TALLAHASSEE — Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner has opened an investigation into the owner of a Miami-based security firm linked to the July 7 assassination of Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse.
The commissioner’s Office of Agricultural Law Enforcement is probing Antonio Emmanuel Intriago Valera, 57, the owner of the private security company CTU. The agency is also investigating the firm.
Antonio Emmanuel Intriago Valera, also known as Tony Intriago, reportedly hired more than 20 ex-soldiers from Colombia who were later killed or detained by Haitian authorities in the aftermath of the assassination. The head of Haiti’s National Police last week accused Intriago of visiting Haiti several times to take part in a plot to kill Moïse but did not provide further information.
Franco Ripple, communications director for Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, told POLITICO that since 2018, Intriago has had a license to work as a security officer in Florida and in October was granted a firearm license.
“Intriago’s whereabouts are currently unknown,” Ripple said. “Should he be arrested, our department will take immediate action by suspending all licenses granted to him. Should other individuals licensed by FDACS and connected to this matter be arrested, we will also immediately suspend those licenses, as well.”
Intriago did not respond to text and email messages seeking comment.
Ripple said, however, the Agriculture Commissioner has no records of CTU. If the company is found to have provided “unlicensed security guard services in Florida,” the state agency could level fines or other penalties against it, he said.
The Agriculture Commissioner regulates a patchwork of issues in Florida, from pesticides to concealed weapons permits and private security firms.
Background: Moïse’s assassination sparked a multi-nation investigation, including into figures with deep connections to South Florida. Haitian authorities arrested Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 63-year-old Haitian American who has lived in the Miami area for years, and claimed he played a key role in the plot to kill Moïse. Sanon reportedly claimed that he was unaware of the killing and coup attempt.
Haitian authorities also arrested two more Haitian Americans with ties to South Florida — James Solages and Joseph Vincent, according to the Miami Herald. The Herald also reports that the two men told Haitian officials that they weren’t sent to assassinate Moïse but simply take him into custody.
South Florida has longstanding connections with Caribbean and Central and South American countries, in no small part because of its location. The Miami-Dade area has one of the biggest diasporas of Haitians in the world, with an estimated 30,000 Haitian Americans living in South Florida.
Wortman, a denturist, did not possess a firearms license and obtained his weapons illegally. The commission heard that there were “two, and potentially three,” instances when police received information about his access to firearms. Little, if anything, was done, according to testimony.
En la noche del lunes un restaurante ubicado en 26 de marzo fue asaltado por dos parejas que se hicieron pasar por clientes al momento de ingresar al local, según pudo confirmar El País con fuentes policiales.
Subrayado informó que entre los clientes se encontraba el embajador de Paraguay en Uruguay, Luis Enrique Chase Plate, pero el diplomático, al ser consultado por El País, negó haber estado en ese local al momento del asalto.
Fuentes de la investigación confirmaron a El País que las cuatro personas ordenaron un plato principal, esperaron a comer y una vez finalizada la cena en vez de pagar la cuenta uno de ellos fue a la puerta y sacó una escopeta de caño recortado.
Los otros tres delincuentes se encargaron de robar las billeteras, los relojes y el dinero de los clientes, logrando recaudar en total una suma de 300 dólares y 20.000 pesos.
Una vez que obtuvieron el botín, los cuatro lograron darse a la fuga.
In his closed-door interview last month, Mr. Sondland portrayed himself as a well-meaning and at times unwitting player who was trying to conduct American foreign policy with Ukraine with the full backing of the State Department while Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, repeatedly inserted himself at the behest of the president.
But some Democrats painted him as a lackey of Mr. Trump’s who had been an agent of the shadow foreign policy on Ukraine, eager to go along with what the president wanted. Democrats contended Mr. Sondland, a wealthy hotelier from Oregon, had evaded crucial questions during his testimony, repeatedly claiming not to recall the events under scrutiny.
And other witnesses have pointed to him as a central player in the irregular channel of Ukraine policymaking being run by Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani, and the instigator of the quid pro quo strategy.
In the addendum, Mr. Sondland said he had “refreshed my recollection” after reading the testimony given byMr. Taylor and Timothy Morrison, the senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council.
Mr. Trump has denied there was a quid pro quo involving the aid and Ukraine’s willingness to launch investigations he was seeking into the Bidens and other Democrats. Mr. Sondland’s clarification is significant because his earlier testimony left it unclear how he viewed the issue, even as three other officials told impeachment investigators under oath that the aid and the investigations were linked. Unlike the others, Mr. Sondland was a donor to Mr. Trump’s campaign and was seen as a personal ally of the president.
Mr. Morrison, the National Security Council official, testified last week that it was Mr. Sondland who first indicated in a conversation with him and Mr. Taylor on Sept. 1 that the release of the military aid for Ukraine might be contingent on the announcement of the investigations, and that he hoped “that Ambassador Sondland’s strategy was exclusively his own.”
The new testimony appeared in part to be an attempt by Mr. Sondland to argue that the quid pro quo was not his idea, and explain why he believed the aid and the investigations were linked. He said it “would have been natural for me to have voiced what I presumed” about what was standing in the way of releasing the military assistance.
The report, by a senior civil servant, Sue Gray, was scrubbed of its most potentially damaging findings at the request of London’s Metropolitan Police, which launched their own investigation of the lockdown breaches last week. So abridged was the document released on Monday that the Cabinet Office characterized it as an “update” of Ms. Gray’s investigation rather than as a report.
Still, even in its redacted form, the report painted a troubling portrait of a work culture at Downing Street, where staff members held alcohol-fueled gatherings with colleagues during a period when the government was urging the public to avoid socializing, even with close friends and relatives. Accusations of double standards have engulfed Mr. Johnson’s government and threatened his grip on power.
“At least some of the gatherings in question represent a serious failure to observe not just the high standards expected of those working at the heart of government, but also of the standards expected of the entire British population at the time,” Ms. Gray said in one of her general findings.
“There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times,” she continued. “Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place. Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”
The prime minister had shored up his position somewhat in recent days, and the findings released on Monday did not immediately appear to pose a fresh threat to him. But at a minimum, they raised hard questions about the operation Mr. Johnson and his senior aides have put together at Downing Street.
Mr. Johnson, who planned to address Parliament about the report on Monday, has been scrambling to avoid a vote of no-confidence in his leadership by Conservative lawmakers. Such a vote would be called if 54 members submit confidential letters demanding it. That threshold has not yet been met, and it was unlikely that the details released Monday would lead to a flood of new dissidents.
Indeed, Downing Street moved swiftly to change the subject. Mr. Johnson, eager to drape himself in a statesman’s mantle, scheduled a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Monday to discuss the mounting tensions in Ukraine. He will visit the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Tuesday.
Britain has been staking out a more assertive policy on Ukraine in recent weeks. But Mr. Johnson has been forced to cede much of the spotlight to his foreign secretary, Liz Truss, and defense secretary, Ben Wallace, while he grappled with the mutiny inside his Conservative Party over the party scandal.
Later in the week, the government will release a report on its “leveling up” program, the blueprint to bolster economically blighted parts of the country’s north, which is the centerpiece of its legislative agenda.
Mr. Johnson hopes to mollify Conservative lawmakers, many of whom were swept into Parliament in 2019 on the strength of Mr. Johnson’s “Get Brexit done” campaign slogan but who have grown disillusioned with him, particularly in the wake of disclosures about pandemic socializing at Downing Street.
El candidato a gobernador por el Frente para la Victoria de Mendoza, Adolfo Bermejo, reconoció la derrota en los comicios que se celebraron en la provincia cuyana, y contó que ya felicitó a su rival Alfredo Cornejo, del Frente Cambia Mendoza, fuerza que se adjudicó el triunfo.
Por su parte, el senador nacional y precandidato presidencial por la UCR, Ernesto Sanz, celebró la victoria de Corjeno y dijo que en esa provincia “fue posible la alternancia que se viene en la Nación”.
“La alternancia que se dio hoy en Mendoza será posible en la Nación. Es el triunfo de una unidad política en la que convergen varias fuerzas”, señaló Sanz, en relación a la alianza que su partido mantiene con el PRO que lidera Mauricio Macri. El jefe de Gobierno porteño viajó para participar de los festejos.
WASHINGTON — Republicans are confident a vote confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the the Supreme Court is only days away, but Democrats are looking farther ahead and warning that this swift process on the eve of an election won’t be quickly forgotten.
Even as senators shared lighthearted and jovial moments with colleagues in the confirmation hearings, some Democrats warned there could be consequences.
“The rule of ‘because we can,’ which is the rule that is being applied today, is one that leads away from a lot of the traditions and commitments and values that the Senate has long embodied,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said.
“Don’t think that when you have established the rule of ‘because we can’ that should the shoe be on the other foot that you will have any credibility to come to us and say, yeah, I know you can do that but you shouldn’t because of X, Y, Z,” he said. “Your credibility to make that argument in the future will die in this room and on that Senate floor if you continue to proceed in this way.”
Whitehouse’s warning comes ahead of an election in which polls say Democrats are favored to win the presidency and potentially full control of Congress.
The remarks foreshadow what could be a major fight among Democrats about whether — and how — to retaliate if they regain power in January. Party sources say it is unclear how they will respond and that it depends on what happens the election — that if they win, the magnitude of victory will determine whether they have the necessary votes and mandate to take drastic action.
Some progressive activists have pushed the party to expand the Supreme Court in retaliation, unhappy that Republicans refused to confirm President Barack Obama’s final nominee months before an election but are letting Trump fill a vacancy as Americans have already begun to cast votes. Biden has said he’s “not a fan of court-packing” as he runs to restore norms and institutions and keeps his focus on defeating the coronavirus and protecting health care access.
Senate Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has argued that Democrats opposition to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination then justified the reversal of his previous promise not to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in the last year of Trump’s term.
“I made it pretty clear that what I thought what happened to Justice Kavanaugh changed every rule, every norm,” he said, while praising Democrats for conducting themselves respectfully with Barrett. “Once we have a new election, then hopefully we’ll have a fresh start.”
The Democrats didn’t pointedly bring up court expansion on Thursday, a topic that they’ve put on the back-burner. But they said the future of the institution looks bleak.
“I don’t know how we get this train back on track,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in the committee. “But this nomination, at this moment in time, is not usual, not normal, and it’s beneath the dignity of this committee.”
Calls for Feinstein’s removal
The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., closed on a note of praise for Graham, which rankled progressives.
“I just want to thank you. This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in,” she told them. “Thank you so much for your leadership.” The two embraced as the hearing ended.
In response Brian Fallon, the executive director of the progressive advocacy group Demand Justice, called for removing Feinstein from the leadership role on the committee.
“She has undercut Democrats’ position at every step of this process, from undermining calls for filibuster and Court reform straight through to thanking Republicans for the most egregious partisan power grab in the modern history of the Supreme Court,” Fallon said in a statement. “If Senate Democrats are going to get their act together on the courts going forward, they cannot be led by someone who treats … the Republican theft of a Supreme Court seat with kid gloves.”
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Oct. 14, 2020.Demetrius Freeman / Getty Images
The Democrats did try to use procedural motions to slow the process down. Graham shot them down and set a committee vote for 1 p.m. Eastern Time on October 22.
After that vote, which is likely to receive the backing of all the Republicans on the panel, the nomination would move to the full Senate, which could hold a final vote as early as Monday, Oct. 26, the week before Election Day. Aides cautioned that nothing is set yet.
“We have the votes,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said Thursday he recognized that “this goose is pretty much cooked.”
The most immediate consequence of confirming Barrett, which would sharply tilt the balance of the Supreme Court and cement a 6-3 conservative majority, was set to occur at the ballot box.
Four Republicans on the Judiciary committee — Graham, John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Joni Ernst of Iowa — are facing competitive reelection bids. Tillis and Ernst are trailing their opponents, and polls indicate most Americans want Republicans to wait to fill the vacancy.
All four offered praise for Barrett and are expected to support her.
The only Republican who has said she’ll vote “no” is Sen. Susan Collins, who faces a difficult re-election battle in Maine, and said it was the wrong time to fill a high court vacancy. In addition, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has said she opposes the process at this time, but her office said she wouldn’t comment on how she’d vote in a final up-or-down referendum until after she meets with Barrett.
Republicans need 50 of their 53 members to secure confirmation.
Police in the small town of Windsor, Virginia, found themselves in the national spotlight after being hit with a lawsuit from an Army officer, who is Black and Latino, after a traffic stop last December.
In body camera and cell phone video, Army Second Lieutenant Caron Nazario, still in his uniform, can be seen with his hands visible out of the window of his new car.
“I’ve not committed any crime,” Nazario said.
When two Windsor police officers, guns drawn, ordered him to get out, he said, “I’m honestly afraid to get out.”
“Yeah dude, you should be,” one officer responds.
In the video, Nazario repeatedly asks why he was pulled over, and one of the two officers pepper sprays and kicks him. He is then handcuffed while police search his car.
Nazario asks, “Why am I being treated like this? Why?”
“Because you’re not cooperating,” an officer responds.
Attorney Jonathan Arthur, who is representing Nazario in a lawsuit filed earlier this month against the two officers, said that he was afraid if he took his hands out of view, something bad would happen.
“To unbuckle his seatbelt, to do anything, any misstep — he was afraid that they were going to kill him,” Arthur said.
The incident report said that Nazario was initially pulled over for not having tags displayed on his SUV, but the temporary dealer plate is visible in the officer’s body-camera video.
Nazario was released without being charged.
“What prompted him to file is the need to stop this conduct,” Arthur said. “The need to hold these two officers accountable and make sure they cannot do it again.”
The Windsor Police Department did not respond to a CBS News request for comment.
Democrats have figured out that if they make it as easy as possible for illegal immigrants, that is, potential future Democratic voters, to spread all over the country, it’s nearly impossible to get them out. And if anyone tries to get them out, they can count on the national media to hyperventilate about “the children.”
A front-page story in the Washington Post on Friday about the ICE raids in Mississippi earlier this week said that the operation had “led to images of weeping children arriving home to find their parents missing.” (Note the use of the phrase “led to,” as though it were a random occurrence rather than a deliberate editorial decision by a news organization to broadcast the faces of weeping kids.)
The Post story said that the raids “again exposed what state and local officials say is a major shortcoming in ICE procedures for dealing with children.”
A video clip of an elementary school-aged girl pleading for the release of her illegal immigrant father went viral on Twitter and ABC News featured it on Wednesday’s broadcast of World News Tonight.
True, the surprise raids did end up with the arrest of close to 700 illegal immigrants residing in Mississippi. Children who had been at school came home in some cases to find one or both of their parents gone, taken in to ICE custody.
After the raids, ICE said that about half of the detainees were set free, with priority given to those who had children at home needing care. That would include illegal immigrants who had already received deportation orders but, because ofthe children, were let go and simply given notice to appear back before a court. (If they didn’t show up the first time, let’s hope they will the second or third time!)
Employers are illegally hiring, and at this point, surprise raids are virtually the only way to enforce what’s left of our immigration laws. Everyone below Texas knows that they’re allowed to waltz right in so long as they claim asylum and come with children. They know the immigration court is backlogged by about 1 million cases right now, so they’ll have to be turned loose inside the U.S. for up to five years waiting for a hearing. And they know that Democrats will breathe fire on anyone who tries to deport them once they’re inside the U.S.
Last month, when President Trump announced that there would be countrywide ICE raids to deport “millions” of illegal immigrants, Democrats in Congress and in sanctuary cities immediately flooded the Internet with notice that if they didn’t answer the doors to federal agents, they couldn’t be taken in to custody.
Democrats have likewise resisted making changes to the asylum system. They won’t contribute any money to building more barrier “walls” on the southern border. They oppose prosecuting illegal border crossers. And they’ve made up a bunch of lies about the migrant detention centers functioning as “concentration camps.”
There are no options left but for ICE agents to show up unannounced at workplaces and courthouses and the like to drag illegal immigrants out of the country — or, at least, to drag them to an federal facility and then release half of them because the children are waiting at home.
Surprise raids aren’t pretty, but they wouldn’t be necessary if not for Democrats’ efforts to block all other enforcement. They have forced them on the children.
The bloc – which consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US – promised to continue providing “financial, humanitarian, military, diplomatic and legal” support to his country “for as long as it takes”.
Federal prosecutors said electric utility ComEd has agreed to pay $200 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into a long-running bribery scheme that implicates Madigan. They say the company has admitted that from 2011 to 2019 it arranged for jobs and vendor subcontracts “for various associates of a high-level elected official for the state of Illinois.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office identified the high-level elected official as “Public Official A” in a news release. A deferred prosecution agreement for ComEd filed in federal court states that “Public Official A” is the Illinois House speaker, but Madigan — a Chicago Democrat who is the longest-serving state House speaker in modern American history — is not mentioned by name.
“The speaker has a lot that he needs to answer for, to authorities, to investigators, and most importantly, to the people of Illinois,” Pritzker said during a stop in suburban Chicago. “If these allegations of wrongdoing by the speaker are true, there is no question that he will have betrayed the public trust and he must resign.”
U.S. Attorney John Lausch said at a news conference that the agreement with ComEd “speaks for itself.”
“It also speaks volumes about the nature of the very stubborn public corruption problem we have here in Illinois,” he said.
Lausch wouldn’t comment on the identity of Public Official A, saying his office doesn’t identify people if they have not been charged. But he said the investigation is “vibrant” and will continue, and he asked for people with information to contact the FBI.
Former federal prosecutor Phil Turner, now a Chicago defense attorney, said it’s likely the government has pursued Madigan for years and with the ComEd allegations, found “something really solid” to reach him.
“To put it bluntly, they’re coming for him,” Turner said. “They’ll have some people who are very credible. With bribes, there’s a money trail, good documentation, and witness testimony corroborated by documents can make the case extremely strong.”
In the news release, prosecutors said Public Official A controlled what measures were called for a vote in the Illinois House of Representatives and exerted substantial influence over lawmakers concerning legislation affecting ComEd.” During the time of the scheme, the Illinois Legislature considered legislation that affected the company’s profitability, including regulatory processes used to determine rates the state’s largest electric utility charged customers, they said.
The alleged bribery scheme was orchestrated “to influence and reward the official’s efforts to assist ComEd with respect to legislation concerning ComEd and its business,” prosecutors said. That included arranging jobs and vendor contracts for Madigan allies and workers, including for people from his political operation, who performed little or no work, appointing a person to the company’s board at Madigan’s request and giving internships to students from his Chicago ward.
In October, WBEZ reported that Anne Pramaggiore, CEO of ComEd parent company Exelon, had abruptly left her job as the company’s ties to a federal investigation seemed to be deepening. The Chicago Tribune reported in December that Madigan was the subject of inquiries in the corruption probe that had already entangled several top Illinois Democrats.
More than half a dozen Illinois Democrats — including some former Madigan confidants and allies — have been charged with crimes or had agents raid their offices and homes.
Madigan, 78, who came up under the political machine of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley and considered him a mentor, was elected to the House of Representatives in 1970. He took over as speaker in 1983 and has held the gavel for all but two years since, building a reputation for canny strategizing, patience and outwitting his political rivals. In 2017 he bested the 32 ½-year record held by a midcentury South Carolina Democrat to become the nation’s longest-serving state House speaker in U.S. history.
Madigan also controls four campaign funds and millions in contributions, allowing him to wield considerable power at the ballot box as well as the state Capitol. But Possley said he has done nothing improper.
“The Speaker has never helped someone find a job with the expectation that the person would not be asked to perform work by their employer, nor did he ever expect to provide anything to a prospective employer if it should choose to hire a person he recommended,” she said in the statement. “He has never made a legislative decision with improper motives and has engaged in no wrongdoing here. Any claim to the contrary is unfounded.”
The ComEd investigation, which charges the company with one count of bribery, is the latest public corruption probe in a state where four of the last 11 governors have been sent to prison and several state lawmakers and Chicago City Council members have faced charges, been convicted, or cooperated with law enforcement investigations.
“Even for a state with a history of corruption, this is unprecedented,” Illinois Republican Party Chairman Tim Schneider said.
Under the deferred prosecution agreement, which still must be approved by a judge, the government will defer prosecution on the charge for three years and then seek to dismiss it if the utility “abides by certain conditions, including continuing to cooperate with ongoing investigations of individuals or other entities related to the conduct described in the bribery charge.”
Lausch said that ComEd has provided “substantial” cooperation in the investigation. Under the terms of its agreement the company will continue to cooperate until all investigations and prosecutions are complete.
Exelon CEO Christopher Crane said the company “acted swiftly to investigate” when it learned of inappropriate conduct and concluded “a small number of senior ComEd employees and outside contractors” who no longer work for the company orchestrated the misconduct.
“We apologize for the past conduct that didn’t live up to our own values, and we will ensure this cannot happen again,” he said.
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