Gaetz associate agrees to cooperate in federal investigation
WASHINGTON — A Florida politician who emerged as a central figure in the federal investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and admits paying an underage girl to have sex with him and other men, according to court documents filed Friday.
Joel Greenberg is expected to plead guilty to six federal charges — including sex trafficking of a child — during a court appearance in Orlando on Monday. His cooperation as a close associate of Gaetz signals a significant escalation in the Justice Department’s investigation and potentially raises the legal and political jeopardy the Florida congressman is facing.
Federal prosecutors have been examining whether Gaetz and Greenberg paid underage girls or offered them gifts in exchange for sex, according to people familiar with the matter. The plea agreement makes no mention of Gaetz, who has vehemently denied the allegations and any wrongdoing and has insisted he will not resign his seat in Congress.
As part of his plea agreement, Greenberg admitted that he recruited women for commercial sex acts and paid them more than $70,000 from 2016 to 2018, including at least one underage girl he paid to have sex with him and others.
Prosecutors say Greenberg met the girl online — from a website where she was posing as an adult — and had a first meeting with her on a boat, paying her $400. He later invited her to a hotels in Florida, where he and others would have sex with her and also supplied the girl and other people with ecstasy, according to the plea deal. In total, prosecutors say Greenberg had sex with the girl at least seven times.
UK eager for a big reopening thanks to vaccine success
LONDON — When London’s Science Museum reopens next week, it will have some new artifacts: empty vaccine vials, testing kits and other items collected during the pandemic, to be featured in a new COVID-19 display.
Britain isn’t quite ready to consign the coronavirus to a museum — the outbreak is far from over. But there is a definite feeling that the U.K. has turned a corner, and the mood in the country is upbeat.
“The end is in sight,” one newspaper front page claimed. “Free at last!” read another.
Thanks to an efficient vaccine rollout program, Britain is finally saying goodbye to months of tough lockdown restrictions.
Starting Monday, all restaurants and bars in England can reopen with some precautions in place, as can hotels, theaters and museums. And Britons will be able to hug friends and family again, with the easing of social distancing rules that have been in place since the pandemic began.
Oklahoma bucks red-state trend, extends early voting
OKLAHOMA CITY — On Election Day last year, state Rep. Jon Echols was mortified to see a 3 1/2-hour line to vote in his district, which stretches from the edge of Oklahoma City’s urban core into suburban neighborhoods that give way to wide stretches of rural land.
A nation like the U.S. — with “real, free and fair elections,” Echols said — shouldn’t make people wait so long to participate in democracy.
“We should all be humiliated that we had that,” Echols said.
He may sound like a voting rights advocate or a Democratic politician set on expanding access to the ballot, but Echols is a Republican and the majority floor leader of the GOP-controlled Oklahoma House. What he did after that Election Day revelation stands in sharp contrast to what the GOP has done in many other states — Echols helped make it slightly easier to vote in deep-red Oklahoma.
Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, signed legislation this week that adds a day to in-person early voting in the state and an extra hour to Saturday early voting, and it also makes changes to ensure mail-in ballots are received in time to be counted. The move comes as voting has become a top issue among Republicans — but in the other direction. GOP-controlled states from Arkansas to Florida have passed laws making it harder to vote, ranging from adding scrutiny to signatures on mail ballots to limiting the time frame drop boxes can be used, and all inspired by former President Donald Trump’s false insistence that he lost his reelection bid because of fraud.
Retired Black players say NFL brain-injury payouts show bias
PHILADELPHIA — Thousands of retired Black professional football players, their families and supporters are demanding an end to the controversial use of “race-norming” to determine which players are eligible for payouts in the NFL’s $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims, a system experts say is discriminatory.
Former Washington running back Ken Jenkins, 60, and his wife Amy Lewis on Friday delivered 50,000 petitions demanding equal treatment for Black players to Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody in Philadelphia, who is overseeing the massive settlement. Former players who suffer dementia or other diagnoses can be eligible for a payout.
Under the settlement, however, the NFL has insisted on using a scoring algorithm on the dementia testing that assumes Black men start with lower cognitive skills. They must therefore score much lower than whites to show enough mental decline to win an award. The practice, which went unnoticed until 2018, has made it harder for Black former players to get awards.
“My reaction was, ‘Well, here we go again,’” said Jenkins, a former running back. “It’s the same old nonsense for Black folks, to have to deal with some insidious, convoluted deals that are being made.” Jenkins is now an insurance executive and is not experiencing any cognitive problems, but has plenty of NFL friends who are less fortunate.
In March, Brody threw out a civil rights lawsuit that claimed the practice is discriminatory. But she later said in a filing that the practice raised “a very important issue” and asked a magistrate judge to compile a report on the problem. She told The Associated Press she did not know when it would be completed.
Oklahoma governor booted from Tulsa Race Massacre commission
TULSA, Okla. — The commission formed to observe the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre announced Friday that it had booted Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt from his seat on the panel days after he signed a bill outlawing the teaching of some race and racism concepts in public schools.
A statement from the commission did not indicate the reason for the parting, and a spokeswoman said the commission had no further comment. However, commission project manager Phil Armstrong this week had sharply criticized the Republican governor for signing a bill into law that prohibits the teaching of so-called critical race theory in Oklahoma schools.
“The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commissioners met Tuesday and agreed through consensus to part ways with Governor Stitt,” the commission’s statement said.
It went on to say that while the commission “is disheartened to part ways with Governor Stitt, we are thankful for the things accomplished together.” It also said, “No elected officials, nor representatives of elected officials, were involved in this decision.”
The Republican governor was informed of his ouster only when the commission issued its statement, said Stitt spokeswoman Carly Atchison.