Attorney General William Barr finds himself facing questions about his role in President Donald Trump’s outreach to Ukraine and the administration’s attempts to keep a whistleblower complaint from Congress, the Associated Press reports. Trump repeatedly told Ukraine’s president in a telephone call that Barr and Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani could help investigate Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden. Justice Department officials say Barr was unaware of Trump’s comments at the time of the July 25 call. When Barr did learn of that call a few weeks later, he was “surprised and angry” to discover he had been lumped in with Giuliani, said a source. Giuliani represents Trump’s personal interests and holds no position in the U.S. government, raising questions about why he would be conducting outreach to Ukrainian officials. Barr is the nation’s top law enforcement officer and leads a Cabinet department that traditionally has a modicum of independence from the White House. To Trump, there often appears to be little difference between the two lawyers. “I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it,” Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, said Trump is treating the country’s attorney general as if he’s just another personal lawyer. “I think it represents a larger problem with President Trump,” she said. “To him, it appears Giuliani and Barr both have the same job.” Barr has come under the scrutiny of congressional Democrats, who have accused him of acting on Trump’s personal behalf more than for the justice system. The Justice Department announced a crackdown on companies it says were involved in fraudulent genetic testing, bringing charges against 35 people associated with dozens of telemarketing companies and testing labs, reports NPR. The federal investigation, called Operation Double Helix, went after schemes that allegedly targeted people 65 and older. They involved laboratories paying illegal kickbacks and bribes to medical professionals who were working with fraudulent telemarketers, in exchange for the referral of Medicare beneficiaries. DOJ says the frauds cost the Medicare program more than $2 billion in unnecessary charges. Among those charged were 10 medical professionals, including nine doctors. “The elderly and disabled are being preyed upon,” says Joe Beemsterboer of DOJ’s criminal division. It was one of the largest health care fraud schemes in U.S. history, Beemsterboer says. It worked on many levels, involving many players — from “those collecting patient information, to those selling it, to those doctors corruptly prescribing these genetic tests, to the labs corruptly billing the Medicare program.” Shimon Richmond of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services inspector general’s office, said telemarketing companies trolled elderly Medicare beneficiaries online, or called them on the phone or even sent people to approach beneficiaries face-to-face at health fairs, senior centers, low-income housing areas or religious institutions like churches and synagogues. Genetic tests may have been offered free to the patients, but there was money to be made from Medicare reimbursement. Typically that payment – anywhere from $10,000 to $18,000 or more, Richmond says — would be split between the worker who recruited the patient, the doctor writing the prescription, the lab that did the test and the telemarketing company that organized the alleged scheme. Technology companies reported a record 45 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse last year, reports the New York Times. Some involve children 3 or 4 years old being sexually abused and tortured. More than a decade ago, when the reported number was less than one million, the proliferation of the explicit imagery had already reached a crisis point. Tech companies, law enforcement agencies and Congress responded, passing legislation in 2008. An insatiable criminal underworld has exploited the flawed and insufficient efforts to contain it. As with hate speech and terrorist propaganda, many tech companies failed to police sexual abuse imagery adequately on their platforms or failed to cooperate with the authorities when they found it. Law enforcement agencies were left understaffed and underfunded, even as they were asked to handle far larger caseloads. The Justice Department, given a major role by Congress, neglected to write mandatory monitoring reports, nor did it appoint a senior official to lead a crackdown. The group tasked with serving as a federal clearinghouse for the imagery — the go-between for the tech companies and the authorities — was ill equipped for the expanding demands. A paper published in conjunction with that group, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, described a system at “a breaking point,” with reports of abusive images “exceeding the capabilities of independent clearinghouses and law enforcement to take action.” In interviews, victims described in heart-wrenching detail how their lives had been upended by the abuse. In a disturbing trend, online groups are devoting themselves to sharing images of younger children and more extreme forms of abuse. The groups use encrypted technologies and the dark web to teach pedophiles how to carry out the crimes and how to record and share images of the abuse worldwide. President Donald Trump met with National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre on Friday, discussing prospective gun legislation and whether the NRA could provide support for the president as he faces impeachment and a difficult re-election campaign, the New York Times reports. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation. The NRA denied any discussion “about special arrangements pertaining to the NRA’s support of the President and vice versa.” LaPierre has been a leader in a campaign by gun rights advocates to influence the White House since back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. He has tried to move Trump away from proposing background check measures akin to what he said after the mass shootings he might support. After a 30-minute phone call last month, Trump appeared to be echoing NRA talking points. “We have very, very strong background checks right now, but we have sort of missing areas and areas that don’t complete the whole circle,” the president said, adding, “I have to tell you that it’s a mental problem.” Privately, Trump has raised questions about the NRA’s ability to back his 2020 campaign the way it did in 2016, when it poured over $30 million into his election, more than any other outside group. Recent public filings have shown that the NRA largely exhausted a $25 million line of credit that was guaranteed by the deed to its Fairfax, Va., headquarters, and borrowed against insurance policies taken out on its executives. Oliver North, who departed this year as the NRA’s president in an acrimonious leadership fight, has said that the organization’s legal bills, running between $1.5 million and $2 million a month from its main law firm, have created an “existential crisis.” Between 2007 and 2014, prosecutors in Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County dismissed 13 consecutive weapons charges against one man, Mario McGill. Then he shot and and killed Robert Miller, a childhood friend. Lisa Miller is unsure why McGill killed her 26-year-old son, but she believes Mecklenburg County’s justice system is sending a dangerous message to those who commit crimes with guns. “It says if they get off one time, they can continue to get off,” Miller said. “They’re taking people from their families. And it doesn’t have to be that way.” Cases like McGill’s have contributed to an alarming statistic: From 2014 through 2018, Mecklenburg prosecutors dismissed 68 percent of weapons charges, a higher rate than any other urban county in North Carolina, reports the Charlotte Observer. Statewide, prosecutors dismissed half of all weapons charges during the five-year period. Mecklenburg’s high dismissal rate means that defendants who commit crimes have a greater chance of avoiding punishment than in other counties. Suspects who get away with crimes often move on to worse offenses, including murder, experts say. Charlotte homicides this year are on pace to reach near-record levels. To investigate how prosecutors handle weapons crimes, the Observer analyzed data on 58 charges that involved weapons, murder or manslaughter. The investigation found that more than half of the roughly 300 people charged with murder in Mecklenburg County since 2015 had prior weapons charges. For 28 murder suspects, a conviction on an earlier weapons charge — rather than a dismissal — would have put them behind bars at the time of the killing. Former prosecutors said they had little choice but to plea bargain or dismiss most charges. That’s because prosecutors shoulder heavy caseloads and operate in a court system that is so overburdened that fewer than one percent of felony cases go to trial. A sheriff’s deputy was shot and killed Friday afternoon in a Houston suburb during a routine traffic stop. Sandeep Dhaliwal was the first observant Sikh to become a sheriff’s deputy in Harris County, reports NPR. He was a “hero” and a “trailblazer,” said Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. “He wore the turban. He represented his community with integrity, respect and pride,” Gonzalez said. Dhaliwal was 42, a married father of three, and a 10-year veteran of the sheriff’s office. He made national headlines in 2015 when the sheriff’s office changed its policy to allow Dhaliwal to grow out his facial hair and wear a traditional Sikh turban while on patrol. Harris County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Mike Lee said dash cam footage shows that the suspect “ambushed” Dhaliwal. The traffic stop appeared to be a interaction until the deputy started to return to his vehicle. The suspect then reopened the driver’s side of the door and bolted toward Dhaliwal from behind, gun in hand, and “shot him and struck him in the back of the head,” Lee said. Robert Solis, 47, has been charged with the capital murder of Dhaliwal. Solis had an active parole violation warrant for “aggravated assault with a deadly weapon” in January 2017. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from expanding a policy allowing the government to deport illegal immigrants quickly without going through immigration courts, the Wall Street Journal reports. The expedited removal policy is currently applied to immigrants who are found within 100 miles of the Mexican or Canadian borders, and who entered the U.S. illegally in the last two weeks. In July, the administration moved to expand the application of the policy to the entire U.S. and to any immigrant who entered the U.S. illegally in the previous two years. U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Friday took issue with the process the administration used to expand the policy. President Donald Trump first ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to expand use of expedited removal a few days after he took office. The Department of Homeland Security took 2½ years to carry out the policy, but when it did in July, it skipped a customary comment period. “If a policy decision that an agency makes is of sufficient consequence that it qualifies as an agency rule, then arbitrariness in deciding the contours of that rule—e.g., decision making by Ouija board or dart board, rock/paper/scissors, or even the Magic 8 Ball—simply will not do,” wrote Jackson. Immigration officials defended the change as necessary to divert more cases from immigration courts, which are working through a large backlog that has grown to more than a million cases this year. Jackson’s ruling in Washington, D.C., is the latest court decision to halt a string of immigration actions the Trump administration has attempted to carry out. A federal court in Los Angeles on Friday blocked the administration from implementing one of its most desired changes, to do away with a limit on detaining immigrant families for longer than 20 days. The Los Angeles Police Department is looking for a few good officers, but it is dismayed by where some people got the message, the Washington Post reports. An LAPD recruiting ad ended up on Breitbart, the news site that former executive chairman Stephen Bannon once described as “the platform for the alt-right.” The site became infamous for its shock stories, including several targeting gay people and Jews. One story championed the Confederate flag after a white supremacist murdered nine black parishioners in a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015. The advertisement triggered a backlash on social media. Seeking to distance itself from Breitbart, the department said the advertisement was “a negative juxtaposition to our core values.” “The LAPD celebrates diversity and embraces it within our ranks, and within the city we serve,” the department said Saturday. The discovery was so bewildering to the department that Police Chief Michel Moore said on Twitter that the LAPD wondered whether the ad was a “spoof” or an effort to discredit the department by linking it to the far-right operation. “No. LAPD did NOT purchase or otherwise acquire ad space on that website. Senior leadership at ads City Personnel Department also relayed they did not authorize or pay for this ad either,” Moore said. LAPD purchases advertising through Google, which typically places ads on websites using demographic information rather than deliberately targeting certain publications “We have stopped these Google Ads altogether while we reexamine our ad filters and take all necessary steps to ensure tighter control of ad settings,” the department said. Breitbart spokeswoman Elizabeth Moore told the Los Angeles Times that the site is “one of the most pro-police, pro-law-enforcement news organizations in America.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected a petition by two death row inmates to find the state’s death penalty unconstitutional, a request that some advocates had hoped would lead to an historic ruling, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. In its one-page order, the court left the door open for individual review of death penalty cases. “Discrete review of properly presented claims will proceed in the individual cases, subject to the jurisdictional limits of the post-conviction courts,” the ruling said. The case centered on a petition filed by federal defenders in 2018 on behalf of two inmates, Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli, but had the potential to affect the 130 others on death row. Shawn Nolan of the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia, which represents Cox and Marinelli, said, “We will continue to litigate the unconstitutionality of Pennsylvania’s capital punishment system in individual cases. There is overwhelming evidence that Pennsylvania’s death penalty system is broken — unfair, inaccurate, and unlawful under the constitution of the commonwealth.” The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office also contended that the death penalty, as applied, has been unreliable and is thus unconstitutional. The office said 112 of 155 death penalty sentences over 40 years through 2017 were overturned, mostly because the defendants had ineffective counsel. District Attorney Larry Krasner, who took office in January 2018, campaigned on “never” seeking the death penalty. His office has agreed or signaled a willingness to vacate the death penalty for more than one-third of the 45 Philadelphia inmates on death row. Krasner said, “I am disappointed that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has declined to address a constitutional issue that is literally a matter of life and death.” A man accused of driving an SUV through a suburban Chicago shopping mall was charged Sunday with a state terrorism and ordered held without bond, the Associated Press reports. Police in Schaumburg, Il., said the Cook County state’s attorney had authorized the charge against Javier Garcia, 22, of Palatine, Il. Prosecutor Annalee McGlone said in a bond hearing that on Sept. 20, Garcia drove his SUV through a Sears entrance into the common area of Woodfield Mall, weaving in and out of kiosks as shoppers ran for cover. No one was struck by the vehicle. “Chaos ensued among the patrons of the mall. Hysterical patrons were running and jumping in attempts to evade the vehicle’s path. Stores were locking their gates and sheltering people in the rear of stores for safety purposes,” McGlone said. Under Illinois law, a terrorism felony can apply if the suspect is believed to have caused more than $100,000 in damage to any building containing five or more businesses. Garcia was released to police custody from the AMITA Health Behavioral Institute. Defense attorney Amil Alkass said Garcia has no criminal history. He also noted his client takes psychiatric medications and is being treated for bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. “He’s definitely not a terrorist,” Alkass told the Chicago Sun-Times. “There was nobody targeted.” |
