District Attorney asks to meet with NYPD ahead of possible Trump indictment: report
March 17, 2023
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A 63-year-old American citizen and mother of seven who has been reported missing in Mexico was last seen being forced into a white van outside her residence in the country, Fox News reported.
The FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to Maria del Carmen Lopez's whereabouts. The agency says she was last seen at her home in Pueblo Nuevo in Mexico’s Colima state on Feb. 9.
"There was an exchange of words. She was refusing to get into the van," her daughter Zonia Lopez told a local news outlet.
"There was another individual who stepped out of the van and helped those two bring her inside and they drove away," she said, adding that ever since her disappearance, her family "all started calling her to see if she would pick up her phone or answer her messenger and we have not heard from her."
Her daughter added that she doesn't think that drug cartels were involved, instead saying that local gangs that organize kidnappings may be to blame.
Lopez’s disappearance follows a U.S. State Department warning last October for Americans to stay away from Mexico’s Colima state.
"Do not travel due to crime and kidnapping," the State Department warned. "Violent crime and gang activity are widespread. Most homicides are targeted assassinations against members of criminal organizations. Shooting incidents between criminal groups have injured or killed bystanders. U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents have been victims of kidnapping."
"The FBI is offering a reward of up to $20,000 USD for information leading to the physical location of Maria del Carmen Lopez," the FBI’s Los Angeles Office said.
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'Stormy Daniels matters': Analyst criticizes claims that Trump indictment is much ado about nothing
March 20, 2023
As former President Donald Trump faces potential indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over a $130,000 hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels to cover up their alleged affair, his defenders are arguing that the indictment is political targeting over a minor offense.
Even former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been critical of his former boss and is considering a run against him for president himself, slammed the New York D.A., telling reporters, "the fact that the Manhattan D.A., in the midst of a crime wave in New York City, then says that indicting the former president is his highest priority. It tells you everything you need to know about the liberal left in this country."
Some of Trump's critics from the left, too, appear disappointed that this might be his first indictment, with former Obama strategist David Axelrod calling it the "least meaningful" case against him.
But liberal journalist Judd Legum wrote for his "Popular Information" blog on Monday that this case is a big deal, and it cuts to the heart of a matter that changed the course of American history.
"There are some basic rules about how federal campaigns operate. If you spend money to benefit your campaign, it must be publicly reported. If you run an ad, you must disclose that your campaign paid for the ad. The underlying principle of these rules is transparency — voters have a right to know what you are saying and doing to get elected," wrote Legum. "If Trump is charged, it will be because prosecutors believe he violated the law in order to hide relevant information from voters in the days leading up to the 2016 election. After Election Day, Trump allegedly engaged in more crimes, including falsifying business records, to cover up his actions."
IN OTHER NEWS: There is a good reason for Trump's 'irate' freakout over an impending Manhattan indictment
"If Bragg decides to charge Trump, he will have to make the case in detail. But Trump's conduct was not unmeaningful, and efforts to hold him legally accountable are not outrageous," wrote Legum. "Trump schemed to conceal relevant information from the voting public in the days before the election, engaged in an elaborate coverup, and then lied about his involvement. This deceit was a subversion of the democratic process and may have changed the course of history."
The most likely charges that Trump could face are misdemeanor bookkeeping fraud. However, it could rise to a felony, which carries jail time, if prosecutors could show Trump committed the fraud in order to conceal a second crime.
Trump has claimed that the case cannot be brought because it is outside the statute of limitations; however, the statute only applies while Trump continuously lives in the state of New York, and he has spent most of his time since the hush payment living either in the White House or his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
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There is a good reason for Trump's 'irate' freakout over an impending Manhattan indictment: analyst
March 20, 2023
The belief that Donald Trump will reap political capital if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury may be whistling past the graveyard for a wide swath of pundits who weighed in over the weekend after the former president used his Truth Social platform to rant that he will be arrested on Tuesday.
According to political analyst David Graham, writing for The Atlantic, it is an article of faith among the punditry that anything that appears bad for the former president is actually a good thing in the long run because it keeps him in the public's attention. But Graham argued that there is a substantial amount of historical evidence to the contrary.
Citing Trump's boasting about his controversial achievements before the 2018 midterms that led in part to substantial Republican losses in the House and Senate, and a second impeachment, which was supposed to motivate his supporters, only for him to lose his re-election bid, Graham wrote that the knee-jerk response to find good news for Trump in his setbacks needs to be put out to pasture.
"The assumption that Trump will profit seems to spring from hubris (among his allies) and self-protective fear (on the part of his critics and rivals). They are operating on a shared, obsolete conclusion that nothing can ever harm the former president" he wrote before adding that the former president's outraged response and calls for protests is a tip-off that he realizes how badly the proceedings could go.
RELATED: Trump indictment is 'expected late Monday or Wednesday'
"Any suggestion that he’s delighted by this fight is belied not only by his irate response but by common sense," Graham wrote before suggesting that the former president has good reason to not want to enter a courtroom where an explanation about a 2016 payment to an adult film star would front and center.
"Trump doesn’t want to discuss the underlying facts of this case—there’s a reason, after all, that Cohen paid Daniels six figures to buy her silence in the first place," he wrote. "Beyond that, several other probes - - which look from the outside to be more perilous to Trump - - are still on deck, regardless of the outcome in Manhattan."
You can read more here.
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