Local
Prosecutors offer plea deal to Comet Pizza gunman
Hearing set for Feb. 10
A gunman fired shots inside Comet pizza in December. (Photo by Elizabeth Murphy; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office offered a plea bargain on Tuesday to the North Carolina man arrested on Dec. 4 for entering D.C.’s Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant with an assault rifle, claiming he was investigating whether a child sex ring operated there.
During a Jan. 24 status hearing at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Assistant U.S. Attorney Demian Ahn told a federal judge a plea offer had been made to Edgar Maddison Welch, 29, who has been charged with multiple federal and D.C. gun-related offenses in connection with the Comet pizza case.
Ahn did not disclose the terms of the plea offer, and the offer was not entered into the public court records as of late Tuesday.
“The offer was not made public,” William Miller, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office, told the Washington Blade
U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson scheduled another status hearing for Feb. 10, when Welch and his Public Defender Service attorney are expected to disclose whether Welch accepts the plea offer. If he does, the terms of the offer will be publicly disclosed.
At a court hearing on Dec. 16, Welch pled not guilty to a federal charge of interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition and D.C. charges of assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence.
D.C. police said Welch fired his rifle at least three times inside the restaurant after frightened customers and employees fled the premises when they saw him enter with the rifle strapped to his shoulders.
Police said no one was injured and Welch surrendered to police peacefully after he determined there were no signs that a child sex ring reportedly linked to Hillary Clinton was operating in a hidden room at the restaurant. Welch told police he became convinced such a ring was exploiting children at the restaurant after reading what authorities say were fake “news” stories posted online.
Comet Ping Pong, which is owned by gay businessman James Alefantis, became the target of harassing phone calls, including death threats, after the fake stories linking it to a pedophile ring were posted on social media outlets and viewed by hundreds of thousands of people across the country.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Brown said Welch, who has been held in jail since the time of his arrest, will remain in jail until at least the time of his trial.
Edgar Maddison Welch (Photo via Facebook)
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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