F.B.I. agents on Wednesday searched the office of a powerful Democratic state legislator in Virginia who had played a key role in a high-stakes congressional redistricting fight.<\/p>\n
The legislator, Louise Lucas of Portsmouth, is a senior leader in the State Senate, where she has served for more than 30 years. Two people familiar with the case said the search was related to an investigation opened during the Biden administration that has continued, examining possible corruption and bribery related to marijuana dispensary businesses.<\/p>\n
F.B.I. agents executed a search warrant at Ms. Lucas\u2019s office and a neighboring marijuana dispensary, according to people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe an open investigation. Other locations were also searched, the people said.<\/p>\n
In a written statement, the bureau\u2019s Norfolk field office said that agents had been \u201cexecuting a court-authorized federal search warrant in Portsmouth, Va.\u201d <\/p>\n
Her office did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.<\/p>\n
Ms. Lucas\u2019s influence was crucial to a recent battle over congressional redistricting. Last month, voters in Virginia approved an unusual plan to redraw district boundaries in the middle of the decade, as opposed to a long tradition of redrawing the lines after every census, which is conducted once a decade.<\/p>\n
Democrats argued the new district lines were needed because of efforts by President Trump and his supporters to redraw boundaries in Republican-dominated states ahead of the 2026 congressional elections, at a time when the Iran war and high gas prices are hurting Republicans\u2019 popularity.<\/p>\n
In Virginia, Democrats currently hold six of 11 House seats, but the new map could tilt that to 10 to 1 in their favor.<\/p>\n
After Republicans complained that the new Virginia political map was unfair to their voters, Ms. Lucas was characteristically blunt on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou all started it,\u201d she replied to Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. \u201cWe,\u201d she said, using an expletive, \u201cfinished it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"F.B.I. agents on Wednesday searched the office of a powerful Democratic state legislator in Virginia who had played…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13267,12819,2339,8,8367,9,12985,15509,12986,7,11259,921],"class_list":{"0":"post-25332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-cannabis-foods-and-products","9":"tag-corruption-institutional","10":"tag-federal-bureau-of-investigation","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-marijuana","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-redistricting-and-reapportionment","15":"tag-search-and-seizure","16":"tag-state-legislatures","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government","19":"tag-virginia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116528834310022171","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}