GOP shrugs off Comey revelations, sticks with Trump
GOP shrugs off Comey revelations, sticks with Trump
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI chief he fired called the president a liar, but the response from many Republicans was a collective shrug. The GOP still needs Donald Trump if it has any hope of accomplishing its legislative agenda and winning elections, and it’s going to take more than James Comey’s testimony to shake them.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday boasted of the GOP’s accomplishments under Trump thus far, and promised more to come, making no mention of Comey in a speech. A group of House conservatives discussed taxes and the budget, with no reference to Comey or the federal investigations into Russia’s election meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
Elsewhere, there were few outward signs of concern from the top Republican officials, donors and business leaders who gathered largely behind closed doors in Park City, Utah, for a conference hosted by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
“The people in this room, who give money to the Republican Party and who are focused on helping get Republicans elected, they do it because they believe in an agenda,” Spencer Zwick, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s fundraising chief, said in an interview. As for the Comey testimony, “there’s nothing we can do about it,” Zwick said.
It all underscored what’s become a hardening dynamic of the Trump presidency: Republicans on Capitol Hill and off are mostly sticking with the president despite the mounting scandals and seemingly endless crises that surround him.
Wounded May soldiers on as election shock complicates Brexit
LONDON (AP) — In a political drama both brutal and surreal, British Prime Minister Theresa May tried Friday to carry on with the business of governing as usual, while her Conservative Party reeled from losing its parliamentary majority and her opponents demanded she resign.
An election that May called to strengthen her hand as Britain leaves the European Union ended with her political authority obliterated, her days in office likely numbered and the path to Brexit more muddied than ever.
Meanwhile the supposed loser, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, savored a surprisingly strong result and basked in the adulation of an energized, youthful base.
British newspapers summed it up in a word: Mayhem.
The Conservatives built their election campaign around May’s ostensible strengths as a “strong and stable” leader, and the outcome is a personal slap in the face. But May soldiered on Friday, re-appointing senior ministers to her Cabinet and holding talks with a small Northern Irish party about shoring up her minority government.
Gianforte to plead guilty to assault charge
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Rep.-elect Greg Gianforte of Montana will plead guilty to assaulting a reporter the day before being elected the state’s only congressman last month, a prosecutor said Friday.
The Republican technology entrepreneur will enter his plea in court Monday, when he is scheduled to be arraigned and sentenced on the misdemeanor charge, Gallatin County Attorney Marty Lambert told The Associated Press.
Gianforte requested the court hearing after reaching a civil settlement this week.
Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs said Gianforte knocked Jacobs to the ground when the reporter asked him a question May 24.
As part of the settlement, Jacobs said he would not object to Gianforte entering a plea of no contest, or nolo contendere, meaning Gianforte would concede to the charge without admitting guilt.
Brazil’s Temer gets big victory in electoral court ruling
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s top electoral court gave embattled President Michel Temer a big victory late Friday, voting to reject allegations of campaign finance violations that could have removed him from office.
After four days of deliberations, judges voted 4-3 in a case that many viewed as a measure of whether Temer could remain in office amid a ballooning corruption scandal and single-digit popularity.
Last month, a recording emerged that apparently captured Temer endorsing hush money to ex-House Speaker Eduardo Cunha, a former Temer ally serving 15 years in prison for corruption and money laundering. Soon after that, details of another bombshell came out: that Temer was being investigated for allegedly receiving bribes.
Temer has denied wrongdoing and vowed to stay in office.
“The facts are very serious, unbearable,” said Judge Luiz Fux, who voted to remove Temer, adding the campaign finance case was about “very serious crimes.”
Prosecutors rest their case at Bill Cosby’s trial
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Prosecutors wrapped up their case against Bill Cosby on Friday, saving until practically the very end the comedian’s damaging, decade-old testimony about giving quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with.
The prosecution called 12 witnesses over five brisk days of testimony in the sexual assault case that could send the 79-year-old TV star to prison for the rest of his life. The defense will begin presenting its side on Monday.
Testifying under oath in 2005, Cosby said he obtained several prescriptions for quaaludes in the 1970s and offered the now-banned sedatives to others, “the same as a person would say, ‘Have a drink,’” according to the deposition read to the jury.
“When you got the quaaludes, was it in your mind that you were going to use these quaaludes for young women that you wanted to have sex with?” the comic once known as America’s Dad was asked.
“Yes,” he said.
London Bridge attacker tried to rent larger truck
LONDON (AP) — The carnage of the London Bridge attack could have been worse: One of the attackers tried to rent a larger truck that could have killed more people, but his payment was declined. The bloodthirsty gang was also shot dead before they could make their way back to the van where their petrol bombs were stored.
In a rare glimpse into the weeklong investigation, police released details on Saturday that showed Khuram Butt originally tried to rent a 7.5 ton truck. The intended truck was smaller but similar to the one used in the Nice attack last year that killed 86 people and injured hundreds in the resort town in the south of France.
After his payment was declined, Butt and his two accomplices rented a smaller van that they used to plow into crowds before they leapt from the vehicle and went on a stabbing rampage in an attack that left eight people dead and nearly 50 people injured. It was the third such deadly attack in Britain in three months.
After leaving the small white van, the men used 12-inch knives with bright pink blades, according to Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command.
Police also disclosed that multiple petrol bombs were discovered in the van, and a copy of the Quran opened at a page “describing martyrdom” was found at one of the attackers’ houses.
Polanski’s victim pleads to end case: ‘He owes me nothing’
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Roman Polanski’s sexual assault victim made an impassioned plea Friday to end the fugitive director’s four-decade legal saga, saying she felt more abused by the legal justice system than by the man who she said drugged, raped and sodomized her when she was 13.
“The trauma of the ordeal that followed was so great that, you know, the brief encounter with him that evening that was unpleasant just faded and paled,” Samantha Geimer said outside a courtroom in Los Angeles Superior Court. “It just wasn’t as traumatic for me as everybody would like to believe it was.”
Geimer asked Judge Scott Gordon to either dismiss the case outright or sentence the Oscar winner to the six weeks he served in prison during a court-ordered evaluation before he fled the country on the eve of sentencing in 1978.
“I implore you to consider taking action to finally bring this matter to a close as an act of mercy to myself and my family,” Geimer said.
She also called for an end to “a 40-year sentence which has been imposed on the victim of a crime as well as the perpetrator.”