BISMARCK, N.D. —

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, a former legislator and the state's longest-serving attorney general, died at age 68, his office announced Friday, just hours after he was taken to a hospital.

Stenehjem died about 6:20 p.m. at a Bismarck hospital, his spokeswoman Liz Brocker said. She said she could not provide additional details, including his cause of death.

Stenehjem's brother, Allan, told KFYR-TV that Stenehjem had been taken to a hospital Friday morning after a medical call to his home.

Allan Stenehjem told KFYR that his brother had been dealing with an ulcer that may have become inflamed, but he later told the Bismarck Tribune that his brother had no known health issues that might have caused his hospitalization, and that his brother's condition was not related to COVID-19.

Stenehjem spent 24 years in the Legislature before being elected attorney general in 2000, then winning five more times. In that long career, he supported an overhaul of North Dakota's court system, laws against domestic violence, consumer protection measures and legislation to keep North Dakota's government meetings and records open to the public.

Gov. Doug Burgum said his fellow Republican "embodied public service" both as a legislator and as the longest-serving attorney general in the state.

"Like so many North Dakotans who treasured his friendship and admired him for his more than four decades of exceptional service to our state, we are absolutely devastated" by Stenehjem's death, Burgum said in a statement.

Stenehjem had announced last month he would not seek another term. He said he wanted to spend more time traveling and with his family. He echoed concerns from several other retiring politicians about an increase in vitriolic social media criticism of politicians.

Stenehjem told the Tribune at the time that fighting illegal drugs was a top challenge of his tenure. Among his proudest accomplishments, he cited getting a $30 million settlement following a diesel spill in Mandan in 1985, establishing a 24/7 sobriety program for people convicted of subsequent DUIs, establishing the state crime lab and improving the training of state crime bureau agents.

Stenehjem ran for governor in 2016 and was his party's choice to replace Jack Dalrymple, who didn't seek a second term. But Burgum, a wealthy former Microsoft executive, bucked party tradition to challenge him and won the primary easily, then went on to win the general election.

The intraparty battle between Burgum and Stenehjem featured a spirited and expensive debate about which candidate was better suited to revive a state economy that was slumping due to depressed oil and crop prices.

Burgum tried to paint Stenehjem as part of an establishment that had done a poor job at managing money and put the state's future in doubt. Stenehjem argued that North Dakota was well-positioned to handle the downturn in oil and farm prices and the state needed an experienced hand at the helm.

Stenehjem was born in Mohall. He attended high school in Bismarck and graduated from the University of North Dakota and received his law degree from the UND School of Law in 1977.

Survivors include his wife, Beth Bakke Stenehjem, and a son, Andrew. Funeral arrangements were pending at Bismarck Funeral Home.

WASHINGTON —

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has been having conversations with former Attorney General William Barr, the committee's chairman said Sunday.

"To be honest with you, we've had conversations with the former attorney general already," Rep. Bennie Thompson told Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" when asked if the committee would go to Barr. "We've talked to Department of Defense individuals. We are concerned that our military was part of this big lie on promoting that the election was false."

Related video above: Rep. Liz Cheney calls out fellow Republican and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for not cooperating with the Jan. 6 investigation

The Mississippi Democrat continued, "So, if you are using the military, to potentially seize these voting machines, even though it's a discussion, the public needs to know, we've never had that before."

Thompson's remarks came in response to a question regarding text of a draft executive order that had been presented to then-President Donald Trump in December of 2020 to have the secretary of defense seize voting machines in battleground states.

Barr, who was a staunch defender of Trump during his tenure at the Department of Justice and pushed the administration's "law and order" message, resigned in December 2020 after rebuking the then-president's false claims about widespread election fraud.

It is unclear who wrote the draft order, which is full of legal language asserting presidential powers to seize the election equipment and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

The draft, which was published by Politico last week, also said the defense secretary could identify National Guard units to be federalized to help the effort. The document also appears to be one that Trump fought to block from the Jan. 6 select committee, which is investigating his attempts to subvert the 2020 election.

It was dated Dec. 16, 2020, according to the document published by Politico, which is two days after the Electoral College met in state capitals to formalize President Joe Biden's victory, dealing a huge blow to Trump's attempts to overturn the election.

Thompson also said he wasn't aware of an operational plan but just the draft itself.

"We do know that a potential person was identified to become the attorney general of the United States, who would communicate with certain states that the election on their situation had been fraudulent and not to produce certified documents," he said.

NEW YORK —

The New York attorney general’s office late Tuesday told a court its investigators have uncovered evidence that former President Donald Trump’s company used “fraudulent or misleading” asset valuations to get loans and tax benefits.

The court filing said state authorities haven’t yet decided whether to bring a lawsuit in connection with the allegations, but that investigators need to question Trump and his two eldest children as part of the probe.

The Trump Organization issued a statement Wednesday calling the civil investigation “baseless” and politically motivated.

Video above: NY attorney general seeks Trump's testimony

In the court documents, Attorney General Letitia James’ office gave its most detailed accounting yet of a long-running investigation of allegations that Trump's company exaggerated the value of assets to get favorable loan terms, or misstated what land was worth to slash its tax burden.

The Trump Organization, it said, had overstated the value of land donations made in New York and California on paperwork submitted to the IRS to justify several million dollars in tax deductions.

When giving estimates of Trump's wealth, the company misreported the size of his Manhattan penthouse, saying it was nearly three times its actual size — a difference in value of about $200 million, James' office said, citing deposition testimony from Trump's longtime financial chief Allen Weisselberg, who was charged last year with tax fraud in a parallel criminal investigation.

James’ office detailed its findings in a court motion seeking to force Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. to comply with subpoenas seeking their testimony.

Investigators, the court papers said, had “developed significant additional evidence indicating that the Trump Organization used fraudulent or misleading asset valuations to obtain a host of economic benefits, including loans, insurance coverage, and tax deductions."

In its statement, the Trump Organization said “the only one misleading the public is Letitia James.”

“She defrauded New Yorkers by basing her entire candidacy on a promise to get Trump at all costs without having seen a shred of evidence and in violation of every conceivable ethical rule,” they wrote. “Three years later she is now faced with the stark reality that she has no case.”

Trump's legal team has sought to block the subpoenas, calling them “an unprecedented and unconstitutional maneuver." They say James is improperly attempting to obtain testimony that could be used in the parallel criminal investigation, being overseen by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Trump sued James in federal court last month, seeking to put an end to her investigation. In the suit, his lawyers claimed the attorney general, a Democrat, had violated the Republican’s constitutional rights in a “thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates.”

In the past, the Republican ex-president has decried James’ investigation and Bragg's probe as part of a “witch hunt."

In a statement late Tuesday, James office said that it hasn't decided whether to pursue legal action, but said the evidence gathered so far shows the investigation should proceed unimpeded.

“For more than two years, the Trump Organization has used delay tactics and litigation in an attempt to thwart a legitimate investigation into its financial dealings,” James said. “Thus far in our investigation, we have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit."

Although James’ civil investigation is separate from the criminal investigation, her office has been involved in both, dispatching several lawyers to work side-by-side with prosecutors from the Manhattan D.A.’s office.

James’ office said that under state law, it could seek ”a broad range of remedies” against companies found to have committed commercial fraud, “including revoking a license to conduct business within the state, moving to have an officer or director removed from board of directors, and restitution and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains.”

In the court papers, James’ office said evidence shows that Trump’s company:

— Listed his Seven Springs estate north of New York City as being worth $291 million, based on the dubious assumption that it could reap $161 million from building nine luxury homes.

— Added a “brand premium” of 15% to 30% to the value of some properties because they carried the Trump name, despite financial statements explicitly stating they didn't incorporate brand value.

— Inflated the value of a suburban New York golf club by millions of dollars by counting fees for memberships that weren’t sold or were never paid.

— Valued a Park Avenue condominium tower at $350 million, based on proceeds it could reap from unsold units, even though many of those apartments were likely to sell for less because they were covered by rent stabilization laws.

— Valued an apartment being rented to Ivanka Trump at as high as $25 million, even though she had an option to buy it for $8.5 million.

— Said in documents that its stake in an office building, 40 Wall Street, was worth $525 million to $602 million — between two to three times the estimate reached by appraisers working for the lender Capital One.

One judge has previously sided with James on an earlier request to question another Trump son, Trump Organization executive Eric Trump, who ultimately sat for a deposition but declined to answer some questions.

Last year, the Manhattan district attorney brought tax fraud charges against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg, its longtime chief financial officer.

Weisselberg pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he and the company evaded taxes on lucrative fringe benefits paid to executives.

Both investigations are at least partly related to allegations made in news reports and by Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets.

The disclosures about the attorney general's investigation came the same day as Trump ally Rudy Giuliani and other members of the legal team that had sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election were subpoenaed by a House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

DANVERS, Mass. —

School officials in Massachusetts have worked to shield from public view details of violent, degrading, racist and homophobic hazing rituals held in the high school hockey team's locker room.

One hockey player who was subjected to the abuse said after being interviewed by police and others from Danvers government he is still waiting for accountability.

"When you first walked in and saw this going on, what went through your mind?" WCVB's 5 Investigates asked him.

"I was very, very scared, very uncomfortable, and I wanted to leave very, very, very, very quickly," the player said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"Were you ever assaulted?" we asked.

"Yes," he replied.

The alleged assaults and other hazing took place, he said, during rituals that took place inside the hockey team's locker room. The rituals were explicitly homophobic, starkly racist, and sometimes violent, according to his account, and always featured abuse of young players by upperclassmen.

For example: every Tuesday was "Gay Tuesday," when the lights were turned off in the locker room and everyone had to take off their clothes.

The player said he was "terrified" by it. "Very, very, very much so. Not what I expected when I signed up to play for the team," he said.

"Was there actually touching of genitals?" 5 Investigates asked.

"Yes," he replied. "There was."

"Intentionally?" we asked.

"Yes, I mean, as intentional as can happen with the lights off," he replied.

"Why was it called gay Tuesday?" Anderson asked.

"The main concept was they were mocking gay people," he said.

And then there were what the team called "Hard-R Fridays."

Players who refused to say a racial slur with a hard "R" were physically beaten, sometimes with a red sex toy, the player said.

"On Friday, I would refuse to say it and get held down by multiple of my friends and beaten," he said. "And then I'd walk around with shame, being heckled for the rest of the night."

He continued, "There were moments where I saw other people get beat and did not move. I didn't do anything. I didn't help them because I was so scared of what it would be like for it to happen to me again that I didn't lash out."

He said the culture of bullying transformed his teammates, who realized if they followed the orders, the beating would stop.

"And then slowly but surely, throughout the weeks, they became the ones who would be holding people down," he said.

At least once, he said, an assistant coach walked in on one of the team's rituals.

"He turned the lights on. Saw everyone naked. One of the captains in the middle of the room, he asked him what's going on and the player said, 'Coach, it's Gay Tuesday,' And the coach says, 'I don't want to know.' He turns the lights back off and he leaves, closes the door," the player said.

The player was interviewed by school and police officials as well as an independent investigator hired by the town. His statements were witnessed by other adults.

There were ultimately three separate investigations into hazing, bullying, homophobia and racism. But those reports, provided by the town and police department to 5 Investigates, though, are almost entirely blacked out, and therefore unreadable and useless to the public.

"It's really astonishing that they felt that the best option was to just try to cover it up and it'll go away," the player said. "But it won't go away."

According to an unredacted portion of the police report, police found no evidence of criminal misconduct.

The head hockey coach, Steve Baldassare, who was also the school resource police officer, was placed on leave in January of 2021, then reinstated in February. In July, he resigned. He and the assistant coaches denied any knowledge of misconduct to investigators. Baldassare did not return our call.

The independent investigation concluded, "there was a culture of bullying" and "misconduct on the team," but all description of that misconduct was redacted.

The Danvers school superintendent said the school department "addressed personnel and student discipline" and "implemented training."

But the town still refuses to tell the community the details of the allegations.

"I feel like the people who should be accountable are not accountable. That's not the kids," the player said. He said he does not blame the players. He actually said he sees them as victims.

"The adults are the people who have been given the power, they're the ones who are paid to monitor this type of thing," he said. "Their whole job is to make sure that these kids act a certain way, and they really dropped the ball."

After his police interview, the player said the same officer returned to his home unannounced and asked if he wanted to file criminal charges. He told him no, he said, because he viewed the players as victims.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A petition seeking the impeachment of Kentucky’s attorney general was filed Friday by three grand jurors who criticized his handling of an investigation into Breonna Taylor’s shooting death by police.

The petition’s allegations against Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron include breach of public trust and failure to comply with his duties as the state’s chief law enforcement official. They do not accuse him of any crimes, but impeachment is not considered a criminal proceeding.

The petition is the latest in a flurry of tit-for-tat efforts to impeach Kentucky elected officials. Four Kentucky citizens recently petitioned the state House of Representatives to impeach Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear for executive actions he took in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and the matter was assigned to a House committee for review.

Beshear’s actions had been upheld by the state Supreme Court, and the governor says there are “zero grounds” for his removal.

Kentucky law requires impeachment petitions to be referred to a House committee but does not require any further action. Under the state’s constitution, the House possesses the sole power of impeachment. An impeachment trial is held in the state Senate, with a conviction requiring the support of two-thirds of the senators present.

The petition against Cameron, signed by a handful of Kentuckians, was submitted to the overwhelmingly Republican Kentucky House. Cameron is a close ally of U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and is seen as a rising GOP star.

Cameron’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The petition’s signers include an attorney who did so on behalf of three grand jurors who have accused Cameron of misleading the public when describing the grand jury proceedings.

Cameron was the special prosecutor who investigated the actions of the Louisville police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Taylor during a warrant search last year. The investigation culminated in a grand jury ruling that did not charge any of the officers in the Black woman’s death. The shooting sparked protests in Louisville alongside national protests over racial injustice and police misconduct.

The petition is the latest seeking the ouster of prominent Kentucky officeholders. Another petition is seeking the ouster of Republican state Rep. Robert Goforth for an incident in which he allegedly tried to strangle a woman. Goforth, a former gubernatorial candidate, pleaded not guilty after his indictment on charges of strangulation and assault. The case is pending.

The petition against Cameron revives allegations raised anonymously by the three grand jurors. It accuses him of deceiving the public regarding his handling of the investigation into Taylor’s death.

Cameron had said in a widely viewed news conference that the grand jury had agreed that the officers who shot Taylor were justified because they were fired at by Taylor’s boyfriend. Officers fired 32 rounds into the home, five of which struck Taylor.

The three grand jurors said they did not agree and wanted to explore criminal charges, but said they were denied because Cameron’s prosecutors believed none of those charges would stick.

The impeachment petition was signed on their behalf by their Louisville attorney, Kevin Glogower.

“The grand jurors did not choose this battle,” Glogower said in a statement Friday. “This battle chose them. These are randomly selected citizens who were compelled to sit on a grand jury and were terribly misused by the most powerful law enforcement official in Kentucky.”

___

Lovan reported from Louisville, Kentucky.

Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to ERCOT and other power companies after millions of Texans were left in the dark amid winter weather.

The CIDs surround power outages, emergency plans, energy pricing and more.

“I’m using the full scope of my Constitutional powers to launch an investigation into ERCOT and other entities that grossly mishandled this week’s extreme winter weather. While Texans pulled together to get their communities through this disaster, they were largely left in the dark,” said Attorney General Paxton. “We will get to the bottom of this power failure and I will tirelessly pursue justice for Texans.”

Those who received a CID include:

• AEP Texas
• Calpine Corporation
• CenterPoint Energy Services
• ERCOT
• Griddy Energy
• La Frontera Holdings
• Luminant Generation Company
• NRG Texas Power
• Oncor Electric Delivery Company
• Panda Sherman Power
• Temple Generation I
• Texas-New Mexico Power Company

This article was written by Sydney Isenberg for KXXV.

WASHINGTON —

Video above: Trump administration carries out executions during transition period

The Justice Department is halting federal executions after a historic use of capital punishment by the Trump administration, which carried out 13 executions in six months.

Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Thursday night, saying he was imposing a moratorium on federal executions while the Justice Department conducts a review of its policies and procedures. He gave no timetable.

"The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely," Garland said. "That obligation has special force in capital cases."

Garland said the department would review the protocols put in place by former Attorney General William Barr. A federal lawsuit has been filed over the protocols — including the risk of pain and suffering associated with the use of pentobarbital, the drug used for lethal injection.

The decision puts executions on hold for now, but it doesn't end their use and keeps the door open for another administration to simply restart them. It also doesn't stop federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty; the Biden administration recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the Boston Marathon bomber's original death sentence.

President Joe Biden has said he opposes the death penalty and his team vowed that he would take action to stop its use while in office. But the issue is an uncomfortable one for Biden. As a then-proponent of the death penalty, Biden helped craft 1994 laws that added 60 federal crimes for which someone could be put to death, including several that did not cause death. He later conceded the laws disproportionately impacted Black people. Black people are also overrepresented on death rows across the United States.

Anti-death penalty advocates had hoped for a more definitive answer from the Biden administration. Support for the death penalty among Americans is at near-historic lows after peaking in the mid-1990s and steadily declining since, with most recent polls indicating support now hovers around 55%, according to the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Ruth Friedman, Director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, which represented some of the prisoners on death row, said Garland's action was a step in the right direction, but it's not enough. She called on Biden to commute the sentences.

"We know the federal death penalty system is marred by racial bias, arbitrariness, over-reaching, and grievous mistakes by defense lawyers and prosecutors that make it broken beyond repair," she said. There are 46 people still on federal death row.

The review is strikingly similar to one to one imposed during the Obama administration. In 2014, following a botched state execution in Oklahoma, President Barack Obama directed the Justice Department to conduct a broad review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs.

Barr announced the restarting of executions in 2019, saying the Obama-era review had been completed and clearing the way for executions to resume. He approved the new procedure for lethal injections that replaced the three-drug combination previously used in federal executions with one drug, pentobarbital. This is similar to the procedure used in several states, including Georgia, Missouri and Texas, but not all.

Donald Trump's Justice Department resumed federal executions in July, following a 17-year hiatus. No president in more than 120 years had overseen as many federal executions. The last inmate to be executed, Dustin Higgs, was put to death at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, less than a week before Trump left office.

They were carried out during a worsening coronavirus pandemic. Toward the end of the string of executions, 70% of death row inmates were sick with COVID-19, guards were ill and traveling prisons staff on the execution team had the virus. It's impossible to know precisely who introduced the infections and how they started to spread, in part because prisons officials didn't consistently do contact tracing and haven't been fully transparent about the number of cases. But an Associated Press analysis found the executions were likely a superspreader event.

There were major discrepancies in the way executioners who put the 13 inmates to death described the process of dying by lethal injection. They likened the process in official court papers to falling asleep and called gurneys "beds" and final breaths "snores."

But those tranquil accounts are at odds with reports by The Associated Press and other media witnesses of how prisoners' stomachs rolled, shook and shuddered as the pentobarbital took effect inside the U.S. penitentiary death chamber in Terre Haute. The AP witnessed every execution.

Secrecy surrounded all aspects of the executions. Courts relied on those carrying them out to volunteer information about glitches. None of the executioners mentioned any.

Lawyers argued that one of the men put to death last year, Wesley Purkey, suffered "extreme pain" as he received a dose of pentobarbital. The court papers were filed by another inmate, Keith Nelson, in an effort to halt or delay his execution. But it went forward.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has declined to explain how it obtained pentobarbital for the lethal injections under Trump. But states have resorted to other means as the drugs used in lethal injections have become increasingly hard to procure. Pharmaceutical companies in the 2000s began banning the use of their products for executions, saying they were meant to save lives, not take them.

EDGEWOOD, Ky. — Four former health care workers were sentenced to a year in prison after they pleaded guilty to restraining a senior in their care for 15 hours by placing heavy bags on them, Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced Thursday.

The case involved two certified nursing assistants, 28-year-old Ellyssa Klein and 31-year-old Sandra Nobbe, and two registered nurses, 74-year-old Gary Ray and 33-year-old Ashley Flower. All of them worked in the Behavioral Health Unit at St. Elizabeth Edgewood.

The four restrained an elderly patient by "arranging furniture around the patient's medical recliner chair" and placing two therapeutic water bags, weighing more than 35 pounds each, on top of the patient, Cameron said. The patient was restrained this way for 15 hours on July 1 and July 2, 2015.

On April 1, 2021, Klein, Nobbe and Ray pleaded guilty to reckless abuse or neglect of an adult, a Class A misdemeanor. The three were sentenced to one year in prison, conditionally discharged for two years. As a condition of their plea, the three had to forfeit their professional licenses and resolve an administrative case with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services stemming from the abuse.

They will also be placed on the Caregiver Misconduct Registry for the next seven years.

On May 20, Flower also pleaded guilty to reckless abuse or neglect of an adult and was sentenced to a year in prison, conditionally discharged for two years. Flower also had to forfeit her professional license.

“The most vulnerable members of our Kentucky family deserve protection, and we will not tolerate abuse or neglect by those charged with their care,” Cameron said in the announcement. “I appreciate the work of our Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control Unit to hold accountable those responsible for these terrible actions, and I urge anyone with information regarding suspected abuse to contact our office at 1-877-ABUSE TIP.”

The Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control prosecuted the case.

If you or someone you know is a victim of abuse, neglect or exploitation in a Kentucky Medicaid facility, contact the Attorney General’s elder abuse tip line at 1-877-228-7384.