Justice Department Asking If Trump Stashed Documents In Trump Tower
Justice Department Asking If Trump Stashed Documents In Trump Tower https://digitalalabamanews.com/justice-department-asking-if-trump-stashed-documents-in-trump-tower/
Investigators have quizzed multiple witnesses about whether Trump is holding sensitive government documents at other properties outside Mar-a-Lago, including at his Manhattan tower and his New Jersey club
Federal investigators have asked multiple witnesses if they knew whether Donald Trump had stashed any highly sensitive government documents at Trump Tower in Manhattan or at his private club in Bedminster, New Jersey, a person familiar with the matter and another source briefed on the situation tell Rolling Stone.
The FBI, according to these sources, had also asked in recent months whether the ex-president had a habit of transporting classified documents from his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago to the other Trump properties. The feds specifically discussed both the New York City and Bedminster locations with certain witnesses.
“It was obvious they wanted to know if this went beyond just Mar-a-Lago,” the first source says.
The Justice Department declined a request for comment from Rolling Stone. Trump attorneys and a spokesperson for the former president did not respond to requests.
The interviews suggest that the Justice Department may believe that Trump’s retention of documents extended beyond Mar-a-Lago, though it’s unclear if there’s any evidence Trump is storing documents outside his Florida property.
On Thursday, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department informed Trump’s legal team it believes the former president may have taken more documents than the ones the FBI returned to the National Archives after its August Mar-a-Lago search. Trump attorney Christopher Kise reportedly suggested that the former president voluntarily conduct a search for any further missing documents at another unnamed Trump property, according to the Times.
The FBI has been quietly interviewing a number of former Trump associates as part of its inquiry into his retention of classified documents. In August, Rolling Stone reported that FBI agents had interviewed former Trump National Security Council staff and asked them whether they were aware of the so-called standing declassification order that Trump’s office has claimed the former president put in place for classified materials taken from the West Wing.
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Sweet Home Alabama: CrossFit Games To Birmingham For 2024-27
Sweet Home Alabama: CrossFit Games To Birmingham For 2024-27 https://digitalalabamanews.com/sweet-home-alabama-crossfit-games-to-birmingham-for-2024-27/
Photo Credit: BIrmingham (@ inbirmingham)
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The CrossFit Games are heading to Birmingham, AL after next season, and will be staying in the state’s largest city from 2024-27. The Games will be hosted at the Birmingham CrossPlex, a multi-sport complex located downtown.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source with knowledge of the location confirmed this to Morning Chalk Up. Prior to the 2022 CrossFit Games, the company’s GM of Sport, Justin Bergh announced that 2023 would be their final year in Madison, WI, the city that’s played host since 2017.
CrossFit delivered the following statement when contacted by Morning Chalk Up concerning the report:
“We’re not commenting on any potential locations for 2024 and beyond at this point. We’ll be making an announcement soon that will detail the complete 2023 season and we’re looking forward to returning to and celebrating our time in Madison next summer. Once the 2023 season announcement is complete, we’ll be able to confirm future locations before the end of this year.”
Remind me: The Games started at Dave Castro’s family ranch in Aromas, California in 2007, founder and former CEO of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, famously called it “the Woodstock of fitness.”
As the Games evolved and grew, it also moved from the Ranch in Aromas to the Home Depot Center (later StubHub Center) in Carson, CA, where it would stay until 2017. The 2017 CrossFit moved to Madison, WI where it has stayed (minus a return trip to Aromas during the disrupted COVID season of 2020) up until this past season for the 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games.
Why it matters: For the third time in its history, the CrossFit Games are moving.
It’s worth noting that according to weather.com, the average temperature in Birmingham at the end of July and beginning of August is 90 degrees fahrenheit, while the average humidity is 75%.
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Mayor Adams Declares State Of Emergency Over NYC Migrant Crisis Seeks Help From Feds State
Mayor Adams Declares State Of Emergency Over NYC Migrant Crisis, Seeks Help From Feds, State https://digitalalabamanews.com/mayor-adams-declares-state-of-emergency-over-nyc-migrant-crisis-seeks-help-from-feds-state/
Mayor Adams declared a state of emergency Friday over the city’s migrant crisis and pleaded for financial and legislative assistance from the federal government and state lawmakers.
The declaration will suspend certain land-use requirements so the city can more rapidly set up emergency housing for migrants, such as the controversial tent camp set to be constructed on Randalls Island, Adams said in a speech from City Hall.
Mayor Eric Adams delivers an address at City Hall on asylum seekers in lower Manhattan, New York on Friday, October 7, 2022. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
But the declaration only goes so far.
With more than 17,000 South and Central American migrants currently in the city, the homeless shelter system is nearly at 100% capacity and social services are being strained to the brink of collapse, Adams said.
[ Cold, hungry, isolated. Migrants facing troubling conditions in Hell’s Kitchen hotel ]
“It is burning through our budget,” he said, predicting that the city will spend more than $1 billion on the crisis in this fiscal year alone. “This is unsustainable.”
As a result, Adams demanded that President Biden’s administration and Albany lawmakers do what they can to help, including allocating emergency funding and passing legislation that would expedite work permits for the migrants.
“This is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” he said.
Mayor Eric Adams (center) delivers an address at City Hall on asylum seekers in lower Manhattan, New York on Friday, October 7, 2022. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
The massive influx of migrants has placed a big burden on the city’s homeless shelter system. That pressure has led to several apparent violations of the state’s right-to-shelter law, which requires the city to provide housing to anyone who seeks it within a proscribed timeframe.
To relieve the burden on shelters, Adams signaled last week that he planned to house some migrants in tents at an Orchard Beach parking lot in the Bronx. But earlier this week, he reversed himself over concerns of flooding there. Instead, he opted to move the tent encampments to Randalls Island.
An NYC Emergency Management employee and others prepare to survey the parking lot at Iachn Statium at Randalls Island Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022 in the Bronx. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)
In a statement released by the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless, which act as watchdogs regarding the right to shelter law, the groups slammed Adams for failing to invest more adequately in affordable housing, which would also ease the burden on shelters.
“It is the city’s historic shameful failure to adequately invest in affordable housing that has continued to fuel mass homelessness,” they said in the statement. “We reaffirm our call on the city to abandon its plan to construct tent cities, and to instead focus on high-quality indoor shelter options and permanent housing.”
[ Thousands of migrants are pouring into NYC from Texas, straining a shaky shelter system. When will it hit a tipping point? ]
Also at play on Friday are the politics of the situation — both here and in other states. Many of the migrants streaming into the city have come from Texas. That state’s governor, Greg Abbott, who’s running for re-election, has directed buses filled with asylum seekers to the Big Apple as a way to criticize Biden’s border policies.
Biden is also seeking a referendum on his effectiveness in the coming November midterm elections. And Gov. Hochul is also seeking re-election.
President Joe Biden speaks as from left, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and New York City mayor Eric Adams listen during a meeting at the FEMA Region 2 office in New York, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. (Evan Vucci/AP)
The mayor said he is not concerned about politically putting Democratic allies in a tight spot.
“[Biden] understood the urgency of the moment,” Adams said, referring to his most recent conversation with the president. “Speaking with the governor’s office, they understand the urgency of the situation. There was never a time that they stated, ‘Eric, you know, we don’t want to engage in this conversation because it’s too political.’ Nope, they did not do that at all.”
He would not offer specifics regarding exactly how the state might help as far as providing locations to house asylum seekers, but noted that “there are plenty of locations that are under state control that I believe we should look at.”
“Right now, I’m not going to disclose exact locations,” he said. “As soon as we get the approval from them — the inspections that state that they’re suitable for people to be inside — we’re going to make a formal announcement.”
Migrants arrive on a bus at the Port Authority from Texas to Manhattan, New York on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)
During a press conference after his speech, Adams offered few details on which aspects of the city’s land use laws his administration intends to tweak. He did say the city does not plan to suspend its Uniform Land Use Review Procedure as part of the process, though.
Bronx Councilman Rafael Salamanca, who chairs the Council’s Land Use Committee, said he has “no idea” which specific land use requirements the mayor is targeting, but speculated that the changes could involve rezoning industrial and commercial areas to house the asylum seekers. That could mean retrofitting vacant warehouses to help ease the city’s burden, he said.
“My team is looking into it and we’re reaching out to [the mayor] because we want to understand: What are you suspending?” Salamanca said.
New York City Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix also did not offer much in the way of specifics when it comes to suspending land-use requirements.
“It does not suspend all our city laws, but just the land-use laws,” she said, adding that more details would be “forthcoming.”
On Wednesday, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and several other Council members put out a statement urging Hizzoner to consider vacant hotels as an option for housing migrants. The Daily News at the time requested a list of the hotels they were referring to, but the Council still has not made it public.
Before taking questions from reporters, Adams urged them to inquire with the Council as to why it has not yet released a list of potential hotels to house migrants.
“Can you ask the City Council where’s the list?” he said. “Cause we can’t get it. They said there were ten hotels that were available and we should be using them … People need to stop criticizing. They need to step up.”
Without calling out anyone by name, Adams also slammed Council members for demanding the city house migrants in hotels while at the same time telling his administration that they don’t want to house migrants in their Council districts.
“I cannot tell you how many Council people, local electeds that are yelling, ‘house people,’ but are saying ‘not in my district,’” the mayor said. “You can’t have it both ways.”
Newly arrived migrants are pictured in a closed holding area at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan, New York on Sept. 19, 2022. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)
When asked about cooperation with the City Council and complaints that he provided little notice to Council members Diana Ayala and Marjorie Velazquez, who represent Randalls Island and Orchard Beach, respectively, Adams again appeared to point his finger back toward lawmakers, saying that his administration has been “communicating with them all the time on this.”
“There’s a deafening silence that’s coming from other parts of government,” he said. “This is not one of these operations where we can sit down and analyze what’s taking place. We had nine buses yesterday. We have eight buses today. We’re getting hundreds of people that are coming here, and it’s going to take real-time movement.”
In an ironic twist, the city’s Immigration Affairs Commissioner Manuel Castro suggested that many of the migrants in New York City could end up in Florida. That state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, also made waves weeks ago when he sent migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.
About one-third of the asylum seekers coming into the city want to be re-settled in other parts of the country, according to Castro. Many of those coming into the city began their journey from Venezuela.
“The largest population of Venezuelans in the country are in Florida, and that’s where most people indicated where they wish to be,” he said. “It really is up to the individuals. We want to make sure that we support people getting to where they wish to go.”
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Putin's Disastrous War In Ukraine Has Pushed Him Into The 'most Precarious Moment' Of His Decades In Power Top Russia Expert Says
Putin's Disastrous War In Ukraine Has Pushed Him Into The 'most Precarious Moment' Of His Decades In Power, Top Russia Expert Says https://digitalalabamanews.com/putins-disastrous-war-in-ukraine-has-pushed-him-into-the-most-precarious-moment-of-his-decades-in-power-top-russia-expert-says/
Putin faces the “most precarious moment” of his time in power, Angela Stent told Insider.
Stent, a top Russia expert, said Putin’s grip on power has slipped because of Russia’s mounting failures in Ukraine.
The Russian army appears “incompetent,” Stent said, and the situation “looks bad” for Putin.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled over his country with an iron fist for more than two decades, brutally cracking down on dissent while cementing his control over the levers of power in Russia. Those who’ve opposed the Russian leader have often landed behind bars or wound up dead. But Russia’s mounting failures in Ukraine have presented novel challenges to Putin’s authority.
Angela Stent, a top Russia expert who served in the Office of Policy Planning at the State Department from 1999 to 2001 and as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council from 2004 to 2006, told Insider that “his grip on power is clearly not as strong as it was on February 23,” the day before Putin launched Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
The war hasn’t gone Putin’s way. The Pentagon said in August that Russian casualties could be as high as 80,000, and that number has likely risen in recent months. In an effort to address Russia’s manpower problems, Putin recently announced a partial military mobilization, as well as various stop-loss measures, but things are not going well. There’s been local resistance to the draft, and tens of thousands of Russians have fled the country.
Putin also announced the annexation of four Ukrainian regions last week, despite the fact that Russia does not fully control or occupy these regions. In the time since, Ukrainian forces have recaptured territory in these areas. Recent reporting suggests that even members of Putin’s inner circle have begun to openly criticize the botched invasion, an action that can be dangerous and even deadly.
The Russian army appears “incompetent,” Stent said, and the situation “looks bad” for Putin. “This is definitely the most precarious moment” in Putin’s 22 years in power, she said, adding that what is happening is entirely “self-inflicted.”
“He didn’t have to go in and invade Ukraine in February, but obviously he made the decision that this was the right time to do it,” Stent, now a Georgetown professor and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said.
Even though the war hasn’t gone as planned for the Russian leader, that does not necessarily mean Putin’s downfall is imminent. “He still projects the image of someone who’s self-confident,” Stent said, pointing to Putin’s “fiery” speech on the annexations.
And there hasn’t been a mass public uprising against Putin, showing how effective his efforts to quash dissent have been. Putin’s most prominent critic, Alexey Navalny, is imprisoned on charges widely decried as politically motivated. Protesting the war could mean prison time for some Russians, and Putin signed a vague law criminalizing spreading so-called “fake news” about the military shortly after the invasion began.
“The problem is Putin has created the system with increasing repression,” Stent said, “It’s a huge disincentive to protest.”
“There’s no one single individual or even small group of individuals who would mobilize people,” she added, “In Russia if you want to have change, it has to happen in Moscow and probably St. Petersburg, and you just haven’t seen the willingness to galvanize people.”
Stent also said that the recent decision by the OPEC+ alliance to significantly cut oil production at a time when Russia’s war in Ukraine is causing an energy crisis seems to point to Putin’s ongoing geopolitical influence. The Saudis and other members of the coalition are essentially “supporting Putin’s war effort,” Stent said. “Even though his situation doesn’t look good, there a large number of countries all around the world that still support Russia.”
But there are also signs that countries like India and China, which tend to side with Moscow on the global stage but haven’t taken an overtly supportive stance with regard to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are “wary” about what Putin is doing, Stent said.
Last month, Putin acknowledged that both countries have concerns about the war in Ukraine as he met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a summit in Uzbekistan. Modi criticized the conflict directly to Putin’s face, stating, “Today’s era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you on the phone about this.”
Putin’s repeated nuclear threats since the war began likely “mitigates” the possibility of such countries offering full-throated support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, Stent said.
‘The nuclear threats are not helping Putin’
A Russian nuclear missile rolls along Red Square during the military parade marking the 75th anniversary of Nazi defeat, on June 24, 2020 in Moscow, Russia.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
With Russia struggling in Ukraine and Putin facing perhaps the worst predicament of his time in power, many leaders, officials, Russia watchers, and military experts in Ukraine and in the West have expressed concerns that the Russian leader might resort to the use of nuclear weapons.
In late September, national security advisor Jake Sullivan said the US has privately communicated to Russia that there would be “catastrophic consequences” if nuclear weapons are used.
A number of analysts have suggested that Putin’s nuclear threats are largely a bluff designed to intimidate the West and push it away from continuing support for Kyiv. The US has provided Ukraine with billions in security aid, including weapons that have played a key role on the battlefield.
If this is Putin’s goal, it’s not working, Stent said, adding that “the nuclear threats are not helping Putin vis-à-vis the West.”
Putin’s nuclear rhetoric should be taken “seriously,” she said, but that there has been “exaggeration of the imminent threat.”
“I don’t think anybody thinks that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon is something that’s going to happen soon,” Stent said, emphasizing that Putin wants to wait and see if the mobilization works before taking escalatory steps beyond attacks on infrastructure such as power plants and dams.
But that doesn’t mean Putin’s nuclear threats can be entirely dismissed.
“Putin said he wasn’t bluffing, and some of our political leaders have said we have to have to take this seriously,” Stent said. “That’s why the administration is clearly communicating with the Kremlin — telling them that if they were to do something like that, there would be very serious consequences.”
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Adderall Shortages Impacting ADHD Patients https://digitalalabamanews.com/adderall-shortages-impacting-adhd-patients/
Widespread shortages of Adderall and other versions of the drug used for treating attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are deepening in the U.S., causing desperation in patients who rely on the medication to focus.
The largest Adderall manufacturer in the U.S., Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd., said last month that a labor shortage from earlier in the year disrupted production, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Pharmacists, manufacturers and patients are reporting shortages of ADHD drug Adderall nationwide. (Photo by Jb Reed/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
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A Teva spokesperson said at the time that the company expects shortages at the retail level to be resolved in coming weeks, but pharmacies are now reporting shortages of the ADHD treatment from an array of other drugmakers.
The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) reported shortages of several versions of the amphetamine from numerous manufacturers this week, as reports sprout up nationwide of the impact that low supplies are having on patients who are unable to fill their prescriptions.
UNITEDHEALTH COMPLETES CHANGE HEALTHCARE MERGER AFTER COURT REJECTED DOJ CHALLENGE
“It frightens people,” Dr. Robert Shulman, a psychiatrist at Rush University Medical Center, told FOX 32 in Chicago. “It frightens parents who have kids who are starting school right now. It frightens adults who are reliant on the medicine to get them through the work day. Patients can’t get their medicines, and we get a lot of phone calls, so it’s a lot of extra work, and the patients have to call around to pharmacies to look and see where there is a supply.”
Shulman says there are several factors contributing to the shortages, including record-high prescriptions for the drug following the COVID-19 lockdowns, a surge in recreational use of the stimulant, and manufacturing limits put in place by the federal government.
A spokesperson for Sandoz, a Novartis company that makes a generic version of Adderall, told FOX Business Friday that there is no shortage of their product in the market and that the company is “meeting all current customer orders,” but pointed to regulatory factors that could be contributing to the situation with the drug.
BIOGEN SHARES SOAR ON ALZHEIMER’S DRUG DEVELOPMENTS
The spokesperson explained that Sandoz, as with other drugmakers, forecasts manufacturing based on customer pre-orders and is granted permission to fulfill the predicted level of ordering by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. If a customer orders more than what drugmakers forecast due to increased demand, manufacturers are unable to fulfill those orders, and they are considered “back-ordered.”
The Novartis AG Institutes for BioMedical Research building in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Photographer: Scott Eisen/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
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Drug companies must petition the DEA for an increase in production volume in that instance. Some requests are granted, and others are denied. The DEA did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment on whether the agency has recently raised manufacturing limits for Adderall or plans to do so.
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When reached by FOX Business for comment, a spokesperson for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did not confirm any shortages of Adderall-type drugs but said in a statement that the agency “continues to monitor supply for ADHD medications and [is] in communication with the manufactures regarding supply.”
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Oath Keepers Founder Spoke Of 'Bloody' War Ahead Of US Capitol Attack
Oath Keepers Founder Spoke Of 'Bloody' War Ahead Of US Capitol Attack https://digitalalabamanews.com/oath-keepers-founder-spoke-of-bloody-war-ahead-of-us-capitol-attack/
washington —
Prosecutors in the trial of five Oath Keepers members on Friday showed a jury fresh evidence that the right-wing militia group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, told his followers ahead of last year’s U.S. Capitol attack there would be a “bloody” war if then-President Donald Trump failed to reverse his 2020 election loss.
In numerous text messages, online postings and speeches shown as evidence, Rhodes promoted the use of force and implored Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, a 19th-century U.S. law that empowers presidents to deploy troops to quell civil unrest.
Trump never invoked the Insurrection Act, even as Rhodes wrote to him in open letters posted online about the idea and bragged to fellow Oath Keeper leaders in a December 2020 text that he was “on back-channel working groups trying to advise the president.”
Rhodes and his four co-defendants are on trial on felony charges including seditious conspiracy. A second set of Oath Keeper defendants accused of being part of the same conspiracy are slated to go to trial in November.
“Show the world who the traitors are, and then use the … Insurrection Act to drop the hammer on them,” Rhodes was seen saying in a December 2020 speech at a pro-Trump political rally in video presented to the jury. “If he does not do it now, while he is commander in chief, we are going to have to do it ourselves later, in a much more desperate, much more bloody war.”
FILE – Protesters loyal to then-President Donald Trump storm the Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021.
Rhodes and his four co-defendants – Thomas Caldwell, Kenneth Harrelson, Kelly Meggs and Jessica Watkins – are on trial on charges accusing them of conspiring to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory on January 6, 2021, in a bid to keep the Republican incumbent in power. A pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on that day and attacked police but failed to prevent the election certification.
Seditious conspiracy is a rarely prosecuted crime under a statute dating to the 19th-century Civil War era, defined as attempting “to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force the government of the United States.” It carries a possible prison sentence of 20 years.
A member of another far-right group, the Proud Boys, on Thursday pleaded guilty of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Capitol attack. Three Oath Keepers members this year pleaded guilty of seditious conspiracy and may be called as witnesses in the current trial.
Testifying on Friday were Capitol Police Special Agent Ryan McCanley and FBI Special Agent Byron Cody, both answering questions about the material that the government introduced as evidence. Friday marked the fourth day of testimony from prosecution witnesses, with the trial set to resume on Tuesday with Cody returning to the witness stand.
Prosecutors have said some of the Oath Keepers were among the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol after he gave a speech to supporters repeating his false claims that the election had been stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.
Five people died during and shortly after the riot and about 140 police officers were injured.
‘Quick reaction force’
In addition, prosecutors have said the Oath Keepers organized a “quick reaction force” of armed members who were kept on standby across the Potomac River in Virginia in case they were called upon to bring firearms into Washington.
Attorneys for the defendants have said the evidence will show they did nothing illegal and that the Oath Keepers are a peacekeeping group that has done security work at events around the country to protect speakers at political rallies.
Various text messages, Facebook direct messages and audio recordings used as evidence in the trial have shown the defendants vowing to reject Biden’s election victory, planning to go to Washington and discussing what weapons they could bring, with Rhodes talking of possible “civil war.”
Prosecutors and defense attorneys are expected next week to address a dispute over whether the government can introduce potentially incriminating communications between Rhodes and Kellye SoRelle, the Oath Keepers’ general counsel, who is facing related criminal charges in a different case.
In one text, briefly posted before the defense objected, Rhodes told SoRelle: “They won’t fear us till we come with rifles in hand.”
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Agent Saw Oath Keepers Leader With 90s-Era Badge To Access US Capitol unescorted
Agent Saw Oath Keepers Leader With 90s-Era Badge To Access US Capitol ‘unescorted’ https://digitalalabamanews.com/agent-saw-oath-keepers-leader-with-90s-era-badge-to-access-us-capitol-unescorted/
WASHINGTON (CN) — The man accused of spearheading a seditious conspiracy last year had unescorted badge access to the Capitol building from his work as a legislative assistant in the 1990s, a Capitol Police special agent testified Friday.
One decade before he founded the Oath Keepers, and two before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes had unfettered access to the building from July 1998 until January 1999 while employed by then-Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Republican.
Rhodes, 63, of Granbury, Texas, is accused of orchestrating the insurrection with his Oath Keepers associates, four of whom are standing trial alongside him, as part of a larger plan to “oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power.”
Although Rhodes did not physically enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6, prosecutors say he spent months planning, recruiting and stocking up on weapons with his co-defendants. Five people were killed in the insurrection, which delayed Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results.
Ryan McCamley, an 18-year veteran with the U.S. Capitol Police and the government’s sixth witness, told jurors Friday that he was doing covert countersurveillance in Washington on Dec. 12, 2020, the day of the pro-Trump Million MAGA March, when he noticed Rhodes giving the speech at the so-called “Jericho” rally wearing a now-expired congressional badge.
McCamley described how he recognized Rhodes — who was wearing a gray suit with a black cowboy hat and an eye patch — after having read about him and the Oath Keepers less than two weeks prior in Defense One magazine.
While he may have heard of the Oath Keepers prior to reading the article, McCamley told jurors he did not “know much about them.” McCamley worked his way up to special agent status within the intelligence operations division in 2015, having started as a uniformed officer,
At the Million MAGA March, McCamley snapped a photo of Rhodes with what he described as a “small” group of Oath Keepers, the antigovernment group Rhodes founded in 2009. Prosecutors displayed the photo to the jury, which the agent said he sent to his intelligence team that day as part of their efforts to prevent clashes between various demonstrators in the city.
On cross-examination, Rhodes’ attorney James Bright tried to establish that the Capitol Police special agent did not see Rhodes and his associates do anything illegal while he was surveilling them in plain clothes on Dec. 12.
Bright asked what drew his attention to the rally, aside from his covert duties. McCamley explained that he saw a cameraman trying to take a photo and, when the “media gets stirred up about something, we kind of want to see what’s going on, too.”
The defense attorney probed further, asking two more times if there was anything else that drew his attention. But the agent did not budge and repeatedly said no.
And when the defense questioned if he saw any illegal behaviors or illegal confrontations, the agent conceded that he did not and that he would describe the Jericho rally as “peaceful.”
Rhodes is a veteran but his eye patch is said to have been a self-inflicted injury from 1993, after his military service, when he dropped a loaded gun and shot himself in the face.
Jurors also heard testimony Friday from FBI Agent Byron Cody, who testified about messages Rhodes sent to fellow Oath Keepers on the eve of the Jericho rally, including several discussing Rhodes’ desire for then-President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
Rhodes said in the letter that the Insurrection Act was the “only option” Trump had to stop Joe Biden from claiming what Rhodes erroneously insisted was an illegitimate victory.
“That’s all he has left,” Rhodes told his compatriots. And if Trump does not act, Rhodes said they will have to fight against an “illegitimate Biden regime,” and that it will be a “bloody and desperate fight.”
The agent also testified about two open letters Rhodes published on the Oath Keepers’ website before the Capitol riot in which he called for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.
Rhodes posted his first open letter on Dec. 14, the day that the electoral college voted to certify Biden’s victory. He urged Trump to declare a coup was being undertaken by known and unknown foreign enemies and to call on the Oath Keepers as his militia.
In the second letter, posted days later on Dec. 23, the Oath Keepers’ founder implored Trump to uphold his oath to the Constitution and to “act now” as a “wartime president.”
“Please don’t do it,” Rhodes pleaded, “do not concede.”
He urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and said this could not wait until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, 2021; Rhodes insisted he should instead “strike now.”
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee, is presiding over the trial, which is expected to resume Tuesday and may last another five weeks.
Rhodes’ alleged co-conspirators set to stand trial alongside him in the Washington federal courthouse are Thomas Caldwell, 68; Kelly Meggs, 53; Kenneth Harrelson, 41 and Jessica Watkins, 40.
A seditious conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison. It requires prosecutors to prove to the jury that an actual agreement — to “overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force” the U.S. government — existed among the accused Oath Keepers.
The Justice Department has so far charged more than 870 people in connection with the Capitol riot. As of last month, about 300 people have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors, 80 have pleaded guilty to felonies. Approximately 132 people have been sentenced to a period of incarceration, at least 21 of whom have been sentenced to prison.
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Opinion | A Georgia Republicans Takedown Of Trump And Herschel Walker Nails It
Opinion | A Georgia Republican’s Takedown Of Trump And Herschel Walker Nails It https://digitalalabamanews.com/opinion-a-georgia-republicans-takedown-of-trump-and-herschel-walker-nails-it/
The crisis that has engulfed Herschel Walker’s Senate candidacy in Georgia raises a question: After this is all over, what sort of space will be left in the GOP for people like Geoff Duncan?
Duncan, the lieutenant governor of Georgia, has been all over the national media offering withering criticism of Walker. But Duncan has gone even further: He’s exposed the truly corrupt nature of the bargain with Trump that fellow Republicans made in nominating Walker.
“Unfortunately, Republicans looked around to see who Trump supported,” Duncan told CNN Thursday night, adding: “Now we’re paying the price.”
Duncan: We didn’t ask who was the best leader. We didn’t ask who had the best resume. Unfortunately, Republicans looked around to see who Trump supported and he was a famous football player and so he became our nominee and now we’re paying the price pic.twitter.com/ddaISLpyZ1
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 7, 2022
Duncan may endorse Walker in the end, as Republicans in his position often do. But for now, what makes Duncan’s criticism noteworthy is not just that he’s blaming Trump for the Walker disaster, now that Walker is reeling from allegations that he paid for an abortion in 2009 (which he denies). It’s also that Duncan locates the problem in the GOP’s ongoing and active embrace of Trump.
“I think every Republican knew that there was baggage out there,”Duncan said Wednesday, noting this baggage has become “unbearable.” Walker won the nomination, Duncan added, because “he was Donald Trump’s friend.”
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Republicans have insisted all these revelations about Walker — which include his son Christian Walker’s scalding attacks on him as an absentee father and serial philanderer — are all a big nothingburger. Or they’ve blamed Democrats or the Fake News. Some have leaked word that they felt opposing Walker was futile once Trump backed him.
But in Duncan’s diagnosis, the problem is more fundamental: Republicans saw picking the candidate backed by Trump as an opportunity. Walker won because he was “Trump’s friend” and because Republicans “looked around” for Trump’s cues before deciding on their nomination.
The Post’s detailed reconstruction of this backstory confirms the point. When Walker approached Republicans last year about running, they knew of spousal abuse allegations in his past. When they raised such things, he accused them of being Democratic stooges in a way that raised concerns about his stability.
There was even a rumor of an abortion, one GOP opposition researcher told The Post, adding: “Republicans in the state knew about it and decided they didn’t care.” Despite initial concerns, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) backed Walker for the nomination, believing he could command media attention, raise big bucks and unite the party, specifically because of Trump’s backing.
In short, Republicans endorsed him not just because they had no choice but because Trump’s backing carried affirmative attributes that could harness the energy Trump has unleashed. They did this despite being well aware of his obvious unfitness. This is what Duncan is calling out.
It’s no accident that Duncan announced his retirement last year. What many Republicans who are disappearing into private life have in common is exactly this: They’ve stood for the proposition that the GOP must purge itself of Trump and Trumpism, unambiguously and with finality.
They have either voted to impeach Trump or demanded complete and unequivocal renunciation of Trump’s insurrectionism from the party. Or they’ve insisted Republicans must stop making corrupt bargains with him and his chosen candidates, as Duncan has now done.
“The fact that he’s not running for reelection tells you all you need to know about Trump’s influence on the Republican Party,” longtime GOP pollster Whit Ayres told me, noting that Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) is expected to resign.
“The kinds of people I’ve worked for my entire career are bailing,” Ayres continued, singling out long-gone Republican senators such as Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both of Tennessee. “They’re saying they don’t want to be involved anymore.”
Of course, Trump doesn’t really represent an aberration from some sort of noble, vanished normalcy within GOP and conservative politics once represented by those figures. Trump was more an exacerbation of ongoing pathologies, as conservatives like Bill Kristol have admitted.
But it’s also true that in some sense, figures like those no longer have a place in the party precisely because Trump is dictating that Republicans must nominate people who are slavishly loyal to him or deeply in thrall to his insurrectionism or (like Walker) simply have his blessing, because he said so.
This doesn’t always work out: Trump couldn’t block Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp from the nomination. But in a way this confirms the point: As Jonathan V. Last notes, when you think about the future of the Republican Party, you absolutely do not think of Kemp, despite his formidable political success, because Kemp does not “belong to Trump.”
By contrast, an empty vessel like Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters is widely regarded as someone who will represent the future of the GOP, should he win. His chief qualification, as Amanda Carpenter explains, is that he’s “wholly and only conversant in the tongue of Trump.”
In coming days, Trump will do a rally for Walker. Rather than put the revelations aside, Trump will likely dwell on them at great length as proof of the persecution Walker has endured and compare it to his own supposed persecution.
Walker is taking on the liberal Fake News and winning, just like I did, Trump will say. This is already working: As one GOP operative argued without irony, Walker is simply following in the footsteps of Trump, who after all survived the “Access Hollywood” scandal, didn’t he?
He did indeed. As figures like Duncan are relegated to private life, before long in GOP politics such revelations will become a badge of honor.
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Dentist Or Doctor? On Iwo Jima He Was Both: William G. King Lieutenant U.S. Navy Dental Corps WWII Part 1 The Andalusia Star-News
Dentist Or Doctor? On Iwo Jima, He Was Both: William G. King, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy Dental Corps, WWII Part 1 – The Andalusia Star-News https://digitalalabamanews.com/dentist-or-doctor-on-iwo-jima-he-was-both-william-g-king-lieutenant-u-s-navy-dental-corps-wwii-part-1-the-andalusia-star-news/
Published 2:30 pm Friday, October 7, 2022
Somehow, the young man from Luverne, Alabama, had not envisioned himself on the black, volcanic rock of an island called Iwo Jima when he graduated from dental school. He was less than three years out of a small dental college in Atlanta, when he found himself pulling teeth as well as treating wounded Marines on Iwo Jima. Lieutenant William G. King had already distinguished himself during the Invasion of Tinian and earned a letter of commendation from Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Seventh Fleet.
Lt. William G. King [left] at an aid station at the foot of the air strip on Iwo Jima, 1945. [Photo: Mrs. Helen King]
William Green King was born on July 19, 1918, in Luverne, Crenshaw County, Alabama. His parents were Charles Tema King and Stella Beal King. After graduating from Luverne High School in 1936, King enrolled at Presbyterian Junior College in Maxton, North Carolina. After he graduated, from there, he enrolled in Atlanta Southern Dental College in Atlanta, Georgia, graduating in June 1942. During his senior year at dental school, King was commissioned as a Lieutenant [Junior Grade] in the U.S. Navy Reserves.
The young dentist practiced for a short time in his hometown of Luverne, Alabama, before being called to active duty and sent to Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, Texas. Lt. William King had bought a new 1941 Ford convertible. You can imagine the popularity of the newly commissioned Navy officer among the ladies of Corpus Christi. When he completed his training in Texas, he was ordered to Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base near San Diego, California. King drove his car to California, sold it and placed the money in a safety deposit box for the future purchase of an engagement ring.
Camp Pendleton was the home of the 4th Marine Division and King was assigned to the HQ Company, HQ Battalion, 4th Marine Division. After training was completed at Camp Pendleton, the 4th Marine Division was shipped to Camp Maui on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Camp Maui was the Amphibious Training Center for the Marines who were about to become part of the Allied island-hopping campaign in the Pacific. Amphibious warfare required intensive combat training and the coordination of air, sea and ground forces. During the tough, two years that the 18,000 Marines practiced amphibious landings at Camp Maui, they suffered more than 1,100 casualties and 212 deaths. The 4th Marines left Camp Maui for the invasion in the Marshall Islands [Majuro, Kwajalein and Eniwetok] in January 1944.
Lt. William G. King performing dental care on Iwo Jima during WWII. Note the sidearm on his hip. [Photo: Mrs. Helen King]
After the Marshall Islands campaign, the 4th Marine Division invaded the Marianas Islands [Guam, Saipan and Tinian] in June 1944. Lt. William G. King took part in the invasion of Tinian. The 4th Marines suffered some 1,906 casualties on Tinian, of which 290 were killed in action. When the battalion surgeon became incapacitated by wounds, Lt. King took over his duties, treating the sick and wounded. For his personal initiative in taking over the duties of the battalion surgeon on Tinian, King received a letter of commendation from Admiral Chester. W, Nimitz [a copy of which accompanies this article]. The author could find no other evidence of any such commendation for a Navy dentist during WW II.
In August 1944, the 4th Marines returned to Camp Maui to recuperate and replenish men and supplies. By January 1945, the Marines were ready to begin the 4,000-mile voyage to Iwo Jima. The invasion of Iwo Jima began on February 19, 1945 and the island was not considered secure until March 26. Lt. William G. King found himself thrust into the middle of what is considered the greatest battle ever fought by the United States Marine Corps. And once again, King would take on the duties of a dentist and a doctor.
The work to save lives on Iwo Jima was an ongoing, all-hands-effort by doctors and dentists. The author would like to quote from an article dated Sunday, March 4, 1945, that appeared in The Alabama Journal, titled, “70 Mangled Marines Saved by Heroic Navy Medical Men.” The article was written by 2nd Lt. Jim G. Lucas [formerly of The Tulsa Tribune], who was a Marine Corps public relations officer:
Lt. William G. King giving inoculations at Camp Maui, Hawaii, prior to invasions in the Pacific during WWII. [Photo: Mrs. Helen King]
“Iwo Jima [delayed] – This Navy transport lay less than 1,000 yards off the blazing beaches last night while four gallant Navy doctors and two dentists fought to save the lives of 74 mangled Marines. It was a gripping battle, one which began less than two hours after the first assault waves had gone ashore yesterday. At the height of this fight to save life, enemy shells landed between this transport and one 100 yards to the left. For three hours, gun crews stood at their stations to fight off enemy planes while the silent battle went on inside. This morning, tired Lt. Cdr. J. H. McCauley, of Los Angeles, Ca. said he hadn’t done enough. Four Marines were dead, but 70 were alive and 68 have a good chance to survive. The first wounded were brought aboard even before this transport had discharged its combat troops. Lt. Cdr. McCauley, E. S. Groseclose, of Lynchburg, Va., E. B. Frazier of Mobile, Al. and Lt. R. A. Hamilton of Springfield, Ky., Navy doctors went into action as soon as the casualty boat came alongside….by mid-afternoon, three boatloads of casualties had arrived. Assisting the doctors were two Navy dentists, Lt. W. J. McGill of Homestead, Pa., and Lt. William King of Luverne, Al., and the ship’s chaplain, Lt. W. E. Wright of Fort Worth, Tx., former pastor of the First Christian Church at Smithville, Tx. One man died in the early afternoon. Dr. McCauley fought desperately to save his life, but the man was all but dead when he reached the ship. Unbelievable medical feats were accomplished in those brief hours. Brain surgery was performed on the rolling sea. Dr. McCauley saved the shattered arm of a Marine, rather than amputate. An attempt to serve the evening meal was interrupted by the arrival of more wounded. The battle to save life continued throughout the night and into the next morning. Chaplain Wright moved among the wounded. He was with all of the four who died when the end came. The first phase of the battle on this improvised hospital ship was to keep the wounded alive. Today, doctors began the fight to repair the wrecked bodies. Marine Col. Orin H. Wheeler of Washington D. C., said “The night’s work was the finest thing I have ever seen.”
Lt. William King’s efforts to treat wounded Marines onboard an improvised hospital ship was not the last time he was called upon to fulfill the duties of a medical doctor. He would soon find himself treating wounded Marines on the dangerous and inhospitable island of Iwo Jima.
[To be continued]
John Vick
Lt. William G. King, U.S. Navy Dental Corps, in his 1941 Ford convertible [Photo – Mrs. Helen King]
[Sources: Wikipedia; Naval history and Heritage Command; The Alabama Journal, article by 2nd Lt. Jim G. Lucas [Marine Corps Public Relations Officer], “70 Mangled Marines Saved by Heroic Navy Medical Men,” dated March 4, 1945]
The author thanks Dr. William G. “Bill” King, Jr. and his mother, Mrs. Helen King for providing information about the late Dr. William G. King, Sr. Mrs. Helen King is 100 years old and is as sharp as most 40-year-olds and a delight to talk to.
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Oscar Chapman Proving To Be A weapon For Auburn On Special Teams
Oscar Chapman Proving To Be A ‘weapon’ For Auburn On Special Teams https://digitalalabamanews.com/oscar-chapman-proving-to-be-a-weapon-for-auburn-on-special-teams/
Oscar Chapman set out one big goal for himself this season: Win the Ray Guy Award.
Approaching the midway point of the schedule, Auburn’s junior punter has done well to make his case while propping up an Auburn punt unit that has been among the best in the nation this year.
“Punters, you know, all they do is catch and kick it a couple times a game,” Chapman said. “But it’s a lot of preparation because I kick the ball maybe four times in a game; if one of those is bad, then everyone looks at you. But if I do my job right, no one really notices. So, it’s one of those — work really hard behind the scenes and just get the job done so you know there’s not a lot on you outside of that.”
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Chapman, in his third season after arriving from Australia, is currently 32nd among FBS punters in average at 44.1 yards per punt, which is just shy of his career-best average as a sophomore last season. More importantly, though, he has been precise and methodical with his approach and execution on special teams.
Thanks in large part to Chapman’s hangtime and ball placement, Auburn leads the SEC and is sixth nationally in net punting (44.11 yards per attempt) and is tops in the league and fifth nationally in punt return defense. Of Chapman’s 19 punts this season, only two have been returned; Missouri was responsible for both of those attempts in the teams’ SEC opener, totaling minus-1 yard between the two tries.
“It goes back to me trying to get good hangtime, good distance and putting the ball where coach wants me to,” Chapman said. “Just our gunners and team are working really hard on punts, pushing blokes down, getting around them and working downfield, putting pressure on the returner so he doesn’t want to catch it on me.”
Chapman has really hit his stride the last two weeks since the start of SEC play, when Auburn has had to lean on him more than its offense would like to admit.
Through the first three games of the season—against Mercer, San Jose State and Penn State—Chapman averaged just 40.7 yards on seven punts. His first punt of the season against Mercer went for just 29 yards, though it came on a short field (Auburn was at the Mercer 40-yard line) and he pinned the Bears at their own 11-yard line early in the second quarter.
Since the start of SEC play, though, Chapman has been called upon 12 times in two games. The Australian specialist has stepped up, averaging 46 yards per punt. That’s tops among SEC punters and 13th nationally among all punters in conference play this year.
He averaged 45.9 yards per punt on eight attempts against Missouri, including a season-long 61-yarder during Auburn’s 17-14 overtime win, which included six straight second-half possessions ending in a punt. Three of those eight punts were downed inside the Missouri 20-yard line. Last weekend against LSU, Chapman averaged 46.2 yards on four punts, again placing three of them inside the 20-yard line, with one downed at the LSU 10-yard line.
For his efforts against Missouri and LSU, Chapman was named to the Ray Guy Award’s weekly Ray’s 8, which recognizes the top-eight punter performances in the country each week during the season.
“Been really, really happy,” Chapman said. “We had a slow start — well, I did. We had a few short ones; we didn’t really punt too much. Last couple games we had a few more…. It’s really good; just trying to keep the average up there and have good hangtime and distance for the next how many games we’ve got left. Good to keep that form going into it.”
Chapman has continued to improve throughout his time on the Plains, and a piece of advice he received from fellow Australian and former Auburn punter Arryn Siposs prior to the 2020 season has stuck with him throughout his career with the Tigers: Practice hard, and don’t overthink things when the lights come on.
“Just catch the ball and kick it; everything will come to you,” Chapman said. “Everything’s kind of second nature — as soon as that ball’s snapped at me, just kind of forget everything and just do your job. I took that with me and work really hard during the week with my fundamentals, and then game time, just forget it all and just do it. That’s helped me so far.”
Chapman has proven to be one of the more consistent pieces to the puzzle for Auburn this season, and with how the offense has struggled—particularly in the second half of games—his reliability and precision in the punt game could prove critical in helping Auburn gain a field position advantage. That, in turn, could help put the offense in a better position to succeed after halftime against its upcoming opponents.
Chapman plans to keep doing his part in helping Auburn win the field position battle, and if he keeps up his current pace, he figures to be in the discussion for the Ray Guy Award as the season wears on.
“He’s a weapon,” Auburn coach Bryan Harsin said. “Oscar’s a guy that — we’ve talked about it — I really do, I think he’s the best if not one of the best in the country.”
Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.
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Kanye West Turns On Jared Kushner In New Interview
Kanye West Turns On Jared Kushner In New Interview https://digitalalabamanews.com/kanye-west-turns-on-jared-kushner-in-new-interview/
While Kanye West and former presidential adviser Jared Kushner were once friendly — meeting both privately and in the White House during the Donald Trump presidency — there now appears to be bad blood between the two.
In an interview that aired Thursday on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, West touched on his seemingly tarnished relationship with Jared — husband to Ivanka Trump — and Jared’s brother, Josh Kushner, an investor and the husband of supermodel Karlie Kloss.
Much of the comments centered on a since-deleted Instagram post in which West wrote, “F— JOSH KUSHNER,” slamming the younger Kushner for investing in his ex-wife Kim Kardashian‘s underwear line SKIMS (an investment that was made by Kushner’s company Thrive Capital before the two announced their public breakup).
West added a message about Josh’s older brother, writing: “JARED WAS HOLDING TRUMP BACK.”
Ivanka, however, still seems to be in West’s good graces. “IVANKA IS FIRE,” he added in his post.
West elaborated on the Instagram post in his interview with Tucker Carlson, telling the right-wing personality: “You know, I had a dinner with Ivanka, Jared and Josh. And a couple days later, I found out that Josh Kushner had 10% of SKIMS, which is a line that I developed with Kim.”
West continued: “And I had a lot of issues with the imagery of SKIMS. I felt like there’s a lot of imagery that was overly sexualized and things that I wouldn’t want to see my wife and definitely not my daughters doing in the future in order to sell product.”
West added that Kushner’s investment was more sizable than his own, telling Carlson, “So, I found out after this dinner that Josh Kushner had 10% of SKIMS and I had 5% of SKIMS. And regardless if Josh Kushner figured out how to put $150 million — I’m sure it wasn’t out of his own account, but $150 million, and I’m sure Jared still has a piece of that fund.”
The Kushners, West said, “could just write it off that I’m crazy” based on his Instagram post, “until they see my disposition in this interview, and then it’s going to get scary.”
In both his Instagram post and in the interview with Carlson, West questioned what Josh’s reaction would be if West had 10% ownership in a company owned by Kloss.
“I said, hey, Josh, what if I had 10% of Karlie Kloss’ lingerie shapewear swimsuit line, and you have 5% of it and you didn’t know? How would that make you feel?” West proposed.
Elsewhere in the interview with Carlson, West compared himself to Trump, dismissing Jared as a “handler.”
“After talking to them and really sitting with Jared and sitting with Josh and finding out other pieces of information, I was like, wow, these guys might’ve really been holding Trump back and being very much a handler [during the administration],” West said. “They love to just look at me or look at Trump like we’re so crazy and that they’re the businessmen.”
West added that the Kushners “weren’t serving my boy Trump the way we could have, because, you know, Trump wanted nothing but the best for this country.”
“A lot of times, the most fake people, their job is talking and making people feel comfortable,” West added.
West also criticized Jared’s previous work in Israel — a well-reported passion project that led to a peace treaty with the United Arab Emirates.
“I just think it was to make money,” West claimed of Kushner’s work on the peace deal. “I don’t know … I just think that that’s what they’re about is making money. I don’t think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they were born into money.”
A source previously told PEOPLE that Jared was first connected to West and Kardashian through Ivanka. Kardashian subsequently worked with the White House on various criminal justice reform issues, which was a rare bipartisan priority for the Trump administration, while West made headlines when he wore a “Make America Great Again” hat on Saturday Night Live and in the Oval Office during Trump’s tenure.
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West’s relationship with Jared previously extended outside the walls of the White House and in August 2020, reports surfaced that they had “met privately” in the lead-up to the rapper and designer’s failed presidential campaign, though West said it didn’t have to do with his run for office.
“I’m willing to do a live interview with the New York Time about my meeting with Jared where we discussed Dr Claude Anderson’s book Powernomics,” West tweeted at the time. (Anderson’s book, published in 2001, details “The National Plan to Empower Black America.”)
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Analysis | Did Trump Not Return All Documents? Here Are The Reasons Thats Plausible.
Analysis | Did Trump Not Return All Documents? Here Are The Reasons That’s Plausible. https://digitalalabamanews.com/analysis-did-trump-not-return-all-documents-here-are-the-reasons-thats-plausible/
It’s a question that has lingered since the historic search of Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago two months ago: Is it possible he still hasn’t returned all of the government documents, even after the search?
Multiple developments since then suggest that the Justice Department is quite preoccupied with precisely that.
The New York Times on Thursday night reported that the Justice Department has told Trump’s legal team that it believes he hasn’t returned all the documents he took when he left the White House. The report says the top Justice Department official pursuing the matter, Jay I. Bratt, said as much during a recent phone call.
As the story acknowledges, it’s not like this concern came out of nowhere. There has been myriad evidence not only that Trump sought to obscure the documents for more than a year, but that the Justice Department suspected that there might be more even shortly after the search.
It’s worth consulting the excellent timeline my colleague Rosalind S. Helderman has constructed.
The first thing to note is that Trump has clearly resisted turning over all the documents. The back and forth with the National Archives dates back to spring of last year, and Trump spent the next several months resisting its demands. Trump then turned over 15 boxes in January, and he handed over another set in June after a subpoena. The August search of Mar-a-Lago allowed agents to review the documents Trump had, but only in parts of the property the search warrant allowed them to venture.
The second is that, through it all, there’s plenty of evidence that Trump and his advisers have falsely claimed — and that Trump himself sought to have his lawyers falsely claim — that all such documents had been turned over:
The most prominent example is a sworn statement signed by Trump lawyer Christina Bobb in June, when Trump’s legal team handed over some documents. It said that a “diligent search was conducted” and that “any and all responsive documents accompany this certification.”
Dawsey and Alemany also reported this week that Trump in early 2022 asked his lawyer Alex Cannon to tell the Archives that all materials sought by the agency had been returned. But Cannon refused. Trump later released a public statement that didn’t include the assertion that everything had been returned.
The Post’s Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey and Helderman reported last month that former Trump deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin had provided a similar assurance to the Archives as far back as September 2021. Philbin said that former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows had told him none of the material Trump took was sensitive or classified, and that Trump only had 12 boxes of news clippings.
Philbin’s language — i.e. citing Meadows — and Cannon’s refusal both point to the prospect that Trump’s own lawyers don’t fully trust the people they are dealing with. And part of that could be that Trump hasn’t been terribly forthcoming. For example, The Post reported in recent weeks that, when some documents were turned over in January, Trump personally oversaw the packing of the boxes himself “and did so with great secrecy, declining to show some items even to top aides.”
Thirdly is something else that the Times reported in its story Thursday night: that one of Trump’s more recently installed lawyers, Christopher Kise, advised him to hire a forensics team to conduct a voluntary search for any additional documents. Trump was reportedly initially on board at first, but was later talked out of it.
A fourth is that Trump’s document-retention habits were notoriously bad, including ripping up documents and reportedly putting them in the toilet — and that haphazard treatment extended, The Post reported this week, to classified documents. We already know the classified records found at Mar-a-Lago were mixed together with all kinds of other documents. And even if you don’t believe Trump deliberately continues to retain additional documents from the White House, there’s the prospect that some might have been destroyed or lost.
The final key point is that the Justice Department has been pointing in this direction for a while now.
Questions about potential other documents first cropped up in earnest after a district court unsealed an inventory list of documents seized in the August search. The most conspicuous inclusion: the presence of 48 folders that were described as “empty folders with ‘CLASSIFIED’ banners.”
While it wasn’t clear whether those folders had contained documents seized in the search or handed over elsewhere, it raised the prospect of whether the documents could be traced to specific folders and help determine if everything had been handed over. (Archives officials had previously described “unfoldered” classified documents as being among things that were “of most significant concern.”)
Shortly thereafter, the Justice Department made clear the prospect of unreturned documents was a priority. A week after the inventory list was released, the Justice Department said in a court filing that it needed access to the seized materials to determine whether materials stored in the folders “may have been lost or compromised.” It also cited “efforts to identify the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored.”
In another filing to an appeals court, it reiterated the need for the documents, saying reviewing them “could lead to identification of other records still missing.”
That could’ve been interpreted as a ploy to get access to the documents, by floating a worst-case scenario and daring judges to deprive them of the records needed to investigate. But the Justice Department reportedly raising the issue with Trump’s own lawyers — and stating it so directly as that it believed Trump hadn’t returned everything — takes things to another level.
And one that wouldn’t seem like a huge stretch, if past is precedent.
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Canada To Ban Iran's IRGC Leaders From Entry Expand Sanctions
Canada To Ban Iran's IRGC Leaders From Entry, Expand Sanctions https://digitalalabamanews.com/canada-to-ban-irans-irgc-leaders-from-entry-expand-sanctions/
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Putin’s Own Allies Turn On Him as Ukraine Unleashes Hell in Stolen Russian Tanks
Sergei Karpukhin/ReutersHot on the heels of embarrassing reports of Russian recruits fighting each other and Moscow loyalists calling for Kremlin ministers to kill themselves, it seems the rage against Vladimir Putin’s handling of his invasion of Ukraine is now openly being conveyed to the man himself by members of his own inner circle.A report Friday—which is Putin’s 70th birthday—said that one of the despot’s closest allies had openly challenged the disastrous way the war was being conducted.
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Court Screwup Reveals Mar-a-Lago Judge’s Latest Legal Absurdity in Trump Case
Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily BeastFirst, she stopped FBI special agents from even glancing at the classified documents they recovered from Mar-a-Lago. Then she appointed a special court referee that former President Donald Trump wanted to slow down the investigation over his mishandling of classified documents.But now, it’s clear District Court Judge Aileen Cannon already knew the Department of Justice was ready to hand Trump back a ton of personal records six days before she cla
Bloomberg
Judge to Trump Lawyers Over Deposition: ‘Stop Wasting Time’
(Bloomberg) — Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers were told by a federal judge to “stop wasting time” after they tried halting the deposition of former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham in a defamation lawsuit minutes after it began, citing her painkiller medication. Most Read from BloombergBiden Says Putin Threats Real, Could Spark Nuclear ‘Armageddon’Kremlin Lets State Media Tell Some Truths About Putin’s Stalling WarBiden Should Hit Saudi Arabia Where It Really HurtsMusk’s Tw
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Russian Infighting Peaks With Calls for Suicide and Execution
GettyJust over two weeks since Vladimir Putin’s latest hail mary in his war against Ukraine, things are going so well for the Russian leader that draftees are rioting, his top allies are at each other’s throats over a series of losses, and his defense minister has now been urged by his own team to blow his brains out.“Yes, really, many are saying that… a defense minister who allowed such circumstances to arise could, as an officer, just shoot himself. But, you know, for many the word ‘officer’ i
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New York’s Sneaky New Tactic to Stifle Greg Abbott’s Migrant Bus Stunts
The Daily BeastNew York City deployed a new tactic Friday morning in an effort to counter Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s increasing flow of migrant buses: drowning the bus companies and their drivers in traffic violations.Two more buses arrived at the city’s Port Authority Bus Terminal just after 6 a.m. Friday, adding to the more than 17,000 migrants Abbott has bused to New York in a sick political stunt.This time, however, a half-dozen uniformed members of the NYPD Highway Patrol’s Motor Carrier Safe
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DROWNING POOL Intense New Album Strike A Nerve Out Now
DROWNING POOL Intense New Album “Strike A Nerve” Out Now https://digitalalabamanews.com/drowning-pool-intense-new-album-strike-a-nerve-out-now/
First Album In Six Years Released via T-BOY/UMe
New Lyric Video for “Strike A Nerve” Watch HERE Band On Tour Now
“The former nu-metal torchbearers have taken a long sonic journey since the Sinner days, recently settling into a breed of dirt-kickin’, bull-snortin’ groove-metal” – Revolver
“What the world needs now is some hard-hitting Drowning Pool to get you through the day.” – Loudwire
“[‘Mind Right’] has the groove metal swagger that Pantera was known for, though the frantic breakdown and squealy guitar solo at two minutes exhibits that classic Drowning Pool sound.” – Metal Injection
, /PRNewswire/ — Texas hard rock stalwarts DROWNING POOL’s first record in six years is out now via T-Boy/UMe. Earlier this summer, the band released their first single, the critically-hailed, blistering “Mind Right,” next the melodic and heavy “Choke,” and finally the hammering “A Devil More Damned” single and lyric video. On September 30, the wait was over and the full-length DROWNING POOL album Strike A Nerve and title track were released. Listen to the album HERE
Strike A Nerve Artwork
“In listening, you would believe many of the songs on Strike A Nerve were written about the difficult times we all faced during the lockdown. But the songs were actually written and recorded prior to Covid. That tells me that we were a bunch of isolated, frustrated dudes long before it became trendy!” says bassist Stevie Benton of the long-awaited album, which the band is currently supporting on the road through the end of the year. See current dates below.
“It’s pretty crazy to think it’s been almost seven years between records – so much has happened with the world, the band, our lives… We are so thankful to finally get this thing out there. I hope y’all dig it as much as we dig playing these new tunes,” adds drummer Mike Luce. “It really does cover some ground. There’s the heaviest thing we’ve done (to date) with ‘Mind Right,’ some classic, familiar DP-style riffin’ happening with songs like ‘Stay And Bleed’ and ‘Choke,’ Jasen wearing his heart on his sleeve in probably the most intimate song DP has done, ‘Everything But You,’ and all the while you have some slamming-bounce happening in ‘Down In The Dirt,’ then heavy bangers like ‘A Devil More Damned’ and ‘Rope,’ and more. It’s crazy and awesome at the same time to see how this band has evolved over the past 20-plus years. Thank you to the all-core folks that have stuck by us for so long…I and we are truly thankful. Hope to see you out there on the road when we hit your neck of the woods!”
Inspired by wearing life’s battle scars on our sleeves, Strike A Nerve is an 11-song tour-de-force through the torn and battered psyche of a band. Drowning Pool completed recording, mixing and mastering Strike A Nerve just as Covid forced worldwide lockdowns. Written and recorded before the pandemic that halted the world for more than two years, the album became more poignant with its time on the shelf.
Long hailed as champions of blue-collar hard rock and metal for their consistently incendiary live shows and vastly impressive catalog, Drowning Pool have become celebrants of the nu-metal movement, their working-class ethos and stubborn perseverance helping them overcome numerous trials while forging a bond few bands could ever realize.
Drowning Pool is Jasen Moreno (vocals), CJ Pierce (guitar), Stevie Benton (bass) and Mike Luce (drums). Strike A Nerve was produced by Shawn McGhee.
STRIKE A NERVE – TRACKLISTING
1. Doing Time In Hell
7. Everything But You
2. Hate Against Hate
8. Down In The Dirt
3. Stay And Bleed
9. Rope
4. Strike A Nerve
10. A Devil More Damned
5. Racing To A Red Light
11. Mind Right
6. Choke
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DROWNING POOL – FALL 2022 TOUR DATES
10/05 – The Blue Note – Harrison, OH
10/06 – The Winchester Music Tavern – Lakewood, OH
10/07 – Hard Times Four Mile Fork – Fredericksburg, VA
10/08 – Stage West Penn State – State College, PA
10/09 – Dingbatz – Clifton, NJ
10/11 – The Concourse – Knoxville, TN
10/12 – Shagnasty’s – Huntsville, AL
10/14 – The Wildcatter Saloon – Katy, TX
10/16 – KEGL Freakers Ball – Ft. Worth, TX
11/04 – Sunshine Studios Live – Colorado Springs, CO
11/05 – Mesa Theatre – Grand Junction, CO
11/06 – The Oriental Theatre – Denver, CO
11/08 – Barnato – Omaha, NE
11/10 – The Rave – Milwaukee, WI
11/11 – St. Croix Danbury Event – Danbury, WI
11/12 – Hard Rock Hotel and Casino – Sioux City, IA
11/13 – Rust Belt – East Moline, IL
11/15 – Amos Southend – Charlotte, NC
11/16 – Suck Bang Blow – Murrells Inlet, SC
11/18 – Southport Hall – New Orleans, LA
11/19 – The Haute Spot – Cedar Park, TX
MORE DATES TBA
ARTWORK: Hi Res
PHOTO: Hi Res
drowningpool.live
SOURCE Universal Music Enterprises
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Ukraine War: World Must Act Now To Stop Russia Nuclear Threat Zelensky
Ukraine War: World Must Act Now To Stop Russia Nuclear Threat – Zelensky https://digitalalabamanews.com/ukraine-war-world-must-act-now-to-stop-russia-nuclear-threat-zelensky/
Media caption,
Watch: Zelensky warns Russians are being prepared for nuclear warfare
By Hugo Bachega and John Simpson
BBC News, Kyiv
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russian officials have begun to “prepare their society” for the possible use of nuclear weapons, but added he does not believe Russia is ready to use them.
In an interview with the BBC, President Zelensky denied having urged strikes on Russia, claiming that an earlier remark had been mistranslated.
“You must use preventive kicks,” he said, referring to sanctions, “not attacks”.
In recent weeks, the Ukrainian army has recaptured large swathes of territory in a successful counter-offensive that has forced Russian troops to abandon long-held positions. In what Kyiv describes as Moscow’s response to its defeats, President Vladimir Putin has incorporated four partially occupied regions of Ukraine.
The annexations, widely dismissed as illegal, have raised fears of a possible escalation in the seven-month war. President Putin and other senior Russian officials have suggested that nuclear weapons – possibly smaller, tactical weapons – could be used to defend those areas, although Western officials say there has been no evidence Moscow is prepared to do so.
Speaking in English at the president’s office in Kyiv, President Zelensky said: “They begin to prepare their society. That’s very dangerous.
“They are not ready to do it, to use it. But they begin to communicate. They don’t know whether they’ll use or not use it. I think it’s dangerous to even speak about it.”
Then, in Ukrainian, he said through a translator: “What we see is that Russia’s people in power like life and thus I think the risk of using nuclear weapons is not that definite as some experts say, because they understand that there is no turning back after using it, not only the history of their country, but themselves as personalities.”
However, he denied having called for strikes on Russia during an online event on Thursday, saying the Ukrainian word he had used had been misunderstood.
The initial comment was denounced by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as “an appeal to start yet another world war”, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it demonstrated why Russia was right to launch its operation in Ukraine.
“After that translation,” President Zelensky said, “they [the Russians] did their way, how it’s useful for them, and began to retranslate it in other directions.”
The interview happened hours after US President Joe Biden said that the Russian threat to use nuclear weapons had brought the world closer to “Armageddon” than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis during the Cold War.
President Zelensky said action was needed now, as Russia’s threats were a “risk for the whole planet”. Moscow, he claimed, had “made a step already” by occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest nuclear station which President Putin is trying to turn into Russian property.
Around 500 Russian troops were at the plant, he said, although the Ukrainian staff still operate it.
“The world can stop urgently the actions of Russian occupiers,” President Zelensky said. “The world can implement the sanction package in such cases and do everything to make them leave the nuclear power plant.”
Empowered by sophisticated Western-supplied weapons, the Ukrainian army has made significant advances in the east and the south, reclaiming towns and villages even in areas the Kremlin claims are now part of Russia.
President Zelensky said Russian forces were putting up a “good enough fight”, but that Ukraine had received weapons – “I won’t say we have enough now” – and soldiers were motivated to push forward.
The Russian military’s setbacks, a major embarrassment for President Putin, have sparked unusual criticism of the country’s military.
Amid the losses, President Putin announced the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of reservists, which led to rare anti-war protests in Russia and to a huge exodus of military-age men.
President Zelensky urged Russians to “fight for your body, rights and soul”, saying: “Those mobilised kids now, they come with nothing. Without guns or armour. They are being thrown here like cannon fodder… If they want to be kebabs – fine, let them come. But if they are people after all and think that this is their lives, they have to fight.
“Everything Putin is afraid of, and it’s not the nuclear hit, he is afraid of his community,” he said. He’s afraid of his people. Because only those people are capable of replacing him nowadays. Take away his power. Give it to someone else.”
Asked whether President Putin could survive in an eventual Ukrainian win in the war, he said: “I don’t care.”
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Patrick Stallworth Convicted In Kamille Cupcake McKinneys Fatal Kidnapping
Patrick Stallworth Convicted In Kamille ‘Cupcake’ McKinney’s Fatal Kidnapping https://digitalalabamanews.com/patrick-stallworth-convicted-in-kamille-cupcake-mckinneys-fatal-kidnapping/
A jury has convicted the man accused in the deadly 2019 kidnapping of a Birmingham 3-year-old.
Patrick Stallworth and his girlfriend planned all day and then carried out the deadly kidnapping of Kamille “Cupcake” McKinney three years ago, federal prosecutors said Friday.
Why? It could have been for the 42-year-old Stallworth’s sexual gratification – child pornography was found on his phone and video evidence showed him buying a male enhancement pill form a convenience store hours after the abduction, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brittany Byrd in closing arguments.
It also could have been because Stallworth’s girlfriend, 32-year-old Derick Irisha Brown had lost custody of her six children and wanted another child.
“It doesn’t matter,’’ Bryd told jurors. “All that matters is you have everything you need to get justice for Kamille McKinney. Find him guilty.”
Stallworth’s attorney, Derrick Collins, said in his closing arguments, however, that the U.S. government failed to prove Stallworth was responsible, or even involved in a conspiracy with Brown, to kidnap Cupcake.
Collins offered condolences to Cupcake’s family on behalf of himself, Stallworth and Stallworth’s family, but said his client did not do anything to harm Cupcake.
“Mr. Stallworth has cried many times over this tragedy,’’ Collins said in closing arguments to the jury, reiterating that is the defense’s contention that Brown was solely responsible for the kidnapping and death of Cupcake. “My client is a victim…for falling in love with her.”
Stallworth and Brown are both charged federally with kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap a minor.
A jury returned with a verdict after less than an hour of deliberations. Stallworth was found guilty on both counts.
Brown’s trial is set for Nov. 14 in federal court in Tuscaloosa. The U.S. Department of Justice previously ruled it will not seek the death penalty in the federal charges.
Both still are charged with capital murder in state court. No state trial dates have yet been set.
Cupcake vanished from a birthday party at Tom Brown Village public housing community on Oct. 12, 2019. Her body was found at the landfill 10 days later.
Chief U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler is presiding over the trial. Lloyd Peeples, chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Criminal Division, along with assistant U.S. Attorneys Byrd and Blake Milner, are prosecuting the case. Stallworth is represented by Birmingham attorney Derrick Collins.
The jury began deliberating Friday after the trial’s start on Monday. Federal prosecutors introduced more than 100 pieces of evidence and 22 witnesses.
The prosecution contends that Stallworth and Brown had planned all day to kidnap a child. Earlier that Saturday, according to testimony, Stallworth was seen on video buying $18.91 in candy at a convenience store near Tom Brown Village.
Then, a short time later, a 12-year-old girl said Stallworth stopped her as she was leaving cheerleading practice at Hayes K-8 and asked her if she wanted some candy. She ran away.
Later, according to testimony, Stallworth and Brown were seen sitting in their Toyota Sequoia on a street and, when confronted by a resident, Brown asked where were all the children that used to play on the circle. That woman testified that Brown seemed overly interested in children.
Testimony throughout the week showed Stallworth in the Toyota Sequoia throughout the day. His whereabouts that day were documented through area surveillance videos and phone location data.
Stallworth initially denied knowing anything about Cupcake’s disappearance. He was interviewed five times by investigators and it was only during that final interview – after the girl’s decomposing body was found – that he admitted to seeing the girl at his apartment.
He claimed Brown had taken the girl, saying she wanted to keep her, and he also said the Brown wanted him to sexually touch the girl. He told detectives that Brown “put Cupcake to sleep” by putting her hands over her nose and mouth.
He claimed that he took a sleeping pill and when he awoke, Cupcake was no longer in the apartment. Brown was beside him in the bed, he said, and they had sex.
Testimony showed that Cupcake’s body was discarded in a construction trash bin at an apartment complex next door to where Stallworth and Brown lived in Center Point.
FBI Agent Cynthia Bobe said Derick Brown told them where to look for the girl’s body. Bobe testified that the trash bins were so tall that she went up to a second story at the complex and looked down on them. She did not see Cupcake’s body.
As investigators were looking at the bins, the company came to take them to the landfill. Those bins were kept separated from the general trash at the landfill, and that’s when authorities went through them and found Cupcake’s body.
FBI Agent Stanley Ruffin testified that he found Cupcake’s body, and said at first, he thought it was a doll.
“I saw what I thought was a doll just laying there,’’ an emotional Ruffin testified. “And I realized it wasn’t doll.”
“I had to close my eyes to think if I was really seeing what I was seeing,’’ Ruffin said. “I took a moment, thought about my own children.”
“When I opened my eyes, I realized I was actually seeing a human body,’’ he said. “A little girl.”
Ruffin retired a short time later.
Medical experts testified that Cupcake died by asphyxia. She had methamphetamine, Trazodone and Benadryl in her system.
Dr. Daniel Dye, of the Jefferson County Coroner/Medical Examiner’s Office said the meth and Trazodone contributed to the baby’s death. He said there was no visible sign of sexual trauma to Cupcake that they could find.
Cupcake’s DNA, however, was found on a plastic mattress cover in the couple’s apartment. DNA belonging to Stallworth and Brown were also found on the cover.
In the prosecution’s closing arguments, Milner said Stallworth accomplished what he and Brown set out to do that Saturday – kidnap a child. “But for his actions, she would still be alive,’’ he said of Cupcake.
The defense claimed that Stallworth never knew Cupcake had been abducted.
Collins, in his closing arguments, said the couple went to Tom Brown Village for Brown to talk to her children’s father about their whereabouts while they were in DHR custody.
Stallworth contends he got out of the car and walked around to avoid a run -in with the children’s father.
Collins said it was during that time that Brown took Cupcake and gave her Trazodone, described as a “knock-out” drug. Cupcake immediately fell asleep in the back of the SUV, Collins said.
“My client never knew that child was in the car,’’ Collins said.
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Herschel Walker Fires His Campaign's Political Director For Allegedly Leaking To The Press During The Trump-Backed Candidate's Messiest Week To Date: Report
Herschel Walker Fires His Campaign's Political Director For Allegedly Leaking To The Press During The Trump-Backed Candidate's Messiest Week To Date: Report https://digitalalabamanews.com/herschel-walker-fires-his-campaigns-political-director-for-allegedly-leaking-to-the-press-during-the-trump-backed-candidates-messiest-week-to-date-report/
Senate GOP candidate Herschel Walker has fired his political director during a raging scandal.
Republican aide Taylor Crowe was reportedly let go for leaking to the press.
Walker is battling headlines about an alleged abortion and attacks from his disillusioned son.
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Embattled Senate hopeful Herschel Walker has fired his political director for reportedly leaking stories to the press during the Georgia Republican’s most grueling week yet.
Taylor Crowe, who announced that he was joining Walker’s campaign just three months ago on LinkedIn, is now gone according to reports from CNN. The short-lived stint is attributed to Crowe sharing unauthorized information with the media while Walker is reeling from a barrage of negative press.
The Walker campaign did not respond to Insider’s request for comment about what, specifically, sparked the sudden departure.
Walker, who is vying to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, remains engulfed in controversy with just weeks to go before election day.
The family-related fracas includes swirling allegations that Walker, who espouses family values on the campaign trail and has endorsed adopting a nationwide abortion ban, paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. He’s also come under attack from his 23-year-old son, Christian Walker, a conservative culture warrior who has been bashing his absentee father on social media.
Herschel Walker continues to dispute the abortion story but has only added to the confusion. The fallout has been so damaging, that even scandal-plagued former President Donald Trump has decided to keep his distance for now.
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Is That Real? Stunned John King Asks Maggie Haberman If Trump Actually Asked His Diet Coke Sommelier How To Overturn Election
‘Is That Real?’ Stunned John King Asks Maggie Haberman If Trump Actually Asked His Diet Coke Sommelier How To Overturn Election https://digitalalabamanews.com/is-that-real-stunned-john-king-asks-maggie-haberman-if-trump-actually-asked-his-diet-coke-sommelier-how-to-overturn-election/
By Tommy ChristopherOct 7th, 2022, 1:42 pm
CNN’s John King asked New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman to verify that a stunning anecdote from her book about former President Donald Trump was real.
Haberman has been making the rounds to promote the release of her controversial but much-buzzed-about book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.
On Friday’s edition of Inside Politics, Haberman spent most of the hour with King, discussing the political news of the day. But during one segment, King had to ask her about a bizarre scene from the book.
At issue is Trump’s well-documented fascination with Diet Coke, which included a red button on the Resolute Desk that would send a White House valet running to fetch him a bottle of the soft drink.
King read a passage from the book that had Trump asking the Diet Coke wrangler for advice on how to overturn his election loss, then asked Haberman: “Is that real?”:
JOHN KING: So one last one here. This is about what to do. Trying to challenge the election, “quizzing nearly everyone, even the valet who brought him Diet Cokes after he pressed a red button on the Resolute desk about which different options would lead to success.” A: Is that real? And B, in the context, I’m not making– the White House valets are incredibly hard working people who love the institution of the building. But if Donald Trump runs again, who will be around him?
MAGGIE HABERMAN: I mean, you just hit on the important, most important point about a future Donald Trump presidency. I know there’s some theory that he’s figured out how to do it better next time. And that’s not really true. What he, he is obsessed with personnel. Everything with Donald Trump comes down to personnel. Where’s my Roy Cohn, searching for his fixers. Now, what he did figure out in 2020 is that he finally had the, quote unquote right people whom he thought would help him. Those are the kinds of folks he would turn to.
JOHN KING: Right. It’s fascinating. It’s great. From beginning to end.
Watch above via CNN.
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Kanye West Live: Kanye Selling His White Lives Matter Shirts Today
Kanye West Live: Kanye Selling His “White Lives Matter” Shirts Today https://digitalalabamanews.com/kanye-west-live-kanye-selling-his-white-lives-matter-shirts-today/
Key Takeaways from Kanye’s Tucker Carlson Interview
Rapper Kanye West sat for an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson Thursday night to discuss a range of topics, from his “White Lives Matter” shirts, to his support of Donald Trump, to his ex-wife Kim Kardashian.
Here are the main takeaways from the interview:
White Lives Matter
West talked about his “White Lives Matter” t-shirt that drew a lot of criticism at his Yeezy show during Paris Fashion Week Monday.
He said the shirt, which he wore along with conservative pundit Candace Owens backstage, was “funny.”
“I do certain things from a feeling,” West said. “I just channel the energy. It just feels right. It’s using a gut instinct, a connection with God, and just brilliance.”
West also recalled his father, an ex-Black Panther, who texted him about the shirts.
“He said, ‘White Lives Matter. Ha ha ha ha ha.’ And I said, ‘I thought the shirt was a funny shirt. I thought the idea of me wearing it was funny.’ And I said, ‘Dad, why do you think it was funny?’ He said, ‘just a Black man stating the obvious,'” West told Carlson.
He said that was his favorite response, adding that as an artist, he doesn’t have to give anyone an explanation.
“People, they’re looking for an explanation, and people say, ‘well, as an artist, you don’t have to give an explanation,’ but as a leader, you do,” West said. “So the answer to why I wrote White Lives Matter on a shirt is because they do. It’s the obvious thing.”
Lizzo, Abortion and Black Genocide
West said singer Lizzo’s weight and abortion and examples of the “genocide of the Black race” during the interview.
“It represents life, I’m pro-life,” West said when asked by Carlson why he’s wearing a lanyard with a picture of an ultrasound on it. “I don’t care about people’s responses. I care about the fact that there’s more Black babies being aborted than born in New York City at this point. That 50 percent of Black death in America is abortion.”
He said there are systems in place that prevent his “good friend” Lizzo from losing weight.
“Now let’s talk about Gabby and my good friend Lizzo. Lizzo works with my trainer, a friend of mine, Harley Pasternak,” West said. “When Lizzo loses 10 pounds and announces it, the bots […] on Instagram, they attack her for losing weight, because the media wants to put out a perception that being overweight is the new goal, when it’s actually unhealthy.”
West added that he weight is “clinically unhealthy” and people who promote her size are “demonic.”
Kim Kardashian
West is being accused of slut shaming his ex-wife Kim Kardashian after he criticized her for appearing with her “ass out” on a magazine cover.
“Kim is a Christian, but she has people who want her to go to Interview Magazine and put her ass out while she’s a 40-something-year-old multi-billionaire with four black children,” he said.
He also said he was unaware Kardashian was “close” with the Clintons.
MAGA and Trump
West also told Carlson that he was told his “life would be over” if he publicly supported former President Donald Trump.
The rapper has faced backlash for his support for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
“I really felt like I think I started to really feel this need to express myself on another level when Trump was running for office and I liked him,” West told Carlson. “My so-called friends [and] handlers around me told me if I said that I like Trump that my career will be over. That my life would be over.”
“They said stuff like ‘people get killed for wearing a hat like that,'” he continued. “They threatened my life… they basically said that I would be killed for wearing the hat.”
Part two of the interview is set to air on Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox News.
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Alabama Football Fan Guide To Tides Home Game Vs. Texas A&M
Alabama Football Fan Guide To Tide’s Home Game Vs. Texas A&M https://digitalalabamanews.com/alabama-football-fan-guide-to-tides-home-game-vs-texas-am/
Alabama fans circled this one on the calendar a long time ago. Jimbo Fisher’s Texas A&M Aggies visit Tuscaloosa this week for a hug SEC West showdown, with the Tide looking to avenge last year’s lone regular season loss.
The weather forecast looks perfect for a college football Saturday at the Capstone, so let’s everyone enjoy ourselves for what looks like an all-day affair with the Tide playing in primetime on CBS.
There are Bryant-Denny Stadium changes: What Alabama fans should know for 2022, including the introduction of alcohol sales in the venue. Here’s what you need to know about gameday at the Capstone this week.
READ: Alabama football bucket list: 25 things every Crimson Tide fan should do once
GATES OPEN: 4:30 p.m.
WALK OF CHAMPIONS: 5 p.m.
ELEPHANT STOMP: 6 p.m.
KICKOFF: 7 p.m.
TV: CBS
Bryant-Denny Stadium during the Alabama-Southern Miss game Saturday, Sept. 21, 2019. (Ben Flanagan / AL.com)
WEATHER
Friday: Sunny skies with a high near 84, followed by clear skies and an overnight low around 54.
Saturday: Sunny skies with a high near 76, followed by clear skies and an overnight low around 46.
Sunday: Sunny skies with a high near 77, followed by clear skies and an overnight low around 50.
— The National Weather Service
Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe (4) runs the ball against Arkansas during the second half of an NCAA college football game Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022, in Fayetteville, Ark. (AP Photo/Michael Woods)AP
THE GAME!
How did the hype for this game lose its luster? As soon as Jimbo Fisher went off on Nick Saban back in May, everyone immediately circled Oct. 8 on the schedule and braced for another mega-showdown game of the century-like atmosphere. We predicted ESPN’s “College GameDay” and/or SEC Network’s “SEC Nation” would settle on campus to preview an absolute showdown Saban and his former assistant Fisher.
Perhaps it’s because they insisted it’s all water under the bridge. Or perhaps it’s because the Aggies lost to Appalachian State and Mississippi State, and this game doesn’t have the same oomph we thought it did preseason.
Regardless, it’s a big game. Alabama looks to stay undefeated and avenge the 2021 loss in College Station, the Tide’s only regular season blemish on their way to the College Football Playoff. Bama is a big favorite, says Vegas, but what did that mean last year when A&M punched them in the mouth and walked away with an upset victory? Saban once again reminded us of all the rat poison that can distract his team heading into a game everyone else expects them to win. The Aggies can save their season with a win in Tuscaloosa. Alabama cannot focus on revenge or Jimbo and Saban’s summer spat.
Besides, the Tide may not even have their starting quarterback under center as Bryce Young recovers from a shoulder injury suffered against Arkansas. Will Jalen Milroe get his first career start? Will we see more fireworks from Jahmyr Gibbs? Will Texas A&M have another fast start against Pete Golding’s defense? We’ll find out under the lights Saturday night.
CASH-FREE
Beginning in 2022, all points of sale at Alabama athletics events for concessions and retail will be cashless. Fans with cash can exchange for a Fancard in $20 increments in two locations in the stadium: Lower Level (first Floor), Section AA (near Concession S126); and Upper Level (eighth Floor), Section NN-8 (near Concession N804).
Each location will have a team member to assist guests who require this service. UA said Fancards are a preloaded Mastercard with no activation fees. These can not only be used at stadium concessions but also anywhere Mastercard is accepted.
ALCOHOL SALES
Alabama Athletics now sells beer and wine at select sporting events.
The majority of concessions locations offer beer and wine, and additional portable stations are set up on the 100, 200 and 800-level concourses. Guests must be 21 to purchase and show valid proof of identification. IDs are checked at time of purchase, and there is a limit of two alcoholic beverages per transaction. Sales of beer and wine concludes at the completion of the third quarter.
UA said alcohol purchased in the stadium concourses cannot be brought into or out of a premium seating area, and all alcohol purchased at sporting events must be consumed at the venue and may not be carried out “under any circumstances.”
CONCESSIONS
Concession stands are located throughout the concourses of Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Crimson Crave trailer is set up along the Walk of Champions as a pre-entry dining option.
Reminder: All concession transactions will be cashless.
ASAP will be available for mobile ordering at select portables throughout 100, 200 and 800-level concourses. You can find QR codes with a link to order and pick up concessions items from your smartphone throughout the stadium.
And, folks…they have a $14 giant pretzel now. People buying and gobbling them up at the Louisiana-Monroe game, so if you want to indulge, grab one early.
TAILGATING
Tailgating on the Quad is allowed in 2022. Free Quad tailgating is located on the west side of the Quad. Reservations are not required. Quad tailgate supply drop-off is located on Colonial Dr. and is open during the following times: Friday at 6-8 p.m. and Saturday at 7 a.m. until noon (for Texas A&M). Fans are permitted 15 minutes to unload equipment and exit Colonial Drive. View the Quad drop-off map. The UA Gameday Info tent is located at the corner of 9th Avenue and University Boulevard.
FOOD VENDORS
You can find the following food trucks along 6th Avenue on campus this Saturday:
Jim ‘N Nick’s
Full Mon BBQ
A Little Some Extra
La Mexicana
Honey’s Kitchen
MOBILE TICKETING
In 2020, ticketing and parking went mobile-only, providing a safe fan experience with quick and convenient entry on gameday during the pandemic. UA said mobile ticketing will reduce the risk of lost, stolen or counterfeit tickets while providing the ability to easily manage, transfer or sell your tickets anytime from your smartphone, so the system will remain in effect.
You can manage their tickets on their smartphone via the Alabama Crimson Tide mobile app or online at RollTide.com/MyAccount. UA encourages fans to download their tickets before gameday. Prior to reaching the Bryant-Denny gates, fans can open their digital wallet on their smartphone, select their game tickets or parking passes, and hold their smartphone near the scanner for entry.
UA noted that “Print-at-Home” tickets (PDF copies) are no longer available, and mobile tickets are only valid when presented on a smartphone. Printed copies of QR codes will not be accepted. If you do not have a smartphone, you can contact the Alabama Athletics TIDE PRIDE/Ticket Office before gamedays for options.
TICKET TRANSFER
UA also announced some new upgrades to mobile ticketing in 2022. The transfer process will now allow you to utilize your phone contacts when transferring tickets through the Alabama Crimson Tide mobile app. Also, there will no longer be a transfer expiration, and you have the ability to better track your transfers with a first and last name associated with all transfers. Ticket purchasers can also quick download their game tickets by using our new “Add All” feature.
Ticketholders can transfer their tickets to someone in the event they are unable to attend a game. Ticketholders (excluding UA faculty/staff and students) can still post their tickets on StubHub.
METAL DETECTORS / CLEAR BAG POLICY
UA will have walk-through metal detectors at all gates of Bryant-Denny Stadium. Fans do not need to remove shoes or belts to walk through the metal detectors.
Alabama will also continue to enforce its clear bag policy in the interest of public safety and to significantly expedite entry into Bryant-Denny Stadium. The only non-clear plastic bag fans can bring into Bryant-Denny is a small clutch purse no larger than 4 1/2 inches-by-6 1/2 inches. If any larger, the bags must be clear and plastic. Fans can also bring in one-gallon clear plastic freezer bags, similar to Ziploc bags you buy at the grocery store. Learn more about the clear bag policy.
COOLING STATIONS
It’s beginning to cool off now that autumn has arrived, but seasoned Alabamians know we’re not out of the woods yet. UA wants to help you stay cool on gamedays. Cooling stations will include water monsters, fans, shaded seating, sunscreen and first aid staff are located at the following locations:
Lower Level (first Floor) Sections G, AA & LL
Lower Level (second Floor) Sections D, K, BB & MM
Upper Level (eighth Floor) Section SS-10 First Aid Room
Water Monsters featuring 150-gallon tanks of cold filtered water are located throughout Bryant-Denny Stadium to assist fans in staying cool and hydrated. Fans are permitted to bring empty, non-glass, bottles/cups inside to fill up at the various water stations. Small cups will also be provided next to the canister.
Lower Level (first Floor): Sections G, LL, AA & Gates 7, 30, 38 & 59
Lower Level (second Floor): Sections D, K, BB, MM, S-8
Upper Level (eighth Floor): Sections NN-1, NN-14, SS-1, SS-14
TRAFFIC
UA has provided four clearly defined routes designed to provide fans with the most time-efficient ways to and from campus. Read their pregame and postgame traffic maps.
The Cottondale and 216 routes are best for fans traveling from Birmingham and parking on the east side of campus.
The I-359 route is best for fans traveling from Birmingham or west of Tuscaloosa and parking downtown or on the west side of campus.
The McFarland route is best for fans traveling from Birmingham and parking on the east side of campus.
Beginning three hours prior to kickoff, or earlier if deemed necessary by law enforcement, the core campus area will be closed to through traffic. A proper UA Gameday permit is required to ac...
Cookbook Looks Back At Dynamic Popeyes Founder And His Food
Cookbook Looks Back At Dynamic Popeyes Founder And His Food https://digitalalabamanews.com/cookbook-looks-back-at-dynamic-popeyes-founder-and-his-food/
By CHEVEL JOHNSON – Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana is known for delivering food with big, bold flavor. The same can be said for the founder of the Popeyes fried chicken empire, who put spicy chicken, red beans and dirty rice on the national map and whose story is outlined in a new book, “Secrets of a Tastemaker: Al Copeland, The Cookbook.”
Copeland’s son Al Copeland Jr. said he and authors Chris Rose and Kit Wohl tried to capture the “real life and times of Al Copeland” in the book released last month.
The elder Copeland, who died in 2008, made his mark in business with his restaurants, but was also known for philanthropic endeavors — including “Secret Santa” missions to thousands of children in metro New Orleans and the extravagant Christmas light display at his home. For a time, he even had a successful offshore powerboat racing career.
“Some people thought he was flashy and flamboyant, and he was,” his son said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But what they didn’t know was that everything that was his was yours — whether that was a Lamborghini or just welcoming you into his home. He was very much a man who enjoyed seeing people happy.”
Copeland built — and eventually lost — the Popeyes fried chicken empire. His first restaurant opened 50 years ago, in 1972, in the New Orleans suburb of Arabi. The “Love That Chicken” jingle, still used in commercials today, debuted in 1980.
The book recounts Copeland’s boldness in cooking, and includes recipes — though not those associated with Popeyes, his son said. Readers can get a glimpse, he said, into the kind of food Al Copeland used in Copeland’s, the casual dining restaurant chain venture he started in 1983.
The book includes dishes served at the Copeland family table, including corn and crab bisque, crawfish bread, ricochet catfish, crawfish eggplant au gratin, and pork tenderloin CP3, named for then-New Orleans Hornets star guard Chris Paul.
“What runs throughout the book … is the story of the American dream,” Copeland Jr. said. “This book is about a guy who didn’t have much of anything, not much of an education and he was living in a world that wouldn’t give him much of a shot.”
By 1989, there were 700 Popeyes franchises in the United States and abroad, and Copeland leveraged those assets to buy the Church’s Fried Chicken chain. That move gave him control over 2,000 chicken restaurants. But the success was short-lived: A little more than two years later, the merged company had amassed more than $400 million in debt and, in 1991, Copeland filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for Al Copeland Enterprises.
In May 1992, the bankruptcy court awarded Copeland’s creditors total control of his chicken empire under a new name, America’s Favorite Chicken Company. Copeland did retain ownership of the Popeyes recipes and the manufacturing company that made the seasonings, according to the book.
“Although he was not operating Popeyes, the company could not operate — not even exist — without him,” the book reads. “That ruling reinforced Al’s longtime belief that he should always have a back door, an alternative plan for change.”
In 2017, Restaurant Brands International Inc. acquired Popeyes.
Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, said Copeland was known for being bold, in thought and business.
“He has done almost more than any other chef to get the city’s most authentic flavors to people everywhere,” she said. “I think of him as an ambassador for New Orleans … because wherever there’s a Popeyes, then you have the chance to get a piece of New Orleans.”
The September book launch helped mark the 50th anniversary of Popeyes. Copeland Jr. said the fried chicken franchise was founded when he was 9 years old so he’s had a “chance to experience the whole ride from the poorer times to the exciting times.”
“This project is bringing back a lifetime of memories and it’s a way for my father’s legacy to live on,” he said.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Debate Interruptus! https://digitalalabamanews.com/debate-interruptus/
TGIF, Illinois. My walkout song: “Don’t stop believin’.”
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Illinois Playbook won’t publish Monday, Indigenous Peoples Day. We’ll return to your inbox Tuesday.
Darren Bailey did his best to get under Gov. JB Pritzker’s skin Thursday in their first face-to-face debate in the governor’s race.
The Republican state senator was animated as he repeatedly spoke over Pritzker, calling him a liar and making a gimmicky move to get the Democratic governor to pledge he wouldn’t run for president if reelected.
Pritzker appeared unfazed, ignoring the interruptions, though he came off as a bit flat as a result. Pritzker hurled his share of invectives: “liar,” “hypocrite” et al and answered a moderator’s question about presidential aspirations. “I intend to serve four years more as governor, and get reelected. And I intend to support the president who is running for reelection.”
To viewers who have already made up their minds, the debate probably firmed up their support, one way or another. (After all, early voting has already started.) But this debate wasn’t for them. It was for the folks who haven’t yet decided how they’ll vote.
And for them, the debate revealed in the clearest of terms how far off the two men are on policy.
As WBEZ’s Dave McKinney explains: “Pritzker portrayed Illinois as a state that is on the financial rebound, embraces diversity and trusts women to make the right decision for themselves when it comes to abortion. And Bailey, who frequently went on the offensive, knocked Illinois as a place where crime runs rampant, businesses are leaving and state finances are in ruin — and he pinned all of that on Pritzker.”
SAFE-T Act: Bailey said he would work to repeal the law that will bring no-cash bail, even though doing so would take away new programs that benefit police, like mental health support and body cameras. Pritzker, who has previously said the law needs clarification, wouldn’t detail during the debate what those tweaks might be.
Economy: If you played a drinking game based on Bailey saying “zero-based budget,” you probably passed out before the debate finished. His answer to all the state finance questions was to adopt a budget cycle that starts at zero, thus rejecting the programs that were funded in the last budget. Pritzker pointed to his four balanced budgets and getting the state’s backlog of bills paid off. The governor said he wouldn’t pursue the graduated-rate income tax system rejected by voters in 2020, and he believes it’s possible to have permanent tax cuts if state budgets keep getting balanced.
Abortion: Pritzker reiterated he would protect a woman’s right to choose abortion. Bailey sidestepped the issue. “Illinois has the most permissive abortion laws in the nation. Nothing’s going to change when I’m governor. I couldn’t change them if I could,” he said.
Workers Rights amendment: Pritzker said he’s supported the right for workers to organize “my entire career.” Bailey said unions should “stay in their lane.”
Guns and education: Pritzker wants to see a ban on assault-style firearms in Illinois and nationwide. Bailey wants to fire “the entire[state] board of education.”
Pandemic: Pritzker accused Bailey of not being vaccinated, prompting a stunned Bailey to shout, “And how do you know that?”
Some humor: Asked what they’re walkout song would be, Pritzker whiffed, saying any song about big ideas (his campaign theme). Bailey: “A Hard Workin’ Man” by Brooks & Dunn.
Watch the full debate here.
“Pritzker had a rough start and Bailey was a tough opponent,” reports NBC 5’s Mary Ann Ahern
Thorough recap by Tribune’s Rick Pearson and Jeremy Gorner
Another thorough recap by Mike Smith and Maggie Strahan via WGN 9
At Illinois State watch party, students see chance to engage in governor’s race, by Pantagraph’s Connor Wood
Biden pardons marijuana offenses, calls for review of federal law: “The president also urged governors to take similar action for state offenses of civil possession of marijuana. In addition, he called on the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to “expeditiously” review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Currently, marijuana is classified as a Schedule I narcotic, meaning it’s deemed to have no medical use and a high potential for abuse. Heroin and LSD are other Schedule I drugs,” write POLITICO’s Eugene Daniels and Natalie Fertig.
Illinois, of course, has been ahead of the game on the issue, legalizing cannabis three years ago. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said she’s “heartened” that the Biden administration is taking the same “momentous steps” toward equity. “It has been long understood that the war on drugs was a war on Black and Brown communities. This step, which mirrors efforts passed here in Illinois in 2019 is well overdue and an historic first step to repair the harm caused to these communities,” Foxx said in a statement.
Have a news tip, suggestion, birthday, anniversary, new job, or any other nugget for Playbook? I’d like to hear from you: [email protected]
At the Oak Brook DoubleTree at 8:30 a.m. to give remarks at the Illinois Association of Hispanic State Employees Conference and Job Fair. — At Western Illinois University at 11 a.m. to break ground on a new Center for Performing Arts.
On 79th Street at 2:30 p.m. for a ribbon-cutting for Healthy Lifestyle Hub on the Auburn Gresham INVEST South/West corridor.
In the Cook County Building at 10:30 a.m. to present the fiscal 2023 budget to the Forest Preserves Board.
— Now Gannett is publishing Dan Proft’s ‘newspapers’: “While the papers claim to comprise honest local reporting — ‘Real data. Real news,’ the slogan reads — they are part of a wider trend of the blurring of journalism and campaigning. This has sparked fears that, ahead of the midterms, readers are consuming divisive messages without realizing the true source,” writes Jem Bartholomew in Columbia Journalism Review.
— Tribune will no longer make endorsements for top offices: “Alden Global Capital, the second-largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., is soon to announce that all of its papers will no longer back political candidates for president, governor and Senate seats,” by Crain’s Corli Jay.
— Sun-Times drops paywall and offers digital content for free to everyone, by Nykia Wright, Jennifer Kho and Celeste LeCompte
— Abortion an issue in Supreme Court races, and billionaire Ken Griffin is getting involved: “A SuperPac, funded by the billionaire Republican mega-donor Ken Griffin, is now airing an ad trying to link the Democrats to indicted former House Speaker Mike Madigan,” reports ABC 7’s Craig Wall.
And the Illinois GOP has created CleanUpILCourts.com website that features Madigan’s influence on the judicial system to attack Lake County Judge Elizabeth Rochford and Appellate Court Judge Mary Kay O’Brien.
— Preckwinkle opponent Bob Fioretti criticizes growth in county budget, opposes guaranteed income plan, wants a hiring freeze, by Tribune’s A.D. Quig
— IL-06 race: Rep. Sean Casten discuss gun control, immigration, more in 6th District congressional race, via Daily Herald
— IL-10 race: Rep. Brad Schneider interview with Daily Herald in his race for Congress, via Daily Herald
— IL-11: Democratic Rep. Bill Foster’s new ad focuses on crime and safety.
— Money race heats up: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says she raised $1 million in the third quarter and has $3 million cash on hand. Ald. Sophia King raised $191,500. Paul Vallas was second to King among challengers at $147,000. Businessman Willie Wilson reported $1,033,000, but just $33,000 of that came from donors. He donated the other $1 million to himself.
— ARRIVED: Chicago saw 198 new migrants arrive Wednesday, according to the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services. The city has now seen 2,406 asylum-seekers bused from the Texas border since Aug. 31.
— First day of City Council budget hearings: CPD hiring, mayor’s staff under scrutiny: “The lines of questioning from alderpersons include the size of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office (Too big, many said.) to what the city is doing to recruit and train enough police officers to keep pace with a record number of retirements,” by Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman.
— City lawyers try (again) to block Mayor Lori Lightfoot deposition in CPD whistleblower case: “Isaac Lambert claims he was demoted for refusing to lie about a fellow officer’s shooting of an autistic teen,” by Sun-Times’ Andy Grimm.
— Chicago-area hospital workers call for more staff and higher wages, by WBEZ’s Esther Yoon-Ji Kang
— Chicago’s military education chief quietly resigned after ‘systemic failures’ involving student sex abuse, by WBEZ’s Alex Ruppenthal
— Suburban woman gets 2 weeks in jail in Jan. 6 attack on U.S. Capitol: “Leticia Ferreira, 33, a Brazilian national who lives in Indian Head Park, was the second defendant from the Chicago area so far to receive a sentence of at least some incarceration for participating in the events in the nation’s capital that day,” by Tribune’s Jason Meisner.
We asked how you like your sandwiches cut (Hey, it’s Friday!):
Stella Black, Ed Mazur, Patricia Ann Watson and Jori Fine, who handles public policy for Whole Foods Market, all like diagonal. It’s less messy and “tastes better.”
Steve McKenzie: “The four-corner sectional diagonal cut is required for a proper triple-decker BLT. But diagonal cuts for grilled cheese and a north-south cut for a PB&J.”
Joseph Monack: “I cut my sandwich in half along the transverse plane, which is to say between the two pieces of bread. Then I have two open-faced sandwiches.”
Do you let campaign folks come into your home to talk about their candidate? Email [email protected]
— Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to rights advocates in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, via New York Times
— House GOP confronts its 2023 rift: Impeachments, by POLITICO’s Jo...
The Justice Department Believes Trump Might Have More White House Documents
The Justice Department Believes Trump Might Have More White House Documents https://digitalalabamanews.com/the-justice-department-believes-trump-might-have-more-white-house-documents-2/
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice suspects former President Donald Trump still possesses documents that he took from the White House, people familiar with the matter told NBC News on Friday.
The department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, recently communicated that concern to Trump’s lawyers, the sources said.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the department believed Trump had not returned all of the documents he took from the White House. This was also confirmed by The Wall Street Journal.
The revelation leaves some key questions unanswered, including whether the department has concrete evidence that Trump still holds classified material or it’s just a suspicion based on inferences, such as the empty envelopes with classified markings that were seized at Mar-a-Lago or information from the National Archives that it’s still missing documents from Trump’s presidency.
Various court filings from the department have suggested that some presidential records are still missing.
In a September filing opposing U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling barring the Justice Department from accessing documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, the department complained that her ruling “appears to bar the FBI and DOJ from further reviewing the records to discern any patterns in the types of records that were retained, which could lead to identification of other records still missing.”
The Justice Department has also pointed to the empty envelopes marked classified that the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago as evidence some docents could be missing.
The Times reported that Trump’s lawyers were split on how to respond to the Justice Departments questions about any further records in the former president’s possession, with one faction, led by attorney Chris Kise, suggesting they hire a forensic accounting firm to search for additional documents. Other lawyers talked Trump out of that idea, the Times reported. NBC News has not independently confirmed the reported disagreement.
The Justice Department declined to comment. NBC has reached out to Kise for comment.
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said in statement Friday that the “weaponized Department of Justice and the politicized FBI are spending millions and millions of American tax dollar to perpetuate witch hunt after witch hunt.”
Other former presidents had moved “millions of pages of documents,” he said, adding, “The document hoax is just that, a hoax and a charade.”
“President Trump is being unjustly, illegally, and unconstitutionally targeted because he won’t stop fighting to restore power back to the people,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Trump filed an emergency request Tuesday asking the Supreme Court to intervene in the case and allow a special master to review classified documents federal agents seized from Trump’s Florida estate. The request came in response to a ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 21 that said the Justice Department could resume using classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago in its criminal investigation, but barred the special master from reviewing them.
That part of the federal appeals court’s decision “impairs substantially the ongoing, time-sensitive work of the special master,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Moreover, any limit on the comprehensive and transparent review of materials seized in the extraordinary raid of a president’s home erodes public confidence in our system of justice.”
The National Archives informed the House Oversight and Reform Committee last week that some records from the Trump White House had still not been turned over in compliance with the Presidential Records Act.
Several days after the FBI searched Trump’s Florida property, a receipt of recovered items showed that agents found a trove of top-secret and other highly classified documents. Federal agents removed 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were labeled secret and top secret.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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Trump-Backed Super Pac Places 6-Figure Ad Buys In Ohio Pennsylvania Senate Races
Trump-Backed Super Pac Places 6-Figure Ad Buys In Ohio, Pennsylvania Senate Races https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-backed-super-pac-places-6-figure-ad-buys-in-ohio-pennsylvania-senate-races/
Former president Donald Trump‘s new “MAGA Inc.” Super PAC has placed two six-figure ad buys in states with tight midterm Senate races.
The super PAC, launched by Trump’s team in September with plans to to support pro-Trump candidates in the midterms, has completed ad buys in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
So far, Politico reported via AdImpact that $135,650 worth of ads were placed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and another $276,000 in Columbus, Ohio, and Cleveland, Ohio, adding that the numbers are expected to rise as more stations report buys.
The former president has been campaigning in Ohio for Republican J.D. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” and last month rallied in Pennsylvania for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former daytime host who came to popular culture via Oprah Winfrey.
Democrat John Fetterman had a double-digit lead over Oz through August, but the gap has narrowed in recent weeks. Polls show the state’s lieutenant governor out-polling the former heart surgeon by 4.3%, according to Real Clear Politics.
In Ohio, polls are lagging, with the last one reported in late September showing Vance up by 1.2% over Democrat Tim Ryan, well within the margin of error. The lead has flipped back and forth between the two candidates since Vance’s five-point lead in August eroded, according to Real Clear Politics.
Trump had a $100 million war chest to spend on candidates he supports for the November elections, but Politico reported he has faced criticism for not using more. Both Vance and Oz trail their opponents in fundraising, making outside support more important.
Fetterman recently told MSNBC that Republicans “unloaded $15 million of McConnell’s money on us”, referring to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “And now we are the top target on Fox News,” he added.
Ohio and Pennsylvania are two of the most expensive battleground races, as well as being favorite targets for late night hosts, and will help determine the balance of the Senate for the next two years.
Federal Elections Commission filings show Pennsylvania on top this year, with $87.4 million raised by four candidates, with Fetterman on top with over $25.8 million and Oz second with $19 million.
Ohio is fifth with $73.9 million raised, including $21.5 million by Ryan and $3.6 million by Vance, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Trump also continues to hold rallies with candidates he supports. He’ll next appear in Arizona and Nevada this weekend.
The former president’s endorsements were key for candidates during primary season, but with major issues like the overturn of Roe v. Wade playing into this year’s races, it’s less clear how his support will play in the general election.
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Donald Trump Is Suing CNN For Defamation Seeks $475M
Donald Trump Is Suing CNN For Defamation, Seeks $475M https://digitalalabamanews.com/donald-trump-is-suing-cnn-for-defamation-seeks-475m/
Former president Donald Trump doesn’t want to stop calling CNN “fake news.” He wants the network to pay.
Per a federal court filing in Florida, Trump is suing the network to the tune of $475 million. This for what his attorneys cited as a smear campaign “with a series of ever-more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of ‘racist,’ ‘Russian lackey,’ ‘insurrectionist,’ and ultimately ‘Hitler.’”
The lawsuit was filed in Fort Lauderdale.
“Beyond simply highlighting any negative information about the plaintiff and ignoring all positive information about him, CNN has sought to use its massive influence, purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source, to defame the plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically,” the filing reads.
Donald Trump SUES CNN $475M For Defamation
Trump sent an email to those on a subscription list aiming to raise funds for the suit against the “Corrupt News Network.”
CNN has declined comment on the filing or Trump’s repeated allegations that the network set out to make sure he was defeated politically.
He also alleges that CNN has ramped up its attacks on him recently. Fearing that he will run for president again in 2024.
“As a part of its concerted effort to tilt the political balance to the left, CNN has tried to taint the plaintiff,” the suit said.
Trump, 76, lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden. While he has dropped several hints, he has not said if he will run again.
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Top Robot Companies Pledge Not To Add Weapons To Their Tech To Avoid Harm Risk
Top Robot Companies Pledge Not To Add Weapons To Their Tech To Avoid Harm Risk https://digitalalabamanews.com/top-robot-companies-pledge-not-to-add-weapons-to-their-tech-to-avoid-harm-risk/
Several robot production companies have pledged not to support the weaponization of their general purpose robots and have encouraged other companies to follow suit.
In an open letter, six leading robotics firms promised not to add weapons to their general use technology and said they would oppose others doing so.
“We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues,” read the open letter, first reported by Axios.
“We also call on every organization, developer, researcher and user in the robotics community to make similar pledges not to build, authorize, support, or enable the attachment of weaponry to such robots.”
The letter was signed by Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics and Unitree Robotics.
Co-signers also pledged to review applications to buy their robots to prevent possible weaponization and to investigate technological features that could be weaponized in future.
“To be clear, we are not taking issue with existing technologies that nations and their government agencies use to defend themselves and uphold their laws,” the letter said.
‘The benefits for humanity of these technologies strongly outweigh the risk of misuse.’ Photograph: Annegret Hilse/Reuters
In a statement to Axios, Boston Dynamics said it was concerned about attempts made to weaponize commercially available robots, adding that such developments could further erode public trust in technology.
“For this technology to be broadly accepted throughout society, the public needs to know they can trust it,” the statement said. “And that means we need policy that prohibits bad actors from misusing it.”
Emergency departments have used Boston Dynamics’s “Spot robot” – a dog-like machine – to survey situations, NPR reported. The company has said the robot was not designed for surveillance or as a replacement for human police officers.
In their open letter, the six robotics companies said they were “convinced that the benefits for humanity of these technologies strongly outweigh the risk of misuse, and we are excited about a bright future in which humans and robots work side by side to tackle some of the world’s challenges”.
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Joro Spider Invasion Reaches Alabama: What You Need To Know
Joro Spider Invasion Reaches Alabama: What You Need To Know https://digitalalabamanews.com/joro-spider-invasion-reaches-alabama-what-you-need-to-know/
A hiker in north Alabama has reported to AL.com what would be the first confirmed sighting of the invasive Joro spider in Alabama.
The Joro spider, which can grow to be several inches long, has become a huge nuisance for people living in north Georgia, reproducing in huge numbers and spinning large, three-dimensional webs that can take over porches, sheds and wooded areas.
Since being introduced to north Georgia from Asia sometime around 2013, the spiders have spread to Tennessee and both Carolinas, and is expected to continue to spread throughout the eastern United States.
Now it appears the spiders are in Alabama.
Mathew Guthrie of Paint Rock, Ala. said he was hiking with his brother at the Roy B. Whitaker Preserve in Paint Rock, about 15 miles east of Huntsville on Saturday, when he came across a spider like nothing he’d ever seen before.
“We almost ran into it,” Guthrie said. “I went to move the web and it was really thick, almost like fishing line or like a thread from clothing, but it was golden.
“And that kind of took us back a little bit. Then we looked at the spider, and we had never seen one like that before.”
He took photos of the large, yellow spider and its golden web, which he sent to AL.com as seen in the gallery above.
Guthrie said he’s been going to that preserve for years but never saw anything like this spider until last week.
“We sat and watched it and tried to take pictures of it for maybe 20 minutes, because we just thought it was really cool,” Guthrie said.
“I hate spiders, but I was like ‘That is neat.’”
AL.com sent Guthrie’s photos to Andy Davis, a research biologist at the University of Georgia who studies Joros, who confirmed that the animal in the photos is a large, female Joro spider, likely already carrying an egg sack, meaning it’s likely been in the area for a while.
“Basically, by the time the average person sees one, they’re already there, and they’ve been there for a while,” Davis said. “This one in the picture looks like a big fat female, which means she probably grew up here.”
Davis said it’s no surprise that the Joro would reach into the Huntsville area, after having already been reported around Chattanooga, Tenn. and multiple spots on the Georgia side of the state line.
“North Georgia especially is basically overrun with them,” Davis said. “So it is damn near inevitable that you’re going to get some in Alabama this year.”
Here are some facts about the Joro spider:
Joro spiders are known as remarkably good hitch-hikers, and young spiders are able to spread by “ballooning,” or spinning thread into the air during high winds to carry them off to new areas. They can also hide egg sacks on vehicles or containers that can hatch their offspring in new locations. Davis said the one reported Joro sighting in Oklahoma happened when a student at the University of Georgia spotted and recognized the spider at her hometown in Oklahoma and realized she had probably inadvertently brought the spider (or its eggs) there herself. “These things are going to go everywhere,” Davis said. “They’re suited for the U.S. climate, unfortunately, and they’re really good at hitchhiking.”
The Joro is a durable spider, with research showing that it has several advantages over native spiders, such as a higher metabolism and heart rate that will likely allow the Joro spider to survive in colder climates than many other spiders.
Joros are not considered dangerous to humans. They are have venom, but their tiny fangs make it unlikely that they could bite through a human’s skin.
If you think you’ve seen a Joro spider, Davis recommends reporting the sighting through the web site iNaturalist, where citizen scientists can report their observations of a number of species to help track their movements, or specifically to jorowatch.org, a website created by the University of Georgia to track the spread of this new invasive species.
Davis said they can be quite a nuisance with their frequent massive web spinning, but that so far it doesn’t appear that they are having a negative impact on the ecosystems in areas where they have become established. “I don’t think the answer should be just swat it and kill it,” Davis said. “Because a lot of people have that instant reaction, ‘Oh, let’s kill it. It’s a non native as a spider. It’s ugly.’ And I personally don’t think that’s the right idea.”
There may even be a benefit to having Joros around. The spiders are known to eat brown marmorated stink bugs, another invasive pest that can cause significant crop damage and unsightly swarms in homes and other structures. “Joro spiders present us with excellent opportunities to suppress pests naturally, without chemicals,” University of Georgia entomologist Nancy Hinkle told the school’s news service last year. “I’m trying to convince people that having zillions of large spiders and their webs around is a good thing.”
Davis concedes though, that having huge spiders and their webs around the property isn’t for everyone. “People in Atlanta are at their wit’s end right now with the spider webs,” Davis said. “Because once they do get on your house or around your property, they’re a nuisance for sure. And so that’s what can people can in Alabama can expect, really. But then again, philosophically, does a species deserve to die because it annoys us? I mean, that’s sort of where I am.”
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NYC Mayor Eric Adams Declares State Of Emergency Over Influx Of Migrants | CNN
NYC Mayor Eric Adams Declares State Of Emergency Over Influx Of Migrants | CNN https://digitalalabamanews.com/nyc-mayor-eric-adams-declares-state-of-emergency-over-influx-of-migrants-cnn/
New York CNN —
Mayor Eric Adams has declared a state of emergency to help respond to the city’s migrant crisis, which he told reporters Friday will cost the city $1 billion this fiscal year.
“We now have a situation where more people are arriving in New York City than we can immediately accommodate, including families with babies and young children,” Adams said. “Once the asylum seekers from today’s buses are provided shelter, we would surpass the highest number of people in recorded history in our city’s shelter system.”
The mayor called for emergency federal and state aid to handle the continued influx of asylum seekers.
Adams’ declaration will direct all relevant city agencies to coordinate efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis and to construct the city’s Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers. The state of emergency will be in effect for 30 days and may be extended, the mayor said.
New York City now has more than 61,000 people in its shelter system, including thousands experiencing homelessness and thousands of asylum seekers who have been bused in over recent months from other parts of the country, according to the mayor. He said more than 17,000 asylum seekers have been bused to New York City from the southern border since April of this year.
As of the first week of October, Texas has spent more than $18 million busing migrants – who have been processed and released by immigration authorities in Texas border communities – to Washington D.C., New York City, and Chicago. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the program in April as part of his response to the Biden administration’s immigration policies, and acknowledged that taxpayers were likely to foot the bill.
New York City’s shelter system is operating at near 100% capacity, Adams said. The city expects to spend at least $1 billion by the end of the fiscal year dealing with the influx of migrants, the mayor said, adding that if asylum seekers continue to enter the city at the current rate, the total population within the shelter system will exceed 100,000 in the year to come.
Adams said 42 hotels have been set up as emergency shelters and 5,500 migrant children have been enrolled in schools.
The city is also exploring a potential program for New Yorkers to volunteer to host asylum seekers and the “unhoused” in their homes.
“New Yorkers want to help, and we’re going to make it straightforward and easy for them to do so,” the mayor said.
Adams said in September that officials were assessing how they will respond to the influx of migrants, including legal options.
“Once we finalize how we’re going to continue to live up to our legal and moral obligation, we’re going to announce it. Until then, we’re just letting people know what we’re thinking of and how we’re going to find creative ways to solve this man-made humanitarian crisis,” Adams said at an unrelated event.
A record number of migrants were bused to the city on September 18 – nine in total, which is the most recorded in a single day in this recent wave, according to two city officials. At least 1,011 asylum seekers arrived from September 16 to September 18, according to a third city official.
Texas has bused more than 11,000 migrants to New York City, Washington, DC, and Chicago since August, Abbott’s office announced in September.
Abbott and others who favor increasing immigration restrictions argue that Biden administration policies have provided an incentive for more people to cross the border illegally. Some Republican candidates have pushed the narrative of a migrant invasion as midterm elections approach, pledging they’ll do more to crack down on illegal immigration.
The busing campaign has led to sparring between Abbott and Adams, whose administration has accused the governor of using human beings as political pawns and whose city has been long considered a sanctuary for migrants. The mayor has asked the federal government for more resources, including housing assistance. The White House said it is in touch with Adams and committed to FEMA funding and other support.
Adams has said he has spoken with the mayor of El Paso and told him New York City cannot accommodate this many asylum seekers. He said the city has been in contact with Abbott’s office, adding that the Texas governor and his team have not been open to communication.
Adams reiterated that New York City is still a sanctuary city but stressed it is unable to handle such an overwhelming influx of migrants.
“We are not telling anyone that New York can accommodate every migrant in the city,” the mayor said Monday. “We’re not encouraging people to send eight, nine buses a day. That is not what we’re doing. We’re saying that as a sanctuary city with right to shelter, we’re going to fulfill that obligation. That’s what we’re doing.”
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Biden: Nuclear 'Armageddon' Risk Highest Since '62 Crisis
Biden: Nuclear 'Armageddon' Risk Highest Since '62 Crisis https://digitalalabamanews.com/biden-nuclear-armageddon-risk-highest-since-62-crisis/
NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden is declaring that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, as Russian officials speak of using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in the eight-month invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser, Biden said Thursday night that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “a guy I know fairly well” and the Russian leader is “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”
Biden added, “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” He suggested the threat from Putin is real “because his military is — you might say — significantly underperforming.”
U.S. officials for months have warned of the prospect that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine as it has faced strategic setbacks on the battlefield, though Biden’s remarks marked the starkest warnings yet by the U.S. government about the nuclear stakes.
Still, nothing has changed in U.S. intelligence assessments that in recent weeks have shown no evidence that Putin has imminent plans to deploy nuclear weapons, according to U.S. officials on Friday.
One official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, added that Biden was speaking broadly about the administration’s growing concerns about Putin’s threats.
Biden was conveying that the White House sees Putin’s rhetoric as “reckless and irresponsible” and is taking it seriously, the official said. The official added that Biden’s remarks are in line with warnings he’s made in speeches at the U.N. General Assembly and that other senior administration officials have made recently.
The president’s new remarks came after White House officials this week said they have seen no change to Russia’s nuclear forces that would require a change in the alert posture of U.S. nuclear forces.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture, nor do we have indication that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.
The 13-day showdown in 1962 that followed the U.S. discovery of the Soviet Union’s secret deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba is regarded by experts as the closest the world has ever come to nuclear annihilation. The crisis during President John F. Kennedy’s administration sparked a renewed focus on arms control on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Biden on Thursday also challenged Russian nuclear doctrine, warning that the use of a lower-yield tactical weapon could quickly spiral out of control into global destruction.
“I don’t think there is any such a thing as the ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” Biden said.
He added that he was still “trying to figure” out Putin’s “off-ramp” in Ukraine.
“Where does he find a way out?” Biden asked. “Where does he find himself in a position that he does not only lose face but lose significant power within Russia?”
Putin has repeatedly alluded to using his country’s vast nuclear arsenal, including last month when he announced plans to conscript Russian men to serve in Ukraine.
“I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction … and when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal,” Putin said Sept. 21, adding with a lingering stare at the camera, “It’s not a bluff.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week that the U.S. has been “clear” to Russia about what the “consequences” of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine would be.
“This is something that we are attuned to, taking very seriously, and communicating directly with Russia about, including the kind of decisive responses the United States would have if they went down that dark road,” Sullivan said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier Thursday that Putin understands that the “world will never forgive” a Russian nuclear strike.
“He understands that after the use of nuclear weapons he would be unable any more to preserve, so to speak, his life, and I’m confident of that,” Zelenskyy said.
Biden’s comments came during a private fundraiser for Democratic Senate candidates at the Manhattan home of James and Kathryn Murdoch. He tends to be more unguarded — often speaking with just rough notes — in such settings, which are open only to a handful of reporters without cameras or recording devices.
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Miller reported from Washington.
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