By MICHAEL R. SISAK and MICHAEL BALSAMO (Associated Press)

Investigators probing disgraced former sports doctor Larry Nassar’s stabbing Sunday at a federal penitentiary in Florida are lacking a key piece of evidence: video of the assault.

Nassar was attacked inside his cell, a blind spot for prison surveillance cameras that only record common areas and corridors, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. In federal prison parlance, because of the lack of video, it is known as an “unwitnessed event.”

It’s the second time Nassar, the former U.S. women’s gymnastics team doctor, has been assaulted in federal custody while he’s serving decades in prison for sexually abusing athletes and possessing explicit images of children.

The attack, which left Nassar hospitalized in stable condition with injuries including a collapsed lung, underscored persistent problems at the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Despite the Biden administration’s vow to fix the broken prison system — with new leadership and an emphasis on turning prisoners into “good neighbors” — the agency has continued to struggle with violence, understaffing, abuse and misconduct.

Nassar’s stabbing, just weeks after “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s suicide at a North Carolina federal medical center and amid lingering fallout from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 jail suicide, also highlighted the agency’s inability to keep even its highest profile prisoners safe.

“This kind of violence in our federal prisons is inexcusable,” said Daniel Landsman, the deputy director of policy at the criminal justice advocacy group FAMM, or Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “The failures that led to this assault are not isolated — too often we see similar incidents impact incarcerated people across the country.”

“The assault of Larry Nassar raises a number of questions regarding safety in in federal prisons,” Landsman said.

The Bureau of Prisons did not respond Tuesday to AP’s questions about Nassar’s stabbing, and violence, low staffing levels and other problems plaguing its facilities. In a statement Monday, the agency confirmed an altercation involving an inmate at the United States Penitentiary Coleman, but declined to identify the person “for privacy, safety and security reasons.”

Nassar, 59, was attacked inside his cell Sunday by a prisoner armed with a makeshift weapon, according to the person familiar with the matter. Nassar was stabbed multiple times in the neck, chest and back. Two officers guarding the unit where Nassar was held were working mandated overtime shifts because of staffing shortages, the person said.

The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack or the ongoing investigation and did so on condition anonymity.

Nassar was previously assaulted in May 2018 at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, within hours of being placed in general population — an attack his lawyers blamed on the notoriety of his case and a seven-day televised sentencing where scores of victims made impassioned statements. Nassar’s lawyers did not specify the nature or severity of that attack.

Cell doors on most federal prison units are typically open during the day, letting prisoners move around freely within the facility. Surveillance cameras aren’t positioned to see inside cells, though other cameras may have captured Nassar’s assailant walking in and out of the cell.

At some federal prison facilities, including the Manhattan jail where Epstein died, surveillance cameras been found to malfunction or not record at all — an issue Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., sought to address last December with a law requiring the Bureau of Prisons to overhaul failing and outdated security systems. The agency, however, has been slow to make progress.

Facing increased scrutiny in the wake of Epstein’s suicide and an ongoing AP investigation that has uncovered myriad scandals, Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters has pledged to overhaul recruiting and hiring practices and end systemic abuse and corruption.

But changing the culture of the massive agency — the Justice Department’s largest with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of about $8 billion — has proved exceedingly difficult. Correctional workers say they’ve seen no meaningful reforms to fix longtime staffing problems that put inmates’ and their own lives at risk.

Just two weeks before Nassar’s stabbing, workers at the Florida prison complex where he was attacked organized a protest outside a nearby supermarket to highlight what they said were dangerous staffing levels.

“They’re going to have somebody killed, either staff or an inmate, if they don’t fix the problem,” said Jose Rojas, the union president at the Coleman prison complex. “We sounded the alarm, we warned the public, and I hate to be prophetic, but we were right.”

At Nassar’s prison, known as USP Coleman II, nearly one-quarter of correctional officer positions are vacant, according to records obtained by AP. Staffing guidelines show the facility, with more than 1,200 prisoners, should have 222 correctional officers. Only 169 positions are filled.

The day Nassar was stabbed, 44 posts were left vacant and unassigned at the prison, records show. One of the officers assigned to Nassar’s unit was working a third straight 16-hour day, while the other officer was on a second straight day of mandated overtime.

The AP has revealed widespread criminal conduct by employees, sexual abuse by workers, inmate escapes, and staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies.

Last August, the Justice Department appointed Peters — a reformer who previously ran Oregon’s state prison system — to replace former Bureau of Prisons Director Michael Carvajal, a Trump administration holdover who clashed with Congress, claimed staffing wasn’t problematic and had to be subpoenaed before attending one of his last oversight hearings.

Peters, in turn, has focused on shifting the Bureau of Prisons away from its strictly carceral roots, emphasizing that “our job is to make good neighbors, not good inmates.” Peters has rewritten the agency’s mission statement to emphasize employees’ job to “foster a humane and secure environment and ensure public safety” by preparing people behind bars for successful reentry into their communities.

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Associated Press reporter Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Public Welfare Foundation for reporting focused on criminal justice. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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On Twitter, follow Michael Sisak at http://twitter.com/mikesisak and Michael Balsamo at http://twitter.com/MikeBalsamo1 and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER (Associated Press)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, a former homecoming princess who at 19 helped carry out the shocking killings of a wealthy Los Angeles couple at the direction of the violent and manipulative cult leader, walked out of a California prison Tuesday after serving more than 50 years of a life sentence.

Van Houten, now 73, “was released to parole supervision,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.

She left the California Institution for Women in Corona, east of Los Angeles, in the early morning hours and was driven to transitional housing, her attorney Nancy Tetreault said.

“She’s still trying to get used to the idea that this real,” Tetreault told The Associated Press.

Days earlier Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would not fight a state appeals court ruling that Van Houten should be granted parole. He said it was unlikely the state Supreme Court would consider an appeal.

The 1969 slayings and subsequent trials captivated the nation during an era of strife marked by the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

At a parole hearing in 2016, Van Houten said the murders were the start of what Manson believed was a coming race war he called “Helter Skelter,” after the Beatles song. He had his followers prepare to fight and learn to can food so they could go underground and live in a hole in the desert, she added.

Van Houten was sentenced to death in 1971 for helping Manson’s group carry out the killings of Leno LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife, Rosemary. Her sentence was later commuted to life in prison when the California Supreme Court overturned the state’s death penalty law in 1972. Voters and state lawmakers eventually reinstated the death penalty, but it did not apply retroactively.

The LaBiancas were killed in their home, and their blood was smeared on the walls afterward. Van Houten later described holding Rosemary LaBianca down with a pillowcase over her head as others stabbed her. Then, ordered by Manson follower Charles “Tex” Watson to “do something,” Van Houten said, she picked up a knife and stabbed the woman more than a dozen times.

The slayings happened the day after Manson followers killed actress Sharon Tate and four others. Van Houten did not participate in the Tate killings.

She is the first Manson follower who took part in the killings to walk free.

Van Houten is expected to spend about a year at a halfway house, adjusting to a world changed immeasurably by technology in the past half-century.

“She has to learn to use to use the internet. She has to learn to buy things without cash,” Tetreault said. “It’s a very different world than when she went in.”

Van Houten, who will likely be on parole for about three years, hopes to get a job as soon as possible, Tetreault said. She earned a bachelors and a masters degree in counseling while in prison and worked as a tutor for other incarcerated people.

Van Houten was found suitable for parole after a July 2020 hearing, but her release was blocked by Newsom, who maintained she was still a threat to society.

She filed an appeal with a trial court, which rejected it, and then turned to the appellate courts. The Second District Court of Appeal in May reversed Newsom’s rejection of her parole in a 2-1 ruling, writing that there was “no evidence to support the Governor’s conclusions” about Van Houten’s fitness for release.

The judges took issue with Newsom’s claim that Van Houten did not adequately explain how she fell under Manson’s influence. At her parole hearings, she discussed at length how her parents’ divorce, her drug and alcohol abuse and a forced illegal abortion led her down a path that left her vulnerable.

They also disputed Newsom’s suggestion that her past violent acts were a cause for future concern were she to be released.

“Van Houten has shown extraordinary rehabilitative efforts, insight, remorse, realistic parole plans, support from family and friends, favorable institutional reports, and, at the time of the Governor’s decision, had received four successive grants of parole,” the judges said. They also noted her “many years” of therapy and substance abuse counseling.

The dissenting judge who sided with Newsom said there was some evidence Van Houten lacked insight into the heinous killings.

Newsom was disappointed by the appeals court decision, his office said.

“More than 50 years after the Manson cult committed these brutal killings, the victims’ families still feel the impact,” the governor’s office said in a July 7 statement.

In all, Van Houten had been recommended for parole five times since 2016. All of those recommendations were denied by either Newsom or former Gov. Jerry Brown.

Cory LaBianca, Leno LaBianca’s daughter, said last week that her family was heartbroken by the possibility that Van Houten could be released.

Anthony DiMaria, whose uncle Jay Sebring was killed along with Tate, said Tuesday her release was devastating to all the victims’ families, who “collectively suffer the pain and loss” caused by the Manson cult.

Van Houten, a former high school cheerleader and homecoming princess, saw her life spiral out of control at 14 following her parents’ divorce. She turned to drugs and became pregnant but said her mother forced her to abort the fetus and bury it in the family’s backyard.

Van Houten became the youngest of Manson’s followers when they met at an old movie ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles where he had established his so-called family of followers.

Manson died in prison in 2017 of natural causes at age 83 after nearly half a century behind bars. Watson and fellow Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel have each been denied parole multiple times. Krenwinkel was recommended for parole last year, but that was rejected by Newsom. Another follower, Susan Atkins, died in prison in 2009.

By HYUNG-JIN KIM and MARI YAMAGUCHI (Associated Press)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile toward its eastern waters Wednesday, its neighbors said, two days after the North threatened “shocking” consequences to protest what it called a provocative U.S. reconnaissance activity near its territory.

South Korea’s military detected the long-range missile launch from the North’s capital region around 10 a.m., the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said South Korea’s military bolstered its surveillance posture and maintained readiness in close coordination with the United States.

Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters that the North Korean missile was likely launched on a lofted trajectory, at a steep angle that North Korea typically uses to avoid neighboring countries when it tests long-range missiles.

Hamada said the missile was expected to land at sea about 550 kilometers (340 miles) east of the coast of the Korean Peninsula outside of the Japanese exclusive economic zone.

North Korea’s long-range missile program targets the mainland U.S. Since 2017, North Korea has performed a slew of intercontinental ballistic missile launches as part of its efforts to acquire nuclear-tipped weapons capable of striking major U.S. cities. Some experts say North Korea still has some technologies to master to possess functioning nuclear-armed ICBMs.

Before Wednesday’s launch, the North’s most recent long-range missile test happened in April, when it launched a solid-fuel ICBM, a type of weapon that experts say is harder to detect and intercept than liquid-fuel weapons.

Wednesday’s launch, the North’s first weapons firing in about a month, came after North Korea earlier this week released a series of statements accusing the United States of flying a military plane close to North Korea to spy on the North.

The United States and South Korea dismissed the North’s accusations and urged it to refrain from any acts or rhetoric that raised animosities.

In a statement Monday night, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean sister Kim Jong Un, warned the United States of “a shocking incident” as she claimed that the U.S. spy plane flew over the North’s eastern exclusive economic zone eight times earlier in the day. She claimed the North scrambled warplanes to chase away the U.S. plane.

In another fiery statement Tuesday, Kim Yo Jong said the U.S. military would experience “a very critical flight” if it continues its illicit, aerial spying activities. The North’s military separately threatened to shoot down U.S. spy planes.

“Kim Yo-jong’s bellicose statement against U.S. surveillance aircraft is part of a North Korean pattern of inflating external threats to rally domestic support and justify weapons tests,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “Pyongyang also times its shows of force to disrupt what it perceives as diplomatic coordination against it, in this case, South Korea and Japan’s leaders meeting during the NATO summit.”

North Korea has made numerous similar threats over alleged U.S. reconnaissance activities, but its latest statements came amid heightened animosities over North Korea’s barrage of missile tests earlier this year.

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Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo.

By LISA RATHKE (Associated Press)

ANDOVER, Vt. (AP) — A storm that dumped up to two months of rain in two days in Vermont and other parts of the Northeast brought more flooding Tuesday to communities that included the state capital, where officials said that river levels at a dam just upstream appeared to be stable.

Muddy brown water from the Winooski River flowed Tuesday through the capital of Montpelier, obscuring vehicles and all but the tops of parking meters along picturesque streets lined with brick storefronts whose basements and lower floors were flooded. Some residents of the city of 8,000 slogged their way through the waist-high water; others canoed and kayaked along main streets to survey the scene. Shopkeepers took stock of damaged or lost goods.

Montpelier Town Manager Bill Fraser said the dam remains a lingering concern but that the city was shifting to a recovery mode, with water receding and public works employees expected Wednesday morning to start removing mud and debris from downtown streets. Building inspections will start as businesses begin cleaning up their properties.

“The dam did not spill over. The water in the dam is still up there but it stabilized. We are feeling like the water going over the spillway of the dam is not an imminent threat,” Fraser said. “It looks like it won’t breach. That is good. That is one less thing we have to have on our front burner.”

There were other signs of hope as Vermont rivers crested and flood waters receded, allowing officials to begin assessing the damage and the scope of the clean-up ahead. The flooding has already caused tens of millions of dollars in damage throughout the state.

“It’s heartbreaking because you know all these businesses are losing inventory, and this person just clearly just lost their car,” said state Sen. Anne Watson, noting a parked vehicle inundated with water in Montpelier. Similar scenes played out in neighboring Barre and in Bridgewater, where the Ottauquechee River spilled its banks.

Bryan Pfeiffer, a biologist who has lived in the Montpelier area for four decades, canoed around the downtown area to check out the damage and was appalled by what he saw. The basement of every building — including the one where he works — and the lower levels of most were inundated. Even the city’s fire station was flooded.

“It’s really troubling when your fire station is under water,” Pfeiffer said.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said flood waters surpassed levels seen during Tropical Storm Irene.” Irene killed six people in Vermont in August 2011, washing homes off their foundations and damaging or destroying more than 200 bridges and 500 miles (805 kilometers) of highway.

The sun was out Tuesday and more sunshine was expected Wednesday. More rain was forecast Thursday and Friday but Peter Banacos, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the state will be spared any further torrential downpours.

“We sustained catastrophic damage. We just really took the brunt of the storm,” Ludlow Municipal Manager Brendan McNamara said, as he assessed the flood’s impact around the 1,500 person town.

“I talked to people today that said my house is gone. Thankfully we got through it with no loss of life,” he said, adding the damage was worse than Tropical Storm Irene. “Ludlow will be fine. People are coming together and taking care of each other. We’ve been here before and we will get through it.”

Among the losses was the town’s water treatment plant. Its main supermarket remained closed. The main roadway through town had yet to be fully reopened and McNamara couldn’t begin to estimate how many houses had been damaged. The town’s Little League field and a new skate park were destroyed, and scores of businesses were damaged.

Colleen Dooley returned to her condominium complex in Ludlow Tuesday to find the grounds covered in silt and mud and the pool filled with muddy river water. A wooden pool deck had been carried about 300 feet (100 meters) by flood waters; the adjacent Black River was still raging.

“I don’t know when we’ll move back, but it will certainly be awhile,” said Dooley, a 59-year-old retired teacher.

One woman was swept away in New York on Monday. There have been no reports of injuries or deaths related to the flooding in Vermont, where swift-water rescue teams aided by National Guard helicopter crews have done more than 100 rescues, Vermont Emergency Management said Tuesday.

That included an “extremely high-risk rescue” by a visiting New Hampshire team of a person who decided to drive around a barricaded road, said Mike Cannon of Vermont Urban Search and Rescue. “The car was washed off the roadway almost into the river,” he said.

Dozens of roads and highways were closed, including many along the spine of the Green Mountains. There were fewer flood warnings and advisories than on Monday, and most were concentrated in the north of the state. Road crews cleared debris Tuesday, reopening Interstate 89 as it follows the Winooski River between Montpelier and Middlesex.

The slow-moving storm reached New England after hitting parts of New York and Connecticut on Sunday. Some communities received between 7 and 9 inches (18 centimeters and 23 centimeters) of rain. Towns in southwest New Hampshire had heavy flooding and road washouts, and the Connecticut River was expected to crest above flood stage Wednesday in Hartford and towns to the south.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator Richard Spinrad said Tuesday that 13.7 million people were under inland flooding alerts on Tuesday. Atmospheric scientists say destructive flooding events happen more frequently as storms form in a warmer atmosphere, and the planet’s rising temperatures will only make it worse.

President Joe Biden, attending the annual NATO summit in Lithuania, declared an emergency for Vermont and authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help coordinate disaster relief efforts and provide assistance. He also spoke with the governor and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

FEMA sent a team to Vermont, along with emergency communications equipment, and is prepared to keep shelters supplied if the state requests it. The agency also is monitoring flooding in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire, regional spokesperson Dennis Pinkham said Tuesday.

One of the worst-hit places was New York’s Hudson Valley, where a woman identified by police as Pamela Nugent, 43, died as she tried to escape her flooded home with her dog in the hamlet of Fort Montgomery.

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point was pounded with more than 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain that sent debris sliding onto some roads and washed others out.

Multiple rescue crews were positioned in Montpelier, where dispatch, police and fire operations were relocated to a water treatment plant after heavy flooding at City Hall and the police and fire departments. Also, the radio towers they use for emergency calls were not functional, Police Chief Eric Nordenson said.

Shelters were set up at churches, town halls and the Barre Municipal Auditorium, where delivering food to the more than 200 people taking refuge there — including those forced to evacuate from two area homeless shelters — was a challenge.

“We’re trying to find paths to get supplies in to them,” said John Montes, American Red Cross of Northern New England regional disaster officer.

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Associated Press writers Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Michael Hill in Albany, New York; and Mark Pratt, Michael Casey and Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters Wednesday, its neighbors said, two days after the North threatened “shocking” consequences to protest what it called a provocative U.S. reconnaissance activity near its territory.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff says the launch was made on Wednesday morning but gave no further details such as how far the weapon flew.

Japan’s Defense Ministry said it also detected a possible ballistic missile launch by North Korea.

The launch, the North’s first weapons firing in about a month, came after North Korea earlier this week released a series of statements accusing the United States of flying a military plane close to North Korea to spy on the North.

The United States and South Korea dismissed the North’s accusations and urged it to refrain from any acts or rhetoric that raises animosities.

In a statement Monday night, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean sister Kim Jong Un, claimed that the U.S. spy plane flew over the North’s eastern exclusive economic zone eight times earlier in the day. She claimed the North scrambled warplanes to chase away the U.S. plane.

“A shocking incident would occur in the long run in the 20-40 kilometer section in which the U.S. spy planes habitually intrude into the sky above the economic water zone” of North Korea, Kim Yo Jong said.

North Korea has made numerous similar threats over alleged U.S. reconnaissance activities, but its latest statements came amid heightened animosities over North Korea’s barrage of missile tests earlier this year.

By KEN RITTER and BEATRICE DUPUY (Associated Press)

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A man was arrested and a woman described as his hostage was released unharmed Tuesday after an hourslong standoff in a room at the Caesars Palace resort on the Las Vegas Strip, police said.

No injuries were reported and police did not immediately say if the man in custody had been armed in a high-rise tower of the iconic Las Vegas Boulevard property. Furniture, cushions and other objects fell from a 21st floor window, frightening guests in a swimming pool area below.

“The suspect has been taken into custody. The female is currently with officers,” the department said in messages posted mid-afternoon Tuesday. Officer Aden OcampoGomez said the woman did not appear to be injured.

Las Vegas police Capt. Stephen Connell said the standoff began about 9:15 a.m. with a report from hotel security that a man and woman were arguing and that the man pulled the woman into a room “by force.”

Police SWAT officers secured the hallway outside the room, although Connell said it was not immediately clear if the man was armed.

Connell told reporters during the standoff that the woman believed to be held hostage “has been heard from,” and was believed to be “still OK.”

Outside, guests heard glass break and saw curtains billow from a broken window about two-thirds up the 29-story Palace Tower, one of six towers at Caesars Palace, an iconic and historic centerpiece of the Las Vegas Stri. The hotel has nearly 4,000 rooms.

Emma Snyder, 24, said she was near a resort swimming pool on her first day of vacation from Appleton, Wisconsin, when she heard several loud bangs and saw falling glass. She said it looked like sparkles.

“People were just staring up and looking,” she said.

Beverly Blackwell, 56, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, was lounging by a pool with her husband, Chris, when she heard glass break and saw curtains flutter from the broken window.

“When we saw the window shatter it was kind of a surreal feeling, it got pretty scary,” Blackwell said. “We were told to gather our stuff and rush out the back.”

Both Snyder and Blackwell told The Associated Press they thought there might be a shooter or attack. Staff yelled for guests to evacuate the pool area.

Snyder said some people hid by a staircase while items flew out the window: a coffee maker, a hair dryer, a desk bureau.

Blackwell said that after 30 minutes, people were told they could return to their rooms.

Broken glass and furniture fell intermittently for about an hour, said Associated Press writer John Marshall, who was on vacation with his family in a room on the fifth floor of the Palace Tower.

“It looks like he’s pretty much emptied the room of furniture,” Marshall said of the man police said was barricaded upstairs. Marshall saw seat cushions, a chair and other items hit a ledge outside the window of his room, and said some fell to the pool area after it had been evacuated.

Hotel employees told Marshall and his family that the incident was on the 21st floor and that guests on other floors were not evacuated or restricted from movements.

“In the casino, it’s business as usual,” Marshall said, although hotel security officers and police were visible in the guest valet area.

OcampoGomez, a Las Vegas police spokesman, said there were no immediate reports of injuries to anyone in the pool area.

Marshall said he and his family had no initial word from the hotel about what was happening but said they remained in their room as a precaution. Hotel housekeeping staff members were still working in nearby rooms, he said.

Hotel representatives did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages from AP seeking comment.

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Dupuy reported from New York.

By BEN NUCKOLS (AP Sports Writer)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has agreed to invest more than $1 billion in a new commercial entity controlled by the PGA Tour, and Greg Norman will be ousted as the CEO of LIV Golf if the business deal between the Saudis and the tour is finalized, a tour executive told Congress on Tuesday.

The agreement between the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the primary funder of LIV Golf, and the PGA Tour shocked the golf world when it was announced last month and led to probes by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which summoned tour officials to the Capitol to testify under oath, and the Justice Department, which is looking into potential antitrust violations.

Among the subcommittee’s findings were that representatives of the tour and the Saudis discussed giving Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy their own LIV Golf teams, a proposal that apparently never reached either player. There was no indication during Tuesday’s hearing that Congress would block the tour from going into business with the Saudis.

The subcommittee chairman, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he was troubled by the geopolitical implications of Saudi investment in American sports and efforts by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi leader, to whitewash the kingdom’s human rights abuses. However, Republicans on the committee were more sympathetic to the PGA Tour and the existential threat it faced from the PIF, which controls $600 billion in assets — roughly 500 times what the tour is worth.

“We’re here because we’re concerned about what it means for an authoritarian government to use its wealth to capture an American institution,” Blumenthal said.

The PGA Tour and the Saudis announced on June 6 that they agreed to drop all lawsuits against each other and combine their commercial interests into a new for-profit company while maintaining the tour’s nonprofit status. Asked by Blumenthal how much money the Saudis have committed to the new venture, Ron Price, the PGA Tour’s chief operating officer, testified the amount was “north of $1 billion.”

Blumenthal repeatedly pressed Price and Jimmy Dunne, a PGA Tour board member and a key negotiator of the Saudi deal, on why the tour did not seek alternative sources of funding to compete with the PIF. Price and Dunne said going into business with outside investors would not prevent LIV Golf and the PIF from continuing to compete with the tour and use its vast resources to sign top players.

“My entire concern here is to put this divisive period behind us, and for the sake of players, fans, sponsors and charities, unite the game of golf again,” said Dunne, a New York investment banker who is well connected with the sport’s leaders.

Critics of the Saudi investment in golf have pointed to the kingdom’s poor human rights record and the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which U.S. intelligence concluded was likely approved by the crown prince, an allegation he denies. The PIF has bought its way into other sports including soccer — it owns Newcastle United of the English Premier League — and Formula One racing.

“There is something that stinks about this path that you’re on right now because it is a surrender, and it is all about the money, and that is the reason for the backlash that you’re seeing, Mr. Price,” Blumenthal said. “The equity ownership interest that the Saudis will have … gives them financial dominance. They control the purse strings.”

But Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a harsh critic of the Saudi regime, said Congress should not interfere with a private enterprise doing business with the Saudis. He proposed instead that the U.S. reduce arms sales to Saudi Arabia. And the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., suggested that Saudi involvement in sports ultimately could improve human rights in the kingdom.

“If the kingdom’s involvement in golf and other sports helps it to modernize or offer rights to women, wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Johnson said.

Blumenthal pressed Dunne and Price to pledge that PGA Tour players would be free to criticize the Saudi regime if the deal is completed. Both said they would not recommend that the tour’s policy board approve any deal that includes such restrictions on speech.

Before the hearing, the subcommittee released documents detailing the secretive and hasty negotiations that led to last month’s framework agreement. Dunne conceded that the tour botched the announcement of the deal, leading many to mistakenly conclude that the tour and LIV Golf had completed a merger.

“The rollout was very misleading and inaccurate, which is everyone’s fault. There is no merger,” Dunne said. “There is merely an agreement to try and get to an agreement instead of a lawsuit.”

The documents released by the subcommittee detail the roles of people on the Saudi side of the negotiations, notably Amanda Staveley, a British investment banker who helped broker the Newcastle deal and now sits on the team’s board, and Roger Devlin, a British businessman.

Devlin was the first to approach Dunne about the prospect of a deal between the tour and LIV, the documents show, although Dunne said Tuesday he never met Devlin in person and reached out to Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF, on his own. Dunne initially contacted Al-Rumayyan via WhatsApp, the documents show.

“My attitude was all of the people other than the guy with the money, we shouldn’t talk to,” Dunne said.

A memo from Staveley’s firm titled “The Best of Both Worlds” includes the proposal that Woods and McIlroy take ownership of LIV teams and that each of them play in 10 LIV events per year. There is no indication in the documents that either Woods or McIlroy, both of whom remained loyal to the PGA Tour, were ever informed of the idea.

Among the other proposals included in the memo are a mixed-gender, LIV-style team event with qualifying in Saudi Arabia and concluding in Dubai; awarding world ranking points to LIV events, including retroactively; and PIF sponsorship of two elevated PGA Tour events, including one in Saudi Arabia.

None of those proposals was included in the framework agreement signed by Al-Rumayyan and PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan. The PGA Tour sent a letter to players after Tuesday’s hearing saying the PIF made “a series of suggestions” that “were rejected immediately.”

The parties also negotiated but did not sign a side agreement that called for ousting Norman as LIV’s CEO. Asked by Blumenthal whether Norman was out of a job, Price said that if the tour and the PIF complete their business deal, the tour would control LIV and Norman’s job would be eliminated.

“We would no longer have a requirement for that type of position,” Price said.

Norman remains in the CEO role, although he has been largely sidelined as the public face of LIV since the deal was announced. He was invited to testify Tuesday along with Al-Rumayyan; both declined. Monahan also did not testify because he is recovering from an unspecified medical situation that kept him out of work for a month; he has said he plans to return next week.

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