Washington
State Department adviser charged with illegally retaining classified records
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior adviser at the State Department and expert on Indian and South Asian affairs is accused by the Justice Department of printing out classified documents and storing more than 1,000 pages of highly sensitive government records in filing cabinets and trash bags at home.
Ashley Tellis, who has also worked as a contractor in the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, was charged in federal court in Virginia with the unlawful retention of national defense information after FBI agents who searched his home over the weekend found what they said was a trove of records marked as classified at the secret and top secret levels.
He was ordered detained Tuesday pending a detention hearing next week. One of his lawyers, Deborah Curtis, told The Associated Press that “we look forward to the hearing, where we’ll be able to present evidence” but declined to comment further.
An FBI affidavit cites several instances over the last month in which Tellis is alleged to have printed on government computers, or asked a colleague to print, classified documents on topics including U.S. military aircraft capabilities.
Surveillance video shows him on several occasions exiting the State Department and a Defense Department facility with a briefcase in which he was believed to have stashed the printed-out papers, according to court documents.
Tellis also met multiple times with Chinese government officials in recent years, according to the affidavit. Tellis arrived to one 2022 dinner with a manila folder while the Chinese officials he was meeting with entered with a gift bag, the FBI says. The affidavit says Tellis did not appear to have the manila folder in his possession when he left the restaurant, but does not accuse him of providing any classified information during his meetings with the Chinese.
Tellis is a prominent foreign policy expert with a specialty in Indian and South Asian affairs. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace lists him as a senior fellow and the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs. He also served on the White House National Security Council staff under Republican President George W. Bush.
New York
Suspect in killing of elderly NYC couple also tried to drain their bank accounts, prosecutors say
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York City man charged with killing an elderly couple and then setting their house on fire during a horrific home invasion last month had also attempted to drain their bank accounts before using their credit cards to go on a shopping spree, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Jamel McGriff, a serial robbery suspect on parole, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to multiple counts of murder, kidnapping and arson, according to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s office.
The 42-year-old Bronx resident is charged in the Sept. 8 killings of Frank Olton, 76, and Maureen Olton, 77, in their home in the New York City borough of Queens.
Prosecutors say McGriff had been going door-to-door asking residents if he could come in to charge his cellphone. They say he spoke with Frank Olton, who had offered to help, before McGriff forced his way into the couple’s home, where he remained for nearly five hours.
Firefighters responding to a report of a house fire found Frank Olton’s body in the basement tied to a pole and with multiple stab wounds to his neck and chest. Maureen Olton’s badly burned body was found in the living room.
Prosecutors in court Tuesday said McGriff had set the house on fire in an attempt to destroy evidence of the killings, the Daily News reports. They said Maureen Olton appears to have been tied to a chair and strangled to death.
Prosecutors said McGriff also unsuccessfully attempted to transfer more than $10,000 from the couple’s accounts to his own.
He took the couple’s credit cards as well, spending nearly $800 on clothes at a Macy’s in midtown Manhattan just hours after the killings, they said. McGriff was caught the following day after going to a movie in Times Square, prosecutors said in court Tuesday, the Daily News reports.
The convicted felon, who was on parole after serving 16 years in prison, was ordered held until his next court date on Nov. 12. If convicted, McGriff faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Missouri
Sheriff jailed over accusation he meddled in an investigation
The sheriff in St. Louis was jailed Tuesday and faced mounting calls to resign just 10 months into the job over accusations that he ordered deputies to handcuff the jail chief and then meddled with an investigation.
Federal Judge John Bodenhausen ordered the bond revoked for 28-year-old Alfred Montgomery after the prosecution argued in court filings that there was a serious risk he would “attempt to threaten, injure or intimidate” witnesses or jurors.
St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer issued a statement Tuesday calling for Montgomery to resign and describing the situation as “absurd.” Days earlier, the Missouri attorney general’s office tried and failed yet again to oust Montgomery.
But he has no plans to step down, said David Mason, a retired city judge who now works as an attorney for the sheriff’s department.
Montgomery has been at the center of controversy since he was sworn into office in January after narrowly beating out an incumbent in the Democratic primary. The Missouri attorney general first demanded his resignation in June, accusing him of refusing to transport detainees for medical care, misspending and nepotism.
But just as his legal team disproved the nepotism claim, he was indicted in August on a federal misdemeanor alleging that he deprived the acting commissioner of St. Louis City Justice Center of her rights by ordering her to be handcuffed.
Montgomery’s office does not run the jail, although it does transport people being detained there, so the jail official denied the sheriff’s request to gain access to a detainee who had made sexual misconduct claims against one of his deputies.
Five additional felony charges, alleging witness retaliation and tampering, were added this month.
Montgomery’s attorney Justin Gelfand said that any adverse employment action that was taken against employees stemmed from misconduct, and not based on information provided to law enforcement. He said he planned to appeal.
Florida
Judge grants protective order against U.S. Rep. at request of former girlfriend
LAKE CITY, Florida (AP) — A Florida judge has granted a protective order against Republican U.S. Rep. Cory Mills at the request of a former girlfriend who claimed that he threatened to release nude images of her and physically harm her future boyfriends after she broke up with him.
Under the order issued Tuesday by Circuit Judge Fred Koberlein in Columbia County, Florida, Mills can have no contact with his ex-girlfriend and may not go within 500 feet of her residence or where she works. Mills also is prohibited from referring to her on social media.
The order is in effect through the end of the year, and any violation can result in a fine or imprisonment.
The order was issued following an earlier hearing before the judge in Lake City, about 60 miles east of Jacksonville. After hearing testimony, the judge said he had concluded that the woman was either a victim of dating violence or that she had reason to believe she was in danger of becoming a victim of dating violence.
Mills has previously called the allegations “false” and said they misrepresented the nature of their interactions. His attorney, John Terhune, didn’t respond to an emailed inquiry on Wednesday, and a spokeswoman also didn’t respond to an email asking for comment about the order. In August, when the allegations first surfaced, Mills said they were being pushed by a former political opponent
The 26-year-old woman told Columbia County Sheriff’s Office investigators that she had started a romantic relationship with the 45-year-old Mills in 2021, and it ended in February. During their time together, she lived with him at a home in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, while the congressman traveled back and forth from Washington. At the time they met, Mills was still married but had separated from his wife, and he told her that the divorce was finalized in 2024, she said.
The woman said she moved out of the New Smyrna Beach home earlier this year and moved to Columbia County following news reports about domestic disturbance allegations against Mills from another woman described as his girlfriend in Washington.
Mills was first elected to Congress in 2022, and his district stretches from the Orlando area to the Daytona Beach area.
New York
Lawyers seek release date for man after conviction overturned in Etan Patz case
NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for a man whose conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz was recently overturned asked a judge on Tuesday to set a date for his release from prison if prosecutors don’t decide soon to hold a new trial.
Pedro Hernandez’s conviction was overturned in July by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which ruled that the jury in his 2017 trial should have gotten a more thorough explanation from the judge of its options, which could have included disregarding all of the confessions. He was ordered freed unless he was retried “within a reasonable period.”
A federal judge expressed doubt Tuesday that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the recent appeals court decision.
Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan did not immediately rule on the request by Hernandez’s lawyers to set a date to free their client.
Matthew Colangelo, a prosecutor in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, said prosecutors likely won’t know for three months whether they’ll seek a new trial and if the high court will hear an appeal.
He said the passage of time since the crime and the uncertainty over how many of the 50 witnesses who testified at Patz’s 2017 trial would be available was delaying a decision on whether to retry Patz. So far, he said, prosecutors have spoken to about two dozen of the witnesses from the last trial.
Although he said the possibility of the Supreme Court hearing an appeal was “greater than remote,” the judge expressed doubt, saying: “This is not the kind of case the Supreme Court would be inclined to take.”
Hernandez’s lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that sometimes made him hallucinate.
After Tuesday’s hearing, defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said he wants prosecutors to make a decision whether to retry Hernandez. He has already been tried twice. His 2017 conviction came after a previous jury couldn’t reach a verdict. Now 64, he has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
Hernandez was a teenager working at a convenience shop in Etan’s downtown Manhattan neighborhood when the boy vanished. Police met him while canvassing the area but didn’t suspect him until they got a 2012 tip that he’d made remarks years earlier about having killed a child in New York, not mentioning Etan’s name.
Etan was among the first missing children pictured on milk cartons. His case contributed to an era of fear among American families, making anxious parents more protective of kids who had been allowed to roam and play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.
State Department adviser charged with illegally retaining classified records
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior adviser at the State Department and expert on Indian and South Asian affairs is accused by the Justice Department of printing out classified documents and storing more than 1,000 pages of highly sensitive government records in filing cabinets and trash bags at home.
Ashley Tellis, who has also worked as a contractor in the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, was charged in federal court in Virginia with the unlawful retention of national defense information after FBI agents who searched his home over the weekend found what they said was a trove of records marked as classified at the secret and top secret levels.
He was ordered detained Tuesday pending a detention hearing next week. One of his lawyers, Deborah Curtis, told The Associated Press that “we look forward to the hearing, where we’ll be able to present evidence” but declined to comment further.
An FBI affidavit cites several instances over the last month in which Tellis is alleged to have printed on government computers, or asked a colleague to print, classified documents on topics including U.S. military aircraft capabilities.
Surveillance video shows him on several occasions exiting the State Department and a Defense Department facility with a briefcase in which he was believed to have stashed the printed-out papers, according to court documents.
Tellis also met multiple times with Chinese government officials in recent years, according to the affidavit. Tellis arrived to one 2022 dinner with a manila folder while the Chinese officials he was meeting with entered with a gift bag, the FBI says. The affidavit says Tellis did not appear to have the manila folder in his possession when he left the restaurant, but does not accuse him of providing any classified information during his meetings with the Chinese.
Tellis is a prominent foreign policy expert with a specialty in Indian and South Asian affairs. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace lists him as a senior fellow and the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs. He also served on the White House National Security Council staff under Republican President George W. Bush.
New York
Suspect in killing of elderly NYC couple also tried to drain their bank accounts, prosecutors say
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York City man charged with killing an elderly couple and then setting their house on fire during a horrific home invasion last month had also attempted to drain their bank accounts before using their credit cards to go on a shopping spree, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Jamel McGriff, a serial robbery suspect on parole, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to multiple counts of murder, kidnapping and arson, according to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz’s office.
The 42-year-old Bronx resident is charged in the Sept. 8 killings of Frank Olton, 76, and Maureen Olton, 77, in their home in the New York City borough of Queens.
Prosecutors say McGriff had been going door-to-door asking residents if he could come in to charge his cellphone. They say he spoke with Frank Olton, who had offered to help, before McGriff forced his way into the couple’s home, where he remained for nearly five hours.
Firefighters responding to a report of a house fire found Frank Olton’s body in the basement tied to a pole and with multiple stab wounds to his neck and chest. Maureen Olton’s badly burned body was found in the living room.
Prosecutors in court Tuesday said McGriff had set the house on fire in an attempt to destroy evidence of the killings, the Daily News reports. They said Maureen Olton appears to have been tied to a chair and strangled to death.
Prosecutors said McGriff also unsuccessfully attempted to transfer more than $10,000 from the couple’s accounts to his own.
He took the couple’s credit cards as well, spending nearly $800 on clothes at a Macy’s in midtown Manhattan just hours after the killings, they said. McGriff was caught the following day after going to a movie in Times Square, prosecutors said in court Tuesday, the Daily News reports.
The convicted felon, who was on parole after serving 16 years in prison, was ordered held until his next court date on Nov. 12. If convicted, McGriff faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Missouri
Sheriff jailed over accusation he meddled in an investigation
The sheriff in St. Louis was jailed Tuesday and faced mounting calls to resign just 10 months into the job over accusations that he ordered deputies to handcuff the jail chief and then meddled with an investigation.
Federal Judge John Bodenhausen ordered the bond revoked for 28-year-old Alfred Montgomery after the prosecution argued in court filings that there was a serious risk he would “attempt to threaten, injure or intimidate” witnesses or jurors.
St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer issued a statement Tuesday calling for Montgomery to resign and describing the situation as “absurd.” Days earlier, the Missouri attorney general’s office tried and failed yet again to oust Montgomery.
But he has no plans to step down, said David Mason, a retired city judge who now works as an attorney for the sheriff’s department.
Montgomery has been at the center of controversy since he was sworn into office in January after narrowly beating out an incumbent in the Democratic primary. The Missouri attorney general first demanded his resignation in June, accusing him of refusing to transport detainees for medical care, misspending and nepotism.
But just as his legal team disproved the nepotism claim, he was indicted in August on a federal misdemeanor alleging that he deprived the acting commissioner of St. Louis City Justice Center of her rights by ordering her to be handcuffed.
Montgomery’s office does not run the jail, although it does transport people being detained there, so the jail official denied the sheriff’s request to gain access to a detainee who had made sexual misconduct claims against one of his deputies.
Five additional felony charges, alleging witness retaliation and tampering, were added this month.
Montgomery’s attorney Justin Gelfand said that any adverse employment action that was taken against employees stemmed from misconduct, and not based on information provided to law enforcement. He said he planned to appeal.
Florida
Judge grants protective order against U.S. Rep. at request of former girlfriend
LAKE CITY, Florida (AP) — A Florida judge has granted a protective order against Republican U.S. Rep. Cory Mills at the request of a former girlfriend who claimed that he threatened to release nude images of her and physically harm her future boyfriends after she broke up with him.
Under the order issued Tuesday by Circuit Judge Fred Koberlein in Columbia County, Florida, Mills can have no contact with his ex-girlfriend and may not go within 500 feet of her residence or where she works. Mills also is prohibited from referring to her on social media.
The order is in effect through the end of the year, and any violation can result in a fine or imprisonment.
The order was issued following an earlier hearing before the judge in Lake City, about 60 miles east of Jacksonville. After hearing testimony, the judge said he had concluded that the woman was either a victim of dating violence or that she had reason to believe she was in danger of becoming a victim of dating violence.
Mills has previously called the allegations “false” and said they misrepresented the nature of their interactions. His attorney, John Terhune, didn’t respond to an emailed inquiry on Wednesday, and a spokeswoman also didn’t respond to an email asking for comment about the order. In August, when the allegations first surfaced, Mills said they were being pushed by a former political opponent
The 26-year-old woman told Columbia County Sheriff’s Office investigators that she had started a romantic relationship with the 45-year-old Mills in 2021, and it ended in February. During their time together, she lived with him at a home in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, while the congressman traveled back and forth from Washington. At the time they met, Mills was still married but had separated from his wife, and he told her that the divorce was finalized in 2024, she said.
The woman said she moved out of the New Smyrna Beach home earlier this year and moved to Columbia County following news reports about domestic disturbance allegations against Mills from another woman described as his girlfriend in Washington.
Mills was first elected to Congress in 2022, and his district stretches from the Orlando area to the Daytona Beach area.
New York
Lawyers seek release date for man after conviction overturned in Etan Patz case
NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for a man whose conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz was recently overturned asked a judge on Tuesday to set a date for his release from prison if prosecutors don’t decide soon to hold a new trial.
Pedro Hernandez’s conviction was overturned in July by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which ruled that the jury in his 2017 trial should have gotten a more thorough explanation from the judge of its options, which could have included disregarding all of the confessions. He was ordered freed unless he was retried “within a reasonable period.”
A federal judge expressed doubt Tuesday that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the recent appeals court decision.
Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan did not immediately rule on the request by Hernandez’s lawyers to set a date to free their client.
Matthew Colangelo, a prosecutor in the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, said prosecutors likely won’t know for three months whether they’ll seek a new trial and if the high court will hear an appeal.
He said the passage of time since the crime and the uncertainty over how many of the 50 witnesses who testified at Patz’s 2017 trial would be available was delaying a decision on whether to retry Patz. So far, he said, prosecutors have spoken to about two dozen of the witnesses from the last trial.
Although he said the possibility of the Supreme Court hearing an appeal was “greater than remote,” the judge expressed doubt, saying: “This is not the kind of case the Supreme Court would be inclined to take.”
Hernandez’s lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that sometimes made him hallucinate.
After Tuesday’s hearing, defense attorney Harvey Fishbein said he wants prosecutors to make a decision whether to retry Hernandez. He has already been tried twice. His 2017 conviction came after a previous jury couldn’t reach a verdict. Now 64, he has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.
Hernandez was a teenager working at a convenience shop in Etan’s downtown Manhattan neighborhood when the boy vanished. Police met him while canvassing the area but didn’t suspect him until they got a 2012 tip that he’d made remarks years earlier about having killed a child in New York, not mentioning Etan’s name.
Etan was among the first missing children pictured on milk cartons. His case contributed to an era of fear among American families, making anxious parents more protective of kids who had been allowed to roam and play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.
