New York
Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers question his accuser at his rape retrial
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein ‘s lawyers questioned his accuser at his rape retrial Thursday, making clear they planned to explore her conflicted feelings and complex history with the onetime Hollywood powerbroker.
It’s the third time Jessica Mann has had to answer his lawyers’ questions in a New York court. But different attorneys are now defending the ex-studio boss whose downfall powered the #MeToo movement
against sexual misconduct. It remains to be seen whether their inquiries will hit the emotional boiling points of Mann’s prior cross-examinations.
Weinstein lawyer Teny Geragos began questioning Mann on Wednesday by seizing on her complicated feelings about Weinstein during a knotty relationship that involved some consensual sexual encounters.
Under prosecutors’ questioning earlier, Mann said that despite the alleged rape, she loved “a part of him” because he could be kind and encouraging about her personal struggles and professional dreams, and that the two had “some pretty human moments” together.
“What did he do for you that made parts of you really love him?” Geragos asked.
“It was the validation,” Mann said.
When Geragos went on to ask about the “human moments,” Mann said she once slapped Weinstein, thinking he was inviting it as sex play, but that he later told her, “Jess, that’s not you.”
“So when you were talking about the validation that you received … and the human moments that you shared with Harvey, it was that you slapped him?” Geragos asked.
Mann said she instead was referring to his remark that “that’s not you.”
Court ended for the day soon afterward.
Weinstein, 73, is on trial for the third time on a charge accusing him of raping Mann in a New York hotel in 2013. He was initially convicted in 2020, but an appeals court overturned that verdict. During his first retrial, the jury couldn’t reach a decision on the rape charge.
Mann also alleges that Weinstein raped her again in Beverly Hills, California, in late 2013 or early 2014. He has never been charged with any crime related to that allegation.
“He just treated me like he owned me,” she told jurors this week.
Mann, 40, acknowledges that she accepted his sexual advances at times but said the two rapes happened as she protested and pleaded with him to stop.
Weinstein’s lawyers maintain that everything that happened between the two was consensual and part of a supportive, caring relationship. They say Mann, who was a hairstylist and actor aspiring to make it big in show business when she met Weinstein, reaped benefits from associating with an Oscar-winning producer, only later accusing him amid the #MeToo outcry of 2017 and 2018.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.
Washington
Romanian man sentenced to 4 years in prison for swatting spree targeting dozens of U.S. officials
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Romanian man was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison for organizing a wave of swatting calls and bomb threats against dozens of U.S. government targets, including members of Congress, cabinet-level officials, federal judges and the heads of federal law-enforcement agencies, according to prosecutors.
Thomasz Szabo, 27, was a prolific participant in a dangerous form of online harassment that has become an increasingly common occupational hazard for public officials across the American political spectrum.
Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of nearly five years for Szabo, who pleaded guilty last June to conspiracy and threats charges. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., also sentenced him to three years of supervised release after his four-year prison term, according to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office.
“This administration will not tolerate attacks on the institutions and individuals who serve this country,” Pirro said in a statement.
Szabo gets credit for the roughly 20 months he already has served in jail.
In 2018, from Romania, Szabo began creating chat servers for him and like-minded users to engage in internet trolling. By late 2020, he had expanded his online activities to include swatting, which involves making hoax threats to provoke emergency police responses at targets’ homes. Others joined him in making the bogus threats.
“Despite (or because of) the fact that they resulted in far greater harm to the victim and society, these activities offered much more entertainment value to the defendant and his followers, since swatting and bomb threats often resulted in an observable real-world impact,” prosecutors wrote.
Szabo was charged with Nemanja Radovanovic, of Serbia, whose case hasn’t been resolved.
Another Szabo associate was charged separately in Florida. Alan Filion was sentenced at age 18 in February 2025 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to making approximately 375 swatting calls between August 2022 and January 2024. Filion was a juvenile at the time of his criminal conduct but pleaded guilty as an adult.
In December 2023, Szabo told Radovanovic that they should pick targets from both the Republican and Democratic parties because “we are not on any side,” their indictment says. A day later, Radovanovic and Filion embarked on a swatting spree targeting at least 25 members of Congress or their relatives and dozens more state and federal government officials, according to prosecutors.
“Over and over, police departments and other first responders were hijacked by the defendant and deployed to fictitious emergencies,” prosecutors wrote. “As a result, fewer personnel and resources were available to respond to real emergencies.
On Jan. 19, 2024, Secret Service agents questioned Szabo after Romanian authorities searched his home. He was extradited from Romania to the U.S. in November 2024, officials said.
Virginia
Man convicted of aiding IS group, but jury deadlocks on alleged role in deadly Kabul airport bombing
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — An alleged Islamic State group militant from Afghanistan was convicted on Wednesday of aiding the terror organization that took credit for a deadly suicide bombing at a Kabul airport, but a jury couldn’t agree on whether he bears some responsibility for that attack during the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from the country in 2021.
Mohammad Sharifullah faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years after his one-count conviction in an international terrorism case that President Donald Trump heralded last year during a speech to a joint session of Congress. Sharifullah didn’t testify at his weeklong trial.
Approximately 160 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, attack at the airport, where U.S. troops were conducting an evacuation operation when a lone suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device near an entry point known as Abbey Gate.
A federal jury in Virginia convicted Sharifullah of providing material support to an Islamic State regional branch known as ISIS-K. But the jurors deadlocked on whether any deaths at the airport “resulted from” that conspiracy. Sharifullah could have faced a possible life sentence if the jury had unanimously decided that question.
Sharifullah didn’t appear to have any visible reaction to the verdict. U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga didn’t immediately set a date for Sharifullah’s sentencing.
The jury deliberated for roughly eight hours over two days. In a note to the judge, jurors indicated that they quickly reached a unanimous decision to convict Sharifullah of conspiracy but couldn’t agree on the element that could have significantly enhanced the severity of his sentence. The judge rejected a prosecutor’s request to give them more time to deliberate.
Defense attorney Lauren Rosen argued that prosecutors failed to present any evidence tying Sharifullah to the bombing besides his own words during hours of FBI questioning. Rosen said Sharifullah told FBI agents what he thought they wanted to hear, possibly because he was afraid of being tortured in Pakistani custody before he was brought to the U.S.
“The problem was, he didn’t know much about what actually happened that day,” Rosen told jurors during the trial’s closing arguments. “The government has told you nothing about how this attack actually happened.”
Justice Department prosecutor Ryan White said Sharifullah played a crucial role in planning the Abbey Gate bombing and was involved in several other attacks by ISIS-K, including its March 2024 attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed roughly 140 people.
“The defendant thought nothing of killing,” White said. “For him, it was just another day at the office.”
A review by U.S. Central Command found that the Abbey Gate bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State group militant who had been released from an Afghan prison by the Taliban. Sharifullah recognized the alleged bomber as an operative he had known while incarcerated, according to an FBI affidavit.
A former Marine testified to Congress that he and others had spotted two possible suspects behaving suspiciously on the morning of the bombing but didn’t get permission to act. However, the Central Command review concluded that the snipers hadn’t seen the actual bomber and that the attack was not preventable.
A prosecutor assigned to the Abbey Gate case was fired last year after a right-wing commentator publicly criticized him over his work during President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration. Michael Ben’Ary’s ouster was part of a broader purge of Justice Department veterans deemed to be insufficiently loyal to Trump, a Republican.
During his most recent presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly condemned Biden for his role in the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and blamed him for the Abbey Gate attack.
Biden’s White House was following a withdrawal commitment and timeline that the first Trump administration had negotiated with the Taliban in 2020. A 2022 review by a government-appointed special investigator concluded decisions made by both Trump and Biden were the key factors leading to the rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military and the Taliban takeover.
White, the prosecutor, said Sharifullah told a journalist that he wanted to “catch and kill the crusaders” from the U.S. for invading his country after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“This case is not complicated,” White said. “The defendant told you everything you need to know.”
Rosen said U.S. authorities accepted ISIS propaganda at face value when the group took responsibility for the airport bombing. She suggested that militants from a Taliban offshoot were manning Abbey Gate and could have been involved in the attack.
“You can’t base your verdict on mere conjecture and speculation,” Rosen said. “That’s what the prosecution is asking you to do.”
Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers question his accuser at his rape retrial
NEW YORK (AP) — Harvey Weinstein ‘s lawyers questioned his accuser at his rape retrial Thursday, making clear they planned to explore her conflicted feelings and complex history with the onetime Hollywood powerbroker.
It’s the third time Jessica Mann has had to answer his lawyers’ questions in a New York court. But different attorneys are now defending the ex-studio boss whose downfall powered the #MeToo movement
against sexual misconduct. It remains to be seen whether their inquiries will hit the emotional boiling points of Mann’s prior cross-examinations.
Weinstein lawyer Teny Geragos began questioning Mann on Wednesday by seizing on her complicated feelings about Weinstein during a knotty relationship that involved some consensual sexual encounters.
Under prosecutors’ questioning earlier, Mann said that despite the alleged rape, she loved “a part of him” because he could be kind and encouraging about her personal struggles and professional dreams, and that the two had “some pretty human moments” together.
“What did he do for you that made parts of you really love him?” Geragos asked.
“It was the validation,” Mann said.
When Geragos went on to ask about the “human moments,” Mann said she once slapped Weinstein, thinking he was inviting it as sex play, but that he later told her, “Jess, that’s not you.”
“So when you were talking about the validation that you received … and the human moments that you shared with Harvey, it was that you slapped him?” Geragos asked.
Mann said she instead was referring to his remark that “that’s not you.”
Court ended for the day soon afterward.
Weinstein, 73, is on trial for the third time on a charge accusing him of raping Mann in a New York hotel in 2013. He was initially convicted in 2020, but an appeals court overturned that verdict. During his first retrial, the jury couldn’t reach a decision on the rape charge.
Mann also alleges that Weinstein raped her again in Beverly Hills, California, in late 2013 or early 2014. He has never been charged with any crime related to that allegation.
“He just treated me like he owned me,” she told jurors this week.
Mann, 40, acknowledges that she accepted his sexual advances at times but said the two rapes happened as she protested and pleaded with him to stop.
Weinstein’s lawyers maintain that everything that happened between the two was consensual and part of a supportive, caring relationship. They say Mann, who was a hairstylist and actor aspiring to make it big in show business when she met Weinstein, reaped benefits from associating with an Oscar-winning producer, only later accusing him amid the #MeToo outcry of 2017 and 2018.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.
Washington
Romanian man sentenced to 4 years in prison for swatting spree targeting dozens of U.S. officials
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Romanian man was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison for organizing a wave of swatting calls and bomb threats against dozens of U.S. government targets, including members of Congress, cabinet-level officials, federal judges and the heads of federal law-enforcement agencies, according to prosecutors.
Thomasz Szabo, 27, was a prolific participant in a dangerous form of online harassment that has become an increasingly common occupational hazard for public officials across the American political spectrum.
Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of nearly five years for Szabo, who pleaded guilty last June to conspiracy and threats charges. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., also sentenced him to three years of supervised release after his four-year prison term, according to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office.
“This administration will not tolerate attacks on the institutions and individuals who serve this country,” Pirro said in a statement.
Szabo gets credit for the roughly 20 months he already has served in jail.
In 2018, from Romania, Szabo began creating chat servers for him and like-minded users to engage in internet trolling. By late 2020, he had expanded his online activities to include swatting, which involves making hoax threats to provoke emergency police responses at targets’ homes. Others joined him in making the bogus threats.
“Despite (or because of) the fact that they resulted in far greater harm to the victim and society, these activities offered much more entertainment value to the defendant and his followers, since swatting and bomb threats often resulted in an observable real-world impact,” prosecutors wrote.
Szabo was charged with Nemanja Radovanovic, of Serbia, whose case hasn’t been resolved.
Another Szabo associate was charged separately in Florida. Alan Filion was sentenced at age 18 in February 2025 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to making approximately 375 swatting calls between August 2022 and January 2024. Filion was a juvenile at the time of his criminal conduct but pleaded guilty as an adult.
In December 2023, Szabo told Radovanovic that they should pick targets from both the Republican and Democratic parties because “we are not on any side,” their indictment says. A day later, Radovanovic and Filion embarked on a swatting spree targeting at least 25 members of Congress or their relatives and dozens more state and federal government officials, according to prosecutors.
“Over and over, police departments and other first responders were hijacked by the defendant and deployed to fictitious emergencies,” prosecutors wrote. “As a result, fewer personnel and resources were available to respond to real emergencies.
On Jan. 19, 2024, Secret Service agents questioned Szabo after Romanian authorities searched his home. He was extradited from Romania to the U.S. in November 2024, officials said.
Virginia
Man convicted of aiding IS group, but jury deadlocks on alleged role in deadly Kabul airport bombing
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — An alleged Islamic State group militant from Afghanistan was convicted on Wednesday of aiding the terror organization that took credit for a deadly suicide bombing at a Kabul airport, but a jury couldn’t agree on whether he bears some responsibility for that attack during the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from the country in 2021.
Mohammad Sharifullah faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years after his one-count conviction in an international terrorism case that President Donald Trump heralded last year during a speech to a joint session of Congress. Sharifullah didn’t testify at his weeklong trial.
Approximately 160 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were killed in the Aug. 26, 2021, attack at the airport, where U.S. troops were conducting an evacuation operation when a lone suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device near an entry point known as Abbey Gate.
A federal jury in Virginia convicted Sharifullah of providing material support to an Islamic State regional branch known as ISIS-K. But the jurors deadlocked on whether any deaths at the airport “resulted from” that conspiracy. Sharifullah could have faced a possible life sentence if the jury had unanimously decided that question.
Sharifullah didn’t appear to have any visible reaction to the verdict. U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga didn’t immediately set a date for Sharifullah’s sentencing.
The jury deliberated for roughly eight hours over two days. In a note to the judge, jurors indicated that they quickly reached a unanimous decision to convict Sharifullah of conspiracy but couldn’t agree on the element that could have significantly enhanced the severity of his sentence. The judge rejected a prosecutor’s request to give them more time to deliberate.
Defense attorney Lauren Rosen argued that prosecutors failed to present any evidence tying Sharifullah to the bombing besides his own words during hours of FBI questioning. Rosen said Sharifullah told FBI agents what he thought they wanted to hear, possibly because he was afraid of being tortured in Pakistani custody before he was brought to the U.S.
“The problem was, he didn’t know much about what actually happened that day,” Rosen told jurors during the trial’s closing arguments. “The government has told you nothing about how this attack actually happened.”
Justice Department prosecutor Ryan White said Sharifullah played a crucial role in planning the Abbey Gate bombing and was involved in several other attacks by ISIS-K, including its March 2024 attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed roughly 140 people.
“The defendant thought nothing of killing,” White said. “For him, it was just another day at the office.”
A review by U.S. Central Command found that the Abbey Gate bomber was Abdul Rahman al-Logari, an Islamic State group militant who had been released from an Afghan prison by the Taliban. Sharifullah recognized the alleged bomber as an operative he had known while incarcerated, according to an FBI affidavit.
A former Marine testified to Congress that he and others had spotted two possible suspects behaving suspiciously on the morning of the bombing but didn’t get permission to act. However, the Central Command review concluded that the snipers hadn’t seen the actual bomber and that the attack was not preventable.
A prosecutor assigned to the Abbey Gate case was fired last year after a right-wing commentator publicly criticized him over his work during President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration. Michael Ben’Ary’s ouster was part of a broader purge of Justice Department veterans deemed to be insufficiently loyal to Trump, a Republican.
During his most recent presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly condemned Biden for his role in the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and blamed him for the Abbey Gate attack.
Biden’s White House was following a withdrawal commitment and timeline that the first Trump administration had negotiated with the Taliban in 2020. A 2022 review by a government-appointed special investigator concluded decisions made by both Trump and Biden were the key factors leading to the rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military and the Taliban takeover.
White, the prosecutor, said Sharifullah told a journalist that he wanted to “catch and kill the crusaders” from the U.S. for invading his country after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“This case is not complicated,” White said. “The defendant told you everything you need to know.”
Rosen said U.S. authorities accepted ISIS propaganda at face value when the group took responsibility for the airport bombing. She suggested that militants from a Taliban offshoot were manning Abbey Gate and could have been involved in the attack.
“You can’t base your verdict on mere conjecture and speculation,” Rosen said. “That’s what the prosecution is asking you to do.”
