🎧News Brief: Judge Grants Jack Smith’s New Request; Pennsylvania to Count 100,000 Outstanding Ballots; FBI Stopped Iranian Plot to Assassinate Trump

Special counsel Jack Smith at the Justice Department in Washington on June 9, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Good morning, and welcome to The Epoch Times News Brief for Saturday, Nov. 9, 2024. I’m Bill Thomas, we have some very impactful stories to share with you right now, and here’s what’s going on.

A judge grants a surprising request regarding a federal case against President-elect Donald Trump, a critical Senate race in a key battleground state hinges on tens of thousands of outstanding ballots, and the FBI stops a terrorist plot aimed at murdering the president-elect.

Also, the courts issue a consequential ruling regarding illegal immigrants, and dozens of monkeys are on the loose after escaping from a research facility, and we’ll tell you where.

We have a great deal to get to today, and we begin with this. Special counsel Jack Smith makes an important request in federal court regarding his case against President-elect Donald Trump, and here’s what we’ve learned.

Judge Grants Jack Smith’s New Request

Smith has just asked a judge to give him more time to look into the “unprecedented circumstances” of his election-related case against Trump, due to the results of Tuesday’s election and the president-elect’s upcoming inauguration.

In court papers filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Smith asked the court to postpone several pretrial deadlines, and he said that his team needs to “determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”

The papers say that next month, Smith will either file a report or he will let the court know about his office’s deliberations on the matter. They also say that Trump’s attorneys have not objected to the request.

So you know, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted Smith’s request within minutes, and she ordered the special counsel’s office to file a status report by Dec. 2.

By the way, it remains uncertain what will happen in a number of other pending legal cases against Trump, including a second federal case regarding allegations of mishandling classified documents and a criminal case brought against Trump and his associates in Fulton County, Georgia.

Meanwhile, later this month, the president-elect faces a sentencing date in New York for his conviction on 34 charges of falsifying business records.

Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice (DOJ) told The Epoch Times that the agency has a longstanding policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.

Additionally, several top Republicans, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, have asked both the DOJ as well as a number of local district attorneys to end their cases against Trump.

We continue now and in Pennsylvania, they’re still counting thousands of ballots, a very consequential election hangs in the balance, and here’s what we know.

Pennsylvania to Count 100,000 Outstanding Ballots

State officials say there are still at least 100,000 ballots left to be processed. They’re urging people to be patient while election workers do their work, and the outcome of a critical Senate race will not be determined until all votes are counted.

Earlier this week, The Associated Press projected that Republican businessman Dave McCormick unseated Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) in one of the most hotly contested Senate races in the country.

Right now, McCormick leads by over 30,000 votes. However, with so many ballots left to count, Casey said that he would not yet concede the election to his opponent.

Casey said on the social media platform X that he’s dedicated his life to making sure that the voices of the people of Pennsylvania are heard, and that it’s necessary to allow the election process to play out to ensure that everyone’s vote would be counted.

Earlier this week, following the AP projection, McCormick said that he was “honored and excited” to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate.

If his lead holds, the Republicans would have at least 53 seats in the upper chamber in the next Congress after spending four years in the minority, with a pair of races in Nevada and Arizona still up in the air.

As we continue, federal officials say they’ve put an end to a terrorist plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump, and here’s what we’ve learned.

FBI Stopped Iranian Plot to Assassinate Trump

Yesterday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed criminal charges against three men who were allegedly involved in a murder network orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the DOJ charged “an asset of the Iranian regime” who was ordered by the regime to assemble and direct “a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump.”

Garland added that “we will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security.”

The Justice Department said that law enforcement authorities arrested a pair of suspects in New York. However, a third suspect remains at large and is believed to be in Iran. He immigrated to the United States as a child, but he was deported around 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction.

The criminal complaint was filed in federal court in Manhattan, and it alleges that a couple of months ago, an unnamed official in the IRGC instructed the third suspect to put together a plan to observe and ultimately kill Trump.

When the suspect was unable to create a plan in the specified time, the IRGC official told him that Iran would pause its plan until after the presidential election, because the official believed that Trump would lose and it would be easier to assassinate him at that time.

The complaint says that the suspect then went to work building a network of accomplices, offering $100,000 to these people to locate and kill Trump, along with a number of other Americans, Israeli natives, and even an American journalist who is a prominent critic of the Iranian regime.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the IRGC has been “conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil and that simply won’t be tolerated.”

More legal news now, and a judge has just made a critical ruling regarding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), illegal immigrants, and American citizens, and here’s what you need to know.

Judge Strikes Down Citizenship Program for Illegal Immigrants

A federal judge in Texas struck down a DHS rule called “parole in place” that allows illegal immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens to temporarily remain in the country and eventually earn both a green card and U.S. citizenship.

That path to citizenship would necessitate having lived in the United States continuously for at least 10 years, having no disqualifying criminal history, and being married to a U.S. citizen by June 17.

The DHS said that the government was trying to keep families together by granting parole in place on a case-by-case basis. However, shortly after the rule was announced, 16 states, led by Texas, filed a lawsuit arguing that the program would encourage illegal immigration and increase financial burdens on states through health care and law enforcement costs.

A district court judge halted the rule in August, pending the outcome of the case, and earlier this week, he ruled that the DHS lacks the authority to grant the “parole in place” process to illegal immigrants.

The judge’s decision effectively ends the parole-in-place program.

So you know, it’s estimated that around half a million illegal immigrants who are in the United States and married to U.S. citizens would have been eligible to participate in the program.

Just one more story to share with you today, and this one is truly wild. Dozens of animals have escaped from a science lab, they’re on the loose in the woods, authorities are warning people to be very careful, and here’s what’s going on.

43 Monkeys Escape From Research Lab

Police say they’re still searching for a total of 43 monkeys, of the rhesus macaque breed, that recently escaped from the Alpha Genesis research facility in Yemassee, South Carolina, which is just about an hour and a half drive from Charleston.

The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office said that traps have been set up throughout the area, and that local police officers who are equipped with thermal imaging cameras are helping to locate the animals.

Police are strongly advising residents to keep their doors and windows secured to prevent the animals from entering their homes. They’re also urging anyone who spots one of the escaped animals to call 911 and not to engage with them.

So you know, Alpha Genesis breeds thousands of monkeys in the area for research purposes, it has one of the largest primate facilities in the United States, and the organization’s personnel are working with law enforcement to bring the monkeys home.

Last year, the company landed a lucrative federal contract to run a large monkey colony, with thousands on a nearby island. The organization has also been awarded significant grant money for research into a number of progressive brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

And now, it looks like our time is just about up for today, so we’re going to call it a wrap for the Saturday edition (the weekend edition) of The Epoch Times News Brief.

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And finally, as we do each and every day on this program, we wrap everything up with a very notable quote, and this one comes to us from the great journalist Diane Sawyer, who said: “Whatever you want in life, other people are going to want it too. Believe in yourself enough to accept the idea that you have an equal right to it.”

For all of us here at The Epoch Times News Brief, I’m Bill Thomas.

The Epoch Times News Brief program is written each day by David Ross.

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Enjoy the remainder of your day, and we’ll see you right back here next time for another edition of The Epoch Times News Brief.

For now, let’s all continue to watch out for one another, and have an absolutely superb day today. Bye for now.