A view of the U.S. Capitol this month. House investigators are expected to press Charles Kupperman, deputy to then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, to corroborate key elements of an account that President Trump built a shadow foreign policy team to pressure the Ukrainian president.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images


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Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

A view of the U.S. Capitol this month. House investigators are expected to press Charles Kupperman, deputy to then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, to corroborate key elements of an account that President Trump built a shadow foreign policy team to pressure the Ukrainian president.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Investigators in the impeachment inquiry of President Trump want to talk to Charles Kupperman on Monday. But it’s unclear whether the former White House official will show up.

As they gather evidence behind closed doors, House investigators had been expected to press Kupperman to corroborate key elements of a top U.S. diplomat’s account that Trump built a shadow foreign policy team around his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate a political rival — and that Trump held up U.S. military aid for Ukraine as leverage.

But Kupperman, who had been the top aide to then-National Security Adviser John Bolton, filed a lawsuit on Friday night describing himself as caught between two competing orders. He wants a court ruling on whether he should comply with the House subpoena to testify — or comply with a White House order to stay away because the nature of his job as adviser means he is exempt from the congressional order.

“Dr. Kupperman takes no position on whether the command of the Legislative Branch or the command of the Executive Branch should prevail; he seeks only to carry out whichever constitutional obligation the Judicial Branch determines to be lawful and binding on him,” his lawyer, Charles Cooper, said in a statement.

House investigators called the lawsuit a stall tactic and accused Kupperman of working with the White House to stonewall Congress. They sent him a letter on Saturday saying their subpoena “remains in full force” and said Kupperman is legally obligated to appear on Monday.

“The deposition will begin on time and, should your client defy the subpoena, his absence will constitute evidence that may be used against him in a contempt proceeding,” the impeachment inquiry leaders said in a letter to Cooper.

Kupperman’s lawyer said the White House had no advance notice of the lawsuit and said it was not discussed or coordinated with anyone from the White House. “We believe the arguments of both Branches are substantial and offered in good faith,” Cooper wrote, saying it would not be appropriate for Kupperman to resolve what he called a “momentous Constitutional dispute.”

Nicholas Rostow, who served as legal adviser to the National Security Council in George W. Bush’s White House, said he expected that the congressional subpoena would take precedence over the White House claim — but he cautioned that the court may take a different view.

“The court may say this is an odd duck because the House hasn’t voted on whether this is an official impeachment inquiry, so executive privilege might still apply,” said Rostow, who has long worked with Bolton and knows Kupperman. “It’s a question the court may have to wrestle with.”

People who know Kupperman say they don’t expect him to be swayed by politics or ideology. Dennis Ross, a former ambassador and top adviser to Republicans and Democrats on Middle East policy, compared Kupperman to Sgt. Joe Friday from the television series Dragnet, a character known for sticking to the facts.

“Charlie has always been very conservative but also honest and a straight shooter,” said Ross, who got to know Kupperman years ago when they both were doctoral students. “He has strong views like Bolton about Russia and Putin. Neither he nor Bolton would have turned a blind eye to what they saw as fundamentally inappropriate and wrong behavior.”

Former Trump administration officials say Kupperman is known to follow procedures. He was an adviser to Bolton for more than 30 years and served various roles in President Reagan’s administration, including in the White House and on an advisory committee on arms control.

Kupperman worked as an executive at defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin before joining the Trump administration in January. He left the White House on Sept. 20, 10 days after Bolton and Trump parted ways.

Kupperman has expressed some controversial hard-line views in his past work with Frank Gaffney, the founder of the Center for Security Policy, who has advocated curtailing immigration and has repeatedly denounced Muslims, according to a former Bush administration official. But the former official said Kupperman was also known to be “quietly instrumental” in helping to strengthen and build National Security Council staff during his time in Trump’s White House.

He started at the National Security Council two months after Bolton’s first deputy, Mira Ricardel, was pushed out of her post following an argument with first lady Melania Trump’s office.

Despite their political differences, Ross said he never knew Kupperman to be anything but straightforward.

“It’ll be the real facts,” Ross said. “It won’t be something else. It won’t be alternative facts.”

NPR White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/10/28/773524571/bolton-deputy-wants-court-ruling-before-he-talks-in-trump-impeachment-inquiry

A growing brush fire was threatening hundreds of homes in Brentwood and other Westside hillside communities, burning several structures and prompting widespread evacuations.

The fire broke out along the 405 Freeway near the Getty Center and was spreading to the south and west. The mandatory evacuation zone was set for west of the 405 from Mandeville Canyon Road to Sunset Boulevard. Mount St. Mary’s University was surrounded by flames and was being evacuated.

“We have an active and growing brush fire on the west side of the 405 Freeway, north of Sunset Blvd,” the Los Angeles Fire Department said in an advisory. “For those living in this area, you must be prepared to evacuate from Mulholland down to Sunset and from the 405 to the PCH.”

“This is a very dynamic situation due to high winds and information is quickly developing,” the Fire Department said. “Stay vigilant.”

Evacuation centers have been opened at the Westwood Recreation Center and the Van Nuys/Sherman Oaks Recreation Center, which allows small pets.

At least 75 acres have burned and the acreage is expected to grow, said Margaret Stewart, a Fire Department spokeswoman. An unknown number of structures have been damaged by fire. Helicopters and aircraft were making night drops along the fire line.

The fire was threatening some of Los Angeles most expensive neighborhoods. Among those evacuated was Lakers star LeBron James, who said on Twitter: “Had to emergency evacuate my house and I’ve been driving around with my family trying to get rooms. No luck so far!

The California Highway Patrol advised motorists to avoid the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass. Portions of Sepulveda Boulevard was also closed.

“People in the area … are advised to prepare to evacuate due to a rapidly moving brush fire,” the Fire Department said in a statement posted on Nixle.

The blaze erupted shortly before 2 a.m. Monday.

A video posted on Twitter by Flavio Chávez showed flames burning on one side of the freeway.

In Southern California, a Santa Ana wind event began Sunday night and was expected to last through Monday with isolated gusts of up to 60 mph in the Los Angeles County mountains and humidity levels as low as 5%, causing officials to issue red-flag warnings.

“Potential for very rapid fire spread, long range spotting and extreme fire behavior with any new fire ignitions,” the National Weather Service said.

Temperatures in the area were about 59 degrees. Around 2:30 a.m., winds in the Sepulveda Pass area seemed to be calm, but humidity levels were about 12% and winds in the central Santa Monica Mountains were blowing about 10 mph to 20 mph.

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-28/fire-along-interstate-405-near-getty-center

The parents of slain U.S. human rights activist Kayla Mueller said Sunday that their daughter might still be alive had former President Obama been as “decisive” as President TrumpDonald John Trump‘Veterans for impeachment’ signs seen at World Series game during Trump visit Trump met with boos, ‘lock him up’ chant at Game 5 of World Series Kayla Mueller’s mother: Daughter might still be alive ‘If Obama had been as decisive’ as Trump MORE in ordering military action to recover her from ISIS before her death in 2015.

Mueller’s parents told The Arizona Republic that they credited Trump with bringing Mueller’s killers to justice after the president announced Sunday morning that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed in a U.S. raid.

“I still say Kayla should be here, and if Obama had been as decisive as President Trump, maybe she would have been,” Marsha Mueller told the newspaper.

“For me what matters most I’m hoping now we will finally get the answers we have been asking for all along,” she added. “I think this administration truly might help us. I don’t think they are as closed about what happened.”

Her husband, Carl Mueller, added that it was “important” to him that Trump knew of his daughter’s story and thanked the president for mentioning Kayla Mueller’s name in his address Sunday morning.

“He knows her story. He’s been briefed on it, and he knows, and that’s important to me,” he said, according to the Republic. “I don’t think anything would have stopped him from getting this guy.”

Mueller, an Arizona-born human rights activist working with Doctors Without Borders in Syria, was abducted in 2013 after leaving a hospital and remained in ISIS captivity for months, reportedly being forced into marriage to al-Baghdadi himself.

She was confirmed by U.S. forces in 2015 to have been killed by a Jordanian airstrike targeting ISIS-held areas in Raqqa, Syria.

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/467674-kayla-muellers-mother-daughter-might-still-be-alive-if-obama-had-been

CLOSE

CHICAGO — Amid an impeachment inquiry in Washington and an ongoing strike by more than 32,000 teachers and school staff, Donald Trump is expected to make his first presidential visit to Chicago on Monday, a city that he often ridicules for how its leaders handle gun violence.

Trump is scheduled to attend a fundraiser Monday morning hosted by Todd Ricketts, Cubs co-owner and Republican National Committee Finance chairman. Later, he will speak at the largest annual gathering of law enforcement leaders in the world, the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference. 

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, this year’s conference host, said he plans to boycott the president’s remarks, a move that pushed Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police board to issue a vote of no confidence in Johnson.

“As police officers, our job is to be the voice for the voiceless and ambassadors to the communities that we serve,” Johnson said in response to the vote. “I can’t in good conscience stand by while racial insults and hatred are cast from the oval office or Chicago is held hostage because of our views on new Americans.”

Chciago teachers strike: When will it be over?

Kevin Graham, president of the Chicago’s FOP, called Johnson’s boycott an “insult” to the president.

“I think Superintendent Johnson should not walk out of the president’s speech, particularly when the federal government has sent federal agents and prosecutors to assist the Chicago Police Department with our gun and drug problems,” Graham said.

Even when Trump spoke at last year’s conference in Orlando, Chicago played a central role in his speech.

“There’s no reason for what’s going on there,” Trump said at the time, adding, “The crime spree is a terrible blight on that city.”

Trump has frequently taken aim at Chicago over the years. In a January 2017 interview with ABC, Trump compared Chicago to Afghanistan, saying, “Afghanistan is not like what’s happening in Chicago.” Trump said he would “send in the feds” to fix the city’s “horrible carnage.”

“People are being shot left and right, thousands of people over a short period of time,” Trump said, adding, “Chicago is like a war zone.”

How Chicago has responded to Trump

Chicago hasn’t taken too kindly to Trump’s comments.

During a campaign visit in March 2016, Trump was essentially booted out of the city: Protests at a rally at the University of Illinois Chicago prompted organizers to cancel the event half an hour before it was scheduled to begin.

That same year, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Chicago would remain a sanctuary city, defying the president-elect’s hardline immigration stance. The city later sued the Justice Department over a plan to withhold federal public safety grants from sanctuary cities. 

Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has similarly defended her city against criticism from the president and his supporters. In August, when Ivanka Trump tweeted about a weekend of shootings in Chicago, Lightfoot fired back, saying Ivanka Trump had misrepresented the events and had not reached out to city officials.

Given Trump’s rocky history with Chicago, it’s likely that Johnson won’t be the only one protesting the president’s visit. The Rev. Marshall Hatch, a pastor at Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist on the city’s West Side, gave Johnson a round of applause at a meeting of faith leaders Wednesday.

“It is a chance to send a statement from Chicago. This is the one place the president has almost been fearful to come,” Hatch said. “There’s a very active, progressive element in this city. I suspect he’s going to get the kind of greeting here that he doesn’t get in other cities.”

Trump’s speech could worsen the tense relationship between police and communities, said Ciera Walker-Chamberlin, a minister in the Jesus Christ House of Prayer Church and executive director of Live Free Chicago, which works on mass incarceration and violence prevention.

“Here in Chicago, we have worked very hard to rebuild trust between police and the community and the last thing we need is for the president to undermine that with a tough-on-crime speech to police chiefs. If he really wants to help, he should fund violence prevention programs and support criminal justice reforms,” she said.

The Rev. Michael L. Pfleger, a pastor at St. Sabina Church and an anti-gun violence activist, said he wrote a letter to the president encouraging him to visit with Chicagoans living on the South and West sides.

“Mr. Trump has continually tweeted and spoken in sound bites about Chicago,” Pfleger said. “Since he is coming, take time to listen and learn, to see how he can help. If he is only coming to pick up money, he should stay home.”

Nearly 3,000 people have expressed interest in a Facebook event for a protest of Trump’s visit. The event, called “Get Out of Our House!,” is being organized by groups including Indivisible Chicago and the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America.

“The last time Trump tried to come to Chicago at UIC Pavilion, the Chicago community showed up, forcing Trump to cancel and leave town. We need to do that again, but it’s going to take all of us,” organizers wrote in the event description.

It was not immediately clear if Chicago teachers and school staff would join the protest Monday, which would mark their eighth day of strike.

Chicago schools strike: It’s for aides living off less than $36,000 a year, union says

Is Trump right about gun violence in Chicago?

Trump often holds up Chicago as a supposed example of how tougher gun laws don’t prevent shootings.

“In Chicago, which has the toughest gun laws in the United States, probably you could say by far, they have more gun violence than any other city,” Trump said in a 2016 presidential debate — a claim that he has since repeated.

That’s not exactly true.

In recent years, Chicago has indeed reported the nation’s most homicides.

But Chicago is also the nation’s third-largest city. Homicide rates in Chicago pale in comparison to those of other cities when taking into account its population of more than 2.7 million people.

Even considering firearm-relatedhomicide rates, specifically, Chicago is not a stand-out.

“When people say that Chicago is the ‘homicide capital of the United States,’ they’re referring to the homicide count,” said Jens Ludwig, director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, which partners with the Chicago Police Department. “Chicago’s actually got a middle-of-the-pack homicide rate, per capita.”

Crime rates in Chicago have generally tracked with trends in other major U.S. cities. But that pattern broke in 2016, when Chicago witnessed a unique surge of gun violence and captured the nation’s attention.

“Chicago had a remarkable spike in homicides, for unclear reasons, in 2016. But since then, it’s recovered by a large percent,” said Phil Cook, a professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. “It looked to all the world like an epidemic outbreak in relatively few neighborhoods.”

A disproportionate amount of that violence occurred in a handful of neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides. These predominantly African American neighborhoods suffer from high levels of poverty, few job opportunities and often lack basic amenities like grocery stores.

But even at its peak in 2016, Chicago’s homicide rate remained lower than that of smaller cities like Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans and St. Louis. Chicago’s homicide rate also remained below its own recent peak at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1990s.

Last year, Chicago again had the nation’s highest number of firearm-related homicides.

But the city’s firearm-related homicide rate, per capita, trailed St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Detroit, Memphis, Kansas City, Newark and Philadelphia, according to FBI data. In 2018, St. Louis reported a firearm-related homicide rate three times that of Chicago.

For the past two years, shootings and homicides have been declining in Chicago, and 2019 is on track to continue the trend.

Several factors could be contributing to the decline, including an expected leveling-off following the surge of violence in 2016, Ludwig said.

“We’ve generated some evidence that at least part of the cause is management changes at the Chicago Police Department. But there have been a bunch of other activities underway to reduce gun violence in the city,” Ludwig said.

What about Chicago’s ‘toughest guns laws’ in the nation?

Experts say that while Chicago is among the states with stricter gun laws, it’s not the most restrictive.

Illinois ranks eighth in the U.S. for strongest gun laws, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The organization says Illinois — which became the final state to allow concealed carry in 2013 — hasn’t gone as far as other states on regulating gun dealers, limiting bulk firearm purchases and restricting large-capacity magazines. Its penalties for violating gun laws also aren’t as strong as those of other states.

A 2017 report by the City of Chicago found that stronger state and federal gun laws would help reduce gun violence in Chicago, as a majority of illegally used or possessed firearms recovered in the city could be traced back to states with less regulation over firearms, such as Indiana and Mississippi. Subsequent research has substantiated these findings.

“Cities and states can’t unilaterally regulate the gun problem because guns flow so easily across city and state lines. It’s really going to require federal regulation,” Ludwig said.

Alexandra Filindra, a political science professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, is critical of Trump’s characterization of gun laws in the city.

“It is incredibly naive and simplistic to say that because we have high violence in one area, that means that gun laws are not effective,” Filindra said. “Trump has used Chicago as a dog-whistle in the past, and I think that his visit to Chicago will be interpreted in the same way.”

Follow Grace Hauck on Twitter @grace_hauck.

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/28/trump-chicago-presidential-visit-highlights-gun-crime-violence/4072445002/

More than four days after it ignited, the wind-driven Kincade Fire surged through Sonoma County early Monday morning, burning new homes and other structures as it moved south through rugged terrain toward neighborhoods on the north edge of Santa Rosa that were ravaged by the deadly Tubbs Fire of 2017.

CLICK HERE FOR LIVE UPDATES ON THE KINCADE FIRE AND THE PG&E OUTAGES

But it slowed almost as quickly as it had surged by 3 a.m., bringing a sigh of relief — if only momentary — to an area ravaged over the past four days.

At 11 p.m. Sunday, as the winds kicked up, firefighters raced to the area, battling hot spots from the Shiloh community east to Mark West Springs, while warning people to flee Larkfield-Wikiup to the south, where hundreds of homes are being rebuilt after they were lost two years ago.

Structures burned on Faught Road as well as Shiloh Ridge, where palatial estates sit on spacious lots in a fire-prone area.

The hills surrounding Chalk Hill Road near Windsor glowed dark red. Smoke billowed into the roadway. Trees burned. Fire crews stationed themselves at each property along the road, working to usher the flames past without damage to the homes.

“They’re doing tactical patrol. They’re going from house to house making sure they have proper clearance, defensible space and if there’s any residents still at home, try to evacuate them,” said Rigo Herrera, a spokesman for the state’s Cal Fire agency. “And they make sure all power is out, gas and electricity is shut to the house. They make sure your windows and doors are closed. You don’t want embers to get into your house.”

Flames were also reported a few miles east near Safari West, a 400-acre wildlife preserve on Porter Creek Road that had been saved in 2017 by its founder, Peter Lang. While his own home burned, Lang spent hours racing around in his truck, dousing spot fires near the cheetah barn and the hyena pen.

The spread of the fire came after a near-apocalyptic day of horror around the Bay Area that saw blazes break out in multiple counties despite mass PG&E power outages designed to prevent just that. Fueled by a historic windstorm, the fires closed freeways, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and intensified fears that parts of California could become almost dangerous to inhabit.

The fires forced the temporary evacuations of hundreds of residents in Vallejo, Crockett, Martinez, Lafayette, Clayton and Oakley on Sunday. But the monster inferno in Sonoma County forced more than 180,000 residents to flee — with no promise they could return to their homes soon.

After 10 p.m. Sunday, David Fincher, 67, was hosing down the roof of his mobile home at a park on Old Redwood Highway north of Santa Rosa, as crews set up a line against flames raging less then a mile away.

Fincher’s neighborhood had been evacuated earlier, but as he peered off into the orange glow in the distance, he said he planned to stay until he no longer felt safe.

“I stayed last time too,” he said, referring to the Tubbs Fire. “The wind was blowing this way and then it shifted. It totally tore up Wikiup.”

At 10:30 p.m, police were making passes through a nearby Larkfield-Wikiup neighborhood, sirens blaring, to encourage any remaining residents to leave immediately as flames leaped on Faught Road.

“I’ve got clothes and my meds in the car. When I feel threatened I’ll leave,” Fincher said. “But not before then.”

Marcos Nunez, 47, who has lived on Shiloh Road for more than a decade, said, “It’s just carnage up there,” after he packed up and left.

More than 3,400 firefighters and other personnel had battled the Kincade Fire on Sunday, keeping the flames from entering dense neighborhoods in Healdsburg and Windsor and from roaring over Highway 101, which could possibly set off a rampage that could reach the Pacific Ocean.

The fire, though, did extensive damage in the Alexander Valley east of Healdsburg, ruining many homes and wineries including Salt Rock and Field Stone.

Ferocious winds reaching nearly 100 mph over the weekend turned the fire, now more than 54,000 acres — 84 square miles — into a blast furnace that had destroyed at least 94 structures, including at least three dozen homes.

The fierce winds died down early Monday morning, but firefighters were bracing for strong gusts to resume Tuesday into Wednesday.

The fire nearly doubled in size Sunday despite the numerous air tankers, dozens of bulldozers and more than 350 engine crews hopscotching across the region in an effort to get the upper hand.

Containment dipped to 5%, down from 10% percent earlier in the day. Two firefighters were injured, including one who was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento with burns. Cal Fire estimated that the fire would not be fully contained until Nov. 7.

“We’re in the heart of the battle with this fire,” said Cal Fire Division Chief Jonathan Cox. “To say the conditions are a tinderbox is probably an understatement.”

Shelters for evacuees opened in Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Marin County and San Francisco. Some shelters were powered by generators, as Pacific Gas & Electric Co. shut-offs continued to affect nearly 1 million customers across Northern California.

Among the evacuated towns were Sebastopol, Guerneville, Forestville, Occidental and Bodega Bay. Roughly 100 patients at Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital were transferred to medical facilities in Novato and San Francisco. Sonoma County officials emptied a jail as well, just in case.

Just about everyone in the county was either under an evacuation order, an evacuation warning, or the power outages imposed by PG&E.

Mother and daughter Becky and Joan said they left their their home on the west side of Santa Rosa Saturday morning and headed to the Finley Community Center, only to be evacuated from there just 90 minutes later. With other shelters already full, they went to what they thought was an open site, but it was locked.

“We we’re trying to navigate the streets with no traffic lights,” said Becky, who, with her mother, declined to give their last names, fearing their personal information could be abused. “We ended up in a parking lot in the dark in our car.”

On Sunday, they made their way to the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds in Petaluma.

“It’s scary. It’s very scary,” Joan said. “For me it’s unnerving because we don’t know when we can go back.”

Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick sympathized with the tens of thousands of people displaced, but said he had no regrets about ordering evacuations.

“When this fire decides to make a run and the winds push it, you can’t win,” he said. “We lost 24 people in 2017. There is absolutely no reason to lose a human life here.”

Not everyone abided by Essick’s orders. The town of Windsor was empty Sunday except for Mike Costlow, who stayed so he could lug a 250-foot-long fire hose from house to house in his neighborhood.

There were no flames in the neighborhood, just clouds of smoke, but Costlow sweated and panted as he deftly maneuvered the hose, which he had borrowed from a retired fireman and attached to the nearby fire hydrant.

“It’s preventative,” he said. “I have too much to lose. I’m a new business owner and all my tools are in the house. It’s just impossible to lose everything.”

Elsewhere Sunday, a fire in Lafayette incinerated a tennis club near Highway 24. Fires on each side of the Carquinez Strait — one in Vallejo and one in Crockett — forced evacuations, prompted a 5-hour shutdown of Interstate 80 and the Carquinez Bridge and burned part of the California State University Maritime Academy in Vallejo.

The second biggest fire in the state, known as the Tick Fire, burned 4,615 acres in Los Angeles County, damaged or destroyed 49 structures, and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.

Early Monday morning, around 1:30 a.m., another fire ignited in Los Angeles, near Interstate 405 and the Getty Center museum. Mandatory evacuations were ordered in the area, not far from the location of the December 2017 Skirball Fire.

After the last two fire seasons, during which more than 100 people died, entire neighborhoods in Santa Rosa burned and the town of Paradise (Butte County) was destroyed, the series of fires caused nervousness up and down the state that the next big fire disaster was at hand.

“There’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of anxiety and fear out there,” Essick said. “Your life is our priority.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom Sunday extended the state of emergency for Sonoma County to a statewide emergency because of the “unprecedented’ wind that blew embers more than a mile ahead of the main conflagration near Geyserville and forced fire crews to rush around extinguishing scores of spot fires.

The declaration will help pay for the Kincade, Tick and other fires burning in the state. Newsom said fires and power shut-offs “make for a moment in our history that we hope we don’t have to repeat.”

“The fires we’re experiencing are not completely abnormal,” he said. “What makes this moment so different are the shut-offs that overlay it. And that’s where obviously people are feeling even more stress.”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a local emergency to provide mutual aid for those affected by the fire, including a 200-bed shelter at Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, at 1111 Gough Street, starting at 8 a.m. Monday.

PG&E reported that equipment on one of its transmission towers broke near the Kincade Fire’s origin point shortly before the blaze was reported at 9:27 p.m. Wednesday. Power had been shut off in the area, but not on that specific transmission line, in an effort to prevent such an event.

If the investigation were to conclude that PG&E equipment ignited the Kincade Fire, it would be the latest blow for the utility, already mired in bankruptcy court and closely monitored on federal criminal probation.

Paul Doherty, a PG&E spokesman, said another wind event is forecast for Tuesday that could complicate efforts to restore power and extend blackouts into the week.

A Spare the Air alert was called for the entire Bay Area on Monday because of an anticipated shift in winds that will draw Kincade Fire smoke across the region — particularly San Francisco, the East Bay and the North Bay.

Leilani Cooper, 57, rushed through the billowing smoke in northern Windsor Sunday to save her family’s 30-year-old horse, Oliver, which had been left behind by her brother-in-law Saturday when the area was evacuated.

“He helped raise my children,” Cooper of Healdsburg said of the horse as she walked the nervous animal past a burning carport. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. I couldn’t just let him suffer.”

San Francisco Chronicle writers Kurtis Alexander, Megan Cassidy, Jill Tucker, Peter Fimrite and Tatiana Sanchez contributed to this story.

Sarah Ravani, Erin Allday and Demian Bulwa are San Chronicle staff writers. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com, eallday@sfchronicle.com, dbulwa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sarravani @erinallday @demianbulwa

Source Article from https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/Kincade-Fire-won-t-let-up-rages-south-14567209.php

Boris Johnson arrives at Downing Street on Monday. Leon Neal/Getty Images

For the past few days, leaders in Europe and Westminster have been locked in a standoff — the EU wanting to hear the UK’s next steps before granting an extension, and British politicians awaiting a verdict from Brussels before deciding on an early election.

But now one part of the equation has fallen into place — European leaders have granted a Brexit delay until the end of January.

In theory, that should make an election more likely; the UK now has time to have a campaign period and hold a vote, with several weeks to spare before the new Brexit deadline.

But as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has learned, getting an election is easier said than done. He needs two-thirds of MPs to back the plan, which requires support from the opposition Labour Party.

And Labour have been steadfast in opposing a vote until a no-deal Brexit is “off the table.” They’ve been less clear about what exactly “off the table” means — so much will depend on whether the party deems this extension satisfactory for them to back a poll.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn could still argue that the threat remains of a no-deal in January 2020, as well as at the end of the transition period in Johnson’s Brexit deal.

Johnson’s Plan B: If Labour do continue to block an election, they’ll be isolated. The SNP and the Liberal Democrats have now warmed to the idea of a contest, after previously supporting Corbyn in stonewalling the Prime Minister.

And those two opposition parties have handed Johnson an unlikely lifeline — they’ve indicated that they will support a bill overruling the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. This would call for an election but would only need a simple majority of MPs to pass.

In return, they would want the January 31 extension secured, meaning Johnson would have to put his efforts to pass his Brexit deal on hold for now.

This plan could still be an appealing path for the Prime Minister, should he lose the vote on his election request later today.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/uk/live-news/brexit-delay-boris-johnson-election-monday-dle-gbr-intl/

“Apocalyptic,” said Carol Pajala, 67, who fled her home in Santa Rosa with her husband, David, and their golden retriever after the predawn alert came through. The couple found shelter at a fairground in Petaluma, a city about 17 miles south, where authorities had established a space for displaced residents.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/27/fierce-winds-sweep-across-california-worsening-wildfires-prompting-new-evacuations/

Democrats on Capitol Hill and the 2020 campaign trail on Sunday expressed their sympathy over the death of former Rep. John ConyersJohn James ConyersEXCLUSIVE: Trump on reparations: ‘I don’t see it happening’ McConnell: Reparations aren’t ‘a good idea’ This week: Democrats move funding bills as caps deal remains elusive MORE (D-Mich.), one of the U.S.’s longest-serving black lawmakers.

Conyers’s fellow Democrats remembered the lawmaker in statements as a fighter for progressive causes such as single-payer healthcare and civil rights, pointing to his involvement in a congressional resolution apologizing for America’s role in the slave trade among other legislation.

“Saddened to hear of the passing of Congressman John Conyers,” tweeted Rep. Barbara LeeBarbara Jean LeeFemale lawmakers make bipartisan push for more women in politics at All In Together gala DeLauro enters race to succeed Lowey as Appropriations chief The 13 House Democrats who back Kavanaugh’s impeachment MORE (D-Calif.), former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. “He was a tireless advocate for racial and economic justice for more than 50 years. As a CBC co-founder, he focused the nation’s attention on inequality and so many overlooked issues. My heart is with his family today.”

“Rep.John Conyers had an historic and principled 53 years of service,” added Rep. Steve CohenStephen (Steve) Ira CohenDemocrats introduce ‘THUG Act’ to block funding for G-7 at Trump resort Hill editor-in-chief: ‘Hard to imagine’ House leadership without Cummings Top Democrat holds moment of silence for Cummings at hearing MORE (D-Tenn.), who also served in Congress with Conyers. “He passed the MLK holiday after a 15 year campaign.He hired Rosa Parks.The Congressional apology for slavery and Jim Crow would not have occurred without his support. He was kind to all and a mentor to me.”

“Our Congressman forever, John Conyers, Jr.,” tweeted Rep. Rashida TlaibRashida Harbi TlaibHouse Democrats offer bill to expand the estate tax Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar to hold Minneapolis rally The Hill’s Campaign Report: DNC toughens December debate criteria MORE (D-Mich.), who hails from the same state Conyers once represented. “He never once wavered in fighting for jobs, justice and peace. We always knew where he stood on issues of equality and civil rights in the fight for the people. Thank you Congressman Conyers for fighting for us for over 50 years.”

“John Conyers was a civil rights champion who served Michigan and the people of Detroit for decades. He began his career working for John DingellJohn DingellEnergy efficiency cannot be a partisan issue for Washington Polling director: Young voters swayed by health care, economy, gun control McCain and Dingell: Inspiring a stronger Congress MORE, before running for Congress himself and they both believed in justice and equality for all,” tweeted another Michigan congresswoman, Rep. Debbie DingellDeborah (Debbie) Ann DingellHillicon Valley: Facebook launches ‘News Tab’ | Senate passes bill to take on ‘deepfakes’ | Schumer outlines vision for electric cars Dem lawmaker raises concerns over ‘eavesdropping’ smart speakers Pelosi focused on narrow impeachment probe on Ukraine: report MORE (D).

Candidates in the 2020 Democratic Party primary also sounded off on their support for Conyers’ legacy, including Sen. Kamala HarrisKamala Devi HarrisHarris reverses course, attends South Carolina justice forum Watch live: 2020 Democrats speak at criminal justice forum Michael Moore praises O’Rourke on gun reform MORE (D-Calif.) who vowed to “carry on his fight.”

“For over 50 years, Congressional Black Caucus Co-Founder John Conyers Jr., reminded us to fight for jobs, justice, and peace and ensured we never forget Martin Luther King Jr.’s sacrifice,” she tweeted. “My prayers are with his family today.”

Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersHarris reverses course, attends South Carolina justice forum Watch live: 2020 Democrats speak at criminal justice forum Michael Moore praises O’Rourke on gun reform MORE (I-Vt.) addressed Conyers’ death at his campaign rally in Detroit alongside Tlaib Sunday afternoon, referring to Conyers as his “friend” and a “champion of civil rights.”

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/house/467671-democratic-lawmakers-candidates-pay-respects-to-john-conyers

The main term voters associate with Mr. Fernández’s candidacy is “hope,” Mr. Giacobbe said.

Mr. Fernández, 60, a law professor who continued to teach as he campaigned for president, has projected an image of an ordinary man who takes pleasure in simple things like belting out rock classics while playing the guitar. Early on Election Day, he took his collie, Dylan — named after Bob Dylan — to a park where they played fetch.

Mr. Fernández has staked out more liberal positions than Mr. Macri on social issues. The most notable is Mr. Fernández’s support for decriminalizing abortion. He has a close relationship with his 24-year-old son, Estanislao, who is bisexual and has promoted his father’s candidacy during drag performances at venues in Buenos Aires.

On economic issues, Mr. Fernández is seen as more pragmatic than Mrs. Kirchner. She was criticized for distorting economic figures and building a patchwork of unsustainable subsidies that set the stage for the state’s insolvency when commodities prices dropped during her time in office.

Several voters said on Sunday that they felt they had no good options.

“I have a tiny hope that something could change,” said Noelia Mirta Tassone, 42, as she left a polling station in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires. But her overriding feeling as she cast a ballot was one of hopelessness, she said.

“This is a country that stumbles into a crisis every 10 years, regardless of who is in power, said Ms. Tassone, who voted for Mr. Macri in 2015 but now wants him out. “I know they are all thieves, and I’m fed up of standing by while they all steal from me.”

Mr. Fernández has been vague about his plans to stabilize an economy mired in a deep recession amid rising inflation and the steady depreciation of the local currency. But political analysts and ordinary Argentines expect that he will adopt more protectionist policies than Mr. Macri, who has championed a free market approach.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/world/americas/argentina-presidential-election-peronists.html

The chief official White House photographer for former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama suggested the Trump administration was posing for Saturday’s stern-faced Situation Room picture in the wake of a U.S. military raid that resulted in the death of a major ISIS figurehead.

Pete Souza, the former director of the White House Photography Office, called the timestamp of the Situation Room picture into question Sunday morning. Souza inferred that it’s very unlikely President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and several top administration officials and generals were actively monitoring the raid on ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s compound when the photograph was taken Saturday in Washington.

Souza took the famous photograph of Obama and a shocked then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intently watching the Seal Team 6 raid on the Abbottabad compound that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in 2011.

“The raid, as reported, took place at 3:30PM Washington time. The photo, as shown in the camera IPTC data, was taken at ’17:05:24,'” Souza remarked on Twitter Sunday. He was replying to a tweet from White House Director of Social Media and Assistant to the President, Dan Scavino Jr.

The Situation Room picture was taken Saturday by Chief Official White House Photographer for President Donald Trump, Shealah Craighead, former official photographer for First Lady Laura Bush.

The al-Baghdadi Situation Room photo Saturday showed Trump; Pence; National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien; Secretary of Defense Mark Esper; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army General Mark A. Milley; and Brig. Gen. Marcus Evans, Deputy Director for Special Operations on the Joint Staff. All six men are shown in stiff, postured stances, giving squinted glares toward the camera.

The Trump photo is far more symmetrical and organized than the Obama White House Situation Room picture taken during the bin Laden compound raid in 2011. Clinton can be seen holding her mouth in shock and Defense Secretary Robert Gates is crossing his arms in front of a jumble of administration officials and generals who are standing behind them.

Another Twitter user said it didn’t seem unreasonable that Trump and the generals “were still there 2 hours later waiting for the crew to return to the base,” when the picture was taken. “Sure, it’s possible,” Souza replied.

In response to another now-deleted tweet, Souza continued acknowledging, that at the very least, it is possible the raid was still ongoing when Trump was photographed Saturday. “It’s entirely possible that the raid was still going on at 5:05 p.m. Before drawing definite conclusions about the photo, reporters need to nail down the actual timeline of the raid.”

Daily Kos Trending News Manager Jennifer Hayden remarked that a Trump golf outing tracker showed the president was golfing at 3:33 p.m. Washington time, as the raid was happening.

Many of Trump’s most frequent supporters took to social media to gloat about the successful U.S. special operations mission which left al-Baghdadi dead as a result of suicide. Breitbart News blared the headline, “Iconic Photo: Trump Game Face Epic!”

An exhibition set to open November 15 at the 9/11 Museum in New York City, Revealed: The Hunt for Bin Laden, uses many of Souza’s photographs to help illustrate the 10-year search for the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

On Sunday afternoon, Souza again clarified it’s “definitely possible the photo was taken during the raid,” noting that Trump’s own timeframe of “around 5 p.m.” was relatively vague. Critics continued referring to several timelines which showed he was potentially golfing at the time of the raid.

During his news conference announcing Baghdadi’s death Sunday morning, Trump told reporters he teased the announcement on Twitter hours before in order to make sure reporters weren’t golfing or “otherwise indisposed” at the time of his address.

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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/obama-photographer-baghdadi-raid-trump-situation-room-suggested-staged-timestamp-golfing-1468012

The family of Kayla Mueller, a humanitarian worker from Arizona who was held captive, tortured and killed by ISIS, said it brought them great solace to know that the U.S military operation that ended with the death of the terrorist group’s leader had been dedicated to her.

President Donald Trump announced the death of the ISIS leader and founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a Sunday morning address that mentioned Mueller by name, calling her a “beautiful young woman” who died while trying to “help people.”

“We just learned that the whole thing was dedicated to Kayla thanks to General [Mark] Milley and it’s very touching,” her father, Carl Mueller, told ABC News on Sunday. “President Trump mentioned her today in his statement and he mentioned that he deserved what he got for what he did to Kayla. … she’s not forgotten, and that’s important.”

Mueller, 26, was on a humanitarian mission in Turkey on Aug. 3, 2013, when ISIS kidnaped her after crossing the Syrian border to visit a hospital. In February 2015, U.S. officials confirmed that she had died while in ISIS custody, but her body was never recovered.

Mueller Family
Kayla Mueller seen on her travels in this undated photo.

Sitting beside his wife, Marsha Mueller, in an emotional interview at their home in Arizona, Carl Mueller, also revealed that the couple once traveled to Irbil for a face-to-face meeting with Umm Sayyaf, wife of ISIS oil Abu Sayyaf. Delta Force killed Abu Sayyaf in May 2015 and captured Umm Sayyaf, who previously held Kayla Mueller captive in their home for al-Baghdadi to sexually assault.

Carl Mueller said they went “against the advice of the FBI,” over the summer to find out what may have happened to their daughter’s remains — or if she could still be alive.

“When we talked to Umm Sayyaf, we found we got more information out of her, not just us, the people backing us – they got information from her that neither the Kurds or the US government had got in the two days that we were there,” Carl Mueller said. “It makes a big difference when you are talking to these people with a humanitarian attitude. We don’t care what you did, what you’ve done – we just want to know what you know about our daughter to bring her home.”

Matt Hinshaw/The Daily Courier via AP
Kayla Mueller poses after speaking to a group in Prescott, Ariz., May 30, 2016.

Through meeting with Sayyaf, and others who had contact with Kayla Mueller, they said they learned that she was held in solitary confinement, tortured, and raped by al-Baghdadi.

“We learned from women that were ransomed out by their governments that she said she was held in many cold, dark places, she was raped by al-Baghdadi, we know that to be a fact,” Carl Mueller said. “She was murdered by him or someone in his organization. That’s what we’re pursuing and that’s what we hope that President Trump will help us with.”

The couple said they had filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act to gather more information about how she may have died. The requests were denied, and they’re considering taking legal action to receive documents related to her death.

Mueller Family
Carl and Marsha Mueller seen here at the Prescott, Arizona, playground named “Kayla’s Hands” in honor of their daughter, Kayla Mueller.

“My only real goal is to be bring Kayla home, back to Arizona, where she grew up and was born. So that’s what we’re trying to do,” Marsha Mueller told ABC News.

In his public address on Sunday, Trump said U.S. special operations forces targeted al-Baghdadi in a nighttime raid in Syria on Saturday. The troops eventually cornered him and three young children that he had taken captive.

Realizing that there was no way out, he detonated a suicide bomb inside of a dead-end tunnel, killing himself and the three children.

al-Furqan Media/AFP/Getty Images, FILE
An image grab taken from a propaganda video released, July 5, 2014, by al-Furqan Media allegedly shows the leader of the Islamic State jihadist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, aka Caliph Ibrahim, adressing Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Mosul.

“He was a sick and depraved man. And now he’s gone. Baghdadi was vicious and violent. And he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward, running and crying,” Trump said Sunday.

He also noted that al-Baghdadi had committed “especially heinous” murders of innocent Americans in addition to Kayla Mueller, including freelance journalists James Foley and Steven Sotlof and humanitarian worker Peter Kassig.

“Think of the things he did to Kayla. … What he did to her was incredible,” Trump said Sunday. “He kept her in captivity for a long period of time; he kept her in captivity, his personal captivity. She was a beautiful woman, beautiful young woman, helped people. She was there to help people.”

“And he saw her and he thought she was beautiful and he brought her into captivity for a long period of time and then he killed her. He was an animal. And he was a gutless animal,” he added.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/US/family-slain-isis-hostage-kayla-mueller-secretly-met/story?id=66573404

Trump praised his military and intelligence officials for the operation, which he said he watched from the White House Situation Room on Saturday evening — following a round of golf earlier that afternoon — with Pence, Esper, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior officials. News that Baghdadi was killed — announced as “jackpot,” from the commander on the ground, according to O’Brien — came around 7:15 p.m. Trump issued a tweet two hours later after U.S. helicopters touched down back in Iraq, writing, “Something very big has just happened.” 

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-forces-launch-operation-in-syria-targeting-isis-leader-baghdadi-officials-say/2019/10/27/081bc257-adf1-4db6-9a6a-9b820dd9e32d_story.html

California governnor expands emergency declaration to entire state

Hurricane-force winds created blowtorch-like conditions overnight in Northern California as the Kincade Fire continued to rage Sunday. As of 8 a.m. PT, the fire had burned 30,000 acres and was only 10% contained.

Approximately 180,000 people are under evacuation orders, the Sonoma County Sheriff tweeted. “This is the largest evacuation that any of us at the Sheriff’s Office can remember. Take care of each other,” the Sheriff’s office tweeted.

Two brush fires erupted along Interstate 80 near Crockett, California, on Sunday, sending billowing smoke and flames toward the freeway, forcing the California Highway Patrol to shut it down. Crockett is located less than 30 miles northeast of San Francisco.

In Southern California, the Tick Fire in Santa Clarita had burned over 4,000 acres and was 65% contained as of 8 a.m. PT. At its height, nearly 50,000 residents were ordered to evacuate. They have since been allowed back home as Santa Ana winds started to subside.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a statewide state of emergency Sunday, which allows “every resource available” fight the wildfire.

A firefighter walks through a burned property after the Kincade fire tore through Healdsburg, California, on Sunday, October 27, 2019.

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Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/fire-in-california-latest-on-kincade-sonoma-tick-fires-evacuations-today-live-updates-2019-10-27/

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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/27/politics/john-conyers-michigan-representative-dies/index.html

President TrumpDonald John Trump Comey: Mueller ‘didn’t succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency’ During deposition, official says he made several efforts to advocate for Marie Yovanovitch Bolton looms large as impeachment inquiry accelerates MORE on Sunday again claimed he wrote a book prior to the terror attacks on 9/11 warning about the dangers of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“I said you have to kill him. You have to take him out. And nobody ever listened to me. … Let’s put it this way: If they had listened to me, a lot of things would have been different,” Trump said as he announced that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had died in a U.S.-led raid in Syria, The Guardian reported.

“I didn’t get any credit. I never do,” he continued, referencing his book “The America We Deserve,” which was published in 2000.

Trump in a tweet last year also claimed that his book foreshadowed bin Laden’s rise ahead of 9/11, saying, “Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!”

But many have pushed back on his characterization of the book.

An Associated Press fact check last year pointed out that the book was published more than a year and a half before the 9/11 attacks, not “just before.”

The AP also noted that the book made a minimal reference to bin Laden and mentioned the al Qaeda leader as one of many threats to U.S. security.

Trump’s book also did not call for further U.S. action against bin Laden or al Qaeda following attacks that former President Clinton ordered in 1998 in Afghanistan and Sudan targeting the terrorist group, according to the news service. The 1998 attacks “missed” in that they did not kill bin Laden, but they did disrupt bin Laden’s network and destroy a factory in Sudan associated with the creation of a nerve gas ingredient, it added.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump also claimed that he said, “You better take him out” about bin Laden in the book. He also said he “predicted Osama bin Laden” when “nobody really knew who he was.”

The CIA and other national security operations were aware of bin Laden before the attacks on 9/11, according to the AP.

Trump did predict a terrorist attack that would make the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center pale in comparison, the AP reported. However, that was a widespread concern at the time among officials, according to the news service.

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/467631-trump-again-claims-book-foreshadowed-9-11

A lawyer for U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told The Wall Street Journal that Sondland told impeachment committee members that President TrumpDonald John Trump Comey: Mueller ‘didn’t succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency’ During deposition, official says he made several efforts to advocate for Marie Yovanovitch Bolton looms large as impeachment inquiry accelerates MORE‘s dealings with Ukraine amounted to a quid pro quo. 

Sondland’s lawyer Robert Luskin told the news outlet that Sondland revealed to House committees that he thought a meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would take place only if the country agreed to investigate corruption allegations about his political rivals. 

Last month, Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiWSJ: Sondland told the House that Trump’s Ukraine pressure was a quid pro quo Schiff says committees are making ‘rapid progress’ in impeachment probe McConnell blasts impeachment inquiry as ‘kangaroo court’ in fundraising pitch MORE (D-Calif.) launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine following a whistleblower complaint about a July 25 call with Zelensky. 

When a lawmaker asked Sondland if he believed this arrangement was a quid pro quo, Sondland said he believed so but warned that he was not a lawyer, Luskin told the newspaper. 

The Journal’s report follows text messages between Sondland and U.S. diplomat William Taylor that came out during the impeachment inquiry. 

In the exchange, Taylor said, “It’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

“The president has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” Sondland responded. 

Taylor’s subsequent testimony resulted in scrutiny of Sondland, and some lawmakers have called for him to return and answer more questions. 

Taylor’s testimony was similar. He told House investigators that a meeting between Trump and Zelensky as well as security assistance for Ukraine were conditioned on the country’s pursuit of investigations into whether Kiev interfered in the 2016 election and into unfounded corruption allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. 

Taylor also relayed that Sondland told a Ukrainian representative, “The security assistance money would not come until President Zelensky committed to pursue the Burisma investigation.”

Luskin told the Journal that Sondland would probably return if he were asked to do so.

Trump has denied that there was a quid pro quo and blasted the impeachment inquiry as a “witch hunt.”

However, a rough transcript of the July call released by the White House reveals that the president did ask Zelensky to look into the former vice president. Trump has also publicly asked Ukraine and China to investigate the democratic presidential candidate.

Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/house/467607-sondland-told-house-there-was-a-ukraine-quid-pro-quo-report

Two men died after someone opened fire at a crowded party about midnight Saturday near Greenville as nearby Texas A&M University Commerce celebrated homecoming weekend.

Sgt. Jeff Haines of the Hunt County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday afternoon that eight people were shot — two of them fatally — and six suffered injuries while they tried to escape. Four of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition, and another victim’s condition was described as good.

Earlier in the day, Hunt County Sheriff Randy Meeks had indicated 12 people had been shot.

Authorities said they were looking for a single gunman but hadn’t identified a suspect or received a detailed description of the person from witnesses at The Party Venue facility along U.S. Highway 380 just west of Greenville.

Meeks said he did not believe the public was in any danger.

The party, which had been promoted as a homecoming event but wasn’t school-sanctioned, was attended by about 750 people, mostly in their teens and early 20s. The sheriff said more than 20 of them had been questioned by early Sunday about what they saw.

Texas A&M Commerce confirmed that four of its students had been treated and released from hospitals.

Initial reports had suggested the gunman was armed with a semiautomatic rifle, but Meeks confirmed the weapon was a handgun. The first person the gunman shot may have been his intended target and the rest of the victims may have been fired upon randomly, the sheriff said.

“The amount of people that were there, the overcrowdedness of it — it gave the opportunity for this shooter to be able to accomplish whatever he wanted to be able to accomplish,” Meeks said. “When you have this many people in one place, it’s an easy target for somebody.”

Hunt County Sheriff Randy Meeks addresses members of the media at the sheriff’s department headquarters after a shooting at Party Venue on Highway 380 in Greenville, Texas, on Sunday, October 27, 2019. (Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer)

The shooting took place about 15 miles southwest of the Commerce campus, which is about 65 miles from Dallas.

A “Twerk or Treat” costume party had been promoted for Saturday night at the venue, which is described as an 8,000-square-foot facility with a capacity of 500 — well below the estimated attendance at the event.

Hunt County deputies who were investigating complaints about illegal parking at the venue arrived about 20 minutes before the gunman opened fire began.

They were questioning a person outside the front of the venue who they believed was intoxicated when they heard gunshots coming from the back of the building.

At first, they could not tell whether the shots were fired inside or outside but found the two men who had been killed when they entered the building, authorities said.

An off-duty Farmersville ISD police officer also had been at the venue working security at the party.

The sheriff said the party became “complete chaos” as people tried to flee the gunman, with some breaking through windows and others trying to squeeze through the venue’s front door four abreast.

Halloween masks litter the ground among signs of chaos at the scene where a mass shooting occurred the night before at The Party Venue.(Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer)

The gunman fled during the commotion, and witnesses had not given authorities a detailed description of him or any suspect vehicle.

“It appalls me that, as many folks that were there, [they] have not been able to give us a better description of the shooter,” Meeks said.

The sheriff pleaded with partygoers to provide any information they could about the gunman.

“We need to get him off the street as soon as possible, and we have very, very little to go on right now,” he said.

According to Meeks, a sheriff’s sergeant quickly determined that one person who had been shot had life-threatening injuries and rushed that victim to a hospital in his patrol vehicle. Another deputy at the scene performed triage.

“I believe their actions may have saved lives,” he said.

Graphic video posted online showed seriously wounded victims, with at least one receiving CPR as many people screamed in the background.

Halloween masks and blue medical gloves dotted the ground outside the venue. Authorities found fake bullets inside that appeared to be part of a costume.

Meeks said that in his 44 years of law-enforcement experience, this is the first time he’s encountered “something of this magnitude.”

“I think anything like this is gonna be something very hard to deal with; it’s not something that we deal with every day,” he said.

Medical City Plano Hospital spokeswoman Melissa Sauvage told The Associated Press that the hospital had received three victims of the shooting, all of whom were in critical condition.

Chief Deputy Buddy Oxford of the Hunt County Sheriff’s Department addresses members of the media outside of a crime scene after a shooting at Party Venue on Highway 380 in Greenville, Texas.(Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer)

Sunday afternoon, police tape blocked off the venue, which is just west of Greenville’s city limits. The Hunt County Sheriff’s Office had set up a mobile command post, and several media crews were at the scene with authorities from local, state and federal agencies.

The FBI and the Texas Rangers are helping with the investigation.

“This is a pretty big case, and we’re a small law-enforcement agency,” Meeks said.

Officials work a crime scene after a shooting at Party Venue on Highway 380 in Greenville, Texas.(Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer)

Ethan Derek Preas, director of campus operations and safety at Texas A&M Commerce, said in an email that the event where the shooting was reported was not sponsored by the university.

The shooting took place just minutes before Houston-based hip-hop artist BeatKing was scheduled to perform at the party.

The rapper tweeted early Sunday that seeing video of the shooting “makes my heart drop.”

On Sunday afternoon, Kimberly Wilson stopped by the venue to pick up her 19-year-old daughter’s car, which had been abandoned overnight.

Wilson’s daughter doesn’t attend Texas A&M Commerce but knows students there, which is how she heard about the party. Her daughter was unharmed, and Wilson picked her up after the teenager’s car got stuck in mud near the venue.

“I think that youth, young people don’t have a fair chance in starting their lives,” Wilson said when asked about her reaction to the shooting.

She said she had been to parties growing up where people would shoot into the air to send people running, but this is different.

“This is ‘I’m coming in, aiming at somebody to take somebody out’ …,” she said. “You’ve got all this mayhem going on. This is ridiculous.”

Investigators work a crime scene Sunday after a shooting at The Party Venue on Highway 380 in Greenville.(Ryan Michalesko / Staff Photographer)

Other people were reluctant to speak at the venue Sunday — a problem law-enforcement officials say has impeded the investigation.

Haines, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said he’s not sure whether witnesses are afraid to cooperate but he pleaded for people with information to come forward and help bring the gunman to justice.

“We need your help,” he said. “We don’t know what the motive of this individual was. We don’t know why this individual did what they did and we don’t know if they plan on doing it again.”

He urged people to speak up, even if they have an aversion to working with law enforcement.

“Have some dignity and respect for those that lost their lives just coming to a party last night,” he said.

Anyone with information about the shooting may call the Hunt County Sheriff’s Office at 903-453-6800 or Crime Stoppers at 903-457-2929.

Staff writers LaVendrick Smith, Dana Branham, Cassandra Jaramillo and Eva-Marie Ayala contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/10/27/mass-shooting-at-texas-am-commerce-homecoming-party-in-greenville-according-to-reports/

Democratic leaders of the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump are gearing up for an epic tug-of-war with the White House over their desire to call to testify the former national security adviser John Bolton.

Bolton, who was ousted by Trump in September, is seen by Democrats as a key witness who could prove critical in nailing the president for corruptly leaning on Ukraine to help in his re-election campaign.

The former national security adviser is reported to have expressed deep misgivings about Trump’s attempts to cajole Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate and potential rival.

Adam Schiff, the chair of the House intelligence committee who is spearheading the impeachment inquiry, said on Sunday the spotlight was now falling squarely on Bolton.

Speaking on ABC’s This Week, he accused the White House of obstructing proceedings by attempting to block the testimony of current and former officials, adding: “My guess is they are going to fight us having John Bolton in.”

Schiff described Bolton as a “very important witness … He has a wealth of information and we do want him to come in and testify.”

Schiff pointed to the previous testimony of a former aide to Bolton, Fiona Hill. She told the impeachment inquiry her boss had been so alarmed by efforts by the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others to run a rogue foreign policy in Ukraine, designed to dig up dirt against Biden, that Bolton had instructed Hill to alert White House lawyers.

“I am not part of whatever drug deal” was being cooked up, Bolton is reported to have said. According to Hill, he also attacked Giuliani as “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up”.

By swinging the focus on to Bolton, Schiff indicated that Democratic leaders have no intention of allowing the patriotic glow around the killing of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to knock them off course in their pursuit of Trump.

Schiff implied that any attempt to block Bolton’s appearance before closed-door impeaching hearings would merely delay the start of open public proceedings in the impeachment process – a key demand of the White House and Republicans.

Bolton’s former deputy, Charles Kupperman, filed a lawsuit on Friday asking a judge to determine if he should comply with a subpoena to testify before the House committees as scheduled on Monday. The move was widely seen as a delaying manoeuvre.

If Trump had been hoping that the successful mission to take out Baghdadi would deflect public attention from the gathering impeachment storm and on to a rare foreign policy victory, he would not have been satisfied for long. Even amid a rash of positive comment about the raid on the Sunday political shows, discussion soon reverted to Trump’s troubles.

Vice-President Mike Pence was confronted with a question about impeachment from Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. He sought to present the image of Trump as commander-in-chief of US forces pulling off a dangerous mission in Syria as a counterpoint to his beleaguered domestic position.

“Democrats have been pursuing impeachment by and large for the past three years,” Pence said. “What the American people have seen in the last 12 hours … is that President Trump has never stopped fighting to keep the promises we made in the election in 2016.”

Pence went on to insist that “there was no quid pro quo – the president did nothing wrong”. In fact, devastating evidence has emerged through the impeachment hearings that Trump used the leverage of a Washington summit meeting and almost $400m of military aide to Ukraine to force Kyiv into investigating Biden and other political opponents.

Among the damning evidence is a statement from Trump’s own current chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who earlier this month confirmed that there had been quid pro quo with military aid withheld. Hours later he tried to retract the statement.

Eric Swalwell, a Democratic member of the House intelligence committee, told Fox News Sunday the Isis raid would have no impact on the impeachment proceedings.



Adam Schiff speaks to the press as he leaves hearings in the Capitol on Saturday. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

“We still expect the president to carry out his duties and we are going to continue to hold him to account,” he said. “This can be compartmentalized. We are not concerned about what he did with this Isis raid, we are concerned with the extortion scheme that it looks like he led with the Ukrainians.”

Before news of the Baghdadi raid broke on Saturday night, another of Trump’s former top aides, John Kelly, further added to his travails by saying he had warned the president about the danger of impeachment.

Speaking at an event staged by the conservative Washington Examiner, the former White House chief of staff said that when he left the post he had advised Trump: “Whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man’ – someone who won’t tell you the truth.”

Kelly added that he had given that counsel “because if you do, I believe you will be impeached”.

Trump disputed the claim, lashing back at Kelly in a statement to CNN that “John Kelly never said that … If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of the office.”

A statement from White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham attracted widespread ridicule.

“I worked with John Kelly,” Grisham said, “and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.”.

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/27/donald-trump-impeachment-adam-schiff-john-bolton

Washington — Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ruthless leader of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) who once controlled a vast swath of territory and tens of thousands of jihadist fighters, died in a raid by U.S. troops in northern Syria, bringing a dramatic end to a years-long U.S.-led hunt. 

Addressing the nation on Sunday morning, President Trump said a team of U.S. special forces targeted al-Baghdadi in a “dangerous and daring” overnight raid. During the operation, the ISIS leader was “crying and screaming” and attempted to flee through a tunnel, the president said. As U.S. forces and dogs approached him, al-Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and a group of children who he brought with him, according to Mr. Trump. 

“He died like a dog. He died like a coward,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he watched much of the raid in real time from the White House Situation Room. 

Mr. Trump said test results confirmed the identity of ISIS leader’s body, which he noted had been mutilated by the blast. During the operation, the president added, U.S. forces killed a “large number” of ISIS militants and collected intelligence from the terrorist group. No U.S. service members were killed.

An aerial view taken on on October 27, 2019 shows the site that was hit by helicopter gunfire which reportedly killed nine people near the northwestern Syrian village of Barisha in the Idlib province along the border with Turkey.

OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP via Getty Images


The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) said the raid took place at a compound at about 12:30 a.m. local time to the west of the town of Barisha, a mountainous area about 25 miles west of Aleppo overlooking the Turkish border. The area is a hotbed of activity by al Qaeda cells in Syria.

SOHR said eight U.S. gunships and a fighter jet fired on targets in the area for about two hours, with messages blasted over loudspeakers in Arabic urging those in the compound to surrender. The group said nine people were killed, including two women and a child. 

Pressed by reporters, Mr. Trump said the operation to target al-Baghdadi was not linked to his controversial decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from northern Syria. The abrupt move earlier this month was seen by many Republican and Democratic lawmakers as an abandonment of the U.S. Kurdish allies there. Turkey and allied Arab groups invaded the territory the Kurds acquired in their U.S.-backed fight against ISIS soon after the American withdrawal.

The Syrian Defense Forces (SDF), the main Kurdish group that has fought alongside U.S. forces against ISIS, hailed the overnight operation on Sunday. “Successful & historical operation due to a joint intelligence work with the United States of America,” said General Mazloum Abdi, the SDF commander.

Al-Baghdadi’s death also comes just days after the U.S. announced it would be sending additional troops into Syria to protect oil fields from ISIS. 

This image made from video posted on a militant website on Monday, April 29, 2019, purports to show the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, being interviewed by his group’s Al-Furqan media outlet.

/ AP


Iraqi and Turkish officials said both countries had shared intelligence with the U.S. prior to the raid. 

Al-Baghdadi, who has rarely been seen in public, appeared in a video in April for the first time in five years. The video showed al-Baghdadi with a bushy grey and red beard and seated with a machine gun next to him.  

In December 2016, the U.S. State Department raised its reward to $25 million for information on al-Baghdadi, making him one of the most wanted terrorists in the world

Al-Baghdadi was born in 1971 and claimed to have been descended from the Prophet Muhammad. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2004, al-Baghdadi was detained in a prison camp that became an incubator for jihadis.

Released a year later, he joined al Qaeda’s offshoot in Iraq, rising to become its leader, before moving into the chaos of Syria’s civil war and renaming his group ISIS.

At its peak, ISIS ruled over an estimated 10 million people in Iraq and Syria, enslaving women and performing public executions. Although its territorial caliphate ceased to exist earlier this year, there are still as many as 18,000 ISIS members in Iraq and Syria and Kurdish forces have said another 12,000 accused ISIS fighters were imprisoned.  

Margaret Brennan, David Martin, Kathryn Watson, Arden Farhi and Holly Williams contributed to this report. 

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-isis-leader-believed-to-have-been-killed-in-syria-2019-10-27/