While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump railed against a federal judge's decision on Thursday that continues to block above-ground construction of a $400 million White House ballroom, allowing only below-ground work on a bunker and other "national security facilities" at the site.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to suspend its construction of a $400 million ballroom where it demolished the East Wing of the White House.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has flouted a court order blocking it from enforcing a policy limiting news reporters' access to the Defense Department's headquarters, a New York Times attorney asserted Monday in urging a federal judge to compel the government's compliance with the 10-day-old order.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge agreed Friday to block the Trump administration from enforcing a policy limiting news reporters' access to the Pentagon, ruling that key portions of the new rules are unlawful.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The office that enforces ethics standards for attorneys in the nation's capital has accused Justice Department official Ed Martin of professional misconduct for a threatening letter that he sent to Georgetown Law School's dean last year, when Martin was the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C.
The Trump administration's latest policy of deporting immigrants to "third countries" to which they have no ties is unlawful and must be set aside, a federal judge ruled Wednesday in a case that already reached the nation's highest court.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is appealing a judge's order that blocks him from punishing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot, for participating in a video that called on troops to resist unlawful orders, according to a court filing on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal authorities are barred from conducting an "unsupervised, wholesale search" of electronic devices that they seized from a Washington Post reporter's Virginia home while investigating allegations that a Pentagon contractor illegally leaked classified information to the journalist, a magistrate judge ruled Tuesday.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- The federal government is asking a court to "run roughshod" over the First Amendment after seizing electronic devices from a Washington Post reporter's Virginia home last month, an attorney for the newspaper argued Friday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge said Tuesday that he knows of no U.S. Supreme Court precedent to justify the Pentagon's censuring of a sitting U.S. senator who joined a videotaped plea for troops to resist unlawful orders from the Trump administration.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Pentagon contractor was indicted Thursday on charges that he illegally removed and shared classified national defense information with a journalist, a case that has drawn national attention after federal agents searched a reporter's home as part of the investigation.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Trump administration secretly reimposed a policy limiting Congress members' access to immigration detention facilities a day after a federal immigration officer fatally shot a woman in Minneapolis, attorneys for several congressional Democrats said Monday in asking a federal judge to intervene.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorneys for President Donald Trump urged a federal judge on Friday to rule that Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from civil claims that he instigated a mob's attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The police chief in the nation's capital pressured subordinates to manipulate department data to artificially lower the city's crime rates, according to a report by a Republican-led congressional committee.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department on Friday asked an appeals court to block a contempt investigation of the Trump administration for failing to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Virginia man on Friday made his first court appearance on charges that he planted a pair of pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national parties in Washington on the eve of a mob's attack on U.S. Capitol.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell accuses the Trump administration's top housing regulator of abusing his position to misuse private mortgage records belonging to Swalwell and other Democratic critics of the Republican president.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A court official has dismissed a Justice Department complaint that accused a federal judge of "hostile and egregious" misconduct during hearings for a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's ban on transgender troops serving in the military.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- National Public Radio will receive approximately $36 million in grant money to operate the nation's public radio interconnection system under the terms of a court settlement with the federal government's steward of funding for public broadcasting stations.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A jury began deliberating Wednesday in the Justice Department's assault case against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent, turning him into a symbol of resistance to President Donald Trump's law-enforcement surge in the nation's capital.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hurling a sandwich at a federal agent was an act of protest for Washington, D.C., resident Sean Charles Dunn. A jury must decide if it was also a federal crime.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hurling a sandwich at a federal agent was an act of protest for Washington, D.C., resident Sean Charles Dunn. A jury must decide if it was also a federal crime.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than 50 people have faced federal charges in Washington, D.C., since President Donald Trump's emergency law-and-order surge began last month. Already, prosecutors have dropped at least 11 of those cases, an unusually high collapse rate that judges say is wasting court resources.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A retired four-star U.S. Navy admiral was sentenced on Tuesday to six years in prison for his conviction on corruption charges that he agreed to exchange a military contract for a lucrative postretirement job.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A former Justice Department attorney accused of hurling a sandwich at a federal agent in the nation's capital -- a confrontation captured in a viral video -- pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to a misdemeanor assault charge.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Justice Department prosecutors are dropping their federal case against a woman who was charged with threatening to kill President Donald Trump -- the latest in a string of self-inflicted setbacks for prosecutors during President Donald Trump's law-enforcement surge in the nation's capital.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal magistrate judge on Thursday angrily accused Justice Department prosecutors of trampling on the civil rights of people arrested during President Donald Trump's law-enforcement surge in the nation's capital.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A grand jury refused to indict a man who was captured on video hurling a sandwich at a federal agent. Prosecutors dropped another case after complaints that police illegally searched a man's satchel and found a gun. Judges, too, have balked at keeping several defendants in jail, citing weak evidence and dubious charging decisions.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Citing "the most illegal search I have ever seen in my life," a magistrate judge is upbraiding the federal government for the way it has handled arrests in the District of Columbia this month and says the possible effects -- violations of rights and the potential for illicit detentions -- are not legally acceptable.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate has confirmed former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as the top federal prosecutor for the nation's capital, filling the post after President Donald Trump withdrew his controversial first pick, conservative activist Ed Martin Jr.
Michael Gordon prosecuted some of the most notorious members of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His latest case to make is proving that the Justice Department fired him because he was good at his job.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday questioned when the Trump administration will try to enforce its birthright citizenship executive order and asked if the government would attempt to deport U.S.-born children of people who are in the country illegally or temporarily before restrictions on birthright citizenship might take effect in late July.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a man who was deported to El Salvador roughly 30 minutes after the court suspended an order to remove him from the U.S.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Coming to court this week, a police officer's widow wanted to prove that a man assaulted her husband during a mob's attack on the U.S. Capitol and ultimately was responsible for her husband's suicide nine days later. A jury's verdict on Friday amounted to only a partial victory for Erin Smith in a lawsuit over her husband's...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two of the police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from a mob of Trump supporters filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking to compel Congress to follow one of its own laws and install a memorial to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A retired police officer was sentenced on Friday to serve 18 months behind bars for lying to authorities about leaking confidential information to the Proud Boys extremist group's former top leader, who was under investigation for burning a Black Lives Matter banner in the nation's capital.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge is weighing a request from the Trump administration to unseal records of the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. -- files that the civil rights leader's relatives want to keep under wraps in the national archives.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal magistrate judge on Wednesday ordered the pretrial detention of a man charged with stealing a purse from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while she dined at a restaurant under the protection of Secret Service agents.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A military veteran whose Capitol riot case was erased by a presidential proclamation was convicted Tuesday of charges that he illegally possessed guns and ammunition in his van when he was arrested near President Barack Obama's home in the nation's capital.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ed Martin Jr., who will be the Justice Department's new pardon attorney after President Donald Trump pulled his nomination to be the top federal prosecutor for Washington, said Tuesday that he plans to scrutinize pardons that former President Joe Biden issued on his way out of the White House.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Only a few Capitol riot defendants remained jailed after President Donald Trump issued mass pardons to supporters who joined a mob's attack on Jan. 6, 2021. A trial for one of them -- a military veteran charged with federal firearms offenses and a hoax bomb threat -- began Tuesday with testimony about his 2023 arrest near former...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is naming Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a former county prosecutor and elected judge, to be the top federal prosecutor for the nation's capital after abandoning his first pick for the job.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from implementing an executive order that a labor union says would cancel collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Trump administration's claim that it can't do anything to free Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison and return him to the U.S. "should be shocking," a federal appeals court said Thursday in a scathing ruling in favor of the Maryland man.
HYATTSVILLE, Md. (AP) -- A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to arrange for the return of a Maryland man to the United States after he was mistakenly deported to a notorious El Salvador prison.
HYATTSVILLE, Md. (AP) -- The wife of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador joined dozens of supporters at a rally before a court hearing Friday, where his lawyers will ask a federal judge to order the Trump administration to return him to the U.S.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump has pardoned a Virginia man whose sentence already was commuted for his convictions stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An appeals court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump can fire two board members of independent agencies handling labor issues from their respective posts in the federal government.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump's executive order banning transgender people from military service on Tuesday
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday declined to force the Trump administration to immediately reimburse dozens of public broadcasting stations for upgrades to the nation's emergency alert system.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government's steward of funding for public broadcasting stations sued the Trump administration on Thursday over its pause in grant payments for upgrading the nation's emergency alert system.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Georgetown Law School's dean on Thursday rebuffed an unusual warning from the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C., that his office won't hire the private school's students if it doesn't eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge agreed Tuesday to continue blocking President Donald Trump's administration from freezing grants and loans potentially totaling trillions of dollars.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge on Tuesday questioned President Donald Trump's motives for issuing an executive order that calls for banning transgender troops from serving in the U.S. military, describing a portion of the directive as "frankly ridiculous."
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge agreed Tuesday to temporarily block prison officials from transferring three incarcerated transgender women to men's facilities and terminating their access to hormone therapy under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge is expected to rule Tuesday on a request to temporarily block prison officials from transferring three incarcerated transgender women to men's facilities and terminating their access to hormone therapy under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Massachusetts woman who told police that she went to the U.S. Capitol to kill members of President Donald Trump's cabinet said she was influenced by Luigi Mangione, the man charged with fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, prosecutors said in a court filing.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump's mass pardons for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol won't change the "truth" about what happened in the nation's capital four years ago, two federal judges separately wrote Wednesday as they dismissed criminal cases stemming from the attack by a mob of Trump supporters.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump's mass pardons for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol "will not change the truth of what happened" in the nation's capital four years ago, a federal judge wrote Wednesday as she dismissed one of nearly 1,600 cases stemming from the attack by a mob of Trump supporters.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal judge who presided over the seditious conspiracy case against Oath Keepers members said Wednesday that it would be "frightening" if the anti-government group's founder, Stewart Rhodes, is pardoned for orchestrating a violent plot to keep Donald Trump in the White House after he lost the 2020 presidential election.