Top racing trainer released from prison facing possible deportation from US

The one-time leading trainer secured early release from a five-year sentence having been a pivotal figure in a huge doping scandal in racing
One-time leading trainer Jorge Navarro, known as the 'Juice Man', has been released from prison. The 50-year-old secured early release from federal prison in Florida having served three years and three months of a five year jail sentence after admitting doping horses.
Navarro was a pivotal figure in a widespread doping scandal in which more than 20 people were charged including Maximum Security trainer Jason Servis, who was also jailed. The charges arose from a 2020 FBI investigation into the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs involving a group of trainers, vets and drug distributors at tracks across the USA as well as in the UAE.
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The Department of Justice said Navarro, who trained more than 1,200 winners with earnings of nearly £26 million, 'operated his doping scheme covertly, importing misbranded 'clenbuterol' that he both used and distributed to others, avoiding explicit discussion of PEDs during telephone calls, and working with others to coordinate the administration of PEDs at times that racing officials would not detect such cheating.'
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One of the horses he doped was XY Jet, winner of the 2019 Golden Shaheen in Dubai. Among his preferred PEDs were various 'blood building' drugs, which, when administered before intense physical exertion, can lead to cardiac issues or death. XY Jet died of an apparent heart attack in 2020.
At the time New York district attorney Audrey Strauss described Navarro as 'a reckless fraudster whose veneer of success relied on the systematic abuse of the animals under his control'.
Navarro left federal prison in Miami on Wednesday but could now face deportation as the native of Panama does not hold US citizenship.
He became widely known as 'Juice Man' after a viral video emerged of him celebrating a winner, trained by Navarro's brother, with a friend who shouted "Juice Man", adding "That's the juice".

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Times

12 hours ago

• Times

Sex addict Anthony Weiner on jail, Trump and Hillary Clinton

As nominative determinism might suggest, Anthony Weiner was perhaps always doomed. A prominent New York congressman and rapidly rising star in the Democratic Party, married to Hillary Clinton's glamorous adviser, Huma Abedin, it all came crashing down — in spectacularly lurid style — in May 2011, when Weiner accidentally posted a sexually explicit photo of his bulging crotch to Twitter. The headlines wrote themselves, with the New York Post gleefully declaring, 'Weiner exposed'. First, though, he denied it, claiming his account had been hacked (the New York Post — 'Weiner: I'll stick it out'), before admitting to having sent similar pictures to numerous women ('Naked truth'), and finally resigning ('Weiner's rise and fall'). Six months later, Abedin gave birth to their son, Jordan. Undeterred, Weiner attempted a return to politics in 2013 in the bold hope of becoming mayor of New York ('Weiner's second coming'), before more reports of sexting emerged — this time under the alias Carlos Danger — and he crashed out in the primary. Through this all, Abedin stood by him. But in 2016 it emerged that he had posted a sexually explicit photo with Jordan, then four, sleeping next to him. And, a few weeks later, that one of those he had sexted was a 15-year-old girl. An FBI probe was launched the following year and he was sentenced to 21 months for transferring obscene material to a minor (he served a little over 15 months in prison). Abedin filed for divorce ('Huma cuts off Weiner') and would later say that Weiner 'didn't just break my heart, he ripped it out and stomped on it over and over again'. In the decade since, Weiner faded from view, before reappearing as an in-house liberal at WABC, a conservative talk radio station. He continued therapy for what he says is a sex addiction. Now, 14 years after first derailing his own promising career, the indefatigable Weiner is staging (another) comeback, running for a seat on New York City Council. Sarah Batchu, one of his opponents, told The New York Times that Trump's victory has allowed other scandal-prone politicians to believe they too could return. ('Trump got elected as a 34-time felon,' Weiner himself said last month.) 'Everyone deserves a second chance, but this guy has had third, fourth and fifth chances,' Batchu said. And, just days before his former wife Abedin marries Alexander Soros, the son of billionaire George Soros and heir to his fortune, 60-year-old Weiner is walking the streets of the East Village in Manhattan, dog and journalist in tow, in his bid for elected office once again. Tabloid-friendly surname aside, this was not supposed to be Weiner's trajectory. At the age of 27, the Brooklyn native became the youngest councillor in New York City's history; then, as an acclaimed, gifted congressman representing New York and known for his straight-talking, sometimes brash modus operandi, a rising star in the Democratic Party and an eligible bachelor in DC circles. In 2007, he began dating Huma Abedin, the glamorous longtime aide to Hillary Clinton. In her 2021 memoir, Both/And, Abedin wrote that after their first kiss her 'head started spinning and didn't stop'. At 32, it was her first serious relationship. They married in 2010, in a ceremony officiated by Bill Clinton, and became a bona fide Washington power couple. • NYC mayor election: Everything you need to know As if his infidelities — from less than a year into their marriage — weren't painful enough, they came with possibly catastrophic professional and political consequences too. Little over a week before the 2016 election, the FBI said it had messages between Abedin and Hillary Clinton, her boss, which they found on Weiner's seized laptop. It was his laptop, in other words, that prompted them to reopen the investigation into Clinton's private email use. Clinton herself credits the probe as a decisive factor in her loss. 'If the election was on October 27,' she said of the day prior to the announcement by James Comey, then the FBI director, that the probe would be reopened, 'I would be your president.' Weiner tells me he thinks 'things are much more complicated' but that it's 'not nothing'. Our dog walk is in the area of the city where Weiner is running for a council seat — a pocket he's never before represented. 'I mean, look, it was a very close race, and she lost by a small number of votes, and so you can point to anything and say that was the difference,' he says in his defence. He never made a 'direct amendment' to Clinton. 'I think I wrote her a letter saying I'd like an opportunity [to apologise] at some point. I don't think we ever spoke about it.' In fact, Weiner is never excessively contrite about any of the scandals I raise as we walk the neighbourhood. He is open, for example, about his belief that he was severely punished and has done his time. 'It was a slow news week and my name is Weiner,' he says at one point. At another: 'I knew that prison was ridiculous. For obscenity, it was pretty ridiculous. I mean, everyone did what they were supposed to. Look, the higher the monkey climbs, the more you can see his ass.' This is how Weiner talks — profane, direct, often curt. But he is not guileless. I ask about his treatment for sex addiction. This is a contested term. Sex addiction is not listed as a formal diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, while the World Health Organisation recognises compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as a impulse-control disorder, not an addiction. It's perhaps an 'academic conversation', Weiner says. He attends groups once a week and attendance, he says, is growing — 'Rooms are fuller and fuller, more and more people, more and more meetings.' Weiner has drawn connections between his past career and his sexual behaviour. 'You become obsessive about people's affirmation,' he says when I press him. So the obvious question is, isn't there now a high risk of relapse if he returns to politics? 'I don't think this is an example of an alcoholic who wants to be a bartender,' he says. But he does admit the link. 'I would argue that a lot of people in public life are really jazzed up by the affirmation. They get it. I just have to be mindful of it. But it's a reasonable question.' Nonetheless, one might suggest that running for public office would be the very last thing you would do if you were him, so… why? 'The candidates were running this kind of frictionless campaign,' he says of his opponents, 'trying not to offend any of the traditional Democratic constituencies.' But in the end, Weiner thought, 'The only reason not to run is that people would say something mean about me, or would bring up my past, and I didn't think that was a good enough reason.' He raised the idea of running again with Huma and Jordan, now 13, over dinner one night. They were supportive. 'Her take was, look, this is what you're good at.' He reckons the issues associated with running in this new part of the city — and as 'more of a centrist candidate in a very progressive district' — are arguably bigger challenges than the scandals. I ask about Abedin and her imminent wedding to Soros. It is the only few seconds of the interview that I get the sense he weighs his words with much care. 'I don't know what's public and I am not going to comment on it.' He does confirm, when I mention it's due to take place the following weekend, that he isn't going. 'That's the day that polls open here… Yeah, I will not be going. I wish them all the best and she seems very happy and Jordan likes them [all]. So it's all great.' His former wife has moved on — is he dating too? 'That's a big word.' At this point his dog, Billy, finds herself in a harmless brawl in the dog park. This is a welcome distraction — 'She's just being the neighbourhood school mom' — but Weiner returns to our earlier topic and says that, yes, he does go out on dates. I ask if he uses the apps. He doesn't, he says, but he's clearly amused. 'That's kind of a funny idea.' He admits the task of persuading people to trust him is harder than for most. 'Yes, I just had this conversation with someone recently.' With someone he's dating? 'Dating is… It's a lame word…' He trails off before talking about the dog instead. 'You see, she wants to play. She just doesn't quite know how to do it.' At this point Billy begins humping another dog. I suggest this might be too on the nose to include in the interview. 'A little bit,' he concedes. 'You can kind of see the lead for your piece taking shape right now in front of us. I'll write your lead for you: 'You can tell Anthony Weiner's dog has been around him for a while.' ' We wrap up the subject of dating. 'Put it this way: it's fraught. But I don't date much.' Does he stand any chance of winning, though? Weiner thinks his opponents in the upcoming council election are tame. 'In today's world, you've got these other people that I'm running against [who] cut their teeth in a very different time, where it's: how do you get this? How do you not offend this group?' He talks about homelessness. 'You have homeless people who are mentally unwell living on our streets. It's a problem. Everyone recognises [it], every candidate recognises it… This group of politicians that I am up against, they look at the situation and say, all right, who's on this side of the problem? Who's on this side? 'And there are people like the American Civil Liberties Union, who said that a homeless person has a right to be on that street right now in our public space. But most people in this part [of the city], most people who vote, they look at that and say, 'How do we solve that problem?' ' His putative return to politics is not without backlash. Sarah Batchu proposed a bill in February nicknamed the Weiner Act that would ban registered sex offenders — of which Weiner is one — from holding public office. His top opponent is Harvey Epstein, a previously unknown candidate who went viral when Saturday Night Live did a sketch about his name: neither Harvey Weinstein nor Jeffrey Epstein. We leave the dog park and a man walks towards us holding a camera. 'You've got some nerve running for office after sending that dick!' Weiner is unfazed. 'Say, one of these Trump motherf***ers!' Most of what is shouted over the next three minutes is even more unprintable than that. 'You kiss your mom with that mouth?' Weiner asks him, repeatedly shouting, 'Trump motherf***er, go home!' and, 'Another Trump motherf***er!' to those in the park who are, by this point, beginning to turn their heads. The man repeats the usual charges. 'Your fault that Trump got elected in the first place, motherf***er!' he rages. 'They used your sex crime to sink Hillary!' The episode feels reminiscent of the 2016 fly-on-the-wall documentary, Weiner, which introduced me and countless others to Weiner's brusque style while his mayoral campaign (and then marriage too) combusted in real time, its whole extraordinary disintegration captured on camera. This time, a number of young men rally to him. 'Mr Weiner,' one says. 'Don't even talk to him. He's worthless.' These aren't the only men we bump into on our walk who are supportive of Weiner — and they are largely men. But it's difficult to tell if he stands a chance in the council election. 'It's too small a district to really poll,' he says. But he knows his pitch well. 'I just think that my gift is the absence of really giving a shit about whether I might offend someone… And it sounds to people like, oh, I'm doing something different. 'No, what I'm really doing is just practising the only form of politics I know how to do now. Is it going to fit well with this moment? Does it fit well with this electorate? Does it fit well with my scandal? Who the f*** knows. But I don't know any other way to do it. I don't know any other way to do it.'

The Independent

16 hours ago

• The Independent

Family of ex-FBI agent presumed dead in Iran hopes talks with US can lead to return of his remains

The family of a retired FBI agent presumed dead after vanishing in Iran 18 years ago is calling for any deal between the United States and Iran to include the return of his remains. Robert Levinson disappeared on March 9, 2007, when he was scheduled to meet a source on the Iranian island of Kish. For years, U.S. officials would say only that Levinson was working independently on a private investigation. But a 2013 Associated Press investigation revealed that Levinson had been sent on a mission by CIA analysts who had no authority to run such an operation. The U.S. government in 2020 said that it had concluded that Levinson had died while in the custody of Iran. The family at the time said that it did not know when or if Levinson's body would be returned for burial but vowed that those responsible for his death would ultimately face justice. "We want to make sure that our dad is not forgotten,' Daniel Levinson, one of Levinson's sons, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Friday. The younger Levinson said that as President Donald Trump signals an interest in diplomacy over Tehran 's nuclear program that could avert direct U.S. military involvement in Iran's war with Israel, now is the time for Washington to use its 'leverage to hold them responsible.' The family, he said, still has no answers but believes the Iranian government does. 'We fully believe that they know exactly where his remains would be and what exactly happened to him,' he said. 'We want justice for him. We want to get answers. We have no answers and the Iranian government has lied about it for 18 years.' On Thursday, an account on the social media platform X created to draw attention to Levinson's case posted a message that said: 'Our dad, Bob Levinson, was left behind too many times. This may be the last chance to get answers. Any deal with Iran must finally bring him home to rest on US soil.' Among the people who reposted the message was FBI Director Kash Patel.

Daily Mirror

20 hours ago

• Daily Mirror

Mystery woman who paid fine to free Madeleine McCann suspect is ex-cop

Christian Brueckner was facing extra time behind bars because he could not pay a fine. But now a former technician in Germany's BKA - their equivalent of the FBI - has paid the cash A former police officer has paved the way for the release of Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner by secretly paying his court fines. German authorities hoped outstanding levies for an offence in jail would keep the 48-year-old rapist and paedophile behind bars until January. But they were dealt a blow when a mystery woman paid the £1,300 fines needed for him to be freed on the earliest possible date in September. And now it has emerged the anonymous donor is a former employee of the Bundeskriminalamt - Germany's equivalent of the FBI. Her actions means investigators will miss out on crucial extra time to bring charges over Madeleine's 2007 disappearance. ‌ ‌ Brueckner is nearing the end of a seven-year jail term for raping an American pensioner in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz. German prosecutors named him as their prime suspect in the Madeleine case in June 2020 but have yet to charge him. In May he was convicted for verbally assaulting prison guards and also has outstanding fines for assault. The mystery woman, a former technician from the BKA, transferred €1,447 (£1,238.27) to pay the fines earlier this month. According to Der Spiegel she is a former surveillance operative who once worked in audio intelligence. She was allegedly upset after investigators bugged Brueckner's jail cell without permission. The woman claims she only meant to pay a fine relating to insulting a prison officer and did not realise the charges included assault. She described it as a 'misunderstanding'. Brueckner is now due to walk out of prison on September 17 and has boasted of planning to go into hiding. Politicians and victims' groups want an inquiry into how a woman once trusted with surveillance operations ended up helping Brueckner. ‌ 'This is not just a scandal – it's a catastrophic failure of judgement and oversight,' one MP told Der Spiegel. 'The police must explain how this could happen under their watch.' Earlier this week it was reported Brueckner is planning to move to Germany's 'billionaire playground island' when he is released from jail. His lawyer Friedrich Fuelscher has claimed Brueckner plans to stay in Germany after his release - and has already chosen a new home. ‌ 'According to my information, he plans to settle in Schleswig-Holstein,' Fuelscher told Bild. And Brueckner has a very specific location in mind - the exclusive North Sea island of Sylt. 'Sylt has appealed to him in the past,' Fuelscher added. Sylt is Germany's northernmost island, nestled in the North Sea just off Schleswig‑Holstein. It has been connected to the mainland by the Hindenburgdamm causeway since 1927. In the 1960s Sylt reinvented itself into a jet‑set playground for rich movers and shakers, and it is still this way today. ‌ Despite a lengthy police investigation, detectives appear to be no closer to charging him over Madeleine's disappearance. He was cleared last October of a string of sex crimes he was accused of carrying out in Portugal. Prosecutors are awaiting the outcome of an appeal against those verdicts lodged in Germany's Federal Court of Justice. Brueckner denies any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance. German search teams spent three days hunting for evidence in Portugal earlier this month. Brueckner was living in a ramshackle farmhouse on the edge of Praia da Luz when Madeleine vanished from the holiday resort in May 2007.