Chris Hedges's Blog, page 39

2nd CIA Contractor Testifies in 9/11 Case at Guantanamo

FORT MEADE, Md. — A former CIA contractor who helped design a harsh interrogation program following the the Sept. 11 attacks sought Friday to minimize the severity of techniques used on the men facing war crimes charges for their alleged roles in the plot.

John Bruce Jessen, testifying in public for the first time about an interrogation program long shrouded in secrecy, told a military court at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that the techniques used against detainees had been shown to have no lasting effects and were used only a small portion of the time they were in captivity.

Jessen said the techniques, which included waterboarding and prolonged sleep deprivation, were employed only to gather intelligence aimed at preventing another terrorist attack.

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“If at at any time they didn’t want the techniques to be applied, all they had to do was talk, and most of them did that right away, ” said the retired Air Force psychologist.

Jessen took the stand after eight days of testimony by James Mitchell, also a retired Air Force psychologist. The pair are considered the architects of the interrogation program, which was used on detainees in clandestine CIA facilities around the world, and which are now largely viewed as torture.

Their testimony comes as lawyers for the five men charged in the attacks seek to exclude a key piece of evidence against them: statements the defendants gave to FBI agents after they were moved from CIA custody to Guantanamo in September 2006. Their death penalty trial is scheduled to start at the base next January.

Jessen, as Mitchell did before him, described how Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, learned to withstand the waterboarding and eventually began to volunteer information, including his role in the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002.

“The objective was to get the detainees to willingly engage in dialogue with the CIA analysts at some level,” Jessen testified.

A Senate investigation in 2014 found that the interrogation program designed by Mitchell and Jessen was used on 39 detainees and produced no useful intelligence.

Jessen, who now lives in Washington state, created the interrogation program with Mitchell based on the experience both men had training Air Force pilots and other service members to put up resistance to the enemy if captured. Their company received $81 million from the CIA, according to the Senate report.

Mitchell earlier defended the interrogation program, though he conceded that some interrogators used unapproved methods or that some techniques were used even when not necessary because detainees were cooperating.

The methods they developed included sleep deprivation for days at a time, confinement in small spaces, painful shackling, forced standing in the nude, being plunged into icy water as well as the simulated drowning process known as waterboarding,

Mitchell said the overall goal of the program was to prevent another terrorist attack. “I felt my moral obligation to protect American lives outweighed the temporary discomfort of terrorists who voluntarily took up arms against us,” he said.

Air Force Col. Shane Cohen, the judge, said he will ultimately decide how to characterize the treatment the men were subjected to in various clandestine CIA detention facilities before they were taken to Guantanamo in September 2006. They are now among the 40 prisoners still held at the base.

“The opinion of the Department of Justice, the attorney general, or even the president of the United States is not binding on me,” Cohen said during Mitchell’s testimony.

His decision could have a significant effect on what evidence the government can present in the case against Mohammad and his four co-defendants. Proceedings against the men have been bogged down in pretrial hearings since their May 2012 arraignment on charges that include nearly 3,000 counts of murder, hijacking and terrorism. They could get the death penalty if convicted at the trial by military commission.

The proceedings at Guantanamo were being transmitted to several government installations in the U.S., including Fort Meade, Maryland, where they were viewed by The Associated Press.

U.S. Declares Virus Emergency, New Entry Restrictions

WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday declared a public health emergency and announced significant entry restrictions because of a new virus that hit China and has spread to other nations.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who is coordinating the federal response, announced that President Donald Trump has signed an order that will temporarily bar entry to the U.S. of foreign nationals, other than immediate family of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, who have traveled in China within the last 14 days. The new restrictions take effect at 5 p.m. EST on Sunday.

“It is likely that we will continue to see more cases in the United States in the coming days and weeks, including some limited person-to-person transmissions,” Azar said. “The American public can be assured the full weight of the U.S. government is working to safeguard the health and safety of the American people.”

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Americans returning from China will be allowed into the country, but will face screening at select ports of entry and required to undertake 14 days of self-screening to ensure they don’t pose a health risk. Those returning from Hubei province, the center of the outbreak, will be subject to up to 14 days of mandatory quarantine.

Beginning Sunday, the U.S. will also begin funneling all flights to the U.S. from China to seven major airports where passengers can be screened for illness.

The virus has infected almost 10,000 people globally in just two months, a troublesome sign that prompted the World Health Organization to declare the outbreak a global emergency. The death toll stood at 213, including 43 new fatalities, all in China.

A public health emergency in the U.S. allows the government to tap additional resources to send to states, such as emergency funding and if necessary drugs or equipment from the national stockpile, and to suspend certain legal requirements.

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that while the risk in the U.S. is low, “I want to emphasize that this is a significant global situation and it continues to evolve.”

There are six cases of this virus in the U.S. and 191 individuals are being monitored, Redfield said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health, said one reason the U.S. stepped up its quarantine measures was an alarming report from Germany that a traveler from China had spread the virus despite showing no symptoms. Fauci contrasted it with the response to recent outbreaks of Ebola, which can’t be spread unless someone is very ill.

At the same time, federal health authorities were recognizing that the test they’re using to detect the virus isn’t always dependable. Redfield said when it was used on some of the people currently in isolation, they’d test positive one day and negative another.

Of the six U.S. patients so far, airport screening detected only one. “Astute doctors” caught four others, after the people sought care and revealed that they’d traveled to China, Redfield said. And the CDC diagnosed the most recent case, the spouse of one of those earlier cases, who was being closely monitored.

Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University expert on public health law, said putting a large number of people under quarantine “is virtually unprecedented in modern American history.”

“But I think it’s justified,” he said, noting the evacuees had been in a hot zone for the virus for a long time.

Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun offered America’s “deepest compassion” to the Chinese, noting that the deadly outbreak came during the peak of their holiday season, when everyone would ordinarily be celebrating and not living in fear of contracting the virus.

Biegun said the U.S. is working hard to find donors of supplies and making arrangements for a “robust effort to help the Chinese people get their arms around this outbreak.”

The announcement came hours after the State Department issued a level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory, the highest grade of warning, and told Americans in China to consider departing using commercial means. “Travelers should be prepared for travel restrictions to be put into effect with little or no advance notice,” the advisory said.

Hours later, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines announced they were suspending all flights between the U.S. and China, joining several international carriers that have stopped flying to China as the virus outbreak continues to spread.

Meanwhile, U.S. health officials issued a two-week quarantine order for the 195 Americans evacuated earlier this week from the Chinese city of Wuhan, provincial capital of Hubei province. It was the first time a federal quarantine has been ordered since the 1960s, when one was enacted over concern about the potential spread of smallpox, the CDC said.

“We understand this action may seem drastic. We would rather be remembered for over-reacting than under-reacting,” the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier said. None of the Americans being housed at a Southern California military base has shown signs of illness.

China counted 9,692 confirmed cases Friday, the vast majority in Hubei province.

The National Health Commission reported 171 cases of people who have been “cured and discharged from hospital.” WHO has said most people who got the illness had milder cases, though 20% experienced severe symptoms. Symptoms include fever and cough, and in severe cases, shortness of breath and pneumonia.

China has placed more than 50 million people in the region under virtual quarantine, while foreign countries, companies and airlines have cut back severely on travel to China and quarantined those who recently passed through Wuhan. Infected people don’t show symptoms immediately and may be able to pass on the virus before they appear sick.

American Airlines said it was halting all flights starting Friday and running through March 27. Delta plans to wait until Feb. 6 to suspend China operations to help travelers in China leave the country. It said the stoppage will continue through April 30.

United Airlines announced that it will suspend flights to Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu but continue flights to Hong Kong.

The U.S. screening airports are John F. Kennedy International in New York, San Francisco International in California, Seattle-Tacoma International in Washington, O’Hare International in Chicago, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International in Georgia, and Daniel K. Inouye International in Hawaii.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average skidded more than 600 points Friday as the outbreak continued to widen, stoking fears that the travel restrictions and other uncertainties caused by the health emergency in the world’s second-largest economy could dent global growth.

Since China informed WHO about the new virus in late December, at least 23 countries have reported cases, as scientists race to understand how exactly the virus is spreading and how severe it is.

Experts say there is significant evidence the virus is spreading among people in China, and WHO noted with its emergency declaration Thursday it was especially concerned that some cases abroad also involved human-to-human transmission. It defines an international emergency as an “extraordinary event” that poses a risk to other countries and requires a coordinated international response.

“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China but because of what is happening in other countries,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva. “Our greatest concern is the potential for this virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems which are ill-prepared to deal with it.”

A declaration of a global emergency typically brings greater money and resources, but may also prompt nervous governments to restrict travel and trade to affected countries. The announcement also imposes more disease reporting requirements on countries.

The last time the federal government ordered a quarantine was in 1963 when a woman named Ellen Siegel was held in quarantine for up to 14 days because she did not present a valid certificate of vaccination against small pox. Siegel had visited Sweden when it still had a case of smallpox and although she had been revaccinated about two months earlier, the vaccination was said to be unsuccessful.

On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it was authorizing the departure of family members and all non-emergency U.S. government employees from Beijing and the consulates in the cities of Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenyang. Staff from the Wuhan consulate departed earlier this week.

The decision was made “out of an abundance of caution related to logistical disruptions stemming from restricted transportation and availability of appropriate health care,” the embassy said.

Mike Wester, a businessman in Beijing who has lived in China for 19 years, said he has no plans to leave.

“I feel safer self-quarantining myself here at home than I do risking travel,” Wester said.

He pointed to potential risks from crowds at airports and being required to remove a mask for passport and security checks.

Japan and Germany also advised against non-essential travel and Britain did as well, except for Hong Kong and Macao. Popular holiday and shopping destination Singapore barred Chinese from traveling there, becoming the first Southeast Asian nation to do so.

Tedros said WHO was not recommending limiting travel or trade to China.

“There is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade,” he said. He added that Chinese President Xi Jinping had committed to help stop the spread of the virus beyond its borders.

Although scientists expect to see limited transmission of the virus between people with close contact, like within families, the instances of spread to people who may have had less exposure to the virus is worrying.

In Japan, a tour guide and bus driver became infected after escorting two tour groups from Wuhan. In Germany, five employees of a German auto parts supplier became ill after a Chinese colleague visited, including two who had no direct contact with the woman, who showed no symptoms of the virus until her flight back to China. On Friday, Germany confirmed a sixth case, a child of one of the people already infected.

“That’s the kind of transmission chain that we don’t want to see,” said Marion Koopmans, an infectious diseases specialist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and a member of WHO’s emergency committee.

The new virus has now infected more people globally than were sickened during the 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, a cousin of the new virus. Both are from the coronavirus family, which also includes those that can cause the common cold.

___

Moritsugu reported from Beijing. Associated Press reporters Joe McDonald and Sam McNeil in Beijing, Lauran Neergaard, Darlene Superville, Kevin Freking and Deb Riechmann in Washington, Mike Stobbe and Alexandra Olson in New York, Maria Cheng in London, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Edith Lederer at the United Nations, Elaine Ganley in Paris, Frank Jordans in Berlin and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

White House Curbs Immigration for 6 Nations in Election-Year Push

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced Friday that it was curbing legal immigration from six additional countries that officials said did not meet security standards, as part of an election-year push to further restrict immigration.

Officials said immigrants from Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania will face new restrictions in obtaining certain visas to come to the United States. But it is not a total travel ban, unlike President Donald Trump’s earlier effort that generated outrage around the world for unfairly targeting Muslims.

Trump was expected to sign a proclamation on the restrictions as early as Friday.

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The announcement comes as Trump tries to promote his administration’s crackdown on immigration, highlighting a signature issue that motivated his supporters in 2016 and hoping it has the same affect this November. The administration recently announced a crackdown on birth tourism and is noting the sharp decline in crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border and citing progress on building the border wall.

Immigrant visas were restricted for Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Eritrea and Nigeria. That type of visa is given to people seeking to live in the U.S. permanently. They include visas for people sponsored by family members or employers as well as the diversity visa program that made up to 55,000 visas available in the most recent lottery. In December, for example, 40,666 immigrant visas were granted worldwide.

Sudan and Tanzania have diversity visas suspended. The State Department uses a computer drawing to select people from around the world for up to 55,000 diversity visas. Nigeria is already excluded from the lottery along with other countries that had more than 50,000 natives immigrate to the U.S. in the previous five years.

Nonimmigrant visas were not affected. Those are given to people traveling to the U.S. for a temporary stay. They include visas for tourists, those doing business or people seeking medical treatment. During December, for example, about 650,760 nonimmigrant visas were granted worldwide.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Homeland Security officials would work with the countries on bolstering their security requirements to help them work to get off the list.

“These countries for the most part want to be helpful, they want to do the right thing, they have relationships with the U.S., but for a variety of different reasons failed to meet those minimum requirements,” Wolf said.

Rumors swirled for weeks about a potential new ban, and initially Belarus was considered. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was headed to the Eastern European nation as the restrictions were released and Belarus was not on the list. Wolf said some nations were able to comply with the new standards in time.

The current restrictions follow Trump’s travel ban, which the Supreme Court upheld as lawful in 2018. They are significantly softer than Trump’s initial ban, which had suspended travel from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen for 90 days, blocked refugee admissions for 120 days, and suspended travel from Syria. The government suspended most immigrant and nonimmigrant visas to applicants from those countries. Exceptions are available for students and those with “significant contacts” in the U.S.

Trump has said a travel ban is necessary to protect Americans. But opponents have argued that he seeks to target Muslim countries, pointing to comments he made as a candidate in 2015 calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

The seven countries with considerably more restrictions include nations with little or no diplomatic relationship to the U.S. They include five majority-Muslim nations: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

Sudan and Kyrgyzstan are majority-Muslim countries. Nigeria is about evenly split between Christians and Muslims but has the world’s fifth-largest population of Muslims, according to the Pew Research Center.

Wolf said immigrant visas were chosen because people with those visa are the most difficult to remove after arriving in the United States.

The initial ban was immediately blocked by the courts and led to a monthslong process to develop clear standards and federal review processes to try to withstand legal muster.

The announcement of new countries banned was expected around the third anniversary of the Jan. 27, 2017, enactment of the first order.

Wolf said officials spent about six months working on revised criteria. They examined countries for compliance with minimum standards for identification and information-sharing, and assessed whether countries properly tracked terrorism or public safety risks. Officials looked at whether countries used modern passports, shared information that the U.S. could validate on travelers and identified possible criminal suspects in a way that the U.S. could see before entry. They evaluated responses and ranked nations on where they fell.

Government agencies then discussed whether countries had different, but important, contacts with the U.S. and then decided on restrictions.

“Really the only way to mitigate the risk is to impose these travel restrictions,” Wolf said.

___

Merchant reported from Houston.

Senate Rejects Witnesses in Trump Trial

WASHINGTON — The Senate rejected the idea of summoning witnesses for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial late Friday, all but ensuring his acquittal. But senators considered pushing off final voting on his fate to next week.

The vote on allowing new witnesses was defeated 51-49 on a near party-line vote.

Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah voted along with the Democrats for witnesses, but that was not enough.

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Despite the Democrats singular focus on hearing new testimony, the Republican majority brushed past those demands to make this the first Senate impeachment trial without witnesses. Even new revelations Friday from former national security adviser John Bolton did not sway GOP senators, who said they’d heard enough.

That means the eventual outcome for Trump would be an acquittal “in name only,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a House prosecutor, during final debate. Some called it a cover-up.

The impeachment of the president now lands squarely in an election year before a divided nation. Caucus voting begins Monday in Iowa, and Trump gives his State of the Union address the next night.

Trump was impeached by the House last month on charges the he abused power and obstructed Congress like no other president has done as he tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden, and then blocked the congressional probe of his actions.

The Democrats had badly wanted testimony from John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser whose forthcoming book links Trump directly to the charges. But Bolton won’t be summoned, and none of this appeared to affect the trial’s expected outcome.

In an unpublished manuscript, Bolton writes that the president asked him during an Oval Office meeting in early May to bolster his effort to get Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to a person who read the passage and told The Associated Press. The person, who was not authorized to disclose contents of the book, spoke only on condition of anonymity.

In the meeting, Bolton said the president asked him to call new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and persuade him to meet with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was planning to go to Ukraine to coax the Ukrainians to investigate the president’s political rivals. Bolton writes that he never made the call to Zelenskiy after the meeting, which included acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.

The revelation adds more detail to allegations of when and how Trump first sought to influence Ukraine to aid investigations of his rivals that are central to the abuse of power charge in the first article of impeachment.

The story was first reported Friday by The New York Times.

Trump issued a quick denial.

“I never instructed John Bolton to set up a meeting for Rudy Giuliani, one of the greatest corruption fighters in America and by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, to meet with President Zelenskiy,” Trump said. “That meeting never happened.”

Key Republican senators said even if Trump committed the offenses as charged by the House, they are not impeachable and the partisan proceedings must end.

“I didn’t need any more evidence because I thought it was proved that the president did what he was charged with doing,” retiring GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a key hold out, told reporters Friday at the Capitol. “But that didn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she, too, would oppose more testimony in the charged partisan atmosphere, having “come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate.” She said, “The Congress has failed.”

Eager for a conclusion, Trump’s allies nevertheless suggesting the shift in timing to extend the proceedings into next week and it shows the significance of the moment for senators in casting votes in only the third presidential impeachment trial in American history.

The situation remained fluid, but senators have indicated they want more time to publicly debate the charges and air their positions on the coming vote, according to a Republican familiar with the proposal but unauthorized to discuss it. The person was granted anonymity.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made the offer to Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, the person said. Senators were considering it while the proceedings were underway on the Senate floor. Schumer had not yet agreed to it.

Under the proposal, the Senate would resume Monday for final arguments, with time Monday and Tuesday for senators to speak. The final voting would be Wednesday.

To bring the trial toward a conclusion, Trump’s attorneys argued the House had already heard from 17 witnesses and presented its 28,578-page report to the Senate. They warned against prolonging it even further after House impeached Trump largely along party lines after less than thee months of formal proceedings making it the quickest, most partisan presidential impeachment in U.S. history.

Some senators pointed to the importance of the moment.

“What do you want your place in history to be?” asked one of the House managers, Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger.

Trump is almost assured of eventual acquittal with the Senate nowhere near the 67 votes needed for conviction and removal.

To hear more witnesses, it would have taken four Republicans to break with the 53-seat majority and join with all Democrats in demanding more testimony. But that effort fell short.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in the rare role presiding over the impeachment trial, could break a tie, but that seems unlikely.

Murkowski noted in announcing her decision that she did not want to drag the chief justice into the partisan fray.

Protesters stood outside the Capitol as senators arrived on Friday, bu few visitors have been watching from the Senate galleries.

Bolton’s forthcoming book contends he personally heard Trump say he wanted military aid withheld from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate the Bidens. Trump denies saying such a thing.

The White House has blocked its officials from testifying in the proceedings and objected that there are “significant amounts of classified information” in Bolton’s manuscript. Bolton resigned last September — Trump says he was fired — and he and his attorney have insisted the book does not contain any classified information.

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman, Deb Riechmann and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

GOP Accused of ‘Greatest Cover-Up Since Watergate’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday accused the Republican Party of orchestrating the “greatest cover-up since Watergate” as the Senate prepared to debate and vote on whether to allow witnesses to testify in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

The Senate is widely expected as early as Friday evening to oppose permitting witnesses, given swing vote Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) announcement late Thursday that he will vote no. Alexander’s decision sparked widespread anger and the trending Twitter hashtag #LamarAlexanderIsACoward.

Schumer said during a press conference Friday that if the Senate votes against allowing witnesses, “the president’s acquittal will be meaningless.”

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“This is about truth, and today the Senate will vote on whether witnesses and documents are allowed in this trial,” said Schumer. “The importance of this vote is self-evident.”

SCHUMER: “If my Republican colleagues refuse to even consider witnesses & documents in the trial, this country is headed towards the greatest coverup since Watergate … [Trump] will conclude he can do it again, & Congress can do nothing about it. He can try to cheat again.” pic.twitter.com/5vNB1tIQ9p

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 31, 2020

The Senate at 1pm ET is scheduled to begin four hours of debate on whether to approve witnesses, followed by a vote. If the Republican-controlled chamber decides against allowing witnesses, it will be the first time in U.S. history the Senate has held an impeachment trial without witness testimony, according to PolitiFact.

A final vote on whether to acquit or remove Trump could come as early as Friday evening, but anonymous Republican senators and aides told Politico the trial could extend until next week if House Democratic impeachment managers push for more time to make closing arguments.

Just ahead of the Senate debate on witnesses, the New York Times reported that former national security adviser John Bolton—one of the potential witnesses in the trial—alleges in an unpublished book manuscript that Trump instructed him in May of 2019 to help with the “pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) tweeted Thursday night that the Senate will be “disgraced” if it votes to acquit Trump without hearing witness testimony or considering documentary evidence that the White House has withheld from Congress.

“If the trial is rigged to keep hidden the most damning, most important, most relevant evidence, then it’s not a trial,” wrote Murphy. “Nor is it an acquittal. It’s a cover-up.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, wrote in a pair of tweets Friday morning that “history will judge us for what happens next.”

“Faith in our American institutions is at an all-time low,” said Warren. “The fact that GOP senators are covering up the president’s corruption with a sham impeachment trial without witnesses documents doesn’t help.”

Americans deserve to know that the President is using the power of his/her office to work in the nation’s interest, not his own personal interest. And they deserve a Senate with the political courage to stand up to a President that has abused his power & corrupted our government.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) January 31, 2020

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of government watchdog group Common Cause, warned in a letter (pdf) sent to every U.S. senator Thursday that ending the trial without witnesses “could undermine our democracy for generations.”

“This is much bigger than President Trump,” Hobert Flynn wrote. “Preventing witnesses, evidence, and transparency in President Trump’s impeachment trial potentially undermines the Constitution for generations.”

“Americans deserve nothing less than the full truth,” she added. “They deserve to see a fair trial, and they are watching closely to see if Senate Republicans fulfill their constitutional duty to serve as an impartial jury or blindly conduct a rigged trial.”

Richard Wolff: Global Capitalism Is Theft

In modern capitalism, governments routinely borrow money. They do this to finance budget deficits that occur when governments raise less in taxes than they spend. Governments also borrow to invest in long-term projects of economic development. The swindling occurs when the lenders and borrowers—usually private financiers and career politicians—negotiate loans that serve their own particular interests at the expense of the taxpayers who eventually cover the costs of repaying the government’s loans plus interest on them.

If governments raised enough taxes to cover their desired levels of spending, they would not need to borrow. Taxes imposed on the wealthiest corporations and individuals would be the most equitable strategy. The corporate wealthy protest, of course, threatening that if taxed, they might reduce their contributions to the economy (investing less, etc.). Most government politicians sympathize with those protests. Many come from the ranks of the wealthiest corporations and individuals (or aspire to join them). They share similar ideologies and depend on campaign donations from them. Compliant politicians typically exaggerate the negative aspects of taxing corporations and the rich. They rarely compare them to the negative effects of the alternatives: taxing middle and lower income people more or cutting government spending.

Government borrowing to cover budget deficits has its own negative effects on the economy. Many variables influence the impacts of taxes and deficit borrowing. Because those variables’ effects cannot be known or measured for years into the future, no one can know which is better or worse for the economy in the long run. When the corporate rich and their political allies stress the negative effects of taxes on the rich they usually carefully neglect the other side of the story as when advertisers mention only the positive side of whatever they are paid to promote. Their goals are simply more profits and less taxes.

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The class swindle embedded in government borrowing is the none-too-subtle mechanism whereby the richest sectors of modern capitalism avoid or replace taxes levied on them with interest-bearing loans to the same government.

The class swindle goes deeper than one-sided untruths about taxes. This becomes clear when we identify who lends to borrowing governments. Banks, big corporations, the 5% wealthiest individuals and other governments are the chief lenders. They are the same economic groups (excepting foreign governments) that press for and get tax cuts such as the Trump/GOP tax reduction of December 2017. That particular tax cut increased the federal budget deficit to over $ 1 trillion in 2019. The same politicians who facilitate tax reductions for banks, big corporations, and the wealthiest individuals likewise then facilitate government borrowing money from them.

The class swindle embedded in government borrowing is the none-too-subtle mechanism whereby the richest sectors of modern capitalism avoid or replace taxes levied on them with interest-bearing loans to the same government. What a deal for the rich who thus exchange taxes (assets lost) for loans (assets and income gained)! And what a deal for their political servants: leaders who can spend more to buy votes and secure donations without having to tax anybody because they can borrow instead. And by the time the mass of taxpayers watching all this grasps the swindle perpetrated on them, those leaders have moved up their political ladders. Their replacements will then respond to popular anger by ostentatiously raising taxes less or maybe even cutting them in favor of, yet again, borrowing. As this can gets kicked down the road, its explosive potential builds.

Deficit finance—the polite veneer for this swindle—deepens inequality in the United States and everywhere else it is practiced. It redistributes wealth from the mass of people (taxpayers) to the richest who “save” by means of lower taxes and then “invest” those “savings” in government loans. In transferring money from the many to a few, deficit finance operates like a lottery.

A different but parallel sort of swindle occurs when governments, especially in “emerging economies” (Asia, Africa, Latin America, and so on), borrow from banks and other lenders in the “advanced industrial economies.” Here the perpetrators are, on the one side, bankers and other lenders eager to make profitable loans to foreign governments. On the other side are government politicians eager to borrow. The latters’ eagerness flows from two sources. The first is the need to secure their political careers by funding economic development projects that could not otherwise occur because those politicians fear the electoral results of using taxes to pay for the projects. The second is their ability to divert, legally or otherwise, sizable portions of the loans they procure to finance themselves and their parties in addition to (or even instead of) their development projects.

These lenders and borrowers gather easily in expensive hotels to negotiate wondrous “development loans” nicely serving both their needs. The loans are backed, of course, by the borrowing country’s ability to tax its citizens and/or sell its natural resources and/or sell its government operations to pay off the loans and the interest on them. Given such loans’ high profitability, they can and often do run for years before outraged local citizens revolt and refuse to keep paying. Then the country declares bankruptcy amid threats and lamentations on all sides. Eventually, what remains of the loan is partly or wholly forgiven. No problem: the lenders’ profits were already reaped, the career benefits achieved. Soon the whole process begins again.

The organization and manipulation of government debts (to finance budget deficits and development projects) have been core components of world capitalism’s real history for centuries. The system fosters those swindles. The system also rejects or ignores the critics of those swindles including Modern Monetary Theorists, Marxists, and “populists” of varying persuasions. Change comes when finally the swindle’s critics and its victims merge to end it.

Delta, American Suspend Flights Between U.S. and China

NEW YORK  — Delta Air Lines and American Airlines said Friday they will suspend all flights between the U.S. and China, making them the first U.S.-based airlines to do so and joining several international carriers that have stopped flying to China as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread.

American said it will halt the flights starting Friday and running through March 27. Delta plans to wait until Feb. 6 to suspend China operations to help travelers in China leave the country. Delta said it will stop the flights through April 30.

United Airlines, the only other U.S. carrier with direct flights to China, has announced it will reduce but not stop service to China.

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All three of the U.S. carriers had reported a steep decline in bookings to China.

For American and Delta, their decisions to suspend all flights there might have been forced when international experts labeled the coronavirus a global public-health emergency. American was under extra pressure after the union representing its pilots sued to halt the flights and told its members not to fly to China because of the health risks.

Several major international airlines, including Air France, British Airways and Scandinavian Airlines, had already suspended service to China.

As the number of flights in and out of China dwindles, passengers on the planes that are still flying face an eerie scene.

On a flight from Shanghai to New York, nobody spoke for fear of spreading germs. Flight attendants donned masks to serve drinks to passengers, who were also wearing masks. A woman who flew 14 hours from Shanghai to New York said she changed her white face mask every four hours to make sure it was clean.

On a flight from Amsterdam to China, frightened passengers protested when they realized that a man from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, would be on the plane, said Chris Van Heesch, a 50-year old from the Netherlands. In the end, the man was allowed to fly.

At Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Bangladesh, passengers arriving from Beijing on Wednesday walked through thermal scanners to check for fevers. As their disembodied faces appeared on a nearby screen, most of their heads looked green, indicating a normal body temperature, but the machine beeped loudly when one man’s forehead appeared red. He was shuttled to the side where a woman took his temperature with a device shaped like a bar code scanner.

“One hundred one degrees,” she called out.

Meanwhile, an airport worker pushed health cards into departing passengers’ hands urging them to contact health authorities if they have a fever within 14 days of arrival.

“The number of infected people in Beijing is relatively low — over 100. But it is much higher in Wuhan,” said Mohammed Raihan, a Bangladeshi student who attends Capital Medical University in Beijing. “That’s why I’ve come back. All the schools and universities have been shut down indefinitely.”

A similar scene played out in Kathmandu, Nepal, where masked passengers were greeted with large, illustrated signs imploring them to visit the health desk if they have symptoms including high fever, muscle pain, headaches or hemorrhaging.

Health experts said Thursday there’s significant evidence the virus is spreading among people in China and were concerned that in other countries — including the United States, France, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea and Vietnam — where there have also been isolated cases of human-to-human transmission. The new virus comes from a large family of coronaviruses, some of which cause nothing worse than a cold.

Flight cleaning crews are taking extra steps to protect themselves. Crews already fully disinfect arm rests, window shades and other hard surfaces after international flights on United Airlines. But if a plane carried a passenger with suspicious symptoms, the cleaning crew will don face shields, goggles and long-sleeved gowns while they clean with a disinfectant approved by the Centers for Disease Control, said United spokesman Charlie Hobart. A plane would be taken out of service and fumigated if a passenger had a confirmed case of coronavirus, he said.

John F. Kennedy International Airport resembled a hospital corridor where everyone from passengers to luggage handlers wore face masks.

Jarvan Lee, a 25-year-old student from New York, came to JFK to pick up family friends arriving from Beijing wearing a black mouth cover with two air filters. He bought it five days ago from Amazon for $30 and plans to wear it at the mall or anywhere else he’s around a lot of people. “I’m worried,” he said of the virus.

Helen Lewis, who pushes passengers in wheelchairs to their flights, began wearing gloves Sunday and asks coughing passengers to cover up their mouths.

“You don’t know who you’re carrying,” said the 62-year-old New Yorker.

Bill Chen, who arrived in San Francisco from Shanghai on Wednesday, said his temperature was quickly screened at the Shanghai airport before he departed. He also filled out a health questionnaire that asked if he had traveled to Wuhan or had any contact with someone who had been in the city.

“I feel a little bit sorry for people traveling on the plane,” Chen said. “People have to be nervous.”

___

Lerman reported from San Francisco. AP Writers Anne D’Innocenzio in New York, David Koenig in Dallas, Joeal Calupitan in Manila and Terry Chea in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Australia Offers a Preview of the World to Come

Let me betray my age for a moment. Some of you, I know, will be shocked, but I still read an actual newspaper. Words on real paper every day. I’m talking about the New York Times, and something stuck with me from the January 9th edition of that “paper” paper. Of course, in the world of the Internet, that’s already ancient history — medieval times — but (as a reminder) it came only a few days after Donald Trump’s drone assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that its front page was essentially all Iran and The Donald. Atop it, there was a large photo of the president heading for a podium with his generals and officials lined up on either side of him. Its caption read: “‘The United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it,’ President Trump said Wednesday at the White House.” Beside it, the lead story was headlined “U.S. and Iranians Lower Tensions, at Least for Now.” Below were three more Iran-related pieces, taking up much of the rest of the page. (“A President’s Mixed Messages Unsettle More Than Reassure,” etc.)

At the bottom left, there was a fifth Iran-related article. Inside that 24-page section of the paper, there were seven more full pages of coverage on the subject. Only one other piece of hot news could be squeezed (with photo) onto the bottom right of the front page. And whether you still read actual papers or now live only in the world of the Internet, I doubt you’ll be shocked to learn that it focused on Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, already involved in a crisis among the British Royals that was almost Iranian in its intensity. The headline: “In Stunning Step, Duke and Duchess Seek New Title: Part-Timers.”

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Had you then followed the “continued on page A5” below that piece, you would have found the rest of the story about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (including a second photo of them and an ad for Bloomingdales, the department store) taking up almost all of that inside page. If, however, you had been in a particularly attentive mood, you might also have noticed, squeezed in at the very bottom left of page 5, an 11-paragraph story by Henry Fountain. It had been granted so little space that the year 2019 had to be abbreviated as ’19 in its headline, which read in full: “’19 Was the 2nd-Hottest Year, And July Hottest Month Yet.”

Of course, that literally qualified as the hottest story of the day, but you never would have known it. It began this way:

“The evidence mounted all year. Temperature records were broken in France, Germany and elsewhere; the Greenland ice sheet experienced exceptional melting; and, as 2019 came to a close, broiling temperatures contributed to devastating wildfires that continue in Australia. Now European scientists have confirmed what had been suspected: 2019 was a very hot year, with global average temperatures the second highest on record. Only 2016 was hotter, and not by much — less than one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit.”

As Fountain pointed out, however briefly, among the records broken in 2019, “The past five years have been the five warmest on record” (as had the last decade).

In another world, either that line or the actual headline should reasonably have been atop that Times front page in blazing letters. After all, that’s the news that someday could do us all in, whatever happens in Iran or to the British royal family. In my own dreamscape, that piece, headlined atop the front page, would have been continued on the obituary page. After all, the climate crisis could someday deliver an obituary for humanity and so many other living things on this planet, or at least for the way of life we humans have known throughout our history.

If you live online and were looking hard, you could have stumbled on the same news, thanks, say, to a similar CNN report on the subject, but it wasn’t the equivalent of headlines there either. Just another hot year… bleh. Who’s going to pay real attention when war with Iran lurks just beneath the surface and Harry and Meghan are heading for Canada?

To give credit where it’s due, however, a week later when that climate news was confirmed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it did finally hit the front page of the January 16th edition of the paper Times. Of course, I wouldn’t be writing this if it had been the day’s blazing headline, but that honor went to impeachment proceedings and a photo of the solemn walk of the seven House impeachment managers, as well as the clerk and sergeant-at-arms, delivering those articles to the Senate.

That photo and two stories about impeachment dominated the top of the page. Trump’s “phase 1” trade deal with China got the mid-page area and various other stories (“Warren Confronts the Skeptics Who Fear Her Plans Go Too Far”) were at page bottom. Stuck between the impeachment headliners and the Warren story was, however, a little insert. You might think of it as the news equivalent of a footnote. It had a tiny chart of global temperatures, 1880 to 2019, a micro-headline (“Warmer and Warmer”), and a note that read: “In the latest sign of global warming’s grip on the planet, the past decade was the hottest on record, researchers said. Page A8.” And, indeed, on that page was Henry Fountain’s latest story on the subject.

As it happened, between the 9th and 16th of January, yet more news about our heating planet had come out that, in a sense, was even grimmer. A new analysis found that the oceans, sinkholes for the heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, had also experienced their hottest five years on record (ditto for the last decade). In their case, however, 2019 was the very hottest, not the second hottest, year so far. And that, too, was a Times story, but only online.

Two Kinds of Time

Now, I don’t want you to misunderstand me here. The New York Times is anything but a climate change-denying newspaper. It has some superb environmental and global-warming coverage (including of Australia recently) by top-of-the-line journalists like Somini Sengupta. It’s in no way like Fox News or the rest of Rupert Murdoch’s fervently climate-denying media organization that happens to control more than 70% of newspaper circulation in burning Australia.

The situation I’ve been describing is, I suspect, far more basic and human than that and — my guess — it has to do with time. The time all of us are generally plunged into is, naturally enough, human time, which has a certain obvious immediacy for us — the immediacy, you might say, of everyday life. In human time, for instance, an autocratic-minded showman like Donald Trump can rise to the presidency, be impeached, and fall, or be impeached, stay in office, and pass on his “legacy” to his children until something new comes along to make its mark, fail or end in its own fashion, and go the way of… well, of all of us. That’s human history, again and again.

And then there’s the time-scape of global warming, which exists on a scale hard for us mortals to truly take in. After all, whatever Donald Trump might do won’t last long, not really — with two possible exceptions: the use of nuclear weapons in an apocalyptic fashion or the help he’s offering fossil-fuel companies in putting yet more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, while working to limit the development of alternative energy, both of which will only make the climate crisis to come yet more severe.

Otherwise, his time is all too human. With our normally far less than century-long life spans, we are, in the end, such immediate creatures. Climate change, even though human-caused, works on another scale entirely. Once its effects are locked in, we’re not just talking about 2100 or 2150, dates hard enough for us to get our brains (no less our policy-making) around, but hundreds of years, even millennia. Though we’ve known about climate change for many decades now, we’re dealing with a time scale that our brains simply aren’t prepared to fully take in.

When weighing an Iranian drone assassination or a presidential impeachment or the latest development in election 2020 against news of the long-term transformation of this planet, no matter how disastrous, the immediate tends to win out, whether you’re a New York Times editor or just about anyone else.

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that it’s been so difficult to truly grasp the import of the warming of this planet, because its effects have, until now, generally been relatively subtle or challenging to grasp. When The Donald is in the White House or Harry and Meghan cause a stir or an Iranian major general is assassinated, that’s riveting, graspable, headlines. Those heating waters, those warming temperatures, the bleaching of coral reefs, the melting of ice shields in Greenland, the Arctic, and the Antarctic leading to rising sea levels that could one day drown coastal cities, maybe not so much, not deep down, not where it truly counts.

The Burning

The real question is: When will climate change truly enter human time — when, that is, will the two time scales intersect in a way that clicks? Perhaps (but just perhaps) we’re finally seeing the beginning of an answer to that question for which you would, I suspect, have to thank two phenomena: Greta Thunberg and Australia’s fires.

In August 2018, all alone, the 15-year-old Thunberg began a Friday school strike in front of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm to make a point: that however all-encompassing the present human moment might seem, she understood in a way that mattered how her future and that of her peers was being stolen by the adults in charge of this planet and the climate crisis they were continuing to feed. The movement of the young she sparked, one that’s still sparking, was a living, breathing version of those two times intersecting. In other words, she somehow grasped and transmitted in a compelling way how a future crisis of staggering proportions was being nailed in place in human time, right at that very moment.

And then, of course, there was — there is — Australia. But one more thing before I get to the devastation of that country. I began writing this piece in New York City on a weekend in January when the temperature hit a record-breaking 65-69 degrees, depending on where in the metropolitan area you were measuring. (A couple of hundred miles north in Boston, it hit 74 degrees!) It was glorious, spring-like, idyllic, everything a human being in “winter” could want — if, that is, you hadn’t made it past Meghan and Harry or Suleimani and Trump, and so didn’t have a sense of what such records might mean on a planet threatening to heat to the boiling point in the coming century. We’re talking, of course, about a world in which Donald Trump and crew were responding to climate change by attempting to open the taps on every kind of fossil fuel and the greenhouse gas emissions that go with their burning. Meanwhile, despite the news that, by 2100, parts of the North China plain with its hundreds of millions of inhabitants could be too hot for habitation, China’s leaders were still pushing a global Belt and Road Initiative that involves the building of at least 63 new coal-fired power plants in 23 countries. Huzzah! And remember that China and the United States are already the top two emitters of greenhouses gases.

Of course, tell that to the Australians whose country, by the way, is the world’s third largest exporter of fossil fuels. For the last month or more, it’s also been a climate-change disaster area of a previously unimaginable sort. Even if you haven’t taken in the acreage that fire has already destroyed (estimated to be the size of South Korea or the state of Virginia) — fire that, by the way, is making its own weather — you’ve certainly seen the coverage of the dead or hurt koalas and roos, right? Maybe you’ve even seen the estimate by one scientist — no way to confirm it yet — that a billion creatures (yes, 1,000,000,000) might already have died in those fires and it’s still not the height of the Australian summer or fire season.

In some fashion, as a climate-change disaster, Australia seems to have broken through. (It probably doesn’t hurt that it has all those cute, endangered animals.) Looking back, we earthlings may someday conclude that, with Greta and with Australia burning, the climate crisis finally began breaking into human time. Yes, there was that less than Edenic November of 2018 in Paradise, California, and there have been other weather disasters, including hurricanes Maria and Dorian, that undoubtedly were heightened by climate-change, but Australia may be the first time that the climate-change time-scape and human history have intersected in a way that truly mattered.

And although, in the midst of winter, this country isn’t burning, we do have something else in common with those Australians: a nation being run by arsonists, by genuine pyromaniacs. After all, earlier in his coal-fired career, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison brought a literal lump of coal into that country’s parliament, soothingly reassuring the other members that “this is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.”

In the election he won in 2019 (against a Labor Party promoting action on climate change), he was in big coal’s back pocket. And like our president, his government has been messing with international attempts to deal with the climate crisis ever since. Again like our president, he’s also been an open denier of the very reality of climate change and so one of a crew of right-wing global leaders seemingly intent on setting this planet afire.

Climate-Change Previews?

Years ago, in my apartment building, someone dozed off while smoking in bed, starting a fire a couple of floors below me. I noticed only when the smoke began filtering under my door. Opening it, I found the hall filled with smoke. Heading downstairs wasn’t an option. In fact, a couple who had tried to do so were trapped on my floor and I quickly took them in. I barely had time to panic, however, before I heard the sirens of the first fire engines. Not long after, the doorbell rang and two firemen were there, instructing me to open all the windows and stuff towels at the bottom of the door to keep the smoke out. I’m sure I’ve never been so happy to greet someone at my door.

That fire was, in the end, contained inside the apartment where it started and I was in no danger, but peering into that smoke-filled hallway I would never have known it. The memory of that long-lost afternoon came back to me in the context of burning Australia, a country where fire fighters had been desperately at work for weeks without being able to douse the hundreds of blazes across that drought-stricken land, which has also recently experienced record high temperatures. It’s been the definition of a living nightmare.

And here’s what I began to wonder on this newest version of planet Earth: Are we all in some sense Australians, whether we know it or not? I don’t mean that as an empathetic statement of solidarity with the suffering people of that land (though I do feel for them). I mean it as a statement of grim fact. Admittedly, it won’t be fire for all of us. For some, it will be rising sea levels, flooding of a never-before-experienced sort, storms or heat waves of a previously unimagined ferocity, and so on.

Still, right now, Australia is our petri dish and unless we get rid of the arsonists who are running too many countries and figure out a way to come together in human time, we’re likely to enter a world where there will be no fire fighters to save us (or our children and grandchildren). Climate change, after all, looks to be nature’s slo-mo version of nuclear war.

In movie terms, think of Australia as the previews. For most of us, the main feature is still to come. The problem is that the schedule for that feature may not be found in your local paper.

NFL’s Saints Accused of Helping Shape Clergy Sex Abuse List

NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans Saints say they only did “minimal” public relations work on the area’s Roman Catholic sexual abuse crisis, but attorneys suing the church allege hundreds of confidential Saints emails show the team’s involvement went much further, helping to shape a list of credibly accused clergy that appears to be undercounted.

New court papers filed this week by lawyers for about two dozen men making sexual abuse claims against the Archdiocese of New Orleans gave the most detailed description yet of the emails that have rocked the NFL team and remain shielded from the public.

“This goes beyond public relations,” the attorneys wrote, accusing the Saints of issuing misleading statements saying their work for the archdiocese involved only “messaging” and handling media inquiries as part of the 2018 release of the clergy names.

Instead, they wrote, “The Saints appear to have had a hand in determining which names should or should not have been included on the pedophile list.”

“In order to fulfill this role … the Saints must have known the specific allegations of sexual abuse against a priest … and made a judgment call about whether those allegations by a particular victim against a named priest were, in its opinion, legitimate enough to warrant being included,” the attorneys wrote. They added, “It cannot now be disputed that the Saints had actual involvement in the creation of the pedophile list.”

That list, the Saints’ role in it and how accurate it was have become key questions in a controversy that has swirled around the team since news of the emails broke last week.

Victims’ advocates have long argued that the New Orleans Archdiocese’s list of 57 credibly accused clergy, since expanded by six more names, minimizes the problem. An Associated Press analysis of the list suggests it underestimated the actual number of publicly accused clergy members in the region by at least 20.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys alleged in earlier court papers that Saints executives joined in the archdiocese’s “pattern and practice of concealing its crimes,” and one email from late 2018 referred to Saints Senior Vice President of Communications Greg Bensel joining unnamed “third parties” in a discussion about “removing priests from the pedophile list.” It was not clear which other Saints officials may have been involved.

The Saints, whose devoutly Catholic owner Gayle Benson is close friends with the local archbishop, have disputed as “outrageous” any suggestion that the team helped cover up crimes. They have accused plaintiffs’ attorneys of mischaracterizing what is in the emails.

Even as the team’s attorneys went to court to keep the 276 documents from being released to the public, they said in a court filing this week, “Neither the Saints nor any of their personnel have anything to hide.” The team says it does not object to the emails becoming public later if they are admitted into evidence in the case.

In a lengthy statement Wednesday, the Saints said Bensel, the team spokesman, advised the archdiocese to be “direct, open and fully transparent” when it released its list to the media and to make sure all law enforcement agencies were alerted.

“Never did the Saints organization offer advice to conceal information,” the team’s statement said. “In fact, we advised that as new information relative to credible evidence about other clergy came to light, then those names should be released and given to the proper authorities.”

In its own statement Thursday, the New Orleans Archdiocese disputed the plaintiffs’ attorneys on the Saints’ role, saying it was “limited to guidance in releasing information to media” and not advising on the content of the accused clergy list.

The National Football League has not responded to repeated queries from the AP about whether such PR work by the team was appropriate or violated league conduct policies.

But victims’ advocates say the Saints have at least created the appearance of impropriety.

“It’s inappropriate for a football team to involve itself in a sex abuse scandal,” said Kevin Bourgeois, who is both a local volunteer leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and a Saints season ticket holder.

“Their response was that they told the archbishop to be straightforward and open,” said Bourgeois, who wore a black Saints jersey at a news conference this week outside the team’s suburban practice facility. “And we believe that that’s completely not true.”

The AP, which first reported on the Saints email controversy last week, filed a motion with the court this month supporting the release of the documents as a matter of public interest.

Both the Saints and the archdiocese have opposed the AP’s involvement, and a court hearing was set Friday on whether the news organization may be heard. After that, another hearing will be scheduled to consider whether the Saints emails given to plaintiffs’ attorneys may be released to the public.

The litigation has brought fresh attention to the process by which the New Orleans archdiocese came to produce its list of 57 names of clergy it deemed “credibly accused” of sexually abusing minors — the first roster of its kind to be released in heavily Catholic Louisiana.

The list was published in November 2018 as the archdiocese was reeling from a scandal in which a longtime deacon and schoolteacher, George F. Brignac, continued serving as a lay minister in the church decades after he was accused of sexually abusing children. An Orleans Parish grand jury indicted Brignac last year on claims he raped an altar boy beginning the late 1970s.

An AP investigation identified 20 clergy members who had been accused in lawsuits or charged by law enforcement with child sexual abuse who are missing from the New Orleans archdiocese list — including two who were charged and convicted of crimes.

The AP analysis included a review of bankruptcy documents, lawsuits, settlement information, grand jury reports, media accounts and a database of accused priests tracked by the group BishopAccountability.org.

Meanwhile, a new lawsuit accuses local church leaders of refusing to disclose the names of 17 people accused of abusing children at a church-run home called Madonna Manor in suburban Jefferson Parish. The names were omitted from the list even though the archdiocese has paid millions of dollars to settle claims of sexual abuse at the home, the lawsuit says.

When the credibly accused list was released in late 2018, Archbishop Gregory Aymond expressed confidence in its accuracy and said it implicated 2 percent of local clergy following a review of 2,432 files dating to 1950.

That percentage would be significantly lower than the representation of abusive priests seen in jurisdictions around the country, said Terry McKiernan, founder of BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit group that tracks clergy sexual abuse cases.

The church’s own numbers, published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, put the national average around 6 percent, while some advocacy groups contend it’s as high as 10 percent.

McKiernan said it would be “objectionable” for Bensel to hold the dual role of directing damage control and weighing in on the contents of the credibly accused list.

“One would hope that the church is not viewing this as a PR matter anymore but a matter for truth and justice,” McKiernan said. “If you have someone helping you spin not only the problem but the supposedly accurate list that describes the problem, you have a lot of work to do.”

___

Associated Press writers Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia, Meghan Hoyer in Washington and Kevin McGill in Metairie, Louisiana, contributed to this report. Contact AP’s investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.

Writer Who Accuses Trump of Raping Her Seeks His DNA

NEW YORK — Lawyers for a woman who accuses President Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s are asking for a DNA sample, seeking to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress she says she wore during the encounter.

Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s lawyers served notice to a Trump attorney Thursday for Trump to submit a sample on March 2 in Washington for “analysis and comparison against unidentified male DNA present on the dress.”

Carroll filed a defamation suit against Trump in November after the president denied her allegation, saying he didn’t know and had never even met her. Her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, then had the black wool coat-style dress tested. A lab report with the legal notice says DNA found in skin cells on the outer surface of the sleeves was a mix of at least four people, at least one of them male.

Several other people were tested and eliminated as possible contributors to the mix, according to the lab report, which was obtained by The Associated Press. Their names are redacted, but the report indicates they were involved in a photo shoot where she wore the dress last year, the only time Carroll says she has donned the dress since the alleged assault.

“Unidentified male DNA on the dress could prove that Donald Trump not only knows who I am, but also that he violently assaulted me in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman and then defamed me by lying about it and impugning my character,” Carroll said in a statement Thursday.

The White House and Trump’s lawyer have not responded to a request for comment.

While the notice is a demand, such demands sometimes spur court fights requiring a judge to weigh in on whether they will be enforced.

Carroll accused Trump last summer of raping her in a dressing room in Bergdorf Goodman, a Manhattan luxury department store, in the mid-1990s.

In a New York magazine piece in June and a book published the next month, Carroll said she and Trump met by chance, chatted and went to the lingerie department for Trump to pick out a gift for an unidentified woman. She said joking banter about trying on a bodysuit ended in a dressing room, where she said Trump pinned her against the wall by her arms, reached under the dress, pulled down her tights and raped her as she tried to fight him off, eventually escaping.

“The Donna Karan coatdress still hangs on the back of my closet door, unworn and unlaundered since that evening,” she wrote. She donned it for a photo accompanying the magazine piece.

She had kept the dress because it was a favorite and she hoped she could someday feel comfortable wearing it again, her legal team says.

Trump said in June that Carroll was “totally lying” and he had “never met this person in my life.” While a 1987 photo shows them and their then-spouses at a social event, Trump dismissed it as a moment when he was “standing with my coat on in a line.”

“She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation,” he said in one of various statements on the matter, adding that the book “should be sold in the fiction section.”

Carroll sued Trump in November, saying he smeared her and hurt her career as a longtime Elle magazine advice columnist by calling her a liar. She is seeking unspecified damages and a retraction of Trump’s statements.

Her lawyer, Kaplan, said the DNA sample request was “standard operating procedure” given the unidentified male DNA on the garment.

“As a result, we’ve requested a simple saliva sample from Mr. Trump to test his DNA, and there really is no valid basis for him to object,” she said.

Trump’s lawyer has tried to get the case thrown out. A Manhattan judge declined to do so earlier this month, saying the attorney hadn’t properly backed up his arguments that the case didn’t belong in a New York court.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they come forward publicly.

Carroll said she didn’t do so for decades because she feared legal retribution from Trump and damage to her reputation, among other reasons. But when the #MeToo movement spurred reader requests for advice about sexual assault, she said, she decided she had to disclose her own account.

Trump, a Republican, isn’t the first president to face the prospect of a DNA test related to a woman’s dress.

Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, underwent such a test during an independent counsel investigation into whether he had a sexual relationship with onetime White House intern Monica Lewinsky and then lied in denying it under oath.

After Clinton’s DNA was found on the dress, he acknowledged an “inappropriate intimate relationship” with Lewinsky.

Clinton was impeached by the House in December 1998 and later acquitted by the Senate.