In Brief: October 2, 2020

Trump adds to election anxiety by pushing legal boundaries

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has floated the unconstitutional idea of delaying the Nov. 3 election. His administration may have violated a judge’s order on the 2020 census and could be held in contempt. Another court ruled that he illegally sidestepped Congress to find billions for his border wall.

In ways large and small, in multiple corners of the government, the president has demonstrated a willingness to push the boundaries of federal law, if not outright flout them. And in the heat of a presidential campaign, that track record only adds to anxiety about whether Trump will abide by the results of the election.

“When the president talks about being the law-and-order candidate, it’s clear that when he says the word ‘law’ he means the laws he personally cares about enforcing,” said Liz Hempowicz, public policy director at the private Project On Government Oversight. “That’s not how a law-and-order system works. You can’t pick and chose. It’s just a complete breakdown of our democratic systems happening in front of our eyes.”

Trump has already suggested the election will be rigged, and he has pointedly declined to promise a peaceful transfer of power if he loses. He jokes about staying in office beyond two terms, prompting supporters in Atlanta last week to chant “12 more years!”

But it’s no joke to critics who see a callous attitude toward the laws he claims to uphold. They point to a series of instances in which Trump or officials in his administration have violated the spirit of the law, ignored it or made end runs around statutes to implement his policies.

Friendly skies: Jet-owning donors reap Trump-era rewards

WASHINGTON — Ben Pogue, owner of a Texas construction company, provided the use of a private jet to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign last fall. Several months later, his father received a presidential pardon.

Like more than a dozen other big Republican donors, many whose businesses are affected by Trump administration policy, he found a way to gain influence beyond simply writing a check. And, like many of them, he received some form of payback.

Records reviewed by The Associated Press show that donors with private aircraft have provided nearly $600,000 in private flights since July 2019 to Trump Victory, the president’s big-dollar fundraising committee led by Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News star who is dating Donald Trump Jr.

The donations highlight the gulf between Trump’s promise to clean up Washington’s pay-to-play “swamp,” and the reality of his presidency.

While there is rarely a straight line between a donation and a desired result, the flight arrangements offered donors a valuable opportunity to interact with campaign officials. Some donors were recipients of government contracts. Others stood to benefit from regulatory changes or were awaiting a favor, like the clearing of Pogue’s father’s name.

Conservative hoaxers face charges over false voter robocalls

Two conservative operatives were charged Thursday in connection with false robocalls that aimed to dissuade Black residents in Detroit and other Democratic-leaning U.S. cities from voting by mail, Michigan’s attorney general announced.

Jacob Wohl, 22, and Jack Burkman, 54, each face four felony counts in Detroit, including conspiring to intimidate voters in violation of election law and using a computer to commit crimes, Attorney General Dana Nessel said.

The calls falsely warned residents in majority-Black Detroit and cities in at least four other states that if they vote by mail in the Nov. 3 election they could be subjected to arrest, debt collection and forced vaccination, Nessel said.

The men, who have a history of staging hoaxes and spreading lies about prominent Democrats and government officials, are not in custody, and no date for their arraignments has been set.

Nessel said her office would work with local law enforcement to secure their appearances, saying they could face arrest and extradition or could voluntarily travel to Michigan to face the charges.

Trump opposes changing debate rules but will still attend

MORRISTOWN, N.J. — President Donald Trump opposes changing the rules for the remaining two presidential debates against Democrat Joe Biden, but his campaign says he will attend regardless.

Tuesday’s opening debate in Cleveland quickly turned chaotic, with frequent interruptions by the candidates — particularly Trump. The Commission on Presidential Debates said Wednesday that it “intends to ensure that additional tools to maintain order are in place for the remaining debates.”

The commission and representatives from Trump’s and Biden’s campaigns met Wednesday morning to discuss the previous night’s debate and potential changes. Some potential changes that have been discussed include adding opening and closing statements and shortening open discussion.

Trump, a Republican, tweeted Thursday that he opposed any changes. “Why would I allow the Debate Commission to change the rules for the second and third Debates when I easily won last time,” he tweeted shortly after landing in New Jersey, where he was to hold a campaign fundraiser at his private golf club.

From wire sources

On a conference call with reporters, Trump’s reelection campaign indicated that Trump would attend the remaining debates regardless of whether the rules are changed.

In Appalachia, people watch COVID-19, race issues from afar

BUCHTEL, Ohio — The water, so cold that it nearly hurts, spills relentlessly into a concrete trough from three pipes driven into a hillside near the edge of town.

People have been coming to the trough for at least a century, since horses were watered here and coal miners stopped by to wash off the grime. People still come – because they think the water is healthier, or makes better coffee, or because their utilities were turned off when they couldn’t pay the bills. Or maybe just because it’s what they’ve always done.

For years, Tarah Nogrady has filled plastic jugs here and lugged them back to a town so small it rarely appears on maps. As she collects water for her four Pekinese dogs waiting in the car, she doesn’t wear a mask, like so many around here. Nogrady doubts that the coronavirus is a real threat – it’s “maybe a flu-type deal,” she says.

It’s a common view in the little towns that speckle the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio, where the pandemic has barely been felt. Coronavirus deaths and protests for racial justice — events that have defined 2020 nationwide — are mostly just images on TV from a distant America.

For many here, it’s an increasingly foreign America that they explain with suspicion, anger and occasionally conspiracy theories. The result: At a time when the country is bitterly torn and crises are piling up faster than ever, the feeling of isolation in this corner of Ohio is more profound than ever.

___

AP: Trooper’s mic records talk of beating, choking Black man

In graphic, matter-of-fact chatter picked up on his body-camera mic, a Louisiana State trooper implicated in the death of a Black man can be heard talking of beating and choking him before “all of a sudden he just went limp.”

“I beat the ever-living f—- out of him,” the trooper said in a 27-second audio clip obtained by The Associated Press.

It is the most direct evidence to emerge yet in the death last year of Ronald Greene, which troopers initially blamed on injuries from a car crash at the end of a chase. The long-simmering case has now become the subject of a federal civil rights investigation and growing calls for authorities to release the full body-cam video.

Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, who died last week in a single-car crash, is heard recounting the May 2019 arrest of Greene in rural north Louisiana on audio provided to the AP through an intermediary who asked not to be identified because the case remains under investigation. Its veracity was confirmed by two law enforcement officials familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity. State Police did not dispute the tape’s authenticity.

“Choked him and everything else trying to get him under control,” Hollingsworth is heard saying, apparently in his part of a phone conversation with a colleague.

___

Facebook, Twitter flounder in QAnon crackdown

CHICAGO — Facebook and Twitter promised to stop encouraging the growth of the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon, which fashions President Donald Trump as a secret warrior against a supposed child-trafficking ring run by celebrities and government officials, after it reached an audience of millions on their platforms this year.

But the social media companies still aren’t enforcing even the limited restrictions they’ve recently put in place to stem the tide of dangerous QAnon material, a review by The Associated Press found. Both platforms have vowed to stop “suggesting” QAnon material to users, a powerful way of introducing QAnon to new people.

But neither has actually succeeded at that.

On Wednesday, hours after a chaotic debate between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, a video from a QAnon account that falsely claimed Biden wore a wire to cheat during the event was trending on Twitter, for example.

Twitter is even still running ads against QAnon material, in effect profiting off the type of tweets that it has vowed to limit. In some cases Facebook is still automatically directing users to follow public and secret QAnon pages or groups, the AP found.

___

Documentary tries to prove existence of dead Lincoln photo

NEW YORK — The image is haunting, depicting a gaunt-faced man with a familiar beard, staring ahead lifelessly. The right eye is bulging and appears disfigured from an unseen wound.

Some experts believe the man is Abraham Lincoln, captured hours after the nation’s beloved 16th president succumbed to an assassin’s bullet on April 15, 1865, a heretofore unknown photo of incalculable emotional and historic value.

Others dismiss the mere possibility.

The original ambrotype image is locked away in an Illinois safe deposit box, the subject of court fights and accusations of robbery and, on Sunday, a Discovery network documentary that attempts to unravel the mystery behind it.

“In the world of authenticating, this is like finding the Holy Grail,” said Whitny Braun, a California investigator whose effort to determine if the photo is real is traced in Discovery’s special, “The Lost Lincoln.” The man who claims to own the image is suing to halt the show from being aired.