Crooked Cop James Comey Claims Barr, Trump Have ‘Damaged’ DOJ

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Crooked Cop James Comey Claims Barr, Trump Have ‘Damaged’ DOJ

Former FBI Director James Comey claimed in an op-ed for the Washington Post on Wednesday that President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr are leaving a “legacy of damage” to the Justice Department.

“The Justice Department was damaged when the attorney general and the president lied to the American people about the work of the special counsel investigating the president,” Comey wrote, referring to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Comey then claimed that Trump and Barr damaged the DOJ again when Barr “intervened in a case involving the president’s friend Roger Stone to overrule the sentencing recommendation of career prosecutors.”

Comey was referring to Barr’s recommendation that the DOJ lessen Stone’s sentence, since the judge presiding over Stone’s case was clearly biased.

Trump ultimately commuted Stone’s sentence entirely, as it was within his constitutionally vested authority to do.

Another example Comey cited was when Barr dropped the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had been set up by FBI agents interviewing him, according to recently declassified documents.

Declassified documents have indicated that Comey may have been personally overseeing the deceptive perjury trap against Flynn, shortly after he took over as Trump’s first national security adviser.

Comey discussed the matter with the out-going Obama officials, including the president and Vice President Joe Biden, on Jan. 5, 2007.

He is believed to have confirmed in that meeting that Flynn’s calls with a Russian ambassador were legitimate, but remained open to the possibility of using the antiquated Logan Act against Flynn.

Comey’s boss, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, confirmed in recent Senate testimony that he had gone rogue in the investigation against Flynn while keeping her in the dark on it.

Uncovered documents also prove that Comey and top intelligence officials involved in the Russia-Gate hoax knew that the so-called intel from the Steele Dossier—upon which their “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation was predicated—was highly questionable at best, and outright dishonest at worst.

But all of this, according to Comey, was evidence of corruption within the Trump ranks and not the “dirty cops”  in his own intelligence community.

Comey—rumored to be facing potential criminal charges in the soon-to-wrap investigation led by special prosecutor John Durham— urged voters to choose a president who will “repair” the damage Trump has done to the DOJ.

“We need a president who will appoint an attorney general not because he needs a personal defense lawyer but because American justice needs a guardian,” Comey maintained.

“We need a president who has devoted his life to serving others through the rule of law,” he continued. “We need to elect Joe Biden.”

When asked over the weekend whether he believed he was a “target” in the Durham probe, Comey told CBS News: “I have no idea.”

Comey said he had not been contacted by Durham, and he coyly denied the possibility that his actions might have come under suspicion.

“I can’t imagine that I’m a target,” he claimed, while acknowledging that his CIA counterpart, John Brennan, had recently been called in to give a deposition.

“Given that I know what happened during 2016, which was a bunch of people trying to do the right thing consistent with the law, I’m not worried at all [about] that investigation of the investigation,” Comey said. “They just want to have an investigation to talk about.”

Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

Facebook May Allow Posts That Encourage Sending Multiple Mail-in Ballots

Joshua Paladino
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Facebook May Allow Posts That Encourage Sending Multiple Mail-in Ballots

Facebook may not remove election-related posts that encourage voter fraud, as long as the posts contain suggestions or questions instead of clearly false and misleading information, the New York Times reported.

This could lead to a policy in which Facebook lets users post that voters should send in their mail-in ballots multiple times or, on the other hand, that mail-in voting does not work, Reclaim the Net reported.

The information, which came from an anonymous person who said they advised Facebook, does not seem to draw a reasonable and certain line between blatantly false and misleading information and protected free speech.

Facebook’s community guidelines on “voter and/or census fraud” say that the platform will ban “statements that advocate, provide instructions or show explicit intent to illegally participate in a voting or census process.”

This may give Facebook officials and employees the room to choose what election-related posts they want to censor based on their leftist ideological preferences.

In the same New York Times article, Facebook employees revealed that they are “alarmed” by President Donald Trump’s opposition to mail-in voting and support for absentee voting.

Trump has reiterated that he has no issues with properly vetted absentee ballots.

However, other types of “mail ballots are very dangerous for this country because of cheaters,” he said recently. “They go collect them. They are fraudulent in many cases.”

The president was referring specifically to the process of ballot harvesting, in which party operatives walk door-to-door to collect ballots and, in some cases, help voters fill out ballots.

Other concerns have arisen over duplicate ballots being mailed, ballots being sent to the wrong addresses, being sent to those who are dead or ineligible to vote, being carelessly discarded or being mishandled by the post office.

All of these concerns were on display in recent primary elections where Democrat-run officials automatically sent ballots to everyone on their hopelessly outdated voter rolls, which they also have fought tooth-and-nail to resist updating and purging of inactive voters.

Ironically, the same Facebook employees who failed to understand these concerns said they have consistently asked whether Trump’s statements somehow have disenfranchised voters.

Social media companies like Facebook, along with the legacy media and the Democratic Party, have been fairly open about their plans to dispute the results of the 2020 election.

If the election’s results are disputed, they may activate a “kill switch” that would prevent Trump from reaching out to voters on Facebook and making the case as to why he won the election in front of the American people.

Fauci Hesitant to Rush COVID Vaccine Due to Safety Concerns

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Fauci Hesitant to Rush COVID Vaccine Due to Safety Concerns

As the development of a coronavirus vaccine ramps up, some health experts are warning that distributing the vaccine too soon could harm the public.

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, is one of the scientific professionals concerned about how quickly the vaccine is being developed and tested.

He told Reuters that the federal government should be wary of passing an emergency use authorization for something that is not yet reliable.

“The one thing that you would not want to see with a vaccine is getting an EUA [emergency use authorization] before you have a signal of efficacy,” he said. “One of the potential dangers if you prematurely let a vaccine out is that it would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the other vaccines to enroll people in their trial.”

President Donald Trump often has been at odds with Fauci—who maintains deep ties and, likely, a large financial stake, in the pharmaceutical industry—over his questionable recommendations and their motives.

Trump has generally urged a streamlined process that would allow the vaccine development to be fast-tracked, thereby expediting economic recovery.

However, he warned recently that Big Pharma may intentionally be dragging its feet until after the November election in order to inflict political pain on him for cutting into its profit margin with a “most favored nation clause” that ended price-gouging on prescription drugs.

The vaccine developers also may have more to gain from drawing out the development process to extend their pipeline of research grants knowing they may reap less in private profits from putting a vaccine on the market.

More than 100 coronavirus vaccines are being developed in labs around the world, but Fauci reiterated that he is “cautiously optimistic” that a trustworthy vaccination would be ready by the start of 2021.

“To me, it’s absolutely paramount that you definitively show that a vaccine is safe and effective, both,” Fauci said. “We would hope that nothing interferes with the full demonstration that a vaccine is safe and effective.”

Some health officials have said that they would make a coronavirus vaccine mandatory as soon as it becomes available.

Virginia Commissioner of Health Dr. Normal Oliver said he would force Virginians to take the vaccine, or face some sort of punishment.

“[The coronavirus] is killing people now, we don’t have a treatment for it and if we develop a vaccine that can prevent it from spreading in the community we will save hundreds and hundreds of lives,” Oliver said on Friday.

But others in the health community are warning against such drastic action.

Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, whose company secured approval for the mumps vaccine, told Harvard Business School’s Tsedal Neeley earlier this summer that efficient and safe vaccinations take years of research and development.

Forcing the public to take a vaccination that has not been thoroughly tested would be dangerous, he said.

“What worries me the most is that the public is so hungry, is so desperate to go back to normalcy, that they are pushing us to move things faster and faster,” Frazier said. “Ultimately, if you are going to use a vaccine in billions of people, you’d better know what that vaccine does.”

Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

17-Year-Old Arrested in Killing of 2 People in Kenosha

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17-Year-Old Arrested in Killing of 2 People in Kenosha

(Headline USA) A white, 17-year-old police admirer was arrested Wednesday in the killing of two people gunned down during a third night of riots in Kenosha over the police shooting of a black man who resisted arrest, Jacob Blake.

Kyle Rittenhouse, of Antioch, Illinois, was taken into custody in Illinois on suspicion of first-degree intentional homicide. Antioch is about 15 miles from Kenosha.

Two people were shot to death Tuesday night in an attack carried out by a young white man who was caught on cellphone video opening fire in the middle of the street with a semi-automatic rifle.

“I just killed somebody,” the gunman could be heard saying at one point during the shooting rampage that erupted just before midnight.

One victim was shot in the head and the other in the chest, Sheriff David Beth told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A third person suffered gunshot wounds not believed to be life-threatening.

In the wake of the killings, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers authorized 500 members of the National Guard to support local law enforcement around Kenosha, doubling the number of troops sent in. The governor’s office said he is working with other states to bring in additional National Guard troops and law officers.

“We were all chanting ‘black lives matter’ at the gas station and then we heard, boom, boom, and I told my friend, ‘That’s not fireworks,’” 19-year-old protester Devin Scott told the Chicago Tribune. “And then this guy with this huge gun runs by us in the middle of the street and people are yelling, ‘He shot someone! He shot someone!’ And everyone is trying to fight the guy, chasing him and then he started shooting again.”

Scott said he cradled a lifeless victim in his arms, and a woman started performing CPR, but “I don’t think he made it.”

According to witness accounts and video footage, police apparently let the young man responsible for the shootings walk past them with a rifle over his shoulder as members of the crowd were yelling for him to be arrested because he had shot people.

Much of Rittenhouse’s Facebook page is devoted to praising law enforcement, with references to Blue Lives Matter, a movement that supports police. He also can be seen holding an assault rifle.

Other photographs include those of badges of various law enforcement agencies, including the Chicago Police Department. All of the badges have a black line across them — something police officers do with black tape or another material whenever an officer is killed in the line of duty.

In a photograph posted by his mother, he is wearing what appears to be a blue law enforcement uniform as well as the kind of brimmed hat that state troopers wear.

The sheriff told the Journal Sentinel that armed people had been patrolling the city’s streets in recent nights, but he did not know if the gunman was among them.

“They’re a militia,” Beth said. “They’re like a vigilante group.”

The FBI said it is assisting in the case.

Witness accounts and video show that the shootings took place in two stages: The gunman first shot someone at a car lot, then jogged away, stumbled and fell in the street, and opened fire again as members of the crowd closed in him.

A witness, Julio Rosas, 24, said that when the gunman stumbled, “two people jumped onto him and there was a struggle for control of his rifle. At that point during the struggle, he just began to fire multiple rounds and that dispersed people near him.”

“The rifle was being jerked around in all directions while it was being fired,” Rosas said.

Sam Dirks, 22, from Milwaukee, said he had seen the suspected gunman earlier in the evening, and he was yelling at some of the protesters.

“He was definitely very agitated. He was pacing around, just pointing his gun in general. Not necessarily at anyone specifically,” Dirks said.

In other widely circulating video, police can be seen tossing bottled water from an armored vehicle to what appear to be armed civilians walking the streets. One of the civilians appears to be the gunman who later shot protesters.

“We appreciate you being here,” an officer is heard saying to the group over a loudspeaker.

In Wisconsin, it is legal for people 18 and over to openly carry a gun, with no license required.

Blake, 29, was shot on Sunday as he leaned into his SUV, after escaping the grasp of officers and disregarding their commands to drop a knife as he circled the vehicle. Kenosha police have said little about what happened other than that they were responding to a domestic dispute. They have not said why the officers opened fire or whether Blake was armed, as their investigation continues.

During the unrest in Kenosha since then, protesters destroyed dozens of buildings, set fires and hurled objects at police, who responded with tear gas on three straight nights.

Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.

Religious Progressives Air Anti-Trump Ads to Suppress Christian Voter Turnout

Joshua Paladino
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Religious Progressives Air Anti-Trump Ads to Suppress Christian Voter Turnout

Religious progressives have initiated an effort to suppress voter turnout among conservative Christians for President Donald Trump, Religion News Service reported.

Anti-Trump Christian groups are running advertisements in swing states to support Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

These ads either condemn Trump for not being sufficiently Christian, or they explicitly endorse Biden and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

“The policies of a new Biden-Harris administration will be built on principles that more closely align with our Christian beliefs,” said Rev. Noel Anderson, who co-founded the New Moral Majority PAC, in a press release.

The support for Trump among Bible-believing Christians in 2016 surpassed that of George W Bush in 2004 (78 percent), John McCain in 2008 (74 percent), and Mitt Romney in 2012 (78 percent).

Trump garnered 81 percent support from those who Pew Research describes as “white, born-again/evangelical Christians.”

There is little indication that Trump is losing the support of this demographic.

In fact, recent polling suggests that he has gained their support.

The vast majority, 72 percent, of white evangelicals stated in a June 2020 poll that they approve of Trump’s job as president, while 82 percent of them stated that they would vote for the president in November, Pew Research reported.

These numbers suggest that the nominally Christian groups that declare their principled objections to the president rely on corporate-backed astroturfing for their survival.

One Catholic social justice group called Network said it will spend $50,000 to run anti-Trump advertisements online in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona that target Christian voters. They will appear on Facebook, Instagram, and Google.

Network’s ads claim that Trump is not “pro-life” because he supports the death penalty and has not been proactive enough in addressing poverty, despite his administration’s efforts to increase employment and wages for American workers.

The group will attempt to convince Christians that there is a moral equivalency between the murder of innocent babies and the state-sanctioned killing of convicted criminals.

The ads will direct voters to “PopeFrancisVoter.org,” which offers quotes from Francis and advise to Catholics against voting for Trump.

“The sacred issues the Pope asks us to bring into the voting booth include protecting people in poverty, the elderly, and migrants and rejecting racism,” the website says. “Prayerful consideration of the candidates for President make it clear: Catholics cannot be true to their faith and vote for Donald Trump in November.”

Lee Morrow, the elections manager for Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, who heads the anti-Trump campaign, said “Catholics cannot be single-issue voters.”

Morrow echoed Democratic talking points about Trump purposefully trying to “divide us” during the “COVID-19 pandemic.”

Vote Common Good, another leftist Christian organization, has partnered with the Never-Trump Lincoln Project, to run advertisements in Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.

Vote Common Good and the Lincoln Project will work to turn white Christians, “who have lost patience with Trump’s behavior or been disappointed with his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protest movement against racism,” to vote Biden.

NEW: ‘Fatal’ Level of Fentanyl in George Floyd’s System When He Died

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NEW: ‘Fatal’ Level of Fentanyl in George Floyd’s System When He Died

New court filings in the case against the former Minneapolis police officers involved in the death of George Floyd show that there were doubts about what caused him to expire, according to a medical examiner.

The report from the Hennepin County medical examiner released on Tuesday details the results of the toxicology tests on Floyd, and states that Floyd had “a fatal level of fentanyl” in his system.

The medical examiner reiterated, however, that there were a multitude of causes contributing to Floyd’s death.

But he did make it clear that had there been no other factors contributing to the situation, the level of fentanyl in Floyd’s system would have been a cause of death on its own.

“[Dr. Andrew Baker] said that if Mr. Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death,” the June 1 filing said, according to KMSP-TV.

The new memoranda reflected discussions Baker had with the county attorney’s office.

One memo said Baker concluded, “The autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation,” but Baker told the attorney his investigation was incomplete pending a toxicology report.

A previously released report from the same medical examiner’s office found that Floyd had also recently used methamphetamine before his death.

The medical examiner concluded that the cause of death was “a heart attack from subdural restraint and neck compression,” but added that significant conditions included “fentanyl intoxication” and “recent methamphetamine use,” in addition to “Arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease.”

An independent autopsy of Floyd ordered by his family, however, found that he died from “asphyxiation from sustained pressure,” and it reported evidence of “neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain.”

NBA Players Discuss Boycotting Playoffs to Protest Jacob Blake Shooting

Joshua Paladino
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NBA Players Discuss Boycotting Playoffs to Protest Jacob Blake Shooting

Some NBA players said they are talking with each other about boycotting playoff games because a white police officer shot a black man, Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Sunday.

Blake, who resisted arrest, survived the shooting, but his family says he is paralyzed below the waist.

Rioters have burned buildings, looted, and attacked police. The unrest has led two deaths.

Toronto Raptors players met on Wednesday morning. Point guard Fred VanVleet said “a number of things have been discussed,” CNN reported.

The Raptors are scheduled to play the Celtics in Game 1 of the Conference Semifinals on Thursday.

Celtics guard Marcus Smart said a boycott is “something that’s in the back of our minds.”

VanVleet said the shooting changed his view of the playoffs because he feels that players have a responsibility to respond to public issues.

“At some point, we’re the ones always with the microphones in our face,” he said at a press conference. “We’re the ones always who have to make a stand.”

VanVleet said he was “pretty excited” about the Raptors’ advancement to the next round of the playoffs, but the shooting changed his view.

“We’re the first ones and the responsibility falls on us to make a change to stop being oppressed,” said VanVleet, who earns $9 million per year.

“Are we going to hold everybody accountable or we’re just going to put the spotlight on black people who are black athletes or entertainers and say: ‘What are you doing, what are you contributing to the community, what are you putting on the line?'”

As with the death of George Floyd — who had a long rap sheet — athletes, celebrities, and politicians said that it is unfair to consider Blake’s criminal history in his death.

Jaylen Brown, who plays for the Celtics and is the vice president of the National Basketball Players Association’s Executive Committee, said criminal history should not lead to death.

“There is an emphasis in this country on the framing of these instances, such as Jacob Blake,” Brown said. “Well, he was a convicted felon. Well, he had a history of police brutality. Well, he possibly had a weapon. This framework is not unfamiliar to people of color and African Americans. Nor does it constitute death or being shot seven times.”
“The reality is majority of African Americans and people of color have a history with the police,” he said. “It comes with the plagues of systemic oppression, lack of education, economic opportunity, housing, et cetera. And most people of color, most minority communities, have history with the police.”

 

TRUMP: Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf Will Lead Agency

Ben Sellers
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TRUMP: Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf Will Lead Agency

(Headline USA) President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will nominate acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf for the top spot in the agency, rewarding a forceful advocate for administration policy whose leadership has been challenged on legal grounds.

The president made the announcement on Twitter. He praised Wolf’s management of an agency that has been key to implementing Trump administration policies on immigration and crime, which critics say detracts from the core DHS mission of protecting the nation from external threats.

“I am pleased to inform the American Public that Acting Secretary Chad Wolf will be nominated to be the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Trump tweeted. “Chad has done an outstanding job and we greatly appreciate his service!”

Wolf’s prospects for Senate confirmation are unclear. There is a narrow window for him to be confirmed before the Nov. 3 election, with the Senate away until Labor Day and then scheduled to recess in mid-October.

He’s likely to face criticism over DHS involvement in administration efforts to limit both legal and illegal immigration as well as the deployment of agents in tactical gear to protect the federal courthouse  this summer in Portland, Oregon, without the agreement of state and local authorities.

“I think given his past actions, he’s an awful choice,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, said in a call with reporters.

Sen. Gary Peters, a member of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee, said the agency needs “qualified, principled leaders” as it faces the coronavirus pandemic and threats to election security.

“Given Acting Secretary Wolf’s record since assuming his role, I have serious questions and concerns about his suitability for the job,” the Michigan Democrat said.

Wolf’s position of acting secretary has already been the subject of legal challenges. He has been in what is supposed to be a temporary role for over 500 days, more than twice as long as permitted under the federal law intended to limit the length of time someone can hold a position in the government without Senate confirmation.

Wolf was named acting secretary in November 2019 following Trump’s removal of his predecessor, acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan, after six months leading the agency that has the third-largest budget in the federal government.

“He has demonstrated his absolute loyalty to the president and his willingness to do everything the president wants,” said John Sandweg, the agency’s former acting general counsel. “That triggered enough trust to nominate him.”

The Government Accountability Office said in a finding released Aug. 14 that the federal rules of succession had been violated at DHS and neither Wolf nor acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli could legally hold their positions.

That gave new ammunition to the many legal challenges of administration immigration policies. DHS has disputed the GAO finding and says both men can legally hold their positions under a different federal statute, the Homeland Security Act.

The administration may have felt compelled to nominate Wolf in an attempt to avoid jeopardizing any actions, such as the issuance of immigration regulations, that are legally reserved for the secretary, said Sandweg, now an attorney who specializes in immigration and national security.

“The GAO opinion creates a sense of urgency that they probably need to legitimize his position,” he said.

“I am honored to be nominated by President Trump to lead the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security in safeguarding the American people,” Wolf said in a statement after the president announced his nomination to be secretary. “As the homeland faces evolving threats from natural disasters, violent opportunists, malign cyber actors, and transnational criminal organizations, the mission of DHS is as critical as ever.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

3 Shot, 2 Killed in 3rd Night of Unrest After Police Shooting in Kenosha

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3 Shot, 2 Killed in 3rd Night of Unrest After Police Shooting in Kenosha

(Headline USA) Two people were killed and another was wounded as shots were fired late Tuesday in Kenosha during the third night of unrest in Wisconsin following the police shooting of a black man who resisted arrest, Jacob Blake, authorities said.

The shootings were reported at about 11:45 p.m. in an area where riots have taken place, Kenosha police Lt. Joseph Nosalik said in a news release. They happened after police drove away violent protesters from in front of a courthouse that had been the site of the main clashes between rioters and authorities.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said one victim was shot in the head and another was shot in the chest, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Beth didn’t know where the other person was shot, but his or her injuries were not believed to be life threatening.

Beth told the Journal Sentinel that armed people patrolled the city’s streets in recent nights, but he did not know if the shooter was among them.

“They’re a militia,” Beth said. “They’re like a vigilante group.”

Cellphone video of at least two of the shootings that was posted online shows what appears to be a white man with a semi-automatic rifle jogging down the middle of a street as a crowd and some police officers follow him. Someone in the crowd can be heard asking “What did he do?” and another responds that the man had shot someone.

The man with the gun stumbles and falls, and as he’s approached by people in the crowd, he fires three or four shots from the seated position, hitting at least two people, including one who falls over and another who stumbles away to frantic shouts of “Medic! Medic!”

With the crowd scattering, the shooter stands up and continues walking down the street as police cars arrive. The man puts up his hands and walks toward the squad cars, with someone in the crowd yelling at police that the man just shot someone, but several of the cars drive past him toward the people who had been shot.

Beth told the Journal Sentinel that no one had been detained over the shootings, but that he thought at least one person would be soon based on video police had reviewed.

“I feel very confident we’ll have him in a very short time,” he said.

Protester Devin Scott told the Chicago Tribune that he witnessed one of the shootings.

“We were all chanting ‘black lives matter’ at the gas station and then we heard, boom, boom, and I told my friend, that’s not fireworks,” said Scott, 19. “And then this guy with this huge gun runs by us in the middle of the street and people are yelling, ‘He shot someone! He shot someone!’ And everyone is trying to fight the guy, chasing him and then he started shooting again.”

“I was cradling him in my arms. I was trying to keep this kid alive and he wasn’t moving or nothing. He was just laying there,” Scott said. “I didn’t know what to do and then this woman starts performing CPR. There was no pulse. I don’t think he made it.”

The shooting victims have not been identified.

Earlier Tuesday, the lawyer for Jacob Blake’s family said Blake was shot multiple times by police on Sunday and that it would “take a miracle” for him to walk again. He called for the officer who opened fire to be arrested and others involved to lose their jobs.

The shooting of Blake was captured on cellphone video and ignited new riots over racial injustice in several cities, coming just three months after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

Earlier Tuesday, Blake’s father spoke alongside other family members and lawyers, telling reporters that police shot his son “seven times, seven times, like he didn’t matter.”

“But my son matters. He’s a human being and he matters,” said Blake’s father, who is also named Jacob Blake.

The 29-year-old with a long rap sheet was in surgery Tuesday, said attorney Ben Crump, adding that the bullets severed Blake’s spinal cord and shattered his vertebrae. Another attorney said there was also severe damage to organs.

“It’s going to take a miracle for Jacob Blake Jr. to ever walk again,” Crump said.

The legal team plans to file a civil lawsuit against the police department over the shooting. Police have said little about what happened, other than that they were responding to a domestic dispute. The officers involved have not been named. The Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating.

Police fired tear gas for a third night Tuesday to disperse rioters who had gathered outside Kenosha’s courthouse, where some shook a protective fence and threw water bottles and fireworks at officers lined up behind it. Police then used armored vehicles and officers with shields pushed back the crowd when protesters ignored warnings to leave a nearby park.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers had called for calm Tuesday after inflaming the situation Sunday with comments about the shooting, while also declaring a state of emergency under which he doubled the National Guard deployment in Kenosha from 125 to 250. The night before crowds destroyed dozens of buildings and set more than 30 fires in the city’s downtown.

“We cannot allow the cycle of systemic racism and injustice to continue,” said Evers. “We also cannot continue going down this path of damage and destruction.”

The governor is facing mounting pressure from Republicans over his weak handling of the unrest.

“Yesterday, Governor Evers sent 250 National Guard to Kenosha,” said Rep. Bryan Steil, who represents Kenosha. “This was woefully insufficient. Yesterday, I asked the President for additional assistance. He agreed. The offer was rejected by Governor Evers. Again, I call on the Governor to accept the President’s offer of assistance, supported by Kenosha officials, which includes National Guard from other states and federal law enforcement officers. The violence needs to stop now.”

Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, said the damage in Kenosha does not reflect what her family wants and that, if her son could see it, he would be “very unpleased.”

She said the first thing her son said to her when she saw him was he was sorry.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to be a burden on you guys,’” Jackson said. “‘I want to be with my children, and I don’t think I’ll walk again.’”

Three of the younger Blake’s sons — aged 3, 5 and 8 — were in the car at the time of the shooting, Crump said. It was the 8-year-old’s birthday, he added.

The man who said he made the cellphone video of the shooting, 22-year-old Raysean White, said he saw Blake scuffling with three officers and heard them yell, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” before the gunfire erupted.

He said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands.

In the footage, Blake walks from the sidewalk around the front of his SUV to his driver-side door as officers follow him with their guns drawn, while he disobeys their instructions. Another video released on Tuesday showed Blake broke free from officers as they tried to arrest and subdue him on the opposite side of the vehicle. As Blake opens the door and leans into the SUV, an officer grabs his shirt from behind and opens fire. Seven shots can be heard, though it isn’t clear how many struck Blake or how many officers fired.

Hundreds of people again defied curfew Tuesday in Kenosha, where destruction marred protests the previous night as fires were set and businesses vandalized. There were 34 fires associated with that unrest, with 30 businesses destroyed or damaged along with an unknown number of residences, Kenosha Fire Chief Charles Leipzig told the Kenosha News.

“Nobody deserves this,” said Pat Oertle, owner of Computer Adventure, surveying the damage on Tuesday. Computers were stolen, and the store was “destroyed,” she said.

“This accomplishes nothing,” Oertle said. “This is not justice that they’re looking for.”

Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.

Ex-Planned Parenthood Worker: ‘Did You Know Abortion Even Had a Smell?’

Ben Sellers
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Ex-Planned Parenthood Worker: ‘Did You Know Abortion Even Had a Smell?’

Pro-life activist Abby Johnson waged a withering attack Tuesday against abortion supporters who were too quick to abstractify the ghastly process.

During her segment at the Republican National Convention she recounted in horrific detail the event that prompted her to leave her job at Planned Parenthood and switch sides.

Johnson, the founder and leader of the nonprofit ministry And Then There Were None, which encourages former abortion workers to walk away, said that she was recruited into the position directly out of college.

She was reassured that Planned Parenthood’s mission was advancing a noble cause to help people and ultimately to eliminate the need for abortion.

But she soon discovered otherwise.

In 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, things drastically changed, she said.

After being honored with the Margaret Sanger employee of the year award, named after Planned Parenthood’s racist, eugenicist founder, she was given a quota to double the number of abortions she was expected to sell.

“When I pushed back … I was reprimanded and told abortion is how we make our money,” she revealed, also noting that many of the clinics are “strategically located in minority neighborhoods.”

In one particular instance, Johnson said she witnessed an ultrasound abortion and saw the unborn baby struggling, fighting for its life as the doctor cavalierly joked about sucking its dismembered body parts out with a vacuum by saying “Beam me up, Scotty.”

“The last thing I saw was a spine twirling around in its mother’s womb before succumbing to the force of the suction,” Johnson revealed.

She said abortion supporters remained willfully ignorant of the process. “They can’t even conceive of the barbarity.”

But her firsthand knowledge remained etched in her mind, continuing to haunt her.

“I know what it sounds like,” she said. “I know what abortion smells like. Did you know abortion even had a smell?”

Johnson offered ringing praise for President Donald Trump, however, calling him “the
most pro-life president we have ever had.”

And it appeared her convention appearance might help advance the effort even more. As of late Tuesday, the number of visits to her website appeared to have crashed the site.

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