U.S. Border Patrol officers return a group of asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico as Mexican officials check the list, in Nuevo Laredo.
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U.S. Border Patrol officers return a group of asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico as Mexican officials check the list, in Nuevo Laredo.
Salvador Gonzalez/AP
Attorney General William Barr ruled Monday that immigrants fearing persecution due to threats against their family members are no longer eligible for asylum.
The case involves a Mexican man (identified as “L-E-A” in court documents) who sought asylum after his family was threatened because his father did not allow drug cartel dealers to use his store for business. That fear of endangerment traditionally has been the basis for legally recognizable claims for asylum.
Under U.S. law, an asylum seeker must prove a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a specific social group.
Barr, under his authority to oversee immigration court rulings, reversed a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals that found the Mexican man’s family was a recognizable social group. Ultimately, the Board did not approve the man’s asylum application because it did not recognize the necessary connection between his membership in the group and the alleged persecution.
Barr said the Board was correct in rejecting the asylum claim, but “the portion of the Board’s decision recognizing the respondent’s proposed particular social group is overruled.”
“Further, as almost every alien is a member of a family of some kind, categorically recognizing families as particular social groups would render virtually every alien a member of a particular social group. There is no evidence that Congress intended the term ‘particular social group’ to cast so wide a net,” Barr wrote.
However, Barr wrote that his decision does not disqualify all family-based social groups because there are some societies in which clans or sub-clans are socially distinct.
“I conclude that an alien’s family based group will not constitute a particular social group unless it has been shown to be socially distinct in the eyes of its society, not just those of its alleged persecutor,” he wrote.
Immigrant advocates say Barr’s decision is only the latest move by the Trump administration to restrict asylum.
Earlier this month, the ACLU and other groups challenged new restrictions sought by the administration requiring immigrants who travel through another country before reaching the United States ineligible for asylum. A federal judge in San Francisco has temporarily blocked that rule.
The Barr decision also runs up against legal precedent, according to some advocates.
“It’s a significant declaration of power from the A.G. and one that will hopefully take a beating in court,” tweeted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — A search around the area of a remote northern Manitoba community has failed to find two teenagers who are suspects in the murder of three people in British Columbia, but police continued to urge local residents to stay inside Monday and lock their doors.
RCMP Cpl. Julie Courchaine told a news conference in Winnipeg that the agency received a tip Sunday afternoon that Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky may have been spotted in York Landing — about 55 miles (90 kilometers) from Gillam, where a vehicle that had been used by the suspects was found burned last week.
“It is critical that residents of York Landing remain vigilant and stay indoors as much as possible with their doors locked, and to report anything suspicious by calling their local police immediately,” Courchaine said.
McLeod, 19, and Schmegelsky, 18, have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Leonard Dyck, a University of British Columbia professor, whose body was found last week in British Columbia.
They are also suspects in the fatal shootings of Australian Lucas Fowler and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese of Charlotte, North Carolina, whose bodies were found July 15 along the Alaska Highway about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from Dyck’s killing.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the Royal Canadian Air Force was assisting with the search.
On Monday afternoon, the RCMP tweeted they still have not been able to verify if the two teens are in the area.
“After a thorough & exhaustive search, #rcmpmb has not been able to substantiate the tip in York Landing. RCMP resources will continue to be in the York Landing & Gillam areas,” the tweet said.
“We thank the community for their patience & understanding & ask them to continue to be vigilant.”
Police earlier had been searching further east in the town of Gillam, aided by tracking dogs and drones.
The tip about the possible sighting came from members of the Bear Clan Patrol, an indigenous-led neighborhood watch group that was invited by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs to help ease residents’ fears.
While York Landing geographically isn’t far from Gilliam, Courchaine said the community is “only accessible by air or via a two hour ferry crossing in the summer.” There also is a rail line around 25 kilometers (15 miles) south.
The area has “very challenging terrain, lots of forest, lots of muskeg, waterways,” said Couchaine.
Meanwhile, the father of one of the suspects has sent a book to reporters describing his mental health, harassment convictions involving his ex-wife and his relationship with his fugitive son.
Alan Schmegelsky said the book titled “Red Flagged” is a novelization of actual events and fictionalizes some incidents.
He said he sent the book to reporters to highlight how a “broken system” has shaped him and his son.
“My son and I have been treated like footballs. It’s time for some truth,” he said.
He writes that he was arrested by Victoria police on Aug. 4, 2008, his son Bryer’s 8th birthday, three years after his acrimonious split with the boy’s mother.
Court records show he was charged with criminal harassment in December 2008. He was found guilty of the lesser offence of disobeying a court order.
He returned to court numerous times over the next decade on charges of harassment and breach of probation.
Schmegelsky says he does not currently have a permanent residence and has been homeless for about two years, staying primarily in Victoria.
He has said that he did not see his son between the ages of 8 and 16, at which age his son briefly lived with him in Victoria and they worked in construction together for a summer.
Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered Trump, the House Ways and Means Committee, and New York officials to confer and file a status report by 6 p.m. Tuesday that either outlines an agreement or lays out the parties’ positions if there’s no agreement.
Nichols issued the order after Trump filed an emergency motion last week. The motion asked the court to enjoin the Ways and Means Committee from requesting Trump’s state tax returns under a new New York law until the president has an opportunity for judicial review.
The Ways and Means Committee argued that the court lacks jurisdiction to bar it from requesting Trump’s state tax returns. It also argued that its decision about whether to utilize the New York law is protected against a legal challenge under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause.
Nichols said there seems to be a risk that without Trump receiving some sort of relief, the Ways and Means Committee could quickly request and receive Trump’s tax returns, making the case quickly ripe and then moot.
He said he thought it was problematic that the Ways and Means Committee and the New York officials weren’t committing to the court that they wouldn’t request and produce Trump’s state tax returns “tomorrow or Monday, or the Monday after.”
At the same time, Nichols said that it seems inappropriate to enjoin the committee from requesting Trump’s state tax returns because Trump wouldn’t be harmed by the request itself.
Nichols said he wanted the parties in the lawsuit to see if they could reach an agreement to provide relief to Trump that’s as modest as possible; that treads as lightly as possible, if at all, on concerns about separation of powers and the Speech or Debate Clause; and that preserves the ability for the court to adjudicate on the lawsuit only when more information is available.
The law Trump is challenging in the lawsuit allows the chairmen of Congress’s tax committees to request public officials’ state tax returns from the state’s department of taxation and finance.
In court papers filed Monday morning, Trump also suggested that instead of enjoining the Ways and Means Committee, the court could instead enjoin the New York officials, preventing them from providing Trump’s state tax returns to Congress until the president can be heard in court. The New York officials argued that they were blindsided by this request and that the court shouldn’t consider it until they can respond to it.
The lawsuit over the New York law is one of two closely watched ongoing lawsuits in the fight over Trump’s tax returns. At the beginning of the month, the Ways and Means Committee filed a lawsuit against the Treasury Department and the IRS asking a judge to order the agencies to comply with Neal’s request and subpoenas for Trump’s federal tax returns.
Trump last week had argued that the two lawsuits were related and should be handled by the same judge. But Judge Trevor McFadden, who is handling the lawsuit over Trump’s federal tax returns, disagreed, leading the lawsuit over the president’s state tax returns to be randomly assigned to Nichols.
Tommy Huxley played Sunday at the festival with his band, Tommy Huxley’s Blues Avenue, and when the first shots were fired, they were breaking down their equipment. Huxley tells us Gilroy cops were on the scene seconds later and searching for the shooter.
Ratcliffe, though currently in Congress, has experience at the Department of Justice and is well-versed in the requirements of the DNI job, Whitaker claimed Monday on “The Story.”
“John and I were U.S. attorneys in the Bush administration,” he said.
“I think he’s perfectly qualified to do this role. I think he’s a smart, talented individual.”
Ratcliffe has been well-versed in the intelligence community after driving key sections of ongoing Republican-led probes into apparent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses by the FBI and Justice Department.
“It’s clear that Rep. Ratcliffe was selected because he exhibited blind loyalty to President Trump with his demagogic questioning of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller,” Sen. Schumer said.
“If Senate Republicans elevate such a partisan player to a position that requires intelligence expertise and non-partisanship, it would be a big mistake.”
In a tweet, President Trump formally announced Ratcliffe as Coats’ eventual successor, adding the current officeholder will depart on August 15.
Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny attends a protest in Moscow, Russia, on July 20.
Pavel Golovkin/AP
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Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny attends a protest in Moscow, Russia, on July 20.
Pavel Golovkin/AP
A prominent Russian opposition leader was discharged from a Moscow hospital Monday and sent back to jail, despite claims by his doctor that he may have been poisoned by an unknown chemical agent while in custody.
A day earlier, Alexei Navalny, 43, was hospitalized with what was initially described as an “allergic reaction.” His spokesman said he had exhibited “severe swelling of the face and skin redness,” a reaction he had never had in the past.
Navalny was arrested several days before an opposition demonstration held on Saturday and is currently serving a 30-day sentence. More than 1,300 people were detained after protesting the exclusion of opposition candidates from Moscow’s city council elections.
Navalny raised the possibility that he had been poisoned by a chemical agent while in jail, according a blog post cited by the Associated Press. His physician, Dr. Anastasiya Vasilyeva, said she suspected that Navalny could have been chemically poisoned, although that suspicion could not be confirmed. Vasilyeva said Navalny had been returned to jail before being properly tested, but she had taken his hair samples in hopes of getting an independent assessment.
Navalny’s attorney, Olga Mikhailova, also blamed his condition on an unknown chemical substance.
The opposition leader has been targeted before. In 2017, he suffered a partial loss of vision after being assaulted and doused with a green antiseptic. His sight was restored after he sought treatment abroad.
GILROY, Calif. — The gunman who killed three people and wounded a dozen more at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California was an angry 19-year-old who had recently waded into the world of white supremacy.
Santino William Legan, who was shot dead by police Sunday before he could do more damage, posted online about an 1890 racist manifesto, “Might is Right or The Survival of the Fittest,” NBC News confirmed.
“Read Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard,” Legan posted on his Instagram page. He then used a slurs against mixed-race people and misogynistic descriptions of white Silicon Valley workers, complaining about “hordes” of them “overcrowding” towns.
Redbeard, which was a pseudonym, argued that only strength and violence determined what is morally right. The work, which is filled with misogynistic and anti-Semitic rhetoric, is a staple among neo-Nazis and white supremacists on extremist sites.
And the phrase “might is right” is often posted as a sort of motto or catchphrase indicating white supremacy on neo-Nazi extremist forums.
Legan was also apparently no fan of the festival, a three-day food fair that began in 1979 to celebrate the local garlic industry — and which was in walking distance from his home on a tree-lined street in Gilroy.
“Ayyy garlic festival time,” his post read. “Come get wasted on overpriced s—.”
Below that was a post from someone named futboieden, which read “when you get too wasted and accidentally shoot up the festival.”
Just who futboieden was remained unclear a day after the nation was left grappling with yet another mass shooting. This one claimed the lives of 6-year-old Stephen Romero, a 13-year-old girl, and a man in his 20s. The names of the other two victims were not released.
Investigators also said they were looking into reports that Legan might have had an accomplice but said that had not been confirmed. They said the AK-47-style assault rifle Legan used in the shooting was purchased July 9 in Nevada.
“We don’t have a motive for the shooting as yet,” Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said during a press conference.
Legan was from a family of boxers. He was coached, along with his brothers, by their father, Tom.
Neighbors said the family converted its garage into a boxing gym and the boys were often seen sparring with each other.
Santino Legan in a high school yearbook photo.
“I’m so confused and hurt for the parents to go through this,” said Elia Scettrini, 65, who lives two doors away and teaches Spanish at Gilroy High School.
Scettrini said Legan just graduated from high school and described the family as friendly and polite.
Police on Monday could be seen carrying several bags of evidence out of the family home and searching a car parked outside.
This was not the first time the Legan family has found itself in the crosshairs of a police investigation.
Legan’s grandfather Thomas Legan was a Santa Clara County supervisor running for re-election in 1988 when he was accused of molesting one of his daughters six years earlier.
Thomas Legan, who died last year, insisted he was innocent and maintained his ex-wife had manipulated the girl into making a false accusation. A jury agreed and found him not guilty after six days of deliberations.
Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., said he and his wife, Judy, were in the crowd Sunday when the shots rang out.
“The shooter was not far from us as we heard the loud ‘pops,’ which seemed to get closer as we ran,” the congressman said in a statement.
The Gilroy Garlic Festival is one of the county’s best-known food festivals and has been held for 41 years. It draws hundreds of thousands of paying visitors every year.
The focus of the festival is garlic-flavored food, from garlic bread and calamari to ice cream and frog legs, and some people even show their fondness for the plant by wearing garlic-shaped hats.
The festival made several changes this year to try to reverse a recent 20 percent decline in attendance, Gilroy Life, a local lifestyle publication, reported last week. The changes included adding a concert by singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat and an appearance by celebrity chef Tom Colicchio.
The festival is run primarily by volunteers and much of the money goes to local charities.
“It’s been able to supply money for all groups, whether it’s the little kids’ swimming team or the high school football teams,” said Alex Larson, 57, who owns the Garlic Shoppe in Gilroy with his brother.
Larson said the festival is so central to the community that people will rally behind it, rather than letting the shooting mar its reputation.
“If it were a festival that someone was profiting from, it would be completely different, but this is a festival that everyone profits from,” he said. Next year, he said, “People are going to show up, and it’s going to be better.”
People in Gilroy were using the hashtag #gilroystrong on social media on Monday, echoing a saying that became popular in Boston after the marathon bombing there in 2013.
Ingram reported from Gilroy, and Zadrozny and Siemaszko from New York.
Mary Anne Marsh, a political analyst for Fox News, raised concerns on Monday that President Donald Trump appeared to be consolidating his control over the U.S. intelligence community with the nomination of GOP Representative John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence.
“It’s more about protecting Trump than America,” Marsh, who previously served as a senior adviser to Democratic Senator John Kerry, warned during a segment of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom on Monday. “John Ratcliffe has been all over the investigate the investigators [probe], who’s doing that right now? [Attorney General] Bill Barr, so Donald Trump has consolidated his control over the intelligence committees at a time when he’s given Barr unprecedented access and control over all the intelligence information, which we’ve never seen by an attorney general before,” she said.
“Now he adds Ratcliffe,” the analyst asserted. “So this is Trump locking down the intelligence community for his purposes, not national security purposes.”
Trump reportedly long aimed to replace Coats, a Republican, as he did not see him as loyal enough to his administration. On Sunday, the president announced that Coats would be leaving office on August 15 and that he had nominated Ratcliffe, who represents Texas, as his replacement.
“I am pleased to announce that highly respected Congressman John Ratcliffe of Texas will be nominated by me to be the Director of National Intelligence. A former U.S. Attorney, John will lead and inspire greatness for the Country he loves,” the president wrote in a tweet.
Republican Senator Richard Burr, who represents North Carolina and is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested in a Monday statement that Ratcliffe’s nomination would quickly be approved by his committee. “When the White House submits its official nomination to the Senate Intelligence Committee, we will work to move it swiftly through regular order,” Burr said, NPR reported.
Some experts have raised concerns about Ratcliffe’s lack of experience when it comes to national intelligence. “Ratcliffe would be the first DNI without significant intelligence or ambassadorial experience,” John McLaughlin, a former Deputy Director of the CIA, pointed out on Twitter. “Dan Coats has done superbly the main thing a DNI must do: present the collective view of the intelligence community in a fair, objective, and non-partisan way.”
As Marsh explained, Ratcliffe has been a staunch supporter of the president, particularly in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference and its alleged involvement with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
“So Americans need to know this, as they listen to the Democrats and socialists on the other side of the aisle, as they do dramatic readings from this report: that Volume 2 of this report was not authorized under the law to be written. It was written to a legal standard that does not exist at the Justice Department,” he argued during Mueller’s testimony to the House Judiciary and House Intelligence Committees last week. “And it was written in violation of every DOJ [Department of Justice] principle about extra-prosecutorial commentary,” the congressman said.
As Democratic lawmakers continue to investigate allegations against Trump and his administration, as well as push for legislation to challenge Russian election interference, Ratcliffe would serve in a prominent role that he could potentially use to shield the president.
President Trump on Saturday called Baltimore a “very dangerous & filthy place” and suggested that Democratic politicians, including Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, had made the city all but uninhabitable.
Leaders of Trump’s party appear to disagree: House Republicans have scheduled their yearly policy retreat for a downtown Baltimore hotel in September, according to two senior Republicans familiar with the plans.
That could present an uncomfortable situation for Trump, as sitting presidents customarily speak each year at their party’s House retreat.
The Republicans spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe arrangements that have yet to be made public. The website for the hotel, the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, and multiple third-party hotel booking sites show the hotel as sold out for the days of the retreat, Sept. 12 to 14, while showing availability at other nearby hotels.
During past congressional retreats, Capitol Police have cordoned off the premises to all but lawmakers and authorized attendees, meaning no unrelated guests are permitted.
The House Republican Conference handles the retreat planning in conjunction with the nonprofit Congressional Institute. Jeremy Adler, a spokesman for the conference chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), did not respond to a request for comment Monday. Congressional Institute President Mark Strand did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
Trump over the weekend issued Twitter attacks on Baltimore and Cummings (D-Md.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
The panel has issued multiple subpoenas targeting the Trump administration. The committee voted last week to authorize subpoenas for White House work communications sent via personal email and cellphone, amid questions about whether the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in law, Jared Kushner, violated federal record-keeping laws.
Cummings has also sought testimony from White House counselor Kellyanne Conway after a government watchdog found that she violated a law that forbids federal government employees from engaging in certain campaign activities.
“If racist Elijah Cummings would focus more of his energy on helping the good people of his district, and Baltimore itself, perhaps progress could be made in fixing the mess that he has helped to create over many years of incompetent leadership,” Trump said in one Sunday tweet. “His radical ‘oversight’ is a joke!”
The Marriott Waterfront is not in Cummings’s district, though just barely — it is four blocks inside the edge of Democrat John Sarbanes’s circuitous 3rd District in Baltimore’s Harbor East neighborhood.
The GOP retreat was originally scheduled for the remote Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., in late January, but Republican leaders postponed it because of the then-pending government shutdown. Democrats also postponed their retreat, rescheduling it for May at a suburban Virginia resort.
Baltimore has been a frequent destination for both parties’ legislative retreats. Republicans last held their retreat in the same Marriott in 2016; Democrats huddled at a nearby Hyatt Regency last year.
Lawmakers and congressional staffers are fond of Baltimore as a retreat location because of its proximity to Washington, cutting down on travel time to and from the Capitol, as well as the wealth of off-premises tourism options for family members who sometimes join them.
Democrats like talking about Russian election meddling more than anything else in the world. President Trump hates the topic more than any other.
What both sides have in common is that neither takes the threat seriously. They should.
The Senate Intelligence Committee just released a report revealing Russian efforts to interfere with our election far more widespread than we had previously known. While Democrats seemed most upset about their emails getting hacked, and while major media outlets seemed most upset about “fake news” being spread on Facebook, the truly scary story to come out of the Intelligence Committee’s report was Russian efforts to hack state election systems.
Russian malefactors systematically tried to hack into elections systems in all 50 states. They successfully penetrated the systems in some cases. In Illinois, for instance, Russians got so far they could have altered state voter rolls — but apparently didn’t. What’s unnerving is that there’s no doubt they’ll try again.
Given the contentiousness of current politics, the last thing we need is a presidential election tainted by foreign hacking. This is a serious issue that deserves a serious response on both the state and federal level.
Trump has, to his discredit, waved away the facts on Russian meddling. He apparently fears that giving credence to the story of Russian meddling in turn gives credence to Democrats and the media who want to discredit his victory.
Of course, Trump’s critics want to say he stole the election. Of course, they use the fact of Russian meddling to advance that claim. But their story is false: there’s no evidence Russians altered any votes or tampered with any vote tallies.
Trump is the president of the United States. He needs to be above worrying about his detractors. He needs to put national security interests above perceptions and his own ego, and he needs to robustly respond to the actions exposed by this Senate report.
First, he needs to rebuke Russian President Vladimir Putin both publicly and privately. Second, he needs to support U.S. intelligence and law enforcement in their efforts to detect and thwart Russian efforts in 2020.
That doesn’t mean Republicans should rubber stamp Democratic “election security” legislation, some of which amounts to a federal takeover of state election responsibilities — as if states have less incentive to preserve the integrity of their own elections.
We hope Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and the states can see the importance of this issue and set aside their respective hangups in order to work together.
But Democrats (and frankly, some of the Intelligence Committee) have another hangup they need to get over. They need to acknowledge Russian meddling appears to have been at the very origin of the Mueller probe.
The Russia probe’s roots reach back to the salacious Steele dossier, which emanates from Fusion GPS, a Democratic research firm. We know that Fusion GPS worked alongside Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has long been considered close to Russian intelligence.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller refused to answer any questions about the origins of the probe, which is too bad. Any serious accounting of Russian meddling would get to the bottom of Russia’s role in the Steele dossier.
Democrats want to use “Russia” as an excuse for losing an election. For that reason, Trump wants to deny there’s a problem.
Both sides have to grow up and confront a common enemy.
Officers at a Baltimore airport found a missile launcher packed inside a checked bag that belonged to an active-duty military service member who had just returned from Kuwait and wanted to bring the item home as a “souvenir,” according to an agency spokeswoman.
“Transportation Security Administration officers at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport detected a missile launcher in a man’s checked luggage early this morning, July 29,” the agency wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
The Department of Homeland Security agency said it immediately contacted airport police and tracked down the passenger. The Texas man was taken in for questioning.
“He wanted to keep the missile launcher as a souvenir,” TSA said in the statement, adding military weapons are not allowed in either checked or carry-on bags.
TSA said the weapon was not a “live device.” It was confiscated and turned over to the state fire marshal for safe disposal.
The unnamed man was released and allowed to board his connecting flight home. TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein deadpanned, “Perhaps he should have picked up a keychain instead.”
It is not clear if the bag was first inspected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, another Department of Homeland Security entity that all passengers must pass through when re-entering the country, or at what point in the unnamed passenger’s travel process TSA discovered the item.
TSA frequently shares unusual items found in carry-on and checked baggage. Over the past year, officers have found more than 4,000 firearms in carry-on bags, as well as grenades, fireworks, and other items.
A photo taken of him on Sept. 18, 2001, has been used in a widely circulated meme that claims Mr. Trump personally traveled to ground zero with hundreds of workers to help uncover victims.
Mr. O’Brien, the author, said the size of the Trump Organization at the time was “a little bit over a dozen people,” which would have made it impossible to send hundreds of people to participate in the relief effort. At the time, Mr. Trump had a large number of casino workers based in Atlantic City, but there is no documented effort of him marshaling his resources to aid in the relief effort.
“He’s very comfortable propagandizing that event for political purposes,” Mr. O’Brien said. “Even in the face of tragedy, he can’t help but self-promote and self-aggrandize.”
Also unproven: the donations Mr. Trump said he gave to charities involved in the relief effort. In 2016, Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, said there was no evidence that a $10,000 donation pledge that Mr. Trump made after the attacks had ever been given to a charity called the Twin Towers Fund.
The White House did not respond to a question asking for clarification of Mr. Trump’s involvement at ground zero.
New details emerge about suspected Gilroy Garlic Festival gunman
What we know:
3 killed, including a 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a man in his 20s, and 15 others wounded in a shooting at the popular Gilroy Garlic Festival some 80 miles southeast of San Francisco
Gilroy police quickly shot and killed a gunman
The deceased gunman has been identified as Santino William Legan, 19, CBS News has learned
Manhunt on for possible accomplice
Three people were killed and 15 others wounded after at least one gunman opened fire Sunday evening during the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California, authorities said. A suspect was also killed in the shooting that sent hundreds of panicked people scrambling for safety.
The deceased victims included 6-year-old Stephen Luciano Romero of San Jose, authorities said. The conditions of the wounded ranged from critical to fair.
Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee told reporters in a late-night briefing that Gilroy officers engaged a suspect within a minute of shots ringing out and killed him. CBS News has learned he has been identified as Santino William Legan, 19.
Santino William Legan, 19, (inset) has been identified as the gunman in the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting in California.
CBS News
Smithee said witnesses told authorities at least one other person may have been involved in the shooting but there was no confirmation of that or the role he or she might have played. He said a manhunt was underway for the possible accomplice.
Federal law enforcement sources told CBS News the FBI was among numerous law enforcement agencies at the scene assisting Gilroy police, who were leading the investigation.
Smithee said the suspect or suspects appeared to have cut through a wire fence at a creek bordering the festival grounds to bypass heavy security to gain access.
There was no early word on a possible motive. Witnesses told CBS News the gunman appeared to be firing at random. Some witnesses said he suddenly appeared from behind a stage before beginning to shoot.
“It’s just incredibly sad and disheartening that an event that does so much good for our community has to suffer from a tragedy like this,” Smithee added.
The shooting happened on the last day of the annual three-day festival. It features food, cooking competitions and music and attracts more than 100,000 people, The Associated Press notes.
Gilroy, a city of 50,000 some 80 miles southeast of San Francisco, is known as “The Garlic Capital of the World.”
President Trump attacked the Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday as “a con man” and someone who “Hates Whites & Cops,” just hours before Sharpton held a news conference in Baltimore to decry Trump’s derogatory weekend tweets directed at the city and an African American congressman.
Sharpton, a former Democratic presidential candidate and MSNBC talk-show host, appeared in Baltimore alongside Michael Steele, who formerly chaired the Republican National Committee and served as Maryland’s lieutenant governor.
At the event, held at a Baltimore church, Sharpton said Trump had attacked the city and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in “the most bigoted and racist way.”
“He has a particular venom for blacks and people of color,” Sharpton said of Trump.
Steele, the first African American elected statewide in Maryland, criticized Trump for “reprehensive comments” and invited him to come to Baltimore.
“Put the tweet down brother, and show up,” Steele said.
In tweets beforehand, Trump said he had known Sharpton for 25 years. He said the two “always got along well” and attended boxing matches together.
“He would ask me for favors often,” Trump said. “Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing. Must have intimidated Comcast/NBC. Hates Whites & Cops!”
Baltimore, under the leadership of Elijah Cummings, has the worst Crime Statistics in the Nation. 25 years of all talk, no action! So tired of listening to the same old Bull…Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest. Nothing will get done for the people in need. Sad!
Sharpton’s news conference came two days after Trump criticized Baltimore as a “rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live” and attacked Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who represents part of the city. Cummings chairs the House Oversight Committee, which has been holding an array of hearings critical of Trump administration practices.
Sharpton responded Monday morning on Twitter by sharing a photograph of Trump attending a 2006 conference hosted by Sharpton’s organization, the National Action Network. The photo also included singer James Brown and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.
“Trump at NAN Convention 2006 telling James Brown and Jesse Jackson why he respects my work. Different tune now,” Sharpton wrote.
Trump soon responded on Twitter, saying that Sharpton would “always ask me to go to his events” as “a personal favor.”
“Seldom, but sometimes, I would go. It was fine,” Trump said.
Sharpton later continued the back-and-forth on Twitter, writing: “Trump says I’m a troublemaker & con man. I do make trouble for bigots. If he really thought I was a con man he would want me in his cabinet.”
Trump also renewed his attacks on Baltimore and Cummings on Monday, asserting in a tweet that the city of more than 600,000 people “has the worst Crimes Statistics in the Nation.”
“25 years of all talk, no action!” Trump wrote. “So tired of listening to the same old Bull…Next, Reverend Al will show up to complain & protest. Nothing will get done for the people in need. Sad!”
Steele also spoke out about Trump over the weekend, raising a question in a tweet about “how much more of Trump’s incessant whining, tweeting, bullying, & racism are we willing to put up with.”
Trump launched his attacks on Cummings two weeks after he started taking aim at a group of four liberal minority congresswomen known on Capitol Hill as “the Squad.”
In the first of his tweets attacking the freshman lawmakers, he said they should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” — remarks that drew a rebuke from the House.
Only one of the four women — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali refugee who became a U.S. citizen in 2000 — was born outside the United States. The others — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) — were born in the United States.
In another tweet Monday, Trump referenced the four lawmakers again.
“If the Democrats are going to defend the Radical Left ‘Squad’ and King Elijah’s Baltimore Fail, it will be a long road to 2020,” he said.
Trump’s advisers have concluded that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.
Sharpton also saw a political motive in Trump’s attacks. During a call Monday morning into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he said, “I think this is Trump getting ready for reelection.”
Later Monday morning, Trump struck a more hopeful note about Baltimore and suggested that the city’s leaders call him.
“The fact is, Baltimore can be brought back, maybe even to new heights of success and glory, but not with King Elijah and that crew,” he said. “When the leaders of Baltimore want to see the City rise again, I am in a very beautiful oval shaped office waiting for your call!”
Toluse Olorunnipa and Ashley Parker contributed to this report.
Rep. John Ratcliffe listens as former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill last week.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Rep. John Ratcliffe listens as former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified on Capitol Hill last week.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Updated 1:35 p.m. ET
Rep. John Ratcliffe is President Trump’s choice to become the next top leader of the U.S. intelligence community.
The Texas Republican thanked Trump on Twitter following the president’s earlier announcement, also on Twitter, that Ratcliffe was his nominee to replace outgoing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
Coats and Trump haven’t been sympatico from the beginning and the White House has been telling journalists for weeks that the president wanted somebody else.
If the transition isn’t a surprise, however, the choice of Ratcliffe might have been — and some key senators have yet to state one way or another how they feel about the nominee.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., didn’t mention Ratcliffe in a statement on Sunday that praised Coats but also emphasized what McConnell called the need for a president to get candid advice.
“The U.S. intelligence community works best when it is led by professionals who protect its work from political or analytical bias and who deliver unvarnished hard truths to political leaders in both the executive and legislative branches,” McConnell said. “Very often the news these briefings bring is unpleasant, but it is essential that we be confronted with the facts.”
One question raised by McConnell’s statement: Would Ratcliffe be so much of a loyalist that he would only tell Trump what he wanted to hear — and Congress and the public what Trump wanted them to hear? Or could he be the honest manager that the Senate majority leader says is needed?
Republicans control the Senate and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which would consider Ratcliffe’s nomination before the full body voted to confirm him.
That’s if Trump formally submits the congressman’s name.
In the past, Trump has sometimes said he intends to nominate someone for a post but never actually transmitted the name to the Senate.
That’s what happened, for example, when Trump nominated economics commentator Stephen Moore and former pizza magnate Herman Cain to the board of the Federal Reserve; ultimately senators were spared the need to actually assess or cast votes on them.
North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement Monday that he spoke with Ratcliffe over the weekend “to congratulate him” on the nomination.
Continued Burr: “When the White House submits its official nomination to the Senate intelligence committee, we will work to move it swiftly through regular order.”
Other members of the panel have so far been silent on Ratcliffe’s nomination.
Coats, a long-serving former member of Congress, was well known to many lawmakers and was confirmed in early 2017 by a vote of 85 to 12. At the same time, the Senate has considered and endorsed a close-call nominee of Trump’s before, in CIA Director Gina Haspel.
She was controversial because of her role in President George W. Bush’s terrorist interrogation program, but she also was a career officer with deep experience inside the agency.
Ratcliffe sits today on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence but had little intelligence or foreign affairs experience before that, as some commentators observed after Trump’s announcement.
Democrats faulted what they called Trump’s bid to fill an important role with what they called a flunky and another “television character.“
Trump vs. the spooks
Trump, Coats and the leaders of the intelligence community have endured uncomfortable stretches for as long as Trump has been in office.
The spy bosses assessed that North Korea is unlikely to surrender its nuclear weapons, for example, even though Trump has made much of his personal rapport with its leader, Kim Jong Un.
The leaders of the intelligence and national defense establishment told Congress that Iran was abiding by its commitments to the nuclear deal, even though Trump sought to abrogate it and went ahead with withdrawing the United States.
And Coats and the other leaders of the intelligence community also continued their focus on foreign election interference in parallel with the investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller into Russia’s attack on the 2016 election.
Trump goes back and forth as to what he accepts about foreign interference generally and specifically into Russia’s role in the 2016 election.
The news on Sunday about Coats’ departure and Ratcliffe’s nomination followed an earlier announcement by Coats that he was appointing a new election security czar within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and directing the other agencies within the intelligence community to do the same.
After getting in some early jabs in about Donald Trump’s tariff threats on France for their wine (Trump said that he thinks American wines just look better than French wines), John Oliver dug into the text scandal and resignation of Ricardo Rossello, the Governor of Puerto Rico, on Last Week Tonight.
This week, Rossello said that he would be stepping down from his post as governor which was big news for Puerto Rico. Oliver showed footage of citizens of Puerto Rico celebrating with joy as the announcement was made.
“Holy sh*t — it does not bode well for your political career when people are reacting to your resignation like Oprah just gave them a new car,” joked Oliver.
He added that the resignation is a historical moment considering all that Puerto Rico has been through. He points out that “Puerto Rico has endured decades of systemic interruption, a massive debt crisis, tripling austerity measures, inadequate response to Hurricane Maria and a high profile probe that saw two former top government officials arrested this month.”
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The resignation came after 900 pages of a group chat in which Rossello was part of were released. The text chain included personal attacks on rival politicians as well as sexist and homophobic comments.
“It was very, very bad,” Oliver emphasized. In the 900 pages, Rossello called a female adversary a “whore” and at one point, he responded to someone mentioning that they wanted to shoot the mayor of San Juan saying it would be doing him a favor. But the worst comment was a tasteless joke about the dead bodies accumulating during and after Hurricane Maria at an understaffed morgue.
Needless to say, it is understandable that Puerto Ricans wanted him out — none more than a protestor Oliver loved who simply said about Rossello: “Nah brah, you’re not fit to be governor — OUT!” Afterward, Oliver joked that he said he wanted to see the protestor as the next Bachelorette.
Oliver continued to drag Rossello by showing footage of an interview he had with Fox News’s Shepard Smith, who asked him to name his supporters. Rossello clearly struggled to answer the question as Shepard pressed him until he uttered the name Javier Jimenez, mayor of San Sebastian, as a supporter.
“That was excruciating,” Oliver said of the clip. “He took so long to come up with a name you might think he made Javier Jimenez up!”
Well, it turns out that Jimenez is, in fact, real, but it doesn’t seem like he’s on the same page as Rossello. After the Fox News interview, Jimenez released a video saying that he did not support Rossello at all.
“It’s still not clear what happens next,” said Oliver. “Puerto Rico’s future is unclear.” He adds that the Secretary of State was next in line for the post, but he was also in the scandalous group chat and resigned. After him is the Secretary of Justice who is too close to Rossello and she said she didn’t want the job.
Despite the unknown future, Oliver said the people of Puerto Rico are “incredibly optimistic.” He showed footage of hopeful citizens and then said that Rossello inadvertently accomplished something. “By being such a spectacular sh**head Rossello ended up uniting Puerto Rico in hating him — and that’s an incredible achievement!
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