List of All Articles with Tag 'us politics'

Wednesday did not go how Hunter Biden probably hoped. The president's son was supposed to finalize a plea deal, admitting he broke the law but avoiding jail time for misdemeanor tax crimes and agreeing to a diversion program on a gun charge. Instead, a federal judge questioned the scope of the plea deal.

Wednesday's hearing for Hunter Biden was already poised to be a historic event, as the son of a sitting US president appeared in court to plead guilty to federal tax crimes, bringing a controversial investigation to a near close.

Mitch McConnell appeared briefly unable to continue speaking and was escorted away from a Senate Republican press conference on Wednesday, before returning moments later. The scene occurred as Republicans held their last weekly press briefing before the August recess, and discussed remaining business including the chamber’s effort to pass a defense spending bill before the holiday begins. Mr McConnell was seen freezing at the podium for several seconds before a number of senators including Joni Ernst of Iowa approached him and encouraged him to step away. He did so, only to come back a few minutes later, and refused to elaborate on what had just occurred. “Can you address what happened here at the start of the press conference? Was it related to your injury from earlier this year when you suffered a concussion?” asked CNN’s Manu Raju. “I’m fine,” responded the senator. “You’re fine? You’re fully able to do your job?” Raju asked in response, to which the minority leader replied: “Yeah.” The Independent has reached out to Mr McConnell’s office for further information about the episode. The 81-year-old McConnell returned to the Senate in March after suffering a fall that caused a concussion. He also continues to walk with a limp, a residual issue caused by his battle with polio at a young age. Mr McConnell’s freezing at the press conference is likely to be looked at with scrutiny given the renewed interest in the issues presented by the increasingly advanced ages of many of the members of the upper chamber of Congress. Sen Dianne Feinstein of California, in particular, has been the subject of intense criticism on the manner as many have argued that the senator, who often appears confused in interactions with reporters and staff, is no longer up to serving. Read More Who is Jack Smith? The ex-war crimes prosecutor who is coming for Trump Billionaire Leon Black accused of raping autistic teenager at Epstein townhouse Who is running for president in 2024? All of the candidates

Republican leadership is bracing for yet another week where they'll need to unite a splintered conference -- this time on a series of spending bills that will set the tone for an autumn showdown with the United States Senate.

The president of the Missouri school board that voted to revoke its anti-racism resolution now says the resolution could be kept, but revised. The Francis Howell School Board in 2020 adopted a resolution against racism at the height of the national reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Control of the board flipped over the past two years, with conservatives winning elections, and it voted 5-2 last week to let the resolution expire. But in a Facebook post Tuesday, board President Adam Bertrand said that although support for the 2020 resolution as written is unlikely, “there may be support of a rewrite or modification.” Bertrand said member Mark Ponder will seek input from other board members and the community, “to move towards a draft that he feels the majority of the current board feels the community could support.” Messages left Wednesday with Bertrand and Ponder were not immediately returned. Zebrina Looney, president of the St. Charles County NAACP, said she is hopeful that the resolution can be maintained and hopes that her organization can be involved in any revisions. “I think having all voices involved, including voices of people of color, would be beneficial,” Looney said. School board elections have become intense political battlegrounds in recent years, with political action groups successfully electing conservative candidates who promise to restrict how race and sexuality can be taught, remove books that some conservatives find offensive, and stop transgender-inclusive sports teams. The Francis Howell district is among Missouri’s largest, with 17,000 students in a mostly white suburban area of St. Louis. Several dozen people opposed to rescinding the resolution turned out for the school board meeting last Thursday, and the vote drew strong condemnation from the NAACP other civil rights groups. The 2020 resolution “pledges to our learning community that we will speak firmly against any racism, discrimination, and senseless violence against people regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability." The board's vice president, Randy Cook, led the effort to remove the resolution, telling The Associated Press that the board “doesn’t need to be in the business of dividing the community.” Cook is among five board members who have been elected since April 2022 with the backing of the conservative political action committee Francis Howell Families. In 2021, the PAC described the anti-racism resolution as “woke activism” and drafted an alternative resolution to oppose “all acts of racial discrimination, including the act of promoting tenets of the racially-divisive Critical Race Theory, labels of white privilege, enforced equity of outcomes, identity politics, intersectionalism, and Marxism.” Cook said last week that he had no plans to push for a new resolution with that wording, or any other wording. In an email Wednesday, he said school boards are tasked with addressing the needs of their districts, “not to spend time writing and debating resolutions about all of the problems in the world today.” Racial issues remain especially sensitive in the St. Louis region, nine years after a police officer in the suburb Ferguson fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown during a street confrontation. Officer Darren Wilson was not charged and the shooting led to months of often violent protests, becoming a catalyst for the national Black Lives Matter movement. ___ Find more AP coverage of race and ethnicity issues: https://apnews.com/race-and-ethnicity Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide African leaders condemn coup attempt against Niger’s president after his home is surrounded Whistleblower tells Congress the US is concealing 'multi-decade' program that captures UFOs Movie Review: Baby’s first horror? Disney’s ‘Haunted Mansion’ conjures up a story about grief

Pentagon whistleblowers shared explosive claims of alien technology defying laws of physics and pushback from military leadership against those reporting such sightings. The House Oversight Committee held a hearing titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency” on Wednesday. Three witnesses took part in the hearing – David Grusch, a former intelligence official and whistleblower who said last month that the US has “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles, David Fravor, an ex-Navy commander who reported spotting seeing an object flying across the sky during a 2004 training mission, and Ryan Graves, a retired Navy pilot who appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2021 saying that he had spotted unidentified aerial phenomena off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”. Mr Grousch claimed that individuals have been injured while working on reverse engineering UFOs, but he said he couldn’t get into specifics of how that happened, adding that that “non-human biologics” were found along with recovered crafts. Mr Graves said that he estimates that 95 per cent of UFO sightings by pilots go unreported, citing fear of repercussions. Read More Republican lawmaker claims US is ‘hiding evidence’ of UFOs which ‘defy physics as we know it’ Why a Harvard professor thinks he may have found fragments of an alien spacecraft An Area 51 blogger was raided at gunpoint by federal agents. He says the US Government is trying to silence him Congressman asks UFO whistleblower if anyone has been ‘murdered’ to maintain alleged coverup Whistleblower tells Congress the US is concealing 'multi-decade' program that captures UFOs

Federal prosecutors and attorneys for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, are at loggerheads and appear to have scrapped a deal for the lawyer and lobbyist turned artist to plead guilty to tax misdemeanour charges and enter into a diversion programme on a gun-related charge after the judge overseeing a plea hearing questioned whether the deal would preclude the government from pursuing other charges against him. US District Judge Maryellen Noreika ordered Mr Biden’s lawyers and prosecutors to confer further after Mr Biden said he would not accept the agreement if it did not provide that the government could not charge him for any crimes currently known to prosecutors if he successfully completes the terms of the deal. Prosecutors had agreed to ask Judge Noreika to impose a term of probation on Mr Biden for not having paid taxes on time in 2017 and 2018. Mr Biden was also expected to enter into a diversion deal under which he’d plead guilty to charges that he’d lied on a gun background check form when he said he wasn’t a user of drugs when he bought a pistol during that same time period, but would withdraw the plea after completing the terms of the diversion agreement, which often requires community service and continued sobriety verified by drug tests. During the court hearing, he told Judge Noreika that he’d been sober since 2019 but had been in and out of drug treatment for roughly two decades. The sticking point in the proceedings appeared when the judge asked prosecutors and defence counsel whether they understood the hearing to conclude any criminal proceedings against Mr Biden, and when prosecutors said that was not their understanding, she ordered prosecutors and defence counsel for the president’s son to confer on whether they still have an agreement. More follows... Read More Is Donald Trump going to prison? Trump begs Congress to help with legal troubles as possible Jan 6 charges loom – live Congressman asks UFO whistleblower if anyone has been ‘murdered’ to maintain coverup

Three retired military veterans are testifying Wednesday at a House hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena -- commonly known as UFOs -- warning that the sightings are a national security problem and that the government has been too secretive about them.

A staffer for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is no longer with the 2024 presidential campaign just days after he retweeted a video featuring White supremacist imagery.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday responded to a reporter’s query about House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s claim that the GOP could soon open an impeachment inquiry into the president by laughing as he exited a White House event. Mr Biden was caught cracking a smile and chucking on his way out of the East Room after delivering remarks on his administration’s efforts to increase the availability of mental health treatment. Earlier in the day, Mr McCarthy had said that an impeachment probe would provide the House with “the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed” before they can attempt to oust Mr Biden, which many in his conference have been pushing to do since before he took office. It’s not known whether the House will actually initiate an impeachment inquiry into Mr Biden, but multiple prominent Republicans have become increasingly vocal in their promotion of conspiracy theories and false claims about alleged criminality on the part of the president. Mr McCarthy told Fox News host Sean Hannity late Tuesday that the House Oversight Committee’s widely panned probe into Mr Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was “rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry” even though the younger Mr Biden does not hold and has never held public office. Republicans have spent years alleging that Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, was the reason Mr Biden carried out Obama administration policy as vice president when he pushed Ukraine’s then-president, Petro Poroshenko, to oust a prosecutor whose firing had been demanded by the US, EU, IMF and other entities that were backing financial aid for Ukraine. The false allegations were what motivated then-president Donald Trump to attempt to blackmail Mr Poroshenko’s successor, Volodymyr Zelensky, into announcing sham investigations into the Bidens, leading to Mr Trump’s first of two impeachment trials. Read More Trump begs Congress to help save him from his legal troubles Trump, January 6 and a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election: The federal investigation, explained Why was Donald Trump impeached twice during his presidency?

Rudy Giuliani will not contest claims from two Georgia election workers who have accused the former attorney to Donald Trump of smearing them with false and defamatory statements surrounding the 2020 presidential election. A late-night federal court filing from Mr Giuliani’s attorneys on 25 July states that he “concedes solely for the purposes of this litigation” that he made false statements about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss that “carry meaning that is defamatory”. He also conceded that his statements meet the “factual elements of liability” for their claims that amounted to “intentional infliction of emotional distress”. The two women were subject to relentless abuse fuelled by false claims that they manipulated votes, damage that Mr Giuliani has refused to concede stemmed from his statements. “Giuliani’s stipulation concedes what we have always known to be true,” attorney Michael J Gottlieb Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP said in a statement. “Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss honorably performed their civic duties in the 2020 presidential election in full compliance with the law; and the allegations of election fraud he and former-President Trump made against them have been false since day one.” “While certain issues, including damages, remain to be decided by the court, our clients are pleased with this major milestone in their fight for justice, and look forward to presenting what remains of this case at trial,” he added. The two-page filing from Mr Giuliani’s attorneys indicates he will continue to argue that spurious claims about voter fraud in the state were protected speech. A spokesperson for the former New York City mayor indicated that the concession was in an effort to bypass a fact-finding portion of the case, which would involve the public disclosures of emails, text messages and other communications involving his claims. US District Court Judge Beryl Howell had threatened Mr Giuliani with sanctions and put him on the hook for $90,000 in legal fees following claims that he failed to preserve evidence related to the case. His latest filing came as a response to an order from the judge demanding an explanation. Ted Goodman, political adviser to Mr Giuliani, said in a statement shared with The Independent that he “did not acknowledge that the statements were false but did not contest it in order to move on to the portion of the case that will permit a motion to dismiss.” “This is a legal issue, not a factual issue. Those out to smear the mayor are ignoring the fact that this stipulation is designed to get to the legal issues of the case,” he added. In their testimony to the House select committee investigating the events surrounding the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Ms Freeman and Ms Moss revealed the depth of abuse they endured, forcing them from their jobs and making them feel unsafe after the former president and Mr Giuliani promoted debunked conspiracy theories involving them. They later filed a defamation suit against Mr Giuliani as well as right-wing outlet One American News Network, which settled with the women last year. A report from Georgia’s State Election Board following a year-long investigation also dismissed bogus claims of election fraud and cleared the allegations against the women. The fraud claims were “unsubstantiated and found to have no merit,” the investigation concluded, reporting on the work of the FBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and investigators from the Secretary of State’s office vetting the alleged fraud Earlier this month, Bernie Kerik – a former New York City Police Department commissioner who worked with Mr Giuliani to support bogus voter fraud claims – was directed by the judge to provide “a document-by-document privilege log of any withheld record that provides sufficient information to ‘enable other parties to assess the claim’ that ‘the information is privileged or subject to protection as trial preparation material.’” He also was ordered to show why those records and other statements should be withheld. But a joint filing on 24 July from attorneys for Mr Kerik and the two election workers reveals that the parties reached an agreement to receive those documents – which were also sought in the unrelated federal investigation surrounding Mr Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The former president’s campaign withdrew its claim of privilege over those documents, and Mr Kerik’s legal team has handed over thousands of documents to prosecutors investigating the former president’s mindset and decision making as he baselessly stated that the 2020 election was “stolen” and “rigged” against him despite a lack of evidence. Read More Giuliani team that tried to find evidence of 2020 fraud hands over hundreds of documents to January 6 probe Trump, January 6 and a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election: The federal investigation, explained Trump news – live: Trump begs Congress to help save him from legal troubles as Jan 6 indictment decision looms All the lawsuits and criminal charges involving Trump and where they stand

Former US Marine Trevor Reed is expected to make a full recovery after being wounded in battle approximately two weeks ago serving alongside Ukrainian forces fighting Russia, a source close to Reed told CNN.