The Full Belmonte, 6/19/2022
“NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. on Saturday opened COVID-19 vaccines to infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
The shots will become available next week, expanding the nation’s vaccination campaign to children as young as 6 months.
Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccines for the littlest children, and the final signoff came hours later from Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the agency’s director.
‘We know millions of parents and caregivers are eager to get their young children vaccinated, and with today’s decision, they can,’ Walensky said in a statement.
While the Food and Drug Administration approves vaccines, it’s the CDC that decides who should get them.
The shots offer young children protection from hospitalization, death and possible long-term complications that are still not clearly understood, the CDC’s advisory panel said.
The government has already been gearing up for the vaccine expansion, with millions of doses ordered for distribution to doctors, hospitals and community health clinics around the country.” Read more at AP News
The crux of any prosecution of Donald Trump would hinge heavily on convincing a jury that Trump knew he lost the election and acted with criminal intent to overturn the valid election results. Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
“Former prosecutors say January 6 hearings have delivered ‘compelling evidence that Trump committed crimes’
The searing testimony and growing evidence about Donald Trump’s central role in a multi-pronged conspiracy to overturn Joe Biden’s election in 2020 presented at the House January 6 committee’s first three hearings, has increased the odds that Trump will face criminal charges, say former DoJ prosecutors and officials.
The panel’s initial hearings provided a kind of legal roadmap about Trump’s multi-faceted drives – in tandem with some top lawyers and loyalists – to thwart Biden from taking office, that should benefit justice department prosecutors in their sprawling investigations into the January 6 assault on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
Ex-justice department lawyers say new revelations at the hearings increase the likelihood that Trump will be charged with crimes involving conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding or defrauding the United States, as he took desperate and seemingly illegal steps to undermine Biden’s election.
Trump could also potentially face fraud charges over his role in an apparently extraordinary fundraising scam – described by House panel members as the ‘big rip-off’ – that netted some $250m for an ‘election defense fund’ that did not exist but funneled huge sums to Trump’s Save America political action committee and Trump properties.
The panel hopes to hold six hearings on different parts of what its vice-chair, Liz Cheney, called Trump’s ‘sophisticated seven-part plan’ to overturn the election.
Trump was told repeatedly, for instance, by top aides and cabinet officials – including ex-attorney general Bill Barr – that the election was not stolen, and that his fraud claims were ‘completely bullshit’ and ‘crazy stuff’ as Barr put it in a video of his scathing deposition. But Trump persisted in pushing baseless fraud claims with the backing of key allies including his ex-personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and lawyer John Eastman.
‘The January 6 committee’s investigation has developed substantial, compelling evidence that Trump committed crimes, including but not limited to conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct official proceedings,’ Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the DoJ told the Guardian.
Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, told the Guardian that ‘the committee hearings have bolstered the need to seriously consider filing criminal charges against Trump’.
The crux of any prosecution of Trump would hinge heavily on convincing a jury that Trump knew he lost the election and acted with criminal intent to overturn the valid election results. The hearings have focused heavily on testimony that Trump fully knew he had lost and went full steam ahead to concoct schemes to stay in power.
New revelations damaging to Trump emerged on Thursday when Greg Jacob, the ex-counsel to former vice-president Mike Pence, recounted in detail how Eastman and Trump waged a high-pressure drive, publicly and privately, even as the Capitol was under attack, to prod Pence to unlawfully block Biden’s certification by Congress on January 6.
The Eastman pressure included a scheme to substitute pro-Trump fake electors from states that Biden won for electors rightfully pledged to Biden – a scheme the DoJ has been investigating for months and that now involves a grand jury focused on Eastman, Giuliani and several other lawyers and operatives.
Eastman at one point acknowledged to Jacob that he knew his push to get Pence on January 6 to reject Biden’s winning electoral college count would violate the Electoral Count Act, and that Trump, too, was told it would be illegal for Pence to block Biden’s certification.
Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the DoJ’s fraud section, said: ‘It is a target-rich environment, with many accessories both before and after the fact to be investigated.’
But experts caution any decision to charge Trump will be up to the current attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has been careful not to discuss details of his department’s January 6 investigations, which so far have led to charges against more than 800 individuals, including some Proud Boys and Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy.
After the first two hearings, Garland told reporters, ‘I’m watching and I will be watching all the hearings,’ adding that DoJ prosecutors are doing likewise.
Garland remarked in reference to possibly investigating Trump: ‘We’re just going to follow the facts wherever they lead … to hold all perpetrators who are criminally responsible for January 6 accountable, regardless of their level, their position, and regardless of whether they were present at the events on January 6.’
But Garland has not yet tipped his hand if Trump himself is under investigation. Despite that reticence, justice department veterans say the wealth of testimony from one-time Trump insiders and new revelations at the House hearings should spur the department to investigate and charge Trump.
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Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan, said the panel’s early evidence was strong, including ‘video testimony of Trump insiders who told Trump that he was going to lose badly, and that with regard to claims of election fraud, there was ‘no there there’,’ as Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows acknowledged in one exchange made public at the hearings.
McQuade added that Barr’s testimony was ‘devastating for Trump. He and other Trump insiders who testified about their conversations with Trump established that Trump knew he had lost the election and continued to make public claims of fraud anyway. That knowledge can help establish the fraudulent intent necessary to prove criminal offenses against Trump.’..
But it might not be all plain sailing.
Simmering tensions between the panel and the justice department have escalated over DoJ requests – rebuffed so far – to obtain 1,000 witness transcripts of committee interviews, which prosecutors say are needed for upcoming trials of Proud Boys and other cases. However, the New York Times has reported some witness transcripts could be shared next month.
Nonetheless, as Garland weighs whether to move forward with investigating and charging Trump, experts caution a prosecution of Trump would require enormous resources, given the unprecedented nature of such a high-stakes case, and the risks that a jury could end up acquitting Trump – which might only enhance his appeal to the Republican base. Yet at the same time ,the stakes for the country of not aggressively investigating Trump are also extremely high.” Read more at The Guardian
“Apple workers in Maryland have voted by a nearly two-to-one margin to join a union, becoming the first retail employees of the tech giant to unionize in the United States.
More than 100 workers in Towson near Baltimore voted 65-33 on Saturday to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union said.” Read more at The Guardian
Greg Gianforte in January 2021. Photograph: Thom Bridge/AP
“Montana’s governor, Greg Gianforte, was vacationing in Italy during that state’s historic flooding, which caused Yellowstone national park to close, his office confirmed on Friday.
As the state suffered record flooding and rockslides, Gianforte’s office had initially declined to say where he was or when he might return, citing “security concerns”, even as a statewide disaster was declared.
In a statement to NBC Montana on Friday, the Republican governor’s office said: ‘The governor departed early [last] Saturday morning to Italy with his wife for a long-planned personal, private trip.’
‘When severe flooding struck, the governor delegated his authority to respond to the disaster to Lt Gov Kristen Juras with whom he worked closely over the last four days to take swift, decisive action,’ the statement added.
Gianforte was now ‘grateful to be back in Montana’ and planned ‘to survey damage [on Friday] and meet with residents and local officials about recovering and rebuilding,’ his office said.
Floodwater – a mix of heavy rain and snow melt in the south-western corner of the state – wiped out numerous bridges and washed out miles of roads and closed the park earlier this week.
The damage is still being assessed, but repairs to damaged infrastructure in the 2.2m-acre park could run as a high as $1bn and could take years to perform given the short season between snowfall that allows for construction.” Read more at The Guardian
“Members of a ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ production team were arrested filming a segment at the Capitol while it was closed to visitors.” Read more at New York Times
“Gun companies have refocused their marketing efforts, targeting buyers with messages of fear, machismo and defiance.” Read more at New York Times'
“Lives Lived: The commentator Mark Shields delighted and rankled audiences with piercing analysis of America’s political virtues and failings. He died at 85.” Read more at New York Times
War in Ukraine
Halyna Bondar, left, and a friend visit her son, who was buried two days earlier in Bucha, Ukraine.Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
“The Ukraine invasion can be measured by many metrics. The death toll is most telling.
The workers who handle Ukraine’s dead — including gravediggers and coroners — carry deep psychic wounds.
Banned weapons have formed the backbone of Russia’s fighting strategy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an unannounced visit to the battered southern city of Mykolaiv.
The opera in Odesa, Ukraine, reopened for the first time since Russia invaded.” Read more at New York Times
“European Union countries will meet on Thursday and Friday to debate Ukraine’s potential membership.” Read more at New York Times
“Colombia will elect its next president today in a tight race between a leftist and a Trump-like candidate with a devoted TikTok following.” Read more at New York Times
“The World Health Organization will convene this week to decide whether monkeypox qualifies as a global health emergency.” Read more at New York Times
Ghislaine Maxwell with her father, Robert Maxwell, and mother, Elisabeth, in 1990. Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images
“When Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial neared its end, the British socialite’s lawyers had their work cut out for them. For weeks, prosecutors had painted Maxwell as a member of the elite who carried out unspeakable acts to maintain her charmed life with the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.
They presented abundant evidence that Maxwell lured girls, some just 14 years old, into Epstein’s orbit for him to sexually abuse – while carrying herself as an untouchable ‘lady of the house’. In the prosecution’s telling, Maxwell didn’t just do bad things: she was gleefully committed to doing them.
After the prosecution rested its case, Maxwell’s lawyers were left with few options for mounting a defense. They tried to make her look likable, and elicited fawning testimony from several of Maxwell’s former employees, as part of this effort.
The likability strategy didn’t appear to work, as Maxwell was found guilty on 29 December, but her attorneys have now launched another humanization campaign, to secure leniency when she is sentenced on 28 June. But their strategy has shifted from likability to pathos – casting her as an abused girl turned traumatized woman who was susceptible to Epstein’s influence and thus led into her crimes by him.” Read more at The Guardian
Taliban fighters gather at the site of an explosion in front of a Sikh temple in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, June 18, 2022. Several explosions and gunfire ripped through a Sikh temple in Afghanistan's capital. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
“ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack on a Sikh temple in Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul that killed at least one worshipper and wounded seven others.
IS made the claim in a statement posted on its Amaq website late Saturday. It said the assault on ‘the Sikh and Hindu temple’ was in response to alleged insults made against the Prophet Muhammad, the central figure of the Islamic religion, by an Indian government official. It did not name the official.
Gunmen attacked the Sikh house of worship, known as a gurdwara, Saturday morning and a firefight between the attackers and Taliban fighters seeking to protect the building ensued, Afghan officials said.
A vehicle filled with explosives was detonated outside of the temple but that resulted in no casualties. Before that, the gunmen threw a hand grenade which caused a fire near the temple’s gate, the officials said.” Read more at AP News
Walker Pickering for NPR
“The parents of a murdered Democratic aide are finally ready to talk. Joel and Mary Rich’s world was rocked by the murder of their son, Seth Rich, in 2016. Within days, the grieving parents were contending with a tidal wave of far-right conspiracy theories and outright lies around their son, amplified by Fox News. They sued the network in 2018 — and the case was settled. Now, they’re opening up about the emotional toll for the first time. “You’re a pawn in the game,” his mom says.” Read more at NPR
Colorado defenseman Cale Makar scores a short-handed goal early in the third period of Saturday night’s Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final. Photograph: Dave Sandford/NHLI/Getty Images
“Cale Makar barely broke a smile after scoring his second goal and Colorado’s seventh of the night. He fist-bumped Mikko Rantanen to thank him for the pass and skated to the bench.
He and the Avalanche are calm, confident and rolling. They’re now two wins from dethroning the two-time defending champions.
Looking like by far the better team, the Avalanche overwhelmed the Tampa Bay Lightning 7-0 in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup final on Saturday night to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.” Read more at The Guardian
Martin Klimek for The Washington Post via Getty Images
“A Google engineer claims the company’s AI chatbot is sentient: ‘It told me it had a soul.’ Other experts aren’t so sure.” Read more at NPR
“Vermont harvested more maple syrup in 2022 than any other year in the state's modern history.” Read more at NPR
