The Full Belmonte, 8/9/2022
Former President Donald J. Trump said F.B.I. agents had searched Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, and broken open a safe.Credit...MediaPunch, via Associated Press
“Former President Donald J. Trump said on Monday that the F.B.I. had searched his Palm Beach, Fla., home and had broken open a safe — an account signaling a major escalation in the various investigations into the final stages of his presidency.
The search, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation, appeared to be focused on material that Mr. Trump had brought with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence, when he left the White House. Those boxes contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents.
Mr. Trump delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, only doing so when there became a threat of action to retrieve them. The case was referred to the Justice Department by the archives early this year.
The search marked the latest remarkable turn in the long-running investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions before, during and after his presidency — and even as he weighs announcing another candidacy for the White House.
It came as the Justice Department has stepped up its separate inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after his defeat at the polls in the 2020 election and as the former president also faces an accelerating criminal inquiry in Georgia and civil actions in New York.
Mr. Trump has long cast the F.B.I. as a tool of Democrats who have been out to get him, and the search set off a furious reaction among his supporters in the Republican Party and on the far right of American politics. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader in the House, suggested that he intended to investigate Attorney General Merrick B. Garland if Republicans took control of the House in November.
The F.B.I. would have needed to convince a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed, and that agents might find evidence at Mar-a-Lago, to get a search warrant. Proceeding with a search on a former president’s home would almost surely have required sign-off from top officials at the bureau and the Justice Department.
The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.
An F.B.I. representative declined to comment, as did Justice Department officials. The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, was appointed by Mr. Trump.” Read more at New York Times
A police car outside Mar-a-Lago yesterday. Photographer: Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images
“WASHINGTON — A lawyer for plaintiffs who are suing the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Monday turned over more than two years’ worth of text messages from Mr. Jones’s phone to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, including messages that show Mr. Jones was in touch with allies of former President Donald J. Trump.
But the files do not appear to include text messages from the time most of interest to the committee: the day of Jan. 6, 2021, and the weeks building up to the attack, according to people familiar with the document production.
Though the phone data was retrieved in mid-2021, the most recent message is from mid-2020, according to Mark Bankston, who represents Sandy Hook parents suing Mr. Jones for defamation for lies he spread about the 2012 school shooting. That time period is before Mr. Jones became involved in plans to amass a pro-Trump crowd in Washington to march on the Capitol as Mr. Trump fought to remain in office despite his defeat at the polls.” Read more at New York Times
“ATLANTA — A federal judge meted out a second layer of life sentences on Monday to Travis and Gregory McMichael, two of the three white Georgia men convicted of committing federal hate crimes for the pursuit and slaying of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man, in February 2020. The third man, William Bryan, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
In an equally dramatic move, the judge, U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood, rejected requests by the men — all of whom were previously sentenced to life for their murder convictions in state court — that they be allowed to serve part of their concurrent life sentences in federal prison.
The lawyer for Travis McMichael said that hy’s family members came to court and argued that the men convicted in the killing should receive no special treatment. Marcus Arbery, Mr. Arbery’s father, said that he wanted the men to “rot in the state prison.”
‘These three devils have broken my heart into pieces,’ he said.
The sentencing hearings were held in a Brunswick, Ga., courtroom for the men, whose actions, caught on video, horrified the nation and the world. Prosecutors contended that the killing of Mr. Arbery was the men’s own version of vigilante justice, motivated by racism.” Read more at New York Times
“In early 2021, with the turmoil of a bitterly contested presidential contest still fresh, several election clerks in Michigan received strange phone calls.
The person on the other end was a Republican state representative who told them their election equipment was needed for an investigation, according to documents from the Michigan attorney general’s office.
They obliged. Soon, the machines were being picked apart in hotels and Airbnb rentals in Oakland County, outside Detroit, by conservative activists hunting for what they believed was proof of fraud, the documents said. Weeks later, after the equipment was returned in handoffs in highway car-pool lots and shopping malls, the clerks found that it had been tampered with, and in some cases, damaged.
The revelations of possible meddling with voting machines have set off a political tsunami in Michigan, one of the most critical battleground states in the country.
The documents detail deception of election officials and a breach of voting equipment that stand out as extraordinary even among the volumes of public reporting on brazen attempts by former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters to scrutinize and undermine the 2020 results.
But one of the most politically striking elements of the case is the identity of one of the people implicated in the scheme by the office of the attorney general: Matthew DePerno, who is now the presumptive Republican nominee for that very post.
Mr. DePerno, a lawyer who rose to prominence challenging the 2020 results in Antrim County and has been endorsed by Mr. Trump, is vying to unseat Dana Nessel, a Democrat who is Michigan’s top law enforcement official and who fought attempts to undermine the state’s election.
Now, evidence provided by her office places Mr. DePerno at one of the ‘tests’ of voting equipment and suggests that he was a key orchestrator of ‘a conspiracy’ to gain improper access to machines in three counties, Roscommon and Missaukee in Northern Michigan and Barry, a rural area southeast of Grand Rapids. The tampering resulted in physical damage, but the attorney general’s office indicated that there was no evidence that there was ‘any software or firmware manipulation’ of the equipment.” Read more at New York Times
“On Monday, Gabby Petito’s family filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against Utah police. Petito was missing for weeks before being found dead in Wyoming.” [Vox] Read more at NBC News / Marlene Lenthang
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
“Police departments across the country are facing severe staffing shortages as they struggle to recruit and retain officers, Axios' Ivana Saric reports.
Why it matters: The shortages have coincided with a spike in crime across the nation.
In Denver, firearm homicides surged in 2021, more than double the 2015 total.
Philadelphia last year saw the largest number of homicides ever recorded in the city, up nearly 13% from 2020.
‘We’re getting more calls for service and there are fewer people to answer them,’ Philadelphia Police spokesperson Eric Gripp told AP.
The big picture: Several factors are driving the shortages at a time when the spotlight remains on excessive force cases and law enforcement agencies with patterns of abuse.
Departments have struggled with low pay and the ‘great resignation’ brought on by COVID, per CNN.
A survey last year by the Police Executive Research Forum found a 45% increase in retirements compared to the previous year.
State of play: The changes are having a widespread impact on services.
In L.A., 650 fewer officers are working than before the pandemic. The city has ‘downsized its human trafficking, narcotics and gun details,’ closed its animal cruelty unit, and decreased its homelessness outreach teams by 80%, AP reports.
In Seattle, staffing shortages mean fewer detectives investigating sexual assaults.” Read more at Axios
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
“Axios has agreed to sell to Cox Enterprises of Atlanta in a deal valued at $525 million, Axios' Sara Fischer reports.
What it means for our readers: more great Axios journalism.
Axios management will maintain control of editorial direction and day-to-day operations.
Cox also plans an investment of $25 million in Axios journalism, including national coverage, Axios Local and Axios Pro.
Axios Local publishes daily in 24 cities and plans to expand by the end of 2022.” Read more at Axios
“Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a never-sent draft resignation letter that former President Trump was ‘doing great and irreparable harm’ to the country, according to a New Yorker excerpt by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, from their book ‘The Divider: Trump in the White House,’ out Sept. 20. Read the excerpt
Read more at Axios
The pay gap between men and women emerges soon after they finish college—often earlier than is widely perceived, new data show.
“In nearly 75% of roughly 11,300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, median pay for men exceeded that for women three years after graduation, according to Education Department data on 1.7 million college grads who received federal student aid. Determining why those gaps appear earlier isn’t simple, but career paths, salary negotation tactics and discrimination could be factors.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Most parents aren’t vaccinating their toddlers against Covid-19
“More than a month after the CDC recommended the shots for children ages 6 months through 4 years, about 4% to 5% of them have gotten jabbed, according to the most recent data from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Some parents are waiting until their children get fall checkups or because their kids were recently infected; many don’t perceive the virus as a threat, or have safety concerns because the vaccines are still new.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
China’s military demonstrated its ability to effectively blockade Taiwan during four days of exercises. Two Taiwanese jet fighters fly near Hsinchu, Taiwan.
PHOTO: RITCHIE B TONGO/SHUTTERSTOCK
Taiwan’s military accused China of carrying on sustained cyberattacks, as Beijing said it would continue military exercises around the island.
“Taiwanese Lt. Gen. Lu Chien-chung said China had engaged in a campaign that rendered some government-run sites inaccessible. In another incident, display screens in some 7-Eleven convenience stores were programmed to show a scowling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who visited Taiwan last week.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — In a growing challenge to Russia’s grip on occupied areas of southeastern Ukraine, guerrilla forces loyal to Kyiv are killing pro-Moscow officials, blowing up bridges and trains, and helping the Ukrainian military by identifying key targets.
The spreading resistance has eroded Kremlin control of those areas and threatened its plans to hold referendums in various cities as a move toward annexation by Russia.
‘Our goal is to make life unbearable for the Russian occupiers and use any means to derail their plans,’ said Andriy, a 32-year-old coordinator of the guerrilla movement in the southern Kherson region.
A member of the Zhovta Strichka — or ‘Yellow Ribbon’ — resistance group, Andriy spoke to The Associated Press on condition of not being fully identified to avoid being tracked down by the Russians. The group takes its name from one of the two national colors of Ukraine, and its members use ribbons of that hue to mark potential targets for guerrilla attacks.
Ukrainian troops recently used a U.S.-supplied multiple rocket launcher known as HIMARS to hit a strategic bridge on the Dnieper River in Kherson, severing the Russians’ main supply link. The city of 500,000 people, seized by Russian troops early in the war, has been flooded with leaflets from the resistance, threatening Moscow-backed officials.” Read more at AP News
“NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenyans are voting Tuesday in an unusual presidential election, where a longtime opposition leader who is backed by the outgoing president faces the brash deputy president who styles himself as the outsider and a ‘hustler.’
The election is considered close, and East Africa’s economic hub could see a presidential runoff for the first time. Economic issues such as widespread corruption could be of greater importance than the ethnic tensions that have marked past votes with sometimes deadly results.
Kenya is a standout with its relatively democratic system in a region where some leaders are notorious for clinging to power for decades. Its stability is crucial for foreign investors, the most humble of street vendors and troubled neighbors like Ethiopia and Somalia.
Hundreds of voters lined up hours ahead of polls opening in some locations, often after being summoned by volunteers’ whistles. Difficulties were reported at times with the electronic voting system, and presidential candidate George Wajackoyah told journalists that voting kits weren’t working in his stronghold. Though polling in low single figures, Wajackoyah and his pledges to legalize marijuana have prompted questions over whether he could draw enough votes to force a runoff.” Read more at AP News
“SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Some of the heaviest rain in decades swamped South Korea’s capital region, turning Seoul’s streets into car-clogged rivers and sending floods cascading into subway stations. At least eight people were killed — some drowning in their homes — and seven others were missing, with more rain forecast, officials said Tuesday.
More than 43 centimeters (17 inches) of rain was measured in Seoul’s hardest-hit Dongjak district from Monday to noon Tuesday. Precipitation in the area exceeded 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) per hour at one point Monday night, the highest hourly downpour measured in Seoul since 1942.
Deserted cars and buses were scattered across streets as the water receded on Tuesday. Workers cleared uprooted trees, mud and debris with excavators and blocked off broken roads. Landslide warnings were issued in nearly 50 cities and towns, and 160 hiking paths in Seoul and mountainous Gangwon province were closed.” Read more at AP News
“Blinken in DRC. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken travels to the Democratic Republic of the Congo today as he continues his Africa tour. Blinken’s visit comes a day after he launched the Biden administration’s sub-Saharan Africa strategy document (the most mentioned country? Russia).” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Ukraine’s nuclear tensions. Russia on Monday said it will allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to access the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, following concern over the site’s safety after facilities on the plant site were hit by shelling last week. Ukraine’s nuclear chief has also backed an IAEA inspection while also calling for the plant to be made a ‘demilitarized’ zone.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“More aid to Ukraine. The United States announced a further $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine on Monday, with the majority of the assistance going toward artillery ammunition. The new commitment means that the United States has now provided $9.8 billion in security assistance since Biden took office, an amount that eclipses Ukraine’s annual defense budget.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Iran accord | European Union diplomats presented a final draft nuclear accord that could deliver a major expansion of Iranian oil exports to global markets, giving the US and Tehran just weeks to choose whether they want to revive the 2015 deal. The blueprint resulting from 15 months of talks in Vienna now requires a decision by Biden and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on whether to sign off on the agreement.” Read more at Foreign Policy
”Losing patience | China’s leadership has grown increasingly frustratedwith a years-long failure to develop semiconductors that can replace US circuitry, an embarrassment capped by a flurry of anti-graft probes into top industry officials and the $9 billion rescue of Tsinghua Unigroup. Senior figures are angry that tens of billions of dollars funneled into the industry haven’t produced the sorts of breakthroughs seen in previous national-level scientific endeavors, sources say.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Government shuffle | Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will reveal a new cabinet tomorrow after the murder of former leader Shinzo Abe exposed embarrassing ties between their party’s largest faction and the Unification Church. The shuffle could indicate how power within the Liberal Democratic Party has shifted away from Abe’s bloc, which has produced a series of prime ministers since the turn of the century.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Mexico, the world’s largest beer exporter, faces severe water shortages in the country’s north that threaten output after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said brewers there should halt production. Months of water scarcity in drought-plagued Monterrey, an industrial region where beermakers like Heineken NV have facilities, led Lopez Obrador to declare beer production in the north ‘over,’ telling companies to focus on the south and southeast instead.” Read more at Foreign Policy
Residents wait to fill water containers in Monterrey. Photographer: Marian Carrasquero/Bloomberg
“Angel Hope looked at the math test and felt lost. He had just graduated near the top of his high school class, winning scholarships from prestigious colleges. But on this test — a University of Wisconsin exam that measures what new students learned in high school — all he could do was guess.
It was like the disruption of the pandemic was catching up to him all at once.
Nearly a third of Hope’s high school career was spent at home, in virtual classes that were hard to follow and easy to brush aside. Some days he skipped school to work extra hours at his job. Some days he played games with his brother and sister. Other days he just stayed in bed.
Algebra got little of his attention, but his teachers kept giving him good grades amid a school-wide push for leniency.
‘It was like school was optional. It wasn’t a mandatory thing,’ said Hope, 18, of Milwaukee. ‘I feel like I didn’t really learn anything.’
Across the country, there are countless others like him. Hundreds of thousands of recent graduates are heading to college this fall after spending more than half their high school careers dealing with the upheaval of a pandemic. They endured a jarring transition to online learning, the strains from teacher shortages and profound disruptions to their home lives. And many are believed to be significantly behind academically.
Colleges could see a surge in students unprepared for the demands of college-level work, education experts say. Starting a step behind can raise the risk of dropping out. And that can hurt everything from a person’s long-term earnings to the health of the country’s workforce.” Read more at AP News
The skeleton of a plesiosaur on display at the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.Credit...Ross Barker/Alamy Stock Photo
Fossil Find Tantalizes Loch Ness Monster Fans
“LONDON — Millions of years before the first (alleged) sighting of the Loch Ness monster, populations of giant reptiles swam through Jurassic seas in areas that are now Britain. Known as plesiosaurs, these long-necked creatures that could grow up to 40 feet long were thought to have dwelled exclusively in oceans.
But a discovery published in a paper last week by researchers in Britain and Morocco added weight to a hypothesis that some Loch Ness monster enthusiasts have long clung to: that plesiosaurs lived not just in seas, but in freshwater, too. That could mean, they reasoned excitedly, that Nessie, who is sometimes described as looking a lot like a plesiosaur, really could live in Loch Ness, a freshwater lake.
Local papers have celebrated the finding. It ‘gives further credit to the idea that Nessie may have been able to survive and even thrive in Loch Ness,’ said an article on page 32 of the Inverness Courrier, a biweekly newspaper in the Scottish Highlands. ‘Loch Ness Monster bombshell,’ blared a headline from Britain’s Daily Express tabloid. ‘Existence of Loch Ness Monster is ‘plausible’’ read headlines in The Scotsman, The Telegraph and elsewhere, seizing on a phrase in the University of Bath’s announcement of the study’s findings.” Read more at New York Times
“NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a question that keeps some scientists awake at night: Do spiders sleep?
Daniela Roessler and her colleagues trained cameras on baby jumping spiders at night to find out. The footage showed patterns that looked a lot like sleep cycles: The spiders’ legs twitched and parts of their eyes flickered.
The researchers described this pattern as a ‘REM sleep-like state.’ In humans, REM, or rapid eye movement, is an active phase of sleep when parts of the brain light up with activity and is closely linked with dreaming.
Other animals, including some birds and mammals, have been shown to experience REM sleep. But creatures like the jumping spider haven’t gotten as much attention so it wasn’t known if they got the same kind of sleep, said Roessler, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany.
Their findings were published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Read more at AP News
Getty Images
Olivia Newton-John, the dulcet-voiced singer from Australia who became a country-pop, folk-pop, rock-pop, disco-pop sensation in the 1970s, starred in the Hollywood musical juggernaut ‘Grease’ and underwent a sultry makeover with her mega-selling 1981 record ‘Physical,’ died Aug. 8 at her ranch in Southern California. She was 73.
Her family announced her death in a statement on Facebook, noting that she ‘has been a symbol of triumphs and hope for over 30 years sharing her journey with breast cancer.’ Additional details were not immediately available, but for many years she owned a 12-acre estate on the Santa Ynez River near Santa Barbara.
Ms. Newton-John was treated for breast cancer in 1992, and she announced 25 years later, in 2017, that it had returned and metastasized. (She subsequently revealed that she had been battling the disease in private since 2013.)
Since her initial diagnosis at 44, Ms. Newton-John had become an advocate for cancer research and awareness, as well as for environmental causes. She sang for presidents and a pope, the sick and the disabled, and promoted music as a form of spiritual therapy, raising millions of dollars to fund the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Center at Melbourne’s Austin Hospital. Her later albums featured inspirational music about love, friendship and overcoming trauma.” Read more at Washington Post
“David McCullough, who was known to millions as an award-winning, best-selling author and an appealing television host and narrator with a rare gift for recreating the great events and characters of America’s past, died on Sunday at his home in Hingham, Mass., southeast of Boston. He was 89.
The death was confirmed by his daughter Dorie Lawson. No specific cause was given.
Mr. McCullough won Pulitzer Prizes for two presidential biographies, ‘Truman’ (1992) and ‘John Adams’ (2001). He received National Book Awards for ‘The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal’ (1977) and ‘Mornings on Horseback’ (1981), about the young Theodore Roosevelt and his family.
Deep research and lively readability were hallmarks of his books, and so was their tendency to leap off the shelves. ‘Truman’ topped The New York Times’s best-seller list for 43 weeks; ‘John Adams’ was No. 1 in its first week and has since gone through dozens more printings.” Read more at New York Times
Updated 9th August 2022
Credit: Rose Hartman/Getty Images
“Issey Miyake, the Japanese fashion designer whose timeless pleats made him an industry favorite, has died aged 84. He died of cancer on August 5, his office confirmed to CNN on Tuesday.
A funeral service has already been held with his family and close friends, his office said, adding that a memorial ceremony will not be held, in line with the designer's wishes.
Miyake rose to international prominence in the 1980s with avant-garde designs that those who could afford his luxury pieces immediately regarded as collector's items. Today, his designs are preserved at institutions including London's Victoria and Albert Museum, New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.” Read more at CNN
Issey Miyake pictured in Tokyo in 2015. Credit: Masahiro Sugimoto/The Yomiuri/Reuters
“Pete Rose was dismissive Sunday when asked about an accusation that he had sex with a girl under 16 in the 1970s.
Rose, who was attending a celebration in Philadelphia for the 1980 World-Series-winning Phillies team, told a female reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer: ‘No, I’m not here to talk about that. Sorry about that. It was 55 years ago, babe.’…
Rose was given a lifetime ban from baseball in 1989 for betting on games, but was given special permission by the commissioner’s office to appear at the Phillies event. He has been barred from consideration for the Hall of Fame because he is on baseball’s ineligible list.
Major League Baseball and the Phillies did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday about Rose’s remarks.
The accusation of underage sex against Rose, 81, came out in a 2017 defamation lawsuit he filed against John Dowd, who had led the investigation into Rose’s gambling. It stemmed from remarks Dowd made on a radio program claiming that Rose had sex with ‘12- to 14-year-old girls.’
In testimony from that case in 2017, an unidentified woman said she had sex with Rose when she was under 16. Rose responded that he believed she was 16, the age of consent in Ohio. Rose has not faced any charges of underage sex; the statute of limitations has expired.” Read more at New York Times