CBS News
Chad Daybell’s “desire for sex, money and power” led to deaths of wife and Lori Vallow Daybell’s children, prosecutor says
Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial of Chad Daybell, who is charged in Idaho with killing his wife and the two youngest children of his then-girlfriend, Lori Vallow Daybell, in an unusual case rooted in extremist religious beliefs. The trial comes nearly a year after Vallow Daybell was convicted of murdering her children.
Prosecutor Rob Wood told jurors Wednesday morning that Daybell became obsessed with Vallow Daybell after they met at a religious conference in 2018. Wood said the pair had an affair and came to see Daybell’s wife at the time, Tammy Daybell, and Vallow’s children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow and Tylee Ryan, as obstacles to their future who were sometimes called dark spirits or zombies.
“When he had a chance at what he considered his rightful destiny, he made sure that no person, no law would stand in his way,” Wood said about Daybell. “His desire for sex, money and power led him to pursue those ambitions and this pursuit led to the deaths of his wife and Lori’s two innocent children.”
The pair was initially set to be tried together, but a judge severed their trials after Daybell waived his right to a speedy trial.
Daybell, 55, is facing charges of first degree murder, insurance fraud, and conspiracy to commit murder and grand theft in connection with the deaths of Tammy Daybell, 7-year-old “JJ” and 16-year-old Tylee. Vallow Daybell received a life sentence without parole for the killings.
Prosecutors say the couple justified the three killings with doomsday beliefs, part of an elaborate scheme to eliminate any obstacles to their relationship and to obtain money from survivor benefits and life insurance. Vallow Daybell referred to her two youngest kids as zombies, one friend testified during her trial.
John Roark/The Idaho Post-Register via AP, Pool
Who is Chad Daybell?
Chad Daybell was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and self-published fiction loosely based on its teachings.
In 2019, he tried to fraudulently collect on his late wife’s life insurance policy, and Vallow Daybell continued to collect both children’s Social Security benefits after they died.
Chad Daybell has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and the trial is expected to take more than two months. Prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty if Daybell is convicted.
The grim story began in the fall of 2019, when extended family members reported the two children missing and law enforcement officials launched a search that spanned several states. The subsequent investigation took several unexpected turns.
Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell were having an affair when both of their spouses died unexpectedly, investigators said. Vallow Daybell’s husband was shot to death by her brother in Arizona in July 2019; the brother told police it was in self-defense.
Several months later, in October 2019, Tammy Daybell died. Chad Daybell initially told police she was battling an illness and died in her sleep, but an autopsy later determined she died of asphyxiation. Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell married just two weeks after Tammy Daybell died, surprising family members and drawing suspicion from authorities.
Friends later told detectives that Vallow Daybell and Chad Daybell believed they had been reincarnated and were tasked with gathering people before a biblical apocalypse.
Washington — President-elect Trump is meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Chew on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
The news was first reported by CNN.
A spokesperson for TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference earlier Monday, Trump had warm words about TikTok and its near-term future.
“We’ll take a look at TikTok. You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points. And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that,” Trump said when asked about how he would stop a ban. Harris won 54% of voters under 30, but Trump made inroads.
During his first term in the White House, Trump tried to ban the app.
President Biden earlier this year signed into law a bill passed by Congress requiring TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, face a Jan. 19 deadline to cut ties or be banned in the U.S. The companies have tried to delay the deadline pending a Supreme Court review, but a federal appeals court, which upheld the law, denied the request last week. The companies asked the Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily pause the law.
“A modest delay in enforcing the Act will create breathing room for this Court to conduct an orderly review and the new Administration to evaluate this matter — before this vital channel for Americans to communicate with their fellow citizens and the world is closed,” the emergency application said.
The filing asked the Supreme Court to make a decision on the request by Jan. 6 so ByteDance and TikTok can “coordinate with their service providers to perform the complex task of shutting down the TikTok platform only in the United States” if the justices decline.
A 90-day extension could be granted if a sale is in process by the deadline. But TikTok has argued that a sale is unfeasible and the Chinese government opposes the sale of the algorithm which powers the app.
Most Americans may consider the standard retirement age to be 65, but the so-called “full retirement age” for Social Security is already older than that — and it’s about to hit an even higher age in 2025.
Social Security’s full retirement age (FRA) refers to when workers can start claiming their full benefits, which is based on the number of years they’ve worked as well as their income during their working years. The longer someone works and the higher their income, the more they can receive from Social Security when they finally claim their benefits.
While the FRA used to be 65 years old, Congress overhauled the program in 1983 to raise the retirement age threshold in order to account for longer life expectancies.
As part of that revamp, the FRA has been inching higher by two months at a time, based on a person’s birth year. For instance, people who were born in 1957 reached their FRA when they turned 66 years and 6 months old, or starting in 2023; but people born in 1958 must turn 66 years and 8 months old to qualify for their full benefits, or starting in September 2024.
The full retirement age is set to increase again by two months, to 66 years and 10 months old, for people born in 1959. That means the higher FRA for that cohort will go into effect in 2025, with people born in 1959 starting to qualify for their full benefits in November 2025. (You can calculate when you could get your full benefits on this Social Security Administration page.)
To be sure, there is flexibility about when to claim Social Security benefits. People can claim as soon as they turn 62 years old, but the trade-off is a reduced benefit that’s locked in for the rest of their retirement.
For instance, claiming at 62 will result in a benefit that’s about 30% less than your full benefit — a sacrifice that many older Americans opt for, given that many are forced into retirement earlier than they expected or because they believe it makes more sense to claim more years of guaranteed retirement income, even if it’s at a lower amount.
Young boomers and Gen Xers
The increase in the FRA for people born in 1959 marks the penultimate age change, with the final jump occurring for workers born in or after 1960. Those Americans won’t be able to claim their FRA until they hit 67 years old, which means that someone born in January 1960 must hold off until January 2027 to get their full retirement benefits.
That will mostly impact the youngest baby boomers and Gen Xers, with the latter generation spanning 1965 to 1980.
These workers, however, are among the least prepared for retirement, according to recent research. The youngest boomers — those born between 1959 and 1965 — started to hit 65 this year, but many of them lack adequate savings to support themselves in old age, the ALI Retirement Income Institute found earlier this year.
About 1 in 3 of these younger boomers will rely on Social Security benefits for at least 90% of their retirement income when they are 70, the study found. But Social Security benefits are designed to replace about 40% of a person’s working income.
Gen X, meanwhile, is also shaping up to hit retirement without enough saved for their golden years. The average retirement savings of Gen X households is about $150,000 — far below the roughly $1.5 million that Americans say they need to retire comfortably. Another study found that about 40% of Gen Xers don’t have a penny saved for retirement.
Meanwhile, older Americans can also maximize their Social Security benefits by delaying claiming until they turn 70 years old. At that point, one’s benefits are boosted about 25% higher than their full benefits. But only about 4% of Americans wait until they’re 70 to claim the maximum Social Security benefit, according to a recent study from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies.
CBS News
Trump threatens to sue Des Moines Register over poll, promises more lawsuits against news outlets after ABC News settlement
The announcement Saturday that ABC has agreed to commit $15 million toward President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential foundation to settle a defamation lawsuit was a rare victory for Trump in years of lawsuits against news organizations.
In the settlement’s aftermath, Trump said Monday at a news conference in Florida that he planned to sue the Des Moines Register over a poll and vowed to continue filing suits against news outlets whom he’s long accused of bias.
He complained that the pollster, J. Ann Selzer, “said I was going to lose by three or four points,” after previous Iowa surveys showed he’d win the state easily, “by 20 points.” Trump won the state by 13 points.
“In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference,” he said, adding, “we’ll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow.”
Lark-Marie Anton, a spokesperson for the Des Moines Register, said in a statement to CBS News, “We have acknowledged that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer.”
“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit,” Anton said.
Such litigation is unusual for presidents to pursue, according to Ohio University professor Aimee Edmondson. Trump has a long history of suing the media, she said, though his lawsuits aren’t often successful.
“It’s a rarity that he would actually win a settlement against a journalistic outlet, when I saw that I was astonished,” said Edmondson, who researches media law and journalism history.
Trump has sued CNN, The Washington Post and the New York Times multiple times, including during his first term in office. It’s a tactic he pursued both before and after his presidency, suing journalists and their book publishers, and major outlets — including CBS News — for coverage he didn’t like.
Edmondson said the lawsuits appear to have an added benefit for Trump.
“He has really done a good job repeating that message that journalists are the enemy of the people,” Edmondson said.
During the press conference on Monday, Trump said, “I feel I have to do this,” and added, “It costs a lot of money to do it but we have to straighten out the press.”
While Trump’s recent lawsuits have focused on outlets that are subsidiaries of deep pocketed corporations, Edmondson said she worries they might inspire others to sue “mom and pop” local media in response to coverage.
“Think of the state and county local officials, who might say, “Oh, this will be a great way to punish local journalists,” Edmondson said.
Trump’s suits often demand extraordinary figures from the defendants. Trump sued Timothy O’Brien after the journalist wrote a book questioning Trump’s claims about his own net worth, demanding $5 billion in damages. The case was dismissed, and Trump later told a reporter for The Washington Post that he knew he couldn’t win the suit.
“I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” Trump said.
Trump sued ABC for defamation after anchor George Stephanolopous said that Trump had been “found liable for rape” during a March 10 interview with Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
A unanimous civil jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexual abuse of the writer E. Jean Carroll. The sexual abuse claim included an allegation that Trump forced his fingers inside Carroll against her will. The federal judge who presided over the case later wrote, “the jury implicitly found Mr. Trump did in fact digitally rape Ms. Carroll.”
Trump sued CBS News in October, accusing the network of “deceitful” editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump has claimed CBS News edited Harris’ response to a question about conflict in the Middle East in order to mislead the public. He reiterated that claim Monday.
“They took Kamala’s answer which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer, and they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later in the interview,” Trump claimed.
CBS News said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed that its claims are “completely without merit.” The network said it will vigorously defend against the lawsuit.
CBS filed a motion to dismiss the suit on Dec. 6, arguing the case has no merit and that it should not have been filed in Texas, which is home to neither the defendant or plaintiff. CBS is New York-based, and Trump lives in Florida.
Trump has also sued journalist Bob Woodward and publisher Simon & Schuster in January 2023, claiming Woodward publicly released interview recordings made for the book “Rage” without Trump’s permission.
Trump said Monday that Woodward “didn’t quote me properly from the tapes,” and he claimed Woodward “sold the tapes, which he wasn’t allowed to do.”
The publisher’s parent company at the time, Paramount Global, was named as a defendant as well. Paramount is also CBS News’ parent company.
Soon after the case was filed, Simon & Schuster and Woodward released a joint statement calling the lawsuit meritless.
“All these interviews were on the record and recorded with President Trump’s knowledge and agreement,” the statement said. “Moreover, it is in the public interest to have this historical record in Trump’s own words. We are confident that the facts and the law are in our favor.”
The case is ongoing, and the defendants have asked a judge to dismiss the suit.
In 2022, Trump sued the board that bestows journalism’s most prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize. The case revolves around a statement the board made reaffirming its decision to give The New York Times and The Washington Post an award in 2018 for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III later found “insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.”
Trump said Monday, “it turned out to be a hoax and they were exactly wrong.”
The Pulitzer Prize Board put out its statement after Trump called for it to revoke its 2018 awards. The board said two independent reviews found “no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”
A Florida judge in July rejected an effort by the defendants to have the case dismissed. It remains ongoing.
TikTok CEO meets with Trump ahead of January ban
Social Security’s full retirement age is increasing in 2025. Here’s what to know.
Trump threatens to sue Des Moines Register over poll, promises more lawsuits against news outlets after ABC News settlement
TikTok CEO meets with Trump ahead of January ban
Social Security’s full retirement age is increasing in 2025. Here’s what to know.