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Indiana limits abortion data for privacy under near-total ban, but some GOP candidates push back
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana allows so few abortions that health officials stopped releasing individual reports to protect patient privacy — a move some Republicans are now fighting to reverse.
The Republicans, including prominent candidates for office this year, want access to reports detailing each abortion still performed in the state. Advocates for abortion rights and some state officials warn that would jeopardize the privacy of physicians and patients who can only receive abortions under strict circumstances.
The state bans abortions except within limited time frames in cases of rape, incest, lethal fetal anomaly and serious health risks to the patient. Like many states, Indiana has long collected data on abortions, but the Department of Health last year decided to keep the individual reports from public record and only release its regular summary data four times a year to make it harder to potentially identify patients.
Indiana law requires physicians to submit “terminated pregnancy reports” with demographic and medical history information to the health department. The reports do not name patients but can list their zip code and county of residence, and they're rarely released in states that collect them, according to experts.
In the days following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, an individual record obtained by the Indianapolis Star through a public records request confirmed an abortion provided to a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio.
The topic has gradually become a political football as Indiana's competitive primary for governor approaches in early May.
In January, Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Attorney General Curtis Hill called on the health department and Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb to allow the release of individual reports. Republican Lt. Gov. and gubernatorial candidate Suzanne Crouch pledged in a March post to X to make the reports public record if she is elected.
And on Thursday, Attorney General Todd Rokita, who is running for reelection, issued an advisory opinion arguing the reports should be public record. The opinion doesn't change any practices but was in response to an inquiry from state Sen. Andy Zay, a congressional candidate, Rokita's office said.
Voters should ask the field of gubernatorial candidates to take a stance, Rokita said during a Thursday news conference.
After Rokita released his opinion, the health department said the reports are not public record, and pointed to an informal opinion written by an appointed open records official in December.
Rokita argued the reports are not medical records and could show whether an abortion was performed legally. Without the reports, he said, “there is no effective way” to enforce the state's near-total ban.
The Legislature should act next year if the department doesn't, Zay said Thursday.
“We can use them as tools to hold those around the periphery of abortion clinics and abortion doctors accountable,” Zay said of the reports.
The individual reports ask patients for information including zip code, age, race, ethnicity, educational attainment, marital status, previous pregnancies, the date of their last period and the father's age, according to the most recent quarterly summary. Patients may refuse to answer questions, the department said.
Physicians report information on the type of procedure, the reason for the abortion and an estimate of the length of the pregnancy. The individual reports also include the name of the physician, the name of the facility and the date of the abortion.
Indiana's ban went into effect in August. From October to December, 46 terminated pregnancy reports were filed with the health department compared to 1,724 in the same period in 2022.
It is not common for states to release individual abortion reports, said Rachel Jones, principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, a science-based research group that supports abortion rights.
Jones said seeking individual reports is an effort to intimidate health care providers and patients.
“There’s no public health or even legal purpose for trying to impose this,” Jones said.
Rokita denied that the small number of reports makes it easier to identify patients and said that the health department can redact some information before making reports public.
The attorney general has taken up multiple legal battles focused on abortion. He gave a televised interview criticizing an Indianapolis OBGYN who provided an abortion to the 10-year-old from Ohio. The Indiana Supreme Court found last year that some of Rokita’s statement violated rules of professional conduct for attorneys.
Rokita is weaponizing the reports, said Rebecca Gibron, CEO of the Planned Parenthood region that includes Indiana.
"Denying abortion as health care is an abuse of power, aiming to stigmatize vital services for political gain at the expense of Hoosier’s access to essential health care — even now when it is only accessible in the rarest of circumstances," Gibron said in a statement.
Isabella Volmert, The Associated Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News
Charges against Trump and Jan. 6 rioters at stake as Supreme Court hears debate over obstruction law
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday is taking up the first of two cases that could affect the criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn his election loss in 2020. Hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot also are at stake.
The justices are hearing arguments over the charge of obstruction of an official proceeding. That charge, stemming from a law passed in the aftermath of the Enron financial scandal more than two decades ago, has been brought against 330 people, according to the Justice Department. The court will consider whether it can be used against those who disrupted Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.
The former president and presumptive nominee for the 2024 Republican nomination is facing two charges in the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington that could be knocked out with a favorable ruling from the nation's highest court. Next week, the justices will hear arguments over whether Trump has “absolute immunity” from prosecution in the case, a proposition that has so far been rejected by two lower courts.
The first former U.S. president under indictment, Trump is on trial on hush money charges in New York and also has been charged with election interference in Georgia and with mishandling classified documents in Florida.
In Tuesday's case, the court is hearing an appeal from Joseph Fischer, a former Pennsylvania police officer who has been indicted on seven counts, including obstruction, for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to keep Biden, a Democrat, from taking the White House. Lawyers for Fischer argue that the charge doesn't cover his conduct.
The obstruction charge, which carries up to 20 years behind bars, is among the most widely used felony charges brought in the massive federal prosecution following the deadly insurrection.
Roughly 170 Jan. 6 defendants have been convicted of obstructing or conspiring to obstruct the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, including the leaders of two far-right extremist groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. A number of defendants have had their sentencings delayed until after the justices rule on the matter.
Some rioters have even won early release from prison while the appeal is pending over concerns that they might end up serving longer than they should have if the Supreme Court rules against the Justice Department. That includes Kevin Seefried, a Delaware man who threatened a Black police officer with a pole attached to a Confederate battle flag as he stormed the Capitol. Seefried was sentenced last year to three years behind bars, but a judge recently ordered that he be released one year into his prison term while awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling.
The high court case focuses on whether the anti-obstruction provision of a law that was enacted in 2002 in response to the financial scandal that brought down Enron Corp. can be used against Jan. 6 defendants.
Fischer's lawyers argue that the provision was meant to close a loophole in criminal law and discourage the destruction of records in response to an investigation. Until the Capitol riot, they told the court, every criminal case using the provision had involved allegations of destroying or otherwise manipulating records.
But the administration says the other side is reading the law too narrowly, arguing it serves “as a catchall offense designed to ensure complete coverage of all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding,” including Fischer's “alleged conduct in joining a violent riot to disrupt the joint session of Congress certifying the presidential election results.”
Smith has argued separately in the immunity case that the obstruction charges against Trump are valid, no matter the outcome of Fischer's case.
Most lower court judges who have weighed in have allowed the charge to stand. Among them, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, wrote that “statutes often reach beyond the principal evil that animated them.”
But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, another Trump appointee, dismissed the charge against Fischer and two other defendants, writing that prosecutors went too far. A divided panel of the federal appeals court in Washington reinstated the charge before the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.
While it’s not important to the Supreme Court case, the two sides present starkly differing accounts of Fischer’s actions on Jan. 6. Fischer's lawyers say he “was not part of the mob” that forced lawmakers to flee the House and Senate chambers, noting that he entered the Capitol after Congress had recessed. The weight of the crowd pushed Fischer into a line of police inside, they said in a court filing.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia are among 23 Republican members of Congress who say the administration's use of the obstruction charge “presents an intolerable risk of politicized prosecutions. Only a clear rebuke from this Court will stop the madness.”
The Justice Department says Fischer can be heard on a video yelling “Charge!” before he pushed through a crowd and “crashed into the police line.” Prosecutors also cite text messages Fischer sent before Jan. 6 saying things might turn violent and social media posts after the riot in which he wrote, “we pushed police back about 25 feet.”
More than 1,350 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 1,000 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury or judge after a trial.
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Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington and Michael Kunzelman in Silver Spring, Maryland, contributed to this report.
Mark Sherman, The Associated Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News
Trump trial: Why can’t Americans see or hear what is going on inside the courtroom?
NEW YORK (AP) — It's a moment in history — the first U.S. president facing criminal charges in an American courtroom. Yet only a handful of observers are able to see or even hear what is going on.
Instead, most of the nation is getting news of former President Donald Trump's hush money trial secondhand. Starting with preliminary motions and jury selection Monday, reporters in a Manhattan courtroom must convey what is being said to the outside world after the fact.
That's all because New York state law regarding media coverage of court proceedings is one of the most restrictive in the country. Last week's death of O.J. Simpson, whose murder trial beamed live from a California courtroom captivated a nation three decades ago, was a telling reminder of how New York is behind the times — or, at least, a holdout.
WHY WON'T NEW YORK LET ME SEE IT?
Regulations limiting media coverage in courtrooms date back nearly a century, when the spectacle of bright flashbulbs and camera operators standing on witness tables during the 1935 trial of the man accused of kidnapping and killing Charles Lindbergh's baby son horrified the legal community, according to a 2022 report by the New York-based Fund for Modern Courts.
Rules to enforce decorum spread nationally, amended to account for the invention of television, as defense lawyers worried that video coverage would harm their cases, the report said.
Yet an interest in open government chipped away at these laws and — slowly, carefully — video cameras began to be permitted in courts across the country, often at the discretion of judges presiding in individual cases.
New York allowed them, too, on an experimental basis between 1987 and 1997, but they were shut down. Lobbyists for defense lawyers remain strong in New York and hold particular sway among lawyers in the state Assembly, said Victor Kovner, a former New York City corporation counsel who advocates for open courtrooms.
New York and Louisiana are the only states remaining that completely restrict video coverage, the Fund for Modern Courts said.
To Kovner and others, that's outrageous.
“We're the media capital of the world, we like to think, and the fact that cameras aren't permitted in one of our three branches of government is unacceptable,” said New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who has sponsored a bill to try to change that.
“It's one of the most consequential trials of our modern age,” the senator said. “I think the public has a right to see exactly what happens in that courtroom.”
WAIT — I SAW A PICTURE OF TRUMP IN COURT AT THE TRIAL'S START
That's because the presiding judge, Juan M. Merchan, permitted a handful of still photographers to shoot photos of Trump before the day's proceedings started. Once court was called into session, courtroom sketch artists — a dying communications form — hold sway.
There is actually some video coverage of the trial, available on monitors in an overflow room adjacent to the main courtroom. It was packed Monday with reporters, court officers and a few members of the public, including Ron Sinibaldi, a former accountant from Long Island who lined up outside the courthouse before midnight for a seat.
“I read presidential biographies,” Sinibaldi said. “I go to presidential libraries. I'm here for the history.”
HOW CAN THOSE INVOLVED GET AROUND THE RESTRICTIONS?
In a hallway outside of the courtroom, a limited number of cameras and a small pool of reporters are positioned to capture remarks of anyone involved in the trial who want to address the outside world. That included Trump, even before the proceedings started.
Absent live coverage of the trial, how often the former president chooses to take advantage of those cameras and whether news organizations carry his remarks either live, taped or not at all will play a big role in how the case is perceived publicly.
MSNBC carried his remarks live on Monday morning. “They're trying to grab the narrative regardless of the outcome,” CNN reporter Phil Mattingly said of the Trump defense team.
HOW ARE JOURNALISTS COVERING THE TRIAL HANDLING IT?
With some difficulty. CNN stationed a team on the streets of Manhattan outside the courtroom, where a truck festooned with pro-Trump flags frequently drove by, blaring horns and music from loudspeakers. Reporters sometimes struggled to be heard. “It is kind of a circus down here,” CNN's Kaitlan Collins said.
Commentators and experts, many of them with experience in jury selection, offered opinions from outside the courtroom or from studios. Fox News analyst Jonathan Turley said “most cities, at least those outside of New York,” will see the case as a weaponization of criminal justice.
With estimates that jury selection could take two weeks, and no way of showing it, journalists will have a lot of time to fill unless they turn their attention elsewhere.
WILL OTHER TRUMP CASES BE TELEVISED?
Georgia, where Trump faces charges of election meddling, gives judges discretion over whether to allow television cameras. Superior Court of Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee has said he will make all hearings and trials in that case available for broadcast. That has already included hearings on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis would be allowed to argue the case.
Federal courts do not allow cameras in criminal cases. Trump is facing separate federal cases for election interference and mishandling classified documents, although it is not clear when, or if, trials will take place.
The feds offer one glimmer of hope: The U.S. Supreme Court permits audio of oral arguments to be broadcast outside of the courtroom. But there's no indication that this would apply to Trump's case. New York's law does not allow audio coverage of his hush money trial.
Proponents of legislation to open up New York courts to electronic media coverage are hoping the attention paid to the Trump case may boost their proposals. The idea is being considered as part of current negotiations over the New York state budget so, theoretically, a new law could even affect the Trump trial if it is passed and goes into effect immediately.
Given New York state's history, it's best not to count on it.
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Associated Press correspondent Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz in New York, and Anthony Izaguirre and Maysoon Khan in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder.
David Bauder, The Associated Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News
Trump will return to court after first day of hush money criminal trial ends with no jurors picked
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump will return to a New York courtroom Tuesday as a judge works to find a panel of jurors who will decide whether the former president is guilty of criminal charges alleging he falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal during the 2016 campaign.
The first day of Trump's history-making trial in Manhattan ended with no one yet chosen to be on the panel of 12 jurors and six alternates. Dozens of people were dismissed after saying they didn't believe they could be fair, though dozens of other prospective jurors have yet to be questioned.
It's the first of Trump's four criminal cases to go to trial and may be the only one that could reach a verdict before voters decide in November whether the presumptive Republican presidential nominee should return to the White House. It puts Trump's legal problems at the center of the closely contested race against President Joe Biden, with Trump painting himself as the victim of a politically motivated justice system working to deprive him of another term.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records as part of an alleged effort to keep salacious — and, he says, bogus — stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign. On Monday, Trump called the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg a “scam” and “witch hunt.”
The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the sexual encounter ever happened.
Prosecutors say the payments to Cohen were falsely logged as legal fees. Prosecutors have described it as part of a scheme to bury damaging stories Trump feared could help his opponent in the 2016 race, particularly as Trump’s reputation was suffering at the time from comments he had made about women.
Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment and that it was designed to stop Daniels from going public about the alleged encounter. But Trump has previously said it had nothing to do with the campaign.
Jury selection could take several more days — or even weeks — in the heavily Democratic city where Trump grew up and catapulted to celebrity status decades before winning the White House.
Only about a third of the 96 people in the first panel of potential jurors brought into the courtroom on Monday remained after the judge excused some members. More than half of the group was excused after telling the judge they could not be fair and impartial and several others were dismissed for other reasons that were not disclosed. Another group of more than 100 potential jurors sent to the courthouse Monday was not yet brought into the courtroom for questioning.
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Richer reported from Washington.
Michael R. Sisak, Jennifer Peltz, Jake Offenhartz And Alanna Durkin Richer, The Associated Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News
Only 1 in 3 US adults think Trump acted illegally in New York hush money case, AP-NORC poll shows
WASHINGTON (AP) — The first criminal trial facing former President Donald Trump is also the one in which Americans are least convinced he committed a crime, a new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds.
Only about one-third of U.S. adults say Trump did something illegal in the hush money case for which jury selection began Monday, while close to half think he did something illegal in the other three criminal cases pending against him. And they’re fairly skeptical that Trump is getting a fair shake from the prosecutors in the case — or that the judge and jurors can be impartial in cases involving him.
Still, half of Americans would consider Trump unfit to serve as president if he is convicted of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments to a woman who said he had an affair with her.
While a New York jury will decide whether to convict Trump of felony charges, public opinion of the trial proceedings could hurt him politically. The poll suggests a conviction could hurt Trump’s campaign. Trump enters a rematch with President Joe Biden as the first presumptive nominee of a major party — and the first former president — to be under indictment. A verdict is expected in roughly six weeks, well before the Republican National Convention where he will accept the GOP nomination.
Trump has made the prosecutions against him a centerpiece of his campaign and argued without evidence that Biden engineered the cases. That argument helped him consolidate GOP support during the Republican primary, but a conviction might influence how many Americans — including independent voters and people long skeptical of Trump — perceive his candidacy.
“Any conviction should disqualify him,” said Callum Schlumpf, a 31-year-old engineering student and political independent from Clifton, Texas. “It sets a bad example to the rest of the world. I think it misrepresents us, as a country, as to what we believe is important and virtuous.”
Yet, a cloud of doubt hangs over all the proceedings. Only about 3 in 10 Americans feel that any of the prosecutors who have brought charges against Trump are treating the former president fairly. And only about 2 in 10 Americans are extremely or very confident that the judges and jurors in the cases against him can be fair and impartial.
“It’s very obvious political persecution,” said Christopher Ruff, a 46-year-old political independent and museum curator from Sanford, North Carolina. “I’m no fan of Trump in any way, shape or form. Didn’t vote for him, never will. But it’s obviously all political.”
Consistent with AP-NORC polls conducted over the past year, the new poll found that about half of Americans say Trump did something illegal regarding the classified documents found at his Florida home, and a similar share think he did something illegal regarding his alleged attempt to interfere in Georgia’s vote count in the 2020 presidential election. The poll also found that nearly half of Americans believe he did something illegal related to his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Prosecutors in New York will argue that Trump falsified his company's internal records to hide the true nature of a payment to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Cohen alleges he was directed by Trump to pay adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 one month before the 2016 election to silence her claims about an extramarital affair with Trump.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the 34-count indictment and denied any affair with Daniels.
The poll found that 35% of Americans say Trump has done something illegal with regard to the hush money allegations. Slightly fewer, about 3 in 10, think he did something unethical without breaking the law. Fourteen percent think he did nothing wrong at all. Those numbers haven’t shifted meaningfully in the year since he was first charged in the case.
Republicans are much less likely than Democrats and independents to say Trump committed a crime in the hush money case.
“He's done nothing wrong,” said Louie Tsonos, a 43-year-old sales representative and Republican from Carleton, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. “Because Trump has a lot of money and fame, they want to destroy his reputation. Or at least they are trying to.”
Fewer than one in 10 Republicans say Trump did something illegal in the case, while 4 in 10 Republicans think he did something unethical but did not break the law. About 3 in 10 Republicans, like Tsonos, say he did nothing wrong.
By contrast, about 6 in 10 Democrats and roughly 3 in 10 independents believe he did something illegal.
Monica Brown, a Democrat from Knoxville, Tennessee, thinks Trump did something unethical, though not illegal, in the New York criminal case under way. But a conviction would ruin his credibility to serve as president, she said.
"I don’t believe any president – whether it’s Donald Trump or anyone else – should have a criminal conviction on his record," said Brown, a 60-year-old veterinary technician and social worker. “Even if it’s related to something like hush money, what respect are they going to get from anyone? Citizens of the country or world leaders, they aren’t going to respect you.”
Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans say they would consider Trump fit to be president even if he were to be convicted of falsifying business documents in the hush money case. About 8 in 10 Democrats say Trump would not be fit to serve in the event of a conviction. About half of independents think he would be unfit to serve, with 22% saying he would be fit and 30% saying they didn't know enough to say.
“I don't think any of that stuff has any relevance to his ability to lead this country,” said Jennifer Solich, a Republican from York, Pennsylvania, and retired nuclear engineer who believes Trump would be fit to serve if convicted in the New York case. “There may be some unethical aspects to it. I just think it's more trivial than what we're facing as a nation.”
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
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The poll of 1,204 adults was conducted April 4-8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
Thomas Beaumont And Amelia Thomson-deveaux, The Associated Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News
Three charged following January pro-Palestinian demonstration in Toronto office
TORONTO — A pro-Palestine group says some of its supporters have been arrested for protesting inside a Toronto business it claims is linked with Israeli causes.
The group, which calls itself Jews Say No To Genocide, says in a statement that dozens of people went into the offices of Awz Ventures around Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue West on Jan. 31 and held a demonstration.
Police say a 33-year-old woman, a 37-year-old woman and 41-year-old man were arrested.
All three are charged with mischief to property, being members of an unlawful assembly and failing to leave the premises when asked.
Police allege several people unlawfully gained access to a private business, and that the accused obstructed the operation of the business and failed to leave when directed.
In a statement, Jews Say No To Genocide says Toronto Police are on the wrong side of history and accuses them of selectively enforcing the law.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2024.
The Canadian Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News
White House rejects long-shot House Republican effort to get President Joe Biden to testify
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Monday rejected a long-shot effort from House Republicans to get President Joe Biden to testify before lawmakers in the GOP's stalled impeachment inquiry.
In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, the White House dismissed the invitation sent to Biden last month, calling it a “partisan charade” in an impeachment probe that has unearthed no evidence implicating the president in any wrongdoing while in public office. House Republicans had been seeking information related to the Biden family's business dealings in what the GOP characterized as an alleged influence-peddling scheme.
“Your Committee’s purported ‘impeachment inquiry’ has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, wrote in the letter sent to Comer on Monday.
Sauber added, “Your insistence on peddling these false and unsupported allegations despite ample evidence to the contrary makes one thing about your investigation abundantly clear: The facts do not matter to you.”
Sauber himself is leaving the White House early next month, another sign from the administration's perspective that the House Republicans' push to impeach Biden is largely over. The lawyer was brought on in 2022 to oversee the White House's response to congressional investigations as Democrats braced to lose their majorities on Capitol Hill later that November.
To replace Sauber, the White House is elevating his deputy, Rachel Cotton. Sauber is returning to the private sector.
In his request to the White House, Comer had asked Biden to “explain, under oath,” what involvement he had in the Biden family businesses.
The committee has asserted for the past year that the Bidens traded on the family name, by trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.
But despite dedicating countless resources and interviewing dozens of witnesses, including the president’s son Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden, Republicans have not produced any evidence that shows Joe Biden was directly involved or benefited from his family’s businesses while in public office.
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Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.
Farnoush Amiri, The Associated Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News
Donald Trump brings his campaign to the courthouse as his criminal hush money trial begins
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump began his day as a criminal defendant lashing out at the judge and prosecutors, casting himself as a victim and angrily posting on social media.
In other words: a familiar routine.
But inside the courtroom, which was closed to TV cameras, Trump was a different man — reserved and muted in a stark departure from his feisty approach to other legal troubles.
The contrast spoke to the gravity of his situation. Trump is now the first former president ever to stand trial on criminal charges and faces the prospect, if he loses, of becoming the first major American presidential candidate in history to run as a convicted felon.
Trump is accused in the case of falsifying business records to hide alleged hush money payments made to a porn star to keep her from going public during his 2016 campaign with allegations of an affair.
The trial is expected to last at least six weeks and Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is required to attend every day court is in session — a schedule that will dramatically alter his daily life and his ability to campaign in battleground states.
So Trump instead brought his campaign to the courthouse, delivering statements before and after the day’s proceedings, which he again cast as nothing more than a politically motivated effort by his rivals to hinder his campaign.
“This is political persecution,” he steamed after arriving with a phalanx of lawyers and several senior aides, but without his wife or other family members. “This is an assault on our country,” he went on.
Trump is already well practiced in the art of campaigning from the courtroom. In addition to appearances related to his four criminal trials, Trump this year voluntarily attended most days of his civil fraud trial as well as a defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who had accused Trump of rape.
Those two trials did not end well for Trump: The former president was found liable in both cases, and now owes over half a billion dollars, including interest.
During those hearings, Trump was often admonished by the judges, who instructed him to be quiet or answer questions more succinctly. At one point, the judge in the Carroll suit threatened to kick Trump out of the courtroom for speaking loudly. Another day he stormed out. Trump also openly sparred with the judge in his civil fraud case, including from the witness stand.
Such behavior would not be tolerated in a criminal courtroom and Judge Juan Merchan made clear Trump could be sent to jail and prosecuted separately if he were to engage in such disruptive behavior.
On Monday, Trump did not.
At times, he was seen whispering and passing notes with Todd Blanche, his lead attorney. But during other stretches, Trump slouched forward, casting his gaze toward the ceiling, or leaned back in his chair with his arms folded and his eyes closed.
Every movement was memorialized by a small pool of reporters inside. As he entered the courtroom, Trump "paused for a split second" and “licked his lips” before walking up the courtroom’s center aisle. When he was introduced as the defendant, Trump turned and gave prospective jurors "a little tight-lipped smirk.” Later, when he exited the courtroom for a break, Trump glared at a New York Times reporter who earlier had reported Trump had fallen asleep in his chair.
While his body language was carefully parsed, he was seen more than heard.
During the first day of his trial, Trump said just five words on the record — “Yes” once, and “Yes, sir” twice — as he was read his so-called “Parker warnings" informing him that his right to be present at the trial could be revoked if he acted out and that he could be sent to jail for disruptive behavior.
It remains unclear how long Trump's restraint will last as the trial drags on.
The sterile, fluorescent-lit courtroom is a world away from the gilded Mar-a-Lago club where he has taken up residency in his post-presidential life. There he is surrounded by doting staff and ardent supporters who deliver standing ovations every night as he enters the dining room.
In the courtroom, Trump was introduced to jurors not as president — as his aides still call him — but “Mr. Donald J. Trump" — and faced restraints, including the prospect that he might not be granted permission to attend his youngest son’s high school graduation.
The judge has not ruled on the matter, but did bar Trump from traveling to Washington next Thursday, when the Supreme Court will take up his argument that, as a former president, he is immune from prosecution.
“We think that it is important for the court to remind Mr. Trump that he is a criminal defendant and that he is under the court’s supervision," one prosecutor, Christopher Conroy, said.
With Trump stuck in New York for the foreseeable future, aides have been planning rallies and other political events on weekends and on Wednesdays, when court is not supposed to be in session. Merchan said Monday that Wednesdays could be added if he trial falls behind schedule.
Aides are also considering possible events around New York after court ends for the day. Trump has often talked about wanting to campaign in his home state, even though New York remains overwhelmingly Democratic.
He is also expected continue to speak from the courthouse and hold press conferences to spin each day's proceedings, as he has in his other trials.
While Trump has complained about being taken off the campaign trail, he has been keeping a relatively light schedule of public events since he locked up the GOP nomination last month, with most of his rallies scheduled on weekends anyway. Instead, he has been focused on fundraising as he tries to close the gap with his Democratic rival, President Joe Biden.
He is also expected to rely more heavily on surrogates. On Monday, allies including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds — all potential vice presidential or cabinet picks — fanned out across cable networks to blast the case.
Trump's indictments proved beneficial during the primaries, helping him rake in tens of millions of dollars from angry supporters and denying his GOP rivals the media spotlight as they were trying to gain traction.
It's unclear, however, how a criminal trial and possible conviction resonate with the broader general election audience, which includes more moderate and independent voters that could decide the race.
Nearly half of registered voters, 46%, said in a recent NYT/Siena College poll that Trump “should be found guilty” in the New York trial. And about 6 in 10 said the charges were “very” or “somewhat” serious.
The details of the case are salacious — involving a porn star, tabloids and hush money payments. But the case is widely see as posing less of a legal risk to Trump than his other cases, which accuse him of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election and of charges under the Espionage Act over his hoarding of classified documents that could lead to serious jail time.
But the hush money case could be the only one that makes it to trial before November’s vote.
Biden's campaign, meanwhile, ignored Monday's proceedings as his aides seek to avoid the appearance of judicial interference.
Campaign officials said Monday that they will instead focus on continuing to present a political split-screen between the two men, with the president focused on governing and Trump focused on himself.
That contrast was especially striking this weekend, as Iran launched an attack against Israel and Biden worked to prevent a wider Middle East escalation, speaking by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
He'll spend the week campaigning in battleground Pennsylvania, with events planned in Scranton, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, as Trump remains in court.
___ Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington and Liset Cruz in New York contributed to this report.
Jill Colvin And Michael R. Sisak, The Associated Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News
Alberta announces wage offer for government workers during collective bargaining
EDMONTON — The Alberta government is offering a 7.5-per-cent wage increase in the midst of collective bargaining, with government workers calling for a 26-per-cent bump.
More than 22,000 members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees fall under the negotiations that began this year, including workers in social services, corrections and natural resources conservation.
In a previous update to members, the union called the government's opening four-year offer an insult.
The union's counter-proposal spans three years.
Finance Minister Nate Horner says his United Conservative Party government values the public service but doesn't see publicly funded employees getting the same kind of settlement the union is demanding anywhere else in Canada.
Horner calls the union's wage position extreme.
"The Alberta government will not increase taxes or cut programs, services or workers to give unprecedented salary increases that will result in pay well above market rates," Horner said in a news release Monday.
Guy Smith, president of the union, said the government has been aware of the union's proposals since March 6, and the union won't budge from what it calls fair and reasonable demands.
Smith called Horner's statement unwarranted and unhelpful.
"The cost of living has increased for everyone, and every worker has the right to fair, livable compensation from their employers," he said.
Smith said negotiations should take place in good faith and at the bargaining table, not through the press.
"There is no reason that any government worker should be unable to afford food, clothes and rent while working full time for the government of a very wealthy province," said the union's update in February.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 15, 2024.
The Canadian Press
Categories: Saskatchewan News, Saskatoon News