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Massachusetts judge accused of helping illegal immigrant evade ICE pleads not guilty

The Massachusetts judge accused of helping an illegal immigrant evade an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Newton District Court Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, 51, appeared in U.S. District Court in Boston on Thursday, where she was arraigned on obstruction of justice stemming from an incident that allegedly took place on April 2, 2018.

RELATED: MASSACHUSETTS JUDGE WHO HELPED ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT ESCAPE ICE ARREST INDICTED, FEDERAL AUTHORITIES SAY

Prosecutors claimed in court documents earlier Thursday that Joseph, along with 56-year-old court officer Wesley MacGregor, helped Jose Medina-Perez, a twice-deported illegal immigrant with a fugitive warrant for drunk driving in Pennsylvania, sneak out a back door after he appeared in court to be arraigned on drug charges, according to MassLive.com.

Authorities alleged that Joseph asked an immigration agent who was in the courtroom to leave, and said Medina-Perez would be released into the courthouse lobby. But after the hearing, MacGregor led him downstairs to the lockup and out a back door, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Andrew Lelling said.

Medina-Perez, who had been barred from entering the U.S. until 2027, was caught by immigration officials about a month after the hearing, Lelling said, and is now in immigration proceedings.

Both Joseph and MacGregor were charged with obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting; obstruction of a federal proceeding, aiding and abetting and conspiracy to obstruct justice. MacGregor was also charged with perjury before a federal grand jury.

Andrew Lelling, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announced charges on Thursday against Newton, Mass., District Court Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph and a former court officer for obstruction of justice.

Andrew Lelling, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announced charges on Thursday against Newton, Mass., District Court Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph and a former court officer for obstruction of justice. (AP)

MacGregor also pleaded not guilty to all counts in court on Thursday.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement that the indictment "is a radical and politically-motivated attack on our state and the independence of our courts."

"It is a bedrock principle of our constitutional system that federal prosecutors should not recklessly interfere with the operation of state courts and their administration of justice," she continued. "This matter could have been appropriately handled by the Commission on Judicial Conduct and the Trial Court. I am deeply disappointed by U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling’s misuse of prosecutorial resources and the chilling effect his actions will have.”

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Lelling said the charges were not meant to send a message about immigration policy. He said he's "heard the occasional gasp of dismay or outrage at the notion of holding a judge accountable for violating federal law ... but if the law is not applied equally it cannot credibly be applied to anyone."

Both Joseph, who has been suspended without pay, and MacGregor were released after the hearing on Thursday. No date has been set for their next court appearance.

Fox News' Katherine Lam and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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Liberals Beg For Russia Collusion To Be True

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Former U.S. AG Whitaker to clarify House testimony: Nadler

FILE PHOTO: Acting U.S. Attorney General Whitaker testifies before House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington
FILE PHOTO: Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 8, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

February 27, 2019

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker agreed to meet with lawmakers to clarify his testimony, a congressional leader said on Tuesday, referring to an appearance where Whitaker was quizzed about whether President Donald Trump had sought to influence investigations.

“I want to thank Mr. Whitaker for volunteering to meet with us to clarify his @HouseJudiciary testimony,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, tweeted, saying he hoped to schedule Whitaker in the “coming days.”

Lawmakers have not said what Whitaker will address from his Feb. 8 testimony, which Nadler previously said was “unsatisfactory, incomplete, or contradicted by other evidence.”

But the most persistent questions then focused on whether Whitaker had contact with Trump about an investigation into hush-money payments to women during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney.

The Justice Department, which has already said Whitaker stands by his testimony, had no immediate comment.

The brief tenure of Whitaker as head of the Justice Department ended on Feb. 14 when the Senate confirmed Trump’s choice of permanent Attorney General William Barr.

The Judiciary Committee has obtained possible evidence suggesting that Trump asked Whitaker about possibly changing the prosecutor in charge of the hush-money probe, said a person familiar with the matter.

A House Judiciary Committee spokesman and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

If true, such a request by Trump could bolster Democratic efforts to show that the president has sought to influence law enforcement investigations against him and his associates.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is said to be close to ending a 21-month investigation into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump; whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow; and whether Trump has since obstructed justice.

Russia has denied meddling. Trump has denied any collusion. The Mueller probe has clouded his presidency for many months.

Nadler’s panel has information suggesting that Trump asked Whitaker if U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman could take control of an investigation of Cohen by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, said the source who asked not to be identified.

Berman is a former law partner of another Trump attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Trump dismissed as false a report in the New York Times last week about a similar request to Whitaker.

Congressional investigators now have information that such a request was made and that Whitaker provided misleading testimony to the panel while under oath during his contentious Feb. 8 hearing, the source said.

In that session, Whitaker testified he had not talked to Trump about the probe and had not interfered with it in any way.

He also denied media reports that claimed that Trump had lashed out at Whitaker after he learned Cohen was pleading guilty to lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow.

Nadler said then that media reports contradicted Whitaker’s testimony and that “several individuals” had direct knowledge of phone calls Whitaker denied receiving from the White House.

Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, including making payments to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen said he made those payments at the direction of Trump.

Both women have claimed they had affairs with Trump. He has denied having sex with Daniels and denied McDougal’s claim.

Cohen testified behind closed doors to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. He is expected to testify publicly on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee.

(Additional reporting by Nathan Layne and Karen Freifeld; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: OANN

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Is an FBI Interview a G-Man's License to Lie?

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At 10:38 on the morning of Feb. 4, 2019, the deputy for United States District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said, “Good morning, Your Honor. This is a sealed proceeding, and the courtroom has been locked.”

Paul Manafort: no transcript, video or audio of what he was accused by Robert Mueller's team of lying about. 

AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File

It was a hearing at which lawyers for Special Counsel Robert Mueller would argue that Paul Manafort had lied to them during 12 interviews, both before and after striking his plea bargain on foreign lobbying and money laundering charges. We know what was said behind those locked doors because a word-for-word transcript was made of the courtroom proceedings.

Strangely, there was no such transcript of what Manafort had said in his interviews. This made it difficult to reconstruct what his responses to questioning had been, let alone determine whether they were truthful.

But if there was no transcript, surely the court could consult a videotape of his interrogation, the sort of recording that is standard practice for local police who are interviewing, say, a suspected car thief. And if there was no videotape for the judge to watch, surely there was, at the very least, an audiotape.

But no. The bureau has insisted instead, for more than half a century, on summarizing its interrogations, of everyone from witnesses to targets, in a type of memo designated an FD-302 or just “302.” Those memos have been used in recent high-profile investigations to summarize the statements of Manafort, Hillary Clinton, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others. Many were shocked to learn that Clinton’s interview with the FBI about her handling of classified emails was not tape-recorded. They may be more shocked to learn that is standard FBI procedure.

Amy Berman Jackson: Judge frustrated by having to consult an FBI 302 memo rather than verbatim testimony.

United States Government/Wikimedia 

Judge Jackson, who would ultimately side with Mueller’s team on the question of Manafort’s truthfulness, was flummoxed at first. She didn’t quite know what to make of the accusations Manafort had lied after he had pleaded guilty and promised to cooperate. Flummoxed, because she was trying to reconstruct from 302s what had and hadn’t been said.

“That's not the way the 302 read to me when I read it,” she said in response to the prosecution’s characterization of Manafort’s testimony. “This is the problem with not having grand jury testimony, but having to look at a 302.” Clearly frustrated, the judge added, “I may not be able to resolve it on the face of the 302.”

Although some media coverage has suggested otherwise, a 302 is not a transcript. Here’s how a standard FBI interview works. Two agents sit down with the person to be interrogated. One agent does the questioning, the other takes notes — by hand. After the interview is over, back at the bureau office, the agent who took notes uses them to construct a memo summarizing the conversation.

That summary, then, is twice removed from the actual interview. The notes are not an exact rendering of the dialogue; and the memorandum is not an exact copy of the notes. Yet the summary is treated as the official record of the interview. The 302 is a record to which the interviewee is held even though it is not close to a verbatim rendering of what was said — neither questions nor answers.

Those who regularly deal with 302s seem unsurprised when they are missing crucial information. In Jackson’s courtroom, lead Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann was declaring Manafort had been caught in “another false statement.” The proof, said the prosecutor, was found in paragraph 17 of a “declaration” made by an FBI agent involved in the interrogation.

“But it would be reflected in the 302, also?” the judge asked.

“I don’t think it is,” Weissmann responded. “I think it’s only in the declaration.”

The hearing moved on. But let’s pause to consider what just happened. The special counsel’s team was accusing Manafort of a specific lie, but the document ostensibly detailing what Manafort said -- the 302 -- did not have any record of the statement in question. So the prosecutor fell back on a supplemental declaration by an FBI agent. The 302, in other words, was so unreliable that it lacked key information on which prosecutors were basing their case.

Thomas Zehnle: Manafort attorney argued the absence of an "evidentiary basis for finding that Mr. Manafort intentionally misled the investigators.” 

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

At least Manafort’s lawyer, Thomas E. Zehnle, was paying attention. In a post-hearing memorandum, Zehnle and his co-counsels wrote to the court: “Finally, even if one has some concern about how the FBI’s summary report reads, it does not provide the evidentiary basis for finding that Mr. Manafort intentionally misled the investigators.” Pointing to the 302, they added, “The government’s summary is not a grand jury transcript that identifies specific questions and answers; it remains ambiguous.”

By their very nature, 302s are ambiguous not just because they may be unreliable narrations, but because they may include information beyond just what was said. In response to an inquiry from RealClearInvestigations, an FBI official explained, “The FD-302 form, in pertinent part, is used to memorialize interviews as well as other information that may become the subject of testimony.” Asked what exactly “other information” means, or for an example of such information, the official replied, “We’re not able to provide any specifics or further comment for you.”

But Jackson’s courtroom provided some inkling of what “other information” might be. Weissmann called the judge’s attention to “Exhibit 10, page 6, which is the 302” of one of the Manafort interrogations. The prosecutor asked the judge to “look at the 302 — and I'd just like to quote some of it to you, because some of it is factual about what the facts were, not just intuiting what was in someone's head.”

In this inadvertent admission, Weissmann declared that “some” of the government memo being used as evidence “is factual about what the facts were.” And that this part of the memo was “not just intuiting what was in someone’s head.” But doesn’t that suggest that other parts of the 302 passed along information that wasn’t factual or intuited “what was in someone’s head”? A 302 purports to be an accurate account of what was said in an interview. How accurate are agents’ intuitions about their interviewees’ states of mind? Are we willing to convict people and send them to prison for false statements based on what agents intuit?

An Old Habit

These problems are behind a decades-long campaign to have all law enforcement -- from small-town deputy sheriffs to deputy directors of the FBI -- make the recording of interviews standard policy.

One of the leaders of that effort has been civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, author of the book “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.” He argues that 302s present a pervasive and unnecessary temptation for agents to bend the truth. A “fundamental flaw in the FBI’s truth-gathering apparatus,” Silverglate wrote in 2011, is “the long-defended Bureau-wide policy of not recording interrogations and interviews, a practice that allows the FBI to manipulate witnesses, manufacture convictions, and destroy justice as we once knew it.”

That may sound like strong stuff, unfair even. But the FBI’s own intransigence in the face of the electronic recording movement lends credence to Silverglate’s critique. An FBI response to this proposed reform has become notorious in civil libertarian circles. In 2006, the bureau produced a written rebuttal to the “on-going debate in the criminal justice community whether to make electronic recording of custodial interrogations mandatory.”

Robert Mueller: Infamous 2006 policy memo was issued under his watch as FBI Director.

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The policy memo offered several reasons why the FBI resisted recording, including the telling admission that, when people get a look at FBI interrogations in action, they don’t like what they see: As “all experienced investigators and prosecutors know, perfectly lawful and acceptable interviewing techniques do not always come across in recorded fashion to lay persons as proper means of obtaining information from defendants,” the memo states. “Initial resistance may be interpreted as involuntariness, and misleading a defendant as to the quality of the evidence against him may appear to be unfair deceit.”

The bottom line is that FBI agents feel empowered lie to witnesses or suspects, but when those targets lie to the FBI they are charged with crimes. And being allowed to produce 302s, instead of taped interviews, allows this practice to continue. It’s worth noting that when that memo was produced, the FBI director was Robert Mueller.

The practice of using memos instead of actual transcripts became standard procedure a long time ago, and dates to precedents established by founding FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Sometimes the 302 reports reflected noble work. But not always.

In the 1950s, 302 forms were filed by special agents probing the private lives of suspected Communists. In the 1960s, 302 reports were used as a record-keeping tool by FBI agents penetrating the Ku Klux Klan. When Special Agents James P. Hosty Jr. and James W. Bookhout interrogated Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, they summarized the questioning in a 302 they dictated the next day. It’s a measure of the artificiality of the memos, and the agents’ skewed sense of what was important, to include in the 302 that the agents, in the first paragraph of their report, stated that Oswald “made many uncomplimentary remarks about the FBI.”

Mark Felt: "Deep Throat" FBI man filed a misleading 302 report.

AP Photo/File

During the Watergate scandal, Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt filed a misleading 302 form in an attempt to cast aspersion for news leaks to The Washington Post onto a Miami prosecutor. Yet it was Felt who was Bob Woodward’s infamous “Deep Throat.”

This last example highlights two problematic aspects of the practice. First, although FBI officials may portray the 302 as a neutral investigating device, the potential for abuse is so great that it’s practically baked into the process. These are not even-handed wire service stories. They are a one-sided recounting of a conversation tailored to put the author, and the bureau, in the best possible light.

Second, it’s so ingrained in FBI culture that the bureau’s leadership doesn’t question whether it’s an inherently unfair method of building a case.

Immediately after assuring President Trump in private meeting, “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves,” then-FBI director James Comey went to his car, got out his laptop and immediately began writing a 302-style memo. Which he later leaked. According to his own congressional testimony, Comey did the same thing to former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Yet Comey seemed surprised anyone would see those as weasel moves or sneaky things, the obvious irony being that we only know about the “weasel moves” quote because Comey put them in his 302-type memo.

“The Bureau cherishes its procedures and lives by them,” Andrew McCabe, another fired top FBI official, wrote in his recent memoir. “The official write-up on my own application interview, conducted in Philadelphia more than two decades ago, can be found somewhere in the personnel files at the J. Edgard Hoover Building. It’s a form known as a FD-302. Every interview conducted by an FBI agent is reported or summarized on a 302. This form is the most basic building block of an investigation.”

Brian Boetig: When interviews and interrogations aren’t recorded, any number of things can go wrong.

AP Photo/The Buffalo News, Derek Gee

Not all FBI agents believe they should be. Around the same time as the controversial “misleading a defendant” explanation was being promulgated, Special Agent Brian Boetig co-authored an article, “Revealing Incommunicado: Electronic Recording of Police Interrogations,” for the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. In it, he and his fellow authors made the case for recording all interviews. (Boetig is not squeamish: His crime-fighting bona fides are solid enough that he was recently promoted to be assistant director of the bureau’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.) “Testimony regarding what transpired inside the interrogation room,” they wrote, “can become tainted if only the participants witnessed what occurred.”

Boetig and his co-authors argued that when interviews and interrogations aren’t recorded any number of things can go wrong: “First, problems associated with recollection can contribute to conflicting statements. Interrogations often last for hours and exact transcripts cannot precisely memorialize everything. Furthermore, a trial may not occur for years after the interrogation, reducing the ability to cognitively recall all of the specific details and circumstances not recorded in notes or reports.”

Beyond that, note jotters and memo writers can simply get things wrong. It would be a remarkable feat of note-taking to capture every word that is said in a fluid conversation; so to start with, pertinent dialogue is missing even in the most scrupulously produced 302. There may also be things that the note taker mishears, misunderstands, or scribbles down incoherently.

Again, remember that the notes aren’t the finished product: They are used as a reference by the agent as he or she — perhaps days later — reconstructs the interview in summary form. Such summaries might be useful for agents and case managers to keep track of investigations, but the use of 302s goes far beyond that. They become the official record of what was said in an interview. If one contradicts that record in subsequent interviews or testimony, the 302 can be used as evidence that one has lied to the government.

The Michael Flynn Case

It’s one thing to be held accountable for what one says in a tape-recorded interview, where there is a complete record of what was said on both sides of the conversation. But how confident can we be that a memo summarizing handwritten notes is accurate, even assuming agents’ best good-faith efforts? Confident enough to send someone to the penitentiary for many years?

Michael Flynn: Mistakes were made in his FBI interview, but not only by him.

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Consider Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to “making materially false statements and omissions” to FBI agents because the 302s of his interview did not match other evidence the bureau had collected. It turns out that mistakes were made -- and not only by Flynn.

For starters, one of the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017 was Peter Strzok, who was later removed from the investigation because of deep anti-Trump animus he expressed in texts with a fellow FBI employee. Even then, according to congressional testimony, Strzok and the other agent didn’t really believe Flynn lied to them. And, of course, they had no tape recording to help them weigh the facts. As McCabe himself wrote in a memo, “[I]t was not a great beginning of a false statements case.”

That aspect of the saga received some media attention. But another one did not. Late last year, District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the special counsel to release the FD-302 memorializing the interview with Flynn. On Dec. 17, the Mueller team complied: “the government hereby files two redacted versions of the FD-302 report summarizing the FBI’s interview of the defendant on January 24, 2017.”

Two versions?

The first had been originally filed Feb. 15, 2017, three weeks after the interview with Flynn. Three weeks seems an awfully long time for recollection, especially of subtle details that may lead to a man being prosecuted for lying to the FBI. Is three weeks common or even consistent with official policy? It’s hard to say, because the publicly available version of the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide reads, “Any matter that may be testimonial must be documented using an FD-302 within [REDACTED].”

Peter Strzok: He and the FBI agent with him didn’t really believe Flynn lied to them, according to testimony.

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Let’s put aside the question of how it could possibly be the case that the standard deadline for filing a 302 is some sort of secret that warrants redaction. Let’s assume that three weeks is within the window. But even if three weeks doesn’t seem like a long time, that’s nothing compared to how long it took to file the second, final version of the Flynn 302 — 3½ months. Here’s how Robert Mueller explained what happened: “The content of both versions of the report is identical, except that the first version, which was digitally signed and certified in February 2017, inadvertently contained a header labeled ‘DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL.’ Once that error was recognized,” Mueller said, “the header was removed and a corrected version, omitting only the header, was re-signed and re-certified in May 2017.”

How did the words “DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL” find their way onto the 302? And don’t those words suggest that the document was still open to revision? The one thing we can be quite sure of, however, is that inaccurate claims were made in an official FBI record of an interview: Isn’t that the sort of thing that gets people in trouble?

But let’s be more generous than aggressive prosecutors tend to be and accept that the error was inadvertent, as Mueller claims. That would be proof of an astonishing tendency to error in the creation of FD-302s. Here we have a crucial 302 of the highest importance -- one providing the pretext to prosecute the White House national security adviser. And it not only has an “error” at the top of the page, that “inadvertent” text is centered and written in bold, all-capital letters. If that’s the sort of supersized mistake that happens in a high-priority case, what does that tell us about the accuracy and reliability of the average FD-302?

FD-302 from the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

FBI/Warren Commission/Wikimedia 

The concern isn’t a new one: “You can have a conversation with an agent,” Robert Kennedy’s press secretary when RFK was attorney general, once told journalist Victor Navasky, “and when it is over he will send a memo to the files. Any relation between the memo and what was said in the conversation may be purely coincidental. You would think you were at different meetings.”

It was that sort of reputation that led the Department of Justice in 2014 to issue a new Policy Concerning Electronic Recording of Statements. Promulgated by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, the document opens with this declaration: “This policy establishes a presumption that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the United States Marshals Service (USMS) will electronically record statements made by individuals in their custody.”

There was great anticipation that the new policy would finally be the end of commemorating interviews in memos derived from handwritten notes. “This policy change is an important step in the right direction,” the Harvard Law Review declared in 2015, “reflecting a growing movement that has recognized the benefits of recording interviews; however, the new policy puts in place little express accountability for failure to comply with the presumption.”

Not only is there “little express accountability” for not recording interviews at the FBI, the bureau has made it policy to interpret the presumption of recording in the narrowest possible way, while obliging agents to file 302s as a matter of course. DOJ policy notwithstanding, “FBI interviews with witnesses are rarely recorded,” says one prominent white-collar Washington, D.C., defense lawyer. “About 99 percent of the time agents take notes during the interview and then turn those notes into a 302.”

That 99 percent may be a slight exaggeration, but what is the real ratio of taped to typed interviews? If the bureau knows, it isn’t willing to share: “The FBI does not maintain statistical information about the aggregate number of electronic recordings or FD-302s prepared in a given window of time,” an FBI official told RealClearInvestigations.

Asked why 302s are still standard operating procedure, the bureau is coy. “The electronic recording of non-custodial interviews is not required,” the same FBI official said in an email exchange. But that covers a lot of suspects and witnesses, as any number of FBI targets can attest, including Michael Flynn. Although the current DOJ written guidelines call for video or audio recording of interviews of persons under arrest, it also includes this caveat: “Interviews in non-custodial settings are excluded from the presumption.” And “non-custodial” is an interesting term of art.

“There is a presumption that statements made by persons in FBI custody must be recorded,” the bureau instructs agents in the 2016 edition of the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. But that leaves a lot of running room to interrogate people without cameras or recording devices. To the FBI, “custody” only applies “following arrest and prior to initial appearance when the arrestee is in a place of detention with suitable recording equipment.”

That means for those who have not yet been arrested when they are interviewed-- as was the case with Lt. Gen. Flynn -- FBI policy is to rely on 302s to memorialize what was said and done. The same holds true of those who have been arrested and then have been arraigned, which explains why the special counsel’s office and the FBI didn’t feel obliged to record any of their dozen interviews with Manafort.

The FBI does allow agents to consider recording non-custodial interviews, but requires “the interviewing employee” to consider a range of factors. One such factor is “[w]hether the interviewee’s own words and appearance (in video recordings) would help rebut any doubt about the meaning, context or voluntariness of his/her statement or confession raised by his/her age, mental state, educational level, or understanding of the English language; or is otherwise expected to be an issue at trial, such as to rebut an insanity defense; or may be of value to behavioral analysts.”

The other factors similarly focus on the question of whether a recording will help get a conviction rather than whether it will help get at the truth.

Recordings are not always perfect representations of what happened in interviews, either. (There is, for example, literature on how camera placement can affect viewers’ interpretations of a subject’s demeanor.) But electronic recording is clearly superior to the 302 process with its invitation to error and risk of baked-in bias. Yet, in a society where any and all of one’s movements are captured on videotape (just ask Jussie Smollett), the one situation in which there is likely not to be a camera running is in an official FBI interview.

What will it take to have the FBI give up its stubborn commitment to the scribble-and-type method of memorializing interviews? A decree from the attorney general or the president would likely get the job done. Or legislation from Capitol Hill, which controls the FBI’s funding. Concern about retaining the public’s confidence in the bureau certainly hasn’t been enough. Nor have humiliating courtroom defeats.

Noor Salman, second from right, with her lawyers. She was acquitted of lying to the FBI concerning the Orlando, Florida, nightclub massacre carried out by her husband.

Susan Clary via AP

A year ago, a jury in Florida acquitted Noor Salman of all charges against her in the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The wife of Omar Mateen, the mass murderer who carried out the attack, Salman was charged by federal authorities with obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting her husband in the attack.

The Justice Department’s case was based almost solely on the confession FBI agents got Salman to sign after questioning her for 18 hours without a lawyer – and, crucially, as it turned out -- without a tape recorder. At the end of that interrogation, she signed a statement based on information fed to her by the two investigating FBI agents, a statement the agents wrote themselves. Some of that information would be disproven at trial, meaning that the prosecution relied on a “confession” that contained information fed to her by FBI agents that the government subsequently found out to be untrue. Moreover, at the trial, the agents contradicted each other on significant portions of what she said. These discrepancies might have been resolved by a tape or transcript of the interview, but of course, nothing of the kind existed.

“The FBI must join the rest of law enforcement and record all statements,” one of Salman’s attorneys, Charles Swift, said after the acquittal was announced. “It’s ridiculous if they don’t.”

The jury foreman agreed. In a statement issued afterward to the media, the foreman said the jury was convinced that Noor Salman did know what her husband was planning to do. But based on the incomplete method the FBI used to collect evidence, they couldn’t in good conscience convict her.

“I wish that the FBI had recorded their interviews with Ms. Salman,” the foreman added, “as there were several significant inconsistencies with the written summaries of her statements.

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Rep. Nadler 'Encouraged' by Docs Received in Trump Probe

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., says he is encouraged by the tens of thousands of documents his committee has received from many of the 81 individuals and entities as part of his sweeping investigation of President Donald Trump, his associates and members of his administration.

"I am encouraged by the responses we have received since sending these initial letters two weeks ago," Nadler said in a statement posted to his press site. "It is my hope that we will receive cooperation from the remainder of the list, and will be working to find an appropriate accommodation with any individual who may be reluctant to cooperate with our investigation."

Nadler announced the broad investigation in early March and said it would cover "three main areas," including public corruption, obstruction of justice, and abuses of power by the president, his associates, and members of his administration. The committee sent letters to 81 people and entities – including the Justice Department, White House, senior campaign officials, Trump Organization officials, and Trump's sons.

Evidence gathered in the probe would be the basis of a possible impeachment proceeding, though Nadler has said it is too soon to discuss impeachment.

Source: NewsMax America

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Ivanka Trump says she backs minimum wage — but not handouts for those ‘unwilling to work’

Ivanka Trump said Tuesday that she supports a minimum wage, but doesn’t back handouts for those “unwilling to work.”

Trump made the statement in a Twitter post in response to a Yahoo News article that asserted Trump was challenging a minimum-wage platform pitched by U.S. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

“No I did not,” Trump wrote in response to the Yahoo headline. “I support a minimum wage. I do not however believe in a minimum guarantee for people ‘unwilling to work’ which was the question asked of me.”

“I support a minimum wage. I do not however believe in a minimum guarantee for people ‘unwilling to work’ which was the question asked of me.”

— Ivanka Trump

IVANKA TRUMP SAYS NEW PROJECT AIMS TO HELP LIFT WOMEN IN DEVELOPING WORLD

Trump later wrote about her recent efforts to assist American workers.

“I’ve spent much of the last 2 years focused on inclusive economic growth via workforce development and skills training as well as pro-working family policies such as the doubled Child Tax Credit & CCDBG,” Trump wrote.

On Monday, Trump had told Fox News host Steve Hilton – for an interview that will air on Sunday’s “The Next Revolution” -- that she believed many Americans would reject a minimum wage for people who are unwilling to work, seeing it as a form of handout.

“I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something,” Trump said. “I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get.

"I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling around this country over the last four years. People want to work for what they get."

— Ivanka Trump

MARC THIESSEN: ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ IS AN ECONOMIC ILLITERATE -- AND THAT'S BAD NEWS FOR AMERICA

“So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to be able to secure a job. They want the ability to live in a country where’s there’s the potential for upward mobility.”

Earlier Tuesday, Trump’s excerpted Monday remarks had prompted Ocasio-Cortez to respond that Trump had only a “2nd-hand” understanding of work.

“As a person who actually worked for tips & hourly wages in my life, instead of having to learn about it 2nd-hand, I can tell you that most people want to be paid enough to live,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “A living wage isn’t a gift, it’s a right. Workers are often paid far less than the value they create.”

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The freshman congresswoman then cited data from the Economic Policy Institute claiming that the gap between productivity and a typical worker’s pay had increased dramatically since 1973 – around the time of the Arab oil embargo.

According to the Hill, guaranteed pay for those unwilling to work was a proposal listed on a Green New Deal fact sheet that Ocasio-Cortez's office said was released in error and did not appear in the actual bill submitted to the House.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Kremlin: Putin-Kim summit details not clear yet

The Kremlin spokesman says it is not clear yet when and where the Russian president and the North Korea leader will meet for a rare summit.

Dmitry Peskov said Monday details are still being worked out on the rare talks between Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Peskov has confirmed reports that the preparations for the meeting are underway.

Kim's previous major negotiations, with U.S. President Donald Trump in February, collapsed after the two sides failed to bridge their differences over U.S. sanctions and the North Korean nuclear program.

Putin has publicly supported the talks between Trump and Kim but said that North Korea needs to be given solid security guarantees if it were to give up its nuclear arsenal.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: Cases of Pepsi are shown for sale at a store in Carlsbad, California, U.S., April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Amit Dave and Mayank Bhardwaj

AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – PepsiCo Inc has sued four Indian farmers for cultivating a potato variety that the snack food and drinks maker claims infringes its patent, the company and the growers said on Friday.

Pepsi has sued the farmers for cultivating the FC5 potato variety, exclusively grown for its popular Lay’s potato chips. The FC5 variety has a lower moisture content required to make snacks such as potato chips.

PepsiCo is seeking more than 10 million rupees ($142,840.82) each for alleged patent infringement.

The farmers grow potatoes in the western state of Gujarat, a leading producer of India’s most consumed vegetable.

“We have been growing potatoes for a long time and we didn’t face this problem ever, as we’ve mostly been using the seeds saved from one harvest to plant the next year’s crop,” said Bipin Patel, one of the four farmers sued by Pepsi.

Patel did not say how he came by the PepsiCo variety.

A court in Ahmedabad, the business hub of Gujarat, on Friday agreed to hear the case on June 12, said Anand Yagnik, the lawyer for the farmers.

“In this instance, we took judicial recourse against people who were illegally dealing in our registered variety,” A PepsiCo India spokesman said. “This was done to protect our rights and safeguard the larger interest of farmers that are engaged with us and who are using and benefiting from seeds of our registered variety.”

PepsiCo, which set up its first potato chips plant in India in 1989, supplies the FC5 potato variety to a group of farmers who in turn sell their produce to the company at a fixed price.

The All India Kisan Sabha, or All India Farmers’ Forum, has asked the Indian government to protect the farmers.

The farmers’ forum has also called for a boycott of PepsiCo’s Lay’s chips and the company’s other products.

The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

PepsiCo is the second major U.S. company in India to face issues over patent infringement.

Stung by a long-standing intellectual property dispute, seed maker Monsanto, which is now owned by German drugmaker Bayer AG, withdrew from some businesses in India over a cotton-seed dispute with farmers, Reuters reported in 2017. (reut.rs/2ncBknn)

(Reporting by Amit Dave in AHMEDABAD and Mayank Bhardwaj in NEW DELHI; Editing by Martin Howell and Louise Heavens)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: The Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By P.J. Huffstutter and Shradha Singh

CHICAGO/BENGALURU (Reuters) – Archer Daniels Midland Co said on Friday it was considering spinning off its ethanol business after slim biofuel margins and Midwestern floods slammed the U.S. grains merchant’s profit, which tumbled 41 percent in the first quarter.

ADM said it was creating an ethanol subsidiary, which will include dry mills in Columbus, Nebraska; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Peoria, Illinois.

The ethanol subsidiary will report as an independent segment, the company said, allowing options “which may include, but are not limited to, a potential spin-off of the business to existing ADM shareholders.”

Results were hit by the “bomb cyclone” blizzards that devastated the Midwest and Great Plains this year, causing massive flooding across Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, washing out rail lines and wreaking havoc in the moving and processing of corn, soybeans and wheat. One-sixth of U.S. ethanol production was halted.

In March, ADM warned Wall Street that flooding and severe winter weather in the U.S. Midwest would reduce its first-quarter operating profit by $50 million to $60 million.

“The first quarter proved more challenging than initially expected,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Juan Luciano, with earnings down in its starches, sweeteners and bioproducts unit. Luciano said impacts of the severe weather ultimately “were on the high side of our initial estimates”.

Ongoing problems in the ethanol industry added to the problems and “limited margins and opportunities” for ADM, Luciano said.

The ethanol industry has been in the midst of a historic downswing due to the U.S.-China trade war, excess domestic supply and weak margins.

ADM, which had been an ethanol pioneer, signaled to Wall Street in 2016 that it was hunting for options and considering sales of its U.S. dry ethanol mills. Luciano told Reuters this year that offers ADM had received for the mills were too low.

In addition, ADM said it planned to repurpose its corn wet mill in Marshall, Minnesota, to produce higher volumes of food and industrial-grade starches.

Other major traders are alsy trying to distance themselves from struggling ethanol businesses. Louis Dreyfus Company BV spun off its Brazilian sugar and ethanol business Biosev in 2013. Rival Bunge sold its sugar book and has sought a buyer for its Brazilian mills since 2013.

ADM, which makes money trading, processing and transporting crops, such as corn, soybeans and wheat, has been looking to strengthen its core business. Last month it said it would seek voluntary early retirements of some North American employees and cut jobs as part of a restructuring effort.

The company expects to lower 2019 capital spending by 10 percent to between $800 million and $900 million.

Net earnings attributable to the company fell to $233 million, or 41 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31, from $393 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue fell to $15.30 billion from $15.53 billion. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 46 cents per share, while analysts on average had estimated 60 cents, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)

Source: OANN

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The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this illustration
FILE PHOTO: The Slack app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Slack Technologies Inc, operator of the popular workplace instant-messaging app, reported a loss of $140.7 million in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2019, the company said on Friday in a regulatory filing ahead of its planned public market debut.

The company said its daily active users exceeded 10 million in the three months ended Jan. 31, 2019.

Slack expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SK”, it said.

The San Francisco-based company is seeking to go public via a direct listing, making it the second big technology company after Spotify Technology SA to bypass the traditional route of listing shares through an initial public offering.

A direct listing is a cheaper way of becoming a public company as the process requires fewer investment banks and therefore lower fees.

In a direct listing, however, a company does not sell any new shares to raise money. Instead, it gives existing shareholders the opportunity to cash out.

Slack is the latest in a string of high-profile technology companies looking to go public this year. Lyft Inc, Pinterest and Zoom Video Communications have completed IPOs so far in 2019.

The company is hoping for a valuation of more than $10 billion in the listing, Reuters had previously reported. Some early investors and employees have been selling the stock at around $28, valuing the company close to $17 billion, Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge, a brokerage company, told CNBC on Thursday.

Slack set a placeholder amount of $100 million to indicate the size of the IPO. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Its competitors include Microsoft Teams, a free chat add-on for Microsoft’s Office365 users.

(Reporting By Aparajita Saxena and Joshua Franklin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Candidate Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of an exit poll in Ukraine's presidential election in Kiev
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of the first exit poll in a presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine April 21, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – Russia’s decision to make it easier for residents of rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine to obtain a Russian passport is meant to test Ukraine’s new leader and the West should not recognize the documents, Lithuania’s foreign minister said on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the order on facilitating passports on Wednesday, three days after comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice, won a landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election.

Linas Linkevicius, whose own country also has strained relations with Moscow, told Reuters in an interview that the West should consider imposing new sanctions on Russia.

“This is a blatant violation of international law. And basically also a kind of test to the new (Ukrainian) leadership, which is also a usual game,” Linkevicius said.

“The least we can do (is) we shouldn’t recognize these passports. How to do that technically, it’s another issue to discuss. Also (we need) to look at additional sanctions,” said Linkevicius, whose small Baltic nation is a member of NATO and the European Union.

Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and its support for armed separatists battling Kiev’s forces in eastern Ukraine. Some 13,000 people have been killed in that conflict despite a notional ceasefire signed in Minsk in 2015.

Linkevicius, who in Kiev on Friday became the first minister of an EU country since Ukraine’s election to meet President-elect Zelenskiy, said they had discussed the passport issue.

Zelenskiy also raised the possibility of resetting the Minsk ceasefire agreement without giving any concessions to Russia, Linkevicius said.

“DANGEROUS CANCER” OF GRAFT

The minister urged Zelenskiy to deliver on his electoral promise of tackling corruption, which he described as the “most dangerous cancer” facing Ukraine, which hopes one day to join the EU.

Last month, Lithuania’s own relations with Russia came under renewed strain after a Vilnius court found former Soviet defense minister Dmitry Yazov, in absentia, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in a 1991 crackdown against Lithuania’s pro-independence movement.

Russia branded the verdict “extremely unfriendly and essentially provocative” and opened a probe into the judges involved.

Linkevicius accused Russia of seeking to politicize the judicial process by trying to take revenge on the judges, adding: “This is lamentable.”

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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A Cook County judge recently called out embattled State Attorney Kim Foxx for upholding a double standard by prosecuting a woman for filing a false police report — but dropping similar charges against embattled “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett.

Foxx has faced intense criticism over her office’s decision to drop a 16-count indictment against Smollett, just weeks after bringing the charges against the high-profile TV star. Foxx’s deal with Smollett, which did not require him to admit guilt, drew ire from the public, the city’s top cop and the former mayor who called it a “whitewash of justice.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHICAGO PROSECUTOR KIM FOXX CHIDED BY NATIONAL ATTORNEYS GROUPS AFTER JUSSIE SMOLLETT CHARGES DROPPED 

Cook County Judge Marc Martin, who was presiding over an unrelated case, chastised Foxx and her office for creating a situation where anyone charged with filing a false report would expect the same leniency her office afforded Smollett.

Candace Clark, 21, is facing one felony count of making a false report. Prosecutors accused her of giving a friend access to her bank account and then telling authorities the money had been stolen. She denies the charges and claims she’s the victim of Foxx’s double standard — something the judge weighed in on.

“Well, Ms. Clark is not a movie star, she doesn’t have a high-price lawyer, although, her lawyer’s very good. And this smells, big time,” Martin said to prosecutors during a recent hearing, Fox 32 reported. “I didn’t create this mess, your office created this mess. And your explanation is unsatisfactory to this court. She’s being treated differently.”

The judge continued, “There’s no publicity on this case. She doesn’t have Mark Geragos as her lawyer or Ron Safer or Judge Brown. It’s not right. And (if) I proceed in this matter, you’re just digging yourselves further in a hole. (If the) press gets a hold of this, it’ll be in a newspaper. Why is Ms. Clark being treated differently than Mr. Smollett?”

Foxx recused herself from the Smollett case in February but continued to oversee the investigation through text messages with her assistant Joseph Magats.

The text messages revealed Foxx called Smollett a “washed up celeb who lied to cops.” They also show she cautioned Magats about throwing the book at Smollett.

“Sooo……I’m recused, but when people accuse us of overcharging cases…16 counts on a class 4 becomes exhibit A,” Foxx wrote to Magats on March 8.

“Pedophile with 4 victims 10 counts. Washed up celeb who lied to cops, 16. On a case eligible for deferred prosecution I think it’s indicative of something we should be looking at generally. Just because we can charge something doesn’t mean we should,” she added, referring to the case of R&B singer R. Kelly, who was indicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom were underage.

KIM FOXX’S CHIEF ETHICS OFFICER RESIGNS FOLLOWING SMOLLETT CONTROVERSY

President Trump said last month he asked for a federal review of Foxx’s decision to drop the charges against Smollett. He also called the actor “an absolute embarrassment to our country.”

The Smollett case garnered national attention and threatened to tear Chicago apart. It pit the police department and mayor against prosecutors and underscored the idea that wealthy people are somehow above the law.

Smollett told police he was attacked on Jan. 29 around 2 a.m. as he was returning home from a sandwich shop in Chicago. He said two masked men shouted racial and anti-gay slurs, poured bleach on him, beat him and tied a rope around his neck. He claimed they shouted, “This is MAGA country” — a reference to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

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After an intense investigation, police said Smollett staged the entire incident to drum up publicity for his career.

Smollett has strongly denied the accusations.

Source: Fox News National

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