If you are on the Westside of Los Angeles today, you might want to use lunch to start that commute home early, because Donald Trump’s whirlwind visit to town today is going to make a. parking lot out of the area very soon.

With the former Celebrity Apprentice host expected to touch down at LAX around 3:25 p.m., the LAPD and others are set to start closing down streets from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills and beyond in the next hour or so, we hear. As has become commonplace under the Trump administration when it comes to the Democratic stronghold of L.A., the police have just been given the go-ahead by the Secret Service to make the road closures public, even though POTUS is landing within hours. (See the full list of road closures below.)

We also know that this visit by 45 will see him getting an update from Casey Wasserman on L.A.’s 2028 Olympics plans and then hitting dual fundraisers in Beverly Hills at the Montage hotel on North Canon Drive.

All in all, in his first trip out to L.A since September, Trump will be here just over four hours, with Air Force One set to be wheels up out of LAX for an overnight in Sin City at 7:45 p.m.

IOC

After a quick Marine One jump from LAX to Santa Monica Airport and then a motorcade through the heart of West L.A. and retail Bev Hills, the Olympics briefing is set to start at around 4:10 p.m. Staunch Democrat Wasserman, grandson of the quintessential Hollywood power player Lew Wasserman, long has stressed the Olympics is a nonpartisan affair. To that end, the sports agent exec has sought impute from the Trump crew and the overall federal government in the City of Angels’ successful 2017 bid and preparations for the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad.

Donald Trump Commutes Sentence of Rod Blagojevich, Pardons Eddie DeBartolo, Michael Milken And Others

Having said that, Mayor Eric Garcetti won’t be at the Olympics briefing this afternoon at the Montage Beverly Hills. Perhaps as justification for the fundraisers to follow, there is one bit of official business out of the LA2028 meeting. As required by the IOC, today is expected to see a formal signoff by Trump that all federal government agencies will provide operational support to the privately funded $6.9 billion-budgeted Games.

Jae C Hong/AP/REX/Shutterstoc

As security descends like a steel net over the area and halts traffic on surrounding main streets like Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, to name a few, Trump then has a roundtable with well-heeled supporters scheduled for 5:45 p.m. at the hotel. Staying in the same location, that sit-down is to be followed by a speech at a joint Trump 2020 campaign and RNC fundraiser at 6:15 p.m. The latter is expected to bring in about $6 million for the re-election effort and the party run by Ronna McDaniel, Mitt Romney’s daughter-in-law.

As for Trump not staying overnight at either the Montage or his own Beverly Hills home, POTUS told reporters today, “Largely [the] schedule is by the Secret Service; we do what they want us to.” In wide-ranging remarks about the pardons he issued today and more, Trump added before boarding Air Force One: “I don’t set the schedule, I have nothing to do with it.”

Yeah, sure.

Still, one day after potential challenger Sen. Amy Klobuchar held a Jay Leno-attended fundraiser in L.A, this fourth visit by this POTUS to SoCal since taking office is far from over once he leaves town tonight.

John Oliver Gives Laura Ingraham Credit For Seeing William Barr-Donald Trump “Rift” As A Ruse

On Wednesday, Trump will be flying back to the Golden State to break bread and maybe hit a few golf balls with Oracle boss and Annapurna backer Larry Ellison in the latter’s sprawling Rancho Mirage property for another fundraiser.

Larry Ellison
MediaPunch/Shutterstock

Protested by more than 2,200 Oracle employees in a petition, the $100,000- to $250,000-a-ticket event comes as Ellison’s company and Amazon keep fighting in court over the $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) contract that the Pentagon abruptly handed to Microsoft last year after it almost was assured to go to the Jeff Bezos-founded company.

Besides that little website that has everything, a streamer, a cloud services business and more recently Jack Warner’s old spread, Bezos also owns a broadsheet called the Washington Post that Trump is no fan of. Adding another irritant to the current POTUS, Trump’s visit to the Coachella Valley succeeds a trip to the region’s famed Thunderbird Heights by President Barack Obama on the Presidents Day holiday Monday.

After time with Ellison, Trump is going up to Bakersfield to join House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in the GOP stronghold for another party event before exiting for Arizona later on Wednesday.

Already a must-visit for Dems looking for much-needed Hollywood cash, L.A. will see a lot of Oval Office contenders in town leading up to the Golden State’s March 3 primary. And, once the Democrats have a nominee, expect to see that person and Trump here even more in the pursuit of donors wide and far — which means, you might want to get a bike. Just sayin’.

A Big Week For Hollywood’s ATM: Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg And Even Donald Trump Plan L.A. Fundraising Swings

HERE IS THE OFFICIAL ROAD CLOSURE ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE LAPD, BUT, AS ALWAYS, EXPECT A FEW SURPRISES:

Los Angeles & Beverly Hills: To assist the public in avoiding possible traffic congestion during the visit of the President of the United States on February 18, 2020, the following areas of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills should be avoided when possible to prevent travel delays for community members:

Tuesday, February 18
The area around S. Centinela Avenue between Airport Avenue & Olympic Boulevard
3-4:30 p.m.

The area around S. Robertson Boulevard between the Santa Monica Freeway & Beverly Boulevard
3-6 p.m.

The City of Beverly Hills, Wilshire Boulevard north to Santa Monica Boulevard, and Rodeo Drive east to N. Rexford Drive
5-8 p.m.

The area around S. Robertson Boulevard between Beverly Boulevard and the Santa Monica Freeway
6:30-8 p.m.

The area around S. Centinela Avenue between Pico Boulevard & Airport Avenue
7-8 p.m.

Source Article from https://deadline.com/2020/02/donald-trump-traffic-la-olympics-fundraiser-jeff-bezos-larry-ellison-lapd-1202861671/

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Photographs by Tony Cenicola, Todd Heisler and Calla Kessler.
Additional work by Alicia Parlapiano, Guilbert Gates, Isabella Grullón Paz and Rebecca Lieberman.

Polling data from ABC News/The Washington Post, Reuters, Monmouth University, Quinnipiac University, Fox News, USA Today/Suffolk, University of New Hampshire, CBS News/YouGov, CNN, The Des Moines Register, NBC News/The Wall Street Journal, Winthrop University. Numbers are through Feb. 13.

Polls conducted more recently and polls with a larger sample size are given greater weight in computing the averages. Data is for registered voters or likely voters, depending on the poll.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/19/us/politics/democratic-debate-nevada.html

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich walked out of federal prison late Tuesday evening and flew back to Chicago after President Donald Trump commuted his sentence.

Speaking to Chicago TV station WGN-TV, Blagojevich said he was “grateful” to Trump.

“He didn’t have to do this, he’s a Republican president and I was a Democratic governor. I’ll have a lot more to say tomorrow.” Blagojevich told WGN-TV in an interview on the Denver airport tram on his way out of Colorado.

Blagojevich, a Democrat and one-time contestant on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” had been serving a 14-year sentence in a Colorado federal prison. He was convicted in 2011 of federal charges of using his powers as governor to extract campaign money and other political favors in exchange for naming a successor to fill the Illinois Senate seat left open when Barack Obama became president, but Trump objected to the length of his sentence. 

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/19/rod-blagojevich-released-prison-after-trump-commutes-sentence/4804835002/

President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Blagojevich, a Democrat, was convicted in 2011 by a federal jury in Chicago on 17 counts, including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated when President Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

He was sentenced to 14 years in prison and had been serving his prison time at a Colorado federal prison since 2012. His date for expected release was 2024, factoring in two years of credit for good behavior. Late Tuesday, the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that Blagojevich had been released from the federal prison in Englewood, Colorado.

“He served eight years in jail, that’s a long time, and I watched his wife on television, I don’t know him very well, I met him a couple of times, he was on for a short time on ‘The Apprentice’ years ago, seemed like a very nice person, don’t know him, but he served eight years in jail, there’s a long time to go,” Trump said Tuesday. “He’ll be able to go home to his family after serving eight years in jail, that was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion.”

At Denver’s airport, Blagojevich said he had “no warning” that he’d be walking free Tuesday.

“My first thought was ‘I wonder if I’ll have time to get a run in’ believe it or not. Because you get programmed, you have routines and I found that it helps through this time when you discipline yourself every day and you have something to work for, it helps you do it,” he told reporters Tuesday before boarding a plane. “And so I had a run planned and I think I wonder if I’ll get that in before I go. And there was this helicopter over the prison so I thought well, maybe I won’t run so I went and did pushups.”

Trump has long floated the idea of commuting his sentence and said that he thinks Blagojevich had served enough time and been mistreated.

“I am thinking very seriously about commuting his sentence so that he can go home to his family after seven years,” Trump said in August of last year. “You have drug dealers that get not even 30 days, and they’ve killed 25 people. They put him in jail for 18 years, and he has many years left. And I think it’s very unfair.”

In January, Blagojevich penned a column on Newsmax titled, “House Democrats Would Have Impeached Lincoln” amid the now-wrapped congressional impeachment efforts against Trump. While Blagojevich didn’t mention Trump’s name in the column, his wife Patti Blagojevich tagged the president’s name as she retweeted the piece.

Blagojevich appears to defend Trump in the column against House Democrats’ efforts, comparing the impeachment proceedings with his own criminal case, and calling the House impeachment vote an “abuse of the Constitution.”

“No president is safe if a majority of hyperpartisan House members from the opposition party are willing to abuse the Constitution and vote to impeach,” Blagojevich wrote. “And the worst part of it is, that should this happen, those politicians are taking from the people their right to choose their own leaders through free elections.”

While in prison, the disgraced governor rose to fame in part because of his penchant for sartorial flamboyance, larger-than-life persona and an apparent eagerness to perform for the camera. He became known through tabloids by the mononym “Blago,” and the Chicago Tribune reported that inmates inside of the prison refer to him simply as “Gov.”

In 2009, he appeared on NBC’s “The Apprentice,” a reality TV show hosted by Trump.

Blagojevich also fronted a prison band called “The Jailhouse Rockers,” which his defense team used as an example of his good behavior during his appeal to no avail.

“I followed the law every step of the way,” he told reporters Tuesday. “I’ve said that all along and that’s absolutely the case and they’re the ones who did wrong and eventually I think the truth will win out and the Bible teaches that.”

ABC News’ Luke Barr contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=69049748

WASHINGTON – Attorney General William Barr has considered resigning his post in a widening dispute with President Donald Trump over his persistent tweets criticizing Justice Department investigations, a person familiar with the matter said late Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear whether the attorney general directly communicated his concerns to the president since he told ABC News last week that Trump’s repeated disparagement of federal prosecutors had made his job “impossible.”

Late Tuesday, the Justice Department said Barr had “no plans” to resign.

The development was first reported by The Washington Post and comes as the Justice Department and the White House have been enveloped in near-constant tumult.

In an interview with ABC News last week, Barr suggested the president should stop weighing in on criminal cases handled by the Justice Department. 

“It’s time to stop the tweeting about the Department of Justice criminal cases,” he said, saying Trump’s commentary makes it “impossible for me to do my job.”

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/18/william-barr-has-considered-resigning-over-trumps-involvement/4802249002/

U.S. stocks declined on Tuesday, a day after Apple warned that it would miss its sales forecasts because of the disruption in China. Stocks tied to the near-term ups and downs of the economy slumped, with financials, energy and industrial shares the leading losers.

The S&P 500 index fell 0.3 percent. Bond yields declined, with the 10-year Treasury note yielding 1.56 percent, suggesting that investors are lowering their expectations for economic growth and inflation.

With much of the Chinese economy stalled, demand for oil has fallen and prices were down on Tuesday, with a barrel of West Texas Intermediate selling for roughly $52.

In Germany, where the economy depends heavily on global demand for machinery and automobiles, a key indicator showed economic sentiment has tumbled this month, as the economic outlook has weakened.

Reporting and research was contributed by Motoko Rich, Alexandra Stevenson, Choe Sang-Hun, Russell Goldman, Hannah Beech, Richard C. Paddock, Tiffany May and Elaine Yu.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Tuesday that more than 73,000 people in 25 countries have become infected with the new coronavirus.

Daily increases of about 2,000 cases have largely been the norm for the new coronavirus, named COVID-19, but on Monday the WHO reported a massive spike of nearly 20,000 cases. This was predominantly attributed to the WHO including clinically diagnosed cases in China’s Hubei province, where the outbreak originated, in the total case count for the first time since the U.N. agency began issuing daily updates in January.

China started reporting clinically diagnosed cases—those that are confirmed by a doctor and not a laboratory test—to the WHO on Thursday. The initial case count was 13,332, but that number rose on Tuesday. However, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus didn’t share specific data about how many of the 1,800 new cases were clinical diagnoses.

Clinically diagnosed cases are confined to China, where the vast majority of all confirmed cases have been identified. Of the 73,332 total cases, 72,528 involved people in China, where 1,850 people have died from the virus. In addition to the lives lost in China, France, the Philippines and Japan have each reported one death.

Cases outside of China rose to 804, an increase of 110 cases from the day before, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed 15 cases of the virus in the United States. That number doesn’t include the 14 American passengers who were evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined off the coast of Yokohama, Japan.

“The quarantine process failed,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told USA Today. “I’d like to sugarcoat it and try to be diplomatic about it, but it failed.”

Fauci added that “something went awry in the process,” but admitted that he wasn’t sure what went wrong.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center confirmed that 13 additional passengers from the cruise ship arrived at the Omaha hospital for “further monitoring, testing and treatment if needed.” Although the WHO is including clinically diagnosed cases in its case count, the CDC is considering a case to be confirmed only if lab results are positive.

COVID-19 was first identified in humans in December and resembles severe acute respiratory syndrome. In 2002 and 2003, the SARS virus, also of Chinese origin, sickened 8,098 people worldwide, including eight people in the U.S. The current COVID-19 outbreak is nearly nine times as large as the SARS outbreak but is far less deadly.

In contrast to the SARS mortality rate of about 10 percent, COVID-19’s current mortality rate is about 2 percent.

Ghebreyesus said during Tuesday’s press conference that there wasn’t enough data from countries outside of China to draw comparisons between COVID-19 and other viruses. When pushed as to why the WHO didn’t have the necessary information, Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, said it wasn’t due to a lack of transparency but was caused by countries prioritizing dealing with the current “public health challenge” and difficulties gathering and collecting data, including privacy laws.

He urged countries to both “speed up” their collection and sharing of “core data” and implement public health measures that are “well thought out” and pay “due respect” for people’s individual liberties and rights.

“There’s an awful lot at stake here in terms of public health, not just to people in China but of all people in the world,” Ryan said.

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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-update-map-73000-confirmed-cases-25-countries-1487793

Most of the Democratic presidential hopefuls are campaigning in Nevada ahead of Wednesday’s debate and Saturday’s caucuses. Michelle Price, a Vegas-based political reporter for the Associated Press, joins CBSN’s “Red & Blue” to discuss the latest developments on the campaign trail.

Source Article from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibopwkj9pRc

WASHINGTON – Bernie Sanders said Tuesday night that he is not planning to release any additional medical records. 

Sanders, 78, suffered a heart attack in October during a campaign event. He had a blockage in one artery and two stents were inserted, his campaign said at the time.

Speaking during CNN’s town hall in Las Vegas, Sanders was asked to clarify whether his presidential campaign would be releasing full medical records, which he previously stated he would do. Sanders will take part in the Democractic candidate debate Wedneday night. 

More:Warren rips Bloomberg as ‘egomaniac billionaire’ as Dems prepare for new rival on debate stage

At the time, he said, “The people do have a right to know about the health of a senator, somebody who’s running for president of the United States — full disclosure.”

However, Tuesday he said: “We have released quite as much documentation as any other candidate has” and reiterated that letters from cardiologists and doctors have said he is in good health.

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/02/18/bernie-sanders-wont-release-full-medical-records/4801735002/

Trump said Tuesday that he has “total confidence” in Barr and conceded, “I do make his job harder.” He also asserted, though, that he, rather than his attorney general, is “the chief law enforcement officer of the country.”

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raises-possibility-of-suing-those-involved-in-prosecuting-roger-stone/2020/02/18/238279fc-5250-11ea-9e47-59804be1dcfb_story.html

His choices appeared to be aimed at people who he viewed as the subject of unfair prosecutions or sentences, underscoring his own sense of grievance about being the subject of investigations he has derided as hoaxes and witch hunts.

Mr. Trump was particularly critical of the 14-year prison sentence for Mr. Blagojevich, who was convicted of trying to essentially sell President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat for personal gain and once appeared on the reality series, “The Celebrity Apprentice,” which Mr. Trump hosted.

“That was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence, in my opinion,” Mr. Trump said after announcing that Mr. Blagojevich would go free after serving eight years in prison.

“Seemed like a very nice person, don’t know him,” Mr. Trump told reporters.

But critics lashed out at Mr. Trump’s actions, accusing him of abusing the pardon power, as some previous presidents have done, to reward friends and repair the reputations of convicted felons who do not deserve it.

“The pardoning of these disgraced figures should be treated as another national scandal by a lawless executive,” Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, said in a statement. “In office, Trump has used pardons almost exclusively to shield unrepentant felons, racists, and corrupt scoundrels like Blagojevich and now Milken, one of the most prolific financial criminals in U.S. history.”

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/us/politics/trump-pardon-blagojevich-debartolo.html

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., billionaire Tom Steyer and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, all trailed Buttigieg.

Sanders’ 12 point lead is well outside the 4.7 point margin of error of the new survey, which was conducted between Feb 14-17 on a sample size of 900 registered voters.

Preliminary analysis of the results indicates that the biggest beneficiaries of Biden’s tumbling numbers were Bloomberg and Buttigieg, both moderates who are working hard to offer voters an alternative to the stridently progressive message coming from Sanders.

Bloomberg will be making his first appearance on the Democratic primary debate stage this week in Nevada, despite the fact that his is not competing in the first four nominating states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Instead, Bloomberg has focused on Texas and other states that vote on Super Tuesday, March 3. His ads, however, appear to have made an impression: In January, 59% of poll respondents said they remember seeing an ad from Bloomberg on TV or social media.

The survey also measured comfort levels among voters with certain qualities in a presidential candidate for the first time this month. These include a candidate “who self-funds their campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money” and a candidate who “is a socialist.”

Among Democratic primary voters, just 16% said they would be “very uncomfortable” voting for a candidate who used his or her personal fortune to fund their campaign. Among registered voters of both parties, the survey found the same number, 16%, reported they would be “very uncomfortable” voting for a self-funded candidate.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/18/nbcwsj-poll-sanders-leads-by-double-digits-as-biden-sinks-bloomberg-rises.html

Amid backlash over the Department of Justice seeking to reduce Roger Stone’s recommended sentence, Ian Prior, a former DOJ public affairs deputy director, said that no one in the Justice Department is taking the calls for Attorney General Bill Barr’s resignation seriously.

Prior’s comments on “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday came after a national association of federal judges called an emergency meeting to tackle mounting concerns about President Trump and senior Justice Department officials’ intervention in cases involving Trump associates.

USA Today first reported that the independent Federal Judges Association would hold the meeting.

The call for the meeting follows a tumultuous week in which Barr’s DOJ intervened in the cases involving Trump associates Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

More than 1,100 former Justice Department employees have signed an online petition urging him to resign.

DOJ PROSECUTORS RESIGN AFTER TOP BRASS REVERSES COURSE ON ROGER STONE SENTENCING

“This is just a resistance letter,” Prior said, adding that the letter was put together by a group called Protect Our Democracy and is part of overall “faux outrage” over the Stone case.

“It’s really just ex-Obama officials funded by liberal donors that are trying to resist the Trump administration with litigation and statements like that,” he added.

Prior said the 1,000-2,000 people signing the letter make up “001 percent of all current and living former DOJ employees.”

Prior rejected the notion that the letter is bipartisan since petitioners from both parties signed.

“Well, the majority of the people that signed that are career employees, so, of course, they served multiple administrations, but, it’s not like they have big-name political appointees from past Republican administrations on that. I don’t think anybody in the Justice Department takes it seriously,” he said.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Last Monday, federal prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of between 87 and 108 months for Stone after he was convicted on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering, and making false statements to Congress on charges that stemmed from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/ian-prior-bill-barr-resign-roger-stone

Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Tuesday that “it is obvious” former Trump adviser Roger Stone deserves a new trial in light of resurfaced tweets that indicate partisanship and “inherent bias” from a juror in his trial.

“I think almost any judge in the country would order a new trial,” Napolitano told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, adding that he’s “not so sure” that Judge Amy Berman Jackson will agree.

ROGER STONE MAKES SECOND REQUEST FOR NEW TRIAL AMID SENTENCING CONTROVERSY

Last week, former Memphis City Schools Board President Tomeka Hart revealed she had been the foreperson on the jury that convicted Stone. A history of Democratic activism and a bias against President Trump, via a series of left-wing social media posts, also came to light.

Following the revelations, Stone made on Friday another request for a new trial. He had already filed for a new trial two days prior, but was denied by Jackson.

Stone was originally charged with seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements to Congress. He was convicted on all counts in November, and then released on his own recognizance until his sentencing, which is slated for Thursday.

Napolitano said that Jackson should bring the foreperson and the four prosecutors who have since resigned into the court for interrogation by Stone’s lawyers.

“[They should ask] what did you know about her and when did you know it and why didn’t you tell us that you knew about her prejudice?” Napolitano asked.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

“You have a duty, an affirmative obligation to reveal to us when we selected you, [of] the existence of these tweets in which you were so harshly negative about the president and the people that support him,” Napolitano said, referring to the foreperson.

Napolitano said that Jackson has a duty to find out whether or not the prosecutors knew about the biased foreperson in order to make a ruling about a new trial.

Fox News’ Nick Givas contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/judge-napolitano-obvious-roger-stone-new-trial

A child’s polka dot boot and a soup ladle with fresh dirt led police to the body of a 6-year-old kidnapping and homicide victim, South Carolina police said Tuesday.

First grader Faye Swetlik, who was found last week near her home in Cayce, died by asphyxiation at the hands of a neighbor, officials revealed.

Faye Marie Swetlik.Cayce Department of Public Safety / via Facebook

“Faye Swetlik’s death did not occur at the location where her body was discovered,” Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher told reporters.

“We have concluded that Faye’s death was a homicide and took place within only a few hours after she was abducted. The cause of Faye’s death has been ruled asphyxiation.”

She was killed by her neighbor, previously identified as Coty Scott Taylor, 30, police said.

“Evidence leads us to believe the deceased abducted and killed 6-year-old Faye Marie Swetlik and it appears that he is the sole perpetrator of this crime,” Cayce Director of Public Safety Byron Snellgrove said.

Faye had been reported missing Feb. 10 and Taylor was found dead on his patio shortly after the girl’s body was discovered Thursday, police said.

The big break in the case came moments earlier when police, following garbage trucks in the Churchill Heights neighborhood of Cayce, found the boot and the ladle in Taylor’s trash, officials said.

“I happened to be on scene at that time. Upon seeing these items, I called for assistance to do an additional and immediate grid search of the areas” behind the nearby homes of Faye and Taylor, Snellgrove said.

“As assistance was coming, I went into the woods behind the townhomes and just before 10:30 a.m., I located the body of Faye Swetlik.”

Moments later, “police were notified of a residence, that there was a man bleeding on the back patio,” according to the police chief.

“Officers immediately went to his aid and found a deceased white male,” previously identified as Taylor, Snellgrove said.

Faye was last seen around 3:45 p.m. on that Monday afternoon playing outside her family’s home and the girl’s mother called 911 about an hour later.

Taylor had been interviewed in his home by police Wednesday but gave no hint he was connected to Faye’s disappearance, police said.

“He was cooperative and gave consent to agents to look through the house,” Snellgrove said. “Those agents did not see anything that alerted them to believe that he had knowledge or was in any way involved in Faye’s disappearance.”

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/death-missing-6-year-old-south-carolina-ruled-homicide-asphyxiation-n1138156

The plan also calls for making community college and four-year public colleges “debt-free” for low-income students, meaning they would not have to take out loans to finance tuition or other costs like books, food and transportation. The benefit would be available to families that earn, on average, less than $30,000 a year, according to the Bloomberg campaign.

The tuition-free and debt-free college goals would be accomplished by creating a new federal-state matching program and doubling the maximum Pell Grant to $12,690. In addition, Bloomberg would expand Pell eligibility to incarcerated students and undocumented students, known as Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children.

How would the proposal change student loans?

New and existing federal student loan borrowers would be automatically enrolled in a new repayment plan that caps monthly payments at 5 percent of a borrower’s discretionary income — down from 10 percent under many existing income-based repayment plans. After a borrower made 20 years of “reasonable progress” in repaying a loan, the government would forgive up to $57,000 of any remaining balance tax-free. By contrast, there’s currently no limit on loan forgiveness under income-based repayment plans, though the amount of forgiveness is taxed as income.

Borrowers would be able to opt out of Bloomberg’s new repayment plan, according to the campaign. The new income-based repayment plan would also be restricted to federal student loans that financed undergraduate studies, not graduate education, the campaign said.

Bloomberg’s plan eschews broad based student loan forgiveness, but it calls for wiping out the loans of borrowers who attended “failed or predatory for-profit colleges.” It also vows to “fix” the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, including providing debt relief “to all qualifying public servants who’ve applied for forgiveness in good faith under the current policy.”

What else is Bloomberg proposing?

Bloomberg also pledged to “end” admissions practices at elite universities that favor the children of alumni. His plan backs legislation requiring universities to make public information about their “legacy” admissions policies and threatens to curtail federal funding to elite universities “if progress isn’t made toward ending legacy preferences.”

In addition, Bloomberg’s plan calls for tripling direct federal funding for historically black colleges, Hispanic-servicing institution and other minority-serving institutions.

How much would it cost?

The price tag for Bloomberg’s higher education plan is $700 billion over the next 10 years, according to the campaign. It would be funded by the money raised through Bloomberg’s proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy.

How does Bloomberg’s plan compare to what other Democrats have proposed?

Bloomberg’s plan to make community college free while imposing a means test for “debt-free college” is similar to proposals by other Democrats like Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. Those candidates, like Bloomberg, have argued that federal subsidies should be targeted to low- and middle-income families.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have proposed eliminating tuition at public colleges and universities for all students and providing student loan forgiveness to large numbers of students.

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/18/mike-bloomberg-community-college-student-loans-115703

Pressure is building on Attorney General Bill Barr to resign after thousands of former Department of Justice officials and members of the Federal Judges’ Association expressed concern about his conduct.

By Monday, more than 2,000 former DOJ employees from both the Republican and Democratic parties had signed a letter demanding that Barr resign, while the Federal Judges’ Association had agreed to convene an emergency meeting to discuss the attorney general’s behavior.

Their concerns center on Barr’s handling of the Roger Stone case. Stone—a long-time adviser to President Donald Trump and a veteran GOP operative—is due to be sentenced later this month for crimes uncovered during the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Last week, prosecutors recommended a jail term of seven to nine years for Stone. But after Trump condemned the proposal, the DOJ said it would issue a more lenient sentencing memo. The four prosecutors that worked on the Stone case subsequently resigned in protest.

Though Barr publicly complained about the president’s tweets on the issue, critics have accused the attorney general of undermining the rule of law to protect the president and his allies.

The open letter signed by former DOJ staff claims that Barr “openly and repeatedly flouted” the principle of equal justice under the rule of law.

The letter also warned it was “unheard of for the Department’s top leaders to overrule line prosecutors, who are following established policies, in order to give preferential treatment to a close associate of the President, as Attorney General Barr did in the Stone case.”

John Flannery—a former federal prosecutor—was among those who signed the letter. He told MSNBC Monday that Barr “has no business in that job” and called on DOJ officials to “do the job right.” He described Barr as the president’s “consigliere” and said Trump is the “chief criminal who’s running a crime syndicate out of the West Wing.”

Other former attorneys reacted to the open letter and the Federal Judges’ Association meeting on Twitter. Harry Litman, for example, said the U.S. is now in “full on crisis mode,” describing recent developments as “mind-blowing.”

Former Associate White House Counsel Ian Bassin noted, “Our institutions are sounding alarms,” while former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah said the open letter was a “extraordinary bi-partisan show of unity.”

Former U.S. attorney Barb McQuade—now a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School—said she was among those who signed the open letter, warning, “Even the appearance of partisanship has no place in the fair administration of justice.”

Laurence Tribe—a legal scholar at Harvard Law School who advised President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign—described the Federal Judges’ Association meeting regarding Barr as “rolling thunder.”

“One stuffed goose named Barr is cooked,” he added. “2000 DOJ alumni he can ignore. 1000 federal judges? That’s an altogether different kettle of fish.”

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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/trump-running-crime-syndicate-out-west-wing-barr-his-consigliere-former-prosecutor-says-1487708

President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Blagojevich, a Democrat, was convicted in 2011 by a federal jury in Chicago on 17 counts, including an attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated when President Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

He was sentenced to 14 years in prison and has been serving his prison time at a Colorado federal prison since 2012. His date for expected release was 2024, factoring in two years of credit for good behavior.

“He served eight years in jail, that’s a long time, and I watched his wife on television, I don’t know him very well, I met him a couple of times, he was on for a short time on ‘The Apprentice’ years ago, seemed like a very nice person, don’t know him, but he served eight years in jail, there’s a long time to go,” Trump said Tuesday. “He’ll be able to go home to his family after serving eight years in jail, that was a tremendously powerful ridiculous sentence in my opinion.”

Trump has long floated the idea, saying he thinks Blagojevich has served enough time and has been treated unfairly.

“I am thinking very seriously about commuting his sentence so that he can go home to his family after seven years,” Trump said in August of last year. “You have drug dealers that get not even 30 days, and they’ve killed 25 people. They put him in jail for 18 years, and he has many years left. And I think it’s very unfair.”

In January this year, Blagojevich penned a column on Newsmax titled, “House Democrats Would Have Impeached Lincoln” amid the now-wrapped congressional impeachment efforts against President Trump. While Blagojevich didn’t mention Trump’s name in the column, his wife Patti Blagojevich tagged the president’s name as she retweeted the piece.

Blagojevich appears to defend President Trump against House Democrat’s efforts in the column, comparing the impeachment proceedings with his own criminal case, and calling the House impeachment vote an “abuse of the Constitution.”

“No president is safe if a majority of hyperpartisan House members from the opposition party are willing to abuse the Constitution and vote to impeach,” Blagojevich wrote. “And the worst part of it is, that should this happen, those politicians are taking from the people their right to choose their own leaders though free elections.”

While in prison, the disgraced governor rose to fame in part because of his penchant for sartorial flamboyance, larger-than-life persona, and an apparent eagerness to perform for the camera. He became known through tabloids by the mononym “Blago,” and the Chicago Tribune reported that inmates inside of the prison refer to him simply as “Gov.”

In 2009, he appeared on NBC’s “The Apprentice,” a reality TV show hosted by presidential Trump and fronted a prison band called “The Jailhouse Rockers,” which was used by his defense team as an example of his good behavior during the appeal to no avail.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=69049748

Mike Bloomberg’s campaign said on Tuesday that it sees Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., as the only threat to Bloomberg winning the Democratic nomination and defeating Donald Trump in 2020.

Dan Kanninen, the lead state strategist for Bloomberg’s campaign, led off a briefing with reporters by saying Bloomberg and his team view Sanders as the only other candidate who has a shot at being “sworn into office next year.”

When asked why former Vice President Joe Biden was not on his list of candidates who could beat Trump in November, Kanninen pointed to a new round of polling, including in Florida, that he described as showing former front-runner Biden’s status had “collapsed.”

“It’s consistent [with] what we are seeing from our own numbers. It’s consistent [with] what we are seeing on the ground,” the Bloomberg advisor said about Biden’s struggles, while noting the growing crowd size at rallies for the former New York mayor in Florida, Virginia, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Biden has dropped in recent surveys since his disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, while Sanders and Bloomberg have surged. A Real Clear Politics polling average has Sanders in first, followed by Biden and Bloomberg, who started the race in seventh.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/18/mike-bloomberg-sees-bernie-sanders-as-only-threat-to-capturing-nomination.html