NYC detectives' union turns the tables, vows to sue George Floyd rioters who attack officers

NEW YORK CITY – The focus of so much of the recent George Floyd protests has been on police violence against demonstrators and others, but in New York City, the union that represents NYPD detectives is turning the tables.
"If you assault a New York City Detective and there are no consequences from the criminal justice system, we have to have other means to protect our detectives," said Paul DiGiacomo, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, which has represented some 19,000 current and former detectives. He vowed to sue any protestor, rioter or looter who attacked its members.
"It's heart-wrenching because they are out there doing a job under very difficult circumstances, trying to protect the innocent people that are protesting while the criminal element is within that group, assaulting, looting and victimizing not only police officers and detectives out there, but also the people of the city."
The first lawsuit has been filed against a looting suspect accused of stealing items from a pharmacy in Manhattan and who allegedly attacked Detective Joseph Nicolosi. The detective claimed he was injured in the struggle when the 19-year-old suspect resisted arrest.
"They've had urine thrown at them, rocks thrown at them, shot at, assaulted. I don't know how much more they could take a day of putting up with a lot out there. And, you know, they are the finest in the world and they are doing a fabulous job, but they are being demonized by the elected officials," DiGiacomo said.
GUARDIAN ANGEL DESCRIBES FENDING OFF LOOTERS WHO BROKE HIS NOSE, EYE SOCKET
It's unclear if the lawsuits will succeed -- especially with laws in place protecting police.
"This is not a new tactic by the police. This was tried back in the 1990s in New York City, at another time when there was a great deal of unrest and ultimately, it didn't work," said noted civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, a veteran activist who has dealt with police issues for decades. 
Kuby said if the detectives wanted to sue citizens, they needed to surrender the legal restrictions protecting them, such as qualified immunity. He also pointed out that cities legally have indemnified law enforcement officers, preventing them generally from being sued personally, and said both exemptions should be dropped.
"If the police want to use the civil law as a tool in their policing, those of us who pay their salaries have the opportunity now to engage in some real reform, which is, stop the indemnification of cops, stop the free lawyers for the police, stop the qualified immunity for the police -- and we'll see how that works out for them," Kuby said.
Lawmakers in Congress and some state legislatures have moved to strip qualified immunity as a legal protection for police. Kuby also said police officers have gone to great lengths to protect their privacy, which would be removed by filing a lawsuit.
"The cops freak out about their privacy concerns and don't want their personal history handed over to the very people that they are suing," Kuby said. “That is another powerful reason not to go through with these lawsuits.”
Still, DiGiacomo remained undeterred. “We will be behind our detectives and pursue these cases civilly and send a message to the criminal element, that you are not going to get away with this. If we can’t get you one way, we will get you another.”
The NYPD has said that more than 350 of its officers suffered injuries during the protests.
Fox News' Ben Evansky contributed to this report.

Antifa Punk Cartoons

Sanders, AOC back Kentucky progressive, look to spoil centrist Dem's gains against McConnell

Just as a new poll showed Kentucky Democrat Amy McGrath pulling into a statistical tie in her U.S. Senate election fight against the incumbent, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, some other news emerged that could spell trouble for her campaign.
McGrath's chief Democratic primary challenger -- state Rep. Charles Booker -- received endorsements Tuesday from two big-name fellow progressives: U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
"As Louisville has become an epicenter of national tragedy and protests due to the police murders of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee, Charles has shown leadership by showing up on the frontlines," Sanders wrote in a statement, according to the Courier Journal of Louisville. "He was an endorser of our campaign for president and supports progressive policies such as criminal justice reform, Medicare for All and getting big money out of politics."
Ocasio-Cortez said Booker would make the Senate “a better place.”
"I'm proud to endorse him. Let’s go,” she added.
Booker, who will compete against McGrath in the Democratic primary June 23 for the right to face McConnell in November is running to the left of McGrath, a former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot who has positioned herself as a moderate in a state that presidential candidate Donald Trump won by 30 points in 2016.
“I’m running for U.S. Senate because, in this crisis, Kentucky needs a real Democrat to take on Mitch McConnell,” Booker, in his first statewide TV ad, said this week, according to the Lexington Herald Leader. “Someone who will fight to guarantee health care and living wages for all, and not help Trump just get his way.”
In the same ad, Booker also calls McGrath a "pro-Trump Democrat."
McConnell, 78, is Kentucky’s longest-serving U.S. senator, having held his seat since January 1985. His campaign responded Tuesday to news of the Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez endorsements of Booker.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is neck-and-neck in a new poll with Democratic candidate Amy McGrath -- but McGrath is facing a primary challenger who's endorsed by two big-name progressive Democrats.

"Amy McGrath has been running an inauthentic, extreme campaign for nearly a year, and she is still unattractive to Democratic voters," McConnell campaign manager Kevin Golden told The Courier Journal, still seemingly more concerned with McGrath than Booker. "It's not surprising that Democrats are already looking for a replacement."
Booker has raised $700,000 just in June and more than $315,000 in the first three months of the year, but McGrath, who is backed by the Democratic National Committee, raised nearly $13 million in the first quarter of the year.

​​​​​​U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is joined onstage by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 9, 2019. (Getty Images)

“Amy McGrath spent over 20 years serving her country and doing what’s right above partisan politics and that’s what she will do for Kentucky,” McGrath spokesperson Terry Sebastian told the Herald Leader. “Working families want to hear solutions not partisan rhetoric. That’s one of the many things that makes her different from Mitch McConnell.”
Booker is also backed by 16 House Democrats in Kentucky’s Legislature.
McGrath has a one-point lead over McConnell in a new RMG Research poll conducted over May 21-24.

Trump Jr. calls out Biden over comments urging action against police brutality

Donald Trump Jr. waves at campaign rally before President Donald Trump appears Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020 in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

Donald Trump Jr. called out Joe Biden on Twitter Wednesday over comments the presidential candidate made regarding the need for action against police brutality.
"Let me be clear: We can't leave this moment and once again turn away and do nothing. We need justice. We need action. We need reform," Biden wrote on Twitter.
Trump Jr. pointed to Biden's career in politics and questioned what he was doing while in office all those years.
"It makes me wonder why you didn’t do any of these things in the first 50 years of your Washington DC career… Give me a break!!!" Trump Jr. responded.
The exchange comes as protests have continued throughout the U.S. following the death of George Floyd in police custody on May 25.
Trump Jr. suggested that Biden's statement on the need for reform didn't relate to his actions representing Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009, or when he served as the 47th vice president of the United States from 2009 to 2017.

Biden supported a 1994 crime bill that many critics and fellow Democrats blame for high levels of incarceration among African-Americans.

Floyd was taken to a cemetery for burial Tuesday in his hometown of Houston, with his death inspiring worldwide demonstrations calling for an end to systemic racism and police brutality. It appears to have already ignited change within some schools and police departments throughout the U.S.
President Trump, Biden, and some Democrats have pushed back against calls "defund the police." Instead, the former vice president suggested the “urgent need for reform," on Monday.
"No, I don't support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness," he said during an interview with CBS.
Biden directly addressed Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter, Gianna, in an emotional video message played Tuesday at the funeral for the 46-year old black man who died two weeks ago.
“Little Gianna, as I said to you when I saw you yesterday, you are so brave,” said Biden. “Daddy is looking down at you, and he is so proud of you. I know you miss that bear hug that only he could give, the pure joy of riding on his shoulders so you could touch the sky.”
Fox News' Dom Calicchio and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report

Messy Georgia primary raises alarms for November, as Ossoff edges closer to clinching Senate nomination

The Democratic Senate primary in Georgia was too early to call Wednesday, as Jon Ossoff held onto approximately 49 percent of the vote with more ballots coming in -- amid widespread reports of hourslong lines, voting machine malfunctions, provisional ballot shortages and absentee ballots failing to arrive in time.

Ossoff, whose defeat in a 2017 special election was a gut-punch to Democrats who flooded his campaign with money, was leading Sarah Riggs Amico and Teresa Tomlinson. They each have roughly 13 percent of the counted vote, and candidates need 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff.
One of the state’s largest counties, De Kalb in the metro Atlanta area, has yet to report any results as of early Wednesday.
As the night wound on, and races were also held in South Carolina, Nevada and West Virginia, it became evident that the long-standing nationwide wrangle over voting rights and election security had come to a head in Georgia -- where a messy primary and partisan finger-pointing offered an unsettling preview of a November contest when battleground states could face potentially record turnout.
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign called the situation “completely unacceptable.” Georgia Republicans deflected responsibility to metro Atlanta’s heavily minority and Democratic-controlled counties, while President Donald Trump’s top campaign attorney decried “the chaos in Georgia.”
It raised the specter of a worst-case November scenario: a decisive state, like Florida and its “hanging chads” and “butterfly ballots” in 2000, remaining in dispute long after polls close. Meanwhile, Trump, Biden and their supporters could offer competing claims of victory or question the election’s legitimacy, inflaming an already boiling electorate.

Steven Posey checks his phone as he waits in line to vote, Tuesday, June 9, 2020, at Central Park in Atlanta. Voters reported wait times of three hours. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

At Trump’s campaign headquarters, senior counsel Justin Clark blamed Georgia’s vote-by-mail push amid the COVID-19 pandemic, alluding to the president’s argument that absentee voting yields widespread fraud.
“The American people want to know that the results of an election accurately reflect the will of the voters,” Clark said. “The only way to make sure that the American people will have faith in the results is if people who can, show up and vote in person.”

Rachana Desai Martin, a top Biden campaign attorney, called the scenes in Georgia a “threat” to democracy. “We only have a few months left until voters around the nation head to the polls again, and efforts should begin immediately to ensure that every Georgian — and every American — is able to safely exercise their right to vote,” she said.
Martin stopped short of assigning blame, but two Georgia Democrats on Biden’s list of potential running mates pointed at Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who led the selection of Georgia’s new voting machine system and invited every active voter to request an absentee ballot.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted at Raffensperger about problems in pockets of metro Atlanta. “Is this happening across the county or just on the south end,” the Democrat asked, referring to an area with a heavily black population.
Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor and an Atlanta resident, tweeted that “Georgians deserve better” and that Raffensperger “owns this disaster.” Abrams established herself as a voting rights advocate after she refused to concede her 2018 race because of voting irregularities when her Republican opponent, now-Gov. Brian Kemp, was secretary of state.
Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, has a history of slow vote tabulation. Its local elections chief, Richard Barron, called Tuesday a “learning experience" while alluding to the state's role in the primary process.

People wait in line at one of a few in person voting places during a nearly all-mail primary election Tuesday, June 9, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

The finger-pointing goes beyond details of the law. Raffensperger correctly noted that county officials train poll workers, including on the use of the new voting machines. But Raffensperger is the state’s chief elections official who decides how many machines to send to each county, and his office provides training curriculum for local officials.

On absentee ballots, the Republican secretary of state pushed unprecedented no-fault absentee access, paying to send an application to every Georgian on the active voter rolls. But, as Barron noted, neither the secretary of state nor the legislature provided additional money for local officials to hire staff to process the influx, which dwarfed the typical primary.
History suggests that both local and state officials, whether in Georgia or elsewhere, could find themselves in the national crosshairs if their election tallies leave the presidency in flux.
“I know that in these hyperpartisan times, half the people will be happy, and the other half will be sad,” Raffensperger said. “But we want to make sure that 100% of people know ... the election was done fairly and we got the accurate count.”
Elsewhere in Tuesday's races, a progressive candidate featured in a Netflix documentary on politics won the Democratic Senate primary in West Virginia to face Republican Sen. Shelly Moore Capito in November.

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots in the state's primary election at a polling place, Tuesday, June 9, 2020, in Atlanta, Ga. Some voting machines went dark and voters were left standing in long lines in humid weather as the waiting game played out. (AP Photo/Ron Harris)

Paula Jean Swearengin was featured in the 2019 Netflix political documentary “Knock Down the House.” She accepted only individual donations during her campaign and outraised one of her two opponents, former state Sen. Richard Ojeda, by a more than 10-to-1 margin. Also seeking the Democratic nomination was former South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb.
Meanwhile, two incumbents won the Republican nominations for governor in West Virginia and South Dakota.

Gov. Jim Justice was declared the primary winner in West Virginia on Tuesday, while Gov. Doug Burgum captured the GOP nomination in South Dakota.
Justice, a billionaire coal and agricultural businessman, defeated Woody Thrasher, Mike Folk and others to win the GOP nomination. This week, President Trump tweeted a message of support for the governor: “Big Jim is doing a tremendous job for West Virginia. Vote for Big Jim!”
Burgum, a former software executive, defeated Michael Coachman in the election, which was conducted exclusively by mail. He’s expected to be a heavy favorite in November over Democratic political newcomer Shelley Lenz, a veterinarian and small-business owner.
Kanawha County Commissioner Ben Salango won the Democratic nomination for governor of West Virginia.
Two Republican incumbent senators also won their primaries on Tuesday: Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia and Lindsey Graham in South Carolina.
In Nevada, voters were waiting in lines for three hours and more Tuesday at limited polling places despite Nevada officials encouraging people to cast their primary election ballots by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Nevada Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Wayne Thorley said his office had received a report of a three-hour wait at one Clark County polling place.

Fox News' Tyler Olson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Barr says familiar names among those DOJ is investigating in Durham probe, calls findings 'very troubling'

Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News' Bret Baier in an exclusive interview aired Tuesday that Americans will be able to recognize "some" of the names under investigation as part of U.S. Attorney John Durham's ongoing probe into federal surveillance abuses -- and that he is "very troubled" by "what has been called to" his attention so far.
Barr asserted that despite the coronavirus pandemic, the Durham team "has been working very aggressively to move forward," and that there "will be public disclosure" of his findings. Part one of Baier's interview with Barr aired on Monday.
"I think before the election, I think we're concerned about the motive force behind the very aggressive investigation that was launched into the Trump campaign without, you know, with a very thin, slender reed as a basis for it," Barr told Baier. "It seemed that the bureau was sort of spring-loaded at the end of July to drive in there and investigate a campaign."
The Justice Department's (DOJ's) watchdog has identified critical errors in every FBI wiretap application that it audited as part of the fallout from the bureau's heavily flawed investigation into former Trump adviser Carter Page, who was surveilled during the campaign in part because of a largely discredited dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Additionally, an ex-FBI lawyer in that case even falsified a CIA email submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in order to make Page's communications with Russians appear nefarious, the DOJ inspector general found. The FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was allegedly told by the CIA that Page had reported his Russian contacts and was essentially acting as an informant -- only for Clinesmith to allegedly omit that exculpatory information in a surveillance warrant application that framed Page's communications with Russians as a sign that he was a secret foreign agent.
Barr said he couldn't comment on whether criminal charges were coming, including concerning Clinesmith -- but that people shouldn't become impatient. The DOJ has concluded that the Page warrant was legally improper and lacked probable cause.

Carter Page, one-time adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, addresses the audience during a presentation in Moscow, Russia, December 12, 2016. (Reuters)

"We can't discuss future charges. But I have to say that I do find a little irritating," Barr said. "You know, the propensity in the American public on all sides of the political spectrum when they see something they think could be a criminal violation, I say, why hasn't this person been indicted again? And, you know, there's the old saying that that the wheels of justice grind slow and they do run slow because we have due process and we follow the process. But people should not draw from the fact that no action has been taken that taken yet, that that means that people or people are going to get away with wrongdoing."
The attorney general emphasized, however, that he wasn't concerned about criticisms of the Durham probe in an election year.
"For the first time in American history, police organizations and the national security organizations were used to spy on a campaign, and there was no basis for it," Barr said. "The media largely drove that -- and all kinds of sensational claims were being made about the president that could have affected the election. And then and then later on, in his administration, there were actions taken that really appear to be efforts to sabotage his campaign. And that has to be looked at. And if people want to say that I'm political because I am looking at those potential abuses of power, so be it. But that's the job of the attorney general."
Internal FBI documents unsealed in April indicate that Peter Strzok -- the now-disgraced anti-Trump former head of FBI counterintelligence -- ordered the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn to remain open even after it was slated to be closed due to a lack of so-called "derogatory" information.

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok, testifies before a House Judiciary Committee joint hearing on "oversight of FBI and Department of Justice actions surrounding the 2016 election" on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

The materials surfaced just a day after explosive FBI communications revealed that top bureau officials discussed their motivations for interviewing Flynn in the White House on Jan. 24, 2017 -- and openly questioned if their "goal" was "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
Top Republicans, meanwhile, have accused FBI Director Christopher Wray of ignoring their May 4 letter seeking information and interviews with key FBI officials in the Flynn case - prompting the lawmakers to take matters into their own hands.
"Because Director Wray has declined to respond to our request, we are forced to write to you directly," Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote in an extraordinary letter last month to FBI agent Joe Pientka, who participated in the unusual January 24, 2017 White House interview that led to Flynn's prosecution for one count of making false statements to the FBI. The lawmakers requested Pientka sit for a transcribed interview with the Judiciary Committee.
Fox News previously determined that Pientka also was intimately involved in the Carter Page probe, which the DOJ has since acknowledged was riddled with fundamental errors and premised on a discredited dossier that the bureau was told could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Pientka was removed from the FBI's website after Fox News contacted the FBI about his extensive role in Crossfire Hurricane FISA matters -- a change first noticed by Twitter user Techno Fog -- but sources said Pientka remained in a senior role at the agency's San Francisco field office. The FBI told Fox News shortly before Pientka's removal from the website that reporting on his identity could endanger his life, even though he serves in a prominent senior role at the bureau.
"They seem to have ignored all the exculpatory evidence that was building up and continued pell-mell to push it forward," Barr told Baier. "So that's one area of concern."

In this July 26, 2017 photo, Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, testifies during a Judiciary Committee hearing into alleged collusion between Russian and the Trump campaign. (Reuters)

Barr also slammed Judge Emmet Sullivan for trying to become an "alternative prosecutor" in the Flynn case. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in the case on Friday, after Flynn's lawyer Sidney Powell said it was unconstitutional for Sullivan to keep the case alive even though both the prosecution and defense want it dismissed. The DOJ has accused Sullivan of usurping the executive branch's constitutional prosecutorial discretion.
Brandon Van Grack, a top Justice Department prosecutor and former member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team, withdrew from the Flynn case in May. His departure came just days after Fox News reported that the explosive, newly unsealed evidence documenting the FBI's efforts to target Flynn called into question whether Van Grack complied with a court order to produce favorable evidence to Flynn.
Just minutes after Van Grack exited, the DOJ announced it was seeking to drop the Flynn case entirely. That came on the recommendation of U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, who served as an FBI agent for more than a decade and had been evaluating the Flynn case.
"The other area of concern is that after the election, even though they were closing down some of that, as we've seen in the Flynn case, and say there's nothing here, for some reason, they went right back at it, even at a time where the evidentiary support or claim support like the dossier was falling apart," Barr said. "And it's very hard to understand why they continued to push and even make public testimony that they had an investigation going when it was becoming painfully obvious or should have been obvious to anyone that there was nothing there."
Barr said that the DOJ was "looking at" names that some might recognize -- although not at the level of Joe Biden or Barack Obama.

FILE - In this Dec. 1, 2017, file photo, Michael Flynn, center, arrives at federal court in Washington. A judge set a sentencing hearing for Michael Flynn after rejecting arguments from the former Trump administration national security adviser that prosecutors had withheld evidence favorable to his case. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

The DOJ, Barr added, was also taking a look at requests by several Obama administration officials -- including Biden and Obama's chief of staff -- to obtain the identity of an individual who turned out to be Flynn through a process known as "unmasking."
The process ordinarily begins when a U.S. citizen's communications with a foreign adversary are intercepted by U.S. intelligence. Limited numbers of U.S. officials can then request the identity of the U.S. citizen, which is normally shielded for privacy reasons. Flynn was unmasked by a slew of Obama administration officials, and news of his calls with Russian officials immediately leaked to the news media, furthering Russia collusion narratives.
A transcript unearthed by Fox News indicates that The Washington Post’s newsroom was deeply divided over whether it was even worth reporting that Flynn was speaking to Kislyak in December 2016 -- before the Post published details in a column from an opinion writer who “was able to just throw this piece of red meat out there.”
OBAMA KNEW DETAILS OF WIRETAPPED FLYNN CALLS, STUNNING DOJ 
"You know, unmasking is not by itself illegal, but the patterns of unmasking can tell us something about people's motivations at any given point of time," Barr said. "So we're trying to take a look at the whole waterfront on unmasking what was done, especially in 2016."
Obama was aware of the details of Flynn's intercepted December 2016 phone calls with Kislyak, apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, according to documents released as exhibits to the government's motion to dismiss the Flynn case.

Sally Yates was removed from her position as acting attorney general after she refused to enforce President Donald Trump's travel ban. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

Obama's unexpectedly intimate knowledge of the details of Flynn's calls, which the FBI acknowledged at the time were not criminal or even improper, raised eyebrows because of his own history with Flynn -- and because top FBI officials secretly discussed whether their goal was to "get [Flynn] fired" when they interviewed him in the White House on Jan. 24, 2017.
Obama personally had warned the Trump administration against hiring Flynn, and made clear he was "not a fan," according to multiple officials. Obama had fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014; Obama cited insubordination, while Flynn asserted he was pushed out for his aggressive stance on combating lslamic extremism.
"I mean, for example, let's say suppose for a period in the spring, there was a lot of heavy unmasking done on people involved with the Trump campaign," Barr added. "That would be very relevant as to what people were thinking at that time and what their motivations were."
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power sought to obtain Flynn's redacted identity on at least seven occasions, according to newly declassified list of names from the intelligence community -- even though Power testified under oath before the House Intelligence Committee that she had “no recollection” of ever making such a request even once.
The records raised new concerns over exactly who might have leaked details of the Flynn investigation to The Washington Post in January 2017.
That leak apparently was illegal, given national security laws and the classified nature of the Flynn probe. In early January 2017, President Obama loosened rules governing the sharing of intelligence information within the federal government -- which Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said was intended to "pave the way for a shadow government to leak classified information" more easily.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power wrote a book review this week outlining how Major League Baseball can be saved in the "Age of Distraction." (Reuters)

And, the breadth of unmasking requests relating to Flynn was striking enough to prompt questioning in congressional hearings. According to the documents, Power may have received Flynn’s identity after an unmasking request on Nov. 30, 2016; Dec. 2, 2016; Dec. 7, 2016; Dec. 14, 2016 (two unmasking requests); Dec. 23, 2016, and Jan. 11, 2017.
The list does not make clear whether Power, or other named officials, actually received the identity they sought to unmask.
“The number of unmasking requests by yourself began to go up dramatically in 2014,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told Power, as noted by The Federalist's Sean Davis.
According to transcripts of her testimony released last month after Republicans demanded them, Power claimed: “Any time a U.S. person or entity's name came to me disclosed or annotated, or where I requested it and it came back, I never discussed it with another member of the human race. ... I have no recollection of making a request related to General Flynn.”
Power added, “I have never leaked classified information. .. I have never leaked names that have come back to me in this highly compartmented process. I have, in fact, never leaked, even unclassified information.”
At the same time, Power acknowledged she had a “significant appetite for intelligence.”
As if to prospectively assuage any concerns of impropriety, former national security adviser Susan Rice sent an email to herself on Jan. 20, 2017, the day of Trump's inauguration, stating multiple times that Obama wanted everything done "by the book" concerning Flynn. Republicans called the strange email an obvious attempt by Rice to cover herself politically.
"I mean, it’s the most bizarre thing I’ve read," former House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy told Fox News. "It is, ‘Dear Diary, President Obama is perfect and Jim Comey says he’s done everything by the book.’ Well, I’d like to know what book he's following."

Defund Police Cartoons

New York Times fiasco: Media bring Trump model to racial issues

The transformation of journalism that began with the political birth of Donald Trump has exploded into a full-blown crisis with the death of George Floyd.
It is, and I don’t say this lightly, a battle for the soul of the profession. And if you take a snapshot of this moment, those who believe in the old-fashioned notions of fairness and balance are losing.
That’s why the editorial page editor of the New York Times was forced out, that’s why the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer was forced out, and that’s why a vast swath of this country no longer trusts the media.
It’s easy to understand why black journalists, who a generation ago didn’t get to run papers like the Times or anchor many television shows, are filled with anger and passion over the systemic racism that showed its ugly face with Floyd’s killing. And having reported on civil rights, affirmative action and other issues for many years, I’ll readily concede that the white media power structure covered these issues sporadically and didn’t fully grasp the depth of frustration in the black community.
But a dangerous trend began when Trump ran for president, and it’s no accident that his views on immigration and other social issues were viewed by detractors as either flirting with racism or the real thing. Media critics began to write, and this intensified when he got to the White House, that perhaps journalists had a higher duty to oppose him, that just-the-facts reporting was now obsolete.
With their overwhelmingly negative coverage and caustic commentary, from a slew of scandals and controversies to impeachment and the coronavirus, the media increasingly came to be seen as part of the resistance. The culture rewarded their increasingly anti-Trump stance, which is shared by academics, entertainers and late-night comics. And these journalists would reassure themselves that this president is such an authoritarian figure, such a threat to democracy, that history demanded they toss out the old rulebook.
In the process, the roughly 40 percent of the country that supports Trump came to view the mainstream media as an arm of the Democratic Party. And the president was more than happy to demonize the business with his enemy-of-the-people rhetoric, fueling the us-versus-him atmosphere.
Now we're hearing many of the same arguments after nearly two weeks of nationwide protests, sometimes violent, even as four Minneapolis police officers have been charged in Floyd’s death. No responsible journalist supports racism or police brutality, but the sentiment that carried the day at the Times is that contrary opinions about handling the protests, such as that of Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, simply can’t be published because they hurt the cause.
James Bennet was ousted as the Times editorial page editor after he and Publisher A. G. Sulzberger eloquently defended the need to run contrary opinions such as Cotton’s, even if they are deemed “painful” or “dangerous,” as Bennet put it. They were right. But Sulzberger reversed himself under intense pressure from black and other staffers who denounced what was an online-only column by a United States senator who said the military could be brought in if urban riots were out of control. I don’t necessarily agree, but it's not a fringe view by a fringe figure.
At the Inquirer, Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski was pushed out after a 20-year career over an admittedly insensitive headline -- “Buildings Matter, Too” -- despite a quick and fulsome apology by the paper. The Inga Saffron column, while saying that black anger was justified after 400 years of oppression in America, argued that the destruction of downtown property would also permanently scar the city.
Protesting staffers wrote, and this is telling: “We’re tired of being told to show both sides of issues there are no two sides of.”
Ben Smith, in a thoughtful Times column, says America’s biggest newsrooms “are trying to find common ground between a tradition that aims to persuade the widest possible audience that its reporting is neutral and journalists who believe that fairness on issues from race to Donald Trump requires clear moral calls.”
That’s the heart of the issue. “Moral calls” is a euphemism for political judgments, for taking a stand, for deciding which opinions are acceptable and which must be excluded.
Smith goes on to say that “the shift in mainstream American media — driven by a journalism that is more personal, and reporters more willing to speak what they see as the truth without worrying about alienating conservatives — now feels irreversible. It is driven in equal parts by politics, the culture and journalism’s business model, relying increasingly on passionate readers willing to pay for content rather than skittish advertisers.”
That candid admission reveals how high the stakes are. Perhaps, in this hyperpolarized era, news outlets can no longer sell themselves as objective arbiters and taking sides rings the cash register. But then it’s time to admit they are taking sides and drop the fig leaf of objectivity.
Bennet, a smart journalist and former Atlantic editor, didn’t help himself by failing to read the Cotton piece in advance. And Sulzberger made clear to his paper that the resignation wasn’t voluntary.
“We saw a significant breakdown in our editing processes, not the first we’ve experienced in recent years,” he said. “Both of us concluded that James would not be able to lead the team through the next leg of change that is required.”
After Sulzberger initially defended the publication of Cotton’s online-only column, he used various rationales to explain why the paper was now denouncing it. One was that there were factual problems, although Cotton’s staff went through three drafts and questions that included fact-checking. The next was that its tone was “needlessly harsh.”
Would the same standard apply to the subsequent Bret Stephens column, “Donald Trump Is Our National Catastrophe”? Or to the subsequent Michelle Goldberg column, “Tom Cotton’s Fascist Op-Ed”? An argument by a United States senator that has majority support in the polls is now fascism? Or is the harshness label only slapped on columns that challenge the Times orthodoxy?
In her piece, Goldberg wrote that “there’s generally no way to defend the administration without being either bigoted or dishonest.” There you have it: there is no other side but the anti-Trump side, at least none that should be deemed fit to print.
News organizations have to choose whether they want to win back the confidence of the entire country or only publish material that appeals to the woke crowd. The racial tensions that have gripped the country turn on matters of life and death, and that put a harsh spotlight on how journalists are defining their future. The pretense isn’t working anymore.

Trump to resume trademark campaign rallies after coronavirus hiatus

President Trump will resume hosting campaign rallies sometime in the next two weeks, returning one of the president's most potent weapons to his arsenal as the 2020 campaign season enters a pivotal stretch, Fox News is told.
Trump had suspended the rallies, which energize his base and allow his team to collect a treasure trove of voter data, in early March amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Americans are ready to get back to action and so is President Trump," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told Fox News. "The Great American Comeback is real and the rallies will be tremendous. You’ll again see the kind of crowds and enthusiasm that Sleepy Joe Biden can only dream of.”
As late as March 9, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, remarked that going to campaign rallies may not be a bad idea.
"You know, I can’t comment on campaign rallies," Fauci told reporters. "It really depends. We are having as we all said — this is something in motion. This is an evolving thing. ... If you want to talk about large gatherings in a place you have community spread, I think that’s a judgment call, and if someone decides they want to cancel it, I wouldn’t publicly criticize them."
Days later, the president pulled the plug. “I’m not going to do it if I think it’s going to be negative at all,” Trump said. “I don’t want people dying.”

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Bojangles Coliseum, Monday, March 2, 2020, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Monday's announcement that the rallies would resume comes as some polls show the president's support significantly trailing rival Joe Biden.
“CNN Polls are as Fake as their Reporting,” Trump tweeted early Monday. “Same numbers, and worse, against Crooked Hillary. The Dems would destroy America!”
The change-up also follows statements by many Democrats in charge of big cities -- including several who once insisted on strict quarantine measures -- championing the nationwide mass demonstrations over the in-custody death of George Floyd, sans social distancing. Epidemiologists, too, have abruptly changed their tune, even though they once said lockdown measures were so important that they justified widespread unemployment and business closures.
"We spent the last couple of months being hectored by public health experts and earnestly righteous media personalities who insisted that easing lockdown policies was immoral, that refusing to social distance or wear masks was nigh upon murderous," Jonah Goldberg wrote for the G-File. "They even suggested that protests were somehow profane. But now that the George Floyd protests are serving as some kind of Great Awokening, many of the same are saying 'never mind' about all of that. Protests aren’t profane, they’re glorious and essential—if they agree with what you’re protesting about."
More and more states are now reopening pursuant to federal guidelines and local leaders' assessments, and the nonenforcement of quarantine measures during the Floyd protests has left governors with little room to argue for extending the lockdowns.
Nevertheless, the left-wing taxpayer-funded radio station NPR ran a story late Monday suggesting that the rallies will be dangerous. NPR did not indicate that the Floyd protests would be dangerous in posts covering those demonstrations.
Prior to suspending rallies in March, the Trump campaign had previously been eyeing, but had not yet announced, a rally in Tampa, Florida, on March 25.
The massive events are often an opportunity for Trump to hone attack lines against his opponents -- but also present chances for them to hit back. At a campaign rally in late February, for example,  Trump calls Democrats' criticisms of his coronavirus response "their new hoax."
Biden and other Democrats then falsely accused Trump of calling the virus itself a hoax. Several fact-checkers, including The Washington Post, make clear that Trump was referring to the Democrats' response to the virus.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Donald Trump Jr. says Dems calling for police to be defunded should first call for security details to be cut

Donald Trump Jr. on Monday called out Democrats looking to defund police departments in the wake of George Floyd protests should start by cutting their own security detail.
Trump said that the entire country has called for the end of police brutality but said calls to cut funding for police departments would do little to stop abuses and would make the most vulnerable communities more vulnerable.
“Will those same anti-cop Dems call for their security details to be cut?” Trump asked.
Democratic leadership in the House and Senate on Monday unveiled legislation that would increase the accountability of police officers and remove immunity from legal consequences stemming from acts committed in the line of duty. But came up short from calling for police departments to be defunded.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar have been two vocal advocates to take drastic action. Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told Spectrum News 1 that some of the NYPD's $6 billion in annual funding should be redirected to address systemic racism. She said the $6 billion budget for the city police “costs us books in the hands of our children and costs us very badly needed” investment in public housing.
Omar, D-Minn., took it a step further and said that the Minneapolis Police Department is “rotten to the root” and should be dismantled. She called the department a cancer that needs to be amputated so it does not spread, the New  York Post reported.
Key Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, are distancing themselves from the “defund” push.
“I don’t support defunding the police. I support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency, honorableness and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community, everybody in the community,” Biden told “CBS Evening News” on Monday.
Floyd, a handcuffed black man, died May 25 after a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air. His death set off protests, some violent, in Minneapolis that swiftly spread to cities around the U.S. and the globe.
Derek Chauvin,  a former Minneapolis police officer charged with second-degree murder, appeared in court Monday and Hennepin County Judge Jeannice M. Reding raised his bail from $500,000 to $1 million
Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that he tasked the city to “identify $250 million in cuts” to invest more money into the black community, communities of color, women and “people who have been left behind."
“It’s time to move our rhetoric towards action to end racism in our city,” he said, according to Deadline. “Prejudice can never be part of police work…It takes bravery to save lives, too.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., were asked by a CNN reporter if they supported the movement to defund the police entirely.
“That’s a local decision,” Pelosi said.
Fox News' Brooke Singman and the Associated Press contributed to this report