homes for the clients in violation of state law.

Money laundering charges alleged Happy House Behavioral Health paid $5 million in July 2023 to a Hope of Life International Church, which later wired $2 million to an entity in Rwanda.

The charges against Happy House Behavioral Health include conspiracy, fraud, forgery, theft and money laundering.

The Associated Press left an email with a lawyer representing Happy House Behavioral Health.

In a statement, Hope of Life International Church said it was unjustly charged with money laundering for accepting a donation from a licensed sober living facility that was a tenant of the church and was later accused of defrauding the state’s Medicaid program. The church said it didn’t have access to the sober living facility’s internal operations, financial practices or management decisions.

“The church’s only relationship was that of a landlord and, later, as a recipient of a donation — a donation accepted in good faith, consistent with its mission and longstanding practice,” the statement said.

In all, more than 100 people and several companies have been charged in cases brought by Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office in the state’s crackdown on Medicaid fraud and unlicensed sober living homes, many of which targeted tribal community members. The state had suspended payments to more than 100 providers as part of the crackdown.

The scam had left an unknown number of Native Americans homeless on the streets of metro Phoenix as fraudulent sober living homes lost their funding and turned former residents out onto the streets.

Navajos account for most Native Americans grappling with addictions who have been affected by the scam. Navajo officials say that in some cases, people who ended up in the homes were picked up in unmarked vans and driven to the Phoenix area from faraway places on the sprawling Navajo Nation that stretches across northern Arizona, and parts of New Mexico and Utah.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two Navy SEALs based in Virginia are facing disciplinary action for racist conduct, and several of their platoon and team leaders are being disciplined for leadership failures, according to a defense official.

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The two enlisted Team 4 members are being punished for developing racist memes targeting a Black sailor in their platoon and circulating them in a group chat with other team members, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of an ongoing investigation. The memes depicted the sailor as a slave, according to visuals viewed by The Associated Press.

According to the official, the sailor who was targeted reported the incidents this year, but they took place beginning in 2022 and the memes circulated for years. The sailor had been in one of the SEAL Team 4 platoons but had his qualifications and SEAL trident revoked last year. He alleged that his failure to remain a SEAL was due to the racist treatment.

Two officials said that as a result of the investigation, which was conducted by Naval Special Warfare Group 2, the sailor’s SEAL qualifications are being reinstated and he will get back pay. The group oversees SEAL Team 4 and the platoons that make up the team, located at Joint Base Little Creek-Fort Story in Hampton Roads, Virginia

The probe found that the platoon and SEAL Team 4 leaders did not adequately address the sailor’s concerns about racist behavior and that the decision to revoke his qualifications was flawed.

“This was a very shocking case of explicit and repeated racist memes directed at our client in a platoon-wide text thread,” said Timothy Parlatore, the sailor’s lawyer, referring to the memes shared over a Signal chat. “They modified his face in photos to look like a monkey and portrayed him as a chained slave on a slave ship, among others.”

The two enlisted sailors responsible for the memes face non-judicial punishment and punitive letters in their files. Both actions can be career ending, or can result in demotions or loss of pay. Other actions are still pending.

The platoon and team leaders are also facing administrative actions, including disciplinary letters in their files, that could determine if they continue as SEALs.

In a statement, Naval Special Warfare Command acknowledged the investigation into “serious allegations of unprofessional conduct within one of our commands” and said “accountability actions are ongoing.”

It added that “we are dedicated to fostering a climate of dignity and respect, and after conducting a thorough and fair investigation, we will hold anyone found responsible of misconduct accountable.”

Parlatore praised Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, head of NSW, and his staff for taking swift action to “investigate, reverse the negative repercussions that our client received, and move to hold people accountable.”

This is just the latest significant investigation into behavior issues and command failures at Naval Special Warfare Command. And it underscores racial concerns that are not new to the special warfare leaders.

Commando forces across the services — particularly the officers — tend to be far less diverse than the military as a whole. And leaders in recent years have tried to attract a wider array of recruits in order to develop a more diverse force.

Those efforts, however, could be threatened now, as the Trump administration and Defense Department leaders have made it a priority to end diversity and inclusion programs across the military and the government as a whole. That could exacerbate racist problems in the smaller, largely-white teams.

As of March 2021, a full 95% of all SEAL and combatant-craft crew officers were white and just 2% were Black, according to Naval Special Warfare statistics provided to the AP. The enlisted ranks were only slightly more diverse.

Those number are starkly different from the overall Navy population, where about 40% of the enlisted force and 24% of its officers are non-white.

According to the defense official, the sailor filed more than a dozen specific complaints about racist behavior and about half were substantiated.

And as Group 2 leaders began to look into the complaints, a second sailor — who is white — also complained about bullying by other platoon members. That amplified the broader concerns about the command climate and the later findings of leadership failures.

Other recent investigations also found training and command problems.

Last October a highly critical review found that two Navy SEALs drowned as they tried to climb aboard a ship carrying illicit Iranian-made weapons to Yemen because of glaring training failures and a lack of understanding about what to do after falling into deep, turbulent waters.

And in 2023, an investigation into the death of a SEAL candidate a year earlier concluded that the training program was plagued by widespread failures in medical care, poor oversight and the use of performance-enhancing drugs that have increased the risk of injury and death to those seeking to become elite commandos.

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A military veteran whose Capitol riot case was erased by a presidential proclamation was convicted Tuesday of charges that he illegally possessed guns and ammunition in his van when he was arrested near President Barack Obama’s home in the nation’s capital.

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U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols also convicted Taylor Taranto of recording himself making a hoax threat to bomb a government building in Maryland. The judge decided the case without a jury after a bench trial that started last week in Washington, D.C.

Taranto was arrested in Obama’s neighborhood on the same day in June 2023 that Trump posted on social media what he claimed was the former president’s address. Investigators said they found two guns, roughly 500 rounds of ammunition and a machete in Taranto’s van.

Taranto was livestreaming video on YouTube in which he said he was looking for “entrance points” to underground tunnels and wanted to get a “good angle on a shot,” according to prosecutors. He reposted Trump’s message about Obama’s home address and wrote: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” He was referring to John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.

Taranto wasn’t charged with threatening Obama or Podesta. But the judge convicted him of making a hoax bomb threat directed at the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Taranto’s lawyers said he didn’t have any bomb-making material and wasn’t near the institute when he made those statements on a livestreamed video. During the trial’s opening statements, defense attorney Pleasant Brodnax said the video shows Taranto was merely joking in an “avant-garde” manner.

“He believes he is a journalist and, to some extent, a comedian,” Broadnax said.

But the judge concluded that a reasonable, objective observer might have believed Taranto’s statements on the video. While some viewers may have thought his words were of a “madcap nature,” others could have interpreted them as coming from “an unbalanced narrator willing to follow through on outlandish claims,” Nichols said.

Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, didn’t immediately schedule a sentencing hearing for Taranto. He has been jailed for nearly two years since his arrest because a judge concluded that he poses a danger to the public.

After reading his verdict from the bench, the judge said he would entertain a request by defense attorney Carmen Hernandez to release Taranto from custody until his sentencing. Nichols said he intends to rule on that request later this week.

Taranto, a Navy veteran from Pasco, Washington, is one of only a few people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol who remained jailed after President Donald Trump ‘s sweeping act on clemency in January. Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the riot.

Before Trump’s pardons, Taranto also was charged with four misdemeanors related to the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors said he joined the crush of rioters who breached the building. He was captured on video at the entrance of the Speaker’s Lobby around the time that a rioter, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by an officer while she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door.