| Donald Trump played a central role in the notorious hush payments to silence adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who both allege they had affairs with the president, according to evidence obtained by federal investigators and cited Friday by The Wall Street Journal. In August 2015, the Journal notes, Trump met with American Media Inc. Chief Executive David Pecker and asked him what he could do to help his burgeoning campaign. Pecker offered to buy the stories of any women accusing the candidate of sexual encounters—which is exactly what he did a year later, when Trump asked him to kill a story from McDougal. Pecker’s company paid $150,000 to silence McDougal, and Trump thanked him for his help, according to the newspaper. The Journal also reports that Trump “was involved in or briefed on nearly every step” of the agreements with both McDougal and Daniels, working through his former friend and longtime fixer Michael Cohen. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Trump continues to claim that Cohen was nothing more than a “public-relations person” who “represented me on very small things.” In 2016, the Journal notes, Trump allegedly told Cohen to “get it done” when referring to a payment to silence Daniels—and was eventually forced to pay Cohen twice that to reimburse him, which Trump categorized as “legal fees.” These revelations “raise the possibility” that Trump ran afoul of federal campaign-finance laws, the Journal notes. |
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| Officials in Northern California confirmed Friday that five people were found dead in vehicles that were completely burned by a wildfire raging in the region. The Butte County Sheriff’s Office said all of the victims of the “Camp Fire” were discovered in Paradise, a town near the foothills of Sacramento. “The preliminary investigation revealed that the victims were located in vehicles that were overcome by the Camp Fire,” Butte County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a statement. “Due to their burn injuries, identification could not be immediately made.” According to the Associated Press, the fire has reportedly grown to almost 110 square miles and has destroyed thousands of buildings. On Thursday, at least 30,000 people were reportedly evacuate from the area. “There was really no firefight involved,” Capt. Scott McLean of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told the AP. “These firefighters were in the rescue mode all day yesterday.” This comes as two other fires in Southern California continue raging, forcing thousands to evacuate. The Woolsey Fire—which erupted mere miles from Thousand Oaks, California, where a gunman killed 12 people earlier this week—has reportedly prompted an evaluation to be ordered for the 13,000 residents of Malibu. View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet. |
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| A law enforcement official says that Ian Long, the gunman who killed 12 people at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, this week, posted to social-media accounts during the attack. The official told the Associated Press that Long posted about his mental state and whether people would believe he was sane to both Facebook and Instagram. Authorities have yet to determine an official motive for the attack, but investigators are looking at whether Long believed his ex-girlfriend was at the bar. An official told CNN that the shooter posted the following message around the time of the attack: “I hope people call me insane... (laughing emojis).. wouldn’t that just be a big ball of irony? Yeah.. I’m insane, but the only thing you people do after these shootings is 'hopes and prayers’.. or ‘keep you in my thoughts’... every time... and wonder why these keep happening...” |
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| While Kansas Republican gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach might blame his Tuesday night loss to Democrat Laura Kelly on a lack of funds, a series of GOP operatives say his own “dysfunctional” campaign is to blame, according to a Friday report from the Kansas City Star. “It was the most dysfunctional thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” one unnamed GOP operative told the Star. The operative explained that Kobach ignored campaign advice and failed to establish a basic “get out the vote” program, and that at one point his office didn’t even have a working phone system, and that many volunteers were never contacted. “It didn’t appear that Kris Kobach seemed all that interested in working on the things that mattered, like fundraising, grassroots organizing, or asking voters for their support,” another source said. But some members of Kobach’s team were committed to blaming a lack of funds: “We got outspent,” Kobach’s campaign manager said, speaking on the day following the election. “It’s hard to deliver messages when you don’t have the resources to get them out to everybody.” But yet another GOP source disagreed: “The joke was, you’d say ‘the Kobach campaign’ and (then) you’d say, ‘what campaign?’” |
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| Deadly shootings are rising in the U.S., reversing nearly two decades of a downward trend, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited Friday by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The report analyzed nationwide gun-related deaths and found a rise in gun homicides between 2015 and 2016. During that period, 27,000 people died from gun homicides, compared to 23,000 between 2012 and 2013. The study also reported that the number of deadly shootings had risen across all age groups, as did the number of suicides—which increased by 21 percent from the preceding decade. The report noted, however, that it’s not clear if these increases are short-term spikes or if they are indicative of longer-term national trends. The report, published Thursday, came just hours after the Thousand Oaks massacre, in which a gunman murdered 12 people at a college bar night in Ventura County, California. |
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| The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday filed a lawsuit to block President Trump’s new asylum proclamation, USA Today reports. The organization filed the lawsuit in a Northern California court, and it seeks a court injunction to prevent the implementation of Trump’s new asylum restrictions. The ACLU claims the president’s new policy violates a 1965 immigration law stating that any foreigner who arrives in the U.S., “whether or not at a designated port of arrival,” may apply for asylum. “The new asylum ban is flatly unlawful and may result in many people being sent back to danger,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told the newspaper. “Neither the President nor the Attorney General may override the immigration laws enacted by Congress.” The new White House policy states that any immigrants who illegally enter the United States will be “placed into expedited deportation proceedings,” instead of going through the asylum process. Trump made the policy official on Friday by signing a proclamation. “They’re flooding our country, we’re not letting them in. But they’re trying to flood our country,” Trump said Friday, referencing to the migrant caravan that is walking to the southern border. |
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| “I don’t know Matt Whitaker,” President Donald Trump insisted to reporters before departing to Paris Friday morning. Yet, last month, during an appearance on Fox & Friends, when host Steve Doocy asked the president specifically about a Washington Post report that suggested he might replace his Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Whitaker, Trump replied, “Well, I never talk about that, but I can tell you Matt Whitaker’s a great guy. I mean, I know Matt Whitaker.” This week, The New York Times reported that Whitaker was a frequent visitor to the Oval Office in recent months and is “said to have an easy chemistry with Mr. Trump.” |
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| The Florida man accused of sending pipe bombs through the mail to prominent critics of President Trump has been indicted on 30 counts that could carry a maximum penalty of life in prison, the AP reports. Cesar Sayoc, 56, was arrested on Oct. 26 and held on five charges, including alleged use of a weapon of mass destruction. Sayoc now faces a 30-count indictment in federal court. Authorities say Sayoc made and sent 16 packages with explosives through the U.S. Postal Service to Trump critics and former government officials including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Tom Steyer, and Robert De Niro. None of the devices exploded. According to the charges, Sayoc aimed to “kill, injure and intimidate an individual and unlawfully to damage and destroy a building, vehicle, and other real and person property.” Others allegedly targeted by Sayoc include former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). Packages were also mailed to CNN offices in New York City and Atlanta. |
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| Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has returned home safely from the hospital after fracturing three ribs in a Wednesday fall in her office, according to a tweet from New York Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptack. “Justice Ginsburg has been discharged from the hospital,” he wrote, citing a Supreme Court spokesperson. “She is doing well and plans to work from home today.” The 85-year-old justice went to the hospital Thursday morning after experiencing severe discomfort from the fall—but once she was there, according to a statement from her nephew Thursday night, it was business as usual. “The last I heard she was up and working, of course, because what else would she be doing, and cracking jokes,” her nephew said, according to Reuters. “I can’t promise they were good jokes but they were jokes.” |
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