A two-and-half-years old lawsuit finally came to a close Friday, when Judge Richard E. Moore ruled that two confederate statues of Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, must remain standing. Moore, however, did not award any damages after plaintiffs argued that the 188 days the statues remained covered by tarps encroached on a state law protecting war memorials and caused the plaintiffs emotional distress. He did say he would award attorney fees.
The city had said the law was unconstitutional because the war memorials send a racist message, The Guardian reports. But the argument was unable to sway Moore, even though he did acknowledge the authors of the historic preservation statute likely had more sinister intent.
"I don't think I can infer that a historical preservation statute was intended to be racist," Moore said. "Certainly, [racism] was on their minds, but we should not judge the current law by that intent."
The statues were covered by tarps following the death of Heather Heyer at a violent "Unite the Right" rally in the Virginia city in August 2017. Read more at The Daily Progress and The Guardian. Tim O'Donnell
Joe Maddon is coming home.
Maddon, one of the most prominent managers in Major League Baseball, reportedly agreed to a three-year-deal worth somewhere between $12 and $15 million to take over as the new skipper for the Los Angeles Angeles after his contract with the Chicago Cubs was not renewed after the season. Maddon was involved with the Angels as a player, scout, and coach from 1975 to 2005, before he left to manage the then-Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2006.
Maddon helped turn the previously moribund Tampa Bay franchise into a perennial contender, and made the World Series there in 2008, though he's probably best known for guiding the Cubs to their first World Series victory in 108 years in 2016. While the rest of his Cubs tenure trended downhill, Maddon maintains a reputation as one of the games most innovative tacticians, and the Angels are surely hoping he can help revive an organization that's underachieved for years now, despite employing the greatest player in the game in outfielder Mike Trout.
It won't be an easy task, on or off the field. The Angels have many issues to address in terms of their roster, most notably the pitching staff, but they are currently dealing with scrutiny that goes well beyond baseball — the fallout from the death of former pitcher Tyler Skaggs' death may have revealed a longstanding failure to address drug use and addiction within the organization. Tim O'Donnell
President Trump seems wholly unconcerned with the Kurds he left without backup in Syria.
After pulling U.S. troops from the Kurdish-held area of Syria and promptly allowing Turkey to invade, Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday that America's Kurdish allies are "safe" because "Syria's protecting" them. That's not true, but Trump doesn't seem to care regardless, adding that the Kurds are "no angels, by the way."
Once the U.S. pulled support from the Kurds who led America's fight against ISIS, Turkey quickly attacked the region and unquestionably killed Kurds along the way. But Trump brushed off the incursion on Wednesday, saying "If Turkey goes into Syria it is between Turkey and Syria. It's not our problem." "They've got a lot of sand over there... There's a lot of sand that they can play with," he said of the Turkish attacks that have already slaughtered dozens of Kurds. Trump also shrugged off how Russia has already started trolling the U.S. by sending troops to the region and said it's fine for Russia to start supporting Syria.
Trump seems to have forgotten that, like critics and allies on both sides of the aisle have told him, the Kurds lost about 11,000 of their own troops during America's fight against ISIS. Kathryn Krawczyk
Since U.S. and South Korean authorities busted one of the world's largest child pornography sites in 2018, more than 300 site users in 11 countries — and more than two dozen U.S. states — have been arrested, while at least 23 minor victims in the U.S., U.K., and Spain who were actively abused by the site's users have been rescued, Bloomberg reports.
The site was shuttered in March 2018 and its founder, 23-year-old South Korean national Jong Woo Son, was indicted in August of that year. Son remains in custody in South Korea where he was convicted, while his indictment was unsealed Wednesday.
Son operated a Darknet, or encrypted online content, market that was hidden from traditional search engines to distribute more than 1 million explicit videos involving children, while accepting Bitcoin as currency. Agents from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division reportedly were able to determine the location of the Darknet server, which led to Son's arrest. They were then able to "de-anonymize" the Bitcoin transactions on the site to unmask many of the site's users.
Bloomberg notes that child pornography is a crime that's increasing at a rapid rate around the globe in part because of the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which allow transactions to remain anonymous. Read more at Bloomberg. Tim O'Donnell
Ex-Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch wasn't the only career diplomat who ran into trouble under President Trump, at least according to former State Department official Michael McKinley.
McKinley will testify behind closed doors for Congress' impeachment investigation Wednesday, following his surprising resignation as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's senior adviser last week. But a person familiar with McKinley's testimony has told The Washington Post that McKinley saw career diplomats "mistreated" and "their careers derailed for political reasons" while serving under Trump, and that he'll tell Congress all about it.
McKinley had spent 37 years in the State Department until his apparently "bitter" resignation last week, the Post writes. His resignation likely stemmed from Yovanovitch's firing as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and how the State Department did not "defend" her or "interfere with an obviously partisan effort to intervene in our relationship with Ukraine" for Trump's political benefit, the source said.
But McKinley reportedly won't directly criticize Pompeo in his Wednesday testimony. He will instead will reiterate an August report from the department's inspector general that said Trump appointees alleged career diplomats were disloyal to Trump, the source says. McKinley will specifically focus on Yovanovitch's firing, "a punitive action he and many other rank-and-file diplomats viewed as wholly unjustified," the Post continues. Read more about McKinley's probable testimony at The Washington Post. Kathryn Krawczyk
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's snubbing of Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sure didn't last long.
Sky News on Wednesday morning published an interview with Erdogan in which he indicated ahead of a U.S. delegation's visit to Turkey he wouldn't meet with Pence and Pompeo, saying "I'm not going to talk to them" and that he'll talk "when Trump comes here." This seemed to surprise Pence, who in an interview subsequently said, "we have every expectation that we will meet with President Erdogan."
But the meeting is evidently back on, with Erdogan's communications director quickly telling Turkish press he actually does plan to meet with Pence and the rest of the U.S. delegation after all, Axios reports. Pence and Pompeo are visiting in order to negotiate a ceasefire in Syria.
At the same time that he's reversing this snub, Erdogan is floating the possibility of canceling his upcoming meeting with Trump in the United States next month, per Reuters, saying he may re-evaluate it because "arguments, debates, conversations being held in Congress regarding my person, my family and my minister friends are a very big disrespect" to Turkey. Brendan Morrow
More questions have arisen surrounding President Trump's businesses after ProPublica obtained documents via New York's Freedom of Information Law.
The documents show that for two of Trump's New York properties — 40 Wall Street and the Trump International Hotel and Tower — different financial figures were reported to lenders and to tax authorities. For example, the Trump Organization told a lender that 40 Wall Street had been 58.9 percent leased on Dec. 31, 2012, before vaulting to 95 percent a few years later, which reportedly represented borrower-friendly "leasing momentum." But the company reportedly disclosed that the building was 81 percent rented as of Jan. 5, 2013 to tax officials. Ultimately, the reporting strategy helped Trump reach favorable terms — he received a 10-year loan with a lower interest than the building previously had and was also able to defer paying off much of the principal until the end of the loan. "There was a story crafted here," said Kevin Riordan, a financing expert and real estate professor at Montclair State University.
As for Trump Tower, the company reportedly told tax authorities that the building made around $822,000 renting space to commercial tenants in 2017, while reporting to lenders that it took in nearly double that. In eight years of data ProPublica examined for the property, the Trump organization generally reported gross income to tax authorities that was around 81 percent of what it reported to the lender.
There can be legitimate reasons for such numbers to diverge, real estate experts have noted, but those same experts told ProPublica that some of the gaps in the documents did not appear to have any reasonable justification. Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley said the discrepancies amount to some "versions of fraud." Read more at ProPublica. Tim O'Donnell