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WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) – The congressional committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas on Tuesday to three lawyers who joined former President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to overturn his election defeat: Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.

The House of Representatives committee demanded the pro-Trump lawyers hand over documents and sit for depositions on Feb. 8.

Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said in a statement that the panel expects the lawyers to join the nearly 400 witnesses who have spoken with the Select Committee as part of its investigation into the causes of the deadly attack by Trump supporters.

The committee also subpoenaed Boris Epshteyn, a Trump political adviser.

Robert Costello, a lawyer for Giuliani, said in an interview that the subpoena was “political theater” and that his client was constrained by the legal doctrines of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.

“I don’t think there’s anything here he can testify about,” Costello said.

Powell, Epshteyn, and Ellis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speaks about the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, during an appearance on the John Catsimatidis radio show in New York City, New York, U.S., September 10, 2021. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

“The four individuals we’ve subpoenaed today advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn the election results, or were in direct contact with the former president about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes,” Thompson said in the statement.

Powell, Giuliani, and Ellis jointly spoke at a Trump campaign news conference on Nov. 19, 2020, where they vowed to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory. Powell promised to “release the Kraken,” likening their effort to a mythological sea monster.

The Trump campaign distanced itself from Powell after she claimed without evidence at the news conference that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots from Trump to Biden.

Giuliani’s New York law license was suspended in June, after a state appeals court found he made “demonstrably false and misleading” statements that widespread voter fraud undermined the election, won by Democrat Joe Biden.

The committee is aiming to release an interim report in the summer and a final report in the fall, a source familiar with the investigation said last month.

CNN reported on Tuesday that the committee has subpoenaed and obtained records of phone numbers associated with one of Trump’s children, Eric Trump, as well as Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Donald Trump Jr.

The Select Committee’s members have said they will consider passing along evidence of criminal conduct by Trump to the U.S. Justice Department. Such a move, known as a criminal referral, would be largely symbolic but would increase the political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to charge the former president.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/world/us/giuliani-other-pro-trump-lawyers-hit-with-subpoenas-over-jan-6-attack-2022-01-18/

MEXICO CITY — In a country where the brutal killings of journalists are almost routine, a recent spree of violent deaths has provoked a rare outpouring of public outrage among reporters and everyday citizens alike in Mexico.

Journalists in dozens of cities across the nation held vigils and demonstrations on Tuesday night, one of the largest mass protests over the murders of media workers in recent years after three of their colleagues were killed this month, two of them just days apart in the same city.

“It’s infuriating, it’s enraging, because journalists always give our soul, our heart, our body,” said Oscar Luna, who worked as a reporter for 10 years and attended a vigil in Mexico City. “From one moment to the next, they take away that passion, that commitment, that love, that dedication that you have toward journalism.”

The killings came in rapid succession.

Alfonso Margarito Martínez Esquivel, a photographer who had worked with local and foreign media outlets, was killed outside his home in broad daylight on Jan. 17 in the border city of Tijuana. Just days later, Lourdes Maldonado López, a veteran broadcast reporter who covered politics and corruption, was shot and killed inside her car, also in Tijuana.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/world/americas/mexico-journalists-killings.html

The widow of slain NYPD cop Jason Rivera posted a new moving Instagram message on the day of his wake at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“This is probably the heaviest my heart has ever felt,” Dominique Rivera wrote Thursday. “Mi media naranja (my half-orange), like my mother in law used to call him, left me feeling so empty.

“I love you so much mi pollito in heaven,” she said. “See you later.”

“Pollito” is Spanish for chick or little chicken.

The post includes a photo of the grieving widow kissing Rivera on the cheek.

The couple married in October.

“Eternal love,” she wrote in another post. “Live through me.”

Rivera, 22, was being mourned at St. Patrick’s on Thursday, with thousands — most of them first responders — paying their respects at his wake.

Dominique Rivera is due to deliver one of the eulogies at the young cop’s funeral Friday at the historic Midtown church.

She shared her thoughts on Instagram on Sunday, calling her husband “my beautiful angel,” and bemoaning the five days they were to spend together before his death.

She revealed how the two were high school sweethearts and had known each other since childhood.

“I love you so much mi pollito in heaven,” Dominique Rivera said in her Instagram post honoring her late husband Jason Rivera.
Dominique Rivera/Instagram
Dominique Rivera will deliver one of the eulogies at her husband’s funeral.
Dominique Rivera/Instagram
The two were high school sweethearts and had known each other since childhood.
Dominique Rivera/Instagram

Rivera and his partner, Wilbert Mora, 27, were responding to a domestic disturbance call in Harlem last Friday when career criminal Lashawn McNeil ambushed the two cops.

Rivera died that night while Mora clung to life until he was declared dead Tuesday — but not until his donated organs saved the lives of five others, officials said.

A funeral service for Mora at St. Patrick’s is scheduled for next week.

McNeil was shot and mortally wounded by a third officer at the scene.

Source Article from https://nypost.com/2022/01/27/nypd-cop-jason-riveras-widow-posts-moving-message-on-instagram/

Fifty more migrants arrived outside Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, days after two buses carrying asylum seekers arrived at her Naval Observatory home from Texas earlier this week.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Press Secretary Renae Eze confirms to ABC News 50 migrants were dropped off at the Vice President’s Naval Observatory residence Saturday after a long bus ride from Texas.

Abbott said he sent two buses of migrants to Harris’s residence on Thursday.

“We’re sending migrants to her backyard to call on the Biden Administration to do its job & secure the border,” he tweeted at the time.

Abbott and other Republican leaders from border states have been sending migrants to Democratic-led cities for months, calling it a protest of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies amid an influx of migrants at the southern border.

Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis escalated the scheme this week by dropping off approximately 100 migrants outside Harris’s Washington home and on Martha’s Vineyard, the island just south of Cape Cod where former President Barack Obama has a residence.

The moves sparked national attention, and outrage from the White House and Democrats who said the lawmakers were using migrants as political pawns. Republicans have cheered the move, arguing the Biden administration should do more to secure the border.

Some Democratic lawmakers said they received no prior warning the migrants were going to be arriving.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said the state has since offered voluntary transportation of the migrants off of Martha’s Vineyard to a temporary shelter at Joint Base Cape Cod.

One Venezuelan immigrant, Victor, told ABC News’ Armando Garcia that he was there when someone was asking migrants to sign their name on a list to get a seat on the plane. He did not sign up because the offer sounded too suspicious and because it did not align with his plans to eventually get to New York City.

Victor said he feels for the people that were duped into taking those flights, but he understands why they took that risk.

“It’s complicated because they tell you you’ll have everything you want, but when they arrived people were basically lost,” he said.

The White House said FEMA administrators have been meeting with city officials on site to coordinate available federal support, but have largely dodged questions on how to improve the immigration system — stating they inherited a broken process from the Trump administration.

President Joe Biden criticized the migrant drop-offs as “simply wrong.”

“It’s un-American, it’s reckless and we have a process in place to manage migrants at the border,” he said at a gala for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “We’re working on making sure it’s safe and orderly and humane. Republican officials should not interfere with that process by waging these political stunts.”

DeSantis on Friday also said more migraine drop-offs were coming.

“I have $12 million for us to use and so we are going to use it and you’re gonna see more and more. I’m going to make sure that we exhaust all those funds,” he said at a press conference.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of the story said that the migrant buses came from El Paso. The governor’s office later clarified that the migrant buses to the vice president’s residence were sent from Texas, but not El Paso.

ABC News’ Quinn Owen contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/texas-gov-abbott-sends-50-migrants-vp-harris/story?id=90070912