Rep. Louie Gohmert, speaking on Wednesday at a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee on impeachment, said the name of a person whom Republicans believe is the whistleblower who sparked the inquiry against President Donald Trump.
The Texas lawmaker said the person’s name while rattling off a list of witnesses he said should have been called in the impeachment inquiry.
“Now that we have the articles of impeachment — a vague abuse of power, obstruction of Congress — the very things the majority has done in preventing us from having the witness that could shed light on this, not opinion but fact witnesses, we need to hear from those witnesses,” Gohmert said. He then proceeded to say a list of names of witnesses he wanted to testify which included the person alleged to be the whistleblower.
NBC News is not reporting the name.
In his remarks, Gohmert did not specifically identify the person as being the whistleblower. Democrats on the panel did not immediately react to the remark.
Democrats have repeatedly asked Republicans not to say the name of anyone believed to be the whistleblower, citing legal privacy and safety issues. Gohmert was the first to do so.
“House Republicans just committed an incredible and outrageous breach. The President threatened the whistleblower with violence, and whether the person just named is the whistleblower or not they were just put in real danger,” Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., tweeted after Gohmert’s statement. “This is unacceptable and there should be consequences.”
House Republicans just committed an incredible and outrageous breach.
The President threatened the whistleblower with violence, and whether the person just named is the whistleblower or not they were just put in real danger. This is unacceptable and there should be consequences. https://t.co/yyzK5KNKGS
Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, had called for the media to out the whistleblower last month at a rally for the president, who’s repeatedly lashed out at the whistleblower and called for his or her identity to be revealed.
“I say tonight to the media, do your job and print his name,” Paul said.
“I believe in personal privacy, particularly as it relates to a whistleblower, and think that would be most unfortunate,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said then.
Andrew Bakaj, the whistleblower’s lead lawyer, has said that disclosure of his client’s name would deter future whistleblowers and he has threatened legal action against anyone who reveals the name. In a statement last month, the whistleblower’s lawyers said “identifying any suspected name … will place that individual and their family at risk of serious harm.”
The inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, found the whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s alleged pressure campaign on Ukraine was credible. The description of events in the complaint has largely been confirmed by the transcript of Trump’s July phone call with the Ukrainian president and by the publicly available testimony of other witnesses in the impeachment inquiry.
What happens next: The House Judiciary Committee will meet Wednesday night and Thursday to consider those articles and possible amendments. The articles will then be voted on, one by one, by the Judiciary Committee, setting the stage for a full House vote next week. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.
Want to understand impeachment proceedings better?Sign up for the 5-Minute Fix to get a guide in your inbox every weekday. Have questions?Submit them here, and they may be answered in the newsletter.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz delivered a troubling picture of missteps taken during the FBI’s investigation into Trump campaign associates on Wednesday, saying his findings should not be viewed as a vindication of the bureau.
Horowitz, testifying for more than five hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee, outlined the findings of his 20-month investigation into the bureau’s probe, saying he found “basic, fundamental and serious errors” as part of the FBI’s process.
“We are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by three separate, hand-picked investigative teams, on one of the most sensitive FBI investigations, after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the FBI,” Horowitz told lawmakers.
Horowitz’s testimony came two days after he released his 434-page report on his findings. Horowitz’s report found that there was no evidence of political bias in the decision to open the investigation and that the bureau had an “authorized purpose” for the probe.
But Horowitz also found 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” throughout the FBI’s investigation. The bulk of his testimony on Wednesday was focused on issues he found within the probe, particularly in the follow up requests for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants tied to Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
“We found no evidence that the initiation of the investigation was motivated by political bias. It gets murkier — the question gets more challenging, senator — when you get to the FISA. When you get to the attorney’s actions, for example, in connection with that FISA,” Horowitz added.
Horowitz appeared to be referring to Kevin Clinesmith, a front-line lawyer. Clinesmith, according to the inspector general report, altered an email related to the warrant renewal application.
Horowitz also declined to say if he thought the FISA warrant applications on Page would have been accepted if the court knew all of the information that he found during his investigation. He also specifically said he personally would not have submitted the subsequent FISA warrant applications as they were originally drafted and submitted by the FBI.
“I think the activities we found don’t vindicate anybody who touched this,” Horowitz said.
Horowitz’s comments fed the narrative from Republican senators that the FBI went “off the rails” during its investigation into Trump campaign associates. Trump appeared to declare victory before the hearing was over, tweeting, “They spied on my campaign!”
Graham, in particular, teed off repeatedly on the FBI’s probe, including in a roughly 40-minute opening statement where he said the behavior described in the report “was as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life.”
“[It] becomes a massive criminal conspiracy over time to defraud the FISA court, to illegally surveil an American citizen, and to keep an operation against a sitting president of the United States violating every norm known to the rule of law,” Graham said.
Sen. John KennedyJohn Neely KennedyMORE (R-La.) said the report “made me want to heave” and that at one point, “I thought I had dropped acid, it’s surreal.”
When Kennedy argued that someone needed to be “fired,” Horowitz didn’t counter him.
“Agree completely,” Horowitz said. “There’s got to be a change in the culture also.”
“We are investigating those contacts. We’ve issued a couple of public summaries so far about people we’ve found violated FBI policy. We have other investigations ongoing,” Horowitz said.
Horowitz poked holes in several conservative conspiracy theories, including saying that he found no evidence that former President Obama ordered the investigation into Trump campaign associates and that there was no evidence that anyone besides Page had been wiretapped by the FBI.
And in a break with the White House over whistleblowers, he said individuals have the right to remain anonymous. Trump and his allies have called for a whistleblower at the center of the House impeachment inquiry to be unmasked.
“Whistleblowers have a right to expect complete, full confidentiality in all circumstances,” Horowitz said, adding that it was a “very important provision.”
“She was desperate for a boyfriend,” said neighbor Kenneth Safford, 69.
“She smoked cigarettes out here. We would talk. She always said she had a problem . . . She couldn’t get a man,” he said, adding that she sometimes speculated as to why she couldn’t find love.
“She claimed she had built in body odor,” he said. “She wanted a boyfriend so bad.”
A second neighbor — a 45-year-old woman who did not want their name given — said that after meeting Anderson, Graham changed.
“Since he got into her life she didn’t have a desire to work. She used to exercise with me, we used to walk around the block. Then all of the sudden she seemed to disappear. I stopped seeing her around. She stopped taking my calls,” she said.
Graham also told the woman she was part of a religion pertaining to “black jews” — likely the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, of which Anderson has been identified as a one-time follower by law enforcement sources.
The group believes they are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites, are known to vilify white and Jewish people and are considered a black supremacist group by The Southern Poverty Law Center.
Anderson and Graham were heard chanting and reading the New Testament from their home, another neighbor told The Post.
“She used to do chanting and stuff like that. It was loud enough to know it was that. She would just be standing right there,” the neighbor said. “Standing and smoking. You would just hear them just chanting religious stuff.”
About a year after the two met, Graham — who grew up in the Manhattanville Houses in West Harlem — lost her home through foreclosure and moved into a van with Anderson, the neighbor said.
“They would come back to the apartment once in a while and stay until the sheriff put the lock on the door,” the neighbor went on.
Another local, who only gave her name as Alexis, said Graham “was a little off” and “yelled at the kids” in the neighborhood for playing in the street.
Before Anderson met Graham, he was in the Army Reserves, serving as a fuel and electrical system repairer as a specialist from Sept. 1999 to Sept. 2003, according to an Army spokesman.
But shortly before he got out of the reserves, he was arrested for having an illegal weapon and went on to spend the next eight years in and out of jail in New Jersey and Ohio, records show.
A woman receives medical assistance on the scene in Jersey City.
Afp/AFP via Getty
A police officer arrives at the scene of an active shooter in Jersey City on Tuesday.
Afp/AFP via Getty
A police officer arrives at the scene of an active shooter in Jersey City on Tuesday.
Afp/AFP via Getty
A group of civilians is evacuated after the shooting.
Peter Gerber
Police officers work at the scene of an active shooter in Jersey City on Tuesday.
In 2003, Anderson pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of an air/spring pistol in Hudson County, New Jersey. He was sentenced to three years probation in February 2004, having already spent 335 days in the county jail, court records show.
Just over three years later in Nov. 2007, Anderson was found guilty yet again of the same charge and was sentenced to probation again in December 2008 after spending 445 days in jail, the records show.
Once he was sprung, Anderson moved briefly to New York and then headed to Kent, Ohio in July 2009 to shack up with a woman he’d met online, according to records from the Kent Police Department.
On Sept. 20 that year, the two got into a fight about having children together, leading Anderson to punch a hole in the wall and threaten her.
“I’m gonna kill you. I feel like killing you. You made me lose everything, you can leave this world. Call the police because I’m gonna kill you,” Anderson allegedly told the woman as he forcefully grabbed her cheeks on her face, the police records state.
He was arrested for domestic violence threats and later pleaded the case down to criminal mischief and spent 30 days in jail, Ohio court records show.
The couple got back together after the quarrel and about two and a half years later in April 2011, Anderson was arrested again when police realized he had an open warrant from Hudson County for his 2007 weapons violation during another incident involving Anderson’s girlfriend and her children.
He was extradited to New Jersey and was sentenced to five years in prison in June 2011 for violating his earlier probation — but only served four months in prison before he was let out on parole again.
Anderson and Graham are accused of walking into the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket Tuesday afternoon and shooting three individuals after they killed a Jersey City detective in a nearby cemetery.
The attack is being called a hate crime by Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop but Jersey City police are yet to say if the shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.
The duo are also considered the prime suspects behind the murder of a Bayonne Uber driver.
The impeachment proceedings against President Trump have featured testimony by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland on a key cellphone conversation with Trump regarding Ukraine. Sondland is seen here being sworn in last month.
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The impeachment proceedings against President Trump have featured testimony by U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland on a key cellphone conversation with Trump regarding Ukraine. Sondland is seen here being sworn in last month.
Susan Walsh/AP
Center stage in the Trump impeachment inquiry is a conversation that took place by telephone — a device that was invented 8 years after Andrew Johnson became the first U.S. president impeached by Congress.
Telephones, in fact, have played key parts in all three of the presidential impeachment proceedings that followed Johnson’s. But each one of those exercises has also featured technological innovations unheard of in Johnson’s time.
Even the low-tech and ultimately futile attempt to oust Abraham Lincoln’s White House successor involved a relatively newfangled technology: the telegraph, Samuel Morse’s paradigm-shifting 1844 invention.
To make his case that sacking Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was justified despite a recently passed law requiring prior Senate approval, Johnson writes a lengthy letter to the Senate citing Stanton’s mishandling of telegrams as grounds for dismissal.
Johnson points to testimony in the impeachment inquiry from his fired war secretary. In it, Stanton acknowledges having received a telegram from a Maj. Gen. Baird asking what should be done about expected riots in New Orleans. “He took no action upon it, and neither sent instructions to General Baird himself nor presented it to me for such instructions,” Johnson writes of Stanton. “On the next day (Monday) the riot occurred. I never saw this dispatch from General Baird until some ten days or two weeks after the riot, when, upon my call for all the dispatches, with a view to their publication, Mr. Stanton sent it to me.”
It was the time stamp on Baird’s telegram that bolstered Johnson’s claim of negligence by Stanton. But the beleaguered president’s argument was not highly persuasive. Johnson was impeached by the House and only escaped conviction in the Senate by a single vote.
Telegrams had another, more peripheral role in the first presidential impeachment: they conveyed a show of support for Johnson from the hinterlands. “Remain firm,” reads one from Pittsburgh sent to the White House and featured on the front page of the Feb. 25, 1868, edition of The Evening Star of Washington, D.C. “Every decent man in New York City,” reads another, “is with you.”
A full century would pass before the next attempt to impeach a U.S. president.
What prompted Congress to seek Richard Nixon’s impeachment was a bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate complex in 1972 by five operatives working for CREEP, the acronym of the Committee to Re-Elect the President.
The police scanner and walkie-talkies that Washington metropolitan police found in possession of the Watergate burglars were a technological leap forward from the Andrew Johnson-era telegraphs. In the end, though, these gizmos failed to keep Nixon’s henchmen from getting busted.
It was another 20th century invention that proved central to Nixon’s hasty August 1974 resignation as an impeachment vote against him loomed in the House: the tape recorder.
Like Nixon, all five presidents who preceded him — from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Lyndon Baines Johnson — had secretly taped their White House telephone and face-to-face conversations. All those recordings remained private, and Nixon clearly expected the 3,400 hours of conversations he’d taped would as well.
The Supreme Court thought otherwise.
In a unanimous decision, the highest court of the land rejected Nixon’s claim of executive privilege and ordered the White House to release the audio tapes.
In those recordings, White House counsel John Dean can be heard warning Nixon of the growing danger posed by the president’s efforts to cover up the Watergate affair. “We have a cancer within — close to the presidency, that’s growing. It’s growing daily. It’s compounding,” Dean tells Nixon, who grunts audibly in acknowledgement. “It grows geometrically now, because it compounds itself.”
The tapes turn the political tide decisively against Nixon, with fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill quickly abandoning the president. Barely two weeks after the Supreme Court’s July 24, 1974, ruling, Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to quit the presidency.
Twenty-four years later, Bill Clinton becomes the second American president to be impeached by Congress. He’s alleged to have committed perjury after denying in a sworn deposition that he’d had “a sexual relationship” with Monica Lewinsky, a 24-year-old White House intern.
It’s a stain of semen on a blue dress worn by Lewinsky that seals Clinton’s fate in the Republican-led House impeachment inquiry.
DNA identification technology that had not existed in the two previous impeachment episodes implicates Clinton. Based on a sample of his blood drawn in the White House Map Room before an F.B.I. supervisory special agent, the F.B.I. finds “to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty” that Clinton is the source of the DNA detected in the dress’ semen stain.
Tapes of phone conversations between Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, a discontented confidant who secretly recorded those calls, lead federal investigators to the blue dress. In one November 1997 exchange, Tripp advises Lewinsky to keep the blue dress. “I would rather you had that in your possession if you need it years from now,” Tripp tells her. “It could be your only insurance policy down the road.”
Although the DNA test providing incontrovertible evidence that Clinton had lied about his relationship with Lewinsky clinches his impeachment in the House, it is not enough to persuade a required two-thirds majority of the Senate that he should be the first U.S. president removed from office.
Twenty-one years later, newly emerged technologies are again prominent in the latest attempt to impeach a sitting president.
Encrypted text messages sent over smartphones are providing some of the most striking documentation of frantic efforts by American diplomats to deal with Trump’s freeze on promised military aid to Ukraine. “I think it’s crazy to withhold military assistance for help with a political campaign,” writes William Taylor, the top American diplomat in Kyiv, in one text exchange with U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland.
Sondland also features in testimony about his impromptu phone consultation with Trump from a Kyiv restaurant that was overheard by others at the table and was later depicted in a rough transcript that was publicly released.
And then there’s Twitter. The social media platform launched in 2006 is Trump’s preferred bully pulpit and he used it to denigrate the work of career ambassador Marie Yovanovitch while she testified at a House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearing. “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump wrote in a tweet that Yovanovitch characterized at that same hearing as “very intimidating.”
Yet for all the digital age peculiarities of Trump’s impeachment saga, his July 25 conversation with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy over a prosaic telephone line remains the main piece of evidence for both Trump’s adversaries and his supporters.
No recording of that call is known to exist, other than written notes — a reminder that while advances in technology have mattered in all four presidential impeachment proceedings, it’s only to the extent that they’re actually put to use.
What happens next: The House Judiciary Committee will meet Wednesday night and Thursday to consider those articles and possible amendments. The articles will then be voted on, one by one, by the Judiciary Committee, setting the stage for a full House vote next week. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.
Want to understand impeachment proceedings better?Sign up for the 5-Minute Fix to get a guide in your inbox every weekday. Have questions?Submit them here, and they may be answered in the newsletter.
Washington (CNN)Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz spoke extensively on Wednesday about his findings on Crossfire Hurricane, the counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump campaign associates were coordinating with the Russian government to sway the presidential election.
The volcano in New Zealand that killed an estimated 14 people when it erupted with little warning is notoriously difficult to predict, making it one of the most dangerous in the world, according to scientists.
The volcano on White Island is New Zealand’s largest and a major tourist attraction. And while some warning signs were reported, scientists familiar with the area say they were not enough to halt public tours.
“It’s not the first time this volcano has behaved like that, where there was an explosion with no warning,” said David Phillips, head of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “This time, it was terrible because the explosion happened when people were visiting the crater.”
Beginning several months ago, researchers at GeoNet, an organization founded in 2001 that monitors activity at all of New Zealand’s volcanoes, observed an uptick in activity at White Island. The scientists reported “small, muddy, geyser-like explosions” in the volcano’s active crater, but kept their alert to Level 1, their lowest designation which signals minor volcanic unrest.
On Nov. 18, that warning was raised to Level 2 after GeoNet recorded stronger volcanic tremors at White Island and an increase in toxic sulfur dioxide coming from the volcano. Level 2 is categorized as “moderate to heightened volcanic unrest,” but tour companies typically stick to a business-as-usual approach under this designation, according to Richard Arculus, a volcanologist at the Australian National University.
Bouquets of flowers are placed on the waterfront near White Island Tours base in Bay of Plenty, Dec. 10, 2019 in memory of those who lost their lives during the volcano eruption in New Zealand.Marty Melville / AFP – Getty Images
“With a Level 2, it’s standard practice for tour operators to keep operating,” Arculus said. “There might be more activity like mud or water being thrown out of the crater lake, but tour operators would not cancel tours on a Level 2 alert.”
This is because it’s not unusual to see fluctuating patterns of activity at White Island, according to Phillips.
“It’s one of the most active volcanic systems and it’s very difficult to predict,” he said. “This sort of activity waxes and wanes all the time, and alert levels go from 1 to 2, and in most cases nothing happens.”
White Island is known as a stratovolcano, characterized by continuous small-to-moderate eruptions over the past 150,000 years. About 70 percent of the volcano is submerged in the Bay of Plenty, and eruptions at White Island typically occur when water comes into contact with magma.
“There’s water in the crater at the top and it filters down fractures, and at some point, that water came into contact with the magma,” Phillips said. “But, this is taking place underground, so it’s hard to know the exact location of fractures and where the water and magma systems may be.”
When the volcano erupted this week, 47 tourists were visiting White Island, which is located roughly 30 miles off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
New Zealand Police said they intend to open an investigation into the events surrounding the eruption, including an inquest into health and safety issues for tourists and tour companies. But Phillips said White Island is a major attraction that boosts the local economy, and New Zealand, in particular, is known for its adventure tourism industry.
“No matter what it is, adventure tourism is not without risk, so where do you draw the line?” Phillips said. “If you have tourists going to that island just about every day, there’s always going to be a finite risk.”
But speaking for himself, Phillips said any kind of heightened activity would be enough to make him think twice.
“I’m fairly risk-averse,” he said. “Despite the fact that volcanoes are of great interest to me, if the warning went from Level 1 to Level 2, I wouldn’t go. I would much prefer to visit when things are quiet.”
LONDON (Reuters) – Voters go to the polls on Thursday in an election that will pave the way for Brexit under Prime Minister Boris Johnson or propel Britain toward another referendum that could ultimately reverse the decision to leave the European Union.
After failing to deliver Brexit by an Oct. 31 deadline, Johnson called the Dec. 12 election to break what he cast as political paralysis that had thwarted Britain’s departure and sapped confidence in the economy.
The face of the “Leave” campaign in the 2016 referendum, 55-year-old Johnson fought the election under the slogan of “Get Brexit Done”, promising to end the deadlock and spend more on health, education and the police.
His main opponent, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, 70, promised higher public spending, nationalization of key services, taxes on the wealthy and another referendum on Brexit.
All major opinion polls suggest Johnson will win, though pollsters got the 2016 referendum wrong and their models predict outcomes ranging from a hung parliament to the biggest Conservative landslide since the era of Margaret Thatcher.
“We could have a Conservative majority government which will get Brexit done and unleash Britain’s potential,” Johnson told campaigners. “This election is our chance to end the gridlock but the result is on a knife-edge.”
Corbyn said the Conservatives were the party of “billionaires” while Labour represented the many.
“You can vote for despair and vote for the dishonesty of this government, or you can vote Labour and get a government that can bring hope to the future,” he said.
Polls open at 0700 GMT and close at 2200 GMT when an exit poll will give the first indications of the result. Official results from the bulk of United Kingdom’s 650 different constituencies begin to come in from 2300 GMT to 0500 GMT.
While Brexit framed the United Kingdom’s first December election since 1923, the tortuous exit from the EU has variously fatigued, enthused and enraged voters while eroding loyalties to the two major parties.
A majority would allow Johnson to lead the country out of the club it first joined in 1973, but Brexit would still be far from over. He faces the daunting task of negotiating a trade agreement with the EU in a self-imposed deadline of 11 months.
After Jan. 31, Britain would enter a transition period during which it would negotiate a new relationship with the EU27. He has pledged to do that by the end of 2020.
BREXIT AND BORIS
Sterling markets are pricing in a Johnson win. But a five-year flurry of two historic referendums – on Scottish independence in 2014 and Brexit in 2016 – and two national elections in 2015 and 2017 have delivered often unexpected results that ushered in political crises.
The election pitches two of the most unconventional British politicians of recent years against each other. Both have been repeatedly written off by opponents and both offer starkly different visions for the world’s fifth largest economy.
Johnson’s pitch is Brexit but he shrank from anything more radical in a heavily choreographed campaign. Corbyn pitched what he calls a radical transformation for a country long wedded to free-market liberalism.
Johnson, the New York-born former mayor of London, won the top job in July. His predecessor, Theresa May, resigned after failing to get parliamentary backing for her Brexit deal with the EU and then losing her party’s majority in a snap election.
Johnson defied critics by striking a new deal with the EU but was unable to navigate the maze of a divided British parliament and was defeated by opponents whom he portrayed as traitors subverting the will of the people.
The United Kingdom voted by 52%-48% in 2016 to quit the EU. But parliament has been deadlocked since May’s failed bet on a 2017 snap election over how, when and even whether to leave.
MISSTEPS
Corbyn, once an opponent of the EU who now says he would remain neutral if he was a prime minister overseeing another referendum, was repeatedly grilled over his Brexit plans. He pledged to overthrow a “rigged system” he said was run by billionaires and tax dodgers.
Both made missteps during the campaign.
Johnson in one interview refused to look at a picture of a sick four-year-old boy forced to lie on the floor of a hospital and then inexplicably took the phone from a reporter and pocketed it. He later apologized.
Corbyn, a veteran campaigner for Palestinian rights, repeatedly avoided apologizing for what some party members, lawmakers and Jewish leaders say is his failure to tackle anti-Semitism from some elements within the party. He apologized eventually.
Johnson’s strategy was to breach Labour’s so called “Red Wall” of seats across the Brexit-supporting areas of the Midlands and northern England where he described his political opponents as the out-of-touch enemies of Brexit.
“If I’m honest with you, there’s no choice,” said voter Andrew Davis, from Kent in southern England. “I don’t like any of the main candidates, so I’m struggling.”
Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Philippa Fletcher
The Parliament had until midnight Wednesday to form a majority government. But the hour passed with the two leading candidates for prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu and the former army chief Benny Gantz, unable to negotiate a power-sharing agreement.
Until a new government is created, Mr. Netanyahu remains prime minister of a caretaker government.
By clinging to office, analysts say, Mr. Netanyahu would at least leave himself in better position to negotiate a plea bargain with state prosecutors, and could perhaps avoid trial altogether in exchange for retiring from public life.
In the next election, expected to be in March, he will have to campaign as a defendant in three criminal cases: He was indicted on Nov. 21 on bribery and other corruption charges, accused of trading official favors worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Israeli media moguls for lavish gifts and extravagantly positive press.
It is unclear whether the indictment itself will hurt his chances, though, since the outlines of the cases against him have been known for months.
Israeli opinion polls show that another contest between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gantz would result in the same stalemate: Mr. Gantz’s Blue and White party nearly always comes out slightly ahead, but falls short of enough partners to form a majority coalition.
But Democratic leaders trumpeted the bill for what it did contain: a White House-approved measure that would extend 12 weeks of paid parental leave to civilian federal employees, a 3 percent pay raise for troops and the end to a Defense Department policy known as the widow’s tax, which prevents the surviving family members of military personnel from receiving their full benefits.
Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, issued a scathing defense of the bill on Wednesday, calling it “the most progressive defense bill we have passed in decades.”
“Throughout the negotiations I failed in one way: I was unable to turn President Trump, Leader McConnell and Chairman Inhofe into Democrats and convince them to suddenly accept all of the provisions they despise,” he said in the statement, referring to Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Smith led the final stages of the negotiations off Capitol Hill and bargained directly with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, according to three officials familiar with the private talks who insisted on anonymity to describe them. Mr. Smith declined on Wednesday to comment on Mr. Kushner’s role or the broader negotiations.
Most of the provisions in the compromise bill had already been finalized by the time discussions reached him. But it was Mr. Kushner who helped broker a deal to create the Space Force, a chief priority of the president’s, in exchange for the paid parental leave, a measure championed by his wife, Ivanka Trump, also a senior adviser to the president.
“In the case of the White House, they wanted both,” said Senator Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican and key ally of Mr. Trump’s who sits on the Armed Services Committee and has been a vocal backer of Space Force. “At the end of the day, the president gets two victories.”
Mr. Trump appeared to regard the deal with a measure of amazement on Wednesday before the vote. “Wow! All of our priorities have made it into the final NDAA,” he wrote on Twitter, using an acronym for the National Defense Authorization Act.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi addresses judges of the International Court of Justice on the second day of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday.
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Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi addresses judges of the International Court of Justice on the second day of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands, on Wednesday.
Peter Dejong/AP
The de facto leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, listened quietly in the audience of the United Nation’s high court on Tuesday, as lawyers recounted the mass killing, rape and torture of Myanmar’s Muslim minority Rohingya.
But on Wednesday, Suu Kyi had her turn at the microphone, where she vigorously defended her country’s government against accusations of genocide.
“The situation in Rakhine state is complex and not easy to fathom,” she told a 17-judge panel of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, referring to the region where the brutal crackdown carried out by Myanmar’s military has been centered.
This week, the International Court of Justice is considering whether to grant a provisional measure aimed at protecting Rohingya still living in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The tiny Muslim-majority nation of Gambia brought the case against Myanmar, which is accused of violating the 1948 convention against genocide. The ICJ has in the past confirmed that all member states have the duty to prevent genocide.
The U.N. estimates that 10,000 Rohingya have been killed in the crackdown.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate once lauded as a defender of human rights, has faced mounting criticism that she stood by as nearly a million Rohingya were forced to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.
She is one of the first national leaders to respond to a claim directly before the court. Under the International Court of Justice’s immense stained-glass windows and intricate chandeliers, Suu Kyi told the panel of judges that Myanmar’s military was merely dealing with an internal armed conflict when soldiersresponded to “coordinated and comprehensive attacks” by militants in the region.
Suu Kyi says a 2016 attack on local police by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a militant group, triggered the response by Myanmar’s military.
“It cannot be ruled out that disproportionate force was used by members of the defense services in some cases, in disregard of international humanitarian law, or that they did not distinguish clearly enough between ARSA fighters and civilians,” she told the court.
Suu Kyi argued that Gambia does not have enough evidence to lodge charges of genocide and pledged that anyone who committed war crimes would be held accountable through Myanmar’s own military justice system.
“Please bear in mind this complex situation and the challenge to sovereignty and security in our country when you are assessing the intent of those who attempted to deal with the rebellion,” she said. “Surely, under the circumstances, genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis.”
She continued: “There will be no tolerance of human rights violations in Rakhine or elsewhere in Myanmar. No stone has been left unturned to make domestic accountability work.”
Judges in The Hague open the second day of hearings in the case alleging genocide by Myanmar.
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Judges in The Hague open the second day of hearings in the case alleging genocide by Myanmar.
Peter Dejong/AP
Suu Kyi’s assessment of what happened in Rakhine state contrasted starkly with the case made by Gambia a day earlier.
Lawyers and experts representing the West African nationdescribed victims being forced inside houses that were intentionally set on fire; soldiers specifically targeting children, including infants and babies; and satellite images showing an entire Rohingya village destroyed, while a nearby non-Rohingya village was left untouched.
Gambia’s justice minister, Abubacarr Marie Tambadou, who spent more than a decade prosecuting cases related to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and is one of the officials presenting Gambia’s case, told the court that he visited Rohingya refuge camps in Bangladesh in 2018.
“When I looked into the eyes of those refugees as they recounted their devastating stories, I could see the looks of fear, of despair, of desperation, and of destruction,” he told the court. “The looks of victims of a modern-day genocide. And so we asked the question WHY? Why is the world standing by and allowing such horrors again in our lifetime?”
Human rights groups swiftly condemned Suu Kyi’s testimony.
“The exodus of more than three quarters of a million people from their homes and country was nothing but the result of an orchestrated campaign of murder, rape and terror,” Amnesty International wrote in a statement.
“To suggest that the military ‘did not distinguish clearly enough between fighters and civilians’ defies belief,” Amnesty said. “Likewise, the suggestion that Myanmar authorities can currently and independently investigate and prosecute those suspected of crimes under international law is nothing but a fantasy, in particular in the case of senior military perpetrators who have enjoyed decades of total impunity.”
As NPR’s Michael Sullivan has reported, Suu Kyi’s unprecedented appearance before the International Court of Justice is likely aimed in part at shoring up domestic support ahead of elections next year. Crowds of well-wishers waving “We Stand With Our Leader” signs cheered Suu Kyi as she left Myanmar for the Netherlands over the weekend.
Supporters holding portraits of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi march toward City Hall in Yangon, Myanmar, on Tuesday.
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Supporters holding portraits of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi march toward City Hall in Yangon, Myanmar, on Tuesday.
Thein Zaw/AP
In Myanmar, Rohingya watched livestreams of the hearing on smartphones, The Washington Postreported.
“The government has no shame,” 23 year-old Ro Nur Deen told the Post. “They have no transparency and no accountability, but finally, we are excited that theworld can see the truth at the ICJ.”
Gambia’s legal team told the court that afterthe crackdown that forced so many to cross the border, an estimated 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar, citing a recent U.N. fact-finding mission that concluded they “remain under serious risk of genocide.”
If the judges side with Gambia, the court would order Myanmar to immediately “take all measures within its power to prevent all acts that amount to or contribute to the crime of genocide.”
A decision is expected within weeks or months, while a formal ruling of whether Myanmar committed genocide could take years.
“You are called upon to act now,” Philippe Sands, a specialist in international law and a member of Gambia’s legal team, told the court. “This court is the ultimate guardian of the Genocide Convention,” he told the court. “It is on you that the eyes of the world are turned.”
What happens next: The House Judiciary Committee will meet Wednesday night and Thursday to consider those articles and possible amendments. The articles will then be voted on, one by one, by the Judiciary Committee, setting the stage for a full House vote next week. Here’s a guide to how impeachment works.
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Leah Minda Ferencz and Moshe Hirsch Deutsh, two victims from Tuesday’s deadly Jersey City shootout, were, each in their own way, key pillars of the region’s Orthodox community, friends and family said Wednesday as they prepared for the victims’ burial.
Ferencz, 31, who operated the JC Kosher Supermarket that had been targeted in the shooting Tuesday, was there when the shootout occurred, said chabad Rabbi Moshe Schapiro.
“She was a caring and nurturing mother for her three children, and at the same time helped her husband who ran the first kosher grocery in the area, to ensure that the community’s families have were to shop and feed their children,” according to a statement by the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn.
Deutsch, 24, who volunteered extensively within the community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, “was a fine, all around altruistic spirit,” said Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox, of the Crisis department of Chai Lifeline, an international healthcare support organization. “It was all human spirit and human care.”
“The Jewish community is shaken,” said Evan Bernstein, The New York and New Jersey Regional Director of The Anti-Defamation League. “We want to get the details and understand what happened.”
The third victim of the shooting was Douglas Miguel Rodriguez Barzola, a recent immigrant from Guayaquil in Ecuador. Alfonso Morales Suarez, the Consul General of Ecuador in New Jersey, said Rodriguez Barzola’s wife and daughter live here, but his mother still lives in Ecuador, and the family hasn’t made a decision yet on where they will bury him.
Rodriguez Barzola was a congregant at Iglesia Nueva Vida in Newark and had been working at the grocery store in Jersey City for more than a year to provide for his family, which includes a wife and an 11-year old daughter, said Williams Machazek, the pastor of Iglesia Nueva Vida.
“He was an excellent person,’’ he said. “He really looked out for his family, and they were inseparable. He was very active in the church.”
Ferencz, 31, a Brooklyn native, was running the grocery store with her husband, Moshe Ferencz, who left before the shooting to attend afternoon prayers next door. When the shooting started, he feared the worst but had no idea if she was okay. Officials let him know that she had been killed at about 10:30 Tuesday night, Schapiro said.
The story continues below the gallery.
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Diana Cabrera is shown as she sits near her son, Galo Cabrera Jr. 15. Cabrera, who works in Jersey City and lives in Kearny was surprised to learn that, Detective Joseph Seals, lived near the Arlington Diner, where she dined with her family Tuesday. Seals, who worked with the Jersey City Police Department, was killed in the line of duty, Tuesday, November 6, 2019. Kevin R. Wexler/NorthJersey.com
Deutch, a cousin of Ferencz, had been visiting the store Tuesday when the shootout occurred. He was the son of Abe Deutch, a community leader in Williamsburg, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a Wednesday press conference.
Deutch, 24, was a yeshiva student at Yeshiva Gedola of Satmar in Williamsburg, and served as a volunteer at Bike4Chai, Chai Lifeline’s annual cycling event, according to Chai Lifeline. He was involved in Achim B’Yachad, Chai Lifeline’s division for Chassidic communities in the New York area, as a respite volunteer visiting sick children in hospitals and a Big Brother for sick children and their siblings.
“He was a young Chassidic man who dedicated a lot of his time as a volunteer to working with ill children,” said Rabbi Fox. “He was also one of our stars in our annual Bike-athon, which draws attention and helps further the cause of the work we do for sick children.
“It was a very tragic loss,” Fox said. “He had many associates who were very close to him and scores of children and families who he helped and they are all very much feeling the loss.”
According to the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn, Ferencz and her husband were among the first to relocate from Williamsburg, due to rising housing prices, housing, to settle in Jersey City. “They did not do it for themselves, but to pave the way for a new community that lives harmoniously with their neighbors,” the group said.
Many people come to the Ferencz’ store in Jersey City to get a kosher sandwich because it’s the only place in town to get kosher food, Schapiro said. Deutch had stopped in for a visit Tuesday with a cousin when the shooting started.
“This is all very hard on the whole family,” Schapiro said.
Deutch was remembered for helping raise money for children with cancer and other chronic illnesses by participating in a two-day, 180-mile bike ride through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York called Bike4Chai.
“Moshe embodied the very best of Chai Lifeline,” Rabbi Simcha Scholar, CEO of the charity, said in a statement. “He was a dedicated volunteer who always looked for opportunities to help others. This is a devastating loss for our entire community and our thoughts are with all those impacted by this senseless act of violence.”
The two Jewish victims were to be buried Wednesday night in Kyrias Joel, the Hasidic Jewish community located near Monroe in Orange County in upstate New York.
“It’s heartbreaking. There are no words to describe it,” said Rabbi Jack Meyer, co-founder of Misaskim, the Brooklyn-based organization that provides emergency relief and bereavement services.
The third victim, Rodriguez Barzola, who was living in Harrison, volunteered to help whenever he could at the church, but did not always go to Sunday service because he often worked at the grocery store that day, Machazek said.
He said his wife is distraught, and that his family is now raising funds to send Rodriguez’ body back to Ecuador. He said the church is doing all it can to help the family.
“There is prayer, we are working toward helping them, and the entire church has risen,’’ he said.
Schapiro said that “relations between the various groups in the neighborhood have been good. They have never had problems with the neighbors. There’s media saying they were targeted directly. But obviously this is shocking and scary but they don’t feel anti-Semitism in that part of the community. They never had any problem, so this was a shock to them.
“As citizens of the world, as Jewish people watching this we ask, how can we respond to this?” Schapiro said. “By bringing more light to a dark scene. As the Talmud teaches us, a little light can push away darkness. We can bring more positivity in the world. That’s the best way to help.”
He said the community has set up a GoFundMe page to help the families.
‘Crisis of anti-Semitism’
“We feel a lot of pain but we have to understand why this is a moment of urgency,” de Blasio said. “This confirms the sad truth that there’s a crisis of anti-Semitism gripping this nation and a crisis of anti-Semitism in the city. It has continued to take on a more violent form all over the country and now we have seen an extraordinary and extreme form of violence that reached the doorsteps of New York City and we have to take that as a warning sign.”
The New York City executive director for prevention of hate crimes will be leading an effort to work with communities all over the city, de Blasio said, to ensure the safety of the entire city especially the Jewish community.
“We must recognize the greater context in which this outrage occurred,” Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox advocacy group, said in a statement. “Jews have been targeted in city streets, in their houses of worship and online. The increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents is alarming and needs to be urgently addressed.
“We pray that the plans of all who would do our people harm be frustrated, and that all Americans be spared any future such senseless violence.”
Ronald S. Lauder, founder of the Anti-Semitism Accountability Project, said in a statement, “The horrendous attack in Jersey City is yet another glaring example of how Jews are being violently targeted across the United States. It’s time to hold elected officials accountable: if you enable anti-Semitism or fail to take it seriously, we will see to it that you lose reelection. We will see to it before other communities become memorials. Looking the other way never has — and never will — end well.”
Jim Sues, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations New Jersey chapter, said in a statement: “We stand in solidarity with our Jewish sisters and brothers and ask people of all faiths and backgrounds to repudiate the hatred that apparently motivated this heinous attack. As a diverse community, we must not allow hatred to be fueled against any person or group.”
Staff writer Ricardo Kaulessar contributed to this story.
Two more people have died following a volcanic eruption Monday on New Zealand’s White Island police have announced.
The official death toll now stands at eight, according to a New Zealand police release issued on Wednesday afternoon, EST.
The newly-reported deaths came after authorities said they had confirmed six people had died and the bodies of eight other people were believed to remain on the island. That brings the suspected total death count to 16.
Many of those who survived the blast suffered horrific burns. Another 28 people are still hospitalized, including 23 in critical condition.
Forty-seven people were on the popular tourist island at the time of the eruption, some of whom were walking along the rim of the crater.
Survivors ran into the sea to escape the scalding steam and ash and emerged covered in burns, said those who first helped them.
A majority of the burns, said Dr. John Kenealy, clinical director of surgery at Counties Makanau, were severe. Some patients’ burns covered 90% to 95% of their bodies.
“This number of burns is unprecedented in New Zealand,” Kenealy said, “and in the rest of the world.”
Michael Horowitz, the inspector general for the Justice Department, said he was “very concerned” about leaks from the FBI to Rudy Giuliani about the investigation of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham delivers his opening statement to the FISA report hearing with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham accused the FBI officials who investigated the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia of a “massive criminal conspiracy” in a fiery opening statement Wednesday for a hearing where the Justice Department’s top watchdog testified.
In a freewheeling speech to kick off the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on FBI abuses, the committee chairman said federal investigators made more than a few missteps — and took the law into their own hands.
“What has been described as a few irregularities becomes a massive criminal conspiracy over time to defraud the FISA court, to illegally surveil an American citizen and keep an operation open against a sitting president of the United States — violating every norm known to the rule of law,” Graham said.
The more than 40-minute unscripted speech came before the long-anticipated testimony of Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general who investigated the origins of the Russia probe into the Trump campaign.
Horowitz’s report, released Monday, found no intentional misconduct or political bias surrounding the FBI’s launch of the probe, which was called “Crossfire Hurricane,” and efforts to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to monitor Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
However, the report faulted the FBI for numerous errors in the FISA application process, identifying at least 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the application and renewals for Page’s FISA warrant.
Graham said Horowitz’s team discovered “an abuse of power I never believed could actually exist in 2019.”
“How bad is it? It was as if J. Edgar Hoover came back to life,” Graham said.
The Judiciary Committee chairman read aloud the text messages between FBI investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the former lovers who expressed disgust with Trump in their exchanges, calling Trump a “loathsome human” and “awful.”
Graham blasted the few investigators as “bad people.” He said former British spy Christopher Steele, who authored the salacious and unverified dossier against Trump, had an ax to grind against the president and those biases colored the investigation.
In a passionate speech that was reminiscent of his angry defense of Brett Kavanaugh before his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Graham said he has serious concerns about whether the FISA Court can continue without reforms.
“Trump’s time will come and go,” Graham said. “But I hope we understand that what happened here can never happen again. Because what happened here is not a few irregularities. What happened here is the system failed.”
Graham also said the report should be a call to action for FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“Director Wray, you’ve got a problem,” Graham said.
He urged Page, the former Trump campaign adviser, to file suit.
“I hope Carter Page gets a lawyer and sues the hell out of the FBI and DOJ,” Graham said.
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