WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Florida law enforcement officials will launch their own criminal investigation into the apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump that will run parallel to the federal probe, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday.

The governor said Florida prosecutors will pursue the most serious charges available under state law, including attempted murder, in the state-level investigation into Ryan Wesley Routh, who was charged Monday with federal firearms offenses.

“We have a very strong interest in holding this suspect accountable,” DeSantis told reporters.

It’s not uncommon for state and federal law enforcement agencies to run simultaneous investigations into crimes, as states may be able to bring charges that are unavailable at the federal level — and vice versa.

Routh is charged at the federal level so far only with gun crimes, but additional charges are possible as Justice Department prosecutors seek an indictment from a grand jury. Prosecutors will often quickly bring the first charges they can and then add more serious charges later as the investigation unfolds.

“We will spare no resource in this investigation,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday during an event at the Justice Department.

Markenzy Lapointe, the top federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Florida, declined to comment on the state probe.

DeSantis said it will be handled by Florida’s office of statewide prosecution, overseen by Attorney General Ashley Moody.

The FBI has interviewed the suspect’s family members, friends and colleagues and is working to collect evidence. Authorities have requested search warrants seeking access to a video recording device, cellphones, a vehicle and electronics at Routh’s previous addresses.

FBI agents were spotted Tuesday at Routh’s home in Kaaawa, Hawaii. FBI Honolulu office spokeswoman Sarah Rice said they were carrying out “court-authorized law enforcement activity.” She said the court documents authorizing the activity were sealed.

No motive has been disclosed, and Routh invoked his right to an attorney when questioned, officials said.

Coming just weeks after a July 13 shooting at a Pennsylvania campaign rally where Trump was grazed by a gunman’s bullet, the latest assassination attempt accelerated concerns that violence continues to infect American presidential politics.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is Trump’s Democratic opponent in November, spoke with him Tuesday to express how grateful she is that he is safe, according to the White House.

Routh, 58, was arrested Sunday after authorities spotted a gun poking out of shrubbery on the golf course where Trump was playing. Routh camped outside the golf course with food and a rifle for nearly 12 hours, lying in wait for the former president before a Secret Service agent thwarted the potential attack and opened fire.

Routh did not fire any shots, never had Trump in his line of sight and sped away, leaving behind a digital camera, a backpack, a loaded SKS-style rifle with a scope and a plastic bag containing food, officials said. He was arrested in a neighboring county.

Routh’s attorney declined to comment after he appeared briefly in federal court Monday, when a judge ordered that he remain locked up after prosecutors argued that he was a flight risk. Routh has been moved from the Palm Beach County jail to the federal lockup in Miami. A federal magistrate set additional hearings for later this month.

In the federal case, Routh is charged with illegally possessing his gun in spite of multiple felony convictions, including two charges of possessing stolen goods in 2002 in North Carolina. The other charge alleges that the weapon’s serial number was obliterated and unreadable to the naked eye, in violation of federal law.

Federal investigators are examining Routh’s large online footprint, which suggests a man of evolving political viewpoints, including recently an apparent disdain for Trump, as well as intense outrage at global events concerning China and especially Ukraine.

“You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote of Iran in an apparently self-published 2023 book titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” which described the former president as a “fool” and “buffoon” for both the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the “tremendous blunder” of leaving the Iran nuclear deal.

Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale and Zeke Miller in Washington also contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has failed to report some child sexual abuse allegations to local law enforcement or social service agencies even after changes prompted by its handling of the case against former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, according to a Justice Department watchdog report released Thursday.

In a review brought on by the FBI’s failures to promptly investigate Nassar, the inspector general found serious problems persist that run the risk of child sexual abuse allegations falling through the cracks as overworked agents juggle dozens of cases at a time. In one case, a victim was abused for 15 months after the FBI first received a tip about a registered sex offender, the report said.

“This report makes clear that the FBI is simply not doing its job when it comes to protecting our children from the monsters among us who stalk them,” said John Manly, a lawyer who represents victims of Nassar. “Despite years of promises and numerous congressional hearings it’s now clear that the Larry Nassar scandal could happen again today.”

A senior FBI official acknowledged that the bureau has made mistakes in investigating crimes against children but said the “vast majority of work” has been handled appropriately.

“Ensuring the safety and security of children is not just a priority for the FBI; it is a solemn duty that we are committed to fulfilling with the highest standards. The FBI’s efforts combating crimes against children are among the most critical and demanding undertakings we do,” the FBI said in a statement.

The inquiry follows a scathing 2021 report that found that FBI’s failure to take action against Nassar allowed the doctor to continue to prey on victims for months before his 2016 arrest. The FBI put in place many changes, but the inspector general says more are needed to protect children.

In a review of more than 300 cases between 2021 and 2023, the inspector general flagged 42 cases for the FBI that required “immediate attention” because there was no evidence of recent investigative steps taken or because of other concerns, according to the report.

The inspector general found no evidence that the FBI followed rules requiring allegations to be reported to local law enforcement in about 50 percent of the cases. When the FBI did report an allegation to law enforcement or social service agencies, it followed FBI policy to report it within 24 hours in only 43 percent of the cases, according to the report.

The FBI accepted all of the findings and recommendations of the report. Among the changes the FBI is committed to is the development of a training program for investigators and supervisors focused not only on investigative techniques but also on the bureau’s own policies and procedures.

Most of the incidents that the inspector general flagged to the bureau “reflected the failure to properly document completed investigative steps or involved investigations where no additional action was necessary,” Michael Nordwall, FBI executive assistant director, wrote in a letter included with the report.

Even while acknowledging errors, the FBI cited the “overwhelming” burden on agents tasked with investigating crimes against children given the conduct involved, an influx in tips flooding in to law enforcement, increased use of encrypted technology to conceal the offenses and budget cuts.

Citing one agent who was juggling about 60 investigations, the inspector general said special agents “must constantly triage their caseload.” The inspector general said the FBI needs to comes up with a plan to tackle the growing number of cases to ensure that agents are able to manage the cases on their plate.

The report released in 2021 faulted the FBI for failing to treat Nassar’s case with the “utmost seriousness and urgency,” and then making numerous errors and violating policies when it did finally swing into action. Nassar pleaded guilty in 2017 to sexually assaulting gymnasts and other athletes with his hands under the guise of medical treatment for hip and leg injuries.

The FBI has described the actions of the officials involved in the Nassar investigation as “inexcusable and a discredit” to the organization. In April, the Justice Department announced a $138.7 million settlement with more than 100 people who accused the FBI of grossly mishandling the allegations against Nassar.

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Associated Press reporter Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment Tuesday against Donald Trump over his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that keeps the same criminal charges but narrows the allegations against him following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents.

The new indictment removes a section of the indictment that had accused Trump of trying to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to overturn his election loss, an area of conduct for which the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion last month, said that Trump was absolutely immune from prosecution.

The stripped-down criminal case represents a first effort by prosecutors to comply with a Supreme Court opinion likely to result in a significant revision of the allegations against Trump over his efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power. It was filed three days ahead of a deadline for prosecutors and defense lawyers to tell the judge in the case how they wanted to proceed in light of that opinion, which said former presidents are presumptively immune from prosecution for official White House acts.

The two sides will be back in court for a status hearing next week, the first such appearance in months given that the case had been effectively frozen since last December as Trump’s immunity appeal worked its way through the justice system.

In a statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump called the new indictment “an act of desperation” and an “effort to resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt.’” He said the new case has “all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY. ”

The special counsel’s office said the updated indictment, filed in federal court in Washington, was issued by a grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in the case. It said in a statement that the indictment “reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions.”

The central revision in the updated criminal case concerns Trump’s dealings with the Justice Department.

The original indictment included allegations that Trump tried to enlist the department in his failed effort to undo his election loss, including by conducting sham investigations and telling states — incorrectly — that significant fraud had been detected.

It detailed how Jeffrey Clark, a top official in the Trump Justice Department, wanted to send a letter to elected officials in certain states falsely claiming that the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election” and had asked top department officials to sign it, but they refused.

Clark’s support for Trump’s election fraud claims led Trump to openly contemplate naming him as acting attorney general in place of Jeffrey Rosen, who led the department in the final weeks of the Trump administration. Trump ultimately relented in that idea “when he was told it would result in mass resignations at the Justice Department,” according to the original indictment. Rosen remained on as acting attorney general through the end of Trump’s tenure

The new case no longer references Clark as a co-conspirator. Trump’s co-conspirators were not named in either indictment, but they have been identified through public records and other means.

In its opinion, the Supreme Court held that a president’s interactions with the Justice Department constitute official acts for which he is entitled to immunity, effectively stripping those allegations from the case.

“As we have explained, the President’s power to remove ‘executive officers of the United States whom he has appointed’ may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

The justices returned other core allegations in the case to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the trial judge presiding over the case, to determine what constitutes an official act protected from prosecution — and what does not.

The new indictment still includes one of the more stunning allegations brought by Smith — that Trump participated in a scheme orchestrated by allies to enlist slates of fraudulent electors in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden who would falsely attest that Trump had won in those states.

It also retains allegations that Trump sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes, and that Trump and his allies exploited the chaos at the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to further delay the certification of Biden’s victory.

Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that the interactions between Trump and Pence amounted to official conduct for which “Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution.”

The question, Roberts wrote, is whether the government can rebut “that presumption of immunity.”

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the ruling. In an excerpt from an interview with CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” that aired Tuesday, she said: “I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances. When we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same.”

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Associated Press writers Mark Sherman, Lindsay Whitehurst and Maya Sweedler in Washington contributed to this report.

“I (expletive) told them they needed to post guys (expletive) over here,” the officer said in police body camera footage released by the Butler Township Police Department. “I told them that (expletive) Tuesday.”

When another officer asked who he told that to, he responded: “the Secret Service.”

Police body camera videos, released in response to a public records request, show frustration among local law enforcement at how Thomas Matthew Crooks — whom police had flagged as suspicious before the shooting — managed to slip away from their view, scale a roof and open fire with an AR-style rifle at the former president and Republican presidential nominee. They also show police expressing confusion and anger about why no law enforcement had been stationed on the roof.

“I wasn’t even concerned about it because I thought someone was on the roof,” one officer says. He asked how “the hell” they could have lost sight of Crooks after spotting him acting suspiciously if law enforcement had been on top of the building. The other officer responded: “They were inside.”

Trump was struck in the ear but avoided serious injury. One spectator was killed and two others were injured.

Several investigations are underway into the security failures that led to the shooting. Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr., who took over after the resignation of former chief Kimberly Cheatle, has said he “cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.” The Secret Service controls the area after people pass through metal detectors, while local law enforcement is supposed to handle outside the perimeter. Rowe told lawmakers last month that Secret Service had “assumed that the state and locals had it” covered.

A Secret Service spokesperson said Friday the agency is reviewing the body camera footage.

“The U.S. Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners, who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day,” spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in an email, “The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a U.S. Secret Service failure, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”

Two officers from local county sniper teams were inside the complex of buildings and spotted Crooks acting strangely. One of them ran outside to look for Crooks while the other remained in the building on the second floor, according to Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger. But neither officer could see Crooks on top of the adjacent building from their second-floor position, Goldinger has said.

Another video shows officers frantically looking for Crooks in the moments before the shooting. The video shows one officer help another climb up to the roof to investigate, spotting Crooks before dropping down and running to his car to grab his gun. There is no audio in the video until the officer is back at his car, grabbing his weapon, so it’s unclear what he said after seeing Crooks on the roof. It was not immediately clear whether the sound was not recorded, or if the audio had been redacted by police.

The acting Secret Service director has said local law enforcement did not alert his agency before the shooting that an armed person had been spotted on a nearby roof.

After the shooting, officers are seen in one video climbing onto the roof, where Crooks lay dead. Standing near his body, one of the officers says he was “(expletive) pissed” that police “couldn’t find him.”

“I hear you bro,” the officer responds. “But for now, I mean, he’s the only one.”

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Lauer reported from Philadelphia

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said Monday that her agency failed in its mission to protect former President Donald Trump, as lawmakers of both major political parties demanded during a highly contentious congressional hearing that she resign over security failures that allowed a gunman to scale a roof and open fire at a campaign rally.

Cheatle was berated for hours by Republicans and Democrats, repeatedly angering lawmakers by evading questions about the investigation during the first hearing over the July 13 assassination attempt. Cheatle called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades, and vowed to “move heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure there’s no repeat of it.

“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13th, we failed,” she told lawmakers on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. She also revealed that the roof from which Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally. Cheatle said she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the assassination attempt.

Yet Cheatle remained defiant that she was the “right person” to lead the Secret Service, even as she said she takes full responsibility any security lapses at the event. When Republican Rep. Nancy Mace suggested Cheatle begin drafting her resignation letter from the hearing room, Cheatle responded, “No, thank you.”

In a rare moment of unity for the often divided committee, the Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer, and its top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, issued a letter calling on Cheatle to step down.

The White House didn’t immediately comment on whether President Joe Biden still has confidence in Cheatle after her testimony.

Democrats and Republicans were united in their exasperation as Cheatle said she didn’t know or couldn’t answer numerous questions more than a week after the shooting that left one spectator dead. At one point, Mace used profanity as she accused Cheatle of lying and dodging questions, prompting calls for lawmakers to show “decorum.”

Lawmakers pressed Cheatle on how the gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded, and why Trump was allowed to take the stage after local law enforcement had identified Crooks as suspicious.

“It has been 10 days since an assassination attempt on a former president of the United States. Regardless of party, there need to be answers,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York.

Cheatle acknowledged that Crooks had been seen by local law enforcement before the shooting with a rangefinder, a small device resembling binoculars that hunters use to measure distance from a target. She said the Secret Service would never have taken Trump onto the stage if it had known there was an “actual threat.” Local law enforcement took a photograph of Crooks and shared it after seeing him acting suspiciously outside the security perimeter, but he wasn’t deemed to be a “threat” until seconds before he opened fire, she said.

“An individual with a backpack is not a threat,” Cheatle said. “An individual with a rangefinder is not a threat.”

Cheatle said local enforcement officers were inside the building from which Crooks fired. But when asked why there were no agents on the roof or if the Secret Service used drones to monitor the area, Cheatle said she is still waiting for the investigation to play out, prompting groans and outbursts from members on the committee.

“Director Cheatle, because Donald Trump is alive, and thank God he is, you look incompetent,” said Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio. “If he were killed you would look culpable.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, one of the Democrats who joined the calls for Cheatle to resign, noted that the Secret Service director who presided over the agency when there was an attempted assassination of former Republican President Ronald Reagan later stepped down.

“The one thing we have to have in this country are agencies that transcend politics and have the confidence of independents, Democrats, Republicans, progressives and conservatives,” Khanna said, adding that the Secret Service was no longer one of those agencies.

Trump was wounded in the ear, a former Pennsylvania fire chief was killed and two other attendees were injured after Crooks climbed atop the roof of a nearby building and opened fire with an AR-style rifle shortly after Trump started speaking at the rally.

Cheatle said the agency hopes to have its internal investigation completed in 60 days. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has separately appointed a bipartisan, independent panel to review the assassination attempt, while the department’s inspector general has opened three investigations.

The Secret Service has acknowledged it denied some requests by Trump’s campaign for increased security at his events in the years before the assassination attempt. But Cheatle said Monday there were “no assets denied” for the Pennsylvania rally.

Authorities have been hunting for clues into what motivated Crooks but have not found any ideological bent that could help explain his actions. Investigators who searched his phone found photos of Trump, Biden and other senior government officials and found that he had looked up the dates for the Democratic National Conventional as well as Trump’s appearances. He also searched for information about major depressive order.

The attack on Trump was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Reagan was shot in 1981. It was the latest in a series of security lapses by the agency that has drawn investigations and public scrutiny over the years.

Cheatle took over two years ago as head of the Secret Service’s 7,800 special agents, uniformed officers and other staffers whose main purpose is protecting presidents, vice presidents, their families, former presidents and others. In announcing her appointment, Biden said Cheatle had served on his vice presidential detail and called her a “distinguished law enforcement professional with exceptional leadership skills” who had his “complete trust.”

Cheatle took the reins from James M. Murray as multiple congressional committees and an internal watchdog investigated missing text messages from when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The Secret Service says they were purged during a technology transition.

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Associated Press reporters Michael Kunzelman and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Secret Service at https://apnews.com/hub/us-secret-service.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who tried to assassinate Donald Trump had photos on his phone of the former Republican president, President Joe Biden and other officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Investigators searching Thomas Matthew Crooks’ devices have also found that the shooter looked up the dates for the Democratic National Convention as well as Trump’s appearances, according to the people who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition on anonymity to discuss details of the ongoing probe.

The FBI has been searching for clues into what drove Crooks to open fire at Saturday’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in an attempt to assassinate the GOP presidential nominee. The FBI has said they are investigating the shooting as a potential act of domestic terrorism but have yet to find a clear ideological motive. The FBI gained access to Crooks’ cellphone, scoured his computer, home and car, and interviewed more than 100 people so far.

Crooks killed one rallygoer and seriously wounded two others. Trump suffered an ear injury but was not seriously hurt, appearing just days later at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee with a bandage over the wound.

The shooter had also searched for information about major depressive disorder, according to three people familiar the investigation. But investigators have not yet determined whether he was actually diagnosed with the disorder, one of the people said. Studies have shown that the vast majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent, and experts say most people who are violent do not have mental illnesses.

On a conference call with reporters Sunday, Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office, said: “We have no indication of any mental health issues.”

Crooks used an AR-style rifle, which authorities said was purchased legally by his father. Investigators also found he brought multiple loaded magazines. He also bought 50 rounds on the day of the shooting. Authorities found a bulletproof vest in his car and another rudimentary explosive device at his home. Over the past few months he had received several packages there, including some that had potentially hazardous material.

The shooting raised serious questions about why law enforcement was unable to stop the man from getting on a roof and opening fire. Multiple investigations into the security failures are underway, including a Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s probe into the Secret Service’s handling of security.

Local law enforcement had noticed Crooks pacing around the edges of rally, shouldering a big backpack and peering into the lens of a rangefinder toward the rooftops behind the stage where the president later stood, officials have told the AP.

An image of Crooks was circulated by officers stationed outside the security perimeter. Witnesses later saw him climbing up the side of a squat manufacturing building that was within 135 meters (157 yards) from the stage. He then set up his AR-style rifle and lay on the rooftop, a detonator in his pocket to set off crude explosive devices that were stashed in his car parked nearby.

Butler Township Manager Tom Knights said in a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday that officers were searching for a suspicious person around the time Trump arrived. Officers didn’t find him around the building, so a Butler Township officer attempted to gain access to the roof by being hoisted up by another officer, Knights said. The officer spotted a person on the roof, and that person pointed a rifle at the officer, Knights said.

“The officer was in a defenseless position, and there was no way he could engage the actor while holding onto the roof edge,” Knights said. The officer fell to the ground and Butler Township officers “immediately communicated the individuals location and that he was in possession of a weapon,” Knights said.

Moments later, Crooks started firing, sending panicked spectators ducking for cover as Secret Service agents shielded Trump and pulled him from the stage. Two counter-sniper teams were stationed on buildings behind Trump, and the team further away from Crooks fired once, killing him.

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Associated Press reporter Michael R. Sisak in Butler, Pennsylvania, contributed.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Jurors in Hunter Biden’s gun trial began deliberating Monday whether the president’s son is guilty of federal firearms charges over a revolver he bought in 2018 when prosecutors say he was addicted to crack cocaine.

He’s charged with three felonies in the case that has laid bare some of the darkest moments of his drug-fueled past. Prosecutors have used testimony from former romantic partners, personal text messages and photos of Hunter Biden with drug paraphernalia or partially clothed to make the case that he broke the law.

“No one is above the law,” prosecutor Leo Wise told jurors in his closing argument as first lady Jill Biden watched from the front row of the Wilmington, Delaware, courtroom.

Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before leaving the courthouse for the day. Deliberations were to resume Tuesday morning.

President Joe Biden’s son has publicly detailed his struggle with a crack cocaine addiction before getting sober more than five years ago. But the defense sought to show that that he did not consider himself an “addict” when he bought the gun and checked “no” on the form that asked whether he was “an unlawful user” of drugs or addicted to them.

The case has pitted Hunter Biden against his father’s Justice Department in the midst of the Democratic president’s reelection campaign. The charges were brought by special counsel David Weiss, who was nominated by Republican former President Donald Trump to be U.S. attorney for Delaware and led the yearslong investigation.

Before the case went to the jury, the prosecutor urged jurors to focus on the “overwhelming” evidence against Hunter Biden and pay no mind to members of the president’s family sitting in the courtroom.

“All of this is not evidence,” Wise said, extending his hand and directing the jury to look at the gallery. “People sitting in the gallery are not evidence.”

Jill Biden and other family members left the courthouse shortly after deliberations began. The first lady sat through most of the trial, missing only one day last week to attend D-Day anniversary events with the president in France. At one point Monday, Hunter Biden leaned over a railing to whisper in his mother’s ear.

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell told jurors in his closing argument that prosecutors had failed to prove their case. Lowell said the his client may have a famous last name, but he is still presumed innocent until proven guilty like any other defendant.

“With my last breath in this case, I ask for the only verdict that will hold the prosecutors to what the law requires of them” — a verdict of not guilty, Lowell said.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers have suggested he was trying to turn his life around at the time of the gun purchase, having completed a detoxification and rehabilitation program at the end of August 2018. The defense called three witnesses, including Hunter’s daughter Naomi, who told jurors that her father seemed be improving in the weeks before he bought the gun.

Closing arguments came shortly after the defense rested its case without calling Hunter Biden to the witness stand. He smiled as he chatted with members of his defense team and flashed a thumbs-up sign to a supporter in the gallery after the final witness — an FBI agent called by prosecutors in their rebuttal case.

The trial has put a spotlight on a turbulent time in Hunter Biden’s life after the 2015 death of his brother, Beau, from brain cancer. The proceedings have played out in the president’s home state, where Hunter Biden grew up and where the family is deeply established. Joe Biden spent 36 years as a senator in Delaware, commuting daily to Washington, and Beau Biden was the state’s attorney general.

Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and two former girlfriends testified for prosecutors about his habitual crack use and their failed efforts to help him get clean. One woman, who met Hunter Biden in 2017 at a strip club where she worked, described him smoking crack every 20 minutes or so while she stayed with him at a hotel.

Jurors have also heard him describe at length his descent into addiction through audio excerpts played in court of his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things.” The book, written after he got sober, covers the period he had the gun but doesn’t mention it specifically.

A key witness for prosecutors was Beau’s widow, Hallie, who had a brief, troubled relationship with Hunter after his brother’s death. She found the unloaded gun in Hunter’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018, panicked and tossed it into a garbage can at a grocery store in Wilmington, where a man seeking recyclables inadvertently fished it out of the trash.

The prosecutor pointed to text messages he said show Hunter trying to make drug deals in the days around the gun purchase. In one message, Hunter told Hallie he was smoking crack. “That’s my truth,” Hunter wrote.

“Take the defendant’s word for it. That’s his truth,” Wise said. He urged jurors to reject the defense’s suggestion that Hunter did not really mean what he was texting at the time and was simply trying to avoid being with Hallie.

“You don’t leave your common sense behind when you come into that jury box,” Wise said.

The defense told jurors that there was no actual witness to drug use by Hunter during the 11 days that he had the gun. Lowell also sought to discredit testimony from Hallie and another ex-girlfriend. He told jurors to consider their testimony “with great care and caution,” noting that they were given immunity agreements in exchange for taking the witness stand for prosecutors.

Joe Biden said last week that he would accept the jury’s verdict and ruled out a presidential pardon for his son. After flying back from France, the president was at his home in Wilmington for the day and was expected in Washington in the evening for a Juneteenth concert. He was scheduled to travel to Italy later this week for the Group of Seven leaders conference.

Last summer, it looked as if Hunter Biden would avoid prosecution in the gun case altogether, but a deal with prosecutors imploded after the judge, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, raised concerns about it. Hunter Biden also faces a trial scheduled for September on felony charges alleging he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over four years.

If convicted in the gun case, he faces up to 25 years in prison, though first-time offenders do not get anywhere near the maximum, and it’s unclear whether the judge would give him time behind bars.

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Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Mike Catalini and Matt Slocum in Wilmington and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s lawyers accused the star prosecution witness in his hush money trial of lying to jurors, portraying Trump fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen on Thursday as a serial fabulist who is bent on seeing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee behind bars.

As Trump looked on, defense attorney Todd Blanche pressed Cohen for hours with questions that focused as much on his misdeeds as on the case’s specific allegations and tried to sow doubt in jurors’ minds about Cohen’s crucial testimony implicating the former president.

Blanche’s voice rose as he interrogated Cohen with phone records and text messages over Cohen’s claim that he spoke by phone to Trump about the hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels that is at the heart of the case, days before wiring her lawyer $130,000.

Blanche said that was a lie, confronting Cohen with texts indicating that what was on his mind, at least initially, during the phone call were harassing calls he was getting from an apparent 14-year-old prankster. Cohen said he believed he also spoke to Trump about the Daniels deal.

“We are not asking for your belief. This jury does not want to hear what you think happened,” Blanche said, his voice growing even louder, prompting an objection from the prosecutor.

The heated moment was the crescendo of defense cross-examination over two days designed to portray Cohen — a onetime Trump loyalist who has become one of his biggest foes — as a media-obsessed opportunist who turned on the former president after he was denied a White House job.

Whether the defense is successful in undermining Cohen’s testimony could determine Trump’s fate in the case. Over the course of the trial’s fourth week of testimony, Cohen described for jurors meetings and conversations he said he had with Trump about the alleged scheme to stifle stories about sex that threatened to torpedo Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Prosecutors have tried to blunt the defense attacks on their star witness by getting him to acknowledge at the outset his past crimes, including a guilty plea for lying to Congress about work he did on a Trump real estate deal in Russia.

But the cross-examination underscored the risk of prosecutors’ reliance on Cohen, who was peppered repeatedly with questions about his criminal history and past lies. Cohen also testified that he lied under oath when he pleaded guilty to federal charges, including tax fraud, in 2018.

“It was a lie? Correct?” Blanche asked Cohen about whether he lied to the late U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III at a court hearing about not feeling pressured into pleading guilty.

“Correct,” Cohen said.

The defense also attacked Cohen’s motivations and elicited testimony designed to support the defense’s argument that the Daniels deal was essentially a shakedown of Trump, rather than a plot to keep voters in the dark. Cohen acknowledged telling a former prosecutor that he felt Daniels and her lawyer were extorting Trump in seeking the $130,000 payment to keep quiet about her claim of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.

“Yes, I recall making a statement like that … that they were extorting Mr. Trump,” Cohen told jurors.

He’s by far prosecutors’ most important witness, placing Trump directly at the center of the alleged scheme to silence women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Trump. Trump denies the women’s claims. Cohen told jurors that Trump promised to reimburse him for the money he fronted and was constantly updated about behind-the-scenes efforts to bury potentially detrimental stories.

Cohen also matters because the reimbursements he received form the basis of 34 felony counts charging Trump with falsifying business records. Prosecutors say the reimbursements were logged, falsely, as legal expenses to conceal the payments’ true purpose.

Trump, who insists the prosecution is an effort to damage his campaign to reclaim the White House, says the payments to Cohen were properly categorized as legal expenses because Cohen was a lawyer. The defense has suggested that he was trying to protect his family, not his campaign, by squelching what he says were false, scurrilous claims.

“The crime is that they’re doing this case,” Trump told reporters Thursday before entering the courtroom, flanked by a group of congressional allies that included Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.; Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.; and Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus.

The hard-right Republican lawmakers stood outside the courthouse and railed against a “kangaroo court” and the case, amplifying the former president’s attacks on the judicial system as they were heckled but also cheered by the crowd. The former president has been joined at the courthouse in recent days by a slew of conservative supporters, including some considered potential vice presidential picks and others angling for future administration roles.

Among those at the courthouse Thursday were Republican members of the House Oversight Committee, which delayed a hearing on an effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress so the lawmakers could appear alongside Trump in Manhattan.

Blanche confronted Cohen with profane social media posts, a podcast and books he wrote about the former president, getting Cohen to acknowledge that he has made millions of dollars off slamming Trump. In one clip played in court Thursday, Cohen could be heard using an expletive and saying he truly hopes “that this man ends up in prison.”

“It won’t bring back the year that I lost or the damage done to my family. But revenge is a dish best served cold,” Cohen was heard saying. “You better believe that I want this man to go down.”

Cohen acknowledged he has continued to attack Trump, even during the trial.

In one social media post cited by the defense attorney, Cohen called Trump an alliterative and explicit nickname, as well as an “orange-crusted ignoramus.” Asked if he used the phrase, Cohen responded: “Sounds correct.”

Cohen — prosecutors’ final witness, at least for now — is expected to return to the witness stand Monday. The trial will take Friday off so Trump can attend the high school graduation of his youngest son, Barron.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has said it will rest its case once Cohen is done on the stand, though it could have an opportunity to call rebuttal witnesses if Trump’s lawyers put on witnesses of their own.

The defense isn’t obligated to call any witnesses, and it’s unclear whether the attorneys will do so. Trump’s lawyers have said they may call Bradley A. Smith, a Republican who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton to the Federal Election Commission, to refute the prosecution’s contention that the hush money payments amounted to campaign-finance violations. Defense lawyers said they have not decided whether Trump will testify.

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Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

The rate of stolen guns from cars climbed nearly every year and spiked during the coronavirus pandemic along with a major surge in weapons purchases in the U.S., according to the report, which analyzes FBI data from 337 cities in 44 states and was provided to The Associated Press.

The stolen weapons have, in some cases, turned up at crime scenes. In July 2021, a gun taken from an unlocked car in Riverside, Florida, was used to kill a 27-year-old Coast Guard member as she tried to stop a car burglary in her neighborhood.

The alarming trend underscores the need for Americans to safely secure their firearms to prevent them from getting into the hands of dangerous people, said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steve Dettelbach, whose agency has separately found links between stolen guns and violent crimes.

“People don’t go to a mall and steal a firearm from a locked car to go hunting. Those guns are going straight to the street,” said Dettelbach, whose agency was not involved in the report. “They’re going to violent people who can’t pass a background check. They’re going to gangs. They’re going to drug dealers, and they’re going to hurt and kill the people who live in the next town, the next county or the next state.”

Nearly 122,000 guns were reported stolen in 2022, and just over half of those were from cars — most often when they were parked in driveways or outside people’s homes, the Everytown report found. That’s up from about one-quarter of all thefts in 2013, when homes were the leading spot for firearm thefts, the report says.

Stolen guns have also been linked to tragic accidents, such as when a 14-year-old boy in St. Petersburg, Florida, killed his 11-year-old brother after finding in an alley a gun that had been stolen from an unlocked car a few days before.

At least one firearm was stolen from a car every nine minutes on average in 2022, the most recent year for which data was available. That’s almost certainly an undercount, though, since there’s no federal law requiring people to report stolen guns and only one-third of states require a report.

“Every gun stolen from a car increases the chances it’ll be used in a violent crime,” said Sarah Burd-Sharp, senior director of research at Everytown, which advocates for gun control policies. It’s unclear what’s driving the trend. The report found higher theft rates in states with looser gun laws, which also tend to have higher rates of gun ownership.

The report analyzed crime data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, which includes details about what was stolen and where it came from. Guns stolen from cars bucked car theft trends overall — the rate of other things stolen from cars has dropped 11% over the last 10 years, even as the rate of gun thefts from cars grew 200%, Everytown found in its analysis of FBI data.

In Savannah, Georgia, city leaders last month passed an ordinance requiring people to secure firearms left inside cars after seeing more than 200 guns stolen from unlocked cars in a year. The measure is facing pushback from the state’s attorney general.

The ATF has separately said that theft is a significant source of guns that end up in the hands of criminals. More than 1 million guns were reported stolen between 2017 and 2021, the agency found in a sweeping report on crime guns released last year. And the vast majority of gun thefts are from individuals.

The agency is prohibited by law from publicly releasing detailed information about where stolen guns end up. The information can, however, be shared with police investigating a crime.

Miguel Eugenio Zapata, 37, was arrested in Chantilly, Virginia, on Thursday on a charge that he made false statements to law enforcement.

Zapata submitted at least seven anonymous tips to the FBI’s website claiming that seven government employees and contractors were involved in the Capitol riot, according to an FBI task force officer’s affidavit.

Court records don’t identify which government agency employed Zapata, but the affidavit says the Chantilly resident previously worked with all seven people named in his false tips to the FBI. One of them had hired Zapata and served as his program manager.

“None of the seven government employees and contractors were in Washington, D.C., on January 6 or attacked the Capitol,” the affidavit says.

The tips included similar language and were submitted from four IP addresses. The affidavit says Zapata used a company’s “web anonymizer” service to submit the tips.

The unidentified company’s logs showed that Zapata’s user account accessed the FBI’s tips site, conducted research on two of his targets, searched Google for the term “fbi mole,” and accessed the website of an Office of Inspector General for an intelligence agency, the affidavit says.

The document doesn’t identify a possible motive for making the false reports.

Zapata’s first tip, submitted on Feb. 10, 2021, says a former co-worker was trying to overthrow the U.S. government, espouses conspiracy theories and retaliates against colleagues who don’t share their political views, according to the affidavit.

Another tip that month accused an intelligence agency contractor of sharing classified information with far-right extremist groups, including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, “to foment terror and incite violence.” Zapata worked with that person from 2017 to 2019, the affidavit says.

The FBI confirmed that all seven people named in the tips were working in Virginia when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, disrupting the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.

An email seeking comment was sent to an attorney for Zapata.

After the Jan. 6 insurrection, the FBI received tens of thousands of tips from friends, relatives and co-workers of suspected rioters. More than 1,300 people have been charged with participating in the attack.