Dick Cheney,
Powerful Vice President and Washington Insider,
Dies at 84

A former defense secretary and congressman, he held the nation’s No. 2 job
under President George W. Bush and was an architect of policies
in an era of war and economic change.







Dick Cheney, widely regarded as the most powerful vice president in American history,
who was George W. Bush’s running mate in two successful campaigns for the presidency
and his most influential White House adviser in an era of terrorism, war and economic
change, died on Monday. He was 84.

The cause was complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, according
to a statement by his family, who said he died in Northern Virginia. Mr. Cheney had homes
in McLean, Va., and Jackson, Wyo.

Plagued by coronary problems nearly all his adult life, Mr. Cheney had five heart attacks
from 1978 to 2010 and had worn a device to regulate his heartbeat since 2001. But his
health issues did not seem to impair his performance as vice president. In 2012,
three years after retiring, he underwent a successful heart transplant and had been
reasonably active since then.

Most recently, he startled Americans of both parties by announcing that he would vote
for Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, in the 2024 election, denouncing her
Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, as unfit for the Oval Office
and a grave threat to American democracy.

“We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution,”
Mr. Cheney said.

His announcement echoed that of an earlier one by his daughter Liz Cheney, the former
Republican representative from Wyoming, who broke with Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021,
attack on the Capitol by his followers. She, too, said she would vote for Ms. Harris.

As vice presidents go, Mr. Cheney was a singular figure: more powerful and less ambitious
for higher office than any vice president in modern times. A 10-year member of the
House of Representatives, the youngest White House chief of staff in history, the
defense secretary from 1989 to 1993, a confidant of presidents and lawmakers,
Mr. Cheney had impeccable credentials and contacts and was a master in the art
of getting things done, preferably without fanfare.

In many ways an inscrutable personality, he had no patience for small talk, almost
never spoke about himself and rarely gave interviews or held news conferences,
although he sometimes went on television to promote administration policies and
was often in the news. He preferred the backstage to the spotlight.

A consummate Washington insider, Mr. Cheney was an architect and executor of
President Bush’s major initiatives: deploying military power to advance, they said,
the cause of democracy abroad, championing free markets and deregulation at home,
and strengthening the powers of a presidency that, as both men saw it, had been
unjustifiably restrained by Congress and the courts in the aftermath of the Vietnam War
and the Watergate scandal.

As Mr. Bush’s most trusted and valued counselor, Mr. Cheney foraged at will over fields
of international and domestic policy. Like a super-cabinet official with an unlimited portfolio,
he used his authority to make the case for war, propose or kill legislation, recommend
Supreme Court candidates, tip the balance for a tax cut, promote the interests of allies
and parry opponents.


But it was the national security arena where he had the most profound impact. As defense
secretary, he helped engineer the Persian Gulf war that successfully evicted Iraqi invaders
from Kuwait in 1991, and then took a leading role a decade later in responding to the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. To prevent future attacks, he advocated aggressive
policies including warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention and brutal interrogation
tactics. And he pushed for the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003,
completing the unfinished job of his previous stint in power but leading to years of warfare.





Mr. Cheney being sworn in as defense secretary in March 1989.
Mr. Bush, left, valued his loyalty and discretion, as his son,
President George W. Bush, would years later




Early in Mr. Bush’s first term, many Democrats and even some fellow Republicans
wondered if Mr. Cheney might be the real power in a White House occupied by an
untested president whose qualifications had been questioned. While Mr. Bush
eventually asserted his authority and Mr. Cheney’s influence declined by the
second term, the image of him as a Machiavellian paterfamilias was never quite dispelled.

Even Mr. Bush worried about that perception, as he noted in his 2010 memoir,
“Decision Points.” He wrote that Mr. Cheney offered to withdraw from the ticket
for the 2004 presidential election, having become “the Darth Vader of the administration.”
Mr. Bush considered the offer, aware that accepting it “would be one way to demonstrate
that I was in charge.” But he ultimately kept his running mate, saying he valued the
vice president’s steadiness and friendship.

There was no question about Mr. Cheney’s steadiness.

On Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked airliners destroyed the World Trade Center in
New York and crashed into the Pentagon and into a Pennsylvania field, killing
nearly 3,000 people in the nation’s worst terrorist attack, it was Mr. Cheney
who took charge at the White House.





Mr. Cheney with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, on Sept. 11, 2001.
With the president traveling and sent to secure locations after the terrorist attacks
that morning, it was Mr. Cheney who took charge of the response from the White House.


Mr. Bush, who was visiting a school in Florida as the attacks took place, was shuttled
to secure locations in Louisiana and Nebraska. The vice president activated defense
measures across the nation, put American forces on alert around the world and ordered
the Capitol evacuated and government leaders removed to safety. From a
White House bunker, he maintained continuous contact with the president and other
officials and kept what many called a steady hand at the helm through the crisis.

In the aftermath, Mr. Cheney became the strategist behind a rapid expansion of
presidential power to fight terrorism and a forceful proponent of Mr. Bush’s doctrinal
warning to the world: that nations and regimes would be counted as for or against
the United States in the new age of terrorism, and that pre-emptive military action
would be taken against anyone who posed a threat to the security of the country.


A Wartime Leader



Six weeks after the attacks, Mr. Cheney helped engineer a swift, lopsided passage of the
USA Patriot Act, a sweeping law that greatly expanded the government’s powers of investigation,
surveillance and detention to fight terrorism. With the wounded nation still seething over
Sept. 11, public opposition to the law was muted, though civil libertarians warned that it
authorized the government to spy on ordinary Americans.

Later, it became clear that the act was being used to underpin secret courts, wiretaps
without warrants, the unlimited detention of suspects without hearings or charges, and
interrogation methods that skirted bans on torture in the Geneva Conventions. There were
wide protests and even constitutional challenges. But Mr. Cheney strongly defended the
law and its expansion of presidential power, and it remained in force.

Mr. Cheney also strongly influenced Mr. Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan to hunt for
Osama bin Laden, the Qaeda leader who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks, and to suppress
a fanatical Taliban regime that had sheltered terrorists and imposed a brutal theocracy
on the Afghan people






Mr. Cheney and Mr. Powell briefing the news media on troop movements during the
Persian Gulf war in August 1990.


And it was Mr. Cheney who was a dominant voice behind Mr. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in
2003 and then to justify the war. He insisted that Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, had ties
to Qaeda terrorists, possessed weapons of mass destruction and would threaten America and
its allies with nuclear blackmail.

What began as a one-month combat operation in Iraq gave way to a nearly nine-year occupation,
a struggle against Iraqi insurgents and internecine warfare that would claim the lives of nearly
4,500 American military personnel and, it is believed, at least 100,000 Iraqis (estimates vary);
cost more than $2 trillion, according to some reports; and leave a staggering trail of destruction
throughout the country.

As the war dragged on, the outlines of an enormous intelligence failure began to emerge.
The Sept. 11 commission, an independent panel given the task of investigating the 2001 attacks,
found no evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and the chief weapons inspector
of the Central Intelligence Agency, a White House appointee, concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles
of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.





Mr. Cheney, Mr. Powell and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf during a parade in
Manhattan in June 1991 to honor the troops who had fought in the Gulf War.



But these findings were released as Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney campaigned for re-election
in 2004, and the candidates conceded nothing. “To delay, defer, wait wasn’t an option,”
Mr. Cheney said. “The president did exactly the right thing.”

The Democratic candidates, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and his running mate,
Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, tried to press the matter, but the debate over
whether America had been led into war under false pretenses appeared to lose coherence
as a grinding election-year issue.

It came into focus again in Mr. Bush’s second term, however, as American patience with
the war started to wear thin amid a rising toll of American and Iraqi deaths, soaring costs
in the face of an economic downturn at home, persistent questions about the humiliation
and torture of enemy detainees, and the administration’s lack of a clear timetable and exit strategy.

By the midterm elections in 2006, with the war into its fourth year and no end in sight,
public frustration had reached a tipping point. Democrats, energized after years of passivity,
promised changes. Riding a wave of voter dissatisfaction, they swept to majorities in
both houses of Congress for the first time since 1994.

After the election, Mr. Bush dismissed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — Mr. Cheney’s
closest administration ally and a lightning rod for war critics — and named Robert M. Gates,
a former director of central intelligence, as his successor. The president also spoke of
cooperating with Congress and said he would consider proposals from a bipartisan
Iraq Study Group calling for gradual disengagement from Iraq.




American troops in action in Baghdad during the Iraq War in 2007.
Mr. Cheney had been a dominant voice behind Mr. Bush’s decision to
invade Iraq in 2003.



But it soon became clear that Mr. Bush intended to do neither. In early 2007, with
Mr. Cheney’s endorsement, the president sent tens of thousands of American troops
to Iraq, augmenting the 132,000 there, in a surge to help the government quell
violence around Baghdad. The House passed a nonbinding resolution against the plan,
to which Mr. Cheney declared, “It won’t stop us.”

It seemed nothing would. After years of carnage and sectarian violence that had
left Iraq on the brink of civil war, Mr. Cheney dismissed suggestions that the country
was on the verge of collapse. “The reality on the ground is that we’ve made major
progress,” he said. He argued that pulling out before Iraq was able to defend itself
would set off a blood bath between Sunni and Shiite sects.

By the spring of 2008, as the war entered its sixth year and American deaths surpassed
4,000, it was apparent that the conflict would be inherited by the next president.
Mr. Cheney said that the war had “lasted longer than I would have anticipated” but
that it had been “well worth the effort.”

Defending a Legacy
During the 2008 presidential race, the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama
of Illinois, castigated the administration over the Iraq war. The Republican nominee,
Senator John McCain of Arizona, who often used the shorthand “Al Qaeda” to refer to
a protean and increasingly divided enemy, warned against a premature troop withdrawal
from Iraq, but rarely mentioned Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney, distancing himself from a team
whose day was nearly over.

After an almost two-year campaign, Mr. Obama’s election presaged broad changes in
foreign and domestic policy. And the Iraq war was hardly the only leftover problem.

In Afghanistan, a resurgent Taliban posed new dangers. Bin Laden’s terrorist network
had been rebuilt in tribal strongholds of Pakistan. America’s alliances were frayed.
Disputes with Iran, North Korea, Russia and other potential adversaries lingered. And
the American and global economies were in deep distress, a result, many experts said,
of Republican policies.

A month before leaving office, Mr. Cheney struck an unapologetic tone in exit interviews,
defending the use of broad executive powers in waging war, in the treatment of terrorism
suspects and in domestic wiretapping, insisting that historians would ultimately look
favorably on the administration’s efforts to keep the nation safe.

On Jan. 20, 2009, Mr. Cheney, who had hurt his back moving boxes and attended the
inauguration at the Capitol in a wheelchair, was succeeded by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.
of Delaware. The two had been lobbing verbal grenades at each other for months.
Mr. Biden had called Mr. Cheney “probably the most dangerous vice president we’ve had
in American history” and vowed to “restore the balance” to the office. Mr. Cheney fired back:
“If he wants to diminish the office of vice president, that’s obviously his call.”





During Barack Obama’s presidency, Mr. Cheney, pictured here with the
Bidens in 2009, became the leading Republican critic of the new administration.



As Mr. Obama took over, Mr. Cheney broke with a longstanding practice of becoming inconspicuous
after leaving office. He contended that the new president was endangering the country by planning
to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, suspending military trials for terrorism
suspects and prohibiting interrogation techniques like waterboarding.

In a blitz of television appearances and speeches, Mr. Cheney soon emerged as the leading
Republican critic of the new administration. No one envisioned that he would run again for
elective office, but with his tenacity and insider’s knowledge of government and politics,
he seemed to be mounting more than a rear-guard defense of Bush policies; rather, the aim,
it appeared, was to influence the continuing national security debate as well as his own legacy.
By then, he had joined a parade of Bush associates working on memoirs.

His book “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir” (2011, with Liz Cheney) expressed
few regrets over the most controversial decisions of the Bush administration. While defending
its actions, the book sidestepped many important questions in discussing the debates that
had ensued over its policies, some reviewers said.

By 2014, five years after leaving the White House, Mr. Cheney’s command of public attention
seemed undiminished. Far from fading into the background of history, he thrust himself into
national debates with an onslaught of more broadcasts and published commentaries assailing
Mr. Obama’s responses to Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria. He also went to Capitol Hill
to urge Republicans to reject a rising isolationism in their party and embrace strong military
and foreign policies.

And when the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the C.I.A. of torturing terrorism
suspects during the Bush years, Mr. Cheney rose to defend the agency, arguing that its
interrogations had been legally authorized and “absolutely, totally justified.” He roundly
dismissed allegations that the C.I.A. had misled the White House about its methods or
inflated the value of the information obtained from prisoners.


Tensions in the White House

Several years before Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney left office, evidence that there had been no
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was overwhelming, and even Mr. Cheney abandoned
the claim. But debate over the administration’s justification for waging war never went away,
with the focus turning to the vice president’s office in the fall of 2005, when Mr. Cheney’s
chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

The charges were filed by a special prosecutor investigating the illegal disclosure of the
identity of a covert C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame Wilson, whose husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV,
a former diplomat, had gone to Niger to investigate a report that Iraq had bought
weapons-grade uranium there in 1999. Mr. Wilson had found no evidence to support the
story and had written an opinion article for The New York Times undermining the
administration’s rationale for invading Iraq.

The significance of the case lay not in the disclosure of an agent’s identity, but in what
seemed to lay behind it: a plan orchestrated by the White House to discredit Mr. Wilson
after his article was published by portraying his trip as a boondoggle that had been set
up by his wife.

Mr. Libby, who resigned, was not accused of leaking Ms. Wilson’s name but of lying to a grand jury 

and federal agents when he told them that he had learned her identity from a reporter. The indictment said 

he had actually learned it from administration officials. It cited Mr. Cheney in three passages and, while 

it did not accuse him of wrongdoing, strongly suggested that he had been behind the campaign to discredit Mr. Wilson.

At Mr. Libby’s trial in early 2007, his lawyers argued that he had not lied, but had only
misspoken. Neither Mr. Libby nor Mr. Cheney testified. But prosecution witnesses swore
that Mr. Libby had learned of Ms. Wilson’s identity from officials, and he was found guilty,
becoming the highest-ranking White House official convicted of a felony since the
Iran-contra scandals of the 1980s.

Mr. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison, a $250,000 fine and two years’ probation.
Mr. Bush commuted the prison term but did not grant a pardon, leaving the fine and probation
in place. The president portrayed the commutation as a compromise, but his action reignited
passions in the case. Critics called it a subversion of justice to keep Mr. Libby from disclosing
White House war planning. Mr. Libby’s supporters said his resignation and humiliation
had been punishment enough.

Here Are The Two Billionaires Supporting Zohran Mamdani








Two California billionaires, along with a few Hollywood types, have thrown their
support behind the likely next mayor of New York.
From left, clockwise:
Elizabeth Simons, Tom Preston-Werner, Jane Fonda, Cynthia Nixon.



Nov 01, 2025, 06:30am EDT


At least 26 billionaires have spent millions trying to stop Mamdani from becoming
New York’s next mayor on Tuesday. More surprising are the two billionaires who
stepped up to support the frontrunner.


ast week, Forbes combed through campaign finance records to find the billionaires
spending to stop Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who says
billionaires should not exist, from becoming mayor of America’s largest city. That
analysis identified 26 billionaires or billionaire families who had poured over $22 million
in total into the race trying to stop the New York assemblyman who’s leading in the polls.
(Since then, Mike Bloomberg has donated another $1.5 million to a group backing
Mamdani's rival, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo).

More surprising is the fact that, as of Oct. 27,
there are at least two billionaires pulling for Mamdani.

The first is Elizabeth Simons, the daughter of the late hedge fund billionaire
Jim Simons (d. 2024) who shares a $32.5 billion fortune with her stepmother
Marilyn and two siblings. She cut a check for $250,000 to New Yorkers For
Lower Costs, the main independent group backing Mamdani’s campaign, in August.

Elizabeth’s donation comes as part of a long family history of political giving.
Jim Simons, who started his career as a codebreaker and a math professor before
founding hedge fund Renaissance Technologies in 1982, was an investment
legend known for automated quantitative models and his exclusive Medallion Fund,
which averaged 30% returns annually after fees. He was worth an estimated
$31.4 billion when he died in April 2024—and was a major Democratic donor,
pumping over $100 million into federal races between 2015 and 2024.

An Atherton, California resident, Liz Simons earned degrees in journalism and
education from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University,
respectively, before going into teaching. She worked in Spanish-bilingual and
English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. She is now active in the
nonprofit world, serving on the boards of progressive groups like the Marshall Project
and the Foundation for a Just Society (the latter founded by her sister, Audrey)
and volunteering at The Beat Within (a magazine by and for incarcerated youth).
She also heads the Heising-Simons Foundation, which has given away almost
$1.3 billion since 2007 to groups working on climate change, education,
human rights and science. Like her father, Liz has signed the Giving Pledge,
committing to donating a majority of her fortune to charity.

Sending Mamdani some financial reinforcement isn’t the first time Liz has waded
into politics. A review of federal election records show more than $25 million in
contributions to Democrats since 2015, including about $10 million in the 2024 cycle.
She’s already sent almost $900,000 to the DCCC and DSCC, the official
Democratic campaign arms for House and Senate races, this year.

GitHub cofounder Tom Preston-Werner, 45, is Mamdani’s other billionaire backer;
in April, he sent New Yorkers For Lower Costs a check for $20,000. Preston-Werner,
also a Bay Area resident, started the software development platform in 2008
and became a billionaire after Microsoft bought the company for $7.5 billion in 2018;
his net worth is about $1 billion today, Forbes estimates. He now runs a venture
capital firm called Preston-Werner Ventures.

Unlike Simons, Preston-Werner has a more sparse political giving history. An analysis
of Federal Election Commission records suggests that he and his wife, Theresa,
have given about $2 million in federal races since 2019. On his blog, Preston-Werner,
also a Giving Pledge signatory, highlights additional donations in 2020 to Covid-19 relief
($1 million) and racial justice efforts ($250,000). Their foundation has distributed
$28 million since 2019, a review of tax records shows.
Neither donor replied to requests for comment.

The two billionaires’ contributions, which together represent about 10% of all the money
New Yorkers For Lower Costs has taken in so far, pit them against a posse of Mamdani’s
billionaire foes that includes Democratic stalwarts (Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings)
and Trump allies (Joe Gebbia, Steve Wynn) alike.

While Simons and Preston-Werner may be the only billionaires backing Mamdani,
he has attracted other notable donors. That includes Haroon and Idris Mokhtarzada,
the D.C.-area brothers who cofounded the Maryland-based personal finance company
RocketMoney and today serve as CEO and CTO, respectively. Haroon sent $99,000
and Idris donated $90,000. Another famous donor is Hollywood star Jane Fonda—who
used to be married to billionaire Ted Turner and lives in Georgia and donated $1,000.
City resident and actress Cynthia Nixon, who challenged Andrew Cuomo for New York’s
governorship in 2018, chipped in $5,000.


In terms of donations to their actual campaigns, which are capped at $2,100, Mamdani
has received fewer private funds than Cuomo—$4 million to Cuomo’s $5.9 million.
But he’s made up for it thanks to city matching funds that favor candidates who receive
smaller donations from more people. Mamdani’s campaign for mayor has attracted
over 40,000 donors with an average donation of $98, the lowest of any campaign.
Cuomo’s has brought in about 10,000 donors with an average contribution of $593,
the second-highest.

New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell
and Former NOPD Officer Jeffrey Vappie
Indicted for Fraud and Obstruction of Justice\
August 15, 2025

NEW ORLEANS –

Acting U.S. Attorney Michael M. Simpson announced
that LATOYA CANTRELL (“CANTRELL”), age 53, and
JEFFREY PAUL VAPPIE, II (“VAPPIE”), age 52, both residents of New Orleans,
were charged in a superseding indictment today on federal charges concerning 

wire fraud and obstruction of justice.

CANTRELL and VAPPIE were both charged in a conspiracy to commit
wire fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371,
as well as a conspiracy to obstruct justice, in violation of Title 18,
United States Code, Section 1512(k). VAPPIE is also charged with
twelve counts of wire fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code,
Section 1343, and CANTRELL is charged in six of those wire fraud
counts. VAPPIE is charged with making a false statement to the FBI,
in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001. CANTRELL
is charged in one count of obstruction of justice, in violation of Title 18,
United States Code, Section 1512©(1), and two counts of making
a false declaration before a grand jury, in violation of Title 18,
United States Code, Section 1623.

According to the allegations contained in the superseding indictment,
while CANTRELL was Mayor of New Orleans and VAPPIE was a
New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) officer and member of her
executive protection team, CANTRELL and VAPPIE developed a
personal, intimate relationship as early as October of 2021. From
that time until VAPPIE's retirement in June 2024, they embarked
on a scheme to defraud the City of New Orleans and NOPD by
exploiting VAPPIE's job and CANTRELL authority as Mayor to have
the City and NOPD pay VAPPIE's salary and expenses during times
VAPPIE claimed to be on duty but when he was actually engaged
in personal activities, often with CANTRELL. The allegations contained
in the superseding indictment describe the many steps that CANTRELL
and VAPPIE took to hide their scheme and perpetuate their continued
fraud, including using a secure messaging platform, WhatsApp, to
exchange over 15,000 messages, pictures, and audio clips in an
eight-month period; intimidating subordinates; harassing a citizen;
lying to colleagues and associates; deleting evidence; making
false statements to FBI agents; giving the grand jury an affidavit
signed under oath and penalty of perjury that contained numerous
false statements; and, ultimately, committing perjury before a
federal grand jury, all for the purpose of distracting and impeding
inquiries and investigations, including a federal grand jury investigation.

The superseding indictment alleges that CANTRELL and VAPPIE
perpetuated their scheme both in New Orleans and during out-of-state
trips. In both instances, VAPPIE's activities while claiming to be on
duty were conspicuously different than any other member of the
Executive Protection Unit. While in New Orleans, they treated a
city-owned apartment in the Pontalba as their personal, shared
residence and coordinated to spend time together there, engaging
in personal activities, while VAPPIE claimed to be on duty for EPU
and was paid to be doing his job. CANTRELL occasionally canceled
scheduled work events to facilitate personal and intimate interactions
with VAPPIE in the Pontalba apartment.

The superseding indictment also alleges that CANTRELL and VAPPIE
arranged for VAPPIE to accompany CANTRELL on at least 14 domestic
and international trips to maximize their time together and engage in
personal activities. In their private text messages, CANTRELL characterized
trips with VAPPIE as “times when we are truly alone” and what
“spoils me the most.” These trips included trips to San Francisco, which
VAPPIE and CANTRELL decided to extend an extra day so they could
visit a series of Napa Valley wineries. While VAPPIE was wine tasting,
on April 9, 2022, he claimed to work, and was paid for working, a 15-hour day.

In August 2022, CANTRELL said she would “make it happen” to have
VAPPIE accompany her on a 3-day trip to Washington, D.C., a trip that
they both agreed that they “needed.” Shortly after they retuned,
VAPPIE described the trip to CANTRELL as “another leg on our journey”
as he declared his love for her and their physical relationship. In total,
the City of New Orleans paid over $70,000 for VAPPIE's travel on these trips.

When asked about her reason for bringing members of the
Executive Protection Unit with her on out-of-state trips, a practice
CANTRELL began about five months after VAPPIE joined EPU,
she justified it as a “pivot” due to COVID and a matter of “safety.”
At the same time, however, she continued to take out-of-state trips
without protection. In fact, on the same day she gave one such statement,
she canceled a work trip to Miami, and traveled alone—by plane,
then bus, and then ferry—to the island of Martha’s Vineyard in
Massachusetts to spend time with VAPPIE while he attended a
conference paid for by the City of New Orleans related to his position
on the HANO Board of Commissioners—a position to which CANTRELL
appointed him a few months earlier. On other occasions, when VAPPIE
was unavailable to accompany CANTRELL on a trip, CANTRELL decided
not to take another member of Executive Protection.

The superseding indictment alleges that both VAPPIE and CANTRELL
were aware their conduct broke criminal laws. For instance,
in April 2022, an associate told CANTRELL explicitly in multiple text
messages that spending public funds and using public resources for
her personal relationship was a “felony.” When CANTRELL and VAPPIE
learned that the news media was investigating their time together in
the Pontalba, they agreed to “be straight and together.” Days after the
first news stories broke, in November 2022, VAPPIE conducted numerous
online searches for New Orleans-area attorneys who specialize in the
practice of criminal law, and he researched WhatsApp’s security features.
But the defendants’ wire fraud scheme nevertheless continued until VAPPIE's
retirement in June 2024.

As alleged in the superseding indictment, in July 2023, the grand jury
issued subpoenas to both VAPPIE and CANTRELL compelling the
production of records. The FBI also interviewed VAPPIE. During the
interview, VAPPIE lied about the nature and circumstances of his
relationship. In response to the subpoena, CANTRELL produced a
selection of responsive records, but none of the over 15,000 WhatsApp
messages she exchanged with VAPPIE. CANTRELL also created an
affidavit, sworn under oath, that she had activated a feature that
automatically deleted messages in 2021. CANTRELL submitted a
screen shot of her iPhone, showing that WhatsApp messages were
set to delete in 24 hours. In fact, CANTRELL did not turn on that
feature until December 26, 2022, roughly one month after the
news media began speculating on her conduct, VAPPIE conducted
online searches concerning WhatsApp and its security level,
and by which time several people had warned VAPPIE and CANTRELL
that their conduct was illegal. This “disappearing messages” feature,
moreover, only applied to new messages. During roughly this same
period, CANTRELL also manually deleted thousands of her prior
WhatsApp messages with VAPPIE. As alleged, even at the time
CANTRELL responded to the grand jury subpoena, she still possessed
more than 50 pictures, including screen shots of correspondence with
VAPPIE, that were responsive to the subpoena, but which she
nevertheless concealed from the grand jury.

The superseding indictment further alleges that VAPPIE and CANTRELL
continued their pattern of obstruction through the rest of 2023 and 2024.
This included improperly pressuring the Interim Superintendent of NOPD
to overrule findings of an internal investigation into VAPPIE's conduct.
When the Interim Superintendent did not heed that directive, CANTRELL
ordered the Interim Superintendent to nevertheless reassign VAPPIE
back to her protection detail. Months later, in a meeting VAPPIE attended,
CANTRELL informed the Interim Superintendent that the
Interim Superintendent would be replaced. Similarly, when a
private citizen took pictures of CANTRELL and VAPPIE together in
public, dining and consuming alcohol al fresco while VAPPIE reported
to be on duty, CANTRELL obtained non-public information about the
citizen, filed a police report, and sought a restraining order against the citizen.

Acting U.S. Attorney Simpson reiterated that an indictment is
merely a charge and that the guilt of the defendants must be
proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

If they are convicted of the conspiracy to commit wire fraud,
CANTRELL and VAPPIE each faces up to five years in prison and
up to three years of supervised release. For each count of wire fraud,
CANTRELL and VAPPIE each faces up to twenty years in prison and
up to three years of supervised release. For the conspiracy to
obstruct justice, CANTRELL and VAPPIE each faces up to twenty years
in prison and up to three years of supervised release. For the false
statement to the FBI, VAPPIE faces up to five years in prison and
up to three years of supervised release. For each obstruction of
justice count, CANTRELL faces up to twenty years in prison and
up to three years of supervised release. For each count of making
false statements to a grand jury, CANTRELL faces up to five years
in prison and up to three years of supervised release. For each count,
both defendants face a fine of up to $250,000 and a $100 mandatory
special assessment fee.

Acting U.S. Attorney Simpson praised the work of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation in investigating this matter and expressed appreciation
for the support provided by the Department of Justice’s Computer Crimes
and Intellectual Properties Section Cybercrime Lab, the City of
New Orleans Office of Inspector General, and the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
Assistant United States Attorneys Jordan Ginsberg, Chief of the
Public Integrity Unit, and Nicholas D. Moses, of the Financial Crimes Unit
and Health Care Fraud Coordinator, are in charge of the prosecution.

Federal grand jury indicts former FBI director
for false statements and obstruction in congressional testimony

Thursday, September 25, 2025

ALEXANDRIA, Va. –

Lindsey Halligan, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia,
announced today that a federal grand jury returned an indictment
charging former FBI Director James Comey with making a false
statement and obstruction relating to his oral testimony before
the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020.

“The charges as alleged in this case represent a breach of the
public trust at an extraordinary level,” said U.S. Attorney Halligan.
“The balance of power is a bedrock principal of our democracy,
and it relies upon accountability and a forthright presentation of
facts from executive leadership to congressional oversight. Any
intent to avoid, evade, prevent, or obstruct compliance is a
violation of professional responsibility and, most importantly, the law.”

If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison. Actual
sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the
maximum penalties. A federal district court judge will determine
any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines
and other statutory factors.






A copy of this press release is located on the
website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the
Eastern District of Virginia. Related court
documents and information are located on
the website of the District Court for the
Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER
by searching for Case No. 1:25-cr-272.



An indictment is merely an accusation.
The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Navy Officer Says Underwater UFOs Are Legitimate Threats.
The Evidence Is Hard to Ignore.

Some of the most credible encounters with nonhuman aircraft have happened
over the world’s oceans. Now, the witnesses want answers.

By Stav Dimitropoulos
Published: Aug 25, 2025 9:30 AM EDT








In mid-2014, during training flights off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, F/A-18 pilot and
U.S. Navy Lieutenant Ryan Graves began to notice something strange. The radar returns looked
off—phantom blips moving with unfathomable speed and precision. At first he dismissed it as a
glitch. But then the anomalies returned, recorded by the fighter jets’ sophisticated sensors. They
would hover in place—and then dart away at supersonic speeds. They were recorded from the
ocean’s surface to 40,000 feet.

“Sometimes stationary—0.0 Mach. Other times 250 to 350 knots . . ..
Sometimes even supersonic—1.1 to 1.2 Mach. All altitudes.
And always over the ocean,” Graves says.

After appearing only as glitches on the jets’ radar, the objects on one occasion finally came into
view. Graves reported seeing a dark gray or black cube inside a clear sphere, between five and
15 feet in diameter, coming within 50 feet of their jets. “That was the turning point,” Graves says.
“We started treating it as a safety issue.”

Over the next year, Graves’s squadron recorded sightings of unidentified objects almost daily.
Sometimes the objects flew in loose formations. Other times they traveled alone. They had no
exhaust, no visible propulsion, no wings. Sometimes the object would rotate in place; others
vanished when approached. As it turned out, pilots stationed off the West Coast—on missions
aboard the USS Nimitz, the USS Princeton, and other carriers—had been experiencing similar
things for years.

Some of these craft—now classified as UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena)—appeared to
be capable of transmedium travel, meaning they are able to move from air to sea without slowing,
splashing, or emitting heat. They challenged every assumption held by aerospace engineers and
radar operators.

Graves doesn’t claim to know what the objects were. But one thing was clear.
“This wasn’t business as usual,” he says. “There was a serious issue at play. It wasn’t just one
rogue object. It wasn’t just us on the East Coast. It wasn’t just my squadron. It was a pattern.
This was global.”

Since at least the 1950s, military sources have reported strange objects plunging into the
ocean—what they call USOs (unidentified submerged objects). These phenomena exhibit
characteristics that conflict with our understanding of physics and maritime navigation. As
radar and similar technologies have advanced, so have the number of sightings.




Ryan Graves, executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace;
David Grusch, former representative of the National Reconnaissance
Office to the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force
(now the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office);
and retired Navy Commander David Fravor appear at a
House Oversight Committee hearing on UAPs in 2023.




Today Graves is one of the most vocal advocates for UAP transparency. Now retired from
the military, he’s the founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, the largest UAP-focused
pilot safety initiative in the world, and works with former Pentagon and naval officials to
push for greater transparency. He doesn’t claim that these craft are alien, but he’s certain
that they aren’t using known human tech. “Where that leaves us opens up options—extraterrestrial
visitors, time travelers, breakaway civilizations . . . things that challenge the status quo and
aren’t easily accepted at face value,” he says.

Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, PhD, an oceanographer, was one of the first to view footage from
the UAP incidents in 2015 involving fighter jets attached to the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which
at the time was conducting training exercises off the coast of Florida. Two videos captured by
Navy fighter jets that were made public in 2020 show strange craft flying at incredible speeds
with no visible means of propulsion, sometimes rotating in midair. “I knew then that what I saw
was not our technology. We don’t test experimental aircraft in training ranges—it’s too dangerous—
and I had access to everything classified. No nation has craft that can move like that,” he says.

Gallaudet, now retired from the Navy and currently the CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, is pushing
for the U.S. government to treat these phenomena as a “national research priority.” Despite some
public disclosures, many records remain classified, buried within defense contractor vaults or
shielded by national security exemptions. If even part of what’s been reported is true, then the
encounters off Virginia, California, and elsewhere could be the opening chapter in a much deeper
mystery—one that spans oceans, navies, and continents.

This spring, Graves and Gallaudet briefed officials in Washington, D.C., on unidentified submerged
objects. “We’re at a unique moment in history,” Graves says. “People have access to tools that can
reveal things. The momentum is building.”

That momentum has already begun reshaping policy. In 2023, Congress passed the
UAP Disclosure Act, legislation requiring federal agencies to collect, catalog, and disclose records
related to recovered nonhuman craft and biologics. For the first time, U.S. law openly acknowledged
the potential existence of off-world or nonhuman intelligence, and even hinted at craft retrieval and
reverse engineering programs.

Those newly released records contain a trove of details on previously classified encounters with
multiple transmedium UAPs. None definitively prove that otherworldly beings are hiding in or above
our oceans, but they do raise questions that neither our military nor scientific experts can explain.

“The possibility that they exist underwater is very real,” Gallaudet says. “They could come from
another galaxy, if they’ve conquered the engineering challenge of that,” he says. “Or why not—maybe
they lived here for a long time, before we even evolved, and sought safety from the Earth’s atmospheric
and geologic cataclysms by creating a habitat or place to live beneath the seafloor. . .. That’s one hypothesis.”

The following four incidents have provided investigators with the most compelling—and perplexing—evidence
so far of transmedium encounters with what experts like Gallaudet believe could be nonhuman in origin.





In 2004, F/A-18 Hornet pilots assigned to the USS Nimitz captured images
of a UAP using their jet’s Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared
(ATFLIR) system.




USS Nimitz, 2004

In November 2004, several U.S. Navy pilots assigned to the USS Nimitz encountered a Tic Tac–shaped
UAP darting and dashing over the Pacific. According to reports that followed, the object lacked visible
control surfaces and heat signatures that would be typical of jet aircraft or rockets. It never made a
sonic boom, although it appeared to be traveling faster than the speed of sound.

The incident began when the USS Princeton, a guided-missile cruiser escorting the Nimitz off the coast
of San Diego, picked up strange radar contacts. The objects appeared at 80,000 feet, and then dropped
to sea level in less than a second. F/A-18 Commander David Fravor and Lieutenant Commander Jim Slaight
scrambled to intercept the object. Each man claims to have seen a smooth, white oblong object around
30 to 40 feet long, with no wings, no windows, no markings. It hung in the air just over the sea.

As Fravor circled downward, the object suddenly shot away, vanishing in seconds. “It just disappeared.
Like a bullet out of a gun,” Fravor told Fox News.

The strike group dispatched a second flight. This time the object was captured on an infrared camera showing
a white speck flying against the wind, rotating and maneuvering in ways no known aircraft can.




An infrared sensor onboard a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft captured
footage of a UAP over Rafael Hernández Airport near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.





Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, 2013


One of the most hotly debated encounters of an unidentified submerged
object came in April 2013, when an infrared surveillance camera operated by U.S. Customs and
Border Protection captured something extraordinary over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. A small spherical
object flew inland from the ocean, crossed the airport, and then returned to sea—where it maneuvered
in ways that appeared to defy physics.

The three-minute video, published by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, has become a key piece
of evidence suggesting the possibility of transmedium travel. It shows the object entering the water
without slowing down—no splash, no wake, no disruption. Seconds later it resurfaces, splits in two,
and then submerges again. Any object passing between two mediums should generate drag or
turbulence or, at the very least, a splash, according to the laws of hydrodynamics. But this one
behaved as if those laws didn’t apply.

“It’s not that they break the laws,” Gallaudet says. “It’s that they demonstrate engineering capabilities
we haven’t yet developed. We can’t build anything that can do that today.”

“I’ve spoken with the pilots who saw it,” he adds. “The near-instantaneous acceleration of that craft is
something we just can’t engineer.”





A pilot of a U.S. Navy CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter, like the one shown above,
reportedly encounted a UAP while flying off the coast of Puerto Rico.




Caribbean Sea, Unspecified date

In the 1990s, a Navy CH-53 Sea Stallion pilot was flying off the coast of Puerto Rico when he saw something
he couldn’t explain. His crew, on a routine mission to retrieve a BQM target drone that had previously been
dropped into the ocean, had sent a diver into the water to connect the drone to the helicopter’s hoist system.
But just before the helo was about to lift the 20-foot-long drone out of the sea, something pulled it violently
downward. The pilot, whose name has not been disclosed, would later report that the object was a large,
dark mass unlike any submarine or marine animal he’d ever seen.

After F/A-18 Commander David Fravor went public with the previous incident he witnessed flying off the
USS Nimitz, he says the Sea Stallion pilot contacted him to relay the story. Fravor then shared details on
Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2019.

“The helo drops a swimmer in the water, he hooks the whole thing up, and they fly back,” Fravor said.
“The first time they were out and they were going to pick up a BQM, he’s sitting in the front—in the CH-53
you can see down by your feet—and as he’s looking down, they’re 50 feet above the water, he sees this
kind of dark mass coming up from the depths.”

As the pilot picked up the BQM, he was apparently at a loss for words. “He’s looking at this thing going,
‘What the hell is that?’ And then it just goes back down underwater. Once they pull the kid and the BQM
out of the water, this object descends back into the depths.”




A video frame from 2019 footage taken aboard a U.S. Navy ship off San Diego
shows an unidentified spherical object flying in the air before disappearing into the ocean.




USS Omaha, 2019

It began as a blip. In July 2019, an infrared camera aboard the USS Omaha captured something that
defied explanation: a spherical object moving swiftly over the Pacific before dropping into the ocean—again,
no splash, no wake, no debris. The footage, later verified by Pentagon officials, stunned observers. The
object didn’t resemble any known drone, missile, or aircraft. And its disappearance beneath the waves
raised new questions about transmedium tech.

In the incident, the crew of the Omaha (which was also sailing off the San Diego coast) recorded a
spherical UAP hovering just over the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The ship’s sensor that caught the
object was the sophisticated AN/KAX-2—a stabilized sensor turret built for maritime environments that
includes a digital video camera, night vision camera, and laser rangefinder.

The video shows a recording of the AN/KAX-2 screen and appears to have been taken with a night vision
camera. The object seemingly moves, tracked by the sensor operator, and then hovers just above the
ocean’s surface. Then the object disappears.




A video frame from 2019 footage taken aboard a U.S. Navy ship off San Diego shows
an unidentified spherical object flying in the air before disappearing into the ocean.



A pilot of a U.S. Navy CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter, like the one shown above,
reportedly encounted a UAP while flying off the coast of Puerto Rico.




An infrared sensor onboard a U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft captured
footage of a UAP over Rafael Hernández Airport near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.












“It looked nothing like any known aircraft,” Gallaudet says. “After I testified before Congress last year,
a sailor who had been on the bridge of the Omaha contacted me. He said the object was just one of
many—and that he’d witnessed a similar event aboard the USS Jackson in 2023.”