Category Archives: Fifth Amendment

Within our constitutional framework, property rights have been relegated to second-class citizenship.

Take the Supreme Courts double-standard on the Fifth Amendments prohibition against the government taking private property unless its for public use. For alleged infringements of other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the Court strictly scrutinizes government action. But with the Fifth Amendments property protections, the Court allows legislatures to interpret their own constitutional boundaries. If only property rights are at stake, then the fox may guard the henhouse.

Or consider the Courts amorphous review for substantive due process, a values-based inquiry into the constitutional legitimacy of state and federal regulatory laws. On this score, the Court candidly concedes that property rights and contractual freedoms enjoy less protection than other, non-economic liberties.

In his new book Property and the Pursuit of Happiness: Locke, the Declaration of Independence, Madison, and the Challenge of the Administrative State, Edward Erler shows how constitutional property rights climbed through the looking glass and came out topsy-turvy. From Americas founding era to the present day, property rights flipped from cachet to low-caste, and whats supposed to be up, well, is down.

Erler is a professor of political philosophy, so its unsurprising this books foremost contribution is its discussion of the vital role property rights played in the Framers constitutional vision. Tracing an arc of political thought from Aristotle through Locke on to the Declaration of Independence, Erler argues that the Founding Fathers put an inherently American gloss on pre-existing conceptions of property one that merged natural rights and moral obligation into a synthesis they called the pursuit of happiness.

For the Founders, the right to property was the comprehensive right that included all other rights. In this spirit, the Supreme Court in 1795 averred that the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Erler explains the decline of property rights from these sanctified heights. As the economy advanced and governments grew, vested property interests came increasingly into conflict with public policy, and it fell to the courts to demarcate the boundaries between public and private spheres.

For much of our nations history, as courts wrestled with these controversies, they hewed to an understanding of property rights closer the Framers than what we see today. The practical result was that property rights enjoyed considerable constitutional protection from overbearing government.

But the scales of justice shifted early in the twentieth century, when the Progressive forces of history swept first into legislatures and then into the courts. Progressives rejected the Founders conception of property rights because it impeded the science of economic planning. As Progressive influence waxed, property rights waned.

Although Property and the Pursuit of Happiness overlaps in subject and tone with Richard Epsteins excellent 2008 book, Supreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property, the two books are complementary but not the same. Discussion of the Founding Fathers is largely absent from the latterarguably the only flaw in Epsteins seminal workand this topic is Erlers strongest contribution.

This is not to say that Property and the Pursuit of Happiness is flawless. In the introduction, Erler warns that he test[s] the patience of the reader on some occasions, and hes not lying. The book is needlessly difficult. Relatedly, he peppers his prose with awkward sentence introductions (e.g., In a statement that is not entirely hyperbolic . . .). Further, the books subtitle, which mentions the Challenge of the Administrative State, engages in a bit of false advertising, as Erler gives the topic only a cursory examination.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, Property and the Pursuit of Happiness is an important contribution to a growing body of scholarship pushing for a restoration of property rights to their original place among our individual freedomsparticularly with respect to the Fifth Amendments Takings Clause.

The good news is that these ideas are taking root. To wit, the Trump administration is reshaping the federal judiciary with a generation of judges affected by Richard Epsteins work. On the other side of the bar, dogged public interest lawyersmost notably those at the Pacific Legal Foundationhave advanced property rights in courts across the country. After decades, all this effort is paying off.

Consider the blowback to the Supreme Courts infamous holding 15 years ago in Kelo v. City of New London, which allows government to condemn peoples homes and give their land to a corporation in the name of economic development. As Ilya Somin explains in his book The Grasping Hand, many state courts reacted to Kelo by tightening restrictions on the use of eminent domain.

Last Summer, the Court handed down a watershed decision in Knick v. Township of Scott, which basically puts property rights (and Fifth Amendment takings claims, specifically) on the same procedural footing as other guarantees enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The Courts newest members, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, joined Chief Justice John Robertss Knick opinion. The holding is a bold step towards ending the inequality of our constitutional rights.

None of these welcome developments would have happened absent the toils of scholars and practitioners who laid the foundations for a resurgence of property rights. With Property and the Pursuit of Happiness, Erler adds a valuable voice to this worthy cause.

William Yeatman is a research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

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Recovering A Strong American Conception Of Property Rights - The Federalist

Julio Carrillo invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when called to testify Friday in the murder trial of his wife.Sharon Carrillo is charged with murder in the death of her 10-year-old daughter Marissa Kennedy.Julio Carrillo is serving 55 years in prison after pleaded guilty to killing the girl.Sharon Carrillo's father and stepmother also took the stand Friday morning as the defense continued to present its case. Prosecutors rested on Thursday.Roseanne Kennedy, Sharon Carrillos stepmother, testified that her stepdaughter didn't say her first word until she was nearly 5 years old and was diagnosed with learning disabilities.The defense has argued that Sharon Carrillo has limited mental capacity.Roseanne Kennedy said Julio Carrillo had Sharon Carrillo and Marissa Kennedy under his control, with both seeking his approval before doing anything.Kennedy went on to say Sharon Carrillo lost her identity and turned into a robot because of Julio Carrillo.

Julio Carrillo invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when called to testify Friday in the murder trial of his wife.

Sharon Carrillo is charged with murder in the death of her 10-year-old daughter Marissa Kennedy.

Julio Carrillo is serving 55 years in prison after pleaded guilty to killing the girl.

Sharon Carrillo's father and stepmother also took the stand Friday morning as the defense continued to present its case. Prosecutors rested on Thursday.

Roseanne Kennedy, Sharon Carrillos stepmother, testified that her stepdaughter didn't say her first word until she was nearly 5 years old and was diagnosed with learning disabilities.

The defense has argued that Sharon Carrillo has limited mental capacity.

Roseanne Kennedy said Julio Carrillo had Sharon Carrillo and Marissa Kennedy under his control, with both seeking his approval before doing anything.

Kennedy went on to say Sharon Carrillo lost her identity and turned into a robot because of Julio Carrillo.

Read more:
Julio Carrillo pleads 5th when called to testify in wife's murder trial - WMTW Portland

A US Army veteran became the first in Florida to be charged with defying the states newly adopted red flag law after he refused to turn in his firearms, including an AR-15.

Jerron Smith, 33, who is suspected of shooting at his friends car, was found guilty by a jury in Broward County in southeastern Florida last Friday, December 6, in less than an hour.

Judge Ernest Kollra ordered a pre-sentencing investigation for Smith who faces up to five years in prison.

Floridas new red flag law came into effect in the wake of the shooting tragedy in a high school in Parkland in February 2018 in which 17 people lost their lives.

It was just after a month after the horrific incident that Smiths weapons were confiscated by the deputies after a shooting took place outside his residence in Deerfield Beach.

Smith was accused of repeatedly firing at his best friends car during an argument over a cellphone on March 28 night. The police came to his house to seize off all the weapons and other items under a Risk Protection Order. They had found several magazines stocked in his bedroom.

According to a criminal complaint filed against Smith, it was said that he had shot at least half a dozen times at the vehicle of Jackson Levon while he was inside it.

Under Floridas red flag law, authorities with the backing of the judge can seek to remove weapons from people who are perceived as threats to themselves and others. Apart from Florida, 14 other states have such laws.

Smith told the jury that he was unaware of the legal requirements when the deputies came to his house. He repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, believing that the police could not search his home without showing a warrant or his consent.

According to a report in the local Sun-Sentinel, Smith's lawyer could not present a convincing argument that his client did not fully understand the new law. The date for Smiths sentencing is yet to be decided.

The Sun-Sentinel also said in a report in September that guns have been taken from 2,0000 residents of the state in a year-and-half since the new law was passed.

But figures showed that South Florida, which includes places like Broward County where mass shootings are not rare, has not been as agile in implementing the new law like most other big counties.

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Army veteran who refused to give up firearms citing Fifth Amendment found guilty of defying Florida's new 'red flag' law - MEAWW

In this Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019 photo, a campaign poster for Seattle City Council incumbent ... [+] candidate Kshama Sawant is posted outside her campaign headquarters in Seattle. Seven of the nine Seattle City Council seats are up for grabs in next month's election, where retail giant Amazon has made unprecedented donations totaling $1.5 million to a political action committee that's supporting a slate of candidates perceived to be friendlier to business. Among the company's top targets is Sawant, a fierce critic of Amazon, who is running against Egan Orion in the District 3 race. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Ive spoken and written often in the last year or so about the steady, persistent, and insidious efforts underway across the country to erode the business of private rental property. That last sentence sounds like I am a conspiracy theorist, pushing a narrative that someday private rental property wont exist and the only place to rent an apartment will be from the government or non-profits. Sometimes I doubt it myself until I see things like the request from Seattles Renters Commission to ban evictions during the winter.

But wait a minute. Wouldnt banning evictions be a compassionate thing to do? The Commission says in its letter,

During winter in Seattle, temperatures regularly fall into the 30s overnight and, according to All Home King Countys Count Us In report for 2019, forty-one percent of homeless neighbors sleep outside every night with an additional nineteen percent sleeping in vehicles.

The Commission cites a French example, the Trve hivernale, or winter truce which bans evictions from November 1 through April 1 every year. But think about that for a moment. That would mean evictions would be banned for almost half the year. And the Commissions letter leads anyone reading to ask, well, why do we allow evictions at all since cold is just one of a myriad of bad things a person faces when they sleep outside.

Lets go back to what I call the slow, steady, and insidious nature of efforts to decommodify housing in the United States. I wrote about a book, In Defense of Housing, that suggests housing should not be bought and sold. In essence, the argument that housing is a human right, makes buying and selling housing like buying and selling bandages at the scene of accident, immoral and exploitative. Is the Commission and other advocates of these sorts of measures really urging compassion or something else.

Consider the fact that actual removals from multifamily housing in Seattle are very infrequent, so infrequent that they barely register on the dashboard of housing problems.

Not very many households end up evicted in Seattle

Out of the thousands of units of rental households less than 1 percent in 2017 had an eviction action filed and even fewer, just under 600 were actually removed. If we just divide that number by 12 and multiply by 5 for the winter months, we get just 243 actual evictions. How many of those households end up forced to sleep outside? We have no idea because the City nor anyone else actually tracks what happens to households once they are removed. You can read a full response to the supposed eviction epidemic in Seattle in the Losing Perspective response.

What happens in France is that eviction season begins in April, and all the evictions in the country are simply stayed until that date and then the removals begin. Also, in France there are exception for people who have a place to go, including shelters and other housing options. France also provides insurance for lost rent during the period.

In a letter I sent to the City I point out that if the Commission is truly interested in addressing this issue with compassion, they could provide $1000 a month for housing for 250 households who might be removed over a five month period at a cost of about $1,250,000. Or they might consider asking Amazon, a local company that just spent $1,500,000 on trying to oust the citys socialist Councilmember, Kshama Sawant to pay for this assistance. Amazons efficiency in delivering products to doorsteps all over the planet is inversely matched by their clumsy efforts at doing politics; they also barged into a local battle over evictions and ended up having to back off their support. Sawant, of course, supports the winter ban on evictions.

Whats happening here is not compassion but a power and property grab. Once such a moratorium is in place, why not just keep it in place forever. Im sure the same people that wrote the letter would nod their heads at that idea. The logical conclusion of banning screening of tenants (including credit checks in Minneapolis), controlling what can be collected in rent, and then banning evictions is exactly the outcome I am cautioning against in the opening paragraph: the end of private rentals.

There is also one little stumbling block, though, on our way to the socialist paradise: the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment doesnt allow the taking of private property without due process and compensation. But Im sure we can just put a moratorium on that too.

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Seattle Eviction Ban: Are We Headed To The End Of Private Property Rentals? - Forbes

Rep. Chris Stewart, (R., Utah), before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Nov. 19, 2019.(Jacquelyn Martin/Reuters Pool)

Laws protecting religious liberty are superfluous. Sometimes theyre worse.

That includes legislation unveiled Friday by Utah representative Chris Stewart (R.), which, according to The Hill, protects LGBTQ+ individuals from discrimination while allowing religious exemptions for organizations to act on their beliefs.

The very construction of that sentence grates against reason. A bill whose goal is to protect LGBTQ+ individuals that also offers exemptions to religious institutions has it completely backwards. Religious Americans arent obligated to ask for state exemptions to practice their faith any more than journalists are obligated to ask for state exemptions to practice free speech.

Stewart argues that his legislation is a way to bridge the gap between outlawing discrimination and allowing protected religious freedoms. Thats not a gap that needs bridging. We dont pass laws bridging the gap between the Fifth Amendment and how we prosecute criminality. Religious liberty is a right protected under the Constitution, anti-discrimination laws are predominately passed by state legislatures, and the courts exist to work out any conflicts between the two.

If anything, religious institutions most need protection from lawmakers. Its the state, after all, that wants to compel Catholics to perform abortions. Its the state that wants to coerce business owners to participate in gay weddings. Its the state that wants to force nuns to buy abortifacients.

If religious Americans are going to negotiate over legislation to preserve rights, theyre going to lose. The plus sign in LGBTQ+ promises an open-ended procession of new aggrieved groups pleading for special protections, while those of orthodox faiths, shrinking in number, will be left to beg for absolution from politicians beholden to the majority.

Probably in an attempt to refresh its image, the Mormon Church is an advocate of the Stewart bill which, admittedly, is more a PR effort than anything else. Utah also recently banned conversion therapy quackery for minors. (Though, it did not ban abusive reassignment surgery and hormone treatment for minors, and nor did any other state. This is another sign of the asymmetry of the debate. Politicians fear the LGBTQ+ activist far more than their bishop. And Orthodox Christians have little reason to trust that such people will protect religious liberty.)

I also once believed that RFRA laws were vital in protecting rights. But they, like all other laws, are easily hijacked, whittled away, and misused. Worse, such laws tend to create the impression that Americans have some obligation to ask their politicians for permission. They do not.

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Americans Dont Have to Ask Government for Permission to Practice Their Faith - National Review

Chris Eisgruber '83, Maria De La Cruz Perales Sanchez '18, and Brad Smith '81 speak to reporters outside of the U.S. Supreme Court.

After almost two decades of changing policy and political back and forth, America's DREAMers now await a Supreme Court decision with the power to cement their futures.

This upcoming decision was sparked in part by a case filed jointly in November of 2017 by the University, Microsoft, and Maria Perales Sanchez 18. Initially heard in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the federal lawsuit argues that the decision to rescind DACA was out of step with the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and violated DACA recipients' due process rights under the Fifth Amendment.

The University's lawsuit has prompted a flood of corporate and educational institutions to mount similar challenges. This wave of private sector forays into legal activism, given the historical role of organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement Of Colored People (NAACP), represents a new force in the American legal landscape.

The University's impetus to file this suit was explained by University President Christopher Eisgruber 83 in a statement to The Daily Princetonian.

"We filed this suit because we thought that, together with Microsoft and our courageous alumna Maria Perales Sanchez 18, we could provide a distinctive perspective that might influence the ultimate outcome of the litigation about DACA, Eisgruber wrote.

Despite a lack of political traction over the years, exemplified in former President Barack Obama's inability to pass the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act and his subsequent resort to executive orders, research has found that public support of protections for undocumented childhood arrivals is substantial across the nation. In 2018, Pew Research found that 73 percent of Americans favor legal status for childhood arrivals, including a majority of GOP voters.

In providing justification for their decision, the Trump Administration has primarily sold the move as an act to limit overreach by future executives.

"If the Supreme Court upholds DACA, it gives the President extraordinary powers, far greater than ever thought," President Donald Trump tweeted on Oct. 9.

A broad consensus indicates that this case, regardless of the outcome, will have a massive impact on the futures of America's almost 700,000 recipients of the 2012 DACA protections and estimated million more who never joined the program in the first place.

The three primary outcomes, according to Vox reporter Ian Millhiser, would create vastly different immigration policy ecosystems and may have long-standing implications on future presidents use of the executive order.

In the first scenario, the Court would render a decision much in line with the previous two rulings by the District Courts essentially rejecting the Administration's justifications for ending the program, claiming a lack of sound policy justification. As a result, the program would by default reopen to those eligible, but in this scenario the Administration is able to reinstate its policy after providing some policy justification. This outcome would thus only represent a technical and temporary win for DACA activists.

The second scenario is likewise a technical and narrow ruling, but one which would keep the current policy directive in place. Either by affirming the Administration's legal and policy justifications or by finding the question outside of the purview of the Court, this verdict would allow the Administration to rescind DACA.

The final scenario is an addition to the second. The court could also deliberate on the fundamental legality of DACA. Here, as the court finds the issue within its purview, it could affirm the legal arguments of the Administration and determine DACA to be legally void. Given this, future executive action on this issue would be deemed dead on arrival.

Eisgruber, when asked his prediction of the outcome based on the oral arguments he attended early this November, presented a reserved yet optimistic opinion.

"My year as a Supreme Court law clerk taught me that oral argument is often an unreliable indicator of the Courts eventual judgment. I am optimistic because I believe that our legal argument, which twice prevailed in the district court, is sound," he wrote.

Missing from the list of Millhisers possible outcomes is a sweeping judicial endorsement of the DACA program. That power lies with a different governmental branch altogether.

"The DREAMers need a path to citizenship, and only Congress can provide that. We will accordingly continue to urge Congress to enact a permanent legislative solution, regardless of what the Court decides in this case," Eisgruber wrote.

The National Immigration Law Center, based on its experience with the Supreme Court, expects a decision by June 2020 at the latest.

Originally posted here:
Looking back at the University's DACA lawsuit - The Daily Princetonian

WASHINGTON When certain associates and acquaintances of President Donald Trump get into hot water, he forgets he ever knew them. Various figures from the Russia investigation and the Ukraine matter as well as a British prince have fallen out of familiarity with the president in this way.

For a few days, the stock market suffered a similar fate when it dipped too low for Trump to boast about it. But he rediscovered the market by the end of the week when it rose back up.

A look at some remarks by Trump from the NATO summit in London and from back home as the Democratic effort to impeach him moves ahead:

PRINCE ANDREW

TRUMP: "I don't know Prince Andrew. ... I don't know him." remarks Tuesday with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

THE FACTS: Trump knows the British prince. Andrew hosted a breakfast for him in June, they toured Westminster Abbey together and photos spread over two decades capture some occasions when they've met. The prince stepped back from royal duties after his involvement with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was exposed.

Trump also recently declared, repeatedly, that he did not know Gordon Sondland, his ambassador to the EU, "very well" and "I have not spoken to him much." Sondland provided some of the most damning testimony in the House impeachment inquiry about how he had tried to carry out Trump's wishes to persuade Ukraine to investigate the president's political rivals in the U.S.

Sondland testified that he's had many conversations with Trump, who called the ambassador "a really good man and great American" before Sondland's problematic testimony.

Several people in prominent positions in the Trump campaign or known as close advisers were similarly marginalized as mere volunteers, hangers-on or low-level functionaries when it became troublesome during the Russia investigation to acknowledge their stature.

___

STOCK MARKET

TRUMP: "If the stock market goes up or down I don't watch the stock market. I watch jobs." remarks Tuesday during NATO summit after stocks fell sharply.

THE FACTS: This is not true. Trump watches the stock market, as he demonstrated Friday when the market rebounded and he tweeted precise percentages of how much the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq have gone up this year. "Stock Markets Up Record Numbers," he tweeted.

Trump uses the stock market as a leading barometer of his presidency, giving the subject a rest only when the market's performance is down.

It's an almost constant companion, through thick but not thin.

On a good day, he will tweet about it. Otherwise, his rally speeches and White House remarks are laced with references to the market's growth since he became president. He takes credit for gains and blames losses on other things, like Democrats.

Trump tweeted about the stock market more than a dozen times in November as it repeatedly edged into record highs.

On one occasion, his boastfulness became too much even for him. He tweeted: "Stock Markets (all three) hit another ALL TIME & HISTORIC HIGH yesterday! You are sooo lucky to have me as your President." Then he added: "(just kidding!)."

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MACRON

TRUMP, on French President Emmanuel Macron's assertion that NATO is suffering "brain death": "He's taken back his comments very much so on NATO." remarks Wednesday in London.

THE FACTS: No, Macron did not back off what Trump had called a "very, very nasty" statement about NATO. He conspicuously stood by it, before the summit, after it and when face to face with Trump in a tense joint news conference. If anything, Macron appeared to relish the provocation he had brought on.

"I do stand by it," he said Tuesday as Trump looked on. "I assume full responsibility for it," he said Wednesday. And Macron tweeted: "The comments I made about NATO prompted a debate among members of the alliance. This dialogue is a very good thing." He likened himself to an ice-breaker smashing through ice.

Macron characterized NATO as brain dead last month, citing a lack of U.S. leadership and confusion in the alliance about what its fundamental missions should be. He said the U.S. was turning its back on NATO and in light of Trump's unexpected announcement in October that he would withdraw troops from Syria not coordinating with allies on strategic decision-making.

On Wednesday, Macron mildly praised the summit as "constructive" while emphasizing that the fundamentals that sparked his complaint had not been resolved.

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OCEAN DEBRIS

TRUMP: "I also see what's happening with our oceans, where certain countries are dumping unlimited loads of things in it. They float they tend to float toward the United States. I see that happening, and nobody has ever seen anything like it, and it's gotten worse."' remarks Tuesday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

THE FACTS: He's right that garbage from abroad has come to U.S. shores by sea. What he does not say, when making this repeated complaint, is that garbage from the U.S. also makes it over the ocean to other countries and that Americans have plenty to do with trashing their own shores.

Debris from Asia was most noticeable after the 2011 Japanese tsunami, said marine debris expert Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association, "but the same can be said about debris entering the ocean from the U.S. and washing ashore in Asia." In fact, she said, most debris is not tracked to the country of origin.

The United States produces the largest amount of plastic waste in the world by weight, Law said.

"Most debris we find on the coast of the US is likely from the US," Denise Hardesty, a scientist who researches ocean trash for Australia's federal science organization, said by email.

Hardesty surveyed the U.S. West Coast from Washington to the California border with Mexico and found the dirtiest place was in Long Beach at the river mouth, where researchers found 4,500 items.

Marcus Eriksen, chief science officer and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, which fights plastics pollution, said Asian fishing gear arrives as debris in Alaska and British Columbia because of north Pacific currents, a problem exacerbated by the lack of regulation of such gear. But in pointing the finger at Asia, Trump is ignoring "our own problems with plastic waste here at home."

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IMPEACHMENT

TRUMP: "The word 'impeachment' is a dirty word, and it's a word that was only supposed to be used in special occasions: high crimes and misdemeanors. In this case, there was no crime whatsoever. Not even a little tiny crime. There was no crime whatsoever, and they know it. " remarks Wednesday with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.

THE FACTS: That's a misrepresentation of the conditions for impeaching a president. The constitutional grounds for impeachment do not require any crime to have been committed. In setting the conditions, treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors, the Founding Fathers said that a consequential abuse of office crime or not was subject to the impeachment process they laid out.

Months after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers that a commonly understood crime need not be the basis of impeachment. Offenses qualifying for that step "are of a nature ... POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself," he wrote.

As they move toward drafting articles of impeachment, though, Democrats are alleging crimes involving obstruction of justice as part of their case that Trump abused his office.

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TRUMP, on his July 25 call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy: "All you have to do is listen to the call or read the call. We had it transcribed perfectly. But he was he said no pressure, no nothing. There was no nothing." remarks Wednesday with Conte.

TRUMP: "Breaking News: The President of Ukraine has just again announced that President Trump has done nothing wrong with respect to Ukraine and our interactions or calls ... case over!" tweet Monday.

THE FACTS: Trump misleads in suggesting that Zelenskiy didn't have any concerns about the call. Nor was the call "transcribed perfectly;" only a rough transcript was released by the White House.

While Zelenskiy initially said there was no discussion of a quid pro quo, he said in an interview Monday with Time that Trump should not have blocked military aid to Ukraine. Zelenskiy also criticized Trump for casting the country as corrupt, saying it sends a concerning message to international allies.

On that call discussing military aid, Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Trump's political rivals in the U.S.

"Look I never talked to the president from the position of a quid pro quo," Zelenskiy said. "But you have to understand. We're at war. If you're our strategic partner, then you can't go blocking anything for us. I think that's just about fairness."

On corruption, Zelenskiy said it unfairly undermines support for the country.

"Everyone hears that signal," he said. "Investments, banks, stakeholders, companies, American, European, companies that have international capital in Ukraine, it's a signal to them that says, 'Be careful, don't invest.' Or, 'Get out of there.'"

It's true that in early October, Zelenskiy had told reporters "there was no pressure or blackmail from the U.S." But he did not state Trump had done "nothing" wrong, even as he let his criticisms simmer before surfacing them.

In any event, Zelenskiy knew months before the call that much-needed U.S. military support might depend on whether he was willing to help Trump by investigating Democrats.

___

TRUMP: "For the hearings, we don't get a lawyer." remarks Tuesday with Trudeau.

THE FACTS: Trump is wrong about being deprived of an attorney in the House Judiciary Committee hearings. The committee invited Trump and his lawyers to appear if he wishes, but the White House refused.

In a letter early in the week to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., White House counsel Pat Cipollone declined the invitation for the president's counsel to appear at Wednesday's hearing while Trump was at the NATO summit, insisting that the inquiry violates "basic due process rights."

For hearings in the coming week, Trump had until Friday to decide whether he would take advantage of due process protections afforded to him under House rules adopted in October. He was offered an opportunity to ask for witness testimony and to cross-examine the witnesses called by the House. But he decided not to participate in that round, too.

If the House impeaches Trump, the Senate trial will look like a normal trial in some respects, with senators as the jury. Arguments would be heard from each side's legal team for and against Trump's removal from office.

The Intelligence Committee hearings, in contrast, were like the investigative phase of criminal cases, conducted without the participation of the person under investigation.

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RONNA MCDANIEL, Republican National Committee chairwoman, on Democrats who said the Russia investigation should be part of the basis for impeaching Trump, not just his actions with Ukraine: "Are you kidding me? They lied for 2 years about collusion & POTUS was exonerated." tweet Thursday, using POTUS as an abbreviation of president of the U.S.

THE FACTS: She's wrong to suggest that special counsel Robert Mueller's report cleared the Trump campaign of collusion with Russia. Nor did the report exonerate Trump on the question of whether he obstructed justice.

Instead, the report factually laid out instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, leaving it open for Congress to take up the matter or for prosecutors to do so once Trump leaves office.

Mueller's two-year investigation and other scrutiny revealed a multitude of meetings with Russians. Among them: Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt on Clinton.

On collusion, Mueller said he did not assess whether that occurred because it is not a legal term.

He looked into a potential criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign and said the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence to establish criminal charges on that front.

Mueller noted some Trump campaign officials had declined to testify under the Fifth Amendment or had provided false or incomplete testimony, making it difficult to get a complete picture of what happened during the 2016 campaign. The special counsel wrote that he "cannot rule out the possibility" that unavailable information could have cast a different light on the investigation's findings.

Mueller also did not reach a conclusion as to whether the president obstructed justice or broke any other law.

He said his team declined to make a prosecutorial judgment on whether to charge Trump, partly because of a Justice Department legal opinion that said sitting presidents shouldn't be indicted.

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TRADE

TRUMP: "We won, in the World Trade Organization, we won seven and a half billion dollars. We never used to win before me, because, before me, the United States was a sucker for all of these different organizations." remarks Tuesday with Stoltenberg.

THE FACTS: He is wildly wrong to state that the U.S. never won victories in disputes taken to the trade organization before him.

The U.S. has always had a high success rate when it pursues cases against other countries at the WTO. In 2017, trade analyst Daniel Ikenson of the libertarian Cato Institute found that the U.S. won 91% of the cases it took to the Geneva-based trade monitor.

As Ikenson noted, countries bringing complaints to the organization tend to win because they don't bother going to the WTO in the first place if they don't have a strong case.

As for Trump's claim that the U.S. "won" $7.5 billion from the WTO, that's not quite right.

Trump was referring to a WTO decision in October siding with the U.S. on imposing tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of European imports annually. The value of the tariffs on those imports is much less than $7.5 billion.

The WTO announcement culminated a 15-year fight over EU subsidies for Airbus a fight that began long before Trump was in office.

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ISLAMIC STATE

TRUMP: "We have a tremendous amount of captured fighters, ISIS fighters over in Syria. And, they're all under lock and key, but many are from France, many are from Germany. Many are from U.K. They are mostly from Europe." remarks Tuesday with Macron.

MACRON: There are "very large number of fighters ... ISIS fighters coming from Syria, from Iraq and the region." Those from Europe are "a tiny minority of the overall problem."

THE FACTS: Trump is incorrect to say the Islamic State fighters who were captured and held by the Kurds in Syria are mostly from Europe.

Of the more than 12,000 IS fighters in custody in Kurdish areas, only 2,500 are from outside the region of the conflict, some from Europe, some from other parts of the world. Most of the captured fighters about 10,000 are natives of Syria or Iraq.

European nations have indeed been reluctant to take detainees who came from Europe, frustrating Trump. But such detainees are far fewer than the majority he frequently claims.

___

TRUMP, on protecting oilfields in Syria: "We have the oil, and we can do with the oil what we want." remarks Tuesday with Stoltenberg.

THE FACTS: That's not true. The oil in Syria belongs to Syria and the U.S. can't do anything it wants with it.

As secretary of state, Rex Tillerson reviewed whether the U.S. could make money off the oil-rich areas and concluded there was no practical way to do so, said Brett McGurk, Trump's former special envoy to the global coalition to defeat IS. "Maybe there are new lawyers now, but it was just illegal for an American company to go and seize and exploit these assets," McGurk told a panel on Syria held in October by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Stephen Vladeck, a national security law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said there is no solid legal argument the Trump administration could make if it sought to claim Syria's oil.

While Trump has said he will withdraw the bulk of roughly 1,000 American troops from Syria, he's made clear he will leave some military forces in the country to help secure the oil from any IS resurgence.

The Pentagon has said it is committed to sending additional military forces to eastern Syria to "reinforce" control of the oil fields and prevent them from "falling back to into the hands of ISIS or other destabilizing actors."

___

BRITAIN'S HEALTH CARE

TRUMP, speaking about claims that Britain's state-funded health care system would be part of future U.K.-U.S. trade talks: "I don't even know where that rumor started. We have absolutely nothing to do with it and we wouldn't want to. If you handed it to us on a silver platter, we want nothing to do with it." remarks Tuesday with Stoltenberg.

THE FACTS: He's referring to his own past statements as a "rumor."

Asked about the National Health Service during a visit to Britain in June, he said "when you're dealing in trade, everything's on the table. So, NHS or anything else."

The service, which provides free health care to all Britons, could in fact be a bargaining chip in U.S.-U.K. trade talks. U.S. health-services companies can already bid for contracts if they have European subsidiaries. A future government could increase the amount of private-sector involvement or let U.S. companies bid directly.

As well, the U.S. could demand during trade talks that Britain pay American pharmaceutical companies more for drugs. Medicines became a big issue in negotiations on a revamped North American free trade deal, as the U.S. pushed successfully for tighter restrictions on the development in Canada and Mexico of generic versions of U.S.-patented drugs.

Leaked documents from preliminary talks between U.S. and U.K. negotiators over two years from July 2017 released by the Labour Party last week said "patent issues" around "NHS access to generic drugs will be a key consideration" in talks.

It's an overstatement to say the national health service as a whole would be up for sale, as Labour has alleged will happen if Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives win the Dec. 12 election and try to strike a post-Brexit trade deal with the U.S. Britain would not be "selling off" the health service, as Labour asserts, because taxpayers would still be footing the bill.

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AP FACT CHECK: Trump and the people he forgets he knew - Minneapolis Star Tribune

The ex-boyfriend of slain Trinity University student Cayley Mandadi told a jury Friday that he last saw her when Mark Howerton put his arm around her and pulled her away the night she was to end it with Howerton, who is accused of killing her in a jealous rage.

Jett Birchum, a former Trinity University student, said he dated Mandadi for about nine months before she met Howerton. He admitted Mandadi was on-and-off with both men at the same time, but before her death, decided she wanted to get back with Birchum.

She told me she was trying to end the relationship, Birchum told the jury in the fifth day of proceedings in the trial.

He mentioned once that while they were together, Howerton kept texting and calling Mandadi, and sent her a video that Birchum said he saw because she handed him the phone.

I had seen a Snapchat. He was holding his gun and putting it in his mouth, saying, This is your fault, Birchum told the jury.

He said he had sex with Mandadi before a football game Oct. 28, 2017, and saw her the next day to have lunch before Howerton picked her up from her dorm to take her to the Mala Luna Music Festival.

She told me she wanted to break up with Mark, let him down easy, and that they could just be friends, he told the panel. She told me she was planning on breaking up with him at Mala Luna because there would be witnesses all around.

Birchum said he went to the festival and saw from a distance Howerton as he pulled her away. He tried to call Mandadi, but she did not pick up. He attempted to follow them, but lost them in the crowd, he told the jury.

Testimony has established that Howerton and Mandadi had been drinking heavily and doing MDMA, commonly known as Ecstasy or Molly, a mood-altering drug. The pair argued over Birchum at the music festival Oct. 29.

That night, Howerton said he persuaded her to go to Houston with him, and at some point she stopped breathing in his car and he drove her to a hospital in Luling.

Since she was unresponsive and covered in bruises from head to toe, doctors there decided to transport her to a Kyle hospital, where she was declared brain dead Oct. 30. She died Oct. 31 after being taken off life support.

From the start of Birchums testimony, defense attorney John T. Hunter objected and attempted to discredit Birchums statements because he was offered immunity by the district attorneys office in exchange for his testimony to the grand jury. Hence, Birchum could not be implicated in any charges.

A grand jury weighs evidence and determines whether charges should be brought against a suspect prior to a trial.

Hunter asked Birchum, who now attends Texas State University, if he was on probation at the time of Mandadis death.

No sir, he said, adding that his community supervision for a drug charge out of Fort Bend County concluded in February 2018.

Hunter then cross-examined Birchum over photographs extracted from his phone that showed cocaine and bags of marijuana.

Were you providing marijuana to students at Trinity University? Hunter asked.

Birchum, under the direction of his attorney, J. Charles Bunk, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination about a dozen times.

Another witness, Joseph Goodwin, testifying for the state, told the jury he went with Mandadi and Howerton to the music festival and did MDMA with them while there.

He said Howerton was angry because Mandadi was not ready when they went to pick her up Oct. 29 to go to the event. He said they did not speak on the way there.

Goodwin said he last saw the pair at 3:30 p.m. that day.

They were about 10 feet behind me. Mark said he was going to get drinks near the entrance. Thats the last time I saw them, Goodwin told the jury.

If convicted, Howerton faces up to life in prison.

Testimony continues Monday in 144th state District Court, Visiting Judge Raymond Angelini presiding.

Elizabeth Zavala covers county and state courts in San Antonio. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863

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Testimony: Slain Trinity University student had plans to break up with boyfriend to go back to her ex - San Antonio Express-News

On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the Teamsters Union, disappeared.

Hed gone to a restaurant in suburban Detroit apparently expecting to meet a couple of mafia figures whom he had known for decades. Hed hoped to win their support for his bid to return to the unions presidency. A few customers remembered seeing him in the restaurant parking lot before 3 pm.

Sometime after that he vanished without a trace.

The FBI has long assumed that Hoffa was the victim of a mob hit. But despite a decades-long investigation, no one has ever been charged with his murder. His body has never been found.

Yet even though his physical remains are missing, Hoffa lives on in our collective cultural consciousness.

Martin Scorseses The Irishman is only the latest film to offer a fictionalized version of Hoffas story. Before that there was Sylvester Stallones F.I.S.T. (1978), Danny DeVitos Hoffa (1992) and the made-for-TV movie Blood Feud (1983).

Hes been the subject of countless true crime books, most famously Charles Brandts I Heard You Paint Houses. He inspired an episode of The Simpsons. And he crops up in tabloids such as the Weekly World News, which claimed to have found him living in Argentina, hiding from the vengeful Kennedys.

Ever since I started researching and writing on the history of the Teamsters, people have asked me where I think Hoffas body is located. His story, Ive learned, is the one aspect of labor history with which nearly every American is familiar.

Hoffas disappearance transformed him from a controversial union leader into a mythic figure. Over time, Ive come to realize that Hoffas resonance in our culture has important political implications for the labor movement today.

Hoffa became a household name in the late 1950s, when Robert F. Kennedy, then serving as chief counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee, publicly grilled him about his mob ties.

While other witnesses avoided answering questions by invoking their Fifth Amendment rights, Hoffa, the newly elected leader of the nations largest and most powerful union, adopted a defiant stance. He never denied having connections with organized crime figures; instead, he claimed these were the kinds of people he sometimes had to work with as he strengthened and grew his union in the face of employer opposition. He angrily dismissed any allegations of corruption and touted the gains his union had won for its membership.

The verbal sparring between Kennedy and Hoffa became the most memorable part of the hearings.

To the benefit of big business, it turned Hoffa into a menacing symbol of labor racketeering.

But to his union members, it only enhanced his standing. They were already thrilled by the contracts Hoffa had negotiated that included better pay and working conditions. Now his members hailed him as their embattled champion and wore buttons proclaiming, Hoffa, the Teamsters Teamster.

His membership stayed loyal even as Hoffa became the target of a series of prosecution efforts.

After becoming attorney general in 1961, Kennedy created a unit within the Department of Justice whose attorneys referred to themselves as the Get Hoffa Squad. Their directive was to target Hoffa and his closest associates. The squads efforts culminated in convictions against Hoffa in 1964 for jury tampering and defrauding the unions pension fund. Despite that setback, Hoffas hold on the Teamsters presidency remained firm even after he entered federal prison in 1967.

When he finally did leave office, Hoffa did so voluntarily. He resigned in 1971 as part of a deal to win executive clemency from the Nixon administration. There was one condition written into the presidents grant of clemency: He couldnt run for a position in the union until 1980.

Once free, Hoffa claimed that his ban from the union office was illegitimate and began planning to run for the Teamsters presidency. However, he faced resistance not from the government but from organized crime figures, who had found it easier to work with Hoffas successor, Frank Fitzsimmons.

Hoffas meeting at the restaurant on July 30, 1975, was part of his efforts to allay that opposition.

Clearly, things didnt go as planned.

Some theorize that the mafia had him killed in order to ensure that he would not run against Fitzsimmons in the Teamsters upcoming 1976 union election.

But after no arrests and multiple fruitless excavations to try to locate his body, Hoffas case remains, to this day, unresolved.

In Andrew Lawlers history of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, he writes, To die is tragic, but to go missing is to become a legend, a mystery.

Stories are supposed to have a beginning, a middle and an end. But when people go missing and are never found, Lawler explains, theyll endure as subjects of endless fascination. It allows their legacies to be re-written, over and over.

These new interpretations, Lawler observes, can reveal something fresh about who we were, who we are, and who we want to be.

The myth of Hoffa lives on, even though almost five decades have passed since that afternoon in July 1975.

What shapes has it taken?

To some, he stands for an idealized image of the working classa man whod known hard, manual labor and worked tirelessly to achieve his success. But even after rising to his leadership post, Hoffa lived simply and eschewed pretense.

As a Washington Post article from 1992 put it, He wore white socks, and liked his beef cooked medium well He snored at the opera.

Meanwhile, his feud with the Kennedys pitted a populist tough guy off the loading docks against the professional class, the governing class, the educated experts. The Washington Post piece ties Hoffas story to that of another working-class icon. Watching Hoffa go up against Bobby Kennedy was like watching John Henry go up against a steam hammerit was only a matter of time before he lost.

But Hoffas myth can also serve as a morality tale. The New Republic, for instance, described how Danny DeVitos 1992 film reworks Hoffas life into the story of an embattled champion of the working class who makes a Faustian pact with the underworld.

In the movie, Hoffas Teamsters are caught in hopeless picket line battles with mob goons who the anti-union employers have hired. In order to get those goons to switch sides, Hoffa makes a bargain with mafia leaders. But the mafia ultimately has Hoffa killed when he tries to defy their control, becoming the victim of his own unbridled ambition.

Finally, the underworlds mysterious role in Hoffas death keeps his story compelling for Americans who have a fascination with conspiracy theories. It supports the idea of an invisible cabal that secretly runs everything, and which can make even a famous labor leader disappear without a trace.

Hoffas story is often intertwined with theories about the Kennedy assassination that attribute the presidents murder to an organized crime conspiracy. Both Hoffa and Kennedys murders, in these accounts, highlight the underworlds apparently unlimited power to protect its interests, with tentacles that extend into the government and law enforcement.

Over two decades after he went missing, a 1997 article in The Los Angeles Times noted that No union in America conjures up more negative images than the Teamsters.

This matters, because for most Americans who lack first-hand knowledge about organized labor, Hoffa is the only labor leaders name they recognize. And as communications scholar William Puette has noted, the Teamsters notoriety is such that for many people in this country the Teamsters Union is the labor movement.

A union widely perceived as mobbed upwith a labor leader notorious for his Mafia tieshas come, in the minds of some Americans, to represent the entire labor movement. That perception, in turn, bolsters arguments against legislative reforms that would facilitate union organizing efforts.

The other themes in Hoffas myth have similar negative implications for labor. He represents a nostalgic, white, male identity that once existed in a seemingly lost world of manual work. That myth also implies that the unions that emerged in those olden times are no longer necessary.

This depiction doesnt match reality. Todays working class is diverse and employed in a broad spectrum of hard manual labor. Whether youre working as a home health aide or in the gig economy, the need for union protection remains quite real.

But for those working-class Americans who see their society controlled by a hidden cabal of powerful, corrupt forceslike the puppet masters who supposedly had JFK and Hoffa killedlabor activism can appear quixotic.

For these reasons, the ghost of Jimmy Hoffa continues to haunt the labor movement today.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance and legacy say about unions - Quartz

The Vallejo police officer who shot and killed a man behind a buildingin February 2018 has been placed on paid administrative leave, Vallejo police confirmed in response to public records act request from the Times-Herald.

Officer Ryan McMahon fatally shot Ronell Foster, 33, seven times after the two tussled behind a building in the 400 block of Carolina Street on Feb. 13, 2018. McMahon was also involved in the officer-involved shooting of Willie McCoy in February 2019. McMahon, along with five other Vallejo police officers, shot and killed McCoy at a Taco Bell drive-through.

Police on Wednesday declined to provide any additional information on why McMahon was placed on leave and whether it had anything to do with the Foster or McCoy cases.

Vallejo police Capt. Joseph Iacono declined to provide any comment when asked earlier this month about why McMahon was placed on leave.

I am prohibited from commenting on any potential personnel matter, he told the Times-Herald.

McMahon told investigators that he tried to stop Foster and educate the man about driving recklessly and not having a light on the bicycle, according to documents released this year under the states new police transparency law, SB 1421.

Fosters family, through the law offices of Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris, sued the city and police department three months after Foster was killed. Burris attorneys intended to depose McMahon in anticipation of a trial.

However, in October McMahon signaled his intent to exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the federal lawsuit.

McMahon told investigators that Foster rode off on the bicycle, leading him on a chase over several city blocks. Foster eventually ditched his bicycle and started running, while the officer got out of his cruiser and ran after Foster.

During the chase, McMahon reported that he allegedly witnessed Foster reaching for his waistband several times. Believing Foster had a weapon, McMahon discharged his Taser. One of the two probes struck Foster in the back but that didnt stop Foster as he continued to run away until falling along a walkway behind a building on Carolina Street, McMahon told investigators.

McMahon caught up to Foster and pushed the man down as he tried to get up. The officer said he tried to use a stun gun on Foster, but that failed as well.

McMahon said he began hitting Foster with a flashlight. At some point, Foster got up and ripped the flashlight from McMahons hand. The officer told investigators he feared for his life.

This guy just took my light from me, were fighting and nothing Ive used on him is working. He is gonna smack me in the head, McMahon said to investigators. Hes gonna take my gun and shoot me or hes gonna beat me down with my own flashlight, and theres nobody here to help me and nobody knows where Im at.

McMahon said he tried to activate his body camera throughout the encounter, pressed the button after shooting Foster. The system records the 30 seconds prior to activation without audio.

Foster was shot three times in his chest and once in the head, left shoulder, left arm and the right side of his back, autopsy records show. Marijuana, methamphetamine and amphetamine were found in Fosters system.

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Vallejo cop involved in two fatal shootings in two years placed on leave - The Mercury News