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Minnesota Dems Looking for Primary Challenger to Ilhan Omar

Some Minnesota Democrats have begun looking to recruit someone to mount a primary challenge against Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., after her comments about Israel and AIPAC, The Hill reports.

“There’s definitely some buzz going around about it, but it’s more a buzz of is anyone talking about finding someone to run against her than it is anyone saying they’re going to run against her or contemplate it. There’s definitely talk about people wanting someone to run against her,” said Democratic state Sen. Ron Latz, whose district includes a portion of Omar’s.

“Our community is exasperated by Rep. Omar’s unfulfilled promises to listen and learn from Jewish constituents while seemingly simultaneously finding another opportunity to make an anti-Semitic remark and insult our community,” said the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, Steve Hunegs, said in a statement.

Omar and Hunegs met last month following criticism for her initial remarks, and a spokesperson for the congresswoman says she has continued to meet with Jewish leaders since then.

“Unfortunately, having the opportunity to speak with her about that point didn’t dissuade her making that statement,” he told the Hill on Wednesday. “We were appalled.”

However, “While she has created a significant amount of controversy for herself and said things that have offended many Americans, I’m not sure that one could make the case that she is in trouble yet,” said Mike Erlandson, the former chair of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and the former chief of staff to ex-congressman Martin Sabo, a Democrat who challenged Omar’s predecessor in 2006.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Scalia's Son: Expanding SCOTUS 'Worth Taking Seriously'

Adding more justices to the high court is "maybe an argument worth taking seriously," Christopher Scalia said Wednesday in response to some 2020 Democrats' push to do so.

Scalia, the son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, also said some proposals were "unconstitutional," including an idea proposed by South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg to add five members who would "only be seated by unanimous agreement of the other 10."

"The problem with that," Scalia told "Your World with Neil Cavuto" during an interview on Fox News, "is, obviously Section 2, Article II of the Constitution makes very clear that the president has the power and authority to nominate and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint Supreme Court justices. So, I mean, I don't know what . . . these candidates are talking about, but they certainly can't have justices appoint their colleagues. So, that would require an [constitutional] amendment that I just don't think has a snowball's chance anywhere of being ratified."

Other Democratic presidential candidates have proposed changes to the high court, including Beto O'Rourke, who last week said he would be open to the idea of restructuring the court to have five Republican justices and five Democratic justices.

Source: NewsMax America

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Three Hate Crimes In One Day Against Trump Supporters Ignored By MSM

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Mexican cartel gunmen kidnap and beat 11 police officers

Cartel gunmen kidnapped 11 police officers traveling through the Mexican central state of Puebla during the weekend, taking their guns and detaining them for hours, according to reports.

The officers were traveling in two police trucks when their attackers surrounded them, ordering them to get out and forcing them to kneel, reported Mexican news outlets. The gunmen, who had been in three SUVs, took the officers’ weapons and cell phones and beat them, according to the reports.

The officers had finished responding to a call about an attempted theft of gasoline from an oil refinery.

MEXICAN GOVERNMENT APOLOGIZES FOR DEATHS AFTER POLICE HANDED YOUTHS OVER TO RUTHLESS DRUG GANG

The gunmen released the police near a highway in Mexico City, but kept their police trucks, as well as the other items they had taken.

The attackers released the officers after authorities launched a search for them.

22 BUS PASSENGERS KIDNAPPED IN MEXICO MAY BE MIGRANTS 

The area where the police were kidnapped is a high-risk one for kidnapping and other crimes, reported the Mexico News Daily.

Roughly 1,200 people were kidnapped in Mexico in 2017, which has been a problem in the country since criminal organizations began carrying them out in 2006 to get ransoms to finance their illicit activities, said the website Vox. 

Víctor Manuel Sánchez Valdés, a research professor at the Autonomous University of Coahuila, Mexico, was quoted as telling the outlet: “They had to find other sources of income, which gave the hitmen in these groups carte blanche to participate in activities like kidnapping and extortion.”

Last month, an armed gang in Mexico kidnapped 22 passengers who were hauled off a passenger bus.

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The kidnapping recalled another in 2011, when dozens of passengers were hauled off buses by drug gangs in Tamaulipas, killed and their bodies dumped in mass graves.

Source: Fox News World

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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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Kenyan who won Global Teacher Prize says invest in youth

A Kenyan who won the $1 million Global Teacher Prize has returned home to pomp and pageantry. The Franciscan friar has a message for Africa: Invest in youth.

Science teacher Peter Tabichi on Wednesday called his win a testimony that Africa has great people.

"It's a victory for Kenya, for Africa and the whole world. It shows that our young people, given the chance, if we invest in the young people, they are going to do great things," he said.

He routinely gives away most of his salary.

The United Nations Development Program says Africa has the youngest population in the world. Yet many youth express frustration with what they call a lack of opportunities to improve their lives.

The Global Teacher Prize is awarded by the London-based Varkey Foundation.

Source: Fox News World

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Suit filed over gun controls inspired by synagogue shooting

Gun rights groups sued Tuesday to block Pittsburgh from enforcing firearms legislation passed after a synagogue massacre, accusing city officials of blatantly defying the state's prohibition on municipal gun regulation.

Democratic Mayor Bill Peduto signed the bills into law in a ceremony at the City-County Building, declaring the community had come together "to say enough is enough."

"There was a lot of opposition. But more people within this city quietly showed their support," Peduto said. "We are going to take some action, we are going to do something positive and, yes, it is going to be everlasting. Change only happens when you challenge the status quo."

Minutes later, a coalition of gun rights groups sued to get the newly minted laws overturned, calling them "patently unenforceable, unconstitutional, illegal." Separately, the Allegheny County Sportsmen's League asked a judge to hold the city, Peduto and six council members who voted for the legislation in contempt of court, contending they violated a 1995 legal settlement in which city officials dropped an earlier effort to ban assault weapons and agreed to "abide by and adhere to Pennsylvania law."

"It is unfortunate that ... taxpayers will be burdened by the city's elected officials believing it is acceptable — and even gloating — that they are violating the Pennsylvania Constitution and Crimes Code," Joshua Prince, an attorney who filed both actions, wrote in a statement.

The new legislation restricts military-style assault weapons like the AR-15 rifle authorities say was used in the Oct. 27 rampage at Tree of Life Synagogue that killed 11 and wounded seven. It also bans most uses of armor-piercing ammunition and high-capacity magazines and allows the temporary seizure of guns from people who are determined to be a danger to themselves or others. The first two laws are due to take effect in 60 days, the self-harm law in 180 days.

The three bills — proposed not long after the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history — was weakened ahead of the vote in an effort to make it more likely to survive a court challenge.

State law has long prohibited municipalities from regulating the ownership or possession of guns or ammunition. While one of the Pittsburgh bills originally included an outright ban on assault weapons, the revised measure bars the "use" of assault weapons in public places.

A full ban on possession would take effect only if state lawmakers or the state Supreme Court give municipalities the right to regulate guns, which is seen as unlikely in a state where legislative majorities are fiercely protective of gun rights.

___

Rubinkam reported from northeastern Pennsylvania.

Source: Fox News National

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Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during the inauguration of the newly-elected parliament in Kabul
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani speaks during the inauguration of the newly-elected parliament in Kabul, Afghanistan April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

April 26, 2019

By Rupam Jain and Hameed Farzad

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Ashraf Ghani encouraged newly-elected lawmakers to participate in the peace process with the Taliban as he opened on Friday the first session of parliament since a controversial election.

Ghani has invited thousands of politicians, religious scholars and rights activists to an assembly known as a loya jirga next week to discuss ways to end the 17-year war.

Several opposition leaders have said they will boycott the four-day assembly in Kabul, saying it was pulled together without their input and is being used by Ghani as he seeks a second term in a September presidential election.

“We have presented the peace plan on a regular basis and we are committed to it,” Ghani said in the first session since parliamentary elections marred by technical problems, militant attacks and accusations of voting fraud last year.

“Based on this plan, there will be no peace deal and negotiation that does not have the green card of the parliament,” he added.

Officials from the United States and the Taliban have held several rounds of talks to end the Afghan war.

U.S. negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, has reported some progress toward an accord on a U.S. troop withdrawal and on how the Taliban would prevent extremists from using Afghanistan to launch attacks as al Qaeda did on Sept. 11, 2001.

The insurgents have so far rejected U.S. demands for a ceasefire and talks on the country’s political future that would include Afghan government officials.

The loya jirga, a centuries-old institution used to build consensus among competing tribes, factions and ethnic groups, is an attempt by Ghani to influence the peace talks and cement his position for a second term, Afghan politicians and Western diplomats say.

Amid growing political divisions in Kabul, opposition politicians have demanded that Ghani step down when his mandate ends next month, and give way to an interim government to oversee peace talks with the Taliban. Ghani has ruled that out.

The country’s top court said last week Ghani can stay in office until the presidential election in September.

(Reporting by Hameed Farzad, Rupam Jain, Editing by Darren Schuettler)

Source: OANN

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Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Thursday defended special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation while slamming former President Barack Obama’s administration for being slow to take action on Russian interference in U.S. elections and ex-FBI Director James Comey for telling Congress the agency was investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Our nation is safer, elections are more secure, and citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence schemes,” Rosenstein said in a speech to the Armenian Bar Association, marking his first public remarks after the Mueller report was released, reports CBS News.

He also pointed out that the investigation revealed a pattern of computer hacking and the use of social media to undermine elections as “only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord, and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

The Obama administration also made “critical decisions,” including choosing not to publicize the full story about Russian hackers and social media trolling, “and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America,” said Rosenstein.

He noted that the Mueller probe began after Comey disclosed during a hearing before Congress that President Donald Trump “pressured him to close the investigation and the president denied that the conversation occurred.”

Rosenstein said two years ago, when he was confirmed, he was told by a Republican senator that he would be in charge of the probe and that he’d report the results to the American people.

However, he said he didn’t promise to do that, because it is “not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges.”

Source: NewsMax Politics

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FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei's factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.

News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.

The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.

“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.

“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.

British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.

Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.

“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”

Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.

(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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President Trump on Friday said “no money” was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, after reports that the U.S. received a $2 million hospital bill from Pyongyang for the late American prisoner’s care.

“No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else. This is not the Obama Administration that paid 1.8 Billion Dollars for four hostages, or gave five terroist[sic] hostages plus, who soon went back to battle, for traitor Sgt. Bergdahl!” Trump tweeted Friday.

NORTH KOREA GAVE US $2M HOSPITAL BILL OVER CARE OF AMERICAN OTTO WARMBIER, SOURCES SAY

The Washington Post first reported that North Korean authorities insisted the U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier, 21, who was a student of the University of Virginia, sign a pledge to pay the bill before allowing Warmbier’s comatose body to return to the United States. Sources confirmed the bill and the amount to Fox News on Thursday.

Sources told the post that the envoy signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions from the president, but a source told Fox News that the U.S. did not ever pay money to North Korea.

The White House declined to comment when asked on the bill, with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders saying in a statement that: “We do not comment on hostage negotiations, which is why they have been so successful during this administration.”

Meanwhile, the president added: “’President[sic] Donald J. Trump is the greatest hostage negotiator that I know of in the history of the United States. 20 hostages, many in impossible circumstances, have been released in last two years. No money was paid.’ Cheif[sic] Hostage Negotiator, USA!”

Warmbier was on tour in North Korea when he allegedly stole a propaganda sign from a hotel. He was arrested in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor in March 2016. Warmbier, for unknown reasons, fell into a coma while in custody and was held in that condition for an additional 17 months.

North Korean officials did not tell American officials until June 2017 that Warmbier had been unconscious the entire time. He died less than a week after he returned to the U.S. North Korean officials, though, have repeatedly denied accusations that Warmbier was tortured, instead claiming that he had suffered from botulism and then slipped into a coma after taking a sleeping pill.

AMERICAN PRISONERS HELD IN NORTH KOREA ON THEIR WAY HOME AFTER POMPEO VISIT, TRUMP SAYS

Fred and Cindy Warmbier sued North Korea over their son’s death and in December were awarded $501 million in damages – money that the Hermit Kingdom will probably never pay.

While the Warmbiers blamed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump has said he believes Kim’s claims that he did not know about the student’s treatment.

Trump and Kim have met in two separate summits. The most recent, held in February, ended without an agreement on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told Fox News: “Otto Warmbier was mistreated by North Korea in so many ways, including his wrongful conviction and harsh sentence, and the fact that for 16 months they refused to tell his family or our country about his dire condition they caused.  No, the United States owes them nothing. They owe the Warmbier family everything.”

Last year, the Trump administration was also able to save three American prisoners held by North Korea. Kim Dong Chul, Tony Kim, and Kim Hak Song were all detained in North Korea. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought the three Americans home last May, and said they were all in “good health.”

Fox News’ John Roberts, Rich Edson, Nicholas Kalman, and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon, South Korea, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

April 26, 2019

SEOUL (Reuters) – K-pop and drama star Park Yu-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.

Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.

Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around five times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.

Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.

Park’s contract with his management agency had been canceled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park’s management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.

Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.

A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes and secret chat about rape led at least four other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.

The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: OANN

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