Police recover 'significant' new evidence in hunt for killers of a northern Illinois police officer

Investigators revealed Friday they found “significant” new evidence in a wooded, marshy area where a northern Illinois police officer was gunned down during a pursuit of three suspicious men.
The discovery came after investigators used weed trimmers and machetes to clear the spot where Fox Lake Lt. Joe Gliniewicz, 52, was found shot to death Tuesday and then searched the ground on their hands and knees, MyFoxChicago reported.
“We did recover a significant piece of evidence,” George Filenko, Commander of the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, told reporters, according to the station. “I know your next question is going to be what is it? I'm not at liberty to tell you.”
The recovered evidence could be very crucial to the case if and when it gets to the point of prosecution, the station reported, adding that investigators seemed encouraged, if not excited, about what was found.
The station said the search of the crime scene was being conducted in a painstaking manner.
“They've basically gotten it down to almost bare earth. They're on their hands and knees literally today doing grid to grid searches,” Filenko said.
Earlier in the week investigators sent to the crime lab DNA evidence that they hope could lead to the killers.
MyFoxChicago also reported Friday that police obtained videos from homes and businesses that show the three suspects, described only as two white men and one black man, before and after Gliniewicz was murdered.
On Thursday police said a homeowner gave them video of the three men. The new videos could provide more clues, the station said.
The videos were turned over to the FBI which is compiling a timeline of the suspects movements, Filenko said.
The investigators believe the three suspects are probably still in the Fox Lake area, 45 miles north of Chicago.
“We are expecting a high volume of people out on the chain of lakes with it being a holiday weekend and there is no cause for concern for the people coming into town. There's no cause for concern for the residents within the town,” said Detecive Chris Covelli with the Lake County Sheriff’s Department.
A local company Motorola Solutions has announced a $50,000 reward for help in finding the killers.
Gliniewicz, a 30-year police veteran who was planning to retire at the end of the month, contacted dispatchers about the three suspicious men run and requested a second unit. Dispatchers soon lost contact with him, and backup officers found him about 50 yards from his squad car with a gunshot wound. He died soon after.

Clinton acknowledges paying State Department staffer to maintain private email server

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Saturday confirmed that she and her family personally paid a State Department staffer to maintain the private email server that Clinton used when she led the agency.
“We obviously paid for those services and did so because during a period of time we continued to need his technical assistance,” the former secretary of state told reporters after a campaign stop in Portsmouth, N.H.
She also said the payments to former agency IT specialist Bryan Pagliano are “in the public record.” And she commented on Pagliano’s reported decision to plead the Fifth Amendment if called to give closed-door testimony before the GOP-led House’s Select Committee on Benghazi.
"We encouraged everyone to cooperate,” Clinton said. “Facts are facts. I would very much urge those who are asked to cooperate to do so."
A congressional source told Fox News on Friday that committee investigators hope to question Pagliano over possible destruction of evidence. Clinton turned over emails from the private server that she deemed official and deleted those she considered personal.
The Washington Post first reported the payments to Pagliano, citing an unnamed campaign official.

More on this...

• Clinton server scandal: Timeline of key events

The official also told the newspaper that the arrangement also ensured that taxpayers weren’t paying for the upkeep of the server that was shared by Clinton, her husband, the former president, and their daughter as well as former aides.
Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, is under scrutiny for using the private server and personal email accounts to conduct official business.
The Justice Department is investigating the matter and has a server. Among the questions are whether Clinton knowingly sent or received classified information and whether the setup resulted in any security breaches. Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 White House race, has said she never knowingly sent or receive classified information.
Pagliano served as the IT director of Clinton's 2008 campaign committee, then on her political action committee, according to The Post. He installed and managed her server and left his IT job at the State Department in February 2013, the same month Clinton stepped down as secretary.
The Post reports the Clintons paid Pagliano $5,000 for “computer services” prior to him joining the State Department, according to a 2009 financial disclosure form he filed. After he arrived on the State Department’s staff in 2009, he continued to be paid by the Clintons to maintain the server, a campaign official and another person familiar with the arrangement told The Post.
When asked about whether the former IT specialist had been paid privately to maintain the server, a State Department official said the agency “found no evidence that he ever informed the department that he had outside income,” The Post reported. This week, a different State Department official, couldn’t clarify to the newspaper Pagliano’s pay situation.
Pagliano reportedly didn’t list any outside income in the required personal financial disclosures he filed each year. The Post reports he remains a State Department contractor doing work on “mobile and remote computing functions,’ according to the State Department.
It’s not known exactly when or who “wiped” Clinton’s personal email server. However, it seems clear the move came after October 2014, when the State Department requested personal emails be returned as part of her business records.
Committee Republicans have long argued they don’t have all the documents that should be available to the investigation, after Clinton, using her personal discretion, purged some 30,000 emails.
Fox News put additional questions to Pagliano’s attorney, Mark J. MacDougall, Friday about whether his client played a direct role or had knowledge of the server scrub, but MacDougall said there was nothing further to add beyond the letter.
An intelligence source who confirmed to Fox that the FBI’s “A-team” was handling the Clinton email case, described the investigation as “moving along well,” adding investigators remain “confident” deleted records can be recovered because whoever did the scrub may “not be a very good IT guy. There are different standards to scrub when you do it for government vs. commercial.”

Republican disappointment with renaming of Mt. McKinley sparks petition drive to rename Reagan airport

President Obama returning the name of the United States’ tallest mountain from Mount McKinley to Denali has sparked a name-game feud, most recently Republicans under attack by an influential liberal PAC that is setting its sights on Ronald Reagan National Airport.
The group, CREDO Action, the political arm of San Francisco-based cellphone company Credo Mobile, is behind the effort with a petition drive.
“Tell John Boehner: Rename Ronald Reagan Airport,” the group writes on its webpage seeking petition signatures. “President Obama just took a small but important step for recognizing the history, culture, and human rights of America’s Native Americans when he decided to rename …. Mount McKinley in Alaska. But right-wing extremists in the Republican party, including House Speaker Rep. John Boehner, don’t see it that way.”
Within hours of the Obama administration announcing late Sunday that the president was removing the name of William McKinley, American’s 25th president and an Ohio Republican, Boehner and other Ohio Republicans were expressing their disapproval.
Boehner said he was “deeply disappointed” in this decision.
And Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman tweeted that he also was “disappointed” with Obama’s decision, announced ahead of the president's trip this week to Alaska where he tried to garner support for his climate change agenda.
The PAC raised $4 million during the 2014 election cycle. Of the $400,062 spent in connection with congressional races, $355,000 was against Republican candidates, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Credo Action states on its homepage that its mission is in part to fund progressive nonprofits.
The groups also states that during its 4-year history it has raised more than $79 million for hundreds of nonprofits including Democracy Now! and Planned Parenthood -- “efforts made possible by the revenues from our mobile phone company.”
The group had more than 52,400 signatures as of Saturday afternoon, toward its goal of 75,000.
News of the petition was reported first by the Washington, D.C.-based blog PrinceofPetworth.com.
This is not the first time the airport’s name, or renaming, has sparked partisan disagreement.
Just this spring, The Washington Post conducted a survey of area residents on the issue. It found 72 percent of Republicans said they refer to the airport as “Reagan” or “Reagan National,” while only 35 percent of Democrats acknowledged the airport by that name.
“Given Speaker Boehner’s current outrage and disappointment at President Obama’s decision to rename Mount McKinley, it’s time to give him the opportunity to make up for his own past mistakes,” the petition drive also states. “Sign the petition and tell John Boehner he needs to be consistent when it comes to naming America’s landmarks.”
The group also says its “history-making Pledge of Resistance … was a major factor in delaying the approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

Black Lives Matter Cartoon

Kentucky clerk's same-sex marriage refusal divides 2016 GOP field

WASHINGTON –  The case of Kim Davis, the defiant Kentucky clerk thrown in jail for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, has divided the 2016 Republican presidential field -- pitting social conservatives championing her cause against others who suggest she's gone too far.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is planning a rally Tuesday in support of Davis, and says he’s offered her “prayers and support.” The Southern Baptist minister, who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses with the help of a social conservative coalition but is struggling in the polls this time around, argues Davis is on sound legal footing and commended her Friday for “not abandoning her religious convictions and standing strong for her religious liberty.”
On his campaign website, Huckabee posted a “Free Kim Davis” petition and demanded “we must end the criminalization of Christianity!"
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum also has come out strong in support of Davis, as has Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Cruz called Davis’ jailing an act of “judicial tyranny” and encouraged “every believer, every constitutionalist, every lover of liberty to stand with Kim Davis.” And he criticized any 2016 candidate not doing so.
Indeed, several other candidates have walked a fine line, and at least hinted they think Davis has overstepped now that gay marriage has been ruled legal nationwide.

More on this...

• Rick Santorum wades into same-sex marriage license debate

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said "she is sworn to uphold the law."
Former HP executive Carly Fiorina told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday, "I think that we must protect religious liberties with great passion and be willing to expend a lot of political capital to do so now because it’s clear religious liberty is under assault in many, many ways."
She added: "Having said that, when you are a government employee, I think you take on a different role. When you are a government employee as opposed to say, an employee of another kind of organization, then in essence, you are agreeing to act as an arm of the government. And, while I disagree with this court’s decision, their actions are clear."
Fiorina told the host it was now up to Davis to make a personal decision about what is required of her at her job.
“Is she prepared to continue to work for the government, be paid for by the government, in which case she needs to execute the government’s will … or sever her employment with the government and go seek employment elsewhere where her religious liberties would be paramount.”
Whether voters and caucus-goers will see the clerk's case as a litmus test for candidates' social conservative credibility remains to be seen. But the case drags on.
With the clerk herself in jail, the county clerk’s office started to issue same-sex marriage licenses through Davis’ deputy clerks. Davis’ son, Nathan Davis, was the lone holdout from the office.
The first couple to get the license Friday was William Smith Jr. and James Yates.
“I just want the licenses given out,” Yates said. I don’t want her in jail. No one wanted her in jail.”
During a hearing Thursday, U.S. District Judge David Bunning told Davis she would be released if she promised not to interfere with her employees issuing licenses, but she refused.
In Louisiana, presidential candidate and Gov. Bobby Jindal says the Davis case is exactly like ones where business owners – like florists and bakers -- have refused their services for same-sex ceremonies.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told CNN, “I think it’s absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberty.”
Others, like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, searched for a middle ground.
“While the clerk’s office has a governmental duty to carry out the law, there should be a way to protect the religious freedom and conscience rights of individuals working in the office,” Rubio told The New York Times.
Christie told radio host Laura Ingraham the situation is different when it comes to public employees.
“What I’ve said before is for someone who works in the government has a bit of a different obligation than someone who’s in the private sector or obviously working for education institutions that’s religiously based or others,” he said, adding, “but my point is we have to protect religious liberty and people’s ability to be able to practice their religion freely and openly, and of course we have to enforce the law too.”
During another radio interview with Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said despite Davis’ conviction, “the rule of law is the rule of law.”
Also on Thursday, Marion County Circuit Judge Vance Day, a former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party, began taking steps to create a legal defense fund in response to his decision not to perform same-sex ceremonies.

Houston-area sheriff's deputy remembered during funeral

 

HOUSTON –  Thousands of law enforcement officers stood at attention to form a wall Friday outside one of Houston's largest churches as a 21-gun salute and flyover by police helicopters were carried out in honor of a slain sheriff's deputy.
The symbolic gestures followed the funeral for Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Darren Goforth, who was gunned down at a gas pump a week ago.
"We come to this place with heavy hearts, and have questions we don't really understand," Lt. Don Savell, the sheriff's department chaplain, said as the ceremony began. "We gather to share the grief we all feel and perhaps to find the strength to bear our sorrow and to look for seeds of hope."
Second Baptist Church, which holds 7,000 people, was filled. Some officers stood outside and watched the nearly two-hour service on big-screen televisions, while other spectators gathered outside the suburban convenience store where Goforth was killed to view the funeral on screens set up there. Flowers, balloons, posters and written messages in memory of Goforth still surround the pump where he was shot.
Goforth, 47, was in uniform when he was killed while putting fuel in his patrol car. A 30-year-old Houston man is charged with capital murder. Investigators are still trying to determine a motive.
"Darren Goforth was one of the good guys, one that made a difference," Sheriff Ron Hickman said during the funeral. He said Goforth's life was taken "senselessly and in an act of cowardice" the night of Aug. 28 but that he and others "will answer calls in Darren's honor."
He said about 11,000 officers from "coast to coast" had come to pay respects.
Outside the church after the service, Hickman gave Goforth's wife, Kathleen, the flag that had been draped over the casket.
A line of patrol cars formed a large cross in the parking lot, and two Houston fire trucks with ladders extended formed an arch with a flag extended at the top. People lined streets as the funeral procession drove away. A private burial was planned.
Officers at various Texas law enforcement departments held moments of silence outside their buildings around the time of the funeral.
The killing brought out strong emotions in the law enforcement community, with Hickman suggesting last weekend that it could have been influenced by heightened national tension over the treatment of blacks by police. Goforth was white and the man charged with killing him, Shannon Miles, is black.
The Rev. Ed Young told those at the funeral that he fears evil has reached an "almost epidemic stage" with attacks on those who "wear the blue" — a reference to the police uniform.
But he said he's seen signs of hope in the wake of Goforth's death, with people being supportive of officers and openly praying for them.
"Things are changing," Young said. "There will be a new Houston, a new Texas, a new America.
"And you can write it down. We have your back," he told officers as the funeral crowd stood and applauded.

Pandora's Box: New Orleans prof says Confederate purge would target Andrew Jackson, too

Why not? The PURGE has begun on all offensive History. 

If New Orleans intends to purge all symbols of the Confederacy, it must take down its famous statue of Andrew Jackson, too, according to a Big Easy professor, who says his tongue-in-cheek demand is meant to show the absurdity of measuring historical figures by contemporary standards.
With rebel symbols under fire around the nation in the wake of the mass shooting in June of black worshipers at a Charleston, S.C., church by a white supremacist who embraced the stars and bars, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has called for the removal of statues of Confederate stalwarts Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and PGT Beauregard. But a local university dean says a longstanding city ordinance being invoked by Landrieu would just as easily apply to the seventh president, known as "Old Hickory" and famous for defeating the British in the War of 1812's pivotal Battle of New Orleans.

“If they [keep] going down this route, they will open Pandora’s box.”
- Richard Marksbury

The ordinance allows city officials to remove any statue or monument deemed a nuisance if, among other things, it "honors, praises, or fosters ideologies which are in conflict with the requirements of equal protection for citizens as provided by the constitution and laws of the United States." Taken at its word, and without the benefit of historical context, the ordinance would mandate the removal of the statue of Jackson on horseback that has marked Jackson Square since 1856, said Tulane University Prof. Richard Marksbury.
“I don’t want to see any statues taken down," Marksbury told FoxNews.com. "I’m trying to prove a point.”
Marksbury, who has called New Orleans home for more than 40 years, said he is dismayed at the calls for removal of historical statues. Jackson owned slaves, battled fiercely against Seminole Indians in Florida, ordered the Cherokee nation onto reservations and signed the Indian Removal Act, all actions that could put his statue at odds with the ordinance. But he was of a different time, and a significant historical figure, said Marksbury. Monuments may be seen as marking history, not necessarily venerating individuals, he said.

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Tulane University Dean of Continuing Studies Richard Marksbury is proposing the statue of Andrew Jackson be taken down - but he is not serious.

Last week, a public commission in the French Quarter voted to remove a 124-year-old obelisk monument dedicated to the White League's brief, and bloody, overthrow of a biracial Reconstruction government after the Civil War. The fate of 35-foot-high monument, which stands on the edge of the old historic district, now awaits a decision from the City Council, as do the Confederate statues.
“If they [keep] going down this route, they will open Pandora’s box,” Marksbury said, explaining why he proposal, first made in a letter to local newspaper The New Orleans Advocate in late July. “My position is that if you remove one, you have to remove them all."
Landrieu's office in New Orleans did not immediately return requests for comment.
Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War but made military history in the War of 1812. When New Orleans was under threat, Jackson took control of the defenses, including militia for various western states and territories. In the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, his 5,000 troops successfully fought off nearly 8,000 British troops, saving the city.

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Jackson Square, New Orleans (Wikipedia/Aashish Lamichhane)

Next on the chopping block is an engraving of the Confederate flag that is part of a mural near the entrance of City Hall according to local TV station Fox8.
"Across our state and our country, there has been broad consensus that confederate flags should not fly over government buildings,” Landrieu said. “Staff is currently researching the history of the etched marble at the entrance of City Hall to determine the process for removing the Confederate flag crest, as well as alternatives to represent the Civil War period of our city's history in this mural."
Orleans Parish Councilman James Gray is in favor of taking down the Confederate monuments in the city, but he does not believe the Confederate engraving should be removed.
"I think it's a real difference in having a mere historical account than having a statue that is set in a place of honor and being maintained by taxpayer dollars," Gray said to Fox8.

Benghazi investigators hoped to question Clinton IT specialist about possible destruction of evidence

Investigators on the Benghazi Select Committee had hoped to question former Clinton IT specialist Bryan Pagliano over the possible destruction of evidence, known in legal circles as “spoliation,” a congressional source told Fox News.
However, in an August 31 letter to Congress, Pagliano’s attorney said the former 2008 campaign staffer who installed and managed Clinton’s personal server and left his IT job at the State Department in February 2013, the same month Clinton stepped down as secretary, would “respectfully assert his Fifth Amendment right” before the Benghazi Select Committee.
“The matters for which Mr. Pagliano’s testimony and documents are being sought by the Select Committee are also the subject of investigative activity by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice,” the letter said.
According to the 2014 Black’s Law Dictionary, spoliation is “the intentional destruction, mutilation, alteration, or concealment of evidence…If proved, spoliation may be used to establish that the evidence was unfavorable to the party responsible. Also termed ‘spoliation of evidence.’”
While it is not known exactly when or who “wiped” Clinton’s personal server, it seems the move came after October 2014,when the State Department requested personal emails be returned as part of her business records.
On his Linked-In account, Pagliano said he served as “strategic advisor and special projects manager” for “a geographically diverse customer base of over 50,000 users around the world” from May 2009 - February 2013.
Committee Republicans have long argued they do not have all the documents that should be available to the investigation, after Clinton, using her personal discretion, purged some 30,000.
Former Clinton policy aide Jake Sullivan, who testified Friday before the Benghazi Committee, has direct knowledge of the policy decisions that established a U.S. consulate in eastern Libya with substandard security that did not meet State Department requirements, as well as direct knowledge of the 2012 attack  there and the administration's response.

The Benghazi emails released in May to Congress contained only130 references to Sullivan in an online search, yet the most recent records released Monday contained more than 1,300.

Fox News put additional questions to Pagliano’s attorney, Mark J. MacDougall, Friday about whether his client played a direct role or had knowledge of the server scrub, but MacDougall said there was nothing further to add beyond the letter.
An intelligence source who confirmed to Fox that the FBI’s “A-team” was handling the Clinton email case, described the investigation as “moving along well,” adding investigators remain “confident” deleted records can be recovered because whoever did the scrub may “not be a very good IT guy. There are different standards to scrub when you do it for government vs. commercial.”
The disparities seem difficult to reconcile, also given the most iconic image of Clinton on her blackberry aboard a C-17 military plane  was during a 2011 trip to Libya, but the Select Committee said no records were provided from this period.