Judge Jeanine will have to find justice at a later date.
Jeanine Pirro’s weekly Fox News Channel program Justice with Judge Jeanineis being replaced tonight at 9 p.m. with a repeat the documentary Scandalous: The Trial of William Kennedy Smith, according to a programming guide on the network’s website.
“We’re not commenting on internal scheduling matters,” a Fox News spokesperson told Deadline Saturday, but would not comment further.
The development comes after FNC condemned remarks Pirro made last Saturday that seemed to question the national loyalty of Minnesota’s Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and other Muslim women who wear hijabs.
Referring to Omar, who is a practicing Muslim, Pirro said: “Think about it — Omar wears a hijab. Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?”
As Deadlinepreviously reported, Fox immediately distanced itself from Pirro’s comments.
“We strongly condemn Jeanine Pirro’s comments about Rep. Ilhan Omar,” the netowkr said in a statement last weekend. “They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.”
Chicago mayoral hopefuls Toni Preckwinkle and Lori Lightfoot are a little more than two weeks away from a historic election, but there was little evidence of the political showdown at Saturday’s downtown St. Patrick’s Day parade.
There were few political signs or buttons. Ropes and police officers around the dignitaries kept either candidate from working the crowd. And if there were any shouts from the masses for Lightfoot or Preckwinkle, they were drowned out by the frenzy that greeted famous Irish mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor.
The 15-minute march down Columbus Drive also marked Rahm Emanuel’s eighth and final as mayor, but he wasn’t feeling wistful.
“I’m going to kick his ass,” Emanuel joked as he pointed to McGregor next to him, moments before the parade stepped off. McGregor, who sported a pair of green suede shoes, reacted with just a smirk.
The mayor did not appear to greet either of the candidates running to succeed him. He’s had a rocky relationship with both.
As Emanuel, McGregor and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar walked the route front and center, Preckwinkle was off to the right, just past Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Lightfoot, sporting a green plaid Blackhawks fedora, walked with her wife, Amy Eshleman, and 11-year-old daughter, Vivian, to the far left on the other side of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin.
When the dignitaries reached the reviewing stand near Buckingham Fountain, the emcee mentioned Emanuel, Pritzker, Durbin and Preckwinkle by name to little reaction. There was no mention of Lightfoot or the mayor’s race.
While there may not have been much fanfare, Lightfoot and Preckwinkle both relished the moment.
“It feels like a great honor, it really does,” Lightfoot said of passers-by recognizing her and wishing her well. “Coming from where I come from and the journey I’ve been on, particularly over this last year, it’s gratifying that a lot of the hard work by so many people is showing up, because so many people are enthusiastic for change.”
Lightfoot’s victory in the first-round election last month punctuated the 56-year-old former federal prosecutor’s rise from political obscurity into a one-on-one race in the April 2 runoff. Lightfoot, who held two police oversight appointments under Emanuel and worked in police oversight and agency positions under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, had never walked in the parade before.
She did, however, remember attending her first when she was still an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan.
“I came to Chicago for the first time when I was a freshman in college for St. Patrick’s Day,” Lightfoot said, before cracking a joke. “I won’t tell you what happened, crimes and misdemeanors committed.”
As alderman for nearly 20 years and Cook County Board president for nine, Preckwinkle knew the drill. She was more grateful for sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 30s than anything else.
“I’ve been doing this quite a long time. The big difference is the weather,” Preckwinkle said with a laugh. “I’ve been out here when it’s been pouring down rain and when it’s freezing. It’s a beautiful day.”
The 71-year-old chair of the Cook County Democratic Party said she feels good with a little more than two weeks to go in the campaign.
“I’m really optimistic,” she said. “As I go around the city, I get a warm reception and I’m very grateful for the resonance of my message of the importance of investing in our neighborhoods — in our neighborhood schools, community revitalization and addressing public safety challenges.”
Other politicians weren’t as eager to talk about the race.
“I think it’s a very interesting race, thank you,” Durbin said quickly to laughs when asked about the matchup. “I’m not going to be endorsing in that race.”
Pritzker also made it clear he’s staying out of the fray, but pointed out the historic nature of the nation’s third largest city being poised to elect its first African-American female mayor.
“Well, it’s very competitive, and we’re going to make history in Chicago. I’m very proud of that fact,” Pritzker said. “The voters are going to make up their own minds, and I’m proud of the fact that people are running a tough campaign. This is a good city, tough people, and we’re going to get a good mayor out of it.”
As the current mayor joked about going a round or two with McGregor, Emanuel was asked if he had any advice for the two candidates vying for his fifth-floor office at City Hall.
“My advice? Keep offering ideas,” the mayor said. “As Bill Clinton said, ideas are the most undervalued, underappreciated but most important things you can offer.”
Asked if the candidates had offered enough ideas to his liking, Emanuel offered a long pause before offering a restrained answer.
The death toll in the mass shooting at two New Zealand mosques has risen to 50, New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush said during a press conference on Saturday.
The 50th victim was located inside one of the two mosques involved in the attacks, Bush said.
“As of last night we were able to take all of the victims from both of those scenes and in doing so we have located a further victim,” Bush said.
Bush added that the number of those injured was also 50, with 36 people hospitalized, which included one child.
A 28-year-old man had been arrested and charged with murder in the shooting, Bush said, adding that the man would appear in court on April 5.
Three other people were also arrested after the shooting. One woman was released without charges, and a man, who was in possession of a gun, has been charged with firearm offenses, according to Bush. They are not believed to have been involved in the attack, Bush said.
Another 18-year-old man was arrested and will appear in court, Bush said, but added that the arrest was “tangentially related” and that the man was not believed to have been involved with the shooting.
During the press conference, Bush said that police were still investigating the weapons used but said the guns had been altered.
“It’s quite obvious that he modified a category-A firearm,” Bush said.
Bush confirmed the suspect held a New Zealand Arms Act firearms license, which he obtained in 2017 while in New Zealand.
Kalhan Rosenblatt
Kalhan Rosenblatt is a reporter for NBC News, based in New York.
The mafia didn’t kill Gambino boss Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali — a twentysomething Staten Island hothead with a personal beef did, police and sources said Saturday.
Anthony Comello, 24, a non-mobster who works odd construction jobs, was in custody in a New Jersey jail and expected to face murder charges in connection to the killing of Cali, 53, who was blasted at least 10 times outside his Todt Hill mansion on Wednesday, police said at a news conference at NYPD headquarters.
“Everything is on the table at this point,” said Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea. “The investigation continues.”
Comello will be extradited to Staten Island in the next few days to face murder charges, Shea said.
Shea said police recovered the blue pickup truck that witnesses said slammed into Cali’s parked car, luring him outside to his demise.
The stunning hit was the first assassination of a New York City mob boss since an upstart John Gotti had Gambino boss Paul Castellano whacked outside Sparks Steak House in 1985.
Investigators quickly feared a mob war in the making.
But they now believe a personal dispute was to blame — over a woman in Cali’s family, according to multiple law enforcement sources.
The nature of the dispute was not immediately clear.
But sources said Cali — who helmed a family notorious for gambling, loan sharking, and its deadly trade in heroin and oxycodone — thought Comello was trouble, sources said.
Cali didn’t think Comello was worthy of associating with a woman in his family, the sources added.
When the gunman advanced toward the mosque, killing those in his path, Abdul Aziz didn’t hide. Instead, he picked up the first thing he could find, a credit card machine, and ran outside screaming “Come here!”
Kim Kardashian applauded New Zealand’s lawmakers for proposing to change the country’s gun laws following the mosque shootings that left at least 49 people dead. (AP)
Kardashian tweeted Saturday, “Just 24 hours after the Christchurch shooting New Zealand bans semiautomatic guns! America take note! Why can’t our elected officials put public safety over gun manufacturers’ profits?!?!”
Following Friday’s shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed to change the country’s gun laws, though she didn’t immediately specify how.
“I can tell you right now, our gun laws will change,” Ardern said. “Now is the time for change.”
David Parker, the country’s attorney general, said New Zealand would ban semiautomatic weapons at a vigil Saturday but backtracked his comments later, The New York Times reported.
“Those decisions have yet to be taken, but the Prime Minister has signaled that we are going to look at that issue,” Parker told Radio New Zealand.
New Zealand citizens as young as 16, provided they pass a background check to get a firearms license, can possess a long gun. They can get one for hunting, pest control or sports shooting, but self-defense is not considered a valid reason to own a firearm.
This is not the first time Kardashian has called for gun control in the U.S.
Following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018, the social media personality called on Congress to do their job.
“We owe it to our children and our teachers to keep them safe while at school,” she tweeted. “Prayers won’t do this: action will. Congress, please do your job and protect Americans from senseless gun violence.”
Still, if you invested in Boeing 10 years ago, that decision would have paid off: According to CNBC calculations, a $1,000 investment in 2009 would be worth more than $14,000 as of March 15, 2019, a total return over 1,000 percent. In the same time frame, the S&P 500 was up 270 percent. So, your $1,000 would be worth just over $3,700, by comparison.
This left several major airlines, including United, American and Southwest scrambling to rebook passengers and reassign planes. Those companies said they would waive ticket-change fees and fare differences for those affected by the FAA’s grounding order.
Flight-booking site Kayak even introduced a new search feature that allows users to exclude specific plane models, according to co-founder and chief executive officer Steve Hafner.
Though, Bank of America analyst Ronald Epstein said Thursday that the fix could take a lot longer: “Once Boeing identifies the issue … the most likely scenario is the company will take about 3-6 months to come up with and certify the fix,” he said in a note.
Hafner says he expects the 737 models to be grounded only a few months and that travelers will likely be booking flights on them again soon: “They’re out of service on a temporary basis,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Alley.” “In reality, airlines are still planning on flying those planes in the summer. People want security and comfort when they fly.”
In the meantime, Boeing said in a statement it will “continue to build 737 Max airplanes, while assessing how the situation, including potential capacity constraints, will impact our production system.”
If you’re looking to get into investing, expert investors like Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban suggest you start with index funds, which hold every stock in an index, offer low turnover rates, attendant fees and tax bills. They also fluctuate with the market to eliminate the risk of picking individual stocks.
Fraser Anning, an independent and former member of the far-right, anti-immigration One Nation party, drew widespread outrage for his comments made in tweets and an official statement.
“The real cause of the bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place,” Anning said in a statement.
“Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence?” he also tweeted.
Anning was speaking to reporters Saturday in Melbourne when cameras caught a 17-year-old standing behind the politician. The teen held up his phone — appearing to record the event — and then cracked a raw egg on Anning’s head.
The lawmaker punched the teen before a scuffle broke out, and Anning’s supporters held the boy in a choke hold while calling for police, video of the incident shows.
Australia’s ABC News reported the teen was arrested and released by Victoria police. Police are investigating the incident, including Anning’s actions, the news outlet said.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison denounced Anning’s comments and said lawmakers would pass a censure motion against Anning once they return to session next month.
“I would normally not want to give this any oxygen, but I want to absolutely and completely denounce the statements made by Senator Anning,” Morrison told reporters. “In his conflation of this horrendous terrorist attack with issues of immigration, in his attack on Islamic faith specifically — these comments are appalling and they’re ugly and they have no place in Australia, in the Australian Parliament”
The remarks by Senator Fraser Anning blaming the murderous attacks by a violent, right-wing, extremist terrorist in New Zealand on immigration are disgusting. Those views have no place in Australia, let alone the Australian Parliament.
On Friday, 49 people in two mosques in the city of Christchurch were gunned down in an alleged targeted attack by an anti-immigration, racist gunman. The attack, which occurred as people were attending Friday prayers, was the deadliest in New Zealand’s history since 1990.
Contributing: Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY, and The Associated Press. Follow USA TODAY’s Ryan Miller on Twitter @RyanW_Miller
SUNDERLAND, England (Reuters) – Nigel Farage, the politician who probably did more than anyone else to force Britain’s referendum on membership of the European Union, joined protesters at the start of a 270-mile march over what they call a betrayal of the Brexit vote.
The march comes after another tumultuous week for Prime Minister Theresa May in which parliament overwhelmingly rejected her divorce deal for a second time and lawmakers voted to seek a delay in Britain’s exit from the EU.
In the pouring rain in Sunderland, northeast England, which was the first place in Britain to declare a vote to leave the EU, Farage, wearing a flat cap and carrying an umbrella, said Brexit was now in danger of being scuttled by the establishment.
“We are here in the very week when parliament is doing its utmost to betray the Brexit result,” Farage said. “It is beginning to look like it doesn’t want to leave and the message from this march is if you think you can walk all over us we will march straight back to you.”
The march, which began with about 100 people, is due to end at parliament on March 29, the day the United Kingdom was supposed to leave the EU.
Britain’s crisis over EU membership is approaching its finale as May continues to fight to build support for her divorce deal, which is expected to be put before lawmakers for a third time next week. Many Brexit supporters in her own party oppose the deal, saying it ties Britain too closely to the EU.
May has given those critics an ultimatum – ratify her deal by Wednesday or face a delay to Brexit way beyond June 30 that would open up the possibility that the entire departure from the EU could ultimately be thwarted.
As leader of the euroskeptic United Kingdom Independence Party, Farage pressured former prime minister David Cameron to call the Brexit referendum and then helped lead the campaign to leave the EU. But he quit as the party’s leader in the days after the referendum.
In what pro-EU supporters said was a metaphor for his decision to walk away from the fallout of Brexit, Farage said he wouldn’t be completing the full two-week walk to London but would instead join campaigners for about a third of it.
Farage defended that decision and said as a member of the European Parliament he may have to take part in a vote on whether to approve the Brexit deal.
“I am quite a busy chap. I have a role in the European Parliament,” Farage said. “Don’t forgot the final vote is in the European Parliament. I think I ought to be there for that one.”
Writing by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Mark Potter
Special counsel Robert Mueller and his Justice Department supervisors are not saying anything official about the conclusion of their work, but Congress is getting ready. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
After many false alarms that the special counsel’s work is winding down, the clues are mounting that it finally is.
The Mueller probe appears to be in the home stretch.
Some Trump aides and advisers have been making that claim for more than a year, with little basis. But the signs are mounting that it’s finally happening.
Story Continued Below
Several came in what was an unusually busy week for Robert Mueller’s investigation into 2016 Russian election interference, with multiple clues that the special counsel’s work is finishing with a final report to the Justice Department.
On Wednesday, a federal judge handed a second prison sentence to Paul Manafort. That closed the door on Mueller’s prosecution of the former Trump campaign chairman, which will put Manafort in jail through the end of 2024 if President Donald Trump doesn’t pardon him or commute the sentence.
Meanwhile other clues emerged this week suggesting that Mueller’s probe is coming to an end. OnTuesday, the special counsel’s lawyers told a federal judge that they have all the information they need from former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has been cooperating with Mueller’s team since he pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI.
Two key members of Mueller’s team are also moving on. The FBI confirmed a week ago Friday that its lead agent tasked to the special counsel’s team has been reassigned to lead the bureau’s Richmond field office. And a Mueller spokesman on Thursday issued a rare public statement confirming that one the office’s prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, planned to finish his assignment “in the near future.”
“The signs I see are all pointing towards an investigation that is wrapping up,” said Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who has worked with Weissmann on organized crime cases. “[We are] probably a few weeks or even a month or more away from the issuing of a final report, but certainly a fairly complete draft is already being circulated inside the Mueller team.”
Cotter said he’d be surprised if Weissmann were to leave before reviewing Mueller’s complete findings, making his departure a sign that the report — which Mueller must transmit to his Justice Department superiors — is nearly complete. “His knowledge, experience and skills are too great for Mueller not to use him as a leading author of such a report. And I do not believe he would leave if he thought major new veins of information and significant charges were still to come,” he added.
While Mueller and his Justice Department supervisors aren’t saying anything official about the conclusion of the special counsel’s work, Congress is getting ready for the big moment. The House this week in a unanimous 420-0 vote called on Attorney General William Barr to release in full the special counsel’s final report.
Even if Mueller’s investigation is all but complete, however, his prosecutions will continue for months. On Thursday, a judge set Nov. 5 as the opening date in the trial of former Trump political adviser Roger Stone on charges that he lied to Congress about efforts to contact Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign.
Here’s a recap of all the week’s major events in the Mueller probe:
Paul Manafort: The former Trump campaign chairman finally learned how long he’ll spend in federal prison — nearly 7.5 years — after U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Wednesday meted out the final portion of his sentence for a series of lobbying and obstruction crimes that were folded into Manafort’s guilty plea last fall.
Jackson agreed with U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III, who sentenced Manafort earlier this month separately for his conviction in Virginia on financial fraud, that the longtime GOP operative can get credit for the nine months he’s already served at a pair of interim detention facilities since being jailed last June for witness tampering.
Manafort’s lawyers have asked that the rest of his sentence be served in Cumberland, Maryland, though that decision rests with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Federal prosecutors also have moved to begin seeking restitution from Manafort for about $24 million tied to his crimes, which involves forfeiting several of his New York properties, plus bank accounts and a life insurance policy. He also must pay a $50,000 fine.
Manafort still appears to be playing for a Trump pardon or commutation of his sentence. Outside the D.C. courthouse this week, Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing invoked a favorite presidential talking point: that Mueller had revealed no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, even though his client’s case never was about the topic. Mueller tried Manafort on charges related to his lucrative political work in Ukraine, which ended prior to the 2016 election.
But any help from Trump can’t protect Manafort from new charges he faces in New York, where the Manhattan district attorney obtained a 16-count grand jury indictment this week for residential mortgage fraud and other alleged state crimes. A presidential pardon cannot absolve a person convicted at the state level.
Roger Stone: The longtime Trump associate got an early November trial date for allegedly misleading lawmakers about his 2016 contacts with WikiLeaks, which released thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides. That means D.C. jurors will begin to hear his case just as the one-year countdown begins to the next presidential election.
Stone’s lawyers during a court hearing Thursday acknowledged receiving nine terabytes of material from the government in discovery, which they said stacks up “as high as the Washington Monument twice.” His lawyers also got an April 12 deadline to file any motions seeking to toss out the case, something they signaled plans to do in earlier filings which cited “selective or vindictive prosecution” and an “error in the grand jury proceeding.”
Mueller’s plans for trying Stone are unclear. Special counsel deputy Jeannie Rhee took the lead participating in Thursday’s hearing for the prosecution while the soon-to-depart Weissmann made an appearance in the courtroom, seated just inside the courtroom bar with other support staff. The government also has two assistant U.S. attorneys from D.C. who are widely seen as being ready for a hand off should the special counsel close up shop before November.
For his part, Stone blasted out a fundraising plea Thursday night featuring a picture of him, his wife and Trump. Stone said he needs money to defeat the special counsel’s charges and “be free to help the President’s re-election in 2020.”
Michael Flynn: The former Trump national security adviser continues to heed the advice of U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who in December urged Flynn to wait until he’d exhausted all cooperation demands before agreeing to be sentenced.
On Wednesday, Mueller’s prosecutors in a joint status reportacknowledged Flynn could still be called to testify in the government’s upcoming trial against his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, on charges of failing to disclose foreign lobbying on behalf of Turkey. But the special counsel’s office also noted they view Flynn’s cooperation as “otherwise complete.”
In a separate court filing related to the Rafiekian case, defense attorneys revealed this week they’d seen FBI interview notes that suggest Flynn had helped prosecutors in several “ongoing investigations.” Government lawyers during a Friday hearing indicated some of those investigations involve Mueller’s office and some involve other prosecutors, though they didn’t delve into specifics.
Rick Gates: The former Trump campaign deputy is still cooperating with federal prosecutors in “several ongoing investigations” and isn’t ready to be sentenced yet.
That was the takeaway from a one-page joint status report filed in federal court in D.C., the fifth one of its kind since Gates pleaded guilty last February to financial fraud and lying to investigators.
It’s unclear whether Gates’s ongoing cooperation still involves the Mueller probe. But Friday’s filing suggests Gates may be helping federal prosecutors in New York who are investigating Trump’s inauguration committee, which he helped run alongside real estate developer and longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack. The committee is facing questions about the source of its donations and how it spent its record-level $107 million haul.
Another joint status report for Gates is due in court by May 14.
President Donald Trump has branded as “disgraceful” the resolution passed after Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments suggesting House supporters of Israel have dual allegiances. (March 8) AP
President Donald Trump saw it as a political opportunity with Jewish voters.
In tweets, public statements and speeches to supporters, Trump and his aides are trying to use claims of anti-Semitism to pry Jewish voters away from their longtime allegiance to the Democratic Party.
In his latest effort, a Friday morning tweet, Trump said Jewish people were leaving the Democratic Party in what he called a “Jexodus,” though he did not cite evidence for such a shift. He said Republicans were “waiting with open arms” for Jewish voters. “Remember Jerusalem (U.S. Embassy) and the horrible Iran Nuclear Deal!” he tweeted.
The phrase “Jexodus” stirred controversy on Twitter with some users calling it offensive to Jewish people.
Democrats increased their share of the Jewish vote between the 2016 and 2018 elections, from 71 percent to 79 percent. A new Gallup report, based on tracking poll data from 2018, said that “one in six U.S. Jews identify as Republican.” About half described themselves as Democrats.
“‘Jexodus’ is a Republican fantasy that will fail,” said Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. Soifer was among many who said they were offended by Trump’s term.
Divide and attract – it’s a familiar tactic for the politically aggressive president who has also tried to woo members of other familiar Democratic constituencies, including women and African-Americans.
“He’s always stirring the pot,” said Stuart Rothenberg, senior editor at the Inside Elections newsletter.
Trump’s efforts to paint the Democratic party as anti-Jewish came after tweets and comments by freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who suggested that pro-Israel lobbying groups controlled U.S. lawmakers through political money.
While some Democrats said the remarks played into anti-Semitic slurs about how Jewish money controls American politics, Omar said they were “not intended to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole.” Several Democrats said Omar was being attacked unfairly.
Trump, meanwhile, went on offense.
Seeking to foment Democratic discord, Trump issued a March 5 tweet that described Omar’s “terrible comments” as “a dark day for Israel!”
Three days later, after a fractious House debate over a resolution condemning hate, Trump raised the stakes while speaking with reporters as he left the White House on a weekend trip to Florida, describing the Democrats as an “anti-Israel party.”
“They’ve become an anti-Jewish party and that’s too bad,” he said while en route to Alabama to review tornado damage.
During his weekend in Florida, Trump reportedly went even further: The website Axios reported the president told donors during a fundraiser at this Mar-a-Lago estate that “the Democrats hate Jewish people.”
Jesse Lehrich, a foreign policy spokesman for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, said Trump’s attacks ring hollow from a man who spoke sympathetically of some of the white supremacists who held a 2017 march in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“American Jews overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and a brazen attempt to weaponize anti-Semitism by a man who has mainstreamed bigotry seems like a bad way to win them over,” Lehrich said.
Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said “there’s a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of support” among Jewish voters for what Trump is doing, though he has not seen any new polling on the question.
“Everything at this point is anecdotal,” he said.
Brooks also said Trump is appealing to Jewish donors and was “smart to do so.”
In terms of elections, Jewish voters have remained overwhelmingly Democratic during the Trump political era.
According to exit polling conducted for a consortium of news organizations for the 2016 election, Clinton defeated Trump 71 percent to 24 percent among Jewish voters. In last year’s congressional elections, according to those exit polls, Jews broke for Democratic candidates over Republican ones by 79 percent to 17 percent.
While Jewish voters are a small part of the electorate – 3 percent in 2016; 2 percent in 2018 – they are a significant segment in key swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania. That’s why the the Trump campaign, and the Democrats, are making a concerted effort to attract them.
Soifer, the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, cited the drop-off of Jewish support for Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections to say that Trump and the GOP are losing traction with these voters.
Many voters know that Trump has appeared to welcome support from white supremacists who have also engaged in anti-Semitism, she said: “There is what he tweets and then there is reality.”
A Gallup report released Thursday said that, according to 2018 data, 52 percent of Jewish-Americans described themselves as Democrats, while only 16 percent identified themselves as Republicans. Among Jewish respondents, 26 percent approved of Trump’s performance as president; 71 percent disapproved.
Gallup added: “With Jewish Americans representing about 2% of the U.S. population, most opinion polls do not have enough Jewish respondents in a single poll to report reliable estimates for the group.”
Aides said Trump will continue pursuing Jewish votes as he seeks re-election in 2020. “The long history of anti-Semitism from Ilhan Omar and the failure of House Democrats to take appropriate action in response has shown all Americans that Democrats stand squarely with their radical left base,” said Michael Glassner, the campaign’s chief operating officer.
Trump’s basic argument, a claim that Democrats have failed a longtime constituency, is one he has used with other groups of voters, particularly African-Americans – and there is evidence he is having success.
According to a YouGov daily tracking poll released Monday, 15 percent of African-Americans somewhat or strongly approved of the president’s job performance – still low but better than his election numbers. Trump carried only 8 percent the African-American vote in 2016, according to exit polls.
Rothenberg, the senior editor at Inside Elections, said there is no doubt some Democrats are uncomfortable with some of the new voices in the Democratic Party, but there are also some uncomfortable with Trump and how he
“goes overboard” with his “stream-of-consciousness aggression.”
“Could it move a handful of Jewish votes? Yeah, I guess it could,” Rothenberg said. “But, on the other hand, Trump is very simplistic … He is a very polarizing figure.”
The 28-year-old Australian national, who Fox News is not naming, was seen in a white prison suit and showed no expression as District Court Judge Paul Kellar read one charge of murder to him. The appearance lasted only a minute as he was led back out in handcuffs. He did not enter a plea. He was ordered to return to court again April 5.
During the appearance, the suspect allegedly flashed an “OK” hand gesture during the court appearance. The gesture is seen as a “white power” hate symbol. The suspect’s face is not allowed to be seen in photos due to the country’s strick media laws.
The Australian-born man suspected in shootings in shootings at two mosques in New Zealand that killed 49 people Friday appeared in court Saturday, March 16, 2019. (Reuters)
After the suspect left, the judge said that while “there is one charge of murder brought at the moment, it is reasonable to assume that there will be others.”
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said “gun laws will change” in the country. Ardern said the guns used in the attack “appeared to have been modified.” The alleged gunman obtained a gun license in November 2017.
Two other armed suspects were taken into custody while police tried to determine what role, if any, they played in the cold-blooded attack that shocked the world and is the deadliest shooting in the country’s modern history.
The suspect allegedly used a helmet-mounted camera to livestream the massacre at the Masjid Al Noor mosque in central Christchurch and allegedly posted a white nationalist manifesto online. The New Zealand Herald reported Ardern’s office “received a copy of a manifesto from the alleged gunman less than 10 minutes before the attacks.” The media outlet reported “70 other recipients,” including media outlets, received the manifesto.
Ambulance staff take a man from outside a mosque in central Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, March 15, 2019, following a mass shooting. (AP)
In the gunman’s rambling manifesto, he said he was not a member of any organization but had donated to and interacted with many nationalist groups, though he acted alone and no group ordered the attack. He said he chose New Zealand because of its location, to show that even the most remote parts of the world were not free of “mass immigration.”
The video that was allegedly livestreamed by the shooter shows the massacre in horrifying detail. The alleged gunman spends more than two minutes inside the mosque spraying terrified worshippers with bullets, sometimes re-firing at people he has already cut down.
A man reacts as he speaks on a mobile phone outside a mosque in central Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, March 15, 2019. (AP)
At one point, he exits the mosque to rearm before going back inside to shoot more people. Eventually, the man flees as emergency vehicles can be heard approaching in the background.
Several more people were killed in an attack on the Linwood Masjid mosque, about three miles away from Masjid Al Noor a short time later. It was not immediately clear if the same person was responsible for both shootings.
Fox News’ Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump visits a Boeing facility in South Carolina, praises company for its aircraft innovations and being an example for keeping jobs in the U.S. (Feb. 17) AP
WASHINGTON –As lawmakers begin to scrutinize Boeing’s grounded 737 Max 8, they will be probing one of the nation’s most powerful corporate political players, backed with a multi-million-dollar lobbying budget and a direct line to the White House.
Chicago-based Boeing, the second-largest U.S. government contractor, suffered a setback this week when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) followed its counterparts around the world in grounding the 737 Max 8 after two catastrophic crashes raised new questions about the plane’s software.
Now Boeing faces a test of its influence as congressional investigators look into how the plane was approved, what caused the crashes and why the FAA delayed its grounding order. The Senate Commerce Committee is scheduling a hearing and key House Democrats have vowed “rigorous oversight.”
Boeing influence
Like other large U.S. employers, Boeing spends millions of dollars each year on lobbying the administration and making campaign contributions. The company spent $15 million lobbying in 2018, according to disclosure reports, more than household brands like Amazon and Facebook.
Boeing ranked 11th in a Center for Responsive Politics list of the nation’s top spenders on lobbying in 2018.
The company contributed $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee,Federal Election Commission records show. Boeing’s employees, meanwhile, pumped about $5 million into campaigns and political committees in last year’s midterm election, according to a USA TODAY analysis of FEC data.
“This does not bode well for Americans who fly,” Walter Shaub, senior adviser to the Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics wrote in a post on Twitter. “Boeing donates $1 million to Trump’s sketchy inaugural fund and the U.S. breaks with other nations that have grounded the Boeing 737.”
Trump and Muilenburg
Large companies regularly contribute money to political candidates and spend heavily on lobbying. But what sets Boeing apart from most others is the care CEO Dennis Muilenburg has taken to cultivate a relationship with Trump, who owns one of the company’s planes, a 757.
Shortly after the election, Muilenburg sought to smooth things over with the president during a visit to Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. A month later, and days before Trump became president, Muilenburg appeared at Trump Tower, praising Trump’s “engagement.”
When it came time for Trump to make his first trip out of Washington in early 2017 he went to a Boeing plant in South Carolina to tout U.S. economic growth. The company was later awarded a contract to build two Air Force One planes for $3.9 billion.
“We’ve got a whole wave of policy issues, topics we’re working on,” Muilenburg told analysts on a call last year, “but we have a voice at the table, which is encouraging.”
A member of Trump’s Cabinet, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, spent more three decades with Boeing as an executive before joining the administration in 2017.
Trump has continued to praise the company even as he announced the grounding.
“It’s a great, great company with a track record that is so phenomenal,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “And they want this solved; they want it solved quickly.”
Mixed record
Still, the company has had a mixed track record meeting its policy ambitions in Washington. Muilenburg personally spoke with Trump to lobby for the safety of the 737 Max 8. And the FAA initially stood by the plane as Britain, France and Germany joined a growing list of countries suspended its use in their airspace.
U.S. regulators relented Wednesday, citing new information from the crash site and satellite data that the agency said suggested similarities between the Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday that killed 157 people and the crash in October of a Lion Air Flight off the coast of Indonesia that killed 189 passengers and crew.
“Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT,” Trump posted on Twitter days after the crash, a missive that preceded Muilenburg’s call to the White House. “I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better.”
Experts said Boeing has long been a major player in Washington’s influence game, but noted there was no evidence that effort had anything to do with the FAA’s delay in grounding the latest 737 model. The federal government spent $23 billion with Boeing in 2017, a U.S. General Services Administration report on federal contracting shows.
“They’re really good at capturing defense contracts,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at Teal Group and an aviation consultant. “But there’s absolutely no evidence that there’s anything untoward with the the FAA’s decision here.”
A Boeing spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Aviation oversight
Like many other agencies in the Trump administration, the Federal Aviation Administration isn’t working at full capacity. Daniel Elwell, a former Air Force lieutenant general and American Airlines pilot, has been serving as the agency’s acting administrator for more than year.
Trump floated the idea of nominating his personal pilot for the top FAA job last year, but backed down following resistance from lawmakers.
The National Transportation Safety Board, by contrast, is a five-member board that investigates crashes and makes non-binding recommendations on how to avoid future mishaps. Trump appointed two of its five members and elevated a third – originally a Bush appointee – to chairman. The board has one vacancy.
The NTSB is not investigating either the Ethiopian crash or the Lion Air crash. Foreign countries must request NTSB or similar European agencies to investigate.
Mike Slack, a pilot and lawyer who has represented passengers and family members in crash cases, said Trump had little choice but to ground the Max 8 and Max 9 planes. Allowing the aircraft to fly would have gambled jobs – and American lives – and raised even more questions for the administration and Boeing.
“Is this about protecting Boeing competitively against Airbus, its primary competitor? And why would Boeing’s CEO be calling the president of the United States?” said Slack, a former NASA engineer. “That’s not good form when the background story is already that the FAA is not acting.”
Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!
Boeing has had a mixed record scoring policy wins in Washington.
The company fought hard to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, an independent agency that provides loans to foreign companies so they can buy high-priced U.S. goods such as aircraft. Congress reauthorized the bank in 2015, despite concern from many Republicans that it used taxpayer money to benefit huge companies like Boeing that didn’t need the help.
But while Congress reauthorized the bank, SenateRepublicans have declined to confirm all of the board’s members. That has left the bank unable to sign deals valued at more than $10 million, far less than the price of the 737 MAX 8 and other Boeing planes.
Boeing also benefited from a fight to give foreign carriers, including airlines based in Persian Gulf countries, better access to the U.S. market – an outcome that would help them sell more airplanes to their overseas customers. Domestic airlines mostly opposed the idea, arguing that state-owned air carriers brought unfair competition to U.S. skies.
Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Transportation allowed the Gulf carriers to serve the U.S., but required more public reporting of their finances.
Boeing lost another major fight last year. When Delta Airlines sought to import jets from Montreal-based manufacturer Bombardier, Boeing objected to the International Trade Commission. The company argued that the Bombardier planes were subsidized by the Canadian government and, because of that, represented unfair competition to their own planes.
The Commerce Department threatened to impose tariffs that would have quadrupled the cost of the Bombardier jets.
The Trade Commission found Bombardier planes should have cost about three times more than the ticket price because of those subsidies but also declined to rule that the planes would harm the U.S. industry, blocking the tariffs in a loss for Boeing.
Family members mourn for crash victim air hostess Sara Gebremichael, 38, at her house in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed shortly after takeoff on Sunday killing all 157 on board, near Bishoftu, south of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia .The black box from the Boeing jet that crashed will be sent overseas for analysis but no country has been chosen yet, an Ethiopian Airlines spokesman said Wednesday, as much of the world grounded or barred the plane model and grieving families arrived at the disaster site. Samuel Habtab, AP
Officials from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) pray next to an offering of fruit, bread rolls, and a plastic container of Ethiopian Injera, a fermented sourdough flatbread, placed next to incense sticks, at the scene where the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed shortly after takeoff on Sunday killing all 157 on board, near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia March 12, 2019. Mulugeta Ayene, AP
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s unfavorable rating has spiked after just months in Congress, with most of the public viewing her negatively rather than favorably, a new poll shows.
The New York Democrat shot to fame amid the party’s lurch to the left and embracement of socialist policies such as the Green New Deal, yet the more people learned about the 29-year-old freshman congresswoman, the more they were turned off by her.
A Gallup poll released Friday shows that Ocasio-Cortez’s unfavorable rating has risen by 15 points since last September, when she had yet to win the general election, increasing from 26 percent to 41 percent of the American adults polled.
She has also managed to increase her favorability rating, but only by 7 points. About 31 percent of surveyed people view her favorably, compared to 24 percent in September.
Since September, Ocasio-Cortez became more widely recognized across the country, with half of the respondents saying they have never heard of her before. Now only a fifth of surveyed people says they aren’t familiar with the self-described Democratic socialist.
The poll notes that Ocasio-Cortez’s name recognition is growing compared to that of other politicians at the same point in their careers in Congress. More surveyed people know the New York Democrat than they knew Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz as freshmen.
Overall, the results suggest that Ocasio-Cortez may be a polarizing figure. Most of her support is galvanized around younger, more diverse Democrat-leaning groups, while most of her opposition is composed of Republicans and more conservative Democrat-leaning groups.
Nearly three-quarters of Republican respondents say they view her negatively, with only 5 percent having a positive view. Among the Democrats, 56 percent of respondents had a favorable view of Ocasio-Cortez, compared to only 15 percent of the Democrats polled who don’t support her.
She’s also favored by adults 18 to 34, people of color and women. Yet she’s facing a favorability deficit among men (-24), whites (-24), and adults 55 or older (-22).
Among self-described independents, she has a negative net rating of 5 percent.
Don’t be fooled. There has been no major insurrection in the ranks of the Republican Party. Despite what has been widely described as a major defection of a dozen GOP senators over the president’s signature campaign issue this week, Donald Trump still maintains a firm grip over nearly every elected GOP official.
Trump lost the midterm elections after hyping the dangers of a migrant caravan to push for a border wall — the one he originally promised would be paid for by Mexico. He then lost the shutdown showdown against congressional Democrats over funding the wall, eventually agreeing to reopen the federal government without a dollar in wall money as his approval ratings suffered. And now the president has lost a vote on an emergency declaration meant to circumvent Congress’ disapproval of his requested wall funding.
The Republican-controlled Senate didn’t want to have to vote on the resolution. But once House Speaker Nancy Pelosi successfully passed it in the House with the votes of a dozen Republicans, parliamentary rules left Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell no choice. He had to bring it to the floor, knowing it could prove to be an embarrassing defeat for Trump.
Trump’s wall is a loser — by a large margin — in nearly every poll of U.S. voters. Yet only one of the 20 Republican senators representing swing states and up for re-election next year voted against the president’s power move to build his pet project. Of the seven Republican senators facing particularly competitive races in 2020, as designated by the Cook Political Report, six voted with Trump.
More than any other vote during the Trump era, Thursday’s resolution to undo Trump’s declaration of a national emergency crystallizes how congressional Republicans have little choice but to cater to the conservative base of an increasingly conservative GOP — even in states that have recently elected Democrats for statewide office.
A national Quinnipiac University poll, released March 6, found that 66 percent of voters disapproved of Trump’s use of emergency powers to fund a border wall. But a different survey taken a few days later by Morning Consult found that seven in 10 Republican voters said they would be more likely to vote for senators or representatives who supported Trump’s declaration.
Among Republican voters in the Morning Consult poll, 78 percent said that support or opposition for Trump’s national emergency declaration would sway their vote one way or another. As pollsters explained, that figure is greater than the 61 percent of Republican respondents who said the same for the GOP’s plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act in May 2017 and the 64 percent who said the same of the Republican tax bill in December 2017.
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Although Trump carried North Carolina easily in 2016, he has since seen his approval rating in that state drop by 18 points. Perhaps that precipitous drop, as well as a recent statewide poll showing opposition and support for the wall dead even, drove Sen. Thom Tillis to speak out against Trump’s declaration.
“There is no intellectual honesty in now turning around and arguing that there’s an imaginary asterisk attached to executive overreach — that it’s acceptable for my party but not thy party,” Tillis wrote in a Feb. 25 op-ed in the Washington Post. “It is my responsibility to be a steward of the Article I branch, to preserve the separation of powers and to curb the kind of executive overreach that Congress has allowed to fester for the better part of the past century. I stood by that principle during the Obama administration, and I stand by it now.”
But Tillis voted with Trump on Thursday, as he has done 94 percent of the time. The senator simply said of his capitulation: “A lot has changed over the last three weeks.”
What had actually changed? The spread of fear, no doubt, and a creeping realization that the path to re-election must first run through a Republican primary.
After Tillis spoke out against Trump’s power move, North Carolina Republicans made overt threats against him and called for a primary challenge. House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina told the Hill that a recent poll he conducted found that 72 percent of GOP voters in the Tar Heel State wanted their next senator to focus on advancing the Trump agenda over fighting for local priorities, like protecting disaster aid and military construction funding.
“North Carolina Republican primary voters have made their voices clear. They stand with the president. Our senators should as well,” he explained.
Similar threats may explain why Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado avoided making public his stance on Trump’s declaration for more than a month. That state, represented by Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser, is one of 20 suing Trump in an attempt to stop the president’s move. But after voting to uphold Trump’s emergency declaration, Gardner claimed on Thursday that the president had “clear legal authority.”
“It should never have come to this, but in the absence of congressional action, the president did what Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer refused to do,” Gardner said after voting with Trump.
Like Tillis, Gardner had previously argued that immigration and border wall funding are the purview of the legislative branch. “Congress is most appropriately situated to fund border security,” Gardner said in a Feb. 14 statement.
Even representing a state won by Hillary Clinton and holding a Senate seat that is one of the Democrats’ top targets heading into the 2020 election cycle, Gardner still votes with Trump more than 90 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight. His vote on Thursday appeared to cement his status as a White House flunky, and led the Denver Post editorial board to declare its endorsement of him a “mistake.” But as a recent poll of Colorado Republicans makes clear, Gardner’s decision to align strongly with Trump in a blue state is not a mistake, but rather a survival strategy.
A February poll from Colorado firm Magellan Strategies found that 88 percent of GOP voters in the state supported Trump’s proposal to build a border wall. Furthermore, 48 percent of likely Republican primary voters in Colorado named immigration as a top priority, including among every single voter subgroup in the survey.
Republican pollster David Flaherty characterized the results of the recent poll of the state’s GOP faithful as detecting “no sign of weakness for the president.”
The bottom line is that Donald Trump can do no wrong in the eyes of Republicans. It is very likely that Republicans will approve of the job he is doing regardless of any setbacks or obstacles that may arise in implementing his policies now and through 2020.
He is giving Republican voters what they want, and they love him for it.
They believe he is keeping his campaign promises of fighting illegal immigration, improving the economy, creating jobs and not acting like a typical politician. Many respondents express a loyalty toward him because they believe he sincerely cares about all Americans, rich or poor, white or minority, and that he is fighting for them personally.
Colorado Republicans, Flaherty said, overwhelmingly prefer uncompromising, conservative candidates to moderates who are more willing to work with Democrats.
That dynamic likely explains why, in addition to Tillis and Gardner, Martha McSally of Arizona, Joni Ernst of Iowa, David Perdue of Georgia and John Cornyn of Texas all voted to support Trump’s power play. All are expected to face competitive challenges next year, and Democratic strategists likely believe they can defeat at least two of the four. But all those senators appear to be more afraid of their own voters than of the general electorate.
On Saturday morning, his hands shaking, he showed reporters a photo on his phone of his father and his daughter.
“Dad was the leader of the Afghan community and welcomed everyone,” he said.
He had gone to the courthouse where the accused gunman would appear. “Just want to see his face,” he said.
Members of Bangladesh’s national cricket team, who were in Christchurch for a match, were also saved by tardiness, after a news conference delayed their walk to the Deans Avenue mosque.
Mohammad Isam, an ESPN reporter covering the team, reported on an ESPN website that at 1:52 he got a terrified call from Tamim Iqbal Khan, one of the Bangladesh cricketers.
“There’s shooting here, please save us,” Mr. Khan said, according to Mr. Isam.
“I first think that he is playing a prank but he hangs up and calls again — this time, his voice starts to crack,” Mr. Isam wrote. “He says that I should call the police as there’s a shooting going on inside the mosque where they are about to enter.”
Paris riots being called the worst in a decade; Trace Gallagher reports.
French Yellow Vest protesters hit the streets to demonstrate against President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday for the 18th straight weekend and clashed with riot police, prompting the use of tear gas and a water cannon to disperse the agitators.
At least 20 people were arrested by midmorning in Paris. Authorities, fearing a possible uptick in protester numbers and mayhem, deployed additional forces and closed a number of streets in the capital.
The Yellow Vests, meanwhile, hoped that the latest protest will reignite the movement that is losing popularity every week. Yet as the number of protesters dwindled, violence increased.
Protesters threw smoke bombs and other objects at officers along the Champs-Elysees and hit the windows of a police van, echoing the instances of rioting last year, at the peak of the protests. The police then unleashed the water cannon on protesters clustered between two stores, while a burning vehicle was spotted in the neighborhood nearby.
The Yellow Vest movement has rocked France since November 2018, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets demanding President Emmanuel Macron’s resignation.
Late last year, in an effort to quell protests, Macron called for three months of national debate on economic reforms.
He addressed the country in December, promising to speed up tax relief and urging companies to give bonuses to workers. Macron also reiterated his promise to raise the minimum wage and said the government would scrap a planned tax hike on pensioners.
The movement began to gradually lose steam. Earlier this month, only around 40,000 people protested across the whole of France, with about 4,000 in Paris, compared with hundreds of thousands last year.
This weekend’s protest marked the end of Macron’s “Great National Debate,” which was organized to address the protesters’ needs.
But even as Macron made a number of concessions to the protest group, many remain skeptical of his presidency and continue to believe that he favors the rich and businesses at the expense of the rest of the public.
Special counsel Robert Mueller and his Justice Department supervisors are not saying anything official about the conclusion of their work, but Congress is getting ready. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
After many false alarms that the special counsel’s work is winding down, the clues are mounting that it finally is.
The Mueller probe appears to be in the home stretch.
Some Trump aides and advisers have been making that claim for more than a year, with little basis. But the signs are mounting that it’s finally happening.
Story Continued Below
Several came in what was an unusually busy week for Robert Mueller’s investigation into 2016 Russian election interference, with multiple clues that the special counsel’s work is finishing with a final report to the Justice Department.
On Wednesday, a federal judge handed a second prison sentence to Paul Manafort. That closed the door on Mueller’s prosecution of the former Trump campaign chairman, which will put Manafort in jail through the end of 2024 if President Donald Trump doesn’t pardon him or commute the sentence.
Meanwhile other clues emerged this week suggesting that Mueller’s probe is coming to an end. OnTuesday, the special counsel’s lawyers told a federal judge that they have all the information they need from former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has been cooperating with Mueller’s team since he pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI.
Two key members of Mueller’s team are also moving on. The FBI confirmed a week ago Friday that its lead agent tasked to the special counsel’s team has been reassigned to lead the bureau’s Richmond field office. And a Mueller spokesman on Thursday issued a rare public statement confirming that one the office’s prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, planned to finish his assignment “in the near future.”
“The signs I see are all pointing towards an investigation that is wrapping up,” said Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who has worked with Weissmann on organized crime cases. “[We are] probably a few weeks or even a month or more away from the issuing of a final report, but certainly a fairly complete draft is already being circulated inside the Mueller team.”
Cotter said he’d be surprised if Weissmann were to leave before reviewing Mueller’s complete findings, making his departure a sign that the report — which Mueller must transmit to his Justice Department superiors — is nearly complete. “His knowledge, experience and skills are too great for Mueller not to use him as a leading author of such a report. And I do not believe he would leave if he thought major new veins of information and significant charges were still to come,” he added.
While Mueller and his Justice Department supervisors aren’t saying anything official about the conclusion of the special counsel’s work, Congress is getting ready for the big moment. The House this week in a unanimous 420-0 vote called on Attorney General William Barr to release in full the special counsel’s final report.
Even if Mueller’s investigation is all but complete, however, his prosecutions will continue for months. On Thursday, a judge set Nov. 5 as the opening date in the trial of former Trump political adviser Roger Stone on charges that he lied to Congress about efforts to contact Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign.
Here’s a recap of all the week’s major events in the Mueller probe:
Paul Manafort: The former Trump campaign chairman finally learned how long he’ll spend in federal prison — nearly 7.5 years — after U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Wednesday meted out the final portion of his sentence for a series of lobbying and obstruction crimes that were folded into Manafort’s guilty plea last fall.
Jackson agreed with U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III, who sentenced Manafort earlier this month separately for his conviction in Virginia on financial fraud, that the longtime GOP operative can get credit for the nine months he’s already served at a pair of interim detention facilities since being jailed last June for witness tampering.
Manafort’s lawyers have asked that the rest of his sentence be served in Cumberland, Maryland, though that decision rests with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Federal prosecutors also have moved to begin seeking restitution from Manafort for about $24 million tied to his crimes, which involves forfeiting several of his New York properties, plus bank accounts and a life insurance policy. He also must pay a $50,000 fine.
Manafort still appears to be playing for a Trump pardon or commutation of his sentence. Outside the D.C. courthouse this week, Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing invoked a favorite presidential talking point: that Mueller had revealed no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, even though his client’s case never was about the topic. Mueller tried Manafort on charges related to his lucrative political work in Ukraine, which ended prior to the 2016 election.
But any help from Trump can’t protect Manafort from new charges he faces in New York, where the Manhattan district attorney obtained a 16-count grand jury indictment this week for residential mortgage fraud and other alleged state crimes. A presidential pardon cannot absolve a person convicted at the state level.
Roger Stone: The longtime Trump associate got an early November trial date for allegedly misleading lawmakers about his 2016 contacts with WikiLeaks, which released thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign aides. That means D.C. jurors will begin to hear his case just as the one-year countdown begins to the next presidential election.
Stone’s lawyers during a court hearing Thursday acknowledged receiving nine terabytes of material from the government in discovery, which they said stacks up “as high as the Washington Monument twice.” His lawyers also got an April 12 deadline to file any motions seeking to toss out the case, something they signaled plans to do in earlier filings which cited “selective or vindictive prosecution” and an “error in the grand jury proceeding.”
Mueller’s plans for trying Stone are unclear. Special counsel deputy Jeannie Rhee took the lead participating in Thursday’s hearing for the prosecution while the soon-to-depart Weissmann made an appearance in the courtroom, seated just inside the courtroom bar with other support staff. The government also has two assistant U.S. attorneys from D.C. who are widely seen as being ready for a hand off should the special counsel close up shop before November.
For his part, Stone blasted out a fundraising plea Thursday night featuring a picture of him, his wife and Trump. Stone said he needs money to defeat the special counsel’s charges and “be free to help the President’s re-election in 2020.”
Michael Flynn: The former Trump national security adviser continues to heed the advice of U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who in December urged Flynn to wait until he’d exhausted all cooperation demands before agreeing to be sentenced.
On Wednesday, Mueller’s prosecutors in a joint status reportacknowledged Flynn could still be called to testify in the government’s upcoming trial against his former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, on charges of failing to disclose foreign lobbying on behalf of Turkey. But the special counsel’s office also noted they view Flynn’s cooperation as “otherwise complete.”
In a separate court filing related to the Rafiekian case, defense attorneys revealed this week they’d seen FBI interview notes that suggest Flynn had helped prosecutors in several “ongoing investigations.” Government lawyers during a Friday hearing indicated some of those investigations involve Mueller’s office and some involve other prosecutors, though they didn’t delve into specifics.
Rick Gates: The former Trump campaign deputy is still cooperating with federal prosecutors in “several ongoing investigations” and isn’t ready to be sentenced yet.
That was the takeaway from a one-page joint status report filed in federal court in D.C., the fifth one of its kind since Gates pleaded guilty last February to financial fraud and lying to investigators.
It’s unclear whether Gates’s ongoing cooperation still involves the Mueller probe. But Friday’s filing suggests Gates may be helping federal prosecutors in New York who are investigating Trump’s inauguration committee, which he helped run alongside real estate developer and longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack. The committee is facing questions about the source of its donations and how it spent its record-level $107 million haul.
Another joint status report for Gates is due in court by May 14.
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (Reuters) – The main suspect in New Zealand’s worst peacetime mass shooting intended to continue the rampage before he was caught by police, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Saturday.
“The offender was mobile, there were two other firearms in the vehicle that the offender was in, and it absolutely was his intention to continue with his attack,” Ardern told reporters in Christchurch. The suspect, identified as Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian citizen, has been charged with murder, though Ardern added that further charges are likely.
“I’m not privileged to a full breakdown at this point but it is clear that young children have been caught up in this horrific attack,” she said regarding victims of the attack.
Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
Milo Yiannopoulos banned from Australia for remarks about attack
The Australian government has banned the conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos from entering Australia for a planned tour this year, officials said on Saturday, citing his comments about the Christchurch attack.
Authorities in Australia were urged to ban the far-right commentator following his remarks about the massacre, in which he described Islam as a “barbaric” and “alien” religious culture.
“Mr. Yiannopoulos’s comments on social media regarding the Christchurch terror attack are appalling and foment hatred and division,” David Coleman, Australia’s minister for immigration, citizenship and multicultural affairs, said in a statement on Saturday.
“The terrorist attack in Christchurch was carried out on Muslims peacefully practicing their religion,” Mr. Coleman continued, adding, “It was an act of pure evil.”
The decision came after Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, denounced remarks made by a senator, Fraser Anning, who said on Friday that the “real cause” of the bloodshed was Muslim immigration. On Saturday, a teenager hit Mr. Anning with an egg in Melbourne, according to news reports.
Attacks on mosques and Muslim leaders on rise in the West
Attacks on mosques and Muslim religious leaders in the West have increased in recent years, according to data from the Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland. North America, Europe and Oceania saw 128 such attacks from 2010 through 2017, the latest year of available data.
Terrorist attacks on other religious institutions, such as churches and synagogues, totaled 213 over the same period.
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