Coronavirus-hit Mississippi, Louisiana, pounded by tornadoes, at least 8 dead

Mississippi and Louisiana—two states dealing with an increase of coronavirus cases—were hit Sunday with a deadly storm system that produced tornadoes that ripped through hundreds of homes and buildings, resulting in at least eight deaths.
Homes in Ouachita Parish, La., were "leveled" while families were inside sheltering in place over fears of the pandemic. The News-Star reported that officials in the area were forced to find temporary housing for those affected by the storms while trying to keep residents safe from the virus.
“Because of COVID-19, we are not looking at sheltering like we have in the past,” Shane Smiley, the Ouachita Parish Police Jury president, told the Monroe News-Star. “We are trying to work through this and see if we can secure hotel rooms. This is for anybody who is displaced. The reason being is we are trying to continue social distancing."
Strong storms pounded the Deep South on Sunday, killing at least eight people in south Mississippi and damaging up to 300 homes and other buildings in northern Louisiana.
One person killed was in Walthall County, two were killed in Lawrence County and three were killed in Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency director Greg Michel said. All three counties are more than an hour's drive south of Jackson, near the Louisiana state line.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency Sunday night after he said several tornadoes had struck the state.
"This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter," Reeves said on Twitter. "As we reflect on the death and resurrection on this Easter Sunday, we have faith that we will all rise together."
Mississippi has 2,781 confirmed coronavirus cases and 96 deaths. Louisiana has 20,595 cases and 840 deaths. Coronavirus complicated tornado preparedness, especially for people who must seek shelter with others.
The only way to slow the spread of the new coronavirus is to self-isolate. The only way to stay safe in a tornado is to shelter in a strong building, often a public one.
Jamie Mayo, the mayor of Monroe, La., told KNOE-TV that the storm damaged 200-300 homes in and around the city.
In northwest Louisiana, officials reported damage to dozens of homes in DeSoto and Webster parishes, according to news outlets.
In Morgan County, Alabama, a church roof and steeple were damaged by lightning Sunday afternoon, Morgan County Emergency Management Agency Eddie Hicks told AL.com. Shoals Creek Baptist Church in Priceville was struck by lightning Sunday afternoon. No injuries were reported.
WBMA-TV reported that strong winds damaged buildings and snapped trees in Walker County, Alabama, north of Birmingham.
The Associated Press contributed to this report

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Kansas governor wins court battle over order limiting church gatherings to 10 people

The state Supreme Court of Kansas ruled Saturday night in favor of Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat whose recent order limiting religious gatherings to 10 people because of the coronavirus outbreak was overturned by a GOP-led panel of state lawmakers, according to reports.
The court ruled that the legislative panel, composed of state House and Senate members, overstepped its authority when it voted 5-2 to overturn Kelly’s executive order.
Kelly had filed a petition with the court Thursday, challenging the panel's action, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported.
KANSAS GOVERNOR SUES GOP LAWMAKERS WHO REVERSED HER LIMITS ON CHURCH GATHERINGS DURING CORONAVIRUS
Kelly responded to the court's ruling with a Twitter message Saturday evening.
"I want to thank the Supreme Court for its expedited review under difficult circumstances," Kelly wrote. "Our response to this unprecedented pandemic has necessitated that even our most fundamental institutions find alternative methods that preserve public health."
Despite the court's ruling, it remained unclear how Kelly's order would be enforced because state Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican, has advised law enforcement agencies not to arrest or charge violators, the Wichita Eagle reported. Meanwhile, most churches in the state have already canceled in-person Easter services anyway, the report said.
Justices heard oral arguments one day before Easter, an important day on the Christian calendar in which church attendance often reaches its highest point for the year.
Saturday's hearing was the court’s first conducted completely via video, The Associated Press reported.
The court ruled that legislative action designed to give the legislative leadership panel the ability to overrule Kelly’s executive orders was flawed and didn’t legally accomplish that.
“In this time of crisis, the question before the court is whether a seven-member legislative committee has the power to overrule the governor. The answer is no,” said Clay Britton, chief counsel for the governor.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is seen in an undated photo.

Attorneys for the lawmakers, though, said the court should consider that the resolution that gave the panel its authority was a compromise meant to give legislative oversight at a time when the full Legislature couldn't meet.
The panel is the Legislative Coordinating Council, composed of the top four House leaders and top three Senate leaders. Five of the seven members are Republicans.
“You will recall this was a time everybody was trying to skedaddle as fast as they could from the Statehouse because of the pandemic concerns,” attorney Brad Schlozman said.
Both sides agree that worshipers should avoid gathering in large groups to avoid the risk of spreading the coronavirus. Many churches have been conducting services online for weeks, and none have publicly announced plans to reopen their doors to worshippers.
The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state grew Saturday by 102, to 1,268. Kansas also reported five more deaths, bringing the total to 55.
The state has identified four outbreaks stemming from religious gatherings.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.

FBI had information Steele dossier was part of 'Russian disinformation campaign,' declassified footnotes show

The FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team investigating the Trump 2016 campaign received multiple indications that former British spy Christopher Steele -- one of their key informants in their investigation -- was part of an elaborate "Russian disinformation campaign," according to several newly declassified footnotes from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on FBI misconduct.
“It’s ironic that the Russian collusion narrative was fatally flawed because of Russian disinformation," Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who had pushed for the declassification, said in a statement to Fox News on Friday. "These footnotes confirm that there was a direct Russian disinformation campaign in 2016, and there were ties between Russian intelligence and a presidential campaign – the Clinton campaign, not Trump’s.”
At the same time, Grassley's office added that "the senators expect a fuller declassification in the coming days," including a version of the footnotes that does not redact the names of those who raised the alarm about Steele. Some in Grassley's office, including Grassley himself, have seen the fully declassified footnotes, and want them publicly released immediately, Fox News is told.
One of the footnotes, which was previously redacted in its entirety, read: “The [REDACTED] stated that it did not have high confidence in this subset of Steele’s reporting and assessed that the referenced subset was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate US foreign relations." That subset referred to the activities of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, whom Steele's dossier claimed had traveled to Prague to meet with Russian agents. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was unable to substantiate that claim, and Cohen has denied it.
The footnote goes on to state that a 2017 report “contained information … that the public reporting about the details of Trump’s [REDACTED] activities in Moscow during a trip in 2013 were false, and that they were the product of RIS ‘infiltra[ing] a source into the network’ of a [REDACTED] who compiled a dossier of information on Trump’s activities.”
Another footnote stated: "According to a document circulated among Crossfire Hurricane team members and supervisors in early October 2016, Person 1[Sergei Millian] had historical contact with persons and entities suspected of being linked to RIS [Russian intelligence]. The document described reporting [REDACTED] that Person 1 'was rumored to be a former KGB/SVR officer.' In addition, in late December 2016, Department Attorney Bruce Ohr told SSA 1  [FBI Agent Joe Pietnka]that he had met with Glenn Simpson and that Simpson had assessed that Person 1 was a RIS officer who was central in connecting Trump to Russia."
Pientka was conspicuously removed from the FBI's website after Fox News contacted the FBI about his extensive role in Crossfire Hurricane FISA matters, but sources say he remains in the agency's field office in San Francisco in a senior role. Republicans have sought to question him repeatedly.
Millian contacted Fox News after this article was published, and strongly denied any links to illicit activities or intelligence services, saying there was an attempt to "frame" him that had backfired.
The newly released footnotes gave other reasons to doubt the knowledge and credibility of Steele's main sources, as well as the accuracy of Horowitz's own report.
"When interviewed by the FBI, the Primary Sub-source stated that he/she did not view his/her contacts as a network of sources, [REDACTED] with whom he/she has conversations about current events and government relations," one of the previously hidden footnotes reads.
That statement directly contradicted the executive summary of Horowitz's IG report, which asserted that Steele's Primary Sub-source "used his/her network of sub-sources to gather information that was then passed to Steele."
While Friday's disclosure was significant, the partial declassification of the footnotes didn't fully comply with previous requests to the DOJ from Grassley and Johnson, whose letter to Barr sought the full and complete declassification of the four footnotes in the IG report in January.
Grassley and Johnson wanted the DOJ to declassify footnotes 302, 334, 342 and 350; all were only partially unredacted, and 342 remains fully redacted.
The fully redacted footnote "refers to information received by a member of the Crossfire Hurricane team regarding possible previous attempts by a foreign government to penetrate and research a company or indiviudals associated with Christopher Steele," the DOJ said, adding that it would continue to "review" the footnote's classification for possible release. It was unclear which foreign government was implicated; the DOJ IG report refers to Russia numerous times without any redaction.
In a letter to Barr in January seeking the full declassification of four footnotes in Horowitz's report, Grassley and Johnson had written: "We are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the [IG] report are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information redacted in four footnotes within the classified report."
Friday's partial declassification, which suggested Steele's sources were part of a Russian interference effort, was immediately highlighted by Trump allies and Republicans, who have long pushed the administration to publicize more details of the FBI's flawed investigation, even as U.S. Attorney John Durham is pursuing a criminal probe into the conduct of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The FBI heavily relied on Steele's now-discredited dossier to obtain a surveillance warrant to spy on former Donald Trump aide Carter Page, in which FBI officials asserted that Page was an "agent" of Russia. However, the FBI did not share the information about the Russian disinformation campaign with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) when it moved to obtain the warrant, just as it did not tell the court that another Trump aide had denied collusion during a recorded conversation with an FBI informant.

Former British spy Christopher Steele sat for a four-hour videotaped deposition last month.

The FBI's legal counsel later described the warrant to surveil Page as "essentially a single source FISA" wholly dependent on the dossier, which also made numerous other unsubstantiated claims about Russian hackers in a nonexistent consulate in Miami, Cohen's purported trips to Prague, and lurid blackmail tapes.
Aspects of the Page FISA that did not rely on the dossier have not fared well, either. For example, The Washington Post ended up in the Page FISA application as a key source alongside the dossier. A 2016 opinion piece by the Post's Josh Rogin entitled, "Trump campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine," had overstated developments at the Republican National Convention in 2016. A single delegate had proposed a sweeping amendment to change the GOP platform to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, in a major shift from the Obama administration's policy; parts of that amendment were rejected.
But, the Post's opinion piece framed the development as nefarious, and a possible smoking gun. In a Page FISA application, the FBI went on to cite Rogin's article word-for-word – without quotation marks, but with a footnoted citation – as evidence that the Trump campaign could be working with the Russians in an illicit manner. The FBI apparently did not obtain independent verification of the article’s claims.
"The 'central and essential' evidence used to justify invasive surveillance of an American citizen in the FBI’s probe into Russian interference was, itself, an example of Russian interference, according to once-secret footnotes declassified at the urging of two U.S. Senators," Grassley's office said in a statement to Fox News on Friday.
"For years, the public was fed a healthy diet of leaks, innuendo and false information to imply that President Trump and his campaign were part of a Russian conspiracy to spread disinformation," Grassley and Johnson said separately. "The FBI’s blind pursuit of the investigation, despite exculpatory and contradictory information, only legitimized the narrative. The mounting evidence undercutting this narrative should have stopped the investigation early in its tracks. Instead, it took several years and millions in taxpayer dollars to conclude that the allegations were baseless."
The senators continued: “Had FBI leadership heeded the numerous warnings of Russian disinformation, paid attention to the glaring contradictions in the pool of evidence and followed long-standing procedures to ensure accuracy, everyone would have been better off. Carter Page’s civil liberties wouldn’t have been shredded, taxpayer dollars wouldn’t have been wasted, the country wouldn’t be as divided and the FBI’s reputation wouldn’t be in shambles.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, along with Ron. Johnson, R-Wisc., pushed for the release of the footnotes. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The Justice Department IG, Michael Horowitz, has found that the FBI systematically violated rules designed to protect Americans from unauthorized surveillance, including Page, prompting the FISC to rebuke the FBI and demand changes.
“Why have all these details remained unnecessarily secret for so long?" Page asked Fox News on Friday. "In our dual system of Justice, the Mueller Witch Hunt crew falsely misrepresented my own 'historical contact with persons and entities suspected of being linked to RIS,' when I was actually serving my country in support of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The time has finally come for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and related agencies to release the full facts about the Obama-Biden Administration’s election interference campaign against candidate Trump and the illicit coup attempt against our President.”
In Page's case, an ex-FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, even falsified an email from the CIA to make Page's Russian contacts seem nefarious, when Page in fact had been an informant to the CIA about those contacts, according to Horowitz.
It emerged separately on Thursday that an FBI confidential human source secretly recorded George Papadopoulos in the final days of the 2016 presidential election and pressed him over whether the Trump campaign was involved in Russian election meddling -- something the campaign aide emphatically denied, according to a transcript of that conversation.
Fox News obtained the transcript of the recording, which spreads over 171 pages. Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, is referred to in the transcript as "Crossfire Typhoon" or "CT."
The recording covers a more than four-hour conversation on Oct. 31, 2016. According to the obtained transcripts, the confidential human source (CHS) met with Papadopoulos and asked whether he thought Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
“No,” Papadopoulos replied.
The comments made by Papadopoulos are noteworthy because, according to officials, they were never provided or included in evidence to the FISC when seeking warrants to surveil Page over suspicion of Trump campaign ties to Russia.
When asked whether he thought the Russians had “special interests” in the election, Papadopoulos replied: “That’s all bullsh--. No one knows who’s hacking them,” and added that it “could be the Chinese, could be the Iranians, it could be some Bernie, uh supporters. Could be anonymous.”
Papadopoulos was then asked whether he thought Russians “have interest in Trump.”
“They, dude, no one knows how a president’s going to govern anyway. You don’t just say, oh I like—,” he said before being cut off. “I don’t know. Even Putin said it himself. It’s all, it’s like conspiracy theories.”
The source went on to press Papadopoulos, saying: “I feel like there’s some heavy Trump supporters out there that kind of want to rig this f—king election in Trump’s favor and then at the same time, I don’t know.”
Papadopoulos quipped: “Dude, you, you..there is no rigging in his favor.”
Durham's criminal probe concerning the FBI's Russia probe remains ongoing. Speaking to Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" on Thursday, Barr said he has seen troubling signs from the investigation.

Former FBI Director James Comey, left; U.S. Attorney John Durham, right.

"My own view is that the evidence shows that we're not dealing with just the mistakes or sloppiness," Barr told host Laura Ingraham. "There was something far more troubling here. We're going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted."
It has emerged since former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea that the FBI officials who interviewed Flynn, anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and "SSA [Supervisory Special Agent] 1," have each separately been implicated by Horowitz in apparent misconduct and mismanagement in both the Flynn case and the Carter Page matter.
Strzok's anti-Trump bias is well-documented. The identity of SSA 1 is protected in the Flynn legal proceedings by a court order, but Fox News has reported that documents point to Joe Pientka, who moved last year from the Washington, D.C., area to San Francisco. Pientka briefly appeared on the FBI's website as an "Assistant Special Agent in Charge" of the San Francisco field office late last year, according to the Internet archive Wayback Machine.
However, Pientka no longer appears on any FBI website after being removed shortly after Fox News identified him as the unnamed SSA in the IG report; Fox News is told Pientka received a promotion to a senior role in the bureau's San Francisco field office. Pientka's extensive role in handling the Page FISA has been outlined in Horowitz's report, and top Republican senators, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have requested that Pientka sit for an interview to explain himself.
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

DOJ: 'Expect action' on government regulation of religious services amid COVID-19 outbreak

The Justice Department (DOJ) may take action next week against local governments that have cracked down on religious services as widespread parts of the country are shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, a DOJ spokesperson said Saturday.
“While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedly [and] not single out religious [organizations],” DOJ Director of Communications Kerri Kupec tweeted.
She said the Attorney General William Barr is “monitoring” such regulations.
The DOJ move would come as some churches are standing up to city governments that have blocked them from holding in-person services during the outbreak -- even in "drive-in" formats that keep people separated and in their own cars.
A judge in Louisville, Ky., on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of Mayor Greg Fischer’s ban on drive-in church services there.
“The Mayor’s decision is stunning,” District Judge Justin Walker, a former clerk to Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote in a memorandum to the order. “And it is, ‘beyond all reason,’ unconstitutional.”
Freedom of religion is the first of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” its text begins.
Separately, in Greenville, Miss., two churches have said that police came to their drive-in services and threatened to fine worshipers.
“Churches are strongly encouraged to hold services via Facebook Live, Zoom, Free Conference Call, and any and all other social media, streaming and telephonic platforms,” Mayor Errick Simmons’ office said in an April 7 press release announcing a ban on in-person and drive-in church services.
Attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom have filed a lawsuit challenging that order on behalf of the Temple Baptist Church in Greenville.
Kelly Shackelford, president of the First Liberty Institute, argued in an appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Friday that the city’s order “is just massively unconstitutional.”
“It targets churches in a way that it targets no other group,” he said. “Cars in parking lots are fine. It’s only a crime if the cars in the parking lot are at the church parking lot.”
The virus is highly contagious, and authorities at various levels of government around the country have been urging social distancing guidelines or implementing stay-at-home restrictions in an attempt to slow the spread.
Americans are being told to avoid close contact with one another, maintain good hand-washing hygiene and avoid leaving their homes as much as possible.
There were more than 500,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. as of Saturday afternoon and at least 20,000 deaths.

Trump vows to rebuild US economy to honor coronavirus victims, sees 'tremendous surge' ahead

President Trump vowed to rebuild the U.S. economy to honor those who have died as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
"We're going to rebuild it again in honor of all those who perished today," Trump said Saturday night on Fox News' "Justice with Judge Jeanine."
Trump told host Jeanine Pirro he expects the economy to rebound like a "rocket ship" -- because of the American public's desire to get back to work and $2 trillion in coronavirus economic relief from the federal government.
"And I think the stimulus, coupled with this pent-up demand and everybody wanting to get out and go back to work," Trump said. "I think we're going to have a just a tremendous surge."
The president said Americans have combated the coronavirus the "right way," and that if the country didn't follow the safety guidelines, such as social distancing, the nation likely would have experienced far greater numbers of fatalities.
"We did it the right way. We took care of social distancing and all of the things, words that nobody ever heard before, frankly, and phrases. But if we didn't do that, we would have pulled through it," Trump said. "There were estimates, 2.2 million people. Well, if you cut that in more than half and you said a million and cut that in half. You say 500,000, it just would have been unacceptable."
Trump also looked ahead to when he will eventually reopen the economy, saying the timing of the order will represent the biggest decision of his presidency. But he assured the public that many "smart people" will advise him on the call.
"A lot of very smart people, a lot of professionals, doctors and business leaders are a lot of things that go into a decision like that," he said. "And it's going to be based on a lot of facts and a lot of instinct also. Whether we like it or not, there is a certain instinct to it.
"We're setting up a council now of some of the most distinguished leaders in virtually every field, including politics and business and medical. And we'll be making that decision fairly soon."