Jan. 6 charges against Trump would add to his mounting legal peril as he campaigns for 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hush-money payments. Classified records. And now, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that led to the Capitol attack. Already facing criminal cases in New York and Florida, Donald Trump faces increasing legal peril as investigations into his struggle to cling to power after his election loss appear to be coming to a head.
A target letter sent to Trump by special counsel Jack Smith suggests he may soon be indicted on new federal charges, adding to the remarkable situation of a former president up against possible prison time while vying to reclaim the White House as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
Smith's wide-ranging probe into the chaotic weeks between Trump's election loss and his supporters' attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, seems to be nearing an end just as another case could be on the horizon. A grand jury that was sworn in this month in Georgia will likely consider whether to charge Trump and his Republican allies for their efforts to reverse his election loss in the state.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in all the cases and dismissed the prosecutions as a malign effort to hurt his 2024 campaign.
Here's a look at the Jan. 6 investigation, Trump's legal cases and what could happen next:
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American soldier's dash into North Korea leaves family members wondering why
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Family members of the U.S. Army private whosprinted across the border into North Korea said Wednesday that he may have felt overwhelmed as he faced legal troubles and his possible looming discharge from the military.
Relatives described Pvt. Travis King, 23, as a quiet loner who did not drink or smoke and enjoyed reading the Bible. After growing up up in southeast Wisconsin, he was excited about serving his country in South Korea. Now King's family is struggling to understand what changed before he dashed into a country with a long history of holding Americans and using them as bargaining chips.
“I can’t see him doing that intentionally if he was in his right mind,” King’s maternal grandfather, Carl Gates, told The Associated Press from his Kenosha, Wisconsin, home. “Travis is a good guy. He wouldn’t do nothing to hurt nobody. And I can’t see him trying to hurt himself.”
King was supposed to be returned to the U.S. this week to face military discipline after serving nearly two months in a South Korea prison on assault charges. But instead of boarding a flight for Texas on Monday, as planned, King slipped away and quietly joined a civilian tour group on Tuesday morning headed for the the Demilitarized Zone that divides South and North Korea.
Even with legal troubles hanging over him, King's relatives said they are at a loss to explain why he acted as he did.
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Pfizer reports North Carolina pharmaceutical plant damaged by tornado, no serious injuries
A tornado heavily damaged a large Pfizer pharmaceutical plant in North Carolina on Wednesday, the latest in a string of extreme weather events plaguing the U.S. on a day when floods deluged communities in Kentucky and scorching heat smothered Phoenix and Miami.
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer confirmed that a large complex was damaged by a twister that tore through the Rocky Mount area, but said in an email that it had no reports of serious injuries at the facility.
The Pfizer plant stores large quantities of medicine that were tossed about by the storm, Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone said, adding, “I’ve got reports of 50,000 pallets of medicine that are strewn across the facility and damaged through the rain and the wind.”
Pfizer is one of the largest employers in Nash County, where the sheriff’s office also confirmed damage to several homes.
Meanwhile, an onslaught of searing temperatures and rising floodwaters continued to strike other areas of the U.S., with Phoenix breaking an all-time temperature record and rescuers pulling people from rain-swamped homes and vehicles in Kentucky.
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Revolving Door: DEA’s No.2 quits amid reports of previous consulting work for Big Pharma
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s second-in-command has quietly stepped down amid reporting by The Associated Press that he once consulted for a pharmaceutical distributor sanctioned for a deluge of suspicious painkiller shipments and did similar work for the drugmaker that became the face of the opioid epidemic: Purdue Pharma.
Louis Milione’s four years of consulting for Big Pharma preceded his 2021 return to the DEA to serve as Administrator Anne Milgram’s top deputy, renewing concerns in the agency and beyond about the revolving door between government and industry and its potential impact on the DEA’s mission to police drug companies blamed for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths.
“Working for Purdue Pharma should not help you get a higher job in government,” said Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog for corporate influence in the federal government. “Too much collegiality is a problem. It’s hard to view your past and potentially future colleagues as scofflaws. Any independent person would find this abhorrent.”
Milione initially left the DEA in 2017 after a 21-year career that included a two-year stint leading the division that controls the sale of highly addictive narcotics. Like dozens of colleagues in the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control, he went to work as a consultant for some of the same companies he had been tasked with regulating.
AP reported in May that Milione’s consulting included testifying on behalf of the nation’s fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor, Morris & Dickson, as it fought to save its license to supply painkillers to hospitals and pharmacies. A federal administrative judge determined four years ago that the Louisiana-based company failed to flag thousands of suspicious orders at the height of the opioid crisis but the DEA didn’t move to strip the license until days after the AP inquired about the case.
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IRS whistleblowers air claims to Congress about 'slow-walking' of the Hunter Biden case
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans raised unsubstantiated allegations Wednesday against President Joe Biden over his family’s finances as they summoned IRS whistleblowers to testify publicly for the first time about claims the Justice Department improperly interfered with a tax investigation into Biden’s son Hunter.
Lawmakers were hearing from the two IRS agents assigned to Hunter Biden case, which looked into his failure to pay taxes. The president's son pleaded guilty recently to misdemeanor tax charges in what Republicans have derided as a “sweetheart” deal.
House Republicans are deepening their own investigation, making broad claims of corruption and wrongdoing by the Bidens that they acknowledge are not proven.
“We will continue to follow the money trail,” said Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, as he opened the session.
The Justice Department has denied the whistleblowers’ allegations.
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Stanford University president announces resignation over concerns about his research
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The president of Stanford University said Wednesday he would resign, citing an independent review that cleared him of research misconduct but found “serious flaws” in five scientific papers on subjects such as brain development in which he was the principal author.
Marc Tessier-Lavigne said in a statement to students and staff that he would step down Aug. 31.
The resignation comes after the board of trustees launched a review in December following allegations he engaged in fraud and other unethical conduct related to research and papers that are in some cases two decades old (1999, 2001, 2001)
Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist, says he “never submitted a scientific paper without firmly believing that the data were correct and accurately presented.” But he says he should have been more diligent in seeking corrections regarding his work and he should have operated laboratories with tighter controls.
Panelists found multiple instances of manipulated data in the 12 papers they investigated, but concluded he was not responsible for the misconduct. Still, they found that each of the five papers in which he was principal author “has serious flaws in the presentation of research data” and in at least four of them, there was apparent manipulation of data by others.
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Cracks are emerging in Israel's military. Reservists threaten not to serve if government plan passes
JERUSALEM (AP) — Cracks are emerging in Israel’s military.
The Middle East’s best equipped and most powerful force is under one of the worst assaults it has encountered — a battle within its own ranks.
A contentious government plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary has cleaved deep rifts within Israeli society. Those rifts have infiltrated the military, where reservists in key units have pledged not to show up for duty if the legislative changes are pushed through.
The letters, signed by thousands of reservists over the last seven months, have up to now mostly remained threats. But this week, 161 critical air force personnel announced they will stop their service, raising concerns about the military’s readiness in the face of similar refusals at a time of heightened violence and tensions on several fronts. On Wednesday, hundreds of reservists from various units joined a rally in Tel Aviv, declaring they would not report for duty anymore.
Israel’s military is compulsory for most Jewish men. After their three-year service is complete, many continue reserve duty well into their 40s or beyond.
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New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu won't seek reelection in 2024
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu announced Wednesday he will not seek reelection to a fifth term in 2024, giving Democrats hope of winning back the seat in a battleground state during a presidential election year.
Sununu, who has been governor since 2017 and decided against runs for president and the U.S. Senate, did not say what his immediate plans were and did not endorse anyone to succeed him. He said he reached his decision after discussions with his wife, Valerie, and his children.
“This was no easy decision as I truly love serving as Governor," he said in an email. “Public service should never be a career, and the time is right for another Republican to lead our great state.”
University of New Hampshire political science Professor Dante Scala said Sununu’s announcement gives Democrats a reason to be optimistic, adding that the state has recently leaned Democrat during presidential election years.
“Before Sununu, the Democrats had a lock on the governor office for a dozen years. Sununu changed all that,” he said. “He would have been the significant favorite had he decided to run for a fifth term. For the first time since 2016, we will be more likely to see a competitive race for governor. Democrats will have their best shot in a while.”
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Movie Review: A bomb and its fallout in Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer'
Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is a kinetic thing of dark, imposing beauty that quakes with the disquieting tremors of a forever rupture in the course of human history.
“Oppenheimer,” a feverish three-hour immersion in the life of Manhattan Project mastermind J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), is poised between the shock and aftershock of the terrible revelation, as one character calls it, of a divine power.
There are times in Nolan’s latest opus that flames fill the frame and visions of subatomic particles flitter across the screen — montages of Oppenheimer’s own churning visions. But for all the immensity of “Oppenheimer,” this is Nolan’s most human-scaled film — and one of his greatest achievements.
It’s told principally in close-ups, which, even in the towering detail of IMAX 70mm, can’t resolve the vast paradoxes of Oppenheimer. He was said to be a magnetic man with piercing blue eyes (Murphy has those in spades) who became the father of the atomic bomb but, in speaking against nuclear proliferation and the hydrogen bomb, emerged as America’s postwar conscience.
Nolan, writing his own adaptation of Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” layers the build-up to the Manhattan Project with two moments from years later.
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Movie Review: She’s Perfect Barbie. He’s Scene-Stealing Ken. Their life in plastic looks fantastic
For someone who’s 11.5 inches tall and weighs under 8 ounces, poor Barbie’s had to carry an awfully heavy load over the years on that slender, plastic back of hers.
Welcomed as a trailblazer in 1959 — An adult doll! With actual breasts! — she was nonetheless branded an anti-feminist a decade later when women’s rights marchers chanted “I Am Not a Barbie Doll,” referring to her unrealistic body type (and perhaps ignoring the fact that she was single, a homeowner and a career woman).
As years went by, Barbie had her hits (adopting a more inclusive body type, running for president) and misses (exclaiming “Math class is TOUGH!” — ouch). Through it all, this lightning rod in tiny pink heels remained uniquely talented at reinventing herself.
Which is why it makes sense that now, writer-director Greta Gerwig takes Barbie in more than one direction – in every direction, really – in her brash, clever, idea-packed (if ultimately TOO packed) and most of all, eye-poppingly lovely “Barbie,” the brand’s first live action movie.
Is it a celebratory homage to Barbie and her history? Yes. Also a cutting critique, and biting satire? Yes, too. The film is co-produced by Mattel, and they must have felt skittish about some elements — perhaps not Will Ferrell’s reliably buffoonish Mattel CEO, but a far more serious scene where a young girl accuses Barbie of making girls feel bad about themselves. The movie’s also about gender dynamics, mothers and daughters, insidious sexism ... and more.
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