The Alt Right Is Planning Armed Actions On Inauguration Day. Here’s What We Know So Far.

It’s only been a little over one week since the failed but deadly Capitol coup staged by far right extremists. And there are only five days left until Inauguration Day when President-elect Joe Biden will officially be sworn in. Although Trump has now finally denounced the violence that took place January 6 and asked for armed protesters to cease any further action — especially on his behalf — many are still planning to crash Inauguration Day in the worst ways.

© Provided by Refinery29 TOPSHOT – Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they try to storm the US Capitol in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. – Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. 

(Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

Ahead of next Wednesday’s event, Washington, D.C. and many states across the country are ramping up security measures and preparing reinforcements in case of armed protests on or before Inauguration Day. Currently, federal officials have reiterated warnings to leaders around the country that there are indefinite concerns about more extremists gathering for rallies and riots. An internal agency bulletin that was obtained by CNN this week warned that the FBI has received threats of “armed protests” in all 50 state capitols and at the Capitol.

“While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, the FBI is supporting our state, local, and federal law enforcement partners with maintaining public safety in the communities we serve,” the FBI said in a statement. “Our efforts are focused on identifying, investigating, and disrupting individuals that are inciting violence and engaging in criminal activity. As we do in the normal course of business, we are gathering information to identify any potential threats and are sharing that information with our partners. The FBI respects the rights of individuals to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights. Our focus is not on peaceful protesters, but on those threatening their safety and the safety of other citizens with violence and destruction of property.”

Additionally, Facebook has identified a serious rise in violent rhetoric surrounding the inauguration. A spokesperson at Facebook, who chose to remain anonymous for safety purposes, told Reuters that the company has tracked content that shows the storming of the Capitol has galvanized other far-right extremists who are now planning other gatherings.

But various states are taking extreme measures to prevent any further violence. Extra security precautions are being implemented in battleground states like Pennsylvania that were crucial to Biden’s presidential victory, given the dangerous rhetoric around the “stolen election.” Governors are making plans to activate the National Guard, closing state capitols, and putting up barriers to protect property. In Virginia, a state of emergency has already been declared in Richmond, and Capitol Square will be closed ahead of anticipated protests and potential violence. Larger, more populous states like New York and California are also on high alert. In New York, police are boosting security both in and surrounding the State Capitol in Albany, and in California fences have been erected around the Capitol.

Washington, D.C., specifically, is going all out: the National Guard has already practically taken over on Capitol Hill to protect government officials, with images of guardsmen littering the entire building for the duration of the week. Robert Contee, the D.C. Police Chief, said this week that more than 20,000 National Guard members could be expected in that area alone to protect Biden’s inauguration.

In spite of all of this, the in-person inauguration has not been traded in for a virtual one — which many are concerned about both because of the pandemic as well as potential violence. Already, Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol planned to capture and assassinate public officials, federal prosecutors said in court filings released this week. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke at length about the “close encounter” she had with rioters, during which she thought she was going to die. And Trump has already faced his second impeachment, while many of the extremists who were part of the violent attack are still being arrested.

With all of this coming to light, it’s very likely that this is not the last we’ve seen from Trump supporters who seek to cause havoc and exact revenge for what they believe is Biden’s “false” win. The same dangerous actors who raided the Capitol on January 6 — including QAnon conspiracists, the Proud Boys, Nazis and more — are expected to show up to riot within the next week. Right now, the only thing known for sure is that this will be an Inauguration Day unlike any other.

Mexico says US 'fabricated' charges, releases evidence

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had “fabricated” drug trafficking accusations against his country's former defence minister and then his government published what he said was the entire case file provided by U.S. authorities when they sent him back to Mexico.

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The unprecedented move came one day after Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office announced it was dropping the drug trafficking case against retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos. The 751-page file included transcripts of intercepted Blackberry messenger exchanges that were marked: “Shared per court order, not for further distribution.”

It wasn't immediately clear if release of the documents would affect other court cases in the U.S.

The U.S. government dropped its charges against Cienfuegos in November in a diplomatic concession to the important bilateral relationship and sent him back to Mexico, where he was immediately released.

López Obrador said there was a lack of professionalism in the U.S. investigation and suggested that there could have been political motivations behind U.S. authorities' arrest of Cienfuegos at Los Angeles International Airport in October, noting that the investigation had been ongoing for years, but the arrest came shortly before U.S. presidential elections.

The U.S. government quickly responded that it reserved the right to prosecute Cienfuegos in the future. López Obrador's comments threatened to get the security relationship with the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden off to a rocky start.

López Obrador said Friday that Mexican prosecutors had dropped the case because the evidence shared by the United States had no value to prove he committed any crime.

“Why did they do the investigation like that?” López Obrador said. “Without support, without proof?”

The released documents include purported text messages from December 2015 between two drug gang figures based in Nayarit state that refer to a meeting at the Defence Department with a man they describe as ”The Godfather” at one point and as “Salvador Sinfuego Sepeda” at another.

In the exchange between Daniel Silva-Garate and Juan Francisco Patrón Sánchez, both of whom later were killed, Silva-Garate describes being picked up by men with short, military-style haircuts who tell him they are going to the Defence Department headquarters in Mexico City and describe a meeting with “The Godfather.”

He wants you to work so there is a crapload of money,” Silva Garate texts his boss. “We have to do something from Colombia.”

Silva-Garate tells his boss the “The Godfather” told him “Now we are going to do big things with you … that what you have done is small-time.”

Patrón Sanchez says he wants unmolested routes to ship drugs from Colombia and Silva Garate texts back, “He says that as long as he is here, you will be free … that they will never carry out strong operations,” or raids.

Silva Garate tells his boss the “The Godfather” told him that, “You can sleep peacefully, no operation will touch you.”

Speaking at his daily news conference Friday, López Obrador insisted his government would cover up for no one.

“We’re not going to fabricate crimes. We’re not going make up anything," he said. "We have to act based on the facts, the evidence, the realities.”

López Obrador acknowledged that many Mexicans have confidence in the U.S. justice system, seeing them as “the good judges, flawless, those don’t make mistakes, those are honest."

“In this case, with all respect, those that did this investigation did not act with professionalism,” he said.

Nicole Navas Oxman, acting deputy director of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice said, “The United States reserves the right to recommence its prosecution of Cienfuegos if the Government of Mexico fails to do so.”

In a statement Thursday night, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office went beyond just announcing it was closing the case by clearing the general entirely.

“The conclusion was reached that General Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda never had any meeting with the criminal organization investigated by American authorities, and that he also never had any communication with them, nor did he carry out acts to protect or help those individuals,” the office said in a statement.

It said Cienfuegos had not been found to have any illicit or abnormal income, nor was any evidence found “that he had issued any order to favour the criminal group in question.”

A seven-year investigation by the U.S. authorities was completely disproved by Cienfuegos within five days of having the U.S. evidence shown to him, the statement said.

All charges were dropped and Cienfuegos, who was never placed under arrest after he was returned by U.S. officials, is no longer under investigation.

López Obrador asked why he'd been arrested so close to the U.S. election. “What was the message? Who from? What were they trying to do, weaken the Mexican government, weaken Mexico’s armed forces, spark a conflict with the current government?”

Gladys McCormick, an associate professor in history at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said the only surprise was that Mexico didn’t make a better show of looking into Cienfuegos.

“One would think that they would have at least followed through on some semblance of an investigation, even if it was just to put some window dressing on the illusion that the rule of law exists,” McCormick said. “From the Mexican side, this signals the deep-seated control the military as an institution has on power. It also shows that the level of complicity at play in this case.”

López Obrador has given the military more responsibility and power than any president in recent history, relying on it to build massive infrastructure projects and most recently to distribute the COVID-19 vaccine, in addition to expanded security responsibilities.

Cienfuegos was arrested after he was secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York in 2019. He was accused of conspiring with the H-2 cartel in Mexico to smuggle thousands of kilos of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana while he was defence secretary from 2012 to 2018.

Prosecutors said intercepted messages showed that Cienfuegos accepted bribes in exchange for ensuring the military did not take action against the cartel and that operations were initiated against its rivals. He was also accused of introducing cartel leaders to other corrupt Mexican officials.

Under the pressure of Mexico’s implicit threats to restrict or expel U.S. agents, U.S. prosecutors dropped their case so Cienfuegos could be returned to Mexico and investigated under Mexican law.

Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme told a judge at the time, “The United States determined that the broader interest in maintaining that relationship in a co-operative way outweighed the department’s interest and the public’s interest in pursuing this particular case.”

Even though the U.S. yielded on Cienfuegos, Mexico’s Congress a few weeks later passed a law that will restrict U.S. agents in Mexico and remove their diplomatic immunity.

Those restrictions, combined with dropping the case against Cienfuegos and suggesting the DEA made up the case against Mexico's former defence secretary, could sour the security relationship for the Biden administration, experts say.

“It is surely going to be a relationship of much more mistrust,” said Ana Vanessa Cárdenas Zanatta, a political science professor at Monterrey Technological and Anahuac universities in Mexico City. “This gives Biden all of the cards to distrust the relationship with Mexico so that they continue in secrecy and resume the pressure on the Mexican government of ’what are you doing in the fight against drug trafficking?'”

Mike Vigil, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s former chief of international operations, said clearing Cienfuegos “could be the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as U.S.-Mexico co-operation in counter-drug activities.”

“It was preordained that Mexican justice would not move forward with prosecuting General Cienfuegos,” Vigil said. “It will greatly stain the integrity of its judicial system and despite the political rhetoric of wanting to eliminate corruption, such is obviously not the case. The rule of law has been significantly violated.”

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AP writer E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Christopher Sherman And Mark Stevenson, The Associated Press

WAR IS RAPE

Rare conviction of South Sudan soldiers for rape raises hope

YEI RIVER, South Sudan — First, the soldiers stole their belongings. Then they took their food. On their third and final visit, the woman said, the soldiers raped her and her daughter-in-law until they were unable to walk

.

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What sets these assaults in South Sudan apart from many other rapes by soldiers in the troubled country is this: The women brought the men to court and won.

Ten years after South Sudan gained its independence and two years after its own deadly civil war ended, large-scale fighting has subsided but clashes continue between communities and between the government and groups that did not sign the peace deal — and the use of rape as a weapon remains rampant. Justice is exceedingly rare, but the September conviction has raised hopes that such crimes will increasingly be prosecuted.

“I was traumatized,” the older of the two women, a 48-year-old mother of eight, told The Associated Press in Yei, a town in the southern state of Central Equatoria where she now lives. The AP does not typically identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they grant permission, and the woman said she continues to fear for her safety and is too afraid, for instance, to return to her home village of Adio.

She said she has found some solace in seeing her two attackers convicted and sent to prison after she reported the rape in May to South Sudan's army chief when he visited her village. A new army chief of staff, responding to growing frustration with such crimes, sent military judges from the capital, Juba, to oversee the case and those of 10 other women and girls who also came forward.

In the end, 26 soldiers were convicted, some for rape but others for offences including looting. It was the first time soldiers had been convicted of rape since the 2016 rampage at the Terrain Hotel, where five international aid workers were gang-raped and a local journalist was killed.

The army hopes the trial will be a warning to its troops.

“We apologize, we won’t let it happen again, and we’ll arrest people who do it,” said Michael Machar Malual, head of civilian-military relations for the army in Central Equatoria state. A government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The woman hopes the verdict will encourage more survivors to speak up in a country where sexual assault is a scourge.

Some 65% of women and girls in South Sudan have experienced sexual or other physical violence, the United Nations children’s agency said in 2019.

Between July and September, the U.N. reported an 88% increase in conflict-related sexual violence from the previous quarter even as overall violence dropped. It said there were more than 260 “violent incidents” in total during the period, but it did not specify how many involved sexual violence.

The villages around Yei have been hit hard as fighting continues between government forces and the National Salvation Front, which did not sign the peace deal.

Civilians say they are caught in the middle, with women often accused by soldiers of supporting the rebels — and assaulted — especially if their husbands aren’t around.

In February, three women and a 14-year-old girl were raped by soldiers about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Yei, according to a report by the independent body charged with overseeing the implementation of the peace deal. One woman was gang-raped while held at gunpoint, the report said.



When the AP visited Yei in December, civilians and soldiers said the situation was improving and there had been fewer reports of sexual violence since the trial. The once-bustling town and nearby villages are slowly returning to life after the war.

Yet some residents said they feel as unsafe as ever. A group of women walking home from the market said they hide their food in the bushes, worried that hungry soldiers will steal it from their homes. An economic crisis in South Sudan fueled by a drop in oil prices and the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic means soldiers haven’t been paid in months — and experts are warning of famine.

Rights groups have hailed the recent case as important — but only a first step — and are pushing the government for more accountability.

“This should be a lesson for those with power, especially those with guns, to know that they are not above the law,” said Riya William Yuyada, executive director of Crown the Woman South Sudan, an advocacy group that has pressed the government for accountability.

A hybrid court is meant to be established as part of the peace deal to try people accused of committing wartime atrocities, but implementation is slow. Nyagoah Tut Pur, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, noted that those convicted of such crimes are often lower-level officers, and senior leaders should be held responsible. She added that accountability must also include compensation and services for survivors.

Some women brutalized by soldiers have taken matters into their own hands.

In 2017, Mary Poni said she watched soldiers decapitate her father and gang-rape three of her sisters until they died, before she was assaulted herself. She has written a book about her experience in the hope that it will be a small step toward reconciliation in her country.

“I want the civilian population to be confident in the army, and the army to be able to protect our women and girls,” Poni said. “Women are living in silent fear, not able to open up about things they went through.”

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Associated Press writer Maura Ajak in Juba, South Sudan, contributed to this report

Sam Mednick, The Associated Press

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Heir to South Korea's Samsung faces day of reckoning after four years of graft trial

By Joyce Lee

© Reuters Hong-Ji FILE PHOTO: Samsung Group heir Jay Y. Lee arrives for a court hearing to review a detention warrant request against him at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul

SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean court will sentence Samsung Electronics Co Ltd heir Jay Y. Lee on a bribery charge on Monday, a ruling likely to have ramifications not just for his company but for all of South Korea's chaebol conglomerates.


Lee, 52, was convicted of bribing an associate of former President Park Geun-hye and jailed for five years in 2017. He denied wrongdoing, the sentence was reduced and suspended on appeal, and he was released after serving a year.

The Supreme Court then sent the case back to the Seoul High Court, which will rule on it, and the sentencing, on Monday. Prosecutors have called for a nine-year jail term.

Legal experts say the court is highly unlikely to acquit Lee but it could suspend his sentence, allowing him to remain free. Lee is involved in a separate trial for accounting fraud and stock manipulation.

For many South Koreans, it is not just Lee who will be in the dock on Monday but the whole chaebol system of family-run conglomerates, long credited with building Asia's fourth-largest economy but criticised for wielding too much power and lapses in governance and compliance.

President Moon Jae-in was elected in 2017 on a reformist platform vowing to clean up chaebol practices but he has since encouraged the big businesses to create jobs, especially as the novel coronavirus undermined growth.

Similarly, public sentiment seems to have swung back in favour of the chaebol and many South Koreans would like to see a decisive Lee at the helm of the Samsung empire as it navigates intensifying global competition and pressure to innovate.

"Any absence could affect Samsung from taking on major deals to jump ahead of the competition in fields it is trying to expand in, perhaps buying a struggling competitor in contract chip manufacturing, for example," said Lee Jae-yun, an analyst at Yuanta Securities Korea.

'MITIGATING FACTOR'

On the broader question of chaebols, Cho Chang-hoon, professor at Hallym University of Graduate Studies, said while the conglomerates benefit from centralised decision-making they are often open to attack, including from investors, on environmental, social and governance issues.

Lee has pledged to change Samsung and make compliance and social responsibility top priorities, in part by ensuring that an independent compliance panel set up last year continues to operate.

The judges who will rule on Monday have said they will take the issue of compliance into account in making their decision.

"This is the first trial that proposed compliance as a mitigating factor in sentencing and it could lead to it being utilised in South Korea's charisma-led chaebol culture as a way to build consensus with external stakeholders," Cho said.

Lee's father, Lee Kun-hee, who died in October, was convicted of bribery in 1996 and tax evasion in 2008 but never served time in jail and eventually got a presidential pardon, leniency that was typically shown to business leaders.

But such treatment can no longer taken for granted. The leader of the third-largest conglomerate, SK, served more than two years in prison for embezzlement in 2013-2015.

A petition signed by 57,440 members of the public and lodged with the presidential office hailed Samsung as "the pride of South Korea" and called for Lee to remain free and run the company that pays so much in taxes and provides so many jobs.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Jack Kim, Robert Birsel)

Uganda says president wins 6th term as vote-rigging alleged

KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda’s electoral commission said Saturday that President Yoweri Museveni won a sixth five-year term, extending his rule to four decades, while top opposition challenger Bobi Wine dismissed “cooked-up, fraudulent results” and officials struggled to explain how polling results were compiled amid an internet blackout.

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In a generational clash watched across the African continent with a booming young population and a host of aging leaders, the 38-year-old singer-turned-lawmaker Wine posed arguably Museveni's greatest challenge yet. The self-described “ghetto president” had strong support in urban centres where frustration with unemployment and corruption is high. He has claimed victory.

In a phone interview from his home, which he said was surrounded by soldiers who wouldn't let him leave, Wine urged the international community to “please call Gen. Museveni to order” by withholding aid, imposing sanctions and using Magnitsky legislation to hold alleged human rights users accountable.

Wine repeated that all legal options are being considered, including challenging the results in court and calling for peaceful protests.

The electoral commission said Museveni received 58% of ballots and Wine 34%, and voter turnout was 52%, in a process that the top United States diplomat to Africa called “fundamentally flawed.”

The commission advised people celebrating to remember COVID-19 precautions, but reaction in the capital, Kampala, was muted. At one point, hundreds of Museveni supporters on motorcycles sped by, honking and chanting. The military remained in the streets.

AP journalists who tried to reach Wine's home on Kampala's outskirts were turned away by police. Wine has said he is alone with his wife, Barbie, and a single security guard after police told a private security company to withdraw its protection ahead of Thursday's election.

“I'm alive,” Wine said. After declaring “the world is watching” on the eve of the vote, he said “I don’t know what will happen to me and my wife" now. He said he won't leave Uganda and abandon its 45 million people to the kind of treatment he has faced.

The vote followed the East African country’s worst pre-election violence since the 76-year-old Museveni took office in 1986. Wine and other candidates were beaten or harassed, and more than 50 people were killed when security forces put down riots in November over his arrest. Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, was detained several times while campaigning but never convicted. He said he feared for his life.

This month, Wine petitioned the International Criminal Court over alleged torture and other abuses by security forces and named several officials including Museveni.

In response to his allegations of vote-rigging, Uganda’s electoral commission said Wine should prove it. Wine says he has video evidence and will share it once internet access is restored.

Museveni said in a national address that “I think this may turn out to be the most cheating-free election since 1962,” or independence from Britain.

The electoral commission deflected questions about how countrywide voting results were transmitted during the internet blackout by saying “we designed our own system.”

“We did not receive any orders from above during this election,” commission chair Simon Byabakama told reporters, adding his team was “neither intimidated nor threatened.”

While the president holds on to power, at least nine of his Cabinet ministers, including the vice-president, were voted out in parliamentary elections, many losing to candidates from Wine’s party, local media reported.

Tracking the vote was further complicated by the arrests of independent monitors and the denial of accreditation to most members of the U.S. observer mission, leading the U.S. to call it off. The European Union said its offer to deploy electoral experts “was not taken up.”

“Uganda’s electoral process has been fundamentally flawed,” the top U.S. diplomat for Africa, Tibor Nagy, tweeted, warning that “the U.S. response hinges on what the Ugandan government does now.”

Museveni, once praised as part of a new generation of African leaders and a longtime U.S. security ally, still has support in Uganda for bringing stability. He once criticized African leaders who refused to step aside but has since overseen the removal of term limits and an age limit on the presidency.

He alleged repeatedly that foreign groups were trying to meddle in this election, without providing evidence. He accused Wine of being “an agent of foreign interests.” Wine denies it.

The head of the African Union observer team, Samuel Azuu Fonkam, told reporters he could not say whether the election was free and fair, noting the “limited” mission which largely focused on Kampala. Asked about Wine’s allegations of rigging, he said he could not “speak about things we did not see or observe.”

The East African Community observer team noted “disproportionate use of force in some instances” by security forces, the internet shutdown, some late-opening polling stations and isolated cases of failure in biometric kits to verify voters. But it called the vote largely peaceful and said it “demonstrated the level of maturity expected of a democracy.”

Uganda’s elections are often marred by allegations of fraud and abuses by security forces.

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Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya contributed.

The Associated Press

NY Democrat's ties to Maduro may help Biden unlock stalemate

MIAMI — It was the aftermath of a failed coup against Hugo Chávez and Rep. Gregory Meeks was lounging at the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod with a young lawmaker from Venezuela with a bushy moustache named Nicolás Maduro.

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Photographs of the 2002 encounter show the men standing shoulder to shoulder, having bonded over their shared love of baseball and tales of their respective odds-defying upbringings — Maduro on the streets of Caracas, where leftist radicals like himself were gunned down, and Meeks in a public housing project in Harlem the son of a struggling boxer and teacher.

The exchange would be little more than an anecdote but for Maduro’s ascent to Venezuela’s presidency in 2013 and Meeks’ own improbable climb through the ruthless politics of Washington to become this month the first-ever Black chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Now, two decades on, the New York Democrat says he’s ready — if asked — to confront Maduro, who he remembers from that era as a good listener and committed to social justice.

“There will be no softballs or reminiscing about the good old days,” Meeks said in an interview with The Associated Press this week. “We’d have some real hard talks about what has taken place and what must take place to undo some of the authoritarian things that have happened since he’s become president.”

To talk to Maduro or not: That’s the vexing question facing the incoming Biden administration as it re-evaluates a U.S. policy that has rallied exile hardliners in Miami but done little to cleave Maduro’s grip on power or ease the suffering of regular Venezuelans.

Aides to Biden say the president-elect has limited options for pressuring Maduro and there are no plans to lift crippling oil sanctions or an indictment against Maduro for drug trafficking.

But analysts expect Biden to dial down the almost-daily vitriol aimed at Maduro and threats of a “military option” that characterized Trump’s foreign policy, where Venezuela occupied a privileged space. Instead, he has vowed to emphasize a multilateral approach with the goal of holding free and fair elections as soon as possible.

Enter Meeks, who attended Chávez’s 2013 funeral on behalf of the Obama administration and whose long engagement with Latin America make him ideally positioned to open room for diplomacy. Even though he doesn’t speak Spanish, his reputation as a straight shooter has earned him respect across the region’s ideological divide.

Among those with whom he has struck an unlikely alliance is former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a law-and-order conservative who worked to improve the lot of Afro-Colombians as part of free trade talks more than a decade ago that Meeks backed in defiance of his party. The relationship with Uribe —lionized by Venezuela’s opposition and demonized by Latin America’s left — may come in handy as he seeks to build momentum for politically fraught engagement with Maduro.

“Maduro doesn’t trust his own shadow. But he might trust Gregory Meeks,” said former Rep. Bill Delahunt, who travelled with Meeks to Chávez’s funeral and then twice more to Caracas in a previously unreported mission to improve bilateral relations. “If anyone can move things forward it’ll be Meeks. I have no doubt that he will be an invaluable asset to the Biden administration.”

Meeks said he is not holding himself out as a peacemaker. But he said he is willing to speak to Maduro’s government if allies in Latin America, the European Union and the Biden administration see value in such an approach.

He said his first trip as chairman since succeeding fellow New Yorker Eliot Engel will be to Haiti and Colombia, including a visit to the border with Venezuela where thousands of migrants cross every day looking for food and medical care.

“I want folks to know that Latin America won’t be an afterthought,” Meeks said.

More controversially, he’ is open to involving Maduro stalwarts Cuba and Russia in any negotiations that emerge -- assuming U.S. allies agree.

“That’s a possibility,” he said, adding that the Trump administration’s designation this week of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism will complicate any outreach. “That’s how you resolve an issue of significance. You get buy-in from a number of different people so that it gives the people of Venezuela confidence in the election process.”

A recent State Department cable defending the Trump administration’s hardline policy warns that Russia is working closely with Maduro’s military and finance officials to undermine hemispheric security. The cable, a copy of which was provided to AP by a congressional staffer on the condition of anonymity to share diplomatic communications, argues for more aggressive support for pro-democracy efforts inside Venezuela to complement U.S. sanctions.

“Russia has used its relationship with the regime to symbolically and very publicly defy the United States,” according to the Sept. 9 cable, which is labeled “sensitive but unclassified.” It was sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by James Story, the ambassador at the helm of the Venezuela Affairs Unit in Colombia.

“If left to fester, Venezuela will prove itself to be a very worrisome burr in the side of American foreign policy in the region and prove to be very costly to U.S. national interests,” the cable concludes.

A spokesman for Biden’s transition team declined to comment.

Meeks’ nearly 20-year relationship with Maduro began when both founded what was known as the Boston Group. The informal network of U.S. and Venezuelan lawmakers from across the political spectrum — Democrats, Republicans, socialists and capitalists — came together in Washington and Cape Cod to repair bilateral relations after the brief coup against Chávez that the U.S. was quick to recognize.

The group has largely disbanded, with Meeks the only American member still in Congress. But the relationships built two decades ago have proven resilient. For example, a Republican staffer who participated in the same four-day legislative exchange in Cape Code with Meeks and Maduro led a backchannel effort that in 2018 secured the release of Joshua Holt, a Utah man held for two years in Caracas jail on what were widely seen as trumped-up weapons charges.

More recently, former lawmaker Pedro Díaz-Blum, the Boston Group’s co-ordinator in Venezuela, has brought together dozens of pro-Maduro and opposition economists to prepare a joint study on how to reactivate the country’s devastated oil industry. They have also discussed ways to direct humanitarian aid to the country through multilateral agencies.

After the U.S. presidential election, Díaz-Blum travelled to Washington and saw Meeks. Prior to the trip, which he said he organized on his own, he also met with Maduro, who reiterated his willingness for dialogue with the U.S.

“I was a member of the Boston Group as a lawmaker and I went multiple times to the U.S.,” Maduro said Tuesday in an address to Venezuela’s congress, which is controlled by the governing socialist party following elections boycotted by the opposition as unfair. “I respect and admire a lot the United States, its people and its culture."

After several failed negotiation attempts mediated by the Vatican and Norway, dialogue has become a buzzword for weakness and appeasement among many in the opposition. Not for nothing, the Trump administration has said the only thing to negotiate with Maduro are the terms of his exit.

Meeks said he rejects that logic. Recently even a close Trump ally, Richard Grenell, the former acting U.S. director of national intelligence, met in Mexico City with Jorge Rodríguez, a top Maduro aide who is now president of the pro-government national assembly, which the U.S. doesn't recognize.

“The Trump policy was predicated on Florida politics — not getting something done,” Meeks said.

Still, he said, he has no illusions about Maduro. Following Chávez’s funeral, Meeks said he quietly returned twice to Caracas in a previously unreported effort to pave the way for an exchange of ambassadors, which has not happened since 2010. In one of those trips, he urged Maduro to release opposition activist Leopoldo Lopez, then in jail for leading anti-government protests.

The reconciliation effort failed and Meeks said he walked away from that experience frustrated. Any future overture would require pre-set conditions, he said.

“You can’t just take his word for it,” Meeks said of Maduro. “He’s proven to me that either he was not willing to follow through or something in their politics prevented him from doing so.”

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Joshua Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman

Joshua Goodman, The Associated Press

Comparison between Capitol siege, BLM protests is denounced
Black activists are coming out strongly against a growing narrative among conservatives that equates the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol with last summer's Black Lives Matter protests of racial injustice.

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Republican lawmakers defending President Donald Trump made the comparison again Wednesday while building their case against impeachment and accused Democrats of being hypocrites with selective outrage. Their comments mark the latest effort by Trump and the GOP to misrepresent the Black Lives Matter movement as an extremist, violent faction tied to anarchists.

“You can moan and groan, but he was far more explicit about his calls for peace than some of the BLM and left-wing rioters were this summer when we saw violence sweep across this nation,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said in defending Trump before the House voted 232-197 to impeach the president for inciting an insurrection.

But the two events were fundamentally different. One was an intentional, direct attack on a hallowed democratic institution, with the goal of overturning a fair and free election. The other was a coast-to-coast protest movement demanding an end to systemic racism that occasionally, but not frequently, turned violent.

“The GOP has become the party of false equivalences,” said James Jones, assistant professor of African American studies and sociology at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

Many BLM protesters were responding to the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed Black man who was seen on video gasping for breath as a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck. Police repelled the demonstrators using rubber bullets, tear gas and military assets like helicopters.

The mob at the Capitol was fueled by baseless conspiracies propagated by Trump that the election was stolen from him through massive fraud. The rioters acted on the president’s direct urging to “fight like hell.” They attacked police with pipes and chemicals and planted bombs. They were met largely with restraint by law enforcement.

The unrest that followed Floyd's death included vandalism, arson and looting, but the vast majority of demonstrations were peaceful. Some of the worst violence was in Portland, where thousands of protesters turned out nightly for weeks. Some hurled fireworks, rocks, ball bearings and bottles at federal agents, and a member of a right-wing extremist group was gunned down by an antifa supporter.

But prominent BLM activists repeatedly distanced themselves from provocateurs and brawlers. Much of the violence came from provoked and unprovoked confrontations with police, during city-imposed curfews and after peaceful demonstrators had gone home. An analysis of more than 7,750 demonstrations in 2,400 locations across the country found that 93% happened with no violence, according to the US Crisis Monitor, a joint effort by Princeton University and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

The mob at the Capitol smashed its way into the heart of the federal government, seeking to interrupt constitutionally mandated proceedings to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Lawmakers fled into hiding, and five people were killed, including a Capitol police officer who was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.

The “overwhelmingly nonviolent” demonstrations cannot be compared to the violence at the Capitol, "where white supremacists, mobilized by falsehoods peddled by President Trump and his GOP allies” laid siege to the Capitol “resulting in its desecration,” Jones said.

Trump has made no effort to apologize for remarks that egged on the insurrection. Instead he said Tuesday: "And if you look at what other people have said, politicians at a high level, about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle and various other places, that was a real problem — what they said.”

Freshman Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said Democrats should be removed for inciting violence by supporting the protests that followed Floyd's death in May.

Trump "has held over 600 rallies in the last four years. None of them included assaulting police, destroying businesses or burning down cities,” Greene said.

In fact, occasional violence has happened at Trump rallies, and the president has all but invited crowds to attack critics and journalists. At several events, Trump supporters and protesters have come to blows, including as recently as November, when clashes between people protesting the election results and counter-demonstrators ended with at least one stabbing and 20 arrests.

Freshman Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs of California said she was disgusted that Republican lawmakers used the comparison to avoid condemning a clear attempt “to stop the processes of democracy."

“It’s telling that so many Republicans aren’t even attempting to defend the President — because his actions are indefensible," she said in a statement to The Associated Press after voting to impeach Trump.

The president in a tweet called the Capitol rioters “great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” Over the summer, he called the Black Lives Matters protesters “thugs” and “terrorists.”

In 2020, law enforcement agencies made more than 14,000 protest-related arrests, often detaining people who engaged in civil disobedience, as well as acts of violence.

Trump has portrayed people arrested in the protests as dangerous, left-wing radicals. A review by The Associated Press found many were young suburban adults with no previous run-ins with the law or ties to antifa. Short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

An investigation into the response of the Capitol police is underway. One officer was seen taking a selfie with a insurrectionist, and several rioters were escorted from the premises without being handcuffed.

Equating the pro-Trump rioters to the Black Lives Matter movement could lead to even heavier law enforcement surveillance and actions against BLM, said Scott Roberts of Color of Change, the nation’s largest digital racial justice advocacy group.

“There is a real danger of this false equivocation leading to ramifications, whether intended or unintended,” he said.

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Associated Press Writer Aaron Morrison in New York contributed to this report.

Julie Watson, The Associated Press

Watchdog: DOJ bungled 'zero tolerance' immigration policy


WASHINGTON — Justice Department leaders under President Donald Trump knew their 2018 “zero tolerance” border policy would result in family separations but pressed on with prosecutions even as other agencies became overwhelmed with migrants, a government watchdog report released Thursday has found

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The report from the inspector general for the Justice Department found that leadership failed to prepare to implement the policy or manage the fallout, which resulted in more than 3,000 family separations during “zero tolerance” and caused lasting emotional damage to children who were taken from their parents at the border. The policy was widely condemned by world leaders, religious groups and lawmakers in the U.S. as cruel.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, along with other top leaders in the Trump administration, were bent on curbing immigration. The “zero tolerance” policy was one of several increasingly restrictive policies aimed at discouraging migrants from coming to the Southern border. Trump’s administration also vastly reduced the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. and all but halted asylum at the border, through a combination of executive orders and regulation changes.

President-elect Joe Biden has said Trump’s restrictive immigration policies are harmful, but it’s not clear yet what he will do when he gets in office to alter the system. About 5,500 children have been separated from their parents since Trump took office, and many of those parents were deported without their children. Advocates for the families have called on Biden to allow those families to reunite in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to stop the separations and a federal judge ordered the families to be reunited, but some are still not. Attorney Lee Gelernt, who has been working for years on the issue, said the practice was “immoral and illegal.”

“At a minimum, Justice Department lawyers should have known the latter," Gelernt said. "This new report shows just how far the Trump administration was willing to go to destroy these families. Just when you think the Trump administration can’t sink any lower, it does.”

The “zero tolerance” policy meant that any adult caught crossing the border illegally would be prosecuted for illegal entry. Because children cannot be jailed with their family members, families were separated and children were taken into custody by Health and Human Services, which manages unaccompanied children at the border. The policy was a colossal mess; there was no system created to reunite children with their families. The watchdog report found that it led to a $227 million funding shortfall.

According to the report, department leaders underestimated how difficult it would be to carry out the policy in the field and did not inform local prosecutors and others that children would be separated. They also failed to understand that children would be separated longer than a few hours, and when that was discovered, they pressed on.

The policy began April 6, 2018, under an executive order that was issued without warning to other federal agencies that would have to manage the policy, including the U.S. Marshals Service and Health and Human Services. It was halted June 20, 2018.

The watchdog report found that judges, advocacy groups and even federal prosecutors raised concerns over the policy. But Sessions and others wrongly believed that arrests at the border would not result in prolonged separation and ignored the difficulty in reuniting families.

Notes from a conference call Sessions had with U.S. attorneys from border districts record the former attorney general saying in part: “We need to take away children; if you care about kids, don't bring them in.”

Justice leadership looked at a smaller version of the policy enacted in 2017 in West Texas, but ignored some of the same concerns raised by judges and prosecutors at that time. Top leaders were focused solely on increased illegal activity and didn’t seek information that would have shown concerns over the family separations that would result.

The report follows other scathing investigations of the policy, adding to evidence that Trump administration officials knew a zero-tolerance policy would result in family separations and inflict trauma on immigrant parents and children.

A watchdog report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that children separated at the border, many already distressed by their life in their home countries or by their journey, showed more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress symptoms than children who were not separated. The chaotic reunification process only added to their ordeal.

In a November 2017 email, a top Health and Human Services official wrote that there was a shortage of "beds for babies” as an apparent result of separations in and around El Paso, Texas, that occurred months before the national policy began. Other emails suggest the Department of Homeland Security did not tell HHS officials about the pilot program, even as government facilities for minors run by HHS saw an uptick in children who had been taken from their parents. The emails were released by congressional Democrats in an October 2020 report.

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Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant in Houston and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

Colleen Long, The Associated Press

NY attorney general sues NYPD over Floyd protest response

New York’s attorney general sued the New York Police Department on Thursday, calling the rough treatment of protesters against racial injustice last spring part of a longstanding pattern of abuse that stemmed from inadequate training, supervision and discipline.

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Attorney General Letitia James' lawsuit includes dozens of examples of alleged misconduct during the spring demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s police killing, including the use of pepper spray and batons on protesters, trapping demonstrators with a technique called kettling and arresting medics and legal observers.

"We found a pattern of deeply concerning and unlawful practices that the NYPD utilized in response to these largely peaceful protests,” James said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit.

James, a Democrat, was tasked by Gov. Andrew Cuomo with investigating whether NYPD officers used excessive force to quell unrest and enforce Mayor Bill de Blasio’s nightly curfew. She issued a preliminary report in July that cited a “clear breakdown of trust between police and the public.”

James is seeking reforms including the appointment of a federal monitor to oversee the NYPD’s policing tactics at future protests and a court order declaring that the policies and practices the department used during the protests were unlawful.

The lawsuit in federal court named the city, de Blasio, police Commissioner Dermot Shea and Chief of Department Terence Monahan as defendants. James criticized de Blasio for saying the use of kettling was justified and Shea for saying that the NYPD “had a plan which was executed nearly flawlessly” when officers aggressive cracked down on protesters on June 4 in the Bronx.

In June, at the height of the protests, de Blasio was accused of misleading the city when he told reporters that he personally saw “no use of force around peaceful protests,” even after officers had been caught on video moving on demonstrators without provocation and bashing them with batons.

De Blasio said he met with James on Wednesday and that they share the goal of pushing for major police reforms, such as implementing recommendations in previous reports on the NYPD's protest response. De Blasio, also a Democrat, said however that he did not agree a lawsuit was the solution.

“A court process and the added bureaucracy of a federal monitor will not speed up this work,” de Blasio said. "There is no time to waste and we will continue to press forward.”

John Miller, the NYPD's deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said the department is committed to reform but that James' lawsuit “doesn’t seem to meet the standard for a federal monitor, and it doesn’t seem to illustrate a pattern and practice” as required.

The head of the city's largest police union blamed a “failure of New York City’s leadership" for sending officers “to police unprecedented protests and violent riots with no plan, no strategy and no support.”

“They should be forced to answer for the resulting chaos, instead of pointing fingers at cops on the streets and ignoring the criminals who attacked us with bricks and firebombs,” Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch said.

James’ lawsuit is the second major legal action to stem from the NYPD’s handling of the protests.

In October, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society sued the city on behalf of protesters who say they were assaulted and abused by police.

A civil rights organization and a city watchdog agency have also criticized the department’s actions.

Human Rights Watch issued a report in November on the Bronx crackdown and the city’s inspector general issued a report in December that found that the NYPD was caught off guard by the size of the protests and resorted to aggressive tactics that stoked tensions and stifled free speech.

Mark Winston Griffith, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Communities United for Police Reform applauded the lawsuit, saying: “NYPD violence against protesters is a long-standing problem and it’s a credit to Attorney General James that she’s using the power of her office to challenge the systemic lack of accountability for this violence."

In a joint statement, the NYCLU and Legal Aid Society said: "We hope this will be the beginning of a serious reckoning over police violence and militarized use of force against protesters, especially people of colour, and a check on the impunity many officers have come to see as their right.”

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On Twitter, follow Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak.

Michael R. Sisak, The Associated Press

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M P3

Derelict, dangerous and debarred: Millions in PPP funds given to banned companies


Scattered among the industrial brick buildings in St. Joseph, Missouri — once the starting point for the pony express — lies the story of government pandemic spending gone awry. Among nearly a half-dozen crumbling structures, some with signs posted that warn of conditions that “may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health or the environment" are lingering reminders about HPI Products Inc. That’s the local pesticide company that still has not cleaned up a mess it made over a decade ago.

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St. Joseph endured 25 years of HPI workers discharging industrial wastewater into the city’s sewer system. In 2007, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered HPI to stop illegally storing hazardous waste in corroded drums and leaking in its warehouse. In 2009, the Department of Justice secured a guilty plea from HPI owner William Garvey in federal court for violating the Clean Water Act and hazardous waste storage laws. Garvey was sent to prison. The following year, the EPA obtained a consent decree against the company to pay cleanup costs. After the EPA violations, HPI Products Inc. was debarred — meaning it cannot seek federal contracts or financial assistance from the federal government — on Jan. 1, 2010.

Despite its long history of mismanagement and eventual debarment, HPI was approved this spring for a $441,580 loan through the U.S. Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program, part of the federal government’s massive pandemic economic relief package, according to a review by NBC News.

Companies debarred by the federal government are not supposed to receive these low-interest federally backed loans, according to the requirements for the PPP program. But the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reported in September that it found more than 600 loans totaling over $96 million went to companies that were excluded from doing business with the government. Then on Jan. 11, the SBA’s inspector general reported the number of loans to debarred firms appears to be more than 950. But neither report named those companies.

NBC News, which obtained the loan data under the Freedom of Information Act after a federal court ruling, was able to identify at least 60 debarred businesses worth $32.4 million that were approved for PPP loans. NBC News was among a dozen news organizations that together sued the SBA for release of the information under FOIA. House staffers were able to find more companies because they were given additional identifying information not provided by the SBA to news organizations.

The SBA’s inspector general’s latest report said it found “serious concerns about improper payments” in the PPP program, including money going to debarred companies. It said enough still has not been done by the SBA to prevent these companies from getting loans and to prevent their loans from being forgiven.

U.S. Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., chair of the House Select Subcommittee, said in a statement to NBC News, “The troubling findings by the SBA Office of the Inspector General are unfortunately consistent with the Select Subcommittee’s report in September that SBA approved hundreds of PPP loans to ineligible borrowers who had been debarred or suspended from federal contracting.”

“Treasury and SBA must immediately improve oversight and accountability to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not squandered,” he added. “I’m hopeful that the incoming Administration will implement timely measures to improve oversight.”
Dodging requirements

Since the PPP program began, it has required companies seeking loans to confirmthey have not been debarred. An SBA spokesman said the burden is on companies to provide accurate information, not on banks or on the agency to verify that information.

The agency can consider federal criminal or civil prosecution for misrepresentations on government loan application forms like not disclosing being debarred. But Justice Department records show no such cases yet, and the SBA was unable to point to any actions that have cited debarment as a reason for legal action.

But the SBA said it is examining loan forgiveness applications and would reject requests from any debarred company it finds. “Debarment is one of those items that makes a borrower ineligible” for forgiveness, and they would need to repay the loan, an SBA spokesman said.

With the latest round of PPP loans, approved Dec. 27 as part of a $900 billion economic package, SBA officials say they are trying harder to root out fraud. This time, the SBA is running a computerized check of each company seeking a loan. Applications will be screened by the agency through Treasury Department data systems to confirm the identity of the businesses. These computerized checks that should take less than a day would include confirming tax identification numbers and other information, according to an agency representative.

Following the release of the inspector general’s report this week, the SBA said its efforts to better track fraud include working with the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay team to flag debarred firms. While the inspector general reported those steps are not yet fully in place, an SBA representative disagreed and said, “The guardrails are in place.”
Debarment triggers

Many of the companies NBC News identified were debarred by the EPA for violations of the Clean Air or Clean Water acts. Others were debarred by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor and the General Services Administration.

In Missouri, HPI has continued to prompt a variety of violations for the small city of St. Joseph. According to a lawsuit filed by the city on Nov. 30, 2020, separate from the EPA actions, HPI has not come into compliance with city code and continues to mix and store pesticides in its “increasingly derelict facilities.”

“He has been so successful not complying,” said Janet Storts, a local activist. Told about HPI’s PPP loan, she noted that the company “just got another $400,000 for not doing it right.”

EPA confirmed HPI is debarred following the criminal conviction under the Clean Water Act. In the case of HPI, the debarment is specific to the St. Joseph location where the offense occurred, the same location listed for the approved PPP loan.

HPI did not respond to requests for comment.

Pollutant problems

Among other companies NBC News identified as receiving PPP loans and being debarred for EPA violations are Nupro Industries Corporation, an oil and lubricant manufacturer in Philadelphia whose Neatsfoot Oil products are used for caring for items like baseball mitts and horse riding saddles. It was approved for a $300,000 PPP loan even though it has been debarred since 2012.

The company is required to monitor pollutants in its industrial wastewater by taking samples and testing for pollutants like pH and ethylbenzene, which can cause respiratory issues and dizziness with acute exposure. From 2006 to 2007, Nupro watered down its test samples to appear in compliance with the pollutant limits, according to EPA records. Nupro was criminally prosecuted and pleaded guilty and paid a $200,000 fine.

A.J. Berg, director of operations at Neatsfoot Oil Refineries Corporation, a subsidiary of Nupro, told NBC News the issue had been resolved. But he did not clarify which issue and did not respond to follow-up questions.
Continued headaches

In the meantime, the city of St. Joseph is still struggling to clean up the mess that HPI has left. Garvey still owns at least 11 buildings in St. Joseph. A third building the company previously owned was in disrepair, and the city spent two years trying to get the company to repair the roof to no avail. After a storm in 2017, the facade of the building collapsed.

HPI did not pay for the demolition of the building and instead the city dug into its own funds, spending $390,000. Money was pulled from three funds including the state’s casino gaming initiative, which goes toward Save Our Heritage grants. These grants help owners of historic buildings in the city to make structural and exterior repairs.

But the city keeps hoping for some justice. Aimee Davenport, the attorney representing St. Joseph in its current suit against HPI, said in the lawsuit the city is asking for past damages and fees associated with city compliance violations.

“It’s an economic harm, public safety issue, and environmental issue. All of it,” Davenport said. “We’re trying to get them back into compliance for the protection of all of it as soon as possible.”