‘A deep moral rot’: Coast Guard leader grilled by senators at hearing on sexual assault cover-up
CNN
Senators say US Coast Guard leader has fostered a “culture of concealment,” withheld critical information from congressional investigators.
Senators blasted the head of the US Coast Guard at a contentious hearing on Tuesday, saying she has fostered a “culture of concealment,” withheld critical information from congressional investigators and failed to hold leaders and perpetrators accountable for serious misconduct. “Our investigation has shown a deep moral rot within the Coast Guard now,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, chair of the Homeland Security Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has been looking into the Coast Guard’s past mishandling of sexual assault cases. “One that prioritizes cronyism over accountability, silence over survivors.” Blumenthal and other lawmakers from the subcommittee told Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan that their investigation has found that sexual assault remains a “persistent and unacceptably prevalent” issue across the service, despite her initial assurances that it was a problem of the past. Nearly 40 whistleblowers have come forward to the subcommittee in recent months, lawmakers said. At the hearing, Fagan was questioned about what specific steps she was taking to ensure those who commit serious misconduct, as well as those who cover up their crimes, are removed from the service. “Are you aware that there are more survivors who leave the Coast Guard than perpetrators?” asked Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the Coast Guard Academy is based. “This problem is not one of the past. It is real and present … and the evidence is not in my voice, it is the voices and faces of the whistleblowers … they are in my view heroes in this story.” The hearing was sparked by CNN’s reporting on the results of a secret investigation — dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor, which was quietly closed and hidden from Congress and the public despite substantiating dozens of sexual assaults that had previously been mishandled at the Coast Guard’s prestigious academy. At a previous hearing led by the same subcommittee, four sexual assault victims testified about how they were silenced, retaliated against and left battling severe mental trauma while alleged perpetrators continued to thrive within the service.
The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.
As Chad Curry busily ferries his teenage children through the streets of their Chicago neighborhood of West Ridge, he eyes passing vehicles with a skepticism he didn’t have just a few months ago.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
The Army gynecologist described in a recent lawsuit as a “predator in uniform” is now being held in the Bell County Jail in Texas, “after apparently violating conditions of liberty imposed by his commander,” according to an Army spokesperson.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.