| Armed activists escort black lawmaker to Michigan's Capitol after coronavirus protest attended by white supremacists Posted: 07 May 2020 11:40 AM PDT  Rep. Sarah Anthony told Yahoo News that her security detail, made up of local black and Latino activists, came together because the armed protesters bearing white supremacist symbols represented a "different level of terror."
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| CNN legal analysts say Barr dropping the Flynn case shows 'the fix was in.' Barr says winners write history. Posted: 08 May 2020 05:23 AM PDT  The Justice Department announced Thursday that it is dropping its criminal case against President Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn twice admitted in court he lied to the FBI about his conversations with Russia's U.S. ambassador, and then cooperated in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. It was an unusual move by the Justice Department, and CNN's legal and political analysts smelled a rat."Attorney General [William] Barr is already being accused of creating a special justice system just for President Trump's friends," and this will only feed that perception, CNN's Jake Tapper suggested. Political correspondent Sara Murray agreed, noting that the prosecutor in the case, Brandon Van Grack, withdrew right before the Justice Department submitted its filing, just like when Barr intervened to request a reduced sentence for Roger Stone.National security correspondent Jim Sciutto laid out several reason why the substance of Flynn's admitted lie was a big deal, and chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was appalled. "It is one of the most incredible legal documents I have read, and certainly something that I never expected to see from the United States Department of Justice," Toobin said. "The idea that the Justice Department would invent an argument -- an argument that the judge in this case has already rejected -- and say that's a basis for dropping a case where a defendant admitted his guilt shows that this is a case where the fix was in."Barr told CBS News' Cathrine Herridge on Thursday that dropping Flynn's case actually "sends the message that there is one standard of justice in this country." Herridge told Barr he would take flak for this, asking: "When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?" Barr laughed: "Well, history's written by the winners. So it largely depends on who's writing the history." Watch below. More stories from theweek.com Trump says he couldn't have exposed WWII vets to COVID-19 because the wind was blowing the wrong way Trump cryptically tells reporters 'a lot of things' might happen soon following call with Putin Trump reportedly got 'lava level mad' over potential exposure to coronavirus
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| Teenager Ran Away to Be With Boy She Met on Dating Site. A Week Later She Was Dead. Posted: 08 May 2020 11:14 AM PDT  A South Dakota teenager has admitted to slaying a 16-year-old girl who "ran away" from home to live with him after they met on an online dating website, authorities said.Michael Campbell, 17, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter on Thursday for the death of Shayna Ritthaler, a 16-year-old from Moorcroft, Wyoming, who was reported missing from a local coffee shop on Oct. 3. Less than a week later, her body was found in the basement bedroom of Campbell's home."We got into an argument and then I shot her," Campbell said during a change-of-plea hearing on Thursday, before referring to the teenager as his girlfriend, according to the Associated Press. "I shot her in the head."Meade County State's Attorney Michele Bordewyk said in court that the two teenagers met on an online chat and dating website, Badoo. After weeks of talking online, the pair eventually planned for Campbell to drive to Wyoming so Ritthaler could "run away and live with him in his house," prosecutors said in court on Thursday, the Argus Leader reported.On Oct. 3, Ritthaler was seen getting into Campbell's car at a coffee shop about four hours outside of Cheyenne. Prosecutors say the 17-year-old then drove her back to his home in Sturgis, South Dakota, about an hour away.But back at Campbell's home that he shared with his mother, the teenagers got into an argument. While Bordewyk said it wasn't clear what sparked the argument, it escalated when Campbell grabbed a gun and shot Ritthaler once in the head. The 17-year-old shot her "without the design to cause her death," Bordewyk said, according to AP. When asked by Judge Kevin Krull if he had any justification for killing Ritthaler, Campbell replied: "No."On October 6, authorities found Campbell's car and questioned him. The next day, Ritthaler's body was found in his basement and the 17-year-old was arrested immediately.Many details surrounding the shooting remain unclear because a Meade County judge sealed the case's affidavit on Oct. 10 at the request of the county prosecutor who cited the "potential publicity" of a case that had a "sensitive nature."After his arrest in October, Campbell pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity with first and second-degree murder but changed his plea in Meade County Court as part of an agreement with prosecutors. The plea agreement dismissed the murder charges and recommended a 55-year prison sentence. He will be sentenced on July 10. Steven Titus, the teenager's defense lawyer, said Thursday that the killing was unplanned and said drugs and alcohol were involved. Krull also said that Campbell suffers from PTSD, but Titus said he would wait until sentencing to discuss his client's mental state.Titus said he planned to make a "compelling case" as to why the plea deal and the 55-year sentence was fair, while Bordewyk said three of Ritthaler's family members will make victim impact statements at the sentencing hearing. Campbell was being held on a $1 million bond at a juvenile jail in Rapid City. As part of his change of plea on Thursday, Krull told the teenager he was barred from making contact with the Ritthaler family for the rest of his life and he owed them more than $83,000 in restitution. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| China says Taiwan's bid to attend key WHO meeting will fail Posted: 08 May 2020 02:22 AM PDT |
| New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo receives backlash for tapping tech billionaires Bill Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to help rebuild the state Posted: 07 May 2020 09:29 AM PDT  Critics say the tech billionaires are "not people who should determine" how to rebuild life for New Yorkers.
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| N. Korea lashes South as Kim praises China's Xi Posted: 07 May 2020 07:11 PM PDT  North Korea condemned the South Friday for holding military drills, saying the situation was returning to before the diplomatic rapprochement of 2018, as leader Kim Jong Un -- whose health was the subject of intense speculation in recent weeks -- reached out to traditional ally Beijing. Kim sent Chinese leader Xi Jinping a diplomatic communication congratulating him for China's "success" in controlling the novel coronavirus epidemic, the state news agency KCNA reported. Kim told Xi he was as pleased with China's successes as his own, KCNA reported, adding he "sent militant greetings to every member of the Communist Party of China".
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| Indian migrant deaths: 16 sleeping workers run over by train Posted: 08 May 2020 01:02 AM PDT  The workers fell asleep on the tracks while trying to make their way home during India's lockdown.
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| Seattle to close 20 miles of streets for good Posted: 07 May 2020 11:14 PM PDT  The move is intended to get people out of the their cars and on their feet.
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| Democrats’ Desperation about Tara Reade Is Growing. So Is Their Hypocrisy. Posted: 08 May 2020 12:15 PM PDT  There aren't a ton of synonyms for the word "hypocrisy." I've become aware of this problem ever since I began writing about the Tara Reade–Joe Biden situation. I keep gravitating towards phrases such as "despicable hypocrisy," or "partisan hypocrisy," or "unconscionable hypocrisy," but you can only go to the well so often. Really, though, I'm not sure how else to describe the actions of someone like Senator Dianne Feinstein.You might recall that it was Feinstein, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, who withheld Christine Blasey Ford's allegation of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh from the Senate so that it could not be properly vetted, in a last-ditch effort to sink the nomination.Feinstein knew that Ford's credibility was brittle -- the alleged victim could not tell us where or when the attack occurred, hadn't mentioned Kavanugh's name to anyone for over 30 years, and offered nothing approaching a contemporaneous witness.At first, Feinstein did not want to provide Ford's name, or a place or time of the alleged attack, or allow the accused to see any evidence against him, denying him the ability to answer the charges.Henceforth this brand of justice could be referred to as "The Joe Biden Standard," since it's exactly the kind of show trial the presumptive Democratic nominee promises college kids via Title IX rules.When finally asked about Reade yesterday, Feinstein responded: "And I don't know this person at all who has made the allegations. She came out of nowhere. Where has she been all these years? He was vice president."To put this in perspective, when Ford came forward "out of nowhere," Feinstein said: "Victims must be able to come forward only when they are ready."What's changed?During the Kavanaugh hearings Feinstein noted that "sharing an experience involving sexual assault — particularly when it involves a politically connected man with influence, authority and power — is extraordinarily difficult."Is Biden not a politically connected man with influence, authority, and power? Feinstein is now arguing the opposite: She is saying we should dismiss Reade's allegations because she failed to come forward against a powerful man earlier.But to answer Feinstein's question about what Reade has been "up to" the past 27 years: Well, she's been telling people that Biden had engaged in sexual misconduct. She relayed her story to her former neighbor, her brother, her former co-worker, and at least two other friends. It is also likely that her mother called Larry King Live asking for advice for her daughter the year of the alleged attack.Yesterday a document uncovered by local journalists in California -- somehow missed by Barack Obama's crack vetting team -- shows Reade's ex-husband bolstering her claim in 1996 divorce proceedings: "On several occasions [Reade] related a problem that she was having at work regarding sexual harassment, in U.S. Senator Joe Biden's office."The reaction to the divorce papers has been extraordinary. Biden defenders argue that because Reade alleged "sexual harassment" -- a catch-all term used in the 1990s when men were getting away with despicable behavior far more often -- it proves her story has changed. Biden, through his deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield, alleges that "more and more inconsistencies" come up every day.Even if Reade didn't tell everyone everything that allegedly happened every time she mentioned the incident, that doesn't definitively prove anything. If it did, none of us would have ever heard the name Christine Blasey Ford.Indeed, at time of Ford's evolving story, there was a slew of journalists taking deep dives into the unreliability of memory and trauma and complexities of relaying assault allegations. I assume that science hasn't changed in two years.Let's also not forget that, despite Ford's inconsistencies, Biden still argued that Kavanaugh should be presumed guilty. Why shouldn't he?It is also quite amazing to see Biden's defenders implicitly contending that Reade is only credibly claiming that she was sexually harassed for nearly 30 years, so her story must be politically motivated.Even if we concede that Reade is a wily Sanders operative or Putin stooge, what political motive could Reade possibly have had back in 1993 -- after working for Biden -- to smear the senator? What motive did she have to repeat that story to her family before Sanders was a candidate or Putin was running Russia?By the way, liberals have never argued that political motivations should be disqualifying. Ford came forward, by her own admission, because she did not believe the man who had allegedly assaulted her in high school should be given a seat on highest court in the land. Reade says she doesn't want a man who allegedly assaulted her -- when he was in his 50s -- to hold the most powerful office in the world.Feinstein, of course, isn't the only one to engage in this kind of transparent double standard. When asked about Reade, the idealist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said, "I'm not sure. Frankly, this is a messy moment, and I think we need to acknowledge that -- that it is not clear-cut."Where was all this hand-wringing and caution over the messiness of sexual-assault claims when nearly every Democrat and all their allies in the press were spreading Julie Swetnick's alleged "gang rape" piece? Nowhere.AOC, whose position on Biden has evolved, invited Ana Maria Archila, the women who had famously cornered a weak-kneed senator Jeff Flake in an elevator and yelled at him about Kavanaugh, to the 2019 State of the Union address. Archila now says, "I feel very trapped."I bet.People point out that there are numerous sexual-misconduct allegations leveled at Donald Trump. Indeed. If they haven't yet, news outlets should scrutinize and investigate the credibility of those allegations, as they did for Biden but not for Kavanaugh. But it's important to remember that Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll was given immediate and widespread coverage on cable news, while Reade reportedly wasn't asked to tell her story by any major network -- save Fox News -- until this week.Of course, most Biden defenders are being purposely obtuse about the debate -- Mona Charen's recent column is an excellent example. The problem isn't that Biden is being treated unjustly, or that he should be treated unjustly; it's that he is being treated justly by the same people who treat others unjustly. Democrats have yet to explain why Biden is afforded every benefit of the doubt but not Kavanaugh, and not millions of college students.Public figures such as Biden have every right to demand fair hearings and due process. Voters have every right to judge the credibility of both accuser and accused. Many women are victims. Many women are victims who are powerless to prove it. And some women are frauds. You can't keep demanding that our political system adjudicate similar incidents under two completely differ set of rules. It's untenable.
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| Self-employed Americans "defeated" by lack of unemployment help Posted: 08 May 2020 09:25 AM PDT  Even in states that have set up the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, people have had trouble getting the money.
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| Barr says it was 'an easy decision' to drop case against Michael Flynn Posted: 07 May 2020 10:50 PM PDT  Attorney General William Barr on Thursday defended the Justice Department's decision to drop the Michael Flynn case, claiming this "sends the message that there is one standard of justice in this country."In December 2017, Flynn, President Trump's first national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Earlier this year, Flynn's new attorneys asked to have his guilty plea withdrawn, claiming he was pressured into it by the FBI. On Thursday, federal prosecutors filed a motion saying they had determined the FBI's interview of Flynn was "untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI's counterintelligence investigation."During an interview with CBS News' Catherine Herridge, Barr said the Justice Department had been investigating Flynn's accusation of misconduct by the government, and after finding additional material, he agreed the case should be dismissed. It was "an easy decision" to file the motion, Barr said, and claimed he was not influenced by Trump's numerous tweets about Flynn and never discussed the matter with him.Herridge asked about Flynn admitting in court that his "false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact" on the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. On the question of materiality, Barr responded, "we feel really that a crime cannot be established here because because there was not, in our view, a legitimate investigation going on." There was "nothing wrong" with Flynn's contacts with Kislyak, he said, calling one conversation "laudable."Barr served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 during the George H.W. Bush administration, and he told Herridge he felt he needed to step back into the role because the country was feeling as if "there were two standards of justice in this country." The Flynn case, he continued, "sends the message that there is one standard of justice in this country. And that's the way it will be. It doesn't matter what political party you're in, or, you know, whether you're rich or poor. We will follow the same standard for everybody."More stories from theweek.com Trump says he couldn't have exposed WWII vets to COVID-19 because the wind was blowing the wrong way Trump cryptically tells reporters 'a lot of things' might happen soon following call with Putin Trump reportedly got 'lava level mad' over potential exposure to coronavirus
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| White men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery won't face Georgia hate crime charges. Here's why. Posted: 08 May 2020 01:16 PM PDT  Gregory and Travis McMichael, who are accused of fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery, a black man, will not face hate crime charges. Here's why.
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| Russian hackers accessed emails from Merkel's constituency office: Der Spiegel Posted: 08 May 2020 02:03 AM PDT  Russia's GRU military intelligence service appears to have got hold of many emails from Chancellor Angela Merkel's constituency office in a 2015 hack attack on Germany's parliament, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday, without citing its sources. A spokesman for the German government had no immediate comment. Der Spiegel said federal criminal police and the federal cyber agency had been able to partially reconstruct the attack and found that two email inboxes from Merkel's office had been targeted.
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| After weeks at sea, 277 Rohingya land in Bangladesh Posted: 08 May 2020 05:05 AM PDT |
| Woman heartbroken by Smithfield Foods' response to grandfather's death from coronavirus Posted: 08 May 2020 01:42 PM PDT  "I want you to know he died in the hospital alone, isolated, and scared," she wrote in an Instagram message to Smithfield Foods.
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| Coronavirus deals 'powerful blow' to Putin's grand plans Posted: 07 May 2020 07:09 PM PDT  The bombastic military parade through Moscow's Red Square on Saturday was slated to be the spectacle of the year on the Kremlin's calendar. Standing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron, President Vladimir Putin would have overseen a 90-minute procession of Russia's military might, showcasing 15,000 troops and the latest hardware. Now, military jets will roar over an eerily quiet Moscow, spurting red, white and blue smoke to mark 75 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany.
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| Michael Flynn Confessed. Justice Department Now Says It Doesn’t Care. Posted: 07 May 2020 11:43 AM PDT  It may not be a pardon. But the Justice Department has dropped charges against Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.Retired Army Lt. Gen. Flynn, an important figure in the war on terror who gave Trump's 2016 run military validation, will avoid prison time after the Justice Department provided a deliverance on Thursday that Flynn had long sought. It is also the second redemption that Trump has provided the general, who served as his first national security adviser for less than a month. "The Government has determined, pursuant to the Principles of Federal Prosecution and based on an extensive review and careful consideration of the circumstances, that continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice," wrote Timothy Shea, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a former senior aide to Attorney General William Barr. Shortly before the filing, lead prosecutor Brandon Von Grack abruptly withdrew from the case.The Justice Department filing, in essence, portrays Flynn as the victim of an FBI frame-up job, and his lies to the FBI as legally marginal. Shea wrote that Flynn's lies needed to have been "not simply false, but 'materially' false with respect to a matter under investigation." Later in the filing, Shea referred to those lies as "gaps in [Flynn's] memory," rather than deliberate falsehoods Flynn conceded. "Even if he told the truth, Mr. Flynn's statements could not have conceivably 'influenced' an investigation that had neither a legitimate counterintelligence nor criminal purpose," Shea wrote.It was an astonishing turnaround since 2018, when a federal judge said to Flynn in a sentencing hearing, "arguably, you sold your country out." That judge, Emmet Sullivan, could still decide to reject Shea's filing and continue with Flynn' sentencing. Michael Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and Justice Department inspector general, tweeted that the extraordinary move represented "a pardon by another name" and called it a "black day in DOJ history."Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the decision to drop charges was "outrageous" and revealed "a politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice." Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) added, "If Barr's Justice Department will drop charges against someone who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and who the White House publicly fired for lying to the vice president, there's nothing it won't do, no investigation it won't taint."Neither Flynn nor his attorney, Sidney Powell, responded immediately to requests for comment.Speaking to reports on Thursday afternoon, Trump said he had no prior knowledge of the Justice Department's decision. "He was an innocent man," Trump said, of Flynn. "Now in my book he's an even greater warrior."The dropped charges follow a years-long groundswell from Trump's base, and particularly Fox News, to clear Flynn. His advocates claim that Flynn was set up by the same disreputable FBI figures who they believe persecuted Trump over phantom collusion with Russia.Flynn's guilty plea, in December, 2017, has been no obstacle to the narrative, particularly since Flynn sought afterwards, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his plea. His sentencing, initially set for February, had also been delayed.Last month, agitation for a Flynn pardon intensified after documents emerged from two of Trump's most hated ex-FBI figures, counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page, discussing Flynn's fateful January 2017 interview with the FBI. Page asked when and how to "slip it in" to Flynn that lying to an FBI agent is a crime, something that Flynn's advocates believed showed the general being railroaded from the start. But veteran FBI agents and prosecutors have pointed out that the FBI is not legally obligated to inform an interview subject that lying to them is illegal. "Michael Flynn was very familiar with the FBI," said Stephanie Douglas, a former executive assistant director of the FBI's National Security Branch. "He would certainly have been aware of his obligation to provide candid and truthful information. His claim he was tricked and manipulated doesn't sound valid to me." Shea, in his Thursday court filing, suggested the FBI officials were "fishing for falsehoods merely to manufacture jurisdiction over any statement." In Shea's view, Flynn's lies were less germane to the prosecution than the FBI "lack[ing] sufficient basis to sustain its initial counterintelligence investigation," and its pre-interview position that it ought to close the investigation before speaking with the then national security adviser.Former FBI deputy head Andrew McCabe said on Thursday that the suggestion there was no reason to interview Flynn was "patently false, and ignores the considerable national security risk his contacts raised." He said Flynn's lies added to the FBI's concerns about his relationship with Russia. "Today's move... is pure politics designed to please the president," he added.U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who was appointed by Barr to review Flynn's and other high-profile cases, said on Thursday that he concluded "the proper and just course" was to dismiss the case. "I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed," he said.The FBI Didn't Frame Michael Flynn. That's Just Trump's Excuse for a Prospective Pardon.While serving as national security adviser, Flynn misled FBI interviewers about conversations he had with the then-Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. In one of those late 2016 conversations, according to court filings, Flynn asked the Russians to avoid escalatory actions in response to sanctions and diplomatic expulsions then President Barack Obama enacted as reprisal for Russian electoral interference. Shea, in his filing, called Flynn's Kislyak calls "entirely appropriate on their face."The national security adviser's lies prompted the holdover attorney general, Sally Yates, to warn the White House that Flynn had given the Russians leverage to blackmail him. But it would take weeks before Trump fired Flynn over "an eroding level of trust" concerning misleading Vice President Mike Pence on the Kislyak contacts. By May, Trump was said to have regretted dismissing the general. Flynn in 2017 agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. The general avoided charges for taking $530,000 in unregistered money from interests connected to the Turkish government—something he only declared with the Justice Department after his downfall as national security adviser. During a sentencing hearing in 2018, a federal judge castigated Flynn for disgracing the uniform Flynn wore for three decades. "Arguably, you sold your country out," Judge Emmet Sullivan said. Two years earlier, on stage at the Republican national convention, Flynn had led a chant of "lock her up" about Hillary Clinton. Protesters outside Flynn's courtroom did not let the general forget it. Trump's enduring bond with Flynn is a testament to the importance of the role the general played in 2016.A host of national security officials, many aligned with the Republican Party, rejected Trump in 2016 as unfit to be president owing to his nativism, his penchant for brutality and his benign view of dictators like Russia's Vladimir Putin. Flynn was the exception. And the general was an exceptional figure. As the intelligence chief for the Joint Special Operations Command during the mid-2000s, Flynn is one of a select few people who can be said to have personally prosecuted the most sensitive missions of the war on terror. Michael Flynn Putting Mueller Deal at Risk in 'Dangerous' New TrialIt was a pivotal credential in another way. Flynn emerged from the war on terror endorsing Trump's view that the security apparatus, abetted by hidebound liberals and cowardly conservatives, had neutered the war on terror by refusing to see it was a civilizational conflict with Islam. "Islam is a political ideology" that "hides behind this notion of being a religion," Flynn told the Islamophobic group ACT for America shortly after the 2016 convention. His hostility to Islam informed his sanguine view of Russia, which both Flynn and Trump saw as naturally aligned with the U.S. against what they called "Radical Islamic Terror."It also meant that Trump and Flynn shared a common bureaucratic enemy. James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, was a lead architect of an intelligence assessment finding Russia intervened in the election on Trump's behalf. In 2014, Clapper fired Flynn as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It was deeply embittering. Just four years earlier, Flynn had been hailed as an innovator after claiming U.S. military intelligence had misunderstood the Afghanistan war. While Flynn portrayed himself as a martyr, victimized by the 'Deep State' for daring to warn about radical Islam, Clapper and other intelligence leaders had fallen out with Flynn over what they considered an incompetent management style and an iffy relationship with the truth. Reportedly, Flynn believed Iran was involved in the 2012 assault on a CIA compound in Benghazi that killed four Americans, and claimed incorrectly that Iran was responsible for more American deaths than al-Qaeda. Aides referred to such untruths as "Flynn facts." Flynn facts did not disturb Trump. They validated his instincts on national security. Trump rewarded Flynn by making him national security adviser, one of the most important positions in the U.S. security apparatus. It was the first time Trump redeemed Flynn. Thursday's dropped charges represent the second. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Feinstein Blasts Tara Reade: ‘Where Has She Been All These Years?’ Posted: 07 May 2020 02:55 PM PDT  Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) on Thursday attacked former Joe Biden staffer Tara Reade, who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Biden in the spring of 1993.Feinstein said the allegations were "totally different" than those against Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh."Kavanaugh was under the harshest inspection that we give people over a substantial period of time," Feinstein told CNN on Thursday. "And I don't know this person at all [Reade] who has made the allegations [against Biden]. She came out of nowhere. Where has she been all these years? He was vice president."Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh's accuser, claimed that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in 1982, an allegation that was known by Feinstein's office before it was publicly reported in September 2018. Feinstein later denied that she or anyone in her office had withheld Ford's allegation for political purposes or had leaked the allegation to the press.Reade, meanwhile, called on Biden to drop out of the presidential race in an interview with Megyn Kelly released Thursday."I want to say: You were there, Joe Biden. Please, step forward and be held accountable. You should not be running on character for the president of the United States," Reade said.
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| Anarchy in Venezuela's jails laid bare by massacre over food Posted: 08 May 2020 10:27 AM PDT  Three weeks before he was shot dead, Miguel Calderon, an inmate in the lawless Los Llanos jail on Venezuela's central plains, sent a voice message to his father. Like many of the prisoners in Venezuela's overcrowded and violent penitentiaries, Los Llanos's 4,000 inmates normally subsist on food relatives bring them. The guards, desperate themselves amid national shortages, began stealing the little food getting behind bars, inmates said, forcing some prisoners to turn to eating stray animals.
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| Airline middle seats won't stay empty forever in the name of social distancing. Here's why Posted: 08 May 2020 05:00 AM PDT  Permanently blocking middle seats and limiting the number of passengers per flight is a costly move for airlines and would increase ticket prices.
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| A person was struck and killed by a Southwest plane as it landed on the runway at Austin international airport Posted: 08 May 2020 07:53 AM PDT  Austin-Bergstrom International Airport said it was "aware of an individual that was struck and killed on runway 17-R by a landing aircraft."
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| Pence staffer who tested positive for coronavirus is Stephen Miller's wife Posted: 08 May 2020 12:33 PM PDT  The staffer of Vice President Mike Pence who tested positive for coronavirus is apparently his press secretary and the wife of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller.Reports emerged on Friday that a member of Pence's staff had tested positive for COVID-19, creating a delay in his flight to Iowa amid concern over who may have been exposed. Later in the day, Trump said the staffer is a "press person" named Katie.Politico reported he was referring to Katie Miller, Pence's press secretary and the wife of Stephen Miller. This report noted this raises the risk that "a large swath of the West Wing's senior aides may also have been exposed." She confirmed her positive diagnosis to NBC News, saying she does not have symptoms.Trump spilled the beans to reporters, saying Katie Miller "hasn't come into contact with me" but has "spent some time with the vice president." This news comes one day after a personal valet to Trump tested positive for COVID-19, which reportedly made the president "lava level mad." Pence and Trump are being tested for COVID-19 every day.Asked Friday if he's concerned about the potential spread of coronavirus in the White House, Trump said "I'm not worried, no," adding that "we've taken very strong precautions."More stories from theweek.com Trump says he couldn't have exposed WWII vets to COVID-19 because the wind was blowing the wrong way Trump cryptically tells reporters 'a lot of things' might happen soon following call with Putin Trump reportedly got 'lava level mad' over potential exposure to coronavirus
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| A phase two trial and a June goal: This week's updates on the race for a coronavirus vaccine Posted: 08 May 2020 10:07 AM PDT  Experts caution that even promising early results don't guarantee that vaccines will be widely available anytime soon.
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| Coronavirus: Meat shortage leaves US farmers with 'mind-blowing' choice Posted: 07 May 2020 09:56 PM PDT  As the virus disrupts the food chain, millions of pigs could be put down without ever making it to table.
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| Amid pandemic, Pompeo to visit Israel for annexation talks Posted: 08 May 2020 09:58 AM PDT  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Israel next week for a brief visit amid the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, a trip that's expected to focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans to annex portions of the West Bank, the State Department said Friday. Pompeo will make the lightning trip to Jerusalem to see Netanyahu and his new coalition partner Benny Gantz on Wednesday as the Trump administration tries to return to business as normal by resuming governmental travel and reopening an economy devastated by the COVID-19 outbreak.
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| Katie Miller, Pence spokeswoman, tests positive for coronavirus Posted: 08 May 2020 10:57 AM PDT  The diagnosis brings the threat of infection into the president's inner circle.
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| Bangladesh quarantines hundreds of Rohingya boat people on island: officials Posted: 07 May 2020 10:46 PM PDT |
| Brazil government warns of economic collapse in 30 days Posted: 08 May 2020 08:54 AM PDT  Brazil could face "economic collapse" in a month's time due to stay-at-home measures to stem the coronavirus outbreak, with food shortages and "social disorder," Economy Minister Paulo Guedes warned Thursday. Brazil, Latin America's biggest economy, is also the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the region. But far-right President Jair Bolsonaro - who appeared alongside Guedes, his free-market economics guru - opposes stay-at-home measures to slow the virus, saying they are unnecessarily damaging the economy. "Within about 30 days, there may start to be shortages on (store) shelves and production may become disorganized, leading to a system of economic collapse, of social disorder," Guedes said. "This is a serious alert." Bolsonaro, who has compared the new coronavirus to a "little flu," said he understood "the virus problem" and believed that "we must save lives." "But there is a problem that's worrying us more and more... and that's the issue of jobs, of the stalled economy," Bolsonaro added. "Fighting the virus shouldn't do more damage than the virus itself."
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| Russia is fast becoming a coronavirus epicenter, with health workers still reporting PPE shortages. Putin is already thinking about reopening. Posted: 08 May 2020 04:19 AM PDT  On Thursday, the country reported its largest one-day increase in new cases of 11,231 — yet President Putin already has his eyes on reopening.
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| A Woman Who Opened Fire in a McDonald's After Getting Angry About Coronavirus Restrictions Is in Custody: Authorities Posted: 07 May 2020 07:30 PM PDT  hree teenage McDonald's employees in Oklahoma City suffered gunshot wounds when a customer opened fire because she was angry that the restaurant's dining area was closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, police said Thursday.
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| Neighbor of father and son arrested in Ahmaud Arbery killing is also under investigation Posted: 08 May 2020 11:07 AM PDT  The investigation into the fatal shooting in Brunswick, Georgia, will also look at a neighbor of suspects Gregory and Travis McMichael who recorded video of the incident, authorities said.
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| Gypsy moth: US has another bug to worry about after ‘murder hornets’ Posted: 07 May 2020 10:25 AM PDT  Washington governor Jay Inslee has issued an emergency warning about a possible infestation of gypsy moths, just days after scientists revealed dangerous Asian hornets had been spotted in the state.Both Asian gypsy moths and Asian-European hybrid gypsy moths pose a threat to Washington, according to the governor.
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| Texas salon owner jailed for defying governor's order freed Posted: 07 May 2020 07:57 AM PDT  A Texas salon owner who defied Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's emergency orders and was jailed for keeping her business open walked out free Thursday to cheering supporters after the governor weakened his enforcement of coronavirus safeguards and a court ordered her released. Shelley Luther, owner of a Salon A La Mode in Dallas, wore a mask while leaving jail less than 48 hours after a judge sentenced her to a week behind bars for flouting public health orders meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Luther, who refused to apologize or promise to keep her business closed even after a Dallas judge said dong so might keep her out of jail, said she was overwhelmed as she walked toward a crowd chanting her name.
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| Joe Biden's sexual assault allegation puts Senate candidate Amy McGrath in a tough spot Posted: 08 May 2020 02:17 PM PDT  McGrath said sexual assault should be called out no matter if alleged against a Republican or a Democrat, but the candidate is reticent about Biden.
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| Jetliner hits and kills person as it lands at Austin airport Posted: 08 May 2020 09:33 AM PDT  Southwest Airlines says pilot spotted the person shortly after it touched down and maneuvered to try to avoid the person.
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| EU executive defends China envoy over censored op-ed Posted: 08 May 2020 05:51 AM PDT |
| Did we just witness one of the nuttiest foreign policy blunders in American history? Posted: 07 May 2020 02:57 AM PDT  I cannot be the only American who somehow missed the news that on March 26 Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the United States would offer bounties of a combined $55 million for the capture of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and four of his top associates. By the end of March, most of the country was living under some sort of mandatory lockdown. People were fighting for toilet paper and stocking up on bags of rice and making plans for aspirational quarantine reading. Millions of us were preparing for Mad Max.It now appears that we were thinking of the wrong '80s action flick. Last weekend it was reported that a group of more than 100 American mercenaries, including two former Green Berets and one ex-agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration, had failed in some kind of apparent coup attempt and that some of them were being detained by the Maduro government. What was being called "Operation Gideon" perhaps unsurprisingly failed to bring about regime change, much less result in the apprehension of the country's socialist dictator. Reports suggest that 50 of the mercenaries stormed Venezuela by sea, joining up with around the same number of fellow soldiers of fortune already waiting behind enemy lines. The Venezuelan army (and Maduro's own paramilitary loyalist forces) outmatched them by around 350,000. A small ragtag band of American warriors attempts to force the commies out of South America against all odds? This is basically the plot of Predator if the Predator hadn't shown up.Pompeo maintains that the United States government was not involved in this offensive. For what it's worth, he is probably telling the truth. Instead it appears that the plot was launched long ago by a bunch of former Venezuelan military officials who have been training deserters from the Maduro regime in secret Colombian camps for a year. One of the principals, a retired general named Cliver Alcalá, was arrested in the United States back in March for drug smuggling and is imprisoned in New York.Operation Gideon was, not to put too fine a point on it, at odds with both federal social distancing guidelines and current recommendations from the World Health Organization. It was also absolutely insane. Convincing Maduro, whose presidency is considered illegitimate by the United States and around 80 other countries, to release captured Americans is going to be an enormous hassle for everyone involved. Pompeo says that the Trump administration is prepared "to use every tool" to secure their freedom. This includes, presumably, the threat of military force. What other options are realistically on the table? Official recognition of the Maduro regime? The imposition of additional economic sanctions upon what is arguably the worst economy in the Western hemisphere during the middle of a global public health crisis? A nice handwritten apology note saying, "Sorry, next time we want to encourage bored ex-servicemen to collaborate with your own generals in a revolutionary plot on the pretext that you are involved in high-level drug trafficking, we will, well, there won't be a next time?"Under virtually any other circumstances a story like this one would be a foreign policy blunder worthy of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in terms of the lunatic scope of its ambition, if not, thankfully, in the number of lives lost, American or otherwise. Instead it is likely to be forgotten amid the pandemic. This does not mean that it is lacking in significance.The main lesson of Operation Gideon is that whatever the Trump administration claims about the importance of Venezuela to American foreign policy, they have no serious interest in doing anything about Maduro, much less in helping ordinary citizens for whom a carton of eggs now costs more than a month's wages. It is easy to rail against the undeniable wickedness of the communist dictatorship there; it is harder to displace it. Sounder heads would leave off talk of gazillion-dollar bounties and hope that the worldwide collapse in oil prices might force Maduro out of power, at which time the United States would be better positioned to help a new government.The other lesson is that, whatever we owe the people of Latin America after a half century of destroying their economies through unfair trade arrangements and our addiction to vile drugs, we lack the national will to help them, just as we failed to move the needle against the Taliban in Afghanistan despite 20 years of trying. This is why, no matter how illogical it seems, one of our nation's two major political parties has committed itself to the principle that virtually unlimited immigration is the only feasible solution. So far, no one is proving them wrong.More stories from theweek.com Sen. Joe Manchin forgot to mute a call with Senate Democrats while he went through an Arby's drive-through Trump reportedly got 'lava level mad' over potential exposure to coronavirus The full-spectrum failure of the Trump revolution
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| Geraldo Rivera reacts to Michael Flynn case: Good man caught in a ‘perjury trap’ Posted: 08 May 2020 06:25 AM PDT  Fox News correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera reacts to President Trump calling the Michael Flynn case a 'total hoax' on 'Fox and Friends.'
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| Google employees are told to expect to work from home for the rest of the year, but a select few will be allowed to return to offices as soon as June Posted: 07 May 2020 05:42 PM PDT  Google CEO Sundar Pichai has told employees to expect to work from home for the remainder of 2020, but will open offices for certain exceptions.
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| Off-duty officer body slams Walmart shopper irate over face mask rule Posted: 07 May 2020 07:28 PM PDT |
| Relax Social Distancing? South Korea’s Giving It a Try—With Some Scary Results Posted: 08 May 2020 10:31 AM PDT  SEOUL—South Koreans may be proud of their record relegating coronavirus to the status of a relatively minor menace, but the kind of voluntary social distancing called for now is hard. If anyone doubted that, a new outbreak in one of Seoul's legendary nightclub districts provides an unsettling reminder.South Korea never locked down the way many other countries have, but it did enforce strict rules to keep people from getting so close to each other that the novel coronavirus could run rampant.The fresh outbreak that began last week started in gaudy clubs where the rules of common sense had been dissipating as the dangers of the coronavirus began to fade. No one was wearing masks, and social distancing had ceased to be a priority. Now the search is on to find everyone who might have been in close quarters with one person who was diagnosed as having had COVID-19.He was not identified publicly other than as the 29-year-old source of at least 18 cases, including three foreigners, in five clubs in Itaewon, which was once the stomping ground of American GIs near the former U.S. military headquarters in central Seoul. Officials feared the bug could spread among more than 1,500 people who'd been at those clubs renowned for noise, drinks, fast food at inflated prices, still more for hostesses at some of them. The clubs often are crowded late into the night.The sudden upsurge haunted Koreans just as the government this week was going through the motions of relaxing its strict guidelines, counting on everyone to observe "voluntary social distancing in daily life." Somewhat ambiguously after the incident, night club owners were advised to "restrict business" for one month, suggesting it would be a good idea to cool it—or maybe even close—voluntarily. They were also asked to write down the names of customers—invaluable for tracing future cases—and told everyone had to be wearing face masks. Oh, and, if more cases did break out, owners would have to pay medical expenses.By late Friday night, many owners and managers seemed to have gotten the idea. A lot of the bars were closed and the often crowded main drag through Itaewon was bereft of its usual weekend traffic. All of which supported the view of Son Young-rae, director of strategy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, that we should expect the virus "inevitably to come back in daily activities," though clearly he was not thinking so soon.Son, talking about removal of strict rules before the news of the nightclub incident had gotten around, was confident, "When we have a second outbreak, the speed of the spread will be remarkably slow." Notice Son is not talking about if but when. A second surge is taken as a given.The outbreak in Itaewon may not be enough to warrant restoring rigid formal rules, but officials are wary. Son's superior, Kim Ganglip, vice health minister, said "when the social distancing campaign was in effect" an order on quarantine measures "was valid for nightlife establishments." Now "we will see if additional measures are needed."For now, while owners of nightclubs are expected to do as told, voluntarily or not, ordinary folks can decide for themselves whether to stand six feet apart or wear face masks. By next week, schools and libraries should be reopening, some faster than others. People can work out at fitness centers and go to theaters, and nobody's ordering them to line up six feet apart at cash registers in shops and restaurants.It's hoped that everyone knows enough to do that almost instinctively, even as a strict protocol remains in place for those entering the country from abroad.With at least half the new cases of the virus blamed on passengers off international flights, stringent testing remains in force at airports.The results of the test come back usually after one night at a government facility. The vast majority are negative, but new arrivals are still quarantined for two weeks with friends or relatives or, if on their own, in a spartan room for two weeks at a cost of nearly $100 a day, including meals deposited in carefully wrapped packages outside doors.The only exceptions are those on urgent business who plan to stay for just a few days. They can get a waiver from Korean embassies or consulates abroad after testing negative for the virus. So far only 200 people have gotten the waiver.No matter what, Son had to admit, "it is impossible to terminate or remove COVID-19." Rather, he said, "we can control the situation."At a virtual briefing for foreign correspondents for which they sent in questions, Son played up voluntary distancing even as coffee shops, stores, subways, and buses filled with rush hour crowds. The only sign that people were thinking seriously about COVID-19 was that most were wearing face masks.Some, however, chose to let them slip down below their noses and mouths while a few were no longer bothering to wear them at all.The Korean system, held up as an example before the world after the disease broke out in early February among members of a religious sect in Daegu, a major city 140 miles southeast of here, clearly has worked remarkably well. As of Friday, the Korean Center for Disease Control reported 10,822 cases, up 12 from the day before, including 256 deaths, no increase from the previous day. According to Worldometer calculations, COVID-19 has killed only five out of every 1 million people in South Korea. By comparison, there are 233 per million in the United States, where more than 76,000 people with the disease have died.As South Korea tries to relax restrictions, it is not counting on the population developing immunity any time soon. Son was realistic about the simple fact there's no cure yet for the virus and it's going to frighten Koreans, and the rest of the world, for at least another year or two, maybe longer."Until we have a vaccine or cure, we can have a reappearance," he said, citing the danger of the disease spreading from people who are asymptomatic—showing no signs of the illness and never tested. "It's very difficult to root out."Son spoke before Korean mayors and governors gathered in an emergency session to talk about new guidelines for the nightclubs that were going strong, at least until last weekend. Those who had visited the King Club, Club Queen, and Trunk Club, all places where the latest "super-spreader" had been, were advised to quarantine themselves.The possibility loomed of South Korea again imposing restrictions while Son and others defended the need for voluntary compliance rather than legal orders on social distancing and other common-sense strictures, including wearing face masks and washing hands.Kwon Jun-wook, deputy director general at the Korea Center for Disease Control, counted on what he said would be the "etiquette of people entirely participating" in "the Korean spirit" but acknowledged, "We all agree that the COVID-19 world is very different from the past."He portrayed Koreans as banding together against the disease and saw very little chance of many if any suffering from relapses, or recurrence of the bug once they've been tested as cured.On the basis of 300 cases so far in which tests have shown "reactivation of COVID-19," he said, "there has not been infection or contagion."Laboratory analyses on "whether there's a reactivated virus," he explained, showed that "reactivation was not clinically significant." In fact, while the virus was detected, there had "not been a single case" of anyone coming down with the disease that way.Kwon seemed somewhat less certain about the level of immunity as determined by tests for antibodies capable of fighting the virus, but did say "we have a detailed plan" that depends on cooperation from the Korean public, 70 percent of whom "usually agree to public health testing." One reason testing was readily accepted, he said, was a public health system in which all Koreans get extremely low-priced medical care.An important element in the battle is plasma from patients who are ill. "Plasma can be developed for finding a cure," he said, citing an ongoing "active investigation on developing plasma."Kwon was not optimistic, however, about coming up with the answer right away, or even this year or next. "We will have a concrete picture by next year," he said, but "the vaccine requires higher safety than the treatment"—often carried out in a life-or-death effort simply to save a patient by whatever means have a chance of working.Critical to Korea's success so far, in Kwon's view, was the decision to let people know what's going on, and to track down, via cellphone signals and other means, every place anyone diagnosed with the disease has been."Openness and transparency didn't just come alone," he said. Only after the outbreak five years ago of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), in which 38 Koreans died, was a law passed that requires information sharing.One result has been not only the willingness to cooperate but also the means to pass along warnings as soon as possible. The words "emergency alert" show up on the screens of mobile devices whenever a case is discovered and diagnosed, as happened at least twice on Friday. The first notice did not give out the name of the person but did reveal where he or she lived and had been."COVID-19 developed with huge speed," said Son Young-rae from the health ministry. "It was very important to carry out diagnostic tests actively."By attacking the spread of the disease quickly and aggressively, however, South Korea never resorted to lockdowns and shutdowns as in the U.S. and Europe."We will keep monitoring and controlling the system," Son said. "If the numbers are increasing, we will go back to the system we had in the beginning": social distancing.Not long after he spoke, millions of cellphones buzzed with another "emergency alert." Anyone who had been in those nightclubs in Itaewon, the message advised, "should stay home."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Foreigners on front lines of pandemic in Gulf Arab states Posted: 06 May 2020 11:34 PM PDT  As she was treated for COVID-19 in a hospital isolation ward in Kuwait City, Amnah Ibraheem wanted to credit those caring for her. The nurses were all South Asian, the radiologist was African, another of her doctors was Egyptian. The only fellow Kuwaiti she saw, briefly, was a lone volunteer.
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| Rosenstein ‘Scope’ Memo Confirms Baselessness of Trump–Russia Probe Posted: 07 May 2020 01:58 PM PDT  Finally, three years coming, the Justice Department is showing a little more leg on the Rosenstein "scope" memo -- the directive by which then–deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein defined the parameters of the investigation he'd appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to conduct.Of course, the games never end in the Trump–Russia probe, so there's a hitch. The scope memo remains partially, tantalizingly redacted. Disclosure is limited to Rosenstein's purported grounds for investigating four members of the Trump presidential campaign: Carter Page, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Michael Flynn. But six lines of text, which appear to describe a fifth person, and the supposed basis for investigating that person, remain blacked out.Does this redacted section refer to President Trump? We do not know.We do know that the FBI had opened a criminal investigation of Trump, based on the untenable theory that a president's firing of the FBI director could amount to obstruction of justice. The last 200 pages of the special counsel's voluminous report, moreover, demonstrate that the cabal of activist Democrats that Robert Mueller recruited to conduct the investigation tried like hell to make an obstruction case on Trump. But was that aspect of the special counsel's enterprise licensed by Rosenstein's scope memo? For some reason, we're not being told.The scope memo is dated August 2, 2017. It is worth rehearsing why it was necessary.Rosenstein appointed Mueller on May 17, 2017. In doing so, as I explained repeatedly at the time, he failed to comply with federal regulations. The appointment of a special counsel is proper only if there is a factual basis to support a criminal investigation that the Justice Department is too conflicted to conduct. The Russia investigation was not a criminal investigation; it was a counterintelligence investigation. The latter focuses on the activities of foreign powers for information-gathering purposes, not on criminal activity for prosecution purposes.On Trump–Russia, there was no factual basis for a criminal investigation, which is why Rosenstein did not attempt to articulate one in his directive appointing Mueller. Therefore, the question of whether there was a conflict requiring the appointment of a prosecutor from outside DOJ should never have been reached. Even if it had been reached, there was no conflict, which is why the FBI and DOJ had been conducting the Russia investigation for nearly a year before Mueller's appointment. In any event, because the FBI's counterintelligence mission is not prosecutor work, it normally does not need a DOJ prosecutor, much less an outside prosecutor.That the initial appointment directive was wholly inadequate is not surprising. In that Week That Was, Rosenstein was evidently an emotional wreck.On May 9, President Trump fired FBI director James Comey, publicly relying on a memo Rosenstein wrote and foolishly assumed he'd reap bipartisan praise over -- he had, after all, scalded Comey over the mishandling of the Hillary Clinton emails caper. To his shock and dismay, Rosenstein was vilified. Though Democrats had no real use for Comey (they blamed him for Clinton's defeat), by May 2017 they found it expedient to frame Comey's firing as the height of the president's "collusion" with Russia -- impeding the FBI's effort to examine the fever dream of Trump-campaign complicity with the Kremlin. Indeed, the bureau's then–acting director, Andrew McCabe, leapt at the Comey firing as a rationale for opening an obstruction case on Trump.Rosenstein agitated over being made the fall guy. In his hand-wringing over how to restore his reputation as a scrupulous nonpartisan (i.e., a nominally Republican bureaucrat admired by Democrats), he broached the possibilities of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove a mentally unfit president from office and of covertly recording the president in the Oval Office (if Trump ranted, recordings might convince the cabinet that he was unstable). Realizing that these were lunatic notions, Rosenstein finally settled on naming Mueller, a Beltway eminence, to be a special counsel. The appointment was made on May 17, with Rosenstein's assurances to congressional Democrats that Mueller would have virtually boundless authority.But the problem remained: There was no factual basis to believe that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, had engaged in a conspiracy with the Kremlin to interfere with the 2016 campaign by cyberespionage or any other criminal activity.The failure of Rosenstein's order appointing Mueller to specify a proper foundation for a criminal probe was not just a public-perception problem for the Justice Department: It portended legal challenges. If Mueller charged anyone, as it appeared he was poised to do to Manafort (for tax and other crimes unrelated to Trump and Russia), the defense would surely claim that Mueller's appointment was illegitimate.To paper over this deficiency, Rosenstein issued the scope memo. Up until yesterday, we had been permitted to see only the Manafort-related passages (because, as just adumbrated, they became an issue in Mueller's prosecution of Manafort). But as I noted at the time, even that glimpse of the memo provided insight into the travesty that was the Mueller appointment, and the Trump–Russia probe itself.The unredacted Manafort section authorized Mueller to investigate whether Manafort "committed a crime by colluding with Russian-government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 election." Where to begin? First, as we noted more times than I can count, collusion is not a crime. Second, not surprisingly, Rosenstein articulated no factual basis to believe Manafort had "colluded" with Russia. Third, that's obviously because the "basis" for this allegation was the bogus "Steele dossier." Fourth, by the time Mueller was appointed, the FBI and the Justice Department well knew that the dossier was Clinton-campaign-sponsored propaganda. FBI agents had not only failed to corroborate its triple-hearsay claims; they also knew that Steele had major credibility problems, and they had interviewed a key Steele "sub-source" who scoffed at his claims as nonsense.Of course, Rosenstein wouldn't have wanted to bring those inconvenient details up. At the time of the scope memo, he'd only recently authorized the final application for a FISA surveillance warrant against Carter Page -- which relied on the Steele dossier, notwithstanding what the FBI and DOJ already knew about its deep flaws.Speaking of Page, recall that he was never charged with a crime despite the FBI and DOJ's four representations, under oath to the FISA court, that he was a clandestine agent of Russia working in a "conspiracy of cooperation" between the Trump campaign and Putin's regime. Yet the now-unredacted portions of the scope memo show that Rosenstein authorized Mueller to investigate Page for "colluding" with Russia. Naturally, the memo does not elaborate on the "basis" for this allegation. Like the "basis" for the FISA warrants, it relied heavily on the Steele dossier.The unredacted scope memo similarly reveals George Papadopoulos as a Mueller prosecution target, over the unsupported allegation that he may have committed the nonexistent crime of "colluding with Russian government officials." Mueller was authorized to pursue this claim even though we now know the FBI and DOJ knew it was untrue. Because the FBI had used confidential informants to attempt to entrap Papadopoulos into admitting that he and Trump's campaign were in cahoots with the Kremlin, investigators knew he had vigorously denied it. They also knew that their main tip on Papadopoulos (Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat with longstanding ties to the Clintons) had not actually claimed that Papadopoulos said the campaign was conspiring with the Russians. In fact, Papadopoulos had not even mentioned DNC emails, the publication of which had "suggested" to the diplomat that there might kinda, sorta be some Trump-campaign wrongdoing involved.And then there is General Flynn. Regarding the Trump–Russia probe, the scope memo shows Rosenstein directed Mueller to investigate whether Flynn committed a crime "by engaging in conversations with Russian government officials during the period of the Trump transition." Of course, the Justice Department and the FBI already knew there were no such crimes because they had recordings of these communications, between Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.Flynn had not made any commitments to Russia about lifting sanctions, and even if he had done so, it would not have been a crime. The only theory on which these communications were conceivably criminal would have called for application of the Logan Act. As we've noted many times, this late-18th-century provision, which purports to criminalize freelance diplomacy by unauthorized officials, is unconstitutional. That is why the Justice Department has not even tried to invoke it since 1852, and why, in the Logan Act's 221 years on the books, no one has ever been convicted of violating it.Mueller was also authorized to probe whether Flynn had made false statements to FBI agents who questioned him about his Kislyak conversations. By the time of the scope memo, the FBI and DOJ knew that (a) the questioning of Flynn had not been based on any properly predicated investigation; (b) the FBI had willfully violated protocols to conduct an ambush interview, which they would not have been permitted to do had they sought permission from the Justice Department and the White House; (c) the agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe he had lied; and (d) the bureau improperly edited the report of Flynn's interview. Mueller's staff nevertheless eventually succeeded in pressuring Flynn to plead guilty to a false-statements charge. It has since been reported, however, that (a) they pressured him to plead by threatening to prosecute his son, (b) Mueller's commitment not to prosecute Flynn's son was withheld from the court, in violation of federal law, and (c) prosecutors concealed from Flynn's defense significant exculpatory evidence while misrepresenting how the interview report was generated.It is worth noting that Rosenstein authorized Mueller to investigate other crimes -- e.g., irregularities regarding payments Manafort received from Ukraine, and whether Papadopoulos and Flynn should have registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents due to work they'd allegedly done for, respectively, Israel and Turkey. Putting aside whether there was a sufficient factual basis for these allegations (over which only Manafort was eventually prosecuted), they had nothing to do with the Trump–Russia probe. That is, there was no conceivable conflict warranting appointment of a special counsel, no reason why the Justice Department could not have investigated these matters in the normal course of business.Mueller, to the contrary, was appointed only because an investigation of President Trump and his campaign could have presented a conflict for the Trump Justice Department. Whether it did depended, of course, on whether there was a real reason to conduct a criminal probe of President Trump, despite the fact that the FBI's former director, James Comey, told Trump multiple times that he was not under investigation.From the looks of things, then–deputy AG Rosenstein not only had nothing when he appointed a special counsel; he further had abundant reason to know he had nothing. "Democrats are saying mean things about me" is not a legally cognizable basis for naming a prosecutor from outside DOJ. Did Rosenstein have more than that? It doesn't look that way . . . but maybe all the good stuff is under those six lines that, for some reason, we're still not allowed to see.
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| Booze battle for Pakistan's drinkers during lockdown and Ramadan Posted: 08 May 2020 12:21 AM PDT  Drinking alcohol in Pakistan can be a complicated affair at the best of times, but for 25-year-old student Iram, the coronavirus pandemic has made getting a beer all but impossible. "There is no more beer!" lamented Iram, an Islamabad resident who asked AFP to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals in this conservative country where drinking is illegal for Muslims, even though many people enjoy a tipple. The sum is equivalent to the monthly wage for many people, and Iram initially baulked at the price.
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| China says Taiwan will fail in bid to attend key WHO meeting Posted: 08 May 2020 02:16 AM PDT |
| Man hit by plane, killed on Austin-Bergstrom airport runway, officials say Posted: 08 May 2020 04:03 AM PDT  A person died Thursday night after being hit by a plane as it was landing at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, according to airport officials.
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