NEW YORK (AP) — Former NBA player Jontay Porter admitted Wednesday that he schemed to take himself out of games for gambling’s sake, pleading guilty to a federal conspiracy crime in the scandal that already got him banned from the league.

“I know what I did was wrong, unlawful, and I am deeply sorry,” the former Toronto Raptors center said as he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Echoing findings in an NBA investigation and allegations in an ongoing prosecution of four other men, Porter acknowledged that he agreed to withdraw early from games so that co-conspirators could win bets on his performance.

He did it, he said, “to get out from under large gambling debts.”

Porter, 24, is free on $250,000 bond while awaiting sentencing set for Dec. 18.

Prosecutors estimated his sentence at a range from just under three and a half years in prison to a little over four years. Ultimately it will be up to a judge, who could impose anything from no time to 20 years behind bars. Porter also is likely to be assessed hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution and fines.

He and his lawyer left court without speaking to reporters. The attorney, Jeff Jensen, later declined by email to comment beyond a statement he made last month, in which he said Porter “was in over his head due to a gambling addiction.”

“Jontay is a good young man with strong faith that will get him through this,” Jensen said at the time.

Porter told the court he has undergone inpatient rehab for a gambling problem and remains in therapy.

In a related case, four other men are charged with scheming to profit off tips from an NBA player that he was going to exit two games early. They or their relatives used the knowledge to place big-winning bets that the athlete would do poorly in those games, according to a court complaint filed when they were charged in June. They haven’t yet entered pleas.

The complaint against them didn’t name the player. But details matched up with the NBA investigation that found that Porter gave bettors confidential information about his health, exited at least one game because of bets and wagered on NBA games in which he didn’t play. He once bet against his own team, the league said.

According to the complaint, one of the four men pressed the player to clear up gambling debts by prematurely pulling out of games so that bets on him underperforming would pay off.

In a message responding to the man’s instructions, the player wrote that if he didn’t carry out the plan, “u hate me and if I don’t get u 8k by Friday you’re coming to Toronto to beat me up.”

After tipping off some of the men, the player claimed injury or illness and withdrew from Jan. 26 and March 20 games after only minutes on the court, the complaint said.

Porter played only briefly on those dates before complaining he was hurt or sick and exiting the games. His points, rebounds and assists in both games fell below sportsbooks’ expectations.

According to the complaint, some of the alleged conspirators agreed in advance to share about a quarter of any winnings from the March 20 game with the player. One gambler was on track to collect over $1 million before a betting company got suspicious and stopped him from getting most of the money.

After the NBA and others began investigating, the player messaged some of the men that they “might just get hit w a rico,” an apparent reference to the common acronym for a federal racketeering charge, according to the complaint against them. It said the player also asked the men whether they had deleted “all the stuff” from their phones.

Porter averaged 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 26 games this season, including five starts. He also played in 11 games for the Memphis Grizzlies in the 2020-21 season.

His NBA salary was about $410,000.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn filed what’s known as a criminal information sheet on Tuesday. The document doesn’t specify a court date or the charge or charges, but it does show the case is related to an existing prosecution of four men charged with scheming to cash in on tips from a player about his plans to exit two games early.

The Associated Press sent voice and email messages Wednesday to Porter’s St. Louis-based lawyer, Jeff Jensen. He said last month that Porter had been “in over his head due to a gambling addiction” but was getting treatment and cooperating with law enforcement.

Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace’s office declined to comment on the new developments.

An NBA investigation found in April that Porter, brother of Denver Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr., tipped off bettors about his health and then claimed illness to exit at least one game, creating wins for anyone who’d bet on him to underperform expectations. Porter also gambled on NBA games in which he didn’t play, once betting against his own team, the league said.

The four men charged last month appeared in court but haven’t yet entered pleas. They’re charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and were released on bonds in various amounts.

A court complaint against those four — Ammar Awawdeh, Timothy McCormack, Mahmud Mollah and Long Phi Pham — accused them of using prior knowledge of an NBA player’s plans so that they or their relatives could place winning bets on his performance.

The complaint identified the athlete only as “Player 1,” but details about him and the game– and a quote from an NBA news release — matched up with the league’s probe into Porter.

According to the complaint, the player owed “significant gambling debts” to Awawdeh, who encouraged the athlete to settle them with a “special”: intentionally exiting games so that bettors in the know could successfully wager on him falling short of what sportsbooks figured he’d do.

“If I don’t do a special with your terms. Then it’s up,” the player responded in an encrypted message early this year, according to the complaint. “And u hate me and if I don’t get u 8k by Friday you’re coming to Toronto to beat me up.”

The player told some of the four already-charged defendants that he would claim health problems to take himself out of games early on Jan. 26 and March 20, the complaint says.

Porter played only briefly on those dates before leaving the court, complaining of injury or illness. In both games, his points, rebounds and assists were below the betting line for his performance.

Mollah, McCormack and a relative of Awawdeh had bet the “under” and made out, though a betting company ultimately stopped Mollah from collecting most of his more than $1 million in winnings on the March 20 game, according to the complaint.

After the NBA and others began investigating, the player messaged Pham, Mollah and Awawdeh that they “might just get hit w a rico” — an apparent reference to the common acronym for a federal racketeering charge — and asked whether they had deleted “all the stuff” from their phones, the complaint notes.

Porter’s salary for this year was around $410,000. The 24-year-old averaged 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 26 games this season, including five starts. He also played in 11 games for the Memphis Grizzlies in the 2020-21 season.

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Say hello to the Lancashire heeler, the latest breed recognized by the American Kennel Club. The organization announced Wednesday that the rare herding breed is now eligible for thousands of U.S. dog shows, including the prominent Westminster Kennel Club show.

With long bodies and short coats that are often black and tan, the solidly built dogs are shaped a bit like a downsized corgi, standing around 1 foot (30 centimeters) at the shoulder and weighing up to about 17 pounds (7.7 kilograms). Historically, they were farm helpers that could both drive cattle and rout rats, and today they participate in an array of canine sports and pursuits.

“They’re gritty little dogs, and they’re very intelligent little dogs,” says Patricia Blankenship of Flora, Mississippi, who has bred them for over a decade. “It’s an enjoyable little breed to be around.”

Their official description — or breed standard, in dog-world parlance — calls for them to be “courageous, happy, affectionate to owner,” and owners say contented heelers sometimes pull back their lips in a “smile.”

They’re “extremely versatile,” participating in everything from scent work to dock diving contests, says United States Lancashire Heeler Club President Sheryl Bradbury. But she advises that a Lancashire heeler “has to have a job,” whether it’s an organized dog sport or simply walks and fetch with its owners.

The dogs benefit from meeting various different people and canines, added Bradbury, who breeds them in Plattsmouth, Nebraska.

Lancashire heelers go back centuries in the United Kingdom, where they’re now deemed a “vulnerable native breed” at risk of dying out in their homeland. Britain’s Kennel Club has added an average of just 121 Lancashire heelers annually to its registry in recent years, and the American Kennel Club says only about 5,000 exist worldwide.

Founded in 1884, the AKC is the United States’ oldest purebred dog registry and functions like a league for many canine competitions, including sports open to mixed-breeds and purebreds. But only the 201 recognized breeds vie for the traditional “best in show” trophies at Westminster and elsewhere.

To get recognized, a breed must count at least 300 pedigreed dogs, distributed through at least 20 states, and fanciers must agree on a breed standard. Recognition is voluntary, and some breeds’ aficionados approach other kennel clubs or none at all.

Adding breeds, or even perpetuating them, bothers animal rights activists. They argue that dog breeding powers puppy mills, reduces pet adoptions and accentuates canine health problems by compressing genetic diversity.

The AKC says it promotes responsibly “breeding for type and function” to produce dogs with special skills, such as tracking lost people, as well as pets with characteristics that owners can somewhat predict and prepare for. The club has given over $32 million since 1995 to a foundation that underwrites canine health research.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Aggrieved and defiant, former President Donald Trump spent a day in court Monday for the sometimes testy start of a trial in a fraud lawsuit that could cost him control of Trump Tower and other prized properties.

“Disgraceful trial,” he declared during a lunch break, after listening to lawyers for New York Attorney General Letitia James excoriate him as a habitual liar. The state’s lawsuit accuses the business mogul-turned-politician and his company of deceiving banks, insurers and others by misstating his wealth for years in financial statements.

“They were lying year after year after year,” Kevin Wallace, a lawyer in James’ office, said as Trump sat at the defense table. He looked straight ahead, arms crossed, facing away from a screen that showed details of Wallace’s presentation.

Trump denies wrongdoing and voluntarily attended a trial that he called a “sham,” a “scam,” a waste of the state’s time and “a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.” Currently the Republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential race, he reiterated claims that James, a Democrat, is trying to thwart his bid to return to the White House.

“What we have here is an attempt to hurt me in an election,” he said outside court, adding, “I don’t think the people of this country are going to stand for it.”

Trump sneered at James as he passed her on his way out at lunchtime; she left smiling. Meanwhile, his campaign immediately began fundraising off the appearance.

But Trump left for the day claiming he’d scored a victory, pointing to comments that he viewed as Judge Arthur Engoron coming around to the defense view that most of the suit’s allegations are too old.

The judge suggested that testimony about Trump’s 2011 financial statement was beyond the legal time limit. Wallace promised to link it to a more recent loan agreement, but Trump took the judge’s remarks as an “outstanding” development for him.

Engoron ruled last week that Trump committed fraud in his business dealings. If upheld on appeal, the ruling could force Trump to give up New York properties including Trump Tower, a Wall Street office building, golf courses and a suburban estate. Trump has called it a “a corporate death penalty” and insisted the judge, a Democrat, is unfair and out to get him.

The non-jury trial concerns six remaining claims in the lawsuit, including allegations of conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records. Engoron said that neither side sought a jury and that state law doesn’t allow for juries when suits seek not only money but a court order setting out something a defendant must do or not do.

James is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York.

“No matter how powerful you are, and no matter how much money you think you have, no one is above the law,” she said on her way into the courthouse.

Trump says that James and the judge are undervaluing such assets as his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He and his lawyers also maintain that disclaimers on his financial statements made clear that they were estimates and that banks would have to perform their own analysis.

The former president, his two eldest sons, Trump Organization executives and fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen are all listed among dozens of potential witnesses.

Trump isn’t expected to testify for several weeks. His trip to court Monday marked a remarkable departure from his past practice.

Trump didn’t go to court as either a witness or a spectator when his company and one of its top executives was convicted of tax fraud last year. He didn’t show, either, for a civil trial earlier this year in which a jury found him liable for sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room.

This time, “I wanted to watch this witch hunt myself,” he said outside court.

In a recent court filing, James’ office alleged Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion.

He claimed his three-story Trump Tower penthouse, replete with gold-plated fixtures, was nearly three times its actual size and worth $327 million, far more than any New York City apartment ever has fetched, James said. He valued Mar-a-Lago as high as $739 million — more than 10 times a more reasonable estimate of its worth, James maintained.

“Every estimate was determined by Mr. Trump,” Wallace said in his opening statement. He pointed to pretrial testimony by Trump Organization figures and ex-insiders including Cohen, who said the company estimated assets to get to a predetermined number “that Mr. Trump wanted.”

Wallace said the alleged scheme got the company better loan rates, saving it $100 million in interest.

“They hid their weaknesses and convinced these banks to take on hundreds of millions of dollars in risk,” he said, adding, “While the defendants can exaggerate to Forbes magazine or on television, they cannot do it while conducting business in the state of New York.”

Defense lawyers said the financial statements were legitimate representations of prime properties that can command top dollar.

“That is not fraud. That is real estate,” attorney Alina Habba said in an opening statement. She accused the attorney general’s office of “setting a very dangerous precedent for all business owners in the state of New York.”

Defense experts will testify that valuing properties is subjective, Trump attorneys said. He and his lawyers have also argued that no one was harmed by anything in the financial statements, which were given to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his place among the world’s billionaires.

Banks that made loans to him were fully repaid. Business partners made money. And Trump’s own company flourished.

Defense lawyer Christopher Kise blasted last week’s fraud ruling, telling the judge he shouldn’t have made a decision before hearing expert trial testimony on property valuations. Engoron, tiring of the defense’s criticism, shot back: “Respectfully, what’s that expression? You’re stalking the dead horse here.”

Testimony began Monday afternoon with Donald Bender, a longtime partner at accounting firm Mazars LLP, describing how he spent 50 to 60 hours a year preparing Trump’s financial statements. Mazars cut ties with Trump last year after James’ office raised questions about the documents’ reliability.

James’ lawsuit is one of several legal headaches for Trump as he campaigns to return to the White House. He has been indicted four times since March, accused of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, hoarding classified documents and falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf. He has pleaded not guilty to all the allegations.

The New York fraud trial is expected to last into December, Engoron said.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Karen Matthews contributed to this report.

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Follow Sisak at x.com/mikesisak and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips.

Then came the shock.

Days after that discovery in December 2010, police discovered parts of three more women nearby on a spit of sand known as Gilgo Beach. The remains of six other people were found along several miles of the same parkway during the next few months. An 11th person, whose disappearance had spurred the initial search, was found dead by the highway in December 2011.

What became known as the Gilgo Beach murders — the victims mostly young women who had been sex workers — flummoxed investigators for over a dozen years. The case endured through five police commissioners, more than 1,000 tips, countless theories and supposed conspiracies. Then a fresh review last year tied an old clue, about a pickup truck linked to a victim’s disappearance, to a new name: Rex A. Heuermann.

Energized by the truck tidbit, investigators charted the calls and travels of multiple cellphones, picked apart email aliases, delved into search histories, and collected discarded bottles — and even a pizza crust — for advanced DNA testing, according to court papers.

On Friday, Heuermann was charged with murder in three of the killings, and prosecutors called him the prime suspect in a fourth.

“Since the discovery of the first victim, there’s been a lot of scrutiny and criticism regarding how this investigation was handled. I will tell you this: The investigators were never discouraged,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said. He vowed they would continue working “until we bring justice to all the families involved.”

Heuermann, a 59-year-old architect, pleaded not guilty to multiple murder charges. He insists he “didn’t do this,” his lawyer Michael Brown said.

But police and prosecutors paint a picture of a scheming predator who outwardly maintained the life of a suburban professional, while secretly killing women when his wife was out of town.

“We are going to convict him, and we are going to hold him responsible for what he did,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney declared.

Voice and email messages seeking comment were sent Friday and Saturday to various numbers and addresses associated with Heuermann and his family.

Heuermann used a victim’s cellphone to torment her relatives with calls — including one in which he said he’d killed her — and doggedly searched for information about the investigation while trying to obscure his identity online, according to prosecutors.

Among his searches: “Why hasn’t the long island serial killer been caught.”

The case began with a search for Shannan Gilbert, a sex worker who had called 911 as she ran from a client’s home, saying someone was chasing her. Police were looking for Gilbert in December 2010 when they stumbled upon the remains of someone else: Melissa Barthelemy, last seen alive the year before.

As the toll of victims grew and the search expanded, police used horses to reach the remote area, climbed firefighters’ ladders to see over poison ivy-infested thickets, scoured parking ticket records and got aerial surveillance photos from the FBI. Over the years, reward money was offered, FBI experts profiled the killer and evolving DNA techniques were used.

Harrison announced a new task force to work the case shortly after he became commissioner in January 2022. He’d been a high-ranking New York Police Department official and brought new energy and perspective to the investigation years after the Suffolk department’s former chief was arrested and went to prison in an unrelated case.

Tierney said a breakthrough came six weeks into the group’s work, when a New York State Police investigator used a database to determine that Heuermann owned an early-model Chevrolet Avalanche and lived in Massapequa Park, an area that had come into focus because of some victims’ cellphone activity.

The Avalanche was key because witnesses had told police that a man had parked one outside the home of victim Amber Costello the night before she died, and that the sex worker had arranged to meet that man again the next night, according to prosecutors’ court filing.

Using subpoenas and search warrants, investigators dug into Heuermann’s background. They learned that his cellphone had often been in the same general areas, around the same times, as prepaid anonymous cellphones that had been used to contact Barthelemy, Costello and victim Megan Waterman, the court papers said. The “burner” phones and Heuerman’s phone sometimes even traveled together.

His phone’s location also roughly matched up with some places and times when a man used Barthelemy’s phone to call her relatives after her disappearance, according to the documents.

Combing Heuerman’s credit card records, investigators found payments to a dating site and followed that thread to uncover email addresses under fictitious names and more burner phones. The emails were linked to searches for violent pornography and information on the Gilgo Beach case, and to apparent selfies of Heuermann that were sent to arrange sexual trysts, court papers said.

The phones contacted massage parlors and sex workers as recently as this year. Heuermann was carrying one of the phones when arrested Thursday night, according to prosecutors.

Using advanced DNA testing not available early in the case, authorities also reexamined hairs found on a belt buckle, duct tape and a burlap restraint used in the killings.

Meanwhile, investigators employed more old-fashioned methods to snare a sample of Heuermann’s DNA: They tailed him and sifted through his garbage to pluck 11 bottles from his home bin and grab partially eaten pizza crusts that he’d tossed into a trash can on a Manhattan sidewalk.

The DNA from the pizza matched a hair found on burlap wrapped around one victim, and other hairs matched a relative of Heuermann’s who isn’t a suspect, investigators said. They believe he got the other person’s hair on him at home.

Heuermann has lived in the same ramshackle house since childhood, according to testimony he gave several years ago in one of several traffic-accident-related lawsuits he’s filed in the past decade. He graduated from the same local high school as actor Billy Baldwin, who tweeted Friday that news of his 1981 classmate’s arrest was “mind-boggling.”

After getting a bachelor’s degree from the New York Institute of Technology, Heuermann formed his architecture firm in 1994. He did most of his architectural work in New York City, with clients including city agencies, charities, airlines and major retailers, according to a company biography and the firm’s website.

In 2007, the city’s Department of Buildings audited multiple jobs involving Heuermann after an allegation that he falsely said a seven-story building was vacant when it was set to be renovated. The audits didn’t find any pattern of false filings or significant disregard for city regulations, and no disciplinary actions were taken, according to the department.

After a brief marriage in the early 1990s, Heuermann has been married since 1996 to wife Asa, with whom he has a daughter — a graphic artist — and a stepson, according to his 2018 testimony. His wife, he testified, dropped him off at a nearby train station in the mornings.

Neighbors puzzled at the rundown home with the overgrown shrubs in their tidy midst, and at the contrast between the house and the businessman who set off from it each weekday with suit and briefcase.

“It was,” neighbor Barry Auslander said, “weird.”

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Peltz and Sisak reported from New York. Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — A stone-faced Donald Trump made a momentous courtroom appearance Tuesday when he was confronted with a 34-count felony indictment charging him in a scheme to bury allegations of extramarital affairs that arose during his first White House campaign.

The arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom was a stunning — and humbling — spectacle for the first ex-president to ever face criminal charges. With Trump watching in silence, prosecutors bluntly accused him of criminal conduct and set the stage for a possible criminal trial in the city where he became a celebrity decades ago.

The indictment centers on allegations that Trump falsified internal business records at his private company while trying to cover up an effort to illegally influence the 2016 election by arranging payments that silenced claims potentially harmful to his candidacy. It includes 34 counts of fudging records related to checks Trump sent to his personal lawyer and problem-solver to reimburse him for his role in paying off a porn actor who said she had an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.

“The defendant, Donald J. Trump, falsified New York business records in order to conceal an illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 presidential election and other violations of election laws,” said Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy.

Trump, somber and silent as he entered and exited the Manhattan courtroom, said “not guilty” in a firm voice while facing a judge who warned him to refrain from rhetoric that could inflame or cause civil unrest. All told, the ever-verbose Trump, who for weeks before Tuesday’s arraignment had assailed the case against him as political persecution, uttered only 10 words in the courtroom. He appeared to glare for a period at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who brought the case.

As he returned to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, where he delivered a primetime address to hundreds of supporters, Trump again protested his innocence and asserted on his Truth Social platform that the “hearing was shocking to many in that they had no ‘surprises,’ and therefore, no case.”

In his speech, Trump lashed out anew at the prosecution and attacked in bitter terms the prosecutor and the judge presiding over the case despite being admonished hours earlier about incendiary rhetoric. In a sign of that other probes are weighing on him, Trump also steered his speech into a broadside against a separate Justice Department investigation into the mishandling of classified documents.

“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” Trump said of the New York indictment. “This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election and it should be dropped immediately.”

The crowd at Mar-a-Lago included supporters like failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and longtime ally Roger Stone. Trump’s wife, Melania, was absent from his side and was also not seen with him in New York.

Even so, the indictment amounts to a remarkable reckoning for Trump after years of investigations into his personal, business and political dealings. It shows how even as Trump is looking to reclaim the White House in 2024, he is shadowed by investigations related to his behavior in the two prior elections, with prosecutors in Atlanta and Washington scrutinizing efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the 2020 presidential election — probes that could produce even more charges.

In the New York case, each count of falsifying business records, a felony, is punishable by up to four years in prison — though it’s not clear if a judge would impose any prison time if Trump is convicted. The next court date is Dec. 4 — two months before Republicans begin their nominating process in earnest — and Trump will again be expected to appear.

A conviction would not prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.

The arraignment also delved into Trump’s rhetoric on the case, with prosecutors at one point handing printouts of his social media posts to the judge and defense lawyers as Trump looked on. Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan did not impose a gag order but told Trump’s lawyers to urge him to refrain from posts that could encourage unrest.

The broad contours of the case have long been known, focusing on a scheme that prosecutors say began months into his candidacy in 2015, as his celebrity past collided with his presidential ambitions.

Though prosecutors expressed confidence in the case, a conviction is no sure thing given the legal complexities of the allegations, the application of state election laws to a federal election and prosecutors’ likely reliance on a key witness, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to false statements.

It centers on payoffs to two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged the former president had out of wedlock.

“It’s not just about one payment. It is 34 false statements and business records that were concealing criminal conduct,” Bragg told reporters, when asked how the three separate cases were connected.

All 34 counts against Trump are linked to a series of checks that were written to Cohen to reimburse him for his role in paying off Daniels. Those payments, made over 12 months, were recorded in various internal company documents as being for a legal retainer that prosecutors say didn’t exist. Cohen testified before the grand jury and is expected to be a star prosecution witness.

Nine of those monthly checks were paid out of Trump’s personal accounts, but records related to them were maintained in the Trump Organization’s data system.

Prosecutors allege that the first instance of Trump directing hush money payments came in the fall of 2015, when a former Trump Tower doorman was trying to sell information about an alleged out-of-wedlock child fathered by Trump.

David Pecker, a Trump friend and the publisher of the National Enquirer, made a $30,000 payment to the doorman to acquire the exclusive rights to the story, pursuant to an agreement to protect Trump during his presidential campaign, according to the indictment. Pecker’s company later determined the doorman’s story was false, but is alleged to have enforced the doorman’s confidentiality at Cohen’s urging until after Election Day.

Trump denies having sexual liaisons with both Daniels and McDougal and has denied any wrongdoing involving payments.

Tuesday’s schedule, with its striking blend of legal and political calendar items, represents the new split-screen reality for Trump as he submits to the dour demands of the American criminal justice system while projecting an aura of defiance and victimhood at celebratory campaign events.

Wearing his signature dark suit and red tie, Trump turned and waved to crowds outside the building before heading inside to be fingerprinted and processed. He arrived at court in an eight-car motorcade from Trump Tower, communicating in real time his anger at the process.

“Heading to Lower Manhattan, the Courthouse,” he posted on his Truth Social platform. “Seems so SURREAL — WOW, they are going to ARREST ME. Can’t believe this is happening in America. MAGA!”

Afterward, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told reporters that it was a “sad day for the country.”

“You don’t expect this to happen to somebody who was president of the United States,” he said.

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Tucker and Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Jill Colvin, Bobby Caina Calvan, Larry Neumeister, Karen Matthews, Larry Fleisher, Deepti Hajela, Julie Walker, Ted Shaffrey, David R. Martin, Joe Frederick and Robert Bumsted in New York; Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo in Washington; Adriana Gomez Licon in Palm Beach, Florida; and Terry Spencer in Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of former President Donald Trump at https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump.

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans remembered 9/11 on Sunday with tear-choked tributes and pleas to “never forget,” 21 years after the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

The loss still felt immediate to Bonita Mentis, who wore a necklace with a photo of her slain sister, Shevonne Mentis.

“It’s been 21 years, but it’s not 21 years for us. It seems like just yesterday,” she said before reading victims’ names at the World Trade Center to a crowd that included Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff.

At the Pentagon, which also was targeted on 9/11, President Joe Biden vowed that the U.S. would continue working to root out terrorist plots and called on Americans to stand up for “the very democracy that guarantees the right to freedom that those terrorists on 9/11 sought to bury in the burning fire, smoke and ash.” First lady Jill Biden spoke at the third attack site, a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

On Sept. 11, 2001, conspirators from the al-Qaida Muslim militant group seized control of jets to use them as passenger-filled missiles, hitting the trade center’s twin towers and the Pentagon. The fourth plane was headed for Washington but crashed near Shanksville after crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit.

The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, reconfigured national security policy and spurred a U.S. “war on terror” worldwide. Sunday’s observances came little more than a month after a U.S. drone strike killed a key al-Qaida figure who helped plot 9/11, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Pierre Roldan, who lost his cousin Carlos Lillo, a paramedic, said “we had some form of justice” when a U.S. raid killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

“Now that al-Zawahri is gone, at least we’re continuing to get that justice,” Roldan said.

The self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, still awaits a long-postponed military tribunal. An attorney for one of Mohammed’s co-defendants this week confirmed ongoing negotiations toward a potential agreement to avoid a trial and impose lesser but still lengthy sentences.

The Sept. 11 attacks stirred — for a time — a sense of national pride and unity for many, while also subjecting Muslim Americans to years of suspicion and bigotry and engendering debate over the balance between safety and civil liberties. In ways both subtle and plain, the aftermath of 9/11 ripples through American politics and public life to this day.

But like some other victims’ relatives, Jay Saloman fears that Americans’ consciousness of 9/11 is receding.

“It was a terrorist attack against our country that day. And theoretically, everybody should remember it and, you know, take precautions and watch out,” said Saloman, who lost his brother, Wayne Saloman.

By tradition, no political figures speak at the ground zero ceremony. The observance centers, instead, on relatives reading aloud the names of the dead.

Like a growing number of readers, Brooke Walsh-DiMarzio wasn’t born yet when her relative died. But she took the podium to honor her grandmother, Barbara Walsh.

“I’m here today to represent generation 9/12, those who never experienced 9/11 but still suffer the aftermath of it,” Walsh-DiMarzio said. “We will never, ever forget.”

Nikita Shah wore a T-shirt that bore the de facto epigraph of the annual commemoration — “never forget” — and the name of her father, Jayesh Shah. She was 10 when he was killed.

The family later moved to Houston but often returns to New York for the anniversary to be “around people who kind of experienced the same type of grief and the same feelings after 9/11,” said Shah.

Readers often add personal remarks that form an alloy of American sentiments about Sept. 11 — grief, anger, toughness, appreciation for first responders and the military, appeals to patriotism, hopes for peace, occasional political barbs, and a poignant accounting of the graduations, weddings, births and daily lives that victims have missed. A few readers note recent events, this year ranging from the still ongoing coronavirus pandemic to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Some relatives also lament that a nation which came together — to some extent — after the attacks has since splintered apart. Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which were reshaped to focus on international terrorism after 9/11, now see the threat of domestic violent extremism as equally urgent.

“It took a tragedy to unite us. It should not take another tragedy to unite us again,” said Andrew Colabella, whose cousin, John DiGiovanni, died in the 1993 bombing World Trade Center bombing that presaged 9/11.

Communities around the country marked the day with candlelight vigils, interfaith services and other commemorations, and some Americans joined in volunteer projects. Others observed the anniversary with their own reflections.

More than 70 of Sekou Siby’s co-workers perished at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the trade center’s north tower. He had the day off because another cook asked him to switch shifts.

“Every 9/11 is a reminder of what I lost that I can never recover,” says Siby, now president of ROC United, a restaurant workers’ advocacy group. He said ahead of the anniversary that the attacks made him wary of becoming attached to people when “you have no control over what’s going to happen to them next.”

Ginny Barnett volunteered at the Shanksville site after the attacks and struggled for years to come to terms with the tragedy. She gradually found hope by volunteering for the memorial there now.

“I have seen firsthand the evil that man can do, but I have also seen the good that man can do,” Barnett said Sunday. “With God’s help, we can focus on and foster good, rather than let hate and anger consume us.”

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Associated Press journalists Colleen Long in Washington, Ron Todt in Philadelphia and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.

In a complex financial scheme with political tentacles, prosecutors say, Sherry Xue Li and Lianbo “Mike” Wang raised $27 million for a grandiose development plan that never got close to approval, then siphoned off millions of dollars for personal expenses.

To project the sway to keep their promises — which often included visas to live in the U.S. — they used investor money and foreign nationals’ cash to make big-dollar donations and be seen with Trump and other prominent politicians, prosecutors said in court documents.

“Together we can build a better, stronger and healthier community and ‘Make America Great Again!’” read one of their business’ press releases trumpeting that Li and Wang had attended a pre-inaugural reception featuring various figures in the incoming Trump administration.

Prosecutors didn’t allege any criminal wrongdoing by the political action committees that accepted donations from Li and Wang.

Li, 50, and Wang, 45, were being held without bail after their first appearance in a Brooklyn federal court, though their lawyers can argue for bail later on. The two are facing various federal conspiracy charges.

They weren’t asked to enter a plea, but Wang volunteered, through a Mandarin interpreter, “I did not do this thing.”

Li’s lawyer, Nora Hirozawa, declined to comment. A message seeking comment was left for Wang’s attorney, James Roth.

The naturalized U.S. citizens are business partners who share a Long Island home with some of Li’s relatives, including her 15-year-old son.

Li has been promoting plans for a development near New York’s Catskill Mountains for nearly a decade; Wang worked with her as general manager. Initially envisioned as a cultural theme park called “China City of America,” it morphed into a proposal for a for-profit college campus after local officials told Li that zoning wouldn’t allow the “Chinese Disneyland” she first planned.

The “Thompson Education Center” has never materialized, either. Local officials denied the necessary sewer service in 2015 and then told Li flat-out in 2017 that the project wasn’t approved, according to prosecutors’ court papers.

But she and Wang continued to tell investors the project was a go, sometimes sending them photos of a construction site. That site was actually a house she was having built somewhere else, prosecutors said.

Many backers had been lured with promises of investor visas, which ultimately were denied because of immigration officials’ doubts about the viability of the “Education Center” project, according to court papers.

To bolster those promises, Wang and Li sought to create an image of influence with prominent U.S. politicians.

In some cases, the image was literal.

Li and Wang solicited money from foreigners to give over $600,000 of donations — converted into Wang’s and Li’s names — to attend and bring guests to a June 2017 fundraising dinner with the then-president, prosecutors said. A photo from the event shows Li with Trump and then-first lady Melania Trump.

It is against the law for foreign nationals to contribute to American political campaigns, and prosecutors say Li and Wang knew it.

“It’s unlawful for businessmen in China to make donations. But these businessmen can invest in our company and become our shareholders. We can then arrange for them to meet with the president. Donation is definitely necessary. Our company can do that and it is legal,” Wang told a prospective investor in December 2018 after sending the photo of Trump and Li from the fundraising dinner, according to court papers.

Other investors or prospects also got brochures featuring Li or Wang with Trump and other politicians, including Democratic then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, prosecutors said.

Meanwhile, Li, Wang and unnamed co-conspirators spent at least $2.5 million of their investors’ money on jewelry, vacations, fancy dining, nannies, traffic tickets and other personal items, according to prosecutors. They said some investor money also went to the defendants’ political hobnobbing campaign, including donations and hiring a private plane to bring a Chinese national to a Trump event in October 2017.

The unusual campaign contributions by Li and Wang caught the attention of journalists in 2017 amid scrutiny of numerous donors with ties to other nations who were, at the time, trying to curry favor with the new Trump administration.

The U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, Breon Peace, said Monday his office was “committed to protecting our democratic process from those who would expose it to unlawful foreign influence.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Ivana Trump, a skier-turned-businesswoman who formed half of a publicity power couple in the 1980s as the first wife of former President Donald Trump and mother of his oldest children, has died in New York City, her family announced Thursday. She was 73.

The former president posted on his social media app that she died at her Manhattan home.

“She was a wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life,” he wrote on Truth Social. The couple shared three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric.

“She was so proud of them, as we were all so proud of her,” he wrote. “Rest In Peace, Ivana!”

Two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that police are investigating whether Ivana Trump fell down the stairs and believe her death was accidental.

She was found unconscious near a staircase in the home, the people said. The people could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. The medical examiner’s office will determine an official cause of death.

“It’s been a very sad day, a very sad day,” Eric Trump said as he left his mother’s home near Central Park.

In a statement, he and his siblings called her “an incredible woman — a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty and caring mother and friend.”

“She fled from communism and embraced this country,” the three said. “She taught her children about grit and toughness, compassion and determination.”

Ivanka Trump posted childhood photos of herself laughing and smiling with her mother, who she described as “brilliant, charming, passionate and wickedly funny.”

A Czech-born ski racer and sometime model, she met the future president in the 1970s and quickly perceived him as “smart and funny — an all-America good guy,” as she wrote in a 2017 book. The couple married in 1977.

She became an icon in her own right, dripping with ’80s style and glamor, complete with her signature blonde updo. She influenced the look of the over-the-top Patsy Stone in the classic British sitcom “Absolutely Fabulous,” with the character extolling Ivana as “tremendous” in one episode.

Trump herself would eventually appear in the 1996 hit film “The First Wives Club” with the now-famous line, “Ladies, you have to be strong and independent, and remember, don’t get mad, get everything.”

The Trumps became partners in love and business. She managed one of his Atlantic City casinos and helped make Trump Tower an image of ’80s success (or excess, to some).

She overruled the architects to get a 60-foot waterfall installed in Trump Tower’s atrium, and she went to an Italian quarry to pick out the rosy-beige Breccia Pernice marble that famously lines its floors and walls, according to a biography of Donald Trump by Wayne Barrett.

Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization executive who was in charge of the skyscraper’s construction, recalled Ivana helping the decorator and taking a strong interest in such details as the doormen’s uniforms.

“She did all that to impress Donald, to win his approval,” Res said. “She was traveling back and forth all the time, and leaving her kids. She had a tremendous work ethic.”

The two were fixtures of New York’s see-and-be-seen scene before their equally public, and messy, 1992 divorce. Donald Trump had met his next wife, Marla Maples.

“I couldn’t turn on the television without hearing my name,” Ivana Trump wrote in her book.

During the split, Ivana Trump accused him of rape in a sworn statement in the early 1990s. She later said she didn’t mean it literally, but rather that she felt violated.

Donald Trump would say at times that he regretted having Ivana join him in business and blamed it for the unraveling of their marriage.

“I think that putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing,” he told ABC News in the early ’90s. “If you’re in business for yourself, I really think it’s a bad idea to put your wife working for you,” he said, complaining that when she turned into a businessperson, “a softness disappeared.”

Nevertheless, Ivana ultimately remained friendly with her ex-husband, whom she famously called “The Donald.” She enthusiastically backed his 2016 White House run, saying he would “make big changes” in the United States, and told the New York Post that she was giving him suggestions on his campaign.

“We speak before and after the appearances and he asks me what I thought,” she said. She said she advised him to “be more calm.”

“But Donald cannot be calm,” she added. “He’s very outspoken. He just says it as it is.”

However supportive, she occasionally ruffled feathers.

In 2017, while promoting her book, she told “Good Morning America” that she spoke with the then-president about every two weeks and had his direct White House number, but didn’t want to call too frequently because of then-first lady Melania Trump’s presence.

“I don’t want to cause any kind of jealousy or something like that because I’m basically first Trump wife, OK?” Ivana said with a laugh. “I’m first lady, OK?”

Melania Trump’s spokesperson at the time responded, saying there was “clearly no substance to this statement from an ex, this is unfortunately only attention-seeking and self-serving noise.”

Ivana Trump had continued her business ventures in recent years, promoting an Italian weight-loss diet plan in 2018.

“Health is the most important thing we have. Let’s keep it that way,” she said at the time.

Her death came during a fraught week for the Trump family. Two of her children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, and the former president are due to appear in coming days for questioning in the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into the family’s business practices.

Ivana Trump was born Ivana Zelnickova in 1949 in the Czechoslovak city of Gottwaldov, formerly Zlin, which had just been renamed by the Communists who took over the country in 1948.

She was married four times, most recently to Italian actor Rossano Rubicondi. The two divorced in 2009 after a year of marriage but continued to see each other off and on until 2019, when she told the New York Post the relationship had run its course. He died last year of cancer at 49.

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Associated Press writers Bernard Condon and Michael Balsamo in New York and Jeff McMillan in Scranton, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — The man accused of shooting 10 people on a Brooklyn subway train was arrested Wednesday and charged with a federal terrorism offense after the suspect called police to come get him, law enforcement officials said.

Frank R. James, 62, was taken into custody about 30 hours after the violence on a rush-hour train, which left people around the city on edge.

“My fellow New Yorkers, we got him,” Mayor Eric Adams said.

James was due to appear in court Thursday on a charge that pertains to terrorist or other violent attacks against mass transit systems and carries a sentence of up to life in prison, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said.

In recent months, James railed in videos on his YouTube channel about racism and violence in the U.S. and about his struggles with mental health care in New York City, and he criticized Adams’ policies on mental health and subway safety. But the motive for the subway attack remains unclear, and there’s no indication James had ties to terror organizations, international or otherwise, Peace said.

James didn’t respond to reporters’ shouted questions as he was led to a police car Wednesday afternoon. He was transferred hours later to federal Bureau of Prisons custody and was being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. A message seeking comment was sent to a lawyer representing him.

Police had urged the public to help find him, releasing his name and photo and even sending a cellphone alert before they got a tip Wednesday.

The tipster was James, calling to say he knew he was wanted and that police could find him at a McDonald’s in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood, two law enforcement officials said. They weren’t authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

James was gone when officers arrived, but he was soon spotted on a busy corner nearby, Chief of Department Kenneth Corey said.

Passer-by Aleksei Korobow said he saw four police cars zoom past, and when he caught up to them, James was in handcuffs as a crowd of people looked on.

“There was nowhere left for him to run,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said.

The arrest came as the gunshot victims, and at least a dozen others injured in the attack, tried to recover.

“I don’t think I could ever ride a train again,” Hourari Benkada, a Manhattan hotel housekeeping manager who was shot in the leg, told CNN from a hospital bed.

Gov. Kathy Hochul visited victims as young as 12 in a hospital Tuesday night. One had been heading to class at Borough of Manhattan Community College when he was hit by either a bullet or shrapnel and needed surgery, the governor said.

Guatemala’s Foreign Ministry said an 18-year-old Guatemalan national, Rudy Alfredo Pérez Vásquez, was hospitalized but “out of danger” Wednesday after being injured in the attack.

James detonated two smoke grenades and fired at least 33 shots with a 9 mm handgun in a subway car packed with commuters, police said.

When the first smoke bomb went off, a passenger asked what he was doing, according to a witness account to police.

“Oops,” James said, set off a second, then brandished the gun and opened fire, Chief of Detectives James Essig said.

When the train stopped at a station and terrified riders fled, James apparently hopped another train — the same one many were steered to for safety, police said. He got out at the next station, disappearing into the nation’s most populous city.

But James left behind numerous clues at the crime scene, including the gun — which he bought in Ohio in 2011 — ammunition magazines, a hatchet, smoke grenades, gasoline, a bank card in his name and the key to a U-Haul van he rented Monday in Philadelphia, according to police and a court complaint.

Tucked in an orange workers’ jacket, which he apparently tossed on a subway platform, was a receipt for a Philadelphia storage unit. Authorities found ammunition, targets and a pistol barrel in the storage locker and learned he’d been there on Monday, the complaint said.

The van was found, unoccupied, near a station where investigators believe James entered the subway system.

Surveillance cameras captured the van arriving from Philadelphia early Tuesday, and a man wearing what appeared to be the same orange jacket leaving the vehicle near the station.

James was born in New York but had lived recently in Philadelphia and Milwaukee, authorities said. Bruce Allen, a neighbor near a Philadelphia apartment where James stayed for the last couple of weeks, said the man never spoke to him, even when moving in.

James had worked at a variety of manufacturing and other jobs, according to his videos. Police said he’d been arrested 12 times in New York and New Jersey between 1990 and 2007 on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to possession of burglary tools, but he has no felony convictions.

His hours of disjointed, expletive-filled videos range from current events, to his life story, to bigoted remarks about people of various backgrounds. James is Black.

Some videos complain about Adams, mental health care James says he got in the city years ago, and conditions on the subway. In one post, he fulminates about trains filled with homeless people, the court complaint noted.

In another, he denounces the treatment of Black people in the U.S. and says, “The message to me is: I should have gotten a gun, and just started shooting.”

The Brooklyn subway station where passengers fled the attack was open as usual Wednesday morning, less than 24 hours after the violence.

Jude Jacques, who takes the subway to work as a fire safety director two blocks from the shooting scene, said he prays every morning but had a special request Wednesday.

“I said, ‘God, everything is in your hands,’” Jacques said. “I was antsy, and you can imagine why. Everybody is scared because it just happened.”

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Balsamo reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Deepti Hajela, Jim Mustian and Nardos Haile in New York, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia, Carrie Antlfinger in Milwaukee, Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, and Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City, Guatemala, contributed.