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Nearly six months after the North Carolina Supreme Court election took place, the contest still hasn’t been called and a winner still hasn’t been certified.

That’s almost entirely due to a barrage of litigation from Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin, who sued for more than 65,000 ballots to be thrown out after they had been cast, triggering a sprawling legal saga that is testing some of the most solid precedents of election law. The effort, if successful, could be more than enough to swing the results of the election, as Griffin currently trails Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs by roughly 700 votes.

But even if the push ultimately falls short, Griffin’s critics, who include members of both parties, say it could have long-lasting consequences and pave the way for more candidates to pursue challenges — no matter how legally questionable — to the results of elections decided by narrow margins.

“This is clearly an attempt to manipulate the law and the courts into changing an election result by changing the rules after the election has been held,” said Ann Webb, a policy director with the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, a government watchdog group.

Griffin’s arguments, Webb said, “require the courts to say, ‘Yes, it’s OK to ask us to change the rules after the election is done.’ And that is where we really see something different and something scary, because there is nothing stopping other candidates from any party in the future from using that same strategy and pointing back to this case.”

In an interview, Riggs called Griffin’s legal approach “insidious” and warned that it would likely be mimicked if it is successful.

“It’s a North Carolina problem today, but it’s a Michigan and Arizona and Georgia problem tomorrow,” she said, referencing other closely divided battleground states.

Even some North Carolina Republicans have called for Griffin to throw in the towel.

“I wanted the Republican judge to win because his philosophy more aligns with me,” former GOP Gov. Pat McCrory told local news outlet ABC11 this week. “He was defeated.”

“You abide by the rules before the election. It’s like changing a penalty call after the Super Bowl is over. You don’t do that,” McCrory said, adding that voters “voted based upon the rule set.”

In addition, Republican-led groups are running ads in the state calling for Griffin to end his litigation.

A spokesperson for Griffin didn’t respond to questions from NBC News for this story.

In an email, North Carolina GOP spokesperson Matt Mercer accused Democrats of not being able to “make an argument on the merits of Judge Griffin’s case because they know following the law is not controversial.”

“If Democrats were being truthful, they’d simply admit they don’t actually care about honest elections and are only interested in partisan outcomes,” Mercer added. The North Carolina GOP partnered with Griffin in his original litigation in the state court system.

Months of litigation

Riggs, who was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 2023, emerged after Election Day last November narrowly ahead of Griffin, a state appeals court judge. A full machine recount as well as a partial hand recount of the race both showed Riggs leading Griffin by 734 votes out of 5.5 million ballots cast.

Griffin subsequently filed legal challenges, backed by the North Carolina GOP, across the state, alleging that more than 65,000 people had voted illegally. The claims focused on three categories of voters: voters who Griffin’s lawyers claimed didn’t have driver’s licenses or Social Security numbers on file in their voter registration records; overseas voters who haven’t lived in North Carolina; and overseas voters who failed to provide photo identification with their ballots.

A series of nuanced and complex court rulings have since followed from North Carolina state courts — including the Supreme Court, the bench that the winner of this election will join — and federal courts. (Griffin and Riggs have recused themselves from the matter when the issue came before the courts they serve on.)

The latest development came Tuesday, when a federal appeals court temporarily blocked North Carolina election officials from moving forward with a period that would allow thousands of military and overseas voters to “cure” their ballots after that had been ordered by the North Carolina Supreme Court.

In that decision earlier this month, the state Supreme Court ruled that about 60,000 of the votes in question cannot be thrown out, but that others could be if minor errors were not fixed, meaning those voters would be required to prove their eligibility to election officials.

Long-term ramifications

Critics of Griffin’s strategy say his arguments contradict several long-held precedents in election law — and regardless of whether they’re successful, they could be used in future attempts to overturn close races.

One such precedent is the notion that the rules of an election must be set before voting occurs, as Griffin is seeking to throw out thousands of ballots cast by voters who followed the letter of the law.

Griffin’s critics also note that only he is seeking to have the ballots thrown out, not any of the other Republican candidates who competed in statewide elections in November.

“Republicans are choosing to challenge voters who did nothing wrong,” North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said on a recent call with reporters. “If they truly believe that there’s been election malpractice, then why is every Republican not challenging the same election results that Jefferson Griffin is right now?”

Meanwhile, more than 200 judges, government officials, attorneys and legal professors — including some Republicans — signed a letter to Griffin last month stating, “The arguments you have advanced ask our judicial system to change the rules in place for the 2024 election after it has run its course.”

“If you succeed, tens of thousands of voters will lose their voice after they voted,” they wrote. “For the sake of our judicial system, we ask you to terminate your litigation now.”

In one of the latest filings from Griffin’s legal team in federal court, his attorneys rejected the argument that he wanted to change “the election rules after the election.”

“That’s not what the courts said. They held that the ‘plain language’ of the state constitution barred voters who had never resided in North Carolina from voting in state elections,” Griffin’s attorneys wrote. “And the North Carolina Supreme Court found that the state election code required overseas voters to provide photo identification with their ballots. As part of its remedy, the court provided a 30-day cure period for those voters to fix the defect.”

Griffin’s critics acknowledge the value of legal remedies following an election, but argue that he should have challenged the rules long before the election if he was concerned about them.

“It’s important to have an escape valve in the form of post-election [legal] challenges — if there are real mistakes, or if the law has been misapplied, or there is evidence of fraud,” said Webb, of Common Cause.

But in this case, she said, Republicans are “using the escape valve to bring a challenge against parts of the law that were there and available to be challenged any time over the past several years.”

WASHINGTON — The merch is out and available for a price on the Trump Organization website: $50 for a “Trump 2028” hat; $36 for a shirt that reads, “Trump 2028 (Re-write the Rules).”

The rules aren’t so easily undone. Donald Trump can’t be elected again in 2028 under the constitutional amendment limiting presidents to two terms. Any number of Trump’s Republican allies will tell you that a third term is inconceivable given the enormous hurdles required to pass a new amendment.

“He’s not going to run for another term,” former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich told NBC News. But, he added, Trump has reason to talk about it: “Don’t underestimate the degree to which he believes any Trump-centered noise is good, because it starves his opponents.”

Yet Trump continues to flirt with the prospect of serving until 2033, when he would be 86 years old. Whether he’ll follow through or not, his assertion that a third term is no joke is something that would-be-contenders ignore at their own peril.

Teasing a third term freezes the 2028 GOP presidential field until aspiring candidates have a clearer understanding of whether and how far Trump intends to push the limits of the Constitution.

Anyone who front runs Trump and mounts a campaign before he declares his intentions might offend the MAGA movement.

Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — none are likely to start building a campaign unless and until Trump concedes this term is his last.

Doing so would invite “total and complete rejection,” said Steve Bannon, a senior White House official in Trump’s first term who is exploring ways for Trump to serve a third term. “Trump is MAGA; MAGA is Trump.”

Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor who ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, said that Trump’s third-term musings “particularly impact JD Vance and Ron DeSantis and anyone else who wants the favor of Donald Trump. They know they have to stay out of the mix until Donald Trump gives the blessing to go after it and says that he would not be seeking a third term.”

That’s not likely to happen any time soon. The party expects Trump to draw out an announcement about his future as long as he can, according to a Republican who is close to possible 2028 candidates. The more Trump delays, the more he commands attention and averts the perception that he’s a lame duck.

The White House has considerable leverage at this point. No serious GOP presidential hopeful would want Trump’s ire.

Consider the case of DeSantis. Trump endorsed him in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial primary and viewed his subsequent 2024 presidential primary challenge as a betrayal.

On top of that, Trump’s political base began to distrust DeSantis after he jumped in the race against Trump, a sentiment that hasn’t subsided. Before the GOP Iowa caucus last year, Laura Loomer, one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, told DeSantis in the lobby of a hotel: “You killed your political career, and I hope you’re happy.”

The best way for putative candidates to stay on the right side of Trump is by going along with the notion that he might indeed run, a Trump political adviser said.

“I think anyone looking to 2028 is probably the first person to purchase one,” said the adviser, referring to the “Trump 2028” hat, who was granted anonymity to share internal thinking.

Vance may be better positioned than most rivals as Trump floats the idea of a third term. He has a built-in platform as a sitting vice president, complete with the perks that the job brings.

At his disposal is a taxpayer-funded staff and airplane that he can use to build his foreign policy bona fides. It helps that his boss is a bit of a homebody and has eschewed extensive travel. This month, Vance met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome to discuss tariffs. He had an audience with Pope Francis shortly before the pontiff’s death.

With Trump controlling the Republican National Committee, Vance last month became the group’s finance chairman, allowing him to befriend well-heeled donors who can be helpful to a future campaign.

Vance has made no movements toward his own presidential run and has yet to seriously think about the idea, a source close to the vice president said.

When asked if he views himself as Trump’s successor, Vance insisted last month that his own White House bid was not an urgent priority but acknowledged the circumstances under which he’d become a strong candidate. He also suggested that any serious moves would come after the 2026 midterm elections.

“If I do really well for the next four years, everything else will take care of itself,” Vance said in an interview with NBC News. “Now, like, yeah, in two and a half years, will that become harder? Will people be more focused on politics than on what the White House is maybe doing that particular day? Maybe.”

Others can’t be as confident. DeSantis faces term limitations and will be out of office in 2027, so he won’t have the stage that the Florida governor’s office provides. Still, that might not dampen his ambitions.

“He absolutely believes he can still be president. While most on the outside looking in do not think he has viability, that’s just not how he thinks. It’s not how he views the world,” a longtime DeSantis ally said.

If Trump finds a way to run, though, his grip on the GOP is such that serious opposition may well evaporate.

The most direct way for Trump to circumvent the 22nd amendment is to change it. But that’s nearly an insurmountable obstacle in these polarized times, requiring three-quarters of the states to go along, for starters.

More fanciful ideas for overcoming the legal barrier involves a scenario in which Vance runs for president and picks Trump as his running mate. If they win, Vance then steps aside and Trump becomes president again.

Were Vance to go along with that, attention might turn from the 22nd Amendment to the 12th. That amendment states that no one who is ineligible under the Constitution to be president shall be eligible to serve as vice president.

So, the question then becomes, is Trump ineligible to be Vance’s running mate given that he’s barred under the 22nd Amendment from being elected to a third term? And, here, the answer may come down to a careful textual reading of the two amendments at issue.

An argument might be made that because the 22nd Amendment says only that Trump can’t be elected president a third time, that doesn’t mean he can’t be president if Vance were to resign and turn the job over to him.

Such a scenario, “is contrary to the intent of the amendments,” but is not “squarely foreclosed by the words,” said Kermit Roosevelt, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (and the great, great grandson of former President Theodore Roosevelt).

Whether Vance would go along is a mystery. He has not publicly discussed the possibility, and spokespeople and advisers have declined requests to elaborate on what Vance is thinking about such a 2028 calculus.

In an interview with Trump on April 22, Time magazine asked his thoughts about a swap with his number two.

“I don’t know anything about, what, look, all I can say is this, I am being inundated with requests,” he said. “I’m doing a good job.”

While “there are some loopholes that have been discussed that are well known,” he said, “I don’t believe in loopholes. I don’t believe in using loopholes.”

Keeping the nation guessing, it turns out, is paying off. On Thursday, none other than the president’s second-oldest son, Eric Trump, posed for a picture on X, smiling and sporting a “Trump 2028” hat.

World leaders join crowds in St. Peter’s Square 

The poor will receive Pope Francis’ body at his burial in the Basilica

St. Peter’s Square close to full capacity ahead of the pope’s funeral

A series of ancient traditions rule the pope’s funeral and conclave

Major security operation underway ahead of Pope Francis’ funeral

Cardinals, conclaves and popes, in five charts

Tens-of-thousands of mourners have paid their respects to Pope Francis

A former New Mexico judge was arrested by federal Homeland Security Investigations agents Thursday and accused of tampering with evidence in a case against a man suspected to be a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday.

The complaint alleges Joel Cano, a former Doña Ana County Division 6 magistrate, destroyed evidence in a federal investigation into the Venezuelan man accused of being in the United States illegally and residing in a back house on property owned by the judge and his wife in Las Cruces.

His arrest came a day before the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, alleging she obstructed federal authorities seeking to detain an undocumented immigrant by escorting him through a nonpublic jury door at her courthouse. A statement issued on the judge’s behalf said that she “will defend herself vigorously, and looks forward to being exonerated,” the statement said.

On Friday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi linked the two cases under the Trump administration’s mission of zero tolerance for those who come to the United States illegally and any judges believed to be helping them.

“We’re sending a very strong message today,” Bondi said on Fox News. “If you are harboring a fugitive, we don’t care who you are, if you are helping hide one, if you are giving a TdA member guns, anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

The recently resigned New Mexico judge gave notice earlier this spring days after federal agents conducted a search on his property. His last day on the bench was March 21.

An application to search the back house in late February alleges that in addition to the suspected gang member, two other Venezuelans in the country illegally lived there and that the Canos’ adult daughter lives on the property.

Federal officials have accused the judge of destroying a cellphone said to belong to suspected gang member Cristhian Adrian Ortega-Lopez.

In a criminal complaint, the officials said that the judge destroyed the phone with a hammer and that the device was being sought because it may have contained photographs showing Ortega-Lopez possessing weapons, some of which allegedly belonged to Cano, his wife and their daughter.

A separate federal complaint against Ortega-Lopez, which accuses him of illegally possessing a firearm, states that an anonymous tipster accused him of being a member of TdA and that his tattoos support the allegation. The anonymous tip inspired the investigation, according to the complaint.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated TdA as a foreign terrorist organization in February. 

The judge’s wife, Nancy Cano, was charged Friday with conspiracy to tamper with evidence. The criminal complaint alleges that she told Ortega-Lopez to delete his Facebook account where he had posted photos with weapons allegedly owned by the judge, his wife, or their daughter.

It’s not clear if the Canos have an attorney for the matter. Two phone numbers associated with their address, including one for a firm called Cano Insurance, were out of order. It also wasn’t clear if Ortega-Lopez has a lawyer. The federal public defender’s office in New Mexico did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In March, a judge ordered Ortega-Lopez be released on bail and into the “third party custody” of Nancy Cano. The federal government later successfully argued that he be kept locked up after prosecutors said his cellphone had images of a decapitated body and Ortega-Lopez associating with known TdA gang members, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Mexico. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

Joel Cano was booked into Doña Ana County Detention Center Thursday with no bond listed, according to inmate records. Nancy Cano was booked about a half-hour earlier under no bond conditions, too, the records state.

Shedeur Sanders was not selected by a team at the end of the third round of the NFL draft on Friday. The Colorado quarterback and son of football legend Deion Sanders was projected to go as high as No. 3 overall to the New York Giants but remains waiting after 102 picks.

Sanders could be selected in Rounds 4-7 on Saturday.

Five quarterbacks — Miami’s Cam Ward, Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart, Louisville’s Tyler Shough, Alabama’s Jalen Milroe and Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel — went ahead of Sanders.

Sanders began his collegiate career at Jackson State in 2021 when his father was the head coach. Both left for Colorado after the 2022 season, and Shedeur Sanders spent his final two years in college with the Buffaloes.

In his senior season, Sanders won Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, completing 74.0% of his passes, with 37 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He also threw 4,134 yards.

Sanders was a key figure in Colorado’s turnaround as a football program. The school won only one game the season before his arrival. In 2024, the Buffaloes won nine games for the first time since 2016.

In the lead up to the draft, Sanders was the target of several scouts and coaches, with his character off the field often being drawn into question.

Sanders told NBC News he wasn’t worried about the negativity.

“I truly don’t have any space for negativity, so it doesn’t play a factor in my life at all,” Sanders said in April about the anonymous comments. “I understand the easiest thing in the world to do is to be negative instead of positive. I truly don’t care what people have to say.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., signaled support for impeaching President Donald Trump during a town hall he hosted near Atlanta on Friday, telling attendees that the president’s conduct “has already exceeded any prior standard for impeachment.”

“I mean, I saw just 48 hours ago, he is granting audiences to people who buy his meme coin,” Ossoff said. “When the sitting President of the United States is selling access for what are effectively payments directly to him. There is no question that that rises to the level of an impeachable offense.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday night.

Video of the town hall was made available online by NBC affiliate WXIA. Ossoff, who is currently running for reelection to the U.S. Senate, made the remark in response to an attendee who questioned why Democrats have not moved to impeach Trump, stating her belief that “everything that Trump is doing is leading us down an authoritative rule.”

“Do more. I like you and I will vote for you if you are brave, and you do what we need,” the attendee said. “We need him impeached, we need him removed.”

Ossoff in response said he “strongly” agreed with the attendee, but told the audience that the move is not currently feasible given the current make up of the House of Representatives, which is responsible for introducing articles of impeachment.

“The only way to achieve what you want to achieve is to have a majority United States House of Representatives,” Ossoff said. “And believe me, I’m working on it every single day, every single day.”

The Georgia senator also pointed to what he characterized as Trump’s defiance of a federal court order as another potentially impeachable offense. Ossoff did not specify exactly which case he was referring to, but the remark comes as Democrats accuse Trump of disregarding a Supreme Court order requiring his administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native and former Maryland resident deported to El Salvador.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, called Ossoff’s remarks “disgusting,” accusing him of attempting to “overturn the will of Georgia voters who just elected President Trump.”

Ossoff now joins a handful of congressional Democrats who have backed calls to impeach Trump in his second term.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, who called for Trump’s impeachment several times during his first term and was removed from Trump’s joint address to Congress in March, was the first Democrat this cycle to back the idea.

Additionally, Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., said earlier this month he “fully supports impeaching” Trump, accusing the president of “not abiding by a lawful Supreme Court ruling.”

Trump was impeached twice during his first term, but was acquitted by the Senate following each impeachment trial. Ossoff joined all Democrats in voting Trump “guilty” after Trump’s second impeachment. He was not in Congress during Trump’s first impeachment.

Impeaching Trump again would require the support of a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate. Because Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress, the effort is a nonstarter, at least until the midterm election cycle.

But still, the support among Democratic voters for impeachment is reflective of broader calls for the party to more actively and aggressively counter Trump’s agenda, a notion that polling suggests is widespread among the party’s base.

A recent NBC News poll found less than a third of Democrats want their party leaders to make legislative compromises with Trump, while nearly two-thirds would rather congressional Democrats stick to their positions even if that risks sacrificing bipartisan progress.

A federal judge in Louisiana on Friday said that a 2-year-old U.S. citizen appears to have been deported with her mother to Honduras with no meaningful due process.

In an order scheduling a hearing for next month, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty wrote that the child was sent to Honduras on Friday with her mother who had been ordered to be removed.

“The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote. “But the Court doesn’t know that.”

The Louisiana court called a government lawyer at 12:19 p.m. to speak with the child’s mother and learned that she was on a plane in the air, the judge said. In a call at 1:06 p.m., the court was told the pair were already in Honduras, Doughty wrote.

Doughty wrote that the May 16 hearing was “In the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

Doughty, chief judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017 and confirmed by the Senate the next year.

The mother and her two daughters, including the U.S. citizen who is identified as VML in court documents, were seized Tuesday morning in New Orleans by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the woman went to a scheduled meeting with the agency, lawyers opposing the deportation wrote.

The family was checking in with an “Intensive Supervision Appearance Program” office, the attorneys wrote. The mother, from Honduras, had been freed from ICE detention in 2021 under that program, they wrote.

The father of VML, who lives in the U.S., sought custody of VML after the mother was detained this week and asked that the girl be placed with a custodian who is “ready and willing” to care for her in the U.S., attorneys for the custodian wrote.

VML was born in Baton Rouge on Jan. 4, 2023, and is a U.S. citizen, the attorneys with the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild wrote. The other child is 11 years old and was born in Honduras.

Attorneys who sought to stop the child’s deportation argued that removing her violates the Constitution and her rights as a U.S. citizen.

Lawyers for the government said that the child’s mother has legal custody of the child and that she indicated in a letter she would take her daughter to Honduras.

The letter, in Spanish, reads, “I will take my daughter … with me to Honduras.”

An image of the handwritten letter is dated Thursday at 6:23 p.m., when the woman and child were in ICE custody and before they were deported Friday.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday night.

The Northern Irish hip-hop group Kneecap responded on Friday to criticism over their pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel messaging during their Coachella set earlier this month, calling the backlash a “coordinated smear campaign.” 

The group, which has been vocal about its view of the conflict in Gaza, performed their set during the festival in front of a screen featuring the words “F— Israel, Free Palestine.” 

The group claimed in a post on X after the festival’s first weekend that organizers subsequently censored the livestream of their performance.  While it was not broadcast online, images of the onstage message circulated across social media, prompting outrage online.   

Tribe of Nova, the organizers behind Israel’s Nova Music Festival where Hamas launched a deadly attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that left 1,200 people dead, said Kneecap’s messaging “deeply hurt many in our community.” The organization invited band members to “visit the Nova Exhibition and experience firsthand the stories of those who were murdered, those who survived, and those who are still being held hostage.” 

Kneecap said in an X post Friday: “Those attacking us want to silence criticism of a mass slaughter. They weaponize false accusations of antisemitism to distract, confuse, and provide cover for genocide.” 

“We do not give a f*ck what religion anyone practices,” the group continued. “We know there are massive numbers of Jewish people outraged by this genocide just as we are. What we care about is that governments of the countries we perform in are enabling some of the most horrific crimes of our lifetimes — and we will not stay silent.” 

The group’s statement comes one week after Coachella wrapped, and amid calls from some critics for the band to be reprimanded by U.S. officials.   

Among the more vocal critics was Sharon Osbourne, a TV personality and the wife of heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne, who accused Kneecap of hate speech and said the U.S. should revoke the group’s work visas. 

“While festivals like Coachella showcase remarkable talent from around the globe, music’s primary purpose is to unite people,” Osbourne, who said she’s of Irish Catholic and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, wrote in a lengthy post on X on Tuesday. “It should not be a venue for promoting terrorist organizations or spreading hate.” 

She said while she respects artists’ “right to exercise their opinions,” Kneecap “took their performance to a different level by incorporating aggressive political statements.”  

According to the BBC, during the band’s second weekend performance, the band led a crowd in a “free Palestine” chant, and band member Mo Chara touched on the conflict.  

“The Irish not so long ago were persecuted at the hands of the Brits, but we were never bombed from the… skies with nowhere to go,” Chara said to the audience. “The Palestinians have nowhere to go.”  

More than 50,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. 

Osbourne said Goldenvoice, the organizers behind the Indio, California,-based festival, should not have allowed them to perform again after seeing their first weekend performance. 

“This behavior raises concerns about the appropriateness of their participation in such a festival and further shows they are booked to play in the USA,” she added, calling on people to join her in “advocating for the revocation of Kneecap’s work visa.” 

Goldenvoice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.  

Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, has died by suicide, her family said Friday. 

Giuffre, 41, died in Neergabby, Australia, where she had been living for several years.

Giuffre was one of the earliest and loudest voices calling for criminal charges against Epstein and his enablers. Other Epstein abuse survivors later credited her with giving them the courage to speak out.

She also provided critical information to law enforcement that contributed to the investigation into and later the conviction of Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as other investigations by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,” her family said in a statement to NBC News. “She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.”

“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors,” the statement said. “In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight.”

Raised primarily in Florida, Giuffre had a troubled childhood. She said she was abused by a family friend, triggering a downward spiral that led to her living on the streets for a time as a teenager.

She was attempting to rebuild her life when she met Maxwell, Epstein’s close confidant. Maxwell groomed her to be sexually abused by Epstein, and that abuse continued from 1999 to 2002, according to Giuffre. Giuffre also alleged that Epstein trafficked her to his powerful friends, including Prince Andrew and French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel.

Epstein, a wealthy financier, died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Maxwell, a former British socialite, was found guilty on five counts of sex trafficking in 2021 for her role in recruiting young girls to be abused by Epstein.

Giuffre filed a federal lawsuit against Andrew in 2021, alleging that he sexually abused her when she was 17. Andrew, who stepped back from his duties as an active royal as controversy related to Epstein swirled around him, agreed to settle the case for an undisclosed amount in 2022. He has denied having sex with her. 

Brunel, who headed several modeling agencies, was charged with sexual harassment and the rape of at least one minor in December 2020. He denied wrongdoing and died by suicide in his jail cell in February 2022.

Several months prior, Giuffre testified against Brunel in a Paris courtroom in June 2021. In an interview after her daylong closed-door testimony, Giuffre said she appeared in court to be a voice for the victims and to make sure Brunel was brought to justice.

“I wanted Brunel to know that he no longer has the power over me,” Giuffre said, “that I am a grown woman now and I’ve decided to hold him accountable for what he did to me and so many others.”

Giuffre moved to Australia with her husband before Epstein’s 2019 arrest. The couple has three children.

Her brother, Danny Wilson, told NBC News she “pushed so hard to snuff the evil out” of the world.

“Her biggest push was, ‘If I don’t do this, nobody’s going to do it,’” he said, regarding her advocacy. “She was in real physical pain — suffered from renal failure. But I think that the mental pain was worse.”

The Epstein story received renewed attention during the most recent presidential election, and in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a collection of Epstein-related files to right-wing media figures and then to the public.

Though the release was widely panned for containing information that was almost entirely previously public, the lead-up to its release — including concerns about the disclosure of sensitive or personally identifying information about victims — had been a source of distress and anxiety for victims in recent months, multiple victims told NBC News.

Giuffre’s lawyer, Sigrid McCawley, described her as a “dear friend and an incredible champion for other victims.”

Those who were close to Giuffre said they remembered her as a fighter.

“Virginia was one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever had the honor to know,” her representative, Dini von Mueffling, said.

And McCawley said, “Her courage pushed me to fight harder, and her strength was awe-inspiring.”

In an interview for a “Dateline” NBC special on Epstein that aired before authorities charged Maxwell and Brunel, Giuffre urged law enforcement to act.

“Take us serious,” she said. “We matter.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

GOLDEN, Colo. — Three Denver-area teens cheered each other during a night of throwing rocks at cars — until one of the stones crashed through a windshield and killed a woman, leading to a murder conviction Friday after the trio turned on one another.

Jurors found Joseph Koenig guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Alexa Bartell, 20, on April 19, 2023, after the other young men riding with him reached deals with prosecutors and testified against him. Koenig, now 20, was also convicted of attempted murder and other less serious crimes for rocks and other objects thrown at vehicles the night Bartell was killed and in previous weeks.

Bartell’s family and friends hugged and cried in court after the verdict.

Her mother, Kelly Bartell, said later that justice had been done but she had mixed feelings, expressing some sympathy for Koenig and the other two young men, who were all 18 when her daughter was killed.

“It’s hard to be happy or feel satisfied that justice was served today, because I feel one amazing life was lost and three others are also lost and impacted,” she said.

Jurors had to consider shifting and competing versions of the truth offered by Koenig’s former co-defendants during the two-week trial.

No one disputed that a 9-pound landscaping rock taken from a Walmart parking lot crashed through Bartell’s windshield, killing her instantly. The issue was who threw it. The only DNA found on the rock was Bartell’s, making the testimony from the other two, Zachary Kwak and Nicholas Karol-Chik, key to the prosecution.

Lawyers for Koenig said Kwak threw the rock that killed Bartell. But Kwak and Karol-Chik, whose plea agreements on lesser charges could lead to shorter prison sentences, said Koenig threw it. Although Karol-Chik said they each threw about 10 rocks that night, Kwak testified that he did not throw any.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Katharine Decker told jurors the damage to Bartell’s car was consistent with Koenig — who is left-handed and was driving — throwing the rock, shotput-style, out the driver’s-side window, as Karol-Chik testified. Even if jurors were unconvinced that Koenig threw it, she told them, they should still find him guilty of first-degree murder as a conspirator.

Koenig’s attorneys said he did not know anyone had been hurt until Bartell’s car went off the road. They also argued that he had borderline personality disorder, affecting his impulse control and judgment.

Defense lawyer Martin Stuart asked jurors to instead find Koenig guilty of manslaughter, the least serious charge he faced, saying he did not knowingly try to kill her. Jurors also had the option of finding him guilty of manslaughter as a conspirator.

After seeing Bartell’s car leave the road, the three friends circled back a few times to look again, according to testimony. Kwak took a photo as a memento, but no one checked on the driver or called for help, according to their testimony.

Bartell’s body would not be discovered until her girlfriend, Jenna Griggs, who was on a call with her when it abruptly cut out, tracked her phone to the field, she testified.

The three agreed not to talk to anyone about what happened, but Kwak, the newest to the group of friends, later told investigators that Koenig threw the rock. Karol-Chik, who said Koenig was like a “brother” to him, initially pointed the finger at Kwak before changing his story and blaming Koenig.

Karol-Chik testified that Koenig seemed “excited” as they drove by Bartell’s car and at one point made a “whoop” sound.

“It sounded like him celebrating,” said Karol-Chik, who admitted placing the rock next to Koenig so he could grab it and throw it.

Koenig’s lawyers tried to cast doubt on the reliability of the other men’s accounts but also stressed that none of the three intended to hurt anyone. The defense declined to comment on the conviction.

Kwak entered into a plea deal first, pleading guilty in May 2024 to first-degree assault. In doing so he acknowledged acting in a way that created a grave risk of death. He also pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and attempted second-degree assault for rocks that were thrown earlier in the night. He faces between 20 and 32 years in prison, according to prosecutors.

About a week later, Karol-Chik pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and committing a crime of violence. He also pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder for throwing rocks at a total of nine people that night and earlier in 2023. Under his agreement, Karol-Chik could be sent to prison for between 35 and 72 years when he is sentenced Thursday, a day before Kwak.

Koenig is to be sentenced June 3 and faces a mandatory life term for the murder conviction.