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News From NBC News Michael Cohen Sues Trump Organization, Says It Owes Him Nearly $2MThursday March 7th, 2019 06:39:23 PM Jim MustianPresident Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming the Trump Organization broke a promise to pay his legal bills and owes at least $1.9 million to cover the cost of his defense. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in New York state court, claims the Trump Organization stopped paying Cohen’s mounting legal fees after he began cooperating with federal prosecutors in their investigations related to Trump’s business dealings in Russia and attempts to silence women with embarrassing stories about his personal life. It alleges breach of contract and seeks damages on Cohen’s behalf. Messages seeking comment have been left with the Trump Organization. The lawsuit says the company stopped paying for his legal defense about two months after the FBI raided Cohen’s home and office last year. It says that was around the time Cohen began discussing privately with friends and family that he was considering cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors in New York. “When it was publicly reported that I might be cooperating with prosecutors, the Trump Organization breached its agreement and stopped paying fees and costs,” Cohen said in a statement released by his attorneys. Cohen pleaded guilty in August to tax crimes, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations. He is expected to begin serving a three-year prison term in May. The lawsuit said that as part of his work for Trump, the company agreed to indemnify him for his company-related work. It said the Trump Organization initially lived up to that promise, footing the bill for more than $1.7 million in Cohen’s legal fees. Cohen hired the law firm McDermott Will & Emery in spring 2017 after it became clear he was a “person of interest” in Mueller’s investigation. That firm withdrew from his case late last spring after the Trump Organization stopped paying Cohen’s bills, a withdrawal the lawsuit says “prejudiced” Cohen’s ability to respond to the federal investigations. In addition to the $1.9 million in legal fees Cohen is seeking, the lawsuit claims the Trump Organization should also pay the $1.9 million Cohen was ordered to forfeit “as part of his criminal sentence arising from conduct undertaken by Mr. Cohen in furtherance of and at the behest of the Trump Organization and its principals, directors, and officers.” Cohen was one of Trump’s lawyers and closest advisers for a decade until their public split last summer. After once bragging that he would “take a bullet” for the president, Cohen met with federal prosecutors in New York and with the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, telling them he had lied to Congress to protect Trump and paid off two women to keep them from speaking out about alleged affairs with Trump. Earlier this year, Cohen hired two new Chicago lawyers and parted ways with the attorneys who represented him for months as he cooperated with Mueller and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. The Associated Press previously reported that the shake-up followed what a person familiar with the matter described as a dispute over unpaid legal fees. The person spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. Last week, Cohen told lawmakers he also has not been paying Lanny Davis, an attorney who has served as an adviser and spokesman for Cohen over the past several months. “So he’s doing all this work for nothing?” U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., asked Cohen during his daylong testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. “Yes, sir,” Cohen said. Cohen told Congress that Trump was a racist, a liar and a con man. Trump, in turn, has assailed Cohen as a “rat” and a “serial liar.” Cohen has also tried crowdsourcing his legal fees. A GoFundMe page that Davis set up for Cohen after he first pleaded guilty in August has collected about $215,000, including $50,000 from an anonymous donor. Analysis: Trump Faces Narrow But Consequential ChargesWednesday December 11th, 2019 02:17:09 PM Julie PaceThe articles of impeachment offered up Tuesday against President Donald Trump are narrow, but consequential. They are also likely to be approved by Democrats alone. The impending vote will thrust Trump into a club no president wants to join: only the third American leader to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He’s confronting his allegations without a hint of contrition, more eager to fight than accept blame for his actions. House Democrats say Trump abused the American presidency for personal political gain by asking Ukraine for help investigating political rivals, including Joe Biden, the former vice president and current Democratic White House contender. And they charge he obstructed Congress by blocking access to documents and testimony, an article of impeachment aimed at reasserting the authority of a co-equal branch of government. Some Democrats pushed for more, eager to seize the opportunity to hold Trump to account for a range of other actions, including evidence of obstruction of justice outlined in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held them off, determined to put forward only articles she believes can win the support of members who — like Pelosi herself — were reluctant to launch the impeachment proceedings in the first place. “I wish it were not necessary,” Pelosi said after the text of the articles of impeachment were made public. But she added: “We take an oath to protect and defend. If we did not do that, we would be, again, delinquent in our duties.” While she seems to have succeeded in persuading Democrats of that view, the process — dozens of hours of public testimony from diplomats and other national security officials that left much of the evidence beyond dispute — has so far done nothing to persuade Republicans to break with the president. Broadening the charges would have only risked turning off Democrats, some particularly those moderates who won in House districts where Trump is popular. “I think they made a calculation in the House that the evidence that had been presented recently with regards to Trump’s actions involving Ukraine were concise, clear and accessible,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a Biden supporter. “Rather than charging a broad range of misconduct over many years, they stuck to one topic.” Though there are few historical comparisons, the Democrats’ decision means Trump will face fewer articles of impeachment than any of his predecessors in trying to avoid the ultimate constitutional punishment for a president. The House approved 11 charges against Andrew Johnson, the first president to be impeached in 1868. In 1974, lawmakers were set to vote on three articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon — abuse of power, obstruction of justice and contempt of Congress — but he resigned from office when it became clear the charges had bipartisan support. Lawmakers voted on four articles against President Bill Clinton in 1994 after being presented with 11 possible impeachable offenses by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. But only two passed — exactly the kind of scenario Pelosi and other Democratic leaders hoped to avoid. During the Clinton impeachment, the House backed charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, but a substantial number of Republicans helped to vote down the abuse of power and another charge of perjury. While more moderate Democrats cheered Pelosi’s decision to limit the scope of the impeachment articles, others bemoaned a missed opportunity to hold Trump to account for Mueller’s findings. Mueller said Justice Department guidelines prevented bringing criminal charges against a sitting president, but he appeared to suggest there was another venue to take up the matter: Congress. The articles unveiled Tuesday make no specific mention of Mueller’s investigation, though there was an oblique reference in the obstruction of Congress charge, which states that Trump’s actions in this matter are “consistent” with previous attempts “to undermine United States Government investigations into foreign interference in United States elections.” Corey Brettschneider, a professor of political science at Brown University and the author of “The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents,” called the absence of a specific Mueller-related article a “failure of constitutional duty.” Yet even that more limited scope seems unlikely to gain Republican votes, despite private concerns among some GOP lawmakers with Trump’s actions. No Republicans, in the House or the Senate, voiced support for the articles on Tuesday, including those who are leaving Congress next year. “My mind hasn’t been changed,” said Rep. Will Hurd, a moderate Republican from Texas who Democrats had hoped to persuade. Pelosi spent months arguing that Democrats shouldn’t proceed with impeachment unless they could bring some Republicans along with them. A strictly partisan process, she said, would be too damaging for the nation. But as her party pushed closer to just that scenario, she said inaction would be more destructive. “If we allow one president, any president, no matter who she or he may be, to go down this path, we are saying goodbye to the republic and hello to a president king,” Pelosi said. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Senate Judiciary Panel to Question Horowitz on Russia Probe ReportWednesday December 11th, 2019 01:43:12 PMThe Justice Department’s internal watchdog will testify Wednesday about his report on the origins of the FBI’s investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin at 10 a.m. ET. The report released Monday found the FBI was justified in launching the Russia investigation and that law enforcement leaders were not motivated by political bias. But the inspector general does identify “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command that Republicans are citing as evidence that Trump was targeted by an unfair investigation. President Donald Trump has insisted he was merely the target of a “witch hunt,” but the inspector general’s report undercuts that claim. Contrary to the claims of Trump and other critics, it said that opposition research compiled by an ex-British spy named Christopher Steele had no bearing on the decision to open the investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane. And it rejected allegations that a former Trump campaign aide at the center of the probe was set up by the FBI. It found that the FBI had an “authorized purpose” when it opened its investigation in July 2016 into whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to tip the election in his favor. The report said the FBI had cause to investigate a potential national security threat. FBI Director Chris Wray, in an interview with The Associated Press, noted that the report did not find political bias but did find problems that are “unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution,” including 17 “significant inaccuracies or omissions” in applications for a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and subsequent warrant renewals. The errors, Horowitz said, resulted in “applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.” The FBI is implementing more than 40 actions aimed at fixing some of the bureau’s most fundamental operations, such as applying for surveillance warrants and interacting with confidential sources. The affirmation of the investigation’s legitimacy, balanced by criticism of the way it was conducted ensured that partisan battles would persist over one of the most politically sensitive investigations in FBI history. In announcing the hearing, the committee’s chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called Horowitz a “good man” who has “served our nation well.” The committee said in a statement that Horowitz will be questioned on his findings and asked to offer recommendations as to how to make the government’s judicial and investigative systems better. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Democrats’ Divide: Free College for All or for Some?Wednesday December 11th, 2019 10:06:42 AM Josh BoakPete Buttigieg’s latest ad on college affordability was a relatively quiet one: The presidential candidate is seen explaining his plan for free public college tuition for some to a small group of nodding middle-aged voters, his measured tone hardly shifting as he takes an indirect swipe at his Democratic rivals. But the message was received and returned — in all caps. “Universal public systems are designed to benefit EVERYBODY!” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in defense of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ college plan, using her social media muscle to unleash a fresh barrage of tweets, posts and debate about how best to overhaul the way Americans pay for higher education. The heated exchange exposed the potency of one of the sleeper issues of the Democratic presidential primary. College affordability may not get the attention of “Medicare for All” or carry the emotional punch of debates over race and gender, but it stands as one of the sharpest policy divides between the leading candidates in the race and one likely to have staying power. As their party’s electoral fortunes increasingly depend on college graduates, Democrats are under pressure to do something about Americans’ mountain of student debt — a $1.5 trillion behemoth. Their search for solutions is creating conflicts about how to best address inequality, but the debate is also about how to best motivate college graduates to vote Democratic during the general election next year against President Donald Trump. “There are a lot of dividing lines in politics right now — but the diploma divide is a real cleaver among voters between those who are open to Trump and adamantly opposed to Trump,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic party strategist. The plans up for debate fall into familiar camps — those who want incremental changes, such as Buttigieg, former Vice President Joe Biden and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and those who call for a creation of a large-scale new government benefit, such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders. Those favoring more incremental change are sold as fair and pragmatics, given the general opposition that Republicans and older voters have toward free college tuition. “I only want to make promises that we can keep,” Buttigieg says in his ad, which is running in Iowa, home to three major public universities in communities where younger people are increasingly clustered. Buttigieg’s proposal would offer free public college tuition for students from households earning less than $100,000 a year. “What I’m proposing is plenty bold,” he said. “These are big ideas. We can gather the majority to drive those big ideas through without turning off half the country before we even get into office.” Roughly 70% of U.S. households would qualify for free tuition under Buttigieg’s plan, which does not appear to make allowances for families who live in places with a high cost of living, such as parts of New York and California. Buttigieg’s plan is a step bolder than what’s offered by Biden and Klobuchar, both of whom call for free community college and increasing federal financial aid. On the opposite end of the spectrum are Warren and Sanders, who propose access to free public college tuition for all while offering to cancel much — if not all — of the existing student debt. The plans are rooted in the idea that a universal plan optimizes the benefits to society and secures the broadest political support. Advocates often point to Social Security — the most politically durable of all entitlement programs — as a model. “The promise of universal free access can cut through yearly budgetary fights, reduce bureaucratic hurdles to access, and increase citizens’ trust in and willingness to use the program,” said Suzanne Kahn, a program manager at the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank. “I’m very glad that Mr. Buttigieg is worried that I have been too easy on upper-income people and the millionaires and billionaires,” Sanders told MSNBC in an interview. “That I’m going to allow their kids to go to public colleges and universities, just, by the way, as they do go to public schools right now.” Warren has noted that Buttigieg’s claim that the government shouldn’t pay for college for affluent children rings hollow, since her plan is financed by a wealth tax of fortunes in excess of $50 million. She compared her tuition plan to the GI Bill after World War II that funded college for returning veterans, saying in an interview with the news outlet Iowa Starting Line that the program “not only helped millions of individuals, it also supercharged our economy.” Critics of Buttigieg’s plan note that the current financial aid system is already income-based and that government support has failed to curb students’ dependence on personal debt to finance the rising costs of college. But key to Buttigieg’s college plan is voters’ sense of fairness that the wealthy should not be subsidized at public expense. “You have people who are left of center wondering why the University of Virginia or Berkeley should be free to the children of the affluent,” said Jason Delisle, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute whose research focuses on college financing. College costs have climbed as a degree has essentially become a requirement for entering the job market — with all the net job gains over the past 12 months going to college grads, even though this group makes up just a third of the U.S. population, according to Labor Department figures. The result is that student debt has become the price of admission to the U.S. economy, imposing financial burdens that have been associated with delays in home-buying, marriage and having children. “Higher education is an engine of enabling citizens to achieve in life independently of where they started — having those engines in life makes society healthy,” said Marshall Steinbaum, an economist with the University of Utah. In an economy that depends on consumer spending, the risk is that the student debt buildup after the Great Recession has suppressed spending and saving by the more than 40 million Americans who borrowed for school — and that hurts overall economic growth. Concerns about student debt have mounted as college grads have become more likely to support Democrats. In 2018, Democrats nationwide won college graduates by 14 points, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of midterm voters. White college graduates had until recently been a reliable group of voters for Republicans, but they’re now increasingly tilting toward Democrats. But proposals for free college also carry risks as the issue splits along partisan and generational lines. While nearly three-quarters of Democrats consider free public college tuition a good idea, just about 2 in 10 Republicans do, according to a July poll from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist. Less than half of Americans older than 45 support the idea, while 62% of Americans younger than 45 favor free college tuition. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Buttigieg Discloses Ex-Clients as Fundraising Swing BeginsWednesday December 11th, 2019 03:04:24 AM Steve Peoples and Michelle R. SmithFacing intense pressure to answer questions about his work in the private sector, Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday disclosed a roster of former consulting clients that include a major health insurance provider, a nationwide electronics retailer, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. He also opened a big-dollar fundraiser for the first time to the media, a change of heart he later admitted “took a little getting used to” but was “the right thing to do.” Buttigieg’s campaign released the details while the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, attended an evening fundraiser on Park Avenue in Manhattan. It was the first event on a five-day fundraising swing that features 10 meetings with big donors, and the first time he allowed the media to cover fundraising events that had previously been kept secret. Speaking on MSNBC later Tuesday night, Buttigieg said that the decision to open his fundraisers — which he had previously resisted — took some “getting used to because traditionally campaigns haven’t generally done this.” Former Vice President Joe Biden has opened his fundraisers to the press, while neither Sens. Elizabeth Warren nor Bernie Sanders holds big-dollar fundraisers. Buttigieg added: “I think it makes sense. We’re talking a lot about transparency in this campaign. We’ve got a president who’s moved in the exact wrong direction in terms of transparency.” Walking into the event, he told The Associated Press he’s “seeking to live out the values of transparency that we talk about, and given that we have a White House that has so moved radically in the opposite direction.” His work history, never before revealed, features a detailed list of the clients he worked for when he was an associate at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. between 2007 and 2010, his first job after graduating from Oxford. In a press release announcing the disclosure, Buttigieg downplayed his role in the firm, saying he had released details of his work there “even though it was my first job out of school where I had little decision making authority.” On MSNBC, Buttigieg downplayed the McKinsey work, saying that there’s “nothing particularly sizzling about the clients I released.” His campaign said Buttigieg’s work included trips to Iraq and Afghanistan during a three-month project in 2009 for the U.S. Department of Defense. That project, he said, was focused on “increasing employment and entrepreneurship.” He also worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, where the campaign said he “looked at overhead expenditures such as rent, utilities, and company travel.” That work, his first assignment at McKinsey, did not involve policies, premiums or benefits, according to his campaign. Still, Buttigieg argued on MSNBC that his time working on the Blue Cross project gave him a “sense of what that world is like” and helped influence his “Medicare for All Who Want It” healthcare plan, which would offer Americans a government-run health care option while preserving private insurance. His time at Blue Cross Blue Shield, Buttigieg said, is “one of the reasons why I believe that with a public alternative, we can deliver something that will out-compete all the private plans out there. I’m just not willing to assume that on behalf of individuals before they have the choice to put it to the test. Helen Stojic, a spokeswoman for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, said in a statement to the AP that “for a brief time” the candidate was “part of a larger McKinsey team we engaged back in 2007 to consult with our company during a corporate-wide reorganization.” “He was not involved as a leader on that team, but rather as part of the larger consultant group,” Stojic said. Blue Cross announced it would cut up to 1,000 jobs in January 2009, and it’s not immediately clear whether that happened as part of the same reorganization they refer to in the statement. When asked on MSNBC if his work with McKinsey contributed to those layoffs, Buttigieg said, “I doubt it,” and pivoted to attacking his opponents — Sanders and Warren, though he didn’t reference them by name — who would eliminate private insurance outright, thereby costing health insurance industry jobs. Speaking to donors at the fundraiser, Buttigieg delivered much of his standard stump, making the case for his candidacy. He demurred when a questioner asked if President Donald Trump’s attacks on Biden and his son were hurting him. Buttigieg said voters “have kind of decided what they think about that already” and said he doesn’t hear much about it on the trail in Iowa. Buttigieg did, however, acknowledge his biggest challenge remains building “a broad coalition,” referencing his efforts to reach out to black voters. Polling has shown they are still broadly unfamiliar with the mayor. He also dismissed Trump’s reelection campaign as asking voters to “tolerate the chaos, tolerate the division, tolerate the bad example for your children, and in return for that I will give you job growth almost as good as you had in the Obama years.” He argued that Democrats should now “own the issue of fiscal responsibility” in the face of a Republican president who has had the deficit balloon on his watch. Protesters outside his Tuesday fundraiser on Manhattan’s Upper East Side seemed more bothered by Buttigieg’s association with wealthy donors than his work history. Progressive activist Alice Nascimento led chants of “Wall Street Pete” from the sidewalk outside the event. “He’s hanging out with millionaires!” she charged. “He’s not for working people.” While he is still unknown by many voters nationally, Buttigieg has emerged as one of his party’s most successful fundraisers this year — collecting more than $50 million so far in 2019 — in part by tapping the resources of big donors. That’s set him apart from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who have rejected traditional fundraising techniques in favor of small-dollar donations. Buttigieg resisted opening his fundraisers to public scrutiny for much of the year, but that position became untenable as his campaign moved into the top tier of the Democratic primary. Former Vice President Joe Biden is the only other current Democratic candidate who regularly opens his fundraisers to a pool of reporters. Warren only does fundraisers for the Democratic Party and says she’ll only do those if they are open to the media. Sanders holds what his campaign calls “grassroots” fundraisers that are meant to prioritize even small donors and have generally been open to the press or livestreamed. Buttigieg was under significant pressure to release details about his work for the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm. The company said Monday that it would allow Buttigieg to identify the clients he served more than a decade ago. Buttigieg told The Atlantic on Tuesday he was moved off the assignment at Blue Cross after three months in 2007, long before the nonprofit slashed hundreds of jobs. The campaign said he also worked for the Canadian supermarket chain Loblaw’s in Toronto on pricing; worked for the retail chain Best Buy on a project about energy-efficient products; and researched energy efficiency for several utilities, government agencies and nonprofits. His final project was one to look for new revenue for the U.S. Postal Service in 2010, he said. One of the donors who attended Tuesday’s fundraiser, Henry Lowenstein, shrugged off questions about Buttigieg’s work history. “There’s not a candidate that doesn’t have baggage,” he said. “This is the smartest guy who has a grasp of every issue, but unlike Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have a plan for every issue. He’s the real deal.” Associated Press writer Alexandra Jaffe contributed to this report.
Who’s Running for President in 2020? The field of Democratic 2020 presidential candidates is packed, though some have already dropped out. Those still in the race include a former vice president, senators, businessmen, House members, a former governor and a mayor. As for the GOP, a former governor and former congressman are vying to challenge President Trump. Click the photos to learn more Updated Nov. 20, 2019 Trump to Sign Order Targeting Anti-Semitism at CollegesWednesday December 11th, 2019 12:41:09 AM Matthew Lee and Jill ColvinPresident Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday targeting antisemitism on college campuses, the White House said. The order, which is likely to draw criticism from free speech advocates, will broaden the federal government’s definition of antisemitism and instruct it to be used in enforcing laws against discrimination on college campuses, according to three U.S. officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly preview the move. Trump has been accused of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes, including comments about Jews and money. But he has also closely aligned himself with Israel, including moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and taking a hard line against Iran. In the order, Trump is expected to tell the Department of Education to consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism — which can include criticism of Israel — when evaluating discrimination complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Title VI bars discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin at colleges and universities that receive federal funding. One official said Trump’s order would make it clear that Title VI will apply to anti-Semitism as defined by the IHRA. That definition says antisemitism may include “targeting of the state of Israel.” Still, a second official insisted the order was not intended to limit freedom of expression and was not aimed at suppressing the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement known as BDS that aims to support Palestinian aspirations for statehood by refusing to purchase Israeli products or invest in Israeli companies. The movement is on the rise, sparking tension on many college campuses. The Israeli government has urged allies to rein in the boycott movement, while its backers deny anti-Semitism charges and describe themselves as critical of Israeli decision-making, not Jews. A third official said the order was a response to an alarming rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents on campuses and would mean that Jewish students who are discriminated against for their religion have the same kind of recourse as black students who are victimized by racism. The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found white supremacist propaganda on campuses up 7% from the last academic year, which ended this May. Previous attempts to clarify and codify the application of Title VI to anti-Semitic acts have become bogged down in debates over whether Judaism should be seen as race or is indicative of a national origin. Free-speech advocates have also expressed concerns that a broader definition of anti-Semitism might be used to limit criticism of Israeli government actions. The Republican Jewish Coalition applauded the move, with the group’s chairman, former Sen. Norm Coleman, calling it “a truly historic and important moment for Jewish Americans” and hailing Trump as “the most pro-Jewish President” in the nation’s history. The Trump administration has previously acted to constrain perceived campus anti-Semitism, last year reopening a case of alleged discrimination against Jewish students at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The ADL and the Academic Engagement Network released model guidelines for faculty in November after two instructors at the University of Michigan declined to write letters of recommendation for students seeking to study abroad in Israel. Trump delivered a speech on Saturday night that featured remarks from a recent New York University graduate who had accused the school of failing to protect its Jewish students from harassment. Associated Press writer Elana Schor contributed to this report from New York. Prosecutors OK With Probation for Ex-Trump Aide Rick GatesTuesday December 10th, 2019 10:03:52 PM Eric TuckerThe Justice Department said Tuesday it is not opposing a sentence of probation for a former Trump campaign official who provided “extraordinary assistance” in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum that Rick Gates met with investigators more than 50 times, testified in three criminal trials, admitted to his participation in crimes about which the government was not previously aware, and has agreed to continue testifying even after he’s sentenced. “In short, under exceedingly difficult circumstances and under intense public scrutiny, Gates has worked earnestly to provide the government with everything it has asked of him and has fulfilled all obligations under his plea agreement,” prosecutors wrote in agreeing not to challenge his request to avoid prison. If Gates receives probation at his sentencing hearing hearing next week in Washington’s federal court, it would be the most lenient punishment afforded to any of the half-dozen Trump associates convicted in Mueller’s probe into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The government initially endorsed a similar probation sentence for former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, but that sentencing hearing was postponed last year and prosecutors have recently signaled that they might seek prison time amid efforts by Flynn’s lawyers to discredit the case against him. Gates, one of the first Trump associates charged, pleaded guilty in February 2018 to charges related to the foreign political consulting work that he and business associate Paul Manafort did in Ukraine. Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chairman, was convicted by a jury in federal court in Virginia last year and later pleaded guilty in Washington. He is now serving more than seven years in prison. Gates testified against Manafort and Roger Stone, the former Trump associate convicted last month on charges including lying to Congress and witness tampering.
Who’s Who in the Trump-Ukraine Affair President Donald Trump faces a formal impeachment inquiry led in the Democratic-controlled House after he asked the newly elected Ukrainian president to investigate one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden. Credit: Noreen O’Donnell, Nelson Hsu, Nina Lin/NBC “Gates’ cooperation has been steadfast despite the fact that the government has asked for his assistance in high profile matters, against powerful individuals, in the midst of a particularly turbulent environment. Gates received pressure not to cooperate with the government, including assurances of monetary assistance,” prosecutors wrote. They said “he should he commended for standing up to provide information and public testimony” against those individuals, “knowing well that they enjoy support from the upper echelons of American politics and society.” Hints of Mueller: How the Russia Probe Informs Democrats’ Case on ImpeachmentTuesday December 10th, 2019 08:25:05 PM Noreen O'DonnellHouse Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Tuesday that focus narrowly on allegations related to Ukraine, but the ghost of Robert Mueller appears to inform both. The articles unveiled on Tuesday accuse the president of “high crimes and misdemeanors” by abusing his powers to pressure Ukraine into helping him get re-elected, and by obstructing Congress’ probe of his actions. The document released by House Democrats does not openly refer to the investigation by Mueller, the special counsel who found that Trump and his campaign welcomed Russian meddling into the 2016 election but did not find evidence that they coordinated with the interference. But there are echoes of the Russia probe when impeachment articles make two references to Trump’s past behavior toward foreign interference in elections. Democrats had reportedly debated whether to include allegations that Trump also tried to obstruct the Mueller investigation before focusing only on Ukraine. Mueller’s report, released publicly in April, found insufficient evidence that the president’s campaign had coordinated with Russia and said that charging a sitting president with a crime was “not an option we could consider,” according to a decision from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Still, he said that if his team had confidence that the president did not commit a crime, it would have said so and his report outlined 10 possible episodes of obstruction. Martin Lederman, a professor at Georgetown University Law School and a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2009 to 2010, said he thought it would have been fine to include some of the obstruction of election-related investigations included in the Mueller report or at least to refer to it a bit more expressly. “But I can also see the value in keeping this very short and clear, and not reopening that debate,” he wrote in an email. “I don’t think one choice is obviously preferable to the other.” Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general and an outspoken critic of Trump, tweeted that Democrats had made the right move in narrowing the articles of impeachment, a position he takes in his new book, “Impeach.” But top Lawfare blog editors Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and Susan Hennessey, a former attorney in the Office of General Counsel of the National Security Agency, had argued for the inclusion of one episode from the Mueller report. That would be an article “describing how the president of the United States obstructed justice by directing White House Counsel Don McGahn to create a false internal record denying that the president had instructed him to have Robert Mueller fired as special counsel,” Hennessey wrote on Lawfare on Dec. 9. Both tweeted Tuesday that not including it was an error. Democrats did not address the Mueller report in announcing the articles of impeachment, but said they were forced to act now to prevent further wrongdoing. Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that the House could not wait for more testimony or documents because that would amount to allowing Trump to cheat in one more election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted before the release of the impeachment articles: “The President used the power of his office against a foreign country to corrupt our upcoming elections. He is a continuing threat to our democracy and national security.” What the Articles Say “These actions were consistent with President Trump’s previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections,” the article says, in the document’s first oblique reference to Mueller. The second article, Obstruction of Congress, accuses Trump of “unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its ‘sole Power of Impeachment.’” He directed the White House and other executive branch agencies to defy lawful subpoenas and withhold documents and records from House committees and not to cooperate with subpoenas for testimony. “These actions were consistent with President Trump’s previous efforts to undermine United States Government investigations into foreign interference in United States elections,” the second apparent reference to Mueller’s probe said. Now, as when the Mueller report dropped, President Trump has claimed that he’s done nothing wrong. Trump argued “complete and total exoneration” in April. On Tuesday, he tweeted “WITCH HUNT!” This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Trump Target Lisa Page Sues Justice Department, FBI Over ‘Unlawful’ Disclosure of Texts With Peter StrzokTuesday December 10th, 2019 08:09:58 PM Dan Mangan | CNBCFormer FBI lawyer Lisa Page — who has been a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s barbed tweets and comments — on Tuesday sued the Justice Department and the FBI over what she claims were illegal and “improper” disclosures to media outlets of her nearly 400 text messages with an FBI agent with whom she was having an affair. Page’s suit in federal court in Washington, D.C. says that text messages she exchanged with Peter Strzok were released by the Justice Department to reporters in December 2017 to promote a “false narrative” that she, Strzok and others at the FBI “had conspired to undermine” Trump illegally. She also claims the texts were released in violation of the federal Privacy Act without her consent “to elevate” the Justice Department’s standing with Trump “following the President’s repeated public attacks of the Department and its head,” then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump blamed Sessions for the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation of Trump and his presidential campaign bedeviled the Trump administration for more than two years. Page’s suit says that “many of these messages” that she exchanged with Strzok “involved matters that were ’of a personal nature, including discussions … about their families, medical issues and daily events.” Only about a quarter of the 375 messages screened by a department watchdog were considered “political,” the suit said. Page’s suit came a day after the Justice Department’s internal watchdog in a new report said she “did not play a role in the decision” by the FBI in 2016 to open a probe into the Trump’s presidential campaign campaign and into four members of the campaign. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found there was no evidence that political bias sparked the investigation. Trump has argued that the bias against him by the married Page and Strzok as displayed in their private text messages played a key role in the FBI’s decision to launch an investigation into whether associates of his campaign were coordinating with Russia in that nation’s interference in the 2016 election. The messages included Page writing Strzok, and asking that Trump is ” not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok texted back. Strzok was removed from the Mueller investigation in mid-2017 after the special counsel became aware of his texts with Page. Strzok was fired by the FBI in 2018, but has filed a federal lawsuit of his own asking for reinstatement. Page resigned in May 2018. Page’s text messages with Strzok were released “to a group of reporters” who regularly cover the Justice Department as part of a 90-page document by the Justice Department. Officials summoned “reporters to the Department to review the messages at night, prohibiting the reporters from copying or removing the set of messages from the building, and instructing them not to reveal DOJ as the source,” the suit said. “This clandestine approach is inconsistent with the disclosure of agency records for transparency purposes or to advance the public interest.” The officials who authorized their release “and their allies sought to use, and ultimately did use, the messages to promote the false narrative that [Page] and others at the FBI were biased against President Trump, had conspired to undermine him, and had otherwise had engaged in allegedly criminal acts, including treason.” The suit says that at the time, the messages were part of a larger group of materials that was under review by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General “for evidence of potential bias in the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server for government communications,” the suit says. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Page, snidely referring to her as “lovely,” and referenced her affair with Strzok. The suit notes that Trump has targeted Page by name in more than 40 tweets and “dozens of interviews, press conferences, and statements from the White House, fueling unwanted media attention that has radically altered her day-to-day life.” “Peter, oh, I love you so much,” Trump said at an October rally, imagining what Page would say to Strzok and he to her. “I love you, Peter” … “I love you, too, Lisa’ … “Lisa. Lisa. Oh, God, I love you, Lisa.” Page in a recent interview with The Daily Beast said that whenever Trump mentions her name on Twitter or at political rallies “it’s like being punched in the gut.” She called his attacks “sickening.” “My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again,” Page told The Daily Beat. “The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening.” “But it’s also very intimidating because he’s still the president of the United States,” she said. “And when the president accuses you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there’s no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason, he’s still somebody in a position to actually do something about that. To try to further destroy my life. It never goes away or stops, even when he’s not publicly attacking me.” Trump tweeted about Page shortly after the interview was published. This story first appeared on CNBC.com. More from CNBC: Senators threaten to regulate encryption if tech companies won’t do it themselves Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she plans to oppose House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug pricing bill NBC says it has topped $1 billion in national ad sales for 2020 Summer Olympics This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Trump Meets Russian Official as Impeachment Charges UnveiledTuesday December 10th, 2019 06:19:50 PM Matthew Lee and Deb RiechmannThe Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday was the second for Russia’s foreign minister. The president of Ukraine is still waiting for his first. Trump sat down with Sergey Lavrov at a moment of high drama in Washington — just hours after House Democrats announced articles of impeachment against Trump for his dealings with Ukraine, a U.S. ally that is battling against Russian aggression. Central to the impeachment inquiry is whether Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting for Ukraine’s president as leverage to get Kyiv to investigate Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden. Trump’s critics say he is too friendly with the Russian government and take issue with his public praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin — particularly given that country’s interference in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Trump insists he needs to engage with Moscow and says the two nations can cooperate on many fronts, including countering terrorism. The Trump-Lavrov meeting also came just a day after the Justice Department’s watchdog said the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. Trump has long slammed the investigation as a witch hunt and says the FBI never should have started it. The White House said after the Trump-Lavrov meeting that Trump warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections and urged Russia to resolve the conflict with Ukraine. At a news conference later at the Russian Embassy in Washington, Lavrov acknowledged talking about election interference with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but said it didn’t come up in his meeting with Trump. “We haven’t exactly even discussed elections,” Lavrov said. Earlier, Trump lashed out at the head of the FBI for not denouncing the watchdog’s report. “I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me … a failure of the FBI up and down the chain of command,” Trump said in a tweet. Trump’s fury recalled the day of his first meeting with Lavrov, in May 2017. Just before that meeting, Trump fired former FBI Director Jim Comey over the Russia investigation. Trump was criticized for disclosing classified information to Lavrov and other Russian officials at that meeting. Lavrov shrugged off a question about whether he was privy to any classified information this time. “If you find any secrets, the scoop is yours,” he told the reporter who asked. In his meeting with Lavrov, Pompeo warned against Russian interference in U.S. elections. Lavrov repeated denials of Russian interference, calling them “baseless.” Special counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the Trump-Russia investigation from the FBI, determined that Russia interfered in the election in an effort to help Trump beat his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. “I was clear: It’s unacceptable, and I made our expectations of Russia clear,” Pompeo said of election interference. “The Trump administration will always work to protect the integrity of our elections. Period. Should Russia or any foreign actor take steps to undermine our democratic processes, we will take action in response.” Lavrov derided the “wave of suspicions that has overcome Washington” related to election interference, renewing demands that evidence of such activity be given to Moscow.
Who’s Who in the Trump-Ukraine Affair President Donald Trump faces a formal impeachment inquiry led in the Democratic-controlled House after he asked the newly elected Ukrainian president to investigate one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden. Credit: Noreen O’Donnell, Nelson Hsu, Nina Lin/NBC “All speculation about our alleged interference in domestic processes of the United States is baseless,” Lavrov said. Pompeo said the U.S. had already published its conclusions. “We don’t think there is any mistake about what transpired,” he said. Pompeo and Lavrov also discussed arms control agreements, Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela. Pompeo said that he and Lavrov “spent a fair amount of time talking about Ukraine” and that the U.S. would not relent on its stance that Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014, “belongs to Ukraine.” The two noted cooperation in counterterrorism and anti-narcotics efforts that has continued despite the tensions and expressed hope that shared goals for North Korea and Iran could be realized. But they also acknowledged that their differences are significant and include the New START arms control treaty that is due to expire next year and the tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats by both countries. On the treaty, Russian President Vladimir Putin favors an extension of the pact, but Trump has said he wants China included if it is to be extended. Lavrov noted that Beijing has said it isn’t interested in joining but reiterated Moscow’s desire to keep the deal alive. “Our proposal is still on the table,”‘ Lavrov said. “We’ve been heard. … And now it’s up to the U.S. to decide.”‘ The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., expressed doubt that Trump would demand accountability from the Russians. “President Trump’s pattern of cozying up to autocrats and our adversaries harms American interests and undermines American leadership,” he said. “While dialogue with the Russians is important, especially for strategic stability and the future of arms control, I have no confidence in President Trump to defend our interests in these conversations.” Lavrov arrived in Washington after a meeting in Paris on Monday between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, along with the French and German leaders, at which they agreed to revive the peace process on the bloody separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and exchange all their prisoners. But they failed to resolve crucial issues such as a timeline on local elections and control of the borders in the rebel-held region. Still, Russian and Ukrainian officials on Tuesday described the talks as a step toward peace and pledged to continue negotiations. Trump Lashes Out at FBI Director Wray Over IG ReportTuesday December 10th, 2019 04:03:11 PM Eric TuckerPresident Donald Trump lashed out Tuesday at FBI Director Chris Wray over his characterization of a Justice Department inspector general report on the early days of the Russia investigation, claiming in a tweet early Tuesday the bureau is “badly broken” and incapable of being fixed. The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog concluded in its report issued Monday that the FBI investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was legitimate and did not act with political bias, undercutting Trump’s repeated claims that he has been the target of a “witch hunt.” However, the report also identified problems that are “unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution,” Wray said in detailing changes the bureau plans to make in response. “I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!” Wray, who Trump tapped to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey in 2017, said the FBI had cooperated fully with the inspector general and accepted all its recommendations. Wray said the FBI would make changes to how it handles confidential informants, how it applies for warrants from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, how it conducts briefings on foreign influence for presidential nominees and how it structures sensitive investigations like the 2016 Russia probe. He said he has also reinstated ethics training. “I am very committed to the FBI being agile in its tackling of foreign threats,” Wray said. “But I believe you can be agile and still scrupulously follow our rules, policies and processes.” He said that though it was important to not lose sight of the fact that Inspector General Michael Horowitz found the investigation justified and did not find it to be tainted by political bias, “The American people rightly expect that the FBI, when it acts to protect the country, is going to do it right — each time, every time. “And,” he added, “urgency is not an excuse for not following our procedures.” Attorney General Willian Barr leveled blistering criticism at how the Russia investigation was conducted, telling NBC News Tuesday it was launched based on a “bogus narrative” and saying that he still believed the FBI may have operated out of “bad faith.” Barr, a vocal defender of the president, largely dismissed Horowitz’s findings that political bias did not influence the decision to launch an investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, saying the final determination would come once his hand-picked prosecutor, John Durham, has completed his separate probe into the origin of the investigation. Durham’s inquiry has been under intense political scrutiny. The investigation of the investigators has riled congressional Democrats, who say the Justice Department has lost its independence and become a vehicle for Trump’s political revenge. While it is not clear why Durham’s appointment by Barr was necessary, given that the inspector general’s independent investigation, his suggestion that Durham’s findings will supersede the Justice Department watchdog’s finding is bound to fuel further debate about whether the attorney general is himself acting in good faith, or as a political hatchet man for Trump. The report found that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation in the summer of 2016 into whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to tip the election in the president’s favor. But it also identified “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command, including 17 “significant inaccuracies or omissions” in applications for a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and subsequent warrant renewals. The errors, the watchdog said, resulted in “applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.” Wray declined to say if there was one problem or criticism that he found most troubling, but noted, “As a general matter, there are a number of things in the report that in my view are unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution.” “This is a serious report,” he added, “and we take it serious.” In an interview with ABC News Monday, Wray also pushed back on a theory Trump and his Republican allies have promoted that in recent weeks that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. “We have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 presidential election,” he told the network. Wray urged the American people to be “thoughtful consumers of information,” by taking into account the source of the information “and to think about the support and predication for what they hear.” This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Democrats, White House Forge New North American Trade DealTuesday December 10th, 2019 02:50:29 PM Andrew TaylorHouse Democrats and the White House announced a deal Tuesday on a modified North American trade pact, handing President Donald Trump a major Capitol Hill win on the same day that impeachment charges were announced against him. Both sides hailed the deal as a win for American workers. They said the revamped U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement was a significant improvement over the original North American Free Trade Agreement, with Democrats crowing about winning stronger provisions on enforcing the agreement while Republicans said it will help keep the economy humming along. “There is no question of course that this trade agreement is much better than NAFTA,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in announcing the agreement, saying the pact is “infinitely better than what was initially proposed by the administration.” Trump said the revamped trade pact will “be great” for the United States. “It will be the best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA. Good for everybody – Farmers, Manufacturers, Energy, Unions – tremendous support. Importantly, we will finally end our Country’s worst Trade Deal, NAFTA!,” the president said in a tweet. The deal announcement came on the same morning that Democrats outlined impeachment charges against Trump. The trade pact is Trump’s top Capitol Hill priority along with funding for his long-sought border fence. Trump said it was no coincidence that Democrats announced they had come to an agreement shortly after laying out the two impeachment charges they will seek against him. “They were very embarrassed by (impeachment), and that’s why they brought up USMCA an hour after because they figure it will muffle it a little bit,” Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. In Mexico City, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland joined Mexican officials to sign the updated version of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, or USMCA, at a ceremony in Mexico City’s centuries-old National Palace. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard congratulated the negotiators for reaching a second set of agreements to answer U.S. concerns about labor rights in Mexico, and regional content. “Mission accomplished!” Ebrard told the gathered officials. Lighthizer praised the joint work of the Trump administration, Democrats, business and labor leaders to reach an agreement, calling it “nothing short of a miracle that we have all come together.” “This is a win-win-win agreement which will provide stability for working people in all three countries for years to come,” Freeland said. “That is no small thing.” A U.S. House vote is likely before Congress adjourns for the year and the Senate is likely to vote in January or February. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the vote on the trade deal will likely occur after an expected impeachment trial in the Senate. Pelosi was the key congressional force behind the deal, which updates the 25-year-old NAFTA accord that many Democrats — especially from manufacturing areas hit hard by trade-related job losses — have long lambasted. She and Ways and Means Committee Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., forged a positive working relationship with Lighthizer, whom they credited with working in good faith. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we have reached a historic agreement on the USMCA. After working with Republicans, Democrats, and many other stakeholders for the past two years we have created a deal that will benefit American workers, farmers, and ranchers for years to come,” Lighthizer said. “This will be the model for American trade deals going forward.” NAFTA eliminated most tariffs and other trade barriers involving the United States, Mexico and Canada. Critics, including Trump, labor unions and many Democratic lawmakers, branded the pact a job killer for the United States because it encouraged factories to move south of the border, capitalize on low-wage Mexican workers and ship products back to the U.S. duty free. Weeks of back-and-forth, closely monitored by Democratic labor allies such as the AFL-CIO, have brought the two sides together. Pelosi is a longtime free trade advocate and supported the original NAFTA in 1994. Trump has accused Pelosi of being incapable of passing the agreement because she is too wrapped up in impeachment. The original NAFTA badly divided Democrats but the new pact is more protectionist and labor-friendly, and Pelosi is confident it won’t divide the party, though some liberal activists took to social media to carp at the agreement. “There is no denying that the trade rules in America will now be fairer because of our hard work and perseverance. Working people have created a new standard for future trade negotiations,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “President Trump may have opened this deal. But working people closed it.” Business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also chimed in to support the long-delayed agreement. “This agreement has been the result of painstaking bipartisan negotiations over the past year, and would not have been possible if not for the willingness of President Trump to work patiently with Democrats to get something done that he knew was in the best interests of American workers, farmers and manufacturers,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a former U.S. trade representative. Republicans leaders and lawmakers have agitated for months for the accord but Pelosi has painstakingly worked to bring labor on board. Democrats see the pact as significantly better than NAFTA and Trumka’s endorsement is likely to add to a strong vote by Democrats that have proven skeptical of trade agreements. “I think the vote’s going to be pretty good,” said No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer, D-Md., a veteran party whip. “There’s a general agreement — not total agreement, it’s not unanimity — that USMCA is better. It’s an improvement. And to the extent that Trumka and labor comes out and says that this is an improvement, I think that that will be unifying.” The pact contains provisions designed to nudge manufacturing back to the United States. For example, it requires that 40% to 45% of cars eventually be made in countries that pay autoworkers at least $16 an hour — that is, in the United States and Canada and not in Mexico. The trade pact picked up some momentum after Mexico in April passed a labor-law overhaul required by USMCA. The reforms are meant to make it easier for Mexican workers to form independent unions and bargain for better pay and working conditions, narrowing the gap with the United States. Democrats succeeded in tossing overboard a 10-year protection for manufacturers of new drugs, including so-called biologics, that had won reprieve from lower-cost competition in the original accord. But Pelosi lost out in a bid to repeal so-called Section 230, a provision in a 1996 law that gives social media companies like Facebook broad immunity from lawsuits over the content they publish on their platforms. Conservative Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey offered a rare GOP voice against the accord, which he said veered to the left and “undermines the free flow of capital” from the U.S. to its trading partners. “This is basically NAFTA with a few modernizations, and some restrictions on trade and an expiration date. If people think that’s a huge improvement than I guess they’ll be happy with it,” Toomey told reporters. “If people think free trade is important, they’ll presumably see it as the step backward that I see it as.’’ Toomey said Democrats had outmaneuvered the administration, an assessment that Pelosi shared. “We ate their lunch,” Pelosi told her Democratic colleagues in a closed-door meeting, according to an aide in the room. Vice President Mike Pence, however, released a statement praising Trump’s leadership and claiming Democrats “have finally acquiesced” in allowing a vote on the trade pact. “From my perspective it’s not as good as I had hoped,” McConnell said, while No. 2 Senate Republican John Thune of South Dakota offered a mixed assessment as well, saying the changes agreed to by Pelosi and Lighthizer were “not favorable.” Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this story. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. UK’s Boris Johnson Criticized for Putting Reporter’s Phone in Pocket After Being Asked to Look at Photo of Sick ChildTuesday December 10th, 2019 01:05:20 PMBritish Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought Tuesday to get his campaign back to the issue of Brexit after coming under fire for his lack of empathy for looking away from an image of a child sleeping on a hospital room floor while seeking treatment. The story of 4-year-old Jack has overshadowed campaigning for Thursday’s general election as Johnson and his Conservatives hunted for crucial votes. The opposition Labour Party has painted Jack’s plight — no available hospital bed for a sick child — as a symptom of Britain’s ailing health system, which has suffered under years of Conservative government austerity measures. The parties sought to return to key messages on the campaign trail, with Johnson’s Conservative Party concentrating on the risks of having a divided Parliament and endangering his plan to have Britain leave the European Union on Jan 31. Labour kept up its relentless focus on problems with the beloved National Health Service. All 650 seats in the House of Commons seats are up for grabs in this election, which is also expected to break Britain’s political impasse over Brexit and determine its future relationship with the EU. Johnson’s clumsy reaction to Jack’s plight merely gave it more attention Monday. A video of the prime minister briefly declining to look at a cellphone photo of Jack and then placing the phone in his pocket has been viewed more than a million times. In the clip of the interview, ITV reporter Joe Pike said to Johnson: “You refuse to look at the photo. You’ve taken my phone and put it in your pocket, prime minister.” Johnson then removed the phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. “It’s a terrible, terrible photo. And I apologize obviously to the families and all those who have terrible experiences in the NHS,” he said. The Labour Party found itself embarrassed, meanwhile, by the leak of a phone recording to the Guido Fawkes website in which the party’s spokesman on health issues suggested that the party would lose Thursday’s vote. Jonathan Ashworth said his unguarded remarks were merely banter between old friends. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Democrats’ Impeachment Charges Say Trump ‘Betrayed’ USTuesday December 10th, 2019 03:04:54 AM Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare JalonickHouse Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Tuesday, declaring he “betrayed the nation” with his actions toward Ukraine as they pushed toward historic proceedings that are certain to help define his presidency and shape the 2020 election. The specific charges aimed at removing the 45th president of the U.S.: Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, flanked by the chairmen of impeachment inquiry committees at the U.S. Capitol, said they were upholding their solemn oath to defend the Constitution. Trump responded angrily on Twitter: “WITCH HUNT!” Voting is expected in a matter of days by the Judiciary Committee, which begins deliberations Wednesday, and by Christmas in the full House. The charges, if approved, would then be sent to the Senate, where the Republican majority would be unlikely to convict Trump, but not without a potentially bitter trial just as voters in Iowa and other early presidential primary states begin making their choices. In the formal articles announced Tuesday, the Democrats said Trump enlisted a foreign power in “corrupting” the U.S. election process and endangered national security by asking Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, including Democrat Joe Biden, while withholding U.S. military aid as leverage. That benefited Russia over the U.S. as America’s ally fought Russian aggression, the Democrats said. Trump then obstructed Congress by ordering current and former officials to defy House subpoenas for testimony and by blocking access to documents, the charges say. By his conduct, Trump “demonstrated he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, ” the nine-page impeachment resolution says. “If we did not hold him accountable, he would continue to undermine our election,” Pelosi said later at a forum sponsored by Politico. “Nothing less is at stake than the central point of our democracy – a free and fair election.’’ Trump tweeted that to impeach a president “who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness.” He later headed to Pennsylvania for a reelection campaign rally, where he called the effort “impeachment lite” and promised it would lead to his reelection in 2020. The outcome appears increasingly set as the House presses ahead toward impeachment as it has only three times in history against U.S. presidents, a test of the nation’s system of checks and balances. Democrats said they had a duty to act in what is now a strictly partisan undertaking, as Republicans stand with the president, because Trump has shown a pattern of behavior that, if left unchecked, poses risks to the democratic process. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the Judiciary chairman, said the president “holds the ultimate public trust. When he betrays that trust and puts himself before country, he endangers the Constitution; he endangers our democracy; he endangers our national security.” “No one, not even the president, is above the law,” he said, announcing the charges before a portrait of George Washington. Chairman Adam Schiff of the Intelligence Committee said, “We stand here today because the president’s abuse of power leaves us with no choice.” Trump’s allies immediately plunged into the fight that will extend into the new year. White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said Democrats are trying to “overthrow” the administration. Campaign manager Brad Parscale said Democrats “don’t have a viable candidate for 2020 and they know it.” The president’s son, Eric, embraced his father’s penchant for name-calling, assailing Pelosi and “her swamp creatures.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would be “totally surprised” if there were 67 votes in the chamber to convict Trump, and signaled options for a swift trial. He said no decision had been made whether to call witnesses. In drafting the charges against the president, Pelosi faced a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Some liberal lawmakers wanted more expansive charges encompassing the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Centrist Democrats preferred to keep the impeachment articles more focused on Trump’s actions toward Ukraine as a clearer case. The final resolution, slim in length yet broad in concept, attempted to find common ground by linking the Ukraine inquiry to the Mueller probe in two separate lines.It said the abuse of power was consistent with Trump’s “previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections” while the obstruction charge was consistent with his efforts to undermine U.S. government ‘’investigations into foreign interference.” Democratic leaders say Trump put his political interests above those of the nation when he asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July phone call to investigate his rivals, including Democrat Joe Biden, and then withheld $400 million in military aid as the U.S. ally faced an aggressive Russia. They say he then obstructed Congress by stonewalling the House investigation. The articles say Trump “used the powers of the presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process.” The first article, on abuse of power, says Trump “corruptly” solicited Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. The second article, obstruction of Congress, says that Trump directed defiance of the House’s ability to conduct its legal oversight like no other president ”in the history of the republic.” Trump insisted in a new tweet that when he asked Ukraine’s president “to do us a favor” with the investigations, “’us’ is a reference to USA, not me!” Democrats, however, say Trump’s meaning could not have been clearer in seeking political dirt on Biden, his possible opponent in the 2020 election. Republicans stand with the president even if they don’t fully address his actions. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said, the vote will be on impeachment not “whether a call is perfect.”
Who’s Who in the Trump-Ukraine Affair President Donald Trump faces a formal impeachment inquiry led in the Democratic-controlled House after he asked the newly elected Ukrainian president to investigate one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden. Credit: Noreen O’Donnell, Nelson Hsu, Nina Lin/NBC While the impeachment is focused on the Ukraine matter, Trump’s actions toward Russia continue underlie the debate. On Tuesday Trump met at the White House with Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister just back from Paris efforts to revive peace talks with Ukraine. At the same time, a top adviser to the Ukraine president, Andriy Yermak, disputed key impeachment testimony from U.S. Ambassador Gordon Sondland, telling Time magazine the two did not speak of the investigations Trump wanted during a Warsaw meeting. The next steps are expected to come swiftly after months of investigation into the Ukraine matter and special counsel Mueller’s two-year Russia probe. In his report, Mueller said he could not determine that Trump’s campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in the 2016 election. But he said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice and left it for Congress to determine. Even as she pushed ahead with the impeachment proceeding, Pelosi announced an agreement with the White House on a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal, a top priority for the president as well as many centrist Democrats. It, too, could get a vote next week. Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Alan Fram, Colleen Long, Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly and Eric Tucker contributed to this report. Scroll to see where your representative stands This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Trump, Dems in Tentative Deal on North American Trade PactMonday December 9th, 2019 08:48:21 PM Andrew Taylor and Lisa MascaroHouse Democrats have reached a tentative agreement with labor leaders and the White House over a rewrite of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal that has been a top priority for President Donald Trump. “I’m hearing very good things, including from unions and others that it’s looking good. I hope they put it up to a vote, and if they put it up to a vote, it’s going to pass,” Trump said Monday. “I’m hearing a lot of strides have been made over the last 24 hours, with unions and others.” The tentative accord was revealed by a Democratic aide not authorized to discuss the talks and granted anonymity because the agreement is not official. Details still need to be finalized and the U.S. Trade Representative will need to submit the implementing legislation to Congress. No vote has been scheduled. The new, long-sought trade agreement with Mexico and Canada would give both Trump and his top adversary, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a major accomplishment despite the turmoil of his likely impeachment. An announcement could come as early as Monday. Pelosi, D-Calif., still has to officially sign off on the accord, aides said. The new trade pact would replace the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated most tariffs and other trade barriers involving the United States, Mexico and Canada. Critics, including Trump, labor unions and many Democratic lawmakers, branded NAFTA a job killer for America because it encouraged factories to move south of the border, capitalize on low-wage Mexican workers and ship products back to the U.S. duty free. Weeks of back-and-forth, closely monitored by Democratic labor allies such as the AFL-CIO, have brought the two sides together. Pelosi is a longtime free trade advocate and supported the original NAFTA in 1994. Trump has accused Pelosi of being incapable of passing the agreement because she is too wrapped up in impeachment. Democrats from swing districts have agitated for finishing the accord, in part to demonstrate some accomplishments for their majority. By ratifying the agreement, Congress could lift uncertainty over the future of U.S. commerce with its No. 2 (Canada) and No. 3 (Mexico) trading partners last year and perhaps give the U.S. economy a modest boost. U.S. farmers are especially eager to make sure their exports to Canada and Mexico continue uninterrupted. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer last year negotiated the replacement agreement with Canada and Mexico. But the new USMCA accord required congressional approval and input from top Democrats like Pelosi and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts, who have been engaged in lengthy, detailed negotiations over enforcement provisions and other technical details. Republicans leaders and lawmakers have agitated for months for the accord but Pelosi has painstakingly worked to bring labor on board. Democrats see the pact as significantly better than NAFTA and an endorsement by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka could be the key to winning significant Democratic support. The pact contains provisions designed to nudge manufacturing back to the United States. For example, it requires that 40% to 45% of cars eventually be made in countries that pay autoworkers at least $16 an hour — that is, in the United States and Canada and not in Mexico. The trade pact picked up some momentum after Mexico in April passed a labor-law overhaul required by USMCA. The reforms are meant to make it easier for Mexican workers to form independent unions and bargain for better pay and working conditions, narrowing the gap with the United States. Mexico ratified USMCA in June and has budgeted more money later this year to provide the resources needed for enforcing the agreement. Russia, Ukraine to Revive Peace Process, Exchange PrisonersMonday December 9th, 2019 08:39:38 PMThe presidents of Ukraine and Russia agreed Monday to revive the peace process on the bloody separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and exchange all prisoners, but they failed to resolve crucial issues such as a timeline on local elections and control of the borders in the rebel-held region. At the first meeting between new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the two leaders failed to find a compromise to bring an end to the 5-year-old war that has killed 14,000 people, emboldened the Kremlin and reshaped European geopolitics. But they did agree to try again in four months to find new solutions, said French President Emmanuel Macron, who mediated the talks along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “There are disagreements, especially on timeline and next steps. We had a very long discussion on this,” Macron said. The summit was the biggest test yet for Zelenskiy, a comic actor and political novice who won the presidency this year in a landslide — partly on promises to end the war. The 2015 peace agreement helped to reduce the intensity of the fighting but Ukrainian soldiers and Russia-backed separatists have continued to exchange fire across World War I-style trenches along a front line that slices through eastern Ukraine. While Zelenskiy still enjoys broad public support, he has been embarrassed by the scandal around his discussions with U.S. President Donald Trump that have unleashed an impeachment inquiry in Washington. The U.S. is an important military backer for Ukraine, which is hugely out-gunned by Russia. While the U.S. was never part of this peace process, U.S. backing has strengthened Ukraine’s overall negotiating position with Russia in the past. Now that support is increasingly in doubt, after the Trump administration froze military aid earlier this year and is increasingly focused on Trump’s re-election bid. With U.S. influence waning around the world, many in Kyiv see one clear winner: Russia. Karmanau reported from Kyiv. Sylvie Corbet and Angela Charlton in Paris, Inna Varenytsia in eastern Ukraine, Daria Litvinova in Moscow and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed. NJ Weighs Bill to Let Those Without Documents Get LicensesMonday December 9th, 2019 06:38:05 PM Mike CataliniWhat to Know
New Jersey lawmakers considered legislation Monday to permit immigrants who cannot prove they’re in the country legally to obtain drivers licenses. The Democrat-led Assembly Judiciary Committee began hearing the bill in a packed committee room in the statehouse annex building. Many supported the measure, including a handful of people wearing green and yellow t-shirts that said, “Don’t let these bills die in committee.” Thirteen states, including Delaware and New York, and the District of Columbia permit immigrants without legal status to obtain drivers licenses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A 2018 study from the left-leaning think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective estimated that about 466,000 residents without documentation would be of driving age in New Jersey. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy along with Democratic Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and Senate President Steve Sweeney have said they back the measure. The legislation would create a two-tiered driver’s license system. One license would conform to federal REAL ID requirements that include proof of legal residency. Another license would permit people without a legal status to obtain a license. Panel after panel of witnesses supported the bill, arguing the measure could increase safety since many immigrants without legal documentation already drive without licenses and insurance. They also made emotional pleas, arguing that obtaining a license would help people work and provide for their loved ones.
“By providing access to driver’s licenses, New Jersey shows a monumental step towards keeping families together,” said Tatiana Rodrguez, a volunteer with the progressive-leaning group Make the Road New Jersey. Among the supporters was Motor Vehicles Commissioner Sue Fulton, who cited a study by AAA that indicated unlicensed drivers were more likely to flee the scene of an accident than those with licenses. “In my view our roads are safer when our drivers are trained, tested licensed and insured,” Fulton said. Opponents worry the measure rewards people for breaking the law and could lead to voter fraud because voter registration occurs when obtaining a license. “So you’re accommodating people who broke the law,” Republican Assemblyman Erik Peterson said in an opening round of question to Fulton. Fulton responded that the bill was about increasing safety. Advocates for the bill have pushed for years for the measure, but legislative leaders waited until after November’s election to begin advancing the legislation. Russia Probe Was Valid, Not Motivated by Political Bias: Watchdog ReportMonday December 9th, 2019 06:17:53 PM Eric Tucker and Michael BalsamoThe FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia and did not act with political bias, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog declared Monday, undercutting President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he has merely been the target of a “witch hunt.” The long-awaited report rejected theories and criticism spread by Trump and his supporters, though it also found “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command that are likely to be cited by Republican allies as the president faces a probable impeachment vote this month. The review by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the FBI was authorized to open the investigation to protect against a potential national security threat. Information compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, a focus of Republican criticism, “played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening,” the report said, using the name the FBI gave its investigation. And the report ruled out political bias in the decision to investigate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, a frequent contention by Trump. But the inspector general identified 17 “significant inaccuracies or omissions” in applications for a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and subsequent warrant renewals, although it also found the bureau was justified in eavesdropping on Page. The errors, the watchdog said, resulted in “applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.” Some of that information came from Steele. The watchdog found that the FBI had overstated the significance of Steele’s past work as an informant, omitted information about one of his sources whom Steele had called a “boaster” and who Steele said “may engage in some embellishment.” Republicans have long criticized the process since the FBI relied in part on opposition research from Steele, whose work was financed by Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and that fact was not disclosed to the judges who approved the FISA warrant. The report’s release, coming the same day as a House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing centered on the president’s interactions with Ukraine, brought fresh attention to the legal and political investigations that have entangled the White House from the moment Trump took office. Political divisions were evident in responses to the report. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said it makes clear that the basis for the FBI’s investigation was “valid and without political bias.” Trump, in remarks at the White House, claimed it showed “an attempted overthrow and a lot of people were in on it.” The president has repeatedly said he is more eager for the report of John Durham, the hand-picked prosecutor selected by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a separate review of the Russia probe. Barr and Durham both rejected the inspector general’s conclusion that there was sufficient evidence to open the FBI investigation. The attorney general’s reaction was especially unusual in that the head of the Justice Department typically would not take issue with an internal investigation that clears a department agency of serious misconduct. “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said in a statement. Durham, in a brief statement, said he had informed the inspector general that he also didn’t agree with the conclusion that the inquiry was properly opened, and suggested his own investigation would back up his disagreement. In an interview with The Associated Press, FBI Director Chris Wray noted the report’s conclusion that political bias did not taint the opening of the investigation, or the steps that followed. But Wray said the inspector general found problems that are “unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution.” The FBI is implementing more than 40 corrective actions, he said. The FBI’s Russia investigation, which was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, began in July 2016 after the FBI learned that a former Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, had been saying before it was publicly known that Russia had dirt on Democratic opponent Clinton in the form of stolen emails. Those emails, which were hacked from Democratic email accounts by Russian intelligence operatives, were released by WikiLeaks in the weeks before the election in what U.S. officials have said was an effort to harm Clinton’s campaign and help Trump. Months later, the FBI sought and received the Page warrant. Officials were concerned that Page was being targeted for recruitment by the Russian government, though he has denied wrongdoing and has never been charged with a crime. The inspector general also found that an FBI lawyer is suspected of altering an email to make it appear that an official at another government agency had said Page was not a source for that agency, even though he was. Agents were concerned that if Page had worked as a source for another government agency, the FBI would have needed to tell the surveillance court about that, the report said, and contacted the other agency to obtain additional information. But the FBI lawyer “did not accurately convey, and in fact altered, the information he received from the other agency,” the report said. The lawyer is not identified by name in the report, but people familiar with the situation have identified him as Kevin Clinesmith. The inspector general’s report said officials notified the attorney general and FBI director and provided them with information about the altered email. The inspector general conducted more than 170 interviews involving more than 100 witnesses, including former FBI director James Comey, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the Russia investigation, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, along with FBI agents and analysts. Associated Press writers Mark Sherman, Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick, Jonathan Lemire and Colleen Long contributed to this report. Read Justice Department Inspector General’s Report on Russia ProbeMonday December 9th, 2019 06:13:48 PMThe Justice Department’s internal watchdog report on the origins of the Russia investigation was released on Monday. Here is the report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Amazon Says Trump’s ‘Improper Pressure’ Doomed Pentagon BidMonday December 9th, 2019 05:25:54 PM Matt O'Brien and Joseph PisaniAmazon says President Donald Trump’s “improper pressure” and behind-the-scenes attacks harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract. The Pentagon awarded the cloud computing contract to Microsoft in October. Amazon argues in a lawsuit unsealed Monday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that the decision should be revisited because of “substantial and pervasive errors” and Trump’s interference. Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos are a frequent target of Trump. Bezos personally owns The Washington Post, which Trump has referred to as “fake news” whenever unfavorable stories are published about him. Amazon said it lost the deal due to Trump’s “personal vendetta against Mr. Bezos, Amazon, and the Washington Post.” Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said in a statement Monday the decision to select Microsoft “was made by an expert team of career public servants and military officers” and without external influence. Formally called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure plan, or JEDI, the military’s computing project would store and process vast amounts of classified data. The Defense Department has said it will help speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities and enable the military to advance its use of artificial intelligence. Amazon and Microsoft became the finalists after Oracle and IBM were eliminated in an earlier round of the contract competition. Oracle had also sued, arguing the bidding was rigged in Amazon’s favor. Trump publicly waded into the bidding process over the summer, saying he heard complaints and wanted the Pentagon to take a closer look. “The department is confident in the JEDI award and remains focused on getting this critical capability into the hands of our warfighters as quickly and efficiently as possible,” Smith said. The White House didn’t return an emailed request for comment Monday. Microsoft said in a statement it has “confidence in the qualified staff at the Department of Defense, and we believe the facts will show they ran a detailed, thorough and fair process.” Charles Tiefer, a government contracting law professor at the University of Baltimore, said it would be “an uphill battle” for Amazon to win the lawsuit. The company must prove real influence by the president beyond his tweets and campaign speeches. Emails and other documents would have to prove that Trump’s views toward Amazon were on the mind of officials in charge of awarding the contract. “That’s hard to show,” Tiefer said. “But it’s not impossible.” Amazon makes the case in the lawsuit that its cloud services were a better fit for the project because of its speed, efficiency and experience securely handling classified government data. It says the Defense Department made errors in the procurement process that make little sense without taking into account Trump’s antipathy toward Amazon. Some of the lawsuit’s details are redacted for proprietary or security reasons. “Basic justice requires reevaluation of proposals and a new award decision,” the lawsuit says. “The stakes are high. The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends.” Amazon Web Services has been the industry leader in moving businesses and other institutions onto its cloud — a term used to describe banks of servers in remote data centers that can be accessed from almost anywhere. But Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform has been steadily catching up, as have other providers such as Google, in both corporate and government settings. Mike Hettinger, a tech industry lobbyist focused on federal contracting, said a strong case could have been made for either Amazon or Microsoft winning the contract but it is hard for an outside observer to know what went into the government’s technical evaluations and whether Trump’s comments or actions influenced the outcome. Amazon is likely to use the case to seek more internal documents from the government. “I don’t think anybody knows what happened behind the scenes,” Hettinger said. “I think that’s what this lawsuit is intended to find out.” Michelle Obama Speaks Out on Impeachment Proceedings: ‘It’s Surreal’Monday December 9th, 2019 04:33:15 PM Scott Stump | TODAYMichelle Obama views the impeachment proceedings involving President Donald Trump as “surreal,” but believes the nation can make it through the current political turmoil. The former first lady gave her thoughts on the impeachment inquiry in an exclusive interview with Jenna Bush Hager on TODAY Monday during a trip to Vietnam to raise awareness about the importance of educating young girls. “It’s surreal,” she said. “I don’t think people know what to make of it. But do I think we can come back from it? Oh yeah. “We’ve seen tough times in this country. You know we’ve gone through depressions and wars and bombings and terrorist attacks, and we’ve gone through Jim Crow, and we’ve always come out stronger. And that’s what we have to continue to believe because what’s our choice? To ball up in a corner and call it a day? Well that’s not fair to this next generation that’s coming before us that are counting on us to get this right.” The impeachment proceedings have highlighted the political divide in the federal government and across the country, but Obama believes that can be overcome. “It’s not an ‘us or them,’ it’s not an ‘R or a D’ (Republican or Democrat), we are all here as part of this country,” she said. “We all want the same things, it’s just sometimes that gets lost in the noise.” Obama announced her trip to Vietnam in October on the International Day of the Girl and has now traveled to the country as part of her Girls Opportunity Alliance to highlight the importance of education for young girls. In a country where young girls are often pressured to drop out of school and go to work instead, Obama is supporting programs like “Room to Read,” which has helped more than 6,000 girls in Vietnam stay in school. “It’s important for us to know more versions of what it means to be human, and we’re seeing it in these girls,” she said. Her trip comes after a year in which her memoir, “Becoming,” became a staple on the best-seller list, but she considers the issue of girls education to be a defining one in her mission since leaving the White House. “It’s also a continuation of what I consider my life’s work,” she said. “Yeah the book was something I did, it was wonderful, the response I’m humbled by it, but the truth is that working on girls’ education is what I want to do for the rest of my life until we fix this issue. She will be heading to Malaysia next with her husband, former President Barack Obama, to continue to raise awareness about education for young girls. The journey to Vietnam also marks her first public overseas trip since leaving the White House nearly four years ago. “The truth is that for eight years Barack and I rarely traveled together because we didn’t want to be away from the kids at the same time,” she said. “But now that we’re empty-nesters, there are no kids. We’re just sort of living our lives and taking our time and taking some of the sights in and being with each other. It’s kind of neat.” Jenna will have more with the former first lady on TODAY Tuesday and Wednesday as they share some inspiring stories from Vietnam and get Obama’s thoughts on the upcoming election and the emotional experience of dropping their youngest daughter, Sasha, at college for her freshman year in the fall. This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY: Supreme Court Leaves Kentucky’s Ultrasound Law in PlaceMonday December 9th, 2019 04:13:04 PMThe Supreme Court on Monday left in place a Kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients before abortions. The justices did not comment in refusing to review an appeals court ruling that upheld the law. The American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the law on behalf of Kentucky’s lone remaining abortion clinic. The ACLU argued that “display and describe” ultrasound laws violate physicians’ speech rights under the First Amendment. The federal appeals court in Cincinnati upheld the Kentucky law, but its sister court in Richmond, Virginia, struck down a similar measure in North Carolina. The Supreme Court had previously upheld “informed consent” laws for women seeking abortions. The court will hear an abortion case in March, over Louisiana’s attempt to require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Doctors’ speech also has been an issue in non-abortion cases. The federal appeals court in Atlanta struck down parts of a 2011 Florida law that sought to prohibit doctors from talking about gun safety with their patients. Under the law, doctors faced fines and the possible loss of their medical licenses for discussing guns with patients. In Kentucky, doctors must describe the ultrasound in detail while the pregnant woman listens to the fetal heartbeat. Women can avert their eyes and cover their ears to avoid hearing the description or the fetal heartbeat. Doctors failing to comply face fines and can be referred to the state’s medical licensing board. The ACLU called the law unconstitutional and unethical. ACLU lawyer Alexa Kolbi-Molinas said that the Supreme Court “has rubber-stamped extreme political interference in the doctor-patient relationship.” The law was passed in 2017 and was signed by the state’s anti-abortion governor, Republican Matt Bevin. He narrowly lost his reelection bid last month. But Republicans remain in control of the state legislature. North Korea Calls Trump ‘Erratic’ Old Man Over TweetsMonday December 9th, 2019 03:50:36 PM Kim Tong-HyungNorth Korea insulted U.S. President Donald Trump again on Monday, calling him a “heedless and erratic old man” after he tweeted that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wouldn’t want to abandon a special relationship between the two leaders and affect the American presidential election by resuming hostile acts. A senior North Korean official, former nuclear negotiator Kim Yong Chol, said in a statement that his country wouldn’t cave in to U.S. pressure because it has nothing to lose and accused the Trump administration of attempting to buy time ahead of an end-of-year deadline set by Kim Jong Un for Washington to salvage nuclear talks. In a separate statement, former Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong said Trump’s comments were a “corroboration that he feels fear” about what North Korea might do when Kim’s deadline expires and warned Trump to think twice if he wants to avoid “bigger catastrophic consequences.” On Sunday, Trump tweeted: “Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way … North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, has tremendous economic potential, but it must denuclearize as promised.” He was referring to a vague statement issued by the two leaders during their first summit in Singapore in June last year that called for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing when or how it would occur. Trump added that Kim “does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States or interfere with the U.S. Presidential Election in November.” Kim Yong Chol said Trump’s tweets clearly show that he is an irritated old man “bereft of patience.” “As (Trump) is such a heedless and erratic old man, the time when we cannot but call him a ‘dotard’ again may come,” Kim Yong Chol said. “Trump has too many things that he does not know about (North Korea). We have nothing more to lose. Though the U.S. may take away anything more from us, it can never remove the strong sense of self-respect, might and resentment against the U.S. from us.” Kim Yong Chol traveled to Washington and met with the U.S. president twice last year while setting up the summits with Kim Jong Un. In his statement, Ri, currently a vice chairman of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, said Trump would be well advised to stop using “abusive language” that may offend Kim. “Trump might be in great jitters but he had better accept the status quo that as he sowed, so he should reap, and think twice if he does not want to see bigger catastrophic consequences,” Ri said. “Our final judgment and decision which will soon be made at the end of this year are to be done by the chairman of the State Affairs Commission, and he has neither clarified any stand yet nor made any ironic and irritating expressions toward the other party as done by someone,” Ri added, referring to Kim by one of his government titles. Nuclear negotiations faltered after a February meeting between Trump and Kim in Vietnam broke down when the U.S. side rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities. Kim has said North Korea will seek a “new way” if the U.S. maintains its sanctions and pressure, and issued the deadline for the Trump administration to offer mutually acceptable terms for a deal. Trump and Kim met for a third time in June at the border between the two Koreas and agreed to resume talks. But an October working-level meeting in Sweden broke down over what the North Koreans described as the Americans’ “old stance and attitude.” Kim Yong Chol’s statement came days after North Korea’s first vice foreign minister, Choe Sun Hui, issued a similar threat to resume insulting Trump after he spoke during a NATO summit in London of possible military action toward the North and revived his “rocket man” nickname for Kim Jong Un. In 2017, Trump and Kim traded threats of destruction as North Korea carried out a slew of high-profile weapons tests aimed at acquiring an ability to launch nuclear strikes on the U.S. mainland. Trump said he would rain “fire and fury” on North Korea and derided Kim as “little rocket man,” while Kim questioned Trump’s sanity and said he would “tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.” The two leaders avoided such words and developed better relations after North Korea entered nuclear negotiations with the U.S. last year. Trump even said he and Kim “fell in love,” but his comments on Kim have become sharper in recent weeks amid the standoff in nuclear negotiations. North Korea in recent weeks has said it is unwilling to continue rewarding Trump with meetings and summits he could chalk up as foreign policy wins unless it gets something substantial in return. The North’s stance has raised doubts about whether Kim will ever voluntarily give away a nuclear arsenal he may see as his biggest guarantee of survival. On Sunday, North Korea’s Academy of National Defense said a “very important test” was conducted at a long-range rocket facility on the country’s western coast, touching off speculation that the North could have tested a new rocket engine for either a satellite-launch vehicle or a solid-fuel intercontinental-range missile. Finland’s Sanna Marin to Become World’s Youngest Prime MinisterMonday December 9th, 2019 01:41:33 PM Jan. M. OlsenFinland’s next prime minister is breaking the mold of government leaders in multiple ways. When Sanna Marin takes over the reins of the country, likely on Tuesday, she will become the youngest leader of a government in the world — at 34 she beats Ukraine’s 35-year-old prime minister, Oleksiy Honcharuk. What’s more Marin, who was tapped Sunday by Finland’s ruling Social Democratic Party, will head a five-party, center-left coalition. All of her four coalition partners are led by women — and three of them are in their early 30s. And like New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern — another government leader who is below 40 — Marin is a new mother, having given birth to her daughter Emma last year. Raised by a single mother, she has told Finnish broadcaster how she felt discriminated against when her mother was in a relationship with another woman. A lawmaker since 2015, Marin is the party’s vice chairwoman and was minister for transport and communications in the outgoing government. Lawmakers are likely to approve the appointment of Marin and her government this week so she can represent Finland at the Dec. 12-13 EU leaders’ summit in Brussels. Finland holds the European Union’s rotating presidency until the end of the year. Antti Rinne, the incumbent prime minister whom Marin is replacing, plans to stay on as the Social Democrats’ chairman until a party congress next summer. Rinne stepped down last week after a key coalition partner, the Center Party, withdrew its support, citing lack of trust. The Center Party also criticized Rinne’s leadership skills prior to a two-week strike by the country’s state-owned postal service in November that spread to other industries. Rinne’s resignation prompted the formal resignation of the coalition of the Social Democrats and the Center Party and three junior partners: the Greens, the Left Alliance and the Swedish People’s Party of Finland. On Sunday, the same parties said they are committed to the government program agreed upon after the April election and will continue in Marin’s new government, which will have a comfortable majority of 117 seats in the 200-seat Eduskunta, or Parliament. Beside Marin, the coalition’s other party leaders are 32-year-old Katri Kulmuni of the Center Party; the Left Alliance’s Li Andersson, 32; Maria Ohisalo, the 34-year-old leader of the Greens; and the head of the Swedish People’s Party, Anna-Maja Henriksson, who at 55 is the oldest. Marin will be Finland’s third female government leader. Women have been present in politics in the Nordic region for decades and today represent half of the party leaders in Sweden. Four of Denmark’s nine parties are headed by women. Mette Frederiksen became Denmark’s prime minister in June, while Erna Solberg has been Norway’s head of government since 2013. Iceland’s Vigdis Finnbogadottir was the first woman to be democratically elected as head of state by voters when she defeated three men for the presidency in 1980. Other than Marin, most posts in the government are expected to remain unchanged. Ohisalo will continue as interior minister, Andersson will be in charge of education, Kulmuni will handle the economy ministry and Henriksson will again be the justice minister. Fact Check: Trump, GOP Misfires on Ukraine, Mueller ProbeMonday December 9th, 2019 08:49:04 AM Hope Yen and Calvin WoodwardFacing almost-certain impeachment, President Donald Trump and his GOP allies are blasting theHouse inquiry into whether he abused his office as illegal and declaring him completely free of taint on Ukraine and in the Russia investigation. Those claims are untrue. When certain associates and acquaintances of Trump get into hot water, he also suddenly forgets he ever knew them. Various figures from the Ukraine matter as well as a British prince have fallen out of familiarity with the president in this way. Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg wasn’t truthful about why he recently apologized for supporting the controversial “stop and frisk” policy, falsely claiming no one had ever asked him about it before. Here’s a look at recent remarks by political figures, including Trump from the NATO summit in London and back home as House Democrats sped toward impeaching him: STOP AND FRISKBLOOMBERG, asked about the timing of his recent apology for supporting the “stop and frisk” policy: “Well, nobody asked me about it until I started running for president, so, c’mon.” — interview Friday with “CBS This Morning.” THE FACTS: That’s not true. Bloomberg has been repeatedly asked about his position on the policing strategy that he embraced as New York City mayor from 2002 to 2013. He defended it each time — most recently in January. Stop-and-frisk gave police wide authority to detain people they suspected of committing a crime, and Bloomberg aggressively pursued the tactic. Under the program, New York City police officers made it a routine practice to stop and search multitudes of mostly black and Hispanic men to see if they were carrying weapons. “We focused on keeping kids from going through the correctional system,” Bloomberg said while taking questions at the United States Naval Academy’s 2019 Leadership Conference. “The result of that was, over the years, the murder rate in New York City went from 650 a year to 300 a year when I left.” He added that most police departments do the same thing, “they just don’t report it or use the terminology.” Bloomberg also defended the policy after a federal judge in 2013 struck down the policy as violating the civil rights of blacks and Latinos who were disproportionately affected. He called it a “dangerous decision made by a judge who I think does not understand how policing works and what is compliant with the U.S. Constitution.” Bloomberg then wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in 2013 entitled “‘Stop and frisk’ keeps New York safe.” He later argued in a 2013 radio interview that NYPD had stopped too many white people. “They just keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be, but it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the (crime),” he said. “In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” Last month, Bloomberg apologized for his longstanding support of “stop and frisk,” telling those in a black church that he was “sorry” and acknowledged it often led to the detention of blacks and Latinos. The Nov. 17 announcement came a week before he announced he was running for president. IMPEACHMENT
Who’s Who in the Trump-Ukraine Affair President Donald Trump faces a formal impeachment inquiry led in the Democratic-controlled House after he asked the newly elected Ukrainian president to investigate one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden. Credit: Noreen O’Donnell, Nelson Hsu, Nina Lin/NBC TRUMP: “No Due Process.” — tweet Sunday. STEPHANIE GRISHAM, White House press secretary: “We’re not going to participate in a sham hearing that doesn’t give him any rights … I’ll also mention to people that the president was overseas when they invited him to be part of that silly hearing, so that timing was on purpose.” — interview Saturday on “Fox & Friends: Weekend.” TRUMP: “For the hearings, we don’t get a lawyer.” — remarks Tuesday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. THE FACTS: Trump and his spokeswoman are wrong that he was deprived a chance to be heard in the House Judiciary Committee hearings. The committee invited Trump and his lawyers to appear if he wishes, but the White House refused. In a letter last week to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., White House counsel Pat Cipollone declined the invitation for the president’s counsel to appear at the first hearing last Wednesday while Trump was at the NATO summit, insisting that the inquiry violates “basic due process rights.” The committee’s invitation was issued before Trump left on that trip, not during, as Grisham asserts. For hearings this week, Trump had until Friday to decide whether he would take advantage of due process protections afforded to him under House rules adopted in October. He was offered an opportunity to ask for witness testimony and to cross-examine the witnesses called by the House. But he decided not to participate in that round, too. If the House impeaches Trump, the Senate trial will look like a normal trial in some respects, with senators as the jury. Arguments would be heard from each side’s legal team for and against Trump’s removal from office. The Intelligence Committee hearings, in contrast, were like the investigative phase of criminal cases, conducted without the participation of the person under investigation. TRUMP: “The word ‘impeachment’ is a dirty word, and it’s a word that was only supposed to be used in special occasions: high crimes and misdemeanors. In this case, there was no crime whatsoever. Not even a little tiny crime. There was no crime whatsoever, and they know it. ” — remarks Wednesday with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. THE FACTS: That’s a misrepresentation of the conditions for impeaching a president. The constitutional grounds for impeachment do not require any crime to have been committed. In setting the conditions, treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors, the Founding Fathers said that a consequential abuse of office — crime or not — was subject to the impeachment process they laid out. Months after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers that a commonly understood crime need not be the basis of impeachment. Offenses qualifying for that step “are of a nature … POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself,” he wrote. As they draft articles of impeachment, though, Democrats are alleging crimes involving obstruction of justice as part of their case that Trump abused his office. TRUMP, on his July 25 call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy: “All you have to do is listen to the call or read the call. We had it transcribed perfectly. But he was — he said — no pressure, no nothing. There was no nothing.” — remarks Wednesday with Conte. TRUMP: “Breaking News: The President of Ukraine has just again announced that President Trump has done nothing wrong with respect to Ukraine and our interactions or calls … case over!” — tweet on Dec. 2. THE FACTS: Trump misleads in suggesting that Zelenskiy didn’t have any concerns about the call. Nor was the call “transcribed perfectly;” only a rough transcript was released by the White House. While Zelenskiy initially said there was no discussion of a quid pro quo, he said in an interview Monday with Time that Trump should not have blocked military aid to Ukraine. Zelenskiy also criticized Trump for casting the country as corrupt, saying it sends a concerning message to international allies. On that call discussing military aid, Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Trump’s political rivals in the U.S. “Look I never talked to the president from the position of a quid pro quo,” Zelenskiy said. “But you have to understand. We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness.” On corruption, Zelenskiy said it unfairly undermines support for the country. “Everyone hears that signal,” he said. “Investments, banks, stakeholders, companies, American, European, companies that have international capital in Ukraine, it’s a signal to them that says, ‘Be careful, don’t invest.’ Or, ‘Get out of there.'” It’s true that in early October, Zelenskiy had told reporters “there was no pressure or blackmail from the U.S.” But he did not state Trump had done “nothing” wrong, even as he let his criticisms simmer before surfacing them. In any event, Zelenskiy knew months before the call that much-needed U.S. military support might depend on whether he was willing to help Trump by investigating Democrats. RONNA MCDANIEL, Republican National Committee chairwoman, on Democrats who said the Russia investigation should be part of the basis for impeaching Trump, not just his actions with Ukraine: “Are you kidding me? They lied for 2 years about collusion & POTUS was exonerated.” — tweet Thursday, using POTUS as an abbreviation of president of the U.S. THE FACTS: She’s wrong to suggest that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report cleared the Trump campaign of collusion with Russia. Nor did the report exonerate Trump on the question of whether he obstructed justice. Instead, the report factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter or for prosecutors to do so once Trump leaves office. Mueller’s two-year investigation and other scrutiny revealed a multitude of meetings with Russians. Among them: Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt on Clinton. On collusion, Mueller said he did not assess whether that occurred because it is not a legal term. He looked into a potential criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and said the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front. Mueller noted some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the Fifth Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings. Mueller also did not reach a conclusion as to whether the president obstructed justice or broke any other law. He said his team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge Trump, partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn’t be indicted. PRINCE ANDREWTRUMP: “I don’t know Prince Andrew. … I don’t know him.” — remarks Tuesday with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. THE FACTS: Trump knows the British prince. Andrew hosted a breakfast for him in June, they toured Westminster Abbey together and photos spread over two decades capture some occasions when they’ve met. The prince stepped back from royal duties after his involvement with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was exposed. Trump also recently declared, repeatedly, that he did not know Gordon Sondland, his ambassador to the EU, “very well” and “I have not spoken to him much.” Sondland provided some of the most damning testimony in the House impeachment inquiry about how he had tried to carry out Trump’s wishes to persuade Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rivals in the U.S. Sondland testified that he’s had many conversations with Trump, who called the ambassador “a really good man and great American” before Sondland’s problematic testimony. Several people in prominent positions in the Trump campaign or known as close advisers were similarly marginalized — as mere volunteers, hangers-on or low-level functionaries — when it became troublesome during the Russia investigation to acknowledge their stature. STOCK MARKETTRUMP: “If the stock market goes up or down — I don’t watch the stock market. I watch jobs.” — remarks Tuesday during NATO summit after stocks fell sharply. THE FACTS: This is not true. Trump watches the stock market, as he demonstrated Friday when the market rebounded and he tweeted precise percentages of how much the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq have gone up this year. “Stock Markets Up Record Numbers,” he tweeted. Trump uses the stock market as a leading barometer of his presidency, giving the subject a rest only when the market’s performance is down. It’s an almost constant companion, through thick but not thin. On a good day, he will tweet about it. Otherwise, his rally speeches and White House remarks are laced with references to the market’s growth since he became president. He takes credit for gains and blames losses on other things, like Democrats. Trump tweeted about the stock market more than a dozen times in November as it repeatedly edged into record highs. On one occasion, his boastfulness became too much even for him. He tweeted: “Stock Markets (all three) hit another ALL TIME & HISTORIC HIGH yesterday! You are sooo lucky to have me as your President.” Then he added: “(just kidding!).” MACRONTRUMP, on French President Emmanuel Macron’s assertion that NATO is suffering “brain death”: “He’s taken back his comments very much so on NATO.” — remarks Wednesday in London. THE FACTS: No, Macron did not back off what Trump had called a “very, very nasty” statement about NATO. He conspicuously stood by it, before the summit, after it and when face to face with Trump in a tense joint news conference. If anything, Macron appeared to relish the provocation he had brought on. “I do stand by it,” he said Tuesday as Trump looked on. “I assume full responsibility for it,” he said Wednesday. And Macron tweeted: “The comments I made about NATO prompted a debate among members of the alliance. This dialogue is a very good thing.” He likened himself to an ice-breaker smashing through ice. Macron characterized NATO as brain dead last month, citing a lack of U.S. leadership and confusion in the alliance about what its fundamental missions should be. He said the U.S. was turning its back on NATO and — in light of Trump’s unexpected announcement in October that he would withdraw troops from Syria — not coordinating with allies on strategic decision-making. On Wednesday, Macron mildly praised the summit as “constructive” while emphasizing that the fundamentals that sparked his complaint had not been resolved. OCEAN DEBRISTRUMP: “I also see what’s happening with our oceans, where certain countries are dumping unlimited loads of things in it. They float — they tend to float toward the United States. I see that happening, and nobody has ever seen anything like it, and it’s gotten worse.”‘ — remarks Tuesday with Trudeau. THE FACTS: He’s right that garbage from abroad has come to U.S. shores by sea. What he does not say, when making this repeated complaint, is that garbage from the U.S. also makes it over the ocean to other countries and that Americans have plenty to do with trashing their own shores. Debris from Asia was most noticeable after the 2011 Japanese tsunami, said marine debris expert Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association, “but the same can be said about debris entering the ocean from the U.S. and washing ashore in Asia.” In fact, she said, most debris is not tracked to the country of origin. The United States produces the largest amount of plastic waste in the world by weight, Law said. “Most debris we find on the coast of the US is likely from the US,” Denise Hardesty, a scientist who researches ocean trash for Australia’s federal science organization, said by email. Hardesty surveyed the U.S. West Coast from Washington to the California border with Mexico and found the dirtiest place was in Long Beach at the river mouth, where researchers found 4,500 items. Marcus Eriksen, chief science officer and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, which fights plastics pollution, said Asian fishing gear arrives as debris in Alaska and British Columbia because of north Pacific currents, a problem exacerbated by the lack of regulation of such gear. But in pointing the finger at Asia, Trump is ignoring “our own problems with plastic waste here at home.” TRADETRUMP: “We won, in the World Trade Organization, we won seven and a half billion dollars. We never used to win before me, because, before me, the United States was a sucker for all of these different organizations.” — remarks Tuesday with Stoltenberg. THE FACTS: He is wildly wrong to state that the U.S. never won victories in disputes taken to the trade organization before him. The U.S. has always had a high success rate when it pursues cases against other countries at the WTO. In 2017, trade analyst Daniel Ikenson of the libertarian Cato Institute found that the U.S. won 91% of the cases it took to the Geneva-based trade monitor. As Ikenson noted, countries bringing complaints to the organization tend to win because they don’t bother going to the WTO in the first place if they don’t have a strong case. As for Trump’s claim that the U.S. “won” $7.5 billion from the WTO, that’s not quite right. Trump was referring to a WTO decision in October siding with the U.S. on imposing tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of European imports annually. The value of the tariffs on those imports is much less than $7.5 billion. The WTO announcement culminated a 15-year fight over EU subsidies for Airbus — a fight that began long before Trump was in office. ISLAMIC STATETRUMP: “We have a tremendous amount of captured fighters, ISIS fighters over in Syria. And, they’re all under lock and key, but many are from France, many are from Germany. Many are from U.K. They are mostly from Europe.” — remarks Tuesday with Macron. MACRON: There are “very large number of fighters … ISIS fighters coming from Syria, from Iraq and the region.” Those from Europe are “a tiny minority of the overall problem.” THE FACTS: Trump is incorrect to say the Islamic State fighters who were captured and held by the Kurds in Syria are mostly from Europe. Of the more than 12,000 IS fighters in custody in Kurdish areas, only 2,500 are from outside the region of the conflict, some from Europe, some from other parts of the world. Most of the captured fighters — about 10,000 — are natives of Syria or Iraq. European nations have indeed been reluctant to take detainees who came from Europe, frustrating Trump. But such detainees are far fewer than the majority he frequently claims. BRITAIN’S HEALTH CARETRUMP, speaking about claims that Britain’s state-funded health care system would be part of future U.K.-U.S. trade talks: “I don’t even know where that rumor started. We have absolutely nothing to do with it and we wouldn’t want to. If you handed it to us on a silver platter, we want nothing to do with it.” — remarks Tuesday with Stoltenberg. THE FACTS: He’s referring to his own past statements as a “rumor.” Asked about the National Health Service during a visit to Britain in June, he said “when you’re dealing in trade, everything’s on the table. So, NHS or anything else.” The service, which provides free health care to all Britons, could in fact be a bargaining chip in U.S.-U.K. trade talks. U.S. health-services companies can already bid for contracts if they have European subsidiaries. A future government could increase the amount of private-sector involvement or let U.S. companies bid directly. As well, the U.S. could demand during trade talks that Britain pay American pharmaceutical companies more for drugs. Medicines became a big issue in negotiations on a revamped North American free trade deal, as the U.S. pushed successfully for tighter restrictions on the development in Canada and Mexico of generic versions of U.S.-patented drugs. Leaked documents from preliminary talks between U.S. and U.K. negotiators over two years from July 2017 — released by the Labour Party last week — said “patent issues” around “NHS access to generic drugs will be a key consideration” in talks. It’s an overstatement to say the national health service as a whole would be up for sale, as Labour has alleged will happen if Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives win the Dec. 12 election and try to strike a post-Brexit trade deal with the U.S. Britain would not be “selling off” the health service, as Labour asserts, because taxpayers would still be footing the bill. But it’s also improbable to think U.S. negotiators would “want nothing to do” with Britain’s health care market, despite Trump’s words. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Darlene Superville, Seth Borenstein, Paul Wiseman, Jill Lawless and Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report. Impeachment Witness: Trump Poses Election ‘Danger’Monday December 9th, 2019 06:33:29 AM Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare JalonickPresident Donald Trump’s efforts to “cheat to win an election” are a threat to national security, the top Democratic investigator testified Monday as the House Judiciary Committee pushes ahead with articles of impeachment. In an acrimonious daylong hearing, Democrats outlined their case against the president, saying Trump’s push to have Ukraine investigate rival Joe Biden while withholding U.S. military aid ran counter to U.S. policy and benefited Russia as well as himself. Trump and his allies railed against the “absurd” proceedings, with Republicans defending the president as having done nothing wrong ahead of the 2020 election. The outcome, though, appears increasingly set as Democrats prepare at least two, if not more, articles of impeachment against Trump, likely charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. A Judiciary committee vote could come as soon as this week. “President Trump’s persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security,” said Dan Goldman, the director of investigations at the House Intelligence Committee. Republicans rejected not only Goldman’s conclusion as he presented the Intelligence Committee’s 300-page report on the Ukraine matter, but his very appearance before the Judiciary panel. In a series of heated exchanges, they said Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, should appear rather than send his lawyer. “Where’s Adam?” thundered Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “We want Schiff,” echoed Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. From the White House, Trump tweeted repeatedly, assailing the “Witch Hunt!” and “Do Nothing Democrats.” The hearing set off a pivotal week as Democrats march toward a full House vote expected by Christmas. In drafting the articles of impeachment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Pelosi was meeting with her leadership team behind closed doors Monday evening. A crucial decision will be whether to include an obstruction charge from special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings as some liberals want or keep the impeachment articles focused on Ukraine as centrist Democrats prefer. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler was blunt as he opened the hearing, saying, “President Trump put himself before country.” Nadler said the case against Trump is clear after “multiple officials testified that the president’s demand for an investigation into his rivals was a part of his personal, political agenda, and not related to the foreign policy objectives of the United States. “The integrity of our next election is at stake.” Collins said Democrats are racing to jam impeachment through on a “clock and a calendar” ahead of the 2020 presidential election. “They can’t get over the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and they don’t have a candidate that can beat him,” Collins said. In one of the fiercest exchanges of the day, Collins confronted Goldman over call records that appeared in the report revealing contact between California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the intelligence committee, and Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his indicted associate Lev Parnas. Pressed on who asked to identify Nunes’ phone number in the call logs investigators received, which came from subpoenas the committee made to AT&T, Goldman said “no one played a match game” to find Nunes’ number but declined to comment on specific deliberations of the investigation. “We only issued subpoenas for call records for people who were involved in the investigation,” Goldman said, adding that it was peripheral evidence to the probe and that questions about the calls were better addressed to the individuals who were actually on the calls. In another testy exchange, Republican attorney Stephen Castor dismissed the transcript of Trump’s crucial call with Ukraine as “eight ambiguous lines” that did not amount to the president seeking a personal political favor. Democrats argued vigorously that Trump’s meaning could not have been clearer in seeking political dirt on Biden, his possible opponent in the 2020 election. Asked for his view, Goldman testified, “I don’t think there’s any other way to read the words on the page.” Republicans also revived criticism of Schiff’s decision to expose phone records of members of Congress. The inquiry showed that Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was in frequent contact with California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee. Collins accused Democrats of engaging in a “smear” campaign against lawmakers by disclosing phone records. But Goldman said investigators did not subpoena lawmaker accounts but simply matched them up once they appeared in the records. The Republicans tried numerous times to halt or slow the proceedings and at one point the hearing was briefly interrupted by a protester shouting “We voted for Donald Trump!” The protester, identified as InfoWars host Owen Shroyer, was escorted from the House hearing room by Capitol Police. The White House is refusing to participate in the impeachment process, and Trump appears to be focused elsewhere — on Giuliani’s own probe and the president’s upcoming campaign rallies. Trump spent the morning tweeting against the proceedings. He and his allies acknowledge he likely will be impeached in the Democratic-controlled House, but they also expect acquittal next year in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority. The president was focused instead on Monday’s long-awaited release of the Justice Department report into the 2016 Russia investigation. The Inspector General found that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia and that the FBI did not act with political bias, despite “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command. Those findings undercut Trump’s claim that he was the target of a “witch hunt,” rejecting theories and criticism spread by Trump and his supporters. Yet it found errors and misjudgments likely to be exploited by Republican allies as the president faces probable impeachment. As the House pushes ahead toward votes, Trump attorney Giuliani said Monday he’ll soon be releasing findings from his own recent visit to Ukraine.
Who’s Who in the Trump-Ukraine Affair President Donald Trump faces a formal impeachment inquiry led in the Democratic-controlled House after he asked the newly elected Ukrainian president to investigate one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden. Credit: Noreen O’Donnell, Nelson Hsu, Nina Lin/NBC Many Republicans in Congress are distancing themselves from Giuliani, but Trump’s top ally found an audience in former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon’s “War Room 2020″‘ podcast to discuss his findings, which he promised to reveal in more detail later this week. Democrats say Trump abused his power in a July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor in investigating Democrats. That was bribery, they say, since Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in military aid that Ukraine depended on to counter Russian aggression. Pelosi and Democrats point to a “pattern” of conduct by Trump in seeking foreign interference in elections from Mueller’s inquiry of the Russia probe to Ukraine. In his report, Mueller said he could not determine that Trump’s campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in the 2016 election. But Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the probe and left it for Congress to determine. ___ Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly, Eric Tucker, and Darlene Superville contributed to this report. House Judiciary Chair Nadler Says Impeachment Articles Will ‘Presumably’ Be Introduced This WeekSunday December 8th, 2019 11:40:56 PMHouse Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Sunday that his panel will “presumably” present articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump this week, NBC News reports. “We’ll bring articles of impeachment presumably before the committee at some point later in the week,” Nadler, D-N.Y., said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.” On Monday, the committee will hear from both Democrats and Republicans on the Intelligence Committee about the findings from their investigation into allegations that the president led a campaign to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the top Democrats running for president in 2020. Nadler said that congressional leaders haven’t finalized many of the key details of what may be included in any impeachment articles, saying that there are still significant “consultations” to come between committee members, House Democrats and Democratic leaders before they are finalized. America’s Influence, Once So Dominant, Waning Under TrumpSunday December 8th, 2019 10:27:45 PM Tim SullivanIt’s whispered in NATO meeting rooms and celebrated in China’s halls of power. It’s lamented in the capital cities of key U.S. allies and welcomed in the Kremlin. Three years into Donald Trump’s presidency, America’s global influence is waning. In interviews with The Associated Press, diplomats, foreign officials and scholars from numerous countries describe a changing world order in which the United States has less of a central role. And in many ways, that’s just fine with the White House. Trump campaigned on an ”America First” foreign policy and says a strong United States will mean a stronger world. “The future doesn’t belong to globalists,” Trump told the U.N. General Assembly in September. “The future belongs to patriots.” Trump insists he’s abandoning globalism for bilateral ties more beneficial to the U.S. But there’s little sign of that. Instead, once-close allies — France, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mexico, Turkey, Germany and more — have quietly edged away from Washington over the past three years. Sometimes it’s not so quiet. In a Buckingham Palace reception room during the recent NATO summit, a TV camera caught a cluster of European leaders grinning as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared to mock Trump. “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” Trudeau said, apparently speaking about his meeting with Trump, talking to a group that included the leaders of France, Britain and the Netherlands. Trudeau quickly tried to walk back his words, telling reporters that he and Trump have a “good and constructive relationship.” But the footage brought into the open the increasing divide between the United States and its allies. This is a major change. For generations, America saw itself as the center of the world. For better or worse, most of the rest of the world has regarded the U.S. as its colossus — respecting it, fearing it, turning to it for answers. “We are America,” said Madeleine Albright, secretary of state in the Clinton administration. “We are the indispensable nation.” To be sure, America is still a global superpower. But now, the country’s waning influence is profoundly redrawing the geopolitical map, opening the way for Washington’s two most powerful foes — Russia and China — to extend their reach into many countries where they had long been seen with suspicion. Because those longtime friends of Washington? Many are now looking elsewhere for alliances. Very often, they look to China or Russia. In Islamabad, for example, where the U.S. was once seen as the only game in town, Pakistan’s government now gets military aid and training from Russia and billions of dollars in investment and loans from China. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte is nurturing closer ties to Beijing despite his nervousness over its expansionism in the South China Sea. In Egypt, long one of America’s closest Middle Eastern allies, Cairo now lets Russian military planes use its bases and the two countries recently held joint air force exercises. In Ukraine, which has looked to U.S. military aid for years to try to keep an expansionist Russia in check, Trump’s questionable loyalty is seen as creating a dangerous vacuum. “Once the U.S. role in Europe weakens, Russia’s influence inevitably grows,” Vadim Karasev, head of the Kyiv-based Institute of Global Strategies said. Or there’s France, whose friendship with America goes back to the days of George Washington. Perhaps more than any other Western leader, French President Emmanuel Macron has made clear that Europe should look to Beijing, not Washington, when it comes to addressing global issues from trade wars to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Macron’s recent trip to China was choreographed in part to convey that the European Union has little faith in Washington anymore. Europe is on “the edge of a precipice,” Macron told The Economist magazine in a recent interview. “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” he said, a reference to the announced U.S. withdrawal from northern Syria. Perhaps no U.S. ally is more worried than the Kurds, America’s longtime battlefield allies. They bore the brunt of the combat as the Islamic State group was driven from the territory it held across a swath of Iraq and Syria. “Betrayal process is officially complete,” a Kurdish official said in a WhatsApp message sent to journalists after Trump’s defense secretary announced U.S. troops would fully withdraw from northeastern Syria. That pullout paved the way for a Turkish offensive against Kurdish fighters and signaled to the world that U.S. may no longer be as reliable as it once was. The Kurds weren’t taken completely by surprise. Kurdish officials had been holding back -channel talks with Syria and Russia for more than a year before the announcement. The Kurds feared they would be abandoned by Washington. China has been delighted by what it sees as the voluntary abdication of U.S. leadership, particularly on free trade and climate change. Trump’s pullout from the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example, opened the way for Beijing to push ahead with its own alternative free-trade agreement. Meanwhile, China has gone from being a climate change curmudgeon to sometimes reaping praise as a global leader on the issue. The White House’s National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment about this story. Trump insists he is not pulling the U.S. off the world stage. He cites partnerships with other nations to fight terrorism and his administration highlights a recent high-profile raid in Syria that killed the leader of the Islamic State group. Trump has successfully coaxed NATO allies to spend billions more on their own defense to lessen the burden on the U.S. He complains that America should not be the world’s policeman or its piggy bank, and needs to get out of what he calls ”endless wars.” Some former administration officials have cited Trump’s business background to describe him as having a “transactional” approach to foreign policy. He has pulled out of multilateral agreements, such as the Iran nuclear deal, yet he needs international support to pressure Tehran for its regional aggression and nuclear program. He gets credit for opening dialogues with the Afghan Taliban and North Korea, although efforts to end America’s longest war and get Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons have so far been unsuccessful. He also has set about negotiating bilateral trade agreements with many countries because he says deals made by previous administrations were unfair to the U.S. He had success with South Korea, yet has not yet sealed a deal with China. In some ways, Washington’s declining influence is simply a reflection of history: America is no longer the singular economic and military giant that overshadowed nearly every other nation. In 1945, America had the world’s only nuclear weapons and produced roughly half the world’s gross domestic product. Today, the U.S. has perhaps 15 percent of global GDP and even North Korea has nuclear weapons. Other countries have grown immensely. China, once a poverty-battered behemoth, has become a financial giant and an emerging superpower. Countries from Brazil to India to South Korea have become serious regional powers. But if history plays a role, the diplomatic shifts of the Trump years are more about a White House unapologetically focused on the U.S. Globalism was once one of Washington’s few unifying themes. Now, it’s an insult in the capital, and the U.S. gets more attention for rejecting multilateral agreements, from Trump pulling out of the Asia-Pacific deal to his rejection of the Paris climate accords. The president has hosted only two state dinners and has repeatedly sought to slash the State Department budget. Trump insists talk of American decline is nonsense. “The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to belittle my VERY successful trip to London for NATO,” Trump tweeted after the summit, adding that there was “only deep respect” for the United States. America still has enormous power. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey done across 25 countries found that only 25 percent of people believed the U.S. plays a less important role now than it did a decade ago. Another of the survey’s findings: People in nearly every country said they preferred a world order led by the United States. Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon, Maggie Hyde, Zeina Karam, Sarah El Deeb, Yuras Karmanau, Sylvie Corbet, Jim Gomez and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report. Watchdog Expected to Find Russia Probe Valid, Despite FlawsSunday December 8th, 2019 09:38:05 PM Eric TuckerThe Justice Department’s internal watchdog will release a highly anticipated report Monday that is expected to reject President Donald Trump’s claims that the Russia investigation was illegitimate and tainted by political bias from FBI leaders. But it is also expected to document errors during the investigation that may animate Trump supporters. The report, as described by people familiar with its findings, is expected to conclude there was an adequate basis for opening one of the most politically sensitive investigations in FBI history and one that Trump has denounced as a witch hunt. It began in secret during Trump’s 2016 presidential run and was ultimately taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller. The report comes as Trump faces an impeachment inquiry in Congress centered on his efforts to press Ukraine to investigate a political rival, Democrat Joe Biden — a probe the president also claims is politically biased. Still, the release of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review is unlikely to quell the partisan battles that have surrounded the Russia investigation for years. It’s also not the last word: A separate internal investigation continues, overseen by Trump’s attorney general, William Barr and led by a U.S. attorney, John Durham. That investigation is criminal in nature, and Republicans may look to it to uncover wrongdoing that the inspector general wasn’t examining. Trump tweeted Sunday: “I.G. report out tomorrow. That will be the big story!” He previously has said that he was awaiting Horowitz’s report but that Durham’s report may be even more important. Horowitz’s report is expected to identify errors and misjudgments by some law enforcement officials, including by an FBI lawyer suspected of altering a document related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide. Those findings probably will fuel arguments by Trump and his supporters that the investigation was flawed from the start. But the report will not endorse some of the president’s theories on the investigation, including that it was a baseless “witch hunt” or that he was targeted by an Obama administration Justice Department desperate to see Republican Trump lose to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. It also is not expected to undo Mueller’s findings or call into question his conclusion that Russia interfered in that election in order to benefit the Trump campaign and that Russians had repeated contacts with Trump associates. Some of the findings were described to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity by people who were not authorized to discuss a draft of the report before its release. The AP has not viewed a copy of the document. It is unclear how Barr, a strong defender of Trump, will respond to Horowitz’s findings. He has told Congress that he believed “spying” on the Trump campaign did occur and has raised public questions about whether the counterintelligence investigation was done correctly. The FBI opened its investigation in July 2016 after receiving information from an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, had been told before it was publicly known that Russia had dirt on the Clinton campaign in the form of thousands of stolen emails. By that point, the Democratic National Committee had been hacked, an act that a private security firm — and ultimately U.S. intelligence agencies — attributed to Russia. Prosecutors allege that Papadopoulos learned about the stolen emails from a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud. Papadopoulous pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about that interaction. The investigation was taken over in May 2017 by Mueller, who charged six Trump associates with various crimes as well as 25 Russians accused of interfering in the election either through hacking or a social media disinformation campaign. Mueller did not find sufficient evidence to charge a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. He examined multiple episodes in which Trump sought to seize control of the investigation, including by firing James Comey as FBI director, but declined to decide on whether Trump had illegally obstructed justice. The inspector general’s investigation began in early 2018. It focuses in part on the FBI’s surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. The FBI applied in the fall of 2016 for a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Page’s communications, with officials expressing concern that he may have been targeted for recruitment by the Russian government. Page was never charged and has denied any wrongdoing. Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to hear testimony from Horowitz on Wednesday, said he expected the report would be “damning” about the process of obtaining the warrant. “I’m looking for evidence of whether or not they manipulated the facts to get the warrant,” Graham, R-S.C., said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” The warrant was renewed several times, including during the Trump administration. Republicans have attacked the procedures because the application relied in part on information gathered by an ex-British intelligence operative, Christopher Steele, whose opposition research into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia was funded by Democrats and the Clinton campaign. In pursuing the warrant, the Justice Department referred to Steele as “reliable” from previous dealings with him. Though officials told the court that they suspected the research was aimed at discrediting the Trump campaign, they did not reveal that the work had been paid for by Democrats, according to documents released last year. Steele’s research was compiled into a dossier that was provided to the FBI after it had already opened its investigation. The report also examined the interactions that senior Justice Department lawyer Bruce Ohr had with Steele, whom he had met years earlier through a shared professional interest in countering Russian organized crime. Ohr passed along to the FBI information that he had received from Steele but did not alert his Justice Department bosses to those conversations. Ohr has since been a regular target of Trump’s ire, in part because his wife worked as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the political research firm that hired Steele for the investigation. This is the latest in a series of reports that Horowitz, a former federal prosecutor and an Obama appointee to the watchdog role, has released on FBI actions in politically charged investigations. Last year, he criticized Comey for a news conference announcing the conclusion of the Clinton email investigation, and for then alerting Congress months later that the probe had been effectively reopened. In that report, too, Horowitz did not find that Comey’s actions had been guided by partisan bias. Andrew Yang Keeps It Fun, But Messages Are SeriousSunday December 8th, 2019 08:31:14 PMOf all the many Democrats running for president, Andrew Yang is having the most fun. Unburdened by expectations and unbothered by political convention, the tech entrepreneur has spent months cruising around the country, mixing his dark warnings about America’s new tech economy with doses of humor and unscripted bluntness. He has crowd-surfed, skateboarded and made memorable quips at nationally televised debates. At a new office opening in New Hampshire, he sprayed whipped cream from an aerosol can into the mouths of hyped-up supporters. Later this month in Las Vegas, he’ll raise money for his campaign at a high-roller poker tournament featuring World Series of Poker champions. The formula has made him one of this 2020 campaign’s phenomenons. His outsider bid is fueled by policy, personality and technology. It’s outlasted the White House campaigns this year of some governors and senators, and seems to be following the advice of a former state party chairman who said voters can tell whether candidates are enjoying themselves. Yang’s campaign may not have him on track to winning the nomination, but it may be delivering sober warnings to conventional Democrats about the kinds of voters they’re leaving behind. “You can tell if someone’s like gritting their teeth or if they’re genuinely happy to be there and want to talk to you,” Yang said between events at two Chicago universities this past week, including a rally that drew about 1,500 people. The former state chairman’s guidance, he said, has “made it easier for me to lean into just how I would naturally be as a person.” “I think if people dig into my campaign they see it’s a very, very serious message,” Yang said. “We are going through the greatest economic transformation in our country’s history and we need to rewrite the rules of this economy to work for us. So people, I believe, are savvy enough to know that you can have a very, very serious message and actually enjoy yourself while you’re delivering it.” Yang is on the bubble to qualify for this month’s debate after appearing in the first five. He has hovered in the low single digits in polling along with several candidates who trail former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. But what started out as overwhelmingly online fan base of predominantly male techie types has broadened its appeal. After initially self-funding, Yang raised $10 million in the third quarter. That’s more than most rivals, and he said that “we are going to beat that by a mile” in the final three months of this year. His supporters, known as the Yang Gang, often say the other Democrats in the race to take on President Donald Trump aren’t speaking to them or their fears. Many of these backers are young people who say they don’t feel aligned with either party. Several who attended the Chicago events said they supported Sanders in 2016 but grew disillusioned after he didn’t win the nomination. Many supported third-party candidates or just stayed home that Election Day, when Hillary Clinton led the ticket. And if Yang isn’t the party’s nominee, they may do so again in 2020. “A lot of people aren’t trusting the mainstream political candidates and pundits on TV. Yang is kind of like a breath of fresh air,” said Ethan Daniels, 23, who supported Sanders in 2016 but voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in the general election. “I think that’s the reason why Trump won the election because a lot of people are kind of getting tired of the staleness of these politicians who come through, and then nothing in their life changes.” Daniels finished college with degrees in sociology and criminal justice but is still looking for a job in his field. He said he first learned about Yang on a podcast hosted by comedian and former TV host Joe Rogan; that interview has more than 4.5 million views on YouTube. Daniels likes what Yang has to say about artificial intelligence, universal basic income and video game addiction, topics he says other Democrats “don’t want to talk about.” Daniels was among the supporters at Thursday’s rally wearing blue caps and other items with MATH — for “Make America Think Harder” — on them. It’s Yang’s twist on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. Yang says it’s aimed at getting people to blame job losses across the Rust Belt on the changing economy, rather than immigrants. He argues Americans just need to “think harder” about solutions. Yang’s parents are Taiwanese immigrants. He says he was a “nerdy Asian kid” who skipped a grade in school and was especially scrawny. He was called racial epithets and got in a lot of fights, “which I generally lost.” After college at Brown University and law school at Columbia Yang worked in the tech industry before starting a nonprofit that provided money to entrepreneurs. As he became focused on the toll of automation, he decided the best and necessary policy solution was a universal basic income. He decided that the fastest way to promote the ideas was “to run for president and win.” The “Freedom Dividends” that are now the signature policy of his campaign would provide every adult $1,000 per month, no strings attached, through a new tax on the companies benefiting most from automation. Yang says the money would give people breathing room to pay off debt, care for a sick family member or buy things, and would improve Americans’ mental health by alleviating financial stress. His campaign has been trying it out, giving the $1,000 monthly checks to about a dozen people, That plan, announced during a debate this fall, led to questions about whether he was trying to pay for votes. Joy McKinney, a Republican and evangelical, said she carefully researched universal basic income and Yang’s other policies before joining the “Yang Gang.” The 50-year-old financial planner didn’t vote in 2016 because she didn’t like either Trump or Clinton. But she’s been moved to tears by videos of the people receiving those first $1,000 checks. “Can you imagine a U.S. where everybody matters?” McKinney said. That’s what’s compelling to me.” Presidential campaigns have long been a stage for new personalities or novel ideas that may catch on for a time. The 2012 cycle had Herman Cain and his “9-9-9” tax plan. The 1992 campaign had Ross Perot and his debt charts. Still, Yang’s durability has caught many people by surprise. That may be a product of Yang’s tech and marketing savvy, said presidential historian Mike Purdy. “I think for most people he’s still an aberration,” he said. But Yang said he sees the race in terms of odds. His odds of winning, he says, are better than the odds he had of getting this far. “We’ve already done the hard part,” he said. North Korea Conducts ‘Important Test’ at Once-Dismantled SiteSunday December 8th, 2019 07:13:22 AM Hyung-Jin KimNorth Korea said Sunday that it carried out a “very important test” at its long-range rocket launch site that it reportedly rebuilt after having partially dismantled it at the start of denuclearization talks with the United States last year. The announcement comes amid dimming prospects for a resumption of negotiations, with the North threatening to seek “a new way” if it fails to get major U.S. concessions by year’s end. North Korea has said its resumption of nuclear and long-range missile tests depends on the United States. Saturday’s test at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground will have “an important effect on changing the strategic position of (North Korea) once again in the near future,” an unidentified spokesman from the North’s Academy of National Defense Science said in a statement, carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency. North Korea didn’t say what the test included. Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said that North Korea likely tested for the first time a solid-fuel engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile. The use of solid fuel increases a weapon’s mobility and reduces the amount of launch preparation time. The long-range rockets that North Korea used in either ICBM launches or satellite liftoffs in recent years all used liquid propellants. CNN reported Friday that a new satellite image indicated North Korea may be preparing to resume testing engines used to power satellite launchers and intercontinental ballistic missiles at the site. Seoul’s Defense Ministry said in a brief statement later Sunday that South Korea and the United States are closely monitoring activities at the Sohae site and other key North Korean areas. President Donald Trump reacted to the development by saying that North Korea “must denuclearize.” “Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, has tremendous economic potential, but it must denuclearize as promised,” he said. Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, added that North Korea has a choice to make. “And we hope they make the right choice,” he said in an interview Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.’’ On Saturday, Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in discussed developments related to North Korea, and the two leaders committed to continuing close communication, the White House said in a statement. Moon’s office also released a similar statement, saying the two leaders had a 30-minute phone conversation at Trump’s request. The North Korean test “is meant to improve military capabilities and to shore up domestic pride and legitimacy,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “With the activity at Sohae, Pyongyang is also trying to raise international concerns that it may intensify provocations and walk away from denuclearization talks next year.” The Sohae launching center in Tongchang-ri, a seaside region in western North Korea, is where the North has carried out banned satellite launches in recent years, resulting in worldwide condemnation and U.N. sanctions over claims that they were disguised tests of long-range missile technology. North Korea has said its satellite launches are part of its peaceful space development program. But many outside experts say ballistic missiles and rockets used in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. None of North Korea’s three intercontinental ballistic missile tests in 2017 was conducted at the Sohae site, but observers said the site was used to test engines for ICBMs. After his first summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June last year, Trump said Kim told him that North Korea was “already destroying a major missile engine testing site” in addition to committing to “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. Satellite imagery later showed the North dismantling a rocket engine-testing stand and other facilities at the Sohae site. Last March, South Korea’s spy agency and some U.S. experts said that North Korea was restoring the facilities, raising doubts about whether it was committed to denuclearization. U.S.-North Korea diplomacy has largely remained deadlocked since the second summit between Trump and Kim in Vietnam in February due to disputes over how much sanctions relief the North must get in return for dismantling its key nuclear complex — a limited disarmament step. North Korea has since warned that the U.S. must abandon hostile policies and come out with new acceptable proposals by the end of this year or it would take an unspecified new path. In recent months, North Korea has performed a slew of short-range missile and other weapons launches and hinted at lifting its moratorium on nuclear and long-range missiles. North Korea said the results of Saturday’s test were submitted to the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party. The North said last week that the Central Committee will hold a meeting in late December to discuss unspecified “crucial issues” in line with “the changed situation at home and abroad.” At the United Nations, a statement released by North Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Kim Song, said Saturday that denuclearization had “already gone out of the negotiation table.” The statement accused the Trump administration of persistently pursuing a “hostile policy” toward the country “in its attempt to stifle it.” The statement was a response to Wednesday’s condemnation by six European countries of North Korea’s 13 ballistic missile launches since May. The North Korean diplomat accused the Europeans — France, Germany, Britain, Belgium, Poland and Estonia — of playing “the role of pet dog of the United States in recent months.” “We regard their behavior as nothing more than a despicable act of intentionally flattering the United States,” the ambassador said. Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report. Fact Check: Trump and the People He Forgets He KnewSaturday December 7th, 2019 10:42:38 PM Calvin Woodward and Hope YenWhen certain associates and acquaintances of President Donald Trump get into hot water, he forgets he ever knew them. Various figures from the Russia investigation and the Ukraine matter as well as a British prince have fallen out of familiarity with the president in this way. For a few days, the stock market suffered a similar fate when it dipped too low for Trump to boast about it. But he rediscovered the market by the end of the week when it rose back up. A look at some remarks by Trump from the NATO summit in London and from back home as the Democratic effort to impeach him moves ahead: PRINCE ANDREW THE FACTS: Trump knows the British prince. Andrew hosted a breakfast for him in June, they toured Westminster Abbey together and photos spread over two decades capture some occasions when they’ve met. The prince stepped back from royal duties after his involvement with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was exposed. Trump also recently declared, repeatedly, that he did not know Gordon Sondland, his ambassador to the EU, “very well” and “I have not spoken to him much.” Sondland provided some of the most damning testimony in the House impeachment inquiry about how he had tried to carry out Trump’s wishes to persuade Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rivals in the U.S. Sondland testified that he’s had many conversations with Trump, who called the ambassador “a really good man and great American” before Sondland’s problematic testimony. Several people in prominent positions in the Trump campaign or known as close advisers were similarly marginalized — as mere volunteers, hangers-on or low-level functionaries — when it became troublesome during the Russia investigation to acknowledge their stature. STOCK MARKET THE FACTS: This is not true. Trump watches the stock market, as he demonstrated Friday when the market rebounded and he tweeted precise percentages of how much the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq have gone up this year. “Stock Markets Up Record Numbers,” he tweeted. Trump uses the stock market as a leading barometer of his presidency, giving the subject a rest only when the market’s performance is down. It’s an almost constant companion, through thick but not thin. On a good day, he will tweet about it. Otherwise, his rally speeches and White House remarks are laced with references to the market’s growth since he became president. He takes credit for gains and blames losses on other things, like Democrats. Trump tweeted about the stock market more than a dozen times in November as it repeatedly edged into record highs. On one occasion, his boastfulness became too much even for him. He tweeted: “Stock Markets (all three) hit another ALL TIME & HISTORIC HIGH yesterday! You are sooo lucky to have me as your President.” Then he added: “(just kidding!).” MACRON THE FACTS: No, Macron did not back off what Trump had called a “very, very nasty” statement about NATO. He conspicuously stood by it, before the summit, after it and when face to face with Trump in a tense joint news conference. If anything, Macron appeared to relish the provocation he had brought on. “I do stand by it,” he said Tuesday as Trump looked on. “I assume full responsibility for it,” he said Wednesday. And Macron tweeted: “The comments I made about NATO prompted a debate among members of the alliance. This dialogue is a very good thing.” He likened himself to an ice-breaker smashing through ice. Macron characterized NATO as brain dead last month, citing a lack of U.S. leadership and confusion in the alliance about what its fundamental missions should be. He said the U.S. was turning its back on NATO and — in light of Trump’s unexpected announcement in October that he would withdraw troops from Syria — not coordinating with allies on strategic decision-making. On Wednesday, Macron mildly praised the summit as “constructive” while emphasizing that the fundamentals that sparked his complaint had not been resolved. OCEAN DEBRIS THE FACTS: He’s right that garbage from abroad has come to U.S. shores by sea. What he does not say, when making this repeated complaint, is that garbage from the U.S. also makes it over the ocean to other countries and that Americans have plenty to do with trashing their own shores. Debris from Asia was most noticeable after the 2011 Japanese tsunami, said marine debris expert Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association, “but the same can be said about debris entering the ocean from the U.S. and washing ashore in Asia.” In fact, she said, most debris is not tracked to the country of origin. The United States produces the largest amount of plastic waste in the world by weight, Law said. “Most debris we find on the coast of the US is likely from the US,” Denise Hardesty, a scientist who researches ocean trash for Australia’s federal science organization, said by email. Hardesty surveyed the U.S. West Coast from Washington to the California border with Mexico and found the dirtiest place was in Long Beach at the river mouth, where researchers found 4,500 items. Marcus Eriksen, chief science officer and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, which fights plastics pollution, said Asian fishing gear arrives as debris in Alaska and British Columbia because of north Pacific currents, a problem exacerbated by the lack of regulation of such gear. But in pointing the finger at Asia, Trump is ignoring “our own problems with plastic waste here at home.” IMPEACHMENT THE FACTS: That’s a misrepresentation of the conditions for impeaching a president. The constitutional grounds for impeachment do not require any crime to have been committed. In setting the conditions, treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors, the Founding Fathers said that a consequential abuse of office — crime or not — was subject to the impeachment process they laid out. Months after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers that a commonly understood crime need not be the basis of impeachment. Offenses qualifying for that step “are of a nature … POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself,” he wrote. As they move toward drafting articles of impeachment, though, Democrats are alleging crimes involving obstruction of justice as part of their case that Trump abused his office. ___ TRUMP: “Breaking News: The President of Ukraine has just again announced that President Trump has done nothing wrong with respect to Ukraine and our interactions or calls … case over!” — tweet Monday. THE FACTS: Trump misleads in suggesting that Zelenskiy didn’t have any concerns about the call. Nor was the call “transcribed perfectly;” only a rough transcript was released by the White House. While Zelenskiy initially said there was no discussion of a quid pro quo, he said in an interview Monday with Time that Trump should not have blocked military aid to Ukraine. Zelenskiy also criticized Trump for casting the country as corrupt, saying it sends a concerning message to international allies. On that call discussing military aid, Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Trump’s political rivals in the U.S. “Look I never talked to the president from the position of a quid pro quo,” Zelenskiy said. “But you have to understand. We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness.” On corruption, Zelenskiy said it unfairly undermines support for the country. “Everyone hears that signal,” he said. “Investments, banks, stakeholders, companies, American, European, companies that have international capital in Ukraine, it’s a signal to them that says, ‘Be careful, don’t invest.’ Or, ‘Get out of there.'” It’s true that in early October, Zelenskiy had told reporters “there was no pressure or blackmail from the U.S.” But he did not state Trump had done “nothing” wrong, even as he let his criticisms simmer before surfacing them. In any event, Zelenskiy knew months before the call that much-needed U.S. military support might depend on whether he was willing to help Trump by investigating Democrats. ___ THE FACTS: Trump is wrong about being deprived of an attorney in the House Judiciary Committee hearings. The committee invited Trump and his lawyers to appear if he wishes, but the White House refused. In a letter early in the week to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., White House counsel Pat Cipollone declined the invitation for the president’s counsel to appear at Wednesday’s hearing while Trump was at the NATO summit, insisting that the inquiry violates “basic due process rights.” For hearings in the coming week, Trump had until Friday to decide whether he would take advantage of due process protections afforded to him under House rules adopted in October. He was offered an opportunity to ask for witness testimony and to cross-examine the witnesses called by the House. But he decided not to participate in that round, too. If the House impeaches Trump, the Senate trial will look like a normal trial in some respects, with senators as the jury. Arguments would be heard from each side’s legal team for and against Trump’s removal from office. The Intelligence Committee hearings, in contrast, were like the investigative phase of criminal cases, conducted without the participation of the person under investigation. ___ THE FACTS: She’s wrong to suggest that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report cleared the Trump campaign of collusion with Russia. Nor did the report exonerate Trump on the question of whether he obstructed justice. Instead, the report factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter or for prosecutors to do so once Trump leaves office. Mueller’s two-year investigation and other scrutiny revealed a multitude of meetings with Russians. Among them: Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt on Clinton. On collusion, Mueller said he did not assess whether that occurred because it is not a legal term. He looked into a potential criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and said the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front. Mueller noted some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the Fifth Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he “cannot rule out the possibility” that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation’s findings. Mueller also did not reach a conclusion as to whether the president obstructed justice or broke any other law. He said his team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge Trump, partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn’t be indicted. TRADE THE FACTS: He is wildly wrong to state that the U.S. never won victories in disputes taken to the trade organization before him. The U.S. has always had a high success rate when it pursues cases against other countries at the WTO. In 2017, trade analyst Daniel Ikenson of the libertarian Cato Institute found that the U.S. won 91% of the cases it took to the Geneva-based trade monitor. As Ikenson noted, countries bringing complaints to the organization tend to win because they don’t bother going to the WTO in the first place if they don’t have a strong case. As for Trump’s claim that the U.S. “won” $7.5 billion from the WTO, that’s not quite right. Trump was referring to a WTO decision in October siding with the U.S. on imposing tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of European imports annually. The value of the tariffs on those imports is much less than $7.5 billion. The WTO announcement culminated a 15-year fight over EU subsidies for Airbus — a fight that began long before Trump was in office. ISLAMIC STATE MACRON: There are “very large number of fighters … ISIS fighters coming from Syria, from Iraq and the region.” Those from Europe are “a tiny minority of the overall problem.” THE FACTS: Trump is incorrect to say the Islamic State fighters who were captured and held by the Kurds in Syria are mostly from Europe. Of the more than 12,000 IS fighters in custody in Kurdish areas, only 2,500 are from outside the region of the conflict, some from Europe, some from other parts of the world. Most of the captured fighters — about 10,000 — are natives of Syria or Iraq. European nations have indeed been reluctant to take detainees who came from Europe, frustrating Trump. But such detainees are far fewer than the majority he frequently claims. ___ THE FACTS: That’s not true. The oil in Syria belongs to Syria and the U.S. can’t do anything it wants with it. As secretary of state, Rex Tillerson reviewed whether the U.S. could make money off the oil-rich areas and concluded there was no practical way to do so, said Brett McGurk, Trump’s former special envoy to the global coalition to defeat IS. “Maybe there are new lawyers now, but it was just illegal for an American company to go and seize and exploit these assets,” McGurk told a panel on Syria held in October by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Stephen Vladeck, a national security law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said there is no solid legal argument the Trump administration could make if it sought to claim Syria’s oil. While Trump has said he will withdraw the bulk of roughly 1,000 American troops from Syria, he’s made clear he will leave some military forces in the country to help secure the oil from any IS resurgence. The Pentagon has said it is committed to sending additional military forces to eastern Syria to “reinforce” control of the oil fields and prevent them from “falling back to into the hands of ISIS or other destabilizing actors.” BRITAIN’S HEALTH CARE THE FACTS: He’s referring to his own past statements as a “rumor.” Asked about the National Health Service during a visit to Britain in June, he said “when you’re dealing in trade, everything’s on the table. So, NHS or anything else.” The service, which provides free health care to all Britons, could in fact be a bargaining chip in U.S.-U.K. trade talks. U.S. health-services companies can already bid for contracts if they have European subsidiaries. A future government could increase the amount of private-sector involvement or let U.S. companies bid directly. As well, the U.S. could demand during trade talks that Britain pay American pharmaceutical companies more for drugs. Medicines became a big issue in negotiations on a revamped North American free trade deal, as the U.S. pushed successfully for tighter restrictions on the development in Canada and Mexico of generic versions of U.S.-patented drugs. Leaked documents from preliminary talks between U.S. and U.K. negotiators over two years from July 2017 — released by the Labour Party last week — said “patent issues” around “NHS access to generic drugs will be a key consideration” in talks. It’s an overstatement to say the national health service as a whole would be up for sale, as Labour has alleged will happen if Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives win the Dec. 12 election and try to strike a post-Brexit trade deal with the U.S. Britain would not be “selling off” the health service, as Labour asserts, because taxpayers would still be footing the bill. But it’s also improbable to think U.S. negotiators would “want nothing to do” with Britain’s health care market, despite Trump’s words. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Seth Borenstein, Darlene Superville, Paul Wiseman, Jill Lawless and Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report. House Impeachment Report Looks at Abuse, Bribery, CorruptionSaturday December 7th, 2019 09:38:37 PM Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare JalonickPreviewing potential articles of impeachment, the House Democrats on Saturday issued a lengthy report drawing on history and the Founding Fathers to lay out the legal argument over the case against President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. The findings from the House Judiciary Committee do not spell out the formal charges against the president, which are being drafted ahead of votes, possibly as soon as next week. Instead, the report refutes Trump’s criticism of the impeachment proceedings, arguing that the Constitution created impeachment as a “safety valve” so Americans would not have to wait for the next election to remove a president. It refers to the writings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and others to link Trump’s actions in his July phone call with Ukraine’s president seeking political investigations of his rivals to the kind of behavior that would “horrify” the framers. “Where the President uses his foreign affairs power in ways that betray the national interest for his own benefit, or harm national security for equally corrupt reasons, he is subject to impeachment by the House,” the Democrats wrote. “Indeed, foreign interference in the American political system was among the gravest dangers feared by the Founders of our Nation and the Framers of our Constitution.” Democrats are working through the weekend as articles are being drafted and committee members are preparing for a hearing Monday. Democrats say Trump abused his power in the July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor and engaged in bribery by withholding nearly $400 million in military aide that Ukraine depends on to counter Russian aggression. Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it’s part of a troubling pattern of behavior from Trump that benefits Russia and not the U.S. Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong. “Witch Hunt!”the president tweeted Saturday morning. The articles of impeachment are likely to encompass two major themes — abuse of office and obstruction — as Democrats strive to reach the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” In releasing his report Saturday, Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the president’s actions are the framers’ “worst nightmare.” “President Trump abused his power, betrayed our national security, and corrupted our elections, all for personal gain. The Constitution details only one remedy for this misconduct: impeachment,” Nadler said in a statement. “The safety and security of our nation, our democracy, and future generations hang in the balance if we do not address this misconduct. In America, no one is above the law, not even the President.” The report released Saturday is an update of similar reports issued during the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachments and lays out the justification for articles under consideration, including abuse of power, bribery and obstruction. It does not lay out the facts of the Ukraine case, but it hints at potential articles of impeachment and explains the thinking behind Democrats’ decision to draft them. Without frequently mentioning Trump, it alludes to his requests that Ukraine investigate Democrats, a move he believed would benefit him politically, by saying a president who “perverts his role as chief diplomat to serve private rather than public ends” has unquestionably engaged in the high crimes and misdemeanors laid out in the Constitution. That is true “especially” if he invited rather than opposed foreign interference, the report says. The report examines treason, bribery, serious abuse of power, betrayal of the national interest through foreign entanglements and corruption of office and elections. Democrats have been focused on an overall abuse of power article, with the possibility of breaking out a separate, related article on bribery. They are also expected to draft at least one article on obstruction of Congress, or obstruction of justice. In laying out the grounds for impeachable offenses, the report directly refutes several of the president’s claims in a section called “fallacies about impeachment,” including that the inquiry is based on secondhand evidence, that a president can do what he wants to do, and that Democrats’ motives are corrupt. “The President’s honesty in an impeachment inquiry, or his lack thereof, can thus shed light on the underlying issue,” the report says. In pushing ahead with the impeachment inquiry, Democrats are bringing the focus back to Russia. Pelosi is connecting the dots — “all roads lead to Putin,” she says — and making the argument that Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine was not an isolated incident but part of a troubling bond with the Russian president reaching back to special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings on the 2016 election interference. “This isn’t about Ukraine,” she explained a day earlier. “‘It’s about Russia. Who benefited by our withholding of that military assistance? Russia.” It’s an attempt to explain why Americans should care that Trump pushed Ukraine to investigate rival Joe Biden while withholding the military aid that Congress had approved. At the same time, by tracing the arc of Trump’s behavior from the 2016 campaign to the present, it stitches it all together. And that helps the speaker balance her left-flank liberals, who want more charges brought against Trump, including from Mueller’s report, and centrist Democrats who prefer to keep the argument more narrowly focused on Ukraine. Pelosi and her team are trying to convey a message that impeachment is indeed about Ukraine, but also about a pattern of behavior that could stoke renewed concern about his attitude toward Russia ahead of the 2020 election. Trump pushed back on the Democrats’ message. “The people see that it’s just a continuation of this three-year witch hunt,” he told reporters as he left the White House on a trip to Florida. Late Friday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone informed the Judiciary Committee that the administration would not be participating in upcoming hearings, decrying the proceedings as “completely baseless.” And Trump’s campaign announced new rallies taking the case directly to voters — as well as a new email fundraising pitch that claims the Democrats have “gone absolutely insane.” “The Democrats have NO impeachment case and are demeaning our great Country at YOUR expense,” Trump wrote in the email to supporters. “It’s US against THEM.” Impeachment articles could include obstruction of Congress, as the White House ordered officials not to comply with House subpoenas for testimony or documents in the inquiry. They could also include obstruction of justice, based on Mueller’s report on the original Trump-Russia investigation. There is still robust internal debate among House Democrats over how many articles to write and how much to include — and particularly whether there should be specific mention of Mueller’s findings from his two-year investigation into Trump’s possible role in Russia’s 2016 election interference. The special counsel could not determine that Trump’s campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia. However, Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the probe and left it for Congress to determine. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. Impeachment Collides With Funding Deadline, Testing CongressSaturday December 7th, 2019 05:15:46 PM Joe MichalitsianosThe impeachment drama is dominating Washington, but leading figures such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still have their day jobs to do. The California Democrat faces a testing over the next two weeks, toggling between the impeachment of President Donald Trump and past-ripe issues including North American trade legislation and a massive government-wide funding bill. December is always a busy time in Congress as busted deadlines come due and must-pass legislation reaches the floor. But the poisonous atmosphere surrounding impeachment has raised questions about whether lawmakers can deliver their usual year-end bundle. “American families deserve better than this partisan paralysis where Democrats obsess over impeachment and obstruct everything else,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., attacking Democrats for delays in the defense budget. Behind the scenes, Pelosi is confronting a difficult set of issues that requires agreement with Republicans controlling the Senate, not to mention the signature of the very president she is working to impeach. Topping the agenda is legislation to avoid another government shutdown. A government-wide funding bill expires on Dec. 20, leaving lawmakers little time to prevent a repeat of last winter’s shutdown fiasco. A new battle over money for Trump’s U.S-Mexico border wall, the same issue that started the last shutdown, remains unresolved. Pelosi is also at the center of a long-sought deal on an updated North American trade pact. It is a top bipartisan priority but requires a delicate two-step involving the Mexican government, Democratic labor allies and the Trump administration. Prospects are looking better on another front: The administration and Democrats have stuck an informal agreement on the annual defense policy measure, with a key add-on that would deliver up to 12 weeks of parental leave to federal workers. But it is the funding measure that looms largest. Closing out a $1.4 trillion catchall spending package before Christmas could be a long shot, though Pelosi says she is optimistic. “I don’t think we’re headed for a shutdown. I don’t think anybody wants that. I think the president and the Republicans learned in the last shutdown that … there was no upside to it,” Pelosi said in a CNN town hall on Thursday night. “And we’re on a good path.” That path, however, is likely to lead to some split-the-differences agreements with Republicans that liberals will find frustrating, such as continued funding for Trump’s border wall. Pelosi typically proceeds with care before committing to such deals, consulting with stakeholders inside the party such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., a Pelosi ally, said Friday she’s hopeful that lawmakers could meet the Dec. 20 deadline to complete their work without resorting to a third government-wide stopgap spending bill. “There’s an overwhelming desire to be home for the holidays,” Lowey said. Pelosi said that if more time is needed she would only advance a short-term extension, a move that would require lawmakers to return to Washington early next month. That in itself could provide motivation for wrapping up before Christmas. A positive sign came Thursday night as Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., spoke with Trump about trying to wrap up the spending package. Shelby and other top lawmakers such as Pelosi prefer to avoid dealing with White House hard-liners and have reached out to more favored figures like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Similarly optimistic is House Ways and Means Committee Richard Neal, D-Mass., who along with Pelosi and other Democratic leaders is trying to bring the updated trade agreement with Mexico and Canada to a successful finish. “I think we’re really close,” Neal said. “A couple of more issues and maybe a little bit of clarification, but we’re really close.” Some lawmakers and lobbyists believe that impeachment is actually helping the trade deal talks because Democrats are facing pressure to show voters they are still legislating. It helps that the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal is a good fit for more moderate Democrats who will be running for reelection in Trump-leaning districts. “I don’t want to go home and just say we’ve voted on whatever happens on the impeachment and just go home with that,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas. “A lot of us need something to take back home. And the trade agreement is certainly one of them.” On Friday, Democrats controlling the House voted to update the Voting Rights Act and reduce voter suppression; next week features a vote on legislation to address sky-high prescription drug prices. The votes, on two major Democratic priorities, aren’t getting much attention as the legislation joins a pile of Democratic bills that are dead in the GOP-held Senate. The time crunch is exacerbated by a Senate impeachment trial that is likely to consume at least the month of January. That scenario has lawmakers eager to clear the decks now. “Let’s get as much done as we can, for crying out loud,” said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho. Iran Frees Chinese-American Scholar for US-Held ScientistSaturday December 7th, 2019 12:45:47 PM Jon Gambrell and Matthew LeeA Princeton scholar held for three years in Iran on widely criticized espionage charges was freed Saturday as part of a prisoner exchange that saw America release a detained Iranian scientist, a rare diplomatic breakthrough between Tehran and Washington after months of tensions. The trade on the tarmac of a Swiss airport saw Iranian officials hand over Chinese-American graduate student Xiyue Wang for scientist Massoud Soleimani, who had faced a federal trial in Georgia over charges he violated sanctions by trying to have biological material brought to Iran. The swap, however, had clear limits. Crushing U.S. sanctions on Iran blocking it from selling crude oil abroad remain in place, part of President Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign imposed following his unilateral withdraw from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers last year. Those sanctions in part fueled the anger seen in nationwide protests last month that Iranian security forces violently put down, unrest that reportedly killed over 200 people. Meanwhile, Western detainees from the U.S. and elsewhere remain held by Tehran, likely to be used as bargaining chips for future negotiations. At least two American families of detainees, while praising Wang’s release, questioned why their loved ones didn’t come home as well. Wang’s release had been rumored over recent days. One lawyer involved in his case tweeted out a Bible verse about an angel freeing the apostle Peter just hours before Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif broke the news in his own tweet. He posted pictures of himself with Soleimani at the Zurich airport before quickly whisking him back to Tehran by jet. Trump shortly after acknowledged Wang was free in a statement from the White House, thanking Switzerland for its help. The Swiss Embassy in Tehran looks out for America’s interests in the country as the U.S. Embassy there has been closed since the 1979 student takeover and 444-day hostage crisis. “We’re very happy to have our hostage back. The whole Princeton University community is very thrilled and it was a one-on-one hostage swap,” said Trump, speaking to reporters outside the White House before he left on a trip to Florida. “Actually I think it was a great thing for Iran. I think it was great to show that we can do something. It might have been a precursor as to what can be done. But we have our hostage back.” Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, accompanied the Soleimani to Switzerland to make the exchange. He later posed for a photograph with Wang, who carried a folded American flag in his arms while wearing gray workout clothes. Hook and Wang traveled to Landstuhl hospital near Ramstein Air Base in Germany where Wang likely will be examined by doctors for several days. Wang’s wife, Hua Qu, released a statement saying “our family is complete once again.” “Our son Shaofan and I have waited three long years for this day and it’s hard to express in words how excited we are to be reunited with Xiyue,” she said. “We are thankful to everyone who helped make this happen.” Soleimani arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport with Zarif, where his wife and family wrapped garlands of yellow and purple carnations around his neck. He briefly spoke to journalists from state-run media, his voice shaking and a tear running down his face under a portrait of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “Their grudge against us is based on our scientific growth,” Soleimani said. “They are afraid of our knowledge.” Wang was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran for allegedly “infiltrating” the country and sending confidential material abroad. Wang was arrested in 2016 while conducting research on the Qajar dynasty that once ruled Iran for his doctorate in late 19th- and early 20th-century Eurasian history, according to Princeton. Wang’s family and Princeton strongly denied the claims. The United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said “there was no legal basis for the arrest and detention.” Westerners and Iranian dual nationals with ties to the West often find themselves tried and convicted in closed-door trials, only later to be used as bargaining chips in negotiations. Soleimani works in stem cell research, hematology and regenerative medicine. He and his lawyers maintained his innocence, saying he seized on a former student’s plans to travel from the U.S. to Iran in September 2016 as a chance to get recombinant proteins used in his research for a fraction of the price he’d pay at home. Zarif in September said in an interview with NPR that he had pushed for an exchange of Wang for Soleimani. Speaking in Tehran on Saturday night, Zarif referred to Wang as a “spy” who received his release due to “Islamic mercy.” It remains unclear whether this exchange will have a wider effect on Iranian-U.S. relations. Iran has accused the U.S. without evidence of being behind the mid-November protests over gasoline prices. The demonstrations and the crackdown reportedly killed at least 208 people, though Iran has refused to release nationwide statistics over the unrest. Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ruled out direct talks between the nations. A U.S. official, speaking to journalists on condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations with Iran, suggested the maximum pressure campaign targeting Tehran would continue. “There’s been absolutely no payment of cash or lifting of sanctions or any sort of concessions or ransom in any of these cases, and certainly not with respect to Mr. Wang,” the official said. There had been signs a swap could be coming. In June, Iran released Nizar Zakka, a U.S. permanent resident from Lebanon who advocated for internet freedom and has done work for the U.S. government. The U.S. then deported Iranian Negar Ghodskani in September, who had been brought from Australia and later sentenced to time served for conspiracy to illegally export restricted technology to Iran. Others held in Iran include U.S. Navy veteran Michael White, who is serving a 10-year espionage sentence, as well as environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian with U.S. and British citizenship also initially sentenced to 10 years in prison. Also in Iran are 83-year-old Baquer Namazi and his son, Siamak Namazi, dual Iranian-American nationals facing 10-year sentences after they were convicted of collaborating with a hostile power. Baquer Namazi now is on a prison furlough, said Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman at Iran’s mission to the United Nations. However, the Namazis say he remains unable to leave Iran. Babak Namazi, Baquer’s son and Siamak’s brother, issued a statement saying he was “beyond devastated that a second president” had left the two behind. An earlier 2016 prisoner swap as the nuclear deal took effect saw prisoners including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian released but not the Namazis. Former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who vanished in Iran in 2007 while on an unauthorized CIA mission, remains missing as well. Iran says that Levinson is not in the country and that it has no further information about him, but his family holds Tehran responsible for his disappearance. “We can’t help but be extremely disappointed that, despite all its efforts, the United States government was unable to secure his release, especially after such a painful week for our family,” the Levinson family said in a statement. “Iranian authorities continue to play a cruel game with our father’s life, and with our family. But the world knows the truth, and Iranian leadership must come clean.” Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Nasser Karimi contributed to this report. ‘All Roads Lead to Putin’: Impeachment Ties Ukraine, RussiaSaturday December 7th, 2019 11:53:22 AM Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare JalonickHouse Democrats are bringing the impeachment focus back to Russia as they draft formal charges against President Donald Trump. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is connecting the dots — “all roads lead to Putin,” she says — and making the argument that Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine was not an isolated incident but part of a troubling bond with the Russian president reaching back to special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings on the 2016 election. “This has been going on for 2 1/2 years,” Pelosi said Friday. “This isn’t about Ukraine,” she explained a day earlier. “‘It’s about Russia. Who benefited by our withholding of that military assistance? Russia.” The framing is taking on greater urgency and importance, both as a practical matter and a political one, as Democrats move seriously into writing the articles of impeachment. It’s an attempt to explain why Americans should care that Trump pushed Ukraine to investigate rival Joe Biden while withholding $400 million in military aid that Congress had approved for the struggling Eastern European ally fighting a border war with Russia. “Sometimes people say, ‘Well I don’t know about Ukraine. I don’t know that much about Ukraine,'” Pelosi said Thursday after announcing the decision to draft formal charges. “Well, our adversary in this is Russia. All roads lead to Putin. Understand that.”
Who’s Who in the Trump-Ukraine Affair President Donald Trump faces a formal impeachment inquiry led in the Democratic-controlled House after he asked the newly elected Ukrainian president to investigate one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden. Credit: Noreen O’Donnell, Nelson Hsu, Nina Lin/NBC At the same time, tracing the arc of Trump’s behavior from the 2016 campaign to the present, stitches it all together. And that helps the speaker balance her left-flank liberals, who want more charges brought against Trump, including from Mueller’s report, and centrist Democrats who prefer to keep the argument more narrowly focused on Ukraine. Pelosi and her team are trying to convey a message that impeachment is indeed about Ukraine — Trump’s asking-for-a-favor phone call that sparked the probe — but also about a pattern of behavior that could stoke renewed concern about his attitude toward Russia ahead of the 2020 election. “It shows that a leopard doesn’t change his spots,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., a member of the Intelligence Committee, which drafted the 300-page report on the Ukraine inquiry that serves as the foundation for the impeachment proceedings. With articles of impeachment coming in a matter of days and votes in the House expected by Christmas, Trump’s team is hardening its argument that the president did nothing wrong. They say voters will stick with him at the Democrats’ expense next November. Late Friday, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone informed the Judiciary Committee that the administration would not be participating in upcoming hearings, decrying the proceedings as “completely baseless.” And Trump’s campaign announced new rallies taking the case directly to voters — as well as a new email fundraising pitch that claims the Democrats have “gone absolutely insane.”‘ “The Democrats have NO impeachment case and are demeaning our great Country at YOUR expense,” Trump wrote in the email to supporters. “It’s US against THEM.” Democratic lawmakers and aides are working behind closed doors over the weekend as the articles are being drafted and Judiciary Committee members are preparing for hearings and votes expected next week. The articles are likely to encompass two major themes — abuse of office and obstruction — as the drafters strive to reach the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” But they could be divided up into multiple articles. Democrats argue that Trump abused his office when he asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a “favor” during a July 25 phone call congratulating the newly-elected comedian-turned-president. Trump wanted Ukraine to announce it was investigating Democrats including Biden, according to a rough transcript released under pressure by the White House. They might also include a charge of “bribery,” based on Trump’s decision to withhold the military aid and stall on granting Zelenskiy a coveted White House visit the new president was seeking as a show of support from the U.S., its most important ally. The money was eventually released once Congress began investigating in September. The meeting never happened. Obstruction articles could include obstruction of Congress, as the White House ordered officials not to comply with House subpoenas for testimony or documents in the impeachment inquiry. They could also include obstruction of justice, based on Mueller’s report on the original Trump-Russia investigation. There is still robust internal debate among House Democrats over how many articles to write and how much to include — and particularly whether there should be specific mention of Mueller’s findings from his two-year investigation into Trump’s possible role in Russia’s 2016 election interference. The special counsel could not determine that Trump’s campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia. However, Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the probe and left it for Congress to determine. Pelosi is particularly protective of the views of the new class of freshman lawmakers, who won elections in 2018 to give Democrats the House majority and will be up for re-election in 2020. Many of those Democrats who supported launching the impeachment probe have yet to say whether they will vote to impeach. “I can’t say if I’d vote for or against something until I see it,” said freshman Rep. Joe Cunningham, D-S.C. “Some of it seems connected. Some of it doesn’t.” Freshman Anthony Brindisi, D-N.Y., narrowly elected to a district Trump carried by 12 percentage points, said he’s right in the middle: “I’m totally undecided.” Democrats expect there will be two to four articles of impeachment against the president. Merging the Mueller findings into the overall charges by making the direct link to Ukraine might be one way to reach all sides. Said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Judiciary Committee, “You know we have to explore the possibility that the Ukraine episode is not some kind of aberrational outburst but rather reflective of a continuing course of misconduct.” Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Jill Colvin and Laurie Kellman contributed to this report. US Opens First Round of Resurrected Peace Talks With TalibanSaturday December 7th, 2019 10:43:55 AM Kathy GannonU.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad held on Saturday the first official talks with Afghanistan’s Taliban since President Donald Trump declared a near-certain peace deal with the insurgents dead in September. The talks will initially focus on getting a Taliban promise to reduce violence, with a permanent cease-fire being the eventual goal, said a U.S. statement. Khalilzad is also trying to lay the groundwork for negotiations between Afghans on both sides of the protracted conflict. The meetings being held in the Middle Eastern State of Qatar, where the Taliban maintain a political office, follow several days of talks in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, where Khalilzad met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The Taliban have so far refused direct talks with Ghani calling him a U.S. puppet. Ghani leads the Afghan government with Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah in a power-sharing agreement brokered by the United States after the presidential elections in 2014 were so deeply mired in corruption that a clear winner could not be determined. To head off a conflict Washington stepped in and forced the two leading candidates — Ghani and Abdullah — to share power in a so-called Unity Government that has been largely paralyzed because of the relentless bickering between the two leaders. The Afghan government is now embroiled in a fresh elections standoff. Presidential polls on Sept. 28 again ended in accusations of misconduct, with no results yet announced. Repeat leading contender Abdullah has challenged the recounting of several hundred thousand ballots, accusing his opponent Ghani of trying to manipulate the tally. Meanwhile, Khalilzad’s return to his peace mission followed Trump’s surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to Afghanistan in which he said talks with the Taliban were back on. While Khalilzad is talking to the Taliban about reducing violence, the U.S. military in its daily report said overnight on Saturday U.S. airstrikes killed 37 Taliban and operations by the Afghan National Security Forces killed another 22 of the militants. The insurgents have continued to carry put near daily strikes against military outposts throughout the country. They now hold sway over nearly half of Afghanistan. Trump has expressed frustration with America’s longest war repeatedly saying he wants to bring the estimated 12,000 U.S. soldiers home and calling on Afghanistan’s own police and military to step up. The Afghan government has also been criticized for its relentless corruption. Trump to Delay Listing Mexican Cartels as Terrorist GroupsSaturday December 7th, 2019 05:14:06 AM Darlene SupervillePresident Donald Trump said Friday in a tweet that he will hold off on designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Trump said all the work had been completed and he was statutorily ready to issue a declaration but had decided to delay at the request of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The Mexican government had pushed back against Trump’s plan, saying such a step by the U.S. could lead to violations of its sovereignty. “All necessary work has been completed to declare Mexican Cartels terrorist organizations,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Statutorily we are ready to do so.” “However, at the request of a man who I like and respect, and has worked so well with us, President Andres Manuel @LopezObrador— we will temporarily hold off on this designation.” Mexico’s president thanked Trump for his decision to “temporarily hold off” on designation Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. In a speech after Trump’s tweet, López Obrador said, “I thank Trump for having put off the decision … and having chosen understanding and cooperation.” Under pressure from Trump’s threat to impose tariffs, Mexico has pressed thousands of national guard troops into service to help block Central American migrants from traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S. In place of designating the cartels as terrorist outfits, Trump said the U.S. and Mexico instead will “step up our joint efforts to deal decisively with these vicious and every-growing organizations.” Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard wrote that López Obrador also “respects and appreciates” Trump. “Cooperation won, and there will be good results,” Ebrard tweeted. It was unclear if Mexico had promised Trump anything in return for suspending the designation, which could have caused Mexico headaches. Such a designation might require Mexico to periodically gain U.S. certification that it was cooperating in fighting the cartels, and could potentially have affected Mexico’s access to international lending agencies. The issue came to the fore after the Nov. 4 slaughter of nine U.S.-Mexico dual nationals in the northern border state of Sonora by drug cartel gunmen. Trump said in a radio interview just last week that he “absolutely” would move ahead with designating the drug cartels as terrorist organizations, attributing American deaths to drug trafficking and other activity by the cartels. “I’ve been working on that for the last 90 days,” Trump said in the interview when host Bill O’Reilly asked whether such a designation would be forthcoming. O’Reilly had asked if Trump would designate the cartels “and start hitting them with drones and things like that?” Trump replied: “I don’t want to say what I’m going to do, but they will be designated.” Supreme Court Keeps Federal Executions on HoldSaturday December 7th, 2019 12:20:11 AM Mark ShermanThe Supreme Court on Friday blocked the Trump administration from restarting federal executions next week after a 16-year break. The justices denied the administration’s plea to undo a lower court ruling in favor of inmates who have been given execution dates. The first of those had been scheduled for Monday, with a second set for Friday. Two more inmates had been given execution dates in January. Attorney General William Barr announced during the summer that federal executions would resume using a single drug, pentobarbital, to put inmates to death. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., temporarily halted the executions after some of the chosen inmates challenged the new execution procedures in court. Chutkan ruled that the procedure approved by Barr likely violates the Federal Death Penalty Act. The federal appeals court in Washington had earlier denied the administration’s emergency plea to put Chutkan’s ruling on hold and allow the executions to proceed. Federal executions are likely to remain on hold at least for several months, while the appeals court in Washington undertakes a full review of Chutkan’s ruling. The Supreme Court justices directed the appeals court to act “with appropriate dispatch.” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a short separate opinion that he believes the government ultimately will win the case and would have set a 60-day deadline for appeals court action. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined Alito’s opinion. Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said the legal fight would continue. “While we are disappointed with the ruling, we will argue the case on its merits in the D.C. Circuit and, if necessary, the Supreme Court,” Kupec said in a statement. Four inmates won temporary reprieves from the court rulings. Danny Lee was the first inmate scheduled for execution, at 8 o’clock Monday morning. Lee was convicted of killing a family of three, including an 8-year-old. The government had next planned on Friday to execute Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl and killed an 80-year-old woman. His lawyers say Purkey is suffering from dementia and he has a separate lawsuit pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. Then in January, executions had been scheduled for Alfred Bourgeois, who tortured, molested and then beat his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to death, and Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people, including two children. A fifth inmate, Lezmond Mitchell, has had his execution blocked by the federal appeals court in San Francisco over questions of bias against Native Americans. Mitchell beheaded a 63-year-old woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter. Warren, Buttigieg Scrap Puts Democratic Divide on DisplayFriday December 6th, 2019 11:06:46 PM Will WeissertElizabeth Warren has spent weeks absorbing attacks from moderate rivals looking to blunt her surging campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Now, as the Massachusetts senator risks losing momentum, she’s starting to hit back. After a Democratic Party fundraiser in Boston on Thursday night, Warren blasted Pete Buttigieg, who is emerging as a leading moderate candidate in the lead-off Iowa caucuses set for Feb. 3. She criticized the South Bend, Indiana, mayor for holding closed-door fundraisers with big donors. “I think that Mayor Pete should open up the doors so that anyone can come in and report on what’s being said,” Warren said. “Those doors shouldn’t be closed, and no one should be left to wonder what kind of promises are being made to the people that then pony up big bucks to be in the room.” Like Warren, Buttigieg has spent much of the past year presenting himself as someone uninterested in political squabbling. But that didn’t stop his senior adviser, Lis Smith, from chiding Warren for not being forthcoming about her past legal work representing corporate clients. “If @ewarren wants to have a debate about transparency, she can start by opening up the doors to the decades of tax returns she’s hiding from her work as a corporate lawyer — often defending the types of corporate bad actors she now denounces,” Smith tweeted. While testy exchanges are to be expected with voting now looming, this one reflects the deep divides over the Democratic Party’s philosophical direction. The progressive populism that helped fuel Warren’s rise over the summer has become something of a liability as moderates including Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden question the feasibility of her approach — and find voters are receptive to that skepticism. “I think there’s no doubt that the center approach is getting another look right now,” said Mitch Landrieu, a former mayor of New Orleans who was once mentioned as a possible 2020 contender and believes the country wants a “transition” away from President Donald Trump rather than a full political “transformation.” The latter is exactly what Warren has been pitching voters for the better part of the past year, championing a wealth tax, a “Medicare for All” plan giving government-sponsored health care to every American and canceling trillions in college debt. Those issues dominated the primary for months but are now starting to be edged out by questions about whether a more practical approach will be needed to topple Trump in the general election. Biden is aggressively pitching a more pragmatic center-left agenda, emphasizing his decades in the Senate. “The Medicare for All option may be a nice idea, but it is very, very, very difficult to get done,” Biden said this week in Iowa. “I don’t think the bulk of the enthusiasm of the Democratic Party is for Medicare for All.” Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, has joined the race betting he also can be a more-moderate alternative — and Warren has similarly critiqued him. Appearing this week on his own network, Bloomberg TV, Warren said of the ex-mayor: “I don’t think, as a Democratic Party, that we should say that the only way you’re going to get elected, the only way you’re going to be our nominee, is either if you are a billionaire or if you’re sucking up to billionaires.” Warren’s polls began to stall in late October, when she announced plans to spend $20.5 trillion over a decade to implement Medicare for All but then unveiled a more gradual “transition plan.” The senator said that she’d push to get the full proposal through Congress by the end of her third year as president and, in the meantime, use existing, public insurance options to expand health care coverage. Some saw that as too similar to “public option” plans being championed by Biden and Buttigieg, who argue that candidates backing Medicare for All will spook general election voters who aren’t ready to fully scrap their private, usually employer-based health insurance plans. Kevin A. Nathan, a 48-year-old cybersecurity administrator who attended a recent Warren event in Raleigh, North Carolina, said Warren may need a “strong undercard” in her choice of running mate — should she be the Democratic nominee — to reassure those afraid she’s too liberal to beat Trump. “I think if people took time to dive into her policies rather than let others tell them about who she is she’d be electable,” Nathan said. The race’s other leading progressive voice belongs to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has remained among its front-runners despite having a heart attack — even when it looked like Warren might run away with the most liberal wing of the party over the summer. Sanders has lately reminded voters that he plans to send a Medicare for All bill to Congress during his first week as president — drawing a stark contrast with Warren over a progressive issue on which the pair otherwise agree and countering the notion that the primary will come down to a center-against- left dogfight. “There’s a corporate wing of the party who are desperate to hold onto power,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ chief strategist. “It’s not moderate vs. liberal or progressive vs. moderate. It’s progressive vs. corporate, and progressive is going to win.” Warren’s campaign spent only about $520,000 on TV advertising in Iowa through mid-November but says it has reserved $4.7 million worth of television airtime there and in the states that vote next: New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in January and February. Her backers note that none of the candidates bunched near the top of the polls has begun pulling away — meaning there’s still time to make up ground. “Fundamentally, most Democratic primary voters are progressive,” said Adam Green, a leading liberal activist and Warren ally. “They want someone with big ideas, and they also want to defeat Trump.” Green said Warren getting months of attacks has frightened primary voters and affected her polling — but that it won’t last as candidates including Buttigieg face the added scrutiny that comes with their own rises. “By January,” he said, “it starts to stabilize.” That’s already beginning to happen. Buttigieg is under scrutiny for refusing to discuss the three years he spent working for the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., pointing to a nondisclosure agreement he signed. A voter pressed Buttigieg on the issue Friday as he campaigned in New Hampshire. “It’s not like I was running the place,” he said. “It was my first job out of school.” He added that the company “basically reflects what’s wrong with corporate America.” Associated Press writers Hunter Woodall and Bill Barrow contributed to this report. Rep. Hunter Announces Resignation Days After Guilty PleaFriday December 6th, 2019 10:54:10 PM NBC 7 StaffCalifornia Rep. Duncan Hunter said he will resign “shortly after the holidays” in a statement made three days after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to misuse campaign funds. Hunter’s office released the following statement Friday afternoon: “Shortly after the Holidays I will resign from Congress. It has been an honor to serve the people of California’s 50th District, and I greatly appreciate the trust they have put in me over these last 11 years.” The congressman pleaded guilty to misusing $150,000 in campaign funds for his own personal expenses and acknowledged the finance violations in a brief statement on the steps outside the courthouse before walking away without taking questions. “I failed to monitor and account for my campaign spending. I made mistakes and that’s what today was all about. So, that being said, I’ll have more statements in the future about the future,” Hunter said. After entering a guilty plea, Duncan Hunter may be able to avoid a trial that was set to begin on Jan. 22, 2020 after being postponed. His lawyer Paul Pfingst told NBC 7 Duncan Hunter wanted to spare his three children the publicity of a trial. Duncan Hunter represents the 50th Congressional District, which covers eastern San Diego County and a small part of Riverside County. It is the most Republican district in Southern California, an area now nearly devoid of GOP representation. At this time, it is unclear what will happen to his seat, as the time of his resignation could spur multiple outcomes, from a special election to a vacancy. ‘Bridgegate’ Duo to Use Different Tactics at Supreme CourtFriday December 6th, 2019 10:07:34 PMWhat to Know
One of the defendants seeking to have the U.S. Supreme Court overturn his conviction in New Jersey’s “Bridgegate” case wants to argue separately from his co-defendant, highlighting the different strategies they plan to use when the case is heard next month. Former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive Bill Baroni made the request in a recent filing to the court. Oral arguments are scheduled for Jan. 14. The Supreme Court earlier this year agreed to hear the appeals of Baroni and Bridget Kelly, who were convicted in 2016 of orchestrating traffic jams near the George Washington Bridge into New York to punish a political foe who opposed then-Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s reelection. Kelly was Christie’s deputy chief of staff and Baroni was a top Christie appointee to the Port Authority. Christie wasn’t charged. Baroni had already begun serving his sentence last spring but was released after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, while Kelly has remained free on bail pending the appeal. They were convicted of defrauding the Port Authority of money and property because time and labor was required to effectuate the lane realignments that caused the traffic jams in the town of Fort Lee, whose mayor declined to endorse Christie. Baroni later claimed the lanes were realigned as part of a traffic study. Baroni argued in a filing last week that his attorneys should be allowed to argue separately from Kelly’s on Jan. 14 since the government is basing its argument on its assertion that in his position as deputy executive director, he didn’t have the authority to realign the lanes. “Kelly’s criminal liability, in the government’s view, is thus derivative of Baroni’s,” his attorneys wrote. “That is, according to the government, if Baroni had authority, and thus committed no crime, neither did Kelly.” Both defendants have argued in previous court filings that the government overreached by misapplying federal statutes to fit the facts of the case. They contend if the convictions stand, it will have the effect of criminalizing a wide swath of political behavior. The government contended in a filing last month that political considerations take a backseat to the fact that the defendants exceeded their authority in order to “commandeer” Port Authority resources and lied about the traffic study. Supreme Court Temporarily Shields Trump Bank RecordsFriday December 6th, 2019 08:21:25 PMThe Supreme Court on Friday temporarily shielded the bank records of President Donald Trump and three of his children from House Democrats. In an order signed by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the House cannot enforce subpoenas issued to Deutsche Bank and Capital One at least until Dec. 13. The justices are scheduled to discuss at least one and maybe two other similar cases at their private conference that day. One concerns a subpoena from the House for Trump’s financial records and the other is a demand from the Manhattan district attorney for his tax returns. The court already has blocked the House from getting the financial records while it considers what to do with the cases. The district attorney has agreed to hold off enforcing his subpoena until the justices act. A decision on whether to hear the cases could come by mid-December. Trial judges and appellate panels in all three cases have ruled that the records held by the banks and Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, must be turned over. The subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Capital One also seek documents pertaining to three Trump children, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump; the Trump Organization; and other Trump business holdings. Without a Supreme Court order, the banks would have had to begin turning over records to House committees next week. Ginsburg oversees emergency appeals from New York. Bloomberg Gun Plan: Permits, Assault Weapon Ban, Age LimitsFriday December 6th, 2019 04:08:12 PMDemocratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg unveiled a gun control policy on Thursday just steps from the site of one of Colorado’s worst mass shootings, calling for a ban on all assault weapons, mandatory permits for gun purchasers and a new position in the White House to coordinate gun violence prevention. “I’ve been all in on the fight against gun violence for 15 years, and I’m just getting started,” Bloomberg declared. “As president, I will work to end the gun violence epidemic once and for all.” Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor, entered the Democratic presidential primary less than two weeks ago. Gun violence has quickly emerged as a core issue for his presidential bid, as it has been for his political and philanthropic efforts for much of the last decade. Bloomberg is well known to gun control advocates in Colorado and across the country, where he’s funneled tens of millions of dollars from his personal fortune to help like-minded candidates while creating and supporting gun control groups such as Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action. Despite his dedication to the issue, the former Republican is viewed skeptically by many Democratic primary voters, who look at his ties to Wall Street and vast personal wealth with suspicion. Democratic rivals including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in recent days have accused him of trying to buy the election. At the same time, Bloomberg is pounding the local airwaves in all 50 states with television ads highlighting his work on issues on gun violence and climate change while casting himself as best positioned to defeat Trump next fall. After spending roughly $40 million on an ad campaign over the first week or so of his campaign, he began running a second ad campaign backed by tens of millions of dollars more on Wednesday. The 77-year-old New Yorker outlined his plan to combat gun violence before an invitation-only audience of about 40 victims of gun violence and gun control activists at a Christian center, near the movie theater in Aurora where a gunman killed 12 people and wounded nearly 60 others in 2012. The speaking lineup included Democratic state Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son, Alex, was killed in the attack. Sullivan formally endorsed Bloomberg while introducing him Thursday. “I have witnessed the actions Mike has taken since Alex was murdered,” Sullivan said, insisting that victims of gun violence would have an ally in the White House should Bloomberg win the election. The policies Bloomberg outlined Thursday largely mirror those he fought for on the state and federal levels in recent years, though it’s the first time he’s released his specific prescription for gun violence as a presidential candidate. T hey are ambitious and would almost certainly face fierce resistance from the NRA and Republicans in Congress, but they are not dramatically different from those of his Democratic rivals. The difference, Bloomberg said Thursday, is his proven commitment to the issue. “I promise you I will never back down from this fight,” he said. “That’s the kind of president this country needs and you deserve.” Among the highlights, Bloomberg’s plan would: — Reinstate the federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. — Require every gun buyer to obtain a permit before making a purchase. — Require point-of-sale background checks on all gun purchases while closing the gun show loophole. — Institute a new age limit of 21 for those wishing to buy handguns, semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. — Require a mandatory 48-hour waiting period for all gun purchases. — Institute a federal “red flag” law to deny permits to “troubled people who pose a danger to themselves or others.” — Institute a temporary ban on gun possession for those convicted of assault or other violent misdemeanors. — Ban all guns in K-12 schools, colleges, and universities, except for law enforcement. — Reverse the law that gives gun makers and gun dealers immunity from lawsuits. — Create the position of White House gun coordinator “to mobilize the public to fight gun violence and launch an inter-agency hub to fight gun violence.” Sanders Announces $150B Plan to Expand Broadband AccessFriday December 6th, 2019 12:53:42 PMDemocratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is promising to invest $150 billion to bring high-speed internet to “every household in America” while breaking up and better regulating monopolies he says currently limit access to drive up their profits. The Vermont senator on Friday unveiled a plan providing that funding in infrastructure grants and technical assistance to states and municipalities through Green New Deal climate-change fighting initiatives — allowing them to build what he called “publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative or open access broadband networks.” Sanders also wants to set aside $7.5 billion to increase high-speed broadband in Native American communities nationwide and increase funding for the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Native Affairs and Policy. Citing FCC data, Sanders said that in rural areas, about 30% of Americans lack access to broadband internet access. The senator also says that, as president, he’d require all internet service providers to offer a “Basic Internet Plan” providing “quality broadband speeds at an affordable price.” He also vowed to break up internet service provider and cable monopolies, prohibit service advisers from providing content and wipe out “anticompetitive” mergers. “It is outrageous that across the country millions of Americans and so many of our communities do not have access to affordable high-speed internet,” Sanders said in a statement. He isn’t the only Democratic presidential hopeful promising to improve internet access in rural areas and other under-served communities. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to create a “public option for broadband” managed by a new Office of Broadband Access using an $85 billion federal grant. Former Vice President Joe Biden has released a plan to revitalize rural America that includes a $20 billion investment in rural broadband infrastructure. Articles of Impeachment: Explaining What’s Next in the HouseFriday December 6th, 2019 09:28:50 AM Mary Clare JalonickHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Democrats will draft articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, a crucial step toward a vote of the full House. The articles are likely to mostly encompass Democrats’ findings on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Democrats are still writing them, but the articles could charge Trump with abuse of office, bribery and obstruction. Lawmakers and staff are expected to finish drafting the articles in the coming days, a process that is being led by Pelosi and the House Judiciary Committee. That panel could approve the articles as early as next week, setting up a vote of the full House in the days before Christmas. A breakdown of what it means, how the process works and what the articles might say: WHAT ARE ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT? Articles of impeachment are charges against the president. If the House approves them, they are then sent to the Senate for a trial and eventual vote. There can be as few or as many articles as the House decides. In a Senate trial, senators are jurors and select House members act as prosecutors, or impeachment managers. The chief justice of the Supreme Court presides. If the Senate approves an article of impeachment with a two-thirds vote of “guilty,” the president is convicted and removed from office. If all the articles are rejected, the president is acquitted. While the process has the trappings of a criminal trial, the decision is purely political. This is the fourth time in history Congress has moved to impeach a president. If he were convicted by the Senate, Trump would be the first to be removed. But that is unlikely in the GOP-controlled Senate. WHAT THE ARTICLES WILL COVER The articles of impeachment are likely to encompass two major themes — abuse of office and obstruction. But they could be divvied up into multiple articles. An impeachment article accusing Trump of abuse of office, or abuse of power, would focus on the findings of the Ukraine investigation and his efforts to persuade the Ukrainian government to investigate Democrats as the U.S. withheld military aid. That conduct is the focus of a House Intelligence Committee report that will be presented to the Judiciary panel for consideration in a Monday hearing. Some lawmakers have suggested that Democrats could break out “bribery” as a separate article. It would likely center on Trump withholding the aid, and also withholding a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in exchange for the political investigations. Obstruction articles could be broken up into obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice, or the two could be combined. The administration’s repeated refusals to provide documents and testimony would serve as the basis for an article charging Trump with obstruction of Congress. If Democrats decide to draft an article on obstruction of justice, it could mention the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. DIFFERING DEMOCRATIC VIEWS There has been an internal debate in the House Democratic caucus about how many articles to write and how much to include — and whether to include matters beyond Ukraine at all. Some moderate Democrats have argued that the articles should focus solely on Ukraine, as they believe it’s a clearer case. Others say they can’t ignore Mueller’s report, which said that Trump couldn’t be exonerated of obstructing the special counsel’s investigation. He essentially left the matter up to Congress. Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly says it would be a “terrible mistake” to ignore obstruction of justice as laid out by Mueller. But he said Democrats “certainly don’t want everything in the kitchen sink” in the articles, either. “I think we should keep it as simple as possible,” said California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the Judiciary and Intelligence panels. “I think it’s important that this is digestible for everyday Americans who are understandably busy, but understand what a shakedown is, too.” New Jersey Lawmakers Move Closer to Banning Single Use Plastic, Paper BagsFriday December 6th, 2019 05:27:05 AMWhat to Know
New Jersey lawmakers advanced legislation Thursday to ban single-use plastic and paper bags, as well as plastic foam containers commonly used for takeout. The Democrat-led Senate Budget Committee passed the measure after it was amended behind closed doors. The bill’s sponsors call it “landmark” legislation, and environmental groups say if the bill is enacted it would be among the most expansive in the country. Supporters say the bill will go a long way to remove toxic plastics clogging waterways. It will also remove exposure to plastics that could leach into the bloodstream through foam plastic food containers, they argue. “What we are doing is the strongest plastics legislation in the United States of America,” said Democratic state Sen. Bob Smith, who sponsored the bill. Eight states have banned plastic bags, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Maine and Maryland have also passed bills banning Styrofoam. Hawaii has a de facto ban on paper bags with less than 40% recycled material, according to the conference. Opponents included plastics manufacturers, business and industry groups as well as some supermarkets. Republican Mayor Tony Perry of Middletown said the Styrofoam ban could threaten jobs at a foam plastics recycling center operating there and argued for lawmakers to drop the ban. Though Smith disputed that Styrofoam that has been touched by food could be recycled and said most recycled plastic foam is so-called “clean” Styrofoam. Dennis Hart, the executive director of the Chemistry Council of New Jersey, which represents plastics manufacturers, said doing away with Styrofoam would cost millions of dollars for school districts. He criticized the bill for leaving wax-coated paper cups with plastic lids common at cafes untouched, while prohibiting polystyrene — commonly known as Styrofoam. “It’s just substituting one piece of litter for another,” he said. Smith said the legislation has exceptions for produce, raw meat and pharmacy bags. The measures comes after Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy last year vetoed legislation calling for a surcharge on plastic bags, saying he wanted a more “robust” approach. Banning plastics gained some steam last summer when Starbucks announced it would begin to ban plastic straws in fewer than two years, and Kroger Co., the nation’s largest grocery chain, said it is phasing out plastic bags. Report: Teen Who Died in US Custody Unresponsive for HoursFriday December 6th, 2019 02:25:24 AMA flu-stricken 16-year-old from Guatemala writhed in agony inside a U.S. Border Patrol cell and collapsed on the floor where he lay for several hours before he was found dead, according to video released Thursday that further calls into question the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrant families. The footage published by ProPublica shows the last hours of Carlos Hernandez Vasquez, who was found dead May 20. He is one of at least six children to have died since December 2018 after being detained by border agents. According to ProPublica, Hernandez staggered to the toilet in his cell in the middle of the night at the Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas, and collapsed nearby. He remained still for more than four hours until his cellmate awakened at 6:05 a.m. and discovered him on the floor. The cellmate quickly got the attention of a Border Patrol agent, followed shortly by a physician’s assistant who attempted a single chest compression. Weslaco police reports obtained by ProPublica say the physician’s assistant quickly determined Hernandez was dead. Already, President Donald Trump has faced withering criticism for the thousands of family separations it conducted under a “zero tolerance” policy at the southern border and the squalid conditions under which it detained parents and children earlier this year. U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a statement Thursday saying it could not discuss specifics of the teen’s death due to an ongoing investigation, but that the agency and the Department of Homeland Security “are looking into all aspects of this case to ensure all procedures were followed.” But CBP’s former acting commissioner, John Sanders, told ProPublica he believed the U.S. government “could have done more” to prevent the deaths of Hernandez and at least five other children who died after being apprehended by border agents. “I really think the American government failed these people. The government failed people like Carlos,” Sanders said. “I was part of that system at a very high level, and Carlos’ death will follow me for the rest of my life.” The Guatemalan government on Thursday issued a statement saying Hernandez’s death remained under investigation and that a “legal process” is ongoing. The statement did not address the details of the video or the reports of how he was found dead. The Border Patrol’s statement on the day of Hernandez’s death says the teenager was “found unresponsive this morning during a welfare check.” The video shows Hernandez stopped moving at about 1:39 a.m. on May 20, 15 minutes after he toppled forward and landed face-first on the cell’s concrete floor. Border Patrol logs say an agent performed a welfare check at 2:02 a.m., 4:09 a.m., and 5:05 a.m. Dr. Norma Jean Farley, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, told ProPublica that she was told the agent looked through the window but didn’t go inside. Police photos show a large pool of blood around the teenager’s head. Sanders resigned in June as the Border Patrol was detaining thousands of people at a time, many for longer than the agency’s own 72-hour deadline, sometimes for weeks on end. As border crossings surged this spring, President Donald Trump’s administration sought to hold people for longer to end what it derided as the “catch and release” of immigrant families. But the Border Patrol was not equipped to detain people for that long. Reports of people jam-packed into cells without drinkable water or showers sparked national outrage. One group of lawyers that visited a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, described seeing hungry children trying to care for each other and one 4-year-old with matted hair who had gone without a shower for days. The Border Patrol has since reduced the number of people in its custody — largely due to the rollout of policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” in which the U.S. government has sent more than 55,000 people back across the border to await their court cases. Thousands of those people are now waiting in squalid border camps. In a statement, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, called the CBP’s behavior in the child’s death “inexcusable.” “Today’s report calls into serious question the steps U.S. Customs and Border Protection claims to have taken to care for a child in its custody. Not only did CBP hold Carlos longer than the legal limit and apparently fail to care for him while he was sick, the agency seems to have been untruthful with Congress and the public about the circumstances around his tragic death,” Thompson said. Thompson called for the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general examine all video related to the child’s case and release the findings “as soon as possible.” Ex-Playboy Model Who Claimed Trump Affair Sues Fox NewsThursday December 5th, 2019 11:08:11 PMThe former Playboy model who took a $150,000 payoff to squelch her story of an affair with a pre-presidency Donald Trump sued Fox News on Thursday, claiming prominent host Tucker Carlson slandered her by saying that what happened “sounds like a classic case of extortion.” Karen McDougal’s lawsuit, filed Thursday in New York, says the host and network were “grossly irresponsible.” “They accused McDougal of committing a felony under state and federal law” to an audience of roughly 3 million, “without justification or excuse,” McDougal’s lawyer, Eric Bernstein wrote. Fox News said it “will vigorously defend Tucker Carlson against these meritless claims.” The suit came two days after CNN was hit with a lawsuit from U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, seeking $435.4 million in damages for what he called a “demonstrably false hit piece” about him published on Nov. 22. and discussed on-air. CNN declined to comment. McDougal has said she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. He denied it. As the Republican ran for office in 2016, National Enquirer parent company American Media Inc. paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story, which it never published. The company eventually acknowledged the purchase was a “catch-and-kill” maneuver to help the presidential prospects of Trump, a longtime friend of American Media CEO David Pecker. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance violations in connection with payments to silence McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels, who also alleges she had an affair with Trump that he denies. Cohen is serving three years in prison. AMI, in a deal to avoid federal prosecution, admitted last year to making the payment “in concert” with the Trump campaign. Carlson was discussing the Cohen case on Dec. 10, 2018, when the host recounted what he called “undisputed” facts: that two women had “approached Donald Trump and threatened to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money.” “Now, that sounds like a classic case of extortion,” Carlson added, going on to criticize federal prosecutors for concluding that the payments amounted to campaign contributions. McDougal’s lawsuit says Carlson’s statements were “demonstrably false.” As the suit notes, American Media’s deal with prosecutors outlined how McDougal’s lawyer approached a National Enquirer editor, not Trump, about buying her story, and the company then alerted Cohen. The suit, filed in a state court, seeks unspecified damages. Lawyers for Fox asked later Thursday to transfer the case to federal court. Nunes’ lawsuit, meanwhile, concerns a CNN report that a Giuliani associate claims Nunes met in December 2018 in Vienna with Viktor Shokin, the former prosecutor general of Ukraine, to discuss “digging up dirt” on Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden. The story was based on the word of the now-indicted associate’s lawyer. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Virginia, says Nunes has never met Shokin and didn’t go to Vienna or anywhere else in Austria in 2018. The complaint accuses CNN of harboring anti-Republican bias and “eroding the fabric of America, proselytizing, sowing distrust and disharmony.” CNN has said that Nunes rebuffed repeated requests for comment before publication. US Likely to Hit China Over Human Rights Despite Trade TalksThursday December 5th, 2019 10:15:19 PM Ben FoxCongress is poised to hand President Donald Trump a second chance in less than a month to anger the Chinese government and attack its record on human rights as he tries to deliver a long-sought trade deal with Beijing. Members of the Senate said Thursday that they expect to quickly and easily pass legislation calling for sanctions on Chinese officials and other measures to address the brutal crackdown on the ethnic Uighur minority in China’s northwest. The House passed its version in a 407-1 vote Tuesday. Senate approval is expected within the next two weeks and could be unanimous. The White House has not commented on the legislation, but Trump may have no choice but to sign it as he did the recent bill supporting human rights in Hong Kong. “My sense is that if it passes by an overwhelming margin as it did in the House … it’s difficult not to sign it or allow it to become law,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said. It places Trump in an awkward position since he has made challenging China on trade, not human rights, a signature issue of his administration. He has repeatedly called Chinese President Xi Jinping a friend and has lamented the money and effort the U.S. has spent “policing the world.” The legislation nearing approval in the Senate would direct the administration to come up with a list of Chinese officials who could face sanctions for their role in the repression of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang Province. China has detained at least 800,000 Uighurs, ethnic Kazahks and other ethnic minorities in internment camps. People have reported being subjected to forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings and food deprivation as well as being denied the freedom to practice their religion or speak their native languages. Rubio told The Associated Press that the U.S. has a duty to call attention to the repression regardless of the trade war that threatens global economic growth. “Anywhere in the world where people are being put in camps, where they are then stripped of their religious and ethnic identity by force and by threat, is somewhere that the United States should speak out,” he said. China has said the camps are for voluntary job training. But classified documents leaked to a consortium of news organizations, including the AP, show the camps are instead precisely what former detainees have described: forced ideological and behavioral re-education centers run in secret. The documents detail the Chinese government’s deliberate strategy to lock up ethnic minorities, attempt to rewire their thoughts and force them to speak the dominant Mandarin language. The papers also show how Beijing is pioneering a new form of social control using data and artificial intelligence. Drawing on data collected by mass surveillance technology, computers issued the names of tens of thousands of people for interrogation in a high-tech mass detention system in just one week. In addition to the sanctions, which could result in Chinese officials having overseas assets frozen, the legislation calls for closing the internment camps and would also puts export restrictions on any U.S. technology used to track and monitor people as part of the crackdown. “It’s incredibly important for the people affected by this nightmare,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. The Chinese government will “of course be furious,” said Richardson, who noted it also puts the Trump administration in a difficult position even though it has declared support for religious liberty around the world. “It’s hard to tell where something like this fits into the administration’s overall strategy,” she said. “You would assume that if they want to get a trade deal they wouldn’t be sanctioning technology companies and regional police officials.” The White House had no immediate comment. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said he was pleased to see Republicans and Democrats standing up to China. “This is the 21st century,” Graham said. “We are not going to tolerate a totalitarian regime running concentration camps for people based on their religious status.” Associated Press videojournalist Padmananda Rama contributed to this report. Feed aggregation powered by Syndicate Press. Processed request in 1.82985 seconds. |
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Sports From ESPN Sources: Cole to join Yankees for 9 years, $324MWednesday December 11th, 2019 05:00:13 AM
Gerrit Cole and the Yankees have agreed to a nine-year, $324 million contract that surpasses the deal Stephen Strasburg finalized with the Nats for most total money and annual average salary for a pitcher, sources told ESPN.
Source: Phillies, SS Gregorius reach 1-year dealTuesday December 10th, 2019 10:49:00 PM
The Phillies have reached agreement with former Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius on a one-year deal, a source confirmed to ESPN's Buster Olney. The deal is for $14 million, NBC Sports Philadelphia reported.
Bell brushes off bowling trip, says he rolled a 251Tuesday December 10th, 2019 06:53:15 PM
Le'Veon Bell said Tuesday that although he wishes he hadn't been seen bowling in public on Saturday night, he doesn't "feel bad about what I did," noting that he bowled a career-high 251 "coming off the flu."
NAIA guard Culver erupts for 100-point gameWednesday December 11th, 2019 04:13:43 AM
J.J. Culver, a senior guard for Wayland Baptist, became just the second player in NAIA history to score 100 points, reaching the magical mark in his team's 124-60 rout over Southwestern Adventist on Tuesday night.
Pulisic can inspire next U.S. wave - McConaugheyWednesday December 11th, 2019 10:37:55 AM
Film star and Austin FC co-owner Matthew McConaughey hopes to see the next generation of U.S. soccer talent follow Christian Pulisic's lead.
How the Knicks' grand plans fell apart this timeMonday December 9th, 2019 09:02:45 PM
Hire, fire, repeat. After 20 years of course-correcting, the one thing the Knicks can't seem to do is get on the right track.
Inside the troubled life and death of 1994 Heisman winner Rashaan SalaamMonday December 9th, 2019 04:23:21 AM
Heisman Trophy weekend is a special time to celebrate nominees and former winners. But for Colorado running back Rashaan Salaam, it represented another year of having to face the spotlight, of having to answer questions.
'Get ya a burner phone': An all-access look at Lane Kiffin's SEC homecomingTuesday December 10th, 2019 08:51:09 PM
From the private jet to Oxford, Mississippi, to team meetings to his introductory press conference, we were along for the ride as Lane Kiffin became Ole Miss' latest head coach.
Mayfield vs. ... everyone? An illustrated guide to Baker's beefsMonday December 9th, 2019 01:58:27 PM
Baker Mayfield has always used insults and doubts as fuel. As he revisits one of his biggest feuds Sunday against Kliff Kingsbury, here's a tour of some of his most memorable grudges.
Tua Tagovailoa injury timeline: What's next, dates to know and the big NFL draft questionThursday December 5th, 2019 03:54:44 PM
The injured Alabama quarterback has a decision to make. What exactly is this injury? And how high could he go in the draft? We have answers.
NFL MVP stock watch: Jackson's historic campaign, and who is still in the raceTuesday December 10th, 2019 07:16:57 PM
Is Lamar Jackson a lock for the MVP? Which other QBs -- or wide receiver? -- are still in the mix, and can any of them catch Baltimore's playmaker?
Welcome back? Rating Kawhi Leonard's return to Toronto, all NBA reunionsWednesday October 23rd, 2019 10:33:34 PM
Kawhi Leonard is back in Toronto for what should be a warm reception. Others haven't been so lucky. We're gauging fan reactions during reunion games throughout the season.
Trash talk and viral collisions: Behind the Lakers' first big testWednesday December 11th, 2019 02:11:20 AM
The Lakers' early success came against a cupcake schedule. Then they hit their first proving ground.
The NHL's All-Regression team: Bounce-back candidates, players due for declineWednesday December 11th, 2019 01:47:34 AM
With around 30 games played for most players, it's time to examine who's due for a correction -- in either the positive or negative direction.
The 150 greatest coaches in college football's 150-year historySunday December 8th, 2019 01:13:50 AM
A blue-ribbon panel of 150 experts selects the best coaches in the sport's history.
The 10 individual bowl-game matchups we can't wait to seeTuesday December 10th, 2019 11:53:06 PM
Oklahoma receiver CeeDee Lamb vs. LSU cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. just might top the list of intriguing bowl-game battles.
Predictions for all 41 bowl gamesWednesday December 4th, 2019 09:26:36 PM
From final scores to top performances, we predict what to expect in every bowl game this season.
Can Liverpool be stopped? In the Champions League or anywhere?Tuesday December 10th, 2019 05:21:28 PM
Liverpool have one trophy in the bag and are dominating the Premier League. Could they win five or six? Don't write them off, writes Mark Ogden.
Ariel Helwani's MMA thoughts: What I love (and don't) ahead of UFC 245Tuesday December 10th, 2019 11:15:45 PM
There's a lot to love, including worthy UFC title challengers, Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Bryce Mitchell, but it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
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NYT Most Shared Jersey City Shooting Updates: 6 Killed, Including an OfficerWednesday December 11th, 2019 01:57:51 PM Michael Gold, Nick Corasaniti and William K. Rashbaum
Two shooters opened fire on Tuesday afternoon at a kosher market.
India Steps Toward Making Naturalization Harder for MuslimsWednesday December 11th, 2019 01:52:45 PM Jeffrey Gettleman and Suhasini Raj
A bill establishing a religious test for immigrants has passed the lower house of Parliament, a major step for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist agenda.
Despite Turnaround, ‘Beetlejuice’ Being Forced Out of TheaterTuesday December 10th, 2019 06:54:14 PM Michael Paulson
The $21 million musical will be hoping for a new home after the Shubert Organization made way for Hugh Jackman and ‘The Music Man.’
When a DNA Test Says You’re a Younger Man, Who Lives 5,000 Miles AwaySaturday December 7th, 2019 04:50:18 PM Heather Murphy
After a bone marrow transplant, a man with leukemia found that his donor’s DNA traveled to unexpected parts of his body. A crime lab is now studying the case.
Trump Targets Anti-Semitism and Israeli Boycotts on College CampusesWednesday December 11th, 2019 04:50:34 AM Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman
The president’s order would allow the government to withhold money from campuses deemed to be biased, but critics see it as an attack on free speech.
Lovers in Auschwitz, Reunited 72 Years Later. He Had One Question.Monday December 9th, 2019 09:18:31 PM Keren Blankfeld
Was she the reason he was alive today?
The Youngest Child Separated From His Family at the Border Was 4 Months OldWednesday August 14th, 2019 12:32:39 PM Caitlin Dickerson and Todd Heisler
Baby Constantin spent five months of his first year in a foster home. His family got a painful look at America’s experiment with family separation as an immigration policy.
Roxette Singer Marie Fredriksson Is Dead at 61Tuesday December 10th, 2019 11:18:16 PM Gavin Edwards and Iliana Magra
As half of the Swedish duo, which gained fame in the 1980s and ’90s, Ms. Fredriksson was known for her powerful voice and dynamic onstage presence.
The Great Recycling ConMonday December 9th, 2019 11:00:03 AM Tala Schlossberg and Nayeema Raza
The greatest trick corporations ever played was making us think we could recycle their products.
Donald Trump Is Bad for the JewsTuesday December 10th, 2019 03:20:27 PM Paul Krugman
There are things more important than your tax rate.
The Amazon Coat, One Year LaterWednesday November 27th, 2019 02:29:52 PM Reyhan Harmanci
What all of the women with Amazon coats are doing this winter.
Don’t Think Sanders Can Win? You Don’t Understand His CampaignTuesday December 10th, 2019 05:40:36 PM Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
There was a time in America when being called a socialist could end a political career. Not anymore.
25 Modern Love Essays to Read if You Want to Laugh, Cringe and CryTuesday November 26th, 2019 10:45:14 PM Daniel Jones
To celebrate the column’s 15th anniversary, and the new series on Amazon Prime Video, we pulled together some greatest hits.
Impeach Trump. Save America.Tuesday December 10th, 2019 09:38:24 PM Thomas L. Friedman
It is the only thing to do if our country’s democracy is to survive.
How to Have Closer Friendships (and Why You Need Them)Sunday November 24th, 2019 09:32:09 PM Emma Pattee
Even if you find it easy to make friends — and it’s not, for most people — getting truly close to people is still difficult. Here’s how to make it easier.
Trump ‘Ignored and Injured’ the National Interest, Democrats Charge in Impeachment ArticlesWednesday December 11th, 2019 11:51:24 AM Nicholas Fandos
Democratic leaders unveiled articles of impeachment charging President Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
‘I Got Tired of Hunting Black and Hispanic People’Monday December 9th, 2019 03:02:55 PM Joseph Goldstein and Ashley Southall
Multiple police officers in Brooklyn say they were told by a commander that white and Asian people should be left alone.
Vanna White Takes a Spin as ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Host After 37 YearsTuesday December 10th, 2019 02:47:40 AM Maya Salam
After Pat Sajak had emergency surgery, the show’s famous letter-turner took her first turn leading the show, for three weeks of episodes that start airing on Monday.
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