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Tag: iab-crime

  • FedEx driver is arrested in the kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old girl who went missing outside her home this week, police say | CNN

    FedEx driver is arrested in the kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old girl who went missing outside her home this week, police say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A driver working for FedEx was arrested and charged Friday in the kidnapping and killing of a 7-year-old girl who had disappeared from her home’s driveway in Texas earlier this week, police said.

    Athena Strand’s body was recovered Friday evening, Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin said at a news conference.

    “It hurts our hearts to know that child died,” Akin said Friday.

    “It’s one of the toughest investigations that I’ve been involved in because it’s a child. And anytime there’s a child that dies, it just hits you in your heart,” he said.

    Athena was reported missing Wednesday and authorities launched a search for her across Wise County, located northwest of Fort Worth. Authorities believe the young girl was killed within an hour after her kidnapping from her family’s driveway, which is about 200 yards from her home.

    Tanner Lynn Horner, 31, is being held in Wise County jail on capital murder and aggravated kidnapping charges, according to its website. Bond was set at $1.5 million, Akin said. It was unclear whether Horner had an attorney Friday.

    Horner, identified by authorities as a contract driver for FedEx, was allegedly making a delivery to Athena’s home at the time she disappeared.

    Earlier Friday, police say they received a tip that helped investigators determine Horner abducted the child from her driveway.

    Strand’s mother, Maitlyn Presley Gandy, said her daughter was taken from her by “a sick, cruel monster for absolutely no reason,” she wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday morning.

    “I cannot describe the pain and absolute anger I feel. Missing her doesn’t cover how I feel,” Gandy said in the post accompanying a video of Athena, then age 3. “I want the world to know my baby, my first baby, my first true love, the reason I breathe.”

    “Athena is innocent, beautiful, kind, intelligent, and just the brightest, happiest soul you could ever meet. I don’t want her to be the girl known as the one murdered and discarded by a monster,” she added. “I want everyone to know, every single person in this world, that this is my baby and my baby was taken from me. I want everyone to know her face and her voice and just how wonderful of a person she is.”

    Athena will be remembered for so much, like her dream of growing up to be a Viking princess with tattoos just like her dad’s, how much she loved her two little sisters, and her love for anything pink, her mother wrote.

    Authorities did not indicate a possible motive and said Horner did not know the family or the child, according to Akin.

    Athena’s cause of death remains under investigation and her body was transferred to the medical examiner’s office Friday, Akin said.

    Gandy shared another Facebook post dedicated to thanking “the hundreds if not thousands of volunteers” and the authorities who helped look for her daughter.

    “As a mother, I know no one is as broken as I am…” she wrote, adding that the official agencies who assisted in the investigation “have all cried with me.”

    “It takes a special kind of person and whether a child is yours or not, working crime scenes involving children are hard,” she added. “Thank you for finding my baby. I know everyone wishes this would have ended differently.”

    In a statement to CNN, FedEx expressed its sympathies and directed further questions to law enforcement.

    “Words cannot describe our shock and sorrow at the reports surrounding this tragic event. First and foremost, our thoughts are with the family during this most difficult time, and we continue to cooperate fully with the investigating authorities,” the statement reads.

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  • Kentucky Christmas parade canceled amid threats to protestors calling for Emmett Till accuser’s arrest | CNN

    Kentucky Christmas parade canceled amid threats to protestors calling for Emmett Till accuser’s arrest | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Bowling Green, Kentucky, has canceled its annual Christmas parade scheduled for Saturday due to threats against protests related to the notorious lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955.

    The city announced the cancellation in tweet. In a video posted on Facebook, Police Chief Michael Delaney said at least three groups planned to protest at noon on Saturday at two locations.

    Warren County Sheriff Brett Hightower said his office learned of threats late Friday evening “to shoot anyone who is protesting” or assisting protesters, Hightower said.

    “At this moment, we have not been able to determine the validity of the threat; however, we believe it’s important to alert our citizens,” the sheriff said.

    The protesters want a Mississippi court to order the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham, the White woman now in her late 80s who accused Till of whistling at her in 1955 in Mississippi, according to CNN affiliate WBKO. He was abducted, tortured, and lynched, in a case that drew national attention and helped galvanize attention on the civil rights movement.

    According to WKBO, Donham’s last known address is believed to be an apartment in Bowling Green.

    Donham was never arrested in connection with Till’s death, but a warrant for her arrest was found earlier this year in a Mississippi courthouse basement. A grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict Donham in August.

    The Bowling Green-Warren County NACCP said it is not slated to protest Saturday.

    “This is due in part to safety concerns for the event, as well as focusing our energies on those who are currently being discriminated against and need immediate assistance,” the organization said in a statement last week.

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  • Former Trump White House counsel and his deputy testify to Jan. 6 criminal grand jury | CNN Politics

    Former Trump White House counsel and his deputy testify to Jan. 6 criminal grand jury | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy counsel Patrick Philbin testified to a federal grand jury for several hours in Washington, DC, on Friday, indicating the Justice Department had compelled the men to answer more questions in the January 6, 2021, criminal investigation despite challenges from Donald Trump’s legal team.

    The January 6 grand jury activity is the latest indication the investigation – now led by special counsel Jack Smith – has pushed in recent months to unearth new details about direct conversations with the former president and advice given to him after the election.

    Cipollone was first seen entering the grand jury area with his attorney, Michael Purpura, before 9 a.m., and he was there for more than five hours. Purpura has not responded to requests for comment. The grand jury proceedings themselves are confidential.

    Philbin, whom Purpura also represents, headed into the grand jury area just before the lunch hour on Friday, staying until about 4 p.m.

    Thomas Windom and Mary Dohrmann, prosecutors in the January 6 investigation who are now to be led by Smith, were also seen walking in with Cipollone.

    The investigators are looking at efforts to obstruct the transfer of power at the end of Trump’s presidency and have obtained testimony from several administration advisers closest to the former president after the election and as the Capitol was attacked by his supporters.

    CNN previously reported that Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court, who oversees the federal grand juries in Washington, ordered Cipollone and Philbin to provide additional grand jury testimony this month, following up on their testimony in the fall. The judge has repeatedly rejected Trump’s privilege claims in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to people briefed on the matter.

    Philbin and Cipollone were both key witnesses to Trump’s actions in the last days of his presidency. Cipollone repeatedly pushed back on efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report, he and Philbin opposed a proposal to replace the attorney general with someone willing to look into false claims of election fraud.

    Previously, the Justice Department compelled top advisers from Vice President Mike Pence’s office to testify to the grand jury. They had sought to protect Pence in January 2021 from Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election.

    Earlier this week, Trump White House official Stephen Miller, who worked with Trump on his speech at the Ellipse, had his own day before the grand jury.

    On Thursday, another leg of Smith’s special counsel investigation – into the handling of documents at Mar-a-Lago after the presidency – was active in the courthouse. At least one Mar-a-Lago prosecutor was working in the secret grand jury proceedings, as three aides to Trump, Dan Scavino, William Russell and Beau Harrison, each appeared, according to sources familiar with them. Their attorney declined to comment.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Venezuela and Chevron sign oil contract in Caracas | CNN

    Venezuela and Chevron sign oil contract in Caracas | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Venezuelan government and American oil company Chevron have signed a contract in Caracas on Friday to resume operations in Venezuela, according to the country’s state broadcaster VTV.

    “This contract aims to continue with the productive and development activities in this energy sector, framed within our Constitution and the Venezuelan laws that govern oil activity in the country,” said Venezuelan oil minister Tareck El Aissami, who was slapped with United States sanctions in 2017.

    He attended the signing ceremony along with representatives from Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company PDVSA and Chevron.

    April 2023 will mark Chevron’s 100th anniversary in Venezuela, El Aissami said at the event.

    The move comes after the United States granted Chevron limited authorization to resume pumping oil from Venezuela last week, following an announcement that the Venezuelan government and the opposition group had reached an agreement on humanitarian relief and will continue to negotiate for a solution to the country’s chronic economic and political crisis.

    The US has been looking for ways to allow Venezuela to begin producing more oil and selling it on the international market, thereby reducing the world’s energy dependence on Russia, US officials told CNN in May.

    A 6-month license was granted to Venezuela by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last week, and the US can revoke it at any time. Additionally, any profits earned will go to repaying debt to Chevron and not to the Maduro regime, according to a senior official.

    In 2017, OFAC said El Aissami had played a “significant role in international narcotics trafficking,” according to a news release.

    The Treasury Department said he “facilitated shipments of narcotics from Venezuela to include control over planes that leave from a Venezuelan air base, (and) narcotics shipments of over 1,000 kilograms from Venezuela on multiple occasions, including those with the final destinations of Mexico and the United States.”

    In addition, the department said El Aissami is linked to coordinating drug shipments to Los Zetas, a violent Mexican drug cartel, and provided protection to a Colombian drug lord.

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  • Suspect in 2017 killing of two Indiana teen girls ‘has nothing to hide,’ attorneys say | CNN

    Suspect in 2017 killing of two Indiana teen girls ‘has nothing to hide,’ attorneys say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Attorneys for the suspect in the 2017 killing of two teenage girls in Delphi, Indiana, said in a statement Friday that their client “has nothing to hide. ”

    Richard Allen, who was arrested last month in connection with the killings, will make “a vigorous legal and factual challenge” to the prosecution claim that a .40 caliber unspent round found near the bodies of the two teens tied him to the crime, attorneys Brad Rozzi and Andrew Baldwin said in the statement.

    The statement comes days after the unsealing of a probable cause affidavit on Tuesday that shed light on how investigators narrowed in on Allen and arrested him more than five years since the slayings of Abigail Williams, 13, and Liberty German, 14.

    Allen is charged with two counts of murder and has pleaded not guilty.

    The two girls went for a hike along Delphi Historic Trails but never showed up at a previously arranged time to meet Libby’s dad, according to police. Their bodies were found the next day in a wooded area near the trail, about a half mile from the Monon High Bridge where they’d been dropped off, according to authorities.

    A grainy video of a man walking and a garbled voice recording were among the scant clues authorities publicized over the years.

    “Rick has nothing to hide,” the statement from the attorneys said. “We feel it appropriate, necessary, and within the bounds of our rules of professional conduct to make a few comments concerning the probable cause affidavit and Rick’s innocence.”

    Investigators believe the evidence they gathered shows that Allen is the man seen on a video from Liberty’s phone who forced the girls down a hill and that he led them to the location where they were killed, according to the affidavit.

    That evidence includes interviews with witnesses who were in the area the teens were hiking on a day off from school on February 13, 2017, as well as the video from Libby’s phone. The video shows a man in a dark jacket and jeans walking behind the girls and then telling them, “Guys, down the hill,” according to the affidavit.

    Allen’s lawyers said their client “contacted the police and voluntarily discussed being on the trail that day,” according to the statement. “Like many people in Delphi, Rick wanted to help any way he could.”

    The two girls were dropped off in the area just before 1:50 p.m. that day, the affidavit said. The video showed they encountered the man at the Monon High Bridge at 2:13 p.m.

    A witness told investigators she had seen a man heading away from that bridge later “wearing a blue colored jacket and blue jeans and was muddy and bloody,” and appeared to have gotten in a fight, the affidavit said. The man was traveling on a road adjacent to the crime scene, and investigators were able to determine that took place shortly before 4 p.m.

    Allen remembers “seeing three younger girls on the trail that day” but “his contact with the girls was brief and of little significance,” his attorneys said.

    “The probable cause affidavit seems to suggest that a single magic bullet is proof of Rick’s guilt,” Rozzi and Baldwin said. “We anticipate a vigorous legal and factual challenge to any claims by the prosecution as to the reliability of its conclusions concerning the single magic bullet.”

    Another witness told investigators she noticed an oddly parked vehicle at an old Child Protective Services building. A tip to investigators had also referenced a vehicle parked at the building that “appeared as though it was backed in as to conceal the license plate.” Investigators believe the description of the vehicle matched one of two vehicles that Allen owned in 2017, the affidavit said.

    When Allen spoke with an officer in 2017, he admitted he was on the trail for roughly two hours, the affidavit said. In a subsequent interview in October 2022, Allen told authorities he had gone out there to “watch fish,” that he was wearing jeans and a black or blue jacket and also said he owns firearms which were at his home, according to the affidavit.

    “On October 13th, 2022, Investigators executed a search warrant of Richard Allen’s residence,” the affidavit said. “Among other items, officers located jackets, boots, knives and firearms, including a Sig Sauer, Model P226, .40 caliber pistol with serial number U 625 627.”

    According to the document, investigators found a .40 caliber unspent round less than two feet away from one of the bodies, and between the two victims.

    Lab results confirmed the unspent round had been cycled through Allen’s Sig Sauer, the affidavit said. When Allen was questioned about that result, he denied knowing their victims or having any involvement in their killings, according to the affidavit.

    The affidavit does not make any reference to any other participants in the girls’ killings, despite Carroll County Prosecutor Nick McLeland recently saying in court that he had “good reason to believe that Richard Allen is not the only actor in this heinous crime.”

    Allen’s lawyers said they pushed to have the affidavit unsealed.

    “We were hoping that we would receive tips that would assist us in proving up his innocence,” the statement said. “Although it is the burden of the prosecutor to prove Rick’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the defense team looks forward to conducting its own investigation concerning Rick’s innocence.”

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  • Shanquella Robinson’s death is being investigated as a femicide. Here is what it means | CNN

    Shanquella Robinson’s death is being investigated as a femicide. Here is what it means | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The killing of Shanquella Robinson is being investigated as a femicide, an unfamiliar term for many in the United States as this gender-motivated crime has not been defined by US legislation despite being a global issue.

    Robinson, a 25-year-old student at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina died in October while staying in a luxury rental property in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur.

    Prosecutors in Mexico are seeking to extradite one of Robinson’s friends as a suspect in the case. Daniel de la Rosa, the attorney general for Baja California Sur told local media last week that an arrest warrant was issued for the crime of femicide, or the killing of a woman because of her gender, in connection with Robinson’s case.

    No one has been charged in the case, and authorities have not released the names of Robinson’s friends.

    Unlike Mexico and other Latin American countries, the US does not have a law recognizing femicide as a different crime than homicide, which several experts say does not mean that killings targeting women are not happening in the US at alarming rates.

    “Femicides happen all the time in the US, and many famous murder cases that we all have in our consciousness are actually femicide, but we don’t put that label on them,” said Dabney P. Evans, director of Emory University’s Center for Humanitarian Emergencies, who studies violence against women.

    As the investigation into Robinson’s death continues, here’s what you need to know about what is considered femicide in Mexico, why gender-based violence is a big problem globally, and why scholars say that writing femicide into US law could help women.

    Femicide is the most extreme form of gender-based violence (GBV) and is defined as the “intentional murder of women because they are women.” 

    Femicides fall into two categories: intimate and non-intimate femicide. The former refers to the killing of women by current or ex-partners, while the latter is the killing of women by people with whom they had no intimate relationship.

    In most countries, femicide is not different from homicide in criminal law, but Mexico is among at least 16 countries that have included femicide as a specific crime.

    Under federal law in Mexico, people can face up to 60 years in prison if convicted. The difference between homicide, or unlawful killing, and femicide, varies from state to state in Mexico.

    There could be a history of violence – sexual or not – and threats, or “if the victim was in community, for example, and if she was killed and her body was in public,” said Beatriz García Nice, who leads the Wilson Center’s initiative on gender-based violence.

    A video circulating online in recent weeks appears to show a physical altercation inside a room between Robinson and another person. Her father, Bernard Robinson, told CNN his daughter is seen in that video being thrown to the floor and beaten on the head.

    It’s not clear when the video was taken or if it depicts the moment Robinson suffered the injury that led to her death.

    While there is legislation against femicide in Mexico, “the main problem is the execution,” García Nice said. The number of gender-based violence cases are underreported in national statistics and the law is “under executed” in the judicial system, she said.

    García Nice says nearly 95% of femicide cases in Mexico go unpunished. “If you commit a crime of femicide, there’s really not that much of a chance for you to get convicted for it. And that’s one of the reasons why we see that rates are still very, very high.”

    Alejandra Marquez, an assistant professor of Spanish with a focus on gender and sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean at Michigan State University, said the “feminicidos” crisis in Mexico started several decades ago and first gained national attention in the 1990s when hundreds of women were killed in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez.

    “There used to be this idea, especially in central Mexico, where it was like ‘women are getting killed over there at the border,’ but because it’s expanded all over the country, it’s sort of become this phenomenon that can no longer be ignored,” Marquez told CNN.

    “When you’re in Mexico, it’s part of day-to-day conversation,” Marquez added.

    The disproportionate killings of Black women, the crisis of missing or murdered Indigenous people and the 2021 deadly shootings of women at Atlanta-area spas are some examples of cases that could potentially be labeled as femicides, experts say.

    “As a society, we need to recognize that these are not one-off deaths. These are in fact, connected to patterns of masculine violence, and we need to think more closely about preventing that kind of violence,” said Evans, the scholar at Emory University.

    An analysis of homicide data by the Violence Policy Center shows 2,059 women in the US were killed by men in 2020 and 89% knew their offenders.

    For Evans, having femicide legislation in the US would not solve the issues of toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and misogyny that lead to gender-based violence but the terminology could “allows us to talk about this phenomenon” and prevent it from happening.

    There are existing laws that address gender-based violence in the US and mechanisms to track domestic violence but they are flawed.

    The federal hate crime law covers violent or property crimes at least partially motivated by bias against race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity. At the state level, the definition of a hate crime varies and several states do not cover bias based on gender.

    Earlier this year, federal lawmakers reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act. The legislation is aimed at protecting and supporting survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking – all documented precursors in femicide cases.

    During a March ceremony celebrating the act’s passage, President Joe Biden said more needs to be done to address the issue.

    “No one, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, should experience abuse. Period. And if they do, they should have the services and support they need to get through it. And we’re not going to rest.”

    An estimated 81,100 women and girls around the world were killed intentionally last year with about 56% of them by intimate partners or family members, a UN report published last week shows.

    It’s hard to describe the full scope of gender-based violence, the report says, because roughly 4 in 10 killings reported by authorities have “no contextual information to allow them to be identified and counted as gender-related killings.”

    “These rates are alarmingly high, as we can see; however, that’s the tip of the iceberg,” Kalliopi Mingeirou, the chief of Ending Violence against Women Section at UN Women, one of the entities that compiled the report.

    Mingeirou said when a femicide isn’t classified legally for what it is, police cannot investigate properly. Other challenges in stopping and preventing femicides include the lack of resources and training for authorities expected to implement laws.

    “What women and girls deserve around the world is to have a world that respects their choices, that respects their rights,” Mingeirou said. “We need to have equal rights. We have a primary right to be free from violence because if we are free from violence and harassment, we can achieve, and we can thrive in this world.”

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  • The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

    The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story first ran in July. It also appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Let’s start with the positive: Republicans and Democrats are coming together to protect same-sex marriage from the Supreme Court. The Respect for Marriage Act, which safeguards the right to same-sex marriage nationwide, passed the House with bipartisan support earlier this week and now awaits a Senate vote.

    The Respect for Marriage Act codifies marriages and came about amid worries among Democrats that the same conservative majority on the Supreme Court that took away the right to abortion will target same-sex marriage in the future.

    The version that overcame a filibuster in the Senate passed the Senate Tuesday. A dozen Republican senators from across the country voted with Democrats before Thanksgiving to limit debate and move toward a final vote.

    RELATED: Meet the 12 Republicans who voted to consider the Respect for Marriage Act

    It next goes to the House for approval before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

    But there is a fair amount of fine print.

    First, the bill does not require all states to allow same-sex marriage, even though that is the current reality under the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Rather, if the Supreme Court overturned Obergefell and previous state prohibitions on same-sex marriage came back into effect, the Respect for Marriage Act would require states and the federal government to respect marriages conducted in places where it is legal.

    There are religious exceptions. Republican supporters have emphasized the elements in this Senate version that protect nonprofit and religious organizations from having to provide support for same-sex marriages.

    “I will be supporting the substitute amendment because it will ensure our religious freedoms are upheld and protected, one of the bedrocks of our democracy,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito in a statement after helping break the filibuster.

    It took months of behind-the-scenes effort to bring 10-plus Republicans on board.

    This is all academic right now. The bill is only being passed in case the now-solidly conservative Supreme Court, which has taken delight in upending precedent, were to revisit the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that created a national right to marriage for same-sex couples.

    Two of the justices who voted in favor of that ruling have been replaced by Republican-appointed conservatives, which means that if the case were heard today, there’s a real likelihood it would be decided differently.

    While Justice Samuel Alito seemed to want to wall off the abortion rights precedent upended by the Supreme Court earlier this year, CNN’s Ariane de Vogue has written about how the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could affect issues like marriage. Read her story.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    Today, it’s Republicans and Democrats, along with a Democratic president, working together to protect same-sex marriage from a government institution.

    During that time, public support for same-sex marriage grew from about a quarter of the public in the year the Defense of Marriage Act was enacted to 71% in Gallup polling this year.

    The issue has played a role in multiple US elections, including, arguably, the one that just took place.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    In 1996, Republican majorities in the House and Senate sensed a political opening after then-President Bill Clinton failed to allow gay people to openly serve in the military.

    They were also trying to get ahead of a Hawaii court decision that could have legalized same-sex marriage in that state. Fearing every state might have to recognize same-sex unions, Republicans pushed the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA.

    It declared marriage as between one man and one woman and allowed states to refuse to recognize marriages. It also withheld federal benefits from married same-sex couples. In 2013, a part of DOMA was found to be unconstitutional.

    DOMA had broad approval. Democrats like then-Sen. Joe Biden voted for the bill. Current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and many other Democrats whose names you’d recognize, were among the 342 who voted for the bill in the House.

    Current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among the 67 members to vote “no,” along with Rep. Steve Gunderson, who at the time was the House’s only openly gay Republican.

    In 2004, placing anti-gay-marriage amendments on ballots in key states like Ohio was smart politics. It helped George W. Bush win reelection to the White House and the GOP gain seats in the US Senate.

    Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The Democratic candidate, John Kerry, also opposed same-sex marriage at the time.

    In 2008, even as more in his party began to publicly support marriage equality, Obama continued his opposition.

    He has more recently said and written that he always personally supported same-sex marriage rights. His campaign aide David Axelrod has written that Obama made a calculated decision to oppose gay marriage.

    “He grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’” Axelrod wrote in a memoir.

    In 2012, following the lead of then-Vice President Biden, Obama officially evolved on the issue and said he now supported marriage equality. It was a big moment.

    A few years later, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide.

    “I’m fine with it,” Trump said in 2016 during an interview with “60 Minutes.”

    He’d go on to brag about being a champion for gay rights, although many LGBTQ activists would disagree.

    The politicians of the ’90s have largely evolved with the country.

    But one of the Supreme Court’s relics from the ’90s, Justice Clarence Thomas, recently questioned the 2015 marriage decision he opposed. As a result, Republicans and Democrats are coming together again, in less than a generation, to undo what they did in 1996, and try to guarantee marriage as a right for all Americans.

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  • READ: Trump indictment and statement of facts related to hush money payment | CNN Politics

    READ: Trump indictment and statement of facts related to hush money payment | CNN Politics

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    Former President Donald Trump has been charged with 34 criminal counts in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
    Read the indictment here.

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  • Cash App founder Bob Lee knew the suspect in his stabbing death, police say | CNN Business

    Cash App founder Bob Lee knew the suspect in his stabbing death, police say | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    San Francisco Police have arrested Nima Momeni in connection to the murder of Cash App founder Bob Lee, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said during a news conference on Thursday.

    Scott described Momeni as a 38-year-old man from Emeryville, California. Scott said Momeni and Lee knew one another, but he didn’t provide further details about their connection.

    California Secretary of State Records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business, which, according to its website, provides services like technical support.

    Momeni was taken into custody without incident, according to Scott, and taken to the San Francisco County jail where he was booked on one charge of murder.

    Lee was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco early in the morning of April 4th. The moments following the stabbing attack were captured on surveillance video and in a 911 call to authorities, according to a local Bay Area news portal.

    The surveillance footage, reviewed by the online news site The San Francisco Standard, shows Lee walking alone on Main Street, “gripping his side with one hand and his cellphone in the other, leaving a trail of blood behind him.”

    Many in the tech world and beyond responded to news of Lee’s death with an outpouring of shock and grief. Some, including Elon Musk, also said the incident highlighted the fact that “violent crime in SF is horrific.”

    But on Thursday, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins criticized Musk’s statement as “reckless and irresponsible.” Jenkins said Musk’s remark “assumed incorrect circumstances” about the death and effectively “spreads misinformation” while police were actively working to solve the case.

    Lee was the former chief technology officer of Square who helped launch Cash App. He later joined MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency and digital payments startup, in 2021 as its chief product officer.

    Josh Goldbard, the CEO MobileCoin, previously told CNN: “Bob was a dynamo, a force of nature. Bob was the genuine article. He was made for the world that is being born right now, he was a child of dreams, and whatever he imagined, no matter how crazy, he made real.”

    Earlier Thursday, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey expressed his gratitude to the police department’s homicide detail for “their tireless work to bring Bob Lee’s killer to justice and for their arrest of a suspect this morning.”

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  • Man accused of killing Cash App founder Bob Lee intends to plead not guilty next week, his attorney says | CNN Business

    Man accused of killing Cash App founder Bob Lee intends to plead not guilty next week, his attorney says | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Nima Momeni, the man accused of killing Cash App founder Bob Lee in San Francisco, intends to plead not guilty next week, his attorney said.

    Momeni was to be arraigned on a murder charge Tuesday but that was put off until May 2 after defense attorney Paula Canny asked for more time to prepare.

    Canny told reporters after the hearing that her client also will deny the special allegation of using a knife in the crime.

    Lee, who cofounded the mobile payment service provider Cash App, was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood early on April 4.

    Authorities have said Momeni, 38, of Emeryville, California, and Lee knew each other and they were in a vehicle shortly before the stabbing.

    The district attorney’s office has indicated that the stabbing may have been premeditated.

    “This is a person who was in his vehicle with a kitchen knife,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said earlier this month. “That’s not something most of us carry around at all times with us.”

    Canny said she believes she has evidence to support Momeni’s innocence.

    The attorney says she has seen surveillance videos in the case but is still awaiting police reports and the full autopsy report. “I don’t think you can see anything” in the video, Canny said.

    Jenkins said Tuesday autopsy reports typically take about 60 days and, in this case, the report is not yet ready.

    “We believe that we have sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Momeni murdered Bob Lee,” Jenkins said.

    Canny told station KNTV nearly two weeks ago that there is a “much greater back story” than what has been disclosed.

    California Secretary of State records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business. He has been held without bail since his arrest nearly two weeks ago.

    Canny said she believes her client is not a danger to the community or a flight risk and will push for bail to be set. Jenkins disagreed. “Certainly somebody that we believe committed murder is an extreme threat to public safety.”

    About 20 of Momeni’s family members, including his two teenage children, were in court for the hearing.

    Documents from the district attorney’s office have laid out what authorities say preceded the stabbing.

    A motion to detain document cites a witness interviewed by police and security camera footage, offering a detailed timeline of where Lee and Momeni were.

    A witness, described as a close friend of Lee’s, said he went over to an apartment after being invited by Lee on April 3, where Lee was drinking with a woman later identified as Momeni’s sister, the document states.

    The witness told police the woman was married but her “relationship was possibly in jeopardy,” and the witness was unsure whether the woman and Lee had an intimate relationship, according to the document. Lee later told the witness that they were going to go to his hotel room, where he invited the woman but she declined.

    While at the hotel room, the witness said Lee was having a conversation with Momeni, which involved Momeni saying he was picking up his sister from the apartment Lee and the witness were previously at, according to the document. Momeni asked Lee “whether his sister was doing drugs or anything inappropriate,” the document states. Lee had told Momeni nothing inappropriate happened, according to the document.

    After the conversation with Momeni, Lee and the witness went to Lee’s apartment until about 12:30 a.m. on April 4, when Lee left, the document says.

    Surveillance footage shows Momeni arriving at his sister’s apartment building in a white BMW around 8:30 p.m. on April 3, and later shows Lee entering the building around 12:39 a.m. on April 4. A little after 2 a.m., security footage shows Lee and Momeni entering an elevator together and getting into Momeni’s BMW. Additional footage from the area shows the two driving in the car together.

    Video then shows the BMW drive to a “dark and secluded area” on Main Street, just out of view for the video to see the interaction between the two men, per the document.

    Eventually, the two subjects, who are unidentifiable by their faces but seem to be wearing the same clothing, appear back in frame. After about five minutes, the subject wearing a white-colored top, consistent with what Momeni appeared to be wearing, “suddenly move(s) toward the other subject,” the document says. The two subjects then separate.

    The subject in dark-colored clothing, who authorities believe to be Lee, walks northbound, while the subject in the light-colored clothing walks south and stops along a fence, where a knife was ultimately recovered, the document says. The BMW then “leaves at a high rate of speed,” the document states.

    An autopsy later found Lee was “stabbed three separate times, once in the hip and twice in the chest,” according to the documents. One of the stab wounds “directly penetrated” Lee’s heart, causing his death.

    A kitchen knife was found near the scene, District Attorney Jenkins said in a news conference, adding the department had “proof beyond a reasonable doubt that (Momeni) committed murder.”

    On April 11, investigators found a text message from Momeni’s sister to Lee that showed the sister checking in on Lee, according to the motion to detain document. The text message, per the document, stated: “Just wanted to make sure your doing ok Cause I know nima came wayyyyyy down hard on you And thank you for being such a classy man handling it with class.”

    Meanwhile, additional details in an August 2022 incident involving a woman and Momeni were made available in a police report, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.

    Police in Emeryville cited and released Momeni on a misdemeanor battery charge after a woman reported he attacked her, the newspaper reported, citing documents obtained in a public records request. CNN has requested the documents and reached out to Emeryville police.

    The woman, whose name was redacted from the report, and Momeni reportedly got into an argument the afternoon of August 1, 2022, according to the police report.

    Momeni denied the allegation when questioned by responding officers.

    The woman told police that Momeni was prone to behavior shifts, the Chronicle reported, telling them that “one minute he will be fine and the next he will go off for no reason.”

    In a statement to CNN on Monday, Momeni’s attorney Canny said, “It is only a police report.”

    “There was no arrest. There was no case filed – the Alameda County District Attorney refused to prosecute,” she said.

    The Alameda County District Attorney’s office confirmed to CNN last week it did not file charges but declined to say why or give more detail.

    In the police report, the woman said she met Momeni a week earlier and he allowed her to stay on his couch in exchange for cleaning the residence, the Chronicle says, adding she told officers that she and Momeni were not dating.

    The woman told police that earlier in the day, she had been in the loft’s kitchen when Momeni came downstairs and yelled for her to collect her belongings and leave, the Chronicle reports.

    “Momeni forcefully grabbed her right upper arm and her right side waist area,” Officer Johnson wrote in the report, according to the Chronicle. “He then pushed her against a counter.”

    He denied the allegation to police, according to the newspaper, and a roommate told police that he didn’t see violence and that the woman appeared to be the aggressor.

    Momeni told officers he wanted to pursue charges against the woman for pushing him the day before when they had also argued, the report says, according to the Chronicle.

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  • What to know about the Florida grand jury in the Trump documents probe | CNN Politics

    What to know about the Florida grand jury in the Trump documents probe | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    We learned this week that special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating former President Donald Trump for potentially mishandling classified documents, is using a second grand jury in Miami to gather new evidence.

    The development comes after a period of escalating activity in the federal criminal probe, which has focused around Trump having dozens of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left the White House.

    Up until this point, Smith has been using a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, but the panel hasn’t been observed meeting since early May. It’s unclear why he has now decided to use a second grand jury in Miami, as he appeared to be reaching the final stages of his probe and is weighing possible indictments. (Trump denies all wrongdoing and says the probe is political.)

    Here’s a breakdown of what’s going on Florida and what we know about the fast-developing situation.

    Smith is investigating Trump’s handling of national security records at his Mar-a-Lago resort and elsewhere. His team is trying to determine if Trump or his aides committed crimes by keeping the documents after his presidency. Those were sensitive government documents that Trump had no legal right to hold onto, prosecutors have said in court filings.

    Prosecutors are also investigating whether Trump or his allies obstructed the investigation.

    It’s common for ex-presidents to accidentally keep some classified documents when they move out of the White House.

    Notably, President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence both found classified papers at their homes, from their time as vice president. But Trump’s case appears to be far more serious, because of the sheer volume of classified records involved, and because of his repeated efforts to stymie federal officials who tried to claw back the materials.

    As part of the inquiry, witnesses have testified to Smith’s grand juries in DC and Miami, according to CNN’s reporting.

    The newly revealed grand jury in Florida has raised a host of questions about the endgame of Smith’s investigation.

    Legal experts have speculated that the development might indicate that Smith is exploring bringing parts or all of a criminal case in Florida federal court instead of DC federal court, or possibly in addition to DC. Prosecutors can’t simply file charges wherever they please – they need to establish that they have the proper venue, and they need to connect part of the crime to where the case is filed.

    A significant amount of the conduct under investigation occurred in Mar-a-Lago, located in Palm Beach.

    A top prosecutor from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team previously co-wrote an analysis of the hurdles Smith would need to clear if he wants to bring the case in DC instead of Florida, where the jury pool might be more friendly to Trump.

    Former Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich, who now runs a pro-Trump super PAC, appeared before the Florida-based grand jury Wednesday and testified for less than an hour. After he left the courthouse, he tweeted that he “fulfilled a legal obligation to testify in front a federal grand jury” and that he “answered every question honestly.”

    He is the first person to be publicly named as testifying before Smith’s grand jury in Florida. However, CNN previously reported that “multiple witnesses” have gone before the Florida grand jury in recent weeks, and at least one more is expected after Budowich.

    Prosecutors revealed the specific statutes that they were investigating when they searched Mar-a-Lago last year, a search that uncovered dozens of classified documents, even after Trump’s team swore they turned everything over.

    However, that was before Smith took over the probe as special counsel, and it doesn’t mean these are the only possible crimes he’s examining. But it provides a roadmap of possible charges – because when seeking the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, prosecutors needed to convince a judge there was probable cause that they’d find evidence of these crimes.

    The first is 18 USC 793, which is part of the Espionage Act. That federal law deals with the illegal retention of “national defense information,” a broad term that encompasses classified documents and other sensitive government materials. This law can apply to people who are authorized to handle classified information but knowingly kept the material in an unsecured location, or to people who aren’t supposed to possess the information in the first place.

    The second is 18 USC 2071, which deals with the illegal removal of government records from US custody.

    The third is 18 USC 1519, which is obstruction of justice. This could come into play if prosecutors conclude that Trump or his aides intentionally tried to impede their inquiry – by moving boxes around so prosecutors wouldn’t find classified documents, by possibly questioning complying with subpoenas including for surveillance tapes that prosecutors believe captured the movement of the boxes, by failing to fully comply with a subpoena, or by falsely swearing that all classified files had been returned.

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  • How Republicans are stitching their own straitjacket on Trump indictment | CNN Politics

    How Republicans are stitching their own straitjacket on Trump indictment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican response to Donald Trump’s latest criminal indictment offers a clear test of the famous saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result.

    The choice by Republican leaders, and even almost all of his 2024 rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, to unreservedly defend Trump after he was indicted earlier this year by the Manhattan district attorney helped the former president to widen his lead in primary polls. The roar of outrage from Republican leaders to that indictment restored Trump’s grip on the party after frustration over his role in the GOP’s disappointing 2022 midterm elections had loosened it.

    But since last week’s disclosure that Trump faces another criminal indictment – this one federal, over his handling of highly classified documents – the party leadership and 2024 field has almost entirely replicated that deferential approach.

    Repeating the pattern from other moments of maximum threat to Trump, the GOP response has been marked by a pronounced communications imbalance. From House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Trump’s supporters have loudly supported his claims that he is being persecuted by the left.

    Simultaneously, with only a few conspicuous exceptions like second-tier presidential contenders Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the most Trump’s critics in the party have been willing to do is remain silent and not validate his vitriolic charges. Apart from those two former governors, just a short list of prominent Republicans – including former Trump administration senior officials William Barr and John Bolton, and Senate Minority Whip John Thune – have pushed back at all against Trump’s claim that he is being hunted by “lunatic,” “deranged” and “Marxist” prosecutors, or publicly expressed misgivings about the underlying behavior detailed in the federal indictment against him.

    Christie reveals the exact moment he broke with Trump

    By refusing to confront Trump or his enraged defenders more directly, the Republicans who want the party to move beyond him in 2024 may be stitching their own straitjacket. The nearly indivisible GOP defense of Trump has once again created a situation in which a controversy that is weakening Trump with the broader electorate is strengthening his position inside the GOP coalition.

    Perhaps not surprisingly, multiple public polls show that most voters outside the Republican base are worried Trump jeopardized national security and dubious that anyone convicted of a serious crime should serve again as president. In a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll this spring, roughly three-fourths of independents, people of color, and voters under 45, as well as four-fifths of college-educated Whites, said they did not want Trump to be president again if he’s convicted of any crime. (The poll was conducted after Trump’s indictment in Manhattan but before the recent federal charges.)

    In a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted partially after last week’s indictment, a solid 57% majority of Americans – including around three-fifths of college-educated Whites and voters under 30 and nearly that many independents – said he should not serve as president if he’s convicted specifically in the classified documents case. More than two-thirds of Americans overall said his handling of classified documents had created a national security risk.

    Yet those same surveys also show that the vast majority of Republican voters say they do not believe Trump’s behavior is disqualifying – even if he’s convicted – and accept his claim that he’s the victim of unfair treatment. (In the Marist survey, more than three-fifths of Republicans said they would welcome a second Trump term even if he is found guilty of a crime.) That, too, may be unsurprising given the paucity of conservative elected officials or media figures that those voters trust telling them otherwise.

    Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian leaders, sees more than tactical political maneuvering in the choice by so many Republicans to again immediately lock arms around Trump despite the powerful evidence detailed in last week’s indictment. Such deference is “completely consistent” with the behavior across the world of “autocratic parties” under the thrall of “a leader cult,” says Ben-Ghiat, author of the 2020 book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”

    The closest recent parallel she sees to the GOP’s behavior might be how the Forza Italia party remained in lockstep for years behind former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi throughout multiple trials (and even convictions) for corruption and sexual misconduct, amplifying his claims that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy and “witch hunt.” For leaders like Trump or Berlusconi (who died at 86 on Monday) such legal challenges, she says, actually become a “juncture” to strengthen their dominance by demanding that others publicly defend their behavior – no matter how indefensible. In that way, the leader establishes personal loyalty to him as the one true litmus test for belonging to the party. (The Republican decision to replace a party platform in 2020 with a brief statement declaring it would “enthusiastically support” Trump’s agenda, she notes, marked an important milestone in that transition.)

    “If you stay in the party it’s either you have to be supporting Trump or face the consequences,” says Ben-Ghiat, who teaches at New York University. “You could be even running against him, but you have to adhere to the party line: the weaponization by the deep state. That’s the sad and dangerous part among many dangers we face. Even those people are stuck within this narrative world and this party line and their targets are the same as Trump’s.”

    Trump’s latest round of legal jeopardy leaves the Republicans who are hesitant about him – either because they consider him unfit to serve as president or simply because they believe he is too damaged to win a general election – in the same position as his critics since 2015: hoping that his supporters will somehow move away from him, but unwilling to do almost anything overt to encourage them.

    “They keep indulging the fantasy. … They don’t ever have to do anything and a deus ex machina is going to do this by itself,” says long-time conservative strategist Bill Kristol, who has emerged as one of Trump’s most dogged GOP critics.

    Some Republicans say it’s possible this time will be different and the sheer weight of legal proceedings mounting against Trump – which could include further charges over his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election from special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis – could cause what some call “indictment fatigue” among GOP voters.

    “I think there’s a schizophrenia that exists in this,” says Dave Wilson, a prominent social conservative and Republican activist in South Carolina. “You have people who say that no government should be used to weaponize against any one of us, much less a [former] president. At the same they are beleaguered about the same headlines again and again and again about indictments.”

    Likewise, Craig Robinson, former political director for the Iowa Republican Party, agrees that given the prospect of cascading court appearances through the election year, “Donald Trump is asking a lot of the Republican voter to endure.”

    But many other Trump critics inside the GOP fear that the chorus of support for him from party leaders and his 2024 rivals has set in motion a dynamic where denying him the nomination now could appear to some GOP voters as “rewarding” the Democrats, or the “deep state,” or President Joe Biden, or whoever they believe is persecuting him. “He will win the nomination with the message that they have weaponized the justice system against Republicans, against conservatives,” predicts former New Hampshire GOP chairperson Jennifer Horn, now a staunch Trump critic.

    Trump has quickly made clear that he will stress that argument against any and all criminal claims converging against him. When he appeared for the first time after this latest indictment, at the Georgia GOP convention on Saturday, he argued that the “deep state” was targeting him because it recognized that he was the only 2024 candidate strong enough to stand up to it on behalf of Republican voters. “Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we, we, are the only ones who are going to be able to stop them,” he declared. At another point Trump insisted, “These criminals cannot be rewarded” – presumably by frightening Republican voters away from nominating him.

    Such arguments from Trump show how his 2024 rivals, by mostly endorsing his claims, have voluntarily reduced themselves to the chorus in his drama. So long as the dominant story in red America is the claim that Democrats are unfairly targeting Trump, it may be difficult for the other candidates even to sustain attention in the Republican race.

    “They’ve made themselves just sub-characters in the plot,” says Horn. “Every time they do this they make him the hero. So they are out there asking people to vote for them for president, even though they are saying Donald Trump is the real hero in this scenario. It doesn’t make any sense.”

    Robinson largely agrees. Trump’s multiple indictments, he says, “might be a good opportunity for” for the former president’s 2024 rivals because some voters, even if they consider the allegations unfair, will “also think ‘I don’t want the next 12-18 months to be’” dominated by those controversies. Yet, Robinson believes, by echoing Trump’s claims of unfair treatment, the other candidates are encouraging Republican voters to accept his framing of the race. “If you believe the whole thing is corrupt and needs to be torn down and rebuilt, isn’t he the best one to do that?” says Robinson, adding that among many GOP voters, “There’s this sense that he’s the only one who can fight that fight.”

    Kristol points out that other Republicans with a plausible chance of winning the nomination could distance themselves from Trump without fully endorsing the charges against him. “They can’t sound like me, they can’t sound like Asa Hutchison,” Kristol acknowledges. But he adds, other Republican candidates could respond to this indictment (and any potential subsequent ones) by expressing faith in the legal system to find the truth and saying something like: “‘I think Donald Trump did a good job, but this is bad, and when you can combine this with the ’22 results, we need a different nominee.” It’s an ominous measure of the party’s transformation into Trump’s personal vehicle, Kristol says, that they feel they “can’t even do that and instead want to attack Biden.”

    It remains possible that Trump’s rivals or other GOP leaders could make a more explicit case against him as the race proceeds, or more possible indictments land. Comments on Monday from Thune and presidential contender Nikki Haley – who criticized Trump’s handling of the documents after initially attacking the indictment – suggest a window may be cracking open for greater GOP dissent. But the hesitation inside the party about fully confronting Trump remains palpable. At his campaign announcement last week, for instance, former Vice President Mike Pence said more explicitly than ever before that Trump’s behavior on January 6, 2021, rendered him unfit to serve as president again. But Pence immediately undercut that message by declaring in a CNN town hall later that day that he would “support the Republican nominee in 2024,” which very well could be Trump, even though Pence said he doubted it would be. What started as a challenge to him instead became another measure of Trump’s dominance – a shift underscored when Pence joined the chorus condemning the federal indictment.

    Because Ben-Ghiat sees the GOP taking on more of the characteristics of other “authoritarian parties” in thrall to strongman leaders, she’s skeptical the legal challenges converging around Trump will undermine his hold on the party. But, she says, the experience of other countries shows that imposing legal consequences for the misdeeds of authoritarian-minded leaders is nonetheless critical to fortifying democracy.

    There may be no proof of wrongdoing that can move large numbers of voters in Trump’s coalition, she says, but for everyone else in society, “it is very important to show that the rule of law can hold, that our institutions can do things, that democracy can work.”

    Ben-Ghiat likens the multiple legal proceedings around Trump to the “truth commissions” established in countries such as South Africa and Chile that cataloged and documented the misdeeds of autocratic governments. “In the short run,” she says, the threat to US democracy “may get worse before it gets better” as Trump, echoed by most of the GOP leadership and conservative media, portrays any accountability for him as a conspiracy against his followers.

    “But in the long run,” she says, establishing the evidence of any misconduct or criminal behavior through indictments, testimony and trials “that everyone can read is very, very important.” For anyone concerned about upholding the rule of law, Ben-Ghiat says, the choice by so many Republican leaders to preemptively dismiss any allegation against Trump “is just more proof of how important these procedures are.”

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  • Who is David Weiss, the US attorney overseeing Hunter Biden criminal probe? | CNN Politics

    Who is David Weiss, the US attorney overseeing Hunter Biden criminal probe? | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Donald Trump-appointed US attorney leading the investigation into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter has decades of experience as a federal prosecutor.

    David Weiss, the Delaware US attorney, met in April with Hunter Biden’s attorneys, who had requested a routine status update on the investigation. The long-running probe, which began as early as 2018, at one time concerned multiple financial and business activities in foreign countries dating to when Joe Biden was vice president.

    On Tuesday, the Justice Department said in court filings that Biden will plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal with federal prosecutors regarding a felony gun charge.

    In 2018, the Senate confirmed Weiss to serve as US attorney for the District of Delaware. At the time of his nomination, he was serving as the acting US attorney for the district and was one of nine candidates whom Trump said shared his “vision for ‘Making America Safe Again.’”

    The Philadelphia native is a member of the Delaware and Pennsylvania bars.

    A Washington University in St. Louis and Widener University School of Law graduate, Weiss began his career in law in 1984 as a clerk to Justice Andrew D. Christie of the Delaware Supreme Court, according to his Justice Department biography.

    Following his clerkship, Weiss prosecuted violent crimes and white-collar offenses as an assistant US attorney before joining firm Duane Morris, where he was a commercial litigation associate and eventually became a partner. He later served as chief operating officer and senior vice president at The Siegfried Group, a financial services firm, according to his biography.

    He served as the first assistant US attorney starting in 2007.

    Weiss’ investigation into Hunter Biden continued into the Biden administration, prompting Attorney General Merrick Garland to stress during a March Senate committee hearing that he would not interfere with the investigation. Weiss, he reiterated at the time, had “full authority” to carry out the investigation and to bring in another jurisdiction if necessary.

    Garland said Weiss was “not to be denied anything that he needs.”

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  • Sarah Silverman sues OpenAI and Meta alleging copyright infringement | CNN Business

    Sarah Silverman sues OpenAI and Meta alleging copyright infringement | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors are suing Meta and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, alleging the companies’ AI language models were trained on copyrighted materials from their books without their knowledge or consent.

    The pair of lawsuits against OpenAI and Facebook-parent Meta were filed in a San Francisco federal court on Friday, and are both seeking class action status. Silverman, the author of “The Bedwetter,” is joined in filing the lawsuits by fellow authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey.

    A new crop of AI tools has gained tremendous attention in recent months for their ability to generate written work and images in response to user prompts. The large language models underpinning these tools are trained on vast troves of online data. But this practice has raised some concerns that these models may be sweeping up copyrighted works without permission – and that these works could ultimately be served to train tools that upend the livelihoods of creatives.

    The complaint against OpenAI claims that “when ChatGPT is prompted, ChatGPT generates summaries of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works—something only possible if ChatGPT was trained on Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.” The authors “did not consent to the use of their copyrighted books as training material for ChatGPT,” according to the complaint.

    The complaint against Meta similarly claims that the company used the authors’ copyrighted books to train LLaMA, the set of large language models released by Meta in February. The suit claims that much of the material used to train Meta’s language models “comes from copyrighted works—including books written by Plaintiffs—that were copied by Meta without consent, without credit, and without compensation.”

    The suit against Meta also alleges that the company accessed the copyrighted books via an online “shadow library” website that includes a large quantity of copyrighted material.

    Meta declined to comment on the lawsuit. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The legal action from Silverman isn’t the first to focus on how large language models are trained. A separate lawsuit filed against OpenAI last month alleged the company misappropriated vast swaths of peoples’ personal data from the internet to train its AI tools. (OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.)

    In May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared to acknowledge more needed to be done to address concerns from creators about how AI systems use their works.

    “We’re trying to work on new models where if an AI system is using your content, or if it’s using your style, you get paid for that,” he said at an event.

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  • Pentagon watchdog finds some Western weaponry sent to Ukraine was stolen before being recovered last year | CNN Politics

    Pentagon watchdog finds some Western weaponry sent to Ukraine was stolen before being recovered last year | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Criminals, volunteer fighters and arms traffickers in Ukraine stole some Western-provided weapons and equipment intended for Ukrainian troops last year before it was recovered, according to a Defense Department inspector general report obtained by CNN.

    The plots to steal the weaponry and equipment were disrupted by Ukraine’s intelligence services and it was ultimately recovered, according to the report, titled “DoD’s Accountability of Equipment Provided to Ukraine.” CNN obtained the report via a Freedom of Information Act request. Military.com first reported the news.

    But the inspector general report noted that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Defense Department’s ability to track and monitor all of the US equipment pouring into Ukraine, as required by law under the Arms Export Control Act, faced “challenges” because of the limited US presence in the country.

    According to the report, which examined the period of February-September 2022, the Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv “was unable to conduct required [end-use monitoring] of military equipment that the United States provided to Ukraine in FY 2022.”

    “The inability of DoD personnel to visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored significantly hampered ODC-Kyiv’s ability to execute” the monitoring, the report added.

    The report is dated October 6, 2022. In late October, the US resumed on-site inspections of Ukrainian weapons depots as a way to better track where the equipment was going. The department has also provided the Ukrainians with tracking systems, including scanners and software, the Pentagon’s former under secretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, told lawmakers in February.

    But the report underscores how difficult it was in the early days of the war for the US to track the billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment it was sending to Ukraine.

    Republicans have criticized the Biden administration over what they view as a lack of accountability over the billions of dollars of aid going to Ukraine. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier this year that he supports Ukraine but doesn’t “support a blank check.” The same sentiment has been shared by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    CNN reported in April 2022 that the Biden administration was willing to take the risk of losing track of weapons supplied to Ukraine despite a lack of visibility, as they saw it as critical to Ukraine’s defeat of Russian forces.

    “We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” a source briefed on US intelligence told CNN at the time. “It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”

    US European Command tried to alleviate the issue last year by requesting and maintaining hand receipts from the Ukrainians, which the Ukrainians made a “good faith effort” to provide, the report says, citing EUCOM personnel. The personnel did not provide the IG with corroborating paperwork by the time the investigation concluded, however, the report notes.

    The Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv also asked the Ukrainian government for expenditure, loss, and damage reports for US-provided equipment, the report says, and they “made efforts to prevent illicit proliferation of defense material provided by the United States.”

    Still, criminal organizations managed to steal some weaponry and equipment provided by the US and its allies, the report says.

    In late June 2022, an organized crime group overseen by an unnamed Russian official joined a volunteer battalion using forged documents and stole weapons, including a grenade launcher and machine gun, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, the report says. Ukraine’s intelligence service disrupted the plot, according to the report.

    That same month, Ukraine’s intelligence services also disrupted a plot by arms traffickers working to sell weapons and ammunition they stole from the frontlines in southern Ukraine, as well as a separate plot by Ukrainian criminals posing as aid workers who stole $17,000 worth of bulletproof vests, the report says.

    And in August 2022, Ukraine’s intelligence services discovered a group of volunteer battalion members who stole 60 rifles and almost 1,000 rounds of ammunition and stored them in a warehouse, “presumably for sale on the black market.”

    The report does not specify whether the weapons and equipment were American, but the anecdotes are outlined in a highly redacted section that deals with Ukrainian tracking of US-provided weaponry.

    The Pentagon inspector general wrote that some larger items like missiles and helicopters were easier to track through intelligence mechanisms. Smaller items, like night-vision devices, however, were harder to monitor.

    The report ultimately does not make any recommendations, noting that the Defense Department “has made some efforts to mitigate the inability to conduct in-person” monitoring.

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  • Could Donald Trump serve as president if convicted? | CNN Politics

    Could Donald Trump serve as president if convicted? | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges related to 2020 election subversion, a stunning third time this year that the former president has faced criminal charges.

    But could the former president, who remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, assume the Oval Office again if convicted of the alleged crimes? In short, yes.

    University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen – one of the country’s leading experts on election law – said Trump still has a path to serving as president should he win reelection in 2024.

    “The Constitution has very few requirements to serve as President, such as being at least 35 years of age. It does not bar anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency,” he said in an email to CNN.

    Could a president serve from prison? That’s less clear.

    “How someone would serve as president from prison is a happily untested question,” Hasen said.

    The newest criminal counts against Trump include: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

    Those are in addition to a total of 40 counts in a separate federal indictment related to the special counsel’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents, as well as 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan related to an alleged hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving an adult film star.

    If Trump were to be convicted before the 2024 election and win the contest, he could try to grant himself a pardon, according to Hasen.

    “Whether he can do so is untested. The Supreme Court may have to weigh in,” Hasen said, adding that Trump could potentially appeal a conviction to the conservative Supreme Court.

    Special counsel Jack Smith told reporters that he will seek a “speedy trial,” but if Trump was to be elected before a trial concluded, he may be able dismiss it entirely.

    Robert Ray, an attorney who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, said on CNN following Trump’s June indictment in the classified documents case that the former president “would control the Justice Department” if reelected, adding that if the documents case was pending at that time, “he just dismisses the case.”

    Asked about the latest indictment, Trump defense attorney John Lauro told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins he thinks a potential trial could last “nine months or a year.”

    Lauro said he will need to see the evidence but that his client deserves as much time as any other American. “Every single person in the United States is entitled to due process, including the former president,” he said.

    If Trump is convicted of a felony at the federal level or in New York, he would be barred from voting in his adoptive home state of Florida, at least until he had served out a potential sentence.

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  • Lawmakers reluctant to pursue gun control measures following Nashville school shooting | CNN Politics

    Lawmakers reluctant to pursue gun control measures following Nashville school shooting | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Monday’s deadly school shooting in Nashville has sparked a familiar cycle of condolences and calls to action among lawmakers in Washington, but both sides of the aisle have been quick to concede that the recent violence is probably not enough to sway a divided Congress to move substantive gun control efforts forward.

    After three children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday, President Joe Biden asserted that he’s done all he can do to address gun control and urged members on Capitol Hill to act. But the shooting, so far, has not compelled lawmakers in Washington – particularly Republican leadership and some members representing Tennessee – to push forward gun control, signaling no end to the impasse within the GOP-controlled House and nearly deadlocked Senate.

    The Nashville incident was just among the latest in 130 mass shooting incidents so far this year, according to data from the national Gun Violence Archive.

    White House officials are not currently planning a major push around gun safety reform in the wake of the deadly Nashville school shooting, three senior administration officials said. But Biden and White House officials will continue to urge Congress to act.

    Biden on Tuesday told CNN’s MJ Lee, “I can’t do anything except plead with the Congress to act reasonably.”

    “I have done the full extent of my executive authority – to do on my own, anything about guns …The Congress has to act. The majority of the American people think having assault weapons is bizarre, it’s a crazy idea. They’re against that. And so I think the Congress could be passing an assault weapon ban,” he added.

    Biden has taken more than 20 executive actions on guns since taking office, including regulating the use of “ghost guns” and sales of stabilizing braces that effectively turn pistols into rifles. He also signed a bipartisan bill in 2022 which expands background checks and provides federal funding for so-called “red flag laws” – although it failed to ban any weapons and fell far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for.

    White House officials have been sober about the political realities Democrats face with the current makeup of Congress, where Republicans in control of the House have rejected Biden’s calls for an assault weapons ban. Even when both chambers of Congress were controlled by Democrats during the first two years of Biden’s term, an assault weapon ban gained little traction, in part because of a 60-vote threshold necessary for passage.

    Many Republicans in Congress, including those in positions of leadership and in the Tennessee delegation, have either been reluctant to use the deadly violence in Nashville as a potential springboard for reform or they’ve outright rejected calls for additional action on further regulating guns, arguing that there isn’t an appetite for tougher restrictions.

    On Tuesday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy would not answer questions on whether any congressional action should be taken on guns after the shooting in Nashville. And House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana who survived being shot in 2017, demurred when asked if the most recent school shooting in Nashville would move Congress to address any sort of reforms.

    “I really get angry when I see people try to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts,” he said when asked if his conference was prepared to do anything to address the spate of mass shootings, mentioning only improving mental health and securing schools.

    “Let’s get the facts. And let’s work to see if there’s something that we can do to help secure schools,” he added. “We’ve talked about things that we can do and it just seems like on the other side, all they want to do is take guns away from law abiding citizens. … And that’s not the answer, by the way.”

    Sen. Thom Tillis, a key GOP negotiator in last year’s bipartisan gun legislation, said on Tuesday that he doesn’t see a path forward on new gun legislation. Instead, he believes that lawmakers need to focus on implementing what has already been signed into law.

    “The full implementation is going to take months and years,” Tillis said of the gun bill that passed last summer. “There is a lot of unimplemented or to be implemented provisions in there. Let’s talk about that first.”

    House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican whose committee has jurisdiction over gun policy, said Tuesday that he doesn’t think Congress should take action to limit assault weapons, though he declined to say why it’s okay to ban fully automatic rifles but not semi-automatic weapons.

    “The Second Amendment is the Second Amendment,” he continued. “I believe in the Second Amendment and we shouldn’t penalize law-abiding American citizens.”

    Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been involved in past negotiations on gun legislation, said: “I don’t know if there’s much space to do more, but I’ll certainly look and see.”

    Graham said he is opposed to a ban on AR-15s – which was one of the weapons the Nashville suspect used during Monday’s shooting – noting that he owns one himself and arguing that it would “be hard to implement a national red flag law.”

    Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju why he wouldn’t support a ban of AR-15s, Andy Ogles, who represents the district where Monday’s shooting took place, replied, “Why not talk about the real issue facing the country – and that’s mental health.” And Sen. Bill Hagerty, the Tennessee Republican, refused to discuss calls to ban AR-15s after the Nashville shooting.

    “The tragedy that happened in my state was the result of a depraved person and somebody very very sick. And the result has been absolutely devastating for the people in my community. Right now with the victims, the family and the people in my community – we are all mourning right now,” Hagerty told CNN.

    Asked about banning those weapons, he added: “I’m certain politics will wave into everything. But right now I’m not focused on the politics of the situation. I’m focused on the victims.

    Tennessee GOP Rep. Tim Burchett told reporters that “laws don’t work” to curb gun violence.

    “We want to legislate evil – it’s just not gonna happen,” he said. “If you think Washington is going to fix this problem, you’re wrong. They’re not going to fix this problem. They are the problem.”

    Asked by CNN why private citizens need AR-15s, Burchett pointed to self-defense. He also argued that even though other countries don’t observe the United States’ high frequency of shootings, “other countries don’t have our freedom either … And when people abuse that freedom, that’s what happens.”

    Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress are slamming House Republicans for their disinterest.

    “As a country and as a Congress, we can do better and we know that, so shame on Speaker McCarthy for not bringing something up, for not announcing that we can and do more. All we’re going to get are thoughts and prayers out of their Twitter accounts, and that’s not enough” Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California said during a press conference.

    On the other side of the Capitol, however, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told reporters that he is “not very hopeful” that the Senate can pass gun legislation this Congress.

    “I’m not very hopeful, yet we have to try,” he said.

    Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to force a vote on a semi-automatic weapons ban to put Republicans on the record.

    “We need a fight in Congress, and I’m prepared to conduct that fight, others are as well,” he told CNN. “And ultimately the American people deserve to know where each of us stands on common sense gun violence prevention.”

    Schumer would not say whether he intends to put legislation banning assault weapons on the Senate floor for a vote this Congress. There is nowhere close to enough support to overcome a legislative filibuster.

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  • Trump campaign says it saw surge in donations after indictment | CNN Politics

    Trump campaign says it saw surge in donations after indictment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump raised a combined $18.8 million in the first quarter of 2023 through his joint fundraising committee and his campaign – and saw a spike in donations after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on March 30 – according to new figures provided by his campaign.

    The campaign told CNN it also raised $15.4 million in the two weeks after charges were filed against the former president, showing how much his supporters have rallied around Trump after learning of the indictment.

    The Trump campaign said the fundraising figures suggest his legal woes have benefited him both politically and financially – at least in the short term – and energized his base as he continues to campaign for his third shot at the presidency.

    Politico first reported Trump’s first quarter fundraising numbers.

    Trump’s campaign previously said on March 31 that it had raised $4 million in the 24 hours since his indictment was first announced. The former president has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records.

    During the first quarter, from January 1 to March 31, Trump received a total of 541,971 donations, according to the figures provided by his campaign. The average donation was roughly $34.

    Comparatively, Trump received 312,564 donations in the two weeks after charges were filed against the former president, beginning on March 30, with the average donation totaling roughly $49.

    Prior to the indictment, the former president was bringing in roughly $168,000 per day between January 1 to March 30. It’s unclear whether the boost the Trump campaign says it received since his indictment will continue into the second quarter.

    The former president has been raising money for his 2024 presidential bid through both his campaign and his political action committee, Save America PAC. Filings Saturday night with the Federal Election Commission show that $14.4 million of the first-quarter haul went to Trump’s main campaign account.

    The figure lags behind the $30 million he raised during the first quarter of the 2020 election cycle, when he still occupied the Oval Office.

    In all, the Trump campaign spent $3.5 million in the first quarter and had $13.9 million in cash on hand as of March 31.

    More than $727,000 of his campaign dollars during the three-month period funded payroll, filings show. A little more than $488,000 went to TAG Air Inc. – the Trump-owned company that operates his airplanes.

    Other Republicans who have announced their 2024 candidacies include Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and ex-South Carolina governor, whose campaign has said she collected $11 million in the six weeks since she launched her bid on February 15. But the filings show she raised less than that, and her campaign appears to have double-counted money routed among various committees. In all, Haley raised $8.3 million across three committees connected to her campaign.

    Another South Carolinian, Republican Sen. Tim Scott – who announced a presidential exploratory committee on Wednesday, after the end of the first quarter – reported Saturday that he had nearly $22 million remaining in his Senate campaign account as of March 31. That’s money Scott could transfer directly into a presidential campaign account.

    Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who declared his bid for the GOP nomination in February, loaned his campaign $10.25 million and raised about $1.2 million from contributors through March 31. He had nearly $9.4 million in cash on hand at the end of the quarter, his FEC filing shows.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to launch a 2024 GOP presidential bid, has built a sizable war chest through his state-level fundraising committee. Friends of Ron DeSantis has more than $85 million remaining in its coffers, recent state records show.

    He faces restrictions on the use of that money for a presidential bid, but it could potentially be transferred to another committee backing his candidacy.

    Already, a pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, which launched in March, has announced that it had raised $30 million as of early April. The group debuted its first national TV ad Sunday, taking direct aim at the former president.

    “Donald Trump is being attacked by a Democrat prosecutor in New York, so why is he spending millions attacking the Republican governor of Florida?” the ad said. “What happened to Donald Trump?” The one-time buy on Fox will be followed by a seven-figure national ad buy beginning Monday, according to a source familiar with the super PAC’s plans.

    Details on Trump’s fundraising after the first quarter ended on March 31 won’t be disclosed to regulators for several months.

    On Friday, the former president filed his personal financial disclosure report with the FEC – offering the public a first look at his post-presidential finances. The 101-page report provided some new insights into Trump’s finances since he left office, including his social media business venture, and last year’s sale of digital trading cards known as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • House Intelligence Committee investigating CIA handling of sexual assault complaints | CNN Politics

    House Intelligence Committee investigating CIA handling of sexual assault complaints | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House Intelligence Committee is investigating the CIA’s handling of sexual assault and harassment cases, CNN has confirmed.

    The bipartisan probe comes as multiple female CIA employees have approached the committee since the beginning of this year and told lawmakers the agency is discouraging women from filing sexual misconduct complaints, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    Politico was first to report the committee’s investigation.

    “Sexual assault is a heinous crime. Our committee is committed to addressing this matter and protecting those who are serving their country. We have been in contact with Director [William] Burns, and he is fully committed to working with us on this issue,” the panel’s Republican chairman Rep. Mike Turner and top Democrat Rep. Jim Himes said in a joint statement.

    Turner and Himes sent a letter to Burns last week asking for the CIA’s help looking into the issue, the source said.

    In a statement, the CIA said, “There can be no tolerance for sexual assault or harassment at CIA. The Director and senior CIA leaders have personally met with officers to understand their concerns and to take swift action. We have established an office to work closely with survivors of sexual assault, and we are committed to treating every concern raised by members of the workforce with the utmost seriousness.”

    “Our senior leadership team, including the Director, continues to be fully engaged on this issue and is tracking it closely. We are committed to supporting the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation and are keeping the Committee updated on our progress,” the agency added.

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  • Supreme Court halts execution of Richard Glossip | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court halts execution of Richard Glossip | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US Supreme Court on Friday put on hold the execution of Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma death row inmate whose capital conviction the state attorney general has said he could no longer support.

    The latest round of litigation was brought to the Supreme Court by Glossip, with the support of the Oklahoma Attorney’s General office, who asked for his May 18 execution to be set aside.

    The emergency hold on his execution will stay in place while the justices consider his request that they formally take up his case.

    There were no noted dissents from Friday’s order. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in Friday’s ruling.

    Glossip has maintained his innocence, having been convicted in 1998 of capital murder for ordering the killing of his boss.

    A review launched by Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general found that prosecutors had failed to disclose evidence to Glossip that they were obligated to produce and that the evidence showed that the prosecutors’ key witness – the supposed accomplice of Glossip’s who committed the murder – had given false testimony.

    Despite Oklahoma’s assertions that it could no longer stand by Glossip’s conviction, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeal declined Glossip’s request that his execution be halted.

    In their filings with the US Supreme Court, Glossip’s attorneys argued that – in addition to the obviously irreparable harm he would suffer if the execution moves forward – Oklahoma “will also suffer harm from its Department of Corrections executing a person whom the State has concluded should never have been convicted of murder, let alone sentenced to die, in the first place.”

    Glossip’s case has been before the Supreme Court before, including in a major challenge the justices heard in 2015 that he and other death row inmates brought to the lethal injection protocol used in executions.

    In that case, the court’s conservative majority rejected the inmates’ claims that the lineup of the lethal drugs, which had come under scrutiny after several botched executions, violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Glossip has narrowly avoided being executed on several occasions, including months after the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, when the execution was called off at the last minute by state officials because of questions about the drugs they were planning to use.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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