Four officers fired more than 30 rounds at an anti-fascist activist who had been on the run after being named in the killing of a man during a pro-Trump rally in Portland, Oregon, an official said on Tuesday.
Law enforcement officials killed Michael Reinoehl on 3 September after they cornered him in his car outside an apartment complex in Lacey, Washington. Reinoehl was the suspect in the fatal shooting of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, who was killed at a pro-Trump car caravan in Portland on 29 August.
The USattorney general, Bill Barr, said following Reinoehl’s death that Reinoehl had been located in Washington state by members of the US Marshals Service, the FBI, and state and local law enforcement and had been shot and killed while attempting to escape arrest and brandishing a firearm.
But questions have swirled around the events after witnesses gave conflicting accounts of the moments leading up to Reinoehl’s death, with many raising questions about the officers’ sudden use of lethal force. .
The New York Times interviewed 22 people who were near the scene, and reported that all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give commands before they started shooting. The paper also reported on the official statements of the officers to investigators, which have not yet been released to the public, noting that one officer alleged he thought he saw Reinoehl raise a gun inside the vehicle, but that two others said they did not.
The Thurston county sheriff’s office is investigating the killing. Lt Ray Brady said on Tuesday that Reinoehl had a loaded .380-caliber handgun in his front pocket, and that police found him with his hand on or near the gun after he was killed. Authorities are still investigating whether this gun was used in the Portland shooting days earlier.
The officers who fired at Reinoehl were part of a multi-agency federal taskforce and had pulled up in two unmarked cars, Brady said. The officers were not wearing body cameras, and there is no surveillance footage of the killing.
An autopsy showed that Reinoehl died of gunshot wounds to the head and upper torso. Earlier that day, Portland police had obtained a warrant to arrest him on second-degree murder and unlawful use of a firearm for the killing of Danielson.
A witness, Garrett Louis, told the New York Times he watched the shooting begin while trying to get his eight-year-old son out of the way. He said the officers began shooting so suddenly that he initially assumed they were criminals gunning down an enemy, not police. “There was no, ‘Get out of the car!’ There was no, ‘Stop!’ … They just got out of the car and started shooting.”
Reinoehl, 48, described himself as an anti-fascist and was a father of two who spoke about providing “security” at Black Lives Matter protests. In an interview with Vice published hours before he was killed, Reinoehl said he acted in self-defense at the pro-Trump rally: “Had I not acted, I am confident that my friend and, I am sure, I would have been killed, because I wasn’t going to stand there and let something happen.”
Research shows that anti-fascist activists had not been linked to any deadly violence in the US before the shooting in Oregon, despite the president’s repeated warnings about the “far left”. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security regard white supremacists and other far-right groups as the most lethal domestic terror threat.
Washington (CNN)For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.
(CNN)First lady Melania Trump posted a personal essay on the White House website detailing her experience battling Covid-19, which she tested positive for approximately two weeks ago. The first lady also revealed hat her son, Barron Trump, 14, who the White House publicly confirmed at the time had tested negative, eventually tested positive for the virus, a diagnosis the White House did not share.
Electoral college map: Who actually votes, and who do they vote for? Explore how shifts in turnout and voting patterns for key demographic groups could affect the presidential race.
While the overall cost of the Trump administration plan is similar to the price tag of the Democratic bill, major disputes remain unresolved. Democrats have proposed $436 billion in aid for state and local governments that could have to cut essential services as they face increased costs and lower revenue during the pandemic. Mnuchin offered $300 billion for states and municipalities.
Trump, who signed off on his administration’s proposal, again railed against state and local aid on Wednesday. He said he wants to “see the Democrats loosen up a little bit” because “all they want to do is bail out their badly run cities and states.”
The bipartisan National Governors Association has repeatedly asked Congress for $500 billion more in relief. Mnuchin on Wednesday noted that governments laying off employees like firefighters “would have a cost to the federal government in unemployment, but also a cost to the economy.”
The Democrats’ bill also reinstates the $600 per week enhanced federal unemployment insurance through January. The White House proposal would establish a $400 weekly benefit through the third week of January.
Pelosi has faced some pressure within her caucus to either address issues like unemployment insurance in a stand-alone bill or accept a smaller deal from the White House. In a tense interview on CNN on Tuesday night, the California Democrat said members who have criticized her strategy “have no idea about the particulars” of the talks.
Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, has seen criticism for the Senate’s decision to move forward with Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination as jobless Americans await relief. When he announced the Senate’s plans to vote on a limited bill after the chamber returns on Monday, he said lawmakers would have enough time to pass the aid legislation and confirm Barrett before the election.
A lack of new relief could also hurt vulnerable Republican incumbents as the GOP looks to hold its 53-47 Senate majority on Election Day.
Even if Pelosi and Mnuchin can reach an agreement that would earn Democratic votes and Trump’s signature, they could have a difficult time persuading the Senate GOP to support it.
A federal prosecutor handpicked by the attorney general, William Barr, to investigate whether Obama administration officials had mishandled classified intelligence relating to the Russia investigation has wrapped up his work without finding wrongdoing or considering charges, according to the Washington Post.
The conclusion of an investigation by US attorney John Bash into the so-called “unmasking” of names in intelligence reports by Obama officials was seen as a defeat for Donald Trump and Barr, who appeared to be fishing for damaging information that could be used against former vice=president Joe Biden.
“Unsurprising. What a politically-driven waste of [justice department] resources,” tweeted Sam Vinograd, an adviser to the national security council under Barack Obama.
A second federal investigation launched by Barr into Obama-era investigations of Russian election tampering, in this case led by US attorney John Durham of Connecticut, likewise has failed to bear political fruit before the presidential election.
Durham continues to investigate the origins of investigations into Russian election meddling and Trump campaign contacts with Russian operatives. Trump asserts the Trump-Russia investigation was a political hit job.
But the Russia investigation, led by special counsel Robert Mueller resulted in the indictment of 34 individuals and criminal charges against half a dozen Trump associates, including multiple guilty pleas.
Barr told a group of Republican lawmakers earlier this year that Durham would not file a report – much less any charges – before the presidential election, dashing what appeared to be increasingly desperate hopes inside the Trump administration for a Biden-related scandal.
Officials in the executive branch routinely move to “unmask” names in classified intelligence documents in order to better understand the documents, the Post reported.
The “unmasking” conducted during the Obama administration revealed that former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a key figure in the 2016 Trump campaign, was in the crosshairs of the Russia investigation, which had picked up contacts between Flynn and Russian operatives that Flynn later lied about.
That revelation proved to be politically damaging to Trump. The emergence of Flynn’s deep ties to Russian operatives, which he later admitted falsely denying, led to his resignation as national security adviser and was an early blow for the Trump administration.
Trump at the time asked the then FBI director, James Comey, to “go easy” on Flynn, in a scene that would become a central piece of evidence against Trump in Mueller’s investigation of possible obstruction of justice by the president.
That investigation would in turn fuel demands for Trump’s impeachment, after it was revealed that the US president had pressured the Ukrainian president to generate negative headlines about Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
Trump was impeached in December 2019, and acquitted by the Senate in early 2020, but the key players in the scheme that led to his impeachment remained active in trying to fabricate a scandal attached to Biden’s son in advance of the election.
‘The Story’ host Martha MacCallum and Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt join ‘Bill Hemmer Reports’ to discuss
NBC News’ decision to host a town hall event with President Trump at the exact same time as ABC’s already scheduled event with Democratic nominee Joe Biden is getting criticized by staffers at both networks, stunned media watchers and angry viewers calling for a boycott of the network.
“NBC is doing a real disservice to American voters who won’t get to hear from both candidates,” an ABC News insider told Fox News. “They should be ashamed of failing in their public service duty three weeks before a presidential election to chase ratings instead.”
The New Yorker’s Sue Halpern called the decision “stunning and shameful,” while veteran political analyst Jeff Greenfield called it “indefensible.”
The issue was a hot topic on Twitter, where some people even speculated that NBC is trying to help Trump by scheduling the events for the same time while others called to boycott the network. Some of the backlash even came from within the Peacock Network, according to reporter Yasher Ali.
“I’ve heard from over a dozen NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC sources (talent and staff) and the frustration with and anger toward their employer for scheduling a town hall against Biden is palpable,” Ali tweeted.
NBC News determined the format, date, duration and time slot, Fox News has learned from an NBC insider who maintained the Trump campaign did not dictate any logistics of the event.
NBC also determined the format, audience, and chose “Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie as moderator.
The NBC insider told Fox News that the network’s hands were tied when ABC announced the Biden event, as Election Day is only 18 days away and there is another debate next week, leaving available days scarce. NBC wanted the Trump town hall to mirror the Biden event the network hosted last week, and arranged for Trump’s town hall to follow the same format, duration and timeslot.
NBC’s one-hour Trump town hall begins at 8 p.m., while ABC’s Biden town hall with moderator George Stephanopoulos kicks off at 8 p.m. and is scheduled to fill a two-hour window.
Both town halls are scheduled for the day that Trump and Biden were originally going to partake in the now-canceled second presidential debate, which Trump walked away from after it was announced the debate would be held virtually.
Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.
The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.
An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.
The computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019, according to the store’s owner.
Other material extracted from the computer includes a raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter, who’s admitted struggling with addiction problems, smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman, as well as numerous other sexually explicit images.
The customer who brought in the water-damaged MacBook Pro for repair never paid for the service or retrieved it or a hard drive on which its contents were stored, according to the shop owner, who said he tried repeatedly to contact the client.
The shop owner couldn’t positively identify the customer as Hunter Biden, but said the laptop bore a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother and former Delaware attorney general.
Photos of a Delaware federal subpoena given to The Post show that both the computer and hard drive were seized by the FBI in December, after the shop’s owner says he alerted the feds to their existence.
But before turning over the gear, the shop owner says, he made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello.
Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, told The Post about the existence of the hard drive in late September and Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of it on Sunday.
Less than eight months after Pozharskyi thanked Hunter Biden for the introduction to his dad, the then-vice president admittedly pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk into getting rid of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin by threatening to withhold a $1 billion US loan guarantee during a December 2015 trip to Kiev.
“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden infamously bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018.
“Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
Shokin has said that at the time of his firing, in March 2016, he’d made “specific plans” to investigate Burisma that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”
Joe Biden has insisted that the US wanted Shokin removed over corruption concerns, which were shared by the European Union.
Meanwhile, an email dated May 12, 2014 — shortly after Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board — shows Pozharskyi attempting to get him to use his political leverage to help the company.
The message had the subject line “urgent issue” and was also sent to Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, who also sat on the Burisma board at the time.
Pozharskyi said that “the representatives of new authorities in power tend to quite aggressively approach N. Z. unofficially with the aim to obtain cash from him.”
When the alleged shakedown failed, “they proceeded with concrete actions” in the form of “one or more pretrial proceedings,” Pozharskyi wrote.
“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc .to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” he added.
Vadym Pozharskyi and Hunter BidenYalta European Strategy / Getty Images
Hunter Biden responded by saying he was with Archer in Doha, Qatar, and asked for more information about “the formal (if any) accusations being made against Burisma.”
“Who is ultimately behind these attacks on the company? Who in the current interim government could put an end to such attacks?” he added.
The exchange came the same day that Burisma announced it had expanded its board of directors by adding Hunter Biden, who was put in charge of its “legal unit and will provide support for the Company among international organizations,” according to a news release that’s since been scrubbed from Burisma’s website.
Hunter Biden actually joined the board in April 2014, according to multiple reports.
His lawyer said last year that Hunter was “not a member of the management team,” adding, “At no time was Hunter in charge of the company’s legal affairs.”
About four months after Hunter Biden’s correspondence with Pozharskyi, Archer forwarded Hunter Biden an email chain with the subject line “tax raise impact on Burisma production,” which included Pozharskyi saying that the Ukrainian cabinet had submitted new tax legislation to the country’s parliament.
“If enacted, this law would kill the entire private gas production sector in the bud,” Pozharskyi wrote.
In the Sept. 24, 2014, email, Pozharskyi also said he was “going to share this information with the US embassy here in Kyiv, as well as the office of Mr Amos Hochstein in the States.”
At the time, Hochstein was the State Department’s newly appointed special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs.
Devon ArcherPatrick McMullan via Getty Image
In December 2017, the Naftogaz Group, Ukraine’s state-owned energy company, announced that Hochstein had joined the company as an independent director, but on Monday he announced his resignation.
“The company has been forced to spend endless amounts of time combating political pressure and efforts by oligarchs to enrich themselves through questionable transactions,” Hochstein wrote in an op-ed published by the Kyiv Post.
In addition to denying that’s he’s spoken to Hunter Biden about his overseas business dealings, Joe Biden has repeatedly denied any conflict of interest or wrongdoing by either of them involving Burisma.
Last February, he got testy during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show when co-host Savannah Guthrie questioned whether it was “wrong for [Hunter] to take that position, knowing that it was really because that company wanted access to you.”
“Well, that’s not true. You’re saying things you do not know what you’re talking about,” the elder Biden responded.
Last December, Joe Biden also lashed out during a Democratic primary town hall event in Iowa, where a man accused him of sending Hunter to Ukraine “to get a job and work for a gas company, he had no experience with gas or nothing, in order to get access to . . . the president.”
“You’re a damn liar, man. That’s not true and no one has ever said that,” Biden fumed.
Biden then continued berating the man as he stepped forward, called the man “fat” and challenged him to “do push-ups together, man.”
The FBI referred questions about its seizure of the laptop and hard drive to the Delaware US Attorney’s Office, where a spokesperson said, “My office can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyer refused to comment on the specifics but instead attacked Giuliani.
“He has been pushing widely discredited conspiracy theories about the Biden family, openly relying on actors tied to Russian intelligence,” the lawyer, George R. Mesires, said of Giuliani.
Pozharskyi and the Joe Biden campaign did not return requests for comment. Hochstein could not be reached.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s nominee to the US supreme court, returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a final round of questioning about her judicial record and personal views, with her confirmation all but assured despite Democrats’ forceful opposition.
Members of the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday attempted to dig deeper into the conservative judge’s views on the Affordable Care Act, which expanded healthcare cover to millions more Americans under Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation, and abortion rights.
Also on the agenda in this week’s hearings are same-sex marriage, gun control and any potential cases related to the result of the looming 2020 election.
But Barrett, in the tradition of recent supreme court nominees, avoided answering directly about how she would rule on some of the most important issues that the court may be asked to address.
Playing down the conservative positions she expressed in legal writings as an academic and in personal commitments she made as a private citizen, the 48-year-old appellate court judge she had no political agenda and would approach every case with “an open mind”.
Barrett has been nominated to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died last month. The confirmation hearings have halted all other business on Capitol Hill as Republicans, eager to cement a conservative majority on the court for at least a generation, rush to confirm Barrett before the November election.
Opening the session on Wednesday, after nearly 12 hours of questioning the day before, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the committee, celebrated Barrett’s almost inevitable confirmation as a momentous victory for conservatives, and particularly for conservative women, who he said have faced “concrete” social and cultural barriers in public life that do not exist for liberal women.
“This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology, and she is going to the court,” Graham said, referring to anti-abortion views.
“I have never been more proud of the nominee than I am of you,” Graham continued said. “This is history being made, folks.”
In moments of personal reflection during the hearings, Barrett suggested that mockery of her association with People of Praise, the insular Catholic community inspired by charismatic Christianity, as well as commentary about her large family, which includes two adopted children from Haiti, has been painful. But she said while faith was important to her personally, it would not influence her decisions on the supreme court bench.
But she repeatedly declined to say how she would rule on a challenge to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 supreme court decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion. But she declined again on Wednesday to characterize the decision as a “super-precedent” that must not be overturned.
Democrats continued to press their case that her confirmation would imperil the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, arguing that Donald Trump and Republicans were rushing to confirm her before the court hears arguments that could decide the fate of the healthcare law next month. Again, Barrett insisted that she was not “hostile” to the ACA and would decided cases “as they come”.
Republican state officials and the Trump administration are effectively seeking to invalidate the entire healthcare law based on a single part of it.
Though she did not say how she would rule, Barrett expressed skepticism of this view in an extended exchange with Graham. In such cases, the judge said “the presumption is always in favor of severability” – a legal doctrine applied to congressional litigation that she said requires a court to strike down one element while preserving the rest of the law.
On Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans pressed Barrett to expand on her judicial philosophy and asked substantive questions about her views on topics such as abortion, voting rights, same-sex marriage, executive power and a potentially disputed election result.
The committee is expected to vote on 22 October, as Trump pressures the Senate to confirm Barrett before the November election.
A supermajority — two-thirds of respondents, including a solid majority of Republicans — supports a 2 percent tax on households whose total net worth, including stocks and real estate, exceeds $50 million. Support for such a proposal, which was a plank in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s bid for the Democratic nomination, has increased from where it was a year ago.
“Taxes on the rich is an objectively popular policy,” said Sean McElwee, executive director of Data for Progress, a progressive think tank that has polled extensively on support for liberal policy plans. “Over the long term, the wind is in the sails of progressives, in terms of demand from the public.”
Mr. Trump and his party have tried to sow concern about socialism for several years. In the fall of 2018, as midterm elections approached, Mr. Trump’s White House Council of Economic Advisers produced a 72-page report warning of the dangers of socialist policies to the American economy. The White House promoted it in a news release with the headline, “Congressional Democrats Want to Take Money From Hardworking Americans to Fund Failed Socialist Policies.”
In the abstract, the messaging would appear to fit with Americans’ views about economic policy. Polls show a significant majority of Americans approve of “capitalism” and disapprove of “socialism.” But there are movements toward “socialism” in subgroups of the country. Majorities of young voters, and Democrats overall, have a favorable view of the concept.
Some of the split comes from disagreements over how to define the term. Americans who favor socialism tend to associate it with Scandinavian countries like Finland or Denmark, whose economic and social welfare systems are more commonly referred to as the “Nordic model,” the Pew Research Center has found. Its opponents tend to associate it with Venezuela.
That range of definitions has allowed Republicans to lump a growing number of policies favored by liberal groups under the “socialism” banner. In a recent attack, Mr. Trump’s first example of Ms. Harris’s so-called “communist” views was her position on immigration policy, accusing her of wanting to “open up the borders” of the United States.
“In my district, I hear a lot of fear about the dramatic turn the Democratic Party has taken toward socialism,” Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview. “My constituents are fearful when they see proposals to defund the police, abolish our immigration and customs enforcement, when there is burning and looting in cities, concerns over the Green New Deal.”
It’s October in a year when President Donald Trump is running for reelection — and, as if on cue, the mysteriously obtained private emails of someone close to his opponent have been leaked.
The leaker in this case is President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy of a hard drive that contains photos and purported emails of Joe Biden’s son Hunter to the New York Post.
It’s not clear whether the supposed emails, which involve Hunter and the Ukrainian gas company he worked for, Burisma, are authentic. What’s even less clear is how they ended up making their way to Giuliani — and whether illegality or foreign interference might have been involved. During the 2016 campaign, Russian intelligence officers hacked Democrats’ emails and provided them to WikiLeaks, and the release of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails occurred in the final weeks before Election Day.
But Hunter Biden has long been central to Trump’s reelection strategy. In fact, Trump was impeached last year due to his and Giuliani’s efforts to drum up a scandal related to the Bidens and Burisma. So now, less than three weeks before the election and with Trump trailing in polls, Giuliani appears to be picking up where he left off.
The story of where this hard drive came from is extremely strange
Considering what happened in 2016, one question that has naturally arisen here is: Was Hunter Biden’s information hacked or stolen and then provided to Giuliani?
The New York Post tells a convoluted story to explain how Giuliani got the emails — a story that raises far more questions than it answers.
It all started, according to the Post, in April 2019, when an unidentified man went to a Delaware computer repair shop, to drop off a water-damaged laptop with a “Beau Biden Foundation” sticker (a charitable foundation started in memory of Hunter’s late brother).
The shop owner (who was interviewed by the Post as an anonymous source) claims the man never returned to reclaim the laptop. But he says he recovered data from it and, lo and behold, he discovered there were emails and photos related to Hunter Biden.
The shop owner claims he told the federal government about it, and they seized the laptop and hard drive in December 2019. But he claims he copied the hard drive first and provided it to Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello.
Months later, somehow, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon (who was indicted on fraud charges in August) learned of the hard drive and told the Post. Finally, Giuliani provided the hard drive to the New York Post last Sunday, after having apparently kept it under wraps for about 10 months.
This is a curious tale. Even if we take it at face value, it is unclear who dropped off the laptop (with the conveniently identifying sticker) during the very month conservative media started covering Burisma. It’s also unclear why that person never reclaimed it, why Hunter Biden’s information was on it, why the shop owner would hand it over to Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, and what the interest of the federal government was.
Giuliani has also spent months working with Andrii Derkach, a member of the Ukrainian parliament whom the US Treasury Department recently sanctioned as a Russian agent waging a “covert influence campaign” to affect the US election (by releasing information about purported Biden wrongdoing). Additionally, Burisma was reportedly hacked late last year and a security firm attributed that hack to the Russian military. So there are many reasons to question what actually happened here.
It’s unclear whether the emails are authentic and what they mean
Evidently there were some photos of Hunter Biden on the hard drive (the New York Post has published them), and the reporters claim an explicit video of Hunter is on there as well.
But that does not necessarily mean the emails on the hard drive are authentic and unaltered. It would certainly be possible for a nefarious actor to fabricate or alter some documents among a trove of largely accurate ones. (Indeed, the Post story does not mention any effort to authenticate the emails.)
Then there’s the larger problem that, even if the emails are authentic, bits from them can be selectively chosen and spun out of context to make misleading claims.
Trump’s team has spread the unfounded conspiracy theory that Joe Biden forced out Ukraine’s prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to protect Burisma and his son from an investigation. This theory makes little sense, as it was the consensus position of the US government and Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund to oust Shokin due to his corruption and ineffectiveness. But Trump’s aim is to paint Biden as corrupt, in a repeat of his 2016 strategy against Hillary Clinton.
Now, the Post is touting one purported email from Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi as a scandalous “smoking gun.” In the purported email, Pozharskyi thanks Hunter for “inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together,” and proposes meeting that day. But there’s no confirmation the meeting with then-Vice President Biden happened or, if it did, that the two men discussed Shokin. (A Biden campaign spokesperson told Politico that they reviewed the VP’s official schedules and that “no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”)
Hunter has had drug use issues in the past, and he took lucrative jobs for foreign companies or clients that he appeared not to be qualified for. But there’s been a history of misleading information and outright misinformation pushed about him — often involving Giuliani and Bannon, both of whom were involved in this as well. So supposed bombshell revelations from questionable sources in the days before the election should be viewed with a great deal of skepticism.
The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes. It’s essential that all Americans are able to access clear, concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives, and the lives of their families and communities. That is our mission at Vox. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work. If you have already contributed, thank you. If you haven’t, please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election: Contribute today from as little as $3.
Christian Cooper, a birdwatcher who frequents that area of the park, spotted the woman and asked her to put her dog on a leash. He considered himself a protector of the area, which serves as an urban haven for local fowl. He has said that he tried to lure the dog with a treat, which he carried with him for such situations.
MADISON – A Sawyer County judge has, for now, blocked Gov. Tony Evers’ latest order to curb the spread of coronavirus by limiting public gatherings and the number of customers bars and restaurants may serve at one time.
The order from Judge John Yackel knocks down the order at a time of record hospitalizations, new cases and deaths — and after bars and restaurants have lost a massive amount of revenue as customers stay away while the pandemic rages on in the state.
Wednesday’s decision blocks enforcement and requires attorneys for Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm to appear in court on Monday to defend the order and argue why it should not be put on hold while the lawsuit brought by a Sawyer County restaurant and the Tavern League of Wisconsin is litigated.
“This is a dangerous decision that leaves our state without a statewide effort to contain this virus,” Evers’ spokeswoman Britt Cudaback said. “We will be challenging the decision, and in the meantime, we need Wisconsinites to stay home and help us prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
Democratic state Sen. LaTonya Johnson of Milwaukee said if the decision becomes permanent, the state will be exacerbating the already out-of-control spread in the state.
“Make no mistake, if this dangerous decision stands, Wisconsin will be choosing full bars over full classrooms. What a pathetic set of priorities to teach our children,” she tweeted.
The governor’s emergency order seeks to reduce public interaction to curb the spread of the coronavirus by capping customers to 25% of the establishment’s capacity limit, which is a “defacto closure,” the Tavern League of Wisconsin argues.
The plaintiffs, the Flambeau Forest Inn in the village of Winter and the Sawyer County Tavern League and the statewide Tavern League, argue the limits should have been implemented through a process known as rulemaking.
Tavern League lobbyist Scott Stenger said 25% capacity means it costs more to be open than to be closed for many bars and restaurants. He said the league would be open to a higher capacity limit.
Evers’ spokeswoman said Tuesday the order “is consistent with the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year, and we continue to ask everyone to do their part to prevent the spread of this virus by staying home, limiting travel and gatherings, and wearing face coverings whenever in public.”
The lawsuit argues the Flambeau Forest Inn has been harmed by the order because it does not have official capacity limits; the restaurant must limit its customers to 10 people under the state order.
The restaurant’s dining space includes seating for 60 people, and its bar has seating for an additional 25 patrons, according to the filing.
“If Flambeau were forced to operate at a 10-person capacity, it could only include five customers onsite with the five staff normally required to operate the bar and restaurant,” according to the lawsuit.
A former Navy Seal famous for his role in the killing of Osama bin Laden has criticized the president for promoting a conspiracy theory that the former Taliban leader is still alive and a body double was shot.
Robert O’Neill, who claims to be the one who actually shot and killed Bin Laden during the raid in 2011, posted a series of tweets attacking the president and those who believe the claim.
“Very brave men said good bye to their kids to go kill Osama bin Laden. We were given the order by President Obama,” O’Neill tweeted. “It was not a body double. Thank you Mr. President.”
In a follow-up joke, he added: “S**t. I just found out that I killed Osama bin Johnson. Drinks are on me, I guess…”
In a response to one account, O’Neil wrote: “I know who I killed, homie. Every time.”
On Tuesday, Trump retweeted a post from a since suspended account that suggested former President Barack Obama and his Vice President Joe Biden colluded to stage the killing of the 9/11 mastermind with Iran.
“Hiden Biden and Obama may have had Seal Team 6 killed! EXPLOSIVE: CIA Whistleblower Exposes Biden’s Alleged Role with the Deaths of Seal Team- Claims to have Documented Proof. RETWEET!!!” the tweet read.
The conspiracy theory, which was pushed by QAnon supporters, claims Bin Laden’s body double was actually killed in the raid and that Biden then ordered a Navy Seal helicopter be shot down in order to stop the “truth” from coming out.
As noted by The Daily Beast, Trump’s retweet of the outlandish claims marks “what is perhaps the president’s strangest brush yet with far-right conspiracy theories.”
Trump also retweeted another video claiming, without evidence, that “three former CIA Directors involved in keeping bin Laden alive in Iran, moved him from Iran to Pakistan for Obama’s trophy kill.”
A number of people criticized O’Neill for the tweet, including those who thought it was in reference to an elderly man wearing a United States Marine Corps hat seen in the background of the photo, who was wearing a mask.
“I am not the bad guy. I killed the bad guy,” he tweeted.
Responding to the ban, O’Neil wrote: “Thank God it wasn’t @Delta flying us in when we killed bin Laden… we weren’t wearing masks…”
In a statement, Delta said that failure to comply with their mask-wearing mandate policies amid the coronavirus pandemic can result in losing the ability to fly with the airline in the future.
During Tuesday’s confirmation hearing, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, asked Judge Barrett about her views on climate change. “You know, I’m certainly not a scientist,” she said, and added that “I have read things about climate change — I would not say I have firm views on it.”
“It’s a dodge that fails to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing the planet to warm,” said Ann Carlson, a faculty director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at U.C.L.A. School of Law, who said she found Judge Barrett’s statement “disturbing.”
She continued, “Judge Barrett is a smart, highly educated person who has spent most of her career in a job that rewards knowledge and intellect. For her not to have firm views on climate change is almost unbelievable.”
It is also important to the Supreme Court. In past decisions, the justices have accepted that human-caused climate change is occurring and determined that the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate greenhouse gases in the case Massachusetts v. E.P.A., but a more conservative Supreme Court might revisit the issue.
To Professor Carlson, Judge Barrett’s seemingly anodyne answer “seems like a pretty strong signal to those in the know that she is skeptical of regulating greenhouse gases.”
Sean Hannity breaks down day two of Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings
Judge Amy Coney Barrett “ran circles” around Democratic senators on day two of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings with her “calm, unflappable demeanor and a solid command of facts,” Sean Hannity said Tuesday.
“She made them, frankly, look stupid, unprepared, desperate,” the Fox News host told “Hannity” viewers. “She exposed the absolute hatred that now defines this new radical, insane, and extreme Democratic socialist party.”
Hannity pointed to one exchange in which Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., asked Barrett about her preparation and whether she had brought notes to help with the hours of grueling and highly technical questioning on judicial matters.
“You know most of us have multiple notebooks and notes and books and things like that in front of us,” Cornyn said. “Can you hold up what you’ve been referring to in answering our questions?”
Hannity praised Barrett’s confidence and “solid command of facts,” which left “Democrats completely outmatched, [and] completely outclassed.”
“They are engaging in little more than performance theater, a baby temper tantrum here and there, ” he said,” calling their line of attack something we are “frankly very familiar with.”
Trump shared the image as he and Biden wage a fierce battle for older voters, a demographic that Trump carried in 2016 but which recent polling suggests has moved away from the president. Biden, 77, has sought to capitalize on that trend, traveling to a senior center in Florida on Tuesday to argue that Trump, 74, has neglected older Americans.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
