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Source Article from http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1873288-noticias-en-30
In this image released by the U.S. Coast Guard, a helicopter hovers over the overturned Golden Ray cargo vessel in St. Simons Sound, Ga., on Monday. Twenty of the 24 people on board had been rescued as of Sunday afternoon, when crews were forced to suspend the search because of safety concerns related to a fire on the ship.
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In this image released by the U.S. Coast Guard, a helicopter hovers over the overturned Golden Ray cargo vessel in St. Simons Sound, Ga., on Monday. Twenty of the 24 people on board had been rescued as of Sunday afternoon, when crews were forced to suspend the search because of safety concerns related to a fire on the ship.
AP
Updated at 1:29 p.m. ET
The U.S. Coast Guard says all four crew members missing after a cargo vessel overturned early Sunday in waters off the coast of Brunswick, Ga., are alive and that rescue crews are working to get supplies to them.
The Miami-based Coast Guard’s 7th District Southeast said in a tweet around 12:45 p.m. ET Monday: “All 4 #GoldenRay crew members are confirmed alive. Conditions unknown. Response crews will drill a hole to deliver supplies.”
Hours earlier, the Coast Guard had said on Twitter that rescue workers were making extraction plans after making contact with those still trapped aboard the Golden Ray, a 656-foot vehicle carrier.
The message included short videos of salvage crews appearing to puncture the hull of the ship.
Rescue crews have been working since Sunday to locate the missing crew members after the Golden Ray became disabled and eventually overturned in St. Simons Sound, about 80 miles south of Savannah, Ga.
Emergency responders were notified shortly after 2 a.m. ET that a ship was disabled and “listing heavy” to its port side. A total of 23 crew members and a pilot were on the vessel at the time, and 20 people had been rescued from the ship Sunday, Coast Guard officials said.
However, Capt. John Reed, commander of Coast Guard Sector Charleston, said Sunday afternoon that rescue operations had been temporarily suspended because of safety concerns related to a fire on the ship.
“As smoke and flames began to appear, our crews … assessed the situation was too risky to further go inside the vessel to attempt to locate the four individuals who remain missing at this time,” Reed said.
Investigators are still working to determine what caused the ship, which is sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands, to overturn.
U.S. Coast Guard crews and port partners respond to a disabled cargo vessel with a fire on board Sunday in St. Simons Sound, off the coast of Brunswick, Ga.
U.S. Coast Guard via AP
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U.S. Coast Guard crews and port partners respond to a disabled cargo vessel with a fire on board Sunday in St. Simons Sound, off the coast of Brunswick, Ga.
U.S. Coast Guard via AP
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/759022916/coast-guard-salvage-crews-have-made-contact-with-crew-on-overturned-ship
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/25/us/california-fires-sunday/index.html
Across the country, workers were steeling themselves for months of disruptions to come.
“I’ve been working through most of the pandemic, and I hadn’t tested positive before Omicron,” said Amelia Smoak, 29, who works at a restaurant and bar in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood. She is fully vaccinated but recently recovered from a mild case of Covid. She added that business has gotten far slower as case counts rise: “Tips have been stable, but head count went down drastically.”
Scientists are projecting that the country’s sharp increase in cases will crest by the middle of January. But much about the new variant remains uncertain, and experts remain worried that hospitals might be overwhelmed.
The number of cases in New York continues to rise steeply, yet city school officials have vowed to keep schools open, embracing increased testing as an alternative to closing classrooms.
Schools in Chicago, Washington and most other major cities have announced they also plan to reopen this week, many with increased testing regimens. But some districts — including public schools in Cleveland; Prince George’s County, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C.; Newark, N.J.; Mt. Vernon, N.Y.; and Jersey City, N.J. — will transition to remote learning for one week or more in January.
In Chicago, where businesses have remained open as cases have spiked to their highest levels of the pandemic, public school leaders said they planned to return to class as scheduled on Monday despite concerns from the city’s powerful teachers’ union about safety precautions.
“If they shut down the restaurants, they shut down all the events, every component of the city and state, then hey, I’m not going to put my families at risk, I’m not going to force them to take their children to school,” said Pedro Martinez, the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools. He added: “But short of that, what is the logic of thinking that somehow shutting down schools is going to help this pandemic? I don’t see the logic.”
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/01/us/omicron-covid-pandemic-despair.html
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(CNN)The chief executive of the National Rifle Association told the group’s board he is being extorted and pressured to resign by the organization’s president, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/politics/nra-extortion-pressure-to-resign/index.html
Democrats should bring back the “kiddie table” debates.
On Friday, Democrats announced that after a random drawing, the 20 Democratic candidates participating in the first set of primary debates next week will be split into the following two groups:
NEWS – the Democratic debate groups
PURPLE: bernie, harris, biden, buttigieg, bennet, williamson, swalwell gillibrand, yang, hickenlooper
ORANGE: booker, warren, beto, klobuchar, delaney, tulsi, castro, ryan, de blasio, Inslee
NBC will now decide which night goes first
— Reid J. Epstein (@reidepstein)
June 14, 2019
What this means in practice is that the surging Massachussetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has been threatening Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ grip on second place, will be stuck on stage with candidates in the low-single digits, while self-help author Marianne Williamson, who has barely registered in polls, gets to debate Sanders, Joe Biden, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., — in other words, the other candidates with relatively decent polling. This is totally ridiculous.
During the 2016 nominating process, in response to a historically crowded field, Republicans decided to split their candidates up by their polling averages, creating a main event with the higher polling candidates, and an “undercard” debate with the ones with lower polling. The undercard debate was mocked mercilessly, and the DNC was determined to avoid the appearance of a “kiddie table” debacle lest they be accused of tipping the scales toward one candidate or against another, and so they decided to go with a random lottery system.
The DNC may want to avoid charges of rigging the system that plagued them in 2016, but at the end of the day, managing a field of over 20 candidates is going to always create problems and require certain arbitrary decisions. The criteria for qualifying for the debate, for instance, is already coming under criticism for denying a spot to Montana Gov. Steve Bullock.
For all its flaws, the “kiddie table” provided all candidates with the ability to be on a debate stage, but ensured that the leading candidates would be able to debate with each other.
Sure, one could argue that Warren could shine by essentially being the leader on her debate stage. But this isn’t about her campaign as much as it is to voters. And voters trying to decide between Warren and other candidates should get to see her on the same stage as those she’s realistically competing with.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bring-back-the-kiddie-table-debates
Washington Governor Jay Inslee is expected to ban gatherings of more than 250 people in most of the Seattle metro area, while the state braces for potentially tens of thousands of more cases of coronavirus. Inslee also outlined new rules for nursing homes, which have been hit hard by the coronavirus.
Public health officials said at least 10 long-term care facilities in the Seattle area have reported cases. Patients have died at three of those facilities. Of the 32 people who’ve died from coronavirus in the U.S., 20 of them are linked to the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington.
Bridget Parkhill’s mother recently tested positive for coronavirus at the Life Care Center. She and her sister now visit by standing outside her window.
“It wasn’t a shock that she was positive,” Parkhill told CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti. “It should have been a priority to get everybody tested so they could get all the negative people out of here before they turned positive.”
But a shortage of tests meant only the critically ill were prioritized.
Another long-term care facility that has reported coronavirus cases, the Josephine Caring Community, is in lockdown, CEO Terry Robertson said.
“No visitors, no consultants and no families. And I can tell you that’s incredibly tough,” he said.
In Northern California, officials confirmed Tuesday that an assisted living resident in their 90s died after getting the virus. And a recent study examining coronavirus cases in China found that in people over 80 years old, the death rate was nearly 15%.
In Seattle’s King County, 74 more cases were announced Tuesday, bringing the statewide total to more than 260.
“If you do the math, it gets very disturbing,” Inslee said.
The new nursing home rules outlined by the governor include limiting patients to one visitor per day and screening employees and volunteers for symptoms at the start of their shift.
“The number of people who are infected in an epidemic like this will double in the state of Washington unless we take some real action here,” he said.
Industry groups have issued recommendations for those whose family members live in nursing homes. They said you should ask your loved one’s facility about its plans for cleaning and staffing, keep in touch remotely for now, and monitor instead of move. Leaving the facility could put the elderly at much higher risk, officials said.
Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-washington-seattle-nursing-home-possible-ban-on-gatherings/
A variety of MSNBC and CNN hosts made cameos during Attorney General William Barr’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday when Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, used his opening statement to put an emphasis on mainstream media’s efforts to paint sometimes violent protesters as “peaceful.”
“I want to thank you for defending law enforcement, for pointing out what a crazy idea this defund the police policy … whatever you want to call it, is, and standing up for the rule of law,” Jordan said. “We have a video we want to show that gets right to this point.”
JONATHAN TURLEY. BLASTS CNN’S BRIAN STELTER OVER SANDMANN RETWEET
Jordan then played a powerful video montage featuring a variety of mainstream media members referring to recent protests as “peaceful,” which included everyone from CNN’s Don Lemon to NBC News’ Chuck Todd dismissing violence amid images of burning buildings and attacks on law enforcement.
The video — which irked House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. — featured MSNBC host Ali Velshi famously declaring he was covering a “mostly a protest” despite a building burning right behind him.
“It is not, generally speaking, unruly,” Velshi said.
Rachel Maddow, Chris Cuomo and Willie Geist also appeared in the Republican exhibit.
The words “peaceful protest” were uttered by more than a dozen pundits before footage of the widow of retired St. Louis police Capt. David Dorn speaking about her husband’s tragic death began.
Dorn was murdered amid riots and looting on June 2 while working to protect a pawn shop. His widow spoke about the senseless death as additional footage of law enforcement officers being attacked by protesters played as part of Jordan’s video.
Barr looked on as the dramatic footage was played, portraying chaos in many of America’s major cities since George Floyd was killed in police custody in May.
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When the video ended, Nadler, snarked, “I hope that Mr. Jordan will never complain about the length of my opening statement.”
Nadler then complained the video was not within the committe’s protocol.
“Without objection, I am going to insert committee’s audio-visual policy into the record of this hearing, and note that the minority did not give the 48 hours notice required,” he said.
Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/don-lemon-chuck-todd-barr-hearing-jim-jordan
A federal judge overseeing a sprawling lawsuit about homelessness in Los Angeles ordered the city and county Tuesday to offer some form of shelter or housing to the entire homeless population of skid row by October.
Judge David O. Carter granted a preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs in the case last week and now is telling the city and county that they must offer single women and unaccompanied children on skid row a place to stay within 90 days, help families within 120 days and finally, by Oct. 18, offer every homeless person on skid row housing or shelter.
It’s unclear whether the city and county will challenge the order, which also calls for the city to put $1 billion into an escrow account — an idea that has raised concerns among city officials.
The ruling argues that L.A. city and county wrongly focused on permanent housing at the expense of more temporary shelter, “knowing that massive development delays were likely while people died in the streets.” That element of the order underscores the judge’s skepticism of a core part of L.A.’s current strategy to tackle homelessness.
“Los Angeles has lost its parks, beaches, schools, sidewalks, and highway systems due to the inaction of city and county officials who have left our homeless citizens with no other place to turn,” Carter wrote in a 110-page brief sprinkled with quotes from Abraham Lincoln and an extensive history of how skid row was first created.
“All of the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgeting cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis — that year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets.” Last year more than 1,300 homeless people died in Los Angeles County.
In the last homeless count in January 2020, more than 4,600 unhoused people were found to be living on skid row — about 2,500 in large shelters and 2,093 on the streets. They account for only slightly more than 10% of the city’s overall homeless population, and it’s not clear what Carter’s order might mean for other parts of the city.
The judge wrote that “after adequate shelter is offered,” he would allow the city to enforce laws that keep streets and sidewalks clear of tents so long as they’re consistent with previous legal rulings that have limited the enforcement of such rules. That appears to only apply to skid row.
He also ordered the county to offer “support services to all homeless residents who accept the offer of housing” including placements in “appropriate emergency, interim, or permanent housing and treatment services.” The costs would be split by the city and county, he said.
Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said Tuesday that city lawyers are reviewing the order. He declined to comment further.
Skip Miller, partner at the Miller Barondess law firm, which is outside counsel for the county in the lawsuit, said the county is “now evaluating our options, including the possibility of an appeal.”
Previously, the county had asked to be removed from the case, arguing that it was about the city and that the county was aggressively responding to homelessness without any direction from the court. It cited efforts that included spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually through the Measure H sales tax and developing innovative strategies such as Project Roomkey in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Project Roomkey is a state program that provides temporary funding for cities and counties to rent hotel rooms for homeless people during the pandemic.
The push for an injunction “is an attempt by property owners and businesses to rid their neighborhood of homeless people,” Miller said.
“There is no legal basis for an injunction because the county is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on proven strategies,” he added.
Matthew Umhofer, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, said he and his clients were ecstatic. Carter’s call for action was what they had been looking for when they filed the case, he said, and why they sought out Carter, who had overseen similar cases in Orange County in recent years, to preside over it.
“This is exactly the kind of aggressive emergency action that we think is necessary on the issue of homelessness in Los Angeles,” Umhofer said.
The Alliance is a coalition of downtown business owners and residents that filed the case in March 2020, accusing the city and county of breaching their duty to abate a nuisance, reducing property value without compensation, wasting public funds and violating the state environmental act and state and federal acts protecting people with disabilities.
Carter’s order came the day that Mayor Eric Garcetti released his budget for the next fiscal year, which includes nearly $1 billion in spending on homelessness. The longtime federal judge also ordered “that $1 billion, as represented by Mayor Garcetti, will be placed in escrow forthwith.”
Of the $1 billion in homeless spending planned by Garcetti, more than a third would come from Proposition HHH, the 2016 bond measure to build permanent housing for homeless residents. Garcetti aides said they expect the city will be building or developing 89 HHH projects over the next fiscal year, for a total of 5,651 housing units.
Whether Carter’s order will disrupt those activities is unclear. In his order, the judge said he wants a report in 90 days of every developer receiving funds from HHH, as well as new regulations to “limit the possibility of funds being wasted.”
At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Garcetti declined to say whether the city would file an appeal of the order, saying he first wants to read it. But he suggested that Carter’s order could slow down the construction of HHH projects.
“Roadblocks masquerading as progress are the last things we need,” he said.
Because the $1 billion for homelessness doesn’t yet exist — some of it hasn’t arrived from Washington and none of it has been approved by the City Council for the coming year — Garcetti said he also fears the city will be asked instead to put some other source of money in the escrow account.
The mayor’s proposed budget, set for release Tuesday, comes at a moment of heightened frustration over the city’s handling of homelessness.
Carter has also asked for a number of reports from city and county officials about how money for combating homelessness has been and is currently being spent. He has also ordered that the city and county cease any sales or transfers of city or county property before such reports are provided.
The lengthy ruling also skewered corruption scandals involving housing projects, “excessive delays and skyrocketing costs” under the HHH bond measure, and L.A.’s failure to seek federal reimbursement for Project Roomkey rooms.
Councilman Kevin de León, whose district includes skid row, welcomed the judge’s decision. Although L.A. needs more clarity about setting aside $1 billion, he said, the tight timeframe to offer shelter or housing to skid row residents “lights a fire under the city to act with a real sense of urgency and to match the rhetoric with real outcomes to save lives.”
“It’s a strong shot across the bow — and he is expecting action,” de León said. “Not continued negotiations or studying everything to death.”
Pete White, executive director of the skid row-based Los Angeles Community Action Network, which is an intervenor in the case, said his organization had “grown concerned that politicians are using this litigation to justify investment in emergency shelters instead of housing.”
“We all know that shelters won’t solve our housing crisis, and they definitely won’t address the structural racism that got us here in the first place.”
Skid row activist and resident Jeff Page echoed White , saying the tight window for moving people means they won’t be going to permanent housing but instead to “dorm style living that in and of itself is problematic.” What’s needed, he said, is more permanent housing in the neighborhood to be built as quickly as possible.
“We need more housing here. We need more services,” he said.
In his order, Carter outlined historic forms of discrimination that had cut Black people out of housing opportunities, including redlining, segregated systems of assistance during the Great Depression, highway construction that displaced Black families, and criminalization that has disproportionately affected Black communities.
Racial inequity has continued to color government handling of the crisis, Carter concluded, opining that current city and county policies “compound and perpetuate structural racism, threatening the integrity of Black families in Los Angeles and forcing a disproportionate number of Black families to go unhoused.”
The judge has previously compared the situation to the aftermath of the seminal civil rights case Brown vs. Board of Education, saying there are times when the federal judiciary may need to act “after a long period of inaction by local government officials.”
Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School, called the 110-page order a “deep dive into the problems of homelessness in Los Angeles and an expression of Carter’s frustration with how the city and county have responded to this crisis.” She noted that judges in the South during the 1950s and 1960s had used similarly expansive injunctions to make desegregation a reality and in other cases to implement prison reform.
She wasn’t sure how a higher court might rule if this case ends up getting appealed but said it was “certainly a landmark decision.”
“It is an open question whether the appellate court will step in,” she said. “As Judge Carter acknowledges, there is usually a hearing before such an order. However, he has loaded up his decision with facts that he says obviate the need for a hearing. The judge has made a bold move.”
News of the injunction had not trickled down to the streets of skid row Tuesday, but people reacted favorably when informed of it. Hasan Saleem, 58, who was sitting outside his tent on 6th Street, said he would take housing “right away” if offered, even if it takes 180 days. Still, he remained skeptical.
“I wouldn’t mind waiting if it was true,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s true or not.”
“It’s better than how they used to do it when they just take your stuff and put you to jail,” said Peaceful Bolden, who was standing with a small group across the street from the Los Angeles Mission. “At least they’re trying.”
But Bolden said she did not think housing alone would be enough.
“Some of these people are just refugees from whatever life they used to have,” she said. “They need mental health. They need hospice, some of them. A lot of them don’t want to leave because they don’t want to be under anyone’s rules.”
Andy Bales, president and CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, had heard the news and hailed it as the “wall of reality” that the city and county are finally running into.
“It’s what I came to Union Rescue Mission to accomplish,” Bales said. “I’ve always wanted to decentralize skid row and regionalize Services throughout the County. My hope is this will do that.”
Times staff writers David Zahniser and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-04-20/judge-carter-la-city-county-shelter-skid-row-homeless-fall
The last of up to 15,000 Haitian migrants have been cleared from their encampment underneath and near a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, the US homeland security secretary announced on Friday, ending one stage of a damaging episode for the Biden administration.
Repercussions continued at the end of a week that brought “horrifying” images of migrants being rounded up by border agents on horseback, and others of pregnant women and children without food or water in blazing desert heat.
“As of this morning, there are no longer any migrants at the camp underneath the Del Rio international bridge,” Alejandro Mayorkas said at a White House briefing, confirming that 2,000 migrants had been “repatriated” to Haiti on 17 flights.
About 8,000 had voluntarily returned to Mexico, he said, and about 5,000 were being processed by homeland security agents.
“Some have been returned to Haiti, indeed,” Mayorkas said. “Others have been moved to different processing facilities along the border in light of operational capacity. And then many of them will be returned to Haiti from there.
“If any of the exceptions apply they will not be returned to Haiti but placed in immigration enforcement proceedings. Some of them are detained, some of them are placed on alternatives to detention. We remain in touch with them, we monitor them to ensure their appearance in court at the designated time.”
The administration has faced blistering criticism for its handling of the crisis, from Republicans and Democrats including Julián Castro, a former presidential candidate and housing secretary under Barack Obama.
He told the Guardian in an interview he was “baffled” why Biden had said little about “images of Haitians being treated like animals”.
Castro said Biden risked the collapse of the coalition that helped to elect him if he didn’t live up to his campaign promise of “compassion and common sense” in immigration.
Mayorkas promised an investigation into conditions in Del Rio and treatment of those who were there.
“In the midst of meeting these challenges, we, our entire nation, saw horrifying images that do not reflect who we are, who we aspire to be, or the integrity and values of our truly heroic personnel in the Department of Homeland Security,” Mayorkas said.
“We know that those images painfully conjured up the worst elements of our nation’s ongoing battle against systemic racism.”
In response to a question about the scale of the inquiry, Mayorkas promised it would be far-reaching and probably uncomfortable, but said his department would have no problem making its findings public.
“I know how to maintain the integrity of an investigation, and this investigation will have integrity,” he said.
Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/24/del-rio-encampment-immigration-texas
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(CNN)A 36-year-old nurse has been arrested on suspicion of impregnating a woman in a vegetative state who unexpectedly gave birth last month at a Phoenix health care facility, police said Wednesday.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/health/arizona-woman-birth-vegetative-state/index.html
Pacific Gas & Electric Company announced Friday that it has reached another settlement in relation to a number of deadly fires.
PG&E said the settlement is valued at approximately $13.5 billion and will cover individual claims for fires from 2015-2018. The settlement covers the 2018 Camp Fire, 2017 Tubbs Fire, 2015 Butte Fire and 2016 Ghost Ship fire in Oakland.
“I’m glad. Those people have been waiting a lot longer than we have,” Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said Saturday.
Jones said that while it’s unclear how the money will eventually be divided, it’s a positive step for the utility.
“I think it’s encouraging that they’ve reached agreement on a number because that perhaps means that this is going to get done in a timely manner, and the victims are going to get compensated,” she said.
Some in Paradise, though, said the damage there is permanent and don’t believe there will be enough to make each Camp Fire survivor whole.
“There’s not really a dollar amount that they’re going to be able to put that’s going to make this OK,” said Victoria Sinclaire.
Sinclaire moved into her brand-new Paradise home in July. It was the first completed rebuild for the town. Her daughter and her mother also lost their homes, she said.
In the 13 months since the Camp Fire, she said talking about her escape from the state’s deadliest and most destructive fire has become easier with the help of counseling. Still, she sleeps with a fire extinguisher by her bed.
It’s the lingering effect she worries won’t be covered by the settlement.
“Will that make people whole again at least financially that maybe were underinsured or not insured at all? Or even those of us who were insured? Is that going to make it better?” she asked. “Is it going to make it whole? And will that pay for the years of counseling we all need to be able to deal with this and the aftermath of what it caused in our communities?”
The news also comes after the company had two previous settlements, one for $1 billion with cities and other public entities and another for $11 billion related to insurance claims from 2017 and 2018 wildfires, the company noted.
“We know some of that (settlement) will go to governments and some of that will go to attorneys. So, we don’t know the exact number coming back to victims yet. That will all come out in the wash,” said Kelly Brothers, KCRA 3 financial expert. “What it means for the bankruptcy judge? Not sure either. I think it improves the chances they emerge from bankruptcy as a company.”
Bankruptcy court must still approve the settlement, which the company said would set it on path to emerge from bankruptcy by June 30, 2020, which is the deadline to join the state’s $21 billion wildfire fund under Assembly Bill 1054.
One big question remains, however, according to Brothers.
“Now, what money is left to do the upgrades and the improvements we know PG&E needs? Those decades of deferred maintenance are still out there. Fire season is six months away. What happens when we have the next fire?” he wondered.
Brothers said one strategy PG&E might consider is selling off some of its grid to cities poised to run it themselves. That money, he said, could be used to finance improvements and upgrades.
Source Article from https://www.kcra.com/article/paradise-residents-express-concern-over-pgande-wildfire-settlement-california/30158827
The White House switchboard dialled a phone associated with a January 6 rioter after it was clear the deadly Capitol attack had failed to prevent the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new book.
The book from former Republican congressman and House January 6 select committee adviser Denver Riggleman says the connection was an outgoing call routed through the switchboard at 4.34pm, and it was answered by an unnamed rioter who allegedly has since been charged by the justice department with a role in the storming of the Capitol.
Riggleman’s book, titled The Breach, was reviewed by the Guardian in advance of its scheduled publication on Tuesday, and it has already become controversial after the select committee decried the work as an incomplete account that lacked information to which he was not privy once he left the panel’s inquiry in April.
But in describing his work for the investigation and how he led a team analyzing call detail records, Riggleman offers previously unreported details about the White House calls around January 6 as well as the contacts around Trump’s political operatives, including Roger Stone and Alex Jones.
The White House switchboard call was identified because call detail records give information about “seizure times” that indicate whether a call is answered, the book explains. In this case, the book says, there was a seizure time, indicating the call was completed.
Riggleman also details other instances of connections between the White House and people connected to the Capitol attack, writing that before January 6, the president of an organization known as Latinos for Trump – closely connected to the Proud Boys group – also received a call from the White House.
The Latinos for Trump president, Bianca Gracia, had a total of five connections with White House root numbers starting 202-881 or 202-456, the book said: she placed four outgoing calls and received one incoming call.
The significance of the calls was not immediately clear. Sources close to the select committee have insisted that investigators chased down the leads uncovered by Riggleman and his team, but the panel could not conclusively determine the calls’ content or whether their nature was nefarious.
Despite being close with the former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, and meeting with him in an underground parking garage near the Capitol the evening before the insurrection, Gracia was also chief of staff for Latinos for Trump. Therefore, Gracia’s calls may have been innocuous.
Among other possible explanations, the sources said, was that she may have been in touch with a person on the Trump campaign or a person helping organize the Ellipse rally, or perhaps the White House may have reached Gracia when she had a tour of the complex around Christmas.
The book also describes some of the sources and methods that Riggleman used to create phone link maps of “persons of interest” in the investigation, including the extensive effort to try to unravel who Stone was speaking with in the post-2020 election period.
Stone was one of more than 20 “high-priority targets” but the panel faced an uphill battle identifying his contacts after he refused to voluntarily allow the select committee to obtain his call detail records, forcing investigators to work backwards through associates, the book says.
The select committee was able to construct a detailed map of Stone’s contacts after obtaining the call detail records of Kristin Davis, also known as the Manhattan Madam, who was with Stone at the Willard hotel in Washington DC on the day before and the day of the Capitol attack.
And after investigators identified Stone’s number, the book says, they compiled an intriguing map: Stone called Tarrio both before and after January 6, and he called the former Oath Keepers chief Stewart Rhodes nine days after the riot. Both have since been charged with seditious conspiracy.
The number for Stone also connected to a number of prominent Republicans who each played different roles in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, including the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, and Arthur Schwartz, an aide to Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s eldest son.
Riggleman, co-authoring the book with journalist Hunter Walker for the publisher Macmillan, also uses the book to characterize the former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as being at the center of the efforts to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral college win through the thousands of texts he provided to the select committee.
Though most of the texts sent to and from Meadows that the book includes have previously been reported by CNN and others, the book fills in some gaps about the effort to object to the certification as well as the additional role played by Republican members of Congress.
Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/26/white-house-call-january-6-rioter-denver-riggleman-book-the-breach
Kamala HarrisKamala HarrisScalise bringing Donna Brazile as guest to Biden inauguration McConnell, Schumer fail to cut power-sharing deal amid filibuster snag Howard University’s marching band to escort Harris at inauguration MORE has been sworn in as vice president of the United States, making history as the first woman as well as the first Black and South Asian American person to hold the office.
Harris, the former senator of California, was sworn in before her running mate Joe BidenJoe BidenTrump grants clemency to more than 100 people, including Bannon Scalise bringing Donna Brazile as guest to Biden inauguration Sidney Powell withdraws ‘kraken’ lawsuit in Georgia MORE was sworn in as president right outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C., just before noon local time on a brisk morning at a heavily secure Capitol.
Swearing Harris in was Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor, who is the first Latina to serve on the highest court in the land.
Despite the historic nature of Wednesday’s inauguration, festivities were muted due to the coronavirus pandemic and the continued risk of violence following the insurrection at the Capitol two weeks ago.
More than 20,000 National Guard members have been in D.C. since last week, creating a tight perimeter around the District’s downtown area, closing a large number of streets and Metro stops in the process. As a result, flags instead of spectators filled the national mall.
Still, some of the usual fanfare still remained, such as the attendance of living former Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama. Notably, outgoing President TrumpDonald TrumpLil Wayne gets 11th hour Trump pardon Trump grants clemency to more than 100 people, including Bannon Trump expected to pardon Bannon: reports MORE was not in attendance, though his outgoing Vice President Pence was. Former President Carter, 96, and his wife Rosalynn Carter, 93, were also not in attendance.
Source Article from https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/535014-harris-takes-historic-oath-as-vice-president