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Trump says he does not have opinion on Assange’s arrest

U.S. President Trump welcomes South Korea’s President Moon to the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump listens to questions as he and first lady Melania Trump meet with South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and his wife Kim Jung-sook in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

April 11, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he did not have an opinion about the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who faces the prospect of extradition to the United States over the publishing of secret official information.

British police arrested Assange on Thursday after Ecuador withdrew its asylum that had allowed him to take refuge in the country’s embassy in London for seven years.

“I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing. … I don’t really have any opinion,” Trump said to reporters before a meeting with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in.

On the campaign trail during the 2016 presidential election, Trump repeatedly praised WikiLeaks. Shortly before the election, Trump said, “I love WikiLeaks,” after it released a cache of hacked Democratic Party emails that harmed the candidacy of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

U.S. prosecutors have charged Assange with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to access a government computer.

Manning was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other crimes for providing more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to Wikileaks, though the final 28 years of her sentence were later commuted by President Barack Obama.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

Source: OANN

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ECB’s Enria says merged banking giant must have extra capital, be ‘resolvable’

Chairperson of European Banking Authority Andrea Enria attends a debate with the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Chairperson of European Banking Authority (EBA) Andrea Enria attends a debate with the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in Brussels, Belgium September 26, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman

March 21, 2019

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A new banking giant resulting from a merger must have extra capital and a legal structure that allows authorities to wind it down if it fails, the European Central Bank’s top watchdog said on Thursday.

“If a bank becomes too big, complex or interconnected… it needs to have additional capital,” Andrea Enria said when asked in the European Parliament about a possible tie-up between Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.

“Even if you become big you should be resolvable so the banks should prove that they have structures that are not preventing a smooth resolution in case of crisis,” he added.

“These are the two main safeguards that you need to look at when you look at mergers,” Enria said.

(Reporting By Francesco Canepa)

Source: OANN

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North Korean Weapons Test Not a Ballistic Missile – Intel Experts

Experts from Washington and Seoul seem to agree that the weapons test observed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this week wasn’t a ballistic missile and doesn’t change the strategic situation on the Korean Peninsula.

On Wednesday, the Pyongyang-based Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announced the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) had successfully tested a “new tactical guided weapon” — an event years in the making that carried a “very weighty significance.”

KCNA was short on details, saying only that the missile has a “peculiar mode of guiding flight” and “a powerful warhead.”

“We see it as a guided weapon for the purpose of ground battles,” an officer from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told Yonhap News Agency Friday, adding it does not appear to be a ballistic missile.


The state silences those that disagree with the “official narrative” because this allows them to control the population. Mike Adams hosts to discuss why being curious is so important to liberty in society.

The US agreed, with acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan saying the weapon was “not a ballistic missile” because no observation or early warning system had detected that kind of launch.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to come out and raise or condemn or make hay of this weapons test,” Shanahan said Friday. “It’s wise for us to just sort of continue to focus on making headway on diplomacy and ignore those sorts of comments.”

Eric Brewer, a former director for counterproliferation at the National Security Council, told CNN the test was “not that concerning,” but was probably meant to pressure Washington into returning to the negotiating table.

Citing analysts, Yonhap said the weapon is probably similar to the Israeli-made Spike anti-tank guided missile (AGTM), a highly sophisticated weapon that can be fired from a vehicle mount or from a soldier’s shoulder and has a range of about 4 kilometers.

(Photo by Wikimedia Commons)

If it is an AGTM on the scale of the Spike, it likely represents a significant leap forward for North Korean ground forces in terms of anti-tank weaponry. Like much of its weaponry and vehicles, the Korean People’s Army mostly makes use of old Soviet anti-tank weapons like the 9M113 Konkurs and the newer, Russian-made 9M133 Kornet.

It remains unclear if this weapon is the same one KCNA reported Kim inspected last November, which the state-owned news agency noted had been “researched and developed for a long time,” since Kim’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il, ran the country between 1994 and 2013.

DPRK hasn’t tested a ballistic missile of any type, whether for weapons delivery or satellite launch, since November 28, 2017. As a gesture of goodwill, Kim placed a moratorium on all ballistic and nuclear tests in a bid to bring Washington to the negotiating table that was ultimately successful last June.


Regulations being enacted by the EU/UN actually benefit Big Tech and the globalist agenda of censorship. Alex breaks down solutions for President Trump to act on to keep America from this digital tyranny.

Source: InfoWars

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Beijing's Forbidden City illuminated for Lantern Festival

Beijing's Forbidden City has been illuminated and opened to the general public for night visits for the first time to celebrate China's Lantern Festival.

As night fell, visitors were welcomed by a light show at the Meridian Gate exhibition hall. A dazzling array of lights also lit up the Supreme Harmony Hall. Chinese characters and traditional decorations were projected on the outer walls.

Along a corridor, the ancient Chinese painting "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" was projected on rooftops.

The Forbidden City, which served as China's political center for more than 500 years, is now known as the Palace Museum. China's Lantern Festival marks the end of Lunar New Year festivities.

Source: Fox News World

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Dozens of asylum seekers returned to Mexico under Trump policy gain entry to U.S.

FILE PHOTO - Central American migrants, who are waiting for their court hearing for asylum seekers that returned to Mexico to await their legal proceedings under a new policy established by the U.S. government, queue for food in Ciudad Juarez
FILE PHOTO - Central American migrants, who are waiting for their court hearing for asylum seekers that returned to Mexico to await their legal proceedings under a new policy established by the U.S. government, queue for food at a fire station used as a temporary shelter, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, April 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

April 11, 2019

By Jose Gallego Espina and Lizbeth Diaz

SAN DIEGO/TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – At least 60 Central American asylum seekers who were waiting in Mexico for their cases to be heard have been allowed to stay in the United States since Monday’s court ruling to halt a Trump administration policy of sending them back across the border.

The admissions occurred even though the U.S. District Court ruling does not come into effect until Friday, and despite the fact the ruling does not clearly apply to the hundreds of people returned to Mexico.

The number and outcomes of the cases were confirmed by a migrant attorney and a Reuters reporter who have attended court proceedings in San Diego this week.

The administration has indicated it will appeal the ruling, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether there has been a policy change.

But the stance of the DHS in the cases in a San Diego court shows the U.S. government is already allowing some migrants coming in from Mexico to stay in the United States as their individual cases come up.

A source at Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said on Thursday that around 1,400 people have been returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols policy (MPP) since January, most of them to the border town of Tijuana, where many said they feared dangerous conditions.

The policy was stepped up in the days before the ruling, Mexican government statistics show.

No-one appears to have been sent back under the policy since Tuesday, the day after the ruling, said the Mexican immigration source, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The court ruling clearly applied to the 11 plaintiffs in the civil liberties lawsuit as well as future asylum applicants, but the status of those already in Mexico was left unclear.

Not one of 20 asylum seekers who crossed the border from Tijuana on Wednesday for court hearings in San Diego was returned to Mexico, however. At one hearing, a Guatemalan man asked specifically whether he would have to go back to Tijuana.

“Definitely, he will not be returned to Mexico,” said Pamela Ataii, the DHS lawyer.

Another migrant told Judge Scott Simpson that he was scared to go back, to which Simpson responded: “You are lucky, because I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Luis Gonzalez, supervising immigration attorney with the Jewish Family Service of San Diego, who attended court on Tuesday, said he knew of 13 people who had hearings that day who had been released and one who was detained in the United States.

“Our understanding so far is that families under the MPP program are now being released into the United States after coming to court,” Gonzalez said.

El Salvadoran Gabriela Orellana, 26, and her two children were among those allowed to pursue their cases in the United States.

“I am here, thank God, in a shelter in San Diego,” she said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that asylum seekers who are released into U.S. territory often do not show up at their hearings, a contention at odds with federal statistics which show that the majority do appear.

Carmen Rivera, who said she was fleeing gangs in El Salvador, had given up hope of receiving U.S. asylum after she was sent back to Mexico. She told Reuters she decided weeks ago not to attend her court hearing in San Diego.

After the ruling this week, however, she changed her mind.

“I´m excited to know that we have this opportunity, because to return to Mexico, to Tijuana, is very dangerous,” she said from a shelter close to the border fence in Mexico, where many migrants were camped out in tents.

“Thank God, things changed.”

(Additional reporting by Andrew Hay, writing by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Julie Marquis and Sonya Hepinstall)

Source: OANN

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Heavy gunfire heard at protest in Sudan’s capital: live TV

People protest near the defence ministry building in Khartoum
People protest near the defence ministry building in Khartoum, Sudan, in this still image taken from a social media video obtained on April 9, 2019. Courtesy Sudan Congress Party/via REUTERS

April 9, 2019

CAIRO (Reuters) – Heavy gunfire was heard at a protest outside the defense ministry in Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Tuesday, live broadcast by Arab TV stations showed, and activists said that security forces were trying to break up the protest by force.

Activists said in a statement posted on social media that army soldiers guarding the ministry were trying to protect the demonstrators and opened the gates of the compound to give sanctuary.

Both Al-Hadath TV and Al Jazeera broadcast live footage in which heavy gunfire was heard and people were seen running for cover. They said it was an attempt by security forces to disperse the demonstrators.

There were reports that at least two government soldiers were killed, but it was not immediately possible to verify.

Sudan has been rocked by months of small but persistent protests that were sparked by bread price rises and cash shortages. The demonstrations later turned against President Omar al-Bashir, a former paratrooper who had been in office since 1989.

Bashir, who is being sought by international prosecutors for alleged war crimes in the country’s western Darfur region, has refused to step down and said his opponents needed to seek power through the ballot box.

The protests escalated on Saturday, when activists, trying to push the country’s armed forces to side with them, marched towards a compound in the center of the capital housing the defense ministry as well as Bashir’s residence and the country’s security headquarters and camped out there.

Activists said they chose Saturday for their march to coincide with the April 6 anniversary of a 1985 military coup that forced long-time autocrat Jaafar Nimeiri to step down after protests.

CALL FOR RESTRAINT

Security forces have made several attempts to break up the protest, but army soldiers have repeatedly come out to protect the demonstrators, often firing shots in the air and deploying soldiers on streets around the protesters.

The interior minister, Bishara Jumaa, told parliament on Monday that six people had been killed on Saturday and Sunday in disturbances in the capital, and one in the western region of Darfur.

He also said that 15 civilians and 42 members of the security forces were injured in the protests and that 2,496 protesters were arrested in Khartoum.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged all parties in Sudan to “exercise utmost restraint and avoid violence”, and called for the release of detained protesters, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Jumaa said 39 people had died since the onset of the protests, including three members of the security forces. Activists put the death toll at more than 60.

For the first time in some three months of unrest, a group of prominent opposition leaders joined protesters outside the defense ministry in Khartoum.

They addressed demonstrators who have been massed for two days outside the ministry compound and repeated their demand for Bashir and his government to step down immediately, witnesses said.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty, writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Michael Perry)

Source: OANN

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The week in pictures, Mar. 23 – Mar. 29

https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2019/03/918/516/12_AP19082667735139.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

Bolivia's "Batallon Colorados," sing the national anthem during an event honoring national hero Eduardo Abaroa, who died in the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific, as part of Sea Day celebrations in La Paz, Bolivia, March 23, 2019. 

AP Photo/Juan Karita

https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2019/03/918/516/12_AP19082667735139.jpg?ve=1&tl=1

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.

CLICK HERE FOF THE FOX NEWS APP

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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