The Full Belmonte, 9/24/2022
Trump Lawyers Push to Limit Aides’ Testimony in Jan. 6 Inquiry
The former president’s legal team is seeking to invoke attorney-client and executive privilege over grand jury testimony after waves of subpoenas went out to witnesses.
By Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman
Sept. 23, 2022
“Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump are engaged in a behind-the-scenes legal struggle to limit the scope of a federal grand jury investigation into the role he played in seeking to overturn the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter.
The closed-door battle, unfolding in Federal District Court in Washington, has centered on how far Mr. Trump can go in asserting attorney-client and executive privilege as a means of keeping witnesses close to him from answering potentially damaging questions in their appearances before the grand jury, the people said.
The issue is important because it will determine how much evidence prosecutors can get from an inner circle of some of Mr. Trump’s most trusted former lawyers and advisers. The outcome will help to shape the contours of the information that the Justice Department will be able to gather, as it looks into Mr. Trump’s involvement in the chaotic events after the election that culminated in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
That process continues even as the Justice Department also pursues a separate criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of government documents that he took with him when he left office, including hundreds marked as classified.” Read more at New York Times
Arizona Judge Reinstates Strict Abortion Ban From 1864
A 15-week abortion ban passed this year will take effect on Saturday. But the attorney general has argued that the near-total ban from the 19th century should take precedence.
Sept. 23, 2022
“A judge on Friday ruled that a near-total abortion ban written before Arizona became a state must be enforced, throwing abortion access into question one day before the start of a 15-week ban that passed the Legislature this year.
The stricter ban, which can be traced to 1864, was blocked by a court injunction in 1973 shortly after the Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, determined that there was a constitutional right to abortion.
On Friday, Judge Kellie Johnson of Pima County Superior Court lifted that injunction, noting that Roe had been overruled in June and that Planned Parenthood’s request for the court to ‘harmonize the laws’ in Arizona was flawed.
The 1864 law, first established by the state’s territorial legislature, mandates a two- to five-year prison sentence for anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion. In 1901, the state updated and codified the law.” Read more at New York Times
Puerto Ricans seething over lack of power days after Fiona
“SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Half of Puerto Rico is without power more than five days after Hurricane Fiona struck — including an entire town where not a single work crew has arrived.
Many on the U.S. territory are angry and incredulous, and calls are growing for the ouster of the island’s private electricity transmission and distribution company.
Fuel disruptions are worsening the situation, forcing grocery stores, gas stations and other businesses to close and leaving apartment buildings in the dark because there is no diesel for generators.
Many are questioning why it is taking so long to restore power since Fiona was a Category 1 storm that did not affect the entire island, and whose rain — not wind — inflicted the greatest damage.” Read more at AP News
Republicans unveil 90s-throwback midterm election agenda
The House minority leader introduced the Republicans’ ‘Commitment to America’, focusing on Biden and not on Trump
David Smith in Washington
“Republicans have unveiled a midterm election agenda heavy on critiques of Joe Biden but light on specific policies – and with a throwback theme to the mid-1990s.
After a primary season dominated by extremist ‘Make America great again’ (Maga) candidates and deniers of the 2020 election result, Friday’s launch also represented an effort to tone down rhetoric and win back independent voters.
Kevin McCarthy, minority leader in the House of Representatives, introduced the party’s ‘Commitment to America’ at an event near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground in November’s vote.
The memo of principles underlined how Republicans are hoping to make the midterms a referendum on the presidency of Biden rather than his predecessor, Donald Trump, who continues to suck up media oxygen as a target of several criminal and civil investigations.
“I challenge the president to join with us – let’s go across the country and let’s debate what his policies have done to America and our plan for a new direction,” McCarthy told supporters. “And let’s let America make the decision for the best way for this country to go forward.”
The one-page commitment carried unavoidable echoes of the “Contract With America”, a statement of intent in 1994 that helped Newt Gingrich’s Republicans gain the House majority during Bill Clinton’s presidency, for the first time in more than four decades. But McCarthy’s version offered less detail and, critics said, less ambition.
Its defining message was that Democrats have failed the American people. McCarthy, who hopes to replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker, said: “The Democrats, they control Washington. They control the House, the Senate, the White House. They control the committees, they control the agencies. It’s their plan but they have no plan to fix all the problems they’ve created.”
Taking a leaflet from his jacket pocket, McCarthy added: ‘So you know what? We’ve created a commitment to America.’
The four pillars are ‘an economy that’s strong’, ‘a nation that’s safe’, ‘a future that’s free’ and ‘a government that’s accountable’.
The first point reflects Republicans’ hope that stubbornly high inflation will lead voters to punish Democrats on election day.
McCarthy said a strong economy means ‘you can fill up your tank, you can buy the groceries, you have enough money left over to go to Disneyland and save for a future – that the pay cheques grow; they no longer shrink’.
A safe nation, he added, ‘means your community will be protected, your law enforcement will be respected, your criminals will be prosecuted’.
McCarthy also emphasised the scourge of the opioid fentanyl and the need to secure the US-Mexico border, an issue recently dominated by a stunt in which the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, relocated migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
Indeed, Friday’s launch was notable for what McCarthy did not talk about: abortion rights, voting rights and the climate crisis, all of which are seen as political liabilities for his party. Democrats have been energised by June’s supreme court decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
McCarthy sought to project party unity despite the uneasy coalition that makes up the House minority. It remains uncertain whether the House Freedom Caucus, including far-right members loyal to Trump, will support McCarthy for speaker.
Democrats dismissed the Commitment to America as a Trump platform in disguise. Pelosi said: ‘Today’s rollout is the latest evidence of House Republicans’ wholehearted commitment to Maga: going all in on an extremist agenda designed to greatly diminish Americans’ health, freedom and security.’
The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, distributed a list of eight questions Democrats have for Republicans about their platform. It took aim at many House members’ staunch defence of Trump.
“Who won the 2020 Presidential Election?” the list asks. “Like President Trump, do you believe that the January 6 insurrectionists were engaged in ‘legitimate political discourse’ and should not be prosecuted for their violent actions? … Do you support defunding the FBI in retaliation for executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago?”
The list also seizes on other Republican policies. Hoyer asked:“Will Republicans pursue a nationwide abortion ban? … If given the chance, will you try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act and strip health-care access away from millions of Americans?”
Others joined the criticism. Reed Galen, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “This agenda is meaningless. Kevin McCarthy wants everyone to think he has a positive agenda for America – which nothing could be further from the truth.
“The ultra-Maga has total control of the party and is only interested in a national abortion ban and impeaching Joe Biden. The GOP is no longer interested in governing, they just want to obtain power and use it to destroy their enemies.”
McCarthy’s initiative contrasts with the Senate, where the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has declined to put forward an agenda, preferring to simply run against Biden.
Republicans remain the favourites to win back the House and have history on their side: since the second world war, the president’s party has on average lost 29 House seats in each president’s first midterm election, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.” Read more at The Guardian
Mississippi Welfare Scandal Spreads Well Beyond Brett Favre
Millions earmarked for the needy in the nation’s poorest state instead went to projects that benefited the well-to-do, the state alleges, including a volleyball stadium at Mr. Favre’s alma mater.
Sept. 22, 2022
“As he became further enmeshed in a scheme that diverted federal welfare money to build a volleyball stadium that cost more than $5 million at the University of Southern Mississippi, the former football star Brett Favre texted a question to the head of a nonprofit doling out funds meant to go to welfare recipients in the nation’s poorest state.
‘If you were to pay me,’ he wrote in 2017 of a $1.1 million proposal for promotional efforts that would actually be funneled toward building the stadium, ‘is there any way the media could find out where it came from and how much?’ Several years of text messages about the project came to light when they were filed in court last week and were first published by Mississippi Today, the small nonprofit news site that has consistently led reporting on the story.
Far more than that payment has been exposed in a billowing scandal that has stretched considerably beyond Mr. Favre. A motley assortment of political appointees, former football stars, onetime professional wrestlers, business figures and various friends of the state’s former Republican governor all stand accused of pocketing or misusing money earmarked for needy families.
On Thursday, John Davis, who served as executive director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services under former Gov. Phil Bryant, pleaded guilty to both federal and state charges of embezzling federal welfare funds. Millions of dollars were transferred to friends and relatives, court documents say.
According to a lawsuit filed by the state in May, around $5 million was diverted to Ted DiBiase, a flamboyant retired wrestler once known as ‘The Million Dollar Man,’ and two of his sons, as well as various entities connected to them, including a ministry. Much of the money went to fictitious services, bogus jobs, first-class travel arrangements and even one son’s stay at a luxury rehab center in Malibu, Calif., that cost $160,000, the suit claims.
Similarly, the state claims that Marcus Dupree, a former high school football phenom and professional running back, who was paid to act as a celebrity endorser and motivational speaker, did not perform any contractual services toward the $371,000 he received to purchase and live in a sprawling residence with a swimming pool and adjacent horse pastures in a gated community.
Mr. Favre, who earned more than $140 million in his Hall of Fame career, was paid $1.1 million for speeches he never gave, the suit said. He also orchestrated more than $2 million in government funds being channeled to a biotechnology start-up in which he had invested, according to the suit.
None of the three have been charged with crimes and all have denied wrongdoing. But even the most cynical observers in Mississippi have been dumbfounded by the brazenness of the activity in the allegations and how deeply it reflected the inequities baked into the history of a state with the nation’s highest poverty rate.
‘The profiteering off the poor is ongoing,’ Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, said. He added, ‘It is like Robin Hood in reverse — you take from the poor and give to the rich.’
The accusations about fraudulent grants were all laid out in the lawsuit filed in May against 38 individuals and organizations, which sought the repayment of more than $24 million. Rather than helping the poor, the federal welfare program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, appeared to become a slush fund for pet projects and personal gain.
The state alleges that the money was siphoned off for services that were often never provided and in any case, would have failed to meet both federal and state regulations governing their dispersal. The case follows a state audit released in May 2020 suggesting that as much as $94 million of TANF funds might have gone astray.
Six people were arrested in February 2020 on charges of misusing public funds in what the state auditor, Shad White, has described as one of the largest public corruption cases in Mississippi’s history. Most of them have pleaded guilty; Jody E. Owens II, the Hinds County district attorney, said a joint inquiry by federal and state investigators could produce charges against more people.” Read more at New York Times
Herschel Walker’s Company Said It Donated Profits, but Evidence Is Scant
By David A. Fahrenthold and Shane Goldmacher
Sept. 22, 2022
“Back when he was a businessman running a food-distribution company, Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia, said his company offered its customers more than just burgers and hot wings.
‘You are not just serving delicious, appealing food … you’re teaming up with Herschel, in an effort to level life’s playing field for those in need,’ his company website once read.
Mr. Walker, a former football star, pledged that 15 percent of profits would go to charities, a promise the company said was “part of its corporate charter.” For years, Mr. Walker’s company named four specific charities as beneficiaries of those donations, including the Boy Scouts of America and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
But there is scant evidence that Mr. Walker’s giving matched those promises. When The New York Times contacted those four charities, one declined to comment and the other three said they had no record or recollection of any gifts from the company in the last decade.” Read more at New York Times
Putin’s Draft Draws Resistance in Russia’s Far-Flung Regions
Villagers, activists and some elected officials asked why the conscription drive seemed to be hitting poor, remote areas hardest, while pro-war hawks criticized it as chaotic.
Sept. 23, 2022
“President Vladimir V. Putin’s surprise draft to reinforce his invasion of Ukraine ran into growing resistance across Russia on Friday as villagers, activists and even some elected officials asked why the conscription drive appeared to be hitting minority groups and rural areas harder than the big cities.
Some of the greatest anguish played out hundreds or thousands of miles away from the front line, in the Caucasus Mountains and the northeastern region of Yakutia, a sparsely populated expanse that straddles the Arctic Circle. Community leaders described remote villages where much of the working-age male population received conscription notices in recent days, leaving families that subsist off the land without men around to work ahead of the long winter.
‘We have reindeer herders, hunters, fishermen — we have so few of them anyway,’ Vyacheslav Shadrin, the chairman of the council of elders for a small Indigenous group known as the Yukaghirs, said in a phone interview. ‘But they are the ones being drafted most of all.’
Mr. Putin announced the call-up on Wednesday, describing it as a ‘partial mobilization’ necessary to counter Ukraine and its Western backers, who he said were seeking Russia’s destruction. It was a move he had long delayed making, even as supporters of the war clamored for a draft in order to allow Russia to intensify its assault.
Russia will mobilize about 300,000 civilians, defense officials said, focusing on men with military experience and special skills, though some Russian media that now operate outside the country reported that the number could be much higher.
But by Friday, even some of the hawkish commentators who had been urging a draft were criticizing the sweeping and uneven way it appeared to be rolling out. A popular pro-war blog on Telegram, Rybar, described receiving “huge numbers of stories” of people with health problems or without combat experience getting draft notices, even as some volunteers were being turned away.
Rather than helping Russia’s war effort, hawks warned, the chaotic conscription could end up harming it. And some said the military officials carrying out the order cared more about formally fulfilling orders than winning the war.” Read more at New York Times
As Ukraine worries UN, some leaders rue what’s pushed aside
By JENNIFER PELTZ
“UNITED NATIONS (AP) — In speech after speech, world leaders dwelled on the topic consuming this year’s U.N. General Assembly meeting: Russia’s war in Ukraine.
A few, like Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, prodded the world not to forget everything else.
He, too, was quick to bring up the biggest military confrontation in Europe since World War II. But he wasn’t there to discuss the conflict itself, nor its disruption of food, fuel and fertilizer markets.
“The ongoing war in Ukraine is making it more difficult,” Buhari lamented, “to tackle the perennial issues that feature each year in the deliberations of this assembly.”
He went on to name a few: inequality, nuclear disarmament, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the more than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who have been living in limbo for years in Bangladesh.
In an environment where words are parsed, confrontations are calibrated and worry is acute that the war and its wider effects could worsen, no one dismissed the importance of the conflict. But comments such as Buhari’s quietly spoke to a certain unease, sometimes bordering on frustration, about the international community’s absorption in Ukraine.” Read more at AP News
Russians strike Ukraine as Kremlin-staged votes continue
By KARL RITTER
“KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces launched new strikes on Ukrainian cities Saturday as Kremlin-orchestrated votes continued in occupied regions of Ukraine to pave the way for their annexation by Moscow.
Zaporizhzhia Gov. Oleksandr Starukh said the Russians targeted infrastructure facilities in the Dnieper River city, and one of the missiles hit an apartment building, killing one person and injuring seven others.
The Russian forces also struck other areas in Ukraine, damaging residential buildings and civilian infrastructure.
The British Defense Ministry said that Russia was targeting the Pechenihy dam on the Siverskyy Donets River in northeastern Ukraine following previous strikes on a dam on a reservoir near Kryvyi Rih, causing flooding on the Inhulets River.
“Ukrainian forces are advancing further downstream along both rivers,” the British said. “As Russian commanders become increasingly concerned about their operational setbacks, they are probably attempting to strike the sluice gates of dams, in order to flood Ukrainian military crossing points.”” Read more at AP News
Federer, Even in Defeat, Gets Fitting End to Storied Career
By Christopher Clarey and Andrew Das
“The last match of Roger Federer’s 24-year professional career was about to begin, and Andy Murray, one of his rivals turned teammates at this Laver Cup in London, kept his advice short and sweet.
“Enjoy it,” Murray said.
Federer, 41, took that to heart on Friday night: acknowledging the roars and support of the sellout crowd in the O2 Arena; smiling often and cracking jokes with his doubles partner Rafael Nadal as they lost to Frances Tiafoe and Jack Sock, 4-6, 7-6 (2), (11-9). The decider after the teams split sets was a 10-point tiebreaker rather than a third set.
The tone, as so often with Federer, seemed just right, and there were of course tears when it was over from a champion who has so often given free rein to his emotions — in victory or defeat — after keeping them tightly under wraps with the ball in play. What underscored the special circumstances on Friday were the emotions that others were feeling: the thousands in the arena, including Federer’s family and friends, and perhaps most poignantly, Nadal, a much less lachrymose champion who appeared every bit as inconsolable as his friend and doubles partner as the tears streamed down his face.” Read more at New York Times
Cards’ Pujols hits 700th home run, 4th player to reach mark
By BETH HARRIS
“LOS ANGELES (AP) — Albert Pujols seemed like a long shot in early August to reach 700 home runs, still more than a dozen swings from the hallowed mark and his power stroke all but gone.
Or so it appeared.
Now showing the pop of his youth in the final weeks of his career, the 42-year-old slugger got there with two long shots.
Pujols hit his 700th home run, connecting for his second drive of the game and becoming the fourth player in major league history to make it to the milestone as the St. Louis Cardinals routed the Los Angeles Dodgers 11-0 Friday night.
Pujols joined Barry Bonds (762 homers), Hank Aaron (755) and Babe Ruth (714) in one of baseball’s most exclusive clubs.” Read more at AP News
Louise Fletcher: Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest star dies
Fletcher, who won Academy Award for her role of Nurse Ratched in 1975 film, dies, aged 88
Reuters
“Louise Fletcher, who won an Academy Award for her role in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, has died, aged 88.
Fletcher died in her sleep surrounded by family at her home in Montdurausse, France, her agent, David Shaul, told the Associated Press.
Andrew Bick, her son, told the Hollywood Reporter she died on Friday of natural causes. She had survived two bouts with breast cancer.
The actor won the Academy Award for best leading actress in 1976 for her portrayal of ruthless nurse Mildred Ratched in Miloš Forman’s adaptation of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel of the same name. The movie also won awards for best picture, best director, best leading actor and best screenplay.
In her acceptance speech that night, she used American Sign Language to thank her deaf parents and thanked audiences for hating her.
Her portrayal of the character in the film was so memorable, Netflix made a series called Ratched in 2020, which tells the origin story of the nurse-turned-villain.
Born Estelle Louise Fletcher on 22 July, 1934, she was the second of four children.
She married producer Jerry Bick in the early 1960s and had two sons, John and Andrew. Fletcher divorced Bick in 1977 and is survived by her sons, according to the Associated Press.” Read more at The Guardian