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Tag: civil disobedience

  • ‘Don’t let another sister suffer’: Alleged gang rape in Pakistan’s ‘Central Park’ sparks protests | CNN

    ‘Don’t let another sister suffer’: Alleged gang rape in Pakistan’s ‘Central Park’ sparks protests | CNN

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    Islamabad, Pakistan
    CNN
     — 

    The alleged gang rape of a woman in a park in Pakistan has enraged women’s rights activists who are protesting against what they see as “increasing sexual barbarism” in the country.

    The woman, 24, was with a male colleague in the capital Islamabad’s Fatima Jinnah park – known locally as F9 park and the largest in the city – last Thursday when they were allegedly attacked by two armed men, according to a statement she filed with the police, seen by CNN.

    The woman alleged the men forced the pair toward a “jungle area” of the park where they ripped off her clothes and raped her.

    She said the men told her she should not have been in the park at night and asked about her connection to her colleague.

    “When I responded, I was slapped. My hair was pulled and I was thrown on the floor,” the woman said in her police statement.

    The incident has sparked outrage in the country of 220 million, which is highly patriarchal and where violent attacks against women and girls frequently make headlines.

    Scores of protesters have tied their dupattas – scarves worn by South Asian women – to the railings of the park, alongside messages imploring change.

    “Please don’t let another sister suffer,” one note read. “Save the women and kids of Pakistan,” read another.

    The rights group, Aurat Azadi March (Women’s Freedom March), said in a statement, “There is an increasing sexual barbarism in Pakistan, and criminal silence on it by the state and society is unacceptable.”

    “We are enraged. We are in pain. And we will not let this be forgotten.”

    A spokesperson for Islamabad police told CNN no arrests had been made in the case so far.

    Fatima Jinnah park is a sprawling oasis spread across the center of Islamabad in an affluent part of the city, and has a high security presence. It is often likened to New York’s Central Park as families often gather for festivals and children play at the park throughout the day.

    The government on Sunday ordered domestic television channels not to report on the alleged assault, citing the need to protect the woman’s identity.

    In a statement, Pakistan’s Electronic Media Regulatory Authority said any broadcast of news reports was “prohibited with immediate effect.”

    More than 5,200 women reported being raped in the country in 2021, according to Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, but experts believe the actual number is much higher as many women are afraid to come forward due to social stigma and victim blaming.

    Fewer than 3% of sexual assault or rape cases result in a conviction in Pakistan, Reuters reported in December 2020, citing Karachi-based non-profit War Against Rape.

    In December 2020, Pakistan toughened its rape laws to create special courts to try cases within four months and provide medical examinations to women within six hours of a complaint being made. But activists say Pakistan continues to fail its women and does not have a nationwide law criminalizing domestic violence, leaving many vulnerable to assault.

    In 2021, the beheading of Noor Mukadam, a Pakistani ambassador’s daughter, sent shockwaves through the country with protesters calling on the government to do more to protect women.

    Her killer, Zahir Jaffer, the 30-year-old son of an influential family and a dual Pakistan-US national who knew Mukadam, was sentenced to death by an Islamabad judge last February.

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  • Second Trump attorney met with Mar-A-Lago probe grand jury in recent weeks | CNN Politics

    Second Trump attorney met with Mar-A-Lago probe grand jury in recent weeks | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Trump attorney Christina Bobb appeared before a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in recent weeks in connection with the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, two sources have told CNN.

    Bobb’s appearance marks the second Trump lawyer involved with Trump’s handling of government documents to meet with the grand jury recently. CNN reported that Trump attorney Evan Corcoran appeared before the grand jury last month.

    The Wall Street Journal first reported Bobb’s appearance.

    The disclosure of the testimony by the Trump lawyers comes amid a steady drip of recent moves by special counsel Jack Smith to obtain grand jury testimony from very close contacts of the former president, in many cases about what Trump was told and what he said at the end of his presidency and afterward.

    It also comes amid an escalation of activity in Smith’s other Trump probe, looking into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and efforts to impede the transfer of power following the 2020 election.

    Smith issued a subpoena in that investigation to former Vice President Mike Pence in recent days, seeking documents and testimony. Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien also received a subpoena, as CNN first reported.

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  • Police arrest three after protest at asylum seeker hotel in England | CNN

    Police arrest three after protest at asylum seeker hotel in England | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Police in the northern England town of Knowsley, Merseyside, arrested three people on Friday after violence broke out during a protest outside a hotel used to house asylum seekers.

    Merseyside Police said those arrested were being held “on suspicion of violent disorder and taken to police stations to be questioned.”

    The protest, sparked by a video filmed near the hotel, had started peacefully, police said, but the situation later became tense and projectiles were thrown at the officers.

    Videos shared online Friday from the area appeared to show officers in riot gear with large shields and a police vehicle set ablaze.

    The police said they were dealing with two groups of protesters after a demonstration descended into chaos outside the Suites Hotel in Ribblers Lane.

    Care4Calais, a refugee charity, tweeted: “The far right have split into three groups and surrounded us at the hotel. The police don’t have the capacity to cover all three groups.”

    Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, told the UK Press Association news agency that she “was among 100 to 120 people from pro-migrant groups who went to the scene in reaction to the protest to show support for the asylum seekers.”

    “I’m trying to get in touch with some of the poor men in that hotel, I can only imagine how frightened they are. It was like a war zone,” she told the PA on Friday.

    Assistant Chief Constable Paul White of Merseyside Police said in a statement: “We will always respect the right to protest when these are peaceful, but the scenes tonight were completely unacceptable, putting those present, our officers and the wider community in danger.”

    “Thankfully we have not had any serious injuries reported up to this point, but for officers and police vehicles to be damaged in the course of their duty protecting the public is disgraceful,” he said.

    “We have arrested some of those suspects and will continue without hesitation to review all and any evidence which comes in, through CCTV, images or other information you may have,” he added.

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  • Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

    Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump and his role in January 6, 2021, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

    Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, the source said. They want the former vice president to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the 2020 election and the day of the attack on the US Capitol.

    The subpoena marks an important milestone in the Justice Department’s two-year criminal investigation, now led by the special counsel, into the efforts by Trump and allies to impede the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. Pence is an important witness who has detailed in a memoir some of his interactions with Trump in the weeks after the election, a move that likely opens the door for the Justice Department to override at least some of Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    Pence’s attorney Emmet Flood is known as a hawk on executive privilege, and people familiar with the discussions have said Pence was expected to claim at least some limits on providing details of his direct conversations with Trump. Depending on his responses, prosecutors have the option to ask a judge to compel him to answer additional questions and override Trump’s executive privilege claims.

    ABC News first reported on the subpoena.

    Pence’s office declined to confirm he had been subpoenaed. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment to CNN on the matter.

    Months of negotiations preceded the subpoena to the former vice president, CNN has reported.

    Justice Department prosecutors had reached out to Pence’s representatives to seek his testimony in the criminal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Pence’s team had indicated he was open to discussing a possible agreement with DOJ to provide some testimony, one person said.

    That request occurred before the department appointed Smith to oversee two Trump-related investigations, the January 6-related probe and another into alleged mishandling of classified materials found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

    In November, Pence published his memoir that detailed some of his interactions with Trump as the former president sought to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden. Pence and his team knew that the book’s publication would raise the prospect that the Justice Department would likely seek information about those interactions as part of its criminal investigation, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

    Pence rebuffed an interview request from the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, but allowed top aides to provide testimony in the House’s probe, as well as in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation. The DOJ successfully secured answers from top Pence advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

    There are no plans for Trump’s team to challenge the grand jury subpoena of Pence at this time, according to a source familiar with its thinking. But it would still be possible for Trump to attempt to assert executive privilege over some conversations they had, if Pence declines to detail those conversations to the grand jury.

    So far, Trump’s team has lost those challenges when Pence’s deputies and two White House counsel’s office attorneys testified, following Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s rulings that they must answer questions they initially refused to because of confidentiality around the presidency.

    Howell’s tenure as chief judge of the DC District Court ends in mid-March, meaning a different federal judge, James Boasberg, could be the one to field privilege disputes in the continuing grand jury investigation.

    CNN reported earlier Thursday that Smith had also subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien in both of the Trump-related probes, according to a source familiar with the matter. O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

    Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security secretary was separately interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the probe into 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, former acting secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • First on CNN: Trump’s former national security adviser subpoenaed in special counsel probes of classified documents, January 6 | CNN Politics

    First on CNN: Trump’s former national security adviser subpoenaed in special counsel probes of classified documents, January 6 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien has been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith in both his investigation into classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and the probe related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

    CNN has reached out to O’Brien for comment.

    O’Brien considered resigning from his post over Trump’s response to the violence on January 6, 2021, but ultimately decided to remain in the job, CNN previously reported. The National Security Council should have been involved in the handling of classified documents at end of the Trump presidency, and O’Brien may have knowledge of how those records ended up at Mar-a-Lago.

    Separately, Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the ongoing special counsel investigation related to 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

    Wolf declined to comment on his recent interview with federal investigators, which was first reported by Bloomberg. A spokesman for Smith also declined to comment.

    The interview comes after Wolf’s former deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, testified last month before a federal grand jury as part of Smith’s election interference probe. When Cuccinelli was asked at the time whether privilege claims arose, he said: “They did, and I didn’t say anything.”

    O’Brien, Wolf and Cuccinelli were previously interviewed by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.

    For the time being, Smith has not sought testimony from a handful of other potentially relevant Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller or former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, two other sources tell CNN.

    In the days after the January 6 attack, Wolf urged Trump and all elected officials to condemn the violence on Capitol Hill, calling what transpired “tragic and sickening.”

    “While I have consistently condemned political violence on both sides of the aisle, specifically violence directed at law enforcement, we now see some supporters of the President using violence as a means to achieve political ends,” Wolf said at the time. “This is unacceptable.”

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  • New GOP-led panel to hold first public hearing Thursday on alleged ‘weaponization’ of federal government | CNN Politics

    New GOP-led panel to hold first public hearing Thursday on alleged ‘weaponization’ of federal government | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The GOP-led House committee on the alleged “weaponization” of the federal government kicks off Thursday with its first public hearing with a witness list that suggests Republicans on the committee will push a popular narrative among conservatives that has been disputed by federal officials.

    The hearing will be split into two sessions, featuring a swath of current and former lawmakers, former FBI officials and legal experts. They plan to discuss allegations of how the government has been weaponized against Republicans, as well as the general belief among some conservatives that federal officials and mainstream media have been working to silence the right.

    “We’re focused on the whole weaponization of government, and the idea that the government is not working for the American people,” subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan told CNN. “The government is supposed to protect the First Amendment, not have, as Mr. (Jonathan) Turley said, ‘censorship by surrogate,’” he said, referencing one of the witnesses slated for Thursday’s hearing who is a George Washington University Law Center professor.

    The Ohio Republican continued, “I’m sure those will be some of the things that will come up in the course of the hearing,” he added, referencing a line from one of the witnesses GOP members have called.

    Democrats on the panel, however, tell CNN they reject the premise of the weaponization subcommittee itself – and much of their time will be spent disputing GOP messaging.

    “We have an overall strategy, which is to debunk the misrepresentations that are sure to be coming from it,” said Rep. Dan Goldman, a freshman Democrat from New York. “My understanding is that Sens. Grassley and Johnson are going to speak, and I’m glad they are. I hope they talk about how they used their Senate committees to weaponize Russian propaganda and disinformation in 2020.”

    “I think our intention is to make sure that the American people are aware of the actual truth of the matter, and not whatever partisan misinformation that Republicans are going to peddle,” Goldman added.

    Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is being called as one of the Democrats’ witnesses. He told CNN that “one basic question is whether weaponization is the target of the committee or if weaponization is the purpose of the committee” – previewing a potential line of attack.

    In a new memo released Thursday ahead of the subcommittee’s first hearing, the White House called the subpanel a “Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee” and “a political stunt that weaponizes Congress to carry out the priorities of extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”

    White House Oversight spokesman Ian Sams writes that the committee “plans to weaponize the MAGA agenda against their perceived political enemies” and is “choosing to make it their top priority to go down the rabbit hole of debunked conspiracy theories about a ‘deep state’ instead of taking a deep breath and deciding to work with the President and Democrats in Congress to improve Americans’ everyday lives.”

    The first panel of witnesses to testify before the committee include GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, as well as former congresswoman from Hawaii and ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.

    The lawmakers are only slated to deliver opening statements and are not expected to answer any questions while testifying, sources familiar with the committee’s plans tell CNN.

    Gabbard has regularly appeared on Fox News since leaving Congress and frequently uses the network to accuse the FBI and the Justice Department of targeting political opponents of the Biden administration.

    Grassley and Johnson have both previously attacked the Justice Department for how it has handled its investigation into Hunter Biden and its approach to addressing threats against school administrators.

    Grassley has also accused the Justice Department of seeking to criminalize the First Amendment right of parents to protest school policies. The Justice Department has denied doing so, pointing to a line in the memo acknowledging that “spirited debate about policy matters is protected under or Constitution.”

    The witnesses’ previous comments regarding the politization of the Biden Justice Department suggest that the committee plans to push a narrative that is popular among the right, but has been publicly disputed by the FBI. There is little public evidence supporting such claims, which Jordan says are backed up by unnamed whistleblowers. Some allegations have been debunked by fact-checkers or news reports, and Jordan has falsely claimed for years that there is an anti-GOP “deep state” within the FBI.

    Democrats, meanwhile, plan to showcase Raskin’s testimony, who is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee – which is investigating a series of polarizing issues such as Hunter Biden and the former and current presidents’ possession of classified documents. Raskin, a former member of the House select committee on the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection, and a key fixture in both of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trials, has been a crucial messenger for the left in pushing back against the GOP’s claims and controversial probes.

    The second panel of witnesses will feature former FBI special agents Nicole Parker and Thomas Baker, as well as Turley and the Raben Group’s Elliot Williams.

    Parker wrote an op-ed last month detailing how she left the bureau after over 10 years of service because she believed it became “politically weaponized.”

    Baker, meanwhile, published a book in December 2022 titled, “The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy.”

    Turley was a prominent figure during Trump’s impeachment trials often referenced by the right.

    Williams, a CNN analyst, is appearing on behalf of the Democrats. Williams previously served as deputy assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Department of Justice, where worked to secure Senate confirmation for both Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

    Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democratic member of the subcommittee, cast doubt on the effectiveness of Republicans’ strategy, telling CNN, “I fail to see what they think they’re going to accomplish by those kinds of witnesses. … I don’t know that that adds anything to their credibility or making their case. I’ll leave it at that.”

    But Democrats are also cognizant of one potential disadvantage ahead of Thursday’s hearing – the fact they have not yet met as a group while the Republicans have. Connolly told CNN that, given they were just named as member of the panel last week, they have not yet had the opportunity to begin preparing for the onslaught of investigations GOP members have planned.

    GOP subcommittee members told CNN the purpose of the first hearing is largely to outline the panel’s investigate plans in the months ahead, and set the stage for what viewers should anticipate from the weekly-hearings the committee is hoping to hold.

    “Chairman Jordan wants to introduce people to what the committee hopes to accomplish, and the scope of the problem. Having these senators speak with authority helps set it. They won’t be questioned as witnesses, but they are testifying as to their observations,” GOP Rep. Darrell Issa said.

    “I’m not sure we’re going to learn what we need to learn about what has happened inside government agencies in sufficient detail with these witnesses, but I think they can kind of cast the vision,” Republican subcommittee member Dan Bishop of North Carolina told CNN.

    Bishop said he hopes the work of this panel will pave the way for legislation to address what he claimed were agencies “going off rogue.”

    Jordan and House Judiciary Committee staff have met with series of whistleblowers behind closed doors this week for transcribed interviews regarding claims about the politicization of the Justice Department. The interviews will serve as the basis for much of the subcommittee’s probe, sources with direct knowledge of the interviews tell CNN.

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  • Landmark national security trial of Hong Kong democracy activists begins. Here’s what you need to know | CNN

    Landmark national security trial of Hong Kong democracy activists begins. Here’s what you need to know | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Some were seasoned politicians and veteran protest leaders. Others were academics, unionists and health care workers. They hailed from different generations and held a range of political views, but were brought together by what they say was a shared commitment to Hong Kong’s democratic future.

    Now, the “Hong Kong 47,” as the group of pro-democracy activists in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory has come to be known, will start appearing in court from Monday facing charges that could send them to prison for life.

    Sixteen of the defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against them and are expected to be the first ones to take the stand.

    Their alleged crime? Organizing and participating in an unofficial primary election that prosecutors have called a “massive and well-organized scheme to subvert the Hong Kong government.”

    This is Hong Kong’s largest national security law trial since Beijing imposed the sweeping legislation on the city following mass anti-government protests in 2019. The law criminalizes vaguely defined acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces, all of which are punishable by life in prison.

    The landmark trial – the first involving subversion charges – is expected to run for weeks, but its implications could last for years or even decades in a city critics say is rapidly losing its political freedoms and autonomy.

    John Burns, emeritus professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the trial of the democrats is a “test of will” of Beijing’s capacity to completely wipe out organized opposition in Hong Kong.

    Burns said arresting the democrats and pressing charges against them was meant to both intimidate and eliminate the opposition, either by chasing them out of Hong Kong into exile or by jailing them.

    “It is a process of removing them. By shutting down political parties, shutting down trade unions, they are shutting down the basis of the support for organized opposition,” Burns said.

    The Hong Kong government has repeatedly denied such accusations. Instead, it insists the law has ended chaos and restored stability to the city.

    “Hong Kong prides itself on the rule of law; law enforcement agencies are duty-bound to take action against unlawful acts, regardless of the political background of the suspects. Arrests made are based on evidence and strictly in accordance with relevant laws and regulations,” the government said in a statement in response to the criticism.

    Here is what you need to know about the case:

    The 47 pro-democracy figures have been charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion” under the national security law over their alleged roles in an unofficial primary election in July 2020.

    The vote was held ahead of a legislative election to find out which contenders would be best placed to bid against pro-Beijing candidates.

    Such contests are held in democracies around the world, and involve political parties selecting the strongest candidates for an election. Hong Kong’s democrats had previously held such votes in an attempt to match the organization and discipline of the rival pro-Beijing camp and avoid splitting the opposition.

    Authorities, however, said the primary vote was a “vicious plot” intended to “paralyze the government and undermine state power” by winning a majority of seats and using the mandate to block legislation.

    The government’s Electoral Affairs Commission also responded that the “so-called” primaries were “not part of the electoral procedures of the Legislative Council Election or other public elections.”

    In January 2021, the 47 democrats were arrested en masse in a dawn raid. Since then, many have been remanded in custody or are in jail for other protest-related offenses. Fifteen have been granted bail under specific conditions.

    It is extremely rare for defendants not to be granted bail in Hong Kong under the common law system. However, the national security law stipulates that defendants cannot be granted bail unless the court is convinced they will “not continue to commit acts endangering national security.”

    A Department of Justice spokesman told CNN that bail application in cases concerning offenses “endangering national security” has been “handled fairly and adjudicated impartially by the court having regard to admissible evidence, applicable laws and merits of the case.”

    The cases will be heard without a jury, deviating from the common law tradition.

    The defendants include a wide variety of political activists who describe themselves as ranging from moderate democrats to radical localists, a movement that advocates Hong Kong’s independence from mainland China.

    Among the 16 pleading not guilty is former journalist Gwyneth Ho, 32, of the now-defunct Stand News, which was closed down after a police raid in 2021 and two editors were charged with sedition.

    Ho live-streamed the moment when assailants indiscriminately hit people – many of whom were returning from a pro-democracy march – with sticks and metal bars at a train station in July 2019. Ho’s footage of the incident made international headlines, sparking a probe into the lack of police presence. Ho was injured herself in the attack. She later stepped away from journalism to run for the 2020 Legislative Council elections.

    Gwyneth Ho seen working at her office in Hong Kong on August 4, 2020.

    Leung Kwok-hung, 66, nicknamed “Long Hair” for his signature locks, is a former legislator and retired civil servant. He had been on the front lines of the city’s politics for over two decades and is an outspoken critic of China. He’s known for political protests – both on the streets and inside the city’s legislative chamber. In 2017 he was disqualified from the legislature for refusing to take an oath swearing allegiance to China.

    Activist Leung Kwok-hung holds a placard that says

    Lam Cheuk-ting, 45, regularly joined street protests which at times escalated into clashes with police, and he was often seen negotiating with officers and asking them to stop using tear gas.

    He was sentenced to four months in prison in January 2020 for disclosing the personal information of individuals in a police investigation to the Yuen Long mob attack.

    Former pro-democracy lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting stands outside the Eastern Magistrates' Court on December 28, 2020.

    On the other hand, several prominent activists have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. They have either been detained under pre-trial custody or are serving jail time for other protest-related offenses.

    These include well-known activist Joshua Wong, 26, labeled an “extremist” by China’s state media, and Benny Tai, 54, a former law professor and co-founder of the 2014 Occupy Central movement. Claudia Mo, 66, a former journalist-turned-legislator, who has previously been an outspoken critic of Beijing’s tightening grip over Hong Kong, has also pleaded guilty.

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  • Iran pardons or commutes sentence of ‘large’ number of prisoners, state media reports | CNN

    Iran pardons or commutes sentence of ‘large’ number of prisoners, state media reports | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Iran will pardon or commute the sentences of a large number of prisoners as part of an annual amnesty, state media reported Sunday, although it is unclear how this will apply to people arrested in the recent wave of protests.

    Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has approved a proposal to “pardon or commute” the sentences of thousands of prisoners, state media reports, but with notable exceptions that will likely exclude many imprisoned protesters.

    According to semi-official Tasnim, the amnesty does not apply to those sentenced or facing charges of “espionage for outsiders, direct links with the foreign intelligence services, murder or intentional injuries, as well as vandalism or arson attack on governmental, military and public sites” – all charges regularly levied against protesters and foreign nationals imprisoned in Iran.

    Referring to protesters, Chief Justice Gholam​-Hossein Mohseni​-Ejei said “a number of convicts jailed following the recent riots in Iran had been deceived into wrongdoing under the influence of the enemy’s propaganda campaign” and have “asked for forgiveness,” Tasnim reported.

    At least one Iranian human rights organization dismissed the move as “propaganda.”

    “The #HypocriticalPardoning of protesters by Khamenei is an act of propaganda. They used their self-right to protest and their arrests and sentences are not justified. Not only should all protesters be released, but in the path of justice, the trials of the perpetrators and agents of repression is also a universal right,” Iran Human Rights said on Twitter.

    A New York based NGO, the Center for Human Rights (CHRI) in Iran, described the move by Khamenei as a “PR stunt” with “no grounding in reality.”

    The deputy director of the CHRI, Jasmin Ramsey, told CNN in a statement Sunday that the Iranian regime has a “documented history of making lofty declarations about releasing political prisoners and not following through.”

    “What we expect is that some will be released while many others, especially prominent political prisoners who’ve been unjustly jailed for years, will remain imprisoned,” Ramsey said.

    “This is a PR stunt that has no grounding in reality by a regime that has lost legitimacy amongst its people. The political repression, the imprisonments after sham “trials” led by kangaroo courts, the criminalization of dissent remain,” she continued.

    Semi-official news agency Mehr claimed “tens of thousands” of prisoners could be pardoned or have their sentences commuted but provided no details.

    Khamenei made the announcement ahead of the 44th anniversary of the “victory of the Islamic Revolution” marked on February 11. It is customary for Khamenei to grant amnesty to some prisoners to make this occasion.

    Anti-government protests, sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman in September 2022, have resulted in tens of thousands of people being arrested through the country.

    Last month, Iran executed two protesters charged with killing security personnel, causing an international outcry. Critics said the executions were a result of hasty sham trials. At least 43 people are currently facing execution in Iran, according to a CNN count, but activist group 1500Tasvir says the number could be as high as 100.

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  • Developments in Trump documents probe foretell a 2024 campaign clouded by legal tangles | CNN Politics

    Developments in Trump documents probe foretell a 2024 campaign clouded by legal tangles | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    There’s never been a presidential campaign like it.

    Donald Trump is taking every step of his bid for a third consecutive Republican nomination amid a darkening storm of legal uncertainty.

    The twice-impeached former president, who tried to steal an election and is accused of fomenting an insurrection, launched his first two-state campaign swing on Saturday as he seeks a stunning political comeback.

    Then on Monday, Trump’s potential exposure – in two of his multiple strands of legal peril – appeared to grow, foreshadowing a campaign likely to be repeatedly punctuated by distractions from criminal investigations.

    In a new twist to his classified material saga, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Katelyn Polantz reported that two people who found two classified documents in a Trump storage facility in Florida testified before a federal grand jury. Federal prosecutors are also pushing to look at files on a laptop of at least one staff member around Trump at Mar-a-Lago, CNN reported. The former president has not been charged with a crime, but these developments are the latest sign of an aggressive approach by special counsel Jack Smith in probing the matter. And it shows how a regular drumbeat of legal problems could detract from the former president’s attempts to inject energy into a so-far tepid campaign – especially given the multiple criminal threats he may face.

    On another front, The New York Times reported that a district attorney in Manhattan is presenting evidence to another grand jury probing Trump’s alleged role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Last week, a district attorney in Georgia said decisions are imminent on charges related to Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. It is not known whether the ex-president is directly targeted by the investigation. This all comes as Smith is also probing Trump’s role in the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.

    The unique and extraordinary legal tangle surrounding Trump means that a third straight US election will be tainted by controversies that will drag the FBI and the Justice Department further into a political morass. (President Joe Biden is also facing a special counsel investigation over his handling of documents from his time as vice president, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who’s eying a 2024 bid, is under DOJ review for similar issues.) This follows the Hillary Clinton email flap in 2016 and investigations into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia during that White House bid, as well as Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.

    The fact that Trump is seeking the presidency again, under an extraordinary legal cloud, could have significant consequences for the wider 2024 campaign. Some of his potential Republican rivals, wary of trying to take him down, might hope that his legal troubles will do the job for them. Perceptions that Trump is caught in a web of criminal investigation might also further tarnish his personal political brand, which has already contributed to some Republican loses in national elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

    Still, Trump is a master of leveraging attempts to call him to account, legally and politically. He’s already built a central foundation of his new presidential quest around the idea that he’s being political persecuted by Justice Department investigations and what he claims are rogue Democratic prosecutors.

    “We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. It’s all investigation, investigation,” the ex-president said on the trail over the weekend.

    This is a message that may be attractive to some of Trump’s base voters who themselves feel alienated from the federal government and previously bought into his claims about a “deep state” conspiracy against him. It’s also a technique, in which a strongman leader argues that he is taking the heat so his followers don’t have to, that is a familiar page in the authority playbooks of demagogues throughout history.

    As is normal, it is not known what the people who found the classified documents at the Florida storage facility may have said to the grand jury. But the ex-president is being investigated not just for possible violations of the Espionage Act, but also for potential obstruction of justice related to the documents.

    The two individuals, who were hired to search four of Trump’s properties last fall months after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the summer, were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances last week. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources familiar with the investigation said.

    Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday that the latest development was a sign of an advanced special counsel investigation and could indicate that Smith was leaning toward indictments.

    “It sounds like he is trying to lock in their testimony, to understand how they would testify at trial, whether it is incriminating evidence against Trump or exculpatory evidence that the prosecutors would then have that and have it solidified.”

    The simple, politically charged act of investigating an ex-president was always bound to create a political furor. The fact that Trump is running for the White House again multiplies the stakes and means profound decisions are ahead for Attorney General Merrick Garland if evidence suggests Trump should be charged.

    On a more granular level, the report about the grand jury underscores that for all the political noise, the investigation into Trump’s haul of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is taking place inside its own legal bubble.

    This remains the case, despite the political gift handed to Trump with the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and at a Washington office he once used that should have been handed back when he left the vice presidency. Some classified material was also found at Pence’s Indiana home.

    Those discoveries allowed Trump to claim that he was being unfairly singled out, even if the cases have significant differences. Any Trump attempt to argue that he, like Biden and Pence, inadvertently took documents to his home will be undermined by the fact that he claimed the material belonged to him, and not the government, and what appears to be repeated refusals to give it back.

    Fresh indications of the momentum in the Trump documents special counsel probe followed the latest sign of a lopsided approach to the controversy over classified material by House Republicans, who are hammering Biden over documents but giving Trump a free pass.

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer was, for example, asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown this weekend why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home but was fixated upon the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises by lawyers and an unknown number also found during an FBI search of the president’s home this month.

    “If someone can show me evidence that there was influence peddling with those classified documents that were in the possession of President Trump, then we would certainly expand it,” the Kentucky Republican said. He went on to accuse Biden and his family of being “very cozy” with people from the Chinese Communist party but offered no evidence of such links or that they had anything to do with classified documents. His remarks left the impression that his committee is seeking to find evidence to condemn Biden but is treating Trump differently – exactly the kind of double standard the GOP has claimed the DOJ is employing toward Trump.

    The two special counsel investigations probing Trump and Biden’s retention of secret documents are unfolding independently. In a legal sense, there is no overlap between them. But they will both be subject to the same political inferno if findings are made public.

    Were Trump, for instance, to be prosecuted – over what so far appears to be a larger haul of documents and conduct that may add up to obstruction – and Biden is not, the ex-president would incite a firestorm of protest among his supporters. Even though the sitting president enjoys protections from prosecution because of historic Justice Department guidance, it’s hard to see how the political ground for prosecuting just one of them could hold firm – especially if Biden and Trump are rival presidential candidates in 2024.

    From the outside, it appears as if Biden and Pence were far more cooperative with the DOJ and the FBI after some classified documents were found at their properties than Trump has been. It took a search warrant for FBI agents to get into Mar-a-Lago, and the ex-president claimed that presidential documents that belonged to the federal government when he left office belonged to him. But voters might find it hard to understand nuanced legal differences between the two cases – a factor the House Republican counter-attack based on Biden’s documents made more likely.

    As the political fallout from the classified documents furor deepened on Monday, the country got a reminder of the treatment that can await lower-ranking members of the federal workforce when secret material is taken home.

    CNN’s Holmes Lybrand reported that court documents show that a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, who stored files with classified information at his Florida home, will plead guilty in February to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information.

    Robert Birchum served in the Air Force for more than 30 years and previously held top secret clearance. According to his plea agreement, he stored hundreds of files that contained information marked as top secret, secret or confidential classified outside of authorized locations. A plea agreement stated that “the defendant’s residence was not a location authorized to store classified information, and the defendant knew as much.”

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  • Protesters across the US decry police brutality after Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

    Protesters across the US decry police brutality after Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic videos and descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    Protesters once again took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video depicting the violent Memphis police beating that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

    Demonstrators marched through New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, among other cities across the nation on Saturday, raising signs bearing his name and calling for an end to abuses of authority.

    In Memphis, at a makeshift memorial near the corner where Nichols was beaten, resident Kiara Hill expressed her disappointment and said the neighborhood was quiet and family oriented.

    “To see the events unfold how they’ve unfolded, with this Tyre Nichols situation, is heartbreaking. I have a son,” Hill told CNN. “And Tyre, out of the officers on the scene, he was the calmest.”

    Nichols could be heard yelling for his mother in the video of the January 7 encounter, which begins with a traffic stop and goes on to show officers repeatedly beating the young Black man with batons, punching him and kicking him – including at one point while his hands are restrained behind his back.

    He was left slumped to the ground in handcuffs, and 23 minutes passed before a stretcher arrived at the scene. Nichols was eventually hospitalized and died three days later.

    “All of these officers failed their oath,” Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday. “They failed their oath to protect and serve. Look at that video: Was anybody trying to protect and serve Tyre Nichols?”

    Since Nichols’ death, the backlash has been relatively swift. The five Memphis officers involved in the beating – who are also Black – were fired and charged with murder and kidnapping in Nichols’ death. The unit they were part of was disbanded, and state lawmakers representing the Memphis area began planning police reform bills.

    Crump said that the quick firing and arrests of the police officers and release of video should be a “blueprint” for how police brutality allegations are handled going forward. He applauded Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis for arresting and charging the officers within 20 days.

    “When you see police officers commit crimes against citizens, then we want you to act just as swiftly and show as the chief said, the community needs to see it, but we need to see it too when it’s White police officers,” Crump said.

    These are the moments that led to Tyre Nichols’ death

    The five former Memphis police officers involved in the arrest have been charged with second-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping, among other charges, according to the Shelby County district attorney.

    The officers, identified as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., are expected to be arraigned February 17.

    The attorney for one of the officers indicted, Mills Jr., put out a statement Friday night saying that he didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation.

    All five officers were members of the now-scrapped SCORPION unit, Memphis police spokesperson Maj. Karen Rudolph told CNN on Saturday. The unit, launched in 2021, put officers into areas where police were tracking upticks in violent crime.

    Memphis police announced Saturday that it will disband the unit, saying that “it is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the SCORPION Unit.”

    But disbanding the unit without giving officers new training would be “putting lipstick on a pig,” city council chair Martavius Jones told CNN Saturday.

    City council member Patrice Robinson also told CNN disbanding the unit does not go far enough in addressing issues within the agency.

    “We have to fight the bad players in our community, and now we’ve got to fight our own police officers. That is deplorable,” Robinson said. “We’re going to have to do something.”

    Atlanta police officers watch as protesters march during a rally against the fatal Memphis police assault of Tyre Nichols, in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 28, 2023.

    The fallout from the deadly encounter also stretched to other agencies involved.

    Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation. And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.

    A pair of Democratic state lawmakers said Saturday that they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline.

    The bills will seek to address mental health care for law enforcement officers, hiring, training, discipline practices and other topics, said Rep. G.A. Hardaway, who represents a portion of Memphis and Shelby County.

    Rep. Joe Towns Jr., who also represents a portion of Memphis, said legislation could pass through the state house as early as April or May.

    While Democrats hold the minority with 24 representatives compared to the Republican majority of 99 representatives, Towns said this legislation is not partisan and should pass on both sides of the legislature.

    “You would be hard-pressed to look at this footage (of Tyre Nichols) and see what happened to that young man, OK, and not want to do something. If a dog in this county was beaten like that, what the hell would happen?” Towns said.

    John Miller bodycams orig thumb

    ‘There is no OK here’: Ex-NYPD official reacts to Memphis footage

    By the time she saw her son, badly bruised and swollen in his hospital bed, Nichols’ mother says she knew he wasn’t going to make it.

    “When I saw that, I knew my son was gone, the end,” RowVaughn Wells told CNN.

    Through tears, the mother said the officers charged with her son’s death “brought shame to their own families. They brought shame to the Black community.”

    “I don’t have my baby. I’ll never have my baby again,” she said. But she takes comfort in knowing her son was a good person, she said.

    The 29-year-old was a father and also the baby of his family, the youngest of four children. He was a “good boy” who spent his Sundays doing laundry and getting ready for the week, his mother said.

    Nichols loved being a father to his 4-year-old son, said his family.

    “Everything he was trying to do was to better himself as a father for his 4-year-old son,” Crump said at the family’s news conference.

    “He always said he was going to be famous one day. I didn’t know this is what he meant,” Wells said Friday.

    A verified GoFundMe campaign started in memory of Tyre Nichols had raised more than $936,000 as of early Sunday morning. The online fundraiser was created by Nichols’ mother and reads in part: “My baby was just trying to make it home to be safe in my arms. Tyre was unarmed, nonthreatening, and respectful to police during the entire encounter!”

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  • Meta and Twitter decided to restore Trump’s account. Will other platforms follow suit? | CNN Business

    Meta and Twitter decided to restore Trump’s account. Will other platforms follow suit? | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Former president Donald Trump could soon make a return to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and reach the massive audiences on each, now that the companies behind those platforms have restored access to his accounts.

    But that could just be the start. The decisions by Twitter and now Facebook-parent Meta to bring back Trump could push — or at least provide cover for — a number of other platforms to make similar moves. 

    Facebook and Twitter restricted Trump’s accounts in the aftermath of the January 6 attack. The bans were seen as necessary by tech executives, and indeed many on Capitol Hill, believing Trump could use their platforms to incite further violence.

    Many other platforms followed suit by banning or restricting Trump, including YouTube, Snapchat and game streaming platform Twitch. Shopify, an e-commerce company, removed two stores associated with Trump, and digital payments provider Stripe said it would stop processing payments for Trump’s campaign. In some cases, platforms restricted channels or content that was associated with the then-president, if not directly affiliated — Reddit and Discord, for example, banned pro-Trump groups on their platforms.

    The net effect was that Trump, or at least his accounts, essentially vanished or went silent across the mainstream internet. Trump’s digital exile pushed him to launch his own social media platform, Truth Social. His media company even teased plans to create rivals to other online services, including Stripe. (Trump has not said whether he will resume posting from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram; he is believed to have some form of an exclusivity deal with Truth Social’s parent company to post there.)

    For now, some of these other companies appear to be sticking with their policies. On Wednesday, Snapchat parent Snap indicated that it is not planning to revisit its decision to ban Trump’s account two years ago.

    “In January 2021, Donald Trump’s Snapchat account was terminated for violating our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines,” a Snap spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “According to our Community Guidelines, if your account is terminated for violating our Terms of Service or the Guidelines, you are not allowed to use Snapchat again.”

    But for other platforms, Meta’s ruling this week could add to the pressure many had already been facing to reconsider their bans after Trump announced he’d seek a third bid for the White House in 2024 and new Twitter owner Elon Musk gave him back his account.

    “Usually these companies do fly in a flock and whoever makes the first movements, other companies do tend to try to, in succession, follow behind because the initial company takes the biggest media hit and then the rest of them don’t suffer the reputational hit of being the first technology company to make a decision,” Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, told CNN earlier this month.

    A YouTube spokesperson told CNN Wednesday that the company currently had “nothing to share” on whether the company is or plans to consider reversing its suspension. Shopify, Stripe, Discord and Reddit did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the possibility of following Meta and Twitter’s leads and reversing their bans.

    When Musk announced the decision to reinstate Trump’s Twitter account in November, shortly after completing his acquisition of the company, it came with little explanation beyond Musk’s previously stated desire for freer speech on the platform. Musk conducted an informal poll of his followers and more voted in favor of restoring the account than not.

    Meta’s decision, by contrast, could provide a new set of precedents for platforms on how to handle Trump and other world leaders who violate their rules.

    In announcing its decision on Wednesday, Meta laid out “new guardrails” for how it will handle possible rules violations by Trump if he opts to return to Meta’s platforms. In short: yes, Trump can get suspended again, but a permanent ban no longer appears to be on the table.

    “In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg said. He added that the new, harsher penalties for repeat violations will also apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated following suspensions related to civil unrest.

    For content that doesn’t violate its rules but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6th, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon,” Meta may limit distribution of the posts, Clegg said. The company could, for example, remove the reshare button or keep the posts visible on Trump’s page but not in users’ feeds, even for those who follow him, he said. For repeated instances, the company may restrict access to its advertising tools.

    If Trump again posts content that violates Meta’s rules but the company determines “there is a public interest in knowing that Mr. Trump made the statement that outweighs any potential harm,” Meta may similarly restrict the posts’ distribution but leave them visible on Trump’s page.

    The new policy may still require Meta’s leadership to make significant, subjective decisions about what content is potentially harmful public safety at large, but the rules could act as a model for how other platforms could bring back the former president without appearing reckless.

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  • RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel elected to fourth consecutive term | CNN Politics

    RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel elected to fourth consecutive term | CNN Politics

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    Dana Point, California
    CNN
     — 

    Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was elected to a fourth consecutive term Friday after winning the support of about two-thirds of the RNC members who gathered here for their winter meeting.

    McDaniel fended off a stronger-than-expected challenge from Harmeet Dhillon, an RNC committeewoman from California and an attorney who has represented former President Donald Trump.

    The vote was conducted by secret ballot and McDaniel needed a majority of the members casting ballots to win. After just one round of voting, the parliamentarian announced that McDaniel had received 111 of the 167 votes cast. Dhillon received 51 votes and four ballots were cast for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a 2020 election denier and ardent Trump backer.

    Dhillon had argued the party needed to “radically reshape” its leadership amid recriminations about Republicans’ lackluster showing in the midterm elections, which compounded disappointments over the results in the previous two cycles.

    After her win Friday, McDaniel invited Dhillon and Lindell onstage for a photo op, implicitly attempting to rebut criticism about the fractured nature of the party. “With us united and all of us going together, the Democrats are going to hear us in 2024,” McDaniel said.

    But moments later, Dhillon told reporters that GOP leaders would have to reckon with widespread distrust in the party among rank-and-file voters across the country – which she said was reflected in the support she garnered as she challenged McDaniel over the past two months.

    “The results were not what we or hundreds of thousands of supporters around the country were hoping for, and I think the party is going to have to deal with that fallout of being in a disconnect from the grassroots,” Dhillon told reporters outside the RNC’s general session at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach resort.

    “The party is not united, but it’s our job to try and unite the party, and that’s going to mean changes at the RNC,” Dhillon added.

    Both McDaniel and Dhillon have ties to Trump. The former president backed McDaniel when she first ran for party chair in 2017. Dhillon’s law firm represented Trump in his dealings with the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. The RNC paid more than $1 million for the legal work.

    But Trump stayed neutral in the race for RNC chair, stating that McDaniel and Dhillon should “fight it out.” On Friday, he congratulated McDaniel on her “big WIN” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

    Trump’s likely rival in the 2024 contest for the White House, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, weighed in on the race in an interview that posted Thursday, telling Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, a conservative web show host, that it was time for “some new blood in the RNC.” But the GOP governor stopped short of offering a formal endorsement of Dhillon.

    The feud between McDaniel and Dhillon has underscored the fractious nature of the Republican Party at this moment. There are broad disagreements among RNC members about how to steer the party back into a position of strength before the 2024 presidential election, with Trump already an announced candidate. Dhillon, for example, has said the party must do more to encourage early voting to compete with Democrats after years in which Trump has undermined that method of casting ballots in his quest to sow doubt in election results.

    During a speech at the beginning of Friday’s meeting, McDaniel implicitly pushed back at criticisms of her leadership record as she argued that the party must be united headed into 2024. “We’re working overtime to learn the lessons of the midterms – what went right and what went wrong,” she said.

    McDaniel won public commitments from more than 100 RNC members to back her before Friday’s secret ballot election that unfolded among other votes on party business and resolutions. Dhillon’s allies had suggested that many members would switch to the California committeewoman when the secret voting began, but that dynamic did not pan out.

    The race for RNC chair had grown increasingly contentious over the past two months with Dhillon allies raising questions about the compensation and benefits that McDaniel earned as party chair, and McDaniel supporters pointing to the lucrative payments Dhillon’s law group has received for representing both Trump and the RNC. Both women assured members that they would look closely the RNC’s spending on consultants and outside vendors as the party charts the course forward into the next cycle.

    As the GOP wrestles with how much influence Trump should exert over the party’s leadership and machinery, Trump’s candidates for RNC co-chair and treasurer were defeated during the voting on leadership positions by RNC members Friday afternoon in Dana Point, California.

    Trump’s endorsed candidate for RNC co-chair, North Carolina Republican Chairman Michael Whatley, withdrew after trailing South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick, who won after several rounds of voting. Trump had recently endorsed Whatley after crediting him with “leading North Carolina to tremendous success in the recent election” and said he was “MAGA all the way.” Trump’s choice for RNC Treasurer, Joe Gruters – the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida who had backed McDaniel in her run for a fourth consecutive term – also lost on Friday. Vicki Drummond of Alabama was reelected to a term as treasurer.

    RNC members also approved a resolution opposing “all forms of antisemitism, antisemitic statements and any antisemitic elements that seek to infiltrate the Republican Party.” The resolution explicitly condemned White supremacist Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West – who have well-publicized antisemitic views and dined with Trump in November at his Mar-a-Lago estate – by name.

    The resolution approved by a voice vote Friday said that the Republican National Committee “formally condemns, denounces, censures and opposes Kanye West, also known as Ye, Nicholas ‘Nick’ Fuentes, Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and all others promoting their antisemitism beliefs.” It added that the Republican National Committee “affirms antisemitism has no place in our political party, American politics, or any political discourse.”

    Trump acknowledged that the dinner occurred in a post on Truth Social after the controversy erupted, stating that West had unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends “whom I knew nothing about” and described the dinner as “quick and uneventful.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Memphis police permanently disband unit tied to deadly beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

    Memphis police permanently disband unit tied to deadly beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic videos and descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    A day after the public release of video showing the horrific police beating of Tyre Nichols, the Memphis police department announced it is permanently deactivating the unit that five of the involved officers belonged to.

    The SCORPION unit, launched in 2021, was tasked with tackling rising crime in the city, but has been heavily criticized in the aftermath of the 29-year-old man’s killing. Nichols was brutally beaten on January 7 after a traffic stop. He required hospitalization and died on January 10.

    The five Memphis officers who were fired and charged in Nichols’ death all were members of the unit, Memphis police spokesperson Maj. Karen Rudolph told CNN on Saturday.

    A Nichols family attorney this week called for the unit to be disbanded.

    In a statement posted on Twitter Saturday, Memphis police said it was “in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate” the unit.

    “The officers currently assigned to the unit agree unreservedly with this next step,” police said. “While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted.”

    The police statement comes less than 24 hours after the release of the graphic videos of police striking the Black man. Protests began forming Friday night, with people in several cities taking to the streets and raising signs bearing Nichols’ name.

    Saturday’s marches and rallies are expected in Memphis, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Athens, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio, among other cities.

    Protesters near Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta on Saturday repeated Nichols’ name and demanded justice. They then proceeded to march through downtown.

    In Memphis, protesters late Friday shut down an Interstate 55 bridge near the downtown area, chanting, “No justice, no peace,” according to a CNN team on the scene. There were no arrests stemming from the demonstration, police said.

    Ahead of the release of the videos, Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, called for peaceful protests.

    Memphis City Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas told CNN’s Boris Sanchez on Saturday that before the video release, there was a fear of violent protests because of a lack of police accountability in previous incidents.

    “I think last night, we saw a very peaceful and direct sense of protest in the city of Memphis, and I think it’s because maybe we do have faith and hope that the system is going to get it right this time,” Easter-Thomas said.

    In New York, skirmishes broke out between several protesters and police officers as demonstrators crowded Times Square, video posted to social media shows.

    Three demonstrators were arrested, one of whom was seen jumping on the hood of a police vehicle and breaking the windshield, the New York Police Department said.

    Protesters also gathered in Washington, DC, at Lafayette Square to demand justice for Nichols, according to social media video.

    Along the West Coast, protesters marched in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, carrying signs reading, “Justice for Tyre Nichols” and “jail killer cops.”

    Video of the January 7 encounter shows “acts that defy humanity,” Memphis police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis warned before the footage’s release to the public.

    Police officers and protesters clash in New York on January 27.

    The arrest begins with a traffic stop for what officers said was reckless driving and goes on to show officers beating Nichols with batons, kicking him and punching him – including while his hands are restrained behind his body – as the young man cries out for his mother, video shows.

    The encounter ends with Nichols slumped to the ground in handcuffs, leaning against a police cruiser unattended as officers mill about. Nichols was later hospitalized and died three days later.

    Video shows 23 minutes passed from the time Nichols appears to be subdued and on his back on the ground before a stretcher arrives at the scene.

    Footage of the violent encounter was released because Nichols’ family “want the world to be their witness and feel their pain,” Shelby County District Attorney Steven Mulroy said.

    “While nothing we do can bring Tyre back, we promise you that we are doing all we can to ensure that Tyre’s family, and our city of Memphis, see justice for Tyre Nichols,” Mulroy added.

    The Memphis Police Department has been unable to find anything to substantiate the probable cause for reckless driving and said video of the encounter shows a “disregard for life, duty of care that we’re all sworn to,” Davis said.

    Five former Memphis police officers involved in the arrest – who are also Black – have been charged with second-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping, according to the Shelby County district attorney. They were identified as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr.

    Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

    Also, two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation after the sheriff viewed the video.

    Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump said the family did not know there were two members of the sheriff’s office at the scene of the beating, telling CNN on Saturday, “this was the first they heard of it.”

    The Memphis Police Association, which represents city police officers, expressed condolences to the Nichols family and said it does not condone the mistreatment of citizens or abuse of power.

    The association said it has “faith in the criminal justice system.”

    “That faith is what we will lean on in the coming days, weeks, and months to ensure the totality of circumstances is revealed,” according to a statement. “Mr. Nichols’ family, the City of Memphis, and the rest of the country deserve nothing less.”

    According to Easter-Thomas, the City Council meeting next week will be “robust.”

    Easter-Thomas said she wants to ensure the police department knows the council supports them but expects officers to do their jobs with the “utmost fidelity.”

    Martavius Jones

    ‘We all knew the fate’: Memphis lawmaker emotionally describes Nichols video

    The Memphis police chief likened the video to the 1991 Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King that sparked days of unrest in the city.

    “It’s very much aligned with that same type of behavior,” Davis said.

    Crump also made the comparison. “Being assaulted, battered, punched, kicked, tased, pepper sprayed. It is very troubling,” he said.

    “The only difference between my father’s situation and now is hashtags and a clearer camera,” Rodney King’s daughter Lora King told CNN. “We have to do better, this is unacceptable.”

    “I don’t think anybody in their right mind, anybody that respects humanity is OK with this,” she said, adding that she’s saddened for Nichols’ family and loved ones. “I’m just sad for just where we are in America, we’re still here.”

    A protest over Nichols’ death is set for Saturday in Los Angeles.

    President Joe Biden said he was “outraged and deeply pained” after seeing the video. “It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day.”

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  • Jan. 6 rioter who assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick sentenced to over 6 years in jail | CNN Politics

    Jan. 6 rioter who assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick sentenced to over 6 years in jail | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A man who assaulted United States Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with pepper spray on January 6, 2021, was sentenced on Friday to 80 months behind bars.

    Julian Khater pleaded guilty in September to two counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon. His co-defendant, George Tanios, pleaded guilty last summer to disorderly conduct and entering and remaining in a restricted building. Khater was also ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and $2,000 in restitution.

    Tanios was sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release. He previously spent more than five months behind bars.

    The day after the attack, Sicknick died after suffering several strokes. Washington, DC’s chief medical examiner, Francisco Diaz, determined that the officer died of natural causes and told The Washington Post that the riot and “all that transpired played a role in his condition.”

    Sicknick’s family and partner were present for the sentencing and law enforcement officers dressed in uniform filled the courtroom.

    According to the plea agreements, Tanios bought two cans of bear spray in preparation for his trip with Khater to Washington on January 6. During the Capitol attack, when the two men arrived near a line of police officers by the steps of the Capitol, Khater said to Tanios, “Give me that bear s**t,” according to the plea.

    Khater took a white can of bear spray from Tanios’s backpack, walked up to the line of officers and, as rioters started pulling on the bike rack barrier separating them and the police, Khater sprayed multiple officers – including Sicknick – who had to retreat from the line.

    One of those officers, Caroline Edwards, gave a witness impact statement before DC District Judge Thomas Hogan during the sentencing hearing.

    “I felt like the absolute worst kind of officer, someone who didn’t help – couldn’t help – their friend,” she said of not being able to help Sicknick after being sprayed herself seconds later by Khater. “Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still see his face, white as a sheet.”

    Hogan called Khater’s actions that day “inexcusable,” adding that “three officers (who) were doing their duty … are suddenly sprayed directly in the face.”

    “I’m not going to give a lecture on the riot,” Hogan said, adding that “every time you see the video you’re shocked over again” and that “something has come out of this country that is very, very serious.”

    After recovering from the bear spray attack, Sicknick continued to help protect the Capitol that day, according to court documents, remaining on duty until late into the evening.

    “Just before approximately 10:00 p.m., Officer Sicknick began slurring his speech while talking to fellow officers,” court documents state. “He slumped backwards and lost consciousness, and emergency medical technicians were summoned for assistance. He was transported to the George Washington University Hospital where he remained on life support for nearly 24 hours and was pronounced dead at 8:51 p.m. the following day.”

    President Joe Biden awards the Presidential Citizens Medal to US Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, whose mother Gladys Sicknick accepts on his behalf.

    Khater’s defense attorney said that Hogan should not sentence his client for the death of Sicknick, which the attorney noted was determined to be of natural causes. The judge agreed, noting he “can’t sentence Mr. Khater (for) causing officer Sicknick’s death.”

    Calling his client “sheepish” and “sweet and gentle,” Khater’s attorney said his actions that day amounted to seconds of “emotionally charged conduct” from a man who suffered from anxiety.

    In his statement to the judge, Khater began by highlighting how long he had already served behind bars and how it had “taken a huge toll” on him. “I wish I could take it all back,” he said. “It’s not who I am.”

    Hogan pressed Khater on why he did not expressly apologize to the officers in the courtroom and Sicknick’s family. “Somewhere along the lines we lost the sense of responsibility,” the judge said.

    “It’s the elephant in the room,” Khater said, adding that “there’s a civil thing going on” – in reference to a civil lawsuit from Sicknick’s estate – and that his lawyer had warned him about what to say in court Friday.

    “You should be afraid,” Hogan said of the lawsuit.

    Sicknick’s partner, Sandra Garza, had asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence for both men.

    “I realize it will not bring back Brian, nor give him peace in his last moments on earth, but it will give some sense of justice in my universe,” Garza wrote to the judge.

    “The only thing that surpasses my anger is my sadness,” Sicknick’s brother, Kenneth, wrote in his statement to the judge. “Sadness that the only time I can communicate with Brian is to speak into the nothingness and hope that he is listening.”

    Kenneth continued, “Brian was never one for the spotlight. He preferred to go about his business, not bringing attention to himself. My family and I quietly smile at each other when we attend an event honoring and remembering Brian and the weather turns bad. We know it’s Brian telling us that it is OK, he is OK, please don’t make a big deal about me, take care of the others that need it. That’s what he would have done.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Trump hits the trail in New Hampshire and South Carolina as he looks to rejuvenate 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

    Trump hits the trail in New Hampshire and South Carolina as he looks to rejuvenate 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump on Saturday will deliver the keynote address at the New Hampshire Republican Party’s annual meeting as he returns to the trail looking to ramp up his 2024 presidential campaign.

    Trump will address hundreds of Republican leaders and grassroots activists at the meeting in Salem before headlining a second campaign event in South Carolina – also an early voting state – later in the day.

    The pair of events offers Trump an opportunity to reinvigorate his campaign, which has been slow-moving since he announced his candidacy in November. The former president remains the only declared major 2024 candidate, but several Republicans have been either publicly weighing or fueling speculation about potential bids.

    In New Hampshire, Trump is expected to formally announce that outgoing state GOP Chairman Stephen Stepanek will be added to his campaign operation in the Granite State as a senior adviser, a source familiar with the hire told CNN.

    Stepanek co-chaired Trump’s first presidential campaign before becoming the top GOP official in New Hampshire, serving two terms. He joins Trump’s team as the three-time presidential contender looks to repeat his 2016 victory in the first-in-the-nation primary, a task potentially complicated by waning support among state officials who are looking for a fresh face to top their party’s ticket.

    Trump’s decision to tap Stepanek was first reported by Politico.

    Stepanek had previously expressed enthusiasm about the former president’s upcoming address, saying in a statement, “President Trump has long been a strong defender of New Hampshire’s First in the Nation Primary Status and we are excited that he will join us to deliver remarks to our Members.”

    Trump’s visit comes days before the Democratic National Committee is set to meet to vote on a new proposed 2024 presidential primary calendar put forward by President Joe Biden that would strip New Hampshire of it’s first-in-the-nation primary status – a move strongly opposed by New Hampshire Democrats. Republicans have already locked in their early state lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada – the same lineup Democrats previously had.

    New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, seen as a potential contender for the 2024 GOP nomination, has been sharply critical of Trump. He argued in December that Trump is “not the influence he thinks he is” and said that the Republican Party was “moving on” from him.

    After the New Hampshire event, Trump will fly to South Carolina, a state that helped pave his way to becoming the GOP nominee in 2016 and where he is expected to unveil a leadership team and a handful of endorsements. Among the top South Carolina Republicans scheduled to attend the event at the Statehouse in Columbia in support of the former president are Sen. Lindsey Graham, Gov. Henry McMaster and US Rep. Russell Fry, who won a primary last year over a GOP incumbent who had voted to impeach Trump.

    Trump continues to be investigated by the Department of Justice, and special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the criminal probes into the retention of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and into parts of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. Both investigations implicate the conduct of Trump.

    Trump’s Saturday campaign events come in the wake of recent revelations that classified documents were also found at locations tied to both Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a separate special counsel to take over the investigation into the Obama-era classified documents found at Biden’s home and former private office.

    Earlier this week, Facebook parent company Meta announced it would restore Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 attack.

    This story and headline have been updated.

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  • Memphis releases video showing police stop that led to Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

    Memphis releases video showing police stop that led to Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The city of Memphis has released police body camera and surveillance video showing the January 7 traffic stop and violent police confrontation that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

    CNN is reviewing the video.

    The video clips released by the city include three police body cams and an overhead angle from a pole-based police camera, city officials have said.

    Five Memphis officers were fired this month and then charged Thursday over Nichols’ death, which happened days after the traffic stop police initially said was on suspicion of reckless driving. Nichols was Black, as are the five officers.

    Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care have been relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

    Live updates: Memphis to release Tyre Nichols arrest videos

    Earlier Friday, Memphis’ police chief said the video would show “acts that defy humanity,”

    “You’re going to see a disregard for life, duty of care that we’re all sworn to and a level of physical interaction that is above and beyond what is required in law enforcement,” Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told Don Lemon of the video.

    Ahead of the video release, officials were urging any demonstrations Friday to be civil.

    “Individuals watching will feel what the family felt,” Davis said. “And if you don’t, then you’re not a human being. … There will be a measure of sadness, as well.”

    Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, told CNN on Friday, “It’s still like a nightmare right now.”

    “I’m still trying to understand all of this and trying to wrap my head around all of this,” Wells said. “I don’t have my baby. I’ll never have my baby again.”

    In describing what she heard in the video, Davis said she heard Nichols “call out for his mother, for his mom.”

    Video: Lawyer shares Nichols called out for his mom 3 times

    “Just the disregard for humanity … That’s what really pulls at your heartstrings and makes you wonder: Why was a sense of care and concern for this individual just absent from the situation by all who went to the scene?”

    Police nationwide have been under scrutiny for how they treat Black people, particularly since the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the mass protest movement known as Black Lives Matter. Davis likened the video to the 1991 Los Angeles police beating that sparked outrage across the country.

    “I was in law enforcement during the Rodney King incident, and it’s very much aligned with that same type of behavior,” she said.

    In Nichols’ case, the encounter began with a traffic stop police initially said was on suspicion of reckless driving. An initial altercation happened between Nichols and several officers, and pepper spray was used, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Thursday.

    Nichols then fled on foot, and a second altercation happened – and that’s when Nichols suffered his serious injuries, Mulroy said. Nichols required hospitalization after the arrest and died on January 10.

    Davis said police have not been able to find anything that substantiated the probable cause for reckless driving by Nichols before his fatal encounter with police.

    The department will release the video of the incident in four parts on YouTube, Davis said.

    “The video is broken into four different, sort of fragmented pieces,” that are all relative to the incident, Davis said. The department plans “to post it on a YouTube link so that it can be accessible to just about anybody who wants to access that video,” she said. The video will show the initial stop and also body-worn camera of individual officers she noted.

    Nichols died three days after his arrest.

    Police officials in a number of major cities nationwide have said they are monitoring for any possible public outcry this weekend over what will be seen in the video footage.

    Nichols’ mother is asking for supporters to be peaceful during demonstrations, saying at a vigil in Memphis on Thursday she wants “each and every one of you to protest in peace.”

    “I don’t want us burning up our cities, tearing up the streets, because that’s not what my son stood for,” Wells said. “And if you guys are here for me and Tyre, then you will protest peacefully.”

    Memphis police officers arrived at Wells’ home between 8 and 9 p.m. on January 7 to tell her Nichols had been arrested, she told CNN.

    Officers told her that her son was arrested for a DUI, pepper sprayed and tased, she said. Because of that, he was going to the hospital and would later be taken to booking at the police station, she said.

    “They then asked me (if) was he on any type of drugs or anything of that nature because they were saying it was so difficult to put the handcuffs on him and he had this amount of energy, superhuman energy,” Wells said. “What they were describing was not my son, so I was very confused.”

    Wells said officers told her Nichols was “nearby” but would not tell her exactly where. They also told her she could not go to the hospital, she said.

    tyre nichols mother

    ‘Beat him to a pulp’: Mom shares immediate reaction when arriving at hospital

    However, at about 4 a.m., she said, she received a call from a doctor asking her to see Nichols.

    “The doctor proceeded to tell me that my son had went into cardiac arrest and that his kidneys were failing,” she said, adding it didn’t “sound consistent” with what police had described as Nichols being tased and pepper-sprayed.

    ben crump tyre nichols

    Crump: Nichols video will ‘remind you of Rodney King’

    “When my husband and I got to the hospital and I saw my son, he was already gone,” Wells said. “They had beat him to a pulp.”

    Wells described the horrific injuries her son had when she saw him in the hospital.

    Read stepfather’s description of video: ‘No one rendered aid to him’

    “He had bruises all over him. His head was swollen like a watermelon. His neck was busting because of the swelling. They broke his neck. My son’s nose look like a S,” she said. “They actually just beat the crap out of him. And so when I saw that, I knew my son was gone, the end. Even if he did live, he would have been a vegetable.”

    A Memphis church is scheduled to hold Nichols’ funeral Wednesday.

    Ben Crump and RowVaughn Wells at a news conference Friday in Memphis.

    The five Memphis Police Department officers identified – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr. – were fired January 20 for violating police policies including on use of excessive force, police said.

    They were then charged this week. Each has been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, Mulroy, the Shelby County district attorney, said.

    Martin and Haley were released from jail on a $350,000 bond, according to Shelby County Jail records, while Smith, Bean and Mills Jr. have been released after each posting a $250,000 bond.

    The five former officers are scheduled for arraignment on February 17.

    Two fire department employees who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” were relieved of duty “while an internal investigation is being conducted,” department Public Information Officer Qwanesha Ward told CNN’s Nadia Romero.

    The US Department of Justice has said it is conducting a federal civil rights investigation of Nichols’ death.

    Crump, in a news conference Friday in Memphis, called Memphis’ rapid criminal charges – compared to other cities and states that have waited months or years in similar cases – a “blueprint” moving forward.

    “We have a precedent that has been set here in Memphis, and we intend to hold this blueprint for all America from this day forward,” Crump said.

    He called for Tennessee to enact what he called “Tyre’s Law”: A proposed measure which would require police officers to intervene when they see crimes being committed, including by fellow officers.

    Blake Ballin, an attorney for Mills Jr., one of the officers, said he doesn’t believe his client “is capable of” the accusations, and his client is “remorseful” to be “connected to the death” of Nichols.

    Ballin told CNN he has not yet seen the video, but has spoken to people who have. He urged those who watch the video to “treat each of these officers as individuals.”

    “The levels of culpability amongst these five officers are different, and I expect that you’re going to see in this video that my client Desmond Mills is not, in fact, guilty of the crimes he’s been charged with,” Ballin said.

    Police departments in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, Milwaukee, Seattle, Denver, Dallas, New York and Atlanta told CNN they are either monitoring the events in Memphis closely or already have plans in place in case of large-scale protests or unrest.

    bennie cobb valencia pkg

    Friend of charged officer describes conversation they had about Nichols’ death

    Memphis will continue to work with community leaders and organizers ahead of the video release, in hopes of quelling any potentially dangerous protests, City Council Vice Chair JB Smiley Jr. said.

    “You will see protests, but it will be peaceful because the Memphis Police Department, the sheriff’s department, the district attorney and the Memphis City Council, along with the city administration, has took all the necessary steps to quell any potential of rioting in our city,” Smiley said.

    Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, seen here at press conference Thursday, called the video

    President Joe Biden is echoing Nichols’ family’s call for peaceful protests, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on “CNN This Morning.”

    “We certainly don’t want to see anyone else hurt by this terrible, terrible tragedy, and we’ll stay in close touch with the local and state authorities,” Kirby said.

    The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Friday it is coordinating with partners across the United States ahead of the expected release of the video.

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  • Peter Navarro contempt of Congress trial will be delayed for months, judge says | CNN Politics

    Peter Navarro contempt of Congress trial will be delayed for months, judge says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Friday delayed the contempt of Congress trial for former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro, likely for months, to allow for additional pre-trial debate over the role executive privilege could play when the case goes to a jury.

    Over the course of a nearly two-hour hearing Friday, US District Judge Amit Mehta grilled Justice Department prosecutors on the position the department has taken, in previous internal Office of Legal Counsel opinions, that close aides to a president can be immune from congressional subpoenas.

    The trial had been scheduled to begin on Monday.

    Mehta had opened the door to the possibility that Navarro could present evidence at trial – potentially taking the stand – that he had been told by Trump that the former president was invoking executive privilege over his testimony to the House January 6 Committee.

    So far, Navarro has presented no evidence that Trump made a such an invocation when he was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the now defunct House January 6 select committee.

    Federal prosecutors bristled at the idea that Navarro should still be allowed to present such evidence, arguing that it doesn’t exist in the first place and that if it did, it would not be up to the jury to decide whether such invocation would have shielded Navarro from the subpoenas.

    Mehta ultimately decided that the issue raised legal questions that needed to be decided before trial, so he postponed its Monday start date.

    The judge did not schedule a new date for the trial, and instead set a briefing schedule on the privilege questions that will extend through the end of March.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Peru’s embattled president could have eased the crisis. What happened? | CNN

    Peru’s embattled president could have eased the crisis. What happened? | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    When Dina Boluarte was anointed Peru’s sixth president in five years, she faced battles on two fronts: appeasing the lawmakers who had ousted her boss and predecessor Pedro Castillo, and calming protesterse enraged by the dethroning of yet another president.

    She called for a “political truce” with Congress on her first day of her job — a peace offering to the legislative body that had been at odds with Castillo and impeached him in December after he undemocratically attempted to dissolve Congress.

    But nearly two months on, her presidency is looking even more beleaguered than Castillo’s aborted term. Several ministers in her government have resigned while the country has been rocked by its most violent protests in decades. She was forced to once again call for a truce on Tuesday – this time appealing to the protesters, many of whom hail from Peru’s majority-indigenous rural areas, saying in Quechua that she is one of them.

    Boluarte, who was born in a largely indigenous region in south-central Peru where Quechua is the most spoken language, might have been the leader to channel protesters’ frustrations and work with them. She has made much of her rural origins, and rose to power initially as Castillo’s vice president on the leftwing Peru Libre party ticket, buoyed by the rural and indigenous vote.

    But her plea for mutual understanding with protesters now is likely too late in what analysts are calling the deadliest popular uprising in South America in recent years. Officials say 56 civilians and one police officer has died in the violence, and hundreds more have been injured, as protesters call for fresh elections, a new constitution and Boluarte’s resignation.

    Boluarte has tried to placate protesters, asking Congress for an earlier election date. But Peru watchers say she already made the fatal error of distancing herself from rural constituents after she took the top job as Peru’s first woman president.

    “One has to understand Boluarte’s own ambitions, she was clearly willing to sacrifice her leftist ideas and principles in order to build a coalition with the right to hold onto power,” Jo-Marie Burt, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America and an expert on Peru, told CNN. “And to use force against the very same people who voted for the Castillo-Boluarte ticket.”

    Castillo’s brief term saw him face a hostile Congress in the hands of the opposition, limiting his political capital and capacity to operate. ” (Boluarte) had to make a choice: either she went the Castillo way and spent the next four years fighting a Congress that wants to impeach her or she sided with the right and got power,” Alonso Gurmendi, a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford, who is a Peruvian legal expert, told CNN.

    She chose the latter, experts say, distancing herself from Castillo and instead relying on support of a broad coalition of right-wing politicians to stay in presidency. CNN has reached out to Boluarte’s office for comment and has made repeated requests for an interview.

    During her inauguration, former political rival Keiko Fujimori – whose father Alberto Fujimori is a former president who used security forces to repress opponents during his decade-long rule of Peru – said Boluarte could “count on the support and backing” of her party.

    Boluarte’s woes are a far cry from her early days in Peruvian’s civil service, working at the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status in Surco, as an advisor to senior management and, later, as the head of the local office.

    She ran as a candidate for mayor of Surquillo with the Marxist-Leninist Peru Libre Party in 2018. She failed to gain a seat in the 2020 parliamentary elections, but had better luck the following year, as Castillo’s running-mate.

    In an interview with CNN en Espanol that year, Boluarte clarified a statement she made about dissolving Congress: “We need a Congress that works for the needs of Peruvian society and that coordinates positively with the executive so that both powers of state can work in a coordinated manner to meet the multiple needs of Peruvian society. We do not want an obstructionist Congress … At no time have I said that we are going to close Congress.”

    Castillo, a former teacher and union leader, was also from rural Peru and positioned himself as a man of the people. Despite his political inexperience and mounting corruption scandals, Castillo’s presidency was a symbolic victory for many of his rural supporters. They hoped he would bring better prospects to the country’s rural and indigenous people who have long felt excluded from Peru’s economic boom in the past decade.

    Indigenous women take part in a protest against Boluarte's government in Lima on January 24.

    His ousting from power last year was seen by some of his supporters as another attempt by Peru’s coastal elites to discount them.

    The public have long been disillusioned with the legislative body, which has been criticized as being self-interested and out-of-touch. In a January poll by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) more than 80% of Peruvians say they disapproved of Congress.

    The public also have a dim view of Boluarte, according to polling by IPSOS, which found that 68% disapproved of her in December. That figure rose to 71% in January, according to the poll. She is more unpopular in rural areas, according to the same poll, which found that she had an 85% disapproval score in rural regions in January compared to urban areas (76%).

    In January 2022, Peru Libre expelled her from the party. She told Peruvian newspaper La República at the time she had “never embraced the ideology of Peru Libre.”

    As protests spread through many of Peru’s 25 regions following Castillo’s detention, Boluarte’s government declared a state of emergency and doubled down on law-and-order policies.

    The country has since seen its highest civilian death toll since strongman Alberto Fujimori was in power, say human rights advocates, when 17 civilians were killed during a protest in the south-eastern Puno region on January 9. A police officer was burned to death in Puno on the following day. Autopsies of the 17 dead civilians found wounds caused by firearm projectiles, the city’s head of legal medicine told CNN en Español.

    Human rights groups have accused Boluarte of using state violence to stymie protests and on January 11, Peru’s prosecutor launched an investigation into the president and other key ministers for the alleged crime of “genocide, qualified homicide, and serious injuries” in relation to the bloodshed.

    Boluarte has said she will cooperate with the probe, but plans to remain in office and has shown little sympathy for the demonstrators. “I am not going to resign, my commitment is with Peru, not with that tiny group that is making the country bleed,” she said in a televised speech days after the investigation was announced.

    Boluarte has tried to placate protesters, asking Congress for an earlier election date.

    When asked why she has not prevented security officials from using lethal weapons on protesters, Boluarte said on Tuesday that investigations will determine where the bullets “come from,” speculating without evidence that Bolivian activists may have brought weapons into Peru – a claim that Burt describes as “a total conspiracy theory.”

    Boluarte has done little to ease the angry rhetoric deployed by public officials, parts of the press and the public in criticizing the ongoing demonstrations. Boluarte herself described the protests as “terrorism” – a label that the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) has warned could instigate a “climate of more violence.”

    She again inflamed tensions during Tuesday’s press conference. When asked how she intended to implement a national truce, she said attempts for dialogue with representatives in the region of Puno had not been successful. “We have to protect the life and tranquillity of 33 million Peruvians. Puno is not Peru,” she said. At least 20 civilians have died in clashes in the region, according to data by Peru’s Ombudsman office, and the comment led to an immediate online backlash.

    The presidential office later apologized for the statement on Twitter, saying Boluarte’s words were misinterpreted, and that the president intended to emphasize that the safety of all Peruvians was important. “We apologize to the sisters and brothers of our beloved highland region,” it wrote.

    As the protests show no end in sight, Boluarte on Wednesday dialed down the inflammatory rhetoric when she spoke at a special meeting on the Peruvian crisis at the Organization of American States (OAS).

    She announced plans to investigate the alleged abuses by security forces against protesters, adding that while she respected the “legitimate right to peaceful protest, but it is also true that the state has the duty to ensure security and internal order.”

    The violence had caused around $1 billion in damages to the country, and affected 240,000 businesses, but she was “deeply pained” at the “loss of lives of many compatriots,” she said.

    Boluarte, again, appealed to her former base of voters, indigenous Peruvians. “You are the great force that we need to include to achieve development with equity,” she said. “Your contributions to national development needs to be valued as well as your strength.”

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  • Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

    Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    “There might be someone getting shot tomorrow.”

    That was the warning from Twitter staff at an internal meeting on Jan. 5, 2021, the eve of the deadly attack on the US Capitol. It wasn’t the only stark warning Twitter management received ahead of the insurrection, according to two former Twitter employees who spoke to the House Jan. 6 Committee.

    But now these witnesses, along with some committee staff, are frustrated, saying the committee failed to adequately hold major social media companies to account for the role they played in the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years.

    It was a “real missed opportunity,” Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee turned whistleblower who gave evidence to the committee, told CNN in an interview last week. “I risked a lot to come forward and speak to the committee and to share the truth about these momentous occasions in history,” Navaroli said.

    CNN spoke to half a dozen people who interacted with and were familiar with the Jan. 6 Committee’s so-called “purple team” – a group that included staff with expertise in extremism and online misinformation. Some witnesses and staff said the committee pulled its punches when it came to Big Tech, failing to include critical parts of the team’s work in its final report. The discontent has poured into public view, with an unpublished draft of the team’s findings leaked and obtained by multiple news organizations, including CNN.

    One source familiar with the probe acknowledged that the committee obtained evidence that social media companies like Twitter largely ignored concerns that were raised internally prior to Jan. 6, but while those platforms should have done something at the time, the panel was limited in its ability to hold them accountable. A lawyer who worked on the committee said the panel did its job and focused on the unique and malign role of then-President Donald Trump in an unprecedented attack on American democracy. They also said the final report outlines structural issues across social media and society that need to be studied further.

    Disagreement about social media companies’ role in the Jan. 6 attack comes as 2023 looks to be a pivotal year for Silicon Valley firms in Washington, DC. Spurred in part by the release of Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files,” House Republicans are set to investigate purported Big Tech censorship, particularly as it pertains to social media companies’ handling of a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop. Facebook parent company Meta’s high-stakes decision Wednesday to reinstate Trump on its platforms is also expected to stoke further scrutiny of tech companies’ influence in elections. At the Supreme Court, justices are set to rule this year on a case that could strip key protections afforded to tech companies moderating online speech.

    It isn’t just Navaroli who has taken issue with the committee’s findings. Three of the committee’s own staff members, part of the so-called purple team, published an article earlier this month, sharply criticizing the decisions made by social media companies in the lead up to the attack.

    The final report’s “emphasis on Trump meant important context was left on the cutting room floor,” they wrote.

    “Indeed, the lack of an official Committee report chapter or appendix dedicated exclusively to these matters does not mean our investigation exonerated social media companies for their failure to confront violent rhetoric,” they wrote.

    In wake of the decision, CNN has reviewed thousands of pages of deposition transcripts and other supporting documents the committee has publicly released that provide insight into Silicon Valley’s action and inaction in the critical period between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.

    Navaroli, who worked on Twitter’s safety policy team, told the committee she had repeatedly warned Twitter’s leadership in the lead-up to Jan. 6 about the dangers of not cracking down on what she said was violent rhetoric.

    Navaroli pointed to Trump’s infamous “stand back and stand by” message to the Proud Boys at the first 2020 presidential debate as one instance that incited more violent rhetoric on Twitter.

    Navaroli initially appeared before the committee as an anonymous whistleblower. Part of her testimony was played during the public committee hearings last summer, with her voice distorted to protect her identity. However, she later decided to go public, testifying before the committee for a second time, and speaking to The Washington Post.

    In an interview with CNN, Navaroli said she is speaking out now because she believes it is important for the “truth to be on the record.” She warned that without a full reckoning of social media’s role in the Capitol attack, political violence could once again ignite in the United States and elsewhere around the world, pointing to recent unrest in Brazil where supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s top government offices.

    The final report from the Jan. 6 Committee stated, “Social media played a prominent role in amplifying erroneous claims of election fraud.”

    But a far more blistering assessment was laid out in an unpublished draft document prepared by committee staff that was obtained by several news organizations, including CNN. Its key findings included:

    • “Social media platforms delayed response to the rise of far-right extremism—and President Trump’s incitement of his supporters—helped to facilitate the attack on January 6th.”
    • “Fear of reprisal and accusations of censorship from the political right compromised policy, process, and decision-making.”
    • “Twitter failed to take actions that could have prevented the spread of incitement to violence after the election.”
    • “Facebook did not fail to grapple with election delegitimization after the election so much as it did not even try.”

    Tech companies would broadly dispute these findings and have repeatedly said they are working to keep their platforms safe.

    Twitter’s previous management repeatedly outlined steps it said it was taking to crack down on hateful and violent rhetoric on its platform prior to Jan. 6, 2021, but stressed it didn’t want to unnecessarily limit free expression. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter no longer has a responsive communications team, and the company did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta, pointed to an earlier statement from the company where it said it was cooperating with the committee.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel, conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli's.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel who conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli’s, told CNN he believes the committee did its job to show “the American public the dangers posed by President Trump’s multilayered attack on our democracy.”

    He said the lack of awareness he believes tech companies have shown about their role in the attack was “stark.”

    “I don’t think social media companies recognize they were dealing with a sustained threat to American democracy,” he said.

    Glick, who now works at the Georgetown Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said the purple team’s report had not been fact-checked, contains some errors, and should not have been leaked.

    Another source familiar with the committee’s work told CNN, “It couldn’t be clearer that Trump was at the center of this plot to overturn the election. Not everything staff worked on could fit into this extensive report and hearings, including some who wanted their work to be the center of the investigation.”

    How social media platforms write and enforce their rules has become a central and ongoing debate, raising the key question of what power the companies should wield when it comes to politicians like Trump.

    While some, including Navaroli, insist Trump repeatedly broke social media platforms’ rules by inciting violent rhetoric that should have resulted in his removal before Jan. 6, others including Musk and Twitter’s previous management, argue that what politicians say should be made available to as many people as possible so they can be held to account.

    Meta and Twitter have both reversed their bans on Trump.

    “We’re moving backwards and it’s concerning to me,” Navaroli said of the return of prominent election conspiracy theorists to major tech platforms. “History has taught us what happens when political speech on social media companies is allowed to fester unchecked.”

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  • Five former Memphis police officers indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping in Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

    Five former Memphis police officers indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping in Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Five former Memphis police officers who were fired for their actions during the arrest of Tyre Nichols earlier this month were indicted on charges including murder and kidnapping, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy announced Thursday.

    The former officers, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., have each been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, Mulroy said.

    “While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” he said.

    Live updates on the Tyre Nichols case

    Second-degree murder is defined in Tennessee as a “knowing killing of another” and is considered a Class A felony punishable by between 15 to 60 years in prison.

    The criminal charges come about three weeks after Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was hospitalized after a traffic stop and “confrontation” with Memphis police that family attorneys have called a savage beating. Nichols died from his injuries on January 10, three days after the arrest, authorities said.

    Four of the officers remained in custody Thursday evening, after being booked into the Shelby County Jail. Bond was set at $350,000 for Haley, 30, and Martin, 30, and $250,000 for Bean, 24, and Smith, 28, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Mills, 32, posted $250,000 bond Thursday evening and was released, according to jail records.

    In a joint news conference Thursday afternoon, Blake Ballin, an attorney for Mills, and William Massey, Martin’s attorney, said they have not yet watched the video of the police encounter, which is expected to be released to the public Friday.

    Ballin described Mills as a “respectful father,” who was “devastated” to be accused in the killing. Mills, previously a jailer in Mississippi and Tennessee, was in the process of posting bond Thursday to secure his release and plans to enter a not guilty plea in court, his attorney said. Ballin said he had not spoken to Mills specifically about Nichols.

    Martin also intended to post bond and will also plead not guilty, his attorney said. “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” Massey said.

    Other officers’ attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Police nationwide have been under heightened scrutiny for how they treat Black people, particularly since the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the mass protest movement known as Black Lives Matter. Officials in Memphis have braced for potential civil unrest due to Nichols’ death and have called for peaceful protests.

    President Joe Biden said in a Thursday statement the killing is a “painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment, and dignity for all.”

    Video of the fatal police encounter, a mix of body-camera and pole-cam video, is expected to be released publicly after 6 p.m. Friday, Mulroy said.

    Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday night, Mulroy said that while he can’t definitively say what caused the encounter to escalate, the video shows that the officers were “already highly charged up” from the start of the video and “it just escalated further from there.”

    The video doesn’t capture the beginning of the altercation between the officers and Nichols but rather “cuts in as the first encounter is in progress,” Mulroy said.

    “What struck me (about the video) is how many different incidents of unwarranted force occurred sporadically by different individuals over a long period of time,” the district attorney added.

    Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said the fatal encounter was not proper policing.

    “I’m sickened by what I saw and what we’ve learned from our extensive and thorough investigation,” he said. “I’ve seen the video, and as DA Mulroy stated, you will too. In a word, it’s absolutely appalling.”

    Nichols’ family and attorneys were shown the video on Monday and said it shows officers severely beating Nichols and compared it to the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King in 1991.

    “The news today from Memphis officials that these five officers are being held criminally accountable for their deadly and brutal actions gives us hope as we continue to push for justice for Tyre,” attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said Thursday.

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis took on the position in June 2021.

    The five Memphis police officers, who are also Black, were fired last week for violating policies on excessive use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid, the department said.

    In a YouTube video released late Wednesday, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis condemned the officers’ actions and called for peaceful protests when the arrest video is released.

    “This is not just a professional failing. This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual,” Davis said in the video, her first on-camera comments about the arrest. “This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane.”

    “I expect our citizens to exercise their First Amendment right to protest to demand action and results. But we need to ensure our community is safe in this process,” said Davis, the first Black woman to serve as Memphis police chief. “None of this is a calling card for inciting violence or destruction on our community or against our citizens.”

    The five terminated officers all joined the department in the last six years, according to police. Other Memphis police officers are still under investigation for department policy violations related to the incident, the chief said.

    In a statement posted Thursday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the city had initiated an “outside, independent review” of the training, policies and operations of the police department’s specialized units. At least two of the officers belonged to one of those special units, according to their attorneys.

    Two members of the city’s fire department who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” also were relieved of duty, a fire spokesperson said. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced an investigation into Nichols’ death and the US Department of Justice and FBI have opened a civil rights investigation.

    Mulroy said the investigation is ongoing and there could be further charges going forward.

    Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies nationwide are bracing for protests and potential unrest following the release of video, multiple sources told CNN.

    The Memphis Police Department has terminated five police officers in connection with the death of Tyre Nichols. Top: Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmit Martin. Bottom: Desmond Mills Jr., Justin Smith

    Nichols, the father of a 4-year-old, had worked with his stepfather at FedEx for about nine months, his family said. He was fond of skateboarding in Shelby Farms Park, Starbucks with friends and photographing sunsets, and he had his mother’s name tattooed on his arm, the family said. He also had the digestive issue known as Crohn’s disease and so was a slim 140 to 145 pounds despite his 6-foot-3-inch height, his mother said.

    On January 7, he was pulled over by Memphis officers on suspicion of reckless driving, police said in their initial statement on the incident. As officers approached the vehicle, a “confrontation” occurred and Nichols fled on foot, police said. The officers pursued him and they had another “confrontation” before he was taken into custody, police said.

    Nichols then complained of shortness of breath, was taken to a local hospital in critical condition and died three days later, police said.

    In Memphis police scanner audio, a person says there was “one male Black running” and called to “set up a perimeter.” Another message says “he’s fighting at this time.”

    On Thursday, Mulroy offered a few further details, saying the serious injuries occurred at the second confrontation. He also said Nichols was taken away in an ambulance after “some period of time of waiting around.”

    Attorneys for Nichols’ family who watched video of the arrest on Monday described it as a heinous police beating that lasted three long minutes. Crump said Nichols was tased, pepper-sprayed and restrained, and Romanucci said he was kicked.

    “He was defenseless the entire time. He was a human piñata for those police officers. It was an unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for three minutes. That is what we saw in that video,” Romanucci said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

    Nichols had “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” according to the attorneys, citing preliminary results of an autopsy they commissioned.

    Among the charges, the officers were indicted on two counts of aggravated kidnapping: one for possession of a weapon and one for bodily injury.

    “At a certain point in the sequence of events, it is our view that this, if it was a legal detention to begin with, it certainly became illegal at a certain point, and it was an unlawful detention,” Mulroy said.

    Less than a month after the murder of Floyd, the Memphis Police Department amended its duty to intervene policy, according to a copy of the policy sent to CNN by the MPD.

    “Any member who directly observes another member engaged in dangerous or criminal conduct or abuse of a subject shall take reasonable action to intervene,” the policy, sent out on June 9, 2020, said.

    “A member shall immediately report to the Department any violation of policies and regulations or any other improper conduct which is contrary to the policy, order, or directives of the Department.”

    The policy went on to say “this reporting requirement also applies to allegations of uses of force not yet reported.”

    Correction: A previous version of this story gave the wrong spelling for the name of one of the arrested officers. According to the indictment, it is Tadarrius Bean.

    Previous versions of this story spelled Emmitt Martin’s name incorrectly.

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