By AARON MORRISON and ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is investigating whether leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement defrauded donors who contributed tens of millions of dollars during racial justice protests in 2020, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

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In recent weeks, federal law enforcement officials have issued subpoenas and served at least one search warrant as part of an investigation into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. and other Black-led organizations that helped spark a national reckoning on systemic racism, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss an ongoing criminal probe by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

It was not clear if the investigation would result in criminal charges, but its mere existence invites fresh scrutiny to a movement that in recent years has faced criticism about its public accounting of donations they have received. The recent burst of investigative activity is also unfolding at a time when civil rights organizations have raised concerns about the potential for the Trump administration to target a variety of progressive and left-leaning groups that have been critical of him, including those affiliated with BLM, the transgender rights movement and anti-ICE protesters.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department declined to comment on Thursday.

One of the people said the investigation had been initiated during the Biden administration but is getting renewed attention during the Trump administration. A second person confirmed that allegations were examined in the Biden administration.

The foundation said it took in over $90 million in donations, following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man whose last breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across the U.S. and around the world.

Critics of the nonprofit foundation, and of the BLM movement broadly, accused organizers of not being transparent about how it was spending the donations. That criticism grew louder after BLM foundation leaders in 2022 confirmed they used donations to purchase a $6 million Los Angeles-area property that includes a home with six bedrooms and bathrooms.

Leaders previously have denied wrongdoing and publicly released tax documents. No prior investigations into the nonprofit’s finances have yielded proof of impropriety.

Leaders of the foundation have received subpoenas. In a statement emailed to the AP on Thursday, the foundation said it “is not a target of any federal criminal investigation.”

“We remain committed to full transparency, accountability, and the responsible stewardship of resources dedicated to building a better future for Black communities,” the foundation said in the statement.

The Black Lives Matter movement first emerged in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. But it was the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, that made the slogan “Black lives matter” a rallying cry for progressives and a favorite target of derision for conservatives.

Movement founders and organizers pledged to build a decentralized organization governed by the consensus of BLM chapters. But as the movement’s influence grew, so did the number of organizations that became affiliated with BLM. In 2020, a tidal wave of public contributions in the aftermath of protests over Floyd’s murder came mainly to the BLM foundation, although other organizations were resourced from those funds.

Leaders of the foundation opened up about finances and organizational structure in 2022, revealing detailed accountings of expenditures. The latest Form 990 filing shows the BLM foundation had $28 million in assets for the fiscal year ending June 2024.

The investigation is being run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles.

The top prosecutor there, Bill Essayli, was determined by a federal judge this week to have stayed in his temporary acting U.S. attorney job longer than allowed by law but permitted him to effectively remain the office’s chief prosecutor but with a different title of First Assistant United States Attorney.

Essayli had previously served as a Republican assemblyman in California, where he took up conservative causes and criticized the state’s COVID-19 restrictions. He has been outspoken against state policies to protect immigrants living in the country illegally, and he has aggressively prosecuted people who protest Trump’s ramped up immigration enforcement across Southern California.

As a private practice attorney, he characterized BLM as a “radical organization” while defending a white couple charged in 2020 with a hate crime after they were videotaped defacing a BLM mural in Martinez, California.

At the time, city-sanctioned BLM murals had been painted on roadways in cities throughout the U.S. in an expression of solidarity with the racial justice movement. Essayli was quoted as having told reporters at the time that his clients were simply expressing their political viewpoints and that they disagreed with taxpayer funds being used to “sponsor a radical organization, Black Lives Matter.”

The couple took plea deals to resolve the case in 2022.

At the height of the Floyd-sparked reckoning on racial injustice, some state officials vowed their own investigations in the foundation’s finances, citing their responsibility to protect residents who may have donated to BLM. But most of those probes were resolved without official action.

In 2022, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed a lawsuit against the BLM foundation for failing to comply with an investigation into the organization’s finances. Soon after, a representative of the foundation responded with the necessary information and documentation, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said, and the lawsuit was dismissed.

Alana Durkin Richer in Washington, D.C., and Graham Lee Brewer in Oklahoma City contributed.

By BRIAN WITTE

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A Maryland state senator has been indicted on federal charges including extortion related to her 2022 campaign for a state House seat for allegedly conspiring to threaten the release of an explicit video of a former consultant’s affair.

State Sen. Dalya Attar, a Baltimore Democrat, was charged in a federal indictment unsealed Thursday that involves her brother, Joseph Attar, and Kalman Finkelstein, a Baltimore police officer who worked on her campaign.

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The group conspired to silence a former consultant by threatening to make public a video of her in bed with a married man, according to the indictment. The alleged purpose was to obtain evidence that could be used to prevent her from saying negative things about the lawmaker’s campaign.

The senator said in a statement that the case centers on “the allegations of my former disgruntled employee,” and she noted that “we have yet to see any tangible evidence to support the claim that I knew of any illegal actions taken on my behalf.”

“I look forward to sharing my side of the story, and believe the truth will be the arbiter of justice,” Attar said. “In the meantime, I will continue to serve my community with humility and honor, and look forward to being as transparent as possible.”

According to the indictment, there were secret recordings of Attar’s former political consultant in bed with a married man with recording devices disguised as smoke detectors. The consultant was staying at the time at an apartment owned by Finkelstein’s family.

The recording was intended to be used to potentially harm matchmaking efforts for the consultant’s daughter, according to the indictment.

“She wants her daughters to get married more than she wants to screw me,” Dalya Attar wrote in a WhatsApp message, according to the indictment.

Dalya Attar apparently had a falling out with the consultant, prompting her concerns about future comments about her campaign, but the indictment doesn’t provide any details about the break.

In January 2020, Dalya Attar sent a series of WhatsApp messages to a co-conspirator, saying that two years later the consultant “is still looking to screw me badly,” according to the indictment.

The indictment says that Joseph Attar went to the man who the consultant was recorded sleeping with to share the message: “Leave Dalya alone.”

“Don’t bring her up anymore to anyone,” Joseph Attar allegedly told the man to tell the consultant, according to the indictment. “Stay out of this election, the Delegate election. And make sure she doesn’t do anything against Dalya throughout this election.”

None of the defendants had an attorney listed in online court records.

Dalya Attar is the first Orthodox Jewish woman to serve in the Maryland Senate. She was first elected to her Baltimore district in the Maryland House of Delegates in 2018, and the former consultant worked on that campaign. Earlier this year, she was appointed to an open Maryland Senate seat to fill a vacancy.

She has been charged in the eight-count indictment with multiple counts of conspiracy, extortion via interstate communications, aiding and abetting, interception and disclosure of a wire.

The indictment says she conspired with her brother and Finkelstein to prevent the consultant from communicating to members of the Orthodox Jewish community in her district about her voting record.

If the consultant did not refrain from commenting about the election, Joseph Attar allegedly told the man: “I’ll share this video with everybody you know, everyone she knows, every Rabbi in town, your kids, your wife, her daughters.”

“The next mayor’s commitment to public safety shouldn’t be measured by how many people they jail, but by how they prevent harm before it happens, and reduce incarceration as a result.”

A rally calling for the closure of Rikers Island in 2023. (Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit)

I was 17 when I was sent to Rikers Island in 1997. I witnessed beatings, suicides, and people left untreated in medical distress. That kind of dehumanization never leaves you. Decades later, the same machinery of cruelty still grinds on. Rikers remains torturous—and the crisis of preventable deaths continues to escalate.

We are failing our most vulnerable neighbors. I’ve seen people in a psychiatric crisis—yelling, banging their heads on walls to stop the intrusive hallucinations—with no trained staff responding, only corrections officers watching from a distance. We must stop using jail cells—designed for punishment, not healing—as a psychiatric ward. Locking people in crisis inside a system of isolation and trauma only deepens the very cycle of harm we claim to be addressing.

The next mayor’s commitment to public safety shouldn’t be measured by how many people they jail, but by how they prevent harm before it happens, and reduce incarceration as a result. New York City spends over a half a million dollars a year to incarcerate one person on Rikers—a cost that produces violence and instability.

By contrast, Alternatives to Incarceration (ATIs) are more effective than incarceration at improving employment rates for participants, generating significant savings for taxpayers, and preventing future convictions. Indeed, where at least 35.5 percent of people with mental illness on Rikers will return to Department of Corrections custody within one year of their release, 100 percent of the  individuals with serious mental illness and charged with felonies who are enrolled with one city-funded initiative, CASES’ Nathaniel ACT, have no felony convictions two years after program completion.

ATIs are not simple hand-outs; they are holistic, trauma-informed interventions designed to provide stability and healing. These community-based programs offer personalized support that addresses the root causes of justice involvement, from addiction and mental health challenges to housing instability and unemployment.

Importantly, many of these programs are led by staff with lived experience, which fosters trust and provides authentic insights. By connecting people to essential services—counseling, job training, and safe housing—ATIs create an off-ramp from the criminal legal system that is both cost-effective and proven to reduce crime. This model succeeds precisely because it treats underlying trauma and instability, directly contrasting with the failure of mass incarceration.

As a survivor of Rikers who now works to dismantle the systems that uphold it, I can tell you where the real failure lies: we’ve allowed our jail complex to become the city’s largest, most expensive, and most dangerous mental health facility. 

Today, more than 7,000 people are detained at Rikers, and 90 percent of this population is Black and Latine, cementing the island’s role as a driver of systemic racial injustice. Most are held pretrial—not because they’re guilty of any crime, but because they can’t afford bail. Crucially, many within this population are in desperate need of treatment that they cannot effectively get behind bars: 57 percent have a Brad H mental illness classification, and 21 percent suffer from Serious Mental Illness.

This is why we need a mayor who will invest in the proven off-ramps that actually bring the population down instead of just locking people away on an island. We must aggressively combat the faulty, fear-based narrative—pushed by the police commissioner and other defenders of the status quo—that the city must choose between mass incarceration and “doing nothing,” an irresponsible and dangerous choice that actively undermines two decades of reform.

The financial case for decarceration is overwhelming, as the massive savings demonstrated by Alternatives to Incarceration are clear. The argument is not just financial—it’s about priorities, and whether we’ll fund the solutions that actually work. ATIs are not the only cost-effective solutions to reduce incarceration and increase community safety. Services like Justice-Involved Supportive Housing (JISH), Intensive Mobile Treatment (IMT) teams, Crisis Respite Centers, and other community-based mental health resources offer healing, stability, and dignity, which are the foundations of true crime prevention.

For all of these reasons, a powerful coalition of survivors, advocates, and policymakers came together to create the plan to shutter the island. The next mayor must be a good-faith partner who honors that work, not a political obstructionist who stokes fear to undermine the legal closure timeline.

The choice is simple: any candidate who fails to reduce the jail population and close Rikers Island on the fastest possible timeline is choosing fear and failure over genuine reform. The path to a safer, more just New York City requires courage. It requires a mayor who will finally heed the call of survivors and experts, close the gates of Rikers forever, and invest in the off-ramps that allow all our neighbors to be safe and thrive.

Jason Rodriguez is a research associate at the Legal Action Center and a survivor of Rikers Island. He works on policy and advocacy with the New York Alternatives to Incarceration and Reentry Coalition.

The post Opinion: The Next Mayor’s Test is Closing Rikers— Public Safety Demands It appeared first on City Limits.

By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the military to provide dozens of lawyers to the Justice Department for temporary assignments in Memphis and near the U.S.-Mexico border that could run through next fall, according to a memo released this week and reviewed by The Associated Press.

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“I am directing you to collectively identify 48 attorneys and 4 paralegals from within your Military Department who may be suitable for detail” to the Justice Department to act as special assistant U.S. attorneys, Hegseth wrote in a memo dated Monday that was sent to all four services and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The memo appears to be the latest effort to send military and civilian attorneys working for the Pentagon to the Justice Department, this time to staff offices based along the U.S. southern border or where federal immigration enforcement operations are taking place.

Last month, the Pentagon also approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges in a separate effort. The Trump administration increasingly has tapped the military to bolster its immigration crackdown, from deploying to the southern border and a series of American cities.

This week’s memo says the Justice Department asked for 20 lawyers to help support its offices in Memphis, where the National Guard has been deployed by President Donald Trump; 12 for West Texas — specifically for the cities of El Paso, Del Rio, and Midland — and three lawyers and two paralegals for Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The memo does not specify what kind of litigation the volunteers would be asked to do, but it says that, ideally, attorneys would have “significant experience” in immigration and administrative law in addition to general prosecution and litigation experience.

The Pentagon said in a statement that it was “proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our law enforcement partners, bringing the skill and dedication of America’s service members to deliver justice, restore order, and protect the American people.”

The Justice Department also confirmed the memo’s authenticity but did not provide additional details on the reason for its request or what the attorneys would be doing.

As with the prior request for hundreds of military attorneys to work as immigration judges, it is not immediately clear what impact removing a growing number of lawyers would have on the armed forces’ justice system. The attorneys, called judge advocates, have a range of duties much like civilian lawyers, from carrying out prosecutions, acting as defense attorneys or offering legal advice to service members.

The new request follows a Sept. 26 ask from the Justice Department for 35 attorneys and two paralegals from the military, according to the memo. It wasn’t immediately clear if that number was in addition to the 48 attorneys requested this week.

The AP also reviewed an email that was sent to military attorneys on Sept. 12 that said the Pentagon was looking for volunteers to become special assistant U.S. attorneys in West Texas and New Mexico without mentioning a total figure.

It is not clear how successful the Pentagon has been at getting lawyers to volunteer, but at least some of the services have been making the case to their attorneys through messages like the one sent by the Army’s top lawyer.

“These roles offer unparalleled opportunity to refine your advocacy, courtroom procedure, and functional knowledge of the federal legal system for future use in our military justice system or civil litigation,” Major Gen. Bobby Christine said in an email reviewed by the AP.

Christine said the work would be “in support of national priorities.”

However, Hegseth’s memo says that services only had until Thursday to identify the attorneys and alluded to troops being subject to involuntary mobilization orders.

The Army and Navy did not respond to questions about how many attorneys from their respective services are being sent to the Justice Department. The Air Force directed questions to the Pentagon.

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.