Reports: Mueller Impanels Grand Jury In Federal Russia Probe

Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, recently impaneled a grand jury as part of the probe, several news outlets reported on Thursday.

The Wall Street Journal reported, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the matter, that the Washington, D.C. grand jury “began its work in recent weeks” and is separate from the one assisting with the probe into President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The impanelment of that jury predated Mueller’s appointment as special counsel.

Reuters confirmed, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the matter, that Mueller convened a grand jury.

The empanelment of a new, separate grand jury reflects the scope of Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the election and whether any members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.

Reuters also reported that grand jury subpoenas were issued in connection with a meeting between Donald Trump Jr., the President’s eldest son, and a Russian lawyer.

Trump Jr. attended the meeting after he was promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton as part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s campaign. It was not clear whether those subpoenas were issued by the grand jury Mueller impaneled.

WaPo: Woman Accuses Roy Moore Of Sexual Encounter When She Was 14

An Alabama woman accused the state’s Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore of initiating a sexual encounter with her when she was 14 years old and he was 32, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

Leigh Corfman told the Washington Post that Moore asked her for her phone number in 1979, when she was 14 years old, as she sat outside a courtroom while her mother was inside for a hearing.

Days later, Corfman said, Moore drove her to his home, complimented her appearance, and kissed her. During a second visit to Moore’s home, Corfman told the Washington Post, Moore removed his and her clothes, touched her over her underwear, and guided her hand to do the same over his “tight white” undergarments.

Corfman told the Washington Post, “I wasn’t ready for that — I had never put my hand on a man’s penis, much less an erect one.”

“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” Corfman told the Washington Post. She said she was thinking, “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.”

Corfman told the Washington Post that she and Moore did not have intercourse, and that after she dressed, she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.

The age of consent in Alabama is 16 years of age.

The Washington Post reported that two of Corfman’s childhood friends said she told them she was involved with an older man, and one said Corfman identified Moore in particular.

Nancy Wells, Corfman’s mother, told the Washington Post that Corfman told her about the encounter more than a decade later.

The Washington Post reported that three other women said Moore pursued them when he was in his early 30s and they were in their teens, between the ages of 16 and 18, but none of them said Moore coerced them into sexual encounters.

Wendy Miller told the Washington Post that Moore first approached her when she was 14 years old, and asked her on dates when she was 16 years old. Her mother squashed the latter, according to Miller.

Debbie Wesson Gibson told the Washington Post that Moore asked her out when she was 17 years old and that they went on several dates but their physical involvement was limited to kissing.

Gloria Thacker Deason told the Washington Post that Moore began taking her on dates that involved alcohol when she was 18 years old. The legal drinking age in Alabama, according to the Washington Post, was 19 years of age.

Moore denied the claims in the report.

“These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,” Moore said in a statement to the Washington Post.

In a statement to reporters, Moore’s campaign called the allegations a “last ditch Hail Mary” by “national liberal organizations.”

The campaign noted that the Washington Post’s editorial board endorsed Democratic candidate Doug Jones and claimed the Washington Post has “engaged in a systematic campaign to distort the truth about the Judge’s record and career and derail his campaign” for months.

“In fact, just two days ago, the Foundation for Moral Law sent a retraction demand to the Post for the false stories they wrote about the Judge’s work and compensation,” the campaign said. “After over 40 years of public service, if any of these allegations were true, they would have been made public long before now.”

Moore has a long history of controversial comments, many related to sexuality. In 2005, he said homosexual activity should be illegal and compared it to bestiality. In November 2016, he said a Supreme Court ruling that required states to license and recognize same-sex marriage was “even worse in a sense” than Dred Scott.

In October, he said that the federal judge who blocked President Donald Trump’s policy that would have excluded transgender people from military service “should be impeached,” and incorrectly claimed the American Psychiatric Association considered “transgenderism to be a mental disorder” until 2013.

Elected Republicans have nevertheless embraced him for his party affiliation.

A Colombian teacher forced high-school students to have sex with her in order to get good grades.

Yokasta M, 40, groomed teenage boys at at an undisclosed school in Medellin, Colombia, and would threaten to fail them if they did not sleep with her.

The married teacher was caught after a student told his parents, and in addition to a divorce, she is now facing 40 years in jail.

She allegedly used WhatsApp messenger to send explicit images and proposals to her students.

...

Once she was arrested, one of her students posed some of the images she had sent them online.

The trove of images were captioned: 'This is the teacher Yokasta, who tells us that she disapproves of us if we do not have relations with her. '

As a result, the story went viral across South America, with reactions varying from outrage to jokes that the teenagers were 'probably not complaining'.

Men who allege they were framed by crooked Chicago cop get mass exoneration

CHICAGO — A judge on Thursday threw out convictions against 15 men who allege they were framed by a corrupt former Chicago Police sergeant and his underlings who demanded protection payoffs from residents and drug dealers in a city housing project.

Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. agreed to dismiss the charges after Cook County prosecutors confirmed at a brief hearing that they no longer had faith in the credibility of convictions brought against the men who were arrested on various drug charges from 2003 to 2008 by the rogue cop Ronald Watts and officers under his charge.

“In good conscience we could not see these convictions stand,” said Mark Rotert, who heads the Cook County State's Attorney's conviction integrity unit.

The mass exoneration is the latest mark on the Chicago Police Department, which has come under fire in the city’s black and Latino communities for unnecessarily using deadly force, police brutality and mistreatment of minorities.

The U.S. Justice Department issued a scathing report in the final days of the Obama administration about the Chicago Police Department finding that the city’s police force is beset by widespread racial bias, poor training and feckless oversight of officers accused of misconduct.

Following the dismissal of charges against the 15 men on Thursday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a joint statement that they had “zero tolerance for abuse, misconduct or any unlawful actions” by law enforcement. More convictions could potentially be overturned as the integrity unit says it will review any credible complaints brought by people convicted of crimes that were investigated by Watts.

“The actions of Ronald Watts must be condemned by all of us, and we will continue our work to ensure the abuses of the past are never repeated in the future,” Emanuel and Johnson said in the statement.

The dismissals come two months after lawyers for the 15 men filed a petition on their behalf asking that their drug convictions be overturned because they had been framed by Watts.

Watts and another officer, Kallat Mohammed, pleaded guilty on federal charges in 2013 for stealing money from a drug courier who'd been working as an FBI informant. Watts received a 22-month sentence and Mohammed was sentenced to 18-months in federal prison for the shakedowns.

But the petitioners said Watts and his officers had terrorized residents of the Ida B. Wells public housing complex, a massive complex on the city’s South Side that is now shuttered, for years before they were caught by federal agents.

The petitioners also allege that several other officers, beyond Mohammed, took part in the scheme to plant drugs on innocent residents and drug dealers who refused to pay protection money. Several hours after the convictions were overturned, police department spokesman Frank Giancamilli confirmed that six officers and one sergeant who worked under Watts on the overturned cases, and are still work for the police department, were placed on desk duty pending an internal review of the cases.

Rotert said after reviewing the cases prosecutors concluded that the police officers were “not being truthful” and lost confidence in the arresting officers’ reports and testimony.

Rotert declined to speak about specific evidence that led State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to move to ask the courts to drop the charges. But he noted that his unit saw a troubling trend of defendants complaining early during their prosecution that drugs had been planted on them by Watts and his officers.

The 15 men, who had 18 convictions connected to Watts and his officers, join five others whose drug-related convictions connected to the officers that were previously overthrown. All the men were African-American and received sentences ranging from probation to nine years in prison.

Joshua Tepfer, the lead attorney representing the 15 men in the case, said police ignored complaints by residents about Watts and his officers.

One petitioner who had has conviction overturned, Leonard Gipson, 36, alleged that it was common knowledge in Ida B. Wells housing complex that Watts demanded payments from drug dealers and would plant drugs on men in the project — some who say they were not dealers — if they refused to pay him bribes.

He filed a complaint with the police department after he was arrested in 2003 and says Watts planted drugs on him. Four months later with charges still pending in the first arrest, he said Watts arrested him and planted drugs on him once again.

“Everybody knew if you’re not going to pay Watts, you were going to jail,” Gipson said.

In fact, Watts had been on the FBI’s radar for several years before he was finally arrested along with a junior officer Kallat Mohammed in 2012 after they were caught shaking down an FBI informant.

A September 2004 FBI report included portions of an interview by federal agents with an individual who alleged “Watts gets IBW (Ida B. Wells) drug dealers to pay him ‘to work’ (sell drugs) in the housing project. If the payments are made to Watts, he will in turn allow the drug dealers to continue to sell drugs.” The interview surfaced as a result of 2014 federal lawsuit filed by a man who alleged he had been framed by Watts, according to court filings.

Tepfer says Watts and his crew made about 500 arrests from 2003 to 2008 that led to convictions. He said that he and his team are currently vetting as many as two dozen additional convictions of people who said they had drugs planted on them by Watts or his officers for refusing to pay them off.

“These convictions stick with you,” Tepfer said. “The time that you served you can’t get back. It affects your ability to get jobs, housing, to get public aid…These were poor, African-American impoverished communities in public housing that had no ability to trust law enforcement to help.”

Philip Thomas, 58, one of the petitioners who had his conviction overturned, said the anger still lingers over the more than six years he spent in prison on convictions that he says were the result of Watts and his officers planting drugs on him.

“The better years of my life were spent running from them and then in the penitentiary,” Thomas said.

Baltimore Police Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. was found not guilty Tuesday of all 21 administrative charges against him in the 2015 arrest and death of Freddie Gray.

The verdict absolves Goodson once and for all in the high-profile case, and allows him to continue his career in the city police force.

Goodson, 48, the driver of the police van in which Gray was found with severe and ultimately fatal spinal cord injuries in April 2015, had faced possible termination if any of the charges against him was sustained. He was charged with neglecting his duty by failing to ensure Gray’s safety, including by not securing a handcuffed and shackled Gray in a seat belt and not calling a medic for Gray after he requested one. He was also charged with making false statements to investigators.

The decision clearing him of all charges was unanimous among the three law enforcement officials who presided over the six-day administrative trial, and follows his acquittal on all criminal charges, including second-degree depraved-heart murder, at a separate trial last year.

“This is a vindication of this officer,” said Sean Malone, one of Goodson’s attorneys, shortly after the verdict was read during a brief reconvening of the panel at the University of Baltimore about 1 p.m. Tuesday. “This is a tragic accident that happened, and we’re sorry for the loss of Mr. Gray, but we’re glad that our client is not going to be the face of this incident.”

The panel’s decision is final and cannot be challenged by the city or the Police Department.

Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, in a statement, said the department “will stay the course” with the upcoming trial boards for two other officers charged administratively in the case.

“Freddie Gray died in police custody. My thoughts and prayers remain with the Gray family,” Davis said. “We will continue to make improvements within our organization to meet the expectations of constitutional policing demanded by our community.”

William H. “Billy” Murphy, the Gray family’s attorney, could not immediately be reached for comment. The city previously reached a $6.4 million civil settlement with Gray’s family.

Malone said Goodson did not want to comment himself, but intends to “take care of his family” by continuing his 18-year career with the department until retirement.

“Officer Goodson is just ready to get on. This is three years. He had a murder charge over his head, he’s had this over his head. He’s a quiet man, he’s a hard-working man, he’s just happy to resume his life,” Malone said. “This has been hard on him and his family, and it’s nice to get his life back.”

In delivering the verdict, Prince George’s County Police Maj. Rosa Guixens, the chair of the panel, read out “not guilty” 21 times in a row before abruptly closing the proceedings.

Goodson was stoic until the last “not guilty” was read out, when he broke into a smile. He then hugged his attorneys, who congratulated each other and slapped one another on the back.

Outside the hearing room, Goodson’s father, Caesar Goodson Sr., who had sat through the entire trial, said “the family is glad it’s over.”

“My son is a good son and a good officer,” he said. “We hope no other officer has to go through that.”

Goodson has always maintained his innocence, saying in a statement to investigators aired for the first time at his administrative trial that he did not believe it was safe for him to climb into the van to secure Gray in a seat belt, and that he did not believe that Gray was injured or needed medical care when he requested it.

Gray, 25, was found unconscious and suffering from severe spinal cord injuries in the back of the van after a ride that included several stops, and died a week later. This death precipitated widespread protests against police brutality, and his funeral was followed by rioting, looting and arson that captured national attention and sent the city into a weeklong nightly curfew as the National Guard was called in to maintain order.

Six officers were charged criminally in the Gray case; none was convicted. Goodson, Lt. Brian Rice and Officer Edward Nero were acquitted at bench trials, and Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby then dropped all remaining charges against the other three officers.

The U.S. Justice Department also investigated Gray’s death but declined to bring any federal charges against the officers.

Five of those officers were subsequently charged administratively in the case after detectives from Montgomery and Howard counties conducted an outside investigation into Gray’s death on behalf of the city and the Police Department.

Goodson is the first officer to face a trial board in the case.

In addition to failures related to Gray’s safety, Goodson also faced charges that he made false statements to the county detectives, and that he failed to properly document his actions on the day of Gray’s arrest.

After the verdict, Malone said Goodson had been “wrongfully charged” from the start, echoing his arguments at trial that Goodson had acted in good faith as any reasonable officer would have under the circumstances.

Malone argued at the trial that the police department had failed to properly train or equip Goodson — and all of its officers — to handle non-compliant detainees, and that Goodson had deferred to his supervisors and other officers who had been more directly involved in loading Gray into the van and deciding not to secure him in a seat belt.

Neil Duke, the attorney for the city, had argued Goodson had failed in his duty to keep Gray safe, and was simply trying to pass blame on to the department and the other officers around him that day.

Duke, who could not be reached for comment after the verdict, said during the trial that Goodson was a veteran officer who had “become perhaps a little hardened or callous or indifferent to the plight of an average citizen.”

After the verdict, the local police union applauded the panel’s decision to clear Goodson.

Lt. Gene Ryan, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, said in a statement that while Gray’s death was “an extremely unfortunate incident,” no officers were responsible.

“Officer Goodson can now turn the page on from this chapter in his life and continue his career with the Baltimore Police Department,” Ryan said.

Tuesday’s verdict did not sit well with advocates of police reform.

Monique Dixon, deputy director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in a statement Tuesday that the decision was “appalling, yet predictable” given the fact that the panel presiding over the trial was comprised entirely of law enforcement officers.

“As long as the city lets law enforcement police themselves in lieu of meaningful civilian oversight, these proceedings will not result in accountability and will fail to strengthen community trust,” Dixon said. “These hearings are hollow unless they are fundamentally altered to incorporate resident input, transparency, and accountability.”

Lawrence Grandpre, of the local grass-roots think tank Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, watched the proceedings and said the verdict did not come as a surprise to him, either.

“It’s nothing unexpected. We’ve been trying to reform these trial boards for three or four years,” he said, noting his organization’s efforts to add citizens to the panels.

Grandpre said he is concerned officers serving on the panels are partial to the officers who they have been tasked with passing judgment on, because “they are thinking, ‘That could be me.’ ”

Both Dixon and Grandpre said their organizations will continue working to change laws in Maryland and in Baltimore to improve civilian oversight of the police and police misconduct trials.