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Rudy Giuliani botches attack on Cassidy Hutchinson: 'She was never present when I asked for a pardon'
June 29, 2022
Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday tried to attack the credibility of January 6 committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson -- but he made a statement that appeared to be self-incriminating.
Hutchinson, a former top White House aide with unique access to Trump and the inner workings of the West Wing, testified at the sixth June hearing of the House committee probing the attack on the US Capitol.
An executive assistant to Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows, she was a central figure in the White House around the period of the insurrection on January 6 last year.
Writing on Twitter, Giuliani took issue with Hutchinson's claim that he sought a pardon from former President Donald Trump.
RELATED: National security lawyer slams 'Trump Apology Land's' attacks on Cassidy Hutchinson's credibility
"The January 6 Witch Hunt Cabal has now exceeded even its prior fraudulent," he said. "The last witness was a reckless liar. Contrary to her false testimony she was never present when I asked for a pardon."
The former New York mayor then added, "Actually, I told the President I did not want or need one."
Despite Giuliani's claims, however, we do know that he was directly involved in the process of lobbying Trump to pardon allies for their actions leading up to the January 6 Capitol riots.
The January 6 committee earlier this month revealed it had obtained an email from attorney John Eastman sent directly to Giuliani in which he explicitly said, "I’ve decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”
Other Trump allies who allegedly sought pardons include Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Scott Perry (R-PA), who were also deeply involved in trying to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
With additional reporting by AFP
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Kansas City healthcare companies forced to stop giving emergency birth control to rape survivors
June 29, 2022
The Republican-led state of Missouri has accidentally, or perhaps intentionally, banned a key birth control method.
According to the Kansas City Star, PlanB, emergency contraception, which does not cause abortions, is no longer being used by Saint Luke's Health System. The hospitals usually give PlanB to women who have come in after experiencing being raped. Now, Missouri doesn't allow any options for women faced with rape or incest.
Saint Luke's has 16 hospitals and campuses around the region in both Missouri and Kansas, but after the Supreme Court eliminated the privacy women enjoy around their own reproductive health, the Missouri law went into effect.
“To ensure we adhere to all state and federal laws—and until the law in this area becomes better defined—Saint Luke’s will not provide emergency contraception at our Missouri-based locations,” Saint Luke’s spokesperson Laurel Gifford said in a statement.
IN OTHER NEWS: 'Yesterday was Trump's worst nightmare': Conservative says Cassidy Hutchinson was so compelling even the ex-president had to notice
Among the things that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas advocated in his personal dissent was that he wanted to eliminate birth control for all women, which fell under the 1965 ruling Griswold v. Connecticut. The case declared by a 7-2 decision that the Constitution protects the right of marital privacy against state restrictions "on a couple's ability to be counseled in the use of contraceptives," explained Cornell’s Legal Information Institute.
Thomas and the new revelations about Missouri's law add to concern that any hospital giving PlanB could be at risk legally.
“First, the Missouri law is ambiguous but may be interpreted as criminalizing emergency contraception,” Gifford said. “As a System that deeply cares about its team, we simply cannot put our clinicians in a position that might result in criminal prosecution.”
Additionally, the same care can be provided at Saint Luke’s Kansas facilities “safely, legally, and without putting our clinicians at legal risk,” the statement explained.
“It’s important for survivors to know that if they are concerned that they need emergency contraception as part of their health care following a rape, that they should not go to Saint Luke’s Missouri,” said Kansas City-based Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault. president Julie Donelon.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is also running for U.S. Senate in the Republican primary, has the ability to prosecute anyone violating abortion bans in the state. However, Kansas City area prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, for Jackson County, said she will use her prosecutorial discretion to decide whether to charge anyone. She intends to limit the "erosion" of reproductive freedoms, she said.
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Los Angeles county officials have approved a plan to return California beachfront property to the descendants of a Black family who had the land seized from them a century ago, in a move hailed as a step towards atoning for racial injustice.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to transfer ownership of a piece of land in the city of Manhattan Beach to the great-grandsons of Charles and Willa Bruce, who had operated a resort for Black residents there until it was taken away from them in the 1920s in what the board called "an act of racism."
"We can't change the past and we will never be able to make up for the injustice that was done to Willa and Charles Bruce a century ago, but this is a start," said Supervisor Janice Hahn, who led the effort to return the 7,000 square foot (650 square meters) property to the family.
Hahn added that the move will allow the descendants "to start rebuilding the generational wealth that was denied to them."
Willa and Charles Bruce purchased the land in 1912 and after adding a few other adjacent plots created a beach resort, which came to be known as Bruce's Beach, catering to Black residents, who had few options at the time for enjoying the California coast.
Complete with a bath house, dance hall and cafe, the resort attracted other Black families who purchased land nearby.
But the resort quickly became a target of vandalism and racial attacks from local residents. In 1924, it was seized by the city under the pretext of needing to build a city park and the Bruces as well as other Black families ultimately lost their businesses.
The city park, built on a portion of the seized land, took decades to materialize.
"The experience of Willa and Charles Bruce is an example of how racism against Black people has reached crisis proportions," the board said in a statement, "and has resulted in large disparities in family stability, health and mental wellness, education, employment, economic development, public safety, criminal justice, and housing."
The Bruces plan to lease the land to the city for $413,000 a year and will have the option to sell it back to the county for a price not to exceed $20 million.
The United States is in the midst of a historic reckoning on racism, with Confederate symbols from the Civil War removed across the country, and mass protests calling for racial justice following the high-profile killings of a number of unarmed Black people by police and other manifestations of racial disparities.
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