U.S. lawmakers are urging President Donald Trump to raise the issue of China's mass internment of Muslim ethnic minorities when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Argentina. VOA's Michael Bowman reports from Washington.
Read More Trump Urged to Press Xi on China's Treatment of Uighurs : https://ift.tt/2Qw811U
George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, a man born of patrician pedigree, but with a sense of honor, duty and service to his country that played out over the last 60 years of the 20th century, died Friday at age 94.
In a life on the world stage and at the highest levels of the American political scene, Bush lost and won elections before becoming the American leader in 1989, and then, with a declining U.S. economy and unemployment rising, was turned out of office after four years in the White House, losing his re-election bid in 1992.
He marked the start of his presidency with a sweeping inaugural declaration that “a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man’s heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree.”
His pronouncement soon proved prophetic, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union occurring early in his presidency. Bush met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, their Malta talks viewed as an important stepping stone toward the two leaders signing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
During his four years in the White House, Bush ordered a military operation in Panama to overthrow its drug-trafficking leader, Manuel Noriega. Later, he sent troops to the Mideast to repel Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his attempted takeover of oil-rich Kuwait. It was perhaps the high point of Bush’s presidency, his approval rating among U.S. voters reaching a record 89 percent, with a fireworks display lighting the night-time sky over Washington to salute the successful mission.
Upon later reflection, Bush’s foray into Kuwait was considered as something less than a total victory in that many Iraqi troops were pushed back into their homeland, rather than captured or killed, and Hussein remained in power, only overthrown years later in the 2003 U.S. invasion ordered by Bush’s son, President George W. Bush.
The elder Bush said he rejected an overthrow of the Iraqi government because it would have “incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.”
Early commitment to country
Bush’s commitment to his country came early in life. He was a naval fighter pilot in World War II, attacking Japanese targets at the age of 18, victorious in one of the war’s largest air battles, the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Later, he completed one mission after his plane was hit by flak, leaving his engine on fire. He bailed out of the aircraft and was rescued in the waters off the Bonin Islands.
In his rise to the presidency, Bush held a variety of key positions over the years, often deemed by Republican presidents as the most qualified man in U.S. public life. He served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the early 1970s, chairman of the Republican National Committee a short time later, then as chief U.S. envoy to China in the mid-1970s. Later, he was director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
He was not always a successful politician, losing a 1964 election for a U.S. Senate seat from Texas, where he later founded an oil company. He won an election for a seat in the House of Representatives before losing another bid for a Senate seat. That loss set him on a path to the string of high-level appointments in the 1970s.
Reagan’s running mate
Bush sought the 1980 Republican presidential nomination but lost it to then-California governor, Ronald Reagan, who tapped Bush as his vice presidential running mate in two successful national campaigns, in 1980 and again four years later.
With Reagan barred by the U.S. Constitution from serving more than two terms, Bush plotted a presidential run for 1988, ultimately defeating the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
The campaign was marked by an infamous political television ad produced by a group supporting Bush that depicted Dukakis as weak on crime because as governor he had released on weekend furlough a convicted killer, a black man named Willie Horton, who then raped a white woman and assaulted her white fiance. Some critics viewed the ad as racist and an attempt to play on white voters’ fears of crimes committed by menacing black men.
Four years later, however, Bush lost the presidency to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, although the two later became friends, occasionally dispatched by subsequent U.S. presidents to oversee assistance efforts after natural disasters.
Elder statesman
In his retirement years, Bush watched as one of his sons, George W. Bush, twice won the presidency, only the second time in U.S. history that a father and son both became the U.S. leaders. Bush oversaw the opening of his presidential library in College Station, Texas, and was widely honored as an elder statesman. But on several occasions, as he was confined to a wheelchair while he battled a form of Parkinson’s disease, he had to apologize for inappropriately touching women who were standing next to him after telling a sexually suggestive joke.
Bush was married for 73 years to the former Barbara Pierce, a woman he met in his teenage years. It was the longest marriage among any U.S. presidential couples. She died at 92 in April 2018.
Read More Former President George H.W. Bush Dies: A Life of Commitment to US : https://ift.tt/2Spag4D
James Comey’s lawyer urged a judge Friday to block a subpoena requiring that the former FBI director submit to a private interview before a House panel, arguing that Republican lawmakers want to take shots in a “dark alley.”
But a lawyer for Congress said committees are free to conduct investigations as they please and that Comey, who is concerned that statements from a closed-door interview would be selectively leaked, had no right to refuse a subpoena and demand a public hearing.
“No federal district court judge in the history of the republic has granted the type of relief that Mr. Comey seeks,” said Thomas Hungar, general counsel for the House of Representatives.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, did not immediately rule and scheduled additional arguments for Monday, the day initially scheduled for the interview. He questioned both sides but appeared skeptical of Comey’s arguments and wondered aloud why Comey couldn’t respond to leaks he didn’t like with disclosures of his own.
A private interview
The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee sent Comey a subpoena seeking a private interview to discuss FBI actions in 2016. That was when the bureau declined to recommend charges against Democrat Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server and opened an investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017, less than four years into his tenure.
Comey, who has testified publicly on Capitol Hill about both the Clinton and Russia investigations, balked at the subpoena because he said committees were prone to selectively reveal information for political purposes.
“Don’t do it in a dark corner and don’t do it in a way where all you do is leak information,” said Comey’s attorney, David Kelley.
By insisting that the interview must be done behind closed doors because of the sensitive information at stake, Kelley added, lawmakers are using the subpoena as “both a sword and a shield” so that they can take “shots at the guy in a dark alley” and “let people see what we want them to see.”
“They just want to zero in and gang up and do it in a nonpublic way,” he said.
Comey could leak details, too
Hungar rejected the idea that improper leaks were tainting the investigation.
He said there was no blanket prohibition against committee members or their staffs from disclosing what takes place in closed-door interviews and that there was similarly nothing to stop Comey — if he doesn’t like something that was said — from publicly sharing details about his congressional appearance.
“Mr. Comey has an ample opportunity to express his views,” Hungar said.
Trump administration officials vowed Friday to address some of the issues that forced them to decide against criminally prosecuting any of the 42 members of a Central American migrant caravan arrested last weekend who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally during a chaotic clash with Border Patrol agents.
Immigration officials often deport people who cross illegally instead of prosecuting them first for the federal crime of illegal entry because of “resource constraints, statutory roadblocks and process limitations,” Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman said. Some of those roadblocks include that children cannot be separated from their parents.
But she said immigration officials would work with the Justice Department “to ensure that all future caravan members who participate in violent clashes with border personnel are prosecuted fully for all federal crimes they commit.”
Two charged
On Friday, federal prosecutors charged two caravan members with assault and illegally entering the U.S. In one instance, an 18-year-old from Honduras was caught with four others and elbowed a border patrol agent, officials said. They briefly escaped and were captured. In a separate incident about a quarter-mile away, a 26-year-old El Salvador man threw a punch at officers who found him crossing illegally, they said. He also ran and was later captured.
The caravan’s size is highly unusual, there are more than 6,000 people waiting at the border with Tijuana, Mexico, and the Trump administration has conveyed an image of the group as rife with criminals.
Officials said Friday that one caravan member, a 46-year-old Honduran man convicted of murder, was arrested trying to cross the border illegally. They also said they arrested a member of MS-13. Homeland Security officials have said as many as 600 people in the caravans have criminal records, but have not specified how they know, or given many details.
“This caravan has proven they have a propensity for violence and the American people agree: violence against our frontline law enforcement will not be tolerated,” Waldman said.
Critics: stoking fear
But critics insist the violence is being exaggerated to stoke fears and push political agendas, and say most of the people coming are fleeing violence and poverty in Central America. They point to images of crying barefoot children running from clouds of tear gas after Sunday’s clash as proof of the administration’s inhumane treatment.
U.S. authorities say assailants threw a “hail of rocks” at Border Patrol agents in the Sunday chaos that erupted during a protest against U.S. asylum laws, striking four who escaped serious injury. That prompted Border Patrol agents to launch tear gas and pepper spray balls to quell the unrest in the crowd that included small children in diapers.
Officials say it appeared most of the rocks were thrown from the Mexico side and no one was charged on the U.S. side with assaulting the agents.
Why no charges
Those who were arrested were accused of illegally entering the U.S.; 27 were men and 15 women and children. Charges were not filed because the administration generally doesn’t separate families and because Customs and Border Protection didn’t collect enough evidence to build cases, including the names of arresting officers, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Children had been separated from their parents this summer during a period when a zero-tolerance policy was used at the border, but the separations were stopped by Trump following worldwide outrage.
U.S. authorities are working on a new system to better record evidence if similar circumstances arise, the official said.
Thousands of caravan members have been arriving in recent week, nearly 6,000 people have been staying at a sports complex in Tijuana packed into a space adequate for half that many people. Mud, lice infestations and respiratory infections are rampant.
Many want to seek asylum in the United States, but inspectors at the San Ysidro border crossing are processing about 100 claims a day, meaning they will likely have to wait weeks or months.
On Friday, a federal judge refused to immediately allow the Trump administration to enforce a ban on asylum for any immigrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Judge Jon Tigar rejected the Justice Department’s request to suspend his earlier order temporarily blocking the ban. The administration had still not shown that the ban was legal, or that any harm would come from continuing to implement existing immigration laws, Tigar said in his order.
President Trump criticized the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller Friday in a tweet from the G-20 summit site in Argentina, again calling it a "Witch Hunt!" and saying he didn't end up doing any development deals in Russia.
"Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail...," the president tweeted.
Reporters traveling with Trump say he has been in a bad mood and distracted after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted lying to Congress about a Trump real estate deal in Russia.
Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court in New York Thursday that he misled lawmakers about the timing of talks with Russia for building a Trump tower in Moscow.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian election meddling, brought the charges against Cohen. Cohen is already facing prison time for bank fraud and activities related to his taxicab business.
Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee last year that negotiations between the Trump organization and Russia to build the tower in Moscow ended in January 2016. The talks actually continued as late as June of that year, after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
Cohen also admitted to lying to Congress about other details of the Moscow project, including his own contacts with Russian officials and that he never asked Trump to fly to Moscow himself.
According to the charging documents, Cohen's close friend and onetime Trump employee Felix Sater talked about giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in the Trump tower as a ploy to get Russian oligarchs to pay top dollar to also live there.
Cohen told the judge he lied to Congress because he wanted to be consistent with Trump's "political messaging" and out of his desire "to be loyal" to Trump.
Trump's plans to build a hotel-retail-apartment complex in Moscow go back more than 20 years.
The president insisted throughout the campaign that he had nothing to do with Russia and had no connections to the Kremlin.
But earlier Thursday, while standing outside the White House, Trump told reporters he had been "thinking about building a building.”
"There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business and why should I lose lots of opportunities?" he asked reporters.
Cohen had once said he would "take a bullet" for Trump.
The president now blasts him as a "weak person" who lied to Mueller to get a lighter prison sentence for his financial crimes.
Trump also stressed that his Moscow deal was never a secret and that he abandoned the idea because he wanted to focus on running for president.
The talks between Russia and Cohen for a Trump tower appear to be unrelated to the question of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.
But the negotiations over the deal were going on at the same time Russia was interfering in the election by hacking Democratic party e-mails.
President Trump criticized the probe by special counsel Robert Mueller Friday in a tweet from the G-20 summit site in Argentina, again calling it a "Witch Hunt!" and saying he didn't end up doing any development deals in Russia.
"Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail...," the president tweeted.
Reporters traveling with Trump say he has been in a bad mood and distracted after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted lying to Congress about a Trump real estate deal in Russia.
Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court in New York Thursday that he misled lawmakers about the timing of talks with Russia for building a Trump tower in Moscow.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian election meddling, brought the charges against Cohen. Cohen is already facing prison time for bank fraud and activities related to his taxicab business.
Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee last year that negotiations between the Trump organization and Russia to build the tower in Moscow ended in January 2016. The talks actually continued as late as June of that year, after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
Cohen also admitted to lying to Congress about other details of the Moscow project, including his own contacts with Russian officials and that he never asked Trump to fly to Moscow himself.
According to the charging documents, Cohen's close friend and onetime Trump employee Felix Sater talked about giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in the Trump tower as a ploy to get Russian oligarchs to pay top dollar to also live there.
Cohen told the judge he lied to Congress because he wanted to be consistent with Trump's "political messaging" and out of his desire "to be loyal" to Trump.
Trump's plans to build a hotel-retail-apartment complex in Moscow go back more than 20 years.
The president insisted throughout the campaign that he had nothing to do with Russia and had no connections to the Kremlin.
But earlier Thursday, while standing outside the White House, Trump told reporters he had been "thinking about building a building.”
"There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won, in which case I would have gone back into the business and why should I lose lots of opportunities?" he asked reporters.
Cohen had once said he would "take a bullet" for Trump.
The president now blasts him as a "weak person" who lied to Mueller to get a lighter prison sentence for his financial crimes.
Trump also stressed that his Moscow deal was never a secret and that he abandoned the idea because he wanted to focus on running for president.
The talks between Russia and Cohen for a Trump tower appear to be unrelated to the question of whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election.
But the negotiations over the deal were going on at the same time Russia was interfering in the election by hacking Democratic party e-mails.
They haven’t spoken in days, not since President Donald Trump called to congratulate Nancy Pelosi on Democrats’ election night win.
But they don’t really need to. Trump and Pelosi go way back, from the time she first showed up at Trump Tower fundraising for the Democrats long before he would become president or she the House speaker. Two big-name heirs to big-city honchos — Trump and Pelosi each had fathers who were political power players in their home towns — they’ve rubbed elbows on the Manhattan social scene for years.
And despite daily barbs in Washington, he’s always “Mr. President” to her, and she’s one prominent politician he has not labeled with a derisive nickname.
Not quite friends, nor enemies, theirs is perhaps the most important relationship in Washington. If anything is to come of the new era of divided government, with a Republican president and Democratic control of the House, it will happen in the deal-making space between two of the country’s most polarizing politicians.
The day after their election night phone call, Trump and Pelosi did speak again, indirectly, across Pennsylvania Avenue.
“I really respected what Nancy said last night about bipartisanship and getting together and uniting,” Trump said in a press conference at the White House. “That’s what we should be doing.”
Pressed after his unusual public lobbying for Pelosi to become House speaker, Trump insisted he was sincere.
“A lot of people thought I was being sarcastic or I was kidding. I wasn’t. I think she deserves it,” he said. “I also believe that Nancy Pelosi and I could work together and get a lot of things done.”
Pelosi sent word back a few minutes later from her own press conference at the Capitol, which she delayed for nearly an hour as the president conducted his.
“Last night, I had a conversation with President Trump about how we could work together,” Pelosi said, noting that “building infrastructure” was one of the items they discussed.
“He talked about it during his campaign and really didn’t come through with it in his first two years in office,” she nudged. “I hope that we can do that because we want to create jobs from sea to shining sea.”
Despite all the campaign trail trash talk, both Trump and Pelosi have incentive to make some deals.
The president could use a domestic policy win heading into his own re-election in 2020, alongside his regular railing against illegal immigration, the “witch hunt” of the Russia investigation or other issues that emerge from his tweets.
Democrats, too, need to show Americans they can do more than resist the Trump White House. It’s no surprise that two of the top Democratic priorities in the new Congress, infrastructure investment and lowering health care costs, dovetail with promises Trump made to voters, but has not yet fulfilled.
“I do think there’s opportunities to pass legislation,” said former White House legislative director Marc Short.
Trump has long viewed Pelosi as both a foil and a possible partner, and she sees in him the one who can sign legislation into law.
The president has told confidants that he respects Pelosi’s deal-making prowess and her ability to hang on to power in the face of a series of challenges from the left wing of the party, according to four White House officials and Republicans close to the White House. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and requested anonymity.
He told one ally this month that he respected Pelosi “as a fighter” and that he viewed her as someone with whom he could negotiate.
“The president respects her,” said Short.
Short described the interaction between Pelosi and Trump during a 2017 meeting with other congressional leaders at the White House to prevent a government shutdown. “They were throwing pros and cons back at each other,” he said.
“The question I can’t answer is to what extent will Democrats give Pelosi political bandwidth” to strike deals, Short said. He pointed to potential areas of agreement like infrastructure, drug prices and prison reform.
But part of Trump’s push for Pelosi to return to power was more nakedly political. Pelosi has long been a popular Republican target, spurring countless fundraising efforts and attack ads. And Trump has told advisers that, if needed, he would make her the face of the opposition in Democratic party until the 2020 presidential field sorts itself out.
Pelosi’s name draws some of the biggest jeers at his rallies and he believes that “she could be Hillary” in terms of a Clinton-like figure to rally Republicans against, according to one of the advisers familiar with the president’s private conversations.
At the same time, Trump has not publicly branded Pelosi with a mocking nickname. She’s no “Cryin’” Chuck Schumer, as he calls the top Senate Democrat, or “Little” Adam Schiff at the Intelligence Committee or “Low IQ” Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who will chair the Financial Services Committee.
On whether Trump likes Pelosi as ally or adversary, Short said, “I don’t think those are mutually exclusive.”
Pelosi, perhaps more than her Republican counterparts — outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — became an early observer, and adapter, to the Trump style of governing.
When Trump and Democrats were trying to broker an immigration deal in September 2017, she suggested he could tweet his assurances to the young Dreamers. And he did.
Around the same time when Trump and congressional leaders convened at the White House to avoid a federal government shutdown, Republicans and Trump’s own Cabinet team pressed for their preferred solution. But Pelosi kept asking a simple question: How many Republican votes could they bring to the table? When it was clear they could not bring enough for passage, Trump intervened and agreed with Democrats “Chuck and Nancy,” as he came to call them.
Votes, Pelosi explained later, were the “currency of the realm.” Trump, as a businessman, she said, got it.
Pelosi is poised to become House speaker again if she wins her election in January. Asked this week how Trump might react to having a woman in power, Pelosi recalled the first time she held the office, when George W. Bush was president, in 2007.
Bush would call her “No. 3,” she said, a reference to the speaker’s spot in the presidential succession line, after the president and the vice president.
“He treated me and the office I hold with great respect,” she said. “I would expect nothing less than that from this President of the United States.”
Read More Washington's New Power Standoff - Trump, Pelosi : https://ift.tt/2Rp5LH7
The investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election took a potentially significant turn Thursday when President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, entered a guilty plea at a federal court in New York. Cohen admitted that he lied to Congress about Trump's interest in a real estate project in Russia while he was running for president. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
Read More Cohen Guilty Plea Signals New Turn in Russia Probe : https://ift.tt/2Q3CPrt
A second Republican senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, has said he will vote against President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as a district judge in North Carolina, likely dooming the prospects of Thomas Farr filling the nation’s longest court vacancy.
Civil rights groups such as the NAACP have heavily criticized Farr for his work defending state laws found to have discriminated against African-Americans. Farr is nominated to serve as a district court judge in North Carolina.
Scott announced Thursday that he would not vote for Farr, joining Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona and 49 Democratic lawmakers in opposing the nominee.
Former Helms campaign lawyer
Farr once served as a lawyer for the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Jesse Helms in 1990. The Justice Department alleged that about 120,000 postcards sent mostly to black voters before that election was intended to intimidate them from voting.
The postcards targeting black voters said they could be prosecuted and imprisoned for up to five years if they tried to vote in a precinct in which they had lived for fewer than 30 days.
Farr told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was not consulted about the postcards and did not have any role in drafting or sending them. He said that after he had been asked to review the card, “I was appalled to read the incorrect language printed on the card and to then discover it had been sent to African Americans.”
A 1991 Justice Department memo, first reported by The Washington Post, raised questions about Farr’s claim that he was never consulted about the postcards. The memo said Farr had met with key campaign officials and had advised them “that a postcard mailing like the mailing conducted in 1984 would not be particularly useful” except as evidence in post-election challenges.
The 1984 mailing contained an endorsement of Helms from a black minister and included an address correction request so the card would be returned if undelivered, setting up a potential avenue to challenge the legitimacy of a voter.
Memo raises concerns
Scott, who is African-American, cited the memo as to why he would vote against Farr.
“This week, a Department of Justice memo written under President George H.W. Bush came to light that shed new light on Mr. Farr’s activities,” Scott said. “This, in turn, creates more concerns. Weighing these important factors, this afternoon I concluded that I could not support Mr. Farr’s nomination.”
Scott has supported the overwhelming majority of Trump’s judicial nominees, but in July, the nomination of Ryan Bounds to serve on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was withdrawn after Scott said he “had unanswered questions that led to me being unable to support him.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had repeatedly criticized Republicans in recent days for moving forward with the Farr vote. He said Scott “has done a courageous thing.”
“Thomas Farr has been involved in the sordid practice of voter suppression for decades and never should have been nominated, let alone confirmed to the bench. Thankfully, he won’t be,” Schumer said.
Earlier Thursday, senators had agreed to postpone the vote on Farr until next week. That decision came less than 24 hours after Republicans needed Vice President Mike Pence to cast a tie-breaking vote Wednesday to move Farr’s nomination forward for a final vote.
Longest judicial opening
The history of the judicial opening has contributed to the acrimony. President Barack Obama nominated two African-American women to serve on the court, but neither got a hearing.
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr of North Carolina both supported Farr’s nomination. Tillis said earlier in the week he believed that Farr was being treated unfairly.
Scott is the lone black Republican in the Senate. The NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus had been highly critical of Farr for his work defending state laws they said suppressed the black vote.
GOP leaders in charge of the North Carolina Legislature hired Farr and others at his firm to defend congressional and legislative boundaries that the legislature approved in 2011. A federal court eventually struck some boundaries down as racial gerrymanders and the Supreme Court affirmed that decision.
Farr also helped defend a 2013 law that required photo identification to vote, reduced the number of early voting days and eliminated same-day registration during that period.
North Carolina Republicans said that requiring voter ID would increase the integrity of elections. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state provided no evidence of the kind of in-person voter fraud the ID mandate would address. The Richmond, Virginia-based court said the law targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
Farr told lawmakers that, as an advocate, he vehemently disagreed with the argument that the state’s legislature sought to curtail the voting rights of people of color or any other voter. But, said, “I am obligated to follow the decision by the 4th Circuit and pledge that I will do so.”
North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes said Farr is “fundamentally an honest, decent and honorable man, who did nothing to deserve the assault on his character. We will continue to work to see him confirmed.”
Read More 2nd GOP Senator Opposes Trump Judicial Nominee : https://ift.tt/2DTGIYz
Former FBI Director James Comey asked a federal judge on Thursday to quash a congressional subpoena from Republicans on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee who are trying to compel him to testify behind closed doors about his decision-making ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
The unusual filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came after Comey had previously told Republican lawmakers he would only agree to testify if the hearing were open to the public.
“Mr. Comey asks this court’s intervention not to avoid giving testimony but to prevent the joint committee from using the pretext of a closed interview to peddle a distorted, partisan political narrative,” the filing said.
The Nov. 21 congressional subpoena ordering Comey to appear for a closed-door deposition on Dec. 3 was issued as part of an ongoing joint investigation by the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee.
The House Judiciary Committee separately subpoenaed former Attorney General Loretta Lynch to appear for a closed-door interview on Dec. 4.
The probe is looking at the FBI’s decisions related to its investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and its investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.
The Republican-led inquiry has been lambasted by Democrats as a partisan effort to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, which Trump has labeled a “witch hunt.”
Comey, who was fired by Trump last year, is seen as an important witness into whether Trump tried to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation.
Republicans have alleged the FBI is biased against Trump, pointing to Comey's decision to publicly announce the FBI would not bring charges against her, as well as text messages that disparaged Trump exchanged between two former FBI staffers who worked on the email probe.
They have also claimed that the FBI made missteps when it applied for a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
A Justice Department inspector general report issued earlier this year criticized Comey for his handling of the Clinton matter, but said he did not exhibit political bias.
In the court filing, Comey’s lawyer said that Republicans have pushed a “corrosive narrative” by saying that Clinton committed “serious crimes and was given unwarranted leniency by an FBI and DOJ that were loyal to her and her party.”
Both Republican lawmakers overseeing the congressional investigation — Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy — did not run for re-election and will be leaving Congress at the end of the year.
The probe is expected to conclude in January, when Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives and win the power to issue subpoenas of their own.
A spokeswoman for Goodlatte did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The number of uninsured children in the United States has increased for the first time in nearly a decade, placing it at 3.9 million in 2017, according to a report Thursday from Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families.
Nationally, the number of uninsured children increased by an estimated 276,000 in 2017, from a historic low of 4.7 percent in 2016 to 5 percent last year. Experts say about 75 percent of the newly uninsured children are clustered in states that did not expand Medicaid such as Florida, Texas and Georgia.
Under President Obama's Affordable Care Act, Florida and other states could take federal funding to help pay for health coverage for nearly 900,000 people, but the Republican-led Legislature in Florida voted against it. The vast majority of states have already expanded Medicaid and increased the number of residents eligible for its coverage.
Joan Alker, executive director for Georgetown's Center for Children and Families, has written the report for the last eight years and said she's never seen the rates of uninsured children go up in all 50 states, which happened last year.
Better economy, low unemployment
She said that what is perhaps most concerning is that the uninsured rate among children increased despite an improving economy and low unemployment rate that allowed more children to get private coverage through their parents.
The study blamed the increases on the Trump administration's repeated attempts to prompt an overhaul of publicly funded health care. There were major efforts to repeal Obama's Affordable Care Act and cut Medicaid, and the children's CHIP insurance funding also ran out and hung in the balance for months before Congress extended it.
“There was a lot of confusion among families as to whether these public coverage sources were available,'' Alker said.
At the same time, the Trump administration slashed funding for advertising and enrollment counselors to help sign people up for these health insurance programs. The country's enrollment decline was not just in Medicaid and CHIP, but also in Obamacare, or the federal marketplace where parents can purchase private health insurance and often receive a subsidy to help pay for it.
The report noted that many of the children who do not have health insurance are eligible for coverage but just aren't enrolled.
'More of a fluctuation'
Ed Haislmaier, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said the figures were statistically insignificant.
He did agree that there were dips in Medicaid enrollment and through the Obamacare marketplace, but noted there's no enrollment cutoff for Medicaid, meaning families can sign up their children year-round.
“It's really more of a fluctuation. There's no policy driver there,'' he said, saying he didn't think marketing cuts had any impact.
In Florida, the uninsured rate went from 288,000 in 2016 to 325,000 in 2017.
Florida has one of the highest rates of uninsured residents in the country, and also has had the highest number of enrollees purchasing insurance through the Obamacare federal marketplace. However, Medicaid expansion in Florida is likely off the table for this upcoming legislative session. Incoming Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is against it. His opponent, Democrat Andrew Gillum, campaigned heavily on his support to expand Medicaid coverage for more residents.
The report also expressed concern that strict immigration policies and enforcement were making many immigrant families leery of enrolling, even if their children were eligible for health coverage. “We think it's really this national unwelcome mat regarding public coverage,'' Alker said.
Lawmakers Thursday called for stricter background checks, more mental health support and a public hearing to further investigate problems at a massive detention camp for migrant teens raised by a federal watchdog report and an Associated Press investigation earlier this week.
More than 2,300 teens are being held at the remote tent city in Tornillo, Texas, which opened in June as a temporary, emergency shelter but now appears to be becoming more permanent, with ongoing construction at costs that can reach $1,200 per child per day, the AP reported Tuesday.
The Department of Health and Human Service's Office of Inspector General on Tuesday raised concerns that the private contractor running Tornillo has not put its 2,100 staffers through FBI background checks, and that they're allowed to have just one mental health clinician for every 100 children.
“These issues must be addressed and remedied without delay,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. It was co-signed by other Democratic House members. They asked for a briefing before Dec. 11 and a hearing in the new Congress early next year.
“The problems we are seeing in Tornillo are as shameful as they were in June and symptoms of a much larger problem that we've spent years ignoring - a broken immigration system,” said Rep. Will Hurd, D-Texas, whose district includes the detention camp. “Similar to building a wall from sea to shining sea, detaining kids in Tornillo is the most expensive and least effective policy approach that fails to address root causes of migration flows or make anyone safer.”
Hurd and others said the current border crisis must be solved by working with Central American leaders.
The IG memo, which put the detention camp under a national spotlight, detailed how the former director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Scott Lloyd granted the contractor running Tornillo, San Antonio-based BCFS Health and Human Services, a waiver in June to staff up without typically required child abuse and neglect checks.
Those checks can raise a red flag about any job candidate with a record of hurting a child. There were two reasons for the waiver, according to the inspector general: first, the agency was under pressure to open the detention camp quickly, and second, Lloyd's agency assumed Tornillo staff had already undergone FBI fingerprint checks. They had not.
BCFS has filed more than 30 reports on “significant incidents” from Tornillo.
Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said the detained teens must be kept safe.
“We don't want anybody staffing those facilities who are going to be a potential danger to the population housed there,” Cornyn said.
HHS spokesman Mark Weber said Thursday the agency was working quickly to resolve the issues at Tornillo, but did not provide further details.
AP found that federal plans to close Tornillo by Dec. 31 may be nearly impossible to meet. A contract obtained by AP shows the project could continue into 2020 and planned closures have already been extended three times since last summer. More than 1,300 teens have arrived to the tent city in the middle of the Texas desert since the end of October.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said it was ironic the reason record numbers of migrant children are currently being detained is because stringent background checks on their family members have greatly slowed reunifications.
“Clearly, child safety is of no concern for this administration,” he said. “The Trump administration's cruelty knows no bounds. It should immediately shut down the facility at Tornillo.”
Sen. Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, said the AP report deepened the fears he held when he visited the facility earlier this year.
“This administration's inhumane policies and chaotic execution of those policies will leave lasting scars on the children who are being caught up in this disaster,” Udall said. “The transparency and accountability of this agency is profoundly absent.”
Read More US Lawmakers Call for Migrant Detention Camp Reforms : https://ift.tt/2P8U8Cg
U.S. media reports say President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen is expected to plead guilty Thursday to a new charge being filed against him by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
The reports say Cohen will enter a guilty plea for making false statements to Congress. Details are still coming in.
Cohen already has pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws.
The developments come as Trump continues almost daily attacks, via Twitter, on Mueller's ongoing investigation of his alleged campaign’s links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice in an effort to thwart the probe.
Trump last week provided written answers to about two dozen questions posed by Mueller about his own actions and recollections of the campaign as he transformed from his life as a New York real estate mogul to that of a first-time candidate for public office. It is not known, however, whether Mueller will seek to follow up with more questions for Trump, now nearly halfway through his term in the White House.
U.S. media reports say President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen will plead guilty Thursday to a new charge being filed against him by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
The reports say Cohen will enter a guilty plea for making false statements to Congress. Details are still coming in.
Cohen already has pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws.
The developments come as Trump continues almost daily attacks, via Twitter, on Mueller's ongoing investigation of his alleged campaign’s links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice in an effort to thwart the probe.
Trump last week provided written answers to about two dozen questions posed by Mueller about his own actions and recollections of the campaign as he transformed from his life as a New York real estate mogul to that of a first-time candidate for public office. It is not known, however, whether Mueller will seek to follow up with more questions for Trump, now nearly halfway through his term in the White House.
As President Trump prepares to re-enter the world stage at the G-20 summit in Argentina, allies and adversaries alike are taking stock of the president's domestic challenges in the coming year. These include Democratic control of the House of Representatives, the potential for numerous oversight investigations and the long-awaited end of the Russia probe being led by special counsel Robert Mueller. National correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
Read More Trump's Next Challenge: Emboldened and Empowered Democrats : https://ift.tt/2Rmsunb
The U.S. Senate has advanced a resolution to stop American help to the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. VOA's Michael Bowman reports, Wednesday's vote came despite pleas from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who met with the full Senate behind closed doors.
Read More Senate Advances Resolution to Cut US Help to Saudi-Led Campaign in Yemen : https://ift.tt/2Qt5Yvy
Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, was nominated for U.S. speaker of the house Wednesday. If confirmed in January, she will not only be the first female speaker but also a woman who has held the post twice. VOA's Zlatica Hoke reports Pelosi ran unopposed and won by a landslide, despite dissenters in her party who would prefer new leadership.
Read More Pelosi Expresses Confidence She Will Be US House Speaker Again : https://ift.tt/2SoHGQX
U.S. congressional lawmakers are pressing Rwanda's government against incarcerating dissident politician Diane Rwigara, who faces up to 22 years in prison after being convicted of inciting insurrection and forgery.
Diane Rwigara, a former presidential candidate, is scheduled to be sentenced December 6, along with her mother, Adeline Rwigara. Both women were tried November 7, with the elder Rwigara convicted of insurrection and promoting ethnic hatred. They had been detained by police in October 2017 and jailed for a year but released on bail last month, prior to trial. They remain at home in Kigali, the capital city, under travel restrictions.
"Peaceful political expression is not a crime. Running for office is not a crime," the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission — a bipartisan congressional caucus named for its co-founder — said in a tweet posted earlier Monday.
The commission, which defends and promotes human rights internationally, has scheduled a December 4 briefing on Rwanda's treatment of human rights and political prisoners, including the Rwigaras.
Diane Rwigara ran for president in 2017, challenging incumbent Paul Kagame, but was disqualified after election officials alleged that some signatures needed for her candidacy had been falsified.
In July 2017, the activist started the People Salvation Movement to "encourage Rwandans to hold their government accountable," as she told CNN. She later was arrested on charges of incitement and fraud. Her mother also was arrested for criticizing the government in a WhatsApp exchange with another relative living outside Rwanda.
Diane Rwigara denied the charges, saying Kagame was trying to prevent her from speaking out against injustice. In an interview with VOA after her October release, she called for the release of political prisoners and others unjustly detained.
Kagame oversaw the central African country's reconciliation after the 1994 genocide, but rights groups have accused him and the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front of increasingly clamping down on dissent.
This report originated in VOA's Central Africa Service.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is warning senators that U.S. national security interests are at stake as they consider a vote to halt U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
In prepared remarks released ahead of a closed-door Senate briefing on Wednesday, Pompeo says diplomatic efforts to end the conflict are ongoing and argues that without U.S. involvement in Yemen, civilian casualties there would be much worse.
"The suffering in Yemen grieves me, but if the United States of America was not involved in Yemen, it would be a hell of a lot worse," Pompeo said.
It's unclear if that message will be enough for senators, who have grown increasingly uneasy with the U.S. response to Saudi Arabia after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The briefing with Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis could determine how far Congress goes in punishing the longtime Middle East ally.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says "some kind of response" is needed from the United States for the Saudis' role in the gruesome death. While U.S. intelligence officials have concluded the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, must have at least known of the plot, the CIA's findings have not been made public and President Donald Trump has equivocated over who is to blame.
McConnell said on Tuesday that "what obviously happened, as basically certified by the CIA, is completely abhorrent to everything the United States holds dear and stands for in the world. We're discussing what the appropriate response would be."
The resolution needs just a simple majority to advance, but a vote is not certain this week. It could launch a process for amending the bill that could play out for days in the Senate. It could end up being a largely symbolic move as House Republican leaders have given no indication they would take up the war powers measure before the end of the year.
Pompeo says U.S. involvement in the Yemen conflict is central to the Trump administration's broader goal of containing Iranian influence in the Middle East.
"The first mission is to assist the Saudis and the Emiratis in their fight against Iranian-backed Houthi fighters. This conflict isn't optional for Saudi Arabia, and abandoning it puts American interests at risk, too," he says according to the prepared remarks.
Much will depend on what senators hear from Mattis and Pompeo. Administration officials were able to stall a Senate effort earlier this year against the Saudi-backed conflict in Yemen, when the resolution from Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, fell just six votes short of passage. It drew a mix of Democrats and Republicans who have grown uneasy with U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis in a war that human rights advocates say is subjecting civilians to indiscriminate bombing and wreaking havoc on the country.
That was long before the October 2 death of Khashoggi, the U.S.-educated journalist who was publicly critical of the Saudi crown prince. Senators are increasingly frustrated over the administration's response to that killing and are particularly upset that no one from the intelligence community is attending Wednesday's briefing.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of 10 Democrats who declined to join the earlier effort against the Saudis, said Tuesday he was reconsidering his position.
"Things changed," Manchin said. "The whole thing with Khashoggi is very much concerning. It's not who we are as a country. It's not who we should have as allies and not condemn that."
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, will likely be in favor of the Yemen resolution, and another key member of the panel, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he was "inclined" to support it now if it came up for a vote.
Senators are getting hammered by outside groups running ads and lobbying them for action.
"What I would argue to the administration is that somehow or another there's got to be a price to pay for what has happened," said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chairman of the committee.
"My sense is, unless something happens — where they share what it is they're going to do to deal with this injustice that has occurred — my sense is that people are going to vote to get on the bill."
Khashoggi was killed in what U.S. officials have described as an elaborate plot at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which he had visited for marriage paperwork.
Trump has said it may never be known who was responsible for the killing, and in public comments — and a long and unusual statement last week — he reinforced the United States' long-standing alliance with the Saudis. Trump has praised a pending arms deal with the kingdom that he says will provide the U.S. with jobs and lucrative payments, though some outside assessments say the economic benefits are exaggerated.
Several GOP senators, including key allies Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have publicly questioned Trump's handling of the situation. Paul is trying to block the arms sale.
"If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw the line?" Graham asked reporters Tuesday. He, too, supports blocking the arms sale and said giving the crown prince "a pass on murdering a critic doesn't make the world a safer place."
Read More Senators Grill US Officials on Khashoggi Response : https://ift.tt/2BD4bvS
Ivanka Trump is defending her use of a private email account as she was moving into an adviser's position in her father's administration
The elder daughter of President Donald Trump told ABC News for an interview aired Wednesday that using the private email account when she was transitioning into an administration job cannot be compared to the flap over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server.
Ivanka Trump says her private account emails were archived and contained no classified information. She says she didn't delete any of them.
The Washington Post reported this month that she used the personal email account to conduct official government business. Republicans and Democrats in Congress say they're reviewing the situation to make sure she complied with federal records law.
Clinton says she never knowingly emailed classified information.
A New York congressman who is currently vying for a key leadership post in the Democratic Party has been hospitalized with a bacterial infection.
U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney's office says he has been dealing with a persistent infection that required his hospitalization on Monday in Manhattan. Maloney is asking for a delay in a vote for chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a position he is seeking.
He says he will need a few days of intensive treatment but expects to be out of the hospital and home by the end of the week.
Maloney says he would drop out of consideration if the Wednesday vote cannot be postponed.
Maloney won re-election to his seat following an unsuccessful bid for state attorney general in the state Democratic primary.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is denying a Guardian newspaper report that he met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange three times, including at the time he joined the Trump campaign.
"This story is totally false and deliberately libelous," Manafort said through a spokesman. "We are considering all legal actions against The Guardian, who proceeded with the story even after being notified by my representatives that it was false."
Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid possible arrest and a trial in the United States.
The Guardian said Manafort went to the embassy three times — in 2013, 2015 and March 2016 — about the same time he started working with Trump's presidential campaign.
The newspaper did not say what the two allegedly talked about. It also did not cite sources for its story.
WikiLeaks also denies the story, calling the reporter a "serial fabricator."
"WikiLeaks is willing to bet The Guardian a million dollars, and its editor's head, that Manafort never met Assange," it tweeted.
Manafort is in jail awaiting sentencing for financial crimes.
WikiLeaks published thousands of Democratic Party emails hacked by Russia in with the aim of hurting Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
Special counsel Robert Muller's investigation into Russian campaign meddling includes an effort to determine whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia or WikiLeaks.
Meanwhile, U.S. prosecutors admitted they’d made a mistake when they accidentally referred to charges against Assange during an unrelated case.
Free-press advocates have asked U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to unseal the charges. They have argued that everyone knows Assange is in the Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid arrest and that there is no longer a reason to keep those charges a secret.
Prosecutors have said the inadvertent remark that Assange was charged does not constitute confirmation of the charges. They also have said that under legal precedent, charges against a defendant are not made public until his arrest.
Brinkema declined to rule immediately, saying, "This is an interesting case, to say the least."
Assange first took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid being prosecuted for alleged sex crimes in Sweden.
While whatever charges he may be facing in the United States are unclear, WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and classified military documents.
The presumed incoming Democratic chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee said Tuesday that he planned to investigate the drastic spike in hate crimes in the nation and whether federal investigators had wrongfully targeted racial and ethnic minorities instead of focusing on white supremacist groups.
In a letter to the Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York complained that the agencies had all failed to address prior inquiries about hate crimes and surveillance activities that Democrats made when Republicans controlled the House of Representatives.
“To date, we have received little or no substantive response to any of these communications," Nadler wrote.
"In the next Congress, this committee will likely examine the causes of racial and religious violence, assess the adequacy of federal hate crimes statutes and scrutinize targeted domestic surveillance of specific groups," he added.
Nadler's plans to scrutinize hate crimes and the federal response to them center on one of several topics that Democrats plan to probe when they take over control of the House in January, having made gains in the midterm elections.
Amazon question
Other topics that Democrats have signaled could be probed include whether the Trump administration tried to block AT&T from acquiring Time Warner; whether the administration tried to retaliate against Amazon for political purposes; and whether Trump scrapped plans to relocate the FBI's headquarters to avoid harming his business interests in the nearby Trump Hotel.
New data released in November by the FBI found that hate crimes jumped 17 percent in 2017 and anti-Semitic attacks spiked 37 percent.
The data were released not long after a gunman burst into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 worshippers while shouting, "All Jews must die."
The shooting came the day after federal authorities arrested a man in Florida for mailing explosive devices to critics of Trump, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
Justice Department spokeswoman Kelly Laco, in response to Nadler's letter, pointed to a list of hate crime cases the department had brought since last year.
The cases included the high-profile prosecution of James Alex Fields, currently on trial for killing a woman by driving his car into a crowd of counterprotesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., last year.
A Senate committee has approved the Trump administration's nominee for the top federal energy board after a video surfaced showing him declaring that renewable energy "screws up" the nation's electrical grid.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 13-10 for Bernard McNamee's nomination to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission.
McNamee had worked on a stalled Trump administration effort to bail out struggling coal plants.
In the video, McNamee declares that fossil fuels and nuclear energy "keep the lights on." The video also showed him saying renewable fuel "screws up ... the physics of the grid" providing the nation's electricity.
Members of the committee expressed concern about the video. Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski of Alaska says she still believes McNamee can be objective.
The nomination now goes to the full Senate.
After losing close governor's races in Georgia and Florida, Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum are joining other black leaders to oppose one of President Donald Trump's picks for a lifetime federal judgeship.
Abrams and Gillum say in a joint statement Tuesday that the Senate should reject Thomas Farr's nomination to a district court in North Carolina. The Democrats say Farr has a "discriminatory ideology" that threatens the voting rights of nonwhites.
As a Republican attorney, Farr defended North Carolina laws that federal courts have found discriminatory against black voters.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to confirm Farr in the current lame duck session. He would fill a seat left open after Republicans blocked two African-American women nominated by former President Barack Obama.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort broke his plea agreement with U.S. federal prosecutors by lying to investigators, special counsel Robert Mueller's office alleged late Monday.
Manafort, who faces up to 10 years in prison for various financial crimes, had agreed to cooperate with investigators looking into possible collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
In exchange for his cooperation to answer questions "fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly," some of the charges against Manafort were dropped and prosecutors could have asked for a lighter prison term.
But Mueller's office says Manafort broke his promise and also broke federal law with "crimes and lies."
It did not specify what Manafort lied about, but promised to provide details at a later time. Manafort's attorneys denied the allegations.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Trump continued his attacks on the Mueller probe, claiming that the U.S. national news media "builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller and his terrible Gang of Angry Democrats."
"Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie," Trump said. "Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue."
The developments in the Manafort case could mean some of the charges against him that were dropped could be reinstated, while prosecutors are no longer likely to ask for a lighter sentence.
Manafort is in jail awaiting sentence, which both sides now say there is no reason to delay.
Another Trump associate, former foreign affairs advisor George Papadopoulos, began serving a 14-day prison term Monday for lying to investigators in the Russian probe.
A federal judge rejected his appeal to delay his prison term while he waited for an appeals court to rule whether the Mueller appointment was constitutional.
Judge Randolph Moss reminded Papadopoulos that he had already waived his right to an appeal and that two other judges had upheld the legality of the Mueller appointment.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to investigators in January 2017 about the extent of his contacts with people who had connections with Russia.
Trump has consistently called the Mueller probe a "witch hunt" and strongly denies any collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied to the FBI and special counsel investigators after pleading guilty to federal charges, breaching his plea agreement, according to a court filing on Monday.
Manafort said in the same filing he disagreed with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's assertion that he lied to investigators.
Both the special counsel and Manafort's attorneys agreed there was no reason to delay his sentencing and asked the court to set a date for that.
Mueller, who is probing Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, said in the filing that after signing a plea agreement: "Manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel's Office on a variety of subject matters."
Mueller said in the filing that those lies breached Manafort's plea agreement.
Manafort's attorneys said in the same filing that Manafort had met with the government on several occasions and provided information "in an effort to live up to his cooperation obligations."
They said Manafort disagreed with the characterization that he had breached the agreement.
Manafort, a longtime Republican political consultant who made tens of millions of dollars working for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine, ran the Trump campaign as it took off in mid-2016.
He attended a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a group of Russians offering damaging information on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who lost in an upset to Trump in the presidential vote that November.
Since September this year when he took a plea deal in return for reduced charges, Manafort has been cooperating with Mueller's inquiry.
Russia denies U.S. allegations it hacked Democratic Party emails and ran a disinformation campaign, largely on social media. Trump denies any campaign collusion and calls the investigation a political witch hunt.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Read More US Presidential Line of Succession : https://ift.tt/2r6t2Cg[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Read More House of Representatives Hierarchy : https://ift.tt/2FGTf4d
Washington is digesting the U.S. government’s starkest-ever warnings and most dire predictions to date on climate change. VOA’s Michael Bowman reports, the White House is issuing no calls for action in response to the National Climate Assessment, and President Donald Trump continues to mock the very concept of global warming.
Read More Washington Digests New Warning on Climate Change : https://ift.tt/2KxCMhA
A one-time foreign affairs adviser to President Donald Trump has been ordered to start serving a 14-day jail term on Monday for lying to investigators about his role in Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
George Papadopoulos had sought to delay his brief sentence while awaiting for an appellate court ruling in a separate case challenging the constitutionality of the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose ongoing investigation of Trump campaign aides' links to Russia ensnared Papadopoulos.
U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss on Sunday rejected the bid by Papadopoulos to remain free and delay his jail term, noting that when he pleaded guilty to lying to investigators he had waived his right to appeal his plea agreement. Moss had also fined Papadopoulos $9,500 and ordered him to perform 200 hours of community service.
Moss also noted that two other judges had already upheld the constitutionality of Mueller's appointment and said there was only a "remote" chance that the new challenge would end with a "contrary conclusion."
The 31-year-old Papadopoulos is a relatively minor figure in the 18-month Mueller investigation. He pled guilty to lying to investigators in January 2017 about the extent of his contacts with people who had connections with Russia and the timing of the contacts.
In discussing the names of his advisers during the 2016 campaign, Trump once described Papadopoulos as "an excellent guy." In March 2016, Trump posted a picture on Instagram of his foreign affairs advisory council, with Papadopoulos sitting at the then-candidate's table for the meeting.
But when news of Papadopoulos's guilty plea surfaced, Trump said on Twitter, "Few people knew the young, low-level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar."
Another Trump campaign aide disparaged Papadopoulos as a volunteer "coffee boy."
But that assessment drew a rebuke from Papadopoulos's then fiancee and now wife who said he was “constantly in touch with high-level officials in the campaign.”
Moreover, she said, he did not know how to make coffee.
Trump, who often has dismissed Mueller's probe as a "witch hunt," last week submitted written answers to the prosecutor's questions about the 2016 campaign, but it is not clear whether Mueller will seek to further question the president.
Besides Papadopoulos, several Trump aides have been convicted or pleaded guilty to various offenses linked to the campaign or lobbying work before joining Trump's 2016 campaign.
Mark Robbins gets to work at 8:15 each morning and unlocks the door to his office suite. He switches on the lights and the TV news, brews a pot of coffee and pulls out the first files of the day to review.
For the next eight hours or so, he reads through federal workplace disputes, analyzes the cases, marks them with notes and logs his legal opinions. When he's finished, he slips the files into a cardboard box and carries them into an empty room where they will sit and wait. For nobody.
He's at 1,520 files and counting.
Such is the lot of the last man standing in this forgotten corner of Donald Trump's Washington. For nearly two years, while Congress has argued and the White House has delayed, Robbins has waited to be sent some colleagues to read his work and rule on the cases. No one has arrived. So he toils in vain, writing memos into the void.
Robbins is a one-man microcosm of a current strand of government dysfunction. His office isn't a high-profile political target. No politician has publicly pledged to slash his budget. But his agency's work has effectively been neutered through neglect. Promising to shrink the size of government, the president has been slow to fill posts and the Republican-led Congress has struggled to win approval for nominees. The combined effect isn't always dramatic, but it's strikingly clear when examined up close.
"It's a series of unfortunate events,'' says Robbins, who has had plenty of time to contemplate the absurdity of his situation. Still, he doesn't blame Trump or the government for his predicament. "There's no one thing that created this problem that could have been fixed. It was a series of things randomly thrown together to create where we are.''
Robbins is a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, a quasi-judicial federal body designed to determine whether civil servants have been mistreated by their employers. The three members are presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed for staggered seven-year terms. After one member termed out in 2015 and a second did so in January 2017, both without replacements lined up, Robbins became the sole member and acting chairman. The board needs at least two members to decide cases.
That's a problem for the federal workers and whistleblowers whose 1,000-plus grievances hang in the balance, stalled by the board's inability to settle them. When Robbins' term ends on March 1, the board probably will sit empty for the first time in its 40-year history.
It's also a problem for Robbins. A new board, whenever it's appointed and approved, will start from scratch. That means while new members can read Robbins' notes, his thousand-plus decisions will simply vanish.
"There is zero chance, zero chance my votes will count,'' the 59-year-old lawyer says, running his fingers over the spines leather-bound volumes lined up neatly on a shelf. Inside are the board's published rulings. None of the opinions he's working on will make it into one of them.
"Imagine having the last year and half of your work just ... disappear,'' he said.
Despite the choke of files piled up everywhere else, Robbins' office is remarkably orderly. Three paperweights rest on stacks of papers on his desk: a stone from Babel province, a memento from his time working for the State Department in Iraq; a model of the White House, to commemorate his tenure under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; and a medallion bearing the merit board's seal. This job, which pays about $155,000 a year, "has been the honor of my life,'' he says.
In the corner, a potted plant he rescued from a trash can outside his condo six years ago is now so tall that it's bumping up against the ceiling, growing in circles.
He swears it's not a metaphor.
Robbins, a Republican, was excited when Trump won the election. The president chooses two board members of his or her own party, and the Senate minority leader picks a third. Robbins assumed he'd finally be in the majority after years of serving alongside Democrats, soon able to write opinions rather than just logging dissent.
No such luck.
Trump was in office a year before he nominated two board members, a pair of Republicans, including Robbins' replacement. A third nominee, a Democrat, was named three months later, in June.
Assuming they'd be swiftly confirmed, Robbins quickly began preparing for their arrival, leaving customized notes with comments and suggestions for the nominees based on their distinct personalities and experience on each case.
He'd at least impart a little wisdom, he thought.
But months went by and still no vote. Robbins said he was told the Democrats were refusing to confirm the two Republicans by unanimous consent, insisting instead on a full debate for each. In late September, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee that screens nominees told Robbins it probably would not be able to confirm the appointees before the end of the current Congress. That meant that the entire process, which typically takes several months when there are no complications, will begin again come January, with no guarantee the nominees will be the same.
Now his pile of personalized sticky notes is bound for the trash, too.
Tall, slim and bald, Robbins is an eternal optimist. He sees the futility of the piles of paper and empty offices. But he's determined to keep the trains running, even if he's the only one on the ride.
"It's not like I'm sitting around on the sofa watching soap operas and eating bonbons. I'm still doing my job,'' he said. "It's only when the agency stops working that people realize what we do and the value we bring.''
"Maybe someday they'll say, `Good old Robbins, he just kept plugging along.'''
Frustrating? Yes. But at least it makes for a good story at parties.
"When I say to people, `And then my votes just disappear,' the crowd usually goes `Oh, no!''' he said. "And there's empathy, there's real empathy.''
The board, established in 1978, is responsible for protecting 2.1 million federal employees from bias and unfair treatment in the workplace. The board handles appeals from whistleblowers and other civil servants who say they were mistreated or wrongly fired, and want to challenge an initial ruling by an administrative judge. The board also conducts independent research and writes policy papers destined for the president's desk.
Or it used to.
Robbins is quick to point out the staffing crisis began under President Barack Obama, back when Robbins' first colleague termed out without a replacement.
Others say it's the Trump administration's fault.
Trump has lagged slightly behind his predecessors in nominating political appointees. As of Nov. 19, he had nominated people for 929 positions, compared with Obama's 984 and Bush's 1,128 at the same point in their presidencies. Congress has acted on just 69 percent of those nominations, according to data provided by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization promoting government efficiency.
Max Stier, the partnership's CEO, blames the administration, the Senate and a dysfunctional system of appointing and confirming political nominees.
"There are many different flavors of the same problem,'' he said. He cited several other vacancies, including assistant secretary for South Asian affairs at the State Department, deputy secretary and undersecretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the deputy secretary at the Homeland Security Department, among others. "There is so much going on, but the underlying reality is that our basic government is suffering.''
John Palguta, former director of policy and evaluation for the merit board, called the delay "outrageous.''
"We're setting a new standard, and it's particularly severe and unfortunate at MSPB because of the structure of the agency. It just can't operate. And to let it go for this long, that's really unconscionable,'' Palguta said. "The administration simply hasn't done its job.''
Sen. James Lankford, who chairs the Senate Home Security and Government Affairs' Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management said in a statement he understands the urgency in filling these positions.
"There are over 1,500 individuals waiting for their cases to be heard, but there are not board members in place which means the backlog cannot be addressed,'' said Lankford, R-Okla.
Robbins keeps plugging away and the cases keep piling up.
"We are running out of space,'' he said, shimmying between towers of boxes in a storage closet close to 6 feet tall. More boxes are stacked against the hallway wall and piled up in the clerk's office.
"Any additional cases I work from now on are just, grains of sand on a beach.''
Read More Memos to Nobody: Inside the Work of a Neglected Fed Agency : https://ift.tt/2KwfYie
The Trump administration is downplaying the significance of a report issued Friday that included dire predictions about the impact of climate change in the U.S. The White House said the study was largely based on "the most extreme scenario" and doesn't account for new technology and other innovations that could diminish carbon emissions and the effects of climate change.
The National Climate Assessment, the fourth edition of a congressionally mandated report on climate change, noted that disasters caused by weather are becoming more common. The report, prepared by more than 300 researchers in 13 U.S. government departments and agencies, predicts that those events will become more common and more severe if steps aren't taken "to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades."
White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters noted that work on the assessment began under the administration of former U.S. president Barack Obama and uses multiple modeling scenarios to assess the effects of climate change. But the report issued Friday, according to Walters, relies too heavily on the worst-case-scenario.
"The report is largely based on the most extreme scenario, which contradicts long-established trends by assuming that, despite strong economic growth that would increase greenhouse gas emissions, there would be limited technology and innovation, and a rapidly expanding population," Walters said in a statement.
She said the next climate assessment, which will be prepared over the next four years, will "provide for a more transparent and data-driven process that includes fuller information on the range of potential scenarios and outcomes."
Walters also pointed out that, since 2005, carbon dioxide emissions related to energy production in the U.S. have declined 14 percent, while global emissions continue to rise.
While that's true, the U.S. remains the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind only China.
The Trump administration has rolled back several environmental regulations put in place during the Obama administration and has promoted the production of fossil fuels.
Last year, President Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which had been signed by nearly 200 nations to combat climate change. He argued the agreement would hurt the U.S. economy and said there is little evidence in its environmental benefit.
Trump, as well as several members of his Cabinet, have also cast doubt on the science of climate change, saying the causes of global warming are not yet settled.
White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman contributed to this report.
unitedstatepolitics.blogspot.com Adblock test (Why?) "politic" - Google News February 01, 2024 at 03:47AM https://ift.tt...
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/bostonglobe/VNG7YMZTRWJ5WBFTJ5NVETPCQI.jpg)
