Stormy Daniels to receive $450,000 settlement over arrest at Ohio strip club
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Category: Domestic Affairs,
Live updates: Ex-cop Amber Guyger found guilty in murder of Botham Jean – CNN
Live updates: Ex-cop Amber Guyger found guilty in murder of Botham Jean – CNN
A jury gets it right. When a police officer kills someone without cause it is called murder.
@KamalaHarris is asked if she would allow the child of her VP serve on the board of a foreign oil company.
Kamala dear… Why did you answer this question? Are you under the Trumpian impression that the President has the power to to the Vice-President’s grown children where they may and may not e employed???
Sacramento officers who killed Stephon Clark to return to duty | The Sacramento Bee
One of the Clark family’s lawyers, Dale Galipo, said he was “disappointed but not surprised because I think with few exceptions in the last 10,000 police officer shootings there’s been no criminal prosecutions.”
Galipo, who three weeks ago finalized a $2.4 million settlement with the city for Clark’s two sons, still represents Clark’s parents and grandparents in a pending federal civil rights lawsuit and said the city’s decision to retain the officers could be problematic if they are involved in another shooting down the road.
…“It’s negligent not to be able to recognize the difference between a handgun and a white cell phone.”
…“Sacramento police should know the difference between a gun and a cell phone and my brother should be with us today.”
…“I think people are in shock in this moment that there has been no accountability when it comes to Stephon Clark,” he said. “Today just continually opens up that wound without any healing. … It’s a repeated pattern of no accountability.”
“What does this tell us as community that two killer police will now be on full active duty on our streets?” said Berry Accius, founder of Voice of the Youth and community activist. “What is the message that is being sent to us? … The message to me is, basically, saying it doesn’t matter how much we infiltrate the system; it doesn’t matter how many trainings they create.”
Sacramento officers who killed Stephon Clark to return to duty | The Sacramento Bee
sigh…
Feinstein calls for ‘word-for-word’ transcript of Trump call at heart of impeachment inquiry | TheHill
Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the whistleblower complaint tied to Trump “suggests that an ‘official word-for-word transcript of the call’ was produced.”
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Leaked Audio Catches Trump Threatening Ukraine Whistleblower With Death And Calling Reporters Scum
Leaked audio of a private event that Trump attended at the UN catches the president calling reporters animals and scum while threatening the Ukraine whistleblower with death.
Leaked Audio Catches Trump Threatening Ukraine Whistleblower With Death And Calling Reporters Scum
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Fact-checking Trump’s claim that Obama gave Ukraine “pillows and sheets”
Part of the $250 million assistance package that the Trump administration announced (then froze and later unfroze) included many of the same items that were provided under Obama, including medical equipment, night vision gear and counter-artillery radar.
Fact-checking Trump’s claim that Obama gave Ukraine “pillows and sheets” – CNNPolitics
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The CrowdStrike Conspiracy: Here’s Why Trump Keeps Referencing The Cybersecurity Firm
Trump’s obsession with the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike …references a right-wing conspiracy that theorizes the claim that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee’s servers in 2016 are part of an elaborate ruse, devised to discredit Trump’s victory.
…The supposed evidence of Russia’s innocence relies on the belief that a DNC server has been hidden in Ukraine, possibly by CrowdStrike’s cofounder Dmitri Alperovitch.
…That belief may stem from a statement by ….[Trump] in which he questioned why the FBI didn’t look at the DNC server, that CrowdStrike is owned by “a very rich Ukrainian.” Alperovitch is actually a Russian-born American citizen.
…Turning over the physical server isn’t necessary (or the usual procedure) for forensic analyses, and it isn’t as useful as a copy of what was on the server at the time, which CrowdStrike provided to the FBI. And independent security experts and U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that Russia was behind the hack, using Crowdstrike’s evidence and more than what was found on one server.
The CrowdStrike Conspiracy: Here’s Why Trump Keeps Referencing The Cybersecurity Firm
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Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General: Hunter Biden ‘Did Not Violate Anything’
Hunter Biden cannot be responsible for violations of the management of Burisma that took place two years before his arrival,” Lutsenko told the Post.
Burisma was under scrutiny for possible abuse of power and unlawful enrichment before Hunter Biden was involved in the company, and he has never been accused of any wrongdoing in the investigation.
Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General: Hunter Biden ‘Did Not Violate Anything’
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Sanders campaign: Top staffers make a case against Elizabeth Warren – Vox
Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders’s national press secretary, tweeted [shade] about the Warren campaign’s unionizing effort, which is still under contract negotiation.
…In another tweet, Gray criticized Warren for not supporting a national rent control initiative.
…The campaign’s official position is that their primary focus is going after Joe Biden, as Sanders’s pollster Ben Tulchin told Huffpost, sharing a text message script aimed at persuading Biden voters. But several members of Sanders’s team haven’t been sticking to that same script.
Sanders campaign: Top staffers make a case against Elizabeth Warren – Vox
This is just of the reasons that many Democrats, from rank-and-file to insiders, do not trust the Sander’s organization: his inability to stick to and control the message of his staff and supporters. They go negative and adversarial and he does not reign them in.
Prosecutor rips Amber Guyger’s ‘garbage’ testimony during closing arguments of former Dallas police officer’s murder trial
Guyger was “an intruder” in Botham Jean’s apartment when she fatally shot him in September of 2018.
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And this is the caliber of people that law enforcement hires and protects above the citizens they are sworn to serve.
Diplomats express alarm over Trump’s treatment of former Ukraine ambassador
“We saw the knives were out for Masha but it was still shocking that she was forced to depart her post just weeks before she was going to go anyway,” retired US Ambassador James Melville told CNN Wednesday. “That’s just such a sign of disrespect, and almost contempt for career officers and diplomacy.”
…”It suggests actions outside of and contrary to the procedures and standards of a professional service whose officers, like their military counterparts, take an oath to uphold the Constitution,” they said in a statement. “Whatever views the Administration has of Ambassador Yovanovitch’s performance, we call on the Administration to make clear that retaliation for political reasons will not be tolerated.
In a statement Thursday, the American Foreign Service Association called “on all Americans to honor and respect the non-partisan, non-political work of the dedicated public servants of the U.S. Foreign Service.”
“Our country needs a professional, non-partisan Foreign Service,” the statement said. “Our members pledge their lives to service to their country and its interests. Any attack on their integrity and commitment to non-partisan service does a great disservice to them, to their families and to our country.”
…Yovanovitch, a career member of the foreign service and who has served in ambassadorships under three presidents, was sworn in as ambassador to Ukraine in August 2016.
In May 2019, Yovanovitch was recalled to Washington, months earlier than expected. The State Department said at the time that Yovanovitch was “concluding her 3-year diplomatic assignment as planned” and that her departure aligned with the presidential transition in Ukraine.
…”It’s injurious to morale and you can imagine how career people feel when they see one of the best people that we have, Masha Yovanovitch, treated like this,” he said.
He called for “the higher levels of the State Department” to “come out and defend her.”
“They should say she was a good ambassador, she did what was asked. She did what her constitutional duty asked her to do, represent the United States ably and honorably,” Burns said. “She deserves an apology, a public apology.”
Diplomats express alarm over Trump’s treatment of former Ukraine ambassador – CNNPolitics
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Trump Told Russian Officials He Was Unconcerned by Moscow’s Election Interference: Report
Trump made the comments to …in the same May 2017 meeting where he came under fire for revealing highly classified information that exposed an intelligence source on the Islamic State.
…[Trump] told Lavrov and Kislyak he was unfazed by Moscow’s election interference because America has done the same thing in other countries. He also reportedly said the firing of ex-FBI Director James Comey got rid of “great pressure” on him.
The remarks prompted officials to restrict access to a memo about the meeting to only a “few officials with the highest security clearances” to keep his comments from the public
Trump Told Russian Officials He Was Unconcerned by Moscow’s Election Interference: Report
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Whistleblower complaint: U.S. special envoy to Ukraine steps down a day after whistleblower complaint was released – CBS News
The complaint alleges that Volker went to Kiev in late July and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian political figures and “reportedly provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the President had made of Mr. Zelenskyy.”
…[Trump] asked Zelensky to “investigate” former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company.
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The complaint and the coverup: Donald Trump’s impeachment just got very serious and more likely – New York Daily News
Trump “is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the president’s main domestic political rivals. The president’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”
…Hours after Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call, in which Trump sought personal political favors from a foreign government, White House lawyers reportedly moved an “electronic transcript…from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored” into a “separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature.”
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Make cops carry liability insurance: The private sector knows how to spread risks, and costs
Like police, doctors have a difficult and stressful job that sometimes involves making life-or-death decisions under conditions of uncertainty. But unlike police, doctors don’t expect the rest of us to pay for their mistakes. Instead, doctors carry professional liability insurance, which pays to defend them against malpractice claims and protects them from financial ruin by paying out damage awards to successful plaintiffs.
…Unfortunately, police departments have a hard time getting rid of their own bad apples: For example, the officers who tried to frame Wiggins are still employed by the NYPD; no charges have been filed against them.
…This is the policy change we need to better align police incentives with public safety and respect for constitutional rights. Police officers are engaged in a profession that, while indispensably crucial, also poses serious risk, and that risk is causing taxpayers to foot an enormous bill when the officers fail to meet the standard of care.
…The relationship between police and many of the communities they serve is in a state of crisis. Much of that is due to a perception that police are insufficiently respectful of people’s rights and too quick to use force.
Private liability insurance provides an extremely powerful tool for distinguishing between the best and the worst cops.
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Democrats subpoena Pompeo for Ukraine documents
The subpoena letter explicitly cited the Democrats’ newly launched impeachment inquiry into Trump, suggesting that party leaders will lean heavily on impeachment as a legal justification for obtaining disputed documents. A failure to produce them, they warned Pompeo, would be evidence of obstruction.
They gave a deadline of one week for the documents.
…The lawmakers also notified Pompeo in a separate letter that they had scheduled depositions for five State Department officials between Wednesday and Oct. 10.
Those officials are Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; Kurt Volker, a former NATO ambassador who is Trump’s special representative for Ukraine negotiations; State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent; State Department counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl; and Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
Democrats subpoena Pompeo for Ukraine documents | TheHill
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Attorney general ‘has gone rogue’ to protect Trump
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Pelosi argued that Barr was part of a White House “cover-up” of Trump’s call to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked Zelensky about the possibility of launching an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden.
“He’s gone rogue,” Pelosi said. “I think where they’re going is a cover-up of a cover-up.”
Pelosi: Attorney general ‘has gone rogue’ to protect Trump | TheHill
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Comments From The Peanut Gallery 