CNN's Don Lemon accused of assault in sexually charged encounter at New York bar

CNN anchor Don Lemon has been accused in a lawsuit of assaulting a man in 2018. The network defended its host, saying the accusation was made by man who previously had been hostile toward the network. (Scott Olson/Getty Images, File)

CNN primetime host Don Lemon was accused of a bizarre, sexually charged assault of a bartender in New York's tony Hamptons last year in a civil suit filed earlier this week.
Dustin Hice, of Florida, stated in the lawsuit that he was living in the Hamptons and working at The Old Stove Pub in Sagaponack during the summer of 2018. On July 15, after closing, Hice claimed he left with the owner and co-workers to party at another bar, Murf's Backstreet Tavern, in Sag Harbor, where they saw Lemon. Recognizing the newsman, Hice offered to buy him a vodka drink called a "lemon drop," according to the suit. Lemon declined the offer, Hice claimed, but later approached him inside the establishment.
"[Lemon] put his hand down the front of his own shorts, and vigorously rubbed his genitalia, removed his hand and shoved his index and middle fingers into Plaintiff's mustache and under Plaintiff's nose," according to the lawsuit, filed Aug. 11 in Suffolk County Court, and first reported by Mediaite.

Lemon allegedly asked a crude question about Hice's sexual preference, leaving him "shocked and humiliated," according to the suit.
CNN denied Hice's account and said Hice seemed to bear animosity toward the cable news network.
"The plaintiff in this lawsuit has previously displayed a pattern of contempt for CNN on his social media accounts," a CNN spokesperson told Fox News in a statement.
"This claim follows his unsuccessful threats and demands for an exorbitant amount of money from Don Lemon.
"Don categorically denies these claims and this matter does not merit any further comment at this time."
"Mr. Lemon, who was wearing a pair of shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt, put his hand down the front of his own shorts, and vigorously rubbed his genitalia, removed his hand and shoved his index and middle fingers in Plaintiff’s mustache and under Plaintiff’s nose," the suit allegedly stated.
In the suit, Hice also said Lemon was different from the "Me Too" advocate who he often saw on TV.
"When the cameras are turned off, however, Mr. Lemon’s actions are in stark and disturbing contrast to the public persona he attempts to convey," the suit reads.
Hice denied going after CNN on social media, telling the New York Post: "I have never ever ranted about anyone, especially a news station. … I am a private, religious man."
Fox News' Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.

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Indian-controlled Kashmir under strict lockdown for 9th day

NEW DELHI (AP) — An unprecedented security lockdown is keeping people in Indian-administered Kashmir indoors for a ninth day Tuesday.
Indian troops patrolling the disputed region had allowed some Muslims to walk to mosques to mark the Eid al-Adha festival Monday and shops had been opened briefly on previous days.
But residents were running short of essentials under the near-constant curfew and communications blackout as India tried to stave off a violent reaction to the government’s decision Aug. 5 to strip Kashmir of its autonomy.
Witnesses described hundreds of people chanting “We want freedom” and “Go India, go back” during a brief protest Monday. Officials said the protest ended peacefully.
The lockdown is expected to last at least through Thursday, India’s independence day.
Kashmiris fear India’s moves bringing the region under greater New Delhi control will alter its demographics and cultural identity.
India said its decisions to revoke Kashmir’s special constitutional status and downgrade it from statehood to a territory would free it from separatism.
Rebels have been fighting Indian rule for decades. Some 70,000 people have died in clashes between militants and civilian protesters and Indian security forces since 1989. Most Kashmiris want either independence or a merger with Pakistan.
India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over it. The first one ended in 1948 with the region divided between them and a promise of a U.N.-sponsored referendum on its future. It has never been held.
Islamabad has denounced the changes as illegal and in response has downgraded its diplomatic ties with New Delhi, expelled the Indian ambassador and suspended trade and train services with India.

Tulsi Gabbard to report for active duty with National Guard for two weeks: report

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, answers questions after the second of two Democratic presidential primary debates hosted by CNN Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019, in the Fox Theatre in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard will take a two-week hiatus from the campaign trail to report for active duty in Indonesia with the National Guard, the Democrat announced on Monday.
"I'm stepping off of the campaign trail for a couple of weeks and putting on my army uniform to go on a joint training exercise mission in Indonesia," Gabbard said during an interview with CBS News.
"I love our country. I love being able to serve our country in so many ways including as a soldier," the U.S. congresswoman said.
"And so while some people are telling me, like gosh this is a terrible time to leave the campaign, can't you find a way out of it? You know that's not what this is about."
"I'm not really thinking about how this will impact my campaign. I'm looking forward to being able to fulfill my service and my responsibility,” she added.
Gabbard, 38, is a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard and served in Iraq in 2004. She also completed a tour in Kuwait in 2008, according to Hawaii News Now.
The presidential hopeful is set to depart for Indonesia on Wednesday, where her unit will participate in training exercises that include counterterrorism and disaster response.
Gabbard is one of three Democratic candidates with military experience.

CNN's Chris Cuomo seen in unverified video cursing at man who apparently called him 'Fredo'

An unverified video of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo went viral Monday night, showing him cursing and threatening a man who apparently taunted the host by calling him "Fredo."
In the video that was originally surfaced on the Youtube channel "That's The Point with Brandon," begins amid the confrontation, which allegedly took place on Sunday, with the man telling Cuomo, "I thought that was who you were."
"No, punk-ass b----es from the right call me 'Fredo.' My name is Chris Cuomo. I'm an anchor on CNN," a heated Cuomo responded. "'Fredo' was from 'The Godfather.' He was a weak brother and they use that as an Italian slur- are any of you Italian?... It's a f---ing insult to your people. It's an insult to your f--kin' people. It's like the n-word for us. Is that a cool f---ing thing?"
After the man sarcastically told him, "You’re a much more reasonable guy in person than you seem to be on television," Cuomo reacted, "If you want to play, we'll f---ing play."
"If you've got something to say about what I do on television, then say it, but you don't have to call me a f---in' insult," Cuomo continued.
"Hey man, listen, I don't want any problems," the man, who appears to be holding the camera from below, told Cuomo.
"Well, you're gonna have a big f---in' problem," Cuomo shot back.
The man, who has been described on social media as a "Trump supporter," repeatedly claimed he thought Cuomo's name was "Fredo," which the anchor responded by calling him a "liar" and told him to "own what you said" and "stand up like a man."
WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
Then things quickly escalated when the CNN anchor suggested he would throw him "down these stairs."
"I don't want to have a problem with you, man," the man repeated.
"You're gonna have a f---in' problem," Cuomo said.
"What, what you gonna do about it?" the man asked.
"I'll f---ing ruin your s---," the "Cuomo Prime Time" anchor replied. "I'll f---in throw you down these stairs like a f---in' punk."
"Please do," the man said.
"So you can f---in' sue?" Cuomo asked. "Then take a swing at me... You wanna call me 'Fredo,' take a f---in' swing... I'm f---in' right here. I'll f---in' wreck your s---."
The video ends with multiple people attempting to separate the two men.
In a statement to Fox News, CNN expressed its full support for its primetime anchor.
“Chris Cuomo defended himself when he was verbally attacked with the use of an ethnic slur in an orchestrated setup.  We completely support him,” a CNN spokesperson told Fox News.
The video instantly went viral, catching the attention of Donald Trump Jr.
"Hey @ChrisCuomo, take it from me, 'Fredo' isn't the N-word for Italians, it just means you're the dumb brother," Trump Jr. wrote with a winky face, suggesting he knows critics of the Trump family often call him and his brother Eric Trump "Fredo."
The president's son then slammed CNN's response to the video for claiming that Cuomo was called an "ethnic slur" by sharing a clip of a Cuomo panel where CNN contributor Ana Navarro referred to Trump Jr. as "Fredo."
Others on Twitter pointed out that CNN anchor Jake Tapper depicted Trump Jr. as Fredo in his political cartoon segment back in December and a CNN guest called Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the "Fredo of the Republican Party" in March.
This isn't the first time Cuomo had compared an insult to the N-word. In 2017, he claimed on his radio show that the term "fake news" is "the equivalent of the N-word for journalists." He later apologized, saying "Calling a journalist fake -nothing compared to the pain of a racial slur."
Cuomo announced Monday afternoon, hours before the video went viral, that "Cuomo Prime Time" would be back on-air next week.

Gregg Jarrett: Comey's FBI was running a secret counterintelligence operation against Trump, new docs show

Newly obtained documents confirm that James Comey’s FBI was running a secret and corrupt counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016 and repeatedly deceiving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) thereafter in order to wiretap a Trump campaign associate.
The disclosure was the result of a federal lawsuit and a year of litigation. Despite efforts by FBI Director Christopher Wray to obstruct, a federal court issued an order that forced the FBI and Department of Justice to produce the records known as “302 reports.”  They are a summary of interviews FBI agents conducted with Bruce Ohr, a top DOJ official.
These 302s show that the FBI and DOJ were warned repeatedly by Ohr that ex-British spy Christopher Steele was virulently biased against the target of their investigation, Trump.
That bias tainted the credibility of the “dossier” Steele composed and upon which officials in the Obama administration relied when they officially launched their counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016.  The “dossier” was also the basis for the surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
The FBI and DOJ ignored the warnings of bias and actively concealed it from the FISC. They never advised the judges that the information contained in the “dossier” was “unverified.”
They hid from the judges that it was all funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The court was never told that Ohr’s wife helped cultivate some of the researched used against Trump. Having fired Steele for leaking to the media and lying about it, the FBI and DOJ represented to the judge that Steele was “reliable” when they knew he was not. They continued to rely on him months after his termination.
An apparent fraud was perpetrated on the court not once, but four times in successive warrants through June of 2017. These are dishonest, if not felonious acts.
Secret Meetings
On July 5, 2016, Comey stood before television cameras and microphones at a nationally watched news conference.
By mangling the law and contorting the facts, he announced that he was exonerating Hillary Clinton of any crimes for her mishandling of thousands of classified documents.

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At roughly the same time, some 3,660 miles away from Washington, Comey’s FBI was meeting in a London building with Steele who conveyed the contents of his initial “dossier” memo dated June 20, 2016, with agent Michael Gaeta. When the FBI agent read the document, he was stunned and remarked, “I have to report this to headquarters.” Thus, on the same day, Comey cleared Clinton, the witch hunt against Trump began in earnest.
On July 30 Steele met with Ohr at 9 a.m. at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
Steele shared his “dossier” but added that the FBI already had it in its possession.
Immediately thereafter, Ohr convened a meeting with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the FBI lawyer who worked for him directly, Lisa Page.
The 302 reports corroborate Ohr’s congressional testimony behind closed doors that was made public in February of this year.
He told lawmakers that he specifically warned McCabe and Page that the information in the “dossier” was highly dubious and driven by a biased author who despised Trump.
He also advised that it was commissioned by Fusion GPS where his wife worked because, “I wanted the FBI to be aware of any possible bias.”
Page 125 of Ohr’s congressional transcript is especially revealing. “I told them that Steele was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected,” he stated.
He pointedly informed McCabe and Page that Trump’s political rival, the Clinton campaign, was financially underwriting the “dossier,” which would call into question its veracity because the campaign had a motive to distort or fabricate in order to damage its opponent.
Ohr testified that he cautioned the FBI, “These guys were hired by somebody relating to –who’s related to the Clinton campaign.”
In truth, the funding wasn’t merely “related” to the campaign, it was the campaign, along with the DNC. Ohr also disseminated the “dossier” to Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka at the FBI. But Ohr wasn’t done.
Shortly after the July 30 breakfast with Steele, Ohr gave the same improbable intelligence to three prosecutors at the Justice Department during another meeting.
Two of those individuals, Andrew Weissmann and Zainab Ahmad, were later hired by Robert Mueller to be a part of his assembled team of special counsel prosecutors that escalated the investigation of Trump beyond the FBI and DOJ.  They, too, were informed by Ohr that the Clinton campaign and Democrats had paid for the “dossier” and that Steele was severely biased against Trump.
Instead of investigating Clinton and her confederates for conspiring with foreigners to defraud the U.S. government or violate campaign finance laws, the FBI used the Clinton-Russian “dossier” to target Trump despite a dearth of evidence that any of it was true.
Information Laundering Scheme
Even though Steele was fired by the FBI as a confidential informant, the new 302 reports confirm that Comey’s FBI kept returning him as a source.  By using Ohr as a conduit, they continued to receive information from Steele.
This continued even after Trump was elected and inaugurated as president. Indeed, Steele kept feeding the bureau his phony information through May of 2017.
To circumvent the rules they were breaking, the FBI set up an “information laundering scheme.” Steele would feed information to Ohr, who would pass it to his “handler” Joe Pienka, who would feed it to his partner Peter Strzok, who would give it to Andrew McCabe, who would deliver it to Comey.
Similar to a “money-laundering scheme,” the complex transfer cleansed the dirty information to obscure the original source –Steele.  But the information, of course, was largely fabricated and/or the product of Russian disinformation.
It should be remembered that a counterintelligence investigation is designed to collect evidence of foreign threats to U.S. national security. Normally, the president is the beneficiary of such information.
Here, Comey’s FBI was abusing its counterintelligence authority by using it against Trump. Moreover, Comey appears to have been lying to the president about it.
In early 2017, he kept assuring Trump he was not being investigated. These documents show that he obviously was, well into his presidency.  And yet, the FBI had no evidence that corroborated any of Steele’s “collusion” allegations.
As John Solomon of the Hill has reported, the FBI developed a “spread-sheet like document” that was 90 percent empty of any proof. This did not deter them. They continued to investigate Trump. And when Comey was fired, he helped engineer part two of the witch hunt --the special counsel investigation.

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Taliban say latest talks end on US’s Afghanistan withdrawal

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The latest round of talks between the Taliban and the United States on a deal to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Afghanistan has ended and now both sides will consult with their leadership on the next steps, a Taliban spokesman said Monday.
The eighth round of talks in the Gulf Arab nation of Qatar concluded after midnight and was “long and useful,” Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.
He made no statements on the outcome of the talks.
Last week, another Taliban spokesman had said a deal was expected to follow this round as both sides seek an end to the nearly 18-year war, America’s longest conflict.
An agreement — if reached — is expected to include Taliban guarantees that Afghanistan would not be a base for other extremist groups in the future. However, both the Islamic State group’s affiliate and al-Qaida remain active in the country. The Taliban stage near-daily attacks across Afghanistan, mainly targeting Afghan forces and government officials but also killing many civilians.
The deal also could include a cease-fire and stipulate that the Taliban would negotiate with Afghan representatives, though the insurgent group has so far refused to negotiate with Kabul representatives, dismissing the Afghan government as a U.S. puppet.
There was no immediate comment on Monday from U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who on Sunday tweeted that “I hope this is the last Eid where #Afghanistan is at war.”
Sunday was the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid-al-Adha, which unfolded without any major violence reported in Afghanistan.
Khalilzad later added that “Many scholars believe that the deeper meaning of Eid al-Hadha is to sacrifice one’s ego. Leaders on all sides of the war in Afghanistan must take this to heart as we strive for peace.”
Some in Afghanistan saw it as a response to President Ashraf Ghani, who on Sunday declared that “Our future cannot be decided outside, whether in the capital cities of our friends, nemeses or neighbors. The fate of Afghanistan will be decided here in this homeland. ... We don’t want anyone to intervene in our affairs.”
While Ghani insists that the upcoming Sept. 28 presidential election is crucial for giving Afghanistan’s leader a powerful mandate to decide the country’s future after years of war, Khalilzad is seeking a peace deal by Sept. 1, weeks before the vote.
The Taliban control roughly half of Afghanistan and are at their strongest since the U.S.-led invasion toppled their five-year government in 2001 after the group had harbored al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. More than 2,400 U.S. service members have died in Afghanistan since then.
The U.S. and NATO formally concluded their combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014. The some 20,000 American and allied troops that remain are carrying out airstrikes on the Taliban and IS militants, and are working to train and build the Afghan military.
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Gannon reported from New York.