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Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Charles Kushner. (photo: Reuters/Getty)
Trump's Pardons Make the Unimaginable Real
Tim Naftali, The Atlantic
Naftali writes: "Yesterday evening, President Donald Trump issued 15 pardons and five commutations, including two for individuals found guilty of charges arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation."
He may now attempt what no one thought a president would ever try.
He is reportedly considering a raft of other Christmas pardons—for sympathetic allies, for loyal retainers, and even for family members.
The prospect of a president using his power to protect aides accused of breaking the law is disturbing, but it’s hardly novel. In 1973, President Richard Nixon mulled over the idea of issuing Christmas pardons for his Watergate co-conspirators.
Nixon’s pardons would have been—and many of Trump’s pardons certainly would be—bad presidential pardons. In 1925, thanks to a Chicago innkeeper’s decision to ignore a court injunction to stop selling alcohol during Prohibition, the Supreme Court took the time to explain why: “To exercise [the pardon power] to the extent of destroying the deterrent effect of judicial punishment would be to pervert it.”
But despite seeing that danger clearly, the chief justice at the time, writing for a unanimous Court in Ex Parte Grossman, declined to limit the presidential prerogative. He was certain that no president would ever be so corrupt as to issue bad pardons. “Our Constitution confers this discretion on the highest officer in the Nation in confidence that he will not abuse it,” he wrote. And the chief justice thought he was uniquely qualified to say so: William Howard Taft is the only member of the Court ever to have been president. Taft considered himself a gentleman, and he expected his successors to behave like gentlemen, too.
Fifty years after Taft issued that opinion, Nixon challenged the assumption that no president would use a pardon to undermine the American system of government. As we await Trump’s Christmas pardons, with the expectation that many will be self-serving and injurious to the pursuit of justice, the intertwined tales of Taft and Nixon help explain why, after two centuries, we are still so vulnerable to bad pardons, a power that the Framers left unchecked.
Philip Grossman, who just wanted to make a buck selling hooch in 1921, had no idea that his being found guilty of contempt of court—with a one-year sentence and a $1,000 fine—would prompt the Supreme Court to establish a broad interpretation of the presidential pardoning power. But Calvin Coolidge, who became president in 1923 when the hapless Warren G. Harding died, decided later that year to commute Grossman’s sentence for contempt of court, eliminating the jail time (but keeping the fine).
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois didn’t much like this presidential meddling, seeing Coolidge’s intervention less as an act of presidential mercy than as a direct threat to the entire American justice system. In defiance of the commutation, the court sent Grossman to the Chicago House of Correction. The case ended up at the Supreme Court.
The lower court posed a question that many Americans are now considering: Did the Founding Fathers somehow goof up and give presidents the right to wreck the very institutions they are sworn to protect? The character of Coolidge wasn’t at issue in 1925; the character of his pardon was.
The question in that case was whether a president could pardon an individual found guilty of contempt of court. The case raised two issues: Was the offense of “contempt of court” included in the phrase “offenses against the United States” as understood in 1787? And was it the intention of the Framers to allow presidents the right to undermine the judicial system by condoning contempt toward it?
A decade earlier, fresh into his post-presidency, Taft had written about the pardon:
The duty involved in the pardoning power is a most difficult one to perform, because it is so completely within the discretion of the Executive and is lacking so in rules or limitations of its exercise. The only rule he can follow is that he shall not exercise it against the public interest. The guilt of the man with whose case he is dealing is usually admitted, and even if it is not, the judgment of the court settles that fact in all but few cases. The question which the President has to decide is whether under peculiar circumstances of hardship he can exercise clemency without destroying the useful effect of punishment in deterring others from committing crimes.
As chief justice, Taft answered his own question in the affirmative:
If it be said that the President by successive pardons of constantly recurring contempts in particular litigation might deprive a court of power to enforce its orders in a recalcitrant neighborhood, it is enough to observe that such a course is so improbable as to furnish but little basis for argument. Exceptional cases like this if to be imagined at all would suggest a resort to impeachment rather than to a narrow and strained construction of the general powers of the President.
The Nixon White House was aware of Taft’s broad interpretation of the pardon power, and liked it. In July 1971, the counsel to the president, J. Fred Buzhardt, sent a study of presidential pardons by an outside consultant to White House Counsel John Dean. “The power of the President to pardon is so unfettered,” the report stated, “that the Supreme Court has even said, through the pen of Mr. Chief Justice Taft, in Ex Parte Grossman 267 U.S. 87 (1925), that even should the Chief Executive pardon contempt convictions to the extent of destroying the judicial system of the nation, the proper recourse for correction would be through impeachment ‘rather than to a narrow and strained construction of the general powers of the President.’”
Exactly a year later, after five men working for Nixon’s reelection committee were arrested while planting listening devices in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., Nixon set out to test the Taft decision: Could he pardon members of a conspiracy who were engaged in criminal activities designed to benefit his campaign without triggering an impeachment inquiry? After attempts to control the FBI’s investigation of the break-in had failed and the Justice Department was taking depositions from the reelection-campaign managers for a civil suit launched by Democrats, Nixon thought he could—and came up with a devious plan.
In a meeting with Charles Colson, one of his political advisers, on July 19, Nixon said he wanted to grant a pardon to all five Watergate burglars and their two supervisors, former FBI Special Agent G. Gordon Liddy and the former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt. But the pardon, he said, had to come as part of a general amnesty that involved “both sides.” Five days earlier, a grand jury in Tallahassee, Florida, had indicted six members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War—the so-called Gainesville Six—alleging that they were plotting violence against the Republican National Convention in Miami, slated for August.
Discussing which activists would be part of the plan, before identifying the whole group, Nixon said, “There’s bound to be … the Vietnam Veterans Against the War conspiracy … By God, be sure they have some of those guys with charges still hanging on after the election.”
“[I] see this morning they grabbed some,” Colson replied.
“Huh?” asked Nixon.
“They grabbed some this morning,” Colson said.
“Some … Now, if you can keep some of them alive and others arise … Then we’ve got to pardon the whole kit and caboodle after the election,” Nixon said.
“And nobody’s going to pay a nickel’s worth of attention,” Colson assured him.
“Provided there’s some on the other side,” Nixon replied.
Two weeks later, the plot turned even more convoluted. On August 1, in the midst of a discussion about paying hush money to the Watergate burglars, Nixon asked White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman whether the White House was “doing our best to be sure” that the Gainesville Six were “kept under indictment, or—whatever it is—they are charged until after the election, on the other side, you know what I mean. That veterans’ group down there in Florida … the strategy [is] … you’ve got to pardon everybody.”
Haldeman replied by suggesting to Nixon that, to ensure the strategy’s success, “what we’re trying to do is get some more,” adding mysteriously, “We’ve got some target money.” Nixon wasn’t sure, and wanted details. Haldeman suggested that more anti-war activists could be picked up “where they appear to be doing something.” He assured the president that there would certainly be cause to do it at the convention later that month, and they could hold on to them, just to sell a Watergate pardon. Nixon didn’t push back.
This would have been the most corrupt pardon in modern U.S. history. And Nixon and his henchmen believed that their only restraint was political. Constitutionally, according to the Taft doctrine, Nixon could use the pardon power to assist in a criminal cover-up as long as he didn’t provoke impeachment. There hadn’t been an effort at impeachment since the trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868. The prospect seemed unlikely a century later.
Apparently, the Watergate cover-up initially worked so well that Nixon assumed he didn’t need to bother with a cynical postelection bipartisan political pardon. In October, the Gainesville Six became the Gainesville Eight with the indictment of two additional Vietnam veterans—and it’s possible that these new indictments were somehow linked to Nixon’s political needs. But the immediate danger to the president was subsiding. The burglars and their two managers were keeping their mouths shut, and the perjury committed by the leadership of the president’s reelection committee in FBI interviews limited the indictments to just those seven men.
Although the idea of a grand political pardon wasn’t discussed in the White House after the Watergate indictments were announced in September 1972, Nixon never lost sight of the utility of pardons to limit Watergate’s damage. Whenever cracks seemed to be appearing in the cover-up, Nixon quickly dangled a pardon in front of potential whistleblowers. Unlike the cynical “both sides” political pardon, these inducements had to be kept secret from Congress and the public.
In January 1973, Nixon privately assured Colson that Colson’s friend E. Howard Hunt, whose wife had just died in a plane crash, would get a pardon: “Don’t worry about Hunt,” he said. Assuming that Colson would share this news with Hunt’s lawyer, Nixon cautioned him that the rest of the burglars “must not expect [a pardon] at the same time.”
When fears resurfaced in March 1973 that the Watergate Seven, who received unusually long sentences from District Court Judge John Sirica, would start talking, Nixon once again conferred with Haldeman about pardoning them. “If Sirica can sit there and use the threat of a sentence, why can’t we use the promise of clemency?” Haldeman asked. “They play this partisan, politically,” Nixon responded, trying to talk himself into believing that a one-sided pardon would be politically survivable. The next day, without any sense of irony, Nixon and Haldeman discussed whether this political pardon should be issued to mark the Bicentennial. Nixon then told Haldeman that he preferred a Christmas pardon in 1974.
A month later, when the Senate Watergate investigation began picking up momentum and the ever-expanding cover-up required sacrificing Haldeman, Dean, and Nixon’s chief domestic adviser, John Ehrlichman, Nixon raised the possibility of issuing more pardons. Nixon mistrusted Dean but wanted to do something to retain the loyalty of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, whom he had just forced to resign. On May 18, Nixon ostentatiously promised pardons directly to both of them, in a conversation caught on tape:
Nixon: “I don’t give a shit what comes out on you or John or even that poor, damn dumb [former Attorney General] John Mitchell, there is going to be a total pardon.”
Haldeman: “Don’t even say that.”
Nixon: “You know it. You know it and I know it. Forget you ever heard it.”
Dangling pardons had just gotten more politically risky for Nixon. In the first week of May, Newsweek had published a scoop that Dean was in negotiations to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee that Ehrlichman had told him Nixon had promised a pardon to E. Howard Hunt. It was the first time that Nixon had been publicly linked to an effort to use his pardon power as part of a White House cover-up.
Nixon, however, was undeterred. Five days later, after secretly promising pardons to his former top advisers, Nixon publicly addressed the rumors that he had dangled a pardon to obstruct justice. “In a statement issued from the White House,” Nixon later wrote confessionally in his memoirs, “I said that I had not authorized any offer of executive clemency for any of these defendants. Thus I set more traps that would be sprung by the tapes months later.” Although he had not formally authorized any pardons, Nixon had indeed promised them, indirectly to the burglars and directly to his top co-conspirators.
After May 1973, thanks to the Senate investigation, Dean’s defection, and active digging by the media, the fear of impeachment did become a restraint on this corrupt president’s abuse of the pardon, as the Founders would have hoped. With the cat out of the bag about Nixon’s motives in using pardons, the option of hiding political pardons in a grand bargain to free Vietnam dissenters could no longer work. Nixon’s co-conspirators either resigned or were fired, and the remaining White House staff was wary of dangling, let alone issuing, any presidential promises of clemency. Meanwhile, Nixon’s strategy for saving the cover-up gradually became focused on making sure no one outside the White House heard his tapes.
But once the Nixon presidency entered its terminal phase, in July 1974, the calibrated system to restrain the president’s pardoning power established by the Founders, and ratified by Taft, began to fall apart. The House Judiciary Committee approved, with bipartisan majorities, three articles of impeachment. The Supreme Court, in United States v. Nixon, unanimously ordered Nixon to turn over more of the White House tapes, with three of his appointees voting against him and the fourth recusing himself. The president faced enormous pressure to resign, some of it coming from within the White House. Suddenly, Watergate pardons came back into the picture, including, for the first time, the idea of Nixon pardoning himself.
Neither the Founding Fathers nor Taft had considered that a president might resign at the threat of impeachment. At the Constitutional Convention, the Framers had debated what to do about a president who used pardons to further treasonous activity, at one point suggesting that the Senate should intervene in such a case. In the end, dropping any role for the Senate, they agreed on the language: The president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”
But if impeachment were taken off the table because a president chose to leave before he could be removed, would there be any restraints left on his use of pardons? Could he, in fact, pardon himself? For Nixon and his second chief of staff, Alexander Haig, two years of discussion about the use of the pardon to contain the Watergate scandal now came down to how to use the pardon to protect one individual: Richard M. Nixon.
On August 1, Counsel to the President Buzhardt outlined three possible options to Haig for pardoning the president. As Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein later described the scene in Final Days, Buzhardt said Nixon “could pardon himself and resign”; “pardon Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and all the rest and then resign”; or “resign and hope that [Vice President Gerald] Ford would pardon him.”
Haig went to Ford and outlined these options—as well as a few others if Nixon decided to fight on—apparently hoping that Ford would endorse a pardon and make it easier for Nixon to decide. Ford listened silently and then explained that he needed to speak with his wife, Betty. Later that same day, Nixon tentatively agreed with Haig to announce his resignation on Monday, August 5, when the White House would have to turn over more tapes pursuant to the Supreme Court decision.
But Ford didn’t act as Haig—and likely Nixon—had expected. The next day, Ford called Haig and, reading from a handwritten note, said in front of witnesses, “I want you to understand that I have no intention of recommending what the president should do about resigning or not resigning and that nothing we talked about yesterday afternoon should be given any consideration in whatever decision the president may wish to make.”
On August 2, with no promise of a pardon, Nixon balked, deciding that he wasn’t going to resign on Monday after all. He would take his chances with Congress, and with the public’s response to the release of a recording from June 23, 1972. That recording would become known as the “smoking gun” tape, because on it, Nixon approved a cover-up plan to have the CIA interfere in the FBI’s Watergate investigation on the phony pretext that national-security issues were involved.
Nearly 50 years later, there is still an eyewitness to what happened next. “Haig was trying to convince Nixon to resign,” remembers Laurence H. Silberman, now a senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who in August 1974 was deputy attorney general. “I do recall Haig gingerly pushing Nixon.”
Silberman asked the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal guidance to the executive branch, to write an opinion on whether Nixon could be pardoned in office, including by himself. “I’m pretty sure it was responsive to Haig,” Silberman told me, “who sometimes called me directly rather than go to [Attorney General William] Saxbe, who was a bit impulsive. It was embarrassing, and I tried to keep Bill apprised.”
Silberman recalls Haig asking about the constitutionality of a self-pardon, but not posing that question at Nixon’s initiative. “Haig was trying to convince Nixon to resign, and I think that may have been something that he would have been thinking of as an inducement,” he told me. Silberman assigned the task of producing the opinion to Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary C. Lawton, who with the retirement of OLC chief George Dixon earlier in the year was the ranking member of the office.
On August 5, Lawton hand-delivered her response to Silberman. The memorandum dismissed the idea that a presidential self-pardon could be constitutional. “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself,” Lawton concluded. Nixon could, however, use the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to resign temporarily, and then Ford, as acting president, could pardon him—although Ford would be under no obligation to do so. Lawton also determined that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to pardon Nixon. “I thought Mary Lawton’s piece was quite superficial,” Silberman told me, although he doesn’t recall disputing the memo’s substance at the time.
As rumors persisted that Nixon was considering resignation, Ehrlichman and Haldeman repeatedly contacted the White House to remind Nixon of his promise to pardon them. Haldeman was still pushing the notion of linking pardons to a Vietnam amnesty, although Nixon had dropped the idea long before. Haldeman drafted a long letter arguing for a grand pardon of all the Watergate conspirators and all Vietnam-era draft evaders.
But as the walls closed in, Nixon decided not to issue any pardons related to Watergate. With the release of the “smoking gun” transcript on August 5, Nixon’s remaining political support among conservative Republicans collapsed, leaving him no option but to resign or face impeachment and conviction. Nixon’s lieutenants could no longer protect his presidency, and it’s not clear if he cared about their fate. In fact, pardons could backfire on Nixon, removing the incentive that former aides had to lie on his behalf.
But why didn’t he take a chance on a self-pardon, which Buzhardt thought was legitimate? We cannot be sure, but Silberman’s recollection suggests one possible explanation: the shock of the U.S. v. Nixon decision amplified by the doubts of Nixon’s own Justice Department. “I am not sure,” Silberman told me, “but I think I told Haig that it would surely end up in the Supreme Court if Nixon pardoned himself and the special prosecutor challenged it. Nixon’s record there was not good.”
The more secure route, constitutionally, would have been a later pardon from his successor, but Nixon apparently left office without a promise from Ford himself. There is reason to believe that others close to Ford—former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and possibly Nixon’s former assistant for legislative and congressional affairs, Bryce Harlow—might have signaled in those final days that they would lobby Ford for a pardon. But it is unlikely that there was a formal deal with Ford. Nixon left the White House on August 9 a defeated man, later telling at least one visitor to his Spanish-style finca in San Clemente, his California exile, that he fully expected to go to jail.
Trump, like Nixon, is heading out the door at the end of a corrupt presidency. Like Nixon, Trump has secrets he would like to keep. Unlike Nixon, however, Trump was seeking reelection in the year he faced impeachment, and, after his acquittal in the Senate, it was electoral politics that served as a brake on his willingness to pardon those who knew too much. Trump’s pardons of George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan, in defiance of the Mueller investigation, as well as his earlier pardon of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in November, make clear that public opinion no longer exercises any kind of constraint on Trump.
How far will he go now? Thanks to Taft’s ruling in Ex Parte Grossman, the president could expect the Supreme Court to uphold pardons of his family and the other enablers of his various schemes, whether of defined crimes or abuses of power. But the events of August 1974 leave the question of the constitutionality of a self-pardon wide open. Some in Nixon’s immediate orbit believed it constitutional, even if his Justice Department disagreed. Taft’s expansive decision in 1925 was silent on the matter of a self-pardon.
Will Trump be the first to test the constitutionality of a self-pardon, just as he has tested the limits of so many other constraints on presidential power? Precedent has never mattered to him. He has reportedly been asking aides about the possibility of a self-pardon since 2017. Unlike Nixon, he can’t even hope for a pardon from his immediate successor. But neither can he count on the Supreme Court to uphold a self-pardon; in summarily dismissing Trump’s effort to overturn the election, the justices reminded him that a president should not count on the support of his appointees.
The Framers couldn’t imagine a Congress failing to impeach and remove a corrupt president. Chief Justice Taft couldn’t imagine a president abusing the pardon power, and he couldn’t imagine the circumstances under which a president would pardon himself. Mary Lawton couldn’t imagine that the Constitution would allow a president to be the judge in his own case.
But in the final days of the presidency of Donald Trump, very little seems unimaginable anymore.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort (R) arrives at the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse for an arraignment hearing as a protester holds up a sign March 8, 2018 in Alexandria, Virginia. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
Trump Pardons Charles Kushner, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone in Latest Wave of Clemency Grants
Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, Colby Itkowitz and Jonathan O'Connell, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "President Trump on Wednesday granted pardons or other clemency to another 29 people, including real estate developer Charles Kushner, his son-in-law's father, and two former advisers who were convicted as part of the FBI's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election - once again using his executive power to benefit his allies and undermine an investigation that dogged his presidency."
With his time in office nearing its end, Trump pardoned former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted in 2018 of committing financial fraud and conspiring to obstruct the investigation of his crimes, and he upgraded to a full pardon the sentence commutation he provided earlier to longtime friend Roger Stone.
Trump also pardoned Kushner, the father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to having made false statements to the Federal Election Commission, and he subsequently pleaded guilty to witness tampering, and tax evasion stemming from $6 million in political contributions and gifts mischaracterized as business expenses.
The move came just a day after Trump granted commutations or pardons to 20 people, including three former Republican members of Congress and two others who were convicted of crimes as part of the investigation into Russia’s activities four years ago. The president also pardoned military contractors involved in the killing of unarmed civilians during the Iraq War. Routinely, Trump has avoided the normal Justice Department process for pardons, instead granting clemency to political allies and the well-connected.
Wednesday’s announcement is unlikely to be the last batch of clemency the president unleashes. Trump has told aides, advisers, allies, lawmakers and others to bring him names for consideration, according to two people who have spoken to him. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
“He wants to pardon people,” one of these people said. “If you have someone, now is the time.”
The move sparked blowback, mostly from Democrats, who accused him of wielding his executive authority to shield himself from possible criminal investigation.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called for eliminating the presidential pardon power.
“Once one party allows the pardon power to become a tool of criminal enterprise, its danger to democracy outweighs its utility as an instrument of justice,” Murphy tweeted. “It’s time to remove the pardon power from the Constitution.”
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said, “This is rotten to the core.”
With Wednesday’s pardon of Manafort, Trump has now intervened to aid five people charged in the Russia probe, which was eventually taken over by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The White House announcement made no secret that Trump was taking aim at that investigation; it said Manfort’s convictions were “premised on the Russian collusion hoax,” and that the pardon for Stone would “help to right the injustices he faced at the hands of the Mueller investigation.”
Grant Smith, a Stone attorney, said in a statement: “When the paperwork arrives from the Department of Justice, Mr. Stone will promptly sign the acceptance of the Presidential Pardon. He is humbled that President Trump used his Constitutional power to allow Mr. & Mrs. Stone to put this behind them and move on with their lives.”
Stone himself issued a lengthy statement attacking the case and thanking Trump for “his extraordinary act of justice.”
A Twitter account for Manafort, which appears to have been dormant for years, posted Wednesday night, “Mr. President, my family & I humbly thank you for the Presidential Pardon you bestowed on me. Words cannot fully convey how grateful we are. … You truly did ‘Make America Great Again.’ God Bless you & your family. I wish you a Merry Christmas & many good wishes for the coming years.”
In November, Trump pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his dealings with the Russian ambassador to the United States, though he later sought to take it back. In July, he commuted the sentence for Stone, who was convicted of seeking to impede a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and sentenced to 40 months in prison. And on Tuesday, he pardoned George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to his 2016 campaign who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russia investigation, and Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Mueller’s team.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) tweeted, “Pardons for Paul Manafort and Roger Stone serve neither justice nor mercy. President Trump is handing out rewards to his co-conspirators and shielding his own conduct from scrutiny.”
The list of those pardoned Wednesday was eclectic, and included a former congressman convicted of acting as a foreign agent, a Prince George’s County, Md., police officer convicted of releasing her police dog to attack a man who had surrendered, and a Border Patrol agent who kicked and punched suspects whom he took into custody after a chase. On Tuesday, Trump pardoned former Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), who pleaded guilty to using campaign funds on personal matters. On Wednesday, he pardoned Hunter’s wife, Margaret, who pleaded guilty in the case before her husband and agreed to cooperate.
Trump has drawn significant criticism for how he has used his pardon power, though one adviser said the president is unconcerned about the blowback.
“He’s just burning it all down,” this person said. The adviser said the president has also discussed pardoning Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, and will issue dozens more before he leaves office.
Trump flew to his resort at Mar-a-Lago Wednesday, where he was greeted by hundreds of supporters along his motorcade route. The mostly unmasked supporters waved Trump flags and signs and chanted “Four more years!” One small boy had a sign that said, “We’re going to miss you.”
The practical effect of Trump’s latest move was particularly significant for Manafort, who had been facing a 7 1/2-year federal prison sentence, though he was released to home confinement in May, about two years in, over dangers posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Manafort was found guilty in federal court in Virginia in 2018 of stashing the money he made as a lobbyist from Ukrainian oligarchs overseas to avoid taxes and then committing bank fraud to keep up a lavish lifestyle when his patrons lost power. He then pleaded guilty to related charges in federal court in D.C. and pledged to cooperate with the special counsel, but a judge concluded that he lied to investigators, notably about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime Manafort aide assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian intelligence.
During the 2016 campaign, Manafort gave Kilimnik internal Trump campaign polling data; Mueller’s investigators said they were never able to determine how Kilimnik used the information.
Manafort could still face legal jeopardy from state authorities in New York, which would be outside the reach of a presidential pardon, though so far authorities there have faced an uphill battle.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance had sought to bring a mortgage fraud case against Manafort after his federal convictions, but a court dismissed it on double jeopardy grounds. Vance, though, has been taking steps to revive the effort, and Danny Frost, a spokesman for his office, said in a statement Wednesday, “This action underscores the urgent need to hold Mr. Manafort accountable for his crimes against the People of New York as alleged in our indictment, and we will continue to pursue our appellate remedies.”
Charles Kushner, who was sentenced to two years in prison, already had served his time. Among the allegations brought by prosecutors were that he paid for an unnamed individual’s private school tuition out of company accounts and declared the payments as charitable contributions on his tax returns, according to court documents. The White House cited campaign adviser Matt Schlapp’s support of Charles Kushner’s pardon, along with the support of a former U.S. attorney in Utah.
Upon his release, Charles Kushner resumed practicing real estate development, and his New Jersey-based firm manages more than 20,000 apartments in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Tennessee.
Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump, has long held that the prosecution against his father, led by then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, was unjust, despite his father’s guilty pleas. Trump has not spoken to the former New Jersey governor in several weeks, a person familiar with their relationship said, and Christie has repeatedly encouraged the president publicly to stop trying to overturn the election. Christie had no comment.
According to court documents, while Charles Kushner was under investigation for campaign contributions, he grew angry when he learned that other family members were cooperating with the probe. He paid a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law in a New Jersey motel room, where hidden cameras had been set, and later had the tape mailed to his sister as a warning, according to the documents.
The conviction changed Jared Kushner’s trajectory, he later said, from his goal of becoming a prosecutor. “Seeing my father’s situation, I felt what happened was obviously unjust in terms of the way they pursued him,” he told a real estate magazine, the Real Deal, in 2014. “I just never wanted to be on the other side of that and cause pain to the families I was doing that to, whether right or wrong.”
Jared Kushner’s continued ownership stake in his family’s business while working in the White House repeatedly raised concerns among ethics officials and experts, particularly when the Kushner Cos. was seeking buyers and lenders for its money-losing project at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York. Brookfield Properties took over the property from the Kushners in 2018 and renamed it 660 Fifth.
Charles Kushner told the New York Times in 2018 that he would “prefer not to have a pardon” because of the publicity it would generate.
Trump also pardoned former GOP congressman Mark Siljander of Michigan who in 2010 pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction of justice and acting as a foreign agent on behalf of an Islamic charity that hired Siljander to lobby Congress to have its name removed from a list of alleged terrorist-supporting organizations. In 2012, Siljander was sentenced to a year in federal prison.
Trump similarly pardoned Stephanie Mohr, a former Maryland police officer who served 10 years in federal prison for allowing her police dog to bite and restrain a burglary suspect in 1995. The bite wound required 10 stitches on the calf of the suspect, an unarmed homeless man. A federal jury convicted Mohr, then 30, of violating his civil rights by releasing her police dog to attack him.
Trump also pardoned Gary Brugman, a former Border Patrol agent who spent 27 months in federal prison for assaulting a Mexican national who illegally crossed the U.S. border into Texas. A federal jury convicted Brugman of violating the man’s civil rights.
And he pardoned Jesse Benton, a former aide to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who backed the pardon. Benton was convicted of an attempt to buy an endorsement for Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential bid. Benton had worked for a PAC affiliated with Trump but resigned after the charges were filed.
This image from a Columbus police body camera shows the moments before Officer Adam Coy fatally shoots Andre Maurice Hill early Tuesday. (photo: Columbus Division of Police/WOSU)
Ohio Cop's Body Cam Shows He Shot Unarmed Black Man Within 10 Seconds of Encounter
Gabriel Rosenberg, NPR
Rosenberg writes: "Body camera footage shows a Columbus police officer fatally shooting 47-year-old Andre Maurice Hill less than 10 seconds after finding him in a garage early Tuesday. The officer who shot him is Adam Coy, a 19-year veteran of the department who has since been placed on paid administrative leave."
Columbus police released records and video of the encounter Wednesday, along with Coy's personnel file and discipline records. Coy is white; Hill was Black. Police say no weapon was found at the scene.
Police officials say officers were dispatched to the city's Cranbrook neighborhood around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, responding to a nonemergency call about a man sitting inside a car repeatedly turning it on and off.
Footage from Coy's body camera shows officers walking up to an open garage and shining their flashlights on Hill, who turned around and held up his cellphone. Hill took several steps toward Coy, who raised his gun and shot him.
Because Coy did not activate his camera until after the shooting, there is no audio for the first minute of the footage – Columbus police body cameras feature a "look back" function that records video but no audio of the 60 seconds before activation.
"Put your f***ing hands out to the side. Hands out to the side now," Coy shouts in the video, breathing heavily. "Roll to your stomach now."
Coy asks another officer if medics are coming, walks up to Hill and rolls him over onto his back.
The official Columbus police report of the shooting, also released Wednesday, is brief and absent of most details: "Officer discharged his firearm upon confronting Mr. Hill. Mr. Hill did not survive his injuries."
Police say there is no dashcam footage because officers were responding to a nonemergency call.
At a press conference Wednesday, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther called for the immediate termination of Coy, saying he was "outraged" by the shooting.
"I am also very disturbed about what I don't see next in the body-worn camera footage," Ginther said. "From what we can see, none of the officers initially at the scene provide medical assistance to Mr. Hill. No compression on the wounds to stop the bleeding. No attempts at CPR. Not even a hand on the shoulder and an encouraging word that medics were en route."
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is leading the inquiry. U.S. Attorney David DeVillers said his office also will review if any federal civil rights laws were violated.
"The mayor requested that the U.S. Attorney's Office review the investigation for possible federal civil rights violations, and after consulting with Ohio Attorney General [Dave] Yost, I agreed that my office will review the case as requested once BCI's investigation is complete," DeVillers said in a statement Wednesday. "This office will then consult with the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office on how to proceed at the conclusion of our review."
A month of shootings
Hill's death came just three weeks after a separate law enforcement shooting of a Black man in Columbus, which sparked a federal civil rights investigation of its own.
DeVillers is currently heading a joint criminal-civil rights probe into the Dec. 4 killing of Casey Goodson Jr. by Franklin County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Meade, who is white.
Authorities say Meade encountered Goodson while conducting a search for an unrelated suspect in the Northland neighborhood, and went to confront Goodson – who was neither the person officers were looking for nor the subject of any investigation. Meade then fatally shot Goodson at his home, with a preliminary report from the county coroner finding that the man likely died from multiple gunshot wounds to the torso.
Still, there are many uncertainties surrounding Goodson's shooting, which prompted days of protests in downtown Columbus. Similar to Tuesday's shooting, a lack of recorded evidence presents a challenge to investigators. Unlike Columbus police officers, Franklin County sheriff's deputies don't wear body cameras, so there is no audio or video of the encounter between Meade and Goodson. Authorities have not located any witnesses to the shooting.
An attorney for Meade said that Goodson pointed a gun at the deputy and refused commands to stand down, but that claim cannot be verified due to the absence of recordings or witnesses. Goodson's family disputes the account given by authorities, including whether Goodson had a gun on him at all, and called for Meade to be fired and charged with murder.
Authorities haven't announced state or federal charges against Meade, who remains on administrative leave.
Reform in motion
The two shootings occurred during a critical juncture for police reforms in Columbus.
"You know, every time we think we have an open window where we can begin to have healing and change in the community and begin to build trust, and now we're back to ground zero again because of two back-to-back shootings of Black men," Stephanie Hightower, president of the Columbus Urban League, told NPR member station WOSU on Wednesday.
"All of the actions that you have seen this year basically illuminates what Black folks have always been dealing with, and what we have always thought, is that law enforcement, they're not here to protect and serve our community, they're here to police us, and we've got to change that narrative," Hightower said.
Starting next month, prosecutions of police misconduct in Columbus will fall to a new person: incoming Franklin County Prosecutor Gary Tyack, a Democrat who ousted longtime Republican Ron O'Brien in November. For decades, O'Brien was a target of criticism from racial justice advocates in Columbus.
Over the summer, following weeks of racial justice protests, the mayor issued an executive order requiring all cases of fatal-use-of-force by police to be referred to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. That agency declined to take up the Goodson shooting, however, because city officials waited three days after the shooting to request its involvement.
Columbus voters in November also approved a city charter amendment to create a Civilian Review Board and inspector general, which will conduct independent investigations into police misconduct and policies. The city is currently accepting applications for the review board, which it hopes to seat early next year.
Even then, however, the board will be limited in its scope: Neither it nor the inspector general will have jurisdiction over the Franklin County Sheriff's Office, and significant details about its powers still must be decided with the local police union, whose contract expired this year.
ICE officers. (photo: Getty)
More Than 40 Women Allege Unwanted Surgeries and Medical Abuse in ICE Custody
Adolfo Flores, BuzzFeed News
Flores writes: "Forty-one women are now speaking out against the federal government and a Georgia gynecologist, most of them alleging that they underwent unwanted and medically unnecessary procedures while in ICE detention."
"I was hysterical, I thought about my kids and my life. I wondered if I was going to die," one of the detainees told BuzzFeed News.
The amended class action lawsuit complaint filed on Monday night alleges that 35 of the women underwent nonconsensual or medically unnecessary gynecological procedures at the hands of Mahendra Amin while detained at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Ocilla, Georgia. Fourteen of those women had nonconsensual or medically unnecessary surgeries, the complaint states.
The lawsuit also includes sworn declarations from six additional witnesses to medical abuse and retaliation the women allegedly endured in ICE detention.
In addition to increasing the number of women alleging medical misconduct at the hands of Amin, the class action lawsuit states that the women suffered retaliation for speaking out and face the threat of deportation. The complaint also states that those charged with the care of these immigrant women, including guards, medical staff, and ICE employees, knew about the unwanted procedures as far back as 2018.
"Since at least 2018, Respondents have known about the medical abuse women detained at ICDC have suffered at the hands of Respondent Amin but have nonetheless continued a policy or custom of sending women to be mistreated and abused by Respondent Amin," the complaint states.
Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, said the more advocates and attorneys learn about medical treatment inside the ICDC, the clearer it becomes that there was a pattern of invasive gynecological procedures.
"I don't believe the narrative is that Dr. Amin is a bad apple — the narrative is ICE consistently and systematically violated people's rights," Shebaya told BuzzFeed News. "People in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are treated as less than human and subjected to nonconsensual medical procedures in the most violating ways you can possibly imagine."
In a statement, ICE said it was unable to comment on pending litigation.
"Additionally, all these matters are currently being investigated by the DHS [Office of Inspector General]. ICE is fully cooperating with that investigation," the agency said.
The allegations against Amin became public in September after a whistleblower — Dawn Wooten, who worked as a nurse at the detention center — filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General. Wooten, whose complaint primarily focused on medical care and COVID-19 testing inside the facility, also alleged that unwanted hysterectomies were being performed on immigrant detainees.
BuzzFeed News previously reported on women who said Amin had conducted medical procedures on them without their consent at Irwin County Hospital.
Amin has denied the allegations through his attorney and did not respond to a request for comment.
Jaromy Floriano Navarro, a 28-year-old woman from Mexico who was detained at ICDC, said Amin wouldn't fully explain her treatment and didn't answer questions she and others had about their medical care.
The first time Floriano saw Amin, he performed a vaginal ultrasound on her without warning or explanation. Amin told Floriano she had a cyst that would continue to grow and was dangerous, but beyond that he didn't give her any more details, the complaint states.
"When you asked Dr. Amin questions, he doesn't answer you," Floriano told BuzzFeed News. "He doesn't look you in the eyes, and if you try to talk to him, he looked at you as if you were nothing."
At her initial visit, Amin told Floriano she needed to have a Depo, or birth control, shot. The complaint states Amin did not give her a choice about the treatment, which resulted in Floriano bleeding for a month straight. Floriano said it was unusual because she had had a Depo shot before without any side effects.
Floriano said Amin would rest his hand on her knee while he inspected her vaginal area and inside her body, without ever explaining what he was doing. Amin told Floriano she needed to have a small procedure to drain the cyst, she said, and was told it would only leave behind three dots.
Amin didn't tell her when the procedure would occur. On July 31, Floriano was scheduled for a procedure she believed was to drain her cyst. But once Floriano arrived at the hospital, she was told by an officer at the detention facility that Amin was actually going to perform a hysterectomy.
"I didn't have time to think," Floriano said. "I went into prayer immediately and said, 'Lord, did you hear what she said?'"
Moments later, a nurse walked into the room and told the officer that Amin would be unable to perform the surgery because Floriano's COVID-19 antibody test had come back positive. At the time, Floriano said she didn't even have time to register that the coronavirus had resulted in her avoiding the procedure.
"I was hysterical, I thought about my kids and my life. I wondered if I was going to die at the Irwin County Detention Center," Floriano said.
Floriano spoke with a lawyer at Project South, the Atlanta-based advocacy organization that filed the whistleblower complaint, about the medical treatment women underwent.
Floriano said guards at ICDC and ICE officers continued to pressure her to have the surgery even after she expressed concerns about having the procedure done. Floriano saw Amin on Sept. 15, shortly before she was deported, during which she said he berated her for not getting the surgery.
Shortly after the whistleblower complaint was published, an officer at ICDC asked Floriano if she had spoken out.
"Yes, it was me...I told a lawyer that you guys were doing illegal surgeries here," Floriano responded, according to the complaint.
The next day, Floriano was deported to Mexico, leaving her two daughters, ages 8 and 2, with her mother.
"I hope there is justice for all of us here at Irwin County, for all of us who have been able to speak up and participate in this investigation," Floriano said. "I hope they release every woman from Irwin County and bring back the women they deported for speaking out."
The lawsuit also accuses ICE and guards at ICDC of placing immigrant women who spoke out in solitary confinement or deporting them.
Attorneys representing the federal government had initially agreed to temporarily not deport any of the women involved in the case against Amin. But they later asked a court to get out of the agreement, stating that the highest levels of ICE had not agreed to it. On Tuesday, a federal judge denied their request.
Sawinder Singh had filed an EEOC complaint alleging he faced harassment for years as a bus operator in Montgomery County, Maryland, because he wears a turban and has a beard that is unshorn, in keeping with his Sikh faith. (photo: Marvin Joseph/Getty)
The Trump Administration's Final Push to Make It Easier for Religious Employers to Discriminate
Lydia DePillis, ProPublica
DePillis writes: "Last-minute policies on religious freedom clear the way for employers to hire on the basis of faith. Some of the changes won't be easy for Biden to undo."
t was the hectic week before Thanksgiving, and Amrith Kaur — the legal director of an advocacy group called the Sikh Coalition — was not prepared for a surprise update from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that could have dramatic consequences for her clients.With little warning, the EEOC published a 112-page overhaul of its guidance on religious discrimination in the workplace. The feedback period was proceeding with no time to spare — she would have to file any comments by Dec. 17.
“To my knowledge, that was the first time that pretty much everybody heard about it,” said Kaur, who was busy handling home schooling for her children, ages 8 and 10, when the announcement popped up. “There’s so much happening, and I think it’s very strategic the way this was brought out.”
The guidance is among scores of last-minute actions that ProPublica is tracking on their way through the approval process, many of them accelerating as it became clear that President Donald Trump’s time in office would end on Jan. 20.
The EEOC’s guidance explains the complicated statutes and legal precedent that govern how employers must deal with religious freedom issues in the workplace. It doesn’t have the force of law, but it can be cited in lawsuits, and it serves as a manual for managers navigating thorny situations.
As she dug into the document’s dense language and footnotes, Kaur was particularly distressed because of what she found to be a slant toward large Christian employers like colleges and social service agencies, rather than smaller religions like Sikhism, which face widespread prejudice. For example, in recent days, she’s had to focus on advising health care workers who keep long beards as part of their religious practice. Some hospitals and nursing homes ban facial hair to ensure a proper fit for face masks, but Kaur has been able to work out accommodations that are both COVID-19-safe and allow medical staff to observe their faith — which the new guidance doesn’t address.
As the comment period ended, dozens of other civil rights groups and Democratic leaders filed letters appealing for more time and agreeing that the new guidance could allow for more discrimination under the guise of religious freedom, rather than less.
Unlike many midnight regulations that President-elect Joe Biden could roll back, the EEOC commissioners have multiyear terms, so the Biden administration won’t be able to change the board’s composition until 2022. Meanwhile, Kaur fears that adverse case law could accumulate. “It is our belief that these proposed changes in the manual, and what I think is a clear bias towards Christian viewpoints at the expense of all others, it’s just going to have profound negative effects for years to come,” she said.
Most administrations kick rule-making into high gear once they know their party is leaving the White House, and Trump’s is no exception. A flood of new entries in the Federal Register includes several rules and guidance documents that widen lanes for religious institutions to exclude those who do not share their faith, or narrow the options for beneficiaries of federal programs who feel uncomfortable receiving services in a religious context.
Some of the freshly finalized rules codify an executive order that Trump issued in 2018 declaring that faith-based organizations should have full access to government grant programs without having to modify their operations. They deliver on the promises that Trump made to evangelical Christians during his presidential run, and which he and Vice President Mike Pence campaigned on again in 2020 — the White House’s website contains 228 mentions of “religious freedom,” in posted speeches, press releases and other official statements.
Earlier in the term, Trump’s religious freedom agenda focused on the Department of Health and Human Services, which adopted a rule that protects health care providers who object to certain procedures — namely abortion — on religious grounds, among a host of other actions. Even now, HHS is witholding funds from states that require their insurance plans to cover abortion.
Later, Trump moved on to further integrating religious organizations into the operations of government itself.
In an October interview with the Religion News Service, Trump touted his administration’s work to install religious freedom liaisons in every Cabinet agency. “Led by Pastor Paula White, this Initiative is working to remove barriers which have unfairly prevented faith based organizations from working with or receiving funding from the federal government,” Trump said in a written Q&A.
On that front, the first big change finalized Dec. 7 was at the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, an agency within the Labor Department that enforces compliance with civil rights laws among recipients of federal dollars. The new rule clarifies that private companies can qualify as “religious employers” under certain conditions, and that religious employers may deny positions to people who do not subscribe and adhere to their faith. That could include not hiring people in same-sex relationships or someone of a different religion.
Advocates for marginalized communities say that the rules open the door for religious institutions to use faith as a pretext for firing or simply declining to hire people whom they would prefer not to employ because of other factors — such as sexual orientation or medical disability — even though discriminating on those bases is still illegal.
“If that employer just throws up their hands and says ‘RFRA!’ it’s like a get out of jail free card,” said Human Rights Campaign legal director Sarah Warbelow, referring to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a 1993 law that strengthened the test for what can be considered a burden on the free exercise of religion.
Religious employers say that situation likely won’t occur often, but they still supported the change. Jamison Coppola, legislative director of the American Association of Christian Schools, said that most people who work for his member institutions accept that abiding by faith-based principles is part of the deal.
“It’s a rare occurrence where people enter an employment decision and then realize, ‘Oh, I guess we have some difference of opinion about this,’” Coppola said. “I just think that we don’t run into it that often, because of how we approach the totality of what we’re trying to do as an assembly of believers.”
Among the largest supporters of the rule was Catholic Charities, which, according to USAspending.gov, received approximately $189 million in federal contracts and grants in 2020 across all of its affiliated organizations.
The second change, finalized a few days later after a lightning-fast trip through the Office of Management and Budget, was a joint effort of nine agencies that elaborated on the religious freedom exemptions for recipients of their own spending. It gets rid of the earlier requirement that religious providers of federally funded social services, from food banks to job training, provide referrals to secular alternatives. In the case of “indirect” aid that travels with the beneficiary, like child care and housing vouchers, it eliminates the requirement that there must be a secular option available.
The concerns with those rules center around the possible exclusion of people who may feel uncomfortable getting aid in an explicitly religious setting, even if providers are not allowed to proselytize as part of the programming.
“They are really putting what they believe are the interests of these large social service providers ahead of the people who receive the service,” said Maggie Garrett, vice president of public policy at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Their priority is not the LGBTQ youth who is seeking services because they were kicked out of their home.”
Not all religious organizations — or even Christian organizations — support the changes. Some have recommended that the requirements for secular alternatives be kept because of the delicate political balancing that has gone into these rules over the years.
“It eased peoples’ conscience or concerns about having more faith-based groups be involved in these services,” said Stanley Carlson-Thies, founder and senior director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, which represents Christian employers. Now, he fears a backlash.
“I personally don’t know of anybody who was asking for this change, but there it is, and I don’t think it’s a good change,” Carlson-Thies said. “And I think that one thing that’s going to happen is that the next administration is going to go through a regulatory process and take those out, and they’ll do other things too that to my mind won’t be so positive.”
Finally, the Trump administration is moving forward with its guidance for all employers, whether they contract with the federal government or not, through the EEOC.
The last time the agency updated its religious freedom guidance, in 2008, it went through an expansive, yearslong process that incorporated feedback from a panoply of groups that represent faith communities and those impacted by them, such as advocates for LGBTQ people and women’s reproductive rights.
Trump’s EEOC has shifted its emphasis toward supporting the rights of religious employers and employees. For example, it took up the case of two Kroger employees who were fired after they objected to wearing a rainbow heart emblem on their uniforms, which they interpreted as a symbol of support for gay rights.
In a November online forum hosted by the conservative Federalist Society, EEOC General Counsel Sharon Fast Gustafson articulated the new focus. “The EEOC has an interest in the courts getting all aspects of employment discrimination right, whether getting it right helps the employee, or whether getting it right helps the employer,” she said. “Religious liberty has been a high priority for the current administration, where everyone I have spoken with has been unequivocally supportive of religious liberty for all.”
However, many religious groups felt left out of the process that led to the EEOC’s new guidance.
The updates were put together in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court decision in June that declared gender identity and sexual orientation to be protected classes in an employment context, making it much more difficult to discriminate against gay, lesbian or transgender people in the workplace. EEOC spokeswoman Christine Nazer said the new guidance was drafted by the agency’s office of legal counsel, with no input from external stakeholders.
Many groups that closely track religious freedom issues found out about the updates during a three-day listening session convened by the commission’s Religious Freedom Work Group, which is led by Assistant General Counsel Christine Lambrou Johnson. According to her LinkedIn profile, Lambrou Johnson is a member of the Christian Legal Society, which describes itself as “a fellowship of Christians dedicated to serving Jesus Christ through the practice and study of law, the defense of religious freedom and life, and the provision of legal aid to the needy.”
Nazer said the Religious Freedom Work Group’s duties are separate from the development of the guidance, and that the commission voted to publish the guidance for public comment on Nov. 9, giving additional time for discussion. But at that meeting, the body’s two Democratic commissioners said that they hadn’t had enough time to provide input or that it was rejected by the commission’s Republican members. The Democratic commissioners also raised questions about the legal soundness of some of the guidance’s interpretations and pleaded for the vote to be delayed. It wasn’t.
In addition to liberally interpreting exemptions from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for religious employers to hire and fire on religious grounds, the guidance also raises the bar for intervention when one employee might be harassing another on religious grounds. And it says little about some of the common questions raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the Sikh nurses that Kaur has been helping negotiate accommodations with hospitals, which would be easier if the EEOC had set out a clear position.
In response to these concerns, Nazer said that the commission is “carefully considering all of the comments provided to us by our stakeholders as we finalize the guidance.”
Kaur is not comforted.
“Manuals like this, that are sort of taken as law even though they’re not, are what our government is going to rely on to make a decision on whether discrimination took place,” Kaur said. “We have the Title VII protections in the Civil Rights Act for a reason, and to try and decimate it in a way that’s not supported by the law is a sad and disappointing attempt at getting around having to be fair to everybody.”
A supporter of Evo Morales talks with a member of the Bolivian army at a protest against the provisional government in La Paz, Bolivia. (photo: Rodrigo Sura/EPA)
Bolivia to Repair Human Damages Caused by the Añez Regime
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Bolivia's justice vice minister Cesar Siles informed that his government is preparing two decrees to pardon at least 1,500 people who were politically persecuted by the coup-born regime led by Jeanine Añez (2019-2020)."
The bills will provide economic aid, health insurance, and psychological care to relatives of the victims. They will offer compensation of over US$14,000.
"One bill will allow pardon and amnesty for all citizens unjustly and illegally prosecuted. The other will allow their economic reparation," Siles explained.
The initiative was presented by the Justice Ministry before the Social and Economic Policy Analysis Unit. In the next few days, it will be submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers for their consideration.
The Justice Ministry informed that it is still drafting the decree that will provide economic aid, health insurance, and psychological care for all the persecuted and prosecuted.
Decree 4100 on Integral Reparation will offer compensation of over US$14,000 to the victims' families. Also, it will provide economic reparations to those who were injured or are suffering after-effects.
"We are working quickly to repair the damages caused by the coup-based regime against innocent people and their families. There are injured," Siles said.
Under the Añez regime, "thousands of people lost their jobs unjustifiably as their children were discriminated against in schools," the Vice Minister added.
A closeup view of a bottlenose dolphin shows signs of skin lesions associated with a deadly skin disease known as ulcerative dermatitis. (photo: Tim Morgan/Mississippi State University)
Climate Change Sickening, Killing Dolphins Worldwide
Katie Camero, Miami Herald
Camero writes: "Ever since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005 with its Category 5 strength, dolphins that called those coastal waters home have been dying from a painful skin disease."
Scientists have devoted years to studying the deceased mammals blanketed with crusty, pus-filled lesions in the hopes of finding the cause of the condition.
Now, 15 years later, researchers at The Marine Mammal Center in California — the world’s largest marine mammal hospital — together with colleagues in Australia have discovered what’s causing the devastating disease in coastal dolphins worldwide: climate change.
Storms like Hurricane Katrina are becoming more frequent and severe as global temperatures rise. These storms pour large volumes of rain over saltwater oceans, slowly turning them into freshwater reservoirs.
Because of the decreased salinity, dolphins develop patchy, raised lesions over their bodies that sometimes cover more than 70% of their skin, according to a study published Dec. 15 in the journal Scientific Reports.
The condition, called ulcerative dermatitis or “freshwater skin disease,” sucks dolphins dry of their vital nutrients, paving the way for organ failure and rapid death.
Although climate change cannot be fixed overnight, the “groundbreaking” discovery can provide scientists with information they need to diagnose and treat affected dolphins.
“With a record hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico this year and more intense storm systems worldwide due to climate change, we can absolutely expect to see more of these devastating outbreaks killing dolphins,” study co-author Dr. Pádraig Duignan, chief pathologist at The Marine Mammal Center, said in a news release.
“The findings in this paper will allow better mitigation of the factors that lead disease outbreaks for coastal dolphin communities that are already under threat from habitat loss and degradation,” Duignan said.
The deadly skin disease was first discovered in about 40 bottlenose dolphins in the New Orleans area following Hurricane Katrina, the researchers said. The condition looks like circular patches of swollen lesions where fungus, bacteria or algal species sometimes set up camp, leaving a yellow, green or orange discoloration on the dolphins’ skin.
Since then, outbreaks of the disease have occurred in waters off Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Texas and Australia, where the “rare and threatened” Burrunan dolphin lives.
“The breaks in the skin cause the dolphin to lose vital ions and proteins from their bodies … so when all of that is oozing out of them, the fresh water then rushes in which causes swellings and ulcers,” study lead researcher Nahiid Stephens, a veterinary pathology lecturer at Murdoch University in Australia, told ABC Gippsland.
Stephens said the lesions are on par with third-degree burns in humans.
“It kills them because it causes electrolyte disruptions in [the dolphins’] blood stream and they ultimately end up with organ failure,” he told the outlet.
All of the regions where dolphins have been affected have one trend in common: drastic drops in ocean salinity thanks to more frequent and severe storms brought on by global warming.
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season produced a record-breaking 30 named storms, surpassing the 28 from 2005, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Twelve of them made landfall in the continental U.S., ranging from from Category 1 to Category 4, marking the second-highest number of hurricanes on record.
The change in salinity in oceans can last for months, the researchers said, especially after stronger storms, which are predicted to occur more frequently as temperatures warm.
This also means that scientists should expect more outbreaks of the deadly skin disease among dolphin populations, of which the long-term outlook is “poor,” the team said.
