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D.C. Prosecutors Set Their Targets on Don Jr.’s Posse
Jose Pagliery
Mon, 28 June 2021, 1:13 am·7-min read
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/d-c-prosecutors-set-targets-001343575.html
The District of Columbia’s attorney general will have to wait just a little longer to find out if three more people in the Trump family circle can be forced to testify, as investigators continue to look into whether Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee misspent more than $1 million and enriched his own company.
A local judge Sunday, on the eve of a potentially critical court hearing in that case, ruled that he won’t even let the D.C. attorney general’s office argue in court on Monday why it should subject these key witnesses to tough questions.
The local government’s case centers on how Trump’s kids blurred the lines between the family business and what’s supposed to be a nonprofit, potentially milking the inaugural celebration by funneling events to the Trump International Hotel in Washington where the committee may have overpaid on services.
Recent filings made by the AG’s office show that the probe is starting to home in on the actions of Trump’s longtime financial confidant and others.
“The world’s about to learn how Trump’s inner circle—with Trump’s full knowledge—took advantage of the presidential inauguration,” said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who helped put together inaugural events and is now a lead witness for the government in this case.
“Everything they did was all about self-dealing. They had a nonprofit pay them for their own hotel at an inflated cost,” she told The Daily Beast.
Topping the list of witnesses D.C. investigators now want to interview is Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer. The AG’s office wants to question him under oath, as Weisselberg played a peculiar role in reviewing financial transactions of what’s supposed to be the independent inaugural committee—something far outside his duties at the family company.
The inaugural committee is supposed to be a short-lived nonprofit whose sole task is to quickly put together celebrations for an incoming president. But Trump’s inauguration committee looped in Weisselberg three months after the celebration in 2017 to conduct an audit of the committee’s finances, according to public court documents filed by the AG last month. Mother Jones was the first to reveal Weisselberg’s enlarged role in the scandal.
The second person investigators now want to question is Gentry Beach, a Texas financier who was Don Jr.’s college buddy and served on the nonprofit’s finance committee. Government lawyers identified Beach as a person who coordinated the Trump Org’s reservation of hotel rooms—a $50,000 business expense that was later paid by the nonprofit.
Investigators also want to depose another person who put that deal together: Kara Hanley, who is described in court documents as “a former executive assistant” at the family business. Hanley was listed as a Trump Organization employee on a “friends and families” guest list for events, according to records obtained by The Daily Beast.
Weisselberg’s attorney, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment. Neither Beach nor Hanley responded to calls and text messages.
As this case has progressed, the window for government investigators to conduct these interviews has closed. All three of these people reside more than 25 miles away from the nation’s capital, which means they can’t be forced to appear in court and testify during a trial, according to the D.C. superior court rules. That’s why the local AG is asking Judge José M. López to grant special permission to conduct these depositions.
“The district wishes to move forward as soon as possible with deposing the three individuals… so that any testimony can be preserved for trial and is as accurate as possible,” government lawyers wrote in a recent filing.
But on Sunday, Judge López canceled an afternoon hearing he had previously set for Monday, June 28, postponing the AG’s ability to make its argument in court.
D.C. investigators are closing in on Weisselberg just as the New York attorney general and Manhattan district attorney are doing the same, albeit for a separate criminal probe into bank fraud and tax evasion.
However, this case is civil, not criminal, so the office of D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine isn’t seeking prison time for any of those involved. Instead, the AG wants to recover any improperly spent money and hand it over to a nonprofit that will put it to use for the public good.
The AG’s office claims the committee violated the law for two reasons: It wasted charitable funds and allowed Trump World insiders to personally benefit from the nonprofit.
In court filings, investigators laid out how Trump’s hotel in Washington initially quoted a charge of $3.6 million for the event space, food, and drinks over eight days. When Trump’s inner circle wised up to the idea that the exorbitant price could reek of corruption, then-Trump campaign official Rick Gates negotiated a lower price. But not much lower.
Investigators say the presidential inauguration committee, referred to in court documents as the “PIC,” was repeatedly charged more money than it should have been. They cited one example in which the Trump Hotel’s director of catering tried to lower the price for one event on inauguration day—only to be instructed to raise it back.
“It was categorically improper for the PIC to spend almost $300,000 in charitable funds meant to benefit the public on what was a private party for the Trump children and the guests staying at the hotel their family owned,” government attorneys stated in a filing.
That one event on Jan. 20, 2017, included $175,000 in rental charges, plus $113,000 in food and drinks for the event, according to court documents.
Investigators also say another event ended up being a private party during the evening of the inauguration for Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and hotel guests—blowing $288,367 in rent and food.
“I didn’t understand why anything was being done for the kids. It’s not a birthday party. This is for the United States of America swearing in the most powerful executive in the world,” Winston Wolkoff, who said she had to awkwardly jockey to block the creation of events that were clearly self-dealing, like Junior’s hunting-themed “Sportsman’s Ball” and Ivanka’s “Ladies Luncheon.”
“Why is Ivanka bringing together 100 influential women when she’s not on the Cabinet?” she said. “These kids were doing events for themselves... by them, for them, with them... with other people’s money meant for a nonprofit.”
If Judge López eventually allows the additional depositions to go forward, investigators plan to ask why the presidential inauguration committee went out of its way to pay a debt for The Trump Organization. Investigators are examining how the Trump Organization contracted Madison Washington D.C. Hotel for a block of rooms for Trump family and friends during inauguration week, but in typical Trump fashion, didn’t pay for some of the unused rooms. When the Madison hotel sent the unpaid bill to a collection agency, Gates directed the collections agency to change the name on the invoice to the inauguration committee—which ended up paying $49,358.
According to court documents, Gates told investigators that the hotels were part of a freebie to donors who already put up cash for the inauguration effort. But investigators want to ask Beach, the money manager in Dallas, about the hotel rooms. It was his name, after all, on paperwork for the initial contract.
According to court filings, the D.C. Attorney General’s office has already subjected nearly a dozen people involved to questions in depositions. The top-ranking ones include Ivanka, Don Jr., Gates, and inaugural committee chairman Thomas Barrack. Investigators also got sworn, out-of-court testimony from inauguration committee CEO Sara Armstrong, CFO Heather Martin, and event planner Ramsey Stewart.
Government lawyers have also deposed several employees: Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger, Trump International Hotel's managing director, Mickael Damelincourt, and the hotel's sales director, Patricia Tang.
The inaugural committee, the Trump Organization, and the Trump International Hotel had tried to block the attorney general from even bringing it up at the upcoming hearing on Monday.
The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/d-c-prosecutors-set-targets-001343575.html
Trump Organization attorneys given Monday deadline to persuade prosecutors not to file charges against it
By Shayna Jacobs, Josh Dawsey and David A. Fahrenthold
June 28, 2021 at 2:05 a.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-organization-charges-deadline/2021/06/27/d944a822-d5e0-11eb-9f29-e9e6c9e843c6_story.html
Prosecutors in New York have given former president Donald Trump’s attorneys a deadline of Monday afternoon to make any final arguments as to why the Trump Organization should not face criminal charges over its financial dealings, according to two people familiar with the matter.
That deadline is a strong signal that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D) and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) — now working together, after each has spent more than two years investigating Trump’s business — are considering criminal charges against the company as an entity.
Earlier this year, Vance convened a grand jury in Manhattan to consider indictments in the investigation. No entity or individual has been charged in the investigations thus far, and it remains possible that no charges will be filed.
Prosecutors have shown interest in whether Trump’s company used misleading valuations of its properties to deceive lenders and taxing authorities, and in whether taxes were paid on fringe benefits for company executives, according to court documents and people familiar with the investigations.
The two people familiar with the deadline set for Trump’s attorneys spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations. Under New York law, prosecutors may file charges against corporations in addition to individuals.
Last Thursday, lawyers working for Trump personally and for the Trump Organization met virtually with prosecutors to make the case that charges were not warranted. Meetings like these are common in financial investigations, allowing defense attorneys a chance to present evidence before prosecutors make a decision on whether to seek charges.
Thursday’s meeting was first reported by the New York Times.
Spokespeople for Vance and James declined to comment on Sunday, as did an attorney for Trump, Ronald Fischetti, and an attorney for the Trump Organization, Alan Futerfas.
People familiar with the probe confirmed to The Washington Post that prosecutors were looking at charging the Trump Organization as an entity, as well as Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, following Weisselberg’s refusal to assist in the investigation.
Fischetti, who took part in the Thursday meeting, said Friday that prosecutors are going forward with a case against the company because Weisselberg wasn’t “cooperating and saying what they want him to say” with respect to whether Trump had personal knowledge about his CFO’s alleged use of cars, apartments and other compensation that prosecutors think may not have been reported properly to tax authorities, according to people with knowledge of the case.
Trump, who on Saturday night kicked off a planned series of rallies to boost his and favored Republicans’ future election prospects, still owns his businesses through a trust managed by his adult sons and Weisselberg. He gave up day-to-day management of the company while in the White House, but it is unclear what role he plays in the company’s operations now.
Last month, Trump called the investigations a “witch hunt” run by Democrats seeking to damage his future political prospects.
“It began the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, and it’s never stopped,” Trump said in a news release, referring to the start of his presidential campaign in 2015.
In recent months, according to people familiar with the investigation, prosecutors began investigating Weisselberg’s personal finances, in the hopes that Weisselberg might be persuaded to offer testimony against his boss. But prosecutors have grown frustrated with what they see as a lack of cooperation from Weisselberg, according to a person familiar with the case. This month, Post reporters observed Weisselberg driving into work at Trump Tower — home to both Trump’s Manhattan apartment and his company’s headquarters office — on a day when Trump was staying at the tower.
An attorney for Weisselberg, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment Sunday.
Trump’s business uses a web of hundreds of individual limited liability companies, most of which are ultimately controlled by a trust whose beneficiary is Trump himself.
By Shayna Jacobs
Shayna Jacobs is a federal courts and law enforcement reporter on the national security team at The Washington Post, where she covers the Southern and Eastern districts of New York. Twitter
By Josh Dawsey
Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal. Twitter
By David Fahrenthold
David A. Fahrenthold is a reporter covering the Trump family and its business interests. He has been at The Washington Post since 2000, and previously covered Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the environment and the D.C. police. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-organization-charges-deadline/2021/06/27/d944a822-d5e0-11eb-9f29-e9e6c9e843c6_story.html
Inside William Barr’s Breakup With Trump
In the final months of the administration, the doggedly loyal attorney general finally had enough.
By Jonathan D. Karl
6:00 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/06/william-barrs-trump-administration-attorney-general/619298/
Donald trump is a man consumed with grievance against people he believes have betrayed him, but few betrayals have enraged him more than what his attorney general did to him. To Trump, the unkindest cut of all was when William Barr stepped forward and declared that there had been no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, just as the president was trying to overturn Joe Biden’s victory by claiming that the election had been stolen.
In a series of interviews with me this spring, Barr spoke, for the first time, about the events surrounding his break with Trump. I have also spoken with other senior officials in the Trump White House and Justice Department, who provided additional details about Barr’s actions and the former president’s explosive response. Barr and those close to him have a reason to tell his version of this story. He has been widely seen as a Trump lackey who politicized the Justice Department. But when the big moment came after the election, he defied the president who expected him to do his bidding.
Barr’s betrayal came on December 1, over lunch in the attorney general’s private dining room with Michael Balsamo, a Justice Department beat reporter at the Associated Press. Also in attendance were the DOJ chief of staff, Will Levi, and spokesperson Kerri Kupec. Balsamo was not told the reason for the invitation. When Barr dropped his bombshell between bites of salad, he mumbled, and Balsamo wasn’t sure that he had caught what the attorney general had said.
“Just to be crystal clear,” Balsamo asked, “are you saying—”
“Sir, I think you better repeat what you just said,” Kupec interjected.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr repeated. This time Balsamo heard him.
Balsamo’s story appeared on the AP newswire shortly after lunch ended: “Disputing Donald Trump’s persistent baseless claims, Attorney General William Barr declared Tuesday the U.S. Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.”
The story blew a hole in the president’s claims. Nobody seriously questioned Barr’s conservative credentials or whether he had been among Trump’s most loyal cabinet secretaries. His conclusion sent a definitive message that the effort to overturn the election was without merit.
Barr told me that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell had been urging him to speak out since mid-November. Publicly, McConnell had said nothing to criticize Trump’s allegations, but he told Barr that Trump’s claims were damaging to the country and to the Republican Party. Trump’s refusal to concede was complicating McConnell’s efforts to ensure that the GOP won the two runoff elections in Georgia scheduled for January 5.
To McConnell, the road to maintaining control of the Senate was simple: Republicans needed to make the argument that with Biden soon to be in the White House, it was crucial that they have a majority in the Senate to check his power. But McConnell also believed that if he openly declared Biden the winner, Trump would be enraged and likely act to sabotage the Republican Senate campaigns in Georgia. Barr related his conversations with McConnell to me. McConnell confirms the account.
“Look, we need the president in Georgia,” McConnell told Barr, “and so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now. But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation. You are really the only one who can do it.”
“I understand that,” Barr said. “And I’m going to do it at the appropriate time.”
On another call, McConnell again pleaded with Barr to come out and shoot down the talk of widespread fraud.
“Bill, I look around, and you are the only person who can do it,” McConnell told him.
Levi, the Justice Department chief of staff, had also been urging Barr to contradict Trump’s assertions. But Barr had said nothing publicly to indicate that he disagreed with the president about the election. In fact, the week after the election, he gave prosecutors the green light to investigate “substantial allegations” of vote irregularities that “could potentially impact the outcome” of the election. The move overturned long-standing policy that the Justice Department does not investigate voter fraud until after an election is certified. The theory behind the policy is that the department’s responsibility is to prosecute crimes, not to get involved in election disputes. Barr’s reversal of the policy was interpreted by some as a sign that he might use the department to help Trump overturn the election.
But Barr told me he had already concluded that it was highly unlikely that evidence existed that would tip the scales in the election. He had expected Trump to lose and therefore was not surprised by the outcome. He also knew that at some point, Trump was going to confront him about the allegations, and he wanted to be able to say that he had looked into them and that they were unfounded. So, in addition to giving prosecutors approval to open investigations into clear and credible allegations of substantial fraud, Barr began his own, unofficial inquiry into the major claims that the president and his allies were making.
“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr told me. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”
The Department of Justice ended up conducting no formal investigations of voter fraud, but as part of Barr’s informal review, he asked the U.S. Attorney in Michigan about Trump’s claim that mysterious “ballot dumps” in Detroit had secured Biden’s victory in the state.
As proof of fraud, Trump’s allies had pointed to videos showing boxes filled with ballots arriving at the TCF Center, in Detroit, to be counted after the 8 p.m. deadline for votes to be cast. But Barr quickly found that there was a logical explanation. It had to do with how the 662 precincts in Wayne County, home to Detroit, tabulate their votes. “In every other county, they count the ballots at the precinct, but in Wayne County, they bring them into one central counting place. So the boxes are coming in all night. The fact that boxes are coming in—well, that’s what they do.”
Furthermore, Trump performed better against Biden in Detroit than he had against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden received 1,000 fewer votes in Detroit than Clinton had, and Trump received 5,000 more votes than he had four years earlier. Trump didn’t lose Michigan because of “illegal” ballots cast in Detroit. He lost Michigan because Biden beat him badly in the suburbs.
Barr also looked into allegations that voting machines across the country were rigged to switch Trump votes to Biden votes. He received two briefings from cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. “We realized from the beginning it was just bullshit,” Barr told me, noting that even if the machines somehow changed the count, it would show up when they were recounted by hand. “It’s a counting machine, and they save everything that was counted. So you just reconcile the two. There had been no discrepancy reported anywhere, and I’m still not aware of any discrepancy.”
After the lunch with Balsamo, Barr and Levi went to the White House for a previously scheduled meeting with Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. After talking briefly with Meadows, they went upstairs to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s office. As they were conferring, one of the counsel’s aides knocked on the door and told Cipollone that the president wanted to see him and then, pointing to Barr, the aide said, “And he is looking for you.”
Barr, Levi, and Cipollone walked to the president’s personal dining room near the Oval Office. Trump was sitting at the table. Meadows was sitting next to him with his arms crossed; the White House adviser Eric Herschmann stood off to the side. The details of this meeting were described to me by several people present. One told me that Trump had “the eyes and mannerism of a madman.”
He went off on Barr.
“I think you’ve noticed I haven’t been talking to you much,” Trump said to him. “I’ve been leaving you alone.”
Barr later told others that the comment was reminiscent of a line in the movie Dr. Strangelove, in which the main character, Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, says, “I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence.” Trump, Barr thought, was saying that he had been denying him his essence.
Trump brought up Barr’s AP interview.
“Did you say that?”
“Yes,” Barr responded.
“How the fuck could you do this to me? Why did you say it?”
“Because it’s true.”
The president, livid, responded by referring to himself in the third person: “You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump.”
Barr thought that the president was trying to control himself, but he seemed angrier than he had ever seen him. His face was red. Barr’s AP interview was dominating every cable news channel except the one Trump was watching. The television in the room was tuned to the right-wing, pro-Trump network One America News, which was broadcasting a committee hearing of the Michigan legislature. The hearing featured disproven allegations of massive election fraud, including the testimony of a woman named Melissa Carone, who had worked at the counting location in Detroit and told the committee, “Everything that happened at the TCF Center was fraud. Every single thing.” The next day, Carone would testify again, next to Rudy Giuliani, during which time she slurred her words and appeared to be drunk. (Carone later denied that she had been drunk.)
“They saw the boxes going in!” Trump yelled, referring to the stories about boxes of illegal ballots being counted.
“You know, Mr. President, there are 662 precincts in Wayne County,” Barr said. Trump seemed taken aback that he knew the exact number. “It’s the only county with all the boxes going to a central place, and you actually did better there this time around than you did last time. You keep on saying that the Department of Justice is not looking at this stuff, and we are looking at it in a responsible way. But your people keep on shoveling this shit out.”
As Trump ranted about other examples of fraud, Meadows continued to sit silently with his arms crossed, his posture suggesting that he, too, was upset by what Barr had done.
“You know, you only have five weeks, Mr. President, after an election to make legal challenges,” Barr said. “This would have taken a crackerjack team with a really coherent and disciplined strategy. Instead, you have a clown show. No self-respecting lawyer is going anywhere near it. It’s just a joke. That’s why you are where you are.”
Interestingly, Trump didn’t argue when Barr told him that his “clown show” legal team had wasted time. In fact, he said, “You may be right about that.”
After going through his litany of claims—stolen ballots, fake ballots, dead people voting, rigged voting machines—Trump switched to other grievances, shouting at Barr for failing to prosecute Biden’s son Hunter. “If that had been one of my kids, they would have been all over him!” he said. By the end of the meeting, Trump was doing almost all of the talking. Why hadn’t Barr released John Durham’s report on the origins of the Russia investigation before the election? Why hadn’t he prosecuted former FBI Director James Comey? Trump was banging on the table. He said that Barr had been worthless.
As Barr left, he was unsure whether he still had a job. Had Trump just fired him? And if not, shouldn’t he quit? Why remain attorney general after what the president had just said to him? His status had been left up in the air.
The next morning, Barr received a call from Meadows. “I think there’s a way through this,” Meadows told him. He could prevent Trump from firing him, but he wanted an assurance from Barr that he wouldn’t resign. “Are you willing to stay?” Meadows asked.
“I’m not going to sandbag you,” Barr said. “I will give you a warning if I’m going to leave, and No. 2, I’ll stay as long as I’m needed.”
Barr almost immediately began to regret his decision to stay. His statement on election fraud did nothing to deter Trump, who was now listening, almost exclusively, to Giuliani and others outside his administration. They were telling him that he was still going to win the election.
Two weeks later, Barr went down to the White House to tell the president that he planned to resign before the end of the year. It was their first meeting since their confrontation. To defuse the tension, Barr had written an effusive resignation letter, which he handed to the president when he got to the Oval Office. The letter praised Trump’s record and played directly into his complaints about how he had been treated by Democrats, saying his efforts “had been met by a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds.”
Trump read the letter while Barr was sitting across from him. “This is pretty good,” he said.
Jonathan D. Karl is the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News. His book on the last days of the Trump administration, Betrayal, will be published by Dutton on November 16, 2021.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/06/william-barrs-trump-administration-attorney-general/619298/
Government to investigate leak of Matt Hancock CCTV footage
Denis Campbell
Sun 27 Jun 2021 09.48 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/27/government-investigate-leak-matt-hancock-footage
The government will investigate how the footage of Matt Hancock kissing an aide in his office that triggered his downfall ended up in the public domain, a cabinet minister said.
Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, said the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) would undertake an internal investigation into the leaking of the CCTV pictures to the Sun. Multiple media reports have said a DHSC employee was the culprit.
The tabloid’s publication of footage recorded on 6 May by the CCTV in Hancock’s office of him embracing Gina Coladangelo led to the health secretary’s resignation on Saturday and replacement by Sajid Javid, the former home secretary and chancellor.
Lewis’s remarks came amid claims the leaker had sought the help of an anti-lockdown campaigner in placing the pictures with a media outlet in order to undermine Hancock. As health secretary, Hancock was one of the key ministers arguing last autumn that a second lockdown was needed to reduce Covid infections and stop the NHS becoming overwhelmed.
Speaking on Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday, Lewis said: “I have seen some of the reports this morning outlining how different journalists think the tape might have got out there. That is certainly a matter I know the Department of Health will be looking into to understand exactly how that was recorded, how it got out of the system. It’s something we need to get to the bottom of.”
The security and privacy of government business means ministers need to understand how someone was able to access and record the footage and then share it with a newspaper, he said.
“What happens in government departments can be sensitive, important and people need to have confidence that what is happening in a government department is something that allows government to be focused on these core issues, and the sensitivity sometimes in the security sense of those core issues.
“I do know that is something the Department of Health will be taking forward as an internal investigation and we need to see and let them have the space to do that, to understand how this happened and to ensure this kind of situation can’t happen again or across government indeed.”
The status and nature of the health department’s investigation is unknown, as is whether its findings will be made public. The Guardian reported on Friday that Downing Street had ruled out a full-scale leak inquiry, despite the security implications of the footage going public, amid concern that, if identified, the leaker could present themselves as a whistleblower who was exposing wrongdoing and thus claim the legal protections whistleblowers are meant to enjoy. Sources say that remains the case.
The Mail on Sunday reported that the leaker sent messages via Instagram to the unnamed anti-lockdown activist. One said: “I have some very damning CCTV footage of someone that has been recently classed as completely f***ing hopeless. If you would like some more information please contact me.”
That was reportedly sent on 17 June, the day after Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings published text message exchanges he had with the prime minister last year in which Johnson called Hancock “totally fucking hopeless”.
A second message, sent on 19 June, said: “I really need to be careful with this but it involves him in a very compromising position with some [sic] who isn’t his wife last month.”
And a further message, sent later that day, added: “I have the full video … it’s now been deleted off the system as it’s over 30 days.”
The Guardian asked the DHSC for further details of its inquiry and the Mail on Sunday’s claims.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/27/government-investigate-leak-matt-hancock-footage
The FBI Searched the Home of a Rudy Giuliani Associate
George Dickson worked with the former New York mayor to seek funding for a Hunter Biden documentary.
JUNE 25, 2021
DAN FRIEDMAN
RUSS CHOMA
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/the-fbi-searched-the-home-of-a-rudy-giuliani-associate/
FBI agents on Tuesday searched the California home of George Dickson III, a marijuana entrepreneur who last year partnered with Rudy Giuliani to line up financing for a never completed documentary aimed at advancing the former New York mayor’s bogus claims about Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine.
Asked about a search at Dickson’s address in Aptos, California, a spokesperson for the FBI’s San Francisco office on Thursday said they could “confirm the FBI was present at that location on Tuesday, June 22 to conduct court-authorized law enforcement activity.” The spokesperson declined to comment further “due to the ongoing nature of the investigation.”
Mother Jones could not confirm that the search was related to Dickson’s work with Giuliani. Dickson, the founder of a company that describes itself as “the world’s premier seed-to-consumer cannabis organization” and other ventures, did not respond to multiple email, text, and phone messages.
Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating Giuliani for a suspected violation of foreign lobbying laws in regard to his efforts in Ukraine, where he worked with former Ukrainian government officials and alleged Russian agents to gin up allegations about Joe Biden that Giuliani and former President Donald Trump pressured Ukraine’s government to investigate.
Dickson last year worked with Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, to secure investors for what they pitched as a documentary about Hunter and Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine. One source familiar with the project said Giuliani envisioned the film as the culmination of his efforts and a possible “kill shot” to Biden’s presidential campaign. Tim Yale, a California Republican operative and fundraiser with ties to Roger Stone, the longtime Trump adviser and dirty trickster, and to former California GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, was also involved with the film effort. Yale did not respond to phone and text messages.
The movie was never made, and it is unclear if the project raised any funds. But the three men were seeking minimum investments of $1 million and considered selling shares in the project to people outside of the United States, according to documents prepared for potential investors and obtained by Mother Jones. A draft note purchase agreement for the film contains a clause regarding the obligations of any “Non-United States person” who signed up as an investor for the film, and a source told Mother Jones that the men were seeking financial backers abroad. Last year, lawyers told Mother Jones that raising money abroad for a movie that could be seen as aimed at influencing the 2020 election could violate campaign finance laws or the Foreign Agents Registration Act, if the investors were tied to foreign governments.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, last year said the men had not “raised or solicited” any money from “any foreign citizens.” Costello said Thursday night that he was not aware of the search of Dickson’s home and whether it related to Giuliani.
The federal investigation into Giuliani’s work in Ukraine remains active. FBI agents searched his home and office in April. At the same time, they also seized a phone from Victoria Toensing, a lawyer who worked with Giuliani on his effort to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine. Giuliani told Mother Jones earlier this month that investigators suspect him of “one act of failing to register as a foreign agent.” He said it related to his interactions with Yuriy Lutsenko, a former Ukrainian prosecutor who issued and later rescinded allegations about Biden that Giuliani and Trump pushed Ukraine’s government to probe. Giuliani called the Justice Department’s actions “completely dishonest, completely corrupt,” adding, “They should be investigated.”
A New York appellate court suspended Giuliani’s law license on Thursday over another matter, citing “demonstrably false and misleading” statements he made in court and elsewhere about the 2020 election.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/the-fbi-searched-the-home-of-a-rudy-giuliani-associate/
Classified Ministry of Defence papers found at bus stop in Kent
Documents include details on HMS Defender in Ukrainian waters and possible Afghanistan plans
Maya Wolfe-Robinson
Sun 27 Jun 2021 04.40 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/27/classified-ministry-defence-papers-found-bus-stop-kent
Classified defence documents containing details about HMS Defender and the military have been found at a bus stop, prompting an investigation from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The department said an employee reported the loss of the documents last week, which were discovered by a member of the public in a soggy heap behind a bus stop in Kent early on Tuesday morning, the BBC reported.
The papers included one set of documents that discussed the potential Russian reaction to HMS Defender’s travel through Ukrainian waters off the Crimea coast on Wednesday, according to the BBC, while another laid out plans for a possible UK military presence in Afghanistan.
A member of the public, who wanted to remain anonymous, contacted the organisation when they found the 50 pages of classified information.
The MoD said HMS Defender “conducted innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law” and that all potential factors were considered when making operational decisions.
An MoD spokesperson said in a statement: “As the public would expect, the Ministry of Defence plans carefully. As a matter of routine, that includes analysing all the potential factors affecting operational decisions. HMS Defender conducted innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law.
“The Ministry of Defence was informed last week of an incident in which sensitive defence papers were recovered by a member of the public. The department takes the security of information extremely seriously and an investigation has been launched. The employee concerned reported the loss at the time. It would be inappropriate to comment further.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/27/classified-ministry-defence-papers-found-bus-stop-kent
Matt Hancock resigns: Dominic Cummings issues damning assessment of new health secretary - as PM criticised for not sacking Hancock
Dominic Cummings is among those to weigh in on the latest Whitehall drama, with a damning assessment of the new health secretary.
Sunday 27 June 2021 05:31, UK
https://news.sky.com/story/matt-hancock-resigns-opponents-criticise-pms-handling-of-scandal-surrounding-former-health-secretary-12342658
Matt Hancock has resigned as health secretary - but opposition politicians are criticising the prime minister for not sacking him earlier.
Boris Johnson said on Friday that he had accepted Mr Hancock's apology for breaking social distancing rules, and considered the matter closed.
But after Mr Hancock resigned on Saturday, Mr Johnson was criticised for not sacking him when reports of his failings emerged.
The departure of Mr Hancock and subsequent hiring of Sajid Javid as his replacement has tempted the PM's former chief adviser Dominic Cummings back on to Twitter, where he has in recent weeks regularly issued damning assessments of the government's response to the pandemic.
He suggested that Mr Johnson's wife Carrie Symonds had played a role in the decision to hire Mr Javid as the new health secretary. Mr Javid resigned as chancellor in February 2020 - the culmination of weeks of reported tensions between him and Mr Cummings, who was said to have been key to the subsequent appointment of Rishi Sunak.
Mr Cummings tweeted: "So Carrie appoints Saj! NB If I hadn't tricked PM into firing Saj, we'd have had a HMT with useless SoS/spads, no furlough scheme, total chaos instead of JOINT 10/11 team which was a big success.
"Saj = bog standard = chasing headlines + failing = awful for NHS. Need #RegimeChange."
Earlier, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer led his party in giving his reaction to Mr Hancock's departure.
He wrote on Twitter: "Matt Hancock is right to resign. But Boris Johnson should have sacked him."
Labour chair Anneliese Dodds wrote on Twitter: "A Health Secretary who behaved like rules didn't apply to him.
"A prime minister who didn't have the guts to remove him.
"A government riddled with sleaze. Now Matt Hancock has gone, the prime minister must clean up this crony government."
Mr Hancock resigned after leaked CCTV showed him kissing aide and former lobbyist Gina Coladangelo in his departmental office.
The images, published by The Sun, were from 6 May - more than a week before the easing of social distancing rules around close contact indoors for people from separate households.
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour's shadow health secretary, said: "It is right that Matt Hancock has resigned. But why didn't Boris Johnson have the guts to sack him and why did he say the matter was closed?
"Boris Johnson has demonstrated that he has none of the leadership qualities required of a prime minister.
"Hancock's replacement cannot carry on business as usual. On Hancock's watch waiting times soared, care homes were left exposed to COVID and NHS staff were badly let down.
"Our NHS deserves much better."
Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen told Sky News: "I think Matt's taken exactly the right decision.
"It's OK having the support and confidence of the prime minister but in a pandemic you've also got to have the support and confidence of the public."
Leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey tweeted: "Matt Hancock's legacy as health secretary will be one of cronyism and failure.
"And the fact that Boris Johnson thought Hancock could just carry on regardless brings the prime minister's judgement into question once again."
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford tweeted: "Massive failure of leadership by Boris Johnson.
"Hancock should have been sacked.
"A fish rots from its head - so does this UK Government.
"In Scotland of course we will face a choice on our future. We can say goodbye to the chaos and failure of UK leadership and take a step forward."
Earlier on Saturday, Labour and the Liberal Democrats had demanded Mr Hancock's removal, and some Conservative MPs had also called for the health secretary to go.
Veteran Tory Sir Christopher Chope, MP for Christchurch, said his constituents were "seething" and North Norfolk MP Duncan Baker said: "In my view people in high public office and great positions of responsibility should act with the appropriate morals and ethics that come with that role".
https://news.sky.com/story/matt-hancock-resigns-opponents-criticise-pms-handling-of-scandal-surrounding-former-health-secretary-12342658
I think Vance has more incriminating evidence yet to be revealed.
Boris Johnson handed 'clear plan' as Labour and Tories unite on social care issues
EXCLUSIVE: A cross-party alliance of Tory ex-ministers, employers, carers and unions have come up with a plan and are demanding the Prime Minister 'gets on with it'
By Chris McLaughlin
20:23, 26 JUN 2021
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-handed-clear-plan-24405632
Boris Johnson has been handed a ready-made plan to rescue long-neglected social care services.
The PM promised to “fix” the broken system in his first speech on the steps of No10 when he took office two years ago, vowing: “My job is to protect you or your parents or grandparents from the fear of having to sell your home to pay for the costs of care.”
Since then tens of thousands have sold their homes to pay for care and more than 40,000 care home residents have died of Covid.
Now a cross-party alliance of Tory ex-ministers, employers, carers and unions have come up with a plan and are demanding he “gets on with it”.
Proposals by the Future Social Care Coalition include combining the care system with the NHS and improving pay and training for carers.
Christina McAnea, co-chair of the coalition and Unison chief, said: “Social care has been the forgotten frontline of the pandemic. There’s been a multitude of promises from the PM but absolutely no tangible plans.
“Action is needed now and our plan has been written by those who know what a dire state the sector is in. Social care must become a source of national pride, held in the same esteem as the NHS.”
Critics fear the plans will cost too much.
But the coalition says its proposal to boost the pay of 1.5million care workers would cost just £742million – compared to £35billion earmarked for the failing NHS test and trace.
Social Care Minister Helen Whately told MPs last week there was a “once in a generation opportunity to build a care system for the future” but failed to give any specifics.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-handed-clear-plan-24405632
Vance opened his investigation in 2018, following reports that the president’s former fixer Michael Cohen paid “secret money” to women who claimed to have had affairs with the presidential candidate. ‘time. Cohen told Congress he arranged with Weisselberg to be reimbursed with funds from the Trump Organization listed as legal fees.
The investigation then evolved to examine possible bank and accounting fraud on the part of the Trump Organization, including whether it had inflated the value of certain properties to secure bank loans on concessional terms while minimizing them for tax purposes.
Prosecutors have stepped up pressure in recent months on Weisselberg, who was hired by the former president’s father, Fred Trump, and described himself as “the eyes and ears” of the company.
His cooperation, according to former prosecutors, could be vital in bringing a larger case against the company or Trump himself. Three of Trump’s grown children – Donald, Jr, Ivanka and Eric – have also held leadership positions at the company. So far, however, Weisselberg has refused to cooperate, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump Organization Prepares For Criminal Charges From Manhattan District Attorney – .
June 26, 202
https://www.fr24news.com/a/2021/06/trump-organization-prepares-for-criminal-charges-from-manhattan-district-attorney.html
Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak Confirmed - Sajid Javid is the new Health Secretary
7:51 PM · Jun 26, 2021
THREAD
Confirmed - Sajid Javid is the new Health Secretary
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) June 26, 2021
ABC News @ABC The Trump Organization expects to be charged by Manhattan DA as soon as next week after a nearly two-year investigation, sources tell
@ABC News.
Trump Organization expects to be charged by Manhattan DA as soon as next week: Sources
The probe has focused on the finances of the former president and his company.
ByJohn Santucci andAaron Katersky
25 June 2021, 21:53
• 3 min read
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-organization-expects-charged-manhattan-da-week-sources/story?id=78497107&cid=social_twitter_abcn
THREAD
The Trump Organization expects to be charged by Manhattan DA as soon as next week after a nearly two-year investigation, sources tell @ABC News. https://t.co/FM6zjOCrBb
— ABC News (@ABC) June 26, 2021
Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak Gina Coladangelo is leaving her role at the Department of Health
7:04 PM · Jun 26, 2021·Twitter Web App
Gina Coladangelo is leaving her role at the Department of Health
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) June 26, 2021
Speculation now over who will replace Hancock - Johnson doesn't like doing big reshuffles.... so don't expect big Cabinet shakeup tonight, but always hard to be sure
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) June 26, 2021
BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking · 4m "Those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them, and that's why I've got to resign"
In a video, posted on his Twitter account, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock says he has "been to see the prime minister to resign"
VIDEO
"Those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them, and that's why I've got to resign"
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) June 26, 2021
In a video, posted on his Twitter account, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock says he has "been to see the prime minister to resign"https://t.co/4Q7bIQGShc pic.twitter.com/Gys3iwmoiU
"Those of us who make these rules have got to stick by them, and that's why I've got to resign"
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) June 26, 2021
In a video, posted on his Twitter account, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock says he has "been to see the prime minister to resign"https://t.co/4Q7bIQGShc pic.twitter.com/Gys3iwmoiU
Piers Morgan @piersmorgan Didn’t resign for his abject failures on PPE, testing & care homes that led to Britain having the worst covid death toll in Europe.
Did resign for being caught snogging his mistress.
Pretty much sums up Matt Hancock. As the Prime Minister said: ‘Totally f*cking hopeless.’
6:37 PM · Jun 26, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
Didn’t resign for his abject failures on PPE, testing & care homes that led to Britain having the worst covid death toll in Europe.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 26, 2021
Did resign for being caught snogging his mistress.
Pretty much sums up Matt Hancock. As the Prime Minister said: ‘Totally f*cking hopeless.’ pic.twitter.com/gIK8RPsC2s
Matt Hancock quits as Health Secretary
In a letter to Boris Johnson, Mr Hancock said the Government "owe it to people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down".
He said: "The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis.
"I want to reiterate my apology for breaking the guidance, and apologise to my family and loved ones for putting them through this.
"I also need to be with my children at this time."
His resignation comes amid multiple Tory MPs breaking ranks and calling for the Cabinet minister to step down.
Conservative MP Duncan Baker was the first on Saturday to confirm he was calling for Mr Hancock to go, while former Cabinet minister Esther McVey said she would resign if in the same position.
Mr Hancock apologised for breaching social distancing guidance and Downing Street the matter was "closed" on Friday.
This is a breaking news story, more to follow.
??Follow the latest updates below.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/26/politics-latest-news-hancock-aide-week-reports-say/
Matt Hancock resigns as health secretary
7 mins ago
Matt Hancock has resigned as health secretary, Downing Street says.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/matt-hancock-resigns-as-health-secretary/ar-AALsWBs
J&J Settles New York Opioid Suits for $263 Million (1)
June 26, 2021, 3:45 PM
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/j-j-said-to-settle-n-y-opioid-suits-for-more-than-260-million
Johnson & Johnson said it agreed to pay $263 million to resolve opioid lawsuits filed in New York, settling the cases on the eve of the first U.S. jury trial over claims the company mishandled the highly addictive painkillers.
The settlement resolves complaints brought by New York State Attorney General Letitia James and two Long Island counties that were set to go to trial next week. In a statement Saturday, the company said the deal is consistent with a $5 billion settlement proposal it made last year to resolve all its opioid liability. The global deal has yet to be finalized.
“The dollar amount to be received by the state is the pro-rated share it would have received under the broader agreement in principle, which will be deducted from the all-in settlement amount,” the company said. J&J’s Janssen unit stopped making opioid painkillers last year. The company denied any wrongdoing.
James’ office said in a separate statement that the settlement would provide $230 million to New York municipalities. That figure didn’t include legal fees and costs that J&J factored into its final tally, said Fabian Levy, a spokesman for James.
The deal doesn’t affect a current California non-jury trial in which J&J is among a group of opioid makers accused of illegally marketing opioids to wrongfully reap billions in profits, the people added. The trial is expected to last at least another month.
More than a half-dozen opioid manufacturers, including Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, distributors such as McKesson Corp. and pharmacy providers such as Walgreens Boots Alliance, still face New York’s claims they wrongfully reaped billions peddling the painkillers by illegally marketing them or turning a blind eye to suspiciously large orders. Opening arguments in the case are slated to start Tuesday in Central Islip, New York.
States, cities and counties have sued J&J, McKesson and other opioid-industry players over their roles in fueling the U.S. opioid epidemic, which has claimed the lives of nearly 500,000 Americans over the last 20 years.
The New York case is In Re Opioid Litigation, Index no. 40000/2017, Supreme Court of New York, Suffolk County.
(Updates with statement from J&J.)
To contact the reporter on this story:
Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware at jfeeley@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net
Steve Stroth
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/j-j-said-to-settle-n-y-opioid-suits-for-more-than-260-million
Engineer Warned of ‘Major Structural Damage’ at Florida Condo Complex
A consultant in 2018 urged the managers to repair cracked columns and crumbling concrete. The work was finally about to get underway when the building collapsed.
By Mike Baker and Anjali Singhvi
June 26, 2021 Updated 8:14 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/miami-building-collapse-investigation.html
Three years before the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex near Miami, a consultant found alarming evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage under the 13-story building.
The engineer’s report helped shape plans for a multimillion-dollar repair project that was set to get underway soon — more than two and a half years after the building managers were warned — but the building suffered a catastrophic collapse in the middle of the night on Thursday, trapping sleeping residents in a massive heap of debris.
The complex’s management association had disclosed some of the problems in the wake of the collapse, but it was not until city officials released the 2018 report late Friday that the full nature of the concrete and rebar damage — most of it probably caused by years of exposure to the corrosive salt air along the South Florida coast — became chillingly apparent.
“Though some of this damage is minor, most of the concrete deterioration needs to be repaired in a timely fashion,” the consultant, Frank Morabito, wrote about damage near the base of the structure as part of his October 2018 report on the 40-year-old building in Surfside, Fla. He gave no indication that the structure was at risk of collapse, though he noted that the needed repairs would be aimed at “maintaining the structural integrity” of the building and its 136 units.
Kenneth S. Direktor, a lawyer who represents the resident-led association that operates the building, said this week that the repairs had been set to commence, based on extensive plans drawn up this year.
“They were just about to get started on it,” he said in an interview, adding that the process would have been handled much differently if owners had had any indication that the corrosion and crumbling — mild instances of which are relatively common in many coastal buildings — were a serious threat.
But Eliana Salzhauer, a Surfside commissioner, said that while the cause of the collapse was unknown, it appeared to her that the problems identified by the engineer in the 2018 report could have contributed to the structural failure.
“It’s upsetting to see these documents because the condo board was clearly made aware that there were issues,” Ms. Salzhauer said. “And it seems from the documents that the issues were not addressed.”
Investigators have yet to identify the cause and are still awaiting full access to a site where rescue crews have been urgently sifting through an unstable pile of debris for possible survivors. Experts said that the process of assessing possible failure scenarios could take months, involving a review of individual building components that may now be buried in debris, the testing of concrete to assess its integrity and an examination of the earth below to see if a sinkhole or other subsidence was responsible for the collapse.
The building was just entering a recertification process — a requirement for such 40-year-old structures that have endured the punishment of coastal Florida’s hurricanes, storm surges and the corrosive salty air that can penetrate concrete and rust the rebar and steel beams inside.
Images from a 2018 report by the structural engineer Frank Morabito on the Champlain Towers South condomium.Credit...Morabito Consultants, via Town of Surfside
The 40-year requirement was put in place after a previous building collapse in Miami, in 1974.
Mr. Morabito, who declined to comment this week, wrote in the 2018 report that the goal of his study was to understand and document the extent of structural issues that would require repair or remediation.
“These documents will enable the Condominium Board to adequately assess the overall condition of the building, notify tenants on how they may be affected, and provide a safe and functional infrastructure for the future,” he wrote.
At the ground level of the complex, vehicles can drive in next to a pool deck where residents would lounge in the sun. Mr. Morabito in 2018 said that the waterproofing below the pool deck and entrance drive was failing, “causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas.”
The report added that “failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.” The problem, he said, was that the waterproofing was laid on a concrete slab that was flat, not sloped in a way that would allow water to run off, an issue he called a “major error” in the original design. The replacement would be “extremely expensive,” he warned, and cause a major disturbance to residents.
In the parking garage, which largely sits at the bottom level of the building, part of it under the pool deck, Mr. Morabito said that there were signs of distress and fatigue.
“Abundant cracking and spalling of varying degrees was observed in the concrete columns, beams, and walls,” Mr. Morabito wrote. He included photos of cracks in the columns of the parking garage as well as concrete crumbling — a process engineers refer to as “spalling” — that exposed steel reinforcements on the garage deck.
Images from the 2018 report.Credit...Morabito Consultants, via Town of Surfside
Mr. Morabito noted that previous attempts to patch the concrete with epoxy were failing, resulting in more cracking and spalling. In one such spot, he said, “new cracks were radiating from the originally repaired cracks.”
The report also identified a host of other problems: Residents were complaining of water coming through their windows and balcony doors, and the concrete on many balconies also was deteriorating.
After watching a surveillance video showing the collapse of the building, Evan Bentz, a professor at the University of Toronto and an expert in structural concrete, said that whatever had caused the collapse would have to have been somewhere near the bottom of the building, perhaps around the parking level. Though he had not seen the 2018 report at the time, he said such a collapse could have several possible explanations, including a design mistake, a materials problem, a construction error or a maintenance error.
“I’d be surprised if there was just one cause,” Mr. Bentz said. “There would have to be multiple causes for it to have fallen like that.”
There have been other concerns raised about the complex over the years. One resident filed a lawsuit in 2015 alleging that poor maintenance had allowed water to enter her unit through cracks in an outside wall. Some residents expressed concern that blasting during construction at a neighboring complex had rattled their units.
Researchers analyzing space-based radar had also identified land that was sinking at the property in the 1990s. The 2020 study found subsidence in other areas of the region, but on the east side of the barrier island where Surfside is, the condo complex was the only place where the issue was detected.
Proposed in the late 1970s, the Champlain Towers South project had its architectural and structural designs completed in 1979, according to records. At the time, people were flocking to live and play in South Florida, and developers were looking to build larger complexes that could put people right at the beachfront.
A nearly identical companion property — Champlain Towers North — was built the same year, a few hundred yards up the beach. It was not immediately clear whether any of the issues raised by the engineer in the south project had also been found in the other buildings.
Surfside’s mayor, Charles W. Burkett, said on Friday that he was worried about the stability of the north building but did not feel “philosophically comfortable” ordering people to evacuate.
“I can’t tell you, I can’t assure you, that the building is safe,” he said at a town commission meeting.
The collapse has stunned industry experts in the Miami area, including John Pistorino, a consulting engineer who designed the 40-year reinspection program when he was consulting for the county in the 1970s.
He touted other regulations that have come since, including requirements that tall buildings have an independent engineer verify that construction is going according to plans.
Mr. Pistorino did not want to speculate on the cause of the collapse. But he said that while some buildings in the region have had quality problems, any serious deficiencies were unusual, and were typically easy to detect by way of glaring cracks or other visible problems.
“This is so out of the norm,” Mr. Pistorino said. “This is something I cannot fathom or understand what happened.”
James Glanz and Joseph B. Treaster contributed to this report.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/miami-building-collapse-investigation.html
Engineer reportedly warned in 2018 of ‘major damage’ at Miami condo complex
Four people confirmed dead and 159 still unaccounted for as search-and-rescue teams work around the clock
00:33 Video shows collapse of Miami-area condo building
Guardian staff and agencies
Sat 26 Jun 2021 08.21 EDT
A consultant engineer warned three years before the deadly collapse of a South Florida condominium building that there was evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and abundant cracking and crumbling in the underground parking garage, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
....
MUCH MORE
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/26/miami-condo-collapse-warning-death-toll?utm_term=c1d3de8925e2389f47d6f9ce75344243&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email
Years before Florida building collapse, an engineer warned of ‘major structural damage’ to the condo
Latest: Engineer told building managers there was ‘major structural damage’ at condo in 2018, report shows
By Timothy Bella
June 26, 2021 at 1:06 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/26/florida-condo-building-collapse-live-updates/
Engineers who evaluated the South Florida condo that partially collapsed Thursday, leaving dozens trapped under the rubble, warned in a 2018 report of a “major error” in the construction’s original development. The report – released late Friday by officials in Surfside, Fla., – notes that the building’s reinforced concrete slab is not sloped to drain. https://townofsurfsidefl.gov/departments-services/town-clerk/champlain-towers-public-records-documents
As search-and-rescue teams continue to look for any possible survivors, the newly disclosed report shows Frank Morabito told building managers of “major structural damage” to the concrete at Champlain Towers South. City officials released the report as investigators start to seek a definitive explanation of the collapse. Authorities say 159 people are still unaccounted for.
Here are some significant developments
“Though some of this damage is minor, most of the concrete deterioration needs to be repaired in a timely fashion,” Morabito wrote in his 2018 report.
Officials delivered a somber update on the search-and-rescue efforts as night descended Friday: No new survivors have been discovered.
The family of building resident Stacie Fang said the 54-year-old was among the four people confirmed dead in the collapse.
Surfside officials said at an emergency meeting they are hiring an independent engineering firm with the idea of having them help evaluate the structural integrity of other towers in the beachfront area.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/26/florida-condo-building-collapse-live-updates/
No, the election wasn’t stolen in Antrim County, Mich., either
Opinion by David Von Drehle
Columnist
June 26, 2021 at 12:35 a.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/25/antrim-county-michigan-vote-recount-heroes/
If you remember that the lower part of Michigan is shaped a bit like a left-handed mitten, look for Antrim County between the tips of the middle and ring fingers. It’s a beautiful place. The Lake Michigan beaches are delightful in summer. The fishing is fantastic year-round.
Unlikely as it seems, this is an epicenter of Stolen Election mania.
Now, meet Ed McBroom: a Michigan state senator and conservative Republican from the Upper Peninsula, an even more remote part of the state on the opposite side of the lake. Before the election, McBroom was going about his conservative business representing his constituents on such issues as the large population of wolves in Michigan’s far north and whether hunting them should be legal.
After the election, McBroom accepted the thankless job of hunting down the truth about the supposedly Stolen Election. Together with two other Republicans and one Democrat, McBroom reports, “We have collectively spent innumerable hours watching and listening and reading.” What they found was a mostly well-run exercise in civic duty, slightly smirched by honest mistakes quickly rectified — and then buried in an avalanche of fantasy, fever dreams, grifter fiction and “blatherskite.”
More on blatherskite later.
The report of the McBroom committee makes for chewy reading but is worthwhile nonetheless. Plunging down one rabbit hole after another, the truth-hunters make every effort to find solid evidence for persistent claims of vote-shifting, machine-hacking, ballot-stuffing, algorithmic manipulation or any other means of overturning the will of the people.
Promoters of Stolen Election nonsense often complain that no officials — judges, prosecutors or investigators — will take their “proof” seriously. But when McBroom’s committee asks, repeatedly, to see the goods, they get nothing.
There’s a reason for that. As we see when the committee digs into ground zero, Antrim County, there’s nothing to show.
On Nov. 3, 2020, Election Day, vote-tabulating machines in Antrim spat out the following results shortly after the polls closed, the committee found. In a county with 22,082 registered voters, 16,044 ballots were cast. A pretty good turnout. Not every ballot included a vote for president. Of those that did, the lion’s share went to then-president Donald Trump: 9,748. Challenger Joe Biden received 5,960 votes.
No surprise. Rural counties in western Michigan reliably vote Republican.
What happened next was very surprising, though. When the results were fed into the county clerk’s spreadsheet, flaws in the spreadsheet design produced a mistaken report that Biden had won Antrim County. But no one was fooled for a minute. Folks in Antrim immediately started looking for the cause of the suspected error. On Nov. 5, they figured out that a number of Trump votes had been improperly entered in the spreadsheet, and a new report was made with Trump’s total corrected.
Alas, now there were more “votes” than actual ballots, so obviously the spreadsheet was still messed up. Antrim officials decided to recount the actual ballots. Back through the counting machines they went, exactly 16,044 of them. On Nov. 6, the tabulators spat out results identical to the original election night numbers: 9,748 for Trump, 5,960 for Biden. This total was eventually certified.
Just to be sure — given the brief confusion — a decision was made to recount the ballots again, this time by hand.
These results were finalized on Dec. 17. The painstaking manual inspection of the ballots found that the machines misread one ballot as a vote for Biden when it was not. Eleven ballots were determined to show Trump votes that the machines could not read. A total adjustment of 12 ballots out of nearly 16,000 presidential votes.
In other words, the original Election Day tabulation in Antrim County was 99.9 percent accurate.
Since then, the Internet and social media have been jammed with wild theories about international conspiracies to hack the vote in Antrim County. In the Joe Friday, just-the-facts tone preferred by McBroom, the report finds:
“Events in Antrim County sparked a significant amount of concern about the technology used to count ballots. This concern led to much speculation, assumptions, misinformation, and in some cases, outright lies meant to create doubt and confusion.” The committee recommends that the Michigan attorney general consider investigating the various lowlifes who have deployed lies “to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”
Amen to that.
As for “blatherskite,” we have a midyear leader in the competition for Best Word in an Official Document, 2021 competition. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s from a 17th-century satirical song popular in the early United States, and can apply to all talkers of “blatant nonsense.”
Ed McBroom knows blatherskite when he sees it, and he has risked his standing with the addled Trump base to name it without flinching. No matter how you feel about hunting wolves, that makes the man a hero.
256 Comments
Opinion by David Von Drehle
David Von Drehle writes a twice-weekly column for The Post. He was previously an editor-at-large for Time Magazine, and is the author of four books, including "Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year" and "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America." Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/25/antrim-county-michigan-vote-recount-heroes/
‘Dragon Man’ Fossil Shows Close Link to Modern Humans
Scientists say the fossil belongs to a newly named species of humans that may be our closest ancestors.
June 25, 2021 DAVID WELLS
https://www.courthousenews.com/dragon-man-fossil-shows-close-link-to-modern-humans/
(CN) — Researchers believe they have discovered a new human species that could reshape the way scientists understand the history of human evolution.
According to a trio of new research papers, a skull fossil known as the Harbin cranium belongs to a new species of humans named Homo longi, also referred to as “Dragon Man,” named for the Dragon River area of China where it was found.
These findings were published Friday in the journal The Innovation, and detail how this ancient skull sheds enormous light on the evolutionary path of humans.
“The Harbin fossil is one of the most complete human cranial fossils in the world,” said Qiang Ji, a professor of paleontology of Hebei GEO University who authored one of the papers. “This fossil preserved many morphological details that are critical for understanding the evolution of the Homo genus and the origin of Homo sapiens.”
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MUCH MORE
https://www.courthousenews.com/dragon-man-fossil-shows-close-link-to-modern-humans/
Trump’s baseless claim about ballot drop boxes in Fulton County, Ga.
Fact Checker Analysis
By Salvador Rizzo Reporter
June 22, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/22/trumps-baseless-claim-about-ballot-drop-boxes-fulton-county-ga/
“Thank you and congratulations to Laura Baigert of the Georgia Star News on the incredible reporting you have done. Keep going! The scam is all unraveling fast.”
— Former president Donald Trump, in a statement, June 17
False and misleading claims that cast doubt on Georgia’s 2020 election results continue to pop up seven months after the vote, and Trump keeps promoting them.
We have a high bar for fact-checking the former president these days, but this claim about an election “scam” in the Atlanta area carries weight. The state launched an investigation based on the same reports Trump is referencing from a website called the Georgia Star News.
But there is no evidence of a scam unraveling in Georgia, only shoddy record-keeping by local election officials.
The Facts
Joe Biden unexpectedly won Georgia by 11,779 votes of about 5 million cast, according to a hand recount of the votes that was done as part of a risk-limiting audit and that was later confirmed by a second recount.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, election officials authorized the use of ballot drop boxes by emergency rule. County officials had to fill out forms noting the date, time, location and number of ballots collected from each drop box.
The Georgia Star News, a pro-Trump publication, says it filed public-records requests with every county in the state, seeking the chain-of-custody forms that track the movements of all ballots deposited in drop boxes for the November election.
When Fulton County, the state’s most populous, responded to the request months later, the documents were incomplete. After several follow-up requests, Fulton County officials supplied 1,180 of 1,565 ballot transfer forms.
The missing forms accounted for 18,901 ballots, the Georgia Star News said. In a story June 14, the publication noted that 18,901 was “greater than the less than 12,000 vote margin of Biden’s certified victory in the state.” The same story quoted a Fulton County election official acknowledging that the request for records was not completed.
“We noticed that a few forms are missing, it seems when 25 plus core personnel were quarantined due to positive COVID-19 outbreak at the EPC [Elections Preparation Center], some procedural paperwork may have been misplaced,” Fulton County official Mariska Bodison told the Georgia Star News in an email on June 9.
The Georgia Star News said, “This is the first time that any election official at either the state or county level from a key battleground state has made an admission of significant error in election procedures for the November 3, 2020 election.”
Was it an admission of significant error? The county official said only that “a few forms” were missing. On June 16, two days after this story appeared online, the news organization Georgia Public Broadcasting said it had gotten ahold of almost all the missing records.
“After GPB News asked the county Monday about the forms not included in the Georgia Star’s records request, elections staff located all but eight of the more than 1,500 forms, sent them to state investigators and provided them to GPB News on a flash drive,” the broadcaster reported, adding that “GPB News has obtained records for all 123 counties that used drop boxes, countering claims among some pro-Trump media outlets that there are more than 300,000 ballots’ worth of forms ‘missing’ statewide.”
By the time that fact check appeared, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) had announced his office would investigate the “revelations” from Fulton County.
“New revelations that Fulton County is unable to produce all ballot drop box transfer documents will be investigated thoroughly, as we have with other counties that failed to follow Georgia rules and regulations regarding drop boxes,” Raffensperger tweeted June 14 in response to the Georgia Star News story. “This cannot continue.”
When we asked whether Fulton County records were indeed missing, a spokesman for Raffensperger, Ari Schaffer, said: “The investigation is still ongoing. The investigation is of Fulton’s statement that they were missing forms, not any other claims made by the Georgia Star.”
After the state conducted a hand recount of its election results in November, Biden’s lead dropped from 12,670 to 11,779, apparently from a revision in Fulton County. The recount showed 880 fewer votes there.
Gabriel Sterling, a state elections official in Georgia, called the Fulton County discrepancy “a little worrisome” but said it was a big county with a history of managerial issues. He also noted the difference in vote totals was not enough to change the outcome in Georgia, according to the Associated Press.
Raffensperger has been critical of Fulton County’s election management and has suggested several changes, although he also has defended the integrity of the county’s vote results in 2020.
The county, covering much of metro Atlanta, was in short supply of trained poll workers last year and had long lines because of a shortage of voting machines, among other issues. An audit of Fulton County by a nonpartisan monitor appointed by the state elections board found “persistent chain of custody issues throughout the entire absentee ballot processing system” and blamed bad management.
The auditor said “the fact that ballots were being delivered to State Farm Arena in unsecured mail carts is very concerning. Protocol for securing ballots exists not only to protect the ballots themselves but also to ensure that no ballot box stuffing occurred.”
The auditor also reported: “From October to January, I spent nearly 270 hours at various locations observing every aspect of Fulton County’s election processes. At no time did I ever observe any conduct by Fulton County election officials that involved dishonesty, fraud, or intentional malfeasance. During my weeks of monitoring, I witnessed neither ‘ballot stuffing’ nor ‘double-counting’ nor any other fraudulent conduct that would undermine the validity, fairness, and accuracy of the results published and certified by Fulton County.”
Fulton County officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Raffensperger has ruled out Trump’s claims of election fraud in Georgia. Trump called the Republican secretary of state a “complete disaster” and falsely claimed his brother “works for China.” This year, Raffensperger is running for reelection and facing a primary challenge from Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), a Trump ally.
The Georgia Star News has been publishing regular updates of how many counties have supplied chain-of-custody documents for their drop boxes, keeping up the pressure on those that delay, as we found in this fact check.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office issued a news release in April debunking the implication that something mysterious was taking place besides tardy replies to a publication.
Of the 123 counties that used drop boxes, “120 have confirmed they filled out and retained ballot transfer forms in accordance with Georgia rules,” the statement said. The other three counties, Coffee, Grady and Taylor, were referred for investigation.
The Pinocchio Test
Despite Trump’s latest claim, there is no evidence of an election “scam” unraveling in Georgia.
In response to a request for public records made by a pro-Trump website, Fulton County officials failed to supply all the forms that track the movements of ballots submitted by drop box.
A Fulton County official acknowledged that the chain-of-custody records it provided to the Georgia Star News were incomplete. Days later, Fulton County provided almost all the records to Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Sloppy? Yes. But shoddy record-keeping by itself does not constitute evidence of election fraud.
We will keep a close watch on developments in Raffensperger’s investigation, and it bears keeping in mind that Fulton County has a history of election management issues, including an audit that found problems with keeping chain-of-custody records for ballots in last year’s election at the same time that it affirmed election workers’ integrity.
For now, without evidence to justify accusations of an election “scam” in Fulton County, Trump earns Four Pinocchios.
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183 Comments
By Salvador Rizzo
Salvador Rizzo is a reporter for The Fact Checker. He previously covered New Jersey politics and Gov. Chris Christie, with stints at the Star-Ledger, the Bergen Record and the New York Observer. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/22/trumps-baseless-claim-about-ballot-drop-boxes-fulton-county-ga/
Trump Organization Could Face Criminal Charges in D.A. Inquiry
An indictment of the Trump Organization could mark the first criminal charges to emerge from an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into Donald J. Trump and his business dealings.
By William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich
June 25, 2021 Updated 1:25 p.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/nyregion/trump-organization-criminal-charges.html
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has informed Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that it is considering criminal charges against his family business, the Trump Organization, in connection with fringe benefits the company awarded a top executive, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
If the case moves ahead, the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., could announce charges against the Trump Organization and the executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, as soon as next week, the people said.
The criminal charges would be the first to emerge from Mr. Vance’s long-running investigation into Mr. Trump and his business dealings, and raise the startling prospect of a former president having to defend the company he founded and has run for decades.
While the prosecutors had been building a case for months against Mr. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, as part of an effort to pressure him to cooperate with the inquiry, it was not previously known that the company also might face charges.
Prosecutors recently have focused much of their investigation into the perks Mr. Trump and the company doled out to Mr. Weisselberg and other executives, including tens of thousands of dollars in private school tuition for one of Mr. Weisselberg’s grandchildren, as well as rents on apartments and car leases.
Prosecutors are looking into whether those benefits were properly recorded in the company’s ledgers and whether taxes were paid on them, The New York Times has reported.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers met on Thursday with senior prosecutors in the district attorney’s office in hopes of persuading them to abandon any plan to charge the company, according to several people familiar with the meeting. Such meetings are routine in white-collar criminal investigations, and it is unclear whether the prosecutors have made a final decision on whether to charge the Trump Organization, which has long denied wrongdoing.
It would be highly unusual to indict a company just for failing to pay taxes on fringe benefits, said several lawyers who specialize in tax rules. None of them could cite any recent example, noting that many companies provide their employees with perks like company cars.
Still, an indictment of Mr. Trump’s company could deal a significant blow to the former president just as he has flirted with a return to politics.
It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will ultimately face charges himself. The investigation, which began three years ago, has been wide-ranging, examining whether the Trump Organization manipulated the value of its properties to obtain favorable loans and tax benefits, people with knowledge of the matter have said.
The inquiry is also examining the organization’s statements to insurance companies about the value of various assets and any role that its employees — including Mr. Weisselberg — may have played in hush-money payments to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr. Trump has derided the investigation by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, as a politically motivated “witch hunt.” He unsuccessfully tried to fight a subpoena from Mr. Vance’s office seeking eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns, a fight that twice reached the United States Supreme Court.
A spokesman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment on Friday. A lawyer for Mr. Weisselberg, Mary E. Mulligan, also declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization could not immediately be reached for comment.
The meeting on Thursday between Mr. Trump’s lawyers and the prosecutors, held on a video call and lasting more than an hour and a half, was arranged byRonald P. Fischetti, a personal lawyer for Mr. Trump. Mr. Fischetti is a former law partner of Mark F. Pomerantz, a former federal prosecutor and defense lawyer whom the district attorney’s office enlisted to help lead the inquiry into Mr. Trump and his business.
In the coming days, Mr. Trump’s lawyers might still argue that any charges against the company could take a serious financial toll. Criminal charges, even against private companies like the Trump Organization, can threaten reputations and relationships with banks and business partners.
Companies, like people, can be tried for crimes, and if they are convicted or plead guilty, they can face fines and other penalties.
The indictments could increase pressure to cooperate on Mr. Weisselberg, who could seek to cut a deal with prosecutors to testify against Mr. Trump in exchange for leniency.
Mr. Weisselberg’s intimate knowledge of the Trump Organization — he has worked at the company for decades and was one of the top executives when Mr. Trump was in the White House — would make his cooperation an enormous asset to investigators looking at all aspects of the company. Because of that, he has been a central focus of scrutiny in the district attorney’s investigation, with particular attention paid to the benefits that he and his family received.
In general, those types of benefits are taxable, although there are some exceptions, and the rules can be murky.
Mr. Trump depends heavily on Mr. Weisselberg, who has continued to work at the Trump Organization while under investigation. In his book “Think Like a Billionaire,” the former president credited Mr. Weisselberg for doing “whatever was necessary to protect the bottom line.”
And few things grate at Mr. Trump like the prospect of disloyalty. Close allies have turned on him in the past, including his former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, whom Mr. Trump has labeled a “rat.”
Mr. Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to hush money payments to two women who said they had romantic affairs with Mr. Trump, is cooperating with the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation. After pleading guilty, Mr. Cohen said that it was Mr. Weisselberg who had helped the Trump Organization to disguise the reimbursements that Mr. Cohen received for paying off one of the women.
Mr. Weisselberg was not accused of any wrongdoing by federal prosecutors, and Mr. Trump did not pardon him in his final days in office, though he was said to have considered doing so. (A pardon would not have given Mr. Weisselberg immunity from state charges.)
After Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018, Mr. Trump expressed confidence that Mr. Weisselberg had not turned on him.
“One hundred percent he didn’t,” Mr. Trump told reporters for Bloomberg. “He’s a wonderful guy.”
Mr. Weisselberg is, in certain respects, the polar opposite of his longtime boss. Discreet and unassuming, the financial chief has avoided attention even as he has brought his family into the former president’s orbit. One of his sons, Barry, was the property manager of Trump Wollman Rink in Central Park. Another, Jack, works at Ladder Capital, one of Mr. Trump’s lenders.
But Mr. Weisselberg has done his part to contribute to Mr. Trump’s aura of wealth and power. In 2005, when The New York Times attempted to determine how much money Mr. Trump had, Mr. Weisselberg provided a list of assets that he said would show that Mr. Trump was worth $6 billion.
When the list of assets appeared to add up to only $5 billion, Mr. Weisselberg excused himself.
“I’m going to go to my office and find that other billion,” he said.
William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and broader law enforcement topics. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. @WRashbaum • Facebook
Ben Protess is an investigative reporter covering the federal government, law enforcement and various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies. @benprotess
Jonah E. Bromwich is a courts reporter for the Metro desk. @jonesieman
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/nyregion/trump-organization-criminal-charges.html
Justice Department suing Georgia over state’s new voting law
By MICHAEL BALSAMO and CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY
55 minutes ago
https://apnews.com/article/ga-state-wire-georgia-voting-rights-laws-voting-c552e88d294e5f35e2eea595177bc4b5
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is suing Georgia over the state’s new election law, alleging Republican state lawmakers rushed through a sweeping overhaul with an intent to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot.
“Where we believe the rights of civil rights of Americans have been violated we will not hesitate to act,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday in announcing the lawsuit.
Republican lawmakers in the state pushed back immediately, pledging a forceful defense of Georgia’s law.
The Biden administration’s move comes two weeks after Garland said his department would scrutinize new laws in Republican-controlled states that tighten voting rules. He said the federal government would take action if prosecutors found unlawful activity.
The suit also comes as pressure grows on the Biden administration to respond to GOP-backed laws being pushed in the states this year. A Democratic effort to overhaul election laws was blocked this week by Republican senators.
As of mid-May, 22 restrictive laws had passed in at least 14 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which researches voting and supports expanded access. Justice Department officials hinted that prosecutors were looking at other voting laws across the United States and warned that the government would not stand by if there were illegal attempts to restrict voter access.
The increased enforcement of voting rights laws also signals that President Joe Biden and Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke are making good on a promise to refocus the department around civil rights after a tumultuous four years during the Trump administration. Clarke was one of the nation’s leading civil rights attorneys before her nomination to lead the department’s civil rights division.
Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said he would contest the suit. The Republican official was harshly criticized by then-President Donald Trump and his allies for rebuffing efforts to challenge the outcome of the state’s vote in the 2020 election. Raffensperger largely supported the new law and faces a primary challenge from a congressman backed by Trump.
“The Biden Administration has been spreading lies about Georgia’s election law for months,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “It is no surprise that they would operationalize their lies with the full force of the federal government. I look forward to meeting them, and beating them, in court.”
Gov. Brian Kemp, R-Ga., said in a statement that the suit was “born out of the lies and misinformation the Biden administration has pushed.”
He accused Biden and other Democrats of “weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice to carry out their far-left agenda that undermines election integrity and empowers federal government overreach in our democracy.”
While much of the more controversial aspects of Georgia’s new voting law were dropped before it was passed, it is notable in its scope and for newly expansive powers granted to the state over local election offices.
The bill, known as SB 202, also adds a voter ID requirement for mail ballots, shortens the time period for requesting a mailed ballot and results in fewer ballot drop boxes available in metro Atlanta — provisions that drew the challenge from the federal government.
“The changes to absentee voting were not made in a vacuum,” Clarke said. “These changes come immediately after successful absentee voting in the 2020 election cycle, especially among Black voters. SB 202 seeks to halt and reverse this progress.”
In 2020, just two states had ID requirements for voters requesting a mailed ballot. Along with Georgia, lawmakers in Florida have also passed a law requiring additional identification for mail voting. Clarke described the Georgia law as adding “new and unnecessarily stringent” identification requirements to mail voting.
In Georgia, drop boxes were permitted last year under an emergency rule prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. State Republicans have defended the new law as making drop boxes a permanent option for voters and requiring all counties to have at least one. But critics say the new limits mean there will be fewer drop boxes available in the state’s most populous communities.
For the entire metro Atlanta area, Democrats estimate the number of drop boxes will fall from 94 last year to no more than 23 for future elections based on the new formula of one drop box per 100,000 registered voters.
Clarke noted that metro Atlanta is home to the largest Black, voting-age population in the state.
The NAACP and civil rights leaders such as Stacey Abrams applauded the administration’s step. NAACP President Derrick Johnson said Georgia’s law was a “blatant assault on the American people’s most fundamental and sacred right, the right to vote.”
The law already is the subject of seven other federal suits filed by civil rights and election integrity groups that raise a number of claims under the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in voting.
The Supreme Court also is weighing a voting rights dispute from Arizona that predates last year’s election in which the court could again significantly cut back on the use of the voting rights law.
Eight years ago Friday, the high court removed the Justice Department’s most effective tool in combating discriminatory voting laws: the requirement that states with a history of racial discrimination, mostly in the South, obtain advance approval of any voting changes from the government or a court.
The department also announced Friday that it was creating a task force and advising FBI and U.S. attorneys to prioritize investigations of threats against election officials.
___
Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Mark Sherman in Washington and Kate Brumback and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/ga-state-wire-georgia-voting-rights-laws-voting-c552e88d294e5f35e2eea595177bc4b5
A caravan of Trump backers tried to run a Biden bus off a road. Now they’re being sued under an anti-KKK act.
Jaclyn Peiser
The Washington Post
June 25, 2021
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/25/biden-campaign-bus-lawsuit-trump-train/
Timothy Holloway clutched the wheel of a Biden-Harris campaign bus last October, swerving and dodging as one hostile car bearing a Trump flag after another tried to run him off a Texas highway.
“We were terrified,” Holloway said in a news release. “They were clearly trying to scare us and prevent us from arriving at our destination in peace.”
The tactic worked — the Biden campaign canceled the rest of the day’s events, saying it feared for the safety of campaign staffers, supporters and local political candidates. Some prominent Republicans cheered the effort by the self-proclaimed “Trump Train,” while President Donald Trump himself lauded their efforts, calling the drivers “patriots” who “did nothing wrong.”
Now, Holloway — along with a White House staffer, a former Texas lawmaker and a campaign volunteer — are suing several members of the caravan, accusing them of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which bars violent election intimidation, as well as local Texas laws. The group is also suing local law enforcement, claiming they failed to provide protection.
“Those on the bus feared injury or for their lives. All suffered lingering trauma in the days and months thereafter,” says one of a pair of federal lawsuits filed to the Western District of Texas court on Thursday. “The events of October 30 arose from a campaign of politically motivated intimidation.”
The lawsuits come as hundreds of other fervent Trump supporters face criminal charges for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Some of those who participated in the “Trump Train” were at the Capitol during the insurrection, the lawsuit alleges. The FBI has also announced it is investigating the “Trump Train” incident.
The case isn’t the only recent attempt to invoke the Ku Klux Klan Act against Trump supporters. In February, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, invoked the Klan Act in a lawsuit against Trump, Rudolph W. Giuliani and two extremist groups whose members are accused of participating in the insurrection. Thompson alleged that Trump and Giuliani violated the act by inciting the riots with false claims of a rigged election. The lawsuit is ongoing.
Along with Holloway, the bus heading up Interstate 35 on Oct. 30 also included former Texas state senator Wendy Davis, who made national headlines during a 13-hour filibuster in 2013 to halt the passage of an antiabortion bill. The bus had been driving north from Laredo, Tex., to San Antonio, when those inside noticed dozens of cars sporting Trump campaign gear waiting along the highway and then swarming the campaign bus. Staffers frantically called 911 as the cars boxed them in, driving dangerously close and slowing down the bus.
“I flew down to Texas to help with the Biden/Harris bus tour, intended to drum up enthusiasm at polling locations. Instead, I ended up spending the afternoon calling 911,” tweeted campaign volunteer Eric Cervini — another plaintiff in the new lawsuit, who was driving a separate car during the incident. Cervini also claimed that many of the Trump supporters were armed.
The lawsuit claims that the group started coordinating “to intercept and intimidate the bus as it traveled through Bexar, Comal, Hays, and Travis counties” as soon as the campaign announced events in the state.
As the bus tried to dodge the caravan, police responded to the panicked calls for help. But as the bus made its way to San Marcos, police refused to send patrol cars as escorts, the suit says.
“Certain officers from the San Marcos Police Department said that they would not respond unless the Biden-Harris Campaign was ‘reporting a crime,’ explaining: ‘we can’t help you,’” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges that San Marcos Director of Public Safety Chase Stapp and officials from the San Marcos Police Department and San Marcos City Marshal’s Department “failed to take reasonable steps to prevent planned acts of violent political intimidation.”
The San Marcos police and marshal’s departments did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit. It’s not clear who is representing the individual drivers named in the second lawsuit.
Several of the people named in that lawsuit bragged about their escapades online, the lawsuit says, noting that one defendant, Eliazar Cisneros, boasted on social media that he “slammed” into the bus.
The day’s events were traumatic, the lawsuit says. The plaintiffs, who also include White House staffer David Gins, who was on the bus that day, are suffering from “ongoing psychological and emotional injury.”
“Gins was extremely shaken as a result of his ordeal,” the lawsuit says. “During the incident, he felt ‘terrorized.’ … About an hour into the ordeal, he walked to the back of the bus and broke down in tears.”
Holloway, the bus driver, had trouble sleeping for a month after the incident and says he can’t drive a bus anymore. Davis noted that she feared she’d be physically harmed if she spoke out about her experience that day.
“Those who engage in organized threats — whether they’re online death threats or mob violence — are breaking the law and will be called to account for their actions in federal court,” Michael Gottlieb, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said in a news release.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/25/biden-campaign-bus-lawsuit-trump-train/
Chauvin could face decadeslong sentence in Floyd’s death
By AMY FORLITI and STEVE KARNOWSKI
5 minutes ago
https://apnews.com/article/derek-chauvin-sentencing-23c52021812168c579b3886f8139c73d
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin learns his sentence Friday for murder in George Floyd’ s death, closing a chapter in a case that sparked global outrage and a reckoning on racial disparities in America.
Chauvin, 45, faces decades in prison, with several legal experts predicting a sentence of 20 to 25 years. Though Chauvin is widely expected to appeal, he also still faces trial on federal civil rights charges, along with three other fired officers who have yet to have their state trials.
The concrete barricades, razor wire and National Guard patrols that shrouded the county courthouse for Chauvin’s three-week trial are gone, and so is most of the tension in the city as it awaited a verdict in April. Still, there’s a recognition that Chauvin’s sentencing will be another major step forward for a city that has been on edge since Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020.
“Between the incident, the video, the riots, the trial — this is the pinnacle of it,” Mike Brandt, a local defense attorney who has closely followed Chauvin’s case, said. “The verdict was huge too, but this is where the justice comes down.”
Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for about 9 1/2 minutes as the Black man said he couldn’t breathe and went limp. Bystander video of Floyd’s arrest for suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill prompted protests around the world and a nationwide reckoning on race and police brutality.
Before the sentencing hearing Friday, Judge Peter Cahill denied Chauvin’s request for a new trial, saying defense attorney Eric Nelson has not shown that the court abused its discretion or that there was any prosecutorial misconduct that would have deprived Chauvin of his right to a fair trial. Nelson argued that intense publicity around Floyd’s death tainted the jury pool and that the trial should have been moved away from Minneapolis.
Cahill also rejected Nelson’s request for a hearing into possible juror misconduct, saying Nelson failed to show there was any juror misconduct or that a juror gave false testimony during questioning. Nelson had accused juror Brandon Mitchell of not being candid during jury selection because he didn’t mention his participation in a march last summer to honor the Martin Luther King Jr. Prosecutors countered that Mitchell had been open about his views in a jury questionnaire and during the questioning of potential jurors.
Under Minnesota statutes, Chauvin will be sentenced only on the most serious charge, which has a maximum sentence of 40 years. But case law dictates that a 30-year sentence would be the practical maximum sentence Cahill could impose without risk of being overturned on appeal.
Prosecutors asked for 30 years, saying Chauvin’s actions were egregious and “shocked the nation’s conscience.” Nelson requested probation, saying Chauvin was the product of a “broken” system and “believed he was doing his job.”
Cahill has already found that aggravating factors in Floyd’s death warrant going higher than the 12 1/2-year sentence recommended by the state’s sentencing guidelines. The judge found Chauvin abused his position of authority, treated Floyd with particular cruelty, and that the crime was seen by several children. He also wrote that Chauvin knew the restraint of Floyd was dangerous.
“The prolonged use of this technique was particularly egregious in that George Floyd made it clear he was unable to breathe and expressed the view that he was dying as a result of the officers’ restraint,” Cahill wrote last month.
MORE ON CHAUVIN SENTENCING
– EXPLAINER: What to know as Chauvin sentenced in Floyd death
– Key events since George Floyd's arrest and death
– A look at high-profile cases over killings by US police
– AP Photos: Chauvin sentencing caps tumult since Floyd death
– For George Floyd, a complicated life and consequential death
Attorneys on both sides are expected to make brief arguments Friday.
Floyd’s family members — including his brother Philonise, his brother Terrence and his nephew Brandon Williams — will give statements in court.
Ben Crump, an attorney who has represented Floyd’s family, said family members were feeling “anxious and tense” ahead of the sentencing.
“To us, George Floyd is a cause. He’s a case; he’s a hashtag. To them -- that’s their flesh and blood. You know, that that’s their brother,” Crump said.
Chauvin can also make a statement, but it’s not clear if he will. Experts say it could be tricky for Chauvin to talk without implicating himself in the pending federal case accusing him of violating Floyd’s civil rights.
Chauvin chose not to testify at his trial. The only explanation the public has heard from him came from body-camera footage in which he told a bystander at the scene: “We got to control this guy ’cause he’s a sizable guy ... and it looks like he’s probably on something.”
Several experts said they doubted Chauvin would take the risk and speak, but Brandt thought he would. He said Chauvin could say a few words without getting himself into legal trouble.
“I think it’s his chance to tell the world, ‘I didn’t intend to kill him,’” Brandt said. “If I was him, I think I would want to try and let people know that I’m not a monster.”
Several people interviewed in Minneapolis days before Chauvin’s sentencing said they want to see a tough sentence.
Thirty years “doesn’t seem like long enough to me,” said Andrew Harer, a retail worker who is white. “I would be fine if he was in jail for the rest of his life.”
Joseph Allen, 31, who is Black, said he thinks Chauvin should receive “at least” 30 years, and said he’d prefer a life sentence. He cited nearly 20 complaints filed against the now-fired officer during his career.
Allen said he hopes other police officers can learn “not to do what Derek Chauvin did.”
Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and activist, called for Chauvin to be sentenced “to the fullest extent of the law.” She called Floyd’s death “a modern day lynching” and predicted community outrage if Chauvin is sentenced lightly.
When asked if she would like to hear Chauvin speak, Levy Armstrong said: “For me as a Black woman living in this community, there’s really nothing that he could say that would alleviate the pain and trauma that he caused ... I think that if he spoke it would be disingenuous and could cause more trauma.”
Crump also said he wanted to see a sentence above what is typically given for a second-degree murder conviction.
“There was nothing typical about what Derek Chauvin did in torturing George Floyd to death,” Crump said. “So we don’t expect it to be a typical sentence. It needs to be a sentence that sets a new precedent for holding police officers accountable for the unjustifiable killings of Black people in America.”
No matter what sentence Chauvin gets, he’s likely to serve only about two-thirds behind bars presuming good behavior. The rest would be on supervised release.
He’s been held since his conviction at the state’s only maximum security prison, in Oak Park Heights. The former officer is held away from the general population for his safety, in a 10-by-10-foot cell, with meals brought to his room. He is allowed out for solitary exercise for an hour a day.
It’s not clear if Chauvin will remain there. State prisons officials said that decision wouldn’t be made until after Cahill’s formal sentencing order.
Chauvin and the three other officers involved in Floyd’s arrest are awaiting trial in federal court on charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights. No trial date has been set.
The three other officers are also scheduled for trial in March on state charges of aiding and abetting both murder and manslaughter.
__
Associated Press writer Stephen Groves and Associated Press/Report for America reporter Mohamed Ibrahim contributed to this report.
__
Find AP’s full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd
https://apnews.com/article/derek-chauvin-sentencing-23c52021812168c579b3886f8139c73d
Illinois Man Arrested for Assault on Law Enforcement, and First to be Arrested for Assault on Members of News Media during Jan. 6 Capitol Breach
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/illinois-man-arrested-assault-law-enforcement-and-first-be-arrested-assault-members-news
Virginia Man Arrested for Assault on Law Enforcement During Jan. 6 Capitol Breach
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/virginia-man-arrested-assault-law-enforcement-during-jan-6-capitol-breach
Florida Couple Arrested for Crimes Related to Jan. 6 Capitol Breach
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/florida-couple-arrested-crimes-related-jan-6-capitol-breach
June 24, 2021
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr
Supreme Court backs protesters and rules blocking roads can be ‘lawful’ way to demonstrate
Judges say there should be ‘degree of tolerance to disruption’ caused by right to protest
Lizzie Dearden Home Affairs Correspondent @lizziedearden
43 minutes ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/protest-laws-supreme-court-arms-fair-b1872636.html
The Supreme Court has ruled that protests can be a “lawful excuse” to block roads, as the government pushes for new laws to limit peaceful demonstrations.
Britain’s most senior judges said it was right to acquit a group of protesters who blockaded the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in London in 2017.
A ruling given on Friday morning said that protesters can have a “lawful excuse” defence against the offence of obstructing a highway, even where they have used “deliberately physically obstructive conduct”.
“There should be a certain degree of tolerance to disruption to ordinary life, including disruption of traffic, caused by the exercise of the right to freedom of expression or freedom of peaceful assembly,” the majority ruling added.
“There must be an assessment of the facts in each individual case to determine whether the interference with article 10 or article 11 rights was ‘necessary in a democratic society’.”
The offence has been used against hundreds of protesters in recent years, and the trial of Extinction Rebellion activists who blockaded a Rupert Murdoch-owned printworks had been adjourned pending the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The case was sparked by the prosecution of four anti-arms trade protesters who blocked a road leading to the ExCel Centre while it hosted the DSEI arms fair in September 2017.
After hearing the defendants’ argument that the event involved the “sale of potentially unlawful items designed for torture or unlawful restraint, or the sale of weaponry to regimes that were then using them against civilian populations”, District Judge Angus Hamilton found they had a “lawful excuse” for obstructing a highway and acquitted them of all charges.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) appealed to the High Court, which overturned the judge’s findings in January 2019, finding he had erred in his assessment of proportionality and “took into account certain considerations which were irrelevant”.
The protesters appealed to the Supreme Court, which said the original judge had not made an error and restored the dismissal of the charges.
The ruling said that the DSEI protest had not provoked disorder or seen clashes with police, and had taken place “on an approach road in a commercial area where there was already a sizeable police presence”.
Judges said that when interfering with the right to protest, factors must be considered including the extent to which demonstrators have broken the law, their location, the duration of the protest, its interference with the rights of others and whether the action is over “very important issues”.
Andrew Smith, of Campaign Against Arms Trade, said the judgment had set a “vital precedent” but should not have been needed.
“There should never have been a four-year long legal process with all of the time it has taken and the stress that it will have brought,” he added.
“It was yet another case of totally inappropriate policing and overreach against protesters.
“It is an important verdict, especially now, when the government is trying to crackdown even further on the right to protest. If the current proposals become law, they will give even more powers to the police, while making it even harder for people to make their voices heard.”
Lawyer Raj Chada, a partner at Hodge Jones and Allen who represented the appellants, said the judgment would have a “significant effect” on future cases.
He said it meant there could be “many more arguments to pursue” on behalf of prosecuted protesters, adding: “Even if the protest caused deliberate obstruction, it does not automatically mean the police are right to arrest. There has to be proper evaluation of all the circumstances.”
A spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion said: “This judgment shows how far out of step the government is with its attempt to further criminalise peaceful protest through the new policing bill.
“Such protest, which aims to draw attention to climate and ecological villains including those in our own government, is absolutely the right thing to do, not just morally but in law.”
The ruling came as opposition mounts to controversial protest laws contained in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights said earlier this week that proposals to allow police to restrict protests on the basis of noise were “not necessary in a democratic society” and must be scrapped.
The law would also give the home secretary the power to define “serious disruption”, allow police to ban one-person protests and increase prison sentences for non-violent crimes related to demonstrations.
It has sparked a wave of demonstrations, including some that resulted in vandalism and violence against police officers, amid accusations that the government was stifling the right to protest.
In March, a report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary that was commissioned by Priti Patel found police has been “tipping the balance too readily in favour of protesters”, against disrupted businesses and members of the public.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/protest-laws-supreme-court-arms-fair-b1872636.html
Capitol Siege Defendant Charged with Assaulting Photographer, Damaging News Gear Said Enemies ‘Should Be Hung’ for ‘Treason’
AARON KELLERJun 24th, 2021, 10:06 pm
https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-siege-defendant-charged-with-assaulting-photographer-damaging-news-gear-said-enemies-should-be-hung-for-treason/
Federal authorities have charged an Illinois business owner with attacking a photojournalist and damaging newsgathering gear outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th, the Department of Justice announced on Thursday. He is the first of the hundreds of individuals charged in connection with the siege to have been charged with an attack on the media, the DOJ pointed out.
Defendant Shane Jason Woods, 43, of Auburn, Ill., is also charged with attacking a police officer. Woods also is known by the alias Shane Castleman, court records say.
Woods was identified by tipsters who saw images of him taken from various positions around the Capitol Complex on Jan. 6th. Those tipsters included his own customers and an individual who held a “teaching position” at a college Woods attended in the “early 2000s.” He was easy to for those informants to pick out of photos online due to his bright eyes, according to federal court documents.
Woods went to the capitol building on Jan. 6th wearing “a black North Face jacket, black pants, a black Under Armour backpack, black and white Nike shoes, and a mostly black baseball cap with a stars and stripes brim and “TRUMP” written across the front,” court records say. He also was seen sometimes donning a “mostly black surgical mask with ‘TRUMP 2021' written on it.”
The FBI started matching images of Woods taken at the Capitol Complex with Facebook images and Woods’ Illinois driver license. Phone numbers attached to Woods’ online accounts matched a phone used to call various Washington, D.C. hotels and a capital-area taxi cab company. Woods’ electronic devices were communicating with cellular networks around the Capitol Complex on Jan. 6th as well.
The FBI agent — who by then was on Woods’ trail — said in court records that the defendant appears to have used his business’s financial accounts while traveling to and from the nation’s capital. Authorities believe Woods drove all the way from Illinois to Washington, D.C., with at least one other person:
A review of Auburn Heating and Air Conditioning LLC’s small business checking account records, shows that WOODS was one of the two authorized signers on the account as of March 26, 2021. I identified several charges made to this bank account in and around Washington, D.C. between January 5, 2021, and January 7, 2021. On January 5, 2021, purchases were made at Sheetz and Taco Bell, located a short distance from each other off Interstate 68 in Lavale, Maryland. According to Google maps, Interstate 68 is along the most direct driving route between Auburn, Illinois and Washington, D.C.
Other bills were also tracked and outlined in the FBI agent’s affidavit.
Woods photographed certain waypoints on the trip from Illinois to D.C. and took pictures at the capitol on Jan. 6th. The FBI now has those images.
Federal authorities also have obtained his messages with various associates.
“Please don’t get arrested,” one person told him on Jan. 6th.
“The swarm will be coming in an hour or two . . . Glad you guys made it safe . . . Grab an Antifa by their hair and send them rollin will ya?” another person wrote to him that day.
Discussions dating back to early December indicated to federal authorities that Woods spent time planning to be at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th.
“Trump wouldn’t be golfing if he was worried,” the defendant said to one Facebook user in a December 1, 2020 conversation now contained in the public record.
“True,” the other person replied. “I hope he has an ace in his pocket[.] I want to see all those asshats go to jail too.”
“Hung,” Woods replied. “[O]r fire (sic) squad. Should be hung by (sic) treason tough.”
By January 19, 2021, thirteen days after the siege, the tone changed considerably.
“Has the FBI come after you yet[?]” yet another acquaintance asked the defendant.
His reply, if any, is not included in the current court record.
On Jan. 6th, Woods is accused of tripping an officer who had been sprayed with bear mace by another individual. Several video screen grabs, including the one embedded below, show the alleged assault.
From there, Woods is accused of joining a mob which forced assembled reporters to both abandon their posts and their gear. The charging documents on file in federal court describe it this way:
At approximately 4:50 p.m., on January 6, 2021, a large crowd made its way to and/or past a media staging area that was set up outside the northeast corner of the U.S. Capitol, on U.S. Capitol grounds. As individuals moved past metal barricades that had been set up around the staging area, media members were forced to flee the area before recovering all their cameras and associated equipment. Numerous members of the crowd began to destroy the equipment, including cameras, tripods, lights, shades, and remote broadcasting equipment that belonged to various media outlets. Numerous members of the crowd yelled inflammatory rhetoric against the members of the media. One member of the media who was forced to flee the scene estimated that the equipment from his particular news organization that was destroyed was valued at between $30,000 and $34,000.
Woods is accused of “standing with protesters who are yelling and spitting at members of the news media,” the court documents say.
“Moments later, the individual who appears to be WOODS climbed over the toppled fence and participated in the assault on the media equipment,” the documents continue. “In several other publicly available videos, the individual who appears to be WOODS can be seen walking around the piled media equipment, as well as picking up and tossing some of it.”
Then, Woods “is observed running into and tackling” a cameraman dressed in blue jeans and a blue jacket “as the cameraman is facing away from WOODS.”
“The manner of attack on the cameraman was very similar to the attack” on the Capitol Police officer Woods is also charged with assaulting, the documents say.
Shane Woods (wearing black) is believed to be the man seeing here assaulting a news photographer (wearing blue).
Woods is accused of eight separate crimes: (1) assault on a law enforcement officer; (2) assault in a special maritime or territorial jurisdiction; (3) obstructing, impeding, or interfering with law enforcement during civil disorder; (4) being in a restricted building or on restricted grounds; (5) disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or on restricted grounds; (6) engaging in an act of physical violence in a restricted building or on restricted grounds; (7) violent entry or disorderly conduct; and (8) engaging in an act of physical violence on grounds.
Woods was scheduled to appear in federal district court for the Central District of Illinois on Thursday afternoon. The court docket in his case has not yet been made public.
Read the charging documents below:
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/20972483/us-v-shane-jason-woods-charging-documents.pdf
https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/capitol-siege-defendant-charged-with-assaulting-photographer-damaging-news-gear-said-enemies-should-be-hung-for-treason/
Matt Hancock: I broke social distancing rules but I'm not going
The Health Secretary admits 'letting people down' after footage emerged of him embracing his aide in breach of Covid restrictions
By Christopher Hope, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT and India McTaggart
25 June 2021 • 12:49pm
https://investorshub.advfn.com/secure/post_reply.aspx?message_id=164487320
The Health Secretary declined to comment on reports he has been having an affair with his aide, Gina Coladangelo
Matt Hancock has admitted breaching Covid rules after being photographed in a passionate embrace with an aide - but refused to resign.
The Health Secretary was clinging to his job on Friday morning after reports he has been having an affair with his aide, Gina Coladangelo, in the Department of Health and Social Care.
He said: "I accept that I breached the social distancing guidance in these circumstances. I have let people down and am very sorry.
"I remain focused on working to get the country out of this pandemic, and would be grateful for privacy for my family on this personal matter."
Mr Hancock's position is made even more difficult to defend after he said last year that Prof Neil Ferguson was right to quit as a government adviser after The Telegraph revealed that he had breached lockdown rules to see his lover.
This morning a former Conservative minister said Boris Johnson should "chop" Mr Hancock today to avoid a re-run of the Dominic Cummings saga when the PM was politically damaged for failing to fire his chief adviser for breaching lockdown rules.
Mr Hancock, 42, appeared to be kissing Ms Coladangelo, 43, in what seemed to be captured CCTV footage taken on May 6 from the Department of Health's London headquarters.
The Sun revealed pictures of the Health Secretary in an embrace with his aide, who he hired last year with taxpayers' money, in what the newspaper called a "steamy clinch".
Mr Hancock cancelled a scheduled visit to a Pharmacy2U vaccine site at Newmarket Racecourse on Friday morning following the release of the pictures.
'Stay 2m apart'
The timing of the embrace was in clear breach of the Government's social distancing rules on embracing someone from outside his social bubble.
The guidance in place since March 2020 had ordered people to stay two metres apart from anyone outside their household or bubble. The rules were only relaxed on May 17.
They stated at the time of Mr Hancock's embrace that if people left their home, they had to "stay at least two metres away from people you do not live with or who are not in your support bubble".
They should also "avoid direct contact and face-to-face contact with people you do not live with", and "stay at least 2metres away from anyone who visits your home for work reasons".
Mr Hancock is also under pressure because last year he said that Prof Ferguson "took the right decision to resign" when he travelled to see his lover.
At the time Mr Hancock said he had been left speechless by Prof Ferguson’s behaviour, adding: "I think he took the right decision to resign. I think the social distancing rules are very important and people should follow them."
'Boris Johnson should sack him'
The Health Secretary also could be accused of breaching three of the seven Nolan principles on standards in public life covering integrity and leadership.
One Conservative MP told The Telegraph: "His position is completely unsustainable. Boris has been through this before with Cummings and he lost an awful lot of political capital by supporting Cummngs.
"Boris cannot afford to expend any more political capital on Matt Hancock. We already know he thinks he is hopeless.
"Boris should make sure he leaves now - he should get rid. Boris is going to get slaughtered over this if he does not get rid of him.
"What he can't afford is a re-run of Cummings. I am bracing myself for the avalanche of emails I am going to get from constituents asking 'why is the man still there'.
"We had hundreds and hundreds of emails over Cummings and I don't want to be in the same position over Hancock. Boris should chop him immediately - today."
A senior Whitehall source said that Mr Johnson could buy himself some time if he asked his new adviser on standards, Lord Geidt, a former senior aide to the Queen, to investigate.
Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats demanded that Mr Johnson fire Mr Hancock today with the LibDems describing Mr Hancock as a "hypocrite" for breaching social distancing rules that he had forced the country to follow.
Liberal Democrat Health spokesman Munira Wilson MP said: "This latest episode of hypocrisy will break the trust with the British public. He was telling families not to hug loved ones, while doing whatever he liked in the workplace.
"It’s clear that he does not share the public’s values. Rules for them and rules for us is no way to run a country.
"From the PPE scandal, the crisis in our care service and the unbelievably poor test and trace system, he has utterly failed. It is time for the Health Secretary to go."
Labour chairman Anneliese Dodds MP added: "If Matt Hancock has been secretly having a relationship with an adviser in his office - who he personally appointed to a taxpayer-funded role - it is a blatant abuse of power and a clear conflict of interest.
"The charge sheet against Matt Hancock includes wasting taxpayers’ money, leaving care homes exposed and now being accused of breaking his own Covid rules. His position is hopelessly untenable. Boris Johnson should sack him."
Who is Matt Hancock's closest aide, Gina Coladangelo?
Ms Coladangelo is the millionaire communications director at Oliver Bonas, the fashion, jewellery and homeware store founded by her husband, Oliver Tress.
She was hired to work at the Department of Health and Social Care as an unpaid adviser on a six-month contract in March last year, and appointed her as a non-executive director in September.
She is also a director and major shareholder at lobbying firm Luther Pendragon, which boasts clients such as British Airways and Accenture.
She has been using a parliamentary pass sponsored by Lord Bethell, the hereditary peer and health minister, to gain access to Westminster since April.
Mr Hancock and his wife, Martha, have three children together. Ms Coladangelo is also married with three children.
Have any rules been broken?
This morning the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said "the actual issue is entirely personal for Matt Hancock".
He added: "In terms of rules, anyone who has been appointed has to go through an incredibly rigorous process in Government, so whatever the rules are, the rules will have to be followed.
"There are no shortcuts to that, as anyone who has had anything to do with the appointments system in the Civil Service knows. There are very strict rules in place."
https://investorshub.advfn.com/secure/post_reply.aspx?message_id=164487320
New type of ancient human discovered in Israel
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent
Published 16 hours ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57586315
AVI LEVIN AND ILAN THEILER, SACKLER FACULTY OF MED
image captionThe skull fragment and jawbone found near Ramla in Israel
Researchers working in Israel have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human that lived alongside our species more than 100,000 years ago.
They believe the remains uncovered near the city of Ramla represent one of the "last survivors" of a very ancient human group.
The finds consist of a partial skull and jaw from an individual who lived between 140,000 and 120,000 years ago.
Details have been published in the journal Science.
The team members think the individual descended from an earlier species that may have spread out of the region hundreds of thousands of years ago and given rise to Neanderthals in Europe and their equivalents in Asia.
The scientists have named the newly discovered lineage the "Nesher Ramla Homo type".
Dr Hila May of Tel Aviv University said the discovery reshaped the story of human evolution, particularly our picture of how the Neanderthals emerged. The general picture of Neanderthal evolution had in the past been linked closely with Europe.
"It all started in Israel. We suggest that a local group was the source population," she told BBC News. "During interglacial periods, waves of humans, the Nesher Ramla people, migrated from the Middle East to Europe."
The team thinks that early members of the Nesher Ramla Homo group were already present in the Near East some 400,000 years ago. The researchers have noticed resemblances between the new finds and ancient "pre-Neanderthal" groups in Europe.
"This is the first time we could connect the dots between different specimens found in the Levant" said Dr Rachel Sarig, also from Tel Aviv University.
"There are several human fossils from the caves of Qesem, Zuttiyeh and Tabun that date back to that time that we could not attribute to any specific known group of humans. But comparing their shapes to those of the newly uncovered specimen from Nesher Ramla justify their inclusion within the [new human] group."
Dr May suggests that these humans were the ancestors of Neanderthals.
"The European Neanderthal actually began here in the Levant and migrated to Europe, while interbreeding with other groups of humans."
Others travelled east to India and China, said Prof Israel Hershkovitz, suggesting a connection between East Asian archaic humans and Neanderthals in Europe.
"Some fossils found in East Asia manifest Neanderthal-like features as the Nesher Ramla do," he said.
The researchers base their claims on similarities in features between the Israeli fossils and those found in Europe and Asia, though their assertion is controversial. Prof Chris Stringer, from the Natural History Museum in London, UK, has recently been assessing Chinese human remains.
"Nesher Ramla is important in confirming yet further that different species co-existed alongside each other in the region at the time and now we have the same story in western Asia," he said.
"However, I think it's a jump too far at the moment to link some of the older Israeli fossils to Neanderthals. I'm also puzzled at suggestions of any special link between the Nesher Ramla material and fossils in China."
The Nesher Ramla remains themselves were found in what used to be a a sinkhole, located in an area frequented by prehistoric humans. This may have been an area where they hunted for wild cattle, horses and deer, as indicated by thousands of stone tools and bones of hunted animals.
According to an analysis by Dr Yossi Zaidner at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, these tools were constructed in the same manner that modern humans of the time also made their implements.
"It was a surprise that archaic humans were using tools normally associated with Homo sapiens. This suggests that there were interactions between the two groups," Dr Zaidner said.
"We think that it is only possible to learn how to make the tools through visual or oral learning. Our findings suggest that human evolution is far from simple and involved many dispersals, contacts and interactions between different species of human."
Follow Pallab on Twitter.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57586315
US to keep about 650 troops in Afghanistan after withdrawal
By LOLITA C. BALDOR and ROBERT BURNS
today
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-middle-east-europe-afghanistan-government-and-politics-70d94ada1f9ee7e15c1a3028c9d12326
WASHINGTON (AP) — Roughly 650 U.S. troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan to provide security for diplomats after the main American military force completes its withdrawal, which is set to be largely done in the next two weeks, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
In addition, several hundred additional American forces will remain at the Kabul airport, potentially until September, to assist Turkish troops providing security, as a temporary move until a more formal Turkey-led security operation is in place, the officials said Thursday. Overall, officials said the U.S. expects to have American and coalition military command, its leadership and most troops out by July Fourth, or shortly after that, meeting an aspirational deadline that commanders developed months ago.
The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the withdrawal and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The departure of the bulk of the more than 4,000 troops that have been in the country in recent months is unfolding well before President Joe Biden’s Sept. 11 deadline for withdrawal. And it comes amid accelerating Taliban battlefield gains, fueling fears that the Afghan government and its military could collapse in a matter of months.
Officials have repeatedly stressed that security at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul is a critical requirement to keeping any U.S. diplomatic staff in Afghanistan. Still, the decision to keep additional troops there for several more months makes it more complicated for the Biden administration to declare a true end to America’s longest war until later this fall. And it keeps the embattled country near the forefront of U.S. national security challenges, even as the White House tries to put the 20-year-old war behind it and focus more on threats from China and Russia.
In a statement Thursday night, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that as Biden has ordered, the U.S. will complete the withdrawal by early September. “Nothing has changed about that goal.” Kirby said. “The situation is dynamic, and we review our progress daily. Speculation by unnamed sources about potential changes to that timeline should not be construed as predictive.”
On Friday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, chair of the High Council for National Reconciliation, are meeting with Biden at the White House. The two Afghan leaders also are to meet at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and possibly other administration officials, the Pentagon announced.
Getting most troops out by early July had been in doubt because of complications including an outbreak of COVID-19 at the U.S. Embassy and the push to get Afghan interpreters and others who helped the U.S. out of the country. Officials said U.S. commanders and NATO allies in Afghanistan have been able to overcome logistical hurdles that might have prolonged the withdrawal process. But they also warned that plans in place for the final stages of the U.S. military withdrawal could change if airport security agreements fall through or there are other major, unforeseen developments.
As recently as last week, there was discussion of possibly extending the U.S. troop presence at Bagram Airfield, north of Kabul, but officials said the U.S. presence at the base is expected to end in the next several days.
The roughly 650 U.S. troops that are planned to be a more permanent force presence in Afghanistan will provide security for the U.S. Embassy and some ongoing support at the airport. Officials said the U.S. has agreed to leave a C-RAM — or Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar system — at the airport, as well as troops to operate it, as part of an agreement with Turkey. The U.S. also plans to leave aircrew for helicopter support at the airport.
According to the officials, Turkey has largely agreed to provide security at the airport as long as it receives support from American forces. U.S. and Turkish military officials are meeting in Ankara this week to finalize arrangements.
On Wednesday, Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there is not yet a written agreement with Turks on airport security. He said he did not want to speak about specifics before there is a final agreement, but added, “I feel very comfortable that security at the Kabul airport will be maintained and the Turks will be a part of that.”
The U.S. troop departure, which began with Biden’s announcement in April that he was ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, is ramping up just as the administration moves ahead with plans to evacuate tens of thousands of interpreters and others who worked with American forces during the war and now fear for their safety.
A senior administration official said Thursday that planning has accelerated in recent days to relocate the Afghans and their families to other countries or U.S. territories while their visa applications are processed. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss unannounced plans. The administration intends to carry out the evacuation later this summer, likely in August, according to a second official familiar with the deliberations but not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The Pentagon has said the military is prepared to assist the State Department as needed but indicated that charter flights might be adequate to move the Afghan visa applicants, thus not necessarily requiring a military airlift.
Officials said that NATO allies, such as Germany, are also very close to being completely out of the country.
Senior Pentagon leaders, including Austin, have been cautious in recent weeks when asked about the troop withdrawal, and they have declined to provide any public details on when the last troops would leave, citing security concerns.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-middle-east-europe-afghanistan-government-and-politics-70d94ada1f9ee7e15c1a3028c9d12326
House GOP leader to meet with Capitol officer hurt on Jan. 6
By MARY CLARE JALONICK, NOMAAN MERCHANT and MICHAEL BALSAMO
28 minutes ago
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-capitol-siege-government-and-politics-eaf81f939f397b9977f4d006b66561b7
WASHINGTON (AP) — A police officer who was injured in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and has pushed for an independent commission to investigate the attack will meet with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
Officer Michael Fanone has said for weeks that he wanted to meet with McCarthy, who has opposed a commission and remained loyal to former President Donald Trump. It was a violent mob of Trump’s supporters that attacked the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory after Trump told them to “fight like hell” to overturn his defeat.
The meeting comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that she is creating a special committee to investigate the attack. She said a partisan-led probe was the only option left after Senate Republicans blocked legislation to form a bipartisan commission.
Fanone is expected to be joined by Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was also among the officers who responded to the rioting, and Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, according to one of the people and a third person familiar with the meeting. Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after engaging with the mob; a medical examiner ruled that he died of natural causes.
The three people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
The meetings are part of an effort by the officers and family members to bring attention to the violence of that day and to win Senate approval of a bipartisan commission. The group has become more active as some House Republicans have begun to downplay the severity of the insurrection, in which Trump’s supporters brutally beat officers, broke through windows and doors of the Capitol and hunted for lawmakers.
Fanone, Dunn and Gladys Sicknick have all aggressively lobbied for the commission — which would be modeled after a similar panel that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — and they visited the offices of several Republican senators before the vote last month. Seven Republican senators voted with Democrats to consider the legislation that would form the bipartisan panel, but it still fell short of the 60 votes needed to move forward.
Fanone, a Metropolitan Police officer who has described being dragged down the Capitol steps by rioters who shocked him with a stun gun and beat him, said then that it is “necessary for us to heal as a nation from the trauma that we all experienced that day.”
Similarly, Dunn has described fighting the rioters in hand-to-hand combat and being the target of racial slurs.
The House passed the bill to form a commission last month, and Pelosi, D-Calif., said it was her preference to have an independent panel lead the inquiry. But she said Thursday that Congress could not wait any longer to begin a deeper look at the insurrection.
“Jan. 6 was a day of darkness for our country,” Pelosi said, and the “terror and trauma” to members and staff who were there is something she cannot forgive. She said there is no fixed timeline for the committee, which will investigate and report on the facts and causes of the attack and make recommendations to prevent it from happening again.
She did not say who will lead or serve on the panel.
Pelosi’s official announcement, two days after she signaled to colleagues that she would create the committee, means Democrats will lead what probably will be the most comprehensive look at the siege. More than three dozen Republicans in the House and the seven Republicans in the Senate said they wanted to avoid such a partisan investigation and supported the legislation to form a commission.
Pelosi says that the select committee could be complementary to an independent panel and that she is “hopeful there could be a commission at some point.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has said he might hold a second vote, but there’s no indication that any GOP votes have changed.
McCarthy didn’t comment on the select panel after Pelosi’s announcement, saying only in a brief interview that he hadn’t heard about it.
Many Republicans have made clear that they want to move on from the Jan. 6 attack, brushing aside the many unanswered questions about the insurrection, including how the government and law enforcement missed intelligence leading up to the rioting and the role of Trump before and during the attack.
And some Republicans have gone further, with one suggesting the rioters looked like tourists and another insisting that a Trump supporter named Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed that day while trying to break into the House chamber, was “executed.”
And last week, 21 Republicans voted against giving medals of honor to the U.S. Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police to thank them for their service on Jan. 6. Dozens of those officers suffered injuries, including chemical burns, brain injuries and broken bones.
McCarthy voted for the measure.
Seven people died during and after the rioting, including Babbitt and three other Trump supporters who died of medical emergencies. In addition to Sicknick, two police officers died by suicide in the days that followed.
___
Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Alan Fram contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-capitol-siege-government-and-politics-eaf81f939f397b9977f4d006b66561b7
Pence: Idea of overturning election results is ‘un-American’
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and JILL COLVIN
45 minutes ago
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-michael-pence-constitutions-government-and-politics-a8e29ab2c6bc5a5fecd9e4236eb8f3c3
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence has defended his role in certifying the results of the 2020 election, saying he’s “proud” of what he did on Jan. 6 and declaring there’s “almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”
Pence, a potential 2024 presidential contender, delivered his strongest rebuttal to date of former President Donald Trump’s continued insistence that he could unilaterally overturn the results of the last election, even though the Constitution granted him no such power. A mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a bid to halt the certification process and transition of power, with some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
Pence, in remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday, directly addressed those who continue to blame him for Trump’s defeat to now-President Joe Biden, who won the Electoral College on a 306-232 vote.
“Now there are those in our party who believe that, in my position as presiding officer over the joint session, that I possessed the authority to reject or return electoral votes certified by the states,” Pence said. “But the Constitution provides the vice president with no such authority before the joint session of Congress.
“And the truth is,” he continued, “there’s almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone.”
Pence said he will “always be proud that we did our part, on that tragic day, to reconvene the Congress and fulfill our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States.”
It was Pence’s most overt attempt to date to distance himself from Trump’s rhetoric about the election while painting himself as an heir to Trump’s mantle and key to his accomplishments in office. Trump has continued to insist that he won the November election, even though his administration’s own election experts, his attorney general, state election officials and numerous judges, including some he appointed, have repeatedly and forcefully rejected his allegations of mass voter fraud.
Pence, speaking as part of a series organized by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, repeatedly praised Trump — as he has in other speeches since leaving office — and compared him to Reagan, whom Pence has long hailed as a hero.
But he also argued that the American public needs to trust that Republicans will “always keep our oath to the Constitution, even when it could be politically expedient to do otherwise.”
“Now I understand the disappointment many feel about the last election. I can relate. I was on the ballot,” he added. “But you know, there’s more at stake than our party and our political fortunes in this moment.”
Trump was impeached after Jan. 6 on a charge of inciting an insurrection, and he was acquitted by the Senate the next month, after leaving office. More than 500 people face federal charges in the insurrection, including a member of the Oath Keepers extremist group who pleaded guilty this week.
Pence’s appearance Thursday in front of a sold-out crowd of more than 800 at the hilltop library was his latest in recent months as Pence considers a White House bid. He took a brief pause from the public stage after leaving office in January, but he kicked off a series of appearances in April in early-voting states, looking to sharpen his conservative profile for voters more familiar with him standing in Trump’s shadow.
Earlier this month in New Hampshire, Pence defended the Trump administration record but also appeared to put some distance between himself and the former president, saying, “I don’t know if we’ll ever see eye to eye” on the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
Last week, Pence was booed and jeered during a speech at the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual Road To Majority conference in Florida — a reflection of lingering resentments in some wings of the party over what they see as a lack of loyalty from the former vice president.
Pence entered Thursday to a standing ovation, but there were mixed views about whether he would be a good choice on the presidential ticket in 2024.
Joseph Quiroz, 45, an accountant from Pasadena, said he would like to see Pence run and considered him his top choice at this juncture, largely because of his experience in Washington and as a former governor.
Quiroz, a Republican, said he voted for Trump in 2016 but believed “the best thing would be a new face.”
Bob Refer, 72, a Republican and a retired policeman from San Diego, said he liked Pence. But, he said, “I think he’s too nice a guy. He’s not forceful enough.”
While Refer liked Trump and his readiness to take on a fight, he was dubious about another run for the billionaire businessman in 2024.
But he quickly added: “I’d like someone like him (Trump).”
___
Colvin reported from Washington.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-michael-pence-constitutions-government-and-politics-a8e29ab2c6bc5a5fecd9e4236eb8f3c3
New Details Suggest Senior Trump Aides Knew Jan. 6 Rally Could Get Chaotic
Text messages and interviews show that Stop the Steal leaders fooled the Capitol police and welcomed racists to increase their crowd sizes, while White House officials worked to both contain and appease them.
by Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien
June 25, 5 a.m. EDT
https://www.propublica.org/article/new-details-suggest-senior-trump-aides-knew-jan-6-rally-could-get-chaotic
On Dec. 19, President Donald Trump blasted out a tweet to his 88 million followers, inviting supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest.
Earlier that week, one of his senior advisers had released a 36-page report alleging significant evidence of election fraud that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory. “A great report,” Trump wrote. “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
The tweet worked like a starter’s pistol, with two pro-Trump factions competing to take control of the “big protest.”
On one side stood Women for America First, led by Amy Kremer, a Republican operative who helped found the tea party movement. The group initially wanted to hold a kind of extended oral argument, with multiple speakers making their case for how the election had been stolen.
On the other was Stop the Steal, a new, more radical group that had recruited avowed racists to swell its ranks and wanted the President to share the podium with Alex Jones, the radio host banned from the world’s major social media platforms for hate speech, misinformation and glorifying violence. Stop the Steal organizers say their plan was to march on the Capitol and demand that lawmakers give Trump a second term.
ProPublica has obtained new details about the Trump White House’s knowledge of the gathering storm, after interviewing more than 50 people involved in the events of Jan. 6 and reviewing months of private correspondence. Taken together, these accounts suggest that senior Trump aides had been warned the Jan. 6 events could turn chaotic, with tens of thousands of people potentially overwhelming ill-prepared law enforcement officials.
Rather than trying to halt the march, Trump and his allies accommodated its leaders, according to text messages and interviews with Republican operatives and officials.
Katrina Pierson, a former Trump campaign official assigned by the White House to take charge of the rally planning, helped arrange a deal where those organizers deemed too extreme to speak at the Ellipse could do so on the night of Jan. 5. That event ended up including incendiary speeches from Jones and Ali Alexander, the leader of Stop the Steal, who fired up his followers with a chant of “Victory or death!”
The record of what White House officials knew about Jan. 6 and when they knew it remains incomplete. Key officials, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, declined to be interviewed for this story.
The second impeachment of President Trump focused mostly on his public statements, including his Jan. 6 exhortation that the crowd march on the Capitol and “fight like hell.” Trump was acquitted by the Senate, and his lawyers insisted that the attack on the Capitol was both regrettable and unforeseeable.
Rally organizers interviewed by ProPublica said they did not expect Jan. 6 to culminate with the violent sacking of the Capitol. But they acknowledged they were worried about plans by the Stop the Steal movement to organize an unpermitted march that would reach the steps of the building as Congress gathered to certify the election results.
One of the Women for America First organizers told ProPublica he and his group felt they needed to urgently warn the White House of the possible danger.
“A last-minute march, without a permit, without all the metro police that’d usually be there to fortify the perimeter, felt unsafe,” Dustin Stockton said in a recent interview.
“And these people aren’t there for a fucking flower contest,” added Jennifer Lynn Lawrence, Stockton’s fiancee and co-organizer. “They’re there because they’re angry.”
Stockton said he and Kremer initially took their concerns to Pierson. Feeling that they weren’t gaining enough traction, Stockton said, he and Kremer agreed to call Meadows directly.
Kremer, who has a personal relationship with Meadows dating back to his early days in Congress, said she would handle the matter herself. Soon after, Kremer told Stockton “the White House would take care of it,” which he interpreted to mean she had contacted top officials about the march.
Kremer denied that she ever spoke with Meadows or any other White House official about her Jan. 6 concerns. “Also, no one on my team was talking to them that I was aware of,” she said in an email to ProPublica. Meadows declined to comment on whether he’d been contacted.
A Dec. 27 text from Kremer obtained by ProPublica casts doubt on her assertion. Written at a time when her group was pressing to control the upcoming Jan. 6 rally, it refers to Alexander and Cindy Chafian, an activist who worked closely with Alex Jones. “The WH and team Trump are aware of the situation with Ali and Cindy,” Kremer wrote. “I need to be the one to handle both.” Kremer did not answer questions from ProPublica about the text.
So far, congressional and law enforcement reconstructions of Jan. 6 have established failures of preparedness and intelligence sharing by the U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI and the Pentagon, which is responsible for deploying the D.C. National Guard.
But those reports have not addressed the role of White House officials in the unfolding events and whether officials took appropriate action before or during the rally. Legislation that would have authorized an independent commission to investigate further was quashed by Senate Republicans.
Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would create a select committee to investigate Jan. 6 that would not require Republican support. It’s not certain whether Meadows and other aides would be willing to testify. Internal White House dealings have historically been subject to claims of “executive privilege” by both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Our reporting raises new questions that will not be answered unless Trump insiders tell the story of that day. It remains unclear, for example, precisely what Meadows and other White House officials learned of safety concerns about the march and whether they took those reports seriously.
The former president has a well-established pattern of bolstering far-right groups while he and his aides attempt to maintain some distance. Following the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump at first appeared to tacitly support torch-bearing white supremacists, later backing off. And in one presidential debate, he appeared to offer encouragement to the Proud Boys, a group of street brawlers who claim to protect Trump supporters, his statement triggering a dramatic spike in their recruitment. Trump later disavowed his support.
ProPublica has learned that White House officials worked behind the scenes to prevent the leaders of the march from appearing on stage and embarrassing the president. But Trump then undid those efforts with his speech, urging the crowd to join the march on the Capitol organized by the very people who had been blocked from speaking.
“And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said.
https://www.propublica.org/article/new-details-suggest-senior-trump-aides-knew-jan-6-rally-could-get-chaotic
Test and trace still failing to hit goals as money wasted and tests not returned, watchdog finds
Warning that system ‘plagued by same issues as at the start of the year’ – despite ballooning budget
Rob Merrick Deputy Political Editor @Rob_Merrick
9 hours ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/test-and-trace-covid-nao-dido-harding-b1872191.html
England’s test and trace system is still failing to curb Covid effectively, as money is wasted on idle staff, tests are not returned and self-isolation rules are broken, a watchdog is warning.
The much-criticised organisation has far to go “to achieve its objectives”, the National Audit Office says, with only limited progress made since its last scathing report before Christmas.
The conclusion comes despite ministers throwing money at the system, which has a startling budget of £37bn, although almost £9bn had been underspent by April, the NAO reveals.
Its report highlights multiple failings, including:
* “Low or variable” public compliance, as only a minority of infected people request a test and many others fail to self-isolate as required. However, no targets for improvement exist;
* Contract tracers working as little as 11 per cent of the time, in February, which means the organisation is “still paying for capacity it does not use”;
* Vital results data still not being shared with local authorities, which “makes it difficult for them to deal with localised outbreaks”;
* Just 14 per cent of 691 million lateral-flow tests sent out by the end of May were registered, with test and trace in the dark about whether the rest were used; and
* An increase in contracts handed out without competition – to £2.6bn in the first quarter of 2021, compared with £1.1bn last spring – despite a policy to cut the use of emergency regulations.
The NAO also warns of the danger of performance slipping further, with the “distraction” of test and trace becoming part of the new UK Health Security Agency by October 2021.
It calls on the Department of Health and Social Care to “set out plans by October 2021 for improving the overall test and trace process”.
And it hints this must include higher payments for missing work – a persistent criticism of the system – to “best support citizens to come forward for tests and comply with self-isolation requirements”.
The report says test and trace did hit targets for reaching people testing positive and for identifying their contacts, but “performance slipped a little below both targets during April”.
Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “Some pressing challenges need to be tackled if it is to achieve its objectives and deliver value for taxpayers, including understanding how many lateral flow devices are actually being used and increasing public compliance with testing and self-isolation.”
And Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Account Committee, which shadows the NAO, warned the system “is still plagued by the same issues as at the start of the year”.
It must “get to grips with some fundamental parts of the process, such as its timeliness in reaching contacts for all the tests it provides, people coming forward for tests when they have symptoms, and compliance with self-isolation”, the Labour MP said.
The NAO points out that test and trace is “responsible for driving up public compliance”, with the Sage advisory group warning at least 80 per cent of identified contacts need to be self-isolating.
But surveys pointed to compliance “ranging from 43 per cent to 62 per cent” – and the organisation has set no target.
NHS Test and Trace has been hugely controversial from the start, with ministers ridiculed for calling it “world beating”. Its head, Dido Harding, stepped down last month – but is now set to bid to run the NHS.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/test-and-trace-covid-nao-dido-harding-b1872191.html
Cybercriminals Are Now Relying on Call Centres
Microsoft identified a new threat that involves call centers
Jun 24, 2021 11:46 GMT · By George Dascalu ·
BazarCall Ransomware
As ransomware attacks have become more sophisticated, Microsoft cybersecurity researchers are now on the hunt for BazarCall, cybercriminal call centers that manage to spread BazarLoader malware, according to ZDNet.
BacarCall, also known as Bazacall, is a cybercriminal gang that has been active since January this year. Their way of tricking victims is different from other cybercrime groups as they use call center operators to do so. The attack typically starts with phishing e-mails telling the victim that a subscription has expired and that a monthly fee is charged automatically unless a number is called to cancel the trial subscription.
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https://news.softpedia.com/news/cybercriminal-call-centre-can-trick-you-to-download-ransomware-533324.shtml
Top US general rejected Trump suggestions military should 'crack skulls' during protests last year, new book claims
By Zachary Cohen, CNN
Updated 2233 GMT (0633 HKT) June 24, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/24/politics/bender-book-trump-milley-protests/index.html
VIDEO
Washington (CNN)The top US general repeatedly pushed back on then-President Donald Trump's argument that the military should intervene violently in order to quell the civil unrest that erupted around the country last year. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley often found he was the lone voice of opposition to those demands during heated Oval Office discussions, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender.
Titled "Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost," the book reveals new details about how Trump's language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as protests in Seattle and Portland began to receive attention from cable new outlets. The President would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior, the excerpts show.
"That's how you're supposed to handle these people," Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. "Crack their skulls!"
Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and "beat the f--k out" of the civil rights protesters, Bender writes.
"Just shoot them," Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office, according to the excerpts.
When Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr would push back, Trump toned it down, but only slightly, Bender adds.
"Well, shoot them in the leg—or maybe the foot," Trump said. "But be hard on them!"
The new details about how Milley and a handful of other senior officials were forced to confront Trump's increasingly volatile behavior during the final months of his presidency only add to an already detailed portrait of dysfunction inside the White House at that time.
It also underscores the level of tension between Trump and top Pentagon officials leading up to the presidential election last November.
CNN has reached out to Trump about the claims in Bender's book. A spokesperson for Milley declined to comment.
At times, Milley also clashed with top White House officials who sought to encourage the then-President's behavior.
During one Oval Office debate, senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller chimed in, equating the scenes unfolding on his television to those in a third-world country and claiming major American cities had been turned into war zones.
"These cities are burning," Miller warned, according to the excerpts.
The comment infuriated Milley, who viewed Miller as not only wrong but out of his lane, Bender writes, noting the Army general who had commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan spun around in his seat and pointed a finger directly at Miller.
"Shut the f--k up, Stephen," Milley snapped, according to the excerpts.
'What we have, Mr. President, is a protest'
CNN previously reported that concerns within the Pentagon about Trump's potential to make unpredictable decisions during the campaign and beyond reached a boiling point last September.
While Milley was among those who were particularly distressed about Trump's attacks on senior Pentagon leaders, he was said to be on good terms with the President.
Still, Milley made a concerted effort to stay in Washington as much as possible during those final months. A significant concern for Milley at the time was how to advise Trump if he decided to invoke the Insurrection Act in the wake of civil unrest -- a move that would have military force on the streets against civilians.
Ultimately, Trump never invoked the Insurrection Act but repeatedly suggested doing so during the end of his tenure -- putting Milley and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a complicated situation each time.
Both Milley and Esper were deeply opposed to the idea when Trump first suggested it last June following protests against police brutality and racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd's death.
According to Bender, Milley viewed the unrest around Floyd's death as a political problem, not a military one.
He told the President there were more than enough reserves in the National Guard to support law enforcement responding to the protests. Milley told him that invoking the Insurrection Act would shift responsibility for the protests from local authorities directly to the President, according to the excerpts obtained by CNN.
Milley spotted President Abraham Lincoln's portrait hanging just to the right of Trump and pointed directly at it, Bender writes.
"That guy had an insurrection," Milley said. "What we have, Mr. President, is a protest."
Milley offers public rebuke of Republicans lawmakers
Those comments have taken on new relevance months after the January 6 attack, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's electoral win.
Trump's Republican allies in Congress have staunchly opposed any efforts to investigate the former President's role in fueling the insurrection, with some simply denying there was anything violent about the protests that day.
Recently, some of those same lawmakers have also criticized the Department of Defense's diversity efforts and alleged embrace of the "critical race theory."
While testifying publicly before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday, Milley, who remains in his post as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, offered a forceful rebuke of Republican members over their comments related to both issues.
Responding to a question from Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida about the appropriateness of a seminar at the United States Military Academy at West Point called "Understanding Whiteness and White Rage," Milley said: "I want to understand White rage. And I'm White. And I want to understand it."
Tying the question to the January 6 insurrection, Milley asked: "What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out. I want to maintain an open mind here."
Milley called it "offensive" that service members were being called "quote, 'woke' or something else, because we're studying some theories that are out there."
CNN's Jake Tapper and Michael Conte contributed reporting
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/24/politics/bender-book-trump-milley-protests/index.html