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      Chinese American man convicted in US of spying on dissidents for China

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      A Chinese American scholar was convicted on Tuesday in the US on charges of using his reputation as a pro-democracy activist to gather information on dissidents and feed it to his homeland’s government.A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict in the case of Shujun Wang, who helped found a pro-democracy group in the city.Prosecutors said that at the behest of China’s main intelligence agency, the ministry of state security, Wang lived a double life for more than a decade.“The defendant pretended to be opposed to the Chinese government so that he could get close to people who were actually opposed to the Chinese government,” assistant US attorney Ellen Sise said in an opening statement last month. “And then, the defendant betrayed those people, people who trusted him, by reporting information on them to China.”Wang was convicted of charges including conspiring to act as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general. Faced with up to 10 years in prison, he pleaded not guilty.Wang’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.Wang came to New York in 1994 to teach after doing so at a Chinese university. He later became a US citizen.He helped found the Queens-based Hu Yaobang Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, named for two leaders of the Chinese Communist party in the 1980s.According to prosecutors, Wang composed emails – styled as “diaries” – that recounted conversations, meetings and plans of various critics of the Chinese government.One message was about events commemorating the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, prosecutors said. Other emails talked about people planning demonstrations during various visits that Xi Jinping, Chinese president, made to the US.Instead of sending the emails and creating a digital trail, Wang saved them as drafts that Chinese intelligence officers could read by logging in with a shared password, prosecutors said.In other, encrypted messages, Wang relayed details of upcoming pro-democracy events and plans to meet with a prominent Hong Kong dissident while the latter was in the US, according to an indictment.During a series of FBI interviews between 2017 and 2021, Wang initially said he had no contacts with the ministry of state security, but he later acknowledged on videotape that the intelligence agency asked him to gather information on democracy advocates and that he sometimes did, FBI agents testified.But, they said, he claimed he did not provide anything really valuable, just information already in the public domain.Wang’s lawyers portrayed him as a gregarious academic with nothing to hide.“In general, fair to say he was very open and talkative with you, right?” the defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma asked an undercover agent who approached Wang in 2021 under the guise of being affiliated with the Chinese security ministry.“He was,” said the agent, who testified under a pseudonym. He recorded his conversation with Wang at the latter’s house in Connecticut.“Did he seem a little lonely?” Margulis-Ohnuma asked a bit later. The agent said he did not recall.Wang told agents his “diaries” were advertisements for the foundation’s meetings or write-ups that he was publishing in newspapers, according to testimony. He also suggested to the undercover agent that publishing them would be a way to deflect any suspicion from US authorities.Another agent, Garrett Igo, told jurors that when Wang found out in 2019 that investigators would search his phone for any contacts in the Chinese government, he paused for a minute.“And then he said: ‘Do anything. I don’t care,’” Igo recalled. More

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      Jackson isn’t just Mississippi’s capital. It’s America’s murder capital

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      Jackson, Mississippi, knows the blues.There’s the old men at sunset carting old amps through a full parking lot to the back of an otherwise nondescript bar, to deliver a fearless late-night symposium in the oldest school of blues.And then there’s the Jackson that wakes up in the morning wondering how many young men got killed somewhere else that night. Jackson isn’t just Mississippi’s capital. It’s America’s murder capital, two years running.Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba is perfectly, painfully aware that his city has a murder problem. And he wants to do something about it.“Our residents aren’t against police,” he said. “Our residents are supportive of having more law enforcement to cover gaps and show presence. But they want a police force that is accountable to them.”But who do those police officers answer to? In a city where 83% of residents are Black and 90% of its voters are Democrats, the only person who lives there with the power to hire or fire the capitol police chief is the white Republican living south of Smith Park in the governor’s mansion. This is a democracy problem. .The response of Mississippi’s predominantly white conservative state legislators and Republican governor, Tate Reeves, to violent crime in the state capital last year was to expand the jurisdiction of the Mississippi capitol police department, a state-controlled agency. House Bill 1020 expanded the footprint of the Capitol Complex Improvement District to much of north-east Jackson, while creating a parallel court system to handle cases brought by the capitol police, bypassing the district attorney and locally elected judges.Jackson’s murder problem is real. The national homicide rate per 100,000 people in the United States was about 5.5 in 2023. Jackson’s high-water mark in 2021 was a staggering 99.5. Last year Jackson’s rate was 78.8..Though violent crime has been falling across the country, Mississippi overall had a homicide rate of 19.4 per 100,000, the highest of any state. Jackson is a fraction of that: only about one out of 20 of Mississippi’s roughly 3 million residents live in Jackson. Take Jackson’s 138 murders out of the state’s 2022 calculation, and Mississippi still has a murder rate of 14.6, about three times the national average.Poverty incubates violence. Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the country and most of Jackson’s murders are in its poorest neighborhoods.But the section of Jackson covered by the capitol police is not where you find most of Jackson’s murder problem. It is where most of Jackson’s white people live.“If it’s a notion about how we make it safer, then please justify why they are in the areas with the lowest crime?” Lumumba asks rhetorically. He surmises that it is one more extension of white conservative contempt of the state’s largest city, a Black-majority city viewed as unable to act in its own interest on how to operate a police department.“Someone from north Mississippi certainly doesn’t have a greater interest or desire for safety within our communities than we have for ourselves,” Lumumba said. “And so, it’s paternalistic. I think it is underpinned in partisanship. Also quite frankly, and honestly, it reeks of racism.”Over a chicken biscuit and coffee in middle-class north Jackson, Dr Anita DeRouen, a high school English teacher and former college professor, recounted a drive-by shooting at an empty house last year, up the street from her own in midtown.“I was outside packing up my car and I hear what sounds like three pow pow pow,” she said. The city cops responded, eventually, she said. Little came of it; no one had been hurt.Her house is just inside the footprint of the Capitol Complex Improvement District now. She has a doctorate in English and still does a thing that’s characteristic of Black people talking about race in Mississippi. Rather than refer to it directly, she points to the brown skin on the back of her hand when she means Black people.If she has to call the police now, the capitol police respond first. “What I’ve noticed is, I do see more police in my neighborhood when there’s a reason to call the police. Right? Do people feel more confident calling the police? I don’t know. I just see them around.”DeRouen’s concern about the capitol police district is about who they will police, and to whom they will be accountable.“As a person living in Jackson, I was more concerned about the court situation that came along with that. Because we elect our judges, and they weren’t going to be elected judges,” she said. “The thing that struck me about the district as a whole was that it was so carved out to protect as many white people as they can.”The police chiefs of each agency talk to each other regularly, and talk in public about trying to coordinate their efforts. A police officer responding to a call in the CCID in Jackson’s north is one fewer to answer a call in the south, after all.But Joseph Wade, chief of the Jackson police department, has found himself telling the public that his cops haven’t been replaced. “I tell the citizens all the time; we’re still going to maintain a footprint within the CCID,” he said to the Jackson city council in May. “We’re not vacating … but it gives us an opportunity to deploy our resources to higher-crime areas in Jackson.”Wade came to the job less than a year ago with a community-oriented policing strategy to address the city’s violence. He holds regular community meetings where he shares crime data and solicits feedback from the public. The city established an office of violence prevention and trauma recovery last year, which works to intercept people who are likely to commit an act of violence – or to be a victim of violence – before they add to Jackson’s statistics.The Jackson city police department fields about 275 officers. The capitol police have about 200 and are staffing up to get to 225, chief Bo Luckey said in public comments in May.Neither agency is unblemished. Even as the legislature was considering a plan to expand the authority of the capitol police, the department was under scrutiny for a series of questionable shootings. In one case, an officer fired into an apartment building while chasing a suspected car thief, shooting a woman asleep in her bed. In another, police appear to have shot through the windshield of a car, killing 25-year-old Jaylen Lewis.People around Jackson are touchy about policing right now after the revelations of the Goon Squad torture case in neighboring Rankin county. The federal investigation resulted in convictions for six white Rankin county deputies who sexually humiliated and abused two Black men, shooting one in the mouth. The trial surfaced a pattern of misconduct that still has the community reeling.Local law enforcement in Jackson bristles at any comparison between their policing and that of the Rankin sheriff’s office.Jackson police are still digging out from criticism for failing to notify Bettersten Wade that her son Dexter Wade, had been killed by an off-duty police officer and – despite having ID and her phone calls to the coroner’s office – was buried in an anonymous pauper’s grave behind the county jail. The city and county remain at odds over who should take blame; meanwhile Jackson reformed its notification processes in the wake of public scrutiny.View image in fullscreenIn comparison, two years after the Lewis shooting, Mississippi public safety officials have remained unwilling to reveal basic details about the event to Lewis’s family, citing a continuing “investigation”.State officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.The mayor noted that the city’s clearance rate for homicide investigation’s is above 70%, an indication that the public is willing to work with city police to solve crime. The national average is around 50%.Lumumba insists that the violence in Jackson is not a product of poor policing, drawing a contrast in approach with the capitol police. “But the fact that new problems surface, new interpersonal conflicts take place means that there’s a gap that we’re not filling,” he said. “And I only say that to say that this is absent in the consideration of the state, as they try to approach a safer environment for Jackson from a paternalistic standpoint. They don’t engage community.”Downtown Jackson has been losing population for a generation. You can drive long vacant stretches between buildings before finding signs of life inside. Depopulation isn’t just a Jackson problem – when you look at the list of shrinking communities in America, Mississippi towns like Greenville, Clarksdale and Vicksburg top the list, all expectations of Sun belt growth be damned. People are fleeing poverty.The emptiness creates problems for those who remain: squatters and unobserved spaces nurturing crime. Loss begets a vicious cycle.But people live in this town. Many are thriving.An hour before blues time at Hal and Mal’s, Jackson’s resident drag queen Penny Nickels was finishing up trivia night at the other end of the bar. It’s a monthly event held by Mississippi Capital City Pride. They’re worried about how the police will handle anti-queer harassment.“I’ve had protesters outside protesting, just me. I’m just one queen,” Nickels said. “I’ll be getting out of the car in the parking lot, and they will be coming out. Like they will be yelling directly after me.”The city’s Pride festival is a major event in Jackson, and has long had administrative support from the city government, said Chris Ellis, chair-elect of Mississippi Capital City Pride.“The governor vacates the premises while we’re around,” Ellis said. “I’m sure if he was there, he would ignore us, pretend we don’t exist, or outright claim that we’re, you know, degenerates, and all that good stuff.”Jackson’s LGBTQ+ activists fought for protections from bullhorn-wielding protesters during Pride, and the city responded with an ordinance limiting how amplified sound can be used in public.Alas, the capitol police do not enforce Jackson city ordinances.That complicates the coordination Jackson’s police department hopes to achieve with the capitol police. For the moment, a single 911 system handles all calls for the city, regardless of type. “When a citizen dials 911, they don’t know if it’s a city ordinance or a state law,” Wade said.The legislature anticipated this problem. Reeves vetoed a bill extending local ordinance enforcement authority to the department, because he doesn’t like the city’s politics.In a Facebook message explaining his veto, Reeves said capitol police should not be obligated to uphold local laws restricting police from pursuing immigration violations, describing Jackson as a so-called sanctuary city.“I believe, if this bill were to become law, the capitol police could not assist ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in deporting illegal aliens that live in this community,” Reeves said. “Any time or attention – from an already under-resourced police force – on dealing with city ordinances [of which there are hundreds and none of which have been contemplated, much less approved, by the state] and code enforcement is an unnecessary diversion of personnel from their mission of finding and arresting the criminals.”Reeves did sign legislation requiring any protest next to state property in Jackson to obtain the written permission of the Mississippi public safety director or the capitol police chief. That legislation has been blocked in federal court.Jackson’s annual Pride march – which is held in an area that is now covered by the CCID – is nonetheless caught between the governor and his politics, Ellis said.“We’ve always done a march around Jackson as part of our festivities every year,” Ellis said. “And we’re talking about not doing that because it’s in the purview of the capitol police.”“The reason he even stopped me was because I had my white girlfriend in the car.” Just after leaving an arraignment hearing at the Hinds county courthouse in Jackson, a Black man in his 30s nervously, described the reasons he ran from a traffic stop from a capitol police officer in an unmarked car earlier this year. As the Jacksonian talks jackrabbit fast, he’s reliving the event. He requested anonymity to help prevent reprisals.“So he profiled me. I was driving her car,” the young man said, explaining how the officer pulled him over because his girlfriend was with him.“He gets out. I just see him waving the gun.“I instantly take off, police or no police. This is supposed to be a traffic stop. I’m not wanted for anything. And I haven’t did anything. But I’ve been assaulted by the police. I’ve been beat for nothing. They were supposed to be taking me to jail, instead they put gloves on, beat me and they just dropped me off in a neighboring neighborhood.”In his recollection, Jackson city police tuned him up in an alley some years ago. But it was capitol police that went after him recently.Jackson is depressing, he said.“Corrupt politicians, corrupt government system, corrupted … everything is fucked up. The streets have potholes. There are great people, but living under these circumstances, it creates chaos. The poverty contributes to crime, There’s no resources for our kids for anything to do. You can even have a degree, but you still have to know someone. Yeah, and this is being real.“If you can make it here, you can make anywhere. But if you didn’t make it out of here, then really, it was all against you anyway.”An afternoon in a courtroom at the Hinds county courthouse will break your heart. On a random Monday in July, two dozen men and women – mostly men, almost exclusively Black men shackled together – passed before the bench.The state’s initial legislative plan called for the establishment of a parallel court system for cases brought by the capitol police, bypassing Hinds county superior court. Chief justice Michael K Randolph, a white conservative Republican, would have appointed the judge for this court. Its prosecutors would be appointed by the attorney general, Lynn Fitch, also a white conservative Republican.A fifth circuit federal court approved the basic concept in affirming the law last year. But Mississippi’s state supreme court also ruled last year that the court’s judges could not be appointed and hear felonies under the Mississippi constitution.So now the plan is for the court to be restricted to misdemeanor cases, said Hinds county superior court judge Johnnie McDaniels.“The idea was that court was created to alleviate the backlog of cases in Hinds county. But I’m not sure we have a backlog of cases in terms of misdemeanor cases,” he said. “My position has always been that the state legislature should simply fund two other circuit court judges for Hinds county, so that we can address the real backlog of the number of cases we have. We have a a number of murder cases, a number of all types of cases. And our judges work extremely hard.”Almost all of the defendants had court-appointed attorneys because they were too poor to afford private counsel. Most stood accused of relatively minor crimes. Probation violations, because they didn’t want to show up in front of a probation officer without money to pay their fines. Drug possession. Running from the cops.But four faced murder charges.Senior judge Winston Kidd said what came through court that day was fairly normal. The murder problem is real.“And I acknowledged that when [SB] 1020 came out,” he said, referring to the bill that expanded the capitol police department’s power. “I acknowledged this problem. But no one could tell us why do we need this bill? The only thing I could go back to was the fact that all four circuit judges are African American, and in no other jurisdiction in this state had they tried something of that nature.”In 2017, the Mississippi legislature created the Capitol Complex Improvement District as a vehicle to fund infrastructure issues in Jackson. The state and the city have been feuding over control of its ageing water system. Bit by bit, the state’s eye has wandered over other Jackson assets – a baseball field here, the airport over there.Jackson needs the means to alleviate long-term problems of poverty. Instead, the state looks at taking what the city has left.“I’m more than just looking over my shoulder,” Mayor Lumumba says. “I’m anticipating and expecting it … In Mississippi, we’re also dealing with not what they don’t give us right. But an effort to take what we do have away from us.” More

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      Michigan man kills himself after running over 80-year-old Trump supporter

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      A Michigan man suspected of using an all-terrain vehicle to run over an elderly man for supporting Donald Trump died by suicide as police closed in on him, according to authorities.Police in Hancock – a city located in the state’s upper peninsula – said the man in question was under investigation for allegedly running over an 80-year-old man at about 5.45pm local time on Monday.The elderly man was described as a supporter of the former president who was posting a political sign in his yard, according to police. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition with serious injuries after the man on the ATV struck him, police said.Investigators said they had identified a suspect in the case by Monday evening, and he had been linked to a total of three cases which were apparently “politically motivated”.That man later contacted officers, told them he wanted to “confess a crime involving an ATV driver within the last 24 hours” and asked to be picked up, police said in a statement. When police arrived at the scene, they found a 22-year-old man dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.The events in Hancock came a little more than a week after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a presidential campaign rally in Butler county, Pennsylvania, on 13 July. The gunman at the rally fatally shot a 50-year-old Trump supporter, former fire chief Corey Comperatore, while the former president was wounded on one of his ears.The assassination attempt prompted bipartisan condemnations of political violence, including from the vice-president, Kamala Harris, who is expected to be the Democratic nominee to face Trump in November’s presidential race after Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he would not pursue another term in the White House.On 17 July at the Air Zoo Aerospace and Science Museum in Portage, Michigan, which by car is about nine hours away from Hancock, Harris said political violence was unacceptable.“There must be unity around the idea that while our nation’s history has been scarred by political violence, violence is never acceptable,” Harris said. “There can be no equivocation about that.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“At the same time, the hallmark of American democracy, the hallmark of any democracy is a strong competition of ideas, policies and a vision for the future. And just as we must reject political violence, we must also embrace a robust discussion about what is at stake in this election.”In an statement posted on Facebook on Tuesday, Hancock police and the nearby Houghton county sheriff’s office issued their own condemnation of “violence against any political candidates”. More

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      Hundreds mourn Pennsylvania man killed in Trump assassination attempt

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      Hundreds of people who gathered to remember the former fire chief fatally shot at a weekend rally for former president Donald Trump were urged to find “unity” as the area in rural Pennsylvania sought to recover from the assassination attempt.Wednesday’s public event was the first of two to memorialize and celebrate Corey Comperatore’s life. The second, a visitation for friends, was planned for Thursday at Laube Hall in Freeport.Outside the Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, where the vigil was held for Comperatore, a sign read “Rest in Peace Corey, Thank You For Your Service” with the logo of his fire company.On the rural road to the auto racing track – lined with cornfields, churches and industrial plants – a sign outside a local credit union read: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Comperatore family.”View image in fullscreenComperatore, 50, had worked as a project and tooling engineer, was an army reservist and had spent many years as a volunteer firefighter after serving as chief, according to his obituary.He died on Saturday during the attempt on Trump’s life at the rally in Butler. Comperatore spent the final moments of his life shielding his wife and daughter from gunfire, officials said.A statement issued on Thursday by Comperatore’s family described him as “our beloved father and husband, and a friend to so many throughout the Butler region”.“Our family is finding comfort and peace through the heartfelt messages of encouragement from people around the world, through the support of our church and community, and most of all through the strength of God,” the statement said.Vigil organizer Kelly McCollough told the crowd on Wednesday that the event was not political in nature, adding that there was no room for hate or personal opinions other than an outpouring of support for the Comperatore family.“Tonight is about unity,” McCollough said. “We need each other. We need to feel love. We need to feel safe. We need clarity in this chaos. We need strength. We need healing.”Dan Ritter, who gave a eulogy, said he bought Comperatore’s childhood home in 1993, sparking a friendship that grew with their shared values of family, Christian faith and politics.“Corey loved his family and was always spending time with them,” Ritter said. “This past Saturday was supposed to be one of those days for him. He did what a good father would do. He protected those he loved. He’s a true hero for us all.”Jeff Lowers of the Freeport fire department trained with Comperatore and said at the vigil that he always had a smile on his face.Afterward, Heidi Powell, a family friend, read remarks from Comperatore’s high school economics teacher, who could not attend the vigil.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What made Corey truly extraordinary was his indomitable spirit, unyielding courage, his unflappable optimism,” the teacher, Mark Wyant, wrote.Comperatore’s pastor, Jonathan Fehl of the Cabot Methodist church, said the family “has been humbled by the way this community has rallied around them”, and by the support they have received from people around the world.The vigil concluded with people in the crowd lighting candles and raising cellphones, glow sticks and lighters as Comperatore’s favorite song – I Can Only Imagine, by the Christian rock band MercyMe – played while pictures of him and his family were shown on a screen.Two other people were injured at the rally: David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township. As of Wednesday night, both had been upgraded to serious but stable condition, according to a spokesperson with Allegheny Health Network.Joseph Feldman, an attorney for Copenhaver, said on Wednesday that he had spoken with Copenhaver by phone.“He seems to be in good spirits, but he also understands the gravity of the situation,” Feldman said. “And he’s deeply saddened about what has occurred, and he’s deeply sympathetic” to the other victims and their families.Feldman said Copenhaver suffered “life-altering injuries”, declining to go into detail. He said Copenhaver’s priority is to “keep up with the medical treatment he’s receiving and hopefully be released at some point”.In a statement, Dutch’s family thanked the “greater western Pennsylvania community and countless others across the country and world” for the incredible outpouring of prayers and well wishes.Trump suffered an ear injury but was not seriously hurt and has been participating this week in the Republican national convention in Milwaukee. More

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      Bob Menendez set to resign from Senate after bribery conviction – report

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      The Democratic US senator Bob Menendez is refuting early reports that he told allies he was considering resigning from Congress after being convicted on corruption charges.“I can tell you that I have not resigned nor have I spoken to any so-called allies … Seems to me that there is an effort to try to force me into a statement,” Menendez told CBS News late Wednesday evening.Menendez has represented New Jersey in Congress for more than 30 years, as a representative in the House from 1993 to 2006 and since then in the Senate.NBC News reported early on Wednesday Menendez was preparing to resign.A jury in New York on Monday found the 70-year-old former chair of the Senate foreign relations committee guilty of 16 federal charges, including accepting bribes of cash, gold and a luxury car from three New Jersey businessmen, and acting as an overseas agent for Egypt.Shortly after the verdicts were read, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader; Cory Booker, Menendez’s fellow New Jersey senator; and Phil Murphy, the state’s Democratic governor, had urged him to stand down.Despite months of defiance from Menendez, NBC reported he is ready to relinquish his seat, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the senator’s intentions.“In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” Schumer said in a statement.Murphy, who was among the first Democrats to call for Menendez to resign, will appoint a senator to temporarily complete Menendez’s term, which ends in January 2025.After the guilty verdict, Menendez told reporters: “I have never violated my public oath. I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country.”It was a familiar refrain from Menendez, who has taken a defiant stand ever since he was first indicted in September last year.The senator was on trial with New Jersey businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who were also convicted of all the charges they faced. All three pleaded not guilty.Another businessman pleaded guilty before trial and testified against Menendez and the other defendants.Menendez’s wife, Nadine, was also charged, although Stein announced Tuesday that her trial had been postponed indefinitely. Menendez said in May she was being treated for advanced-stage breast cancer.This article was amended on 17 July 2024. An earlier version stated that Menendez was going to resignReuters contributed reporting More

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      US senator Bob Menendez found guilty on all counts in corruption trial

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      A slew of senior Democrats demanded the resignation of US senator Bob Menendez on Tuesday after the New Jersey politico’s conviction on all counts following a nine-week federal corruption trial in New York City.A jury found the 70-year-old former chair of the Senate foreign relations committee guilty of 16 charges, including accepting bribes of cash, gold and a luxury car from three New Jersey businessmen, and acting as an overseas agent for Egypt.Shortly after the verdicts were read, the Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and Menendez’s fellow New Jersey senator Cory Booker, urged him to stand down.“In light of this guilty verdict, Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate and our country, and resign,” Schumer said in a statement.In a post on Twitter/X, Booker – also a Democrat – called the conviction “a dark, painful day for the people of New Jersey”.Alluding to how he had previously demanded Menendez’s resignation, Booker said: “I originally did so last fall because of the severity of the allegations against him and how they shook the public’s trust. Now, with this conviction, the urgency for Senator Menendez to step down and for the governor to appoint a replacement has even more urgency.”The conviction confirms the remarkable downfall of a politician who once was one of the most powerful and influential Democrats in the US. Federal district court judge Sidney Stein set a sentencing hearing for 29 October, at which Menendez faces up to 222 years in prison.Reporters in the courtroom said Menendez shook his head at the jury as the verdicts were announced, then clasped his hands in front of his face while leaning with his elbows on the defense table.According to the Associated Press, Menendez and his lawyers promised to appeal as they were leaving the courtroom.“I have never been anything but a patriot of my country and for my country,” Menendez said. “I have never, ever been a foreign agent.”Other leading Democrats echoed Schumer’s calls for Menendez to resign. The New Jersey governor Phil Murphy said in a statement he had been convicted of “brazen crimes”.“If he refuses to vacate his office, I call on the US Senate to vote to expel him,” Murphy said. “I will exercise my duty to make a temporary appointment to ensure the people of New Jersey have the representation they deserve.”Andy Kim, a New Jersey congressman chosen as the Democratic candidate for Menendez’s Senate seat in November after the incumbent said he would run as an independent, was equally scathing.“This is a sad and somber day for New Jersey and our country,” he said in a statement. “Our public servants should work for the people, and today we saw the people judge Senator Menendez as guilty and unfit to serve.“I believe the only course of action for him is to resign his seat immediately. The people of New Jersey deserve better.”Prosecutors said that Menendez abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife, through acts that included meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and helping that country access millions of dollars in US military aid.Menendez did not testify but insisted publicly he was only doing his job as the chairman of the foreign relations committee. He said 13 gold bars found in his New Jersey home during a 2022 raid by the FBI belonged to his wife, along with $500,000 in cash stuffed into jackets, a closet and safe.The conviction comes four months before election day and potentially dooms any hope Menendez had of campaigning for re-election as an independent candidate.The senator was on trial with New Jersey businessmen Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who were also convicted of all the charges they faced. All three pleaded not guilty.Another businessman pleaded guilty before trial and testified against Menendez and the other defendants.Menendez’s wife, Nadine, was also charged, although Stein announced Tuesday that her trial had been postponed indefinitely. Menendez said in May she was being treated for advanced stage breast cancer.The 2022 raid on the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home where Menendez lived with his wife, ended with FBI agents confiscating gold bars worth nearly $150,000, and cash stuffed into boots and jackets emblazoned with the senator’s name.During closing arguments last week, lawyers spent more than 15 hours urging jurors to carefully study the evidence.Prosecutors cited numerous instances when they said Menendez helped the businessmen. And they argued that his efforts to speed $99m in helicopter ammunition to Egypt, along with cozy communications with top Egyptian officials, showed he was serving Egypt’s interests as an agent.Lawyers for Menendez insisted the senator never accepted bribes and that actions he took to benefit the businessmen were the kinds of tasks expected of a public official. They said he was simply carrying out foreign responsibilities expected in his role as senate foreign relations chairman, a post he was forced to relinquish after charges were brought.Menendez filed in June for re-election as an independent candidate but announced he would continue to support the Democratic party if he won. It was unclear on Tuesday if he would continue his campaign.Congressman Ruben Gallego, who is running for a US senate seat in Arizona, joined calls for Menendez to resign.“Given today’s guilty verdict, it is clear that Senator Bob Menendez must do what is right and resign. His constituents and this country both deserve better,” Gallego said in a statement.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Trump rally shooting: what we know about the suspected gunman

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      The early portrait that has emerged of the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who authorities say tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a campaign rally in the state on Saturday before secret service agents shot him to death is a complicated and so far sparse one.Thomas Matthew Crooks resided in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white, generally affluent suburb of Pittsburgh. Public records show he shared a home with parents who were licensed behavioral care counselors. Those same records contain no mention of any criminal or traffic citations – as well as any financial problems such as foreclosures.Actions that Crooks took late in his time as a student at Bethel Park high school offered virtually no hint of his political leanings. He was a junior at the school, and it was the first day of Joe Biden’s presidency, when Crooks donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a political action committee aligned with the president’s Democratic party. Public records show his father is a registered Republican and his mother a registered Democrat.Yet eight months later, early in his senior year, Crooks registered to vote as a member of the Republican party, led by Trump since 2016. And he had left his affiliation unchanged when he voted in the November 2022 midterm elections, which took place months after he graduated from Bethel Park high, where he was among a group of students to receive a $500 National Math and Science Initiative “star award”.A former classmate of Crooks’ said he had not shown any particular interest in politics in high school, but they would discuss computers and games. “He was super smart. That’s what really kind of threw me off was, this was, like, a really, really smart kid, like he excelled,” the classmate told Reuters. “Nothing crazy ever came up in any conversation.”Another young man who described himself as a former schoolmate of Crooks at Bethel Park high school spoke with reporters Sunday, recalling how his ex-companion “was bullied almost every day” on campus.The man told NBC News and other outlets that Crooks’ penchant for wearing “hunting” and “military” clothes – and eating alone at lunch – drew derision from his peers, who considered him a “loner” and an “outcast”.“You know how kids are these days – they’re going to see someone like that and they’re going to target him because they think it’s funny or whatever,” the man said to journalists.While the man made clear he wasn’t saying any of those experiences fueled Saturday’s assassination attempt, he added: “It’s honestly kind of sad … He was bullied so much.”ABC News reported that two former classmates of Crooks told the outlet that he was rejected from their school’s rifle club because he wasn’t a very skilled shot. School officials had not immediately confirmed those recollections.Crooks reportedly had an account on Discord, an online chat app that began as a space for gamers but gained notoriety in part because the white supremacist who fatally shot 10 people at grocery in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo posted on the platform about his plans to attack the store.Discord told the gaming news outlet Kotaku that the account that appeared to be linked to Crooks “was rarely utilized”.“We have no evidence that it was used to plan this incident or discuss his political views,” said the company’s statement to Kotaku. In addition to pledging to cooperate with law enforcement, the statement continued: “Discord strongly condemns violence of any kind, including political violence.”Crooks thrust himself into the center of the political world on Saturday when he went about an hour north of Bethel Park and got atop the roof of a bottle manufacturing plant in Butler county, Pennsylvania. Nearby, the former US president was speaking at a supporters’ rally as he pursues a return to the White House in November.Multiple people who were listening to Trump’s speech outside the rally venue said they spotted Crooks as he brought an AR-style rifle to the plant rooftop and took aim in the direction of the former president. But they said officers did not immediately react to their warnings – assertions that prompted the local district attorney, Richard Goldinger, to tell CNN that it was urgent for investigators to figure out how Crooks “would’ve gotten to the location where he was”.Crooks ultimately managed to fire several shots toward the stage where Trump was speaking, which was less than 500ft away (152.4 meters) away. One spectator was killed, and two others were critically wounded. Trump reported that a bullet “pierced the upper part” of his right ear, which was visibly bloodied – but he was otherwise “fine”, he said after Secret Service agents whisked him away from the scene.Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Secret Service said, agents returned fire at Crooks and killed him.View image in fullscreenABC News cited multiple law enforcement sources who told the outlet that the rifle the gunman fired on Saturday had been purchased legally by the suspect’s father, Matthew Crooks. Investigators arrived at that conclusion after the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms conducted an urgent trace on the weapon, according to the network.Separately, the Associated Press reported that authorities had discovered bomb-making materials in Crooks’ home and car, which was parked near the site of Saturday’s Trump rally.The Wall Street Journal added that police received multiple reports of suspicious packages near where Crooks was, prompting officials to dispatch bomb technicians.Graphic pictures of the scene circulating on social media showed Crooks had been clad in a T-shirt branded with the name of a YouTube channel dedicated to providing content on guns and demolition.Late Saturday, the channel’s host reposted a picture on Instagram of law enforcement officers standing over Crooks’ body – with part of the T-shirt’s wording visible – and wrote: “What the hell”.The FBI identified Crooks as Trump’s would-be assassin late on Saturday. On Sunday, the bureau said all available information suggested Crooks “acted alone” and there were no immediate “public safety concerns” about a larger plot.The FBI said it had not yet uncovered a motive for the apparent assassination attempt, or whether Crooks adhered to any specific ideologies. Crooks’ social media profile does not contain threatening language, authorities said on Sunday. Investigators have not found evidence of mental health issues.FBI officials told the AP that Crooks’ family was cooperating with their investigation – part of which also hoped to determine how he took the rifle he fired Saturday.Bethel Park skilled nursing and rehabilitation center, where Crooks was employed as a dietary aide, said it was “shocked and saddened” to hear he was responsible for Saturday’s shooting.“His background check was clean,” said a statement from the facility, which also condemned “all acts of violence”. More

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      Trump lawyers press judge to overturn hush-money conviction after supreme court immunity ruling

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers are imploring a New York judge to overturn his hush-money conviction and dismiss the case, arguing his historic trial was “tainted” by evidence that shouldn’t have been allowed because of the US supreme court’s recent presidential immunity ruling.In a court filing dated 10 July but made public on Thursday, defense lawyers said the guilty verdict in the first-ever criminal trial of a US president should be set aside.“The use of official-acts evidence was a structural error under the federal Constitution,” wrote defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove. “The jury’s verdicts must be vacated.”The supreme court released its immunity decision on 1 July, giving broad protections to presidents and insulating them from prosecution for official acts. It also said evidence of a president’s official acts cannot be used in a prosecution on private matters. The supreme court did not define what constitutes an official act, leaving that to lower courts.Trump’s defense lawyers said that meant the Manhattan jury’s verdict could not stand. Hours after the supreme court ruling, Trump’s team wrote a letter to the trial judge, Juan Merchan, asking him to set aside the verdict and to delay Trump’s sentencing, due to take place in July. Merchan agreed to delay Trump’s sentencing by two months.A spokesperson for Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office declined to comment on Thursday. Prosecutors have until 24 July to respond. They have previously called Trump’s arguments meritless but agreed to push back the sentencing.Legal experts said Trump faces steep odds of getting the hush-money conviction overturned, since much of the case involves conduct before his presidency and the evidence from his time in the White House has more to do with private conduct.The supreme court’s ruling stemmed from a separate case Trump faces on federal charges involving his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. It all but ensured Trump would not face trial in that case before the November election.Trump’s lawyers are also seeking a pause in a third criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents due to the ruling. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.In the hush-money case, Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up his former lawyer Michael Cohen’s $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to remain quiet about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump. Prosecutors say the payment was designed to boost his presidential campaign in 2016. Trump denies having had sex with Daniels and has vowed to appeal after his sentencing.Trump lawyers argue that jurors shouldn’t have been allowed to hear about some matters including his conversations with then White House communications director Hope Hicks, testimony from another aide about how Trump got personal mail in the Oval Office, and tweets that he sent while president. Some of the checks and invoices at issue in the case were also from his time as president.Merchan has said he will decide on Trump’s arguments by 6 September. If the conviction is upheld, Trump will be sentenced on 18 September –less than seven weeks before the election. More