Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration’s characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.

The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Donald Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trump’s coalition have called for a thorough investigation of Pretti’s death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans’ Second Amendment stances.

If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his overall immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trump’s top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.

“The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Leavitt qualified that “when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”

That still marked a retreat from the administration’s previous messages about the shooting of Pretti. It came the same day the president dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had been in charge in Minneapolis.

Within hours of Pretti’s death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Pretti “wanted to … massacre law enforcement,” and Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and acted “violently” toward officers.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti “an assassin.”

Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been pepper sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed, too, and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon -– which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Pretti’s gun and walked away with it just before shots began.

Republican lawmakers are poised to grill former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday at a congressional hearing that’s expected to focus fresh attention on two criminal investigations that shadowed Donald Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.

Smith testified behind closed doors last month but returns to the House Judiciary Committee for a public hearing likely to divide along starkly partisan lines between Republican lawmakers looking to undermine the former Justice Department official and Democrats hoping to elicit new and damaging testimony about Trump’s conduct.

Smith will tell lawmakers that he stands behind his decision as special counsel to bring charges against Trump in separate cases accusing the Republican of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden and hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” Smith will say, according to a copy of his opening statement obtained by The Associated Press. “If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith will say.

The hearing is unfolding against the backdrop of an ongoing Trump administration retribution campaign targeting the investigators who scrutinized the Republican president. The Justice Department has fired lawyers and other employees who worked with Smith, and an independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees said last summer that it had opened an investigation into him.

“In my opinion, these people are the best of public servants, our country owes them a debt of gratitude, and we are all less safe because many of these experienced and dedicated law enforcement professionals have been fired,” Smith said of the terminated members of his team.

Smith was appointed in 2022 by Biden’s Justice Department to oversee investigations into Trump. Both investigations produced indictments against Trump, but the cases were abandoned by Smith and his team after Trump won back the White House because of longstanding Justice Department legal opinions that say sitting presidents cannot be indicted.

The hearing will be led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who told reporters on Wednesday that he regards Smith’s investigations as the “culmination of that whole effort to stop President Trump from getting to the White House.”

“Tomorrow he’ll be there in a public setting so the country can see that this was no different than all the other lawfare weaponization of government going after President Trump,” Jordan said, advancing a frequent talking point from Trump, who pleaded not guilty in both cases and denied wrongdoing.

At the private deposition last month, Smith vigorously rejected Republican suggestions that his investigation was motivated by politics or was meant to derail Trump’s presidential candidacy. He said the evidence placed Trump’s actions squarely at the heart of a criminal conspiracy to undo the election he lost to Biden as well as the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of his supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy,” Smith said. “These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit.”

Smith is also expected to face questions about his team’s analysis of phone records belonging to more than half a dozen Republican members of Congress who were in touch with the president on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021. The records contained data about the participants on the calls and how long they lasted but not their contents.

It is unlikely that Smith will share new information Thursday about his classified documents investigation. A report his team prepared on its findings remains sealed by order of a Trump-appointed judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, and Trump’s lawyers this week asked the court to permanently block its release.

A South Korean court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to five years in prison Friday in the first verdict from eight criminal trials over the martial law debacle that forced him out of office and other allegations.

Yoon was impeached, arrested and dismissed as president after his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024 triggered huge public protests calling for his ouster.

The most significant criminal charge against him alleges that his martial law enforcement amounted to a rebellion, An independent counsel has requested the death sentence over that charge, and the Seoul Central District Court will decide on that in a ruling on Feb. 19.

Yoon has maintained he didn’t intend to place the country under military rule for an extended period, saying his decree was only meant to inform the people about the danger of the liberal-controlled parliament obstructing his agenda. But investigators have viewed Yoon’s decree as an attempt to bolster and prolong his rule, charging him with rebellion, abuse of power and other criminal offenses.

In Friday’s case, the Seoul court sentenced Yoon for defying attempts to detain him and fabricating the martial law proclamation. He was also sentenced for sidestepping a legally mandated full Cabinet meeting, which deprived some Cabinet members who were not convened of their rights to deliberate on his decree.

Judge Baek Dae-hyun said in the televised ruling that imposing “a heavy punishment” was necessary because Yoon hasn’t shown remorse and has only repeated “hard-to-comprehend excuses.” The judge also said restoring legal systems damaged by Yoon’s action was necessary.

Yoon’s defense team said they will appeal the ruling, which they believe was “politicized” and reflected “the unilateral arguments by the independent counsel.” Yoon’s defense team argued the ruling “oversimplified the boundary between the exercise of the president’s constitutional powers and criminal liability.”

Park SungBae, a lawyer who specializes in criminal law, said there is little chance the court would decide Yoon should face the death penalty in the rebellion case. He said the court will likely issue a life sentence or a sentence of 30 years or more in prison.

South Korea has maintained a de facto moratorium on executions since 1997 and courts rarely hand down death sentences. Park said the court would take into account that Yoon’s decree didn’t cause casualties and didn’t last long, although Yoon hasn’t shown genuine remorse for his action.

South Korea has a history of pardoning former presidents who were jailed over diverse crimes in the name of promoting national unity. Those pardoned include strongman Chun Doo-hwan, who received the death penalty at a district court over his 1979 coup, the bloody 1980 crackdowns of pro-democracy protests that killed about 200 people, and other crimes.

Even if Yoon is spared the death penalty or life imprisonment at the rebellion trial, he may still face other prison sentences in the multiple smaller trials he faces.

Some observers say Yoon is likely retaining a defiant attitude in the ongoing trials to maintain his support base in the belief that he cannot avoid a lengthy sentence but could be pardoned in the future.

On the night of Dec. 3, 2024, Yoon abruptly declared martial law in a televised speech, saying he would eliminate “anti-state forces” and protect “the constitutional democratic order.” Yoon sent troops and police officers to encircle the National Assembly, but many apparently didn’t aggressively cordon off the area, allowing enough lawmakers to get into an assembly hall to vote down Yoon’s decree.

No major violence occurred, but Yoon’s decree caused the biggest political crisis in South Korea in decades and rattled its diplomacy and financial markets. For many, his decree, the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea, brought back harrowing memories of past dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, when military-backed leaders used martial law and emergency measures to deploy soldiers and tanks on the streets to suppress demonstrations.

After Yoon’s ouster, his liberal rival Lee Jae Myung became president via a snap election last June. After taking office, Lee appointed three independent counsels to look into allegations involving Yoon, his wife and associates.

Yoon’s other trials deal with charges like ordering drone flights over North Korea to deliberately inflame animosities to look for a pretext to declare martial law. Other charges accuse Yoon of manipulating the investigation into a marine’s drowning in 2023 and receiving free opinion surveys from an election broker in return for a political favor.

FBI agents searched a Washington Post reporter’s home on Wednesday as part of a leak investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of taking home classified information, the Justice Department said.

Hannah Natanson, who has been covering President Donald Trump’s transformation of the federal government, had a phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch seized in the search of her Virginia home, the Post reported. Natanson has reported extensively on the federal workforce and recently published a piece describing how she gained hundreds of new sources — leading one colleague to call her “the federal government whisperer.”

While classified documents investigations aren’t unusual, the search of a reporter’s home marks an escalation in the government’s efforts to crack down on leaks. The Post was told that Natanson and the newspaper are not targets of the probe, executive editor Matt Murray said in an email to colleagues.

“Nonetheless, this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work,” Murray wrote. “The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the search was done at the request of the Defense Department and that the journalist was “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”

“Leaking classified information puts America’s national security and the safety of our military heroes in serious jeopardy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X. “President Trump has zero tolerance for it and will continue to aggressively crack down on these illegal acts moving forward.”

The warrant says the search was related to an investigation into a system engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor in Maryland who authorities allege took home classified materials, the Post reported. The worker, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, was charged earlier this month with unlawful retention of national defense information, according to court papers. He has not been charged with sharing classified information, and he has not been accused in court papers with leaking.

Perez-Lugones, who held a top secret security clearance, is accused of printing classified and sensitive reports at work. In a search of his Maryland home and car this month, authorities found documents marked “SECRET,” including one in a lunchbox, according to court papers.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on Wednesday. The Washington Post said Wednesday that it was monitoring and reviewing the situation. An email seeking comment was sent to lawyers for Perez-Lugones, who is expected to appear in court on Thursday for a detention hearing.

A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself “the president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty Monday to federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power in Venezuela.

“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a courtroom interpreter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.”

Maduro’s court appearance in Manhattan, his first since he and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized from their Caracas home Saturday in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation, kicked off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state. She also pleaded not guilty.

The criminal case is unfolding against a broader diplomatic backdrop of an audacious U.S.-engineered regime change that President Donald Trump has said will enable his administration to “run” the South American country.

Maduro, 63, was brought to court under heavy security early Monday — flown by helicopter to Manhattan from Brooklyn, where he is jailed, and then driven to the courthouse in an armored vehicle. He and Flores were led into court just before noon. Both were in leg shackles and jail-issued garb, and both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it was translated into Spanish.

As Maduro left the courtroom, a man in the audience denounced him as an “illegitimate” president.

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person charged with a crime in the country — including the right to jury trial. But, given the circumstances of his arrest and the geopolitical stakes at play, he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.

That was made clear from the outset as Maduro, who took copious notes throughout the proceedings and wished Happy New Year to reporters as he entered the courtroom, repeatedly pressed his case that he had been unlawfully abducted.

“I am here kidnapped since Jan. 3, Saturday,” Maduro said, standing and leaning his tall frame toward a tabletop microphone. “I was captured at my home in Caracas.”

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old jurist who was appointed to the federal bench in 1998 by Bill Clinton, interrupted him, saying: “There will be a time and place to go into all of this.” Hellerstein added that Maduro’s lawyer could do so later.

“At this point in time, I only want to know one thing,” the judge said. “Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?”

“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros,” the defendant responded.

Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said he expects to contest the legality of his “military abduction.”

Pollack, a prominent Washington lawyer whose clients have included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said Maduro is “head of a sovereign state and is entitled to the privileges and immunities that go with that office.”

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega unsuccessfully tried the same immunity defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a much-disputed 2024 reelection.

Flores, who identified herself to the judge as “first lady of the Republic of Venezuela,” had bandages on her forehead and right temple. Her lawyer, Mark Donnelly, said she suffered “significant injuries” during her capture.

A 25-page indictment accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, the indictment said.

Outside the courthouse, police separated those protesting the U.S. military action from pro-intervention demonstrators. Inside the courtroom, as the proceeding wrapped up and Maduro prepared to leave, 33-year-old Pedro Rojas stood up and began speaking forcefully at him in Spanish.

Rojas said later that he had been imprisoned by the Venezuelan regime. As deputy U.S. marshals led Maduro from the courtroom, the deposed leader looked directly at the man and shot back in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”

Demands for Maduro’s return

Trump said Saturday the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily and reiterated Sunday night that “we’re in charge,” telling reporters “we’re going to run it, fix it.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to strike a more cautious tone, telling Sunday morning talk shows that the U.S. would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing ” oil quarantine.”

Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.

Trump has suggested that removing Maduro would enable more oil to flow out of Venezuela, but oil prices rose 1.7% on Monday. There are uncertainties about how fast oil production can be ramped up in Venezuela after years of neglect, as well as questions about governance and oversight of the sector.

Venezuela’s new interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S.