STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) — The former lawyer and friend of the late, estranged husband of Jennifer Dulos, a Connecticut mother of five who went missing in 2019 and is now presumed dead, pleaded guilty Friday to interfering with police in the case.
Kent Mawhinney had originally been charged with the more serious crime of conspiracy to commit murder.
A court clerk in Stamford confirmed Mawhinney was sentenced to serve 11 months. That equates to the time Mawhinney has already served behind bars since his arrest.
Outside court on Friday, Mawhinney denied knowing the whereabouts of the missing woman and said he would tell authorities if he did.
Dulos, who was last seen dropping off her children at school in New Canaan on May 24, 2019, was declared legally dead in 2023.
Prosecutors allege the late Fotis Dulos killed his wife at her New Canaan home and drove away with her body. He died by suicide in 2020, soon after being charged with murder. He had denied killing his wife. The couple were going through a contentious divorce at the time of her disappearance.
Last year, his girlfriend, Michelle Troconis, was convicted of helping Fotis Dulos plot and cover up the murder of Jennifer Dulos. Troconis was sentenced to more than 14 years in prison.
Mawhinney’s attorney, Jeffrey Kestenband, said in a statement his client was not part of a conspiracy to kill Jennifer Dulos, noting the state acknowledged there was not enough evidence to prove the original charge.
“The state’s acknowledgment is not surprising because Kent was not involved,” Kestenband said. "He has been through a lot since his arrest, and he can now move on with his life.”
Friends and family of Jennifer Dulos said in a statement they do not believe Mawhinney has been absolved of conspiracy to murder, saying the charge was dropped for multiple reasons and they supported the decision to do so.
FILE - Attorney Kent Mawhinney is arraigned on conspiracy to commit murder charges in the case of missing mother of five, Jennifer Dulos, in Stamford Superior Court Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in Stamford, Conn. (Erik Trautmann/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles said Friday it had opened “multiple election fraud investigations” related to California's elections and sent a prosecutor to the county's vote-counting center.
The developments came a day after President Donald Trump made baseless claims of mass fraud in California's drawn-out vote count from Tuesday's primary. Late-tallied Democratic-leaning mail ballots were continuing to eat into the vote totals for the president's preferred candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor.
The announcement by U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, Trump's appointee as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, and the visit to Los Angeles County's ballot tabulation center marked an escalation in the president's campaign against the Democratic-dominated state, whose notoriously prolonged vote count has been a magnet for election conspiracy theories. Trump weighed in again Friday while participating in a roundtable discussion in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, claiming without evidence that Democrats were rigging the election.
“You look at what’s happening — it’s getting tighter and tighter and tighter,” he said. “And the people who were supposed to win, bad things are happening. It’s a crooked state.”
Trump has often said that changes to vote totals as late ballots are counted are a sign of fraud, when they're merely a reflection of more ballots being counted.
On Thursday, Trump said his Department of Justice was investigating the California count. By Friday morning, Essayli posted on X about ongoing investigations without providing details, saying only that California’s elections have “serious structural vulnerabilities.”
An assistant U.S. attorney came to the main ballot processing center Friday morning, according to a statement from Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for Los Angeles County's Registrar-Recorder. The prosecutor “was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” Sanchez said.
He added that “election officials routinely host observers representing a wide range of interests.”
It was not the first time Trump's Justice Department has taken an interest in California's elections. Last fall, it sent observers to monitor polling sites in five counties, including Los Angeles, during the special election asking voters to change California's congressional map.
Also on Friday, Republican Steve Hilton, who is Trump's favored candidate for governor, called for a sweeping overhaul in California's election laws to limit mail ballots to only those who request them, rather than being sent to all registered voters. He also called for an Election Day deadline to accept them rather than the seven-day grace period the state currently allows as long as they are postmarked by the final day of voting.
Hilton said in an interview that the U.S. attorney's office might know more than his campaign does, but noted his team has been monitoring the count and has seen nothing that seems illegal.
“We certainly haven’t seen anything of that nature that would warrant legal action,” Hilton said.
Still, Hilton said the sluggish count has made California “a national and international laughingstock.” He proposed the state government send an emergency detachment of state workers to California's 58 counties to speed up the vote count.
Jesse Salinas, president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officers, said he welcomed Hilton's eagerness to help but the proposal would do no good.
“It'd be more disruptive than helpful at this point,” said Salinas, who's also the clerk and registrar for Yolo County.
Anyone who handles a ballot or machine used in the vote-counting process would have to be trained by the very people working feverishly to tally mail ballots that poured in Tuesday. And, added Salinas, his own vote-counting facility is already full, with no more room for any additional staff.
Hilton, who has been endorsed by Trump, is battling two Democrats for one of the two slots on the November ballot. Reality television star Spencer Pratt, another candidate backed by Trump, is likewise competing with City Councilwoman Nithya Raman for the chance to face Mayor Karen Bass in the November election.
Because Democrats usually vote by mail, and held onto their ballots unusually late in the crowded primary, their votes are often tallied after those of more Republican-leaning voters who might have cast ballots early. The net effect is that Republican candidates appear at their high water marks in the first batch of returns on election night, only to see their leads whittled away in the days or weeks that follow, when election workers complete the lengthy process of tallying late-arriving mail ballots.
Ballots are inspected the day after California's primary election at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in City of Industry, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks to reporters outside the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Ballots are inspected the day after California's primary election at the LA County Ballot Processing Center Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in City of Industry, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
