Ticker
Defense opens its case with ex-police officer
Brother Philonise breaks down on the stand: he ‘was the leader in our house’
Daunte Wright shot dead by cops outside Minneapolis during a traffic stop
Judge releases Trump appointee charged in Capitol riot
Examiner Baker says police restraint 'just more than Mr. Floyd could take'
Newsroom
Officer Kimberly Potter who fatally shot Daunte Wright charged with manslaughter
Former police officer Kimberly Potter was charged with second-degree manslaughter on Wednesday after fatally shooting the 20-year-old Black motorist Daunte Wright, officials said. The white former suburban Minneapolis police officer was arrested earlier in the day in relation to the shooting dead of Wright during a traffic stop on Sunday in Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis. The killing of Wright ignited days of unrest and clashes between protesters and police. The charge against Potter was filed on Wednesday, three days after Wright was killed.


Defense opens its case with ex-police officer
The defense in the Derek Chauvin murder trial opened its case on Tuesday by attempting to show George Floyd had a history of failing to cooperate with the police while under the influence of drugs. Scott Creighton, a former Minneapolis police officer, testified that he stopped a vehicle in May 2019 in which Floyd was a passenger and found him incoherent and unable to obey orders.
Daunte Wright shot dead by cops outside Minneapolis during a traffic stop
Judge releases Trump appointee charged in Capitol riot

Examiner Baker says police restraint 'just more than Mr. Floyd could take'
Dr. Andrew Baker testified in a Minneapolis courtroom Friday, as prosecutors try to prove former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was responsible for George Floyd's death in police custody last May. Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell questioned Baker about the autopsy report he had completed in Floyd's death, which cites "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression." Baker concluded that Floyd's death was a homicide — which as a forensic pathologist he explained means that someone else was involved in the death.

Documents show Trump officials helped suppress coronavirus CDC reports
Top former Trump administration advisors helped suppress scientific information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they felt was harmful to President Trump, and attacked the agency's credibility, according to documents obtained by House Democrats. The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis sent letters to former Trump advisers Scott Atlas, Paul Alexander, and Steven Hatfill, asking for documents and communications about the former administration's response to the pandemic.

Expert Dr. Martin Tobin says George Floyd died from a lack of oxygen, not Fentanyl
Dr. Martin Tobin, a pulmonary specialist who works in critical care, testified Thursday that George Floyd died from a lack of oxygen, bolstering the prosecution's argument that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin caused Floyd's death last May. As an expert witness for the prosecution, Tobin said the state asked him to review documents and videos depicting the circumstances of Floyd's death. Tobin watched some of those videos hundreds of times, he said. Prosecutors say Chauvin killed Floyd by pressing his knee on Floyd's neck.

Investigators seize documents from Trump executive's former daughter-in-law
Officials from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office took possession of documents potentially related to the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, on Thursday as part of an ongoing investigation into the former president's finances.

The relationship with a scandal-prone local tax collector got him into big trouble
His Seminole County tax office was the only one in the state where employees were armed with pistols and body armor. He wore his own law enforcement badge and carried a sidearm at tax collector conferences. He let people pay property taxes with Bitcoin. He tweeted Islamophobic comments, installed a remote-controlled sprinkler system to spray petition gatherers he didn’t like and doled out fat contracts to his groomsmen shortly after winning the usually humdrum Orlando-area office with a campaign to stop “crony capitalism.”

Andrew Giuliani talked with Trump about a New York gov run
Andrew Giuliani, the son of Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said in an interview Wednesday that he is “seriously considering” a run for governor in 2020 and spoke with former President Donald Trump earlier this week about his political ambitions.

Chauvin's supervisor says there was no justification to keep knee on neck
Derek Chauvin’s police supervisor has told his murder trial that there was no justification for the officer to keep his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes. Sgt David Pleoger, who arrived at the scene shortly after Floyd was taken away by ambulance, said that Chauvin and other officers holding down the 46-year-old Black man should have stopped using force once Floyd stopped resisting. “When Mr Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers they could have ended their restraint,” he said.

Foreign billionaire conspired to violate election law in straw donor scheme
A Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire agreed to pay the U.S. government $1.8 million to resolve allegations that he conspired to violate federal election laws in a “straw donor” scheme to route illegal foreign contributions to U.S. presidential and congressional candidates, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Defense takes aim at bystanders in murder case
To the prosecution, the witnesses who watched George Floyd’s body go still were regular people — a firefighter, a mixed martial arts fighter, a high school student and her 9-year-old cousin in a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Love” — going about their daily lives when they happened upon the ghastly scene of an officer kneeling on a man’s neck.

Alexei Navalny on hunger strike in prison
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has started a hunger strike in prison to protest officials’ failure to provide proper treatment for his back and leg pains. In a statement posted Wednesday on Instagram, Navalny complained about prison authorities’ refusal to give him the right medicines and to allow his doctor to visit him behind bars.

Police officers sue Donald Trump for injuries resulting from Capitol riot
Two US Capitol Police officers have filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump, accusing him of inciting the deadly 6 January insurrection and saying he was responsible for physical and emotional injuries they suffered as a result.

Minneapolis: Trial begins for officer Derek Chauvin accused of murder
Opening arguments began Monday for the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd, the unarmed Black man whose death at the hands of law enforcement last May sparked a nationwide reckoning over institutionalized racism and police brutality. Minneapolis officers “take an oath that, ‘I will enforce the law courteously and appropriately’ and as you will learn, as it applies to this case, ‘never employing unnecessary force or violence,’” prosecuting attorney Jerry Blackwell told the jury. “You will learn that on May 25 of 2020, Mr. Derek Chauvin betrayed his badge.”

CDC director warns of 'impending doom' on potential new surge
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday warned of "impending doom" over rising coronavirus cases, telling the public that even though vaccines are being rolled out quickly, a fourth surge could happen if people don't start taking precautions.

Dominion Voting files $1.6B suit against Fox News over election fraud claims
The North American voting machine company Dominion has hit Fox News with a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit, accusing the network of spreading election fraud lies in a misguided effort to stop an exodus of enraged viewers after Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss. The complaint accuses some of Fox’s biggest personalities Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro “and their chosen guests” of spreading “defamatory falsehoods” about Dominion. The company said the lies had threatened its reputation and business.

Sources: Secret Service inserted itself into case of Hunter Biden’s gun
On Oct. 23, 2018, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and daughter in law Hallie were involved in a bizarre incident in which Hallie took Hunter’s gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone. Delaware police began investigating, concerned that the trash can was across from a high school and that the missing gun could be used in a crime, according to law enforcement officials and a copy of the police report obtained by POLITICO.

Saudi accused of threat to Khashoggi UN investigator is human rights chief
The Saudi official who is alleged to have twice issued threats against the independent UN investigator Agnès Callamard is the head of the kingdom’s human rights commission, and formerly served as an aide to the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Awwad al-Awwad is alleged by a person familiar with the matter to have twice threatened to “take care of” Callamard at a January 2020 meeting with senior human rights officials in Geneva.

Jason Miller concealed work for PR firm and misled court to dodge child support
A top aide to Donald Trump was secretly re-engaged by a leading political strategy firm after being forced to step down after a social media scandal, the Guardian can reveal. The company, Washington-based Teneo, wanted access to top Republicans in the then president’s inner circle, and to conceal his ongoing work. Jason Miller – a senior adviser to the former president – also later appears to have misled a Florida court about this employment status, asserting in a sworn statement that he could no longer comply with a court order requiring him to pay child-support payments.

Oath Keepers’ best new hope is a lawyer who cites ‘Lord of the Rings’
The Oath Keepers militia has seen better days. Members of the far-right group’s leadership are facing conspiracy charges for their alleged role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Prosecutors are reportedly considering rare sedition charges against those members, and Oath Keepers’ fundraising efforts have stalled after companies like Amazon banned the group from their charity programs.

Suspect allegedly bought assault rifle after ban on sale was blocked
The suspect accused of opening fire inside a crowded Colorado supermarket was a 21-year-old man who allegedly purchased an assault weapon less than a week earlier, it has emerged. Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa bought the weapon on 16 March, six days before the attack at a King Soopers store in Boulder that killed 10 people, including a police officer, according to an arrest affidavit. It was not immediately known where the gun was purchased.

Three basic warnings: US sinks to new low in rankings of world's democracies
The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group. The US earned 83 out of 100 possible points this year in Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedoms around the world, an 11-point drop from its ranking of 94 a decade ago. The US’s new ranking places it on par with countries like Panama, Romania and Croatia and behind countries such as Argentina and Mongolia.
Shortnews
Harry and Meghan cause for Prince Philip's death
Minutes after the British royal family announced that Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip, had died at the age of 99, the sleuths at Fox & Friends blamed their inevitable culprits: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Host Brian Kilmeade immediately linked the death of the extremely old and sickly Duke of Edinburgh to Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, which aired last month and contained shocking claims of racism and cruel treatment against Meghan by royal family members.
New charges as US prosecutors expand criminal case
Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite accused of aiding in her former partner Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minor girls, faces two more charges, a new Manhattan federal court indictment filed on Monday reveals. This indictment also identified a new accuser in the case, referred to as “minor victim-4” in court papers, and expanded the timeframe of Maxwell’s alleged participation in Epstein’s abuse by seven years – from 1994 to 2004, rather than from 1994 to 1997. Maxwell now faces a total of eight counts.
Pelosi taps D.C. National Guard chief as top House security official
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped the head of Washington, D.C.,’s National Guard, Maj. Gen. William Walker, as the House’s new top security official. Walker, a 39-year military veteran, will become the House’s permanent sergeant-at-arms, Pelosi announced Friday. He succeeds Timothy Blodgett, who took over the post temporarily in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The previous permanent sergeant-at-arms, Paul Irving, was pushed out of the job after Jan. 6, amid recriminations over the security failures that allowed a mob of thousands of Donald Trump's supporters to occupy the Capitol and delay Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results.
GOP Gov. admits ‘Near-Total Abortion Ban’ is unconstitutional
Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) said he only signed what has been widely described as a “near-total abortion ban” in his state this month because he hopes it leads to the Supreme Court taking away women’s rights to make decisions about their own bodies. Hutchinson was speaking during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, after host Dana Bash raised with the issue with him.
Mar-a-Lago partially closed due to outbreak
Former President Trump's luxury resort club Mar-a-Lago has reportedly been partially closed in response to an outbreak of COVID-19 at the Palm Beach, Fla. property. Sources confirmed to The Associated Press that Mar-a-Lago has been closed until further notice in a cautionary move that follows positive COVID-19 tests. Several workers have reportedly been quarantined. The extent of the outbreak and the identities of those who have tested positive were not immediately made known.