US judge ‘cant stop’ Trump adviser book

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A federal judge has criticised former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton for moving to publish his book without formal clearance from the White House, but also suggested he was probably powerless to stop its release given that copies of the manuscript have already been widely distributed.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth told lawyers during arguments Friday that “the horse seems to be out of the barn” and appeared sceptical that there was anything he could do to retrieve books that had already sent out “all over the country.”

A lawyer for Bolton agreed with the judge and said the Justice Department’s request to halt the publication of the book and to recover copies was both surreal and impractical. More than 200,000 copies have already been printed and distributed to booksellers throughout the country, and the book has received substantial publicity from major news media organisations who have reviewed it ahead of its scheduled release next week.

But the Justice Department bristled at the idea that nothing could be done. Justice Department lawyer David Morrell said Bolton had created a “mess” by publishing his book without receiving what he said was formal authorisation that the manuscript was free of classified information.

He said Bolton should not be permitted to profit from a problem of his own making by flouting his contractual obligation to not disclose classified material he was exposed to on the job.

“He has flung the barnyard doors open. He has let the horses out, and now he looks at us collectively and says, ‘What are you going to do about it?”‘ Morrell said of Bolton.

Lamberth did not immediately rule, giving himself time to further evaluate the government’s classification arguments in a court case that raises core First Amendment and national security concerns. Bolton’s lawyers on Friday evening asked for access to any classified hearing the court holds.

The Justice Department sued earlier in the week to halt the release of “The Room Where it Happened,” insisting that the book contained classified information that could damage national security and that Bolton had failed to complete a prepublication review process designed to prevent the exposure of government secrets.

Even Democrats who seized on some of Bolton’s anecdotes to portray the president as unfit for office nonetheless expressed frustration that he had saved his damaging accounts for his book instead of sharing them in the impeachment case.

Bolton declined to testify voluntarily in the impeachment proceedings. House Democrats pressed ahead with their case without subpoenaing him.

The book is due out on Tuesday. Lamberth is expected to make a ruling before then.

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World’s cartoonists on this week’s events

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First published in The Economist, U.K., June 18, 2020 | By Kal

 

First published on POLITICO.com, U.S., June 16, 2020 | By Matt Wuerker

 

First published in De Volkskrant, The Netherlands, June 17, 2020 | By Schot

 

First published on Politicalcartoons.com, Canada, June 15, 2020 | By Dave Whamond

 

First published in The Charlotte Observer, U.S., June 17, 2020 | By Kevin Siers

 

First published on Politicalcartoons.com, U.S., June 12, 2020 | By Dave Granlund

 

First published in The Boston Globe, U.S., June 17, 2020 | By Christopher Weyant

 

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Mueller Report Details Highlight Trump’s Interest in Emails Damaging to Clinton

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WASHINGTON — New details from the Justice Department’s inquiry into Russian influence over the 2016 election released on Friday underscored President Trump’s keen interest in weaponizing information stolen by the Russians and funneled to WikiLeaks for use against his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The new disclosures also emphasized prosecutors’ doubts about whether Mr. Trump told them the truth when he was questioned during the two-year investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian interference in that election and whether the Trump campaign conspired with Moscow to influence its outcome.

Over all, however, the new information shed little new light on the special counsel’s inquiry that dominated the first two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency. It was released in response to a lawsuit claiming that the Justice Department’s redactions of sensitive information in the Mueller report violated the Freedom of Information Act.

Many of the disclosures confirmed information already revealed in media reports or in criminal cases against Mr. Trump’s former aides. The public record is replete with accounts of both the Trump campaign’s efforts to use purloined emails against Mrs. Clinton and the president’s attempts to frustrate the special counsel’s inquiry, including by dangling pardons before key witnesses and targets in hopes that they would not cooperate with law enforcement officials.

The newly released details deal principally with Mr. Trump’s friend and former campaign adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., who was convicted in November of lying to federal authorities, impeding a congressional inquiry and tampering with a witness. He has been sentenced to 40 months in prison.

Mr. Stone was the Trump campaign’s principal intermediary to WikiLeaks. According to newly released passages, prosecutors suspected that the president feared Mr. Stone might incriminate him. It also shows they doubted Mr. Trump was being truthful when he stated in written answers to their questions that he did not recall ever discussing WikiLeaks with Mr. Stone during the campaign.

“It is possible that, by the time the president submitted his written answers two years after the relevant events had occurred, he no longer had clear recollections of his discussions with Stone or his knowledge of Stone’s asserted communications with WikiLeaks,” Mr. Mueller’s investigators wrote in a newly disclosed paragraph. “But the president’s conduct could also be viewed as reflecting his awareness that Stone could provide evidence that would run counter to the president’s denials and would link the president to Stone’s efforts to reach out to WikiLeaks.”

The prosecutors wrote that Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer who was convicted of campaign finance violations and other crimes, told them that he overheard a conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Stone in the candidate’s Trump Tower headquarters in the summer of 2016, before WikiLeaks released its first tranche of Democratic emails stolen by the Russians.

Mr. Cohen said that after Mr. Stone promised that WikiLeaks would soon release more damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump responded, “Oh good, all right.” After WikiLeaks later publicized documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee, Mr. Cohen said Mr. Trump told him, “I guess Roger was right,” the report said.

The prosecutors also noted that Mr. Trump’s public comments about Mr. Stone and other witnesses and targets were an obvious signal. They “communicate a message that witnesses could be rewarded for refusing to provide testimony adverse to the president and disparaged if they chose to cooperate,” they wrote in a previously redacted sentence.

The Justice Department had withheld passages dealing with Mr. Stone in order, it said, to protect the ongoing criminal case against him. But the lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group, and the BuzzFeed News journalist Jason Leopold challenged those and other redactions as violations of the Freedom of Information Act.

John Davisson, a lawyer for the privacy group, acknowledged in an interview on Friday night that much of the newly disclosed information “had come out, in one form or another” after the Mueller report was released. But, he said, “the delay, itself is harmful.” He also said he spotted redactions that were unnecessary and raised suspicions about whether law enforcement officials had wrongly withheld other information.

The Justice Department’s decision to release more of the text of the report came after the federal judge overseeing that case, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the District of Columbia, expressed suspicion about whether the redactions were justified and ordered government lawyers to provide him with the full report so he could review the redactions himself. The plaintiffs in the case argued there was no reason to withhold any information about Mr. Stone because his criminal case is over.

House Democrats have been separately seeking to review grand jury materials cited in the report. The Supreme Court in May blocked the release of that material while it considers whether to hear arguments in that case.

An appointee of President George W. Bush, Judge Walton has sympathized to some degree with the FOIA plaintiffs. He wrote in his March opinion that Attorney General William P. Barr’s overall handling of the Mueller report made him question the department’s motivations for redactions.

Mr. Barr had put forward a “distorted” and “misleading” account of the Mueller report findings in a fashion that downplayed the special counsel’s more damaging findings and shaped the public narrative in the president’s favor, Judge Walton wrote.

“These circumstances generally, and Attorney General Barr’s lack of candor specifically, call into question Attorney General Barr’s credibility,” he wrote — and in turn, cast doubt on the department’s statements to him that the redactions were lawful.

He said he would privately review the full text because “adherence to the FOIA’s objective of keeping the American public informed of what its government is up to demands nothing less.”

During Mr. Stone’s trial, prosecutors said that he obstructed a congressional inquiry into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election in order to protect the president. “He knew that if the truth came out about what he was doing in 2016, it would look terrible,” one prosecutor said of Mr. Stone.

The defense team argued that the entire premise of the prosecution’s case was false because Mr. Stone never had any evidence that would have hurt Mr. Trump. He merely tried to discover what information WikiLeaks had obtained that Mr. Trump could use against Mrs. Clinton before the election, they argued, and neither he nor anyone else tied to the campaign ever conspired with the Russians who had funneled that information to WikiLeaks.

After Mr. Trump attacked the prosecutors’ recommendation for a stiff prison term on Twitter, Mr. Barr intervened and the department asked for a more lenient sentence — an extraordinary reversal that stunned legal experts and department veterans. Four career prosecutors withdrew from the case in protest, and one quit the department entirely.

Mr. Stone, who is scheduled to report to the Bureau of Prisons by the end of June to start serving his sentence, has expressed hopes that the president will pardon him.

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Family says man found hanged in California died of suicide

Relatives of a 38-year-old man whose body was found hanging from a tree in Southern California said they believe he committed suicide, a family spokesman said Friday.

“On behalf of the family of Malcolm Harsch unfortunately it seems he did take his own life,” Najee Ali said in a statement. “The Victorville Police Department officials released new video evidence to family members.”

Harsch’s body was found cut down from a tree May 31 in Victorville, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said. He was one of two Black men found dead in apparent hangings about 53 miles apart.

The sheriff’s department showed Harsch’s family members “surveillance video from a vacant building” related to his death, it said in a statement. An autopsy was conducted June 12.

“Although there remains no sign of foul play, the forensic pathologist is waiting for toxicology results before assigning the cause and manner of death,” the department said.

The other Southern California case involved Robert Fuller, 24, who was found hanging from a tree on June 10 near Palmdale City Hall. The case, which Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials said was believed to be suicide, prompted demonstrations and calls for deeper investigations.

The FBI, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said would investigate both deaths.

The FBI said this week it would also investigate the discovery of a fake body reportedly hanging from a noose near Lake Merritt in Oakland, California. Mayor Libby Schaaf said nooses were found hanging from trees in the park.

Fuller’s case took a turn this week when a man killed in a shootout with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies turned out to be his half-brother, according to a lawyer for Fuller’s family, NBC Los Angeles reported.

The department identified the man as Terron Jammal Boone, 31. He was being sought by authorities on 21 felony charges, including assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence and criminal threats, when he was fatally shot Wednesday night in the Mojave Desert.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.



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Begun in the South, Juneteenth also on West Coast

Although Juneteenth celebrations began in the South, the West Coast saw several large gatherings Friday. Thousands of demonstrators rallied peacefully to protest racial injustice and police brutality in Oakland, San Francisco and Seattle. (June 19)

AP

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Dave Franco’s ‘perfect’ drive-in movie premiere

Dave Franco’s ‘perfect’ drive-in movie premiere

       

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Trump Compared To Segregationist George Wallace In Scathing Republican Ad

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President Donald Trump is being compared to the incendiary segregationist George Wallace in a dramatic new ad by the Lincoln Project.

The ad by the anti-Trump Republican political action committee features segments of an old interview with Wallace, the racist four-term governor of Alabama who also repeatedly ran for president. The Democratic politician sounds strikingly like Trump — particularly when he declares that looters during the civil rights movement should be shot “on sight.”

The line was similar to Trump’s recent threat during the ongoing protests against racism and police brutality that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

The Lincoln Project ad, entitled “Tulsa,” juxtaposes scenes of what it calls “real leaders” like Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy and their inspiring calls for unity to remarks from Wallace and Trump.

“Trump’s decision to hold a rally in Tulsa on the weekend of Juneteenth and in the location of the worst race massacre in American history tells voters all they need to know about him. In a time of multiple crises, Donald Trump has further divided and incited Americans, rather than bring us together,” Stuart Stevens, senior adviser to The Lincoln Project, said in a statement.



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‘Perry Mason’ Cast Reveals What to Expect From the HBO Reboot


‘Perry Mason’ Cast Reveals What to Expect From the HBO Reboot (Exclusive) | Entertainment Tonight


































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Pressed Repeatedly To Say ‘Black Lives Matter,’ Mike Pence Says ‘All Lives Matter’

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Despite being pressed repeatedly during an interview to say the words “Black lives matter,” a phrase that’s served as a rallying cry for protesters against police brutality and systemic racism, Vice President Mike Pence refused to utter the phrase — saying, instead, that “all lives matter.”

Anchor Brian Taff of WPVI-TV, an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, asked Pence point-blank on Friday whether he’d be willing to use the phrase.

Taff noted that the words have “fueled” the anti-racism demonstrations that have erupted across the nation since the death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis who died at the hands of a white police officer. Yet, Taff said, only a few elected Republican officials in Washington have publicly said the words “Black lives matter.”

“I wonder, sir, if those are words that you would utter right here today,” Taff said to Pence. ‘Black lives matter.’ Can you say those words?”

“Let me just say that what happened to George Floyd was a tragedy,” Pence replied. “And in this nation, especially on Juneteenth, we celebrate the fact that from the founding of this nation we’ve cherished the ideal that all, all of us are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. And so all lives matter in a very real sense.”

Juneteenth, which was celebrated Friday, marks the end of slavery in America. It commemorates the day in 1865 that enslaved African Americans in Texas finally learned of their emancipation two years earlier.

Noting that Pence had refused to use the words “Black lives matter,” Taff asked the vice president again if he’d say the phrase. 

“Forgive me for pressing you on this, sir, but I will note you did not say those words, ‘Black lives matter,’ and there is an important distinction,” Taff said.
“People are saying, of course all lives matter, but to say the words is an acknowledgment that Black lives also matter in a time in this country when it appears that there’s a segment of our society that doesn’t agree. So why will you not say those words?”

“Well, I don’t accept the fact, Brian, that there’s a segment of American society that disagrees in the preciousness and importance of every human life,” Pence said in response.

He then went on to describe the efforts the Trump administration has undertaken to “improve” the lives of African Americans, such as the development of economic “opportunity zones” and restoring funding to historically Black colleges. 

Taff chimed in that Pence had again not used the phrase “Black lives matter.”

“And yet, one final time, you won’t say the words, and we understand your explanation,” he said. 

On Friday, protesters in at least 45 states took to the streets to mark Juneteenth and to repeat their calls for an end to racism and police violence.

“All lives do matter, but it doesn’t matter until Black lives matter,” Gwen Woods, the mother of a Black man who was shot dead by police in 2015, said at a rally in San Francisco. “That white privilege ― please check yours.”   



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Juneteenth: rallies and celebrations across America commemorate end of slavery – live

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As the Covid-19 virus continues to spread unevenly across the world, politicians and opinion pages in the US are already blaming new cases of coronavirus on mass demonstrations against police violence and racism. The protests are a visible example of public crowds, and the ideal scapegoat for problems that are far more complex. Some leaders have treated them with overt hostility. But have protests really played a critical role in spreading new cases of coronavirus? The best science suggests probably not a lot.

Let me be clear: I’m not minimising the risk of mass demonstrations during a pandemic. Indeed, there is almost nothing we do at the moment that doesn’t carry some risk of contagion, and it is undoubtedly true that they will lead to some new cases. But the big question is by how much, and whether there are ways to minimise this risk. Here, the answer is largely in favour of the outdoor protests over other large gatherings planned, such as indoor campaign rallies.

The evidence is becoming clear that wearing a mask can substantially lower the risk of spread and severity of illness. We are seeing more and more masks worn by protesters. A second feature of gatherings that affects the spread of the virus is whether they happen outdoors or indoors. Here, too, research suggests that outdoor activities are much safer than indoor ones.

Finally, although this is more preliminary, evidence suggests that if you’re going to be in a crowd, a mobile one is better than a stationary one. None of these three aspects will protect you from infection definitively – but together they offer a modest level of risk reduction. And compared with the risk of catching Covid-19 that is present in many jobs or other activities, such as working in meat-packing plants, outdoor protests are likely to be much safer– especially if we carry out testing, which can quickly reveal if the virus is spreading among protesters, as Massachusetts has done recently.

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